Speaker 1: I think one of the worst things somebody can do
Speaker 1: is to just quit drinking or just quit using, because
Speaker 1: there is this beautiful, loving, authentic, welcoming community just waiting
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us
Speaker 2: Today we have a collaboration episode with three amazing guests who,
Speaker 2: along with Eric, share their experiences and feelings in early sobriety.
Speaker 2: It's a collection of incredible people from some of the
Speaker 2: top sobriety podcasts, including Paul Churchill from Recovery Elevator, Laura
Speaker 2: Cathcart Robbins from the Only One in the Room, Jillian
Speaker 2: Teats from Sober Powered, and of course our own Eric
Speaker 2: Zimmer from The One You Feed. Enjoy this incredible conversation.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show, Laura, Eric, and Paul. I thought
Speaker 3: for anyone that doesn't know any of us, we could
Speaker 3: take a moment to go around and just introduce ourselves. Laura,
Speaker 3: do you want to start us off?
Speaker 4: I would love to thank you, Jill. I'm Laura Cathcart Robins.
Speaker 4: I am the host of the Only One in the
Speaker 4: Room podcast and I am also a debut memoir author.
Speaker 4: My memoir Stashed My Life in Hiding came out a
Speaker 4: little bit earlier this year and has been featured in
Speaker 4: The New York Times and Oprah Daily. It's on the
Speaker 4: Oprah Daily homepage as we record this an excerpt from it.
Speaker 4: And I am very active in recovery in the recovery communities,
Speaker 4: and I'm really excited to be here.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Eric. Do you want to take a moment
Speaker 3: and introduce yourself?
Speaker 5: Sure? My name is Eric Zimmer and I am the
Speaker 5: host of the One You Feed podcast and the creator
Speaker 5: of a program called Spiritual Habits and I can say
Speaker 5: that Laura's memoir is awesome. I read it, so I
Speaker 5: will say that it's very well done. But that's kind
Speaker 5: of me when you feed podcast and the Spiritual Habits program.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Paul, want to take it away?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jill, thanks for having me, Thanks for the invite,
Speaker 1: Laura Eric. Great to meet you, guys. I'm walking in
Speaker 1: the footsteps of giants right here. This is going to
Speaker 1: be a fun conversation we're going to have. Okay, Paul
Speaker 1: Churchill is my name. I'm forty one years old. I'm
Speaker 1: zooming in right here from Bozeman, Montana. I was recently
Speaker 1: married last year. I have a standard poodle named Ben,
Speaker 1: four Nigerian dwarf goats, a couple reptiles, and I'm so
Speaker 1: thankful that sobriety is the main focus of my life
Speaker 1: and then I'm not drinking alcohol anymore. And what almost
Speaker 1: killed me is a pathway to find accountability, and sobriety
Speaker 1: for myself has opened up so many doors. One of
Speaker 1: them has been the Recovery Elevator podcast, which I launched
Speaker 1: in February of twenty fifteen, and we've had an episode
Speaker 1: that comes out every Monday, and we're at like episode
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty two and again I selfishly started
Speaker 1: this for accountability because I could not quit drinking. But
Speaker 1: ten million downloads later, what an adventure. Here we are today,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited to see you again, Jill, and learn
Speaker 1: from Laura and Eric and connect with these other rock stars.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Paul. I think Recovery Elevator is everybody's first
Speaker 3: podcast basically when they try to quit drink.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm honored.
Speaker 5: Paul's much better at the intro game Ryan. We can
Speaker 5: see the Nigerian dwarfs that got me totally.
Speaker 1: They're the superstars in my life right now. One of
Speaker 1: them's name hot Dog, Oreo, Mocha and Elliott, and they
Speaker 1: are all about having fun. That's it. They are my
Speaker 1: teachers right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those are great names. I'm going to go back
Speaker 3: to the simple intro of I'm Jill. If you don't
Speaker 3: know me, I host the Sober Powered Podcast. I have
Speaker 3: a community for support called Living a Sober Powered Life.
Speaker 3: And I'm also a chemistry professor in the Boston area.
Speaker 3: That's my side hustle. And I'm really excited to do
Speaker 3: this conversation today because we're going to talk about our
Speaker 3: experience in the beginning, and I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people look at us and they see how much time
Speaker 3: we have and it feels overwhelming, like they'll never get there.
Speaker 3: And I also like to talk about the beginning because
Speaker 3: I never want to forget what I used to go through.
Speaker 3: I think the more distance you get from it, the
Speaker 3: easier it is to kind of minimize it in your mind.
Speaker 3: So I love talking about early sobriety. So I thought
Speaker 3: the first thing that we could do is just talk
Speaker 3: briefly about our experience in the first week or the
Speaker 3: first month, whatever you prefer, any challenges that you had, surprises,
Speaker 3: and how long ago that was for you. So Laura, yeah,
Speaker 3: if you want to start.
Speaker 6: I'd love to.
Speaker 4: This is something I like to talk about a lot,
Speaker 4: so thank you for this question. So my first month
Speaker 4: was spent in rehab, which I hated and felt sentenced
Speaker 4: to and ashamed to be there and was really resentful
Speaker 4: about all the people who seem to feel safe there
Speaker 4: and enjoy it. So that's kind of what I consider
Speaker 4: to be my first month because I spent it, you know,
Speaker 4: sequestered basically, so I wasn't in real life yet. So
Speaker 4: my second month is kind of my first experience with
Speaker 4: living sober. And I was in the middle of a divorce,
Speaker 4: and I was a mom to two young boys. I
Speaker 4: was the parent association president at their school. I had
Speaker 4: just been asked to join the board. So I had
Speaker 4: this very demanding outward life that I just didn't know
Speaker 4: how to show up for. I have no idea why
Speaker 4: I still went to three meetings a day. I went
Speaker 4: to twelve step recovery meetings, and I went to three
Speaker 4: of them a day, and again I felt sentenced. I
Speaker 4: was the only black one there. I was the only
Speaker 4: black one in treatment. I was the only black one
Speaker 4: in these meetings, and occasionally there might be another one,
Speaker 4: but basically it was just me, and I saw all
Speaker 4: the reasons why I was different from everybody, and none
Speaker 4: of the reasons why I was the same until much later,
Speaker 4: And so all I remember is being incredibly physically uncomfortable
Speaker 4: because I was still going through withdrawal, night sweats, brains apps,
Speaker 4: the inability to make eye contacts, shakiness, headaches, showing up
Speaker 4: for my kids and trying to put on a mile
Speaker 4: for them, and then just going through the motions of
Speaker 4: everything else, but the motions I went through in addition
Speaker 4: to my regular life, were of showing up in recovery
Speaker 4: meetings and doing what I was told.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Laura. And how long ago was that?
Speaker 4: So I will be fifteen years sober in August.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, fifteen. I didn't know that. I thought
Speaker 3: it was like closer to ten.
Speaker 6: Fifteen. Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 4: It was two thousand and eight when I got sober.
Speaker 4: That thing you said about forgetting, I have not forgotten,
Speaker 4: Like it is impressed on my memory how bad it was.
Speaker 4: I remember it every day for some degree, only to
Speaker 4: remember to be grateful for what I have right now,
Speaker 4: Like I'm so grateful to wake up without body aches.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I can work out, and if I am sore, it's
Speaker 4: because I worked out, not because I went and withdrawal
Speaker 4: from pills, you know. And I can show up and
Speaker 4: I can remember conversations like so, I remember the bad
Speaker 4: stuff only because I'm so grateful for the good stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think gratitude is so important. Back when I
Speaker 3: was drinking, I thought gratitude was dumb, And now that
Speaker 3: I'm sober and I can actually feel real gratitude, it's
Speaker 3: very important.
Speaker 6: I agree.
Speaker 3: So, Eric, what was your first week or first month, like.
