Latest / Wake Up with Marci / The Truth about Addiction: Dr. Adi Jaffe on healing honesty and hope
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to Wake Up with Marcy, a deep dive into
- 0:03Speaker 1: self discovery. I'm your host, Marsey Hopkins, and this is
- 0:07Speaker 1: the space where we get real about life transformation and
- 0:11Speaker 1: finding our true selves. Welcome back to wake Up with Marcy,
- 0:16Speaker 1: where real conversations spark real transformation. I'm your host, Marsey Hopkins,
- 0:22Speaker 1: and today we're diving deep into healing, self discovery and
- 0:26Speaker 1: breaking free from the labels in shame that so many
- 0:30Speaker 1: of us carry. Joining me is doctor Addie Jaffey, a
- 0:34Speaker 1: world renowned expert on addiction, mental health, and relationships. Once
- 0:39Speaker 1: facing addiction in prison time, doctor Jeffy completely transformed his life.
- 0:44Speaker 1: He went on to earn his PhD from UCLA, founded
- 0:48Speaker 1: Ignited Recovery, and is the author of the best selling
- 0:53Speaker 1: book Unhooked for Yourself from Addiction Forever. He's made it
- 0:57Speaker 1: his life's mission to destigmati addiction and educate not only
- 1:02Speaker 1: those suffering, but also their families. Whether you're personally facing challenges,
- 1:08Speaker 1: supporting a loved one, or simply on your own journey
- 1:12Speaker 1: of wellness and self discovery, today's conversation will bring hope, perspective,
- 1:17Speaker 1: and practical tools that you can use.
- 1:20Speaker 2: So let's dive in. Welcome to the show, doctor Addie.
- 1:23Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Marcie.
- 1:25Speaker 1: All right, so you came from a good background, Yeah,
- 1:29Speaker 1: and then you got into some trouble and you literally
- 1:35Speaker 1: had a swat team break down your door.
- 1:39Speaker 2: So why didn't you take us back to Yeah? Why
- 1:44Speaker 2: what happened? How did you get yourself there?
- 1:47Speaker 1: Because people think that you come from a really bad background,
- 1:51Speaker 1: that's why you're going to start having these problems.
- 1:54Speaker 2: With alcohol or drugs or such. And that was not
- 1:57Speaker 2: your case.
- 1:58Speaker 3: Yeah, and exactly.
- 2:00Speaker 4: And even if you come from a better family, I'll say,
- 2:03Speaker 4: but you know better, I'll put in air quotes.
- 2:04Speaker 3: But they expect that there must.
- 2:06Speaker 4: Have been, you know, abuse, there must have been something
- 2:09Speaker 4: really terrible under the surface, and there wasn't in my family.
- 2:11Speaker 4: I mean, look, my mom and my dad almost got divorced.
- 2:15Speaker 4: My dad left for a little bit.
- 2:17Speaker 3: You know. That was probably that.
- 2:18Speaker 4: And the big move from I was born in Israel,
- 2:20Speaker 4: the big move from Israel to the United States were
- 2:22Speaker 4: probably the two most traumatic things in my life. But
- 2:25Speaker 4: the bottom line is between personality and taking things really
- 2:29Speaker 4: really really internalizing my own lack of what I would
- 2:34Speaker 4: call perfectionism and adequacy in my own mind, my dad
- 2:38Speaker 4: being a really high achiever and setting really high standards
- 2:41Speaker 4: that I felt like I was failing at regularly. But
- 2:43Speaker 4: then also, as I mentioned, a move, we had a
- 2:45Speaker 4: big move right into high school from Israel to the US,
- 2:48Speaker 4: totally different culture. I spoke the language and not well,
- 2:52Speaker 4: you know, there were things of that nature. But what
- 2:54Speaker 4: I talk about, and I think this is important in
- 2:56Speaker 4: the context of the book, is people think addiction is
- 2:59Speaker 4: this disease that you have a genetic predisposition for that,
- 3:03Speaker 4: you know, because so it runs in your family or
- 3:06Speaker 4: you you have a proclivity to fall into it from
- 3:09Speaker 4: an early age. What I found, having worked with thousands
- 3:12Speaker 4: of people at this point, is there are definitely streams
- 3:15Speaker 4: of connectivity. There are connected you know, themes between people
- 3:19Speaker 4: who struggle with addiction, but they're actually primarily more about
- 3:22Speaker 4: the internal struggle, the strife, the lack of adequacy, feeling
- 3:27Speaker 4: less than judging yourself against others than they really are
- 3:30Speaker 4: about the background.
