Instead of being afraid that you won’t recognize yourself, look at it as an opportunity. You get to define yourself from here on out, and there won’t be any regrettable drunk shenanigans doing that on your behalf. You will have good days, hopeless days, and every other sort of in-between day on this journey. Eventually, you will have to decide who to keep in your life and who to let go. That’s not going to be easy, but the alternative is to continue slowly destroying the one life you’re given. Fears about sobriety are common, even for people who desperately seek it.
- So, you might be scared you won’t sleep very well or you’ll become a person who likes yoga and green smoothies.
- You will start to feel better about yourself, making you more comfortable engaging in conversation with others.
- The Fear is when you wake up from drinking and have this overwhelming feeling that you’ve done something wrong the night before.
Addicts will have to face their relationships with people again, with their families, friends, and co-workers. They may have wronged some of these people, or they might be embarrassed about how they once acted. They’ll have to feel emotions again without numbing them with drink or drug and maneuver their way through tricky family and relationship dynamics. Addiction can be a way to avoid the things we don’t want to deal with. Sobriety means having to face uncomfortable truths about ourselves and others and having to stand up and be who we are.
A Series to Help You Break Through Those Fears
Being afraid to better your own life for fear of what others will say about you is a common yet inane fear. You are living your life for you, not other people. If getting sober is going to make your life better (and trust us, it always does) you should not be concerned with the opinions of others.
The truth is, you have been using drugs or alcohol to cope with your feelings and maybe even symptoms of mental illness. If you give substance abuse up, you’ll have to face those emotions and find a new way to cope. If you have been abusing substances to tamp down feelings, you are in for a boatload of overwhelming emotions as you come clean. Get over your fear of being sober by facing it head on.
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In some cases this may be viewed as a good thing, such as a little ‘liquid courage’ to help you talk to that cute guy or girl standing at the bar. You may have been using alcohol as a crutch to dull whatever might bother you. What began as a drink here or there after work soon wound up being much more than that, to the point where you could not wait to get home and get drunk. Maybe you even tossed back a few at work, in the car on the way home, or in the morning to get you going. Sobriety really is a gift that keeps on giving and you owe it to yourself to discover just how magical a life free from booze can really be.
- Maybe you’re ready—you’re practically desperate—to get sober and to change your life.
- The prospect of changing your habits completely can, indeed, seem quite daunting.
- Addicts will have to face their relationships with people again, with their families, friends, and co-workers.
- True friends do not enable each other to poison their existence in an endless cycle of drinking and drugs.
- We’ll also provide specific steps to take when your heart starts racing and your mind starts wandering.
Everyone is scared when they start something new, it is normal and natural. But, I was more scared of staying stuck in the same old life, feeling guilt and fear of being sober shame, not doing anything and letting my dreams slip away with every drink I poured. For example, let’s look at the common fear that you will be bored.
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The more you scratch it, the worse it’s going to get. Leave it alone, give it time, and it will go away on its own. Besides, allowing the fear of failure to completely influence big decisions like this is a cop-out. It’s a dysfunctional version of “playing it safe.” You deserve better than that. If all of your friends abuse alcohol and/or your spouse abuses alcohol, it makes a lot of sense to fear what will happen next.
