Why Do I Miss Drinking When I Know It Was Ruining My Life?

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 and 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 Addiction Unlimited, I'm your coach, Angela Pugh. And if this is your first time here, welcome to the family. I know it's hard to start looking for help and exploring these struggles, so I'm glad you're here with us and I hope you find everything you need. And for my long-time listeners, thank you. I love you guys and appreciate you so much for spending this time with me every week and making it all worthwhile. Today we're going to talk about a sneaky little something that keeps so many people stuck. And most of the time they don't even realize it's happening. I want to talk about romanticizing, specifically romanticizing your drinking and then romanticizing your recovery instead. And stay with me because I promise this goes somewhere really good. You know when most people hear the word romanticize, they think of candles and sunsets and falling in love. But in the context of recovery, romanticizing your drinking means something really specific and kind of painful. It's the mental highlight reel. It's sitting there maybe weeks or months into sobriety and your brain starts playing those old memories like a movie. The laughs around the bonfire, the way that first glass of wine felt after a hard week, the party where everything felt easy and you were funny and loose and you didn't have a care in the world. And here's the thing. Your brain is not making those feelings up. Those moments happened. That relief was real. That connection felt real. The relaxation felt real. That your brain is doing something sneaky. It's curating. It's only playing the good parts. It's like watching a movie trailer for your drinking life, right? It's all the best scenes and none of the wreckage. It's not showing you the 2am version, the crying in the bathroom version, the waking up at 3am with your heart pounding version. Making your texts with dread because you can't remember what you said version, the making promises you wouldn't keep version. It's not showing you the slow erosion of yourself. The shame you carried around like a second skin, the way you got smaller and smaller trying to hide the thing you couldn't control. And in those moments of nostalgia, your brain edits all of that out. And you're left sitting there thinking, oh man, I just really miss it. It wasn't that bad. And that nostalgia, the romanticized version of your drinking, is one of the most dangerous places you can live. Because when the fantasy feels better than the reality of building something new, it becomes really, really hard to stay on course. The fear of being without those things, without the connection, the relaxation, the escape, that fear becomes so big that people stay stuck. They don't move forward. They stay frozen between two lives, the one you're trying to leave behind, and the one you haven't started building yet. And here's something we don't talk about enough. When you stop drinking, you don't just give up a substance, you give up an identity. For a lot of people, drinking was woven into who they are, right? The life of the party, the one who always had a good time, the person who could hang. Drinking was the stress reliever, the reward giver, the social lubricant, the way you celebrated, grieved, connected, relaxed, and coped. All of it was tied up in drinking. And when you remove that, when you step out of that identity, there's a void, a big uncomfortable scary void. Who am I without it? What do I do at parties? How do I relax? How do I celebrate? How do I deal with stress? How do I connect with people? How do I feel like myself? And here's where people get lost. Instead of building something new to fill that space. They stand at the edge of the void and stare backward. They replay the memories. They mourn the version of themselves that felt easy and fun and free. They pour all of their energy into grieving what was. And none of that energy into creating what could be. And I get it, I really do. Life is easier than building. Here's what I need you to hear. You can't build a future you're not facing. The energy you spend mourning your drinking life is energy you're actively taking away from your sober one. Every time you revisit the highlight reel, you're choosing the past over the present. And that is a choice, even when it doesn't feel like one. You're allowed to acknowledge the loss. It does feel like a loss. It's a transition. You don't have to pretend it wasn't real or that it didn't mean something. But you can't live there. Because while you're standing at the edge of what was, your future is waiting for you to show up and start building it. And this is where romanticizing becomes dangerous because the fantasy fills the void. The daydream gives you somewhere to live while you're figuring out who you are, except it keeps you from actually figuring out who you are. So what do we do about it? Well, we fill it with a different kind of romance. I want you to think about something. But if instead of daydreaming about the past, you started daydreaming about the future. What if you gave yourself permission to really truly imagine, in vivid detail, the life you want to build? Not the generic sober life, not the vague idea of things being better. I'm talking about your life, the specific, beautiful, possible life that's waiting for you on the other side of this. Not the person you want to be, not the water down version, not the lesser version, not the version that's just trying to survive. But the person you've always known you could be, that one that got buried somewhere along the way, what does that person look like? How does that person carry themselves? What do they know about themselves that she didn't use to know? Imagine being someone who makes a plan and follows through on it. Someone whose word means something. Someone who says, "I'm going to do this," and then actually does it. Do you know how powerful that feels? You know what it does to your confidence and your sense of self when you can trust yourself? When going on a vacation, a real vacation, not a trip where you spend a shitload of money to fly somewhere beautiful and do the same dumb shit you do at home, just in a different zip code, right? It always kills me. Like, why do we spend thousands of dollars to go on vacation and just get fucking drunk? You could just do that at home for free. It's so weird. That's not the vacation I'm talking about. I'm talking about a real vacation where you're actually there, where you remember it, where you come home with stories and photos in a full heart instead of a blank in your memory in a credit card bill you can't explain. Imagine that saving money, not stressing about where the money went, not looking at your bank account, wondering why you're always broke when you make decent money. Actually building something, an emergency fund, a vacation fund, a dream fund, whatever matters to you. Imagine going back to school or starting something you've put off for years, the business, the certificate, the degree, the creative project, the thing you told yourself you do someday. Someday is actually available