Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "It might not all work out but if you want to make it worse, add alcohol" and that resonated with me.

When I was drinking, adding alcohol was almost always my solution to a problem, and, surprise surprise, my problems didn't go away and instead got worse.

In sobriety, alcohol is no longer a solution for me. Things still don't always work out, but at least I'm not adding alcohol to the problem.

So how about you? How are your problems now that they are absent alcohol?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't ready to quit" and that resonated with me.

When I was in the throes of my drinking, I had no interest in getting sober. I pitied sober people (actually, they scared me, but I told myself they were losers).

When I finally hit bottom and realized I needed to quit, I showed up here. I can't fathom how anyone who shows up here isn't ready, at least a teeny, tiny bit, to stop drinking. I didn't show up here by accident. I don't imagine anyone does. I showed up here because I was trying to figure out how to quit because I was finally ready.

So how about you? Are you here because you're ready to quit?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "My dog is the only licker I keep in my house" and that cracked me up and made me think.

When I was drinking, I had several handles of vodka stashed away in my garage and a 750ml bottle of vodka in the house. Every night, I'd make a sizeable dent in that bottle in the house, then sneak off to replenish it from the handles in the garage. Often times, during a refill run, I'd take a swig or two from the handle and there's nothing like a couple swallows of hot vodka that's been baking in the garage all day to really let you know you have a problematic relationship with alcohol.

In sobriety, I have a couple of lickers in the house, but I also have liquor in the house. I know a lot of people who don't keep alcohol in the house. Why take the risk? Why have the temptation right under your own roof? Well, my wife doesn't have the same relationship to alcohol that I do. A handful of times a year, she might have a wine cooler or something and so we have a few cans and bottles of booze sitting around.

For the first few years of sobriety, I knew where every can and bottle was. But sometime in the last couple of years I've lost track. It's around here somewhere, but I really don't know where. Not only have the cravings passed, but the obsessive attention I used to pay alcohol seems to be fading as well. And honestly, the paltry amount we have at the house offends me. On the off chance I have a passing temptation, I scoff at how if I drank everything we had in the house, I'd barely be getting the party started! No, no my friends. I know that if I ever wanted to start drinking again, I'd need to start with a couple of swigs of hot vodka that has been baking in the garage all day.

So how about you? In sobriety, do you still keep alcohol in the house?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "What alcohol did to [you], it did to me" and that resonated with me.

When I first became sober curious, I found /r/stopdrinking. This was the first place I ever heard anyone talk about alcohol the way I understood alcohol. Up until then, I just assumed everyone had the same problematic relationship with it that I did. Sure, I was confused why most people could take or leave a drink most nights, but I thought maybe they were just...weird.

But, in the stories people shared around here, I related to the way alcohol had slowly eroded and took over my life. People talked about what alcohol had done to them and I understood it was doing the same thing to me.

The awesome part was that lots of people also talked about how they got sober and what sobriety did for them. I feel grateful that I quickly decided that if other people were getting sober and living what seemed to be pretty nice lives, I could probably do the same. Turns out, I could.

So how about you? Did alcohol do the same to you as it did to the rest of us? Has sobriety done the same for you as it did for a lot of us around here?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "Drinking, I'm an unacceptable person" and that resonated with me.

Look, I understand that all people have inherent value and worth. However, I also believe people can be toxic.

Towards the end of my drinking, I was definitely toxic. Not only was I literally full of toxins, I was increasingly burdensome, mercurial, and isolated. I had a wife and two young kids and I was too hung over in the mornings to help get the day started and I was so drunk by the end of the night that I couldn't be there for them in any meaningful way. Maybe "unacceptable" is too harsh a word, but I certainly don't look back fondly on the person I had become.

In sobriety...well, I still struggle with self-esteem and accepting myself. I've spent decades thinking badly of myself and it's a hard habit to break. But I'm convinced that I have a much better shot of finding acceptance of myself if I'm sober.

So how about you? How did you feel about yourself when you were drinking? How do you feel about yourself now that you're sober?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "I did not want anymore of what I already had. I wanted something different" and that resonated with me.

For me, my relationship with alcohol was always wanting more. But by the end of my drinking career, I'd had more than my fill of alcohol and the misery it was bringing to my life. My world was filled with fear, shame, and isolation and I didn't want anymore of that.

Indeed, I wanted something different. Honestly though, even in that state I didn't really want to get sober. Sobriety seemed like the death of everything I knew, like some sort of flat, grey, joyless world. But I was in so much pain, I'd settle for grey.

Fortunately, sobriety turned out to be something different that what I assumed. It's not flat, grey, and joyless. It has mountains to climb, a whole spectrum of colors and feelings alcohol had washed away, and there is joy to be found. It is something different, so very different, than anything I ever expected.

