November 21, 2022 • 53 mins
This episode focuses on a special weekend when Ellie, Amanda, Catherine, and Jean met up in Boston. They recorded a live show together and got to know each other in person. Listen to some highlights from the recorded conversation and hear Jean's insights about meeting her co-hosts in person for the first time. 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 Host Jean McCarthy www.jeanmccarthy.ca Support us on Patreon https://patreon.com/thebubblehour
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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 face.
Let's take a little dignity.
Speaker 7 (00:47):
Not looking for excuses. I just want to be free.
Speaker 6 (00:52):
From the power.
Speaker 7 (00:54):
WI us head on to be free, free, free, free Free.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I'm Jean McCarthy, and you're listening to They'll Bubble Hour.
Welcome to episode five, or halfway through our ten part
retrospective on a decade of the bubba our podcast.
Speaker 7 (01:17):
Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I'm laughing right now because I'm thinking that it has
taken me months to get this far into the project,
to build these episodes, and some of you will listen
to all of them in a day while you're on
a long drive or cleaning the floor or painting or something.
And it's just funny to me the difference between the
amount of time it's taking me to get these to
(01:39):
you versus the amount of time it will take you
to consume them.
Speaker 7 (01:43):
And I'm thinking of, you.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Know, making handmade pro geese, or I bake something called
beat rolls that take a long time to make, and
my family eats them very quickly. And I always feel
this strange reality reconciliation between the time put in versus
the time to consume. But nevertheless, here we are. I'm
dedicating this entire episode to the Boston meetup. To me,
(02:06):
it was a pivotal moment in our relationship. I didn't
know it at the time, but looking back on it now,
as I'm going through these archives, I'm realizing how important
this meetup was. Here's Amanda reflecting on that meetup a
few years after it occurred.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
That was incredible. Jean, Catherine, Ellie and I had never met,
so we decided to have a meetup and we rented
in Jamaica plane and the four of us hung out
for a weekend. And since there's so many local listeners,
we invited them over and we had a bubble hour
party and it was so cool.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
For those of you that don't know, because I didn't know,
Jamaica plane is in Boston, and I flew to Boston
in February and it was cold as an ass and
we couldn't leave our little apartment because it was so cold.
Member Amanda, we ran across the street three times a
day to get food from Whole Foods, and then the
rest of the time were just indoors in our pajamas,
(03:06):
talking from seven am till two in the morning.
Speaker 7 (03:09):
For about four days straight.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And at the end of it, we had a potluck
supper and it was so cool, so cool, And we'd
been doing the show for years and hadn't met in person.
Catherine and I had met because I happened to be
in her hometown right before we both started the show.
And it's weird to me when you say that that
it's the one and only time we met, because I
swear you're my cousin or my best friend or all
(03:35):
next door.
Speaker 7 (03:37):
I'm sure I've known you in your whole life.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I know, just incredible, the bonds that we build and recovery.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
We met in Boston, because that's where Elli and Amanda lived,
and the bubble hour party that Amanda mentioned was very special. Indeed,
a handful of listeners from the area joined us in
the living room of our little weekend rental. We had
appies and conversation, lots and lots of laughter. It was
really a beautiful, special thing and I treasure that memory.
But the majority of our time was just the four
(04:06):
of us together in this little second story flat, and
I can only hope that whoever lived downstairs was either
very patient or hard of hearing. I am so happy
that we took the time to record a conversation in
that weekend. I just want to suggest to you do this.
I mean, you don't have to have a podcast to
record a conversation. If you are ever having a special
(04:28):
get together with friends or family, or just for your
own personal use, even have a guided conversation that you
can hang on to and listen to later. It is
an absolute gift. We recorded this little chat around the
kitchen table. It was all vintage furniture. It was very eclectic,
and as I recall, there was also a very scary
(04:48):
clown painting. But we just used simple recording equipment and
we did our best to capture the spirit of our friendship.
This is really representative of what the rest of the
weekend sound. You can hear the fondness and comfort that
we share with one another, and you can hear smiling.
Speaker 7 (05:05):
There was so much laughter.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You might wonder if this recording was actually made during
the party that we had, but no, this was just
the four of us. I had spent years talking with
these women about our recovery, but that weekend I really
got to know them differently. I learned a lot more
about them, you know. That weekend. I learned that cooking
was very important to Amanda because her mother was a cook,
(05:27):
and her mother had died young, and so that was
one way that she brought her mother's memory into her
own life. And I also remember watching Catherine blow drawing
her gorgeous long red hair, watching her mannerisms and just
how she moved and conducted herself. And I also remember
she had a really terrible head cold and that she
was powering through it all. I just watched in wonder
(05:50):
at the presence of these other women, and I found
it so cute that after years of hearing Ellie WHI
was bringing to her kids during the podcast, you know,
should be quiet. It was really cool to be able
to hear her talking to her kids on the phone,
to hear the kindness and love in their exchange versus
the hushed whispers that we usually all offered our family
(06:11):
members and dogs and whoever was interrupting our recordings. So
picture us there, Picture us in that cozy, wee little kitchen.
It's a cold, cold, snowy night outside. It was February.
We were wearing sweaters and cozy socks. We all had
missed matched mugs of tea. There's a plate of hummus
on the table, So pull up a chair and join us.
Speaker 7 (06:36):
Today. We're all together. We're together, We're a retreat. The
silence you hear around me right now is the only
silence this room has experienced in the past forty eight hours.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Hello, Hi, Hi, Jane, Hi, Catherine, Hi, Jene, hiail Hi.
Speaker 5 (06:54):
Ladies.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
We have squeaky chairs and you have cups of tea.
We're going to be talking about getting unstuck. So we
broke it down using the trans theoretical model of change.
We pass through various stages as we make a big change,
and this is brue when it comes to recovery. So
we thought we'd explore those different stages and talk about
(07:18):
what each stage looked like for us. The stages of
change pre contemplation, contemplation, preparation, and action.
Speaker 7 (07:30):
I was gonna say, Amanda, but Catherine's handwriting.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So so let's start with pre contemplation. This is the
stage where you're not ready, You're not thinking about anything
being wrong. You are in the problem unaware. Pre contemplation, Ellie,
what did that look like for you?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I think for me, pre contemplation was a general, even
vague sense that something in my life a balance, that
it wasn't right.
Speaker 7 (08:02):
But I was not exploring inward for the problem.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
I was sort of looking circumstantially around the people in
my life and situations and my job or my relationships
I would carry with me in a sense.
Speaker 7 (08:14):
Of unease or imbalance or anxiety.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Not only was the thinking about my drinking being at
the root of the problem, not in my consciousness, nor
was I part of the problem.
Speaker 7 (08:26):
It was a great phase of deflection. If only this person.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Would act differently, if only this job wasn't so stressful,
A profound seeking stage for me.
Speaker 7 (08:34):
But without ever looking inward at myself right to address
that I'm a common denominator in any situation I put myself.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
I couldn't understand why things kept getting worse.
Speaker 7 (08:44):
I know, yes, I was married to an.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Act an alcoholic, because I pinned a lot on to him.
Why am I so stuck? Why is this so hard?
I'm working so hard and everything is a struggle for me.
Even when I had consequences, I normalized them. I was
a black oed drinker from kind of the get go.
Speaker 7 (09:06):
How was I never alarmed? Shoot? I almost.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
Chrum. I'm normalized consequences like throwing up or being hungover
at work?
Speaker 7 (09:24):
Qristian Catherine, Is.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
That because you thought that alcohol was the solution to
fixing the things that we're wrong in your life?
Speaker 5 (09:30):
Not only that, that through line carried through fifteen years
and alcoholic drinking, where I was like, you would drink
too if you had my life.
Speaker 7 (09:40):
My life is.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
So hard and I deserve this, and I work so hard,
and my marriage is so challenging, and.
Speaker 7 (09:48):
So it's more than just rationalizing, it's actually defending.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Yeah yeah, yeahs like it's a reward, It's something I
deserve because it does work at first?
Speaker 7 (10:00):
Does yeah? It dark help stet first, and then it
really doesn't right right.
Speaker 8 (10:05):
I surrounded myself with people who drank like me, and
I really didn't want to hang out with you unless
you drank like I did. I'd wake up in the
morning with this immense sense of dread. What did I
do the night before? I ask, with the tiptoe around
my headeah, then to see like is he mad at me?
Speaker 7 (10:21):
Is he happy with me?
Speaker 9 (10:22):
Like?
Speaker 7 (10:22):
I look for evidence of what I had done.
Speaker 8 (10:24):
Because I was the same as you, Catherine, I would
I was a blackout drinker. Yeah, not necessarily every night,
but when I was going for like on the weekends
or something, I mean, actually, yeah, eventually that's not into
the week too. The worst feeling in the world to
me was being told what I did the night before.
Speaker 7 (10:44):
Oh, I hated that.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
The other part of this that I remember in this
space also was the possessiveness about alcohol.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
Of a I would never go.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
I would never go to the ac city that didn't
involve alcohol. Yeah, these no veangs go to dinner three
friends and the order a bottle of wine, and I
get that little jolt of almost like panic, like, well
that's for me, wory you guys.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
It didn't come with any chambers guilt or defensiveness really.
Speaker 8 (11:12):
As much as this is what I do, I would
like almost like belittle the people that were with me,
like I'm getting another drink.
Speaker 10 (11:18):
I don't know about you, Like you can join in
and be cool like me, or even be a loser whatever,
it's your call, and I'm the big bat loser like
a drug every time.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Yeah, that was part of this too, Leaving perfectly nice
evenings out.
Speaker 7 (11:37):
To go home and drink like I wanted to. Yeah, unapologetically.
Speaker 5 (11:41):
Well, I actually was thinking about it when we we
got together the other day, starting out this long weekend,
unless it was going to be a rage and the
four of us were assured to just be here with
bottles and bottles of wine. If it were just a
normal girl's weekend, I would have been like, no, I
(12:02):
can't do that. Don't these people know how busy I
am and I can't. I can't you know, take the time,
make this happen, and then run the risk of having to,
you know, share what was really going on with me.
I didn't even know what was.
Speaker 7 (12:19):
Going on with me.
Speaker 8 (12:20):
Yeah, well you can't escape, right, like say you can't
go home at the end of the day and drink
like the way that you want to if you're away
with people people for a week.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
I hated that.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah, this is also a point where I did a
lot of doctor shopping.
Speaker 7 (12:33):
I did.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
I was looking for a diagnosis of something. I was
postpartum depression or it was anxiety. And I would go
see therapists and I would tell them everybody everything but
how much I drank. And if they asked me how
much I drank, I would minimize it or all right, lie,
not because I thought I had a problem necessarily, but
because it wasn't really any of their business.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
You know, that's not the problem.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Most people structure they're drinking around their life, and I
would structure my life around my drinking.
Speaker 7 (12:59):
But it was a conscious chores.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
It was.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I'm just made sure no matter what situation I put
myself in. And I wouldn't let my kids sign herself
up for a sports activity that needed to pick up
at eight o'clock unless I could find somebody else to
give her a ride. And I never said to myself,
because eight o'clock is when I'm drinking, I said, that's
all too late for her to be out for sports,
she needs to do coal work, and so my life came.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
To a grinding halt by five o'clock every night. By design.
