You’re not going to like this.
You’re not supposed to.
You’re not booking a cruise. You’re not picking options for your new car. You’re not even downloading a mildly entertaining brain-rot of an app.
You are rewiring your brain and spirit. You are developing new defense mechanisms and coping skills that contradict every instinct you’ve ever had and everything you’ve ever done. And you are finally standing up to the biggest enemy you’ve ever faced.
Yourself.
So yeah, you’re not going to like this.
There is no secret to recovery. You stop. You have to quit. Whatever it is; the booze, the coke, the pills, the needles…you have to stop. And it sucks. We often don’t go to sleep unless the high is promised upon our waking. We can’t imagine any part of life, any day, any emotion or experience without the comfort of our drug of choice and the absolute abysmal hell it keeps providing us.
But it is consistent. So it is comfortable.
No matter the costs endured. Legit financial costs as well as spiritual, social, mental and physical. “Put it on my tab, I’ll be ok.” And just like owing the dopeman and abandoned bar tabs, you’ll never be able to catch up until you change.
The addiction will do its best to keep you from changing. To accepting help. To following logical advise and procedures. Even though this is killing you, you NEED it not just in your life but you NEED it AS your life.
And change means stop.
Whenever you get to that point where something inside you tells you it’s time, you need to listen. Whenever you hear that faint internal whisper that you are out of control and your life is suffering, embrace the reality that it is time. This inner dialogue of rational is often suppressed by the addiction monster. I’m willing to bet not too many people are errant in thinking they might have a drinking or drug problem.
An interesting dynamic of why you’re not going to like this is because it isn’t for you. I mean it is…but it isn’t. It is said you can’t get sober for anyone or anything else other than for yourself. Not a marriage, not a job, not a boat, not a court case…none of these can provide the motivation to not just be sober, but to be willing to rebuild yourself spiritually.
But it isn’t really for you. Not the right here, right now you at least. It is for the future you. The better you. The clear thinking, the honest, the self-respecting, the charitable you. The you that doesn’t exist yet but the you that you can be if you would get out of your own way. And the addict in you, the alcoholic in you, the ever rationalizing, lying to yourself, living in denial piece of shirt person that you currently are, is going to do its best to keep you from changing.
Because it is comfortable.
Because even though it is killing you, you feel you control it.
Because when you become the best version of yourself that you can be, that old version dies.
That old version is replaced with sanity.
That old version learns honesty.
That old version becomes self-aware.
And that old version, your “now” pre-sobriety version, the current you, is absolutely scared shitless by this notion.
And that’s why TODAY you aren’t going to like it.
But your enlightened, self-aware and clearheaded version of you really isn’t going to like it either.
You’re going to love it.