- 3:32Speaker 3: And I think that's important for people to hear.
- 3:33Speaker 4: That's why wealthy families mid you know, you know, kind
- 3:38Speaker 4: of like upper middle class, middle class families, and people
- 3:40Speaker 4: that come from abject poverty can all struggle with the
- 3:43Speaker 4: same issue. Is because the drugs the behavior is used
- 3:47Speaker 4: to cope. In my situation, it was primarily used to
- 3:50Speaker 4: cope with social anxiety and again, low feelings of self worth.
- 3:56Speaker 1: Yes, so what happened when that's what team came in?
- 4:01Speaker 2: Like, why did that happen? And what was going through
- 4:06Speaker 2: your head?
- 4:07Speaker 4: Yeah? I opened the book with the story of how
- 4:10Speaker 4: the SWAT team came in, and so I won't belabor
- 4:13Speaker 4: the point of the actual experience, but you know, the
- 4:16Speaker 4: short of it is, I was a little disenfranchised from
- 4:22Speaker 4: the culture and the family that I grew up in,
- 4:25Speaker 4: and that was self inflicted, right, that wasn't by their doing.
- 4:28Speaker 4: I felt like I didn't belong so I literally moved
- 4:31Speaker 4: to the other side of the country. My family was
- 4:33Speaker 4: in New York, upstate New York, and I moved out
- 4:34Speaker 4: to California.
- 4:36Speaker 3: So I was separated.
- 4:38Speaker 4: I was isolated from them, and in that context, my
- 4:41Speaker 4: drug use escalated and escalated unchecked. It went from smoking
- 4:45Speaker 4: weed and drinking like the vast majority of kids in
- 4:47Speaker 4: high school, into harder drugs after a breakup and depression,
- 4:50Speaker 4: and it got to meth. The last five six years
- 4:53Speaker 4: of my youth were pretty heavily involved in meth. I
- 4:56Speaker 4: was using a lot of drugs that cost a lot
- 4:58Speaker 4: of money. I didn't have money to use them many
- 5:00Speaker 4: of the drugs, so I started selling the drugs. And
- 5:01Speaker 4: I actually four total arrests.
- 5:04Speaker 3: That swat team arrest was just the last one, and
- 5:06Speaker 3: they escalated right.
- 5:07Speaker 4: It was like a traffic stop where I ended up
- 5:09Speaker 4: spending a night in jail, then another stop with more
- 5:12Speaker 4: drugs where I spent a weekend in jail. This time,
- 5:14Speaker 4: what ended up happening is somebody must.
- 5:16Speaker 3: Have given my name.
- 5:18Speaker 4: I ended up getting in a car accident and a
- 5:20Speaker 4: motorcycle accident actually and broke my leg.
- 5:23Speaker 3: But they also found a half a.
- 5:23Speaker 4: Pound of cocaine on me in that accident, and that
- 5:26Speaker 4: told them I was more than just a user. For
- 5:29Speaker 4: three months or so, they tried to get me to
- 5:31Speaker 4: give them other names. I wouldn't do it, so eight
- 5:33Speaker 4: o'clock in the morning they paid me the courtesy of
- 5:35Speaker 4: that swat team arrest.
- 5:36Speaker 3: You asked what was I thinking.
- 5:38Speaker 4: At the time, and really, honestly, the main thing that
- 5:41Speaker 4: I was thinking is I was pretty sure my way
- 5:44Speaker 4: of living up until that.
- 5:45Speaker 3: Point was done.
- 5:46Speaker 4: I had no idea what that meant, because I didn't
- 5:49Speaker 4: know any other way to live.
- 5:50Speaker 3: But it was very clear.
- 5:51Speaker 4: It's kind of like the universe, God, whatever you want,
- 5:54Speaker 4: kept sending me these signals. Yep, you can't keep doing
- 5:57Speaker 4: what you're doing right, little arrest, bigger, broke your leg
- 6:01Speaker 4: in a wheelchair. Now the Swath team is in your house.
- 6:04Speaker 4: It was all moving in one very clear direction. So
- 6:06Speaker 4: I knew I had to do something. Still no idea
- 6:08Speaker 4: what that was, but I knew I could change.
- 6:11Speaker 1: So there's a couple of things I want to unpack here.
