Speaker 1: I think when somebody is trying and they still experience
Speaker 1: a return to use, there's some other problem they're still practicing.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that matters, is putting intention and attention
Speaker 1: into a process of change.
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
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good will.
Speaker 3: If you feel under equipped and overwhelmed to make real
Speaker 3: sustainable change, you're not alone. That's why I'm going live
Speaker 3: on Wednesday at seven pm Eastern to present my most
Speaker 3: popular master class, Habits that Stick. How to be remarkably
Speaker 3: consistent no matter what goal you set join me for
Speaker 3: this free master class where I'll be sharing the single
Speaker 3: most important goal to set if you want to stay
Speaker 3: motivated and encouraged to build.
Speaker 2: Your new habit.
Speaker 3: You'll learn a simple mindset shift that is crucial for
Speaker 3: making habits stick in the midst of life's chaos, and
Speaker 3: will also explore the five pillars of consistency, which are
Speaker 3: so important for making positive changes in your life. Get
Speaker 3: ready to transform your habits and achieve remarkable consistency. Join
Speaker 3: me live on Wednesday at seven pm Eastern. I'll also
Speaker 3: be sticking around to answer questions, so I look forward
Speaker 3: to connecting with you then. I really love meeting all
Speaker 3: the people, so I hope you can make it. You
Speaker 3: can register for this free masterclass by going to oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash habits again. That's oneufeed dot net slash habits.
Speaker 3: I hope to see you there.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us. This is a collaboration episode with
Speaker 2: of course Eric Zimmer from the One You Feed podcast,
Speaker 2: and also Laura Cathcart Robbins, host of the Only One
Speaker 2: in the Room podcast and the author of the memoir Stash.
Speaker 2: Also joining is Carl Eric Fisher, addiction specialist bioethicist at
Speaker 2: Columbia University and a podcast host who is also the
Speaker 2: author of The Urge Our History of Addiction. And we
Speaker 2: have Holly Whittaker, author of Quit Like a Woman. She's
Speaker 2: also the writer of the Recovery Substack. So enjoy this
Speaker 2: great conversation.
Speaker 4: All right, we are coming to you not quite live,
Speaker 4: but I'll just say that the we is Hollywood Occur
Speaker 4: and Eric Zimmer and doctor Carl Eric Fisher and myself
Speaker 4: Laura Cathcart Robins. We are colleagues and friends, and we
Speaker 4: have decided to come to you to talk about dry January.
Speaker 4: Actually not to you. We're going to talk about it
Speaker 4: amongst ourselves and what it means and just different things
Speaker 4: about sobriety and recovery. Like I said, I am Laura
Speaker 4: Cathcart Robbins. I am the host of the podcast, the
Speaker 4: only one in the room. I am the author of
Speaker 4: the memoir Stash My Life in Hiding, which is an
Speaker 4: addiction memoir that came out in March of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: And this is the second time that Eric Zimmer from
Speaker 4: the One You Feed and I have come together to
Speaker 4: have this type of discussion in a dry month. The
Speaker 4: last time was dry July. This time it's dry January,
Speaker 4: and we're going to talk about what that means and
Speaker 4: what it might mean to each of us on this podcast.
Speaker 4: But that's who I am, and I wanted to just
Speaker 4: kind of go around and have everyone introduce themselves before
Speaker 4: we get started in this discussion. And Eric, do you
Speaker 4: want to go next?
Speaker 3: Sure? I'm Eric Zimmer, host of the One You Feed podcast,
Speaker 3: and I also run a program called Habits that Matter
Speaker 3: that brings together wisdom and behavior change so that we
Speaker 3: live our lives in a more meaningful way. And I'm
Speaker 3: really happy to see you again Laura, and see you Carl,
Speaker 3: and finally meet you Holly. But it's been a long time.
Speaker 3: I've heard about you for years and we just have
Speaker 3: we've never crossed paths, so I'm happy that's finally happening.
Speaker 4: And so to Holly, do you want to go next?
Speaker 5: Sure? My name is Holly Whitaker.
Speaker 6: I am the author of the book Quit Like a Woman,
Speaker 6: which focuses specifically on alcohol and women and the recovery industry.
Speaker 6: I have founded a recovery based company and developed a
Speaker 6: modality to help specifically with alcohol use disorder, and I
Speaker 6: currently write the Recovering column on Substack, even though I'm
Speaker 6: on a little hiatus from it and working on two
Speaker 6: books on this topic that we're talking about tonight on Recovery.
Speaker 6: So really excited to be here.
Speaker 5: With you all.
Speaker 6: Lauren Carl are friends of mine, so Eric, it's nice
Speaker 6: to meet I've heard about you for a long time too,
Speaker 6: and Carl, it's.
Speaker 1: Great to see you all. I'm Karl Eric Fisher, addiction psychiatrist.
Speaker 1: I'm a bioethicist at Columbia University. I wrote a book
Speaker 1: called The Urge, Our History of Addiction, which is a
Speaker 1: history of addiction from ancient times to the present day,
Speaker 1: interwoven with some of my experience as a person in
Speaker 1: recovery myself, including some reflections on my family history of alcoholism.
Speaker 1: I host a podcast that's called Flourishing After Addiction that
Speaker 1: focuses on all sorts of different people deep dive interviews
Speaker 1: about how we make sense of addiction and recovery. And
Speaker 1: I do have a Substack newsletter that I just launched
Speaker 1: two weeks ago at Holly's encouragement and so much encouragement
Speaker 1: that she named it for me because I can't name
Speaker 1: anything myself.
Speaker 5: All of my best titles.
Speaker 1: Come from friends and it's called rat Park and I
Speaker 1: love it so much. So thank you, Holly.
Speaker 4: I've got to say I'm a little nervous, and I
Speaker 4: don't know if I want to use the word intimidated,
Speaker 4: but I feel like because the three of you were
Speaker 4: so established and so well respected in this area, that
Speaker 4: I want to rise up to the same level and
Speaker 4: I just need to just be me and do my
Speaker 4: thing because I'm not educated in this area, but I've
Speaker 4: had a lot of experience of my own. And Holly's like,
Speaker 4: yes you are.
Speaker 5: Oh, I'm like looking at you. You're who I call.
Speaker 5: What are you talking about?
Speaker 4: I know?
Speaker 6: But you know what I I mean, you don't have
Speaker 6: any like professional credentials that you are you sponsored?
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm sure, yes, the people.
Speaker 4: At this point, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I mean I want more than I do.
Speaker 4: Well, but yeah, okay, I do have experience. I have
Speaker 4: something what I believe is valuable to contribute. And the
Speaker 4: first thing I wanted to bring up was my experience.
Speaker 4: So I've been sober for a little over fifteen years,
Speaker 4: and when I first got sober, it was just literally
Speaker 4: taking away the substances like I stopped taking pills and
Speaker 4: I stopped drinking, and I didn't have anything mind altering
Speaker 4: in my body. And that was sobriety for me, and
Speaker 4: it was excruciating. I was in an incredible amount of
Speaker 4: pain after I stopped. I was in as much or
Speaker 4: more pain actually after I stopped than when I was using.
Speaker 4: And I got sober through a twelve step program which
Speaker 4: I'm still in and still a part of. And eventually,
Speaker 4: as I engaged in like the tenants of this program,
Speaker 4: the principles of this program, I started to feel some relief.
Speaker 4: And I think of that as my recovery rather than
Speaker 4: me being completely obstinate. And I find that that's kind
Speaker 4: of scary for people, because at this point in my recovery,
Speaker 4: I don't value the abstinence as much as I value
Speaker 4: the work the recovery. So yeah, I feel like there's
Speaker 4: a distinction, and for me now that there wasn't before,
Speaker 4: and I know that things continue to evolve. I think
Speaker 4: you can be using substances and still have recovery. I
Speaker 4: also think that you can be completely abstinent and not
Speaker 4: have any recovery. But I was wondering if you all
Speaker 4: had any thoughts on sobriety versus recovery and if you
Speaker 4: do what they are Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's a really powerful reflection and really complicated.
