17 Things I've Learned in 17 Years of Sobriety
Writing this post is how I learned 17 is a lot of things. Maybe too many.
Hello friends, tomorrow is my 17th anniversary of getting sober, which means that 17 years ago today, I was in the emergency room with doctors monitoring me until I was stable enough to go to the Psych Ward (what a sentence).
Back when Twitter was Twitter, I used to post my favorite sobriety lessons on my sobriety birthday, so I thought it would be fun to do a longer version of that here. But two quick notes before we get into it:
On the 1000 subscribers by Friday goal: I’m scheduling this Wednesday night, and I’m at 980 subscribers. Maybe I’ll get the last 20 by Friday; maybe I won’t! It is impossible to feel bad about having 980 subscribers. So, thank you all.
Questions: The more questions I get for the advice portion of AASL, the more I can choose questions that would be of the most value to readers. So please send any questions you, your friends, family, coworkers, or weird neighbors have. I’d also love to know what you’d like to see more or less of in the newsletter, so don’t hesitate to reach out with feedback. You can send both to askasoberlady@gmail.com.
Recovery isn’t a competition.
As much as I’m proud of the fact that I have 17 years sober, those years accumulated one day at a time. My priority always has to be staying sober today. Not this year, this month, just today. And if I can’t do that, I’ll get up tomorrow and try again. It wouldn’t make me better or worse than anyone else. It would mean that something happened to throw me off course, and I need to figure out what so it doesn’t happen again. Be kind to yourself and others. We’re all just trying to find our way through.
There are many paths to sobriety. Use what helps you; ignore what doesn’t.
Yes, lots of people who are trying to quit drinking go through AA, and it’s remarkably effective for many of those people. But it’s not the only way. There are secular support groups, individual therapy, medications like naltrexone, and yes, some people do it on willpower alone. You don’t have to pick one path and stick with it; you can hop around from, say, AA to therapy or start with medication and then end up in a secular support group.
Quitting alcohol or benzodiazepines cold turkey can not just be unpleasant; it can be fatal.
If you chronically use either of these substances, please talk to a doctor before quitting. (It’s a good idea for any substance, but these two are particularly dangerous to stop using abruptly.)
You get to decide what recovery and sobriety mean for you
Recovery and sobriety mean different things to different people. For me, sobriety means abstinence from any deliberate alcohol consumption. That’s the substance to which I was addicted, so that’s how I measure my sobriety. I define recovery as an ongoing commitment to sobriety and a recognition of the constant work I need to do to address the underlying factors that drove my alcoholism.
But that’s just me. I have a friend who had an addiction to opioids and was able to stop using them. He still drinks beer socially. For him, sobriety is abstinence from opioid use.
You also get to decide what terminology you’re comfortable using. I like calling myself a recovering alcoholic. Because I think about my recovery as an active process, I like using active language to describe it. Some people find the word alcoholic stigmatizing, but I feel like it’s an accurate reflection of how I drank (and a useful reminder of why I don’t anymore).
It doesn’t have to be a “good” time to quit drinking for you to do it; it doesn’t have to feel possible to be possible.
If you had asked me on January 24th, 2008, if I thought I’d be sober in 17 years, I would have laughed in your face. I had only just accepted that my drinking was a problem; I was miles away from thinking about 2018, much less 2025. As much as I even thought about the future, I sort of figured that I would go to rehab, let the airborne fragments of my blown-up life settle, the sharp edges of the wreckage dull and fade, and eventually go back to drinking, only this time I’d do it like a normal person. Or something.
Some people may find that they’re more optimistic than I was, that quitting drinking feels like a good idea and one that’s entirely within reach. I hope those people are out there and their prediction comes true. But if you don’t feel that way, don’t worry. More people than you will ever know have gotten sober when sobriety didn’t feel convenient or possible.
Find something (non-substance related) that brings you calm and a feeling of peace, and carve out a few minutes every day to do it.
