The Easiest Ways To Get Sober 2021

The easiest ways to get sober in 2021. I mean, we're going to talk about things that are so simple. Anyone, 100% of people can do this. And if you can do these two very small changes, you are going to definitely be on your road to recovery. The thing I'm going to tell you today really has to do with triggers. Both of the tips I'm going to give you have to do with triggers. Now the first one might a little obvious, but we're going to go into a little bit more depth into that than maybe you have thought about before. And the second one is going to be not so obvious to you. That one, you may feel a little bit more surprised by that particular idea or piece of information. Okay, so let's, let's get on with it. The first one is to avoid your triggers. Now, before you're like, Amber, we know that. What I want to tell you is most people really don't understand exactly how powerful triggers are. We've been doing what we've been doing for so long. It's habitual. It really is almost an automatic pattern sometimes. And people don't understand how powerful their triggers can be. Now, most people understand triggers on a level at least to kind of think about like, maybe I shouldn't go to the big party where everyone going to be totally messed up. Yes, that is for sure something that you should consider that is a huge trigger. In my world, we call that a high risk situation. But triggers can be a little bit more tricky than that. Even one of the very most obvious things you can do is not keep the substance or the paraphernalia to the substance around your home. Now, if you're watching this as a family member, you may have wondered about this before. You may have wondered like, you know, if I'm trying to help my wife or husband stop drinking, should I not allow alcohol to be in the house? If someone's been sober for quite a long time and they've indicated to you that it doesn't bother them that you have alcohol in the house, then you're totally fine to do that. But in the beginning, I usually suggest that when someone's trying not to drink, to not or use substances, to not have that substance in the house. I know you can get it anywhere. Obviously you can. You're a grown up. You get in the car, you can leave and go get it. But when it's at your house, you can't ever be comfortable. It's like you have to be resisting 24 7. And if you saw Last week's video where we talked about willpower, you know that that willpower can run out. I believe you should allow yourself to be comfortable in your own home. You don't need something that's hidden in the back of the closet back there that's trying to talk to you when you're trying to go to sleep at night and you can't even make it shut up, just get rid of it. Obviously those things are triggers, other things that you may not even be thinking about as far as triggers have more to do with your patterns and routines than the actual substance. So if. Well, I won't say if almost anyone who has developed any kind of substance problem has patterns and routines and rituals surrounding that substance use. For example, if you are used to. Every day when you get off work, you stop at the gas station or the liquor store or whatever and you buy something to drink because you're trying to sneak drink before your spouse sees it and you're trying to drink it. Hurry up. On the way home, you may want to take a different route home. Because if you take that same street, you may find yourself pulling into that parking lot before you even think about it. Literally an automatic happening. Kind of like if you've ever changed jobs or moved houses. I know when we moved our office a few years back, there's a certain turn that I have to take now that I didn't have to take before. And I would find myself halfway to my old office building just because I was just an automatic mode to keep driving to the old office. It's just like that. So changing your route can help switch things up. If you're used to, let's say, using a substance while listening to certain kind of music. Don't listen to that kind of music. Change your music up. If you're used to drinking while you watch your daytime trash TV shows or something like that, don't watch those. Watch something else. If you're used to. You always smoke when you put your Bob Marley shirt on. Let's retire the Bob Marley shirt. And I know those things seem like. Well, it's not, you know, those aren't high risk situations. But like I said, your brain has those things associated with using. And our brain, because it's made for efficiency, our brain tries to put as many things on autopilot as absolutely possible so that it can focus its sort of conscious attention on the more important task. And what you don't realize is that lot of those patterns and rituals are truly on autopilot. I can give you some Examples of some that I hear all the time. A lot of. I see a lot of husbands who drink too much and a lot of them will wait until their spouse, their wife usually to go to bed. And that's when they start drinking because they're hiding it. And so they're waiting until the spouse goes to sleep so that they can drink. Well, if you, if that's your plan, you need to do something different about your, your bedtime routine. Maybe you should go ahead and go to bed. Maybe you should do something totally, you know, different if you're not ready to go to bed. But the whole idea is it's around bedtime. Other things that I've seen that are really, that are really common for people to do, have to do with their after work routines. We talked about the driving one already. But if you come home and you watch the news and you use your substance, maybe you want to watch something else. All of these little things from the, where you drive, where you sit, if you're used to sitting, you got your favorite chair and you always sit in your favorite chair, and you always did whatever substance in that favorite chair, sit somewhere else. All of these things are just tiny, small changes. But if you will make them, you'll make sobriety and recovery 10,000 times easier. And these are just tiny micro changes that anyone can make. You know, you don't have to make it any harder than it has to be. Let's make it simple. All right? Now tip number two, when it comes to triggers, this one might be different because tip number one was avoid your triggers. Tip number two is going to be create new triggers. And you might be like, what, what do you mean create new triggers? Create new triggers for healthy behaviors. Because just like you can get unhealthy behaviors put on autopilot, you can get healthy behaviors put on autopilot too. So you can this same brain mechanism that's working against you and you