How To Stay Sober And Still Have A Social Life
Aug 09, 2023
How To Stay Sober And Still Have A Social Life
When people visit my website and sign up for the free downloads, I ask them what they are most worried about, when it comes to quitting drinking and how to stay sober. The single most common reply is “I am worried about losing my friends when I stop drinking”.
I would love to tell you that all your fears are misplaced and nothing is going to change when you stop drinking poison for fun.
However, the reality is the way you look at your life is going to take a dramatic shift.
What seemed important before will be revealed to be a mere triviality. The richest and true gift of life you previously took for granted or completely ignore in favor of alcohol will suddenly become extremely valuable to you.
The Evil Clown has spent decades of your life meticulously building a virtual reality. This matrix has been constructed around you so painfully slowly that you didn’t even notice when it became complete.
There are things and people in your life who you believe to be essential to your happiness and you are so convinced of this that you never question it.
How To Stay Sober: A Dramatic Shift
Wake up call time! Most of your drinking buddies don’t give a flying fuck about you. If you honestly believe all the people you hang out with to drink alcohol with on a regular basis are your friends, I have bad news for you.
Most drinkers look around at the regular faces of their fellow drinkers and see friends. Hell, after a few beers a few of them will be hugging you and telling you how much they ‘fucking love you man’.
This is like a fish in the middle of a large school of similar fish looking around and thinking ‘wow I am so lucky, I have so many friends’.
Fish do not school because they are such great mates and they love each other.
Safety in numbers?
This is purely an attempt to derive safety in numbers. From a distance, a large school of fish looks like a big angry fish. This formation and behavior pattern help protect from attack and nothing more.
Fish don’t get together for fun or because they love chilling out as a gang. Guess what, drinkers do not hang out together because they love each other, even if they repeatedly state that’s the reason. Drinkers school because it creates plausible deniability.
One individual sitting alone drinking neat vodka is a person in the depths of despair. Ten people sitting together drinking are a super fun group of sociable people. Even though they are all individually doing exactly the same thing as the lonely guy.
Drinking friends create a highly believable sense of safety in numbers.
After all, if you are drinking poison for fun and you can look around and get some instant social proof that what you are doing isn’t insane, then happy days, right?
Hey, Dave is a doctor, Jane is a lawyer and Mike is an architect – these are not stupid people and they drink, so how bad can it be right?
The Evil Clown doesn’t care whether you drink alone or in a group.
He knows there is no real safety in numbers but is very happy to let you continue in that belief. Just so long as you keep drinking, he is happy for you to believe anything you want.
Sorry about this but when you stop drinking you are going to find out that a few of your friends are not as funny as you thought they were. You will discover that many of your ‘friends’ have nothing in common with you beyond a drug addiction. You will lose some friends when you stop drinking, that is the bad news.
The good news is they were never your friends in the first place.
Do you really want to continue living in a fake world with people pretending to be your friend?
Do you know what fake friends do when the shit hits the fan and you really need them?
They disappear quicker than you can say ‘hey I thought you said you loved me’.
Trust me on this, if you got ill and could never drink again, most of these amazing friends would delete you from their phone within days. You are only useful while you can validate their drug addiction as normal.
Nights spent drinking alcohol repeatedly are only fun if you are rendered stupid by the drug. You will find that living a sober life will force you to reassess what ‘fun’ means to you. This may be an uncomfortable adjustment but once you establish your new routine, you will be happier and more at peace than you ever thought possible.
How To Stay Sober
How do I know?
Because I have seen thousands of people go through this process and come out the other side.
Stop worrying about losing friends; it’s a thinly veiled threat of the Clown and nothing more.
If I could offer you the chance to buy some magic glasses that would instantly reveal who your real friends are and who are the ones who are only using you.
Wouldn’t you take me up on the offer?
Of course and 'stopping drinking' comes free with a pair of these amazing glasses.
Some people wonder if they can take some of their friends (or partner) on the sober journey with them. If they can just persuade their drinking friend to hold their hand and escape the trap side by side then they would have the best of both worlds.
This is a particular hope and dreams for many wives and husbands who have called time on alcohol and want their partner to come with them.
You are doing this for you
Sadly the path out of alcohol addiction isn’t a path at all, it is a tightrope.
There is not enough room on the wire to walk with someone by your side. Your drinking associate can walk ahead of you or they can follow you down the wire but it will always be a journey you take alone.
You must be prepared to look back and find they have fallen off the wire and are no longer following you.
You can do nothing about this, so don’t waste too much time trying to control the uncontrollable. You can only change one person on this planet and that person is you. Keeping this truth in mind will show you how to stay sober, even when those around you are still drinking.
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