Want to know about the amazing benefits of sobriety you get when going sober in your 20s? These are some of the gains I experienced when getting sober at 28.
Getting sober during the younger years of your life can be frightening but as I have experienced it, it’s mostly exciting. The pressure to drink and party with friends is something I have experienced, making it even more difficult to stay on the sober path. As someone who got sober in her 20s, I will give you the 5 biggest benefits I have experienced during my journey so far. You will learn about all the gains such as improving mental health, getting financial stability, being able to work on your goals, and more.
After learning about all these amazing benefits, you can see the pros and forget about the cons.
This post is all about the benefits you experience when getting sober in your 20s.
Benefits When Being Sober In Your 20s
1. Self-Discovery & Personal Growth
Let’s be honest, being in your 20s can be confusing. Who am I? What do I want? Is this all life has to offer me? Not to talk about the quarter-life crisis most of us get to deal with at one point. Being sober allows you to be honest with yourself and see yourself as you truly are. For me, skipping the booze felt like I was giving up my whole identity. What else is there to do when partying is no longer part of your way of life? Becoming sober gives you the opportunity and space to learn to discover who you are from the inside, where your true identical self can (finally) reveal itself. Maybe you have always acted like an extrovert, but you are actually someone who loves to take a walk alone through nature. During my path to sober living, I have found that I have often gone beyond my limits. I did things I wouldn’t do sober. Let’s face it, it’s no fun at all to sit in a bar two or three times a a week slacking off about nonsensical things when you don’t drink alcohol. And if that is not what you like to do, then that is fine! At first, I thought I was going to miss this immensely, but the opposite is true. How exciting it is to discover early in life who you are and start doing things you really enjoy.
Looking at my first year in recovery, I got into many things such as meditation, reading books, watching documentaries, networking with other people in recovery, and so on. All such things have contributed so much to me actually learning to know myself. It is only now that I started to get to know who I am and what it is I like to spend my time on. If you ask me, this is super valuable when you’re young and you’re going to be able to get so much out of this for the rest of your life.
2. Improvement of Mental Health
Studies have shown that the use of substances has a significant impact on mental health, think about negative influences on your mood, emotions, and cognitive functions. But I think we all know that substance use both in the short and long term does not do any good to our mental health. When you are sober, your brain can regulate itself properly, leading to more stable moods and a better overall sense of well-being.
Once again when I had completely let myself go over the weekend I had terrible feelings of shame and guilt that would last for days. Not really conducive to your self-esteem and self-confidence, right? Being sober has helped me feel confident and being able to trust myself again. I remember being afraid of not being able to handle difficult situations or difficult emotions without fully numbing myself. But quite honestly, drinking or using substances never made any situation better. Waking up with a massive hangover only made everything worse than it was before. Since I have stopped drinking, I have found other ways to get myself out of dark days. Because yes, life is still hard and I still have hard days. Actually, I am currently going through a difficult period. Over the past few weeks, I have been feeling dejected a lot, tired a lot, and actually felt kind of paralyzed. But if there is one thing I have learned, it is this: everything is temporary. The good moments, but also the bad moments. And I try to hold myself to that as much as possible.
3. Creating Financial Stability
Drinking, partying, using substances, misbuying things that seem like a great idea at the moment – it is an expensive lifestyle. I don’t know about you but during the years I was busy doing all those things, I certainly wasn’t considering saving up for buying a house or thinking about how I would later pay for my children’s studies. I did try, but by the time the weekend started and I was even slightly intoxicated, I didn’t care much anymore and all the brakes went off. Only to open my banking app with sweaty hands on Monday morning to see how much damage I had done to my account…
Being sober in your 20s gives you the benefit of being able to think long-term and allows you to invest in your future. If I were to do a tally of all the money I’ve blown through in those years, well … I don’t even want to think about it. I don’t regret it either, but I am super grateful that I can do things differently now. I have taken a close look at my financial situation and made an overview. I opened an investor account, invested monthly in ETFs, started budgeting, and set different savings goals for myself. Even though you may be in a situation where you have yet to resolve the damage of the past, small beginnings make a huge difference. Maybe your situation is causing you to feel paralyzed and not have the strength to make a start, I completely understand that. If I want to give you something to take away from this it is that every little bit helps and there is never a bad time to start. Even if you make a small start now, the future you will be super grateful!
4. Being Able To Work On Your Goals (Long and Short Term)
During my active addiction, I was far from thinking about my future. I would love to say that I was living in the present, but that is not what I was doing at all. I constantly lived in a daze, without any perception of the present, future, or past. Sobriety in your 20s allows you to not only set goals but also being able to work on them; it allows you to think about your future again and regain the motivation to get better every day.
What I love to do is make vision boards. A vision board is a powerful tool used to visually manifest your goals, dreams, and ambitions. The idea is to create a collage of images, words, and symbols that inspire you and represent what you want to achieve or attract in your life. During my early days of sobriety, I have made some vision boards with recovery as its main theme. It helped me to see for myself what the benefits of quitting would bring me. Besides, being creative is an enjoyable time to spend your time and clear your head. Make it a really cozy intimate moment with yourself, put on some nice music, light some candles, have a cup of tea, and enjoy!
5. Gaining (A Ton Of) Time and Energy
I will be honest, the first period of recovery is difficult and will be accompanied by a lot of fatigue and dejected feelings. But believe me, it will get better. After a few months, you will begin to experience that you are getting back your zest for life. Think about how much time you spent using substances, drinking, being hungover, recovering from a tough weekend, and hiding yourself under your blankets out of shame. It’s a very time-consuming thing when thinking about it. Giving up alcohol and substances may feel like something is being taken away from you, but after a while in recovery, you will see that the only thing that limited you was the substance itself. To me, it felt liberating! The day suddenly has a lot more hours and the weekend lasts longer now that you are experiencing it fully consciously.
During the first period of my recovery, I had no idea what I was going to do with those extra hours. It felt like there was no end to the day and weekends suddenly seemed to last 10 days. This extra time I can now use to exercise, meet up with friends, write this blog, take care of myself, and so on. I didn’t believe it at first, but there is so much more to this life than what you know now.
