Part 3 of 10: The Hosts

Episode Transcript
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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.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Welcome to the Bubble Hour.

Speaker 5 (00:35):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome for the Bubble Hour.

Speaker 6 (00:38):
A ownent, a diffent, not praps we and let a
fait le take a little dignity.

Speaker 7 (00:47):
Not looking for excuses.

Speaker 8 (00:50):
I just want to be free from the power wus
head on the Free, Free, Free, Free Free.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
I'm Jeene McCarthy and you're listening to the Bobble Hour.
Hi everyone, and welcome to this installment of season ten
of The Bobble Hour. This is episode three of our
ten part retrospective looking back over the past decade of
this show. But I do encourage you to listen to
episodes one and two if you haven't already. I have
set them up in the order that I think will

(01:26):
help not only give you the best experience as a
listener and form the narrative in the most cohesive way.
But well, who am I to tell you what to do.
You can listen to them in whatever order you want,
but this is the suggested order. As we say in Recovery,
you know, I'll stay on my own side of the street.
You do you? This episode is all about the host
of the show, the original co hosts Ellie and Lisa,

(01:48):
and then came Amanda and Catherine and myself. Now I
do want to say right off the bat too. You
might have noticed we always just use our first names.
So different hosts have had different perspectives on anonymity, sometimes
because it's part of their recovery program, and some out
of privacy concerns for their family or professional reasons. Ellie

(02:09):
was public as a recovery advocate, and I began blogging
anonymously in twenty and eleven, but eventually I did reveal
my name and identity when I started writing professionally about recovery,
so I didn't start saying my full name on the
show until twenty sixteen. Up to that point, we stalked
to first names only, and so I'm going to continue

(02:30):
to do that in this episode. So you heard a
bit from Ellie and Lisa and Amanda in episode one,
and today we're going to start by hearing a bit
more of their individual stories. Ellie was the originator of
the idea for this podcast, and she moved quickly to
make it happen.

Speaker 9 (02:47):
You know, being impulsive has served me in many different ways.
But the whole idea for blah bla blah Art came
at like ten o'clock at night on a random Tuesday,
and you know, by Saturday, I had a nonprofit in
the works, and you know, I oh anything small.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
The origin of the whole thing in this kind of
mad cap idea I had one night when I couldn't
fall asleep. And I want to give a huge shout
out to Lisa, the original co host with me, because
it was her concept of having a bubble of protection
around ourselves when we're sober, and what sorts of things
we put into our bubble to keep us through the

(03:23):
hard times that you get from day to day. And
she would post funny little pictures of a bubble with
candy bars and her dog and all these and I
just had the idea of a podcast in my mind
went immediately to Lisa and her bubble. I called her
and I said, I have this crazy idea for her
podcast and I want to call it the Bubble Hour.
And that's your idea, what do you think? And she

(03:43):
just jumped in as only Lisa can do with both feet.
And I think our first episode that we recorded as
a half an hour of us kind of giggling on
the phone, just not even really thinking it was ever
going to go anywhere. I mean it, really it was like,
look at us, We're having a little podcast and a
couple of people might ever hear. Neither of us had
any clue where would go.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
We learned more and more of Ellie's story as she
shared on different topics each week.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Feeling of early so about at least I'll speak for myself,
but I know you feel so rubbed raw, like all
of your emotions are just pouring out of you. Every
single thing that happens to you is significant and you
can't really filter anything. At least I was sort of
jangling exposed nerve could not believe that I could get
to the point where I would be able to have
healthy boundaries around other people's opinions, set limits, and not

(04:30):
try to manage everybody, like everybody in my family or
all my friends, or even walking to a room both
of strangers, and try to make sure everybody's happy. I
remember feeling, at least for thirty to sixty days were
a lot of anxiety, of feeling overwhelmed. Going to the
grocery store was crazy. I was just overwhelmed at all
the choices, irritability and sleeplessness, and probably the hardest was

(04:54):
a really deep sense of loss. I felt like I
had lost a friend and I was almost grieving. I
thought these feelings would never go away, but you know,
with time and by talking to other sober people, they did.
They did go away. But it was definitely a process,
a learning curve. And in the first days of sobriety,

(05:14):
if you can get through one hour or one day
and just not have a drink, then you should be
really proud of yourself. That's enough. That's a full time job.
In the very beginning, I.

Speaker 10 (05:25):
Heard people talking about these things that I felt like
were my inner darkest secrets, like that I'm broken somehow,
or that if you really knew me, that you liked me,
or that I had to be perfect. I grow up
so I had to be perfect or my parents.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Could give me back.

Speaker 10 (05:37):
It was a really deep he to tear of mine.
What had my first drink at the age of twelve.
I remember that feeling of, Oh, this must be what
it's like.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
To feel normal.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Ellie often read beautiful passages about recovery that were insightful
and moving, like this essay titled I Can't Feel my extremities.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
The thing about drinking it enables you to manufacture emotions,
albeit fleetingly. Because let's be honest here, if wine or
Scotch or beer didn't have any alcohol in it, would
you still reach forward at the end of a stressful
or tiring day just for the great taste? I wonder.
The other day I was watching a PBS show and

(06:21):
they did a piece about oinophiles, definition of which is
lovers of wine or ones who study the many aspects
of wine. And this man was going on and on
about the legs of the wine, the color, the clarity,
the nose. And as he was talking and swirling and
swirling and swirling this bit of wine in his glass,
I'm watching and thinking, just drink it already, you know

(06:44):
you want to who do you think you're fooling. Maybe
it's just wishful thinking on my part. Maybe I just
don't want to believe that such a creature exists on
the planet. Somebody who literally just studies wine, blobbers on
about it, switches it around in his mouth, and then,
get this, spits it out as if because I believe

(07:06):
that the vast majority of people who drink do so
to change how they feel at any given moment. At
a party and want to loosen up a bit, have
a drink. Tired after a long day, have a drink,
relax those muscles, have an argument with someone or an
unusually tough day, have a drink. Soften the edge a little,
turn the volume down for a bit. I'm talking about

(07:28):
what I finally call normal, ordinary regular people here, Norps,
if you will not problem drinkers are alcoholics. I'm all
for drinking to make a good time, better, improve a
bad day, or unwind a bit. If you're a NORP,
I say go for it.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Have one on me.

Speaker 4 (07:46):
Just don't try to sell me that you really just
enjoy the taste. I don't think you drink it if
it didn't transport you away from yourself a little just
for a while. If you don't believe me, have yourself
a non alcoholic beer at the end of a long,
hard day, you know, just for the taste. If I
sound defensive, it's probably because I'm jealous. I like to

(08:06):
get defensive when I'm jealous, because it's much more fun
to be a little angry than it is to feel inferior.
In some way. All this rambling brings me to my
belated point. The hardest thing to get used to in
sobriety for me is all this being present all the time,
no matter what business. I don't get to manufacture emotions anymore.
Life on life's terms, and life, it turns out, isn't

(08:30):
all peaks and valleys. See, I like extremes. Give me ten,
or give me zero, but please don't give me five.
Five is so, I don't know boring. When I'm at ten,
the world is my oyster. I can conquer anything. I'm fearless,
nothing could ever possibly go wrong. When I'm at zero,

(08:50):
I'm not good enough for the world, and nothing matters anyway,
So why not just wallow in a good old fashioned
pity party. The infuriating truth is that real life is
mostly five with the occasional smike to seven or a
drop to three. Very very rarely do any of us
get to go to ten or zero. I drank to
manufacture a few tens, to wallow in a few zeros

(09:14):
in my sick thinking at ten and zero, at least
something was happening. None of this shuffling around between three
and seven business for me. The difference between me and
a norp is that I didn't drink to change my
four to a five or to make my five six.
I drank to zoom in my rocket to ten or
cliff dive right down to zero. All rambling aside, though

(09:37):
I'm pleased to report that there is a moral to
this story. I should never ever watch television shows about
wine connoisseurs.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
I recall how as a listener to this podcast myself,
I rebound this next clip a few times to listen
to it again because it moved me so much.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Bottles around the house, and I can remember there was
one time I was home completely by myself and I
was trying to speak a bottle. I was like the
whatever the linen causet or wherever it was, and I
was being really quiet with the door and really quiet
sliding it out, and it occurred to me even sort
of in a weird, little lucid place in my brain
as I was doing that, like there's nobody here to
hear me. Who am I? Why am I being quiet?
And realized I was trying to die for myself.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Hang onto that image of Ellie hiding from herself because
we'll come back to it later, but for now, let's
hear more from Lisa about how her alcohol used took
her by surprise because her father was an alcoholic and
she was determined to never be like him.

