Sobriety: An "Acquired" Taste
Let’s be honest. If you say something is an "acquired" taste, that means it sucks at first and you were probably peer-pressured into trying it.
Early sobriety is a lot like waking up in someone else’s life… only to realize it’s actually your own. And wow — what a mess you left behind.
The lights are all on. There are Post-Its everywhere that say “Feel your feelings!” and “Own your $@#*!" and “Text your accountability buddy!” — except you want to bury your $@#*, you don’t have an accountability buddy yet (or are even sure you want one), or a clue where your actual feelings even live. All you know is that people keep telling you to try things. So you do.
You try journaling — and suddenly you’re a poet with emotional constipation.
You try yoga — and end up crying in child’s pose, unsure if it’s grief or a pulled hamstring.
You try gratitude lists, because everyone says gratitude is the key. But all you can think of to write down is “I guess I’m not dead?” Your brain: Gratitude. Grrratitude. Grrr. Attitude. I hate this.
And you buy every freaking book mentioned in a meeting.
Every. One.
Now you’ve got a “Quit Lit” shelf that looks like it belongs in a very emotionally complicated Barnes & Noble section. You haven’t read most of them — but just owning The Body Keeps the Score makes you feel like you’re doing the work. Sort of. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to myself, “Oh, I have that book. I should read it,” when someone quotes another must-have quit lit manual.
There’s a particular flavor of desperation that hits in early recovery. It’s not just about not drinking. It’s about doing everything else you possibly can to not feel like a complete failure.
So you pile on practices.
You buy the fancy journal.
You start your morning pages — and want to vomit by page two.
You get a planner. A mantra. A “sober app.”
You download meditation tracks with chimes and breathing prompts.
You set boundaries like a toddler with a trowel, laying bricks you can’t even lift.
Why? Because someone in a meeting with 14 years sober said you should. Their word of the year is “Balance” and yours is “WTF”.
And listen — they meant well.
But no one tells you that trying to “heal” when you still hate yourself is like trying to decorate a burning house.
I didn’t want to feel anything when I first got sober.
I wanted to not feel everything.
The first time I cried about feelings I couldn’t even name, much less face, an old-head (my term for old timer) said, “Welcome to life as it was meant to be experienced.” I wanted to throat punch him. I fake-smiled instead.
That’s the part people skip over in motivational quotes.
Feeling feelings sounds great until you’re face-to-face with your own shame at 2am and wondering if anyone will ever love you now that you’re sober — and exposed.
I tried journaling my feelings… except I didn’t know what I was feeling.
I tried setting boundaries… but mine looked more like barbed wire or doormats — no middle ground.
I tried a gratitude list… and wrote “coffee” five days in a row because I couldn’t think of anything else I hadn’t ruined.
But I kept going. Mostly because I was too scared to go back.
Let me say this plainly:
Peer pressure isn’t always bad.
In addiction, it got me trashed.
In recovery, it saved my life.
I didn’t want to journal — but someone I admired did it, so I tried.
I didn’t want to do gratitude — but I saw the way their eyes lit up when they shared what they were grateful for.
I didn’t want to cry in public — but someone else did, and they didn’t spontaneously combust.
So I copied them.
At first it felt fake. Performative.
But then something weird happened.
One day I realized I wasn’t pretending anymore.
I wasn’t trying to be sober.
I just… was.
That’s when it hit me: recovery is an acquired taste.
You know the kind.
Like black coffee — bitter, burned-tasting, and unnecessarily aggressive at first… until one day you start craving it.
Or kale — tough, earthy, and a total fraud pretending to be salad… until it’s the thing that keeps your insides regular. And kale chips rock.
Or kombucha — let’s be honest, it tastes like carbonated vinegar and fungus pee with a chaser of mustard water — but somehow it makes your gut happy and your soul just a little smug.
Gratitude felt like that.
Weird. Forced. Pointless.
Until it didn’t.
Until I was writing down “sunlight through the window” or “someone held the door open for me” and I meant it.
Until I caught myself smiling because I was alive — not because I was high.
Until I said “thank you” to God, even when I wasn’t sure how I felt about Him that day.
But here’s the kicker:
None of those habits worked at first because I hadn’t forgiven myself.
I was doing all the right things — but with the wrong heart.
Trying to meditate with a brain full of self-loathing is like trying to hear a whisper during a rock concert.
Trying to heal while still believing you’re trash doesn’t make you healed — it makes you tired.
You can stack all the morning routines you want.
You can listen to five podcasts a day and burn palo santo and get a therapist and a yoga mat and a favorite pen.
But if you still think you don’t deserve love?
None of it will stick.
It took me a long time to realize that.
Longer still to act on it.
Forgiveness, it turns out, wasn’t a one-time act. It was a process.
A slow unwinding of the narrative I’d wrapped around my own throat.
And when I started to forgive myself — not excuse, but forgive — those practices I once mocked started to feel… different.
Like support.
Like scaffolding.
Like truth with a spine.
Gratitude didn’t feel like a forced cheer-up list.
It felt like reverence.
Journaling didn’t feel like self-pity.
It felt like making peace.
Boundaries didn’t feel like cold walls.
They felt like invitations to the right people.
One day, I wrote in a journal and didn’t edit myself.
Didn’t apologize. Didn’t filter.
I just wrote.
Another day, I said “No” to something I would’ve said “Yes” to out of fear — and I didn’t spend the next two hours apologizing for it.
Another day, I cried in the car… and then laughed five minutes later. And I realized: I wasn’t broken. I was becoming.
And no, I don’t love every recovery ritual. Some of them still make me roll my eyes.
But now I understand what they are:
They’re not tools. They’re trust.
They’re not fixes. They’re invitations.
They’re not magic. But they are medicine — bitter at first, then healing.
If you’re in early sobriety and nothing tastes right yet, I get it.
If you’re faking it, I’ve been there.
If you think you’ll never “get it,” let me tell you something:
You’re not failing.
You’re adjusting.
And adjustment takes time.
So yeah — recovery is an acquired taste.
The stuff that once felt foreign becomes familiar.
The habits you mocked become lifelines.
The people you envied become your people.
The life you feared becomes the one you’re building — one weird, awkward, grateful day at a time.
If recovery is an acquired taste,
then I’ve finally acquired it.
And I’m not going back.