E269: The Recipe

Nobody gets sober because they want to stop drinking. They get sober because their life isn't working — and somewhere along the way, someone handed them a set of instructions that actually helped.

Matt and Steve call it the recipe. Not a rulebook, not a religious text, not a list of suggestions. A recipe. Follow the steps enough times and something unexpected happens — it stops being something you do and starts being how you live.

In this episode they dig into what sobriety actually opened up. Not the big obvious wins. The quieter ones. The mental chess game that used to run constantly in the background — calculating how much is there, how much have I had, how do I get more without anyone noticing — just gone. The emotional bandwidth that comes back when you're not spending all of it protecting your access to alcohol. The way treating people better stops being a program principle and starts being muscle memory.

This one is for anyone who is still in the hard part and can't yet see what's on the other side. The recipe works. You just have to make it enough times before you stop needing to think about it.

Find Sober Friends: Website: https://www.soberfriendspod.com Email: matt@soberfriendspod.com

Transcript

Matt: 0:01

It is a Jedi mind trick. It is a recipe so that you are addressing all the underlying issues that you have that make alcohol your cure. Bill said that it is great that when we go off topic, sober, but not mature. I am doing the intro and am already off topic because I am thinking of Bill and sober, not mature in those two guys who like it when we go off topic. But I really want to talk about what sobriety opened up. I had this conversation last week with Dr. Jaffy and I am still thinking about what is good about sobriety because we talk about our struggles all the time when we had alcohol. But I want the newcomer to think about 'shit man this is too hard to do'. No, no, no. What was it like? Oh my God, I am glad I did this and I didn't realize life is easier because I got sober and just kicking off. It is the mental chess game ended with me. Just thoughts on the, um, on the topic.

Steve: 1:35

Good morning Matt, uh,

Matt: 1:36

good morning!

Steve: 1:38

Yeah. Happy, uh, Sunday to us and Tuesday when you hear this somewhere down the road. first thought is that I always like to be honest with our listeners and with other

Matt: 1:51

My

Steve: 1:52

people, and that is um, it's not, it's not easy. To get through early sobriety. If you're really struggling

Matt: 2:02

No.

Steve: 2:02

with it, I'm not talking about right. It's not easy. I don't want anybody ever come into us and think, oh, I'm going to stop drinking and then my life is going to change. It doesn't work that way for most people, okay, who come into some type of program regardless of what it is. It doesn't work that way. That you have to do a lot of work to get there. And just like you said, when you were talking, I'm like, the first thing that comes to my mind is that all of those thoughts around, not only around alcohol, but all of those thoughts that were connected, I didn't know we're connected to my alcoholism, but they were like, they're gone mostly, right? So I don't have this the mental gymnastics, this, this constant conversation in my brain, that today I understand was a lot of my alcoholic my brain wasn't functioning well because it was so abused by alcohol. And that's one of the reasons why again, if you study recovery in the brain science or recovery, it takes a while for your brain back to somewhat of a normal setting. And depending on how much we drink and where our starting points are and other mental health issues, it may never get back there. So you have to adjust to a new normal, if you will, so it's not easy. but the benefits are, I don't know, we I talk all the time. I have a life better than I could have ever dreamed right now I do and

Matt: 3:30

Yes,

Steve: 3:30

that has nothing to do with financial stuff has nothing to do with a lot of things has to do with I sort of figured out like, oh, this is what's important to me. Now I can try to focus on that kind of stuff, and then other things fall in the place. So

Matt: 3:51

money is just a part of life.

Steve: 3:53

Yeah,

Matt: 3:53

it really shouldn't be just about money. It should be a great life is, I'm able to navigate. And if I'm able to navigate effectively, there are other successes in life that should come as a symptom like money, money is like a side effect of other things you figure you're going to do okay money. Well, it doesn't mean I'm going to be a millionaire, but you're going to do okay money wise that you're going to have a roof over your head if you're able to navigate the rules of life effectively.

Steve: 4:24

Right.

Matt: 4:24

Removing alcohol allows you a better chance of that.