Speaker 7 (10:39):
Having an alcoholic father shaped me as a person. I
never would have imagined that I would be in this
place where I'm in recovery because I always thought I
was way too smart. There was no way I was
going to wind up with my dad. So I think
that's part of why it hit me so long to
accept it, because I was totally going to do the opposite.
Well that was my plan anyway. That my childhood was

(11:02):
really full of uncertainty and inconsistency, which led to anxiety
which I still have today that it's definitely dissipated since
I've been sober. I always felt like I could control
my alcoholic father's behavior kind of by appearing perfect. Then
when he didn't show up, or he didn't show up
at all, or he showed up drunk, I blame myself

(11:24):
because I believe it was because I wasn't good enough.
And you know, I'm working through this, but to this day,
I still feel sometimes like I'm not quite good enough,
and I think a lot of people have the same
fear it wasn't all bad. I feel like while I
would never ever ever wish an alcoholic parent on any child,
I do think that I've learned to see that through

(11:46):
some of my childhood and teenage experiences, I did gain
some awareness that I probably would not have had otherwise known.
These traits might have saved me a few times along
the way. For example, I know I learned to question
authority young age, and just because an adult told me
no to something, I didn't necessarily believe it or take

(12:07):
it for the answer. Knowing that authority figures are fallible
has helped me immensely in my life. Even now, I'm
not afraid to question I know, which has been really
helpful to me because I'm an advocate for children professionally,
and I have to be willing sometimes to go against
medical professionals, or educators or even families at times. So

(12:29):
growing up the way I did did give me that,
and I'm thankful and grateful for that. But I do
realize that me alcoholics who do fear authority, but for me,
it's kind of in the opposite. Instead, I fear more
my peers.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Wesa also read pieces that she'd written more often because
she spoke of subjects so tender and difficult that it
was easier to relate them by reading prepared passages. You
can hear the emotion in her voice in this next one.

Speaker 5 (12:59):
I need I drank too much.

Speaker 7 (13:01):
Long before I ever told a soul. I went to
great links to cover up my drinking. I hid the
true extent of my drinking in the isolation of my home.
Alcohol played tricks with my mind and magnified my ability
to rationalize my behavior. Deniel is a powerful thing. I
convinced myself that my drinking wasn't that bad. I didn't
have a DUI, I didn't go to jail. I didn't

(13:23):
lose my family yet, but I felt like every day
was a nightmare that I was living in. The highlight
of my day was sitting alone at night drinking wine.
I didn't look like an alcoholic wine over in the gutter,
but I had this black hole inside of me that
I was trying to fill with alcohol. To the outside world,
I looked like a success. On the inside, I was dying.
Alcoholism is a word shrouded in desperation and shame. As

(13:47):
a woman suffering from alcohol addiction, the standard is doubly so.
As a little girl, I didn't run around squealing excitedly
about wanting to be an alcoholic when I grew up. Instead,
I ran around squealing excitedly about wine. To move away,
go to college one day, be a teacher, and help
other people one day be a mommy. Becoming an alcoholic

(14:07):
was the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, growing up,
I saw firsthand what happens when a person is an alcoholic.
My personal experience made me believe that an alcoholic cannot
love me because I was not worthy of being loved.
An alcoholic never followed through his promises and commitments. An

(14:31):
alcoholic left for days and made me wait to hear
if he was a liar or death, all while questioning
what I could have done to stop this from happening.
Could I have been sweeter? Could I have been prettier?
Could I have been funnier? An alcoholic passed out in
my neighbor's yard and got arrested and went to jail
as my friends were over witnessing every detail to later

(14:53):
share with classmates. An alcoholic forgot to pick me up
from school and I had to walk home, making me question,
at age eleven, what I did wrong to.

Speaker 11 (15:03):
Make this happen.

Speaker 7 (15:04):
An alcoholic made me drive his car because he was
passed out. At age thirteen, while I was scared to
death but stoic, my main goal was keeping his secret
so that I could protect him. An alcoholic stole all
the money from my college fun and drink it away.
The year before I left for college, an alcoholics shows
up drunk on the football field to be my homecoming

(15:26):
court export, leaving me ashamed and humiliated, angry, and confused.
All of these things and more happened to me growing up.
Because my father was an alcoholic. I vowed from an
early age should never be anything like my father, and
I wasn't, so I couldn't be an alcoholic, right. I
was everything society and my community expected me to be.

(15:46):
I was an overachieving, perfectionist. I finished college, got married,
and began my career as a teacher, all around the
same time. Drinking was normal then. I thought we were
very social people with lots of friends. My husband's career
was thriving, and part of that was based on evening
cocktails with clients and trips that included social drinking. Sure
we drank too much sometimes, but so did everyone else.

(16:09):
I had officially escaped my childhood. I was determined to
be perfect. I was determined to never think of my past.
I simply did not allow myself to even have negative
feelings or feelings at all. In general, I was the
epitome of what it meant to be a people pleaser.
I was everyone's go too girl. I was the friend
you could count on. I was a passive life who

(16:30):
never voiced my opinion, and I nodded my head yes
to anything and everything I was asked to be. I
even suggested the going places and doing things I hated
because I wanted things to always be smooth and easy
for everyone else. There was one constant through all of this.
There was always a drink firmly in my hand. Fast
forward to motherhood, I had tea babies very close together.

(16:51):
My dream had at last come true. Finally I was
a mom. I was given two children to love, and
loved them. I did with a force so powerful I
cannot hear it that overwhelmed me and terrified me. I
used wine as a way to detach from the overwhelming
amounts of love I had for my children. I drank
wine at night to escape from my obsessive thoughts about

(17:12):
all of the ways my mothered wrong. I drank wine
to dull the sound of toddlers and their mothers at
playdates in my house. I drank to get through the
endless chores that came with being a mom of two
small children. I drank wine to feel like a part
of the group at a dinner party. I drank to
be the person I felt like my husband liked. I
drank wine to drown out unresolved, uninckowledge, feelings of shame

(17:34):
and fear, and questions about who I was pretending to be,
an unworthiness that were lying just below my surface. That
way of drinking work for a while, until it didn't.
When it stopped working and doing what I needed it
to do, I hit and I drank more. I began
to cover it up. I began to take are you
and alcoholic? Quizzes, and when the answer started to read yes,

(17:54):
I would lie to myself to get the results I wanted.
These quizzes are wrong, That's what I would say to myself.
I'm not an alcoholic.

Speaker 5 (18:01):
I can't be.

Speaker 7 (18:02):
I'm way too smart for that. MY wife and a mom,
and I took my family before anything. I'm an educated
woman living the life to be proud of. I overcame
my childhood and I am doing what I'm supposed.

Speaker 10 (18:11):
To do for everyone.

Speaker 7 (18:13):
I take care of everything. I can't possibly be an alcoholic.
I don't do the things my father did. He is
an alcoholic.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
I am not.

Speaker 7 (18:20):
Denial is a very powerful thing. Accepting and then admitting
I was an alcoholic did not come.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Easily for me.

Speaker 5 (18:27):
I was afraid.

Speaker 7 (18:28):
I was afraid I would be judged by other women.
So I was afraid that people would do less of
me for being weak enough to succumb to addiction. I
was afraid I would never again have fun. I remember
thinking that there was no way I could ever have
fun without alcohol being involved. I was afraid that I
would not be able to deal with life without alcohol.
At some point, I realized that my fear of life

(18:49):
without alcohol was not as scary as losing my life
to alcoholism like my dad, although our alcoholism manifested differently.
Although his disease had progressed to such a high level
of addiction that he did eventually become the stereotypical drunk
on the street before he died, I was just like him.
I was just drinks away from my life becoming what
his eventually became. Alcoholism is progressive. If I did not

(19:14):
get off this fast meeting train, I would die of
this disease too. I may not look the part that
I was the part. I'm a sober woman now and
I can look at myself in the mirror without seeing
a stranger. I thought very hard to get here, and.

Speaker 10 (19:26):
I never had to go back.

