One of the main challenges through recovery is explaining your newfound life of sobriety to your previous friends. Many individuals in recovery find that their friend group continues to engage in substance use. Trying to maintain those relationships while remaining sober can often be challenging. Many of your previous friends may not understand your reasoning for sobriety. How can you explain your sober life without destroying these relationships?
Explaining Your Reasoning for Becoming Sober
Others who have not been a part of your recovery journey may not understand why recovery was necessary for you. Tell them about the hardships you encountered with your substance use and why recovery was the choice moving forward. It can often be difficult to recognize the negative impacts of substance use, especially if the individual you are explaining your reason to is currently engaged in these actions.
Showing them the positive impacts that recovery has had on your life is a great way to help them understand. They may even recognize some of the negative impacts their use has and decide to follow your path of recovery. It is important to remember that despite your efforts to explain your reasoning, not everyone will understand and be supportive. If you find a lack of support, remember the strength you have gained and create a positive response through your thoughts.
Feel free to share some of the recovery lessons you have learned throughout your journey. While many of them may be specific to substance use, some can be applied to others situations as well. Trying to level with them and find a lesson that balances with their potential issues can help others to develop an understanding of why you began recovery in the first place.
Asking For Support for Your Sober Lifestyle
Despite the level of understanding, individuals show you when you explain your reasoning for recovery, attempt to ask for their support through this process. Even if they don’t specifically understand, they may be able to help motivate you to continue or provide you with verbal gratification for the efforts you have put in. Asking for support may be an uncomfortable conversation, but it is often very rewarding in the end.
Allow yourself to move past this potential awkwardness and address your feelings. Through your recovery journey, you have likely focused on developing communication skills to some extent. Use these skills to help you reach out and ask for support. Communicate your needs clearly and effectively to individuals you feel comfortable conversing with. Being able to effectively communicate your feelings is a great skill to have when seeking support from others.
Addressing Strangers
One of the most uncomfortable situations for many individuals is to explain sobriety during social events with various strangers around. You may meet some friends and be invited to go out for drinks and consistently have to deny the invitation. The case may also be that you go out to dinner and find others in your group going to the bar after to drink.
In these situations, strangers may come up to you and ask why you won’t have a drink. You may feel some form of peer pressure from others. Some encounter others attempting to buy them a drink or treating them differently if they choose not to drink. This can be difficult to comprehend, especially when being presented with triggers to engage in substance use. The presence of peer pressure has been shown to drastically increase potential rates of relapse and the reintroduction of substance use.
Be strong and clear with your communication. Tell them that you are not interested and would no longer like to discuss the option of drinking. If you continue to feel pressure to do so, find a ride home or talk to a friend that is there and discuss your desire to leave. It may be tempting to give into this peer pressure and engage in drinking regardless of your recovery commitments, but it is not worth it in the long run. Keep your strength in situations of difficulty and allow them to strengthen your abilities moving forward.
What Is Your Newfound Sober Life?
Be aware of what your newfound sober life looks like. Some individuals attempt to explain this and lack confidence in the personal rules they have set for themselves. This lack of confidence can lead others to feel that you are unsure of your choices to maintain sobriety. Being fully confident in your abilities and the regulations you hold yourself to can set you up to be treated with respect.
Confidence is often highly respected among others in society. Even if you do not feel confident, pretend that you are. If you have a clear guideline of your newfound sober life and what that entails, you will likely receive less questioning and the potential for peer pressure to occur.
Explaining your newfound lifestyle of recovery can be difficult. Not everyone will understand your reasoning behind the desire to recover. Some may even express negative opinions toward these decisions. These reactions can potentially involve peer pressure to engage in substance use again or feelings of low support in your ability to move forward. Use the communication skills you have gained throughout treatment to discuss your reasons behind sobriety and maintain confidence through these conversations. These conversations may feel uncomfortable for some. However, being open about your story can push you to stay on the pathway to success. To learn more about explaining your newfound life of sobriety, reach out to Dream Recovery today at (657) 216-7218.
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