Speaker 1: I think no matter what Lexican you use around your addiction,
Speaker 1: whether you say that you're sober or clean, or alcohol
Speaker 1: free or teetotal or drug free, whatever you want to use,
Speaker 1: the only thing that matters is remembering the darkness, the
Speaker 1: place you found yourself, and never wanting to go back there.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to a life worth living. This podcast is about how
Speaker 1: other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how
Speaker 1: they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our
Speaker 1: guest on this episode is Catherine Gray, who is one
Speaker 1: of very few guests to ever be on the show
Speaker 1: three times. Maybe she'll be the first to be on
Speaker 1: four times. We don't know what the future holds. But
Speaker 1: Catherine Gray is a writer and author who lives in
Speaker 1: the UK. Her first book, which we interviewed her about,
Speaker 1: was The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, which is so
Speaker 1: great it became a best seller. And then today Eric
Speaker 1: and Catherine discussed her new book, Sunshine Warm, Sober, Unexpected,
Speaker 1: Sober Joy That Lasts. Hi, Catherine, Welcome to the show. Hi, alright,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I am so excited to have
Speaker 1: you back. We don't have a lot of three time guests,
Speaker 1: but I'm so happy to have you be one of them.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about your latest book, Sunshine Warm, Sober, Unexpected,
Speaker 1: Sober Joy That Lasts. But before we do that, we'll start,
Speaker 1: like we always do, with the parable, which you will
Speaker 1: get a third try at here, so don't mess it
Speaker 1: up this time. Um, you know how the parable goes.
Speaker 1: There's a grandmother is talking with her granddaughter and she says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and then
Speaker 1: there's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear and the granddaughter stops. She thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second. She looks up at her grandmother
Speaker 1: and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, well, I mean that has a daily residence.
Speaker 1: For me, I feel like inside me every day there's
Speaker 1: like this puppet show with a good and bad Wolford
Speaker 1: like punching each other like sock puppets, and for me
Speaker 1: it really boils down to so I have a very
Speaker 1: negatively biased brain, as most of us do. Study after
Speaker 1: study has shown that when bad things happen to us,
Speaker 1: we give it this profundity and significance in our brain,
Speaker 1: and when positive things happen to us, we just let
Speaker 1: it slide on by. It's like that famous quote about
Speaker 1: our brain being velcro for the bad things and tephlon
Speaker 1: for the good things. I can't remember who said it,
Speaker 1: and I apologize, but every single day I have to
Speaker 1: make sure I feed my good wolf with the good
Speaker 1: things that are happening in my life and just hang
Speaker 1: onto them so that they don't slide away and starve
Speaker 1: my bad wolf who wants to throw all of the
Speaker 1: negative things that happened that day up onto a big screen.
Speaker 1: So that's how I think about it. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: not going to talk a lot about the book you
Speaker 1: wrote before this one, but I did get something very
Speaker 1: valuable from that book about this very thing you're talking about,
Speaker 1: which is holding onto the good things and giving them
Speaker 1: a little bit more focus. On what I took from
Speaker 1: that book that after years of doing gratitude practices, I
Speaker 1: never really got until I saw the way you did
Speaker 1: it in that book is the specificity which I go
Speaker 1: into and think about the thing that occurred. I've only
Speaker 1: been doing it since I read that several days ago,
Speaker 1: but it just something in me sort of clicked. And
Speaker 1: just the last couple of days, as I've written up
Speaker 1: my gratitudes, they're just more alive with that specificity. Oh
Speaker 1: I love that. That makes me so happy. That means
Speaker 1: I've done my job. So I think when people do
Speaker 1: gratitude lists, and this is something that I do every day,
Speaker 1: as I said, to help my good wealth wouldn't And
Speaker 1: it's something that people tend to do, and they tend
Speaker 1: to say things like I'm grateful for my car, I'm
Speaker 1: grateful for i flat, I'm grateful for my dog, I'm
Speaker 1: grateful for my partner. That kind of thing. They go
Speaker 1: too big and these things don't change from day to day.
Speaker 1: So what I discovered, because I fell into this trap
Speaker 1: myself when I started doing gratitudes eight years ago, was
Speaker 1: it if you funnel down to the specificity I can't
Speaker 1: say that word, to the specifics of the gratitude, then
Speaker 1: that becomes so much more powerful, which is what you've discovered,
Speaker 1: which just makes me really happy. Yeah. Yeah, it really
Speaker 1: does make a difference. So let's talk about Sunshine, Warm
Speaker 1: and Sober. At the time of the writing of the book,
Speaker 1: you were eight years sober. I think, so, where does
Speaker 1: that track to where you are now? I'm still eight
Speaker 1: years sober, Okay, just I'm just a little way into it.
Speaker 1: So I'm like almost eight and a half years. I
Speaker 1: don't know whether you want me to go into this,
Speaker 1: but my first book was The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober,
Speaker 1: and I wrote that when I was four years sober,
Speaker 1: and I honestly thought that book was it. I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I've learned all the stuff I'm going to
Speaker 1: learn pretty much about sobriety and non drinking and my
Speaker 1: drinking days and recovery and addiction and all that. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously there'll be updates with the news. But honestly,
Speaker 1: I thought that evolvement had mostly been done in those
Speaker 1: first four years, which just now I'm sure you can
Speaker 1: probably relate, seems quite absurd. It just seems preposterous because
Speaker 1: I've done just as much learning in the last four
Speaker 1: years about how to be a sober adult. Because I
Speaker 1: think when I wrote wrote the first book, I was
Speaker 1: basically a sober teenager. I think you're like a newborn
Speaker 1: for the first year of sobriety, then you're a toddler,
Speaker 1: and then you're like an adolescent. So only now that
Speaker 1: I consider myself, what would be you know, a sober adult.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's what the second book is all about.
