Today is my one-year sober anniversary and I am thrilled. It has been the longest and shortest year of my life! Stopping drinking and then staying sober hasn’t been easy, but it has been worth it. I started with a firm goal of 10 days alcohol-free and hoped to reach 100 days sober. I never thought I could do the first 10 days, let alone the 100 much less a whole year, and now I’ve “made it”. But what does that mean?

With the alcohol out of my mind and body, my anxiety is way down and I sleep so much better. Hangover free mornings will never get old. Without the nightly cocktails and wine, I can handle more, I can get more done, I can do life without feeling overwhelmed all the time. I am proud of all of the work I have done and all I have learned to make it this far. But I didn’t wake up this morning at one year sober to feel any different than yesterday. I haven’t solved all my life issues or challenges. I just now have a fighting chance to work on them.

There is always more to learn and grow so I will just keep doing that. I will continue to just put one foot in front of the other, which is a pace that I think we as drinkers hate. But patience is such a key in staying sober. Patience with the process, patience with ourselves, and sometimes patience with time itself.

One of the biggest tools in my sober toolbox is the wisdom of those with more time sober than I. I would not have learned without the examples of others. I have tears and a heart full of gratitude for those that reached back to help me, that traveled with me, and continue to do so. I owe so much to this online community BOOM Rethink the Drink! I would not have made it without BOOM.

Today I graduate into a beginner “person with more time sober” as I cross the one-year threshold and I would like to be a resource to those starting out or having trouble gaining traction. To this end, I’m going to share the tools that helped me in my first month alcohol-free. I don’t think I came up with any of these on my own so I’m just sharing my collection of resources.

Take the mythical impossibility out of getting sober and staying alcohol-free. I have learned it’s about opening yourself to the ideas shared by those who went before you. Accountability, trust, honesty. Community.

Day 1– distract/read/research

Day 2– white knuckle/willpower

Day 3– have a personal mantra

Day 4- Goals

This is part 1 of two recordings. 

You can listen to part two at this link - Part 2 https://anchor.fm/boozemusings-community/episodes/Part-2-----Demystifying-Sober--Survival-Guide-From-My-First-10-Days-Alcohol-Free-e112dsg

You can read the blog post at this link https://boozemusings.com/demystifying-sober-survival-guide-from-my-first-10-days-alcohol-free/

If you’re “sober curious” … If you are drinking too much too often and want to stop or take a break…or if you have stopped drinking and are trying to stick to sober! Talk to Us. BOOM Rethink the Drink 

The Spirit is not in the bottle it's in you! 

You can listen to the first part of this recording at this link - Part 1 https://anchor.fm/boozemusings-community/episodes/Demystifying-Sober--Survival-Guide-From-My-First-10-Days-Alcohol-Free---Part-1-e112ddl

This is the second of two recordings from the post at this link https://boozemusings.com/demystifying-sober-survival-guide-from-my-first-10-days-alcohol-free/

Looking back from my first-year sober anniversary to my first 10 days alcohol-free 

Day 5 through 10 

Day 5- Stay Home – HIDE!

Day 6 – Mrs P. and 100 new things in the next 100 days!!

Day 7 – Understanding Wolfie and the Wine Witch or Beating the Mythical Booze Brain Beasts

Day 8 – Understanding the Importance of Sober Treats

Day 9- HALT(S)

Day 10 – Faith in the Wisdom of those further down the road (further into sobriety).

Today is my one-year sober anniversary and I am thrilled. It has been the longest and shortest year of my life! Stopping drinking and then staying sober hasn’t been easy, but it has been worth it. I started with a firm goal of 10 days alcohol-free and hoped to reach 100 days sober. I never thought I could do the first 10 days, let alone the 100 much less a whole year, and now I’ve “made it”. But what does that mean?

