14 Reasons Being Sober Makes Your Life Better

And having that extra cash opens up a whole world of new opportunities – you could decide to save for a house, take a vacation, or go back to school, for example. It’s easy to down a lot of empty calories with just a few drinks. Combine the calories in alcohol with the aforementioned junk food cravings and you’ve got a recipe for weight gain. When you’re sober, you’ll probably find that you stop gaining weight (and maybe even lose a few pounds) without really trying. Milestones in sobriety are celebrated to recognize the challenging work you are accomplishing. For example, 12-step programs often have milestones or “sober birthdays” starting x amount of hours sober (i.e., 24 hours sober) and onward from there (i.e., a week, one month, three months).

But when life sucks, staying sober can be more than hard, it can feel like it’s next to impossible. ” Sometimes they stop talking to you altogether. First of all, let me preface this by saying that getting and staying sober has been, by far, the best decision that I’ve ever made. But I’m also https://ecosoberhouse.com/ going to say something else that might not be what other people in recovery want to put out there, but what I have found in my experience to be completely true. When you’re feeling down, seek out support from friends and family to help keep you sane and from slipping into old behaviors.

Seek Support

As the lines between real and fake blur, Americans increasingly chase the idea of authenticity. The first step may be to consider self-knowledge, truthfulness, and other building blocks on the road to personal growth. Join Recovery Connection in celebrating your recovery with our sobriety calculator. As it turns out, I gained twenty pounds, lost all my frenetic energy and discovered I had been self-medicating a host of co-occurring disorders and syndromes which needed to be addressed. Understandably, I was disappointed and more than a little depressed.

But complaining about it not being fair, and focusing on the injustice of it all will just make you feel down and make you more likely to fall deeper into the “poor me” trap. Take a person who’s pleasing to the eye, intelligent, put together, and when sober, brazenly competent, and confident—but after a few whisky sours, that person turns into a paranoid mess of self-doubt. By Michelle Pugle

Michelle Pugle, MA, MHFA is a freelance health writer as seen in Healthline, Health, Everyday Health, Psych Central, and Verywell.

Drunk people become experts—and want you to know it.

In fact, being sober can make your life more fun and rewarding than it’s ever been before. Often-times in recovery, being sober seems to be the aim. Yes, it is a crucial and a fundamental part (the beginning being sober sucks aspect) of starting the journey to full scale “recovery,” but the independent process of avoiding drugs and alcohol is nowhere near true freedom. Little did I know I was living in a box within my addiction.