Getting Sober vs. Being in Recovery

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 the Addiction Unlimited Podcast, the podcast where we talk about what it really takes to stay sober. If you're new here, if it's your first time spending time with me, welcome, I'm Angela Pugh, I'm your coach. I help people stop living a drinking life by healing the patterns underneath the behavior so you can stay sober and build a life you actually want. Welcome to the community. I want to start this episode, being really clear about something. You know recovery is evolving and that's a beautiful thing. Today there are more paths to recovery than ever before. Coaching, therapy, neuroscience informed approaches, online communities, harm reduction, spiritual past, secular past, all of it. Recovery has expanded. And that means more people are getting help in ways that fit who they are and how they live. And that matters to me deeply because the reason I dedicated my life to this work is simple. I wanted more people to get help. I realized early on there were a lot of people who were turned off by AA, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes because of misunderstandings. But either way they were still struggling, they were still suffering and they still deserved support. So the expansion of recovery isn't a rejection of AA. It's an answer to a bigger need. More options means more people finding a way out and that has always been the point. At the same time I want to say something that doesn't get said enough. Rolex Anonymous has a depth and power that's hard to see unless you've lived inside it for a while. And whether it's your path or not, it deserves respect. You don't have to reject AA to choose something different. In choosing something different doesn't mean AA has no value. The goal isn't to pick sides. The goal is freedom. And last week I did an interview with Michael Z and he is an old school AA guy who has an incredible breadth of wisdom and experience in the rooms in recovery. And we're going to break down some of the concepts he talks about because he's been around a long time, right? So he speaks about things at a very advanced level because he's a very advanced guy. So in this episode I'm going to break down some of these concepts and make it make sense for you so you can understand some of the depth that you probably don't understand about the 12 step program. And we're going to relate it in a way that makes it work for everyone whether 12 steps are your path or not. I want everyone to have help. That's why I started my whole business a hundred years ago because I knew a lot of people didn't want to sit in the rooms of AA and AA is not the only place you can learn that information. It's not the only place to heal. So for all the people that didn't want to go there, I still wanted those people to have support and understanding and even to get the brilliance of the program of AA even without having to sit there. So that's what we're doing today. And we're going to start with a trap that a lot of people fall into when they quit drinking. I see this so much. People, they want sobriety to not be an inconvenience. They want to stop drinking but keep everything else exactly the same. Same friends, same routines, same thought patterns, same life just without alcohol. And at first, it works. You feel better. You're not hung over. You're sleeping better. You have more energy. You feel more like yourself because you're not weighed down by booze and all the poison and effects on your brain and your body. But then a few weeks in, maybe a few months, something shifts. The feelings start to creep back in, the anxiety, the overwhelm, the fear, all the shit you were drinking to avoid. It's still there. And now you don't have your solution anymore. Your brain has been relying on alcohol to regulate stress, emotion, sleep, relief. And when that's gone, everything feels louder for a while. And this is where people panic. And they think, wait, I thought sobriety was supposed to make things better. Why do I feel worse now? This doesn't mean sobriety is the problem. It means your system is healing. But most people don't understand that. They just know they're uncomfortable and they don't know what to do about it. This is the gap between sobriety and recovery that breaks people. And Michael Z in our conversation has this incredibly authentic account of what it's really like when you get past that initial pink cloud, the misconceptions, the shock, the realization that the work is just the beginning. Let me share some of what he said. Well, you know, the very first thing that happened to me when I got sober is I was under the misconception that now that I was being good, things should be all right. Everything should be okay. You know, I should get the job I want. I should get the girlfriend I want. My family should love it except me. Maybe even get me a throw me a party and give me an award, not being such an asshole anymore. And I think now that I'm being good, everything will be okay. Guess what? And things got worse. Not better. Things got worse. Okay. This is so important. Things don't actually get worse when you quit drinking like your life circumstances don't suddenly fall apart. What happens is you feel more. You're faced with the reality without your numbing agent, right? That relationship that wasn't really working, you were using alcohol to tolerate it. Now you can't ignore how unhappy you are. That job you hate. You were drinking to deal with the Sunday scaries. Now you're sitting with the full weight of your dissatisfaction or that social anxiety that made it so hard to connect with people to go on dates to hang out and have fun. Alcohol dampened that. Now you're feeling it full force and you don't know how to