Speaker 1: Hey, fam I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the
Speaker 1: Red tabletop podcast, all your favorite episodes from the Facebook
Speaker 1: Watch show in audio, produced by Westbrook Audio and I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts. Attention ladies. For the first time in history,
Speaker 1: women are drinking as much as men. Ask yourself a
Speaker 1: serious question, are you drinking too much? I was going
Speaker 1: for that third bottle of wine. I said, you've got
Speaker 1: a problem. Alcohol is being glamorized Wine Wednesdays, girlified, bottomless
Speaker 1: mimosas sold as a lifeline to sanity, wine glasses that
Speaker 1: say wine is cheaper than therapy. It's a normalization of
Speaker 1: heavy drinking. How much is too much? I could down
Speaker 1: a bottle in like an hour and a half. These
Speaker 1: are the new faces of alcoholism, and they're not who
Speaker 1: you'd expect. The teacher of the Year, a New York attorney,
Speaker 1: a corporate vice president. So us the four questions that
Speaker 1: could save your life. That's my kryptonite. I cannot be
Speaker 1: around vodka. It's a Red Table wake up call. The
Speaker 1: real livers coming in. Those are real livers. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons why this particular show was really important to
Speaker 1: me is because wine for me was like kool aid,
Speaker 1: because like I was a you know, a brown liquor drinker, voka,
Speaker 1: Like I was a hard liquor drinker, Like I could
Speaker 1: drink almost anybody under the table. Damn yeah, Will specifically.
Speaker 1: Now Will is a lightweight, but I mean I used
Speaker 1: to be a hard one to keep up with. When
Speaker 1: I moved to red wine, I considered myself like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is better. This is better for me, because they
Speaker 1: say the red wine is good for you, you know.
Speaker 1: But drinking red wine for me was like drinking glasses
Speaker 1: of water. It wasn't even like so I not drinking it,
Speaker 1: like you're like, I'm like goo, Google, alright, where's the next?
Speaker 1: Because I'm used to that hard hit. I was drinking
Speaker 1: hard in high school too, And when I got out here,
Speaker 1: I was doing cocktails. So ecstasy, alcohol, weed, WHOA, what
Speaker 1: a combination. You were having a good old time. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you. I was having me a little bit.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is not cocaine, this is not heroin.
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing things that I thought was addictive, but
Speaker 1: I would do those three together. That was my cocktail.
Speaker 1: Your threshold becomes so high that what it takes for
Speaker 1: you to to get to the place you need to
Speaker 1: get to. It'll take me two bottles to get to Okay,
Speaker 1: If I do ecstasy, weed and alcohol at the same time,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get there faster and I can keep the
Speaker 1: high going because then I can just keep drinking because
Speaker 1: I know ecstasy is gonna last me about three, four
Speaker 1: or five hours. The weed, you know, that's just gonna
Speaker 1: keep me just smooth, and then the alcohol is gonna
Speaker 1: keep it going like I could just keep taking drink,
Speaker 1: drink drink. Yeah, oh my god, I'm not like that
Speaker 1: sounds intense. Listen, that sounds like I would everybody. No,
Speaker 1: you know what that stressing under a recovery and my
Speaker 1: family that it's not accepting on the fact that addiction run.
Speaker 1: But I get it, literally, I got it quick. Like
Speaker 1: once I I was going for that third bottle of wine,
Speaker 1: I said, you've got a problem. And it was cold
Speaker 1: turkey that day that day, that day, I just stopped.
Speaker 1: Wow and never since. No. I mean I had, like
Speaker 1: I've had a glass of wine here and there, but
Speaker 1: I cannot touch rock. I cannot touch drum drums. Another one.
Speaker 1: No dark liquor I'm never forgets. In New Orleans with Will,
Speaker 1: they had these lavender vodka drinks. I'm like, I haven't
Speaker 1: had vodka in years. Let me tell you, I had
Speaker 1: that lavender voca drink. I had one, I had a
Speaker 1: second one, and I was craving for a third one.
Speaker 1: I haven't stopped thinking about that drink till this day.
Speaker 1: Stopped thinking about that drink till this day. But that's
Speaker 1: when I realized. I was like, Jada, you can't play
Speaker 1: no games. And when I see vodka, even when I
Speaker 1: opened up the refrigerator and they have those vodka spritzers
Speaker 1: in there and I look at it, that grapefruit vodka combination,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, and let me tell you the kind
Speaker 1: of discipline I have to put in because just because
Speaker 1: I have a problem with vodka, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: can't have vock in the house. I'm not doing all that.
Speaker 1: But I think also I'm a binger. Yeah, I'm a binger.
Speaker 1: Your grandmother was when it's time to nal grandmother was
Speaker 1: we're gonna go right. So I wasn't the type of
Speaker 1: person that was drinking every day, you know. I was
Speaker 1: like a weekend party girl, totally you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So it was like, yo, Thursday to Monday morning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Thursday to Monday morning. I would go like just but
Speaker 1: it never got to the point where it interfered with
Speaker 1: your being able to go to work. Did you ever?