Speaker 1: It's sequel. You said a bunch of things in there
Speaker 1: that I could reflect upon, But I think there is
Speaker 1: a line, it's a mine that doesn't exist where we
Speaker 1: go from quote unquote being in recovery to just being
Speaker 1: a human being who goes through the same things that
Speaker 1: everybody in the world goes through. And I think at
Speaker 1: a certain point. That's what recovery starts to look like,
Speaker 1: is it just starts to be about living as a thoughtful, committed,
Speaker 1: good human being, which I think always takes effort, and
Speaker 1: there's always hopefully if you're doing it right, always learning, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think when you're in the first few years
Speaker 1: of recovery, sorry, i've got a puppy and he's got
Speaker 1: a bone, I'm just going to try and get it
Speaker 1: often because it's going to be very razy, a very
Speaker 1: playful mood, which is great timing. I think something that's
Speaker 1: also very true is that we tend to in about
Speaker 1: years of recovery, we set if we're anxious, or if
Speaker 1: we're excited, or if we feel any strong emotion, we
Speaker 1: sort of count that as being triggered. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: being triggered to drink was now. I don't think of
Speaker 1: those emotions in that way. It's just it's just a
Speaker 1: spectrum of emotions that everyone experiences. But I think of
Speaker 1: my addiction quite differently. I don't think of myself as
Speaker 1: you know, forever addicted. I think of it more in
Speaker 1: the neuroscientific way, which is that the addictive super highways
Speaker 1: fade over time, so just as I don't consider myself
Speaker 1: like still addicted to smoking, which I quit seven years ago,
Speaker 1: but if I really started smoking, I would become addicted
Speaker 1: to it again. Those two things coexist. So that's how
Speaker 1: I think about my former addiction. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the norm, but it served me that way of
Speaker 1: thinking about it. Yeah, and so much of what you
Speaker 1: write in this book is about the things are on
Speaker 1: a spectrum or there's lots of shades are gray, or
Speaker 1: there's no, uh, this or that. Answer shows up through
Speaker 1: so many different things that we could talk about as
Speaker 1: are as what we know about addiction, what we think
Speaker 1: addiction is how we recover from addiction. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, there is that one fairly stark bright line
Speaker 1: that says, for most of us are experiences. If we
Speaker 1: drink or use again, we are going to end up
Speaker 1: in trouble again. Absolutely, And I think that's why a
Speaker 1: lot of people do feel safer. The majority of people
Speaker 1: feel safer defining themselves as an addict or alcoholic for
Speaker 1: the rest of their lives because they see that, as
Speaker 1: you know, the daily reminder that they shouldn't drink or
Speaker 1: use because they will become readdicted, and the neuroscience supports
Speaker 1: that as well, because it doesn't matter how you know,
Speaker 1: I haven't drank for eight years, but those well worn
Speaker 1: pathways in my brain, even though they're cobwebbed and disused,
Speaker 1: they're still there, and they're almost like an overgrown highway,
Speaker 1: you know. It's not just a little country lane, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a proper prominent like sixty six. So that's
Speaker 1: not to be tested. In my opinion, I think once
Speaker 1: you've become addicted to something, if you restart, you will
Speaker 1: more than likely become addicted again. Why take the risk? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: what's interesting is I was somewhere around where you are
Speaker 1: in sobriety, probably a little bit less. It might have
Speaker 1: been seven years my first time around, and I drank again.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Oh my god. Yeah. I think I've been
Speaker 1: back sober about fourteen years. Yeah, I think it'll be
Speaker 1: fifteen years in February. But yeah, it was around eight years, um,
Speaker 1: seven to eight that I went back out. And it's
Speaker 1: really it's really interesting because I did a lot of
Speaker 1: the healing that you are describing and talk about in
Speaker 1: the book, and yet I still drank again. And like
Speaker 1: you said, it's obviously I'm on a podcast where I
Speaker 1: talk about my recovery journey again, so we know how
Speaker 1: it turned out, right, it didn't. It didn't work out
Speaker 1: going back out. I thought I could handle it, and
Speaker 1: I didn't. I couldn't. Yeah, so my dad, he's unfortunately
Speaker 1: no longer with us, but he went back out eight
Speaker 1: years as well, and again that was short lived, and
Speaker 1: then he came back and did twenty three years. So
Speaker 1: maybe there's some sort of seven year rich or something
Speaker 1: when it comes to recovery. But yeah, I mean, you're
Speaker 1: never immune, are you. And if the book goes into
Speaker 1: these stats which are really fascinating, So once you've done
Speaker 1: one year of sobriety, you've got sixty six percent chance
Speaker 1: of sustaining it. Once you've gone two years, oh no, sorry,
Speaker 1: it's thirty six percent after one year. After two years
Speaker 1: it's sixty six percent. After three years of sustained sobriety,
Speaker 1: it's six percent. But that's not a hundred percent. There's
Speaker 1: still that fourteen percent full to rate, which means that
Speaker 1: you can always fall down the rabbit hole again. So
Speaker 1: I think for me, it's almost the two things living
Speaker 1: together at once coexisting that I don't want to it
Speaker 1: defined by my former addiction, but I also know it's
Speaker 1: still there, if that makes sense, and the possibility for
Speaker 1: it to resurface is always there. Yep, I agree, it's
Speaker 1: that way, and that's why I was saying. It's like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of gray area, and we'll get into
Speaker 1: some of these. How different is an alcoholic from a
Speaker 1: normal person? Is that even the right word to use?
Speaker 1: You know? How do we define ourselves? Which I think
Speaker 1: there's room for a lot more nuance, except up to
Speaker 1: the point of, at least in my case, the moderation line.
