Aug 30, 2019 | By Tim Stoddart

How Do You Know If You Need to Get Sober?

Sober Videos

What’s up, everyone? Tim Stoddart here, with sobernation.com. How are you? I hope you all had a great weekend. I hope everybody is feeling fantastic on this Monday. Let’s jump right into it. I was thinking a lot this weekend on what I wanted to speak about in today’s video, and just as I was really in my head, going back and forth about different topics, I got a phone call from somebody that I know, that was basically asking for some tips, or some suggestions, on what to do for somebody that they thought might need some help, might need some treatment.

And you know, I said my piece, and I said what I think is important, but after I hung up the phone, I started really thinking, like, “How does somebody know if they need to get sober, if they need to go to treatment, if they need to get help?” I think it’s, like… Sorry, I could hear her toenails on my floor. I think it’s a really good question to ask, because it’s not a black-and-white issue. How do you know if you need to get sober?

The best answer that I could come up with, the best realization, and I think the most important realization that people need to have, is when you hit that moment when you feel inside your heart, and in your mind, and just within your being, that, “I can’t do this anymore.” It’s a tough thing to say, because I’ve seen people that need to get help, and clearly have an addiction problem, and maybe they even admit that they need to go to treatment, but inside themselves, they still have… Call it a reservation, that they aren’t ready. They’re just not completely ready to go all in on recovery.

And it’s a tough concept, you know? Because I never want to be in a position to tell somebody, like, “You can go to treatment, but there’s no point, because you’re not going to get sober,” because that’s not always the case, right? I’ve seen people who I didn’t think were going to make it, and five, 10 years later, they’re doing great. They’re living lives in recovery, and living happy lives, and that’s wonderful, you know? I’m all for that.

But the conversation that I’m trying to start with this video is what is the point that we all hit when we come to the realization when we just know, “I don’t want to do this anymore”? And I don’t know how to define that. I don’t know how to say, like… To point at it, and to say, “These are the circumstances when you know.” Is it being arrested? I don’t know. I got arrested a whole lot, and that was never really a deterrent from me to keep doing what I was doing. Is it being hurt? I mean, I guess for some people it could be. I was lucky that I was never in any car accidents, although I could have been. I was the… I don’t want to say victim. I got jumped, twice actually. Like, I got beat up really fucking bad, and that didn’t necessarily stop me.

For me, and all I know how to do is speak from my own experience, but for me, I had an experience in my life, and I got to a point where I had to take a real honest look at myself, and I had that whole looking out the window moment, where I saw what I was doing, and I saw what I had become, and I just had that internalization where I knew, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

We all need to get there. For some people, it might be a softer fall. For other people, it might be a really hard fall. The tragedy becomes that, like, people die in between that point from, “Yeah, everything’s good. Like, I’m partying a little bit. I’m a little out of control, but I can handle it,” and, “You know what? I need help.” There’s a spot in between there, for some people, that they just don’t make it, and that’s the tragedy, and that’s the shit that keeps us so motivated to rock and roll on Sober Nation the way we are, because it’s my hope, and it’s my prayer, and it’s my mission to just continue to put messages out there so that every now and then, people see it and they say to themselves, “I’m not alone,” and I think that’s really powerful.

So to wrap this up, for those that got through the entire video and dealt with my ramblings, thank you. I appreciate you, but like I said, the conversation that I really want to start is how do you know if you need to get sober? How do you know if you want to get sober? How do you know if you’re an addict or an alcoholic? What does it take for you to have that internal realization? And most importantly, this is the real thing that I’m trying to get at, how do you communicate that message to somebody else, to maybe ease them into a process that they may not otherwise be open to? All right, let’s talk about it. Thank you so much for listening. I’ll talk to you guys next week. Have a great week. Happy Monday. Peace out.