5 ways to build a community when you’re sober

Photo by Zachary Nelson on Unsplash

Addiction is hard. At a high level, everyone knows this, but they don’t see the struggle that happens every day. I tried to quit drinking countless times and every time I did it, I did it without help. And every time, the moment I did interact with someone, I gave into drinking. They wouldn’t even mention alcohol; I was so consumed with the social pressure from it, I would cave before the perceived pressure would kick in so that I still felt I had control.

I’ve made it past six months now and my biggest advice if you’re quitting for good or just doing a dry January are to build a community of other sober people, even if they’re online. Here are some resources I use every day to keep up my sobriety and some that I’ve stumbled upon along the way.

/r/stopdrinking

Before you complain that reddit is a bunch of memelords or nice guys, hear me out. Once you actually get past the opening page of r/choosingbeggars and r/gaming(not knocking those, I frequent them-they’re just not a positive resource generally), you’ll find some subreddits that are there to build a community of positivity and togetherness.

When I first quit drinking, I had been a lurker on r/stopdrinking for a few months. It was full of people at all stages of sobriety- there were the ones who had relapsed, the ones who were…