I think that that's when I wanted to make sure
that I could drink.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
We hear that a lot from moms, in particular the
school dances and the sports and and whatever.
Speaker 7 (13:33):
Things in my life that would have been a joy.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Otherwise my sober life were an inconvenience because they interfere.
Speaker 7 (13:39):
They interfered me. It wasn't something that I felt defensive
or guilty about.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
So it sounds like all of us were in a problem,
unaware of what the problem was, projecting outward that there
was about, with the possible exception of Amanda, who was
having a good old time and not even know.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
There was a problem.
Speaker 8 (13:56):
No, I accepted the fact that there was a problem,
and I was okay with it, all right.
Speaker 7 (14:00):
Like this is my normal.
Speaker 8 (14:01):
I'm a party girl, deal with it, you know, this
is who I am. I don't have kids, I have
a good job, I have a house. You can't tell
me what to do. And I would just normalize it,
like I'm not hurting anyone and I'm not doing anything.
Speaker 7 (14:12):
Yeah, that was a big one. I was like, who
am I hurting?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yeah, I'm gett into work every day and I'm a
contributing member of So.
Speaker 7 (14:19):
Yeah, I'm not as mad as Buddy up the street. Right.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
I conveniently married somebody who was older and more progressed
in his disease than me. I could blame it all
on him and say, well, I'm not that bad, right, Yeah? Right?
Speaker 1 (14:39):
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(15:59):
maybe listeners find themselves in pre contemplation at the stage,
but probably if you're listening to the Bubble Hour and
you're at the very minimum in the contemplation stage, which
is where you start to acknowledge that something isn't right.
And I wrote a post about these stages of change
on Pickle. The post is called how I Knew it
was time to quit drinking And for this stage of contemplation,
(16:22):
I wrote, I began to feel an acknowledgment and growing
discomfort with the reality of my habits. I started to
pay attention to the red flags. I began watching celebrity
rehab with intense focus while drinking. So still in the problem,
but starting to realize, oh.
Speaker 7 (16:41):
I got a little problem with my drinking.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
I didn't want to stop yet, but I definitely started
to feel like.
Speaker 7 (16:49):
Oh crap. I think I know what the problem was.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
That this was me in front of the computer with
a glass of wine, with like one eye clo. Going
to the Alcoholics Anonymous website. They have a quiz that's
like twelve questions. Have you ever found to stop for
a week? Have you ever missed work because of your drinking?
Do you have blackouts? I was carefully picking my way
(17:15):
through these questions. Blackouts, yes, only every once in a while.
But yes, do you drink in the morning? No? Do
you drink alone? No, that's only alcoholics do that? Have
you ever missed work? Well, like maybe, so I carefully
pick my.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
Way through these questions, and.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
I remember thinking that however many it was like five
out of twelve were yes, So that was life probably okay,
if not good. And I get to the bottom and
they say, if you answered even.
Speaker 7 (17:49):
One of these, But that's not the funny part.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
The funny part is that I went back to the
same website, at least that I remember two other times.
It took the exact same quiz, knowing what that tagline
was at the bottom, and hoping for a different outcome.
And if there's anything that describes fifteen years of alcoholic
(18:19):
drinking in my life, it's that that I hoped for
a different outcome every single time, like maybe now it
will be different than it is.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
I was in magical thinking whish for fifteen Yeah, yeah,
it was.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
It was not only trying to find ways to sort
of disqualify myself from the alcoholic or problem drinker club.
Speaker 7 (18:40):
I was trying to.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Add evidence into the other column of I can't be because.
And I lived in this stage as contemplation stage for years.
Speaker 7 (18:49):
It progressed over those six or seven years.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
But for instance, when I was pregnant with my daughter,
my first child, I didn't drink. It wasn't some sort
of moral high ground at whatever reason, I felt.
Speaker 7 (19:00):
Pretty good as a pregnant lady.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
I had this great identity look at the pregnant lady
and put a big fat check in that I can't
be an alcoholic, comb totally ignoring the fact that I'm
building a column.
Speaker 7 (19:11):
Of I didn't enter.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Not everybody has that, not everybody has a less apparent way.
But so I would have like nine hundred checks of
though maybe I have in trouble, and then one make
check that I can't be because, and then conveniently looking
for the evidence to support that.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
I would sort of picture in my line when I
thought of it as like what a real alcoholic look.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Like and astonishing the power of this wishful thinking that
the denial structure that we build them out our maladaptive behaviors,
because if I go on a hunt for evidence to
the contract, I can always find it, and can we
ignore the things that are speaking the other way. The
other piece of this is the moving of the line.
I would say things like I only drink when my
(19:55):
kids are asleep, so I'm not really hurting them, I'm
not really really an issue. And if I ever start
to do that, I'll really curb my drinking. And before
I know it, I'm starting to drink at four or
three in the afternoon without even thinking about that rule
that I would justify it some other way, and like, well,
today was a particularly hard day. The lines became blurry
or blurrier. Virtually there was no line because I would
(20:18):
completely move it.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
What were some of the I'm not an alcoholic because
I hadn't be an alcoholic because dot dot dot.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
I work really hard and I keep getting promoted.
Speaker 7 (20:32):
I loved that one.
Speaker 8 (20:34):
Yeah, any that was mine, And I also had examples
in my life family members, they're an alcoholic. I might
have a little problem sometimes, but that's what an alcoholholic
looks like, no, they don't look like me. Right, I'm
gonna go swim in the morning at six o'clock in
the morning, and I would have active thoughts as I'm
doing strokes through the water, like alcoholics totally don't do that.
Speaker 7 (20:55):
I have that in my stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
I never would say to myself I can stop at
any time, because you.
Speaker 7 (21:05):
Always hear that as one of those.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Announcement a thing's alcoholics saying I can quit at any time.
Speaker 7 (21:15):
That I would be like, so I knew better than this,
so I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 5 (21:18):
But I would be like, why would I want to?
Speaker 7 (21:24):
But like, I don't want to, So, yeah, I really
my stigmatized vision an alcoholic.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yeah, look, we have all my own teeth and have
your teeth fall out. I thought I had a friend
who would be drinking wine and I do.
Speaker 7 (21:38):
Do I need to quit? She'd be like, no, fine,
if you're an alcoholic, I'm an alcoholic.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
And then I would think, well, I can't call myself
an alcoholic because that would hurt her feelings hurt and
she's a really good person and she does a lot
she's not I can't. Yeah, you know, next up alcobal
our code dependent.
Speaker 8 (22:03):
One of the best validations I had was I had
a little legal trouble, as some people know, and so
my probation officer sent me to see addictions.
Speaker 7 (22:11):
Therapist to evaluate me, to see if I had a problem.
Speaker 8 (22:14):
It was literally an hour of answering all those twenty questions,
but way more and you had to rate different things
in your life. And I went there. First of all,
I was still drinking. When I sat down to review
the form with the therapist. I told her that I
wasn't drinking, that I had gotten in a little trouble,
and I just thought it better.
Speaker 7 (22:31):
That I stay away for now.
Speaker 8 (22:32):
And we went through the questions and she said, you know, well,
I don't really think you're an alcoholic.
Speaker 7 (22:38):
I think, you know, you could probably have a couple
glasses of wine.
Speaker 10 (22:42):
I was like, I went to my prevation officer.
Speaker 7 (22:46):
See, I don't have to go to a program. I
don't have to go to a mind that you're going
to your probation officer.
Speaker 5 (22:54):
I have heard it that that if you have had
legal trouble because of your drinking chances.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I think that's question ten on the Amanda.
Speaker 7 (23:05):
And I grew up together and we've been friends for
a long time, but.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
I think we were probably in our twenties and Amanda's
father was in recovery, and Amanda actually went to her
father was like, Ellie and I don't want to be
alcoholics because we never want to stop drinking.
Speaker 7 (23:19):
Is that about time?
Speaker 11 (23:22):
He said, perhaps you might already have a friend, and
he has given you permission to talk about Yes, he
has talked about.
Speaker 7 (23:33):
Him before, permission to talk about it. Yees.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
So we've talked about pre contemplation where you're not aware
I'm not ready.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Contemplation when you start to twig in that. Oh, I
think it might be the alcohol. And preparation is where
you start gathering information, making plans, start gearing up to
make a change.
Speaker 7 (23:57):
We start to look at what is it going to
take off this problem?
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I would say most people move into the preparation page
of change thinking.
Speaker 7 (24:06):
How can I solve this without quitting drinking?
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Right for me, I think it was the only place
I could get into preparation. If that's going to be
the only answer, I'll just stay right where I am. Yeah,
I'm just ligne jack.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And I think that's why a lot of people in
the stage and start with preparation and they try to moderate.
And this is where a lot of us find, Oh, paper,
I cannot moderate, right, which you can moterate for a day, yeah, right,
So you can't string a couple of dates together. And
so that, for a lot of us is another confirmation
(24:39):
that I do have.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
I want to throw a quick plug in a strange
way to phrase it for the binge drinkers though, because
I know that that particular pattern of drinking comes with
its own kind of symptomology and it can be actually
very difficult, I think, to kind of figure out where
you fit in and the spectrum of addiction when you're
a binge drinker.
Speaker 7 (25:00):
And that for me.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
This in this preparation phase, in this moderation phase, that's
when I started to pay ten And you explain binge drinking,
Bin's drinking would be you could go for days, weeks,
sometimes even months without drinking, but then when you drink,
you go all out and.
Speaker 7 (25:14):
Where you don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
You don't know what's going to happen, and you can
drink for days on end or a day just a day.
When you drink, you find yourself in situations that would
not happen to you if you were in D's sob in.
This stage is when I started having awareness of the
lack of an off switch, right, and that meaning if
I had won, I had very little control over how
(25:36):
many more I had or what happened. You do not
d drink daily, but when you do drink, that off
switch becomes something that's impossible.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
What you're talking about, I think Ellie is assessing the
relationship with not the hall and whether it's a binge drinking.
Speaker 7 (25:49):
People can really justify that binge drinking thing. I mean,
it was my cousin's wedding.
Speaker 8 (25:54):
Right right, of course I went all out right, yeah
it was.
Speaker 5 (25:58):
You should have seen my cousin, Susie. She was ten
times yeah you know.
Speaker 7 (26:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (26:03):
I didn't go away to college. I commuted to college.
That would be my excuse to go like when I
went all out crazy.
Speaker 7 (26:11):
I never had those college days. I was like thirty five.
Speaker 8 (26:18):
I never consciously said, oh, I might need to start
thinking about stopping drinking.
Speaker 7 (26:22):
But all of a sudden, every book I read there
was an.
Speaker 8 (26:24):
Alcoholic character, and then on the radio would be something
about drunk driving. And it was like everywhere I turned
it had moved from my subconscious to my conscious without
me knowing it. I think I refused to consciously acknowledge
that I was thinking that I might actually have a problem,
except I was looking for the invisible line.
Speaker 7 (26:45):
I was looking for that line.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
To say, Okay, you know the gig is up. You're
looking for justipation that you were still on the right side.
