Leigh’s Guide to Crush Cravings: Part.1
- I have been a chronic relapaser for years now, and I have managed to completely get rid my cravings and desire for alcohol, I outlined how below*
My entire life I have always been very analytical, I want to know how everything works. From the cosmos and the universe, art, math, music. Down to my own personality. And understanding addiction. I have struggled with alcohol and addiction for what had basically been my whole adult life. I started drinking when I was thirteen, I’m twenty seven now. In between those years I also found an affinity for speed, Adderall specifically. Which luckily I was able to cold turkey a few years back, but the alcohol I could never quit. in the last few years I became what some might call a chronic relapser. I knew I had a problem, I just couldn’t stop. So now, having quit for the last time, and you can imagine my surprise when, now on my way to a month I have managed to eliminate my cravings by about 99 percent. Meaning in the last going on thirty days here I only had cravings twice, which only Lasted for seconds. Being used to my old self I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and feel like old Leigh again. I’m going to wake up and everything is just back in the shitter. I’m going to wake without a burning passion for life and sobriety, and every day I’m wrong. In fact quite the opposite, now every day I wake up with more conviction, more energy, more passion to live than I ever remember having before. So what happened? Let me explain!
This didn’t come without a plan, and a lot of action. As I have mentioned here before the night before I quit for good I don’t remember well. I drank an enormous amount of alcohol in a very short time frame and blacked out walking home from work. The next day however I woke up on my couch still in my work clothes, shoes, back pack on the floor. Covered in my own blood. I think I fell but I have no idea, I had cuts from head to toe, the ones on my shoulder so deep they will probably scar, I had to throw out the work shirt. I could have died, fell onto something sharp and just bled out onto the sidewall. Never would of known what happened. The hangover was the worst in my life and I threw up until I feel asleep that night. That day I wrote the date on my arm in sharpie, this was the last time I would EVER drink that much I was sure.
The first few days of sobriety I realized something had to change, in fact almost everything had to change. Who I was before just wasn’t working. And as much as I wanted to just stop drinking and keep doing everything else the same I realized that wasn’t an option. I had to do something new. I had to make a Leigh that I’ve never been before, make a better one. Reach a place mentally I had only pined for in the past but never realized was truly achievable. I will try to outline what I did below in an effort to help people I know are in the same place I was.
Step: 1 Finding Purpose
When you are a addict, alcoholic or otherwise, you’re whole life revolves around your drug, your high, the buzz, the never ending cycles. You live to get the next fix, and as much a you want there to maybe be something more to your life, that’s it. Even high functioning alcoholics, although able to run a fairly normal life and be productive, still need to get their fix. That drink, I deserve it, I worked really hard today. I need to relax. When you are an addict, the addiction is always going to be at the forefront of your mind. That in and of itself is quite debilitating when you think about. We get drunk just to feel normal because we forget what feeling normal actually feels like. As much as you want to succeed in life at your hobbies or your job you can NEVER put all of your energy into, but what if you could?
I’ve been agnostic for as long as I can remember although I was raised a Christian. And I believed in God for a long time but eventually I fell away from it because of my own personal reasons and since than there was a marked change in how I felt about the world. For a long time there was a great emptiness and a coldness to it I think I just filled with alcohol even more than before. I am a very spiritual person, but I’m not religious, more scientific if anything. But I realized I need to find something bigger than me, not necessarily a God as it were but something real I could believe in and invest my time into to grow as a person, something to really sink my teeth into and give myself a reason to live outside of alcohol. After a great deal of searching I came across Buddhism (lol I’m some of you already know this) and I realized that this was the perfect thing for me. I just totally understood everything the Buddha teaches, but the most important part for me was that he teaches you how to find peace and happiness in your own life. Which I was missing, which Alcohol drained from me.
Now let me just take a second to address this, it’s not the religion that is important, whatever you believe in is almost irrelevant, what is important is that you find something that can give meaning to your life again without drinking. If you are already in a specific religion sink your soul into that, if not it’s not a problem at all. There is a litany of other ways to start putting the pieces back together which I will get into below. It can be exercise, maybe something your are passionate about like writing or art or a new job, try something new you have never done before or do that thing you have been wanting to do you have been putting off because you were too busy drinking. You need to find something bigger and better than the addiction. Every person needs a purpose it’s just the basic human condition. Find yours. And find that desire to be better! Be nicer, be open minded and loving, and pine for change.
