AF Daily Thursday January 1 2009!!!
Great topic! I was thinking yesterday about this, too, and it took me off into a slightly different direction. There are entire cultures in which nobody drinks, or they might drink very little, and yet they (at all ages!) manage perfectly well to have a lot of fun. I am not sure how drinking became so firmly embedded into our cultural expectations and beliefs about "having fun." We'd have to find a sociologist or cultural anthropologist, maybe, for that question; but it certainly is a major example of distorted thinking, and one that has contributed hugely to human suffering....
Someone started a nice thread here a few days about the fear that many have about the idea of "never drinking again." The belief that "no drinking" = "no fun ever again" is certainly a significant contributor to that fear, and it is simply tragic, because it plays a role in many relapses... which lead to stunted lives and premature death for so many.
Last night I played some Wii games with a very cool 10-year-old girl, the daughter of a good friend; and we introduced it to her 92-year-old grandfather, too. We all had dinner, sat around talking about our past years and this new one; we played a crazy board game... We had a blast, and none of us were drinking. And drinking would certainly not have made it any more fun.
It seems to be a sad truth that in a culture like ours, that is so awash in distorted beliefs about the value of alcohol, we have to work very hard to disentangle ourselves not only from the biochemical and genetic drives that we (alcohol-dependent people) have, that create our terrible thirst and habit for alcohol, but also from a set of false beliefs that are forced down our throats from every direction... most of all, from our own minds.
Once having done that, and only then, we can begin to see clearly that life itself, without alcohol, can be truly wonderful... sometimes painful, sometimes joyful, sometimes boring, sometimes a lot of fun... but always a great gift.
Doggygirl;507429 wrote:
How have your perceptions changed about what is "fun" and what is "boring" (or unfun?) since being alcohol free? How has this changed over your alcohol free time? (i.e. what you thought in the first month or few months and for those with longer sobriety than that, how it changed if at all, with more sober time)...
We were joking yesterday about how finding "fun" in these things made us seem "old" but I'm beginning to wonder if that perception doesn't have something to do with AL. Did we justify some of our drinking behavior with mental images of drinking / partying = youthful, and not drinking / (insert activity here) = "old?"
How have your perceptions changed about what is "fun" and what is "boring" (or unfun?) since being alcohol free? How has this changed over your alcohol free time? (i.e. what you thought in the first month or few months and for those with longer sobriety than that, how it changed if at all, with more sober time)...
We were joking yesterday about how finding "fun" in these things made us seem "old" but I'm beginning to wonder if that perception doesn't have something to do with AL. Did we justify some of our drinking behavior with mental images of drinking / partying = youthful, and not drinking / (insert activity here) = "old?"
Someone started a nice thread here a few days about the fear that many have about the idea of "never drinking again." The belief that "no drinking" = "no fun ever again" is certainly a significant contributor to that fear, and it is simply tragic, because it plays a role in many relapses... which lead to stunted lives and premature death for so many.
Last night I played some Wii games with a very cool 10-year-old girl, the daughter of a good friend; and we introduced it to her 92-year-old grandfather, too. We all had dinner, sat around talking about our past years and this new one; we played a crazy board game... We had a blast, and none of us were drinking. And drinking would certainly not have made it any more fun.
It seems to be a sad truth that in a culture like ours, that is so awash in distorted beliefs about the value of alcohol, we have to work very hard to disentangle ourselves not only from the biochemical and genetic drives that we (alcohol-dependent people) have, that create our terrible thirst and habit for alcohol, but also from a set of false beliefs that are forced down our throats from every direction... most of all, from our own minds.
Once having done that, and only then, we can begin to see clearly that life itself, without alcohol, can be truly wonderful... sometimes painful, sometimes joyful, sometimes boring, sometimes a lot of fun... but always a great gift.
:ranger 
c: 
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