Sobriety

Sobriety is the state of not having any measurable levels or effects from mood-altering drugs, including marijuana or other drugs. Sober most often refers to alcohol consumption. Another definition from the dictionary is the quality of being staid or solemn.

Quotes

• Beware the deadly fumes of that insane elation
  Which rises from the cup of mad impiety,
  And go, get drunk with that divine intoxication
  Which is more sober far than all sobriety.
  • William R. Alger, "The Sober Drunkenness", Poetry of the Orient (1865), p. 167.

• One's physical comforts and wants, therefore, should be ordered according to the demands of health and strength, not according to the calls of pleasure. And if we will only bear in mind the superiority and dignity of our nature, we shall realize how wrong it is to abandon ourselves to excess and to live in luxury and voluptuousness, and how right it is to live in thrift, self-denial, simplicity, and sobriety.
  • Cicero, On Duties, 1.106.

• Sobriety, as opposed to inebriety and gluttony, is of admirable use in teaching men that nature is satisfied with a little, and enabling them to content themselves with simple and frugal fare.
  • Epicurus, as quoted in Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers (Half-Hours with the Freethinkers) by Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts (1877)

• When I was drinking, bad music would find its way into my life.
  • singer-songwriter Tony Molina on drinking and recovery, from a Yellow Green Red interview, May 4, 2026

• I quit social media for good in 2016, so those two things – being offline and sobriety – restored my overall focus, taste, ability, work ethic, and I also got more serious about record collecting and digging deeper and educating myself on music more than making music myself, all those things times ten. It’s like night and day, the difference.
  • Tony Molina, from a Yellow Green Red interview, May 4, 2026

See also

• Rationality
• Drunkenness
• Category: Drugs