Latest / Adventures in Adversity: an inspirational podcast / Ep. 66: The weight of our emotional backpacks - Steve unpacks trauma to inspire hope beyond drinking

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Ep. 66: The weight of our emotional backpacks - Steve unpacks trauma to inspire hope beyond drinking · Adventures in Adversity: an inspirational podcast

• 0:00
  OK, we are back. My favorite part of the week
• 0:04
  when I'm doing an intro for a new episode.
• 0:07
  Welcome back to Adventures and adversity.
• 0:09
  This is a podcast about real people, true stories, and really
• 0:15
  just daily inspiration to help all of us, myself included, get
• 0:19
  through life's adversity in many, many forms, right?
• 0:22
  We all have different forms of adversity.
• 0:24
  So I would like to welcome my very, very esteemed guests who I
• 0:29
  was just chatting with, and I'm super stoked to be talking to
• 0:32
  Steve Knapp. Thank you so much for being
• 0:35
  here. I am super stoked to be here.
• 0:37
  Thank you for inviting me. It's been neat just connecting
• 0:42
  over Instagram and kind of watching your content and seeing
• 0:45
  what's up and, and I'm excited to be here and I'm really
• 0:50
  excited to be invited to join you.
• 0:51
  You know, well, it's the the wonderful world of connecting in
• 0:54
  this podcasting world with people who are telling their
• 0:58
  stories. And I don't even know how we got
• 1:00
  connected. Maybe like through a post.
• 1:03
  And then I, I remember looking at your profile and being like,
• 1:06
  OK, yeah, following him for sure.
• 1:09
  Like it's just cool how these tell a story or something comes
• 1:13
  in your feed through through telling a story or hearing a
• 1:16
  story and then you connect with somebody who then you hopefully
• 1:19
  help more people, you know. Hopefully it's the gift that
• 1:22
  keeps on giving. I think it is and I think we
• 1:25
  were, we were chatting right before we hit record and I was
• 1:28
  like OK, this is going to be a good one.
• 1:29
  I mean you just feel I love every guest, but I think your
• 1:33
  authenticity, I think people are going to get a lot from this
• 1:35
  just chatting. So let me introduce you now.
• 1:38
  Another favorite part. You are like reading about
• 1:41
  people while they just listen. You are an adventurer, A
• 1:44
  podcaster, and an alcohol addiction recovering recovery
• 1:48
  coach. Super amazing you are.
• 1:51
  Is it 4 1/2 years sober? 4 1/2 years sober.
• 1:54
  Just over 4 1/2 years sober, but who's counting?
• 1:56
  Hey, congratulations on that. That's awesome.
• 2:00
  You are loving and living the sober life and I'm just looking
• 2:03
  here. Loving and absolutely loving and
• 2:06
  living the sobered life for sure.
• 2:09
  Yeah. To the point now where I I
• 2:13
  entirely believe that anybody that is in recovery can actually
• 2:18
  be recovered. I believe you can get fully go
• 2:21
  go fully from addiction to not needing to escape your life at
• 2:25
  all, not even having the want to do that.
• 2:29
  So you can go from like trying to resist the urge to drink to
• 2:32
  like really just not wanting to. Yeah, I believe entirely that
• 2:35
  you can go from that, that you can rebuild those habits in the
• 2:39
  in the thought pathways to the point of it's just not a thing I
• 2:43
  do anymore. Cool.
• 2:44
  I don't experience today. Like I don't experience a
• 2:47
  craving. I don't experience, I don't
• 2:49
  experience this need to to go and have a drink.
• 2:53
  I don't experience this. I don't have, I don't struggle
• 2:56
  to not use a substance. It's not that's not part of my
• 2:59
  life. It doesn't exist.
• 3:01
  Like I, I don't, I'll walk through the grocery store and I
• 3:05
  will see my old habit on the wall.
• 3:07
  Sure it's there, it exists, but it's not something that I live
• 3:11
  in fear of. I think you can get to the point
• 3:14
  where and this is the way I describe this and this is
• 3:17
  interesting how this is where we ended up already, but I think.
• 3:21
  Right in. Yeah, I think you can get to the
• 3:23
  point. Like the best way I can describe
• 3:25
  this is I don't jump off bridges.
• 3:27
  It's not something I do. I don't drink.
• 3:31
  It's not something I do like. The result essentially is
• 3:34
  probably close to the same. If I was to go and do that, then
• 3:38
  I have a lot of past experience in my life of how that doesn't
• 3:42
  work out very well. Now if I jump off a bridge, I
• 3:45
  know exactly what's going to happen.
• 3:46
  I don't need to live my life in fear of jumping off a bridge.
• 3:50
  That's not something I do. I don't need to live my life in
• 3:53
  fear of what alcohol might do to me if I drink it.
• 3:56
  I have enough past experience that tells me that's not
• 3:59
  something I need to do anymore, so I don't need to live in that
• 4:03
  fear. So I just don't.
• 4:04
  As you were saying that, like literally outside the window, a
• 4:07
  beautiful blue Jay just like landed and there was like the
• 4:10
  sun was shining. I was like, again, what we just
• 4:12
  talked about. I've never thought about it that
• 4:14
  way before about substances and drinking and with my own
• 4:18
  relationship with alcohol. I have two friends in recovery
• 4:21
  right now who like actively they're doing great.
• 4:24
  But you know, I like to know how to best support them too.
• 4:28
  I've never ever heard someone describe it that way.
• 4:31
  You have an emotional attachment to to, Yeah, to the habit, to
• 4:36
  the thing to, to might even be the identity that you have that
• 4:42
  supports that belief. So if that belief doesn't serve
• 4:47
  me anymore and I can see it, then I have the opportunity to
• 4:51
  do something different. That's a really cool way to
• 4:53
  think about it, and I'm sure in your 4 1/2 year journey you
• 4:58
  didn't learn that on day one of recovery.
• 5:01
  Oh no. Oh no.
• 5:02
  Like wow, and I'm sure anyone listening is like how how do I
• 5:06
  get like him? You know, if I if you're
• 5:09
  struggling with alcohol or anything that you have this
• 5:12
  addiction to. Yeah, I think a lot of it starts
• 5:15
  if we were to ask me to go back and what was one of the Super
• 5:20
  key things is self-awareness. I wasn't entirely like when I
• 5:25
  was in my drinking days, I would say that I wasn't the most self
• 5:30
  aware person, at least self reflective person.
• 5:33
  So one of the things that I learned early on, because I
• 5:37
  never really talked about any of the hard things, those things
• 5:40
  were the things I was ashamed of.
• 5:42
  Those were the things that I was guilty of holding on to, guilty
• 5:46
  of doing. And if I talked about those, I
• 5:50
  made those real and then I would actually have to suffer the
• 5:52
  consequences of it. Whereas if I didn't talk about
• 5:55
  any of those, then the consequences, I mean, I still
• 5:58
  carried those in my emotional backpack because I know they
• 6:01
  existed, but I don't have to deal with them directly.
• 6:06
  Everything is an indirect consequence of me avoiding the
• 6:10
  thing that I needed to do. So I would say like self
• 6:14
  reflection and just talking about the stuff.
• 6:17
  Like I remember early on when I started saying the words that
• 6:21
  would burn when they came out of my mouth.
• 6:23
  Thank you, Andy Grammar for that one.
• 6:26
  It's in one of the songs, the words that burn when they come
• 6:28
  out of your mouth. Yeah.
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  And that that just that one line is so true because when it
• 6:36
  stings when it like you're stuttering to get those words
• 6:40
  out, they're so covered in shame.
• 6:42
  But the relief after is second to none.
• 6:45
  And then so like early on, and I remember early on in, in my
• 6:49
  recovery and I started out in a that's all I knew existed.
• 6:53
  That's all I knew that was that was there saying, saying those
• 6:56
  words was was so freeing that it almost got addicting all on its
• 7:01
  own. Like the weight continually like
• 7:04
  washing over and understanding and not even knowing that that's
• 7:08
  what the work is. The work is removing the next
• 7:14
  layer. It's essentially what it is.
• 7:15
  One way or another, no matter how you do it.
• 7:17
  If I can begin to tell the truth and live in honesty, one way or
• 7:22
  another I'm going to find the next version of the cycle.
• 7:25
  The next version that I need to re reiterate to see what I
• 7:30
  needed to change next. That again, very easy for my
• 7:35
  brain to there's two things that you said in that and then I want
• 7:39
  to go back and start from the beginning.
• 7:42
  We're just giving a taste of what's coming.
• 7:43
  Like this is really good stuff. Emotional backpack.
• 7:47
  Yeah, I love it. We all have one.
• 7:52
  Holy shit. Sorry.
• 7:53
  I was just like, OK yeah. How heavy is yours?
• 7:57
  And have you opened it lately? Right.
• 7:59
  My God. Yeah.
• 8:00
  Thank you for that. We're gonna go into that.
• 8:02
  We're gonna unpack that emotional backpack.
• 8:05
  I love it. You have to.
• 8:07
  You're gonna carry it one. Either you're gonna carry it or
• 8:09
  you're gonna unpack it. You don't have to unpack it all
• 8:12
  at once. Cuz you might die.
• 8:13
  If you unpack it all, it'll be a lot time.
• 8:16
  Just not gonna know how to deal with it all.
• 8:18
  It's too much. You're just not going to know.
• 8:20
  You can bare your soul out there.
• 8:22
  It doesn't matter. It's still going to be all over
• 8:24
  the floor. Like you can't just clean it up.
• 8:26
  You can empty it, you can dump it all over the floor, but
• 8:29
  you're going to be walking past all of that stuff for a while
• 8:32
  until you figure out where to put it.
• 8:33
  That is a really good analogy. So rather than take it all out,
• 8:36
  just take it out 1 by 1. Even if you spread it on the
• 8:38
  floor, that's fine. Recovery is messy.
• 8:40
  Emotional healing is messy. Spread it out on the floor as
• 8:43
  long as you can find a safe place to put it.
• 8:45
  I remember I was trying to figure out how to put.
• 8:48
  My mind right now. And then allergy behind all of
• 8:50
  this sort of stuff. And it's like you've done your
• 8:53
  laundry and you haven't put it away, right.
• 8:56
  And so you have your clothes on your bed and you walk past it
• 9:01
  all of the time, and then you move it over to the floor
• 9:04
  because you wanna go to sleep and you still have the mess.
