The Clear Horizon

From oblivion of alcoholism into the light of sobriety

writing

  • Family, ADHD and Alcohol

    I wrote about family, I wrote about habits, I wrote about ADHD. But how does this impact my current state of mind regarding my journey to sobriety? Well, Today I am lying sick on my couch, not being able to do my sports or other activity that normally would regulate my mood and hormone levels… Read more

  • How parents influence your alcoholism – habits, belief, mindset, Education

    I am no Freudian psychoanalyst and I am not a therapist, as I said before. But I think I can identify strong relations between my drinking habits and the way of my socialization in my family. That is of course nothing new, but this insight came so strongly to me after meeting my parents after… Read more

  • Surfing the emotional Wave – But where to start?

    It’s just one of these evenings on which I used to have a drink after work: Stressful appointments, traffic jams, frustrating weather, dark when coming home. The catch: I don’t drink anymore. So, the gloomy and depressive emotions come, and if you don’t have anything to distract you from them, or you don’t want distraction,… Read more

  • Social Media and alcohol

    Sometimes ideas or conclusions or insights strike like lightning or appear a long time afterwards. I want to share one I had today about my own relationship with social media and alcohol consumption. I don’t mean an abusive way of consuming social media after quitting drinking, in which I compensated for my alcohol consumption with… Read more

  • Am I Re-Nerd-Ing? – Why Reading, Gaming and Podcasts become relevant

    When have I returned to reading, listening to podcasts and gaming? It wasn’t in the same moment I stopped drinking. It started when I realized that replacing my drinking habits with hanging out on social media too much. I realized that falling for filter bubbles and fake news aggravated passive aggressiveness and depression. How did… Read more

  • Alcohol or activity – What defines your Masculintiy?

    James Clear writes that you should build habits to define your identity to keep up the habitual routine. The argument goes: If you identify with your habits, the habits become you or at least help shaping your identity. If working is a big part of your identity (which is normal if you are belonging to… Read more

  • Why I hate the winter time – and how to deal with it

    Sometimes it just strikes you down from behind like a thug with a log. From one day to the next, all the decisions you made, all the new habits accumulated, all the good things that have happened to me seem like dust in the wind. Then something like a depression pushes you down, aggravated by… Read more

  • Gaming as craving Relief

    Be it Instagram, Facebook or other Social Media: They all have one thing in common with alcohol: They trigger our reward system with cues and cravings. The question is, how can you get by these cravings as a substitute for alcohol? I found out that uninstalling my social media accounts helped me a lot to… Read more

  • And then it all went over the top

    After a couple of years, I felt it was time to get rid of the feeling of having no proper qualification (in teacher education, you were only deemed as “qualified” once you had both degrees of teacher education, at least if you want to work in a public school, and I wanted to get out… Read more

  • Procrastinating through college – or: Who needs a Future anyways?

    After I finished my Abitur (Giving you the permission to study at a university) I did my substitute service instead of military service (which, no doubt, included as much drinking as having been a soldier would have). This is a fuzzy era, I only know that I hated this time and took every opportunity to… Read more