I Like Myself Better When I'm Sober

I smoked weed today.  There are certain friends that I just smoke weed with sometimes.  I don't hang out with them very often anymore, but when I do, it's weed when there's no partying, and beer added when there's partying.  I don't always love myself when I'm sober, but at least I know who I am.  I recognize my feelings.  My thoughts belong to me.  I have clarity and perception.  And when friendships are predicated on intoxication, they can either strengthen with sobriety, or fizzle out and fade away.

I am 27 years old.  When I broke up with my girlfriend last year and lost my job, I was accepted with apprehensively open arms into my parent's home.  I was depressed about many things at the time.  Politics depressed me.  Relationships confused me.  I was depressed that I spent the last four years prior working in residential property management and couldn't see a “way out” of that industry for work.  I was depressed because of the economy.  Learning about history depressed me.  I was depressed because I attended a college for holistic health care and I was too depressed to go to classes.  They were just so intense, and forced me to examine so many personal areas of my life that I couldn't stand the thought of doing that at the time.  When I mustered up the motivation to go, I came home feeling relaxed and peaceful every time.  I couldn't help but wonder if my introspection and healing helped influence my break up or caused my pain.  Awareness was like a drug I wished I never started using.  There was no turning back.  I knew I had to really look inside at something I wasn't confident in facing.  I knew I had to face myself or disappear.

The first three months, I battled with myself.  I knew I needed time to reflect and heal from whatever it was I needed to heal from.  At first, it was my ex-girlfriend and our relationship.  I thought that's what it was all about.  New relationships were out of the question, in my mind.  I was not ready to enter into the intense, emotionally and spiritually involving relationships that I have a proclivity for developing.  Yet, I had to get out of the house and interact with people.  I couldn't avoid human interaction just because I was healing.  So I went out.  I partied a bit.  I numbed my depression.  I inevitably developed new relationships and called them non-committal relationships.  I had plenty of sex and, of course, became really intimate with someone.  Incredibly, my social circle never missed a beat between college and their late 20's and early 30's.  In fact, now that they have more money, they party even more impressively at times than they did back in the day.  Did I want to return to my own misery of meaningless work, meaningless partying, meaningless relationships... apathy?  My heart was telling me no.  My spirit was begging me to wake up from the dead.

In February of 2010, after six months of unemployment, a really fun holiday season and New Years, savings gone, car repossessed, living with parents, staying over at my non-girlfriend girlfriend's house five nights a week and exchanging beers for massages (at least my college left me with one identifiable asset), I decided to start a journal.  I studied healing arts for a year and a half at this point, and with all the tools and experiences I gained, it was finally time to utilize one of the most basic of life enriching exercises: journaling.  I'll never forget my first night doing it.  I found an empty “Compositions” journal, the traditional kind, 9 ¾” x 7 ½”, and headed my first entry, *Healthy, Happy Life*.  I wrote a list:

1. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Consistent Sleep – Sleep @ same time each night. Prepare for bed at 10:00PM. Sleep: 11:00PM.
2. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   5x5 Meditation (meditate for 5 minutes, 5x per day) – Morning, Afternoon, Lunch, Dinner, Bedtime.
3. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Journal – each night before bed in this book.
4. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Place affirmations in car while driving and in familiar places - “I am confident in myself and love who I am.” “I believe in myself. I am successful and fulfilled.”
5. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Exercise Daily. Drink Water. Eat Plants.
6. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Look in the mirror every morning and write down something I like about myself.
7. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Smile. For no reason.
8. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Relax. Everything happens for a reason. Life is an experience, not a performance.
9. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Breathe. Keep Breathing.
10. 
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Empty mind works better than a busy mind.

And so it was.

The next morning I woke up and wrote another entry.  I finished the entry by saying:

“As I write this, I feel self conscious about wasting my time. I know this is not a waste of time!”

75 days later, I filled a 100 pages with my journey.  I made commitments to myself to remain sober and fulfill a “Healthy, Happy Life”.  I stopped seeing my lady friend and I slowly stopped partying, drinking, and smoking pot.  For the first time in a long time, I became completely honest with and accountable to...myself.  It actually helped that I was completely broke.  Every last ounce of food I ate was homemade or store bought at Sprouts (a farmer's market in Arizona), where my parents shop for groceries.  I became my family's personal chef.  I slowly got back into athletic shape, between running, hiking, basketball, and of course, p90x.  Drawing became a hobby.  Meditation became a habit.  The world became brighter.  I became connected to the beauty of Arizona's nature.  I began expressing gratitude for my life.  I felt awesome.

But, I had another dilemma.  My friends.  Over the last 8-10 years, the majority of my social network mostly consisted of people who I casually (and seriously) partied with.  If I wanted to go hiking in the mountains of Arizona with my buddies, they would want to do a tailgate in the parking lot.  They would want to turn it into a co-ed social function - a desert party.  If I wanted to talk about life and my fascinations and dreams and paradoxes, they would want to turn on the TV and watch Sportscenter.  I desperately wanted to develop the deep, meaningful bonds with my friends that I journaled about and dreamed of.  I wanted to have friends that lived out of the box in an authentic way, not in some unconscious, inebriated, meaningless one.  I found myself torn.  But the more I meditated and the more I journaled and the more I listened to my heart, I knew that I desired true meaning in my life.  I wanted to feel my pain.  I wanted to know myself.  I wanted to be myself.

And so... there has been a lot of ebb and flow in my life since then.  The Universe has blessed me with angels in the form of human beings.  Running into close middle school friends that I hadn't seen in 14 years at the grocery store; developing a father-son like bond with an older man that befriended me after watching one of my college presentations about hypnotherapy. I haven't abandoned my past friendships entirely, but I limit my time spent in that environment. I am still not completely happy all the time.  If you read my first blog about “The Revolving Doors of Duality”, you could understand why that's not a bad thing.  But one thing I am, is happy with myself.  When I have emotional pain and personal discomfort, I like to feel it.  I like to know it.  I like to work through it.  When I am around other people, I like to pay attention to myself.  I like to be aware of how I feel, what I think, and what/who I do.  I like my Healthy, Happy Life.  I might always have a soft spot for my “party friends”, but one thing I know right now is that I like myself better when I'm sober.