Speaker 1: We could probably have a whole day long retreat or
Speaker 1: seminar on that topic because for me, what it reflects
Speaker 1: back is the variety of different recovery experiences and the
Speaker 1: notion that everybody has a different experience of recovery. There's
Speaker 1: not one pathway to recovery. There's probably as many pathways
Speaker 1: to recovery as there are people who are seeking recovery.
Speaker 1: But just to simplify it so I don't think of
Speaker 1: too much space, I had a positive and a negative reaction.
Speaker 1: Positive reaction is I think it's really crucial that people
Speaker 1: in general come up with their own notions of recovery
Speaker 1: and seek it out in a positive towards sense, not
Speaker 1: just stopping for many many people, not just limited to
Speaker 1: twelve separate recovery. That includes getting outside the self and
Speaker 1: finding some sort of advice or feedback so.
Speaker 7: They're not just running their own show.
Speaker 1: The negative reaction I had is speaking from within the
Speaker 1: medical profession, there is a history of definitions of recovery
Speaker 1: being used to gatekeep in certain ways. It tends to
Speaker 1: be about power and judging people who use substances by
Speaker 1: saying what you're doing does not count as recovery. This
Speaker 1: is one of the things that I was interested in
Speaker 1: when I started my sub sec was all these different
Speaker 1: notions of recovery. And everyone has a different definition, different frameworks,
Speaker 1: different components of it.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: Just one example is an older, more conservative definition says
Speaker 1: it requires a sort of conformity to ethical norms quote
Speaker 1: unquote citizenship as part of recovery. Well, whose citizenship and
Speaker 1: who gets to decide? And for some people, recovery involves
Speaker 1: radical activism, and why can't that be a part of
Speaker 1: recovery too. It's really tempting and dangerous, and I've seen
Speaker 1: it happen within the recovery community and also from the
Speaker 1: medical community down to the recovery community to use different
Speaker 1: ideas about sobriety and recovery to discount other people's experiences.
Speaker 4: So do you think there's a difference between sobriety and
Speaker 4: recovery or do you think they're one and the same.
Speaker 1: I tend not to use the word sobriety unless I'm
Speaker 1: working with a client and they value that. Usually it's
Speaker 1: a starting point for a discussion. A lot of people
Speaker 1: like the word sobriety and the context of emotional sobriety,
Speaker 1: and I like that. I strive for emotional sobriety. For me,
Speaker 1: it's a big intention not to snap at my child,
Speaker 1: or even just to be generally crappy, just to be
Speaker 1: grumpy and not show up and be selfish around him.
Speaker 1: That's a relapse for me. Is it a relapse that's
Speaker 1: going to lead me to using alcohol?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: Is relapse always the right word for everyone? No, it
Speaker 1: can be a very stigmatizing word. Some people really hate
Speaker 1: the word relapse. I favor a really broad and inclusive
Speaker 1: definition of recovery, and sobriety is I think, in some
Speaker 1: ways even trickier. I don't know, what do you ought
Speaker 1: to think?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think definitions mean different things to different
Speaker 3: people and can be used in different contexts and you.
Speaker 3: For me, all of those words are problematic in certain
Speaker 3: ways and useful in certain ways. Right, And for me, sobriety,
Speaker 3: meaning an abstinence from mood altering chemicals, has been really
Speaker 3: important to me. I don't think it's the end goal
Speaker 3: for everybody. I don't think it has to be the
Speaker 3: end goal. For me, it was the right end goal,
Speaker 3: and I'm glad to have achieved that for a substantial
Speaker 3: amount of time.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 3: The thing about recovery that I don't like is a
Speaker 3: word generally is that makes it sound like I'm going
Speaker 3: back to something. I'm going to recover something that I had,
Speaker 3: And honestly, for me, my sobriety journey has been about
Speaker 3: becoming something that I really never was before, right, And
Speaker 3: that's somebody who's able to deal with life as it
Speaker 3: comes to me without having to take mood altering substances.
Speaker 3: It's somebody who can do the things Carl talked about,
Speaker 3: which is be more emotionally mature, where I don't snap
Speaker 3: at people, where I think about people other than myself.
Speaker 3: So for me, recovery is useful in that we talk
Speaker 3: about recovery and being recovered from an addiction, right, But
Speaker 3: I think where it ceases to be useful is that
Speaker 3: I wanted a whole lot more than just being recovered
Speaker 3: from an addiction. I wanted to continue and still want
Speaker 3: to continue to grow as a human being and become
Speaker 3: a better and better person. And that is the place
Speaker 3: to me where it's not so much about going back.
Speaker 3: It's about going forward.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think for the sobrieties, I don't know how
Speaker 6: I feel about the words sobriety anymore. I think that
Speaker 6: it was very clear early on that it was a
Speaker 6: very important word to me for me personally when I started.
Speaker 5: My theoretical ideas around recovery are far.
Speaker 6: More advanced than my personal bias, and so I could
Speaker 6: say when I was an early recovery or in early sobriety,
Speaker 6: that I believed in a harm reduction approach, and I
Speaker 6: did theoretically, but I was very threatened by those things,
Speaker 6: and I think like on a personal level, I couldn't
Speaker 6: see how recovery could include the continued use of the
Speaker 6: substance that you were struggling with in a dependent, addictive way.
Speaker 6: And so what's changed is not so much how I
Speaker 6: view it, even though that's changed, like the outward theory
Speaker 6: that I have around what sobriety is or what recovery is.
Speaker 6: But I think what I'm trying to say is that
Speaker 6: I have gotten deeper in my own process, in my
Speaker 6: own path, like my biases and my personal feelings about
Speaker 6: it and my knee jerk reactions around what these words
Speaker 6: mean and who can use them and what they're supposed
Speaker 6: to do has really it's almost like just ascended to
Speaker 6: where the theory is. And I know that sounds really confusing,
Speaker 6: but I guess what I'm saying is, I think, like
Speaker 6: anybody in recovery, I've really struggled with who gets to
Speaker 6: use certain words and who doesn't get to use certain words.
Speaker 5: And I think that.
Speaker 6: That when Eric said that there's a lot of gatekeeping
Speaker 6: in the medical community around these words, I was thinking before,
Speaker 6: there's a lot of gatekeeping within the recovery community around
Speaker 6: these words. I think like far more than there is
Speaker 6: in the medical community, because that's where I've experienced the
Speaker 6: most infighting and truly like complicated conversations around these words.
Speaker 6: And so just to be very direct and quick about it,
Speaker 6: I think, like Carl, sobriety's a word, and Eric, and
Speaker 6: kind of I guess all of us like, sobriety.
Speaker 5: Is this word. That's kind of it's just not key.
Speaker 6: I will accidentally use it, I rarely intentionally use it
Speaker 6: when I'm discussing anything. I think I conflated it so
Speaker 6: much with recovery early on, and to me, recovery Carl
Speaker 6: shared with me jan Brown's definition of recovery, which is,
Speaker 6: I think anybody who says they're in recovery can be
Speaker 6: in recovery.
Speaker 7: You're in recovery if you say you are.
Speaker 6: Right, right exactly your recovery if you say you are
Speaker 6: And I think, to me, that feel important. And I
Speaker 6: think words are Like Eric said, I think like there's
Speaker 6: really no words that exist in our lexicon that are
Speaker 6: not problematic because of what we've done to those words
Speaker 6: or how those words have been used, and so like
Speaker 6: even like words like relapse right or return to use
Speaker 6: or trying to find like what the adequate term is
Speaker 6: to reflect with the experiences of millions of people that
Speaker 6: all have these like vastly differing experiences, we're all trying
Speaker 6: to casture with one word.
Speaker 5: Is just it's a really, I think impossible thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like I learned so much just listening
Speaker 4: to each of you just then, like gatekeeping and problematic
Speaker 4: words and the idea that you're in recovery when you
Speaker 4: say you are in that self declaration. In Holly and Carl,
Speaker 4: you both mentioned relapse. My dad is an HIV doctor.
Speaker 4: He loves his work. All of his patients are living now,
Speaker 4: you know, they used to in the eighties when he
Speaker 4: first started. They die, and now they die of natural causes.
