Speaker 1I want to talk about something that's not talked about enough in addiction recovery. You hear people get sober and all the time they say, you know, I don't miss, I don't miss the drinking days. I don't miss using. It was horrible. It was all bad. I haven't found that to be true. I had a lot of fun in my drinking and using days, or I wouldn't have continued going. I'm going to hazard a guess that a lot of you have also had a lot of fun times. Otherwise we wouldn't have gone to the depths we did. It did something for us in the beginning. Alcohol and drugs were a solution to my problem, my thinking problem, my perception problem. It was my failed solution, but for a long time, it did what it, what I was looking for. It did what I set out to do, which was seek relief, oblivion, quiet, peace, comfort, ease and comfort. That's all I ever wanted in life. That quiet in my head. I didn't want to keep worrying about what you thought of me. I hated going into rooms and thinking to myself, oh, those people are all looking at me. They're talking about me. They're thinking, they're making fun of the way I walk or the way I look or my hat or my, my build or my face. Alcohol and drugs made that go away. And so that's why for a long time, I sought that because in the beginning it did what I looked for my whole life. That connection with you, the connection with the people in the room where I felt like I fit in. I felt like I was a part of for once in my life. I could just exist and be accepted for who I was. I could just exist and be accepted for who I was. I could just exist and be accepted for who I was. That's what drugs and alcohol did for me. I want to ask you today before I jump in, what did drugs and alcohol do for you? What did drinking do that you chased it to the depths you did? Because a lot of us, it was a solution. Like I said, I've been looking for this peace and quiet my whole life. And when I take a drink, the world suddenly doesn't seem as bad. My problems melt away. They slip away. My self-seeking slips away. I don't think about myself. I don't think about my circumstances in my life. I don't think about what you're thinking of me. I don't care. I don't care about a lot of things. So in today's episode, I want to talk about the parts of my using and drinking days that we actually miss. That I actually fantasize about. That I think about. The way my triggers and obsessions happen today. I'll say this. They are fewer and far between than when I first came in. The first three months of my recovery this time around, I was thinking about using cocaine every day. How did I get through that? I called somebody every time I thought about using drugs. And I just simply told them, hey, I'm thinking about using coke today. I didn't care about what I thought they would think. I didn't care about the judgment that I thought was going to happen. And again, if you find someone in recovery that has what you want and has been through it before, they're not going to judge you. They're going to laugh it off with you because our brains are doing that thing again. It's simple. I'm thinking about the thing that almost killed me because I only remember the good times. I only remember the highlight reel. My brain. My brain doesn't remember getting kicked out of the hotel that one time. My brain doesn't remember with sufficient thought force. It's not the first thought that me hiding in the bathroom, waiting for someone to come in and kill me. It doesn't think about those times. It thinks about the relief I received, especially and not always, but especially when times are tough in my recovery. But even when things are going good, I was walking to the shower the other day, a couple of weeks ago, actually. And I had a fantasy about that time. I was alone in my hotel room doing drugs and my brain tells me, Ooh, remember that that was fun. Wasn't it noticing being aware of those thought patterns before it's too late might save your life and it saved my life many times. So let's get into it. There's a feeling in recovery. No one warns you about when you miss your old life and have nobody to say it to, because if you say it in your group, your circle, your recovery community, people might get nervous and they might not know what you're saying. They might not know how to handle it. And you might think that they will judge you and think that you're less than you're not working a proper program, all bullshit. If you say to your family, they'll panic and they'll start calling rehabs. Maybe, I don't know. It depends how bad off you put them in a situation before what the damage you caused. A lot of us might not even have a family support anymore because we burned so many bridges. So you just sit with it alone. And that's exactly when it becomes dangerous. The thing nobody says out loud. And that's exactly when it becomes dangerous. And that's exactly when it becomes dangerous. It feels like you're betraying your recovery. It feels like I should be doing better. I shouldn't be thinking about such petty things. This thing almost killed me. I drove me, ruined my life. How could I be fantasizing about it today? Here's the unspoken rule. Once you're sober, your old life is supposed to be all bottom. No top. You're not supposed to remember the good, the good times. It's supposed to be all, all bad, but listen, let's be honest here. There was a lot of good times. Like I said, off the top, there was a lot of fun. There was a lot. There was a lot of good memories with people and connection that.
