Speaker 1I thought it'd be a good idea to talk about the most important lessons I've learned in the 10 years that I've been in and out of recovery. Hello again, everybody. My name is Anthony. I'm an alcoholic and an addict, and this is Recovering Out Loud podcast. I would say probably nine years of those 10 years, I've been working a recovery program and sober. If you want to know about my story, my relapse, I have a whole episode about that. You can check it out at any time, but this episode is about the most important things I've learned. Lessons, quotes that have helped me stay sober and work a recovery program and kept me happy and sober and just really important things. I want to reiterate too that none of this stuff is from my brain. This is all regurgitated information that I've learned from the people that have come before me, the people that have saved my life and have helped me stay sober. This is all, I'm no expert here in recovery. I don't claim to be a guru or an expert. I picked up, I'm like a sponge in recovery over the 10 years. And I advise everybody to do the same. Take what you like, leave what you don't. Look for the similarities, not the differences when you hear people sharing their recovery stories or their experiences and try to give it back. Regurgitate the information back. I got a message on my podcast this morning from a guy that said, Hey, I love that analogy in that episode about the keys in the grass and the power, the keys to the house were in the grass and the power is within, not outside. We keep looking for the answer outside. And he said, I shared it at my recovery meeting and everybody loved it. And I said, great. I never thought of that. I stole it from somebody else, but that's what this recovery thing is about. We're, we're taking information. We're recycling it out so that somebody else can use it. And we can be of service. We can be a vessel. We can be a, an antenna to the radio transmission coming from within, from a power greater than ourselves. I can transmit, I can be a conduit of God's will essentially. So let's get into it. Please. If you're not following me, please follow the podcast, like the podcast, subscribe, rate the podcast. It helps me so much. And that's all I'll say about that. I love you. Thank you for being here. So lesson number one, how do I get sober? H O W honesty, open-mindedness willingness. These are the essentials to recovery. I have to be honest first and foremost that yes, I have a problem and yes, I cannot solve this problem on my own. I've tried many times self availed me. Nothing. It's worse than I think it is my problem. And I need help. I need I'm beyond human aid. That's honesty, open-mindedness. Okay. I'm going to now listen to the solution that other people have. I'm going to attend recovery spaces and groups, i.e. 12 step recovery, i.e. smart recovery, refuge recovery. There's a ton of other ones that I'm leaving out, but I have another podcast episode about 12 step versus non-12 step. Go check it out. If you want to find other modalities, groups in recovery, there are lots of them. There are 12 steps. Doesn't have a monopoly on getting or staying sober. There are other modalities that you can check out other groups that help a lot of people. Dharma recovery is another one there. I just thought of that. So honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, how I'm open-minded to the information coming in. I'm going to look for the similarities and not the differences. I'm going to contempt prior to investigation is the worst thing that you can have in recovery is I'm right. Oh no, that's stupid. That doesn't make sense. God doesn't exist. They're talking about religion. It's a cult. Stop. Be open-minded. Widen your scope of information. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're right. That's open-minded. Willingness. Willingness to take action. So I'm, I've been honest. I have a problem. I need outside help to get it. I'm beyond human aid. And now I'm willing to do whatever it takes to defeat this addiction, to get into recovery, to recover, to heal. I am willing to take action against my better judgment, especially when I don't want to, because that's what keeps me sober today is doing things I don't necessarily want to do. But the suggestions are coming from somebody doing better than me or somebody that has more sobriety time than me. And when I say better than me, I don't mean they have more cars. They have a wife. They're successful at their job. I mean, those, you know, those people that you just hang around with that are just so spiritually. They fit. They're just so Zen and calm. They are just tapped in. It feels like you're taking 10 milligrams of volume. When you hang around with them, they just bring your anxiety level down, hang out with those people. And if you want what they had, you got to do what they did. Willingness action. That is how you get sober from in a nutshell. All right. Lesson two, your addict, your addiction, your addict brain is doing pushups in the parking lot. I'm sure some of you have heard this one. I love it because I don't necessarily like to think of my addiction as this dark cloud following me around all the time. But that motherfucker is there. I'm telling you he's there. She's there. It's there waiting for you to mess up. I have personal experience with this. It comes at you in all forms, triggers. It comes at you in obsessions, thoughts. Remember, when's the good times you sent your addict will send you the highlight reels of all the good times that you had and leave out all the bad times. Let's think about Anthony. This is what mine says to me. Let's think about that time you were alone for a week in a hotel room that was super expensive and super nice. And although you were alone and by yourself, that was fun. Remember, don't think about when you got kicked out of the hotel for not being able to pay. And when you almost went to jail, when the guy came up to kick you out, the security guard, and there was drugs all over the place and he let you go. Don't think about that. We're only going to think about the good times. Your addict is doing pushups waiting for you. It is a progressive disease. This addiction, alcoholism, it only gets worse, never better. So if I'm now a year and a half sober