Getting Ready for Your First Weeks Alcohol-Free
Getting started alcohol-free is all about opening your eyes to everything alcohol really is in your life –
“One day at a time, I am opening my own eyes to everything that alcohol really is to me. Eyes wide open is the only way to stay sober in a world that celebrates drinking and normalizes being drunk. I hate what alcohol does to me, but luckily I love living alcohol-free!”
If you ARE TRYING TO QUIT DRINKING
Standing strong on your day 1 is all about mindset.
Opening the six links listed below can help you get ready to get started. Remembering these things helps me keep my eyes wide open to everything that I hate about what alcohol does to me.
Let’s begin
Here is a great way to mark each of those Milestones from day 1 to day 31
A Question a Day for 31 Days to help You Quit Drinking
The 31 questions with our answers are inside our private Boom Community space which you can join here . Below are quotes and posts from our public Boozemusings Blog that came from our Community “Rethinking the Drink” with these questions.
“I think the “alcoholic” label is what actually prevents many people from even addressing their relationship with alcohol, which is so sad. Labels are dehumanizing … and addiction is a human condition. With a human story, heart, and family attached.“
“When I was drinking, I became absent from my own life. Figuratively, even when I was physically present, I wasn’t there. When I was drinking I was always struggling to function through a hangover, thinking about when I could start drinking again, drinking, or passed out. Life was going on all around me, but I certainly wasn’t part of it.“
“I was trying and failing for years. I’ve cried while drinking cause I just couldn’t stop myself. I’ve screamed at myself in the mirror. Asking myself. What the fuck is wrong with you. Why do I keep doing it? But this time has been different. I just stopped. I don’t question the decision. It’s non-negotiable
The only trick that I know to quit drinking is to never, ever, quit quitting. I quit over and over and over again. Every time I quit, I gained a little more space between my rational self and the compulsion to drink. I gained a little more time between the compulsion to drink and the act of drinking. Inch by painstaking inch, I learned how to separate the urge to act from the action itself.
I learned how to put cravings off for 5, 10, 15 minutes at a time until they passed. I learned how to outlast days when I thought of nothing but how much I wanted a drink. I finally gained enough space that I was able to stop for nearly three months before I backslid. It took me another sixteen months to get myself back on the wagon after that, but I did it, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna fall back off.“
The Trick To Quit Drinking is to Never Quit Quitting
“I was afraid to quit drinking. Just absolutely terrified. Even when I was sick to death of it. Even when I was so, so ready to quit. Even when I knew I could quit drinking because I had done it before. The fear of living sober stopped me in my tracks.
Alcohol was my safety blanket. It was the comfort object I clung to the way a small child carries their favorite stuffy around. Even though I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that alcohol was ruining my life, the thought of letting it go filled me with dread. I couldn’t imagine life without alcohol. I couldn’t imagine how to fill my time without alcohol. It was absolutely the most important thing in my life, and no matter how much I wanted that not to be true, it was true all the same.
Did I drink because I was insecure, or was I insecure because I drank?”
“I’ve often said that my current state of being Alcohol Free feels different from my previous attempts. One of the main reasons for that is because I’ve let go of the idea of being perfect. “Progress not perfection,” is one of AA’s many little gems. Like “one day at a time,” it requires a change in mindset. Instead of trying to change everything that I didn’t like about my life all at once, I spent a full month just focusing on being sober, one day at a time. That’s it. Not drinking was my A-Number-One priority, and everything else was pushed to the back burner. “
Progress not Perfection – Finding Balance in Sobriey
“When I stopped thinking, “I can never drink again,” and started thinking, “I will not drink today,” staying Alcohol-Free became much easier. It’s not a magic pill and I do still have tough days, but focusing on today and today only takes a huge amount of pressure off. Instead of feeling the weight of “forever” on my shoulders, I only feel the weight of today. Believe me, today by itself is a lot lighter than even “today and tomorrow.” There have actually been times when I’ve told myself, “Sure, you can drink tomorrow! You can drink as much as you want tomorrow!” Then tomorrow becomes today and all I have to focus on is, “I will not drink today.”“
“When I was at my most desperate, surveying the wreckage of my life due to alcohol addiction (usually while drinking, mind you), I started to see sobriety as the solution to all my problems. “If I can just stop drinking,” became a mantra that played on an almost continuous loop in my head. I had a mental picture of my sober life, and in that sober life, all of my problems had been solved.
Here’s the thing: going alcohol free is absolutely the best decision I have ever made, and it has made a huge difference in my life. At the same time, becoming alcohol free has only SOLVED one problem: the binge drinking problem.“
Find our Pocket Guide to Everything you ever wanted to know about living sober HERE
“Fix it. Change it. Direct it.
When we take hold of the reigns we generate a sense of power – a sense of control – and that in and of itself is a catalyst for change.