How to Maintain Emotional Sobriety

"Emotional Sobriety" sounds fairly deep or scary or spiritual or all of those. If physical sobriety is not letting booze mess with the way we feel and how we act, then emotional sobriety is not letting people, places and things mess with the way we feel.

Notice the verb is "mess with".

We still mourn when someone dear to us dies. We are still delighted by the happy laughter of our children (if we have them) and we are still concerned when the teenage daughter is late home. We are pleased when a friend does well, and when we do, but modest in our celebration of it. We are angry if someone steps over our boundaries or we do not get the recognition we deserve for the work we have done.

We still feel the emotions that regular people feel.

What we don't do is respond to the drama queen. We don't fall for the manipulations of users and abusers, and we don't spend time feeling bad with the losers. We don't jump in to rescue people who dived into the lake of their own free will. The second time someone gets wilfully drunk and hurts themselves, and it's clear this is a pattern, we call a taxi to take them to hospital and ask them if they have the fare. We don't act out when someone tugs at our co-dependent heart strings. We try to stay calm when the boss punches our buttons or someone at work lets us down and makes us look bad. We don't make events about our reaction to them, we understand that almost nothing is 'about us'.

Staying away from wet places, and from heavy drinkers, is one way of reducing the need to manage our physical sobriety. Reduce the temptations.

The same applies to emotional sobriety. Stay away from the crazies, the emotionally needy, the users, losers and abusers, the emotionally volatile, the people who use their feelings to manipulate those around them. Do not become one of the consequences of people who made bad life choices.

I know what you're thinking.

If you're an ex-drunk, that's a lot of people. And nearly all the ones who turn us on.

It is. I'm not going to pretend there aren't days when life seems a little dull.

It's why a lot of people don't go for emotional sobriety. They still want some physical attraction, and they know that drama goes with that.

If the sex is worth the drama, go ahead. But you're just being dumb if the drama isn't worth the sex.

Which sounds a lot like MGTOW (or WGTOW).

Because it's the same principle. If it doesn't work for you, stop doing it, and do something that does.