can make that brain mechanism work for you. So what you want to do is you want to set up some patterns, routines and rituals in your life that are just so easy, so natural that they, they happen every day anyway. You're just going to pick a behavior that already happens and you're going to connect it to a new behavior. And when you do that enough times, it by itself will become automatic. But you're going to connect a ritual or routine that you already have to a new behavior that's helpful in some way that gets you set in the right direction when it comes to recovery or sobriety. So let Me give you some examples of what I mean when I'm saying like create new triggers for yourself. Maybe a new trigger. Maybe if you drink coffee every morning, morning, you know, maybe you even have your coffee pot where it has like the alarm thing and it, it's already brewed, so it's sitting there waiting for you when you wake up. Maybe what you want to do is every morning when you drink your coffee, you're going to read a recovery meditation. Super simple, right? You can have that thing downloaded on your phone so that you get some kind of recovery meditation that either comes to your phone every day or all you have to do is open the app. That is a very simple little thing you can do that will set the intention for your whole day. And if you don't have a specific recovery meditation, you want to look at just something, any kind of meditation that's good, that gets your head in the right direction. Some people look at religious ones, but anything that helps keep you motivated and directed in a positive way, that's a great thing to do while you drink your morning coffee. See how easy that is? It just goes quite naturally. Maybe a trigger that you want to set is every, every time you check your email or every morning or afternoon, or whenever you check your email, after you check your email for the first time, every day, you are going to reach out to somebody in your recovery support system or you're going to make some kind of human connection that's positive for you. Maybe you reach out to your sponsor, maybe you text another friend that's trying to get sober. Maybe you text something nice to your grandma because you haven't talked to your grandma lately. And it makes you feel better to know that you, that you reached out to her, but you've made some kind of promise to yourself that when this happens, I'm going to do this new behavior. And the simpler and more automatic you can make it, the better. It may feel a little weird the first week or so, but eventually you're going to get where you can't drink your coffee without reading your recovery meditation, you're going to get where you can't check your email without making that contact to someone out there in some kind of positive direction for you. Let's see, I wrote down some other ones. Another really, really easy thing that you can do, especially if your high risk time is after work or after school, is you can say on my way home from whatever it is that you do on a regular routine, on my way home from work, on my way home from school, or Heck, even if you don't work or go to school, but you know, you run down to the local. Here we have QT gas stations. You run down to the local QT and you get a soda every day on your way home from the QT or whatever that you listen to some kind of recovery podcast or Amber video or recovery book or something else. And it doesn't even have to specifically have to do with substance abuse recovery, but something that gets your head on straight, gets you thinking in a good, positive way. You do that on your way home from what it's something that you do in a regular, everyday ritual and routine. Let's see here. Another thing you can do is somewhere in your morning routine, whether that's after I get dressed or before I leave for work, whatever it is, it probably should be after something. Actually, now that I said, that should be right after something. So the trigger's in place. You can write a gratitude list. You can set an intention for the day. You can write a goal for the day, something. If you stop and you write something down or you say something out loud, you're literally going to help yourself almost manifest recovery. Because number one, just by stopping to do that, you're putting recovery in the front of your mind. And that already is getting you out of all the old automatic patterns that you used to be. Maybe you're going to read one chapter of a book that you've been reading that you found super helpful related to recovery, something like that. Put it in your routine, in your morning routine and your afternoon routine, in the before you go to bed routine. Maybe you want to tie something to. After I brush my teeth at night, before I go to bed, maybe you want to tie something to. After I watch my favorite show, I'm going to do X, Y or Z so that every time that trigger happens or behavior happens, then you link it to something else. Now, you have used triggers in a helpful way. So we know how. We know how the brain works. Let's utilize that to our advantage. I always say, like, work within your operating system. I'd love to hear from you guys some ideas that you have about how you can incorporate this in your life. Whether that's triggers you want to get rid of or triggers that you want to add. And if you have some experience with that, love to hear that too. I used to automatically turn into the Wawa to get an iced coffee, even if I was not planning to get one. And then switch jobs after working somewhere for years would automatically drive the wrong way. And the auto answer the phone saying the business name, or I would auto answer the phone saying the old business name, even though I answered my personal phone, not my work phone. Exactly. You. You've experienced this automatic thing before, and someone's like, how did that happen? You could just get on autopilot. So be intentional about your autopilot. Thank you for sharing that, Lisa. I think we, many of us have had that same experience. Lauren says got a clean house helps even more if you break the bottles or favorite glassware for drinking, smoking, breaking the attachment helps acceptance. And Lauren has 2, 346 days sober. It worked for me. Love it. Lauren, thank you for sharing that. We need those positive reports all the time. And you. And Lauren has given you such a really great piece of advice because it's not just get rid of the substances to trigger, but you probably have some paraphernalia items that go along with your substance use. So if drinking wine is your thing and you drink out of a certain wine glass, get rid of that wine glass. I have a client that I've had now for quite a while, and she