Well said, Adam. Funny enough, in a completely different space last night, I told someone the very same thing. I am never giving myself permission to cause this havoc again. As you said, if I did grant permission, all paths disappear but one. And I do not ever want to be on that path again.
Thanks for sharing this! I find it fascinating in that I approach my sobriety from a completely different lens (the idea of permission has never crossed my mind really), but we've ended up at similar spots. I think for me it's more of a complete loss of appeal, and as every day passes being more and more aware of what I'd potentially lose if I went back to drinking. But hey whatever works! Thanks for sharing your approach in such detail, I especially enjoyed the callout to SMART (I've heard it recommended multiple times now).
I hold sacred what I’ve worked for and what there is to lose. I have zero attraction towards alcohol. I love sobriety.
This permission step goes deeper into if there’s nothing left to lose. Say something catastrophic has happened. When that which you’ve worked for has been taken away, you still have that inner power left within to deny permission to old ways.
Thanks, Adam. Speaking as someone who had ugly relapses in '17 & '18, I applaud the "no permission" strategy to relapse. I pre-meditated relapse both times even though I didn't realize it until after the fact. The mental obsession and phenomenon of craving can be very tricky in my experience. Also, 5 years sober this time, and I still miss a glass of red wine with a meal on occasion too. The feeling passes fairly quickly these days at least.
Yeah it's alarming how, looking back, we realise that we orchestrated a relapse ourselves. I suppose that now unlocks some key awareness on the matter for future situations. I hear it talked about as a 'pre-lapse' and I'm on board with that, because when such sensations come about, I now have the awareness to think 'wait....I'm in a pre-lapse here' and work to meet the unmet need, or talk to an appropriate person, etc. Five years, that's amazing. And yeah urges come and go, and again it's that meta-cognition to think 'this too shall pass' which takes the power out of it. Thank you for your feedback!
Yeah I think knowing that I grant myself permission or not to do something that seems impulsive has spared me in other ways. Anger, shouting back, pressing send on a message, etc. It also brings attention to sleepwalking into something else.
It’s powerful isn’t it? Where else do we run permission on automatic where we could switch it to manual? Something to really ponder about. Thanks for your feedback, Stefano.
I love your acknowledgement of our sphere of agency and choice, Adam. Even beyond sobriety, feels like such a needed message these days.
I find there’s usually a simple choice at the heart of things: helpful or not helpful? skillful or unskillful? connecting or disconnecting? There will always be justifications for doing what’s unhelpful, unskillful, and harmful. Or, we can choose what we already know will help us live more beautifully.
Yours is a great point: these kind of simple binary nodes exist in all choices. Helpful or unhelpful, healthy or unhealthy, etc. like a micro checklist that we can weigh our behaviours against. And another profound point—we already know the right answer from experience and innate wisdom. We inherently know what is harmful or helpful, but we sometimes bypass that intuition to pursue a want at the expense of a deeper need. Thank you, Dana.
What it is to be a strong, insightful, SPIRITUAL, intuitive, independent woman.. Knowledge is growth.. To use our own powers to be led here, by our own guides to change all broken hearts, to use all our own tools, to gain in-depth knowledge to show better paths to follow.. For all to see, including me. My shadow led me here, and wouldn't let me leave until ALL hearts were on new paths to follow. Please not a lot, passes by me.
A spiritual guide has always guided me, since a child. To show love for all and in nature too. But still there are always lessons to learn along our own paths.. May God Bless you all 🕊️🙏❤️ always have faith to follow xx
I enjoyed reading that Adam. I have recently just made a move to full independence. I now only have one blocker which takes away any of those ingredients to make the fire so to so to speak. That is my choice. I can see any temptation to revert to old ways is a short sighted part of me that says it will be good now. The overiding part of me looks at the 2 weeks, the 2 months down the line.
Hi James. I’m glad you enjoyed the read. I’m also very happy you’ve moved on into full independence. What a milestone. Big respect, James, and keep me posted.
In my experience it has been essential to realize that if I were to relapse it's because I gave myself permission to, or decided to remain silent and numb my way through it.
Hey buddy 👋 great to be on the same path. A lot of this resonated with this former addict. Care to support my work here, but only if it resonates with you?
Hi Horseman. I appreciate the read and the share. You say you’re a former addict-that’s awesome. What else are you? Tell me who you are as well as who you are not. Followed you right back 👊🫶
Hey buddy 👋 thanks for asking, I've escaped from a few asylums and now helping others remotely from my bundu cabin, especially zillions of city slickers with chronic, suppressed madness. I'm definitely not yr normal citizen, been extradited to Shangri-La for life by the woke big bro aka liquid modernity. Part of the verdict was that I'm raging mad against the Machine and a grave danger to the IV industrial revolution. I missed the 1st and II IRs, but was a cool spy in the III one, where I learned the trade. Believe it or not but I still have a couple of my ghost UFOs all over the USA, watching the big bros in their filthy cyber bunker data centres. Take that bio, with a pinch of salt! Seriously, I'm just here to help other ex addicts and strugglers, noting the new crazy wave of bot and screen addicts. No more devastation, love never fails 🌾
Thanks Adam. The essential fulcrum that is “permission or not”, has never been made more clear to me, or more important.