- 6:13Speaker 1: And you know, I'm almost ten years sober, and I
- 6:18Speaker 1: like what you're saying. The universe kept giving you these
- 6:22Speaker 1: potential stopgates, like hey, maybe you want to like stop
- 6:26Speaker 1: what you're doing right and rethink. But I needed a
- 6:30Speaker 1: major consequence, and for me, that ended up being a
- 6:34Speaker 1: dui and almost losing my family, but understanding that I
- 6:41Speaker 1: did have addiction to my family, but I was coping.
- 6:45Speaker 1: I was coping with a lot of difficulty from my past.
- 6:49Speaker 1: So you knew that you needed to make a change,
- 6:53Speaker 1: And so how did that change start for you? And
- 6:57Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of people out there that
- 7:01Speaker 1: maybe they're not going through the same things that we've
- 7:05Speaker 1: gone through, but they're recognizing, like, this is not beneficial
- 7:10Speaker 1: to my life, right, there's maybe some difficulties in the
- 7:13Speaker 1: relationships or work. So how can we start shifting and
- 7:19Speaker 1: thinking in a way that, Okay, I need to make
- 7:22Speaker 1: this change and I don't want something terrible to happen
- 7:26Speaker 1: in my life. So what can we start doing? How
- 7:28Speaker 1: can we start looking at this?
- 7:31Speaker 4: Yeah, you know I write in the book that that
- 7:33Speaker 4: back against the.
- 7:34Speaker 3: Wall moment for you is the UI. For me, it
- 7:36Speaker 3: was a swat team arrest.
- 7:37Speaker 4: Are oftentimes the things that help us understand that there's
- 7:42Speaker 4: got to be a new path forward because we can't
- 7:44Speaker 4: head back our literally our backs against the wall, right,
- 7:46Speaker 4: we're stuck. What that is There's a lot of leeway around.
- 7:52Speaker 3: Right, So it doesn't have to be catastrophic, but.
- 7:55Speaker 4: It does have to be a moment where you are
- 7:57Speaker 4: willing to consider that maybe the perception perspective you have
- 8:00Speaker 4: in the world I talk about that that's a whole
- 8:02Speaker 4: chapter in the book is wrong and you need to
- 8:04Speaker 4: allow a new perspective. So I'll give you my version
- 8:07Speaker 4: really quickly.
- 8:07Speaker 3: Now.
- 8:08Speaker 4: So for me, I got arrested, I had a gun
- 8:11Speaker 4: next to me and everything like that. So I had
- 8:12Speaker 4: almost a million dollar bail. I was put in jail
- 8:15Speaker 4: because of my broken leg. They put me in the
- 8:17Speaker 4: hospital ward of the jail. It was decrepit and dirty,
- 8:22Speaker 4: and you know people that had jumped out of windows
- 8:24Speaker 4: and broken ankles and people that got shot at. We
- 8:26Speaker 4: were all in one big cell and I was coming
- 8:29Speaker 4: off of drug. So I actually slept for almost that
- 8:31Speaker 4: whole week, waking up to eat, sleeping on and off.
- 8:35Speaker 4: I waited about a week to get out because my
- 8:37Speaker 4: bill was so high. I didn't even want my family
- 8:39Speaker 4: to post it. I wanted to go in front of court.
- 8:41Speaker 4: So once I was done with that five days somewhat detox,
- 8:46Speaker 4: my lawyer said to me said, look, if you show
- 8:48Speaker 4: up like this to court, you keep showing up like this,
- 8:50Speaker 4: you're gonna end up doing ten, fifteen, twenty years in prison.
- 8:53Speaker 4: We'll fight the case, but the way you look and
- 8:56Speaker 4: with what they just found at your house, you're gonna
- 8:58Speaker 4: go away for a long time. I need you to
- 8:59Speaker 4: go to rehab and clean up, because if you don't
- 9:01Speaker 4: clean up, we're going to have a losing case. So
- 9:05Speaker 4: what my lawyer was so genius at and I think
- 9:07Speaker 4: I actually talked about this directly in the book. Is
- 9:09Speaker 4: He didn't tell me, Look, you're addicted to drugs. Your
- 9:11Speaker 4: life's going to go nowhere. You really need to do
- 9:13Speaker 4: something about this. He took something I cared about. I
- 9:17Speaker 4: wanted to fight this case. I didn't want to spend
- 9:18Speaker 4: fifteen to twenty years in prison. He said, if you
- 9:20Speaker 4: don't want that, you got to do this. Oftentimes we
- 9:23Speaker 4: forget because we see people drinking, we see them using drugs,
- 9:26Speaker 4: we see them engaging behavior that is.
- 9:28Speaker 3: Not helpful for them.
