The Truth About 12-Step Programs: What No One Tells You with Arlina Allen

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Anytime we get triggered or angered, that is a sign
or a place that is covering a wound, and so
we need to sort of bring that to the light
and process our feelings to resolution so that we no
longer carry them.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
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,

(00:41):
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 from moving in the right direction,

(01:01):
how they feed their good wolf.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
If you've listened for a while, you know I've talked
about my recovery, how a twelve step program saved my life,
but also how I don't go anymore. And every time
I hear so you're anti twelve step, I'm not but
when it comes to recovery, nuance tends to get lost.
And that's why I was excited to talk with Arlene Allen,
author of The Twelve Step Guide for Skeptics. She breaks

(01:28):
down the misconceptions that keep people from giving these programs
a real shot, and how to make them work even
if parts of them don't resonate for you. We dig
into the language of twelve step programs, terms like character
defects and how they can be reframed. We explore navigating
the spiritual aspects even if you don't believe in a
traditional higher power. So if you've ever wrestled with recovery,

(01:50):
been interested in twelve steps, or wondered if a twelve
step program could work for you, this episode is worth
your time. I'm Eric Zimmer, and it's time to feed
our good wolf. Yes, Hi Arlena, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Hi, thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
I'm really excited to have you on. Your book is
called The Twelve Step Guide for Skeptics, clearing up common
misconceptions of a path to sobriety and often on the show,
I mentioned that I was in a twelve step program.
I mentioned that I have some concerns about twelve step programs.
I mentioned that I don't go to meetings anymore, and

(02:25):
the problem is there's a lot, a lot of nuance
that's missed in that, and so from my side, I'm
excited to have a chance to really explore all that
nuance so that people who are listening a understand kind
of my perspective on that. But also more importantly, because
this is your interview, they understand the perspective that you're providing.
I think you did a great job because this idea

(02:50):
that you say at some point, I wish that people,
if they had some boundaries, some context, a shift in perspective,
they could move past some of these common barriers and
get a lot out of twelve step programs. And I
think that's really important because despite there being lots of
other things on offer these days, there is nothing that

(03:11):
has the reach and is free that twelve step programs do.
It's amazing that they exist totally. And there are common
barriers and misperceptions that I think keep a lot of
people out or drive people out after a while, and
I think your book does a really nice job of
dealing with those. So yeah, I think you really accomplished
your mission that.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Means a lot to me knowing who you are and
all of your knowledge, So thank you for saying that. Yeah,
that was a mission.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
So we're going to get to that book in a second,
but we will start like we always do, with the Parable.
And in the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with
their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,

(04:00):
represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
grandchild stops 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. 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 1 (04:19):
Well that parable and I have thought about this a lot,
and you're gonna ask a question, and not to be
reductionist about it. What is so powerful about it is
sort of this idea that energy flows where attention goes,
like whatever we focus on expands, right, But if we
sort of twist it a little bit and say that

(04:40):
you know, it's not which one you feed, but what
do you feed it? Right, Like, I know you're very
aware of like internal family systems. And I would say
over the last four or five years, since I learned
about internal family systems, which is the way to relate
to all the parts inside of you, including what we
would call like the bad parts, is that all of
our parts have a positive intention, and sometimes they do

(05:04):
it in destructive ways. And I had a mentor early
on who asked me, you know, we would talk a
lot about self compassion, and she would ask me, can
you love your unlovable part? And I thought it was
an impossible question because oftentimes the answer is no. I
had that experience, but I wanted to cut parts of
me out. Yeah, your person I wanted to kill, but

(05:27):
that's not really possible, right, And there's this old saying
you can't hate yourself well. And so when she posts
that question to me, can you love your unlovable parts?
And it was no. But then I was introduced to
internal family systems. I began to understand that what I
would call like the bad role for the bad parts,
the greed, the hatred, all that stuff, there was a
positive intention for those roles in my life, and as

(05:51):
I fed them love and compassion and understanding and appreciation,
recognizing that I was behaving in those ways out of
survival skills, that sort of lowered the tension in my body.
It helped me to release fear and come more from
a place of love, which is what I think we

(06:13):
would commonly call the good wolf. And so the approach
to getting rid of the bad wolf is to actually
love it.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yeah, that leads us right into I think something we
can talk about with twelve step programs, because there's a
lot of nuance in this and twelve step programs. One
of the things that you say right out of the gate,
and you say again and again and again. I just
want to get it out there for everything else it's
about to follow, is that people are not the program.
Thank you, right, People are not the program. And so

(06:43):
as I talk about things that challenge me in twelve
step meetings, you're going to hear me talk about people
from time to time, right, And so I think it's
really important that everybody understand that, like, people are not
the program. You can need different meetings and get different experiences.
You can just ignore or the one person that says
stuff that you don't like, Like, there's lots of ways
to work with that.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
All.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
Right, Now back to where we were, which is that
you're talking about loving all these parts of ourselves and
the twelve step literature as we go into it. But
the twelve step literature is largely based originally on the
original text, which was AA's Big book Alcohol tends to
be fairly strong in its language about selfishness is our problem. Yeah,

(07:31):
we have these character defects that we have to get
rid of. Right, there's not a whole lot there necessarily
at first glance about loving these parts of us that
are problematic. I often would hear people say I'm still
a liar, cheating, a thief. And that's not said in

(07:52):
a like I'm proud of it way. It's there's some
part of me that's bad, and I need to use
this program to get rid of it. So let's just
start talking there. As a thing that I do know
that rubs some people wrong about twelve step language is
that idea they don't want to talk about character defects.
They may feel terrible about themselves already, So let's help

(08:15):
reframe that or give that some context.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, and the two of the matter. Listen, that book
was written in nineteen thirty five, Right, we're sort of
judging their content of information based on the information that
we have today. So we can see the stark contrast
in these ideologies, and so I think, first off, I
just want to say that that's actually very valid. Yeah,

(08:37):
it's very valid to just be like, hey, you know,
there is a lot of this language in there that
is sort of reinforcing shame as opposed to resolving it.
Like this idea of character defects, I don't actually like
that word myself. Now. I will tell people to go
back to literature all the time, and I do have
my own opinions, and one of my opinions is that