Speaker 1: Because you said in the book, you know, the question
Speaker 1: that most people have at some point is maybe I
Speaker 1: can moderate now? And you said, yeah, you'd wager that
Speaker 1: most of slips or relapses, whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 1: are down to them maybe it will be different thing,
Speaker 1: And that was absolutely what mine was, and mine used
Speaker 1: my healing against me. It's very fascinating because it it
Speaker 1: look you did all these years in a you worked
Speaker 1: the steps a bunch of times, You've been to therapy,
Speaker 1: you you did all this inner child childhood repair work.
Speaker 1: You've been to counsel, You've done all these things. You're
Speaker 1: a healthy, reasonable human being now and and you were
Speaker 1: just young at that age, and you know you were
Speaker 1: doing heroin, which of course is a bad idea, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do that, But a couple of drinks aren't going
Speaker 1: to be a problem. You know, you make good decisions
Speaker 1: and other areas of life. And uh, it didn't, like
Speaker 1: I said, didn't turn out. What's interesting, it wasn't an
Speaker 1: immediate disaster. You know, in a a we were always
Speaker 1: so strident, like if I go back out, I'll be
Speaker 1: a prostitute and selling my body for drugs in the
Speaker 1: next eight minutes, like we're so dramatic about it. And
Speaker 1: that was not my case at all. I started off
Speaker 1: and I had a drink and then nothing bad happened.
Speaker 1: I had a couple more, nothing bad happened. But over
Speaker 1: a period of years it just slid back into the
Speaker 1: same abyss. Yeah, it always does. And I've seen it
Speaker 1: was with all of my friends pretty much that have
Speaker 1: gone back out, that maybe it will be different this time,
Speaker 1: voices one. They've always found the same. There's a few
Speaker 1: months or six months or even a year of where
Speaker 1: it looks like it's going to work out, and then
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It just slides back into that darkness, like
Speaker 1: you said. Yeah, I just think once you've been to
Speaker 1: that dark place, you're always going to be taken back
Speaker 1: to it if you pick up again. So I mean,
Speaker 1: for me, it's not something that I in any way
Speaker 1: nurse a notion of wanting or being able to do again,
Speaker 1: any more than I would nurse the notion that I
Speaker 1: can outrun lions. You know, it's a bad idea for me.
Speaker 1: So yeah, But then people when when I explained to
Speaker 1: them that I no longer call myself an alcoholic, I've
Speaker 1: stopped defining myself that way when I was about four
Speaker 1: or five years sober. I did it secretly at first,
Speaker 1: because I was very scared of offloading the word. I've
Speaker 1: been taught that if you offload the word added or alcoholic,
Speaker 1: then you may as well have pressed a button on
Speaker 1: the relapse machine. You know you're you're heading for a relapse,
Speaker 1: you're crazing for a bruising. So I did it secretly
Speaker 1: at first, and then nothing happened, and I just started
Speaker 1: feeling actually safer in my sobriety. But then that's my story.
Speaker 1: That's not the right way for everyone. It certainly isn't
Speaker 1: If if one of the words makes them feel safe,
Speaker 1: they should keep it. But I think no matter what
Speaker 1: Lexican you use around your addiction, whether you say that
Speaker 1: you're sober or clean, or alcohol free or teetotal or
Speaker 1: drug free, whatever you want to use, and it's alcoholic,
Speaker 1: the only thing that matters is remembering the darkness, the
Speaker 1: place you found yourself and never wanting to go back there. Yep,
Speaker 1: I want to hit a bunch of points in there.
Speaker 1: But let's circle back fairly early on in the book
Speaker 1: where you talk about the definition of addiction, and you've
Speaker 1: got some different experts who weigh in throughout the book
Speaker 1: who are awesome, but I wanted to talk about you know,
Speaker 1: what do we think addiction is? If even that's the
Speaker 1: right word to use anymore? Well, I mean I absolutely
Speaker 1: use the word addiction, but I just use it as
Speaker 1: more of an experience than an identity, So the person
Speaker 1: with an addiction rather than a kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But for me, the definition of it would be you
Speaker 1: start out intending to consume or do a thing, and
Speaker 1: then the reality is different. So say, for instance, if
Speaker 1: I sit down in front of a cheesecake intending to
Speaker 1: eat one, slice and then eat three sizes of it.
Speaker 1: Then that's a bit of a cheesecake problem because I
Speaker 1: never go on a night out intending to drink one
Speaker 1: soft drink and then have eight, which is what I
Speaker 1: used to do when I was drinking. So it is
Speaker 1: that different no matter whether it's spending or gambling or
Speaker 1: what have you. It's the difference between what you intend
Speaker 1: to do and what you actually do. But a lot
Speaker 1: of my experts pointed out that the most recent political
Speaker 1: understanding of it is that it's more of a not
Speaker 1: a learning disorder, because that's outdated now, but it's more
Speaker 1: of a disordered learning. So it's your brain learning that
Speaker 1: this thing helps, whether it's a drug or a drink
Speaker 1: or a shopping website, you know, this thing soothed you,
Speaker 1: and so it comes back to it again and again
Speaker 1: and again and again. So it's more that your brain
Speaker 1: has just learned that something that is bad for you
Speaker 1: is good for you, and so it repeats it, right, right.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that, you know, the learning disorder theory came
Speaker 1: up and disappeared fairly quickly, and I think the problem
Speaker 1: might be with that that term, but I do think
Speaker 1: it points to yeah, your brain learns something really really
Speaker 1: well and then got stuck on that setting exactly. Just
Speaker 1: like your brain classifies food and water and shelter as
Speaker 1: essential for survival, once you're addicted to something, it classifies
Speaker 1: that thing as essential for survival too, So you really
Speaker 1: do think that you need that thing in order to live,
Speaker 1: which is why it's so hard to overcome. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: when you put it in those terms, I just had
Speaker 1: that visceral moment of that is exactly what it feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're trying to get over an addiction
Speaker 1: and you don't have that substance, it does feel like
Speaker 1: you don't have something that is essential to life. And
Speaker 1: it's why I often talk about like one of the
Speaker 1: things that keeps me sober is never wanting to be
Speaker 1: in the place again where on one part of my
Speaker 1: brain knows very clearly that to consume this substance will
Speaker 1: be the end of me, so I will not survive
Speaker 1: if I do it, and the other part of my
Speaker 1: brain is screaming, you're not going to survive if you
Speaker 1: don't do it, and that internal tension is just a nightmare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about, and neuroscientists would
Speaker 1: probably say, although this is vastly oversimplified, that that is
Speaker 1: a fight in your brain between you're amigdala and your
Speaker 1: prefrontal cortex, which is basically the child and the adult
Speaker 1: of your brain. If you're going to boil it down
Speaker 1: really simply because it's your amigdala, that's generally where the
Speaker 1: seat of addiction is, and it really believes that the
Speaker 1: drink is like oxygen. I mean that's how I felt.
