Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - 10 things you need to know about getting and staying sober.

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

In this episode I share personal insights on sobriety, debunking the notion of a linear process and emphasizing the importance of community, asking for help, and the realization that no external validation is required to quit. The episode also touches on misconceptions about hitting rock bottom, the gradually decreasing challenge of sobriety as one gains more tools, the potential need to walk away from certain relationships, and the significance of prioritizing sobriety in various social settings. Additionally, the episode encourages staying active and focusing on a healthy routine to aid in the recovery process and concludes with the importance of community support and persistent effort to overcome the challenges of sobriety. ------------- Sign up for FREE SoberBuddy Meetings here: https://yoursoberbuddy.com/free-zoom-meetings/ More information on SoberLink: www.soberlink.com/recover Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sobermotivation/

Welcome back to season three of the Subur Motivation Podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety as possible, one story at a time. Let's go. How's it going, everyone? We're three months into a new year, and I'd like to take a pulse on how everyone's doing and feeling. If you made the commitment to get sober in 2024 but are struggling to stay accountable, check out Soberlink.

Soberlink is an accountability tool that will keep you honest. It uses a really high-tech breathalyzer system to help when those cravings get a little too loud. Here's why I love it. You'll test at the same time every day, eliminating testing anxiety. Devices have built-in facial recognition so it knows it's you testing. Tamper sensors flag any attempts at trying to beat the system. Friends and family receive instant test results helping to rebuild trust and prevent relapse. If you're serious about getting sober, this is a tool to use.

and the only monitoring system I recommend. Make these next months count. Visit soberlink.com slash recover to sign up and receive $50 off your device. Hey, how's it going, everyone? Before we jump into this episode, I want to give you a heads up that it's sober buddy. We're inviting you to join us on a weekly basis for our free virtual events. I'll put the link in the show notes below where you can get signed up on the Calendly app to get the link to join these Zoom meetings.

I'm very excited to be offering this to everybody. Tonight, actually, Wednesday, March 27th at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, we've got my buddy Todd coming to share a story with all of us, gives us an opportunity to ask some questions and just hear what it was like for someone else. So I hope to see you in a meeting soon. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to this short episode on 10 Things I Wish I knew about getting and staying sober. I've been fielding tons and tons of questions about exactly this over the last.

the years, so I thought I would put down some of my thoughts about things that I wish I knew when I first started. Let's get to the first one. I was not the only one struggling, but I felt so alone. I had completely burnt my life to the ground and felt like nobody understood, the feelings I was going through, or even had a vision for how I was going to dig myself out of it. But as soon as I started connecting with other people, I started to hear stories about people who had done the exact same stuff, and they were living a much better life and the one key ingredient that they always talked about was staying sober. So I knew that was going to be something that I was going to have to do if I was going to improve my current situation. So if you're struggling right now,

early on, or anywhere in this journey, you're not the only one. Other people are struggling to and reaching out and getting support and help and connecting with other people is an incredible solution for that. Sobriety is not a linear process. Number two, things go up and down and all around. It's not get sober one day and then your life just completely skyrockets from there. There's going to be challenges that still come up in life. And if you're anything like me or like the other people that I've talked to over the years, it creeps up from time to time.

Well, maybe I can just have one or maybe I can make it work this time. And sometimes we try it. And we find ourselves back to exactly where we were before soon or a week or two later. We always end up back at the same place. So the process is not going to be just linear. It's not going to be straight up all the time. It's going to ebb and flow just like life. That's not even solely just sobriety.

That's life in general. And you're going to have the tools as you move through this process to be able to work on those things. Oh, one of the things I wasn't necessarily prepared for at number three here is it's going to be a little bit of an emotional roller coaster. And things may get worse before they get better. And here's what I found out in my story is I had avoided feeling, addressing feelings, taking accountability, being present. For so long, when I got sober and I wasn't masking all of my emotions with the substance anymore, they all came and it just was like the flip. blood gates opened up. And here I was feeling all of these different emotions and not having my go-to escape anymore. So things got a little bit rough as I had to work through and navigate

those different areas of life that I just wasn't used to doing. And that's okay if that happens too. Another one is it's okay to ask for help and not have all the answers. You know, this is still one that I plug into today. I don't have all the answers for how everybody's going to get and stay sober, all the answers of how to be the best parent or how to do this or how to do that. But what we are response before is going out there and finding the answers to our questions and being willing to follow suggestions that other people might give us. We have to remain open-minded and willing to try new things. When I look back at my story and my journey, my best thinking got me in the worst places.

