18 Days of Sober Takeaways: Day 17
What Long-Term Sobriety Has Taught Me
At the start of my sobriety, I couldn't imagine ever thinking about alcohol the way I do now.
Sobriety was concrete: don't drink; go to meetings; stay close to people who understand; and get through the day without picking up a drink.
That was enough for a while.
Then life started happening again. I went back to work and built relationships. I made mistakes and learned things.
And slowly I became interested in the parts of me that had been difficult to see when so much of my energy had been spent on drinking or recovering from it.
For a long time, I thought sobriety would mean living with a permanent list of things I couldn't have.
I worried about what I would miss and whether life would ever feel as interesting without alcohol.
But the longer I stayed sober, the less I thought about what I had given up and the more I noticed what had become possible.
Alcohol gradually moved from the center of my life to the margins, until it was no longer the most interesting thing about my story.
It took a long time to get there, of course. But I finally understood that sobriety wasn't a smaller life.
It was my life, finally getting bigger.
In recovery, some promises are worth breaking, as I’ll reveal tomorrow – the final day of my 18 Days of Sober Takeaways from #NationalSoberDay to #SoberOctober.
If you’d like to start on Day 1, you can find it here: 18 Days of Sober Takeaways: Day 1
To further explore any of the topics raised in my 18 Days of Sober Takeaways, or if you’d like support in stopping drinking, please visit:
Substack: Sally Cardy - Transformative Recovery Solutions