Sam Gibbs Morris Consulting

If you know something needs to change and you’re not actively trying to change it, you’re choosing it.

What you’re really choosing is familiar over unfamiliar.

The move is to do the work on your nervous system capacity so that the unfamiliar becomes familiar and last change can occur.

A Man’s Pain.

“When it comes to addiction, the question is not why the addiction? The question is, why the pain?”

I heard that Gabor Maté quote a few years ago, and it floored me.

Something I haven’t talked about a lot on here is how I was an addict and an alcoholic for the better part of 20 years.

Jailed 20 times.
6-ish DUIs. (I lost track)
Rehab 8x.
A s_ic_de attempt in 2009.
Broken relationships.
A failed commercial real estate career.
Alienated by friends and family.

The behavior was an attempt to avoid feeling my pain.

The pain of rejection.
The pain of shame.
The pain of the addiction itself.
The pain of unworthiness.

The root cause of addiction is unmet pain, a pain that we are absolutely not willing to look at.

In 2020, I had been free of drug and alcohol use for 8 years, and I thought I was truly free. I wasn’t.

I had never actually looked at and met my pain, and that “freedom” I felt was actually me exiling the parts of me that were carrying the pain and the addict version of me that had caused so much pain for myself and others; it wasn’t freedom at all.

Then, during a psychedelic ceremony in 2020, I was faced with all those exiled versions of myself, mostly the addict I thought I had healed.

The pain was asking for the time, love, and attention that I had never given it.

Now was that time.

Now, 6 years of deep work in more medicine ceremonies and the most human ceremonies; man to man in brotherhood circles, and my marriage, I can say that I am actually free.

Does all that pain still exist? Yes. Absolutely. And I have a good relationship with it now. I have learned to hold it.

I know that all the pain I carry, the depth of it, the vastness of it, the pain of it allows me to hold the bigness of my life, and my clients.

The bigness of my love, my joy, my pleasure, my mission, and myself.

I can hold a lot because I can feel a lot.

I can hold a lot because I know my own darkness very intimately.

When you’re ready to know your own darkness and hold your pain, send me a DM.

The “addiction recovery” world avoids one word at all costs; cured.

It’s not all because of money or their business model, it’s mostly because of fear.

Fear of relapse.

Fear of getting over-confident.

Fear of taking responsibility.

I have cured my addiction. 100% I am no longer an addict or an alcoholic.

Was I at one point? Yes, I was deep in the abyss of it all.

I was unable to get free from it for more than 30, 60, 90, or 120 days.

I was powerless against it.

My life was unmanageable because of it.

Then I made a decision. At first it looked like diving into AA and identifying as a recoverING alcoholic.

Nearly every day for 6.5 years I sat in meeting and introduced myself as: I’m Sam, I’m an alcoholic.

Then I started to get fed up with saying that every day, It felt defeating, and contracting, and I felt stuck in it.

Deep inside I knew that it was possible to absolutely cured of the addiction that had plagued me for ~20 years.

So I left AA and forged my own path. Doubled down on my spirituality, found breathwork and plant medicines, and started trusting myself.

What happened is that I got ALL THE WAY to the bottom of it.

I cured myself. I am no longer an addict or an alcoholic. I am completely free from all of it. I am no longer “recoverING” or “in recovery” or “sober”, I just am a human living an incredible life.

At first it was the drinking and the drugs; the symptoms.

Then it was unhealed social anxiety.

Then the depression and mental health.

Then the real work began.

What was next in the on deck circle was deep shame and self-loathing.

A level of unworthiness that seemed bottomless.

Feelings of being a broken human that seemed to be all I ever knew.

I got to work, 1 root at a time I began to move through them. Not by talking about them, or journaling about them.

The real healing came from feeling them and the accompanying shadows that lived with them, and developing staying power in my nervous system.

I welcomed back versions of me that I had exiled and called it “healing”; it wasn’t healing at all, it was avoidance.

Now it’s been 13 years since I’ve had a drink and I can say that I have cured myself of the addiction.

These 5 words have the potential to change a man’s entire way of being.

“You’re doing a good job.”.

Sometimes it’s all he needs to hear.

To change a hard day.

To get confirmation he’s on the right track.

To let him know you see him.

Often times the only confirmation that a man gets that he’s “doing a good job” is a paycheck.

And often times that’s not nearly enough.

To hear from the woman he loves that he’s doing a good job will trump any paycheck he ever receives.

Not from a place where it’s not warranted, or you’re sooting his ego, or his little boy.

Say it from a place of truth, a place deep inside you that says I choose you, I love you, and I see you because you’re you.

Tag your man in the comments to let him know.

The greatest thing I ever did during the peak of my 18 year addiction, was that I never stopped trying.

Every relapse, try again.
Every trip to rehab, try again.
Every time I fell down, stand back up.

After so many years people would always ask: how is this time going to be different?

Eventually my response was: I don’t know, all I know is that I’m not going to give up.

One more breath.

Good enough is one of the most dangerous places you will ever find yourself.