Like what I thought was the best idea, it just ended me up in really rough spots. So a big part of me when I got sober was to take direction and suggestions from other people that had a lot more experience than I did. Now, this is an interesting one coming in here at number five. You don't need anyone else to validate your desire to quit. I've heard countless stories on the podcast about people going in to see a therapist or a counselor or talking with a loved one or maybe a drinking buddy. And they said, hey, I think I've got a problem with this.

And the other person was like, no, no, no, you don't. You just have to moderate. You just have to cut back a little bit. Maybe just do it on the weekend. Maybe just take a week off. You know, and sometimes we can do that. But oftentimes we'll run with that and say, oh, well, you know, if so-and-so doesn't think I have a problem, maybe they're right.

Because honestly, I think we just want to keep the drinking going. So if we get anybody who gives us a thumbs up, then that's all we need to keep it going. But look, this is what you need to really focus on. How do you feel about it when you wake up in the morning, the anxiety, the anxiety, the sadness, the lack of being present in relationships that matter in life, everything that it's taking from you. Write it down. Write it down.

If you're struggling with that area. And ultimately, at the end of the day, you're the one who's going to have to show up and make the changes here. So that's what you need to base your decision on. How do you feel about your drinking or substance use? And do you think your life would be better and more fulfilled without it? That might be the million dollar question. That's all you need. And once you make that decision, never question it. Just keep moving forward. All right, let's head over to number six. A rock bottom is not required. A lot of times we think. think we've got to completely bottom out. We've got to fit into this box. It's not required at all.

And what you could probably find out and maybe reflect back on your story is that things oftentimes progressively get worse, how we feel the consequences. And what I focus on most with people who haven't maybe hit this quote unquote rock bottom is how do you feel on the inside? Maybe the external rock bottoms are not there, but I can guarantee you nine times out of ten, that internal rock bottom has already taken place, where you just don't feel good about the decisions that you're making, and even though we say I'm only going to have one or two,

it ends up being a lot more than that time and time again. So keep that in mind. You don't need to have this complete rock bottom blow out on the highway thing to change your relationship with alcohol. You can make that decision and empower yourself, to stop this before it gets further out of hand and further to a place where it might be harder to come back to the more consequences externally that you experience. So keep that in mind.

One of the biggest questions people ask, does it ever get easier? I'm right in the beginning and I'm really struggling and I'm having a lot of cravings and a ton of triggers. Like, does it get any easier? And the short answer to that is yes. Of course it gets easier. And I don't know if I'm completely sold on the fact that it gets easier or we get stronger. And we develop more tools about how we're going to work through the different situations and triggers and cravings and everything else that's involved.

So as you grow in your sobriety, you add more tools to your belt. And when you have more tools, then you're able to work through things. Also, when you work through a big thing for people is stressed, the more and more you do this, the more resilient you come. the more you prove to yourself you can do hard things. And before, in my life anyway, any time things got stressful, overwhelming, celebrations, whatever it was, we were drinking. So I never developed that resiliency needed

to move past these situations sober. And when you do it time and time again, you flex that muscle, you work that muscle, and you add more tools to your belt, which in turn makes it easier to get through those tough situations. but there will become a time where you think about alcohol less and less and less. Another one, too, is you may have to walk away from some relationships, and that's okay. You know, a lot of times when we get into this whole drinking thing,

we surround ourselves with people who drink like us, who think like us, and when you sober up, you might find that you don't necessarily fit into all of those situations or those relationships anymore. And that's okay. And some people you might drift away from naturally because the direction that your life is headed might not be the same way as where their life is headed. I really noticed that.