Step 2 The Routine
The second thing is inordinately important. I don’t know about you guys but when I was drinking I had no structure to my life, I would live hangover to hangover, “sleeping” most of the day away. I say that in quotations because we all now drunk sleeping isn’t actually sleeping at all and we just wake up feeling miserable. Try to nurse our hangover through work and get that next drink. I realized that had to change to, so I did. I started going to sleep every night around the same time, aiming for at least eight hours of sleep. Sleep is the most important thing, there is no healing without sleep. And know in my own experience getting good sleep when you just quit drinking is damn near impossible but do your best. The first week I tossed and turned incessantly. Everything I say is second to getting good sleep, and preferably around the same time of night if possible. If you cant get there yet just hang in there it does come. That’s the first part. The second part is to have structure to your day. I wake up every day now and meditate, weather it’s ten minutes or an hour (well get into meditation later) I eat something healthy for breakfast (or fast if I’m not that hungry), cruise the TS forums, try to read if I have time. Go to work, I’ll usually work out in the afternoons, yoga is my new thing right now. Re-adding that structure back in is essential to success. If we continue to live day to day to day like we were before without any purpose or discipline it will be that much easier to fall back on old habits. Take it one day at a time, implement one thing at a time, its okay to get back into this slowly as long as you are working to get it done.
Step 3: Fixing The Mind
As a student of Buddhism I was reading a book recently of Vipassana meditation, a technique widely taught be the late S.N. Goenka, believed to be the technique The Buddha used to reach enlightenment. In the book it says that the alcoholic will continue to reach for his drink, because his mind needs to be fixed. Basically, when there is turbulence in the mind, and unbalance, it is impossible for one for to find true peace in sobriety. Because we are used to going day to day through a torrent of emotions. A lot of us drink to self medicate, we suffer from social anxiety, depression, bi polar, the list goes on. So when we stop, now all of these problems we were self medicating come to the surface, and unless we find an outlet that can actually help us deal with them it can become overwhelming and we fall back into drinking. If you have the money to go to a doctor or a therapist if you feel the need its probably a good idea. If not, allow me to suggest something.
I came across meditation when I started studying Buddhism recently, and it was a complete coincidence when I discovered all of the practical applications it had, especially in relation to emotional problems and addiction. All backed by years of study and science. Here is a link to 76 actual benefits that can be added to your sober life. http://liveanddare.com/benefits-of-meditation/ what it does you cannot really get with any combination of medicine, it goes in a fixes everything we need mentally to have a successful life beyond alcohol. Worried about not having the willpower to fight off a craving? Meditation fixes that https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-willpower/201004/meditate-your-way-more-willpower. Suffer from bi polar disorder? Hate suffering from the manic highs and lows? Me too, mediation fixes that http://eocinstitute.org/meditation/how-meditation-helps-those-with-bipolar-disorder/. What about depression, anxiety, loneliness, stress, fear, impulsiveness, poor immune system? Meditation fixes that too. And what’s great? It’s completely free, and you only need to start off doing ten minutes a day. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Part of fixing the mind is doing a thorough Unbrainwashing, This I have mentioned on the forums before but I think it would be a good idea to bring up again because of the importance of it. The problem with the addicts mind is that we only ever think of our drug of choice in reverence. We only every remember all the GOOD feelings that it has given us. We look back with nostalgia at all the “good” times we had wen were intoxicated. We THINK alcohol was the reason we had good times, not the people we were around or because of the thing we were doing, and we think this mistakenly. Our brains are so skewed that we truly believe we cannot have fun again without it. But we now we have to stop, because it is destroying our lives, so why can’t we? Why don’t we remember all of the horrible times (which always outweigh the good ones) when it comes to drinking? That’s the demon at work friends, luckily you can undo this.
