3 weeks…JUST DON’T DRINK TODAY
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I really like and relate to both of these. One for before and one for after finding recovery.
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My #1 tip is practice meditation!!!
Practice makes progress.
The practice of meditation can be a potent antidote and effective tool to manage emotions during early recovery. It can be done in many forms from concentration meditation, to guided meditations, to mindfulness meditation, to moving meditations and more. Find what works for you and stick to it. I have grown so much as a person, and in my recovery since I commited to a regular meditation practice. Best of all, meditation is free, accessible to anyone, and can improve emotion regulation over the long-term.
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4+ years (alcohol)
#1 tip
Find yourself a plan B
Our drugs of choise was our plan A, our solution to all problems.
Our way to celebrate all good days, birthdays, holidays, parties, etc.
When quiting that, find yourself something to replace that gap. So…what do you do/eat ore drink when you are normally drink ore use?
Find yourself a plan B.
For me that is: eating chocolat, go for a walk in nature, write in my diary ore here.
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Fantastic and so true. Alcohol is such and evil destroyer of lives.
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3 1/3 years
Build a life you don’t need to escape from.
We all managed our emotions with drugs and alcohol. That was because A our lives were such that they caused us grief, discontent and pain, by having wrong relationships, long standing inner conflicts, wishes and needs that were not being heard, etc. This is always the case, but it’s very often unconscious to the active user.
And B we could not deal with our emotions. We thought that they would eat us up if we let them be present. We felt too close and too distant. We thought there’d be no tomorrow. We were unconsolable.
Through honest introspection, through psychotherapy, 12 step, literature, journalling: find out what your conflicts and your needs are and begin to change your life such that these are less painful and less unaddressed, respectively. And develop a relationship with yourself that contains the practice of feeling your feelings. Cos they won’t go away, they’ll fester in the dark and keep you ill if you don’t.
@Dan531 this thread is the bomb.
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Yeah in ten days I’m allowed to post here 
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Like this, a bunch.
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Like exercise, eating well, getting enough sleep. ALL the things we must do to be healthy.
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Remember yourself at your worst moment.
Remind yourself that’s why you stopped 
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Hurt for a while it will save you from hurting forever.
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31- days Work a 12 step program of you’re interest. You will not regret it if you do the work 100%. No half assing. I’ve worked 1-3 and made a decision to get loaded in the beginning of step 4. Today I am back on step 2 now and taking my time with the steps and the process. I did 1-3 before 60 days, or so I went to fast. this time I’m digging even deeper and alot more has been revealed this time around. Like I hear a friend of mine say “don’t let the process punk you out the promises” just get to work it will be the best decision you make in recovery in my opinion anyways.
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I’ve got just over two years.
My main piece of advice is see alcohol for what it is, don’t get fooled by the advertising.
It causes cancer, it’s poison. Alcohol is today what cigarettes were a couple of decades ago, when they were promoted as a fashionable lifestyle choice that make you look sophisticated and cool… Cigarettes are not cool, they are addictive, make you smell bad and give you cancer.
Give it a couple more decades and alcohol should (hopefully) be recognised for what it is too.
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435 days…. Acknowledging the lies I told myself daily… I can’t get sober, I can’t enjoy life without alcohol…… LIES 
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2 days after 1111 days of sobriety. Nothing the addict voice in your head tells you is rational, truthful, or good for you. If you’re only just a little bit thinking about relapsing, that’s the addict voice. Tell that voice to shut the fuck up.
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Taking personal responsibility for your addiction and not blaming it on anyone but yourself.
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Jumping on late here. But great thread and loving reading all the responses!
Hard to pick one tip, but I think something that has been important to me would be to understand what your substance of choice really gives you.
In other words, play the tape forward. For me as a binge drinker, the idea of having ‘just one, it’ll be fun…’ Or will it more likely be a night that starts fun and then descends into blackouts, spending money you don’t have, saying and doing things that make you ashamed, mystery bruises, risky situations, then the following hangover and feeling terrible and eating loads of shit and going out again for hair of the dog… Rinse and repeat.
@sassyrocks has an excellent list which I should have bookmarked, but don’t. It really resonated with and inspired me when I was starting my sober journey.
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4.5 years.
Don’t do it alone. It can be more lonely in sobriety than when you was drinking or using. Having like minded people around you makes it lot easier at the start, especially considering you will naturally gravitate towards like minded people anyway the longer you are sober.
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My list, which @siand mentioned…helped me immensely in early days…I would read it over when I thought, ‘just one’…
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23 years clean and sober
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