After every up, there cometh the down.. And what a down it was..
The 3 weeks prior was a bender of biblical proportions, it drew bottomless aperols, the battiest of gas stop vino, ceaseless consumption of tobacco, as well as a considerable nibble of almost every other pastry and pastella I could get my hands on.. I’d grown a bit of a beer belly, put some mileage on the noggin and heavily taxed the reward circuitry.. Oohhf not to mention my lungs, which had begun to feel like my oxygen was being run through a dirty hoover bag.
Such an indulgent marathon could not be sustained, but I didn’t enter into monk mode to punish myself – I had wanted to try this for ages.. And it just so happened that after returning I’d be moving out to the wopwops to a quiet single-pony portuguese shanty town on the far side of the island cut off from the world. You thought Madeira was cut off, wait till you see Machico..
This is a place where (and no offence to the locals but..) absolutely nothing of note has ever or will ever occur.. Besides the massive Continente supermarket there is barely a small beach (but nowhere to park), a hiking trail, and of course stunning views over the bay from atop Pico Do Facho (literally: Fascist mountain).
Life on Mute.
There couldn’t have been a better canvas with which to withdraw, disconnect, and renew one’s vrill for life. In this faraway and largely irrelevant grotto time almost stands still. In the mornings you’ll wake to nothing but birds and the sound of water running down the levadas, a stark contrast to the smashing bass of Disclosure at Primavera and loud nights at the pub in Sagres from the weeks prior.
On the eve of monk mode I dropped by the local for my last supper and gorged myself with all manner of Poncha, beer, sinful cuts of meat (cow tongue and pig feet), sangria and whatever else, leaving no desire unfulfilled. Before embarking on the first few steps of a brave new world of abstinence, for all intents and purposes: the life of a man of the cloth..
I set out with a few simple rules:
- Complete abstinence from alcohol and drugs
- No smoking or vaping
- No engaging in the viewing of pron videos
- Pausing Instagram
- And not bringing the phone onto the toilet, just sit and enjoy nature at work
I also decided to temporarily quit Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as I listed out the goals I wanted to achieve and realised grown men climbing your back trying to choke you out was not entirely inline with the whole ethos either..
That’s what you don’t do… so what do you actually do?
Monk mode is more about what you do in the stead of old vices with intentions geared towards reflection, meditation, reconciling the past, setting goals, all that rewarding but gritty spadework and above all just a clean and simple life for a set period of time. Underpinning these concepts: it is about sacrifice. Sacrificing something you really enjoy but which you know doesn’t add much of anything to anything except the bags under your eyes and of course, your bank statements.
I tried to fill the days with Reading, Writing, Working, working out, and joyously pouring over the mountains of glorious Life Admin I’d been sweeping under the rug for so long.. It feels like I’m tugging myself a little bit to say so but almost every single day was productive and packed with fruitful work..
In the 100 days I managed to get a visa (with progress on multiple others), opened a fresh business with banking and accountancy, deployed several projects (including this blog itself), learn a bunch of new songs on guitar and weissenborn, fix my car, and organise a world trip ending back home in New Zealand.
The next section needs to be prefaced with the disclaimer that I’m aware monk mode is not the same as running a Sparathalon or swimming the english channel.. And that the glory of a guy restraining himself from crushing beers and surfing pronhub is not exactly going to be a JR Tolkien level thrill to read.. But anyways.. Here is what happened..
Resisting the nectar of the gods..
The initial difficulties were the obvious ones: hyper-vigilance of alcohol in my immediate environment or field of vision, feeling isolated, sortof bored in bars/pubs, being considered antisocial, not having much to look forward to in the weekends, and of course longing desperately for a cold one after a long day of work.
The truth is – and I believe I would say this after 1,000 days of Monk mode.. there really are few things in this world more simple and beautiful than an ice cold lager beer.. Condensation slowly rolling down the sides of a tall chilled glass gleaming golden in the sun with tiny bubbles rising to the surface and falling again in an endless perpetual cycle of brilliance – all elements indicating the optimal ripeness of the nectar patiently awaiting my consumption… God… Just talking about beer makes me want a beer.. God I love beer.. Shoutout Sumerians (8,000 BC), thank you for inventing beer.
Boozing aint that bad – but it is easy
Anglos are big drinkers (if not: world class booze bags).
Getting off your head is great fun and in moderation it can be harmless, but it is curious that an activity requiring 0% skill or effort often defaults to being the focal point of social interaction.
Sobriety shouldn’t be considered anywhere near as weird as it is. But it is weird because of 2 very obvious truths: 1) that alcohol is fun and delicious and 2) it is easy to drink.
Your pool of “Potential drinking buddies” encompasses any upright vaguely human-looking being with at least one working hand and a mouth “can you lift a glass to your face and inhale liquid in vast quantities? You made the team!!”. Drinking is a sport with the lowest barrier to entry of any communal human activity, with a drinkers attitude you are bound to make friends.
