Speaker 1: If you don't drink every day, maybe you drink and
Speaker 1: then you have like cravings that you're fighting off for days.
Speaker 1: That's part of the drinking experience too. So I think
Speaker 1: not just taking that instant gratification piece, that one to
Speaker 1: two hours as the whole experience is key. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Jill Teats, a biochemist
Speaker 1: and host and creator of the Sober Powered podcast. In
Speaker 1: her podcast and teaching, Jill talks about what she's learned
Speaker 1: about why it's so hard to stop drinking, why alcohol
Speaker 1: makes us so miserable, how to embrace sobriety, and how
Speaker 1: to develop the life skills you need to stay sober. Hi, Jill,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me. I am excited to have you on because
Speaker 1: we are going to be talking about all things addiction
Speaker 1: and recovery. But before we get into that, let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do with the parable. There's a grandparent
Speaker 1: who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second, looks up at their grandparents as well.
Speaker 1: Which one wins, and the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I think this is all
Speaker 1: about which thoughts you indulge and the things that you
Speaker 1: do every day to support the kind of life that
Speaker 1: you want to have. So an easy example for what
Speaker 1: I mean is, as someone who's sober, my mind will
Speaker 1: often send me thoughts like maybe it's been long enough,
Speaker 1: maybe you weren't that bad, maybe you're cured, and I
Speaker 1: can indulge those thoughts, which will then lead me down
Speaker 1: into allowing them to convince me to give moderation another try,
Speaker 1: or I can try to, you know, recognize that indulging
Speaker 1: them probably is not a good idea for me, and then,
Speaker 1: you know, with lifestyle choices, I think the way that
Speaker 1: I structure my life also either helps or hurts my
Speaker 1: sobriety and probably has an influence on those thoughts too.
Speaker 1: So something that I used to do is sit around
Speaker 1: all day and watch TV at work all day. I'd
Speaker 1: come home and I'd watch TV all night for hours,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't support the kind of life that I
Speaker 1: want to have. So I think it's all about recognizing
Speaker 1: destructive thoughts and not indulging them, and then making choices
Speaker 1: in your life for your day to day that just
Speaker 1: support the kind of life that you want. There are
Speaker 1: so many different directions we could go from there, but
Speaker 1: the one I want to explore for a second is
Speaker 1: probably the least obvious, which is talked to me about
Speaker 1: watching TV all night, and tell me, in what way
Speaker 1: does that not support the life you want? How do
Speaker 1: you know that it does? Yeah, So, back when I
Speaker 1: was drinking, I would go to work and then I
Speaker 1: would come home and i'd say hello to my husband,
Speaker 1: and I'd get some wine and I'd watch TV. And
Speaker 1: then I would do that until it was time for bed,
Speaker 1: so like four hours or more. And then every day
Speaker 1: I repeated the same thing, and I wouldn't take the
Speaker 1: best care of my house. Sometimes I wouldn't cook and
Speaker 1: I'd get take out instead because I just wanted to
Speaker 1: sit around and drink and watch TV. And when I
Speaker 1: stopped drinking the first time, I did just keep the
Speaker 1: same exact lifestyle, and it made it really hard because
Speaker 1: I realized, like, sitting around and watching The Bachelor for
Speaker 1: three hours is actually kind of boring, and that made
Speaker 1: me feel the void, and it made me want to
Speaker 1: go back to the old routine, which you know, seemed
Speaker 1: to be more fun. And when I quit for good
Speaker 1: this time, I actually did not watch TV or even
Speaker 1: go in my living room for a month. I went
Speaker 1: in my bedroom instead, and I read or I did
Speaker 1: some research on the computer and that helped me a lot.
Speaker 1: So and now even almost three years and I'm very
Speaker 1: mindful about the amount of TV that I watched because
Speaker 1: it's so mindless and can lead to, you know, wanting
Speaker 1: to eat more than I would want to, or get
Speaker 1: like extra sugar or drink or so that's why I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not anti TV, but I'm mindful about TV. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because this is a question that's alive in
Speaker 1: my life right now, because I have been anti TV
Speaker 1: for most of my life. However, Jenny and I have
Speaker 1: developed a routine of watching some TV in the evening,
Speaker 1: usually a show. It's something we have picked that we
Speaker 1: really like that is really good, and I have a
Speaker 1: knee jerk reaction that says that's not good. But then
Speaker 1: when I try and examine why it's not good or
Speaker 1: why it's not giving me the life I want, I
Speaker 1: start to find that I'm like, well, is it a
Speaker 1: problem watching something that is edifying that stimulates me intellectually?
Speaker 1: You know, I could be reading, but reading fiction is
Speaker 1: very similar to watching a really good TV show. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm reading, but I read tons anyway. So I say
Speaker 1: all that to say, it's just really interesting to think through,
Speaker 1: you know, what behaviors support the life we want. Something
Speaker 1: you said there though, that I think was really interesting
Speaker 1: and instructive is does that behavior enable other behaviors or
Speaker 1: is that behavior taking away from other things that are important? Right,
Speaker 1: So if eating well is important to you and you
Speaker 1: find that you overeat or you get take out, then
Speaker 1: you can see that that behavior is enabling one. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I ask about that just because I'm thinking about it
Speaker 1: in my own life. Yeah, and I appreciate you sharing
Speaker 1: that about your TV two And I try not to
Speaker 1: watch too many things like The Bachelor. Like, no offense
Speaker 1: to anyone on the Bachelor. It's just easy go to
Speaker 1: because that was my favorite show when I was drinking.
Speaker 1: But I try to be mindful of, like when I
Speaker 1: do watch TV, the choice that I'm making too, because
Speaker 1: you could watch like a podcast episode from Dr Huberman
Speaker 1: on YouTube and you could watch that for an hour,
Speaker 1: but that's very educational. Or sometimes you do just need
Speaker 1: reality TV and you need to disconnect and watch a
Speaker 1: little bit of drama unfold. And that's something I've been
Speaker 1: drawn to in my sobriety. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: feel that way. But my life is so drama free
Speaker 1: and calm. That's that's sometimes I need a little bit
Speaker 1: of drama. So I like reality TV for that reason.
Speaker 1: But like before it was all reality TV, it was
Speaker 1: like whatever new thing was on Netflix, even if it
Speaker 1: wasn't very good, I would watch all of it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're more discriminating than that. We're usually watching
Speaker 1: a series that we think it's good, and if we
Speaker 1: get an episode or two in and it's not good,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm not wasting my time, you know, on this.
Speaker 1: But again, it's sort of back to I know, one
Speaker 1: of my great love is in life is reading fiction.
Speaker 1: But I've started to sort of go, well, you know,
Speaker 1: these things are really well crafted. They are like a
Speaker 1: fictional world, and the characters are really developed. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: don't want to spend the whole episode talking about TV,
Speaker 1: because that is not why we're here. But I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if you could maybe give listeners a brief overview of
Speaker 1: what you're drinking and early sobriety journey looked like, you know,
Speaker 1: just a minute or two of the big pieces of it.
Speaker 1: I think the most important thing to start with is
Speaker 1: that I started late. I didn't drink in high school
Speaker 1: and I started drinking at twenty two and I went
Speaker 1: to grad school, so I think that is something important
Speaker 1: to say. I really quickly became a daily drinker, Like
Speaker 1: within the first year, I was drinking every day. Now
Speaker 1: I know that this is called telescoping, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: aware of it then. But once I started drinking, I
Speaker 1: very quickly progressed into problematic drinking and daily drinking, and
Speaker 1: mental health took a huge hit. That was the inspiration
Speaker 1: for quitting. I became really depressed. I developed anxiety, which
Speaker 1: would keep me up. I used to do this really
Speaker 1: lovely thing on the nights that I got really drunk,
Speaker 1: which was a few nights per week, and I would
Speaker 1: force myself to stay awake until the sun came up,
Speaker 1: just thinking about like what a horrible loser I am,
Speaker 1: which then makes you feel even worse the next day
Speaker 1: because now you didn't sleep at all. And eventually that
Speaker 1: thing that I was doing in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night turned into that plus suicidal thoughts. And that's why
Speaker 1: I ultimately stopped. And I tried for ninety days to
Speaker 1: cure myself because I thought I just had a high tolerance.