(08:58):
I like to think of character defects as survival skills, right,
like the character defects. Like if you do read the literature,
they do talk about how these are natural instincts that
are out of balance. So while there is talk about
character defects, there is also sort of compassionate language around hey,
this is a natural instinct and it was just out

(09:20):
of balance. But we do have this negativity bias where
we do sort of focus on the negative and discard
the positive and so if both things are in it,
it just depends on what you focus on, like the
good wolf in the bubble, but both are actually valid.
And I am very sensitive to people who are vulnerable,

(09:41):
and you know, to go to this program feeling guilt
and shame and to be confronted with that is very
challenging on so many levels. And I think like when
someone you know kind of hits bottom and they're just like, okay,
like there are some things that are not working. I'm
willing to surrender and receive information like you're actually doing

(10:01):
some stuff that's wrong, which is just flat wrong. Yep.
And so it is a little harsh. There is a
lot of focus on character defects because those are the
things that need corrected. We don't need to correct the
good things already. Yeah, it's okay, let's talk about the problems.
Let's bring some solutions and so that you can feel better.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Right, And I think the modern insight that underlies this,
which isn't in the book, and we could debate whether
the book should be updated or not, but is that yes,
character defects and yes, our selfishness are actually really problems,
and they are part of the reason that we are
stuck in the mess that we are in. The more

(10:42):
modern insight is those things exist for a reason. Those
things are serving some sort of purpose, and again that
purpose is not working anymore. But it made sense, and
so it moves from as Gabor Montek famously said, don't
ask why the addiction, asked why the pain exactly. But

(11:03):
I do think for me that that idea of particularly
the lines about you know, selfishness, self centeredness, is the
root of our problem. Those changed my life. It's strong medicine,
it is strong medicine. But for me it was right
because of what I realized was whether I was thinking

(11:23):
good about myself or thinking bad about myself, what I
was doing was always thinking about just myself.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, yeah, I showed up pretty broken. Yeah, you know,
self centered to the extreme, self seeking to the extreme.
But why was I seeking so hard? Yeah? I had
needs that were not being met and all my survival
skills that I had developed in childhood were not transferable
to healthy adult life. And so, you know, I was
met with that strong medicine. But I was just at

(11:52):
that point where I was like, my way is not working,
and I was in such a state of humility that
I was like, Okay, tell me how you did this thing. Yeah,
and let's not get it twisted. You know, people typically
go there because their lives are It's not just that
they're not going well, they're going bad. Like really all right,

(12:12):
you know what I mean. It's like, although there is
a lot of conversation now with like dry January stuff,
like people are recognizing that living in alcohol free is
about optimization. It's not necessarily because you have a problem.
But most people go there because life is terrible. And
that's where I was. I was in so much emotional pain.
I was like, do I kill myself or do I
get sober? And it was something I had to deliberate.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
I was like, right, right, And I think that the
couple of things that make a lot of this difficult
in a way are that, indeed, addiction issues alcohol use
disorder ranges on a vast spectrum. It's one person's quote
unquote bottom is very different than what another person's is. Yeah,

(12:55):
And I think also it's a good thing on the
whole that there are alternatives to twelve step programs, because
I think even when we get past some of the
misconceptions that you're talking about, they're not for everybody, So
I think it's good that there's other things out there.
I'm kind of glad for me that there wasn't me too, right,
because I was dying. I was going to go to

(13:16):
jail for a really long time, and I'm glad I
didn't spend any more time than I already had messing
around with apps or this or that. Like I just
went and it was the only thing that there was saying,
and it was a little bit intense, but it worked.
It saved my life, you know, they saved my life twice.
And so again I feel mixed because I think it's

(13:38):
really good that there are alternatives, and for some people
an app will stop their drinking in an optimization type way.
That would not have worked for me at that point, right,
I needed something far more than that.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Same. Yeah, I think we got Seber the same year,
And I'm also very grateful that there wasn't anything else available,
Like there was no recovery memoirs, there were no you know,
there is sober social media accounts, which is kind of
one of the reasons why I wrote the book, because
there's a lot of people that are openly bashing twelve Step,
but you know, I'm not one of those that it's

(14:13):
this or and only this, Like I'm an and the Girl,
I'm like the hill I will die on. Is the
twelve Steps are a worthy endeavor. I'm not saying it's
the only thing that you should do. I'm just saying
that there are amazing benefits to it, largely for free,
and that it's just a realthly endeavor. I'm an and girl,
So I'm like twelve steps and therapy, I'm yoga and

(14:34):
twelve start. You know, there's just so many different modalities.
This is such a great time to get sober or
to get alcohol free, if that's kind of a thing
for optimization. But I'm just saying in this book that
the Twelve Steps are a worthy endeavor. I just wanted
to meet some of the roadblocks head on, which I
think are actually very valid and just be like, here's

(14:56):
a way to round that so that you get the benefit.
Because it benefits are so good. Like you said, it
saved your life, me too, but it not only saved
my life, like it gave me sort of a very
practical and pragmatic way for problem resolution, for self examination,
for goal achievement.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, I love that idea, and let's address some of
these barriers upfront. Okay, I think there are two types
of barriers, right. Barrier one is do I really need
to get sober? Barrier two is do I need to
do it in this way in this program? So I
want to talk about category one just for a second,

(15:38):
and I think the first one there and you talk
about this is you know, can't I just learn to
moderate and say a little bit about that?

