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The Personality Sobriety Stole From Me (And What I Found Underneath) · Recovering Out Loud

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Today I want to talk about the personality change that happens
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when you get sober. So welcome back everybody.
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Recovering out loud, Anthony, alcoholic addict.
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I think I'm this sort of person. When I'm using and I'm drinking
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out there I am. Alcohol and drugs gave me a
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personality. It took away my fear.
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It took away my emotions. I was talking about this, but I
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felt more confident when I would walk into a room and I was high
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or drunk. I felt like I could connect with
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the people in the room. I could open up more, I could
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tell funnier jokes, I could dance, I could.
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I just fit in. Nobody was laughing at me or
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looking at me or wondering about me, and no one was talking about
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me. All these things, these thoughts
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in my head would shut off when I would use and drink.
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And so there's a personality change that I'm chasing here
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when I'm using. I don't like sitting with myself
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sober. So I use these substances, coke,
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alcohol, meth, to fit in, to feel a part of, to feel
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connection. As we know, the opposite of
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addiction is connection. Now when I come into recovery, I
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need to learn who the fuck I am first of all.
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And then I need to love that true self.
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I need to understand all the inadequacies, all the twerks,
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the the things that I do, the idiosyncrasies, the little
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things that drive me, the things that bother me and so that I can
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sit with them and be comfortable, be OK in my own
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skin without needing to take a drink.
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I can build a life so big I don't need to escape from.
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That's what I'm gonna talk about in today's episode is this
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personality change that sobriety takes away it take away from me
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and what I replaced it with. Why getting sober, why getting
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sober made me feel like a a worse version of myself at
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first. Getting through that hump, that
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hard beginning spot, most people expect sobriety to make them
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feel more like themselves. I'm going to unpeel the layers
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of the onion to realize who I am, and I'm going to get sober
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and I'm going to be more calm. I'm going to be more free.
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I'm going to be more confident. The real version.
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Finally, what actually happens and what nobody really warns you
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about is that the first thing sobriety did was introduce me to
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all of this identity that I didn't recognize I was
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uncomfortable with. Because let's be honest, the
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moment you start using or drinking in a problematic
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matter, abusing whatever, you're in that cycle of addiction, the
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moment we start to get into that, we stop aging, we stop
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growing emotionally. We, we, we stay stagnant and we
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stop growing. We stop developing as adults.
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We that's why a lot of people, you hear them say when they come
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in, I'm two years old because it feels like that.
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It feels like I'm a child when I first come in.
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My emotions are raw. I want to cry all the time.
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I'm I'm really concerned and worried about what people are
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thinking of me too much to the fact that I isolate and I get
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myself away from situations. I'd say no to things because I'm
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uncomfortable in my own skin and I don't know how to behave
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without a drink in my hand or a drug in my body.
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So this version of myself that I didn't recognize, he had
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opinions. He was uncomfortable in rooms, a
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lot of rooms. He didn't laugh at things that
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weren't funny. He took up space in a way
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drinking me never did. I took up a lot of space.
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I was, I felt like a burden a lot of times when I was first
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coming in and not in a way people always liked, right?
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You, when you act more like yourself, you pull in more the
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true version of yourself. You pull in more people and but
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you're gonna push away a lot of people.
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There's gonna be a lot of people that are uncomfortable with your
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type of personality and your people will eventually find you.
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I always say this, but if you stay sober long enough, you're
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gonna find a group of people that are right for you, that fit
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your mold, that are like your personality for who you are.
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When I'm drinking and using, I can be a chameleon man.
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I fit into any room. I fit into any group.
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I feel a part of of anything because I don't have morals or
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boundaries or none of that matters.
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I I just say yes to things and I want you to like me, so I'll do
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whatever it takes for you to like me.
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I present my stage character. So I spent months thinking that
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something had gone wrong when I first got sober because I didn't
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like this version of myself. I didn't recognize this version
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of myself. Nothing had gone wrong.
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What I thought, my personality, what I thought was my
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personality, it wasn't. And this episode is about how
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what I found underneath and how I found it and what it cost me
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to find it. So again, this episode is, as
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with all my episodes, it's lived experience.