Chances are when you are and addict, especially someone who has quit recently, seeing alcohol is difficult, it brings up a lot of unweildy feelings. Maybe it makes you want to drink? Unfortunately our modern society deems alcohol legal and even unduly important. So it’s going to be nearly impossible to avoid from a day to day basis, unless your hole your self off into a corner somewhere. So here is what you do, as an alcoholic your brain will naturally try to make you think you want to drink with good feelings and memories even though you know in your heart the truth is contrary, making it harder to fight. SO, you have to consciously change that, what I do is EVERY single time I see alcohol, whether it be in a movie or a grocery store, etc. I say “EW” out loud, or in my head if, users choice. By default your brain will say “good”, you have to counter this with a feeling of repulsion, instead of remembering a time you had fun drinking remember the WORST things it has done for you. Remember the worst hangover you ever had, remember waking up covered in your own vomit before you had to go to work, remember losing your significant other or family or whatever you have lost from drinking. Because if you drink it’s just going to take more, it’s takes everything and you get nothing. Don’t ever let the wound heal. Do this every-time you see alcohol and you will be legitimately surprised at how you used to feel starts to change. For me now feeling disgusted when I see alcohol is literally a reflex. You took all that time to become an alcoholic, put the time in to fix your brain!
Part 4: The Commitment
If in the very farthest reaches of your mind, even if you feel like you are completely committed to getting sober, there is even an inkling of uncertainty you will be way more likely to relapse. You have to admit to yourself in every fiber of your being that this what you WANT, not just something you HAVE to do. If you keep relapsing it’s because somewhere in your subconscious the idea of life without alcohol is scary to you. And it shouldn’t be, if you are reading this then you know in your heart you want to be sober, but you still aren’t fully committed. This was a turning point for me, the second that I realized that the idea of life without ever having to drink again filled me with joy and content, the easier resisting alcohol became every day. BECAUSE I didn’t feel like I was being deprived or missing out on something, alcohol single handedly almost destroyed my entire life, and I will never forget it. Tore apart everything good I had, laid waste to my sense of curiosity and wonder and creativity and passion to live for years. Now when I see people drinking, I don’t feel like I’m being left out of some amazing kind of fun that I can never have again, I feel BAD for the people drinking, who may never realize how incredible life is without it. Who are probably going to wake up the next day with a wretched hangover having to apologize to their friends for doing something stupid/ embarrassing.
When I remember drinking now I don’t think of the great parties I went too, I just think about everything it took from me, every single pain that it caused me physically and mentally for so many years, all the money wasted, jobs lost, relationships shattered. Quitting now I don’t feel like I lost a friend but rather vanquished an enemy. THAT is the switch you have to flip. It’s going to take a while for your body to recover but look at it as a personal challenge. This goes back to the part about un-brain washing. Let’s delve deeper. I saw some one at the gas station today when I was buying coffee, he had two huge 40 ounces or Cororna. USUALLY, including the last time I quit before I relapsed and quit this time for good. I would have looked them with the desire to drink. This time, I almost didn’t even notice them at first, which was weird because before I was astutely aware of anywhere alcohol was near me at all times. When I did finally see what he was holding, I had NO desire whatsoever to drink, I felt repulsed (because I have been training myself to feel that way constantly) and said to myself “that wouldn’t even get me buzzed before”. Because that is the truth, you need to be brutally honest with yourself. I did not envy that man for a second. If you don’t hear anything remember this, you don’t ENJOY drinking, and you are NOT in control, no matter how many days/months/years go by sober. I have seen time and time again people relapsing right back to where they started, because they thought after X years they would have some amount of control and be able to drink like a “normal person”, but is drinking poison really normal? The fact that you think you enjoy drinking is a lie, created by your addiction, when the brain is addicted it will make you feel however it needs to make you feel to get it’s fix and you don’t need to give in! If you are reading this you know that you don’t want to drink so embrace it.
And it’s been happening everywhere, even when I’m watching T.V. And see people drinking I don’t even realize it until way after the scene has been going on. This is completely new territory for me as I have NEVER been able to quit like this before. I just no longer have any interest in alcohol or drinking, why? My best guess is meditation every day, fervently un-brainwashing my alcoholic impulses, and committing 100 percent to being sober forever without any feeling of anguish or fear. I could go on about a lot of other things I think are important, like diet, exercise, and positive thinking. But ultimately I think these are the most important things to find a sober foundation. If this helps even one person then I did my job, just know I’ve been where you are and even though it may seem impossible it isn’t. If you have any questions ask away! I am currently working on a part two for this I didn’t want to make this first post too long, cheers!
Leigh,