navigate social situations without it. You're facing all the reality you've been escaping and that feels overwhelming. In this next clip, Michael explains this even better. I couldn't sleep. I was racked with guilt. I was worried about my health. I couldn't get a job. I didn't want a job. I didn't know I was going to pay my bills. I had no career. I saw no future. I didn't wasn't in a relationship. My sponsor wouldn't let me even pretend to be in one for a year. It was all bad. You know, here's the saying and you've heard this saying, good news about recovery. You get your feelings back. And boy, was that freaking true? Now before you dismiss Michael's story, before you think, well, I'm not like that. I have a job in a relationship and my life together. Stop. Look for the similarities, not the differences. The specific details don't matter. Whether you have a job or don't have a job, you have money or you're broke, whether you are in a relationship or you're single. What matters was this part that he said, the good news about recovery is you get your feelings back. The bad news about recovery is you get your feelings back. That's the universal experience. Your specific experiences don't have to match his exactly. Whatever your life circumstances are, high functioning, low functioning, somewhere in between, you're going to get your feelings back. And when you've been using alcohol as your primary coping mechanism for years, maybe decades, those feelings are going to feel loud. The anxiety you've been managing with wine every night, the disappointment about where your life ended up, the resentment toward your partner that you've been shoving down, the fear about your career, your health, your future, the loneliness you've been avoiding by staying busy and buzzed. All of it comes rushing back. And you don't have your one reliable tool anymore. This isn't a sign that sobriety isn't working. This is a sign that it is working. Your system is healing. You're finally dealing with what you've been avoiding. But here's the thing. You can't just whitenuckle your way through this phase. You can't just grit your teeth and hope it passes because it won't pass on its own. Not unless you replace the solution you took away. This is the part that breaks people. They think quitting drinking was the hard part. They think they did the work. And now they're supposed to coast into this beautiful sober life. But then life happens. Financial pressure from all the money you spent drinking, relationship issues with your partner or kids who are pissed off at you and don't want to talk to you, work stress, health problems, normal life shit that we're going to be. was always going to be there. And you don't have your solution anymore. You haven't developed new coping skills. So what do you do? Well, most people go back to drinking. And this is my point because quitting drinking isn't the work. It's the prerequisite for the work. And Michael shared a great story that captures this perfectly. - Foster or actually a guy shared a sponsor. He said, as he was getting sober, 90 days sober, he was miserable. And I could totally identify with that. And he said to a sponsor, he said, they got together and he said, you know what? He said, if this is what be it, he said, I'm freaking miserable. I'm more miserable than I was when I was drinking to use it. And if this is what recovery is like, if this is what being sober is like, I don't want it. I'd rather be drinking in music. And the sponsor brilliant wisdom here, a sponsor said, you know what? He said, if this is what, if this is what recovery was like, then none of us would stay sober. He said, this isn't what recovery is like. This is what getting sober and becoming in recovery is like. - This is what getting sober is like. Not what being in recovery is like. That distinction is everything. Listen, when you're in that uncomfortable phase, when you're feeling everything and you don't know how to cope, it's easy to think, fuck this, sobriety sucks, I'm going back to drinking. But if you do that, you're just signing up to do this all over again because the alcohol isn't solving anything. It's just delaying the inevitable. You're gonna have to face the feelings eventually. You're gonna have to deal with the dissatisfaction, the anxiety, the resentment, the fear. The question is, do you want to keep running from it and staying stuck or do you want to actually heal? Because again, sobriety is quitting, recovery is healing. And the only way to stay sober, the only way to actually be free is to heal. When I was drinking, I had a drunk life, right? Not because I was stumbling around drunk all the time. I wasn't, I never stumbled. I was high functioning. I had a good job in my life. I looked like I had my shit together, but I was making drunk choices. And what I mean by that is, I was doing drinking things with drinking people in drinking places. I was saying yes to things I didn't really want to do because I was too weak to say no. Then I would drink to deal with the resentment that I went and did something I didn't want to do, right? I was staying in situations that didn't serve me because I was too scared and using alcohol to cope. I was tolerating relationships that weren't right because I was afraid to be alone. Everything I did revolved around drinking. Brunch with mimosas, wine bars, happy hours, golf outings that were really just excuses to drink, scuba dive trips that were really just excuses to drink, right? I had patterns, conflict avoidance, people pleasing, perfectionism, control issues, all the behaviors I developed to manage my anxiety that alcohol temporarily believed. When I got sober, I didn't want my drunk life anymore. I didn't quit drinking to keep living the same life just sober. And