again, that means my addict brain has had another year to do more pushups. He is stronger than ever. The good news is my recovery is also doing pushups. The more I work on it and the more I show up and do things I don't necessarily want to do. Like I said, my recovery is also getting stronger. Okay. Lesson three, you cannot, I repeat, you cannot get anybody sober. This is a personal journey, a personal decision that somebody has to come to when they just have had enough. You might be thinking to yourself, my husband has, is at rock bottom. My son is at rock bottom. He, this has to be it. Why can't he stop? I can't answer that question for you. All I know is there was a moment in time. I call it an act of Providence because there was a, a spiritual, a spiritual experience and I didn't see a white light. I didn't see God. None of that happened, but there was just something in my brain that said, dude, stop fighting, surrender. You've had enough go to rehab again. This is it. Stop. The party is over. Stop fighting. I wish I did it earlier. I would have saved a hundred grand, 50 grand. I don't even know. I would have saved a lot of money. You can't get sober before your time. This is essentially what I'm saying. You can support somebody. You can be there when they're ready. You can not enable them. And I have a whole episode on enabling versus support in the family episode, but essentially it is a personal decision. Somebody has to come to, they have to be sick and tired of being sick and tired and willing to do whatever it takes to go willing to go to any lengths to get over alcohol or drugs. Lesson four, the people who are happy and sober. This is something I've noticed over the 10 years that I've been doing this. The people that are happy and sober, long-term all have one thing in common. They all believe in some sort of spiritual belief. Some sort of spiritual practice. They practice spirituality, not religion. Some of them practice religion, but they all have this fundamental idea of God. This fundamental idea of I'm not God. My ego is the problem. I'm selfish. I need outside help. I need, I am beyond human aid. No doctor is going to fix me. No friend is going to fix me. No psychiatrist is going to fix me. I need to come up with a power greater than me to follow that direction. I have a whole episode on spirituality. If you're interested, go check it out. They all have it. If you've been around long enough, you talk to the people that are happy and sober. There's a lot of people that are sober and not happy. That's the other thing. There's a lot of people that are miserable and sober for a long time. In my opinion, in my experience, if I want to be happy and sober long-term, I need a connection to something greater than me. I need to follow direction of better morals, spiritual principles, honesty, hope, faith, service, brotherly love, humility. I need to follow direction of better morals, spiritual principles, honesty, hope, faith, service, brotherly love, humility. These are all things. Spirituality is a practice. It is a practice. It is rewiring, reconditioning your soul, your brain. When you want to act on a defective character, you want to freak out and get angry at somebody, you don't do it. When you want to cheat at school because it's the easy way out and chat GPT is the greatest thing ever and I could just get by, you don't do it. That's something I struggle with, by the way. I'm working on it. I'm getting better. You're practicing not authenticity. Yes, authenticity is important, but integrity. That's what I'm looking for. Integrity when you're doing the right thing when no one is watching because it's the right thing to do. How do I know what the right thing to do is? It's pretty simple. You stay sober long enough and you start to get that gut feeling of, oh, this is wrong. Don't do that. Lesson five, service is the key to staying sober. Service, selfless service is the key to staying sober. There's going to be times when it's inconvenient for you to help another person. This doesn't mean that you're running over backwards and you are trying to will them to get sober. It just means that you are going out of your way. You're answering the phone. When don't want to you're doing things you're helping your group out you're making coffee setting up chairs you're doing things that you don't necessarily believe in like i said at the beginning because the suggestions are coming from somebody doing better than me service sitting across the table from another alcoholic addict listening to their problems listening to their life and then sharing your experience with them not trying to fix them just simply sharing your experience with them and what you did not telling them what to do telling them what you did that is service when i am in somebody else's i am out of my and my problems seem to shrink it works you just need to try it the other thing i'll say about service too is you don't know when your message will get received you keep putting out that message and you think you're not helping the person they keep relapsing keep relapsing you never know when that message could click for them and work i've had people come back to me and say hey man you said that thing that one time and it really helped me and this and that and in my mind i thought that that was the most useless talk i've ever given or i didn't help that person at all that was a waste of time don't discredit yourself keep carrying the message it'll be received when it's supposed to be received by who is supposed to be received by hope that made sense lesson six recovery is a one day at a time program it's a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition but it is daily when i first came into recovery my only fear not my one of my biggest fears i had a lot of fears i still have a lot of fears it's better today my biggest fear was how am i not going to have a drink on my wedding day that was my biggest fear they kept telling me when i shared about it because i got honest about that fear and now and i wasn't complaining about it maybe i complained about it i did a lot of complaining in early recovery i still do people kept saying to me son just get to bed sober don't drink today don't drink today if you didn't drink today you had a spiritual experience you were a success