Sobriety: Better Than Prozac!
A new study finds that people in recovery are happier than their non-alcoholic peers.
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High or just happy?
By Rachael Brownell
Newcomers aren't always the happiest campers. The early days can be all about withdrawal, misery, and a struggle to stay away from that first drink. But many of those who stick around begin to feel sensation that "normal" people would call happiness. This is tempered, of course, with references to all the messiness of life—ill health, marital troubles, financial challenges—but to the AA veteran, these are part of accepting “life on life’s terms.” When I was new, I used to look around at the happy sober people and think I’d stumbled on a secret society of blissed-out spiritualists with horrible distant pasts. “We are not a glum lot,” says the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, referring to the sometimes eerily upbeat nature of many meetings. So are alcoholics and addicts in recovery actually happier than "normal" people?
According to Christopher Murray, a New York-based psychotherapist, “folks in recovery have learned to manage their emotions without reaching for a substance in order to let loose. Perhaps the step work and the sharing and anxious phone calls at three in the morning have taught them how to access all their feelings with greater ease.”
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