Speaker 11 (26:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (26:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
I bought the book Drinking, a Love Story by Caroline
now And nineteen ninety seven. She wrote in my journal
after the exact words, I said, I think I'm standing
on the abyss of something dark.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
And bottom blessed. If I'm not careful, it's going to
swallow whole.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
And I took that book and I literally hid it
in my underwear drawer, like like a little secret. And
it was ten years after I read that book that
I eventually got sober.
Speaker 7 (27:18):
The fact that you've hit it. It's yelling.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
I bet if you read a book on oh, I
don't know gluten right.
Speaker 7 (27:24):
I would not put that in mind. Where are no?
I would not.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
This is when I put all the things in place,
like only on the weekend, or only three glasses a night,
or only wine and not liquor, and have three glasses,
but they were.
Speaker 7 (27:36):
Huge, longous glasses.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
I could make it maybe three or four weeks following
my quote unquote rule, and then I would say, well,
I did it for four weeks.
Speaker 7 (27:44):
This is fine, I can go back. But any time
I tried to moderate like this, when I did drink,
I drank more little by little.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
During the stage, we start to inch toward willingness, right
lose dark to think, Okay, starting to get a picture.
But the reality is of my situation. I'm starting to
get an idea of what I need to do, and
that willingness does start to grow.
Speaker 7 (28:09):
In this preparation stage.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
I would tip into willingness for a while and then
slip back again, and approached that line several times. Each
time I did something a little more took root. The
willingness is really the key that un locks the door
to the rest of what we're going to talk about
the next stage, which is action.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Today's the day I'm going to quit four clap, Not tomorrow,
m'd be the day, but today it's definitely not going
to be the day. We hear from blisteners of the show,
they're really frustrated by that back and forth of I'm.
Speaker 7 (28:40):
Trying to quit and I can't and I am I
ever going to get this?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And doctor John Kelly was on this show and he
said for some people it can take years.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
Was the average six years.
Speaker 8 (28:52):
Before people are in like solid long term And I
mean that might have included some sobriety, but it.
Speaker 7 (28:57):
Was like that back and forth.
Speaker 8 (28:59):
Yeah, yes, it doesn't have to be that way, but
it certainly isn't abnormal to be that way.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
And really what that represents, I think is the back
and forth between the preparation phase and the action phase.
Really getting into that action phase and initiating change. Because
when we talk about getting unstuck, people get up to
the preparation willingness and they just can't get into that action.
What are some actions each of us took.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
So my first change and starting to question my thinking,
is it's true. So I can't go home from work
and not have a glass of wine. I can't go
to dinner with my partner and not have one. Is
this true? So get a clover my phone bs and
(29:48):
it was piled high.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
I think pain is always a motivator, whether it's emotional
pain or physical pain. The purpose of a show like
this and of the sharing of these different phases is
the gift of having an awareness that pushes you into
action before it goes as absolutely far as it can go.
Speaker 7 (30:08):
And for me, that looked like.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
Forcibly sent into treatment because I ignored so much of
this part of this phase. I had the awareness I
understood that I was an alcoholic. I knew I had
a problem with drinking, and I was still looking for
a softer, gentler way to quote unquote feel better. Suggestions
that were given to me over those periods of time,
things like maybe you should go to a recovery meeting,
(30:34):
or maybe you should ask for help, or those were
so uncomfortable for me that I didn't want.
Speaker 7 (30:39):
To acknowledge that advice. I didn't want to say, yeah,
i'll try that.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
I stayed in my discomfort because it was familiar to me.
And I think this is really the bugaboo about this
stage is that on the receiving end of people asking
for help, now I see this a lot.
Speaker 7 (30:55):
What is it that I need to do to go
into action?
Speaker 4 (30:57):
And I'll say, well, this is what worked for me,
And I know somebody about saying yeah, but that's not
going to work for me because or I'm not willing
to do that, which is fine, but we're back to
the willingness piece, as I wish I had paid attention
to my resistance. Yeah, the advice that I was getting.
You know, I don't want to go into meeting because
(31:17):
somebody I.
Speaker 7 (31:18):
Know might see me.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
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
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(31:46):
Hour patron today at patreon dot com, Slash the Bubble
Hour and help us help others through stories of strength
and hope.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
So maybe we were willing, and maybe we even put
down the drink, But I know I had a lot
of resistance. For a few months, I couldn't call myself
an alcoholic. I had stopped drinking, and I would say, well,
I don't know what you call it, but I know
I can't control my drinking. But I had a hard
time calling myself an alcoholic. It took me care or
(32:22):
four months, and I had to surround myself by people
who were really cool in recovery and who I really respected,
and they called themselves alcoholics and I had to get cover.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
But what, like Geane, what were some of your resistance resistance?
I didn't want to assume a shame identity. That's the
language of Brene Brown that I did not want to
tarnish the perfect I thought image that I built for myself,
the perfect track record.
Speaker 7 (32:50):
I didn't want this to be true. I thought I
was going to ruin my marriage. You know, it didn't
occur to me that I was maybe harring my marriage
by being bombed at night. Maybe that wasn't making It's
(33:14):
not especially when you get older. Being the drunk girl
with lipstick smeared doll over your face when you're like
forty five is just not hot.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
I did not want to go to recovery meetings because
I felt like I was going to be associating with
a shame of identity and those people, and I couldn't
be like them. And I also thought, I can't share.
I can do this on my own. It was more
tortuous than it needed to be. Somebody said that to
(33:45):
me recently. I'm not a sharer. And I said, that's
because you don't share. And I'm not trying to be,
you know, so cute about it.
Speaker 8 (33:54):
I don't think I ever sat and told someone my
whole story, all my deep, dark secrets.
Speaker 7 (33:59):
I mean, it's just something like I needed to do
to get better.
Speaker 5 (34:03):
I had to my therapist, with the exception of I
didn't tell her that I thought I was an alcoholic.
Speaker 7 (34:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
The thing that was different on the day I successfully
quit was that I told someone, and I told her
the damn truth. Yeah, I said, this is how much
I drink every day.
Speaker 7 (34:26):
Yeah, And that was the beginning of something new.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I think telling someone is one of the first and
most important action stages you could do, and telling your
other friend who's drunk with you doesn't doesn't think about
who you're telling, and tell the truth.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Even after I put the drink down and I'm forced
into some sort of program or something, I was totally
reluctant to come actually clean.
Speaker 7 (34:54):
With how bad it really was.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
And so those two things came hand in hand for me.
I asked for help for something I don't need help with. Yeah,
But the minute the truth was out and I got
I choked it out and was able to say what
it was.
Speaker 7 (35:08):
It broke me, is what it did. It broke me.
It got rid of that sense that I can do
this on my own.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Because if there's one thing we always default back to
in this show, it's the power of community, the power
of a shared experience. You can't be part of a
shared experience if you're not putting your experience on the table.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
People that are in recovery are overjoyed to help others
get discovery.
Speaker 7 (35:33):
I was scared if I tried to reach out.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
To people in recovery and they'd be like, oh, yeah,
you're not bad enough to be here, You're you're not
true up enough, because I.
Speaker 7 (35:42):
Thought I was so much better than everyone else. But
I also felt that I wasn't good enough for them either.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
But I did not know that one of the steps
for people that are in a twelve step program is
helping others.
Speaker 9 (35:55):
They're well equipped to do it. They're sort of a process.
It helps our recovery to help others. Yeah, so what's
not is though you are looked down upon. It's that
you brought in, brought into.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
A little old But yeah, you're scared to walk in rooms,
You're scared of who's going to be there, and they're
there for the same reason, for the same reason, so
they're more likely to say this is where you need
to be than I. Can you believe that Allie walked
into a twelve start meeting, Yeah, I.
Speaker 7 (36:26):
Am, and was a hard case.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
I mean I really I had a lot of resistance
and a lot of kicking and screaming. And she said
to me, instead of looking at what you're willing to do, why.
Speaker 7 (36:35):
You look at what you're not willing to do. Why? Why? Yikes?
Speaker 4 (36:40):
And that didn't really sink in right away, but it
did after a while. I try the thing that you
don't want to try, go to the uncomfortable place. And then,
even after my relapse, when my continued to recover, relied
on making changes.
Speaker 7 (36:56):
I can't.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
I couldn't just go back to doing the same thing
I had always done and recovery before, because clearly and
there were things that needed to be changed. I had
to go back and say, now, what part of it
did I want to do?
Speaker 7 (37:06):
What part of it did I think wasn't necessary for me?
Speaker 4 (37:10):
I mean, I always make the uncomfortable choice, but I
know that's the one that's going.
Speaker 7 (37:14):
To leave to change.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
If you're stuck. You're saying one doing all these things
that people see I should, but it's still hard and
I'm still not happy and I'm still having slipped. And
I think sometimes when people say that what.
Speaker 7 (37:28):
They wanted someone to say, Oh.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Then it's okay to drink, but it's not. The solution
then is well, okay, and you need to do something differently.
Now that doesn't mean zigzag, but what it means is,
let's add something.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
What can we at what makes you uncomfortable to think about?
Why does that make you uncomfortable?
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Can you identify one or two places in your recovery
journey where.
Speaker 7 (37:52):
You made an uncomfortable choice And it was a game changer.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
I was thinking that being vulnerable and sharing opening up
to people and sharing my stories and like my truth
and what really happened.
Speaker 7 (38:08):
To me, what I really did.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
I learned how to live and have relationships with other
human beings in recongry because of those game changers, like
saying this is what's really going on inside of me and.
Speaker 7 (38:24):
How about you, Amanda.
Speaker 8 (38:25):
My willingness was maybe like a twenty four hour thing, right,
there was none until I got into trouble and I
had an intervention, and so you know that can happen too.
It can be that you're never ready. Thank god someone
swooped in and said you need to get help, because
I was incapable of making that decision on my own,
(38:47):
absolutely incapable.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
When someone does an intervention for you, they've done the
contemplation and preparation stages, right, they dump you into acting.
Speaker 8 (38:56):
Yeah, and I thought it was making a decision to
no longer have fun.
Speaker 7 (39:01):
Literally, okay, I'll just feel like a nun. I was
going to go from fun Amanda who.
Speaker 8 (39:07):
Sometimes got a little bit out of control, to the
most boring person in the world.
Speaker 7 (39:11):
And so wait, everyone.
Speaker 8 (39:12):
In the room with thinks, Amanda is still fun, raise
your hands. My willingness may have stopped it even ended
if they hadn't come when they did. I was in
enough pain to make a change. So my action was
I dove in. I left my brain at the door
(39:33):
and just said, maybe you can do everything.
Speaker 5 (39:36):
You can build a patio, you know your success at work.
Speaker 8 (39:39):
You can do all these different things, but you do
not know how to stop drinking. So you need to
ask these people how you need to ask for help.
I would go to meetings and I would say, you know,
I'm really struggling with this.
Speaker 7 (39:49):
How do I do this? And people would tell me
you took suggestions.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
I got a lot of suggestion, but it wasn't until
I took them.
Speaker 7 (40:00):
I an't supposed to take that.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
I asked for a lot of help, but I didn't
let people help me.
