July 17, 2024 • 42 mins
2024 1039 "It Wasn't For Lack Of Trying" is Michelle H's powerful life share of experience, strength, and hope in her alcoholism and recovery journey through the programs of Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Adult Children Of Alcoholics and more.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Thanks for joining us today. I'm Tim. I'm an alcoholic. And this is Children of Chaos.
(00:09):
Today we have one of our cast of characters here with us, Michelle H. And Michelle has
joined us on several episodes of Children of Chaos. I've asked Michelle to join us
today and share her experience, strength, and hope on addiction and recovery. Michelle,
(00:30):
take it away. Thanks for being here. Thanks, Tim. I'm Michelle H. alcoholic, ACOA, and Al-Anon.
My sobriety date was September 21, 2003. Since then, a lot of things have happened.
But I'll start with what got me here. And I'm going to try to spend a little bit of time on
(00:53):
that. But I, at this point in the game, prefer to talk about my recovery and what keeps me sober
and how I got sober. I grew up in a nice Midwest family. There is some amount of dysfunction,
but not abuse or any, you know, real horrific things. I just seem to be a very sensitive child.
(01:22):
I have an older sister that's 12 years older. And my parents were married and had the baby at
15 and 16. So there's almost as much many years between my mom and my sister as there is between
my sister and me. And I don't know if my parents were just trying to shorten that gap or what,
(01:45):
but they started me in kindergarten at four. I was a really big child. I'm tall. And I think
everybody looked to me to be more emotionally grown up than I was. And I was not ready academically
or emotionally ready for kindergarten. And I used to hold onto the steering wheel, cry,
(02:06):
they'd pry my little fingers off day after day. It was really traumatic. And I laughed that I'm a
kindergarten dropout because I was done with kindergarten. I could not take another day of it.
And my parents said, well, in this family, if we, we came from Midwestern rural Oklahoma, and
(02:29):
if you're not going to go to school, you've got to get a job. And I don't know what you can do it
for since you can't read. And they get the paper out. They kind of traumatize me again, like you
can't read, you can't do this, you can't do that. And I was like, oh my gosh, what's going to happen
to me. And so I went up to their office and started doing janitorial sharpening pencils. That was
(02:53):
before mechanical pencils, if that dates me a little bit. But anyway, so I ended up going back
to kindergarten. And the school said, well, if she misses one more day, we're going to have to hold
her back. She is just not, you know, she can't miss anymore. And I got chickenpox. And my parents
(03:15):
marched up there and taught, even God was trying to intervene, give this child another year of
kindergarten. But no, I got pushed on to first grade. And I really couldn't read or do math or
anything until about fourth or fifth grade. And I learned how to cheat and lie and get around and
(03:40):
make it look like I was doing okay. Meanwhile, I was really, really terrified. And there were some
things during that education that were publicly shaming. And I think that had a big impact on me.
And it was just one day in one moment of my life. But it made such an impact on my psyche that I was
(04:04):
forever changed. And I know it seems like what does that have to do with this? But I started out from
a real deficit and a real low self esteem. And they might as well have been teaching me in Chinese
because I did not understand what they were requesting of me. And I was not ready or capable
(04:30):
of doing it. And it was before we had a lot of help with ADHD and dyslexia and all these support
systems within the school or even counselors that could help you with these things. And my parents
were busy getting their careers off the off the ground and working and they just didn't notice or
(04:55):
didn't see what was happening to me. Go a few years later. And I'm a good girl at this point. I am
starting to get school at seventh grade, a light came on and I moved to the top of my class. So
I'm definitely smart enough to do it. I just wasn't ready. But right about that same time,
(05:19):
I switched to middle school. And there were some things going on that I hadn't seen before like
drinking and boys and I mean, I'd seen boys, but I hadn't really noticed them in that capacity yet.
And I felt comfort and ease when I took my first drink at 13. Like I had never felt comfortable
(05:46):
before. We were talking in the last episode about some of the traits that happen to you when you
are codependent or cross boundaries and one of them is free floating anxiety. And I believe I was
born with that. I had a nervous stomach. My mom took me to the doctor. The doctor said that I was
(06:09):
an anxious baby. And so I think I was born a little chemically different than other people maybe. And
I began to reinforce that anxiety through my environment and things that happened to me.
So at 13, I'm in middle school, have my first drink, and I over drank from that very first time.
(06:39):
It was amazing how that made me feel. And I drank to the point where I threw up all night,
and I still wanted to do it the next day because that ease and comfort that came from that first
drink was astounding. And I wanted to try to feel that way again where I felt okay. I really was
(07:09):
wild. My throttle was wide open, and I had fun. And I thought everybody, I really did not realize
that people, all people didn't drink. When I got sober and realized that some people drank and some
people didn't, I was surprised. So I had fun in high school. My parents continued to push me
(07:35):
academically, and I never was a junior. So I'm hanging out. I'm a senior. When I was a sophomore,
or when I was a sophomore in high school, this is before I was even accelerated another year,
I was hanging out with people that were four or five years older than me because the kid,
(08:01):
and I was taking driver's ed as a senior. So I was hanging out with younger people too. So I had
a really weird cross-section of friends and ages of friends. And so when you're hanging out with
people that are boys and people that are four years older than you in high school,
you're being exposed to a lot of activities, emotional development, all types of things that
(08:31):
you're usually not exposed to. So I was, I turned 16 at the end of April. I graduated
mid May the next month, and I was already in college and had a semester of college under my belt.
My mother drove me to college. And I was just horrified by that. I was like, let me out a block
(08:58):
away. I do not want to see have anybody see my mother driving me to college of all things.
