How to Recover the Person You Were Meant to Be with Paul Churchill

In this episode, Paul Churchill shares his personal journey to sobriety as he learned to recognize and address his struggles with alcohol addiction. He delves into the complexities of moderation versus abstinence, highlighting the challenges and failures he encountered along the way. Paul also emphasizes the importance of seeking help and support on the journey to recover the person you were meant to be.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Understand the power of mindset in achieving sobriety and transforming your life
• Discover the crucial role of community support in overcoming alcohol addiction
• Explore the impact of labels and identities in your recovery journey
• Learn the importance of seeking help and support on your sobriety path.
• Uncover valuable insights into alcohol addiction and recovery that foster self-awareness and inspire positive change

To learn more, click here!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you ever feel like life is just one problem
after another. You finally feel like maybe there's a break,
and then bam, another problem. This is how it is
for many of us. But there is a better way
to respond, a way of responding that brings greater ease
into your life and returns some of the energy that
the problems.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Drained from you.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
We are hosting a free live masterclass on Sunday, March third,
called Learn the Keystone Habit to unlock energy and ease
in your life. In it, I will teach you how
to tap into resources already within you so that life
feels less like a never ending fight and more like
an ever evolving dance. You will learn the number one

(00:40):
source of unhappiness that drains your energy and keeps you
feeling stuck, and a simple mindset shift you can make
right away so that life doesn't feel like such a
constant struggle. This will be a live event and you'll
have a chance to interact with me and each other.
I've really grown to love these community events where we
get to meet each other and deepen our connections, and

(01:00):
I hope that you can become part of that. Go
to one you feed dot net slash live to learn
more and register for this free event. Again, that's one
you feed dot net slash live. I hope to see
you there.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
To bring people around a campfire, which we've been doing
for hundreds of thousands of years of human beings come
together to discuss our differences are resolved and we are
pack animals. Recently it's like this wave of isolation individualism.
But wow, we need other human beings. We do.

Speaker 4 (01:38):
Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great tinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,

(01:58):
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,

(02:18):
how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Our guest on this episode is Paul Churchill. Paul is
the creator and host of the Recovery Elevator podcast. Today,

(02:42):
Paul and Eric discuss his great new book, Alcohol Is Shit,
How to Ditch the Booze, reignite your life and recover
the person you were always meant to be.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Hi, Paul, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Eric, Hello, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, I'm really excited to talk with you. We're going
to be discussing your book called Alcohol Is Shit, How
to Ditch the Booze, Reignite your life and recover the
person you were always meant to be. But before we
get into that, we will be starting with a parable,
like we always do. And in the parable, there's a
grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,

(03:16):
there are two wolves inside of us that are always
at battle. What is a good wolf which represents things
like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
And the grandchild stops and they think about it for
a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.

(03:38):
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Wow, Eric, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
I've heard you work for a long time and thank you.
So the older I get, the more I recognize that
we do have an influence over our life, right, our thoughts. Actually,
it can instruct physical reality.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
And you know where I.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Choose to put my mental energies I find is what
I get more in return. In fact, I came across
a pdf on religions. If you could distill them all
into like one sentence or less, and they're all the
golden rule. Treat others the way you want to be treated,
treat thy neighbor the way you want to be treated.
And I think with the parable, it's where you place
your energies. Yes, we live in a world of duality, Eric,

(04:22):
where there's good and bad. You have to have them
both for definitional purposes. But I choose to see wholeness
in everything, and I choose to nourish that part of
me that is rooted in love, that is rooted in bravery,
that is rooted and acceptance in wholeness. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
That's a great answer, and one of the things on
your podcast, Recovery Elevator, which is a great show for
people who are interested in recovery. Paul's is one of
the best shows out there. You talk about what you
just talked about there often, and even in your book
later on, you talk a lot about the power of
our thoughts. But where I'd like to start is with

(04:59):
you of just described that you have the single most
accurate assessment test for alcohol. And the reason I want
to start there is that a lot of people they're
not sure about do they have a problem with alcohol
or drugs. Now, some of us, like me, I was
pretty sure pretty early on, and it wasn't so much
a question of whether I had a problem in my case,

(05:20):
was whether I was actually ever going to do anything
about it, and whether if I did something about it,
whether it would actually work. But I know many many
people have a more nuanced relationship with alcohol and drugs,
and so they're asking themselves often am I alcoholic? Or
do I have a problem? Or should I stop drinking?
And there's lots of different ways people phrase that question,
and there's lots of different surveys out there you can

(05:42):
take and you say you've got a one question survey
that is the most accurate you know, so tell us
about that.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
I do, Eric, and thanks for setting that up. I
love this question because most of us embark on this deep,
inter explorative journey spending thousands of dollars with therapists online.
Quiz's question, you know from the brightest minds and institutions,
and yes, those do all the place, Eric, I agree,
But it can be this simple, and it was this
simple for me. At the end is if you've ever

(06:10):
asked the question, if you've ever wondered do I have
a drinking problem? That simple inquiry just answered the question.
And for example, okay, so I'm here, I have a
book alcohol Shit. I crashed and burned hard with alcohol,
extremely hard, fast and early. I like I described that.
For me, it was actually I was thankful that question
was answered very quick. But for many and the stigma's

(06:33):
part of this too. We go so far and so
long into this when we don't need to do so.
But I had a problem with alcohol. I don't struggle
with gambling, not once. If I ever asked myself, you know,
do we have a gambling problem? Do we have an
online shopping problem? Do I have a sex problem? I've
never asked myself those questions. So if you simply ask yourself,
and I feel this inquiry Eric is coming from a

(06:53):
deeper part of yourself saying, yo, hey there, buddy, this
might be getting out of control, we might be going
down a wrong path. And it's when that inner voice
jumps in with those questions, with those narratives. If you
ask the question do I have a drinking problem or not?
You probably do. And if you've ever entered into Google,
into google like online self alcohol assessment question, you've just

(07:16):
answered it right there. You don't even need to take
the test. If you've ever entered you Know How to
Quit Drinking podcasts like you know, do I have a problem?
If you've already answered the question.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Let's assume that that's a fairly accurate diagnostic question. I
tend to agree with you that you don't search for
that sort of stuff if you're not having some sort
of problem. You know. The other way it was often
phrased to me, is you know, do you have a
problem with alcohol?

Speaker 4 (07:40):
Well?

