How to Stay Sober: 10 Tips Aftercare

If you’re like most drinkers, you’ve likely surrounded yourself at some point with a group of people who also drink. I’d argue that many of us gravitated to a group of friends who have drinking habits that align with our own, and we did this because we didn’t want sober friends. It’s seen as normal to drink, and quitting that drug can feel like breaking a social pact. So your bold, life-improving decision to not drink will mean changes almost everywhere you look. Here are some surprising (and not-so-surprising) occurrences that will inevitably happen to your relationships, your identity, even your free time, and how I’ve learned to deal with each one.

• The bottom line is that it’s hard to quit, and even harder to maintain.
• I don’t have that much sex, and that’s more like me saying, I no longer lower my standards and sleep with just anyone because of beer goggles.
• Alcohol is absorbed into your bloodstream very quickly, so it won’t make much difference unless you vomit immediately after taking a sip.

It’s about identifying triggers for alcohol use, like stress, sadness, or boredom, and coming up with coping skills or alternatives to drinking when faced with those triggers. If you’ve cut out other substances along the way, you may prefer describing your journey as living “clean” rather than just sober. You can’t achieve a year of sobriety without a full month. Heck, you can’t achieve a month of sobriety without a full day.

Manage Physical Pain

To tremendous fanfare, earning James Beard nominations and a clientele of industry insiders. “I started to feel like I was part of this larger community, larger than life in some ways, because I was really excited that I was given attention,” Brown said. “In the industry, it wouldn’t be weird to have 60 drinks a week.” The well-known stories of a cold shower and hot cup of coffee will not help your body process the alcohol any quicker.

When it comes to addiction recovery, the only thing harder than getting sober is staying sober. Without treatment, an addict sober house who quits on his or her own has a 50 to 80% chance of relapsing. Even with treatment, the chances are between 20 and 50%.

How Does Medication Management Work During My Recovery?

Talk to your doctor about medications that can help to ease withdrawal symptoms. Managing withdrawal is not something that should try to accomplish on your own. Sobriety Solutions is here to help you navigate a successful detox from alcohol. You also ought to make sure you have options available to help you deal with physical pain and other symptoms of withdrawal. Now is an excellent time to find a meaningful activity or perhaps several meaningful activities that you can become involved. Look for activities that will fill your time and help you feel better about yourself and your situation.

If a wedding is happening, but you’re worried about being surrounded by alcohol, then politely decline to attend. Admitting that there’s a need for a change in your life can be one of the most challenging parts of getting sober. Recognizing this need for change means taking into account how drugs or alcohol have been causing problems in areas of your life. It’s OK if a person returns to this step many times on their journey toward sobriety.

Heroin: The risks, the symptoms and the treatment

Sobriety is not an easy or quick fix to life’s problems. For many, it’s a lifelong process of unlearning coping mechanisms that revolve around substances like alcohol or cannabis, and it’s also a process of relearning how to live life sober and stay sober. So if you love someone with an unhealthy relationship with substances, please practice patience with their journey and remind them that you’re there for support.

Sobriety is kind of like the fast-pass line at Disneyland, except the ride is growing up. So if all of your friends drink alongside you, then there’s no issue, right? Well, there’s a concept in psychology known as “confirmation bias,” and it means that we often look for evidence to support something that we already believe to be true. While making the decision to be sober was the best thing I’ve ever done, it’s also one of the hardest. Not only because not drinking is hard, but also because we live in a society where most everyone around us drinks.

Create a New Kind of Fun

You can become a mentor or a sponsor to those in early recovery. Committing to long-term sobriety also involves continually looking for ways to improve your life. You might get bored when you no longer work towards the next step.