Steve: 4:29

Yeah, I first of all, I don't want to sound I mean, I get it like, you know, the whole thing out there, it sounds like a, you know, coming from a very privileged point of view. And it is and I absolutely do that. I understand my privilege and I can do that. I've seen enough room with enough guys who have the same feeling about life,

Matt: 4:49

the.

Steve: 4:50

who are nowhere near as financially

Matt: 4:52

Yes,

Steve: 4:53

stable as I am right like a matter of fact, a lot of those guys have a better like they are better more. And it's not uncomfortable in their own lives and skin than maybe I'll ever be

Matt: 5:06

yes,

Steve: 5:06

but. So I just want to understand I do understand how that sounds maybe to somebody who may be struggling. But it does happen you shut off the brain like you said, and then all of a sudden when all that stuff starts happening. stops happening, those conversations that alcohol, abuse, all that kind of stuff. The resentments, all that stuff we talk about all the time in recovery, all of those things, when you start, you're starting, you start to be able to navigate around those or eliminate those, then you can concentrate on what's important. Like, yeah, I need to live somewhere. Does that, does that mean that you're going to live in a suburb like you and I do? Maybe not. Maybe it means that you're going to rent a room somewhere. Maybe you're going to live in a suburb house. But you're going to have an opportunity to have a stable place that you can continue to get healthy. Because that's what you need. You need a stable place so that you can start to get healthy and then continue to get healthy. Whereas, it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard for you to, you know, without those things to stay clean and sober.

Matt: 6:21

Just that whole idea of what success and recovery looks like. When you're talking about, you may not live in a suburb, like we do. There are a lot of people who have no interest in living in the suburbs like we do, but that would be hell to them. So it's whatever. I get to live in the city and live through the excitement of the city without having drugs or alcohol be part of that ruining it. That be somebody's reality or could be I don't have to live with my parents anymore. That's a life better than I could ever imagine. So it's it's really whatever it is for you.

Steve: 6:59

yeah,

Matt: 6:59

Let me, let me give you the mental chess game. Is I used to love going to BYUB restaurants. There's this place on the shoreline of Connecticut, Castellos and Noank.

Steve: 7:10

Yeah.

Matt: 7:10

They have a sister restaurant Abbots right next to them, get lobster clams and you bring your own booze and bring a bottle of wine my wife and I one time we picked up one of her friends and we only had a bottle of wine and I just remember inside my head, I was furious because

Steve: 7:27

yeah.

Matt: 7:28

Friend like to drink pretty heavily too. Like that that bottle of wine wasn't going to be enough.

Steve: 7:33

Right.

Matt: 7:35

That is something that sobriety has lifted. The fact I don't have, we can go somewhere. I don't have to worry about the alcohol content is enough of being freeing. This is where a guy like Chip will talk about the steps form five is the inventory there as you're able to you're able to get more capacity and inventory in your brain because you're removing the crap you don't need anymore. This is removing crap I don't need. I have more inventory or hard drive space in my brain and that enough is a huge sobriety win. Nothing else because I don't have to do the mental gymnastics of, do we bring a bottle? Do we not? If there's a bar, do I drink? Do I not? What do I drink? How much am I going to drink? Am I driving? All of that mental chess game that's going on that takes up a lot of processing power is no longer a factor and the fact that I don't have to worry about that is is wonderful and I didn't expect

Steve: 8:42

that. That mental work of trying to arrange that in any attic or alcoholic knows exactly what we're talking about it's exhausting. It's exhausting to always have to think about how do I do this? It's exhausting to take a situation where you pick up a friend and you should have what you think, oh, this great little conversation friendship like a normal thing and the first thing in our minds was,"Shit, I can't drink as much of this bottle that I want to." Right? Because I know, you've talked about your wife barely drinks. That means you get to drink most of that bottle of wine.

