Title of Tip: Stay Positive, Stay Busy
Name: Robert Crawford, 39
Description: Life will throw obstacles at you, and how you navigate that is everything. I come from a negative, abusive, and alcoholic home. I had a kid at 14. I had everything in the world gone wrong that could have. When I was an alcoholic, bad things would happen, and that was my excuse to hide in the bottle. Versus now, I take hardship as a positive, a learning experience, like, alright, I won’t do that again. It’s just how you wake up every day, man. I read something a couple of years back that said the wealthiest people in the world are the ones who wake up happy every day, and I genuinely really try to do that every day. I wake up every day just thankful for my little store. Back when it was a little flea market booth at a little pop-up table and just a couple of shirts, nobody thought it was impressive, but I woke up every day happy to have it. I stayed positive and turned it into a positive thing every day instead of letting the world beat me up about it.
Instruction: Step One: When you wake up, that first hour of the day, do something that makes you happy, whether it’s turning on some Bob Marley, burning some sage, or smoking a fat doobie. You can conquer the day after that.
Step Two: Create a routine and stick to it. Wake up and go to bed every day at the same time. When I first got sober, I started work at 6:00 a.m., so I would wake up at 2:30 am just to get that hour to myself in the morning. People thought I was insane because I was falling asleep at 7:00 p.m. so I could wake up at 2:30 a.m. My friends said, “Well, we want to go out to dinner, and we wanted to do this, and we want to go to that.” And I didn’t have time for it. I was trying to build something bigger than just one night.The addiction quicksand will get if you are concerned about just one night.
Step Three: Stay away from negativity. It doesn’t matter if it’s your neighbor parking crazy or somebody in traffic. Remember, it’s not the end-all, be-all. Life goes on with or without you. If you start falling into excuses for your actions, like, this person did this, this person did that, it’s downhill, in my opinion, after that. Just keep moving forward, stay positive, stay busy. Step Four: Don’t be so hard on yourself. Remember, we are a work in progress. I have breakdowns just like everybody else, and some days, I want to cry.
Learning: Sadly, I learned the hard way. I think most addicts learn the hard way. I had a daughter at 14, and the baby’s mom and I stayed together and did great things. At 19, we bought our first house; at 21, I bought myself a $22,000 car. And that’s coming from poverty. I did all of that with hard work. But the stresses of building something better ended up separating us, and it was easier for me to hide in the bottle than to handle the divorce. I did that for a decade. I was drinking every day. As an award-winning chef, restaurant owners were quick to say, “Hey, instead of giving you what you are worth, we’ll give you some money and endless booze.” And as an alcoholic, you’re like, “Alright, I’m in. I don’t need money.”
Story: The moment I realized I wanted to change, I decided to quit drinking cold turkey, which was foolish because the withdrawals can kill you. I tried to keep working and doing everything as I would normally do, but I was having alcohol withdrawals that lasted for three days. Eventually, I had a seizure at work and hit my head on the steam table, which caused bleeding in my brain. I was in a coma for four days, and when I woke up, they took everything away from me. I could not drive, I could not work, I could not do anything. So now, I had to sit down for 90 days and do nothing except work on me and fix me. I built restaurants. I built businesses. I fixed everybody else, but I never tried to work on myself. I never attempted it until that point. That’s when I started soul-searching and realized I needed to stay positive. It’s easy to fall into despair, Man, you’re a mess, you’re broken, stay in that bottle because that’s where everybody loves you… Oh, the whole world is against me. I guess I will go back to the bottle. When you make changes, you have to do it every day. Addiction is like quicksand.
