027: Clarity of Mind
Relapsing Doesn’t Mean You’re Broken—It Means You’re Human
✨Weekly Insight
Imagine the projects you’d start if you weren’t stealing time from yourself. The ideas that would actually make it from your mind to the page, the screen, the stage. The work that feels like yours—not the version you think will impress someone else, but the thing only you can make. Alcohol doesn’t create space for that. It fills the space. It takes the hours you’d spend refining, experimenting, failing, and trying again.
Now imagine what connection actually feels like. Not the performance from networking events or the small talk over drinks, but the real thing. Showing up to your work without the mess. Showing up to the people in your life without parts of you missing. The creative life you want—the one with momentum, with depth, with work that compounds—it’s built in those moments of clarity. Not in the bottle, but in the connection with yourself. This is where trust is built. This is where more lives.
✍🏻Essays
You commit. You slip. The guilt compounds. You start believing you’re broken, that change isn’t possible for you. Each relapse feels like proof you just can’t do this. But what if relapse isn’t failure—what if it’s information? This week, I’m exploring how I broke the cycle not through willpower, but through public commitment, finding substitutes that actually worked, and building practices that gave my nervous system what it was really searching for. If you’ve ever felt stuck in the pattern of trying and failing, this one’s for you.
Week 2: Relapse Cycle in Sobriety
10 Pain Points of Sobriety is a weekly series where I explore the real pain points of quitting alcohol—the uncomfortable truths that surface when initial motivation fades. I didn’t need alcohol to be creative; creativity was already part of my life. Alcohol stole the time and energy I could have spent creating. It was my escape from feelings of inadequa…
💡Disrupt the Pattern
This week’s question: “Is the drink at the end of the day a celebration of work or a signal you’ve pushed past your limits?”
We explored Drained—where exhaustion from pushing too hard makes drinking feel like a reward, but it’s actually your body sending a signal that boundaries have been broken. The pattern is clear: push past limits → drink to “celebrate” → wake up trashed → push through the fog → repeat. It’s never just one drink. It’s as many as you can throw down until the regrets pile up and tomorrow starts from behind.
The action? Give yourself one week to practice celebrating differently. Notice what your work feels like when you’re not recovering from the night before. Because work is worth celebrating—and you can celebrate without sacrificing your best creative self in the process.
Episode 004 - Disrupt the Pattern
Disrupt the Pattern helps creative professionals break the alcohol cycle that keeps you from addressing the real areas blocking your creativity—feeling blocked, drained, or hidden. Each episode uses a randomized question generator to spark real-time reflection—no scripts, no planning, just honest exploration of what’s potentially blocking your creative …
🎙️Clear Conversations: Creative Minds in Sobriety
I just kind of reached a point where I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I just felt incredibly run down. And I was putting in so much effort to try to change my situation and move myself forward. But I wasn’t going anywhere. I felt like I was running in quicksand or something.
Running in quicksand is such a strong visual. You are putting in so much effort, yet you feel as though you are still sinking. At some point you realize you’ve had enough. Derek MacDonald was so honest about getting sober during one of the hardest weeks of his life, his journey from proving he was allowed to be creative to just doing the thing, and how sobriety unlocked 450,000 words in 18 months was all so inspiring.
Episode 026 with The Monkeymind Meditation Club on November 14th at 3p EST.
What happens when meditation saves your life? Jason from The Monkeymind Meditation Club knows firsthand. After living at “full tilt”—high pressure, high stress, and often just high—everything came crashing down. Meditation literally saved him. Now he teaches meditation in a way that’s down-to-earth and practical, free from incense, apps, and awkward sitting positions. This is a guaranteed no woo-woo zone. Jason works with Jomo, the world’s first (and only) meditating monkey, helping people who don’t traditionally meditate find calm, clarity, and connection. If your mind wanders, you’re in exactly the right place. Join us this week as Jason shares how sobriety and meditation transformed his creative life, and why stillness might be the rebellious act we all need.
🌟 More From This Week
P.S. You can view past newsletter editions here.
What’s Next For You?
🎯 Alcohol may be quietly impacting your creative potential.
Below is a 5-minute quiz that reveals exactly how it’s affecting your specific creative expression—and how alcohol might be maintaining it.
🧐 You may already know alcohol could be impacting your creative potential.
Each step forward is an act of becoming the person you want to be.
Thank you for being here.
Josh