Speaker 1: There was one incident. I had one incident that was
Speaker 1: an eye opening incident for me as well. I had
Speaker 1: one incident or nutting, Professor, I passed out when you
Speaker 1: told me that's the makeup trailer, That's what I never
Speaker 1: told me that that passed out. I went to work
Speaker 1: high and it was a bad batch of ecstasy. Lord
Speaker 1: had mercy, and I passed out, and I told everybody
Speaker 1: that I had taken I must have had old medication
Speaker 1: in a vitamin bottle. Think, oh my god, But I
Speaker 1: tell you what I did, though, got my ass together
Speaker 1: and got on that set. That was the last time,
Speaker 1: like I take heed. I would never do something like
Speaker 1: That's why I was on you always. I stay on
Speaker 1: because Jaden and Trey, because I grew up with my
Speaker 1: mother who was a heroin attic. And still it didn't
Speaker 1: sink into me that any mind altering substance. I don't
Speaker 1: care what it is. All y'all young people talking about
Speaker 1: weed is from the earth, and I like this. It's
Speaker 1: a gate. You know, it's a year, all of this
Speaker 1: from the damn every year. You know, I know my
Speaker 1: body and it's taken me a long time to understand
Speaker 1: what works best for me. But it's imperative for me
Speaker 1: to stop smoking every year for at least two months.
Speaker 1: This is my fourth year doing it now, I know.
Speaker 1: But I think the day that you decided to do
Speaker 1: it all together will be a very be day for me.
Speaker 1: I think they'll see something's different it is. I think
Speaker 1: that's awesome. You know, now I get it. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody has their journey. I'm grateful that that's all you
Speaker 1: dealing with because when I was your age, I was
Speaker 1: doing alcohol. That's what I'm saying. I'm like, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to I mean, I'm like you was much worse than me.
Speaker 1: It can get really messed up. I would always want
Speaker 1: like if you guys saw something in me that was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a downward spiral that is going to catch her
Speaker 1: real quick. That's why you have to trust the eyes
Speaker 1: around you because you won't know. And that was the
Speaker 1: thing with me. Don't think that people didn't try to
Speaker 1: tap me on my shoulder. Don't think that when I
Speaker 1: was at Debbie Allen throwing up all over her house
Speaker 1: that she wasn't like, Hey, I had to reach my
Speaker 1: rock bottoms. I wish I could have been a fly
Speaker 1: on the wall to just see how crazy I wish
Speaker 1: I could have too. So I'm gonna yank to as well.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I think back on my life. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm a walking miracle. You are no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: You are a walking miracle. People would not believe this
Speaker 1: one is too. Yeah, I guess I'm just kind of
Speaker 1: a little funny duddy on the side. Thank you God.
Speaker 1: Right now, we have doctor Jessica Mellinger, and she is
Speaker 1: a liver disease specialist at the University of Michigan who
Speaker 1: has witnessed shocking trends over the past year. Thanks for
Speaker 1: talking about this topic. It's a good one. Yeah, tell
Speaker 1: us what you've been seeing. We've been seeing astronomical increases
Speaker 1: in hospital days for young women with alcohol related liver disease,
Speaker 1: something we previously kind of thought happened mostly just in
Speaker 1: middle aged men. So just really really surprising. Wow, more
Speaker 1: women are drinking more heavily, women are starting drink like men,
Speaker 1: you know, and so they're starting to get liver disease.
Speaker 1: Have you been able to identify when this uptick is
Speaker 1: that really happening in a woman's life in the forties
Speaker 1: and fifties is still kind of the biggest chunk of
Speaker 1: people that we see with this, but the rates of
Speaker 1: women in their twenties and thirties and early forties are
Speaker 1: starting to really catch up with that. Wow, I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot more of my peers, specifically during the pandemic
Speaker 1: um drinking a lot more. What we do find is
Speaker 1: that a large percentage of the population of young people
Speaker 1: eighteen nine year olds almost one and four are reporting
Speaker 1: that they had an alcohol use disorder in the last year.
Speaker 1: That's that most severe form of addiction, right, That's not
Speaker 1: just I misused alcohol once in a while, and that
Speaker 1: younger age group, we're just seeing those numbers go up
Speaker 1: and up and up. I've definitely seen friends and family
Speaker 1: members become excessive drinkers over the pandemic, and it's really
Speaker 1: hard to talk to people about it because I think
Speaker 1: that women are targeted in a certain way in the
Speaker 1: marketing of how you know, like wine Wednesdays and it's
Speaker 1: been difficult to even talk to people that have had
Speaker 1: tesseive drinking issues. I think you're absolutely correct that that's
Speaker 1: exactly what's happening, is that we have a culture that
Speaker 1: is really kind of promoting drinking as just what you
Speaker 1: do to, you know, end your day to cope with problems.
Speaker 1: When I walk through hospital gift shops, there's alcohol paraphernalia.
