On my journey I have been criticised for calling it an ‘experiment’, that ‘proper addicts’ can’t ‘experiment’ with sobriety. For the record, I’ve never called myself an addict & or an alcoholic .. for me it is irrelevant if I am either. I had a problem with alcohol, admitted it, and my personal choice was to stop doing it, for good, forever.
An interesting question I’ve been asked is why I chose to become completely sober & not moderate my intake if I’m not a proper addict. My answer is always that if I knew what moderation/moderating was and was able to do it, don’t you think I would’ve been doing that before?!
Alcohol is so ingrained in our culture, so acceptable. Imagine swapping photos on Facebook of people drinking alcohol for people shooting up heroin (considered to be a less harmful drug). Social media would become a plethora of zombies and needles. This is how I see alcohol now. A powerful, socially acceptable killer. In my view, moderation is just a slow release of a drug rather than bingeing it like I did. Sadly, the end result is the same. Alcohol is a poison whether you drink it slowly or not.
My heart breaks for people who try abstaining from alcohol, love it and then reintroduce it slowly to enjoy themselves at the weekend, fearing they are inferior without it. It is rare this is successful. I read about lots of people who say that once they start moderating, their old habits soon reappear and they are back to square one. After all, we all know how one or two drinks can soon escalate into a couple of days & disaster. That’s what got us in this mess in the first place.
The more sober I become, the more I can see the sadness spread across our society. I see it walking through town, I see it in the supermarket and particularly notice it on vacuous dating sites. Sad eyes blink back at me, photos of men with pints like trophies. It makes me want to scream ‘that pint is a deterrent not a magnet’ but what’s the point? They think it’s making them happy when actually it’s masking a multitude of problems. One day, they will understand.
I believe the future will not be about getting hammered. Remember, only 20 odd years ago we were still smoking on aeroplanes. Alcohol is expensive & ruining lives. The younger generation have already worked out alcohol makes you fat and drink far less than we did at their age.
I believe that in the future, alcohol will become as much of an issue as smoking, that it will be recognised for the harmful toxin it really is and that there will be more (less expensive) help available for those affected. I believe it will become socially unacceptable to drink until you’re sick, that maybe people will start to understand the damage being done rather than think it’s a hilarious incident.
I believe that it will become more socially acceptable to be sober than be a drunken slurring mess.
I believe Soberdom is the future.
#day343 #soberrevolution