woohoo, congratulations!
You never have to drink again.
You never have to worry about whether you said something horrible to a friend while you were drunk again.
You never have to wake up hungover and regretful again.
You never have to check your emails and think "wait, I bought what?" again and either scramble to cancel it or faff about with returning it.
You never have to worry about running into friends/your parish priest in the supermarket when all you have in your trolley is gin and biscuits.
You never have to deal with that low level "do they know how much I drink? Am I hiding it sufficiently? Are they judging me?" hum of anxiety.
Sometimes you need days like that 🙂
Edit: found it. ~~I can't figure out how to mark this as me posting as a mod (I'm on my phone), so please imagine the little "mod" symbol.~~
we don't make fun of people here
congratulations!
What are your temptations, and how can you mitigate them?
for instance, Friday nights became my treat night. I'd get the ingredients for a favourite meal, a really nice non-alcoholic drink, and a beauty treatment, and I'd put dinner on and after dinner I'd get into my pyjamas and do a sheet mask and a hand mask while watching a film.
On days when I was working from home, I'd go for a walk, or in the winter I'd do a workout at home, after locking my laptop for the day, rather than going for a walk to the fridge for wine.
I worked on breaking those associations of "it's a certain time of day, it's time for a drink," by changing my routine. Pushing dinner prep back by 15 minutes by doing a meditation beforehand, which broke that "meal prep = time for the first glass," neural pathway. I live on my own so I control what comes in through my front door, and I don't drink, so I don't buy alcohol, I don't have to negotiate other people's drinking in my space. For the first six months or so I was getting groceries delivered and always making sure there was plenty of non-alcoholic drink options in the fridge, so I didn't go "urgh, there's nothing to eat/drink, I'll just go to the shop and oh look how did this wine get into my basket?"
it matters because you matter.
Alcohol is a depressant that steals your joy, steals your confidence, steals your hope, steals your you. It robs you of the ability to plan beyond the next bottle, it poisons your mind and keeps you downtrodden, and all it gives you in return is a short-lived artificial high that gets shorter and shorter each time.
this stuff is hard and there is exactly zero reason to make it harder on yourself than it needs to be. Congratulations on your one month!
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Just in case this needs saying, this isn't the sub for April Fools' jokes.