Speaker 1: Have you tried to start meditating daily but can't seem
Speaker 1: to stick with it? I had that same problem too
Speaker 1: for a long time, which is why I've created a
Speaker 1: new guide called the Top five reasons you can't seem
Speaker 1: to stick with a meditation practice and how to actually
Speaker 1: build one that lasts. Just head over to our website
Speaker 1: at one you feed dot net and you can get
Speaker 1: free access to this helpful resource. Again, that's a free
Speaker 1: guide called the Top five reasons you can't seem to
Speaker 1: stick with a meditation practice at one you feed dot Net.
Speaker 1: Not drinking is not a replacement for drinking. It's just
Speaker 1: not enough because it's just taking away the anesthetic. You're
Speaker 1: left with the wreckage and the wounds. You're left with yourself.
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
Speaker 1: think ring true. 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 make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Laura McCowen, a writer
Speaker 1: of books and an award winning blog and host of
Speaker 1: spiritual Ish, a show that provides an irreverent take on
Speaker 1: self help. She's been featured in web m D, New
Speaker 1: York Post, Bravo, The Today's Show, and more or Laura
Speaker 1: also hosts sold out retreats and courses teaching people to
Speaker 1: say yes to a bigger life. Her newest book is
Speaker 1: We Are the Luckiest The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life. Hi, Laura,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you, Hi, it's a pleasure
Speaker 1: to have you on. You wrote a wonderful memoir called
Speaker 1: We Are the Luckiest The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life,
Speaker 1: which we're gonna talk about in a moment. But before
Speaker 1: we do, we'll start like we always do. At the parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandmother who's 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 the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second. She looks at her grandmother
Speaker 1: and she said, a 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: I have two answers. One was I just recently rewatched
Speaker 1: Harry Potter with my daughter, all the Harry Potter movies,
Speaker 1: and they have a moment. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: caught this in either the books or the movies, but
Speaker 1: they have a moment where it basically where double Door
Speaker 1: relays this lesson to Potter about the good and the
Speaker 1: bad and it depends on which one you feed. So
Speaker 1: I loved that that happened. It literally came on last
Speaker 1: night when we were watching that one, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is good for the show because she caught onto that,
Speaker 1: you know, that that lesson or that idea she thought
Speaker 1: about that um and asked about it. So there's that.
Speaker 1: But to me in my work, you know, I had
Speaker 1: this idea, I think that a lot of people do
Speaker 1: until we are faced with something that tests that idea
Speaker 1: within ourselves that there are good people bad people, or
Speaker 1: that things are pretty kind of black and white, you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to addiction, which is what my book
Speaker 1: is about and really what my work is about. I
Speaker 1: like most people thought that people who get addicted have
Speaker 1: lack will power, they lack the grit, they're weak right
Speaker 1: on some level, or they're bad, you know, they're just
Speaker 1: bad inside, and that that would never happen to me,
Speaker 1: someone like me. And what I learned in going through
Speaker 1: addiction myself was obviously that that that was not true
Speaker 1: and it really had nothing to do with will power,
Speaker 1: and it didn't matter how good I was or how
Speaker 1: bad I was or anything. And um, I have a
Speaker 1: chapter in a book called We Are All Magnificent Monsters,
Speaker 1: and it's basically about that. It's like, look, we are
Speaker 1: all capable of everything, every piece of light, and we
Speaker 1: have it all in us, all the light and every
Speaker 1: bit of the dark. Essentially, I don't go around wondering
Speaker 1: if people are good about it anymore. I just I
Speaker 1: know that they're both. And to me, that parable is
Speaker 1: not just the fact that we have all that in us,
Speaker 1: but that if we can find that in ourselves, we
Speaker 1: can find it to be true in other people. And um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of compassion that can be found there,
Speaker 1: right because we become a law less judgmental of people's
Speaker 1: badness as we as we would label it. That's sort
Speaker 1: of what I draw from that. And I didn't get
Speaker 1: into the book, it just didn't work. But there's a
Speaker 1: quote that says, believing you were all good is like
Speaker 1: believing in the half moon. So it's the same thing,
Speaker 1: you know, It's like we're all made of everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter what you feed. It matters what
Speaker 1: you feed, right, Yeah. I love that idea and I
Speaker 1: tend to agree off in religions get into debates. Buddhism
Speaker 1: says you're all good, Christianity says you're all bad, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, what point you start from? And I
Speaker 1: just sort of think, well, it's all in there, right
Speaker 1: in there, and so and then it just depends what
Speaker 1: life experiences we have. What's you know, everything that we
Speaker 1: have that happens. Yeah, where I want to start from
Speaker 1: here is a slightly less usual place than I normally would,
Speaker 1: But I want to talk about this because I think
Speaker 1: it's great for this time. In your book, you're saying
Speaker 1: every big transition in your life, pregnancy, becoming a mother, marriage, divorce,
Speaker 1: and especially getting sober, you've been gobsmacked by the messiness
Speaker 1: and difficulty of it all. And then you go on
Speaker 1: to say there's a term for these phases of life
Speaker 1: in biblical and psychological terms, liminal space. Limon is a
Speaker 1: Latin word that means threshold. It's the time between what
Speaker 1: was and the next, a place of transition, waiting and
Speaker 1: not knowing and goodness, gracious, are we in one right now?