Speaker 1: There's wine glasses, there's shot glasses, wine purses, if you
Speaker 1: can believe this, you know, a purse that you has
Speaker 1: a little spigot on it that you can you know,
Speaker 1: put wine in and hide it. And I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of a normalization of heavy drinking, and it's a
Speaker 1: normalization of using alcohol in a way that is kind
Speaker 1: of a coping mechanism. Yeah, Like it's okay to drink
Speaker 1: alcohol when you're depressed or board or feeling lonely. That's
Speaker 1: the thing to do. Yeah. And I've seen it when
Speaker 1: you know, shopping out in the stores. You know the
Speaker 1: wine glasses that say wine is cheaper than therapy. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this, yeah, this normalization of it, this normalization and
Speaker 1: glamorization of it. You know, you watch TV. You see
Speaker 1: women relaxing with big glasses of wine. And we're not
Speaker 1: talking about little glasses. Yeah, big glasses. What are some
Speaker 1: of the signs of the liver disease. The signs can
Speaker 1: be pretty dramatic. And I was able to arrange to
Speaker 1: have a couple of livers brought in for you guys
Speaker 1: to look at. Oh oh oh oh, those are real
Speaker 1: livers coming in. Those are real livers. Okay, okay, those
Speaker 1: are really well, you know games, she's a nurse and
Speaker 1: so I want to see this. Well, we're gonna see
Speaker 1: it because here we are. Okay, so that's a normal liver.
Speaker 1: Oh that's really bad. You can see the normal livers,
Speaker 1: nice and smooth, and the liver that serotic looks really lumpy,
Speaker 1: kind of bumpy, shrunken, And that's scar tissue. That's scar
Speaker 1: tissue that's kind of marbled all through that liver. What's
Speaker 1: happening is just like if you get a cut on
Speaker 1: your hand and it gets red and then you have
Speaker 1: a scar. The alcohol is irritating your liver. And when
Speaker 1: people do get liver disease symptoms, it could be you know,
Speaker 1: your eyes turning yellow, your skin turning yellow, your belly
Speaker 1: kind of swelling up with fluid, people will bleed heavily.
Speaker 1: They'll help you vomiting blood, getting confused. Prior to that,
Speaker 1: you might just feel kind of maybe nauseated, not want
Speaker 1: to eat as much, you just kind of don't feel good.
Speaker 1: So they can be pretty vague symptoms that don't necessarily
Speaker 1: cue you into the fact that you've got to developing
Speaker 1: liver disease problem. That's really really scary to look at.
Speaker 1: It's going to be straightforward, but that gives your reality.
Speaker 1: Is like, once you can see something like that, hopefully
Speaker 1: people will be like, I don't want my liver to
Speaker 1: look like that. You don't get advanced alcohol related liver
Speaker 1: disease overnight. It takes years to get So if you're
Speaker 1: getting serosis in your late twenties, thirties, even forties, you
Speaker 1: started drinking really earlier. Yeah, we have to always remember too,
Speaker 1: that there's really two diseases going on here. There's an
Speaker 1: alcohol use disorder and there's a liver disease, and we
Speaker 1: don't want to forget about the first one right now.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, because you're using alcohol use disorder
Speaker 1: instead of just saying alcoholism, why is that we've moved
Speaker 1: a from using terms like alcoholism or addiction because people
Speaker 1: have told us that they feel stigmatized by it. Not
Speaker 1: everybody is willing to admit right off the bat that
Speaker 1: they have an addiction. So what I tell my patients is,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't care what term you use to
Speaker 1: describe yourself, just recognizing the reality of what's going on,
Speaker 1: and I just try to stick with the terminology my
Speaker 1: patients are comfortable with. If they want to use alcoholism
Speaker 1: or addiction, then I'll use that when I speak with them,
Speaker 1: and if they don't, we don't. And so that there's
Speaker 1: a self assessment quiz for people to know if they're
Speaker 1: drinking too much. Yeah, they go by the term the
Speaker 1: cage questions. The first is do you feel like you
Speaker 1: need to cut back? Um? And this is often kind
Speaker 1: of that first sign. This is what I get asked
Speaker 1: a lot by people. How do I know I'm drinking
Speaker 1: too much? And well, if you feel like you might be,
Speaker 1: that's probably a good sign that that you should really
Speaker 1: think about cutting back or stopping altogether. Do you get
Speaker 1: annoyed by people who talk to you about cutting back?
Speaker 1: Do you feel guilty about your drinking? And then do
Speaker 1: you need an eye opener. When you get up in
Speaker 1: the morning answering any one of those, you could be
Speaker 1: a sign that you've got an alcohol use problem. So
Speaker 1: let me ask you a question. If I have a
Speaker 1: friend who feels as though drinking a bottle of wine
Speaker 1: by herself is okay, is that okay? I think the
Speaker 1: straight answer is no. I'd say that's a problem. And
Speaker 1: I think it speaks to something that many of us
Speaker 1: are unaware of. What is a drink? What is one thing?
Speaker 1: What one standard unit of alcohol and one drink would
Speaker 1: be a shot? One shot like one and a half
Speaker 1: ounces of hard liquor like vodka or DRISKI, one can
Speaker 1: of beer. A standard twelve ounce can of beer is
Speaker 1: one drink four or to five ounces of wine. So
Speaker 1: there's about five glasses of wine per bottle, roughly, and
Speaker 1: many people are having much more than that. I had
Speaker 1: a patient who said she was only having three drinks
Speaker 1: a day. She wasn't certain why, she, you know, had
Speaker 1: liver disease. Come to find out that she was actually
Speaker 1: pouring about six shots worth of um of alcohol into
Speaker 1: each drink, and so she was actually having eighteen drinks
Speaker 1: at night. And if you're a woman and you don't
Speaker 1: have liver disease. This is for people who don't have
Speaker 1: alcohol use disorder or liver disease or an alcohol medical issue.
