Hiiii all! I have mixed feelings about coming here with my random late night after work thoughts since I haven’t posted or been active in a long while. So I feel guilty to come here with this but,
Quick update: I’m 2 years, 2 months and 18 days sober! I have a full time job, and got my license back- with restrictions and plenty of hurdles but I’m grateful nonetheless.
Great… right? I just feel like every other sober person seems so happy and clear? Idk, it’s like I quit drinking and really nothing has changed. I hate playing the blame game but a major root in my drinking is my miserable marriage. So now I’m sober, still depressed and anxious and pretty miserable.
I’m not sure if that made any sense. But, does that make me a dry drunk? For not having anything really change except cutting out the substance? I may be answering my own question here but, I feel like I need a sober friend- like real person to relate to. But I’m almost embarrassed because I’ve been so nonchalant about my recovery that now I feel like I’d look/feel weird going to meetings or even seeking an actual sober friend. I’m just not really that kind of person so I feel like my husband/family/inlaws/everyone really will just think I’m weird or somethings wrong.
Congratulations on your 2 years of sobriety Kaitlyn. That’s impressive.
I started going to meetings just before I hit 3 years. I personally don’t like the term dry drunk. I worked a good program right here on TS. But then I felt like I needed more. That’s when I started hitting up some AA meetings. I started with large speaker meetings on Friday nights. I loved them. Then I went to some smaller book study meetings on Thursday nights. Now I kind of like checking out different meetings. Some I like. Some not so much. But I always get something out of them.
Congrats on your sober time Kaitlyn, excellent work! As to your question, I found my sober tribe right here on this forum. For me this is the peer support I needed. In general, sobriety gave me the possibility to work on other things that didn’t go right in my life. Sobriety gave me the possibility to work on a life for myself I didn’t feel the need to run from. For me that included going into therapy, finding new work, losing most of my old friends and finding new ones, finding new stuff to do. We’re all on our own roads and we all have to find what works for us.
I’m still me too BTW. But I got to change some important things and I feel much better now. It is work but a work of love. If there’s stuff in your life that needs change, I feel you need to work on that. Whatever that means to you personally. Thanks for checking in, wishing you all success. And never think choosing sobriety was the wrong choice for you. Your doing better than you think. Hugs.
I feel rants are healthy but not trying anything new & healthy to help our situation isn’t going to change it. My rec is a ladies mtng. You will be welcomed with open arms!
You aren’t ranting, you are expressing and that’s absolutely okay. That’s why we are here. I can relate to a lot of that. My first couple of years sober was really spent on working on staying sober, not picking up the drink…and for me, that took all my mental capacity. There wasn’t a lot of bandwidth left over for much else recovery wise. As I started to feel a sense of confidence in my sobriety, I realized that I needed work on digging into the ‘why’s’ of my escapism / substance abuse and the ‘how’s’ of what I wanted my life to look like, how I wanted to be. So like a lot of folks, I started up talk therapy again. That definitely helped. For many folks groups/meetings help. For many others (like me) being very active here can be healing. I also found that expressing myself through journaling, walking in nature and also movement therapy was helpful. Getting all those stuck emotions out of my body and learning new ways to keep them moving out of my body. Versus the old ways of drinking / using/ avoiding the hard feelings. For me, learning that the feeling / emotion itself is not wrong was key. And learning that feeling truly do come and go if I let them. That was big.
I think you just asking the question is a great step. It doesn’t really matter what others think of our journey, it is how we feel, what we know in our hearts. If meetings are calling to you, give them a try. If talk therapy is calling, try that too.
As others have said, it takes time to build our new sober self. Healing is a process and for many of us, sobriety is just the beginning.
Being in a miserable marriage is hard. And it is a lot harder once you get sober and can see clearer. That feels to me like a direction to focus…how to heal or find resolution, whatever that looks like for you.
Life stays life and always holds challenges. We have ups downs and days that flow, others that don’t. Being able to move with grace and compassion for our selves and others has helped me a lot.
It is good to ask the questions and take some action. Hope to see you around!! And congratulations on your 2+ years, that is fantastic!!
Great to see you checking in. Congrats on your sober time. Quitting the substance is a great start but to improve your situation you need to work to identify whats making you unhappy, depressed, disconnected and take steps to change. It sounds like youre interested in trying aa but concerned what your family will think. Please dont let that stop you from finding that connection or additional umph youre looking for in your sobriety. Our fears and worries can limit us. It takes courage to take action.
That being said not every meeting is the same. If one doesnt resonate try another. Im with daze i liked speaker meetings starting out but i found a beautiful tribe of women at a ladies only meeting.
I don’t know if dry drunk is a good term to use, but for sure getting sober is often the first step (an absolutely massive one, but still the first, not the only) in improving your life. For me the first year of sobriety was hard work, but with obvious benefits, the second year was stablier, enjoying the fruits of my labours, but year 3+, those fruits of my labours are not tasting so sweet, and I am noticing some massive issues in other areas of my orchard. I’ve been struggling with terrible people pleasing, rumination, I hear you with marriage issues, but also general socialising, career, etc. I swing between thinking “I quit alcohol, I can do anything!” and then sinking into negativity at the lifelong patterns I fear I will never escape from.
Yes!! All of what you said is literally how I feel! Like I had to completely rebuild a career, I’m not happy in it, I feel like an outsider. I feel like in every social gathering people know my deep dark secret and it just makes me feel fake and it’s exhausting masking all the time, then there’s the people pleasing, all of it.
For me, when I hit 2 years sober-I REALLY started to look at my life differently. I can agree with @SassyRocks, I don’t think I had the capacity in the first few years honestly.
When I actually sat down one night and realized I was making ALL the same mistakes in sobriety and I still wasn’t happy-just more isolated feeling-I actually prayed. I had NO idea who I was praying to, maybe to my dad who I lost to alcoholism, maybe my guides, the angels, god, the universe…But I finally realized the only common denominator was ME and I was the problem. I needed help, and that was hard to admit! I had no idea what to do, so I asked to be shown what to do.
Ask and you shall receive! The very next day by nothing short of divine synchronicity and alignment-I had a sponsor and began AA. I had to say yes when it knocked on my door-I almost didn’t lol. But then I remembered I asked for help, and here it was. Honestly-that changed everything for me. It gave me an avenue to connect with others, to do the work and start connecting consciously to that higher power.
My life looks very different today, it’s been 6 years now since that time. And I still think it’s the best thing I have ever done. I thought it was silly starting AA 2 years into my sobriety, but now I can see I just wasn’t willing to do the work the first few years because I couldn’t see how much I needed it. I can relate to your story as I have had many of the same realizations.
Even if we may walk different paths, we can recover together.