Speaker 1: And so it sort of stood out to me as
Speaker 1: very topical for where we are. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: living in this liminal space. How do we do it
Speaker 1: so that what we come out with is positive? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, I hadn't thought of us living in a
Speaker 1: liminal space right now, but we most certainly are. Richard
Speaker 1: Rore Yes, who I adore, I really admire his work,
Speaker 1: and he says we we should seek liminal spaces whenever
Speaker 1: we can. We should embrace them and desire them and
Speaker 1: invite ourselves into them whenever we can. And I believe
Speaker 1: that's because that's where transformation really takes place. When we're
Speaker 1: going along and the ground is pretty steady, we don't
Speaker 1: grow much, we don't change much unless we, you know,
Speaker 1: force it on ourselves. For me, it was many things,
Speaker 1: but getting sober, becoming a mother, the things I just said,
Speaker 1: Like any time when change is forced on you, like
Speaker 1: it is right now for everybody literally in the world,
Speaker 1: how you look at that time is so important. Like
Speaker 1: I think the primary thing is not looking at it
Speaker 1: like a mistake or something that you want to rush through,
Speaker 1: but something that you can say, what is this trying
Speaker 1: to teach me? Right? What is this trying to teach me?
Speaker 1: And to assume that there is something to be taught
Speaker 1: in that time. And that doesn't mean you slap on
Speaker 1: positivity and say it's all good, because it's not. It's
Speaker 1: extraordinarily uncomfortable, extraordinarily uncomfortable. But I think that's what is
Speaker 1: that quote. Great change is always preceded by chaos. If
Speaker 1: you think of it as something is completely busted, like
Speaker 1: you have a vase and it fell on the floor,
Speaker 1: and it's completely busted before we put If we decided
Speaker 1: to put that vase back together in some kind of
Speaker 1: other shape or make a mosaic out of it, or
Speaker 1: whatever you might do. When it's just lying on there
Speaker 1: on the floor, it's in this liminal space. We don't
Speaker 1: know what it is yet, and we don't know what
Speaker 1: we're going to become in this next phase. We don't
Speaker 1: know how we're going to come out of it. So
Speaker 1: I don't know how to say, let's come through it
Speaker 1: with positivity in a positive way. But I do know
Speaker 1: that how we feel about it and how we look
Speaker 1: at it in the perspective that we have about this
Speaker 1: time is not being a mistake and not rushing to
Speaker 1: get to the next part is sort of where the
Speaker 1: magic is. It's like, this is reality, this is what's
Speaker 1: happening right now, and I am in the in between.
Speaker 1: I don't have the answers and sort of in bring
Speaker 1: seen that mystery because who knows. Right when I've tried
Speaker 1: to force myself out of that type of state. Um,
Speaker 1: first of all, it doesn't really work because that's not
Speaker 1: on our timeline. But whenever I've tried to impose some
Speaker 1: order or impose my will on the forces of change
Speaker 1: in a liminal space. It doesn't really work, and oftentimes
Speaker 1: I miss the blessings at that time. Yep, I think
Speaker 1: that's right on it. It's embracing it to the extent
Speaker 1: we can. And I am always sensitive to talking about
Speaker 1: deep suffering things that are happening to certain people in
Speaker 1: the world is like turning them into like a growth
Speaker 1: opportunity for me totally. The reality is when we are
Speaker 1: forced into difficult circumstances, and we all are varying degrees
Speaker 1: of difficulty, we have the opportunity to grow. And change
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we will, but we have the opportunity. And
Speaker 1: when I read your book, that just jumped out to
Speaker 1: me liminal space. I was like, yes, liminal space, and
Speaker 1: just the acknowledgement the first time I heard it, just
Speaker 1: even acknowledging that that that's a thing. Yeah, it's been
Speaker 1: philosophically true and and spiritually true from the beginning of time.
Speaker 1: There's some rest in that, like, oh, there's a beginning
Speaker 1: of middle in the end to everything, there's the beginning
Speaker 1: of middle in the end. So this is the middle part.
Speaker 1: So your book starts off pretty early on with this line,
Speaker 1: and it hooked me immediately. You said, on July two,
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, the night of my brother's wedding, I left
Speaker 1: my four year old daughter alone in a hotel room
Speaker 1: overnight because I was black out drunk. And the reason
Speaker 1: that that grabbed me, beside the fact that it's a
Speaker 1: completely compelling statement, is that I got sober this most
Speaker 1: recent time for me, which has been about twelve years ago,
Speaker 1: because I passed out and left my son alone. Now
Speaker 1: he was home with my my partner at the time,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't alone alone. She got him up, she
Speaker 1: got him to school. But the point is that, like
Speaker 1: I just dropped the ball, and like you, I had thought, yes,
Speaker 1: I've got some problems, but I'm not going to miss
Speaker 1: the boat. That's never gonna happen. That won't happen. And
Speaker 1: it did, and that was what brought me back to
Speaker 1: recovery again. And I had one short relapse after that,
Speaker 1: but I've been sober since. I got sober young from heroin,
Speaker 1: stayed sober about eight years, drank again for about four years,
Speaker 1: and have been sober since. But that was the event
Speaker 1: that for me too that it was just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: something's got to change, you know. And I know for
Speaker 1: you that that really sort of woke you up and
Speaker 1: then it took you about a year to get all
Speaker 1: the way sober from there. But yeah, like you, I
Speaker 1: just really resonated with that because the horror of it
Speaker 1: for me was, even though I could say, well, she
Speaker 1: was home with him, I was supposed to be there
Speaker 1: to wake him up. Yeah, I was supposed to be there.
Speaker 1: For me. It was the most horrific thing that could
Speaker 1: happen to me, you know, Like you said, I thought,
Speaker 1: although there was plenty of evidence, plenty of evidence to
Speaker 1: the contrary, I thought, even when I was really drunk,
Speaker 1: you know, it wouldn't supplant my instinct, my mom instinct
Speaker 1: that I would always make my way back to her,
Speaker 1: and I didn't. And you know, the reason I started
Speaker 1: the book that way was because I wrote this book
Speaker 1: for anybody who wants to, you know, is struggling against
Speaker 1: something within themselves of any kind. But I wrote it
Speaker 1: especially for mothers because there is such a special vitrayol
Speaker 1: and shame for mothers, and I assume fathers too. I
Speaker 1: can only speak to mothers who drink or use, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to invite them in and say like, this
Speaker 1: is where we're going. I've got you, you know, because
Speaker 1: I don't feel shame about that anymore, which is the
Speaker 1: miracle of it all. And obviously there was a lot
Speaker 1: of work involved, but yeah, it goes against everything natural. Right.
