Tag: Peace in Recovery

The Stages of Alcoholism: From 3rd Butt Cheek to Manicured Eyebrows

Alcoholism, Unashamed By Matt Salis 4 Comments
The Stages of Alcoholism: From 3rd Butt Cheek to Manicured Eyebrows
Windy Much?

Where did that come from? In my life that features so many memories lost to blackout drinking, that’s a pondering I’ll never forget. That question dominated my brain on several occasions in my late teenage years when I was experimenting with alcohol.

 

It happened once the morning after a huge drunken fight I had with my high school girlfriend at a party on full display in front of probably a hundred friends. It happened another time after I took a swing at my best friend after drinking together for many hours. Thankfully, I was drunk enough to miss, but I’ve never been in a fist-fight in my life, so it was beyond surprising when I was putting the pieces of the puzzle back together the next day.

 

In fact, had I woken up after either of those instances having grown a third butt cheek I would have been less surprised than I was to learn of my aggressive and abhorrent drunken behavior.

There’s Something Better than Being Unashamed

Alcoholism, Shame of Sobriety, Unashamed By Matt Salis No Comments

Better than Being Unashamed

I awoke slowly and tried to blink my eyes into focus. I stared at the ceiling and realized my memory of the previous night was incomplete. There were missing pieces – again I had gaps in my recollection I would have to piece together. It had been happening like this for decades now. Not every night, or even every week. But every month, certainly, I drank far too much and couldn’t remember the details.

 

I started looking around for clues. Were my clothes on or off? Did I brush my teeth? Was there a cup of water on the bedside table? Did I plug in my phone to charge? Did I put myself to bed, or did I simply fall down when I’d had too much?

 

I was terrified to wake my wife, so I laid silently still until my fear of the unknown surpassed my fear of her reaction. I didn’t roll into her and put my arm gently around her for fear of an elbow to my ribcage. I shook her shoulder gently, and braced for her reaction.

Live Every Week like Shark Week

Alcoholism, Recovery By Matt Salis No Comments

Live Every Week Like Shark Week

My wife and I were watching 30 Rock reruns on Saturday night. I’m not the least bit embarrassed about our lack of fancy plans because Tina Fey is the bomb, and I have a deep and abiding love for her sense of humor. I’m not even going to blame quarantine or make any other excuse. I was in bed with my wife and laughed until I cried – all of my favorite things.

 

Tracy Morgan’s character ended a ranting tirade by declaring his intention to, “Treat every week like shark week!” I laughed so long and hard that one of our kids came into our room to make sure everything was OK, which is dangerous, because we want to discourage our kids from busting into our bedroom at night uninvited, for their sakes even more than ours. My cousin has a very traumatic story about looking for a band-aid in his parents’ room in the middle of the night that I’d like my kids to not recreate. We keep the bandages prominently accessible in the hall closet for this very reason. But I digress.

Friendships Lost in Recovery

Alcoholism, Unashamed, Untoxicated Podcast By Matt Salis 4 Comments

Friendships Lost in Recovery

Sobriety is not as simple as making a decision to no longer drink beverages containing alcohol. For me, for most people who have drank hard enough, long enough, alcohol has twisted and tangled into every aspect of our lives from drunken antics, to our sober, warped brain dysfunction. Sobriety, therefore, is not a simple choice of beverage. Sobriety, if successfully accomplished, changes everything.

Sober People are Losers!

Alcoholism, Recovery, Shame of Sobriety By Matt Salis 12 Comments

Miller Lite's Vortex Bottles Give the Beer a Swirly

Sober people are losers! Look, I’d like to tell you that my opinion wasn’t this superficial, jaded, prejudiced, narrow, misinformed, misguided, misintellectualized, bigoted, arrogant, and just plain asinine, but it was. I thought people who didn’t drink alcohol, for any reason, were losers.

 

This included my own mother for quite a while. God, how shallow and despicable was I?

 

And I’d like to tell you that my opinion changed when I started exploring sobriety, or at least once I was sober myself. Nope! I continued to consider people who didn’t drink alcohol to be losers, I just tucked my tail between my legs and joined their pathetic ranks.