- 9:29Speaker 4: We see the outcome, we know where we think they
- 9:32Speaker 4: need to go, and we want to move them in
- 9:34Speaker 4: that direction. We want to say, look, you're drinking too much.
- 9:37Speaker 4: Stop drinking. Your life will get better. But that's not
- 9:39Speaker 4: the way they understand it. That's not the way they
- 9:41Speaker 4: see it. They wake up full of anxiety, fear, self doubting,
- 9:45Speaker 4: levels of stress, shame exactly. And so the drinking actually
- 9:49Speaker 4: helps them. And you're looking at them saying, hey, if
- 9:52Speaker 4: you stop taking your medicine, everything will get better.
- 9:54Speaker 3: They say, you're crazy. You don't understand me.
- 9:57Speaker 4: He targeted the part that he knew.
- 10:00Speaker 3: I cared about.
- 10:01Speaker 4: I didn't want to spend fifteen twenty years in prison.
- 10:03Speaker 4: He targeted that well, because I'm sure Marci, before you
- 10:06Speaker 4: got that DUI, you knew things weren't You weren't firing
- 10:10Speaker 4: on all cylinders.
- 10:11Speaker 3: You knew things weren't working.
- 10:12Speaker 4: Well, it's just you weren't in a place where giving
- 10:15Speaker 4: up drinking was the Anglararifi.
- 10:19Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all I knew, and I was very much
- 10:24Speaker 1: a victim, and I didn't know how to not drink,
- 10:29Speaker 1: and I was putting everything off on my husband just
- 10:34Speaker 1: basically like you don't.
- 10:36Speaker 2: Know how to have fun.
- 10:37Speaker 1: And you know, so even though I knew that things
- 10:40Speaker 1: weren't good, and I came from an alcoholic mother and
- 10:47Speaker 1: I knew what it looked like, but I kept comparing
- 10:49Speaker 1: myself and I wasn't passing out every night, So you
- 10:53Speaker 1: know that that kept me continuing and on this path
- 10:59Speaker 1: even though you know what your gut you've been you
- 11:01Speaker 1: think about it for quite some time.
- 11:04Speaker 4: And oftentimes decades. Yeah, yeah, long time.
- 11:08Speaker 1: Exactly exactly. And you know, for women, it's really really
- 11:13Speaker 1: hard because we have where the caretakers. We're afraid to
- 11:18Speaker 1: admit that. There's so much shame around it right to
- 11:22Speaker 1: admit that we have a problem. We think our husband's
- 11:25Speaker 1: going to leave us, the kids are gonna they're going
- 11:28Speaker 1: to take the kids. That everyone in the community or
- 11:31Speaker 1: wherever we are, whatever we're doing in life, we're going
- 11:34Speaker 1: to be judged.
- 11:35Speaker 2: How do we if we are working and we're moms, Like,
- 11:38Speaker 2: how how do we get sober? How do we take
- 11:41Speaker 2: care of ourselves?
- 11:42Speaker 3: Like?
- 11:43Speaker 2: I don't know it. It just feels a lot a lot.
- 11:47Speaker 1: Of times that that women struggle more because of the
- 11:52Speaker 1: shame around it, and we don't feel that we can
- 11:57Speaker 1: leave our situation if in fact we needed to go
- 12:00Speaker 1: two rehab.
- 12:02Speaker 4: Right, So for men, it might be I've got to
- 12:04Speaker 4: keep showing up to my job. I've got to keep
- 12:06Speaker 4: doing keeping a roof over the family's head. You're saying,
- 12:10Speaker 4: for women, it's the parenting, the taking care of the household,
- 12:13Speaker 4: et cetera, is oftentimes such a big undertaking.
- 12:16Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 12:17Speaker 4: Look, I mean, here's the interesting thing. There are a
- 12:20Speaker 4: ton of reasons. I mean, I talk about this again
- 12:21Speaker 4: in the book. There are a lot of logistical reasons
- 12:23Speaker 4: why getting help is hard. That's actually the good news,
- 12:26Speaker 4: and why if you seek help sooner, the help is
- 12:29Speaker 4: easier to get and it takes less time.
- 12:31Speaker 1: You know.