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Speaker 1I can't just ignore or say to myself, oh, that was never fun or it was all bad. It's not true. Why is the silence actually the risk? I've watched a lot of people who relapse and they're usually the ones not talking about what's going on in their brain. They're usually the ones that are trying to do it on their own. I'm going to manage this. I'll tell you 90% of the truth, but this 10% I'm embarrassed about. I'm ashamed. I'm not going to share this because. Again, I don't want you to judge me. Those are deadly, deadly thought patterns. The people who relapsed aren't the ones talking about missing it. They're the ones who stopped talking about it completely. And don't get me wrong. There's a time and place to glorify the good old days and identifying with a new alcoholic or an addict. It's, it holds a very prominent place. It's a very essential part of the process. I need to tell you about all my drinking escapades and memories and consequences, the whole picture so that. You will gain trust in me so that I can help you through this because if I came into recovery and people didn't tell me about their drinking and using days, I wouldn't be here today. I wouldn't have identified. I would have left a long time ago because you're nothing like me. You didn't suffer as much as I did. When I hear these stories and these drinking memories and these situations and high bottoms and low bottoms and rock bottoms altogether, when I hear them, it makes me feel like I belong. Like I, I feel like I can trust you. And if you got through that, I can get through it because we're very much alike. The feelings are all the same. Maybe the circumstances are different, but the feelings are the same. That remorse, that self-pity, that bewilderment, that incomprehensible demoralization, that pit that I was in for so many days, so many times I can remember hating myself, wanting to stop, not being able to stop, promising I wouldn't do it, did it anyways. I need to hear that from you so that I can trust you. And recover with you. I like this line. I had someone told me, tell me once the thoughts you can talk about are the thoughts you control. The ones you can't are the ones that control you. So the ones you're not talking about are the ones that control you. Because if I don't tell you about it, it's going to gain power in my head. It's going to seem like a good idea. And then one day I'm buying into that idea that, oh, you know what? This, maybe I could do it differently this time. Maybe ADHD medication won't take me down. Maybe I can take these peptides safely and not tell anybody and I'll get through it. And it's going to solve my problem. I need to be honest, fully 100% honest today in my recovery or I'm doomed. It's a slow burn and it eventually accumulates into the fuck it's, which I always talk about. And then I'm relapsed again. This episode is a permission slip. If you've been missing it and feeling like a bad sober person and missing the times, the sober, the addiction, missing the fun times. You're not, you're not a bad sober person. You're not doing it wrong. You're a normal sober person who was told to hide a normal feeling. So before we get into what people miss, let me explain why your brain does this, because that's, there's a name for it and it's not a character flaw. It's completely normal to miss the drinking and using days. Again, it does get quieter and less frequent. The more you stay sober, the longer you stay sober. That's been my experience anyways. Again, this is recovering out loud. My name is Anthony. I'm an alcoholic and an addict. I've been in recovery since 2015. I had a relapse after seven and a half years on secrets and ADHD medication and steroids. And today I'm coming up to a year and a half sober again. I'm bringing my experience, hopefully my strength and my hope to you so that you can recover and know that you're not alone. Why your brain lies to you. Euphoric recall. Euphoric recall is a documented cognitive bias where the brain remembers the past substance use disproportionately in a positive light. While filtering out the negative consequences, it's not weakness. It's wiring addiction. changes the hippocampus, which is part of your brain, which controls memory formation and retrieval. Your brain, in other words, your brain is showing you the highlight reel and burying the footage from the morgue. So you're getting the director's cut. Or maybe you're not, maybe it's not the director's cut. Maybe it's just the highlight reel, all the good times. You're cutting out the being kicked out of the hotel. You're cutting out the crying wife, the crying husband. You're cutting out the crying kids because that's uncomfortable. My brain doesn't want to remember that. So this is called something called the fading effect bias, which is the other half of this. The fading effect bias is the emotional weight of negative memories fading faster than the emotional weight of the positive ones takes longer for the positive. Sorry for the negative memories to fade than the positive ones. Your brain holds on to those ones a little bit longer. So the longer you're sober, the better the using looks and the less terrible the experience. This is why for a lot of people, months 18 is harder than month three. Not because something went wrong, but because the brain has had longer to do its editing process. What this means practically, your nostalgia is expected. It's actually a sign your brain is functioning normally. Addiction wired, but normally. The work is not to make the nostalgia disappear. The work is to know when it is, what it is, when it shows up. For me, this is, it comes in the form of, Oh, remember that time? Oh, that was fun when you had all that, that freedom and you had that hotel and yeah, you were kicked