Paul Garrigan's Blog, page 34

The Fear of Getting Sober

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I can see now, that one of the main reasons for why it took me so long to become sober was fear. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of what was going to happen to me – it was the fear of what I would be like as a sober person. My job as a habitual drunk gave me the perfect alibi for being a failure in life. I knew that if I became sober and continued to fail, there would be no excuse anymore – I’d be exposed, and that terrified me.

Addiction is a the Best Scapegoat Ever

During my years of being a drunk, I blamed all of my defects and failings in life on just one thing. I honestly believed that I would have been tremendously successful at anything I put my mind to if it wasn’t for my little problem with the drink. I imagined that there was this huge well of potential inside of me just waiting to be tapped – the only think preventing this happening was that I’d been cursed with a disease called alcoholism. It meant that I could sit in bars all day and try convince anyone who would listen that ‘I could have been a contender if it wasn’t for the booze holding me back’. It was sort of like enjoying some of the pleasure of being a winner without ever having to do anything.

For a long time, I honestly believed that somebody else was going to come along and spot my potential. These people would walk into a pub where I just happened to be drinking, and they would somehow notice that I had all this untapped talent that they could exploit. I would be headhunted to join an indie band that was going places or to write a bestselling book. It’s embarrassing now, but I really did used to think that way. If a stranger had walked up to me in a pub and said that she/he recognized me as a math genius or an enlightened being, I would have had no problem believing them. I’d no problem with estimating my talent inside of drunken fantasies; it was testing my potential in real life that scared the shit out of me.

Facing the Fear

I knew that if I gave up alcohol, I would no longer have that excuse for being a failure. There would be no more “if only”- I’d be taking full responsibility for my own situation and my own future. Instead of being able to fantasize about all my hidden potential, I would have to face challenges that would test me and this meant risking failure. To be honest, it didn’t sound like an appealing proposition to me – better to believe that you could have been a winner than to know that you are a loser.

I faced this fear, and the most wonderful things began to happen. I let go of the excuse of addiction, and I put my abilities to the test. I soon found out that there was no Stephen King or Kurt Cobain just waiting to be set free, but I found something far more precious than this – I had the potential to be the best me possible. Over time, I found out that it was okay to fail at things and that by admitting that I’d no talent for something, it did not mean that I was a failure or a bad person.

I no longer have to fantasize about my hidden potential. I’m happy as I am, and I no longer need any excuses for being a failure – because I’m not a failure. I’m not waiting for anyone to come along and fix me because there is nothing to be fixed. I’ve dug right down to discover my real potential, and it turns out that I’m just a normal guy – isn’t that wonderful?

Letting Go is the Key to Life

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In this podcast and video, I discuss the approach to life that has helped me the most. I’ve found that letting go is the key to success and inner peace. Press play to watch the video. The podcast of this episode is below.

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Talking to a Foreigner in Rayong about His Sex Life

I haven’t spent much time with other expats in Thailand since giving up alcohol seven years ago. It is not that I try to avoid these people – it is just that I have no interest in going to bars, and this is where expats like to socialize. I’ve also tended to live in areas where there are very few other foreigners – or at least I did up until now. Last month we moved to Rayong, and there is a substantial expat community in the local area. The other day I met one of my fellow expats, and it turned out to be an uncomfortable experience.

Flashbacks to Sitting on a Bar Stool

In an old post on here I discussed the dilemma of acknowledging other westerners in Thailand. I tend to smile at anyone who makes eye contact with me, but there are many expats who do not like this type of acknowledgement from other foreigners – it’s all a bit strange.

The other day I was on my walk when I happened to make eye contact with another foreigner – instinctively I offered him a smile. He was good enough not to return my acknowledgement with a blank stare, and we ended up having a conversation. We’d barely said hello, when he launched into this long story about his sex life. He filled me in about his exploits with prostitutes in Pattaya and about how he had moved to Rayong in search of a “good girl”. He was using words that I hadn’t heard in years – words like ‘short-time’ (going with a prostitute for a few hours) and ‘bar-fine’ (the money that punters pay to the owner of a bar to take away one of their bar girls).

I would have dismissed this guy as some kind of sex-nut, but I remembered having had thousands of similar conversations like this. During my drinking years, this would be the main topic of conversation among expats. I remember 12 years ago arriving at my first teaching gig in Bangkok, and the first words out of the mouth of the other foreign teacher was to invite me to go along with him to a brothel during our lunch break. I said ‘no, thank you’. I was far from a perfect teacher, but I knew that such school-break activities went well beyond unprofessional. The odd thing was though, that at the time his request didn’t seem that strange – I’d already become used to expats talking openly about their sexual exploits.

