Hello and welcome to your sobriety and identity series.
I am Pamela.
I'm a certified recovery coach,
Life coach,
She Recovers coach,
And the founder of the I Do Not Drink movement.
In 2009,
I entered the world of sobriety because I had to.
I'm someone who cannot drink normally.
And while drinking was for a long time,
My best friend,
It had stopped working.
And so when I entered sobriety,
I entered sobriety from the perspective of,
Well,
It's the only thing that I now can do in order to stay alive and stop,
Well,
Wrecking my existence and the existence of those in my life.
So for me,
Sobriety was.
Abstinence and punishment and a burden that I was to carry the rest of my days,
Which in my head also created a story of lack.
Separation.
Smallness of shame.
Of lack of belonging.
And.
Well,
It wasn't an easy story to carry.
I just had no choice.
For five years,
All I was worried about.
Was following the instructions that I was given in order to stay sober.
Trying as much as I could to see it with eyes of positivity.
And a way to get connected to myself and to something bigger.
Bigger than me in regards to my life purpose,
But the truth is that inside,
Sobriety very much was for me.
About not drinking.
So imagine if the drink is here.
All that I was doing is trying to stay away from it,
To fight it,
To resist it.
To do everything in my power to fight against the craving and the desire to drink.
Still very much romancing in my head the idea that Drinking had been,
In fact,
At some point,
Like I said,
My best friend.
And that's very much the truth for many of us.
Drinking is very much.
The medicine.
The lifesaver.
For our lives.
And so you can imagine,
Right,
Under the concept that drinking really wasn't the problem,
But rather the solution.
All of a sudden a sobriety that was only based are not doing that.
Felt Very much like.
If this was the lifesaver that was keeping me afloat for so many years from the very,
Very difficult waters,
The ocean of my life that was very tempestuous.
If all it was was to stop doing this,
It was very much like saying,
Well,
We're going to get rid of your lifesaver.
We're going to get rid of your medicine.
We're going to get rid of the solution with which you have learned to do life.
To do life when it comes to relaxing,
To sleeping,
To bonding with people,
To socializing,
To getting over things that make you angry,
Things that make you sad,
To celebrate.
Like,
Literally,
It was just about not doing this,
And it left me.
And the storm of my ocean and the storm of my life without my lifesaver.
That idea of sobriety.
Is a very,
Very difficult one,
And many people have it.
For many people,
The goal is to be sober,
Aka not drink or not use the drug.
And so as the story goes,
Five years after this was the existence,
What I now call survivor sobriety,
I was just surviving without my medicine.
I drank again.
Because this sobriety is really painful.
So I drank.
I drank.
I told myself,
Maybe after five years,
It will be different.
And surprise,
Surprise.
It was not.
It was not different.
I'm someone who can never drink normally.
I'm someone who does struggle with a pattern of addiction.
And we're going to talk about that in a different video.
What addiction is.
And so,
In my relapse,
I started drinking.
I want to say politely.
It worked for about 2 minutes.
And then I didn't.
I went right back to square one.
And I stayed stuck there.
For not two weeks or two months,
But for a full two years.
With everything I thought I knew about my five years in that relapse,
I stayed stuck because I hated who I was when I was drinking.
And the lack of self-respect and the lack of self-trust that drinking brought me.
Also didn't like.
The experience that I had had in sobriety.
And so.
I knew.
That if I was going to start sobriety again,
I needed to start a different kind of sobriety.
And that is the sobriety that I'm so excited to talk to you about today.
When you think about it,
If all that I'm doing is abstaining from doing the thing.
That was keeping me afloat.
That doesn't really work,
Does it?
Because now I'm sinking.
But what if,
What if,
What if?
Instead of getting rid of the thing,
The lifesaver that was keeping me afloat from these murky waters.
What have I learned?
To swim.
What if I learned to swim?
What if,
Instead of sobriety being?
A fight against the drink.
Or the drug or the whatever behavior has kept me stuck in that cycle.
