Speaker 1So you quit drinking and or drugging. Now there's this huge empty space where the drinking using used to be. Hours, rituals, a whole identity. Who am I? Nobody tells you sobriety isn't just subtraction. If you don't fill that space on purpose, the old thing fills it for you. Year one is the build year, not white knuckling constructing. This episode is the habits that do the heavy lifting. So you're not relying on willpower every single day, because I'll be the first to tell you willpower will not keep you sober. It'll not, it won't get you sober and it will not keep you sober. How many times have you tried to get sober on your own will and failed? I know I have. Why habits, not willpower? Willpower is a battery. It drains. Recovery can't run on a thing that runs out. The move here is to make sobriety automatic. You don't have to remake at your weakest moment. You're laying the groundwork, the foundation for your recovery. You're habit stacking and doing the small things so that they pay off in the long run. These are all things that helped me get to a year sober. The using was itself a habit loop. Cue, routine, reward. You're not deleting a loop, you're replacing it. With year one specifically, it's the highest risk window. First 90 days especially. Relapse numbers vary a lot by study, but a commonly cited range is 40-60% of substance use disorders. Some ballpark as other chronic conditions like hypertension, asthma. Risk drops the longer you're out. You don't out-discipline early recovery. You out-structure it. Routines. We're building routines here. That is the goal. The habit reality check. So a lot of people think that you do anything for 21 days and it becomes a habit. That has been kiboshed since the 1960s. It's an anecdote and it's not science. If that were the case, then people who went to rehab for 21 days would all just stay sober. Don't you think? If they had a drinking problem, don't drink for 21 days and the habit reforms. You're not going to drink ever again. Not true, as I'm sure you know. The real number. Study of 96 people found a million of 66 days to make a behavior automatic. The range was 18 to 254 days. Exercise type habits skewed longer. Two things that actually matter more than the number. Consistency beats intensity. Showing up small and often wins. Missing one day doesn't break it. The research is explicit. One miss equals nothing. Consecutive misses are the risk. So yeah, I always say, you know, you're not going to relapse because you didn't go to your meeting. You're going to relapse because you didn't go to your meeting again and again and again. It's the repeat behavior of not doing something in recovery. The repeat miss of the habits over and over again. How to actually build one. Start absurdly small. Two minute version, not the heroic one. So journaling once a day for two minutes. That's starting a new habit. Meditating for five minutes every morning. Going for a walk. Calling somebody once a day that you just, you just do. You just call and say, hey, how's it going? Anchor it to something you already do. So after coffee, I'm going to journal. This is what I do with journaling. When I make my coffee in the morning when I wake up, I go and sit down and I journal. And now it's become association. I do it by association, which is actual science too. When I, so now I associate my coffee, unfortunately with my ones, my nicotine pouches, which I'm trying to get rid of, but here we are. And then journaling. And it's, it's become a habit now because I do it. It's the same thing with flossing my teeth at night. This might sound stupid to you, but for the longest time I didn't floss. And I just started incorporating it into my morning routine. And now I don't miss it because what I associate brushing my teeth, washing my face with flossing. And I just started doing it every day. Now it's a habit. The keystone habits. So these are a handful of keystone habits that make the rest easier. One structure your day routine fills the void. The enemy in early recovery is the unstructured empty afternoon. That's where cravings and rumination move in. You don't need to a perfect schedule. You need a plan for the danger hours, your old use time. So Friday nights, this is why a lot of people go to meetings on Friday nights and Saturday nights, because they used to use a lot. Then start small one anchored thing at a time you'd normally use. So at a time when you'd normally use, you start small. Maybe it's going for a walk. Maybe it's calling someone. Maybe it's going to a meeting to protect your sleep. This one's not optional. Wrecked sleep is both a symptom of early recovery and an independent relapse driver. Tired equals everything's harder. Cravings are louder. Boring consistency wins. Same wake up time, wind down, screens down, go to bed at the same time. This is a recovery task, not self care fluff. Three, move your body. This is real evidence. Exercise raises the odds of staying abstinent, erases withdrawal and cuts anxiety and depression in people with substance use disorders, a meta analysis level. It's not about fitness necessarily. It's about burning the restless charge, a clean dopamine hit. This is why a lot of rehabs have gyms in them. Fitness is important. Move your body. Start small, a 10 minute walk counts. Four, get into community. Connect daily with, this is the big one. Connect. The stronger lever there is. Gold standard review, 27 studies, 10,000 plus people, 12 step and 12 step and mutual help involvement beat other treatments, including CBT for continuous aftercare and health care. It's abstinence, roughly 42% abstinent at a year versus 35%. You need community. I need community. I need to connect with like-minded people who are struggling and understand what I'm going through and who are just trying to live better. It doesn't have to be AA. There's smart recovery, refuge recovery, life ring, a sober friend group. They all count. AA is just the most studied one. Find community, sober people that you can hang out with. And maybe they're not sober, but maybe, maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's just a part of your life. And maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's a part of your life, but maybe it's neglect, central, skipped meals, blood sugar, craters, cravings, irritability. Use HALT, hungry, angry, lonely, tired as a daily gut check. Most cravings are one of those four in disguise. Am I hungry? Am I angry? Am I lonely? Or am I tired? And now how can I address this? Do I need a nap? Do I need to talk to someone, go for coffee? Do I need to journal? Do I need to eat? Regular meals don't get to empty. Six, daily emotional check-in. The old tool numbed feelings, drugs and alcohol. Now they show up raw and unnamed feelings drive relapse. 