With the alcohol out of my mind and body, my anxiety is way down and I sleep so much better. Hangover free mornings will never get old. Without the nightly cocktails and wine, I can handle more, I can get more done, I can do life without feeling overwhelmed all the time. I am proud of all of the work I have done and all I have learned to make it this far. But I didn’t wake up this morning at one year sober to feel any different than yesterday. I haven’t solved all my life issues or challenges. I just now have a fighting chance to work on them.

There is always more to learn and grow so I will just keep doing that. I will continue to just put one foot in front of the other, which is a pace that I think we as drinkers hate. But patience is such a key in staying sober. Patience with the process, patience with ourselves, and sometimes patience with time itself.

One of the biggest tools in my sober toolbox is the wisdom of those with more time sober than I. I would not have learned without the examples of others. I have tears and a heart full of gratitude for those that reached back to help me, that traveled with me, and continue to do so. I owe so much to this online community BOOM Rethink the Drink! I would not have made it without BOOM.

Today I graduate into a beginner “person with more time sober” as I cross the one-year threshold and I would like to be a resource to those starting out or having trouble gaining traction. To this end, I’m going to share the tools that helped me in my first month alcohol-free. I don’t think I came up with any of these on my own so I’m just sharing my collection of resources.

Take the mythical impossibility out of getting sober and staying alcohol-free. I have learned it’s about opening yourself to the ideas shared by those who went before you. Accountability, trust, honesty. Community.

If you’re “sober curious” … If you are drinking too much too often and want to stop or take a break…or if you have stopped drinking and are trying to stick to sober! Talk to Us. 

BOOM Rethink the Drink 

The Spirit is not in the Bottle its in You 

“Sobriety” in and of itself sounds and feels so sparklingly pure. Free. Liberated. An enlightening achievement.

Sobriety

I’m keeping my body “clean” and “free” from the poisons of alcohol. But saying you’re sober feels like announcing you are pregnant and going to have a baby. It sounds so fresh, wholesome, pure, and wonderful! Everyone celebrates and cheers the good news. But the flip side is it’s suddenly incontrovertible evidence that you’ve been doing the dirty…

You can’t say ‘sobriety’ without the glaring evidence now that, yeah, you were drinking too much and all that it entails. Everyone cheers. You’re doing the right thing. But in order to get here, you’re also admitting you got dirty. Very dirty. And when you say you’re sober you’re announcing that to the world.

I felt it. When I think of the word “sober” I’m reminded on a daily basis, of the things I’d rather not share. The secrets that I hid. The mud that I crawled through and the truly awful things that I’m not even ready to bring to the light of day. Things that inspire me to stay AF ( alcohol-free) and remind me it’s NAFD ( Not a F#%king Drop ). Now and forever. At some point, the pride and empowerment in the sober lifestyle just kicks in and the dirt is farther away.

Read this post in its entirety at this link https://boozemusings.com/sobriety-is-a-dirty-word/

If you’re “sober curious” … If you are drinking too much too often and want to stop or take a break… Talk to Us. 

We are an independent, anonymous, and private community who share resources, support, and talk it through every day. It helps to have a community behind you in a world where alcohol is the only addictive drug that people will question you for NOT using

You can read more about us Here And join  Here

community support 24-7 or sign up and sign in here

Don’t let the shame of the stigma of addiction keep you from saying

Looking back from 500 days sober, I still remember that when I was struggling with the mere idea of sobriety. Even for a shortened stint like my first 30-day alcohol-free challenge, the questions flooded my mind.

How will I stop drinking?

When will I stop drinking?

Sobriety? Seriously? Is that really necessary?

What in the heck do I need to do/understand/think/be so that I can tell my monkey brain that:

I can do this, I can live without alcohol

My drinking is making my life worse and not better

I know I can’t even say the words I’ve stopped drinking forever, for I’ve also read the stories of many with decades of sobriety who have relapsed.  Unfortunately, I am one of those people that, at some point in my drinking journey, crossed that line from drinking to addiction, and have realized that is why I can never go back.  I still struggle with that quite often, but now instead of fighting it I dig deeper into my past to uncover what brought me to this point.  I have to be honest with myself about that, and that’s been one of the hardest things to accept.

