Sober Toolbox: Introduction
This article has been recorded to audio for convenience. All Podcasts can be heard on: This Website (Podcast Episodes), Podbean, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Google Chrome, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, an more.
Sobertown, welcome to the Sober Toolbox.
“The Human Brain is not optimized for making the best choices” (Dr. Andrew Huberman) (1)
I could not agree more and for this reason, we can not rely on our logic alone to create and sustain a life free of alcohol. Within this series are a bundle of tools within which I hope to be one or many items which you can employ to assist in the process of giving up alcohol and so I welcome you with open arms to the Sober toolbox, our tools are for sharing and may they become worn and rusty from their communal use amongst us here at Sobertown, the cost to use these tools is simple, pass them on and help a neighbour when they could use it, some of these tools are precision instruments for refinement and some a full heavy machinery, at times the steam roller might need to be utilised to absolutely annihilate the problem, at other times a tidy little spirit level might be in order just to sure up a slight incongruence but you know what, there is never any harm in overdoing it in sobriety Sobertown, so if you find your steam roller and you choose to apply it to a minor and beatable craving for alcohol, get at it, there is no overdoing it because our sobriety should be protected at all costs.
The wonderful and somewhat daunting truth about beginning your new life alcohol free is that it is a process of overall betterment of ones life and not simply the cessation of consuming alcohol alone, this is true of almost everybody who embarks on this journey. Quitting alcohol creates a ripple effect in our life whereby many other fuses are spontaneously ignited, most of these burn toward explosions of achievement in health, work, relationships and life and some will inevitably burn toward difficult realisations as we are finally able to or forced to face our sober mind and inner demons, dealing with whatever thoughts or experiences we may have been actively suppressing with our use of alcohol. Beginning an alcohol free life is a whole life shake up and reconstruction, it is a reconstruction of mind and body, I say this metaphorically but in truth this can be said in a very literal sense where our neuronal pathways and circuitry in our brains restructure positively and our diseased cells and damaged DNA are allowed to regenerate and divide without the poisonous interference of ethanol and acetaldehyde. Without question, removing the poison of alcohol from your life is the catalyst to finding your true self, the life you desire and the life you did not know you were capable of living, it is a challenging path leading to growth and a true engagement with life. It is a path more worthwhile and more rewarding than any other I know.
What you may or may not not realise coming into this journey is that quitting alcohol requires a great deal of planning. When we quit alcohol with no plan, no process, no connection and no tools it can be likened to stretching a rubber band, every day you progress through sheer will power alone stretches this band with a set starting point further and further until you reach a point where a single sensation fires old patterns in a deep recess in the depths of your mind and you can only watch on as though a spectator sitting outside of your own body as you start the car, drive to the store, walk in, select the booze, pay, leave, consume, reset. I did not realise this initially, In now know it to be true as true as sun will rise, quitting alcohol requires planning, change and dedication to the process, whatever your process may be.
If you don’t believe this, please prove me wrong, try to quit alcohol through will power alone, don’t change your life in any way, don’t change your activities, relationships or other habits and see how far you get. Some people grab hold and push hard and actually make it months even years before crashing back in a hard and often irreparable manner, most though will only make it days.
One vital point is that at the end of the day, this is your journey, you alone can implement the plan and make the change to find this life, it is there for the taking but nobody can give it to you because it takes work, courage and determination, in fact it takes very hard work and requires dedication without fail. The role of this information, as with all other advice is for you to take everything you can from it and employ it in your life in the best way fit to help you. This is your journey, you sit in the cockpit and your co-pilots can be found in your supports, your groups, your books, your apps and your techniques however they will always and only be your co-pilots, you are at the wheel so fortify your own mind, take the wheel and steer and strengthen your position with all of your supports knowing that this is your journey in the same way a counsellors role is to counsel and lead and direct but still the individual must ultimately change themselves, such is the truth with living your life free of alcohol, it is your journey.
