The First Year of Sobriety

This is where I am at in my sobriety, and a little bit of a ramble about what you experience through the first year of sobriety. This is some of what I have experienced and thought about which has helped me to get 10 months of sobriety under my belt after spending the last 17 years of my life being addicted to and abusing alcohol.

Initially, you have to learn how to overcome the habit of drinking. There are all the first times to get through, interactions with your friends, family and drinking buddies The first dinner without a drink, the first 3pm or 5pm or 10.00am or whatever your start time for the first drink of the day was, your first dinner at a restaurant, your first birthday party, your first Christmas, your first Thanksgiving, Easter, baptism, Fourth of July, vacation, funeral, night out, theatre show, airplane ride, road trips, and the many other first times that you will experience.
In the early days, your mind works overtime and your brain wants to think, think and think some more about everything you have ever done in your life. Flashbacks to the past will come at you when you least expect it, over and over again. Insights and memories merge together to piece together the path of the life you have lived.

Also in the early days, you may be filled with determination and willpower and real desire to succeed at sobriety, you may feel like there is nothing that you can not achieve now that you have some sobriety tucked away. In the early months this was what fuelled me. I had an overwhelming sense that I could do this, and with every day, week and month that passed I felt stronger.

At some point, reality rushes in, and then comes the realization that you are an alcoholic and you have made many bad choices in your life because of this. The enormity of your life and the effects of your life on both yourself and others hit you. This is definitely a time where you could easily turn back to the bottle because it is extremely tough to deal with this and move on. This internal struggle will pass as long as you let it.

Month eight gets really tough. By now you are living a real life, just like a ‘normal’ person. The initial struggle to get through the day without an alcoholic drink is over. You realize that you are living real life just like everyone else out there and it is hard work.

By now, those around you may see you in a different light. They will see that you are serious about sobriety. They may start to depend on you when they need it and they will expect you to have strength.

Life gets really tough because inside you may feel like you are totally falling apart at times but when you compare yourself to who you are now and who you were back then, you know you have come a long way and have changed in so many positive ways.

You feel stuck because although life is hard at times, you have experienced real happiness like never before, you know you are on the right path but probably wonder if you could control your drinking this time. But deep down inside, you know that if you had just one drink, it will all be over. You can not go backwards now, if you do drink again, you will be living a lie and you will know it. As each day of sobriety passes, you realize how low your standards were when you were drinking. The truth starts to creep in and it is difficult to handle.

As time goes by, you spend a lot of time thinking about others, and what they will think of you now. You may never want to see those people again but that is not possible because they are your family and oldest friends. You are afraid because you think they might not like the new boring you. You are at odds with who you are now and who you were then. The easiest way to deal with it is to never see these people or to go back to the bottle and be who you were before but you are not that person anymore. It is tough.

Then comes the realization of how much you have lost out on, how much you don’t know, how much of a disadvantage you are at when you compare yourself to normal people. When you hang with drinkers you don’t care and it is not relevant. It is not that way now. You think about what you could have been, who you are, who you want to be and who you are going to be.

You also have to figure what needs to be fixed within yourself. Now that you are sober everything becomes clearer. It may not be easy but you can begin to unravel your issues and find a way to overcome them. Do you suffer from social anxiety, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, lack of self confidence? Your alcoholism has probably caused some mental issues that you need to overcome or possibly be treated for. The reason you were self medicating needs to be overcome.

You must learn as much as possible about alcoholism. Find out what you are up against, knowledge is power. You should look into AA, sober forums, sobriety books and talk to others who have similar experiences, whatever works for you but you can not be ignorant you must learn everything you can about alcoholism so that you really understand the disease. You will find that there are many similarities between alcoholics no matter what walk of life you are from. Everyones story is different but we all end up going down the same path and usually end up sharing the same feelings, emotions and problems.

You may spend a lot of time trying to overcompensate for everything, trying to be perfect, be there for everyone, do what you can for others, wear yourself out with this perfection but it calms down eventually and then you come to find who you really are and then you can relax and just be you and let everyone be, and just be yourself and realize that you are not responsible for everyone and it is time to let go of your own self imposed guilt.

I don’t count the days anymore unless I am updating my ‘About’ page, I just have a rough idea how long it has been. I think this is important because this decision is for the rest of my life not for a number of days. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but counting days is not for me.

Here are a bunch of other questions that I find myself continually asking and searching for answers:

What is the secret to my sobriety?
What made me attempt to quit drinking?
How have I been able to do this?
What is the best way to get sober and stay sober?
Is the creative theory best?
Is AA best?
Why do so many so many alcoholics relapse?
Why is sobriety so hard?
Why do so many of us go through life drunk as opposed to sober? Why is sobriety looked upon as boring and unexciting?
Why does the mere mention of giving up alcohol make people want to run mile from you?
What will my friends think of me now?
Who am I really?
Why is life so hard?
What is so difficult about being sober?
What can I do to improve myself?
What issues do I have that need my concern?
Is this worth it?
Who has been successful in recovery?

What are your questions? What is your experience of sobriety so far?

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Tags: Alcohol Abuse Recovery, Alcohol Recovery, Alcoholics Recovery, Getting Sober, My Sobriety, Staying Sober, The First Year of Sobriety

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Get Sober. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.