Speaker 5 (40:06):
I mean, well, what would you say to somebody who said,
I am taking the suggestions. I am doing what you're
saying and it's not working. I'm still miserable, I still
am dying to drink, or I am still drinking.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
There's situation that's come up a surprising amount of times
where there's been people who have been trying to get
sober and stop drinking, and they're praying, and they're talking
to people, and they're asking for help, and they're following
instructions and they have a strong desire to stop drinking.
But has actually happened to me in the context of
a couple of recovery meetings where then somebody then said, well,
(40:39):
you know you're not drinking, right, And they said, well,
wait a minute, but I'm praying, I'm doing all these things.
But you know, I thought I just had to have
a desire to stop drinking, and they said, well, this
program works a lot better if you actually.
Speaker 7 (40:53):
Drinking.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
So to answer Catherine's question, for me, at least invariably,
I can drill down to.
Speaker 7 (40:59):
This justtions that have been given to me, and I can.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
I have to look for the places where I made
an exception or I did it sort of half heartedly.
Speaker 7 (41:09):
There's always some piece of it that I have been
resistant to. It's always there. Oftentimes that revolves around it
untold truth.
Speaker 4 (41:17):
I've taken all the suggestion I've done everything right, but
I haven't been working with all of the information.
Speaker 7 (41:22):
I've left that one thing out or this one thing out.
And so let's get honest. Let's really got honest and
look at that.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
One thing that you've never wanted to look at or
talk about, that one thing.
Speaker 7 (41:34):
Everything hard I've had to do came from telling the truth.
That you're related to telling the truth.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
Yeah, that's for me, that's the self centered fear of projection. Yeah,
I would think if I actually told the truth, I
have made up my mind what your response is going
to be. If I actually really get honest about that,
You're not going to like me. Right, that's a codependent thing, right,
But there's also some people who have just beeen very
protective of that.
Speaker 7 (41:55):
That that sort of vulnerability is just unacceptable.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
And every time I think to myself, there's got to
be way I can do it without that, right, So
that is what it is that I need to I
think we all have things that we feel terrible about
in our life that we carry around with us.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
And I was sharing with you guys, make some deep, dark,
long burden secret about myself. Details don't matter, but it's
the fact that it's something that I carried around I
really hated about myself. And then everyone's like, oh, me too,
except for me.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
This is Ellie.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
I was like, well, that doesn't really happen to me,
and that I'm driving in the car with the mandolater
and she looks at me, She's like.
Speaker 7 (42:30):
Actually, that has happened to you. I'm like, oh yeah,
I get honest, Ellie.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
You know, we talk about the power of the me
too experience, and you can't have a me too experience
if you.
Speaker 4 (42:42):
Don't tell the truth, right, if you don't bring it
that way and say no, we're forgiven.
Speaker 12 (42:47):
But things that I can't feel it, and I really
felt it in that me too experience. So to sum
up action, do something, do something different, tell someone, get on,
do something again, do something different again, at something more.
Speaker 7 (43:03):
Don't give up.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
It can just be that you're really hovering between a
couple of phases and it can take.
Speaker 7 (43:08):
A while to get there.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
Be compassionate with yourself without letting yourself off the hook.
Speaker 7 (43:13):
I mean I would try these things.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
And they wouldn't work, and it would back up and
fuel my shame. I did even fuel my inadequacy. This
is a brave journey we're on, whether we're trying to
stop drinking or make any other hard changes in our lives.
I'm not good at stopping and saying you're doing a
hard thing. This is a process and it goes back
(43:36):
and forth and back and forth. And the beauty of
the me too in the connection is that just the
point in time where I think I've failed, I'm the
worst alcoholics ever, or have some kind of a superlative
that's really awful for myself. No, you're a human being
and you're trying and we're here for you. But I
have to maintain that balance.
Speaker 5 (43:57):
Yeah, it can't be like oh I slipped and now
well I let me get a few days under my
belt before I tell anybody that I'm trying to get
sober again, get see stories. You can be compassionate and
honest at the same time, and don't confuse somebody who's
trying to be honest with you with somebody attacking you
or shaming you like a meaning another person. Right, if
(44:19):
a sober person is trying to give you a suggestion,
like chances are, and they're coming from a place of
really trying to help you, and they're not trying to
say you're a loser, and they're not trying to shame you. Yeah,
the reason you're feeling shame is because you got it,
you know, and it's like it's kind of hitting a
sore tender spot.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
Which is why this is virtually impossible to do on
your own right now, it's virtually impossible to.
Speaker 7 (44:46):
Do this Withoulton your on thinking as a guide. That's
so true.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
You need somebody to be able to say, I've been there,
and I understand, and this is what you need to do.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
And keep your perspective right, keep your perspective, and other
people really help us do that, because if we're left.
Speaker 7 (45:00):
On our own, we can spiral into I'm the.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Worst but I told myself a story for a long
time that alcoholics were losers.
Speaker 7 (45:07):
And I couldn't be because I didn't want to be
a loser. And I can say Cat bkly that you
are not.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
Awesome, A lot of fun And this has been an
amazing gathering.
Speaker 5 (45:19):
Yeah, at all in the same room, but at the
same time.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Awes Yeah, and we're glad that our listeners got to
join us for this little portion of it. And it
was cool that we've bonded instantly, like we already had
that on the phone, but it was even more comfortable.
Speaker 7 (45:35):
Yeah, it was just amazing, like, oh, I've known you
guys forever. It was just awesome. Good night, everybody, good night.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Here's why I think this meetup was so important for
the Bubble Hour. To me, this was a pivotal moment
that represents a larger lesson. We didn't know it as
we were recording that episode, but as that year would
go on. The Bubble Hour was a labor of love,
but it was a lot of labor nonetheless, and Amanda
(46:08):
and Catherine both held senior positions in large firms. They
both received promotions later that year, so their jobs became
even more demanding. Ellie was a single working mom, was
really learning the importance of prioritizing her recovery, and I
was also shouldering some pretty big changes in my business
at that time. Being together that we can really energized us.
(46:29):
But the show was starting to run its course. None
of us knew that was going to happen. We knew
it would happen at some point, but we didn't know when.
In the next episode, we're going to look at some
of those major transitions that The Bubble Hour would go
through in the following year as we all debated the
future of the podcast. But here's why this meetup was
so important. We built deeper bonds and we grew the
connection that previously had only existed virtually. So meeting in
(46:54):
person deepened our loyalty and our respect and our humanness
to one another. And so as that year went on,
all of us started to feel the pressure of our
own lives and it started to affect the show. Anytime
I felt tired or irritated over the demands of the
Bubble Hour, I wasn't tempted to make it about the
other hosts. I wasn't inclined to mischaracterize any of their intentions. Now,
(47:18):
part of that is just good recovery. This is something
we learned to do in recovery. But it also happens
when the people you're dealing with are very real to you.
I remember watching Ellie sit by the fire and write
one afternoon. Whenever I think of Ellie, I picture her
sitting in that chair writing. And later I read the
piece that she wrote as she sat that afternoon, and
(47:39):
I was just blown away. It was incredible, and I thought, Wow,
I watched her write this. This is going to help
people and change lives the way that she changed my
life and strengthen my recovery with her earlier work. And
I got to watch her do that. So sometimes meeting
people that we idolize can be a little bit of
a letdown. I was worried I might feel that way
when I met Ellie, but I didn't. Ellie is just
(48:01):
as warm and real as she presents herself in every episode. Amanda.
Amanda is a force. She is stunningly beautiful, but in
kind of an effortless way. And I've seen her picture.
I knew what she looked like, but being around someone
is different. She's efficient and pragmatic and capable in a
way that kind of puts other people at ease. Sometimes
(48:22):
some people just walk in the room and you think, oh,
everything's going to be okay. Catherine is motion and light.
I feel like Catherine is a mix of opposite strengths.
She's intelligent and educated, she works a corporate job in
a huge multinational company, but she also sees ghosts and
she gets messages from the spirit world, and she feels
(48:42):
things that the rest of us are completely oblivious too.
So those two very different sides of her make her
a fascinating person and a lot of fun to be around.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
Her.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
World is really polarized right now, and people are really
pretty nasty to each other in person and online, and
I think a lot of that has to do with isolation,
because it's very easy to dismiss or malign someone who
doesn't really feel all that real to us, someone who
we make one dimensional, someone who maybe only exists as
a profile picture or a voice or disembodied elements that
(49:15):
we transmit over the Internet. And I don't think that
the four of us would have ever dissolved into some
kind of feud or rival teams if not for this meetup.
But I don't think that at all. But I do
think that we might have just grown tired and let
our frustrations settle onto one another little bit more. And
resentments we know are those things. You know, they're very
(49:35):
dastardly and recovery. Resentments could have crept in because they're
sneaky like that. But instead, this weekend we deepened our
love and respect for one another. In the next episode,
we're going to talk about some of the changes that
would come the following year, and there were many. We
all went our separate ways, yet we continued to be
each other's biggest cheerleaders. I have never doubted, not once
(49:59):
doubt the sincerity of the support that these women have
offered me. As I carried on in the years to come.
That is the result of the time we spent together
and conversations like the one you just heard. So my
message to you is to call your friends, go and
see them, spend time with them. Connect with the people
that are important to you. And if you're working on
a project, can everyone is remote, try and meet if
(50:21):
you can, whether it's colleagues or family or neighbors. Sit together,
break bread, talk about other things, ask questions, pay attention,
notice things about one another. Addiction, whether it's to alcohol
or anything, causes us to isolate physically, emotionally, or both.
Isolation can be our default, or to be together but
(50:43):
be distracted by busyness. Give other people your time, unstructured time,
call your friends, plan a gathering, plan to get away.
The ability to do that is one of the many
gifts of recovery. Come back soon for episode six, we're
going to talk about that major change of direction in
the show hook, why it happened, what it was like
when Arsha went from four hosts to one until then,
(51:08):
take good care. I own it.
Speaker 6 (51:11):
I did that, not proud, but that was me. And
when I face it and take it a little dignity.
Speaker 7 (51:19):
Not looking for excuses.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
I just want to.
Speaker 7 (51:23):
Be free from the power weakness.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
Head on me.
Speaker 6 (51:32):
In a dun corners where Shane lies to heaven. Wait
the guest jobs, because you'll keep it up the second.
Speaker 7 (51:46):
It just goes, and wait there to rob you of
your pride. Turn the light on, turn the lad on.
You can shine away. You see the art.
Speaker 6 (51:58):
Not proud that was and have things if I take
back a little dignity.
Speaker 7 (52:06):
Another of excuses.
Speaker 6 (52:09):
I just want to be free from power oh yes,
you don't have to shout it out on main street
to me. You don't need to whisper to confession. And
(52:33):
the person you should not to is look in at
you in there and all all memories holes can always
you away. Do you see an old different, not proud,
damned me? And when i'm face, I take back a
little dignity.
Speaker 7 (52:54):
Another for excuses.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
I just want to be free from a.
Speaker 7 (52:59):
Power by your small when you see own.
Speaker 6 (53:05):
A different the rap that was me and that face
is I take back a little thing to hear I'm
a little bit from excuse s. I just want to
be free from power.