Speaker 1: Anything over one drink a day is really too much.
Speaker 1: That's important for people to know what those recommendations are.
Speaker 1: Having more than one drink a day is too much
Speaker 1: without liver disease. For someone without liver disease, if you
Speaker 1: have liver disease, you shouldn't drink at all. But if
Speaker 1: you don't have liver disease, you should only be having one.
Speaker 1: Wondering and there's some data to suggest that even one
Speaker 1: drink might be too much, so, but right now, the
Speaker 1: National Institute of Health recommendations are one drink a day
Speaker 1: for women to for men. And I hear a lot
Speaker 1: in my clinic people who are surprised that they have
Speaker 1: alcohol related liver disease, particularly young women who don't think
Speaker 1: that they were drinking that much. They were just drinking
Speaker 1: wine with their friends and not realizing that they're getting
Speaker 1: through a bottle of night. That's a lot. I had
Speaker 1: to clutch my purl on the inside a little bit
Speaker 1: around I mean history, thinking about my history, you know,
Speaker 1: just that one drink because I mean I was a
Speaker 1: drink a bottle, real fast drinker. What do you think
Speaker 1: on one hour, I could down a bottle and maybe
Speaker 1: like an hour and a half to oh my god,
Speaker 1: one glass after another, one glass after another. Because you're
Speaker 1: just they're watching TV drinking gee gee, and you're not.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, is red wine? It's chilled? So I'm like,
Speaker 1: why I need to keep my limits. That's not years ago.
Speaker 1: Jade is twenty two, So it's been twenty two years
Speaker 1: for me. So very good. Yes, Like the doctor is
Speaker 1: shocked at right now. She's like, so, what's the latest
Speaker 1: on red wine being healthy? So if you have any
Speaker 1: liver disease at all, we recommend no drinking. Right. There
Speaker 1: has been some suggestion that red wine may have some
Speaker 1: cardiovascular benefits, and the data is kind of up and
Speaker 1: down on that, just depending upon which study you look
Speaker 1: at from a liver standpoint. By being a liver dog,
Speaker 1: I think certainly if you have any amount of liver disease,
Speaker 1: even red wine is really going to be damaging to you. Wow,
Speaker 1: this has been a very informative problems. I really didn't know, right,
Speaker 1: everybody talking about how red wine, you know, if you
Speaker 1: have a glass of red wine a day that that's
Speaker 1: healthy for you. I think it's really important to just
Speaker 1: be aware of my craving. This am I going after
Speaker 1: it for you know, relaxation purposes, to get to sleep
Speaker 1: at night all the time, because that's really when I
Speaker 1: see a lot of my patients find that it sort
Speaker 1: of gets out of hand. Right. Well, thank you for
Speaker 1: thank you for coming in school and the day you
Speaker 1: gave me some information I was not aware of at all.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Next up. Mother of three, Annie Grace was
Speaker 1: a rising star in the marketing world until happy hour
Speaker 1: turned into two bottles of wine a night. Poised, driven
Speaker 1: and ambitious, Annie Grace was just twenty six when named
Speaker 1: vice president of a multinational company. She never imagined her
Speaker 1: after hours work drinks would nearly cost her everything. I'm
Speaker 1: so terrified, any please rescue yourself and he found her
Speaker 1: purpose after hitting rock bottom. Here for how she created
Speaker 1: This Naked Mind, a program that has empowered millions to
Speaker 1: change their relationship with alcohol. I was global head of
Speaker 1: marketing for a company headquartered in London, in charge of
Speaker 1: twenty countries flying all over the world. You know, international
Speaker 1: trips where the booze was just flowing and drinking two
Speaker 1: bottles of wine every single night. When was the moment
Speaker 1: that made you go, WHOA, something's really wrong here. There
Speaker 1: was this one time I asked my four year old
Speaker 1: to come sit on my lap and he said, no, Mom,
Speaker 1: you smell bad in your teeth are purple. And it
Speaker 1: was just like, what is happening? Like how can I
Speaker 1: be showing up for my kids like this? And it
Speaker 1: was these little moments. I was coming back from a
Speaker 1: super boosy work trip. I've been up till three in
Speaker 1: the morning the night before. I went down into the
Speaker 1: hotel are and said, oh gosh, I just need something.
Speaker 1: She said, I can give you a screwdriver, which is
Speaker 1: one of those little lines. If I don't drink hard
Speaker 1: alcohol first thing in the morning, then I'm still okay.
Speaker 1: I'm still not over the line. I'm I'm still not
Speaker 1: It's still not a problem. And so I said, oh,
Speaker 1: but I'm really in pain. And I had this headache,
Speaker 1: and I said, I just have to get home to
Speaker 1: my kids, and so I ordered one and I had
Speaker 1: two or three, and I got to ether airport and
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in the airport and I'm just in tears
Speaker 1: and I'm writing in my journal and I remember writing
Speaker 1: the words, am I an alcoholic? And just really for
Speaker 1: the first time seeing that kind of in black and white.
