November 21, 2022 • 56 mins
As the show finds its legs in the early years, incredible conversations about life after alcohol unfold. Listen through a tapestry of insights and sentiments about recovery, a scrapbook of treasures from the archives. Recovery from alcohol use disorder is about more than just staying sober, it's about finding conenction and hope to sustain inner growth and healing. The Bubble Hour grows into a source of strength and hope for listeners everywhere. Get the book: Take Good Care: Recovery Readings Inspired by The Bubble Hour podcast *(affiliate link) The Bubble Hour website www.thebubblehour.com Tiny Bubbles podcast https://sites.libsyn.com/448419/TinyBubbles Host Jean McCarthy www.jeanmccarthy.ca Support us on Patreon https://patreon.com/thebubblehour
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast includes frank discussions of mature themes that may
not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
This podcast is intended to provide encouragement and support through
personal storytelling. The views expressed are the opinions of the
participants and not intended to be medical, legal, clinical, or
(00:21):
professional information or advice of any kind.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to the Bubble Hour, Welcome to the Bubble Hour.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Welcome to the Bubble Hour. Welcome to the Bubble Hour.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome for the Bubble Hour.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Ownent a diffent, not praps we and let a fait
les taken a little dignity. Not looking for excuses. I
just want to be free from the power wus head
on the Free Free, Free, Free Free.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I'm Geen McCarthy, and you're listening to the Bubble Hour. Well, hello,
hello everyone. This is episode two of a very special
ten part look back over the past decade of The
Bubble Hour. And if you haven't listened to part one
of this season, maybe pause here and go back to it,
because it'll really help set the mood for where everything started.
(01:28):
For the next hour, we'll pay homage to the voices
of those who joined us as guests and who shared
their stories on the Bubble Hour. The early seasons were
topic driven, and each show featured multiple guests and multiple
hosts sometimes and they all weigh in on the theme
of the week, so their conversations ranged from anonymity to advocacy,
(01:52):
from spirituality to sober sex, and everything in between. In
season six, the format shifted to one on one interviews
and a guest shared their story more in depth. Over
the years, hundreds and hundreds of voices that affected millions
of listeners. Well, where do we start, how do we
even begin to say thank you? And how do we
(02:13):
pay fitting tribute to the impact of all of our guests.
In building this season, I went back through every moment
of every episode, all three hundred and fifty three hours,
listening again, creating transcripts and harvesting every single episode for
nuggets and clips for this look back, gathering material for
our new podcast, Tiny Bubbles, and also for our book
(02:36):
of recovery inspirations called Take Good Care. So right down
to a person, I can tell you with recent experience
that each guest was moving, every single one. Honestly, that's
not an overstatement. Go back and listen to them again yourself,
and I guarantee that you will hear something new every
time you listen, because as we grow in our own recovery,
(02:59):
we kind of ready ourselves to hear new lessons and
new insights. In that light, it was quite profound to
go back and listen to these shows again because they
really remind me of where I was at the time
when they aired, whether I was listening as a listener
or participating as a host. But they also they kind
(03:20):
of shine a light on where I am now and
how far I've come. And at the same time, I
listen knowing that these voices from the past have also
moved on, They've moved forward in their own recovery. Maybe
some of them wish they could have a do over
or an update, because you know, it might be hard
for them to listen to where they were at when
(03:43):
they recorded their interview in the past because they're so
much farther along now or things have changed so much
for them. But I look at it this way, guys,
It's kind of like we have an old photo of
you up on the fridge, and yes, you've changed your
hairstyle seventeen times already, but we're not going to take
that photo down.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Kids.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
That photo captures so much meaning and we treasure it.
So it's kind of like when you visit grandma's house
and she still got that old picture of you upon
the wall, or some drawing that you've done, or some
painting that you did in the first year of art
school or something, and you kind of wish you'd put
it away, and yet it means something to her, and
it's significant. For that reason, it feels impossible to do
justice to the power of your stories. But in this episode,
(04:23):
I offer to you an audio collage of stories and insight,
stitched together with love, a tapestry of wisdom and vulnerability
and generosity of spirit. Before we begin, I want to
start with a clip from twenty twelve Season one, when
Ellie talks about walking into her first recovery meeting, because
I feel like that sets the tone, and from there
(04:44):
we'll start to hear voices from over the years and
around the world. You will notice varying degrees of recording
quality because the technology changed so much, as did our
experience as producers and hosts. I hope you enjoyed this
look back.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
To my first the thing was my first women's meeting.
I can remember walking in into a recover meeting and
thinking that I was in the wrong place, like this
has got maybe this is the Junior League or the
PTA or something, because there's no way that these women
are I mean, even though it should have been so
obvious to me, Like, but the stigma that I had
all these the checklists, like can't be because I have
(05:25):
X y Z in my life. I walk in and
I'm a room full of self admitted alcoholics. I all
have X y Z and great friendships and great sobriety
and are able to live being their real selves. Like that,
Every single thing that I had on my checklist I found,
you know, in the in recovery, in twelve step meetings.
And the thing that I was looking for at the
(05:47):
bottom of a glass I found, you know, in variety.
Speaker 6 (05:57):
I never really engaged in highly rich behavior. I wasn't
a morning drinker I would I didn't miss work. I
did everything I was supposed to do. I made dinner,
I cleaned up the dishes. I was an at home drinker.
If I went out, I could control my drinking because
I knew the bottle of Scotch was sitting on the
counter when I got home and I could drink the
way I wanted to once I got home and wasn't
(06:18):
going to be out driving anymore. I was definitely drinking
too numb the feelings that I didn't want to feel,
the feelings of loneliness, the feelings of failure, you know,
in my marriage, the feelings of not being able to
control what was going on, not being happy with what
was happening, but not having any control over it. Deep
(06:40):
down inside, I knew I was drinking too much. I
knew that I had crossed the line. I knew that
there was no definition by which I was a social
drinker anymore. I was isolating and drinking. We had a
family vacation. I had rented a house on the Cape,
and the boys came down and we were hanging out,
(07:00):
and of course, you know vacation, that was time to,
you know, really drink. I was heading to the liquor
store to get more booze because I needed more, and
my oldest son, Luke, jumped in the car with me,
and on the way to the liquor store, Luke said
to me, Mom, the guys and I are really worried
about you. Were worried about your drinking. You know, I
just want to know what you want to do about it.
(07:23):
And that was really the first time that we had
said anything out loud, now that you know, they were
grown men, they were all in high school in college.
And I never hid my drinking. I didn't put it
in colored cups. I poured my scotch and the rest
of the world be damned. So they knew, and I'm
not to this day. I'm not sure how Luke was
elected the one to talk to me, but for Luke
(07:46):
and I was driving the car, and I remember clearly thinking, Okay,
I can go two ways with this. I can play
it down like it's no big deal, or I can
validate what my son is saying to me. And I
said to Luke, I want you to understand that I
(08:06):
hear what you're saying. I hear every word that you're
saying to me. I don't know what I'm going to
do about it, but I promised you I hear you,
and I am going to do something. I don't know
what it is yet, but I am going to do something.
I couldn't pretend. I couldn't ignore it any longer. So
(08:27):
what I did, like any good alcoholic was. For the
next several months, I tried some control drinking, and any
of you out there who are struggling with alcoholism or
think you might be an alcoholic, my suggestion is, try
some control drinking, because if you're an alcoholic, it doesn't work.
Number one, it can't do it, not for any extended
(08:48):
period of time. And number two, it sucks because a
good alcoholic doesn't want to moderate their drinking. They want
to drink the way they want to drink. And so
I tried and failed, and tried and failed and tried
and failed, and finally, between Christmas and New Year's I
went to my first AA meeting Care to Death. Of course,
several people came up to me said, you know, we're
glad you're here. Keep coming. And for the next six
(09:11):
months that was the only thing I did right. I
didn't understand what they were talking about. I didn't get
any of the lingo. I had no idea, and I
don't believe in God, So the whole higher power thing,
I thought, Okay, I don't know about this, and so
I struggled a lot the first six months trying to
put it together. You know, in my head, and in
(09:31):
my heart and tried some more good control drinking. I
finally came to the realization in May of twenty ten.
And the only reason that I came to this moment
of clarity was because I kept coming. I kept coming
to AA meetings. I realized that everything that was wrong
with my life, none of that was the truth. When
(09:53):
you hear something that's truth, it hits you right between
the eyes and takes your breath away. And I recognized
on May fourth, twenty ten, that the truth was that
my problem was that I was an alcoholic and all
of the rest of it were just symptoms. I was
blaming my drinking on other people, places and things. Well,
(10:16):
if this happened to you, you'd drink. And if this
happened to you, you know I was justifying. I was
blaming everyone but myself. I was not taking responsibility for
my part in my alcoholism. And that was the night
that I decided that I was done. And so Math
twenty ten is my sobriety date. I told all of
(10:37):
the guys that I was going to AA and that
I was quitting drinking and what that meant, and I say,
you know, this means that if you ever see me
with one drink. No matter what I say to you,
I have relapsed because I can't drink. It means that
I can never have another drink. And so I asked them,
(10:57):
all you know, grown men, to not have alcohol in
the house. And I said that would really help me
because my house was where I drank. I wasn't a
bar drinker. I came home and drank it home. So
I had to make my home a safe place because
that was what my pattern was. So I had no
alcohol in the house at all for the first at
(11:18):
least six months of sobriety, and I went to meetings
almost every day, and I started to get to know people.
I started to open up, I started to get real.
I got a sponsor and started doing some of the
recovery work and started trying to get to the bottom.
Because then once I was able to put the alcohol aside,
(11:38):
once I was able to let my mind clear up
a little bit, I realized that the alcohol, too, is
but a symptom of a deeper issue that I had
with myself, how I dealt with resentments, how I dealt
with life on life's terms. The alcohol was a symptom
as well. I was a full blown alcoholic, but it
(11:59):
was a symptom of.
Speaker 7 (12:00):
Of deeper issues.
Speaker 8 (12:17):
I just can't seem to get out of my own way,
Like I just couldn't figure it out. And I had
no idea that, you know, drugs and alcohol might be
getting in the way. And I always felt like I
had so much potential. I had a moment of clarity.
I was looking up at the ceiling and I thought,
you know, my life sucks so bad right now. I
(12:37):
better do something about it now, because if I get
it back on track, I'm not going to want to
deal with this because I'm pretty scared of what this
is going to entail. I have no bad association of alcoholics.
