7 Stoic Steps for Breaking an Addiction

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14Ryan Holiday: We're all trying to get clean from something. Everyone has some form of sobriety they're trying to get to, some habit or compulsion or addiction that they're trying to break. Well, what if the secret to sobriety, to getting clean, to breaking free of this form of slavery actually dates back more than 2 ,000 years. Sure, we live in a modern world where temptation has been turned into a multi-billion dollar industry, where we're surrounded by systems designed to hijack our attention and channel our worst impulses, but people have always struggled with this. And stoicism has been a philosophy that's helped thousands and thousands of people get clean, break bad habits, regain that self-mastery that the good life requires.

1:00Ryan Holiday: I'm Ryan Holiday. I've been writing about stoicism now for almost two decades, but like you, I have my addictions. I have my temptations. And stoicism has helped me in my journey of sobriety, of being the person that I want to be. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode from some people who have used stoicism to get clean, get sober, and most importantly, to stay so. And hopefully it will help you too.

1:29Ryan Holiday: What was getting sober like for you? For me, it was like I had played a show in New York. It was my first time in New York. It was like one of those little shows that nobody got paid. You kind of came up there and I was like, all right, I have to go to New York. And little did I know the show made zero difference in my career, but that whole experience changed my life. And I got up there and again, alcohol. And as soon as my feet hit the ground, got out of the car, I just started drinking. And I drank so much that day. I drank more than I, you know, have ever drank before. And I woke up the next day, no idea what happened.

2:05And that's such a scary feeling, too, especially as a female, to just let your guard down with that. Especially where I was staying. I was not in a safe part of town. Like, we had no money, me and my band. So we were like, you know. and it was just like a hangover for me that that was heavier than anything I'd ever experienced before and that lasted for days I remember the next day I was like hey can somebody grab me a drink we're at Penn Station and they came back with a beer and I meant a water and they just assumed they just assumed and so I had a beer I took one sip of it I put it down I was like it just it tasted different to me and you know my motto was just always like the best way to kill hangovers start drinking again you know kind of like counterbalance it which is super dumb but that was it that was the last drink i ever had and i remember i got home and it just seemed like everything in my life was just like kind of falling apart a little bit and i was just like what what am i doing kind of thing and i'm like i i have an issue and everybody's like oh you're too young whatever you just need to chill out but i'm like no man like i i seriously i am drinking more than I should be able to drink.

3:14And it's like taking over my life and I'm doing stuff I don't want to do. And that's a problem too that we kind of have. I think it's getting better where people are starting to realize you don't just have to be some 40 year old man that lost his job and just wakes up and pours Jack in his cereal in the morning. There's sobriety and like alcoholism. Like it looks different for everybody.

3:36Ryan Holiday: Sure. And I was just like, all right, let's try not to drink. Let's just like work on this. And I was like, all right, I'm not going to drink for a month. And then, you know, like that slowly started to change. And so, you know, I had to change up my habits for sure. It was like, you're going to be that person that loves sparkling water. Yeah, we're going to do it. And now, you know, I do. But it was just like things like that. Like, all right, you got to have something. If you have to have something in your hand, like make it water. Yeah. And certain little things like that. And at first it was hard.

4:06But, you know, I think sometimes it's harder now because like the first month you're like, ugh, you can still taste it. You know why you're not drinking. And then, you know, six months, you know, I could still remember, even a year, I could remember why I got sober. But as time goes on, you start to think, well, have I changed? Am I a little different now? Could I handle it? Can I just go have a beer or glass of wine or whatever? And then I'll have a dream that I drank something and it's always awful. It never tastes good. And as soon as I drink it, I'm devastated.

4:38Ryan Holiday: There's a story about the physicist Richard Feynman. I tell it in Discipline is Destiny. He's at Caltech one day going about his business, walking across campus, and he just feels this like sudden pull for a drink. He didn't think he had an alcohol problem. He wasn't an alcoholic. It wasn't negatively affecting his life, but just the suddenness of the urge and the sense that he should fulfill the urge and that that was the most important thing. He's just like, hard no, that's not gonna be me. That's not gonna be my life. And so he gave up drinking right then and there. Maybe that's what saves him from alcoholism or addiction.

