Week 27

I'm battlin' a little over 'ere.

Oct 24, 2022

Today I have been sober for 27 weeks. 189 days.

Sobriety

I’m fuckin’ battlin’ a little over ‘ere. I’ve got the death wobbles and I’m not trying to wind up like Marc Marquez doing a superman impersonation after an epic high side. This last week has been the most tested my sobriety more than any other week over the last probably three months. I‘m trying to navigate through all the possible reasons why which I’ll touch on in more detail below. But for now, I need to talk about “what” before trying to figure out why.

Three key indicators let me know that I am struggling. The first one is obvious. I feel like drinking, or my brain tried to suggest to me that drinking is something I should do.

The second indicator is when I fear a sober future. Sometimes it appears in the form of anxiety or fear. you look away, look back, and bang! There it is. A sudden fear that life is going to be fucking dreadful if I never drink again.

The last one is hard. It’s the hardest to make sense of and sometimes the most confronting. Dreams. Recurring dreams. Usually, I’m out and about somewhere, I’m drinking and doing coke. Halfway through the session, I realise what I have done. It’s as though I had forgotten I was meant to be sober. Then it all hits me at once. “What the fuck have I done?” They feel so fucking real too. Like those dreams, when you wake up, for a split second, you think it might be real. Although up until two nights ago I hadn’t had one of these for some time, the fact that I am still having them is a strong reminder of something I have been reminding myself of all along. In terms of sobriety, you are never, ever as safe as you might think you are.

I’m going to try to unpack these three indicators as best I can below. At this point, I don’t know why they happen or why this week in particular has been more difficult than the weeks and months prior. I’m purely theorizing in a hope of understanding it better for myself and hopefully, it helps someone else as well.

Routine

I’m sitting here at 4:01 am. I didn’t sleep very well last night. I am tired, but when I woke up a little under an hour ago I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep. Usually, I’d go to the gym as soon as I woke up but today, I just felt like I wanted, or rather needed to write this before I did anything else.

The same thing happened to me one-day last week. There could be several reasons why, and I’ll touch on some of them below. I had a long run yesterday. I got a little bit sunburnt. I always struggle to sleep a little after a long run, even more so if I get too much sun. The race director made a joke about people using sun cream because it was overcast and spitting rain. I laughed. I got sunburnt. I knew last night I wasn’t going to sleep well. There’s more to it though, I think.

Anyone who’s read anything I’ve ever written knows how much of a stickler I am for routine. I won’t bore you with why. You can read about why in almost every other blog I have ever written. Not really, but sort of.

We had some family visit for a little over a week this week. Most of them hadn’t met the young bloke yet or seen the new house. It had been planned for a long time so I knew it was coming prepared as best I could. No matter what you do though, you can’t have a bunch of people stay at your house for over a week without it having an impact on your routine. My partner was playing tour guide all week. My son is growing from a brick into a fuckin’ core-filled cinder block. So he’s feeding, sleeping, and being clingy like a baby fuckin’ koala.

What does this mean? It means when I get home from work, there’s more shit to be done than normal. I’m not having a pity party, nor am I airing my dirty laundry on the internet. It just means that when I get home from work there’s more shit for me to get done. So I get to bed later. I wake up more tired. I don’t train or work as well because progressively my battery is going flat. I’m burning more energy each day than I’m recouping. It’s not sustainable. So you need to be malleable with your routine sometimes because you don’t want to end up completely flat. Maybe I need to work on identifying something I can remove from my routine when things get busy. The least important thing at the time. Because at the moment, it’s sleep and that’s okay in the short term, as long as it is truly short term. The way I see it if you only get 70% of the sleep you need, you either run out of charge 70% through the day, or you are limited to 70% of your capacity. The difference between a real battery and our batteries though is that the lower our battery gets, the harder we have to work to get the same result. So if on Monday something took 20% of your battery and you’re not recharging properly through the week, that same activity might take 30% of your battery by Wednesday.

So in situations like this, it’s up to me to find something I can temporarily cut out of my routine with minimal impact on day-to-day life. My son and his needs are always the priority. Family is also important. These guys in particular live pretty far away. 2,000k or more. Some of them are getting on in age. We don’t know how many more times they’ll see the young fella. It was also for a finite period. It’s not the end of the fucking world.

All it means is that for this period, I was going to have to do a little bit extra for the benefit of others. A small sacrifice for the greater good. I’m not proclaiming to be a hero, far from it. The point of this is, when you rely so heavily on your routine, you need to be aware of that so that when life slings shit at you, you’re prepared for it. You need the ability to adjust on the run. I think I have been so focused on developing my routine, automating as many aspects of it as I can, that I forgot to consider how I would best stick to my routine while dodging the slung shit.

It’s a tricky balancing act. I’ve learned a lot from this week and I now have an opportunity to improve and be better. I just know that one thing I can’t sacrifice long-term is sleep. I think ultimately when my routine is unsettled I lose sleep. When I lose sleep my brain isn’t where I need it to be. I think this is when I am susceptible and vulnerable to these urges and feeling around drinking. In fact, I don’t think, I know.