• 9:08
  You're just putting it in a different place.
• 9:09
  And every time you walk by it, you see that mess, but you
• 9:13
  haven't dealt with it yet. You've just moved it, right?
• 9:16
  That's the same thing as all of our, all of the unhealthy cycles
• 9:19
  that we go through. We see it again and we see it
• 9:21
  again and we see it again until we do something different with
• 9:25
  it. I'm going to pick up my laundry.
• 9:26
  I'm going to fold it. I'm going to put it where it
• 9:28
  belongs. Yep, and and and you can do it,
• 9:31
  you just avoid it because it's seemingly painful.
• 9:35
  It's seemingly painful. That's seemingly painful.
• 9:38
  It's seemingly painful. Yeah, and you're like, that
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  wasn't so bad. Why did I avoid that for so
• 9:42
  long? Or that sucked, but at least
• 9:43
  it's done. Seriously caused the like the
• 9:47
  nastiest cause of my own suffering is myself and how I
• 9:52
  avoided the the many many things that were facing a reflection of
• 9:58
  me I didn't want to have to see. Wow, OK with that.
• 10:02
  Take me back. Take me back to the beginning.
• 10:04
  I noticed an accent. Are you by chance Canadian?
• 10:08
  I am by chance Canadian. Yes, you know why.
• 10:11
  You nailed it. Well done.
• 10:13
  Canadian people I just hung out with my I call my really dear
• 10:16
  friend Jade. She amazing from Edmonton.
• 10:20
  She I call her coach Canada. She's one of my besties.
• 10:23
  Amazing. I I tell her I'm like, you know
• 10:25
  I prefer Canadians over Americans, right?
• 10:27
  I'm kidding, like no, I just like Canadians are my homies.
• 10:31
  So love it. What part of Canada are you
• 10:33
  from? Ontario, OK, cool.
• 10:35
  So right, kind of on the Michigan border, just outside,
• 10:39
  just outside of like Detroit, Port Huron area, Southwestern
• 10:43
  Ontario. So kind of born and raised in
• 10:46
  basically southwestern Ontario, OK.
• 10:49
  Yeah, so take me through Little Steve's life.
• 10:51
  Where was little Steve? Just Little through elementary
• 10:54
  school and living life. Steve moved around a lot.
• 10:58
  So my dad just for work moved to Northern Ontario and then moved
• 11:05
  to suburb of Toronto and then and then a different town.
• 11:10
  So I like we moved a whole bunch of times.
• 11:12
  So I changed schools often. I guess that's what that that
• 11:15
  that comes down to. That's hard.
• 11:18
  I was the social kid. I was the social butterfly of
• 11:21
  the two. I have a sister as well.
• 11:23
  And so I was the one who I guess my parents didn't worry about
• 11:27
  too often because I would just go and make new friends and
• 11:30
  figure it out and, and have, you know, try and make the best of
• 11:34
  it, whatever way that that that was.
• 11:36
  And so the downfall of moving around a lot is you never really
• 11:40
  maintain any friendships for a significant period of time.
• 11:43
  Yeah. So that made me a pretty social
• 11:46
  person though. You could adapt very quickly to
• 11:48
  social situations. Yeah.
• 11:50
  And the one thing I wanted to, I vividly remember when I was
• 11:54
  younger, especially after growing up just a little bit,
• 11:57
  was wanting to be liked. And so I remember lying and
• 12:01
  telling, like, these blatantly big stories to try and be cool.
• 12:06
  You know what I mean? Yeah.
• 12:08
  And those never worked out because nobody actually believed
• 12:11
  them. But then I stood on them even
• 12:13
  harder. Like, of course I did.
• 12:16
  How dare you think that I was lying, even though I was.
• 12:19
  So ANYWAYS, yeah, fairly normal growing up.
• 12:22
  Like I played hockey as a kid because in Canada you're born
• 12:24
  with skates on. Of course.
• 12:26
  Right. I think, I think exactly.
• 12:29
  I mean, I'm in Colorado right now.
• 12:31
  Yeah, because I'm, I'm, I'm in school.
• 12:34
  I went back to school, but we can talk about that later.
• 12:36
  Yeah, we'll get. There Anyways, so yeah, I, I
• 12:39
  mean, I, I had a pretty decent upbringing.
• 12:42
  There was no like big traumas. There was no OK.
• 12:46
  No. Fairly average, fairly normal
• 12:51
  working class family, my dad and Mill right?
• 12:54
  My mom working at like, a license office.
• 12:57
  Yeah, there was nothing a big extravagant.
• 12:59
  I had everything that I needed. So like, I really don't have
• 13:04
  much for complaints there. But yeah, even if you have this
• 13:09
  like, a normal, regular kind of upbringing, you still carry
• 13:12
  things with you that didn't work out, right?
• 13:16
  That moments where you weren't emotionally acknowledged and
• 13:19
  then the story you create out of that feels like lack of support,
• 13:25
  right? Like it doesn't have to be a big
• 13:28
  T small T Trauma right now is a very, very buzzword type of
• 13:33
  thing. Totally.
• 13:35
  Totally. And I don't have, if you would
• 13:36
  call it big T's. Uh huh.
• 13:38
  You fill out like that questionnaire about whether you
• 13:41
  have all of these things. I fall very low on that list,
• 13:44
  although I resorted to alcohol later on in my 20s when I was
• 13:49
  1515 years old. Yeah, I was 15 years old.
• 13:53
  But before that, I I was also like the kid that stood out in
• 13:58
  in school because I had childhood epilepsy.
• 14:00
  So I was the weird one. I would have a seizure in the
• 14:03
  middle of class and my head would go to the side and like,
• 14:06
  it would last for about 30 to 40 seconds.
• 14:08
  And then I was normal again. Like I could literally have a
• 14:11
  conversation with you during an episode.
• 14:15
  Just a little minor seizure can happen when I play hockey.
• 14:18
  It would, you know, I, but I just dealt with it.
• 14:20
  From what age? I think 8 or 9 OK.
• 14:23
  I'm gonna say that's that's big T for me, for you, that's
• 14:26
  that's. You're probably right, it
• 14:28
  doesn't feel like. You're very, you're humble, but
• 14:31
  like that's, that's pretty significant to go through.
• 14:34
  Yeah, it is. That's the, that's the if.
• 14:37
  There's the one thing that probably made me stand out.
• 14:41
  Yeah. In front of the other I remember
• 14:45
  riding my bike to school 1 morning and I rode my bike with
• 14:48
  a friend and I had a seizure while riding my bike and I drove
• 14:53
  into the side of a vehicle and flew over the back backside of
• 14:57
  it landing on the grass between the road and the sidewalk.
• 15:00
  And I remember all the kids laughing at me at the bus stop
• 15:04
  that saw me. And then my buddy I, I was like,
• 15:07
  just go to school and I cried all my way home.
• 15:09
  Like that's like one of those memories you you have as a child
• 15:12
  that you never forget. But.
• 15:15
  It's in the emotional backpack, right it?
• 15:18
  Carries it, yeah. In there and that's not every
• 15:21
  kid has to deal with that like the physical condition and then
• 15:25
  the resulting social. You know, let me ask you this.
• 15:28
  Was there, did you find moments where there were kids who were
• 15:31
  really kind to you during any of those episodes?
• 15:34
  Or was it like, see, I always love finding that you're the
• 15:39
  typical mean kid, and then you're like, wait, but wasn't
• 15:42
  there one or two nice kids? There's always someone that
• 15:46
  seems to have a level of care or just didn't care about that at
• 15:52
  all. I still had friends.
• 15:54
  That's great. That and not to minimize.
• 15:57
  Yeah, no, absolutely. I just find it like refreshing
• 15:59
  when you hear like yeah, but then my, you know, give that one
• 16:03
  there is good. Yeah, my buddy was gonna that I
• 16:05
  was riding my bike with wanted to come back with me.
• 16:08
  Like I ended up almost getting in trouble for sending him to
• 16:11
  school cuz I didn't want him to get in trouble right.
• 16:14
  But he was gonna come back home with me and hang out and do all
• 16:17
  of all of the right things like. Shout out to your buddy that
• 16:21
  day. That's good, that's cool.
• 16:23
  Like that's how I would hope my kid would do that, you know?
• 16:26
  But anyway, then. Continue.
• 16:28
  So at the age of 15, it was the. It was.
• 16:31
  I'm 43 to put that into context. Me too.
• 16:35
  Are you do you turn 44 at the end of the year or did you turn
• 16:38
  43? This year turn 44.
• 16:40
  When don't? Say 7.
• 16:43
  No, I'll say the 20. OK, what?
• 16:45
  If we, OK, so we're basically the same, we basically have been
• 16:49
  alive for the same time. Period.
• 16:51
  Yeah, minus -21 days. We've breed the same atmosphere
• 16:55
  for OK. Basically our entire lives,
• 16:57
  correct? We're aligned.
• 16:58
  Yeah, very true, very true. Welcome to 44 in December.
• 17:03
  We're coming up to it. We were in our mom's bellies at
• 17:05
  the same time. Pretty much.
• 17:07
  Cool all. Right the entire time you're
• 17:09
  just slightly older than me. True.
• 17:11
  Older, not wiser. That's funny.
• 17:13
  No, you never know about that. We're both podcasters, so we
• 17:17
  think we're very wise. Right.
• 17:19
  Yeah. I mean, let's go with that.
• 17:20
  I'll go with that. Yeah, I don't know anything.
• 17:23
  I don't know anything either. That's great.
• 17:24
  Excellent. That's why I have other people
• 17:25
  come on and make me look smart. Cool.
• 17:27
  OK, go. When I was 15, it was the summer
• 17:32
  my neurologist decided that he was gonna try and he was gonna
• 17:36
  wean me off the medication that I was taking to stop me from
• 17:41
  having seizures, which worked OK.
• 17:43
  And then because I hadn't had one in a while.
• 17:46
  And then so I basically weaned right off the medication.
• 17:50
  And then like a couple days later, I had three ground mouth
• 17:52
  seizures in one day. So there's the T now that we're
• 17:55
  talking. About it.
• 17:55
  You're 15. Three in one day, I remember
• 18:00
  having all three of them. I remember passing out each time
• 18:03
  I remember getting in the car and my dad riding, driving me to
• 18:06
  the hospital after the third one in the car.
• 18:09
  And I don't know, I think I stayed in the I was, I was out
• 18:14
  like a light in the hospital for like the next day and a half.
