I get inspired when I go to meetings, Steve. And I hope people don't. Don't mind. Then I'm taking content when I hear things in meetings, but I hear some really good stuff and some good behaviors. And the thing I think was worth talking about is vulnerability. How do you be vulnerable when you're in recovery? I'll give you a little bit of background. There is somebody we know who became very emotional in a meeting and then is saying, I'm sorry. I'm sorry,
I'm sorry. And I thought it was powerful that they had enough trust to really let out a lot of emotion. And I have to imagine this person has had incredible emotion over the past few months. And I think it's worth talking about. How do you get yourself to a place where you're vulnerable in your recovery? You're vulnerable with things going on so that you can get better
Yeah, it was a it was a powerful evening. it just such a great example, I think. I certainly think women seem to have an easier time with that than men. but I've been in plenty of men. Just men, you know, pure men, meaning? And. And have had guys start crying
over something. And it's, you know, it's something that you, you, you never get used to it, but you do start to realize that it's an incredible feeling that you can walk into a group where, you know, maybe, you know, bunch of the guys well, a bunch of the people. Well, if it's a mixed meeting, men and women, but you don't know most of them all that well, right? You see them for an hour a week, a couple hours a week, and maybe you know them
here and there. But yeah, to to be able to let stuff out I know was difficult for me at first, too. Really. A lot of it's about trust. It's about trusting,
right?
right? It's about trusting the the group or the people that you're with with that emotion with, you know, like, this is what's happening. This is who I am. And that takes time. It takes time. It takes practice. Not for everybody, but for lots of us. It does because it's you know, it's one of the things we want to do. I mean, who was who wants to air our shit out in a public setting? Right. Even
Yeah.
a even a small even a small public setting who wants to air it out like that? but it's important. I mean, for for us and, you know, for those of us who subscribe to, you know, a 12 step program like we do, it's an important step for us to be able to do that. That way we get to know what's going on. I always tell people like, Mm you hmm. got it. We got to know what's going on. We can't help
somebody. If you're going to walk in there and say, Hey, hey, everything's good, good, and then you're walking out to your car sobbing, or you're walking out to your car angry or whatever it might be, nobody can help you if you're doing that. So by being vulnerable, it's a way that you allow people to get to know you, to understand what's going on, and not always to have answers. Like we don't have answers for a lot of the stuff.
Right.
But just so we know, right? Just so we know so we can check, so you can reach out to this person, say, Hey, what's up? What's going on? You know, you know, how are you doing today? And you can make sure that, you know, you can make sure that this person would be okay.
My anxiety has been at about 11. If we're on a scale of 1 to 10, it's Mm been on an 11 recently. hmm. And I. I walked into the meeting on Friday, and I did not feel great. I felt the anxiety. Anxiety again was at a ten, and I can't remember what I shared, but I talked about something, and whatever I talked about, that was the first time I really felt relief in quite a long time. I drank because I was holding back my feelings and I Right.
was afraid of what you might say about me and afraid that the feelings I have inside are stupid, which is what's important for me to get them out. This podcast is a lot of therapy for me. Mm. I really had been feeling Target vulnerable. Now. I had not been feeling the level of relief in a meeting that I was looking for in quite some time, and that was the first meeting in a while that I felt, Wow, I feel a lot of relief. I think
part of it was our friend. I think part of it was I was participating.
Well, I think I think a couple of things happen there, and you may not remember it, but I certainly remember a little bit about what you said. And the first thing and I actually remember the conversation that you and this person had,
Mm
they
hmm.
asked about how you were doing,
Yes.
how was your week? Right. Immediately, because you had shared that you were stressed out. And Mm they hmm. said, I've been thinking about you a lot. Right. And and you
I
said,
remember. Now, I have to tell you, I have no memory of that
right.
before. Yeah.
Yeah. So, so and then and you even said when you shared, you did a lot for me When I first walked into this meeting, that was before the meeting started
Yeah,
that conversation, like we were sitting right next to each other so I could hear the it's a small group anyway, but and that's the way it works, right? And I think that's what happened, is you immediately became connected to this person because they reached out to you
right.
like, Hey, how you doing? So, so think about this for a second. This person had this crack and this emotional breakdown, crying, sobbing. So she so, so so they came in sort of on whatever. Maybe not because sometimes that happens once you start sharing. But, you know, they were immediately
Mm
concerned
hmm.
about you and Mm hmm. so you immediately became attached, sort of connected to this person like that always makes me feel when somebody asked me how I'm doing, like really ask me and they know like, what's going on? Hey, how you doing? How you feeling? What's going are you feel better? Like those are big connections. And then so there was a connection for you. And Mm hmm. I think I think that's why you probably felt different in this meeting then Another
meeting? Well, maybe you came in you didn't talk to or just your casual. Hey, how you doing, Matt? Hey, how you doing?
