Hello and Welcome to The Joy Buzz! My name is Elise. I am 37 at the time of writing this introductory post and live in Atlanta, GA with my husband, two cats, dog and lots of plants.This is my second blog. The first is called Belle Meets World, and is my beauty and style blog that I’ve had for years. The Joy Buzz will be devoted to sobriety and recovery. In it, I’ll write about my own experience with sobriety and recovery, the various tools and resources I’m exploring, mocktail recipes, and healthy practices such as meditation and mindfulness.
My sobriety date is September 1st, 2018. As of today, I’m nearly 22 months sober, but I’d say I’m only 1 year into truly discovering and practicing the concept of recovery. It’s been a wild ride but also the most important decision I’ve ever made in my life.
My story is this: I realized slowly but surely that I had a habit that wasn’t serving me. I was sad, depressed, unproductive, cranky, sleepless, dissatisfied with life, bloated, puffy, headachy, and foggy. I wasn’t at risk for losing my job, my home, my relationship. I’m very ambitious and attentive to all those things. What awakened me to the need to change was a general notion that the root of most of this bad stuff wasn’t 700 different things but rather one thing that is known to cause each and every one of those symptoms I listed out above. The second layer to that realization was that I was soothing myself with the very thing that was making me feel all these awful things. Booze.
I work in HR, and my employers do know that I am sober and in recovery. They are supportive, and I feel so grateful for that. I’ve also come out on Facebook and Instagram as sober and in recovery. I’ll write about that experience sometime soon since I know a lot of people in recovery wonder what it will be like when they do it.
I named this blog The Joy Buzz for a few reasons. 1. There is so much joy in sobriety. 2. It’s a play on words. Buzz means news but also is that buzzed feeling we sober folks used to chase aggressively with copious amounts of alcohol. 3. In sobriety, you are sometimes overcome with a buzz of joy. The joy of waking up without a hangover. The joy of never having to drink again. The joy of finding sober people who somehow get you on a level no one else can – even when they’ve only just met you. And much more. It’s not all unicorns and hearts and stars. Not by any means. But it is worth every moment. One day at a time.
Thanks for being here. Let’s support each other through this journey!
