Sobriety is an act of resistance

One of my close friends got sober two years ago. She was the main reason that I became sober curious and is a huge inspiration for my 40 day streak. She posted this about 6 months into her sobriety journey, and I feel it’s particularly apt today. Here’s to resisting the forces that want to keep us numb and disconnected. IWNDWYT!

“Alcohol culture is another arm of the exploitative system that wants to keep us disconnected from one another, creating a cycle by which we sink further and further into only knowing how to talk to another person with a drink in our hand. Too burned out and exhausted to do anything but turn to it to cope. Alcohol culture wants us numb, disengaged, unable to meet each other in a real way. This is its only real end. To amuse us to death and rob us of our collective power. I highly recommend divesting from alcohol culture. That’s not to say never enjoy a drink again. You don’t have to be a tee-totaler to free yourself from this. What that means is have other methods of coping. Have other ways of connecting with people. Do not make it the end-all of your community. Do not make it your only activity. Because if you do - you don’t really have a community. You have drinking buddies who you will almost certainly find out the hard way are incapable of interpersonal support in any meaningful way. You end up caring about the drink - not the people with whom you’re sharing the drink. If me saying this makes you feel defensive, pay attention for a bit and observe the ways alcohol culture is propagandized, normalized, and engrained into our society. Divest. Resist.”