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Top Sobriety Blog Posts to Help You Stop Drinking and Stay Alcohol-Free
Sobriety blogs, and blogs in general, have evolved a lot since I read my first post on Unpickled back in 2015. In 2015 blogs were mostly personal. Blogs, and especially sobriety blogs, were an expression of an individual’s ideas or experience enthusiastically shared in this new wide open forum of the internet. Blogs had not yet become the marketplace that they now are. They were not usually filled with “sponsored links”, covered in advertisements or written as a promotion of a service or product. Sobriety blogs at the time, were a fantastic new way to find a community to help you stop drinking and stay sober outside of the traditional 12-step system.
I found the blog Unpickled in reading Lucy Roca’s book How to lead a happier, healthier, and alcohol-free life. Over the next few weeks, while also reading the blogs Sober at Sixty and Tired of Thinking About Drinking, I gained enough inspiration and information, to build a sort of road map in my mind of how to maneuver my first 30 days alcohol-free. I found my sober solutions in reading. But I only retired from my long and illustrious drinking career when I began blogging myself.
I had read Allen Carr’s The Easy Way to Stop Drinking six years before and it opened my mind to the possibility of living happily alcohol-free, but I could not stick to sober for more than a few days at a time. In 2009 when I read it, Carr’s book was the best-known guide to going sober without AA. It is a book that has helped a lot of people but it’s formulaic approach did not work for me. I needed something more personal, authentic, and true to the issues that were troubling me.
When I started blogging my way sober it was not because I had a talent for writing or experience with journaling, but because I had seen sober blogging in action. I had seen the interaction between the blogger, and the people who commented with support and ideas, and it worked!! Blogs took the statement many of us make when we wake up hungover once again – I will not drink today – and added accountability. Blogs encouraged introspection, discussion, and real personal evolution and allowed this to happen with the possibility of complete anonymity. Blogging became my solution to a mostly secret drinking problem that I had been struggling with for years. A way to reach out, reach back, figure out how to live life alcohol-free, and evolve my identity in the process. All without leaving the cozy corner of my kitchen where my computer was set up.
The wonderful thing about being able to search and read individual blog posts online is that they can quickly answer questions that are deeply personal. There is nothing quite like finding the perfectly timed quick read to help you get off, and stay off, the hamster wheel of drink-drunk-regret. Sobriety blogs don’t speak from an abstract perspective, but from experience shared by someone who has lived what you are living. Even many scientific blogs on topics of addiction and recovery, like Marc Lewis’s Understanding Addiction, and Dirk Hanson’s Addiction Inbox, are written from the perspective of the author’s personal experience with addiction and recovery.
This month is Alcohol Awareness Month and I want to celebrate by sharing the sobriety blog posts that made all the difference for me back in 2015 when I was finally able to quit drinking for good. I’d also like to offer our BOOM Rethink the Drink community members, and anyone who may have stumbled over this while searching online, quick access to as many sobriety blog posts as possible that answer specific questions about what is often called the “sober Journey”. I hope that this will be a tool for your sober toolbox when you need a boost as you go through your day alcohol-free.
Blogs can be an easy way to find information off the beaten track. If you are looking for a way to stop drinking, whether following the traditional route of recovery through AA or going your own way, sobriety blogs are inspiring, enlightening and fresh. You can find a comprehensive list of many of the active sobriety blogs here on Feedspot’s Top 90 Living Sober blogs . The blogs and posts listed below are simply the ones that are most often talked about by members of our Boom Rethink the Drink community.
When you are trying to stop drinking there is no easy way. Staying alcohol-free long-term does not have to be about working steps in AA but it does require some deep diving into why you drink and how to stay sober. Does blogging sound like it might work for you but you can’t imagine writing about something so personal online? Come in and join the conversation in our private and anonymous blogging space at www.boomrethinkthedrink.com
read more here
How Posting in the BOOM Community can help you Rethink the Drink
Many of the blogs that inspired me in my first sober months have become books. During my first year sober I was inspired by posts on the popular blogs, Hip Sobriety, I Fly at Night, and OffDry, all of which have inspired best-selling books, Quit Like a Woman, We are the Luckiest, and Nothing Good Can Come of This. You can find an extensive list of “quit lit” and access to our Boom Rethink the Drink Community Book Club in this post from our Boozemusings Blog. Books to Help you Stop Drinking and Fuel Your Sober Momentum.
Our Top 12 Sobriety Blog Posts Picks
Guide to your First Month Sober: Why and How to Quit Drinking
I was living in a coma, a series of grey days that seemed to bleed into one another like a charcoal sketch left in the rain. The outlines and contours of my character, my personality, were disappearing. I was constantly apathetic, unengaged and depressed. I had almost entirely lost my passion (and ability) for a stimulating, intellectually-challenging career. My relationship was tense and distant, as I spent a great deal of time absorbed in my own private drinking world. And the most dangerous part of all of this? I thought this was how things really were. I believed, at 32 years old, that this was reality, this was simply what my life had become, that my best years were over. I knew my drinking was a problem, but I had no idea that every single one of the problems listed above were caused, either directly or indirectly, by alcohol.
from our Boozemusings blog
Anyone can do this.
But it’s the commitment
to not drinking whatever happens
that is the key.
Without that commitment, your life will stay the same.I’m making it sound like it was easy for me.
Hell no – it wasn’t at first.Definitely not.