Speaker 10 (53:21):
When you s
Speaker 5 (53:25):
Free, free, free, Breathe, breeze,
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 face.
Let's take a little dignity.
Speaker 7 (00:47):
Not looking for excuses. I just want to be free.
Speaker 6 (00:52):
From the power.
Speaker 7 (00:54):
WI us head on to be free, free, free, free Free.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I'm Jean McCarthy, and you're listening to They'll Bubble Hour.
Welcome to episode five, or halfway through our ten part
retrospective on a decade of the bubba our podcast.
Speaker 7 (01:17):
Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I'm laughing right now because I'm thinking that it has
taken me months to get this far into the project,
to build these episodes, and some of you will listen
to all of them in a day while you're on
a long drive or cleaning the floor or painting or something.
And it's just funny to me the difference between the
amount of time it's taking me to get these to
(01:39):
you versus the amount of time it will take you
to consume them.
Speaker 7 (01:43):
And I'm thinking of, you.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Know, making handmade pro geese, or I bake something called
beat rolls that take a long time to make, and
my family eats them very quickly. And I always feel
this strange reality reconciliation between the time put in versus
the time to consume. But nevertheless, here we are. I'm
dedicating this entire episode to the Boston meetup. To me,
(02:06):
it was a pivotal moment in our relationship. I didn't
know it at the time, but looking back on it now,
as I'm going through these archives, I'm realizing how important
this meetup was. Here's Amanda reflecting on that meetup a
few years after it occurred.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
That was incredible. Jean, Catherine, Ellie and I had never met,
so we decided to have a meetup and we rented
in Jamaica plane and the four of us hung out
for a weekend. And since there's so many local listeners,
we invited them over and we had a bubble hour
party and it was so cool.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
For those of you that don't know, because I didn't know,
Jamaica plane is in Boston, and I flew to Boston
in February and it was cold as an ass and
we couldn't leave our little apartment because it was so cold.
Member Amanda, we ran across the street three times a
day to get food from Whole Foods, and then the
rest of the time were just indoors in our pajamas,
(03:06):
talking from seven am till two in the morning.
Speaker 7 (03:09):
For about four days straight.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And at the end of it, we had a potluck
supper and it was so cool, so cool, And we'd
been doing the show for years and hadn't met in person.
Catherine and I had met because I happened to be
in her hometown right before we both started the show.
And it's weird to me when you say that that
it's the one and only time we met, because I
swear you're my cousin or my best friend or all
(03:35):
next door.
Speaker 7 (03:37):
I'm sure I've known you in your whole life.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I know, just incredible, the bonds that we build and recovery.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
We met in Boston, because that's where Elli and Amanda lived,
and the bubble hour party that Amanda mentioned was very special. Indeed,
a handful of listeners from the area joined us in
the living room of our little weekend rental. We had
appies and conversation, lots and lots of laughter. It was
really a beautiful, special thing and I treasure that memory.
But the majority of our time was just the four
(04:06):
of us together in this little second story flat, and
I can only hope that whoever lived downstairs was either
very patient or hard of hearing. I am so happy
that we took the time to record a conversation in
that weekend. I just want to suggest to you do this.
I mean, you don't have to have a podcast to
record a conversation. If you are ever having a special
(04:28):
get together with friends or family, or just for your
own personal use, even have a guided conversation that you
can hang on to and listen to later. It is
an absolute gift. We recorded this little chat around the
kitchen table. It was all vintage furniture. It was very eclectic,
and as I recall, there was also a very scary
(04:48):
clown painting. But we just used simple recording equipment and
we did our best to capture the spirit of our friendship.
This is really representative of what the rest of the
weekend sound. You can hear the fondness and comfort that
we share with one another, and you can hear smiling.
Speaker 7 (05:05):
There was so much laughter.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You might wonder if this recording was actually made during
the party that we had, but no, this was just
the four of us. I had spent years talking with
these women about our recovery, but that weekend I really
got to know them differently. I learned a lot more
about them, you know. That weekend. I learned that cooking
was very important to Amanda because her mother was a cook,
(05:27):
and her mother had died young, and so that was
one way that she brought her mother's memory into her
own life. And I also remember watching Catherine blow drawing
her gorgeous long red hair, watching her mannerisms and just
how she moved and conducted herself. And I also remember
she had a really terrible head cold and that she
was powering through it all. I just watched in wonder
(05:50):
at the presence of these other women, and I found
it so cute that after years of hearing Ellie WHI
was bringing to her kids during the podcast, you know,
should be quiet. It was really cool to be able
to hear her talking to her kids on the phone,
to hear the kindness and love in their exchange versus
the hushed whispers that we usually all offered our family
(06:11):
members and dogs and whoever was interrupting our recordings. So
picture us there, Picture us in that cozy, wee little kitchen.
It's a cold, cold, snowy night outside. It was February.
We were wearing sweaters and cozy socks. We all had
missed matched mugs of tea. There's a plate of hummus
on the table, So pull up a chair and join us.
Speaker 7 (06:36):
Today. We're all together. We're together, We're a retreat. The
silence you hear around me right now is the only
silence this room has experienced in the past forty eight hours.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Hello, Hi, Hi, Jane, Hi, Catherine, Hi, Jene, hiail Hi.
Speaker 5 (06:54):
Ladies.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
We have squeaky chairs and you have cups of tea.
We're going to be talking about getting unstuck. So we
broke it down using the trans theoretical model of change.
We pass through various stages as we make a big change,
and this is brue when it comes to recovery. So
we thought we'd explore those different stages and talk about
(07:18):
what each stage looked like for us. The stages of
change pre contemplation, contemplation, preparation, and action.
Speaker 7 (07:30):
I was gonna say, Amanda, but Catherine's handwriting.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So so let's start with pre contemplation. This is the
stage where you're not ready, You're not thinking about anything
being wrong. You are in the problem unaware. Pre contemplation, Ellie,
what did that look like for you?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I think for me, pre contemplation was a general, even
vague sense that something in my life a balance, that
it wasn't right.
Speaker 7 (08:02):
But I was not exploring inward for the problem.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
I was sort of looking circumstantially around the people in
my life and situations and my job or my relationships
I would carry with me in a sense.
Speaker 7 (08:14):
Of unease or imbalance or anxiety.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Not only was the thinking about my drinking being at
the root of the problem, not in my consciousness, nor
was I part of the problem.
Speaker 7 (08:26):
It was a great phase of deflection. If only this person.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Would act differently, if only this job wasn't so stressful,
A profound seeking stage for me.
Speaker 7 (08:34):
But without ever looking inward at myself right to address
that I'm a common denominator in any situation I put myself.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
I couldn't understand why things kept getting worse.
Speaker 7 (08:44):
I know, yes, I was married to an.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Act an alcoholic, because I pinned a lot on to him.
Why am I so stuck? Why is this so hard?
I'm working so hard and everything is a struggle for me.
Even when I had consequences, I normalized them. I was
a black oed drinker from kind of the get go.
Speaker 7 (09:06):
How was I never alarmed? Shoot? I almost.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
Chrum. I'm normalized consequences like throwing up or being hungover
at work?
Speaker 7 (09:24):
Qristian Catherine, Is.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
That because you thought that alcohol was the solution to
fixing the things that we're wrong in your life?
Speaker 5 (09:30):
Not only that, that through line carried through fifteen years
and alcoholic drinking, where I was like, you would drink
too if you had my life.
Speaker 7 (09:40):
My life is.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
So hard and I deserve this, and I work so hard,
and my marriage is so challenging, and.
Speaker 7 (09:48):
So it's more than just rationalizing, it's actually defending.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Yeah yeah, yeahs like it's a reward, It's something I
deserve because it does work at first?
Speaker 7 (10:00):
Does yeah? It dark help stet first, and then it
really doesn't right right.
Speaker 8 (10:05):
I surrounded myself with people who drank like me, and
I really didn't want to hang out with you unless
you drank like I did. I'd wake up in the
morning with this immense sense of dread. What did I
do the night before? I ask, with the tiptoe around
my headeah, then to see like is he mad at me?
Speaker 7 (10:21):
Is he happy with me?
Speaker 9 (10:22):
Like?
Speaker 7 (10:22):
I look for evidence of what I had done.
Speaker 8 (10:24):
Because I was the same as you, Catherine, I would
I was a blackout drinker. Yeah, not necessarily every night,
but when I was going for like on the weekends
or something, I mean, actually, yeah, eventually that's not into
the week too. The worst feeling in the world to
me was being told what I did the night before.
Speaker 7 (10:44):
Oh, I hated that.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
The other part of this that I remember in this
space also was the possessiveness about alcohol.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
Of a I would never go.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
I would never go to the ac city that didn't
involve alcohol. Yeah, these no veangs go to dinner three
friends and the order a bottle of wine, and I
get that little jolt of almost like panic, like, well
that's for me, wory you guys.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
It didn't come with any chambers guilt or defensiveness really.
Speaker 8 (11:12):
As much as this is what I do, I would
like almost like belittle the people that were with me,
like I'm getting another drink.
Speaker 10 (11:18):
I don't know about you, Like you can join in
and be cool like me, or even be a loser whatever,
it's your call, and I'm the big bat loser like
a drug every time.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Yeah, that was part of this too, Leaving perfectly nice
evenings out.
Speaker 7 (11:37):
To go home and drink like I wanted to. Yeah, unapologetically.
Speaker 5 (11:41):
Well, I actually was thinking about it when we we
got together the other day, starting out this long weekend,
unless it was going to be a rage and the
four of us were assured to just be here with
bottles and bottles of wine. If it were just a
normal girl's weekend, I would have been like, no, I
(12:02):
can't do that. Don't these people know how busy I
am and I can't. I can't you know, take the time,
make this happen, and then run the risk of having to,
you know, share what was really going on with me.
I didn't even know what was.
Speaker 7 (12:19):
Going on with me.
Speaker 8 (12:20):
Yeah, well you can't escape, right, like say you can't
go home at the end of the day and drink
like the way that you want to if you're away
with people people for a week.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
I hated that.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah, this is also a point where I did a
lot of doctor shopping.
Speaker 7 (12:33):
I did.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
I was looking for a diagnosis of something. I was
postpartum depression or it was anxiety. And I would go
see therapists and I would tell them everybody everything but
how much I drank. And if they asked me how
much I drank, I would minimize it or all right, lie,
not because I thought I had a problem necessarily, but
because it wasn't really any of their business.
Speaker 7 (12:51):
You know, that's not the problem.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Most people structure they're drinking around their life, and I
would structure my life around my drinking.
Speaker 7 (12:59):
But it was a conscious chores.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
It was.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I'm just made sure no matter what situation I put
myself in. And I wouldn't let my kids sign herself
up for a sports activity that needed to pick up
at eight o'clock unless I could find somebody else to
give her a ride. And I never said to myself,
because eight o'clock is when I'm drinking, I said, that's
all too late for her to be out for sports,
she needs to do coal work, and so my life came.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
To a grinding halt by five o'clock every night. By design.
I think that that's when I wanted to make sure
that I could drink.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
We hear that a lot from moms, in particular the
school dances and the sports and and whatever.