Speaker 5: Well, I have kind of two periods of sobriety to
Speaker 5: talk about. One was, you know, I was twenty four
Speaker 5: and I got sober from heroin use, and I stayed
Speaker 5: sober about eight years and very active in recovery, and
Speaker 5: then went back out and drank for a few years,
Speaker 5: and then got sober a second time and have been
Speaker 5: sober sixteen years since then. So there's these kind of
Speaker 5: two different recoveries for me, and they're both illustrated in
Speaker 5: their own way. The first time, like Laura, I was
Speaker 5: in treatment and I desperately actually after a little while,
Speaker 5: did not want to get out of treatment. I was like,
Speaker 5: you keep me in this building as long as you
Speaker 5: possibly can, because I'm really anxious about what's going to
Speaker 5: happen when I get out there. The second time, the
Speaker 5: will or recent time, sixteen years ago, I did not
Speaker 5: go to treatment and I did twelve step recovery. And
Speaker 5: I think the thing to me that I really remember
Speaker 5: about the early parts of recovery is it just felt
Speaker 5: torturous to me. And it felt torturous to me because
Speaker 5: it felt like I was being sort of torn apart
Speaker 5: inside in that there was this part of me that
Speaker 5: was screaming for drugs or alcohol, and there was another
Speaker 5: part of me that was equally screaming, like, do not
Speaker 5: do it. You know, when I got sober at twenty four,
Speaker 5: I weigh one hundred pounds, I had appetitis. See, I
Speaker 5: was facing fifty years of jail time. I mean, there
Speaker 5: were very compelling reasons not to do it, and so
Speaker 5: I just remember that early phase. And that idea that
Speaker 5: I think is really important is that sometimes we talk about, well,
Speaker 5: just quit and everything will get better. Well that's not
Speaker 5: what happened, right, Things at least in my inside world
Speaker 5: felt worse for a while. And like Laura, I like
Speaker 5: to remember that a lot because that is fuel for me.
Speaker 5: Often It's just like, I never want to feel that
Speaker 5: way again. I never want to feel that at war
Speaker 5: with my own sort of self inside like that. And
Speaker 5: the beauty of recovery for me is that that war ends,
Speaker 5: you know, and that over time eventually it's just not
Speaker 5: like that anymore. But that's what I remember about early
Speaker 5: recovery and just all the other stuff. I mean, the
Speaker 5: first time I was coming off heroin and a lot
Speaker 5: of it, and I was, I mean, I was just
Speaker 5: in really bad shape, you know. And second time wasn't
Speaker 5: quite as much the physical withdrawal, but it was the
Speaker 5: psychological withdrawal of just all my nerves being exposed to
Speaker 5: the world. So that's kind of the two recoveries for
Speaker 5: me and what it was like early on, and what
Speaker 5: I remember most is that internal turmoil.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Eric. I'm glad that you describe that because
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people can resonate with that,
Speaker 3: like you know that you don't want to do it,
Speaker 3: but you do, and it's just like a constant back
Speaker 3: and forth. So I'm really glad that you described that. Paul,
Speaker 3: how about you, what was your first weeker month?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jill, thanks for asking, and Laura and Eric, thanks
Speaker 1: for sharing your stories. Fifteen and sixteen years. Wow, what
Speaker 1: a rockstar group we have on this podcast. I'm honored
Speaker 1: to be here. So in August of twenty fourteen, about
Speaker 1: a month after getting a DUI finding myself waking up
Speaker 1: in a suicide proof jail cell I found myself driving
Speaker 1: drunk to a wedding where I was the wedding DJ.
Speaker 1: Greatest job ever, by the way, And we've heard these
Speaker 1: words like surrender, moment of clarity, right. And I recall
Speaker 1: DJing the ceremony as the bride was walking down the aisle,
Speaker 1: closing one hand on one eye, praying, hoping that I
Speaker 1: picked the right song. And I did luckily. And I
Speaker 1: was in the reception for cocktail hour and I took
Speaker 1: four glasses of wine off the person into the circle
Speaker 1: like the waitress or waiter, and I knew I hit
Speaker 1: this moment. It's like, you know what, A, I'm going
Speaker 1: to ruin this wedding and B I'm in rough shape.
Speaker 1: I cannot keep going on like this. And there was
Speaker 1: this moment of clarity and the universe had my back.
Speaker 1: I had another DJ who finished an event. He came
Speaker 1: over filled in for me. I told my parents, everybody
Speaker 1: and voice memos that I was going to rehab and
Speaker 1: that was the surrender component. The next day, I owann
Speaker 1: to woke up. I remember this. I heard birds form
Speaker 1: one of the first times, and the plan was to
Speaker 1: go to the rehab, go to treatment. However that was
Speaker 1: going to go, but I remember hearing the birds and
Speaker 1: I told my parents, you know what, give me just
Speaker 1: a couple more days here. And what I did those
Speaker 1: first thirty days was I got in nature. There is
Speaker 1: a waterfall about thirty minutes away from me the trailhead
Speaker 1: and about a two and a half mile hike. I
Speaker 1: think I did that hike twenty out of the thirty days.
Speaker 1: In September of twenty fourteen, I also went to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Speaker 1: What a phenomenal program and a drinking problem or an
Speaker 1: addiction can put yourself in such a difficult but a
Speaker 1: beautiful spot where I could clearly see I didn't have
Speaker 1: control and every problem that I've had, I was part
Speaker 1: of it, Like I was the problem. And so when
Speaker 1: that happens, yes, it sucks to realize that, but also
Speaker 1: you start asking for help. You're like, hey, this isn't
Speaker 1: working for me, Like how'd it work for you? There's
Speaker 1: the openness, there's a willingness, and I ended up not
Speaker 1: going to treatment. Nature did so how much to my
Speaker 1: nervous system that first month AA, the support and really
Speaker 1: just doing anything that it took to stay sober. So
Speaker 1: I'm so thankful for my addiction. Obviously it was a
Speaker 1: difficult month, and those withdrawal symptoms that Laura and Eric
Speaker 1: spoke about, I went through all of them. The They're horrible, terrible,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to forget them. We've heard the
Speaker 1: phrase that the newcomer is the most important person in
Speaker 1: the room, and I think for that it reminds us.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I don't got it, and if I go back,
Speaker 1: it's going to be rough. So yeah, thank you, Jill.
Speaker 3: I resonated with so much of that, especially the one eye.
Speaker 3: I did that a lot, the close one eye so
Speaker 3: you can see, like trying to text people are.
Speaker 5: So bad or driving, God forbid, I did that too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: To think about how reckless and dangerous that is now,
Speaker 5: but it was a common thing.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'm the baby sober in the room. As of today,
Speaker 3: I'm three and a half years sober. Congratulations, Thank you, guys,
Speaker 3: thank you. So I was a daily drinker, but I
Speaker 3: it together on the outside. I was the person that
Speaker 3: no one thought had a problem, even though looking back,
Speaker 3: I'm like, how did you, guys not like those times
Speaker 3: you were there and you saw all these things? How
Speaker 3: did you not think that was bad? But I used
Speaker 3: that to justify white and have to stop for a
Speaker 3: really long time. I used my educational background to justify it.
Speaker 3: And I quit because I got really suicidal and I
Speaker 3: was afraid of myself. And what I would do, And
Speaker 3: because I felt that way, I thought that no one
Speaker 3: else had ever felt suicidal from their addiction before, which
Speaker 3: now I know like a lot of people do, but
Speaker 3: in the beginning, I thought it was unique to me,
Speaker 3: so I kept it to myself and I didn't tell
Speaker 3: anyone except my husband, and I tried to just be
Speaker 3: sober by myself with no support. I really believed like
Speaker 3: if I started to telling people, they would do like
Speaker 3: the seventy two hour hold on me, even though I
Speaker 3: didn't feel that way once I quit, and it took
Speaker 3: me a while until Quarantine started when I was four
Speaker 3: months sober to actually start getting support and getting out there.
Speaker 3: So I don't recommend doing it on your own, but
Speaker 3: I was just really scared of how other people would
Speaker 3: respond to me. And now I'm grateful to have so
Speaker 3: much support because as time went on, I started trying
Speaker 3: to talk myself back into it, like, oh, look at
Speaker 3: this person's story. You weren't that bad, Like maybe you
Speaker 3: just went overboard, and maybe you can drink again, and
Speaker 3: it's not a thing. So it's good for me to
Speaker 3: be present here and hear from all of you, because
Speaker 3: I remember the one eye thing like that's not normal behavior.
Speaker 3: You shouldn't have to do that, and it helps keep
Speaker 3: those thoughts away when they pop up. I also had
Speaker 3: a gigantic pink cloud, so the beginning was the nicest
Speaker 3: time for me, and then the bad time came later
Speaker 3: when the pink cloud wore off and I realized, like,
Speaker 3: I still can't drink and I had to accept it again.
Speaker 3: But the beginning was actually a great time because I
Speaker 3: had so many benefits right away mentally, like I wasn't
Speaker 3: suicidal anymore, and that that's its own high when you
Speaker 3: when you hate yourself less than you did last week.
Speaker 3: So I think it's interesting how much our experiences differ
Speaker 3: and how similar they are at the same time.
Speaker 6: I agree.
Speaker 4: I don't know as much about your story, Jill as
Speaker 4: I would like to, but I think the feelings you
Speaker 4: just described are so easily relatable. Whether the particulars in
Speaker 4: the story match or not, does it matter. And you know, Eric,
Speaker 4: I know your story pretty well now from listening to
Speaker 4: you and from interviewing you. But Paul, I love that
Speaker 4: you got out of a suicide proof cell and drank
Speaker 4: and drove to do a job, because that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the same day. But yeah, I mean, it.