Speaker 1: But you say elsewhere in the book, if there's one
Speaker 1: thing you can count on, it's that addiction will always
Speaker 1: demand more, more attention, more loyalty, more time, more everything.
Speaker 1: It will demand everything everything, you know. And it's a
Speaker 1: phrase that you know, we hear in recovery, which is like,
Speaker 1: I didn't do that yet, right, I know, for me
Speaker 1: in my addiction, it was all a matter of time.
Speaker 1: There was no horrific thing that I wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: willing to do at some point to get high or drunk,
Speaker 1: and it just I just didn't have to. You just
Speaker 1: thren't there yet. Yeah, you hadn't had the time or
Speaker 1: the or the circumstances or whatever. Right. Yeah. More, it's
Speaker 1: like everything another thing that really struck me. And you
Speaker 1: gave this description and it's so good because I often
Speaker 1: talk about I think the worst place in the world
Speaker 1: to be is stuck between really really wanting to drink
Speaker 1: and really knowing that you shouldn't like to me that
Speaker 1: as a as a special kind of hell. And I
Speaker 1: stay sober a lot of times because I simply never
Speaker 1: want to be there. But you describe it as widely coyote.
Speaker 1: At that moment when the earthquake hits and the ground
Speaker 1: splits into and the poor coyote is grasping all wide
Speaker 1: eyed and panicked at both sides of the earth, the
Speaker 1: divide becomes bigger, bigger, bigger, and his body starts stretching
Speaker 1: like a rubber band until he's unable to keep any grip.
Speaker 1: I love it, that is, so you know, you call
Speaker 1: it this purgatory, this unbearable wishing for one side or
Speaker 1: the other, this unsustainable stretching. It's just a nightmare. It
Speaker 1: is the nightmare. The nightmare. That year plus between when
Speaker 1: that incident happened with my daughter and when I finally
Speaker 1: got sober was honestly the worst year of my life. Um,
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to get sober, you know, I
Speaker 1: really didn't. I mean, let's just say that, I just didn't.
Speaker 1: I thought it was the end of everything, and yet
Speaker 1: I knew I couldn't keep going as I was, and
Speaker 1: I tried desperately like call it like the third door.
Speaker 1: There has to be another option, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: what I spent purgatory looking for, was that option. And
Speaker 1: and you know, it's funny. The crazy thing is I
Speaker 1: knew it didn't exist, but I just couldn't accept that
Speaker 1: it was over yet. I just couldn't accept that all
Speaker 1: that was over. I didn't know how to do that life.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, in in psychological terms, I think
Speaker 1: it was young maybe Fred who knows? That's that a
Speaker 1: split mind as hell, like a split a split mind
Speaker 1: is hell. I think a really good analogy is like
Speaker 1: if we hear conflict, like say other people having a conflict,
Speaker 1: Say you have kids and they fight, it jacks your
Speaker 1: nervous system up. It's like freaks out, you know, or
Speaker 1: even through strangers fighting, it immediately causes such internal friction
Speaker 1: in you and your heart rate goes up, you know,
Speaker 1: feels terrible. But the purgatory is like the one foot in,
Speaker 1: one foot out was like that friction inside of you.
Speaker 1: And we withstand so much of that when we are
Speaker 1: caught in addiction. We withstand it every day, even not
Speaker 1: just related to the drinking, but the lying, the presentation
Speaker 1: of two different versions of ourselves seeing one thing and
Speaker 1: doing the other thing. The cognitive dissonance of who we
Speaker 1: think we are and yet what we're doing just doesn't
Speaker 1: match up, and that causes that's an extraordinarily hellish, painful place.
Speaker 1: Certainly is I agree with you. I don't know that
Speaker 1: I get so wor again, I don't know that I
Speaker 1: would come out on the side of sobriety. So I
Speaker 1: just can't. I'm out because of that. No matter how
Speaker 1: sobriety might get, I'm the same way. I literally think
Speaker 1: back that feeling. I think back to that feeling, and
Speaker 1: that's what I go. I can't and I know that
Speaker 1: if I go drink, I will I will be forced
Speaker 1: to that juncture again. You know. You know it's not
Speaker 1: like you know, it's not like it's going to go well, um,
Speaker 1: and so you know I'll be forced forced back to
Speaker 1: that juncture. The other thing you talk about that I
Speaker 1: think is really important. As you say, without the drinking,
Speaker 1: life should have come easier. Everybody thinks it will be easier,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really important to be able to
Speaker 1: say that not right away. Sometimes you know that sometimes
Speaker 1: it feels worse for a little bit, you know, I
Speaker 1: always say that being sober is amazing. Getting sober sucks,
Speaker 1: you know, and and so, but it's important to realize
Speaker 1: because I think that's what confuses a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Confused me. Well, I quit. I feel terrible why this
Speaker 1: doesn't seem worth it, you know, And I think if
Speaker 1: we don't have somebody saying to us, we'll hold on
Speaker 1: a second, what you're experiencing right now is not what
Speaker 1: you'll be experiencing later. You gotta get through this. It
Speaker 1: took me a while, for whatever reason, coming in and
Speaker 1: out of recovery a couple of times before I got
Speaker 1: that message clearly enough, like, oh, I see, I need
Speaker 1: to hang on here, you need to hang on. Well,
Speaker 1: there's so much to that, right, there's so much to
Speaker 1: why that's true, because the drink was never the thing, right,
Speaker 1: that the drinking actually served a purpose. I say, like,
Speaker 1: not drinking is not a replacement for drinking. It's just
Speaker 1: not enough because it's just taking away the anesthetic. And
Speaker 1: then you're left you're left with yourself. Yes, you're left
Speaker 1: with the wound. You're left with the wreckage and the wounds.
