Newly Sober? Good. Now Let's Cut the Bullshit.

Some Hard Truths for Getting Through

Adam PT

Jun 01, 2025

133

There Are No Hacks to The Work

There is no shortcut through profound change.

No one else is coming to do it for you. If you want change, you’ll have to earn it.

To wish for ease and immediate reward is to reinforce precisely the mindset you’re here to outgrow. To rush is to betray the lessons. To skip the work is to stay the same.

Love the slow. Honour the toil. Master delayed gratification.

There are no hacks to the work because the work is becoming someone new. That’s a mighty transformation, and one which will mean something different to each person. For me, it was a complete overhaul of my choices, and therefore my thoughts, behaviours, and patterns.

The specifics might differ for you, but no matter the form, the essence is the same: to build a life so solid that addiction becomes irrelevant. You don’t fight it. You don’t resist it. Addiction falls off you like a shell you’ve outgrown.

My recovery took prolonged, deliberate, uninterupted effort: rehab, recovery groups, unlearning, relearning, choosing better, over and over, until better became normal. Life tested me during this process, and now there is simply no circumstance in which I would drink again; not in any scenario or under any pressure. I wouldn’t want to, and I wouldn’t permit myself if I ever did.

It doesn’t belong in my reality. It doesn’t fit the person I’ve become. And I don’t feel like I have to fight to stay sober; I live true to my principles, and sobriety is just one of the many by-products.

Hopefully, you’ll form your own beliefs around recovery. And they must be yours. Not mine, and not someone else’s. Write your own and write them well.

But I’ll tell you what I believe: it’s possible to recover from addiction fully, and I know that because I have done.

There are no hacks to the work, but there are distractions, detours, delusions, and dead ends, and in early sobriety, you’ll encounter them all.

What follows are a few ways that might help you stay on track.

Repair the Vessel

As you rebuild your life, you’ll need to repair the vessel carrying you through it.

You are not just contending with emotional wounds. You have a body and a brain that have been malnourished, inflamed, dysregulated, and distorted for however long you’ve punished them.

Too many people neglect their bodies. I suspect one of the many reasons some folk can’t stay sober is because they return to a reality that still feels miserable, much of which is entirely preventable.

Your mind is your brain, and your brain is your body. Your thoughts and feelings are not separate from your flesh and blood. You are a total biological system that must recover as one, and this must involve restoring your most basic physiological needs.

Start with the holy trinity of well-being: natural sleep, real nutrition, and regular movement.

If these are depleted, then restoring them will already begin to lift your quality of life. They are not nice-to-haves. They are the very conditions under which your blood and organs can settle, your hormones and neurotransmitters can rebalance, and your reasoning mind can grow sharp again.

Fix the basics, and everything else becomes more possible. You’ll be less confused, less reactive, less desperate. You’ll think more clearly and feel more capable.

Ignore them, and try as you might, but this new life you’ve planned might burn out before it can even begin.

Repair the vessel. And steer the ship.

Nothing Lasting Will Change Until You Do

At the centre of all of your recurring patterns and consequences isn’t fate or bad luck or what others do to you.

It’s you.

Your perceptions, interpretations, actions, reactions, and responses. These are not external forces acting on you; they are internal forces coming from you. They are ultimately choices, whether you think they are or they aren’t.

Like it or not, you’ve chosen how you live your life. And you will face the consequences of those choices, good or bad, whether you think you deserve them or not. It’s simple cause and effect.

Until you choose differently, things will always be about the same. You cannot create a new future with the same old self.

Until you own your shit, you are the problem. That’s not an insult. That’s your ticket to freedom. Because if you are the problem, then you are also the solution.

So change it. Upgrade what you tolerate, how you respond, what you pursue, and who gets your time.

You cannot outrun the consequences of the patterns you’re still choosing. So start asking yourself, daily, even moment by moment, how you are still contributing to the very things you wish would change.

Things Might Get Worse Before They Get Better

Some things may improve quickly. But if you had a long-standing problem with addiction, then prepare to be met by the reality you’ve been avoiding (and fuelling).

Let’s put it plainly:

A life of unmet needs, plus an anaesthetic, equals pain plus temporary relief.

Subtract the anaesthetic, and you are left with a life of unmet needs, only now you can feel it.

At times, early sobriety can feel like being thrown in the deep end. Not because you’re broken, but because the numbness is gone, and you haven’t yet built the coping skills that reality has been asking you to learn.

And the only real way out is through.

Keep showing up, keep asking what hurts and why, and keep choosing not to run. This is how resilience is built: through presence, patience, and repetition. Resilience is a skill that becomes more natural over time and will carry you further than any shortcut ever could. Build it, because mental grit will keep you solid throughout most of life’s challenges.

You will slowly move from the deep end to firmer ground. Some things will help you, some will try to pull you back. Thank them all for their lessons, because this is part of your training.

Pain is not your enemy. Pain is honest. It’s telling you what must be faced. It’s a signal, and one that shall pass as you learn to resolve what causes it.