Speaker 1: I really did feel that way, and so did you.
Speaker 1: And but it's very difficult to explain this to people
Speaker 1: who haven't experienced it themselves. Yeah, yeah, and then it
Speaker 1: may be amigdala to preferntal cortex, but it's almost for
Speaker 1: some of us, particularly if we've tried to get sober
Speaker 1: a bunch and haven't been able to, it's like the
Speaker 1: fear of drinking is so strong too. It's just like
Speaker 1: these two terrors are like trying to outbid each other.
Speaker 1: So when we talk about addiction, the other thing that
Speaker 1: I think is a more modern understanding is that there
Speaker 1: isn't like some line where it's like, well, up to
Speaker 1: this point, you do not have an addiction, and then
Speaker 1: the minute you go past this, you suddenly do have
Speaker 1: an addiction that there's a lot more um gray area
Speaker 1: or scale on this. Some people would say, we're all
Speaker 1: addicts to something in some way. How do you think
Speaker 1: about that now? Yeah, I mean I think of addiction
Speaker 1: as a spectrum, And even though I was a seven
Speaker 1: or eight, or maybe even a nine at my worst,
Speaker 1: I'm actually seeing more and more that people are quitting
Speaker 1: when they're lower down in the spectrum, when they're five
Speaker 1: or six, because we're living in a world that's much more. Sorry,
Speaker 1: my puffic keeps taking presents from under the tree and
Speaker 1: trying to rip them off. We should put him on
Speaker 1: the video find Honestly, it's been really good all day
Speaker 1: and that just now it's just become an absolute terror. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I've just taken everything away from him that he can
Speaker 1: do harm too, so that will be fine. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you a funny story about dogs real quick. To this note.
Speaker 1: Jinny and I my partner, we've got this program called
Speaker 1: Spiritual Habits. There's a second version of it that we lead,
Speaker 1: and at the beginning of every session we do a
Speaker 1: guided meditation. Our dogs have decided like that at that moment,
Speaker 1: they're going to go to their worst behavior. So like
Speaker 1: I'm guiding the meditation, and inevitably one of them is
Speaker 1: like it in behind me, or I'm like what are you?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? You don't even ever do this normally.
Speaker 1: Like it's just it's just unbelievable. It's like they can
Speaker 1: sense it. I mean, he literally just got his metal
Speaker 1: color dog tag off his collar somehow and was trying
Speaker 1: to eat it while I was trying to answer a
Speaker 1: question about neuroscience. So it's just like using chicken to
Speaker 1: Oh no, he's destroying his bed. We're just going to
Speaker 1: ignore him. Yeah, make sense that you're doing something important.
Speaker 1: I think, just like children, and that's when they act up.
Speaker 1: I totally lost the thread of what we were talking about.
Speaker 1: What was we were talking about things being on a spectrum,
Speaker 1: and you were seeing people who are lower down, like
Speaker 1: a five are starting to quit. Definitely, yeah, because I
Speaker 1: mean I think it's probably the same in the States
Speaker 1: that here in the UK. Everyone is so much more
Speaker 1: sober positive And if you're at a party now and
Speaker 1: you say that you're not drinking, you don't get heckled
Speaker 1: like you used to, which is just amazing. Things are
Speaker 1: beginning to shift, and I just meet sober people all
Speaker 1: over the place now, like it used to be that
Speaker 1: you couldn't find them unless you went to a meeting,
Speaker 1: and now I'll bump into them at my coworking space
Speaker 1: or at yoga or whatever. And it just feels like
Speaker 1: so many people don't drink now, not that there's a
Speaker 1: right way and a wrong way, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: believe that. I think it's nuanced and people should do
Speaker 1: what works for them. But yeah, it's definitely a spectrum.
Speaker 1: It's not a black and white thing as we've been
Speaker 1: led to believe. You were the first person I heard
Speaker 1: this from, and I think it's such an important idea,
Speaker 1: Which is, before this idea became more known, you were
Speaker 1: always looking like, am I an alcoholic? Let me let
Speaker 1: me look at the numbers. If I am, then okay,
Speaker 1: I have a problem and I should probably work on quitting.
Speaker 1: But if I'm not, no big deal, right, And at
Speaker 1: least again, you were the first person I heard put
Speaker 1: forth this idea, like, if your life is better without drinking,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's as simple as that. You don't have
Speaker 1: to get into this. Am I an alcoholic? How bad?
Speaker 1: Am I? Have I hit bottom all these other questions,
Speaker 1: it's just would my life be better if this wasn't
Speaker 1: in it? Absolutely? And I think. I mean, I spent
Speaker 1: so many lonely nights of the soul googling am I
Speaker 1: an alcoholic? And doing quizzes and fudging my answers, And
Speaker 1: you know, I did that for years before I actually
Speaker 1: quit drinking. And it was only once I was convinced
Speaker 1: that I was that I quit drinking. And that's the
Speaker 1: other thing that's a problematic about the black and white,
Speaker 1: you know, normally versus alcoholic dialogue, is that sometimes people
Speaker 1: think that they need to be really bad in order
Speaker 1: to quit. It would be a bit like if we
Speaker 1: said to smokers, just no, don't quit until you you're
Speaker 1: smoking forty your day. Okay, until then you're a normal smoker,
Speaker 1: but then you've tipped over into smokeoholic and you should quit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's kind of how we approach alcohol. And it's just weird.