- 12:32Speaker 4: The only reason some people end up having to go
- 12:33Speaker 4: to rehab is because they've been struggling for fifteen years
- 12:36Speaker 4: and they literally can't not drink for a day, so
- 12:38Speaker 4: they need a place for twenty thirty sixty days to
- 12:41Speaker 4: just rebalance. If you can handle this ten years earlier,
- 12:45Speaker 4: you probably don't need a rehab, right, Just some therapy,
- 12:48Speaker 4: reading a book, doing some groups will probably be enough
- 12:51Speaker 4: for you. And I think that's a big part of
- 12:53Speaker 4: the message for me in the book is if we
- 12:56Speaker 4: remove the stigma in the shame around you struggle with alcohol,
- 13:00Speaker 4: being you are an alcoholic earlier on in the process,
- 13:04Speaker 4: if some of us just sat down and said, wait,
- 13:06Speaker 4: why am I drinking every day when I get back
- 13:08Speaker 4: from work? Oh, let me break it down. It's because
- 13:11Speaker 4: of a B and C. Okay, Well, that I can
- 13:14Speaker 4: do something about that. I can figure out a way
- 13:16Speaker 4: to reduce my stress at work. I can go to
- 13:19Speaker 4: couple's therapy with my wife. Right, how many people do
- 13:22Speaker 4: you know who drink heavily because they're in an unhappy marriage. Yeah,
- 13:27Speaker 4: and when they get home they have to sit next
- 13:29Speaker 4: to a stranger or somebody who even is worse than
- 13:31Speaker 4: a stranger, right, is making them feel badly about themselves,
- 13:35Speaker 4: and in order to do that, they just have a
- 13:37Speaker 4: couple of drinks so that they don't care as much. Well,
- 13:39Speaker 4: it doesn't seem like that big of a deal early on,
- 13:42Speaker 4: because it does help you get along better ten to
- 13:44Speaker 4: fifteen years later, You've now been in a bad relationship
- 13:47Speaker 4: for fifteen years with no help. The drinking certainly didn't
- 13:51Speaker 4: make the relationship better, and now you need to drink
- 13:54Speaker 4: more in order to deal with your marriage. So the
- 13:56Speaker 4: issues are always there at the outset.
- 13:58Speaker 2: Well. And I'll also say that.
- 14:02Speaker 1: Because I was so wounded from my past and then
- 14:06Speaker 1: I was drinking a lot, my relationship was really bad
- 14:10Speaker 1: because of my drinking and the way that I was
- 14:14Speaker 1: responding and reacting to life. And I will say that
- 14:19Speaker 1: we have ten years later. I mean, I never thought
- 14:23Speaker 1: about growing old with him because I didn't know what
- 14:25Speaker 1: that looked like. And today we have the best relationship possible.
- 14:30Speaker 1: So I am so grateful for recovery and then the
- 14:35Speaker 1: healing that comes after it. Right, it's not just about
- 14:38Speaker 1: putting down the drink. It's all the things that you're
- 14:39Speaker 1: talking about that we need to heal from and building
- 14:44Speaker 1: on that confidence and self love and self awareness. And
- 14:50Speaker 1: so let's talk about, Well, you have your program that
- 14:55Speaker 1: you've created and you talk about, you know, getting really
- 15:01Speaker 1: radically honest, and I love that.
- 15:04Speaker 2: I love that.
- 15:05Speaker 1: So what do you offer through your recovery model?
- 15:10Speaker 4: So in the book, I I kind of split up
- 15:13Speaker 4: the book into two parts. One the one that explains
- 15:16Speaker 4: why we struggle the way we struggle. The second one
- 15:18Speaker 4: I really wanted to give tangible steps for people to
- 15:21Speaker 4: follow in order to move forward. So a big part
- 15:24Speaker 4: of it is something I call the sparrow loop, and
- 15:26Speaker 4: that is something that I just want people to.
- 15:28Speaker 2: The sparrow loop.
- 15:30Speaker 4: Yeah, s P A r O so stimulus, perception, activation,
- 15:35Speaker 4: response outcome. And I'll explain why all those stages in
- 15:37Speaker 4: a second. But the idea was, you know, people are
- 15:41Speaker 4: so scared of things they don't understand. So even when
- 15:44Speaker 4: we're in the throes of drinking or drug use or
- 15:47Speaker 4: any addictive behavior, eating, binge, eating, everybody, wait, you know this,
- 15:51Speaker 4: everybody wakes up in the morning saying today, I'm I'm
- 15:54Speaker 4: gonna go beat it today to ourselves. Today, I don't
- 15:56Speaker 4: need this right, I'm gonna beat my addiction.
- 15:59Speaker 3: Today. Today, I'm not going to drink today, I'm not
- 16:01Speaker 3: going to use drugs today.
- 16:01Speaker 4: I'm not going to look at porn today, I'm not
- 16:03Speaker 4: going to eat a box of pizza.
