Today I am going to help you get sober. This is for real – and your life depends on it so watch the complete video/read the full article and take notes because I am going to cover the five most powerful sobriety tips to quit alcohol today.
Number One – Cut Ties
So number one, now I have experience with this because I have relapsed hundreds of times and I finally got sober 13 years ago. It is very important that you listen, and we are going to do this together.
If you have any trouble, you can leave a comment. We can start a dialogue, but listen to these tips before you comment because I am going to cover everything you need to know.
The first thing you have to do is cut all ties with people that drink – if it is your spouse, I am sorry you have to leave.
If it’s your boyfriend or girlfriend that’s drinking with you, you have to cut them off.
Now what you can say to them is: “I have to be alone and figure this out. I have to not drink. I gotta figure this out. Please have enough patience for me to work on these issues. Okay, I have to just stop. I’m not drinking tonight. Okay, I have to go.”
Because it is life or death. So the first thing you have to realize is that your life depends on your decision today. If you drink one more day, it could be death, it could be prison. It could be jail time, it could be the insane asylum. It could be something very bad.
Every single day is life or death right now, and you have to get out of your situation. The first thing that addicts and alcoholics do when they go into 12 steps for instance, is that they cut out all people, places and things that remind them of alcohol and drinking.
So when I got sober, I did walk away from a girlfriend. It was a very abusive relationship, very codependent. She was an enabler. You know, she would bring home beer for me, and I don’t blame her. I would have found alcohol without her.
But it was a very bad situation, and I was dying. It got to the point where I knew I was dying, and I had had enough, but you have to hit rock bottom. There really can’t be any reservation, you have to really take it all the way this time in sobriety.
I knew in my gut, I didn’t even have to go back to AA or anything. I knew deep down I was done, and it wasn’t because of my heart attack, it wasn’t because of tons of jobs, lost girlfriends or, hurting my parents or car wrecks or jail time it wasn’t any of that.
I felt enough shame that someone caused me – and it’s crazy because rock bottom looks different for each person, your rock bottom might be completely different from mine, but you have to look around and finally realize that it’s enough.
It really is enough. No more lies, no more “I’ll get sober tomorrow.” No more romanticizing people who drink. If you’re watching movies that romanticize drinking or if you’re reading novels, where there’s a drinker, you have to change all of that.
Today’s it, you have to wipe the slate clean. You have to start over. You have to start from day one, you’re a brand new baby right now. If you haven’t taken a drink today congratulate yourself, because sometimes 10 minutes at a time of sobriety is all that we need to celebrate. It’s one minute at a time.
So just take a deep breath. Okay, so you have to cut all ties. I walked away from that girlfriend and I went back home- and I didn’t talk to anyone else. If they wanted to come over, I just said, I’m busy. I can’t hang out right now. We’ll talk later.
If it’s really bad, you’re gonna have to get out of town. You might have to stay with a sober friend, a sober relative, or you might have to stay alone somewhere, you might have to move completely, stay in a hotel.
If it’s crazy and you have the money, go stay in a hotel or rent an Airbnb, you can rent a whole house for a month just to get your head back together.
But you have to get away from the people that drink. You have to get away from the bars that remind you of drinking – all the places where you drank, you have to get rid of. You might even have to sell your car and get a new one – if your car reminds you of drinking.
You have to get rid of all the bottles that are in your house. Throw them, burn them in. Don’t just throw them away, you have to really get rid of them. So that’s number one. You have to get rid of all people, places and things that remind you of drinking, drinking buddies, anything.
So I went home and I hid out because I knew it was life or death. I didn’t care about my old drinking friends. They only cared about me because I drank with them. They’re not your true friends anyways, so it was easy for me to get rid of two people.
I only had two people left that I drank with, one said I was gonna die within a year, and the other one was a homeless guy with long greasy hair who literally. That was the only person I like drinking with at the end of my drinking. So I just ignored them. I didn’t answer their calls. I just stayed home and repaired myself slowly.
Step Two – Get Sober Support
So, step number two. If you want, you can go to AA, and I strongly recommend that you do go to AA. It’s not cheesy. The people care, and they’re sober, that’s all that matters.
It doesn’t matter if their personality is different than yours. All that matters is they have sobriety and you don’t.
So you need to be quiet and listen to a meeting. You have to listen to a meeting and you have to open your ears and close your mouth. That’s all you have to do. It’s really that simple.
You have to keep it simple. You can’t say what if you can’t be like well I don’t really like that person, or they drink too much coffee, or they smoke too many cigarettes, That doesn’t matter. They don’t drink alcohol. Okay. That’s the only thing you need from them is to learn how to not drink.
Now, if you don’t want to go to a meeting, you can do online therapy. Now I’ll leave a link under this video for online therapy, and what you’re going to do is you’re going to look for a therapist who is going to tackle your most traumatic issue.
It’s not the alcohol, that’s just a bandaid, you have to dig deeper than that. Look back and ask why did you start drinking? Was it an abusive dad? Was it an abusive sibling, was an abusive lover, something happened to you, that made you start drinking.
Maybe you hurt your back and you got on pain pills and then you just started drinking; Maybe you lost your job and you started drinking; Maybe you lost the love of your life and you start drinking. That’s heartbreak. Okay. You have a lot of anxiety, maybe there’s some underlying issue that made you start drinking, I had very low self esteem.
So you’re gonna look for a therapist that deals with the underlying issue. There’s therapists that can work with low self esteem, PTSD, OCD, anxiety, depression, you name it, it’s all in this link, you can do online therapy and they’re right there for you, you can start talking to someone who cares and knows what you’re going through, within a half an hour. After you fill out a questionnaire.