I didn't necessarily tell people, hey, we can't hang out anymore. Things are going to change. They just naturally did. Because I was waking up earlier. Things were changing. My life was changing. I had goals for my life for once.

that I was working towards. And I just noticed that a lot of the people around me at the time were just content carrying on, which is okay. That's for them to figure out, not for me to figure out or for me to judge, but I had to start involving people in my life who were where I wanted to be. Another thing, too, is you're going to get invited to all these different events. You're going to have to go to weddings. You're going to go on vacation.

You're going to go to birthday parties. You're going to even have your own birthday party. and you're going to have to set those things up in a way to protect your sobriety. I mean, once you decide to get sober, it's got to come first. Your sobriety's got to come first. For me, it does anyway. Because if I put my sobriety second, third, fourth, or fifth, I risk losing everything else that being sober has given me,

the opportunities that it's provided for me. And without the sobriety piece, a lot of the opportunities and where I'm at in life today, it's gone. it's completely gone. So I've got to always keep that in mind. And when you go to these different events, have a plan in place about how you're going to carry through

and make it through this event that you attend for the first time. And the more and more you do it, just like anything else, just like riding a bike, the more and more you do it, the better you get at it. Get moving.

This has got to be one of my favorite things. A lot of people talk about how walking really helped them get sober because you've got to distract yourself in the early days. So get moving. Hit the gym. Do some yoga.

Get moving on something because you need to, you're going to have a lot of extra time on your hands. So you need to get moving. It's so helpful. Things don't change unless we do. That's sort of the hard truth of all of this. Is this whole situation we find ourselves in is not going to change unless we do. And we've got to start chipping away at the block to change the way that we see things

and how we work through different situations that really were challenging for us before. And you do that over and over and over again. And you develop those new ways of working through situations that don't involve a substance, that don't involve alcohol. Focus on a healthy routine. You're going to have a lot of extra time on your hands, especially if you're new at this. You're going to have a lot of extra time and you need to plug in things that are going to make you feel good

and help you be productive and help you achieve those goals and keep the vision on your why. Why are you doing all of this? Because it's not going to be easy. So you've got to stay close to that why about why am I doing all of this. Why am I putting in this effort and going through this extremely uncomfortable phase in my life to get and stay sober? Stay grounded in that. Never lose sight of that.

Never lose sight of why this is important to you. What are your reasons for doing it? Write that down and reflect. on that frequently. A bonus here at number 11. What I always keep in mind is that the next one wouldn't be any different. We sometimes convince ourselves that we're going to have one and we play it out in our mind, right?

It's going to be so great. We romanticize our relationship with alcohol. Look at it in the movies. Look at it on TV. Look at everybody having a great time. And that's the reality for some, I guess. But I have to be honest with myself that that's not my reality. Although sometimes, of course, I could walk away after one or two.

Would I feel satisfied? No, not at all. I would be extremely upset that I wasn't able to carry on. And what you'll find is it becomes much easier to just have none. I know it sounds wild, but it becomes so much easier just to have none. So the next one will not be any different than the last thousand or 2000. And don't buy into that thinking. Play the tape all the way through.

What does it honestly look like for you? Now, everybody's going to be different here. But what does it honestly look like for you? What does the next day look like? What does it do to your goals? What does it do to you showing up in your career, your kid's life, your partner's life, your relationships?

How does it affect your mental health? How does it affect all of these areas of your life? Be so honest with yourself. that you just don't leave any room for that idea of you're going to be able to figure this out. That keeps us stuck for so long. I was in that place that I would one day be able to drink alcohol like a gentleman and figure this out and my life would carry on and this would be part of the past. I tried for years.

I tried for years to make it make sense. And it never did. Another bonus here too is join a community. if there's one thing that's going to help you out the most, it's a community of people that understand where you've been, what you're going through, and people that have been there so that they can shine the light back through the dark tunnel.

When we don't think this is possible, we can lean on somebody else who's been there, and they can show us that it's possible. So get plugged into some type of community, virtual, in-person, meetings, group therapy, anything to where you can lean on. on other people when you're struggling. And then you can also help out other people when they're struggling

because giving back is very important to keeping this thing going. You may fall, you may slip, you may scrape your knees up a bit, but you never quit. Because everything you want in life is on the other side of this problem that is holding you back from your true potential. Now let's go out there and get another day together. See you guys on the next one.