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Is alcohol causing any problems in your life? If so,
you have a problem with alcohol? Is another fairly clear one.
My follow up question would be, let's say that that
is accurate. Does that mean that if I've answered yes
to that question, that abstinence is the only path for me?
Or is it perhaps that I have a problem that
I need to model. I mean, different people have different

(08:01):
opinions on this, right, and I'd be curious your opinion
and your experience with this.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, Eric, and this is where I think it gets
so beautifully interesting. It's confusing. It's not a black and
white world. It's full of paradoxes. There's a program called
Alcoholics Anonymous, started in nineteen thirty five by Bill Wilson
and doctor Bob. Many times in the Big Book it says,
drinking is but a symptom. Right, you know what does
that mean? Alcohol is not the problem? It's not. It's
a symptom of other unrest in your life. However, to

(08:30):
uncover that unrest and do any sort of inner growth
work with that, the alcohol has to go. Now, great question,
is full abstinence the way to go? We can go
here real quick with this. That's for everybody to decide,
And I think everybody who eventually arrives at full abstinence
has to go through this chapter of moderating right. Ye, Look,
I'm not drinking. I'm not drinking on the weekday, on

(08:52):
the weekends, I'm not drinking alone, not drinking before work,
not drinking you know, in the Jupiter and moon or
an eclipses together. Not you get it. But these are
lines in the sand that if you do struggle with alcohol,
eventually every single one of them will be crossed. And so, okay,
I've been doing this for a hot minute and I
have not come across anybody in a long term fashion

(09:15):
here that moderation has worked. I've heard stories of a
couple weeks, a couple months in my own in my
own personal journey as well. Eric abstinence for me was
the best way to go because of the progressiveness of alcoholism,
but also the nature the way of life works, life circumstances.
This could be deaths in the family, this could be
your own personal tragedy or whatnot. Alcohol is a darn

(09:38):
good coping strategy for a short time.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
You know.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
I think it's interesting because that moderation piece is so
true that I don't think anybody would get to the
point of giving up alcohol or drugs if they actually
love them, like any of us who have a problem
with them do. There's no way it was going to
give them up without having tried everything else possible.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
First. You know, you mentioned AA.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
There's a line in the A Big Book, I think,
basically along the lines that you know, certain people will
chase this idea that somehow, someway I'll control my drinking,
you know, to the gates of insanity and death.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
Right.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
I mean, that's what we're trying to do. And I
tried all those things this last time when I got sober,
what I hope is the last time fifteen years ago,
I actually did a stint in moderation management as a
program first, and I've shared about this before, but it
was so good for me because I failed so badly
at it.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
But I tried so hard.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
I had been sober eight years before I knew what
abstinence was, I knew what AA was. I was like,
I do not want to go back and hang out
with those people. I do not want to give up
my alcohol. So I tried everything I could and moderation management,
and I.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Couldn't do it.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
It would set out like well your weight or whatever
you could have, you know, two drinks a day or
a drink and a half a day or whatever.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
And I was already immediately.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Inflating my weight from about one hundred and forty five
pounds to about one hundred and eighty pounds so that
I could get to the two and a half drinks
a day or whatever it was, right. And then, of
course a drink is measured by certain number of ounces,
but you know, well, we don't have to be real
accurate that, so I was cheating from the very beginning.
And even while cheating, I couldn't do it most of
the time. I remember this, you know, this is one

(11:18):
of my most like poignant memories of that time. Of
it would be like, let's say eleven thirty at night.
I worked a corporate job, so I'd have to be
up the next morning. I'm in my kitchen by myself.
Everybody's gone to bed. It's not like I'm at a party.
Nothing is happening. It's time to go to bed, and
I'm standing there with a bottle of whiskey on the counter,

(11:39):
and I'm trying to not take another drink for which
there's no possible reason on earth to take another drink.
There's no good reason, and I'm trying as hard as
I can not to do it, and yet more often
than not, I poured another drink. And I'm so glad
I went through that process because then it was much clearer,
like Okay, my brain goes well, moderation, I go. We

(12:02):
tried that really hard and it just didn't work. Now
I'm not saying that's the way it is for everybody,
but I know that in moderation management, what I saw
was a lot of alcoholics hanging around hoping that there
was a moderate answer to this.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
Eric, I like you phrased that, And through those failures,
and I had hundreds of them, with moderation, we almost
learned that the abstinence actually is the path of least resistance.
We think abstinence is this like, oh my god, it's
life in the dentist's chair, but it's flipped because there
is such an obsessive compulsion, as you mentioned, to find
a way to drink without impunity, which I tried hundreds
and hundreds of ways. I couldn't find it. But I

(12:38):
think what we say it's like moderate with alcohol, we
almost say it like in brevity, like it's light. You know,
I can't can't have just a couple. But if you
look at the addictive traits of the chemical alcohol. It's
one of the most addictive drugs in the world. And
if we were to say like moderate, you know, let's
moderate our heroin or crack use, like it just doesn't
have the same ring to it when actually alcohol is.

(12:58):
This study show that it's just the most addictive drug
in the world and it kills more people every day
than every other drug combined. Quite remarkable that way, and
one of them thought of this in twenty twelve. You know,
apps are everywhere now, but there was a time when
a BAC of blood alcohol content app tracker came out.
I said, yes, here's a way to moderately drink. So
I went to Old Chicago's downloaded the app. I'm not

(13:20):
going to be drunk driving home and to drink in
that responsible way. At the the app told me when
when to order the next drink so I could be
safe to drive. It was so painful, Eric and I
didn't even survive that way, just all right, two more
that just deleted the app, right.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
Then, Yeah, there's another line from the AA Big Book
that I ever fully understood, and it was that, you know,
something about we could not control and enjoy our drinking.
And what I realized was, I get that, like, if
I'm trying to control it, hey, I ultimately can't do it.
But even while I'm trying to do it, I'm not
enjoying my drinking. It's miserable, you know. It's just or

(13:56):
I can completely let go of the control and then
I'm able to enjoy it a little bit, of course,
until it all comes crashing down. But that recognizing those
two things as not being able to coexist was really
helpful to me and leads me into another topic I
want to discuss though, because I'd get why abstinence is
really important for me. I get why abstinence is important

(14:16):
for most people who are problem drinkers, and it's because
of what you said to me. Abstinence is so important.
It's because it's the only way that the mechanism of
craving ever gets shut off. Meaning if I don't get
complete space from alcohol, then I'm in that craving game
again and again. But I think one of the problems
with an abstinence only viewpoint towards alcohol is that there's

(14:41):
no room for progress in that right, meaning the scoring
is one hundred percent or zero. Right, You're either one
hundred percent like not alcohol free or your zero. And
I've seen that can be very discouraging and detrimental to people.
So how do you think about that in terms of like, yeah,
absence is where we want to get, but how do

(15:02):
I measure progress along the way if I'm not able
to get to full absence right out of the gate?

