Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / Hit of Hope Instead of Dope
Transcript
- 0:03This is Your Pain Game podcast where we talk about the game of living in
- 0:07and with chronic pain and trauma, getting to the heart of how to heal.
- 0:12I am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan
- 0:18on discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, ballistic practitioners, loved ones,
- 0:23and anybody that is interested in having their voice heard in the chronic pain and
- 0:27trauma world that we live in. So I don't know about you, guys,
- 0:40but every single day of my life lately, I feel like I'm shouting
- 0:44out loud like I need a fricking vacation. You know, far too many
- 0:47times to count, it feels like lately, And even when my sweetie and
- 0:51I do go on a vacation, it's like go, go, go,
- 0:55go, go the entire time for almost three weeks, no downtime whatsoever.
- 0:58So we talked about wanting to go on vacations. We talk about wanting to
- 1:02escape rights. I mean, we all have our days, our weeks,
- 1:04even months, who knows, maybe even years of wanting to escape our personal
- 1:11realities. And one of the things that my question is in regards to that
- 1:15is why is life a place that we feel like we need to escape from
- 1:19it as much as we do, and sometimes I'm not even sure what my
- 1:23reality is. On some days, I feel so topsy turvy all the time
- 1:26with my bod and the silly day to day adulting shit that we have to
- 1:30do, my sweetie, running my marketing agency, doing the show, our
- 1:34dogs, my health, his health, you know, everything at all just
- 1:38snowballs. And I'm even having children never ending, and I'm exhausted, and
- 1:42I'm tired of being exhausted. I'm tired of talking about being exhausted. And
- 1:47I do know that I need to take a break here and there, I
- 1:51need to be better about self care, and I do need that escape,
- 1:53but it just makes me question why I so badly want it, And I
- 1:57think that part of it is that I'm hungry to be a part of something
- 2:00that's a little bit bigger than just me, and I'm frustrated with being smaller
- 2:06than I thought I would be at this point in my life. I had
- 2:09inticipated being much different than I am today on stage and being an opera singer
- 2:14and traveling around the world and doing these wonderful things, and here I am
- 2:17now stuck half of my life in a wheelchair. Doing a podcast, and
- 2:22I love this show more than anything, but I'm in this place right now
- 2:25where I kind of feel like I need a little bit of a life escape.
- 2:28I need a little bit of run time, runaway time, and I'm
- 2:30a little scared about that because I know when I get into those places,
- 2:34I tend to make some pretty willy nilly decisions. And I want to be
- 2:38something larger than I am. I want to contribute more to the people that
- 2:42come into my life and the people that are on this earth. Is one
- 2:44of the reasons I started this show. That's why I'm working on a book,
- 2:46It's why I'm working on ted Talks, That's why I'm working on eliminating
- 2:49more unhealthy people and structures from my life and working on removing obstacles and addictions.
- 2:54And one of mine is that I am such a control freak in OCD
- 3:00also taming the alcohol beast that is in my life because I know that I
- 3:04use it to cope with pain and pass trauma, and addiction is obviously one
- 3:08of the many ways that we escape massively, and we all need to be
- 3:13honest with ourselves about addiction, because addiction isn't just about drugs and alcohol,
- 3:16it's about food, it's money and gambling, it's religion, it's exercise,
- 3:20it's sex and porn and more. We all have something. So if you
- 3:23start pointing the finger at other people, you might want to start pointing it
- 3:27towards yourself and take a little bit of a beat and figure out where some
- 3:30of that escapism might be coming from and these addictions that we have in our
- 3:34lives, and maybe assess a little bit more as to where they're coming from.
- 3:38And I know, for me, my OCD and alcohol addiction has come
- 3:42from childhood trauma and it eked its twisted way into the fabric of my being,
- 3:46of who I was and who I am, and at the rate I'm
- 3:49going it will continue to be the who I'm going to be in the future.
