E116: Replacing One Addiction With Another

sort of five bucks a month, huh? Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, I can imagine. So that's my new addiction outside of alcohol. And that's our topic today is addictions other than alcohol. When you find recovery and boy or boy do I find ways to replace alcohol with other things. Yeah. I mean, you need to replace it with other things, right? We talk about that when you get sober. Like you need to replace that addiction with

something else. If you're in a 12 step program like a that the you know, the work is to replace that with some type of spirituality and and try to fill that. those of us who have, you know, addictive personalities, I certainly fall in that category. it's easy to move from one to another. Right. You hear a lot about this. I know some guys who, when they got into recovery, they were gamblers, and all of a sudden they got into some

trouble gambling, you know? And it wasn't always trouble, but they got to a place where they could see that it was heading that way, you know? A good friend of mine, I was on retreat with last year and we talked about that and he was like, yeah, I can't I can't go to the casino anymore, you know, I can't do that. So it's it's it's not unusual for some of us, not all of us, but for some of us just to move that addiction to something else and to focus on

that. Other things, it certainly happens to me mean I've talked about it before, right? And when we had somebody reach out about sugar addiction and food addiction, all those things are real. And certainly I can move from one to another to and it could be it could be a variety of things. Right. And just like everything, it's a mental obsession is what it is, right? It's not a physical obsession. It's a mental obsession. Is this always bad to move from one addiction to the other?

I used to think when I first came into recovery that it's bad that if I'm fixated on something else, that it's that it's always bad. I think it's worth thinking through. When is it bad? When is it good? What do you think in terms of an addiction other than alcohol? What makes something else be bad? Well, it's bad if it starts impacting other areas of your life, right? I mean, just put alcohol there. So if, for instance, you know, I we talked about it on there, John and I

like to hike. Right. listen, I can get into hiking that I'm never around my family. I'm never home. I'm hiking a mile, you know, And I don't care about the impact it has on my family life if I chose to do that. So I have to be careful with that. And there's certain things I need to do if we're going to hike in. Late last year, we hiked some big hikes and I have to prepare for that and I have to get in shape for that and I have to train for that. And all of those things impact other

things around me. So for me, I have to think about how's it impacting other areas of my life, if you know, and certainly when you get things like gambling, you know, it's it's easy. It's easy to look at something like that. Are you gambling more money than you could afford to gamble? Like? Those are some simple things, but it's just not, you know, it's just not that. It's it's exercise. It's, you know, people get into it. All of a sudden, they become competitive bike racers or

something like that. And, you know, and it's no different. Like they just get so solely focused that they have to do it. for me, I have to sort of, is there a balance in my life? What's it taking away from? And if I could do some balance where it's healthy, I feel like I did that with my hiking last year. then I think it's okay. I think that's the key. Is is it something that is damaging to other people? Does it take you away? Does it cost you money?

I can see that. My 14 year old son is addicted to weight lifting.

maybe there's a quit. The last time we went, we went to do chest exercises and he couldn't immediately get to all the equipment that he wanted to get to because the place we go is pretty busy and he's just like pacing and waving his arms and stop. He's like, Well, we're not going to get the workout in that I want to get in. We're here

guys. More than a couple, but couple come to mind quickly who are big exercise, the big gym rats. And. And they'll talk about how, they'll they'll go to the gym and they'll know that it may be cutting into their, you know, a meeting time and and they know that's not good right. And they'll even say, well, you know, I'll just stay here. And as they will say, lean into this next set. Right. Like stay here

longer. And like I said, get that good workout and listen for for the physical exercise stuff. There's there's real reward to it, right? There's endorphins. I There's Oh all yeah, there's all that stress release. You know, when I was younger and this is it even up to a few years ago, like I always considered myself a runner. And when I would really, really get into runner, it actually became

an addiction for me. Like, I can remember one time I had some chest chest pains going on and I went to a you know, I went to a cardiac specialist cardiologist, and she did all the tests on me, right, echocardiogram, all this kind of stuff. And and I couldn't she said, you know, running all right, no running. But, you know, so I get all these tests done and I'm not hearing anything back from her. I finally called up her office and said.

really no reason for me. I'm not a competitive runner. I'm just a exercise fun runner. but I would get down on myself. I'd get pissed off at myself. That's not healthy. What do you think that's about? Because I deal with that too. What do you think the root causes? I don't know. Part of it for me is I'm not sure what the route called, But I'll tell you, one of the things that I'm always afraid of with that is that I know that everything we talk again is developing good habits.