Speaker 3 (15:06):
Okay, Hey, I'm really glad you brought that up, Eric,
because the way most people land in sobriety and I'm
no different here, and thank goodness, I'm on a current
nine plus year away from my last drink. Hope that
never changes. But the way most of us get here
is by stacking days. Right. It's not a one and
done thing. In fact, I've interviewed over four hundred people
on the Recovery Ell Theater podcast. Very few of them

(15:28):
were one and done. Like you know, I'm done with this.
It rarely happens, and it lots more of what's called
stacking days. You get three days here, you get a
week there, and even years. You look back at the
years orre like, Hey, in twenty twenty two, I went
thirty three percent alcohol free. In twenty twenty three, I'm
seventy five percent alcohol free. I think we're going for abstinence,
but really I think that's how we get there. In

(15:50):
more accurate terms, I think that's how most of us
land in sobriety.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
That makes a lot of sense and certainly my experience,
and I think that given that I was either completely
abstinate or not, it was one hundred percent or zero
in the scoring system I was given and introduced to,
it led to when I wasn't one hundred percent just
giving up completely, I mean, and so it was just
profoundly discouraging, right, And so I think what you're saying

(16:17):
is I wish I'd had more people tell me, and
I wish I'd understood more that, like, you're going to
have to make multiple runs at this, Right, You're going
to come in and you're going to learn some things
and you're going to do better, and then you're going
to come up against something you can't you know, handle,
and then you're going to come back again, and over
time you'll eventually get there. That wasn't the way it

(16:38):
was presented to me. So I ended up in a
really dark period where I thought I've done everything they
told me to do, right. I was a heroin addict
at the time, right, And I've gone to treatment. You know,
I did thirty meetings and thirty days, I got a sponsor,
I did all those things and it didn't work. And so,
you know what, I can't do this. I'm not the
kind of person that will ever get this. And I
wish it'd have been presented to me more the way

(16:59):
you're presenting it, because that was a really dangerous period
when I thought I can't get this. I'm not the
kind of person that'll ever get sober. That was a
dangerous and dark period.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
There was a movement in the late eighteen hundred It's
called the Temperance movement, and I think that's one of
the reasons why it's not around today because it was
basically an internal and external declaration Melty with the Church
of I'm going to abstain from alcohol. However, there was
no work. There was no inner work, there's no recovery work,
there was no spiritual growth, there was no program. Then
I think when AA came along, you know, they filled

(17:30):
that void. And you're right, that's black and white. I drank. Oops,
I can't get this, and I went through a period
of that to Eric where I had so many day
ones and I was going to the meetings or whatnot,
and I'm such a stubborn dude. I started my own
sobriety tracker app. The reason why Eric there was only
like one or two on iTunes of that time, and
the one that I had started off you got a

(17:53):
day after twenty four hours, and I had so many
times where I didn't even have a day. I actually
developed an that was still on the app store, the
Recovery Elevator Sobriety Tracker, that you start on day one,
like if you're on day one. But I just couldn't
even make it. It was like point zero one, you know,
point when I woke up, it was point zero five.
You know, you get an hour point zero five. And

(18:14):
I was like, I cannot get this, but I'm going
to start my own app because I want to wake
up and see the number one point zero. Eventually, here
I am today. I had to go through all of
that stuff, all those failed moderation techniques, and again I think,
I think sobriety is the path of least resistance. It
gets a little brutal, they'll kind of let the brain,
the mind, the body, reset the dopamine systems. But I

(18:35):
feel today is also the wild West of recovery is
and there's so many more options today to quit drinking
your drug of choice whatever than there were five years ago,
ten years ago, and definitely twenty or thirty years ago.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about that. You've
got a line in your book, and I've heard you
say it on your podcast multiple times, right, there are
many pathways leading to the same place, So meaning, I
think what you mean is there's not one way to
get sober. There's lots of different ways to get sober.
Share a little bit more about that.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Yeah, with Recovery Elevator, we believe there's no right or
wrong way to quit drinking. In fact, I think it's
dangerous when we do put like this is what sobriety
looks like. Here's step one, two three. I know there's
the twelve steps of AA. That's a beautiful guide that
I think every human being on the earth could follow
and get benefit. But all pathways lead to home, and
stick with me here for a second. I do feel
the addiction actually serves a purpose. In biology, this is

(19:28):
called endowment theory. That nothing happens on planet earth or
in this universe without some sort of beneficial purpose. If
drinking is but the symptom, it's but the messenger, it's
but the invitation to step into a more authentic way
of living. And I think the addiction where I'm at
right now, it has forced me to land inside of me.
We are in a fractured world, a disconnected world. Rates

(19:51):
of addiction, sickness, illness, pain and all that stuff, autoimmune disorders, inflammation,
they're on the rise. But I think what an addiction
is trying to do. It's very painful at first, but
it's trying to reconnect the soul with the conscious, the unconscious,
all parts of your body and helping you land at
your core. So again, all pathways lead to home. There's

(20:12):
no right or wrong way to quit drinking, and I
don't advocate go out and make your own program, right.
I think AA is a great place to start. I
think Cafe Airy is a great place to start. I
think surrounding yourself with people who've already done this, listening
to podcasts like yours, Eric is a great way to start.
But again in twenty twenty three, when we're recording this
in twenty four and beyond. There are some really neat

(20:36):
ways to ditch the booze. And I think the invention
of our time, Eric is going to be the Internet.
That's it, and how we're able to connect. And this
isn't my quote, but the opposite of addiction is connection.
The ways that we can connect in twenty twenty three,
twenty twenty four looks so much different. I'm recording this
right I'm in Costa Rica right now, and I can

(20:57):
see you like you're in the next room and we're
two human beings have an authentic conversation about how we
ditched what was holding us back?

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, I mean when I got sober the first time,
it was nineteen ninety four in Columbus, Ohio, and so
there was nothing else except AA And I mean that
quite literally, Like there wasn't even like the smatterings of
like smart recovery or you know, there was one game
in town and thank god it worked for me. But

(21:26):
like you said, today, there are so many different options.
There is no one way to do it. But I've
heard other people express a concern that the fact that
there's so many different ways to do it. There's all
these different apps, and there's all these different things, that
people can spend a lot of time sort of monkeying
around with a lot of different things before they find

(21:49):
something that really works for them. And I don't really
know what I think about that argument, but I'm curious
what you think.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
That's definitely valid. I track with that. I think things
can be discarded a little fast. I cringe when I
hear people like, oh, I read a pamphlet about AA,
it's just not for me. They never went to one,
or they went to one meeting, it's just not for me.
But I think when you're ready, Eric, when you were
ready to stop using, when I was ready to stop drinking.
When you're ready, it doesn't matter what program you show

(22:20):
up at, and when you're ready to focus on the
similarities instead of the difference, it doesn't matter if it's AA,
Smart Recovery Cafe ARI, it doesn't matter at all. And
I think that's all part of the journey too, of
exploring different programs out it's not for me today, it
might be for me later on down the road. But
I realized I had these these qualms about AA. Well,

(22:40):
we're just we're just going to talk about alcohol for
an hour. That sounds quite triggering to me and that
it was a good argument internally, but I just wasn't
really ready to quit drinking at that time.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
You hit on something there that I think is really important,
which is focusing on the similarities not the differences, right,
And I think this actually applies to any group we
go into, any type of connection we're seeking. It's a
useful idea, But in regards to alcohol or recovery, say
why this is so important and what happens if we're

(23:11):
not orienting in that way?

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Okay? In twenty twelve, I had been sober alcohol free
for about two and a half years and I went
to my first AA meeting with a friend who was
struggling with alcohol. I took this person to an AA
meeting to support that person. And this is after I
had owned a bar in Spain lost to the bar
in Spain was getting blacked out, blacking out every night

(23:34):
of the week for a couple of years straight. And
I was at that AA meeting and I was focusing
on the differences, not the similarities. And I heard people
share and I said, wait a second, I don't have
multiple DUIs. I didn't have any at that time. I've
never been to prison. I've never been to jail. I
don't have a bankruptcy all these things, and I was
drunk like two nights later, and it was a train wreck.

