Hobbies

I've never been one for hobbies, or put it another way, I've never had a hobby that lasted more than about six months.

When I gave up drinking I decided I'd start to study as a hobby, I'd been thinking of it for some time but had neither the time or concentration to make it happen. Drinking and thinking about drinking took up much of my time.

I didn't think I'd 'stick at it', like I didn't really think I'd 'stick at' stopping drinking, but as much as I don't care for AA, I did work on 'one day at a time', sometimes at the beginning it was one minute at a time, it was that hard to get through it.

Anyway back to the studying, I started and didn't stop, which was a huge surprise to me. In fact, I'm still at it, either years down the line. I've collected a couple of diploma's and a degree and now working for my second. It's given me a focus, and at the beginning it gave me hours and hours that I could put my mind to something, shut off from drinking thoughts.

If you can find a hobby that you love or just want to try out a few different ones to see if something fits for you, I'd say give it a go, it's worth trying to get through days that you're mourning the loss of that very big thing called 'drink' that leaves many empty hours in a day.

I think this is why a lot of people go to AA, it fills a gap, but if AA doesn't do it for you, there are just so many things that will.



Hobbies, reading, studying, gardening, visiting friends, visiting new places or getting reaquainted with old ones, just sitting back and watching life from a sober point of view.

I know this all sounds easy peasy but believe me, I know how very very hard it is to do. I think we all have our reasons for stopping drinking, so use your reason for stopping, concentrate on it, live it, breath it, whatever you're suffering, however bad your withdrawels are, just keep breathing, and thinking of that reason and believe me it will pass, you can get there, you can get through it.

To me, when I look back, my life was black, bleak, lonely, sad and disgusting. I lost all moral values, I did disgusting things. I ended up a 'disgusting' individual.

To get back from that is hard, but it can be done. Please leave comments if you wish, lets help each other.