Fear kept me small for years. Sobriety didn't remove it, but it changed everything about how I move through it.
I used to drink at fear.
Not with it. Not through it. At it. Like if I threw enough alcohol at the thing, it would eventually stop showing up. Spoiler: it doesn't work that way. The fear just learned to wait. And when it came back, it came back louder.
Nineteen years sober now. And the fear is still here. That's not the story most people expect to hear. But here's what changed: I stopped needing it to leave.
Fear Wasn't the Problem. My Relationship With It Was.
When I was drinking, fear felt like a verdict. Something was wrong with me. I was weak. Not enough. Other people seemed to move through the world without this constant hum of anxiety underneath everything, so clearly the problem was me.
Sobriety cracked that story open.
In my early recovery work, I started to see that fear isn't a character flaw. It's information. The problem was never that I felt afraid. The problem was that I had zero tolerance for the feeling, and I'd built an entire life around not having to sit with it.
Drinking was just the most efficient escape route I found.
When that route closed, I had to learn something I never learned growing up: how to be uncomfortable without running. That's not a dramatic revelation. But living it, actually practicing it, that changes you at a level that's hard to put into words.
What Happened When I Stopped Running
The first time I really felt fear without numbing it, if I'm being honest, was public speaking during my master's program. Standing up in front of a room full of people, sober, with nowhere to hide. No drink beforehand to take the edge off. No way to fake it. Just suit up and show up, as they say, and walk through it.
It didn't kill me. Which sounds obvious until you've spent twenty-something years believing it might.
That experience, learning to stand in the discomfort rather than run from it, translated into everything that came after. It's what eventually gave me the ability to travel to over 50 countries, to put myself in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people, and to keep showing up even when every part of me wanted to retreat. It built something I didn't have before: trust in myself. Not confidence. Not bravado. Trust. The quiet kind that comes from proving to yourself, over and over, that you can handle what shows up.
Traveling sober accelerated that process for me in ways I didn't expect. When you strip away the social lubricant and you're in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by unfamiliar people, with only your own mind for company, you meet yourself pretty quickly. Some of what I met I didn't like. Some of it surprised me. All of it was real.
That's part of why I built Nomadic Addictt. Not as a travel company. As a way for people in recovery to use the world as a mirror. To test their sobriety in new environments. To discover who they actually are when the old crutches aren't available.
The Stuck Feeling Has a Name
If you're reading this and something in you resonates with the word "stuck," I want to offer you something.
Stuck is almost always fear that hasn't been named yet.
Not laziness. Not lack of motivation. Fear. Sometimes it's fear of failure. Sometimes it's the sneakier kind, fear of success, fear of being seen, fear of what happens if you actually change and the people around you don't know how to hold the new version of you.
Sobriety taught me to get specific about fear. Not to say "I'm scared" as a full stop, but to ask: scared of what, exactly? That question alone has more power in it than most people realize. Because vague fear is enormous. Named fear is workable.
I've sat with clients as a sober companion in some of the most beautiful places on the planet. And the conversation that comes up again and again, whether we're on a beach in Bali or hiking somewhere remote, is this one. What am I actually afraid of? Not the surface answer. The real one.
Most people have never been asked that question in a way that gave them permission to answer honestly.
Sobriety Didn't Make Me Brave. It Made Me Willing.
There's a difference. Brave implies the fear isn't there. Willing means it is, and you move anyway.
I've swum with whales. I've done 350+ scuba dives. I've navigated some of the more uncomfortable corners of the world completely sober, completely present. None of that happened because I stopped being afraid. It happened because I built enough trust in myself to walk toward the thing rather than away from it.
That shift, from running at fear to walking toward it, is available to anyone. But it's not a mindset hack. It's a practice. It's built through repetition, through support, through honesty about where you actually are.
If you want to go deeper on the identity piece, the who-am-I-without-this-thing work that sits underneath fear and sobriety both, I write about that at zacspowart.com. Because sobriety is one door in. But the work itself is about coming home to yourself, fully, not just chemically.
So here's what I want to leave you with.
What is the fear that's been keeping you in the same place? Not the story you tell about why you're stuck. The actual fear underneath it. Can you name it? Can you sit with it for just a moment without immediately trying to fix it or escape it?
That's where it starts.
Interested in 1:1 sober coaching, sober companionship, or custom tailored sober retreats?
Whether you are navigating early sobriety, planning your first sober trip, or looking for someone to walk alongside you, I am here. Learn more at Nomadic Addictt or start the conversation.