Speaker 1: The thing was, at that point my journey, I had
Speaker 1: been trying to cut back. I had done all sorts
Speaker 1: of things. I said, you know, no drinking till the
Speaker 1: weekend for just one glass. I had all of these
Speaker 1: rules and everyone I would break and I stopped being
Speaker 1: able to really look at myself in the mirror. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, why can't I do this for my kids?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm smart, I'm together, I have it in
Speaker 1: control in all other parts of my life, but this
Speaker 1: one thing, like it has got me, and why I
Speaker 1: can't I do this one thing? And so I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there and I'm asking the question that I've been asking
Speaker 1: for years now is what is my problem? What's wrong
Speaker 1: with me? And I had this moment that I can
Speaker 1: only describe as like some divine moment where I said,
Speaker 1: nothing's wrong with you. Find out why? Find out much changed?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's a good one. And so I made
Speaker 1: myself too promises. I said, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: stop trying to stop drinking. I'm gonna let myself off
Speaker 1: the hook. I'm going to give myself some self compassion
Speaker 1: because this roller coaster of shame and blame and trying
Speaker 1: these rules and breaking these rules, it was losing my soul.
Speaker 1: I was losing touch with myself. I did not trust
Speaker 1: myself anymore. And I said, you know what, you've been
Speaker 1: doing the best you can with these tools you have.
Speaker 1: Give yourself passion. Take a year and find out why.
Speaker 1: And so I went on this journey and I wrote
Speaker 1: down every single reason I drink. And I just started
Speaker 1: learning that all those reasons I was drinking, alcohol relaxes
Speaker 1: even THO it doesn't release his cortisol, a stress hormone. Wow,
Speaker 1: it does in adrenaline. That's crazy. Alcohol makes things more fun. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It actually numbs your ability to feel pleasure,
Speaker 1: so that you think nothing's fun without alcohol because of
Speaker 1: all the past alcohol you've been drinking like neurochemically, that's
Speaker 1: what happens in the brain. And so I look at
Speaker 1: this and I'm about a year later, I walk out
Speaker 1: of my office. I tell my husband, if you want
Speaker 1: to drink with me again, tonight's last night because I'm
Speaker 1: done after this. He looks at me, He's like there
Speaker 1: was no trust there, so he didn't believe me. But
Speaker 1: sure enough I really was done. You recorded um yourself
Speaker 1: doing one of your worst moments, a few minutes of
Speaker 1: boost and relax. I'm so much the hip addictions. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of people have those moments that
Speaker 1: I always hear people share about calling out to God
Speaker 1: in their final moments of recognizing that addiction has taken
Speaker 1: over and there's nothing that they can do. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't remember making those videos. I have lots of them.
Speaker 1: I was yeah, just wow. So any you have a
Speaker 1: whole program called This Naked Mind. This Naked Mind just
Speaker 1: started as my own journey. I realized I wanted my
Speaker 1: mind to be naked. I didn't want to be influenced
Speaker 1: or controlled by anything else. Wiping your mind I love,
Speaker 1: And when I put it out into the world, it resonated.
Speaker 1: People started writing me letters. It worked where nothing else worked,
Speaker 1: where they had tried everything, and they felt it stuck
Speaker 1: as I felt. And now millions of people around the
Speaker 1: world have been impacted and helped because they're also able
Speaker 1: to feel really empowered to change their behavior from an
Speaker 1: emotional place. Wow, I hear you have three pillars that
Speaker 1: helps you stop drinking. What are they? The three pillars
Speaker 1: are action, emotion and knowledge. Action emotion knowledge, and so
Speaker 1: you can take the action day one. You stop and
Speaker 1: then hope that the knowledge and the emotion catch up,
Speaker 1: or you can get the knowledge. And that's what I did,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even know I was doing it. I
Speaker 1: got all this knowledge called doesn't actually relax me, it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually make things more fun. And then my emotion changed.
Speaker 1: And then when I finally stopped, it was not as
Speaker 1: hard as it had been every other time because everything
Speaker 1: had caught up. Everything was aligned at that point. Everything
Speaker 1: was aligned because, as we know, willpower, it just runs out.
Speaker 1: It becomes something that over time, if you get stressed
Speaker 1: during the day, you have less will power at home
Speaker 1: to turn down that next drink. Once I understood the science,
Speaker 1: when I's understood, you know that all the things I
Speaker 1: thought it was doing for me, it just wasn't doing.
Speaker 1: Then my emotions changed and then I wanted it as
Speaker 1: much as I wanted. Like a glass of motor oil,
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to drink. And that was so freeing.
Speaker 1: How long have you not been drinking? Over six years? Now,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Well, thank you so much, thank you for
Speaker 1: having with Alright, So, Jessica Duanees was Kentucky's Teacher of
Speaker 1: the Year. On the same day she won this prestigious award,
Speaker 1: she was hiding a dark, painful secret. Welcome, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. So what was the secret you hiding? Yes,
Speaker 1: my secret was that while I was holding that trophy,
Speaker 1: I was feeding to end the ceremony and go get
Speaker 1: liquor and go home and black out. In that picture,
Speaker 1: I was in withdrawals and that's why I'm shiny and sweaty.