And I'm afraid if I miss some time, I'll fall out of that habit. Which is That's true. It happens to me. Right? that's exactly my issue. and and next thing you know, I don't. I go from being obsessed about running every day to not running at all. Right? I mean, and that's a true thing that

happens to me. I think that's the pressure is I know that's back there and that again, that comes back to a like a you know, I hate to the don't I hate to use the word over and over again but balance trying to trying to find that healthy balance which I have trouble finding in a lot of aspects of my life that healthy balance of, of stuff. So, you know, it's a it's a work in

progress. I work on it. you know, like, I said, I've talked about, you know, all the, all the struggles I've had with sugar and food and stuff like that too, I did okay for a while. I think I belong. And I just don't Oh, me too. I think I just don't have the room for that in my brain, not my real life. Right. And I mean this honestly, I just don't have the room in my brain right now to take another 12 step program,

so I'll deal with it. but yeah, I think it's just, you know, part of me just knows that I have this person already that can get stuck on things and I can get stuck on good things and I can get stuck on bad things. Perfect example. I picked up a used playscape, right? Just made out of wood that I want to set up for the grandkids when they come over and everybody's coming over for for Easter holiday weekend. So I want to get this thing up. So I have it down in

my basement all apart. And I'm sanding and I'm cleaning and I'm adding some some wood preservative on there and that's it. My head, like I always want to be down there working on it, right? Always want to be down there working on it. Even today, I'm like, I'm sitting there waiting. Come on. It's just, you know, we're recording this on a Sunday morning this week, and it's like, do I have enough time to get down there and do some work before I get on the podcast?

You know, it's like that type of thought process for me is always there, you know? I always got to fight that. And I did. And I this was sided. I was, you know, sitting there having some coffee. We, we just took in a cat and trying to get this cat sort of used to the house and likes to come up and sit with me in the chair. doesn't always like me to touch it, but likes to sit there. So I sat there with it for a while and tried to get use a dog

to dog. We have a dog. Two dogs was in the room trying to get them comfortable with each other. I'm sure the dog love that. Yeah, Giving she. the cat attention. She's fine. She's fine. She gets a little nervous about it once in a while, But I just decided you not something. I'm going to sit there and I'm going to play with my phone a little bit and have my coffee and do the podcast and I'll head down to the basement after this and do

some work on it, you know? But it's always a struggle for me, always a struggle trying to trying to keep some balance and trying to figure out like, what do I need? What really needs to be done now, I struggle with that. I think that's really workaholism.

I could sit down. I found that if I sat down at 830 to do I'll sit down to do some emails, I'll do some of this next thing I

used to. My focus is getting that thing up in the yard, that's what the pressure I put this pressure down on me to do that. Now we've had some crappy weather and this nice thing, we've had crappy weather recently, so it's easy for me to look outside,

One of the things I want to touch on is Friday night at the men's meeting I went to, we were talking about the question was, what's next? What's next in my program? and one of the guys talked about it. Listen, if you're early in this program, for instance, this guy was talking about he's about seven years sober and he felt like it was time for him to quit smoking. And he said, Now I want to tell you that if your earlier your sobriety and you're a smoker, I want you to smoke all the

cigarettes you want, right? I mean, we don't mess it up. and that was it was some of the talk was around. That kind of stuff is like when do you start addressing some of these other issues. Right. Which is a little bit of what we're talking about today. It's like when do you start addressing some of these issues and that's the other focus. Like I have to always pay attention to my alcohol addiction because that's the one that's the most damaging to my life, right. And to my

relationships. So that has to be the most important thing I pay attention to. If I find that anything else is starting to mess around with that, any of my other interests, any of my other addictions, anything that's going to start pulling me away from that program, I really have to rethink that because that's a dangerous place for me to be That's very easy to happen to me because there's other things that I. Well, I can just do this for now right?

and put a on the back burner because I already know it's there.

could find. And I'm listening to Recovered as I'm mowing the lawn, I'm listening to recovered going to meetings, I'm going to meetings, I'm calling people. It was such a focus on my life. Definitely addiction at the time, but I think that was a good addiction at the time because it was something healthy. I wasn't drinking. yeah. Not only weren't you drinking, you were. You were figuring out why you were

drinking. You were you were getting some information to help you with with what caused you to drink and what was the problematic part of that? You know, it's a it's a good point that you could bring up, because we read about it. Right. It's in our books in the in the family afterwards in that chapter and even in two wives where they talk about all might seem like it might seem like dad is you know, father is has this new found addiction. They don't use that word in there. But that's

what they're talking about. All of a sudden, the only thing he can talk about is AA. So that is something that is real and it

probably should be. I just talked to a new guy this just Friday night, a guy who's really new said, you know, and I've talked to him before and he said, Yeah, you know, I need some help and talked to him afterwards and said, hey, listen, plenty, plenty of guys here who can help you, you know, plenty of guys here can help you, but you have to be willing to put in the work, one of the things my wife gets worried about is that I'm going to get caught up in all this stuff. You know, I talk about it.

I just became a GSA, which is a general service representative for the area that we are in. And it's just basically it requires me to go to a meeting a month. But if I want to get on a committee in that group and get on a committee, which then cause me a list to go to the minimum of two meetings a month. And that's always been a problem. You know, I've been a control freak. I'm still a control freak in my life, and I still like to be in charge of stuff. And I like to lead stuff. It's just my

personality. So I have to be careful with that because next thing you know, I could be going out to four or five meetings a month on top of my regular recovery. Meetings of service were, again, a bad thing. Not really, but I have to I have to weigh it to where it falls into my life. You The service work is where I learned to work on some of these other addictions.

service for AA? If you think it through and not climbing a corporate ladder, I'm not going to get a pay increase. I'm doing this to help other people. So in that aspect, I've learned to go in and have the opposite view of just being a servant and catching myself. You know what? I'm just not going to raise my hand this time because there's no point. That's okay. I'm just going to get this and I'm just going to do what's expected of me, which is more than what most people do, and that is help me.

I have a whole different view of service of not necessarily that I'm slacking because it's not I want to do it well, but I don't have to do it perfectly. I just have to do it well enough to get the job done. That's my way of handling that addiction. Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah. And the reason why we do service, like you said, is to give back something that was given to us freely, Right. To make sure that all the stuff that we do is available to other people. that's important to me. It's

important. It's. It's important to some of us. It's not important to all of us, as we know of anybody who goes to these meetings, realize it's lots of lots of help. And it's always that's always the thing, right? 80% of the work is done by 20% of people, right? Yep. The whole thing. Yeah. It's It's the same people absolutely jostling for this position

or that. Everybody just rotates, it's it's and there's a nice new but it's the same thing I can go there and again I'm a little older so I can look at this and I went there and I, I felt compelled to do this because I've been around for a while and I and I know and I remember I watched people like you come in and do service and I'm like, I, I should do more service. I did a lot of service on the group level, just never above it. And this was my first foray into

doing something above that. But I could go there today and be very content with just doing my part of it without raising my hand and saying, Oh, I'll do this. I used to be always that person, I'll do this, I'll do that. And and trying to get more and more into it. So today I can go there. I could do my part. if I had a different life, I'd probably do more. I really would, right? I mean, I would if I was a single guy and I didn't, you know, if that was and I had more time, I would absolutely

probably do more of that. But I'm not. And so there's other things I need to do. So I don't want to overcommit myself. In the past, I would always overcommit myself and then I pay for it. Mentally, I pay for it. I'd struggle with that and it was just never good. It was just never good. So I've learned along the way to sort of back

off on that a little bit. And like you said, there's no there's nothing more that I need to do to go there, do a good job for my group, and then be happy with that I go there just for one of the things that I liked about that Service level is I would see people I don't see normally that was kind of the pay off. I see these people that I'm friendly with who I don't normally see, but those are the people who I'm mostly friendly with are the people who are

mostly involved anyways. So if I walk into a district service meeting, I'm going to know those people and I may not have seen them in a while. That's the payoff for me. I will tell you where I've gotten better at work. We have another leader who is on leave, so we had to break up their team and I got four additional people brought to me.