Numbness was your real enemy because it kept you from knowing the truth. And only in truth can healing take place.

Choose Your Company Like Your Life Depends On It

Because it really does.

Be as Stoic or as Spiritual as you like, but you are still profoundly shaped by the company you keep.

Don’t mistake tolerating people and patterns that hold you back for patience. That’s not virtue: that’s passivity, and passivity shall drag you under again.

Not everyone is ready for real change. Not everyone wants to get better. And some don’t want you to get better either.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

Even in so-called ‘recovery’ circles, some still lie, manipulate, gossip, and infect others with their unresolved misery. Some still carry a lifetime of entrenched toxic behaviours they have no intention of removing.

Compassion doesn’t mean open borders. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you owe anyone your time. You’re not here to save everyone, and you certainly don’t need to prove to yourself or anyone how Stoic, Spiritual, or evolved you are by tolerating what you should leave.

So, practice kindness, but don’t let it cloud your discernment. Trust your gut. If something sets off your inner alarm, trust it. Take a step away from a person or group and reflect on what’s really happening.

Protect your peace. Guard your integrity. Offer compassion where it’s mutual and authentic.

Let your boundaries speak on your behalf.

Leave the Circus

Some things must be fixed, some must be outgrown, and some must simply be left behind. When I say leave, I don’t mean run, because you cannot outrun yourself, and nothing lasting will change until you change.

But once that spark of real desire to change has begun, staying put might smother it. You cannot build a new life with the same scaffolding that built the old one.

If the people, places, routines, and lifestyle factors around you helped feed your addiction, then you’ll exhaust yourself trying to build your new self within them.

I relocated, and that gave me space to rebuild a fresh frame of mind. I am now able to return to where I came from, but with a new lens. The streets haven’t changed, but the man walking them has.

So walk away if you must. Change your number. Cancel the reunions. Say no. Honour thyself. It’s not running away if you leave with purpose. It’s not weakness if you are choosing from wisdom.

Growth needs space, air, sunlight, and good soil. You won’t bloom in the same conditions that buried you.

Root Yourself in Something Wholesome

You can’t simply remove a behaviour and then live in its vacuum. You must eventually replace it with something worthwhile. Without that, you’re not truly living; you’re merely abstinent and white-knuckling your way through a life that still lacks meaning.

This is where many stumble and fall. The chaos may cease, but nothing takes its place. The problem might be eradicated, but the solution wasn’t installed.

Discover what grounds you. Seek out what or who authentically nurtures you. A place, practice, or pursuit that demands your full presence. This could mean finding your calling or cultivating your passion. Pursue what allows you to naturally lose yourself. It might be a gym, a notebook, a dojo, a field, a kitchen, or a shed full of tools. Go there. And surround yourself with people whose company draws out more of you because they truly believe in your better nature.

Forget About Wishing to Feel Good. Do What Is Right, And You’ll Feel Good For It.

The highs are gone. The artificial ones, anyway. Those chemically-induced, short-lived, consequence-heavy highs you once used to escape pain or simulate reward are no more.

You used them because, in some warped way, they worked. But they work how a thief works: they steal their goods from somewhere else, and in your case, that was your own future.

But the core problem was never the substance. It was the suffering beneath it. Once you realise your role in this suffering, and begin the work of repair, the suffering begins to lift.

Still, some miss the high. They look for some kind of sober version of it.

Forget it. Nothing natural can ever hijack your reward pathways like that again, and that’s a gift, not a loss.

You do not consume real joy. It’s something you earn, in staying true to yourself, in fighting the right fights, and it lives on the other side of effort and toil.

And so toil you must.

Self-discipline is self-respect in action. It’s saying no to what isn’t you, and yes to what is. It’s what keeps you from wandering into destructive ground, and although it might sound like a paradox at first, self-discipline is your map into freedom.

What is good is what is right, and what is right is what aligns with your truest nature. Your truest nature isn’t your cravings, whims, or moods, but your principles.

You’ve lived through misery, and now you don’t have to. Embrace the true sense of peace offered right here, right now, in clear choices, steady effort, principled action, and the life these open up for you.

Pursue what is right, and you’ll wake each day and fall asleep at night proud of who you are. You’ll beam with honour and self-respect. You’ll walk through your life as someone you completely trust.

And when you are loyally wed to your purpose, no passing temptress is worth betraying her for.

You don’t need to fix all your problems. You need to become someone who can face them.

In facing them, you might change them, they might change themselves, or you might outgrow them altogether.

The substances hijacked your reward system, and it felt good because reward was missing elsewhere.

Those highs stood in for the rewards meant for deeper fulfilment: in personal progress, connection, meaning, and contribution.

Because you were deprived, you learned to chase the shortcut, even when it cost you everything.

But now, you take the long road.

Now you return reward to where it belongs: not to shortcuts, but to what is earned.

Forget about wishing to feel good. Do what is right, and you’ll feel good for it.

Seek not the feeling itself, but the kind of person you become in the process.

And once you become that person, you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Thank You

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