How I overcame my biggest distraction — Alcohol
1.
Writer Hunter S. Thompson's daily routine included downing a bottle of Chivas Regal and railing several lines of cocaine before getting his work done. He was a man that lived by the unfortunate, bumper-sticker worthy motto, "Good people drink good beer." He eventually shot himself in the head, leaving behind a short suicide note to his wife, titled, "Football Season is Over."
You probably aren't destroying your life with alcohol like Thompson did. Maybe you've had a few crazy nights, but who hasn't? You might have a few beers on Friday afternoon, but you’re more or less back to being a functioning adult on Monday. Most of us have jobs, friends, family, and a social support network. All of these in some combination keep us from falling into the bottomless abyss of true addiction.
A research study out of England came up with nine different types of drinkers. One type is 'social drinker,' a label many proudly wear. Some types are more likely to spiral into alcoholism, like the ‘depressed drinker’ who uses the bottle as a coping mechanism for a stressful life event (death, divorce, job loss). None are easy to break off, especially for the ‘community drinker’ whose life revolves around going to the pub often with friends.
But regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, all of them have one thing in common: Drinking is a response to emotions we don't want to feel or deal with.
Whether you're a macho drinker trying to maintain your perception as an alpha male, or a re-bonding drinker that believes you need alcohol to be honest and connect to people, it all stems from the same place. We are trying to escape, cover up, and distract ourselves. This is what I call Alcohol Distracted. And this is true for all of these drinking groups.
A drink or two to calm the nerves gives us temporary relief to unwind after a long week, be less self-conscious during karaoke, or to meet your mother-in-law. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. The issue is when we continue to use this temporary relief throughout our lives. The slow-drip of ethanol is never enough to destroy our lives or make us true addicts like Hunter S. Thompson, but it keeps us dull enough to never address our underlying problems. A few drinks at dinner. A few at the party. At the baseball game. Repeat this every week and every month, for years and years.
It's like we have a wound that's too deep to heal properly without stitches, but instead we put on a band-aid. It sort of feels okay, until it doesn't, so we slap on another bandaid. For us, these wounds are emotional – insecurity, fear, anger, anxiety, some unspoken childhood trauma — and our bandaid is the distraction we choose at the moment. It's bandaid after bandaid, and the wound becomes infected, and never truly heals. Next thing you know, twenty years have gone by and you’re still at the bar complaining about your (twelfth) job. Life isn’t the cupcakes and sunshine they promised, and you certainly haven’t found your calling, whatever that means anyways.
Seriously, wtf happened?
2.
I remember when having a few (or 17) beers on Friday night was an acceptable response to the culmination of the week’s stresses. What followed was an outpouring of fun, laughter, joy, honesty, sadness, fear, longing, and a range of emotions that I probably couldn’t label at the time. Eventually, after a series of embarrassing blunders (stealing pizza from a karaoke bar, allegedly dumping beer all over my colleagues, etc.), I toned it down significantly.
The real turning point for me, though, came one Saturday night sitting at home by myself. With no plans for the evening, I instinctively strolled into the kitchen and went to pour a glass of wine. At that moment, as I took a sip, I recognized the drink for what it was: a reaction to boredom.
I let the wine sit in my mouth for a few seconds, swished it around in my mouth, and spit it out in the sink. And then — in true cinematic fashion — I emptied the rest of the wine bottle down the drain and yelled, “You don’t own me, biatch!”
Upon further investigation, the many sources of my Alcohol Distraction became clear. After-work drinks with colleagues was a reaction to anxiety and peer pressure. Saturday-night binges with friends stemmed from an insecurity about being funny and the courage to be myself. Other times, alcohol was a reaction to frustration and anger I was holding because of something that happened that week, like not closing a sales deal or a stressful conversation with a client.
Eureka!
