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Speaker 2Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Recovering Out Loud. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about dry drunks, what it means to be a dry drunk, and recovery. So, we're talking about two different things here. Yes, they are two different things. Being sober and being sober in recovery. What's the difference? Why should I care? How do I know which one I'm in? And sometimes we can waver between two, but that's okay. I'm going to break it all down for you today. This is very important. This is very important because a lot of people think that when they get sober, life is going to magically fix itself, and I'm going to be a better person, and my family is going to be healed. My relationships are going to fix, and everything's going to be great. I'm going to get that job, and the money, and everything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Not true. You need to work on yourself when you get sober. You take the alcohol and drugs away from me, I am unmedicated, essentially. I am a piece of shit. I am a selfish bastard when I am not high. I am high or drunk. Now, towards the end, you could argue, yes, I was a piece of shit while I was high and drunk. My defects of character come out in full force when I get sober. When you remove my solution, I need something else, a power greater than me, something, a recovery program, a group of people that I can lean on, a community, a set of principles that I can follow, so I can be a good person, so I could help the next alcoholic addict. The key to all of this is selfless service. That is the secret to recovery. When I'm helping somebody else, I'm not thinking about me and poor me and my life and my problems. So, we'll break it down today. You can be sober and still be miserable. That is very possible. If anything, it's almost a guarantee if you're not working on yourself and you're not actively trying to improve yourself, self-improvement, self-searching, self-appraisal. Who am I? You cannot be miserable and sober for long. Let me repeat that. No one. Can stay miserable and sober for a long time. You will eventually pick up. I have personal experience with this. If I am not working on myself, if I am not following a set of principles, helping others, like I said, I will pick up drugs and alcohol again, because what's the point? I have no purpose. I have no direction. I have no, what is the point of living if I can't get high or drunk? I need a north star. I need a guiding force. I need an inner teacher so that I can be comfortable in my own skin. I can be comfortable with. Here and now, I don't need to escape. So today we're going to break down what a dry drunk means, the difference between being sober and being in recovery, why people relapse, even after long stretches of abstinence. I'm a perfect example of that relapse after seven and a half years. Don't recommend it. It does get worse. It will get worse. I promise you that. And what real recovery actually looks like in day-to-day life. This is about improving the quality of your life so that I. Don't need to escape it anymore. I don't want to escape it anymore because my life is big. It's not perfect and it's not what I want all the time, but it's exactly what exactly what I need in recovery. And then I find invariably that what I needed and what I wanted was actually the same fucking thing all along. That is the true treasure here. So first dry drunk, what it really means a dry drunk is somebody that got has gotten sober. They've stopped using substances. So they've quit. They've stayed abstinent and they haven't changed their internal patterns that fueled the addiction. That's the key here. They're not changing how they interact in the world. They're still acting on anger. They're still acting on lust. They're still acting. They're picking up other outside things, such as food, sex, gambling to ease the pain and the trauma in, in our lives. Essentially the dry drunk is the world revolves around me and my problems. Everything is against me and it's me versus. Everybody. I am self-centered to the core. I'm not working on being selfless or working on my defects of character. I'm just acting on every single emotion and pain that comes up. And guess who pays the price? Not only you, but every single person around you, every single person that you come into contact with pays the price. And then you're just in this constant state of disturbance. I'm always disturbed when the guy cuts me off in line. I don't have the ability to be patient when I'm not working my recovery program, I flip out and cause a scene and get into a fight. Or go to jail or whatever. You know how it goes. They're abstinent, but still operating from a place of fear, resentment control. I need to control things. You need to follow my script. And if you don't follow my script, I automatically hate you. Now I have a resentment. I'm not telling anyone about it. I'm eventually going to blow up because I'm pissed off. I have a low level resentment following me around like a black cloud. So resentment, fear, control, ego, emotional avoidance is another one. You know, that's too uncomfortable. I don't want to, I don't want to deal