Speaker 1Nobody really warns you about sobriety stopping feeling like a win. It can stop feeling like a celebration, a win. Things just start to get a little bit mundane and okay. And you think it's boredom, but it's really fear of, is this my life now? This is a real thing though. I relapsed after seven and a half years because my life was just okay. There was no real, in my mind, excitement. People warn you about the cravings, the obsessions, the first 30 days, the holidays, the patio season, the concerts. Nobody tells you about the Tuesday a couple of years in when the chips start to slow down, the applause stopped. People stop telling you you're doing a great job and being sober just becomes your life. Somewhere in that quiet, the old voice gets an opening. We go from win to baseline to, is this it? Is this, is this sobriety now? Is this, all my life is now? Like I said, that fear. So this is not a day one problem. I want to be clear. This is something that happens after the pink cloud dissipates. We've stopped collecting chips, like I said, and you get one year sober. For me, it happened after the one year mark, the first time around. I knew more or less what to expect this time around when I got my year again, but I'll never forget the first time I celebrated a one year sober. The week leading up, I had so many feelings, so much anxiety, so much anticipation, so much fear and excitement, all bundled into one emotion. And it was constantly going up and down, up and down. The day after I celebrated my one year medallion with a group of people that are in my recovery community, I had this feeling of now what? Okay, what, what do we do next? And this is often why you'll hear people say the work begins. And I, you know, I don't like hearing that because it's not very true. I don't like hearing that. I don't like hearing that. I don't like hearing that. You've been working hard up until this point. Just don't change anything. Really. That's what I wish people would say more. Don't just don't change anything. The work doesn't begin. You've been working your off this whole time. You're still working your off this whole time. Sobriety is hard. Recovery is hard. Addiction is hard. Choose your hard. But I want to talk today about what do we do with this after it stops feeling like a win after sobriety stops feeling exciting and new and what do we do now? Welcome back to welcome back or welcome to recovering out loud. My name is Anthony. I'm an addict and an alcoholic in recovery. Been in recovery since 2015. Had a relapse at about seven and a half years. I'm back today. Grateful to be alive and grateful to be giving this podcast to you. I started this podcast in my third treatment center. The idea came from there. I didn't actually start the podcast in the treatment center. I didn't go to one of those treatment centers where they let you have your phone blows my mind today. But if you were able to get your phone in rehab and your computer and rehab, go to the treatment center. I didn't go to one of those treatment centers where God bless you that you were lucky. I had no such thing happening. I was 60 days not leaving the facility. It felt more like prison than anything. But here I am. And I'm grateful that I went through that because it taught me patience. It taught me tolerance. It taught me that I was a defiant alcoholic addict that didn't like to listen to what people recommended. And I needed that because I don't want to relapse again. I don't want to go back out there. I don't want to go back to where I was. I don't want to be picking up benzos and stimulants and cocaine and meth. I don't I'm done. I don't want to. Today, I'm done. I've done all the experimenting I need to do today. Hopefully that stays the same tomorrow. I don't know. Today, I'm a member of recovery. So let's jump into it. Please, if you're not following the podcast, please follow the podcast. I would greatly appreciate it. Subscribe to the channel. It helps me so much. You have no idea. Thank you. That's all I'll say about that. I promise. The win era and why it was always going to end. The early scoreboard, day counts, chips, still patting you on the back, telling you they're proud of you. The pink cloud, the sheer relief of not being an active addiction. Feels good, doesn't it? Why it felt like winning. You had a clear opponent, the substance. Great movie, by the way. If you haven't seen it, go see the substance. Great movie. And clear proof you were beating it. The quiet truth, that win feeling was never going to be permanent. It was always going to end. Like everything in life, it comes and it goes. It's transitory. It's not permanent. Just like good feelings, bad feelings. This too shall pass. Hedonic adaptation is when humans return to baseline after any big change, good or bad. So we're used to living in the nines and tens, and then we get brought back to baseline. And we don't really like this feeling. I don't like the state of mind. What is this about? I'm bored now. Recovery kind of sucks. Drinking and using starts to look real good at this point. If you're not careful and you're not checking yourself and you're not talking about what's going on in your head, talk about it. What's going on in your head? It could save you a relapse. The new normal stops giving the hit. Sobriety became your baseline. That's not failure. That's the brain working exactly as designed. So