The following is the post as it appears on Sober App Substack.This series showcases personal stories of addiction recovery and sobriety. Today’s edition features, Randal Lyons, Doctor of Chinese Medicine and shamanic practitioner whose spiritual, integrative program of addiction recovery has been implemented in holistic clinics, premier treatment centers, and his private practice. You can access the online version of The Program through his newsletter, The Sober Shaman.When and how did you get sober?The when is July 17, 1994. And the how is simply that I had just had enough. After countless attempts to quit and many relapses, what changed this time was a clear and unwavering decision to quit. Boom. That’s it. I wasn’t going to try—I just did.I knew that if this was really going to work, I had to relinquish all the slippery people, places, and things—which made up about 90 percent of my life as a rock ‘n’ roll guitar player trying to make it in LA.The only other things I had going for me, which were keeping me alive during the insanity, were my study and practice of Chinese martial and medical arts, along with my spirituality.Neither of those offered clear or well-defined pathways for getting and staying sober, but I knew they worked for me. The passion I had previously poured into making music—and the fire that had fueled my cravings to use—was now redirected into my curiosity about how this medicine could help me and, later, others.What was the turning point in your decision to get sober?I would call it the tipping point rather than a turning point. In the moment I made “the decision,” I felt the full weight of 17 years’ worth of using and its consequences tip over into conscious awareness.It wasn’t any one thing or a lightning-bolt moment of understanding. It was the felt accumulation of all the wasted time. For whatever reason, that was—and remains—my pain.This pain still serves me to this day, because whenever I’m engaged in an activity that could be judged as wasting time, I’m brought into the present moment. And this is the practice: I breathe, relax, and observe from an objective view what the next right thing is. Usually, it involves stopping whatever activity I was doing, because it indeed was “enough of that.”What surprised you about getting sober?What surprised me the most was that I was able to give up playing music as easily as I did. I had such a deep connection between my addiction and my playing that I knew I couldn’t stay in that field. That part was obvious.But the good that I received from music, which I would call soul nourishment, led me to be surprised by the possibility of finding new ways to get the same medicine.For example, when I wrote music, it was always a collaborative jam. There’s nothing better than riding a groove, being carried by its current, and, in all aspects of the phrase, playing together. This was experimentation, without judgment, in which we responded to each other’s input with, “Yes, and…then, what if…?”Later on, armed with a degree, a medical license, and a bunch of acupuncture needles, I could drop into a group at an addiction treatment center and do exactly the same thing. But instead of hitting a chord to elicit a band member’s response, I could throw out a question like, “What’s stronger: belief or reality?” and the room would quickly divide into sides, the discussion rolling, and the current of exploration, learning, and insight in motion. And now, I can add healing to that list—and yes, this was, and continues to this day to be, surprising, as well as exciting and inspiring.What’s the biggest challenge you’ve encountered on your recovery...

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