How an addict quit her phone
+ never regrets the peace.
It all started by leaving my phone in the other room for the entire morning. And since my mornings are a slow rolling time to ease into the day — usually they are a peaceful unfurling lasting from 5am to 10am (or so) for journaling, prayer, meditation, watching the sunrise, reading, writing, two cups of coffee, and plenty of water — that means for my first five hours of consciousness, I'm totally unplugged. I don’t even want the electronics near me. I want to know my energy is entirely of my own choosing. I have no problem existing inside the silent space of love, gratitude, joy, and peace, all on my own. (I have known what life was without this ecstatic luxury and I will never, ever go back). I don’t miss anything. I don’t need anything. And I do not reach for anything except coffee and bliss.
The thing about ditching my phone is that it’s glorious — but it wasn’t at first. What about knowing the weather? And my horoscope? What about all the other stuff I need to know? The news, texts, social media, plans, appointments, reminders, etc.?? What about the outside world?!!
What about the outside world? I spend a good deal of time with it, and I love it. My outside world is anything outside me and my relationship with my Self, so it is: kissing my husband good morning with a big huge well-rested smile on my bare little face. It’s my backyard that smells of late spring, soppy morning dew, and fresh wormy earth. It’s all the busy wild birds, each with its own unique voice and style, each with a different flittering activity. It’s the full grown bunnies that come by, and the butterflies and bumblebees. The flowers growing vibrantly in fuschia, coral, purple, yellow, and crimson along the fence. The jumping jacked-up squirrels. The little black mouse that I know is scuttling in the dead leaves beneath our rose bushes but man, he’s hard to actually spot!
My outside world is the shining yellow sunlight gleaming against the lush tall trees that tower over our house in all directions. It’s the way the soft swaths of electric pink and purple clouds spread out as far as the eye can see as morning stretches herself happily into the warming wilderness. I’ve got an outside world and it is not breaking news. It’s not anyone else’s thoughts or neuroses or marketing or energy or impositions into my inner world. In fact, my inner world and my outer world are pretty damn similar. Because I have designed it that way. I’ve created it this way. Not because I created nature or beauty or silence, but because these are the energies I choose to align with: slowness, calm, steadiness, joy, wonder, richness. As above, so below. As within, so without.
The phone and all of its zillion portals into distraction — I just don’t need it. And I don’t want anything I don’t need. When I quit drinking, it was excruciating to not drink at first. It was all I thought about, all I was afraid of, all I thought I needed was a drink and here I was denying myself the drinks that I was sure were the keys to my happiness, relaxation, and satisfaction in life. Even though my drinking was shredding my connection to myself and my husband and my life. Even though the drinking was dark and deeply troubling and forced me to hide in shame hating myself. Even though I wanted to drink and not drink at the exact same time and it was driving me insane.
Even though.
I’ve talked about quitting social media before and I want to keep the conversation going because I want you to know that it can be an addiction very similar to drinking. Don’t do yourself the disservice of downplaying its harms because you feel silly or like you are ‘making too big a deal’ about it. Honor your instincts and intuition; trust yourself to know it hurts. And if it hurts, be so compassionate to yourself about that. It’s not your fault. The hurt is real. If you feel it, it is real and sacred. Sure, the world around you will want you to laugh it off and pretend it’s just one of those things you have to live with and moderate — but it isn’t. And so much of the reason we have to have our phones nearby at all times is because the social media apps we put on them are forever dinging and blinking and demanding shit from us and OUR BRAINS THINK IT MATTERS. Leaving my phone in the other room is how my highest self communicates with my own subconscious and says: No.
That’s it.
All the flailing around we do — all the panic I used to have about not being able to drink (read: suck down) wine the minute the clock struck 5pm was all made up in my own mind. Recovery teaches you in no uncertain terms that you must take full control of your own thoughts and witness them, question them, decide which ones to believe, which ones to keep and which ones to dismiss. Thoughts are not facts. Thoughts are habits and ego, mostly. And they come from what you believe about yourself, the world, who you are, and what you deserve. They can be created and destroyed. They don’t own you. They are not the real, actual you. You are.
Keeping your phone nearby all the time, keeping all the apps that bug you and tell you what to prioritize (chaos, compulsion, nonsense, and addiction) is a choice. For me, the reason I feel better now that I give zero fucks about my phone, is because I tore off the band-aid of distraction and let that settle into my bones and being. But I had an advantage: I knew how to do it; I had already done it with alcohol. I knew the tricks addiction would try to play on me and the jig was up. At first, I didn’t want to leave my phone in the other room. I wanted to have it with me and I didn’t want it with me. Sounds familiar right? I wanted to drink and I didn’t want to drink. I wanted both at the same time. Cognitive dissonance sets you up for success and failure at once. It isn’t having the phone with you that’s stressing you out. It’s not having made up your mind to have it or not have it.
You have to decide. That’s what’s hard.