Speaker 1: You know. People are like, if you've still got a job,
Speaker 1: if you're not drinking in the morning, if you're not
Speaker 1: drinking spirits, then you're fine and you can carry on drinking.
Speaker 1: You just need to wait until everything is slipping out
Speaker 1: of your grass and you know you're about to end
Speaker 1: up on the streets. That's when you quit. You know.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't make any sense to me. But thankfully
Speaker 1: that is really beginning to shift and change, and it's
Speaker 1: needed to for a really long time. I agree. I
Speaker 1: think it has needed to change, you know, And I
Speaker 1: think it it comes back to this question then, of
Speaker 1: And I get this from clients a lot, right, which
Speaker 1: is they've got a bad habit, which is the way
Speaker 1: we might refer to it. I've got a bad habit.
Speaker 1: I'm eating emotionally, I'm procrastinating, i am spending money in
Speaker 1: a bad way. I am I am doing these things.
Speaker 1: And the question is always, well, is it an addiction
Speaker 1: or not? And I'm sort of less concerned with that
Speaker 1: because again, I don't think you can say, well, yep,
Speaker 1: it is, you are now officially an addict. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: you're you're not happy with it. It's not serving you
Speaker 1: in your life of causing you distress. That's right, And
Speaker 1: the way that we're going to deal with it is
Speaker 1: going to be very similar, whether we call it an
Speaker 1: addiction or whether we call it a bad habit, or
Speaker 1: whatever we want to call it. Some people are very
Speaker 1: quick to call it an addiction. Other people don't want
Speaker 1: to hear that word. Again, it's describing behaviors on a spectrum,
Speaker 1: and you're enough on the spectrum that this is problematic
Speaker 1: for you. Whatever we want to call it. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And like you said earlier, the am I addicted to it?
Speaker 1: Is the wrong question. Really, the right question is would
Speaker 1: my life be better without it if I stop this
Speaker 1: behavior or this compulsion or this consumption of this substance.
Speaker 1: That is the question. And so it doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: if you're addicted to it or dependent on it, or
Speaker 1: whatever language you want to use. It's about whether it's
Speaker 1: lighting your life. And if you are coming to the
Speaker 1: w where you're even asking that question, then the answer
Speaker 1: is yes, it is. It is light in your life,
Speaker 1: because why else would you be researching that. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know people who are who easily moderate a substance or
Speaker 1: shopping or gambling whatever, they don't sit there at three
Speaker 1: am in the blue light of the laptop googling. They
Speaker 1: just don't. So just labels aren't necessary in order to
Speaker 1: tackle the real problem. That's that would be the core
Speaker 1: message I would want to leave people with but they're
Speaker 1: not wrong either. You know, it's whatever helps you. You
Speaker 1: talked about this in the book about this idea of
Speaker 1: you know, do we use those terms alcoholic addict? And
Speaker 1: you know you described how you've chosen to not use
Speaker 1: that term. I don't think about it very much. I
Speaker 1: would say, yeah, I am an addict or an alcoholic
Speaker 1: is the word I would use, but only because I
Speaker 1: don't think about it very much. And I love you quoted.
Speaker 1: I think it was tempest Recovery who says addiction and
Speaker 1: is an EXPERI orien's not an identity, and that that totally.
Speaker 1: I was like, yes, that's the word, and I was
Speaker 1: looking for and I don't really go to a A anymore.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that sort of pushed me out
Speaker 1: of A was what you talk about here. Wasn't that
Speaker 1: word defining myself as an alcoholic? The word? I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: it doesn't The word doesn't mean anything to me. But
Speaker 1: what it was And you talk about this in several
Speaker 1: different ways in the book, talking about people describing people
Speaker 1: outside the room as normalis you talk about describing us
Speaker 1: as having an addictive personality. You talk about describing ourselves
Speaker 1: as like well, I'm just an addict, so that's why
Speaker 1: I do that. What eventually got to me was like
Speaker 1: I just went, I don't think I'm that different than
Speaker 1: the rest of the world, except I cannot moderate drinking. Okay,
Speaker 1: so in that way, that's an experience. But I just
Speaker 1: got so tired of seeing myself as defined by the
Speaker 1: tropes of what an addict is. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: couldn't identify with that more, as you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm definitely of the school of thought where I think
Speaker 1: most people are addicted to something. It's just that the
Speaker 1: experience of being addicted to alcohol and other drugs, because
Speaker 1: we say alcohol and drugs, but alcohol is a drug,
Speaker 1: is one that can savage your life and become a
Speaker 1: very visible and humiliating experience once you really get dependent
Speaker 1: on it. So and other addictions like phone addiction, work addiction,
Speaker 1: they're very socially supported, you know, making money addictions is
Speaker 1: that what our addiction, you know, just that more and
Speaker 1: more more addiction that is one hundred percent encouraged by
Speaker 1: our capitalist societies. And you know, different addictions. They can
Speaker 1: still have those that detrimental effect on you, but they're
Speaker 1: just socially endorsed or reviled. So yeah, it's something that
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be defined by for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life either. But everyone's individual and they see
Speaker 1: it differently. Yep. It's so interesting talking about that, like
Speaker 1: what is socially acceptable what is not? You know, I
Speaker 1: got sober that second time, and the first time I
Speaker 1: was a homeless heroin addict who was looking at going
Speaker 1: to jail for a long time. The second time, I
Speaker 1: was a drinker who smoked marijuana, who also had the
Speaker 1: best job he'd ever had, was driving a very very
Speaker 1: nice car, living in a beautiful part of town, in
Speaker 1: a nice house. Inside, I was just the same. It's
Speaker 1: just that alcohol was legal and heroin was not. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was that basic. Otherwise, there was no difference in
Speaker 1: how sick I was, and I just didn't have to
Speaker 1: do the things as an alcoholic that I had to
Speaker 1: do to get heroin, absolutely, because I could walk through
Speaker 1: any store that I drove by, and I could walk
Speaker 1: in and get my drug at a very affordable, reasonable price.
