Physical Recovery After Alcoholism | How To Regain Physical Health Once You Quit Drinking

This video proposes a physical fitness program as a superior alternative to traditional recovery methods for addiction. I demonstrate how a healthy lifestyle, incorporating exercise and clean diet, can effectively support former alcoholics in their journey to full addiction recovery.

BOOKS FOR RECOVERY AND REINVENTION

THE SMALL BOOK: HOW I BEAT ALCOHOLISM AND WHY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS DOESN'T WORK.

THE SHEPHERD AND THE RUNNINGWOLF: A PATH TO FORGIVENESS ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL

REINVENTION OF SELF: HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND BEING FOREVER

To listen to the deconstruction of two long time AA members who escaped the cult check out their channels below

Quackoholics Anonymous
https://www.youtube.com/@UCcj54GbpaeqNzy4s-nQRt4g 

Kirsten--Sobriety Bestie
https://www.youtube.com/@UCWefB6bk8reofI7ZnXfPTNA

Sober Strong
https://www.youtube.com/@Soberstrong

John Barleycorn taken from Jack London's book John Barleycorn. First published 1913

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So you've heard me talk about the physical fitness program in terms of recovering from alcoholism and why that's such a better plan than sitting in the rooms in an AA meeting. But how do you go about starting it? And what is a proper physical fitness program? And how does it exactly help you on your road from recovery from alcoholism to the cure mark? Stay tuned and I'll tell you. I continually state in my episodes that the Alcoholics Anonymous Protocol is not the way to beat alcohol addiction. I also state that I don't have to prove my point, the AA failure rate proves it for me. I would be pro-AA if only they would change their methods, for I am thoroughly convinced that a holistic recovery program would give them high success rates that they lack today and have lacked since the program began. I'm 17 years sober using the methods of holistic reinvention of self. I rarely have cravings for alcohol today, and if I do, they are transient and mild, usually lasting a minute or two at worst. I'm not in a state of emotional negativity sitting in the rooms, rehashing my past every night. I rarely think about alcohol or my former days of alcoholism at all. So what is this holistic recovery and reinvention of self in all your planes that I keep pontificating about? It is a transformation of the four basic planes of being: the physical plane, the emotional sphere, the career, the spiritual realm. I've mentioned them a great deal in my first dozen episodes or so. Now we're gonna get to the how-to-do it part on the first plane, the physical recreation of being. This advice not only goes for recent former alcoholics, but anyone who's let themselves go or never were in states of good physical fitness in their entire lives. But it is especially essential for the recover of alcoholism on the road to cure. For to say that one wasn't physically healthy as an alcoholic would be a vast understatement. Processing large amounts of alcohol every night sends the body into a state of catastrophe over the long term. Everyone knows the liver will eventually be destroyed, but people don't think about the other effects from long-term alcohol abuse. High blood pressure, which will lead to heart attack or stroke. Just ask F. Scott Fitzgerald, who stood up from a chair at 44, and consequently dropped dead when his heartbeat ceased. Or Jack London, whose disease kidneys from a lifetime with John Barleycorn finally took him. Now, some of us were athletes during the more moderate stages of the addiction to alcohol. I was a practicing Thai boxer and in local school run bouts every few months, for a few years during this phase of my own friendship with Johnny B. In those earlier days, I would train three hours, then wash the sweat away with six to eight beers. But during the last five years of my addiction, from about 35 to 40, I wasn't training much at all and certainly wasn't in the ring anymore. At that point, I was drinking over a 12 pack a night and much more on the weekends. At the end of it, I don't think I could have run a quarter of a mile. So the first plane that needed recreation was the physical. The physical plane is like the foundation of bricks for your new mansion. Fitness is the base for everything, and the cement mixture that holds the bricks together is the diet. The two go hand in hand in this reinvention. They are necessary, not just for physical well-being, but to defeat alcoholism and its post-effect symptoms. The implammation of a healthy diet and fitness program alone far exceed the tenets taught in AA. The villain that causes most to give up their battle against alcoholism is the craving, especially in the first six months. But the cravings will subside if you engage in a holistic recovery program, and if you stay with it, eventually those symptoms will be as rare as I describe. And a fitness program will help you greatly to wade through the interval while these symptoms are the most intense in those first phases to cure. Now I stated in previous articles that the holistic program should begin after the 45-day mark of sobriety, what I name as a second phase of recovery. The first phase being the five-day initial acute withdrawal period, because from day 5 to somewhere between 30 and 45 is when the cravings will be the greatest. They will