Speaker 4: They don't die from HIV or AIDS anymore. His patients
Speaker 4: have a relapse is devastating. It's a return to a
Speaker 4: state that is probably going to kill them, right, something
Speaker 4: bad has happened and they are back to a state
Speaker 4: where they have to recover or work to recover, to
Speaker 4: get back to where they were before. For us in
Speaker 4: the twelve step community, a relapse, I feel is also
Speaker 4: seen that way. When the word relapse is mentioned and
Speaker 4: someone says that they have started using or drinking again,
Speaker 4: I feel the ripple through the room is that something
Speaker 4: devastating has occurred. There's been a failure of some kind,
Speaker 4: a loss, not just for that person, but maybe for
Speaker 4: the community. Right, Like we all had a stake in this,
Speaker 4: and now we're all kind of reeling from this admission
Speaker 4: that something was picked up or someone had a drink,
Speaker 4: or someone shot some dope or whatever it is, or
Speaker 4: someone threw up when they're in recovery from an eating disorder,
Speaker 4: whatever it might be, whatever that relapse looks like. And
Speaker 4: like I said, I think I said this in the beginning,
Speaker 4: I'm really hesitant to even use that word, but I
Speaker 4: think it's very problematic. I don't have another word for it,
Speaker 4: So one I wanted to see if you all do,
Speaker 4: and then just to hear your thoughts on Like for me,
Speaker 4: my old ideas were like, if you pick up anything ever,
Speaker 4: you're back to one and you may not ever make
Speaker 4: it back. Like if you pick up anything ever, you're
Speaker 4: out there and you may not ever make it back,
Speaker 4: meaning if you drink again or you use again, you
Speaker 4: may not ever get this time back that you've amassed. Right,
Speaker 4: ten days sober, ten years sober, whatever it is sober
Speaker 4: meaning without use of any substances or alcohol. And so
Speaker 4: do you all think this is true? One? Do you
Speaker 4: think it's true that you lose something when you pick
Speaker 4: up again, if you pick up again and pick up
Speaker 4: meaning drink or use again. And if it's not true,
Speaker 4: what might your new ideas be around this subject? And
Speaker 4: if you have a name for it that isn't as
Speaker 4: problematic as relapse, or maybe you don't think relapse is problematic,
Speaker 4: and that's the word to use, let's go to Eric first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think this is another loaded term.
Speaker 3: Do I think that we lose something if we pick
Speaker 3: up or use again. I think it depends on what
Speaker 3: we're aiming for. But in my case, yes, I do
Speaker 3: lose something. And you use the term relapse meaning in
Speaker 3: a dangerous condition. Right, Going back to drinking in drugs
Speaker 3: for people like me is a dangerous thing to do, right,
Speaker 3: It actually is, right, and it's far more dangerous today
Speaker 3: than it was fifteen years ago. Right, I was an
Speaker 3: opioid addict, right, I was an intervenious heroin user. It
Speaker 3: is dangerous out there, right, and so not doing that
Speaker 3: is a far safer place to be. The other reason
Speaker 3: that I feel like I lose something is that to me,
Speaker 3: a length of continuous sobriety is what caused the craving
Speaker 3: to use to go away. To me, that is the
Speaker 3: worst feeling in the world, that literal tearing a part
Speaker 3: of my soul, when one part of me is screaming,
Speaker 3: don't do it and the other part is screaming do
Speaker 3: it right, and so space away from that, Thank God,
Speaker 3: that goes away. So in that way, yes, I do
Speaker 3: think we lose something. Do we lose everything? No, That's
Speaker 3: where I think the mistake is.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: In a lot of recovery communities, you could have five
Speaker 3: years and if you use, you are back literally to
Speaker 3: day one, and you are considered an absolute beginner. You
Speaker 3: failed one hundred percent, right, as if those five years
Speaker 3: didn't give you something. I was sober eight years the
Speaker 3: first time around, and I went back out and used.
Speaker 3: And did I lose something when I did? Absolutely? Did
Speaker 3: I have to fight my way back into recovery?
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 3: Were there people who like me had periods of sobriety
Speaker 3: that went out and have never made it back and
Speaker 3: several of them are dead. Yes, right, But I didn't
Speaker 3: lose what I'd learned in those eight years. It wasn't
Speaker 3: gone right. Matter of fact, it was part of what
Speaker 3: allowed me to come back, because I was able to
Speaker 3: see some things in myself that there's no way I
Speaker 3: would have seen before that period of time. So I
Speaker 3: think that's where the mistake is that we lose everything.
Speaker 3: And I think this grading system we have of zero
Speaker 3: percent or one hundred percent is really problematic because we
Speaker 3: don't grade anything else.
Speaker 2: In life that way.
Speaker 3: And so it's a very tricky thing because I do
Speaker 3: think permanent abstinence is a very valuable thing, and I
Speaker 3: don't think we should only be grading zero, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: We have to look at progress. And if I look
Speaker 3: back at my recovery story, and I would imagine most
Speaker 3: of you would say this about yours. There was a
Speaker 3: period of trying and failing, and trying and failing, and
Speaker 3: trying and failing. If we want to use that word, right,
Speaker 3: trying and learning would be a better way to say it.
Speaker 3: Trying and learning, trying and learning, trying and learning, and
Speaker 3: then I was able to get to full abstinence. And
Speaker 3: I would much rather had that context in my mind
Speaker 3: as I was going through it instead of trying and failing.
Speaker 4: Trying and learning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, And so I think it is a useful term,
Speaker 3: and I think we lose something, But I also think
Speaker 3: that it can be problematic if it's applied too strictly.
Speaker 3: So those are just my thoughts.
Speaker 4: Holly, What are your thoughts?
Speaker 5: What were the two specific questions.
Speaker 4: I was asking one if this is a word that
Speaker 4: you use, and but the first question was you know
Speaker 4: the black and whiteness around it? Is it a failure?
Speaker 4: Do we lose everything?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: In the twelve step recovery of which I'm a member,
Speaker 4: you lose all the days, right, you do start counting again.
Speaker 5: Does the book say you lose all the days? Or
Speaker 5: is that what the people did? But do you know
Speaker 5: what I mean?
Speaker 6: Is that do or is that like just a norm
Speaker 6: or is that what the book dictates?
Speaker 4: I think it's the people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think the book says anything about counting sobriety.
Speaker 6: No, the book doesn't say that that's right, So you
Speaker 6: don't actually in a right back to zero. It's what
Speaker 6: has been cultivated through the fellowship that dictates that. This
Speaker 6: one woman we had the same conversation, but she was
Speaker 6: telling me all this stuff that's written in the book
Speaker 6: and all the stuff that's actually just proliferates in the fellowship.
Speaker 6: And that's one of the things, which is it doesn't
Speaker 6: say in the book that you have to reset your
Speaker 6: daycount if you use drugs and drink again. And I
Speaker 6: think the reason I bring that up is because I think,
Speaker 6: isn't that interesting that that's like such our human nature
Speaker 6: is to say, like, where does that come from? It
Speaker 6: comes from us saying you don't get to you messed up,
Speaker 6: you have to reset.
Speaker 5: And go back to day zero.
Speaker 6: It comes from this, like this, this idea that somebody
Speaker 6: with an addiction kind of has to you know, just
Speaker 6: take it, you know, and just do whatever it takes
Speaker 6: because you don't have any agency over this.
Speaker 5: This is what the group says. You have to give
Speaker 5: back your days or whatever it is.
Speaker 6: And so I think a lot of times when we're
Speaker 6: operating around words like this, we have to like remember,
Speaker 6: like a lot of this stuff isn't codified anywhere.
Speaker 5: It's just stuff that we do because of.