The universe is a funny place. I jumped on Instagram this morning and this was the first clip that popped up. The great Rich Roll talks about having goals, but not filling your plate too much. You need to leave some room for the dim sims when the dim sim trolley comes around. That one is for Breeny.

The Logical and Emotional Brains

Think of it as two kids in your care. You like one kid way more than the other, it’s pleasant. Most of the time, it helps you. It plays by the rules. Does as it’s told. Doesn’t often do things that don’t make sense. Even helps you clean up, sometimes without being asked… okay that’s too far but you get the point. But that’s your logical brain.

The second kid is a little eccentric. It’s passionate and instinctive. It’s far more prone to an emotional outburst, but it’s also driven and motivated. It’s a funny little fucker too. The second kid is hard work, but when it’s behaving itself and directing that emotion into something positive, it’s the most incredible little kid you’ve ever met. That kid is your emotional brain.

So when you’re at work, doing housework, boring monotonous grown-up bullshit, your emotional brain isn’t very handy. You rely heavily on your logical brain here. The problem is, you’re emotional brain is easily stimulated and has no sense of when is and isn’t a good time to present itself. The emotional brain will look after itself in the background without making any noise at all. When you get swept up in whatever task you are working on, it’s easy to forget the emotional brain even exists. It’ll sit there playing with its fuckin’ Lego or whatever while the grown-ups work on spreadsheets and shit. We forget about it sometimes. But we need to remember, sooner or later, it’s going to demand your attention one way or another. So while you’re typing “=(((a2/c2)*F2)+J2)” into your boring spreadsheet, the emotional brain is starting to wonder if you remember it even exists and you have no idea. Then fuckin’ bam! A small house made of Lego smashed into the back of your skull.

When it comes to the passing urges to drink, luckily to this point, I’ve been conscious enough to identify that these are just passing thoughts. These are my emotional brain letting me know that it’s struggling. Like most people, sometimes we have strange ways of letting people know we are struggling. When these thoughts present themselves to me, I try to remind myself that this is just my emotional brain letting me know it’s struggling. It’s my emotional brain’s way of letting me know that I’m not looking after it as best I can. It needs more attention. More care and nurturing.

The logical brain simply can not do all the work, all the time. The emotional brain needs to chip in too. I’ve been teaching myself from infancy, to ignore negative emotions. Can’t be sad if you just kind of, refuse to accept the emotion is there (you van, this is just what my dumb brain was telling me). I’m starting to think though, Maybe it’s time for me to nurture the emotional brain so that when the logical brain needs to switch off for a bit, we’re at less risk of being hijacked by our emotional brains. Why would it do the right thing by me if I’m not doing the right thing by it? What does that look like? I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out by writing this. Through the work I’m doing with my psychologist though, I’m thinking that it’s about welcoming the thoughts presented by the emotional brain. Imagine you’re brains are sitting at a table, and you’re standing at a whiteboard with some markers. Collectively you’re trying to brainstorm… some fuckin’ shit. I think up until this point, every time my emotional brain had an idea I didn’t like (negative emotion) I will stop it then and there because I don’t want to hear it. I think I’m smarter than it. I’m not though, the emotional brain knows that I need to hear what it’s trying to tell me. It’s emotional though, so when you shut it down, it’ll sit there in silence with its arms folded, staring at the ground. It won’t persist. Eventually, though, it’ll revisit the last idea it had that I dismissed so quickly, only it’ll present it louder, and angrier. It’s trying to tell us something important, it’s just that sometimes it doesn’t articulate itself very well. Because it’s an emotionally charged little bitch.

So, what do we do? Maybe we listen to the emotional brain. Maybe we take its ideas seriously and write them on the whiteboard. Use whatever colour you want, I don’t give a fuck. Probably red for the emotional brain. This doesn’t mean we have agreed with the emotional brain, yet! All it means is we have taken the idea, noted it down, and are willing to discuss it later. The emotional brain is an idea machine. When triggered it’ll sit there pumping out idea after idea. Sure, most of them are shit, but there are a few nuggets of gold mixed in with the nuggets of shit. When we listen to the emotional brain and write down its ideas, we at least buy ourselves some time before its next outburst and because we wrote down its last idea for later consideration, it’s not fucking screaming them at us. Kind of like regulated preventative maintenance.

Now imagine you’re standing at the whiteboard, brainstorming done. You have a list of all the ideas, some from the emotional brain and some from the logical brain. Collectively, we can run through them and decide together what is the best course of action. Doing this will give us financial security (logical brain) but it will have a negative impact on time spent with family (emotional brain) together, we can discuss a solution where each party is satisfied. I know what you’re thinking, we don’t have time to stop and consider everything in such detail, and you’re right. But I think if we practice listening to our emotional brain properly, we will more automatically consider it and what’s best for it as well as the logical brain.

This is the part I think I suck at and need to get better at. It’s at this point where we need our brains to work collaboratively. It’s a fuckin’ odd match. They’re chalk and cheese. They’re going to argue, a lot. But they have to work together. The thing is, each of the brains is as important as one another. They need each other. The best thing for both of them is to create an environment where they like each other or at the very least respect each other. When we create an environment where both brains feel as important as one another, we create the best environment for working collaboratively.