Two of them are in an outlier category, which means there's more work I have to do, and it was necessary for me to put in hours after that was about to have a conversation with my boss to say, this is a lot. Before I could do that, he came in and said, We're going to break them up even further. We're taking a couple people away. Now I'm in a more manageable level and I felt really good about that, he said,

Okay, I work on Saturdays. So he said, Why don't you do whatever you have to do, get the get the important stuff done, then take off. I immediately went and even though there was work I had to get done, I'm like, You know what? I'm just going to reschedule it later. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the face. I'm going to

will. And sometimes you need that push, sometimes you need your supervisor, your boss or whatever to tell you, Hey, take this day. I was the same way, you know, like sometimes I wouldn't do it. Sometimes I'll get my work done sometime, you know, I'd be like, Oh, no, you know, No, it's okay. I'll just keep doing it right. And again, many times, not all the time. So many times those things came back to haunt me. And and again, it was just me overextending myself. And then I'd be angry.

Or maybe something was expected at home that didn't get done. And it would just cause me trouble and trouble. Today, I'm more apt to just sit down and take a nap. I was never a big napper, but today, a lot of times I'll sit down the afternoon, I'll start reading a book, a close at the book. And again, you know, I'll just sit there in the chair. I'm not a I'm not a go to bed napper, but I'm like, sit in the chair. Next thing I know, I'm sleeping for 15, 20 minutes, which is just

what I do. And that's that's great. I never could do that before. And today I'm like, That's a good thing. You know, I used to think, Oh, I wasted time there. I didn't get something done right. I could have gone for a run. I could have gone to the gym, I got a gym in my basement. I could be in my

basement working out. I could be working on the constant, constant, you know, recording in my head that I'm just not doing enough when really maybe the problem is I'm doing too much and I need to I need to cut back, you know, and that's again, that's, you know, it all starts in my brain. I'll start in my head about finding a comfort level that I'm able to live with. And today, that's a lot easier

than it used to be. And some of that's just age and where I am in my life, you know, I'm no longer chasing the no longer chasing success in a job where I have to you know, I felt like I had probably, you know, had two kids in college. All those things that you're going through now, Right? right. I went through those things. You know, you get kids, you get young kids, you get kids. You're starting to think about college, right? Your sons are old 14, 14.

So you got to start thinking about, okay, college is coming up. How's that look? How do we do that? You know, how how am I going to make that work? All those type of things I have come no up, idea. right? I'm terrified Yeah, None of us did. you do figure it out, right? You do figure it out. No. I had two kids in college. They're three years apart. So there was a year that I had two of them in college at the same time. Not fun. Not fun. but you know something? And it just worked

out that way for me. Matt Those were the years that I probably made the most money at my job, I spent all that money. I spent a lot of that money putting them through college. But you want to know something? It's interesting that that money became available at that time to me, too. right? you know, it's just it's just the way it worked out. It worked out for them. They had to do their part. They had to take out loans. You know, they had a they had to work, you know, they had

to do all that kind of stuff. So, you know, it'll we'll figure out there's lots of opportunities out there to go to school can do it cheaper. You know, I try to convince my dad. I try to convince my daughter, matter of fact, to go to a to be a commuter for the first couple of years. I'm like, hey, you can get out of college with no debt. If you just be a commuter, and go to school for a couple of years and save that kind of money. So. you'll work it out. We always do. We'll figure it

out. You get your kids off, figure out you got good kids. I'm very lucky. With my 14 year old. He's in honors classes. He I think his lowest grade is a B-plus. He is. He's already played two sports. He's trying out for a third. So he has the perfect college resume a freshman year.

thing. You know, it's a hard thing for some people to to do that. Like we always think we need to be doing more and more and more. And I think we can always do more. You know, just one thing before we go. I just I just want to touch bases. Like yesterday, we had a memorial service for one of the guys long term, a guy 30, 33 or 34 years. Dick guess spaghetti dick, the guy I got to know. It was one of these things that I won't get into the story, but I raised my hand. Dick That dick wasn't

driving. He wasn't well enough to drive at the time. And I did one of these things where I raised my hand and said, Hey, if you ever need a ride, I'll help you out. and then I got to the point where I was the only person willing to help him out and do the whole story behind that of resentment and stuff. But it settled into a really nice friendship between Dick and I. And we had a memorial forum yesterday. I just can tell you something that, time I spent with this guy, which was a lot,

right? Like he was living 30 minutes away from me in the wrong direction of a meeting, you know, and and I would leave my house at 6:00 and I wouldn't

service work. That was something I did at times. I felt like I was doing too much. I wish other people were doing it, but the truth is, in the end of it, in the end, you know, it was just such a blessing for me to be able to do that. So I just sort of wanted to give a shout out to Dick and people like him who give us an opportunity to do some service work and and have a relationship like that.

him. And I said to him, It's easy for someone like me to come into a person's life. I had a complicated relationship with my father, right? So it's easy for me to come into Dick's life without any baggage, right? I had no baggage of who he might have been, you know, what kind of father he might have been or anything like that. He was just a guy I picked up and I was able to build this friendship with him. And it was nice to be able

to do that. And I. I realized that as it was going on that, listen, I don't need to have anything, anything but, love with this guy. And that's what I did. We just had this great friendship. We spent a lot of time together. And it was a wonderful thing. I didn't want to go off topic, but I wanted to mention Dick in this thing in this podcast, because yesterday was a nice day. It was. It's always a tough day, but it was a nice day to see such support and love for someone like him.

And I think it's important to talk about because it reinforces that the people, however, your recovery journey is the people that you meet when you need to get sober, who help you get sober are probably going to be the strongest connections you'll ever make, even if they're people you don't see very often. I can think of people I don't see very often. I don't feel like I know them very well. But there's always something with those people that they've said, something that

touches you. And because they're somebody else who's affected by alcohol use disorder, there is a stronger connection than there would be to the general population. I don't think there's any question about it. Again, in the big book, they talk about the Titanic, you know, being on a cruise liner. They don't say the Titanic, but that's going down. How? And we all become one person or become one group of people, one community. I've never been in the service. I've

never been to war. So I don't ever want to think that I understand how it is. But, you know, I'm a big you know, I'm reading a current book right now in Vietnam. I read I read a lot about different stuff like that. I've read World War two books, all that kind of stuff. And there's that connection that you hear about with guys go to war together, right? They have to depend on each other because their lives are at stake. The truth is, it's a little bit like that in AA, right? People die

all the time. All right. I mean, we you know, my wife Oh yeah, will my wife religiously reads the obits and every time she sees someone is like, oh, this guy was you know, this guy was an alcoholic, it's in there, friend of AA and AA, whatever the problem is, you know, it's like people die all the time from this disease. like I said, I, you know, yeah, I meet new people. I offer my help to them. I'm going to tell you most of the time these people to not accept help, right.

Right? It's just they just don't. hey, call me whenever you want to go to the meeting. I'll, you know, I'll tell them all the time. I'll pick you up. I'll take you to any meeting that I go to. I'll find the time to go to meetings when I can't. So it's a life or death, situation for many of us. And that's why we're there. That's why we have this bond. I feel the exact same way. There are people you mentioned going to a district meeting, right? I go to the

district meeting now. There's a lot of people that I know from the rooms, but I don't get to see because I don't go to meetings that they go to anymore. And I love seeing them, my love seeing them. And I love there's a connection there. And for most of those people, here's what I know. Most of those people, if I need help and I have their phone number and I called them, they're going to help me. They're going Yeah, to help me. And that's the

beauty of this program. That's why there is that connection. And I know that. And they know that for me, too, that they call me. They need help. I'm going to be willing to help them. Well, help us. I'd love for you to go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Leave a review on there. So if somebody brand new is scrolling through that, you can tell them what you love about this podcast. I read every single review. Go to Spotify and give us a five

star rating. If you feel we deserve that, check out our web site, Sober Friends Pod dot com where you have contact information for us and also links to all our social media. I'm most active on Instagram at Sober Friends Pod. Steve, thanks for another great podcast. Matt, thanks for having me on. And yeah, have a nice rest of your weekend. You got it. And we'll see you next week by everybody.