I’m soon to be moving into work with addicts, and your post and its approach to addiction, I already know, will be an important part of how I will attempt to help my clients.👍
Love the triangle analogy! I think of relapse as a series of doors, the opportunity will always be there, the urge comes and goes, but permission is the last door and it is locked!!
Oh, Adam… I smiled at your words, all the while reading through. I wish you had posted this a long time ago!
It offers so much clearer thoughts of these difficulties, it has been many months, with many challenges, and we don't always understand, yet wish dearly to know. You have all my support, with all you say.. A much cherished friend, to stay subscribe and to follow.
Have faith in yourself and others to understand.. I wish to send hope for all future thoughts and new paths to follow.. with all my love and care. Always just a friend who stands..side by side Debbie xx
My path and my shadow is now leading me away… perhaps, as yet you don't fully understand, as I do. But I will always cherish my time spent here with all of you ❤️
Offer Love and care, for all, always. As we will all walk side by side, in time this is true. There is a God to follow.. ❤️
I relapsed in October 2018 after 8 years sober. I regained my sobriety in January 2023. I feel like I fucked around and found out. I am maintaining my sobriety with every fiber of my being.
The idea of permission is strong and resonates with me.
Well said, Adam. Funny enough, in a completely different space last night, I told someone the very same thing. I am never giving myself permission to cause this havoc again. As you said, if I did grant permission, all paths disappear but one. And I do not ever want to be on that path again.
It’s funny how things like that happen and I’m glad we’re on the same page!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Nate.
Thanks for sharing this! I find it fascinating in that I approach my sobriety from a completely different lens (the idea of permission has never crossed my mind really), but we've ended up at similar spots. I think for me it's more of a complete loss of appeal, and as every day passes being more and more aware of what I'd potentially lose if I went back to drinking. But hey whatever works! Thanks for sharing your approach in such detail, I especially enjoyed the callout to SMART (I've heard it recommended multiple times now).
Hi Patrick. Yes entirely agree.
I hold sacred what I’ve worked for and what there is to lose. I have zero attraction towards alcohol. I love sobriety.
This permission step goes deeper into if there’s nothing left to lose. Say something catastrophic has happened. When that which you’ve worked for has been taken away, you still have that inner power left within to deny permission to old ways.
I like it. Defense in depth, if you will.
Thanks, Adam. Speaking as someone who had ugly relapses in '17 & '18, I applaud the "no permission" strategy to relapse. I pre-meditated relapse both times even though I didn't realize it until after the fact. The mental obsession and phenomenon of craving can be very tricky in my experience. Also, 5 years sober this time, and I still miss a glass of red wine with a meal on occasion too. The feeling passes fairly quickly these days at least.
Yeah it's alarming how, looking back, we realise that we orchestrated a relapse ourselves. I suppose that now unlocks some key awareness on the matter for future situations. I hear it talked about as a 'pre-lapse' and I'm on board with that, because when such sensations come about, I now have the awareness to think 'wait....I'm in a pre-lapse here' and work to meet the unmet need, or talk to an appropriate person, etc. Five years, that's amazing. And yeah urges come and go, and again it's that meta-cognition to think 'this too shall pass' which takes the power out of it. Thank you for your feedback!
Beautiful share. Love the 'hard no'. I think most of us need at least one of those.
Yeah I think knowing that I grant myself permission or not to do something that seems impulsive has spared me in other ways. Anger, shouting back, pressing send on a message, etc. It also brings attention to sleepwalking into something else.
Thanks, Maggie.
I love the “rock bottom superpower”. Thank you for this share. So powerful.
Hey thank you Kelly. It’s a feature of one of my previous articles “The Power I Found in Losing Everything”.
Thank you for your feedback!
I’ll check it out!
I'd never thought of it in this way before.
Permission is powerful.
I can see some ways I can use it in my life.
Thanks for the insight Adam!
It’s powerful isn’t it? Where else do we run permission on automatic where we could switch it to manual? Something to really ponder about. Thanks for your feedback, Stefano.
I love your acknowledgement of our sphere of agency and choice, Adam. Even beyond sobriety, feels like such a needed message these days.
