About a year ago, my Internet friend, Ross, told me about an app that some friends of his developed. It’s called Exist.io, and it aggregates all the fitness and diet and exercise and mood trackers we have in our lives, so we can get a clear overview of how our choices affect our existence.
I was primarily interested in discovering how certain habits and inconveniences affected my daily life, and Exist will let me see correlations that I wasn’t necessarily making on my own. For example, I figured that sitting in traffic (that most Los Angeles of pass times) would have a uniformly negative impact on how I felt at the end of the day. I mean, I fucking hate traffic, so I presumed more traffic would equal more bad days. But after a year, I observed that it has no measurable impact, at all.
What I did learn, though, was surprising to me. The single most consistent factor in how I feel about myself and my day, on the 5-point scale, is how productive I am. If I fuck off for a whole day, I feel shitty about myself. If I’m not being creative, or doing something that makes me feel useful, I feel shitty about myself. When I do things that are productive, like writing, or getting a lot of adulting done around the house, I feel better about myself. So my newest challenge is to figure out a way to feel worthy and good about myself, even on the days when I can’t or just choose not to be productive.
You may notice that I didn’t post here once in June. Part of that is feeling like I didn’t really have anything important to say, but a really, really big part of it is feeling like I’ve lived my life in public since 2000, and I kind of need my own personal space. It’s scary to feel that way, because I’m struggling with this sense that my acting career is over, and though I’ve written two manuscripts in the last year, neither one will be released for quite some time, so I feel like my writing career is moving much more slowly than I want. I’m afraid that, if I pull myself out of the public too much, I will immediately fade out of whatever relevance I have, my entire professional career will die, and I’ll be forgotten before the end of the year. Being middle-aged and recovering from childhood trauma is THE BEST THING AND DOESN’T SUCK AT ALL!
Krusty the Clown groan
Anyway.
Because I’ve been feeling unproductive and moderately to completely worthless, I haven’t been posting anything here (there is a LOUD and INCESSANT voice in my head that keeps telling me nobody cares about me, and nobody misses me when I don’t write here, and that voice sounds an awful lot like my dad). But I’ve been writing a little bit on my Facebook, and I answer asks almost daily on my Tumblr. A few things have come up that I feel good about, and at least one of those things feels worth sharing today.
So here’s something from Tumblr that I hope some of you find useful:
Ask: Hi! I just went 48 hours without a drink and I’m really proud of myself and wanted to tell someone. Thanks for being so open about your sobriety, it’s a big inspiration for me and I’m sure for many others.
Answer: Hey way to go! Do you plan to stay sober? If no, accept my admiration and go on with your life!
If yes, may I offer some thoughts based on my experience? A couple of big things I lived through that would have been nice to know about in advance?
The first few days weren’t the hardest for me, probably because my body was detoxing lingering alcohol-related stuff. But right around the seventh day, I started to get cravings, and it was tough for a few days there. I was on the phone with Hardwick (who was like a sponsor to me, though I didn’t to a program) almost every day, asking lots of questions, like “is this normal?” and “will this end?” The answer was yes, and sure enough about ten or so days after I had my last drink, I went for weeks without any serious craving.
Then.
Oh shit.
Then, around the fourth week, I had this day where all I wanted to do all day long was drink all the beers in the world, and I couldn’t figure out why. On that day, “one day at a time” became “one hour at a time”. I got through it with the support of Chris and Anne, but it was really challenging.
Around that time, I became aware of all these feelings and emotions and painful memories that I had been numbing with alcohol. They were like FINALLY YOU CAN DEAL WITH US! And that was a whole thing. I went to the therapist a lot around that time, and I read a lot of books that helped me understand and begin to heal the trauma I had been self medicating away.
So the two things I guess I hope you’ll take away from this are:
- It’s totally normal to have INTENSE cravings, and they will pass. I used a LOT of seltzer water, LaCroix, and the occasional caffeine-free soda to satisfy the habit I had of having a drink every night. Having those cravings doesn’t mean you’re weak or anything like that. It’s just habit and biology. After about 45 days, the cravings (which were rare and usually mild) stopped. That was, like 1200 days ago, so I am proof that the intense cravings can and will stop. Oh, but when Anne’s having a great IPA and I’m like, “Man, I wish I could have that,” I remind myself that the reason I stopped drinking was my inability to have one and stop. I’m not going back there, so I make a choice not to drink every day.
- It’s totally normal for some profound emotional things to surface, and you should expect it. You’re going to have this overwhelming clarity and perspective on your life that you didn’t have when you were drinking. If this happens to you, you may want to be prepared with a therapist appointment.
- Oh, and one last thing that I just remembered is that I kept (and keep) a private diary/journal about my experiences, where I am relentlessly honest with myself. That made a HUGE difference for me, and most of my sober friends tell me that they wish they’d done. It’s profoundly helpful to read back and see my progress, while I contextualize things that I didn’t realize were super correlated.
It’s been almost 3.5 years since I took my last drink, and I don’t regret it at all. Maybe that’s your path, or maybe it isn’t. Whatever path you choose to walk, know that these last 48 hours are a real and good and fantastic thing. I’m super happy for you and I hope that you are living your best life!
I occasionally miss having a beer, or a cocktail in a swanky speakeasy, but I do not regret, for a single second, stopping drinking. Before I quit, I was drinking two or three drinks a day, and waking up with some degree of a headache almost daily. I was getting bloated, and the self-medicating wasn’t helping me deal with the childhood trauma I was successfully avoiding. The best part of getting sober, for me, was finding the clarity and perspective that I needed to get out of some toxic relationships that were being maintained out of guilt and inertia, and to start reclaiming my sense of self, so I can find out what my dream is for myself, after spending my entire life doing what other people wanted and expected from me.
I’m in a nonzero amount of existential and emotional pain as I work through this stuff. I’m uncovering things daily that make me feel sad, or angry, or frustrated, or some combination of all three. I cry a lot for the child I was, and the childhood I missed. I spend a lot of time forgiving the teenager and twentysomething I was, knowing now that he was doing the best he could do, without the unconditional love and support a teenager needs to navigate through their world. Some days, I score 5 (great) in Exist. Other days, I hurt a lot and I score 2 or 3 (bad to okay). But I score every day, honestly, and I’ve been able to use that data to help myself heal and move toward living my best life.
I just looked at Exist, and I see that, in the last 90 days, I scored 48% of them as 5, 40% as 4, and 10% as 3. That’s really, really great to know, and though it shouldn’t be, it’s surprising. Since Friday, for some reason, I’ve been wearing the heavy lead apron of Depression and feeling like I’m drowning. It really does feel like it’s been forever, and it’s so healthy and helpful to realize that I’ve been feeling between bad and okay for only a couple of days. It’s a reminder that Depression lies, and the bad days are not forever.
If it matters, you can consider this an unpaid endorsement of Exist.io. It’s made it possible for me to use science and real, measurable data to understand myself, and it’s been a significant part of my self care routine. If your brain has anything in common with my brain (and I’m so sorry if it does), maybe it’ll be helpful for you, as well.
Happy July, everyone.