Speaker 1 (15:46):
Well, listen, in society, like alcohol is the only drug
you have to explain why you're not using it. We
are just so bombarded with messages of you know, drinking
it's fun and all that stuff. So there's a lot
of external influence to drink, right, and so it's very

(16:06):
hard to come to the just and listen. Like for me,
it was a reliable source of medicine. It was medicine
for me, to be honest. It was my way of
emotion management that ultimately did not work well for me
because when I just alcohol, there's like this switch that
gets flipped and all I want is more. And so
I did try to moderate for two years after a

(16:29):
particularly bad night involving the police. I didn't end up
going to jail, partly because I was dating this policeman.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
Good strategy, perhaps going to get in trouble with the
law often.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, yeah, I've.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
Never contemplated that one till now. I never this opportunity
totally kind to run this thing out a few more
years at least, you know it.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Jeez. Yeah. I had a really bad night and I
woke up the next morning. I really hurt my sister
and physically and emotionally and super traumatized. And I woke
up with that horrible, sickening, sinking feeling that something terrible
had happened the night before, and I had to hear
everything secondhand because I was a blackout drinker. Yeah right,
And that's when I started asking the questions like am

(17:17):
I an alcoholic? Like what makes me different from all
my friends who drink like I do? And it just
like one question, let to do another? And so I
was like, you know what, let me just try to
moderate this thing. I'm me just try to learn how
to control it and drink like a lady. Yeah, because
I was drinking like a trucker. I was not drinking
for you, like I was sailor, Lord have mercy. So

(17:37):
I was like, let me, try to control this thing.
And so I spent the next two years in the
self help section of Barnes and Noble, like trying to
figure out what was my problem. Really, yeah, it can't
be this truth is as I was. I was kind
of on the right track. But you know, thirty years
ago I was reading books like Men Are from Mars,
Women Are from Venus, the Seven Spiritual Laws of success

(17:58):
or money or Abundance. I forgot what it was. I
was a deepalk droper book. But I was trying to
think my way into right living kind of a thing,
and I was trying to moderate. So that was like
a glass of water between drinks. That was eating before
I went out, and blah blah blah, keep a couple
of assprun out a glass of water by my nightstand,
because when you wake up at three o'clock in the
morning with cotton mouth, you're so like, yep, completely dehydrant

(18:20):
out of I thought, oh, yeah, if I could prevent
the hangover, maybe that was the thing. Vitamins whatever. So
I didn't have a horrible night every night I drank.
But when I had a horrible night, it was because
I was drinking. And I really just could not moderate.
I couldn't predict what would happen once I started drinking,

(18:42):
even with all these crazy plans I had in place.
And I kind of joke around that I had two
alter egos when I was drinking. I had bad ass
Bency or Windy Windy because I was either fighting or crying.
There's a third, bloody Susan, and literally everybody loved her. Yeah.
I'd like to joke around that if I could encapsulate

(19:04):
my drinking experience, is that if it was in a bottle,
a bag, or blue jeans, I was doing it.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
That's good, phil void literally and figuratively super fun, that's good. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
Yeah, Moderation is an interesting one. There's a line from
a big book that seared itself into my brain, which
was I may not get it exact because I'm in
a little bit of ways from it, but the thought
that somehow, some way they'll control their drinking is the
great obsession of every abnormal drinker.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Control and enjoy.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Oh that's right, yes, okay, so control and enjoy their drinking.
Because I was trying to control and enjoy it from
very early on. I knew like hang on like something
in me was like, something's off. But I tried moderation too,
and the first time that I got sober, I was
a homeless heroin addict who's no doubt in anyone's mind,
including mine. I had fifty years at jail time. I mean,

(20:00):
there was just no doubt. This isn't working. Yeah, I
stayed sober about eight years. I went back out and
all I did when I went back out was drink
and smoke an enormous amount of marijuana. And over time
it began to dawn on me, this isn't going so
well now. I wasn't having external consequences. Everything on the
outside was okay. I had the best job I'd ever had,

(20:23):
I was getting promoted, you know, But inside I knew
I was really sick. But I also knew that, like,
I'm going to have to be abstinate and go back
to recovery. God, I don't want to do that. So
maybe I can moderate. And I thought to myself, there's
a program called moderation management out there. I'm going to

(20:43):
try this. And I was moderation Management's best student for
a while, or what I should say is I was
its most ardent student at trying and still got in
f but I remember nights like this where it's a
like eleven thirty night, I got to get up at
six thirty in the morning. I'm already fairly hammered at

(21:04):
this point, and I'm standing by the sink and my
brain is fighting me. I'm fighting my brain. It's like
one more shot, one more shot, And of course I'm
going there's no reasonable reason to have one more shot.
You're already three or four shots over what moderation looks like.
And yet I mean, I lost that battle more often
than I won it. And I had that realization that

(21:26):
you just talked about control and enjoy I realized I
can try and control my drinking not very well, but
it's miserable. It's miserable because I'm having the eleven thirty
at night battle over a shot of whiskey that's tearing
me apart inside. Or I can just let off the
reins and enjoy it, except that at this point for me,
there's a little bit of enjoyment and a whole lot

(21:48):
of trouble. And I'm really glad that I tried moderation management,
like really tried it. Yeah, because it just now when
my brain starts that dance up again. I'm like, Nope,
you tried, done work, not for you.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
You had enough evidence. Yeah, I think that's such important
information to how like, I love this idea of run
the experiment, and we ran the experiment. We ran the
moderation experiment, and we gave it the old college try.
You know, an experiment. You know, I love the lens
of science because it has a way of depersonalizing things,
so like shame and guilt are not involved. But it's like,

(22:24):
let's just run the experiment. And I ran the experiment,
and I tried and tried and tried. I dancy myself
a clever girl. It's like, okay, but an experiment is
you have a presupposition, and do you run the experiment.
You take some actions, right, you have some beliefs, you
make some decisions, you take some actions, and then you
examine the result. Right, And my results were coming out

(22:48):
pretty clear that I am just not that person who
can moderate. There are some people who can. Yeah, absolutely,
in all transparency, there are some people who can do that.
You know, like you said in the beginning, you know,
addiction or alcohol usessor is a spectrum, so there will
be people somewhere along the line. Who can choose to

(23:09):
soften it's not a thing, or maybe they can choose
to moderate. For me, it just took up too much
mental bandwidth because I have this element of obsession that
maybe some people don't have. Yes, and so once I
start drinking, it's that switch that gets flipped that says
more and I don't have any ability to moderate that.