Speaker 4: Just doesn't make sense to anyone else, right, that seems
Speaker 4: like insanity. And then for us it's like, of course
Speaker 4: you did.
Speaker 6: Of course. You know.
Speaker 4: However, many days later you're going to DJ at a wedding,
Speaker 4: so you have to drink, right, you can't show up
Speaker 4: there sober, that would be dumb, no way, no way.
Speaker 4: And then looking back at it with the perspective that
Speaker 4: we have.
Speaker 6: That's the thing.
Speaker 4: I think that people would like me to impart to
Speaker 4: them when they're in it, when they're in the addiction,
Speaker 4: is that perspective, And I can't. I mean, I can
Speaker 4: tell them my story, but I can't give them their
Speaker 4: own perspective. You know, they're like, what's the secret? How
Speaker 4: can I get out of this? And you know, it's
Speaker 4: just so hard. I love to be able to say, look,
Speaker 4: you're going to look back at you know, driving or
Speaker 4: you know, drinking again, you know, whatever it is, and think,
Speaker 4: you know, this was a left turn for me, But
Speaker 4: I had to go through all those left turns and
Speaker 4: get there myself, and nobody else's perspective was particularly helpful
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that mystery of when it's time for someone yes,
Speaker 5: and then what the best path for them is is
Speaker 5: certainly a mystery. And I've listened to Paul on your podcast.
Speaker 5: I've heard you really break down the components of recovery
Speaker 5: and the internal external splits and lots of really great
Speaker 5: thinking about how we can think through this recovery journey.
Speaker 5: And I know, Jill, you do, and Laura, we've all
Speaker 5: spent a lot of time around this, and yet there
Speaker 5: is to me a fundamental mystery, a little bit about
Speaker 5: what causes somebody to suddenly be at that point where
Speaker 5: they're done.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 5: The problem with that we say that all the time, like, well,
Speaker 5: you know when you're ready, when you're done, We only
Speaker 5: know that in the rear view mirror, Like I didn't
Speaker 5: know it at the time, right, because every single time
Speaker 5: up till then that I had said I'm done, I
Speaker 5: was not done, right, I'm ready no more of this. Well,
Speaker 5: clearly that was not the end then, And so that
Speaker 5: question I think we can get a little bit hung
Speaker 5: up on sometimes, like am I really ready? When we
Speaker 5: feel a call towards any sort of recovery, I think
Speaker 5: it's worth jumping on it to the best of our
Speaker 5: ability at that time, and then we'll see over time.
Speaker 5: Was that the last time or was that one of
Speaker 5: the learning experiences? You know, because I could have given
Speaker 5: you six other stories about my first thirty days in
Speaker 5: recovery right where it was like I got five days,
Speaker 5: I got thirty days, I got eighteen days. I mean
Speaker 5: my first time around, I guess stayed sober thirty days.
Speaker 5: I went on my thirtieth day sober, I watched my
Speaker 5: sponsor talk and immediately left and went and got high,
Speaker 5: which I love to tease him about what a great
Speaker 5: message he had. But again it's like, we don't know
Speaker 5: we're done till sort of looking back on it.
Speaker 1: I want to comment a bit on that as well.
Speaker 1: I think the when you're done component it is so
Speaker 1: confusing and so baffling, but I feel it's almost this
Speaker 1: universal divine intervention and an idea or concept that I
Speaker 1: could be totally wrong on. But I found traction with
Speaker 1: is that nothing in this universe exists without a purpose.
Speaker 1: This is called endowment theory and biology, and that applies
Speaker 1: to an addiction like what's the point of it. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a malfunction. I think it's something that
Speaker 1: flexes us so intensely internally with the pain points that
Speaker 1: we get a front row lesson. You know, it sounds
Speaker 1: great on paper to say, you know, you can be
Speaker 1: right or you can have peace. That's a beautiful phrase
Speaker 1: on a key chain or whatnot. But I think those
Speaker 1: who go through addiction get a front row seat like
Speaker 1: you can be right or you can have peace. And
Speaker 1: piece of sobriety and right is continued drinking from me.
Speaker 1: I really struggled with that, and Eric, as you said,
Speaker 1: I made those internal declarations I'm done, I'm done forever, forever,
Speaker 1: but it really I wasn't until I was. And if
Speaker 1: somebody's listening right now, my advice is to keep going,
Speaker 1: keep building the idea of your sober life internally with
Speaker 1: the very powerful human brain, which could be leveraged either
Speaker 1: way for destruction or to create love in an environment
Speaker 1: where alcohol isn't needed. But that's a tough one, it is,
Speaker 1: for sure. It's great to hear your perspective, Laura, as
Speaker 1: you as well.
Speaker 6: Eric.
Speaker 5: We've given our Instagram account a new look and we're
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Speaker 5: good Wolf, as well as in behind the scenes video
Speaker 5: of the show and some of Ginianiz's day to day life,
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Speaker 3: People used to say to me when I was trying
Speaker 3: to moderate. For years, I was in sober Facebook groups
Speaker 3: and I didn't make the connection there that I wanted
Speaker 3: to moderate, but I had joined sober groups, but people
Speaker 3: used to say to me all the time, like you're
Speaker 3: just not ready, And that used to make me so mad, like,
Speaker 3: of course, I'm ready, Like.
Speaker 6: What are you talking about?
Speaker 3: How can I know if be ready? I'm so ready,
Speaker 3: Like I'm so sick of this. I feel horrible. And
Speaker 3: then when I finally quit for good and I felt
Speaker 3: that readiness and that peace I knew what they meant
Speaker 3: when you guys quit for good? Did you know that
Speaker 3: it was forever or did it take a bit before
Speaker 3: you realize that.
Speaker 4: For me, I went to treatment not to get sober,
Speaker 4: but to stay in my children's lives. Sober was not
Speaker 4: at all my goal, but I did think, you know,
Speaker 4: I'll get a system reset and I can use and
Speaker 4: drink as needed and not be mastered by it. So
Speaker 4: the idea of quitting for good didn't really occur to
Speaker 4: me until I was about a year or sober.
Speaker 3: So were you just moving the goalposts? Like after you
Speaker 3: got out of treatment, were you saying, like, I'll just
Speaker 3: do another month? Did you set a goal for a year?
Speaker 4: I had a very prescriptive divorce attorney who put me
Speaker 4: on a ninety day plan of drug testing and therapy
Speaker 4: and AA meetings, and so those kept me away from
Speaker 4: drugs and alcohol because I didn't want to blow a
Speaker 4: drug test, and I also wanted all the ammunition that
Speaker 4: she was asking for in case we went to court,
Speaker 4: which we didn't end up doing, but that became my
Speaker 4: priority over getting loaded. Like those switched for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: and it could be divine intervention. Like Paul said, I
Speaker 4: believe there are moments of grace in my life that
Speaker 4: I stepped through. Basically, she just kind of gave me
Speaker 4: a third rail, like this is a thing that will
Speaker 4: kill you, so you must do all these things so
Speaker 4: you don't get electrocuted.
Speaker 6: And so I did.
Speaker 4: And then that took me to you about four months
Speaker 4: sober because it was ninety days out of treatment. And
Speaker 4: then I was scared. I think the thing that kept
Speaker 4: me sober that first year was just fear. Then I
Speaker 4: was newly divorced with two little kids. So what happened
Speaker 4: for real if I knocked myself out in the middle
Speaker 4: of the night, You know, I was by myself with
Speaker 4: my kids, Because I did, I vowed, I swore off
Speaker 4: many many times before I actually got sober. If I
Speaker 4: allowed myself even a little bit, I wasn't sure, Actually
Speaker 4: I was sure. I was sure that that little bit
Speaker 4: wouldn't be it. It was so unpredictable. So I decided
Speaker 4: to stay away from it for fear of harming my
Speaker 4: children or not being able to be in their lives.
Speaker 3: And what changed around a year in California.
Speaker 4: In Los Angeles, anyway, we take cakes in twelve step
Speaker 4: recovery to celebrate milestones and I was not going to
Speaker 4: take one. Someone made me take one, and I took one,
Speaker 4: and I gave like the shortest kind of cake speech
Speaker 4: ever and someone came up to me afterward and asked
Speaker 4: me to sponsor them. And I'm like, oh, you don't
Speaker 4: want me. I'm not even staying and I don't know
Speaker 4: anything about this program, and they were like, no, I've
Speaker 4: been watching you.
