Tag: sobriety

A Journey Into Sobriety

Seana Smith in her memoir, Going Under, graphically describes her journey into sobriety – a state achieved for four years at the time of publishing her book.  Her memoir tracks her early childhood, addiction to alcohol and multiple attempts to escape both physically and mentally.  For each step forward, there was always a backward step until she found the solution to her addiction.  Her insightful, inspiring and humorous account traces the ups and downs of a life burdened by alcohol addiction.

Early childhood

Seana had adverse childhood experiences as a result of her father being a violent alcoholic and the inability of her mother to cope with his addiction and the physical and mental abuse against her. The verbal abuse by her father extended to Seana and her siblings, especially to Callum who had a serious mental health issue.  Seana’s home environment lacked consistency and warmth and was constantly unpredictable, despite some happy childhood moments with her parents individually or together.

Year of sobriety

Seana was able to achieve a year of sobriety when her twins were seven years old. The catalyst was a period of heavy drinking that resulted in her trying to pick a fight with her husband, Paul.  She was mean to him but fortunately he did not react to her” sarcasm and barbs”.  The twins had started school and Seana had a strong sense that her drinking was undermining “her urge to feel healthy and bright and well”.  She joined AA and took up ocean swimming which gave her challenge , excitement and a modicum of fear.

Despite this outstanding sobriety effort, Seana dropped back into her old ways, moving from drinking once a week to drinking a bottle a day.  Alcohol provided an escape from the mind-numbing routine of motherhood and the associated domesticity.  This led her to her endless cycle of “thinking and thinking and thinking about drinking”.  She described herself as “white knuckling” as she fought to regain control and overcome the very real physical and mental urge to drink…and drink to excess. 

The ever-present opportunity for free drinks from social events added to her pain and temptation, and ultimately resulted in her submission to the impulse to lose control over her drinking habit.  While Seana did not consider herself to be an alcoholic, she acknowledged that she engaged in “gray area” drinking, leading to morning hangovers and severe headaches impacting her ability to function fully.  She often alternated between moderate drinking and risky drinking.

Trauma and addiction

Gabor Maté contends that addictions, in multiple cases, originate from the pain of adverse childhood events.  The addiction, in whatever form it takes, is often an ineffective attempt to remove the trauma-induced pain.  The experience of trauma evokes negative self-stories and Seana’s book is replete with continuous self-deprecation.  Seana was in the grip of the “need to please” and believed that if she did not drink with others in social settings, she would not be “accepted”.  She also acknowledged that in her twenties, she was addicted to sex – another form of failed attempt to escape from trauma pain.

As part of her journey to sobriety, Seana discovered that her father’s “drinking story” continued through her. It impacted her need to “keep moving and moving”. She sought help from a therapist to assist her in “letting go of old trauma”.  The therapist employed EMDR therapy to great effect.  Seana was able to progressively move beyond the past, focus on the present, express gratitude for the “positive gifts my family and upbringing have given me” and to remember “all the good parts of Dad and Mum” and the adventures they took her and her siblings on.

The journey to sobriety

There are many perspectives on, and paths for, recovering from trauma and its muti-dimensional impacts.  The road to sobriety is complicated by trauma-induced beliefs and behaviour.  Seana like many others who have achieved sobriety found that it was a very long journey with many setbacks to recovery.  She also recognised that recovering from alcohol addiction required multiple pathways which served to positively reinforce each other.

She took up pool swimming that, along with the social encounters and new friends, provided her with release from the physical tension of trying to overcome her alcohol addiction. She also bought a dog, “a wee black poodle called Maisie” – which reduced her urges to escape and travel.

A key to her recovery was listening to sobriety podcasts constantly.  From Janey Lee Grace’s podcast, Alcohol Free Life, Seana discovered a solution, “keep the ritual – change the ingredients”, that she was able to implement by substituting “alcohol-free wines, cocktails spirits and mixers” for alcoholic drinks whenever she had a ritual of drinking, e.g. at 5pm.  She listened to multiple sobriety podcasts including Annie Grace’s podcast, This Naked Mind.   Seana also devoured Annie’s book, This Naked Mind: Find Freedom, Discover Happiness and Change Your Life.