Which brings me to the unintended consequences of sobriety:  Many sober people extoll the beautiful, raw lives they now have which allow them to embrace both joy and pain fully, but until I had some sober miles under my belt, I really didn’t understand what that meant.  I’d heard about their fears of being boring old bags sitting in their loneliness, and how that wasn’t the case at all with their sober lives.

At 500 days sober, what I’ve found is that the only way out is through, you cannot get to the juicy, colorful, sometimes painful, sometimes boring, sometimes technicolor life on the other side while still drinking if you have a problem.  For me, once I’d learned enough to know that I was one of the people with that drinking problem no matter how I sliced it, I just needed the time to learn about how to get there.  Now when I miss drinking, I don’t wallow in the “remember when’s” or “why me’s,” rather I allow my clear and conscious mind to dig in and discover what I was trying to run away from all of those years. Then I accept it as part of my story without judgment, and turn to the mirror and say “I love you” and really mean it.

You can read the full post on our Boozemusings Blog at this link https://boozemusings.com/struggling-with-the-idea-of-sobriety-thoughts-from-500-days-sober/

If you’re “sober curious” … If you are drinking too much too often and want to stop or take a break… Talk to Us. 

We are an independent, anonymous and private community who share resources, support and talk it through every day. It helps to have a community behind you in a world where alcohol is the only addictive drug that people will question you for NOT using

You can read more about us Here And join  Here

community support 24-7 or sign up and sign in here

Don’t let the shame of the stigma of addiction keep you from saying

“I think I have a problem with drinking”

Lately, while working through my own illegible life script, I’ve been identifying some unsettling, troublesome bits. Instead of gently flagging them and continuing onward, allowing the questions of

to just be there in the background, I’ve stopped in place, gnashing my teeth and wailing

I can’t afford to give the writers a raise so this is the script I’ve got. For now. But it’s a perfectly fine script. And I know the work to do on it . . . I know how to do it. And on my better days (and there are many of them, something else for me to remember) I also trust that in those troublesome bits, those riddles, some potential for transformation lies. But I can’t go at ‘em with hammer and thongs.

Maybe personal revelation will come. Maybe it won’t. But in the interim, I’m getting work done on the rest of the script. And life goes on.

Related Posts from the Boozemusings Blog:

Breath and Allow

Are You Maybe Sober Curious? An Invitation to Imagine The Life that Sobriety Cultivates

Freely Feeling – Sober the Highs and Lows

If you’re “sober curious” … If you are drinking too much too often and want to stop or take a break… Talk to Us. 

We are an independent, anonymous and private community who share resources, support and talk it through every day. It helps to have a community behind you in a world where alcohol is the only addictive drug that people will question you for NOT using

You can read more about us Here And join  Here

community support 24-7 or sign up and sign in here

Don’t let the shame of the stigma of addiction keep you from saying

If you're trying to stop drinking, how do you break the cycle of getting to day three, or five, or seven alcohol-free, and finding yourself drinking again because you talk yourself into thinking that you can handle just one or two? How do you get to the point where you don't retreat to old habits when you're feeling lost or bored or empty. Breaking up with alcohol can feel like losing a friend or leaving a toxic lover. I loved to drink. Drinking was a much-anticipated part of my daily routine and had been for decades! Giving it up felt like cutting off an arm.

I knew that I had to cut the umbilical cord because my drinking had become dangerous and unpredictable. Time and time again, I found that no matter how casually my drinking might be at the beginning of the evening, one glass routinely led to a binge. But I continued to struggle, continued to think that THIS time I could have just one or two and that is what is often called denial. When people find themselves in the predicament that I found myself in, they often go to AA and start sharing their stories in a community of others who are doing the same. The AA routine of story sharing is a great way to break out of denial but AA was not practical or possible for me. So rather than going to AA meetings and telling my story, I wrote my way out of denial in an online community where I still write most days. Writing this post ( among countless others), One Glass Won't Hurt, has helped me remember clearly, even into my seventh sober year, why I cannot drink. Not even one. And why although I may remember loving drinking, I also remember the inevitable consequence of my opening that bottle.