Speaker 7 (19:28):
I've learned that it takes a strong and courageous person
to admit to seat and recover. My children are now
seven and nine, and they will never have the same
traumatic experience as I had at their ages and said
they will have a mother who will love them and
protect them and cherish them. I'm learning how to accept
myself and deal with the feelings and emotions and conflict
in life without knowing.

Speaker 5 (19:47):
Myself with alcohol.

Speaker 10 (19:49):
This recovery is a gift.

Speaker 7 (19:51):
Every single day I wake up without fear or without
shame that used to plague me. I wake up.

Speaker 4 (19:56):
Thankful and hopeful.

Speaker 7 (19:58):
I'm all work in progress. I'm not wre I want
to do it, but I'm getting there. I hope everyone
listening will hear my story and reach out for help.
Just please give it a try. I let myself be
vulnerable enough to connect with other women just like me,
seeing that one small thing from behind the safety of
my laptop helped me to where I am today. I'll
listen to others who had gone before me with this,

(20:19):
and I wonder what they have. I wanted so badly
that I was willing to believe them. There are women
just like you and just like me, who are smart
and who are courageous, and I've learned so much from them.
I hope that you will get this a chance, and
if you're listening to this, that you'll be willing to
recognize that there are women just like you who are

(20:40):
doing exactly what you're doing, and we're here to help
each other. Now, instead of being part of the problem,
I'm part of the Solution.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Lisa spoke of some of the challenges of sobriety, like
strained friendships and un learning survival skills from her childhood.

Speaker 9 (20:57):
Well.

Speaker 11 (20:57):
One of the very first people that I told was
very very close friend. She need me before my alcoholism
was obvious to others, and it wasn't obvious to her either.
I don't even know if it was obvious to myself
when we first met that she also need me during
the most horrible stages of my alcoholism. During my first

(21:17):
weeks of sobriety, I avoided her because I couldn't even
say the words out wow. Denial runs very deep. I
told her maybe three or four weeks into sobriety that
I wouldn't be drinking alcohol, and I remember her asking why,
and even though I think at some levels she had
to know why, but I remember saying something like, because

(21:38):
it's destroying my life. I don't even know who I am.
I told her how long had it been since I
had last had a drink, and I was shocked by
her reaction. I was thinking she would be really proud
of me and happy for me, and kind of my cheerleader.
But I guess this is a cautionary tale, because expectation
is the root of all heartache. Suddenly she became really distant.

(22:01):
I thought maybe being open with her would help get
things back to the way they were before. But after
my confession, she was just distant and cold, and to
my surprise, I was heartbroken, and I realized that she
no longer wanted to be part of my nearly sober life.
I thought, why did I tell her what? You know,
what could I have done differently? I think my admission
was really a threat to her on drinking behavior. I

(22:23):
didn't see it this way at that time. I think
it threatened her and it made her feel like, Okay,
what about me? So that first confession was really traumatic
for me, but it all led me to where I
am now. As sad as that was, I think because
of that experience, I'm stronger. I understand now that her
reaction had very little to do with me and very

(22:43):
much to do with her. Even say, being hurt that
badly did make me second guests telling other friends details
about my very personal journey. I'm not ashamed, but my
private now I really struggle with letting people in, and
now I see that that's also a way of trying
to control people. I'm really a work in progress, and

(23:04):
I know that the good thing is I recognize these things,
but I still am learning. You know, I'm still really
trying because really, for me, boundaries feels uncomfortable, even the
most scary, because it kind of goes against the grain
of the survival skills I learned in childhood. I learned
to repress anger or even other painful emotions just because

(23:26):
it wasn't acceptable. You know, I might have been attacked
or blamed or whatever for expressing, you know, pain. So
I think I've really struggled with learning how to set
healthy boundaries. It kind of carried over into my adulthood.
But maybe I went the opposite way with it and
felt really high high fences progress my perfection. It's all
a big work in progress. I feel like I've got

(23:46):
a long way to go, but I also feel like
I'm getting there. I used to feel separate in a
way that was unhealthy, kind of like shameful and unworthy,
And then I started to see that I've really been
powerless over the behavior patterns I've learned, and childhits have
learned the difference between guilt and shame. That's really helped

(24:06):
me a lot with the boundaries for me because guilt,
in my definition, involves behavior, and while shame is about
our be.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
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inspiration on the go? Tiny Bubbles is a new podcast
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(24:46):
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(25:09):
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(25:31):
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Speaker 4 (25:42):
I can remember begging Amantha Kippy please part of this,
and she could only do it from behind the scenes.
She would only help me with the technical piece of it.
She's like, I cannot co host a podcast. I'm not articulate.
I don't have good ideas. You know, I can suppor
you and I want to help you, but I just

(26:02):
this is not something that I'm comfortable doing. And look
at her now, she's a shining example of first of all,
never say never, and never tell me you can't do anything,
because dannit you can. And how much this show has
helped all of us kind of blossom.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
Amanda shared some helpful insights about practical matters, like here,
where she explained the legal process of getting her driver's
license back and shared her letter to the appeal board.

Speaker 12 (26:29):
Just to give you a little background, I got sober
after being arrested for my second DUI. This is not
something that I'm proud of, obviously, but I'm grateful for
that arrest because that's what it hoped to get me sober.
In Massachusetts, you automatically lose your license for two years
with a second DUI, but you can apply for a
work license, which is the hardship license where you can

(26:51):
drive twelve hours a day to get to and from work.
And after a year without a license, and after you've
completed all the court ordered prooms, you can apply. So
I want to apply in the registry immediately denied my application,
and so I had to request a hearing, and the
hearing is held in a courtroom and there's a panel

(27:12):
of three people, I think, one from the District Attorney's office,
one from the Registry, and one from like the insurance
board of the state. I went into the court it's
a regular courtroom and I walked in there and everyone
had a lawyer except me, and I was pretty anxious
when they finally called me up there. I went up
by myself and they read off all my charges, everything

(27:32):
going back to like parking tickets and stuff from when
I was young, and then they ended with me being
arrested for a second offense DUI on August twenty second,
with a blood alcohol level of three point zero, which
is way high, and the whole panel you could just
see them they were like wow. I just took a
deep breath and I said, I know that's really awful,

(27:56):
and said I wrote a letter. I'm very nervous. Can
I read this to you? This is the letters that
I read to the Board of Appeal. Thank you for
taking the time to review my application for a hardship
license today. Below I have provided a timeline of the
actions I have taken since my arrest on August twenty second,
twenty ten. My sobriety date is August twenty fourth, twenty ten.

(28:18):
I have remained continuously sober for the past fifteen months.
On August twenty fourth, twenty ten, I checked myself into
a treatment facility and I was discharged on August twenty ninth.
I attended my first AA meeting outside of treatment on
August thirtieth. On August thirty first, I met with my
employer and inform them that I am an alcoholic and

(28:38):
then needed to get some help. We agreed that I
would go out on short term disability so I could
focus on my recovery. I returned to work full time
on October fourth. September three through September twenty fourth, I
participated in an intensive outpatient program at a facility in Massachusetts,
which consisted of group counseling three times a week, an

(28:58):
weekly individual counseling. Upon completion of the program, I attended
weekly Alternatives in recovery group. The hearing from my arrest
was on October first, and I pled guilty and was
charged with the second offense OUI. I attended the second
Offender aftercare program the weekly counseling session that I had.
I completed the fourteen day residential dual program per second

(29:22):
offender for two weeks in November of twenty ten, and
that was an inpatient program very similar to jail. Actually,
I have had random drug and alcohol testing throughout this
time and have never tested positive. I have supplied with
all the requirements of my court probation. After leaving my

(29:42):
arraignment on August twenty third, I knew that I had
a problem and needed to get help, but I didn't
know what to do. Fortunately, I have an excellent support system.
My father and my best friend are both in recovery,
and they suggested I go away to rehab. I knew
the courts would probably order me into some kind of program,
but I didn't want to wait weeks or months for
my hearing, and I knew that I needed to do

(30:03):
this for myself. The next day, I started making phone
calls and was lucky enough to find a bed at
a treatment facility. When I was in treatment, I accepted
the fact that I am an alcoholic and I am
powerless over alcohol. The councilor suggested I go to ninety
meetings and ninety days and enroll myself in an intensive
outpatient program. So that's what I did. I have attended

(30:23):
AA meetings on a regular basis. Before I returned to work,
I attended one to three meetings a day. I far
exceeded the ninety meetings and ninety days that was recommended
to me when I was discharged from DETOC. After returning
to work, I continued going to meetings five to seven
times a week. I joined several groups, got a sponsor,
and became an active participant in AA. I have had

(30:45):
and still have numerous jobs in AA, including treasurer for
one group and secretary of another. I have chaired meetings,
I speak at commitments with my group, and recently I
begun acting as a temporary sponsor for several women. I
attend the following meetings on a weekly basis, and I
listed out five of my regular meetings. I take my
sobriety and my recovery very seriously. And have every intention

(31:07):
of remaining sober for the rest of my life, one
day at a time. I am sure you will ask
me what is different this time, and I can only
tell you the truth. Prior to my arrest on August
twenty second, twenty ten, I thought I could control my drinking.
After my arrest, I finally realized in a minute that
I am an alcoholic and I cannot drink in safety.
I wish I could take back the things that I

(31:28):
did in the past, but I can't. I can only
go forward today. I can honestly say that I am
grateful that I was arrested, because that is what it
took for me to realize that I needed help and
to get sober. My father told me my arrest was
probably the best thing that could have happened to me.
Although I didn't believe him.

