40 Weeks of Sobriety- The Difference Between Being Sober and Living a Sober Lifestyle

I always thought sobriety would just be me struggling to avoid doing something that I had come to rely on for so long, but it doesn't have to be like that...

Jan 23, 2023

Today I have been sober for 40 weeks, 280 days… or have I?

Sobriety

I’m not going to talk about how my sobriety is going as such anymore unless I have reason to. I don’t think we need to come back here each week and hear me say the same shit. It’s a waste of both of our time.

What I will say is that. I am working hard every day to nail the small things that I know will put me in an excellent place to maintain my sobriety. After all, they are why I feel so good about being sober. It’s all simple shit. But for those who are new here, they are prioritising sleep and sleep hygiene, getting up before the sun, doing daily exercise, and doing my best to eat as many whole foods as possible.

I recently reached out to a good mate who has been sober for over two years and asked him about breathwork. I’ll go into this in more detail later in the blog, but he said to me, “breathwork, if done properly, will supercharge your sobriety”.

I thought it was an odd thing to say. How much soberer can you get than… sober? Can you do a breathalyser and blow negative numbers? What a ridiculous thing to say. But, as I have been on many occasions over the last nine months, or last 34 years for that matter, I was wrong. Very wrong.

So yeah, my sobriety is good, real good, and it’s getting better…

The Difference Between Being Sober and Living a Sober Lifestyle

By strict definition, I have been sober for 40 weeks. 280 days. But after the above-mentioned conversation and a couple of others, I realised I have gone through definitive stages of sobriety. I’m terrible with the recollection of dates and times, but there have been a few key moments over the last nine months where I have felt like I have ‘levelled up” my sobriety, for lack of a better word.

I guess people in AA would probably consider these realisations a lot like going through The 12 Steps.

When I first got sober, I had no idea how nuanced sobriety could be. I honestly thought I would just be trying really hard not to drink. I thought it would always be hard, but it would just be this really straightforward, up-and-down, logical practice where each day I tried hard, and it got a little bit easier. I had no idea there were so many levels to it. I had no idea about the emotional challenges I was going to face, I also had no idea I would find so much growth and personal development through sobriety.

What I have realised is that sobriety is actually something you do. Something you live. It’s kind of like the difference between plant-based and vegan. Plant-based means you eat a diet made up predominantly of plant-based foods. Vegan is a lifestyle where you try to eliminate any and all animal products from your life. Vegan is more a lifestyle while plant-based is essentially a diet. I feel like to a degree you can say the same about “not drinking” and “sobriety”.

I have found with sobriety, like a lot of things, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Fuckin’ revolutionary, I know. But please, bare with me, because I think there is something in this.

The longer I maintain my sobriety, the more I buy into the ideology that is sobriety, and the more I am beginning to understand it. To me, sobriety isn’t about struggling each day. It’s about improving each day. It’s about growth and development. If you’re fortunate enough to stay sober for long enough, hopefully like me you will start to have these realisations.

I remember months of talking a bit about how I felt like I was changing from someone who wasn’t drinking, to someone who simply didn’t drink. On reflection, this was probably a bigger moment than I was able to recognise at the time. It was probably something of a turning point. Everything mentioned above has cued me to take a bit of a moment to reflect back on some of the key moments where I don’t think I so much made a significant amount of progress all at once, rather I became acutely aware of the progress I had made over a period, all at one time. So I wanted to share a few of them with everyone. For a couple of reasons, firstly because I think it’s important to stop and look back sometimes, albeit briefly. We want to always be moving forwards, but there is no point in moving forward if we don’t stop to reflect on how far we’ve come. It helps to motivate us to keep going and can help us feel a bit better about ourselves. the second reason, I just hope it helps someone else. Maybe someone who is in the early days of sobriety, or even someone who’s been in sobriety for some time but might be struggling a little, or someone who has forgotten to look back on all they’ve achieved recently.

Sonny

The first one was obviously the birth of my son. From that moment, I knew nothing would matter more than his welfare ever again. Instantly I felt less inclined to throw pity parties for myself. It wasn’t some kind of deeply emotional, beautiful moment of realisation. Rather it was more of a no-nonsense, time to get on with the job, kind of moment. I kist knew that no party, drink, or drug would ever be close to as important as he and his welfare were. I kind of went from, “oh it’s hard not to drink” to, I just can’t drink now, I don’t want my son to see me drink. i don’t want him to grow up in a family of drinkers. For the first time, my sobriety was about someone else.