5:11Ryan Holiday: Like the Stoics, he didn't want to be a slave to something. He was suspicious of the urge. He was objecting in advance to the subjugation to that urge, the powerlessness to not be able to do something, and so while it was in his power, he stopped. And I think we should think about that, whether it's the caffeine you can't go without, the websites you can't stop checking, your relationship with your phone, junk food, anything that you can't not do, the Stoics would say, is something you should look at with that kind of suspicion and aversion. And if possible, I mean, ideally you quit it right then and there.

5:47Ryan Holiday: It's going to be easier for some things than others. But the question is, what vices or temptations or urges are you going to allow to be in charge of you and your life?

6:02Ryan Holiday: What stuicism really is, is this, the Latin phrase would be pause and reflect, pause and reflect. Like ask yourself, how am I going to feel about this later? How is this decision going to age? What are the consequences for other people going to be here? It's again, you can feel it. You can feel it. You wouldn't be human if you didn't, but you don't have to act on it. That's powerful. I feel like a lot of us, I don't know about you guys, for me, I think that's so many times that you're talking that I have reacted or sent that email or sent that text in anger and I really wish I would have taken that advice and now that you reflect later like wow I wish I would have paused.

6:35Ryan Holiday: Yeah I would say there's very few social media posts that I have written on the fly that afterwards I'm like I'm so glad I posted that. Yeah. You know like if I sit down and I think about it and I schedule it you know those tend to age well. It's whatever I'm saying when I'm a little worked up when I haven't totally thought it through. You know, so I think stoicism, the Stoics try to be less implicit, less immediate. Mark Surilis is the emperor of a large swap of territory. But more importantly, the Stoics would say, he was in command of himself. And there are a lot of powerful and important people, people of a lot of authority, who are not masters of themselves, the Stoics would say.

7:16Ryan Holiday: And that's actually the greatest empire, would be that, to be under your own path.

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10:04Ryan Holiday: the essence of stoic philosophy is being in command of yourself in fact seneca says no one is fit to rule who is not first master of themselves and the reason we're not masters of ourselves is we give that power over to someone or something else right drugs alcohol cigarettes codependency that's the tragedy of addiction not only is it bad for the person but often we can become addicted to our relationship with different addicts, codependency being one of the worst forms of that. The Stoics, it was about being in control of yourself, not your urges, not your desires. And the Stoics look at Alexander the Great.

10:47Ryan Holiday: Mark Sreus looks at Alexander the Great as someone who is super powerful but not actually powerful because he can't stop. There's never enough. Seneca himself actually defines poverty as as not having too little but wanting more. More is all you need as the great Metallica song Master of Puppets goes. That is such a dark and slavish place to be. So the reason we battle our addictions, the reason we try to get clean, the reason we practice discipline so we can be fit to be good parents, to be leaders, to be bosses. If we're not in command of ourselves, if something or someone, some urge or some substance, if that's really what's ruling our life, that is not a good place to be.

11:36Ryan Holiday: Discipline equals freedom. That's Jocko Willink's phrase and he's totally right. Discipline is freedom because if you don't have discipline, you're not free. I know that sounds like a paradox, but if you're not in command of yourself, it means something else is in command of you. Your urges, your desires, your impulses, your emotions. He's saying that by being disciplined, by having a practice, you have true freedom. And I think that's totally right. And the Stoics would have completely agreed. But I think there's also a deeper, bigger argument that that's what I'm trying to make in discipline is destiny.

12:03Ryan Holiday: The idea is that to become who you're meant to become, to do what you're meant to do, you have to have discipline. There was this ancient expression that the character is fate, character is destiny, that the character you cultivate determines who you're going to be, what you're going to be able to do. And so it goes with discipline. So when I say discipline is destiny, what I'm trying to get you to realize, not only is nothing possible without discipline, everything is enhanced by this discipline. Think of the people you admire. It's their grace under pressure. It's their humility despite their enormous success or power or wealth.

12:37Ryan Holiday: It's their restraint. It's that command of themselves. Yes, discipline is freedom and you will find that the more rigorous and regimented you are about how you live your life, which is what Jocko was telling me about, you will live a better life. But to become who you're meant to become, to do what you're meant to do, you need to have discipline. You need the virtue of discipline, that cardinal virtue of discipline.