Speaker 4 (31:43):
At the time, he was right.

Speaker 12 (31:45):
I would not trade my sobriety for anything in the world.
I am applying for this hardship license because it is
very difficult for me to get to work. I depend
on rides to get me to and from the train
station nine miles from my house, and then I walk
to and from my office another mile and a quarter.
Thank you for considering my application for hardship license driving

(32:07):
a motor vehicle as a privilege. And I hope that
I have demonstrated to you that I have learned my
lesson from my mistakes I have made in the past. Sincerely, Amanda.
So that was my letter, and I can tell you
I was doing my best not to cry when I
read that, and it was hard. I'll never forget that day,
and it was the best feeling in the world. I
thought about it a lot before I went that day.

(32:29):
You know, do I game the surface, maybe, you know,
not tell the full truth. But I had nothing to
be ashamed of, and so I just went in there
and it was the best feeling in the world to
just be able to stand up, hold my head high
and not worry. You know, whatever happened happened, it were.

Speaker 11 (32:44):
Thank you for sharing that with us.

Speaker 5 (32:46):
That's yes, really you got your.

Speaker 7 (32:51):
Story.

Speaker 11 (32:52):
That was really great.

Speaker 7 (32:53):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Amanda told us details about rehab for anyone considering it
or who'd never been. It was helpful and it made
the experience seem positive and less scary.

Speaker 12 (33:07):
They brought me to my room. It was actually nicer
than I thought it would be. It was, you know,
just two beds in a room. I had a roommate,
but they weren't there at the time. There was a
bathroom that was shared with another room, so four people
sharing one bathroom. And you know, the room was farse,
but it was clean and it was comfortable enough for me.
You know, I was just there to get better. I

(33:28):
dropped my stuff off in my room and then I
had to go right down to a meeting that they
were having. They had a meeting around seven o'clock every
evening to wrap up the day. So I sat down
in that meeting. At that point, I was still in
shocked at what I was even doing, and I think
I had a nervousness. I just turned to the guy
next to me and I said, Hi, my name is Amanda.

(33:48):
He shook my hand and he said hi, I'm Destiny.
And I just remember tackling to myself because I was like,
oh boy, you sure are you know it's in hindsight,
it was a little signed for me. Then the next
morning we had our first group meeting to start. As
I was sitting there waiting for the meeting to begin
and all the other residents to come in, I was

(34:10):
just crying and it kind of hit me that I
was sitting in a detox facility and I was done
with drinking forever. And it was just really overwhelming to me.
And one of the counselors there came up to me
and gave me a hug and said, it's okay, honey,
You're going to be okay. He was great to me
the whole time that I was there. The meeting started,

(34:31):
we went around and introduced ourselves, and it was funny
when it came to me some people had been there obviously,
you know, before me, and so they're going around the
room saying, my name is such and such and I'm
an alcoholic. So I just it was trying to be
a good student, and I said, Hi, my name's Amanda,
and I'm an alcoholic. It was probably the most amazing
feeling that I've ever had in my life. I felt

(34:52):
this physical presence lift off of me, this weight, this
enormous weight that I had on my shoulders, and it
was the most liberating thing that I think I've ever
done or said. It was just such a huge release
to say those words out loud.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
You know, Amanda had never really wanted to be a
podcast host, talking about recovery, but she came to really
love the experience of weekly recording.

Speaker 13 (35:15):
Sessions and in recovery, I found that the thing that
one of the things that helped me the most was
helping people. Things are going along just fine for me,
but it was a little you know, I wasn't as inspired.

Speaker 12 (35:29):
And then Ellie and Lisa put together the Bubble Hour,
and I've thought this was a fantastic thing that they
were doing. And then I came on board helping out
doing some of the background stuff and hosting every once
in a while. Now I find this incredible inspiration in
my life, and it was something I wasn't looking for.
I didn't know I wanted to do. Now it's something

(35:51):
that I look forward to doing every week. It just
inspires me just being able to reach out to people
and help lots of people, and it just kind of
I tell on my lap, I wasn't really looking for anything.
I'm pretty satisfied with my life, but you know, I
wasn't overly inspired either.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Help others find the message of recovery. We champion on
the Bubble Hour Plus get access to the entire backlist
ad free by joining us on Patreon. Patroon support helps
with the ongoing expense of making free versions of the
show available, as well as the cost to make new
content like our spinoff podcast, Tiny Bubbles. Become a Bubble

(36:34):
Hour patron today at patreon dot com. Slash the bubble
hour and help us help others through stories of strength
and hope. In the second year of the show, Lisa
stepped down as host due to the demands of her
busy life.

Speaker 4 (36:54):
Love for me too, Lisa, and for all that you've done,
and thank you. You're real always a huge part of
my personal bubble, no doubt about it.

Speaker 7 (37:02):
Oh, thank you, I'm here, Thank you, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
I happened to hear this announcement listening as I always
did from my home in Alberta, Canada, far away from
these ladies who had come to know so well as
voices of recovery that had made a big difference in
my life now at the time. The work I did
then and I since retired, But back then my job
included a lot of media appearances. I'd done TV hosting
and producing and radio commercials, so I knew my way

(37:30):
around a microphone. Plus I'd been blogging as Unpickled since
I'd gotten sober two years earlier, so I had a platform,
and I wondered if there was a way for me
to become involved in the podcast remotely. I really didn't
overthink it. It just seemed like a possible fit for
my profile and my skill set. So I dashed off
an email and I thought nothing more of it. If

(37:50):
memory serves me correctly, I got a very polite but
noncommittal reply saying thanks for your offer to help. Later
I would learn that my blog was one that had
helped Lisa gain It's Sober, and when she heard that
I'd offered to take her place, she recommended to Ellie
and Amanda that they take me up on it. It
still gives me goosebumps. You guys, I had no idea here.
I was using the Bubble Hour to help prop up

(38:12):
my lonely road to recovery, and one of the hosts
was there because my blog had helped her. That's incredible
to me. I really like coincidences. I sometimes put no
stock in them, but sometimes they're just too big to ignore.
So when it came to the Bubble Hour, those coincidences
just kept coming. And when I look back on it now,
it feels like I was receiving affirmations that this was

(38:35):
where I was meant to be. Not only did I
not know that Lisa knew my work from Unpickled, but
there were other things I didn't know, in fact, things
that almost no one knew. I assumed that my offer
to help on the show would come to nothing, that
Ellie and Amanda would carry on hosting themselves and not
replace Lisa with the new host. But one day my
phone rang and it was a Boston number on the

(38:55):
call display. I knew something was happening. So the voice
that came through the line was one I knew so well.
I found myself talking to Amanda. She said, you offered
to help, and I'm wondering if you could jump in
on short notice. You guys, I can't even try to
do her voice or her accent, but you know it,
it's very distinctive. And it was really cool to be

(39:15):
interacting with Amanda's boys. So it turned out that and
Dalsa Johnston had just released a book called Drink, and
she was scheduled for an interview the next day, and
Amanda wondered if I could help. Well, it just so
happened that I was going to be leaving on vacation
the day after that, and sure enough, I'd already packed
and that book was in my suitcase to read on

(39:36):
my trip. So that felt like a pretty sweet coincidence
to me, and I said, sure, yes, I actually have
the book, and I will read it tonight and I
will be ready for the interview tomorrow. And there was more.
Amanda sounded exhausted, and it turned out that she'd had
a really tough couple of days helping Ellie, who had
relapsed since the previous week's show, and Amanda had been

(39:59):
helping Ellie get into care. This came to me as
devastating news. Months earlier, I would have assumed that relapsing
was an embarrassment to the show, perhaps a shameful and
dramatic twist. But thanks to what I was learning as
a listener of the podcast, I was able to have
compassion and understanding and reserve the judgment that just a
short while earlier would have been forefront in my mind.

