How To Live the Rest of Your Life Sober

Kudos to you for deciding to live a better life — and a sober life. Developing a structured routine can help you stick to your sobriety goals, make healthy decisions, and reduce the likelihood of triggers and relapse. Create a structured daily routine, but plan for days you may experience sickness or chronic illness flare-ups that could require adjusting your routine. Triggers for drug and alcohol use are typically defined as people, places, and things that remind you of your addictive behavior or encourage the use of substances you’re trying to avoid. They don’t have to be direct triggers, like someone offering you the substance. It’s been over six years since I first started seriously questioning my relationship with alcohol and considered a life without it.

Therefore, when you become sober, your weight will likely stabilize itself. When you don’t put anything unhealthy into your body, you won’t be so vulnerable to colds and stomach bugs. You have to spend time acquiring your substance of choice, using it, and then recovering from its effects. You can use it to work on your hobbies, learn new skills, spend time with your loved ones, work out, or anything else you please. In terms of calories, binge drinking typically becomes the number one calorie source for addicts. Without this additional, daily calorie source, former addicts are significantly minimizing their calorie load.

Build a Support Network

However, the plentiful benefits that follow can be just as incredible. That is, until I changed my approach to the whole business of living life sober. Chris Marshall is a certified substance abuse counselor and the founder of Sans Bar, a venue for “the nightlife experience” without the alcohol, in Austin, Texas.

• It’s been over six years since I first started seriously questioning my relationship with alcohol and considered a life without it.
• Such symptoms are often related to mood and may include irritability, anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and fatigue.
• Acknowledging and celebrating the hard work of recovery is helpful for keeping you motivated and reminding you why you took this brave step toward sobriety in the first place.

Through AA and making friends with other sober people — many of whom are also trans and autistic — I now feel less of a desire to pick up a drink. But I know that deep down, I love to socialize and especially love to host parties, which is why I’m throwing a sober Halloween party this year. For students struggling with substances or in recovery or dealing with family members who are struggling with substances, it can be very lonely and isolating,” she says. I had a picture of what living sober would be like, and it was dismal and dark.

Build Healthy Relationships

Therefore, you’ll have more ready funds than you did while suffering from addiction. Nobody likes to think that they might end up with liver disease or other substance-related health problems. But people are diagnosed with these diseases every day, and if you abuse alcohol or drugs regularly, chances are high that you’ll eventually be one of them.

When you live a sober life, you can get to know yourself and feel comfortable in your own skin. Self-love and addiction are two things that can never go hand-in-hand. Now that you’re sober, you can start working on developing real friendships with people who truly care about you and value you. Some of the other motivators may be finding a job and getting a job, reconnecting with family, solving legal problems, recovering a driver’s or professional license, or eventually helping others stay sober.

Your memory improves.

People may want to feel numb so they can overlook the bad things in their life. That often leads to being unable to see or enjoy the good as well. We hear a lot about practicing mindfulness, not just in the recovery community but in mental health in general. Practicing mindfulness means that you’re focused on the present moment and enjoying it for all that it is, rather than thinking about the past or the future. Once you’ve been sober for a while, you may start to believe that you’re in the clear from alcohol or drug abuse, and maybe you are.

The basic disease model of addiction says that plenty of people use drugs or alcohol to medicate their problems away. If this sounds like you, you might be surprised to find out how much more effectively you can deal with things sober. It might feel like drinking or using drugs makes your problems go away, but as anyone who’s struggled with addiction knows, this is just an illusion. When you commit to sobriety, you can actually solve your problems instead of ignoring them. There are many effects of using drugs or alcohol that go beyond feeling high or drunk.

The Top 5 Objections to Getting Sober

By the fall of her junior year, Berg was back on campus and coming to terms with the fact that she needed more help. Lori Massicot is The Midlife Sobriety Coach on a mission to raise awareness towards the life-changing impact of sobriety as we age. I was ashamed of my over-consumption of Chardonnay, and now I would be ashamed of no longer drinking. If you are reading this sober life because you are in the depths of perimenopause or post-menopause and you feel the darkness, and the heaviness of midlife, I want you to know that I know how you feel, and think. The reason I drank for so many years is that I didn’t want to pay attention to a solution to more happiness and better tools to manage my stress and social anxiety, I tried to numb out and hide.

For many, this is significantly noticeable in terms of hair, complexion, lacking dark circles, and overall weight. Once you stop drinking, you’ll finally notice https://ecosoberhouse.com/ a more healthy and consistent number in your bank account. Now, you pay down debts and start to invest money in the things in life that actually matter.