Speaker 6: I want you.
Speaker 4: And so, being like the good student or whatever preparer
Speaker 4: that I am, I decided to read this book so
Speaker 4: that I could take her through it and be done.
Speaker 4: But she touched my heart and she needed help, and
Speaker 4: so I read the book and in the process of
Speaker 4: reading it with her, I found myself in bits of it,
Speaker 4: not all of it.
Speaker 6: And then someone else asked me.
Speaker 4: Once they saw kind of the bond that she and
Speaker 4: I were forming, someone else asked me to take them
Speaker 4: through the work.
Speaker 6: And so I stayed.
Speaker 4: And probably about two years is when I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm better. I don't like the stuff I had to
Speaker 4: do to get better, but it's like working out, Like
Speaker 4: I hate working out, but I'm better because of it.
Speaker 4: And I didn't like the process. I didn't like the meetings,
Speaker 4: I didn't like the joining and the end agement and
Speaker 4: the fellowship, And you can tell by the tone of
Speaker 4: my voice.
Speaker 6: I still don't love all that stuff.
Speaker 4: No, but I'm much more tolerant of it now, and
Speaker 4: some of it is desirable. But I started falling in
Speaker 4: love with who I was as a result of it.
Speaker 4: And for me, it was really just the honesty piece.
Speaker 4: I had been so dishonest my entire life. The program
Speaker 4: as I worked it required me to be honest, as
Speaker 4: honest as I could be, not just cash register honesty,
Speaker 4: but vulnerable honesty, being real with people, not everyone, because
Speaker 4: that would be an appropriate of it, being real with
Speaker 4: the people that I entrusted with my recovery, and sometimes
Speaker 4: just in big rooms for the people I didn't know
Speaker 4: or trust. And that was helpful to me, which shocked
Speaker 4: the shit out of me, because I always thought, I
Speaker 4: have to keep this close, this yucky stuff close, because
Speaker 4: I've thought it was life or death. It felt like
Speaker 4: survival to me, and then in the end, not only
Speaker 4: was it not survival, I saw the harm I was
Speaker 4: doing myself and keeping it close.
Speaker 5: When I got sober at twenty four in treatment, I
Speaker 5: don't think I knew it was the end. But there
Speaker 5: was a process of going from I'm here because I
Speaker 5: don't want to be dope sick, and I'm here because
Speaker 5: I don't want to go to jail for a long time,
Speaker 5: and the fear of that started to mix or mingle
Speaker 5: a little bit with some hope around the fact that
Speaker 5: life could get better and could be a good thing.
Speaker 5: And so, you know, I often think about the consequences
Speaker 5: get us, you know, sometimes to recovery. But as I've
Speaker 5: thought more about it, I'm like, well, consequences sort of
Speaker 5: need to come together about the same time that some
Speaker 5: hope shows up, because just consequences, at least for me,
Speaker 5: I went through a phase like that where I went
Speaker 5: to treatment a couple times and didn't get sober, and
Speaker 5: bad things kept happening, and that was a really dangerous
Speaker 5: and dark period for me because I thought, I don't
Speaker 5: think we say it much anymore, but in the early
Speaker 5: nineties we did, which is once an addict, always an addict,
Speaker 5: and I thought, I'm going to die like this, and
Speaker 5: so all the bad wasn't enough. It was actually dangerous,
Speaker 5: and so I needed the hope too, both those things
Speaker 5: to come together, but in both my recovery periods. I
Speaker 5: think there's that mixture of I'm trying to get away
Speaker 5: from the bad things, but then I'm starting to be
Speaker 5: pulled towards the good things, and they both play a
Speaker 5: role for me in getting sober and staying sober. They're
Speaker 5: both there. There's all the amazing and wonderful things I've
Speaker 5: gotten out of recovery that I never would have gotten otherwise,
Speaker 5: liking myself and all the things Laura that you talked about.
Speaker 5: And then there's also, as we said a little while ago,
Speaker 5: like looking back going uh huh, no, thank you don't
Speaker 5: want any of that either. So for me, it was
Speaker 5: kind of a blend. But I don't think I knew
Speaker 5: it was the end, but there was a certain point
Speaker 5: where I really hope deeply that it was, you know, like,
Speaker 5: I really hope this is the last time. I don't
Speaker 5: know if it is, because I have a healthy fear
Speaker 5: of this, but I want.
Speaker 4: It to be.
Speaker 3: How long did it take for you to start feeling hopeful?
Speaker 5: I would say within the first thirty days. There started
Speaker 5: to be moments of it, you know, There certainly started
Speaker 5: to be periods, And I think that's why community, wherever
Speaker 5: we find it is so important because I could not
Speaker 5: have seen that hope on my own. I simply didn't
Speaker 5: have it in me. It was seeing other people saying
Speaker 5: I was just like you, and now my life is
Speaker 5: really really good and going, oh well, I didn't actually
Speaker 5: didn't think that was a possibility. I thought, I've got
Speaker 5: to give this up because it's killing me or it's
Speaker 5: going to send me to jail. But it's going to suck,
Speaker 5: you know. I got to do it, but it's going
Speaker 5: to suck. To seeing other people saying no, not only
Speaker 5: can you get sober, this can be a beautiful and
Speaker 5: wonderful life, and that was really powerful for me. So
Speaker 5: I think we sometimes talk about these stages of recovery
Speaker 5: as if they're monolithic things, like I was in despair,
Speaker 5: I was happy, And the reality for me is my
Speaker 5: motions were probably kind of all over the place, like
Speaker 5: I'm feeling really hopeful for two hours and then for
Speaker 5: the next two hours I'm feeling deep despair and want
Speaker 5: to get high, and then you know. So I think
Speaker 5: for me, there was a lot of kind of back
Speaker 5: and forth between all these states. But over time, the
Speaker 5: states that begin to become more prevalent were the ones
Speaker 5: of hope, and you know, the despair was going down
Speaker 5: and the craving was going down.
Speaker 3: I like that. It's not just a switch, like you
Speaker 3: get sober and everything's hopeful and lovely. It's the slow
Speaker 3: switch over time, and then the good stuff starts to
Speaker 3: become more and more.
Speaker 5: Yep. How about you, did you know you were done?
Speaker 6: Yep?
Speaker 3: When I quit, my husband was with me because he
Speaker 3: used to stay up all night with me. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I have a good husband. He's like, he's a really
Speaker 3: supportive guy. He used to stay up all night with
Speaker 3: me and like try to help me when I was
Speaker 3: hating myself and like having really bad alcohol anxiety, and
Speaker 3: we were sitting on the couch and watching the sun
Speaker 3: come up. I had kept us up all night again,
Speaker 3: which was like not new. And I looked at him
Speaker 3: and I was like, I can never drink ever again.
Speaker 3: And I knew, and I felt so much peace when
Speaker 3: I said it. So I know a lot of people
Speaker 3: don't like the idea forever, but like that helped me
Speaker 3: because now I don't consider it like I just knew never.
Speaker 3: And I had had an experience where literally the same
Speaker 3: experience five point thirty in the morning, watching the sun
Speaker 3: come up, and I said to him, I can't drink
Speaker 3: for ninety days, like the same copy paste, like same
Speaker 3: spot on the couch, everything. And I did the ninety
Speaker 3: days and I went back just like you were saying, Laura,
Speaker 3: where like you just need a reset and then you know,
Speaker 3: just sometimes our tolerant is the problem. And I found
Speaker 3: that it was the same, and that, I think was
Speaker 3: why I could say forever, because I had a very
Speaker 3: clear example of what happens when I take a break,
Speaker 3: that it just relaxes back to normal. I immediately said forever,
Speaker 3: and then it stressed me out later when my pink
Speaker 3: cloud went away. But in the beginning I did say forever,
Speaker 3: and I knew how long?
Speaker 6: Did you say? Your pink cloud lasted.
Speaker 3: Almost six months? Yeah, the benefits were increasing a lot,
Speaker 3: and I was really excited about those. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was obviously more intense than like month one. But then
Speaker 3: around like five to six months, the benefits completely stabilized,
Speaker 3: and then I just couldn't drink and it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: so now my life is good, but then I can't
Speaker 3: do my favorite thing, and that was really hard for
Speaker 3: me to accept. So month like six to nine was
Speaker 3: really really hard emotionally, and then I worked through it.
Speaker 4: I want to ask you a question, but I want
Speaker 4: to grab.
Speaker 6: Paul Wise here catch kim by.
Speaker 4: Tho falls in and out, So just could I put
Speaker 4: a pin in the question. I want to ask you, Jill,
Speaker 4: and then go to Paul to talk about what were
Speaker 4: we talking about.