(40:21):
I knew that the best thing I could do to
help Ellie was to step in and help Amanda. So
I stayed up all night reading that book because I'm
a slow reader, but I was determined to be completely
prepared for that interview. It was doubly important to me
because I have so much respect for and Alsa Johnston
as a Canadian journalist and for The Bubble Hour as
a show that had helped me so much.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Sorry for you before I let you go. I am
leaving on vacations and I had bought your book to
bring with me, and so I was really looking forward
to just digging into it. And last night I got
a call from Amanda saying, help, I need a co
host to speak to this amazing author about this amazing book.
And I was absolutely thrilled at the opportunity. But I

(41:06):
had to pull that book out of my suitcase and
I've spent a long four hours reading it. Even under
that change of circumstance, I enjoyed it so much. I
highlighted so much, I made so many notes, and I
had a lot of moments of tears where you just
spoke my truth. It was just such a beautiful read.
It really is a great book.

Speaker 5 (41:26):
I thank you for it.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
You've done some tremendous work here and I'm very grateful
for it. Thank you, Jean, thank you for saying that
that was really touching, really touching. That was what it
was meant to be. You accomplished what you set out
to do. Then thank you. I really really appreciate that.
It's very meaningful to me.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
The coincidences continued. Amanda and I soon went over my
schedule to try a plan when I could start regularly
joining the Sunday night recording call, and I mentioned I
was going to be away on a trip with a
friend who had gifted me and flight to New York
that she'd been stuck with when someone else canceled on her. Now,
I'm a girl from the Canadian prairies. I never thought

(42:07):
I would visit New York in my lifetime. I couldn't
pass up that chance. Amanda said, don't worry. She had
a second co host lined up in Allie's absence, a
woman named Catherine who'd been on the show before, and actually,
Amanda said, Catherine lives in New York. So, in a
strange twist of happy accidents, I was able to meet

(42:27):
Catherine in person before we became co hosts of a
remotely recorded show. And by the way, that meeting took
place on my one thousandth day of recovery, so that
felt like a lot of coincidences coming together. There was
no way that Catherine and I would have ever crossed

(42:47):
paths in this lifetime, but there we were having a
coffee and talking like old friends. Here's Catherine when she
joined the show in twenty thirteen, followed by my official
introduction as.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
A co host.

Speaker 5 (43:00):
Really honored to be a part of the Bubble Hour.
I'm a big fan and I deal with this amazing service.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Glad to be here.

Speaker 5 (43:06):
My sobriety date is April fifth, twenty twelve. I am
thirty eight years old. I'm a newly wet. The way
I got sober was I always start by saying it
was really a complete surrender. I subscribe to the theory
that we only suffer when we fight reality. That was
very true for me.

Speaker 7 (43:25):
I felt like the last two.

Speaker 5 (43:26):
Years of my drinking, I was trying to stand up
on a sheet of ice. It just wasn't predictable. I
really couldn't manage it. One glass of wine and I
could be gone, or ten glasses and I might not
feel it at all. It was really frightening. I was
really holding on to a picture of myself and trying
to control all my emotions and control my reality, when

(43:50):
in fact I was just fighting all of that. So
that surrender and that alignment with honesty has been a
big part of my getting sober, as is the daily
alliance on other sober alcoholics. Since this is a program
of alcoholidays, I thought I would share that my very
first holiday came a few days after getting sober, which

(44:11):
is Easter Sunday. You know, normally I would have felt
like I have to go to the family event, and
I have to keep everything together. I would have felt
that pressure to not let anybody down, or not look imperfect,
or not raise any eyebrows if if anybody said, well,
that's quite rude. Even if I was in crisis, I

(44:32):
would have felt angry and despairing, and I just would
have hidden it and forced myself to do it. But
this time, back in twenty twelve, I just said, I
can't do that, and that aligning with honesty has been
a really important part of my recovery. That I am empowered.
My willingness to be sober was very strong, but my

(44:55):
willingness of any length has definitely evolved. In the beginning,
I was nervous about going to recovery meetings, and then
my willingness to go there and then to try new
meetings that expanded, and at first I thought, well, if
somebody tried to tell me to go to, you know,

(45:16):
ninety meetings in ninety days, I thought, well, that there's
no way I could do that. And then I became
willing to do that, became willing to try praying, to
read different recovery literature, and it's just it's really evolved
and gotten to the point where I'm willing to do
things differently, to reach out to other sober people, even

(45:39):
making phone calls, which I just am really resistant to do.
I'm such an isolator. And so the willingness has gotten
bigger and bigger, and it's bigger than my fear of relapse,
and it's bigger than my bad memories of what it.

Speaker 12 (45:54):
Was like to be active.

Speaker 5 (45:57):
Going back to two thousand five early two thousand and six,
I was in an abusive, actively alcoholic marriage and just
really in a very brittle, physical, emotional, and spiritual state.
I was totally incapable of being authentic about my feelings

(46:20):
even to myself. I just engaged in all kinds of
avoidant behavior, tops of which was drinking because I wasn't
willing to admit the circumstances that I was in. I
just lacked the tools of how to deal with being authentic,
which being inauthentic is the source of a lot of

(46:42):
suffering from many people.

Speaker 9 (46:44):
You know.

Speaker 5 (46:44):
My family of origin was eggshell environment, with this tactic
contract to not deal with what was really there and
how we were feeling. I didn't have the tools, and
I engaged in all this avoidant behavior. In two thousand
and five, with girlfriend of mine gave me a book
called Let Go, Let Miracles Happen. The Art of Spiritual
Surrender by Kathy Cordova, and I said, oh, thanks very much,

(47:08):
that sounds interesting, and I checked it into my closet.
You know, subconsciously I knew that this was going to
be revolutionary for me. So it was sort of like
having a snake in the house. It just sort of
popped up one day and in my memory, it literally
just kind of emerged from this pile of stuff. And oddly,
that week I started hearing all kinds of messages about surrender.

(47:33):
Something my hairdresser said and something on the radio. And
then the last straw that kind of got through my
sick skull was I came home and I flipped on
the TV and it was the tail end of the
Inside the Actor's Studio episode with Michael J. Fox. Somebody
asked him about how he dealt with his career and

(47:55):
being honest with his colleagues when his Parkinson's really was
become advanced. He described how his faith would become frozen,
like in the shape of as if you just ate
a lemon for thirty forty five minutes, and it was
very painful, not to mention, frustrating, and he said, you know,
at first he could sort of fight it, and you
want to change what's happening. At a certain point, you

(48:17):
get to a place where you just say, well, this
is just where I am right now, and I sit
with it. This polanted the seed for me of admitting
who you are, how are you feeling, what exactly is
going on now. It took a number of years before
I got sober, but I actually started therapy right around

(48:37):
that time and got out of that marriage, started getting
really honest about what my behaviors were, sort of laid
a lot of groundwork once that was very helpful then
in getting sober, which it hadn't taken so long, but
we're accepting that that's what happened. So the first thing
was just being honest about how I was really feeling.

(48:59):
Fast forward through twenty twelve and finally said, Okay, I
surrender and I'm going to get sober. And the first
thing about sort of accepting what is was the semantic issue.
At first, I just really struggled.

Speaker 7 (49:15):
With the A word.

