42 Weeks of Sobriety

A very handy trick I learned fromm the sober community and how it can help anyone.

Feb 07, 2023

Today I have been sober for 42 weeks. 294 days. Edging closer and closer to that illustrious 300*.

Sobriety

It’s been a better week than last, where I had stronger cravings and thoughts of drinking and using drugs than I have had in a long time. But it hasn’t been perfect.

We spent a couple of nights bang in the middle of Sydney so my partner could go to a concert with some friends while I hung out with the big fella.

While I didn’t have any cravings, I did notice that When I was there, I was constantly on the lookout for good pubs and bars. It must just be the association I have mentally with travelling to places like that. In the past, whenever I have travelled somewhere like that, alcohol has almost always been the first thing on my mind.

If I had to wait to check in to some accommodation, what better way to kill time than by saddling up at a bar and drinking some schooners? If I was able to check in as soon as I had arrived, the first thing I would do was find the nearest bottle shop so that I could fill the hotel fridge with beers. Even if I was going to an event where I could buy alcohol, I always needed that security of having beers back in the room. Because, you know, what if I returned from the event at midnight and had no beers? I couldn’t possibly call it a night and have a decent sleep! That’d be fuckin’ silly! I needed the comfort of knowing that I had beers there if I wanted them.

It’s also fuckin’ absurd to think that I could get ready and go to whatever it was I was going to without drinking. You never want to turn up sober, and there are a few reasons why. Firstly, drinking at a concert or a sporting event is fucking expensive! So the more beers I could get through before going, the more money I would save. Ya gotta be smart about this shit! Then there’s the impact that being half pissed has on your anxiety. Someone like my can’t go to a crowded public place without my anxiety going into overdrive. What better way to dull that than by taking that edge off with eight quick tins and maybe a couple of sneaky ones in the uber?

The good thing is, I know that all of the above is a load of shit. It’s a cop-out. It’s bullshit that I would hide behind to justify behaviour that I was ashamed of. I’ve learned that now, and I’m slowly but surely learning that I can enjoy myself in busy public places and even enjoy myself more than if I was drinking or on drugs. I think I was always just too afraid to try it. Too scared to go out of my comfort zone and remove my safety blanket, which was drugs and alcohol.

The other positive is that I’m starting to be able to differentiate between a genuine craving and a basic mental association. I’m able to look at these instances more objectively and see that the only reason I was looking for pubs and bars to drink in is that I am conditioned to do in an environment like that. It helps me quickly dismiss the thought and move, which I think is important. The easier I identify these things, the quicker I can move past the thought and get on with shit, which can only be a good thing.

H.A.L.T.S

I was talking to a sober friend of mine recently about the connection between my struggles with sleep and the return of stronger cravings and thoughts around drinking and taking drugs. He asked me if I had heard of the acronym HALTS. I hadn’t.

I feel a little silly that it has taken me almost 10 months of sobriety to stumble across this bad boy but better late than never, and everything I learn that helps me is just another tool in the toolkit that will help me to keep moving forward.

HALTS stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, and Stressed. These are the states where people in sobriety are most vulnerable to “picking up”, which is a term for relapsing the world of sobriety. It makes perfect sense to me. I had identified that when I had my most recent significant struggles, it was during a period when my medication was a little out of balance. It had a massive effect on my sleep and sleep quality.

The idea behind it is that when you have a craving or negative thought around drinking, drug use or whatever your vice, you ask yourself, am I hungry, angry, feeling lonely, tired or stressed? If the answer to any of these is yes, you can then find comfort in knowing that it’s not you being weak causing the problem. If you can be conscious enough in this time of vulnerability to take a step back and ask yourself this question, it could help you significantly reduce the power you give to the craving, urge or thought.

At first glance, it could look like you are shifting the blame onto something else. But I think that’s a harsh way of looking at it. I prefer to look at it as someone being a little bit more self-aware. Gaining a better understanding of themselves and how they work to lead a more fulfilled life. Ultimately, it doesn’t fukcin’ matter if you think you’re just shifting blame onto something else or not. If it works and it helps, you’re fuckin’ mad not to use it.

It got me thinking that this question applies to so much more than struggling with addiction. When you find yourself in a position where you feel you might be able to make a decision with significant consequences, surely asking yourself this question would help. It’s like a quick take-five where you can stop, take a step back and consider the decision and each outcome. Essentially, it helps us put a greater gap between a stimulus and the response, which is never bad.

Shout out to my man Paul for this little nugget of wisdom.

Brain Fart

When you visualise your “comfort zone”, what do you see?

I was talking with the

Writing 4 Resilience

group this morning about it and realised I had always seen mine as a fixed circle, which is wrong. Maybe I'm crazy, and people don't think about this kind of stuff, but as we grow and learn, our comfort zone grows with us. Things that were once outside of our comfort zone no longer are. When I was 16, and on my L plates, driving was definitely outside of my comfort zone. Now I average over 1,000 kilometres a week; I don't even think about driving being difficult.

So maybe our comfort zone is something that follows us, and that is something that we need to be mindful of if we want to keep growing and improving. They say if you’re not moving forward, you’re going backwards, and I think that is true in many ways. If we stop moving forward, our comfort zone will catch up with us, which is bad for me.

I think the comfort zone is full of bad shit, like stagnation, complacency and settling for less than what we are capable of, and I think the longer we spend stuck in the comfort zone, the longer it takes to force ourselves out of it.

I’m not sure if that even makes sense, and I’m just trying to make sense of it all for my own sake, but I’d be keen to hear what other people think to help me better understand myself.

Anyway, that’s enough dribble for this week.

Cheers Wankers.

42 Weeks of Sobriety

A very handy trick I learned fromm the sober community and how it can help anyone.

Sobriety

H.A.L.T.S

Brain Fart

Discussion about this post