KatieSchenk.com

mills:

brianvan:

It’s not so much that I feel like I absolutely NEED a drink… though all this water is keeping my taste buds quite bored… but alcohol seems to be the keystone of all decent spontaneous social plans in NYC. What the hell am I supposed to do that DOESN’T involve alcohol?

[…]

So part of being sober is: accepting that you’ll sometimes not be able to immediately immerse yourself in the energy of a gathering, or enjoy a social interaction when your heart isn’t in it. Sometimes, you just won’t like an evening with hordes. You have to start obeying your natural moods: no more drowning a few and suddenly feeling talkative, exuberant, thrilled, energized, sexualized, rowdy.

You will definitely begin to see things about people you never noticed before, or didn’t care about before. During one of my many sober streaks, I began to realize that I really didn’t like hanging out with certain people and couldn’t figure out why I was friends with them in the first place. I’m not going to jump on the “you can have fun without drinking” cliche, cause honestly some of the funniest, best moments of my young life involve drinking stories, but that cliche does have some merit to it. You just have to be confident in the person that you are… sober.

And as always, Mills puts everything into words more beautifully.