Tools For Early Sobriety

We share practical tools for early sobriety that replace chaos with calm and make nights safer. Meetings, routine, connection, HALT, and a progress mindset turn empty space into steady ground.

• meetings as rhythm, accountability, and social support
• 90-in-90 and online options across time zones
• building a weekly meeting mix for different needs
• routine to reduce evening risk and decision fatigue
• phone list as real invitation to connect
• HALT to meet basic needs before cravings grow
• progress over perfection and keep it simple
• patience and one-tool-at-a-time momentum

Remember, stay curious, stay connected, stay unbottled

Chapters

• 0:05 Welcome And Purpose
• 0:19 What Real-Life Sobriety Looks Like
• 1:16 Getting Practical: Tools That Help
• 2:56 Meetings As More Than Attendance
• 4:23 Filling Time And Social Needs
• 5:19 90-In-90 And Online Access
• 6:33 Environment Beats Motivation
• 7:16 Building A Weekly Meeting Plan
• 8:56 Routine As Stability
• 10:24 Reducing Decision Fatigue
• 11:30 The Phone List And Reaching Out
• 12:46 HALT: Hungry Angry Lonely Tired
• 14:15 Progress Not Perfection
• 15:45 Keep It Simple And Patient Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Hello, and welcome to Unbottle. My name is Marcy Backis, and I am your host. On today's episode, we're going to talk about early sobriety tools that actually help. Yep. Welcome to Unbottled. Again, I am Marcy, and this podcast is about sobriety, what it looks like, how people get started, how they move forward, one honest step at a time. Here we talk about real life sobriety, not perfection, not labels, not doing it right, just real people, real choices, and real support. If you're sober curious, newly sober, coming back after a break, or simply trying to understand your relationship with alcohol, you are welcome here. Take what helps, leave the rest, and most importantly, you don't have to do this alone. I am on the road doing my podcasts, been gone for six weeks. Well, five weeks now. Six weeks I'll be home. And then next week I'll be back in my regular little home studio. But I've been doing this on the road. So today we are getting practical. We've talked about the decision. We've talked about meetings. We talked about sponsorship last week. We talked about a day at a time. Now we're talking about something real. What actually helps in early sobriety? Because when you remove alcohol, there is space. And for some of us, it was a lot of space. For some of you, that space is gonna look different. The space is actually gonna look different for everybody. What space alcohol took up in your life is gonna be different for all of us. But there's gonna be time, there's gonna be feelings, there's gonna be restlessness, sometimes boredom, boredom, excuse me, sometimes anxiety. And without tools, that space can feel uncomfortable fast. And I think a lot of you have thought about that. Like without alcohol in my life, what is there? So today I'm giving you tools, not theory, not inspiration, just some tools you can use today. Is it gonna stay that way for the rest of your sobriety? Absolutely not. I want to speak on that. After 38 years, my sobriety now is very different than my original sobriety. Neither are right or wrong. They are just my sobriety meets me where I'm at. And I want yours too also. So the first thing we're gonna talk about in this is meetings. More than just attending. So let's start with meetings. Whether you're attending meetings through Alcoholics Anonymous or another recovery community, because remember, I got sober through AA, but I don't want to say that's the only way. And hopefully, as my podcast grows, we can get some people that want to share about other ways of they've been able to get sober. Because, for gosh sakes, I don't want there is not a one size fits all in sobriety. So whether you're attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, easy for me to say, or another recovery community, meetings serve a purpose beyond information. Oh, do they ever? They break isolation, they create a rhythm rhythm, they offer accountability, and they provide perspective. And for me, when I got sober, they provided my social outlet. I'm a very social being. Well, when I was younger, the older I get, the little less social I become. But I was very social and I need, and actually, I drank a lot in bars and at home. So I needed to fill a lot of time because let me tell you, alcohol was everywhere in my life. So meetings filled that for me. And early sobriety, especially frequency matters. You may hear people say 90 meetings in 90 days, and I subscribe to that theory. I think in your early sobriety, there is no room to not go to a meeting. And I'm also going to say in sobriety in 2026, there are 24-hour meetings online. What a gift. What an absolute gift. If you wake up in the middle of the night with feelings of anxiety, there's meetings all over the world. There's meetings you go to AA and you can get a meeting anywhere online. Even if you're not sober through AA, if you're sober through something else, you can use that as a tool. So I really do subscribe to 90 meetings in 90 days, no matter what you're doing. It isn't about punishment, it's about immersion. Filling your life with something that isn't alcohol because early sobriety needs repetition. That is a fact. Meeting and meetings do a lot of things. They interrupt that thought loop that says, you're fine, you're overreacting, you can handle this alone. If you can, God bless you. I will tell you, you are better off handling it with others. Even sitting quietly in a meeting shifts your environment. And environment matters more than motivation. An early sobriety, environment matters. It matters. So I want you to take in all that I just said. That's a lot. So use your meetings as a tool, is what I'm telling you. Use those meetings as a tool. I had mine set up every day of the week. Wednesday, I'm trying to think back. Wednesday night was a candlelight meeting. Saturday nights, I went to Malibu to a speaker meeting because it felt like I was getting out. I could get dressed up. I drove over the canyon to Malibu. I went to a great Malibu speaker meeting. I loved it. It was another different group of people than I was getting sober with. Once you find your group, you kind of go to the same meetings. I loved my Saturday night meeting. I went by myself and I went over the hill. And that gave me a feeling of like I was going out doing something special. What else are we going to talk about that we need in early sobriety? Routine is stability. And I loved my meetings. And again, we've talked about meetings. Find your meetings, go three times. If you still don't like a meeting, change it. You're going to want different types of meetings. In the beginning, you may only be comfortable with saker meetings where you don't have to share. As you get more into your sobriety, you're going to find book studies, step studies. Like I said, I love the Wednesday night candlelight meeting. Home meeting was by candlelight. Gave you that comfort of being a little bit anonymous in that meeting. So look around at different meetings. Try them. Alcohol often creates kiosk, chaos, kiosk, chaos in subtle ways. Sleep disruption. Oh my God, my sleep was horrible. Emotional swings, unpredictable evenings. You go home and you said, I'm not going to drink tonight. The next thing you know, you're drinking. All of those things. When alcohol leaves, routine becomes your friend. Not rigid control. That's not what I'm talking about. You must. Just some structure. Alcohol took away our structure, whether you think so or not. I was great at work, but after that, you never knew where I was going to be or where I was going to go or what was going to happen. The structure is things like waking up at a consistent time, planning your evenings instead of letting them happen by happenstance, scheduling meetings ahead of time, going to bed earlier. Routine reduces decision fatigue. And we, uh whether you know it or not, in your drinking career, you had a lot of decision fatigue. You were making decisions all the time. Where to go, what to do, what to drink, how much to drink, controlling your drinking, being around different people, don't want to be around them, want to go home, don't want to drink tonight, staying away from alcohol that whole night at home, sitting on the couch making deals with yourself. Insanity about decisions. Routine reduces decision fatigue. And decision fatigue is dangerous in early sobriety. The fewer spontaneous emotional decisions you make at 8:30 p.m., the better.

