7 Things that Scared Me the Most about Getting Sober

Getting sober was one of the scariest decisions that I’ve ever made for myself. For years drinking and using were the things I looked forward to every day. They were the crutches upon which I walked, my supports, the things that I leaned on day in and day out to escape the anxieties of life. Eventually, though the fear of continuing on that way began to outweigh the fear of getting sober and I finally made the decision to take the leap. Below are the seven things that I feel I was most afraid of when I first got sober.

1. Facing Reality

One of the scariest things about getting sober for me was the fact that I wouldn’t be able to escape reality anymore. I would actually have to deal with all of the problems and the chaos that I’ve created in my life. This not only scared the shit out of me but it was also a large part of what fueled my addiction to begin with. A lot of my drinking and drug use was me directly trying to escape my situation. I was drowning in debt, my house was a disaster, people were trying to contact me that I avoided because of the lifestyle I lived, nearly all of my relationships were falling apart and my life was completely unmanageable. So I would drink or get high to avoid those things, the cycle would continue, and those problems would keep escalating in the background while I was out obliterating myself.

Despite the fact that this point in time was a very terrible and dark place for me, it was also the place I needed to go to push me to get sober. My fear of continuing on that way began to outweigh my fear of giving up alcohol and drugs. I think to find real, long-term sobriety, the first thing that had to happen was getting to that point where that scale had finally tipped.

2. Facing myself

For as long as I can remember I’ve never been content with myself. I didn’t want people to know who I was because I didn’t like who I was and I didn’t think they would either. It was as if all of these years for the sake of protecting myself, I had built a prison around myself and the only thing that gave me a sense of freedom was my escape through using and drinking. It was that sense of ease and comfort that I looked forward to every day, of freeing myself from myself. It gave me this false courage that I could be exactly what I’d always wanted to be, or I at least didn’t have to think about who I really was. I lived in a fantasy world where reality was completely distorted and I could trick myself into thinking I was someone else.

Honestly, when I got sober, I realized getting to know myself was something that I’d been putting off for a large part of my life because I was afraid. I realized I needed to stop running from it and address it. It was absolutely terrifying, but at the same time, it has been one of the most beautiful parts of my journey in sobriety. I took a serious look at the person that I was for years when I was stuck in the whirlwind of addiction and realized how horribly selfish I’d been. It was painful, but it also made me realize how badly I didn’t want to be that person anymore. It gave me the willingness to try to approach life differently and to be a better human being in general. As a result, I can look in the mirror and most days, because God knows I will never be perfect, I am content with who I see.

3. Interacting with people

When I first got sober I didn’t know how to have a conversation with someone without having alcohol or drugs to lean on. I had no idea what to say or talk about and I felt very awkward. This was also a huge reason why I drank/used the way that I did. When I first got sober I would walk away from conversations thinking only about all of the things I should have said differently. Most of the time I wouldn’t say anything at all because I felt so uncomfortable and I was afraid of letting somebody else in.

Truthfully, it was difficult to talk to people without being extremely anxious at first. For me, it took a lot of pushing myself out of my comfort zone, opening up about things and getting vulnerable with people in my local recovery community. Eventually talking to people in sobriety started to come naturally and as I was going through my healing process it started to get easier. Where it really began though, was with becoming content with myself by actively trying with my whole heart to be a better person every day. Once I started to focus on that, my interactions with other people started to get easier because I started to like myself more and, as a result, started to lose that fear of letting people in.

4. Losing friends

One of my biggest fears in getting sober was that I was going to lose all of my friends that I partied with. I thought they wouldn’t want to hang out with me anymore because I wouldn’t be fun to hang out with. The truth is, some of them didn’t stick around and I learned sort of the hard way that the ones who mattered are the ones who did.

As time went on and I got more involved in a local recovery program, I started to make new friends who were also sober and had similar goals for their lives. And honestly, some of the best friends I have today are the friends that I’ve met in recovery. These are people who want to see me succeed, who lift me up and answer the phone when I need a friend. Those are the kind of people that I want to be surrounded by today.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the friends that I used to spend time with when I was drinking and using. However most of them are in a different headspace than I am now and for the sake of my own wellbeing, it was better to let them go than to focus on trying to maintain those relationships. And to my surprise, several of them have actually ended up coming to my recovery group since I’ve made the decision to get sober so it’s been awesome to be able to be a friend and support person for them when they decide that they want sobriety for themselves too.

5. Being judged for being sober

Another fear I had was of being honest with people about my sobriety and worrying that they would judge me. There is definitely a stigma surrounding addiction and I think it’s incredibly hard for someone who hasn’t been through it to understand what it’s like. The reality is, there will be people who judge me for my past. There will be people who form their own opinions about what being an addict means, however today I realize that I don’t have to let that bother me. In fact, I’m able to see that in those situations it’s not that there’s something wrong with me, it’s that there is a lack of understanding and/or education behind the other person’s perspective. In most cases, people have been very respectful of the fact that I choose to be sober and some of them have even admitted considering sobriety for themselves as well.

Beyond that, I also don’t know whether or not someone is ever actually judging me. Usually it’s just me overthinking, and it’s really none of my business what’s happening in other peoples’ minds anyway. The point is, everybody has their own opinions, and opinions are absolutely not facts. Either way, most of the time people seem to respect and even admire my decision to stay sober.

6. Not being able to go to social events

When I first got sober, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to go to bars or anywhere I used to hang out. In the beginning, I really didn’t go to any of those places, but the social aspect was something that I missed about my drinking days. I ended up hanging out a lot with another friend that was sober who really liked to shoot pool so we started going out to play. We had so much fun drinking pineapple juice-soda concoctions and playing the game that I almost forgot it was even a place where I used to lose myself on a regular basis. Additionally, I made many other sober friends through community recovery groups that I could call any time to hang out with.

So in summary, I did avoid those places in the beginning while I was getting a foothold on sobriety, but once I had some sober friends to hang out with and other interests to focus on, I was still able to go out and have a good time amongst friends. Another thing I will add is that someone once told me to focus on what I can bring to the situation rather than what I can take from it. Having that perspective when in places where people are drinking has also really helped me to keep my head in a good place.

7. Not knowing what to do with my time

In early sobriety, I worried a lot about what I was going to do now that I wasn’t getting messed up all the time. That was literally all I once did after all. At first I spent a lot of time going to recovery meetings. I poured my heart into healing myself and it did take some work, but in taking that time for myself I was able to build real friendships with other sober people and I learned a lot about how to be a better person and a better friend.

As time went on, I started down a really neat path of self-discovery. I started to get back into things I used to do before the drugs and alcohol took over, I tried a lot of new things that I thought might be interesting or fun, and today my time is filled with tons of awesome and rewarding hobbies. I love to knit, shoot film photography, refinish old furniture, listen to vinyl, the list goes on, but the point is I’ve found things that truly make me happy that don’t involve drugs or alcohol.