- 3:53Right. And so that escape and that freedom can come in the form
- 3:57of addiction, right. And I understand addiction from an anxiety and coping mechanism
- 4:01and from a trauma perspective, and so does my guests today. So,
- 4:05without further ado, and I know there's a little lengthy opener here today,
- 4:10I just kind of started going on a tangent about addiction. But anyways,
- 4:13I'd like to introduce you to my guest today, Dylan lend Good. Hey
- 4:15Dylan, how are you. I'm doing well, Lindsay, thank you for
- 4:17asking. It's good to be here. It's good to see you again.
- 4:20Um. Dylan is a tech speaker, an addiction recovery advocate who works with
- 4:25individuals and organizations to increase engagement in the addiction recovery process. So I'm going
- 4:30to roll out the red carpet for yet and I'd like to start talking with
- 4:33you about how you got started with your addiction and where you are today,
- 4:40and we'll kind of fill in everything in between, because you've got a pretty
- 4:43incredible story. Thank you. Yeah, So, how do I get started
- 4:45with my addiction? That's a that's a great yeah, I know, and
- 4:47it's loaded. Yeah, there's you know, because there's it's not just one
- 4:51thing really that led to my addiction, you know, it was kind of
- 4:54a I think it called a combination of different things. So I grew up
- 5:00and was a scholar athlete in high school, and I was convinced that I
- 5:03would probably never pick up drugs and min never drink. And the reason for
- 5:08that was because I saw what alcohol did to my grandfather a little bit and
- 5:13drugs with some of my friends, and I just in the idea that I
- 5:15would be out of control. I didn't like that, you know, that
- 5:18the substance would make me out of control. The problem was that I had
- 5:21this this deep inability to feel okay my on skin, and this deep inability
- 5:26to deal with life, especially going into college and as responsibilities increase, and
- 5:31you know, growing up, I just had this this really deep inability to
- 5:35to deal and to feel okay. And so in college when I had my
- 5:39first drink, is almost like everything that I had been trying to achieve through
- 5:43good grades and through sports and alcohol actually gave me that. You know.
- 5:47I thought that if I got the good grades and I was captain the wrestling
- 5:50team or state champion wrestle or whatever, if I could achieve those things,
- 5:54which I did, some which I didn't, but regardless, I thought,
- 5:57if I could just do that, I would be good enough, you know.
- 6:00And that never worked. Yet when I picked up a drink for the
- 6:02first time, I felt good good enough, you know, my mind quieted
- 6:06down, my my, you know, the ability to kind of handle life.
- 6:12It worked for a little bit, to be fair, really did.
- 6:14It worked for a little bit, but it's it's a maladactive cope mechanism.
- 6:17It doesn't it doesn't stay that way. Rights, we need more to achieve
- 6:23the same effect, and then eventually it doesn't work at all. But now
- 6:25I'm addicted, so you know, it just spirals downhill from there. But
- 6:29that's kind of how it started, you know. It's like I wasn't looking
- 6:31to feel okay necessarily through alcohol. I just happened to pick up a drink
- 6:35and then realize that that's what it did for me. Yeah, it was
- 6:39your red bull. It gave you wings, yeah, exactly exact. Yeah.
- 6:43Yeah. Well, and I think for me and some people would think,
- 6:46how is it possible that Lindsay doesn't have good self esteem? She's always
- 6:49on top of things. She can always walk into the room and she's smiling,
- 6:53and she's this, and she's that. Oh my gosh, dude,
- 6:55I have self esteem issues and I always have. And for me, alcohol
- 6:59was one of those places that I could turn to that gave me more courage.
- 7:03As we all know, it does give you courage to say things that
- 7:05you would never really say, to do things that you probably would not do,
- 7:09and looking back at yourself and going whoa, that was me doing those
- 7:14things under the guise of vodka or whatever the concoction was of the evening that
- 7:19I was drinking back from the day. But so what happened for you?
- 7:24So you got into college and you started getting into the drinking drug scene.
