How to Stay Sober: What Actually Works Day to Day
Deciding to stop drinking takes a moment. Staying sober is built out of ordinary days, and most of what holds it together is unglamorous and repeatable. If you want help finding meetings near you, call (866) 920-0628.
Read more: Staying Sober One Day at a Time: Practical Tips from AA Meetings
Staying Sober One Day at a Time Is a Method, Not a Slogan
The reason members talk in days is that the size of the question changes the answer. Never drinking again is a commitment nobody can honestly make. Not drinking today is a decision anybody can make, and it can be made again tomorrow.
People who count years still work in days. The unit does not get bigger with time sober.
Meetings Do the Most to Help You Stay Sober
Regular attendance at AA meetings is the single habit most members point to. Part of it is the content and part of it is simply being in a room with people who understand the problem without needing it explained.
Newcomers are often advised to go often at first, and to keep going on the days it feels unnecessary. Those are usually the ones it turns out to have been for.
Getting a Sponsor
A sponsor is a member with some time sober who takes you through the steps and picks up the phone. It is not therapy and they are not a counsellor; they are someone a few steps further along the same path.
Most people find one by listening in meetings until somebody says something that makes sense, then asking them afterwards. The asking is more ordinary than it feels.
Knowing Your Triggers Before They Arrive
Triggers are specific rather than general: a particular hour, a particular room, a particular person, payday, the drive home. Naming yours in advance turns an ambush into something you can plan around.
The plan can be small. Call someone at six. Take the other route. Leave the event at nine. It only has to work once at a time.
Building a Daily Routine That Helps You Stay Sober
Drinking usually occupies a fixed slot in the day, and leaving that slot empty is what tends to go wrong. Members fill it deliberately, often with something physical or with a daily reading.
Sleep and food matter more than people expect. A great many near-misses turn out on inspection to have been tiredness or an empty stomach.
What to Do After a Slip
A relapse is a reason to go back, not a reason to stay away. The most damaging thing about a slip is usually the shame that follows it, because shame is what keeps people out of the rooms where the help is.
Members will have heard it before. Turning up the next day is the whole of what is asked.
Telling People, and Who to Tell
You do not owe anyone an announcement. Most members tell a small number of people early on, chosen because those people will make it easier rather than because they are owed an explanation.
Having one person who knows why you are leaving the party at nine turns an awkward exit into a normal one. That is usually worth more than a wider disclosure.
The First Ninety Days of Staying Sober
Early sobriety is disproportionately hard, and the advice to go to a lot of meetings at the start exists because the first stretch asks the most while you have the fewest tools.
It does get easier, though not on a schedule anyone can promise. Members describe the change less as craving disappearing than as the day stopping being organised around it.
Finding Your First Meeting
You do not need to be certain, sober, or ready to speak. Meetings are free, there is no membership, and the only requirement is a desire to stop drinking.
You can search by city and state in our directory, and listings show days, times and format so you know what to expect before you walk in. Open meetings welcome anyone, including family, which makes them an easy first one to attend.