Today, I have been sober for 21 weeks and one day. 148 days.
I had planned on writing this blog on Monday, checking it over yesterday and then publishing it. This is what I usually do. It’s important to me to share it every Tuesday. That’s the day a new week ticks over in terms of my sobriety. I don’t know if anyone does, but I like to lie to myself and think that there’s people out there hanging out on a Tuesday waiting for me to publish it. I’m not a big head. Not metaphorically, anyway… I do this because it forces me to be accountable. I think accountability is very understated in regards to personal development and the like. It’s been fuckin’ massive for me.
Fire Management
I’m a bit disappointed in myself for not prioritising this and letting this slip a day. I did it a couple of weeks back too. I know that for people reading it doesn’t matter at all. Ultimately, it probably won’t have any impact on me or my life either. The reason I am disappointed is because I have stumbled across something that has been so significant in maintaining my sobriety, something that works, and on two occasions out of four, I have allowed myself to slip. Anyone who has a history of addiction or mental health issues would understand how fucking terrifying a slippery slope can be, especially when you feel like you’re doing well. While most would think I’m being dramatic, or that it’s not that big a deal, I feel like I’m one bad move away from spiraling back out of control and flooring it back at full fuckin’ noise to where I was almost five months ago. It’s stressful, it’s high strung, to a lot of people probably sounds illogical, but it works for me. Doing anything too different from what I know works is just way too fuckin’ risky. As I’ve said a whole bunch of times before, whatever I have to do to stay sober and make managing my mental health easier is better than any alternative. I’ll find a really clean, full length mirror and take a long, hard look at myself, then give myself an upper cut and do better next week. I promise, kinda, maybe…
I don’t like allowing myself to accept excuses, from myself. It’s sets a bad precedent. I need to apply that strict attitude to all things right now. At the moment, it’s allowing myself to publish my blog a day late, but when I let complacency into my life, that could mean a couple of beers will be okay. And they will. But next week I might think four beers will be okay. They’ll be okay too. One night, I might have 10 beers, behave myself, be in bed by 10pm, wake up fine and be productive the next day. Fuckin’ voila, I’m fixed! I’m ‘proven’ to myself I can drink again, even though I haven’t done nearly enough work why I drink, like i drink, when I drink. The next half beer could just as easily become a three day bender. Excuses are like patching a broken water pipe. The water pipe may still function, but it’s still broken. You haven’t solved the problem at the root cause. So hopefully now, you’re starting to understand why I feel like I have no other choice but to be so militant with this shit. It’s just the way it has to be. This is not a pity party. I fuckin’ hate parties sober anyway. I don’t want your sympathy. These are my problems, and though some them are not my fault, they are my responsibility.
Imagine you come home from work and there’s a fire in your back yard. It’s not your fault there’s a fire. It sure as fuckin’ hell is your responsibility to put the cunt out though. You have a duty of care to your family, your neighbors, your belongings your pets etc. You wouldn’t say, “nah fuck ya’s, I didn’t light it, I’m not putting it out”. Now imagine you come across a whole stack of buckets of water, you grab one and pour it onto the fire but the fire accelerates. For some reason, the bucket was full of petrol. You thought you were doing what was best, but in fact it was the opposite. So now it is not only your responsibility, but also your fault. Why the fuck am I telling you this? The fire was my problems, issues, thoughts, feelings, whatever the fuck. The petrol in the bucket was alcohol, drugs and any other avoidance technique I could think of. The tall, dark, muscular, handsome man pouring the bucket onto the fire is me. The difference is, most of us wouldn’t use another bucket of petrol. Most of us would get a hose, or a fire extinguisher or whatever. Not me! I didn’t notice the fire growing with every bucket. The only thing I’ve ever used is the bucket. I don’t know how to use anything else. Now I’ve inhaled all these petrol smoke fumes and I’m getting a little delirious. It wasn’t until the fire got so close and hot that I realised that pouring these buckets on the fire was actually making it worse. Even now, you still think, maybe these last few buckets have water in them! So you try them too! They didn’t have water in them. Now you’re cornered and hoping like fuck some other poor bastard is going to come and save your stupid arse. I had to stop pouring the buckets on the fire. I had to stop being stubborn. Call the brigade, call out to a neighbor. I needed help. I needed to find a better, more effective way to put out the fire. I needed to stop being a stubborn prick. I needed to accept that I needed help, then I needed to ask for help. So essentially, for me, putting these blogs out one day late, could result in me burning to death in a house fire. I kid, but you get it, right?
How do you manage your fire?
Stimulus/Response
This is not an excuse. This is me admitting and accepting that I have not managed my limited time well. I’ve got a lot going on at the minute, but I think? I am close to having most of the extra, non-routine shit sorted. Obviously, I have a newborn. So the every day chores are just a little bit harder than usual. The house I bought at the coast has a self contained unit downstairs. I’ve been working on a few things to get it ready to be set up as a holiday rental. Initially I wasn’t in a great rush to get this sorted. But the fuckin’ Reserve Bank and their interest rate hikes have forced my hand a little. Soulless pricks. It ties in really well with dropping from two wages to 1.5 wages. Just fuckin’ perfect. By no means am I struggling, however I have something there that could generate extra income and help alleviate some of that financial stress. I still have a tiny little bit of stuff to do but it’s all but done. It went online at 8pm Monday night and by the same time Tuesday night eight nights of the upcoming school holidays were already booked. Thank the fuckin’ Flying Spaghetti Monster.