Speaker 1: And like, by the time I got sober, and this
Speaker 1: kept me drinking for so long as I was afraid
Speaker 1: of what I was going to have to look at,
Speaker 1: you know, my wrecked marriage. I felt like a shitty
Speaker 1: person just all the time, and I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to feel things. You know, the reasons why we end
Speaker 1: up drinking start so early. It's just like this accumulation
Speaker 1: of limiting beliefs and bad conditioning and bad patterns, and
Speaker 1: then of course when we get sober, we're left with ourselves.
Speaker 1: One of the first guys I talked to, one of
Speaker 1: the only two sober people I knew when I was
Speaker 1: trying to get sober, he had like twenty years of
Speaker 1: sobriety at that point. You know, what you want to
Speaker 1: know so desperately is like does it get better? And
Speaker 1: that's what I would ask sober people, like do you
Speaker 1: like your life now? Because I just didn't believe they could.
Speaker 1: And I said like, is it better? Are you better now?
Speaker 1: You know, twenty years sober? And he just like I
Speaker 1: had the best laugh. He's like, oh, honey, He's like,
Speaker 1: it gets better because you're not creating all this wreckage anymore.
Speaker 1: Like that does feel better? It gets better, and then
Speaker 1: it gets worse, and then it just gets different. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty good description, although I will unequivocally still stand
Speaker 1: on the yes, it's better. Oh yeah, the difference is
Speaker 1: not a bad difference. I mean the equivocally it's better
Speaker 1: almost not even a comparison. It's like an apple in
Speaker 1: an orange, like well, right, you know, the sort of
Speaker 1: the crux of my entire book was like everything I
Speaker 1: thought I wanted and everything I thought that made life
Speaker 1: worth living, and everything that I thought I was so wrong.
Speaker 1: But it took time. Like I hated sobriety for a
Speaker 1: good year. Hated it because I wanted to drink all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, and that's really painful. That obsession didn't
Speaker 1: leave me for a long time. I was piste off,
Speaker 1: I was ad, I was in so much, and yet
Speaker 1: there were births of such extraordinary joy and hope and
Speaker 1: love and all of that in there. Yeah. So yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's unequivocally better. But it's not easy. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: life is easy right now. I had two very different
Speaker 1: getting sobers. I mean, when I got sober at twenty four,
Speaker 1: it was from heroin addiction and it was a low bottom.
Speaker 1: I was homeless. I was looking at going to jail
Speaker 1: for a long time I weighed a hundred pounds. I
Speaker 1: had hepatitis C. I mean I was in bad shape.
Speaker 1: And I went in and I got into treatment, and
Speaker 1: I stayed in treatment, and then I went to a
Speaker 1: halfway house. I wouldn't say that it felt easy, because
Speaker 1: it was not easy. But life was less complicated, probably right,
Speaker 1: good life was way less complicated. And it was so
Speaker 1: bad that it was like, oh my god, relief. And
Speaker 1: I was supported and I was carried, and the second time,
Speaker 1: I had just gotten the best job I'd ever had.
Speaker 1: I had, you know, a family, I lived in the suburbs,
Speaker 1: and I drove a nice car and had a lot
Speaker 1: more to lose, and nothing bad had happened. I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: yes I didn't go home to take care of my
Speaker 1: son that one night, But compared to my earlier one,
Speaker 1: which was such a such a bad thing, I was like,
Speaker 1: what this isn't so bad. I had enough wisdom to
Speaker 1: know that inside I was just the same. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: but it was harder, and like you, the desire to
Speaker 1: drink didn't leave. It just it dogged me for like
Speaker 1: six months. I was like, is this you know? First
Speaker 1: time it felt like it went away, kind of quickly.
Speaker 1: The second time, I was like, oh my god, it
Speaker 1: just you know, and it was a little bit more
Speaker 1: of an intellectual exercise because I hadn't fully had my
Speaker 1: ass kicked. Yeah, I had it pretty well kicked, but
Speaker 1: it was still enough. I found my way through it.
Speaker 1: You feel like that's because alcohol is just everywhere. It's
Speaker 1: so there, it's so socially acceptable, it's so totally benign
Speaker 1: to most people, whereas Heroine's obviously everyone's like, of course,
Speaker 1: now that's what I mean. Inside, I was exactly the
Speaker 1: same person. I was out of control and desperate. It's
Speaker 1: just that alcohol. I could walk down to the store
Speaker 1: and for ten dollars by a pint of whiskey. For heroin,
Speaker 1: I had to have all this money, and I kept
Speaker 1: having to spend more, And how where am I going
Speaker 1: to get three hundred dollars a day? And I've got
Speaker 1: to start stealing it and I've got to engage with
Speaker 1: a different group of people. That's dangerous. But fundamentally, the
Speaker 1: mechanism of addiction in me was the same both times,
Speaker 1: and so I luckily had had enough time in sobriety.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd have been sober about eight years that
Speaker 1: I could see that, you know, I could think back
Speaker 1: and and and I learned enough in that time that
Speaker 1: I was able to see, Okay, this is the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's just that the consequences aren't here yet, and they
Speaker 1: may not be here in the same way for a
Speaker 1: long time. But the question I kept asking myself was like,
Speaker 1: do I really need to keep riding this elevator down?
Speaker 1: Like do I need to get in a car accident
Speaker 1: with my son before this is enough? And I just
Speaker 1: kept going, No, I don't have to do that. No,
Speaker 1: I don't have to do that. And that's a different game.