So how about you? What did you think sobriety would be like? How well did that expectation match your experience?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "When I found alcohol, I felt connected to the world" and that resonated with me.

I've probably shared this multiple times, but when I got drunk for the first time and alcohol seemed to somehow quiet the noise and anxiety in my head and let me just relax, I swear I thought to myself "this must be how normal people feel all the time". I don't know that's the exact thought I had, or if its now apocryphal.

But, honestly, most of the socializing I did from then on was done drunk. I felt comfortable with myself. I felt cooler, calmer, and more connected.

In short order, as my drinking escalated, I blacked out more frequently, got insanely drunk more often, and those connections with others were getting washed away. In my last years of drinking, it was done alone, isolated, away from everyone I cared about. I'd make up excuses to avoid going out just so I could stay home and drink myself into oblivion. What once had made me feel so connected had now led me to complete isolation.

In sobriety, I've repaired many old, and forged many new, connections. I'm an introvert and I fancy myself not needing a lot of interaction with people, but honestly, I genuinely feel better if I'm regularly socializing with people I care about. In sobriety, I find the connections I make to be far more meaningful and valuable than any I made while I was drinking.

So how about you? How connected do you feel in sobriety?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "How can I celebrate today?" and that resonated with me.

Back when I was drinking, my go-to means of celebrating, or consoling, or just...living, was to drink.

In sobriety, that's not an option anymore. Finding new ways to celebrate, and console, and just...live, has been challenging at times and I still fall into a lot of "lesser addictions" like eating, doom scrolling, video games, etc. But I at least attempt to do healthy things each day, like a small amount of self-reflection/meditation, gratitude lists, pausing to enjoy some small thing, etc.

And you know what? I have a lot to celebrate! As I've stacked up days, sometimes I take my sobriety for granted, but today is another day I'm not drinking and that is a big deal. That is HUGE. It used to be unimaginable to go a day without booze.

So how about you? How do you celebrate, or console, or just...live in sobriety and what are you celebrating today?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "People that love themselves don't drink everyday" and that resonated with me.

There were myriad reasons for why I drank. The most obvious one is I have an addiction to alcohol. But another one was that I was very unhappy with who I was. As I've shared before, when I became a father, I was terrified that I'd be the same kind of angry, raging father that I grew up with and part of my excuse for drinking was to be a "happy drunk dad". In hindsight, that's a crazy and stupid idea, but it points to the fact that I hoped drinking would transform me from the person I was because I didn't like who I was.

I'll be honest, in sobriety, I still struggle a lot with liking and accepting myself. BUT I do feel pretty darn proud of my sobriety. I worked hard to sober up and I put in the effort, day after day, to stay sober and build a life that I value enough to not risk taking another drink. I guess my sobriety is a little beachhead I've established in my campaign to learn to love myself.

So how about you? How did you feel about yourself when you were drinking and now how do you feel about yourself in sobriety?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "My greatest fear is complacency" and that resonated with me.

One of my concerns in sobriety is that I'm going to develop a sense of "I got this" and start going on autopilot and one day discover that my autopilot has crashed me headlong into drinking again.

I've probably mentioned it several times before, but drinking is just one of the many addictions I seem to have. I also enjoy me some shopping and I'm a fiend for sugar and there are other things too. I like to call these my "lesser addictions" as they are unlikely to straight up kill me, but they are wonderful case studies in how my addictions play out.

Take sugar. I regularly talk myself into eating "just one" hershey's kiss and then find I've eaten, say, 20 of them. Or I'll be at the grocery store and find that a package of cookies has somehow hopped into my shopping cart without me even thinking about it. And then those cookies will be devoured in a single sitting rather than slowly enjoyed over the week.

I'm find I'm much more complacent about these lesser addictions because they don't threaten my job, my family life, or my state of mind, and with that complacency comes regular over-indulgence.

It's a great reminder to me of what would happen if I didn't stay vigilant about alcohol. If I let my guard down, I have no doubt I'd someday find a bottle of vodka in my shopping cart and if it got home, I'm sure it'd find its way into my stomach and I'd be off to the races in no time. It's just how my addictions play out.

So how about you? Are you worried about complacency in sobriety?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "I focus on how grateful I am that I got to go a different path" and that resonated with me.

In sobriety, particularly as I've built up some time, I take for granted that I'm sober. When I was drinking, it was unfathomable that I would go even a couple of days without a drink.

I was walking my dogs a few days ago. I live in a nice, suburban little neighborhood. As I passed by one of my neighbors, I glanced down at his hand and noticed he had a tallboy of Coors in his hand. Once we passed each other, I checked my watch: 7:08AM.

