I know when I was drinking, and in early sobriety, peace was not the word I would use to describe my life. Chaos would be pretty accurate. Misery would be accurate as well.  Feeling at peace is a wonderful goal for anyone in sobriety – because it is achievable and it can add a lot of years to your life.  Why? Because stress, chaos, anger, resentment, and misery all take their toll, not just psychologically but physically as well.

More and more evidence indicates that stress and the hormones released due to it take years off our lives.  It’s pretty difficult to rid your life of all stress, but it certainly is possible to get rid of manufactured stress. By manufactured stress I mean the tensions that come from making poor choices.

Your job is more stressful if you are always late to work – because you are dodging criticism and wondering, as you trudge along on the freeway, late once again, if this might be the last straw.

Your home life is more stressful if you don’t spend quality time with your kids and they start to get out of control.

Your finances can create stress if you just have to have that slightly larger TV that you can’t really afford so you add another thousand dollars to an already hefty debt you’re carrying.

There are all sorts of ways our daily choices contribute to whether or not life feels like a pleasant and peaceful experience or if it feels like a giant wrecking ball is pulled back in position, ready to be dropped on us should one more thing go wrong.

Certainly there are things that just happen – but if I really think about it – most of my stress is manufactured. Either I’m overreacting or worrying too much, or I’m making choices that add to my stress.

Here are 10 ways to reduce stress over time:

Exercise – this doesn’t mean you have to run a marathon because a pleasant walk through the neighborhood after dinner can often be enough to kick in those stress-defeating brain chemicals

Eat better – junk food does not put our bodies in the best shape possible to cope with unavoidable stresses. You are just more capable of responding calmly and cooly when you are jacked up on sugar and excessive amounts of caffeine

Have a conversation – every day you should have a pleasant conversation about your day with SOMEone. It can be a friendly call to an old friend or a few minutes of quiet time with your spouse – but it’s a great way to diffuse things as they happen

Don’t spend money you don’t have – if you can’t afford the fancier car, don’t buy it. If you can’t afford the bigger TV screen, downsize your choice. Money does not buy happiness, especially if you don’t have the money and your credit card company jacks your interest rate to 29%!

Sleep – might seem silly to put this here because it’s so obvious you need sleep, but most Americans don’t get enough sleep.  Think about it – if you aren’t sleeping at least 7 hours, you are taking years off your life. Your body deals better with stress when it has sufficient rest

Keep Connected – especially important in recovery – keep connected with others in recovery. Go to a meeting when you are feeling stressed rather than stew in your own thoughts

Simplify your life – are you trying to do too much? Are you continually competing with others? Maybe it’s time to look at ways to simplify your life

Write Things Down – putting goals, finances, and the like in writing makes them more manageable. You can find order in the chaos sometimes just by sitting down and figuring out the steps you need to take to extricate yourself from manufactured stress.  A few years ago I put together a financial goal document and followed it (almost) faithfully. It gave me a clear picture of my way to more security and although it seemed like it would take forever, I did eventually reach those goals in a few years.

Be Kind to Yourself and Others – have you gotten into the habit of being perpetually hostile or angry? It’s easy to get into the rut of being a grouch. It doesn’t make life easier. I’ve noticed on days I really embrace the joy of life and smile at people – and sincerely, enthusiastically greet them – everyone seems to lighten up- life adjusts to your mood – you cast a pall on everyone when you’re in a snit, and you brighten up the room when you’re grateful and joyful

Find Quiet Time – maybe you like to read or just sit and meditate. Just find out what works for you and spend some time reflecting, learning something new, or just rejuvenating yourself.  TV is not quiet time. It’s fine, but it isn’t a substitute for spending time with your own thoughts and feelings so you can get a clue about how things are REALLY going for you

Sometimes the challenges of summer vacations are due to simply changing your schedule – you might be out of town for a week or two, or even longer. You no longer have your usual support network at your fingertips, especially if you travel abroad.  However, there are some things you can do to prepare for this, and these are especially critical if you are in early recovery and still building a foundation.

First thing to do is find out where the meetings are in the place where you are traveling. Frankly, you have to go someplace pretty darn rural and off the beaten track to not be able to find a meeting.  If you are going overseas to a place where you don’t speak the language, investigate where English-speaking groups meet. They are EVERYwhere.  Americans living abroad have built quite a nice network of 12-step meetings, especially in popular destination cities such as Paris and Rome.

It can be pretty fun to go to a meeting in some of these countries. Back in the early 90s I went to a meeting in Dublin and they asked me to speak.  Now there are some language differences even though we all speak English.  I remember speaking about drinking a pint  a day and I wondered why people were looking at me funny.  Truth is, they couldn’t understand why I was in AA if I only drank a pint a day (they consider that one beer).  I didn’t think to clarify that it was a pint of Vodka.  It was pretty hilarious to find this out after the meeting.  I’m sure many left thinking, “Those Americans sure are lightweights! If I could keep myself to a pint of lager a day I sure as heck wouldn’t be in this meeting!”

I’m not sure what meetings are like in Scotland these days – back in the early 90s they were a far cry from American meetings. First off – everyone seemed either depressed or pissed off that they were at a meeting. They sat in a big circle quietly brooding with sullen looks on their faces.  This was very different from my meetings in NYC where laughter and comaraderie were the usual staples of a meeting.  I’m hoping over the last 10 years things have gotten a bit more sunny in those rooms.