• 18:17
  Like I didn't even wake up. I was so exhausted from it all.
• 18:19
  I remember waking up, doctor putting me back on the
• 18:22
  medication. And then when you turn 16 in
• 18:24
  Ontario, you can go ahead and get your license.
• 18:26
  And I was terrified to take I was terrified to take the test
• 18:31
  because what if I had another seizure and I killed someone?
• 18:33
  That was the story I was telling myself.
• 18:36
  Like imagine driving down the road and then having another
• 18:39
  seizure that was like that, where I have absolutely no
• 18:43
  control over my body at all. Terrifying.
• 18:46
  And then like, I could kill myself.
• 18:48
  I could kill someone. I could.
• 18:49
  Like, it was. That was scary.
• 18:50
  ANYWAYS, So Fast forward to, yeah, Fast forward to like when
• 18:56
  I was 20 in my 20s, because I didn't even had a drink really
• 19:00
  until I was about 20 years old because I was my mom had the
• 19:05
  fear of God instilled in me that if I had a drink while taking
• 19:08
  the medication because. And she was right.
• 19:11
  Yeah, drinking and on the medication is not good that you
• 19:14
  have the potential of having another one of those.
• 19:16
  Like that's that's what sits in the back of your mind, except
• 19:19
  for, you know, you go four years, five years without having
• 19:22
  one. And then then you start hanging
• 19:25
  out with some people from work and they're having a party and
• 19:29
  you want to, you want to fit in and you want to start trying to
• 19:32
  belong and then have a couple of drinks.
• 19:35
  And you know what, this, this isn't that bad.
• 19:37
  I'm also not suffering any ill effects from this and I'm also
• 19:40
  not having any seizures. So just kind of carried on.
• 19:44
  No drink with the buddies, drink now golfing, drink here, drink
• 19:47
  there. Social lubricant.
• 19:49
  Now I get to, you know, be a little bit more boisterous and
• 19:52
  all the rest of those things and actually have the courage to
• 19:56
  maybe go and talk to a girl or dance, dance at a bar, those
• 20:01
  sorts of things, and then just be kind of a little bit extra
• 20:05
  crazy and a little bit extra loud.
• 20:07
  Anyways, a year went by and I hadn't had a seizure at all.
• 20:13
  I hadn't really taken any medication.
• 20:15
  So I went and. I made an appointment with my
• 20:17
  doctor and I was like, I really need to have a conversation.
• 20:20
  Like, what should I do about this?
• 20:21
  Not the drinking part, but that's smart.
• 20:23
  I never talked about that part. All I did was say, hey, listen,
• 20:27
  I haven't taken any medication in like a year is what should I
• 20:30
  do? Like, do I need to?
• 20:31
  Should I get some more testing? Should we do whatever?
• 20:35
  And I had started drinking a fair amount at that time, like
• 20:38
  partying and just doing your 20/20/20 something.
• 20:42
  Yeah, 20 something stuff. And the doctor was like, no,
• 20:45
  just keep doing what you're doing.
• 20:46
  I was like, sweet, give me permission to keep on drinking.
• 20:50
  Doctor said party's on. Party, just go ahead.
• 20:53
  That's what I was doing. I got a doctor's note to party.
• 20:56
  It's essentially. What that was?
• 20:58
  No, I mean, I think, yeah. That's the way I took it.
• 21:01
  Yeah, totally. That was the perspective I gave
• 21:03
  it. That was a story that, yeah.
• 21:05
  Yeah, total, that was the. Stories are so, my gosh, story
• 21:08
  that. Story.
• 21:09
  Yeah. OK.
• 21:11
  The story you tell yourself. And so you're in your mid 20s,
• 21:15
  by the way. Kudos to you for even having
• 21:17
  that conversation. I don't know if every 20
• 21:19
  something is is doing that with their doctor.
• 21:21
  That's a good thing. I didn't after that, though.
• 21:24
  Like, it was a good thing then, but I had that that like
• 21:28
  traumatizing experience when I was 15 that I didn't want to
• 21:30
  have to suffer anymore. But if a doctor told me I was
• 21:32
  probably not going to have that anymore, then I was just going
• 21:35
  to believe it. Yes, got it.
• 21:38
  Right, so I gave the Doctor the power that I should have had.
• 21:42
  Right, you were looking for like that I.
• 21:45
  Got the validation that I needed doing.
• 21:48
  Totally. I totally got a firm.
• 21:50
  Give me the permission and the validation because you.
• 21:53
  Yeah. It wasn't even what I was
• 21:54
  looking for, but it's what I got out of it.
• 21:57
  Because it's not always you're you're not always going to get
• 22:00
  what you're looking for versus what you're going to get out of
• 22:03
  it. Those are two different things.
• 22:05
  Totally. So, yeah.
• 22:06
  So I mean, you know, I meet a girl, we get married, we I have
• 22:10
  kids, I have a really good job. I end up getting promoted a
• 22:14
  couple of times. I end up being in charge of half
• 22:17
  the operation of a facility. Like I had a lot of
• 22:20
  responsibility kids. The longer I went, the more my
• 22:25
  drinking got worse and worse. So my late 20s, I was still
• 22:29
  working shift work and I would plan drinking days, drinking
• 22:33
  nights, and like my drinking just got worse and worse.
• 22:37
  Not that life got much worse. Life didn't get first.
• 22:40
  I was just not dealing with it in the way I should have.
• 22:44
  I also didn't know any better. Like I'll acknowledge that my
• 22:47
  level of self self was the pretty basic, my level of self
• 22:53
  reflection even more basic. And so I mean, when did I know
• 22:58
  something was wrong? Yeah, because you were high
• 23:00
  functioning, it sounds like. Oh yeah, I.
• 23:02
  Was just high functioning. High functioning alcoholic is
• 23:05
  just bullshit. That's tell me, tell me.
• 23:09
  I think I think like that is that is another lie you tell
• 23:14
  yourself to keep. How?
• 23:17
  How many lies do I need to tell myself to keep myself
• 23:20
  comfortable in this situation that I'm doing?
• 23:22
  I was great at that. I told myself I was fantastic
• 23:25
  under pressure, but I was a procrastinator.
• 23:27
  I'm laughing because I'm such a procrastinator.
• 23:30
  Too, right. But you put yourself under
• 23:31
  pressure because you're procrastinated.
• 23:34
  And then you go ahead and put the effort in because you needed
• 23:38
  the ridiculous pressure that you put on yourself to actually
• 23:42
  accomplish the task when you can completely do it in the opposite
• 23:45
  fashion, but you refuse to. So are you actually good under
• 23:50
  pressure or do you have to put yourself under pressure to make
• 23:53
  it important? The latter, because if you just
• 23:55
  made it important, you wouldn't have to put yourself under the
• 23:57
  pressure. That is so good.
• 23:58
  Self induced, like misery. Yeah, when you procrastinate,
• 24:01
  you're like, why are you doing this?
• 24:05
  It's cycle until you like confront what you're what are
• 24:08
  you avoiding, right? That like discomfort of the task
• 24:11
  or the beginning, right. Discomfort feeling, My gosh.
• 24:15
  OK, so you so the high functioning thing.
• 24:18
  It's not you're. Yeah.
• 24:19
  OK, so you were. A functioning anyway.
• 24:22
  Keep a job, yeah. Like keep a job.
• 24:26
  I wasn't good. I wasn't doing a good job at
• 24:28
  keeping it near the end. But I mean, I was able to keep a
• 24:31
  job. I would drink on my way into
• 24:34
  work in the morning. I would drink on my lunch hour.
• 24:37
  I would go for a drive and then come back into work and then I
• 24:40
  would drink on my way home. Like, that's how bad it got.
• 24:43
  Drinking and driving became a thing that I did.
• 24:47
  And I remember the first time that I was doing it alone in my
• 24:50
  track where you drive past an intersection and you're like, I
• 24:54
  can't drink here. But once I get past this
• 24:57
  intersection, I can drink there because there's no no one has a
• 25:01
  chance to see me. And in the back of my mind, I
• 25:05
  know it's not right. But that little voice, I got so
• 25:09
  good at ignoring that as I continued, Whoa, look at that.
• 25:13
  I zoomed in. Technology is amazing.
• 25:20
  I don't know what happened there.
• 25:21
  If anyone's listening to this and can't see, if you're just
• 25:24
  all of a sudden that little voice, he zoomed.
• 25:27
  The camera zoomed in unexpectedly.
• 25:29
  So this this camera has some features.
• 25:33
  I'm laughing with you. I just love technology.
• 25:37
  You're like, OK, So it felt like that was an impactful moment.
• 25:41
  And it did. That little voice became center.
• 25:45
  Big did. It did at some point and I'm
• 25:48
  going to work on fixing my technology issue here.
• 25:52
  No, but I love that you're saying that because I think
• 25:55
  anyone listening, and myself included, everyone has that
• 25:59
  little voice where you know what you should and shouldn't be
• 26:01
  doing and you're saying you got good at ignoring it.
• 26:04
  I did do that. Did I zoom out?
• 26:06
  I think it's partially zoomed out.
• 26:10
  Partially. I'm going to go like.
• 26:12
  This There you go. And we'll see what happens,
• 26:15
  because I'm not entirely sure. You have a good face card, you
• 26:19
  know, whatever the kids say, face card.
• 26:22
  Race card. So I the things that I used to
• 26:28
  think were wrong to do became right.
• 26:31
  That makes any sense. So you slowly change your moral
• 26:37
  compass. I did anyways.
• 26:39
  I slowly changed my moral compass.
• 26:41
  What that looked like, what right and wrong were.
• 26:46
  The lines continued to blur to a point where I think the
• 26:53
  addiction makes itself more important than anything else.
• 26:58
  And I mean, it's still my responsibility, it's still my
• 27:03
  body, it's still my decisions, it's still the things that I
• 27:08
  dealt with. And I'm actually trying to have
• 27:11
  this conversation and fix my Zoom issue.
• 27:14
  Yeah, no, But we can also pause too, if you want.
• 27:16
  Just pause and then you can fix it.
• 27:18
  There we go up, there we go. Zoom out.
• 27:20
  We're zooming out. You're good.
• 27:22
  It's like a metaphor or conversation.
• 27:25
  We're zooming in on certain things, and we're zooming out.
• 27:29
  Now we're zooming out. Now we're good to go.