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I'm not preaching from a mountaintop.
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I'm not telling anyone this is how they should recover.
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Recovery is a very personal journey.
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This is just my personal experience.
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So take what you like and leave the rest.
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Look for the similarities in my story and my experience and not
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the differences. Look for the similarities.
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That'll help you a lot in all recovery spaces.
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So this episode is for two groups, the newly sober who are
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starting to notice their real personality and don't like what
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they're seeing. And that's OK.
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I didn't like what I was seeing at first.
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It's it's ugly, it's uncomfortable.
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I was covering it with drugs and alcohol for a long time.
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Now I got to put up with me. Oh my God, I was escaping this
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guy for so long. You know, Alan Watts always says
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that is that addicts and Alcoholics use and drink to
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escape themselves, not to escape the world, but to escape
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themselves. That hits me when I hear that.
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So first group is the newly sober, like I said, and then the
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second group of people is the long term sober, the especially
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the dry drunks who never clocked this because they white knuckled
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past it or they just ignored it and they're not aware.
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The promise here is that this is going to be reflection first,
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then practical. So it's not a framework, not a
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method. It's what I actually do.
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And if you don't know me quickly, I'll tell you I had 7
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1/2 years. I've been in recovery since
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2015. I had 7 1/2 years and I relapsed
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on secrets and ADHD medication and steroids and I'm back now.
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I came back into recovery in 2025 of January.
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I have about a year and a half now and I do this stuff because
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I like doing it. It keeps me sober and I know,
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God knows. I'm always looking for more
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recovery information. So hopefully this episode helps
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you understand the personality change that comes with getting
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sober that also comes with drinking and drugging and how to
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find that true self and love that true self 'cause that's the
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ultimate goal in life here. How do I love myself, find my
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true self and love my true self? So we've all probably had this
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feeling where you're out at a social event, you're in a room
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full of people. Maybe you're not friends with
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everybody there and you feel uncomfortable.
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Those thoughts are of people are looking at me, people are
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judging me, people are making me feel uncomfortable.
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I don't like this. And this is sort of when we have
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the realization that, wow, I have a lot of opinions.
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I have a lot of things that I don't like about myself.
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There's a lot of anger coming up and in early recovery, if you
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don't have that time gap between when the thought comes and when
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the action comes, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes.
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You're gonna piss a lot of people off because you're gonna
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share some opinions that people would rather not hear.
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You're gonna freak out and act on anger and other defects of
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character when you wish you hadn't.
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You wish you had stayed silent instead.
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This is where meditation comes in and allows us to realize
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those emotions and thoughts coming up before we act on them.
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So there's been times in my recovery where I've literally
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caught myself in mid performance.
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The laugh was already out of my, my brain registered.
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It wasn't funny. I'm just people pleasing.
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I'm wanting to fit in. I'm dishonest.
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I'm I just, I want you to like me.
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There's a split second of dual awareness here where you're
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knowing you're doing it and you're unable to stop it.
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Has anyone ever had that where you're getting angry at your
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wife or your husband and you see yourself getting angry, You're
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feeling this anger come out and you'd rather not be doing this,
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but you're doing it anyways because it's just that quick
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second where it just comes out and you're acting on your
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defective character. It's the vertical of losing your
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own opinion in real time. You're just people pleasing.
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You're fitting in. Then what happens is a couple
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weeks go by and I, you can't stop noticing the pattern.
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I start to notice this pattern. I'm I'm getting really angry at
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people that are not following the social rule for me.
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I'm, I'm feeling like when somebody doesn't hold the
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elevator or respect the space at home in my in my building, it
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really bothers me. I really want to say something
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when the guy is riding his bike on the sidewalk.
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That really pisses me off and it doesn't piss anyone else off.
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Before those, those things used to not bother me at all.
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Now they're bothering me. So this isn't new behavior.
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It has always been there. Sobriety just gave you enough
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bandwidth to catch it, to realize it, to be aware of it.
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So what's actually happening here?
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When you picture yourself at the most comfortable, most social,
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most at ease in a group? What was actually happening in
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your body in those few moments when you're the most
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comfortable, you're the most at ease, you're the most social,
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you just feel like you don't have to perform, you just fit
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in. Things are easy.