Speaker 1: It was a bad habit. And then I went back
Speaker 1: to drinking, blew everything up again, suicidal thoughts again. But
Speaker 1: then that allowed me to really accept that I just
Speaker 1: can't change the way that I drank. And it's been
Speaker 1: just about three years, and I did it all by myself.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, I was very resistant to getting support.
Speaker 1: I thought that it meant I was strong if I
Speaker 1: could do it on my own, and so it took
Speaker 1: me a few months to get some support. But eventually
Speaker 1: I did, and I started working with a therapist, and
Speaker 1: that just changed everything for me. So I wish I
Speaker 1: had done it sooner, but and I still work with
Speaker 1: the same therapist today. So you mentioned you didn't drink
Speaker 1: until you were twenty two, and that when you drank,
Speaker 1: your emotional health began to suffer. You developed anxiety, suicidal
Speaker 1: thoughts came. I'm curious what your mental and emotional health
Speaker 1: was like at one or twenty or nineteen, because very
Speaker 1: often we are drinking because we're not feeling great in
Speaker 1: the first place. Yeah, I just had other strategies that
Speaker 1: were self destructive pre twenty two. So my first love
Speaker 1: of was restricting food and over exercising and like trying
Speaker 1: to control my weight. That was my first love. And
Speaker 1: when that's your main interest, drinking isn't really a priority
Speaker 1: because people get the druncheese and and everybody knows like
Speaker 1: drinking and weight loss, like it kind of doesn't go together.
Speaker 1: So that was the main reason that I had no
Speaker 1: interest in it in college because I just wanted to
Speaker 1: be super thin. But then in grad school, everybody drink
Speaker 1: except for me, and I thought they wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: be friends with me if I didn't drink too, So
Speaker 1: then I started trying it. And then I almost immediately realized, like,
Speaker 1: this fixes my problems way better than restricting food and
Speaker 1: over exercising ever did. So I dropped the disordered eating.
Speaker 1: I didn't need that anymore, and then I just started drinking.
Speaker 1: So I had other things that I did. I was
Speaker 1: never good at dealing with emotions. I got very overwhelmed
Speaker 1: and things fell out of control, and then I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do with that. So that's why I
Speaker 1: was drawn to self destructive things to just like calm
Speaker 1: me down very quickly. Yeah, and so after you got sober,
Speaker 1: and I want to explore you're getting sober period a
Speaker 1: little bit more because there's some really interesting things in
Speaker 1: there also. But after you got sober, did you find
Speaker 1: that any of those eating and exercise issues came back. No, actually,
Speaker 1: which is really good, and I know not everyone's going
Speaker 1: to have that experience, but I had worked with a
Speaker 1: therapist when I was twenty two to work on that stuff,
Speaker 1: and that helped change my mindset around it, and I realized,
Speaker 1: like the way that I was obsessing was leading to
Speaker 1: all of the stuff that I hated, and I learned
Speaker 1: to eventually just take care of myself and and like
Speaker 1: not worry so much about tracking or macros or so
Speaker 1: I learned to just kind of relax. And also part
Speaker 1: of my sobriety journey was improving my body image. That
Speaker 1: was always a struggle for me, and it took a while.
Speaker 1: It took probably like six months before I looked in
Speaker 1: the mirror and I gave myself a compliment for the
Speaker 1: first time, just like a quick one, not even a
Speaker 1: good one. It's a quick, like neutral comment. And then
Speaker 1: I realized, like, wow, So yeah, body image was always
Speaker 1: a struggle. It still is sometimes, but it's a lot better.
Speaker 1: But thankfully I didn't return to that. You mentioned that
Speaker 1: your mental health got worse as you drank, And I
Speaker 1: think this is an area that's worth exploring. And it's
Speaker 1: sort of like obvious one in a way, which is
Speaker 1: that we start drinking drugs whatever it is, as an
Speaker 1: emotional coping tool, and it works, you know. It's why
Speaker 1: we throw ourselves into it wholeheartedly. Or I should say
Speaker 1: for some of us it works really well, and those
Speaker 1: are the ones of us who end up having a problem.
Speaker 1: But then over time, I often think of it as
Speaker 1: this sort of scale right of positive versus negative benefits
Speaker 1: right from alcohol. And for me, in the beginning, alcohol
Speaker 1: and drugs were like positive zero negative. You know, there
Speaker 1: was a period of time where and then that ratio
Speaker 1: slowly starts to change, you know, until at least with me,
Speaker 1: I was completely upside down. The benefit I was getting
Speaker 1: at the end, for me, it was heroin. The benefit
Speaker 1: I was getting was so marginal compared to the extraordinary
Speaker 1: cost I was paying. So it sounds like something similar
Speaker 1: happened to you, which was these things made my emotions
Speaker 1: easier to deal with it first, until all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it made it all worse. Yeah, And my problem
Speaker 1: was I didn't recognize that it was alcohol for a
Speaker 1: really long time, so I still thought I was getting
Speaker 1: a hundred percent benefits. I thought I was just a suicidal,
Speaker 1: anxious person that hated myself. I thought that was all
Speaker 1: me and it was my fault and like, oh look,
Speaker 1: just another problem to add to my list. And I
Speaker 1: never realized it was alcohol until I actually stopped, and
Speaker 1: then I saw like, wow, I don't feel this way anymore.
Speaker 1: This is shocking. Yeah. Well, what's really interesting about that
Speaker 1: is the nuance in it is that you probably were
Speaker 1: an anxious person who didn't like yourself before you started,
Speaker 1: so that was actually there. So it wasn't like alcohol
Speaker 1: caused all that. But over time, I think what starts
Speaker 1: to happen, and you write a lot about what happens
Speaker 1: to our brains scientifically biochemically around alcohol, is that over
Speaker 1: time alcohol now starts to magnify and starts to amplify
Speaker 1: what was already there. And there are good reasons why
Speaker 1: alcohol causes anxiety. Yeah, exactly. It took the problems that
Speaker 1: I started with that alcohol was fixing for me, and
Speaker 1: then it just enhanced them, which then made me want
Speaker 1: to drink more to deal with my problems, which then
Speaker 1: enhanced the problem even more, and it created this awful
Speaker 1: cycle that eventually, like I became desperate enough to try
Speaker 1: to get out of it. But yeah, it just it
Speaker 1: made it worse and worse and worse. And over the
Speaker 1: years I would blame tequila. That was my first as tequila.
Speaker 1: That's making me so depressed. So I can't drink Margarita's anymore,
Speaker 1: that must be why. And I would blame like certain
Speaker 1: little things, or it's this person's fault, it's not precious alcohol.
Speaker 1: But then as time went on and it continued to
Speaker 1: get worse, eventually I had to face it. I lost
Speaker 1: all the excuses. Yeah, it's really interesting because I think
Speaker 1: I like you. I started heavy drinking a little bit later.
Speaker 1: I was eighteen, which is still even late by some standards.
Speaker 1: I had I done it a little bit in high school,
Speaker 1: and I drank strangely from the beginning, but I didn't
Speaker 1: do it often, and then I quit for a number
Speaker 1: of years completely. So when I started again, I've never
Speaker 1: heard that term telescoping. I telescoped really really quickly. But
Speaker 1: I think I realized relatively early on that there was
Speaker 1: a problem, that there was something not normal about my drinking.
Speaker 1: I'm amazed I sort of even realized that because I
Speaker 1: was around a ton of hard drinking and hard drugging people,
Speaker 1: and yet I just something inside me had this sense
Speaker 1: something wasn't right. You know. I think at the age
Speaker 1: of nineteen, so I've maybe been drinking a year. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was in nineteen or twenty a year and a half.
