Stop Thinking Like That!

Yo, yo yo was happening. Nico here.

How many lies have you told today?

What about yesterday?

What about this last week?

How many lies did you tell in active addiction?

How many lies have you told about your journey of self-recovery?

We must be rigorously honest with ourselves. You thought I was talking about how many lies you tell other people? My question is how many lies did you tell yourself? Think about that. How many lies do you tell yourself this morning? How many lies did you tell yourself yesterday? How many lies did you tell yourself this past week? I'll admit I still lie to myself. I don't like that feeling. I don't like the feeling of telling myself one thing and not following through on it.

It reminds me of days that I would attempt to get away with sneaking a high or running a scheme, manipulating people so that I can get what I wanted. Rigorously, be honest with yourself and with others. I believe that is a pillar of self-recovery. If we continue to feed ourselves a false narrative or lies. We put ourselves in a false reality.

These false realities are horrible to live in quite honestly, the main reason. Why is it? Because we believe that they're true, but nothing shows that they are. We're basically fooling ourselves by lying to ourselves and then telling ourselves that it's okay to do. We Gaslight ourselves!

Rigorously, honest mimics looking in the mirror and saying, Hey Nico, you are a heroin addict, you weigh 120 pounds. Your skin is pale. The only thing that goes on your mind is how you could even reuse needles, after getting a sack of dope. That was rigorously honest. The false narrative that I used to tell myself was “I'm just gonna get high one last time and it's gonna be it.” or “I just need one last run.” “This will be my last time. I can do it.”

“If I just get one more drink it will be easier”,

“if I just hit this last lick I won't be hard up for cash”

“If I could just make this one come up, I can get it done!”

Even saying It out loud right now. I wanna laugh at myself and I really wanna smack myself because that is the false narrative I used to live in and I would believe.

Can I share something crazy with you guys? That false narrative, the one we used to believe we used to make it work too. Think about it. We used to tell ourselves if we do X, then Y will happen.

That false narrative used to play in my head all the time, but I'd go buy a bottle and say just one drink. That'd be like, oh man, this feeling is good. Let me, let me just make sure it sticks around. Then all of a sudden, a couple hours later, all of it was gone. And I was back where I originally started. We get done what we want to get done.

One of the problems and conflicts that I have with a lot of the organizations that are currently teaching self-recovery or recovery through different modalities Is that they want us to completely forget the capabilities that we have in our heads. If I said I wanted to get drunk that day, I would've gotten drunk that day.Wasn't a matter of, oh, I wonder if I can. It was, this is what I'm gonna get done. So I got it done. I went into rooms or groups or therapy sessions or got on calls with somebody who said, “you can't think that way anymore.”

I became confused. That's how I live. I put something in my head and I get it done just because it used to be drugs and alcohol. Why should I change that? Now the power that you guys have inside of you is still there. The power to be creative, to get what you want, the power to use your willpower, to achieve things that other people can't, your imagination is so beautiful. You can create solutions for yourself, for your problems. A struggle that we run into and being rigorously honest with ourselves is what are the actual problems that we need to solve. For many of us, the problem that we needed to solve was getting drunk seeking comfort, the release of pain or seeking pleasure, the tools, the mindset, and the things that we did to accomplish that. They're still available to us.

Something that I'm still overcoming is the fear of that power. For instance, when I wanted to get my book done, I just got it done. I said I'm gonna be a published author. So I wrote the book. Yeah, there were steps in between, but it was done between Memorial day and September 2020. I got it done by September. It was already picked up by a publisher. You guys can go get a copy at www.nohalonm.com it teaches five things to know before you get sober. One of those things is that you're gonna get to know yourself. The only way to get to know yourself is when you're rigorously honest with yourself about the lies and the narratives that you tell yourself, as well as the lies and the narratives that you tell others. If someone lies to you saying that you're doing all right, and you know, you're not because that internal voice is saying that you can do better, that you're not doing the best that you can. Matter of fact, if anybody just lies to you in general, to make you feel better, They don't care about you.

The reason why I say they don't care about you is that they just care about making you feel good at that moment, rather than making you feel good over a long time. These cats that used to tell us things that appeased our emotions, these people that would tell us things that they knew would make us feel okay for the moment. Those people don't love you. The people that love you are the ones that call out the lies that tell you, “Hey, you're living in a false narrative because you shouldn't be doing that.” Those are people that actually love you and stay around them. My goal is not to do recovery for you. My goal is to help guide you along your journey of self-recovery,

There's no reason for you to pretend to be an angel. It's okay to have No Halo.