Went to a festival! Will it get better?

[Sillymummies123]

Hey all,

I'm on day 14 of sobriety. This is Naked Mind book inspired, and as such I'm aiming more for a "I don't want alcohol" rather than a "I don't get to have alcohol", which was going well until yesterday.

I went to my first ever music festival for the day with my OH and it was AWFUL (bless my poor OH, who spent their day dealing with meltdown after meltdown from me). I didn't drink, but I was so anxious, so uncomfortable, so unsettled surrounded by people dancing and loud noise (I have a phobia of dancing and am not that fond of large crowds), as I was absolutely determined to enjoy some live music and to prove to myself that I don't need alcohol to have a good time.

I feel like an absolute failure because although I stayed at the festival, we left early (6pm instead of our planned 12pm) and I didn't actually enjoy it at all purely because I felt so anxious and wanted alcohol. I'm supposed to be creating positive associations between sobriety and drinking and I feel like yesterday I failed. I felt like all the work I've done in unlearning alcohol (as per the CBT Annie Grace Naked Mind method) is undone and I think all I've done is show my brain that sobriety = not fun.

I need similar experiences in early sobriety which went away, reassurance that even in the Naked Mind approach, alcohol can Rear its ugly head and any explanations about why this time is was horrible, but next time it could not be.

Thanks MN, feeling washed out by stress this morning (almost like I actually went on a drinking binge).

Thank you for your replies. I guess there will always be moments. Mentally however I am just so better off without ANY alcohol. And it would help set things straight with my social group some of whom put a lot of pressure on me to party like we used to in our 20s. What I mean by this is if I just say I’m teetotal they’ll have no choice but leave me alone, but if there’s any way that they can twist my arm and get me to join in and go the full hog, then they will and whilst I’m drinking there is always the prospect. It’s just the thought of missing out on that glass of champagne or that cocktail or that one beer on a sunny afternoon that puts me off going completely sober. However, that just keeps it in my life and means that I can’t just move away from it completely. in some ways, it would just be easier to be completely alcohol free so I never have to think about it. Anyway, I was feeling really down yesterday because I was tired and my husband himself had just come back from having a really good time at a festival, of which I didn’t attend. Thinking about it though I would be happy going to some festivals if the weather was right and I could go home or have a nice place to sleep at the end of it and not have to listen to everybody partying around me in a dirty campsite. I’m quite content really without drinking and in fact enjoy myself more much of the time. I just wish everybody else was the same so that it wasn’t his constant conversation about it all the time. It really amazes me. How ingrained in our lives alcohol is, and how people don’t realise it.