I find there’s usually a simple choice at the heart of things: helpful or not helpful? skillful or unskillful? connecting or disconnecting? There will always be justifications for doing what’s unhelpful, unskillful, and harmful. Or, we can choose what we already know will help us live more beautifully.
Yours is a great point: these kind of simple binary nodes exist in all choices. Helpful or unhelpful, healthy or unhealthy, etc. like a micro checklist that we can weigh our behaviours against. And another profound point—we already know the right answer from experience and innate wisdom. We inherently know what is harmful or helpful, but we sometimes bypass that intuition to pursue a want at the expense of a deeper need. Thank you, Dana.
You all..encourage a smile.. 😊
What it is to be a strong, insightful, SPIRITUAL, intuitive, independent woman.. Knowledge is growth.. To use our own powers to be led here, by our own guides to change all broken hearts, to use all our own tools, to gain in-depth knowledge to show better paths to follow.. For all to see, including me. My shadow led me here, and wouldn't let me leave until ALL hearts were on new paths to follow. Please not a lot, passes by me.
A spiritual guide has always guided me, since a child. To show love for all and in nature too. But still there are always lessons to learn along our own paths.. May God Bless you all 🕊️🙏❤️ always have faith to follow xx
I enjoyed reading that Adam. I have recently just made a move to full independence. I now only have one blocker which takes away any of those ingredients to make the fire so to so to speak. That is my choice. I can see any temptation to revert to old ways is a short sighted part of me that says it will be good now. The overiding part of me looks at the 2 weeks, the 2 months down the line.
Hi James. I’m glad you enjoyed the read. I’m also very happy you’ve moved on into full independence. What a milestone. Big respect, James, and keep me posted.
In my experience it has been essential to realize that if I were to relapse it's because I gave myself permission to, or decided to remain silent and numb my way through it.
Thanks for sharing your letter.
That’s a key layer of self-responsibility.
Thank you for reading, Reinny.
Hey buddy 👋 great to be on the same path. A lot of this resonated with this former addict. Care to support my work here, but only if it resonates with you?
No more devastation ☠️
Love never fails 🌾
Hi Horseman. I appreciate the read and the share. You say you’re a former addict-that’s awesome. What else are you? Tell me who you are as well as who you are not. Followed you right back 👊🫶
Hey buddy 👋 thanks for asking, I've escaped from a few asylums and now helping others remotely from my bundu cabin, especially zillions of city slickers with chronic, suppressed madness. I'm definitely not yr normal citizen, been extradited to Shangri-La for life by the woke big bro aka liquid modernity. Part of the verdict was that I'm raging mad against the Machine and a grave danger to the IV industrial revolution. I missed the 1st and II IRs, but was a cool spy in the III one, where I learned the trade. Believe it or not but I still have a couple of my ghost UFOs all over the USA, watching the big bros in their filthy cyber bunker data centres. Take that bio, with a pinch of salt! Seriously, I'm just here to help other ex addicts and strugglers, noting the new crazy wave of bot and screen addicts. No more devastation, love never fails 🌾
Nice. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Adam. The essential fulcrum that is “permission or not”, has never been made more clear to me, or more important.
I’m soon to be moving into work with addicts, and your post and its approach to addiction, I already know, will be an important part of how I will attempt to help my clients.👍
Awesome, glad I could help. Thank you for reading, Michael.👍
A great read mate
Thank you good Sir
Love the triangle analogy! I think of relapse as a series of doors, the opportunity will always be there, the urge comes and goes, but permission is the last door and it is locked!!
Nice way to think about it, Thanks Desi!
Oh, Adam… I smiled at your words, all the while reading through. I wish you had posted this a long time ago!
It offers so much clearer thoughts of these difficulties, it has been many months, with many challenges, and we don't always understand, yet wish dearly to know. You have all my support, with all you say.. A much cherished friend, to stay subscribe and to follow.
Have faith in yourself and others to understand.. I wish to send hope for all future thoughts and new paths to follow.. with all my love and care. Always just a friend who stands..side by side Debbie xx
Wow Debbie, I feel it.
Thank you for reading, and for sharing such uplifting words.
You got this.
We march on.
Much respect, Debbie.
My path and my shadow is now leading me away… perhaps, as yet you don't fully understand, as I do. But I will always cherish my time spent here with all of you ❤️
Offer Love and care, for all, always. As we will all walk side by side, in time this is true. There is a God to follow.. ❤️
'Rock bottom superpower' -- I love this!
Flip it on its head!
Thank you Adam.
I relapsed in October 2018 after 8 years sober. I regained my sobriety in January 2023. I feel like I fucked around and found out. I am maintaining my sobriety with every fiber of my being.
The idea of permission is strong and resonates with me.
Good to hear, April. And glad the permission idea speaks to you. Thank you for reading 🙏