A key factor for Seana in her journey to sobriety and freedom was the use of the affirmation, “My life will be better if I never drink again”.  This mindset shift refocused her belief and energy because she had always valued health, fitness and happiness but had pursued these goals in the wrong areas such as social drinking.

Reflection

Going Under is a courageous memoir recording a history of childhood trauma and the constant physical and mental battle to overcome alcohol addiction.  It makes you realise what is happening “on the inside” when someone is struggling with such addiction. Seana approaches her story with incredible insight and resilience.  Her humour adds character to her insightful tale.

As I read her book, I found that some parts triggered the memory of my father who was an aggressive alcoholic, physically abusing my mother and creating fear for myself and my siblings.  Seana’s book helped me to appreciate his internal struggle and the inability of my mother to cope with his alcoholism, sometimes aggravating the situation by berating him when he was drunk.  Seana recounts how her own mother learnt a little too late how to relate to an alcoholic partner.

There are multiple social support groups such as The Sober Club  developed by Janey Lee Grace which Seana refers to.  I have found that the Creative Meetup group hosted by the Health Story Collaborative is a strong support for me while I experience chronic illness and deal with my adverse early childhood experiences as a result of my alcoholic father.

Following one such Creative Meetup on Zoom, I reflected on my father’s war experience and resultant PTSD.  It helped me to better understand what he was going through and his daily challenge of just coping with life and family.  I wrote a blog post and a reflective poem titled, Paternal Forgiveness, to express my thoughts and feelings at the time.

I found that meditation and prayer helped me immensely to deal with my adverse childhood experiences and gave me the strength to overcome the tendency to addiction.  As we grow in mindfulness, we can unearth our negative self-stories, express gratitude for the positive aspects of our life and progressively build courage and resilience.

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Image by Alicia from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Coping with Grief During the Pandemic

Jenée Johnson, mindfulness trainer and visionary leader in the public health space, gave an enlivening and inspiring presentation during the current Healing Healthcare: A Global Mindfulness Summit.  In her talk, Honoring Grief with Your Whole Heart, she highlighted the collective grief resulting from the pandemic and offered processes and tools to cope with grief, whether pandemic-driven or the result of life’s normal circumstances.  She mentioned that she had been well equipped for the pandemic – having the solidity of a house, finances, nutrition, supportive partner, work and a relevant skillset – but she too found the pandemic “unmooring”. 

Jenée experienced the added personal grief of the death of her brother – an experience I can relate to with the recent death of my brother Pat.  However, her brother died not only from the isolation associated with the pandemic but also from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) resulting from 9/11.  Jenée spoke of grief, whether personal or collective grief, as depleting and “an energy expenditure”.  She maintained that the pandemic created a “tsunami of emotions” which Dr. Lise Van Susteren describes as “emotional inflammation”.  

Ways to cope with grief

While Jenée acknowledged that the pandemic and associated events impacted individuals differentially, grief was a common outcome – a sense of loss of people, a way of life and/or positive memories.   She contended, however, that there are ways to replenish ourselves, rebuild our energy and achieve emotional regulation.  Some of the ways to cope with grief that Jenée suggested are:

  • Firstly, acknowledge that the reactions of fear, anger and grief are natural human responses.  The challenge is how we manage or regulate these difficult emotions in a time that is constantly unmooring us from our established way of doing things and our regular supports.  The pandemic and personal grief impact our whole human system – our minds, hearts, body and emotions. 
  • Cultivate awareness of everything that has happened to you over the period of the pandemic and subsequently.  Jenée suggested that we need to attend to, rather than hide from, our emotional state.  There is a tendency to shut down and block out painful feelings and recollections but unless we face them, they can overwhelm us when we least expect.  She mentioned that there were times when she cried and wailed after her brother’s death, releasing pent-up emotions.
  • Central to Jenée’s approach is heart-focused breathing.  She stated that when we breathe deeply and release our out-breath we can let go of what is constraining us.  The HeartMath Institute that has pioneered research on the intelligence of the heart has promoted heart-focused breathing and developed a suite of tools, programs and videos to promote health and wellbeing.  They contend that heart-focused breathing contributes to heart coherence which helps to balance mental and emotional energy and activate creativity.  Jenée argued that this form of breathing creates space for energy, enables the pain of grief to move through us and opens us up to flourish and experience joy and pleasure once again.
  • Change our expectations about our capacity to focus and achieve productivity.  Jenee suggested that is not reasonable to expect that we can be as productive during the pandemic as we were before and the same applies to personal grief.  The pandemic and personal grief contribute to a depletion of energy and reserves.  Rather than overload our system with unrealistic expectations, it is important to modify our expectations in the light of our reduced energy levels.  For example, I have to reduce my expects about how many posts I can write per week given my recent grief and the accumulated effects of the pandemic.  Some people have gone so far as to change their expectations about he nature of their work and sought more fulfilling and rewarding work that is less depleting in terms of time and energy.
  • Pamper ourselves with things that relax us – spending more time reading novels or the paper, sleeping in when appropriate, enjoying a massage, purchasing aromatherapy oils or indulging in treats (Jenée admitted that coffee and almond croissants are one of her treats – something else I have in common!).  One of the dangers is to resort to alcohol to dampen our pain (alcohol sales have exploded during the pandemic) and we need to be cognisant of the impact of increased alcohol consumption on our sobriety goals and this may entail a reassessment of the “reward value” of consuming more alcohol in times of grief. 
  • Rebuilding social connections through our recreation and work activities. Resuming social activities such as social tennis or dancing (where permitted) along with walking generates movement which in turn builds up dopamine which makes us feel good.  Sometimes grief brings extended family members together and creates the opportunity to develop new connections or re-establish old ones.  In the workplace, we could begin our meetings with a grounding exercise followed by an emotional “check-in” to see how everyone is coping – putting people ahead of task in these challenging times.
  • Practicing gratitude can generate appreciation and joy even amidst grief and pain. Jenée suggested buying a beautiful gratitude journal and an exquisite pen to cultivate the habit of journal writing and expressing gratitude.  She recommended Robert Emmons’ book, Gratitude Works, for its insights on the benefits of gratitude and its tips on ways to foster gratitude. 

Reflection

Jenée quoted Jon Kabat-Zin when he said that “the challenge of mindfulness is to be present for your experience as it is”, not as you wish it to be or try to make it different by denying the reality of the experience and your related thoughts and emotions.  Mindfulness can build resilience in challenging times as has been proven by extensive research.   As we grow in mindfulness and enhance our self-awareness, we are better able to gain insights into the way forward, develop the courage to face our fears and increase our window of tolerance.  We can experience gratitude, joy, renewed energy, and heightened creativity.

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Image by SEBASTIEN MARTY from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Overcoming Conditioning: The Road to Sobriety

Veronica Valli and Chip Somers, psychotherapists and sobriety coaches, provide a video podcast which focuses on, “How to stop drinking without feeling like you are missing out”.   Both have recovered from extended substance abuse and share their knowledge, skills and life stories to help others experience recovery.  Throughout the video they explore the false beliefs that lead us to maintain our level of alcohol drinking and that serve to entrench our habituated behaviour.  They explore the outside influences that reinforce our false beliefs and unhelpful/unhealthy habits.  Veronica and Chip offer a way forward for anyone who wants to overcome their conditioning and achieve sobriety – a road to recovery that they have used to help many hundreds of people recover and achieve a truly successful life.  They also offer a Soberful podcast with more than 150 episodes incorporating success stories to help people sustain their efforts to achieve sobriety. 

The power of false beliefs

Chip and Veronica point out that underpinning our habituated drinking behaviour is a set of false beliefs that influence our thoughts and emotions on a daily (even hourly) basis.  These false beliefs relate to the nature of the rewards offered by alcohol drinking and the fear of exclusion through living a boring life if not drinking.  The fundamental false belief is that alcohol is the passport to a promised land – the land of fun, excitement, relaxation, a sense of connection and belonging, sex and romance.  The power of this belief is fuelled by our conviction that this is the desired land – the place we want to be.  Associated with that is the fear that if we stop, or even reduce, our alcohol drinking we will be seen as boring and be excluded from the desired land of personal fulfillment.