Speaker 6: You know, like what came out of like the group
Speaker 6: think or whatever, and also came out of whatever was
Speaker 6: operating at the time that those norms were formed. So
Speaker 6: when I think of like, there's some statistic I think,
Speaker 6: and I will try and find it so you can
Speaker 6: include it in the show notes. But I'm not going
Speaker 6: to say this is one hundred percent accurate. Maybe Carl
Speaker 6: you know this, but I think it's like five percent
Speaker 6: of people that try for an abstinence space recovery actually
Speaker 6: make it from start to finish without return to youthse
Speaker 6: that very few people that are going for an abstinent
Speaker 6: in face recovery actually make it through without relapsing or
Speaker 6: without return to use. And so when I think of it,
Speaker 6: I think of like, and the problematic nature of it
Speaker 6: is that that figure that comes from research that I
Speaker 6: will find and make sure is accurate. But when you
Speaker 6: think about that this is like a very normal If
Speaker 6: it's ninety five percent of people that are trying to
Speaker 6: not consume or consuming, or trying not to use or using,
Speaker 6: that's interesting too, write because it shows that this is
Speaker 6: just like a normal occurrence. And that's how I view
Speaker 6: it really is, like return to use is just a
Speaker 6: normal thing as part of the process of trying to
Speaker 6: overcome an addiction to to a substance or whatever it is,
Speaker 6: and that like, of course we've turned it into this
Speaker 6: this naturally occurring thing that's actually like proof that you're trying, right,
Speaker 6: because like if you're relapsing, right, or if you're going
Speaker 6: back out, like you're.
Speaker 5: Going back out from somewhere, right, this is like part
Speaker 5: of what we do.
Speaker 6: But we've carved this out to say this one exceptional
Speaker 6: thing that I think until like the seventies wasn't even
Speaker 6: a word that was like discussed in you know, in
Speaker 6: treatment settings as like a potential outcome. We've created a
Speaker 6: lot of fear around something that's just a normal part
Speaker 6: of the process, you know, And I think, like to
Speaker 6: be very clear what Eric said there was a huge
Speaker 6: consequence in certain situations to that phenomenon, right, but that
Speaker 6: is just.
Speaker 5: Part of it.
Speaker 6: And return to use the other piece about it. You
Speaker 6: asked like for you know, like what words I think
Speaker 6: I use return to use? But there's also like there's
Speaker 6: so many different definitions of relapse that there's really no
Speaker 6: like one this is exactly what a relapse is. There's
Speaker 6: no working definition that we're all using and coming back to,
Speaker 6: you know, like somebody could say, I accidentally, you know,
Speaker 6: took a sip of my mom's wine and I've relapsed, right,
Speaker 6: and somebody might call that a lapse, and somebody might
Speaker 6: not even mention it because it was nothing.
Speaker 4: You know, I love return to use and I find
Speaker 4: it just even then the idea of it to be
Speaker 4: really comforting because it doesn't feel as heavy or is blaming,
Speaker 4: as relapse might feel. And I'm wondering, Carl, from a
Speaker 4: medical standpoint, And I don't know if you do this,
Speaker 4: but if you were counseling people who have a loved
Speaker 4: one that's dealing with this, what words do you use
Speaker 4: when discussing return to use? And do you try to
Speaker 4: normalize it for them, like it's part of the process.
Speaker 1: I tend to default to the cutting edge medical descriptions,
Speaker 1: which is what Holly has gone to in terms of
Speaker 1: talking about return to use. I also like to take
Speaker 1: a step back and ask about measurement in general, because
Speaker 1: whenever we attach a name to something, or we're measuring
Speaker 1: it or tracking it, including this notion of return to use,
Speaker 1: or if someone chooses to identify this way laps or relapse,
Speaker 1: the question is why is that the metric? Why is
Speaker 1: that the thing we're attaching to This also overlaps or
Speaker 1: the question of recovery. Is our measure of recovery not using?
Speaker 1: Or is our measure of recovery thriving and feeling better?
Speaker 1: Is it interpersonal effectiveness? Is it feeling connected to a
Speaker 1: sense of meaning and purpose and being in connection with
Speaker 1: other human beings. Even in medical circles, you know, people
Speaker 1: talk about the immediate question, which is what language do
Speaker 1: you use or what do you measure in terms of
Speaker 1: return to use versus relapse, et cetera. And even from
Speaker 1: the top federal agencies like NAIDA at the National Institute
Speaker 1: of Drug Addiction, there have been some recent opinions and
Speaker 1: advisories given saying we shouldn't just track if somebody stops using,
Speaker 1: because we've all met people who have stopped using in
Speaker 1: a very sort of tight and restricted and controlled way
Speaker 1: but have not developed in other ways. That's a thing
Speaker 1: that happens, and more power to them, you know. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that people don't use if it's their choice, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad that people don't use if they're at risk
Speaker 1: of death with opioids and fentanyl and other types of
Speaker 1: dangerous substances increasing every single day. But I say that
Speaker 1: because a lot of times, in a medical context, people
Speaker 1: are really concerned about, like the rea. There's a whole
Speaker 1: therapy called relast prevention therapy. I think that's a good metric.
Speaker 1: But if we're stopped there, then we're selling somebody a
Speaker 1: really stark and boring and dry vision of life, and
Speaker 1: that I think is actually one of the problems with
Speaker 1: dry january, which we could also talk about. I think
Speaker 1: dry january is fine. I think it's great in the
Speaker 1: sense that, like sometimes people stop use and then they
Speaker 1: confront the self and it's sort of like sitting down
Speaker 1: to meditation.
Speaker 7: You see the activity.
Speaker 1: Of the mind, and it's terrifying and can be miserable
Speaker 1: or overwhelming. But if you can get out through to
Speaker 1: the other side, it can be very beautiful and instructive. Okay, great,
Speaker 1: but it can't just be about stopping use. That's a
Speaker 1: starting point. That's almost like the meta point that has
Speaker 1: to exist above all the sort of like definitions and all.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I have a coaching client of mine who did
Speaker 3: something that I thought sort of brought this together in
Speaker 3: a really interesting way. I probably shared this last time
Speaker 3: Laura when we were on but she was having trouble
Speaker 3: getting complete and total abstinence and would get very discouraged
Speaker 3: by it. I mean, she may have gotten this idea
Speaker 3: somewhere else. I don't know if she made up. Anyway,
Speaker 3: what she started doing was putting a marble in a
Speaker 3: jar for every day that she was sober. And what
Speaker 3: we saw over the course of a couple years was
Speaker 3: a ton of marbles, right, maybe three hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: marbles a year, maybe three hundred and fifty five marbles
Speaker 3: a year. And she was also developing in all the
Speaker 3: ways that you talk about, Carl, And so again, in
Speaker 3: her case, we still looked at abstinence as a place
Speaker 3: we wanted to get to because those returns to use
Speaker 3: were problematic, right, They sometimes would last longer than a
Speaker 3: day or two.
Speaker 5: They affected her quality of life exactly.
Speaker 3: They affected her quality of life. But that was a
Speaker 3: really useful way of us measuring in a way that
Speaker 3: was actually I think you because there is something about
Speaker 3: measuring and celebrating success. And we can look at the
Speaker 3: twelve step program counting days as a you know, I think, Holly,
Speaker 3: you mentioned maybe it's a power thing, and I think
Speaker 3: there is some of that, right, But I think some
Speaker 3: of that also came out of us celebrating each other
Speaker 3: as we made progress.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite things is to go to a
Speaker 3: twelve step meeting and see the whole room go crazy
Speaker 3: for somebody who has thirty days sober. Right, There's something
Speaker 3: that just warms my heart seeing yeah. Yeah. And so again,
Speaker 3: I think that with all these things, there's a point
Speaker 3: where terms and labels and measuring is useful and there
Speaker 3: are ways and it's not useful. And I think if
Speaker 3: people can look in their own life and say, in
Speaker 3: what ways is this useful to me? And in what
Speaker 3: ways is it not? And that's what I thought was
Speaker 3: so ingenious about what my client did is she found
Speaker 3: a way of measuring that worked for her, that allowed
Speaker 3: her to see real progress, to feel good about herself,
Speaker 3: to see progress, but not get into this Z year
Speaker 3: over one hundred percent or I failed five times this year. Instead,
Speaker 3: it's like I succeeded three hundred and sixty times this year, right,
Speaker 3: And I just loved that approach to things. I thought
Speaker 3: it was a really wise way to handle this question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that too. You didn't share that before,
Speaker 4: I don't think. I don't think I've heard that story.
