What’s the biggest challenge you’ve encountered on your alcohol-free journey?

To help others feel less alone, I wanted to ask…

One of the things I love most about this space is that we make room for the highs and lows, the blessings and struggles, of getting and staying alcohol free.

And while we absolutely celebrate the gifts and delightful surprises of sobriety here, we don’t shy away from the hard parts. Talking about challenges can feel like an exhale, or even soften the struggle. It also helps others recognize themselves in what’s being shared.

With that in mind, and recognizing that everyone’s experience is different and sobriety doesn’t look the same for everyone, I’d love to ask our sober community:

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve encountered on your alcohol-free journey?

We ask this in the My Sobriety Story series, so I’ve pulled together some responses below. You can find the full stories here.

Whether you’re sober curious and looking for inspiration… navigating a tough stretch… or feeling steady in your sobriety and wanting to reflect and connect—I hope you’ll find these shares reassuring and a reminder that you’re not alone.

We’d love to hear from you, too. What’s been the hardest part of your alcohol-free journey? Please share in the comments.

And if you’re alcohol-free and would like to contribute to the My Sobriety Story series, we’d love to have you. You can email me here for the questions and guidelines.

“As the piano man sang, you wake up with yourself.” —Marya Hornbacher

“Figuring out how to deal with all the things I used alcohol to suppress. I started drinking when I was 13 or 14 years old—it was pretty much my only coping skill. I had to learn how to get comfortable with discomfort, and I had to retrain my brain to not think of alcohol as the first and only solution to every problem.” —Katie MacBride

“Loneliness. I mentioned I was too ashamed to ask for help early on when I stopped, so I did what I’ve gotten so good at in my life: muscled through on my own. But eventually, I needed some outside support.” —Josh Luton

“Once I got sober and started spending time with people in uninebriated states, I realized I just didn’t have much in common with these folks I’d considered my friends. It was a blessing in disguise, of course—now I have friends that I genuinely have shared interests with outside of the substances we consume. But for a while, it was really rough. I went from having a big friend group to almost no one.” —maja roglić

“My relationships shifted a lot. I lost friends. I’ve spent almost a decade coming to terms with how I handled those relationships at the time and mourning the loss of some very close friends.” —Helena Shannon

“Finding a community where I feel like I fit in. I never felt the need to go to AA or any support group like that, so it was difficult for me to find other sober people that I felt would want me.” —Sydney Allen

“Navigating relationships is always the biggest challenge.” —Elizabeth Jannuzzi

“Letting go of my identity as a ‘party girl’ and embracing a quieter lifestyle. In my first few years of recovery, I tried to simply cut out drugs and alcohol but keep the rest of my life exactly as it was: I went to clubs and festivals, stayed out late, and prioritized my social life above all else. But I eventually realized that sober life might look different for me than how I was used to spending my time. These days, I go to bed early, and I’d rather stay in than go out. Allowing myself to embrace the quieter, softer side of myself was a challenge.” —Carly Schwartz

“Sobriety is a double-edged sword that demands hypervigilance, which also battles the age-old tempest of the sense of identity. I relive stinging memories just as I go to sleep, yet without those memories, I would forget why I am sober in the first place. My codependent programming made it difficult to forgive myself, but without forgiving myself, I can’t make right with the people I hurt along the way. It is setting the boundaries you wrote and talked about inside of the recovery bubble that you have to delineate in the real world.” —Little Edits Atelier

“I still live in shame. I haven’t done anything since I got sober that I’m ashamed of. That’s not to say I don’t embarrass the heck out of myself all the time. But I’m not ashamed anymore of things I do. What I’m ashamed of, what some part of me will not let go of, is all that I gave up or missed because I chose alcohol instead.” —Shane Willbanks

“Building a loving relationship with myself and the ability to notice my thoughts, to be with what’s here and not get pulled into the story, is an ongoing practice. Some days it’s a LOT harder than others. Sometimes I get really frustrated. I want to be ‘fixed,’ I want to be whole, I want to feel okay all of the time.” —Ellie Nova

“One of the biggest challenges has been untangling sobriety from beauty standards. We often socialize the idea that sobriety should come with visible “wins” like weight loss, glowing skin, a more conventionally attractive body, as if those are proof that recovery is working. My experience has been different. Since getting sober, I’ve gained weight. I’ve been eating consistently, lifting heavy weights, and I had a baby. My body changed. And sometimes I have to consciously tune out the narrative that equates sobriety with shrinking.” —Jessica Dueñas

“I had to accept responsibility for the reality I’d created, realize there was no quick fix, and understand that the road out would be long and winding. I went through a prolonged period of feeling pretty low. But from this blank slate, I found a strange kind of power: starting over gave me the chance to rebuild my life on my own terms, and I now reframe this reset as an advantage.” —Adam PT

“Being sober means taking responsibility for my actions, my life, and the consequences that come with the choices I make.” —Kaitlyn Ramsay

“Figuring out how to do all the things I loved to do sober, instead of while drinking. Golf, live music, professional sports games, after-work get-togethers, airplane trips, hotel rooms, road trips, sex. Yeah, that was big.” —Dee Rambeau

