Speaker 1You know that voice in your head that is really loud and it tells you that it's okay to drink or it's going to be different this time or it sometimes feels like you're literally battling with another person. There's another voice that's talking and telling you that things are going to be different this time and it happens before every single relapse. Today's episode I'm going to talk about the five lies that addiction tells you and I've found in the 10 years that I've been doing this in recovery and in the addiction field working in the addiction field that they're most more or less synonymous across the board. A lot of people have the a similar experience where it's almost like and I do videos on this all the time of me versus my attic brain. My attic brain is a separate part of me sometimes it feels like that and so I want to do this episode today because I want to bring light to the fact that one this is not something that you have to deal with. It's not something that you have to deal with. It's not something that you have to deal with. It's not something that you have to deal with. It's not something that you have to be run by. It's something that can coexist in your life and you don't have to act on the decisions because that motherfucker in my head will tell me that it is a good idea to do it. It'll convince me seven ways till Sunday that this is the right thing to do and it's going to be different this time. It's going to be better. You will get control of this. You can just have one and no one will know. I'm going to go and get into all of that. So I'm Anthony. I'm an alcoholic and an addict. I had seven and a half years of recovery and medication and secrets and steroids and this is why I'm so passionate about recovery because I want to keep continuing to carry the message to people so that you don't have to go through that because I don't wish that upon anybody. That was one of the worst experiences of my life. It always does get worse and I'm here to tell you today that there is a solution. There is a way out of this thing. I have found it and many other people that I know have found it. So let's get into it. So five lies in order to the five lies that show up. Each one gets a story what it actually sounds like in your head. And what I'm about to describe best describes what the field calls cognitive distortion. So the scientific clinical term behind it is cognitive distortion. Thinking patterns documented in addiction research going back to Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis. I'm not going to quote the papers but I'm going to tell you what it sounds like at 2am or 3pm or 3am or when you're on the patio looking at that beautiful drink that looks so great and the illusory freedom that comes with drugs and alcohol. Lie one. I've got this under control. So the lies favorite costume for this one is competence. You're functional you're showing up you're paying the bills. Therefore the logic goes I don't have a problem. I've got this under control. Everything's okay. Look at me I still have my job. This I go into this in detail in the functional alcoholics episode because this is what happens we put on the stage character and tell the world that everything's okay and we're convincing ourselves that everything's okay. Meanwhile, our life is in chaos. So the specific feeling of this lie is relief. It lets you exhale. It lets you breathe for a second that you know, if I don't have a problem, then that means I don't have to do anything to fix the problem because there's no problem here. I'm good guys. Thank you. It lets you off the hook. It lets you close the tab on a part of your brain that was starting to ask questions. I don't like that. I'm not going to ask questions. I don't want to get into this. I'm I'm fine. I've got this under control. Control is the great obsession of every alcoholic. It's the lie that keeps you drinking for an extra 510 or 15 years longer than you need it to. Control is on a spectrum. It's not a binary thing. The question isn't am I out of control? The question is how much of my life am I organizing around the substance, the drugs, the alcohol? If the answer is any, then the lies already working in your life. Here's what it actually sounds like. I can stop whenever I want. I just don't want to right now. Ever done ever said that before ever heard that I can stop whenever I want. I just don't want to right now. So today I don't trust my own assessment of control. I outsource it to my higher power. My mentors, my therapist, my partner, my friends. I tell three people that I trust. If three people tell me that I trust that something is off, they're right. And I'm the one holding the lie. I need two people to see my problem. I can't see it. My perception is distorted. Lie number two. I've earned this. This one shows up after a hard week. It shows up after a chaotic month or a business deal. And it's, you know, I've earned this. I've worked hard. I deserve a drink. I deserve relief. I deserve to relax. A promotion, a funeral, something bad, something good. Any days that end in Y, I deserve this. So this lie feels like fairness. Like you're finally being reasonable with yourself. Yeah, this makes sense. I earned this. Yeah, you did, Anthony. And it's a lot of patting on the back, self-stroking, if you will. It's dressed up as self-care. This is my self-care routine. I'm going to enjoy a drink. And then it never turns out to be one drink. So that's what makes this one lethal is the other lies feel like