The Regret of Getting Sober Is not Doing It Twenty Years Sooner

Dealing with Regret in Sobriety

Getting sober today

Regret, in some form, is a part of the human experience. We make mistakes, we maybe feel bad about them for a little while, and then we (hopefully) learn from them and move on. But for those of us who have been questioning our drinking and realize that alcohol is playing too large of a role, those feelings of regret find new intensity. Regret in sobriety is normal, but it can feel overwhelming. Reframing and having the tools to deal with it can help.

Connor, the Senior Manager of Coaching at Tempest, says that regret was a constant part of his life when he drank. “I would wake up in the morning and immediately start piecing together what had happened the night before,” he says. “One night, a friend and I were talking about a party they had been to, and they said, ‘I’m worried I didn’t represent myself how I would want to.’”

That sentiment hit Connor in “just the right spot” and enabled him to shift his perspective when it came to drinking: “It isn’t that I am bad, or broken, or messed up—which is how I would often feel—it was simply that I wanted to make different choices,” he explains.

That morning-after regret isn’t the only type that’s related to alcohol. There’s also the kind that comes up after quitting drinking. When we quit drinking and can clearly see how alcohol impacted our lives, it’s easy to get caught up in what we might have done differently. With clear-headed hindsight on our side, we can see how alcohol impacted relationships or life choices. This is the kind of regret that can quickly turn to shame if we don’t have the tools to work with it.

It’s impossible to reverse or prevent feelings of regret. What we can do, however, is trying to work through the feelings so we can move past them—and hopefully, even learn something from them. There are folks in recovery dealing with regret.

Trevor, who no longer drinks, says that the years of drinking left him with a lot of feelings of regret. “I damaged my marriage, friendships, family relationships, work relationships, and … I missed out on things like watching my daughter grow and learn when she was a baby,” he explains. “I missed a lot of moments and milestones—and the things that I didn’t miss, I took for granted.”

While Trevor doesn’t think he’s fully moved past these regrets quite yet, he says he’s learned to forgive himself—at least for the most part. He hopes therapy and more self-reflection will take him the rest of the way there.

“Talking about [my experience] with people that love and support me has been the biggest help for me,” Trevor says. “I think being able to joke about it and make fun has been a good way for me to bring light to a hard situation has also helped me.”

“Regret and guilt go hand in hand,” Lori, who’s been alcohol-free for four and a half years, says. “Almost daily, at some point, I can get a ‘rush’ of guilt that comes over me—something will happen, or something could be said and that often will trigger these feelings in me.”

Lori’s feelings of regret aren’t as strong as they used to be, but they’re still there.

“I have a 31-year-old daughter who is the light of my life. I divorced when I was pregnant with her, so in every possible way, I was a single mom,” says Lori. “Things really took a turn for the worst when she was in high school … I lived a double life.”

When Lori’s daughter was at school, she would do things she “would never, ever do sober” before trying to be “mom of the year” at home. Eventually, Lori’s daughter pulled away.

“She knew her mom was up to no good, but we never spoke of it,” Lori says. As much as the distance hurt Lori, she didn’t decide to quit drinking until the cousin she lived with, who was also very close with her daughter, told her to “clean up or get out.” Lori chose the former and says, “it was the best thing anyone has ever done for me.”

In the years since quitting drinking, Lori says she and her daughter’s relationship has improved dramatically.

“She’s comfortable talking and sharing her fears and struggles with me. This would not have ever happened if I were not sober,” Lori says. “I know I can’t ever change my past, but I can learn from my many mistakes and not repeat them.”

Carol stopped drinking 33 years ago at age 41. “At the time of my drinking, I didn’t have many regrets—they came after. When I got sober, I was filled with regret,” she says. “Regret that I couldn’t have done some of my life differently.”

As a mother of four daughters, Carol felt lots of expectations of what she “should and shouldn’t have been doing.” “I felt I missed out on so much of my daughters’ lives. I provided for all their basic needs, [but] emotionally it was a different story,” she says. “I didn’t listen to them very much. I yelled a lot and expected a lot from them.”

Now, after three decades of life without alcohol, Carol deals with those feelings of regret by sharing her experiences, strength, and hope with others.

“There will come along a woman just like me who regrets the mistakes she made while drinking and hears the message of hope,” she says, “and [realizes] that she too can recover and do her life clean and sober, free from alcohol or drugs.”

We are all imperfect, and the sooner we accept that the sooner we learn to be okay with ourselves and this whole being alive thing. Life is about learning to understand and accept your own gifts and limitations to make a life that suits you, in which you can feel ok about who you are and your choices.

We missed out on leaving us unable to know or accept ourselves, which impacted our ability to make healthy decisions. When things fell apart, which they did, often, we drank to numb the pain, rather than truly feeling it, learning from the experience, and being motivated to change.

We felt unlucky and doomed, without recognizing we had a hand in the failures we were experiencing. Alcohol made us feel better (temporarily) and it prevented us from learning from our most serious mistakes. Sometimes, it drove us to make new ones. We weren’t willing or able to take a serious look at ourselves, and so we were doomed to repeat our negative patterns.

This made us hate ourselves, which pushed us to crave self-destruction. We wanted to forget who we were. To disappear for a while. To get a break from being us. We were trapped for years in this damaging cycle.

My inability to know myself (lack of self-discovery) and accept myself meant that I could not connect honestly with people—even my own family. And so, for years, I kept my distance from the people who knew me best.

My biggest regret, not becoming sober sooner! #fyp #sober #podcast #soberliving #regret #mindset

I was ashamed of where I came from and who I was because of so many years of dysfunction. I felt like a failure and so I wanted to keep to myself.

If I hadn’t gotten sober, I would never have known what was missing in the quality of my relationships. After all, you cannot know what you do not know. You can’t miss what you don’t have.

I can’t tell you whether you have lost as much as I did through your drinking. But I can tell you that if you think your drinking is a problem, then it probably is. And the scale of the problem is likely much more severe than you currently realize.

I’m catching up on the self-discovery, self-acceptance, and relationship-building that I missed out on because of my drinking, but I can still feel grief over how much I have missed. Life is so obviously not about wandering around in semi-blackout.

The only regret I have about getting sobered up is that I didn’t do it twenty years earlier. For problem drinkers, the best time to get sober was years and years ago. The second-best time is today.

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