Successful Sobriety: A two part process. Quitting alcohol and creating the new post alcohol life

I recently listened to a social media post from an influencer who is on his 69th day of sobriety. His message was refreshingly honest; basically, he is bored, unhappy and disappointed that this is what he has found to be how he feels so far. 

Personally I believe each person who finally quits alcohol uses whatever process or method works for them and, because I had several false starts and know how hard the process is, I applaud each person who takes it on and finds a way to sobriety, whatever route they take. That said, I think my own experience is relevant to share. Personally, I think the one-day-at-a-time approach, long term, has real drawbacks. At least it did for me. The main drawback being that it suggests that life is continuing as it did before, just absent alcohol. And, one-day-at-a-time requires that each day is a fight against that urge to drink. And it is a fierce battle. In my experience, like gambling in Vegas, over time, the dealer and the addiction will always prevail.

Don’t get me wrong, I think anything that enables someone to start moving down the road to recovery and sobriety is positive. In my case, fear for my health was a major motivation. But after 30 days of one-day-at-a-time, and feeling physically healthier, the pull of the booze and longing for the other social benefits prevailed more than once. I was, in essence, mentally, still a drinker who was just not drinking. Note here: substitute beverages can be helpful for a time, but they are just feeding the “I am still a drinker” mentality.

I feel it is necessary to reiterate here once again, I salute and support anyone who finds a way, no matter how. However, because of my own false starts and learning, I want to make available my own experience and point of view to potentially help others skip some steps and avoid failure. To that end I want to share my lessons-learned around actually quitting alcohol and what to expect afterwards and how to move forward.

First, I want to talk about the process of actually quitting. When you start, have realistic expectations. This will be hard. You may have setbacks. Don’t beat yourself up. That is part of the process.  And, once you are successful, you are not finished. You have just begun. 

The first week of sobriety is very hard. After all, you have learned to depend on the medication that alcohol provides as well as the social benefits and routine to which you are accustomed. So go with whatever motivation pushes you to just start the process. The reality of liver cirrhosis is as real as can be. Social and relationship problems, economic problems, etc. Use one or all to motivate you. The first 3 or 4 days will feel off. Sleep will be elusive, you will feel agitated, and you will technically still have alcohol in your system. After about 3 days it is not uncommon to start noticing better sleep and seeing other benefits relating to energy and how you feel. 

When quitting I also recommend that you change your routine. Part of alcoholism is the routine to which you are accustomed. I found it beneficial to start working out during the time I would normally crack open my first beer. I also made it a point to get to bed earlier, wake up earlier and start my day with a connection to nature such as a walk outside and a morning meditation. 

The thing that was the most important for me, and what actually led to my finally succeeding after several failed attempts, was to redefine who I am. 

You see, up to that point, I was a drinker who was fighting the urge to drink. Once I decided that I am, and for the rest of my life will be, a non-drinker, everything shifted. That mental shift was hard to make. But once it was crystal clear in my mind, I AM A NON-DRINKER, everything shifted. Through this neurolinguistic process, I managed to shift my subconscious. Immediately my craving for alcohol diminished significantly and shortly after, disappeared. I no longer had a need to keep an alcohol-free beer in my fridge to sate my craving. I still used sweets to mitigate sugar cravings, but I lost my desire to drink alcohol. Even the longing to fill loneliness or be a “party guy” vanished. The importance of tracking the “day 25, day 26, day 40, etc” disappeared. Afterall, I am a non-drinker. That gave me the ability to really gain complete control of my sobriety.

That process can support that first phase of your sobriety journey. However, the second part of this, the one many people fail to anticipate, is what comes after you may feel like you have won. The reality, as articulated by the influencer mentioned at the start of this blog, is what comes next and it can be as difficult, or more so, than the first part. The sense that, “so this is it?” 

