Week 19

Back to Basics- Mental Fatigue and Triggers

I am 19 weeks sober today. 133 days.

Brain Dump Fatigue

I am feeling a little drained today. I have found that after writing these blogs I get mentally fatigued. I used to feel the same after a heavy psychologist session. It exhausts me. I don’t know why. It could be that it’s just a long time sitting here at the computer. It could be deeper than that. Maybe it’s that feeling of relief after getting something off your chest. Like I have been in fight or flight mode thinking about the blog or something else, then when it’s finally over I am overcome with a sense of relief and subconsciously my brain/body allows me to properly relax. It’s not a bad thing. For someone with ADHD, being tired is often a welcome change.

Yesterday I published my first ADHDad blog. Not many people knew I was an expectant father. There were a variety of reasons which I explained in the blog.

ADHDad

So I was anxious about sharing it. I needed to for my own sake, but I actually published it on SubStack hours before sharing it on socials. I was apprehensive to share it and I don’t know why. I was just worried about how it would be received which is frustrating because it goes against the very reason I write these blogs.

I’m planning on writing ADHDad weekly, I just haven’t chosen the day yet. This blog will always be on a Tuesday because that’s the day I complete another week sober. So maybe Friday, or maybe just whenever I feel like it, I dunno, whatever.

Luckily it was well received. I don’t know why I ever feared it wouldn’t have been. That’s the nature of the emotional brain though. It’s like an energized spiral. Once it gets past a certain point it just gets stronger and faster and before you know it you’ve built something up to be far bigger than it actually is. I think that sometimes all we can do about that is be aware that it is happening and create a mechanism where we can remind ourselves that it’s just our emotional brain carrying on a bit.

I’d be really interested to hear if anyone else gets this same fatigue after a significant ‘brain dump’ and what you put it down to?

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Back to Basics

I feel like lately I’ve gone away from my original ‘why’ with my blog. I guess with all the passing of Paul Green it kind of sent my mind down a different path for a period and I felt compelled to dedicate some of my time and energy on suicide and mental health. I have been feeling pretty good in regards to my sobriety so I thought I didn’t really need to touch on it because I wasn’t sure I had a whole lot to add.

Writing this weekly blog is and always has been an important part of my sobriety. The accountability of having to come back each week and tell everyone that I’ve gone another week without a drink or substance has motivated me a lot and I don’t know that I would still be sober without it. I was afraid though that I would get to a stage where I sat down every week and wrote the same blog as the previous week only in different words. So I started to explore some other stuff that I had on my mind.

Frustratingly I have definitely found myself looking at the metrics of each blog I post. Being insecure and self conscious, I started to question why some blogs were more popular than others. Although there are thousands of variable each week, the insecure brain tells me that a blog that doesn’t do as well, just mustn’t be that good. The thing is though, there is no metric for how helpful one person found a blog. I would always rather have minimal views in exchange for having something actually help someone. It’s been difficult at times to remind myself of my ‘why’ in regards to starting this blog. It has never and will never be about metrics, I do it for myself primarily. I share it because once I hit publish it’s ‘gone’, so to speak. It’s like I’ve taken some of the mess in my head, put it on a page then sent it away. It gives me mental clarity. Something that’s been bouncing around in my head for a period of time is gone and I feel like I have more room in there for other shit. A bit of space where I can sit down and sort through my shit. So when i find myself obsessing over metrics I get disappointed in myself, That’s not what this is for. This is about reducing my stress, not adding to it. I have enough of that shit already.

So, today, I want to talk about my sobriety for a bit…

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Triggers

I was back in Canberra last week waiting for my son to show up. I’m a terribly impatient person. Waiting for a fucking baby to born at any point in a 4 week window sounded like hell to me. Luckily though his birth was induced, so I knew there was at the that he would be here at the latest, but over a four day period we would essentially be on call from the hospital. They would decide each morning who was and wasn’t coming in that day. On the first morning of the four days I found out it wasn’t going to happen today. Almost instantly I got a craving or temptation to drink. I was back in Canberra, it was a Friday, my mates were all going to knock off after lunch and I thought, “Man it’d be good to have a few schooners in the arvo sun”. Once I have a thought like that, even though I instantly dismiss it, it seems to come back throughout the day. I struggled with it a lot the following day too. It was odd, because I’d been doing so well. I couldn’t figure out why I was battling so hard. Then I realized something…

The time’s I have struggled the most with cravings and temptations over the last 19 weeks have been when I have been away from home. I found it really interesting. I went to Newcastle for a run early in my sobriety and I struggled a little bit there too. I remember at the time having internal conflict. Emotional brain telling me I’d be fine to have a couple beers with dinner, “you could probably even have a couple of beers and still claim you’re sober”. Fuckin’ ridiculous.

For the first time in my 19 weeks of sobriety, I feel like I have clearly identified one of my triggers. I knew the obvious ones. Stress, fatigue, workload etc, but this one wasn’t so obvious.

The good thing about identifying your triggers is that you can then do something about them. You can’t fix puncture in a bike tube if you don’t know where it is. You know your tires flat and you don’t want to walk the bastard home, but you have to find the cause of the air leak. The bad thing about identifying triggers is that often they’re… triggering.

It’s a lot like when you do a ‘Lessons Learned’ after a project at work or school. You have to sit there and accept that you may have fucked up a little. That’s hard. But the purpose of the process is so you can identify how you fucked up and put measures in place to prevent it from happening again.

I had to go through this triggering feeling to identify that it was even a trigger. Now I have identified it i can look into ways to manage it better should I find myself in the same predicament again.

What got me about this one though is why does being away from home feel conducive not only to drinking, but drinking drinking. Benders. Long weekends, holidays, personal leave to go go and have a fucking baby. For me, there’s something about being away from home and not having to worry about work in the extreme near future that lights a fire inside of me. A fire made of that wood you’d see around in 2019 after 10 years of drought, with ethanol poured on it.

I struggle to find the words to describe the excitement I would feel when I knew I had no real responsibilities ahead of me, everything that mattered was taken care of for the next little while, I had a bit of play money and there was something on or to go to for me to use as an excuse to obliterate myself.

At the time I was lying to myself. Trying to convince myself that I just liked having a good time. I’d earned it. I don’t have to work for a while, I’m spending money I’d been putting away in readiness for this moment, so no one was getting hurt. I know now that I craved this state because it was the only thing that dulled my anxiety. The noise went further and further away with every drink. It was completely counter productive because for me the longer I pushed the anxiety away, the harder it would come back once I’d slept the bender off. I think deep down I knew all this, I just wasn’t ready to hear it. I just wasn’t interested and felt powerless at times to stop myself. My thirst for that state of complete obliteration was insatiable. It reminds me a lot of former AFL star Ben Cousin’s mind set. When he would train his ass of for a month before bye round then go on a 4 day bender and blow 10 grand in the process. Whilst not as extreme as that, it was certainly a similar mindset. Too much is never enough. Ironically it was this mindset that lead me to sobriety. At Easter this year I had a massive weekend and I think I finally got to the state I was after. I didn’t have to work until after ANZAC Day. So I had another six or so days off after I decided to try to get sober before I had to go back to work. The perfect shit storm.

I don’t know if it’s just a guy with terrible anxiety seeing an opportunity to turn the noise off for a while with no repercussions. Maybe it’s just being away from those creature comforts you love at home? Your own bed, clothes in your cupboard instead of in a great big fucking bag you have to lug around everywhere, your phone charger where it normally goes? Maybe this adds to the anxiety just enough. I even struggle when I’m working away. Up until recently I was almost always a weekend drinker, but as soon as I had to stay away with work I would drink. Like there was no question. I’d know as soon as I woke up and left home that I would be drinking that night.

Maybe it’s just habit from years and years of associating any trip away with alcohol. Holidays, weekends away, concerts, festivals, live sport, whatever. For all of my adult life, whenever I went away from my house I would drink.

I thought after 18 weeks of sobriety, I would be this new version of myself in these situations, but clearly the trigger is still there. I could spend as much time as I want trying to figure out exactly why being away from home is conducive to drinking for me and possibly never figure it out. I don’t have time for that shit. I got shitty nappies to change and that. ‘Cause y’know, I’m a dad now.

What I can do though is be aware of the trigger, be ready for it, plan for it. If it doesn’t come, great. I’m sure next time it will be easier, because that’s how repetition and practice works. I just don’t think there’s a world that exists where you can be too prepared for an instance like this. Like the old Japanese saying goes…

“It’s better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.”

So what will my plan be next time I’m away? Keep busy, make plans with people for the time I’m there, take workout clothes so I can train if I need to, ring someone I haven’t spoken to for a while like the annoying old Aunty who forgets everything you tell her, do some writing, even get someone to chain me to the bed so I can’t… wait, ignore that. You get the gist though. I can’t make your plan for the next time you get triggered to do something you shouldn’t or don’t want to do, but it wouldn’t hurt for you to have on if you feel like you might need one.

I’d be really keen to hear what other unique triggers are out there. Not the typical ones. Doesn’t have to be about drinking either. Over eating, gambling, whatever. What triggers you into acting on your impulsive thoughts?

I reckon that’s enough for today. Nappy’s, Dad ‘n’ that…

Thanks always.

Cheers Wankers

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