Speaker 5: We were talking about whether when we got sober we
Speaker 5: sort of knew right well that this is it, you know,
Speaker 5: or you know how we thought about that question, you
Speaker 5: know in the beginning.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's good to be back. Thank you. Apologize. In
Speaker 1: springtime in Montana, it was it was sunny this morning,
Speaker 1: and I looked up and there was a massive hailstorm
Speaker 1: and I might be here for twenty seconds. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but let's take advantage of it. It's good to be back, Okay.
Speaker 1: I wasn't certain that September seventh, twenty fourteen, was going
Speaker 1: to be my last drink of alcohol, but I mentioned
Speaker 1: when I woke up right before, about six days before
Speaker 1: that I heard the birds for the first time. My
Speaker 1: last dream was about six days later on a Friday night,
Speaker 1: and went camping with people, and we talk about this
Speaker 1: moment of clarity, whatnot. I drank half of a beer
Speaker 1: and I looked at it, and I knew unequivocally internally
Speaker 1: that if I finished that beer, my entire life was
Speaker 1: going to go down a totally different route, and the
Speaker 1: entire life would have been condensed two three years more.
Speaker 1: Suicide was already gave it a go. So I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that was going to be my last
Speaker 1: sobriety date, but I knew something was different. And after
Speaker 1: interviewing hundreds of people for the Arid podcast, that's a
Speaker 1: line that sticks out that, you know, I just knew
Speaker 1: that something was different that time, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: at the time what I had done or what I
Speaker 1: was doing. Was I was connected. We've all heard that phrase,
Speaker 1: the opposite of addiction is connection. But I was connecting
Speaker 1: with the land when I walked up to that waterfall.
Speaker 1: Almost twenty days out of thirty days, I was connecting
Speaker 1: with the stars. There was a time where I wouldn't
Speaker 1: go back to Bozeman, the town I live in, until
Speaker 1: I saw the first star. So I would sit on
Speaker 1: this picnic bench in the wilderness, in the forest, and
Speaker 1: I'd wait till the sun went down. As soon as
Speaker 1: I saw that first star I would come back, and
Speaker 1: those are the links that I had to go to.
Speaker 1: I just knew that's what I had to do. And
Speaker 1: at about two months away from alcohol, I went to
Speaker 1: an AA meeting and the voice was like, ah, I've
Speaker 1: got this. And I remember I was going to turn
Speaker 1: around in my car. I looked at my watch, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have time for this. I've got
Speaker 1: two months of sobriety totally under wraps. And this bigger
Speaker 1: voice showed up was like, no, Paul, you don't have this.
Speaker 1: You're going to that meeting and you need to do everything.
Speaker 1: And I had loved podcasts, and at that moment, there
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of sobriety podcasts. Thank goodness, Now there's
Speaker 1: a lot, which is awesome. And so I selfishly started
Speaker 1: a podcast just to keep myself accountable. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that was going to be the run,
Speaker 1: and that run might not stick forever. I really truly
Speaker 1: have accepted the just one day at a time, and
Speaker 1: that simplifies everything. And another thing, there's a spiritual phrase
Speaker 1: that has been remixed hundreds of times. Whatnot is asking
Speaker 1: you shall receive. We've all heard that. And when we
Speaker 1: get to those moments of such intense pain, such intense discomfort, internally,
Speaker 1: we don't know who we are. There's a bigger voice
Speaker 1: that starts to emerge. It's like, dear God, please help.
Speaker 1: It's the foxhol prayer. And I began asking for help right.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it at the time, but I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: I can't live like this anymore, Please help. I remember
Speaker 1: turning my gaze to the stars, to the clouds, to
Speaker 1: the earth, to whatever. I can't do this anymore, please help,
Speaker 1: And the help arrived. It did. The help arrived in
Speaker 1: a beautiful format of a standard poodle, and he went
Speaker 1: to the waterfall every single time I went there, and
Speaker 1: I leaned into other energies on the universe that were
Speaker 1: there to help me. And yes, my parents were there,
Speaker 1: and yes, had great friends the AA community, and I'm
Speaker 1: so thankful for the RI community as well. I needed
Speaker 1: a lot of help to quit drinking. I did, and
Speaker 1: everybody needs help to depart from an addiction. And I
Speaker 1: asked for help to the universe and I got it.
Speaker 1: And before the hailstorm kicked me off, I heard Laura
Speaker 1: say something about loving herself right, and I think and
Speaker 1: again an addiction. One of those points is to unite
Speaker 1: ourselves with our true selves, right all the higher self,
Speaker 1: the lower self, and when we are ready. We talked
Speaker 1: about this earlier, is you have to get all parts
Speaker 1: of you on board before quitting drinking. If you just
Speaker 1: internally say I'm done quitting drinking, that's kind of the
Speaker 1: conscious self. It's like, yeah, I'm done quoting drinking. But
Speaker 1: you need to You need to line up the soul,
Speaker 1: the conscious, the unconscious, the heart and mind, the whole body,
Speaker 1: the whole compartment that is you, and say we are
Speaker 1: doing this. This is the trajectory we are moving in,
Speaker 1: and it takes a long time to gather all the
Speaker 1: parts of the personality to do that and move forward.
Speaker 1: So hopefully the streak goes. I've already learned a lot
Speaker 1: from Eric and Laura and you too, Jill, so so
Speaker 1: thanks for having me, and hopefully I'll be here fur
Speaker 1: the remainder of this. I really do. I wish I'm
Speaker 1: sorry I missed a little bit there.
Speaker 5: With a hailstorm. I'm worried about the goats. Yeah right,
Speaker 5: that's the main thing that's kind of on my mind.
Speaker 5: How are the goats? Are they sheltered.
Speaker 1: They I thought about that. They're on in the backyard.
Speaker 1: They know where to go. But my wife's outside on
Speaker 1: her on her bike. I called her and I think.
Speaker 5: We'll be okay, but I'm worried about it, like a storm.
Speaker 1: I think will be okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, there's just something so illustrative about the way you speak.
Speaker 4: It's really like having the beer in your hand and
Speaker 4: having it be half empty and knowing that that's your
Speaker 4: crossroads and you know, like the jail cell, and it
Speaker 4: gives me a visceral response. I can visualize your story
Speaker 4: really well. I just I'm appreciating the description that you're
Speaker 4: giving us.
Speaker 6: I love that. I love stories.
Speaker 4: That's why I have a storytelling podcast because I love
Speaker 4: these stories. And yeah, I love to have you come on.
Speaker 4: I wanted to ask Jilla question. I kind of piggybacked
Speaker 4: on your experience from getting sober and having that pink
Speaker 4: cloud and that last drink that you talked about or
Speaker 4: that last night on your sofa, and it kind of
Speaker 4: goes into the trigger conversation that I know we were
Speaker 4: going to have. But what was your experience, like your
Speaker 4: first experience that you remember being out at a social
Speaker 4: situation where cocktails were being served.
Speaker 6: What was that like? And did you prepare for it?
Speaker 3: Good question. So my first almost four months of sobriety,
Speaker 3: I was doing it entirely alone, although I was listening
Speaker 3: to Craig Beeck's podcast and he was like saving me.
Speaker 3: So I was reading some quit lit and listening to
Speaker 3: like I eventually discovered Paul's podcast. But I was not
Speaker 3: like doing very much, and I just knew I would
Speaker 3: go and not drink. And there's a lot of drinking
Speaker 3: in science. And I quit in November, so I quit
Speaker 3: right before the holiday season. So there were a lot
Speaker 3: of parties. There were a lot of happy hours, and
Speaker 3: the first one I ever went to was like a
Speaker 3: goodbye party for somebody they had quit and got another job.
Speaker 3: And I got a little mocktail, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm good, nobody's gonna detect that I'm sobered. They're gonna
Speaker 3: leave me alone. And somebody had heard me say it,
Speaker 3: or like someone mentioned they got a mocktail too. Because
Speaker 3: a couple people were trying to be supportive even though
Speaker 3: I wasn't really telling anyone, and this woman cornered me.
Speaker 3: When I tell the story, I always call her like
Speaker 3: the crazy lady, and she cornered me, and she very
Speaker 3: loudly was like, you're still not drinking. Why, Like she
Speaker 3: demanded to know in front of everybody, like all the bosses,
Speaker 3: all the way up the chain, and I was cool.