Speaker 4: I also wanted to just kind of put out their
Speaker 4: twelve step recovery tends to look down upon or disregard
Speaker 4: what I now know to be harm reduction. I had
Speaker 4: not heard that term before. Like, I remember meeting a
Speaker 4: guy at a meeting and he had come in because
Speaker 4: of heroin use, and he was taking chips and he
Speaker 4: was on suboxen. Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: And I immediately thought, Oh, he's not sober, like, he's
Speaker 4: not doing this, He's just substituted with something else that's
Speaker 4: not real sobriety. And I felt like that opinion was
Speaker 4: kind of carried through the group, Like the consensus was
Speaker 4: that if whatever you're if you're using anything, then you're
Speaker 4: not you're not in this thing with us. You're taking
Speaker 4: dirty chips, which means that you're taking chips while you're
Speaker 4: still using and dirty cakes, right, And.
Speaker 5: Is that a word, dirty chips and dirty cake?
Speaker 4: It is, it's absolutely, it's a term, yes. And so,
Speaker 4: like I've said, now, you know, since I've been educated
Speaker 4: and educating myself, I see things differently, but I'm very
Speaker 4: much still learning about this. So I was wondering what
Speaker 4: the three of you thought about the black and whiteness
Speaker 4: of that, and if it has a place in twelve
Speaker 4: step recovery or just in recovery.
Speaker 3: I mean, once upon a time. And again I think
Speaker 3: Holly made a good point earlier, which is there's the
Speaker 3: if you want to look at twelve step programs, they're
Speaker 3: based on alcoholics Anonymous and alcoholics Anonymous published a book,
Speaker 3: and that book, you know, is intended to be sort
Speaker 3: of the core of the program, and then different groups
Speaker 3: add all sorts of things on top of that. And
Speaker 3: I actually think that's fine, because I don't think a
Speaker 3: book that was published in nineteen thirty nine should be
Speaker 3: the end all, be all Bible of life. But there
Speaker 3: was once upon a time in recovery, in certain circles,
Speaker 3: if you were taking antidepressants, right, you were considered not so.
Speaker 6: I don't think that's even once upon a time. I
Speaker 6: think that's still I really do. It may be still, yeah.
Speaker 3: And it just depends on the group, right. That's the
Speaker 3: thing when we talk about twelve step programs, if we
Speaker 3: talk about them monolithically as one thing, we are missing
Speaker 3: the fact that there can be great disparity. Right. I
Speaker 3: was part of twelve step programs where antidepressants were considered
Speaker 3: absolutely fine, and what you're describing, Laura, seboxone would be
Speaker 3: considered completely fine, but other groups would be like, absolutely
Speaker 3: not to any of that. And a few years after
Speaker 3: I got sober, I met a guy who used to
Speaker 3: be my drug dealer, my heroin dealer, and he was
Speaker 3: sober on methadone, and like you, Laura, I looked down
Speaker 3: on him and I thought, hmm, I'm glad I didn't
Speaker 3: do that right because I wouldn't get here. And I
Speaker 3: think this gets back to our earlier discussion about recovery,
Speaker 3: that there's more than just physical sobriety, right. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think everybody's path is their own, right, I think
Speaker 3: it's perfectly possible to be getting help. You know, there's
Speaker 3: lots of different drugs out there that help us achieve abstinence, right,
Speaker 3: I think that those can be used as a way
Speaker 3: of launching ourselves into these deeper realms of recovery that
Speaker 3: Karl has talked so eloquently about. So those are just
Speaker 3: kind of my thoughts.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I have strong feelings about this. Of course.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to get out of this trap
Speaker 1: that we have such a deeply polarized opinion of medications
Speaker 1: in the United States. And I love this one discussion.
Speaker 1: I know I've discussed this view, Holly, but it was
Speaker 1: from the nineteen seventies. There's a bioethicist and psychiatrist who
Speaker 1: said we swing between psychotropic heatedism on one side and
Speaker 1: pharmacological calvinism, Calvinism meaning that there's some sort of virtue
Speaker 1: in suffering, and so individuals and cultures swing from sort
Speaker 1: of screw it, let's do everything back to nothing is good.
Speaker 1: And the truth of the matter, certainly at the population level,
Speaker 1: is somewhere in the middle. It would be very bad
Speaker 1: if everybody with every kind of addiction God put on ozempic.
Speaker 1: For example, like, there's interesting evidence that ozempic has some
Speaker 1: sort of effect central addiction relevant receptors and has effects
Speaker 1: on gambling addiction and alcohol addiction. Not to take us
Speaker 1: down too much of a rabbit hole, but you know,
Speaker 1: ezempic has costs too. It has actual material costs, and
Speaker 1: then it also might reduce bone density and muscle mass
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other things. Like there are costs
Speaker 1: and benefits to the box hone, they're definitely costs is
Speaker 1: a box zone. There are ways that it can be
Speaker 1: diverted in harmful ways, and there are ways that some
Speaker 1: people can experience maybe emotional numbing or things like that.
Speaker 1: But medications for addiction treatment, they're not even assisted treatment.
Speaker 1: It's for addiction treatment. Because medications are the only things
Speaker 1: in a research basis that have been shown to reduce
Speaker 1: death for opiaduced disorder. Not attending twelve step groups, not
Speaker 1: going to a rehab, not outpatient psychotherapy, nothing, it's just medications.
Speaker 1: And so if we're interested in actually getting people in
Speaker 1: to recovery, whatever recovery means, whatever we want to call it,
Speaker 1: we have to be much less judgy about medications. I think, like,
Speaker 1: if you go to the coastal cities, or if you
Speaker 1: go to places where there's like a higher density of
Speaker 1: people and groups like you can find groups that are
Speaker 1: much more accepting of this. But you know, across the
Speaker 1: whole national and certainly global addiction community, you can certainly
Speaker 1: find treatment centers where people will say, hey, if you're
Speaker 1: on a heart medication like a beta blocker that reduces anxiety,
Speaker 1: that's not real sobriety, you should ask your doctor to
Speaker 1: switch you to something else that's not psychoactive, because maybe
Speaker 1: just taking the edge off.
Speaker 7: A little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't used a self prescribed mind remoon
Speaker 1: altering substance for a very long time.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 1: I alter my moods in a lot of ways.
Speaker 7: You know, I still go to the.
Speaker 1: Ice cream, and I still go to anger, and I
Speaker 1: still go into like frantic overwork or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: there's lots of ways I alter my moods. And the
Speaker 1: actual magnitude of changing someone's mood with suboxone is so
Speaker 1: minor compared to the universe of other ways that people
Speaker 1: use their mood. There's no universe in which it would
Speaker 1: ever possibly justify the scale of death that the lives
Speaker 1: left on the table represent here, Carl.
Speaker 6: Do you think it's because there is the fear that
Speaker 6: they're getting a bit of hit and a bit of
Speaker 6: a high, and there's like they're altering themselves, Or do
Speaker 6: you think it's because it's cheating and it's not really
Speaker 6: like doing it the right way.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's so overdetermined in the sense that there's
Speaker 1: so many different stories and narratives swirling around it. Some
Speaker 1: of it is just cultural inertia. That's part of why
Speaker 1: I was interested in the history of addiction is there
Speaker 1: is a lot of racist and sort of class oppressive
Speaker 1: stuff going on in the nineteen seventies when methodone was
Speaker 1: first introduced, and you know, because of that and because
Speaker 1: of stories about who was using substances, primarily heroin, back then,
Speaker 1: you know, methodone was overregulated to the gills in a
Speaker 1: way that it still is today. So you know, imagine
Speaker 1: in your mind right now, what is your image of
Speaker 1: a methadone clinic. It looks like a fortress. It's a
Speaker 1: place with barred windows, and people have to line up
Speaker 1: in the cold and the snow for hours sometimes. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until COVID that we started to get some take
Speaker 1: home doses. You know, that sort of oppression made its
Speaker 1: way into methanone. There's just one casualty of the constant
Speaker 1: war on people that was disguised as the war on
Speaker 1: drugs that just trickled down. That trickled down in a saboxone.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: Suboxone is only just recently liberalized so that every doctor
Speaker 1: can prescribe it. People should know that because like a
Speaker 1: lot of doctors don't even know that honestly. But this
Speaker 1: happened a little while.