There are quite a few English-speaking meetings in Paris because it’s filled with ex-pats.  The people in them are very friendly and helpful.

Remember that pre-planning is important – you don’t want to be in a country trying to communicate you need to find a meeting in pidgen French!

When you are planning a vacation, when considering your choices also consider your sobriety. If you are 1 year sober, a cruise is probably going to be more challenging than a trip to Disneyworld. Face it, cruises are giant booze parties in most cases. You are trapped on a giant floating bar.  Might not be the best place to be if you are still on shaky legs.

If you are going someplace rural – camping or hiking – make sure you bring along your paperback Big Book or daily meditations to help. Fortunately, unless you are camping with a bunch of boozers, you won’t have many temptations in the back woods.  The bigger temptations can come in countries where alcohol has a strong presence everywhere.   Sometimes people do not understand why you won’t have just one glass – so be prepared to defend your right not to drink.  Generally the easiest thing to say is I’m allergic – or I have a medical condition and the doctor said alcohol could kill me.  Whatever it takes to get the person to back off!

There aren’t any hard and fast rules on traveling in recovery – the best thing to do is plan in advance for any issues you think might arise.  If you are planning to travel with other people who will be drinking, it could be a good idea to have at least one person who knows you are and can be a sounding board should things get stressful.

One of the consequences of drinking and drugging is that you destroy trust.  To keep your addiction going you lie, manipulate, and maybe even steal. Sometimes in early sobriety it’s easy to get frustrated that people don’t trust you.

“Hey, I’m not drinking! I’m a new person! Give me a break!”

If you’ve been in and out of the program or you have done your fair share of rehab stints, it’s really no wonder people don’t want to trust just yet.  It took a while to destroy trust. It will take a while to build it back up.

I’m a real believer in teaching by example. We all know how often we hear about this or that politician preaching family values or moral righteousness only to find out they had their hands in the coffers or were engaged to their mistress before the ink dried on the divorce papers from their second failed marriage. Nothing turns us off more than a lot of talk that isn’t backed up by action.

That’s how people work.  We feel what’s called cognitive dissonance when we hear one thing but see another. It jars us and irritates us.

So if I want to teach someone they can trust me, I need to be trustworthy. And I need to be trustworthy for quite some time.

You know the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me?”  I think that’s the way a lot of people feel when they’ve been betrayed by someone they love. Obviously there are people who seem to have an infinite tolerance for relationship misery, but healthy people don’t like getting burned. The natural urge is to protect yourself from getting burned again, especially if your trust was broken over and over and over again.

I think it’s important not to take the distrust personally. Accept it humbly as a consequence of bad behavior. Making amends is just the beginning of building trust.

Face it: when you are an alcoholic or addict, most of the time the people in your family have a few shortcomings. Grin. I mean, I have rarely met a recovering person who had a story of perfect parents who never drank too much or who just lived these exemplary lives filled with continually good choices, a positive attitude, and an even emotional life.

I remember one time going to dinner with my father – he had decided to get sober when I did because when I told him what was going on he though, “Heck, that sounds a lot like me.” It was pretty cool because it seemed to be making him a less angry, more emotionally available person.  I knew not to hang my sobriety on his – because that’s never a good idea.

Anyway, this was a dinner about three years into my sobriety – and I was down visiting my parents for the holidays. We went to this little Italian restaurant they loved and the waitress came over to take drink orders. I ordered my usual favorite – sparkling mineral water (I just love Perrier – and it’s healthier than soda).  My dad looked up and ordered a beer.  Oh man. You can well imagine what my stomach did at that moment. It literally felt like the floor fell out from under me. I’m sure I turned red.

But what do you do?  It was clear by the way he ordered it that he had been doing it for a while, and my history with my father had been anything but warm and cuddly. I honestly didn’t think I could do anything but bite my tongue.

My father died a couple of years ago due to bile duct cancer. For years he had horrible pains in his gut and would pace the floor all night, unable to sleep.  I always wondered how much alcohol abuse may have contributed to whatever degenerative process that triggered cancer. Who knows.

All I can tell you for sure was that he wasn’t happier drinking again.

Ever find yourself getting wistful about the days when you were drinking?  It’s a really dangerous place to go – but most people do it at some point. Reminiscing needs to be kept in the proper perspective.  I think sometimes the best defense is a good offense (grin) – which means you have an arsenal of really, really bad stories to recall whenever you start downplaying just how bad it was when you were drinking.

Sometimes this romanticizing is triggered by an event in your life. Maybe you are at an wedding reception and your friends who happen to like really high-end wines are talking about it. Maybe they are sharing an expensive bottle of wine. You start to think: I used to be a real connoisseur of fine wines. I liked to show off and I knew vintages, grapes, all that stuff.

You might even start conveniently forgetting the after effects of your drinking – the lost relationships, the embarrassing time you said something you shouldn’t or passed out at a wedding just like this one.

Every time you idealize your drinking, make sure you match it with a really nasty memory. It can help cancel it out and remind you that while some people are cut out for wine tastings, you were only cut out for wine guzzling, hang overs, and lost days.