out by your wife, but at least you could do things the way you wanted. At least you didn't have responsibilities. You didn't have to go to work because you got fired from that job and life was fun. Remember how fun that was? Here's what I've come to realize about this whole thing. I don't necessarily miss the high of doing Coke or drinking. I miss the illusory freedom brought upon by drugs and alcohol. This not having to be an adult, the ability to turn my phone off, kick my shoes off, relax, unwind, not worry. I miss this fake freedom, illusory freedom that I used to have. The things you're allowed to miss. One, missing the escape. The relief that came with the first drink, the first line, the first smoke, whatever, toke, the shoulders dropping, the volume going down, the breath. I could, finally relax and breathe. The escape from my thoughts, myself, my circumstances. Not necessarily escaping life or reality. I'm escaping myself. All my defects of character, all the things I don't like about myself. I just, it didn't matter. It slipped away as I said. Relief from the constant noise, anxiety, hypervigilance, racing thoughts, whatever your particular flavor of unrest. Rest was. Your dis-ease. Two, missing the using buddies, using friends. The friendships that only made sense because you were both using. You were connected by the bag or connected by the pitcher of beer. Those relationships where you could just talk for hours on high on drugs or drunk and just be open with somebody. The connection you felt where you could just let it all out and not worry about how they would receive you, how they would judge you because you both shared that bond. The hard truth. Those weren't all fake friendships. Some of them were real. They were just built on a shared sickness. They were built. They were built on the wrong motive. I'll say the wrong. They were built on something you thought was real, but it was surface level. That's my opinion. Anyways, the need underneath all this is being seen by someone who got it without explanation. Belonging. Three, missing the ritual, the preparation, the anticipation. Remember that? I'm texting my dealer and I'm excited when it's gonna show up. I'm more excited ordering my drugs online and waiting for them to come in, going to the mailbox, opening the mailbox, seeing the package there. That got me high. I was like, my dopamine was firing on all levels from the anticipation of having that first drink or drug. The leading up to. The drive, the call, the wait, the set up. Sometimes that was as good as the high. I'll say, I'll go out on a limb here and say that that was better than the actual high because every time I used and picked up, my dopamine didn't match what I thought my dopamine was gonna match and it let me down. But leading up to it, I was so high anticipating that feeling of just picking up, just having the drugs in my hand. I was safe if I had my drugs on me. If I had enough drugs for the foreseeable future, that was what I chased for a long time. Missing the ritual. Four. Missing the identity. You knew who you were. The fuck up, the wild one, the party, the fun guy, the funny guy, the funny girl, the tragic figure. Without my using, I didn't know what I was. I, like I said in that identity episode that I recorded, I had an identity touch so strong to my addict self that I didn't know who I was without it. Without the drugs, without the alcohol. Sober me was a stranger and the addict had a personality I'd spent years building and I knew who that was. I was accustomed to that person, that that character, that stage character. The need underneath identity, self concept, a story about who you are. Recovery asks you to be someone you've never met. That's disorienting whether or not anyone admits it. And then five, how about this one? Missing the body. The figure, the appearance. What substances did to your body? So for me, the stimulants allowed me not to eat and I could lose weight and I liked the way my face looked because it was hollowed out. I thought it was good. I thought it was a to achieve. I thought it was what people wanted. I thought it was what I wanted. I wasn't thinking about food all the time. So that felt good. Physically, chemically, sensorily. This one is hardest to talk about because it's the most honest. The substance worked. That's why we used it. It allowed me to be skinny. It allowed me to not have to eat all the time. The need underneath. Psychological regulation. A nervous system that doesn't know how to soothe itself is going to miss the thing that soothed it. Even if that thing was killing it. So we've named all the things that we miss or could potentially miss. There's many more but these are just a few. That's step one. Step two is where a lot of people miss and the posts on social media won't really talk about but what to actually do with this. So the standard line is find healthier ways to meet the same needs. That's true for some of them. Connection. Yes. Find a new community. Ritual. Yes. Build the new ones. Intensity. Yes. Find legal versions of aliveness. Recovery community is so important in my life today. I can't stress enough how important it is to lean on like-minded people. So if there's think of it into two buckets here. Bucket one says needs you can meet differently. Connection. So your sober community. Ritual. Morning routine. Sober rituals. Meditation. Prayer. Journaling. Identity. You build a new one slowly through doing things that you like doing. Intensity. Cold water. Hard workouts. Creative work. Real risk taking that doesn't involve fentanyl. Bucket two. Needs you have to grieve or let go. Surrender. The oblivion. The chemical relief. The version of yourself who didn't care. The quick fix. The microwave mentality. I have to let that go because it's not realistic to just solve my problems