I didn’t think I could do it
yet I did by following that one rule
no matter how hard it was at first.Do not drink alcohol –
whatever happens.
by Zoo from our Boozemusings blog more from Zoo here
There’s a huge great obstacle course in the way. You can’t see the whole course, only the obstacle directly in front of you. And you can’t see the promised land on the other side. You have no idea how big the course is, how long it takes to get through it, or whether you’re up to it.
But you know that you can’t stay where you are. It’s only going to get worse. So you take a leap and throw yourself at the first obstacle….
from the blog Mummy was a Secret Drinker by Clare Pooley author of The Sober Diaries
UNPLUGGING FROM THE ALCOHOL MATRIX MINDSET
Alcohol creeps into our lives in so many ways and accelerates so slowly and quietly that we don’t see it coming…until one day we do. It might be a teensy wakeup call or something bigger, but that’s the day we say “This isn’t working anymore” or “I would feel so much better without this” or “I have to cut back” or maybe even “I have to quit for a while.” That’s the point where many of us find that moderating or cutting back is not that simple, or if it is, we can’t sustain it. Now the internal struggle begins, the promises we make to ourselves that we break. Over and over…and over. Our minds are no longer free because we’re so occupied with drinking or not drinking. Will we or won’t we. How long has it been? How much, how little. Alcohol and the place it holds in our lives has become unhappy making, an internal tussle, a silent struggle.
by Maggy for Boozemusings more from Maggy here
Sobriety is like a little car, and if you’ve got the little car already on its way downhill, however slowly, don’t do anything to stall. don’t change your medication, don’t suddenly quit your job, don’t buy a dog, don’t stop going to meetings. You want the car to keep moving, right? Downhill, yeah? Slowly gathering momentum. Don’t get impatient that other people don’t notice how great you are. Don’t confront your spouse about their radically different life plan. Not now. Not now.
protect your little sober car.
from Tired of Thinking About Drinking by Belle
Day 778: You Do Not Have to be Good
I’m not saying you should all go pet goats and buy new purses (though honestly, they’re both generally good ideas). I’m saying, think about cutting yourselves some slack. Have a cupcake if you want it. Buy two cupcakes and eat only the frosting parts of both of them, which is a thing I have heard some other people do.
from OffDry by Kristi Coulter
Heavy drinking is like an ever-tightening circle. Even if you function OK during the day, working and looking after your family, at some point, your life will start to shrink as alcohol begins to take the place of the healthy relationships and the connections that make being human, human. Without you recognizing it, alcohol will become your best friend. So when you stop drinking it will feel like somebody close has died, then you will grieve which hurts like hell.
by MrsP for Boozemusings more from MrsP here
I write this today to say the prizes behind door two, the one where you step into the mystery of a whole different life – the one you don’t want and wouldn’t have chosen, not in a million years – are far more fabulous and dazzling than anything you could conjure up behind door number one. Fabulous not in the way Beyonce is on the outside, but like The Buddha was on the inside. Dazzling in the way the sunlight dances on water: magically, simply, gently, and all over.
by Laura McKowen author of We are the Luckiest
Befriending the part that wants to get high
To forgive and embrace the part that’s simply waiting for a chance to get stoned…that’s radical. It flies in the face of conventional approaches to addiction, which demand that we get rid of this part, cast it out, or at least ignore it until it finally shuts up.
by Marc Lewis author of The Biology of Desire
Lessons From the Middle of the Lake in Year 3 Sober
Any long-distance swimmer knows that touching the boat gets you immediately disqualified in a race. It is considered cheating. And, we swimmers also know, that if we touch the boat, we might very well just give up. The temptation to quit the race would be too strong. So, not touching the boat is essential for our mental balance. And I think ‘touching the boat’ is a bit like slipping in later sobriety and letting yourself have a drink. If you let yourself ‘slip’ and ‘touch the boat’ there is a good chance nothing more will come of it, but there is an equal chance that you will give up and give in. At least I worry that I will. And then, I would happily (at first) let myself be pulled along and just give in.
from Night Heron for Boozemusings
6 Months Sober – Flying Away from the Drinking Obsession
I will do whatever it takes to make sure I do not drink today.
I will go to bed early. I will sit in the shower until the water turns cold. I will eat an entire bag of candy, a pint of ice cream, and so many french fries I feel like I’m going to puke. I will lose myself for hours in video games. I will chain smoke cigarettes, even though I quit smoking cigarettes in 2017. I will obsessively clean my house. I will read post after post on BOOM. I will read article after article on Boozemusings. I will scroll social media for far longer than is healthy. I will go for a walk as long as I know that my feet won’t take me to the liquor store. I will give my debit card to my aunt and tell her to lock it up until I’m not worried I will buy alcohol. I will smoosh my face into my cat’s fur until she starts grumbling. I will hug my son until he starts complaining. I will do yoga videos. I will do sit ups, push ups, and squats. I will fall down the YouTube rabbit hole. I will cry. I will scream. I will do anything and everything I can to distract myself, because I will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to make sure I do not drink today.
from Zen Garden for Boozemusings
If I am tempted, thankfully very rarely and briefly these days-I go back in time, and remind myself of the carnage that alcohol brought into my life. I also remind myself of the horrible person I was because of alcohol. My mental health has improved since I’ve been free from alcohol, I would not put any of this at risk by drinking… I can think about how disappointed I will be in the morning, not to mention the huge amount of energy it takes to try to stop drinking again…I know that I will sleep badly and that I will definitely feel like shit tomorrow. From experience, I know that it won’t be just one drink, for just one night. Looking back through my repeated history of day one’s, it is easier to resist drinking today than it is to stop drinking again tomorrow.
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