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You can let out your personality and be vulnerable.
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What's happening to your body in those moments?
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Were you confident or were you anesthetized?
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Were you numbed? Were you numbing?
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Alcohol does not make you more confident.
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It turns down the volume on the part of your brain that's
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scanning the room for threats. So drugs and alcohol are turning
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down that part of my brain that are looking for threats, looking
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for fear. The fear, the anxiety that
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people are thinking about me, it just turns down the volume knob.
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And that's why for a long time it worked because I could go
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anywhere and have fun and everywhere was fun because I
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didn't care. That's also why it makes it,
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it's so hard when you come in to work, like when you're in active
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addiction at the end, it's so hard to, for me, I couldn't
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picture leaving my house without having a drink or a bag on me.
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That was it. I, I couldn't leave the house.
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There was no purpose for me to go out into the world unless I
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had drugs or alcohol. My safety, my, my safe
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substance, my emotional manipulator, if you will.
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So there's hyper vigilance. Vigilance, which is the low,
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constant, low awareness, low level awareness of whether the
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room is happy with you, whether you said the right thing,
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whether the vibe shifted. Alcohol quiets all of that, that
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that hyper awareness, that hyper self consciousness that I always
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talk about. It's like I'm always thinking
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about how I'm acting and I'm very careful and it's a very
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exhausting place to be to be in this sort of state where you're
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just constantly thinking of what others are thinking of you
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instead of just being present in the moment.
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When it's quiet, you feel free, you feel like yourself, but
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that's your nervous system on pause, not your personality on
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display. Alcohol pauses my nervous
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system, drugs pause my nervous system.
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Then there's something that's called a fond response.
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We have fight, flight, freeze and fond.
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Fond is the one that a lot of people don't talk about.
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It's this sort of enmeshment to the the threat.
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So I'm, I, I was, I had a fond response to drugs for a long
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time. They were like my best friend.
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I was attached to them at the hip.
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They were my God. My higher power finding is when
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your, your nervous system's survival strategy is to make the
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threat comfortable, agree with it, appease it, make it happy so
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it doesn't hurt you. We do this with the drugs a lot.
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I I want to make the threat comfortable.
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I'm agreeing with it. This isn't that bad.
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It's not that bad. I like this.
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We're friends. This is a good thing.
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Drugs aren't that bad for me just to justify and keep using.
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So I'm not sitting here and saying that everyone who people
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pleases has trauma. I'm saying that this is a
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concept that helped me understand my own pattern.
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Take it or leave it like the rest of this podcast.
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The question it forced me to ask though, was my agreeableness a
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choice or was it a strategy? I've been running so long it
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feel stopped feeling like a strategy.
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So was I agreeing? Was I choosing to be an
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agreeable person or was it a strategy?
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I've been running for so long it stopped feeling like a strategy.
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Then there's the codependency piece of this.
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Melody B talks about it. Great book, Codependent.
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No more uncomfortable read Because I was on most pages it
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was me. She was talking about me.
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The specific thing that hit for me was a lot of what looks like
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caring about other people is actually managing your own
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anxiety about whether they're OK with you.
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So a lot, let me read that again.
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A lot of what looks like caring about other people is actually
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managing my own anxiety about whether they're OK with me.
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The checking in that really isn't about them.
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The keeping the peace. That's actually about keeping
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yourself safe. So to connect it all together,
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alcohol plus a fond response, nervous system, a lifetime of
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people pleasing equals, a combination that looks from the
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outside like a great personality.
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Wow, he's a great guy. He always agrees with everything
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I say. He laughs at all my jokes.
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It's I'm easy going, low drama, agreeable.
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He's everybody's friend. But then you take the alcohol or
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drugs away and the hyper vigilance doesn't go away.
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It gets louder because the medicine is gone and now you've
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got no volume knob. So all this stuff.
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I'm constantly thinking about what other people are thinking
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of me. I'm constantly thinking about
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how I'm did I just say something stupid?
