Rigor Boredis:
Staying Sober When You Are At Home Alone With “NOTHING” to Do
7-22-2020 by Chris Cobb
Let’s start this off with some excuses I, and probably you have used in the past to say “Fuck This” and drink again. “I’m lonely.”, “Everyone hates me. What’s the point?”, “I’m pissed, might as well get drunk.”., or “I’m BORED” … As alcoholics, we use any excuse we can find if we don’t truly want recovery. Sober and miserable much? I’ve been there too. I had nearly two years of sobriety back in 2016, but I still hated my life. I had a job, a car, my license back for the umpteenth time, but I didn’t have what it took to fill that God-sized hole in my chest, the inevitable void we all fall into when our pink cloud runs out of fluff. I’ve always been told if I want to ride on a pink cloud I better bring a pink parachute so I don’t shatter when I hit rock bottom again. Even this time around, I have over 2 years of sobriety, and yes, have still hit highs and lows, an emotional roller-coaster of wants, needs, disappointments, wins, failures, dreams and hopelessness. I have managed thus far, however, to keep my head on straight when I hit my lows, knowing that the only way things can get better is if I make them better. So here are a couple of those methods to my madness, or should I say solutions?
1 – Remember where you came from.
Beginning at childhood and ending at “suck it up, buttercup”. Poverty, abuse, guns, drugs, homelessness, you name it. I grew up around it, I grew into it. I once thought I was destined to be an outlaw. But I’m no badass by any means except for my smarts on computers. So past environment vs. character attributes, this is where we have to make a solid decision. Sick of the shit you grew up and into, well stop it. You’re the only one that can. I could go on and on about the bed I had to sleep in at 12 years old that was meant for a toddler, my legs dangling off the end, as I’m eating the two meatballs on a bun left in the fridge for the next couple days, which I’d eventually have to poop out with no luxury of toilet paper, but that was 22 years ago. How on Earth could I allow something like that to affect my work ethic, my physical and mental well-being today? Well believe it or not, things like that ruled my adult life, because I allowed them to. Until I learned to walk it off and get what I want by working hard for it, I was moving nowhere but down. Now that I’ve broken through the surface and leveled up in my life, I still need to remember these things, but without resentment and anger. I need to include the things I PUT MYSELF THROUGH as a result, and remember what I was putting in my body (booze, drugs) when I was destroying myself in the past. I need to keep a history of these things so that history doesn’t repeat itself. You look at the good, the bad, and the ugly, and remember where you came from, where you’ve gone, and never go back to the bad. Pretty simple, yet so difficult just to WANT to do what it takes at first, right? Well suck it up. Get up, dust off, and RUN for your goals. No one will do it for you. Besides, there is always SOMETHING to do…
2 – No one is going to save you but you.
As mentioned above, no one is going to do things for you, you have to do the footwork in order to give yourself a snowball’s chance in Hell at a better life. You, like me, have likely lied around, felt sorry for yourself, and wished everything would get better, but refused to get up and take action immediately. Instead, we have procrastinated, put things off, told ourselves we’d “do it later”. Fuck that, it’ll never get done. Get up NOW, live in the NOW, and FOCUS on what you need, what you want, and the difference in priority between the two. Accept what you can’t change and move onto the things you CAN change, for the better. Two sayings to keep in mind:
1” “You can wish in one hand, shit in the other and see which one fills up faster.”, and
2: “When the going gets tough, the tough get kicking ass.”
I like ‘2’ much better.
3 – Drop the Ego.
Remember me mentioning that I was homeless at one point? Well who cares right? People everywhere have been in far worse situations than I have, so who am I to cry about it to anyone? I can’t sit in a meeting and try to tell everyone my story is far worse and more difficult to shake off then all of theirs. Ego will tell you that you are either better or worse, or better off, or worse off than others, that your pain is greater, you have a stronger headache than they, or even that you don’t need to work steps or go to meetings because you can stay sober with sheer willpower – whatever. Stop thinking you’re unique because if you don’t focus on what you need to do in order to make YOU better than the OLD you, then your “uniqueness” will become terminal. Take your own inventory, leave others to their own.
4 – Sink or Swim.
After all is said and done: where will you stand? At the bottom, at the top? It’s ALL up to YOU! Learn to swim. Dive into any and all positive opportunities that the Universe gifts you. Life is too short to stand in the swamp waiting for the beach to slide underneath your feet. You want the beach, get to the damn beach by moving around, through and over anything that attempts to stand in your way. Remember: Everything you want in life is on the other side of fear. Imagine all your fears as bricks to a wall, and on the other side of that wall are your dreams. Burn that wall down with the fire inside you. You want it, go get it.
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