Speaker 1: It is a little bit of a different game. But
Speaker 1: I was fortunate to support so and and help. I
Speaker 1: could go on and on about how fascinated I am
Speaker 1: by alcohol and that we basically think it's a spinign
Speaker 1: or celebrated drug. But you know, that's that's a whole
Speaker 1: different conversation. But I think that you don't have to explain. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm not using heroin. No. You know, people wonder when
Speaker 1: you don't drink. It's like a conversation they were, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's a thing. This thing did not do heroin
Speaker 1: similar to you. When I got sober, the second time,
Speaker 1: I had a job that was a professional job. I
Speaker 1: was in sales for a software company, and my job
Speaker 1: was taking people out, entertaining them, going to conferences, you know,
Speaker 1: And so I'm just I'm just waltzing into these drinking
Speaker 1: situations all the time. My wife at the time continued
Speaker 1: to drink. It was a strange getting sober, but it worked,
Speaker 1: which thank god, thank god, the elevator continuing to go down.
Speaker 1: I guess my primary feeling because I obviously didn't stop
Speaker 1: drinking after the most horrific thing happened. But I think
Speaker 1: that what scared me the most is that I just
Speaker 1: really didn't know what was going to happen when I
Speaker 1: drank anymore. I just anything was on the table. I
Speaker 1: just didn't know. And so you said, you know, do
Speaker 1: I have to get in a car accident with my
Speaker 1: side and then it's like that might be the best
Speaker 1: thing that was going to happen to you. I agree.
Speaker 1: It was the same situation for me, Like when I start,
Speaker 1: I don't really know. Most times what happens is I
Speaker 1: do this, then I do this, and I do this.
Speaker 1: But then there's those other times I was a complete
Speaker 1: blackout drinker, you know, so like all the time, I
Speaker 1: often think back and I'm like, well, there's probably horror
Speaker 1: stories back there that I just fortunately don't recall, you know,
Speaker 1: and I just don't. I just don't recome blackouts are
Speaker 1: a blessing. I suppose let's talk about another complicated topic,
Speaker 1: which is A. A. It seems like maybe we've had
Speaker 1: a similar relationship to A, Like I think A saved
Speaker 1: my life twice, and it's saved my life. I think
Speaker 1: that's all I can say about it. And yet I'm
Speaker 1: not really that big a part of it anymore, and
Speaker 1: there's lots of things with it that I have some
Speaker 1: some challenge with. But I love to be able to
Speaker 1: have a nuanced dialogue about A, because most of the
Speaker 1: dialogue that we hear out there is not nuanced, as
Speaker 1: you say. So well as in politics and religion, the
Speaker 1: beliefs on both extremes of A or dangerous and limiting,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really important. So I thought, maybe
Speaker 1: we could just spend a couple of minutes about what
Speaker 1: are some of the good things about A that we
Speaker 1: love and what are some of the things that maybe
Speaker 1: we don't love as much, And then I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear some of your ideas on alternatives to A Sure,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm always really hesitant to say too much
Speaker 1: about getting sober without A because that's what I did right, right,
Speaker 1: and it would be disingenuous to that. I can say, well,
Speaker 1: I've heard good things about this and that this seems interesting,
Speaker 1: but I don't have firsthand experience with it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I'd love to just kind of talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about it. Sure, that was a chapter that I wrote
Speaker 1: many times, like at least ten times, and I still
Speaker 1: wasn't sure if I wanted to include it, because I
Speaker 1: just didn't. It's a delicate topic and at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, my feeling is the same the people
Speaker 1: in a saved my life, period. So my arguments are
Speaker 1: kind of, um, it's not even an argument. It's a
Speaker 1: luxury that I can have this conversation. But you know,
Speaker 1: I would say, even since I wrote the book, I
Speaker 1: have different opinions now, so which is beautiful. It's like
Speaker 1: we get to change our mind and we get to grow,
Speaker 1: and that's the reality of people in nature, is right.
Speaker 1: We just don't like to acknowledge that. Um, my arguments
Speaker 1: against a A, we're largely about the fellowship of a
Speaker 1: I didn't really grasp and I don't think people largely
Speaker 1: do from the outside or even inside the program. That
Speaker 1: there's the Fellowship, which are the people, and they're all
Speaker 1: kinds of dysfunctional things that happen in the fellowship because
Speaker 1: it's people. But then there's the Twelve Steps, which is
Speaker 1: the program of recovery. That is the actual program. I
Speaker 1: think the program is beautiful, incredible. I wouldn't change a thing,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't touch a thing. I think it's ancient spiritual wisdom.
Speaker 1: It's not even unique to the Twelve Steps. You can
Speaker 1: find a sort of process in other places. But the
Speaker 1: Fellowship is where I struggled because I really had a
Speaker 1: hard time. I would often leave meetings feeling more depressed
Speaker 1: and not more hopeful, because I felt like, in some
Speaker 1: cases there was just this overwhelming sense of fear this
Speaker 1: these things, you know, like my addict is in the
Speaker 1: parking lot doing push ups and meetings or my medicine,
Speaker 1: and if I stay away from meetings, I'm going to,
Speaker 1: you know, drink and die. And not just that that's fine,
Speaker 1: but it was more telling other people they can't be sober,
Speaker 1: and that they're not really sober. If they aren't doing
Speaker 1: a a That's what I took a lot of issue
Speaker 1: with it. No one has any right to tell anyone
Speaker 1: how to do their sobriety or their life or what
Speaker 1: constitutes being a healthy sober person, right, So I didn't
Speaker 1: like that there's that just this overall sense of that
Speaker 1: people who are or sober were coming into meetings, I
Speaker 1: heard them say the same story every time they shared,
Speaker 1: and it was like, I don't know how. This just
Speaker 1: feels like being stuck. It didn't feel expansive to me.