just putting down the drink didn't automatically change any of that. It gave me a clearer head, but I didn't all of a sudden make great choices, right? It allowed me to remember everything I didn't say, but it didn't magically make me brave or honest or capable of setting boundaries. It didn't remove my anxiety. In fact, at first it felt a little bit worse because I couldn't numb it anymore. The only thing that changed those patterns was recovery, the actual work of healing. So what does the actual work look like? What's the difference between just being sober and actually being in recovery? Michael used this framework called the Hero's Journey to Describe It. And honestly, I had never thought about recovery this way before, but it makes perfect sense. You may have heard of the Hero's Journey in movies. It's kind of how they write scripts and books and all those things. Listen to what he says. - So I'm reading this book. I'm three years sober. And as I'm reading the hero with a thousand faces, I'm thinking, this is the journey I'm on in recovery. This is the 12-step. Oh, answering the call, that was my call to get sober. Oh, meeting a mentor. That was me getting a sponsor. The mentor's job to introduce the hero to a power greater than himself. Well, that's like a sponsor. Oh, entering an unknown world. Oh, the abyss. That's the freaking fourth step. - You see that? Recovery is a transformation journey. You're not just stopping a behavior. You're becoming a different person. Think about it. Answering the call is recognizing you have a problem. Meeting a mentor is finding someone who's already done what you're trying to do. Whether that's a sponsor, a therapist, a coach, a friend in recovery, entering the unknown is doing the uncomfortable work, looking at your patterns, your trauma, your pardon things. This isn't unique to AA. This is the structure of any real change. And here's what Michael said about what transformation actually means. - The hero's journey is about one thing. And that's freeing the spiritual energy that is locked in the prison of a self-receasing alcoholic who wants to bend God's will to fit his ideas or her ideas. And it's about going through a transformational journey and unlocking and pouring the spirit back into the community where it heals not only the alcoholic, but it heals the community as well. - Okay, let me translate that from old school AA language. When you're drinking, you're trapped in your own head. Everything is about you. Your pain, your needs, your escape, you're completely self-centered, not because you're a bad person, but because you're in survival mode. You're just trying to get through each day without falling apart. Recovery is about breaking out of that prison, right? It's about learning to think about other people, to show up for your kids, your partner, your friends, to stop acting like a victim every time something doesn't go your way, to take responsibility for your life and your choices. It's growing up, finally, right? And that requires tools, actual skills, not just willpower. Because here's what people don't understand. You can't do this alone, you need support, you need people who understand. You need new coping mechanisms to replace the drinking. Again, whether that's therapy AA, another recovery program, another sober community, a combination of things, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you have something, some structure, some accountability, some place to learn how to be a person without alcohol. This is why sobriety alone isn't enough, because just removing the alcohol doesn't give you those tools. It doesn't teach you how to handle stress or process emotions or set boundaries or deal with conflict. You have to learn all of that, and you can't learn in isolation. And here's another thing that Michael said that really caught my attention, because it gets at the core of why we can't just quit drinking and expect everything to be fine. He talked about self-loathing about that voice of alcoholism. Listen to this. I believe, and I'll give you an example of this, I believe that the core characteristic, the core of alcoholism is deep self-loathing. For me, that's the core. And I'll never forget when the day I discovered that in a realistic setting, I was, listen to this, seven years sober. I was seven years sober. I was sitting on my couch in Woodland Hills. It was a morning I'm drinking a Vente Pike. I'm doing my morning pages. Coffee's good, journaling away, suddenly somebody. In back of me, whispered, "I hate you." That I like frickin' looked at. Now, I live alone, by the way. I turned, I literally turned around and said, "Who's that?" There was nobody there. And in a flash, I realized that I heard alcoholism talk to me. And that alcoholism had been talking to me my whole life. And I didn't understand the voice, and I had not separated the voice of alcoholism from who I thought I was. OK, did you hear him say seven years sober, seven years? And he still heard that voice. Now, Michael calls this self-loathing. And maybe you hear that and think, I don't hate myself. That's not me. But let me ask you this. Do you have an inner critic? That voice that tells you you're not good enough, you should be doing more, you should be better than this by now. You're falling behind, you're failing. Everyone else has it together except you. That voice that compares you to everyone around you and finds you lacking, that points out every mistake, that won't let you rest, that tells you you're lazy when you're exhausted, that you're weak when you're struggling, that you're a mess when you're just human. That's what Michael is talking about. That's the voice. of alcoholism or anxiety or trauma or whatever the hell you want to call it. And we drink to shut it up. We