Speaker 1: And so it does speak to that idea of the
Speaker 1: way we define the substance has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with it. I also do think that drugs are a
Speaker 1: little bit different than say, gambling or phone or sex
Speaker 1: addiction or and the way they're different is both types
Speaker 1: of addictions change the brain by what your brain is
Speaker 1: learning and by the neurochemicals that you're generating. They both
Speaker 1: do that, but drugs and alcohol, in addition to the
Speaker 1: way that sort of happens in the mechanism of addiction,
Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol actually then are chemically on top of
Speaker 1: that changing the brain even more because that's what they are,
Speaker 1: so their brain changing chemicals, right, So it's almost like
Speaker 1: you've got the double dose of it in that case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for pointing that out. That is an important distinction,
Speaker 1: and that's why those types of addictions could be all
Speaker 1: the more powerful and also destructive. Um, what you just
Speaker 1: said about the heroin addiction versus the alcohol dependence, I
Speaker 1: bet the second time around, when you got sober, you
Speaker 1: encountered more resistance to your getting sober than you did
Speaker 1: the first time around, because you know, your life was
Speaker 1: so great and you were nailing everything and killing it
Speaker 1: at life. And you know that was very much my
Speaker 1: experience as well when I came out and said, you know, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm an alcohol it because I definitely embraced that word
Speaker 1: at first, and I need to quit drinking. I nobody
Speaker 1: apart from a few members of my family and my
Speaker 1: best friend who I had lived with, was like a
Speaker 1: great decision. Whils with that, I got a widespread reaction
Speaker 1: of you're not that bad, just you know, just yeah, fine,
Speaker 1: take a break, but just do it for a month
Speaker 1: or so, or you know, maybe six months at most. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, you're doing really well at life. It's just
Speaker 1: it's that relationship that's gotten you down, or it's just
Speaker 1: your a bit depassity, you're drinking more than usual, And
Speaker 1: it's just such a strange social thing because you're doing
Speaker 1: this thing that is one of positive lifestyle choice, and
Speaker 1: yet people resist it. Yeah, they don't want to lose
Speaker 1: that drinking body. So it's legal, and it's socially celebrated
Speaker 1: and championed, and we're encouraged to grow up to be drinkers.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think in that way it is different
Speaker 1: to other drugs totally. And I think some of it
Speaker 1: depends where you live, in the culture that you're in.
Speaker 1: And but I mean, I have I've had a couple
Speaker 1: of clients who are in that boat where It's like
Speaker 1: everybody around them is just like, you're fine, what are
Speaker 1: you making such a big deal out of? And I
Speaker 1: mean that I just that's so hard. I mean even
Speaker 1: at least, you know, when I got sober the second time,
Speaker 1: even though on the outside things looked good, the people
Speaker 1: who were closest enough to me were like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good idea, Like I mean, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I was a disaster area. I just on the outside
Speaker 1: was holding it together. The resistance the second time was
Speaker 1: internal because the first time I had just so been,
Speaker 1: so been beaten up by drugs and alcohol. The second
Speaker 1: time I had but not as much, And so I
Speaker 1: had to keep saying to myself, like do I really
Speaker 1: need to go any further with this? Like do you
Speaker 1: really need to ride the elevator down another floor? Do
Speaker 1: you need to get in a car accident with your
Speaker 1: son in the car because you've been drinking? Like is
Speaker 1: that what this really is going to take? That's the
Speaker 1: conversation I'd have with myself where I'd be like, Okay, no,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't. But it was a little bit harder.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting that second sobriety, and so many people
Speaker 1: have a second sobriety. I mean for me, it was relationships.
Speaker 1: As you know, I realized three how I can't remember
Speaker 1: how long it wasn't sobriety, but I realized that I
Speaker 1: was well and truly addicted to love and relationships and
Speaker 1: had to give those up for a year in order
Speaker 1: to recalibrate. But yeah, a lot of people do of
Speaker 1: that kind of second sobriety, where they realized there's another
Speaker 1: addiction line beneath their priory addiction. That secondary addiction of
Speaker 1: love or sex. For me was part of what dragged
Speaker 1: me back out into active drinking addiction again, is because
Speaker 1: that addiction was running enough of my life that the
Speaker 1: core focus of a big part of what recovery is,
Speaker 1: and we may get to this if we have time,
Speaker 1: is about, you know, getting outside of yourself and caring
Speaker 1: about other people and having their well being in mind.
Speaker 1: That had receded from my life, and all I was
Speaker 1: interested in was me, me, me, me again and that
Speaker 1: was a big part I think of what was behind
Speaker 1: me going back out. Yeah, that makes sense. So we're
Speaker 1: going to take a brief detour here to talk about
Speaker 1: I know you must do this on purpose in your
Speaker 1: books because it's funny, but you come up with all
Speaker 1: these different ways of describing being drunk. I don't know
Speaker 1: if the English just are better at this, they just
Speaker 1: have more descriptive words. Whether you're searching them out, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but but I love reading. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: give a couple of them. One of them, you're describing
Speaker 1: being drunk, and you said I'm truly bat faced, which
Speaker 1: I don't even fully I don't even fully understand. Clattered, spangled,
Speaker 1: lashed blitz. Yeah, there's another one says entices everyone to
Speaker 1: get their kit off and toast their tits. I think
Speaker 1: there's mostly a British thing. We have so many different
Speaker 1: words for getting drunk because it is basically a national hobby.