But that was a lot of pressure to put me under. And I had basic eating issues. I had modeled in
high school. And I found out later that a lot of those eating issues, anorexia, bulimia,
(09:23):
are control issues, trying to control your environment or control things. And I wanted
to be thin, being thin and looking good was always important to my family. And I was a wild kid. So
my parents thought the solution was to put me in a dorm room at 16. Okay, so I have no supervision
(09:48):
whatsoever. I've got a drinking problem. And I'm just having the time of my life. Luckily, I'm a
perfectionist smart enough, and really an overachiever. So I'm functioning in school,
but I made my first B in psychology. And I literally dropped out of school over it,
(10:16):
because I was so afraid of not being perfect and have not. It freaked me out. And I just think it
was too stressful. And I was just terrified. And so I went to work for our company business,
which was real estate at the time. And this was another really tricky thing to navigate. So that
(10:44):
didn't really that environment didn't feel very good either. So I again, dropped out of kindergarten
went back. Well, now I'm a freshman, a true freshman in college. And I went back, started
taking courses and drinking and doing pretty good in school. I don't know, I always studied. But
(11:09):
sometimes I drank all night and didn't even like sleep and went to school. We all had designated
party hats. Sometimes I'd even wear my I was the conductor. So that's kind of funny that you know,
how I ended up with that. But so I ended up going to New York University and graduating from there,
(11:31):
and still having a lot of fun. But that was probably the height of my alcoholism. Now my
alcoholism went on for many more years, but I am an extreme people pleaser. And I care a lot about
what you think about me. So by the time I got back to Tulsa and started working, I was able to not
(11:57):
drink until five o'clock because I needed to hold it together. I needed to function I needed to keep.
And I cared what you thought about me and I wasn't going to go sloshing around drunk all day long.
That was not acceptable. So although people pleasing was a big problem for me, it actually
(12:18):
probably kept me from being a real low bottom drunk. And I knew I had a problem. I went to my
first AA meeting when I was probably 24. That was probably the year after I got back from college.
I had one weekend off and I went straight to work for the family business for my dad who was
(12:41):
typical of men of that generation where they didn't come to your soccer games or your
activities. They weren't at the hospital when you were born. They did their own thing. For the most
part it's not like it is today. And so I go to my first AA meeting in about 24 years old and I get
(13:07):
30 days sobriety. And I think, wow, this is easy. And some things happened in my life that
were pretty awful. I had an unwanted pregnancy and some things that were really hard. And
my parents told me if I had the baby they weren't going to stand by me. I was going to be on my own
(13:31):
and basically disinherited. Well, we come from a pretty enmeshed family and the thought of being
kicked out of the nest was pretty daunting. I worked for a family of about a year and a half.
Pretty daunting. I worked for the family business. My dad was pretty much controlled the purse strings
(13:55):
and I didn't really know what to do. But I did go back to drinking. I knew that was one solution
that had worked for me, that made me feel better. So I did that and didn't get another
30 days sobriety for 10 or 12 years. And I wasn't in AA the entire time. But later on probably
(14:22):
in the late 1990s I tried, I mean, I went to an AA meeting every day for a year and couldn't get
sober, couldn't string 30 days together. And I resigned to be a functioning alcoholic. I didn't
know what else to do. I mean, being on the fence is always the hardest for me. If I'm in or out.
(14:48):
I'm a typical black and white alcoholic. If I'm in, I'm okay. If I'm out, okay. But the most
miserable I've ever been has been on the fence. In relationships too. I've been married and divorced
three times and in another long-term relationship that lasted 13 years. And the hardest time is
when I was on the fence, either wanting to get out or not wanting to be in. Most of those relationships,
(15:18):
I started planning the exit strategy pretty early on. There were a lot of bad boundaries.
And the first two, I married my drinking buddy. The third one, girl meets boy on AA campus,
which is never really like early in sobriety. They tell you don't get in a relationship for
(15:44):
that first year. And there's good reason for that. But my first year of sobriety was really,
really exciting. I, it was hard. I felt like what the book describes the whole of the donut,
everything and everywhere and everybody I did it with surrounded around drinking, even going to
(16:11):
activities at my with my kids school or whatever. So I really didn't know what I like to do or what
I enjoyed doing. I pretty much threw myself into reading and I think I read 60 books that year.
That was an escape for me and not a lot of self help. I'd already read all those
(16:36):
trying to get sober. These were, there were a few like the four agreements and the alchemist
and some that kind of verge on self help. But they I mostly read mindless novels.
So I worked the steps, I got the sponsor, I'd already been fired by four sponsors trying to
(16:58):
get sober. And they're like, Oh, you know, I don't think we can help you. Maybe you need somebody
else because you don't seem to be getting it. And I had enough 24 hour chips to tile a bathroom.
So I mean, it wasn't for lack of trying. And then I got a sponsor. And meanwhile,
(17:20):
I have a four year old and a husband that is a really serious alcoholic. He's such a bad alcoholic
that he is in a nursing home now and he's only 68 years old.
So that's what kind of drinking we were doing. I just I wasn't the kind of person who had
(17:42):
too many two too many drinks at a Christmas party or something. I drink every day I drink
at least one magnum of wine and if it was a weekend, I could drink too. So I mean, that wasn't
nothing. And sometimes you could throw some martinis in on it. I mean, I usually didn't do
that because I couldn't maintain and I didn't like to get too drunk and I didn't drink during
(18:08):
the day because I couldn't I'd have to go to sleep. I just couldn't function. So anyway, I'm
working the steps and like any good alcoholic, I think I'm going to figure it out and move on.
So I diligently set to work with my sponsor working the steps and did one a month
(18:33):
was doing pretty well. I mean, things are getting easier. As far as not having the night terrors
and waking up knowing I was killing myself and trying to be emotionally available for my
three, four year old son. So that was improving. But I was really starting to feel every emotion.
(18:58):
And I was going through a divorce. My son's dad was on his third or fourth rehab. I never went to
rehab his first rehab was in nearby our community. And I would leave the hospital. I would go to
community. And I would leave the baby at my mom's and I would go it's a place called Valley Hope and
(19:24):
I would I used to say we got a two for one there. And I would go to the knee to knee and the family
times but I would also go to meetings and just hang out on the porch. And I knew if he came home,
and I was still drinking he would fail. And I really wanted our marriage to work and I was
(19:45):
going to give it one more shot. And I never drank again. And he never got sober. So it didn't work
out. And well, I knew that it wasn't going to work out probably the night my son was born. He was too
(20:07):
drunk to go to the hospital. So I drove myself in labor to the hospital. I knew if I couldn't trust
him to show up for the most important thing in my life, I probably wasn't going to be able to trust
him on anything. And when I don't have trust, I mean, then sex went out the window, the intimacy
(20:27):
when I like everything started to fall apart when the trust was gone. And so I'm in year one of
sobriety. And I go on a girl ski trip with friends from elementary school. Now I've never
experienced where you have to get rid of all your old friends. Some of mine drink alcoholically and
(20:48):
those people chose not to be around me anymore because I think they felt like, wow, if you're an
alcoholic, then that makes me an alcoholic and it made them really uncomfortable. But my friends
that weren't alcoholics that some of them back in the day drank problematically, but they weren't
alcoholics. And as they grew up and became adults, they're drinking normalized. And so I went on a
(21:16):
ski trip with these friends from elementary school and a couple that we'd picked up along the way in
college. And we decided we were going to get high and go snowshoeing. And I came back and I told my
sponsor that and I didn't know that you weren't supposed to do anything mind or mood altering.
