The many forms of independence

This week we celebrate Independence Day.?248 years ago this week, the United States of America declared its independence from England. Since 2005, the Independence holiday has been about more than a patriotic celebration, but also a personal one. I had my last alcoholic drink on July 3, 2005.?

I’ve learned a lot over the last 19 years, the least of which is that the intensity of and the return on investment from my “sobriety” exponentially diminishes every year.?

The sentimentality and nostalgia remain, but life has introduced more challenges, opportunities, and adversity. Life has introduced more things to gain independence from. ?

It seems that the natural order is freedom, but our unnaturally built and engineered society thrives on the opposite of freedom.

Which is fine. Ben Franklin’s famous quote, with the proper context, illustrates as much: ?

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”?

Life, especially one in a highly advanced economic and technological society, is all about compromises on our independence. We are constantly weighing; how much restriction are we willing to live with or tolerate??

In 2020, I stepped onto the solo entrepreneurial limb. Talk about independence. And talk about compromise against that independence.?

You must make choices that sacrifice your personal time, wants, and desires. And you must make choices for the immediate survival of your business. ?

Along the way, one of those choices was to buy and use another’s technology over building and owning from scratch. The latter is significantly more expensive. And since I was funding this with my own money, the former was more advantageous.?

But that choice created all sorts of complications and restrictions. Because you don’t own the tech, if the owner wants to change it, you, and more importantly, your customers and business, are put in difficult and divergent positions.?

A few months ago, we made the decision to build from the ground up and own our technology. The process of independence is in motion. Every day, however, we must accelerate that motion because the restricted world we operate in today is diverging too far from what our customers actually paid for and expect.?

As of 2 days ago, we went from being 90 days to 50 days from go-live with Commonly Well 's new Precision Recovery Management Solution.?

Independence Day can come in all forms. I am looking forward to celebrating another version in a matter of weeks.?

As I noted above, my sobriety date is here again. I don’t write anything new every year. In the past it seemed like I was repeating myself. But a few years ago, I wrote a reflection that I was very proud of, and the insights remain true and relevant. ?

So, I share that in full below.?

16 Years of Magic

Originally posted to davidwhitesock.com on 3 JULY 2021

Today marks 16 years since having my last alcoholic drink.?

16 years sober — I suppose.?

I used to do harder drugs but stopped using those maybe 17 years ago. I frankly don’t remember the day.?

The last day I drank was quite unremarkable. In fact, no one around me knew that I was actually violating probation by drinking.?

My mind was not made up yet.?

The more eventful moment came a few weeks later when I woke up in the fetal position on the floor of my kitchen.?

I don’t know how I got there. But I knew why I was there.?

That was my day of surrender.?

I was not surrendering to not drinking — I was surrendering to living.?

When I explain this to people today, especially sober people or people in recovery, I get quizzical looks. I also get reprimanded — directly and indirectly.?

Many roll their eyes. Some say “whatever.” And others proclaim, “Okay, keep telling yourself that lie.”?

For these people, the only logical connection to my life today and my life before my last drink was the drink.

It was not the drink.

Society was exerting two strong forces against me … the force of logic and that of anchoring.?

The logical force dictates that if I quit drinking my life would naturally get better.?

No; that’s not how life works. Some of life gets better because alcohol for many creates friction and builds barriers to progress and success.?

There is, however, a half-life or a set of diminishing returns after one gets sober.?

16 years later, my not drinking alcohol has less effect on my goals than it did in July 2005.?

Yet, society considers the effect a constant. It is not.?

The anchoring force might be more evil and destructive to people’s lives.?

An anchoring heuristic is where our thinking is set upon a particular reference point from which subsequent judgments are influenced and made.

If sobriety is the anchoring point, then all decisions are made through that lens.?

Had I attached myself to that anchor, which society — including my family, friends, sponsors, and attorney — demanded I do, I wouldn’t have gone back to college when I did.?

Odds are I wouldn’t have been nudged toward law school, subsequently proving that a convicted felon could become licensed to practice law.?

My path to sobriety was not conventional. I did not follow conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom was the rational path.?

The rational path restricts the opportunity for magic.?

I did not know it at the time, but I was using psycho-logic. ?

The great ad exec, Rory Sutherland from Ogilvy, describes psycho-logic in his book?Alchemy.?

“The human mind does not run on logic any more than a horse runs on petrol.”

Human beings are not logical or rational animals — no matter what economists try to tell you.?

We are highly irrational. Behavioral economists cheer.?

A + B = C is perfectly fine when making an argument and designing a machine. But that is not the equation of human life.?

When it comes to sobriety and addiction, society, and pretty much all of treatment seek rationality to this problem.?

You drink a lot. And your life is filled with negative consequences. Stop drinking. And your life will have less negative consequences.?

As the narrative goes ….

You drink a lot. You need treatment. Go away from your life for 30 days. Come back and change everything. Wait, don’t change everything. Go to 12 step meetings for the rest of your life. Don’t make any big decisions in the first year of sobriety. Life will get better … if you work it.?

That is a rational approach to a highly illogical problem.?

When I was 3 months sober, it became clear to me that going to a bunch of meetings and working a couple part-time jobs wasn’t getting me anywhere.?

I decided a return to college would present the best opportunity for a reimagined future.

Almost everyone in my life said, “Don’t do it, you’ll relapse.”

They were anchored in sobriety. They were applying rationality. They were promoting safety.?

This is the conventional wisdom applied to millions every day.?

The path I chose optimized for magic.?

It introduced me to a professor, a former public defender. She suggested law school.

The spark of a real purpose in life was lit.?

A natural reactor since.

Magic.?