- 7:27So what happened after that? I went to University of Connecticut for a year,
- 7:30which is where I had my first drink and started drinking. And even
- 7:32even in hindsight, I could see there was a problem because I was starting
- 7:35to drink alone and you know stuff like that. I didn't pick up any
- 7:40drugs until after college, so it just but spiral from there. And there
- 7:45was some trauma thrown in there too. So when I left University of Connecticut
- 7:48after a year, I moved back home and decided to pursue acting and and
- 7:54moving back home, I had an incident where I was assaulted by a gang
- 7:58and that, you know, was a very traumatic thing for me, and
- 8:01I just decided, like, screw it, I'm going to start doing drugs,
- 8:05you know. So I started smoking weed and taking acid and doing you
- 8:09know, all types of drugs, and it kind of spiraled from there.
- 8:13So I would get I got rested and had to do community service, and
- 8:16a community service I learned about harder drugs, and it just, you know,
- 8:20over the course of a few years, it went from you know,
- 8:22me having a drink at University of Connecticut to me now using crack cocaine and
- 8:28getting rested all the time and losing jobs and ending up almost homeless. I
- 8:35was going to ask about that about the homelessness if that ever came into play,
- 8:37because I've got a guess that's coming up as well. Who was homeless
- 8:41in a story is like freaking sane. Yeah, so I was almost not
- 8:45necessarily living on the street, but there's a period of time where I didn't.
- 8:48I was just staying on a couch here or there, you know.
- 8:50Yeah, So it was that that type of thing, and I lost a
- 8:52pretty much every job I had I lost to due to my drinking or drug
- 8:58use. Yeah, And from that, I know, for me, I
- 9:03struggled with promiscuity issues, especially in college because of the massive amount of drinking
- 9:07that I was doing. Was just part of that being in the sorority,
- 9:09you know, just be skanky and slutty and drunk. Is that just like
- 9:15those were part of our Greek letters, right, And so how did you
- 9:20Did you have any issues in relation to porn and less and sexuality and promiscuity,
- 9:24Some of that stuff come into play in relation to your drinking and drug
- 9:28use, for sure. You know, I had grown up thinking that I
- 9:33grew up idolizing guys who at that I don't know if they use this term
- 9:37anymore. At that time period of time, they call the players. All
- 9:39right, so you're aging us, darling, Yeah, so players, you
- 9:46know, the guy who would sleep around a lot. Basically now somebody idolized.
- 9:48But even then I didn't really idolize that way I idolized was what I
- 9:52thought it meant, you know. So what I thought it meant was you
- 9:56know, worth, you know, confidence, fun, like all these things
- 10:01that I that I projected onto this idea of sleeping around, you know,
- 10:05because I would see guys that were like that, and they looked like they
- 10:07were having fun, They looked like they were confident, they looked like they
- 10:09were all the things that I really wanted for myself. But it wasn't so
- 10:13much that I wanted to sleep around. It was that I wanted these things.
- 10:16I thought it would give me, right just like you know, I
- 10:18thought alcohol was giving me confidence, I thought, but it was really taking
- 10:22it away. And it was a similar thing with this. So I did
- 10:24struggle with that because when I did drink, I was able to be confident
- 10:28at least have the small sense of confidence. And through that, you know,
- 10:31I did sleep around and then you know, and you know, some
- 10:35issues around masturbation pornography did come up, but those actually came up in recovery
- 10:39from addiction. So I've had a few challenges. Interesting, yeah, in
- 10:43sobriety where food and sex became I had an unhealthy relationship to those in sobriety
- 10:50and the reason why I, you know, I had to take a look
- 10:52at them was because it was starting to leave me closer to relapse to drugs
- 10:56and alcohol. Because our brain's always looking for a way out, right,
- 10:58especially we deal with trauma if we have a history of trauma, early trauma,
- 11:03especially in our brain is always looking for a way to kind of deal
- 11:07with that, you know, find a quick fix. And for me,
- 11:09it's it's a constant, I don't want to say battle, but it's a
- 11:11constant growing process to train myself to look for growth and healing rather than for
- 11:16the instant dope, mean head or the instant pain killer or whatever. Yeah,
- 11:22And I mean we all say it, like at the end of our
- 11:24day, we're like, oh God, I need a drink, you know.