Speaker 1: It was awful. And so that's kind of like how
Speaker 1: my days were at that point. I would wake up
Speaker 1: around two am, do my lesson planning, go to school,
Speaker 1: take zan X to ward off the withdrawals, and yeah,
Speaker 1: um teach. I taught really well. I had so much
Speaker 1: shame for being an alcoholic. I felt like I was
Speaker 1: such a terrible person outside of school that when I
Speaker 1: was teaching, I was just diving in a hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And as soon as the bell rain, I said by
Speaker 1: to the kids who I loved dearly. But as soon
Speaker 1: as I said by to them, straight to the liquor store,
Speaker 1: straight home, and I would probably be blocked out by
Speaker 1: like six seven o'clock. Way, go back to wash prints,
Speaker 1: repeat wow and your wor how much would you say
Speaker 1: you were drinking. I was drinking at least a fifth
Speaker 1: a day for a year and a half, so I
Speaker 1: actually did end up with alcoholic liver disease. Like I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: the fifth what is it? It's like the bottle that's
Speaker 1: like this big, It's like the standard bottle. Multiple people
Speaker 1: will share some left over. I was drinking the whole
Speaker 1: thing one day. What was your rock bottom? I kind
Speaker 1: of hit two rock bottoms. I started to have like
Speaker 1: the swollen belly. I was throwing up bile. My vision
Speaker 1: would start to get a little bit blurry. I would
Speaker 1: have people cover my classroom because they thought that I
Speaker 1: was sick, and then I had stomach issues. Know it
Speaker 1: was that I was drinking a lot, and I was
Speaker 1: having these symptoms all day. For thirteen years, I was
Speaker 1: able to work and manage the double life. But one
Speaker 1: day I couldn't get out of the house. I was
Speaker 1: terrified to get in the car and drive. I was like,
Speaker 1: there's something really wrong. I can't even pretend anymore. So
Speaker 1: I googled and I saw that there was a rehabilitation facility.
Speaker 1: I got sober then, and I thought good. I went
Speaker 1: to college, graduate school twice, I lived on my own,
Speaker 1: first generation American, and I was like, love, I can
Speaker 1: do all this. Getting sober should be easy, right, No,
Speaker 1: you know, I lasted to the holidays and I started drinking.
Speaker 1: So I ended up in a rehab facility again. I
Speaker 1: didn't tell anybody. I hit it from my complete family,
Speaker 1: like nobody needs. I struggled so much, and I was
Speaker 1: like it was just a rough you know, It's like
Speaker 1: it was a rough break. I was afraid of losing
Speaker 1: my job. And then my biggest, most terrifying traumatic relapse
Speaker 1: was when I was in a relationship with someone who
Speaker 1: was also a recovery. His drug of choice was heroin,
Speaker 1: and he relapsed. With everything with COVID going on, right, like,
Speaker 1: we lost our support groups. We couldn't go to work,
Speaker 1: and it was just us two in the house together.
Speaker 1: Even though we loved each other very much, it's not enough,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're in recovery, you need to get
Speaker 1: with your people to be in your community, and we
Speaker 1: were just stuck. Jessica fell in love with her boyfriend
Speaker 1: Ian when they were in rehab together. His battle with
Speaker 1: drugs began when he got hooked on prescription painkillers after
Speaker 1: a military injury. With her own sobriety hanging by a threat,
Speaker 1: Jessica tried convincing Ean to get help. I was hiding
Speaker 1: his disease because I was ashamed for him. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to tell anybody that my boyfriend was addicted to heroine.
Speaker 1: One day we were supposed to have like a romantic date.
Speaker 1: A texted him to get me a diet coke and
Speaker 1: I didn't hear anything. I called nothing, So I was like, God,
Speaker 1: let me go to his apartment. Thing. Knock nothing, knock nothing, knock,
Speaker 1: call the phone here, the phone ringing. I started to
Speaker 1: get anxious, so I started banging on the door. Neighbor
Speaker 1: comes and he's like, oh, I'm going to call the
Speaker 1: police on you, and I'm like, please please call the
Speaker 1: police because something's wrong with him. And he's in there.
Speaker 1: When the police come and the rest of it such
Speaker 1: a blur. I remember the like them opening the door
Speaker 1: and they're like, there's a dead male and it was him.
Speaker 1: I fell apart and then they were like, do you
Speaker 1: have his mom's And so I had to call his
Speaker 1: mother and say that he's gone. Then I had to
Speaker 1: call his brother. His mom came, and I never wish
Speaker 1: on any soul having to tell a mother that her
Speaker 1: son is dead. Corner finally let us in. He was blue.
Speaker 1: A few hours ago. He had just said I love you,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to the store, and then he
Speaker 1: went from that to being gone. The corner took the body,
Speaker 1: his family went and I went straight to the liquor
Speaker 1: store straight home. After that, I got hospitalized eight times.
Speaker 1: I went to rehab and they're a doctor. It was like,
Speaker 1: you can't deal with your grief, and so you drink
Speaker 1: to deal with it, and then you're were processing these
Speaker 1: feelings and I was like, you know what, I surrender.
Speaker 1: I'm waving that white flag. When I walked out of
Speaker 1: the facility, I resigned from teaching, and something just clicked
Speaker 1: to me. There was no amount of alcohol that I
Speaker 1: could have drink to make me feel better. At that
Speaker 1: point I stopped, Thank God, and um, I've been sober now.