(21:39):
And that pot was a no no, I really didn't know that. And she told me I was going to have to change
my sobriety date. And I said I wasn't doing it. It took me a decade to get it. I won't say no,
I hadn't wasn't a dailies pot smoker. Like when my son was born, I quit smoking pot just one day,
I didn't want to do it anymore. I was the same way with beer. I drank so much beer that one day,
(22:04):
I couldn't drink another beer. And I drank other things. But so I was like, I won't smoke it again.
I'm but I'm not going to change my date. So she fired me. So I went out and people do this in AA.
I went out on a quest to see if I could collect enough people on my side to validate and justify
(22:25):
not changing my date. And so I looked for another sponsor and I ended up finding one that didn't make
me change my date and and it really didn't affect my sobriety. But and things like that had happened
along the way. I remember on my first fourth step, I didn't talk about a couple of sexual things and
(22:48):
the abortion. And I just felt shame and I didn't want my sponsor to know that. And luckily, I
didn't drink over it. And the about year one or 18 months into it, I got my first sponsor.
Sponsor E. And she had the exact same issues that I had. And we worked right through all that.
(23:15):
And every time I've gotten a sponsor, I have reworked the steps with them ergo, doing my steps
again, because a lot of things come up. And God is magic that way. God puts these people in your life
or you in their life. And you co create the sobriety journey. And God is magic when it comes to
(23:41):
pairing us up and helping us help each other. And so I started sponsoring people. And I continued
sponsoring and at that time I was going to five meetings a week, I didn't have daycare during the
weekends, and it was a little bit stressful. And I didn't go so five times a week. And pretty much
(24:03):
I did that for years. And I break up with the my son's dad. And I meet a guy in AA. And we are
like I've kind of been in a really emotionless, not physical relationship since my son was born
(24:27):
because I just wasn't going to leave him when my baby couldn't talk. And I wasn't going to leave
my son with somebody that was so alcoholic, he probably wouldn't even wake up in the night
to check on him. And I knew he would fight me for custody. So I had kind of been enduring
and there were some ups and downs where we worked, you know, need to have some short moments of
(24:52):
sobriety. But I meet my Latin lover in in AA campus. And man was it great. It was really,
really awesome. And my parents kind of threw me under the bus because they were afraid the
X is going to take the baby. I was a really good mother. I was an exemplary mother. So for them to
(25:19):
take that position was ludicrous. I was offended. I was hurt. I was sad that they were taking this
drunk side over mine. And I was going to show them so I just married him. And yeah,
the sex is great, but we couldn't even agree on how to sort laundry. We could not figure out how
(25:43):
to get along at all. And he was supposedly sober, but he didn't count pills. And so yeah,
and I had told him I said, there's only two things. You cheat on me, it's a deal killer.
And you don't stay sober. It's a deal killer. I mean, at this point, my sobriety is so important
(26:06):
that that is a deal killer. Today, I have a little bit different opinion. I want somebody who is
sober and emotionally sober, but my drinking is not dependent on your drinking. And that's a big
difference. Back then, I wasn't sure if your drinking would affect my drinking. So I was
(26:29):
really staunch on that point. Anyway, so we go along for a while and we did have a lot of fun.
And we did have a lot of good times, but the marriage wasn't a good one. There, his ability
to stay sober, I mean, he was such a bad pill addict that he'd have surgeries to get pills.
(26:54):
So I mean, and his mind was so strong, and he justified and believed these stories that
it was going to be really hard for me to work through getting that all sorted out because he
couldn't see it and I could. And so we separated. Oh, I used to have this thing where I could not be
(27:19):
alone. And so I was like a monkey. And I couldn't let go of one until I had my hand on the other.
So I went straight from the Latin lover to the Boy Scout. Okay, so the Boy Scout was
a 13 year relationship and we had a lot he didn't drink. He was the only one that
(27:45):
wasn't an addict. I mean, he could drink two beers and generally only did that once or twice a year.
And but there were some problems. I don't even want to get into those. That's a whole different
program. But it wasn't addiction of any kind. And we had kids the same age. And we did a lot of
(28:09):
Boy Scout camping and we're raising those kids. But when the kids were gone, that relationship
didn't work out either. We didn't have much in common. So love has always alluded me. And I
really believe that in sobriety, well, in the beginning, it had it was a direct relationship
(28:30):
to drinking a lot of drinking, it makes relationships very dysfunctional. But as I got
healthier, because I've got close to 20 years, so the last 10 years, I felt like my sobriety
journey has a lot to do with my relationships. And about year four or five, I was sober and I
(28:57):
didn't want to drink, but I was miserable. My relationship wasn't working. And I was about to
go through my third divorce. And I decided to go to the meeting next door to my AA meeting,
which was a group of people that had quite a bit of sobriety and we're reading out of the ACA book,
(29:20):
which is adult children of alcoholics. And it was a really inclusive meeting, I had gone to some
Alan on meetings, but they don't always like alcoholics in their meeting, we trigger them,
and I thought they were kind of whiny. So we, it wasn't really for me, the information was good.
(29:44):
But this group, this hybrid group that we read from Alan on an ACA was really became my new home
group, because I it was the lessons that I was really needing on how to live life on life's terms
and control. I'm a control freak. And I learned that from my family of origin and trying to
(30:07):
control these severe alcoholics from going to jail and killing people and hurting my children. And,
you know, so I cranked down on control, I wanted to, to try to figure that out boundaries,
perfectionism, and a whole slew of other things that can really adversely affect relationships.
(30:33):
So I began to work on these issues, and it's still working on those today. I still go to AA,
and I still sponsor people in AA, I usually have one sponsor, per time, and it usually
takes six months to a year if they make it and then we become almost like co-sponsories at some
(30:58):
point and we become really good friends. But during the sponsoring portion, I set some pretty
good boundaries. And I am not your friend. I'm not your marriage counselor. I certainly you can see
from my story don't have any expertise or much to tell you about, but I do have a lot of experience
(31:21):
to tell you about that. But I can show you my roadmap to getting sober. And I'd say that is
one of the main things that has kept me sober. And I have done a thing called Stage 2 Recovery.
