Sobriety is a portal. A Portal into what? You name it. All you can be. All you can do. Your best self, your peace of mind, your fulfillment, your health and longevity, your enjoyment of intimate relationships, your soul’s highest expression in this human vessel. This is the place you enter. This is the portal. But the portal opens to a road that will be sometimes difficult to travel. Sometimes there will be clear skies, sometimes storms, sometimes there will be beautiful pink clouds at evening time and sometimes those clouds will dull to gray. The following posts from our community speak to staying sober longterm. The only way out is through, no matter the weather.
Staying Sober when Pink Becomes Grey
Gradually all that “new sober joy” faded into a norm, the Pink Cloud dopamine state dissolved (this is how our brain works) and I (without warning) sunk into a state that I could only describe to my sober soulmates as spiritual roadkill. That’s how it felt, like a feeling of soul-deep total DEADNESS”
The Pink Cloud of early sobriety passed and it was now time for Part 2 of my journey: Survive. Just like the title says, there isn’t a whole lot of glamor on this rung of the sobriety ladder. And let’s be completely honest: at times our AF journey is hard. Really fucking hard. Alcohol is pernicious and screws with our thinking and our behavior. But surviving means doing whatever you have to do in order to stay alcohol free.
Burnout and Depression in Early Sobriety
The Pink Cloud is gone. I have crashed. I am exhausted with the ‘work’ of sobriety. I am tired of working on my emotional issues because I felt the need to solve them all in the first few months of sobriety. Issues that have been around for 20 years, I decided could all disappear within a few months.
Distraction and the art of candlemaking
Staying sober long term, fighting an addiction to alcohol, is a mental battle fought in the head. It takes an awful lot more than exercise, healthy eating, taking up a hobby that you’ve always fancied and shagging a new partner ( or reconnecting with your existing partner in a shagging sort of way) to get to grips with, vanquish and eliminate from your life…. It takes a lot of hard work to step away from the old you and build the new you from scratch. Yes, the brain is plastic; its plasticity enabling us to learn new things and build new habits, but in order to do that we need to be prepared to really part with the old, not just paper it over with distractions and achievements and that takes time.
Getting and Staying sober, like embarking on any transformational journey is inviting what could be gale-wind forces of change. We might be dealing with issues that have been pushed down, denied or medicated, ancient wounds buried in the cellar, ungrieved sorrows stuck away in the attic, or just some heavy bags leftover from childhood yet to unpack. Possibly one or two or few bats in our belfry. Sometimes getting sober just turns the key and opens the door to the real work of transforming our lives. Hallelujah’s all around.
If you’re “sober curious” … If you are drinking too much too often and want to stop or take a break… Talk to Us.
We are an independent, anonymous and private community who share resources, support and talk it through every day. It helps to have a community behind you in a world where alcohol is the only addictive drug that people will question you for NOT using
