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You
Living with addiction is a heavy burden we carry with us for years of our lives. Getting sober is the best decision we can make for ourselves. Although we often have multiple reasons why we decide to get sober, we usually make the most lasting change when we’re finally ready to do it for ourselves. We make the conscious choice to get clean once we recognize our own worth and start to value ourselves more. We realize just how much we’ve been settling, and sacrificing, in our lives. We’ve suffered long enough. We deserve to be happy. We deserve to have good things come to us. We deserve to be the highest, truest versions of ourselves we can possibly be.
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Your Loved Ones
Our loved ones deserve to see us thriving and healthy. When we get sober, we are able to mend our broken relationships, after years of distance, conflict and turmoil. We’re finally at peace within ourselves, so we’re able to extend that peace to healing our damaged relationships. We’re able to make amends for the mistakes we’ve made. We reopen lines of communication and reconnect with the loved ones we’ve been estranged from, many of whom we haven’t seen in years, who have been so worried about us, and who only want to see us happy.
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Your Physical Health
Your body takes quite a beating when you’re funneling toxic substances into it. Your self-care often goes out the window. Your sleep, nutrition, hydration, and exercise are all sacrificed. You deserve to feel your best. You deserve not to feel so exhausted, worn out, drained and depleted. Your energy and physical health start to improve as soon as you cut out the addictive substances. Our bodies have an amazing way of healing and regenerating themselves, and getting sober kickstarts that process.
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Your Mental Health
Addictions and mental illnesses go hand in hand. They compound and exacerbate one another, they feed and thrive off one another, and they very often have similar causes and manifestations. The unresolved, deeply rooted pain we’re still grappling with can contribute to both our addictions and our mental health issues. Similarly, they can both present themselves in similar ways, causing us similar life issues and troublesome circumstances. When we use, we’re often depressed, and vice versa. We use our addictions as coping mechanisms for our anxiety and our deep unhappiness. We mask our pain with the temporary high of our drugs of choice. When we get sober, we finally have the clarity and inner connectedness to get to the root of our issues. We give ourselves the chance to really heal.
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Your Emotional Health
Unburdening ourselves of our addictive patterns frees us up to explore our emotions in healthy ways. We have the freedom and the self-awareness to be creative with our healing. We have the energy to go to therapy and work with a recovery coach. We feel strong enough to be able to go to meetings and check in with our sponsor. We feel our consistency, our commitment and our resilience returning. We start to feel like we’re getting back to our true selves. We finally start to feel liberated of the shame, disappointment, regret and remorse that have been plaguing us like dark clouds over our existence.
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Your Fulfillment
All the goals you’ve put on the back burner. All the ideas you’ve been toying with. All the things you love to do that you’ve been neglecting. All the passions you’ve had to sacrifice to maintain your addictions. When we get sober, we have the unique chance to explore our purpose and to find fulfillment along the journey.
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Your Stability
It’s very hard to live with addiction and enjoy a stable, secure life. We often have financial problems, and we’re constantly afraid we will lose our jobs, our homes and our possessions. We worry we won’t be able to provide for ourselves and our families. We gamble away our savings, or blow them all on drugs. We can’t seem to get ourselves out of the financial hole we’ve fallen into, that our addictions caused us to create. Sobriety allows us to be clear, present, responsible and accountable. We’re finally able to get our lives back on track.
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Your Future
Our addictions have a way of running us into the ground, taking over our lives, and robbing us of our chances for a healthy future. We want to be around to watch our children, and their children, grow up. Our addictions can cause and worsen our mental and physical illnesses. Our livers can’t withstand all the drinking. Our hearts can’t survive all the harsh drugs. We put ourselves in harm’s way every time we use. When we decide to get sober, we make the conscious decision that we want to live, that we want to see what kind of future we’re capable of manifesting for ourselves.
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Your Peace
Addiction and turmoil go hand in hand. It’s virtually impossible to be at peace while we’re flooding our systems with toxic substances, self-harm and unhealthy relationships. Our addictions thrive on our self-destructiveness and self-sabotage, much of which is subconscious, that we aren’t even aware of. Getting sober allows us to access that place of stillness, quiet and peace within us, a place that is always there but which gets buried under layers of pain and illness.
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The World
There are no limits to what we can accomplish when we are healthy, happy and whole. Our sobriety opens the doors to all the people we can help, projects we can start, organizations we can lead, volunteer opportunities we can take advantage of. Many of us have a natural inclination to want to help people and make the world a better place. When we get sober, we’re finally able to see just how much we can contribute to improving the world around us, in our families and communities, our support groups and wider networks, and the world at large.