And those were groups of people that did some advanced coursework, and it's led by a facilitator.
(31:47):
And it takes several months to do and a lot of honesty. So you have to have a really trust a
group that you trust because they're going to be showing you some things that are in your shadows
that you may or may not want to look at. And you have to have a group that's kind and gentle,
(32:08):
but honest and to the point. And I got a lot of healing in those groups. And I would say
that having a home group with honest people and a really good group of sobriety that after work
in Stage 2, and then we'd go into sometimes the same group would go into meditation, or some other
(32:34):
activities that kept us bonded and really close. So I think having friends that I relied upon
and that I relied upon and that I liked was paramount in my sobriety. Because I still had
other friends, I still worked and had a social life, served on a lot of committees and did a
(33:02):
lot of things. But I need that like minded group that I have bonded with. So sponsorship was
important for keeping me sober and working those steps. I mean, I like to go to step meetings,
(33:24):
and I like to go to meetings where we read out of the books, more than speaker meetings, or where
we just talk a lot. In a healthy meeting, you do hear God through those people. And you do get a
lot of information about experience, strength and hope. But in an unhealthy meeting, you're going to
(33:46):
hear a lot of unhealthy things. And the answers are in the book. And the answers are in the steps.
So oh, there's another group of women and I usually sponsor people one at a time. But there
were these five yoga friends, I'm really big into yoga, I'm a 200 hour teacher, which I did later on,
(34:09):
that wanted to that either were alcoholics, or had drinking problems, and they wanted to investigate
more. So we began to set out to work the steps as a group, which I discouraged at first, because I
said, we're all going to be on different pages with this, we're all going to be at different speeds of
(34:30):
going through it. But they we agreed. And so we set out to meet and it took us about a year to go
through the steps. And we met weekly, most weeks. And it was an interesting dynamic, because one of
the teachers was, I'm going to stand on the top of the mountain and I am going to scream from the top
(34:56):
of my lungs how sober I am and how sober you should be. And man, she was powerful. But some of the
people, you know, people get sober when they're ready, not when you want them to be ready. And
she asked me once, why do you not care that she's drinking? And I was like, well, I do care, I love
(35:22):
her. But she'll be back if she's supposed to be back, God's got her. And I can't control it.
And so I have had really good boundaries in my sponsorship. And if people aren't ready, I let them
I let them go. So anyway, we worked these steps. And it was really enlightening, because it was five
(35:48):
women about the same age. And I learned a lot about eating disorders and how women feel about their
bodies and their self esteem, more than just their drinking and sauce, saw things that really helped
me understand that I am not alone. And also, I don't want to say the word, but for no other word,
(36:12):
like date rape, or men taking advantage of women, how often that occurs. And just different things.
I mean, it was just really fascinating to do this work. And I think now out of the five or six girls,
there are three of us that are still sober, maybe four, there's four out of the six. So that's pretty
(36:36):
good odds. I mean, I think yeah. And one of the girls so she drinks socially and doesn't have a
problem. And I kind of believe that that might be true. I know as alcoholics, we say that sometimes,
and it's not true. But I think in her case, it might be. And I think the other girls still grappling
with it. And you know, there's she can still come back. What do they say? We'll gladly refund your
(37:01):
misery at any point, and you're welcome back when you're ready. So anyway, so it's been a journey of
making friends and these great, life long deep alliances, where I know if I needed something,
(37:24):
I could probably call more than a handful of AA friends, and they would show up maybe even in a
different state to help me out. And then we started this thing called yoga for sobriety. And we would
meet and we would talk and then we would move. And I feel like there's a book, I forget who it is,
(37:51):
but the issues are in your tissues. Anyway, that these traumas get stuck in our bodies. And that
if you, let's say, get a therapist to do talk therapy, and you do AA and work the steps and
talk in meetings, and then you do yoga, you can pull out some of these traumas in your body. It's
(38:19):
like the body keeps the score. It's that book, you can actually work through your traumas more quickly.
And so we started offering this yoga. And I, it saved my life too. Because I've been doing yoga
(38:39):
now for 25 or 30 years. And I mean, in the beginning, I tried to exercise my drinking away,
I tried to moderate drinking, there was a big movement in book about that. And I think the
writer of that book ended up in prison for killing someone. I mean, yeah, I was not. Yeah.
But I tried that and my cups die, you can have so many cups a day, well, my cups just get got bigger.
(39:06):
And I tried to pray and meditated away. And all of those things have come back into my practice of
sobriety, and have filled that spiritual void. Because I believe it is true that addiction is
the result of a spiritual void that we can fill on a day to day basis. So those are how I have stayed
(39:33):
sober. And those are some of my experiences. And today, my latest addition is this podcast,
and I am getting so much out of it. And it's true what they say about you can't give away what you
don't have. Every time I give away through service at a meeting, or sponsorship or doing this podcast,
(39:59):
I'm the one who comes away with abundance. So I, you know, can't encourage you enough.
If you're struggling to stay sober, to please don't leave before the miracle happens. It took
me 10 years, and just to get 30 days together. And I think it's a miracle. Because had it come easy,
(40:23):
like it did the first time, I might not value it today. I don't know if I drank again, that I could
ever get sober again. And that's a chance I don't want to take. And that 10 years was a real, real
gift to me. And, you know, I also say some of my biggest blessings are a result of my worst life's
(40:47):
tragedies, like being an alcoholic, I used to get so mad at people when they would say, Oh, I'm just
a grateful alcoholic. I was like, bullshit. And, you know, it is so true. It is so true, because
had I been a normal drinker or not a drinker, it would not have forced me to look into all these
(41:11):
things that have enriched my life so greatly. And, you know, I didn't want to bear my soul and my
secrets and talk about all this stuff. It was painful. But it's really the only way to move
through it. And I just look forward to the next 20 years. Glad to be here.
(41:32):
Michelle, thank you so much. That was a very powerful share. And I am so glad that you have
become a part of this podcast with us. Thank you very much. It's a privilege.
Thank you. This has been a production of ChildrenOfChaos.net. Children of Chaos is a
forum to discuss topics related to and in concert with addiction and recovery in America. It is not
(41:57):
affiliated with, endorsed, or financed by any recovery or treatment program, organization,
or institution. Any views, thoughts, or opinions expressed by an individual in this venue are solely
that of the individual and do not reflect the views, policies, or position of any specific
(42:17):
recovery-based entity or organization.