(23:54):
I had like thirty drinks that night, and when the
gas station was closed, I could no longer pick up alcohol.
I was googling if I could drink rubbing alcohol or
hydrogen peroxide, and I had a bottle of each on
either side of my computer. So shit got real fast.
But it was a big eye opener for me. I
recognized in that meeting, looking back, that there was still

(24:14):
the obsession to drink, and I was focusing on the
differences of why I was not like them, why I
was better, or why I was different, and why I
could find a way to go out and drink again.
I did, didn't work. I got back at it, and
I don't think that was an error. It had to happen.
I learned a lot from it, Eric, I really did.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah. I think that when we walk into any group,
I was saying, I think some of this comes up.
But I think in recovery in particular, we want to
not belong there, right, that would be our preference. Our
preference would be as we talked about earlier. The great
desire of every addict or alcoholic is that you're not
an addict or alcoholic, right because then you can continue

(24:53):
to do what you do. So we're pretty motivated to
disqualify ourselves. We're pretty motivated to look for all the
ways I'm not like you people. And I know people
who look at people and go you know, people will
walk into a meeting and go like, I was not
nearly as bad as those people, or other people will
say I'm way worse than what those people were. I mean,
we're just looking for a way to give ourselves an

(25:14):
excuse to walk out the door. And so listening for
similarity is really helpful. And I don't know if you
said this in your book, but I think you did,
or maybe you said it on a podcast. Even further,
if we don't focus on the stories, the externals of
what the stuff, but the internals of how it feels.
And you know, I've shared with you and I've shared
with listeners before. You know, there was a time I

(25:35):
got sober twice once was a very low bottom heroin addiction,
homeless heroin addic hepatitis CEE going to jail for a
long time and then I stayed sober, and then I
went back out and I just pretty much drank and
smoke pot and my bottom the second time was much higher,
if we want to use that terminology, meaning had the
best job I'd ever had, I was driving the nicest

(25:56):
car I'd ever had. I was living in a great neighborhood.
I mean in all those ways. Luckily for me, what
I was able to focus on was inside. I felt
just as out of control as I did the first time. Right,
And so oftentimes, if we can shake the if we
can get away. And I say all that to say,
when we're looking at externals, it's easy to disqualify ourselves.

(26:16):
But most people who are an addict, if you walk
into a room of AA or another support group and
you listen to people describe what it felt like to
be an alcoholic or addict, I think that that's when
the similarities really come forth, which is just that just
that despair and that shame and that confusion of why
can't I stop this?

Speaker 3 (26:36):
Okay, I track with you, Eric. I think one of
the most dangerous parts about alcohol drugs the stigma and
the ego, the disease or whatever you want to call
it tells us that we're the only person in the
world that's struggling with that, which is not true at all.
Millions and millions of Americans, millions across the world when
we find our tribe or find other like minded individuals

(26:57):
that have the same thing in common, and for us,
we've punched an intense ticket of pain to enter the
rooms of sobriety or to enter the rooms of authenticity, growth,
and wholeness through recovery from an addictionary substances, You're gonna
go through a lot of pain, you know, rock bottom,
homeless on the street, hepatitis, ce, all that stuff, regardless,
and sometimes you know, higher bottom, lower bottom. They're all

(27:19):
emotionally relatively the same, they're all internally equally is painful.
But I also have found on the flip side, on
the other side of it, it is an incredible glue.
I've been part of many clubs, guilds, sports teams, committees,
you name it, but not once have I found the
camaraderie that exists in sobriety. You know, we do events,

(27:40):
we do retreats, we do sober travel trips, and the
first couple ones I thought we were getting lucky. I
was like, Man, we're gonna that's gonna be hard to duplicate.
But it's the glue of sobriety. It's the glue, which
actually it's the pain, you know, day one, when we
start talking, it's like we've known somebody for seven days
or two weeks. We go right, pass a small talk

(28:01):
and get into it, which I absolutely love.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
I teach a couple of different programs, and an aspect
of it is about building community. And I quote some
studies around how long it takes to build friendships, right,
and so if you look at the scientific research about
how long it takes to build a friendship, it takes
a lot of hours, right. I've seen some estimates like
one hundred hours, which is why people tend to become

(28:45):
close to people they work with, because they spend all
that time with them. What I think about these studies, though,
is that they did not interview groups of alcoholics or addicts,
or support groups for depression or support groups for cancer
or pick your top, because friendships form so much more
quickly when you're immediately talking about things that matter deeply. Right,

(29:08):
it takes one hundred hours to build a friendship if
you're spending thirty of those hours talking about the weather
and sports. Right when you're immediately in the sort of
intimacy that any of these different types of groups and
hopefully you know, our spiritual habits programs go that deep
that quickly. When you do that, the time to build
friendships and lifelong connections is far faster and far easier,

(29:31):
which is what you're describing right, Like, right away, you
have these connections with people that are really strong and deep,
and it is like a glue.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
Eric, you know, the people on this sobriety journey. Again,
there's a stigma, But I think we have it wrong.
I think the stigma puts us at the back of
the societal queue. But I think it's opposite. We can
come together in a room and put aside our differences,
talk respectfully, lead with love, and connect fast. In fact,
it's almost a superpower of mind. When I travel there.

(30:00):
I've been at AA meetings in like over a dozen
countries right around there, and I do it because I
find the connection in a meeting. I find myself at
a barbecue, hit somebody else's house later, or dinner plans
or whatnot, and it's this fast track right past the
bs small talk into authentic conversation with all of this
at the sole level where seeking we're yearning for this.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Let's pivot this direction a little bit because you're starting
to sort of talk about recovery as a plus to life,
Like it's not just like, oh, I get to quit
drinking and that's why I go, but that I actually
get further ahead in life. And you talk a lot
about this idea where you say, as I mentioned earlier

(30:44):
in this book, alcohol is a spirit which can give
us profound gifts if we're able to recognize, right, you
sort of talk about this like seeing our recovery and
our addiction as ultimately a gift. Talk more about that,
because that's what we're sort of talking about here, is
that as part of this you get an enhanced community.
What are the other benefits that come from a life

(31:06):
in recovery?

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Okay, Eric, sobriety, recovery it's the greatest gift I could
have ever received. But not everybody gets there in sobriety.
My take is there's a lot of victims in sobriety.
It's a lot of victims in this world. There's a
lot of victims in AA actually, but back to the
parable the one You Feed podcast. As I said, if
I'm authentic to how I answered that question, if I
choose to see wholeness in everything and really lean into

(31:28):
the universe, that everything is happening for me, not against me,
it helped me depart from the victim mentality. So if
I'm true to that, if I honor that, and I
know that nothing malfunctioned in the past with the addiction,
it all took me to this path right here again,
all pathways lead to home, mine, yours, and others on
this sobriety journey. It's more of a painful way into

(31:49):
this type of work, but also you catapult to the
other side. So I think there are so many benefits
to sobriety that others who don't embark on this. We
have no choice but to answer questions such as who
I am, like, what's the point of life? What's important
to me? What am I going to do in this
human life the rest of the time I have here.