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, I'm not thanks, and I just
Speaker 3: kind of looked at her and made it uncomfortable, and
Speaker 3: she answered her own question. She decided I was on
Speaker 3: a cleanse whatever. But every time I went to one
Speaker 3: of these happy hours, I would leave and I would
Speaker 3: cry in my car from the stress. And it wasn't
Speaker 3: that I was like having an internal debate like I
Speaker 3: want to drink, but I can't. Oh, but maybe I
Speaker 3: can if whatever. I knew I wasn't going to drink,
Speaker 3: but it just sucked and I felt really uncomfortable and
Speaker 3: I didn't know what to do with the uncomfortable feeling,
Speaker 3: so I would just hold it in for two or
Speaker 3: three hours and then cry. But then after I cried,
Speaker 3: I remember, I felt like insanely proud of myself after
Speaker 3: I got the feeling out, and then it got easier,
Speaker 3: and then quarantine happened and I didn't have to socialize
Speaker 3: with any of those people at all.
Speaker 6: So it kind of backed right up into that, right,
Speaker 6: the quarantine. That's awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then I got out of practice though, so
Speaker 3: coming out of quarantine was a little bit hard. I
Speaker 3: had a lot of time, but I had not very
Speaker 3: much experience.
Speaker 4: Really interesting, what about you, Paul, for repeat the question basically,
Speaker 4: like we were talking kind of about triggers and jess,
Speaker 4: if you were at your first experience at a place
Speaker 4: where where drinks were being served and you weren't drinking,
Speaker 4: and what was that like?
Speaker 6: And then how did you prepare for it?
Speaker 1: For sure? And again I had to get to the
Speaker 1: point where unequivocally every cell in my body knew right,
Speaker 1: and I'd burned the ships an MP three format. I
Speaker 1: was terrified, but it had landed that I can't if
Speaker 1: I drink, I die, right, So I had versed that,
Speaker 1: and we make it so over complicated of you know,
Speaker 1: we think the planets will fall out of orbit. But
Speaker 1: I burned the ships completely and equivocally. And one of
Speaker 1: my favorite stories with this is I was on an
Speaker 1: adult kickball team probably three years of sobriety, and we
Speaker 1: won the championship. Hell, yes, I still play in that
Speaker 1: kickball league. And we won the championship and we were
Speaker 1: at the sponsor bar or you know where we go afterward,
Speaker 1: and the team we played against. I went up to
Speaker 1: get a water or soda, water, whatever, and there's about
Speaker 1: six or seven people getting shot and they saw me
Speaker 1: show up and they're just like shot shot shots, just
Speaker 1: like the LMFAO song. I decline. I like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. No, no, no, no
Speaker 1: shot shot shots, and just like do it, and I go, guys,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. My last drink was three and a
Speaker 1: half years ago. I can't take a shot. And there
Speaker 1: is a chemical response in people when somebody's vulnerable and
Speaker 1: authentic and they lay it out how it is not
Speaker 1: one of those people was like oh everybody was like
Speaker 1: oh shit, great job, Like that's incredible, No way, we'll
Speaker 1: take the shot. And so if you stand in your
Speaker 1: authority and know who you are, as I mentioned, a
Speaker 1: part of an addiction is to connect you with your
Speaker 1: more authentic self, the deeper you, then you're gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: And people ninety five percent of them are like, wow,
Speaker 1: great job, like you do you They want to support
Speaker 1: your mission, but a couple of them sometimes get defensive
Speaker 1: when you say you don't drink, but here's why. They're
Speaker 1: also questioning the role that alcohols playing in their own life.
Speaker 1: And we can be intimidating some people, like wait, Jill
Speaker 1: quit drinking, Laura did, Eric? I drank more than did
Speaker 1: so A lot of the results are mixed, but overall,
Speaker 1: not drinking and relaying that information to people has been
Speaker 1: the best filter I could have ever asked for, especially
Speaker 1: dating right I found out date one if this was
Speaker 1: going to be a fit or instead of five ten
Speaker 1: dates down the road. It's been a phenomenal filter for friends,
Speaker 1: for family, for workplace, for everything. Yeah, thanks for asking, Laura,
Speaker 1: I can I can tell you a very good podcaster,
Speaker 1: and same with you, Eric, everybody is very attentive and
Speaker 1: good listeners. So thank you well.
Speaker 4: And clearly the dating work because you are newly married,
Speaker 4: you said.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, mid pandemic, I had had enough of
Speaker 1: quarantine and I went to the country of Columbia. Very
Speaker 1: cool and yeah I met my wife. It was phenomenal.
Speaker 5: What about you, Eric, Well, I feel like a Dickens
Speaker 5: novel right because I'm like the Tale of two sobrieties,
Speaker 5: but they're so very different. And I talk about them,
Speaker 5: because the first one was significant enough in that, you know,
Speaker 5: I got sober for like eight years and was so
Speaker 5: in recovery that it didn't feel like a I'll run.
Speaker 5: And so the first time I was in treatment and
Speaker 5: my primary addiction at that point, well, I was addicted
Speaker 5: to everything, but the thing that was most on my
Speaker 5: mind was heroin, and so I just stayed as far
Speaker 5: away from all of that as I possibly could. But
Speaker 5: I remember I went into a halfway house after the
Speaker 5: treatment center, and I was in there, and one day
Speaker 5: they admitted a new guy, and he was in the
Speaker 5: kitchen and they were sort of unpacking his stuff and
Speaker 5: I walked in and there were like ten syringes on
Speaker 5: the counter. He was a diabetic. But the response in
Speaker 5: me was so overwhelming that I turned around and to
Speaker 5: start vomiting. The trigger was so like, oh, just brutal.
Speaker 5: And so there's a lot of benefit, I think, to
Speaker 5: being like just totally away from it, right, But then
Speaker 5: you do have the challenge of when you run into it,
Speaker 5: you've got to be particularly prepared because, as Jill said,
Speaker 5: you didn't have a lot of practice with that. When
Speaker 5: I got sober this second time, I was primarily a
Speaker 5: drinker and a lot of marijuana smoking. I had a
Speaker 5: job where I was in a sales role. Part of
Speaker 5: my job was to take people out who were drinking,
Speaker 5: and my wife at the time was a daily drinker,
Speaker 5: and so from day one I was around it all
Speaker 5: of the time. And I don't recommend that is a strategy.
Speaker 5: I think if you've got the choice to kind of
Speaker 5: get away from it, that's probably wiser. I feel like
Speaker 5: I made it a lot harder on myself. You know,
Speaker 5: I wanted to drink the first time. My cravings went
Speaker 5: away semi quickly. This time, it felt like I was
Speaker 5: dogged by them for six months. And I think part
Speaker 5: of it is I just was around it all the time.
Speaker 5: But I was pretty well used to it at that point,
Speaker 5: and so, you know, my triggers that second time were
Speaker 5: far more emotional. I think the first time they were
Speaker 5: location based, they were certain situations. The second time they
Speaker 5: were very emotionally based. You know. Over time, what I
Speaker 5: would notice is my brain would just sort of start saying,
Speaker 5: I need a drink, I need to drink, I need
Speaker 5: to drink. And it took me a while to sort
Speaker 5: of go okay. Well, in the beginning, that's just kind
Speaker 5: of what the brain does. But after the early stages,
Speaker 5: I was like, this still comes up pretty regularly, and
Speaker 5: so then I had to kind of do the next
Speaker 5: level down, like what am I actually feeling when that
Speaker 5: tape goes off in my head? You know, I was
Speaker 5: able to identify what some of the different things were
Speaker 5: for me, what those triggers were. So I think triggers
Speaker 5: come in different kinds.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: There is that location based trigger, right I drive by
Speaker 5: the bar where I got drunk every night after work,
Speaker 5: I'm triggered, right, There's the people triggers, like, oh, I'm
Speaker 5: seeing Bob and Bob and I used to get drunk
Speaker 5: all the time together. But there's time triggers, right, Like
Speaker 5: for me, right at the end of the day when
Speaker 5: work ended was always a very difficult time. And then
Speaker 5: there's like emotional based triggers, right, the things that are
Speaker 5: going on inside me or the situations and the people
Speaker 5: around me. And so I think for me, sort of
Speaker 5: understanding all of those and how to respond to each
Speaker 5: of them is an important part of kind of getting
Speaker 5: to the point where I felt pretty safe and secure
Speaker 5: in recovery.
Speaker 4: I'm really struck by what you said about examining what's
Speaker 4: behind I want to drink. I mean, I think that
Speaker 4: ability for a self examination in that moment, that's wonderful.
Speaker 4: That you have that ability to even slow it down
Speaker 4: long enough to see. I think for me that was
Speaker 4: practice to get to that point. It feels like stopping
Speaker 4: time a little, right, Like you can feel like you'reself
Speaker 4: reaching for something and you freeze it.