• 27:31
  Editor Julian had some cinematic.
• 27:34
  I think that you're good now. Yes, we're all good.
• 27:37
  I think we're situated. Yeah, thank you for.
• 27:40
  Being so candid and I know we talked before about ask
• 27:43
  anything, keep it real. But thank you for being so
• 27:46
  candid about that. Because I know for me and other
• 27:51
  listeners all over here, you know, it's not always easy to
• 27:54
  like own and admit like when you were doing things that didn't
• 27:58
  align with like your values or like, you know, it's, it sucks
• 28:01
  to admit it. Like I know I've been there.
• 28:03
  I'm like, fuck, I can't believe I did that.
• 28:05
  Like shit. And I knew it was wrong and I
• 28:07
  did it. And that's part of my recovery
• 28:10
  too from like the whole narcissistic abuse is just being
• 28:12
  like, Hey, we did that. We're not going to shame it, but
• 28:15
  we're going to own it and we're going to learn from it.
• 28:17
  Like I spent a lot of your shaming like that moral compass
• 28:21
  was changed and all this shit. And so when you just thank you
• 28:23
  for saying that, because it's exactly how I felt like in
• 28:27
  previous situations where I was like, wow, you're you're not,
• 28:30
  you didn't used to think that was OK, like.
• 28:32
  The shift happened so slowly though, right?
• 28:35
  And this. Is one day.
• 28:37
  This is. This is how you don't notice it.
• 28:39
  This is how the people in your lives don't really notice it
• 28:43
  because if something small changes every day for two years,
• 28:48
  then the only way you really notice it is when you're going
• 28:51
  back and back and look at a picture.
• 28:53
  I used to weigh 200. When I go back and look at a
• 28:55
  picture, I can see what I looked like, what Steve looked like
• 28:57
  when he weighed 215 lbs. I remember telling myself, OK,
• 29:01
  I'm going to do something about my drinking when I weigh 200 lbs
• 29:04
  and I blew past 200 lbs and it was like 205.
• 29:08
  Like I knew it was a problem, but I never, never wanted to
• 29:12
  stop. I smoked too.
• 29:13
  I smoked like a chimney. And a lot of the reasons why I
• 29:16
  smoked was the same reasons why I drank.
• 29:18
  It was a version of this escape at work.
• 29:21
  I lived 2 very, very separate lives.
• 29:23
  I lived a work life and I lived a home life.
• 29:26
  And at home I didn't smoke. I drank a lot at home and I hid
• 29:29
  booze at home and I did all of the things your typical
• 29:33
  alcoholic would do. I don't, I don't find that term
• 29:35
  offensive. I don't find many terms really
• 29:38
  offensive for the most part, say, say what you need to say to
• 29:41
  keep yourself comfortable. But it's all about, for me, it's
• 29:45
  all about the real, the realness of it, the, the honesty of it.
• 29:50
  And I did, I did way too many things that I wasn't proud of,
• 29:54
  drinking and driving included. I mean, I, I know that there
• 29:58
  was, there were times when I was drunk that my, that I, that I
• 30:01
  hurt my kids. There's nothing I can do about
• 30:03
  it today other than try and live the best, most emotion,
• 30:07
  emotionally healthy life that I can and now be an example of
• 30:10
  that today as opposed to beating myself up over it.
• 30:14
  Yeah, absolutely. I can't lose sight of what of
• 30:17
  the example that I want to be now as opposed to what I was.
• 30:23
  But eventually when you drink too much, life comes to a head
• 30:28
  more than once and I think we either take the opportunity to
• 30:33
  make the change or I continue to lie to myself to not face what's
• 30:38
  in the backpack. So my drinking did an excellent
• 30:43
  job of causing unhealthy relationship between myself and
• 30:48
  my now ex. I still remember trying to show
• 30:51
  up for my kids but not in. I wasn't the most.
• 30:54
  I wasn't ever abusive. I'm not an angry person anyways,
• 30:59
  but I made a lot of mistakes. But what it what it came down to
• 31:05
  was and I, I had moments where I would be crying on the floor.
• 31:11
  I would be just a puddle, just a complete puddle.
• 31:15
  Like I remember wanting it all to stop but not having the words
• 31:19
  to describe what that was like. I just like screaming with my
• 31:23
  mouth wide open but no sound coming out.
• 31:26
  Just laying on the floor and just in tears.
• 31:29
  Like I wanted to stop but I didn't know what it was.
• 31:32
  So I carried on. What the straw that broke the
• 31:35
  camel's back. You know, people call it rock
• 31:37
  bottom. And I those those moments were
• 31:41
  were worse than the moment when I decided that things were going
• 31:44
  to change. And my ex-wife found my credit
• 31:47
  card bill and it was a Sunday, March 13th.
• 31:51
  My sobriety date is the 14th of 2021.
• 31:54
  And she found my credit card bill and she looked at it and
• 31:58
  waited till the evening. So she kept it to herself and
• 32:02
  there was 18 or 19 trips to the liquor store for the month, 900
• 32:06
  dollar $900 credit card, but all all booze and cigarettes, mostly
• 32:10
  booze. And she asked me I was already
• 32:13
  drunk that night. She asked me, she goes, can you
• 32:16
  explain this? And she gave me the way out.
• 32:18
  She gave me the option. She says I had a friend who had
• 32:21
  an alcohol problem as well and she so she asked me if I was
• 32:24
  buying booze for him. And I sat there and I
• 32:27
  contemplated and I said, OK, I can take this way out and lie
• 32:32
  and throw my buddy under the bus and then figure out how I'm
• 32:35
  going to make this story stick like all of the other stories I
• 32:40
  told. And I had so many, I was so
• 32:42
  afraid of this person being in the same room as this person and
• 32:46
  then them having a conversation about me.
• 32:48
  And then I was going to get found out.
• 32:51
  And this was like almost all aspects of my life.
• 32:54
  Like if I was, if I could keep work at work and then keep it
• 32:58
  separate from home, then the lines wouldn't be crossed and
• 33:01
  information wouldn't wouldn't get shared.
• 33:04
  And if I could keep everything all compartmentalized, then I
• 33:08
  could keep this facade that I was holding up with wigs and
• 33:14
  super glue and duct tape and everything else like it was a
• 33:19
  House of Cards just waiting to fall apart.
• 33:21
  At this point in time, I was miserable, absolutely miserable.
• 33:25
  I never got to the point where I wanted to end my life.
• 33:27
  I didn't get that far. I turned this is this was when
• 33:31
  the lie got too big to carry and I turned around the strap.
• 33:33
  Break the straps on the backpack.
• 33:35
  Break. Man, you just can't.
• 33:37
  You're tired of it. I was tired of it.
• 33:39
  I was absolutely tired of it. So I turned around to her and I
• 33:42
  said no, that was all me. And then she started asking
• 33:45
  questions and I started just telling the truth.
• 33:48
  Just letting it out. The pain, the pain of all of the
• 33:52
  secrets and, and and the trying to figure out how to maintain
• 33:56
  the next one was too much. So the truth started dumping in
• 34:00
  a hurry. All of the questions, all of the
• 34:03
  shame, I was just here it is. It's this is, this is it.
• 34:07
  Whatever's going to happen to me now is is what's going to happen
• 34:09
  to me now. And in one of your clips that I
• 34:12
  watched, you talked about in your podcast, it's a feeling too
• 34:16
  of like the actual saying it there's, it's literally it's
• 34:21
  something, it's the, the, the weight of bearing the secrets is
• 34:28
  heavier than like the potential consequence of like the truth.
• 34:31
  We don't, you know that, you don't know it actually
• 34:34
  experience. So you say consequence of the
• 34:37
  truth. The only consequence of the
• 34:40
  truth that I knew was the one that I made-up.
• 34:44
  Because none of us can. We're all horrible predictors of
• 34:47
  the future. Yes, tolerable predictors of the
• 34:51
  future. I can't tell you what's going to
• 34:52
  happen in half an hour from now. I could be partly accurate, but
• 34:56
  I have no freaking idea. And if I tell myself that I do,
• 35:00
  that's a crock of shit. I don't know.
• 35:01
  I also don't get. I also don't have the
• 35:04
  responsibility to control how someone else responds.
• 35:08
  And none of that stuff I could even be close to putting words
• 35:11
  to way back then when I was 39. None of that stuff I didn't
• 35:15
  have. The language for it, I didn't
• 35:17
  have emotional intelligence for it, I didn't.
• 35:20
  Everything was very, very, very, very basic.
• 35:23
  And I think the more you get into addiction, the more basic
• 35:27
  things get, because they have to.
• 35:29
  Yes, it seems like for when you talked about when you're
• 35:32
  drinking too much, there's moments where things come to a
• 35:35
  head. You decided it in that moment
• 35:37
  with the receipt and the 19 trips.
• 35:40
  It was almost like a flicker of self-awareness.
• 35:43
  It was like. Excellent way to put that.
• 35:45
  It was like the the match was lit and now you're on fire with
• 35:49
  self-awareness and like helping, but you were like there was an
• 35:53
  awareness that goes maybe I should tell the truth.
• 35:55
  Oh wait, I'm going to. How often often in unhealthy
• 35:59
  relationships because you need safety to tell the truth.
• 36:03
  So how often in unhealthy relationships where you go ahead
• 36:06
  and you try and be vulnerable even though it has nothing to do
• 36:09
  with the actual problem that you have, and then that
• 36:13
  vulnerability gets used against you.
• 36:15
  Where in that do you begin to feel safe enough to even tap
• 36:20
  into the shame that you carry to let go of it?
• 36:23
  Because shame dies in the light. It dies outside of us.
• 36:28
  We feed it when we keep it secret.
• 36:30
  So. Good.
• 36:31
  Every time I decided to not say anything, all I did was justify
• 36:37
  the fact that I didn't say anything.
• 36:39
  I gave that more power. Well, and it seems like since
• 36:45
  then, like if anyone listening, that self-awareness only grows
• 36:50
  from that flicker. Like if you start to see a
• 36:52
  little bit and you do the work towards like getting more, it
• 36:56
  just at least for me too, I'm just like, I like this feeling
• 37:00
  of working on myself. This is really good.
• 37:03
  You reap the war the rewards of the benefits of what you feed.
• 37:06
  Yes. And so I fed the shame and I fed
• 37:09
  the guilt. And so I wrapped the rewards of
• 37:12
  feeding the shame and feeding the guilt.
