Beyond the Struggle

I’ve made it. Today marks the year since I stopped drinking. It’s been a wonderful and a tough year. I love the AF life, it has shown me the best version of myself. At the same time my brother’s death has been immensely tough. But instead of giving up I chose to see that as a test, that I didn’t fail, which I’m really proud of today. The tougher it is to not drink, the better it will feel afterwards if you prevail. This year has shown me things in my life on which I would like to improve. Being AF is like waking up and seeing life for what it is and makes it impossible to neglect the things that’s annoying or in need of improvement. It has also restored my pure feeling of self worth which is incompatible with status quo and neglect. And good things start growing when I remove old energy thieves. It’s like throwing a heap of rocks out of the balloon: remove the root of energy waste and you surge to the sky! One of my most useful insight has been “the switch” which is what I call the mom...

Social media gives you the impression that you’re on top of what’s happening. That’s an illusion. What you perceive as the state of the world is in fact a tornado of egos amplified by marketing algorithms. These algorithms don’t care about the truth or your well being but only that you continue using their services.   Social connections are very important to us, and of course social media has given us opportunities to keep contact with people we wouldn’t have had contact with otherwise. As a big phone book Facebook is tremendous. But part of the concept is also that you don’t really choose which people you keep contact with. That is done by the algorithms. Facebook is very good at letting you know a little bit too much about people you don’t care enough about to give a call. It’s in our DNA to be rewarded for social connections. In the tribal era connections were a guarantee that you wouldn’t get excluded or killed.    That’s why social media in a way is the perfect ...

My alcohol free year is coming to and end. It has been a both a wonderful and a horrible year. One of the reasons I stopped drinking was to be able to help my brother. His death didn’t make me question my decision, on the contrary it has felt good to deal with the pain head on, but I sometimes wonder if I could’ve done more. I know I couldn’t. You can’t help someone that doesn’t want to be helped. You’re the only one with the key to your own addiction. Others can be there and show the way but you’re the one that has to walk through the door. One thing this alcohol free year has taught me is that addiction thrives in the vacuum that comes from unconscious decisions. For me it’s always been the glass here and there I took without thinking about it that’s been the biggest problem. All the glasses that “just happened”. All the gym classes I skipped because I had drunk. I didn’t consciously decide not to go the gym, I just let that happen by drinking too much the day before. And I have to a...

Every emotion has its counterpart. We have to have been bored to have fun. We have to have felt calmness to be excited and we have to experience true love to feel heart breaking sorrow. We mourn because we have loved and we dared to love because the one we loved was worth losing. Don’t judge the decisions you made then, with the knowledge you have now. Alcohol made my life harder but I didn’t know to what extent then. I don’t want any of my years with alcohol undone because they all form the fundament of my alcohol free self today. You can not be alcohol free if you haven’t had alcohol, because you can not free yourself from nothing. And just like emotions has their counterparts, so does actions I’ve done before and after I stopped drinking. My energetic drunken me then mirrors itself in the calm alcohol free me now. And that person blaming my faults on others to avoid dealing with alcohol has a lighter twin who instead takes the blame where it’s due and helps others. It takes one to k...

We all know our whys not to drink. We repeat them whenever we feel tempted. I should not drink because this and that. I think that whys are really helpful but I’ve come to think of another set of whys which I think are more important in the long run. We all know why we shouldn’t drink but do we know why we drank too much in the first place? I think that addiction points to a question waiting to be asked. A question we don’t want to answer because it would force us to do changes to our lives we’re not ready to do. For me that questing is: “Do I want to pursue a different career?”.   For someone else it might be: “Am I happy in my relationship?”  or  “Why does it feel safer for me to fail than to succeed?”. To avoid answering the hard questions I ask myself harmless questions with answers not forcing me to do anything, really: “What will make me happy?” “What are my life goals?” “How should I find my true love?” I’m not saying it’s not important to think these things throug...

We are all warriors. We have good days, bad days, we slip, but we get up on our feet again. We stay accountable and continue to rock this journey. Together. Something has been bugging me, though. Even if I’m immensely proud of not have drunk for almost a year there is a pattern I can’t deny: I replace one addiction with another. The replacement might not be as bad but still. It’s like I’m not getting to the bottom of my brains constant desires, like I have an addiction snake inside of me waiting to lash out. To my defense I have both gotten rid of alcohol and nicotine this year but boy have I eaten sugar instead. Cookies, candy, soda and ice cream every day, most days several times. And now that I cut down on sugar I eat peanuts instead. Loads of them. And I know it’s fine as long as I stay away from alcohol. But it still annoys me. The same goes with Facebook. Have not felt this addicted in a long while. Way too often I find myself mindlessly scrolling waiting for something to happen....

There is really no difference between addictions whether it is weed, alcohol or some other drug. It's all about getting the brain used to abnormal levels of endorphins and dopamine. Getting the brain used to shots of endorphins that desensitize the system so that we need more and more to feel the same high. You don't know you're addicted until you try to stop and it can be hard to face the first time. So hard that you even don't want to face it and you need to reset. For every reset you take a small step until you get it: you have to shift focus of being tired of drinking to being tired of trying not to. When you're tired of trying, you don't want to reset anymore. As always there are withdrawal symptoms before the brain starts getting back at normal levels. The beauty with the brain is its ability to mend itself. It's not a coincidence that a lot of addiction programs start with 90 days since that's is the amount of time it takes for most brains to ge...

We want a handshake But have to distance We want a hug But have to distance A pat on the back But have to distance A sincere high five But still, the distance   We want live music But have to distance Or sing together But have to distance Or a theater play But have to distance Experience together But still, the distance   We want to be social But have to distance Or look in the eyes But have to distance Share a moment together But have to distance To just feel human But still, the distance