Speaker 5 (49:17):
Now I can sort of happily say I'm hi, I'm Catherine.
I'm an alcoholic, but at first I wasn't comfortable with that.
But I sort of said to myself, well, who cares
what I call it. I know what it looks like,
I know what it feels like. I know that when
I have one drink, I cannot stop, and I will
keep going until I'm physically incapable of continuing. Jerry Seinfeld

(49:42):
has the same where he says, the last working muscle
when you're watching TV is your thumb muscle that's clicking
looking for a channel. Like that was me, Like I
would be, you know, one eye open but still trying
to get another bottle of wine open. And I could
remember all of the shame around that. I could remember
this fear that I caused my new partner at the time,

(50:06):
the semantic issue of I got around it by just saying, well,
I accept that this is the truth that if I
have even one, I can't stop. And now I actually
feel fairly neutral about saying I'm an alcoholic. A newcomer
in a recovery meeting asked me, well, why do we
have to say it? I mean, can't we just be

(50:26):
here and not really say it. I think it's important
to say it, but we talk about things like being
humble and surrendering to our higher power. Maybe if that's
your path, saying the alcoholic word helps me accept that
that's just part of who I am. I'm pretty neutral
about it. It's a problem when I act on it.

(50:50):
If I stay sober, then it's really fairly neutral. It's
just part of who I am, and I have to
deal with that, just like Michael J. Fox just has
to deal with the fact that he's shaking and has
these other issues. The other thing at the beginning was
accepting what to do about it, what to do about
getting sober. And this makes me think of myriad excuses

(51:11):
that I had as to why I can't or why
it's going to be hard. Well, like in my case,
I travel a lot for work, I have to entertain
a lot. Oh, this isn't going to be possible, or
there's no way I could engage in recovery meetings because
I just don't have time, you know, and everybody's got
all of these issues. But for me, acceptance just became well,

(51:36):
is that true? If you travel for work and you're sober?
How do you reconcile those two things? Because they can coexist,
And so I accept that and it just makes it
a lot easier. The only time I suffer is when
I fight reality, then I have a hard time. But
if I don't fight it, and I say, well, help

(51:56):
me understand a solution here, how can I face over
and still entertain clients for work. Another thing was accepting
the reality of what happens when I pick up even
one drink, playing the tape forward and accepting why I
can't drink. So if somebody says you can't be that bad,

(52:19):
you weren't that bad. I have to accept that I
blacked out almost every single time I drank. At the end,
that's just the fact that helps me stay sober, because
this is why I can't drink.

Speaker 7 (52:32):
I accept that.

Speaker 5 (52:33):
Just accepting life on life's terms, that I can accept,
that I don't have to drink, that I can deal
with my emotions as they come through. I started actively
questioning my thinking or what I actually called my stories
or my fictions. I think I was a little bit
in love with being a victim. I was a little

(52:56):
bit in love with drama and suffering. I think I
really held on to that pretty tightly in some perverse way.

Speaker 7 (53:04):
But I really just thought, even in.

Speaker 5 (53:07):
Early sobriety, you know, nothing will ever change, or I
can't handle these difficult feelings or things that are happening.
Every time I've thought like that would pop in my head,
a question is that true?

Speaker 13 (53:20):
Or can you just.

Speaker 5 (53:22):
Accept your feel anxious just very second? But that's not
fundamentally who you are? And that was really really important
for me. My anxiety, which had been always been bad,
really spiked and I thought, oh great, you know, here
I am just going through this sobriety thing and it's
getting worse.

Speaker 7 (53:42):
It's just who I am, that's it.

Speaker 5 (53:44):
I'm stuck, you know. And then I would question, do
I have to accept that as reality? And the answer
was no. And I'm happy to report that that really
listed instead of sort of judging it as good or bad.
Can't we just accept that maybe we have some symptoms
as they come along, and I can keep moving. Then

(54:05):
you can take that training of yourself into having compassion
for starting with myself and then also for others. But
instead of going to the place of disaster and then
resentment and anger and all the things that I might
drink over, if I just align back with honesty and

(54:27):
realign myself and accept, Okay, it's really raining heavy out
and now I'm going to get wet, but I don't.

Speaker 4 (54:35):
Have to suffer.

Speaker 5 (54:36):
I can just accept this is how it is, and
I'm just going to move forward through it with a
lot of compassion for myself, to the world, for everyone
around me. It's just made life a heck of a
lot easier. I don't suffer nearly.

Speaker 12 (54:49):
As much as I used to.

Speaker 5 (54:53):
I'd like to start by welcoming Jean as our new
co host. We're so excited to have you. Why don't
you start by telling us a little bit of your
story of recovery.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Well, my name is Jeans. I'm a person in recovery.
For me, that means I haven't used alcohol since March
of twenty and eleven and I live in Western Canada
in a fairly small city. So online support has played
a huge role in my recovery Bogs podcast, especially the
Bubble Hour. There's a lot of great resources out there
that have been very helpful to me. Additionally, I write

(55:23):
a recovery blog called Unpickled and that chronicles my journey
from day one to presence of going through the changes
in my life that came with sobriety. I'm the last
person anyone would expect to be in recovery, or so
I thought when I began this journey. My husband and
I own a business, and we have three sons that
have grown now, so you know, super mom and super

(55:45):
working woman and leader in my community and very active
in my industry. And I volunteer on boards and I
also write music and record and perform, although I recently
gave up performing live as part of my recovery strategy
because of just too much a gentleman is really wearing
me out. I am the typical vision of a woman

(56:05):
who just goes one hundred mild an hour all day
long and then used wine as that brick on my
head at the end of the day to slow me down.
And just provide that quick shift into the making supper
and the quiet evenings at home and putting the brakes on.
Over the course of a decade, it took not only
bigger bricks and more of the bricks, but that I

(56:26):
got to wear nice relaxing evening glass of wine was
really an evening of just quietly drinking heavily, alone and silently.
And my family didn't realize. And I knew that I
was in trouble. I knew it was getting away on me. I,
as a business person, live in a world where you
can make a chart and do some research and put

(56:47):
a plan together and solve any problem. And tried that,
and I was horrified that I just could not rein
it in. And I knew I wouldn't be able to
keep it a secret for much longer. I thought that
everyone would just be shocked if they knew. But there's
nothing shocking about a superwoman having a secret. I now
know that there are millions of other women out there

(57:09):
just like me, dislike you, ladies, that are amazing accomplishments
and our overachieving tendencies and all the things we think
make it so impossible for us to be alcoholic. Is
really part of a personality pattern that often accompanies addictive personality.
So I thought I was the most surprising alcoholic in
the world, and in fact I just was very ordinary.

(57:31):
So that awareness really drives the passion for me to
help spread the news of recovery and break through those
stigmas that prevent people from asking for help. And the
shame and the isolation that we experience an addiction, I
think is unnecessary in this day and age of information
and shame kept me drinking, and misinformation kept me hiding.
I disbelieve with all my heart, but speaking out and

(57:53):
reaching out says lives. And that's why I'm so happy
to be on board with you here in the bubble
hour and just give another voice of recovery and of hope.

Speaker 12 (58:03):
Jean and Catherine, you were both new to the show
at the beginning of the year. It was actually, I
think November when you started co hosting Love two thousand
and thirteen, two new co hosts all of a sudden,
and it's like, Wow, how's this going to go? And
We've we formed this friendship, We've gotten to know each other,

(58:23):
and I've known Ellie forever and I just love you ladies.
It's really been great getting to know you and changing
myself and seeing you guys change. It's just been a
really great experience and I just love doing it.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Now.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
I would be remiss if I failed to mention one
other voice that many came to recognize as a regular
part of the show, the intro robot Love How Radio.
Here's something that only the hosts and guests from those
early seasons will know. That voice was also heard off
air all waiting for the show to begin, and it

(59:02):
was rather menacing. So if you weren't nervous before you
called into the screening room holding on the line with
all the various participants of the show, this automated voice
would jangle everyone's nerves when it counted us in.

Speaker 7 (59:15):
Your Shoe is scheduled to start in twin.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Ten minutes, five minutes, three minutes, one minute, and finally.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Your Shoe will go live in five seconds.

Speaker 7 (59:26):
Four three two one.

Speaker 5 (59:31):
Block hold radio.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
So listeners just heard the nice part on those early episodes. Eventually,
we learned how to turn off the tag altogether and
eliminated it from the start of the shows entirely. I
have left it up on the episodes that are on
Patreon just for old times sake, so Patreon members can
still hear it. Otherwise, it's being removed from the old
episodes and replaced with the theme music, which did you

(01:00:02):
notice has been updated to include all the voices from
those past hosts.

Speaker 5 (01:00:08):

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):

Speaker 5 (01:00:14):
We welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bubble Hour.

