33 Weeks of Sobriety

How being selfish is the least selfish thing you can do. My best blog in a while...

Today I have been sober for 33 weeks. 231 days.

Sobriety

I don’t have a whole lot to add to my sobriety this week. Which is a good thing. I had a good week last week. So the fact that it doesn’t feel like a lot has changed is comforting. If last week had been a bad week and nothing had changed this week, then that would be bad. In fairness, I didn’t really get exposed to many circumstances or environments where I would have been tempted to drink. But that is only half of the factors that can tempt someone. The external factors.

This will be different from person to person, but external factors have been less of an issue for me through my sobriety. External factors are predictable and controllable. What do I mean? An external factor might be going to a Christmas party. It might be catching up with a friend for lunch at a pub. These are predictable. We can prepare ourselves for them mentally. We can put measures in place to control the risks.

The other half of the factors are internal. These are the fuckin’ mongrels. Why? Because we have significantly less control over them. I can go through a period like I am now where I am feeling really positive about my sobriety, then wake up tomorrow and have craving after craving after craving. There are some controllable or manageable factors around the cravings. Things like making sure I exercise most days, trying to eat more whole foods in place of processed food (processed sugar is brain poison), being conscious of my sleep hygiene, and making sure I set time aside to spend with my family with my phone on do not disturb to ensure I am being as present as I possibly can be, to name a few. I have found that when I tick most of these boxes, I am generally in a better place mentally.

My drinking and drug use were always relative to the stressors in my life at the time. I have ADHD, I’m always fuckin’ stressed. My mum used to say to me as a kid “you’re the only child I know that will die of a stomach ulcer” (stress can cause stomach ulcers). Maybe someone should’ve taken me to see someone about that, hey mum? I’m kidding, I’m not bitter, honest…

Through my sobriety, I have slowly learned what does and doesn’t help me. It’s a little more complex than “go for a run, won’t want to drink”. Even through my worst period leading up to my meltdown at Easter, I was super fit, trained more days than I didn’t, and often hungover. It’s more about doing all the things that I have identified that help me. But even when I do tick all of those boxes, there is still no guarantee that the cravings and urges simply will not show up. You can not control them. All you can do is put yourself in the best position possible to hopefully avoid them completely, minimise the impact they have on you or the severity of them when they happen, and lastly have some last-resort coping mechanisms to get you through the craving. My current coping mechanism is a little bit of self-talk, and it goes a little something like this, “dude, a craving lasts 15 fucking minutes. If you can’t go 15 fucking minutes without a drink, you are weak as fucking piss. Are you weak as piss? And you’re gonna let the temptation of drinking beat you because you’re too weak to abstain for 15 minutes? Don’t be fuckin’ weak”. Extreme, yeah, maybe a little. But it works for me.

The moral of all the dribble above is simple. Do not become complacent. Yeah, I’m going well, that’s fantastic, but there is no time to become complacent. People stay sober for 30-plus years and then relapse. You’re never truly free from the cravings or the stressors that can drive the cravings. You have to stay vigilant and not take for granted these purple patches you go through where you feel like you’ll never have another craving ever again. Enjoy them, and celebrate your progress, but understand and appreciate the ongoing nature of the challenge at hand. While ever you’re alive, things will challenge you, and while ever things challenge you, you’re at risk of succumbing to the temptation. Stay strong legends.

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My Name is Sam, and I am Selfish

I have to be honest here. I’m a little bit pissed off.

Am I Really Selfish?

It was recently drawn to my attention that some people have questioned my motives for getting sober. I need to tread carefully here because I may have misinterpreted what I’ve been told and I’m trying hard not to allow it to elicit a negative response. When I first heard this criticism the time between the stimulus and response was very, very short. Fuck it, I’ll admit it. I snapped. I got pissed off. Putting space between stimulus and my response is something I am constantly working on and from the above and clearly need to do more work on it.

Fortunately, I was able to reflect on it later after my emotional brain had run out of energy and see it for what it really was. Through no fault of their own, some people just don’t understand. Why would they? Unless they had been through something similar or had someone close to them go through something similar, why would they have a need to learn?

The nuts and bolts of it are simple, you can not get sober for anyone other than yourself. You can try. You can take the first step(s) because someone else wanted you to. But if you aren’t ready to, or simply don’t want to get sober for yourself, you won’t. I wish it were different. I wish I could say that I got sober for my son, my partner, my parents, or my siblings. But the fact is, I didn’t.