Speaker 1: At that point, I moved. I moved to San Francisco
Speaker 1: because I was trying to change my drinking. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting how we can sort of have a sense of
Speaker 1: it a little bit, but denial being so strong, and
Speaker 1: when we see alcohol or drugs as truly are salvation,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to question it. I wanted to hit
Speaker 1: something else that you said in there. I think you
Speaker 1: said it really well. You said that I realized I
Speaker 1: couldn't change the way I drank. Say a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that. Yeah, So I started questioning my drinking
Speaker 1: two years in, when my tolerance had doubled and I
Speaker 1: was getting blackout drunk on my couch by myself often,
Speaker 1: and I realized one day, like this is a lot
Speaker 1: of alcohol. That was why I first started questioning, um,
Speaker 1: like you are drinking a lot every day, Like this
Speaker 1: is a lot so then naturally, I thought, Okay, well
Speaker 1: let's moderate, let's just moderate our drinking. That's the solution,
Speaker 1: drink less. And I couldn't. I just couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 1: But I was obsessed with figuring it out, and I
Speaker 1: would spend the next five years researching it, Like I
Speaker 1: would wake up every day and I would research how
Speaker 1: do you moderate your drinking? And I would find all
Speaker 1: these strategies online or I would make them up myself.
Speaker 1: I'd get my husband involved. I did the craziest stuff
Speaker 1: to try to control it. And I thought like, if
Speaker 1: I could just practice starting and stopping enough times, I'll
Speaker 1: be able to stop naturally, Because that was my problem.
Speaker 1: I just needed practice drinking moderately. I tried so hard.
Speaker 1: I was so desperate, and that was the main reason
Speaker 1: I did the ninety day challenge. It was because nothing
Speaker 1: was working for five years, and I thought, like, ninety
Speaker 1: days will reset my tolerance and then I'll moderate. So
Speaker 1: I was so desperate to change my drinking, and I
Speaker 1: really believed that it was possible. I thought if I
Speaker 1: just practiced enough or found the right strategy, that I
Speaker 1: could change it. And I never thought I would have
Speaker 1: to be sober I just thought I had to keep trying.
Speaker 1: Even though I had five years of failures, I never
Speaker 1: succeeded at it. Yeah, we used a word in there,
Speaker 1: it was my obsession. And there's a line in the
Speaker 1: A A Big book that says something like, the idea
Speaker 1: that he would be able to drink normally is the
Speaker 1: great obsession of every alcoholic, right that is the obsession
Speaker 1: is to figure that out. There's another line in there
Speaker 1: that I didn't understand with as much nuance as I
Speaker 1: do now, and the line was that, you know, the
Speaker 1: alcoholic cannot control and enjoy his drinking. I realized that
Speaker 1: there was something very specific in there, and what it
Speaker 1: meant was I could try and control it, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't very good at it, but I could really lean
Speaker 1: in and work, but I hated it. It was miserable.
Speaker 1: Or I could enjoy it, just let my hands off
Speaker 1: the wheel, let it go. But I could not do both.
Speaker 1: And that was really important to me, and some listeners know.
Speaker 1: I got sober at twenty four from a heroin addiction state.
Speaker 1: Sober about eight years, went out and drank again. And
Speaker 1: when I was starting to realize the second time around
Speaker 1: that God, I might this is not going well, there's
Speaker 1: a problem here. I was like, well, I know what
Speaker 1: sobriety means, like it's abstinence. It's back to a A
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, no. So I joined moderation Management,
Speaker 1: which is a program out there to teach you to moderate.
Speaker 1: And I joked that if it came down to the
Speaker 1: effort I put into it, I would have been the
Speaker 1: valedictorian of moderation Management. I so desperately did not want
Speaker 1: the answer to be zero, but I utterly simply could
Speaker 1: not do it. There were some nights I could do it.
Speaker 1: Some nights I could sit there and be like, all right,
Speaker 1: that's my three drinks. But I was cheating from the beginning,
Speaker 1: like wow, they say like two drinks four ounds drinks,
Speaker 1: so I'm having to eight ounds. I mean immediately I
Speaker 1: was gaming the system. And I just remember these nights.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can relate of standing by my kitchen sink.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's eleven at night and I have maybe
Speaker 1: already gone over my goal, or I'm right at it.
Speaker 1: I'm about to walk upstairs and go to bed, and
Speaker 1: the ski bottle is sitting there, and the agonizing I did,
Speaker 1: there was no reason on God's green earth to take
Speaker 1: another drink at that point none, I was going to bed,
Speaker 1: and yet it just tore me apart inside trying to
Speaker 1: do it. So that moderation is such an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: So you realize your last attempt at this is if
Speaker 1: I stay sober for ninety days, that's going to reset
Speaker 1: the clock and I'm going to be able to moderate.
Speaker 1: And so you do that, then what happens? Then I
Speaker 1: actually moderated, and I never moderated like for two months,
Speaker 1: three days, okay, two months. And I didn't start my
Speaker 1: drinking by moderating. I just like went nuts right from
Speaker 1: the beginning. So I never knew moderation ever. So I
Speaker 1: took the ninety days off and then I went from
Speaker 1: being a daily drinker down to having two glass of
Speaker 1: wine out on a date with my husband on Saturday nights,
Speaker 1: stopping on my own because I was good, and then
Speaker 1: not wanting anymore. I thought, like, I did it. I
Speaker 1: cured myself. Look at me, I can do it. But
Speaker 1: what was happening in the background was I was completely isolating.
Speaker 1: I refused to see anyone because if I hung out
Speaker 1: with other people, they would make me drink too much.
Speaker 1: So I didn't hang out with anyone. I just stayed
Speaker 1: in my house where it was safe, and then I
Speaker 1: went out with my husband for my two drinks and
Speaker 1: then we went on a cruise and that's where it ended.
Speaker 1: So before we go on the cruise, I have a
Speaker 1: couple of the questions about this period of moderation time.
Speaker 1: You weren't actually drinking more than that? Were you thinking
Speaker 1: about drinking or was it kind of just not really
Speaker 1: a big deal. I was actually, in my mind cured.
Speaker 1: I was completely cured. I wasn't resisting cravings. I wasn't
Speaker 1: like white knuckling it and forcing myself to stop. I
Speaker 1: wanted to glass of wine on Saturday night and that's
Speaker 1: all I did, and I didn't want any the other
Speaker 1: six days, so I didn't have any. And I thought like, wow,
Speaker 1: look at me, I did it. It sounds like it.
Speaker 1: So then you go on a cruise and we had
Speaker 1: the drink package, and you know the goal was always
Speaker 1: to drink on special occasions and then do my little
Speaker 1: two drinks a week. Moderating vacations are special occasions, right,
Speaker 1: even though it was a ten day vacation, it's so
Speaker 1: ten days of specialness. I could drink the way I wanted,
Speaker 1: which meant waking up in the morning and drinking and
Speaker 1: then drinking all day and drinking all night. And I
Speaker 1: did that for ten days straight. And it was my
Speaker 1: first time in Europe. It was a cruise I'd wanted
Speaker 1: to go on for my whole life. And I humiliated
Speaker 1: myself so bad all across Europe, multiple times. It was constant,
Speaker 1: so much humiliation. I cannot even look at the pictures,
Speaker 1: so drunk awful. All I did was drink. And then
Speaker 1: I came home and I was right back to normal
Speaker 1: daily drinking, no control, no off switch, and I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I'm like, where'd my moderation go? What happened? And I
Speaker 1: couldn't get it back. I was in Europe this summer
Speaker 1: and they are still talking about your I'm sure Star
Speaker 1: Jill was in town. And you know, so your moderation disappears,
Speaker 1: and you're back to drinking kind of in an out
Speaker 1: of control way, and then you decide, Okay, that's it,
Speaker 1: this isn't gonna work. I can't change my drinking, and
Speaker 1: you give it up. Yes. I tried for four more
Speaker 1: months to get back moderation, and all the bad stuff
Speaker 1: came back right away. There was no gap between the
Speaker 1: vacation and the bad stuff, and I suffered for four
Speaker 1: months and then one day I was just like, something
Speaker 1: bad will happen to me if I keep doing this,
Speaker 1: because I was so suicidal on nights that I would
Speaker 1: get really drunk, and I was afraid, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do something about this. Because my husband will sometimes go
Speaker 1: away for work, or he'll go on a motorcycle trip,
Speaker 1: so sometimes I'm alone, and those were the nights that
Speaker 1: I really went for it. So I started seeing my
Speaker 1: future where something like that would happen, and then I
Speaker 1: would act on those really scary thoughts that I was having,
Speaker 1: and that was enough for me to just say, I
Speaker 1: can't do this anymore. I knew I didn't want that stuff,
Speaker 1: even though, like I hated myself so much at the time,
Speaker 1: and I just stopped and I told my husband we
Speaker 1: were watching the sun come up because I had kept
Speaker 1: us up all night with my misery and he always
Speaker 1: tried to take care of me and comfort me. And
Speaker 1: I looked at him and I was like, right, poor guy,
Speaker 1: it was years years of not sleeping for him. And
Speaker 1: I looked at him and I said, I can of
Speaker 1: her drink ever again and that was that. So I
Speaker 1: have a few questions related to that. The first is,
Speaker 1: as we've said, every alcoholic or addict alcoholic has this
Speaker 1: idea like, well, I could handle it again, right, I
Speaker 1: could do it differently, right. I mean that's how I
Speaker 1: drank again after eight years. Right. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: you know I was doing heroin then then we all
Speaker 1: know that's a bad idea, right, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do that again. Like, let's just leave that off the table.