this is our new baseline now. It's not really good or bad. It's neither here nor there. I'm just okay. I'm kind of comfortable, but uncomfortable at the same time. And those thoughts come in and what's the point of all this? This isn't really fun anymore. And it doesn't feel as good as it used to. What do we do now? The win feeling didn't leave because you did something wrong. It left because you got used to your own life. What the plateau actually feels like. The scoreboard goes quiet. No more milestone dopamine. Nobody's clapping at year three or year two. Maybe they are. Is this it? You got the thing you fought for and it just feels like regular life with extra chores. Boredom, flatness, restlessness, and the guilt about feeling that way. I should be grateful. People who, people would kill for what I have. That sort of petty feeling of, man, I shouldn't be feeling this way. Again, we're using that, my favorite non-word in recovery that we need to eliminate from your vocabulary, should and shouldn't. You are exactly where you need to be in this moment right now. Driving along, listening to my voice, walking, running along, listening to my voice. Be here now. So then we fall into this comparison track. You're in this moment right now. You're in this moment right now. You're in this moment right now. You're in this moment right now. You're in this moment right now. You're in this moment right now. So I don't have allergies, but every once in a while, I'll go through these sneezing fits where I can't stop sneezing and I start sweating insufferably. It's happening right now. So if you see me sweating or looking exhausted or sick or allergies, that's why. So the active addiction is far enough back that you stop measuring against it. You start measuring sober life against fantasy life instead. I think Peter Crone says this, but the delta between your life currently, your situation, your current state, and where you think you should be, where you think your life should be, that's suffering. The dangerous misread. Why flat gets mistranslated into something's wrong and how the old voice exploits the gap. The brain hates a vacuum. When sobriety stops feeling like a reward, part of you goes looking for what will. I am wired for the quick fix, the band-aid solution, the this will fix this now, the Keurig coffee maker. I want my coffee now. I don't want to wait for it to boil on the stove. I want it now. Euphoric recall creeps in. I talk about this at length in my episode about missing drinking and drugs. Go check it out. The plateau is prime soil for it. The memories get sweeter exactly when the present feels flattest. The lie the plateau tells. If recovery were really, really working, I wouldn't feel this empty. It's a lie. Name it out loud. So I've had many moments in my recovery, many moments in my recovery where I felt this feeling of not winning or losing, just sort of flat, feeling like I needed to rock the boat. And this is when it started with my relapse onto ADHD medication, because I remember there was a specific day driving home from the wrong with my brain. There was something wrong with my life at current state. I needed to be doing something. I didn't really have a direction or purpose. And I felt flat. I was full of fear. And so I started to think about escaping with ADHD medication and I rationalized and justified. Some of you may be doing this right now in your last couple of weeks or last couple of days, and you have no idea because it's so subconscious, or you do have an idea and you're too scared to tell somebody about it. This is how you do it. And I think it's really important that you relapse starts every single time. I'm at discomfort, dis-ease. I am unsatisfied with my current state, whatever that is, my current events, whatever that is, my current circumstances or perceived problems. I start to look outside for solutions. Eventually I knocked them all down until I returned back to what originally worked, my failed solution, drugs and alcohol. And so it was in this moment where I seriously started considering going back on ADHD medication. Again, I was three months sober and this two year, I think it was in 2025. And I started to devise a plan to fix myself, use outside things to fix my insides, to change my insides. I was telling my wife about the plan, but I was not telling my community members in recovery, the people that knew me that, that would call me out on my shit. And that's not to say my wife didn't call me out. She definitely did. She called me on my shit, but I needed to tell somebody, so that it felt, it gave me permission to go and do it. And I wasn't lying. And I felt like I was but I wasn't. I was not being honest with why I wanted to use ADHD medication. That was my problem here. I wasn't being honest with the why, the motive behind what I was doing. As long as you are clear with your motives, you can do anything in recovery. Tell somebody and be clear with your motive. Why are you doing this? Why are you getting into steroids? Why are you getting into peptides? Why are you just smoking weed? And I use that in quotations, just. Why? Ask yourself, what is this about? What am I trying to fix? What am I trying to heal? What am I trying to achieve by doing this thing? Whatever your idea is. Am I using something external to try and fix an internal problem, an internal solution, something that requires an internal