Speaker 6: Ago, right, it was controlled, right, like you can only
Speaker 6: prescribe so much.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you.
Speaker 1: Had to get a special waiver, you had to go
Speaker 1: through a special course and go through this whole process.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: It was only a little while ago that that happened,
Speaker 1: and so few doctor went through the extra step of
Speaker 1: getting certified to do the suboxone. Even I it was
Speaker 1: just like taking an online course and checking a box.
Speaker 1: It's just we need much more massive uptake of it.
Speaker 1: It's been really suppressed that we're leaving so many lives
Speaker 1: on the table. You know, the opioid epidemic is not
Speaker 1: We're not bending the curve at all. It's horrifying. I
Speaker 1: talked to one researcher. Today, I talked to researchers who
Speaker 1: I went to med school and residency with and people
Speaker 1: who are in the research community, and they are burning out.
Speaker 1: I mean, they are really struggling because they're doing the research.
Speaker 1: You can pile up our journal articles that say suboxone
Speaker 1: saves lives. These the medicine saved lives, but it's just
Speaker 1: not happening, not because of a lack of medical research.
Speaker 1: It's because of the cultural stigma and again, like the
Speaker 1: internal stigma within the recovery community.
Speaker 7: I think it's really just deadly.
Speaker 3: Are their stats, Carl on the number of people on
Speaker 3: suboxone year over year. I'm just kind of curious because
Speaker 3: to your point, I don't know how many years ago,
Speaker 3: I'm terrible with time. It was this really fringe thing
Speaker 3: that I was starting to hear about, and now, you know,
Speaker 3: I think there's a whole lot more of it, and
Speaker 3: I'm curious. We may not be bending the curve that much,
Speaker 3: but I would have to assume that the uptake levels
Speaker 3: on that have to be going up somewhat substantially, or
Speaker 3: that just may be my own sense impression, which is
Speaker 3: why I'm asking about data.
Speaker 1: You know, I would love to get some data, put
Speaker 1: it in the show notes. Later I can look into that.
Speaker 1: But I do know in outline that you could double
Speaker 1: a tiny number and it's still.
Speaker 7: A tiny number.
Speaker 1: That's the issue, such a tiny fraction. Like if we
Speaker 1: you know, we're still at over one hundred thousand overdose
Speaker 1: deaths a year and the size of our addiction workforce
Speaker 1: is tiny, tiny, tiny, and our addiction workforce is primarily
Speaker 1: directed toward alcohol. You know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people with opio use problems.
Speaker 7: Going to rehab.
Speaker 1: So it's really I mean, that's really where the numbers are.
Speaker 1: That's why the tighter restrictions on subbox when prescribing were removed.
Speaker 1: But still, what we need is a cultural change. We
Speaker 1: need people to change the way they think about addiction
Speaker 1: and recovery and recognize that. You know, there's this sort
Speaker 1: of like pro recovery slogan sometimes people say to suggest
Speaker 1: that you can't just stop debts. There's a difference between
Speaker 1: stopping and death and saving life, which is true, but
Speaker 1: you also have to stop the deaths. If you don't
Speaker 1: stop the debts, you can't, Yeah, get the people in
Speaker 1: the room dead, people can't recover.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, that was really helpful for me, Carl. I
Speaker 4: probably told all three of you that I sat with
Speaker 4: Beth Macy on a panel about a year ago and
Speaker 4: she really hit this subject hard, harm reduction, harm reduction,
Speaker 4: harm reduction. It was actually the most I'd ever heard
Speaker 4: anybody talk about it. And I was still kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 4: but you're not on my side of it, right, you
Speaker 4: don't understand the consequences of someone like me who was
Speaker 4: really really ill with this picking up anything and using
Speaker 4: it again. And I didn't really get what she was saying,
Speaker 4: But I got it when you were talking, Carl, that
Speaker 4: this is the way to bring these people into where
Speaker 4: I'm sitting now in recovery. That there isn't a meeting
Speaker 4: they can sit in that's going to get them. And
Speaker 4: I'm just saying recovery because it's just the word that
Speaker 4: I use. But there isn't a meeting or a talking
Speaker 4: to or a therapist that's going to do the same
Speaker 4: job that a medication that makes them physically able to
Speaker 4: join in. Well, I've had several people in my family
Speaker 4: die from both alcohol and heroin, and so I feel
Speaker 4: like I have experience, but I didn't really understand that
Speaker 4: and this gives me a lot more compassion, So I
Speaker 4: really appreciate it. Holly, I know you want to talk
Speaker 4: about dry January.
Speaker 6: I want to talk about it just because everyone wants
Speaker 6: to talk about it. Like I personally have no strong
Speaker 6: feelings towards dry January.
Speaker 5: I can't remember if I used to or not.
Speaker 6: I think I used to be a little like tongue
Speaker 6: in cheek about it when it really really blew up,
Speaker 6: because it started about a decade.
Speaker 5: Ago in the UK.
Speaker 6: It was like the first many years that people did it,
Speaker 6: a few thousand people did it.
Speaker 5: And then you know, it's like now, you.
Speaker 6: Know, millions of people do it, to the point that
Speaker 6: they're already exhausted by it and now are moving on
Speaker 6: to damp January.
Speaker 5: That's dry January is too.
Speaker 6: You know, and so like we've already been through three
Speaker 6: cycles and we've swung back and then we're going so
Speaker 6: but I think, like for me this year, I've heard
Speaker 6: a number of people, most of my friends are you know,
Speaker 6: in some form of recovery, and so people I know
Speaker 6: talking about it, you know, and giving it like a
Speaker 6: little sight and I kind of am surprised by it
Speaker 6: by the number of like people I've heard disparage it
Speaker 6: this year, and like a year ago a calumnist that
Speaker 6: The Cut wrote an article that was like, don't get
Speaker 6: sober in January, and a lot of people get sober
Speaker 6: in January, a lot of people into recovery in January.
Speaker 6: And we have kind of like because we're so aware
Speaker 6: of the impact of diet culture in all the ways
Speaker 6: that like in hustle culture and productivity culture and workism
Speaker 6: and the ways that we're supposed to become new people
Speaker 6: in January first, and now we've rejected that. And now
Speaker 6: we don't want to become new people in January first.
Speaker 5: We just want to sleep.
Speaker 6: And I think we're missing the point, Like we're missing
Speaker 6: the point capitalism is going to capitalism, right, this really
Speaker 6: beautiful movement that I think is a wonderful idea that
Speaker 6: gives people a chance. Like there was Hello Sunday Morning.
Speaker 6: I don't know if that's even still in existence, but
Speaker 6: was this organization that allowed people in New Zealand or
Speaker 6: Australia to try three months or one month's since of
Speaker 6: not drinking.
Speaker 5: And this was you know, like a decade or fifteen
Speaker 5: years ago, and.
Speaker 6: People would say it was like a local thing and
Speaker 6: they signed up for it as like a break from alcohol.
Speaker 6: They'd commit to a break from alcohol and they would
Speaker 6: say I'm doing a Hello Sunday Morning or an HSN
Speaker 6: and beoble be like, oh got it. And so it
Speaker 6: was this really sweet way for people to not have
Speaker 6: to go through the complicated of deciding whether or not
Speaker 6: they're an alcoholic, you know, before cutting back their drinking,
Speaker 6: and getting recognition that this is an important thing and
Speaker 6: it's socially supported. And that is what Joy January is
Speaker 6: to me, is the sense of there's visibility, it's conspicuous,
Speaker 6: you're pledging to it. It's very very much like a
Speaker 6: thing your friend might do, not because she's an alcoholic
Speaker 6: or she's pregnant or whatever, but because she wants to
Speaker 6: take a break after the holidays. And so I think
Speaker 6: when you're looking at like specifically alcohol and the barrier
Speaker 6: to entry, like for treating alcoholics disorder or even just
Speaker 6: like on that spectrum, like I'm not talking severe, but
Speaker 6: just like addressing it, you have to go through a
Speaker 6: lot of hurdles because of the normalization and the idea
Speaker 6: that only people that don't like there's a lot of
Speaker 6: stuff that prevents people from examining whether or not, you know,
Speaker 6: alcohol is showing up wrong.
