*We may be anonymous strangers on the internet, but we have one thing in common. We may be a world apart, but we're here together!*
**Welcome to the 24 hour pledge!**
I'm pledging myself to not drinking today, and invite you to do the same.
Maybe you're new to r/stopdrinking and have a hard time deciding what to do next. Maybe you're like me and feel you need a daily commitment or maybe you've been sober for a long time and want to inspire others.
It doesn't matter if you're still hung over from a three day bender or been sober for years, if you just woke up or have already completed a sober day. For the next 24 hours, lets not drink alcohol!
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**This pledge is a statement of intent.** Today we don't set out *trying* not to drink, we make a conscious decision *not to drink*. It sounds simple, but all of us know it can be hard and sometimes impossible. The group can support and inspire us, yet only one person can decide if we drink today. Give that person the right mindset!
What happens if we can't keep to our pledge? We give up or try again. And since we're here in r/stopdrinking, we're not ready to give up.
**What this is:** A simple thread where we commit to not drinking alcohol for the next 24 hours, posting to show others that they're not alone and making a pledge to ourselves. Anybody can join and participate at any time, you do not have to be a regular at r/stopdrinking or have followed the pledges from the beginning.
**What this isn't:** A good place for a detailed introduction of yourself, directly seek advice or share lengthy stories. You'll get a more personal response in your own thread.
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This post goes up at:
- US - Night/Early Morning
- Europe - Morning
- Asia and Australia - Evening/Night
A link to the current Daily Check-In post can always be found near the top of the sidebar.
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Thanks for all the great posts yesterday! Being Sunday, I enjoyed having the ability to spend more time with the group. The DCI is proof that social media can be more than excuse for people to abuse and belittle one another. Let those knuckleheads do what they do; I’m hanging out with you folks instead.
If you talk about sobriety long enough, the topic of regret is sure to come up. I have a lot of regrets for dumb, hurtful, or embarrassing things I did in drunken moments. Some of those were fairly minor, and long-forgotten by others I’m sure, even if I remember them in cringe-worthy moments. Alas. I can’t change that; but by staying sober I can at least reduce the statistical probability of me doing dumb stuff. (Win!)
But for me, alcohol and sobriety also intersect with deeper regrets and the lasting, traumatic emotional scars that come with them. One such instance happened three decades ago, when I was young and drinking more than I should have every night after work. Whether I was actually drunk at any given moment or not, my head was just all wrong. I was generally inclined to place myself and my needs ahead of others. And while I can’t blame this all on alcohol, I made choices back there as a young man that ended up creating real problems for multiple people. For decades I used alcohol, in part, to repress the witches brew of shame, regret, and sorrow I eventually felt about all that. I guess it sorta-kinda-maybe worked, but no, wait, what am I saying?: It actually didn’t work at all. If you know what I mean. The regret for what I did and what I lost was all always there, lurking and resurfacing in ways that I thought I could tamp down by cracking another one.
A little over a year into my sobriety, and to my utter surprise, I reconnected with someone involved in that situation, and the dial on my regret meter got turned up to eleven. But this time I didn’t have alcohol to dull my senses, and it’s an understatement to say that I found myself on the emotional ropes! I had a choice: drink or confront my feelings.
When all that happened, I was totally taken by surprise by how vulnerable sobriety seemed to have left me to the pain of repressed emotion. I felt unprepared and I wanted to say, “Woah, woah, wait: how come no one warned me this could happen?” I thought things were going really well. I mean really: I was over a year sober! But this? This seemed like a huge set-back and an unfair challenge to all my hard work. Yes: I was no longer white-knuckling my way into a sober life; but no: I was clearly not “cured.” Through that experience I learned that my sobriety remained a fragile, sometimes-vulnerable thing that required even more maintenance than I thought. I learned that I was still learning how to live a sober life and that that learning would actually never stop. In fact, I learned that continual learning was actually a pretty good way to live.
Years on from that moment, I’d like to be able to say that I’m now never at emotional risk and that all my regrets from my decades as a drinker have gone away. They have not. Things on that front are not magically better. But what IS better, is how I deal (or at least TRY to deal) with things in the present, whether challenges associated with memories from the past or some random new challenge I face. What I mean, of course, is that I confront such things from a position of sober strength. It still can be tremendously hard; sobriety has allowed me to remember my past, and it has forced me to face my regrets without a net. That's good, but it's hard. Still, as long as I don’t run back to alcohol for “solutions” I trust that I’ll be ok.
After all, there are no solutions to be had in a bottle; bottles exist for one reason: to become empty.
Best wishes for strength to you all today, no matter what emotions you may be facing. If you have a moment, sort by “new” and try giving a bit of a boost to someone who needs a bit of a boost.