I got sober four years ago, leaving behind a nasty, daily drinking habit. In my experience, one of the worst things about being an alcoholic was simply how exhausting it was.

I was tired of spending so much money on booze. I was tired of hiding and lying about my habit. Most of all, though, I was just literally tired.

When I stopped drinking, I finally moved on from years of sheer, utter exhaustion.

Years of Terrible Sleep

My trouble with low energy began with restless nights. During my drinking years, my alcoholism wreaked havoc on my sleep.

As a daily drinker, I was…

Hi everyone!

I hope you’re all doing well! Last week, my top post was 10 Ways Alcohol Damaged My Life. When I was still drinking, I was a bit in denial about the harmful effects of alcohol. I was oblivious to many of alcohol’s harms until after I quit drinking. The longer I’ve stayed sober, the more evident it’s become just how badly my drinking habit was hurting me. You can read the full post here.

If you want to catch up on everything that I’ve been writing, make sure to check out the main Exploring Sobriety page.

Thank you very much for reading, and I hope you have a great week!

Benya

I quit drinking a little over four years ago, after a decade of struggling with alcoholism. Quitting wasn’t easy. I struggled to even admit that I had a problem. Before committing to getting sober, I spent a lot of time going back and forth over whether I really wanted or needed to give up alcohol.

When I was debating sobriety with myself, I always looked for justifications to keep drinking. I desperately clung to any excuse I could come up with to put off sobriety, or even to give up on it entirely.

One of those excuses was that I…

In the study of logic, there’s a well-known fallacy called “no true Scotsman” or an “appeal to purity.”

The speaker starts by making a generalization: “Scotsmen never wear ties.”

Then, they’re faced with evidence refuting their statement: Mike is a Scotsman, and he’s wearing a tie right now.

At this point, instead of admitting they were wrong, the speaker doubles down. “Mike doesn’t count. No true Scotsman would wear a tie.”

The speaker is playing rhetorical games instead of actually addressing the counterexample.

No True Alcoholic

At this point, you might be wondering: Why am I giving a lesson on informal logic in…

What is Vocal?

Vocal (vocal.media) is a blogging platform which, as far as I know, is the closest thing to Medium that isn’t Medium.

Anyone can become a writer on the platform, upload posts, and get paid based on readership.

There are, however, a few key differences between the sites:

Submissions

The first difference is that every single post on Vocal has to go through a submission process. When you submit a post, you’re asked to choose a “community” to include it in. Communities are kind of a hybrid between Medium’s publications and topics.

Each community has curators who determine whether to accept submitted…

“High-Functioning” Alcoholism

For some alcoholics, the effects of their addiction are obvious: they’ve lost their jobs and homes, they’re in and out of the hospital, and they’re practically on a first-name basis with the local prosecutors. This is likely the type of addict that the average person pictures when they think about alcoholism.

For most of the alcoholics that I’ve known, however, the effects are far more subtle. Plenty of addicts manage to keep their lives together, despite how much they’re drinking. And, if their lives do start falling apart, they’re at least able to keep up appearances.

These are the so-called…

Ben Affleck is one of the most famous celebrities in the world, and he’s also one of the most famously sober. Unfortunately, much of the coverage of his sobriety has focused on his relapses.

As a fellow recovering addict, I’m far more interested in his successes than in his slips. Most addicts I know, including myself, have stumbled at some point. The important thing is to keep trying — not to let a relapse turn into a permanent defeat.

So, what is it that kept Affleck working towards his recovery? …

I quit drinking in December of 2016. Before getting sober, I went through the very common phase of debating with myself over whether I really had a drinking problem.

On one hand, I couldn’t deny the simple fact that I was drinking every single day. That seemed like a pretty obvious indicator of alcoholism.

On the other hand, my drinking habit didn’t really appear to be damaging my life. Sure, I had noticed a few negative effects, but my life wasn’t exactly falling apart. …