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Being clean and sober means avoiding the temptations that come with certain people, places, and things. You cannot afford to be around them any longer. After you have been through treatment and are in recovery, you may realize that they were not really your friends anyway. True friends do not enable each other to poison their existence in an endless cycle of drinking and drugs. You will be making new friends in treatment and recovery, as well as through yoursupport group meetingsand new activities you will now start to enjoy. It is common for people to have a fear of sobriety, especially if they have been struggling with addiction for a long time.
Not everyone enters the sober life confidently. If you have been an alcoholic or addicted to drugs for years, it may be hard for you to picture your life without it. If your social life revolves around alcohol, then it’s true it will likely change if you stop drinking.
“I’ll hate being sober.”
While recovering addicts may feel that sobriety limits the ways they can find fun, sobriety actually opens up new opportunities. Most importantly, being with positive people will help the newly recovering addict gain confidence and empowerment in recovery. Your true friends may have to take a short break from you if they are too addicted to drugs or alcohol.
When alcohol becomes an integral part of your life, it’s scary to think about who you are without it. Will you still be popular and able to make jokes? There are a lot of unknown answers and some people do not want to know themselves without this toxic substance. I was one of the people who actually felt bad for sober people. I thought their lives were boring, routine, and unexciting.
“My friends will leave me.
We want to follow our dreams, or move in a new direction, but as long as fear is driving the car, it’s challenging to even leave the parking lot. Before we enact any kind of big change in life, fear of being sober we tend to think about things for a long while. After all, making one change, like switching jobs, moving, or going back to school, means other things in our lives will change as well.
And because it is so valuable to us, we become too sensitive to any potential threat to it. We become prey to fear, anticipating loss and failure. Fear and anger are said to be primal, protective emotions. They are considered the twin sides of a fight-or-flight response built into our nervous system to ensure our physical survival. When triggered, it automatically generates a defensive reaction.
Tips to Achieve Long-term Sobriety
There is something happening in your life that is serious enough for you to be taking action and making these changes, so what you know now can not be that great. Successful recovery will https://ecosoberhouse.com/ definitely be better. While life in recovery can be challenging, it is infinitely better than staying stuck in the alternative. Sure, life with alcohol might be what you’re used to.
- Try to make this thought exciting instead of scary.
- I think many people make this assumption before they even try sobriety.
- The individual may have the clarity to see how much the substance abuse is destroying their life, but the idea of leaving their misery behind frightens them.
- Alcohol and drugs cover up pain and suffering.
Recovery is not easy; it will require putting one foot in front of the other every single day. Some days, you may stumble or even fall, like a toddler learning to walk. Success in recovery is all about picking yourself back up and putting one foot in front of the other again. As you do so, you will be successful—fearlessly successful. The FHE Health team is committed to providing accurate information that adheres to the highest standards of writing. This is part of our ongoing commitment to ensure FHE Health is trusted as a leader in mental health and addiction care.
#1. “I will not have fun ever again.”
Encourage them to name their fears and then process those fears in a recovery group, with their sponsor, or in therapy. If you do not think you can handle responsibility, you may have used drinking as an excuse. As human beings, everyone has the capability to handle responsibility.
