Matt: And we’re live. What’s up guys? It is Matt here with Project Unbroken. Today I wanted to go over a couple of tips that I had for heroin withdrawal, heroin recovery. Maybe getting into a maintenance program. Getting out of a maintenance program, and things you can do to make that a little bit easier. This tip, or what I want to talk about today is kind of self care, and when we’re going through rough times, whether that’s when we’re withdrawing. When we’re just stressing out about recovery. Stressing out about addiction. Stressing out about life in general. I think one of the things that seems to slip under the radar is us remembering to take care of ourselves. What happens is, we stop focusing on taking care of ourselves and we get really consumed by everything that seems to be happening around us. I remember in my addiction, I wasn’t exercising at all. I was trying to figure a way out of my addiction. I was just barely trying to make ends meet.
Matt: I think it ends up being a vicious cycle, because you stop taking care of yourself, and what ends up happening is, you start to lose respect for yourself or you lose your self respect. Then you start looking at yourself as, even subconsciously, like you’re not that important. Because you’re not treating yourself like you’re very important. I was reminded of this the other day, because work’s been super busy. There’s just a lot going on at work, at home. All good stuff, but it’s just busy, busy, busy. While I do my best to try to eat well. I try to exercise. I try to take care of myself. A lot of times I notice that I would put my self interest on the back burner in order to try to keep up with everything else that’s going on. I forget what day it was. Last week Thursday or Friday. It was towards the end of the week. Crazy week. I noticed my car was kind of a wreck. I haven’t shaved my face or I didn’t have a haircut recently. I could feel that old feeling creeping back in.
Matt: Even just something as simple as my car being dirty. I was just getting in it, and I was kind of getting used to it being dirty. There was just shit all over the place. I was like, “This stops right now.” I immediately went, got a haircut. Went home, got a shower, shaved my face, changed my clothes. I went to the gym, got a good sweat in before that. Got my car all cleaned up, vacuumed, outside cleaned. I spent two hours just getting my shit together. Yeah. I was busy. I didn’t really have the two hours, but I knew that I had to set that time aside, or it was just going to spiral into this fucking self loathing feeling of just not feeling myself. The difference that made was huge. It’s just because I got in my car, it was super clean. I felt good about having my wife get in the car again. She doesn’t care, but it’s just, I was proud of myself. First of all, I love my car. When it was nice and cleaned up, I was like, “Oh yeah. This is what I’m talking about. This is who I am.”
Matt: I’m that dude with the clean car. The shaved face. I’m in shape. I got my hair cut. I got my shit together. Even just to do those three little things made me look at myself with more self worth. When we’re coming out of addiction or maintenance program or any major shift in our life, these little things are really important. They way we view ourselves is really important. If we’re looking at ourselves like we’re a second class citizen and we don’t deserve to clean ourselves up, or to take care of ourselves, we start to let just other things slip by the wayside. It’s all about momentum. When you’re happy with yourself, when you feel good about yourself. When you feel good about the way you look, and you feel good about the way you feel and you’re thinking clearly. You start making better decisions that will improve your self worth, and it will only benefit you in the long run.
Matt: If you start letting things slip and your hair gets all whatever, all fucked up, and your scruffy, and you’re woofing out in the neck, and your clothes are all tattered, and your car’s dirty, house is dirty. It’s just a slippery slope. We start to lose a level of self respect, and it’s just we’re not putting the same effort into ourselves as we need to be. Especially when times are stressful, you have to take care of number one. I’m a big believer in the fact that you can’t pour from an empty cup. I know that it feels like a lot of times the weight of the world is on our shoulders, and we got to help other people out, and we have to help ourselves at the same time. But if you don’t help yourself out first, you’re not going to be any good to anybody. The stress that comes with just not having your own shit together, is going to limit you from the good you can do to help others. I know a lot of you guys out there have kids. You have significant others, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife.
