In the U.S., drinking alcohol or using drugs in the morning before work is very common these days (since a large percentage of the population is working from home).
Back in the day, co-hosts of the Elevation Recovery Podcast, Chris Scott and Matt Finch, had a period of their lives where they drank alcohol first thing in the morning to mitigate work stress and quickly banish alcohol withdrawal hangovers (Matt also took unprescribed RX pills like opioids, benzos, amphetamine salts, and more before work to make jobs less stressful and soul-crushing).
In episode 183 of Elevation Recovery, Chris Scott & Matt Finch share stories about working very stressful jobs or careers and how they used either alcohol (Chris) or alcohol and drugs (Matt) to mitigate the ‘suckiness’ of their workdays and their lives in general.
Many people today are in similar situations…
As it’s easier than ever to use alcohol and/or drugs while working (from home) as you can more easily hide your substance use.
Thus, Episode 183 is dedicated to helping people bring more clarity to their own habits and hopefully provide some insights that can help individuals to improve their lives significantly (including addiction recovery and mental health optimization!).
Here are some of the main topics discussed in this episode:
- Research has suggested that approximately 80% of Americans are either unsatisfied at work or worse (and many have chronic stress from their work!)
- Why Matt believes having low-paying stressful jobs that he hated contributed to his substance addictions
- Why Chris believes his finance career, although high-paying and status-boosting, caused way too much stress and anxiety and how he used alcohol to relax
- How Chris’s drinking progressed into physiological dependence
- Drinking alcohol for hangovers?! It works for the day but only makes things worse in the long run (especially if you keep doing it daily)
- How Chris thought he just hated his stressful career in finance and had mild PTSD from it, and thought that was why he felt horrible and didn’t at first realize it was from alcohol withdrawal
- After 6 years in finance going from company to company, Chris realized that it simply wasn’t the right profession for his well-being
- How to take a step back and find out what you actually want in life
- How Matt used to drink Budweiser in the morning to cure his hangover before work
- How Matt used opioids in the morning before work to make his job in New York not suck so much
- How alcohol, opioids, and other substances can induce hypomania and how this can make them more addictive
- How Matt used alcohol, opioids, benzos, and a lot of other substances to self-medicate social anxiety, generalized anxiety, intermittent depression, low self-esteem, and his general fear of life
- How alcohol can make some people feel more competent, even though it typically makes a person less competent
- How alcohol starts off as resource (eg for relaxation after work or social settings) and how when it’s used daily or habitually, eventually you could need it just to avoid withdrawal (which you can die from when cold-turkey detoxing from alcohol)
- How Matt planned to quit RX opioids when he moved back to California, yet on the drive from New York he stopped to meet a few old dealers before going home (to get Norco and Valium illegally)
- How Matt quit opioids successfully with only a 3-day weekend off from work, yet didn’t know how to heal his brain and still didn’t feel good 4 months later — took opioids again — and was a full-blown heroin addict within a couple of months
- Why Chris and Matt are trying to get mainstream recovery programs to quit ignoring the chronic brain dysfunction of people quitting alcohol and/or drugs (and actually do something to help rebalance their ‘starving brains’)
