The Journey is the Destination

When I write these blogs they often evolve from their muddled, embryonic form into some kind of mini personal revelation. It’s a process that leads to greater clarity, the type of clarity that I struggle with, unless I am journaling and scrutinising my overcrowded mind. However, clarity alluded me a few days ago when someone in a bar asked me a pretty straightforward question, ‘why did you quit alcohol?' I was taken by surprise, not by the question, but my inability to deliver the killer answer having spent 3.5 of the last 5 years living AF. I stumbled over the question like a floundering interviewee desperately trying to recall the mic drop answer, before eventually spewing out an old story about binge drinking and mobile phones with the conviction of a feather in the wind. 

Seeking to salvage something from this missed opportunity to spread the joys of living AF, I thought hard about why it can be so difficult to explain something that I have given so much time to understanding over the past few years. I concluded that the context of being in a bar, with people who are enjoying a few pints, is rarely the right time to wax lyrical over the benefits of living AF. Of course it isn’t. I would have steered as far clear of that fun sponge as possible during my drinking days. I am also conscious that I don’t know anyone else's full story; I might know some surface level stuff, but everyone’s story runs so much deeper than that. That is something I am sensitive to during casual conversation. That’s also why I created this blog, the neutrality of putting it out there and inviting people to come and see if my journey resonates. Perhaps now these blogs exist, I could politely signpost people towards them if they really want to know more. What about the answer to the question though? Why did I quit alcohol? I have shared many positive reasons to live AF, but never really taken a deep dive into why this all started in the first place.  

Values and Alignment

After some really deep reflection, the two words that kept arising were hope and faith. I might be doing them a disservice, but I’m pretty sure the lads in the bar weren’t looking to open a deep philosophical conversation, so perhaps the little anecdote I shared was sufficient that day. A couple of days later though, I discovered some podcasts containing motivational talks by the late Jim Rohn. Among the many gems of advice, the hardest hitting message was about aligning the way you live your life with your core values. To do that, Rohn says, you first have to get brutally honest about what they are, and that was something that I had started to do in the months leading up to starting my AF journey. That is also the answer to the question 'why did you quit alcohol?' in the tiniest little nutshell. It was the realisation that my values and the way that I was living my life did not align. 

Having not been able to see it before, I was beginning to recognise that I had always had strong values. For many years though, my behaviour didn’t align with them; a recipe for emotional disarray as I hurt others and myself along the way. The common denominator for my misaligned behaviours was alcohol. You might argue that it’s not alcohol’s fault, it’s mine and for many years I’d say the same. Until I flipped the narrative and it filled me with great hope that the fulfilment, peace and joy that alcohol had promised, and failed to deliver time and time again, might actually be found elsewhere.

The journey is the destination

Before I decided to go AF, alcohol was a fast-track pass to temporary contentment, peace and a quiet mind. Rohn and also Marc Lewis, in The Biology of Desire, acknowledge that our brain creates pathways to pleasure and it will always seek the most direct route. Alcohol, and other drugs, activate direct pathways to pleasure, like a Ferrari at full throttle on an open motorway. Don’t get me wrong, if Google maps offers a faster route, I’m taking it, but that’s usually because I just want to reach my destination as quickly as I can. In life though, the destination I was reaching through the alcohol fuelled fast track was becoming less and less desirable as my values grew stronger. I started to eye up the less trodden path with curiosity. Yes there was some trepidation, but I started to see that, maybe, the journey is the destination. Knowing that there was another path is one thing, but choosing to take it was an act of faith. First I needed hope though, hope that there was something bigger than my self-centred seeking of instantaneous pleasure, and that beyond all that there was something better. Something that I could never see at 200mph on the motorway to instant gratification. 

A journey of hope and faith

By taking the leap of faith onto the less trodden path, I now have to accept responsibility for every choice I make, as well as those that I made in the past. Alcohol enabled me to excuse myself for sloppy habits, talking rubbish, sleeping in, eating rubbish, being unreliable, hurting others, putting myself at risk, late nights and any other questionable decisions made whilst under the influence. It was too easy to use alcohol as a shield to do as I pleased without accountability. Now though, living AF, I am disarmed and 100% accountable!

As my values have become clearer, I now recognise that the times when I get low can often be attributed to a lack of alignment between my behaviour and my values. I am still working my way through the overgrowth, facing everything that I once zoomed straight past (sometimes with the windows fogged up and no brakes in case of emergency). As I clear the path, it is essential that I replace old habits with fresh seeds of hope, a new habit that is good for my mind and body. If not, the Poison Ivy will grow back with a vengeance. My mind still wants to take the easy path to pleasure; knowing intellectually what is needed to find inner peace is not the same as enlightenment on a spiritual level, says Rohn. I had a spell of gaining control of my eating habits, but that’s out the window now. I feel like I’ve been stuck on an intellectual understanding of a few things like this since going AF, but there’s still plenty of work to be done. When will I finally put down the bloody phone! 

A work in progress

It’s fair to say that I am still very much a work in progress as I negotiate this sometimes scary, but mostly beautiful, pathway in pursuit of genuinely meaningful experiences. The lure of the high speed motorway to hedonic, frivolous pleasure still pulls me in way too often, mostly taking the form of scrolling reels or clattering a bag of skittles. At least I don't forget to de-mist the windscreen and I've fixed the brakes now though. I am far more aligned with my values than before I went AF, and that is real progress. When hope is high, so is my spirit. I cannot say for certain how this ends, or whether it will ultimately prove a net positive for me and my family, but for as long as I feel I am a better person for being AF, I will continue with faith. There is still plenty of overgrowth to clear, but choosing AF has given me both a blueprint and the hope that those fast-tracks to nowhere can be re-routed.

So that is the answer I was searching for in the bar that day. I am sure the lad who asked will be relieved he was spared it; I am grateful he asked though, and I hope you are too.