13:02Ryan Holiday: When did you find Stoicism? I found it through sobriety. Interesting. Now I'm talking about the textbook version of Stoicism. I had always operated, and this is what I learned about myself through reading, you know, meditations, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, I'm a huge fan of. They couldn't be more different in the way they lived their lives or what life had presented them. But they had the same type of philosophy. It's really interesting, right? So we are not our outside situations. We are how we choose to respond to our outside situations. And when I used to think that way a lot and I used to kind of daydream sometimes, I get teased about it.

13:36And then I realized this is one of the things that's going to keep me sober. Because this is, I know this to be true. Like I have that knowing whether I'm right or wrong. I know for myself this type of philosophy is going to help me in times where I cannot see straight in times where I'm having a really rough time because You know, I look at that situation that happened to me in the hospital Boy going into the hospital. I was like this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me ever And it's going to affect a lot of people. I work with they're going to be jobless They're going to be you know, and I was like that whatever I get out and i'm almost eight years sober now God willing and I Think that was by far the best thing that has ever happened to me So I learned a lot from that.

14:15So this is this ties into a higher power thing is like, I really don't know what's good or bad. And I'm holding up air quotes here because I really don't.

14:23Ryan Holiday: Yes. You know, something can be, you know, we're not dumb. We can realize when we're like, oh, you know, like I broke my shoulder. That friggin hurts. That that really sucks. But that could lead to something that, you know, really wonderful. And this has put me, stoicism and my sobriety and the way my life has gone over the last few years, which is not like I thought it would, kind of in, I'm not even going to say in the worst way because I don't believe that now. I'm now in a place where I can be, I think, a lot more useful to a lot more people. I think when people hear that, it's like, it's not good or bad.

14:55Ryan Holiday: You go to this sort of moral place. It's more like it's not positive or negative. It just is. and then you get to decide, by the way, time will tell whether it was positive or negative.

15:11Ryan Holiday: The secret to life, Epictetus said, was two words. Two things explain everything you should do in all situations. And he said those two words are simple, persist and resist. Meaning some things you have to endure, you have to do even though they're really hard. And then other things you have to stop doing even though it's really hard to do them. Persist and resist. He was really talking about the virtue of temperance or self-discipline, self-mastery. And his point was that if we could do that, if we could persist in some things and resist other things, we could become what we're truly capable of becoming.

15:44Ryan Holiday: This virtue of temperance, self-discipline, self-command, it's everything. It's deterministic and predictive. It will make you better at what you do. It will make whatever you do great if complemented by self-command and self-discipline.

16:01I mean, isn't that the problem with like self-help and everything that you can read all the self-help books, you can read all the stoicism books, but you still have to do it. Yeah. You can have all that knowledge, but what are you doing in your real life to show that?

16:21Ryan Holiday: But specifically with addiction, there's a couple of layers here, which is like one, you can know you have a problem, but not believe you really have a problem. Right. So there's like the knowing, hey, I know this isn't working for me. I know I got to quit this. But then you can say like later or down the road or it's not as bad as other people or I've got an arm in control. So you have that element of just like, you know it, but you don't really feel it, you know, or you feel it, but you don't know or whatever it is. And then there's the part where it's like, then you know what you need to do.

16:54Ryan Holiday: And then the actual doing of it day to day is the next part of it. It's like, hey, I know these are the healthy habits. These are the practices. These are the things that keep me sober, that keep me on the right path. And then are you doing it day to day or are you making excuses or are you making exceptions? And then that's when you get yourself into trouble. So there's the knowing and then really knowing and being ready. Like, as you said, you wanted to get sober for a while, but it's not until some magical point in 2023 where you're like, okay, now it's really, really, really the time. And then just because you know it's the time, that doesn't help you right now.

17:35Ryan Holiday: Three years later where you have to do it again today and tomorrow and the day after. Yeah, it's just one day at a time really. And that's a mindset that I shifted was don't just say, okay, it's going to start today and last forever. It's going to start today and it's going to just be today and then it's going to be tomorrow. And then, I mean, sometimes you go hour by hour in the beginning. I'm just not going to do it right now. Right now. And as long as you stack enough of those on top of each other, you're there.

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