I’ve been sober for a almost 3 years now and I’ve lately been getting these creeping thoughts of returning to drinking. Like, maybe I’m cured now, maybe it’s ok, maybe I’ve changed and my relationship to alcohol will be different if I start drinking again. Sobriety isn’t feeling so exciting anymore. How do you keep your commitment to sobriety over the longer game? It was so easy to be motivated when I was only a year out, maybe because the memories of drinking were so fresh. I am trying to find the energy to keep being sober when it’s not so new and exciting (realising I am sounding like I’m in a long term relationship gone stale and I’m looking for the spark right now lol!).
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Well, I am just shy of 500 days, but I get what you are saying. It sounds like you are perhaps forgetting why you wanted to be sober in the first place. Did you do any journaling or writing while you were drinking or early days of being sober?
My list of how I want to live my life, who I want to be, how I want to feel really helps keep me centered when I start thinking about a drink or two.
I drank for 40 years…I know EXACTLY how it works. Sure you can have a couple and have a fun day or night one day, then a few more the next week or month or day, then you miss a day of work, maybe fight with the SO, man you feel like crap hungover, but you keep drinking, you stop caring about a lot of stuff you used to love, you drink, you look like shit, you slur, you run over something…hopefully just a rock…
But maybe…you fight with your SO some more, miss more work, your anxiety is high, you feel like a failure, you get fired, you drink, you cry a lot, you puke, maybe a beer will help…you pass out and wake up in jail…you fucked up again. You think…maybe I would be better off dead.
Or maybe you just sleep in and miss breakfast with your kids. You show up drunk at their game or recital. You don’t read that nighttime story anymore cuz you slur and they say you smell funny. Maybe you fight with your SO. Maybe you just drink.
By the end, I hated who I was and how I felt. I do not want to go back there.
I hope you find your sober passion. You have some good time there. You deserve to be happy.
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Well said.
I can always relate to your posts.
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