to you now. Imagine being the parent you always wanted to be, not the parent who's half present, counting the hours until the kids go to bed so you can finally have your glass of wine. But the parent who's actually there in the moment on the floor at the game in the conversation, the parent your kids look at and see someone solid. Imagine never having to worry about driving, ever, not doing the math in your head, not hoping a cop doesn't pull you over, not waking up at 4 a.m. wondering if you made the right call, just getting in the car and going, no math required. Imagine waking up on a Saturday morning feeling good. Not great, not sparkling, but good. Clear, present with your whole day in front of you. No hangover, no anxiety, not trying to piece together what happened last night, no lying in bed, dreading the text you might have to answer. Imagine not living a double life anymore. That one, right there, sit with that for a second. So many of us are living two lives. There was this person I showed to the world, put together capable, funny, fine, and then there was the person I was in private, the one I hid, the one full of shame, the one who knew the real truth. The exhaustion of maintaining that split is something you don't fully realize until it's gone. The energy it takes to manage the persona and keep the secret to perform the okayness when you're anything but okay. It's enormous. And when that's gone, you get all of that energy back. No more lying, no more sneaking, no more creating a whole persona to show the world while you hide away in shame because you know the truth. What you see is what you get. And that person, the real integrated whole person you're becoming, that's someone worth romanticizing. So how do you actually do it? I know it sounds nice, but how the hell do we actually do it? How do you redirect a brain that's been programmed to look backward? And there are a few things that actually work. First, when nostalgia hits, play the whole tape. Your brain wants to show you the highlight reel. Make it show you the whole movie. In 12 steps, you hear a say, play the tape all the way through. And this is what we mean. When you catch yourself thinking about the fun times, keep going. Don't stop at the laughing around the bonfire. Keep playing it forward. What happens next? How do you feel the next morning? What did that version of your life actually cost you? Right, you're not doing it to punish yourself. You're doing it to give yourself accurate information. The highlight reel is a lie by omission. The full tape is the truth. Second, build a vision you actually want to live in. Write it down. For real, get specific. What does your life look like in one year if everything goes well? What about five years? What are you doing? Where are you living? How do you feel? What have you built? What does your morning look like? What do you do on weekends? The more specific your vision, the more real it feels. And the more real it feels, the more it can compete with the romanticized past. I did a whole episode years ago about your sober vision, building your sober vision. I will look that up and link it in the show notes for you. So you can go back and listen to that about how to build that vision. It's so important and it's really fun. Okay, and third, find things to genuinely love about your sober life. Not just the absence of the bad stuff, but the presence of the good stuff. Because the little things start to feel really good, morning coffee without dread, remembering conversations, feeling proud of yourself at the end of the day. Those aren't small things, those are enormous things. Notice them, collect them, build a case for the life you're living. And fourth, give yourself an identity to step into. Not just one to step out of. Recovery isn't just about not drinking, right? It's about becoming someone. Who is that person? What does that person care about? What does that person do? What do they stand for? Start building that identity with intention. Because if you don't fill that space, the old identity will try to come back and fill it for you. Okay, here's what I want you to take away from today. We talked about the romanticizing trap. The way your brain curates your drinking life into a highlight reel. All the best scenes, none of the cost. And we talked about why that nostalgia is so dangerous. Not because the feelings aren't real, but because they're keeping you frozen between two lives. We talked about the identity void and how the people who struggle most aren't the ones who can't handle sobriety. They're the ones who stand at the edge of what was and pour all their energy into grieving it instead of building what comes next. That's not a suggestion. That's how it works. And we talked about what it looks like to redirect that energy, to take that same ability to dream and long for things and point it forward. The vacation you'll actually remember, the money that actually stays in your account, the parent, the partner, the person you've always known you could be, the life where you don't have to maintain a double life anymore, where what people see is actually who you are. That life is not a fantasy, it's available to you. But you have to choose to build it and you have to be willing to put your energy there instead of behind you. So here's your one takeaway. Every time you catch yourself romanticizing the past, redirect, ask yourself, what am I building? What do I want? What does my future look like if I stay the course? And then go there. In your mind, in your actions, in your choices, go there on purpose every single day. Your drinking life had a highlight reel. Your sober life gets one too. And I promise you, the best scenes haven't even been filmed yet. Now, if you've been listening to this and something clicked, if you're tired of flailing on your own, tired of the one step forward, two steps back, tired of knowing what you should do and still not being able to make it stick, I want to talk to you. Not someday, not when things get bad enough, but now, because here's the thing about waiting for the right moment, there isn't one. The moment is right now, and the only thing standing between you and relief is deciding you're done messing around. I work with people one on one and we can start the very moment you're ready. No waiting list, no lengthy process, you book a call, we talk, we get to work, that's it. If you're ready, go to addictiononlimited.com/call and book your call right now. The link is in the show notes. And I didn't know the book a call form wasn't working, so I apologize if you've popped on there and tried to book a call and it wasn't working. I fixed it, my new BFF and sent me an email and let me know, it wasn't working, I had no idea it wasn't working, but it is officially fixed. So go book a call, addictiononlimited.com/call. I will link that in the show notes as always, along with the sober vision episode link, so you can go back and listen to that one as well. I can't wait to talk to you. I've been doing some really incredible consultation calls lately, it's been so much fun, and I look forward to doing a ton more. I can't wait to meet you. 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.