with that. I'll just push that down. And then it comes up and explodes on your wife or husband. Some common signs of a dry drunk chronic irritability or anger. So everything is just pissing you off. It's the state of disturbed. I'm just constantly restless, irritable and discontent. And now I don't have my drinks or my drugs. So you're seeing the consequences of that. I'm acting out on that. I'm always irritable. So just, I'm just always uncomfortable. Everything's pissing me off. Everyone else is the. Problem, right? This victim mentality, that's dry drunk, white knuckling through life, just getting through every day, getting to bed, not working on myself, just trying to get sober, trying to get through every day. It's a struggle. It's a real struggle being a dry drunk, not having a recovery program, no accountability. Again, everyone else is to blame except for me. Wasn't my fault. If only my husband or my wife or my friends would treat me better or call me more, I'd be happier. No emotional. Growth. So we're not learning from our mistakes. We're not learning from our emotions. We're not noticing them. They're just coming through. And I always say our emotions and thoughts come through like trains at a train station. You can either use them. They either have Velcro on them and they stick around and we're dwelling on that, or you let them pass by. You're acknowledging it and it's passing by through like trains at a train station. And then another sign of a dry drunk, still trying to control people, outcomes and feelings. If everybody would just follow my script. Don't you know the world would be a better place if everyone just listened to me and my ideas and followed my plans. So the key point here is the substance is removed, the substance is gone, but the addiction, the addict mindset is still running the show. Me, me, me, I need to get things my way now. And if I don't, you're going to hear about it. Think of it like this. You didn't remove the engine. You just took your foot off the gas, walking around, just coasting through life, irritable, restless, irritable and discontent. Sober does not equal recovered or in recovery. There's a huge debate. I'm going to go on a tangent here, a little sidetrack here. There's a big debate in recovery versus whether someone can recover or not. There are specific programs that say you can recover from a seemingly hopeless and you can recover. So recover, I can recover from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. That's what it says is I can be restored. To a state of usefulness. Really, if you look up recovered or recover in an old dictionary, one of the oldest definitions is to return. I think it's return to usefulness. So I'm now useful to society in my life, to useful to others again. Whereas when I'm in addiction, I am completely useless. I can't show up to things. I can't keep obligations. I can't keep promises. I can't fuck. I can't even keep my own promises. I promised I wouldn't drink tonight because I have that important engagement tomorrow. Here I am drunk again. So sobriety is behavioral. I'm stopping drinking and using recovery as psychological, emotional, spiritual, and relational. You can be 30 days, one year, 10 years sober and still feel emotionally unsafe, disconnected from community, from a power grade in yourself, from yourself, unfulfilled, stuck in old survival patterns. This is why you constantly hear people say, and some people relapse over this. Like I said, I stayed sober, but I hated. My life. I was miserable. This encircled back abstinence alone does not teach you how to feel emotions, how to communicate or how to repair relationships. These are all skills that are learned in recovery from me working on myself, being honest about the way I'm interacting in the world. Well, I was kind of a piece of shit there. Oh, I didn't really, I kind of blew up at my wife. You know, I didn't really, she probably didn't appreciate that. I should go and apologize. This is recovery, observing how I interact in the world. So what recovery actually is recovery is a change from the inside out. It is an inside job. You hear that a lot. Recovery is an inside job. Nothing out here is going to fix the way I'm feeling that discomfort, that unease inside that disease. It's an inside job. I have to work on myself, my defects of character. When I lie, I have to go back and say, hey, I lied there and tell the truth. It's not about being perfect. We are not saints. We are looking for spiritual progress here. I'm being honest with you. about when i fuck up there's a good story that i've heard a speaker say once and i like to tell it there was a guy that was he lost his keys and he's out on his front lawn one day looking for his car keys and he's searching through the grass he's on his hands and knees and his friends walk by and say hey man what are you doing and he invites them over to help him look for his car keys he's frantically looking all over the grass until one of them says to him hey man where were you last when you had your keys? And he goes, Oh, I was inside the house. And the guy, his friends go, well, why the fuck are we looking out here then? And his response is, well, the grass is beautiful. It's nice out here. I want