Always happy to hear about people considering their drinking habits.
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Good article.
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I love this! It’s a great way for the younger generation to experience fun and socializing without alcohol. I wish they had these places back in my day. All we knew were bars and clubs.
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Love this piece by Charles M. Blow…
“I don’t think everyone realizes what an othering experience it is to be treated like a freak because you have made a healthy choice.”
I Quit Drinking Four Years Ago. I’m Still Confronting Drinking Culture. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/08/opinion/alcohol-drinking-dry-january.html?unlocked_article_code=1.n04.bZ4z.K2TNzFFd6wCI
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I just read this article in the NYtimes and enjoyed it and then I started reading the comments. The comment section is now closed so I popped on here hoping to find it being discussed and viola!
It’s funny how many people are triggered by Mr. Blow’s piece. The negative comments remind me of me when I used to drink. There was nothing I hated quite so much when I was drinking as seeing sober people in bars. I felt like they were there to watch the rest of us get drunk and make asses of ourselves – which I in fact did with great regularity. I didn’t want sober witnesses. Was I aware of my own issues? Sure in some way but I wasn’t ready to address or confront that then and didn’t want to feel the pressure or weight of that worry or guilt. The fact that the people not drinking probably weren’t thinking about me at all wasn’t the issue so much as their presence reminded me of something that I suspected was a problem in myself that I didn’t want to deal with.
I am so grateful that I hit ten years sober in September and that I no longer feel any pressure to drink. I’m very comfortable with my choices but I’m also not young anymore and I don’t hang out in bars. Traveling to Europe with a group of people is probably when I felt the difference of my sobriety the most. But I’m very comfortable in my sober skin at this point and felt no pressure and I was surprised and happy to learn that even in that group, I was not alone.
It’s nice to see prominent people coming forward to talk about their own sobriety.
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Congratulations on your 10 years!!! That is wonderful!! And always good to see you!!
When I first read the piece, the comments were positive, so I haven’t seen the blowback (no pun intended, okay, maybe a little pun). 
I do agree that there is often a reaction from non sober people about sober people. And it kind of proves Mr. Blow’s points, I imagine. We don’t know what we don’t know. And I am very glad sobriety is something I know.
I appreciate Mr. Blow’s opinion pieces, and I agree, it is positive that he is sharing his experience with his wide audience. 
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I have a similar feeling about the experience of being sober from lust (“sober from lust” is one way of phrasing it; I’m talking about sex addiction recovery).
I sometimes hear “it’s natural”, “men are wired that way”, “just keep it balanced”. (There are people who are not men in sex addiction recovery too but I can only speak for myself and what I have heard on my journey.) They’ve never lost days or even weeks to it. They’ve never crossed boundaries they never thought would be defined, let alone crossed.
In the perspective shared there (in phrases like “men are wired that way” or “just keep it balanced”), the problem is located in me: something must be wrong with me because in my sobriety I choose to carefully, consciously, and consistently give up any practice of “consuming” people and images as sexual objects, as objects to lust after, “check out”, and consume.
The thing is, the problem is not actually located in me.
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That’s an interesting perspective. I will think on that.
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