Speaker 1: At certain points. I also felt like there's this over
Speaker 1: identification with being an alcoholic and that being the center
Speaker 1: of all your issues in life and why you do
Speaker 1: everything you do, and I just I rejected that so hard.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, you're a human being, that's why you're
Speaker 1: doing these things. I agree. That was one of the
Speaker 1: things that that drove me crazy was this idea, this
Speaker 1: this constant delineation between us alcoholics and normal people norm
Speaker 1: and I went, no, I don't think so. Yes, there
Speaker 1: are some things that are specific to my alcoholism, but
Speaker 1: all humans struggle, all humans go through all this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, and we're not so different and we're not
Speaker 1: so unique. I I sort of related with that, and
Speaker 1: similar to what I think you're also saying. The thing
Speaker 1: I sort of got tired of hearing was you know,
Speaker 1: I'm still sick. Yes, you know, so over ten fifteen years,
Speaker 1: I'm still sick. I'm still a liar, a cheat. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I'm not the same person I
Speaker 1: was when I came in the door, Like, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that my alcoholism is fixed. But the Big Book
Speaker 1: says we recover. It does not say we are forever sick.
Speaker 1: It says we recover that. But that's missed. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of misinformation that gets spread through the fellowship because
Speaker 1: people go to meetings and then they take what someone
Speaker 1: says in meetings and they passed that on, and they
Speaker 1: passed that on and they passed on and that becomes
Speaker 1: common knowledge and it's really not what was intended, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's not actually even in alignment with the program.
Speaker 1: So those were my arguments. And the literature. There are
Speaker 1: parts of literature that I was like, come on, can
Speaker 1: we please update. It's you know, like the further Wives
Speaker 1: chapter and if your if your husband is you know,
Speaker 1: just be gentle with him and let him do the
Speaker 1: things he needs to do are ridiculous at this day
Speaker 1: and age. Okay, so those are my arguments. Some of
Speaker 1: my arguments in the beginning were like arguments against getting sober.
Speaker 1: They really were. I just didn't want to get sober,
Speaker 1: and so it is the problem, right, But some of
Speaker 1: them were legitimate and they were real, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: discerning enough to really just take what worked for me
Speaker 1: and leave the rest. I just wasn't there yet, So
Speaker 1: that stuff got to me over a time. However, there
Speaker 1: is such incredible community in A. The Fellowship is beautiful.
Speaker 1: I have met some of the most loving, wise, peaceful,
Speaker 1: serene people in the Fellowship of A And if you
Speaker 1: have an alcohol problem, it is a place where you
Speaker 1: can bring that. I think the tenants, you know, service,
Speaker 1: being of service are huge. That's a massive part of
Speaker 1: my life, and I think what sustains my sobriety and
Speaker 1: keeps me healthy. I never had an issue with the
Speaker 1: God thing at that was always very easy for me.
Speaker 1: But I know a lot of people do, and so
Speaker 1: that didn't bother me. I love, you know, the trust God,
Speaker 1: clean house, help others. I think that's a pretty decent
Speaker 1: way to live. You know, it's a good foundation for
Speaker 1: a life. And um, and again I think the tall
Speaker 1: steps are beautiful. What I've noticed is that over time,
Speaker 1: and especially since this pandemic has started. Almost immediately when
Speaker 1: it started, I kind of was like, oh, I need
Speaker 1: to go back to my roots. I need to be
Speaker 1: in meetings with other people that are struggling. I need
Speaker 1: I want to be a service specifically to those people.
Speaker 1: And I want to sit and hear other people too.
Speaker 1: And you know, so it's interesting that that I found
Speaker 1: that to be my foundation, the foundation of my recovery.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so those are my general thoughts. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: I think it's okay for it to be complicated too. Yep,
Speaker 1: I agree. I have very similar fee And I mean,
Speaker 1: I think one of the things about a one of
Speaker 1: the best things about it is it's just ubiquitous. It's
Speaker 1: just everywhere, and it's free, you know, and it's like
Speaker 1: pretty much anywhere you can find free places to go
Speaker 1: that you will get support and care and an opportunity
Speaker 1: and people who will understand you. And um, you've got
Speaker 1: a great line. Nothing is such a bomb for a
Speaker 1: broken soul as this to know you are not alone
Speaker 1: and you'll get that in a or twelve step room.
Speaker 1: You'll walk in and you'll hear people telling stories. You're like,
Speaker 1: oh my God, like yeah, okay, that's the only one
Speaker 1: that was this way. So it's ubiquitous and it's everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I think that's amazing. Um, I agree with you.
Speaker 1: Some of the literature I think is outdated. It's just
Speaker 1: you know, A has got this. We're not going to
Speaker 1: change anything from what was nineteen thirty nine. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's got a little of that like it was written,
Speaker 1: you know, right out of God's mouth, you know. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, and I do have a little challenge
Speaker 1: with the God thing, not so much that there's a
Speaker 1: there's that element of it. And I thank God for
Speaker 1: the line. Thank God, it's something. I don't believe it
Speaker 1: for the line as we understood him, because I think
Speaker 1: that's probably saved millions of lives. But I still do
Speaker 1: think like the Lord's Prayer, that is a severely Christian prayer,
Speaker 1: Like I think there are places that we could not
Speaker 1: lose the heart of a but we could de emphasize
Speaker 1: the Christian God piece of it, mainly because it would
Speaker 1: open it up, I think to more people Yeah, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: but I think that you can come to a a
Speaker 1: you know, like I just translated, when they say this,
Speaker 1: what does that mean to me? When they say this,
Speaker 1: what does that mean to me? It's just with like
Speaker 1: an additional step of processing that that I sort of
Speaker 1: had to go through. And if you work with the
Speaker 1: right people in a and you talk to the right people,
Speaker 1: which I have to acknowledge that experience varies wherever you
Speaker 1: are right widely. So I got sober in Boston, a
Speaker 1: A means, which is like extraordinary because there so many there.