Some people are like, well, I didn't think I was
an alcoholic because it just had this concept of what
you know, down abum down by the river. I didn't
(12:59):
have that because I had people in my family and
people in my circle who were sober. They were like shiny, happy,
amazing people. I'm really really lucky that I had that example.
I had seen how it had changed my father, and
i'd seen how it had changed my relationship with him.
That was kind of freaked out to do it, but
I didn't think it was a bad thing to do,
(13:20):
but I had these horrible feelings still of what did
I do? I just I crated my life. I had
to stay in denial about what my life looked like
now because if I had really checked in with oh
my god, I blew that career. Oh my god, I
did that. Like if I had checked in with all that,
it would have been too much to handle. Do the
(13:41):
best you can every day. And that's what I loved
about getting into program of recovery. I was given some
directions on what to do, and I did them because
I'm the good little girl quote unquote, even though I
hadn't been right. I was given suggestions and I did them.
You know, someone ran up to me my first recovery
(14:01):
meetings said oh, are you doing ninety and ninety? And
I was like, what is that? I had no idea,
And it's like ninety meetings and ninety days and if
you want your misery back.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
You can have it.
Speaker 6 (14:11):
At the end, I'm like.
Speaker 8 (14:12):
What ninety meetings and ninety days and if you want
your misery back, you can have it. And I was like,
I'll take that challenge. So I started keeping track. I
did ninety meetings and ninety days, and I was not
miserable after ninety days. Like there were like certain experiments
that I did and they worked. I was told, you know,
(14:33):
get some commitments where you actually are of service when
you go to a meeting, and I did that and
I felt better. I did what was suggested, and I
felt a lot better.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
I did counseling, and initially that didn't work hugely, but
I think the thing with counseling is it takes time,
and it was more like over time, I started to
reflect on things I started when I stopped drinking. You know,
I got a lot of clarity, and I could see things.
I took time for me, which I'd never really done before,
(15:09):
and I just I really learned a lot about myself.
So I think uncovering the reasons behind I never asked
myself why I drank, But when I actually did start
asking myself why I drank, I realized I was just
burnt out. I was, you know, trying to please everyone,
trying to do everything, trying to make sure everything was perfect,
and it wasn't. And now I just slowed down a bit,
(15:30):
and I was tired. A lot of the time. I
didn't take the time to even sleep properly. And the
difference that made was unbelievable. It was small, little changes,
and really realizing what was driving my drinking really really changed.
I looked at my thinking around alcohol, and I suppose
one of the big things that I learned was I
learned a lot about alcohol. Okay, we all know, you know,
(15:52):
drinking equals hangover equals not feeding. Great, but there was
so much I didn't understand about it. The anxiety that causes,
the things that happened in your brain, that it's that
it's an alcohol that is a poison, that it's addictive,
that all these various different things. I just educated myself
a lot about alcohol, and that once I knew why
(16:13):
I was drinking and what it was doing to me,
I could I could not signs, and then things really
started to change for me. I mean even things like triggers,
like I never knew why Friday evening was such a
trigger point for me, but then I realized, you know,
what was the end of the week. I was tired,
I was stressed, I was all of those things. And
once I realized there was different ways to deal with
that made a huge, huge difference to me.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
My rehab is a little bit different. I didn't I
didn't choose to go to rehab. I didn't even know
I was going to go there. I blacked in there.
I was finally at the end of my professional drinking career,
getting to the part where I was hating it so
much that I want to hurt myself. I tried to
quit so many times that and unsuccessfully. I was in
(17:05):
a blackout state, and the people I was with were
just tired of dealing with my crap. So they loaded
me up and took me to the hospital and took
me to the emergency room. And when I woke up
in the morning, I was in a nice comfortable bed
and have my own TV and breakfast and stuff. And
I said, well, this is neat, you know. I didn't
feel like eating or anything, and I was really ill.
(17:26):
But no, my parents weren't there or anything. I lived
with my mom because that's what happens when you drink
a lot. They gave me a shot in my butt
of a whole inch of vitamins and stuff and told
me that I was in the emergency room and do
I remember what had happened and where I was? And
I didn't remember anything, and They told me that I'm
going to be there for a couple of days, and
(17:46):
my mom called me and she was hoping that I
wasn't upset that they had taken me there, and I
was actually kind of relieved, and they said that I'm
going to be there for a while. I was really
happy because it was kind of like a little vacation.
But then when it kind of sunk it after a while,
was it was scary to think that I was going
to be away from everything that I knew. It was
the best thing that could have happened, and all of
(18:07):
my efforts to quit drinking. Being in a facility where
there are people taking care of you all the time
was the best way. Because I've been sober for one
hundred and sixteen days, I think, and before then I
couldn't even get thirty days together. I felt so well
cared for. Everybody cared so much about me while I
(18:30):
was there, constantly hell are you not just the people
that work there, but also the other patients too. I
really felt like everybody cared. A really great experience to
follow up here was fantastic, and this is the only
time in my life that I've actually been able to
say to myself, I'm actually doing it this time, when
before I was doing it for somebody else or saying yeah,
(18:50):
yeah yeah. But this time, I actually can feel it
in my heart, and I know that I'm done drinking,
and I know that I'm if I drink again, I'm
going to make a permanent decision on it. Thanebruary viewing.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Do you ever wish for a little bit of recovery
inspiration on the go? Tiny Bubbles is a new podcast
that brings you the best bits of the Bubble Hour
podcast in quick little episodes, just fifteen minutes long, but
packed with wisdom, insight, and encouragement to live your life
wholeheartedly and alcohol free. Look for Tiny Bubbles wherever you
(19:34):
get podcasts and subscribe today. Tiny Bubbles little bits of
recovery goodness brought to you by the Bubble Hour. Sometimes
all you need is a little pep talk so you
can get back to living that beautiful life you're building.
(19:57):
Take Good Care is a new collection of recovery readings
inspired by the Bubble Hour. If you love the encouragement
and support you find here on this podcast, then this
new book is for you. Visit the Bubblehour dot com
for more information or check the show notes for a
link to purchase. You'll find Take Good Care on Amazon worldwide.
Take Good Care Recovery reading inspired by the Bubble Hour,
(20:19):
the perfect gift for yourself and friends.
Speaker 10 (20:33):
We don't talk enough. I don't think about the fact
that this can be a very, very deadly disease. It's
not just chronic disappointment and anger and heartache and families,
but the fact that you actually can disappear first as
a human and then literally disappear. So you know, Having
lost my father to the disease in a very sad
(20:55):
way three years ago, it is really real to me.
He had alcohol related dementia and died of course a cost,
and that's about as bad as it can get with alcoholism.
So it's a formidable opponent. I not to be alarm,
just to say, if you think you're wrestling with it,
(21:16):
do what you need to do to find some peace.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
The first time I realized I might have a drinking
problem was when I was thirty years old. I had
recently gotten married. I was making dinner for my husband
at the time while I watched TV, and in the
course of cooking this meal, I drank an entire bottle
of wine, and I remember pouring the loss of it
into my glass.
Speaker 11 (21:48):
And just thinking, Wow.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
That's weird. I drink the whole bottles just cooking dinner,
and I'm sure I went on to drink more that night.
I can't remember, but that was my first kind of
aha moment that I might have a problem. And not
long after that night, drinking a bottle of wine became
a nightly habit. When I think about why, I think
I'm a pretty high strung person, I'm classify myself as
a type A person. And I loved how I'd just
(22:12):
be go go go all day and I could have
wine and it would just help me turn off my
brain and finally sink into a chair and relax. So
I'd just come home from work, open up a bottle,
and sip on it all evening long. But at first
that seemed like a harmless routine, but very quickly it
became a scary habit. I found myself constantly plotting how
to get that nightly bottle into the house. My husband
(22:33):
likes to drink, but he isn't an alcoholic. He can
take it or leave it on those nights, and when
he drinks it home, he usually just has a beer
or two, but I had to have that entire bottle
to myself, so I started stopping at a different store
every night on the way home from work. So I
would a gas station, other times a grocery store, and
then sometimes I found myself drinking the bottle. I'm still
wanting more, so I made sure I had a backup
bottle around. In the later years, I started going to
(22:55):
Trader Joe's on my lunch hour once a week and
buying a case of wine that I'd keep stashed in
my trunk, so I'd never had that problem of running out,
and the empis were another problem. Would only take out
a recycling once or twice a week, and four or
five or six wine bottles looked like a lot in
a small recycling bin. So I started hiding some of
the bottles in my closet, and then I would throw
them away in a public trash can on the way
(23:16):
to work. My husband knew I was drinking too much,
but I put a lot of energy into hiding just
how much from him. So this one on, night after
night after night for years, and the only breaks I
took were during my pregnancies, and I hated being pregnant
because I couldn't drink. I'd drink when I was happy,
when I was sad, when I was sick, or when
I was hungover. It didn't matter if there were no
nights off, and bad things started to happen. One night,
(23:38):
I drove drunk to the store to buy more wine.
On my way home, I swear everything passed into a
curb and my earbags went off. I left the car
and ran a mile home and spent a sick, panicky night,
worrying about what I had done and wondering if the
police were about to come arrest me. The next day,
my husband went to look for my car.
Speaker 12 (23:53):
But it was gone.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I called the police to ask about it, and they
told me it was being held for hit and run,
and for a horrible moment, I thought I might've hit
a person. It turned out I had another car, but
I was too blocked out to know it a parked car.
We traveled to visit some family and friends over the holidays,
and I drank every night, and I had a miserable
vacation because of it. What I realized during those days
that quite simply I won't have a happy life if
(24:16):
I continue to drink pudding will be the toughest thing
I've ever done, but if it might put me on
a path to a hap their place, I know, I
owe it to myself and my family to try.
Speaker 13 (24:40):
Things got really bad for me, you know, And I
heard at our recovery meeting once.
Speaker 14 (24:45):
That things got so bad that my.
Speaker 13 (24:48):
Actions were moving in such a way that they were
moving so quick I couldn't lower my standards quick enough.
And that's really kind of how I felt at the end.
It was a bad blow bottom for me. I had
legal to du why legal situation. My children didn't want
to be around me. They wanted to be with their father.
You know. I crossed that line from emotional addiction and
(25:10):
holding it together to being physically addicted, and things were
falling apart, and with a little help in my family,
it was a full blown intervention. And I can remember
the sigh of release because finally it was like it
was out of my control. I didn't actually have to
ask for help. It was being pushed on me just
a little bit. I mean, I could have pushed back,
(25:32):
but I was so desperate at that point that I
was so willing. And you know, and I say this
that at that point, the drinking had gotten me to
the point that I felt like I had fallen underneath
ice and I could see where the opening was to
take a breath, and I just couldn't get there. What
I really needed was somebody to reach in underwater and
grab me and pull me up. And that's what it was,
(25:54):
and that's exactly what happened. I've required so much help
over the past year and a half, and I've immersed
myself into sort of the recovery community.