• 37:15
  You don't reap freedom from feeding the shame.
• 37:18
  You don't see the other side of what that's going to look like
• 37:22
  when you give it the attention it wants.
• 37:26
  So I started feeling less shame when I started telling the
• 37:30
  truth, which was weird because the consequences sucked.
• 37:34
  But I was more afraid of the consequences than I was of the
• 37:36
  relief of the shame, because I didn't know what relief of shame
• 37:39
  felt like. And so the next day, not knowing
• 37:42
  what the hell to do, but knowing I had to do something, I did
• 37:46
  something that people people basically say I was kind of
• 37:50
  crazy. I kind of called my own
• 37:52
  intervention of some sorts. I called up my work because I
• 37:55
  was hungover as hell. The next day, talked to HR, told
• 37:58
  HR had a problem I that I was going to, I had a problem with
• 38:01
  alcohol and I was going to start working on.
• 38:02
  I sent an e-mail to the local a, a group.
• 38:06
  It was right in the middle of COVID.
• 38:07
  So there was nothing in person, but I sent an e-mail to them.
• 38:12
  I still have the e-mail to this day.
• 38:13
  And that was it's time for me to put the bottle down was the
• 38:17
  title of that e-mail. And I just wanted access to
• 38:19
  something. I have no, I had no clue.
• 38:21
  I then called up my parents and told them I had a problem with
• 38:25
  alcohol and that I was going to get help.
• 38:28
  And this is what I said to everyone.
• 38:30
  I said I need your help. I need your support.
• 38:33
  I don't know what that's going to look like.
• 38:34
  Like I don't, I don't know what the support is going to look
• 38:36
  like, but I'm going to need it. I have a problem and I'm going
• 38:40
  to do something about it. And so that was on a Monday.
• 38:42
  On the Wednesday we invited her parents over for dinner.
• 38:46
  They and just lived down the road and I told them in person
• 38:51
  that I have a problem with alcohol and that I'm going to
• 38:54
  need your help and I'm going to need your support.
• 38:56
  But I don't know what that's going to look like, but I'm
• 38:58
  going to get help. So I started, I made a plan for
• 39:01
  myself like I told all of my immediate family, including
• 39:04
  work, but within the first week of me being sober.
• 39:08
  Full honesty. Also, what I didn't know was the
• 39:11
  amount of accountability that was that was going to bring, but
• 39:14
  it wasn't the accountability that I needed.
• 39:16
  I didn't know, but it was the honesty.
• 39:18
  It was it was the fact that I wasn't going to have to walk
• 39:21
  around on wondering like all of the people that I was going to
• 39:25
  see on a fairly regular basis all knew that there was
• 39:28
  something that I was working on. And I that part I wasn't afraid
• 39:31
  of. I didn't realize that this is
• 39:33
  like not something people do. I did it anyway.
• 39:35
  So I made a plan for myself to go to 4 meetings a week.
• 39:38
  OK, So I went to four meetings a week like clockwork.
• 39:41
  And there's a lot of, you know, go to 60 and 60 and whatever it
• 39:46
  was like there's, there's a whole bunch of just four
• 39:48
  meetings a week because I wanted to make sure that I could still
• 39:51
  show up for my kids and still put them to bed.
• 39:53
  And still, you know, I have family time and still do all of
• 39:56
  those things. I took up a hobby and that was
• 39:59
  baking bread because somebody had made the suggestion.
• 40:02
  Of do something that you always wished you wanted to do.
• 40:05
  And I was like, I always wanted to make a loaf of bread.
• 40:08
  So I that's. Amazing.
• 40:10
  So I, I took up a baking bread as a hobby and that was one of
• 40:16
  the IT was probably one of the silliest little things and
• 40:19
  little things that I picked up in my early recovery that that
• 40:22
  brought me peace when and I this is the way I describe this.
• 40:29
  When I quit drinking, I lost the only thing that allowed me to
• 40:33
  operate in in this world. The only way I knew how it was,
• 40:37
  it was, it was my best friend, it was my coping mechanism.
• 40:40
  It was my medicine. It was something I did when I
• 40:43
  was happy. It's something I did when I I
• 40:45
  was sad. It was something I did all day
• 40:47
  long. And when you take that away,
• 40:49
  there is, I called it the chaos of nothingness.
• 40:52
  There's a giant emptiness that exists because of the emotional
• 40:57
  attachment that that I didn't know existed between me and the
• 41:01
  thing and the relief that I got because it was my solution.
• 41:05
  And when we look at it from that perspective that it was the
• 41:08
  solution, not the problem then that I get to look at what am I
• 41:15
  using it to solve? And death by 1000 cuts when you
• 41:19
  stop doing that and you and you've and you've drank for a
• 41:23
  good 15 years, you have no fucking clue who you are.
• 41:27
  I didn't. I had no freaking clue.
• 41:29
  I knew what I did which. Is not who you are.
• 41:32
  Amazing, I zoomed in again. That's amazing.
• 41:38
  My editor, Julian's gonna love this.
• 41:39
  He's gonna be like, that was great.
• 41:41
  OK, no, OK. So that was we were having a
• 41:44
  good, a good point there. So you, it's a rebirth.
• 41:47
  It's almost like life without alcohol was you were like
• 41:50
  reborn. Yeah.
• 41:51
  Or who do you? It's looking at life through a
• 41:53
  completely different lens. And it was and it was.
• 41:57
  It was looking at life through the lens of my past.
• 41:59
  Because I was clearly, I clearly did a lot of shit I wasn't proud
• 42:04
  of. We all do.
• 42:05
  And and at some point you have to make peace with it.
• 42:08
  You don't make peace with it all at once.
• 42:10
  You make peace with it in little bits and pieces and chunks and,
• 42:13
  and whatever. That's why they say connection
• 42:15
  is the opposite of of addiction. Without other people in my life,
• 42:19
  I would never be where I am right now without.
• 42:22
  And I say this over and over and over again as strangers saved my
• 42:25
  life. Strangers don't have the
• 42:26
  emotional responsibility that family and friends do You also,
• 42:30
  if you say something to a stranger and they walk away,
• 42:32
  what have you lost? Not a hell of a lot compared to
• 42:35
  if, if it was your wife or if it was your family.
• 42:39
  You know what I mean? There's so much emotional
• 42:41
  tension in, in, in our only in our own family relationships
• 42:45
  that that shame carries so much more weight than it does when I
• 42:48
  sit down with you, Brianne, and tell you my story.
• 42:51
  Because the emotional consequence to me sharing with
• 42:54
  you is way less than it is when when I share it with somebody
• 42:58
  that I already have an emotional connection with.
• 43:01
  That the shame of my poor actions.
• 43:04
  Great bear consequence to your life.
• 43:09
  So you, gosh, there's so much I can say to that.
• 43:13
  It's almost like when when you said shame, you said addiction
• 43:17
  is the opposite of connection. When I remember thinking when I
• 43:20
  was in therapy talking about shame and then my therapist
• 43:23
  talked about or then I looked up, I'm like, what is the
• 43:25
  definition of shame? And Brené Brown?
• 43:27
  And again, I'm sure there's a million.
• 43:28
  Love Brene. Love Brene Brene.
• 43:30
  Is like my homie, she said, and correct me if I get this right,
• 43:35
  she said shame is the fear of disconnection.
• 43:38
  And I was like, wait, what? OK.
• 43:41
  Because like it's not just feeling bad.
• 43:42
  It's like if you know this about me, you're not going to love me
• 43:46
  anymore. I was like my God mic drop.
• 43:49
  And then I was like, so if you are honest and if you're honest
• 43:52
  and something like whoever stays stays, honesty is important.
• 43:56
  But like you can't fear the disconnection.
• 43:58
  Like the I don't even know what I'm saying.
• 44:00
  Right. But you can you live in the
• 44:02
  scarcity. You can live in the scarcity of
• 44:04
  what disconnection might give you.
• 44:05
  Yes, like they're going to reject me if they know the
• 44:08
  truth. Or you can experience the
• 44:11
  connection that the truth will give you and neither 1 you can
• 44:14
  control. There you go.
• 44:15
  Right, like I can't control your perspective of any of my story.
• 44:19
  Uh huh. I can't control any of that.
• 44:22
  I can only hope that you will see me for who I am and see the
• 44:26
  good in the what I'm doing or or the like.
• 44:30
  There's always a benefit or a non a benefit somewhere in any
• 44:34
  relationship. And eventually you can either
• 44:36
  pull that elastic van so far where the where no one's betting
• 44:40
  benefiting and shit snaps. But sitting behind the shame
• 44:44
  pulls the elastic band farther. Yeah, there's no opportunity for
• 44:47
  reconnection when you keep pulling.
• 44:49
  But what a beautiful thing that you being my guest, sharing your
• 44:54
  story. It's resonating with things that
• 44:57
  I've been through and we are connecting as a result of the
• 45:01
  truth that you're sharing with me.
• 45:03
  We met today, we followed each other for a week or so to a
• 45:06
  couple weeks, whatever. Couple weeks, yeah.
• 45:07
  Like he by you being honest, like you, you don't control my
• 45:13
  reaction. But in this case, like my
• 45:16
  reaction is wow, I'm feeling seen, I'm feeling heard.
• 45:20
  This is all going to like that truth of you sharing is going to
• 45:23
  be heard by people listening and like it's actually a beautiful
• 45:27
  thing coming from maybe you told yourself, if I tell this,
• 45:30
  everyone's going to, it's like, actually, it's the opposite here
• 45:33
  because all these people are helped.
• 45:35
  So apparently you were a wrong predictor of the future and that
• 45:38
  you know what I'm saying. Like all these things yourself
• 45:40
  so that you don't tell the truth.
• 45:42
  Yeah, because back then, the truth hurt.
• 45:45
  Yeah, yeah. Back then when when I was
• 45:48
  telling, when I was trying to tell the truth to someone, I
• 45:51
  felt ashamed and I felt guilted and I felt not good enough.
• 45:56
  And a lot of the times, and a lot of what I ended up doing was
• 46:00
  just nothing because it felt like no matter what I did, it
• 46:04
  wasn't enough. That all falls on me.
• 46:07
  I can blame whomever, but it still falls on me because it the
• 46:12
  courage to have the hard conversation falls on the person
• 46:17
  who is having the problem that requires the change.
