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by swijck 614 days ago
I will sound lame and boring but here is my sobriety story:

- Where I am from kids start drinking at 16 or earlier and it starts with beer. Which is bitter and "an acquired taste", one "you have to learn to enjoy". I did not want to "learn to enjoy" anything that is objectively bad for my body, the cause of all sorts of issues for people (career fuckups etc) and on top of all that expensive.

- I used to drive all the time and therefore not starting to drink made it easy to not miss it. If you never made it a habit, you won't crave it, you won't miss it.

- I grew up with family around me drinking a glass of wine or other drink on a routine: at dinner, after a long day of work... => this worked for them, no judgement, I personally will try to build routines that make me sleep better, actually bring me lasting joy.

- Time wasted by alcohol, even at moderate amounts, is none-zero. I want to reduce my time feeling shit as much as possible, because why would we want it any other way?

IDK, I am probably weird for not drinking any alcohol ever. But I enjoy parties as much as my friends. Its all a matter of being influenced by peers making drinking 'the norm', breaking the norms for your own good works out most of the time.

1 comments

Good for you.

I noticed, before I stopped drinking, I never was on a party where I didn't at least got tipsy.

Meaning, all my social skills relied on alcohol. It made it easier to talk to people, date women, etc.

I never learned to do all that sober, and so now that I'm pushing 40, I feel kinda lost at events.

This hits close to home for me. Recently I’ve been reflecting on this based on a similar situation.

(It’s not worked and still new.) I’m trying to force myself to find new hobbies and as a result interact with people while sober. I’ll report back, good luck to you!

I drank for the taste, not for the effect of alcohol (I did that 2 times on purpose in my life and I'm ok with that). Stopped around 20. Honestly, most party chats are not that interesting. Usually the interesting things happen at the end of a party when the amount of people shrink, then it becomes more interesting. This is entirely subjective, just giving you an N+1