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Halfway Through the Hardest Part of Sobriety

Kelly Tompkins
3 min readAug 27, 2024

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Why the first three days are always the toughest

Photo by Nsey Benajah on Unsplash

I have successfully made it through two days of sobriety and the difficulty is definitely starting to ramp up. If you didn’t catch my first day, it was relatively easy. But for me, my journey of sobriety has been a bunch of good first days. It was always the second and the third day that were the worst in the beginning.

For me, the first three days are so close to when I was drinking, that my alcohol brain starts to rationalize. Well, I can always have a first day later this week, and drink tonight. It’s not like I was sober for very long so it doesn’t matter. If I drink tonight, then I’ll just go sober over the weekend. While it probably doesn’t make sense to someone who hasn’t tried multiple times to go sober, I feel like, or at least hope, that it’s relatable to someone. I always had a reason during the first few days that I could give up and try again later. I’ve had more starts that ended up at day 3 than I can count.

What changed this time?

The second day this time went by relatively smoothly and I have my best friend to thank for that. This is the same best friend who I always met up for drinks, and we’d spend hours talking about our lives.

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Kelly Tompkins
Kelly Tompkins

Written by Kelly Tompkins

Austin,Texas sober girl. Lover of horror movies, cats, and fitness. Occasional bad poet.

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