solution? And then I relapsed. I got back on ADHD medication. One's never enough. My brain is just wired differently than other people's. I'm convinced of that today. I don't need an MRI or a brain scan to prove that. When I start, I want more. When I start, it's never enough. And if one is good, two must be better. If two is good, 10 must be better. And I, on and on and on. It never ends. Never enough. One is too many, a thousand is never enough. So I want to reframe dry versus emotionally sober, emotional sobriety and recovery. There's two timelines, physical sobriety. So you physically stopped using or drinking and emotional sobriety. You grew, you changed. Your perception shifted and changed and altered. You're becoming a new version of yourself. They don't move at the same speed. The plateau is what feels like when the first one is way ahead of the second. The plateau is what it feels like when the first one, physical sobriety, is way ahead of the second, emotional sobriety. Dry but not sober. Coasting on abstinence while the emotional work flattened. Flatlines. A lot of people plateau here for years and never notice. They're not on the next floor. These are the people that are miserable in recovery. They're sober, but they're just miserable to be around. They're angry. They treat you like shit. They're not fun to be around. And they're suffering. This is why emotional sobriety is so important in my life today. How am I living? How are you living? How are you acting in the world? Around your family? Around strangers? But more importantly, around the people you love? Are you proud of how you are showing up in your life today? Jeff Bullas If you're not, change it. Be of service. Do the next right thing. Ask for help. If you don't know where to go with your next step, reach out to someone you trust in recovery. Ask them what they would do if they were you. Early recovery was about subtraction, removing the substance. The plateau is the doorway to addition. Building a life with enough meaning that you're not relying on a scoreboard to feel okay. Building a life you don't want to escape. You're not relying on a scoreboard to feel okay. Building a life you don't want to escape. From achievement to maintenance to meaning. Maintenance feels like a letdown only if you thought achievement was the destination. So here's what helped for me the way through. I'm not prescribing anything. I'm not telling anyone to do anything. This is my experience. As always, be ready for the valley so it doesn't ambush you. Naming the plateau in advance robs it of its power to convince you something's broken. It's coming. Okay. You can't stay high forever. Just like you can't stay low forever in recovery. If you're going through a stage right now where you're flying high and things are great and you're listening to recovery podcasts and yeah, I'm on top of the world. I'm celebrating milestones. Just be honest with yourself. It's going to end. That doesn't mean that you dwell on it and beat yourself up and say, well, what's the point of any of this? Just be prepared. Be realistic. Do I have the foundation in recovery laid? Is my foundation laid in recovery so that when this happens, I'm, I'm prepared for it. I can handle anything life throws at me because I am doing the right things in recovery today that I don't want to be doing. Maybe you want to be doing them. Most of the time, I don't want to be doing them, but they help me and they save my life and they save others' lives when I am of service. Is my foundation firm enough today so that I can get through anything the future has to hold? And I don't need to worry about what the future has to hold, but I can, I know I'm going to get through it because I've done the work today. Notice when you've quietly stopped doing the things that worked for you in the beginning, the plateau makes you complacent precisely when you feel fine, switch the fuel, chase meaning over the next hit of progress. What is my purpose? What meaning and purpose is not a destination. It is a journey. I it's found in doing the things that I love doing, helping others and doing the things I love doing. I believe everyone on this earth's purpose and meaning is to serve other people. And if we all just did that a little more, well, I sound very woo woo right now, but the world would just be a better place, but it's true. Just help others. Your life will change. I was doing this thing the other day that I saw on Instagram. I highly recommend it. Next time you're walking down the street and you're looking at strangers, make eye contact with them. Okay. It's really embarrassing and awesome at the same time. I, it changed my whole day. I went from feeling okay to feeling on top of the world. Make eye contact. Make eye contact. Make eye contact. Make eye contact. Make eye contact. Make eye contact. Send them good vibes. Send them love you. I'm pushing with my hand right now. If you're not watching like Spider-Man spinning a web, just shoot them a little bit of happiness and good vibes and love in your mind. Just, Hey, I'm going to send you some love. Here you go. Here's some, here's some good energy. It'll change your day and you'll laugh at yourself, which is also funny and great. So chasing, finding meaning over the next hit of progress, service connection, the boring, consistent stuff that doesn't give you a dopamine spike, but it builds a floor underneath you.