Matt: 9:25

Damn

Steve: 9:26

Now you can't, right? So that in itself is such a relief, right? And again, in our recovery program, there's 12 steps of AA, it tells us that we'll have more energy, we'll be able to do more stuff, right? And when you read those things, you think, I thought, oh, physically, yeah, I'll feel better, I'll do stuff, I'll work out, no, no, no, we even talk in the mental, there's not that mental exhaustion. And then again, not only that mental exhaustion, but the emotional exhaustion, right? Because when I had to do those mental gymnastics, that chest match in my head, I would be like strung out. And then I would flip out over the little stuff.

Matt: 10:16

street, yep.

Steve: 10:17

And I'd have anger and rage and all that stuff because I was just so mentally exhausted of trying to protect what at the time seemed most vital to me, which was my ability to drink and my access to alcohol. That I had no emotional bandwidth to do it much else.

Matt: 10:38

Exactly.

Steve: 10:39

Right? So I was a very volatile for for this alcoholic, a very volatile, not a nice person to be around often. When I mean it's playing time sure. Especially if I had my booze. I was great to be around. what it looks and that's the start right and that's the whole point. We're talking about what it looks like this entry, you know, what the sobriety look like, what are the, you know, what's the best part of it? That's that's the start. I mean, first of all, I guess the start is physically you feel better, but when you start having these mental, emotional changes in your life, that's where you start realizing like, Oh, I didn't expect this. Like I, I didn't realize that I was going to get this benefit out of it and I think that's when I talk about it. That's what I mean. Like I don't, I don't have it. I don't have that anyway. Not and that doesn't mean it never happens. It means it just doesn't happen on a regular daily basis to me. And today I have some tools to deal with it. I have a fellowship to deal with it so that when I find myself in those places where I'm born down emotionally, in life is not loving Steve that I have an outlet to go find out what do I do with this besides picking up a drink, right? And because today I know like today, intellectually, I have the knowledge that I can't pick up a drink. So, so I have to, so I have to do all this stuff. Right. Anyway, I have to take action. That's what I have

Matt: 12:21

yep.

Steve: 12:21

to,

Matt: 12:24

This is where I like to about the recipe. I've discussed this in meetings and this is just how I look at things. This doesn't necessarily have to be an AA thing or a 12 step thing. And I can apply this to the 12 steps. I look at a recipe as if you follow these set of instructions and put in these ingredients, the inputs, then the output should be consistent with what the recipe saying you'll get. If I do, I make sourdoughs a tough one because there are variables, but make a sourdough loaf and I've got my starter the way it should be and I weigh everything out and I let it rest and fold it and do all the things to let it rise and then put it in the oven to bake for the set time that it asks or as you get better, you kind of learn, right? This is where I shave some things off the recipe because of my variables. You get a consistent output. The 12 steps are a recipe to me and not just these are the 12s. This is what you do the recipe so that you don't drink. It is a Jedi mind trick of it is a recipe so that you are addressing all the underlying issues that you have that make alcohol your cure that you no longer have to add alcohol as part of the recipe. It is removed. The problem with adding alcohol to your recipe is it causes other issues that it causes these side effects that pop up that not having alcohol there doesn't and that's not just after a while. Okay, I need to follow these steps and what step am I in so I know we're imbalancing my recovery. It just becomes how you work your way through life and how you think through things so that it's not just how you apply it to alcohol. It's how you apply it to anything in life. I'm a nicer person now because I've got it in my head that if I do the wrong thing, I have to make an amends and I prefer not to make an amends. So you learn, all right, what are those things you have to do to be better when you interact with the general public and if I do that well, there's no amends to be made that becomes the muscle memory around how do you treat people better? And once you start treating people better, you get benefits back that they like you better. They treat you in a different way. And then that becomes very rewarding and it becomes the inverse of a vicious spiral.

Steve: 15:05

Yeah, what?

Matt: 15:05

ahead.

Steve: 15:06

Go No, sorry.

Matt: 15:08

Go ahead. No, I'm done. I'm rambling.