(23:29):
So going through this process of trying to moderate, I
would argue, is essential.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
You're not going to give up something that you love
without a really good reason, right, love love, Yeah, And
so I agree. I think the moderation is a useful experiment.
I love the lens of experiment too, and I tried
that experiment. That's how I went back out after eight years.
Was this belief like, well, I'm just not going to
do heroin. Obviously that's a terrible idea. We all know that,

(24:18):
and so I'm just going to drink. And the experiment
it's sort of like when they test the effectiveness of
a drug. You know, in the first month, you're like, hey,
this drug's pretty effective, and then they realize that after
three years it will kill you. That was kind of
my experiment, and that's not an experiment that I want
to run again, because experiments can be expensive, you know,
and deadly, these type of experiments, and so you know,

(24:40):
I ran at once, didn't work, and I remain fairly
clear that I can't do that. So okay, moderation, you
go through it, you figure it out. And let's say
we now arrive at a point where I'm like, Okay,
it seems pretty clear that there's no moderation for me. Right,
I'm either on or off, but I don't have that
slow down switch.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
The cost is too high.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Yep, So now I need help. I'm looking around at
help and I see twelve step programs and I go, ugh, Right.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
Isn't that funny that that's like the common response to
twelve I was like, oh God, Like.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
Well, I think honestly, for nearly anybody who is facing
down getting sober, it could be anything, and they would
be like, uh to anything that asks much out of them. Right,
But twelve step programs people know more about them than
they do any other alternative because of the media and
all of these different things. Right, we have an idea
of what that means. Whereas if I said you should

(25:37):
go to smart recovery, people would be like, Okay, what
the heck is that no one has any idea because
you know, it's a small thing. So one of the
things that you say is I almost missed out on
my sobriety because the program isn't what I thought it
was going to be a sad, shameful group of dingy
church basement dwellers.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
That's what I thought it was.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Well that some meetings are kind of that way, to
be honest.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
There's a few, to be honest, you know what, I've
grown to love those two. Me too, Me too, but yeah,
because the essence is that it wasn't what I thought
it was, and it's no interesting. You know, I coach
people who want to get sober who don't want to
do that, and I will always ask why yeah, or
even the people that interview, I always ask why not?
And it's always like so there are to read big

(26:22):
trigger words that typically heat people out if you look
at the steps at face value. Like when I read that,
like I wrote this book because I'm a skeptic, I
saw the steps and I saw god, I saw alcoholic,
and I saw powerless and I was like, no, thank you. Yeah,
but then my way wasn't working. There wasn't nothing else.
I was like, fine, I'll go yeah, you know, and
I met this girl. I talk about her in the

(26:44):
book a lot kimmers. You know. I was like, listen,
if this is religious, if this is the God thing, like,
I'm not going to be able to do this because
I grew up in the church, and I felt like
I had been begged Gog my whole life to fix me. Yeah,
and here we are still human, right. I was still
make all these mistakes. I was still acting in ways
that were not in alignment with the values that I

(27:04):
grew up with, and so I thought I was a
bad person. So I kept asking God to fix me.
And I got to this point where I was like,
you know what, if I can't be good, I kept failing.
I thought I was failing, and so I decided if
I couldn't be good, I was gonna be good at
being bad. So that's so. And I got sober, and
you know, I was like, if that's what this is,
I'm not going to be able to see it. And

(27:25):
this grip pulled me aside and she was like, hey,
you know, it's not a thing, don't worry about it.
She's like, just for funzies. Let's do this little exercise.
She said, take pace paper out on one side, write
down all the attributes that you would want God to be.
And I was like, okay, well it's like loving powerful,
I'm clearly the favorites ape Like it had to make

(27:46):
sense to me, like what did I really know about God?
Because I grew up with God and there were times
when I had spiritual experiences and so I was trying
to draw from, like all the positive things I had
felt growing up. And she's like, well, what don't you
want it to be? And I was like, well, punish
you know this idea of hell? What is it all about?
How can you say that you love me but then
condemn me to hell? Like I'm born on the wrong

(28:08):
side of the planet and they have a different religion
or whatever. And she was like okay. So when I
was done, she said, hand me a piece of paper
and I handed it to her and she tore it
in half as she handed me back the bahasative side
and she's like, let's just start with this. I was like,
that's it, and she's like that's it. I was like,
oh good. So it was introduced to this idea that

(28:28):
you could readefine words. Yeah, like who gets to decide
what God means to you?

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Right?

Speaker 1 (28:34):
You do? Like I have like this rebellious nature. I
was like, nobody's going to tell me what God means
to me? Yeah, I'm going to decide. But I just
didn't know that that was an option until she told me.
It was an option that was revolutionary to me.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
to synthesize information rather than just in testing it in
a detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to
pause and reflect. What's your one big insight so far

(29:07):
and how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously,
just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
and be present. Cant it. If you want to keep
this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
I'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with

(29:28):
insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a
nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if you don't
like them, you can get off a list really easily.
So far, there are over one and seventy two others

(29:50):
from the one you Feed community on the list, and
we'd love to welcome you as well, So head on
over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's feed
our good wolves together. I think that line that as
a last second decision, tacked on to the end of
the third step after a whole lot of debate about it.
God comma as we understood him, and now it still

(30:12):
says him. But at least it gave this little wiggle
room there, right, And I bet that line saved millions
of people's lives. You know, my problem was different around God.
My problem was I came in and I didn't believe
in God, and so I came in and I was told,
you need to have a higher power and it needs

(30:32):
to you know, you can make it whatever you want.
But it's nineteen ninety four in Columbus, Ohio. And this
is what ninety five percent of us are talking about
when we say God. We may drop the judging, shameful pieces,
but we still believe it's this thing that's going to
intervene on your behalf and get you sober. And I
was so desperate. I was like, Okay, fine, okay, I'm in.
I'm in, I'm in. I'll do whatever it takes. And

(30:54):
I tried and I tried, and I tried to believe.
And that's something really bad happened in my life. And
I realized that I didn't have a God that made
any sense to me. And that was the beginning of
the unraveling. It still took me a few years, but
eventually I went back out. So when I came back
I was like, all right, I can't pretend again, what