drink because that voice is so loud and so relentless that alcohol is the only thing that makes it quiet for a few hours. And here's what's terrifying. You can put down the drink. But if you don't address that voice, if you don't heal that self-loathing, it's still there. Whispering and waiting. Again, why sobriety alone isn't enough. That's why people with years of sobriety will still go back out because they never did the actual work of separating that voice from who they really are. They never healed the wound underneath. Here's what Michael told me happened next in that moment. And here's the miracle of recovery from me in that moment. After I realized that, I had a new voice. And the new voice said, "You don't hate yourself. You love yourself because you're a child of God and you're going to continue to recover." And that was the very first time I ever spoke back to and heard the voice of alcoholism. A new voice, one that said, "You don't hate yourself." That's the work. That's recovery. Building a new voice, a voice that can talk back to the alcoholism. A voice that can say, "No, that's not true, dude. I am not worthless. I am not broken beyond repair. I am not a piece of shit. I am a person who deserves to heal, who deserves to be happy, who deserves to build a life I'm proud of." But you don't just wake up one day with that voice, right? You build it slowly over time through the work of recovery. So what does the day-to-day reality of living in recovery look like? People's been sober for 30 years and hears what he said about how he does it. I try to do it every day. I have to reaffirm my commitment and not to pray and meditate. The 11 step age 86, 87, and 88 are where I start my day. I have to remind myself every day that I have God removed, direct my thinking and removed self-pity. Did you hear that? Every day. After 30 years, he still has to do it every day. Because here's the thing about recovery. It's not a destination. It's a practice. It's something you have to choose over and over again. And Michael actually shared this really beautiful metaphor that made so much sense to me and I loved it. Listen to this. She had one of my favorite quotes in this book. She said that my relationship with God is like being next to a still flowing river. She says, "When I'm next to that river, I'm peaceful. I'm calm. The river burbles by and is wonderful." She said, "When I get up and start walking away from the river, I hear it less and less. And the further away I go from the river, the more worried, filled with anxiety and unhappy I am." The river of recovery. You have to keep walking back to it. You have to keep choosing it. And the beautiful thing, the longer you do this, the more the promises start coming true. Not the promises you made up in your head about how sobriety would fix everything, but the real promises, the ones that actually matter. What I found and God from being sober and being in the program is something I never would have wanted. Never would have thought I wanted. And what is it in a nutshell? I am, for the most part, 100% comfortable being me. I am comfortable in my own skin. I'm grateful for my life. Comfortable in his own skin, comfortable being himself. That's the promise of recovery, not a perfect life, not endless happiness, not everything going your way, just peace, with yourself, with who you are. And honestly, that's everything. So here's what I want you to take away from this. If you are a newly sober and you're struggling, if you're thinking, why is this so hard? I thought quitting drinking with fixed everything. You're not doing it wrong. You're just in the gap. The gap between sobriety and recovery. sobriety is quitting. Recovery is healing. And that healing takes time. It takes work. It takes tools and community and practice and showing up even when it's uncomfortable. It means learning to sit down and shut up to do the right thing instead of the feel good right now thing, to recognize the red flags and walk away before they burn you. It's building a new version of yourself, version 2.0. The one you can look in the mirror and smile at. The one who shows up. The one who's honest. The one who other people can count on. That version doesn't just appear when you put down the drink. You have to build her or him. One day at a time, one choice at a time, one moment of choosing recovery over that old voice that says I hate you. And eventually, you get to be comfortable in your own skin. You get to be grateful for your life. You get to be free. But only if you do the work. Only if you go beyond sobriety and into actual recovery. That's the journey. That's the transformation. That's what it really takes to stay sober. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you really enjoyed Michael Z. What a crazy amount of experience and wisdom he has. It was so fun getting to talk to him and to be able to share his thoughts with you also. And listen, you know the deal. If you're done screwing around with this thing, if you are exhausted and you're tired of spinning your wheels and you're tired of starting back at day one over and over again, book a call with me and let's see if we're matched to work together. We'll figure out where you are and what is the next right move for you. And you can do that at addictionalimited.com/call. This is a great time to start doing that work. We're going into a beautiful time of year, gearing up for nicer weather just around the corner. This is a great time to really get it together and change your life. And I would love to be a part of your journey. Addictionalimited.com/call. Of course, as always, I will link that 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 addictiononlimited.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. [BLANK_AUDIO]