The Power of Choice
The undervalued and overlooked necessity of challenging yourself in recovery.
After almost seven years in recovery and nearly six working in middle of a treatment center, I can say one thing with absolute certainty: Those who succeed in recovery, simply challenge themselves more than those who do not. It seems to me; while our personal stories, heartache, and shame is important, we tend to get caught up in the emotions of the past “planning” our next move, how to best make amends, where we might work, live, how to handle this court case, what we are going to say and so on..
All of it’s important, I get it. We need to process this stuff. I’ve talked to so many suffering addicts with these exact problems and I was happy to. I was one of these addicts. At the end, however, the fact remains:If you succeed it’s because your next move will be solved by doing the next right thing. Your amends will be successful because you lived it. You’ll get the job that’s available. You’ll handle the court case by going to court, paying your fines, and staying in contact with them. You’ll get better at knowing what to say as you improve who you are.
I don’t want to say anything to take away from the importance of talking about these issues. But damn, at what point is all the talking just perpetuating the thinking that’s keeping us from acting? We think in a way that’s challenging enough. This leads us to escaping for distraction. I swear there was a direct correlation between repeat clients and how much free time they spent in t.v. room.
I’d talk with client’s over and over about the same issues. I loved being a listening ear. Both me and my co-worker Dean created an amazing space for clients to vent. The problem was we kept talking about the same shit over and over again. The same girl, the same problems, the same court cases, living arrangements, and all the other bullshit that comes with fucking your life up and starting over. Treatment kind of fosters this.
It dawned on me once with a particular client, and maybe it was just true with him. I doubt it though. He had been to treatment a couple times. I got to know him, and got along with him well. It came to a point where I had heard every problem he had twenty times. Not to trivialize his problems, but 95% of problems with addicts and alcoholics are the same:
Housing
Employment
Court cases
If you have any relationships, they are fraught with manipulation and deceit.
Obviously, that fourth one is loaded. But the problem really is just deciding whether you are going to work on that relationship or not.
I interrupted him after he was discussing his wife and their relationship again.
“Dude, all of your problems come down to your inability to make a good decision in a moment. You know this right? We can talk about this and that your wife and if she’s loyal or how your gonna make up for being a shitty husband, but no matter the plan we come up with you won’t follow it. Even if we make the plan up right now and you love it, you won’t follow it next week.”
His face kinda looked down. He knew it was true. Ten minutes earlier he was excited coming up with his new relapse prevention plan. The problem was, I remembered the last three times he was there, he was just as excited to follow his plan then too.
“What do we do?” he said.
“The plan is fine man. Everyone’s plan is fine when they leave here. You’ve done this before. I don’t know exactly the solution.”
We sat there quiet for a few minutes. Not really talking or looking at each other, just thinking.
“What are you willing to do?” I said.
“Anything.” he answered.
I knew this guy. He was willing and he trusted me. We had developed a relationship and I wanted to be real with him.
“Alright man, let’s just focus on preparing you to make the right decisions in a moment, I don’t know how exactly but we’ve done all this curriculum, all the therapy, all the sober living. Let’s just focus on you, and your ability to choose.”
If you’re willing to do anything you’re going to start challenging yourself. Force yourself to do what is hard and uncomfortable. Period. There is not enough of this in treatment centers. There seems to be a balance that’s missing. Fortunately, with the disease model we’ve successfully removed a lot of stigma surrounding addiction leading to increased funding in many areas. Unfortunately, the disease discussion is always argument is always opposite the choice, as if they are mutually exclusive. This makes it very difficult to discuss choice and discipline in treatment centers. In any event, when we end up achieving sobriety, no matter how we did it, we exercised choice to some degree. Some may attribute this to the divine, a sponsor, some or some program. But the fact remains: after a year of sobriety we are better at exercising choice.
Here’s the truth: You’re really good at doing what you want. You are probably terrible at doing things you don’t want. Addicts and alcoholics have an insane focus on what whey don’t want. It’s like looking at the bad things in your life instead of the good. It perpetuates the cycle of changing the way we feel. Unfortunately, exercising choice isn’t a direct solution to our problems but more of a practice. Therefore, very few people follow through with the practice as the benefits aren’t always clear and are often delayed. On top of that, we also have old behavior that promotes “good feelings” that are more instantaneous.
Check out this video from Andrew Kirby. For me, this video graph really highlighted why I ended up in such a miserable spot in life.
In this video, Andrew is discussing this graph and how it can affect any person.I like to think instead of “good life vs. bad life” it’s better framed as “good feelings vs. bad feelings”. If you skipped it than imagine this:
Every day we wake up and we pursue good feelings. The average person snoozes the alarm for the instant gratification of extra sleep - forgetting they were going to wake up and exercise. While they did get a little extra sleep(+1 good feeling in the moment) there are consequences to pursuing the comfortable route. By choosing to snooze the alarm they are effectively choosing to be less disciplined and less healthy the next day, and foreseeable future(-2 good feelings in the future). Now this graph nearly applies to everything. The point is this: act according to what you know you should do, and the consequences of this will pay off overtime. Continue to act as if you need to feel okay, and you will perpetuate the cycle you’re striving to leave behind.