- 11:26I mean it is just so it's part of our culture. Is the
- 11:30is the drinking culture. I mean, it's in every freaking advertisement that you
- 11:33you thumb through every weekend is go out with the girls and go out for
- 11:37bottomless mimosas, which of course is one of my favorite things to do.
- 11:39But what we do is, and I'm in marketing, we market the the
- 11:45awesomeness of being drunk. We market that to our children and to ourselves as
- 11:50adults, and we're we wonder why that is our first go to coping mechanism.
- 11:54And then the second thing is sex because we're all hopped up and sexy
- 11:58and we're drinking and our inhibitions are down, and next thing we know,
- 12:01we're banging some broad in the in the bathroom of the bar. I can
- 12:07say that because I've done it. And so you know, when you when
- 12:11you end up in these shady situations that are super unsafe, especially for women.
- 12:16And I love how you talked about the fact that you know, guys
- 12:18are the ones that look super cool, and they look like they have their
- 12:20act together and they've got women on the other hand, or girls in art.
- 12:24When we're in high school and in college, we're skanks. We don't
- 12:28look like we're wonderful, we don't look like we've got it all together.
- 12:30We're slutty, even though we're the same person as the dude. If not
- 12:35less bad, then the guy would be right. So it's just it's such
- 12:37an interesting thing how we've got these different roles that we play even though we're
- 12:41doing the same exact behavior and we're participating in the same activities, but we're
- 12:46looked at totally different, and that then spirals you down, Especially from my
- 12:50perspective. I can only speak for myself, it spiraled me down into more
- 12:54self esteem issues because then it was just it was compounding on top of another
- 12:58of them's like, well, okay, that was last night. I'm over
- 13:01at that walk of shame right. Unfortunately, sounds like we both have done
- 13:05it, the walk of shame, and it is a shameful experience, and
- 13:09you do shame yourself and then you beat yourself up about and then what do
- 13:11we do? We just do it again, because oh, we'll fix it.
- 13:13The next time around, and that slippery slope, that cycle continues.
- 13:18And so when it comes to addiction, the pain that comes from it,
- 13:20because it's a very lonely place to be in addiction, no matter what addiction
- 13:24you're in. People. There was a gal that I talked to who like
- 13:28a binge eater, just absolutely could not stop eating food and the shame and
- 13:31the guilt that she experienced from that. You mentioned that you talked about having
- 13:37a bad relationship with food as well as porn. Can you talk a little
- 13:39bit about that in relation to food in regards to your care, because you're
- 13:43talking about your sobriety and how the food and the porn part or the food
- 13:46porn sex part kind of came in your sobriety. It's so interesting because you
- 13:50were, oh, great, I've got that part taking care, but now
- 13:52I've got a glom onto something else. Can you talk a little bit about
- 13:56that totally? Yeah, I mean that's just the way our brain. My
- 13:58brain is like, you know, looking for the looking for the hit,
- 14:03you know, looking for the fix. And so when I early in sobriety,
- 14:05you know, sugar became a drug drug and it got so bad that
- 14:09it was like the part of my brain that I wanted alcohol kind of was
- 14:13being lit up again. So when I would binge on sugar, I would
- 14:16just get these cravings to drink. You know, I really want to drink.