(32:10):
There's many normal drinkers out there, whatnot? You know, they're
not forced to ask these internal deep questions. They're not
forced to find a different way of living, and they're
not forced to find a way to align the way
they're living more in line of how we are as
human beings. So I want to be in the moment,
but I'm excited, shall I say, of where this recovery

(32:31):
journey goes in the future. I think a couple of
years into sobriety, I could barely spell spirituality. And now
it's like this beautiful aperture of really trusting the universe.
Bob Marley's got a song. Every little thing is going
to be all right, three little birds and up into
this moment for me, Eric, and maybe you can say
the same about yourself. Every little thing is going to
be okay, and it has been up until this moment.

(32:51):
So it's really leaning into that. And the sobriety has
taught me again back to the parables, like where you
put your energy is what you're going to get back.
And I'm choosing to see wholeness, authenticity, love in everything
that I see. And there's days it's a struggle. I
get it. I drive in the same roads that you
guys do, and that stuff. This is a superpower. This

(33:11):
is an asset. It is not a liability.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
You know.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
I've even had that reflected back to me and people
throughout my life. You know, over the years who have
been almost envious of what it's like to be in recovery,
of the friendships that get formed, of the deep work that,
like you said, were forced to kind of do you know?
I have been involved in some form of healing and

(33:36):
or recovery and working on who I am because I've
had to since I was twenty four years old, that's
almost thirty years now. There were a couple of years
of a big detour in there. But I never would
have done the type of things that I did as
young as I did them, with the intensity that I
did them, and I mean as far as my own

(33:57):
spiritual path and my own personal growth path, I wouldn't
have done those things if I hadn't been forced into
doing it. And so there are many, many benefits and
gifts of recovery. And I think there's another element to
this too that I think about a lot, which is,
you know a lot of people in recovery will say
that they eventually see it as a benefit or a gift,

(34:21):
or many people who have gone through any sort of
very difficult experience, many of them will turn around and
reflect upon it as a very positive thing and The
key element to me seems to be that they found
some way that that difficulty served the world.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
That when we're able.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
To suddenly take what was difficult for us, what was
really painful for us, and use it in some way
to help someone else. To me, that transforms the thing.
That's the alchemy that gets it to be where we're
able to sort of go like, oh, that was a gift.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Yeah, if you didn't say the word alchemy, I was
going to say just that. I saw Morgan Freeman movie
a couple months ago and he was asked what's the
point of life? And without hesitation, he responded to pass
on what we've learned to others. And Eric, we're doing
that right now. I crash and burn so hard. I'm
not the only one. There's millions of people who have
as well, same with you, and here we are. We've

(35:17):
had limited time together and we're getting after it. We
are sharing our experiences, of our stories of how we
found healing and how we continue to deepen on that path,
and also how we can help others. The only reason
why Recovery Elevator has been successful, I feel, is the
motives behind it when I started were to create account

(35:37):
of be for myself. That's a selfish motive, but number
two to help. If other people listened along the way
and gain traction out of it, then let's do it.
There was no money, there was no sponsorships. The first
hundred episodes. It was almost like an easier day. But
to pass that along to another human being of our
experiences again, I think it's how we're wired biologically. Chemicals

(35:58):
such as oxytocin, Sarah own and all those feel good
chemicals are released when we do so. And we do
this with other species too. We help out animals who
need help. We raise it dogs, right, We have animals
in our households, and helping others feels our soul up.
And it was almost like rocket science. In nineteen thirty
five when Bill w figured it out, he said, you

(36:18):
know what crazy as can be. When I go to
Manhattan hospitals and share my story with alcohol, I stay sober.
Not everybody I speak to stays sober, but by golly
darn it, I'm staying sober. It was revolutionary at the time,
but now we know that sharing and opening up and teaching,
and that's what you are.

Speaker 4 (36:37):
Eric.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
You're a teacher and you're teaching right now. Doing that
to listeners, it helps us as well and hopefully it
helps the listener.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. I think that that
founding of AA. And again I want to be clear,
like neither you nor I is saying AA is the
only way to go by reight stretch of the imagination.
It happens to be the program that saved my life twice.
I also see the challenges with it, and I'm glad
that there's all sorts of alternatives, but I reference it
a lot because it was what worked for me. But

(37:04):
that moment that Bill found out and he found it
out in Ohio, which is where I'm at right, you know,
just up the road from here. You know, he found
that when he talked to another alcoholic, he stayed sober.
And I think that what's so beautiful about that is
the actually the reciprocity there, because I know people like
this and will come into recovery or any sort of

(37:26):
support movement, and they won't want to be a burden
to the other people. Oh I don't want to call him.
I would just be a burden. Or I don't want
to tell them about my problems because I would be
a burden, right, And the beauty of what Bill and
doctor Bob found with each other was that they helped
each other equally. It wasn't like the person who has
a ear sober and the person who has a day
sober that there's some power imbalance there.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
There isn't.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
There's a reciprocity in the coming together. And that's been
my experience in any sort of good support movement. You
know that there's a lot in the mental health community
today around peer support, and it works for the exact
same reason. There's a true reciprocity between people in that
both are helped in that relationship. And I think it's
one of the most beautiful things in the world, is

(38:11):
that thing where when we genuinely connect with people, both
people benefit from that connection.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
Yeah. An addiction I feel in a purpose of it
is the humbling process you mentioned two people coming together
as equals. It's the ego, right, you have to come
face to face with the ego and make a decision
life or death and letting the ego take me off
the cliff or whatnot. So this reciprocity of two people
coming together, which is very in line for roughly ten

(38:38):
thousand human generations of how we evolve. We have to
help each other pass on our stories of how to live.
You know, how we're living today is completely past awkwards
of how we used to live and made it this far.
And by not asking for help, and look, I'm the
same too. I don't want to be a burden or whatnot.
But by not asking for help, you're depriving another person
to feel good, for them, to be in line with

(39:00):
what a human being is to help them. Once I
really embodied that, it became a lot easier for me
to ask for help. And we've heard it in the
rooms or whatnot, is the most important person in the
room is the newcomer. That's the same in cafe iri.
That's our private online community as well. And you know,
aa that's how I started. I still go. But you
know it's not a perfect program either, and I want

(39:20):
to be clear on that as well.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, there's so many programs these days that are out there,
and I think a lot of them share in common
in something that you say in the book, which I believe. Also,
you know, anytime I'm on a podcast and anyway's like well,
they'll ask me to make some definitive statement about alcoholism
or addiction. I don't really want to make any definitive
statement because everybody's different, and there's so many gray areas
that you talk about. But the one statement that I