But without it things get trickier, and well at least quite a bit less interesting.. But this unexplored space is where the challenge begins – if you took to drinking like a fish in water when you were younger, it can be that without a drink in your hand you feel on edge. It certainly was for me.
The obstacle is the way.
When you remove escapism… All that’s left is confrontation.. with yourself, with your past.. Your tendancies, behaviour patterns.. And how they’ve affected each other over time..
Oops I was supposed to be avoiding thinking about everything from before… But suddenly there is nothing to do with these issues but tackle them head on.. Journaling, meditating, walking in nature, these are all scenes I pictured with a proud stride, ripped physique, and stroking a long beard and looking out over the panorama pensively like a Greek stoic, with poise and power.. Well.. Maybe that part comes later but a lot of it was more like curling into a ball and letting the internal pennies drop and smash against the floor of my subconscious.
“Why did those things happen..? What ingrained behaviours do you have that led to this problem? How could you adjust yourself to better deal with that situation in the future? How do you feel about this issue/thing/person? And what might you do to help you let go and move on…”
And the answers that come are never the comforting ones from before that you wanted to believe like “because the other person was a jerk” or “you just get unlucky sometimes” it’s much more like: “no.. you were the dickhead there.. you were probably doing this thing that you tend to do.. and here’s what you learned..”.
Once these thoughts began to set in, I’d crave the familiar escapism and wonder why tf I chose to live in the middle of nowhere and commit to this crazy bullshit in the first place. Especially when it seemed like this very thing was the source of suffering..
I was stuck in monk mode but I wanted to be in drunk-mode..
There was a lot of heavy shit to clear out of the basement.. There were one or two days I just wanted to throw it all away and drown myself in grog…
The way of the tortoise – “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast”
As the first 2 weeks passed things really slowed down to the point where I could go whole days armed with only a book and a coffee barely moving an inch for hours other than to turn the page. I felt a surge of bliss and was not shy about sharing my progress with anyone who inquired. Most friends and family knew I was on monk mode and that soon I’d be able to levitate, walk on water and talk to animals. It was all going easy, too easy, I might never drink again. I have everything I need, this is the new way of living..
My new mantra became one of the tortoise: “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast” and so tortoises and turtles have become the totem animal of monk mode. For the layman: when you take care with something important, you save time avoiding making errors in haste which would’ve ultimately led to inefficiency, ergo when you slow down you actually speed up.
Embracing being the boring sober person… To a degree..
I have to admit as an introvert, going out is just downright simply not as fun without alcohol.. In this case I have not yet mastered the walking on water aspect of monk mode and perhaps I don’t really care enough about that to do so. I cannot say that I’ve fully figured out an answer here, I still don’t feel 100% comfortable in large social settings without a drink in hand. And I think that’s largely because – It would be a lie to say I don’t love drinking.
As far as our biology is concerned a steady stream of liquid carbs and spirit is also undeniable go-go fuel for a night out (helps you sustain your noctivagant social energy). When you think about it, everyone is not just high on alcohol but also sugar. Similarly when they pay the price in the following morning – the rewards as well as the damage of these 2 culprits is intertwined.
You actually have heaps of time, you’re just not used to being bored..
When you go full monkmode you realise how much people are just running around like headless chickens all the time racing from one thing to the next, one form of escapism to another be it alcohol, pron, dating apps, the promise of some new job, new relationship. You also realise how natural those desires are since you still have them but there’s an objectivity window that creates enough of a space between you and the desire to accurately analyse its sources.
You can accept that you are a monkey on a floating rock and not try to punish yourself for that, while still working towards healthy solutions for those impulses. And of course – when it comes time to pay the devil his dues, indulge yourself. After all, delayed gratification in the extreme results in no gratification. And what is a life without pleasure?
Free time is a blessing that we often subconsciously look at as being a burden, not knowing what to do with yourself or feeling adrift and without purpose is essentially just the lack of having a direction on what to do next and not presently having anyone available to tell you what it is (a boss, professor, partner, teacher, dependant).
The default mode of the mind at least for most people is to always find something to do to fill in that time and then to complain that they “don’t have any time”. With a mobile phone on hand this is always the case, there is never a void of things to do which serve absolutely no purpose towards progressing in life towards your goals. There are reels, dating apps, tiktoks, youtube, and 9 other apps immediately demanding your attention which will ultimately suck away your energy and attention and leave you exactly in the same place you started.
But limiting your time on your phone is the same old cliche everyone has been talking about for yonks, the key is to make plenty of time to do nothing at all. In the end, you’ll get more done. 90% of your busywork is not the real work. 99% of the “urgent notifications” are completely irrelevant in the broader scheme. It is certainly a bit tragic to reflect on the way we have allowed the modern world to become a deranged pollution of our attention space. Flooding our minds with nonsense and crap about wars in countries we’ve never visited, and scandals about people we’ve never met.