- 16:04Speaker 3: Whatever it is.
- 16:05Speaker 4: And then by nine am noon, three pm, seven pm midnight,
- 16:09Speaker 4: whatever it is for.
- 16:10Speaker 3: You, you're back in it again. If we don't.
- 16:13Speaker 4: Understand why we're doing what we're doing, it's even more terrifying, right,
- 16:16Speaker 4: more shame. So the first thing is to just explain
- 16:19Speaker 4: to ourselves.
- 16:19Speaker 3: Why we do things.
- 16:20Speaker 4: Stimulus is a thing that sets the behavior in motion.
- 16:24Speaker 4: Perception is the way in which you process the stimulus.
- 16:26Speaker 3: I'll explain more about that.
- 16:27Speaker 4: Once you process the stimulus a certain way and it
- 16:29Speaker 4: creates an activation physiologically and psychologically, you have feelings somatic
- 16:34Speaker 4: like in your body or cognitive in your head. Those
- 16:37Speaker 4: feelings are the things you're trying to deal with through
- 16:40Speaker 4: the response. The response for any of us is the overeating,
- 16:43Speaker 4: the drinking, and the stuff.
- 16:44Speaker 3: Right, the behavior that we're in trouble with.
- 16:46Speaker 4: You drink, you overeat, you binge, you start really feeling
- 16:49Speaker 4: really sick, or you drink until you black out.
- 16:51Speaker 3: That's the outcome.
- 16:53Speaker 4: Most people don't come for anything, but the outcome, they
- 16:56Speaker 4: just come because crap happened that they are unhappy with,
- 16:59Speaker 4: and they want to dui for you and arrest for me.
- 17:03Speaker 4: A blackout when you ended up waking up with somebody
- 17:06Speaker 4: you didn't know in bed next to you, whatever, you know,
- 17:09Speaker 4: using porn so much that your wife found it and
- 17:12Speaker 4: is now mad.
- 17:12Speaker 3: At you and is threatening divorce.
- 17:14Speaker 4: Whatever it is, the outcome is what people care about.
- 17:17Speaker 4: But because the behavior came right before the outcome. You drank,
- 17:21Speaker 4: you blacked out, you overate, you threw up, you use
- 17:24Speaker 4: some meth and got arrested, we think the thing to
- 17:27Speaker 4: focus on is the behavior. But what I explained is
- 17:30Speaker 4: if you remove the behavior, all the coping that came before,
- 17:33Speaker 4: it still needs a place to go and you now
- 17:36Speaker 4: have no way of dealing with it. And so that's
- 17:38Speaker 4: why we get caught in the cycle. You stop drinking,
- 17:40Speaker 4: but then the stress and the anxiety build up. Well,
- 17:43Speaker 4: you don't have new coping strategies to deal with it,
- 17:45Speaker 4: so you at some point you say, well forget about it,
- 17:47Speaker 4: I'm going to go back to having a drink. And
- 17:49Speaker 4: that cycle is why so many of us fail.
- 17:51Speaker 3: So number one is just explain what it is that
- 17:53Speaker 3: that that.
- 17:54Speaker 4: Goes on for all of you and then the next piece,
- 17:57Speaker 4: and that's I call it eat, the explore, ex transform cycle.
- 18:01Speaker 4: Once that outcome happens, a lot of people in our situation.
- 18:06Speaker 3: Get really afraid of failure.
- 18:07Speaker 4: And I think that that's explained by what we talked
- 18:10Speaker 4: about earlier, right, self judgment, deprecation, feeling less than. It's
- 18:14Speaker 4: such a big part of the problem that when you fail,
- 18:16Speaker 4: you get the blackout, the dui that you throw up,
- 18:19Speaker 4: whatever it is, you feel once again like your self.
- 18:23Speaker 3: Image has been reinforced.
- 18:25Speaker 4: But one thing that I've learned now being in this
- 18:27Speaker 4: field fifteen sixteen years is those failures are actually opportunities.
- 18:31Speaker 4: When things don't work out the way you want them to,
- 18:33Speaker 4: it's the.
- 18:34Speaker 3: Time to stop.
- 18:35Speaker 4: Understand why that's explore, sit with it, and accept it.
- 18:40Speaker 4: That's sitting with discomfort, getting comfortable being uncomfortable, understanding you're
- 18:45Speaker 4: not perfect, but you're also not broken, right, You're just
- 18:47Speaker 4: you're human, and so acceptance, explore, accept, and then once
- 18:51Speaker 4: you've finished that acceptance piece, transform. Okay, drinking doesn't lead
- 18:57Speaker 4: to the outcomes I want. When I feel anxious in stress,
- 19:00Speaker 4: I need something else. But I don't know what that is.