Yeah.
It's very different. And that is why we got to meet. The other thing you said is, listen, I know this person. You know this person. I know you. That's why we drank. Like, if if we didn't have a meeting to go and do that kind of stuff, we'd be home drinking, too,
Right.
to bury those feelings. Mm hmm. There's no question about it. I know. I would like if I had this feeling. Listen, you know, lately things haven't been a cakewalk for me. And it's like there's no question. There's no question in my mind that if I wasn't involved, actively involved in a recovery program, that I would be very susceptible to picking up a drink right now. Mm hmm. Really. And I mean, I don't even think about it, but it's just like that's Mm hmm.
just life, right? We got to deal with that kind of stuff. so it's it's nice to see it because it's a it's a powerful example that we can go through stuff and we don't have to succumb to succumb to our alcoholism and Mm hmm. and we don't have to go back to that, you know, that pit that we used to be in?
Yeah. It's. It's also vulnerable, accepting help of not being defensive when somebody like this person comes up and says. How you doing? I was thinking about you and looking at of, Hey, this is a good thing. Mm hmm. I appreciate you thinking of me. This is giving Yeah, me the opening to open up right. that I'll cross through the topic and be vulnerable myself. The month of October was one of the worst months I have
had in years. Years. It's not as bad with the things happening as things that happened, like in the financial crisis. Like I worked in a financial industry and lost my job. But that last six months I was there was at the time like the worst. I felt career wise and I'm in a much better place. Then there are some things job related that feel like that, and we have some household stuff going on that hit us hard. And I'm kind of on burying myself now. Attacks like we had a I think I probably I
might have talked about this. Um, no, I think we I probably didn't do this because although you haven't seen a MIS in this podcast, there are times we might take a break and bank up a whole bunch of episodes. So I'll be vulnerable. And the things that would have made me drink the pump on our well failed the water from the dial on my shower behind the wall is dripping down and the next thing I know, the ceiling in our living room started to collapse. So we had to get that. We had to get the
plumber in to do that. And the plumber didn't want to do under the sink because there's some mold there and some bugs because there might be a pipe behind that's broken and a mold problem potentially. And a lot of a lot of work stuff. And I think any one of these things I could handle. But all of this stuff together really brought me to my knees and I made some very positive decisions. I sat down and I haven't had a therapist since my retired in July of 2022. I went online and I did some.
God bless people who have to go look for therapists because it's a hard Yeah. thing if you got to list.
Mm mm mm mm
And
mm
I called my the mental health provider that does her insurance
mm.
and she goes, Well, have you Googled? Thank you, have a nice day. And hung up, Right. but found a therapist, found a place that not only they have a therapist, but they also have like an on site psychiatrist that can walk you through your medicine and get you to a point where you might be off of the medicine. Because with the stress that I have had, my doctor has put me also on a very low dose of what he calls an antipsychotic. Now, he was sure to tell me I'm not
psychotic. I don't know if I believe them, but it was something to help with both the ADHD and the anxiety that was at a level ten. Yeah. I will tell you, I didn't drink over it, but this was this was a this has been a very bad time. And Laurie coming up to me saying, how are you doing? Was a wonderful thing. And it was wonderful that I could accept the help and not be offended that somebody cared about me. Mm hmm. And there's vulnerability in terms of accepting somebody caring for you.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. It is no question about it. To let somebody into your life, into the the most intimate part of your life, to. To let somebody know your fears to what you know, what you're what you're stressing out about, really what you're stressing out about. Not the surface stuff that many of us go through life sharing with our you know, our acquaintances. You know, let's face it, we you know, we go through life and we we have a lot of acquaintances, but very few really close friends Mm hmm.
that and that changes that. It does change when you're in a recovery program because
Yes.
of the because of the shared struggle that we have. it changes. It really does. Even though, you know, you're still somewhat acquaintances because the amount of time you spend together, there's a shared struggle. And I've always gone back to it. You know, there was a friend who used to come in to the Friday night meeting and say, sit back and relax. The war is over right? And I always would say that recovery is a little bit a little bit like being in a war. Mm hmm.
And if you talk to people who served, Lou and I didn't. But if you talk to people who who served in the military during wartime. Right. The band, the brothers, the move, the show, Right. You become brothers because you depend on each other. You're you're lives literally depend on each other. I think there's a same feeling of that in recovery. Right?