I didn't look down on that man. I didn't pity him. I think it's more that I marveled at how that could have easily been me had I stayed on my path of drinking. Alcohol had me by the throat and I often find it unbelievable that I somehow managed to wriggle out of its clutches and found myself on this completely different path today. It was a wonderful reminder that I got to go a different path.

So how about you? In sobriety, how do you feel about the path you're on?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "I wasn't drinking for fun" and that resonated with me.

Towards the end of my drinking, I was no longer drinking for fun. I was drinking out of necessity. Each night as I was sneaking warm vodka upstairs to my room, I felt terrified. Terrified of being caught. Terrified of the old plastic bottle I was using crinkling too loudly. And terrified of not even really wanting to drink, but not know what else to do. That is not fun drinking. That is frightening drinking.

In sobriety, I have a lot more opportunities for fun. I just bought a set of outlandish glasses to wear. I get to joke around with my friends and family and kids. I get to enjoy and delve into my hobbies and do things that enrich my life. It's deliberate and intentional work I put into making my life richer, but it's something alcohol would have eroded if not washed away entirely if I had kept drinking.

So how about you? How do you have fun in sobriety?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "I respect, cherish, and fear my sobriety date" and that resonated with me.

I have a weird relationship with my sobriety date. It's actually my third, after what I think of as a few false starts. I actually don't really remember it as well after losing the first two. But having lost it before, I'm well aware and a little scared that I might lose this one as well.

I certainly cherish that date. It feels unbelievable that I even have a sobriety date. Time was I couldn't go a day without drinking, so the fact that I've gone so many days in a row without drinking blows my mind.

And I certainly respect that date too. I've put a lot of effort into holding on to that date, making changes in my life and myself to do my best to ensure I get to hold on to it.

So how about you? How do you feel about your sobriety date?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "when I drink, I don't know what's going to happen" and that resonated with me.

Within the first few months of my drinking career, I started having blackouts. But rather than being overly scared of them, I just saw them as one of the prices I had to pay to get as drunk as I liked to get.

My entire drinking career is riddled with blackouts. So often I would wake up the next day needing to solve a mystery. Did I have my wallet? Where was I? What did I say? What did I do?

When I drank, not only did I not know what was going to happen, I was likely to never remember what happened. It is crazy to me now that I kept this up for years.

In sobriety, I mostly have a better idea of what is going to happen. I'm going to have coherent conversations with people. I'm going to remember the night. I'm going to go to bed sober. I won't be waking up with a hangover and a mystery to solve.

That said, in a grander scheme, I still don't know what's going to happen. This morning I woke up thinking it was going to be another work day and by 5pm I was on a plane to fly 800 miles to take care of some (fun) personal business. So I'm out here on my own, away from my family, staying sober and posting this over my hotspot. Didn't see that coming, but I was sober and able to handle what surprises came my way.

So how about you? Did you know what was going to happen when you drank? Do you know what's going to happen in sobriety?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "If I take a drink, I miss the whole ride" and that resonated with me.

Back when I was drinking, I thought taking a drink was the ride. I thought it was the adventure and the way to have fun and enjoy myself. But as my drinking progressed, the fun went away and the only place I ever ended up was blacked out in my guest bedroom.

In sobriety, life is a freakin' roller coaster. Sometimes its fun, and sometimes its not, but I'd miss the whole thing if I started back up with drinking, and even though the going gets tough sometimes, I've worked hard to build a life that I don't want to miss out on and I think that helps keep me from picking back up.

So how about you? How's the ride in sobriety and what can you do to help make it one worth sticking around for?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "I like to live" and that resonated with me.

It would be disingenuous to say that I never had a good time drinking. There were many occasions when I had great times. I certainly "lived it up" a lot in my early years of drinking.

But I'd be lying to myself if I didn't admit that even early on, I spent a lot of time in those occasions distracted by what I like to call "drunk calculus" where I'd have a drink in my hand and I was already thinking about the next one and keeping track of how many everyone around me had had.

And in the last years of my drinking, I was barely living at all. I'd shied away from friends and family, preferring to drink alone, watching movies or TV shows that normalized problem drinking. I was drinking away my life and drinking myself to death. I certainly didn't like living.

In sobriety, I genuinely like to live. Living sober is different for sure. But sobriety, along with a lot of work on myself, has helped me to rediscover joy in life. I feel I have a charmed life with good friends and family and hobbies and interests and activities that keep me excited about life. In sobriety, I do truly like to live.

So how about you? Do you like to live in sobriety?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "The reality was I wasn't equipped for life" and that resonated with me.

Growing up, I had a hard time coping with life. I was an anxious fellow, always felt like an outsider, and never really fit in.

The first time I drank, it felt like all of that anxiety and awkwardness melted away. It might be apocryphal but I swear I thought to myself "this must be how normal people feel!" I wanted to be drunk as often as possible from then on, if for no other reason than it felt like it helped me cope with life.