External influences reinforcing false beliefs

Television advertising with its ability to create colourful and exciting scenarios portray a culture where drinking is the road to inclusion and fun.  The images portrayed in advertisements entice us to sit back and relax with a drink or to party on with others who are having a good time.  Some ads even focus on the pain of exclusion for those who are not part of the drinking set.  Wine and beer advertising through social media, text messages and email is continuous and unrelenting, promising the ”good life” if you participate and partake.  Newspapers offer special advertisements that encourage you to sign up for weekly/monthly shipments of alcohol at special discounted prices. If you happen to join a wine club, they are very ready to make you “one-off offers” that are “specially designed for you” – and they can make this very targeted by tracking your frequent purchases.  A culture of drinking permeates our society and it is very difficult to break the hold of this cultural entanglement.

The road to sobriety

Both Veronica and Chip stress that the road to sobriety can be a long journey where the early stages can be quite difficult as we try to break the hold of our false beliefs and the influence of family, friends and peer group that can hold us back – sometimes with the disarming comment, “Oh come on, don’t be a bore!”   

One of the primary ways that Chip highlights to begin the road to recovery is a “reality check” or what is often called “a cost/benefit analysis”.  Chip insists that we face the reality of the costs of drinking alcohol for us personally and don’t downplay or overlook the negative impact on family, friends, work output, social relationships, health and wellbeing and overall productivity.  Facing the reality of our lack of sobriety can be painful and entails a thorough reassessment of the reward value that we consciously or unconsciously ascribe to drinking alcohol.   

Veronica focused on the need for social support to reinforce our efforts to achieve recovery.  She maintains that social support is necessary to reduce the likelihood of falling back into old habits or the stop/start pattern that can develop when we go it alone.  To this end, Veronica offers a Soberful Facebook group and a paid online Soberful Life Program with monthly workshops, support meetings, training videos, and podcast discussions – all facilitated by professional experts and established authors in the field of sobriety.   

In her latest book, Soberful: Uncover a Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol,Veronica offers other ways to begin the journey to recovery and sustain a life of sobriety.  She highlights the emotional skills needed to sustain our recovery efforts and identifies effective strategies to manage the difficult emotions that we often try to avoid or numb through alcohol.  She discusses in detail what she describes as the Five Pillars of Sustainable Sobriety which she identifies as movement, connection balance, process and growth (this is also offered as a free Masterclass). 

Reflection

The road to sobriety is very much an individual journey and both Chip and Veronica have travelled this road over many years in their earlier lives.  They have experienced the challenges, the setbacks, pressures and the big and small victories.  Veronica found that journalling and meditation (undertaken over more than 20 years) have helped her to sustain her sobriety and Chip highlighted the positive influence of “expressing gratitude for what he has” as a sustaining force.

One of the ways to recovery involves a process of reflection on what “messaging” we give ourselves on a particular occasion when we chose to drink alcohol.   We can review, for example, whether our behaviour was motivated by a reward mindset – just one or two drinks to reward ourselves for overcoming a difficult situation, achieving a successful outcome, celebrating an anniversary or birthday.  Bringing awareness to our personal messaging helps us to identify the specific motivators that underlie our habituated behaviours. 

As we grow in mindfulness through reflection, listening to podcasts, participating in workshops/programs or meditating, we can grow in self-awareness and identify the drivers behind our habits, including the habit of drinking alcohol, and develop the necessary emotional regulation to enable us to achieve a desired state of sobriety.

I have personal experience of the damaging effects of alcohol through my experience of an alcoholic father who lacked any support mechanism for his post-traumatic stress syndrome resulting from three and a half years as a prisoner-of-war in Changi.  After a marriage breakup and a successful remarriage, he became a model of sobriety, giving up drinking alcohol completely, and keeping fit by walking for an hour every day.

This family history has motivated me to avoid alcoholism.  However, I still feel the pressures, internal and external, to have a regular glass of wine (a variable regularity governed, to some degree, by my life circumstances at the time – such as the recent death of my brother Pat Passfield).  My strategy to move towards my desired level of sobriety is to reflect on what motivates my behaviour in particular circumstances and to do a reality check covering the real cost of the occasional drink (e.g. on health and relationships). 

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Image by pen_ash from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.