Yes.
Many of us feel that our lives are dependent upon this connection with these other people. So it's a very intimate connection that that we don't share with other people. I know I don't share I have some really close friends and I don't share with them the stuff that I share with people who are definitely not as close as other people. Right. And again, that's not everybody, but this is certainly me. So you have that connection.
And and to be vulnerable, to be able to do that with people, to me, it just it's reassuring. It's like I feel like I'm not alone. Right? That that's the that's the major thing, right? I feel like I'm not alone in this in this fight, in this world. That's somebody, you know, that somebody can understand it, Mm you know, hmm. because the truth is, for a lot of the stuff, non alcoholics have trouble understanding it. They really do. And Mm. for the most part, I can go to another alcoholic and talk
to them about it. And and they get it and they get it.
This is something else I mentioned in the meeting, because we we read. I forgot what the story was. I think it's on page. I was going to say 139, but it's not 139. No It's like three. It's in the back of the book. It's in the book part early on. My favorite part, they no, I don't think it was there. It was in the they could have lost it all. right, It was it was the quote unquote, the high bottom drunks. Right, And I came alive there because the woman, if you read it, doesn't sound like a high
bottom. The name of the chapter is because I'm an alcoholic. right. The woman at the end outs herself as a lesbian and like the last paragraph and doesn't talk about that, the whole thing. And she realizes that about herself. And it made me really think about the other thing I was going to I was going to share. So I guess I'm totally going off on the tangent here, but I think it fits is there's some stuff politically that's really
pissing me off. And I almost mentioned there's some stuff politically that is really pissing me off, and a lot of it is about intolerance. In reading that that the woman said, like as an aside, I discovered I like women, I'm a lesbian. I don't like to say, you know, well, so what? Because that dismisses it is it is a difference, but it is irrelevant. It's an interesting Mm fact. You know, hey, you've hmm. got blue eyes, you've got ice cold blue eyes like Frank
Sinatra. Okay, that's interesting. But it's irrelevant because in a good 12 step meeting, you can have people of all persuasions, gay or straight, black or white, old or young, you name it, and everything is irrelevant except for our need to stay sober. That cuts through everything, which is why you say you can be vulnerable in that room and they may be acquaintances and it feels safe.
Last week before that, Gordon came up to me and put his arm around me, and Gordon can be kind of a quiet guy, but as I came
Yes.
right over, you're okay. I went through this. You will be fine. Yeah. And it's like the people who are quiet that you don't talk to when they come over and put their arm around you and you don't expect it.
You know, it's not only that, but. But he's new to this meeting. Fairly new, right? Mm Within hmm. within
I've
the last
known
year.
Gordon for years, though.
I'll have you. Okay
Yeah.
then.
Yeah,
I
I've
mean, yeah,
seen him at other meetings.
it's. But you know, but, but to have somebody like that come in here again and be that comforting. Okay
Yeah.
and I'll give you an example is like, like I said, I've been going through some my own shit here and it's nothing big. It's just, it's just life stuff. But last night I felt like I needed I needed a meeting, right? So I needed a meeting with like, so I said my wife, I think I'm going out to a meeting and I like when I do that, when, when I do a spur of the moment meeting like that, I like to check out new meetings sometimes. Sometimes, if I know, you know,
there's a meeting going on. I know, guys, maybe I'll go, maybe I'll go to that meeting. But last night was like, it's a Wednesday and I just about never go out usually. We're recording this podcast on Wednesday night, so I'm not going out to a meeting and I decided to go down to the next town over for me, Glastonbury and I live in a really blue collar town in Glastonbury is sort of a, you know, a suburb and a much more wealthy suburb
Oh,
and whatnot.
most certainly is.
And so I went there and the guy so right away everybody knew I was new, right? It was a small meeting, like maybe ten or 12. Gu was a men's meeting. I like to go to men's meetings. And by the way, everybody knew I was I was the only guy that they didn't know on their own, like, hey, you know, I'm like everybody. You give me those eyeballs. And so I say, What brings you out tonight? And I just made a joke. And I said, I want to see if Glastonbury drunks are any different than
Manchester drunks. Right? A. And but, you know, I shared that meeting we read, we read from Daily Reflections, and that was the topic that we talked on and, and about prayer and meditation. A, you know, everybody shared and I just felt totally comfortable in that meeting. This is the whole point that, that, you know, I walked into that meeting, I didn't know. So there was a person that I had ever seen before, which is somewhat unusual. Usually I know somebody. I've seen them before.
