#1: Dangers of Focusing So Much On The Addiction Instead Of Recovery

Welcome to episode one of the Sober and Happy podcast. My name is Tim Phillips and I will be your host today. The goal of this podcast is to take you through my journey of getting sober, the difficult challenges that I have faced along the way, and how I have gone from a life of simply just being sober to a life where I am both sober and.

In this episode, I want to discuss the pitfalls of putting so much focus on the substances that we have battled in our addictions and why I think the recovery model of avoidance is actually setting us up for failure.

Throughout this podcast, I'll share a lot about my recovery journey, but for this episode, I want to jump ahead to a point just after I had five years of sobriety.  I followed a path in sobriety that so many people have in their recovery journey. First, I went to rehab, and then I immersed myself into Alcoholics Anonymous.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, I was told it would work if I worked it, so I worked the hell out of AA. I worked the steps several times. I met with my sponsor weekly and I sponsored several other men.  I was extremely active in my home group and held just about every service commitment you could have, both in the group level and the district levels.

I went to meetings anywhere from three to five times a week, and because of that, I did stay sober. However, I was miserable. No matter what I did. I found myself getting more and more depressed, and my anxiety was getting to be absolutely debilitating. I was even diagnosed as borderline agoraphobic, which in a nutshell is having the fear of going outside.

I tried everything, including medications, and nothing was helping. Eventually, I found myself back at the point of being hopeless. It was a similar spot that I'd found myself in during my final chapter of my drinking, but being hopeless sober is a much darker place than being hopeless drunk. I did not want to drink because I honestly knew that it wouldn't fix how I was feeling, but I didn't know how to fix it.

That is what brought me to a giant auditorium, listening to one of my favorite speakers, Tony Robbins. Somewhere in that week I heard him tell a story and I realized why I was struggling so much. Tony Robbins tells this story about two of the early whitewater rafting guides on the Colorado River. They were sitting and talking about this one specific spot on the river where they're having a lot of difficulty in the spot.

There was this giant obstacle, it was a giant stump that if they hit it, it would cause the raft to either get stuck or flip over. Or cause even more danger for the people in the raft. The spot they needed to get to was right to the left of that stump. There was two giant boulders and there's this path right between it.

So they'd always explained to the group that they were guiding about the danger of the stump and to the spot that they needed to go.  and the people in the boat would always, every time paddle like hell to try to get to that spot, but they keep hitting the stump every single time. And these guides were absolutely baffled.

Why? Despite all the effort of the people there, they kept hitting the stump. Finally, one of the guys tried, decided to try something different. He didn't even mention the stump to the people that he was guiding. Instead, he just focused on that spot between those two rocks that he needed the people to hit.

And miraculously he found after he did that every single time, they avoided the stump and they went right between the two rocks onto safety. Tony Robbins explained that where your focus goes, your energy flows, and despite everybody trying to avoid this stump and knowing where they needed to go, the subconsciously when they were paddling, the fact that they were focusing on the stump, guided them to that stump every single.

And when I look back on my early years of sobriety, I realize that all my focus was on alcohol. In rehab, the primary focus was on relapse prevention, which only focuses on alcohol and how to avoid alcohol. And then I go to aa. And although we had the same goal to stay sober, most are focused, was still on alcohol, I was told I was always gonna be an alcoholic.

I was powerless. It was going to be a daily battle to stay sober. Then we talked about all the reasons why we might end up relapsing. If you don't work the steps you're going to drink, if you stop going to meetings, you're going to drink. If you even let your guard down for even one moment, you're going to drink.

I remember the old timers and Alcoholics Anonymous used to always tell this story about how alcohol was outside doing pushups getting stronger, and that the second they let their guard down, it was gonna jump out of the bushes and get them. And then we also focus on all the things that it isn't safe to do.

Don't walk down the liquor aisle at the grocery store. Don't go to places with alcohol without having support. Foolproof plan to get out of there just in case you craved alcohol and the list goes on and on. I found with that mindset, I couldn't do so many of the things that I enjoyed doing because I was so focused on the danger of being around alcohol.