Hurting yourself is easy, living is hard
Aside from you being the master of your journey and of your fate I should emphasise that in life and every aspect of it there is no quick fix, no silver bullet and there is no panacea for erecting the perfect life or for suddenly quitting alcohol with no work or cravings or discomfort, this is the hard truth. One thing authors tend to neglect to inform their readers much of the time is that their written work or strategies alone regardless of their power and strength are in reality only one helpful section of information among the cacophony of information that comes together to form aspects of your life and so I say to you the reader/listener that I believe the contents of my work to be very helpful, beneficial and I have employed all of the information and tools within my work in my own life with success. This though if you chose it do do so, should form only a piece of the jigsaw making up your sober life where you take the helpful and subtract anything you find unhelpful. We are all individuals with differing pasts, differing personalities and our success will be found in differing techniques, although we may share the same overall basic biology and have faced the same addiction to ethanol, the rest is unique to you and so you should take everything you can, learn as much as you can, invest deeply in this process and sometimes, reject that which you know to be unhelpful and if this needs to be the case for my work, so be it, you must find what is most helpful to you and eliminate that which is unhelpful. Lastly on this note, I embarked on this journey to document what I learn, what I do and did and employ my professional knowledge in health and sport science where it may be relevant however I am not trained, at all, in addiction recovery and I need that to be known, this does not exclude me from sharing my journey or my techniques but it does exclude me from anything that could be considered medical advice, psychological advice or addiction recovery, with that in mind, I hope deeply that I can help you with my experiences and journey, and that Sobertown is my solitary goal.
You may come to this place out of love, or you may come to this place out of fear. Both love and fear are strong motivators it just depends on your angle of approach to the desire for a life of sobriety.
Sobertown fear is a good motivator, but it rarely becomes the sole driver for sobriety, knowing the science, the facts, the medical aspects are a vital piece of the puzzle, but this alone will not sustain you on this journey. You need to come to sobriety with open arms and from a place of desire, of love and with the view of sobriety as being the great opportunity that it is. The facts fuse with the emotions and all meld together to fuel the engines toward growth in sobriety and freedom from alcohol.
Sobertown if you are unsure, sitting on the fence, still in hope and belief that moderation is a realistic goal, please let me save you some time and heartache, trust me on this we are very similar you and I on this path and we are all linked by this common experience, the more you speak to others who have struggled, the more you will see the similarities despite the varied journeys. If you are unwilling to accept the cost of drinking alcohol, the cost to your bodily and mental health, relationships, finances and physical and visual ageing processes then the answer is simple, very simple, you should work toward leading a life without alcohol. As daunting as this may sound initially, the equation is very simple and many people lead incredible lives free of alcohol. The fact that alcohol is widely used and accepted in society as a legal drug has exactly zero bearing on the very real truth that alcohol consumption above the very moderate 10 standard drinks per week WILL increase risk of seven types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, liver disease, faster ageing and poor mental health outcomes and these are just the tip of the iceberg. Sobertown here is some more desirable truth, long term sobriety with associated hard work has the common side effects of better sleep, less illness, more productive lives, better relationships, better sex lives, healthier weight, healthier dietary choices, reduced depression, reduced anxiety, calmness and level mood, non-hung over death feelings in the morning, higher incomes and work opportunities, better financial health, positive influence in friends and family, massive overall growth in human potential mentally, spiritually and physically and many, many, many, many, many more benefits. Amazing, and all you needed to do was allow your body and mind to heal and stop regularly poisoning them.
The way I see it is this. If you drink a very minimal amount, never exceeding, for example, one to two drinks (normal drinks, not double shot mixers, cocktails or giant glasses of wine) then statistically you can probably get by without damaging your body or mind too significantly with alcohol. This though is very few of us, VERY FEW, and even at moderate levels alcohol remains unhealthy, contrary to what you may have heard, ethanol is poison and the product our body converts ethanol to (acetaldehyde) is even more poisonous to the body than ethanol itself. My opinion is that the proportion of the population who can and do drink “responsibly” is VERY LOW as the drug itself removes ones ability to make healthy and rational decisions as soon as it begins to affect the body, while we lie to ourselves and downplay the true quantities we consume with statements such as “I had a couple of beers” which is often a cover for six to ten, or “I need a glass of wine tonight” which is cover for at least a whole bottle. Our minds and our desire to rationalise addiction cause us to literally lie to ourselves.