Maybe I’ve turned into a prude, but it just seems odd to me that other people would be so open about their sex life with complete strangers. My guess is that most of these guys would not behave the same way back in their home countries because there is a taboo about against paying for sex. I suppose the thing that bothered me most was the fact that this guy just assumed that I was the same as him – that I was another sex tourist. I found the conversation to be embarrassing, and I was just happy to get away from him in the end. I’ve no interest in being reminded of the type of conversation I had while sitting drunk on a bar stool.

Sexpats in Thailand

There are many people who come to Thailand for sex, but it would be wrong to suggest that this is the motivation for most expats. I’ve talked about this before in another blog post (People Move to Thailand to Escape Dissatisfaction and Not Just to Have Sex ), the sexpats tend to burn themselves within a couple of years, and they will then return home with their tail between their legs- that guy I met on the beach yesterday sounded like he was on his last legs in Thailand after just one year.

Update – I met one of my foreign neighbors yesterday evening, and he turned out to be quite a character. We had barely started chatting when he asked if I would give him the password to my WiFi – I said ‘no way’.

Letting Go of the Hole in My Soul

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I used to tell people that it felt as if I had a hole in my soul. Even as a young child, there was always this deep sense that things were not okay with me, that I was one of the walking wounded. I turned to alcohol because it seemed to offer a way to fill this hole, but ultimately it only made things much worse for me. I could have turned to more healthier pursuits for easing that sense of not-being-okay – like throwing myself into a career or finding religion – but I can see now that every path would have ended with suffering. My seeking to find wholeness was a fool’s journey because there was no hole to fill.

The Myth of the Hole in the Soul

When I talked about the hole in my soul, I was really saying that I did not believe that my reactions to life were normal. I didn’t like the ebb and flow of my emotions, and I didn’t like how I felt around other people. I developed the idea that there was a right way for me to be experiencing life, and the fact that this wasn’t happening meant that I was broken and that I needed something to fix me. Of course, the things that I was experiencing was called life, and the only thing that was abnormal was my ideas about how life should be. This basic misunderstanding sent me off on a painful quest to find a remedy for a disability that I never had.

Filling the Hole in My Soul

The key to filling the hole in my soul turned out to be surprisingly simple – I gave up on the idea that the hole existed. I stopped trying to fill this non-existing hole, and the sense of it existing completely disappeared. I no longer feel like the walking wounded, and there is this sense of complete wholeness where that hole used to be. I’ve stopped all the seeking because I know there is nothing out there that will make me feel whole – it is not possible for me to be anything less than whole.

Why is Relapse Even an Option?

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The reason I struggled for so many years with my alcohol problem was that I allowed relapse to be an option in my life. I took great comfort in the claim that relapse is a normal part of recovery, and I used this as my ‘get out of jail free’ card. During those times when I did manage to take a break from alcohol, I was never really free because the option to relapse was always there to tempt me back to the old way of doing business. It was only by removing this choice completely from the table that I could finally become free. Unfortunately, it took me a long time to understand that this option to eliminate relapse from my life even existed.

Entertaining Relapse

I know of many people who are still struggling to end their addiction – it is a desperately sad situation. The reason they are struggling is that they are still fighting. They don’t seem to understand that to quit means to give up – instead they are stuck in the situation of having to fight against the temptation to relapse. It would be so much easier if they would just surrender by removing the option of relapse completely from their life. That’s what I did and afterwards staying sober became incredibly easy. At that moment of surrender, my problem stopped being alcohol, and I was free to begin rebuilding my life. I no longer had to worry about relapse because that option was no longer available to me.

I empathize with people who are struggling to become sober because I dealt with the same shit in my life for almost two decades. I understand how hard all this can be and how overpowering it can all seem. When people say to me though, that they are worried that they might relapse I have to ask why they are even entertaining such thoughts. Let’s be clear, I’m not saying these individuals should feel any guilt for having such thoughts, but it does seem reckless to allow such thoughts to take up residence in our brain. This urge to relapse only ever has the power we give to it – and by being clear that it is not going to happen we take away this power.

This All Sounds Way Too Easy

I can understand how difficult it might be for people struggling with addiction to accept what I’m saying here. I would not have believed such claims myself a few years ago. I was packed full of ideas about how hard it was to recover from addiction and how relapse would always be there waiting to trip me up. The claim that I could just choose to eliminate the relapse option would have sounded sacrilegious to me – it was the complete opposite to the message that I was getting from the addiction experts. It did turn out to be this easy though, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Once I let go of the whole relapse nonsense, it all became incredibly easy for me.

I Do Not Deserve to be Happy

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In this video and podcast I discuss the idea that I deserve to be happy. I don’t believe that anyone deserves to be happy – it makes as much sense as saying that people deserve to have sunny days. The great thing about life is that we are served a banquet of emotions, and the key to inner contentment is to partake of the whole banquet.

