15 Months of Sobriety- The Rebuild Week 13
15 things I wish I knew about sobriety/addiction 15 months ago
Today I have been sober for 15 whole, fucking months. 455 days. It’s scary to think how quickly that time has gone, especially given how hard it has been at times.
I still don’t fully understand where I sit in terms of milestones, particularly in regard to my sobriety. While reflecting on your progress is important, I still worry placing too much emphasis on milestones can lead to complacency. As in, “Once I get to said number of days, I can relax a little”. But relapse is something that can happen to anyone, at any time, no matter how well they are doing. So for me, it’s important to remain vigilant. So I guess for now, the best thing to do is recognise the achievement for what it is but also understand that if long-term sobriety is the goal, as always, the number of days behind you doesn’t ultimately matter. As cliche as it sounds, it truly is just the next 24 hours we need to be concerned with.
Recently I’ve noticed that most of my blogs have been about some realisation I have had that would have been even more useful to me earlier on in the piece. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to reflect on 15 things I wish I had known 15 months ago. Almost like a note to myself 15 months in the past.
The hope for myself is that it serves as a little reminder to myself of what’s possible but, more importantly, an opportunity for someone reading this to have some of these realisations a little sooner than I did. Hopefully, it helps someone.
I’ll put links to some articles I and others have written at the bottom of some sections that I believe will help. Please remember that this article or any article referenced is not intended as medical advice. They are simply the lived experiences of others. You should always see a health professional when considering sobriety.
1. You Are Addicted Enough to Do Something About It.
Not long after I started drinking, I realised I didn’t drink or use drugs the same way others did. Others would use substances to enhance their social experience. Early on, I knew I was using substances to escape the perils of my mind. I knew it was a problem and knew it was unhealthy. However, I had formed a view that I wasn’t addicted enough to do anything about it. I was functional. I had a job, my bills were paid, and everyone around me who mattered was doing okay, so I figured it was fine. I think to a degree, I was lying to myself subconsciously to justify some actions that didn’t sit comfortably with me.
If you are uncomfortable with using substances, gambling, shopping, or any other vice, that is enough to do something about it. You don’t have to be homeless. Your actions don’t need to have a direct negative impact on the lives of others for you to have a problem. Pain is personal, there is no metric to measure it. If you believe an issue needs addressing, it needs addressing. That’s all the proof you need. We only live once, don’t waste time procrastinating because you think you’re not worth it because you are.
Click here to read my article Not Addicted Enough.
2. You Have to Learn to Be Selfish.
A lot of people with addiction issues find it difficult to be selfish. Usually, we have low self-esteem. We don’t think we are worthy of our own energy and effort, let alone the energy and effort of others. We like to do things for others because they say nice things to us, which gives us a little boost of self-esteem. So we condition ourselves to prioritise serving others because, in a cruel twist of irony, that’s what makes us feel good.
One of the harshest realities of sobriety for me is that you cannot get sober for anyone but yourself. Nobody can get sober for you. No amount of begging, pleading or intervention will intrinsically motivate someone to get sober. That’s not how intrinsic motivation works.
If you or someone else is struggling to get sober for someone or something else, it doesn’t mean they don’t love you or care about you. It doesn’t mean they’re not trying. It doesn’t mean they don’t want sobriety. It just means that they haven’t yet found or built that intrinsic motivation required to do so.
You have to be selfish. You have to find a way to prioritise yourself. Maybe not forever, but sobriety is hard, especially initially. You will not have the energy to look after everyone and everything else or take enough care of yourself to achieve sobriety.
The kicker is the people around you will benefit more from you doing the work on yourself than they ever will have from you just doing things for them because you present an improved version of yourself to them.
Click here to read my article on the importance of being selfish.
3. Identify and Build a Support Network.
As human beings, we need support when going through difficult times. Sobriety is certainly no different.
I think having a small group of compassionate, understanding and empathetic people is important. Try to identify some people you feel comfortable talking to who won’t judge you.
When I got sober, I was fortunate enough to have a friend living with me who had just passed seven years of sobriety. He is someone that I don’t often rely on, but I know he is there for me if I ever need to talk. I have a supportive, patient and understanding partner as well.
