Speaker 1Today, we're going to talk about my unpopular, my favorite unpopular opinions in addiction recovery. Now, I am fully open to being wrong about these, but these are things that I picked up over the last 11 years while recovering and being in recovery, having a relapse at seven and a half years, and now being a year and a half sober again. So I like to talk about this stuff because I believe it and it's not really the popular belief or opinion, but I find it to be true. So if you think I'm wrong, I love that. Please comment below what your opinion is. At the end of the day, everyone has an opinion. These are just mine. So let's get into it. Welcome back or welcome to Recovering Out Loud podcast. My name is Anthony. I'm an addict and alcoholic in recovery, been in recovery since 2015, year and a half sober again after I relapsed after about seven and a half years, and I'm grateful to be back. Alive with you. Please follow the podcast if you're not. Let's get into it. Okay. One, being sober and bitter is not recovery. It's the same disease in a suit. You can't put down the drink and still be running the exact same operating system. I know because I've done it. This is what we call a dry drunk. If you're bitter, if you're miserable, if you're impossible to live with, you're not working a good recovery program. Let's be honest. When I was in active addiction, I was lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating the world to get what I wanted. I was a taker through and through. When I come into recovery, if I don't change any of my behaviors, what's the point of all of this? Oh, now I'm alive, but I'm still a miserable prick to be around. I'm still treating everyone poorly. I'm still in victim mentality. You cannot be sober and miserable for a long time. Eventually, you will look for relief. And even if that relief is in cars and money and treating people like shit and buying things and I don't know, strip clubs and gambling, eventually you're going to turn back to what worked, your failed solution, which is alcohol and drugs. The substance was never the whole disease. It was a symptom you could see. Resentment, self-pity, control, the need to be right. That machinery keeps running whether or not there's a drink in your hand. This is where a recovery program comes in. And rewires those old beliefs and old ideas. Sober and miserable isn't a badge of toughness. It's the disease that learned to survive abstinence. A guy white knuckling and blaming the world is not safer than a guy drinking. He's just quieter about it. And usually a week away from a good reason. Being a dry drunk is of no benefit to anybody. No one. Especially not yourself. It might feel good while you're doing it. It might feel easy. You might not be even aware of it. But if you are working a recovery program, the chances are you are taking an honest self-appraisal, an inventory of yourself, your defects of character, the way you interact in the world, and you are making mistakes, but not repeating the same mistakes over and over again. You are making amends, and then you're doing a living amends by not repeating the behavior. That's recovery. Growth. Toward a goal. Progress. Not perfection. Putting down the drink is the price of admission. It's not the destination. If you're dry and hard and bitter, that's not the finish line. That's a warning light. The great news is you can change this at any time in your life. Okay, number two. Gratitude lists don't work when you're using them to bypass a real feeling. Gratitude saved my life. And I've also used it to lie to myself. Both can be true. There's a name for this. It's called emotional bypass. Using positivity or gratitude, to skip over a feeling instead of through it. The research is pretty clear. Chronically suppressing negative emotions doesn't make them go away. It makes them louder and links to more anxiety and distress over time. A gratitude list staple on top of unprocessed grief is just a nicer looking form of avoidance. Here's how you can tell. Does your gratitude include the hard thing? I'm grateful and I'm also furious today. Or does it replace it? I have no right to be sad. Look at all that I have. The second one is a trap. Real gratitude practice works. It's genuinely protective. The point isn't gratitude is fake. It's the gratitude and a hard feeling can sit at the same table. When you use one to evict the other, you've turned a good tool into a muzzle. Feel the thing, then be grateful. In that order. Gratitude on top of an unfelt feeling is just a some people are dry, not sober, and you can tell within five minutes. Not drinking and being sober are two different jobs. And you can hear the difference in about five minutes of a conversation. Yeah, this is the way I notice it is when people are talking shit about things or being victims. You can notice it pretty quickly when somebody is blaming the world for their problems or talking shit about somebody else to feel better about themselves. Those are usually two good tells. When someone's complaining a lot with no solutions, that's another good way to tell. And if you are, just notice it, change it. You're the only one suffering. So dry equals the substance is gone. Sober equals the reasons you used are getting worked on. One is a fact about your last 24 hours. The other is a direction. So the honest tells, like I said, resentment, still the victim of every story, still keeping score, white knuckled, tight jaw, waiting for a medal, talks about how long it's been more than what's changed. And I sit in a room without needing to win it. Can't sit in a room without needing to win it. Me versus you. So this five minutes thing, it's not about judging people. That's not what I'm talking about here. This is about recognizing a state you've been in yourself and the ability to say, wow, I'm proud. I'm grateful. I don't have to be that guy today. I don't have to be that rule. I don't have to. I'm grateful that I don't have to play that role today. Simple as that. I'm not trying to weaponize you either. So being newly dry is legitimate. It's a necessary stage, not a character flaw. Everybody starts dry because we don't have the toolkit yet. We don't have the solution. We're just coming in and doing our best at the beginning or just showing up. The problem isn't being dry. It's mistaking dry for done and then pitching a tent there. Dry is where you start. Sober is where you're going. Recovery is the process that brings you there. And there's no destination here. Nobody's judging you for the standing at the start line. Just don't call it the summit. This isn't the finish line. There's no certificates or graduation in recovery. You're on the path. You're going up