Matt: A lot of you guys have parents that you take care of. We need to be the ones that are strong enough, and stable enough to take that shit on when there’s stressful situations happening. You know as well as I do, that’s all the time. That stuff’s always going to be coming at you. You are going to be better prepared to handle that stuff if number one is taken care of. If you feel good about yourself you have a level of self confidence. You feel good about going out into the world and handling your shit. If you’re not feeling yourself and you’re not taking care of yourself physically, even just with your hygiene, whatever, you’re not going to be feeling as confident about going out there and tackling your problems. You’re not going to feel like you’re up to the task to go out there and handle your shit, because it’s not easy. A lot of times, even today for instance. I woke up. I start my day like 3:45, 4AM. I woke up, and right off the bat I was feeling this all swollen. I’m not sure if I’m getting sick or whatever.
Matt: My first thought was, “Cancel all your appointments. Stay in bed and get better.” I was like, “Fuck that, I can’t do it.” I got up immediately. As soon as that thought hit my head, hit the shower, shaved my face, got cleaned up, put my gear on, drank a cup of coffee. Fucking went out the door, and I got after it. It’s been pretty non-stop all day. I’ve had a bunch of appointments, a bunch of meetings, and every one of them I haven’t really been fucking excited to go into them. But you’d be surprised what having even just a level of self confidence, just from getting a shower and getting some water on your face, and cleaning yourself up a little bit. I was like, “All right, I can fucking do this. I can handle this.” I just crushed a big fucking cup of coffee, went into my first appointment, and smashed it. After that I was like, “All right, you’re good.” Next appointment was half hour later. Smashed it. I had a meeting about half hour after that.
Matt: Before that I had to go pick my daughter up, and drop her off at school. We had a great little breakfast. Had some funny back and forth. My daughter’s four years old, so us having conversations is a fairly new thing that I really enjoy my time doing. Even for her for instance. If I pick her up and I’m like … Hey Tara. If I pick her up and I’m like all unkempt and unshaven and not feeling good about myself, that’s going to rub off on her and she’s not going to have the same quality experience with her dad that she deserves to have. It’s not her fault that I’m up all night doing work and shit. I got to get up early and now I’m not feeling 100%. I got to get my shit together so she can have a better morning, so she can have a better day, so she can have a better life. That’s what we all need to do when we’re going through stressful times. Again, withdrawing, recovery, maintenance programs, whatever it is. We’re just feeling depressed, down and out, anxious, whatever.
Matt: This is where fake it till you make it comes in. You might not be feeling it, but you got to fucking fake it, go out there, face the day head on. Take this shit that’s coming at you, these stressful situations. Just run straight at them. Because again, the first thing I wanted to do was pull the covers back up over my head, go back to bed and pretend that I didn’t have any responsibilities to take care of. But, shaving my face, get in the shower. Just getting my shit together, and then going on, going into my appointments and my meetings and just fucking feeling like a boss and handling it. Now I’m good. It’s about quarter after 10 in the morning right now. I’ve been up for six hours. If I would have slept in, I’d be feeling like shit right now, because I know that I had five really important meetings this morning that I would’ve fucking missed already, and then I’d have to make them up tomorrow when, honestly, I’m going to be tired tomorrow at 4AM too. If you guys have shit on your plate that you need to handle, do yourself a favor.
Matt: If you’re a guy, shave your face. If you’re a girl, whatever. Do your hair. Get your make up on. Crush a cup of coffee. Put on some Gangsta Rap, and go handle your shit. You’re going to feel better, even if you don’t want to do it, go to work. Even if your job sucks, go to work. Kick ass at that job. Start working on your side hustle when you have time. Do that then. Just got to keep moving. You have to understand that nobody’s going to afford us any breaks, even when times are tough. When times are tough and it feels like that treadmill of life is speeding up, you just got to run faster. Run at that shit. Do not hide from it. Because, when we hide from it, you know where it’s piling up. It’s just behind us. We try to keep it out of sight, out of mind. But that stuff piles up on you. If you got shit on your plate, go handle it.
Matt: I’m going to leave it there guys. I got another appointment coming in. I’m a little bit more excited to handle them now, but thank you for watching. I look forward to talking to you guys soon. Take care.