Psychologist

Another key was going back to my psychologist. I waited for five months of sobriety to do so. I knew I had a lot of difficult work to do with her and I didn’t have the confidence in the strength of my sobriety before then to take on the challenges I knew laid ahead of me. In hindsight, maybe I could’ve gone back sooner, but there is literally no point in giving that thought any energy because I can’t change it and I’m doing just fine.

My psych made me realise that I have other things to worry about. Almost a nice little distraction from the constant reminder I had been feeding myself not to drink. I think at times I was putting way too much pressure on myself not to drink. I also knew from my second appointment onwards that if I wanted to keep making progress, drugs and alcohol wouldn’t be an option. I needed the mental fog to lift so that I could focus more on the work that I had to do.

My Birthday

My birthday is at the end of October. My last birthday was my first sober in 18 years. I had been sober for six months at the time. Around this time we had finally started to feel settled in our new town and house on the south coast. The weather was warming up. It was finally that time of year when you could wear the same clothes all day. You know when you no longer need a jumper in the morning and then again in the evening. It’s heaps more convenient. I like that shit.

I was lucky enough for my birthday to fall on the weekend. I say lucky now, but I remember at the time being concerned about it. Once upon a time, a birthday falling on a weekend day was the greatest excuse ever to rip right in, and make a real cock of myself.

From the outside looking in, it was a pretty mild celebration. We took some food down to the beach, sat there in the slightly too strong to comfortable wind, ate some bread rolls, and just kind of did nothing. For the first time in my life, I enjoyed actively doing nothing. I wasn’t able to do it for long, I get bored too easily, but I remember in the past, I wouldn’t have been able to sit there doing nothing for even a minute, without the comfort of drinking. It’s too slow for me. It leaves my brain too vulnerable to being infiltrated by negative thoughts.

But this time was different. I was able to sit there and just enjoy it for what it was. Even with the wind blowing sand into my face. Even with the sand being too hot for my poor little feet, I had a great time. I remember on the way home thinking to myself, “holy shit, I just thoroughly enjoyed something that I had convinced myself I hated for so long.”

The reality is, I’ve never actually hated relaxing at the beach, or in the park, or at the pool, or whatever. I hate the fucking anxiety I would get when I stop. When I slow down. When I give my thoughts that opportunity to sneak in. The difference now was, I was learning to deal with those thoughts, rather than just do whatever I could to avoid them altogether. Progress!

Christmas Holidays

The Christmas holidays were a bit scary for me. I had two and a half weeks off over Christmas. After the year I had, got sober, became a dad, moving. blah blah blah, I needed the rest. I was determined to actively take it easy. Well, take it easy compared to my normal lifestyle when I’m working.

I wanted to learn to not only actively do nothing, but do it intentionally, sober, and enjoy it. To most, that probably sounds easy. But for me, it’s hard. Because For so many years I had trained myself to do whatever it took to prevent getting stuck with my own thoughts. When I’ve been on holiday breaks in the past, at times, it’s taken a huge effort to wait until midday to have a drink. That wasn’t an option this time and that scared me.

But like most things in my life, it wasn’t nearly as scary or hard as I’d built it up to be in my own head. I was determined to spend the morning with my son, something I don’t get the opportunity to do while I am at work. So I focused on that and created memories that’ll stay with me until I get dementia and or die. This is gonna blow your fucking minds, but we’ll never be the age we are right now, ever again. That probably means fuck all to you, but babies, they change so much in such a short time. The next time I’ll get to spend the morning with him for more than two weeks straight will be in another 12 months. He’ll be driving cars and smoking cigarettes by then, probably…

Sorry, got carried away there. The point is, the holidays proved to me, like my birthday, that not only can I enjoy myself sober, but it’s actually fucking better. So much better. I got so much more out of my holidays by getting up early and spending time with him than I would have had I been sleeping off another big night and waking up next to a dominos box with half a cold pizza in it, smelling and feeling like shit. More importantly, so did he. I was realising again, that life for me, at least, was better without drugs and alcohol.

Breathwork and Other Habits

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or you’re new here, you’ll know that I crap on about habits all the time. The standard ones are prioritising sleep, getting up early, exercising, and trying to eat well.

Toward the end of the holidays, I reached out to my mate Paul to ask about breathwork. I’d tried guided meditation before. I hated it. Because it was the slightest bit hard and required even the smallest amount of patience, I threw tantrums before declaring I just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t for me. I have ADHD, I could never meditate or do mindfulness practices. Convenient excuse. I’m also a stubborn little asshole who only wants to do things my way. I’m on a spectrum. Leave me alone.