the recovery mountain just like the rest of us. Four, your milestone chip means nothing if you're impossible to live with. Yeah. So this goes back to the original, you know, being a dry drunk. Celebrating your sobriety milestones is pretty much worthless if you're a terrible person to live with. Let's be honest. If you're difficult, if you're on, if you're not showing up for things, if you're making excuses, if you're constantly in denial and fighting with people and acting on every emotion that comes up, time is the cheapest metric in recovery. It's real. It matters. But it's the one thing that accrues whether you, whether or not you do the actual work. The people you live with, aren't counting your days. They're counting whether you're kind, whether you show up, whether the tension left the house. That's the real ledger. A chip with a monster attached to it isn't a win. It's evidence that abstinence and recovery are not the same thing. Chips matter. Milestones are motivation. They're markers. They help. Don't torch them. And I'm not trying to torch them here. Plenty of people are hard to live with early because they're detoxing. Raw, terrified. The point isn't chips are worthless. That's not what I'm trying to say. It's the, it's that the number is necessary, but nowhere near sufficient. Don't let the chip become the whole accomplishment. How are you living today? Count the days. Just don't let the days be the only thing you count. Ask the people in your house how your recovery is going. That's the real chip. And five, we have one day at a time is misused as an excuse to never plan a life. One day at a time kept me alive. It was also for a while, my excuse to not build anything. The slogan was built for the craving for the moment when a whole sober future feels impossible and you need to shrink it to the next 24 hours. That's its actual job. When I came in, it was, how am I not going to drink on my wedding day? And they told me just don't drink today. Just get to
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Speaker 1it gets smuggled however into everything no career move no repaired relationship no goals i'm just saying in today that's not the principle that's the fear working the principle as a costume that's the fear wearing the principle as a costume excuse me staying present and building a future aren't enemies you can plan the garden and still only water it today oh i love that yeah you're planting seeds for the future and they're not going to grow in your time and you can water them today while also planning them for them to grow into something bigger and beautiful what's the fear of working the principle as a costume that's the fear of working the principle one day at a time is how you get through the day it was never meant to be how you avoid the decade okay next and one of my favorites because it is especially true most relapses start with start weeks before the drink the drink is the last event not the first i talk about this all the time by the time i picked up on my relapse was already weeks old the drink wasn't the beginning it was the receipt so this one isn't just my opinion it's actual there's an actual model behind this relapse is a process not a single moment doesn't happen overnight it starts as an emotional shift long before any substance shows up the sequence roughly goes emotional relapse isolating skipping meetings bottling feelings poor sleep you're not even thinking about using it mental relapse is the bargaining the romanticizing maybe i could handle it the physical relapse is the drink the earlier you catch it the easier it is to pull back so the drink is the last domino which is good news because it means that we're there were warning signs and lights and flags for weeks you can learn to read your own warning signs now an honest caveat nuance here is if you're new in recovery and you're relapsing constantly those ones feel like they happen right away and they can happen right away because you have you're just so new that you decide you're going to relapse and so i'm not saying that no relapse happens in a moment because i certainly when i was in the middle of addiction and active addiction i was relapsing every day because i wasn't necessarily trying to stay sober and you can try to stay sober and relapse and it feels like it happens in a moment but usually it's because you're unaware of the emotions that are driving you the weeks leading up because you're so caught up in your head and you're not i'm not caught up in recovery work recovery community i'm so focused on getting pleasure and relief that i just use because it works it it it satisfies the craving okay next comparison recovery is just using aimed forward sorry comparison and recovery is just using aimed inward even better comparison is the same hit i used to i just aimed it at myself instead of a bottle using was always about managing an unbearable feeling right now comparison does the identical job it takes a hard internal moment and gives you a fast false story to escape into i'm behind i'm better than them i'll never get where they are both directions are the disease comparing down at least i'm not that bad gives you permission to coast comparing up everyone's ahead of me gives you reasons to quit what's the point same drug two flavors it's a mood alter with no substance required that's why it's sneaky it doesn't look like a relapse it just feels like being honest with yourself your recovery is isn't a leaderboard the only honest comparison is you today versus you back then so today you versus yesterday you you're this is a war with yourself everything else is just using the extra steps so if this one poked a bruise in you that's kind of the point tell me which ones made you mad in the dms below comment below tell me which ones you agree with disagree with tell me which ones i've missed these are just some of the many unpopular opinions i share after being in recovery for 11 years or so i'm not always right and i'm okay with that i don't need to be right today i'd rather be free so if you're not following the podcast yet please follow along i'd appreciate it it's the greatest payment you could ever give me if no one's told you this yet today i love you and remember recovery
Speaker 3is simple hank joined bj's wholesale club the day he became a father of 30 i coach football now coach hank saves up to 25 off grocery store prices 30 pounds of pasta three cases of protein bars 75 sports drinks and that's just pregame he knows teamwork and bj's knows savings this is your home coach home of the save join for just 20 at bj's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save not easy
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