Speaker 5: And I think that this is.
Speaker 6: A really beautiful way for people to experience that without
Speaker 6: having to go through all of the mental gymnastics and
Speaker 6: the hurdles to actually enter some kind of recovery, you know.
Speaker 6: And so that said, yeah, of course it's become commodified.
Speaker 6: Like some woman just wrote this article. I couldn't even
Speaker 6: read it. It was like something about like how I'm
Speaker 6: the devil and dry January is the devil and something else.
Speaker 6: And there's a lot of like side eyed stuff. But
Speaker 6: the capitalism component of it and the fact that like
Speaker 6: not drinking or dry January.
Speaker 5: Or sober curiosity or these other like.
Speaker 6: Trends are somehow damaging and terrible, and I personally feel
Speaker 6: that needs to be set aside. And what we need
Speaker 6: to understand is that there's so few things that capitalism
Speaker 6: does write, and in this case, this is leveraging an
Speaker 6: opportunity for people to try something out they wouldn't otherwise.
Speaker 6: And I guarantee January is probably the month that the most.
Speaker 5: People get sober.
Speaker 6: It has to be, so I personally don't think there's
Speaker 6: anything wrong with it, And I think it's one of
Speaker 6: those places where I've chosen to not be upset about
Speaker 6: the commodification of recovery and sobriety or whatever that is.
Speaker 6: It's just let it be and let people do it.
Speaker 6: And that's my thoughts on Try January.
Speaker 4: That's a very generous way to look at it.
Speaker 5: I think. I don't know if I always looked at
Speaker 5: it this way.
Speaker 6: I think I was very ough, you know, when it
Speaker 6: really really took off and everyone was doing it, and
Speaker 6: like there was this feeling that like, oh, but I'm
Speaker 6: really in recovery. I really had a problem, and then
Speaker 6: people are just trying it on for fun and you know,
Speaker 6: and I think that there was that sentiment that I
Speaker 6: had around it or it's not real or whatever again
Speaker 6: like personal bias, like deep inside.
Speaker 5: That was my gut reaction to it. But I think
Speaker 5: it's great, you know.
Speaker 1: I think this connects really nicely to the story Eric
Speaker 1: that you had about the person who's putting.
Speaker 7: Marbles in the jar.
Speaker 1: I love that story. I'm going to remember it because
Speaker 1: it's about practice that person was practicing and they wanted
Speaker 1: credit for those days that they practiced. And I think
Speaker 1: when somebody is trying and they still experience a return
Speaker 1: to use or some other problem.
Speaker 7: They're still practicing.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that matters, is putting intention and attention
Speaker 1: into a process of change.
Speaker 7: And why would we put that down? You know?
Speaker 1: I think RYE January could be somebody's experienced practicing with
Speaker 1: drinking and they might not stick with it, and then
Speaker 1: they see that and they see the difficulty with bringing
Speaker 1: their actions in line with their intentions, and then they
Speaker 1: modify and they change, and then maybe it's only three
Speaker 1: years or five years later that plants a seed for
Speaker 1: some bigger change.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Carl, can I just say real quick you might
Speaker 6: know this better, but I think that the average time
Speaker 6: between identifying that you knowing you have something wrong and
Speaker 6: actually seeking treatment for it when it comes to I
Speaker 6: think it's alcohol, but it might be all addiction, is
Speaker 6: like ten years.
Speaker 5: Seven to ten years, Is that right?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: John Kelly, who directs the recovery research in suit at Harvard,
Speaker 1: he likes to say eight.
Speaker 7: But you're exactly right.
Speaker 1: It's actually from the time, if I'm remembering it right,
Speaker 1: from the time that somebody makes any attention to seek absidence.
Speaker 1: The bad news is there's many, many returns to you.
Speaker 1: So people can have problems along the way, but the
Speaker 1: good news is many many people recover. It just takes
Speaker 1: a while, and all of that is practice along the way, right,
Speaker 1: you know, if somebody wants to practice, we're all in
Speaker 1: little bubbles. We like to talk about recovery. Probably people
Speaker 1: on this podcast like to talk about recovery. They might
Speaker 1: have experience with it, but there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there who don't. And maybe that's their entry point.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's our entry point to practicing the change or
Speaker 1: looking at themselves.
Speaker 7: So why I put that down?
Speaker 3: I would agree. I mean, I think anything that gets
Speaker 3: people to examine their relationship to substances is a good thing, right.
Speaker 3: And for some people, they'll examine their relationship to it
Speaker 3: through dry January and they'll go, Okay, nothing to see here, right, Like,
Speaker 3: they'll move on right, and other people will start to
Speaker 3: see something, you know. I mean, I've heard stories of
Speaker 3: people say, oh, I took a month off drinking and
Speaker 3: I started to really see what drinking was doing in
Speaker 3: my life. Right. And again, you know your point, Carl.
Speaker 3: They may maybe a year down the road, three years
Speaker 3: down the road, but I only see a positive in
Speaker 3: things that encourage us to do that. And I also
Speaker 3: think when we start to say and truly accept like
Speaker 3: there's lots of paths to recovery, there's lots of ways
Speaker 3: to get better. If we really accept that, right, then
Speaker 3: we can become very encouraging of all of them. And
Speaker 3: we don't have to sort of, you know, to use
Speaker 3: your term Holly side eye these different things or take
Speaker 3: hot takes on things. Right, we can just go good,
Speaker 3: somebody's trying to get better. More power to you, you know, imagine, imagine.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I also think though, and I agree with everything you
Speaker 4: all said, almost reluctantly, because I really don't want to
Speaker 4: like driyja anyway. I really like I feel like it's
Speaker 4: such a like an amateurist thing, Like people are just
Speaker 4: trying out something like just to see if it makes
Speaker 4: them a little bit healthier. I think most people are
Speaker 4: probably trying to lose weight or get back in shape,
Speaker 4: and letting, you know, letting go of alcohol is part
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 5: Sure, but like, isn't that okay to have like vain reasons?
Speaker 4: It is? It is, I'm trying. I was listening to you, Holley,
Speaker 4: I'm like, I'm going to be more generous with this
Speaker 4: because this is really a good thing. I'm going to
Speaker 4: embrace it. But I was reading I don't know if
Speaker 4: you guys read this. TJ. Holmes and Amy Roback. They
Speaker 4: were Good Morning America like posts who Affair and now
Speaker 4: they have their own show.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But he was saying saying he's doing dry January and
Speaker 4: he was drinking eighteen drinks a day. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 4: come up like against like, whoa, this is a really
Speaker 4: big change from my eighteen drinks a day in dry January.
Speaker 4: And I know we have to wrap up, but I
Speaker 4: was just thinking, shouldn't there be some kind of support
Speaker 4: because then you feel like he's got to feel terrible
Speaker 4: right physically my experiences, it got worse before it got better,
Speaker 4: Like I felt like, oh my god, I need something
Speaker 4: for like the first thirty days, the first sixty days,
Speaker 4: like I need anything, Like I would have taken or
Speaker 4: used anything to get rid of the feeling of withdrawal,
Speaker 4: because I would imagine that the body or the brain
Speaker 4: wants something after it's used to having eighteen drinks a day,
Speaker 4: So is it wise when someone is drinking I would
Speaker 4: say that successively. I don't know if TJ. Holmes would
Speaker 4: but is it wise to embark upon an abstinence, an
Speaker 4: abrupt abstinence, or should people who were maybe drinking excessively
Speaker 4: look for support as they go through it, knowing someone
Speaker 4: that can inform them that's gonna get worse, but then
Speaker 4: it'll get better.
Speaker 1: Well, this is not medical advice, but uh, alcohol withdrawal
Speaker 1: can be dangerous.
Speaker 7: You know, it'll kill you.
