oh that ' s good to know <| sep |> This is a difficult thing . When I was still not confident in my new sober narrative I didn ' t want it known to just anyone . Now , I still don ' t push it out there . I discussed with my wife explicitly how I wanted , or didn ' t want , her to talk about it with people we knew . Including her like this made her a strong ally as I could have her discretely tell friendsfamily that I wasn ' t drinking and that lessened the social burden on me . We were able to come up with the right words that I could feel comfortable with putting out there and then she delivered them so I didn ' t have to . Any way it goes , readjusting to a new selfnarrative was awkward and uncomfortable but in my experience almost no one wanted to make it that way for me intentionally . The fact is that most people have huge misconceptions about alcoholism drinking problems and don ' t know how to act when confronted with it . On the other times , rare times of running in to a fellow out in the wild can be a nice bonding connection . BTW , the only people that gave me trouble about my new sobriety were people that had their own problems and wanted an enabler or were just being dicks . To these people I give them one polite rebuff and if they don ' t take the hint , I take a moment to form as caustic a response as I can manage .