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Speaker 1Reconnect to why not how long the day count stops being the point. Why am I doing this? Everyone's why is different for me. I want a better life. I want to stop hating myself. I want to stop hurting people around me. I want to do something amazing. I want to be great. I want to do things I like to do. And I can't do any of that when I'm high or drunk. Sobriety stopping feeling like a win. Isn't the moment it's failing you. It's the moment it's asking you to grow up into it. The applause was never the point at all. The life underneath it was all right. That was a wild one today. Thanks for sticking with me. Uh, I'm going to edit it out obviously, but I went on a sneezing rampage there. And sweating my ass off, had to go to the bathroom and blow my nose 38 times. Eating something sweet usually makes it go away for me. I still haven't figured out what the hell it is, but it's I'll sneeze 30 times in 10 minutes. And it's been like that since I was a kid. I had to leave school. It was super embarrassing. And today it just makes me hot, sweaty and uncomfortable and it ruins podcast recordings like this one. So hopefully you got something out of that. Thank you for sticking with me, even though you're not going to hear all that crazy, dead air between. This podcast is raw and authentic. And I try not to edit out anything ever. I'm going to edit out the sneezes because I don't think that serves anybody, but I'm really happy you're here. And I'm happy that the podcast is growing and reaching more ears, hopefully helping other people. I've been getting a lot of messages on social media more than usual about, I need help. Help me. I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't, I'm in so much pain and I message everyone I can back. I would say I answer every single message back. If I don't answer you, I'm sorry. It's because I missed the message and it went down on my list, but I do my best to answer everybody. If you want to change your life and get sober and stop the pain, you're going to have to do some things that you've never done before. And you're going to have to do some things that you don't want to do. And you're going to have to do those things consistently, not just once or for one day. I had to go to rehab for the third time. And I felt like I was starting over. I was in the sense that I had to shut up, listen to what my counselors were telling me and do follow direction, do the next right thing. Because the person telling me was doing better than me. If you want recovery and you can't figure it out and you're like beating yourself up, why can't I get in? Everyone else is getting it. I would hazard a guess that you, the only difference between you and me and other people that are getting sober is that you're not getting sober. You're not getting sober. You're not getting people that are getting sober are consistently taking action against their best thinking. They did it when they first got sober and they continue to do it today until they feel like doing it. And that day may never come. You may never feel like doing it, but you do it anyways because the grand scheme of things, it's a lot better than how I was living before. And I haven't gotten kicked out of any hotels lately. I haven't driven drunk lately since I got sober. I should clear that up. I haven't gotten kicked out of my house lately. If you want what we have, you need to do what we did. And that's going to be uncomfortable and scary and painful, but it's worth it. Recovery is simple, not easy. And if no one's told you this
Speaker 3yet today, Tammy 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. I love you.
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