- 14:18And it was like okay, because I wasn't having a little sugar,
- 14:22I was binge eating, I was gaining a lot. I was technically obese
- 14:26at that and so it was, you know, creating a brain chemistry where
- 14:30it was like leading back to relapse if I didn't address it. And so
- 14:33I now I really had to dress it. And for me, addressing it
- 14:37me it means staying away from sugar and flour. Like I don't do either
- 14:39one of those. So we got to keep you away from cakes and cookies,
- 14:43honey, Is that what we're saying. Well, it's true because like
- 14:46when I do like I'll do like, oh I'm just not going to drink
- 14:48for a couple of months or whatever, I immediately am. And I'm not
- 14:52a sugar person, like a cookie sweet person at all. I'm not really
- 14:56salty or sweet, but that doesn't really matter. But anyway, when it
- 14:58comes to sweets, like like all right, you know, if we're going
- 15:01out too, I have a thing with my girlfriends and my well of everybody
- 15:03that goes out to dinner lunch with me. I'm always celebrating somebody's birthday,
- 15:07even if it's not their birthday, because I believe that we all deserve free
- 15:11desserts in life, even if it's not our birthday. So I always do
- 15:13this thing, and I've done it since I was in high school. But
- 15:16I'm like, I can kind of like have one little bite and I'm good,
- 15:18But man, if I don't have a glass of wine or something,
- 15:20I'll eat that entire piece of cake. So okay, So how long ago
- 15:24did you sober up? Two thousand and four? Two thousand and four.
- 15:30Wow, so you're like almost up the twenty year mark. That's amazing.
- 15:33Yeah, and a pretty easy path for you for twenty years. Ah yeah,
- 15:37yeah I wish. Yeah. So what have you been doing to a
- 15:41stay sober? Did you have any relapses during that? During this almost twenty
- 15:46years span of time, did you did you almost slip up? Or did
- 15:50you have any Oh? I mean there were times there were times those views
- 15:52and things that I was like, do I change my sobriety day, you
- 15:54know, relationship to certain things. But but yeah, it was definitely not
- 16:00a straight shot upward, you know, is it very much? You know,
- 16:03two steps forward, one step back. And it's been your periods of
- 16:07time where it's been very fulfilling and very easy. There are other times when
- 16:11it's been extremely hard, you know, and it's been everything that a good
- 16:17experience in life. I feel like that's where recovery really is. It's just
- 16:21being able to experience life and it's fullest on both the negative and the positive
- 16:25side, or the painful or joyful side, and not having to pick up
- 16:29as a result. So when it comes to your sobriety specifically, how did
- 16:33you get sober? Did you just like cold turkey one day and you went
- 16:37to an AA meeting or how did you start on that path? And then
- 16:41what have you found to be really good ways to keep moving through the recovery
- 16:45process. Did you do any medication assisted treatment? Did you do and did
- 16:48you go in the house anywhere for like a thirty day clamp? Can you
- 16:52give us a little bit of that journey of how you got started on that
- 16:55and the components of a good foundation for recovery. Yeah, for sure.
- 16:59So for me it was all step meetings and I go to a few different
- 17:02fellowships and originally, so originally I had, I had gone to twelve Step
- 17:07meetings before, but I wasn't really ready to change yet. So you know,
- 17:11I was court ordered to get help. Oh do you tell that story?
- 17:17Yeah? So, so I got arrested numerous times and finally got to
- 17:19the point where I used up all my kind of get out of jail free
- 17:22cards and then they're like, look, you've got to get help order to
- 17:26jail. So I'm I finally get help, but even then I still wasn't
- 17:27ready. So I go to the IOP that they suggested, and I'd be
- 17:30high, or I go to a twelve Step meeting, I'd be drunk.
- 17:34And so eventually, you know, it was like I ended up getting arrested
- 17:40again, ended up going to Hart for Correctional in Connecticut, And at that
- 17:45point, for whatever reason, the idea of losing my freedom really did something
- 17:49psychologically to me. So I had overdosed. I had, you know,
- 17:52I had attempted suicide, like I had pretty dark times prior to that moment,
- 17:57but I still wasn't willing to change really, and for whatever reason,
- 18:03going to Harvard Correctional, the loss of freedom, like I said did something
- 18:07psychologically where I wanted to actually change. So I went to rehab for the
- 18:10second time, and that's when I got sober. So going to rehab helps.
