Getting Started: Back to Basics and Challenging the Norms

Hello there! Welcome back – it’s a pleasure to have you here again.

Lately, I’ve felt deeply called to share more about my sobriety journey. The more I open up about it, the more people reach out asking for tips, advice, and a bit of guidance – and helping people on their journey, at whichever stage, is why I started the Sober Travellers. I write online and open up to friends and strangers in the hope of helping, someone, somewhere, during their journey to freedom.

So let’s use this time to go back and explore some ideas around early recovery – whilst challenging what may be preventing us from getting better in the first place.

The path to sobriety

I believe we can all too often block ourselves from getting sober before we even start. In fact, I know. I’ve seen it countless times… and do it myself. Concepts of what an alcoholic or addict looks like causes us to spin on our heels and say “nah, no way, not me!”, or, our own stubborn thinking prevents us from looking outside our own mind in the first place, and we stay convinced we can do this alone.

So what to do or where to start? The advice is simple (on paper…): accept, be willing and be patient.

Let’s begin.

1. Break the stigma – the “Hollywood Image” of addiction is bullsh*t

First things first: we need to completely redefine what we think an addict or an alcoholic looks like.

We’ve been fed a very specific narrative through movies and media and we’re taught to believe that an alcoholic or addict has to be someone…maybe homeless, sleeping on a park bench, dirty, or someone who has completely lost everything, including their marbles. Because of that extreme image, we look at our own lives and think, “well, I’m doing alright compared to that guy”… and quietly return to slowly destroying our own lives.

Let’s break it down:

• Status or bank accounts do not matter: You cannot play the card of “I can’t be an alcoholic, I’ve got my shit together” Addiction doesn’t discriminate, folks. You do not have immunity as a result of your educational achievements, career, titles, bank balance, fashion, dreams. I have watched people ruin their lives by not accepting this.

•The sinking ship – age doesn’t matter. Getting sober as a young person was a stigma I, along with many of my comrades, had to break. Again, this disease doesn’t check your ID – it’s never too early to address your relationship with substances, because let me tell you something, I am no mystic meg, but I know this sh*t is a downward spiral and get’s worse, and worse, every…time. You do not need to be an “adult”, or to have lost everything, to put the fire out before it engulfs you entirely.

• Frequency doesn’t matter: You absolutely do not have to drink or take drugs every single day to be struggling with addiction.

2. Shift Your Focus to Powerlessness (The True Test)

I want to begin this by highlighting something, and it is quite a heavy point to start with: but if you are even questioning your relationship with alcohol or substances in the first place, then that itself (to me, anyway) suggests something. So, to support you in exploring your relationship further, I recommend that instead of looking at how much or how often you consume, to look at the physical reality: powerlessness.

Ask yourself these honest questions:

• Do you have the power to stop picking up the substance in the first place?
• Once you take that first sip or that first hit, do you have the power to stop?

Look, I know this is a scary one to face. But what is your power like in relation to the above two questions? If you can’t comfortably say no to it, or find yourself powerless, doesn’t that say something? Sure, maybe you’re not a full blown alcoholic or addict, but there is a dependency growing that has the potential to become unmanageable. I found this a really helpful exercise at the start of my journey.


3. Realise You Can’t Find The Solution In The Problem

Think about it: addiction, or dependency, lives inside your mind. So ask yourself this: How can I find the solution to addiction in my own mind when my mind is the actual problem? You can’t fix a broken tool with the same broken tool.

I found my path through a 12-step program and it completely changed my perspective on…well, pretty much everything. It took me out of my own thinking, opened me up to a new world of people, and helped me to find a power great than my self.

Let’s not forget, we all live in a world where we’ve been conditioned to reach outside of ourselves for fixes, a bottle mistaken for unconditional love, a pill disguised as safety… It’s scary, but our thinking cannot always be trusted at the best of time, so it’s only fair to accept that some new perspectives can’t do us any harm. Plus, if you’re anything like me, and consistently failed at trying to get yourself sober or clean, doesn’t that show you your D.I.Y methods aren’t quite as successful as you’d hope? Think about it, how many times have you said “I’m never doing that again”…to either do it the same day or that weekend.