Speaker 14 (26:04):
But you know, I looked at it like my job
was to read about recovery, do the work on recovery,
and I felt like I just graduated and was the valedictorian.
And you've talked about that toolbox. You know, I have
the super duper model. Take a look at the tools
that I've got. There goes the cockyment. And what led
(26:25):
me to my relapse and very quickly, was somebody who
I'm very much a supporter of me getting sober kind
of changed their toot and it really wasn't working out
for this person. Maybe being all sober or not so
was very destructive. There was something that they didn't teach
(26:46):
me in all the hours of class that I sat
flu was that not everybody is a fan of you
being sober.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
You know.
Speaker 14 (26:53):
It was a matter of somebody saying something, you know, yeah,
you can go down there. You can fool everybody. You
can't fool me. You know, you chose booze over your kids,
and you're not going to be nothing but a drunk.
In the end, that was all it took, and I
started drinking. My disease picked up right where it was.
The arsenal of tools that I did have prepared me
(27:14):
to quickly get back and say I'm not willing to
give it all up. And that whole idea of the
expectation that I could kind of come back home and
you know, live my life exactly as I was, just
minus the alcohol, had to take on a very new meaning.
It's not me my program is my program. So I
(27:34):
had a friend that was successfully leading a sober life
and was leading a life that kind of revolved around recovery.
And at first I said, oh God, please don't make
me turn into that person. And you know, of oh
this is great, and I said, but you know, what
I'm doing is not working. So I'm just going to
(27:57):
jump on And that's what I did. I went to meetings.
If I didn't like that meeting, I went to another meeting.
I developed my own network of people, and I changed
the people that I hung out with. It wasn't realistic
for me to do the same things with the same
people because the people that I used to associate with
on a daily basis drink like I did. And so
(28:18):
to think that just me taking away the alcohol was
going to solve the problem wasn't going to improve my
environment of maintaining my sobriety. It was changing a lot.
It was meeting new people. It was saying, Okay, now
I've got to take the tools that I've learned there
and now put it into real life action.
Speaker 15 (28:47):
I'd say, I think there's two things that you got
to do to quit drinking. Number one, you got to
break through denial. You know, I think that summed up
by virgins don't take pregnancy tests. I think that if
you think you might have a problem, you do. If
(29:09):
you're wondering if you can moderate, you can't. If you've
ever googled am I an alcoholic? Google a lot to
just give you three words, yes you are. You got
to get through that, and then you got to realize
that what you have to do is learn to tolerate discomfort,
(29:31):
because you know, part of our drinking is we're taking
this drug to get rid of discomfort of whatever we're feeling.
Realizing that you're going to feel discomfort and almost detaching
yourself from it, you know, put it in a little
bubble or balloon and look at it almost floating in
(29:53):
front of you that and realize, hey, I'm feeling discomfort.
It's a fleeting emotion I'm having. It's not forever. This
is what discomfort feels like. That allows you to get
through that discomfort of sobriety, but also it's prepared me
to deal with life. You know, people die, bad things happen.
(30:16):
There are days when you're going to feel really sad,
and you learn to just ride with the emotion and
not let it consume you. It's helped with the cravings too,
when you realize they're just fleeting thoughts coming through your mind.
They come and go, And I think for me, those
were kind of the two key things.
Speaker 12 (30:44):
I'm really glad I went. When a rehab is to
teach you you can deal with all the emotions over
say so alcohol there you know, it's not an option.
So I dealt with fear, badness, joy and all these
range of most fair sober.
Speaker 13 (31:02):
I was able to do it.
Speaker 12 (31:03):
There's a lot of work. They gave us pack of
homework to do during downtime that helped you acore your feelings,
problems and issues. We would read them in a group
the process and I get feedbacks. But that was helpful.
Spent six hours a day in groups, classes are meetings.
We had chores we had to do. I think that
was the future humility. I guess the kitchen was the
worst one that we all pitched in as the groups
(31:27):
work together. There was some dramas. One time I called
my sponsor and wanted to go home and told her,
you know, like can I deal with this?
Speaker 16 (31:34):
You know?
Speaker 12 (31:35):
She said, no, you need to stay and it's okay
and did it gradually. But I did it and the
drama got better. Missed home. I tried to think about it.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
You know, in the long.
Speaker 12 (31:45):
Term, grand scheme of things, the twenty one days is
not such a long time. It gave me time to
focus on me, my sobriety without having the everyday stressors
of life. I had tried to get sober on my
own for several years I wasn't able to do it,
and so that helped me to have that time away
(32:06):
and I'm to focused on sakes.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
We actually have a couple of Britain submissions from people
who didn't want to be live on the show. I
would like to read what she said because I think
it's very moving. She says, I think there is a
huge stigma around being an alcoholic and a double standard
in regards to men and alcohol. My husband hates to
see a woman get drunk, but does not mind seeing
a man who is drunk. When people think of a
typical alcoholic, they picture a man, probably women high they're
(32:41):
drinking more than men do. When I was actively drinking,
I did not call myself an alcoholic. I just thought
I had a drinking problem, but I did not tell
people I had a problem. I knew I needed to
stop drinking altogether someday in the future, but I felt
very alone in my addiction. I felt guilt, fear, and shame.
I did not really realize that I have a disease.
I hid my drinking very well, and in fact, most
(33:03):
of my friends now thinking I just stopped drinking alcoholic
to feel healthy, But they do not know I call
myself an alcoholic. One friend even said to me one day,
you stop drinking, but you're not an alcoholic. I didn't
correct her. I think there was a huge negative stigma
around the word alcoholic. The interesting thing is that I
am actually close to several people have gotten sober. I
(33:23):
attend twelve Step meetings, and I knew and I knew
this while I was drinking, and I never reached out
to them. I assumed that somehow their drinking was never
as bad as mine. I felt very ashamed, and this
shame made me hide. I did not regard my sober
friends as bad, weak, or flawed for having a drinking problem.
In fact, I saw the sober people around me as
strong and courageous. However, I did not reach out to
(33:46):
them while I was actively drinking. It wasn't until I
hit my bottom and got sober that I realized that
I am an alcoholic, and I have reached out to
my sober friends today. I still don't label myself as
an alcoholic to most people. However, if anyone asked me
why I no longer drink, and if he or she
were interested in sobriety, I would certainly reach out my
hand to help that person and share my experienced strength
(34:08):
and hope. What helped me the most well I was
actively drinking was reading the Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore
by Rachel Brownow. I finally identified with somebody else when
I read her story, and that was very powerful. I
think the more we normalize and inform the public about
women's alcoholism, the better.
Speaker 5 (34:31):
What was interesting was that I was very clever in
my drinking. Is just the amount of effort that I
put into managing to get extra drinks, hide it, you know,
the huge kind of like sometimes I look back and go,
my god, that was a master plan in terms of
hiding it, buying it, getting an extra round in all
the little clever little things that I did to get
(34:53):
drinking or whatever, hide it, whatever had to be. Now,
I kind of use that the other way. When I'm
at a social event and I don't want to drink
and I'm not making a big song and dance about
I use those tactics, you know, that cleverness to get
around it. And it's amazing what you can get away with.
I got through a whole Christmas party, an office Christmas party,
which is a really boosy for without drinking, and people
(35:14):
never noticed, and so I was kind of delighted with
myself in the sense of being able to flip that
around and use that sort of you know, the cunningness
of you know of it all to actually to help
my sobriety.
Speaker 17 (35:40):
Sometimes people will say, you know, I had more fun.
I have more fun in recovery, or things got really bad,
so their perspective on drinking was very negative. I think
for me, I tended to romanticize my drinking days. So
it's been hard for me to find things in soviety
that feel as exciting as those with times in my life.
(36:01):
But I actually try to not compare my drinking life
to my sober life. There are almost separate existences, and
I compare them. I really get confused and muddled up
because my life was highs and lows when I was drinking,
and my life is more somewhere in the middle now,
and that can feel boring or mundane for some people.
And at times I have felt less spontaneous. And so
(36:24):
there are pieces of it that you sought to kind
of work on, things that are interesting to you that
you want to learn about. And yeah, fun is completely changed.
I would one hundred percent agree with that, but.
Speaker 18 (36:35):
It has to.
Speaker 17 (36:36):
It has to and the gratitude for noticing the small
things that we wouldn't have noticed before.
Speaker 19 (36:56):
You are not alone, and it's very easy to feel
like that, especially for example where I live, which is
super remote, and if I can do it, anyone can.
I would definitely look things up online, and it's so
much stuff out there now. And obviously, of course Global
(37:17):
hour my my saving grace, but I think the most
most important one is that you're not alone, even if
you feel like you aregain we can do it.
Speaker 15 (37:32):
I've become a very much less reactive person. You know,
when I was drinking, I was about fifty five percent
a whole most of the time. And you know, I
think I've gotten that percentage down to about five percent.
Speaker 10 (37:55):
Because I that's pretty get me.
Speaker 15 (37:59):
It's allowed me to listen a lot more than I talk.
There's a saying that God gave you two ears and
only one mouth for a reason. You know, if you're
interested in people and you listen to people, you really
never want for conversation because the vast majority of the
(38:21):
world just wants to talk about themselves. And if you're
good at saying uh huh, oh, really you could talk
for hours, and you know, even if you don't like them,
you can just think of yourself as like an alien
anthropologist studying a weird creature. Have fun with it.
Speaker 16 (38:49):
I had a really good and great life when I
was when I was even still drinking, and a lot
of things shifted for me. But it really it was
this aspect of my life that I felt like it
was slowly going to kill me. And I mean that
literally and figuratively, and that I could still be an
(39:13):
okay person if I was drinking, but I knew deep
down that if I quit then it would be a
million times better.
Speaker 8 (39:31):
I'm so grateful to be sober. I love being sober.
I love the camaraderie. I love when I meet people
and they kind of a speaking kind of the language,
and I'll be like, are you in the Secret Club?
And they're like and if they say yes, I'm like
that kind of look at me. And if they say no,
(39:52):
I'm like, oh, never mind.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Help others find the message of recovery We champion on
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(40:22):
Hour patron today at patreon dot com. Slash the bubble
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and hope.
Speaker 11 (40:39):
And when I started drinking, it was because it was
my symbol of adulthood. So when I turned thirty, I thought,
oh my god, I'm going to be thirty tomorrow. I
need to go get oil of Ola. Because I was old,
I had.
