4 Signs Sobriety Is Actually Working (Even When It Feels Like It's Not)

Hey everybody, welcome to the Addiction Unlimited podcast where you get to learn everything you want to know about addiction and recovery. I'm your host, Angela Pugh, co-founder of Kansas City Recovery, Life Coach and Recovery in Alcoholic. To learn more about me, you can listen to episode zero on your podcast app or find us on the web at AddictionUnlimited.com. Hello my friend, welcome back to Addiction Unlimited. I'm your coach, Angela Pugh. Thank you for hanging out with me today, listening to the pod. It's about 5 a.m. for me and I'm recording this. I have a nice hot cup of coffee, getting some recording done before the day gets noisy. And I want to tell you about a client of mine. She came to me about three or four weeks into our work together and she was defeated. Not in the way people are defeated in early sobriety, like that raw, desperate, white knuckling kind of defeated. This was different. This was the kind of defeated that comes from trying really hard and feeling like it's not working. She was crying more than when she was drinking. She was fighting more with her partner. She didn't know what she liked anymore. She couldn't answer the question, what do you like to do for fun without going completely blank? She felt more lost than she did on day one. And she looked at me and said, I think I'm doing this wrong. And I want to tell you what I told her because I think a lot of you need to hear this too. I said you're not doing it wrong. This is exactly what healing looks like. And nobody told you that. So you've been sitting here thinking something is broken when actually everything is working. And she cried, not sad cry, but relief cry because she had been carrying all the weight of thinking she was failing at the one thing she was trying hardest to do. And she wasn't failing at all. And that moment is why I'm recording this episode today. Here's the lie we all believe about healing. We think it's going to feel like exhaling. We think we're going to put down the drink and feel this wave of relief wash over us and then slowly and steadily things are going to get better. We're going to sleep better, feel better, show up better. Our relationships are going to improve. We're going to find out who we are without alcohol and it's going to feel like coming home. And some of that does happen for sure. Some of it takes a while. But that is not what every second of the beginning feels like. Sometimes the beginning feels like chaos. And here's why. For years, maybe decades, alcohol was doing a job. It was managing your emotions, numbing your discomfort, blurring the edges of things that were too sharp to look at directly. It was your coping mechanism, your social lubricant, your way of transitioning from one part of the day to the next. It was doing a lot of work. When you take it away, all of that stuff is still there. The emotions don't disappear because you stopped drinking. The discomfort doesn't vanish. The sharp edges are still sharp. Except now there's nothing blurring them. You didn't create new or more chaos. You just became able to feel it. And if nobody has told you that, if nobody sat you down and said, this is supposed to feel like this, then of course you think something is wrong. Of course you wonder if you made a mistake. Of course you start to think maybe this isn't working. It is working. This is just what it feels like. I want to walk you through some of the specific things that happen in early recovery that look like problems, but are actually signs that you're doing it right. These aren't guarantees. Not everyone is going to experience them exactly the same way or in a certain order, but they are common enough that I want to name them because recognition is everything when you're in the middle of it. And the first one is that things don't feel fun or fulfilling anymore. This is the one that scares people the most. You quit drinking and you expect to fill that space with things that make you happy. Hobbies, people, experiences, and instead, nothing lands. Things that used to bring you joy feel flat. You can't even answer the question, what do you like to do fun without going completely blank? And the fear is, what if this is just who I am without alcohol? What if I'm just a boring, empty person in the drinking was the only thing that made me interesting? That fear is a lie, by the way, and here's the truth behind it. People was artificially inflating your dopamine for years. Every time you drink, you got a hit of that reward chemical, that sense of pleasure and relief. And yes, this. And over time, your brain compensated by producing less of it naturally and becoming less sensitive to it overall. So your baseline, your normal, everyday sense of satisfaction and enjoyment got flattened out. When you stop drinking, your brain has to recalibrate. It has to learn how to produce and respond to dopamine naturally again. And that takes time. The flatness you're feeling right now isn't who you are. It's your brain healing. It's temporary, but only if you stay in it. The second one is that you are more emotional, not less. People come into sobriety expecting to feel calmer and more in control. And instead, they're crying at commercials, snapping at people they love, feeling things so intensely, it's almost unbearable. Things that seem completely disproportionate to what's actually happening. And what's going on is this, for years you were numbing. Every feeling that was too uncomfortable to sit with, you had a way to turn down the volume. Anxiety, loneliness, anger, grief, boredom, all of it got muffled. Now that the muffling is gone, everything that was underneath is surfacing. All at once. And your coping skills, your actual sober coping skills are brand new. You're just learning to regulate emotions that you've been suppressing for years. And you don't have much practice yet. This is your nervous system coming back online. It's not a breakdown. It's a recalibration. It means it's working. The third one is your relationships feel harder. This is a big one. And I want to be super honest about this. You are changing. The people around you are not, at least not at the same pace. And that creates friction. The dynamics that alcohol used to blur are now coming into focus. Co-dependency. The ways you've been playing small to keep