in this snap of a finger in the instant gratification. Grief as a recovery skill. Sobriety includes a real loss even if what you lost was killing you. You have to grieve that old version of yourself. There's no way around it. You can love what you lost and still be glad that it's gone. Two things can be true. That's adult emotional life. I can be sad that I lost this identity but I can also realize that it was killing me and it doesn't serve me anymore and I'm becoming a new version of myself. Play the tape all the way through to the end. The practical tool. So whenever I get a using thought euphoric recall shows up, I can force the brain past the highlight reel and play the tape all the way through. What happened all the way through that time when I picked up those drugs, when I took those ADHD pills, when I took that meth, where did I end up? Maybe not right away but how did I end up that night? I couldn't sleep. My wife was yelling at me because I was talking so much and I wasn't eating. I slept in because I was staying up all night and then I wasted all my time on the internet doing nothing. High out of my mind. Shopping for more drugs. That was my ritual, my routine. And then invariably, I end up hating myself at the end. Play the tape all the way through to the end. If you've been missing your old life and thinking that it means you're not really sober or you're not doing it right. You are. You're just sober and honest. That actually the version that lasts. Here's something that you can do tonight. Find one person, whether it's a sponsor, a sober friend, a therapist, peer in your recovery community, someone with a like-minded as you say one true sentence about what you miss, tell them what you miss about it. Not a confession, not a relapse warning, just a sentence. I miss blank sometimes. Sometimes I miss having the freedom, having the ability to just shut off my brain. I miss that sometimes. And that's okay. I can get it out and it loses its power when you get it out. When you put pen to paper or when you tell somebody about it. And if you're worried about calling someone and bothering them, just think about it this way. If you call somebody, you could be helping them. You never know. You might be helping them because when they help you. you, they're out of their shit. I like to think of it like that. I am reaching out to somebody and just saying, Hey, can I run something by you? Hey, I want to get your opinion on this. Hey, I've been having this thought in my head. Let me run something by you. Let me put, get this out because I need to get it out. Simple, not easy. You're not failing by missing it. You're doing recovery by being able to look at it. The people in trouble aren't the ones who miss the old life. They're the ones who've buried that they miss it. I don't think there'll ever be a time where I, I don't miss parts of my drinking and using. A lot of it was fun. Like I said, the difference today is that I can be honest and aware about it. I can play the tape all the way through and tell myself, Hey, yeah, that seemed like it was fun, but remember all the negatives that came with it because I don't know about you, but if you're listening to this, chances are you have more negatives than positives. Otherwise you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be seeking recovery. You wouldn't be trying to better yourself. I have many more negative that negatives always outweigh the positives for me and my experience. That's because I, I had a lot of experiences that really brought me to a bottom that I didn't want to ever experience again. I don't ever want to go back there. I don't ever want to go back to my
Speaker 2using and drinking. I don't ever want to relapse. Ultra running shoes are all about space, the space to go further, to feel better, to do something you never thought possible. Starts with ultra fit. Unlike traditional running shoes, ultra fit gives toes more room to move naturally. So every step is strong, balanced and comfortable. Whatever you're lacing up for, stay out there with ultra shop now at ultra running.com. That's a L T R a running.com.
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Speaker 1only BJ's home of the save. Do I miss it sometimes? Yeah, for sure. There was a lot of times that didn't end up in horrible consequences. The difference is by the end of it, I always hated myself. I always ended up in that same feeling by the end, that remorse, that bitterness, that self-pity. When I had one problem I would use and drink, and then I would have many more problems. The hangover was always, would always outweigh the positives for me. So just be honest with yourself today. Play the tape all the way through what happened when you picked up that next week, that next month, that next day. What was that like? Remember what that was like. Be honest with yourself. Are you allowed to miss it? Absolutely. But you can grieve that old version of yourself and move on and build a new version of yourself. One that can face life head on without having to escape, can face hard times, get through them. This too shall pass. Don't ever forget that. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for listening. If no one has told you this yet, I love you. Please like, follow, subscribe, rate the podcast. I appreciate every single one of you. Don't ever forget, recovery is simple.
Speaker 3Mommy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's Wholesale Club, saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods, even they can't screw up. Have you met my kids? And with BJ's gas, she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home, road warrior mom. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at bjs.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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