Thanks for joining us today. I'm Tim. I'm an alcoholic. And this is Children of Chaos.
(00:09):
Today we have one of our cast of characters here with us, Michelle H. And Michelle has
joined us on several episodes of Children of Chaos. I've asked Michelle to join us
today and share her experience, strength, and hope on addiction and recovery. Michelle,
(00:30):
take it away. Thanks for being here. Thanks, Tim. I'm Michelle H. alcoholic, ACOA, and Al-Anon.
My sobriety date was September 21, 2003. Since then, a lot of things have happened.
But I'll start with what got me here. And I'm going to try to spend a little bit of time on
(00:53):
that. But I, at this point in the game, prefer to talk about my recovery and what keeps me sober
and how I got sober. I grew up in a nice Midwest family. There is some amount of dysfunction,
but not abuse or any, you know, real horrific things. I just seem to be a very sensitive child.
(01:22):
I have an older sister that's 12 years older. And my parents were married and had the baby at
15 and 16. So there's almost as much many years between my mom and my sister as there is between
my sister and me. And I don't know if my parents were just trying to shorten that gap or what,
(01:45):
but they started me in kindergarten at four. I was a really big child. I'm tall. And I think
everybody looked to me to be more emotionally grown up than I was. And I was not ready academically
or emotionally ready for kindergarten. And I used to hold onto the steering wheel, cry,
(02:06):
they'd pry my little fingers off day after day. It was really traumatic. And I laughed that I'm a
kindergarten dropout because I was done with kindergarten. I could not take another day of it.
And my parents said, well, in this family, if we, we came from Midwestern rural Oklahoma, and
(02:29):
if you're not going to go to school, you've got to get a job. And I don't know what you can do it
for since you can't read. And they get the paper out. They kind of traumatize me again, like you
can't read, you can't do this, you can't do that. And I was like, oh my gosh, what's going to happen
to me. And so I went up to their office and started doing janitorial sharpening pencils. That was
(02:53):
before mechanical pencils, if that dates me a little bit. But anyway, so I ended up going back
to kindergarten. And the school said, well, if she misses one more day, we're going to have to hold
her back. She is just not, you know, she can't miss anymore. And I got chickenpox. And my parents
(03:15):
marched up there and taught, even God was trying to intervene, give this child another year of
kindergarten. But no, I got pushed on to first grade. And I really couldn't read or do math or
anything until about fourth or fifth grade. And I learned how to cheat and lie and get around and
(03:40):
make it look like I was doing okay. Meanwhile, I was really, really terrified. And there were some
things during that education that were publicly shaming. And I think that had a big impact on me.
And it was just one day in one moment of my life. But it made such an impact on my psyche that I was
(04:04):
forever changed. And I know it seems like what does that have to do with this? But I started out from
a real deficit and a real low self esteem. And they might as well have been teaching me in Chinese
because I did not understand what they were requesting of me. And I was not ready or capable
(04:30):
of doing it. And it was before we had a lot of help with ADHD and dyslexia and all these support
systems within the school or even counselors that could help you with these things. And my parents
were busy getting their careers off the off the ground and working and they just didn't notice or
(04:55):
didn't see what was happening to me. Go a few years later. And I'm a good girl at this point. I am
starting to get school at seventh grade, a light came on and I moved to the top of my class. So
I'm definitely smart enough to do it. I just wasn't ready. But right about that same time,
(05:19):
I switched to middle school. And there were some things going on that I hadn't seen before like
drinking and boys and I mean, I'd seen boys, but I hadn't really noticed them in that capacity yet.
And I felt comfort and ease when I took my first drink at 13. Like I had never felt comfortable
(05:46):
before. We were talking in the last episode about some of the traits that happen to you when you
are codependent or cross boundaries and one of them is free floating anxiety. And I believe I was
born with that. I had a nervous stomach. My mom took me to the doctor. The doctor said that I was
(06:09):
an anxious baby. And so I think I was born a little chemically different than other people maybe. And
I began to reinforce that anxiety through my environment and things that happened to me.
So at 13, I'm in middle school, have my first drink, and I over drank from that very first time.
(06:39):
It was amazing how that made me feel. And I drank to the point where I threw up all night,
and I still wanted to do it the next day because that ease and comfort that came from that first
drink was astounding. And I wanted to try to feel that way again where I felt okay. I really was
(07:09):
wild. My throttle was wide open, and I had fun. And I thought everybody, I really did not realize
that people, all people didn't drink. When I got sober and realized that some people drank and some
people didn't, I was surprised. So I had fun in high school. My parents continued to push me
(07:35):
academically, and I never was a junior. So I'm hanging out. I'm a senior. When I was a sophomore,
or when I was a sophomore in high school, this is before I was even accelerated another year,
I was hanging out with people that were four or five years older than me because the kid,
(08:01):
and I was taking driver's ed as a senior. So I was hanging out with younger people too. So I had
a really weird cross-section of friends and ages of friends. And so when you're hanging out with
people that are boys and people that are four years older than you in high school,
you're being exposed to a lot of activities, emotional development, all types of things that
(08:31):
you're usually not exposed to. So I was, I turned 16 at the end of April. I graduated
mid May the next month, and I was already in college and had a semester of college under my belt.
My mother drove me to college. And I was just horrified by that. I was like, let me out a block
(08:58):
away. I do not want to see have anybody see my mother driving me to college of all things.
But that was a lot of pressure to put me under. And I had basic eating issues. I had modeled in
high school. And I found out later that a lot of those eating issues, anorexia, bulimia,
(09:23):
are control issues, trying to control your environment or control things. And I wanted
to be thin, being thin and looking good was always important to my family. And I was a wild kid. So
my parents thought the solution was to put me in a dorm room at 16. Okay, so I have no supervision
(09:48):
whatsoever. I've got a drinking problem. And I'm just having the time of my life. Luckily, I'm a
perfectionist smart enough, and really an overachiever. So I'm functioning in school,
but I made my first B in psychology. And I literally dropped out of school over it,
(10:16):
because I was so afraid of not being perfect and have not. It freaked me out. And I just think it
was too stressful. And I was just terrified. And so I went to work for our company business,
which was real estate at the time. And this was another really tricky thing to navigate. So that
(10:44):
didn't really that environment didn't feel very good either. So I again, dropped out of kindergarten
went back. Well, now I'm a freshman, a true freshman in college. And I went back, started
taking courses and drinking and doing pretty good in school. I don't know, I always studied. But
(11:09):
sometimes I drank all night and didn't even like sleep and went to school. We all had designated
party hats. Sometimes I'd even wear my I was the conductor. So that's kind of funny that you know,
how I ended up with that. But so I ended up going to New York University and graduating from there,
(11:31):
and still having a lot of fun. But that was probably the height of my alcoholism. Now my
alcoholism went on for many more years, but I am an extreme people pleaser. And I care a lot about
what you think about me. So by the time I got back to Tulsa and started working, I was able to not
(11:57):
drink until five o'clock because I needed to hold it together. I needed to function I needed to keep.