It’s not lost on me how fortunate I am to have these people in my corner, and I understand that not everyone is as lucky as I am, but there are several other options out there.
You can see a psychologist. I started seeing my psychologist again shortly after getting sober. I went to my GP and asked for a mental health plan. This provided me with 12 rebated sessions with a psychologist for a year. Initially, I was seeing my psychologist fortnightly and later tapered that back off to monthly.
The sober community is quite a niche. It’s often hard to find people locally or socially from the community, especially given the circles you are currently operating in that led you down this path in the first place. However, the internet is also an amazing place to find support. In fact, sobriety restored my faith in the internet a little bit. For many people, it’s much easier to talk openly via the internet than in person and using the internet, you can funnel millions of like-minded people from all around the world into one small place.
There are countless support groups on Facebook, you can search the hashtags #odaat and #RecoveryPosse on Twitter and Instagram. You can now dial into AA and NA meetings via Zoom, which is much less confrontational than lobbing up to in-person meetings. You can Search for Sobriety on Reddit. You can even find countless great articles right here on Substack.
Ultimately, you know the support you need. You need to be brave enough to ask for it.
Click here to check out
ever-growing resource of amazing Substacks on sobriety, SoberStack.
4. Work Past Your Fear of Other Peoples's Opinions.
I remember when I first got sober, I was in such a high state of anxiety that I felt like I was almost manic. I would get so wound up by the smallest of things.
One of the main issues that I couldn’t get off my mind was what the fuck would I tell people when they see me socially and I’m not drinking? I’m the party guy. I’m always up for a drink. I can’t tell them that I had a drug and alcohol-induced breakdown, and now I more or less have to get sober. So what will I tell them? I thought, given my reputation, if I told people I wasn’t drinking today, tonight, this weekend, whatever, then they would instantly assume that I had done something horrible or embarrassing, and now I was forcing myself to have a break. This, of course, is the truth. However, this is not how people think.
The thing is, what others think of you is none of your business. No one cares that much about you. Humans are inherently selfish. It sounds confronting initially, however, when we choose to look at it from another perspective, it gives us the freedom to do whatever we believe is best for us. Why you are or aren’t doing something is absolutely no one else’s business, and frankly, people are too tied up in their own self-important bullshit to truly care about what you are doing and your motivation for doing it.
writes a great blog called all about how she hid her sobriety for ten years and is now breaking her silence on it. Click the highlighted links to check them out!5. Communication Is Key
American footballer and actor Terry Crews once said, “Addiction grows in secrecy”. When he said that, it hit me like a truck.
My substance abuse spiralled out of control during a particularly stressful period of my life where admittedly, I probably bit off a little more than I could chew, and I was too proud to admit that it was all getting too much for me.
I didn’t know how to communicate my struggles without feeling like I had failed myself and those around me. Had I been able to, perhaps things wouldn’t have had to get as bad as they did before I sought help.
I think we need to invest energy into learning how to communicate how we feel effectively. No one can help us if they don’t know we need help, but we’re going to be reluctant to ask for help until we learn that asking for help is not a weakness and learn to ask for help in a way that doesn’t make us feel like we are a burden on others.
When you open up and talk about how you feel, you will start feeling better. It may be incremental initially, but it works, and you will see improvements.
Click here to read my article Communication is Key.
6. Let Go of Guilt- It’s Slowing Your Progress
I think there is a misconception that people in active addiction enjoy it or do it because they want to. In most cases, I don’t believe this is true. Addiction is complex, and I cannot go into those complexities now.
What I want to stress, though, is that people in active addiction and recovery are often holding onto a lot of guilt. We feel like we have let people down. We feel like we have let ourselves down. We feel like we have underachieved and are still underachieving. We are a community of people susceptible to low self-esteem and feel like nobody is proud of us or anything we have done.
I think addicts are the one community who probably wishes time machines were real more than most other groups. But the harsh reality is they don’t exist, and we need to accept this. We cannot do anything to undo things we have done in the past other than let it go.
