Matt: What’s up everybody? This is Matt and Greg with Project Unbroken. Do us a favor and hit that subscribe button and please share this video with anybody that yo think might benefit from hearing about the experiences with drug abuse that Greg and I went through.
Today we wanted to talk a little bit about recovery and if it is a daily process. I think for a lot of people that are starting on the road of recovering or starting to look into getting out of their addiction, you’ll hear a lot of stuff like “Take it one day at a time. It’s a step by step kind of thing.”
What are your thoughts on recovery? Day to day, do you think about your recovery on a daily basis? Do you think about heroin on a daily basis?
Greg: At this point, no. I don’t. I think for some people, recovery for drugs is a daily process. But for me, it’s not. I’m at a point now where I don’t think about it. I don’t really relate as an ex-heroin addict. I don’t know.
It doesn’t shame me. Everyone goes through their things in life. I got caught in the addiction. I got out, but I focus on the positives. I overcame heroin addiction. Now, I’m successful. I’m happy. I got a family. I look at the positive sides of things.
That’s what think, helps me not have to focus on recovery day to day, is I focus on the positive side of thing. I learned from my addiction. I focus on the negative sides of addiction.
The positive sides of life, the negative sides of addiction. It put me in a shit hole. I was miserable when I was in addiction. Why would I want to go back to that. For me, and we’ll go deeper into this, I would say that no, at this point recovery is not a day to day thing.
Matt: I’m on the same page. I remember when I went to the inpatient rehab center. The one thing that really freaked me out is they were big on every time you introduce yourself, you had to say, “Hi. May name if Matt. I’m a heroin addict.”
They were like, “You got to basically, you’re going to be an addict for the rest of your life.” In my head, I was like, “Fuck no. I’m not. I’m putting this behind me and I’m moving towards better things.”
I don’t want to say that you need to forget about your addiction right off the bat. You need to like Greg said, keep in mind of all the negative shit that it brought to you, and the terrible situations and the way that it just ruins a lot of things in your life. Relationships, finances, it will destroy your life. You can’t forget about that stuff.
But moving forward, I don’t think it’s healthy to always relate to yourself as something with such a negative stigma attached to it.
Greg: You know what I do, is I realize that I have an addictive personality. I can get addicted to things. From you know what? How can I use this for my binge? But with my business, I got addicted to business but tried to keep it healthy. Got addicted to working out. I’m addicted to working out. I love it, but it’s also healthy for me.
What I do is I use the negatives. I have an addictive personality. How can I use that for a positive? Let’s turn this around. Let’s turn it on its head. That’s what we did. It’s what we’ve both really done.
Matt: I think that’s really smart, and I think that … I know for a fact that we both got to a point where until Project Unbroken started … We see each other daily. We have for the last several years. We never talk about it. It’s not a topic of discussion. It was a huge part of our lives when we were friends. Back in the day when we split up to try to get clean, it just never … it’s not at topic of discussion anymore.
I think that’s a really positive part, or a beneficial part of why we’ve been so successful moving forward. Having heroin constantly on my mind, al the time, I don’t think would have helped me as I was getting clean.
Greg: It would have been worse almost.
Matt: Yeah. I think so, too.
Greg: I would say maybe the first year even … I can’t remember exactly. Maybe it was a daily process. It got to a point where I changed my mindset. I’m almost like, “All right. I got an addictive personality. I want to make this a super power.”
You know what I mean. I’m going to work off this, make it a positive thing. And that’s what I did. You got to just think more positively. No more of this bullshit, “Oh, I’m a heroin addict. I’m never going to go.” Fuck that.
Matt: The victim mentality.
Greg: Right , exactly. Getting out of that victim mentality. Thinking positive about everything. Where can I find the positives in everything. Then once doing that for awhile, it wasn’t a daily process anymore. The daily process is living my life being active. That’s it.
Matt: Exactly.
Greg: Why the fuck would I wan to go back to not being happy? I associate unhappy with addiction.
Matt: Yeah. I know al lot of people have found success with the 12 step program or different forms of recovery centers, stuff like that. In my head, when I was in my addiction, I saw these old salty guys like former addicts smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, telling me they knew what addiction was like.
That’s not what I wanted. I didn’t want … That’s not what I wanted as a goal for my life. I didn’t want to always be just reminiscing about my heroin days and how it screwed my life up forever. I was more focused on improving myself, improving my life and making steps in the positive direction away from my addiction. Not floating in that same circle forever. I wan to get away form it.
Greg: Yeah. There’s different groups for … Different things work for different people. But I think it’s important to know, I don’t think recovery has to be a daily process when you get to a certain point. It doesn’t have to be. It’s not for me. So it doesn’t have to be for everyone.
Maybe for some people it does. I don’t know.
Matt: Of course.
Greg: It definitely doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to be a daily process.
Matt: No. Absolutely not. If you’re looking at recovery, and you’re trying to wrap your head around that, how am I going to be dealing with recovery every day for the rest of my life? Just keep in mind, you can get away from it and while it will always be a part of your past, you can set your focus on maybe more positive things.
It doesn’t have to run your day to day life by any means.
Greg: One thing I do like is to take it day by day. I like one day at a time. I never really understood that before, even when I came out of my addiction. My fiancee went to rehab for alcohol. When she got out, I can clearly remember this. The first day she got out I was talking about how’s it feel like you’re never going to drink again? And she started getting serious anxiety.
She was like, “I need to do something right now. I’m getting really bad anxiety.”
I was like, “Look. How you feel right now is not going to be how you feel down the road. Just take it one day at a time.” I told her, “Take it one day at a time.” That’s what registered. Like, “Oh, shit. How you feel today is not how you’re going to feel tomorrow. You’re going to start feeling better and better and that’s what one day at a time means.”
It means it’s going to get better. That’s kind of what it means. A month later, I brought up the same conversation and she’s like, “Fucking shit. I don’t even want to drink anymore. I’m happy.”
I thin one day at a time is important to understand the meaning behind that.
Matt: I mean, there’s a million different ways to look at it. But another phrase that I’ve heard a couple of times that makes sense to me is “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
It’s getting clean, getting out of addiction is a huge undertaking. It’s huge. And if you look at it, like the big picture, and you’re like, “Oh my God. This is the rest of my life. I can never have a drink again. I can never do dope again. I can’t do …” It’ll freak you out.
But if you think of it, just that one bite, one day, whatever, sooner or later you’re far enough away and you’re like, “Shit. I whopped this thing. I’m good.”
You can’t see it from day one.
Greg: You can’t, because day one is not fun. You don’t feel good and I think in our minds is like, “I can’t keep feeling like this.” But you don’t realize that it does get better.
Matt: Greg and I have talked a lot about that, where it’s hard to see it but when yo get to a certain point, you’re like, “Oh. I forgot that I used to be back there.” And that’s a lot of what we talk about, was trying to avoid relapse.
Just remember, that is coming If you can just stay away from where you’re starting, good things are coming your way.
Greg: The farther you get along, the more that relapse becomes uncommon. You got to definitely still stay away from the old friends and all of that, that might still bring it around you, because all it takes is one time to go back in that relapse pattern.
Matt: It doesn’t take much.
All right. I think that will do it for recovery being a day to day process. Different for everybody, but just set your focus on the right things and you can find success that way.
Thank you for watching. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. If you guys have any questions leave a comment or hit us up in the contact section of our website projectunbroken.com.
Thanks for watching guys.