(31:16):
do I do with God? Because I don't believe in
an interventionist God that does anything. I don't believe in
a person I just that's me, right. And what I
realized was I can't build my life on something I
don't personally believe. That's a bad strategy. And so then

(31:37):
for me it became I need to do an even
more radical re understanding of what this means, and so
my problem was slightly different, but it is doable. As
you mentioned in the book, some people just have God
be an acronym for group of drunks, meaning I believe
the people in the program, the support of that can
help me get sober. And I think that's a really

(31:58):
good one. Some people say good order direction, right, that's
another one.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
For me.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
It ended up being I believe that there are these
sort of principles that we see again and again across
religious traditions, across philosophical traditions, across psychological traditions. And my
belief became if I had tried to live according to
those principles to the best of my ability, yeah, it'll
be enough to keep me sober. It'll be enough for
me to handle what happens. And that turned out to

(32:23):
be a foundation that I could build on. Yeah, I
will say that over time, because I don't go to
twelve step meetings anymore, and we'll eventually get to what
that is. Over time. I got tired of translating in
my head. I got tired of hearing somebody talk about
God and me go, okay, well, what that actually means
to me because a lot of the ways it was

(32:44):
talked about was in the interventionist sense, and that didn't
make sense to me. So not only was I translating
the word, I had to try and translate the sentiment,
and just for me, over time, for me, it grew tiring.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
I could see that matter is. You know, it's for
a lot of people. It's a great place to start. Yeah, yeah,
you know, I love this idea of layering tools. Yes, right,
So let's just say for arguments, say you know the
book Alcoholic Anonymous talks about, you know, gaining access to
power like that. Really, if we kind of boil it
all down, that's what it's about, access to power. And

(33:21):
you and I together is dronger than me by myself.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
There's this idea that you can't read the label from
inside the jar. And when I'm in the swirling emotions
of despair and all that stuff, I'm in a jar
and I can't see. But if you said, hey, Arlena,
just share with me what you're thinking and I talk
about it, there's something about talking about it that relieves
some sort of stress. There's a connection that happens, there's

(33:49):
some validation. You'd be like yeah, I could see how
you feel that way. Like to me, those are like
the magic words. I could see how you feel that way. Yeah,
so validating, right, and there's something that then makes me
feel safe and then my defenses come down and then
the truth comes out. And so let's just say that
it's a good place to start because those are the

(34:09):
types of dynamics and that is a power greater than myself.
Like just at mear minimum, that in and of itself,
to me was enough. And I really struggled with making
sense of God until Cameras was like, just focus on
these things and just work out everything. Yeah, the mental

(34:30):
gymnastics required to try to figure it out. Sometimes it's
just too much, right, But you know, we focus on
what we do want, not what we don't want, right,
And so I have had this ability to sort of
like let go of the rest.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Your book talks about why people don't go to a
and then why people leave, and so we're going to
come back around to leave, although I keep sort of
jumping in because we're in the right spot. But what
are the you said three big reasons that people kind
of resist. You know, I think we talked about God
the other was the word alcoholic. Talk to me about
that one.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, resistance is huge. Put a pin in that. I
want to circle back to that. But the word alcohol
like typically brings up these ideas of a man in
a trench code. Homeless people typically serves up really negative images.
But I started going to meetings and meeting these amazing people.
I'm from California, the Silicon Valley area, and I was

(35:23):
exposed to a lot of professionals. There was like homeless
people too, And this is one of those things, like
I found the right meetings that served me, and I
went to like the bougie side of town and hung
out with the fancy people who were sober. I wanted
to be like them because they were seeing things that
resonated with me, and they see that you're kind of
the average of the five people you spend the most

(35:44):
time with. I decided to hang out with people who
were like account executives or doctors, lawyers, like I related
to them better and they had what I wanted. So
I did a lot of that. But I was like,
if that's what an alcoholic is, signed me up. Like
I wanted what these people had, and so really, what
I've come to understand that when people use that word

(36:07):
freely is because these are people who have stood at
the abyss of despair, of life and death, and even
though they had tremendous guilt and shame, they decided to
do self examination, which requires a huge amount of heart.
Like these people are badass, Like they are able to practice.

(36:28):
They're really striving for things like honesty and integrity. Like
you were talking about the Principles. I got a friend
who's a staunch atheist. He's been going to AA for
forty years, and he just decided that he was going
to listen for the principles and do that. I was like, sane, sane,
because even though you know, I have this relationship with
this higher power thing that I don't really understand. I

(36:49):
kind of think of it his love, we're both still
talking about the same thing and practicality. And so people
rail at the word alcoholic at first, it's because they're
missing some information. That's a limiting belief. Limiting belief is
either missing information or incorrect information. And so I would
sort of argue that if you are like throwing AA out,

(37:11):
it's because you're harboring a limiting belief. And I'm what
you would call recovery promiscuous. I want all the tools
that are going to benefit my life. So I don't
see the word alcoholic is a shame label. I see
it as a badge of honor.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
Yeah, it's interesting. We've explored this topic a lot on
the show, and it's this idea of labels and diagnoses
when it comes to addiction, mental health, all of this stuff.
And I think that ultimately what we want is we
want to be able to use labels when they are
useful to us and discard them when they're not. Exactly

(37:50):
and to your point, know what that label actually really means,
or at least means to me. I still I'm seventeen
years sober ill. I don't go to twelve step programs.
But if you ask me, are you an alcoholic? I
would say yes. But that only means one thing to
me today. It means that I'm someone who cannot successfully

(38:10):
drink alcohol. That's the extent of it. It doesn't mean
I'm still sick. It doesn't mean that I have character defects.
It doesn't mean that I'm different than other people except
in one way right to me, because I don't feel
like I'm different than the average person. Right, I don't
feel like there's like people in recovery and then normal
people like I think that's a useful distinction for a while,