That aside, one point which is vital for you the reader/listener to fully acknowledge is that you, regardless of your habits are not defective. You are not defective, nor are you in any way unique. Your habit is not unique regardless of whether you consume copious amounts of alcohol daily or simply more than you would like to. You are not inherently flawed either way and you are not even different. Whatever your consumption, or your habits there are many others who struggle with the same circumstance, many in your country, in your town and probably in your street. The roots of your struggle may run back to life events, childhood, trauma, genetics or familial addiction or perhaps not, it may relate simply to the inherent addictive nature of alcohol and the development of habit through circumstance then reinforced by an addictive substance over time. Just because you do not see the struggles others face it does not mean it is not occurring all around you, it is. You are not faulty or even unique. The attraction to alcohol is natural and common, society pushes us toward it and not away from it and its very nature is to attract and addict and encourage overconsumption. You can shake the habit, just as many others struggle with overconsumption there are many, myself included who found the way to living without alcohol regardless of the conditions surrounding us daily, you can too. There is nothing wrong with you because you drink. Not a thing, and you can change, you absolutely can live a life without alcohol being a part of it, as foreign a concept as that may be to you, it is true, it is being done by many. We are a large and growing community worldwide of people who lay our head on the pillow at night with a clear and sober mind and it feels fantastic and YOU, you can do it too with the right knowledge, mindset, determination, support and tools.
When we think of abstaining from anything in our lives, we tend to think not doing something is a passive process. To not engage in some acts in life may be a relatively passive process whereby we simply do not engage in the activity without any real thought, resistance or difficulty for example not wearing your blue shirt, you just chose to wear a different shirt without much thought or effort just because it is what you decide or feel like. Nobody is in your face saying blue shirt, blue shirt, blue shirt, why didn’t you put on the blue shirt. Your own mind is not craving the blue shirt later in the day and you don’t get agitated when you can’t wear the blue shirt. What I mean is, there are many things we simply do not do without effort or resistance. When it comes to abstaining from alcohol, nothing could be further from the truth. Living a sober life and choosing not to consume alcohol is a highly ACTIVE process, who would have thought that NOT doing something required so much intent and planning, investment and effort, but it absolutely does. Some of you may actually find minimal resistance to giving up alcohol but I can assure you that living a prolonged period alcohol-free does require active engagement because the time of challenge will always come eventually. The act of not consuming alcohol is highly active in the sense that we employ many and varied techniques sustained over time in order to NOT consume alcohol, these techniques can be thought of as our tools in maintaining sobriety.
Each and every one of us on this journey, whether we know it or not have a conceptual bag of tools we employ to maintain our sober lives. This toolkit is our sober lifeline and its contents are broad and varied between us. Some tools are common to many of us and are powerful like a heavy sledge, effective in smashing the forces drawing us toward our old ways. Some tools are less common and more subtle and precise like a spirit level, allowing us to fine-tune and balance our daily rituals to bring our habits into line and squeeze the most out of this newfound life and state of being. Living a life free of alcohol especially initially requires great investment and the more one invests into the process, as with most endeavours in life, the more successful one will be.
The more tools we have, the more we engrain and use these tools and the more we apply them and manipulate them to apply to us, to our individual life and experiences and the more we grow them in strength, the better we are able to sustain this very intentional life we are all striving for and maintaining. All of our tools are vital and all contribute as a whole to maintaining the life we have created. We should never stop growing our toolbox and we should never stop reaching in and using the contents of our toolbox, the beauty of sobriety and a clear head is that this becomes easier as we grow into our sober lives and grow as individuals. Growth is vital, seeing sober living as an opportunity and not a chore is vital and committing to the process, your process, whatever that may be, again is vital. If you come to sobriety as a requirement, forced by an external factor such as a drink driving charge or court order, perhaps a loved one pushing for it before you yourself made the decision it is the right move for your life then in my opinion the longevity of the process will be in grave danger, the change truly is an opportunity and achieving freedom from alcohol is a well and hard-earned gift in your life.