Sure, I have used them as motivators along the way, “selfishly” though, I did it all for my big, fat self. The criticism that I have heard, albeit second hand is along the lines of “oh it’s interesting that he didn’t get sober for his partner or his son” and I agree, it’s really fuckin’ interesting. You’d think that these external motivators would be enough for someone to “just not drink”. I wish it were, but it really isn’t that fuckin’ simple.

In my experience, it’s important to look at why someone drinks in the first place. My family wasn’t the reason for my substance abuse issues. Not directly anyway. They are an external factor. All the poor decisions I made, all the times I showed little to fuckin’ zero willpower and caved to cravings and urges, were all down to internal factors. I think ironically, the reason someone drinks has to be the reason that they stop drinking as well.

Bare with me here, because this might be tricky for me to explain.

I believe that I drank and used drugs the way that I did because as a child with undiagnosed ADHD, I never learned to regulate my emotions. I never developed appropriate coping mechanisms for dealing with complex or negative feelings and emotions. Kids with ADHD think that their emotional needs are unimportant. Couple that with the “don’t cry/she’ll be right/toughen up” bullshit generation I was raised in resulting in spending all my life thinking that how I felt simply didn’t matter.

Fast forward to adulthood, on the inside I am still just that small boy with an inability to regulate his emotions that don’t feel as though his emotional needs are important to anyone else. Only now, it’s deeper ingrained in me. As we get deeper and deeper into adulthood, we accrue more and more responsibilities. The consequences of our actions start to grow in significance. We’re starting to make decisions about careers, investing in property, and starting families. These are some big ticket fucking stressors.

Combine these stressors with a person who has grown up believing that their problems aren’t important and you have a person dealing with a whole lot of fucking stress and no one to talk about them to. Sure, there are people there who would happily listen, but when someone has spent years and years being convinced that their problems aren’t important to others and have trained themselves to believe that reaching out to someone to talk to will only make them a burdensome, you can start to see why someone in this position will look for alternate coping mechanisms.

I drank from the age of 16. Almost every weekend, until I was 33. I had periods of my life where things would start getting a little out of hand. I quit drinking for three months when I was about 23 because I had identified I was treading a very fine line. I’ve used drugs since I was 18. I have always drank to get drunk. That’s what you did when you were 16. That was the whole point. I’ve never seen the point of enjoying a couple of drinks and then just stopping. I could never grasp the concept of just having a couple. What a waste. Empty calories. I’d rather just drink water. If I’m drinking, it’s because it does something to/for me. I guess I just drank the way I did when I was a kid all the way up until I stopped drinking.

Although at times my drinking caused fights with partners, friends, family members, and the like, it never really threatened to derail my life. I even failed a drug test and got fired from a company I was working for in Queensland. I had no job, I was 1200k’s from home and somehow managed to find myself another job in a matter of days and everything was okay. Because everything turned out okay, I was young and dumb enough to believe that nothing needed to change.

It wasn’t until shortly after we bought our first home in May 2020 and COVID lockdowns hit that things started to take a more serious turn. With the benefit of hindsight, I am now able to reflect and see a key chain of events that ultimately led to my breakdown, and they were all stressors. Stressors that I failed to manage appropriately. At the start of the year, we found out we were expecting our son. Around the same time, we were presented with an opportunity to move to the coast through my work. We’d also had our house evaluated and were looking to do some renovations. With that evaluation came a rental evaluation. We worked out that we would be able to keep our house in Canberra and buy another house on the coast. An amazing opportunity that I am eternally grateful for.

I knew that in July/August we would go through a bunch of changes all in a short period of time that would pile stress on us. Given I love to catastrophise by nature, I began freaking the fuck out. Telling my bosses that I’d be moving on, dealing with property managers in Canberra, brokers, real estate agents, solicitors, packing the house, finding and buying a new house at the coast, freaking the fuck out about how the fuck I was going to learn to look after another human when at 33 years old I was still struggling to look after myself, all with an increasingly pregnant partner who was getting more tired, sore and swollen each and every day, she did an incredible job given the circumstances and I am very grateful for that. I definitely made things worse for myself by panicking for more than the circumstance warranted, but to a large degree, that’s just the fuckin’ way I am.

So what does someone do when faced with a situation like this? Someone with ADHD so is prone to stress and overwhelm. Someone who never built an effective mechanism for dealing and coping with stressors. They revert back to the only thing they know.

