When you’re on the extreme end of the spectrum like I was, it can feel like sober people are aliens. I was appalled by sober people before I became one. I honestly didn’t know one, or care to know one. I didn’t realize recovery was a thing. Sure, I had heard of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I didn’t know there were happy recovering alcoholics. I didn’t know they come in all shapes, sizes, ages, genders, and races. Once I became one, I realized sober people aren’t as “alien” as we think. But there are a lot of differences between sober people and “normies,” besides the obvious: we don’t drink and they do. Here are the biggest differences between sober people and drinkers.
- We are wired differently.
I think this is the whole reason normies and sober people have different relationships with alcohol. I truly believe we are wired differently. But what does this mean? It can mean different things to different types of drinkers. In my case, drinking alcohol was never fun for me when having just one. I was wired to drink as many drinks as I could as fast as I could. Not only that, alcohol affected me differently. I suffered severe blackouts where I could remember almost nothing about an entire night. I never knew when these blackouts would come on. It could be after three drinks or ten. Non-alcoholics are not affected by alcohol in this way and don’t have a destructive relationship with this dangerous substance.
- We see the world in a different way.
There’s something to be said for sobriety and awareness, they kind of go hand-in-hand. Many of us who have been drinking heavily do so to numb our feelings. Once we are no longer numbing them, we become much more self-aware. It’s not to say that normies can’t be self-aware, but people in recovery view the world differently. The trials and tribulations we have been through in our drinking days and in our recovery are much different than normies. Getting through the darkest days of our life and seeing the other side changes us in a significant way.
- Sober people view their recovery in a before/after sense.
Another way we are different from normies is that we view our lives in a before and after sense as it pertains to our recovery. Getting sober can be the hardest and most important decision we ever make it. Personally, I now view my life as before I got sober and after I got sober. Life is just different now. There are a ton of memories that are blurry and unclear to me from my drinking days and today I am much more in tune with myself and my life. When I talk about my life and events there is a before/after sense to it, an experience most normies might not relate to.
- Our gratitude levels are different.
An attitude of gratitude is something sober people are very familiar with. I feel like gratitude is an automatic byproduct of sobriety. Gratitude isn’t something I ever experienced in my life before I got sober. Read more “the fix”…