- 18:14It was a huge piece of it for me. And then along with
- 18:17rehab, they would bring us out this twelve Step meetings and I would go
- 18:19to those meetings and I got a sponsor and started working with twelve Steps.
- 18:23And at the rehab, I was learning things like yoga and meditation, which
- 18:27I was incorporating on a regular basis, so kind of both of those were
- 18:32really important, you know, the support group meetings and also this spiritual lifestyle
- 18:38of yoga and meditation and starting to incorporate that into my life. Like both
- 18:42of those were a good, very very good foundation to start with. Yeah,
- 18:48and I think that, you know, I mean, everybody's got their
- 18:49own journey when it comes to addiction. My husband and I've spoken about him
- 18:52multiple times on the show, but he was an raging, alcoholic, abusive
- 18:56man and had been through mass of childhood trauma when he was younger, which
- 19:02we've came out later and still never really dealt with it. But in his
- 19:07regard, like in a healthy way in from my perspective, he just stopped
- 19:11one day just like that was it, went to one meeting, that was
- 19:15it. And from my understanding, he's still sober. But I do know
- 19:19that he's actually kind of like a meaner person than he was when he was
- 19:22drunk. Like I'm like, I kind of want the drunk I back.
- 19:26So one of the things that I know is is something that I've always thought
- 19:30about in my brain when I think about, oh, I'm never going to
- 19:32have a drink again, or you know whatever. I don't do drugs or
- 19:33anything like that. I mean, I do cannabis and THC for my pain
- 19:37in the evening, but I do love my red wine. But when it
- 19:40comes to like what I'm not going to do with everybody else's drinking, Like
- 19:44it's not fun anymore if you're not drinking, or it's not fun if you're
- 19:47not doing drugs. It's not fun with your friends who you've got friends that
- 19:49are able to have a glass of wine instead of two bottles of wine.
- 19:53What do we say to people that are a little bit scared about not being
- 19:56able to have fun if they end up so bring up because I know that
- 20:00that is actually one, at least from my perspective, that is a scary
- 20:03thought to not have fun anymore, because we've attributed fun with partying and going
- 20:10out and all earlier, Like what I was saying about the marketing, like
- 20:12everything's all about New Year's Eve parties and alcohol and you know, all of
- 20:15that. So it's it's possible to have fun without drugs and alcohol important,
- 20:19right, right, right, right, Yeah, it is. And most
- 20:22people when they come to the point of debating whether or not to stop,
- 20:25it's because it hasn't been fun for a while, and so usually, you
- 20:30know, usually they're coming with some type of situation where it's like this isn't
- 20:33doing what it used to do. Yeah, I don't look really pretty in
- 20:36this outfit anymore, especially if my panties down on my ankles and in a
- 20:41gross bar. Yeah. Yeah, So I know that you're you've done ted
- 20:48talking. You're you do a lot of speaking engagements as well. Can we
- 20:51talk about what you're doing to help others now with your mind, body spirit
- 20:56program, what you're doing to help others in their journey towards recovery, and
- 21:00how that's assisting you to stay sober for yourself, because I assume that's pretty
- 21:03gratifying for you to help others. I know for me doing this show and
- 21:07of itself is gratifying to hopefully help other people with each episode that we do
- 21:12here. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So I currently work with
- 21:17a company consulting company, and we help individuals and families usually are struggling some
- 21:22type of mental health or substance use challenge, and so they'll come to us
- 21:26and looking for support and how to how to get help for usually a loved
- 21:30one. And what I do is help out using some of the some of
- 21:34the practices that I learned early on yo get meditation, yoga, and mindflemens.
- 21:38You know. It's where I work with the clients on helping it,
- 21:41helping them to feel better and get through you know, the initial stages of
- 21:45change or detox, and then helping them to rewire their brains so that they
- 21:48can live a new, better life. And sometimes we'll also do interventions.