So, I’ve been stressed. I’ve been prioritising shit that doesn’t align with what has and does work for me, my sobriety and management of my mental health. It’s been starting to show too. Throughout this ordeal I’ve had to work really hard on my stimulus/response reactions. In the past when doing shit like putting together Ikea Flat Packs, I’d be having a beer while doing it. Or planning on having a beer after doing it. That’s not an option anymore and although it seems like the easiest way to mentally cope with putting one of those devil packs together, it’s just not an option for me anymore. I’m still really shit at it, for the moment, I’m just saying swear words really loud, really often, but I’m not drinking. I’ve wanted to. I’ve had more temptations to drink this last week than probably the two or three weeks prior. But I haven’t. I might be a bit grumpier here and there. I might be swearing a little bit more or a little bit louder, but I’m not fucking drinking. Again, better than the alternative.
Like all things, the more I work on it, the better I will get at it. The swear words will become quieter, and eventually less frequent. The urge to drink will become less significant as I get calmer. As i tick these annoying tasks off the list, there will be less stimulus for me to have to respond to. I just need to keep on working on it. Or as the legendary David Goggins puts it, ‘Callus your fucking mind!’ Goggins can be polarizing and a lot of people might think he’s mad but I love his Callus Mind theory. Every time we do something that’s hard, we get better at it. It’s another callus. Each callus protects us from how much that process hurts each time. Each time I want to drink and don’t, I get better at it, it gets easier, it’s another callus. Makes sense.
Suddenly Susan
I consider myself lucky, here’s why. I want to tell a story about someone I’ll call Susan. Parts of this may sounds untrue or made up. Some parts may sound as though I’ve skimmed over certain details. That’s because it’s important for me to protect the identity of the people involved. It’s not for me to tell this story in that level of detail. However there are some key details that I wanted to share because I think they are important and possibly inspiring.
Susan was a very typical, middle class Australian mum. She worked full time, lived in a nice family home. Like most Australians her age at the time, she would have the odd glass of wine with dinner, maybe a few more on a weekend. Something a large portion of Australians do. Very normal shit.
Susan went through a fairly significant traumatic event roughly 25 years ago. While remaining functional, still working full time, still raising her children, running a household, Susan began to drink a little more. She was now drinking every night, often more than the one glass. Incrementally her drinking got worse. She would now come home from work and pour herself a drink before doing anything else. Still though, dinner was always cooked, the dishes were always done, clothes always washed, groceries always done. This was how Susan lived until her kids became adults and moved out. Even after they’d been gone for some time, she kept working and living this way. She was drinking too much, but she was ‘okay’.
Susan’s elderly parents started having some issues with her health and decided to move away to where their son lived because it was a warmer climate. A better environment for people struggling with things like arthritis and the like. With her kids moved out and getting on with their lives and parents now living so far away she didn’t have a lot of reason to stay where she was and decided to follow her parents. She thought it would be good to be with them as they aged in case they ever needed a hand with anything. So, she left her job and followed her parents.
Susan’s parents weren’t quite old or sick enough to warrant having Susan looking after her all the time though. So in a new town, with no job and not a whole lot to do, Susan’s drinking started to get worse again. Not having to go to work meant she could have her first drink at lunch time instead of 4pm. Nothing else to do, so fuck it, right? It’s warm up there. It’s nice to have a drink in the afternoon sun.
Jump forward a few years and things are much worse. Susan is now drinking as soon as she wakes up. Her health is deteriorating. Her family are aware and want to help but it’s not that simple. She doesn’t want help and they don’t know how to help. How would you help someone with an addiction problem who isn’t ready to accept it’s a problem?
Despite her families countless attempts to provide her with help, having interventions, offering to pay for whatever treatment she requires, nothing is working. Susan agrees here and there to go to detox’s and rehabilitation programs but none of them work.
Susan is now living on her own in a small apartment. There is no one to hide her drinking from. no one to hide the alcohol from. She can do as she pleases. But the alcohol has started to affect her ability think rationally. Her physical health is getting worse. Susan find out that the lease on her apartment will not be renewed but her brain is too damaged to fully comprehend the gravity of the situation. She’s now so incapable of understanding that she’s about to be homeless.
Her family try one last time to get her the help she needs. They’re exhausted. They have lives and responsibilities of their own like we all do. Kids, jobs, mortgages, bills, whatever. But no matter the pain she has caused them over the years, they can’t just leave her to her own devices to be homeless.