(38:31):
and then eventually for me became unuseful. And so for me,
it's just that one thing I cannot successfully take mind
altering substances. Yeah, I love what you said about a
limiting belief right being either incorrect information or was it
not enough information or missing information? Yeah, yeah, that's really good.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, it's just interesting because this program has allowed me
to grow on a ball. What I need also changes yep. Right,
And I went to meetings for so long because it
was sort of just convenient way for me to check
a lot of boxes.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Yeah, and it is. I mean that in a good way.
Like when I stepped away, I had to reverse engineer
in my mind, what do I think I'm getting there?
Why is this working? And now I got to make
sure that I'm getting those things elsewhere and that does
take some patching together. Whereas AA, like you said, it's

(39:24):
a very convenient, you know, one stop shop for a
lot of good things.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, this is where I'm an and girl like. I
still do twelve step meetings occasionally, but I moved five
years ago, and so I quit going to in person
meetings because in the area that I'm in, it just
wasn't feeding me anymore. Yep, And so I decided I
needed to layer in more things.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
I should be clear, I will go to a twelve
step meeting. I mean, like my friend Chris is fairly
active in the program. I'll go with him occasionally. I
will go just because, I mean, on one level, I
love them. I do think there is a type of
beauty that you see in a twelve step meeting that
you don't see most of the time anywhere else. And

(40:31):
it's there in pretty much every meeting if you look
for it. And I am not like against AA or
twelve step programs in any way, shape or form, And
I'm not like I won't go. They just for me
in the last X number of years didn't feel like
the best way for me to become the next best
version of myself.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yeah. I think that it leads to a really good point,
is that we need to really trust our instincts. Like
everything you said is so valid. The whole point is
that we're growing and evolving, and so we need different things.
And it's not that I don't like twelve step meetings.
It's that I have a crating to go deeper or

(41:12):
for more. Yeah, and so I started exploring other things.
But at the end of the day, sometimes it's just
easier to jump on a zoom meeting and see some
friends and hear some good stories, be reminded of information
that transformed my life. You know, they say that we
have a quick forgetter, but you know you were talking
about sort of made me think of what neuroscience calls

(41:35):
the default mode network. It's sort of like the way
that it's like the neural And I love science because
when I don't have faith, I have science, and science
is actually explaining a lot of the spiritual dynamics that
you and I understand now, right, And so what I
know now is that our brain operates on a default
mode network. It's the way our neurology was developed. There

(41:58):
was this really good book called What Happened than to You?
By doctor Bruce Perry and Overwmberin. It's a slight variation
on the question of what's wrong with you? And it's
such a more gentle, compassionate that it's like, what happened
to you? Well, what happened to me is that I
had a lot of trauma when I was growing up,
and it shaped my neurology. It shaped how I respond
to stress in a very specific way, and so in

(42:19):
my adulthood I have learned tools and practices that reshape
that default. But what I know for sure is that
if I stop doing all these practices, I will revert
back to my default, which is basically at the essend
to be super reduction as a fear based right, like
I come back to my survival skills, which no longer

(42:40):
serve me in adulthood. And so I just feel like
it's a more compassionate lens instead of thinking that I'm
an addict or I'm an alcoholic, Like I don't really
talk about that a whole lot anymore. I been sober
for thirty years. It's been a long time since with
all that stuff. When my fear gets kicked up, I
do respond in very specific ways, and so I sort

(43:01):
of liken it to you know, diet and exercise, Like
I could go to the gym every day for a
year and be in great shape that if I stop,
I've revert back. I live on my gains, which is
very painful or like I wouldn't eat one salad and
I expect to be healthy the rest of my So
it's likely right. So totally gets that. So that's why

(43:23):
you know, going to meetings, like I stayed in the book.
It's like, I'm not saying that you've got to go
to meetings forever. You're a beautiful example of you don't
have to do that. And there will be people who
say you have to go to meetings for the rest
of your life, otherwise you'll relapse and die, you know,
which is what we see. Actually, I'm sure you have to.
They told me when I first got sober that if

(43:43):
you stick around line and I feel, see people die.
And that has definitely been my experience. I've you know,
lost people. I really loved this, you know, this thing,
whatever you want to call it. So I think, you know,
when we're talking about the people being problematic, let's just
have a little compassion for them because they're afraid they've
seen some terrible experience and terrible things. Yeah, but no,

(44:04):
you're right, you don't have to do this forever. For me,
it was just like a convenient place to get check
all the boxes of gratitude and remember what it was
like for the future and be of service and connect
with spirituality because you know, am I everyday walking around life?
I really don't have a lot of opportunities to talk
about spirituality and lesson in those rooms where you know

(44:25):
it's encouraged to talk about it.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah. I mean, I think if I didn't do this show,
I would probably still go to twelve step meetings. You know,
if a huge chunk of my life was devoted to
doing something different with my mind. Let's say I was
still in the software business, which was a great career
in many ways. It's just simply that to your point,
I need to be reminded of things very often. I

(44:50):
just happen to be in a position where I get
reminded of these things all the time because I'm talking
to people all the time, I'm reading these books all
the time, and I'm helping teach these ideas to other
people all the time that I swim in them. Yeah,
and that's beneficial. But I may not always do that.
I mean, you know, maybe I go back to be
a software guy in five years, I don't know, and
my needs might change. Yeah, And so you know, I

(45:13):
want to go back to something you said a second
ago about trusting our instincts, because I think this is
interesting because today I can trust my instincts. Yeah, when
I was still drinking or very early in sobriety, my
instincts were terrible. What my natural reaction to do was
always like by that point, generally a really bad idea.

(45:34):
You know, I don't know if they still say it,
but they used to say it all the time, like
it's your thinking that got you here, and so, you know,
I think that that idea of instincts is an interesting
one because I think sometimes we can trust our instincts,
but our instinct might be I shouldn't go to meetings.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Yeah, you bring up a good point. You know, you
and I are pretty far down the road and trust art,
we've had the ability to learn how to trust our instincts.
And I was in the beginning able to trust my
instincts because my instincts were out of balance and my
default mode network was still in survival mode, and so
I just needed new information and new ideas to help

(46:14):
me think because the way I was thinking made sense
to me at the time, you know. And it's interesting
how decisions are made. It's like you have a feeling,
and you consider the information that you have, and you
make a decision based on the information that you have,
and then you take action, you invoke the law of
cause and effecting you experience a result that's a cybernetic loupe.

