Episode #113 Graduate’s Journey To Sobriety Revealed, Beyond Addiction Podcast

THIS PODCAST IS WITH KAT A GRADUATE OF GULF BREEZE RECOVERY.

Kat has been through the GBR program and we are excited to speak with her about her journey since leaving Gulf Breeze Recovery.

Kat entered treatment at Gulf Breeze Recovery in 2016 after a twelve-year struggle with substance abuse. She has just celebrated seven years of continuous recovery. Today, she lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and daughter, where she enjoys reading, hiking, and spending time with family. She works as a COO of a corporation.

MY ADDICTION WAS ALL-ENCOMPASSING.
“My addiction was all-encompassing.  I was a person who used drugs and alcohol in a way that was unhealthy and unsustainable.  The using was all-encompassing, including figuring out how to get money to use; everything involved in that lifestyle took up my entire life; it was my entire personality.  And so, for me getting clean wasn’t just about putting down the drugs; it was about figuring out who I was, who I wanted to be what kind of life I wanted to live because I spent almost a dozen years in active addiction, from the time I was an adolescent.   I had no concept of what a healthy life looked like.  I had no concept of what I even wanted for myself.  It’s been this beautiful process of starting from nothing.  I got to do this paint-by-number, build a life, and put all the things that were good for my spirit into it; I got to build myself into the kind of woman I wanted to be when I grew up.  And I definitely got the tools to do that at Gulf Breeze Recovery.”

Gulf Breeze Was Not My First Treatment Center.
“Gulf Breeze was not my first treatment center.  And it was not my first attempt at recovery.  I went to my first 12 Step meeting when I was 17.  And I got to Gulf Breeze when I was 28.  I tried many things during that period.  And the thing at Gulf Breeze that was so different, is that every other facility I had been to give me a list of action items; it was very much a doing this, you need to wake up at this time, go to these groups.  When you get out, you need to do this many meetings now.  It was a list of steps, which was fine, and they were all good things.  They were all things that were conducive to recovery.  But the problem was, I needed help figuring out how to make my own list of things that worked for me; I couldn’t make any independent choices when those things were not available to me.  What Gulf Breeze did for me was teach me intimately about the nature of my thinking and wisdom.  And so, I got to learn how my thoughts were creating my own experience, how to tell the difference between egoic and chaotic thinking and something that was coming from my own wisdom.  What’s funny is today, I choose to do many things I was taught in early treatment centers because they’re fun and give a lot to my spirit, and I find a community that I can give back in.  But I do it from a place of this is something that moves me.  This is something that I feel drawn to do.  Versus this is a list of steps that someone is making me take.  What I got from GBR is how to be still.  And listen for that voice of wisdom and trust it.”

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https://www.gulfbreezerecovery.com/