the peace, the resentments you've been drinking over instead of addressing, the relationships that were held together by shared drinking and don't really have much beyond that. All of it becomes visible. Invisible is uncomfortable. Some relationships will get harder before they get better. Some relationships will have to be renegotiated completely. And some relationships may not survive your recovery because the version of you that's emerging doesn't fit inside the dynamic that was there before. That is not a sign you're doing it wrong. That's a sign that you're changing. Real change disrupts things. That's how you know it's real. The fourth one is that you want to hide. Everything feels like too much, too loud, too intense, too demanding. The idea of being around people, even people you love feels exhausting. You want to pull back, go quiet, be alone. And then you feel guilty about it because you've heard that isolation is dangerous in recovery and you don't want to be doing the dangerous thing. But here's the distinction I want you to hold on to here. There's a difference between rest and disappearing. Rest looks like I need a quiet weekend. I'm going to say no to the party. I need to not be performing for anyone right now. I'm going to fill up so I can show back up. Disappearing looks like I'm cutting off everyone. I'm not answering texts. I'm not going to my support. I'm completely withdrawing from everything and everyone that knows what I'm doing. One of those is self-protection. The other is a warning sign. And you'll know which one you're in if you get honest with yourself. But needing to retreat sometimes, needing to not be on, that's not failure. That's your nervous system asking for something it desperately needs. I want to talk about why this window, not day one, but somewhere between 30 and 90 days in, is actually one of the most dangerous windows in early recovery. Not dangerous in a dramatic sense, but dangerous in a quiet sense. Because this is when the initial momentum has worn off. The relief of finally deciding is gone, right? The people who were cheering you on have moved on to their own lives. And you're left with the day-to-day work of being sober, which is harder and less glamorous than anyone made it sound. And it feels worse than you expected. So your brain starts doing the math. It says, "I've been doing this for two months and sometimes I feel worse than when I started. The relationships are harder, my emotions are bigger. I don't even know what I like anymore. If this is sobriety, maybe I didn't need to quit. Maybe I was fine. Maybe I can moderate." And if nobody is there to interrupt that math, to say, "Wait a minute, you're reading this wrong. Let me show you what's actually happening." Then a lot of people walk right back through that door they just came out of. Not because they don't want sobriety, but because they didn't know what they were experiencing was normal. Because they thought the chaos meant they were failing. Because nobody told them this is just what it feels like. You're not falling apart. You're coming back together. Every uncomfortable thing you're feeling right now, the flatness, the emotions, the relationship friction, overwhelmed. All of that is evidence that something is shifting. You spent years building a life around a substance. That life had structure and patterns and ways of being that fit around drinking. And now you're dismantling it. You're pulling out the thing that was holding the shape of everything and rebuilding from the inside out. That's not a small thing. That's enormous work. And it's supposed to feel like work. The discomfort is not a detour on the way to healing. The discomfort is the healing. I think about my clients, the men and women who come into my six-week program, white knuckling it, convinced something is wrong with them. Almost every single one of them at some point says some version of, "I didn't know this was normal." Knowing the identity confusion, the hollow feeling, the brain that won't shut up, they all thought they were the only one. They all thought it meant something was broken. None of them are broken. All of them are healing. And what changed everything for them wasn't just the information. It wasn't just me saying this is normal. It was having someone who had been through it, who knew this territory from the inside, who could look at what they were experiencing and say, "I know exactly where you are. I know what comes next and you're going to be okay." That's what 20 years on the other side looks like. That's what I offer. Because I've lived every mile of this road. So here's what I want to leave you with. If you're in this right now, if it feels messy, emotional, confusing, harder than you expected, you are not off track. You're in it. And this is the part where most people turn around, not because they want to drink, but because they don't understand what's happening. Don't be that person. Get support. Get perspective. Get someone in your corner who can tell you in real time what's actually going on so you don't keep second guessing yourself. And if you want that, come talk to me. I actually opened up a few extra spots in my calendar right now because a lot of you have been reaching out to me saying you couldn't find a time slot on my calendar. And I don't want that to be the reason you stay stuck. So if you've been thinking about it, go grab one of those spots. AddictionUnlimited.com/Call. Just you and me figuring out what's going on and what you actually need. I'll write my friend. You are not broken. You are in the middle of becoming someone new. And that part? Yeah, it can be uncomfortable. But it's also amazing and exciting and empowering. And I'm ready for you as soon as you're ready to go all in. I'm here for it. AddictionUnlimited.com. Of course, that link is always in the show notes. I hope you're having a fantastic day and I will see you next week. You've reached the end of another great episode of the Addiction Unlimited podcast. Candid and honest conversation about addiction and recovery. Be sure to visit us at AddictionUnlimited.com to join the conversation and access show notes and links to everything we talked about. Love this episode? Please take 30 seconds to subscribe, rate, and review on iTunes to help us improve and give you the information you want. Thanks for listening. See you next week. [Music]