Speaker 6 (01:00:17):
Oh A, disn't not prap.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
I love it the we we're all represented there together.
It makes me smile every time I hear it. So
it was a happy day. When Ellie returned to the
show in twenty fourteen. I knew she'd been away in treatment,
but I had not heard any of the details. I
didn't know really anything about what had happened with her,
But I was really excited when she was coming back
to the show. I was really looking forward to hosting together.

(01:00:44):
The rest of us had decided it wasn't our place
to share the reason for Ellie's absence, except to say
she was taking some time off, so when she returned,
I was curious to see what exactly she would decide
to share on air. True to her nature. Ellie was
generous and forthcoming when she told the story of her relapse.
I heard it for the first time along with the audience.

Speaker 5 (01:01:04):
Longtime listeners of the program will recognize our next guest, Ellie.
She is a founder of the Bubble Hour and we're
really pleased to welcome Ellie back to the show.

Speaker 4 (01:01:14):
It's great to be back talking with you, guys. I
got sober for the first time in two thousand and
seven after drinking for twenty years. I knew I was
an alcoholic. I knew I had a problem, but I
just did not want to stop. I felt like that
alcohol was the thing that held me together and just
refused to acknowledge that it was a thing that was
tearing me apart from the inside out. My husband had

(01:01:35):
had it, my house was sailing, and lots of consequences
were happening because of my drinking. Eventually, I ended up
in a thirty day program, which was phenomenal, and when
I got out of that, I didn't want to be sober,
but I didn't want to drink anymore, so I just
went ahead and did what they told me to do,
just because it was the only thing I hadn't tried,
which was to listen and to get help. I became
very active in recovery. I went to a lot of

(01:01:56):
recovery meetings. The community that I found there was the
spark behind and beginning things like the Bubble Hour, because
I really felt as though that feeling of relief that
I felt when I would hear other people tell my
story and express the feelings that I had that when
I was drinking, I really felt like the only one
who felt those things, or who did these crazy things
like hide bottles or life for no reason. The power

(01:02:17):
of community was so uplifting and fraying for me that
I got very, very immersed in recovery, both in my
in real life communities with meetings and recovery people and
sponsors and things like that, and also in the online
community and in recovery advocacy. I did get very busy,
but felt manageable and a really great balance of putting
my recovery first. If I stayed sober, then everything else

(01:02:40):
in my life would stay intact and healthy in balance.
And in twenty eleven I had a really tough year.
My dad died really suddenly, and then three months later
I was diagnosed with cancer. With intensive chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
A lot of the pay medication and things that they
had to give me as a result of my cancer
treatment flared up my addictions, but I never became dependent
on those pay medications. But it sort of poked the beast,

(01:03:02):
It woke the monster up. When I started to feel
better coming out of my cancer treatment, I had been
offline from my recovery community for about eight or nine months,
and I went into full blown workoholism mode, so I
don't have time for my own personal recovery. I honestly
felt that just by working with other alcoholics and recovery
and talking to other alcoholics and recovery, that that was

(01:03:24):
the same thing as working in personal program or recovery.
What I was doing was running. I was running from
the pain of my dad's loss. I was running from
fear and the anxiety experience as a part of having cancer.
I did not want to feel, I did not want
to think, and I certainly didn't want to stop moving,

(01:03:44):
because as soon as I stopped moving, I would get
that sort of existential angst and that itch. But the
outside world, it looked like I was lighting the world
on fire. The people that I did still stay in
touch with that were part of my recovery community would
say things to me like, Ellie, you do know that
you're acting impulsively and obsessively and compulsively. The only thing
you haven't done is picked up a drink. And I

(01:04:04):
completely dismissed what they had to say because the rest
of the world, the quote unquote normal people who aren't
aware of the way that people look when they're sliding
into a relapse. We're saying, look at you go, and
you just really seem to be at the top of
your game. If all these people think I'm okay, then
I must be okay. Right from the end of my
cancer treatments to what I actually picked up a drink

(01:04:25):
was about.

Speaker 7 (01:04:25):
A year and a half.

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
By the time I actually relapsed, I was in so
much emotional pain. I wasn't asking for help, I wasn't
interested in anybody's help. Basically wanted to deal with everybody
else's issues rather than my own. Was an opportunistic thing.
I had vanilla extract, which has alcohol in it, in
my pantry one day, and I, without even thinking, I

(01:04:46):
remembered hearing that that had alcohol in it, and I
drank it to be protective of my recovery. I can't
really be around anything that could lead to what I
call an opportunistic relapse. I know now it was a
giant cry for help. Session to drink came immediately back.
It did not matter that I had almost six years
of sobriety under my belt. It was instantaneous. Because I

(01:05:09):
was so far away from my recovery community, so far
away from working on myself. I wanted to hide from myself,
and that's the only way that my disease myself. I
knew how to do that, and there was that fifteen
seconds of relief of oh, right now, I'm okay in
my own skin, and then the wheels came completely off
of us. Within hours, I'm driving to liquor store to

(01:05:32):
by vodka, knowing full well that id re left, that
I was in a heap of trouble, that I was
physically addicted immediately again, and I didn't care because I
just couldn't stand myself for one second longer. There's still
a lot of people in my life that are very
close to me and insisted that I go get help.
So I went back to the thirty day treatment program.

(01:05:53):
Within two weeks of being there, I was fighting to
get out. Someone in my life came to me at
the the three half and sat down and said, no,
I don't hear surrender from you. I hear you scrambling
to get your life back. I hear a lot of ego.
I hear your addictions speaking to me. You need to
stop and focus on yourself. And I got so angry.
I was terrified. The last person in the world that

(01:06:17):
I wanted to be stuck with with me. So I
took the last two weeks of that thirty day program,
when I listened quietly and I was a good student.
Then I reluctantly agreed that I needed to make a
lot of changes and simplify my life. And I got
out of that program and I went home, and I
made a lot of promises and I kept them for
maybe a couple of weeks, I don't know, saying that
I had stopped being so busy, and I would focus

(01:06:39):
on myself and I wouldn't overextend the message of anything
you put in front of your recovery, you're going to lose.
I ignored that. I thought my kids need me. I've
just been away from them for thirty days, and my
businesses are struggling, and so many people stepped in when
I was away to make sure that I could focus
on myself. But all I wanted was my life back.
I didn't want to make those changes, and I didn't

(01:06:59):
want to do the hard work. I did go back
to recovery meetings, and I sat there for three or
four times a week, but I was not surrendered. I
was not willing. I still wasn't a good enough reason
for me to stay sober. Recovery is nothing if it's
not an inside job.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
And when I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:07:16):
Uncomfortable in my own skin, and when only the person
that you want to hide from the most is yourself,
that's a really dangerous place to be in. I needed
a lot more help than I was asking for. Defiance
is a big part of my story, so I made
it ninety days before I put myself in a situation
that was dangerous taking care of somebody else in a very,
very triggery environment where there was alcohol around. There was

(01:07:37):
wine in a refrigerator that was open, and I opened
the refrigerator to pull out some leftovers to heat up
for dinner, and I pulled out a bottle of wine. Instead,
and I just drank it. There was not a moment's thought.
There was not a moment's like maybe I should call somebody,
or maybe I should ask for help. It was almost
an out of body experience, like watching my hand reach
for the bottle and thinking, well, here we go. My
releft lasted about an hour. I got in the car

(01:07:59):
and tried to drive home with my kids, and we
have a whole safety plan in place because of my
first relapse, and my daughter recognized that I was driving
too slow and asked me to pull over. And about
five minutes after she asked me to pull over, I
started to go into a grayout, which she called the police,
and the police came and I was arrested, and I
had a DUI with child engagement and a heap of
legal trouble and a very very angry husband and kids

(01:08:20):
that I had scared half to death. You know, it's
a miracle that things didn't go much much much worse.
Sober women that have been by my side the entire
time came in and just looked me straight in the
eye and said, you know, no more messing around. You're
going for long term treatment. You're going for at least
sixty days, ninety days, if we can get it and
it's all about you. It really for me, it was

(01:08:41):
a life and death situation. I mean, thank god. I
could have fought it, and I could have tried to
make excuses, but there was nothing left to go back to.
By going into longer term treatment, I had to sit
with myself. The wreckage that I experienced as a result
of that last relapse is staggering. You know. Here I
was somebody who was out front in the public eye
all the time talking about recovery, adveracy, doing a podcast.