Speaker 1: It's like day one hundred sixty six, so I'm like
Speaker 1: five and a half one in the universe, and like
Speaker 1: the higher powers that be, I wrote this op ed
Speaker 1: in a local newspaper in Kentucky, and I said, this
Speaker 1: is me. I'm an alcoholic. I've been drinking forever. Like
Speaker 1: I've been struggling. I've been living this double life. And
Speaker 1: I remember the day that it came out. I was
Speaker 1: so anxious. I had actually been teaching and an all
Speaker 1: boys school, and I was like, my boys, they're not
Speaker 1: gonna want to talk to me. They're gonna be over
Speaker 1: me their parents. But the best thing was those kids.
Speaker 1: They were like, you know, you're just teaching something different,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's just funny. Yeah, like they say that,
Speaker 1: they say that when they're just like, thank you for
Speaker 1: telling us worth it. It's been a hundred percent worth it.
Speaker 1: Every relationship I had got stronger. I think it's awesome
Speaker 1: that your students recognize that that was a teaching moment.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a teaching moment about life. Having struggles
Speaker 1: and fallen down is it's that's part of life, you know,
Speaker 1: And it's not about the fall. It's about it. It's
Speaker 1: about to get up. But I would just say to anybody,
Speaker 1: it's like, if you're questioning it, there's probably something wrong.
Speaker 1: And the other really big thing too that I would
Speaker 1: say is you're never alone, because I feel like for
Speaker 1: as long as I kept my mouth shut, I was
Speaker 1: poisoning myself. Once I finally opened my mouth, everything came out.
Speaker 1: I've stayed sober since I've opened my mouth, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. And so I feel like people need
Speaker 1: to realize it's okay to not be okay. You keeping
Speaker 1: a secret could be the difference between you living and dying.
Speaker 1: That's real, real, real, real talk. Right there. Had to
Speaker 1: learn that the hard way. Thank you so much, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful for the opportunity. And that was a
Speaker 1: powerful testimony to keep doing the work, keep doing the work. Yes,
Speaker 1: how many times did you re laugh? Scame? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's debatable whether you actually want to call
Speaker 1: it relax because relaps actually implies that there has been
Speaker 1: recovery that has taken place. I would just have periods
Speaker 1: I call them of abstinence, and then I would use again.
Speaker 1: I would always run back to a different meeting to
Speaker 1: kind of sneak and kind of sneaking and get kind
Speaker 1: of comfortable there and say, oh no, I was going
Speaker 1: to these meetings and all of that nonsense. And every
Speaker 1: time I would do that, I would feel so much
Speaker 1: relief just having admitted it and going back and picking
Speaker 1: up that one day key chain. It was such a relief.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, you're making yourself feel all
Speaker 1: that shame. Nobody feels that way about you. You just
Speaker 1: gotta keep coming back totally until it clicks. And that's
Speaker 1: the one thing, the one thing I never did well,
Speaker 1: stop going yeah, that's amazing. I just kept coming back,
Speaker 1: and one day the light bolt went off. Oh God.
Speaker 1: When twenty nine year old Katie was ready to put
Speaker 1: an end to a decade of binge drinking and blackouts,
Speaker 1: she took matters into her own hands. A New York attorney,
Speaker 1: Katie has always been an overachiever who could conquer anything,
Speaker 1: but when it came to alcohol, she was powerless. At
Speaker 1: one point, she was drinking so much she couldn't remember
Speaker 1: the night before. Katie got sober to save her own life.
Speaker 1: She had no idea she was about to change the
Speaker 1: lives of countless others with her groundbreaking group, Sober Black
Speaker 1: Girls Club. What did your binge drinking look like? I
Speaker 1: was studying for the bar. I had my dream job,
Speaker 1: I had my dream car. I had like a really luxury,
Speaker 1: nice apartment. Life was good, So now why am I depressed?
Speaker 1: And this is when my drinking problem as astivated to
Speaker 1: a adduction. And this is when like binging started, literally
Speaker 1: going to work and coming back home and just feeling
Speaker 1: so empty, feeling like I haven't accomplished anything, feeling like
Speaker 1: a failure. It was just a terrible feeling and feeling
Speaker 1: that I just ran from right and then that basically
Speaker 1: turned into me binging. What I realized through therapy was
Speaker 1: that I had people telling me I was pretty and smart.
Speaker 1: I was given awards, school always came easy to me.
Speaker 1: And then when that was all taken away and I
Speaker 1: was put into the setting where this nine to six setting,
Speaker 1: where now I don't have anyone telling me giving me compliments.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not a star, I'm not shiny, especially
Speaker 1: when you're in settings where like you're the only black
Speaker 1: person doing certain things, like the focus is on you.
Speaker 1: Through therapy, I realized that, like Kat, you never had
Speaker 1: self esteem. Your self esteem was based on what people
Speaker 1: thought about you and your awards and your afflishments, and
Speaker 1: now that you're done with all that, you don't know
Speaker 1: who you are. I became deep pressed. But I'm glad
Speaker 1: that you talked about your feelings of low self esteem,
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, part of doing
Speaker 1: the work is getting at the root of what is
Speaker 1: really causing you to drink or causing you not to
Speaker 1: want to deal with your feelings. And for you it
Speaker 1: was a low self esteem and it was that for
Speaker 1: me as well, you know, and never really understanding where
Speaker 1: all of that came from. I still don't understand to
Speaker 1: this day. We all deal with that to a certain
Speaker 1: and I think that we we all find different ways.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what I said about being addicted to reactions? Yeah? Literally,
Speaker 1: was like, That's why I'm connecting with you so much
Speaker 1: on this because I'm like, I feel you like needing
Speaker 1: validation and and arriving off of that validation is Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a dangerous cycle. What was your lowest point that
Speaker 1: you looked at yourself and said this is a problem.
