Sober Snacks #3

Bite size tips & stories to help you not drink today. For the sober and sober curious looking for digestible, on-the-go sober-positive content. These are the stories and lifestyle tips of people who don’t drink. Enjoy :)

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Take your own path and don’t let anyone tell you how you have to do it.

Every person is different, and every life circumstance is different and so, of course, every way of healing is going to be different. There are a million and one different ways to recover — try it all. If something works for you, keep it. If it stops working after 2 weeks, drop it. Allow for fluidity in your recovery.

My top advice is to go out and explore the different modes of recovery -- take on what works for you and leave the rest.

For example: non-alcoholic, 0%, and alcohol free beer wine and spirits. There is a divide in the recovery community about whether we should drink it. 

My two cents is that you just have to be really honest with yourself about if they are a trigger for you. 

What do I mean by trigger? Here are my examples of being triggered: 

1. It’s going to kick-start more thoughts about drinking. 
2. It’s going to cause self-pity about sobriety because you feel sad you can’t have “the real stuff”. 
3. If you’re just going to be pissed because you really want the “real stuff” and you’ll never be satisfied with a knock-off.

For example, when I’m tasting something that should give me a buzz and it doesn’t give me the buzz: I'm thinking, quite literally, "f*ck off — I don’t want THIS! Get it outta here! Why would I want to taste that it if I’m not going to feel something from it?"

That’s me because I never drank for the taste, ever. I drank to feel something. I drank for the affect and drinking non-alcoholic stuff just pisses me off. Give me a coke with some grenadine instead, that doesn’t taste like booze to me, and so that works for me.

To be honest, I’m one of those crazy people that doesn’t even drink sparkling water because it reminds me of hard seltzers which was the last thing that I drank in my drinking days. I would hide hard seltzers all over the house! So now if I drink seltzer water, I get intrusive thoughts about alcohol and it’s just not worth it for me. 

I want to be at peace and tempting my brain with things that remind me of what I used to love to drink messes with my peace of mind.