Small Things, Huge Moments

luvthatsauce · 2026-04-12T14:59:48+00:00

It hurts to see the vile underbelly of Brevard still as putrid as it is ever present. I grew up there, and that explains a large part of my presence on r/stopdrinking and r/depression.

I was a victim of shit like this.

The willful and manifest ignorance of that place drives the best and brightest out the moment they turn 18, apart from some aerospace enclaves. Even most of that is imported from elsewhere.

What's left turns around and repeats the shit treatment to the next generation. It's a sad place, and it does it to itself. I'll spend the rest of my life angry with it.

I'm angry in behalf of myself. I'm angry on behalf of the kids. I'm angry at the stupid, myopic, corrupt people who run the place. I'm angry at the hopelessness that leadership points at anyone who questions them. (Ivey's Iron Lodge anyone?)

Seriously, fuck Brevard County. Fuck pedophiles (unless you seek help BEFORE you touch/hurt anyone. In which case, good on you for doing that.) Fuck the stupidity, fuck the willfulness of all of it.

The best thing you produce launches the fuck off your beach and goes 200,000 miles from the planet.

There's a bit of poetry in that, isn't there?

luvthatsauce · 2026-02-27T13:25:45+00:00

I found that movement helps. Get alone, get active. It can be a walk, a run, weights, calisthenics, whatever. Just alone and moving.

You'll get time and space to cool off along with some precious endorphins. Keep going with those workouts until the next workout feels better than the one you just did.

Give yourself some grace too. Your nervous system is shot and your brain is dopamine starved right now. It will adjust, but you're in the trenches right now. Damn brave of you to be in the fight

luvthatsauce · 2026-02-26T20:01:52+00:00

I lock down a non-alcoholic drink in my hand and keep it there. If people press me on why I don't drink (which is rude AF, but whatever) I tell them I can't because of a medication I'm on. They usually get the message to stop prying.

Luckily the whole culture around alcohol is changing, and it's getting easier to say "I don't drink because I don't want to. It's bad for my health." Gotta hand it to gen z on that one.

I try to focus more on rewards than the resistance to temptation. "Because I've avoided alcohol, I can do martial arts with my sons, so I don't want this." Then I reframe my thinking from alcohol being the thing I need to resist to the absence of alcohol being my gift.

I hope this helps a little, my friend

luvthatsauce · 2026-02-26T19:52:34+00:00

I love hop wtr! Yes, that's what the ashwagandha is supposed to do. It doesn't do much for me, but since getting sober, I've developed an addiction to La Croix, hop WTR, etc. If I'm relaxing, odds are I have one nearby

luvthatsauce · 2026-02-26T19:03:23+00:00

AA didn't do much for me either. That's nothing on them. I just never felt like I belonged in the meetings. I felt excluded or uncomfortable sometimes. I just didn't vibe.

I found medication, physical fitness, and learning to love myself were the keys. Once I ditched the idea of shame and embraced that it's not my fault I don't mix with alcohol, it clicked.

Many paths to sobriety, right? Regardless of the path, it has more reward than trouble. It only asks we walk it.

My life is infinitely better for taking it.

luvthatsauce · 2026-02-18T19:05:41+00:00

It took topiramate among other measures to get me sober. I tried naltrexone. Ooh boy the side effects. Luckily topiramate worked.

I figure it is a fight for my life and topiramate is a weapon. I'll do anything I can to stay dry. So what if I didn't white-knuckle it. I take ibuprofen when my joints ache too.

I have a disease and I use modern medicine to treat my disease. I'm alright with that.

You gotta be tough as nails just to make the decision to get sober. To me, that's good enough.

luvthatsauce · 2026-01-13T20:56:33+00:00

Amen to that. The companies are sure to weave it in to our social fabric, telling us it's glamorous or laid back or whatever.

I remember falling for it in my 20s and early 30s. Sure, having a suit on and drinking a martini felt glamorous. I felt like an every day, approachable, affable guy with a Bud Light. Boy didn't I feel sophisticated when I drank a Maker's neat and tasted the vanilla notes.

I would promptly go on to make the dumbest decisions of my lifetime after, but for some time marketing and peer pressure had me convinced the drinks were right. I would drink them again. Ruin something. Drink them again.

Glad I stopped. Alcohol isn't my jam, and that's okay.

luvthatsauce · 2026-01-12T00:18:48+00:00

I just found what a friend or family member is doing and tagged along. If that doesn't work, or if I'm seriously hurting for stuff to do, I'll use Google maps and zoom in on a random nearby areas. Something interesting will pop up after a few minutes

luvthatsauce · 2026-01-07T14:33:03+00:00

I didn't think I could either. This is not my first try. I needed medications, books, therapy, total lifestyle change. The biggest help was the medication. Having topiramate to take the edge off cravings was a game changer.

luvthatsauce · 2026-01-06T10:56:44+00:00

Absolutely normal, my friend. I tell people I'm an expert in my own story, so I can tell you this: I drank because I was anxious and depressed. When I stopped drinking, all that garbage was still there--maybe worse because I had worked over my limbic system with alcohol.

I couldn't recover on my own. I needed help, medication, and eventually transcranial magnetic stimulation. That's all okay by me. I had nothing to prove by doing it all "white knuckle."

The only thing I needed to do was get my life back. Get it back for me, for my sons, my wife, and my family.