Step Three – The 1st Step
If you choose to go to AA or even if you don’t choose to go to AA, the most important step of your life is called the first step in 12 Step programs. And that is, I am going to read it exactly off to you.
“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol. That our lives had become unmanageable.”
That’s it. There’s no bells or whistles, there’s no fancy jargon, it’s straight up. You have to admit you’re powerless over alcohol, that your life has become unmanageable.
So you really have to be honest with yourself right here. You really have to look around and look at what has happened, and you can’t blame anyone. You have to take total accountability with the stuff.
And I know people may have hurt you, people may have ripped you off. But the bottom line is you created your reality. And it might sound harsh, but it’s true.
I had created my reality. I created that girlfriend. I created that house, I created my job, I created my car, I created my health, and I created my thoughts – and that led me to nearly destroying myself with alcohol. I didn’t know how to scare my life anymore. So you really have to take accountability.
Number Four – Change Diet
Number four, you have to change your diet. No more fast food, no more junk. If you’re drinking a pot of coffee a day, you have to slow down or switch to something else, like Yerba Mate.
You have to change your diet, because if you’re just eating sugar, you’re spiking your blood sugar, and you’re spiking your thoughts, and then you’re going to crash and the scariest thing that you can do as an alcoholic, is feel angry, sad, or hungry. Okay.
So you have to really stabilize your body, and once you stabilize your body with nutrition and complete proteins and carbs, then you can start thinking clearly.
You can even start taking vitamin B. Start getting supplements, look into some really good nutritional shakes, something that’s easy on your stomach, because when I got sober, I couldn’t even hold down yogurt. It was really bad. So you might want to look into soups, but definitely do organic as nutritious as possible.
Step Five – Get Busy with Your Life!
Fifth step. The last step is to get busy. You can start journaling, you’re going to have emotions that are going to be crazy, you’re going to have ups and downs, you’re going to be crying uncontrollably. You won’t know what’s going on but your emotions are coming back because you are not covering them up with alcohol.
So it’s really good to start journaling and start looking into things that used to make you happy before you drank. What were your hobbies, you might want to revisit those.
Now I know this is day one of sobriety, you might be very weak, but you can do something that you used to do. Okay, it could be writing, it could be drawing. It could be going for a walk.
You could reconnect with an old friend who doesn’t drink that you used to walk together with, go to the lake, go look at the water and cry it out, it’s okay, or laugh it out, whatever, you’re gonna have lots of emotions.
And that’s part of recovery, it’s okay. I have to sit with your emotions and feel them, and they will re-integrate back into your mind and your body, and you’ll get more comfortable with those emotions, and they will settle down.
But in the beginning it’s going to be a roller coaster. So I really suggest you get some online therapy, or go to AA, you’re gonna have to swallow your pride on this one.
You’re gonna have to just let go and let God and walk into that room, you can sit in the back, you don’t have to speak. Grab yourself a tea or a coffee and sit in the back, and just listen.
Don’t make any excuses – no one cares. They are really thinking about themselves, but they do care that you’re there, that you’re sober.
I love you guys, you can do this. It’s very important that you follow these steps. Now if you’re curious about the 12 steps you can look into them. There’s 12 of them obviously. And but the first one you really need to digest is just step number one, that your life has become unmanageable.
So you really have to be honest with yourself and take accountability. You can take a list, you can write down a list of things that have become unmanageable in your life.
How is your job? How are your relationships? How is your family, are they affected, are they crying because of what you’re doing to yourself. Surely if you’ve been drinking heavy for any length of time your life is a mess. And you have to realize that it’s okay.
It’s okay. There’s geniuses and professors and professors and professionals that got destroyed by alcohol and their life is horrible. It happens to the best of us, whether you’re a nurse, a doctor, or you’re homeless, it doesn’t matter.
We all are affected by alcohol, and it can destroy us. Just realize that one more drink could be your death. And if you have children, do you really want to leave them right now. Do you want to die ? I don’t think so. And someone out there cares about you. I care about you. I want you to do this. And today is the day. It’s gonna be hard.
Even if you relapse, it’s okay to get back on the wagon. Don’t let guilt and shame make you go back out and stay out because you might not come back. I relapsed once actually twice when I got sober and I was like, two years into sobriety.
I impulsively took a drink. But it was so nasty. I didn’t even want to revisit it. I was done. And I didn’t let guilt and shame make me drink again because most of the time when I relapsed previously, I had so much guilt and shame, I was like well I might as well go back out and drink because I just ruined all my sobriety.
You don’t want to do that. So just think about today, don’t think about the past. Don’t think about the future, think about right now. Every 10 minutes every half hour that you are not taking a drink, you should celebrate that, say yes I did it. I didn’t take that drink and drank some tea. Drink some soup, have a protein shake.
Get some help, but cut ties with everyone. Move out of that town, as soon as possible. If you live in a small town and they all know you drink, and you have hundreds of triggers all over the place just get out of that town, it’s not worth it, if your true friends and family will love you.
They might be upset that you’re not drinking, but if they’re true friends they’ll come back. All the drinking friends that I had, they left, they weren’t true friends. They don’t care if I’m sober. They’re just waiting on the sidelines waiting for me to drink again.
And finally they faded away, and it’s been 13 years. I have a sober fiancé. I have a great job, working from home, helping people like you, but it’s one day at a time. It really is. Sometimes it’s one hour at a time.
So I hope these tips help you leave a comment if you are struggling, or if you just want to say hi and hit that subscribe button, and we will talk to you soon.