(46:35):
So like, I found myself in the same spot over
and over again, and I was like, what is going on?
And what I learned later is that we decide emotionally
and justify logically. And what I was deciding from emotionally
was I had this aversion, this aversion to myself because

(46:56):
I hated who I was, had so much self loathing
making these mistakes, but I just didn't know what to
do instead, And by going to meetings, by actually working
the twelve steps with a sponsor, yes, a loving compassionate
you know, there's a whole discussion around how do you
choose one and what do you actually do? I actually

(47:17):
described in the book how I did it. It's not
the right way, it's just a way it worked for me. Whatever,
But yeah, it was the process that just you know,
ended up helping me get the result I wanted. But
it did start with examining my whole decision making process,
like really breaking it down and the twelve steps, specifically,

(47:38):
the fourth step was a very pragmatic and practical way
to sort of unpack all my baggage. Yeah, so helpful.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
Let's spend a minute there, because I think that's important.
I think one of the aspects of AA, the reason
that it works is the peer support. I'm talking to you,
one alcoholic talking to another. There's some sort of magic
in that, right, So there's that that's a big component
of it. The other is that there is a actual
program to change who you are. That's what the twelve

(48:10):
steps are. Or maybe that's the wrong way to say it.
Maybe it's not to change who you are, but it's
to help you change the coping mechanisms and the ways
that you relate to the world that are causing you
to stay, as you said, stuck in the same place.
And that's a real benefit. Are the twelve steps the
best way to change? I don't know. Is there a
best way to change? Of course not. There's lots of

(48:31):
ways to change, but it is a way, and it
is a way that lots of people have done. And
I'm so glad that I did them multiple times, right,
I'm so glad that I went through that process multiple
times because they do. And so when I look at
my life and I'm like, Okay, if I'm not going
to meetings, what do I need. One of the things

(48:52):
I need is some sort of structured way of continuing
to examine my inner world and change. And there's lots
of different ones, but that's a component of what I
think in my sort of reverse engineering. You know, I
need the support of other people, and I need to
support other people. I also need some sort of structure

(49:13):
to how I change. Yeah, and the twelve steps gives that.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Yeah. But I loved about the four step. And to
be honest, I kept hearing that people were doing steps one, two,
and three and relapsing and that terrified me. And what
I get is that because of the guilt and shame,
people are so afraid to look. But what I want
people to know is the Force up is licensed to bitch,
like you give a comp.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
At least at first, at least until your sponsor gets
a hold of it.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Well, listen, I had a captive audience. I had a
really come all right pashonate sponsor, and I wish I
would have known that before going in. I was like,
oh my god, that's just a different perspective. It's like
what you get to talk about. You get to name
the people that you're mad at or resentful. You get
to get really specific about the cause and how they

(50:03):
hurt you, and how they hurt you. Was it your
self esteem that they damaged? Kind of sounding a little victimy,
but it was like what was effected? It was my
self esteem, it was my emotional safety, financial insecurity relation.
I got to exam. And then the last part was
what was my role in all this? What was the

(50:23):
dynamic right and every relationship with sort of a fifty
to fifty shared so what was my part? And that
was the light bulb moment, Like and when I wrote
it all out at once, I began to see these
patterns emerging and I lied, And it was largely around responsibility.
I was taking inappropriate responsibility for others and not taking

(50:45):
that responsibility for myself. And when I was able to
sort all that out with a sponsor, I was able
to let go of what was at mine so that
I could bear the weight of what was, which was
a lot.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
That's a really beautiful thing to say.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
So this one thing is that it wasn't that I
changed it was I emerged, Like through this process, it's
like my authentic self is able to emerge. And so
it wasn't like I was bad and needed to be good.
It was like I was holding on to these survival
skills that were actually hurting me. Yeah, but I wasn't

(51:22):
able to let go of them and tell I knew
what to do instead, Like that's super practical.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
Right, So listener and thinking about all that and the
other great wisdom from today's episode, If you were going
to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away,
what would it be? Not your top ten, not the
top five? Just one?

Speaker 2 (51:41):
What is it?

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Think about it?

Speaker 2 (51:43):
Got it? Now?

Speaker 3 (51:44):
I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
thing you can do today to put it in practice?
Or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
heroic effort. If you're not already on our Good Wolf
Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool

(52:07):
you can leverage to remind you to take those vital
baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed
dot net. Slash sms. It's totally free, and once you're
on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a
week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently
shared to give you an idea of the type of
stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless.

(52:28):
Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what,
keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem
from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the
fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe.
If you want to get in, I'd love to have
you there. Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms.
All right back to it. If something is the only

(52:52):
way you know how to cope with certain situations in life,
you're gonna stick with it until you have something else.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
It works because you got to make it make sense.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
Yeah, I love that line I emerged. I think that's
a really beautiful, beautiful way of saying it. That is
what happens. There's this Yeah, we change, Yeah, we recover
parts of ourselves, but on a different level, it's something
new that is still made up of me. It's still
me shaped in some way, but it's a much sturdier,

(53:23):
beautiful thing.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
I wonder if i'd ask you a question, I wonder,
what did you discover about yourself that surprised you? Well.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
I think that the primary revelation I already sort of
hit on, and the rest of the steps helped me
just to see it more and more clearly, was this
idea of my complete focus on myself. Even if I
thought that I was doing something for someone else, if
I looked underneath closely enough, it was still me, me, Me.

