24 Hours Sober Is a Big Damn Deal

By Rene Brookbank, founder of Love & Recovery.

Sometimes I wake up after twenty-four hours without alcohol and I feel amazing.

Literally one day.

Nothing in my life has magically rearranged itself. But I’m awake, and I feel good. There is relief. There is this little glimpse of how I want to feel.

And I wonder: Why can’t I remember this when I want to drink?

Why can’t I bring this exact morning with me into the part of the day when the desire shows up? Why does something that feels so obvious now become so easy to bargain away later?

I’m still struggling with drinking. That’s the truth of where I am as I write this.

I wish I were writing about something comfortably behind me. Instead, I’m writing from inside the confusing space of loving how I feel without alcohol and still wanting the thing that takes that feeling away.

Maybe you know that space, too.

I call it King Alcohol. Toxic. A destroyer. And yet, somehow, when the desire comes, I can find myself listening again.

That is one of the hardest things to explain: I know what alcohol costs me. I also know how beautiful a morning without it can feel.

And knowing hasn’t always been enough.

Wanting a pause between the craving and the drink

This morning, I actually thought about taking my yoga inversion bench everywhere with me in my car. When the desire to drink hit, I imagined pulling over, getting out, and doing an inversion.

Yes. Literally turning myself upside down.

I’m sharing the thought because it tells you how badly I want an interruption. Some space between wanting a drink and getting one. Something that helps me remember the person who woke up that morning feeling so grateful she hadn’t had alcohol the day before.

I want to be able to reach her.

And then there’s yoga.

I have an instructor whose classes leave me feeling like I’ve been to a revival. I walk out feeling that good. Moved. Connected. Like something inside me has had a chance to breathe.

And then I go get vodka.

That sentence hurts to write.

Both things are true. The peace I felt in class was real. So was the desire that followed it.

It’s hard to understand how I can feel so good and still do something that I know will take me away from that feeling. It’s even harder when I turn that confusion into another reason to be cruel to myself.

Trying to find a way through

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous has a passage in “More About Alcoholism” about the ways people try to control their drinking—changing what they drink, setting rules about when and where, taking up more exercise.

I recognize the bargaining.

Only at night. Only on weekends. Switch what I’m drinking. Only after a workout.

Surely there’s a set of rules that will finally make this manageable.

And in these modern times, my search for help has included medication. I’ve tried a GLP-1 medication, acamprosate, and naltrexone. I haven’t gotten the result I hoped for.

Seeking medical help deserves its own place in this story. Those attempts were real efforts to get better. My experience doesn’t tell anyone else what will work for them, and it doesn’t mean I’m beyond help.

It means I’m still looking for a way through.

Meanwhile, there’s AA.

I know it can help. And I’m resisting going.

I don’t have a tidy explanation for that. I keep asking myself why I don’t want to go, and I don’t have an answer that makes the resistance disappear.

It’s uncomfortable to admit that I can want relief so badly and still feel reluctant to reach for support.

But I suspect I’m not the only one.

Maybe someone reading this knows exactly what it feels like to have another plan, another rule, another hopeful morning—and still be afraid of what happens when the desire comes back.

I want to say something to that person. And I need to hear it myself.

Why 24 hours sober deserves recognition

Those twenty-four hours count.

They don’t become meaningless because you’ve had twenty-four hours before. They aren’t less worthy of recognition because someone else is celebrating twenty years.

I know what one day can feel like from the inside. The wanting. The negotiating. The relief of waking up and realizing you gave yourself that time.

That is why I care about celebrating it.

I’m still learning how to carry the feeling of a sober morning into the rest of my day. I may need more than a memory. I may need to let someone hear me say, “I want to drink,” while there is still time for them to sit with me through it.

I don’t have a finished recovery story to hand you today.

I have an honest one.

I love how I feel after twenty-four hours without alcohol. I want more mornings like that. And I’m trying to find my way toward them, even while part of me resists.

If you have twenty-four hours today, I hope you let it matter.

I know I’m trying to.

Twenty-four hours sober is a big damn deal.

If you’re in the middle of one of those long evenings tonight, I wrote about that too: It Gets Easier: Getting Through the Long Evenings of Early Sobriety.