Speaker 18 (40:55):
These things that were like symbols of this is the
thing that's going to say that I am now this person.
So oil Ola was my I'm now in my thirties,
and I think alcohol came right along with that. I
know that I have a compulsion around sugar, and I
think that in many ways alcohol was a path to it.
And so even when I started drinking it was it
(41:18):
was probably as much about the sugar as it was
about the alcohol. And so every Friday night I would
have a six pack of smeared off ice and a
family pack of Twizzlers, and I would buy the family
packs that had the ten percent more free on it
so that I could have seventeen point six ounces of
Lacrish every and I would like go out and find
(41:42):
the ten percent more free. I'd leave and go to
another store. And so by then I had met my
current partner, Brad, and one night he was there and
he said, I can't believe that you eat all of
those Twizzlers every Friday. And I didn't really like feeling judged.
I thought, gosh, I don't know if I want him
to know that I'm eating.
Speaker 11 (41:58):
The whole family pack. And we didn't live together at
the time, so I continued to do it every Friday.
Then one night, the health class from a local college
was on on our public access network, and this teacher said,
if you're hiding it from other people, if nobody knows
that you do it as much as you do, then
you're probably an addict. And I thought, oh my god,
(42:20):
I'm addicted to Twizzlers. I decided that I would start
eating one ounce at a time. I was going to
moderate the twizzlers. An ounce was three twizzlers. I thought, okay,
I'll put them in snack bags. So I bought all
these snack bags and I put three Twizzlers in each one,
and I sealed them up and put them in my pantry.
And I had eye surgery and I went to bed
(42:41):
that night. And next morning I got up and I
slipped on something. I thought, what was that? And I
looked and the entire family room floor was littered with
snack bags. I had woken up in an anesthesia induced
haze eaten all the Twizzlers, and so I was like, Okay,
I have a problem.
Speaker 9 (42:55):
I've got to quit.
Speaker 11 (42:56):
I've got a quit twiddling. So I quit cold turkey,
I quit Twiddlers. And what's interesting is when I quit
the Twizzlers, I didn't want the stumer off ice. I
stopped the Twizzlers and smart off ice. I lost twelve
pounds and less than a month without making any other changes.
I work in higher education. I was in charge of
the student athletes at the time, and one of our
basketball players died. Eighteen year old kid just had a
(43:18):
heart condition and died and it was horrible. And on
the way home that night, I thought, I have got
to have a drink. First time I can remember thinking
I need to drink in order to cure what ails me.
I was standing at the store that night looking at
alcohol and this old man said, I don't know what
you're looking for, but whatever's up there is not going
(43:39):
to fix you. And I think about that now and
I get goose bumps. That was probably the beginning of
my drinking to feel better. You know, some people drink
to feel good, but once you start drinking to feel better,
you're probably on a path to a problem. So I
always drank by myself. I can probably count on one
hand the number of people in my life that have
ever seen me drink. I drink below. I drank before
(44:01):
events and after events. But I was never one to
drink in public because I didn't want people to associate
my drinking with my behavior. If I was crazy, it
was crazy because I was crazy, not because I was drunk.
And it's difficult to see the problem when you drink alone,
you know, like when you're drinking by yourself. From the beginning,
I think it's harder to see whether or not it's
(44:23):
a problem. And so when I finally started asking myself,
is this becoming a problem. I did the online surveys,
and when I got to the question of do you
drink alone? I thought, of course I drink alone.
Speaker 7 (44:32):
I live alone.
Speaker 11 (44:34):
So alime, I love a drink with island by myself,
and so I always the six question. I thought it
was such a ridiculous question. As a result, I like
the shame thing was really delayed for me because I
drank alone. And like, I can remember doing an online
health risk assessment at work and they asked how many
drinks do you have a week? And I wrote twenty eight.
(44:55):
You got a score on this assessment and I had
a like a ninety eight, and then after I said
I had twenty eight drinks a week, it dropped it
to like a seventy two. I went to this meeting
with all of my coworkers and I told them that
my score dropped to a seventy two when I said
I had twenty eight drinks a week.
Speaker 14 (45:11):
And what was funny?
Speaker 9 (45:14):
What's that?
Speaker 11 (45:15):
Their reaction was, you told the truth. Nobody said do
you have twenty eight drinks a week? I started thinking,
and I don't feel like I have control. That was
the bigger issue was that I don't really feel like
I'm in control here. So I talked to the benefits
lady at my job because, like I said, I'm still
in shameless territory. And I said, I wanted to know
(45:36):
if you have a drinking cessation program like you're smoking
cessation program. And she looked at me like I was crazy,
and I said, well, you know we do these things
for tobacco, do we do them for alcohol? And she said, well,
drinking is really a mental health problem, and so you'd
want to go to your employee assistance program. And that
(45:56):
was when when I started feeling stigma. And that's when
I started worrying about shame and said, I thought, you know,
maybe I do have a problem here. And I had
been looking at sobriety memoirs, but I hadn't found one
that I wanted to read because they were all stories
about mothers. And I came across Caroline Naps Drinking a
(46:17):
love story and I read it and I thought, oh
my god, this is my story, and so like I'm
highlighting and my kinds, the legs. I read it everything
that related to me, everything that seemed familiar, and as
I looked at it, I like highlighted everything except for
and in the.
Speaker 10 (46:34):
It.
Speaker 11 (46:37):
So I'm like, oh my god, what am I gonna do?
I've got to stop. And I met this lady standing
out in my front yard, This woman came over and
she said, my name is Judy. I live next door.
And I was like, oh my gosh, it's so nice
to meet you. And she said, I'm seventy years old
and I got silver twenty seven years ago in AA
And I thought to myself, I'm forty three and in
(46:57):
twenty seven years i'll be seventy and so maybe if
I stop drinking now, I can be this lady when
I grow up.
Speaker 8 (47:15):
Accepting doesn't mean Okay, I'm going to accept my life
just as it is like this, I'm accepting it as
it is. Now, what do I want to do? What
are the things I can change that I can change?
Speaker 11 (47:24):
Okay, well, here's where you are.
Speaker 8 (47:26):
Let's get clear and where you are and what do
you want?
Speaker 7 (47:29):
What do you want to do?
Speaker 8 (47:30):
And what small step can you take towards it? You know,
we like grand stuff, you know, addicts and alcoholics. We
want big, dramatic changes. And yeah, it's like, you know what,
I think that in this part of recovery, when it
feels like we are living our authentic life, it's like,
what's the small step I can take? And to be
(47:51):
having some patients and acceptance with where we are doesn't mean,
we're going to stay there, but it means we can
be fully present to that moment that's going to take
us to the next moment.
Speaker 10 (48:17):
I need to know myself without alcohol. I didn't know
myself without alcohol. I couldn't keep a promise. I couldn't
go into an evening and say I won't have anything
to drink and keep the promise. I couldn't do it.
So crying uncle and staying in that place is a
good place for me.
Speaker 15 (48:49):
Once I got past, say, the first ninety days or so,
was this feeling that I was less than or other
than everybody. You know, everybody else could have a drink
and enjoy it, and here I am with my club soda.
You know, boy, am I a loser? It seems like
(49:10):
after a year I kind of transitioned from I'm less
than to hey, I'm better then. I don't need a
drug to have a great time, and you know, at
the end of a party, I'm still smart. I hope
I don't sound like an ego monster when I say that,
(49:33):
But that was kind of an important thing for me
because it was tough having, you know, that feeling that
you're less than. I mean, I remember going to a
wedding pretty early on. It was a pretty fancy, dancy,
you know, wedding in a ritzy place. At our table
was a guy who was like, he owns a mansion
(49:56):
and owns a business, and he was flying to give
three speeches in New York City the next day. And
I thought, my god, am I a loser? He's there
sipping his wine and I'm just having my soda here.
And I realize now, like that was a ridiculous attitude
on my part, you know, But it took me a
(50:17):
long time. My god, I wish it all could have
happened in thirty days, but I mean it took months
and months and months and a year and so forth
to sort of get there. I do my thing, and
I'm good with it. You know, I'm happy with me
right now. I got out in the nick of time,
(50:38):
as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, you know, you know,
and I know, and their stigma attached to this, Having
you know, developed the problem myself, it certainly allows me
to empathize with people a heck of a lot more
than I ever used to. Number One, it has shocked
me how alike we all are. You had that episode
(51:02):
where you read letters from Charles, and I thought, my god,
that could be me. And you interviewed Shelley, and I
listened to some things said she said, and that could
be me. Yeah, And I almost thought you could put
my interview together by just editing out snippets from everyone
(51:22):
you've done before.
Speaker 7 (51:25):
I think that may be true for a lot of us.
But you know, the thing is, it's funny that we
never get tired of hearing it because we all hear
ourselves in it, and the details might be different, but
the core truth behind it is the same. We were hurting.
We tied something that we thought would help it ended
up making it worse, and we got addicted to it,
(51:47):
and so we had to leave that behind and then
also find a new way to deal with the original
problem anyway, and then things got better. I mean, really,
that is the hero's journey of every person in recovery.
That the details change sober, but at the core of
every story, it kind of all comes back to that,
because that's the human essence of it all. Because people
(52:09):
are so interesting, right, I Mean, it's not as if
you're just being a people pleaser by listening to them.
They really are just amazing. Every person has a three.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
That's all for this time, my friends. Coming up on
the next episode, we'll hear more from each of our
show's hosts, including me. Thanks for listening. Please be so
kind as to give us a big gold juicy five
star review, and please be sure to subscribe to our
new podcast, Tiny Bubbles. And hey, have you heard out
(53:00):
our new book of recovery readings. It's called Take Good Care.
You'll find it on Amazon by me Gee McCarthy, right
next to my other recovery books. If you'd like to
support the show, please join us over on Patreon. Your
pledge there gives you access to full episodes of the
backlist ad free. And you know what, it does take
quite a lot to maintain and manage a decade worth
(53:21):
of recovery resources. Well, we all know it's a worthwhile effort, right,
so your help is definitely greatly appreciated. I will get
you when you come back for more, and until then,
take Good Care.
Speaker 4 (53:33):
Own A didn't not proud, but that's me and let
up face. Let's take a little dignity, not a look
and bo excuses. I just want to be free from
the power waiting us head on me in a dun
(53:56):
corners where shame lives to Henna, wait with your jobs,
because you'll keep it up the second it just stays
and wait there to rob you off your pride.
Speaker 15 (54:14):
Turn the light on.