(39:43):
will make, and you make it also, and you say
you can't do this alone. There are several gray areas
in recovery, but this isn't one of them.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
This one is.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Black and white. What that means the not doing it
alone can take lots of different forms. But I do
believe that to be true for the vast, vast majority
of people who have a real problem, is that doing
it by yourself won't work. We do hear stories of
people who do. I'm not saying that never happens, but
it's so rare.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah, and I think it was a long term. It's
even more rare. People can do it on their own
a couple months whatnot? Yet I did it on my
own for two and a half years and went twenty
AA meeting and the drunk two days later. I did.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah. I went and saw my sponsor lead when I
was thirty days sober, and went out afterwards and bought
hero And I was like, man, that is a strong
message you got, dude.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
So similar to you sober two years of walking to
an AA meaning and all goes up in smoke.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
Folks on the differences. Yeah, I drank my roommate's bottle
of champagne that he saved from his wedding.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
Yikes.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
In the late seventeen hundreds, there was a Seneca man
named Handsome Lake. This is an Indian tribe who recognized
he brought the tribes people together that struggled with alcohol,
and he almost built. He didn't have twelve steps right,
but it was a strikingly similar program as AA to
bring people around a campfire, which we've been doing for
hundreds of thousands of years of human beings come together

(41:03):
to discuss our differences are resolved, and we are pack animals.
Recently it's like this wave of isolation individualism, but wow,
we need other human beings we do.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, share a little bit more about your story here.
So we've referenced it a couple of times. Obviously you
said you owned a bar in Spain. We can all
assume what happens if you Manchin an alcoholic and owning
a bar.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
It's not a good thing.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
We can picture all that you stay sober a couple
of years you go to an AA meeting, you drink again,
walk us through there. How did you find your way
back to sobriety? And what was it like in the
early days for you?

Speaker 3 (41:36):
All Right? So in twenty ten, this is five years
after I owned the bar, I said, hey, I something's
going on here. So I went two and a half
years without alcohol. I was only going to go for
a month, but after just a couple of weeks, the
color in my face changed, the bloating went away. It's like, oh,
I might be onto something here, but I still didn't
want to believe it was alcohol. Two and a half
years later, drank we covered that. I said, no problem,

(41:57):
I'll get back on it at two and a half
years before, I'll do it again. Except that wasn't the case.
That two and a half years went seven months that
I remember, got like three months and three weeks, and
then it was like a year and a half two
years of just day ones, over and over and over.
Twenty fourteen got a little the grim at a failed
suicide attempt there. I got a DUI while driving to
work and it was just the hopelessness. And my heart
goes out to everybody or anybody who's listening out there

(42:19):
that's in that space of an addiction where there's just
the hope seems to be lost. Keep going. Myself was there,
Eric was there. We got your back, We're right there,
We're right here with you. We are. And later that year,
in twenty fourteen, Eric, luckily, I found myself two months
away from alcohol. I was going to an AA meeting
and I was hiding behind pine trees. This is the stigma, right.
I didn't want people driving by. No one was going

(42:40):
to AA. I heard this voice in my brain that said,
we don't have to go to that meeting. I got this,
and I just stopped there because I knew every time
in the past when I said I got this, not
only did I didn't get this, I ended up in
a way worse spot, just completely backfired. So something was
there with me. I left the pine tree, I went
into the AA meeting. I came out and I had

(43:01):
the idea of a podcast. At that time, there's only
a couple sobriety podcasts. I said, shit, not only do
I have to go back into AA, I have to
do something more. And you've heard the quote or a
line like you have to put at least as much
energy into your recovery as you did for your drinking,
and obviously like a little bit more to counteract that.
And I put a lot of energy in my drinking.
I was a bar owner, I was used to DJ
clubs and weddings and all that stuff. So I just

(43:23):
went full board into it. And I said, all right,
I'm going to start a podcast called Recovery Elevator. February fifteenth,
twenty fifteen, was a first episode to create accountability, and
I just in an MP three format, launched it out
in the world. Burn the ships. Look man, name's Paul Churchill,
crashed and burned big time with alcohol. But an amazing
thing happened. Eric I had got honest and authentic with myself,

(43:45):
and that process was already underway in twenty fourteen. And
when I did it in MP three format, I gave
others the permission to do the same. And I received
one email like three weeks after I launched the podcast,
it's too scared to read it. Actually, more emails came,
people started listening, and here we are nine and a
half years later, four hundred and sixty something weekly podcast
Sober Travel over ten million downloads. YadA, YadA, all this stuff.

(44:08):
I mean, what an incredible journey. I don't think everybody
has to get sober that way. I don't recommend it,
you know, looking back, that was actually quite risky, with
about six months of sobriety, launching a sober podcast. I
don't recommend that. But but for me, that's how my
universe bent, you know, turned melded in a way that
I was able to remain alcohol free. And thank goodness

(44:29):
that current run is still live today.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
And so while you were doing that, you were also
attending AA. Sounds like you've attended a reasonable amount of AA.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
Yeah, okay, I did the full ninety and ninety you know.
Sponsor steps just put the ego asides, like, look, I
don't know better than these people. I am not better.
I have no effing clue what's good for me or
how to do this. So I just said yes yes
to everything, and including the podcast. Right now, I'm in
Costa Rica, and I go to one AA meeting a
week about thirty minutes away from me. It's awesome. And

(44:58):
with that into seven or eight meetings, and I've already
got a wonderful community of authentic people who know exactly
who I am. Right, superpower, right leverage that this is
an asset. Back home, I spend most of my time
here in Montana. I probably go to one to two
AA meetings a month, but sometimes I'll go three or
four months without going to a meeting. However, I am

(45:19):
very plugged in to our community group cafe ARI like
I run it. You know, I'm in a different position there.
But I attended our chat right before I interview Eric.
I attended our we call them chats and our version
of meetings. I do probably two to three a week,
and I make sure I host at least one.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
My recovery journey was a lot of a early on,
and then as time went on, I sort of found
other aspects to get, you know, sort of what I
was getting from AA. I was starting to drift away
from AA, which the first time I did that ended
up with me drinking again. And when it started to
happen again, I was like, I don't want to repeat that,
and so I was kind of looking at like, well,
what am I getting from AA, Like what is it doing?

(46:19):
And I was able to sort of reverse engineer that
in different ways. You know, oh, I'm getting community, So
where else am I getting community? I'm getting a structured
approach to change. Where else might I get that? I'm
getting the chance to support others.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
I like that.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
I sort of.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
Tried to break it down, and I think I'm glad
I did that after I had like, say, five years sober,
instead of trying to do that in the beginning and
be like, oh, well, I think I'm going to know
how to do all this. Let's talk about the word
alcoholic for a second, because this is a controversial term.
You know, it was not a controversial term in nineteen

(46:51):
ninety five, right when I got into sobriety. It was
like you just that's how you identified, And many people
now feel like as a label, it's not a very
helpful label. How do you feel about the term alcoholic
and how does it work for you in your life?

Speaker 3 (47:05):
Yeah? Great question. I've oscillated on both sides of it. Eric,
I have officially broken up with the word alcoholic twice
in podcast episodes. Yeah, but when I go to the program, hey, man'am,
it's Paul an alcoholic. Out of respect for the program.
We do need to be careful with words, right. The
unconscious has already attached to label a stigma behaviors whatever
to a word, so we need to be careful with that.

