Sober Snacks #23

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 :)

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

If there was a smart, driven, capable woman sitting in front of you, what advice would you give her around getting sober and do you think there is any specific advice that she should ignore?

I would say to myself, “You know what you need to do”.

I think I knew for a long time before I stopped drinking that I had a calling to stop drinking. I felt the inner poke, if you like. So I would just say to myself, “Listen to the inner poke. Don’t be afraid. The life that you will achieve will exceed your wildest expectations and all of those fears that you are feeling right now”.

I was so afraid that I was going to be really bored, lose my friends, and never have fun again. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I think I would also say, actually, “Those things will be hard the first time or the second time that you do them. But really, really quickly you learn to operate differently and to live differently. Put yourself in a position where you’ll be practicing and just think of it as practicing how to do life in a different way”.

This is how we rewire our brain connections, all that stuff that I understand so well now. It really does start to feel good quicker than you expect. If I had to put it simply I’d say, “Step into it. Don’t put it off and don’t worry, because the universe will bring everything together for you”.

Is there any advice that you would say they ignore?

When taking someone’s advice about your own drinking, make sure they are really qualified in sobriety. I was such a big drinker and sometimes friends would say to me, “You know, should do it this way”, or “You should do it that way”, or “Maybe you should join AA”. It took me a while to manage my frustration over that, a lot of people giving me different advice.

The advice I would say is you don’t need to tell anybody anything about your sobriety. First of all, it’s yours. You own it. If you’re going to talk to someone about your sobriety, choose the people that you resonate with, that you relate to. Take your advice from. Don’t take advice from people you don’t know sobriety or people that you do know that drink heavily and are still drinking. And just try to create a small force field around yourself and block that stuff out.