Day 112: Wider - not narrower

In the beginning of my AF journey, it felt like I was making my life more narrow. I thought about all the things I couldn’t do, or probably wouldn’t feel like doing, being AF. The friends I probably would stop seeing, and the activities I would avoid like sitting in a bar drinking or inviting people home for dinner just to be able to drink a lot of wine. (I’m not saying that you can’t have people over for dinner being AF, I just silently note that the dinners have been way fewer when the opportunity for drinking wine under socially accepted terms disappeared.) 
In my early AF days, I would look at all those missed opportunities for having a good time and I really thought I was denying myself a lot of fun activities. Then I started to look at these activities and found that they all came in the same shape, but in different colors: they all revolved around getting drunk somehow.
At the bar: getting drunk
Dinner with random friends: getting drunk
Out clubbing, getting drunk
Playing video games with my brother: getting drunk
Sitting by myself in the sofa: getting drunk
Later on my journey I found out that I haven’t really closed the door to a LOT of activities. Actually I only closed the door to one: GETTING DRUNK. I just had to find out what to do instead. And when I started doing other things instead of getting drunk I found out that my AF life is not narrow at all: it's way wider because I will have energy to fill it with meaningful things. And different things: playing board games, writing, walking, running, making kombucha, meditating, call real telephone calls to people, making great food and becoming a tea master. I wouldn’t have done even half of those things if I still drank and my life has way more variation now.
So AF life is not narrow - it’s wider!
Onwards and upwards, comrades!

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