to be out here. This is a perfect analogy to, I am looking outside for the solution. When the solution is inside the house, it's inside me. My keys are inside the house the entire time, this material I use outside things to change my insides. If I just get that job, I'll be happy. If I just get the girl, I'll be happy. If I just win the bet, I'll be happy. If I just get that house, I've always wanted that Porsche. I will be happy. Biggest lie we can tell ourselves nothing. The shine wears off of those things, those material things. It never lasts. This is where recovery comes in and replaces that. I am in, I can be in financial trouble and, and go from miserable to okay by not getting any money because I am changing. The perception is changing. I did a whole episode about, you can check it out. I am changing the way I look at my problems. I'm changing the way I look at the world. It's not everyone versus me anymore. It's, I'm focused too much on money and maybe right now I'm not supposed to have money. Am I okay? Yeah. The heat's on. I have a bed. I have food on the table. Things are pretty fucking good. I'm not using drugs today. I'm not lying, cheating and stealing. Things are pretty good. Life is good. Essentially, we're moving from self-centered to God-centered. It's not a religious God. I'm moving from self-centered to community-centered. I'm focusing on others, constant thought of others. I'm enhancing my spiritual life through the self-sacrifice of service to other people. Simple. At the end of the day, we are recovering our true selves here. I'm peeling back the layers of the onion. I am unlearning old behaviors that I picked up in addiction and in childhood and over my life, the armor. I'm peeling down the armor and I'm getting to the core, the root of the problem, me. I'm a pretty good person under here. I just need to unlearn all these behaviors that kept me sick for so long and still keep me sick. These behaviors also kept us safe. They were survival mechanisms. How can I be safe without freaking out and using anger and jealousy and judgment and fear? A power greater than me, maybe. Community. A recovery program. The point of all this, the key is to uncover, discover, and discard. I'm uncovering. I'm discovering. Oh, wow. I've realized I do that thing when someone cuts me off. I get really angry in traffic when somebody pisses me off. Maybe I need to work on patience more. Maybe I need to let the guy go in front of me so that I can work on my patience. Maybe when this guy's talking and won't let me get a word in, I need to practice my listening skills by shutting up and listening. What a concept. In recovery, you start to notice patterns instead of reacting automatically. We're not walking around like a pinball machine pulling the trigger every time someone pisses us off or just there's a space. There's always a space between circumstance, when thing happens to me, said thing happens to me, whatever happens, outside circumstance, and my reaction. There's always a space. Recovery makes that gap wider and wider over time so I can pause. Hey, maybe I shouldn't yell at this guy right now. Hey, maybe I shouldn't steal from the grocery store. Maybe I should do something else instead. Maybe there's another way to approach this problem. Let me ask for help. There's a level of humility here too. Another spiritual principle. What are the opposites of our defects of character? Spiritual principles, honesty, hope, faith, humility, service, brotherly love, perseverance, patience, love, tolerance. I'm replacing those old ideas with spiritual principles. Instead of being defensive all the time, I can be humble and say, yeah, you know what? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. What a concept. Ultimately, recovery is the shift from I can't drink or use drugs to I can't drink. I don't need to escape my life anymore. Building a new life I don't want to escape from. It's pretty good here. If I notice gratitude, practice gratitude, all the good things I have in my life. Why does dry drunk lead to relapse? Most relapses, I would say all, but most relapses don't start with a drink. They start in the weeks, months, years leading up to that first behavior, picking up. It starts with emotional disconnection. My primary purpose, becomes Anthony. I don't serve anybody anymore. The highest, I love this, the highest job, the highest position we can hold in recovery is a servant. That is the highest you can graduate to. There's no graduation here. The highest position I can be is a servant, not a slave. I'm there by choice. I am serving God's will. I am serving others. I am doing the next right thing because at the end of the day, it benefits me. It gives me, it makes me feel good about myself. And people tend to graduate, tend to gravitate. Jeez, I can't think right now. Gravitate towards that. And I can attract good energy. I put out good energy. I attract good energy back. Then things start to happen that are good in my life. I start to get the job that I need. The money comes eventually. It's just not in my time. Dry drunk sobriety often includes isolation. So I'm better on my own. I don't need those people in recovery. I've got this. Emotions. I'm angry, so I'm just going to