The realization I had is that we don't get addicted to substances, we get addicted to the feelings they give us. If you've ever been a smoker and tried to quit, you probably resonate with this. The advice is usually "you can't just quit smoking cold turkey, the key is to figure out your triggers (like boredom), and then to replace smoking with another (healthy) habit that makes you feel good".
All distractions stem from a fear of sitting with the truth of what’s happening right now and accepting that feeling. When we don't accept the feeling, we distract ourselves. And when we have that moment of strength where we don't reach for that distraction, we activate our Buddha superpowers. We can start the process of recognizing and investigating the emotion — no matter how painful — and start the process of healing and growth.
For example, let’s say you're frustrated with your boss at work, which causes you stress and expends a great deal of emotional energy. A few Heineken's will certainly ease the tension, and maybe some informal talk-therapy with your colleague can make you feel heard. But, you haven't really changed, and you're back at work next week snapping at your boss. What is the real source of your anguish?
It's possible that you don't have the capacity to say "no" to an extra workload because you have unresolved boundary issues. This causes you to be a workaholic, or to not speak up when you know you should.
Or, maybe you never learned how to express your emotions freely as a child, so you feel disengaged or fake because you can't bring your authentic-self to the workplace.
It could even be that you're in the wrong role, job or industry, and you feel trapped. Society has told you this is what you should be doing, even though every fiber of your being feels otherwise. As you can imagine, these are issues that can't really be solved with a few drinks.
The question is, how do we even notice what those feelings are? And, more practically, what do we replace alcohol with?
3.
When I took an extended backpacking trip across South East Asia, I made a vow to not drink alcohol the whole time. My reason was very pragmatic. I figured that traveling by myself to countries I'd never visited already had the potential to go very wrong and leave me susceptible to getting mugged, scammed, or sold into a Vietnamese sex slavery ring. Alcohol would only increase the likelihood of any of these things happening, so best to make it a dry adventure.
On this 4-month trip I discovered that I needed exactly zero alcohol to have fun in a social gathering. At a large Meetup event for Bitcoin and crypto enthusiasts, I drank half a dozen of those glass bottles of Perrier, and honestly had the time of my life. I was giddy, talkative, and felt endorphins flowing through my brain. I felt ALIVE. To this day, I remember the people, their stories and even some of their names, which probably had something to do with the fact that I wasn't totally shit-faced.
Well, wait a second. How does that work?
Simple. The social gathering centered around a topic (crypto) I was passionate about, with other people who shared the same passion. Unlike some bullshit work seminar (or Zoom call) your boss forces you to attend, I wanted to go to this. I learned that I can feel connected and joyful, even a bit "high," without a sip of alcohol, as long as I'm enveloped in deep conversations with people that have like-minded interests. Doing things I like to do. Following my curiosity. Playing around.
Activities and groups that satisfy your curiosity are a great way to bring out your inner child, that free-spirited and forgiving part of us that we seem to have forgotten. These are activities we enjoy for the sake of doing them. And, most of the time they don't require alcohol to have fun. Conversely, when you go places you don't want to, with people you don't like, you're bound to have a crappy time and get Alcohol Distracted.
To begin to feel what the inner child is telling you, you have to go through a dry period of going without that thing for a few days, weeks or months. This deliberate "going without" period is initially necessary, otherwise known as the Hedonic Reset. Start with a small goal — it doesn’t have to be a 4-month no-booze trip across Asia. If you drink every day then go without for one week, if you drink every week then go without for 2 weeks or one month. Once you do this for a few weeks, you'll start to become sensitive to what you're reacting to, and what feeling you're chasing.
The second part is adding in playful activities to occupy the time you gain from not drinking. To find what you like, think back to what you enjoyed doing as a kid, or when you were younger. Examples: Biking, cooking, creating art, dancing, darts, golf, frisbee, fishing, flying a kite, hiking, ice skating, legos, making music, Mario Kart 64, playing with dogs/cats, road trips, rock climbing, reading fiction books, swimming, trampolines, yoga, writing for fun, making things with your hands, playing catch in the park, strumming the guitar or playing an instrument, etc.