And I cared what you thought about me and I wasn't going to go sloshing around drunk all day long.
That was not acceptable. So although people pleasing was a big problem for me, it actually
(12:18):
probably kept me from being a real low bottom drunk. And I knew I had a problem. I went to my
first AA meeting when I was probably 24. That was probably the year after I got back from college.
I had one weekend off and I went straight to work for the family business for my dad who was
(12:41):
typical of men of that generation where they didn't come to your soccer games or your
activities. They weren't at the hospital when you were born. They did their own thing. For the most
part it's not like it is today. And so I go to my first AA meeting in about 24 years old and I get
(13:07):
30 days sobriety. And I think, wow, this is easy. And some things happened in my life that
were pretty awful. I had an unwanted pregnancy and some things that were really hard. And
my parents told me if I had the baby they weren't going to stand by me. I was going to be on my own
(13:31):
and basically disinherited. Well, we come from a pretty enmeshed family and the thought of being
kicked out of the nest was pretty daunting. I worked for a family of about a year and a half.
Pretty daunting. I worked for the family business. My dad was pretty much controlled the purse strings
(13:55):
and I didn't really know what to do. But I did go back to drinking. I knew that was one solution
that had worked for me, that made me feel better. So I did that and didn't get another
30 days sobriety for 10 or 12 years. And I wasn't in AA the entire time. But later on probably
(14:22):
in the late 1990s I tried, I mean, I went to an AA meeting every day for a year and couldn't get
sober, couldn't string 30 days together. And I resigned to be a functioning alcoholic. I didn't
know what else to do. I mean, being on the fence is always the hardest for me. If I'm in or out.
(14:48):
I'm a typical black and white alcoholic. If I'm in, I'm okay. If I'm out, okay. But the most
miserable I've ever been has been on the fence. In relationships too. I've been married and divorced
three times and in another long-term relationship that lasted 13 years. And the hardest time is
when I was on the fence, either wanting to get out or not wanting to be in. Most of those relationships,
(15:18):
I started planning the exit strategy pretty early on. There were a lot of bad boundaries.
And the first two, I married my drinking buddy. The third one, girl meets boy on AA campus,
which is never really like early in sobriety. They tell you don't get in a relationship for
(15:44):
that first year. And there's good reason for that. But my first year of sobriety was really,
really exciting. I, it was hard. I felt like what the book describes the whole of the donut,
everything and everywhere and everybody I did it with surrounded around drinking, even going to
(16:11):
activities at my with my kids school or whatever. So I really didn't know what I like to do or what
I enjoyed doing. I pretty much threw myself into reading and I think I read 60 books that year.
That was an escape for me and not a lot of self help. I'd already read all those
(16:36):
trying to get sober. These were, there were a few like the four agreements and the alchemist
and some that kind of verge on self help. But they I mostly read mindless novels.
So I worked the steps, I got the sponsor, I'd already been fired by four sponsors trying to
(16:58):
get sober. And they're like, Oh, you know, I don't think we can help you. Maybe you need somebody
else because you don't seem to be getting it. And I had enough 24 hour chips to tile a bathroom.
So I mean, it wasn't for lack of trying. And then I got a sponsor. And meanwhile,
(17:20):
I have a four year old and a husband that is a really serious alcoholic. He's such a bad alcoholic
that he is in a nursing home now and he's only 68 years old.
So that's what kind of drinking we were doing. I just I wasn't the kind of person who had
(17:42):
too many two too many drinks at a Christmas party or something. I drink every day I drink
at least one magnum of wine and if it was a weekend, I could drink too. So I mean, that wasn't
nothing. And sometimes you could throw some martinis in on it. I mean, I usually didn't do
that because I couldn't maintain and I didn't like to get too drunk and I didn't drink during
(18:08):
the day because I couldn't I'd have to go to sleep. I just couldn't function. So anyway, I'm
working the steps and like any good alcoholic, I think I'm going to figure it out and move on.
So I diligently set to work with my sponsor working the steps and did one a month
(18:33):
was doing pretty well. I mean, things are getting easier. As far as not having the night terrors
and waking up knowing I was killing myself and trying to be emotionally available for my
three, four year old son. So that was improving. But I was really starting to feel every emotion.
(18:58):
And I was going through a divorce. My son's dad was on his third or fourth rehab. I never went to
rehab his first rehab was in nearby our community. And I would leave the hospital. I would go to
community. And I would leave the baby at my mom's and I would go it's a place called Valley Hope and
(19:24):
I would I used to say we got a two for one there. And I would go to the knee to knee and the family
times but I would also go to meetings and just hang out on the porch. And I knew if he came home,
and I was still drinking he would fail. And I really wanted our marriage to work and I was
(19:45):
going to give it one more shot. And I never drank again. And he never got sober. So it didn't work
out. And well, I knew that it wasn't going to work out probably the night my son was born. He was too
(20:07):
drunk to go to the hospital. So I drove myself in labor to the hospital. I knew if I couldn't trust
him to show up for the most important thing in my life, I probably wasn't going to be able to trust
him on anything. And when I don't have trust, I mean, then sex went out the window, the intimacy
(20:27):
when I like everything started to fall apart when the trust was gone. And so I'm in year one of
sobriety. And I go on a girl ski trip with friends from elementary school. Now I've never
experienced where you have to get rid of all your old friends. Some of mine drink alcoholically and
(20:48):
those people chose not to be around me anymore because I think they felt like, wow, if you're an
alcoholic, then that makes me an alcoholic and it made them really uncomfortable. But my friends
that weren't alcoholics that some of them back in the day drank problematically, but they weren't
alcoholics. And as they grew up and became adults, they're drinking normalized. And so I went on a
(21:16):
ski trip with these friends from elementary school and a couple that we'd picked up along the way in
college. And we decided we were going to get high and go snowshoeing. And I came back and I told my
sponsor that and I didn't know that you weren't supposed to do anything mind or mood altering.