Speaker 1: And I was so much younger, and I've done so
Speaker 1: much therapy and I've done eight years of recovery. I
Speaker 1: was looking. I was like, I make good decisions in
Speaker 1: my life, like you know, I'm a dad, I make
Speaker 1: good decisions about my son. I'm successful in my career
Speaker 1: and make good decisions there. Surely I can do this again.
Speaker 1: And like you, I actually had a short period of
Speaker 1: moderation where I was like, oh, look, the world didn't end.
Speaker 1: I took a drink and and the world didn't end.
Speaker 1: But I feel like I had a lot of cycles
Speaker 1: of this, and maybe you did in your own way,
Speaker 1: but it sounds to me like part of my brain
Speaker 1: if I was you would be saying, all right, you've quit,
Speaker 1: and we know when you quit again that you reset
Speaker 1: and you were doing fine, so let's just reset and
Speaker 1: then let's not go on a cruise. How do you
Speaker 1: work with that thought when it comes up, because I'm
Speaker 1: sure it does, right. Yeah, eighteen months was very challenging
Speaker 1: for me because I had a lot of those thoughts.
Speaker 1: I thought often around that milestone, maybe it's been long enough,
Speaker 1: maybe you weren't actually that bad and you went overboard.
Speaker 1: And I was getting to know more people in the
Speaker 1: sober community, and you know, some people just have more
Speaker 1: extreme stories and I would hear their stories and I'd
Speaker 1: be like, well, I wasn't that bad, So maybe I
Speaker 1: wasn't bad at all. Maybe I just you know, went
Speaker 1: overboard with this whole sober thing. And that's what I
Speaker 1: meant in the beginning about like indulging the thoughts, because
Speaker 1: even though I had a lot of those thoughts, I
Speaker 1: didn't follow them down into the hole. I recognized, like, no,
Speaker 1: you've talked yourself in to this before and you know
Speaker 1: how it goes. And maybe I could moderate if I
Speaker 1: completely isolated and didn't do anything. But you can't isolate
Speaker 1: a pcent of the time forever, and it's just not
Speaker 1: worth it for me to go back to that place
Speaker 1: because between the cruise and stopping for good, there were
Speaker 1: four really, really painful months, and it's not like you
Speaker 1: can moderate a little bit and then you know, have
Speaker 1: a bad night and go back to sobriety. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: takes months or years of blowing up your life before
Speaker 1: you can get back to sobriety again. And what helps
Speaker 1: me the most is like being a part of the
Speaker 1: sober community, like with my page and my podcast and
Speaker 1: the work that I do, so I feel a lot
Speaker 1: of accountability and that helps me resist the thoughts too,
Speaker 1: but I do have them. My mind like desperately wants
Speaker 1: me to try to moderate again. You bring up several
Speaker 1: I think important things there, and one is I think
Speaker 1: it's really important to realize like we can't always come back.
Speaker 1: I know people who got sober when I did the
Speaker 1: first time and went back out like I went back out,
Speaker 1: and they are still out. Every time I see them,
Speaker 1: they talk about getting back in, and year after year
Speaker 1: after they can't do it. They simply cannot make it stick.
Speaker 1: So again, the reasons why some of us are able
Speaker 1: to get sober and others aren't. Is truly one of
Speaker 1: life's great mysteries. To me, I don't understand it, but
Speaker 1: that's one thing that helps me, is like, you may
Speaker 1: not have another recovery in you. Like the second time
Speaker 1: around for me was so much harder than the first time.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I mean, I can isolate some
Speaker 1: of the variables about why it might have been harder,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I just was plagued by cravings for
Speaker 1: a long time, far longer than the first time around.
Speaker 1: It felt like a real battle. So I think that
Speaker 1: idea of what you're saying is really value bole, which
Speaker 1: is that you don't know that you're going to get back.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing I think you touched on,
Speaker 1: which is another point that I kind of want to
Speaker 1: call out, is the risk to reward factor. The reward
Speaker 1: for you if you moderate it would be two drinks
Speaker 1: on Saturday night, right, Okay, that's nice. The risk is outsized, right,
Speaker 1: it's suicide in your case, it's a likely progression to suicide.
Speaker 1: So I think that's the other thing for those of
Speaker 1: us that get trapped with moderation thoughts that works for
Speaker 1: me very often is to be like, Okay, yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: but what's the reward to risk? You know, if I moderate,
Speaker 1: I'm having a couple of drinks a week. I mean,
Speaker 1: is that going to make my life incredibly better? No,
Speaker 1: it might make an hour of my life better. But
Speaker 1: the risks in my case have been proven over and
Speaker 1: over again, which I will burn my life to the ground.
Speaker 1: You know it will happen. It might take a month,
Speaker 1: it might take a year, it might take three years,
Speaker 1: but that seems to be the things. So I think
Speaker 1: that risk to reward ratio. And then the last piece
Speaker 1: you've called out there, I think is also really valuable
Speaker 1: is recognizing the impact of what I'm doing on others.
Speaker 1: And that impact is easier to recognize when we're sober
Speaker 1: and not in denial. When you're drinking, you have to
Speaker 1: do everything in your mind to minimize that to keep drinking.
Speaker 1: But when we're sober, we're able to see it. So
Speaker 1: I think you identified like three really useful strategies there,
Speaker 1: for like working with maybe I could moderate thoughts, which
Speaker 1: I think everybody in recovery has them. I think they
Speaker 1: are just part of the territory, some more than others,
Speaker 1: but we all have them from time to time, and
Speaker 1: for me, just the fact that I have those thoughts
Speaker 1: means I can't moderate. I also accept that I'm like
Speaker 1: my husband would never think about it. Sometimes I get
Speaker 1: so like envious of him. But he just randomly stopped
Speaker 1: drinking for like three months last summer in the summer too,
Speaker 1: and he never had like maybe it's been long enough
Speaker 1: or you know, he just randomly didn't more on it.
Speaker 1: And I can compare my experience to his experience and see,
Speaker 1: like the way that I try to talk myself back
Speaker 1: into it means I can't do it. So having him
Speaker 1: in my life has been so helpful for me because
Speaker 1: I have an example of like how different my drinking
Speaker 1: is from what like I wish it could ever be. Yep, yep, totally.
Speaker 1: I heard you on another podcast and the woman said
Speaker 1: something that I'm amazed in, having been in recovery more
Speaker 1: or less since I was twenty five, I've never heard
Speaker 1: before you guys were talking about this question of am
Speaker 1: I alcoholic or not? And she said, you know, nobody
Speaker 1: ever has to ask themselves like am I a frog?