We tell ourselves the object of our addiction is what is causing us so much torture. It’s too tempting, it’s too “addictive.” But the truth is that no substance is inherently addictive all on its own. There’s no actual measure of the “addictiveness” in a drug. But if we aren’t satisfied with our inner life, if we do not have easy and immediate access to a place inside that is pure peace, calm, love, and joy anytime we want, then we will surely encounter some substance or habit “out there” that will give us a hit of a high that allows us a glimpse of it artificially. Whatever it is that grabs us and digs its claws in has an in, and it has an in because we think we need something we don’t already have, or cannot cultivate in ourselves any other way.
Some of the greatest and most profound gifts of recovery are the abilities to slow down, ease up, laugh at ourselves, forgive ourselves and each other, and really take the time to examine our lives, our priorities, and belief systems. What this grants us over time is an uncanny ability to notice what is disrupting our precious peace, and confront it. And one of the things that I think was lost on me before I entered recovery was that the most important and critical factor in being able to change my life for the better was not knowing how to change it, but rather witnessing it as it actually was. Without judgment, without berating or shaming myself, and without trying to white-knuckle anything in order to “be good” according to anyone else.
There is a well known scientific principle called The Observer Effect which states that the act of observing a system will influence what is being observed. This was the essential tipping point for me in going from drinking to not drinking, from grabbing my phone to not having it on me at all. Instead of reacting everytime my brain told me HAVE A DRINK or CHECK YOUR PHONE, I witnessed that thought. I watched it and didn’t do what it said. I said: No. It is the most quiet revolution there is: to witness the mind and not believe it, not attach any meaning to it. You want to pick up the phone because your mind says you must, not because there is anything important on the phone. You want to have a drink because your mind says you must, not because drinking will help you with anything.
Once I made the decision to remove my phone, I found that over time I went to check it later and later in the day, and even then it was a quick glance just to see if there were any calls or texts that were urgent. There usually weren’t. This is the reality. We are told to believe we live in a threatening and terribly urgent world. We don’t. There’s just a ton of people and companies invested in trying to make us believe we do, and thereby enlisting us in helping to perpetuate the illusion. There was nothing on my phone or in it that was critical or even that interesting.
What happens over time when you stop answering to the substance, you realize the substance really has no pull of its own. And life inside and outside of you becomes more clear, more peaceful, and less jarring. What’s hard about quitting is not how hard it is to live without the substance, what’s hard about quitting is realizing you have all the freedom you ever wanted now that you aren’t enslaved to a bottle or a device, but you have to spend time alone with yourself to understand what it is you want to do with it.
You see, there was comfort in the addiction. I liked having something else boss me around because at least then I didn’t have to decide for myself what I would do instead. At least nursing a hangover meant I couldn’t focus on anything else (just writing that sentence made me feel nauseous and incredulous that I used to do that to myself). But man, I wouldn’t trade being my own boss for any other ‘success’ the world could try to sell me now.
It’s not a breeze to remain sober, it’s a responsibility I hold in the highest esteem. It’s not a priority in my life — it is the priority. But all around me the ‘outside world’ laughs at my decision not to drink. Most of them think it's nonsense or annoying or weird, and that I should be able to drink or moderate or whatever. Because they cannot fathom a life entirely without booze. It’s the same with all the social media obsession, the phone obsession. It’s all a distraction we opt into and think we can’t get out of — but we can.
We just have to stop looking to the thing that’s crippling us as though it can also be the thing that empowers us or makes us feel better. It won’t because it can’t. The mind may keep insisting this can be true, but when we get quietly, compassionately real with ourselves, we know that it isn’t. For fuck’s sake, we have proven it to ourselves over and over again! That’s why our phones make us batty! We keep grabbing them, keeping them close, expecting that they won’t drive us batty even though they always, always DO. Accept the truth for what it is. That’s all. No blame, no shame, no judgment. Self-empowerment is hard at first, but mostly because we are generally unaccustomed to dealing with things by accepting them for what they actually are. Seeing things clearly and accepting them as is picks up its own momentum and becomes second nature over time.
We either answer to the chaos (thereby ensuring it continues) or we embody the peace of being in charge of our own experience. It’s one or the other and we get to choose. But we can’t get to the peace until we recognize and accept that we don’t rail against the phone or the booze or the drug or the substance. We rail against the choice.
Absolutely love this!
I’m really impressed with your clarity and understanding of recovery. “We either answer to the chaos (thereby ensuring it continues) or we embody the peace of being in charge of our own experience. It’s one or the other and we get to choose. But we can’t get to the peace until we recognize and accept that we don’t rail against the phone or the booze or the drug or the substance. We rail against the choice.” I feel like your words will help me. I have reduced use of FB a great deal, much preferring the community and writing here. I have never posted on other platforms hardly at all. However, I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work and found it super helpful. I recognize in my own life and in our culture the way phones distract and rob us of time. Your clarity and way of thinking this through is valuable. Thank you. I like the idea of just not using the phone first thing each day. That’s a great starting point, and in one way I think intermittent fasting ideas would help. I want to more fully reclaim my focus and break free of the habits.