032: Clarity of Mind

Numbing doesn't make life easier—it makes it postponed

✨Weekly Insight

Alcohol doesn’t erase stress—it just postpones your brain’s ability to process it.

Every unresolved issue. Every avoided conversation. Every creative block.

They don’t disappear. They accumulate.

Your nervous system keeps the score.

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✍🏻Essays

Trembling. There’s a crack in my voice. I can’t look at their faces.

“Thank you, you can all sit down now.”

All I could think about was the beer waiting at the end of the day—my escape into what felt comfortable.

I didn’t know how to trust myself. So I avoided anything hard. I chose a career behind the camera. I was relieved my last name started with W because I’d be called on last.

But being last was worse. It gave me time for the thoughts to build: “What I have to say is not important.”

That’s what lost self-worth looks like. Not in the moment it fractures, but in the decades that follow. In every opportunity you turn down. In every time you choose safety over growth.

A few years into trying to control my drinking, someone asked: “Do you want to be a group leader?”

The same physical sensations ran through my body. But something different happened. I said yes.

That small decision opened a pathway. Trust isn’t rebuilt through understanding—it’s rebuilt through evidence. Through doing the thing you don’t think you can do.

Week 7 of my 10-part series on the pain points of sobriety: how alcohol prevents you from building self-trust, why the prefrontal cortex can’t strengthen when chemically impaired, and the daily practice that proves you can face fear without fleeing.

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💡Disrupt the Pattern

The end of the day. You’ve been creating, problem-solving, holding it all together. The mental load doesn’t just disappear when you close your laptop.

And there’s the thought: “I deserve it.” The drink looks like a reward.

But what are you really rewarding?

This episode breaks down what’s actually happening in that moment—and what changes when you stop confusing reward with relief.

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🎙️Clear Conversations: Creative Minds in Sobriety

This past week, I sat down with Elizabeth Austin, a full-time writer and solo mom who’s 10 days away from her one-year sobriety anniversary. She’s placed over 30 pieces in major publications—including The New York Times, TIME, and Harper’s Bazaar—all written in sobriety while navigating her daughter’s cancer treatment and rebuilding her life after an unexpected job loss.

Elizabeth grew up in millennial party culture where sobriety felt like “stale white bread lifestyle.” But when her daughter was diagnosed with leukemia during COVID, drinking became her only escape: “If there’s nowhere to physically or mentally go, I’m going to go into the bottom of a bottle. You have to go somewhere.”

The breaking point came when her daughter finished treatment. Moving into a new apartment, Elizabeth decided she wasn’t taking cancer with her—and she wasn’t taking the drinking either.

Here’s what she discovered about creativity and sobriety:

“I’m of the mindset that you can write into anything infinitely. There are an infinite number of ways to tell a story. You can always go deeper.”

That infinite perspective only became possible with clarity.

She’s now finishing a memoir about being “the world’s worst cancer mom” while managing multiple book projects. And she told me something that captures why sobriety matters for creative work:

“I’m really glad I’m sober because I think I would be struggling to deal with the uncertainty of it all if I wasn’t.”

Sobriety doesn’t kill your creative edge. It gives you the clarity to handle everything that comes with doing the work that matters.

Episode 030 - When Clarity Becomes Your Most Essential Creative Tool: A Conversation with Elizabeth Austin

You can listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well:

My Next Guest on🎙️Clear Conversations

Episode 031 with Ryan Lee on December 18th at 10:00a EST

This week I’m sitting down with Ryan Lee, founder of Capsule Adventures and the creator of something I didn’t know existed until now: sober adventure travel that’s built for presence, not performance. Ryan got sober on March 16, 2021, two days after lying on an Airbnb floor convinced he was dying from a heart attack that turned out to be panic and daily hard drug use finally catching up with him. What happened next wasn’t a slow fade into recovery—it was a complete life rebuild that led him from corporate America to leading bucket-list trips through places like Patagonia and Iceland, all substance-free. What draws me to Ryan’s story is how he replaced the chaos with something that brought back real joy—not manufactured euphoria, but the kind of presence that comes from standing on a glacier or watching clouds part over Machu Picchu with complete clarity. I want to explore what it takes to build a life around that clarity when you’ve spent years numbing it. How do you create experiences designed to help people feel everything when most of the world is still trying to feel nothing? Ryan’s work isn’t about restriction or proving sobriety—it’s about what becomes possible when you strip away the blur. This is a conversation about replacing old patterns with something better, finding joy in unexpected places, and building a creative life that refuses to settle for grey scale when 4K is available.

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🎬 Behind the Scenes

I have a special mixed media piece I’ve been working on that will be featured in a prominent Substack community later this week. That’s all I can give you for now. 👀

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

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What’s Next For You?

The 31-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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