ONE FUCKING YEAR OF SOBRIETY
What a year of sobriety has taught me about myself, others and life in sobriety in general.
Today I have been sober for 365 days. 52 weeks. 12 months. ONE, FUCKING, YEAR!
It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since I got home from my last almighty bender last easter, culminating in my drug and alcohol-fueled breakdown at 3.30 am.
It’s a bit like when we think about our kids. It seems like yesterday they were born, but we also can’t imagine what life would be like without them. That’s how I feel about my sobriety.
I’ve been thinking about this blog for a while now, and I almost feel a little pressured to come up with something great to do the occasion justice. I’m torn, too, because all I’ve ever done is write for myself and share it with others in the hope that someone out there will benefit from it.
I think milestones are a bit silly. As cliche, as it sounds, living sober is literally one day at a time. It’s how it has to be. You can’t afford to give too much attention to these milestones because you must focus solely on the here and now. You are focusing on making it through today and only today without caving into your vice(s).
But I also think it’s important to reflect and recognise how far you have come and what you have achieved, and maybe, just maybe, feel a slight sense of pride in that.
I think that’s one of the greatest misconceptions about people in addiction. They may put on a front, but deep down, we don’t want to be addicts. We don’t want to lean into a life-crippling vice to avoid dealing with their negative thoughts and emotions. I think we like to put on a mask that says, “Nah, I don’t have a problem. I just like a good time”, and I think that we use that to convince ourselves of the same thing because if I can convince myself of something, I can convince anyone of it. I believe that’s why people in addiction are such great liars because they have had so much practice lying to themselves, even though we know the truth deep down. It is inescapable.
So I guess this week should be something of a celebration. A celebration not only of progress but, more importantly, a celebration of a new and improved lifestyle. A lifestyle is more conducive to growth, honesty, reflection, and a continual desire to progress without the weight of drugs and alcohol holding me down. A lifestyle that is not only best for me in terms of my physical and mental health but hopefully one that improves my impact on the lives of those closest to me.
So to do this, I thought I would review some of the things sobriety taught me about myself, others people and life in sobriety in general. The things I wasn’t expecting. Hopefully, it might help others going through similar battles. Maybe reading this will encourage someone to try sobriety for the first time or give it another crack. After reading this, people might be able to learn some of the things that I learned the hard way, the easy way.
Anyway, let’s do it.
I CAN Actually Achieve Things
For a long time, I was torn about my own drinking and drug use. For periods at a time, I would hate that I drank and took drugs. During other periods, I would see no issue with it. I think these waves correlated with where my mental health was at. I wouldn’t have an issue with it if I was struggling or down. But when I was doing ok, I knew what I was doing didn’t sit comfortably with me or align with who I felt I truly was.
I remember when I was younger, I went to The Gold Coast with my mates over New Year’s. When I got back, I felt really sick and run down. I got some blood tests and found out I had glandular fever. The numbers from the blood test results showed my liver reading four times the recommended numbers. I have no idea what they meant other than my liver had taken a pounding.
I was advised to lay off the grog for a period of time to allow my poor old liver to recover. I tried my best as an 18-year-old kid, but only a couple of weeks later, on Australia Day, I was back on it. One of my vital organs was struggling harder than it ever had, doing four times the work it was supposed to, and there I was, just pouring more alcohol through it. I just had no willpower. I had a rubber arm. As soon as I met up with my mates, I was back into it.
Over the years, I’ve tried things like Dry July, Octsober, and whatever the February one is. Each time I failed miserably. I always wondered how the guys I drink with every weekend could go a month off the drink so easily, yet I just… can’t? I just couldn’t.
I now understand it was because we were drinking for different reasons. For most of them, it was social. It was fun. They were drinking to be part of the social scene. I was drinking, quietening my mind. To escape the millions of thoughts racing around in hyperdrive.
For so long, I’ve been too scared to dream of better things because I feared failing. If you can convince yourself that you can’t do something, that you’re not cut out for it, that you don’t have it in you, then you excuse yourself from even having to try.
Being sober for a year has taught me that something I once deemed impossible for someone like me is possible.
Not only in terms of sobriety but in all facets of life. Sobriety has taught me that even though I don’t know how to do something right now, it doesn’t mean I can’t. It has, and continues to, help me lift this limiting belief system I’ve ingrained in myself over the last 34 years.
It’s taught me not to be afraid of trying new things. It’s made getting outside of my comfort zone and striving for growth a little bit more comfortable. It’s given me just the smallest amount of self-belief, and that self-belief is growing, which makes me excited for the future.