Speaker 1: Which cracks me up, like you just know, like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it never comes up because I'm clearly not
Speaker 1: a frog. But if I asked myself often enough, if
Speaker 1: I was a frog, we would know there was something wrong.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was great, because you know, the
Speaker 1: answer to am alcoholic or you know, maybe that's not
Speaker 1: even the right word anymore, right, do I have a
Speaker 1: problem with alcohol? Or There's lots of different ways to
Speaker 1: phrase it. The answer is sort of embedded in the
Speaker 1: question to some degree if we have to think about
Speaker 1: it that much, because like you said, your husband does
Speaker 1: not have to think about that. He does not have
Speaker 1: to wonder am I Am I not? Because he simply isn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no questioning it for him, because he's truly a
Speaker 1: take it or leave it drinker. He can take it
Speaker 1: or leave it. He doesn't care. That's the definition. And
Speaker 1: the fact that we have the obsession part means we're
Speaker 1: not a take it or leave a drinker, which is
Speaker 1: the goal. Like we don't want to be a controlled drinker.
Speaker 1: We want to be a take it or leave it drinker,
Speaker 1: and we just can't because our mind thinks about it
Speaker 1: of the time. That's all I thought about before. So
Speaker 1: you're in the sober community, the sober world, and one
Speaker 1: of the things that I've seen emerge from that world
Speaker 1: a lot over the last number of years that simply
Speaker 1: was never present when I was getting sober? Is this
Speaker 1: harm reduction idea, this idea that you know what, not
Speaker 1: everybody maybe will get sober, maybe not everybody has to
Speaker 1: get completely sober, But if you go from fifteen drinks
Speaker 1: a week to three drinks a week, that's a vast improvement.
Speaker 1: You know, as I refer to my inner attic perks
Speaker 1: its ears up at harm reduction and goes, well, there's
Speaker 1: they got a really good point, right, And I think
Speaker 1: they do have a really good point, just not for me.
Speaker 1: So how do you think about this idea of one
Speaker 1: size doesn't fit all? I don't even know if the
Speaker 1: word would be recovery, but but let's use recovery. Let's
Speaker 1: throw harm reduction under recovery and say this one size
Speaker 1: doesn't fit all. Because it seems to me that there
Speaker 1: is somewhere between where your husband is, which is truly
Speaker 1: don't care, and where maybe I am. There are clearly
Speaker 1: places in between there. How do you think about that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's an amazing question. I think about what
Speaker 1: you were saying about how you did moderation management, like
Speaker 1: imagine if you and I were both drinking today and
Speaker 1: we had all of these options, Like there are apps,
Speaker 1: would be a good podcast. There are apps that help
Speaker 1: you drink less and like you know, teach you. You
Speaker 1: can hire a coach to at you to drink less
Speaker 1: and give you account of it. Like there's so many
Speaker 1: things that you can do now to try to learn
Speaker 1: to drink less. And I would have given them all
Speaker 1: of my money, all of it. Take it, please help me.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a mixture of people. I think
Speaker 1: it's some just desperate, desperate people that go into that
Speaker 1: and try to learn to moderate, and they stay stuck
Speaker 1: for longer because there's more options for them, like more
Speaker 1: options of giving it a try, where I had less options,
Speaker 1: so I was able to just throw out my hands sooner.
Speaker 1: And I think there's other people in there that are
Speaker 1: super curious and they're not as far down the spectrum
Speaker 1: as you or I am, where they don't like completely
Speaker 1: lose control. They are able to moderate sometimes other times
Speaker 1: they go overboard. They can resist cravings occasionally and stop
Speaker 1: bit two drinks like they're early on. But the way
Speaker 1: that I see it is you can't go back down
Speaker 1: the spectrum. You can take a pause and you can
Speaker 1: chill like I'm paused. I'm chilling where I am in
Speaker 1: the spectrum, but you can't go back. That's what I think.
Speaker 1: I think harm reduction. Obviously, drinking less is better. If
Speaker 1: you used to drink thirty drinks a week and now
Speaker 1: you drink ten, it's just better. It's obviously better, But
Speaker 1: the obsession might be exactly the same, or it might
Speaker 1: be even more intense because you really want fifty, but
Speaker 1: you're forcing yourself to have ten. So I think it
Speaker 1: just keeps a lot of people stuck in the loop,
Speaker 1: or it slows down the progression to them just giving
Speaker 1: it up. And I also think it's just like a
Speaker 1: stupid drink. Like I know, if I said that to
Speaker 1: me three years ago, I would have been like, you
Speaker 1: don't understand me. Get out of here with that. You
Speaker 1: don't understand my our goals. But now that I'm sober,
Speaker 1: we're fighting for just a stupid drink. It's not essential
Speaker 1: for life. It's not like it's food or connection with
Speaker 1: other people. It's just a stupid drink that's not required.
Speaker 1: And now, thankfully we have so many non alcoholic alternatives
Speaker 1: that people can enjoy. So I think fighting so hard
Speaker 1: to keep something that's not essential in your life should
Speaker 1: also just kind of be a sign, like if you're
Speaker 1: giving a coach thousands and thousands of dollars to help
Speaker 1: you learn to drink less because you can't drink less
Speaker 1: on your own, like it just slows down the quitting
Speaker 1: in my mind. I think it works for some and
Speaker 1: it pushes the pause for a bit on their progression,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it takes them backwards to where
Speaker 1: my husband is. What do you think? I have a
Speaker 1: lot of different opinions. You know, I tend to agree
Speaker 1: with you to a certain extent. The premise of moderation
Speaker 1: management was not everybody's bad enough that they need to
Speaker 1: give it up completely. I think that is a valid premise.
Speaker 1: What I saw in moderation management, and again this is
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, was a bunch of people who are
Speaker 1: just like me, who are desperately trying to take it
Speaker 1: from alcoholic drinking to normal drinking, and it wasn't working
Speaker 1: for the vast majority of them. You know, now, I
Speaker 1: am very glad that I did moderation management, by the way,
Speaker 1: and maybe spending thousands of dollars on a coach and
Speaker 1: spending time with an app is sometimes what we need
Speaker 1: to kill off the belief that we can moderate. Like
Speaker 1: moderation management was good for me because whenever I start
Speaker 1: thinking about I'm like, look, we've tried this. You worked
Speaker 1: really hard at this. You know, you joined a program
Speaker 1: for this and it did not work. So I think
Speaker 1: there is some value in that. I think your point
Speaker 1: also about it's just a stupid drink is a really
Speaker 1: interesting perspective, like why are we fighting so hard to
Speaker 1: keep something in our life that shouldn't be that valuable.
Speaker 1: If it's that valuable, it might speak to howliant we
Speaker 1: are on it. It was interesting when I got sober
Speaker 1: from Heroin. I knew a couple of people who got
Speaker 1: sober on methodone, and I know methodone and Subak Zone
Speaker 1: have the big community out there of a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are helped by those the opinion that I
Speaker 1: had at that time, and I have tamed it a
Speaker 1: little bit and been willing to go like, well, not
Speaker 1: everybody is me. It's a different opinion. But the feeling
Speaker 1: I had at that time was I am so glad
Speaker 1: that I am fully sober, And the reason was not
Speaker 1: that I think taking methodone is a problem if it
Speaker 1: stops all that behavior. But not having any substance forced
Speaker 1: me to grow mentally, spiritually, emotionally. It made it a criticality,
Speaker 1: and it drove me into community. And so when I
Speaker 1: looked at my life then versus these people's lives, I went,
Speaker 1: my life feels really rich and alive and and there's
Speaker 1: just dozen't in the same way. And again I don't
Speaker 1: think that's for everybody. I think there is something to
Speaker 1: be said for that. I think the other thing that
Speaker 1: harm reduction points to, and this is another one that
Speaker 1: I have mixed opinions on, is that not everybody is
Speaker 1: capable of full abstinence. And it goes back to I
Speaker 1: don't know why some of us get sober and others don't.