- 19:02Speaker 4: Transformation is about going out there and seeking it. So
- 19:05Speaker 4: I call it like a scavenger hunt. What can deliver
- 19:08Speaker 4: the outcome that I want? And so it's this loop
- 19:10Speaker 4: that I have people go through, and every time it
- 19:13Speaker 4: works out that we want too, we celebrate. Right, you
- 19:15Speaker 4: had a sober night, you did well, you drank the
- 19:17Speaker 4: two drinks you wanted to. But every time it goes
- 19:19Speaker 4: off the rails, it's time to get to work. And
- 19:22Speaker 4: that's different than what most of us do, which is
- 19:24Speaker 4: every time things go off the rails, we try to
- 19:26Speaker 4: sweep it under the rug, move forward, put on a
- 19:28Speaker 4: you know, stiff upper lip, smile through it, and.
- 19:31Speaker 3: Try to get to the other side.
- 19:32Speaker 4: So that's the overarching idea behind the book is understand
- 19:36Speaker 4: why you act the way you act, accept what got
- 19:38Speaker 4: you to this place, but then go change it.
- 19:41Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, like for me, I mean I have well,
- 19:44Speaker 2: I have a huge toolbox, and then for me, a
- 19:50Speaker 2: lot of it was gratitude, forgiveness and shifting my.
- 19:57Speaker 1: Energy from you know, like living in attitude is a
- 20:01Speaker 1: way of being a magnet to a beautiful life.
- 20:04Speaker 4: Right, every person listening to this right now, if they're
- 20:07Speaker 4: looking for their own path. You'll discover your own toolbox.
- 20:10Speaker 4: There are things that have worked for many many people.
- 20:12Speaker 4: Gratitude is one of the things I bring to most
- 20:14Speaker 4: of my clients right off the bat.
- 20:15Speaker 3: Because it's super easy to do. You can get it
- 20:18Speaker 3: done in five minutes a day.
- 20:20Speaker 4: And you know, the irony is most of my clients,
- 20:23Speaker 4: if I ask them for three things they're grateful for,
- 20:25Speaker 4: they'll sit there and think.
- 20:26Speaker 3: For a little while. Whereas once you've.
- 20:28Speaker 4: Been in once you've been in practice at this. I've
- 20:31Speaker 4: been doing this for about let's say a decade now, Yeah,
- 20:35Speaker 4: there are thousands of things I can.
- 20:36Speaker 1: Be Yeah, people have people think it's got to be
- 20:40Speaker 1: something big. It's like the car in the driveway or
- 20:44Speaker 1: the house you're living in.
- 20:45Speaker 2: It's not about that, right.
- 20:47Speaker 4: Clean water, a roof over your head, clean air, to
- 20:51Speaker 4: be shoes that fit you. I mean, you know you breathe,
- 20:56Speaker 4: you're breathing right now, right, Yeah, I mean, like, the
- 21:00Speaker 4: number of things you have to be grateful for or
- 21:03Speaker 4: you can be grateful for is nearly endless. And the
- 21:06Speaker 4: good news, as you just point out, and this is
- 21:08Speaker 4: just one tool we're talking about right now. It reformulates
- 21:11Speaker 4: the way you look at the world, because once you start,
- 21:14Speaker 4: I call it, it's like these flags of gratitude that
- 21:16Speaker 4: pop up all over the world as you walk around.
- 21:18Speaker 3: And that's the real benefit.
- 21:20Speaker 1: All Right, somebody's sitting there and they're listening and they're like, God,
- 21:24Speaker 1: my life right now. I mean, I don't know how
- 21:27Speaker 1: I can look at anything and be grateful.
- 21:29Speaker 2: I can't wait to have my next drink.
- 21:32Speaker 1: Or whatever it is. Where are they turning? What is
- 21:37Speaker 1: a first step they can make? And then tell us
- 21:41Speaker 1: a bit about your book, because unhooked, I mean.
- 21:45Speaker 2: That there's an answer for you.
- 21:47Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, So first of all, start small, number one.
- 21:51Speaker 3: Start small. Too many people they try to hit it
- 21:54Speaker 3: out the park, right off the boat. Right.