- 21:55So if individuals come and they don't they don't want help, in a loving
- 21:57and caring way, we look at how can we how can we use the
- 22:02you know, the social capital of the family or the social capital of their
- 22:04their friends and loved ones to help this person see to see the potential in
- 22:10getting help, because some people they don't necessarily they want to change, but
- 22:15they don't necessarily think it's possible. They don't see a way out, so
- 22:18they just kind of resigned to this downward spiral of addiction. Yeah, sometimes
- 22:22all they need is that kind of hit of hope rather than hit of dope.
- 22:26Right, Oh, you did not be able to see, you know,
- 22:33to be able to see some potential there hit of hope instead of dope.
- 22:37Yeah, I love it. It's actually very well said. So and
- 22:41I assume that you know, there are a lot of people that, like,
- 22:44for me, for example, like if I was in this in this
- 22:45state where I needed to like get sobered up like big time. I know
- 22:48that I have friends and family around me that are very supportive of anything that
- 22:52would happen to me in my life, good, bad, or ugly.
- 22:55But I know that there aren't not everybody has that support structure. And it
- 23:00sounds like you kind of step in and help with that if other people don't
- 23:04have that support or at least help to bring the people that could be supportive
- 23:08for people to get through to get sober, to help guide them in the
- 23:12right steps. Am I clear on that with what Yeah okay, good,
- 23:15yeah, good, Yeah, that's really neat because I mean that's got to
- 23:18be gratifying for you too, and it helps you stay sober. Yeah,
- 23:22it does, it does. It's also so there's two different pieces to that.
- 23:23One is that that's what I do professionally. That's why I work with
- 23:27a company, Feinberg Consulting, and we do this professionally, and it's very
- 23:32much coming from a place of being of service. You know, it's not
- 23:34just about you know, making money. That being said, it's a business
- 23:37and so it is what I do, you know, what I get paid
- 23:41to do. And the other side of the coin is is my own recovery
- 23:45and working through twelve step meetings and a twelve step program. And so the
- 23:48beauty of that is you don't need money to go to a meeting, you
- 23:52don't need money to get a sponsor like That's one of the most beautiful things
- 23:56about a twelve step way of going about recovery is that you really don't need
- 24:00anything except willingness to change. And if you have that, you can go
- 24:04pretty much every day, depending where you're physically okay, you can go and
- 24:07get support every single day, you know, without having to spend a time.
- 24:11Are you still going to meetings? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I
- 24:15still go to meetings, yeah, like every day just about actually really wow,
- 24:21almost twenty years. Yeah, and it's you know, they go waxes
- 24:23and wait. So recently I've being been increasing it because I realized it's something
- 24:29you needed to do just from your own mental health. But yeah, I
- 24:33still go to meetings. Good for you, because I know that there are
- 24:37the diehards AA people that are like I've been here for forty years, you
- 24:40know, and they don't leave and they're going to die in an AA meeting.
- 24:44And then there are some that like get in there, they get their
- 24:45help and then they're actually just rock stars and they find it their own way
- 24:48of healing. Because I know, and I've been to AA meetings before,
- 24:52and I've been to alan On meetings as well, and I did not find
- 24:56them to be very helpful for me, only because my personality type bommed onto
- 25:00everybody that was like me and we ended up just going out and hanging out
- 25:04after meetings, and then that would end up not being something that was a
- 25:07cont to do. And so I know that there are there, you know,
- 25:11people that have gone to like, oh I went to a meeting,
- 25:14it wasn't for me. I mean I would encourage you to go to find
- 25:18another meeting or find another meeting. Would you agree with that? Because every
- 25:22every meeting is not for everybody, Like we all are a little different.
