Let’s talk about the order of healing when you quit drinking. We’ll also put a time frame on it…more or less place holders for what you can expect.  As with everything in recovery…your time frame may not exactly match up with what is outlined here…but should be close!  ??

 

When we ditch the booze the healing happens in the reverse order as the destruction. 

 

When we slide down the chasm of addiction we are afflicted spiritually first, as that is the first connection that becomes severed.  Next up is our mental health, and then the physical body fails. The body can’t keep up with the amount of poison entering it and organs begin to fail, think liver and pancreas.

 

So the destruction happens spiritually, mentally and then physically.  

 

The healing happens in reverse. 

 

We heal physically, mentally and then spiritually. It’s a triage of sorts. Keep in mind there is always overlap. You won’t say, okay, I’m physically strong, now let’s work on the mind. In addition, the three will always be a work in progress.

 

Good news here, you don’t need to initiate the steps of this healing process. As long as you do the following, the intelligence of the body will take over. 

Here is what you need to do.

1️⃣.  Ditch the booze

2️⃣.  Fuel the body with healthy fuel. Food that is alive..aka:  greens, veggies, fruits, and try to cut down on meat. At least for a bit.

3️⃣. Cut back on sugar and caffeine intake. Here at RE we love our ice cream…so green light on the ice cream in the first 15-30 days, but try to cut back to 1-3x per week. Caffeine, 1 cup per day. This is mostly to help with relaxation and sleep.

4️⃣. Moderate movement. Walk, hike, jog, stretch, yoga, weights…for 20 min, 3x per week.

5️⃣. Here’s the fun part – Recovery!  This could be AA, we have Café RE, Smart Recovery, Treatment, IOP, etc.

 

On day 1 we begin healing physically. The cells in the back of the mouth, the throat, the stomach, liver and pancreas are the first to say, thank you!! 

Let’s talk about weight. If you lose weight, great!  But there’s a good chance you’re going to gain weight. Beer, wine, spirits are basically empty calories, or the same as a moldy gummy worm. You may see your body expanding in your first 30 days, which is beautiful. There is more of you to love. A book Paul recommends to help fuel your body properly is The All Day Energy Diet by Yuri Elkaim.

 

The physical restoration component is anywhere from 3-12 months depending on how far you rode the shit storm of addiction.

 

Then begins the real fun stuff…the mental work, which is anywhere from 6 mo -1.5 years. In active addiction there is chaos internally. There is no coherence with the body and the mind. After we find our footing physically, the brain seemingly is going to go haywire. You won’t naturally find yourself in the present moment, but this is the time to really focus on every task at hand. Washing the dishes is our recovery work.

 

A big part of the mental healing is letting the hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenal axis settle down. These three organs control the stress response. Cravings and moments where you’re triggered begin to smooth out once this stress mechanism comes back down to earth. 

 

The mind and body will thank you for getting off the rollercoaster of emotions and rock bottoms. Those are stressful and wreak havoc on our inner peace. At the tail end of the mental healing is when something neat happens. 

 

In fact, it’s extraordinary. 

 

This is when we have the capacity to recognize we are not the thoughts, but the one who experiences them. Or as Eckhart Tolle says, life is the dancer, and we are the dance. This is the bridge to the spirituality component of our healing. 

 

As the Swiss, 20th century analytical psychologist Carl Jung says –  we enter a spiritual dimension when we begin experiencing synchronicities in life. Or we almost see the bread crumbs confirming we are on the right path. Jung was a firm believer that there are no such things as coincidences and everything is connected. Or interdependent.  Both in the physical and the dream world. According to Jung, this metaphysical state of living occurs when we are in balance. 

 

When we are in a healthy dance with time and congruent with the natural flow of life, this is when those seemingly synchronistic events take place. They are quite powerful to be honest. They make you feel connected to something for sure. Paul says, to be fair, he did experience these synchronistic events before quitting drinking, but it was like once every couple of years and nowadays, it’s weekly and sometimes daily.

 

One reason why healing spiritually comes last is because it helps to make this connection in times of repose, sitting, meditating or focusing on the breath. 

 

Paul says, “I don’t know about you, but there was 0% chance I was sitting in lotus position to connect with a higher power in my first 2-6 months. Probably not even the first two years. Meditating for me at first, was absolutely brutal. But as I progressed, I began to enjoy it, and with some meditations, I would feel euphoria in parts of my body and once I think the best word to describe what happened was astral travel.”  – (He knows it sounds strange. ?)

 

So…that’s the most common pathway when it comes to healing from a drinking problem.

 

There is a concept to describe the initial phases of this which is PAWS. Short for Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome. This is your body, mind, heart, organs, and soul, recalibrating – finding a new homeostasis. Please don’t hit the eject button if you have a rough day or 20. After chaos, calm is always on the horizon. This is a universal law. PAWS lasts anywhere from 3 months to a year or two…. Yea it can be uncomfortable, but it’s preferable to the perilous road of addiction.

 

***Taken from Recovery Elevator Podcast, episode 404, host Paul Churchill***