8 Years Sober and Counting
Long-term sobriety is nothing like the early days
Today is an important day for me: It’s the anniversary of the day that I stopped drinking.
I’m now eight years sober, and I can say without hesitation that quitting alcohol was the single best decision I’ve ever made in my life.
When I first quit, however, I wasn’t nearly so sure of myself. I hesitated over whether I had a true addiction, I worried about whether I’d be able to stay quit, and I struggled immensely throughout the first weeks of sobriety. If you had told me back then that I’d stick with this for eight years (and counting), I don’t think I would have believed you.
I quit drinking at the very end of December, which is probably the single most popular time of the year to quit drinking. Now that we’ve reached another New Year’s Eve, I’m sure that thousands upon thousands of addicts around the world are making a similar commitment to get sober.
This week’s newsletter is written especially for those of you who have just quit or are planning to quit tomorrow. I’m going to focus on the difference between what it was like when I first quit drinking and what it’s like to be sober now, eight years later.
Sobriety During the First Eight Days
When I first stopped drinking, I was miserable. It was arguably the hardest week of my entire life.
I had been drinking heavily for about a decade, rarely going more than twenty-four hours without getting drunk. Most days, I drank at least a six-pack of beer. Some days, I drank an entire case.
Going from drinking daily to not drinking at all was a huge shock to my system. For the first few days, I could barely think about anything. My mind was in a constant fog. I would start to form a thought, and halfway through I’d forget what I was trying to concentrate on.
I also couldn’t sleep well during those days, which made the brain fog even worse. The lack of sleep, and the withdrawal, ended up making me absolutely miserable. I’d cry for no apparent reason, and I felt angry all the time.
To add to all of this, I was just constantly craving alcohol. People talk about cravings as if they are short-term feelings that come and go. Later on in my sobriety, that was the case, but in the early days, my urges to drink lasted all day. I truly couldn’t stop thinking about alcohol.
I tried all sorts of things to distract myself, but nothing held my attention very well. I couldn’t even make it through a twenty-minute-long TV show. At some points, I ended up just staring at the wall.
It felt a little like I was going insane. Time was practically standing still. People say to take sobriety one day at a time, but I was more focused on just getting through each minute.
Again and again, I’d start to tell myself that I should just give up. I felt like there was no way I could keep going through such a miserable existence, so I might as well just throw in the towel right away.
Other times, I’d try to convince myself that if I had just one or two drinks, it would somehow then help me stay sober. I thought that maybe it could ease me into sobriety, rather than jumping into it so abruptly.
It was hard to resist all of these tempting thoughts, but I somehow made it through. “Playing the tape” helped me to resist many of the urges. (Check out the newsletter archive for more on that technique.) It also helped a lot to reach out to other recovering alcoholics. Reading sobriety blogs, forums, and essays also got me through many tough moments.
After a week, I started to feel a little better, but it took another couple of years before I was really enjoying sobriety. Recovery was a slow process. I had spent a decade depending on alcohol, so it makes sense that it would take more than a few days to learn to live without it.
Sobriety After Eight Years
With all of that said, these days I’m happier than ever. I don’t want to give the false impression that my life is perfect—I still have problems, just like anyone else. However, on the whole, my life is truly more amazing than I ever could have hoped for.
After getting sober, I had far more time, energy, and money. Initially, all the free time felt like a boring burden, but over the years, I’ve learned to use it for self-improvement.
Sobriety led to a cascade of other beneficial decisions, like quitting smoking, beginning to run, and even leaving my miserable job as a lawyer for work that I love as a writer and teacher.
Eight years after quitting drinking, I’m healthier than I’ve ever been. I’m down about sixty pounds, I work out most days of the week, and everyone says I look better than ever.
I’ve grown more as a person during these years than ever before too. I’ve learned a new language, moved to a new country, gotten over bad social anxiety, and made a ton of new friends. I’ve become nicer to the people around me, and when I tell them how mean I used to be as an alcoholic, they don’t even believe me.
The cravings that used to feel so constant have completely disappeared. I don’t feel any desire whatsoever to go back to drinking, and my old life as a daily drunk feels more like a bad dream than my old reality.
If sobriety was still as hard today as it had been eight years ago, I surely would have given up on it. But the truth is that despite how hard sobriety is in the beginning, it eventually becomes downright easy.
The early days of sobriety are tough, but it is absolutely essential to keep in mind that they don’t represent sobriety as a whole. The hardest part of sobriety is at the very beginning, and the longer you stay sober, the easier it tends to get.
To everyone who has just quit drinking, congratulations! Although the days ahead will likely be difficult, sobriety will get much easier with time. Those tough early days are worth it for what comes next.
The Exploring Sobriety Collection
Before I go, I wanted to mention again that I’ve just released an ebook collecting some of the earliest essays that I ever wrote about sobriety. I think these are particularly helpful for people who have recently quit. You can get a copy on Amazon—and it’s free if you have Kindle Unlimited. Thank you very much to those of you who have already checked it out!
Congrats on 8 years and thank you very much for sharing your experience, strength, and hope with us these past few years!