Yes it’s the same old cliche bumper sticker but it really hit home in MM for me, our virtual world has become a garbage heap of information caught in a hurricane. And to opt out of that actually takes some doing. I rewatched the matrix recently and felt a sobering parallel between the humans hooked up to the virtual machine world, and people sitting on the bus/train staring at their phones without a word as we see in the world today. We aren’t slaves to AI just yet, but it seems like we are well on our way.
Defrag your mental hard drive – The best ally in a war with the past is the present
If you had a computer in the 90s you remember running the bi-monthly defragmentation of the hard drive to speed up windows. Defragging was the process where your PC moved those pieces of fragmented files back together into one continuous block on the drive. It attempted to organise free space, so future files could be saved cleanly and efficiently.
When you go back through all those things that bothered you about the past it hurts your brain and makes you feel like crap – usually a therapist sits across from your ready to offer a tissue with one hand and a huge invoice with the other..
Another interesting approach I discovered in this time is to do this yourself without the therapist, once things are settled and you feel content and at peace – which could be with or without monk mode..
Zoom out for a moment and just appreciate that whatever it was (however horrible) that happened before has lead you here (and now), and if the here and now is good then by definition those things were meant to be. The deck gets shuffled again and again and the cards will fall where they may, but if you are in a good place now then you can only be grateful for those past challenges. Without them you’d be in some kind of alternate universe completely different to this one, what a shame that would be..
I’ve been going out and walking the levada almost every night around 11pm by myself looking at the sky and talking to the trees which has become normalised to the point that I am either completely mental or perhaps so sane that I’ve gone full circle..
In any case this has been my version of defragmentation, reconciling the past until it fits within the picture of the present – which is one that you’re grateful to have.
Defrag and Defrag until the drive is clear enough to get back out there, the space created will feel a little weird at first.. But dont worry, you’ll start making a mess again in no time (especially with your browsing history).
Dionysus & the mid monk blowout
Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, revelry, and ecstasy, embodies the spirit of indulgence, joy, and letting go of societal restraints. He represents the necessary balance between order and chaos, reminding us that embracing pleasure and spontaneity is vital to the human experience.
In the context of Monk Mode, Dionysus symbolises the need to “pay the devil his dues” by allowing moments of relaxation and fun. While disciplined self-improvement is crucial, acknowledging and indulging in life’s pleasures helps maintain a balanced, fulfilling existence, preventing the rigidity of constant self-denial.
I decided even from the beginning that since this whole stint was almost more than double what I’d ever done before I’d need a blowout around the halfway mark to give myself a recalibration (and a massive dose of dopamine) and just cut loose from all the discipline and rigidity for a few nights before returning to the monk. After doing so – I immediately noticed all the clarity I’d gained had been lost. I felt slighted in a way but also that it’d been an interesting experiment.. I wanted to get back to where I was..
Arguing about Politics and Spirituality has to be the biggest waste of time and energy
Spirituality is what you make of it. It is the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things. So quite literally, it is the realm of things we cant map out or interpret since we cannot scientifically or concretely measure or analyse it, it is ephemeral, magic, undefinable. And of course its different for everyone.
People are very quick to climb into the minds of others and begin desperately dismantling or attempting to tamper with another person’s views or beliefs, it is a very engaging and visceral emotional and intellectual game and if you are good at it it can make you feel very powerful.
What I’ve learned over the last few years is that those who claim to be gurus are often the most lost of all and that there is no such thing as the messiah. There is no true messianic knower of truth, they only have their own truth, and whoever else they can muster to follow them.
Other people are often very quick to tell you what the true source of your problems are or instruct you to behave more in the way they do if you want to see results and be a success story like them. But more often than not, when you really look deeply into those individuals you will find they are the archetype of the pseudo-messianic, they do not have any more answers than you do, but they are addicted to the psychological game of ideological-conversion.
I’m not saying that one shouldn’t engage in debate and dialogue about the nature of spiritual ideas and acknowledge different viewpoints, but simply that they should always be analysed from the perspective of the speaker’s intentions. Do they want to see you shine or simply convert you? And I’ve realised in MM that I more than most, have been subject to this ridiculous game in the past..
On one of the first few nights following monk mode I found myself engaged in a political debate in the hostel lounge over a few beers with some other guests before I was able to remind myself not to be stupid and fall for this one again – it was Israel Palestine and stretching towards midnight before I came to my senses and respectfully departed from the conversation.
Danger and Addictive nature of Monk Mode
And in the end this is one of the addictive dangers I’ve identified with monk mode that needs to be taken carefully into consideration: Monk Mode can trap you in a cycle of self-isolation, making it difficult to reengage with the world. While self-improvement is rewarding, it can become an excuse to avoid building the real-life connections that are essential for long-term well-being.
To be continued…
