What Does It Really Mean To Be Sober?

Sobriety can have different meanings depending on who you talk to.  For some, it  simply means being sober from their drug of choice. For others, it means being abstinent from all drugs and alcohol, going to meetings regularly, being a sponsor for others etc. Because sobriety can look so different for different people, many people who want to work toward sobriety have some questions about what "true" sobriety looks like.  

Most of these questions come from an underlying sense of pressure. The pressure to do sobriety "perfectly". To never falter, to never find ourselves engaging in other behaviors in a problematic way, to never find ourselves feeling tempted, the list goes on and on and on. So, what does real sobriety look like? How do we know if we are being successful with recovery? The answer is not anything fancy or flashy, but it's an honest one. There is no perfect recovery. It just doesn't exist. No one is going to get to their version of sobriety with zero struggles, trials and tribulations, big life changes and transitions etc.  

It's also completely ok if your journey with addiction and sobriety doesn't look like anyone else's. It doesn't have to. It also shouldn't because you are your own unique person! As unique people, our journeys with anything are going to be individual and that's wonderful and beautiful. If we can embrace that, it can really help make the struggles and trials easier when they do come up.