Speaker 1: What I've learned about triggers here is they pass.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Came across somewhere that the average timeframe of the trigger
Speaker 1: were an emotional front that is extremely uncomfortable is twenty minutes, right,
Speaker 1: And I remember those first thirty days. I would set
Speaker 1: a timer with serious, Hey, serious, set a timer for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes. And I would also trick myself and say, Yo, dude,
Speaker 1: let's just go for a run first, Paul, and then
Speaker 1: we'll drink. Yeah, And then I would say, it's cool,
Speaker 1: we're gonna drink, no worries, but let's do laundry first. Hey,
Speaker 1: they're big guy, not a problem. Let's just cooked dinner first,
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna get blasted, right. And then after
Speaker 1: four or five of those, they'd go away. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite resources or techniques here is Look, you can't
Speaker 1: outthink your drink. You cannot think yourself out of an addiction.
Speaker 1: If you could, we wouldn't be on this call right now.
Speaker 1: You just can't. But we've got a lot of data
Speaker 1: in our past. You can play the tape forward. I've
Speaker 1: got a pretty good idea right now, after not having
Speaker 1: a drink for almost eight plus years, I've got a
Speaker 1: damn good idea of what will happen when I take
Speaker 1: that drink. I can play the tape forward. Is it
Speaker 1: going to be one? Probably not? Is it going to
Speaker 1: be under five? Probably not? Well, I cut it off
Speaker 1: after a night. You know, the last fifty hundred times
Speaker 1: I drank, I was unable to stop in one night.
Speaker 1: It would go into the next morning. So I'd play
Speaker 1: the tape forward, and I would keep playing it forward,
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, we're probably gonna end up in jail perhaps,
Speaker 1: or you'll five or six day binge. And I would
Speaker 1: sit with that, like, ah, you know, alcohol, it's not
Speaker 1: working for me as much anymore. Is that really worth it? Again?
Speaker 1: You can't think yourself out of an addiction, but sometimes
Speaker 1: you can see things. You've got a good idea based
Speaker 1: off the past experiences of what is going to happen,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't always work. Sometimes, you know, just the
Speaker 1: universe lines up. It's more of a challenge than that
Speaker 1: I have pound my fists into the grass before. I've
Speaker 1: gone out to the forest and yelled. And sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: still learning tools on how to get through triggers. But
Speaker 1: thank you universe and the help I have had that.
Speaker 1: You know, alcohol, that's not the go to right now.
Speaker 1: I don't think about taking a drink when I have
Speaker 1: difficult times. I'll throw a temper tantrum, you know, in
Speaker 1: my basement and yell, and I'll pull my ukuleli off
Speaker 1: the wall and strum some chords, a minor chord and
Speaker 1: just sing and make a song up. And really, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you can get messy and ugly to get through
Speaker 1: a trigger or craving, but it doesn't matter at the
Speaker 1: end of the day. And here's the neat part about
Speaker 1: sobriety and this stuff is Eric, I've just met you,
Speaker 1: and I heard about your podcast a lot. I love
Speaker 1: your logo. It's really cool to finally meet you, Eric.
Speaker 1: I've had seen your stuff for years now, and Laura
Speaker 1: is great. But there's a camaraderie with sobriety, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to go through any of the stuff alone.
Speaker 1: You can go to one AA meeting, you get thirty numbers,
Speaker 1: call any of those people up at any time the
Speaker 1: next year or two whenever, and they reach out to help.
Speaker 1: And I feel honored to meet Eric. Can thank you,
Speaker 1: Jill and stay with Laura because I feel like I
Speaker 1: have three new new contacts that we go to bat
Speaker 1: for each other at any moment. So to leverage the
Speaker 1: community that is just waiting for you, and I think
Speaker 1: one of the worst things somebody can do is to
Speaker 1: just quit drinking or just quit using, because there is
Speaker 1: this beautiful, loving, authentic, welcoming community just waiting for you.
Speaker 1: I've gone to AA meetings and I think seven or
Speaker 1: eight different countries, and it's the same thing every country.
Speaker 1: You walk in. Hey, I don't know the language, but
Speaker 1: I'm at a barbecue afterward, right, somebody always think your home,
Speaker 1: your family, right, And the camaraderie of this sobriety or
Speaker 1: sober movement, which really is authenticity. It's the movement of
Speaker 1: finding your true self without an external substance, alcohol, heroin, drugs,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. That's a badass movement like sign
Speaker 1: me up for that? Has it been easy? Hell? No,
Speaker 1: I think life in general is not easy, right, But
Speaker 1: what a beautiful trajectory, what a beautiful pathway. When I'm triggered,
Speaker 1: I recognize that what is that phrase? All things pass?
Speaker 1: This two shill pass? Just wait it out, live to
Speaker 1: see another day. Sometimes, as I mentioned, sometimes it's not
Speaker 1: pretty at all. But you know what, you wake up
Speaker 1: the next day and say, O, what was the problem yesterday?
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I love that idea of delay. That is
Speaker 5: a very useful strategy. Just not now, you know, put
Speaker 5: something else in front of it, because yeah, it does
Speaker 5: tend to pass.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well that's the opposite of addiction, though, isn't it. Because
Speaker 4: addiction is instantaneous. It's a fix, and so to delay
Speaker 4: that fix is very counterintuitive for me, and I just yeah,
Speaker 4: I was just really struck when you said that, that
Speaker 4: that was the process through which you went, And I
Speaker 4: think if I were new and I heard that, that
Speaker 4: would be what I would work toward. After I heard
Speaker 4: someone say that, I would work toward giving myself even
Speaker 4: a timer, you know of Okay, I'm just going to
Speaker 4: wait one minute in my car before I go back
Speaker 4: in and order a shot or whatever it is.
Speaker 6: And you know, I don't know if I.
Speaker 4: Would be able to reflect back, like you said, an
Speaker 4: examp and what's underneath it, but it is what I
Speaker 4: do now as well. It's second nature now, you know,
Speaker 4: it's not something that I have to kind of talk
Speaker 4: myself through. I observed myself doing it, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: you go, girl, look at that.
Speaker 6: Look at you just did. That was dope.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll just say really quickly, I was gonna just
Speaker 4: talk briefly about an experience I had the other night
Speaker 4: where I was invited to a party where I was
Speaker 4: the guest of honor and everyone was drinking. It was
Speaker 4: a small cocktail party, and for the first time in
Speaker 4: a really long time, it looked fun to me like
Speaker 4: it usually doesn't.
Speaker 6: I'm usually really.
Speaker 4: Bored and irritated by drunk people and I just want
Speaker 4: to go home. But this time they weren't drunk. It
Speaker 4: was just convivial. You know. It was that Black people
Speaker 4: call it kiking, when everybody's like talking over each other,
Speaker 4: and I was like drawn into that. But what I
Speaker 4: realized toward the middle of the party is that they
Speaker 4: were all matching my level of vulnerability and generosity, Like
Speaker 4: I was already like that. They came in a little
Speaker 4: bit stiffer, and as they drank a couple of drinks,
Speaker 4: they kind of became like. I was like, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm very affectionate. I hug people. I want to listen
Speaker 4: to what they're talking about. I have a warmth about
Speaker 4: me that is authentic, it's natural. And I think when
Speaker 4: I was, you know, in my addiction, that was squelched,
Speaker 4: like I couldn't be that person. So that's who I
Speaker 4: am naturally now. And I was like, oh, I don't
Speaker 4: need to drink to have what they're having because I
Speaker 4: actually have this naturally. And I know not everybody does.
Speaker 4: I know their social anxiety and people go and rigid
Speaker 4: and they endure and then they leave, which is sometimes
Speaker 4: my experience. But at this particular party, I felt very
Speaker 4: free and warm and just like able to navigate it
Speaker 4: in this again observing myself like, wow, look at this,
Speaker 4: you don't need a drink to have fun basically, And
Speaker 4: when it really looked like everybody was having fun with
Speaker 4: their drinks and I was the only one not drinking there,
Speaker 4: I was the only one.
Speaker 5: Was it when you had that insight like, oh wait,
Speaker 5: I'm already kind of where they're getting to. It no
Speaker 5: longer looked good to you. I'm curious where the transition
Speaker 5: happened because in the beginning, right you were like, wait,
Speaker 5: that looks really good. But it sounds like at some
Speaker 5: point maybe I guess you didn't say that explicitly, but
Speaker 5: at some point maybe that changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean I don't think that the drink itself looked good.