said she had her favorite turvis tumbler that she used to drink out of every day. And I was like, we gotta get rid of that turf tumbler and get you a new one or something like that. And you may think, well, I don't want to get rid of that. You know, those were expensive or something like that. And I'm going to say something, super addiction counselor here, right? Whatever much that stuff costs you is not going to cost you nearly as much as that addiction. So stop worrying about the cost. I've had a lot of people over the course of many years have to give up the rest of their stash, the rest of their alcohol, the rest of their pills. So much so that I had to start researching how to, like, safely get rid of all these different drugs in the office. It's kind of funny, actually. One way you can do that is if you have a substance and you're trying to get rid of it, but you want to do that in a safe way, is you can put it. If you have old, like, wet coffee grounds or just old used coffee grounds, and you put the substance in there, put the coffee grounds with it. That's a safe way to get rid of a substance. But don't worry about the cost. Don't let that stop you. Once when I was working in an inpatient facility, I can remember having some kind of lesson or whatever with this group of people about getting rid of triggers or managing triggers and this guy says, now we're in South Carolina, but very close to here. We're very close to North Carolina line. And there was this guy and he had went to Asheville, which is in North Carolina. It's kind of in the mountains. It's kind of a little town not far from here. It's kind of like a hippie town, Ish, I'll say that. And he said, well, I went to Asheville and I just bought this new bong. It's so great. I paid 50 for it and I'm not gonna give it up. And the whole then create this whole group discussion about it. So many times I've seen people have old paraphernalia or old stash of whatever it is, and they say, well, I'm gonna sell it. Every time I see that before they can sell it, they've done how to relapse. So I'm telling you, just while you're in the zone, get rid of it. So. So the guy says, I want to get rid of it. And he. And so they were talking about different things he could do. And he said, well, it's just made out of this really pretty glass and it's like green or blue or something. I can't remember. He said, what if I put it in my fish tank? I said, well, yeah, you can do that. But the thing of it is, even if you break the thing and you put it in your fish tank, every time you see those little specks of that color, your brain is going to remember that pong and then you're going to want to use. So don't try to cheat yourself because you paid 20 bucks for something. Don't worry about it. When you're in the right mindset, get rid of it. The paraphernalia, the. Any of those triggers, the. The secret stash, the clothing you wore, whatever, it's not worth it. Get rid of those triggers. Jenny says, my spouse is an active addiction and I'm learning my triggers that fuel the fire. I have a playlist of positive music I play whenever I drive past his deal locations. Keeps me calm. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you shared that, Jenny, because I didn't share any tips for family members, but everything I'm telling you about getting sober will work exactly the same for family members. And that's a perfect example of a family member trigger. And when you. When you just said that story, Jenny, it triggered me to remember a story. This was years and years and years ago, but it was a long time ago when I Was running, like, an intensive outpatient program at another facility full of teenagers. And this one teenage girl, her mom knew where the dealer's house was or whatever. Of course, the girl doesn't come home one day or she's late. And the mom, of course, is like, I know where she's at. And this mom, just so you know, she's like a professional, always very put together. I think she might have been a lawyer or worked in a law firm, something. She was super professional. Anyways, as a family member, you're gonna. You're gonna appreciate that. How crazy it can make you. Jenny, she. She goes. She finds herself in this neighborhood beating on the door of this drug dealer boy, probably 18 or 19 years old, like, telling them to come out in the yard like she was gonna fight him. That's how much you can just lose your sanity. And family members have triggers just like people trying to get sober. So I'm glad you brought that up. Hey, Jack from London. Jack says a week's over today. That is fantastic. That first week's the hardest. It's gonna start to get better after now. Angie says, my husband wants sobriety so badly, but he can't deny the compulsion. What can help make the compulsion avoidable? All of these things that I'm telling you help make the compulsion avoidable. Change patterns, change routines, and that's going to cut down on your cravings significantly. And sometimes it doesn't even have to be an external trigger, like something you see or run across in your environment. It can be an internal trigger, like an emotion or a thought that can trigger something else. Just like when I read what Jenny wrote, it triggered me to remember that old story, what you want to do with that. And I do have some videos about craving specifically, but you want to not entertain the obsessive thought. So once you. That first thought gets triggered in your head and you start remembering or fantasizing when or planning or scheming, the longer you stay in your head, feeding that thaw, I call it gasolining the fire, the longer it's going to last. So there are small little things you can do that will make your recovery journey so much easier. Lauren says, oh, glad to help. I recently started using an online life coach system called Serious joy. It's been a week, and it's helping me further, too. They have a YouTube channel as well. All right, thanks for that. It must be some kind of almost like a goal tracking system or a daily routine system that Lauren's talking about. Any kind of thing like that that you can incorporate is going to help you changing it up, taking out the things that you don't want to be there and adding in the things that you do want to be there. If you got value from this video, if it's helped you in any kind of way, if you will give it a thumbs up, that helps us to spread recovery. And also, I want to give you access to our 30 day jumpstart program for free. I've put the link in the description for you. And up next, I'm going to have a video for you about relapse, how to avoid relapse once you get yourself sober, how do you stay that way? See you guys next week. Thanks for joining me.