What held me back from giving 'sobriety' a try?
For me it was a fear that everything enjoyable about my life would come to an end.....I wanted the bad stuff to stop, but I didn't want to lose the 'good stuff' as well.
I was actually afraid that my attempts to give up alcohol might succeed and leave me alive but socially dead..I didn't want to lose Jeff, I just wanted to lose that crap that happened when I drank.......
I convinced myself that I just had to tough it out through the negative times as a price I had to pay to play. What I failed to notice was the steady price increase I was paying..
Alcohol didn't just turn bad for me overnight, it progressed like grass grows. It consistently got worse but at a pace that I didn't see occurring until the day that I suddenly had that painful awareness of how far I had traveled down a road I never knew I was on...
I wish I had known the self awareness questions to ask myself back then, maybe I would've realized what alcohol was silently and stealthfully doing to me and my life, but either I wasn't aware of those questions, or I simply didn't want to hear them.....
Sobriety wasn't just about 'quitting alcohol'.......to me, sobriety was about 'quitting life as I knew it' which at the time meant strictly quitting the things that brought me joy. I didn't feel like I was just quitting the bad stuff, I felt like sobriety was forcing me to quit the good stuff as well, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to become the person that I feared sobriety would expose...
I saw a lot of people living in sobriety or recovery, and I believed them when they said that 'THEY' were happy, but I knew (at least I believed) that I was different. The boring sober life might work for them, but I'm a guy that likes to have fun, and in my mind, I deeply and honestly believed that 'fun' for me would never occur without alcohol....
I'm kinda glad I was wrong. I'm kinda glad that I was finally willing to give life free from alcohol a try. I'm kinda glad that you all were here to believe in me until I could finally believe in me for myself. I'm kinda glad that I decided to try! And I'm really glad that you all were right!!