Speaker 1: There's LGB too, you know, meetings, there's literally every sort
Speaker 1: of faction just to find your own meeting. That's not
Speaker 1: the case in a lot of places outside of big cities.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yep, agreed, that's a really good point. Women's
Speaker 1: meetings exists and men's meetings exists. That's about as far
Speaker 1: as the yeah, I love what you said there you
Speaker 1: sort of summarize you said, it's a it's for people
Speaker 1: who who didn't catch it. It's an a line that
Speaker 1: says trust God, clean house, help others, right, and clean
Speaker 1: house means clean up your inside messes, you know, take
Speaker 1: care of your your internal things. You feel bad about
Speaker 1: the things that haunt you that you know, clean your
Speaker 1: life up resentments that you have, and that I think
Speaker 1: it has resentments right to Like I'm almost six years sober.
Speaker 1: I will be this year. It's like, resentments are this
Speaker 1: sort of thing that makes me the most sick, you know.
Speaker 1: And that language I think is brilliant, you know, because
Speaker 1: it is about cleaning house. I like the distinction you
Speaker 1: made in A. There's a fellowship and there's a program
Speaker 1: of recovery. But I think what's really useful and what
Speaker 1: I often do is, particularly as I've drifted away from
Speaker 1: A a second time. First time I drifted away from
Speaker 1: A and I ended up drinking. Yeah, so moving away
Speaker 1: a second time, I'm like, we'll hold on here, Like
Speaker 1: do you not learn your lessons? You know? But but
Speaker 1: what's been helpful for me is to think about what
Speaker 1: is it that I got from A A that I
Speaker 1: think helped me to stay sober? And how else did
Speaker 1: I get that in my life? And I think community
Speaker 1: people to talk to that I can share with and
Speaker 1: that understand me, you know, recovery community, not friends and family,
Speaker 1: you know, right, And then some method for dealing with
Speaker 1: my internal things some sort of spiritual life, some sort
Speaker 1: of connection to something bigger than me. Again, words can
Speaker 1: can can be different, and then opportunities to help others service. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, A A is really great in that way
Speaker 1: because it's sort of it's just customing. You just keep
Speaker 1: going to meetings and new people keep coming in and
Speaker 1: you've got your opportunities. So outside of that, I've had
Speaker 1: to figure out, like, Okay, how do I patch those
Speaker 1: things together in my life? And when I sometimes talk
Speaker 1: with people who are thinking through their addiction, they're like,
Speaker 1: A is not for me. I'm like, okay, well, here
Speaker 1: are some things I think you might want to make sure,
Speaker 1: like how are you going to get these things? Because
Speaker 1: it's the combination of those factors that is what I
Speaker 1: think makes A when it works work. Absolutely. I totally
Speaker 1: agree with all of that, and I think there are
Speaker 1: ways to deal with underlying causes and conditions and the
Speaker 1: really mental health. Right. Um, I say, I threw the
Speaker 1: book at it. I was like, I'm gonna do a
Speaker 1: A and I'm gonna read all the books, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do therapy, and I'm a yoga teacher and because
Speaker 1: I'm just sort of nerdy and curious for for one,
Speaker 1: but also I didn't find it all in A. You know,
Speaker 1: for for example, A doesn't address the body, the physical body,
Speaker 1: And to me, that's a massive, huge, massive part of
Speaker 1: and I'm not that's not a fault of A. It's
Speaker 1: just not part of the program. Yeah, that's a fascinating
Speaker 1: point that I've often thought of a lot of the
Speaker 1: times when I think, well, A A doesn't do that,
Speaker 1: and I think a little bit more about it, I'm like, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't want it. It probably shouldn't try that, Like
Speaker 1: what do you want to fitness program in A Not
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, yeah, but but even in the literature it
Speaker 1: sort of doesn't address the body. And again it's not
Speaker 1: a criticism of A, but that's a huge that has
Speaker 1: been a massive part of my healing. What I've learned
Speaker 1: about trauma, what I've learned as a yoga teacher, is
Speaker 1: that so much of our issues are in our body
Speaker 1: and have to be released some deically, and and that
Speaker 1: required something else, you know, it's also therapy. Like I
Speaker 1: needed therapy, I needed more, and that is encouraged in A.
Speaker 1: There's a line I think it's like one page thirty
Speaker 1: three that says, you know, we encourage you to seek
Speaker 1: the help of professionals in all these other areas. And
Speaker 1: so I bring that up not to cite the Big Book,
Speaker 1: but because some of the misinformation you hear is people
Speaker 1: saying ignore that in a saying ignore that, don't go
Speaker 1: to that. This is all you need, and that's what
Speaker 1: spreads and perpetuates this sort of dysfunctional side. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: And what you were just saying, I often say. I
Speaker 1: use a similar phrase when I talk about dealing with
Speaker 1: my depression, which is I just throw the kitchen sink
Speaker 1: at it, Like I continue, it's just everything, yes, yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like if there's a way that's been suggested to work
Speaker 1: on it, I'm yeah, I've probably given it a shot,
Speaker 1: you know, like yeah, because it requires that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's for me, requires that, or I can slip into
Speaker 1: really bad states. To use a buzz word, it's holistic, right,
Speaker 1: That's what it takes for me, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: what recovery took. Also agree, So I think I think
Speaker 1: that covers it all. You know, those are sort of
Speaker 1: the summary of how I feel, but that at the
Speaker 1: heart of that is so much gratitude and so much
Speaker 1: reverence for my life because I don't think I would
Speaker 1: be here if not for that foundation. In a So,
Speaker 1: you and I are nearly out of time, but there's
Speaker 1: a couple of small things that I'd like to talk about,
Speaker 1: although they're not small. Um, but I'm just going to
Speaker 1: read a line from the book and ask you just
Speaker 1: to say a little bit more about it. You say,
Speaker 1: and you're talking about being lonely or alone. You say,
Speaker 1: we think it's the loneness we fear, But I believe
Speaker 1: what we actually fear is not having a home within ourselves.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking so much during this time that this
Speaker 1: is like we're all being forced into sobriety of of
Speaker 1: of sorts because we're just left with ourselves. And I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but but I think, um, it's
Speaker 1: causing a pretty large to mental health crisis because we
Speaker 1: have created a world where we barely we don't have
Speaker 1: to be with ourselves at all. If we don't want,
Speaker 1: there are million ways that we can escape. So just
Speaker 1: you know, commentary on this time. But my first two
Speaker 1: thoughts when I went to get sober, where what if
Speaker 1: I'm boring? And Who's gonna love me? I was so
Speaker 1: afraid of that a loneness, even though I had been out,
Speaker 1: not really been in a lot of relationships. It was
Speaker 1: just the irony of that is that I was so
Speaker 1: much more alone. I didn't have a home in myself.
