Another very helpful tool to get sober and to maintain sobriety has been reflecting on my thoughts and how alcohol is a bad choice. Of course I could have chosen a simple mantra or forced myself to other things, but here’s the deal why writing helps, especially handwritten:

First off, being mindful of yourself is a very important tool to listen to your body, concentrate on your feelings and deconstructing your addiction. Once ou are able to pinpoint particular aspects of your underlying feelings and the mechanisms how alcohol affects your reward system and your psyche, your can apply reframing mindset changes and small habitual changes to convince yourself that alcohol is the worst choice there is.

Writing it into a diary is a very important issue as well. It has been proven, that reading physically printed or written down text has a much deeper learning impact than from a screen (the Scandinavians are reverting some of their digitalization efforts in schools, because they found out the learning from digitized texts tends to be much shallower). Likewise is writing with your hand not only for your neuro-motorical memory, it also imprints the information you write down on paper deeper into your mind. Why this is so, I don’t know for sure, but having worked as a teacher before changing my professional field has very much proved this issue to me.

So, I write down important insights for myself in a physical diary and I condense this information in this blog, for whoever wants to profit.

Until then, keep up the faith in yourself and take one step at a time.