(21:39):
And that pot was a no no, I really didn't know that. And she told me I was going to have to change
my sobriety date. And I said I wasn't doing it. It took me a decade to get it. I won't say no,
I hadn't wasn't a dailies pot smoker. Like when my son was born, I quit smoking pot just one day,
I didn't want to do it anymore. I was the same way with beer. I drank so much beer that one day,
(22:04):
I couldn't drink another beer. And I drank other things. But so I was like, I won't smoke it again.
I'm but I'm not going to change my date. So she fired me. So I went out and people do this in AA.
I went out on a quest to see if I could collect enough people on my side to validate and justify
(22:25):
not changing my date. And so I looked for another sponsor and I ended up finding one that didn't make
me change my date and and it really didn't affect my sobriety. But and things like that had happened
along the way. I remember on my first fourth step, I didn't talk about a couple of sexual things and
(22:48):
the abortion. And I just felt shame and I didn't want my sponsor to know that. And luckily, I
didn't drink over it. And the about year one or 18 months into it, I got my first sponsor.
Sponsor E. And she had the exact same issues that I had. And we worked right through all that.
(23:15):
And every time I've gotten a sponsor, I have reworked the steps with them ergo, doing my steps
again, because a lot of things come up. And God is magic that way. God puts these people in your life
or you in their life. And you co create the sobriety journey. And God is magic when it comes to
(23:41):
pairing us up and helping us help each other. And so I started sponsoring people. And I continued
sponsoring and at that time I was going to five meetings a week, I didn't have daycare during the
weekends, and it was a little bit stressful. And I didn't go so five times a week. And pretty much
(24:03):
I did that for years. And I break up with the my son's dad. And I meet a guy in AA. And we are
like I've kind of been in a really emotionless, not physical relationship since my son was born
(24:27):
because I just wasn't going to leave him when my baby couldn't talk. And I wasn't going to leave
my son with somebody that was so alcoholic, he probably wouldn't even wake up in the night
to check on him. And I knew he would fight me for custody. So I had kind of been enduring
and there were some ups and downs where we worked, you know, need to have some short moments of
(24:52):
sobriety. But I meet my Latin lover in in AA campus. And man was it great. It was really,
really awesome. And my parents kind of threw me under the bus because they were afraid the
X is going to take the baby. I was a really good mother. I was an exemplary mother. So for them to
(25:19):
take that position was ludicrous. I was offended. I was hurt. I was sad that they were taking this
drunk side over mine. And I was going to show them so I just married him. And yeah,
the sex is great, but we couldn't even agree on how to sort laundry. We could not figure out how
(25:43):
to get along at all. And he was supposedly sober, but he didn't count pills. And so yeah,
and I had told him I said, there's only two things. You cheat on me, it's a deal killer.
And you don't stay sober. It's a deal killer. I mean, at this point, my sobriety is so important
(26:06):
that that is a deal killer. Today, I have a little bit different opinion. I want somebody who is
sober and emotionally sober, but my drinking is not dependent on your drinking. And that's a big
difference. Back then, I wasn't sure if your drinking would affect my drinking. So I was
(26:29):
really staunch on that point. Anyway, so we go along for a while and we did have a lot of fun.
And we did have a lot of good times, but the marriage wasn't a good one. There, his ability
to stay sober, I mean, he was such a bad pill addict that he'd have surgeries to get pills.
(26:54):
So I mean, and his mind was so strong, and he justified and believed these stories that
it was going to be really hard for me to work through getting that all sorted out because he
couldn't see it and I could. And so we separated. Oh, I used to have this thing where I could not be
(27:19):
alone. And so I was like a monkey. And I couldn't let go of one until I had my hand on the other.
So I went straight from the Latin lover to the Boy Scout. Okay, so the Boy Scout was
a 13 year relationship and we had a lot he didn't drink. He was the only one that
(27:45):
wasn't an addict. I mean, he could drink two beers and generally only did that once or twice a year.
And but there were some problems. I don't even want to get into those. That's a whole different
program. But it wasn't addiction of any kind. And we had kids the same age. And we did a lot of
(28:09):
Boy Scout camping and we're raising those kids. But when the kids were gone, that relationship
didn't work out either. We didn't have much in common. So love has always alluded me. And I
really believe that in sobriety, well, in the beginning, it had it was a direct relationship
(28:30):
to drinking a lot of drinking, it makes relationships very dysfunctional. But as I got
healthier, because I've got close to 20 years, so the last 10 years, I felt like my sobriety
journey has a lot to do with my relationships. And about year four or five, I was sober and I
(28:57):
didn't want to drink, but I was miserable. My relationship wasn't working. And I was about to
go through my third divorce. And I decided to go to the meeting next door to my AA meeting,
which was a group of people that had quite a bit of sobriety and we're reading out of the ACA book,
(29:20):
which is adult children of alcoholics. And it was a really inclusive meeting, I had gone to some
Alan on meetings, but they don't always like alcoholics in their meeting, we trigger them,
and I thought they were kind of whiny. So we, it wasn't really for me, the information was good.
(29:44):
But this group, this hybrid group that we read from Alan on an ACA was really became my new home
group, because I it was the lessons that I was really needing on how to live life on life's terms
and control. I'm a control freak. And I learned that from my family of origin and trying to
(30:07):
control these severe alcoholics from going to jail and killing people and hurting my children. And,
you know, so I cranked down on control, I wanted to, to try to figure that out boundaries,
perfectionism, and a whole slew of other things that can really adversely affect relationships.
(30:33):
So I began to work on these issues, and it's still working on those today. I still go to AA,
and I still sponsor people in AA, I usually have one sponsor, per time, and it usually
takes six months to a year if they make it and then we become almost like co-sponsories at some
(30:58):
point and we become really good friends. But during the sponsoring portion, I set some pretty
good boundaries. And I am not your friend. I'm not your marriage counselor. I certainly you can see
from my story don't have any expertise or much to tell you about, but I do have a lot of experience
(31:21):
to tell you about that. But I can show you my roadmap to getting sober. And I'd say that is
one of the main things that has kept me sober. And I have done a thing called Stage 2 Recovery.