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Why did I say that? I'm repeating that last joke I
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said in my head that wasn't funny and it didn't land the way
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I thought it landed. Now I'm thinking about this the
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whole dinner and everyone else, nobody else is thinking about it
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or I'm thinking about it the next day or two days or three
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days. It's exhausting.
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So This is why early sobriety can feel like you got worse at
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being a person. You didn't get worse.
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The anaesthesia wore off, the medicine wore off, the drug
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stopped working because he stopped using them.
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The work was always going to be here, you just couldn't feel it
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before. So the identity crisis that
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nobody names this is a new territory.
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It's what separates a dry drunk from somebody actually
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recovering. The question underneath all this
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is, if I'm not an easygoing person, if I'm not the easygoing
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one, who am I? If the agreeableness wasn't
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really me, what is? That question sounds
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philosophical, and it doesn't feel philosophical when you're
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living it. But think about it for a moment.
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Like, who am I without alcohol and drugs?
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Who am I without the substance in my body to protect me from my
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brain, my emotions, my thoughts, my uncomfortableness, my defects
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of character, whatever they may be?
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It feels like standing in a room you've lived in for years and
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not recognizing any of the furniture.
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Like what's going on here? This is all new to me.
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I don't get it. What drinking gave you that
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Sobriety takes back permission. Permission to be loose, to be
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loud, to not monitor yourself, to be you.
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The drink wasn't the thing you were addicted to.
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The permission was the relief of not having to be so careful all
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the time. You can just take your bra off,
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take your shoes off, relax a little, breathe that exhale.
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That's what alcohol and drugs did for me, man.
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Just allowed me to be myself, allowed me to not monitor
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anything, to not be aware. And This is why it's so hard
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when we come into recovery, because how do I do that without
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substances? How do I accept myself 100%
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fully as I am in this moment, without numbing, without
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escaping? Sobriety asks you to source that
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permission internally, and it's hard.
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This is an inside job. There's nothing out there that's
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going to fix this. There's no pill, there's no car,
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there's no money. There's no amount of jobs or
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financial security that's going to fix this.
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It's an inside job. It has to be done from within
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with recovery coping mechanisms and tools and repetitive
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repeated behaviors and practice. It's hard work, but it's so
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worth it because then I can go into any room and be confident.
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I can be comfortable, I can be myself, I can enjoy any scenario
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because I can let loose and not monitor how I'm interacting in
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the world, how I'm presenting. I don't care.
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And it doesn't just go away, but it, the voice gets quieter and
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quieter when I say something that I'm like, oh, that wasn't
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that funny, why did I say that? I don't beat myself up about it.
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I just let it go. Nobody's thinking about it, and
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if they are, it's their problem, not mine.
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Let it go. So the dry drunk connection
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here, this is exactly where a lot of people get stuck.
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Abstinent, technically, but still managing the room, still
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performing the easygoing version.
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This is exhausting to not do without with without substances.
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Still laughing at things that weren't funny.
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I want to fit in. I want to manage my stage
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character to the world without drugs and alcohol.
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It's exhausting. Eventually I'm going to be, I'm
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going to be miserable and then I'm going to relapse.
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ID without identity work is just white knuckling and better skin.
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That's it. With better skin, you know you
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look better and now you're just white knuckling through events,
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through the world. You can be 7 years sober and
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still people pleasing. I was.
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It's dishonesty at the end of the day because I just want to
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fit in. I don't want you to judge me.
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I want you to like me and I'm going to put on this stage
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character, this mask. I'm going to wear this mask
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here. I'm going to wear that mask
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there so that I can fit into every room and that you will
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like me. The disorientation is normal,
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OK? The version of you that's
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emerging in sobriety is not finished.
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It's not fully formed. It takes time.
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You're going to say things that don't sound like you because you
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don't know yet what that sounds like.
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You don't know what you sound like.
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You don't know what what you know.
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You're still unpeeling the layers of the onion that you
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packed on using drugs and alcohol for so long.
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It's a lot of work. It's difficult.
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That's not a problem. It's that's the process here.
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You don't find yourself in sobriety.
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You build yourself slowly, with a lot of awkward trial runs at
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first, so you're peeling back the layers of the onion, but
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you're also building new skills and new.