What if instead of fighting that,
My addiction,
My pattern,
My medicine,
My drink.
What if instead of fighting that,
What if I started to fight for?
My transformation.
So I'm not fighting against the drink.
I'm shifting perspectives completely 180.
And now I'm fighting.
For my transformation.
What if this news subrides?
Was about redesigning my life.
Learning to stay in my life instead of escape.
Quieting that horrible war.
That constantly happened in my head when I was drinking.
When I was in that sobriety,
Because let's be clear,
I put down the drink.
But I picked up other things.
Food,
Toxic relationships.
It's a thing.
It happens,
Right?
But what if this new perspective changed everything?
Because the purpose of this sobriety is not to to not drink?
It's about learning to be with my life.
Learning to get to know me differently,
Learning to be the author.
Of everything that I couldn't be with in this world,
In this life.
And so in other words,
I'm now learning to swim.
Sobriety is not about not drinking.
Sobriety is about learning to be with me,
Not escaping my life and learning to author my days.
Who can I be?
Without the war in my head.
Who can I be without the space that alcohol would take?
Who can I be without this fight that was against me?
And fully based on lack and abstinence.
And that's when sobriety shifts.
And so sobriety really is foundationally the space that is created.
When I take away that war with myself.
That has to do with drinking.
Or with using,
Or with whatever other toxic cycle has kept me trapped.
And now with sobriety,
I shift.
And to rewriting who I can be.
Without that.
And that's where the work begins.
If it were as simple as sobriety is not doing this thing,
Well,
Many people could do it.
But that wouldn't lead to anything.
Sobriety brings a beautiful gift that I had no idea during those first five years was available to me.
And that is.
The pen,
The pen that all of a sudden was in my hand,
Where I could author my life,
Where I could write the script of my story.
Because I no longer felt.
So disconnected.
Either fighting myself because I was drunk,
Or I was chasing the drink,
Or I was hungover.
I was always in a war with myself or the world.
But when I don't have that,
Now all of a sudden,
I get to write my story.
The beautiful guardian of my thought life.
I get to be me.
Someone who designs who they are in the world instead of just react to it.
I get to be someone who respects.
Themselves differently.
Someone who holds on to their word.
Because I'm not constantly betraying my sense of self,
My integrity.
I'm not constantly throwing myself under the bus and then wondering,
What is wrong with me?
The sorority is truly a gift.
And there is a process to get there.
For many people,
It is understanding that it's up.
Cleaner way to live?
You know,
Cleaner in thought,
Cleaner in integrity,
Cleaner also in health,
And they just can do it.
And that's awesome.
Good for them.
That's certainly not me.
We'll talk about the different kinds of drinkers and what is required for each person to explore sobriety.
But no matter where it is easy to just let it go.
Or it's a little bit more complicated.
I can tell you though,
That sobriety is the journey of a lifetime.
It's where it all begins.
Sobriety is not the end of your story with drugs or alcohol,
But it is the beginning.
And that is such a gift.
Sobriety the way that I am inviting you to think about.
It's not.
About putting the drink down.
It's about picking your life up.
And it's not the end of your story with alcohol or drugs.
It's about the beginning of your story.
With yourself.
And that is so powerful.
If you're here to explore sobriety,
I really invite you to ask yourself,
How do I see sobriety?
Do I see it as punishment?
Or do I see it?
As possibility.
Do I see it as what I can no longer do?
Or can I start to see it as the space that I am creating?
To evolve into who I can be.
Alcohol was the medicine,
But it was always also the box.
Who can you be when you step out of that box?
It's so exciting.
Thank you for having me be a part of your path.
I encourage you to continue watching.
All of the beautiful videos that I'm going to be bringing to you so that I can share,
You know,
The journey that I started in 2009.
And has absolutely transformed my life.
I'm so grateful for you.
And I'm so proud of you too.
I hope you're proud because you're watching this and you're doing this work.