(47:27):
And studies show that only five percent of alcoholics actually
live under bridges. Brown paper bags fit that bill. Most
alcoholics are very functional, And the stats here are we're
high earners, we're highly educated when we are in relationships.
So with that, the word alcoholic to what an alcoholic
it really is, actually is a compliment, like we're higher
achievers than the average person. Like crazy stats there. But

(47:49):
where I'm at right now in my journey, and I
think this is the point of an addiction, is you know,
we have been looking for happiness outside of ourselves so long.
That was for me in a bottle, right, this internal unrest, well,
what's up tequila? Like that'll fix it pretty quick. But
where I'm at right now is I'm trying to be
as grounded and as rude as possible as I can be.
That you can call me whatever you want to call me, eric, alcoholic,

(48:12):
you know, alcohol use disorder. I've been called way worse
in the past, probably well in the future. It doesn't matter.
And that's part of the recovery work, too, is to
not focus on what everybody else is thinking about you
and normal. Number one. People don't think about you as
much as what we think that they do, So it
really doesn't matter. And again, I think we're living in
a world. It kind of upsets me sometimes that we

(48:33):
want everything to be black and white. You're either this
or you're that. And kind of how we started, Eric,
we go down this road of online questionnaires, meetings with
doctors and therapists. Oh am, I in do I have
an alcohol use disorder? It doesn't matter. Like you are
what you are. Do you want to improve in life
as there is something that's holding you back. But I've

(48:54):
already seen a change, Like the words sober curious is
now on the horizon. That's just like alcoholic light, you know.
But it really doesn't matter to me. In fact, you know,
we think if we come out to our friends and
family as an alcoholic, then you know, the stars will fall,
our worlds are over. But let me just share this
with you guys, and Eric, you might have seen the same.
I know you have. I have burned the ships or

(49:16):
said I am an alcoholic to over a million people,
probably high hundreds of thousands. Yeah, by download numbers, millions. Yeah,
I've actually received the opposite more love, more support, more authentic,
you go, do you man? Hey, how can I help?
It's the exact opposite has happened. I imagine you too, Eric,
And the more authentic you are about your story, in

(49:36):
owning it and being you and being more rooted in yourself,
it doesn't matter what people call you, it doesn't. And
you've probably seen the opposite, Like people are like, yeah, Eric,
you do you man? Like I wish I could own
my story in a fashion that you do.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
I think about this question a lot, you know, I
talk a lot about recovery. I talk a lot about
different mental illnesses, and I think this idea of a
diagnosis versus an idea entity are very interesting. Right. I
still refer to myself as an alcoholic because to me
that means a very specific thing. It just means I
can't drink alcohol safely again.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
But interestingly, part.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Of what you know made me go to AA less
was the fact that there was this constant discussion of
what an alcoholic meant, right, and so you know, there
would be like, well, you know, we're still all really sick.
You know, well we're still a liar, cheating, a thief.
Were still this idea that like since I once was

(50:32):
quote unquote you know, define myself as an alcoholic, that
I had all these character traits that I no longer had,
you know, I was like, wait a minute, I don't
actually think I'm particularly dysfunctional or sick. I came in
the rooms really messed up, but I don't think I'm
really that way anymore. And so that idea of sort
of what alcoholic meant started to not work for me

(50:55):
because I was like, well, identify myself as so much
more than an alcohol I actually identify myself much more
with everybody in the world than I do a very
small subset of people in the world, even though in
the beginning that's where I need to identify. And so
for me, it's sort of like these labels or diagnoses
or identities, I try and think about where are they useful?

(51:17):
And then when do they become limited? You know, And
for me that's what works. But alcoholic is a shorthand
for me, meaning don't be an idiot and pick up
another drink eric, Right, Like, as long as I don't
forget that fact, it doesn't really matter what I call myself, right,
But I don't want to forget that key fact. Because
every time I have in the past it has not

(51:38):
gone well.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
I think a lot of people are pushing sobriety off
because the word alcoholic is too big of a word
for them to swallow. Like you said, if it's a
little too prohibitive for you, you call it whatever you want. Yeah,
Laura McCowan addresses it like this, You just ask yourself,
are you free? Is alcohol blocked your freedom? You can
call it whatever you want. But of course, listeners, if
the word alcoholic is just there's too much much of

(52:00):
a charge there, Yeah, I agree. And sometimes, like I've
been diagnosed things that end in syndrome or disorder or disease,
and I I don't even say that. I don't even
say that internally in my brain, Like I'm not going
to say, oh, I have a syndrome because words have weight.
They for sure do, and the unconscious will latch onto that.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Yeah they do.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
I mean, I think that's what's so interesting is that
oftentimes in the beginning my experience is at the beginning
to diagnosis, like being diagnosed as depressed was actually initially
helpful because I was like, well, what is going on
with me? And then somebody's like here's what it is,
and they describe it, and then they were like, and
here's the different ways you treat it, like initially really

(52:39):
helpful and then over time though, I don't want to
be limited by it. And so that's I think where
it's interesting. If the identity or label helps you deal
with that situation or problem better, great, But the minute
that you start to define yourself and your limits of
who you are by that thing, to me, that's when
it's time to discard it, because then it is no

(53:02):
longer empowering, helping, healing, curing, it's limiting. Another guess we've
found on the show Catherine Gray. I don't know if
you know where. She's out of England. She's delightful and
is written about recovery, but hers is even simpler. It's
just simply would your life be better without alcohol in it?
And that is such another just really great way to
look at it, Like who cares what you call it,

(53:22):
how you define yourself? Would your life be better if
all the bad things that were happening related to drinking
weren't happening? And you can move on that foundation.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Without a doubt. And internally, there's a lot of ways
to phrase it it is and whatever's the easiest, softest
way we've heard that before for you to enter into
that world to explore it. Yeah, go for it, because
quitting drinking is the one domino that has the capacity
to knock every other domino in your life over. It's
going to affect everything. So you know, go slow with it,

(53:52):
but also don't go too slow with it, because there's
a progressive nature of alcoholism or really any addiction of sorts.
And you kind of wait, wait a little too long,
shall we say?

Speaker 1 (54:01):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean, I'm so grateful but having been
an opiate addict that I did it in the nineties
and not today because it is dangerous out there. So
this is a big question. What is addiction or alternately,
what causes addiction?

Speaker 3 (54:17):
There's one thousand and one answers for this. None of
them are right, none of them are wrong. But I'm
going to try to summarize it. And I have fun
talking about this, I really do. There is a line
in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. This is doctor Gobermante's
book on addiction that says most anthropologists agree that there
was no record of addiction in pre modern times. There
is addiction in the Bible, and there has been, but

(54:38):
nothing like we see it today. So what the heck
is going on? If it's genetic, you know, genes don't
change that fast. And side note with genetics, they still
have not found the addiction gene. In fact, they stopped
looking for the addiction gene. They've already mapped the whole
human genome. There's not a gambling gene. There's not an
Amazon Prime shopping gene, there's a there's not a cigarette gene.
There isn't And so the genetic thing, maybe genetic loads

(55:00):
the gun and the environment pulls the trigger. I think
we're a little closer to that. If we distill it
to the opposite of addiction is connection, then addiction is disconnection,
then I think we're onto something. There is the way
we used to live. You know, prior to three or
four hundred years ago, the communities were much more intact.
Every task that we did meant something to the community.