For alcoholics and addicts, we live the above graph on steroids. Think about it, the first step to feeling okay is like three weeks of feeling like shit. In order to feel okay again, and not continue our destruction, we must delay gratification and feel like shit for a few weeks. This is an investment in yourself, and your future. It comes down to more than just using though, clearly our behavior is fucked up too.
In an argument with our spouse we get good feelings winning an argument so we resort to anger in order to be understood(+1 good feeling in the moment). Anger has consequences as well. We say things in a moment we don’t really mean and our spouse remembers it. This changes the way they act towards us. They may fear us, and operate outside of reality to keep us from being upset. This may feel good sometimes, but it’s a recipe for a terrible relationship(-2 good feelings in the future).
Often we are incredibly lethargic and or just simply bored early in recovery. While we are clean and it’s something we are proud of, we must be careful not to seek comfort and distraction. Every time we don’t feel great or we are bored we will watch T.V. or browse social media endlessly seeking distraction. (+1 good feeling in the moment). The problem occurs when this becomes a pattern and we are distracting ourselves constantly in order to not feel the way we feel. We are losing opportunities to read, exercise, write, and pursue goals, all of which will lead to a better life. (+2 good feelings in the future)
Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be, be one.
Marcus Aurelius
In every moment, we know what a good man would do. Success in recovery comes down to having the focus to ensure you can make the decision of a good man. Unfortunately, many of us don’t believe these tactics will work because they actually take time before you see benefits from them. And remember, we are coming from a life where if we didn’t get the “benefit” from our “investment” on time, we were threatening people., literally. We are contending with our own patterns of acting. This becomes very difficult for the newly recovered because good decisions not only delay gratification but they don’t feel good either. Meditation can be tiring and uncomfortable early on, reading is difficult and early paragraphs and whole pages need to be re-read, and exercise just makes me sweat and breathe a lot. Not only do we have to refrain from doing what destroyed our life, we have to build with very little good feelings for a decent period of time. That’s why great thinkers such as Nietzsche said:
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
The tribe, in this example, is the average person we continue to put ourselves around.
I always used to suggest cold showers. Rarely did my clients understand it. Even if I gave them the research on the benefits of cold therapy for depression and overall health, very few would follow through. First of all, it sucks. I mean who wants to be shivering and uncomfortable during the moments we are normally seeking comfort in a warm shower? I get it. But I didn’t suggest a cold shower simply for the proven benefits. I wanted my clients to practice turning that knob to freezing cold even though it was the last thing they wanted to do. You ever hear that quote about integrity and doing the right thing when no one’s looking? What a better time than in the shower? I wasn’t forcing them to. It’s not like it was an assignment. My theory was that if in a difficult moment you exercise choice, when no one is looking, when what you really want is comfort, you will be better prepared for the inevitable moment you want to drink or get high when no one is looking and all you want is comfort.
Reading is something I suggest constantly. The importance of expanding your mind cannot be overlooked. Opening up to other ideas and ways of thinking increases the probability that you will have other ideas and think differently. This takes time, as we read rarely do we get a benefit immediately. Normally, the benefit comes after we read a book, live some, and organize what we read in the book to our own life, adjusting accordingly.
The power of making a choice, in a moment, needs to be where our focus is. Often, we just simply want to rearrange our life into what we think we want it to be. The problem is, what we want is often wrong and sets us up for expectation. In order to live “one day at a time” we need to practice one day at a time. What are you practicing? Or are you waiting?
“You are not your body and hair-style, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.
Epictetus
Enhancing your ability to make better choices by systematically practicing choice. That is what I’m talking about here.
Doesn’t our military do this to a degree with boot camps? Its not as voluntarily and therefore I don’t think it has as good as an effect, but to say it has no effect is ignorant. I’ve seen my own friends undisciplined and unmotivated completely change after four years in the military.
I’m not suggesting that you should rely on choice alone. What I am suggesting is that choice alone may be the thing that saves you one day.
Do you want to start exercising choice?
Not everyone wants to fully change everything in one day. I’m not even sure that is possible. However, if you want to start getting better at practicing choice vs. comfort then do the following: earn your comfort.
At the beginning of your day make sure you do some of the following before you binge the next season of _______.
Exercise/Stretch
Clean
Read
Write/Journal
Take care of errands
Do something that will make you proud of you.
Even if you must just choose one, choose one. Start today. Your life could depend on your ability to choose. If you hadn’t guessed it already, the client I was working with? The one who began practicing choice? Still sober today. He followed an old stoic lesson I used to teach to all my clients: act according to who you want to be.
As addicts, we normally act according to our feelings. It looks kind of like this:
FEELING—> ACTION—> IDENTITY
Lonely —> Drink —> Drunk
Withdrawal —> Get high —> Junkie
Anger —> Drink, get high, whatever comes with that —> Inmate#284148
Who do you want to be? You remember the old WWJD wrist brands? They were meant to increase your focus so that in a moment you could ask yourself, “what would jesus do?” then act accordingly. What I’m getting at is what would you do if you were the best you could be?
It would look something like this:
IDENTITY—> ACTION —>FEELING
Healthy —> Workout —> Feel accomplished
Smart—> Read —> Knowing more
Kind —> Exercise kindness even when angry —> No more regret over acting angry
The point is that if you keep living like you used to, other people get to decide your identity. Once you start acting according to who you want to be, then no one can decide who you are but you.