This doesn’t mean we should forget the things we have done, as they serve as handy motivators to keep us on track. However, we must find a way to let go of our guilt for our past actions. In recovery, we need to be looking for ways to rebuild our self-esteem and find reasons why we are worth the effort. Holding onto guilt is only going to weigh us down.
They say holding onto a grudge is like drinking poison in the hope that the other person gets sick. The same applies to guilt. It’s like drinking poison (no pun intended) in an effort to punish your past self. It’s simply not going to work.
Everyone on the planet has regrets and has done things they wish they could change. You are no different to everyone else in this regard. Don’t drink the poison. Let go of the guilt.
7. Rome Wasn’t Built in A Day- Implement One Thing at A Time.
“For as long as I have to”. That’s how long I wanted to stop drinking when I first got sober. That was my only real goal. At the time, the long-term future was irrelevant to me. I had a big problem right here, and it would take all my attention and energy right now to sort it out.
There’s a reason why we say, “One day at a time”. As simple and cliche as it sounds, it’s just true. It’s where our priorities must lie. In a way, there is no point in setting sobriety goals long into the future because the future does not, and will not, ever exist. It will always be out of arms reach. We can’t control that. What we can control, however, is what we do today.
Initially, I only focused on not drinking, using drugs, and exercising daily. They were the only non-negotiables I had. I had other things I wanted to achieve, but none were as important as these three. I did this for probably three months before I felt ready to return to my psychologist. Months later, I started to track some health metrics like sleep, resting heart rate and heart rate variability. Months after that is started to implement some mindfulness practices like breathwork and journalling.
My point is that you are emotionally vulnerable when you first get sober. Motivation is great. It’s a lot like when people have New Year’s resolutions and wake up on the first of January ready to take on the world, but they try to quit drinking, smoking, eating sugar and training for a marathon simultaneously. It’s just not sustainable. It’s reported that 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by mid-February, and I believe it’s because people try to reinvent themselves overnight. It’s too hard and too much stress.
If anything, this is a time when we should be cutting ourselves a little more slack than usual. Often it’s the high expectations we place on ourselves that get us into this mess in the first place. Naturally, we will want to follow the same plan but must work to avoid it. If your problem is drinking, your focus needs to be on not drinking. Instead of spreading that energy and motivation over many different goals, channel it into one main goal. Do repetitions until you are confident that you have habituated it. Only then should you try to implement a new habit. Then repeat this process.
8. Practice Gratitude- Focus on What You DO Have.
Gratitude is a bit of a buzzword these days, but there is a reason why it’s so common. It’s bloody good to be grateful.
I think the issue with gratitude, though, is that people sometimes use it incorrectly. I grew up in a time when if you spoke about your grievances, it was often viewed as complaining. If you’re complaining, then clearly, you’re ungrateful.
“Mum, I don’t feel like eating this for dinner”
“Don’t be so ungrateful!”.
Gratitude is not about accepting a shitty thing because you have some not-so-shitty things. To me, gratitude is about acceptance. Accepting that things are not and never will be perfect. Being at peace with the fact that we may never have all the things we desire and remembering that although there are always things we should be working towards, we already have a lot, and it it’s just as important to make the time to appreciate what we do have. One does not offset the other. They coexist.
To me, people in addiction or recovery need hope. We are so susceptible to slumping into a “woe is me” mindset, and I think gratitude provides us with much-needed hope. It can be a flickering light in an otherwise dark time.
Try using a gratitude journal before you go to bed each night. Commit to doing it for a month or more. Be patient, but I’ll be very surprised if it doesn’t make a difference in your life.
9. Embrace the Real You.
For a long time, I felt like I was afraid to be my true self. I felt like I had to be vulnerable or showing any sign of softness would make me appear weak. This is probably pretty common among people who suffer from depression, anxiety and addiction.
It comes back to the fear of other people’s opinions. We guide our true selves instead of embracing our true selves because we want to control what others think of us. Guess what? You can’t. You never will be able to. People will form their opinions of you based on their interpretations of the way you present yourself, and there is absolutely fucking nothing you can do to control any of that.
So we conduct ourselves in a manner that we believe will please others, but we don’t know for sure if it does because we’ve convinced ourselves that pleasing others is a good thing because when we do that, we get a little spike of dopamine when they say nice things about it, but all the while we are neglecting ourselves. Over time, we embed these neural pathways and arrive at a point where we are so conditioned to neglect who we truly are that we have lost ourselves.
Life is too short for this shit. I wish I had figured this out so much sooner. Embrace who you are, and discover and pursue your passions, regardless of what others think. These are the things that will provide you with the contentment and fulfilment you’ve been longing for. If you’re in a position where your addictive behaviours have landed you in a place you’re uncomfortable being in, it is time to change. We know what Einstein said about repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Click here to read my article New Year, real Me.
10. You’re Craving Dopamine, Find an Alternative.
One key contributor to addictive behaviour is the pursuit of dopamine. We often cave to vice because we are seeking a dopamine hit. Substance, gambling, internet and gaming, food, sex, porn and shopping addictions are all motivated by that little hit of dopamine we get, which usually spikes its highest right before we do the actual thing.
Often people in recovery will be seen to “replace” their addiction to one vice with a healthier alternative. I’ve seen people bagged for this, and I can not wrap my head around it. Are we not better off being addicted to Exercise, meditation, poke bowls and green smoothing than fucking heroin and meth?
When we understand dopamine's role in addiction, we can start looking for healthier alternatives. The way I see it, dopamine that e exchange money for, drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex in some cases, shopping etc, are unhealthy sources of dopamine. We don’t have to work (I don’t mean a job) to attain them, but rather make a transaction. Dopamine that we can’t pay for and have to earn is usually a much healthier alternative and will make you feel better for longer. Things like exercise, pursuing your passions, serving others, spending time being present with people you care about, practising mindfulness and achieving small goals, to name a few.
Essentially, you get out what you put in. If dopamine is easily attained, it’s probably not going to be a healthy or sustainable thing to do.
Click here to read my article ADHD, Addiction and Dopamine
11. Sobriety Is More Than Abstinence- Embrace It.
It took me a while to realise this one. Maybe six months or more.
There is certainly no issue with simply abstaining from vice. If it works for you, it works for you. But I found that when you change your thinking from simply being sober to living a sober lifestyle, there’s a whole new world of sobriety for you on the other side, and it’s something I wish I had embraced earlier.
I was guilty of thinking that by getting sober, I would be “doing my Bit’ and that my brain would just kind of sort itself out. It didn’t, and it was naive of me to assume it would.
When your addiction is driven by underlying unresolved mental health issues, abstinence isn’t going to fix the problem. You will have the same problems you always did, minus your favourite coping mechanism. This works for some people, and that’s great. But for me, I knew I had to get sober to sort out the crap that was hiding under my addiction.
For me, it’s about the whole person change. For me, journaling, this blog, my psychologist, learning to communicate and practising mindfulness helped me and continues to help me embrace a sober lifestyle. This doesn’t mean you have to change who you are at your core, it means you have to embrace, explore and share who you are. Some things will be difficult to work through, but each and everything you work through will be worth it. I promise you.
Click here to read my article The Difference Between Being Sober and Living a Sober Lifestyle.
12. Set Alternate Goals.
I’ve found it beneficial to set myself non-sober-related goals to work with my sobriety. Sobriety can be tough, particularly in the early stages. As I said earlier, it’s important not to overwhelm yourself with too many goals and set your expectations too high, I think there’s a huge benefit in setting yourself some small, achievable goals along the way and making sure to celebrate the achievements as you go.
Let’s face it, we need the distraction, particularly early on.
This will help you in a couple of ways. Firstly, if you have something else to work toward, you won’t be sitting around all day thinking about not drinking/using drugs/gambling etc. This isn’t healthy. We need something else to direct our attention to when we find ourselves distracted by tempting thoughts. Secondly, without knowing it, you’re training yourself to start living, which will come in handy down the track. It forces you to get out and do things.
In early sobriety, I just made sure I went to the gym every morning. I had a 5-day rotation, however, if I go to the gym and didn’t feel like doing the exercises for that day, I would do what I enjoyed. I allowed myself that wiggle room because, at that stage, the most important thing was that I was getting out of the house and doing something that was good for me. If I had been strict about sticking to my gym plan, I would have been more likely to talk myself out of it. I just told myself, go to the gym, do the circuit you’re supposed to do if you feel up to it. If not, then do something you enjoy.
You don’t have to go to the gym, you can set a daily step goal, spend half an hour a day in the garden, commit to learning an instrument, do some knitting, whatever. Just make it something easily accessible, something you enjoy and something with minimal friction between you and achieving it.
13. Progress Isn’t Linear. Trust The Process.
As someone who suffers from ADHD, I struggle with patience. Once I decide I want something, I want it yesterday. As mentioned earlier, I got sober and thought things would get better on their own. They did get better, but sobriety did and continues to force me to do the work needed to keep me on the right path.
I’ve found that I can go through periods where I feel like I’m not making any progress, and then I will go through a period where I will make a lot of progress all at once, almost like it’s catching up.
Sobriety has taught me that if I am patient and follow my processes, those good periods of progress and enlightenment will come when they are ready to come. As addicts, we chase instant resolutions to our problems, and it’s difficult to trust that sitting in silence with court eyes closed for ten minutes each morning or that working our way through another difficult urge or craving is going to pay off for us down the track, but it does, trust me. Trust yourself. Trust the process.
14. It’s Worth It
I think if you asked almost anyone with a bit of sobriety under the belt, they will tell you that it’s all been worth it. But I can’t speak for anyone other than myself, so let’s stick to that.
Sobriety is hard. It was very hard in the early days. It gets easier, but it never gets easy. But when I look at my life now and my life 18 months ago, my life is exponentially better. The changes that have happened to my brain can’t be understated. I am so much less anxious. I am calmer. I am significantly more considered. the gap between a stimulus and a response is increasing, meaning I am more considered and less reactive when speaking.
The stresses that used to drive me towards drinking and using drugs don’t stress me as much as they used to, meaning the coping mechanism I was using was only making the stresses worse, which means welcome to the downward spiral.
I also found a whole bunch of unexpected physical health benefits too. On reflection, they don’t surprise me, but at the time, I was exercising purely to manage my mental health, but I think the pure abstinence from drugs and alcohol coupled with an increased volume of exercise helped to improve my all-around health.
Most importantly, I am a better partner, son, brother, uncle, and sibling than I used to be, and I am definitely a better father than I would have been had I not become sober. Along with the birth of my son, getting sober is the greatest thing to ever happen to me.
Click here to read my article The Bonus Physical Health Benefits of Sobriety
15. Sobriety IS Possible, For Anyone.
There are millions of people out there who are in active recovery right now. We can talk about who was “more addicted” or had a “worse problem”, but I think that rhetoric is toxic. It’s like having a Maltese Terrier standing next to a Great Dane. One is big and has short hair, one is small and has fluffy hair, usually some brown crap around its mouth and occasionally some dags of shit hanging off the fur around its arse. But Guess what? They’re both fucking dogs.
As I said at the top, there is no metric. Some people get sober at 18 years old, some people get sober at 70 years old. Some people overcome gambling addictions, some people overcome heroin, or these days, fentanyl addiction.
The fact that there are so many people out there in active recovery tells us that all people, from all walks of life, with all sorts of addictions can be helped. No one is immune to help or sobriety.
AA isn’t for me, but millions of people have found sobriety through AA. It took me four psychologists until I found the right one for me. The help is there. the help works. You must be willing to keep trying until you find the right balance.
I’m no expert, I’m just a bloke who failed to build appropriate coping mechanisms earlier in life, and when things got hard, I spiralled out of control, but if you think you need help or are considering sobriety, feel free to reach out and I’ll do whatever I can to help point you in the right direction.
I hope this helped someone.
Cheers Wankers.
X.
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Thank you for sharing SoberStack and huge recognition for your 15 months, Sam! Beautiful, powerful reflections—they speak to the inner work and the outer, everyday actions and practices. I consider folks who identify as being recovery to be some of the most courageous, most honest people I know. I feel truly grateful to call them community. Celebrating you, and cheering you on.
What passion are you pursing?