60 second habit, name what you're feeling, journal, voice memo, text a friend, name it to tame it. This pairs with the habit of reaching out before the crisis, not during. There's a reason why if you get a sponsor or a mentor, they, a lot of them will tell you to call them every single day. It's because you're getting in the habit of picking up your phone, dialing the number and talking to somebody. It doesn't have to be a, uh, an earth shattering talk or a cinematic share. It can just be, Hey, how's your day? You're getting in the habit of calling someone. This helped me immensely. I can't overstress stress enough. How important building a habit of calling people is so that when you want to drink, you call them instead of drinking because it just so natural you've removed all the obstacles. It just becomes second nature. Thought of drinking, call someone thought of using, call someone. I did this for months in my sober house. When I lived there, I wanted to use cocaine almost every day. And I would call somebody in recovery, my mentor. And I would say, Hey, I feel like using drugs today. I know it's stupid. And he would talk me through it and I would get and I stayed sober. The one tool that holds it all together. If you only build one connection, it's the key. Stone of all keystones. Isolation is the relapse breeding ground. Every other habit gets easier when you're not alone in it. The highest leverage micro habit reach out on a good day. So reaching out on a bad day is already wired in. Yeah. Like I said, you're not building habits to perform recovery. You're building a life. Sobriety can actually live inside one thing at a time, man. Ask before, reach out for help before your house is on fire. So that when you're in a situation where it does catch fire, you're prepared. The one, the one feels like effort because you're building scaffolding, laying track, you're building a foundation, man. And you need when, when, when life starts to fall apart, as sometimes it does, when things start to happen, I need a foundation to rely on so I can get through anything sober. And I'm here to tell you, you can get through anything sober. I've seen people over the 11 years I've been in recovery get through everything, and I mean everything. Murder, death, loss, overdose, cancer diagnosis, bankruptcy, depression, divorce. I've seen it all, and they've stayed sober. Why not you? Why not me? The goal isn't to white-knuckle forever. It's to make sobriety who you are, not what you're fighting. Every small rep is a vote for that person. 66 days, 254 days, doesn't matter. You just keep showing up imperfectly. A great book that I recommend everybody read about habits is Atomic Habits by James Clear. He talks a lot about removing obstacles, and there's a lot of science behind this, but removing obstacles so that it makes it easier for you to build the habit. So if you're trying to quit smoking, for example, this is just an example. Try to quit nicotine. As in this moment right now, as I talk to you, I don't really want to quit nicotine. When I'm ready to quit nicotine again, I need to remove the things that make it easier to have nicotine, i.e. having the pouches around, having too many, a big inventory of pouches, which I always seem to have. I'm looking at fucking six cans around me right now. If your goal is to lose weight, you remove the junk food out of your house. You make it harder to have junk food because then it requires dopamine, motivation to go and get the thing. So if I don't have junk food in my house, it requires me to go to the grocery store and get junk food when I want junk food, which is a lot harder than just reaching in the cupboard and getting junk food. This is obvious, but it works. Make it easier to perform the habit. If you need to start journaling, keep your journal on the counter like I do. That's what I do. I keep my journal on the counter, so I have to do it. I have to look at it every morning when I walk by and say, ah, you know, I better do that. I started guided meditation. I wanted to start meditating, build the habit of meditating. Now I just use a timer, but I started for the first, I don't know, 90 days with a guided meditation app. And the one I use is called waking up. It's great. I was, I had someone lead me through meditation every morning. Now I just do it myself. If 12 step is your thing, meetings are your thing. Pick a home group that's close to your house so that it's easy to go to. Maybe one walking distance. Maybe one where all your friends are. So you're looking forward to going to that meeting. The important thing is in early recovery to fill the space that alcohol and drugs took up. Because let's be honest, when you first get sober, you get a lot of time on your hands. I always talk about this, but you're going to get a lot of time back on your hands. Make sure you have routines and plans to fill that time. That's what I do. And if it sounds like I'm telling everybody what to do, I don't mean to do that. I'm just, I'm just very passionate about this. I, everybody can get to a year of sobriety. Everyone can get long-term recovery. These are the things that helped me. It was starting small, consistently showing up, doing things I didn't want to do, trusting in someone else, borrowing their higher power, their faith, their spirituality, borrowing their hope. And then when they made suggestions or they told me what they did to get sober, I just listened, man. That's it. I just did it. I took what I liked and I took, what helped them. And I just implemented it into my life. One thing at a time. We get inundated with all these things when we come in and do this and do that. And just pick one thing and try to do that. Imperfectly. Just try to do it. Recovery is not for those who need it. It is not for those who want it. It is for those who do it. And if that pisses you off, good. Because it's true. It's for those who do it. How bad do you want it? Are you done? Are you willing? Are you willing to do whatever it takes? Great. Here's the plan. Find someone. Do what they did. And you will have what they have. Serenity. Freedom. Peace of mind. We're trading instant gratification for delayed gratification. We're putting in the reps now so that down the road, we can reap the benefits. And the reward is much, much, much bigger than you think it will be. I promise you. That's been my experience every time I've gotten sober. The reward is always bigger. The ease and peace of mind and serenity that comes with having a solid spiritual connection, connection to people, power greater than yourself, sobriety is unrivaled in life. There's no drug like it. And in my experience, the best dope of all time is helping others. Watching the light turn on when they get it, when they stay sober for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. It's something. You don't want to miss. You won't want to miss. I promise you helping somebody else, getting them into recovery. You won't, will not want to miss that. If no one has told you this yet today, I love you. And remember recovery is simple, not easy.
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