Speaker 7 (54:15):
Turn the light on.
Speaker 1 (54:16):
You can't shine away.
Speaker 4 (54:18):
You see the different, not proud, that was me and
things if I take that a little dignity. Another of excuses,
I just want to be breathe from power. Oh you
s you don't have to shout it out on main streets,
(54:45):
and you don't need to whisper to confessions. And the
person you should talk to is look in at you.
You in there and a.
Speaker 10 (55:02):
Lot of matters.
Speaker 4 (55:03):
Most can always you away. You see old different, not proud,
but damns me. And when a face, I take back
a little dignity. Another from excuses, I just want to
be free from a power a person. When you see old,
(55:28):
a different, not prad that was me, and face, I
take me a little dignity. I'm a look from an excuse.
I just want to be free from the power as free, free, free, free,
(55:50):
free
This podcast includes frank discussions of mature themes that may
not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
This podcast is intended to provide encouragement and support through
personal storytelling. The views expressed are the opinions of the
participants and not intended to be medical, legal, clinical, or
(00:21):
professional information or advice of any kind.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to the Bubble Hour, Welcome to the Bubble Hour.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Welcome to the Bubble Hour. Welcome to the Bubble Hour.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome for the Bubble Hour.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Ownent a diffent, not praps we and let a fait
les taken a little dignity. Not looking for excuses. I
just want to be free from the power wus head
on the Free Free, Free, Free Free.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I'm Geen McCarthy, and you're listening to the Bubble Hour. Well, hello,
hello everyone. This is episode two of a very special
ten part look back over the past decade of The
Bubble Hour. And if you haven't listened to part one
of this season, maybe pause here and go back to it,
because it'll really help set the mood for where everything started.
(01:28):
For the next hour, we'll pay homage to the voices
of those who joined us as guests and who shared
their stories on the Bubble Hour. The early seasons were
topic driven, and each show featured multiple guests and multiple
hosts sometimes and they all weigh in on the theme
of the week, so their conversations ranged from anonymity to advocacy,
(01:52):
from spirituality to sober sex, and everything in between. In
season six, the format shifted to one on one interviews
and a guest shared their story more in depth. Over
the years, hundreds and hundreds of voices that affected millions
of listeners. Well, where do we start, how do we
even begin to say thank you? And how do we
(02:13):
pay fitting tribute to the impact of all of our guests.
In building this season, I went back through every moment
of every episode, all three hundred and fifty three hours,
listening again, creating transcripts and harvesting every single episode for
nuggets and clips for this look back, gathering material for
our new podcast, Tiny Bubbles, and also for our book
(02:36):
of recovery inspirations called Take Good Care. So right down
to a person, I can tell you with recent experience
that each guest was moving, every single one. Honestly, that's
not an overstatement. Go back and listen to them again yourself,
and I guarantee that you will hear something new every
time you listen, because as we grow in our own recovery,
(02:59):
we kind of ready ourselves to hear new lessons and
new insights. In that light, it was quite profound to
go back and listen to these shows again because they
really remind me of where I was at the time
when they aired, whether I was listening as a listener
or participating as a host. But they also they kind
(03:20):
of shine a light on where I am now and
how far I've come. And at the same time, I
listen knowing that these voices from the past have also
moved on, They've moved forward in their own recovery. Maybe
some of them wish they could have a do over
or an update, because you know, it might be hard
for them to listen to where they were at when
(03:43):
they recorded their interview in the past because they're so
much farther along now or things have changed so much
for them. But I look at it this way, guys,
It's kind of like we have an old photo of
you up on the fridge, and yes, you've changed your
hairstyle seventeen times already, but we're not going to take
that photo down.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Kids.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
That photo captures so much meaning and we treasure it.
So it's kind of like when you visit grandma's house
and she still got that old picture of you upon
the wall, or some drawing that you've done, or some
painting that you did in the first year of art
school or something, and you kind of wish you'd put
it away, and yet it means something to her, and
it's significant. For that reason, it feels impossible to do
justice to the power of your stories. But in this episode,
(04:23):
I offer to you an audio collage of stories and insight,
stitched together with love, a tapestry of wisdom and vulnerability
and generosity of spirit. Before we begin, I want to
start with a clip from twenty twelve Season one, when
Ellie talks about walking into her first recovery meeting, because
I feel like that sets the tone, and from there
(04:44):
we'll start to hear voices from over the years and
around the world. You will notice varying degrees of recording
quality because the technology changed so much, as did our
experience as producers and hosts. I hope you enjoyed this
look back.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
To my first the thing was my first women's meeting.
I can remember walking in into a recover meeting and
thinking that I was in the wrong place, like this
has got maybe this is the Junior League or the
PTA or something, because there's no way that these women
are I mean, even though it should have been so
obvious to me, Like, but the stigma that I had
all these the checklists, like can't be because I have
(05:25):
X y Z in my life. I walk in and
I'm a room full of self admitted alcoholics. I all
have X y Z and great friendships and great sobriety
and are able to live being their real selves. Like that,
Every single thing that I had on my checklist I found,
you know, in the in recovery, in twelve step meetings.
And the thing that I was looking for at the
(05:47):
bottom of a glass I found, you know, in variety.
Speaker 6 (05:57):
I never really engaged in highly rich behavior. I wasn't
a morning drinker I would I didn't miss work. I
did everything I was supposed to do. I made dinner,
I cleaned up the dishes. I was an at home drinker.
If I went out, I could control my drinking because
I knew the bottle of Scotch was sitting on the
counter when I got home and I could drink the
way I wanted to once I got home and wasn't
(06:18):
going to be out driving anymore. I was definitely drinking
too numb the feelings that I didn't want to feel,
the feelings of loneliness, the feelings of failure, you know,
in my marriage, the feelings of not being able to
control what was going on, not being happy with what
was happening, but not having any control over it. Deep
(06:40):
down inside, I knew I was drinking too much. I
knew that I had crossed the line. I knew that
there was no definition by which I was a social
drinker anymore. I was isolating and drinking. We had a
family vacation. I had rented a house on the Cape,
and the boys came down and we were hanging out,
(07:00):
and of course, you know vacation, that was time to,
you know, really drink. I was heading to the liquor
store to get more booze because I needed more, and
my oldest son, Luke, jumped in the car with me,
and on the way to the liquor store, Luke said
to me, Mom, the guys and I are really worried
about you. Were worried about your drinking. You know, I
just want to know what you want to do about it.
(07:23):
And that was really the first time that we had
said anything out loud, now that you know, they were
grown men, they were all in high school in college.
And I never hid my drinking. I didn't put it
in colored cups. I poured my scotch and the rest
of the world be damned. So they knew, and I'm
not to this day. I'm not sure how Luke was
elected the one to talk to me, but for Luke
(07:46):
and I was driving the car, and I remember clearly thinking, Okay,
I can go two ways with this. I can play
it down like it's no big deal, or I can
validate what my son is saying to me. And I
said to Luke, I want you to understand that I
(08:06):
hear what you're saying. I hear every word that you're
saying to me. I don't know what I'm going to
do about it, but I promised you I hear you,
and I am going to do something. I don't know
what it is yet, but I am going to do something.
I couldn't pretend. I couldn't ignore it any longer. So
(08:27):
what I did, like any good alcoholic was. For the
next several months, I tried some control drinking, and any
of you out there who are struggling with alcoholism or
think you might be an alcoholic, my suggestion is, try
some control drinking, because if you're an alcoholic, it doesn't work.
Number one, it can't do it, not for any extended
(08:48):
period of time. And number two, it sucks because a
good alcoholic doesn't want to moderate their drinking. They want
to drink the way they want to drink. And so
I tried and failed, and tried and failed and tried
and failed, and finally, between Christmas and New Year's I
went to my first AA meeting Care to Death. Of course,
several people came up to me said, you know, we're
glad you're here. Keep coming. And for the next six
(09:11):
months that was the only thing I did right. I
didn't understand what they were talking about. I didn't get
any of the lingo. I had no idea, and I
don't believe in God, So the whole higher power thing,
I thought, Okay, I don't know about this, and so
I struggled a lot the first six months trying to
put it together. You know, in my head, and in
(09:31):
my heart and tried some more good control drinking. I
finally came to the realization in May of twenty ten.
And the only reason that I came to this moment
of clarity was because I kept coming. I kept coming
to AA meetings. I realized that everything that was wrong
with my life, none of that was the truth. When
(09:53):
you hear something that's truth, it hits you right between
the eyes and takes your breath away. And I recognized
on May fourth, twenty ten, that the truth was that
my problem was that I was an alcoholic and all
of the rest of it were just symptoms. I was
blaming my drinking on other people, places and things. Well,
(10:16):
if this happened to you, you'd drink. And if this
happened to you, you know I was justifying. I was
blaming everyone but myself. I was not taking responsibility for
my part in my alcoholism. And that was the night
that I decided that I was done. And so Math
twenty ten is my sobriety date. I told all of
(10:37):
the guys that I was going to AA and that
I was quitting drinking and what that meant, and I say,
you know, this means that if you ever see me
with one drink. No matter what I say to you,
I have relapsed because I can't drink. It means that
I can never have another drink. And so I asked them,
(10:57):
all you know, grown men, to not have alcohol in
the house. And I said that would really help me
because my house was where I drank. I wasn't a
bar drinker. I came home and drank it home. So
I had to make my home a safe place because
that was what my pattern was. So I had no
alcohol in the house at all for the first at
(11:18):
least six months of sobriety, and I went to meetings
almost every day, and I started to get to know people.
I started to open up, I started to get real.
I got a sponsor and started doing some of the
recovery work and started trying to get to the bottom.
Because then once I was able to put the alcohol aside,
(11:38):
once I was able to let my mind clear up
a little bit, I realized that the alcohol, too, is
but a symptom of a deeper issue that I had
with myself, how I dealt with resentments, how I dealt
with life on life's terms. The alcohol was a symptom
as well. I was a full blown alcoholic, but it
(11:59):
was a symptom of.
Speaker 7 (12:00):
Of deeper issues.
Speaker 8 (12:17):
I just can't seem to get out of my own way,
Like I just couldn't figure it out. And I had
no idea that, you know, drugs and alcohol might be
getting in the way. And I always felt like I
had so much potential. I had a moment of clarity.
I was looking up at the ceiling and I thought,
you know, my life sucks so bad right now. I
(12:37):
better do something about it now, because if I get
it back on track, I'm not going to want to
deal with this because I'm pretty scared of what this
is going to entail. I have no bad association of alcoholics.