• 46:19
  If I don't ever say anything but I want change to happen, all I
• 46:24
  get is resentment out of it. Inaction leads to that
• 46:27
  resentment. I can't ask you to know what I'm
• 46:30
  thinking if I don't tell you. And so like, I was super guilty
• 46:33
  of that, super guilty, super guilty of that.
• 46:36
  So I, I learned to dump my truth out fairly early on because the
• 46:44
  freedom I started feeling from talking, from saying the truth
• 46:50
  kind of perpetuated itself. That emotional backpack
• 46:53
  continued to get lighter. I started to feel better about
• 46:57
  myself. I started to get back a little
• 46:59
  bit more self-confidence. I started seeing the things in
• 47:03
  my life that that were aligned and I was started seeing the
• 47:06
  things in my life that weren't. And there was a lot of
• 47:08
  misalignment, things that I believed in that I just ignored
• 47:13
  to keep things comfortable. Nice guys finished last was a
• 47:17
  word at a phrase that I used about myself for a really really
• 47:20
  long time. There was a feeling that I never
• 47:22
  ever ever said out loud. I was a yes ma'am through and
• 47:25
  through. For the most part.
• 47:27
  I figured if I said yes to everything then I could do no
• 47:30
  wrong. And what happened there was all
• 47:31
  I did was lose respect. And I didn't learn that until
• 47:35
  like 2 years ago. So you found yourself, did you
• 47:39
  find the was there were the physical withdrawals hard at at?
• 47:45
  I didn't. I didn't know.
• 47:47
  Yeah, I was on very uneducated. I didn't know that physical
• 47:51
  withdrawal from alcohol, physical dependence to alcohol
• 47:55
  was was the thing and I didn't know that it could possibly kill
• 48:00
  you. That was not some that was not
• 48:02
  common knowledge for me. Yeah.
• 48:04
  That being said, I was at the point where like my last year of
• 48:08
  drinking was waking up at 4:30 in the being so nauseous I would
• 48:12
  dry heave for 15 minutes to the point where like I would I would
• 48:16
  drink water to give myself something to throw up.
• 48:18
  It was disgusting. That was my normal.
• 48:21
  See what I mean? Like it was it, you know, starts
• 48:23
  out as one night a week and then it ends up being 6.
• 48:26
  And so that was the last year and my, the the first, the first
• 48:31
  week was atrocious. Absolutely headaches, brain fog
• 48:36
  like you, the brain fog lasted almost three weeks, but brain
• 48:40
  fog was nasty. Really, really hard to
• 48:42
  concentrate and operate. Waking up in puddles of sweat.
• 48:47
  Like part way through the night I would change my clothes and
• 48:51
  sleep on the other side of the bed and then wake up again two
• 48:54
  hours later just as soaked as I was two hours before.
• 48:57
  Then and now the entire bed soaked and then just going back
• 49:01
  to sleep in cold and soaked stuff.
• 49:04
  Your body's just like. It's.
• 49:06
  Just doesn't know what to do, huh?
• 49:07
  No, it's. Reorganizing itself.
• 49:11
  It's trying to figure it out, right?
• 49:12
  It is doing its thing. It is screaming inside because I
• 49:15
  finally not, I'm not giving it the thing that was keeping it
• 49:18
  comfortable too. And everything needs to.
• 49:21
  I mean, I had bruises next to my liver.
• 49:24
  I would wake up in the morning like black and blue and purple,
• 49:28
  not in not when I was detoxing, but when I was still like in
• 49:32
  active addiction, active drinking and, and all of these
• 49:35
  signs I continued to ignore. And that's like, that's a blood
• 49:40
  vessel to my liver exploding and throwing up blood and having
• 49:46
  high blood pressure when I'm, you know, 36 years old and being
• 49:49
  afraid of seeing the doctor because God forbid I have to lie
• 49:53
  to him and hopefully he doesn't say I have too big of a problem.
• 49:56
  Just keeping it's just at war, war with your mind at war and
• 50:01
  physically. So you pushed through that
• 50:02
  withdrawal? I pushed through the withdrawal
• 50:05
  TMI but whatever I it took like 2 1/2 to three weeks before like
• 50:11
  my urine changed from that dehydrated yellow to actually
• 50:15
  clearing up. Like that's how long it took for
• 50:18
  my body to like rehydrate properly.
• 50:20
  It was like re. It was like a demolition.
• 50:23
  And really just like, OK, well, we're not gonna live with this
• 50:26
  substance anymore. So we're gonna just like
• 50:27
  reorganize. We're gonna like heal.
• 50:29
  Try to heal as quickly as possible.
• 50:31
  Or figure. After that I lived on the on the
• 50:34
  the pink cloud. There's they call it the pink
• 50:37
  cloud in recovery. I lived on that sucker for like
• 50:39
  4 months. I had it.
• 50:40
  I had. The cloud where you feel great.
• 50:42
  Oh yeah. Or you're like, this is fucking
• 50:45
  amazing. Yeah.
• 50:47
  I've never felt so fresh and not hungover.
• 50:50
  I. Lived on that damn thing.
• 50:52
  It was like my body was starting to to figure itself out.
• 50:56
  I started feeling better physically.
• 50:57
  The first man. In my first year I went from 215
• 51:00
  lbs to 180 lbs. Like I lost like 3540 lbs in the
• 51:05
  first year and I ate so much candy it was ridiculous.
• 51:07
  Yeah. But yeah, you like, but you
• 51:10
  were, you were literally like transforming, like internally,
• 51:14
  externally like shedding. Shedding both up here, yeah.
• 51:19
  In here, yeah. And, and, and it was pretty
• 51:24
  early on where I'm, I met this other group in recovery.
• 51:28
  I'm joined this online community called I am sober.
• 51:32
  And it was basically like this little you would just post a
• 51:36
  post. It's kind of like sober social
• 51:38
  media, but not really. Oh, cool.
• 51:40
  Yeah. But you, everyone in there had a
• 51:42
  problem. And you would share your little
• 51:43
  stories. And yeah, people would comment.
• 51:46
  And then there was a group of people on there that had started
• 51:49
  up their own recovery meeting. And I got curious one day and I
• 51:52
  went and visited them to see what they were about.
• 51:55
  And I really liked the the way they were, their view on life.
• 52:00
  It wasn't a a it wasn't a box. I was starting to feel enclosed,
• 52:05
  but I didn't really have words for it either.
• 52:07
  But I, I was starting to feel like controlled by this set of
• 52:11
  rules that I was supposed to live my life by that, that
• 52:14
  weren't, that weren't fully aligned with, with, with my
• 52:17
  heart. And so I went and visited them
• 52:20
  and I started actually swapping my meetings, my a, a meetings
• 52:24
  with this group and, and I caught Flack from the a a
• 52:28
  community because that's not recovery is what I was told.
• 52:31
  And I was like, OK, well it. Is for me.
• 52:34
  It, it, it seems to it's something that I'm interested
• 52:37
  in. So I did that.
• 52:38
  I had a sponsor. He was amazing.
• 52:39
  I won't like him personally was whatever works for you guy,
• 52:43
  whatever works for you. If that's what works for you, I.
• 52:45
  Feel like, yeah, like recovery looks different for everyone,
• 52:48
  doesn't it? Or maybe it doesn't, I don't
• 52:50
  know. But.
• 52:50
  It. For alcohol.
• 52:52
  It does. It looks different for everyone,
• 52:55
  but I also, and this is this is a thing that's going through my
• 52:59
  mind right now, is terminal uniqueness.
• 53:01
  And how do we like if we end up in in the spot of you can say
• 53:05
  like recovery use is, is unique for everyone, but how, where do
• 53:09
  you cross the line to terminal uniqueness?
• 53:11
  And you're just not unhelpable because no one else has
• 53:14
  experienced the things that I have experienced.
• 53:17
  And we've all, regardless of whether we've shared different
• 53:21
  experiences, we've all felt the same emotions.
• 53:24
  Yes, yes, those core emotions, yeah.
• 53:27
  Right, so. We get there in different ways.
• 53:30
  We have our human, we have our humanness that we can still go
• 53:34
  back to. Yeah.
• 53:35
  That we're we're regardless of where you come from, regardless
• 53:38
  of what you've been through, regardless of what I've gone,
• 53:41
  where I come from and what I've been to, we can, we can always
• 53:44
  relate back to our humanness. So I'm not that different than
• 53:47
  I'm not that different than you, regardless of my experience.
• 53:50
  I just need to have the curiosity to find out where to
• 53:53
  meet. We're all all playing in the
• 53:55
  same field. It's almost like, and we're all
• 53:58
  experiencing, you know, a movie inside out.
• 54:00
  Yeah, with the emotions. Like I was like, wait, I mean, I
• 54:04
  love it for so many reasons, but I was like, wait, so all of us
• 54:07
  have these little board of directors that, you know, these
• 54:09
  are MO and but they all look different.
• 54:12
  They all have their little like maybe mine would have a little
• 54:14
  Copa hat and like this coffee and yours would have all yours
• 54:17
  would have your shirt and your. And I'm like, but they're all
• 54:20
  the same. But they just the beautiful
• 54:22
  thing is that we have the uniqueness.
• 54:24
  I just love how you put it that if you're curious, curious
• 54:28
  enough to find those points, that's so good.
• 54:31
  Curiosity and willingness. You gotta go find them, yeah.
• 54:37
  It's a willingness, right? Like if I show up with the
• 54:41
  willingness to investigate myself and you too, then we'll
• 54:46
  figure out where to meet. When I don't have the
• 54:48
  willingness to listen to you, it is a reflection of my lack of
• 54:51
  willingness to listen to myself. I can't meet anyone in a spot
• 54:56
  where I'm not willing to meet myself.
• 54:57
  I can't. So you're doing all this self
• 55:00
  work, you're you're finding the places that work for you.
• 55:04
  You're feeling you're on the pink cloud.
• 55:06
  I've never heard that terminology.
• 55:07
  The pink cloud of recovery. Mm hmm.
• 55:11
  And but this is 4 1/2 years ago, right?
• 55:14
  So do you find and then now you find yourself in this
• 55:17
  self-awareness keeps growing right throughout this 4 1/2 Take
• 55:21
  me through the next phase after the pink cloud is it did that?
• 55:24
  Does it drop off where you're like, oh, where's the pink cloud
• 55:27
  go? I mean, it dropped, it dropped
• 55:29
  off, but I in the meantime, I started finding people that I
• 55:32
  really, really connected with, Julie being one of them.
