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Chapter 1: What is the significance of Stoicism in overcoming addiction?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. 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. 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. 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 and that's such a scary feeling too especially as a female
to just let your guard down like 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 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'm like, I meant a water. And they just assumed. They just assumed. And so I had a beer. I took one sip of it and I put it down. I was like, ugh. It just, it tasted different to me. Sure. And, you know, my motto was just always like the best way to kill a hangover is start drinking again. Sure.
You know, kind of like counterbalance it, which is super dumb, but...
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Chapter 2: How does personal experience shape the journey to sobriety?
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.
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 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 going to be me. That's not going to be my life. And so he gave up drinking right then and there. Maybe that's what saves him from alcoholism or addiction.
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 Bone, junk food, anything that you can't not do, the Stokes 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.
It's gonna be easier for some things than others. But the question is, what vices or temptations or urges are you gonna allow to be in charge of you and your life? What stoicism really is, is this. The Latin phrase would be pause and reflect. Pause and reflect. 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 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 it'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.
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.
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Chapter 3: What strategies can help in breaking free from addictions?
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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, right? Codependency being one of the worst forms of that. The Stoics, It was about being in control of yourself, right? Not your urges, not your desires.
And the Stoics look at Alexander the Great, Mark Suarez, he 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 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 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, like if we're not in command of ourself, 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. 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 Stokes 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. 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.
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