Some people are like, well, I didn't think I was
an alcoholic because it just had this concept of what
you know, down abum down by the river. I didn't
(12:59):
have that because I had people in my family and
people in my circle who were sober. They were like shiny, happy,
amazing people. I'm really really lucky that I had that example.
I had seen how it had changed my father, and
i'd seen how it had changed my relationship with him.
That was kind of freaked out to do it, but
I didn't think it was a bad thing to do,
(13:20):
but I had these horrible feelings still of what did
I do? I just I crated my life. I had
to stay in denial about what my life looked like
now because if I had really checked in with oh
my god, I blew that career. Oh my god, I
did that. Like if I had checked in with all that,
it would have been too much to handle. Do the
(13:41):
best you can every day. And that's what I loved
about getting into program of recovery. I was given some
directions on what to do, and I did them because
I'm the good little girl quote unquote, even though I
hadn't been right. I was given suggestions and I did them.
You know, someone ran up to me my first recovery
(14:01):
meetings said oh, are you doing ninety and ninety? And
I was like, what is that? I had no idea,
And it's like ninety meetings and ninety days and if
you want your misery back.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
You can have it.
Speaker 6 (14:11):
At the end, I'm like.
Speaker 8 (14:12):
What ninety meetings and ninety days and if you want
your misery back, you can have it. And I was like,
I'll take that challenge. So I started keeping track. I
did ninety meetings and ninety days, and I was not
miserable after ninety days. Like there were like certain experiments
that I did and they worked. I was told, you know,
(14:33):
get some commitments where you actually are of service when
you go to a meeting, and I did that and
I felt better. I did what was suggested, and I
felt a lot better.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
I did counseling, and initially that didn't work hugely, but
I think the thing with counseling is it takes time,
and it was more like over time, I started to
reflect on things I started when I stopped drinking. You know,
I got a lot of clarity, and I could see things.
I took time for me, which I'd never really done before,
(15:09):
and I just I really learned a lot about myself.
So I think uncovering the reasons behind I never asked
myself why I drank, But when I actually did start
asking myself why I drank, I realized I was just
burnt out. I was, you know, trying to please everyone,
trying to do everything, trying to make sure everything was perfect,
and it wasn't. And now I just slowed down a bit,
(15:30):
and I was tired. A lot of the time. I
didn't take the time to even sleep properly. And the
difference that made was unbelievable. It was small, little changes,
and really realizing what was driving my drinking really really changed.
I looked at my thinking around alcohol, and I suppose
one of the big things that I learned was I
learned a lot about alcohol. Okay, we all know, you know,
(15:52):
drinking equals hangover equals not feeding. Great, but there was
so much I didn't understand about it. The anxiety that causes,
the things that happened in your brain, that it's that
it's an alcohol that is a poison, that it's addictive,
that all these various different things. I just educated myself
a lot about alcohol, and that once I knew why
(16:13):
I was drinking and what it was doing to me,
I could I could not signs, and then things really
started to change for me. I mean even things like triggers,
like I never knew why Friday evening was such a
trigger point for me, but then I realized, you know,
what was the end of the week. I was tired,
I was stressed, I was all of those things. And
once I realized there was different ways to deal with
that made a huge, huge difference to me.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
My rehab is a little bit different. I didn't I
didn't choose to go to rehab. I didn't even know
I was going to go there. I blacked in there.
I was finally at the end of my professional drinking career,
getting to the part where I was hating it so
much that I want to hurt myself. I tried to
quit so many times that and unsuccessfully. I was in
(17:05):
a blackout state, and the people I was with were
just tired of dealing with my crap. So they loaded
me up and took me to the hospital and took
me to the emergency room. And when I woke up
in the morning, I was in a nice comfortable bed
and have my own TV and breakfast and stuff. And
I said, well, this is neat, you know. I didn't
feel like eating or anything, and I was really ill.
(17:26):
But no, my parents weren't there or anything. I lived
with my mom because that's what happens when you drink
a lot. They gave me a shot in my butt
of a whole inch of vitamins and stuff and told
me that I was in the emergency room and do
I remember what had happened and where I was? And
I didn't remember anything, and They told me that I'm
going to be there for a couple of days, and
(17:46):
my mom called me and she was hoping that I
wasn't upset that they had taken me there, and I
was actually kind of relieved, and they said that I'm
going to be there for a while. I was really
happy because it was kind of like a little vacation.
But then when it kind of sunk it after a while,
was it was scary to think that I was going
to be away from everything that I knew. It was
the best thing that could have happened, and all of
(18:07):
my efforts to quit drinking. Being in a facility where
there are people taking care of you all the time
was the best way. Because I've been sober for one
hundred and sixteen days, I think, and before then I
couldn't even get thirty days together. I felt so well
cared for. Everybody cared so much about me while I
(18:30):
was there, constantly hell are you not just the people
that work there, but also the other patients too. I
really felt like everybody cared. A really great experience to
follow up here was fantastic, and this is the only
time in my life that I've actually been able to
say to myself, I'm actually doing it this time, when
before I was doing it for somebody else or saying yeah,
(18:50):
yeah yeah. But this time, I actually can feel it
in my heart, and I know that I'm done drinking,
and I know that I'm if I drink again, I'm
going to make a permanent decision on it. Thanebruary viewing.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
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(19:34):
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(19:57):
Take Good Care is a new collection of recovery readings
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(20:19):
the perfect gift for yourself and friends.
Speaker 10 (20:33):
We don't talk enough. I don't think about the fact
that this can be a very, very deadly disease. It's
not just chronic disappointment and anger and heartache and families,
but the fact that you actually can disappear first as
a human and then literally disappear. So you know, Having
lost my father to the disease in a very sad
(20:55):
way three years ago, it is really real to me.
He had alcohol related dementia and died of course a cost,
and that's about as bad as it can get with alcoholism.
So it's a formidable opponent. I not to be alarm,
just to say, if you think you're wrestling with it,
(21:16):
do what you need to do to find some peace.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
The first time I realized I might have a drinking
problem was when I was thirty years old. I had
recently gotten married. I was making dinner for my husband
at the time while I watched TV, and in the
course of cooking this meal, I drank an entire bottle
of wine, and I remember pouring the loss of it
into my glass.
Speaker 11 (21:48):
And just thinking, Wow.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
That's weird. I drink the whole bottles just cooking dinner,
and I'm sure I went on to drink more that night.
I can't remember, but that was my first kind of
aha moment that I might have a problem. And not
long after that night, drinking a bottle of wine became
a nightly habit. When I think about why, I think
I'm a pretty high strung person, I'm classify myself as
a type A person. And I loved how I'd just
(22:12):
be go go go all day and I could have
wine and it would just help me turn off my
brain and finally sink into a chair and relax. So
I'd just come home from work, open up a bottle,
and sip on it all evening long. But at first
that seemed like a harmless routine, but very quickly it
became a scary habit. I found myself constantly plotting how
to get that nightly bottle into the house. My husband
(22:33):
likes to drink, but he isn't an alcoholic. He can
take it or leave it on those nights, and when
he drinks it home, he usually just has a beer
or two, but I had to have that entire bottle
to myself, so I started stopping at a different store
every night on the way home from work. So I
would a gas station, other times a grocery store, and
then sometimes I found myself drinking the bottle. I'm still
wanting more, so I made sure I had a backup
bottle around. In the later years, I started going to
(22:55):
Trader Joe's on my lunch hour once a week and
buying a case of wine that I'd keep stashed in
my trunk, so I'd never had that problem of running out,
and the empis were another problem. Would only take out
a recycling once or twice a week, and four or
five or six wine bottles looked like a lot in
a small recycling bin. So I started hiding some of
the bottles in my closet, and then I would throw
them away in a public trash can on the way
(23:16):
to work. My husband knew I was drinking too much,
but I put a lot of energy into hiding just
how much from him. So this one on, night after
night after night for years, and the only breaks I
took were during my pregnancies, and I hated being pregnant
because I couldn't drink. I'd drink when I was happy,
when I was sad, when I was sick, or when
I was hungover. It didn't matter if there were no
nights off, and bad things started to happen. One night,
(23:38):
I drove drunk to the store to buy more wine.
On my way home, I swear everything passed into a
curb and my earbags went off. I left the car
and ran a mile home and spent a sick, panicky night,
worrying about what I had done and wondering if the
police were about to come arrest me. The next day,
my husband went to look for my car.
Speaker 12 (23:53):
But it was gone.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I called the police to ask about it, and they
told me it was being held for hit and run,
and for a horrible moment, I thought I might've hit
a person. It turned out I had another car, but
I was too blocked out to know it a parked car.
We traveled to visit some family and friends over the holidays,
and I drank every night, and I had a miserable
vacation because of it. What I realized during those days
that quite simply I won't have a happy life if
(24:16):
I continue to drink pudding will be the toughest thing
I've ever done, but if it might put me on
a path to a hap their place, I know, I
owe it to myself and my family to try.
Speaker 13 (24:40):
Things got really bad for me, you know, And I
heard at our recovery meeting once.
Speaker 14 (24:45):
That things got so bad that my.
Speaker 13 (24:48):
Actions were moving in such a way that they were
moving so quick I couldn't lower my standards quick enough.
And that's really kind of how I felt at the end.
It was a bad blow bottom for me. I had
legal to du why legal situation. My children didn't want
to be around me. They wanted to be with their father.
You know. I crossed that line from emotional addiction and
(25:10):
holding it together to being physically addicted, and things were
falling apart, and with a little help in my family,
it was a full blown intervention. And I can remember
the sigh of release because finally it was like it
was out of my control. I didn't actually have to
ask for help. It was being pushed on me just
a little bit. I mean, I could have pushed back,
(25:32):
but I was so desperate at that point that I
was so willing. And you know, and I say this
that at that point, the drinking had gotten me to
the point that I felt like I had fallen underneath
ice and I could see where the opening was to
take a breath, and I just couldn't get there. What
I really needed was somebody to reach in underwater and
grab me and pull me up. And that's what it was,
(25:54):
and that's exactly what happened. I've required so much help
over the past year and a half, and I've immersed
myself into sort of the recovery community.
Speaker 14 (26:04):
But you know, I looked at it like my job
was to read about recovery, do the work on recovery,
and I felt like I just graduated and was the valedictorian.
And you've talked about that toolbox. You know, I have
the super duper model. Take a look at the tools
that I've got. There goes the cockyment. And what led
(26:25):
me to my relapse and very quickly, was somebody who
I'm very much a supporter of me getting sober kind
of changed their toot and it really wasn't working out
for this person. Maybe being all sober or not so
was very destructive. There was something that they didn't teach
(26:46):
me in all the hours of class that I sat
flu was that not everybody is a fan of you
being sober.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
You know.