• 55:36
  She's she's she's the Co host. You're Co host of your podcast?
• 55:40
  Yep. We did it again.
• 55:42
  Did it do it again? Yeah.
• 55:45
  That was for Julie. Julie shot out.
• 55:47
  Zoom in on Julie, even though she's.
• 55:49
  Not here, I'm actually at her house right now.
• 55:51
  OK, well that was a shot out to her.
• 55:55
  Yeah, okay, you have this through the Glass Recovery
• 55:58
  podcast? Yes.
• 55:59
  Through the Glass recovery podcast that is currently going
• 56:01
  through a rebranding right now we're about, yeah, we can bring
• 56:05
  that up. We can bring that up at the end.
• 56:07
  But anyways, we so you need. So I'm met her through that
• 56:12
  community and a bunch of other people where we were all in the
• 56:17
  same about six months apart in our sobriety.
• 56:21
  And we all really connected to sitting up late and talking
• 56:25
  about all of our shit and investigating where it came from
• 56:29
  and how it came to be. And we just went down that road.
• 56:34
  And Julie and I shared a whole bunch of that stuff to a point
• 56:37
  where like if you end up in a space that is so safe, where,
• 56:42
  and this is the stuff you can't gift anyone.
• 56:44
  But if you end up in a space that's so safe where you can
• 56:47
  just get whatever those weird kind of, we think they're weird
• 56:51
  and we think they're sideways thoughts and we think they're
• 56:54
  kind of disgusting. And so how dare I never say
• 56:56
  that. But if you end up in a safe
• 56:58
  space where those words can leave you, I found that they
• 57:02
  held less and less power over what I was going to do next.
• 57:06
  The difference between responding and reacting.
• 57:09
  The difference between showing up to work and snapping back at
• 57:13
  one of the other leaders and sitting there and waiting to
• 57:17
  find out what they were going to say.
• 57:19
  Because I realized that I was making myself emotionally
• 57:22
  responsible for their reactions. So I was framing things for them
• 57:26
  to fall my way and I would never see what someone else's reaction
• 57:31
  or response would be because that is terrifying.
• 57:35
  So, and this was one of the things that I did within my
• 57:39
  first year, I found myself saying sorry for everything.
• 57:43
  I apologize if it was a word that fell out of my mouth, and a
• 57:47
  lot of my change early on came from being frustrated with doing
• 57:52
  the same stupid shit over and over again and not knowing how
• 57:55
  to do it any differently. Sorry was one of them.
• 57:58
  Why did I always leave these conversations feeling like I was
• 58:01
  responsible for the thing that happened or the thing that was
• 58:04
  wrong that that that happened that was wrong?
• 58:07
  It was because I took ownership for it by apologizing.
• 58:09
  So I decided that I would write my own definition of sorry.
• 58:14
  And I wrote this down in my own journal entry.
• 58:17
  And I was like, this is what sorry is going to mean to me
• 58:19
  from here on out. So I stopped apologizing for
• 58:22
  shit that I didn't need to apologize for.
• 58:24
  And it was weird as hell because it created this really awkward
• 58:27
  silence. Really awkward silence.
• 58:30
  Like now what do I say? How what do I do?
• 58:32
  I'm like, I have to find a whole brand new language for just
• 58:36
  having conversation and just relating to people and then
• 58:40
  listening to them. This is weird.
• 58:42
  ANYWAYS, my level of self go ahead.
• 58:46
  It's probably you don't have to like fill the air like I can
• 58:49
  relate to that so much. I'm not I'm not gonna I
• 58:52
  apologize all the damn time. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
• 58:56
  And I'm like, what? I even catch myself too in
• 58:58
  texting like oh sorry I'm like no I'm not, No no.
• 59:01
  You make yourself small. You you minimize yourself with
• 59:05
  every apology that isn't necessary is a minimization of
• 59:09
  oneself to keep things comfortable for you, not for
• 59:14
  them, not for them. If it's on me, you don't have to
• 59:17
  do anything like right, That's fine, I'll take it.
• 59:20
  I'll put it in my backpack. It's heavy already, but I'll put
• 59:23
  it so you don't have to put it in yours.
• 59:25
  No, you put it in yours. You do love.
• 59:28
  It or if it's there, but I mean why not be open to the
• 59:31
  conversation to see who see where it belongs.
• 59:34
  But if I just have constantly apologize for it, then I just
• 59:36
  get to take the responsibility for it even if I want it and
• 59:39
  then. What if you're your reaction?
• 59:42
  If I don't take responsibility for it?
• 59:44
  It's easier for me to, like, bear that than you to be unhappy
• 59:47
  with me or mad at me or like it's gonna be weird.
• 59:51
  Conflict avoidance. Yes, but when you start to heal
• 59:54
  and become self aware, it's not really conflict.
• 59:57
  It's like, I want to be on the same page, so different.
• 1:00:02
  It's like it's going to be maybe that first 30 seconds, but like
• 1:00:05
  that 30 seconds of being uncomfortable.
• 1:00:07
  Or we can just be fake and carry this weirdness.
• 1:00:10
  And I'm resenting you from afar anyway, right?
• 1:00:13
  So why don't we just, why don't I just tell you what's bothering
• 1:00:15
  me? My gosh, you're like healing my
• 1:00:17
  life right now. I'm like, I'm like, that's yeah.
• 1:00:20
  It's just literally like, well, how do they know if you don't
• 1:00:23
  tell them? Because you're too much of A
• 1:00:25
  weakling to have the conversation right now.
• 1:00:27
  So go grow some courage and go have the conversation like.
• 1:00:31
  How often did you use resentment as your blanket?
• 1:00:36
  Like a lot that's I don't have. You avoid the.
• 1:00:39
  Yeah, you just do about it. And it's keeping me warm and
• 1:00:42
  it's giving me purpose. Yeah, you're right.
• 1:00:45
  It's it's really a waste. Actually, I talked about that my
• 1:00:49
  therapist once I had resentment towards somebody and like she
• 1:00:54
  was like, well, why can't you have that conversation?
• 1:00:57
  You know, And I was like, I totally can.
• 1:00:59
  I can, I'm just, that person is totally approachable and like
• 1:01:03
  really. So I'm like, it's all me.
• 1:01:05
  Like they don't even know. And, and it ended up I ended up
• 1:01:10
  doing some discovery work on myself and being like, you're
• 1:01:13
  not, this is all about needing validation from this person that
• 1:01:17
  you're not getting. And so you're resenting and I'm
• 1:01:21
  like, you're really creating this whole story, Bree and this
• 1:01:25
  person Like it's it's actually, I was like laughing after.
• 1:01:28
  I'm like, OK, yeah, I just had a whole story in my head.
• 1:01:31
  And then but it's actually not true.
• 1:01:33
  And I actually love them. And I actually just need them to
• 1:01:36
  validate me because I'm still not totally validate, you know,
• 1:01:39
  You know what I mean? Like.
• 1:01:40
  Yeah. And here's the funny part.
• 1:01:42
  If they're a safe person, you can actually say, hey, listen,
• 1:01:44
  here's the story that I'm telling myself and you're not
• 1:01:47
  projecting it on them when you say that because you say you say
• 1:01:50
  here's it's the story that I'm telling this as vulnerable as
• 1:01:52
  hell, but I. Understand like.
• 1:01:55
  But here's the story I'm telling myself based off of this
• 1:01:57
  situation. And if that's if that person is
• 1:01:59
  a safe person, then you, you get an amazing conversation out of
• 1:02:04
  it. You get to hear their truth.
• 1:02:06
  Yes. Oh.
• 1:02:07
  My gosh. Then you get to correct the
• 1:02:10
  story you tell yourself in a healthy way.
• 1:02:13
  Here's what. Using them?
• 1:02:15
  Nothing. Oh my gosh, that's.
• 1:02:18
  When you say that, you bear the responsibility for the story.
• 1:02:21
  There's the story. I'm gonna use that with everyone
• 1:02:24
  that I tell stories about in my head.
• 1:02:26
  No, that's really brilliant because you're coming
• 1:02:29
  authentically. You're saying here's you're
• 1:02:31
  having an internal struggle. Like I'm I'm having an internal
• 1:02:34
  struggle and I want to repair it with you and like maybe this is
• 1:02:37
  all yeah, I really, really like that.
• 1:02:39
  So it seems like you you can't really get get you have to have
• 1:02:43
  the self-awareness to be like, OK, I tell myself stories.
• 1:02:46
  We alltel our self stories. That's OK.
• 1:02:48
  Just how can we fix it? How can we get the truth of it?
• 1:02:52
  Yeah, like we're, if you recognize that it is just a
• 1:02:55
  story and it isn't the truth, then even when you have that
• 1:03:00
  conversation anxiety, that's the birth place of anxiety.
• 1:03:04
  Is that the future? That's it.
• 1:03:06
  That's every story we tell ourselves, right?
• 1:03:10
  Is something we don't know. We're guessing.
• 1:03:13
  And we fill in the gaps by telling the story to ourselves,
• 1:03:16
  like our brain wants to make sense of it when really you can
• 1:03:19
  clarify the story by like a very helpful, heartfelt conversation.
• 1:03:23
  And then if there's not a good response to that, perhaps, I
• 1:03:26
  mean, you got to evaluate who who is psychologically safe.
• 1:03:30
  We were just talking about that at work, too.
• 1:03:32
  Psychological Safety at Work, at home, with friends.
• 1:03:35
  It's everything, right? Yeah.
• 1:03:37
  Tell me about your podcasting of psychological safety.
• 1:03:40
  That is a psychological safe place to talk about all the
• 1:03:43
  things sobriety, The sobriety podcast.
• 1:03:46
  I'm looking at it here through the Glass Recovery podcast.
• 1:03:50
  Yep, right now it's going through a rebrand.
• 1:03:53
  It's going to be rebranded to no alcohol needed, OK.
• 1:03:58
  And it's, and it's, it's a version of our growth, part of
• 1:04:03
  part a part of my growth, part of what really helped me in my
• 1:04:08
  recovery. And Julie, as well as caused.
• 1:04:10
  Yeah, where we met was we met in, in, in meetings where
• 1:04:14
  somebody gave us a topic. And even if there was 15 or 20
• 1:04:17
  people at the meeting, we, we after the topic was presented,
• 1:04:21
  we went out into breakout rooms of groups of four or five.