(55:22):
Ourself being, our self worth was more tied to that.
So the way we're living today, Instagram, email, this super
fast paced, these high salaries. I'm a big fan of
capitalism some aspects, but also we're seeing the limitations clearly,
and I think addiction is a big part with that.
The way we're living today, I think is completely out
of balance, and I think it is the environment that
is creating such such extreme unrest. I just read that

(55:46):
the life expectancy for a white male in America has
dropped for like four straight years in a row. There's
all kinds of barometers. Addiction is one of them. But
mental health, like I said, inflammations, anxiety disorders, all this stuff,
it's skyrocketing. So what the heck is going on? I
think we have separated ourselves from nature. Eric, there's like
this compulsive, obsessive, compulsive disorder by everybody to consume. Right,

(56:08):
we have the climate change. We've all heard about this stuff,
but can we rein it in it's It's quite interesting.
But one more thing with that, the spirits, like the
technology to drink or the technology to get an alcohol
up to forty percent alcohol like that didn't exist about
one hundred years ago. Beer topped out at like three
point two percent. This is a couple hundred years ago.
Wines we're like six to seven percent, not thirteen percent.

(56:31):
You couldn't find, you know, your microbrew a ten percent
and drinking was also done more in communal settings a
couple hundred years ago, So there's almost like these safeguards,
these stop gaps in place to prevent alcoholism from going
out of control. But again, I think it's the way
we're living. It's we've never been more stressed. It's so competitive.
We've got parents like cheating on their kids' SATs to

(56:52):
get them into college. Like what's going on with so
many of these things right now? But I don't think
we labeled it.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
All is bad.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
Hang with me for just a second. I do think
that every human being is going to have to overcome addiction,
and I think there are a wave of people that
have already done it, like this could be me and you.
Eric the buddhas said all of humanity has to cross
a river crossing of consciousness, and it wasn't metaphorically spoke
about it many times. So today I think we've got

(57:20):
some very potent drugs. We got alcohol, we have sugar,
we have TV, and we have screens, right cell phones,
and I think the cell phone technology, I think that
technology addiction is going to be the greatest of our
time that everybody is going to have to overcome. And
this is finding wholeness externally, looking for wholeness externally, and
we're going to be forced to find it internally. And

(57:41):
I think there's a wave of us that have already started.
And I don't want to say, Eric checkbox, Yep, I'm there,
they're not. That's not it at all. But I think
there's going to be a wave of humanity that have
to really tackle this inner unrest at the individual level.
I don't think that the government is going to have
the answer to addiction health like I think this is
going to be something the individual or small communities are

(58:04):
going to have to solve. And I think we'll see
us moving back into smaller communities, let's say, off the grid,
but where those soul societal structures are more intact. But
I think it's an incredibly fascinating topic.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
I do, Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
Also, I want to probe a little deeper there because
and you write about this in your book a little
bit about at first glance what can seem to be
contradictory things, which is this need, as you said, to
sort of go inwards and establish our relationship with ourselves
on an internal level, right and also remain connected to

(58:40):
the people around us. And I think that's what you're saying, right,
is that you need to do both those things sort
of simultaneously, because it seems to me that, like you know,
certain Eastern traditions would focus on, at least the way
we've westernized them, going inside, you know, the answers within
you. You know, meditate, be quiet, go inwards. Right, that's one extreme.

(59:01):
The other extreme is you spend all your life outward,
and it seems like and you're write about this in
your book, sort of being able to do both right,
being able to go inwards and remain connected to others.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
I think the word we're going here is balance. There's
the yin and the yang, right. We almost have to
know both extremes, the good wolf, the bad wolf or whatnot.
But it's finding that healthy balance because you're right, one
of the other is not going to work. I don't
think I could just go sit in a cave and meditate,
at least for myself right now and find that inner piece.
It just wouldn't work. I need I need that human connection.

(59:35):
I have a wonderful wife and I need that connection.
But on the flip side, if it's all external and
you neglect internally, that inner child's like, yo, what about me?
So I think this river crossing of consciousness that the
Buddhist speaks about could be just that, it could be balanced,
it could be harmony. And there's another theory with that.
I know I'll lose some people here, that we are
one of the last species out there to enlighten orally

(59:59):
to reach full homeostasis with nature. You know, the human
beings have been a little out of balance in the
last couple hundred years without a species that have been
with extinction and climate change, YadA, YadA, YadA. But it
still fits in the big picture of it, all right.
So I think thousands of years looking back, like whoa
humanity had to go through that really rough time, almost

(01:00:19):
like that caterpillar who looks like they're going through extreme
dysfunction before emerging as a butterfly. I really hope that's
what's going down here.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
As we finalize and wrap up here, give me one
last piece of advice for somebody who is either early
in their recovery journey or even determining whether they should
get on the recovery journey.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Okay, burn the ships, burn the ships, and it's got
to be done internally. You can look in the mirror
yourself and be like, hey, is this really where we're going.
You gotta get honest with yourself. Then burn the ships externally.
Find a close friend. It doesn't have to be a
close friend, but just voicing it, getting it inside to
outside in front of a live human being is going
to do wonder for you. And that could be just

(01:01:01):
going to a meeting, a chat. There's so many online
recovery platforms, but burning the ships is quite impactful because
it's honesty. You have to get honest with yourself and
get honest with another person. It's not easy. I get it.
That's my advice, Eric.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
So not everybody's going to be familiar with that phrase
burn the ships. So what's that meaning?

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
I guess you're right. In fifteen nineteen, with bernand Cortes
sailed from Cuba and landed on the coast of Vera
Cruz in Mexico to conquer the Aztec Empire, which for
the previous five hundred years many have tried to conquer
the Aztecs. The first thing he did, and this is true,
when he got on the coast of Mexico, he said,
burn the ships. He burned. I think it was like
thirty or forty ships, millions and millions of dollars in

(01:01:37):
today's money. The only way they were going to go
back to Spain is if they were victorious, and that's
what happened. They won. A long story, but with burning
the ships, we have conversations with people that we can't
unha those conversations. And like I said earlier, when you
reach out for help, you give another person the opportunity
to be of service, to be of help which helps them.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
That is a beautiful place for us to wrap up.
Thank you so much Paul for coming on, Thanks for
sharing your wisdom. We'll have links in the show notes
to your podcast to your recovery community. And it was
a real pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Eric, it was a blast, nice chat with you. Thank
you very much for having me.

Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this
monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now.
We are so grateful for the members of our community.
We wouldn't be able to do what we do without

(01:02:52):
their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
To learn more, make a donation at any level and
become a member of the One You Feed Immunity go
to oneufeed dot net slash join The One You Feed
podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting
the show.