There wasn't a person that I had ever even seen before, but I had no problems here. I had no problem telling them, you know something? I felt like I needed to get out of the house for a couple of hours. And so I came I came out to a meeting, talked about my stuff, and I could have never done that before. I could have never done that. And again, I'm not going to dump all my stuff at a brand new meeting like that, like I would out of
one of my regulars. But if I'm going to tell you something, I walked into that meeting and it was and it would have been to an AA meeting in some churches, like it was like a maze getting to the room. It really was.
No. Yeah.
And luck. And
Yeah,
luckily
I
I follow a guy in and I just followed into the room and I found that his name was Chris and I followed them out and we had a nice conversation. And the beautiful thing was if I had something I needed to talk about, that guy was there to talk to me, right? We had a talk all the way out to our cars and if I needed a minute, he would have stood there and talked to me. It's an amazing feeling to have that kind of support and that kind of trust in other people.
this is the thing that makes recovery different, is you have that and you have to put in what you want out of it. You got to put in. Yeah. If you want to be in a position where people are going to listen and comfort you, you have to put something out and you have to be ready to listen. You got to put the effort in. And if you do so, somebody is going to be there to help you. It's also I'm going to help somebody else because it makes me feel better. And I've been there and I'm going through a
rough stretch right now. And sometimes it feels like I must have crappy recovery if I feel this way. And then I think about a lot of people I heard early on this said, I got to year five and I was ready for suicide. I want I didn't do it, but I wanted to kill All myself. right. And I really committed to
the program and I got better. So this is also a reminder life is still going have ups and downs and they're going to be stressful periods where you're like me and totally out of your comfort zone and you have to get through it. And there are tools out there and it's being vulnerable meetings and it's asking for help when you need it. So you don't have to just go to a meeting for this. You can call a friend, call somebody in recovery, make a connection,
even if it's online. There are problems other than alcohol. That what therapists are for. You get the help. You go get the help that you need. Go tell people what your issue is and be willing to listen and just keep doing it until you get better.
Ye. Yo know, I had a thought, and I just lost my head. I thought it was. It was relevant, and maybe it'll come back to me, but it really is about like you said, there's lots of there's lots of recovery out there. There's lots of things we have to work on and there's lots of tools out there. But if you if you're struggling with if you're struggling with addiction of any type, then the biggest thing I will say is you have secrets, right? You Mm have hmm.
secrets. And because you know that there's not an addict out there or alcoholic or whatever who doesn't have secrets. So and that goes across all of your addictions, right? If you're gambling, you know, we all well know if you're gambling, Right. How many people. Right. The people. They lost businesses because they gambled all the money away. there was a famous guy in. In one of the towns in a town I live in who, who had a
bunch of restaurants. Lost them all because he he got, you know, he got into a gambling problem. There's obviously obviously, if you have a sex addiction addiction, then that's going to be something you know, you're going to have a lot of you know, a lot of secrets about. You know, you're going to be doing stuff that other people aren't going to know. And for many of us, it's the same thing about alcohol. It was for me. You know, my addiction was very much done. A lot of it was done in secret.
more people knew about it than I. I lived. I allowed, you know, myself to believe, but it was still done in secret. And therefore, you know, you need, you need that group of people you need to have you need to bring light to those things so that you know, so that you don't have these secrets that you're carrying around. Because that's what kept me drunk for so long. That's what kept me going. And, and, and the only way you do that, you have to be vulnerable. You have to trust people.
Right.
And that's a hard thing, right? I mean, we talk about all the time in this program. You know, we've talked about the stuff before and we talk about a fourth and fifth step doing an inventory and then sharing that inventory with another human being. You know, you have to find that trust factor in order to be able to do that. And and it's not always easy. It's not always easy to do that. You know, I've shared a lot of things that I thought I would never share
with anybody. And I've heard a lot of things from other men who I'm sure they they were very reluctant to share at times. You know?
You have to risk being hurt Mm hmm. with your trust. You Yeah. have to risk that. And you might you might end up getting burned by extending trust from time to time. In reality, it's probably a smaller time than you think, but you might miss an opportunity to make a connection with somebody if you don't want to trust There are those opportunities that you could be better. You can make a connection. You can help
somebody else. If you extend trust in, you have to almost, if you're in recovery, off some blind trust wisely. It's
You do
not blind trust. You know, the guy on the street with
know,
with a signer or, you know, some some some lawyer who's an ambulance chaser,
right?
You want to do it with the right people. But you have to you have to find somebody that you can trust and tell your secrets so you can get them off your chest. Yeah.
