Good morning, fellow sobernauts, IWNDWYT, 😁!
We may be anonymous strangers on the internet, but we have one thing in common. We may be a world apart, but we’re here together!
Welcome to the 24 hour pledge! I’m pledging myself to not drinking today, and invite you to do the same. Maybe you’re new to c/stop drinking and have a hard time deciding what to do next. Maybe you’re like me and feel you need a daily commitment or maybe you’ve been sober for a long time and want to inspire others.
It doesn’t matter if you’re still hung over from a three day bender or been sober for years, if you just woke up or have already completed a sober day. For the next 24 hours, let’s not drink alcohol!
I will not drink with you today!
Day 12. I feel good, but starting to get burnt out already on this whole “recovery” thing. I want to just continue my life without alcohol, not dwell on it. I don’t find it hard to drink right now and I’m not sure I will find it hard to avoid in the future.
Everyone’s different. Some people find the “recovery” model helpful, some people don’t. Some people find the AA model helpful, but I gave many years of my life to a “higher power” as a lay member of a religious order, and so I don’t find that model helpful, and the people who say things like “but this doorknob could be your Higher Power” just make me laugh. I’m glad the AA model is there for people who find it helpful, but I’m not one of those people.
I drank too much, I got to the point where I decided that I didn’t want to do it any more, so I don’t. I dug into the science behind addiction, about what alcohol really does to you, and read books by people who modelled the sober life I wanted, eg “Sunshine Warm Sober”. And now I mostly don’t think about it, I just don’t drink.
This is my eventual goal. I don’t have an urge to drink and all these programs are about fighting urges.
Bear in mind that this lack of urges can change. I did dry January in 2022, and thought “this is great, no cravings, nothing.” By March I was drinking as much as I had been before I did dry January, and this is quite common.
So when I stopped again in May 2022, I recognised that I needed to spend some time building sober supports and scaffolding, so that when cravings arrived, I had tools to deal with them.
I’ve wondered if that would be the case. But here’s my train of thought. I asked my therapist what I should do if in the future I get disappointed when I can’t drink at a wedding or trip. She said you don’t have to worry about that right now, just take it day by day. But when it comes to urges, she tells me I need to be prepared. Which is it, you know?
both?
I don’t want to second-guess your therapist, but I wonder if she’s thinking short-term vs long-term? Unless you have a trip planned or an upcoming wedding in your immediate future, a sudden urge to drink is a more immediate thing to need to have a plan for than something which is a way in the future, after you’ve got a good long stretch of sobriety under your belt.