Speaker 1: It's a mystery, you know. And there's a part of
Speaker 1: me that wants to be like, everybody is capable of it,
Speaker 1: But there's also a part of me that says, maybe not,
Speaker 1: maybe not. For a variety of reasons, maybe not. And
Speaker 1: if full abstinence isn't within the realm of capability for
Speaker 1: that person, then harm reduction is a great strategy. And
Speaker 1: I think if we look at harm reduction as a
Speaker 1: global public health measure, it's a great thing, but when
Speaker 1: you trickle it down to an individual, I think we
Speaker 1: have to really look at are we selling that person
Speaker 1: short perhaps? So I don't know, these are controversial opinions, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody talked about this when I got sober.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't in the air. It was if you
Speaker 1: end up in an a meeting, you're an alcoholic and
Speaker 1: the only thing for you is to get sober, and
Speaker 1: even more so, here's the only way to do it.
Speaker 1: Broadly speaking. So the recovery world is so different than
Speaker 1: it was years ago in Columbus. I'm stunned by its diversity,
Speaker 1: and I think ultimately that's a good thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's really interesting what you said about how trying
Speaker 1: everything you can to moderate is helpful, and that was
Speaker 1: true for me. I just didn't have as many options
Speaker 1: as there are today. But the reason I don't return
Speaker 1: to drinking is because of the ninety days and because
Speaker 1: I moderated after and then I saw I blew up
Speaker 1: my life again the same loop. But without that, I
Speaker 1: would still be going back and forth forever. And what
Speaker 1: I've seen in the sober community because I've been in
Speaker 1: it for so long. Is there are some people that
Speaker 1: unfortunately fall for moderation and those thoughts of you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I can give mindful drinking a shot, and you
Speaker 1: see them kind to disappear. And when someone disappears, not always,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it's because they've returned to drinking. And I've
Speaker 1: seen some people you know, come back and they say,
Speaker 1: you know, I tried moderation, I blew up my life again,
Speaker 1: I'm miserable. I'm back. But then they like don't fully
Speaker 1: come back, and then they like try to give it
Speaker 1: a go and they disappear and then they're back in
Speaker 1: the loop. So I think having so many options for
Speaker 1: trying to learn to drink mindfully can also harm people
Speaker 1: where they wouldn't have so many options before and they
Speaker 1: would just give up and be like, Okay, well you
Speaker 1: know I tried it, But now there's so many more
Speaker 1: things that you can try, and new things are coming
Speaker 1: out all the time, and it's like this works for
Speaker 1: this person, maybe it would work for me. And so
Speaker 1: I think it can also trap us to and make
Speaker 1: us think it's possible again. YEA, let's change direction a
Speaker 1: little bit. You said that you got sober without help
Speaker 1: in the beginning, and then you realized that wasn't the
Speaker 1: best approach, so you got a therapist, and then from
Speaker 1: there you started to build more of a community around yourself.
Speaker 1: I would love to just maybe examine that journey. At
Speaker 1: what point did you realize, like, oh, help really would
Speaker 1: be a good idea here? What was going on that
Speaker 1: caused you to go from here, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: this by myself because I'm strong to like, that's not
Speaker 1: the best idea. What was happening then that brought that
Speaker 1: realization on quarantine happened, So if it didn't happen, I
Speaker 1: probably would have just continued on my way doing it
Speaker 1: on my own because I'm so strong. So I quit
Speaker 1: drinking in November, right before the holiday season, and there
Speaker 1: were so many parties and so many happy hours, and
Speaker 1: people in science just drink a lot. So there were
Speaker 1: a lot of drinking parties to go to, and I
Speaker 1: would go to them and not drink, and I would,
Speaker 1: you know, get through it, and then I would cry
Speaker 1: from the stress, and then I would feel good about
Speaker 1: myself afterwards. So it wasn't all negative. But I kept
Speaker 1: doing that, and you know, I got through it. And
Speaker 1: it was fine, and then quarantine happened and we all
Speaker 1: got sent home. And I was a lab worker, so
Speaker 1: I could not do my job from home. So for me,
Speaker 1: going to therapy before felt like everybody would know, like
Speaker 1: I'd have to leave work early, like the same time
Speaker 1: every week, and so that was why I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: But then when we were all sent home, I was like,
Speaker 1: now no one knows if I use my lunch break
Speaker 1: for therapy because I don't have to leave. So that
Speaker 1: convinced me to give it a shot. And then I
Speaker 1: found my current therapist, and she helped me so much
Speaker 1: to learn, just like how to deal with stuff. I
Speaker 1: still wasn't learning that. In the beginning. I was sober
Speaker 1: and like, I accepted, you know, this is just the
Speaker 1: way that it is, but I wasn't working on how
Speaker 1: to deal with stuff and work through problems without getting
Speaker 1: super overwhelmed. So I don't know what would have happened
Speaker 1: if I didn't find therapy, but thankfully I did. I
Speaker 1: don't know what order this happened for you, but I
Speaker 1: can see two points in time. I can see I
Speaker 1: started therapy, and I can see I started a sober podcast.
Speaker 1: Right what was going on in between there did you
Speaker 1: build a community and that community gave you the idea
Speaker 1: how did that all happen? So I had a bit
Speaker 1: of community in sober Facebook groups where I would post
Speaker 1: and interact with people and you know, make some friendships there,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know about like all the other options
Speaker 1: for community. I was just on Facebook and going to
Speaker 1: therapy and living my life as normal. And then in
Speaker 1: my spare time every day, I had been researching addiction
Speaker 1: because I just wanted to understand, like why me? That
Speaker 1: was my main mission in sobriety, to help alleviate hopefully
Speaker 1: the shame unless I've discovered was actually my fault. So
Speaker 1: I spent every night educating myself about addiction and why
Speaker 1: it happened. And eight months into sobriety, that's when I
Speaker 1: got the idea to do the podcast. My body image
Speaker 1: had improved, my self hatred had improved, and I was
Speaker 1: feeling so much better and more comfortable that I just
Speaker 1: woke up one day and I was like, everybody needs
Speaker 1: to know what I know. And I just started it
Speaker 1: that day and I just wanted to share with people,
Speaker 1: like why did this happen to you? And why it's
Speaker 1: not because you're a loser or because you're a weak person.
Speaker 1: I just wanted them to understand, like, you're not a
Speaker 1: loser basically, and then yeah, I just put it out there.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting that you did that, and I want
Speaker 1: to go to that. And I think that speaks to
Speaker 1: one of the dangers of going it alone. I think
Speaker 1: you don't hear that message often enough, like you're not
Speaker 1: a loser, you're not broken, you're not which is one
Speaker 1: of the great things about a support group, whichever one
Speaker 1: you might pick, whether it be alcoholics anonymous, or rational
Speaker 1: recovery or smart recovery. I mean there's so many of them,
Speaker 1: refuge recovery or Dharma recovery, is that, you know. One
Speaker 1: of the biggest things I got out of a early
Speaker 1: on was seeing lots of other people who I looked
Speaker 1: at I'm like, they seem like normal, good people, and
Speaker 1: they would tell stories like my story, and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, and we would talk about how you know, alcoholism.
