029: Clarity of Mind

When you stop drinking to connect, you start connecting to yourself

✨Weekly Insight

I never thought I’d call myself a morning person.

I used to work production jobs that required early call times. I’d drive past gyms at 5 a.m. and see people working out, thinking they’d lost their minds.

Little did I know I’d become one of them.

When you quit drinking, you’re forced to develop a deeper relationship with yourself. For me, a big part of that was wanting a healthier relationship with sleep.

I did a sleep reset program—basically sleep deprivation for a few days to reset my system. Then it was gradual: 11 p.m. to 10 p.m. to 9 p.m., slowly shifting my wake time earlier too.

But the real shift came from changing my internal narrative. Instead of “I suck at sleeping,” I started telling myself, “I am a good sleeper.”

That reinforced the behavior. Now my routine is 8 p.m. to bed, 4 a.m. up. Now I’m the person who’s lost his mind. 🤪 Haha!

I wake up with gratitude and energy to do more in the morning than I ever had before sobriety.

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⛰️ Something BIG is Coming

Something big is being revealed on December 1. An experience designed to show you exactly what becomes possible when alcohol is removed from the equation. Clarity. Energy. Creative momentum. If you want first access, get on the list.

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✍🏻Essays

You’re at dinner with friends. Everyone orders drinks. The server turns to you. “And for you?”

“Iced tea, unsweet.”

The table goes quiet. Someone shifts in their seat. Your closest friend gives you that look. Then it starts: “Come on, just have one.” “Don’t make me drink alone.”

Now you’re drowning in guilt. Hold your ground and make everyone uncomfortable. Give in and break the promise you made to yourself.

Either way, you lose.

What if the hardest part of sobriety isn’t saying no to alcohol—it’s sitting with the isolation that follows? The choice between being alone in a room full of people, or alone at home avoiding them altogether?

In week 4 of my 10-part series on the pain points of sobriety, I’m exploring why social isolation isn’t punishment—it’s preparation—and the neuroscience of why your brain makes authentic connection feel so uncomfortable after relying on alcohol’s shortcut for years.

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💡Disrupt the Pattern

“When you feel creatively stuck, do you reach for alcohol, or do you reach for stillness?”

The core insight: Being still with creative discomfort feels impossible, so you reach for the easiest distraction—alcohol. You’re not blocked because you lack ideas or talent. You’re blocked because you haven’t learned to sit with the uncomfortable space where breakthroughs actually happen. The cycle tightens as you feel stuck, reach for alcohol to relieve it, temporarily feel better, wake up still blocked, then reach again.

The action? Remove alcohol completely for seven days and practice sitting with creative discomfort for just five minutes without reaching for any distraction. Because your breakthrough is waiting in the stillness, not in the relief—letting go of alcohol is what allows you to finally be present with what wants to emerge.

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🎙️Clear Conversations: Creative Minds in Sobriety

This week I sat down with Tyler Donohue, a writer who stopped drinking not because she hit rock bottom, but because her body kept whispering: “Something about doing this thing does not resonate.”

Tyler wasn’t getting DUIs or ruining her life. She was just a normal social drinker. But when two family members spiraled into severe addiction in late 2023, she finally gave herself permission to listen to that inner voice—even without the dramatic crisis she thought she needed.

The last drink she had was December 31st, 2023.

Here’s what she discovered on the other side:

“For me, it’s either a fuck yes or it’s a fuck no. I don’t stay at a party I don’t want to be at. I don’t go to events that don’t lift me up and give me energy.”

That clarity didn’t shrink her life—it expanded it. Tyler now writes for Girl Resting, lives nomadically across continents, and has been published in The Cut. She doesn’t claim the word “sober” easily, but she knows this: removing alcohol revealed what she actually wanted when she stopped numbing the edges.

And she learned something surprising about creativity too: “I think I was convinced for a long time that drinking made me more creative. But really it just lowered my standards.”

Episode 027 - When Sobriety Reveals What You Actually Want: A Conversation with Tyler Donohue

My Next Guest on🎙️Clear Conversations

Episode 028 with Denise Hamilton-Mace on November 27th at 9a EST

What happens when you decide to drink differently in midlife—and the people around you don’t like it? This week’s guest on Clear Conversations knows that territory intimately. Denise Hamilton-Mace hosts “Mindful Drinking & Moderation in Midlife,” where she champions a refreshingly honest approach to alcohol that’s gotten her both celebrated and uninvited. She’s living proof that sobriety doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing, and that the creative courage to stand in your truth matters more than fitting into anyone else’s definition of “doing it right.” Join us for a delicious Thanksgiving chin-wag (a saying I didn’t realise comes from British slang) about rejection, reinvention, and why your midlife drinking decisions are nobody’s business but your own.

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🎬 Behind the Scenes

For a few months now, I’ve been creating myself as a cartoon and placing this character in various scenes. You have seen this with the thumbnails in the 10 Pain Points series here below:

10 Pain Points of Sobriety: A Weekly Series Exploring the Struggles of Quitting Alcohol

I had an idea to utilise RunwayML, along with Google Veo and Midjourney to create a short anime-inspired video to advertise The Sober Creative Reset that is coming in January. I have a rough idea of the concept and so I’m creating it as I go. I’m not sure what the outcome will be, but this is the beautiful part about creating. Just going with the flow. Especially from a place of clarity.

P.S. You can view past newsletter editions here.

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What’s Next For You?

The 30-Day Alcohol-Free Reset starts on January 1st.

If you want to see what your creativity feels like without alcohol in the way, this is your moment.

🎯 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

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