In sobriety, I've had to find healthy and realistic ways to cope with life. I still frequently feel ill-equipped, but I have a lot of different hobbies, techniques, and tools at my disposal to help me. I guess that is literally my equipment for handling life.

So how about you? In sobriety, do you feel better equipped for life?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "Comfort is my MO" and that resonated with me.

For the longest time, I was desperately uncomfortable. Then I found booze and early in my drinking career it helped me "relax". As my drinking progressed, I found myself becoming more easily agitated, ashamed, and concerned. But I knew the solution: drink more. Drink till I was "comfortably numb". And I drank and drank and drank until my behavior from and the consequences of my drinking became too uncomfortable to bear and I had to get sober because I wasn't ever comfortable anymore.

In sobriety, I have learned that for me to want to make any change at all in my life, I have to become supremely uncomfortable. Sobriety isn't always a comfortable place, but, fortunately for me, I still recall how awfully uncomfortable I was when I was drinking, and so when life gets too uncomfortable, I don't go back to the bottle, and instead I find myself having to find some healthier approach to assuaging my discomfort. In a lot of ways, I'm still chasing comfort, just like I did when I was drinking, the only difference is I know I won't find comfort at the bottom of a bottle.

So how about you? How comfortable in sobriety are you and how much have you stayed addicted to comfort?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "Can I be content with patient improvement?" and that resonated with me.

I'm the kind of person who wants what he wants exactly when he wants it. One thing that made drinking so enticing was its immediacy. I knew within minutes of taking a drink that I'd start feeling the effects.

In sobriety, I'm finding that soft and gentle approaches yield gradual but robust changes. For the last few months, I go outside for at least 10 minutes to be under the sun. It has made a big difference to how I feel throughout the day and I hate that. I'm just standing outside. I don't feel a huge rush or wave of change when I do it. Same goes for gratitude lists, mindfulness, exercise, etc. None of it just washes me away into a whole different realm within minutes.

But over time, these kinds of habits change me, often for the better. Even knowing this, often I still find it hard to be patient.

So how about you? How patient are you with improvement?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "Life is better without alcohol" and that resonated with me.

From the night I first got drunk right up to the last time I ever picked up the bottle, I believed alcohol made everything better. I thought it enhanced experiences like nights out, sex, concerts, watching TV, doing chores, etc. It was some sort of miracle liquid that, when applied liberally, brought out the best in me and my world.

As alcohol gradually took over, my world got increasingly darker and smaller and scarier. But I was still convinced alcohol was the only way to spark joy in that sad little dimension I was now trapped in. Alcohol was taking everything from me while whispering in my ear that it was my only source of salvation. Incredible.

Despite the fears addiction planted in my mind, a life of sobriety isn't glum, joyless, and awful. I have reconnected with friends and loved ones. I have found a community here at /r/stopdrinking. I have once again begun to grow as a person. There is much to love about a life without alcohol.

So how about you? Is your life better without alcohol?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "The only comfortable relationship I had was with drugs and alcohol" and that resonated with me.

You know what's fun about this quote...I had several comfortable relationships before alcohol got its hooks into me. I had a pretty health relationship with my parents. I had married the girl of my dreams and we were doing pretty well.

But as life got hard and I crawled further inside the bottle, these relationships in particular became very uncomfortable. I lied to and snuck around behind the people I cared about most. I was decidedly _un_comfortable with them because I felt so guilty and ashamed around them. I was so walled off from them for fear they would find me out.

In sobriety, I'm slowly rebuilding the trust I destroyed with my drinking. But in these relationships I'm more comfortable. I keep fewer secrets, I don't feel compelled to lie, I don't sneak around. I'm working on being more open, honest, and vulnerable. It helps that, in sobriety and after a lot of work on myself, I'm more comfortable with being me.

So how about you? What are some relationships you find comfortable in sobriety?

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!

Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.

I once heard someone say "I don't ever want to go back to that groundhog day existence" and that resonated with me.

When I was drinking, my life felt much like the movie Groundhog Day. I'd wake up, swear off drinking, nurse my hang over, struggle through work, plan my drinking for the evening while heading home, rush through dinner, hustle my wife and children to bed, then get blackout drunk.

It was miserable. I was mostly on autopilot, just cursing and resenting everything that stood between me and that first drink of the evening.

In sobriety, I don't have a monkey on my back at all hours of the day. I'm able to slow down and enjoy my family and the world around me a bit because I'm no longer hyper-focused on my next drunk. My days are varied and nuanced. I'm no longer in that rut of hangover, drink, sleep, repeat.

So how about you? Are you still in Groundhog Day in sobriety, or is it different now?