Speaker 7 (13:33):
Things in my life that would have been a joy.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Otherwise my sober life were an inconvenience because they interfere.
Speaker 7 (13:39):
They interfered me. It wasn't something that I felt defensive
or guilty about.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
So it sounds like all of us were in a problem,
unaware of what the problem was, projecting outward that there
was about, with the possible exception of Amanda, who was
having a good old time and not even know.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
There was a problem.
Speaker 8 (13:56):
No, I accepted the fact that there was a problem,
and I was okay with it, all right.
Speaker 7 (14:00):
Like this is my normal.
Speaker 8 (14:01):
I'm a party girl, deal with it, you know, this
is who I am. I don't have kids, I have
a good job, I have a house. You can't tell
me what to do. And I would just normalize it,
like I'm not hurting anyone and I'm not doing anything.
Speaker 7 (14:12):
Yeah, that was a big one. I was like, who
am I hurting?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yeah, I'm gett into work every day and I'm a
contributing member of So.
Speaker 7 (14:19):
Yeah, I'm not as mad as Buddy up the street. Right.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
I conveniently married somebody who was older and more progressed
in his disease than me. I could blame it all
on him and say, well, I'm not that bad, right, Yeah? Right?
Speaker 1 (14:39):
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(15:03):
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Speaker 7 (15:31):
If you love the.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
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Bubble Hour the perfect gift for yourself and friends. So
(15:59):
maybe listeners find themselves in pre contemplation at the stage,
but probably if you're listening to the Bubble Hour and
you're at the very minimum in the contemplation stage, which
is where you start to acknowledge that something isn't right.
And I wrote a post about these stages of change
on Pickle. The post is called how I Knew it
was time to quit drinking And for this stage of contemplation,
(16:22):
I wrote, I began to feel an acknowledgment and growing
discomfort with the reality of my habits. I started to
pay attention to the red flags. I began watching celebrity
rehab with intense focus while drinking. So still in the problem,
but starting to realize, oh.
Speaker 7 (16:41):
I got a little problem with my drinking.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
I didn't want to stop yet, but I definitely started
to feel like.
Speaker 7 (16:49):
Oh crap. I think I know what the problem was.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
That this was me in front of the computer with
a glass of wine, with like one eye clo. Going
to the Alcoholics Anonymous website. They have a quiz that's
like twelve questions. Have you ever found to stop for
a week? Have you ever missed work because of your drinking?
Do you have blackouts? I was carefully picking my way
(17:15):
through these questions. Blackouts, yes, only every once in a while.
But yes, do you drink in the morning? No? Do
you drink alone? No, that's only alcoholics do that? Have
you ever missed work? Well, like maybe, so I carefully
pick my.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
Way through these questions, and.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
I remember thinking that however many it was like five
out of twelve were yes, So that was life probably okay,
if not good. And I get to the bottom and
they say, if you answered even.
Speaker 7 (17:49):
One of these, But that's not the funny part.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
The funny part is that I went back to the
same website, at least that I remember two other times.
It took the exact same quiz, knowing what that tagline
was at the bottom, and hoping for a different outcome.
And if there's anything that describes fifteen years of alcoholic
(18:19):
drinking in my life, it's that that I hoped for
a different outcome every single time, like maybe now it
will be different than it is.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
I was in magical thinking whish for fifteen Yeah, yeah,
it was.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
It was not only trying to find ways to sort
of disqualify myself from the alcoholic or problem drinker club.
Speaker 7 (18:40):
I was trying to.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Add evidence into the other column of I can't be because.
And I lived in this stage as contemplation stage for years.
Speaker 7 (18:49):
It progressed over those six or seven years.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
But for instance, when I was pregnant with my daughter,
my first child, I didn't drink. It wasn't some sort
of moral high ground at whatever reason, I felt.
Speaker 7 (19:00):
Pretty good as a pregnant lady.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
I had this great identity look at the pregnant lady
and put a big fat check in that I can't
be an alcoholic, comb totally ignoring the fact that I'm
building a column.
Speaker 7 (19:11):
Of I didn't enter.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Not everybody has that, not everybody has a less apparent way.
But so I would have like nine hundred checks of
though maybe I have in trouble, and then one make
check that I can't be because, and then conveniently looking
for the evidence to support that.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
I would sort of picture in my line when I
thought of it as like what a real alcoholic look.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Like and astonishing the power of this wishful thinking that
the denial structure that we build them out our maladaptive behaviors,
because if I go on a hunt for evidence to
the contract, I can always find it, and can we
ignore the things that are speaking the other way. The
other piece of this is the moving of the line.
I would say things like I only drink when my
(19:55):
kids are asleep, so I'm not really hurting them, I'm
not really really an issue. And if I ever start
to do that, I'll really curb my drinking. And before
I know it, I'm starting to drink at four or
three in the afternoon without even thinking about that rule
that I would justify it some other way, and like, well,
today was a particularly hard day. The lines became blurry
or blurrier. Virtually there was no line because I would
(20:18):
completely move it.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
What were some of the I'm not an alcoholic because
I hadn't be an alcoholic because dot dot dot.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
I work really hard and I keep getting promoted.
Speaker 7 (20:32):
I loved that one.
Speaker 8 (20:34):
Yeah, any that was mine, And I also had examples
in my life family members, they're an alcoholic. I might
have a little problem sometimes, but that's what an alcoholholic
looks like, no, they don't look like me. Right, I'm
gonna go swim in the morning at six o'clock in
the morning, and I would have active thoughts as I'm
doing strokes through the water, like alcoholics totally don't do that.
Speaker 7 (20:55):
I have that in my stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
I never would say to myself I can stop at
any time, because you.
Speaker 7 (21:05):
Always hear that as one of those.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Announcement a thing's alcoholics saying I can quit at any time.
Speaker 7 (21:15):
That I would be like, so I knew better than this,
so I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 5 (21:18):
But I would be like, why would I want to?
Speaker 7 (21:24):
But like, I don't want to, So, yeah, I really
my stigmatized vision an alcoholic.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yeah, look, we have all my own teeth and have
your teeth fall out. I thought I had a friend
who would be drinking wine and I do.
Speaker 7 (21:38):
Do I need to quit? She'd be like, no, fine,
if you're an alcoholic, I'm an alcoholic.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
And then I would think, well, I can't call myself
an alcoholic because that would hurt her feelings hurt and
she's a really good person and she does a lot
she's not I can't. Yeah, you know, next up alcobal
our code dependent.
Speaker 8 (22:03):
One of the best validations I had was I had
a little legal trouble, as some people know, and so
my probation officer sent me to see addictions.
Speaker 7 (22:11):
Therapist to evaluate me, to see if I had a problem.
Speaker 8 (22:14):
It was literally an hour of answering all those twenty questions,
but way more and you had to rate different things
in your life. And I went there. First of all,
I was still drinking. When I sat down to review
the form with the therapist. I told her that I
wasn't drinking, that I had gotten in a little trouble,
and I just thought it better.
Speaker 7 (22:31):
That I stay away for now.
Speaker 8 (22:32):
And we went through the questions and she said, you know, well,
I don't really think you're an alcoholic.
Speaker 7 (22:38):
I think, you know, you could probably have a couple
glasses of wine.
Speaker 10 (22:42):
I was like, I went to my prevation officer.
Speaker 7 (22:46):
See, I don't have to go to a program. I
don't have to go to a mind that you're going
to your probation officer.
Speaker 5 (22:54):
I have heard it that that if you have had
legal trouble because of your drinking chances.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I think that's question ten on the Amanda.
Speaker 7 (23:05):
And I grew up together and we've been friends for
a long time, but.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
I think we were probably in our twenties and Amanda's
father was in recovery, and Amanda actually went to her
father was like, Ellie and I don't want to be
alcoholics because we never want to stop drinking.
Speaker 7 (23:19):
Is that about time?
Speaker 11 (23:22):
He said, perhaps you might already have a friend, and
he has given you permission to talk about Yes, he
has talked about.
Speaker 7 (23:33):
Him before, permission to talk about it. Yees.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
So we've talked about pre contemplation where you're not aware
I'm not ready.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Contemplation when you start to twig in that. Oh, I
think it might be the alcohol. And preparation is where
you start gathering information, making plans, start gearing up to
make a change.
Speaker 7 (23:57):
We start to look at what is it going to
take off this problem?
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I would say most people move into the preparation page
of change thinking.
Speaker 7 (24:06):
How can I solve this without quitting drinking?
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Right for me, I think it was the only place
I could get into preparation. If that's going to be
the only answer, I'll just stay right where I am. Yeah,
I'm just ligne jack.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And I think that's why a lot of people in
the stage and start with preparation and they try to moderate.
And this is where a lot of us find, Oh, paper,
I cannot moderate, right, which you can moterate for a day, yeah, right,
So you can't string a couple of dates together. And
so that, for a lot of us is another confirmation
(24:39):
that I do have.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
I want to throw a quick plug in a strange
way to phrase it for the binge drinkers though, because
I know that that particular pattern of drinking comes with
its own kind of symptomology and it can be actually
very difficult, I think, to kind of figure out where
you fit in and the spectrum of addiction when you're
a binge drinker.
Speaker 7 (25:00):
And that for me.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
This in this preparation phase, in this moderation phase, that's
when I started to pay ten And you explain binge drinking,
Bin's drinking would be you could go for days, weeks,
sometimes even months without drinking, but then when you drink,
you go all out and.
Speaker 7 (25:14):
Where you don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
You don't know what's going to happen, and you can
drink for days on end or a day just a day.
When you drink, you find yourself in situations that would
not happen to you if you were in D's sob in.
This stage is when I started having awareness of the
lack of an off switch, right, and that meaning if
I had won, I had very little control over how
(25:36):
many more I had or what happened. You do not
d drink daily, but when you do drink, that off
switch becomes something that's impossible.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
What you're talking about, I think Ellie is assessing the
relationship with not the hall and whether it's a binge drinking.
Speaker 7 (25:49):
People can really justify that binge drinking thing. I mean,
it was my cousin's wedding.
Speaker 8 (25:54):
Right right, of course I went all out right, yeah
it was.
Speaker 5 (25:58):
You should have seen my cousin, Susie. She was ten
times yeah you know.
Speaker 7 (26:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (26:03):
I didn't go away to college. I commuted to college.
That would be my excuse to go like when I
went all out crazy.
Speaker 7 (26:11):
I never had those college days. I was like thirty five.
Speaker 8 (26:18):
I never consciously said, oh, I might need to start
thinking about stopping drinking.
Speaker 7 (26:22):
But all of a sudden, every book I read there
was an.
Speaker 8 (26:24):
Alcoholic character, and then on the radio would be something
about drunk driving. And it was like everywhere I turned
it had moved from my subconscious to my conscious without
me knowing it. I think I refused to consciously acknowledge
that I was thinking that I might actually have a problem,
except I was looking for the invisible line.
Speaker 7 (26:45):
I was looking for that line.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
To say, Okay, you know the gig is up. You're
looking for justipation that you were still on the right side.