Speaker 1: Not that it's extremely common, but it can be dangerous.
Speaker 1: So it is good for people who are worried about
Speaker 1: their health to seek out medical help, keeping into account
Speaker 1: that there are also problems with access. You know, people
Speaker 1: might have trouble accessing good which are all supported, or
Speaker 1: if you walk into your ear you might get treated
Speaker 1: like crap. Yeah, and so that people might get suck
Speaker 1: in a double bind there. And I also know that
Speaker 1: when I when I was trying to stop drinking as
Speaker 1: a young doctor, I kept on telling myself, ooh, I
Speaker 1: better not stop quickly, a better sload And so that
Speaker 1: turned into years upon years right, rationalizations, So it's very hard.
Speaker 1: I think in general it doesn't have to be medicine.
Speaker 1: It's good to get help looking at those kind of rationalizations,
Speaker 1: and you know, is this nonsense or do I actually
Speaker 1: need to be careful. My own experience was that I
Speaker 1: had plenty of experience with silly rationalizations.
Speaker 4: Eric.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean again I think yes, probably, you know,
Speaker 3: good medical advice says you get help. But again, I'm
Speaker 3: kind of back to who knows whether for I don't
Speaker 3: even remember the gentleman's name, the eighteen drinks a day,
Speaker 3: but he's actually due to dry January, He's now taking
Speaker 3: a look at something he may never have taken a
Speaker 3: look at before, right, Who knows where that will lead?
Speaker 3: And back to this idea of there's one thousand different
Speaker 3: roads into recovery. I mean, I just I'm in general
Speaker 3: and support of again, like I said, anything that gets
Speaker 3: people to take a look at their relationship with these
Speaker 3: chemicals is a positive. And yes, if you're drinking eighteen
Speaker 3: drinks a day for a long, long period of time,
Speaker 3: I'd suggest a little bit of medical help.
Speaker 4: I mean, I didn't even mean to laugh there. That's
Speaker 4: that's real. That's like, it just makes me laugh that
Speaker 4: that was the headline on my feed in the morning
Speaker 4: was d J. Holmes.
Speaker 6: He really was drinking eighteen every single day, thirty days,
Speaker 6: that's what he says.
Speaker 4: He says easily has eighteen drinks a day is what
Speaker 4: the headline says, and then he saved three thousand dollars already.
Speaker 4: This is whenever. This was on.
Speaker 3: January third.
Speaker 4: Does anyone have any last words, anything that you were
Speaker 4: inspired to say when someone else was talking that you
Speaker 4: didn't get to say, or just something you want to
Speaker 4: leave with the listeners.
Speaker 3: Well, I always wrap up discussions like this with an
Speaker 3: old twelve step phrase, which is keep coming back, right.
Speaker 3: And I don't mean it in necessarily keep coming back
Speaker 3: to twelve step programs, but I mean it in general
Speaker 3: when it has anything to do with addiction or substance use, overuse,
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call it. Like, I think the
Speaker 3: message is keep coming back, keep trying. I love the
Speaker 3: way Carl put it, keep practicing right, because recovery is available,
Speaker 3: but it rarely happens to us on the first or
Speaker 3: second or third try, right. It's something that happens through
Speaker 3: repeated effort to try. And so I would just say,
Speaker 3: you know, don't get discouraged and keep coming back. You know,
Speaker 3: there's lots of ways to get help. Keep looking for help,
Speaker 3: and there is a solution if you want one.
Speaker 1: Laura, I want to say, these are great questions. You
Speaker 1: said at the outset that you were feeling a little nervous,
Speaker 1: and you have no reason to. I think they're really
Speaker 1: wise in their directness. You're getting to the core of
Speaker 1: questions that a lot of people are walking around with
Speaker 1: and then feel really awkward to ask, like what exactly
Speaker 1: is relapse? How bad is it if I go have
Speaker 1: a relapse?
Speaker 7: Or what does it mean to be sober? What am
Speaker 7: I even going for?
Speaker 1: There's almost a sort of I don't know, it could
Speaker 1: be snobbishness in some circles, or maybe just the sort
Speaker 1: of toughness in others, but a hesitancy to explore these
Speaker 1: types of things. And I think it's really really useful
Speaker 1: to just look closely, because this is what life is
Speaker 1: made out of, you know, this is really what matters
Speaker 1: is how do I want the character of my lives
Speaker 1: to be? My many lives? I didn't even mean to
Speaker 1: say that plural. It's true. We're living new lives every
Speaker 1: single day. We have so many opportunities to reinvent it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I just really.
Speaker 1: Appreciate returning to these core core topics because in recovery
Speaker 1: communities and medical communities, we can get twisted up in
Speaker 1: knots about what is right and wrong, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: you know, at the end of the day, people are
Speaker 1: just trying to feel better, get better, do better, and
Speaker 1: this is all really special stuff.
Speaker 7: So I'm glad to be here with all of you.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you, Carl. That was very sweet, and
Speaker 4: I do I feel bolstered now. I appreciate that now.
Speaker 6: Holly, thank you for organizing all this. I think like
Speaker 6: the one thing that I took away from this, and
Speaker 6: I've been thinking about a lot lately.
Speaker 5: Is just how capable people are.
Speaker 6: And how smart they are about themselves, and how little
Speaker 6: consensus there really is about what's right. And it just
Speaker 6: totally depends on who you talk to and what their
Speaker 6: experiences and what their biases and what their opinions are.
Speaker 6: I mean, just sitting here in this group, I think
Speaker 6: that we take for granted that there is We believe
Speaker 6: that there exists some code and that if we just
Speaker 6: find it and read it and follow it, then we'll
Speaker 6: be fin like that there's an answer out there.
Speaker 5: And I think it's just so much messier than that.
Speaker 6: And I think a lot of us spend a lot
Speaker 6: of time looking around and making sure we're doing it right.
Speaker 6: And I think that it really just comes back down
Speaker 6: to that, you know what Eric said, right of just trying,
Speaker 6: it's just about trying, and we don't give enough credit
Speaker 6: to trying and just showing up.
Speaker 5: We complicate it.
Speaker 6: So I really enjoyed talking to all of you and
Speaker 6: hearing all of your different perspectives, and thanks for making
Speaker 6: this happen.
Speaker 4: And I'll just say really quickly at the end that
Speaker 4: I really appreciate this conversation. It was really nourishing for me.
Speaker 4: I'm going to take all of this and go out
Speaker 4: in the world with it and sound really smart, but
Speaker 4: also getting sober for me was the hardest thing I've
Speaker 4: ever done in my life. It was excruciating and humiliating,
Speaker 4: and I didn't want to and I didn't believe in
Speaker 4: any of the things I was asked to believe in,
Speaker 4: and I still don't believe in a lot of those things.
Speaker 4: And yet it's the best thing that I have ever
Speaker 4: done for myself. The life I lead today is because
Speaker 4: of what I did, because of that hard work. And
Speaker 4: to go back to the marbles and the jar and
Speaker 4: what Carl pointed out, practice makes a practice, you know,
Speaker 4: the more you practice, eventually you'll have a practice. That's
Speaker 4: what's happened to me. You know, faith without works is dead,
Speaker 4: but work without faith still works. For me. I've done
Speaker 4: this work and I've ended up with this life that
Speaker 4: I wouldn't trade it in right as of this moment
Speaker 4: for anything. I really enjoy it and I am thriving,
Speaker 4: and that's just something I never thought I would do
Speaker 4: at the beginning. I didn't think that was possible for me.
Speaker 4: So these types of the discussions are oxygen for me, truly,
Speaker 4: and I appreciate all of you, and Eric, I've taken
Speaker 4: over the conversation, but thank you for inviting us to
Speaker 4: have this discussion on your show.
Speaker 3: Seriously, Yes, yes, it's been a pleasure. I'm happy to
Speaker 3: talk to two of you who've been on the show before,
Speaker 3: and Holly, I'm so happy to have finally gotten a
Speaker 3: chance to have you on. And I think it was
Speaker 3: a great discussion. And the more often we all talk
Speaker 3: about these things, the better, So thank you all.
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