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Judging Other People is a Waste of Time

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Judging other people is about as useful as using a net to catch waves in the sea. This need to pass judgement has to be the least appealing of all human traits, and as far as I can tell it is the cause of most conflict in the world. It is just too easy to look at other people and decide that they are somehow getting life wrong – the saps. This judgement can then be enough to put me up on my high horse from where I decide that it is my duty to save these lost souls. It’s all bullshit of course. The only way that I can judge the beliefs of other people is by comparing those beliefs to my own beliefs, and for this to work I have to assume that my beliefs are the best ones – something that is impossible to know.

One of the most dangerous aspects of judging other people is that it becomes a form of scapegoating – a way for me to weasel out of dealing with my own shit. It means that I can pretend to be one of the good guys and to give credit for all the problems in the world to whoever ends up on my naughty list. It is so much easier to blame the shittier aspects of life on religion, political beliefs, or cultural character traits. I can kid myself that by trying to fix the world I can fix myself – sort of like the guy who wants the world covered in leather, so that he does not need to buy any shoes. What a joke.

More about Bullshit Beliefs

I’ve written on here before about my uneasiness with all beliefs – at best I see them as a necessary evil. Of course, I’m only talking here about my own relationship with beliefs, and I’m not trying to tell other people what to believe or what not to believe. I’m just saying that I’ve found that the fewer beliefs I hold, the greater my peace of mind.

I’m convinced that at their very best a belief can only ever be a partial-truth, so I tend to view all beliefs as basically bullshit. From my perspective, this judgment business is all about one group of people pointing out the bullshit of other people from the comfort of their own bullshit. I’ve lost my appetite for this type of carry on. I now know that it is only my ability to spot my own bullshit that can be beneficial to me, and by focusing too much on other people’s bullshit it is just a way to not focus on my own bullshit.

The Sound of Egos Clashing

For the last few years, I’ve wasted a fair amount of time on web forums. I’ve always been interested in spiritual stuff, and I particularly enjoy the forums where the believers and skeptics clash. During my twenties, my loyalties were with the skeptics/atheists, but for the last few years my allegiance has changed to the believers. In recent months, it has become impossible for me to ignore that these debates are just a massive waste of my time. Both sides in these arguments can be described as believers, and they both believe in things that can never be proven true. It is just a clash of egos, and a type of entertainment. I also suspect that these forums are damaging because the act of defending beliefs can make us more entrenched in these beliefs – I don’t see this as a good thing.

I’ve completely lost interest in all online debate forums. I’ve no real beliefs to defend anymore, and this means that I’ve no real urge to change the beliefs of other people. I want to only focus on my own bullshit because that is the road that will take me where I want to go in life. Judging other people is easy, but it is not very productive.

Sometimes You Gotta Be Tough

Of course, there are times when judging other people may be more justified. Those people who hold beliefs that make them a nuisance to other people do need to be kept in check, but this is less about judging them and more about social order. I’ve no interest in judging other people because they believe in things that I might find strange – the only point at which I might become interested is when these beliefs are causing problems for the rest of us. So, if you tell me that that your best friend is a garden pixie, I’ll try my best not to judge you negatively, but if you tell me that this pixie is telling you to do nasty things I will probably become a bit more judgmental.

The Best Reason to Quit Addiction is the Reason You Fell Into Addiction

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Breaking away from addiction will be almost impossible unless you have a very good reason to do so. If this motive isn’t convincing enough, or if it is too vague, you can expect this new sober life to be as wobbly as jelly, and it will likely all end in a mess. This reason for quitting has to be so compelling that you will be willing to do whatever it takes to create a life free of mind numbing chemicals. I found that the only reason that held this much power for me was the reason for why I fell into addiction in the first place.

The Reason for Addiction is the Best Reason to Quit Addiction

There was nothing wrong with my motivation for turning to alcohol during my mid-teens. I felt unable to cope with the challenges that were coming my way – everything seemed so hard – but alcohol looked to be a way to breeze through life and avoid all the sharp edges. For the first few years, getting drunk every day did seem to be giving me a free pass through life. I particularly enjoyed been under the influence at work because it felt like I was getting away with something. It didn’t take long though, before my life became far more unmanageable than it ever was before. I sometimes crossed the line into madness because alcohol did such a poor job of helping me cope with things.

The Drunks Curse of Pain Healing All Wounds

At the end of my addiction, I would have been happy just for the pain to stop. I knew from previous experience that this motivation would not be enough to keep me sober long-term. The problem with using pain and suffering, as a reason to quit addiction, is that the pain and suffering soon goes away. They say that time heals all wounds, but this can be a curse when you are using these wounds as a reason to remain sober. Once the pain goes, the memory of the pain begins to fade, and soon there is no longer any reason to be on the wagon.

