The Dark Thought That Keeps Me Sober

Is this the opposite of a positive mindset?

This essay originally appeared in the Exploring Sobriety newsletter.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Within the recovery world, there’s a lot of talk about the power of positive thinking. We have to believe in our sobriety, trust the recovery process, and focus on what is going right in our lives. A positive mindset can help us through even the hardest days.

For the most part, I’ve found this approach helpful. But is positivity always best?

The truth is that on some of my hardest days, it hasn’t been positive thoughts that kept me going, but instead a single, very negative one:

I’m going to die someday.

It’s a dark thought to fixate on, but the truth is that this brutal reality has kept me sober through some of the toughest times.

I hate thinking about death. Before I even reached high school, I was already getting panic attacks. My whole life has felt haunted by existential dread.

I’m a theist — I believe in God — but I’ve never been sure what I think about the afterlife. Is there more after death? Or is this life all we have? I don’t know, and that uncertainty terrifies me.