This was where things really started to get out of hand, and it makes perfect sense… now.

More stress equals more stress relief. I went from having a beer on weekends to drinking from Thursday to Sunday and using drugs most weekends, sometimes both nights, sometimes all weekend. I went from making spur-of-the-moment, drunken decisions to buy drugs, to sneakily withdrawing cash from the shared account midweek to make sure I had cash for drugs later that week. It was all because I had piled all this stress onto myself without having the ability to cope with said stress.

It’s difficult but also important for me to accept that I was in fact prioritising my substance use at times. It was starting to have an impact on my work, my family, some of my friends, and of course, me.

I was miserable, everything was too hard, and the drugs and alcohol were only making it harder, but towards the end there, I genuinely felt powerless against it, and that was fucking terrifying. I was staring down the barrel of doing three of the most stressful things you can do as an adult, all within a month of each other, and I felt powerless against drugs and alcohol. I started to feel like I was losing all control if I hadn’t already.

Fine, I’m Selfish.

So how does someone regain control in a situation like this? Someone who truly believes that their problems are just that, theirs. Someone who truly believes that talking about their stressors will only burden others and force their stress onto the other person? How can someone who truly believes that go to anyone they care about with their problems? They can’t. They feel like they have nowhere to go. So they fall deeper and deeper into the coping mechanism they are most familiar with. In my case, drugs, and alcohol.

Like it or not, they have to be selfish.

Once you hit rock bottom, the only way out is to be selfish. You need to do whatever you have to do to claw your way out. I was staring into the most stressful period of my life to date. I was fucking terrified. Removing my most comfortable coping mechanism, albeit an unhealthy one that was only adding to my stress long-term, made things even harder again.

The timing wasn’t good. I’ll forever carry the guilt that my partner had to put up with me during this dark period because of the impact it had on her first and possibly only pregnancy. A time that should be full of joy and excitement.

The facts are though, I had no choice. I had to stop. I had to channel what little spare energy I had into my sobriety. I had no choice. I had to stop drinking and using drugs.

The reason I couldn’t get sober for anybody else is simple. You can not fix an internal issue with an external motivator. Sure, there were times when I was struggling to stay sober and some self-talk along the lines of “just get through today for your partner/future child/family” was beneficial, but addiction and sobriety are much more complex than that.

To put it simply, I drank and took drugs because I didn’t love myself. I had developed low self-worth from believing that I wasn’t as important as everyone else throughout my life. The only path out of it is the same path you took. You have to undo all of what you believed about yourself. 33 years worth. It’s drawn out and fucking hard. I wish it was as simple as taking someone who has never loved themselves and just saying “alright mate, you have to love yourself now”, but it’s not. Every single time that I had thought that I was less than, or unworthy, I applied another layer to that compounding belief. Each and every one of those layers have to be peeled back off, one by one and no one can do it for you. People can support you but they can’t do it for you. Say you set yourself a challenge of doing 1,000 push-ups in a day. People can stand around and encourage you, they can get you something to eat and drink, they can support you, but you have to do the fucking push-ups. It’s fucking tiring. You go through phases where you feel good and you’re getting a lot done at one time, then you hit a wall and feel like the next push-up is impossible let alone the 500+ you have to go. But you have no choice, you have to get it done.

As I’ve said a bunch of times, the hard work that’s gone into this, every single bit of it, is far better than the alternative.

Actually, Nah, I’m Not Selfish.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”

- Jim Rohn

I like this quote. I believe it too. The only thing I would add to it is “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with including yourself”.

I am well aware that the timing of my breakdown wasn’t good. But sometimes we don’t have control over these things. I have said I carry guilt around with me because I negatively impacted my partner’s first and possibly only pregnancy. I have to live with that and attempt to make peace with that. I had to desert my partner and family at times when I had dark moments or moments of struggle. that’s still difficult for me to digest.

Getting sober isn’t like what you see in the movies. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in some Hamptons-style retreat where you walk barefoot on the plush fucking grass that somehow doesn’t make you the slightest bit itchy.

It’s fucking hard. At times it’s ugly. It’s drawn out and gritty. At times it’s not nice to be around. To those who had to experience the worst of it and still experience the ongoing struggle, I am sorry. I’m sorry that I got myself into such a mess. I’m sorry that I let it get so bad before doing something about it. But if it didn’t get so bad, maybe I would never have done anything about it and I’d still be bounding along the line just above that mental fucking breakdown line.

I will never ever regret getting sober. I can’t change the circumstances in which it happened. I am sympathetic to those who were affected by my initial struggles. But I will never, ever accept that what I did was selfish.

This could sound like a cop-out so some, and if it does to you, I’m sorry you feel that way, but the people around me deserve the best version of me that I can give to them. If you truly love and care for people, you will want to give them the best version of yourself. You are one of their five people.

Through my actions, I was dragging down the averages of the five people I spend the most time with. Through no fault of their own, their average was being brought down by someone who was too scared to deal with things properly. Someone who ran from their problems. Someone who was too much of a coward to face their problems. To me, I WAS being selfish before I was sober but prioritising myself for a period of time while I focused on my sobriety was far from selfish.

I had to do what I had to do when I had to do it. I was unwell. I still am, just much less so. I will have to manage this forever, no matter how much work I do. I just hope it continues to get more and more manageable and that I maintain the trajectory I am currently on. By doing what I have done, by being “selfish” I have raised the average of those five people closest to me. Whether I like it or not, I dragged them down with me, now it’s my responsibility to bring them back up with me.

So I’m going to keep prioritising and working on myself. I’m going to keep making time for myself to exercise. I’m going to keep making sure I get adequate sleep each day. I’m going to keep spending hours each week writing. I’m going to keep investing money into myself through my psychologist Because I am a selfish prick! I’m kidding. I’m going to keep doing these things because I know this is how I manage my sobriety. These are the things I need to prioritise to ensure that when I do spend what little free time I have with those that matter the most, I am the best possible version of myself at the time.

I have got my exercise done and out of the way in the morning while they’re asleep to kickstart my day with a bunch of endorphins and so I know I’ve burnt plenty of calories so I can feel good about myself and not feel like a lazy piece of shit.

I’ve gone to bed early to make sure I have had enough rest so that the next day I have the energy to tackle whatever challenges get thrown my way.

I’ve gone to work early while they sleep to get my blogs done with no one around so I get less distracted and they take me less time to do than they would if I were at home surrounded by distractions. My blogs help me empty my brain, blow off some steam, and walk into the house of an afternoon with way less chatter in my head, allowing me to be more present for the people who matter most.

I’ve been paying to see my psychologist regularly and making time to do the homework she has set out for me because that is what will truly free me from the shackles off of my own mind. The more work I do in this space, the more I’ll be able to love myself. The more I’m able to love myself the better my mood will be. I’ll be able to reduce the amount of chatter in my mind. The less my mind is racing, the more present I will be when spending time with my family.

If working on myself, and in turn raising the average of those I care about the most, being more present and offering them the best and most complete version of myself to them that I can, is selfish, Then call me fucking selfish.

Ultimately, I don’t really care if people think I am selfish. This blog is not about defending myself to people, especially those who haven’t been close enough to get an accurate snapshot of the whole situation. This is about changing people’s perceptions of people struggling with mental health and addiction issues who are actively trying to do something about it. What these people are doing is hard. Really fucking hard. There’s a reason a lot of people struggle with these issues for the entirety of their life. Go fucking go easy on them. Be gentle. Love and support them. Help them become a better version of themselves. Criticising someone with already low self-worth is not going to help them, but it will make things worse.

I think the thing we all need to realise is that when we improve ourselves, everyone benefits. This shit I am doing is fucking hard. Peeling back these layers all on my own is fucking hard. Doing it with a young family, a full-time job, a small business at home and everything else is fucking hard.

But I am doing it by choice. I am choosing to what’s best for me because I believe what is best for me is organically what’s best for those closest to me. I know I’ve been a prick at times throughout this journey. But I know that I am doing what’s right. I know that what I am doing will be worth it in the long run. In fact, I wholly believe it’s what I have to do and it’s the only option.

If you, dear reader, still think I’m selfish, I am sorry. But there isn’t much I can do for you.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

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Movember

Just wanted to shout out everyone who donated to my Movember page. I raised over $1700 which is pretty fuckin’ wild given I was only raising money for a few weeks.

I truly appreciate the support of each and every one of you. Thank you for your generous donations to such an amazing cause and thank you for providing me with the accountability that I needed for me to finish my longest-ever run.

I’m already thinking of ways to do it bigger and better next year. Looking at you

Struggling by Ben Alexander

Running for Resilience

, Talk soon...

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Guys, please, if anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, uber eats driver, or me, just talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800