Within my writing or podcasts, you will come to notice a theme, that is a recurring oddity in my metaphors and analogies. You may find some of my imagery, relations or anthropomorphising topics strange but this is done for a good reason, that is to do with the way our memory works. When we investigate grandmasters in memory and their strategies we come to see that while these individuals are indeed incredible in their abilities that these abilities are not simple inherent and that they employ a range of techniques such as imagery and association, memory palaces and other interesting strategies for achieving incredible feats of memory, without getting into too much detail suffice to say this is why in my writing I will often delve into metaphors and this is why some of these metaphors may initially seem odd, they are placed with intention, to stick with you, to help consolidate memory and learning and hopefully for a little entertainment at the same time.
One of the most important points to remember and to reinforce Sobertown is that there is not one system or one set of tools that suit everybody. Some of us will find success in employing strategy 1, some in strategy 2 and so on. Some resources prefer alcoholics anonymous, some actively dis alcoholic anonymous, some profess to have their own true and correct system, some encourage medication use, others rehab, you get the picture, my thoughts are that if a system is effective for you and it does not harm anybody in any way that it is an effective tool for them, not everybody, no one tool is right for every single human being, but for them, it is valid and works and this is all that matters. The most important advice I have in this journey is to keep learning, keep reading, keep trying no matter what until you find your own path. Our physiology may be largely the same, but our personalities differ, our lives differ, our resources differ and our past experiences differ and for all of these reasons there will be great variability in what techniques, support, services or tools help most in creating and sustaining an alcohol-free life. My personal example is that I gave up alone, without AA, without SMART Recovery or any other specified group or program and using a myriad of my own techniques and strategies and I then grew into increased connection as I progressed through milestones. Your journey is your journey and it will look different at least in some way to everybody else and their path. Never give up, this can be done with the right amount of work and research and support.
Final point to finish on for today Sobertown, again I am not a qualified professional in the area of addiction, counselling, substance abuse or psychology and I will not create content professing to be an expert in any of these areas of study. Why should I create this content then? Why should I have an opinion? Yes, I am just another of many who has successfully found his way to a better life, a life free of alcohol after struggling with addiction and resulting mental health difficulties this is true and it is true that I am not unique in this achievement. As I invested in the planning and process of leaving alcohol I gained from a broad range of opinions, advice, stories and other inputs and many of the most valuable pieces of advice I employed did not necessarily come only from addiction professionals, there is value in many opinions in this sphere and with the simple goal of helping others reach this better place I and many other have found I create this content, this is my simple and single goal. This coupled with an overlap with my background in exercise science and human function is what I draw on to create what I hope and believe is a unique approach and of assistance to some of you out there listening.
Without further explanation or delay, on we go.
What is the Sober Toolbox Series?
The Sober Toolbox series will include one podcast and article dedicated to each tool in sobriety and will continue to be released over the coming weeks, this toolbox will also continue to grow, so stay tuned Sobertown and remember you are not alone and you can do this, keep learning, keep coming back, we got you.
Sober Toolbox (Contents)
1: Introduction to Sober Toolbox
2: (Mindset) Growth or Fixed
3: (Beliefs) Drinker vs Non-Drinker
4: (Triggers) Spatial Association
5: One Day at a Time (ODAAT)
6: (Mindset) Positive vs Negative
7: Accountability
8: Sober Superheroes
9: Dear Me
10: The Five Why’s
11: No Mental State is Forever
Stay tuned Sobertown.
REFERENCE
(1): Rich Roll Podcast: July 20, 2020, 24m:45s. Change Your Brain: Neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman | Rich Roll Podcast. Taken From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwQhKFMxmDY 16/06/2021.
The Sobertown Blog articles and recordings are created as a means of assisting others in achieving and maintaining freedom from alcohol. Experiences, entries, research and article content are that of the author/s and should be applied in a safe manner, where/when relevant, with medical oversight. This is not medical advice.