Paul was great, he explained to me that there was no real right or wrong way to do it. That’s kind of a mindset I’ve adopted towards most things over the last nine months. Just do things the way they work for you. As long as you’re not harming anyone else in the process, introduce habits into your life in a way that you are most likely to stick to them. Be gentle, go easy, yadda yadda. Make it sustainable. Make it easy for you to come back again and try it tomorrow.

I told myself I would do it every morning for a month and see what happens. I made that commitment. So, I would wake up every morning, sit on the ground in the dark in the spare room, set a timer on my phone, close my eyes and just focus on my breathing. I didn’t cross my legs because my hips are fucked from running heaps and stretching fuck all. Like an idiot.

To stay true to what I mentioned above, I started off on “easy”. Five minutes is all I expected of myself. I was really worried that five minutes would feel like five hours. That I would sit there and just wish it were over already. I was pleasantly surprised though, the time went fast, I was able to focus somewhat on my breathing and started to catch the odd thought and tell it to fuck off so I could return to focusing on my breath.

After a few days I started to feel like 5 minutes wasn’t enough. It was actually going too fast. I found myself not wanting it to be over. I’d gone from someone who woke up and went at 110% straight away to someone who started their day by stopping and reminding themselves to slow down and keep calm.

Forever the measured, OCD wanker, I increased the time incrementally. One minute per day until I got to ten minutes, the amount of time I spend each day still. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I still kind of don’t. I didn’t feel incredible when I was finished, but I did feel like there was something in it. Like there was a benefit. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

It wasn’t until I was two or three weeks in that I realised what it was. The practice of catching and dismissing my thought, pushing them away to deal with later, in an effort to focus purely on what I was focusing on, was straining me to put space between a stimulus and my response.

I said to Paul, “I think I’ve just realised something, you don’t get the benefit from this shit at the time, or immediately after. it comes to you throughout your day-to-day life.” I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was a lot kinder way of saying, “yeah no shit, idiot”.

If you like, The Beatles check out Paul’s Beatles Tribute Band The Beatnix. They’re also on Instagram.

Finally, after years of psychologists trying to teach me to do it, I was learning to talk myself down from negative thoughts and feelings. I was able to identify when I had a random thought or feeling and then decide whether or not it was worthy of my attention or not. If it wasn’t I was able to allow it to sit. nothing more, nothing less. I was able to realise that yeah, it happened, but it doesn't;t actually mean anything. I have control over how much that feeling or thought affects me.

I don’t know if it’s a little bit of recency bias, but I think this is probably one of the biggest realisations I’ve had to date. Not because of the few small moments of clarity that I have had, but because of the possibilities it opens up for me. If I can continue to work at it, get better at it and get comfortable with these negative thoughts and feelings, they can’t fucking hurt me. They are powerless. Sobriety will be so much easier if the thoughts and feelings around drinking or the negative thoughts I have about myself have been stripped of any power.

It’s pretty crazy how something I thought I was incapable of only a couple of months ago feels like it already has, and will continue to, have such a positive impact on my day-to-day life, all in exchange for just 10 minutes a day. I am converted. try it. It’s great.

Summary

To me, sobriety isn’t about abstinence. It’s not about avoidance. Sobriety is about change. The whole person change. It’s about growth. If you’re going to impact such a significant change in your life, why not make it a positive change? Why not slowly but surely put yourself just outside of your comfort zone to try to find the small things that make this self-improvement easier on yourself?

Discover the small things you can do each day that make it easier to achieve your goal.

I never once, caught or expected to make these discoveries. I just wanted to get sober and sort my head out. I feel so lucky to have fumbled my way into the position I find myself in now. Without sounding like too much of a wanker, I feel enlightened. I feel like I have learned and discovered so much over these last nine months. So much so that I don’t regret any of the drinking or any of the drug use, because, without it, I wouldn’t have been in a position to learn these lessons and have these realisations I am talking about now.

I don’t want to downplay the challenges of sobriety. I’m not a master of it by any stretch. It’s still hard at times. it will be forever. I am constantly aware of the risks of complacency. But I want people to know that sobriety can be exciting. Another day of sobriety can provide you with so many amazing opportunities to learn and grow. There will be hard days, but ultimately the positives will forever outweigh the negatives. All cases are different, some people may take longer to get to these realisations than I have, and some may discover them sooner. It doesn’t matter, the important part is that they are possible, they can and do happen and will continue to happen. I am always so excited when I see someone who has been in sobriety for much longer than me, and they say that it is still getting better each day. It motivates, inspires and excites me.

If you want to do something, be about it. All about it. Pay no mind to what others may think of you for it. Do what you want to do. throw yourself into it. It will be worth it.

You get out what you put in.

Right now, I’m fuckin’ pumped for another day of sobriety tomorrow.

ODAAT!