Podcast Episode 3. When the world feels like it’s falling apart.

In this episode:

I share about why we should stay sober even when the current events repeatedly show themselves are darker and grimmer. I offer an alternative to the thought, “The world has gone to hell, so why bother getting sober?”

Recommended Resources:

Why Bother Getting Sober When The World is Falling Apart, TikTok by Jessica Dueñas

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas
Hey everyone. So today we’re gonna talk about basically how to survive, how to stay sober when it really feels like the world is going to shit. So quick story, I remember there was one time I was working with a client and something happened on a federal legal scale that was incredibly discouraging, which happens at this point all the time now. And her comment to me was, I don’t even.

see why I should bother getting sober when everything’s gone to hell anyway. And so if you’re listening to this and you feel that way, I hear you and I recognize that yes, things often do feel like they’ve gone to hell. However, I’m going to encourage you to still stay sober, to still try despite the world apparently falling apart.

The first point that I want to bring up, right, for any of you who might care about any kind of social activism, social supports, etc. for others, is that if you in any way expect to contribute to changing things or to helping to change things that are not directly in your control, I promise you that you in the throes of addiction are not going to be able to help anybody else. So that’s going to be like my first point, right?

You’ve got to be sober in order to help other people. If you are struggling with addiction, you’ve got to be sober in order to truly show up for yourself and for others. Now, when I was an educator, I was in the throes of addiction. And yes, I was helping a lot of other people. I was helping students. I was able to amass massive amounts of money to fundraise for the school that I worked at, et cetera. But you know who I wasn’t showing up for? For me. And the way that I was doing that, I would eventually have died an early death

and never seen the fruit of all the work that I was putting in. But if you’re sober, right, you can show up for any cause that you want to support and know that at least you are giving yourself the chance in your lifetime to see things through. But if you are not trying to fight your addiction, your addiction is eventually going to get you. So I want to bring that up as the first point. The other point that I want to point out

I know things seem really terrible now, but I promise you that throughout, like, humans’ existence, we have always gone through, the generations before us have always gone through unprecedented times, right? I personally speaking, as a descendant of people who were colonized, as a descendant of people who were enslaved, if my ancestors had said, well, fuck it, like, now I’m a slave, so why bother?

or if my ancestors had said, well damn, now the Spanish came in and took our lands, right? Why bother? If my ancestors had said those things, I wouldn’t be here. And so I encourage you, regardless of your own background, regardless of who your ancestors are, et cetera, I want you to understand that if you sit there and say, why bother, that you are robbing future you.

or not even you, if you, I’m not even saying that you’re gonna have children or not, but like you’re robbing like the future, the opportunity of what you can accomplish if you choose to stay here and fight for your recovery. And really, I don’t feel like I have a third point, and this is gonna be like a super short randomness of me just talking, but I just wanted to point those things out, that you matter, your recovery matters. You.

While you are still on this earth, you deserve, you owe it to yourself and to anybody who might be impacted by you to show up fully. And if you’re fighting addiction, that means getting help. And that’s all I’ve got.

Published by Jessica Dueñas