largely be continuous and intense. I recommend people in this phase to do whatever you have to do in order to pass this milestone. This is when the diet may not be that healthy as one checks a day's off into the end of this phase. I even recommend hanging out in the rooms of AA if you must. Just don't adopt their protocols or mindset. You're not gonna want to start exercising here. This phase is survival mode. But day 45 is when you begin the reinvention of self. And it starts with a physical fitness program. This was easy to formulate for myself, as I've been involved in high-intensity physical fitness activities since I was about 14. Martial arts and lifting weights has always been a part of my life. So for me, it was just a matter of returning to what I already knew. And it was still a slow process, as I was now middle-aged, and it let it go just like a college football player who lounged on the couch after his glory days were concluded. But many don't know how to begin a physical fitness routine. They sign on to the local gym, see all these machines, and aren't really sure what to do. What is a good workout? How hard are you supposed to train? And unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation out there for those new to exercise. Whether you're a former alcoholic or not. Look at an old episode of The Biggest Loser: people who are 400 pounds and pumping that elliptical while being screamed at by Gillian Michaels, who seems to be intent that her client drops dead right in front of her. That is not healthy at all for anyone. Athletes don't even train like that. We usually had three days a week of high-intensity training, two days more moderate levels, and one lighter day. If one's gonna go for broke every single session, pretty soon you're gonna hit a burnout, over-trained status, and you're gonna start to have negative returns. The only reason you see that sort of nonsense on your television is for ratings, plain and simple. In Jillian Michaels, she's a professional trainer and she knows better. The first thing you have to understand is that you have to start slow. Ideally, you're gonna want to build to a cardio type program of 45 to 60 minutes. You aren't training for an Olympic event. Neither am I in my now 50s. You're just establishing a consistent physical fitness program. When I began my return to fitness at 40, I started with three rounds on the heavy bag and just a few exercises lifting weights. I built that to 13 rounds and 40 minutes with the weights. I'm also a former competitive bodybuilder, so I do maintain a lifting program. But lifting weights isn't necessary as much as the cardio fitness. As a matter of fact, many lifters are in terrible cardio condition as that sort of exercise is anaerobic. In other words, it's not nearly as beneficial for cardiovascular health. Or if you want to gain a little strength work, you can do 15 minutes of weight or nautilus movements. But you don't have to spend two and three hours in the gym. You should be able to wrap it up in an hour, four to five days a week. Which begs the next question of what is the best type of cardio work in which to engage? There isn't a quote best type, only the best type that works for you. Some people like classes such as boot camp or Zumba. Nothing wrong with those at all. Others prefer 45 straight minutes on the elliptical. You can mix it up with three 15-minute intervals of elliptical, stationary bike, treadmill, or other cardio activities. Or maybe you just prefer speed walking. Is running okay? Sure, if your joints are fine with it. I used to run as part of my training, but in my mid-40s, my knees finally put the kibosh on that noise. But I've seen others still pulling off a few miles at a time in their 60s. The point is to get the heart rate up in a consistent manner four to five nights or mornings a week. So what is the quote right increased heart rate without having a coronary episode like Michael's was trying to initiate on her poor people? It's called a target heart rate. And minus any heart issues, it's easy to calculate. And always check with your doctor before you start this program if there are possible health issues. The target heart rate is a number that used to be hand-calculated with something known as the carvonin formula that I learned about a million years ago on a stone tablet in physical therapy school. There is something known as a maximum heart rate, which is simply 220 minus your age. Let's take myself. 220 minus 57 equals 163 beats a minute, or in other words, your maximum allowed pulse. The maximum pulse rate you should have for your age with exercise. The formula plugs this number at a 60 to 80% exertion rate, added with your normal resting heart rate, that you can find while taking your pulse. You do this without exertion. As said, it is a resting pulse rate. And then you take the formula, you find the 60% rate and the 80% rate, and just train somewhere in between. Say you're speed walking on the treadmill. If you check your pulse after 10 minutes, you should be somewhere between the 60 to 80% rate. This formula I give in the description part of this episode. But nowadays, you can just plug the numbers in the internet instead of doing it manually. Just look up the phrase, how to calculate target heart rate. After a while, you're not gonna have to check your pulse during exercise, as you're gonna intuitively know by your breathing where you are at. In essence, your breathing is supposed to be somewhat hard, you are supposed to be sweating, but you're not supposed to feel like you're gonna die like some of these gurus propagate. Here's how I recommend that you build your program to avoid overtraining. You start three days a week. How long you engage depends on how you feel. If you last 10 minutes, then that's where you start. 