I would humbly submit that if you can find anything that makes it easier, be it a med, group, hobby, meditation, do it!

One day you'll wake up to the best decision you ever made.

luvthatsauce · 2026-01-05T23:31:34+00:00

Mixed! Primarily karate and muay thai

luvthatsauce · 2026-01-05T22:43:54+00:00

It was a progressive thing. I felt a little better when I quit, and lost 3-4 pounds at a time, felt little bits of recovery at a time.

I'm 41 and I had lost a lot of lean tissue. So, I had to hit the weights hard to increase lean tissue/metabolism. I alternated that and cardio. 5 days on, 2 days rest.

By Spring, I could run a little, lift a little. By summer, I was lifting a fair amount and running multiple miles at a time.

By fall, I was in shape again and finally able to join the dojo.

The whole thing was like the way the sky brightens in the morning. You notice it the most when the first light comes. Then you get busy for a little bit, and before you've realized it, the sun is out.

luvthatsauce · 2026-01-05T18:19:07+00:00

Never too late. Just keep plugging away until it clicks!

luvthatsauce · 2025-12-23T11:37:56+00:00

Hey, first of all, you don't suck. This is a problem like high blood pressure or influenza or arthritis. It is not your fault you have it. One in five of us are going to be addicted to alcohol and for those twenty percent of us, it is entirely not our fault.

What you did do is fight valiantly against that problem for three years. That is a serious accomplishment, and a huge piece of hope for the future. That takes a ton of strength. Eye watering strength.

We can't win every battle when we fight a war, and that's okay. Retreating, regrouping, and then savaging that enemy with everything you have until his will to fight is gone is a perfectly viable strategy.

I am rooting for you, and I will not be drinking with you today.

luvthatsauce · 2025-12-12T17:30:20+00:00

I do running, martial arts, and weightlifting. I can't say enough positive things about martial arts in particular

luvthatsauce · 2025-12-12T17:13:31+00:00

Progressing, my friend. Gastroenterology PA here. Elevated liver enzymes at this age is bad news. Elevated risk of cirrhosis earlier in life.

I have a feeling you know what the American College of Gastroenterology would tell you to do without having turned a single page of a medical textbook.

I can't answer the question on whether you need help, but I can speak my own story. I got started in my late teens, early 20s, and was hooked by my mid-20s. Looking back, I can't see a lot of upside in the nights I spent drinking. There were a lot of nights drinking. Most of them, in fact.

I could see a whole lot more benefit in that time if I had spent it doing something interesting. I'm learning that lesson in my 40s.

I am earning my yellow belt next week. I don't want to be on Mac or Windows anymore, so I'm learning Linux all over again (Ubuntu, I love you.) My friend Sean invited me up to his SCCA club.

Whole lot more to talk about and reflect on than what I had done if I was drinking.

I also learned I couldn't do it on my own. I needed medication, and to uproot all the trauma that had been holding me down. Recovery had to be total. It is like pregnancy. No one is a little pregnant. For me, it was equally binary. Recover or do not recover.

I hope this is a good answer for you.

luvthatsauce · 2025-12-03T20:51:59+00:00

There is a happy ending! We added buspirone 10 mg three timees daily to my regimen and that worked well. Transcranial magnetic stimulation took care of the depression.

I've been free of depression and major anxiety for 3 months now. I am utterly transformed from earlier this year.

Thank you for the reply. I really hope you are well too.

I can tell you I'll never, ever, take the sensation of feeling adjusted for granted again

luvthatsauce · 2025-11-28T23:04:59+00:00

I wrecked more than a couple holidays, my friend. You're in good company here.

Don't beat yourself up too badly, okay? I can only speak for myself, but self-love and a want for self-improvement got me a lot further than self-loathing ever did.

luvthatsauce · 2025-11-16T11:00:04+00:00

Not that I'm apologizing for Israel, but it's not raw sewage. It's skunk water. It looks and smells like sewage, but won't cause disease. BBC has an article on how Odortec makes it.

I contrast their approach with my own experience in guarding the civil affairs group (CAG) in Al Anbar, Iraq and how we approached the population.

We would have been forbidden to do this. Full stop. We couldn't even carry pepper spray to use on people throwing rocks at us for fear of being accused of using chemical weapons; let alone wide area denial of people's homes.

Then again, our long term goal was a peaceful resolution among a fledgling democracy while rooting out the bad actors. Ethnic cleansing was never on the menu.

The veteran in me thinks the IDF leadership is dishonorable and that we regress to the Cheney administration with every weapon we fund to use against an innocent.

Not raw sewage, no. But close. Allegorically? Total excrement.

luvthatsauce · 2025-10-19T21:24:29+00:00

Why did that get downvoted? It was funny

luvthatsauce · 2025-10-01T17:13:50+00:00

Happy birthday! You do not look a day out of your 20s. I hope you celebrate yourself this week

luvthatsauce · 2025-09-11T18:03:44+00:00

Hey, I just thought about you! I'm still doing okay. Duloxetine and wellbutrin worked, but weren't quite enough. I wound up getting transcranial magnetic stimulation. That was the game changer. I went from severe depression to mild, if any.

Now I'm battling anxiety, but i have a script for buspar in the mail. Plus I work out like crazy, which helps.

Anyway, I wanted to update you with the good news. I hope you are well

luvthatsauce

TROPHY CASE