I am currently on day 3 of my journey of living a sober life.
I’d like to hear what you believe have been or are keys to success in staying sober for you! I am asking because my mind has already been wandering back to the old routines.
Examples may include: Distracting yourself from those thoughts with what activities? Joining a support group? Avoiding old friends/habits/routines? Building a healthy relationship? Therapy?
Everything that you stated is helpful. It’s best to have a good combination of things. The link below is some of our #1 tips for staying sober from people with some sober time under their belts. Welcome back and best wishes to you.
Thank you for sharing this with me. Right away, I really like Hotic’s “definition” of acceptance.
Acceptance
Self reflection
AAs 12 steps
Community
Open mindedness
To name a few that got me thus far
-Take personal responsibility for your sobriety and do not cast blame on anyone other than your own self for the overuse of alcohol or drugs. People who do not take this responsibility are still awash in their own selfishness.
-Sobriety is not easy and requires work and often outside support from an app like this or a group setting like AA or SMART Recovery.
You have made a great decision…
The keys for me are as follows:
-having the desire to never drink again, and not just accepting the concept of sober forever, actually embracing it.
-not looking at sobriety as losing something or giving something up, and instead looking at it as gaining everything. It’s addition through subtraction.
-believing in the power of say “no” to the toughest person to deny…me. “no, I do not give myself permission to drink”. No one can make me drink if I don’t want to, just as no one could make me quit, until I wanted to…and I wanted to.
Free your mind, and your (sober) ass will follow.
Well, I think the keys to getting sober are a bit different than the keys to staying sober. Meaning focus in early sobriety (getting sober) can be more focused on distraction (especially early days)…this could be thru an established program and following guidelines from program/attending meetings/immersing in program readings…spending time here posting/reading…physical activity…hobbies…reading sobriety and recovery books and memoirs…things like that. A large part of that is building a sober community/support (program, TS, etc) and education (readings, listening to others experiences, etc). Other distractions are things to keep your mind and body busy…sleeping would also be a distraction, warm baths, showers, binge watching Netflix and again physical activity. All those can help in early days. You can also begin building a foundation of sobriety and recovery knowledge thru programs, TS, podcasts, readings, groups, etc. That stuff all adds to your sober toolbox and muscles.
As time goes on and you gain some strength and sober muscles, you can start examining your why’s and what now’s and building new coping strategies. Therapy, journaling, more reading, meditation, mindfulness…there are many paths and tools.
It is also important IMHO to truly look at the reality of your drinking versus the fantasy … the mind shift is important. Once you realize you are not giving up something tangible or important…that you are actually gaining things…self esteem, self confidence, a life of freedom…a new life with new possibilities…it can be freeing to no longer have or need the crutch.
Also, ice cream and LaCroix…they are also key (for some of us) in early sobriety. 
This is a great topic. I’m so glad you are back. I can tell you, just by the tone of your OP, that you sound ready for sobriety and actually want it! That will take you far. So many paths in recovery, but those that have posted on this thread are more than “just sober or not drinking”. They’ve dug deep and have invested in their personal and/or spiritual growth. So much freedom in becoming a non-drinker if you embrace it that way. That’s where a program or routine of recovery can take you, and it’s a gift beyond my wildest dreams. Community is key. For me, the more the better. I’ve built what I consider authentic friendships here. Many of these posters directly influenced my sobriety, and they may not have a clue how important their posts were. TS is fantastic.
I think the key of getting sober for me was a therapy back in 2017 when I didn’t drink for 8 weeks and saw how much that change me. It was an eye opener which didn’t mean I stayed sober after. But it made me realise that alcohol was really, I mean in all seriousness, a problem in all my problems.
For me now staying sober is the new normal which doesn’t mean either that life doesn’t throw shit on me (even writing this feels like having a pity party) - or seems difficult. So staying sober is the result of working on dealing with negative feelings for me mostly, dealing with stress and the feeling of being overwhelmed. And for this I need other sober people to talk about, I need structure in my life (work, food, working out, walking, taking care of my diabetes).
Congratulations on your 3 days and welcome back 
Congrats on day 3! Find what works for you and stick with it. You got this! 
You have to find something better than the addiction, which is hard because nobody would really be in dire straights if the abuse wasn’t worth it in some way (even if that is a really bad long term strategy for life).
You have to actually believe it, you will not be able to fake it because your body will know. Everyone I have ever met that got sober isn’t still romanticizing the bad old days and pining for one last hurrah, they all actually believe they’re better off self-evidently from their perspective.
I also think you need to sort out the other things in your life that give you meaning like family, friends, career, hobbies, intimate relationship. If you’re missing 2+ of those things then addiction is going to be far more difficult to say no to. That could just be because they generally make up life and sobriety is pursued because addiction conflicts with life in a big way but if you have no conflict because you don’t have those things then it’ll be a lot harder to justify the suffering because there’s just no meaning to suggest it’s worthwhile.
Good luck, that’s my sense of things and it seems to work for me.
Well said!! This has certainly been true for me and others I know with long term sobriety.
Hitting rock bottom did it for me. I would sit in the bottom of a bottle every night wondering why everything was so fucked. I had effectively ran off all my drinking buddies because of my jekyll and hyde routine. I had single handedly ALMOST ruined my marriage by living in my head and in the past. And working everyday with hangxiety had become unbearable. When I did the math, alcohol made every part of my life worse, so subtracting it would only bring the opposite effect.
Life since has been all gains.
Most of those are part of my journey. The distraction strategy I don’t find very effective personally; I’ve found reaching out to sober contacts from my recovery groups works better. I call them and I give up the thought: I share it with them and that gets it out of my head, which helps untangle my thinking.
The biggest steps forward in my recovery, personally, have all been from group work, first in an addiction recovery clinic (I attended group sessions there for two years), later in a twelve-step program. In the twelve-step program I am really feeling growth. I am at three weeks now. I’ve reached this length of time before but this time feels different. I am doing the stepwork - I am on step 4 now - and that is having a deep, transformative psychological effect.
Went to AA, got a sponsor, practice the steps, sponsor other men.
I’ve been sober over 5.5 years with this method. But not only am I sober, but I am incredibly happy in my life. I don’t have cravings, I have great interpersonal relationships, and don’t feel like hanging it up.
For me putting down the drink and the drug was only part of it. My selfish ass wanted to be happy joyous and free and AA gave me exactly that!
For myself I reached a stage of my life flashing before me and was life or death, I was given a lifeline and I’m thankful for every day I am here to spend with my family, life is precious don’t waste it as we all regret it later on not being sober, I have taken 2 months off work which has helped me focus on myself and I have forgiven myself in the past and connected with family and joined a sobriety aftercare rehab team which I speak to every day including this community, it’s hard to do it on your own so reach out and connect with people and love yourself first and foremost and the rest will come naturally each day you’re sober is a massive step towards a better life 
Really happy for you, Prince.
You are absolutely correct. This is a great topic and some of it is correct most of it.
it all depends on the personality in the individual involved.As to what the extent of the journey may be for that individual.
For me getting sober and staying sober the keys are a lot different once you have the foundation stone underneath you and you have taken your crash course in the steps
then I have found that there is a difference between staying sober and living in sobriety.
There is no specific set of spiritual tools that was laid in our feet for our inspection, However the big book does reference a lot of tools and our disposal.
It just depends on how we want to use them and how we apply them in our daily life that makes the difference between failure and success.
In most cases Reliance upon a higher power nothing can be achieved without it. Keep the faith and to thine ownself be true