Speaker 1: It's like the Eskimos who have so many words for
Speaker 1: ice kind of thing they or the Irish have, you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen different words for rain. Yeah, that's why we have
Speaker 1: so many of them, because we get drunk so often.
Speaker 1: So I think that that can explode it. I think
Speaker 1: if you asked any British person that'll be able to
Speaker 1: rattle off at least fifteen different words for drunk. I
Speaker 1: think the US used to be better at it because
Speaker 1: if you read the A A big book, which was
Speaker 1: written back in the late thirties, there's some great ones
Speaker 1: in there, like you know, Boiled as an owl. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, there's some good ones in there. I don't
Speaker 1: remember them all, but now I think America as a whole,
Speaker 1: we're just less literate, so we are words have just
Speaker 1: gotten to be less fun. But I truly enjoyed that
Speaker 1: throughout the book. I just kept looking for it. We've
Speaker 1: hit on this a little bit. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: addictive personality and the corral it to it. In your book.
Speaker 1: You've got two sections and I'm just going to try
Speaker 1: time together. You asked the experts, can you have an
Speaker 1: addictive personality? And then you also talked about this, you
Speaker 1: know narrative that some people have like well I'm just
Speaker 1: an addict, you know, like as they're binging on sugar
Speaker 1: or coffee or cigarettes, Well, I'm just an addict. So
Speaker 1: is there an addictive personality? And if we have it,
Speaker 1: are we more likely to become addicted? Well? I asked
Speaker 1: four experts, and I specifically and deliberately chose experts with
Speaker 1: very different ways of thinking from the very traditional a
Speaker 1: a way of thinking right across to the more radical
Speaker 1: way of thinking, the more modern ways of thinking. And
Speaker 1: it was so interesting because three of the four said, no,
Speaker 1: there is no such thing as an addictive personality. What
Speaker 1: you can have is a predisposition to addiction, and these
Speaker 1: are things like anxiety, being somebody who's anxious, or being
Speaker 1: somebody who's introverted. But then the very opposite is also true,
Speaker 1: because people who are extroverted or more prone to be
Speaker 1: impulsive and spontaneous are also more likely to be addicted.
Speaker 1: To This idea of this singular addictive personality that a
Speaker 1: person can have is just not true. It's not backed up,
Speaker 1: and most experts would say that it's not a thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna it's not true because that's that's two
Speaker 1: black and white. But most most experts, I think, would
Speaker 1: agree that it's there's no evidence for it. What you
Speaker 1: do have is certain characteristics in your personality that mean
Speaker 1: that you're predisposed, just like genetics or traumatic childhood predisposed
Speaker 1: you to addiction. And the other thing is sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: literally eating cotton wool. I hope it's all alive at
Speaker 1: the end of the sea. Trying to kill himself through
Speaker 1: various means um no anyway. So, and the once an addict,
Speaker 1: always an addict something that I hear so much and
Speaker 1: it just makes me feel really sad. This this kind
Speaker 1: of I'm just an addict narrative that people tend to internalize,
Speaker 1: and therefore I think that they're just going to get
Speaker 1: addicted to everything because I once got very addicted to something.
Speaker 1: It's just not the case. I mean, for a start,
Speaker 1: if you've overcome a primary addiction, no matter what it was, too,
Speaker 1: you have beaten an addiction. Yeah, you may not have
Speaker 1: beaten it forever, you may go back, but you still
Speaker 1: have that toolbox that you use to beat that addiction,
Speaker 1: you know, whether you've been sober for four years or
Speaker 1: forty years. So it's something that I just don't really
Speaker 1: believe in. I think that once an addict, always an
Speaker 1: addict is quite a destructive way to think of it.
Speaker 1: I think all of us are paring to addiction, and
Speaker 1: all of us could fall into an addiction. So that's
Speaker 1: more the way that I think of it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, when we get sober from
Speaker 1: an addiction, there does appear to be more likelihood of
Speaker 1: falling into another one. And I don't think that's so
Speaker 1: much underlying personality so much as as as you said,
Speaker 1: it is a series of risk factors that have added
Speaker 1: up to addiction. And we're still learning how to live
Speaker 1: without relying on some external thing to make us feel happy.
Speaker 1: But over time, I think that can change. It's funny
Speaker 1: I've said this before. I answered that I was an
Speaker 1: impulsive person on personality tests up until a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, and that is not the way any sort
Speaker 1: of description of me over the are part of the
Speaker 1: last twenty five years would be, except for, yeah, I
Speaker 1: did go back out and drink for a while, but
Speaker 1: I'm not an impulsive, rash person. And yet I had
Speaker 1: that I'm an addict, Thus I must be impulsive that
Speaker 1: I continued to answer those things that way. And I
Speaker 1: know you're a fan of Dr Rick Hanson. You've quoted
Speaker 1: him in a lot of books. And I was talking
Speaker 1: with him recently and he said something that just I
Speaker 1: was like, Yes, that's exactly it, although I think his
Speaker 1: his measurement of time is off. He said, everybody's self
Speaker 1: conception is at least six months out of date, and
Speaker 1: I was like, that is brilliant, and for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, it's way longer than that. It could be
Speaker 1: that for people who were addicted, you know, have an
Speaker 1: addiction and they've been sober ten or fifteen years, that
Speaker 1: personality there, their self conception may still be stuck on
Speaker 1: some really defining things that aren't true anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: in a a there's people you say this all the
Speaker 1: time around here, like, well, I'm still a liar, cheat
Speaker 1: and a thief. And I'm like, well, are you like
Speaker 1: all right? I mean, okay, maybe you are, but but
Speaker 1: maybe you're not. So it's interesting. Yeah, it's allowing yourself
Speaker 1: that room and having the permission to evolve beyond what
Speaker 1: you were. And what you just said is perfect. I
Speaker 1: mean I used to for many, many, many many years,
Speaker 1: I told myself and other people told me as well,
Speaker 1: that it was an echo chamber, the story that I
Speaker 1: was dreadful with money. Right, I'm terrible with money. I'll
Speaker 1: never buy a flat, I'll never be able to save money,
Speaker 1: I'll never get out debt. And so obviously my reality
Speaker 1: reflected that. So we have to be careful what molds
Speaker 1: we pour our stories into, because that shapes our reality.