Speaker 11 (26:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (26:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
I bought the book Drinking, a Love Story by Caroline
now And nineteen ninety seven. She wrote in my journal
after the exact words, I said, I think I'm standing
on the abyss of something dark.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
And bottom blessed. If I'm not careful, it's going to
swallow whole.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
And I took that book and I literally hid it
in my underwear drawer, like like a little secret. And
it was ten years after I read that book that
I eventually got sober.
Speaker 7 (27:18):
The fact that you've hit it. It's yelling.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
I bet if you read a book on oh, I
don't know gluten right.
Speaker 7 (27:24):
I would not put that in mind. Where are no?
I would not.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
This is when I put all the things in place,
like only on the weekend, or only three glasses a night,
or only wine and not liquor, and have three glasses,
but they were.
Speaker 7 (27:36):
Huge, longous glasses.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
I could make it maybe three or four weeks following
my quote unquote rule, and then I would say, well,
I did it for four weeks.
Speaker 7 (27:44):
This is fine, I can go back. But any time
I tried to moderate like this, when I did drink,
I drank more little by little.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
During the stage, we start to inch toward willingness, right
lose dark to think, Okay, starting to get a picture.
But the reality is of my situation. I'm starting to
get an idea of what I need to do, and
that willingness does start to grow.
Speaker 7 (28:09):
In this preparation stage.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
I would tip into willingness for a while and then
slip back again, and approached that line several times. Each
time I did something a little more took root. The
willingness is really the key that un locks the door
to the rest of what we're going to talk about
the next stage, which is action.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Today's the day I'm going to quit four clap, Not tomorrow,
m'd be the day, but today it's definitely not going
to be the day. We hear from blisteners of the show,
they're really frustrated by that back and forth of I'm.
Speaker 7 (28:40):
Trying to quit and I can't and I am I
ever going to get this?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And doctor John Kelly was on this show and he
said for some people it can take years.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
Was the average six years.
Speaker 8 (28:52):
Before people are in like solid long term And I
mean that might have included some sobriety, but it.
Speaker 7 (28:57):
Was like that back and forth.
Speaker 8 (28:59):
Yeah, yes, it doesn't have to be that way, but
it certainly isn't abnormal to be that way.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
And really what that represents, I think is the back
and forth between the preparation phase and the action phase.
Really getting into that action phase and initiating change. Because
when we talk about getting unstuck, people get up to
the preparation willingness and they just can't get into that action.
What are some actions each of us took.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
So my first change and starting to question my thinking,
is it's true. So I can't go home from work
and not have a glass of wine. I can't go
to dinner with my partner and not have one. Is
this true? So get a clover my phone bs and
(29:48):
it was piled high.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
I think pain is always a motivator, whether it's emotional
pain or physical pain. The purpose of a show like
this and of the sharing of these different phases is
the gift of having an awareness that pushes you into
action before it goes as absolutely far as it can go.
Speaker 7 (30:08):
And for me, that looked like.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
Forcibly sent into treatment because I ignored so much of
this part of this phase. I had the awareness I
understood that I was an alcoholic. I knew I had
a problem with drinking, and I was still looking for
a softer, gentler way to quote unquote feel better. Suggestions
that were given to me over those periods of time,
things like maybe you should go to a recovery meeting,
(30:34):
or maybe you should ask for help, or those were
so uncomfortable for me that I didn't want.
Speaker 7 (30:39):
To acknowledge that advice. I didn't want to say, yeah,
i'll try that.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
I stayed in my discomfort because it was familiar to me.
And I think this is really the bugaboo about this
stage is that on the receiving end of people asking
for help, now I see this a lot.
Speaker 7 (30:55):
What is it that I need to do to go
into action?
Speaker 4 (30:57):
And I'll say, well, this is what worked for me,
And I know somebody about saying yeah, but that's not
going to work for me because or I'm not willing
to do that, which is fine, but we're back to
the willingness piece, as I wish I had paid attention
to my resistance. Yeah, the advice that I was getting.
You know, I don't want to go into meeting because
(31:17):
somebody I.
Speaker 7 (31:18):
Know might see me.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
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
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(31:46):
Hour patron today at patreon dot com, Slash the Bubble
Hour and help us help others through stories of strength
and hope.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
So maybe we were willing, and maybe we even put
down the drink, But I know I had a lot
of resistance. For a few months, I couldn't call myself
an alcoholic. I had stopped drinking, and I would say, well,
I don't know what you call it, but I know
I can't control my drinking. But I had a hard
time calling myself an alcoholic. It took me care or
(32:22):
four months, and I had to surround myself by people
who were really cool in recovery and who I really respected,
and they called themselves alcoholics and I had to get cover.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
But what, like Geane, what were some of your resistance resistance?
I didn't want to assume a shame identity. That's the
language of Brene Brown that I did not want to
tarnish the perfect I thought image that I built for myself,
the perfect track record.
Speaker 7 (32:50):
I didn't want this to be true. I thought I
was going to ruin my marriage. You know, it didn't
occur to me that I was maybe harring my marriage
by being bombed at night. Maybe that wasn't making It's
(33:14):
not especially when you get older. Being the drunk girl
with lipstick smeared doll over your face when you're like
forty five is just not hot.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
I did not want to go to recovery meetings because
I felt like I was going to be associating with
a shame of identity and those people, and I couldn't
be like them. And I also thought, I can't share.
I can do this on my own. It was more
tortuous than it needed to be. Somebody said that to
(33:45):
me recently. I'm not a sharer. And I said, that's
because you don't share. And I'm not trying to be,
you know, so cute about it.
Speaker 8 (33:54):
I don't think I ever sat and told someone my
whole story, all my deep, dark secrets.
Speaker 7 (33:59):
I mean, it's just something like I needed to do
to get better.
Speaker 5 (34:03):
I had to my therapist, with the exception of I
didn't tell her that I thought I was an alcoholic.
Speaker 7 (34:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
The thing that was different on the day I successfully
quit was that I told someone, and I told her
the damn truth. Yeah, I said, this is how much
I drink every day.
Speaker 7 (34:26):
Yeah, And that was the beginning of something new.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I think telling someone is one of the first and
most important action stages you could do, and telling your
other friend who's drunk with you doesn't doesn't think about
who you're telling, and tell the truth.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Even after I put the drink down and I'm forced
into some sort of program or something, I was totally
reluctant to come actually clean.
Speaker 7 (34:54):
With how bad it really was.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
And so those two things came hand in hand for me.
I asked for help for something I don't need help with. Yeah,
But the minute the truth was out and I got
I choked it out and was able to say what
it was.
Speaker 7 (35:08):
It broke me, is what it did. It broke me.
It got rid of that sense that I can do
this on my own.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Because if there's one thing we always default back to
in this show, it's the power of community, the power
of a shared experience. You can't be part of a
shared experience if you're not putting your experience on the table.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
People that are in recovery are overjoyed to help others
get discovery.
Speaker 7 (35:33):
I was scared if I tried to reach out.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
To people in recovery and they'd be like, oh, yeah,
you're not bad enough to be here, You're you're not
true up enough, because I.
Speaker 7 (35:42):
Thought I was so much better than everyone else. But
I also felt that I wasn't good enough for them either.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
But I did not know that one of the steps
for people that are in a twelve step program is
helping others.
Speaker 9 (35:55):
They're well equipped to do it. They're sort of a process.
It helps our recovery to help others. Yeah, so what's
not is though you are looked down upon. It's that
you brought in, brought into.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
A little old But yeah, you're scared to walk in rooms,
You're scared of who's going to be there, and they're
there for the same reason, for the same reason, so
they're more likely to say this is where you need
to be than I. Can you believe that Allie walked
into a twelve start meeting, Yeah, I.
Speaker 7 (36:26):
Am, and was a hard case.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
I mean I really I had a lot of resistance
and a lot of kicking and screaming. And she said
to me, instead of looking at what you're willing to do, why.
Speaker 7 (36:35):
You look at what you're not willing to do. Why? Why? Yikes?
Speaker 4 (36:40):
And that didn't really sink in right away, but it
did after a while. I try the thing that you
don't want to try, go to the uncomfortable place. And then,
even after my relapse, when my continued to recover, relied
on making changes.
Speaker 7 (36:56):
I can't.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
I couldn't just go back to doing the same thing
I had always done and recovery before, because clearly and
there were things that needed to be changed. I had
to go back and say, now, what part of it
did I want to do?
Speaker 7 (37:06):
What part of it did I think wasn't necessary for me?
Speaker 4 (37:10):
I mean, I always make the uncomfortable choice, but I
know that's the one that's going.
Speaker 7 (37:14):
To leave to change.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
If you're stuck. You're saying one doing all these things
that people see I should, but it's still hard and
I'm still not happy and I'm still having slipped. And
I think sometimes when people say that what.
Speaker 7 (37:28):
They wanted someone to say, Oh.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Then it's okay to drink, but it's not. The solution
then is well, okay, and you need to do something differently.
Now that doesn't mean zigzag, but what it means is,
let's add something.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
What can we at what makes you uncomfortable to think about?
Why does that make you uncomfortable?
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Can you identify one or two places in your recovery
journey where.
Speaker 7 (37:52):
You made an uncomfortable choice And it was a game changer.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
I was thinking that being vulnerable and sharing opening up
to people and sharing my stories and like my truth
and what really happened.
Speaker 7 (38:08):
To me, what I really did.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
I learned how to live and have relationships with other
human beings in recongry because of those game changers, like
saying this is what's really going on inside of me and.
Speaker 7 (38:24):
How about you, Amanda.
Speaker 8 (38:25):
My willingness was maybe like a twenty four hour thing, right,
there was none until I got into trouble and I
had an intervention, and so you know that can happen too.
It can be that you're never ready. Thank god someone
swooped in and said you need to get help, because
I was incapable of making that decision on my own,
(38:47):
absolutely incapable.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
When someone does an intervention for you, they've done the
contemplation and preparation stages, right, they dump you into acting.
Speaker 8 (38:56):
Yeah, and I thought it was making a decision to
no longer have fun.
Speaker 7 (39:01):
Literally, okay, I'll just feel like a nun. I was
going to go from fun Amanda who.
Speaker 8 (39:07):
Sometimes got a little bit out of control, to the
most boring person in the world.
Speaker 7 (39:11):
And so wait, everyone.
Speaker 8 (39:12):
In the room with thinks, Amanda is still fun, raise
your hands. My willingness may have stopped it even ended
if they hadn't come when they did. I was in
enough pain to make a change. So my action was
I dove in. I left my brain at the door
(39:33):
and just said, maybe you can do everything.
Speaker 5 (39:36):
You can build a patio, you know your success at work.
Speaker 8 (39:39):
You can do all these different things, but you do
not know how to stop drinking. So you need to
ask these people how you need to ask for help.
I would go to meetings and I would say, you know,
I'm really struggling with this.
Speaker 7 (39:49):
How do I do this? And people would tell me
you took suggestions.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
I got a lot of suggestion, but it wasn't until
I took them.
Speaker 7 (40:00):
I an't supposed to take that.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
I asked for a lot of help, but I didn't
let people help me.
