When I initially stopped drinking, I was a bit confused by the fact how easy it seemed to quit in the first place. I felt high and euphorised. I really could not understand why I had this feeling.

I deep dived into the matter: Reframe, blogs, books, videos. Not all of them take the pink cloud into consideration, and that is for a good reason: Obviously not everyone experiences it, or if they experience it, it may not be noticed in such a strong manner. Or people are simply not caring about this feeling.

The Pink Cloud is defined as a phase of heightened euphoria and being “high on life”. Everything just seems easy and nice and happiness seemed just to wait around the corner and you ask yourself. why was I drinking anyways. It is a good feeling and initially helped me get over the worst (psychological) withdrawal symptoms. Mind you, I never had physical withdrawal symptoms and I was in no medical treatment.

The more I read about it and dealt with it, and the more I dealt with sobriety and how to fight off urges and temptations of drinking again, the more I realized that the phase of MY Pink Cloud started dissolving by the end of the year. That made it a bit more difficult to keep away from alcohol in December celebrations, but since I had my online program, my app and my information flow as well as my tools to work on my recovery, I got by. Then came January and I felt I was on a turning point.

Interestingly, a lot of people share similar or equal experiences when it comes to stepping out of the Pink Cloud: confusion, anxiety, feeling overwhelmed by the full impact of emotions you used to depress with alcohol. I guess then is the point where I had returned to alcohol in earlier times, or, upon moderated drinking, fell back into fully fledged addiction, because I didn’t want depressive and anxiety feelings. Paradoxically, we depress ourselves even more with short kicks of dopamine with alcohol.

Realizing this and the easy temptation alcohol offers, you might want to substitute your alcohol with other substances or non alcoholic beverages. For me, that worked as long as I was in the state of the Pink Cloud, but it wouldn’t today.

The good thing about realizing I was in a Pink Cloud gave me a good head start to sort out things. So, at first, the Pink Cloud gave me the willpower to reframe my drinking habits. Then the Pink Cloud started to dissolve as in a way to say: “You are strong enough now, you don’t need my anymore”. In other words, the supporting program and the apps as well as my active confrontation with my addiction led to a new set of habits, insights, changes in mindsets and beliefs to help me build on my bullet proof vest and reflecting on my emotions. This is very helpful on the way to recovery, because I don’t have the feeling I need to rely on my willpower anymore to fend off temptation to drink.

On the contrary: Dealing with my emotions and anxiety led to insights so that I don’t want the substituting habits anymore. Since these summon up the unnecessary feelings of emptiness and anxiety like I felt when the dopamine level sank after the intake of alcohol, I don’t want substituting habits or drinks, nor the alcohol anymore.

The importance here was, that I realized that working on my anxiety and inner conflicts that belong to my Core why I was addicted to alcohol so long is a necessity.

I don’t know if I have already stepped over the threshold of never going back to alcohol. But at least now I know an orientation point to stay on the path of recovery.

Until next time: Take one step at a time and keep up the faith in yourself.