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You're learning about how you what bothers you and what
17:03
doesn't bother you and what pisses you off and what drives
17:06
you and what you actually care about, what you actually like.
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You might learn that you actually never liked being in a
17:11
bar at all, and it was just the alcohol that was making you feel
17:14
connected. You might learn that you never
17:16
like a certain type of music or concerts because it was just
17:18
alcohol that was keeping you comfortable, lubricated
17:21
socially. So the grief that nobody warns
17:23
you about is that drunk you was well liked, genuinely not
17:28
performing, actually well liked. People like the drunk version of
17:30
you. At least they did for me.
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Easy going, fun available, down for anything.
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Nothing bothered me. The one who made every table
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feel easy. I was the glue of the
17:40
conversation, or so I thought I was.
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You know, towards the end you become much more quiet and in
17:45
your head when you're using too much coke, you don't want to
17:48
talk or do anything. It's becomes very uncomfortable
17:51
and then you're always paranoid in thinking about things.
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But in the beginning it worked. So sober you is more specific,
17:56
more honest, less available, more likely to say.
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I'd actually rather not do that. You have boundaries now.
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You have moral guidelines. Not everyone who liked drinking
18:05
you, so not everyone that liked the drinking version of you
18:08
likes sober you as much. That's why I say you always get
18:11
new friends. You're gonna lose some friends
18:13
in sobriety because the only thing holding you together was
18:15
that bag. The only thing that holding you
18:16
together was was the pitcher of beer.
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The social fallout is some friendships were built on
18:22
drinking. They don't fit you anymore.
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Not because anyone is bad, but because the thing that made you
18:27
so compatible was part partly that you never pushed back.
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You were easy going, you were just went with the flow and you
18:35
didn't care about anything. But now those things bother you.
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It bothers you when somebody makes a slight at you or
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comments on you or makes you feel less than before.
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It didn't I I didn't mind. Red flags about people that
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pissed me off in the past don't piss me off anymore because I'm.
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I'm drunk and I'm high and I don't care about these little
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things that bother me. The friend who who is used to
18:56
agreeing with everything is going to notice that when you
18:59
stop, the friction is real. So the friend who's used to you
19:03
agreeing with everything being that person is going to notice
19:05
when you stop. And that's friction.
19:08
It's going to push people away. Some people will adjust, some
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people won't. That's information, not failure.
19:12
Just move on, Get new friends. You probably didn't have
19:15
anything in common with them anyways.
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So my first round of this, my first 7 1/2 years, it took me a
19:22
while to to get to this, but I was performing towards the end
19:25
when I relapsed, I wasn't being honest with people.
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And This is why I say honesty is so important.
19:29
The dishonesty took me out. Let's be honest, the secrets
19:31
took me out. The people pleasing didn't go
19:33
away, it just got. I got better at hiding it under
19:36
sobriety language. So I got better at I'm good, I'm
19:38
in recovery, I'm working on it. All technically true, but none
19:41
of it honest. Part of what the relapse cost me
19:43
was the clarity about what I had been avoiding for the last year
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in my 7 years. I want to ask you something.
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When you picture the most likable version of yourself, is
19:53
that version sober? If the answer is no, that's not
19:56
a reason to go and drink today. That's the exact thing worth
20:00
sitting with. I need to sit with that.
20:02
The grief of losing the drinking version of yourself is real.
20:05
It's hard, it's difficult, it's uncomfortable.
20:08
You're allowed to grieve it. You're allowed to sit with it
20:10
and be uncomfortable and be sad. You just don't have to go back
20:14
to it. Recognize that this is
20:17
temporary. This too shall pass.
20:18
I'm going to find a version of myself that I like, the true
20:21
version of myself, and I'm going to become version 2, point O in
20:25
sobriety. That's what I've come to.
20:27
I've become a new version through each relapse and each
20:32
learning curve and each instance in sobriety.
20:35
Every time I go to a social event sober, I learn more about
20:38
myself. It's true.
20:39
I learn about the real me, what drives me, what motivates me,
20:44
what I need to work on, what bothers me.
