How did you make sobriety feel normal in your social life?

I’ve been sober for a week and I’m feeling good. I feel ready to get back to my projects and routines, but I haven’t navigated the social side of this change yet.

Most of my friends are social drinkers, and they haven’t really seen the difficult side of my relationship with alcohol.

I don’t want to make a big announcement or give a long explanation. I just want to tell them I’ve decided to stop drinking, let them understand that it’s important to me, and feel supported without making it a big deal.

For those who’ve been through this, how did you bring it up naturally with the people close to you?

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Congrats on your 1 week Cris. Thats hard work. I would just take it one day at a time. ODAAT. See what happens. I didn’t care about my social life early on. My own sobriety and learning tools and getting support was what I was working on before I cared about the social aspect. And I just told people here and there when the situation came up.

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When I quit, I told people as it came up. I just said I’m trying to quit. I thought that I kept my drinking problem pretty secret, but the more people I told, the more I heard “that’s good dude, you really needed to quit, I was worried about you”. Guess it wasn’t so secret.

At a year sober, I shared on social media. I figured that, I’ve come so far that if I could inspire or help one other person, it would be worth any negative press I’d get. It’s all been positive and I’ve helped and inspired at least 3 others to also quit.

Now, 7 years, 10 months and 30 days later, I am completely open as to why I don’t drink and open about my old relationship with alcohol. Still, it’s all been positive.

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