Speaker 4: I just thought it looked fun. And I think once
Speaker 4: I realized that I too was having fun, there was
Speaker 4: an aha moment like oh, I don't need the drink
Speaker 4: to have fun. And mind you, the first year that
Speaker 4: was not the case for me. I went to several
Speaker 4: events where I was pivotal in these kind of leadership
Speaker 4: positions at my kids' school galas where I had to
Speaker 4: fake it through the whole event and then get home
Speaker 4: and like you said, Jill, cry in my car. But
Speaker 4: the stress of it just I've like griped the steering
Speaker 4: wheel when I got in the car and be like okay,
Speaker 4: I can breathe now. I got through it, and you know,
Speaker 4: it was like being frozen for two hours and then
Speaker 4: getting in the car and thawing afterward. But I didn't
Speaker 4: have to get in the car and thaw this time.
Speaker 4: I was already thought and I was fine. But there
Speaker 4: wasn't aha moment for me that it wasn't like I
Speaker 4: don't want a drink, but I did want to have
Speaker 4: fun like that, and that I was able to do
Speaker 4: that without a drink was a really cool thing for
Speaker 4: me to witness of myself.
Speaker 5: I think that learning to do what a drink naturally
Speaker 5: did for us is a really interesting learning experience and
Speaker 5: one that I've played with different ways. I mean, still
Speaker 5: it takes me a while to warm up around people.
Speaker 5: I mean I don't even mean like twenty minutes. I
Speaker 5: mean like I met you like six times, Like I mean,
Speaker 5: it just depends on the situation. But that is one
Speaker 5: thing that like I just have sort of gone, you
Speaker 5: know what, like that's kind of who you are. It's okay, Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's okay just to be the way you are with
Speaker 5: this and the fact that if you put me in
Speaker 5: a room full of people, I don't know, it's going
Speaker 5: to take me a while. And instead of going that's bad,
Speaker 5: that's wrong, boy. If I had a drink, it would
Speaker 5: just just go okay, you know what, that's who you are. Eric,
Speaker 5: It's all right. The other thing that's been interesting as
Speaker 5: you were talking, I was thinking about I just did
Speaker 5: this not that long ago. We went. Me and a
Speaker 5: couple of friends went out there, both sober, and there
Speaker 5: was a sober bar in Columbus, Ohio. You've probably got
Speaker 5: these all over the place in Los Angeles, but you
Speaker 5: don't have many of them here. As matter of fact,
Speaker 5: that was the only one and it is now gone.
Speaker 5: And we went and it was a very very strange
Speaker 5: environment and they were doing karaoke, and part of me
Speaker 5: wanted to do it, and then like ninety percent of
Speaker 5: me was terrified to do it. And then I went,
Speaker 5: you know what, if I was drunk, I would just
Speaker 5: hop right up there. So to me, there are times
Speaker 5: where I'm like, I try and push myself almost again,
Speaker 5: not trying to make myself be somebody not, but when
Speaker 5: I recognize, like there's a part of me that would
Speaker 5: like that, but I'm afraid. So I was like, I
Speaker 5: got up and I did karaoko.
Speaker 6: Really but I did it.
Speaker 3: I wish I was.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did a Leonard Cohen song.
Speaker 5: You know, sometimes I'll do that with dancing. Same thing, Like,
Speaker 5: there's a part of me wants to dance, but I'm
Speaker 5: afraid I just didn't. And I'll just be like, just
Speaker 5: come on, kind of push myself a little bit to
Speaker 5: kind of learn to do some of these things that
Speaker 5: are harder for me that alcohol used to make easier
Speaker 5: again without trying to be somebody I'm not, but I
Speaker 5: have found there are times it's helpful to kind of
Speaker 5: give myself a gentle nudge.
Speaker 4: Dancing is one of those things. It's like the level
Speaker 4: of self awareness that one has sober when you step
Speaker 4: out onto the dance floor is so much different than
Speaker 4: when you've had a couple of drinks totally and you're
Speaker 4: aware of different things. You're aware of the music and
Speaker 4: like it's making you feel this way and let's go
Speaker 4: and as opposed to is this the right move?
Speaker 6: You know, it's just it's just so much different.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 6: But I love that you shared that. Thank you.
Speaker 5: How about you, Jill with that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: I did that same thing. Actually the first time I
Speaker 3: went to a sober wedding, I was sober at the wedding.
Speaker 3: The wedding was a lot of alcohol with an open bar,
Speaker 3: but I worried about it for like a year and
Speaker 3: a half and then.
Speaker 6: I did.
Speaker 3: And then I went to the wedding and I was
Speaker 3: really stiff and uncomfortable about dancing. I was secure in
Speaker 3: my not drinking. I was like a little under two
Speaker 3: years sober at the time, and I was I was okay.
Speaker 3: But then I thought, like, it's okay if you don't dance.
Speaker 3: It's fine, you don't have to. But I think Tomorrow's
Speaker 3: Jill would feel really good if you danced a little bit.
Speaker 3: Then like one of my favorite songs came on, and
Speaker 3: I grabbed the groom who's my husband's best friend, and
Speaker 3: we went and we danced and it was like like
Speaker 3: awkward and I had like bad moves, but I did it.
Speaker 3: And I made friends with like the drunk girls that
Speaker 3: just want to dance all night, and I dance with
Speaker 3: them and dance by myself, and I felt really proud
Speaker 3: of myself. And I've been to weddings where I haven't
Speaker 3: danced at all. But I try to think, just like
Speaker 3: you were saying with the karaoke, like that you would
Speaker 3: have done that and you felt good about it the
Speaker 3: next day. I don't think I'll do karaoke though, because
Speaker 3: drunk Jill has done a lot of karaoke and I
Speaker 3: think it would be like it hurt my heart to
Speaker 3: do karaoke again, But dancing I can do sometimes.
Speaker 5: I love the way you put that about you don't
Speaker 5: have to go out there and dance, but you know
Speaker 5: the Jill of tomorrow will look back and be like,
Speaker 5: I'm glad. I like that's a very like self compassionate
Speaker 5: way of nudging yourself.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 5: I just love the way you put that. I think
Speaker 5: that really describes the right way to do that way
Speaker 5: that helps us grow instead of making us feel bad
Speaker 5: about who we are.
Speaker 3: So, guys, this was amazing. I feel like we have
Speaker 3: to do this again. This was really helpful for me.
Speaker 3: But where can we connect with you and learn more
Speaker 3: about your work and if there's anything that you're up
Speaker 3: to that you want to share. Laura, I know you've
Speaker 3: been like insanely busy.
Speaker 6: I have it.
Speaker 4: It's actually slowing down now. But everything that is me
Speaker 4: is on the Only one pod dot com and there
Speaker 4: you'll find all the events, all my speaking engagements, all
Speaker 4: the episodes of the podcast, everything about the book. The
Speaker 4: only place I really live on social Media's Instagram and
Speaker 4: that's at Laura Cathcart c at h c art Robin's
Speaker 4: robb In s. And I just want to thank you all.
Speaker 4: This has been incredible and thank you Jill for organizing it.
Speaker 4: I'd love to do it again, so I'm looking forward
Speaker 4: to the next time.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Eric. Where can we connect with you?
Speaker 5: Yeah, oneyfeed dot net. That's kind of all spelled out,
Speaker 5: O n E you f e ed dot net the podcast.
Speaker 5: Is there any programs we're doing. I'm co teaching a
Speaker 5: workshop at the Corpalu Institute in Massachusetts this summer. It's
Speaker 5: about awakening in nature. I'm co teaching it with a
Speaker 5: Buddhist teacher, Ralph day l Rosa. So information on that
Speaker 5: is on the website and we are trying to do
Speaker 5: more Instagram and that's one underscore Yo, you underscore feed.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that you were coming to Massachusetts.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm going to talk to you about that later, but
Speaker 3: we have to meet up.
Speaker 5: Okay, all right, deal Paul.
Speaker 3: Where can we connect with you and learn about your work?
Speaker 1: Okay? So it's Recovery Elevator dot com. We're also at
Speaker 1: Instagram at Recovery Elevator. We're private community Cafe Ari. We
Speaker 1: do sober travel trips. We just had a trip to
Speaker 1: Costa Rica and we'll see what happens in the world
Speaker 1: of sobriety in the future. And this is so cool
Speaker 1: to be here with Eric, Laura, Jill. Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for organizing this. This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Yeah, and if you search for Sober Powered
Speaker 3: you can find me. That's my show, my website and
Speaker 3: my Instagram. And thank you guys so much for being here.
Speaker 3: All the links to everything will be in the show
Speaker 3: notes if you want to connect with us, and we
Speaker 3: will definitely do one of these again, so we'll see
Speaker 3: you in the future.
Speaker 5: Thank you so great to meet you, Paul, and see
Speaker 5: you two again Jill and Laura.
Speaker 6: Yes, same same.
Speaker 1: Saying, thanks Eric, Laura and Jill. Great stuff.
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