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The One Habit That Didn’t Changed With Sobriety

But the reason for it did.

Kelly Tompkins
4 min readOct 5, 2020

“Come on, you’ve only had three drinks, you could stay for one more right?”

“I guess I could..wait, are you counting my drinks?”

Oops.

Unfortunately, I was the first person back in the day.

High effort, low reward

When I would go out back in the day, I used to be hyper aware of how much others around me were drinking. I’d make a mental note of where everyone was at when I arrived, and if I didn’t get blackout drunk, I’d know where everyone was at when it was closing time. I did a lot of things that I thought were normal, that only someone struggling with addiction would do.

Not wanting to seem like the token alcoholic, I always found myself counting the number of drinks my friends were having. My logic was that if I could stay at the same number or just under the person who was drinking the most, that somehow I could fool everyone around me that I didn’t have an issue with alcohol. The token alcoholic would be that person, not me. At least, in my head it seemed like the perfect plan.

I would pre-game before parties if I thought that people wouldn’t be drinking as heavily as I’d want to or I’d make up the “loss” afterwards. It…

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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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