No matter who you are or your circumstances, sobriety is possible. There are so many amazing services out there. You don’t have to go to AA, or speak to a counsellor, you have to start, dip your toes in the water, reach out to a few people, try a few different things and find what works best for you.
I Was Self Medicating
At times throughout my life, I’ve been dubious about the whole “self-medicating” thing. I always thought it was a somewhat plausible concept, but I didn’t honestly believe it was as common as people would have you believe. It wasn’t until I got sober that I realised I was self-medicating the entire time. I was trying to solve a problem with my own medication that couldn’t be solved through medication.
One of the biggest reasons for relapse is not so much the lure of the vice but the way sobriety opens up pathways for all those negative thoughts and emotions we’ve been working so hard to suppress all along. It’s like opening a can of worms, except the can is on the ground, flush with the ground level, so you have no idea how many worms are in the can.
Naively, I thought I would get sober, and my brain would recalibrate itself, but that was far from the case. I believed that if I “did the right thing”, my brain would do the right thing for me. On reflection, it did, but I wrongfully assumed that abstinence alone was all I would need to contribute.
The first few months of my sobriety were horrible and by far the hardest. I don’t know how I got through it. After years of using substances to drown out negative feelings or thoughts, they still sat there. I thought I’d drowned them out, but the fuckers had been down there with scuba tanks ripping into an intensive training regime, getting stronger and stronger.
The thing is, there is only one way to deal with these thoughts, and it’s something that I’m still working on every day. You can’t drink them, snort them, run from them, medicate them or ignore them.
Believe it or not, the only way to deal with these thoughts is to coexist with them. Think of them as a pain in the arse neighbour. Yeah, sure, he’s a prick. He’s got car parts on his front lawn and plays music while your kid is trying to sleep. But he fuckin’ lives there, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. You need to learn to coexist with the asshole. And the best way to do that is to be kind to him.
You can complain all you like. But if he finds out you rang the council and complained about him, he’ll only make your life worse. You can try to beat him at his own game, but he’s a piece of shit. He’ll beat you with natural his natural gift for being a shit bloke and experience. It’ll be hard at first, but each time you see him, give him a wave, say g’day, and ask him how he’s going. It’ll be uncomfortable. It might even be a little bit awkward forever. Still, incrementally it will get more and more comfortable until you get to a point where you might even be able to have a yarn over the back fence instead of just a raise of the finger as you drive out of your driveway.
Thoughts and feelings that make us uncomfortable are precisely the same. Like all things, it gets easier with practice. From my experience, there is no other way. You have to throw on wear your grown-up pants, be brave, and slowly face them one by one. Do it at your pace. If it feels like they’re starting to bank up behind one another, that’s ok. That’s normal. Try to focus on the one you’re dealing with now. You’ll get better at it and more efficient, and as you get better at it, the lineup will shorten quicker than you realise if you focus on the right now.
If you’re considering sobriety, don’t let this frighten you off. The first little while sucks. Know that. I have found, though, that knowledge provides comfort. If I can explain something to myself during a tough time, and make sense of it all, even though it doesn’t fix the problem, just understanding why is a huge step in the right direction. It’s probably half or more of the battle! Understanding what is happening and why it is happening just makes things so much easier to deal with.
Keep plugging away. You can do it. I promise you. It is so very worth it.
No One Cares That You Don’t Drink
When I first got sober, I was terrified of telling people I wasn’t drinking. The circles I moved in previously were full of people who drank and used drugs. That’s fine. I still love all of those people and like to think that my sobriety hasn’t impacted my relationships with anyone, and if it has, fuck’em.
For me to go somewhere and not drink kind of shocked people. I’d worked up something of a reputation as someone who enjoyed a couple of drinks, clearly. So when someone realised I wasn’t drinking, I’d get bombarded with questions. “Why!? What the bloody hell is wrong with ya!?”
I was hardly about to say something like, “Well, I was diagnosed with ADHD in my late 20s and subsequently have childhood trauma from living in a busy household with two parents working full-time, one of which was a shift worker, plus two others siblings, and because I had undiagnosed ADHD I didn’t get the attention I deserved so now I don’t have any cop[ing mechanisms so I developed an unhealthy relationship with drugs and alcohol, and now it has gone too far and has to stop!” *takes breath*
Initially, I would say, “Oh, I’ve just been drinking a bit too much lately, and I’m having a bit of a break”. I came up with so many great stories about why I wasn’t drinking. Was it dishonest? Kind of. Does it matter what I say to these people who are grilling me about not drinking if the main goal is not to drink? Fuck no.
I think the people who were giving me shit for not drinking were exposing their insecurities around their own drinking. Why do I believe this? Because I used to do the same shit. I would feel shame for drinking alone and bully someone into drinking with me. I would feel jealous of someone else’s ability to stay sober. I admired their discipline and self-control and wished I could show the same restraint.
However, I found that the more I opened up about my drinking to people, the more comfortable I got and the better it was received. After the initial bagging for not drinking, people often softened once they realised there was something a little deeper at play. They would become more sensitive to what you were saying, and quite often, people would even start to reveal that they too were uncomfortable with how much they were drinking, the impact it was having on their physical and mental health, but also their home environment or relationships with the people they cared about the most.
The power of open, honest conversation is incredible and can help develop the most unlikely relationships.
These days, no one says a single word to me about drinking or not drinking because they are used to it and also because it doesn’t impact them in any way, so they don’t care.
Former NFL player and actor Terry Crews once said, “Addiction grows in secrecy”. When I heard him say this, it was one of those things that smacked me straight between the eyes. I was scared to tell anyone about what I had been doing or that I was uncomfortable with my own drug and alcohol use. I was ashamed. I thought it wouldn’t be received well. But the relief I felt when I finally started letting people in on the truth was immeasurable and key to the success of my sobriety.
If people care about you, they should do so unconditionally. If someone you’ve developed a bond with over several years treats you differently after you reveal you’ve been struggling with something for a period of time, maybe you need to reconsider that relationship.
If I was to advise anyone on this one, I would tell people, if you can, say something like, “I’m not comfortable with my drinking/drug use/whatever vice and the impact it’s having on my life, so I’m trying to stop”. It’s a fucking difficult thing to do, but if you can manage it, you will get a significant jump start on your progress.
You never know what doors a good honest conversation can open for you. Some of the people I have leaned on the most through my sobriety have come from the most unlikely places, and my only regret is that I didn’t start having these conversations sooner.
FOMO is a Myth… Kinda
Look, I’m not going to sit here and say that I haven’t occasionally had the thought of, “Oh man, I’m never going to be able to experience sitting in a beer garden on a sunny afternoon tipping schooners, getting nice and toasty from a nice combination of the sun and cold beer”. That happens now and then. But these days, it’s more that same thought as well as, “But that’s ok because that’s not what I want, and my life is far better without it.”
I remember when I was younger, there was always massive hype around New Year’s Eve. What would we do, and where would we go? Socially it was almost like a competition that would be doing the coolest shit for New Year’s Eve. If you weren’t going to travel somewhere, pay to stay in the accommodation, get written off for a day or two, and then drive home half-dead a couple of days later, all so that at midnight you could count backwards from ten, then excrete some loud noises from your face hole, you felt like a loser. If you were staying in your home city for New Year’s, it was probably best not to tell anyone.
I fell into this trap myself many times. I’ve been to music festivals over New Year’s, various towns up and down the east coast of Australia, house parties, camping trips, and whatever else. The one thing I can say about New Year’s Eve is not once has the celebration met the hype surrounding it. New Year’s has never been one of my life's all-time greatest nights.
I’m using the New Year’s thing as a reference because I think when we are honest with ourselves and reflect on all the nights out we’ve had, very few of them have been even close to the greatest nights of our lives. Maybe I’m convincing myself of this too. Maybe I’ve grown out of it a bit, but after a year of sobriety, I genuinely never feel like I am missing out by not going out and drinking all night.
In fact, when I reflect back on most of my 20’s and early 30s. I know for a fact that I did miss out. I missed out on a lot because I was drinking. because I was up until all hours snorting coke, then spending days on the lounge feeling like I was recovering from an autopsy.
I’ve wasted so much time either drinking, doing drugs or being hungover. The fear of missing out is what ultimately led me to miss out altogether.
Don’t fear missing out because you’re not missing out on anything.
There is a Difference Between Abstinence and Sobriety
As mentioned earlier, I was guilty of thinking sobriety alone would solve all of my problems. It didn’t. Initially, I thought it made them worse.
I have since learned that sobriety exposes you to the opportunity to work through your problems. When you’re in addiction, it’s like your problems are on the other side of a prison fence. You can see them. You know they are there. They’re present enough to affect you mentally, but you don’t have the clarity to do anything about them.
Sobriety removes the fence. It’s fucking daunting standing there facing them all at once for the first time, but it’s work you must do.
I see abstinence as just that. Abstaining from your vice and nothing more. I see sobriety as a lifestyle. It’s kind of like the difference is eating a plant-based diet and living a vegan lifestyle. A plant-based diet means you don’t eat animal products. A vegan lifestyle means you do all that you can in your day to day to life to avoid anything associated with harming animals.
It took about six months for me to realise this. Had I gone to AA and done a 12-step program, I may have realised this sooner. One thing I do know is that when I switched my mindset from simply not drinking or taking drugs to actively living a sober lifestyle, things started to get much better and quicker.
So, what the fuck is the difference?
When I was abstaining from drugs and alcohol, I removed myself from anything drug and alcohol-related entirely. There were certain people I couldn’t be around, not because of them and who they were but because of my own lack of self-control when I was with them.
It wasn’t until I regularly started to talk with other people in sobriety and work on things to aid my sobriety that I really started to feel a difference. Things like daily breathwork and stretching. Continuing my blogging. Starting back with my psychologist. Actively trying to gain a better understanding of addiction, and in particular how it pertains to ADHD, through podcasts, articles, blogs and books.
The best way for me to explain this is if you run away or hide from your vice, eventually, you’ll run out of energy, and it will catch up with you, forcing you to deal with it on its terms. If you turn around, face it, and slowly walk into it, you deal with it on your terms. You are in control and will get to the other side sooner if you like the Bison…
You Can Not Get Sober For Anyone Else
This one is a little difficult for people to understand, especially people outside of the world of addiction or recovery. Sadly though, it’s true. It fucking sucks, but it’s true. Even American actor Rob Lowe says so, and he’s rich! Famous! Funny! And good looking!
Skip forward to 1:22 in the video above to see what I’m talking about.
The thing is, when it comes to making such significant changes in our lives, external motivators will only fuel us so much. This is why most people who have interventions and go off to rehab for their family or people who get court-ordered to go to a rehab centre instead of prison will relapse more than once. We need to be intrinsically motivated. We need to want it for ourselves primarily and trust that those around us will benefit organically from our sobriety.
I wrote about this extensively earlier in the year. But as Rob says, there needs to be a change from within for sobriety to be successful. If you do it for someone or something else and haven’t had that light bulb moment in your head, you’re going to struggle.
Am I suggesting you should go out and get fucked up until you have your own lightbulb moment, which usually is found at the deepest, darkest corner of your own rock bottom? Of course not. Your light bulb moment can come to you in the initial stages of sobriety. The change you experience can be a gradual one. You might feel an inkling of change one morning and then feel the change grow incrementally through your first month of sobriety.
I suggest that if you know you aren’t ready, don’t tell someone you will do it for them. Don’t tell anyone else you will do it someone else. Don’t tell yourself you’re doing it for someone else. Because the thing about addiction is it will always linger in the background. It’s our black dog. Sitting there waiting for us to make mistake and make its move. Take it one day at a time. Minimise all pressure on yourself. If you relapse, you haven’t failed. You’ve just been sober for X amount of days. That’s a good thing and something to build on. You’ve learned valuable lessons that will make the next time easier.
It’s Perfectly Okay to Replace an Addiction With a Healthy One
I’ve heard and read many online and social comments like, “Oh, you’ve just replaced alcohol with exercise.” This is just an example, and I’m choosing to use this one because it’s probably the most common one I’ve been exposed to.
At the end of the day, our lives are built around a series of habits. You wake up every morning, have a yawn, a stretch, a fart, and then a shit. That’s a habit. You leave for work at the same time, stop at the same place, and order the same coffee every day. That, too, is a habit.
When you think of your day as a calendar, you fill that calendar with blocks of stuff. The enemy of an addict is free time. Especially in the early days of recovery. Not only is it okay to fill the void left by you no longer spending hours a day succumbing to your particular vice, but it’s also fucking essential.
So maybe someone gives up a daily drinking habit and becomes a marathon runner. They may become unhealthily obsessed with running, but which is the better of the two evils? A habit that will dramatically improve your cardiovascular health, help you lose weight but may do some damage to your ankles and knees, or full-blown drug or alcohol addiction?
The key here is to focus on the main goal. If the main goal is sobriety, then what you do to achieve that, so long as it doesn’t harm anybody else, is nobody’s business.
If someone says one of these bullshit lines to you about replacing one habit with another, know that they are insecure within themselves and jealous of what you are trying to achieve. They are saying what they are saying not for you but for them. To make themselves feel better about their own choices. It can be difficult to remember and stay conscious of, but you can’t let this kind of bullshit get in your head. You’re dealing with enough, and you don’t need the insecurities of some jealous arsehole bringing you down. Fuck those guys.
Everything is Better, Sober
When I first got sober, I had no idea what I was in for. I thought my life would stay the same without drugs and alcohol. I can see now that I was very naive and that when I look at why I was drinking or using drugs, of course, I will go on a journey of sorts when I removed them from life. Even now, on reflection and with 12 months under my belt, I’m still blown away by how far I have come mentally and emotionally. Which is pleasing given my initial goal was “to get sober for long enough to sort my head out”.
I have always been and still am reluctant to say I will never drink again. It’s not because I want a get-out clause or the freedom to drink again without the judgement of others. I have that anyway. I don’t see the point in making such a claim. It adds unnecessary pressure. Recovery is literally about one day at a time. Sometimes even less than that, sometimes it’s about one 15-minute craving at a time. Whatever the case, it’s about repetitions of small pockets of time, so attaching a goal to such a large amount of time seems illogical. Today’s goal was to be sober for today. I had the same goal yesterday. No prizes for guessing tomorrow's goal.
Learning to coexist with negative thoughts and emotions after decades of avoiding them was hard. But the reward for that is increased presence. I now enjoy the things I used to enjoy sober even more than I used to. It’s like sobriety, and the newfound presence it gives me amplifies all emotions. Sure, there’s a downside that comes with that, you’re forced to feel the shit out of the bad things too, but we’re meant to. We’re designed to. Drugs and alcohol numb our feelings. That’s why they appeal to the mentally unwell, stressed or slightly down. But the payoff is that the positive emotions get numbed too. Without the extreme lows, we don’t get the extreme highs.
Dealing with the lows without substances is fucking hard, but the good news is, it’s something we can work at and improve on. We’re not emotionally fixed. No matter your age or circumstances, the beautiful thing about our emotional state is that with enough hard work, if we believe it, we, more than anyone else, have the power to change it…
Thank You
I don’t like doing this shit, but I thought after a year, I probably owe it to many people. I’m not going to, though, because this blog is long enough already, and if you’re still here, thank you too. But I’ll try to bundle it up.
From the strangers on Twitter who got around me a year ago when I had a meltdown and shared it online to the subscribers of this blog, who I have no idea who you are but read every week and hold me to account, especially my paid subs who are helping me pursue a slow-burning dream, the R4R crew, W4R crew, 2Zoners, LPC, all of my other friends, my inlaws, my mate Hazza for living with us right when I needed him to, my mate Paul for all the guidance, my own family extended or otherwise, and most importantly my own little family, Thea and Sonny.
Each and everyone one of you reading this has played a part, small or otherwise, in helping change the trajectory of my life forever. I quite literally could not have been here today, in the position I am in, without the help and support of you all.
From the bottom of my heart, my family and I will feel indebted to each and every one of you for as long as we live.
Cheers Wankers.
X.
Bogues Tonnes Up
Each week I will chuck a bit about my journey to my first 100k run at the Sri Chinmoy Canberra Trail 100k for anyone who gives a shit.
I attempted the Canberra Marathon on Sunday and failed. I booked out at 31.66k. I broke it down in a blog which you can read here. But essentially, I went in under-prepared and didn’t respect the distance as I should have. It gave me the kick up the arse I needed and lit a bit of a fire under me.
I am running the 100k for a few reasons. Mostly because I always wanted to. Mostly though, I want to raise as much money as I can for Beyond Blue. An amazing charity that does brilliant work in the mental health space.
If you want to help out and help keep me accountable for this fucking ridiculous goal, CLICK HERE to make a 100% tax-deductible donation.
Every cent counts, and you’ll be comfortable knowing it’s going to a reputable organisation who do amazing work.
Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter @sbrngthghts.
Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.
Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear
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; 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
Ive really enjoyed reading your ramblings Sam, well done on everything!
I often talk about you to my wife and just how amazing it's been watching the last year unfold. So so cool.
I have a friend who could learn a boat load from you but he's not at his rock bottom, yet. Your substack will be one of the first places I send him, when he's ready. Even if you were to stop now, what you've written is such a good source of information and inspiration. Well done, Sammy!!