Sobriety is hard, man. There’s no two ways about it. There’s a reason literally nobody does it. Whether it’s that niggling voice in the back of your mind that tells you a couple of beers is normal and fine, or the other (often louder) voice that tells you moderating to the weekends is ‘A-Okay,’ there’s always some kind of excuse to have a drink. And this makes the whole process a little like self-imposed torture in the beginning.
Not only are you ridding yourself of probably your most frequent pastime, you’ve usually gotta lose a ton of friends and familiar faces in the process. It can suck.
But actually, it really doesn’t suck. And you know that—that’s why you want to do it. That’s why I’ve been saying I’m going to go sober for the last… four or so years now (give or take.)
What’s not to love? No hangovers, no blackouts, no drunken embarrassments, no regretful sex with 57 year olds in the piss-drenched alleys behind your local pub. Don’t judge me. We’ve all been there… Quite literally in the case of old Jean with the smoke stained blue-rinse and Marge Simpson croak. Just kidding.
Her name wasn’t Jean.
Long story short we want to get sober and stay sober, and no matter what reasons we have for that, it can be difficult to make stick without the right mindsets in place. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. So get your head out of the gutter and off my sordid sexcapades for now, you’ll have to stay tuned for “Put Down The Snowball” for all that good stuff. (Previews & snippets available on my Insta.)
Without further Adieu (lets cut the shit and just say ‘ado’ from now on, yeah?) here are three mindset shifts for lasting sobriety.
Don’t Make Your Sobriety About Shame
It’s so easy to wish back our evenings after we’ve fucked something up. We’ve done it all before. Drink, make mistakes, wake up, regret. The next step in the chain is often ‘go sober.’ But does it stick? Nope. And that’s because once the initial embarrassment wears off, and the hangover subsides, we’re more than eager to jump into the next bout of alcohol fuelled madness and do it all over again.
The simple way around this is to stop making sobriety about all the bad stuff. The shame, the negative feelings you feed, or the mistakes you make, forget all that. Instead, make your sober journey about growth, development, and opportunity.
Not drinking alcohol is rare, and it’s interesting, and it’s powerful. You gain an extra day (at least) every weekend. You gain deeper sleep, more self control, a body and mind that faces its problems head-on without the use of numbing agents and toxic coping mechanisms. It’s amazing!
When I fancy a drink now it really helps to think about the positive elements of staying sober—it completely silences the ‘one night won’t hurt’ temptation.
Don’t Make Your Sobriety About Others
It took me a long time to commit to going sober, and a major factor in that was the worry that I’d lose friends, become boring, or let them down somehow. But it comes to a point where you have to put yourself first.
The truth is: you are a constant. It’s you that you see in the mirror, you that you have to face each morning. You that you hear in your mind, you that will never phase out from your life. Friends, even family, cannot be considered an absolute constant. A million things can happen that takes you away from people, or them from you. But there’s only one thing that’ll separate you from you, and that’s the end of the story.
Your sobriety has to be about you. You’re not looking to ditch people or leave them behind, but your choice of activity has changed. It’s that simple. It has to be.
And look, sober isn’t boring. Not at all. Here are ‘6 things to do instead of drink alcohol’ that I just thought up on the spot while pretending to be some kind of budding influencer on the internet or something.
Sobriety Isn’t A Replacement For Alcohol.
Now hear me out. You call your friend. You grab some booze and probably a bag of coke, pop round their’s, get ready and buzzing together, head off out, meet people, laugh, joke, throw traffic cones around the street, leap frog those hip-height bollard things they put along paths for no reason, and stagger home fucked up in the early hours to crash out in bed for eight hours while laughing at a joke you told four hours ago. It’s an activity. A time-killer. A tangible ‘thing’ you have done. An experience, albeit a largely negative one.
Now compare all that to sobriety. You… don’t drink.
Does that sound like an activity with the right levels of ‘umph’ to counteract and balance an entire night on the tiles? Not at all! So why do we always expect it to be? We need to do stuff! We need substitutes. Real substitutes. A new hobby. Writing, playing an instrument, becoming a born-again messiah of the sober new world order on the net with a bunch of greyscale selfies and wise captions.
Whatever it is, make sure it’s something you want to do. Something you can sink your teeth into. It doesn’t have to be the first thing you try, but commit yourself to filling that spare time with something that engages you for long periods of time, wears you out in some way, and fulfils you. I promise you by the time you’ve written a one-thousand word blog post while trying to remain both funny (at a push) and grammatically correct (unlikely) you won’t even want to go out. You’ll just want sleep.
Which is exactly what I’m going to do right now.
That’s all for today, my arctic foxes and wolves, I hope you enjoyed these mindset shifts for lasting sobriety. Any you want to add? Help out the pack and post a comment down below. And don’t forget to pop on over to Instagram and Facebook to stay up to date with my sexy selfies and occasionally helpful ramblings. Ta-ta for now, auf wiedersehn, Ciao! Arctic out.
ARCTIC 
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