AA talks about the importance of prayer and meditation, but if you’re an agnostic with ADHD like myself, that can be a tall order. Over the years, however, I’ve devised my own calming respites. Petting my dog’s belly while she sleeps. Playing with the goats or watching them run around like maniacs. Sitting on the porch and watching the birds swoop from tree to tree and occasionally try to kick each other’s ass. Anything that makes you happy and calm gets you outside your head. Prioritize doing it for at least a few minutes every day.
Trying to figure out if addiction “counts” as a disease distracts from more important issues
In my opinion, the biggest problem with the disease concept is not stigma or social and environmental factors—it’s the implication of a binary. That a disease is something you either have or don’t. Maybe addiction in its most chronic, truest form is a disease. But a person can still have a substance use disorder, still be using alcohol in excessive and dangerous ways that destroy their life, and still need help. Whether or not that person has a disease does not make them less worthy of that help.
All people who struggle with substance use are deserving of compassion, kindness, and support. Is someone with schizophrenia any more deserving of treatment than someone with depression or anxiety? Their needs might be different or more acute, but we all deserve humane, accessible help
Recovery is a non-linear process
You will have good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks, and good months and bad months. None of that means you’re doing anything “wrong.” I am 17 years sober, and I still miss drinking sometimes. Be honest about your ups and downs with yourselves and others in your support system. Talk through them. Feeling like you want to drink or use is not inherently dangerous. But feeling that way and keeping it to yourself, or trying to ignore or suppress those feelings, definitely can be. Which brings me to...
Honesty is a great shame reducer
When I first started writing about my experience with addiction and recovery (and then actually publishing it on the internet), I got a lot of comments about being “brave.” I also got a lot of comments about oversharing or being a precious millennial who thinks her life story is endlessly fascinating. Neither was accurate. The truth is, being honest about what it was like to be addicted to alcohol helps me feel less ashamed of how dependent I was on alcohol, how out of control and selfish my behavior was, and how deeply I hurt people I loved.
Don’t get me wrong, none of that feels great now. But the second I started talking about it—first with other people in recovery and later for a broader internet audience—all of that shame started to lose its charge. There were still things I regretted, but I could talk about them. I could reconcile that version of myself with the person I am now. Shame can be its own addiction, one that often leads to substance use. But the more I shared, the less shame I felt. I realized that I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t horrible, even if I had done some horrible things.
You’re an authority on your own experience—no one else’s (and vice versa)
When you successfully do something challenging, it’s tempting to feel like you know what other people in the same challenging situation should do. Given that I write an advice column about recovery, it’s possible that this is a wildly hypocritical thing to say. I may not always be successful, but I try to use my experience as the beginning of understanding what the letter writer is going through, not the entirety of it.
It’s significantly harder to know what’s going on in someone else’s head than it is our own. By sticking to your own experience and then giving the other person room to share theirs, you’re adhering to your expertise without projecting complicated feelings onto someone else.
Getting sober won’t fix all of your problems, but it will probably help
Recovery is not some magic inoculation against the trials and tribulations of being human. What it can do is make us more aware of what’s behind these peaks and valleys and better able to reach out for and accept help in navigating the valleys. It was only once I got sober that I started getting treatment for depression, and a few years into sobriety, I was diagnosed with ADHD. And that’s just the clinical stuff. There were, and are, plenty of other challenges.
If you expect getting sober to be a magic fix, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. But you will also likely be astonished by how much easier it is to deal with the obstacles that arise with a clear head.
Medication prescribed by a doctor and taken as directed is entirely compatible with sobriety
Some people in the recovery community have very strong feelings about what medications are acceptable to take when you’re in recovery, and unless any of those people are your doctor, you shouldn’t listen to them. As mentioned above, I have ADHD, and I take Adderall for it. When I first got the diagnosis, I had well-meaning but objectively incorrect people tell me that I shouldn’t take any stimulants because it would jeopardize my sobriety.