Speaker 5 (40:06):
I mean, well, what would you say to somebody who said,
I am taking the suggestions. I am doing what you're
saying and it's not working. I'm still miserable, I still
am dying to drink, or I am still drinking.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
There's situation that's come up a surprising amount of times
where there's been people who have been trying to get
sober and stop drinking, and they're praying, and they're talking
to people, and they're asking for help, and they're following
instructions and they have a strong desire to stop drinking.
But has actually happened to me in the context of
a couple of recovery meetings where then somebody then said, well,
(40:39):
you know you're not drinking, right, And they said, well,
wait a minute, but I'm praying, I'm doing all these things.
But you know, I thought I just had to have
a desire to stop drinking, and they said, well, this
program works a lot better if you actually.
Speaker 7 (40:53):
Drinking.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
So to answer Catherine's question, for me, at least invariably,
I can drill down to.
Speaker 7 (40:59):
This justtions that have been given to me, and I can.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
I have to look for the places where I made
an exception or I did it sort of half heartedly.
Speaker 7 (41:09):
There's always some piece of it that I have been
resistant to. It's always there. Oftentimes that revolves around it
untold truth.
Speaker 4 (41:17):
I've taken all the suggestion I've done everything right, but
I haven't been working with all of the information.
Speaker 7 (41:22):
I've left that one thing out or this one thing out.
And so let's get honest. Let's really got honest and
look at that.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
One thing that you've never wanted to look at or
talk about, that one thing.
Speaker 7 (41:34):
Everything hard I've had to do came from telling the truth.
That you're related to telling the truth.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
Yeah, that's for me, that's the self centered fear of projection. Yeah,
I would think if I actually told the truth, I
have made up my mind what your response is going
to be. If I actually really get honest about that,
You're not going to like me. Right, that's a codependent thing, right,
But there's also some people who have just beeen very
protective of that.
Speaker 7 (41:55):
That that sort of vulnerability is just unacceptable.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
And every time I think to myself, there's got to
be way I can do it without that, right, So
that is what it is that I need to I
think we all have things that we feel terrible about
in our life that we carry around with us.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
And I was sharing with you guys, make some deep, dark,
long burden secret about myself. Details don't matter, but it's
the fact that it's something that I carried around I
really hated about myself. And then everyone's like, oh, me too,
except for me.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
This is Ellie.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
I was like, well, that doesn't really happen to me,
and that I'm driving in the car with the mandolater
and she looks at me, She's like.
Speaker 7 (42:30):
Actually, that has happened to you. I'm like, oh yeah,
I get honest, Ellie.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
You know, we talk about the power of the me
too experience, and you can't have a me too experience
if you.
Speaker 4 (42:42):
Don't tell the truth, right, if you don't bring it
that way and say no, we're forgiven.
Speaker 12 (42:47):
But things that I can't feel it, and I really
felt it in that me too experience. So to sum
up action, do something, do something different, tell someone, get on,
do something again, do something different again, at something more.
Speaker 7 (43:03):
Don't give up.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
It can just be that you're really hovering between a
couple of phases and it can take.
Speaker 7 (43:08):
A while to get there.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
Be compassionate with yourself without letting yourself off the hook.
Speaker 7 (43:13):
I mean I would try these things.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
And they wouldn't work, and it would back up and
fuel my shame. I did even fuel my inadequacy. This
is a brave journey we're on, whether we're trying to
stop drinking or make any other hard changes in our lives.
I'm not good at stopping and saying you're doing a
hard thing. This is a process and it goes back
(43:36):
and forth and back and forth. And the beauty of
the me too in the connection is that just the
point in time where I think I've failed, I'm the
worst alcoholics ever, or have some kind of a superlative
that's really awful for myself. No, you're a human being
and you're trying and we're here for you. But I
have to maintain that balance.
Speaker 5 (43:57):
Yeah, it can't be like oh I slipped and now
well I let me get a few days under my
belt before I tell anybody that I'm trying to get
sober again, get see stories. You can be compassionate and
honest at the same time, and don't confuse somebody who's
trying to be honest with you with somebody attacking you
or shaming you like a meaning another person. Right, if
(44:19):
a sober person is trying to give you a suggestion,
like chances are, and they're coming from a place of
really trying to help you, and they're not trying to
say you're a loser, and they're not trying to shame you. Yeah,
the reason you're feeling shame is because you got it,
you know, and it's like it's kind of hitting a
sore tender spot.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
Which is why this is virtually impossible to do on
your own right now, it's virtually impossible to.
Speaker 7 (44:46):
Do this Withoulton your on thinking as a guide. That's
so true.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
You need somebody to be able to say, I've been there,
and I understand, and this is what you need to do.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
And keep your perspective right, keep your perspective, and other
people really help us do that, because if we're left.
Speaker 7 (45:00):
On our own, we can spiral into I'm the.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Worst but I told myself a story for a long
time that alcoholics were losers.
Speaker 7 (45:07):
And I couldn't be because I didn't want to be
a loser. And I can say Cat bkly that you
are not.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
Awesome, A lot of fun And this has been an
amazing gathering.
Speaker 5 (45:19):
Yeah, at all in the same room, but at the
same time.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Awes Yeah, and we're glad that our listeners got to
join us for this little portion of it. And it
was cool that we've bonded instantly, like we already had
that on the phone, but it was even more comfortable.
Speaker 7 (45:35):
Yeah, it was just amazing, like, oh, I've known you
guys forever. It was just awesome. Good night, everybody, good night.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Here's why I think this meetup was so important for
the Bubble Hour. To me, this was a pivotal moment
that represents a larger lesson. We didn't know it as
we were recording that episode, but as that year would
go on. The Bubble Hour was a labor of love,
but it was a lot of labor nonetheless, and Amanda
(46:08):
and Catherine both held senior positions in large firms. They
both received promotions later that year, so their jobs became
even more demanding. Ellie was a single working mom, was
really learning the importance of prioritizing her recovery, and I
was also shouldering some pretty big changes in my business
at that time. Being together that we can really energized us.
(46:29):
But the show was starting to run its course. None
of us knew that was going to happen. We knew
it would happen at some point, but we didn't know when.
In the next episode, we're going to look at some
of those major transitions that The Bubble Hour would go
through in the following year as we all debated the
future of the podcast. But here's why this meetup was
so important. We built deeper bonds and we grew the
connection that previously had only existed virtually. So meeting in
(46:54):
person deepened our loyalty and our respect and our humanness
to one another. And so as that year went on,
all of us started to feel the pressure of our
own lives and it started to affect the show. Anytime
I felt tired or irritated over the demands of the
Bubble Hour, I wasn't tempted to make it about the
other hosts. I wasn't inclined to mischaracterize any of their intentions. Now,
(47:18):
part of that is just good recovery. This is something
we learned to do in recovery. But it also happens
when the people you're dealing with are very real to you.
I remember watching Ellie sit by the fire and write
one afternoon. Whenever I think of Ellie, I picture her
sitting in that chair writing. And later I read the
piece that she wrote as she sat that afternoon, and
(47:39):
I was just blown away. It was incredible, and I thought, Wow,
I watched her write this. This is going to help
people and change lives the way that she changed my
life and strengthen my recovery with her earlier work. And
I got to watch her do that. So sometimes meeting
people that we idolize can be a little bit of
a letdown. I was worried I might feel that way
when I met Ellie, but I didn't. Ellie is just
(48:01):
as warm and real as she presents herself in every episode. Amanda.
Amanda is a force. She is stunningly beautiful, but in
kind of an effortless way. And I've seen her picture.
I knew what she looked like, but being around someone
is different. She's efficient and pragmatic and capable in a
way that kind of puts other people at ease. Sometimes
(48:22):
some people just walk in the room and you think, oh,
everything's going to be okay. Catherine is motion and light.
I feel like Catherine is a mix of opposite strengths.
She's intelligent and educated, she works a corporate job in
a huge multinational company, but she also sees ghosts and
she gets messages from the spirit world, and she feels
(48:42):
things that the rest of us are completely oblivious too.
So those two very different sides of her make her
a fascinating person and a lot of fun to be around.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
Her.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
World is really polarized right now, and people are really
pretty nasty to each other in person and online, and
I think a lot of that has to do with isolation,
because it's very easy to dismiss or malign someone who
doesn't really feel all that real to us, someone who
we make one dimensional, someone who maybe only exists as
a profile picture or a voice or disembodied elements that
(49:15):
we transmit over the Internet. And I don't think that
the four of us would have ever dissolved into some
kind of feud or rival teams if not for this meetup.
But I don't think that at all. But I do
think that we might have just grown tired and let
our frustrations settle onto one another little bit more. And
resentments we know are those things. You know, they're very
(49:35):
dastardly and recovery. Resentments could have crept in because they're
sneaky like that. But instead, this weekend we deepened our
love and respect for one another. In the next episode,
we're going to talk about some of the changes that
would come the following year, and there were many. We
all went our separate ways, yet we continued to be
each other's biggest cheerleaders. I have never doubted, not once
(49:59):
doubt the sincerity of the support that these women have
offered me. As I carried on in the years to come.
That is the result of the time we spent together
and conversations like the one you just heard. So my
message to you is to call your friends, go and
see them, spend time with them. Connect with the people
that are important to you. And if you're working on
a project, can everyone is remote, try and meet if
(50:21):
you can, whether it's colleagues or family or neighbors. Sit together,
break bread, talk about other things, ask questions, pay attention,
notice things about one another. Addiction, whether it's to alcohol
or anything, causes us to isolate physically, emotionally, or both.
Isolation can be our default, or to be together but
(50:43):
be distracted by busyness. Give other people your time, unstructured time,
call your friends, plan a gathering, plan to get away.
The ability to do that is one of the many
gifts of recovery. Come back soon for episode six, we're
going to talk about that major change of direction in
the show hook, why it happened, what it was like
when Arsha went from four hosts to one until then,
(51:08):
take good care. I own it.
Speaker 6 (51:11):
I did that, not proud, but that was me. And
when I face it and take it a little dignity.
Speaker 7 (51:19):
Not looking for excuses.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
I just want to.
Speaker 7 (51:23):
Be free from the power weakness.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
Head on me.
Speaker 6 (51:32):
In a dun corners where Shane lies to heaven. Wait
the guest jobs, because you'll keep it up the second.
Speaker 7 (51:46):
It just goes, and wait there to rob you of
your pride. Turn the light on, turn the lad on.
You can shine away. You see the art.
Speaker 6 (51:58):
Not proud that was and have things if I take
back a little dignity.
Speaker 7 (52:06):
Another of excuses.
Speaker 6 (52:09):
I just want to be free from power oh yes,
you don't have to shout it out on main street
to me. You don't need to whisper to confession. And
(52:33):
the person you should not to is look in at
you in there and all all memories holes can always
you away. Do you see an old different, not proud,
damned me? And when i'm face, I take back a
little dignity.
Speaker 7 (52:54):
Another for excuses.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
I just want to be free from a.
Speaker 7 (52:59):
Power by your small when you see own.
Speaker 6 (53:05):
A different the rap that was me and that face
is I take back a little thing to hear I'm
a little bit from excuse s. I just want to
be free from power.
Speaker 10 (53:21):
When you s
Speaker 5 (53:25):
Free, free, free, Breathe, breeze,
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