- 21:55Speaker 4: So, if you've been drinking for fifteen years, first of all,
- 21:57Speaker 4: it could be literally medically dangerous or you to just
- 21:59Speaker 4: stop drinking without medical supervision. So don't get some support.
- 22:04Speaker 4: And that's support sounds dangerous or risky for a lot
- 22:08Speaker 4: of people because normally support only came when we screwed up.
- 22:10Speaker 4: Support only came when we failed and other people made
- 22:14Speaker 4: us accountable. The kind of accountability I'm talking about is different.
- 22:17Speaker 4: It's reaching out to people that you trust and love
- 22:19Speaker 4: and say, Okay, I don't want to live this way anymore.
- 22:21Speaker 4: I'm willing to start considering some change. Let's start working.
- 22:25Speaker 4: So that's number one. Find a comfortable environment to do
- 22:30Speaker 4: that in a lot of people try to do it alone.
- 22:32Speaker 3: Shame is a huge player in that.
- 22:34Speaker 4: I say, just find it doesn't matter what group, it
- 22:36Speaker 4: doesn't matter who is part of that.
- 22:38Speaker 3: Find a group of people. You can do it.
- 22:40Speaker 4: It helps a ton to be able to do that.
- 22:42Speaker 4: And then a couple of quick tips from the book.
- 22:44Speaker 4: Number one, this is hard, but you want the fastest route,
- 22:49Speaker 4: stop lying, stop lying to yourself, and stop lying to
- 22:53Speaker 4: other people. Radical transparency will be really, really uncomfortable for
- 22:57Speaker 4: a short period of time. It will be your quickest
- 22:59Speaker 4: path to get where you're going. And that brings me
- 23:02Speaker 4: to the second part of this, which is in order
- 23:05Speaker 4: to get better in life, and I'm not talking about recovery,
- 23:08Speaker 4: I'm talking about life in general. You have to get
- 23:10Speaker 4: comfortable being uncomfortable, and that is something you have to
- 23:13Speaker 4: train yourself in because, and I'm no judgment I did
- 23:16Speaker 4: this for fifteen years of my own life. One of
- 23:19Speaker 4: the reasons we use so much is to escape discomfort.
- 23:23Speaker 4: Escaping discomfort is the most sure way to bring destruction
- 23:26Speaker 4: into your life. You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
- 23:29Speaker 4: So those are kind of the big pieces. Stop lying,
- 23:31Speaker 4: get some accountability and support with a group of people.
- 23:33Speaker 4: It could just be one person for now that you
- 23:35Speaker 4: trust and has your best interest at heart, and then
- 23:37Speaker 4: start getting comfortable being uncomfortable. You mentioned the book, and
- 23:40Speaker 4: on our last couple of minutes here I have a
- 23:43Speaker 4: website called read unhooked dot com. You can look at
- 23:46Speaker 4: a bunch of little pieces there when you buy the book.
- 23:48Speaker 3: We also have resources.
- 23:49Speaker 4: On the web page in order to support you with
- 23:52Speaker 4: additional work on top of the book. But this book
- 23:56Speaker 4: is my way of trying to give people something really,
- 23:58Speaker 4: really actionable. And we've heard from a lot of the
- 24:00Speaker 4: readers saying, the first half got me to understand why
- 24:03Speaker 4: I'm struggling. The second half gave me the actual tools
- 24:06Speaker 4: to do something about it.
- 24:08Speaker 1: And that's it, right, And this is what you talk
- 24:09Speaker 1: about getting educated, right. We need to be educated those
- 24:14Speaker 1: that are involved. I mean, it's a family sickness, so
- 24:18Speaker 1: we all need to get educated, and we all play
- 24:20Speaker 1: different roles, and then we need to use the tools.
- 24:26Speaker 2: We need to learn them and use them.
- 24:28Speaker 4: I always got to use the tool right. Just learning
- 24:30Speaker 4: about the tools is not going to help you all
- 24:31Speaker 4: that much.
- 24:32Speaker 1: You've got to take the action, and that's so so important.
- 24:36Speaker 1: So I'm so grateful that you joined us today.
- 24:40Speaker 2: Thank you for.
- 24:40Speaker 1: Being here sharing your story, and you know just all
- 24:44Speaker 1: that you do. No matter where you are in your journey,
- 24:47Speaker 1: it's never too late to wake up and rewrite your story.
- 24:54Speaker 1: I will see you next week, and thank you again,
- 24:56Speaker 1: doctor Jeffy for being here.
- 24:58Speaker 3: Thank you, Marci, thank you everybody.
- 25:00Speaker 2: Bye bye,