Speaker 1: The prevailing idea then was it was a disease. And
Speaker 1: we may get into that because I think that's an
Speaker 1: interesting area to talk about. Is it a disease, is
Speaker 1: it not? What does that mean, but it certainly took
Speaker 1: it from moral failing, right, It took it out of
Speaker 1: the moral failing. And so I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the benefits of being around other people in recovery. So
Speaker 1: you started the podcast because you had kind of learned
Speaker 1: all this on your own, and then you had a
Speaker 1: desire to share with others. Then once you started doing that,
Speaker 1: did you start to develop a community around yourself and
Speaker 1: then think to yourself like, oh boy, this is really great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that same day that I started the show, I
Speaker 1: also got on Instagram, and that was when I learned
Speaker 1: of the whole sober community on Instagram, and that community
Speaker 1: is much tighter than what's inside Facebook groups. And I
Speaker 1: was making like real friends and just interacting with people
Speaker 1: more and more. And then I observed the same thing,
Speaker 1: like someone would share a story and it would be
Speaker 1: someone that I admired that had, you know, much more
Speaker 1: time than me, and I would see her story and
Speaker 1: she'd share maybe something really embarrassing that she did, and
Speaker 1: I would think, like, I don't think she's a loser,
Speaker 1: so why do I have to be a loser? And
Speaker 1: then that helped me a lot, and what helped me
Speaker 1: in Facebook groups. Was I thought like people were going
Speaker 1: to take me away because I felt suicidal from drinking alcohol.
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to get the seventy two
Speaker 1: hour hold even though it had been like months, and therefore,
Speaker 1: like I can't anybody, I have to keep it to
Speaker 1: myself forever. And eventually, like months and months and months,
Speaker 1: and I got the courage to share in a Facebook group.
Speaker 1: I think it was just like a little comment. I
Speaker 1: didn't even make a post, and so many people commented
Speaker 1: in response to my comment, and they were like me too.
Speaker 1: And people were messaging me their story if they didn't
Speaker 1: want to comment publicly, and and I saw, like, wow,
Speaker 1: that didn't just happen to me. Like I I really
Speaker 1: believed all of my struggles were unique. And I think
Speaker 1: that's really bad about doing it alone, too, is none
Speaker 1: of our struggles are unique, even down to the teeniest,
Speaker 1: tiniest detail. And once you learn that, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: of course I'm not a loser now, like I am
Speaker 1: seeing it better. It's not just me. It happens to
Speaker 1: thousands of people. Yeah, And I think what we're speaking
Speaker 1: to here is that it may be possible for some
Speaker 1: people to do it alone. I don't think it would
Speaker 1: have been for me, but it might theoretically be possible
Speaker 1: to do it alone. But that's not the important question.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe the important question is what's the way to
Speaker 1: do this that's going to most enhance my life? You know,
Speaker 1: what's the way of doing this that's going to take
Speaker 1: something that has been up till now a terrible struggle
Speaker 1: and shame and turn it into for lack of a
Speaker 1: better word, and asset right. And my experience has been
Speaker 1: that's what happens in community, right, because we're a giving
Speaker 1: other people the ability to do that for us by
Speaker 1: sharing their story, they're able to help us, and then
Speaker 1: vice versa, we're able to help others by sharing our stories.
Speaker 1: And that reciprocal community relationship is so healing. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: just knowing that someone that you look up to has
Speaker 1: also done a bunch of stuff that's shameful or bad
Speaker 1: like whatever you want to call it. Just seeing that
Speaker 1: other people have struggled to in a way that you
Speaker 1: know was some kind of consequence or something negative. That
Speaker 1: helps me a lot. And you see all types of
Speaker 1: different sober people too. You see people that completely blew
Speaker 1: up their lives, and that's why they're sober. You see sober,
Speaker 1: curious people that you know didn't have too many consequences,
Speaker 1: but they just decided I don't want to feel like
Speaker 1: crap anymore. You see all sorts of people in the middle.
Speaker 1: You see people that gave it up for health. So
Speaker 1: wherever you're at in your journey, you can see like, wow,
Speaker 1: that person didn't blow up their life and then they
Speaker 1: quit and now they're happier. So maybe I don't have
Speaker 1: to be like the worst drinker ever to give this
Speaker 1: a shot too. So I think seeing all the different
Speaker 1: types of people in the community is still helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think another important piece in there is that
Speaker 1: you're pointing to the diversity and community and if you're
Speaker 1: not finding people that seem like you, either one of
Speaker 1: two things is going on. One is you are focusing
Speaker 1: totally on the ways in which you're different, not the
Speaker 1: ways you're similar, which is a very common thing in
Speaker 1: early recovery. Right, we just wanted to qualify ourselves. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not like that. But the second is you may
Speaker 1: not be in the right spot right, So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different options out there in a way
Speaker 1: that again for me, there just wasn't in you know, Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 1: And there are so many different places that you can
Speaker 1: seek community and you can find people that are like
Speaker 1: you and that you can relate with. And so I
Speaker 1: think a is try to look for the similarities, not
Speaker 1: the differences, but be keep looking. If what you find
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to you, keep looking. And I say
Speaker 1: the same thing, even if the recommendation or somebody is
Speaker 1: like doing a It's like, don't go to a meeting
Speaker 1: and decide it's the wrong thing. Don't even go to
Speaker 1: that same meeting five times and determine it's the wrong thing. Like,
Speaker 1: try some other ones. Because even within one group, like
Speaker 1: a A in one city, the differences in the type
Speaker 1: of group and the spirit and the energy in that
Speaker 1: group can be radically different, I mean almost night and
Speaker 1: day in some ways. And so community is there if
Speaker 1: we're persistent and looking for it. Yeah, And you can
Speaker 1: even lark in a community. Now you can just you know,
Speaker 1: follow people on Instagram and just kind of observe, or
Speaker 1: join a Facebook group and observe, or Twitter TikTok like
Speaker 1: they're everywhere YouTube, so you can just observe until you're
Speaker 1: comfortable and then enter the community. So we're really fortunate
Speaker 1: that there are so many sober people on social media. Now,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about an idea that I
Speaker 1: think you have said that I think is important, and
Speaker 1: you say, I believe that one of the keys to
Speaker 1: maintain in sobriety is breaking down those beliefs that alcohol
Speaker 1: is good and recognizing what alcohol actually does. Say a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that. Why that's in Horton and
Speaker 1: maybe your top instance or two of what we think
Speaker 1: alcohol does for us and what it actually does for us. Yes,
Speaker 1: so because alcohol provides instant gratification, we get fixated on
Speaker 1: that beginning part and we think the rest of the story,
Speaker 1: all the suffering later is more like our fault and
Speaker 1: it's us, and we don't connect that alcohol is contributing
Speaker 1: to it. So a good example of that would be
Speaker 1: someone drinking to manage anxiety. They feel very anxious, so
Speaker 1: then they drink and the alcohol slows down their brain,
Speaker 1: so then they feel more calm and they think, oh,
Speaker 1: alcohol helps my anxiety done. But then when they wake
Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night, they have the jolt,
Speaker 1: the racing heart, the anxiety, you know, all night, all
Speaker 1: the next day, their anxiety is worse. They don't connect
Speaker 1: that to the drinking that they did that night. And
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of us go wrong is we
Speaker 1: think it just helps and that's the end of the
Speaker 1: story and all the rest of it is us. Same
Speaker 1: thing with depression, Like I thought I was just a depressed,
Speaker 1: bad loser, and when I drank, I had these two
Speaker 1: hours of happiness and fun and connection with my husband,
Speaker 1: and then I went back to being a miserable loser.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't connecting that those like two hours of
Speaker 1: instant gratification were fueling all of the suffering that came after.
Speaker 1: And then when I finally took a break, I recognized it.
Speaker 1: So we don't see cause and effect of our drinking.
Speaker 1: We only see the beginning, and we're not connecting the
Speaker 1: rest of the story. And it's hard. Sometimes you can
Speaker 1: only do that through a break, like what happened for me.
Speaker 1: But we need to consider the entire story, the whole thing,
Speaker 1: from after the drinking two before you start drinking the
Speaker 1: next time. If you don't drink every day, maybe you
Speaker 1: drink and then you have like cravings that you're fighting
Speaker 1: off for days. That's part of the drinking experience too,
Speaker 1: So I think not just taking that instant gratification piece
Speaker 1: that one to two hours as the whole experience is key.
