Well we have reached 10 weeks. No booze.

The changes have been well-documented on this blog. I have nothing new to add. But what I will say is that there are times when weird thoughts creep into my head that I didn’t expect.

Like for instance the fact that I feel less creative sober than I felt when I was drinking alcohol.

Ok… Maybe not less creative but more like the fact that creativity is a conscious thought now whereas before I just went with it. This happens a lot with creators.

You’ve probably read multiple accounts of musicians and painters and writers feeling the pressure to create when they sober up and wondering if your creativity was because of your substance abuse.

I can tell you that I do not believe that I am actually less creative. I don’t think I’m actually less imaginative. I don’t think I’m actually less artistic. I think that what has happened is that now the creativity takes concentration. I have to purposely and purposefully sit down and do my thing.

I think sometimes we fall for narratives that we have been told from a romantic standpoint. The quote from Hemingway which he actually never said, is “write drunk, edit sober.” That’s meant to be a guide for this romantic notion that writers are all a bunch of introverted drunks.

Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue once talked on his radio show about the fact that he was expected to be creative every single day when he was a heroin addict and when he wasn’t a heroin addict he was expected to recreate stuff that was going on in his head as an addict.

That’s not possible.

Think about the last time you were drunk. Your emotions likely ran very high. Either you laughed atdl everything. Or did things, like karaoke, that you would never do if you were sober…. Or you got into some volatile argument that really escalated. Passions, both negative and positive, ran high (forgive the pun).

A key part of creating is the ability to lower filters and let fly with your internal truth. That’s hard to do sober. It’s easy to do under the influence.

Something happens in your brain on substances.

Go back to that feeling of being drunk. Go back to that feeling of being high. Think about that for a second.

You can’t recreate that exact same feeling. Your brain is fundamentally changed, chemically, when you are consuming alcohol. It doesn’t mean that you can’t find a new way to be creative but it doesn’t come in the same stream. You have to learn to access a different stream.

Because Let Me Tell You Folks, the pros a bean alcohol-free outweigh the pros of drinking, tenfold.

Just like anything it’s about learning. When you lose a bunch of weight you have to learn a bunch of new things. You have to buy new sizes of clothes. You have to adjust to the fact that you have more energy and you have more hours in your day to fill up with things other than sitting on the fucking couch.

This is about learning a new thing. It’s about trying on new sizes. It’s about adjusting. Because I don’t want to go back down that road of alcohol abuse and depression and lack of external motivation. If that means my creativity takes a hit until I learn to access these new streams in my brain, that’s okay. Because the pros outweigh the cons by a lot

If you’re on this journey with us can you hit 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 weeks – – give yourself a pat on the back. And know that it gets easier. And the weird things that come into your head about the fact that maybe you need a drink simply aren’t true.

Peace