today just make it keep it simple just don't drink today and if that's too hard to wrap your head around just don't drink for the next 15 minutes and keep doing that over and over again you will eventually get months and years less than seven there i wrote all these i love them you are going to encounter a lot of sick people in recovery okay let me repeat that there are a lot of unwell people in recovery they may have years they may be very unwell what i mean by sick and unwell is they might not be practicing authenticity to the best of their ability in that moment that you that you talk to them they might be doing things that you don't disagree with that you disagree with and that's okay you need to meet people where they're at and you don't always need to hang out with people okay i don't love everybody i sorry i do love everyone that i come into contact with in recovery i love them all but it doesn't mean that i have to go and have coffee with them a lot of you will understand what i'm saying there are a lot of people that i don't need to hang around with in recovery and they might have years of sobriety but they don't have anything that i want essentially and what do i want peace of mind i want calm i want presence of god i want zen i want quiet soundness of mind awareness mindfulness that's what i want i want to be useful again and i am today lesson eight coming back after my relapse after seven and a half years was one of the hardest things i've ever done i don't recommend testing the waters with your addiction and mine led through steroids and adhd medication i talk about it extensively in my other episodes and my story it was extremely hard i just remember being in those airbnbs kicked out of my house surfing from hotel to airbnb to hotel thinking i knew what the answer was i had self-knowledge i was full of self-knowledge but that didn't do because i wasn't willing to take the action because i didn't want to stop because i saw recovery as this mountain with uphill in the snow with booby traps it was just this unpalatable journey that i didn't want to partake in and that is not true the hoop you have to jump through in recovery is a lot wider than you think you just have to take those first steps and listen to what people are telling you and take the action and do what they say when you want to use you call them you don't pick up you just don't pick up that one which leads me into lesson nine secrets keep you sick you're only as sick as your secrets so important i relapsed because i had to go back to work and i had to go back to work because i had secrets i was telling you ninety percent of the truth and i was keeping the ten percent back here as one of my favorite counselors in utah said you're robbing banks ten percent of the time but ninety percent of the time you're a good civilized human being you're still a bank robber anthony you got to be a hundred percent honest if you have any plans or designs or secrets anything at the end of your day is there something that should be discussed with someone something that you're uncomfortable with something that you know is wrong tell somebody about it make sure one person on this planet knows everything whether it's your therapist a sponsor a friend your partner make sure somebody on this earth some human knows everything every single thing secrets keep you sick you will relapse eventually because there's a whole thing of shame and guilt and i'm going to do another episode on guilt and shame but it just layers on top of each other and then eventually you're in a state of depressed you're in a state of disturbed and the only solution once you have all the other failed solution the only failed solution is alcohol and drugs you will get there eventually tell somebody everything lesson 10. resentment and fear are lethal to us they are poison they will take you out resentment is anger that is relived replayed i have a little episode on anger and and resentment eventually much like secrets resentment leads you in a state of disturbed and if you're in that state long enough you will eventually by process of elimination you will eventually be in a state of disturbed and if you're in that state long enough you will eventually by process of elimination you will eventually by process of elimination you will eventually be in a state of disturbed and if you're in that state long enough you will eventually by process of elimination you will eventually by process of elimination the car the house the girl the gambling the the car the house the girl the gambling the shopping you will eliminate all these things until you shopping you will eliminate all these things until you pick up mind-altering substance and it may not be pick up mind-altering substance and it may not be your drug of choice at first like me it may not be your drug of choice at first like me it started with steroids and then eventually it led into steroids and then eventually it led into adderall i never abused adderall before now i i did it was a new thing for me adderall i never abused adderall before now i i did it was a new thing for me and then you had benzos in there it was a new thing for me and then you had benzos in there it was a whole other whirlwind of terrible relapse these two whole other whirlwind of terrible relapse these two states will leave you disturbed and when you states will leave you disturbed and when you are disturbed you are looking for relief are disturbed you are looking for relief and when you are looking for relief and when you are looking for relief eventually you will find the relief that used to work and if the relief that used to work and if you're choosing you're choosing substances instead of recovery or god substances instead of recovery or god you just don't know what's going to you just don't know what's going to happen next i don't know what's going to happen next i don't know what's going to happen next i don't know what's going to happen next i could be a relapse for four happen next i could be a relapse for four happen next i could be a relapse for four months or i could be in a relapse a months or i could be in a relapse a months or i could be in a relapse a bender for four years bender for four years bender for four years i don't know lesson 11 cross addiction i don't know lesson 11 cross