Looks plain stupid!

I just celebrated my 1600th sober day! I probably wouldn’t bother counting days at this stage of my sobriety but the day counter widget on this site makes it super easy.

Celebrating milestones is fun!

For this nice round number I made a date loaf especially so that I could cut it lengthways and write ‘1600’ on it with jam. Satisfying! Then I took a photo and shared it on my social media accounts. Was proud to be celebrating my sober milestone and am always keen to be a visible person in recovery.

Had some lovely responses including one message on Twitter from a yoga teacher in the UK which said: “There was a time I couldn’t imagine how people managed life without booze, now I wonder why I ever bothered!”

Yes I totally get this. My goodness when I think back to first giving up the drink and how terrified I felt of living my life with no booze in it.. how boring I thought I was going to be and how I could not fathom never drinking again… those feelings were very intense.

But now? I’m just happily living my life with no alcohol in it and it’s no big deal. Better than that it’s surprisingly easy. (It wasn’t always, it was hard work at first and I had to concentrate very hard on beating cravings and turning my thinking around).

I don’t miss alcohol. I don’t crave it. I don’t think about it at 5pm every day. I don’t wish I could drink like other people. Far from it.. when I see people getting hammered I can feel quite grateful that I’m not doing that any more.

Member @pinky feels the same and she wrote this great update in the Members Feed the other day which she has agreed to let me share here.

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@pinky: Company staying for the last week, and it’s been a challenge. They are big drinkers, and like to have a two hour cocktail session before dinner every night, which is generally around 9:00 pm. Conversation deteriorates, stories are repeated night after night, and I’m really so done. They leave today – thank God – and I can resume my quiet little sober life where I eat dinner early and tuck in for some TV and a quick read before bed.

Interesting that I used to feel somehow ‘less than’ that I couldn’t participate in this nightly ritual because I am not drinking. Now I feel so relieved that I don’t have to do this anymore.

For those of you worrying about how you’re not going to be ‘fun’ anymore, take heart. I no longer feel any regret, or jealousy, or desire to be part of that.

My little life may look boring from the boozer’s point of view, but the boozy life looks plain stupid to me now. I agree with Mrs. D et al that we’re the cool kids now!

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Yes we are! We are the cool kids and don’t you forget it. If you’re reading this and can’t ever imagine feeling relaxed about living alcohol free, hang in there… it really does get easier. Work on trying to turn your thinking around, attack every hard-wired belief you have about alcohol and make sure you call ‘bullshit!’ on those beliefs (because they are bullshit). And if you are ever having a bad day might I suggest making a date loaf and writing your number of sober days on it in jam? Might just be the pick-me-up you need.

Mrs D xxx

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8 Comments
  1. Yemaya 8 years ago

    Yes drunks look Just plain stupid through sober eyes…I wish someone had video taped me when i was drunk as I mightve given up sooner….as Ive said before the first thing to go when people are drinking are the social niceites….I cant stand being around drunk people anymore…and now I get why people didnt invite me to functions because even though I thought I was wonderful, witty and fabulous I was just an obnoxious dickhead…

  2. MarkG. 8 years ago

    Congratulations! Nothing about my life is boring (although I find I do get bored because that’s just in my nature). I used to seek huge thrills and thought I needed to do big things to get happy. Not so any more. I used to experience long spells of depression, that felt each day like they would never end. Not so any more! I’m growing comfortable with the middle ground. Having a wife, 2 kids, full time employment in a service field (teaching) all keeps me busy. More often than note, I feel happily and usefully whole.

  3. Sheepish 8 years ago

    Amen to that @MrsD! Being sober is totally badass! My head and conscience are clear. I sleep, I wake up feeling great and, guess what, I still socialise! I can go out with friends and have silly fun and not miss booze one bit. If everyone else gets really drunk I either just laugh along with their daft drunkeness (no point being judgey) or slope off happily. It’s a bloody revelation and I LOVE IT!