I couldn't go to a concert and enjoy it. I couldn't go to sporting events. I couldn't even go to my friend's wedding without worrying about drinking constantly. Being sober was supposed to open up all the possibilities and what I could do in life, but it always seemed that I needed to keep limiting myself just to stay sober.

No wonder so many people in recovery are battling so hard with anxiety and depression. Alcohol is everywhere and it cannot be avoided. So to focus your recovery on how to not drink and that the world is full of danger, really is setting us up not only for a constant battle against our addiction, but it is also putting us at a very fragile and debilitating state of mental health.

No wonder so many of us relapse. I don't think it's because we don't follow the rules. I think we are simply exhausted with the life of sobriety that has been presented to and taught to us. That is exactly where I was when I woke up the morning of my five year sober anniversary. It was a huge milestone for me, and I was hoping that life was going to change that morning.

I was going to finally be happy and fulfilled. I felt once I reached that point that so many others failed to do that something finally was going to click, but it didn't happen. I was filled with disappointment from the expectations of what that day was going to mean to me, and it spiraled me into an even deeper state of depression.

However, I found once I shifted my focus on the sober life I wanted to live and not focusing on simply how to navigate the world filled with dangers lurking around every corner that everything changed. I want to clarify that I'm not saying to not take precautions, especially in the early days, and I'm definitely not saying to deliberately put yourself in dangerous situations just to prove something, to build your strength or that you should test fate.

We should always use common sense when dealing with addiction. If you have a problem with crack, you probably shouldn't hang out in a crack house. The same thing could be applied to my situation. I personally don't go to bars just to go to a bar, but it isn't because I think I'll drink in a moment of weakness.

I personally just don't enjoy the atmosphere. However, when I'm out of town on business, I can go out with my coworkers after a long day of meetings. My point is that we still need to avoid the stump. However, if we're constantly focusing on the stump, no matter how hard we paddle to avoid it, we're actually increasing our chances of ending up in the spot we're so desperately trying to avoid.

I have found how to navigate between those two boulders to the calm water. Beyond that, it is a place where you don't have to paddle like hell just to avoid obstacles. It is a place where you could relax and enjoy the beautiful view that is just beyond that struggle. We'll discuss throughout this podcast many of the tools and tactics I picked up along the way that has helped me discover how to get where I am now and what I am doing now to continue to grow and live an amazing life.

But for now, I want you to reflect on what you're focusing on in this moment of your life in regards to your recovery. Remembering that where your focus goes, your energy flows. Are you focusing on all the things that you can't do in life since you quit drinking, or are you focusing on the life you want to?

Do you constantly think about the person you were in the past or are you giving yourself credit for how far you have come so far and are working towards the person you want to be? What are some of the limiting beliefs you tell yourself about your addictions? How much of your day is still controlled by alcohol?

Have you simply shifted from being obsessed with drinking to being obsessed about not drinking? What would your life look like if you shifted that focus towards building an amazing life that just happens to not involve alcohol? Most importantly, how are you identifying yourself? Me personally, I no longer identify as Tim the alcoholic.

I'm simply Tim, the guy that you could count on, the guy who chases his dreams, the person who faces his fears instead of running from them. The most amazing son, brother, uncle, coworker, or friend a person could ask for. And oh yeah. I also happen not to drink. One of my favorite quotes is recovery isn't about getting sober.

It is learning to love yourself so much that you no longer need to drink, and that is my life today. It was not an easy journey getting to this point, but the view beyond those boulders is so worth all the effort it took to get here. If you're not there yet, I want to help guide you to this magical. That is why I'm doing this podcast, and I hope you decide to come on this journey with me.

I will be posting new episodes every week, so please like and subscribe so that you don't miss an episode. And if you found this helpful, please share it with someone else that you think it might help. And I want to thank you so much for listening and keep living sober and happy.