negotiation. This one feels like kindness. I'm being nice to deserve this. Addiction doesn't announce itself as the villain. It shows up as the friend who thinks you're working too hard. So it's not bad. My friends think I've earned this. That voice in my head is just, you know, this is okay, buddy. Let yourself loose a little. Put your hair down. Take your bra off. So the trick here is actual self-care doesn't require you to betray your recovery. If the reward involves breaking your sobriety, it's not a reward. It's a setup. What I do is I do my self-care routines. If I like going to the movies by myself, I do that. If I like going to the sports event, Jay's game, I do that. Lie number three, this time is different. This is the lie that ends long-term sobriety. Pure insanity. It's the lie that ended mine. This time will be different. ADHD medication is not like cocaine. It's not like other drugs. I haven't tried this yet. So I've got this one. It's okay. This one shows up after some time has passed as well. It shows up when things are going well and I can control it now. I've, I'm cured. I've got this thing. It's this time will be different. It's pure insanity doing the same thing, expecting different results. I'm not going to end up in a trap house doing cocaine because I'm taking it as prescribed my medication. It's funny for a lot of people. This one usually turns up as I've, I've earned a drink. This time will be different with a drink. But for me, it was much more cunning, baffling, and powerful in that I convinced myself I had ADHD. And so this time will be different. Looked like I'm not going to go down the dark path back to cocaine because this will solve my problem. And what is my problem? My problem is dis-ease. I am at dis-ease. I am disturbed. I am uncomfortable. I'm not tapped into a power greater than myself. That is my problem. And I try to solve it with outside things, including ADHD medication. And then when that doesn't work, I inevitably go back to my drug of choice, which was cocaine and other stimulants and alcohol. So the, the tricky one about this is the, lie trades on your growth. It actually uses actual progress that you've made as evidence that the rules no longer apply to you. That's the genius behind it is it can only work on, it can only work on people that have been doing well or think they've been doing well. What nobody told me was that, and what I want to tell you is if you're listening at three and a half, 10 years, the disease does not get weaker. It's progressive. It is, you hear it all the time. It's doing pushups in the parking lot while I sit in the studio. It's true. My disease is getting stronger. However, my recovery is also getting stronger. If I continue to work on it, the thing is it gets quieter over time. And so you're not outgrowing it. You're outworking it one day at a time. Essentially. Those are two different things. You don't outgrow addiction. You outwork it. The long timers paradox is the longer you're sober, the more convincing the lie becomes. And the less anyone around you is watching for it because you're so good at hiding it. Now you're good at discerning and building the stage character. And I don't really have a problem. And I'm not going to tell anyone about this because I don't want them to think that I'm going to relapse and that I'm weak and that I'm not good at recovery and I'm faltering and I have flaws. I don't want anyone to know that. So what do I do now? I simply tell myself whenever these thoughts come up in it, it's been a while, actually, it's been a couple of weeks since I've had this idea of a fantasy of the fun times. But for me, it's, I simply have lost my right to chemical peace of mind, all mood or mind altering substances. I cannot use one. And maybe I had to go through that relapse to prove that I couldn't just use one, but essentially I just can't have one of anything. And that brings me peace today. It's not always easy, but I have to pray about it. I have to remind myself. I have to tell people when these thoughts start to obsess in my mind and play on thought loops, you can get through it. You just have to open up and get it out of your head. Lie number four, nobody will know. This is a good one when you're on vacation. So hotel rooms, business trips, weekends with your partner, uh, weekends, your partner's away. Sorry. You have the house to yourself. The lie lives in a closed door. So I'm all alone. Now. Nobody's going to know. I'll just have one. No, one's going to know. I can get back into recovery on Monday. The specific fantasy. This one sells is one clean contained secret use, no witnesses, no consequences back to normal Monday morning. I can get through this. No one will know. Well, let me tell you, you're going to know. And you, in my experience, I'm not able to live with that secret eventually blows up in my face and I'm using meth again. This feeling is cons conspiracy, conspirational, conspirational. Is that a word? Conspirational. It's you against the world, a private little deal you're making with yourself. What's actually happening in the moment is that your addiction is asking to be taken off the accountability grid to get away with this one. And that's the only thing it wants. Your addiction wants you dead. Let's be honest. So, like I said, you will know the part, the lie skips over is you will know you have to go to sleep with yourself and wherever you go in the world, you're taking yourself with you. It means your recovery will know the recovery version