And those were groups of people that did some advanced coursework, and it's led by a facilitator.
(31:47):
And it takes several months to do and a lot of honesty. So you have to have a really trust a
group that you trust because they're going to be showing you some things that are in your shadows
that you may or may not want to look at. And you have to have a group that's kind and gentle,
(32:08):
but honest and to the point. And I got a lot of healing in those groups. And I would say
that having a home group with honest people and a really good group of sobriety that after work
in Stage 2, and then we'd go into sometimes the same group would go into meditation, or some other
(32:34):
activities that kept us bonded and really close. So I think having friends that I relied upon
and that I relied upon and that I liked was paramount in my sobriety. Because I still had
other friends, I still worked and had a social life, served on a lot of committees and did a
(33:02):
lot of things. But I need that like minded group that I have bonded with. So sponsorship was
important for keeping me sober and working those steps. I mean, I like to go to step meetings,
(33:24):
and I like to go to meetings where we read out of the books, more than speaker meetings, or where
we just talk a lot. In a healthy meeting, you do hear God through those people. And you do get a
lot of information about experience, strength and hope. But in an unhealthy meeting, you're going to
(33:46):
hear a lot of unhealthy things. And the answers are in the book. And the answers are in the steps.
So oh, there's another group of women and I usually sponsor people one at a time. But there
were these five yoga friends, I'm really big into yoga, I'm a 200 hour teacher, which I did later on,
(34:09):
that wanted to that either were alcoholics, or had drinking problems, and they wanted to investigate
more. So we began to set out to work the steps as a group, which I discouraged at first, because I
said, we're all going to be on different pages with this, we're all going to be at different speeds of
(34:30):
going through it. But they we agreed. And so we set out to meet and it took us about a year to go
through the steps. And we met weekly, most weeks. And it was an interesting dynamic, because one of
the teachers was, I'm going to stand on the top of the mountain and I am going to scream from the top
(34:56):
of my lungs how sober I am and how sober you should be. And man, she was powerful. But some of the
people, you know, people get sober when they're ready, not when you want them to be ready. And
she asked me once, why do you not care that she's drinking? And I was like, well, I do care, I love
(35:22):
her. But she'll be back if she's supposed to be back, God's got her. And I can't control it.
And so I have had really good boundaries in my sponsorship. And if people aren't ready, I let them
I let them go. So anyway, we worked these steps. And it was really enlightening, because it was five
(35:48):
women about the same age. And I learned a lot about eating disorders and how women feel about their
bodies and their self esteem, more than just their drinking and sauce, saw things that really helped
me understand that I am not alone. And also, I don't want to say the word, but for no other word,
(36:12):
like date rape, or men taking advantage of women, how often that occurs. And just different things.
I mean, it was just really fascinating to do this work. And I think now out of the five or six girls,
there are three of us that are still sober, maybe four, there's four out of the six. So that's pretty
(36:36):
good odds. I mean, I think yeah. And one of the girls so she drinks socially and doesn't have a
problem. And I kind of believe that that might be true. I know as alcoholics, we say that sometimes,
and it's not true. But I think in her case, it might be. And I think the other girls still grappling
with it. And you know, there's she can still come back. What do they say? We'll gladly refund your
(37:01):
misery at any point, and you're welcome back when you're ready. So anyway, so it's been a journey of
making friends and these great, life long deep alliances, where I know if I needed something,
(37:24):
I could probably call more than a handful of AA friends, and they would show up maybe even in a
different state to help me out. And then we started this thing called yoga for sobriety. And we would
meet and we would talk and then we would move. And I feel like there's a book, I forget who it is,
(37:51):
but the issues are in your tissues. Anyway, that these traumas get stuck in our bodies. And that
if you, let's say, get a therapist to do talk therapy, and you do AA and work the steps and
talk in meetings, and then you do yoga, you can pull out some of these traumas in your body. It's
(38:19):
like the body keeps the score. It's that book, you can actually work through your traumas more quickly.
And so we started offering this yoga. And I, it saved my life too. Because I've been doing yoga
(38:39):
now for 25 or 30 years. And I mean, in the beginning, I tried to exercise my drinking away,
I tried to moderate drinking, there was a big movement in book about that. And I think the
writer of that book ended up in prison for killing someone. I mean, yeah, I was not. Yeah.
But I tried that and my cups die, you can have so many cups a day, well, my cups just get got bigger.
(39:06):
And I tried to pray and meditated away. And all of those things have come back into my practice of
sobriety, and have filled that spiritual void. Because I believe it is true that addiction is
the result of a spiritual void that we can fill on a day to day basis. So those are how I have stayed
(39:33):
sober. And those are some of my experiences. And today, my latest addition is this podcast,
and I am getting so much out of it. And it's true what they say about you can't give away what you
don't have. Every time I give away through service at a meeting, or sponsorship or doing this podcast,
(39:59):
I'm the one who comes away with abundance. So I, you know, can't encourage you enough.
If you're struggling to stay sober, to please don't leave before the miracle happens. It took
me 10 years, and just to get 30 days together. And I think it's a miracle. Because had it come easy,
(40:23):
like it did the first time, I might not value it today. I don't know if I drank again, that I could
ever get sober again. And that's a chance I don't want to take. And that 10 years was a real, real
gift to me. And, you know, I also say some of my biggest blessings are a result of my worst life's
(40:47):
tragedies, like being an alcoholic, I used to get so mad at people when they would say, Oh, I'm just
a grateful alcoholic. I was like, bullshit. And, you know, it is so true. It is so true, because
had I been a normal drinker or not a drinker, it would not have forced me to look into all these
(41:11):
things that have enriched my life so greatly. And, you know, I didn't want to bear my soul and my
secrets and talk about all this stuff. It was painful. But it's really the only way to move
through it. And I just look forward to the next 20 years. Glad to be here.
(41:32):
Michelle, thank you so much. That was a very powerful share. And I am so glad that you have
become a part of this podcast with us. Thank you very much. It's a privilege.
Thank you. This has been a production of ChildrenOfChaos.net. Children of Chaos is a
forum to discuss topics related to and in concert with addiction and recovery in America. It is not
(41:57):
affiliated with, endorsed, or financed by any recovery or treatment program, organization,
or institution. Any views, thoughts, or opinions expressed by an individual in this venue are solely
that of the individual and do not reflect the views, policies, or position of any specific
(42:17):
recovery-based entity or organization.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.