20:46
And why does this bother me? Is this a me problem or society
20:50
problem? And it's almost always a me
20:52
problem. It's I got to work on this.
20:54
I don't need to change anybody, nor can I.
20:57
So what I actually do is I paused before agreeing with
21:01
people. The automatic, yes.
21:02
Used to be before my brain registered the question.
21:05
I would just agree. I would just be whatever you
21:09
wanted me to be. I'm that guy.
21:10
Yeah, sure. Whatever.
21:11
What I do now is let me think about it.
21:13
Can I come back to you? Or sometimes just leaving the
21:15
silence, using silence as a tool, being OK and comfortable
21:20
in the silence, being myself, just being able to just sit and
21:25
allow the silence to be exactly as it is in that moment.
21:29
This matters because the automatic, yes, the automatic
21:33
people pleasing was doing a lot of the work to prevent me from
21:35
finding out what I actually wanted.
21:39
So I'm gonna round it up with the honest, hard part here.
21:42
It's the highest risk, highest reward.
21:44
If you're not in it today, cut this and save it.
21:47
The thing that nobody says out loud, if you can agree, if you
21:51
can be agreeable when you're under the influence and that's
21:54
anesthetized, you are drunk high.
21:57
That's not agreeableness. That's a coping mechanism.
22:01
Wearing a personality's clothes. The real me, the one sobriety is
22:05
still introducing me to, is harder to be around in some
22:09
ways. If there's more friction,
22:10
there's more opinions, there's more boundary height holding,
22:13
less available. Not everyone's going to like me
22:16
and or like you and that's OK. You're going to find your
22:18
people. The more you be authentic, be
22:21
yourself, the meeting yourself. Peace is getting sober is
22:25
supposed to be the gift and it is.
22:27
But the part of the gift is a reckoning.
22:29
You'll you find out which relationships were built on the
22:32
performance. You find out which ones hold
22:35
when the performance stops, who my true friends are and who
22:38
aren't, people that are sticking with me and people who are fair
22:41
weather friends or fast but you know, bar friends, drinking
22:45
buddies. The relationships that survive
22:47
are better, they're stronger, but the ones that don't are
22:50
still losses. It feels like a loss and that's
22:52
tough and that's OK. So this, all this to be said
22:56
that this is not an episode where I tell you it gets easier
22:58
and everyone loves the real you. Maybe they do, maybe they don't,
23:01
maybe some do, maybe some don't. What I can tell you is that the
23:05
version of me that's showing up now today, the one with opinions
23:10
and pauses and the occasional no, that's the version that's
23:14
actually here. The other ones were just passing
23:16
through. So this is the true version
23:18
that's here now. The other ones were just passing
23:20
through where they were. Masks if sober, feels harder to
23:24
live in right now than the drinking you.
23:28
You're not broken. That this is a part of the
23:29
process. It's hard.
23:31
No, if it wasn't hard, we wouldn't have rehabs.
23:33
We wouldn't need recovery rooms. People would just stop on their
23:37
own will and they'd be comfortable in their own skin
23:39
right away. They wouldn't need therapy.
23:41
You're just unmedicated for the first time in your life, and
23:44
that's uncomfortable before it's liberating.
23:47
The agreeableness you're losing wasn't your personality, it was
23:51
your armor. It was your onion, your layer of
23:53
the onion that protected you. Taking it off is supposed to
23:55
feel exposed. You're supposed to feel
23:57
vulnerable. That's how you know it's
23:58
working. I'm still working on this.
24:00
I'm still finding out about myself.
24:02
I'm still learning about this process.
24:04
It's, it's hard, it's simple, but it's not easy, right?
24:07
So when I, like I said before, when I go out today, I'm
24:11
learning about myself every single time I'm learning about
24:14
people I want to hang out with the kind of people this is my
24:17
friend group today. My friend group today is people
24:20
that are working on themselves. Plain and simple.
24:22
I want to hang out with people that are working on themselves.
24:24
That's it. Please like, subscribe, comment,
24:26
follow the podcast, send it to a friend.
24:29
Thank you. If no one's told you this yet,
24:31
today I love you. Recovery is simple, not easy.