If you’re “sober curious” … If you are drinking too much too often and want to stop or take a break… Talk to Us. 

We are an independent, anonymous and private community who share resources, support and talk it through every day. It helps to have a community behind you in a world where alcohol is the only addictive drug that people will question you for NOT using

You can read more about us Here And join  Here

community support 24-7 or sign up and sign in here

Don’t let the shame of the stigma keep you from saying

“I think I have a problem with drinking”

2 years ago, while searching around the internet for help to stop drinking, I stumbled over some words that were not at all what I expected to be reading. The title of the article was pretty straightforward, Guide to your First Month Sober: Why and How to Quit Drinking, but there was little in it about the dull, controlled and somewhat depressing world that I assumed was addiction recovery. I had no idea how much those words would change my life. I joined the online community, BOOM Rethink the Drink, that was recommended in that article, and 100 alcohol-free days later, I was loudly proclaiming that no drug was sweeter than my sobriety. It was like I’d found a portal into this magical parallel universe.

Sobriety is an invitation to imagine.  We know we need things to move towards, and not just away from.  And I think our brains are rather easy to lead around, so I do like to keep it going forward by really envisioning what may be.  When you are older and wiser as most of us are by the time we get sober, you can more easily let go of the things you can’t manifest, so it’s ok to envision, move towards and then not attain something.   Not every dream can come true.  But plenty of them can.  And I just find sobriety really fuels the limitless possibilities in life.  After all, when you remove the garbage that was clogging you up and stifling you in your life, your self-development and achievements seem to escalate.   Booze demands loyalty to it number one.   Without that full-time occupation, you have the energy to burn on all the good stuff.

So what MAY BE for you?

If you’re “sober curious” … If you are drinking too much too often and want to stop or take a break… Talk to Us. 

We are an independent, anonymous and private community who share resources, support and talk it through every day. It helps to have a community behind you in a world where alcohol is the only addictive drug that people will question you for NOT using

You can read more about us Here And join  Here

community support 24-7 or sign up and sign in here

Don’t let the shame of the stigma keep you from saying

“I think I have a problem with drinking”

Most of us are addicted to alcohol on some level when we decide to stop drinking. We may not be physically dependent but we are most likely neurologically addicted. If you drink routinely at a similar time under similar circumstances, your brain will learn that it needs alcohol in those situations. That could be every day at 5 pm or every Friday and Saturday night. Even with weekend binge drinking, it is possible to become neurologically addicted if you repeat the behavior routinely.

Addiction works on your survival instinct or

“Lizard Brain”

Many people are confused by why it can be so difficult to stop but if you put it in the context of survival instinct I think it’s easier to understand.

Survival instinct has NOTHING to do with rational thought.

If you are starving you will likely kill for food.

If you are in danger you will run or you’re body will fill with endorphins and you will fight.

You will instinctively hunger for sex because that’s how we’re wired to keep our species alive.

Survival instincts are not about making a decision they just are.

If you’ve been drinking habitually, even if the habit is a habitual Friday/Saturday binge, it’s that survival instinct brain that will fight to get a drink when you make the rational decision to stop. You have to DECIDE to STOP drinking on a strong conscious level if you are going to override that subconscious survival instinct. You have to make it NON-Negotiable and get comfortable with being uncomfortable for a while.

The way that some of us drink or drank is quite deadly, immediately dangerous, like Russian Roulette, and the only one who can make you not pick up the first drink is….. you.

Learn as much as you can about your Lizard brain. You are ALREADY a survivor. You are a FIGHTER. Heavy drinkers are SURVIVORS! We survive all kinds of stuff that other people couldn’t, that’s how we get addicted. We are NOT lightweights.