For so long, I’ve only been kind to my emotional brain when it’s kind to me. I’ve been using it like a bad friend uses a friend with money. I’ve only been there for it during the good times, not the bad times. Kind of like that close mate who fights people and then cries every time they drink. I’ve been a part-time friend of my emotional brain. I’ve been so focused on telling my emotional brain it’s dumb and stupid because of all the bad shit it has done to me. Not once though have I stopped to appreciate it for all the amazing things it’s done for me.

For most of my life, I have been guilty of prioritising the wrong shit. Shit that was driven by the logical brain. You have to work! So you can make money! So you can buy a house! So you can give half your money away each time you get paid! That’s what you have to do! It was ingrained in me as a kid. It was ingrained in my parents as children.

Look, that shit is very important. We need security and safety. But it is not MORE important. What the fuck are we securing and making safe in our homes if we are avoiding our emotions? I think a lot of us work how we do, “grind” (I fucking hate that word) like we do because have been conditioned to avoid negative emotions. “don’t cry”, “you’ll be right”, “Toughen up”… fuck off! Who the fuck are we to tell thousands and thousands of years of human evolution that we no longer need to feel our negative emotions? Without negative emotions, we have no reference. We don’t know what positive is without knowing what negative is.

The emotional brain looks after us. Through writing this I am learning that to me it is far more important than our logical brain. Take a step back for a second and think about what truly matters to you. What makes you content? Consider which part of your brain is driven from. Even if you said “a big fuck off mansion with a night club in it and 38 cars in the underground garage”, whilst you’re probably a materialistic asshole, that is still driven from the emotional brain. That is desire or probably more so, a lack of self-esteem you’re trying to fill by having shit that will impress other people. Without our emotional brain, life isn’t worth living. Happiness, love, pride, gratitude, all that fluffy shit you love to feel, it’s all generously given to you by your emotional brain. Like life though, it’s about compromise. “I’m willing to give you this feeling of happiness and joy, however, you won’t feel it to its fullest unless you also feel that feeling of sadness I gave you when your pet fish died last week”.

I think in my case, I was taught from infancy that my emotional needs weren’t important and I’ve grown up believing this. I think when I had my breakdown at Easter it was my emotional brain telling me it had had enough of the neglect. “Stop feeding me beer and cocaine you fucking idiot”.

I’ve been a little bit busy recently and probably prioritising the wrong shit. I think out of habit, when I get under the pump, the first thing I neglect when I’m busy is my emotional brain. I think this is why on four occasions in one week I’ve had a seriously strong urge to drink. On two occasions I’ve had that fear and anxiety that life is going to be horrible without alcohol. On one occasion I had a seriously vivid and distressing recurring dream.

I think I need to keep practicing the work I’m doing with my psychologist and notice the negative emotions. I need to stop dismissing them out of convenience and fear and let them in. They don’t have to hurt me. I don’t have to act on them. I just need to listen to them AND hear them. Be more aware that they are there. I think the more I do that, the less I will struggle with sobriety.

Share Sobering Thoughts

You Don’t Lose if You Learn

It’s important for me in this instance to work to keep working on gratitude. To make sure I maintain that switch in mindset. Just because I had a week where I struggled more than in recent times, doesn’t mean I am regressing. I’ve identified how and why it might have happened and I feel like I might be on the money here. This is a positive thing. We are constantly learning. I think a lot of us forget that just because we are finished school doesn’t mean we are finished learning. There’s a lesson in everything. While we don’t want to silver linings in everything and it’s very important to feel negative emotions when they present themselves, it’s equally as important to reflect after that process and take away lessons.

To me, gratitude isn’t witnessing a car crash and being grateful it wasn’t you. Gratitude comes after processing the event. Being grateful not for witnessing such an event, but being grateful to your brain for presenting the feelings and helping you navigate them so you can gain a renewed sense of your mortality and what truly matters. Gratitude for that sense of mortality changing the way you approach your life. Grateful that processing such an experience will change how you prioritise how you spend your time with your loved ones. It’s deeper than simply being glad it wasn’t you. It’s layered.

So did I have a hard week after I was fortunate enough to have several good weeks in a row? Yep. Was I due for one? Probably. Ultimately, life isn’t all beer and skittles. Sometimes it sucks. Every bit of shit that life slings at us is an opportunity and I think if we work hard to remain conscious of this we can take that opportunity and see what comes from it. Pursuing some opportunities may well lead to dead ends. We need to be aware of that but not let it deter us from pursuing them, because other opportunities can change the trajectory of our entire lives for the better. We just don’t know which it will be until we pursue them.

In my case, I think spending time and energy on trying to not have these feelings is wasteful. Because I can’t control that. With some work though, I can control how I react to them and how I let them affect me. I think we understate how much energy we have. I think we all waste it because we aren’t completely aware of how much of it we have. I think we need to focus that energy on controlling our reaction to the stimulus, rather than the stimulus. Because we don’t and never will control the stimulus.