SPEAKER_01: 9:24

Structure does not restrict you, it protects you. The phone list tool.

SPEAKER_00: 9:32

This one is uncomfortable for many people, but it's important. And these days, I want to tell you what a gift you have. So when I got sober, pagers were new. That was usually the way you got a hold of your drug dealer. And answering machines were fairly new when I got sober in 1988. Those were our tools. We didn't have cell phones. You had to be on a landline. So these days, reaching out, calling someone, texting someone, saying I'm struggling is important. It's an important tool. Because we would call now, we were lucky we could leave our sponsor or someone in the program a message, but you couldn't get a hold of them all the time. I'm going to tell you, isolation feeds relapse. Connection interrupts it. When someone gives you their number at a meeting, it isn't polite filler. It's an invitation. Let me repeat that. When someone gives you their number at an AA meeting or any meeting that you're attending for sobriety, it isn't polite filler. It's an invitation. You can call when you're irritated, lonely, restless, confused. You could even call when you're happy and let them know you're having a good day and you wanted to share it with someone, that you were feeling strong, that you were feeling invincible, any of those things. But you can also call when you're just irritated, lonely, restless, confused. You don't necessarily need a dramatic reason. The act of reaching out weakens the urge to withdraw back into isolation.

SPEAKER_01: 11:27

And it's extremely powerful. All right. Have you been around long enough to hear HALT?

SPEAKER_00: 11:38

Any idea what HALT means? It's one of those acronyms like AA means Alcoholics Anonymous. KISS Method. Talk about that one later. There's a simple acronym often used in recovery: HALT. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. All of these states are dangerous. They lower your resilience. So I'm gonna tell you: if you're hungry, eat. If you're tired, rest. If you're lonely, reach out. Go to a meeting, go to a meeting online, call one of those phone numbers you were given. If you're angry, pause before reacting. Sobriety is not just about avoiding alcohol, it's about regulating your basic human needs. Food, rest, connection, and regulating our emotions are all human needs. When you take care of basic cra basics, cravings often shrink. So if you're craving alcohol, I want you to think about halt. Are you hungry? Are you angry? Are you lonely? Are you tired? Because if you're any of those things, that could be what the cravings come from. Address those things so you don't give in to the craving. Progress, not perfection. This is something that is so important. You will not do early sobriety perfectly. Oh, for gosh sakes, you will not. You may miss a meeting, snap at someone, have resentments, feel bored, feel flat. None of those equal failure. Let's go through that list again because I think it's super important and I don't want to gloss over it. You may miss a meeting, you may snap at someone, you may feel resentful, you may feel bored, or you may just feel flat. None of those equal failure.

SPEAKER_01: 13:57

Perfection has taken many people back out to drinking. Repeat that.

SPEAKER_00: 14:11

Progress says I stayed sober today. Even if it was the messiest day you've had. Talked about Hulk, hung hungry, angry, lonely, tired.

SPEAKER_01: 15:18

Guess method is keep it simple, stupid. Just in case I didn't fill that in. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. We strive for progress over perfection. Perfection gets you nowhere. We learn in progress.

SPEAKER_00: 15:38

Remember that. And trust me, in early sobriety, we got a lot to learn. Early sobriety is not glamorous, it's steady, it's repetitive, it's sometimes uncomfortable. But tools make it manageable. Meetings, routine, connection, basic self-care, and patience. Have patience with yourself. You don't need every tool all at once. Just start with one. And again, I want to thank you for spending this time with me. It's something, if something in this episode resonated, sit with it. If something didn't, let it go. This podcast about is about progress, not perfection, about honesty, not pressure. And remember, stay curious, stay connected, stay unbottled. Next episode, we're going to talk about something deeper, emotional sobriety, and what happens after the initial stability sets in. Until then, be gentle with yourself. You're doing something brave. My name is Marcy. This is Unbottled.