One word: Play.
"A grownup is a child with layers on."
- Woody Harrelson
Interestingly, I found there's a sort of positive cycle that starts after you begin playing again. You start to remember different ways to play, and life takes on a brighter tone. Once I experienced the freedom of not drinking — of "going without" — it became a helluva lot easier to continue not drinking and finding playful activities to enjoy. In other words, just try this even once, and the flywheel of change starts spinning.
4.
Psychologist Carl Rogers believed that in order to achieve self-actualization — achieving your true purpose and feeling fully yourself— you have to be in a state of what he called "congruence". You have an ideal-self, and you have your current self-image. When your day-to-day experience is different from your ideal self, you feel like something is off, like you're not fulfilling your potential. You get bitter, frustrated, even resentful.
Your ideal-self feels the urge to explore and create new ideas. Your current self is stuck repeating the same, dull task at work. Your ideal-self wants time to focus on deep work, but your job requires lots of meetings and task-juggling. Your ideal-self wants to work helping people, or animals, and your current self works from home for a tech company selling some software. Yep, that’s all incongruence.
We spend a good chunk of our days at our jobs, and the work we've chosen is our striving for self-actualization. When there's incongruence here, it throws off the balance of our inner lives (And what other life is there, after all?). Speaking from experience, work has been the biggest source of stress that's caused me to stay Alcohol (and food) Distracted. This took on many forms: being in the wrong role that didn't match my skills, working on something I didn't believe in, and not sorting through my own boundary and attachment issues which caused unnecessary conflict with teammates.
I've come to believe that there are two types of jobs. The first type of job makes you feel tired or even stressed afterwards. It dissipates your energy, it doesn't increase it. If you've ever had a mismatch in jobs or had to sit through 14 consecutive Zoom meetings, you know what I mean.
At my startup, I handled customer service and operations for far too long, which usually left me feeling drained. When Friday rolled around I often felt like getting smashed at the bar and whining about my self-imposed struggle. If you frequently feel like this in your job, it's time to YOLO and start smashing the apply button on LinkedIn.
In reality there is a spectrum here, of course. You might feel "neutral" about your job, but I still group this in this first category since it doesn't bring you energy, like the second type.
The second type of job is one that gives you energy, not that takes it away. After completing this type of job you feel good, motivated, and even relaxed. You do it for the sake of doing it, for the sheer joy of the task itself, and could continue it perhaps indefinitely. For me, it was the feeling of joy in my first recruitment job. "Wow, I can't believe they're actually paying me to basically go out for dinner and just talk and listen to people. This doesn't feel like work at all!"
This feeling is the classic definition of being in a flow state. While we often equate flow states with creative tasks like playing an instrument, writing, painting, dancing or singing, in fact flow can come from anywhere. Accountants feel flow when they're crunching numbers, and sales people feel flow when they're in the middle of a sales pitch. It really just depends on the person. I hate doing jigsaw puzzles, for instance, but my wife loves it.
Achieving this flow state has another benefit. As Jordan Peterson says, it can help you turn "chaos into order". The tangled knot inside of us can be straightened out by expressing ourselves and being absorbed in something completely and fully. We move towards congruence between our self-image and our ideal-image.
But when we go in the opposite direction, we create psychic entropy and internal discord. When we hit our thirties or forties, many people think that it's okay to relax into whatever habitual grooves they've established. They've graduated from school, got a full-time job and more-or-less figured out how to function in the world. Yet, as you might have noticed, things don't get easier. We all go through declining physical and mental health, an unfulfilled career, relationship troubles, and the usual ups and downs of luck and misfortune. We build up a bunch of negative tension. How does one keep these problems away?
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the seminal book Flow, says that if a person doesn't know how to use their attention to get into these flow states, he will inevitably turn to the easy external solutions like drugs, entertainment, excitement—whatever dulls or distracts the mind.