• 1:04:24
  It was way more intimate conversation, a way more, way
• 1:04:27
  more. That's where we grew.
• 1:04:29
  That's where our recovery. We went from like little baby
• 1:04:33
  sober people to started growing, going up into our recovery and
• 1:04:37
  figuring out our shit, giving ourself the freedom we needed to
• 1:04:42
  change those unhealthy coping mechanisms to something that
• 1:04:46
  that that would work without the desire to drink, without the
• 1:04:50
  desire to remove the discomfort. So the podcast is a reflection
• 1:04:54
  of essentially those meetings. We present a topic, we invite
• 1:04:59
  two to three guests. So like a breakout room to have
• 1:05:02
  a conversation about a topic related to recovery and
• 1:05:05
  emotional intelligence or something along those lines.
• 1:05:07
  Because what we've learned is that if I get to know myself and
• 1:05:12
  I get to know my nasty habits and I get to know my good ones,
• 1:05:14
  and I get to know all of these things about me and how I
• 1:05:18
  respond and how do I find the language to express myself in an
• 1:05:22
  emotionally healthy way? My goal was to put so much
• 1:05:26
  distance between me and a bottle, right?
• 1:05:28
  And the distance was emotional distance.
• 1:05:30
  If I could put myself if, if I could turn around, and if I
• 1:05:34
  could figure out how to have an emotionally healthy reaction to
• 1:05:38
  what happens in my life, I am not going to desire my old habit
• 1:05:43
  anymore. So well said.
• 1:05:45
  Again, analogy that not just the physical distance from the
• 1:05:48
  bottle, the emotional distance. Wow, it makes so much sense the
• 1:05:53
  way you're saying it, that if you are able to cope with life,
• 1:05:56
  if you have an emotional distance, it's not something you
• 1:05:59
  desire genuinely not because you shouldn't, because you know it's
• 1:06:02
  not going. You just know it's not it's.
• 1:06:05
  Not I have plenty of experience that says it doesn't work.
• 1:06:09
  You've investigated it thoroughly, yeah.
• 1:06:12
  I've got all the evidence in the world.
• 1:06:14
  And so it become you want to go, it's about not just, oh, I'm not
• 1:06:18
  drinking and I'm resisting the urges to like, oh, I'm over here
• 1:06:21
  now. Like that's not even in my
• 1:06:22
  stratosphere. Like, I don't, that's not what I
• 1:06:25
  go to. If I continue to just go, urge,
• 1:06:28
  resist, urge, resist, I'm just gonna sit at urge resist.
• 1:06:33
  If I say urge, what is the root of urge?
• 1:06:36
  Then I can look at what's sitting behind here so I don't
• 1:06:39
  have to fight the resistance. And then I can move myself
• 1:06:42
  another the level farther. And so this is, this is how I
• 1:06:45
  kind of like, see this in my brain was, you know, I started,
• 1:06:51
  I started out this close to a drink, right?
• 1:06:55
  And, and that's why white knuckling the crap out of it.
• 1:06:58
  And then as I got more emotionally healthy and I got,
• 1:07:03
  and I started figuring out my what's and my whys and, and the
• 1:07:06
  ifs and the ands and, and then doing something about it, trying
• 1:07:10
  something new, then I could put myself farther and farther away
• 1:07:14
  from it. And so if I had something
• 1:07:17
  detrimental happen and I got closer, I still wasn't there.
• 1:07:21
  And then so I would get closer and then I get farther away and
• 1:07:24
  then get closer and then get farther away and then go closer
• 1:07:28
  and then farther away. And then soon you just get far
• 1:07:30
  enough away that it's not a thing I do anymore, right?
• 1:07:33
  Like that's that, that that has been like the goal.
• 1:07:36
  If I can have an emotionally healthy reaction response, not a
• 1:07:40
  reaction to what happens in my life, then maybe, just maybe
• 1:07:44
  it's not going to be a thing I do anymore.
• 1:07:46
  And so like back to the podcast that is, is a lot of it is
• 1:07:51
  emotional intelligence and sharing, sharing a story based
• 1:07:55
  on the topic. That was the experience.
• 1:07:57
  And so the rebrand right now is going to a point because Julie
• 1:08:01
  and I both believe we don't need alcohol.
• 1:08:04
  We don't need escape to live a really amazing freaking life
• 1:08:08
  because now you're going to get to to experience it in all, in
• 1:08:12
  all of the colors, in all of the emotions and all of the things.
• 1:08:16
  And I get to experience my connection with you, with her,
• 1:08:20
  with any other friends, in as real a way as possible.
• 1:08:25
  Because I'm not going to use anything to separate to put a
• 1:08:28
  layer between me and you. Another great analogy.
• 1:08:31
  Gosh, so good. I feel like that is a great
• 1:08:35
  place to before I like ramble and lose what you just said.
• 1:08:41
  That is such a good place to kind of push pause because I
• 1:08:44
  would love to in the future. Have you come back as well?
• 1:08:48
  And maybe Julie can come back. Would love to just you know,
• 1:08:52
  I've talked a little bit about on the podcast about recovery
• 1:08:55
  from addiction and all of that, which is I just especially with
• 1:09:00
  alcohol, more and more people just being like, wait, why am I
• 1:09:03
  doing this? Is this in this, this is really
• 1:09:06
  bad. Like I saw another one of your
• 1:09:08
  reels or like, Oh shit, that's not good.
• 1:09:10
  Like it's really bad for you, You know, like there's the world
• 1:09:14
  is waking up to the vadnais of the physical things as well, it
• 1:09:18
  seems like. So would love to welcome you and
• 1:09:20
  Julie back, you know, in the future, if that ever would be
• 1:09:23
  something. But I wanted to thank you for
• 1:09:26
  being so real, so authentic about your recovery.
• 1:09:31
  I think I know people listening have struggle with alcohol, but
• 1:09:36
  even more so than that, it's this the root, right?
• 1:09:39
  Like you were talking about it. That's what you used, right?
• 1:09:42
  And if anyone listening to this is going through the human
• 1:09:45
  emotions, I know that they're going to feel less alone
• 1:09:48
  listening to this because we're all navigating them.
• 1:09:50
  You know, it's like we're all navigating them daily, every
• 1:09:53
  moment. So I just love that you guys
• 1:09:55
  have a podcast where you're keeping it real and so much
• 1:09:59
  respect for you and like, congratulations again on your
• 1:10:02
  recovery. And like everything you're doing
• 1:10:04
  to help people recover, which is a ripple effect to all the
• 1:10:08
  people that they then interact with.
• 1:10:10
  It gives me chills. Like you're literally changing
• 1:10:13
  the course of people's lives by having this conversation.
• 1:10:16
  So thank you. Appreciate that.
• 1:10:18
  Yeah, well, I'm going to wrap it up.
• 1:10:20
  Anything else that you want to leave, I'm going to put in the
• 1:10:22
  show notes, a link to your podcasts, link to your Instagram
• 1:10:26
  website, all the things, anything you want to say say you
• 1:10:29
  know, as a parting parting. I don't see this is where I I
• 1:10:32
  rabble ramble. I need to work on my endings.
• 1:10:34
  Is there anything you'd like to say Need to?
• 1:10:36
  Figure it out. The other thing I do have is a
• 1:10:39
  men's mental health podcast called Forged in Silence.
• 1:10:41
  I'm going to shamelessly plug plug that one there.
• 1:10:44
  I started that up with a friend and what we wanted to do was try
• 1:10:49
  and create a space where we talk about the issues men face.
• 1:10:56
  But rarely talk about there's right now there's, it almost
• 1:11:02
  feels like there's this battle of between men and women and
• 1:11:06
  masculinity and femininity and patriarchy and all the rest of
• 1:11:09
  the BS that we have that's going on.
• 1:11:12
  And, and what we want to try and do is create a space for where
• 1:11:16
  men feel safe that they can, they can talk about what, what
• 1:11:20
  it is on their mind. Because both Robbie and I, we
• 1:11:23
  suffered in silence for a really long time and we didn't, we
• 1:11:26
  didn't talk about the things that we needed to talk about.
• 1:11:29
  And we're both living way better lives today because we found
• 1:11:31
  those spaces. So what we want to do is say
• 1:11:34
  that it's OK to talk as a man and it's OK to share your
• 1:11:38
  emotions and it's OK to try and figure those out.
• 1:11:41
  Yeah, because suicide rate is it's super high like.
• 1:11:45
  It's it's higher men, yeah. Men, it's super it's super high
• 1:11:49
  and it's been and it's because we're not talking.
• 1:11:51
  We need we need safe spaces. We need other men to be like,
• 1:11:55
  you know what I can, I can sit here and, and handle your stuff
• 1:11:58
  with you. Yeah.
• 1:11:59
  And sexually be all right. And so that's forged in silence.
• 1:12:05
  We actually, yeah, Forged in silence podcast.
• 1:12:08
  We're on YouTube there too. But you know, there's, I don't
• 1:12:11
  think there's any parting words of wisdom or whatever that may
• 1:12:14
  be. I think finding, finding a place
• 1:12:18
  where you can try and share any bit of honesty in real life and
• 1:12:23
  your heart. I think that's what I'm going to
• 1:12:25
  get a little teary here. But I think that's like, that's
• 1:12:28
  the one of the things that I was so afraid to share that I love
• 1:12:31
  about myself now. You can feel you can feel that
• 1:12:34
  you have a big heart too, and and how beautiful that all of
• 1:12:37
  that is not like buried and you know, self medicating because
• 1:12:43
  like that can show it's probably beautiful when you're getting
• 1:12:45
  emotional. I know I get emotional when I
• 1:12:47
  talk about you see, like how beautiful it feels to like be
• 1:12:51
  real. And then you start to go, wow, I
• 1:12:54
  told myself I love. I really like love that about
• 1:12:57
  myself. And it's super cool.
• 1:13:00
  It's really cool. And that's like chills over
• 1:13:02
  here. And thank you for sharing your
• 1:13:04
  heart with me. And I feel like we're going to
• 1:13:07
  be connected for a while after this.
• 1:13:10
  Sounds great, really appreciate it.
• 1:13:12
  I'm looking forward to it. Have an awesome weekend Steve,
• 1:13:14
  and I'll be messaging you soon. Sounds good.
• 1:13:18
  Thanks for having me on Bree, I really appreciate it.
• 1:13:20
  Of course, take care. Take care.
• 1:13:22
  I.