Steve: 15:10

Okay, one of the things you said there and I agree. Like I said, everything right, it starts to snowball, right? You start to feel better. People start to treat you better. Maybe work goes better. Maybe you find work. Maybe you haven't been able to work, right? All those things, right? Then you start making money, which is, you know, double as sort sometimes, you know, people start making money and they find, oh, I got money in my pocket and that's a problem. So, so but eventually you'll start making money and you'll have some of this financial again. Financial financial success based upon where you are and what you're starting, not the based upon what maybe Matt and I have. But one of the things, I love the thought of the recipe and when you're talking, and then you said it at the end, was changing the recipe to the variables for me, right? Because I was thinking, yeah, that recipe is great. But the recipe you have might not work someone who's in Colorado and their, you know, the elevation is higher, right? The recipe needs to be tweaked, right? It needs to be tweaked depends on the flower you're using this salt you're using and the content of your water and all those type of things. So a recipe is a recipe but a recipe is also a starting point.

Matt: 16:32

Correct.

Steve: 16:33

It's a starting point, not an ending point. So I follow a couple, you know, mostly bakers, but also chefs, I follow this one bakery, a young woman who I love, who I've been following for years, who she started out making these videos as she worked for a company going in early baking stuff in the morning hated her job, hated her job. Then eventually got enough support through social media to go out and start her own company and now makes cookies and sons of mine line. And oh, man, I just lost my train of thought. But oh, but she, oh, that's what it is. So she's always talking about because she just did this little thing where she made six different cookies, right? Tweaking the recipes to try to figure out which one was the best one, which one that she think was the best that she was going to send out and start, you know, selling to people. So that's my point. It's always a tweak because we're individuals, we need to figure out what's going to work for us, which doesn't mean we need to do it on our own, right? That's the other thing, right? That's why AA, that's why AA has this this fellowship in this program because there's other people who have tried this recipe and they may have a tweak for you let you don't think about. So yeah, it's it's really a good, it's, it's a good idea. I mean, it's a good analogy in the fact that it's a great starting point. And once you start figuring out, you can, you can get it dialed in. You can get it dialed in and you could find a really sweet spot like your sourdough bread. That seems to be working, right? And that has become, it's working. So why why mess with it too much? And I think that's the same thing with our program, if it's working and things are good, why mess with it too much?

Matt: 18:34

Yeah, but on the other hand, now that I have mastered the basics of sourdough, what if I can make it better by looking for a more complex recipe now that I have the skills and have added some wheat to it? And now it tastes a little bit more like the bakery. And maybe, you know, I've got some herbs that I have in the garden. can throw all types of herbs in there or dried fruit or raisins or dates or whatever, you know, you're seeing online. And now I have something that is a boutique sourdough. You get my point. I think there's, there's, I was just thinking of this as we were talking, when you were talking about this woman, baking her cookie to make the best one. I do a lot of video editing work at work. And trying to learn after effects right now. I've got a purpose for it. You can look and say, "Gosh, this is taking me too long to throw my hands up." Or, "I made a mistake. I have looked at it now when I'm using the video editor and I'm playing with after effects of every opportunity I get in there is an opportunity to learn." And it's going to take me a lot longer on a project the first time.

Steve: 19:51

But

Matt: 19:52

I can't let that be the thing that stops me. That I need to put in some serious hours on this first project. But if I put the hours and time into this first project, I have made that time investment because I've learned the shortcuts and I've learned how to do it in the right order, and I can repeat that. And every time I, I repeat the task, I get better and better. And then I start to have that idea of, "Well, what if I add this piece in to make it even better?" And if you that a little bit over time you've taken a couple of steps a day, but over time you have spanned miles if you've done it consistently. And then you look back and say, "I have this skill set that it didn't have before that I looked at the program and all as I saw were all these windows and gadgets and gears." I'm like, "I don't even know where to start here." And now it becomes a language that you know fluently. This is kind of where I want to give you some encouragement that sobriety takes time. And it's not easy upfront. and it's not something you'll see the benefits of on day one or week one or month one. If you have the patience and you look at it then I'm building a skill set and I'm building something new when she get to a certain period of time you can look back and say, "Whoa, I've made progress." And to me that is very satisfying than the immediate gratification.