  4. Icandothis71 8 years ago

    Love this post, thank you @behind-the-sofa. Especially the phrase ‘you can’t think your way to sober living you have to live your way to sober thinking’…

    I am on Day 20 and am loving so many things about waking up sober. Alcohol was disconnecting me from myself, therefore my life. If I truly love myself, is that what I want?

    I’m in shock at how I defended it to those I love for so many years. I normalised it, justified it, hated them for talking to me about it. “Don’t tell me what to do!!”….. and all along they were on my side.

    Makes me sad.

    Now it’s time to be on my own side and call bullshit on the thoughts and cravings that are there. It’s been hard so far and painful, yet so rewarding and so many hard pills to swallow.

    Appreciate this site, and your post.

    • Lizzy 8 years ago

      @Icandothis71 I think your idea of asking yourself “If I really love myself, is that what I want” . The answer will always be “no” – if I really love myself then no I won’t poison my body and i wont drown my personality, I wont become absent from my life…

    • behind-the-sofa 8 years ago

      Thanks………yeah, a drinker always defends their drink…. even though their ‘real self’ agrees with what people are saying and what they’re saying to themselves, the alcoholic voice shouts them all down and tells them everything is fine, just stick with them…… Congrats! 3 weeks tomorrow! The first few weeks are the hardest….. just don’t listen that alcoholic voice….. even though it can be so compelling you have to realise that’s not the real you talking……

      • Icandothis71 8 years ago

        Just baffles me how it has taken so long to look at the behaviour. Coming from a drinking culture, and my peers drinking (and still do) as much as I do, made it normal. For years. I thought everyone drank that way and that it was fun. It takes over and leads to dark places. So glad I’ve seen the light now and figure there’s no point beating myself up about it, just live and action sobriety now to get me out of the hole I dug for myself.

  5. behind-the-sofa 8 years ago

    I sometimes miss drinking and I sometimes crave a drink but it’s nowhere near as bad as when I first started…. I spend a lot more time actually craving and wanting my sobriety now than wanting a drink…. as you progress in sobriety you become more aware of your own limitations and the shortness of your time and the thought of wasting any more brain cells or wasting days nursing headaches seems abhorrent and ridiculous… You see alcohol and what it did to you in a very clear focus when you have some distance from it….. when you’re caught up in it you just need the next fix, then the next fix, you’ll sort it out, you’ll get clean eventually but for now you just need the next fix and that goes on and on….. you’ve had so much to drink that one more isn’t going to hurt, but it just never stops… you can’t actually envisage living without alcohol because it’s your friend, your painkiller, your comforter, it smooths out all the rough edges in your mind and lets you relax….. it’s a part of you, your lot in life, your destiny…. non drinkers seem like a strange and alien lot, made of different stuff than you…. it’s not true though, within everyone is the capability to be sober…. it’s our natural state afterall…. and anyone can get to the point where they’re comfortable being sober…. but of course at the time of your active addiction alcohol is you, it’s your identity, it’s how you approach the world, through a booze tinted lens… the world’s a horrible place and booze is the only thing that makes it a little better…. it’s hard to think your way out of that….I mean you might be fully aware that booze is killing you and that you should stop but you still can’t stop drinking, – it’s like your personality splits into two, on the one hand you don’t want to drink and you know it’s bad for you but on the other hand you’re just pathologically compelled to carry on getting wasted – no matter how much you rationalize and reason with the problem, it just doesn’t listen – it wants a drink….. I heard a saying that ‘you can’t think your way to sober living you have to live your way to sober thinking’…. and as you become sober your mind naturally shifts into line you can see it’s bad for you and you can act on that and not pick up a drink… you become more harmonious because you’re doing what you want to do and with that comes a whole variety of clear thoughts about what a waste of time and how despicable drinking is…. the thing that you defended for so long as if it were your best friend- even though you knew it was bad for you – is now cast off and scutters away, and with it being not around all the time, influencing your thoughts, you begin to distill the relationship in your mind and you’re left with the bitter essence of what all those years together actually were…. horrid and wasted.

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