Speaker 1: I couldn't be trusted in my own house, you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't be trusted in my mind and in my body.
Speaker 1: It was a scary place to be. It was a
Speaker 1: painful place to be. And when I went to get sober,
Speaker 1: I was just recently separated, like a year separated from
Speaker 1: my husband at the time. The loneliness of that was
Speaker 1: like crushing at first. It's like I need someone in
Speaker 1: my life. I just need someone to come in and
Speaker 1: fix this I need. And that's narrative. You know, I
Speaker 1: have uncovered through a lot of work in sobriety, is
Speaker 1: that I had this belief that someone else was going
Speaker 1: to come and save me and that that was going
Speaker 1: to fix me. And man, did I do everything to
Speaker 1: try and make people do that for me. And that
Speaker 1: has been that has been the real work of my sobriety,
Speaker 1: That has been the real crux of it. That was
Speaker 1: underneath the drinking was this medicaid and this inability to
Speaker 1: be with myself, this fear of being by myself, and
Speaker 1: this crushing fantasy, crushing because it's a fantasy and not
Speaker 1: real that someone was going to save me. And when
Speaker 1: that didn't happen and that didn't work and no one
Speaker 1: could ever do that, Oh my god, what a painful
Speaker 1: place that was. And it's ongoing forever. I'm not in
Speaker 1: this perfect place. I still desire to be in a partnership.
Speaker 1: I still want that, but it's it's not a need.
Speaker 1: It's not like a fix that I need, like that
Speaker 1: anxious feeling if I need to be fixed like you
Speaker 1: did when you were drinking or using. It's like I
Speaker 1: need this because I can't be okay without it. It's
Speaker 1: more like I truly do have a home in myself,
Speaker 1: and the reason for that is because it's like, this
Speaker 1: is a safe place to be now, Laura, is a
Speaker 1: safe place to be. I trust myself. When I was
Speaker 1: very early in society, there was this like I don't
Speaker 1: even know if you could call it a poem. It's
Speaker 1: just more a line that I wrote and it says,
Speaker 1: but there is this I am awake and I am alive,
Speaker 1: and I'm not afraid of myself anymore. And that was
Speaker 1: my baseline. It's like, at least I'm not afraid of
Speaker 1: myself anymore. And then you can you can build on that, right,
Speaker 1: and then you start to build self esteem through a
Speaker 1: steemable acts, and you start to build dignity. And by
Speaker 1: a steemable acts, I mean, I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: be a functional person. I didn't know how to pay bills.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to do laundry. I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to keep my word. My boundary are all screwed up.
Speaker 1: So I would say yes when I met no, and
Speaker 1: I was like, know when I met yes, Just try
Speaker 1: to get you to like me and two people please,
Speaker 1: and bend myself in different ways and and all of
Speaker 1: those things. All of that that work adds up to
Speaker 1: being a place that internally I am proud to be in,
Speaker 1: that I am content to be in. Any Way, there's
Speaker 1: still loneliness, but it's not that loneliness. I think that
Speaker 1: totally makes sense. And I think it's a natural and
Speaker 1: normal human desire to be in a partnership. I think
Speaker 1: it's a it's a desire that's part of being human. Right.
Speaker 1: I had to learn that too. I always thought it
Speaker 1: was like this very embarrassing weak thing. Yeah. No, And
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we're given this idea that, like, well,
Speaker 1: for psychologically independent, then we just would never need that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And it's not a need in the
Speaker 1: way you say, but it's a pretty strong human desire.
Speaker 1: But there's a very big difference between this is something
Speaker 1: I would like to have in my life and I
Speaker 1: want to have and my life is worth living without it,
Speaker 1: or my life is broken without it, or I am
Speaker 1: broken without it. Those are very different because what it
Speaker 1: becomes is you essentially end up using people to fill
Speaker 1: something You're not really in relationship, right, You're you're using
Speaker 1: people to fulfill something in you and um, and that's
Speaker 1: not a relationship. I mean we've all experienced though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Right. My history of
Speaker 1: relationships was I'd go into a relationship thinking that's what
Speaker 1: I needed. I needed this person to fix me. And
Speaker 1: then when we'd finally be in the relationship and I
Speaker 1: wasn't fixed, I just go, you're the problem. You're the problem.
Speaker 1: You're not like, why aren't you doing what I need
Speaker 1: you to do? I still believe like a relationship will
Speaker 1: fix me. You just have clearly the wrong one, and
Speaker 1: so I'm going to the right one. Yeah. Anyway, you
Speaker 1: and I are going to continue in the post show
Speaker 1: conversation by talking about this line from you, and you say,
Speaker 1: in my experience the primary difference between those who recover
Speaker 1: and those who don't. So we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: what that is in the post show conversation. Listeners. If
Speaker 1: you'd like access to that and many episodes, add free
Speaker 1: episodes and all kinds of other good stuff, you can
Speaker 1: become a member by going to one you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash join. So thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: It's been such a pleasure to talk to you, and
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed this. Thank you, Thank you. If what
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