Finally, Susan agrees to go to detox, then rehabilitation. Where else is she going to go? So the plan is for Susan to go to a hospital and detox from alcohol. From there she will move onto a rehabilitation center for an indefinite period of time. She accepts. Her family work their fuckin’ arse’s off, jumping through a million hoops and cutting through miles of red tape to get here the help she needs, all while having busy lives themselves. Susan is literally incapable of doing these things for herself. Her family can’t just give up on her though, so the persevere and finally the paperwork is done. Hospital and rehab staff both warn her family that she sounds like she is in a bad way and could be beyond help. That even after all this time and work, there’s no guarantee’s of success and that Susan’s case is fairly extreme.
When Susan arrives at the hospital for detox she’s not in great shape physically. Tests run by the staff confirm their suspicions. She’s unwell, not just mentally but physically too. The good thing, she’s in the best place she could be for someone so unwell.
Susan has been sober for 7 days. A whole week. For the first time in 25 years. As I write this, she is on her way from the detox the rehabilitation center. Her week in detox has been flawless. She is a different person. She can walk on her own. She is jovial and sharp of mind. Staff at the hospital have remarked at just how well she has done. She is organised. She’s now ringing her family telling them what time she needs to be picked up to move from the detox to the rehab. She’s excitedly telling them everything she needs packed in her bag, she has enthusiasm!
It all sounds too good to be true. How after all this time can it all have been so simple? It’s not. Her family are aware of this too. They are cautiously optimistic. But to breeze through detox the way she has is definite win. More battles lay ahead. She will have worse days, but she is in the right place. Hopefully all of her families hard work is starting to pay off. Now it’s her turn to do the hard work. Susan though, is more certain than anyone that she is going to do it. Which is a great sign, but she and her family need to remain aware that often over confidence can lead to complacency.
For me there is a few key takeaways from Susan’s story. Sometimes people need to hit their version of rock bottom to affect change. Sadly for Susan, her version of rack bottom was little lower than some other peoples. Staring down the barrel of being homeless and unemployable would be terrifying. A horrible thing to happen to anyone, but to me this reaffirms that we can find good in almost in situation.
It proves the value of unconditional love and support from those who mean the most to you. 25 years is a fucking long time and it’s easy to empathize with people who just want to give up on someone in situations like this. Susan’s family just couldn’t do it though. I think at times they wanted to but their conscience just wouldn’t allow it. She’s very lucky to have such wonderful people around her.
I think it also speaks to the notion that you can’t help someone who sin’t ready to help themselves. I think in situations like this, as hard as it is, love and support are the only things that help someone. You simply can not demonize someone into doing something you want them to do. If someone asks you kindly to consider doing something, you more than likely will at least consider it. If someone carries on like a fuckwit, yelling and screaming at you to try and get you to do something, you’re going to tell them to fuck off. We need to be gentle and kind. We need to understand that people in these situations are unwell. You don’t walk into an oncology ward to someone hooked up to chemotherapy and say ‘FUCKING DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!’ We need to change our angle. People are far more likely to let you in when you are gentle.
Another is purpose. For so long Susan has had no purpose. Why not wake up and get drunk? What the fuck else is eh going to do? She can’t work, can’t drive, not in this state anyway. It’s the only way she knows how to put out her own fire. It’s either that or sit in her apartment by herself all day and confront 25 years of squashed feelings and emotions. I’d be fuckin’ drinking too. As soon as Susan got to detox, for the first time in a long time she had some structure in her life. She had some purpose. She had a time table, a reason to be at a certain place at a certain time. In my opinion, this is probably the thing that helped her become motivated to make this change. Finally she had an alternative. Just something else to do. She just needed someone to help her. Someone to tell her what to do, where to do it and when to do it. In cases of addiction like this, you can’t just take away a massive part of someon’’s life and replace it with nothing. You have to fill the hole back in! We all need purpose. A reason to get out of bed, a reason to keep our shit together. Some of us just need it a little more than others. We all need a ‘why’.
My final takeaway is this. It is never too late. Susan has drank every day for more than half of her life. She’s a grandmother to multiple young children. She’s has the opportunity to play a role in the lives of these kids for decades. She has a lot of life left to live. Not just a physical existence but a meaningful, purposeful role.
Susan is beautiful human being. She’s kind, funny and loving. She just didn’t know what to do when she needed some help. I did, that’s why I’m lucky. Nothing she has done over the last 25 years can detract from that and that person is still there in side of her. I hope that she continues on this path and regains control of her life. It’s what she and maybe more so her family deserve. If she does, I think it will be mostly due to a loving families refusal to ever give up on her.
Wherever there is life, there is hope.
Cheers Wankers
X
That fire analogy is some powerful writing Sam. You're right, some people haven't clocked that your'e posting on a Tuesday...but your regular readers would notice if you stopped showing up. So holding yourself to account on a Tuesday, week after week, that's consistency and that's what gets results, whether it be staying sober or training for an ultra marathon (or both).
Gday Sam, Ive just discovered Sobering Thoughts this week and have read them all. They are great. You are making a difference and an impact from a 50 something, 2 year sober, regular (maybe not quite as irregular as some) guy! cheers Ian