“In the beginning, it was navigating ‘The Firsts’: the first hen weekend, wedding, concert, family event, and holiday. I worried I wouldn’t enjoy them the same or would feel left out. But I showed up, and now I’m proud every time I put myself into an environment where alcohol is present and I choose what is right for me.” —The Glow Guide by Jen

“Learning how to have a good time totally straight and being around people who are drinking and not resenting them. I recently went to a New Year’s Eve party, which is usually the bane of the existence of a sober person, and had the best time! Also, keeping from falling back into those old patterns that got me drinking in the first place; it is so tempting to wallow in shame, fear, self-loathing, anger, hate, and sadness when things get hard.” —Mid5 Coaching Scott Cameron

“When I relapsed, it snuck up on me. There wasn’t some big event. In hindsight, I had been drifting back towards a drink and not taking care of myself for months, and I made an impulsive decision. I got cocky and complacent, and my addiction convinced me it was safe to take one drink again. No matter how busy I get, I have to prioritize my sobriety and keep maintaining it.” —Jake Summers

“It seems to me that addiction carries with it a form of amnesia. If I’m not actively in a process of living clean, of living sober, I begin to forget the horrors of that life.” —C.L. Steiner

“I think my biggest challenge has been standing up to society’s pressure and alcohol norms.” —Rilee Wagner

“My best friend died of cancer when I was eight or nine years sober. Then, three months later, my wife was diagnosed with cancer, which she’s been fighting for the past 13 years. I’ve never wanted to drink over these things, but they certainly add a level of stress and sadness that makes it tough to experience serenity or emotional sobriety.” —Parker Gates

“Grief. When my wife passed away in 2021, it brought me to the edge of myself. It was sudden. Brutal. A drowning accident. One day, we were making plans. The next, I was planning a funeral. And here’s what surprised me: I stayed sober.” —Author Jeremy Evans

“My mother, whose caregiver I was for five years, passed away from cancer and Alzheimer’s at 64 in January 2025. The last months of her life, she was bedridden, unable to speak or care for herself. Sitting by her bedside, seeing her suffer and wishing for her to let go while feeling unconditional love for her was one of the hardest things I ever did. I was often torn between wanting her to die because the little life she had left was too painful and the fear of losing her. Losing her will possibly remain my biggest loss and my biggest gift. Caring for her until her very last breath taught me to really live the program of AA. I was allowed to be of service in the most intimate, human way.” —Theresa Rath

“Early in my sobriety, I had two miscarriages, the first putting me into a deep depression. In 2017, I immigrated from Brazil to Germany, and it was one of the hardest challenges I faced, suffering relentless xenophobia over there. I was also pregnant when I arrived and the most scared I have ever felt, feeling deeply alone and so sick that I could not move, could not go to meetings, and like I was going to physically and spiritually die. The following year, I lost three of my grandparents, the people who saved my life by taking care of me when my parents could not. Their deaths hit me hard, especially my maternal grandmother, all while I was away in a different country.” —Marianna Portela

“The biggest challenge was learning how to live life on life’s terms. Life didn’t miraculously get better when I got sober. I lost my job, and my kids had so many ups and downs in life, which I had to navigate. My third child was hospitalized for a suicide attempt and running away. I had to fight to get her help. My mother developed dementia and was placed in a long-term care home. I remember feeling so depressed and wondering if this is all there is, but I kept going to meetings. I listened to people who had years of sobriety and to those who were struggling to stay sober. Things slowly got better.” —Sue McWilliams

“Learning how to stay—especially when things are uncomfortable.” —Lisa Schmidt

“Accepting God. It took a year in the program to understand a God I could relate to, who had in its consciousness a plan for me that did not have me employed peeling potatoes in some horrible, boring town for the rest of my life.” —Alle C. Hall

“I had this very naïve idea that if I just stripped away the alcohol and drugs and worked all 12 Steps, I would be sailing on a pink cloud from here to kingdom come. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When I stripped away the alcohol, I was faced with the addiction underneath the alcohol—one that I would find out had propelled me to drink in the first place.” —I Can Only Give You Everything

“When I got sober, I had to follow that rule to remove all slippery people, places, and things. For me, that included almost everything and everyone closest to me.” —Randal Lyons

“My relapses were heartbreaking setbacks on my recovery journey. I committed to a “sober year” on my 32nd birthday (7/21/2020), but I wasn’t able to get and stay sober permanently until December 19, 2022. The ups and downs, the wanting, wishing, hoping, and foxhole prayers of wanting to be sober.” —Kristen Crocker

Living life on life’s terms does not mean that I’m a victim. I may be powerless over the stimulus, but I have a choice today in how I respond. I think that continually moving to and living in a space of acceptance of people, situations, and emotions is the ongoing challenge of recovery.” —Vince Puzick

“Turns out, the biggest surprise and the biggest challenge were the same, because now it meant I had to get honest. And when you’ve been hiding vodka in a Tampax box for over a year…well, honesty requires some practice.” —Stephanie Gibbons

What’s been your biggest challenge on your alcohol-free journey?

Please share in the comments. And before you go, would you take a second to tap that little heart? It lets others know there’s something helpful here and grows our sober community.