Speaker 14 (26:53):
It was a matter of somebody saying something, you know, yeah,
you can go down there. You can fool everybody. You
can't fool me. You know, you chose booze over your kids,
and you're not going to be nothing but a drunk.
In the end, that was all it took, and I
started drinking. My disease picked up right where it was.
The arsenal of tools that I did have prepared me
(27:14):
to quickly get back and say I'm not willing to
give it all up. And that whole idea of the
expectation that I could kind of come back home and
you know, live my life exactly as I was, just
minus the alcohol, had to take on a very new meaning.
It's not me my program is my program. So I
(27:34):
had a friend that was successfully leading a sober life
and was leading a life that kind of revolved around recovery.
And at first I said, oh God, please don't make
me turn into that person. And you know, of oh
this is great, and I said, but you know, what
I'm doing is not working. So I'm just going to
(27:57):
jump on And that's what I did. I went to meetings.
If I didn't like that meeting, I went to another meeting.
I developed my own network of people, and I changed
the people that I hung out with. It wasn't realistic
for me to do the same things with the same
people because the people that I used to associate with
on a daily basis drink like I did. And so
(28:18):
to think that just me taking away the alcohol was
going to solve the problem wasn't going to improve my
environment of maintaining my sobriety. It was changing a lot.
It was meeting new people. It was saying, Okay, now
I've got to take the tools that I've learned there
and now put it into real life action.
Speaker 15 (28:47):
I'd say, I think there's two things that you got
to do to quit drinking. Number one, you got to
break through denial. You know, I think that summed up
by virgins don't take pregnancy tests. I think that if
you think you might have a problem, you do. If
(29:09):
you're wondering if you can moderate, you can't. If you've
ever googled am I an alcoholic? Google a lot to
just give you three words, yes you are. You got
to get through that, and then you got to realize
that what you have to do is learn to tolerate discomfort,
(29:31):
because you know, part of our drinking is we're taking
this drug to get rid of discomfort of whatever we're feeling.
Realizing that you're going to feel discomfort and almost detaching
yourself from it, you know, put it in a little
bubble or balloon and look at it almost floating in
(29:53):
front of you that and realize, hey, I'm feeling discomfort.
It's a fleeting emotion I'm having. It's not forever. This
is what discomfort feels like. That allows you to get
through that discomfort of sobriety, but also it's prepared me
to deal with life. You know, people die, bad things happen.
(30:16):
There are days when you're going to feel really sad,
and you learn to just ride with the emotion and
not let it consume you. It's helped with the cravings too,
when you realize they're just fleeting thoughts coming through your mind.
They come and go, And I think for me, those
were kind of the two key things.
Speaker 12 (30:44):
I'm really glad I went. When a rehab is to
teach you you can deal with all the emotions over
say so alcohol there you know, it's not an option.
So I dealt with fear, badness, joy and all these
range of most fair sober.
Speaker 13 (31:02):
I was able to do it.
Speaker 12 (31:03):
There's a lot of work. They gave us pack of
homework to do during downtime that helped you acore your feelings,
problems and issues. We would read them in a group
the process and I get feedbacks. But that was helpful.
Spent six hours a day in groups, classes are meetings.
We had chores we had to do. I think that
was the future humility. I guess the kitchen was the
worst one that we all pitched in as the groups
(31:27):
work together. There was some dramas. One time I called
my sponsor and wanted to go home and told her,
you know, like can I deal with this?
Speaker 16 (31:34):
You know?
Speaker 12 (31:35):
She said, no, you need to stay and it's okay
and did it gradually. But I did it and the
drama got better. Missed home. I tried to think about it.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
You know, in the long.
Speaker 12 (31:45):
Term, grand scheme of things, the twenty one days is
not such a long time. It gave me time to
focus on me, my sobriety without having the everyday stressors
of life. I had tried to get sober on my
own for several years I wasn't able to do it,
and so that helped me to have that time away
(32:06):
and I'm to focused on sakes.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
We actually have a couple of Britain submissions from people
who didn't want to be live on the show. I
would like to read what she said because I think
it's very moving. She says, I think there is a
huge stigma around being an alcoholic and a double standard
in regards to men and alcohol. My husband hates to
see a woman get drunk, but does not mind seeing
a man who is drunk. When people think of a
typical alcoholic, they picture a man, probably women high they're
(32:41):
drinking more than men do. When I was actively drinking,
I did not call myself an alcoholic. I just thought
I had a drinking problem, but I did not tell
people I had a problem. I knew I needed to
stop drinking altogether someday in the future, but I felt
very alone in my addiction. I felt guilt, fear, and shame.
I did not really realize that I have a disease.
I hid my drinking very well, and in fact, most
(33:03):
of my friends now thinking I just stopped drinking alcoholic
to feel healthy, But they do not know I call
myself an alcoholic. One friend even said to me one day,
you stop drinking, but you're not an alcoholic. I didn't
correct her. I think there was a huge negative stigma
around the word alcoholic. The interesting thing is that I
am actually close to several people have gotten sober. I
(33:23):
attend twelve Step meetings, and I knew and I knew
this while I was drinking, and I never reached out
to them. I assumed that somehow their drinking was never
as bad as mine. I felt very ashamed, and this
shame made me hide. I did not regard my sober
friends as bad, weak, or flawed for having a drinking problem.
In fact, I saw the sober people around me as
strong and courageous. However, I did not reach out to
(33:46):
them while I was actively drinking. It wasn't until I
hit my bottom and got sober that I realized that
I am an alcoholic, and I have reached out to
my sober friends today. I still don't label myself as
an alcoholic to most people. However, if anyone asked me
why I no longer drink, and if he or she
were interested in sobriety, I would certainly reach out my
hand to help that person and share my experienced strength
(34:08):
and hope. What helped me the most well I was
actively drinking was reading the Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore
by Rachel Brownow. I finally identified with somebody else when
I read her story, and that was very powerful. I
think the more we normalize and inform the public about
women's alcoholism, the better.
Speaker 5 (34:31):
What was interesting was that I was very clever in
my drinking. Is just the amount of effort that I
put into managing to get extra drinks, hide it, you know,
the huge kind of like sometimes I look back and go,
my god, that was a master plan in terms of
hiding it, buying it, getting an extra round in all
the little clever little things that I did to get
(34:53):
drinking or whatever, hide it, whatever had to be. Now,
I kind of use that the other way. When I'm
at a social event and I don't want to drink
and I'm not making a big song and dance about
I use those tactics, you know, that cleverness to get
around it. And it's amazing what you can get away with.
I got through a whole Christmas party, an office Christmas party,
which is a really boosy for without drinking, and people
(35:14):
never noticed, and so I was kind of delighted with
myself in the sense of being able to flip that
around and use that sort of you know, the cunningness
of you know of it all to actually to help
my sobriety.
Speaker 17 (35:40):
Sometimes people will say, you know, I had more fun.
I have more fun in recovery, or things got really bad,
so their perspective on drinking was very negative. I think
for me, I tended to romanticize my drinking days. So
it's been hard for me to find things in soviety
that feel as exciting as those with times in my life.
(36:01):
But I actually try to not compare my drinking life
to my sober life. There are almost separate existences, and
I compare them. I really get confused and muddled up
because my life was highs and lows when I was drinking,
and my life is more somewhere in the middle now,
and that can feel boring or mundane for some people.
And at times I have felt less spontaneous. And so
(36:24):
there are pieces of it that you sought to kind
of work on, things that are interesting to you that
you want to learn about. And yeah, fun is completely changed.
I would one hundred percent agree with that, but.
Speaker 18 (36:35):
It has to.
Speaker 17 (36:36):
It has to and the gratitude for noticing the small
things that we wouldn't have noticed before.
Speaker 19 (36:56):
You are not alone, and it's very easy to feel
like that, especially for example where I live, which is
super remote, and if I can do it, anyone can.
I would definitely look things up online, and it's so
much stuff out there now. And obviously, of course Global
(37:17):
hour my my saving grace, but I think the most
most important one is that you're not alone, even if
you feel like you aregain we can do it.
Speaker 15 (37:32):
I've become a very much less reactive person. You know,
when I was drinking, I was about fifty five percent
a whole most of the time. And you know, I
think I've gotten that percentage down to about five percent.
Speaker 10 (37:55):
Because I that's pretty get me.
Speaker 15 (37:59):
It's allowed me to listen a lot more than I talk.
There's a saying that God gave you two ears and
only one mouth for a reason. You know, if you're
interested in people and you listen to people, you really
never want for conversation because the vast majority of the
(38:21):
world just wants to talk about themselves. And if you're
good at saying uh huh, oh, really you could talk
for hours, and you know, even if you don't like them,
you can just think of yourself as like an alien
anthropologist studying a weird creature. Have fun with it.
Speaker 16 (38:49):
I had a really good and great life when I
was when I was even still drinking, and a lot
of things shifted for me. But it really it was
this aspect of my life that I felt like it
was slowly going to kill me. And I mean that
literally and figuratively, and that I could still be an
(39:13):
okay person if I was drinking, but I knew deep
down that if I quit then it would be a
million times better.
Speaker 8 (39:31):
I'm so grateful to be sober. I love being sober.
I love the camaraderie. I love when I meet people
and they kind of a speaking kind of the language,
and I'll be like, are you in the Secret Club?
And they're like and if they say yes, I'm like
that kind of look at me. And if they say no,
(39:52):
I'm like, oh, never mind.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
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(40:22):
Hour patron today at patreon dot com. Slash the bubble
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and hope.
Speaker 11 (40:39):
And when I started drinking, it was because it was
my symbol of adulthood. So when I turned thirty, I thought,
oh my god, I'm going to be thirty tomorrow. I
need to go get oil of Ola. Because I was old,
I had.
Speaker 18 (40:55):
These things that were like symbols of this is the
thing that's going to say that I am now this person.
So oil Ola was my I'm now in my thirties,
and I think alcohol came right along with that. I
know that I have a compulsion around sugar, and I
think that in many ways alcohol was a path to it.
And so even when I started drinking it was it
(41:18):
was probably as much about the sugar as it was
about the alcohol. And so every Friday night I would
have a six pack of smeared off ice and a
family pack of Twizzlers, and I would buy the family
packs that had the ten percent more free on it
so that I could have seventeen point six ounces of
Lacrish every and I would like go out and find
(41:42):
the ten percent more free. I'd leave and go to
another store. And so by then I had met my
current partner, Brad, and one night he was there and
he said, I can't believe that you eat all of
those Twizzlers every Friday. And I didn't really like feeling judged.