There is no question about it. And that's where when you when you come into recovery, I've always said you need you need a group of people. And I always said that we believe in sponsors and in our recovery, someone who sort of can help take us through the program of recovery. But I think you need more than that. I think you need more than just a sponsor. I think you need a group of people that you
Oh,
can
absolutely.
have that that you have some you can bounce off because humans are fallible, right? They they make mistakes. So, you know, when you come in here, you're struggling and you may pick somebody. And like I said, you have to be you know, you have to be careful. You have to be you can't have blind faith in it. But you do get to know these people and you get to know, you know, by the time by the time you get to a fourth or fifth step with a sponsor, you sort of have an idea of who this person
is. And you get the feeling that whether you want to do that and I know what I was going to say before, because one of the things I think is important and I think it's important for you, it was for me for a long time, and that was I realized and I think I realized it from hearing a matter of fact. I know I do. I, we, I, I recall hearing a sermon in church and I won't try to repeat it because I would mess it up. But it was about a surgeon who did this operation
on this young child. And this young child afterwards when the surgery was a success and he went to visit the child. And while he's visiting the child, the child gives him his teddy bear and he the surgeon takes this teddy bear and puts it in his office. And throughout the years, people would ask him and people would say to him, you know, how how could you take that teddy bear? It was the kid's favorite bear. And he talks about being able to receive a gift. And I always had
trouble receiving a gift. I don't know about you,
Yes.
but I had I did not know how to properly receive a gift, which sounds weird, but I would be. Oh, no. The old nose you shouldn't have is not Mhm. the way to receive a gift.
No, it's not.
Right? That is. That's what I always did. Oh, no, you shouldn't have. Oh, don't bother. You did know to take it. To thank them, to cherish it. Oh, thank you for thinking. Like to, to actually understand how to receive a gift is really, really important. And it's the same thing when we're vulnerable to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and then to us to receive some some affection, some help, whatever we might need to be able to do that, it really is
important. All right. And like you said, you need to put something out there. And that's one of the things, because if you just tell people, oh, I don't bother, don't worry about it, don't worry about it, people won't worry about it.
Yes.
They'll stop, right? They'll stop worrying about it. All right? If you tell people, oh, don't worry about I'm fine, you know, then they'll stop asking how you're doing. But if you're if you're honest with them and if you let yourself be vulnerable and if you tell them and you do, I've heard you do it before, you know. How are you doing? Oh, I'm doing I feel like shit. Yeah, I know. Really. And you said, you know, I've had a horrible week or whatever, you know, and you'll talk about it with
Mm
certain
hmm.
people, you know, and you talk about it. You open yourself up in meetings, you know, you do that. So it's it's such an important part of it. And I think the differences is I think it's it it goes down it it pertains to the quality of your sobriety. I really do. I think when you start letting yourself be vulnerable, then the quality of your sobriety is so much better. I Mm really hmm. feel that way because you let more people in who more people could help you. More people understand you right?
R.
You know, when I you know, I've told the story I had when I had problems last year and, you know, I had some issues with this dog attack, my dog like I had guys checking on me. Hey, how are you doing? You look like guys caring about me, you know, checking in. You know, Mm I'd hmm. go to a meeting, see these guys and. And, you know, they'd walk up to me. Hey, how'd your week go? You okay? You know, like, really, it's. It really nice to have people and,
Yep.
you know, you know, you know, they really care about you. So it's it's an important feeling. It's it's one of those things that you get out of week, out of recovery. It's one of the things that you get out of this program that we follow one of those promises, if you will, that I didn't even know that it was available to me. Right. So that's the kind of stuff that I get today. Like, oh, I wanted to give you sober. I wanted to be able to go to work. I wanted to
be able to make money. I wanted to have a good, happy family, home life. But I didn't realize that I would have all these other people caring about me, really caring about me as much
Right.
as I do. And and that's it's a total change in the way I came into this program.
Well, we'd love to hear your thoughts. How are you with being vulnerable? And I will tell you, when you say that about don't give me a gift. You shouldn't have. I think that's more about me than it is the other person that I don't feel worthy. Mm hmm. And you have to feel worthy so you can find me made a Sober Friends podcast or an Instagram at Sober Friends Pod. And why don't you, w you're while you're trolling around the Internet, I want to go over to Apple. Give us a five star
review. Tell everybody what you love about the show. You can do that on Spotify as well. Steve, thanks for being vulnerable tonight.
Hey, Matt. Thanks for having me. Great to be back.
And we'll see you next week by everybody.