The Wrong Way to Get Sober

These were just a few of the mistakes I made when I quit drinking.

Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash

I have a confession: I made a ton of mistakes when I got sober.

It’s not as if there’s just one, universal “right” way to quit drinking, but there sure are a lot of wrong ways. I know from experience.

In fact, with how many things I did wrong, it sometimes feels like a miracle that I was ever able to stick with it. On some level, I’m sure that I was trying to self-sabotage and lead myself into a relapse. To this day, I’m grateful that I managed to resist those temptations.

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My mistakes began on my very first day without alcohol. I had decided to quit drinking on a long weekend because I thought I’d need a few days to recuperate before I could function at work.

That was a wise decision, but the trouble was that I hadn’t come up with anything to do instead of working or drinking. I thought that I was taking precautions by devoting the entire weekend to quitting drinking, but I was actually setting myself up for failure by not planning anything else to keep me occupied.

During my first few days sober, I was bored out of my mind. I stayed locked in my apartment all day, switching between reading, watching television, and playing video games. Nothing could hold my attention well, and I even found myself literally just staring at the wall for large portions of the day.

I truly believe that boredom is one of the most serious threats to sobriety. It was incredibly hard to resist going back to drinking when the apparent alternative was to just sit around and do nothing.