The Spectrum of Addiction: You can Ignore it, but it Won’t Go Away

Alcoholism, Recovery By Matt Salis 8 Comments

Spectrum of Addiction

I took a writing class with my favorite instructor over the weekend. She asked the writers to picture a particular irrelevant scene in the future, and imagine how that made us feel. The specific scene is irrelevant to what you are reading here, so I’ve spared you the details, but it wasn’t irrelevant to me. Not at all. In fact, quite to the contrary, it was very important, and the emotion that flooded my body upon considering the situation my writing coach suggested was complete and total relief.

 

I immediately recoiled and broke into a cold sweat. I’ve recently designated “relief” as a dirty word in my vernacular. Relief is what I chased with alcohol. I’ve used sex and food and work in search of that same soothing relief. Relief is the dangling carrot of addiction.

Sobriety is Easy: Just Add Anchors

Alcoholism, Recovery, Unashamed By Matt Salis 4 Comments

My Family Anchors My Sobriety

Feeling temptation to drink alcohol is very rare for me these days, now over three years into my permanent sobriety. I do occasionally, however, feel momentary pangs of desire for the elixir so woven into my life for all those many years of drinking. On a recent warm and sunny Saturday afternoon I felt such a craving as I turned onto my block heading home with all my goals accomplished for the day.

 

I was done. It was time for some well deserved relaxation. Reclining on my sun-drenched back porch with a golden-amber IPA in my hand sounded, for a moment, like a well-earned reward.

You Can’t Get There from Here

Alcoholism, Recovery By Matt Salis No Comments

Grand Lake to Estes Park - The Long Winter Slog

As we were wrapping up our first ever Sober and Unashamed Couples Retreat in Grand Lake, Colorado, on Sunday, one of the the attendees told me that he and his wife wanted to go to Estes Park before their flight home Sunday night. He showed me the route that Google suggested to him, and we discussed his options.

 

The summer drive from Grand Lake to Estes Park takes you right through Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Road, and is among the most beautiful 47 miles of scenic roadway in the world. You crest the majestic Rocky Mountains, are likely to see moose or elk, look across clear mountain lakes and experience views that are unmistakably Colorado. It is a winding road full of switchbacks and steep ascents that will take well over an hour to traverse, but the drive is the experience, and you won’t mind if it takes all day.

7 Benefits of Transformational Sobriety

Alcoholism, Recovery By Matt Salis 10 Comments

I Shower Most Days...

“This is the best I’ve ever felt in my life!” claims the caption on Instagram. “Tap the heart if you are waking up sober!” The rainbows and unicorns approach to addiction recovery so popular on social media actually makes sobriety harder for me. I want to drink to settle my nausea from the transparent grovelling for likes and cyber-appreciation. “Since I’ve given all my troubles to God, I don’t want to drink anymore and I feel so free!” Listen, I’m all about prayer and repentance, and I feel like God is firmly on my side. But the idea that we can hand over the steering wheel and take a nap, and our addiction will melt away, is too much for me to embrace.

 

I’m not trying to pick a fight, and I am happy for anyone who can recover based on inspirational slogans and dogma. That’s just not me. And I’ve heard from enough readers on the topic to know that’s not helpful to many of you, either.

 

The benefits of permanent sobriety are neither instantaneous nor simple. But once I put in the significant time, made the gruelling effort and opened my mind and heart to the changes in my life, the enlightenment has far exceeded my wildest expectations of recovery.

The Momentum of Sobriety, and the Sobriety of Momentum

Alcoholism By Matt Salis 17 Comments

"You're either growing or you're dying. There ain't no third direction."

My holiday season was great. At least, it was great on paper. I had lots of family time, lots of neighborhood parties and festive work events. I slept-in to the best of this early riser’s ability on many days. I didn’t write much, didn’t record any Untoxicated Podcast episodes, spent almost no time on social media, didn’t promote my SHOUT Sobriety program, had two weeks off from high school soccer coaching and hardly watched the news at all while listening to Christmas music and watching football bowl games. I took some downtime and relaxed. During the first 11 1/2 months of the year, I put in long hours like most Americans, and the rest was well deserved. Perfect, right?

 

Here’s the problem. All those things I didn’t do are the things that make me feel good. There’s a line from the movie, Tommy Boy, that often pops into my mind. Tommy’s father, and very successful business owner, Tom Sr., says, “You’re either growing or you’re dying. There ain’t no third direction.” I feel a lot of stress to keep going, and sleeping-in before watching college football doesn’t do anything to scratch that itch.