"But such responses are regressive—they do not lead forward," he explains. The solution?
"The way to grow while enjoying life is to create a higher form of order out of the entropy that is an inevitable condition of living. This means taking each new challenge not as something to be repressed or avoided, but as an opportunity for learning and for improving skills."
The truth is, many of us are disengaged. Many of us have so-so jobs that pay the bills. We know at the bottom of our hearts that it's not "quite the right fit." That it's not our true calling. We are, like Arjun in the ancient Hindu tale the Bhagavad Gita, stuck at the crossroads of indecision.
There are also some of us who are 95% happy, or more or less satisfied at work. But there is a tiny misalignment. Ever-so slight, deep down we still feel it. Even if it's only one inch off the mark, it causes internal strife. This is painful, and our minds will do whatever it takes to distract us from the truth. Enter substance X and distraction Y of your choice.
The simple takeaway is this: by doing activities and jobs that we legitimately enjoy, most of the time, there is little room or need for other distractions.
I'm not saying that your work is the main or only reason for drinking. But it could be one of the big triggers. Consider what life would be like if you worked on tasks everyday that commanded your complete attention and left you feeling energized at the end of each day?
What would you do with that energy? You probably wouldn’t be getting buzzed with a colleague to complain about work, or plopping on the couch with a beer to unwind. That energy would spiral and reinforce you towards more fulfilling and creative actions, not less.
It is not inevitable that we are in jobs (or lives) that don't give us a sense of flow most of the time, and perhaps it's worth finding one that does. Perhaps we would be happier with ourselves, those around us, and with life in general.
5.
Since my own relationship with alcohol has changed, I’ve found the effects of drinking a beer now to be totally uninspiring. The liquid courage that would once give me energy is gone. Instead, I just get sluggish and dull. Perhaps the inhibitions I was trying to free have been freed in other ways. More likely, I've found healthier ways to feel good and fulfilled— saunas, exercise, meditation, music, writing, and cooking. My happiest and most connected moments have not been drinking with friends or coworkers, but in deep focus on creative tasks (and meditation, but that’s a post for another time).
Nowadays, I rarely if ever crave alcohol. In those rare moments where I do crave it, it's a very obvious sign to me that something is off-kilter. I've developed the awareness from repeated mistakes to know that it's not a real solution to the problem. Instead, I use it as an opportunity to ask myself: 'What's missing right now? Why do I feel this way?' Sitting with this feeling, I acknowledge it, investigate it and then nurture it.
Yeah, I know, I'm one sensitive-ass dude.
Keep in mind that I was never addicted to alcohol in the sense of being a serious ‘problem drinker.’ It never led to stealing money or ruining my relationships. I was a casual drinker. I will still have a sip of wine at a friend's birthday party, but have no problem stopping there. I still go to bars and gatherings where others are drinking. At first I was worried about what to say in situations where I was the only sober one, until I realized that most people are too distracted to even notice.
By the way, if you're sober and can't relate to this (or have gotten past your craving for alcohol and switched it with another unhealthy habit), then replace 'alcohol' with 'food' or 'smoking' or 'video games' or ‘overworking’ or 'binge watching Netflix' or ‘phones’ or 'social media.' Anything can be a distraction, the tendency of your mind trying to escape the present moment. Heck, craving power is one of the most addictive drugs of all, and it’s not surprising that both Trump and Putin famously don’t drink.
This process of realization and weaning off alcohol and other distractions is not a "one and done" situation. There will always be some conflict, some incongruence or another to deal with. And who knows if we are ever fully self-actualized. The point is, this is an ongoing journey, and there is always opportunity for growth. You just have to keep working on it.
So, have you ever used alcohol as a way to avoid a feeling? To get away from recurring anxiety, stress, fear, sadness, longing, or general dissatisfaction? To avoid a tough conversation or action? An unspoken truth or pain?
If your answer is yes, then maybe it’s worth exploring this relationship.