I thought, gosh, I don't know if I want him
to know that I'm eating.
Speaker 11 (41:58):
The whole family pack. And we didn't live together at
the time, so I continued to do it every Friday.
Then one night, the health class from a local college
was on on our public access network, and this teacher said,
if you're hiding it from other people, if nobody knows
that you do it as much as you do, then
you're probably an addict. And I thought, oh my god,
(42:20):
I'm addicted to Twizzlers. I decided that I would start
eating one ounce at a time. I was going to
moderate the twizzlers. An ounce was three twizzlers. I thought, okay,
I'll put them in snack bags. So I bought all
these snack bags and I put three Twizzlers in each one,
and I sealed them up and put them in my pantry.
And I had eye surgery and I went to bed
(42:41):
that night. And next morning I got up and I
slipped on something. I thought, what was that? And I
looked and the entire family room floor was littered with
snack bags. I had woken up in an anesthesia induced
haze eaten all the Twizzlers, and so I was like, Okay,
I have a problem.
Speaker 9 (42:55):
I've got to quit.
Speaker 11 (42:56):
I've got a quit twiddling. So I quit cold turkey,
I quit Twiddlers. And what's interesting is when I quit
the Twizzlers, I didn't want the stumer off ice. I
stopped the Twizzlers and smart off ice. I lost twelve
pounds and less than a month without making any other changes.
I work in higher education. I was in charge of
the student athletes at the time, and one of our
basketball players died. Eighteen year old kid just had a
(43:18):
heart condition and died and it was horrible. And on
the way home that night, I thought, I have got
to have a drink. First time I can remember thinking
I need to drink in order to cure what ails me.
I was standing at the store that night looking at
alcohol and this old man said, I don't know what
you're looking for, but whatever's up there is not going
(43:39):
to fix you. And I think about that now and
I get goose bumps. That was probably the beginning of
my drinking to feel better. You know, some people drink
to feel good, but once you start drinking to feel better,
you're probably on a path to a problem. So I
always drank by myself. I can probably count on one
hand the number of people in my life that have
ever seen me drink. I drink below. I drank before
(44:01):
events and after events. But I was never one to
drink in public because I didn't want people to associate
my drinking with my behavior. If I was crazy, it
was crazy because I was crazy, not because I was drunk.
And it's difficult to see the problem when you drink alone,
you know, like when you're drinking by yourself. From the beginning,
I think it's harder to see whether or not it's
(44:23):
a problem. And so when I finally started asking myself,
is this becoming a problem. I did the online surveys,
and when I got to the question of do you
drink alone? I thought, of course I drink alone.
Speaker 7 (44:32):
I live alone.
Speaker 11 (44:34):
So alime, I love a drink with island by myself,
and so I always the six question. I thought it
was such a ridiculous question. As a result, I like
the shame thing was really delayed for me because I
drank alone. And like, I can remember doing an online
health risk assessment at work and they asked how many
drinks do you have a week? And I wrote twenty eight.
(44:55):
You got a score on this assessment and I had
a like a ninety eight, and then after I said
I had twenty eight drinks a week, it dropped it
to like a seventy two. I went to this meeting
with all of my coworkers and I told them that
my score dropped to a seventy two when I said
I had twenty eight drinks a week.
Speaker 14 (45:11):
And what was funny?
Speaker 9 (45:14):
What's that?
Speaker 11 (45:15):
Their reaction was, you told the truth. Nobody said do
you have twenty eight drinks a week? I started thinking,
and I don't feel like I have control. That was
the bigger issue was that I don't really feel like
I'm in control here. So I talked to the benefits
lady at my job because, like I said, I'm still
in shameless territory. And I said, I wanted to know
(45:36):
if you have a drinking cessation program like you're smoking
cessation program. And she looked at me like I was crazy,
and I said, well, you know we do these things
for tobacco, do we do them for alcohol? And she said, well,
drinking is really a mental health problem, and so you'd
want to go to your employee assistance program. And that
(45:56):
was when when I started feeling stigma. And that's when
I started worrying about shame and said, I thought, you know,
maybe I do have a problem here. And I had
been looking at sobriety memoirs, but I hadn't found one
that I wanted to read because they were all stories
about mothers. And I came across Caroline Naps Drinking a
(46:17):
love story and I read it and I thought, oh
my god, this is my story, and so like I'm
highlighting and my kinds, the legs. I read it everything
that related to me, everything that seemed familiar, and as
I looked at it, I like highlighted everything except for
and in the.
Speaker 10 (46:34):
It.
Speaker 11 (46:37):
So I'm like, oh my god, what am I gonna do?
I've got to stop. And I met this lady standing
out in my front yard, This woman came over and
she said, my name is Judy. I live next door.
And I was like, oh my gosh, it's so nice
to meet you. And she said, I'm seventy years old
and I got silver twenty seven years ago in AA
And I thought to myself, I'm forty three and in
(46:57):
twenty seven years i'll be seventy and so maybe if
I stop drinking now, I can be this lady when
I grow up.
Speaker 8 (47:15):
Accepting doesn't mean Okay, I'm going to accept my life
just as it is like this, I'm accepting it as
it is. Now, what do I want to do? What
are the things I can change that I can change?
Speaker 11 (47:24):
Okay, well, here's where you are.
Speaker 8 (47:26):
Let's get clear and where you are and what do
you want?
Speaker 7 (47:29):
What do you want to do?
Speaker 8 (47:30):
And what small step can you take towards it? You know,
we like grand stuff, you know, addicts and alcoholics. We
want big, dramatic changes. And yeah, it's like, you know what,
I think that in this part of recovery, when it
feels like we are living our authentic life, it's like,
what's the small step I can take? And to be
(47:51):
having some patients and acceptance with where we are doesn't mean,
we're going to stay there, but it means we can
be fully present to that moment that's going to take
us to the next moment.
Speaker 10 (48:17):
I need to know myself without alcohol. I didn't know
myself without alcohol. I couldn't keep a promise. I couldn't
go into an evening and say I won't have anything
to drink and keep the promise. I couldn't do it.
So crying uncle and staying in that place is a
good place for me.
Speaker 15 (48:49):
Once I got past, say, the first ninety days or so,
was this feeling that I was less than or other
than everybody. You know, everybody else could have a drink
and enjoy it, and here I am with my club soda.
You know, boy, am I a loser? It seems like
(49:10):
after a year I kind of transitioned from I'm less
than to hey, I'm better then. I don't need a
drug to have a great time, and you know, at
the end of a party, I'm still smart. I hope
I don't sound like an ego monster when I say that,
(49:33):
But that was kind of an important thing for me
because it was tough having, you know, that feeling that
you're less than. I mean, I remember going to a
wedding pretty early on. It was a pretty fancy, dancy,
you know, wedding in a ritzy place. At our table
was a guy who was like, he owns a mansion
(49:56):
and owns a business, and he was flying to give
three speeches in New York City the next day. And
I thought, my god, am I a loser? He's there
sipping his wine and I'm just having my soda here.
And I realize now, like that was a ridiculous attitude
on my part, you know, But it took me a
(50:17):
long time. My god, I wish it all could have
happened in thirty days, but I mean it took months
and months and months and a year and so forth
to sort of get there. I do my thing, and
I'm good with it. You know, I'm happy with me
right now. I got out in the nick of time,
(50:38):
as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, you know, you know,
and I know, and their stigma attached to this, Having
you know, developed the problem myself, it certainly allows me
to empathize with people a heck of a lot more
than I ever used to. Number One, it has shocked
me how alike we all are. You had that episode
(51:02):
where you read letters from Charles, and I thought, my god,
that could be me. And you interviewed Shelley, and I
listened to some things said she said, and that could
be me. Yeah, And I almost thought you could put
my interview together by just editing out snippets from everyone
(51:22):
you've done before.
Speaker 7 (51:25):
I think that may be true for a lot of us.
But you know, the thing is, it's funny that we
never get tired of hearing it because we all hear
ourselves in it, and the details might be different, but
the core truth behind it is the same. We were hurting.
We tied something that we thought would help it ended
up making it worse, and we got addicted to it,
(51:47):
and so we had to leave that behind and then
also find a new way to deal with the original
problem anyway, and then things got better. I mean, really,
that is the hero's journey of every person in recovery.
That the details change sober, but at the core of
every story, it kind of all comes back to that,
because that's the human essence of it all. Because people
(52:09):
are so interesting, right, I Mean, it's not as if
you're just being a people pleaser by listening to them.
They really are just amazing. Every person has a three.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
That's all for this time, my friends. Coming up on
the next episode, we'll hear more from each of our
show's hosts, including me. Thanks for listening. Please be so
kind as to give us a big gold juicy five
star review, and please be sure to subscribe to our
new podcast, Tiny Bubbles. And hey, have you heard out
(53:00):
our new book of recovery readings. It's called Take Good Care.
You'll find it on Amazon by me Gee McCarthy, right
next to my other recovery books. If you'd like to
support the show, please join us over on Patreon. Your
pledge there gives you access to full episodes of the
backlist ad free. And you know what, it does take
quite a lot to maintain and manage a decade worth
(53:21):
of recovery resources. Well, we all know it's a worthwhile effort, right,
so your help is definitely greatly appreciated. I will get
you when you come back for more, and until then,
take Good Care.
Speaker 4 (53:33):
Own A didn't not proud, but that's me and let
up face. Let's take a little dignity, not a look
and bo excuses. I just want to be free from
the power waiting us head on me in a dun
(53:56):
corners where shame lives to Henna, wait with your jobs,
because you'll keep it up the second it just stays
and wait there to rob you off your pride.
Speaker 15 (54:14):
Turn the light on.
Speaker 7 (54:15):
Turn the light on.
Speaker 1 (54:16):
You can't shine away.
Speaker 4 (54:18):
You see the different, not proud, that was me and
things if I take that a little dignity. Another of excuses,
I just want to be breathe from power. Oh you
s you don't have to shout it out on main streets,
(54:45):
and you don't need to whisper to confessions. And the
person you should talk to is look in at you.
You in there and a.
Speaker 10 (55:02):
Lot of matters.
Speaker 4 (55:03):
Most can always you away. You see old different, not proud,
but damns me. And when a face, I take back
a little dignity. Another from excuses, I just want to
be free from a power a person. When you see old,
(55:28):
a different, not prad that was me, and face, I
take me a little dignity. I'm a look from an excuse.
I just want to be free from the power as free, free, free, free,
(55:50):
free
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