Black Coffee

Black Coffee and a Conversation

I had coffee with a friend about a month ago. Typically, he makes fun of me for the amount of sugar I put in my coffee…and he’s by no means the first to mock my bad and unhealthy habit. But on this particular day he arrived at the coffee house, and after grabbing his drink, sat and began sharing a story. It took less than a moment before he stopped abruptly in the midst of his story and said, “You’re drinking black coffee!” I responded, “And no sugar either.” We hadn’t met for a couple weeks so this was big news to him, but for me it was Day 11 without the “legal cocaine” in my coffee.

Today, as I begin working on this story, it’s Day 39. Only now am I feeling a measure of credibility and self-respect to speak more deeply about my accomplishments. After years of trying and quitting on myself, the decision to talk about this has come with a fairly guarded mentality.

• So, we’re talking about sugar here?
• No… We’re talking about addiction.

“Why Can’t Today Be Day One?”

Let me go back to the morning of Day One briefly. It was early on a Tuesday morning when that question entered my mind. I was driving in to Greeley to meet my daughter for coffee when the thought meandered across my mind. I knew exactly what the question was implying…why not make another commitment to stop using sugar. But the scope of the question was far greater…reading between the lines the question was really asking me, why not make another commitment to getting healthy…losing weight…eating right…avoiding diabetes…pursuing quality of life…becoming free!

For anyone who has attempted unsuccessfully to make important changes in their life, a sense of contempt for self can flood our thinking as we mentally relive all the failed attempts we’ve made to “beat” something we’ve felt in bondage to. Over time, our secret thoughts begin to create a sense of doubt about our own credibility. If I may truly be honest here…I came to a place where I simply thought I was full of crap when it came to follow through with the changes I desperately wanted to make. I had no problem sitting across the table from others discussing how they should make those important changes in their lives…. but I had come to the conclusion I was simply not credible when I would speak of my own plans around personal change. When you’ve battled with an addiction, relapsed, pulled yourself off the ground, relapsed, crashed and burned, and this cycle goes on and on and on, there comes a point when a guy wants to go “Jim Carey” on himself. Liar Liar – Jim Care

It’s a humorous scene in a silly movie, but for those of us who want to be real and honest regarding struggles we rarely make known in our Facebook’s “best-life-ever” status updates, there comes a point when relapse after relapse leads to a place where we simply want to play the B.S. card on ourselves when we start squawking about our self-improvement plans.

I don’t mean to belabor the point, but we truly must appreciate all the garbage that goes with “addiction”.

• There’s the junk that led to the addiction in the first place… Circumstances that led us to seeking out certain behaviors or substances in order to deal with life.
• There’s the drug itself and the physical and psychological dependence that’s been created… and that drug could very well be a behavior or habit… When we think of addiction, all too often we think of alcohol or some illicit drug, but if you think about it, there are destructive addictions which have moved dangerously close to “normal” in our culture because so many struggle with them.
• Then, there’s the distorted perspective of self that develops from years of failing to beat the addiction…  How does one quantify the damage to one’s own psyche through years of self-inflicted mental abuse driven by shame, destructive and crippling thoughts about personal identity, and all that leads to a state of learned helplessness?

Learned helplessness is a condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed. It is also thought to be linked to depression.  Any of that going on around us?

In my day-to-day conversations with so many of my probation clients, learned helplessness is a real issue. Their perspective of self is so distorted they struggle with believing they have the strength to beat addiction and win their battle. One gal cried in my office as she verbalized a core belief she held that she did not deserve to be happy in this life. She verbally vomited in my office about all the damage she had caused in family relationships, failures she suffered to hold down jobs, and an inability to remain free from the drugs. She no longer used because she wanted to… she despised the drug even in the moment she was using it.

Can you relate to that thinking?  Come on…step across the aisle and join us for a moment.  Have you never sat in front of the TV binging on shows you’ve already watched, or really have no interest in watching…and as you sit there, you wonder to yourself why you’re wasting your time?  Maybe you’ve gotten into a rut and you find yourself sleeping longer than you should…and the sleeping is driven by a motive to avoid dealing with life issues.  You’re not resting…and as you lay there, nothing feels good about what you’re doing, yet you have the hardest time pulling out of the mode you’re in.  Then, there’s the donuts brought into the office….even though you don’t want them, you find yourself shoving a bite into your mouth….

Maybe it’s just me here…but I can relate powerfully to a person addicted to a drug and despising it even as they use it.

So, Back to Day One

The fight to be free from destructive (or perhaps simply counterproductive) behaviors and thinking patterns is a very real one…and they have built a stronghold.  They will not surrender peacefully.

This is Monday morning, it’s a new week.  Why not today?  Why can’t today be your Day One?  Start by identifying one thing you want to go after and target it.  Make a specific commitment to yourself about what it will look like to “win” and what it will look like to “lose” today.

For me, the ultimate goal is physical health which involves so much more than cutting out sugar in my coffee, but I have to experience what it feels like to “win” again, so it’s real simple for me…no sugar in the coffee.

Today is now Day 48 in my sugar/coffee battle; and it’s Day 23 in my battle to quit phone app games…a major time waster and distracter!  Today is Day 1 in a new commitment I am making to add something into my life, and this brings up a great point!  It’s not all about identifying behaviors and thinking patterns to stop, but also identifying those that you want to start or increase.

Think about this very simple truth right now:  If you don’t win Day 1, you won’t win this fight.  You have to win Day 1.  Then, tomorrow, it’s all about Day 2.  So….I’ll ask one more time, why can’t today be Day 1 for you?