addiction i don't know lesson 11 cross addiction can take you down another episode on can take you down another episode on can take you down another episode on cross addiction cross addiction is cross addiction cross addiction is cross addiction cross addiction is picking up other things once you put picking up other things once you put picking up other things once you put down your drug of choice i kind of down your drug of choice i kind of down your drug of choice i kind of already talked about this but already talked about this but already talked about this but essentially things like peptides essentially things like peptides essentially things like peptides nowadays with guys and steroids and nowadays with guys and steroids and nowadays with guys and steroids and ozempic you can get addicted to that ozempic you can get addicted to that ozempic you can get addicted to that going to the gym looking good that is an going to the gym looking good that is an going to the gym looking good that is an addiction of in of itself and that can addiction of in of itself and that can addiction of in of itself and that can lead you it can take you down it can lead you it can take you down it can lead you it can take you down it can leave you in a state of disturbed like i leave you in a state of disturbed like i leave you in a state of disturbed like i said and take you down lesson 12 the said and take you down lesson 12 the said and take you down lesson 12 the opposite of addiction is connection we opposite of addiction is connection we opposite of addiction is connection we can't do this thing alone i can't we can can't do this thing alone i can't we can We need community. I need a group of people that understand what I'm going through and have been what I've been through. It's like a bunch of people recovery coming into recovery is like surviving the Titanic. We all just know that was a close call. You know, when you walk into recovery space and everyone just looks at each other and you just have that nod, that camaraderie like, Oh yeah, I know what you've been through. Even though I didn't flip a car on the highway like that guy did. I still, I get the feelings. I get it. That feeling of, I want to stop, but I can't. And everything in my life is burning to the ground, but I keep choosing alcohol. I get it. And there are other people that get that to find them and hang out with them. The best question you can ask in early recovery is not why, what next? What else? What else can I do? What else did you do? What did you do when you experienced this? I guarantee you there are people in recovery that have been through what you have been through and can help you. And lesson 14, my biggest problem today is my ego. Self-centered selfishness. My ego tells me that I'm right and you're wrong. It's me versus you. That guy's being an asshole and he is doing it personally to me. My ego tells me I don't need recovery. And you're strong enough now, Anthony, you don't need to meditate anymore. You don't need to pray. You don't need to go to your recovery meetings or spaces. You don't need to talk about your problems because you can handle this. We've got this. I've got this. That's ego. Be aware of that. That'll take you down. I always say this, but I relapsed because my primary purpose became Anthony. Instead of staying sober and helping the next alcoholic, getting things, progressing in life, material items, looking good. I wanted you to like me. And if you liked me, I was okay. That's codependence. That's ego. I need you to see how good I'm doing. I don't want to talk about my problems. I don't want to tell you that I'm on steroids and trying to fix my body dysmorphia because that means I'm flawed. I don't want to tell you that I'm on steroids and trying to fix my body. I don't want to talk about that. That's ego. Be aware of that coming out. Deflate it. How do you deflate your ego? Being of service, doing things you don't want to do, asking for help. I was going to combine my favorite recovery quotes into this episode, but I'll do a separate one for that because there's a lot of good ones. And I say them throughout my episodes, but let's end with this beautiful quote from Alan Watts, who if you don't know Alan Watts, I guess he's a philosopher. He talks about alcoholism. He talks about, he talks about spirituality. He has a lot of books. He does a lot of talks. And he, he has a famous quote on alcoholism specifically. And it goes like this. The alcoholic is not addicted to alcohol. He is addicted to the attempt to escape from himself. One more time. The alcoholic is not addicted to alcohol. The drug addict is not addicted to alcohol. A drug addict is not addicted to drugs. He is addicted to the attempt to escape from himself. I don't like what's going on in my brain. I don't like here and now. I don't like being present. I wanna worry about tomorrow and I wanna be ashamed of the past because that makes me feel like I'm in control of things and I want control, ego. I wanna be right. I wanna be liked. I wanna be loved. I wanna be praised and attaboyed. Maybe perhaps you are not addicted to alcohol or drugs. Perhaps you are addicted to escaping yourself. The substance is not the root. Self-avoidance is. Recovery is a self-searching process. It is a self, honest self-appraisal, daily self-examination. Why do I do things? Why do I react in the way I react? Why do I pick up alcohol and drugs? What is this about? And again, these are deeper questions that you don't need to figure out right away. In the beginning, ask what next? What else? How do I stay sober? What do I do? What did you do? How did you get through this? Can I bounce something off you? Those are the things you wanna be asking people that you trust and people that have been through addiction and are now practicing a recovery program and spiritually fit. Like I said in the beginning, those people that are tapped in, calm, peace, things just sort of roll off their backs. They're like soldiers walking through a war zone with bullets flying through them. And they're just there. They trust that they're gonna be okay. Those are the people I wanna hang out with. If no one has told you this yet today, I love you. Remember, recovery is simple, not easy.
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