You see, for someone who has been a drinker for years, who has many fond memories while drinking and likely was using alcohol to medicate or cover up other feelings or issues, this is the moment of reckoning that few anticipate. Like with quitting, this can show up differently for each person: loneliness, disappointment, boredom, sadness, frustration. And, for a few it is happiness. In my case, it was depression I had been medicating. After having overcome such a demon I was really taken off-guard by this experience. This was a dark emptiness, the level of which I had never experienced. The closest thing I could equate it too was a period of intense grief after having lost a close loved one. I never felt so alone and helpless. And in this case it felt like it would be my end. 

The reason I share this personal experience is to inform and prepare others. This did not have to happen in this way. Or at least had it happened, I would have been prepared for it and had a plan to overcome that situation.  You see, during that time I spent a lot of time in a dark room thinking about what I was going to do. If I was going to live, why? I spent a lot of time pondering this question. I spent about three full days thinking about why I should live and what things were most important to me in my life. And, in that frame of mind, I got crystal clear as to my answers to that question. 

I have never shared the specifics of this part of my process publicly before. But at this point I decided I was going to live and I wanted to clearly demarcate the new post-alcohol Brad and the start of my post-alcoholic life. 

After 59 years of being perhaps the only person I know without one, I made a decision to get a tattoo. This would not only mark this time of transition. But, up to that point in my life, I had never been able to think of anything that held enough significance to me to have it printed on my skin for the remainder of my days. However, now it was different. I knew exactly what things were the most important in my life and that warranted a marking on my body forever. 

So, I got onto a website called Fivrr and found a tattoo designer whose style appealed to me and began the process of creating my tattoo. Each morning I awoke before my alarm eager to see the revisions I had made and each afternoon I did more research, made changes and evolved. Note: having never done anything like this before, I learned the benefit of having a designer open to multiple revisions.

My tattoo evolved to two tattoos and I stayed with this process for nearly 2 months until the designs were exactly as I wanted. I never imagined that I would have not one, but two tattoos I would feel comfortable wearing for the rest of my life. 

During this process, I found that in between, I found the energy and interest to document my process and what I was learning. In addition, I began to recall past lessons I had learned, and somewhat forgotten, in other places such as the Forum and past philosophical readings. At some point during this process, I came to the realization that my depression had left and I was completely enrolled in my new purpose of creation. First, my tattoos, next The Get Happiness Plan program.

The reason I shared this personal journey was not to say that everyone should get a tattoo. However, I believe that the key to overcoming what follows quitting alcohol and to creating a new life can be summed up into one word: “Purpose”. You see, once I had “Purpose”, everything shifted. And in my case, “Purpose” arose in the process of Creation.

Since that time, I invested my time and energy in additional education and life coaching certification and training including the Harvard “Managing Happiness” certification, to support and refine my thinking.  I found a mountain of science and evidence to validate what I had found on my own. However, while educational, the science and courses left the student better informed but lacking an actionable process. Which is why I created The Get Happiness Plan: a distillation of all this data into 7 key elements designed to enable someone to find purpose and create a new life after alcohol or other life transitions. I also know that creating plans is hard. So I applied my experience creating simple business plans to a process of creating a new life plan that is combined with live online coaching.

There are 7 key elements to the Get Happiness Plan program. Each person won’t necessarily need all of them, but it is likely that he or she will find purpose and be able to create the next meaningful phase of life from amongst them and through applying my exercises and planning process. The 7 elements include:

• Gratitude / Spirituality

• Connection with Nature

• Creating Community and Personal Relationship Connections

• Purposeful service to something beyond ourselves

• Learning or Creating

• Physical Health

• Sufficiently Gratifying / Rewarding Work

I went through my own journey through the desert, Harvard and NLP certifications and many other processes to arrive at this data and to create this process. 

In summary, there are not one, but two processes to anticipate in the sobriety journey: quitting alcohol and creating a new life post-alcohol as a non-drinker. Each process requires focus and deliberate actions for ultimate success. Fixing one but not the other is a recipe for regression and failure. Whether you use my system or another, don’t leave the second part of this process to chance. Seek support, follow a process and don’t go it alone.