Burn The Ships

I follow a lot of newly sober people on twitter and have recently seen a few people who are back at Day 1 again. I have been there. I had a few years twice and ended up drinking again. I’ve quit so many times in my mind in the morning only to end up at the liquor store or bar later that day.

Not all journeys are the same. No two people are the same. Going back and having a drink isn’t wrong. Alcohol is legal. After all, I can drink if I want but I choose not to. But what about the person who really and truly wants to stop but can’t? Or the one who can get 30 days or a few months but end up drinking again even though they feel guilty about it.

There’s a saying I heard recently called “burning the ships.” This is used quite often on a podcast I listen to, but I’ve heard it used elsewhere since. It’s an interesting one. Burning the ships, to me, means severing my connections with the world of before. Cutting off the people, places, and things which threaten my sobriety. Imagine landing on an island and starting a new life, but burning the ship you came to the island on. That’s what burning the ships means to me. Cutting the old life off and focusing solely on the new way — and to be excited about it!

Call it relapse. Call it backsliding. Call it whatever you want. You’re not wrong for it. It doesn’t make you a bad person. Alcohol is addictive. It’s slickly marketed to us to make us feel as if we’re missing out if it’s not present at every single thing in life. After work. Baseball game. Vacation. Weddings. Graduation. Etc. And those are just the positive events. Subliminally, the media tells us to drink at other unpleasant experiences like divorce, death, job loss, bad day at work, stress from the kids, etc. It’s a full-on assault on our eyeballs and ears to convince us that we need to drink.

But we don’t.

I have slipped before and when I did, it wasn’t a day or two and I was back to being sober again. I lost a few years of sobriety in 1996 and stayed drinking until 2012 when I quit for good. 16+ solid years of drinking. I couldn’t burn the ships.

Burning the ships is hard because we can have deep, emotional connections in our life we think we’ll never regain if we can’t drink. I have found this to be completely untrue. It didn’t happen overnight but I life a great life today. Alcohol is small in my life. I can go anywhere and do anything because I have burned the ships. I’m on the island of sobriety and there’s no going back. I’ve created a life I love and you can do the same.

What are you holding onto? What do you think you won’t be able to enjoy without alcohol?

What if I told you you can enjoy anything and everything without alcohol? Because you can. I did it and so can you!

Time to burn the ships.

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