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Quitting Drinking Changed My Life - Thoughts on a Year of Sobriety.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/comments/jtg3v6/quitting_drinking_changed_my_life_thoughts_on_a/.
I've been trying to write this post for days. My official sobriety anniversary was on the 11th of November. Although I am someone for whom words typically come easily, I have struggled to put down exactly what sobriety has meant for me. Because the truth is, it's changed my entire life in so many ways that it's difficult to capture it all.

By the time I quit drinking, I was well past the point where I knew I had a problem. I was drinking daily, drinking when I didn't want to, hiding my drinking, lying about my drinking, justifying my drinking and was just plain terrified that I really couldn't stop and that this was the life I was doomed to live. I felt like I was in an unending series of Ground-Hog Days - waking up anxious and dehydrated and achy and miserable, wishing I hadn't drank at all.

Like many of you, I'd strung together a few brief periods of sobriety in the previous years - a few times even making it over 30 days. But, I always went back to drinking because I felt entitled and bitter. Why should everyone else around me get to enjoy drinking? Why can't I drink normally? I'm successful and intelligent and I deserve to drink fancy craft beer on patios. I'd fool myself into thinking that I could be successful at "drinking responsibly" THIS TIME because of whatever reason I'd made up to convince myself of that.

I owe my success to this subreddit. I lurked here for years, resetting my counter many many times, and reading all of your stories and sharing my own. It was this subreddit that suggested "This Naked Mind," "Alcohol Lied to Me," and "Alcohol Explained." I bought these books as audiobooks and I listened to them over and over again, walking my dogs, driving to work, cleaning my house. And through this repetition, I was able to begin to change the way that I viewed alcohol.

Here's the truth - as best as I can tell it. Alcohol is an addictive, toxic substance that acts as an anesthetic in humans. This means that it does one thing and one thing only: takes you closer and closer to unconsciousness as your blood alcohol content increases. It does this by disrupting your Central Nervous System - which in turn slows both your physiological and psychological processes. The symptoms of drinking that we've all experienced such as tipsy-ness, slurring, stumbling and so forth are the desperate attempts of your brain to fight against an overwhelmingly toxic substance that is overtaking your body.

Alcohol cannot do any of the things that we ascribe to it. It doesn't make us funnier, more confident, sexier, playful, braver, less anxious or any of the other things we tell ourselves. How could it? You have ascribed these attributes to alcohol through years and years of personal and social conditioning. By watching movies where sexy people get a bit tipsy and let go, where the tough guy slugs back whiskey to shore up his courage, where people drink to steady their nerves before a big battle, and so on. And you've had some good experiences with alcohol, nice days with friends on a sun-soaked patio, romantic evenings with your spouse, bonding time with your family.

Have you ever heard of the placebo effect? Our brains are so powerful that simply suggesting to someone that taking this pill will cure their terrible migraines actually works!- even though they are given only sugar pills. Studies have shown this time and time again, even when people KNOW they're taking a placebo, they can STILL feel positive effects. Alcohol is your placebo. And every single good thing that you think it does for you, you can do on your own. In reality, you are doing them on your own.

Once you stop romanticizing drinking, you can begin to truly free yourself from it. I won't pretend that there weren't days and times in the last year that I really wanted a drink. But when you understand that drinking has never given you anything good and that it's certainly not going to start now, it's easier to push those feelings aside.

The first three months, I must have checked my Sobriety App like 10 times a day. By six months, I checked it occasionally, and by nine months, drinking was just a thing I didn't do. I am no longer jealous of those who are drinking - I actually feel a bit sorry for them, wasting their money, energy and precious time on such an awful thing. Quitting drinking gave me the confidence in myself to take other positive steps that I'd been wanting to take. Because if I could overcome my addiction to alcohol, well, there wasn't much I couldn't do.

Sobriety delivers everything that alcohol promised me. I am happier, healthier, less anxious, smarter, more successful, calmer, and better able to deal with my daily life. My marriage is better, my relationship with my family is better, I'm a better boss and friend. The only thing I regret about quitting drinking is that I didn't fully commit to it sooner.

If you're struggling - it gets better, so so much better. A year ago I never could have believed I would be writing this post. I lived in fear of what an alcohol-free life would look like. But now I know what it looks like, and although it certainly isn't perfect, it's more beautiful than I'd dared hope. There's freedom over here, friends, and I know that you can find it too.

Thanks for always being here, r/stopdrinking. You saved my life

#dobrywpis #alkoholizm