ignore it. Or I'm going to take it out on somebody else. Unaddressed trauma. So there's something in my life has happened that has caused me to pick up drugs and alcohol or caused me mass discomfort. I'm just going to ignore it. And resentment builds quietly in the background. I am hating everything. Remember, resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person, people die. I'm the only one suffering when I'm in resentment. Nobody else is suffering. No one else is even suffering. I'm the only one suffering when I'm in resentment. So eventually, and this will happen to you, the thought appears, what is the point of staying sober if life feels like this? What's the point? I might as well use a drink. For me, I always thought boredom was the reason I relapsed. And again, boredom is fear. So I was afraid that it was never going to end. This feeling of everything was just okay. And things were okay in my life. Not being able to sit through that, acknowledge it, and just reach out for help and get through those times lead me to the next step. I need my medicine eventually. I can't live miserable and sober for long. As I said in the beginning, relapse is not failure. It's information that our plan isn't working. There's something that needs to be tweaked here. I need to build a part of my life that I can enjoy that I don't need to escape, like I said. So how to move from dry drunk to recover, recovering alcoholic addict. Some practical tools and shifts you can do to switch from primary purpose is me to primary purposes to stage over and help another alcoholic. Get connected. Meetings, therapy, community, go for coffee with somebody, go buy somebody a coffee, ask them how they're doing. If you go to a meeting and see a new person, go up to them and ask them how they are. Get their phone number, talk to them, call them. Call three alcoholics or addicts every day and just ask them how they're doing. You will build friends and connections this way. Two, practice honesty, especially when it's uncomfortable. And when you lie, go back and say, hey, you know, I kind of lied there. This is embarrassing. But and then laugh about it. I told you a white lie there. I shouldn't have done that. Next is learn emotional language. So not just I'm fine. Everything's fine. Angry or stressed. Get deeper. Go deeper. What are you actually feeling in this moment? Meditate. Think about it. Feel it. Allow it to sit with it. Don't sit in it. And then stop white knuckling and start participating. Action, action, action. Find someone that's sober. Ask them what they did and then do what they did. Take the steps one at a time. Do the next right thing. And if you can't do that, do the next thing right. And then you do the work gently, consistently, imperfectly. You build a routine so that when you're tired and you don't want to go to that meeting, you have a routine. You have an obligation to be there. You have a service position, whatever it is. These are tools that actually work. All right. So here's the truth with all of this. Sobriety keeps you alive. Great. Everyone, if you are sober, you cannot avail long-term recovery. You will, again, you will, you cannot be miserable and sober for a long time. Recovery gives you a life worth staying sober for. So you're building all these things. If you had hobbies in the past, like playing the guitar, going for walks, going to the gym, you actually enjoy these things. You're present. You're able to show up. Family gatherings, obligations, commitments. You are staying true to your word. That builds confidence. I am doing things I'm saying in my head that I'm going to do. So in closing, if you are sober, you are staying true to your word. That builds confidence. I am doing things I'm saying in my head that I'm going to do. So I'm sober right now and unhappy. You're not broken. You're not failing. You're not doing it wrong. Just look at some of the areas in your life and say, where can I be of service to other people? Where can I build life? Where can I find purpose? Where can I lend a helping hand? What are some areas that maybe I'm not so proud of about myself? Some actions, some relationships, some things I'm not taking apart accountability in. And how do I slowly, but surely start to be accountable and show up and be a good person? I had a mentor ask me one time, what kind of man do you want to be? Ask yourself, what kind kind of man or woman or person do you want to be? And do my actions reflect that person? Simple, not easy. I'll leave you with this. You don't recover so that you can stay sober. You stay sober so that you can recover. Recover what? My true self, that three-year-old Anthony that's running around spreading love and joy and happiness and peace and purpose. Thank you guys for showing up today and listening. I appreciate all of you. Please like, follow, subscribe, send this podcast to someone who needs to hear it. Thank you for the messages as well. I am back up on TikTok and fully putting out videos again. Instagram, still not so much. I'm still banned from there for a bit, so we'll see how that goes. Out of my control. Recovery is simple, not easy. And if nobody's told you yet today, I love you.
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