Sobriety Fatigue
Sobriety Fatigue
Tired of being sober or just plain tired?
The other day, I was trying to better understand how new readers discover this newsletter. One of the things that I checked was which search terms bring people here from Google.
The very top result—the most frequent search term that eventually leads people here—was “sobriety fatigue.” This surprised me because I don’t often write about the topic. In fact, I’m not even exactly sure what these potential readers are searching for. To me, the phrase is a little ambiguous. It could mean:
The feelings of sleepiness, brain fog, and exhaustion that accompany getting sober.
Or, the feeling of being tired of sobriety itself—when the sober days start to run together and you worry that the rest of your life will be miserable.
Although these topics are distinct, they’re both important, and they’re both sets of feelings that I struggled with when getting sober. So, in today’s newsletter, I figured, why not write a bit about each of them? Hopefully, the next time that somebody lands here from searching “sobriety fatigue,” they’ll find what they’re looking for regardless of which meaning they intended.
Sleepiness and Exhaustion
I’ll start with the literal feelings of tiredness that many of us experience after we quit drinking. The first month after I got sober, I was about as sleepy as I’d ever been in my entire life.
I had spent years drinking myself to sleep. I had almost never gone to bed without being at least a little drunk. Normally, I was more or less passing out at the end of each night.
When I cut the alcohol out of my life, falling asleep was hard. I ended up with brutal insomnia, especially the first few nights.
When I was awake, I felt like a zombie. Part of this was probably the lack of sleep, and another part, I suspect, was a more direct physical result of my alcohol withdrawal.
In any case, I could barely think during my first few days sober. I was extremely confused, and when I had thoughts, they were fleeting. I’d walk into a room and forget why I had entered. I’d start a sentence and be unable to finish it. I ended up literally just staring at the wall for hours.
The good news is that the worst of these effects cleared up very quickly. After just a few days, I felt like I was back to being a functioning human. After a couple of weeks, I was starting to sleep a bit better and could get through work without much trouble.
The bad news is that the weaker effects lingered for just over a year. During that entire first year sober, I’d have moments of brain fog and confusion. I also continued to have trouble sleeping, although not every night.
I very often worried that I’d be stuck that way forever. I wondered whether the trade-off was worth it.
Fortunately, with time, even these lesser effects subsided. I took a few active steps to help reduce my fatigue: I began exercising regularly, I improved my diet a bit, and I tried some tricks to beat insomnia, like avoiding my bedroom when I wasn’t sleeping.
I’m sure all of those steps helped a bit, but above all else, I really just needed time. The recovery process should really be measured in years, not days.
Although I rapidly improved during my first few weeks sober, I still experienced the lingering effects of my addiction for much longer. In a way, it’s distressing to realize that it can take years to fully overcome those bad effects. However, I think that knowing that we can continue to improve for so long is also in a way encouraging.
If you’re half a year or a year into sobriety, and still struggling with it, I think it’s important to understand that your life will continue to change and improve.
Tired of Sobriety
I think that last point provides a good segue into the other type of fatigue: The feeling that we just can’t keep going with sobriety.
A rough timeline of my emotions of sobriety would go something like this:
The first two weeks of sobriety: I was miserable, but highly motivated to stick with it. Despite severe anxiety and depression, I had an incredibly strong drive to continue with sobriety.
Two weeks to two months in: The worst symptoms had disappeared and I was overjoyed. I felt even more motivated to keep going.
Two months to two years in: My joy started to fade, and I became overwhelmed by the feeling that sobriety would last for the rest of my life. I questioned whether anything had really changed and whether I should stick with it or just go back to drinking.
Two-plus years in: Sobriety became, more or less, easy. I began to recognize the major improvements in my life, and I stopped feeling the desire to go back to alcohol. Sobriety has remained an important part of my life, but it doesn’t feel like it dominates my life in the way that it used to.
As you can see from that short summary, it’s been a rocky journey with a lot of back and forth.
Just like in the first half of this newsletter, the most important solution for these feelings was simply to give it more time. I had to stick with sobriety even when it didn’t feel like it was helping. I had to trust that eventually, it would.
However, in addition, I also found that I needed to find other ways to grow. The main cause of my fatigue was the feeling that sobriety had changed nothing. So, I had to take charge of my life and start changing things.
Working out regularly was a huge help in this regard. Exercise is easy to track and it provides clear, measurable growth. I can see when I’m lifting more weight or running faster. It also provides secondary benefits, like improving our health, lifting our mood, and even making us look better.
I also took up some productive hobbies, like drawing, writing, and learning a foreign language. Some of these hobbies completely changed my life. Writing became my primary income source for several years. Learning Spanish allowed me to move to Spain.
These hobbies helped me to feel like my life was moving forward in a way that sobriety alone would not have.
I think that early on, I was expecting that if I simply got sober, everything else would fall into place. There’s some truth to this—getting sober did make everything else far, far easier—but I still had to take additional steps on my own.
You’re Making Progress
Ultimately, though, I think the solution for sobriety fatigue, regardless of which type we’re talking about, is to give yourself more time.
Sobriety improves our lives, but it moves slowly and requires continuous work. We can’t expect everything to be better within weeks or months. It’s more likely to take years.
But, as exhausting as that thought might be, it should also serve as motivation. It’s a reminder that we’re still making progress, even when it feels like we aren’t, and our lives can continue to get better, even after months or years sober.