In my early 30s, I became a health nut. Then I started drinking and everything fell apart.

If you need to quit an addiction, does anyone need to join you? Nope. You can do it all by yourself.

The goal now is to stay sober...not to be a perfect spouse, parent, neighbor. Not to make anyone happy. You can do that later. For now, less overwhelm means do less.

If you're sobercurious and interested in quitting alcohol for a specific time period or forever, you may be wondering how to get started. The obvious answer is "quit drinking", but the real answer is more complicated than that.

We spent a lot of mental energy on how much we’d be able to drink with people instead of focusing on building a relationship based on real things…like personalities, interests, commonalities, etc. If they drank, we figured the rest would fall into place.

If you’re among the sober-curious, you might be wondering what it feels like to detox from alcohol. Regardless of what you’ve heard, here are some real answers from real people who are in recovery and have conquered that first week of alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

The key is to have support. We all need help at different times in our lives, and “help” can look different based on where we’re at. We’re not meant to do any part of life alone, especially something as difficult as crushing an addiction!

I no longer guard my drinking time like a dragon in front of gold. Now my time with my kids is the gold.

Now what? The shock and sadness of not being needed have turned into the desire to retire from the longest and hardest job I’ve ever had, motherhood. And run with arms wide open to the next thing.

I thought I was losing my mind. I’m now 43 years old and feel like my body has become an evil foe I’m not familiar with.

Life is hard.