When Sobriety Gets Tough, Could Practicing Gratitude Be the Solution?

It’s Saturday morning and I am sitting on the back patio, writing. I woke up around 6:30; the same time the sun begins to shine in through the bedroom windows since we “fell back.”

Since I was a teenager, my anxiety has made good-quality sleep elusive. I often find myself awake for hours in the middle of the night, or incapable of falling asleep, or, like this morning and many mornings as of late, awake before I’m ready to be.

Despite wishing I could sleep in a bit, I am happy to be awake — especially at this exact moment, with my coffee and laptop in front of me and the warm sun cutting through the slight chill in the air resulting in a nearly perfect temperature.

Early on in sobriety mornings like this felt like a tremendous gift. Having spent the previous two years waking up hungover nearly every single day, the clear-eyed, hydrated-skin, and alert-minded feeling after nights without drinking was shockingly good.

In the habit of journaling when I first wake up, I am able to go back and see just how many 8:00 AM reflections were focused on my reclaimed mornings in those early days. Page after page, stretching on through months four, five, six, and beyond, my thoughts, my handwriting, espouse the joys of rising, enthusiastically, with the sun.

Here, in month 15, waking up early and with full-body clarity is far more commonplace. Even as I take in this current moment, while reflecting on the joys of doing exactly this, it doesn’t feel quite as beautiful and joyous as it did in the beginning.

Like with new relationships, everything was novel in early sobriety. These moments weren’t merely markers of my progress, they were significant improvements from how I’d been living just months prior. The memory of how life was before was close enough to starkly juxtapose life now.

As time goes on, and sobriety becomes my new normal, it requires more effort to remember, and thus, to reflect upon these small but impactful improvements. For every ten early and peaceful mornings, I am reminded of what mornings used to feel like maybe once. But, as with anything, it’s vital to my happiness as well as my long-term success in sobriety, to call upon these moments of gratitude often.

Despite having established a strong journaling routine, I’ve never incorporated gratitude lists before. I didn’t give the idea of practicing gratitude, actively, much thought because for the majority of my first year sober I was overwhelmed with grateful feelings. There was really no practice or work required to exist in that headspace.

Sobriety is a fluid and evolving state, though, and as time passes what was once a challenge becomes second nature and that which I’d never thought difficult has become challenging.

Whether it’s the pink cloud or simply the high of a less-encumbered state of being, the joy of sobriety came more naturally in those first couple of months; and what I am learning, is that the absence of that easy joy does not equate simply to less joy — it equates to more difficulty.

The joy, the gratitude, extends beyond the temporary impact of good feelings; it serves as the fuel that pushes you through the hard times. So, I cannot ignore the importance of honing it.

This is where a gratitude practice comes in.

I don’t know that sobriety will ever come without challenges or struggles. I don’t know that I’d ever want it to. I’m not sure that the absence of alcohol would feel as impactful or life-changing without the sacrifices and hurdles that it brings.

Instead, I’d prefer to do the hard work of retraining my brain to focus on the positives. I’d like to incorporate a daily gratitude practice and manufacture a state of joy and gratitude until that mindset comes naturally.

Rather than focus on a goal of ease, perhaps the goal of sobriety is to find ways to keep a full tank — to operate, daily, in a joyous and grateful space; even when being sober feels especially hard.