Speaker 1: In a a they used to say that was playing
Speaker 1: the tape all the way through, right, But I think
Speaker 1: you're doing something even a little bit beyond that, right,
Speaker 1: which is playing the tape all the way through, would
Speaker 1: be me observing my experience all the way through, and
Speaker 1: that is very valuable, very important, and very instructive, and
Speaker 1: maybe ultimately the most instructive if I can connect all
Speaker 1: the dots. However, what you're doing with your background, you're
Speaker 1: a biochemist by trade. What you're doing is actually looking
Speaker 1: at the science and sort of providing not the subjective
Speaker 1: experience of what happens when I drink, but the objective
Speaker 1: here's what happens to human brains when they drink. And
Speaker 1: I think that's another valuable perspective to add. I don't
Speaker 1: think one is better than the other, but I think
Speaker 1: that's a helpful extra piece there. So let's do this
Speaker 1: with anxiety, because I think you've written very well on
Speaker 1: this and I'd love to bring a little of it
Speaker 1: out here. What's happening in the brain that is causing
Speaker 1: alcohol to make me feel calm for a little bit,
Speaker 1: but then make my anxiety worse overall. What's that process?
Speaker 1: What's happening? Yeah, so when we drink, alcohol slows down
Speaker 1: our brain, so it slows down the messages that are
Speaker 1: being sent around the brain, or if you drink a lot,
Speaker 1: it'll stop some of them completely. So because your brain
Speaker 1: is slower, you can't have as many racing thoughts that
Speaker 1: are contributing to your anxiety. So that's why it calms
Speaker 1: you down. It doesn't help you relax. It just slows
Speaker 1: down your brain or turns things off for you. A
Speaker 1: particular neurotransmitter. Yeah, so alcohol will stimulate something called GABBA,
Speaker 1: which is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. So
Speaker 1: that is what is slowing down your brain. But as
Speaker 1: you train yourself to rely on alcohol to calm you down,
Speaker 1: the brain is going to recognize that this same process
Speaker 1: is happening over and over. And just like you develop
Speaker 1: tolerance when you have two drinks a day and then
Speaker 1: eventually you need three and four, you develop the same
Speaker 1: kind of tolerance with your mental health. So the brain
Speaker 1: is going to want to maintain a balance at all times.
Speaker 1: And if you're constantly slowing the brain down with alcohol,
Speaker 1: it's going to try to counteract that so it can
Speaker 1: stay at its normal brain activity level. And it does
Speaker 1: that in two ways. It makes it harder for gabba
Speaker 1: to be released, so it's harder for you to feel calm,
Speaker 1: and it increases excitability in the brain, so it increases
Speaker 1: a neurotransmitter called glutamate. So when the alcohol wears off,
Speaker 1: that's why we have anxiety. So your brain is now
Speaker 1: sped up from all of this extra excitability and the
Speaker 1: alcohol is not there to balance it back out. So
Speaker 1: then your brain just is like going nuts and you
Speaker 1: can't release gabba as well as normal, so you're having
Speaker 1: trouble calming yourself down too. So then now you have
Speaker 1: all the sextra anxiety. And we know the perfect solution
Speaker 1: for anxiety because we've taught ourselves that's alcohol. So then
Speaker 1: you drink some more alcohol, and then over time again
Speaker 1: your brain will adapt make the problem worse. And then
Speaker 1: some people will get to the point where like withdrawal,
Speaker 1: for them, they just can't tolerate the anxiety that they
Speaker 1: feel because it's so intense, and they keep they'll stop
Speaker 1: for a couple of days, the anxieties out of control,
Speaker 1: and then they'll go back to drinking again because they
Speaker 1: just can't handle it. But the longer they stay with drinking,
Speaker 1: the more their brain is adapting, and the worse and
Speaker 1: worse and worse the problem is getting. And the same
Speaker 1: thing happens with depression. That's why eventually I became very suicidal.
Speaker 1: That will happen to a lot of people too. Your
Speaker 1: baseline just keeps dropping or raising, depending on you know,
Speaker 1: the symptom like anxiety. The baseline is just raising over time.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so alcohol is then fueling the problem that
Speaker 1: we're trying to cope with, and it gets worse and
Speaker 1: worse and worse until it's hard to stop. And this
Speaker 1: is happening with every drug that we take. I mean
Speaker 1: kind of across the board. Right. Our brain is trying
Speaker 1: to achieve homeostasis. So if you've got something that's speeding
Speaker 1: it up, it's gonna be like, hey, hang on here,
Speaker 1: let's slow this down. And if you've got something that
Speaker 1: slowing it down and be like, well, we're gonna move
Speaker 1: this up. We had a guest on the show, and
Speaker 1: I don't remember how she referred to it. But the
Speaker 1: essence of it was every drug has a cost, meaning
Speaker 1: that there's no free lunch. Like if you feel calm
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours, that's going to come back
Speaker 1: around on the other side, and you're probably going to
Speaker 1: pay for that with two hours of worse anxiety at least,
Speaker 1: right And as you say, this just exacerbates, and that
Speaker 1: is what makes early sobriety so very difficult in so
Speaker 1: many cases. And you and I talked about this at
Speaker 1: another point where we talked about how for some people
Speaker 1: when they get sober, they immediately feel a little bit better,
Speaker 1: but for some people when they get sober, they immediately
Speaker 1: feel worse, and they may feel worse for a little while.
Speaker 1: And that's what this is about. Would you group all
Speaker 1: of this under sort of post acute withdraw Is that
Speaker 1: sort of what all this is? Or is that even
Speaker 1: something different? So withdrawal which happens in the first week
Speaker 1: or two is your brains like, whoa where did this
Speaker 1: thing go that I need? And it's trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: figure itself out, And it doesn't figure itself out a
Speaker 1: hundred in a week or two, but it does it
Speaker 1: enough where you don't have like horrible symptoms anymore for
Speaker 1: most people. But post acute withdrawal is the brain chemistry
Speaker 1: balancing back out, and that's a slower process. Your brain
Speaker 1: has to learn, like, oh, I need to regulate myself now,
Speaker 1: I have to do this work. I don't remember how
Speaker 1: to do that. I've been relying on alcohol or you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is for twenty years, so it takes more
Speaker 1: than two weeks for that process to happen, and and
Speaker 1: post acute withdrawal can last, you know, for a year
Speaker 1: or year and a half for some people, and that
Speaker 1: can drive the back to relapse too, because it's emotional
Speaker 1: symptoms and what fixes our emotional problems better than drugs
Speaker 1: and alcohol. So yeah, that's like the brain balancing back out,
Speaker 1: and that takes time. Even though you might feel normal,
Speaker 1: your brain is still adapting back because all the adaptation
Speaker 1: that happened didn't take two weeks. You didn't drink daily
Speaker 1: for two weeks and then like you had all these problems.
Speaker 1: It took years and years and years, so it takes
Speaker 1: time to undo it. Well, we are out of time.
Speaker 1: I could continue doing this forever. You and I are
Speaker 1: going to talk in the post show conversation a little
Speaker 1: bit about a couple of really important ideas, and the
Speaker 1: first is emotional sobriety, right, you say that emotional sobriety
Speaker 1: is about taking your power back, which I think is
Speaker 1: really important. So we're gonna talk about emotional sobriety, and
Speaker 1: then we may also talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: brain disease model, which is basically saying is addiction of disease?
Speaker 1: Is it a moral issue? Is it a choice issue?
Speaker 1: What is it? You know, there's lots of different ideas
Speaker 1: out there, and so we'll talk about that in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation listeners. If you would like access to
Speaker 1: that and all kinds of other great things, you can
Speaker 1: make a gift to us and become part of our
Speaker 1: community by going to One you Feed dot net slash joint. Well, Jill,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on. It has been
Speaker 1: such a pleasure to talk with you and I've really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
Speaker 1: making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.
Speaker 1: When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge,
Speaker 1: you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our
Speaker 1: way of saying thank you for your support now. We
Speaker 1: are so grateful for the members of our community. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to do what we do without or support,
Speaker 1: and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To
Speaker 1: learn more, make a donation at any level and become
Speaker 1: a member of the one you Feed community, go to
Speaker 1: when you feed dot net slash Join the One You
Speaker 1: Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for
Speaker 1: supporting the show.