10 minutes a day, three times a week. After a month, build to four or five times a week. And build the duration, a minute or two each session, until you reach that 45 minutes to an hour. I go two days on and one off, which averages to almost five days a week. This method mentally keeps me going as I'm always close to a rest day without losing consistency. Some people exercise every other day, which is perfectly fine as we aren't athletes anymore. Five days a week is outstanding. Now some will tell me that they don't have the time. Nonsense. Used to drink for hours a night. You can do an hour, four to five days a week, even if it's just speed walking right from your driveway. Most will spend at least twice that amount of time on social media as for what I am proposing. Now there's the diet, which, if fitness is the bricks, then the cement is this aspect of holistic recovery. First, if you use cigarettes to get through the 45-day mark, then now's the time to eliminate them. That goes for everyone. Smoking is one of the dumbest things mankind has ever invented. I smoked during my last years of alcoholism and used the same nicotine to get through the phase two of recovery. I quit and so can you. The diet is largely just decent food mixed with a lot of vegetables and fruits, good protein from fish and chicken, as well as whole grains. You'll find that if you buy rice and pastas instead of those packaged dinners, your monthly grocery bill will dramatically decrease. You can drink coffee, but keep it to just a few cups a day at most. I rarely touch soft drinks, but do consume various juices, and the main staple is plain water. I keep sugar to a minimum. You don't have to be a killjoy, but one small to moderate dessert a day is enough. There is a physiological reason to this when you're on your way to cure from alcoholism. Because excessive caffeine, nicotine, and sugar actually induce cravings due to the physiological effect they have on the body. That's why the setup of AA is insane. Look at them, smoking every intermission, guzzling, coughing, engulfing those donor cookies. They're not only not helping themselves, but hurting themselves with defeating those cravings, especially the newer members. You can use all those additives to get you through that mind-blowing phase two of intense symptoms, but at day 45, you need to bring yourself to the healthy life, not the AA life. This combination of a physical fitness routine combined with a healthy diet will do far more to bring you to normality than the AA method. The physical fitness program will constantly drop the natural endorphins into your system. And guess what the effect is from Mother Nature's natural drug? It decreases the effects of cravings. You won't have as many, the durations of the ones that do come won't be as long, and the intensity of them will be less. I noticed that immediately when I began my return to physiological health. These cravings will occur on and off over the third phase to six months, in the fourth phase to the two-year mark, which I proclaim cure. But the physical fitness program will keep the symptoms to a minimum. There is nothing that matches the high of continuous and constant physical activity. If you continue my program, you'll find that you have a new addiction, your workout. It's always hard to start whether you have never exercised, are returning from a long layoff, or are a once physiologically destroyed alcoholic. But it's like the old adage states: it's simply a matter of taking that first step and then continuing to put one foot in front of the other. Or you can listen to the proponents of Alcoholics Anonymous, the group that has a massive failure rate and has no concept of healthy anything. The people who ingest toxins at their meetings, who don't go to the gym or run four days a week because that would interfere with their time in the rooms that they are afraid to leave. I always ask the 10-year sober AA member why he still feels the need to go to the rooms five and six nights a week. Why is this group so necessary for him to keep from drinking? It's because AA has become the center point of his life force. His master status is an alcoholic. The members have been programmed not to think in the realm of a holistically healthy return to self. They have been programmed to do the serenity prayer, to tell their story over and over, and that a life without the rooms is a life of fear. But I'm telling you to reclaim your life. And it starts with a return to physical well-being. For if you start with a life of physical fitness, you won't be living a life of fear anymore. You'll know what it's like to be living. And if you want some more reasons why AA is not a healthy way to advance to recovery, check out my playlist card at the end of the video. And check out my own guidebook on how to recreate your own life on all holistic planes. Reinvention of self, how to change your life and being forever. Link is on the video description as well as the channel page banner. And remember, you made the contract, so keep it. Be sober at sundown, and I will see you at the next sunrise.