True recovery means admitting that you cannot do it alone – we must be willing to look beyond ourselves. And yes – this absolutely involves accepting that you do not know everything. Be open minded – I swear to you, this was a shifting point in my recovery. I had to learn to listen to others. I had to allow myself to become teachable.

I had a vision where I saw my skull splitting open with a glowing stream of new information entering it and I’m so grateful for this breaking point. I was stubborn and had a mighty ego – I thought what I didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing – seriously, like what can this old geezer tell me about life that I don’t already know? Reality check: you’re 25 Chloe and you don’t know shite. And it just so happened these people showed me where to find the keys to my freedom. So you see, this type of thinking and close-minded delusion kept me swimming in a circle of my own sickness.

4. Find Your Tribe (Even if You Think Everyone is Weird)

When I first entered my programme of recovery, I’m not going to lie: I thought everyone would be weird as fuuu*k., and I absolutely did not want new friends. I just wanted to get my head straight and get out. For months I strictly kept myself to myself.

But then I discovered that these people were soon to become my family. They are the backbone to my sobriety and have taught me unconditional love. I now have friendships where we hold each other accountable, challenge our thinking, push each other to be better, and accept our imperfections. We understand we still want to live our lives to the max, do crazy sh*t (like midnight tattoo’s, raving or skinny-dipping) and be madly spontaneous, just without the of self-destruction.

Find people that will keep you safe whilst you try to break free. Might not be in a sober community like me, but you’re not going to make life easy for yourself by playing in the same playground you practiced your old tricks in. Plus, the more you understand that you are at chemical war with your dopamine system that triggers you to drink/take drugs based on external stimuli (places, people, smells, etc) – the more you should try protect yourself. It’s not forever, but remember, this is your life. The people you keep close to you do have an impact on you, whether you like it or not. Sit around a beehive long enough, you’re going to get stung – ya know what I mean?

5. Go Micro: Keep This Shit Simple

I hope I’ll be sober in 10 years, but the truth is? I don’t know. What I do know is that I can stay sober for today. We have to go micro with this stuff. Absolutely keep it simple.

If you know me, you know I’m the kind of person who wants 27 versions of Rome built…overnight! I want eeeeverything, and I want it fast. But this sobriety thing does not come fast or easy. In my early days, I was getting so upset and frustrated, fighting for my life every single day without feeling any different or anyone to celebrate my small victories with. I felt like all these little things I was doing wasn’t achieving anything.

Thankfully, my sponsor gave me a massive reality check: “Look, this shit is like going to the gym. You don’t walk out after one workout with a six-pack. Remember, you’re building a new house here. Every single little action, every ounce of daily effort you put in, is quietly making you stronger and will amount to something”.

So please, stay patient and stay willing. And if you can, don’t go crazy trying to swap one extreme for another. When I stopped drinking, I immediately decided I was going to learn how to skateboard, play the piano, and speak fluent French all at the same time. Genuinely, guys, that is not even a joke. I actually tried to do that. But do you know what I did? Overwhelmed myself and made things 10x harder. and gave up after a few weeks. Just focus on getting sober and keep everything within the day… coz you’re life is going to get really good, pretty quickly, and you will do the things you dreamt about. Yup, I just finished a year back-packing South East Asia!

One final tip, from me to you, ignore anyone who says to you “What! You’re not an addict, you’re just…X, Y, Z” – you do not need permission from your friends or family members to address what you know is true in your stomach. If I listened to everyone who said this to me, I wouldn’t be writing a blog from my lovely, sober life in Morocco where I’ve got everything I could ever need to be happy and fulfilled, and it’s only the beginning, and I know the best is yet to come. It’s your life – and you deserve to be free and happy.

Your Next Steps

If you’re reading this and something is stirring inside you, I challenge you to do three things today:

1. Assess the powerlessness: Be brutally honest about whether you can actually control it once you start.
2. Drop the judgment: Accept that what you *think* you know about addicts or sobriety might be completely wrong.
3. Reach out: There is a massive, beautiful family of people waiting to welcome you the second you ask for help.

Focus on today. You’ve got this.

Chlo x