One of the biggest reasons why it took me so long to find sobriety from alcohol and drugs was the fact that I couldn’t imagine having fun in life without them. The truth was that I thought the idea of getting sober actually sounded quite boring back then. I was only 23 years old at the time and in my mind, drinking and drugging was just what you did to have fun. Sadly, this is exactly why so many people, especially young adults, struggle to achieve sobriety and stay in recovery, and I was definitely one of them.
Before I drew that first full day sober from alcohol and drugs, my social life solely consisted of going to parties, raves, clubs, bars, pool halls, barbecues, and various other locales where the norm was to get drunk or high. In my mind back then, the only time it wasn’t an occasion to do those things was during my workday. For some reason I never crossed that threshold. Maybe that’s why the idea of getting sober sounded so boring to me back then because I associated it with the only area of my life where I was sober, work. And work was totally boring to me.
I didn’t achieve that first full day sober until my life really got out of control from the alcohol and drugs. When it did, I started checking out Alcoholics Anonymous in June of 1995, and at that time, there weren’t many young people trying to get clean and sober. In addition, the young people’s groups that are so readily present today weren’t really around back then. This made me feel like a fish out of the water, as the rooms seemed filled mostly with people in their late 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s and beyond. I didn’t stay around very long in those rooms for this reason and instead I sought out other addictions to keep myself numb and to continue my illusion of what having fun was.
By the time I came back into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, twelve more years had passed. I wasn’t that young anymore and had discovered I wasn’t having fun with any of my addictions either. I wanted to find happiness in life in a completely different way so I decided to give the 12-Step process of recovery my full attention. While it took me a few more years to achieve that, I eventually was able to get there and that’s when I began seeing that life had a vast amount of things to enjoy, and none of them were associated to any of my addictions.
I learned how to have fun going to meetings, having coffees and meals with others, partaking in game nights, going to beaches, playing sports, heading on road trips, hiking, biking, seeing movies at the theater and so much more. What was ironic was how all those things either seemed completely boring to me during those addiction-fueled years, or they had to have one of my addictions present for me to take part in any one of them.
Thankfully, I’ve learned how to have a lot more fun today clean and sober not only from alcohol and drugs, but also from all of my other addictions too. Every day I find something new to enjoy in life and my brain no longer is telling me that sobriety is boring. In fact it’s just the opposite today as the idea of drinking and drugging, and doing any of my other addictions these days seems totally boring.
The point I’m trying to make here is this. Whether you are young, middle-aged, or older, there is a lot of fun to be had in a clean and sober based life. While your ego and brain may be telling you otherwise, once you invest yourself fully in recovery, you too will see that sobriety really isn’t boring at all. And before you know it, you’ll also start seeing how an addiction-based life is what’s really boring…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson