Week 20

Do what you know works.

Milestones

Today I have been sober for 20 weeks. 140 Days. Something of a milestone. With every sober day that passes though, the less these milestones seem to mean to me. I don’t think It’s a bad thing. It’s important for me to stay humble through this process and avoid becoming complacent. I have found with sobriety, it’s a tricky balancing act. In a twisted sense of irony, the more time I spend I thinking about my sobriety, the closer I feel to relapse. That’s why I refuse to have any goal outside of ‘just being sober for today’. Although it’s getting easier, this shit is fucking hard. Why make it harder by piling pressure on myself in the form of a goal or target? That’s why in recent weeks I have been updatingthe amount of days I have been sober along with the amount of weeks. It’s a little trick I play on myself to maintain humility and avoid complacency. 100 days is 14.28 weeks. Whilst 100 days is cool, you may even go as far to say it’s an achievement of note, 14.28 weeks is not. What the fuck is 14.28 weeks?It’s hardly worth mentioning. Not to me anyway.

Not this week. This week both numbers are good numbers. They’re big and round. They both end in a zero. They’re both divisible by shit loads of other numbers. As ridiculous as it is, this makes my brain feel nice.

So I decided to go back and (skim- I have ADHD you know?) read all of my blogs so far. It’s been super interesting to read them retrospectively and see the weekly progression through a different lens. After getting over how cringe some it it is, particularly early on, there were a couple of key takeaways that stuck out to me.

The first on was… I was fucking kidding myself. It’s nice to read how determined I was and how sure of myself I was. Looking back though, I am near certain I was lying to myself. I think I was just telling myself what I needed or wanted to hear to convince myself that I would get through another week. Particularly early on. It speaks a little to the idea of visualizing something or saying things out loud until you start to believe it. In this case though, I think it was the sharing that helped. It held me to account.

Given my mental state at the time and the ‘detox’ stage, if you will, my memory of those early weeks isn’t great, so I don’t know for sure if I did or didn’t believe what I was writing. I do know though, sharing it with each of you has made it so much easier to maintain my sobriety. I felt like I owed it to the people who read each week. So thank you. You have helped me more than you will ever understand.

When I read them, I can sense a manic, tense excitement . Like the feeling I had writing each blog returns to my chest and stomach as I read them. Going back through them was uncomfortable at times but progressively it became more comfortable as I worked my way through. I think is a fair and accurate depiction of how I was feeling as the weeks progressed. At one point I said I was feeling like I had finally made my way out of the shit storm and now it was only drizzling. In hindsight, I can see that each week I took a small step out of the shit storm and the further I got from it, the easier the steps became, the further I was able to stride per step.

In no way do I think the work is done. It’ll never ever be finished. A newborn can’t walk. A toddler can… toddle? A kid can run. But no matter how long ago you learnt to walk, walking still takes energy and effort. It may feel like second nature, but it still takes effort and even as adults, sometimes we lose our balance or have to walk uphill into a strong wind. My point is, Even things that are easy most of the time, can still be difficult in certain circumstances.

The second thing I’ve taken away from rereading my blogs is that I can see my thoughts get clearer each week. I felt like it was noticing this at the time too, but it’s nice to go over them and confirm what I was hoping to see. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the longer I was sober, the better I felt about it my sobriety, the clearer I seemed to be mentally. I think I can see that each week I seemed to be able to articulate my thoughts from a much clearer viewpoint, which is ultimately the goal of my sobriety. To clear my head for long enough to give me the mental clarity required for me to start the inner work that needs to be done. You don’t send a first year apprentice electrician to wire up a main switch board of a sky scraper. I was very conscious of this. One baby step after one baby step. Crawl before ya walk type shit. Through gaining more and more mental clarity, I can process my thoughts more effectively and now I am in a better position to navigate the thoughts that come to me. I’m also better equipped to start delving into the real reason why I struggle processing my thoughts. What are the thoughts I have that I have been avoiding for so long and why have I been avoiding them?

I don’t have many answers to what the exact memories, thoughts or triggers are that I was trying to avoid, but this tells me a couple of things. One is that I am only just at the beginning, which is promising because for the most part I feel a lot better than I did 20 weeks ago. So hopefully, although know it will be a rocky road at times, things should keep getting better as I work my way through it all. The other thing is that I need to be patient, trust the process and just go with it. Don’t force anything and be okay with slower progress. Slower progress is still progress.

I think I just need to keep chipping away, doing what I have been doing already. No major changes. It doesn’t matter if I tell myself lies. Write in blogs that I am a little more confident about things than I actually am. It doesn’t matter what anyone’s approach is, so long as it’s not hurting anyone and it’s working.

I’m not going to reread my blogs for a while now. Since starting out, I have always been a little bit against rereading them. There is something so cathartic about writing about how I feel and leaving it there. There is a risk of stirring up old emotions that for the most part I have have been dealt with. The process of writing, sharing and then parking my thoughts has been one of keys to my sobriety, I believe. I don’t want to jeopardize that and I never ever want to give myself too hard of a time for things I have written in the past. It’s pointless. I can’t change it. It’s what that version of me needed to say at that time. I’m not in that exact head space right now and I won’t be again because it’s a constant, ongoing journey. They’ve served their purpose and I’m grateful for that.

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Routine

Anyone who has been reading my blogs for a while knows I am a stickler for routine. As someone with ADHD i honestly believe it’s one of the only things that makes me productive and even functional at times. The last few weeks has really tested that. Being away in Canberra for the birth of my son then being at home this last week but not working has really tested me.

I didn’t struggle with thoughts of drinking, because I was just staring at my sleeping newborn like a fuckin’ idiot. But it made me so much less productive. I still woke up at 4am every morning to go to the gym. I was always going to do all that I could to hold onto that aspect of my routine because it took way too much hard work to get it to that point. When I got home from the gym I would have a few hours with my son. Clean his shitty ass, give him a bottle, more intense staring at his sleeping face.

I found that after I’d knock off from my ‘morning shift’ with him, I didn’t want to do anything, at all. I had some stuff to get done around the house and thought I’d take advantage of the time off work and get them done over the week while I was off work. I used all the usual tools that I normally do. I wrote daily to do lists, crossed things off when I completed them because it feels so fuckin’ nice putting a green line through a black word. I dunno why I use green, but it’s always black words and a green line.

I knew this shit needed to be done. I became the best procrastinator I have ever been over this last week and I don’t know why. I wasn’t doing anything else instead. Just kind of fuckin’ about the house. I think I have figured it out though. I need to stay up. I don’t know why. I don’t kthink I even care why. I just know that I have to. I need to busy, almost in a rush. I can get up at 4am and be training by 4:30am every single day, no problem. In the shower at work by 6am and at my desk by 6:30am. Work all day no problems. Home around three and then slow down a bit.

When I have nothing overly time sensitive to get done though, I’m fucked. I can spring out of bed and into action at 4am after 6 hours sleep, but if I have sit down and mind my son for an hour at 7am I can’t drag my ass off the lounge to empty the dishwasher. I have to keep going. I’m like an old lead fuel car that needs to be driven every day other wise it starts to get a bit spluttery and then eventually won’t start at all.

I went back to work yesterday and although I miss my son while I’m there, I’m glad to be getting back to my routine. I don’t like who I am when I am out of my routine. It’s dangerous. I get no sense of achievement, then I feel like a lazy piece of shit, my emotional brain feeds off my negative thoughts and gets stronger than the logical one. It has the potential to send me into a very strong, very negative spiral. So I guess the theme for this week just popped into my head, literally as I write this. Sometimes, even though it’s tempting to want change or something different, I think we need to just take a step back, take a breath, recalibrate and get back to what we know works for us. If complete fuckin’ mayhem and chaos works for you, do it. Whatever works. I’m just happy I can slip back into my little routine that most people think is a little bit nuts. It’s comfy in there. Like you’re wrapped in a blanky Nan knitted for ya then she gives ya a big cuddle while ya wrapped in it. That’s my routine for me.

I wanna know though, how important it routine to your mental health, productivity overall happiness etc? Is there something you do that others think is a little different or strange but it works well for you? Who are these people, where do they live, do you want me to fight them? I’m kidding.

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Keyboard Warriors

Seerut K Chawla is a London based psychotherapist. This week she posted screenshots of the responses to one of her recent posts on Instagram around Male Mental Health. Click on the below and take a look for yourself.

seerutkchawla

A post shared by Seerut K. Chawla (@seerutkchawla)

I want to emphasise that I am not sharing this to incite more hate or division. Ultimately I think those two things play a major role in creating a stigma. That is not my intention. I have no interest in going into the men vs women bullshit, because that’s all it is, bullshit. I’m not going to talk about why these people are so vile for having said what they have said. Anyone reading this blog doesn’t need me of all people explain any of that, you can read it for yourself.

What I wonder about though is, how does someone get to a point where they believe it’s ok to leave comments like this on someones post on a public forum? Like what lead them to that point. People aren’t born sexist, racist, discriminatory or whatever.

I have one theory, and I want to stress, it’s only a theory. I have no idea what the answer is, but believe this maybe, could be it. I’m just trying to provoke conversation around it to force us to think about this kind of stuff a bit more.

Clearly these people lack accountability. Social media platforms allow people to make comments like this and be held to account. So they feel a little braver, especially when they stumble across people with the same view. But I think people willing to make comments like this have a preexisting lack of accountability.

Again, I am purely theorizing here, but are these the kind of people who have no ability to accept when they themselves have done something wrong? It’s always someone else’s fault? They don’t have the courage to look within themselves and say, ‘yeah maybe I fucked up there’? Does that come from being spoiled as children? Told it was ok after they did something wrong so they’ve grown into adults that now believe nothing is ever their fault? Now as adults when things don’t go their way the only mechanism they have for coping is to blame someone, some group or something else and that’s how they’ve landed here? I believe people who hate like this hate themselves and they haven’t developed a mechanism to process that or do anything about it. So when they find a community of people who feel the same and they all get behind a common narrative, it makes them feel better about it. ‘I say hateful shit on the internet but so does that person so that means it’s ok for me to do it too’.

It’s just sad, I feel sad for people who do this kind of shit. They must be miserable. That doesn’t mean they are not doing damage though. When it’s on the scale of this size, we can’t just excuse it by saying ‘oh yeah but it’s ok because they’re just miserable themselves’. At this scale it is dangerous. It snowballs, these groups get bigger, they get more courageous with more numbers so they say more outlandish and hateful shit. This is exactly how terrorist groups radicalize people from certain religious groups. Maybe a little extreme, but to me, it’s same process.

I think we can always find a quote from best-selling author and absolute fucking legend Mark Manson to help sum things up…

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Nobody else is responsible for your life but you. Many people may be at fault for your pain and unhappiness. But no one else is responsible for digging you out of that pain or unhappiness.</p>&mdash; Mark Manson (@IAmMarkManson) <a href="

Mark Manson @IAmMarkManson

Nobody else is responsible for your life but you. Many people may be at fault for your pain and unhappiness. But no one else is responsible for digging you out of that pain or unhappiness.

18, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Look, I might be wrong, really wrong. But we need to be having conversations about this kind of stuff. We’re not going to come up with answer to things straight away, almost ever. But the more people around the world having the conversations, the more fingers we have in pies, so to speak. The more brains thinking about this kind of stuff the more chance we are as a whole of stumbling across some answers. So, let’s try it. What do you think happens to someone to get this point?

We can’t ignore it. We need to stop turning a blind eye to things that are inconvenient to us then wonder why no one is doing anything about it or why nothing is changing.

I’d be really keen to hear what peoples thoughts are on this one. let me know.

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Gratitude

Thanks for your time this week, gang.

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I hope everyone has a good week and please, don’t write dumb, fucking hateful bullshit you don’t truly mean on the internet. Or say it in real life. Try be nice this week.

Cheers Wankers.

Also, ADHDad on Fridays from now on.

X.