do something other than use, and other than obsessing about using/not using
simple but true.
easy...hmmm. sometimes I think my biggest stumbling block was my insistence that sobriety has to be hard, a struggle, a big huge unending wrestling match. When I got past that shadow boxing stage (and no, I wasn't clean when this idea came to me) it freed up a lot of my life.
I had gotten locked into thinking that life was either using or struggling not to use, my idea of what sobriety is was so wack.
I write, walk, those are two things that work for ME when I start obsessing over using/not using. But they aren't always options...so I am getting creative, and more open to the idea that there are about 65 billion things I can be doing at any time other than using...
using is a habit, it's become easy, automatic...but there are options and I can try them, and they can be simple.
wash dishes, take a crap, put old clothes in a bag for Good Will, pop zits, rake leaves, masturbate...whatever.
I used to think that I had to have some super sure fire impregnable addiction fighting ammunition and back up ammunition always at the ready...I kept making it way more difficult than it has to be.
sobriety is so much bigger and freer than addiction. I kept thinking it was addiction turned inside out, or some mirror image, where everything was parellel but flippped, but it's nothing like that. It's relaxing.
It's realizing that unlike when I was using, there is no ONE thing I need to be doing.
so..what do I do when I am tempted to use...remind myself that I like freedom a whole lot better than that cage I used to keep myself in, and instead of climbing back into the cage, I do anything else, well. except climb into another cage (we all know the lets switch the addiction game)
I don't know how many days in I am...I stopped looking at it that way, because that too kept me focused on sobriety as 'not using', and was counter productive to me.