(01:09:03):
Ninety days of just focusing on my recovery and on myself.
Recovery is completely an inside job. It's not something that
can be done with your head. With my head. It's
my thinking and my brain that gets me in trouble.
I had to move it from my head to my heart,
and I had to fall in love with myself again.
I would rather get sober one hundred times over than
sit down and look at a lot of the old

(01:09:25):
wounds in my life. But I know now that until
I did that, I could have built the strongest recovery
in the world. If I'm building a recovery castle on
a swamp. It's going to think I can remember when
I got sober the first time I thought, you know,
I'm really glad I'm married, or I'm really glad I
have kids, and I'm really glad I have these outside
factors that I'm afraid of losing because I think without them,

(01:09:46):
I'm not sure I could stay sober. Right now, it's very,
very blessed to be back with my kids and living
at home, and I've really simplified my life. Recovery is
a full time job for me now separated from my husband.
And that's the kind of thing that would have sent
me right into a relapse before, all these things that
I could never imagine staying sober through that, I could

(01:10:09):
never imagine finding a purpose, a way to keep going.
That to lose those outside things would just be unbearable.
I'm finding a sense of self worth. I'm finding a
sense of self confidence, which is completely the opposite of ego.
But to find that sort of sacred space within myself,
finding out who I am when I'm not in any
kind of spotlight, and finding out who I am when

(01:10:30):
nobody's watching and when nobody's home, and wanting it for me,
wanting peace of mind and filling that hole that I
have in my soul that I think I'll always carry
around to a certain degree. A good friend of mine said,
you know, sometimes God taps you on the shoulder, and
sometimes he elbows you in the teeth. I'm not saying
that I'm grateful for all the hardships I've been through,
but i am grateful to be somebody who remains teachable.

(01:10:53):
If I'm negotiating with myself, if I'm negotiating with people
around me, that's the first line of a relapse. It
scared me that I could know I was an alcoholic.
It scared me that I could know that my life
would fall apart if I drank. And not only did
I do it once, I did it twice. I relapsed twice.
That's really kind of a slow form of suicide, or
perhaps a quick one, depending on how unlucky you are.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
For the next few years, Ellie, Amanda, Catherine and I
would spend every Sunday evening on air, taking turns, leading
and participating in discussions, arranging guests and topics. It was
a demanding position, but also fulfilling and enlightening. There was
never conflict or drama. We all just showed up and
gave from the heart holding space for each other and

(01:11:38):
for the guests who so generously gave their time to participate.
I loved Sunday evenings.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
You know, Catherine and I joined the show in order
to give Ellie a break so that she could work
on her own recovery. Ellie, we were so excited when
you came back on the show. It was so wonderful
for so many reasons. Not Ellie, because we were really
excited to host with you, as both of us are
fans of the show before we joined it, but also

(01:12:05):
because we were so happy for you that you were
feeling strong and ready to come back. What was it
like to be away from the show, What was it
like to come back, and what was your first episode?

Speaker 9 (01:12:15):
Like?

Speaker 4 (01:12:16):
Oh wow, I'm feeling pretty emotional if I have a
real lump in my throat, completely burned out. The Bubble
Hour had actually become kind of a burden for me.
It wasn't something I even looked forward to doing because
I felt so worthless and so full of shame. Now
I was sliding into a relapse. I didn't even know
I was heading for a drink. I would have sworn

(01:12:36):
up and down that I wasn't. I had been enough,
way more than I could chew, and I kind of
thought that I had to be the center of everything,
that everything had to bottleneck through me. You know, I
had my hands just wrapped so tightly around the wheel
of everything. I kind of let go of it all.
I sort of free fell away from my life, the
fact that Catherine, that you and Jean were able to

(01:12:57):
step in the way that you did, and I was
gone for the show only a year to watch the
three of you grow this little crazy, mad cap idea
that I had into what it is now, and the
people that you've reached, and the way that the three
of you come together, and the way you compliment each other,
the way you're different, the way you're the same. I'm
really staggered. I mean, there's no other word for it.

(01:13:19):
My heart is just I am. It's overflowing with gratitude, really,
really and truly for all three of you and guests
and listeners and who Now. I don't find myself speechless
very often, but I kind of feel that way tonight.
I think of all the things that I had to
walk away from, despite how burned out I was, the
Bubble Hour was probably the one that I worried about
the most. But I had to completely, one hundred percent

(01:13:42):
let go of everything, and I couldn't be in touch
and find out, you know, how are things going and
who's going to be the guest and what's happening here.
I had to completely cocoon myself into treatment twice, thirty
days in the fall, and then ninety days again, and
from March to June. It's by far the hardest thing
ever done, walking away from my life as I knew it.

(01:14:02):
It was a year of shedding masks for me, and
when I came back to the Bubble Hour, didn't I
don't even think of myself as a co host of
the Bubble Hour. I think of myself as a friend
of Jeane and Amanda and Catherine. To be able to
ease back into the Bubble Hour and feel so safe
with you guys and feel so welcomed at home, I
feel like I learned from you guys all the time.

(01:14:25):
The show is a gift to me now, starting with
Lisa and continuing with all of you, and certainly with
all the guests that we've had. I'm humbled and grateful
for the amount of vulnerability and courage, because those two
things in my mind come hand in hand, that have
come from everybody who's been a part of it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
Eventually four of us would gather in person, just once,
and you'll hear more about that in an upcoming episode.
True to her word, Lisa did return as a guest
multiple times, sharing her warmth and insight as she continues
to live life in recovery.

Speaker 7 (01:14:59):
Good well come as long as I keep doing the
next right thing, which is really what my goal is
every day, and that's the best I can do. And
if I know I'm doing that, I am okay with myself.
I can go to sleep at night and be okay
knowing I'm doing the best I can with any given situation.
That doesn't always mean I'm doing the right thing or
the perfect thing. That I'm doing the best I can.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
For now, I hope these voices have filled your heart
as they do mine. I am forever grateful to Ellie
and Lisa and Amanda and Catherine, and it is my
honor to have stood among them as a host of
the Bubble Hour, which is I dare say iconic as
an early standard bearer of the form of recovery podcasting.

(01:15:43):
Come back soon for the next episode, when we'll share
a laugh about some of the inglorious moments we experienced.
If you love the show and you want to give
us a boost, there are loads of ways to do so.
A five star reviews easy and impactful, and please subscribe
to our spinoff podcast, Tiny Bubbles and review it if
you would be so cold. And you can also join
us on Patreon and help offset the expenses of maintaining

(01:16:04):
the archives, and in exchange, you'll get access to full
episodes from the backlist ad free. And don't forget to
nab a copy of our book, Take Good Care Recovery
Readings inspired by the Bubble Hour. It's available on Amazon.
Thanks for listening. I'm Geen McCarthy. I'll be here when
you're ready to hear more from this season, so do
come back soon, and until then, please take good care.

Speaker 6 (01:16:26):
Own it A didn't not proud, but thats we and
let U face and take a little dignity. Not looking
for excuses, I just want to be free from the
power waiting us head off me.

Speaker 8 (01:16:48):
In a dun Corners where Shane lives to Hannah.

Speaker 3 (01:16:57):
Guest job just.

Speaker 6 (01:16:58):
Because you'll keep it up it just stays and wait
there to rob you of your pride.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Turn the light on.

Speaker 7 (01:17:08):
Turn the light on.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
You can't shine away.

Speaker 6 (01:17:11):
You see them on a different not proud, that was me,
and things if I take that a little dignity. Another excuses,
I just want to be breathed no power.

Speaker 8 (01:17:29):
Oh yes, s. You don't have to shout it out
on main streets and you don't need to whisper to confession.
And the person you should talk to is look in

(01:17:52):
at you in the mirror and on all matters as
can always.

Speaker 5 (01:17:57):
Hear you away you see.

Speaker 6 (01:18:00):
Different, not proud, but thats me.

Speaker 8 (01:18:03):
And when I face, I take back.

Speaker 6 (01:18:06):
A little dignity. Another from excuses, I just want to
be free from power by yours. When you see a different,
not prad that was me, and that face, I take
back a little thing to hear I'm a little form

(01:18:31):
excuse it. I just want to be free from the
power as free, free, free, bree Breeze,

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