I realized that the best reason for me to give up alcohol was the same reason for why I began abusing it in the first place. I wanted to experienced mental peace, and I became willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve this. I already knew by the fact that I almost drank myself to death in search of this mental peace that this could work as a powerful motivator for me. I made this my reason for quitting, and as expected it provided me with the motivation I needed to break away from alcohol for good.

Why Do You Want to Quit Addiction

I would urge anyone who is trying to break away from alcohol or drugs to think long and hard about why they want to do this. If you can’t clearly and succinctly state this reason, you are going to find it a real struggle when things get tough. It is best to write this motive down on a piece of paper, or on the computer, and to look at it critically to decide if it is going to be powerful enough to launch you into sobriety. If this reason for quitting doesn’t seem convincing enough to you now, it is going to appear even less convincing later on when you really need it. By choosing the right reason to quit you can guarantee your success – in many cases, the best reason to choose will be the one that lead you into addiction in the first place.

Go It Alone in Addiction Recovery

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I’ve managed to build a good life away from addiction, and I’ve done this by going it alone. I don’t belong to any type of support group, and the only path that I follow is my own. I did stay in a Thai temple for the first 10 days of my recovery, and the monks there helped me detox and provided me with some tools for living, but I have not required any additional help in the 7 years (almost) since checking out of that program. I’m not suggesting that other people should go it alone in recovery, but I do want to point out that in some cases it may be a better option.

Forced to Go It Alone

In some respects I had no choice but to go it alone when I finally decided to give up alcohol for good. At that time I was living in rural Thailand, and the nearest 12 Step meeting was six hours away by motorbike. I desperately wanted to stop drinking, but I had no strong desire to attend one of these meetings. I felt guilty because of this lack of motivation. I’d managed to stay sober with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous for a two year period during my twenties, but I no longer felt much enthusiasm for the program. I could see how it worked for other people, but it just felt like the wrong path for me. I kept hearing that Alcoholics Anonymous was my only real chance for recovery, and I worried that this might be true.

I started checking out online AA meetings in the year before giving up alcohol for good, but I became fed up with members telling me that I needed to get to a live meeting every day. I’m sure these people meant well, but 12 hour trips (there and back) on my motorbike through the Thai countryside didn’t seem very reasonable to me at all, and I disliked the accusation that I was willfully choosing alcoholism by failing to do this. I also knew already that meetings could not guarantee my recovery – during my twenties I’d gone to a meeting every day for 2 years, and I still ended up back drinking.

In the weeks before my final split with alcohol, I reached new levels of desperation. I knew that if Alcoholics Anonymous was the only option for me I was screwed. I’d had seventeen years of bouncing in and out of AA, so surely that program would have already worked if it was going to work. I could see that the AA saying, ‘if you keep on doing the same things, you will keep on getting the same results’ equally applies to their program. I did briefly consider returning home to Ireland, so that I could check into rehab, but this solution just felt wrong.

Giving up Alcoholism

Getting help at a Thai temple was a desperate attempt to end my addiction, but it worked for me. I’d reached a point of complete defeat, so it may have been that my recovery was inevitable. Before arriving, I made up my mind to not only give up alcohol, but to also give up being an alcoholic. I removed alcohol completely as an option from my life, so this meant that the possibility of relapse was gone. It turned out that giving up alcohol was incredibly easy once I removed the whole alcoholism garbage from my life. Drinking alcohol just became something that I no longer did anymore.

My life improved when I stopped drinking but all the reasons for why I’d turned to alcohol in the first place were still there. I needed to find a new way to deal with the challenges of being a human. The universe became my teacher, and the fact that I was no longer chemically anesthetized by the booze meant that I could learn. In the beginning I did benefit from guidance from books, YouTube videos, and podcasts, but I didn’t limit myself to content only from people in recovery. I understood that most of my problems were things that every human has to deal with, and I’m not some type of special case.

The most important part of this journey alone has not been about taking on new beliefs but in eliminating bullshit. I keep chipping away at my worldview to simplify things, and to make my approach to life more consistent with reality. I now know that all beliefs act as filters, and that real inner contentment comes from having as few of these filters as possible. Most importantly, I’ve found that there is nothing wrong with feeling up or feeling down and there is never any need to try to escape what I’m feeling.

Go it Alone in Recovery

I think it is great that there are so many different recovery paths. We all have to find our own way, and in many instances this may require belonging to a recovery group. I would suggest though, that if people are struggling with the available recovery options they could try going it alone. At the end of the day, we are all ultimately on our own path anyway.

Giving Up Alcohol Was Easy

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In this video and podcast I describe how giving up alcohol for good turned out to be incredibly easy. The reason why I struggled to stop for years with addiction was that I believed in nonsense, and I always left the door open for a return to addiction. In the end I not only had to stop drinking alcohol, but I also had to give up being an alcoholic. I removed alcohol as an option completely from my life, and things became incredibly easy for me.

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