If you were lucky enough to get sober during the pandemic, the idea of going back to normal can seem like a daunting task. With everyone getting vaccinated and businesses opening back up, the temptation to drink will be present again, in conditions you can’t control anymore. So what can we do?

The takeaway from this is that you might need to treat this experience as if you’re going sober for the first time. Here are some tips and tricks for newly sober people and those who quit drinking during these unprecedented times.

Have conversations with those close to you about your sobriety

One of the first steps when you’re…

I thought about streaming for a while; though the amount of time between me deciding to stream on Twitch and actually doing it was embarrassing, and it was all because of self-doubt. What’s unique about me and why would someone follow me? Would my computer even be able to handle streaming a game?

Because I doubted I could do it, I did everything but actually stream that ended up helping in the end. …

It might be a surprise to you that I’m absolutely terrified in horror games. I mean, I run a Medium publication dedicated to horror, my favorite genre of video game is horror survival so I must be one of the bravest!

While I can watch a guy with a chainsaw on the big screen, put me in a game where I’m the one running from it and I become a coward. But since I genuinely love being scared, I knew I needed to get over it. …

You might have some questions right now from the title. What does a beach ball in a pool have to do with alcohol? Didn’t I just write an article about how I’ve forgotten all about drinking?

That’s the great thing about being in recovery- you never quite forget about it, even if months go by without a craving. And this new craving was brought on by the most surprising of events.

So what happened?

The temperature is rising

As dumb as that sounds, what eventually brought on cravings for alcohol was as simple as it being close to summer.

It had been a couple…

A realization hit me a couple of nights ago- besides the one month last year where I drank, I have been doing this whole sobriety thing for almost two years now. While I regret drinking in the first place, it was the moment I got 100% confirmation that drinking just wasn’t for me.

But this realization had hit me hard and suddenly; it was the first time I had even thought about my relationship with alcohol and sobriety in months. From thinking about it almost daily to forgetting it even existed, what changed for me? …

When I first went vegan in January, it was such a major shift in my diet I actually stopped weight lifting to focus only on what I was eating. I had this idea that weight lifting as a vegan would be hard; I would be forced to drink protein shakes to make up for lost protein and it’d be a high carb diet full of beans and pasta. From January to the middle of February, I exercised by walking more and just did all that I could to stay vegan with my main carbs being vegetables. But as time went…

Oh, I could never go vegan. I just love cheese too much!

When someone’s not asking about how you get protein on a vegan diet, it’s usually reasons why they could never go vegan. Spoiler alert- the top reason is because of cheese. No judgment here from me, I was vegetarian for a while because I was in the same boat. The idea of completely eliminating cheese from my diet seemed insane. Why would someone willingly give up cheese? I put cheese on everything from tacos to pasta so it was a significant change. …

Will I keep it up?

If you ever wonder who the 30 day food/drink challenges are marketed towards, it’s me. It’s not easy to commit to a new lifestyle so the challenges always feel like a nice baby step, or a glimpse into what your life could be. You can do anything for 30 days and it’s a long enough stretch of time to really see how your body reacts to the change. And just like I had been flirting with sobriety with #soberoctober, #veganuary was my chance to take my flirtation with being vegan to the next level.

Before…