- 25:26We find our little clicks, we find our groups. We find who touches
- 25:29our hearts, who pulls on our heart strings, who's there that can help
- 25:33support? And also I have a question in regards to getting a sponsor when
- 25:37you get into AA, how do you actually glom on and find a sponsor
- 25:44within the AA program? How do you do that? From your perspective,
- 25:47Like the best way, yes, with any with any twelve step fellowship,
- 25:49it's you know, you want to find somebody, in my opinion, who's
- 25:53as what you want, all right, It's like they have a certain way
- 25:56of going about life or a way of going about expressing themselves. There's something
- 26:00about them that you relate to that you really would aspire to, or maybe
- 26:06they share the same type of life struggles and challenges of addiction that you share.
- 26:10You know, there's got to be some type of commonality there and something
- 26:12to aspire to. And so from that standpoint, I think it's good to
- 26:17reach out and just start to get to know somebody and see if it could
- 26:19be a good fit. And it's not gonna be a good fit for everybody,
- 26:22But just like the meetings, you know, can't necessarily judge by one
- 26:25meeting, just like you right judge by one person. You know, there's
- 26:29so many different people and sponsors available in different fellowships. You want to give
- 26:33it at some time to really discern what could be a good fit and whether
- 26:37or not is yeah, and I think time is a good Give yourself some
- 26:41grace and give yourself be patient with yourself because with anything that you want to
- 26:45change, whether it's weight loss, whether it's getting through childhood trauma, whether
- 26:48it's putting on weight, which is what I'm trying to do. And be
- 26:52patient with our bods and our minds and our spirits and our souls, because
- 26:56we're not going to nothing's going to turn around on a dime in one day.
- 27:00Guys like I've have forty five years of stuff I've got to deal with
- 27:03here tomorrow. It's not going to all of a sudden be perfect wins and
- 27:08it might not ever be game right. It's the paying game, sure is.
- 27:14And trauma is so painful, and the things that you've been through,
- 27:17and I know we didn't talk about a lot of them, and I know
- 27:18some of them we didn't want to cover, but I think that well for
- 27:22starters, congratulations on being almost twenty years sober. I mean, that's pretty
- 27:25awesome because this guy is not some old rackety dude over here either. How
- 27:29old are yet? Forty four? That's sorry, we're the same age.
- 27:33So yeah, so twenty years. I mean for somebody to get sober when
- 27:36you're twenty four or twenty five years old, that's pretty remarkable because in your
- 27:40middle of your twenties, you're not thinking about sobriety. You're thinking about partying
- 27:44and going out and having fun and meeting a spouse and whatever. And so
- 27:48I give you massive kudos for doing that, especially in the middle of your
- 27:51twenties, because that's that's tough in and of itself. You got it.
- 27:53Yeah, And the willingness to change, like you said, I think,
- 27:56is a huge component too. Like for me, my thing, I created
- 28:00this cute little disordered eating situation with my CRPS and so now I'm dealing with
- 28:04food issues and I didn't know that I was going to, but I am
- 28:07trying to be in this place. It's kind of how I started the beginning
- 28:11of this episode, where I felt like I was supposed to be something larger.
- 28:15I'm supposed to be bigger than I am. I'm always going to be
- 28:18this wow, big personality type. But I feel like I don't want to
- 28:22be just a whisper. I want to be a storm. And I think
- 28:26that you are so encouraging in the willingness to change, because that is the
- 28:30number one thing. If you're not willing, then nothing's going to change.
- 28:33I mean, hello, it sounds simple, yeah, easy civil, but
- 28:38not easy. Yeah. I'm really proud of you, and thank you so
- 28:42much for spending the time that you have with us today, and I look
- 28:45forward to following you for the next twenty years to see what crazy shnanigans you
- 28:48get into. That sounds good. Thanks for bearing me off, no problem,
- 28:53Thank you so much. You are exclusively invited to share this willingness to
- 28:57change VIP journey together. Let's get to the heart of how to keel with
- 29:03you by my side. Please follow the Pain Game podcast wherever you digest your
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- 29:18little VIPs. Catch you on the other side.