of yourself will know, which means the next morning you're either lying to everyone who matters to you, or you're starting over or you're lying to yourself. Sobriety isn't something other people hold for you. It's the relationship you have with yourself when nobody's looking, right? It goes back to that integrity. What am I doing when no one's watching? How am I living? What do I do now? There's no secrets in my recovery today. I work hard at that. I work hard at taking my inventory every night and analyzing, is there something that I should be telling somebody about? Is there something that I'm hiding? There's something that I'm not proud of, something that is embarrassing me, that is eating me up, that is renting space in my head. If I'm in a hotel room or work trip, I think about it, I text somebody before. So get an accountability partner. This is something that I do. I tell my mentor, I tell my friends in recovery, my partner, the thought isn't the problem. Keeping the thought private is the problem. Lie number five, it's too late to come back. This is a good one. This lie shows up after a slip, after a relapse, after a week, a month, a year of using again. I fucking certainly had this one. It's the lie that turns a slip into a bender. It's too late to come back. It's too hard to come back. I always say this, but when I relapsed, it was like recovery was this mountain uphill in the snow, raining with booby traps. It was so hard for me to fathom coming back in to this program and this life because I was too far gone in my brain. It's a lie. Everyone has a moment when they slip that they can either decide to jump back on the spiritual beam and get back into recovery or continue going on and hoping that they'll control it or what's the use anyways. This doesn't matter. I fucked up already. I might as well keep going. I've already tried stimulants that I never said I was going to try meth. Now I'm going to get into benzos because what's the point? Anyways, I'm already this far. It's too far gone. It feels like logic, like math, like the ledger is closed and you've been assigned your final column. This is it. It's done. Too late. The door is closed. It's completely wrong. The easiest of the five to disprove because everyone in the rooms has come back from something. Everyone in recovery has come back from worse than you did. I can guarantee it. I've seen it all the time. I'm an example of it. I came back from a relapse that I never thought I was going to come back from. There is no expiry date on recovery. There's no score you can't come back from. The meeting you're afraid to walk back into is full of people. The recovery community you're going back into is full of people that have had it worse than you or have come back from harder or come back from near death experiences. You just have to show up January 12th, 2025. That's my date now. Not my first date, my current one. And honestly, the shame of coming back after seven and a half years was one of the hardest things I've ever done, if not the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. But I'm so happy I did. I'm so glad that I didn't die. I'm grateful for the people that have come before me that have lifted me up to where I am now. You can be that person too. You can also avoid all of this by noticing this lie and all of these lies before it becomes too late to stop your relapse. And again, relapse isn't failure. It's a learning curve. It's a part of the process. It's a hint that your plan is off. Your plan is, needs to be corrected, needs to be fixed and course corrected. That's it. It's a course correction. Something wasn't working. And so I'm going to try something else this time. I'm going to ask for help and do it differently because it didn't work the first time. This led me to relapse. So I'm going to try something else. I'm going to be open-minded and willing. So quick recap, five lies. I've got this under control. I've earned this. This time will be different. Nobody will know. And it's too late to come back. If you hear yourself saying one of those things, tell somebody about it, write it down, get it out, be honest. It might save your life. It might save a relapse. You never know. You don't need to live in your head by yourself. There's people that are willing to help you. Every one of these lies sounds reasonable in the moment. We're good at convincing ourselves that it's true. We can paint the reality and project reality onto anything. I can convince myself of anything. I always say that. Coming up with these ideas, not telling anybody, these plans and these great designs for fixing me. Anytime I start to think about it, I'm going to be like, think on that, that plane of, of, of, of thought I'm in a world of trouble. It's like me sitting in a room full of me, me's talking to me and saying, Hey, I got this idea. And all of the me's saying, yeah, that's a great idea. You should do it. Go do it. It's a great idea. Tell somebody about it. Get it out of your head. It loses all of its power. When you talk about it, if one of these landed harder than the others, that's the one I'd sit with this week, not to fight it, just to notice when it shows up, naming the lie is most of the work, identifying it. Please. If you liked this episode, follow subscribe to the podcast, send it to a friend. I appreciate every single one of you. Thank you for being here today. If no one's told you this yet, I love you. And recovery is simple, not easy.
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