Steve: 21:23

I think you'll see success, I think there will be success early on. It'll be hard to notice it yourself. We always talk about in our program, "oh people notice the changes in me many times before I have." It's the same thing. Like again, that early sobriety, you're working so hard, many of us. I work so hard, I'm talking about, I work so hard for that early sobriety and I'm talking about first few weeks, maybe a few months, just not picking up a drink. Literally not picking up a drink. Fighting the mental obsession that I needed to pick up a drink that I couldn't see a lot. That was so difficult, that was so time consuming. That was so energy draining just to do that part of it. that I couldn't see the other stuff going on. My point is, early sobriety, you will see some stuff. You will have some changes being made, you will have positive changes. Your body will start to heal as soon as you take that alcohol. As soon as you stop to put in the alcohol in your body, it's going to start to repair itself. The human body is an amazing thing, as is the

Matt: 22:39

Yep,

Steve: 22:40

human brain. But they may not be noticeable to you right away. But they'll be noticeable and you will see it, and just as you just said, Matt, you'll be able to look back on it and go, oh yeah, I didn't notice that was happening at that point, but man, now I see how good that was and how I was making this small little incremental progress, even though I was not noticing it. So lots of things out there, but again, I'll go back to this. This is one of the reasons why if you're in some other recovery other than a 12 step program, a or a or any of the other,

Matt: 23:22

you know,

Steve: 23:25

we've talked about this before we came on the year. I don't know a lot about those other programs because a is when I follow, but I'm interested in some of those other ones, and what I'm interested in is the recipe. Right? I'm interested in the recipe. Like what's their recipe? Why is it work different? Obviously, it works some people, because one of the things I always say is that the biggest thing for me, especially nowadays, is the fellowship of a and I'm curious is how other places do their recipe and what they use and do they use a fellowship type thing. They don't so I have a lot of interest in that, but for me, it's it's about doing this program and then staying connected with the other people who have done it, who have figured out again, their way of doing it so that maybe, you know, like anything. Listen, if I go to culinary school and I get trained to become a chef, I just don't go take over a five star restaurant.

Matt: 24:31

No.

Steve: 24:33

Right? I have to start working under other people who have done it. And then I could go, you know, then I could build my skills just like we talk about not just, you know, not only the recipe, but skills and stuff like that. That to me is sort of how a work, right?

Matt: 24:49

Yep.

Steve: 24:50

Is I pull away the alcohol? I go into this program, and then I allow other people to teach me how they did it. And eventually once I'm strong enough, once I'm good enough, once I'm healed enough, I could start making tweaks to my own program. Right? As you talk, I could start making tweaks to that recipe when I feel comfortable enough and safe enough to do it. And again, I may want to run it by. And again, if you're if you're a chef, you're not making a brand new dish and putting it out to sell to people without having as much of other people taste it and say, Hey, what do you think?

Matt: 25:27

Correct.

Steve: 25:29

Again, that's how a works for me. Hey, you know, our buddy Edson always talk about it. Hey, what do you think of this idea? I think it's an ask backwards idea. I don't think you right? That's that's how we that's how it works for us. And I'd be very interested to see how that kind of stuff works in other programs. But for me, it it works for me. Again, I'm grateful and my life is so good to be able to sit here, you know, almost almost every Sunday morning with you. Log on, have the ability to do this work to get out there. I always say to put this out in the universe somewhere where other people listen to it and maybe get something out of it. That's the privilege. That's, that, that is part of my, that is part of what is so good about my life, that I couldn't imagine, right? I've been sober almost 16 years, well, at the time, right? I was, I would, I never imagined doing a podcast.

Matt: 26:31

I'd

Steve: 26:31

never imagined that I would, I would sit down and not, not only could, but you would want to do this. Now it's like one of my favorite things to do every week. Come here and sit down and we talk for half an hour, whatever, and, uhm, as that hopefully put it out to the universe and maybe, maybe helps some other suffering alcoholic.

