Three Major Mistakes That Lead to Relapses
To protect my sobriety, I had to stop doing these three things.
I struggled to quit drinking. My sobriety was initially a start-and-stop process. One day I’d swear off alcohol for good, the next I’d find a way to talk myself back into drinking.
With each relapse, I was tempted to throw in the towel. Every time that I failed to quit drinking, I became further convinced that it would be impossible for me to ever make my sobriety last.
Despite these feelings, I kept trying to quit, and I did my best to learn from past relapses instead of beating myself up over them. When I asked myself why I had kept returning to alcohol, I discovered three major mistakes that I had made:
Being Around Alcohol
It sounds so obvious now, but when I first quit drinking I just couldn’t get it through my head: To stay sober, I needed to stop being around alcohol — entirely.
Every time that I tried quitting, I made sure to clear out any last remaining alcohol from my apartment, but that’s often as far as I went. I didn’t spend enough energy actively avoiding alcohol throughout the rest of my life.
I even went to parties while trying to quit drinking, despite knowing that they would be filled…