Speaker 1: Our perceptions of ourselves shape our reality. So it would
Speaker 1: be like you're pouring some jello into a mold and
Speaker 1: being like, oh, how strange it's now shaped like this mold.
Speaker 1: If you tell yourself that you're terrible with money, or
Speaker 1: you're impulsive, or that you get addicted to everything, then
Speaker 1: you will then go and become that self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1: So if you change how you think about yourself, then
Speaker 1: often that can trigger a change in yourself. Or if
Speaker 1: you just look at the actual evidence, like when's the
Speaker 1: last time I told a lie? Am I still a liar?
Speaker 1: And I still agy? Am I still a thief? When's
Speaker 1: the last time I stole? So? Yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: let yourself evolve and become better and champion yourself when
Speaker 1: you become better. I think it's really important. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it. You talk about that in the book our
Speaker 1: stories can become self fulfilling prophecies, And you have a
Speaker 1: line I love the one you just used about pouring
Speaker 1: our stories into a mold. The other one that you
Speaker 1: said is it becomes like a coat hanger that you
Speaker 1: hang the rest of your life upon, which is another
Speaker 1: really good analogy. And I think this is interesting because
Speaker 1: again I see this sort of work working with clients,
Speaker 1: and the vast majority of my clients. It's not alcoholism
Speaker 1: or addiction work, right, But what I see is this
Speaker 1: tendency to say, like, I'm the kind of person who
Speaker 1: never follows through on things, and it's this interesting dance
Speaker 1: of and it's the same thing with alcoholism and addiction.
Speaker 1: You've got to say, well, yeah, there's a real problem here, right,
Speaker 1: I've got to look at the facts and go okay, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: up till now, I traditionally have not tended to follow
Speaker 1: through on things that I started. So okay, that that's
Speaker 1: who I am today. But like you said, we've got
Speaker 1: to give ourselves the freedom to move forwards. And I'm
Speaker 1: always looking for like a word, like what's the right word,
Speaker 1: Like tendency is a word that I sort of like,
Speaker 1: I might say, I have a tendency towards X. You know,
Speaker 1: which is is true? You know right now, I have
Speaker 1: a tendency towards X that can totally be changed and overridden.
Speaker 1: It's a very different thing. So it is a nuanced discussion.
Speaker 1: But I think the important part of it, as you're saying,
Speaker 1: is like don't let it harden. You know, if it's
Speaker 1: you fall, then learn what you can from it, but
Speaker 1: don't let it harden. Yeah, because we can and absolutely
Speaker 1: do change. I mean, what you've just touched upon is
Speaker 1: so important to make yourself a person with the thing
Speaker 1: rather than the things. So I used to be a
Speaker 1: late riser. Now I'm a person who tends to get
Speaker 1: up early. But I allow that identity as a late
Speaker 1: riser to just become the thing that I always did.
Speaker 1: And in order to change it, obviously you have. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of atomic habits, James. Clear, Obviously
Speaker 1: you have to start changing the thing in order for
Speaker 1: the new thing to become the new tendency. You can't just,
Speaker 1: you know, say you're an early riser and then you are.
Speaker 1: That's not what I mean. But you should allow yourself
Speaker 1: the riggle room to evolve beyond that thing that you
Speaker 1: used to do, even if you did it for twenty
Speaker 1: one years like I drank for twenty one years. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just so important and to allow ourselves that ream
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, we are at the end of our time.
Speaker 1: I could talk to you all day. You and I
Speaker 1: are going to continue to talk for a little while
Speaker 1: in the post show conversation, and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about two riveting things we're going to talk about. You've
Speaker 1: got a line we repeat what we don't repair. You say,
Speaker 1: I think that untangling your childhood and therapy is one
Speaker 1: of the most important things to do, so we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about that. And we're also going to talk
Speaker 1: about a new hobby that we both have discovered, which
Speaker 1: is bouldering. So we're going to talk about that in
Speaker 1: the post Share Conversation listeners. If you'd like access to that,
Speaker 1: you can get access to all the post show conversations
Speaker 1: add free episodes. A special episode I do each week
Speaker 1: called The Teaching a Song and a Poem. You can
Speaker 1: go to one you feed dot Net slash joint. Catherine,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, always one of my favorite guests.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I've really enjoyed this conversation. May I just
Speaker 1: point one thing out though, because I don't want to
Speaker 1: say credit for something that I didn't say, so we
Speaker 1: repeat what we don't repair with. Is it quite from
Speaker 1: a therapist called Chris seen something I can't remember her
Speaker 1: full name. Um, it wasn't my quote, but I did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I used it as a chapter heading, but then quoted
Speaker 1: her within it. So I don't want to take credit
Speaker 1: for that because it's such a good phrase. Well, if
Speaker 1: she doesn't have it, if she doesn't have a last name,
Speaker 1: we don't need to credit her. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: I know she does. I'm kidding, all right. The book
Speaker 1: is called Sunshine Warm, Sober Unexpected Sober Joy That lasts.
Speaker 1: You can find it where you get books. Will have
Speaker 1: links afar our show notes. Also to all of Catherine stuff,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. I've loved this. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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