Matt: 26:53

I was on Mark Stapleton's podcast recently, recovered. And he has phone callers that send their voice messages in.

Steve: 27:00

Oh yeah, yeah.

Matt: 27:00

And he had someone Hannah from England. And it's just amazing that you can put together a podcast and there are no boundaries on how far it can go and that. Mark is based in Michigan and he's been doing this podcast for years and years and years and he has somebody in England

Steve: 27:21

Yeah.

Matt: 27:22

who found it, who has, has almost the exact same amount of sobriities me. And found it and that became part of how she built her own recipe by listening to this podcast where the microphone was in Michigan. But it didn't matter the distance because the internet was able to get this all around the world as long as you had a way to pull it down from the cloud. That is an astonishing thing to me that that's possible.

Steve: 27:52

Yeah, just, just a sign up Bill Buckle up. Bill Hill would go off topic, off topic, Sara Silveman. I don't know if she has a podcast that I follow. Her whole show is based upon people calling and leaving voice mails and then she talks about those voicemails. So that's a pretty, you know, when you thought about that, like, oh, that's a silver, Sarah Silveman does her whole podcast is based on

Matt: 28:13

Mark doesn't do this is his whole podcast.

Steve: 28:14

Right. I know.

Matt: 28:15

I don't know if I'm this talented as Sarah that you gotta get a lot of voice mails and you gotta curate a lot of them.

Steve: 28:22

Yeah,

Matt: 28:22

but to have a good reaction, she's supremely talented as a community.

Steve: 28:27

Oh, of course,

Matt: 28:29

of course. And you've got to be quick of how do you make the shittiest voicemail in the world into something entertaining?

Steve: 28:35

But it's funny that you said that because I think that's a great idea, right? I mean, if you have, especially Mark has a big podcast right? I mean, his

Matt: 28:43

Hmm.

Steve: 28:43

hit podcast has been around for a long time and so. But yeah, it's, listen, it's, you know, I keep saying it keeps circling around in my head. Like, you know, the benefits of this program that I found are incredible. And, you know, one of the other things we have is, you know, we have, we have these promises, right? We have these promises again, you know, we talk about all times. Like some of the stuff is old and stuff like that. But basically I was told that when I came in, if I, if I did this recipe, and if I follow that, that I would, I would find certain things in my life that would be amazing to me. And I'll just tell you again, for, for my point of view, that has happened to me. And not only for me, right? I've been around a long time. I know a lot of people in recovery, it's happened to most of the people that I know who have stuck with this program. Right? They always say, right? 100% success rate for people who work this program, 100%. And I certainly find that to be true. And I find that there's not a single person, and I mean this honestly, this is not, there's not a single person who I know that came through with the AA or recovery. And I can, I can, no, I can't say me, I can only speak to a, um, who once they got here and once they got sober and once they removed their, their alcohol or drug, I can't think of one person who said, oh, I liked it better when I was out there. No, I mean that honestly.

Matt: 30:32

Yeah.

Steve: 30:32

Nobody, nobody says that, right? So it's a tried and true recipe, tried recipe that has found for me to be a way that I could live of life, of usefulness and all those things that I talk about here all the time. But life is life, I always, you know, a little caution. I always feel some caution in the life of life. Life doesn't, life doesn't always treat me the way I want it to treat me. I mean, that honestly and so, and I still get pissed off, I still get resentful, I still get angry, I still get whiny, but today I don't have to let it control my life and none of those things. I don't need to let those things control my life. because I have an option and I have a recipe and I just can always do, like I said, go home, use that recipe and I'm going to feel better.

Matt: 31:33

Here's the question for you. What mental energy are you spending right now? It's a bright could get back to you. Email me. Matt at soberfriendspod.com, the website, soberfriendspod.com, social media at soberfriendspod, instagram, tiktok, Facebook. I remember we're all--I think that's pretty much it. Steve, thanks for helping me hash this through today.

Steve: 32:01

It

Matt: 32:03

will see everybody next week. Bye everybody.