If you are a SURVIVOR and you’ve taught your Survival brain that it NEEDS alcohol by drinking habitually, your brain is going to FIGHT BACK HARD in all kinds of creative ways. Use your powerful ability to survive to fight back against the addicted instinct to drink.

You may have to fight hard, but you ABSOLUTELY CAN DO IT.

KNOWING rationally that your brain will FIGHT to trick you into drinking because it has LEARNED that it NEEDS alcohol to survive … that is the key for a while … the first key.

You’ll need to find more keys as you move forward. Reading this may help The Fuckit Bucket . But the first key is accepting and understanding that no matter what you do not NEED to drink.

Find the rest of this blog post with links to many articles and several YouTube selections on the topic at this link Struggling to Stop Drinking : Overriding Your Survival Instincts or Walking Through the Ring of Fire

If you are drinking too much too often and want to stop or take a break…come join us

We are an independent, anonymous and private community who share resources, support and talk it through every day. It helps to have a community behind you in a world where alcohol is the only drug addiction that people will question you for NOT using

You can read more about us Here

Download the Mighty Networks app here for easy access and search BOOM Rethink the Drink

If you had told me, only 6 weeks ago, that the first month sober would be anything other than a miserable, white-knuckled exercise in deprivation, I would have written you off as delusional or brainwashed by self-help books. I would have assumed that you didn’t know me, didn’t understand my life, or had simply forgotten how wonderful drinking really was. I would have been wrong. This is a recording of a blog post published on the Boozemusings log at this link Demystifying Sober for the Sober Curious - find more here on our Boozemusings Blog and here in our Private Community Boom Rethink the Drink If You're Drinking Too Much Too Often Talk to Us 

Stopping myself from drinking alcohol was so very difficult for me to do at first because it was masking the real problems.  It didn’t take me long to realise that for me it wasn’t that I was simply addicted to alcohol – it was much deeper than that.

Alcohol was not the only thing I was dealing with.

The real issue was that I wanted and thought I needed alcohol’s effect because it helped to cover up the root of my problems.

Alcohol was the drug I had chosen to help me deal with and cope with the thoughts in my head – and there was a direct connection between my thoughts and my actions

The overthinking, the covering up of historic hurts, the anxieties felt, the self-deprecating thoughts, the cognitive distortions and catastrophising.

Cognitive distortions means that at times I have repetitive, negative, troubling and unpleasant thoughts and I can ‘blow them up’ completely out of proportion.

Slowly as the days, months and years passed the reasons for me drinking alcohol appeared in my head in the form of thoughts, emotions and feelings.

I faced my demons and tried to find methods and ways to face them head on without using alcohol –  to find other ways to cope.

I have had to face ‘who I am’ and be accepting of times when I couldn’t – and sometimes still can’t – change things. Sometimes it was exhausting and my emotions were labile at times, but I trusted the members before me who told me to keep going.

In the times when I could not seem to control my anxieties I protected myself by slowing down, by not being the one that everyone relies on, by avoiding stressful situations, by using distraction techniques and self care.

My life is not perfect and it never will be because like everyone’s life it has its ups and downs.  But it’s my life now to live as I choose – alcohol does not have any power to control me anymore. I’ve escaped the alcohol trap.

This is a recording of a blog post – Read the entire post at this link on the Boozemusings  Blog at this link https://boozemusings.com/i-choose-freedom-escaping-the-alcohol-trap/

If you’re “sober curious” … If you are drinking too much too often and want to stop or take a break…or if you have stopped drinking and are trying to stick to sober! Talk to Us. 

We are an independent, anonymous and private community who share resources, support and talk it through every day. It helps to have a community behind you in a world where alcohol is the only addictive drug that people will question you for NOT using

You can read more about us Here And join  Here

community support 24-7 or sign up and sign in here

Don’t let the shame of the stigma keep you from saying

“I think I have a problem with drinking”