(53:57):
And that's still largely the case, I think for all
of it to some degree. Right, I'm not trying to
pretend that I fixed that I didn't.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
But it's from a different motive, don't you think.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
Yes, Actually, what I think is I tend to believe
that we have multiple motives underlying things. So I do
kind things for other people. Some of that is because
I just want to be kind. It's a value. It
emerges naturally for me. There's all that, and I'd love
you to see me that way, right, Like doesn't mean
that it's not valid. It just means that you know

(54:27):
it's mixed. But I think that was a big one
for me. It was just seeing all the ways. Because
if you'd asked me, are you selfish? I would have
said no, of course, not Now I clearly was. I mean,
I guess if you'd asked me at that time, I
probably would have said yes. But that was a real
light for me. And then I think as we got
into doing the fourth step, I saw that I'm not

(54:51):
a resentment based alcoholic. Primarily, I'm a fear based alcoholic.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
Right.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
You know, you do a resentment inventory and you do
fear inventory. At that time, I didn't see that I
had resentments. Now with years later, things become a little
bit clearer and I'm able to see things I didn't.
But what I did identify with was I was scared
of everything. Yeah, I didn't believe I could be anything
good or useful. That was all gone. And you know,

(55:19):
you quote the line in the book somewhere it's like
we're egomaniacs with an inferiority complex. That pretty much described it.
I think it just showed me all the subtle ways
that I was always trying to arrange life to be
the way I wanted it. Yeah, and I think that's natural,

(55:40):
Like you said earlier, these are natural instincts as a
natural instinct, and it's a useful instinct a whole lot
of the time. Yeah, and instincts. I think this is
the actual line from the book can run amok, you know,
and mine had. And I love what you said about
the fourth step two because it's amazing to me. I
can see it so much more clearly now. But the

(56:03):
vulnerability in people and they're terrified of writing that stuff
down and sharing it with someone else. Now, after you've
done a couple of fifth steps, your ability to be
shocked by anything is largely gone. I mean I would
say to people, there's like nothing that you're going to say.
There's nothing that you could possibly say. I don't think

(56:24):
that's going to make me, you know, like judge you harshly.
But until you've done that a few times now, it's easy,
you know, somebody I know I relatively easily can be
like well I'm like this, I'm like that, I felt this,
I felt that. But boy, those first few times it's
so hard, but life changing.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
Yeah, it's like that the treasure you seek is in
the work that you're avoiding. M Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
I heard somebody say the other day, the answers you
seek are on the other side of the actions that
you're avoiding you or.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
The treasuy you seek is in the cave you fear
to enter. But it's it's like the thing that we're
most afraid of hold the most power of transformation.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
Or one last thing I want to cover here is
this idea that AA is a cult. Just kind of
help us reinterpret or see that differently.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
I mean, it is a little culty, but if it
is a cult, it's the worst cult because people don't
do what they're supposed to do. Anyway.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
Well, you said something in the book that I think
is really important to this. You said that one of
the things about a cult is that there is one
person who has authority, and AA is a completely decentralized thing.
No one has authority. It's a bizarre organizational system, but
no one has authority.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Yeah, we're really bumping up against is recovery resistance. Right,
We will look for reasons not to do this thing, right,
we will look for all kinds of reasons not to
do this because it's so confrontational to our very identity,
which I'm going to tie back to the default mode network, right,
Like drinking was such a part of my identity. It

(58:01):
was really difficult for me to think of not doing it.
And the idea that is a cult like that is
something that the brain can latch onto and point out
very valid reasons why it might be a cult, right, right,
And again, like you were talking about earlier, this is

(58:21):
sort of a people based problem. Yeah right. So you know,
we started this conversation by saying that the people are
not the program. The twelve steps are the program. I
take people back to literature. Don't rely on what I
say or you say, go back to literature. But this
idea that twelve Step is a cult largely is centered
around how people behave and listen. Twelve Step is not

(58:44):
the hotbed of mental health. I'll just admit that right upfront.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
As I used to hear people describe it, it's like
you gathered all the sickest people in like one place.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Yeah yeah, but you know this sort of brain is
not true. But anyway, yeah, yeah, but it leads me
to this idea that the people that offend you at
meetings or put you off or whatever, they're triggering something
inside that actually needs to be healed. So I would
encourage people to notice when they feel angry. About something

(59:16):
like if someone's coming off as culty or controlling or whatever,
to work that feeling and that thought process through the
steps to find out what's going on underneath. And I
liken the meetings to this example that Mary and Williamson shared.
She'd use to lecture a lot on the course of miracles,
and she talked about gmologists will take two raw, rough

(59:38):
amethysts and put them in a tumbler together, and as
these amethysts bump up against each other, they rub off
their rough edges, and then they come out they're smooth.
It's almost as if we go to meetings and we
tumble around with all these people. We hear all kinds
of ideas that challenge us. And if we can day

(59:59):
the course, stay with the feeling, stay with the thing
that pissed you off. They say that the truth will
set you free, but first it will piss you off.
I'm saying lean into that. Don't leave the program because
somebody made you angry. I'm saying, don't waste a good crisis.
Use that as a way to examine what is going

(01:00:19):
on underneath. Because anytime we get triggered or angered, that
is a sign or a place that is covering a wound,
and so we need to sort of bring that to
the light and process our feelings to resolution so that
we no longer carry them. So, yeah, people at meanings
can be problematic. I'm saying, with a few simple boundaries

(01:00:43):
and with a little bit of courage and persistence, that
even those people have something to teach us and to
help us heal.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
Ultimately, Yep, that's a beautiful place for us to wrap up.
You and I are going to continue in the post
show conversation. I'd like to talk a little bit more
about finding the right meeting because this is really important.
I'd like to talk about the how mindset and how
important that is to recovery and wherever else we happen
to wander. But listeners, if you'd like access to the

(01:01:13):
post show conversation, all the other post show conversations, an
episode I do each week about it teaching a song
and a quote or a poem that I love, and
if you want to support us, because we can really
use the support, one you feed dot net slash join
is the way to do that. Arliah, Thank you so much.
I really enjoyed the book and this was a wonderful conversation,

(01:01:34):
and I would just end by saying, anybody out there
who's struggling with your substance use and you're thinking about
twelve steps, this book is a great, great guide to
help you as you enter that world, or to get
you into that world if you're having trouble getting into it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
That's beautiful. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
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
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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

(01:02:29):
their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
To learn more, make a donation at any level and
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Eric Zimmer

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Truth About 12-Step Programs: What No One Tells You with Arlina Allen