Fortunately, I didn’t listen, and the medication was a game-changer. It didn’t make me feel high; it didn’t make me crave anything; quite literally, all it did was help me focus for a few hours.
One person’s drug of choice is another person’s vitally necessary medication. Be honest with your doctor about your history and habits, and then let them decide what medications you should or shouldn’t take.
Medications like naltrexone and acamprosate can help you quit drinking
There are three medications that are FDA-approved for alcohol use disorder, but I’m only mentioning two. The third is antabuse, and in my experience, it’s punitive and ineffective, so I’m not getting into it here. If you want more information about it, you can find it at the same SAMHSA link below.
Naltrexone helps with cravings and also minimizes the pleasurable response a person has to alcohol. It’s been proven to be very effective in helping people reduce their alcohol use or quit entirely.
Acamprosate also helps reduce cravings and maintain abstinence. The class of drugs Ozempic is in (GLP-1 agonists) also shows promise as a potential treatment for alcohol use disorder. Medication is a completely valid way to start your recovery, but a lot of people don’t know about the options that exist. More information here: https://www.samhsa.gov/substance-use/treatment/options/medications
Most people won’t notice or feel negatively about the fact you’re not drinking
When people first get sober—specifically from alcohol because it’s such a big part of how our society socializes—they often worry that people will notice they’re not drinking and ask uncomfortable questions about why. I hope this is less true now with the proliferation of trends like Dry January and “sober curiosity,” but either way, most people don’t care.
Trends like Dry January and Sober October are helpful
Speaking of Dry January and sober curiosity, they are trends that used to grate on my nerves. I simply didn’t see why it was a big deal that people who didn’t have a “problem” with alcohol were abstaining from it for 31 days. I wouldn’t have said as much, but I was falling into the binary trap: the ‘you either have an addiction or you don’t’ mentality.
But there are countless reasons that people might want to reevaluate their relationship with alcohol. Some people I know hopped on the Dry January bandwagon only to realize it was harder than they thought, and their alcohol use wasn’t as innocuous as they assumed. Other people just realized they felt better and decided to stick with it.
Creating and maintaining boundaries is hard but necessary
Many of these lessons boil down to “Don’t let other people tell you how recovery should be done; find the support and path that works for you.” In doing so, I’m telling on myself. Not letting others dictate my reality has been a challenge for me my entire life. It’s something I work on constantly. Sobriety helps, but it’s also something people have a lot of very strong opinions about. Plenty of people wanted to tell me how things should be done, and I haven’t always had an easy time not listening to them or not taking it personally when they disagreed with my actions.
Recovery is something you ultimately do for yourself, not others. You can listen to other people’s opinions and advice, but how you proceed is up to you. Boundaries clarify where others’ advice ends and what you think is right begins.
Community support is invaluable
When I first got sober, nothing was more beneficial to me than AA meetings, simply because I met other people who understood what I was going through and had been through it, too. I eventually stopped going to meetings, but I found people in recovery through my writing and connected with them online. One of the things I love about writing this newsletter is connecting with readers who are in recovery or are interested in it. People grappling with their most obsessive desires, pasts, and hopes for the future. People working to improve their lives despite being, as we all are, unfailingly flawed and human.
Find people you can be honest with and be honest with them. It helps you, but I promise it helps them, too. Thank you for helping me.
Send questions and feedback to askasoberlady@gmail.com. By sending a question, you agree to let me reprint it in the newsletter with your name redacted or changed. Emails may be edited for length or clarity.
I’m not a doctor or mental health professional, so my advice shouldn’t be construed as medical or therapeutic. You are free to take or leave it.
Congratulations, and thank you! Hitting the 3 years mark on February 12 and it’s been made a lot easier by folks such as yourself who talk openly and honestly about addiction and recovery. It’s a standard I am grateful to hold myself to. Just subscribed and excited to read more!✌️
Happy sober anniversary!