Speaker 1: Within one year, I lost my job, my hypaying job.
Speaker 1: I can't afford my hYP paying apartment, I can afford
Speaker 1: my hyping So I lost basically all those things in
Speaker 1: one had to move back home with my parents. A
Speaker 1: lot of my relationships were basically problem So at this
Speaker 1: point I have to like turn anywhere to be like Katie,
Speaker 1: what is wrong with you? Like if all this stuff
Speaker 1: is happening, it has to be you. There's something that
Speaker 1: you are doing. And it was extremely hard for me
Speaker 1: because as black folks, we keep a lot of stuff inside.
Speaker 1: But at that time, I thought I was the only
Speaker 1: person going through this. So I never met anyone at
Speaker 1: that time that I thought had an addiction. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know what an addiction was. In my head. It
Speaker 1: was like older white men and big bellies, No clew
Speaker 1: what I was going through, and I just knew I
Speaker 1: needed help. So I started to go see a therapist
Speaker 1: and she said maybe should take a breaking drinking. And
Speaker 1: I looked at her, like what are you walking around?
Speaker 1: Why are you bringing up alcohol? What does that have
Speaker 1: to do with me? Like like like that has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with me, Like it's not in my family.
Speaker 1: No one drunks at home. So after a couple of sessions,
Speaker 1: I gave into the idea like you know what, Like
Speaker 1: she's right, drinking is the cause I think every time
Speaker 1: I drink, something bad or negative actually does happen. One
Speaker 1: of the suggestions my therapist gave me was to go
Speaker 1: to a twelve step program, so I went I was
Speaker 1: the only black person, so that like threw me off,
Speaker 1: and that just really rubbed me the wrong way. So
Speaker 1: it was the culture that you did. I just didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't make sense to me. I felt like there
Speaker 1: were rules I had to follow and there were things
Speaker 1: I had to agree on, and if I didn't agree
Speaker 1: on certain things and I wasn't doing something right, I
Speaker 1: wasn't doing sobriety right, I couldn't get with it. I
Speaker 1: could not understand that. So then I created Silver Bacos Club,
Speaker 1: and then when the pandemic hit, we really expanded because
Speaker 1: folks needed meetings and they felt like the meetings they
Speaker 1: were going to online, they didn't feel like they belonged.
Speaker 1: They felt like they couldn't talk about certain issues. But
Speaker 1: I don't know if you did twelve Stop, but there
Speaker 1: was a point where you couldn't talk about outside issues.
Speaker 1: And what is an outside issue? Can you please tell
Speaker 1: me what that means? That means you can't talk about race.
Speaker 1: So when Judge Floyd passed away, I was actually at
Speaker 1: a twelve Stop meeting, but I went to both support
Speaker 1: of friends. We're talking about it. We're really upset and
Speaker 1: I'm at this meeting, but there's no sense of the
Speaker 1: spear of anger, of sadness, like everyone is pretending or
Speaker 1: acting as if a black man has not just been
Speaker 1: killed on national time. I'm grieving and you all are
Speaker 1: just having a wonderful time. And I wasn't the only
Speaker 1: one person who was feeling like this. There was a
Speaker 1: girls all around the nation was feeling like this. And
Speaker 1: that's why we decided to create our own meetings. If
Speaker 1: you need to go to rehab, go to your rehab,
Speaker 1: but on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and Sundays, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get together. That's beautiful. Like I'm literally sitting here going wow,
Speaker 1: Like that's so important, Like the fact that there's so
Speaker 1: much as women of color that we see in this
Speaker 1: world that isn't designed for us and catered for us.
Speaker 1: I'm just sitting here. I'm being very very quiet, but
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to listen and understand because that has
Speaker 1: just not been my experience. It's almost like finding a therapist,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like sometimes you just have
Speaker 1: to keep going until you find the right one. I'm
Speaker 1: just sorry that you had that experience. Yeah, I've definitely
Speaker 1: felt what you're talking about. It was just culturally didn't
Speaker 1: fit what I needed, and I felt very much an outsider.
Speaker 1: And so because of my specific experiences of being a
Speaker 1: black woman and the traumas that I was coming with,
Speaker 1: that certain programs that I would go to couldn't relate
Speaker 1: and there weren't hardly anyone in there that looked like
Speaker 1: me either. Yeah, you know, and so I totally did it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the work that you're doing. Yeah no,
Speaker 1: Thank you for the Black Girl Sober Club. Thank you
Speaker 1: for sharing your story with Thank you for having beautiful
Speaker 1: testimony we both have on black turbans today. It's the
Speaker 1: name of the game, it is. That's how you succeed. Okay,
Speaker 1: to join the Red Table Talk family and become a
Speaker 1: part of the conversation, follow us at facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash red table Talk. Thanks for listening to this episode
Speaker 1: of Red Table Talk podcast produced by Facebook, Watch, Westbrook Audio,
Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio.