I can\u2019t remember exactly when I realized my drinking had stopped become an occasional social event and when it became the main event. I know that like many of you, the slide was gradual. What was once a way to have fun had become my primary coping mechanism, a substitute for feeling sadness and joy. Though my kindle shows that I have been looking at \u201csober lit\u201d for close to 10 years, it wasn\u2019t until 4 years ago, just before my 40th birthday, that I consciously tried to stop, not just moderate my drinking. I have had some starts and stops since then but like all things, practice makes perfect. And life is not perfect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what happens when you stop drinking alcohol?<\/strong> You get sober. Sober has a lot of baggage, both the word and the condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hate the word sober. It\u2019s too close to somber, serious, stone cold. I prefer to think of myself as awakening, renewing, rediscovering. It\u2019s about what you are gaining, not about what you are stopping. Notice I didn\u2019t say losing, because avoiding feeling like shit is not<\/em> losing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I can\u2019t remember exactly when I realized my drinking had stopped become an occasional social event and when it became the main event. I know that like many of you, the slide was gradual. What was once a way to have fun had become my primary coping mechanism, a substitute for feeling sadness and joy. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alcohol","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcor7Q-n","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sobernotsomber.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/20190808_194653-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sobernotsomber.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}