Sobriety also improved my mental clarity, which also has an impact on my spending. Feeling better about myself has led me to not needing to “prove” anything. I only buy things that I really value. I have been more mindful in what I purchase and when, and this has made a huge difference on both my financial health and my overall happiness. Even though I drank cheap wine, it got expensive to keep drinking. It seemed like alcohol was at least 30% of every restaurant bill.
And I knew there were people, but I didn’t know how to find them, you know? So that’s kind of what you know, sparked my idea in starting the DRI club and starting the, 1000 hours drive challenge. Like I really just wanted to find friends like I was like, crap, how do I need How do I need other sober people that aren’t necessarily affiliated with a 12-step program or you know, people I knew in rehab.
The Dry Life: Adopting An Alcohol-Free Lifestyle, Not A Label
Even if you know that there are benefits to quitting alcohol, it does not mean that it’s easy to stop drinking—especially if you’ve been misusing alcohol for a long time. And I also think that we’re surrounded by such a boozy culture where alcohol free lifestyle drinking is pushed and rewarded. Just immersing yourself in any community where people want to be alcohol for you are out at Cree and are talking about the health benefit and the personal transformation they’re going through and yeah.
So it’s something that just like anything else, like you have to do what you’re comfortable with? Like, I’ll tell people all the time, you know, I was I think I had over three years sobriety before I ever tried my first nonalcoholic beer. And I thought about it for a little while first. And it really was not a triggering experience at all it really, if anything, it’s kind of took away some of that FOMO that I still had a lot of even when I was out with friends, right? Because, you know, nobody at the end of the shirt, nobody really cares what you’re drinking, you know, I don’t know, I can’t think of the last, you know, gathering that I was at when someone was like, what was your friend drinking?
You’ll feel fantastically proud of yourself 🙂
Or then, when you get older, oh, well, we recommend, you know, 12-step meetings. And so, that was really the only thing that I was ever told that I could do besides, you know, go to therapy, and I was already doing that. So, you know, I that’s what I did for about, I’d say probably like two years.
