Laura McKowen on the Magic of Being Sober

free access to this helpful resource. Again, that's a free guide called the Top five reasons you can't seem to stick with a meditation practice at one you feed dot Net. Not drinking is not a replacement for drinking. It's just not enough because it's just taking away the anesthetic. You're left with the wreckage and the wounds. You're left with yourself. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers

have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. Yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort

to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Laura McCowen, a writer of books and an award winning blog and host of spiritual Ish, a show that provides an irreverent take on self help. She's been featured in web m D, New York Post, Bravo, The Today's Show, and more or Laura also hosts sold out retreats and courses teaching people to

say yes to a bigger life. Her newest book is We Are the Luckiest The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life. Hi, Laura, welcome to the show. Thank you, Hi, it's a pleasure to have you on. You wrote a wonderful memoir called We Are the Luckiest The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life, which we're gonna talk about in a moment. But before

we do, we'll start like we always do. At the parable, there's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks about it for a second. She looks at her grandmother

and she said, a grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I have two answers. One was I just recently rewatched Harry Potter with my daughter, all the Harry Potter movies,

and they have a moment. I don't know if you caught this in either the books or the movies, but they have a moment where it basically where double Door relays this lesson to Potter about the good and the bad and it depends on which one you feed. So I loved that that happened. It literally came on last night when we were watching that one, and I was like, this is good for the show because she caught onto that, you know, that that lesson or that idea she thought

about that um and asked about it. So there's that. But to me in my work, you know, I had this idea, I think that a lot of people do until we are faced with something that tests that idea within ourselves that there are good people bad people, or that things are pretty kind of black and white, you know, when it comes to addiction, which is what my book

is about and really what my work is about. I like most people thought that people who get addicted have lack will power, they lack the grit, they're weak right on some level, or they're bad, you know, they're just bad inside, and that that would never happen to me, someone like me. And what I learned in going through addiction myself was obviously that that that was not true and it really had nothing to do with will power, and it didn't matter how good I was or how

bad I was or anything. And um, I have a chapter in a book called We Are All Magnificent Monsters, and it's basically about that. It's like, look, we are all capable of everything, every piece of light, and we have it all in us, all the light and every bit of the dark. Essentially, I don't go around wondering if people are good about it anymore. I just I know that they're both. And to me, that parable is not just the fact that we have all that in us, but that if we can find that in ourselves, we

can find it to be true in other people. And um, there's a lot of compassion that can be found there, right because we become a law less judgmental of people's badness as we as we would label it. That's sort of what I draw from that. And I didn't get into the book, it just didn't work. But there's a quote that says, believing you were all good is like believing in the half moon. So it's the same thing, you know, It's like we're all made of everything. Uh,

and it doesn't matter what you feed. It matters what you feed, right, Yeah. I love that idea and I tend to agree off in religions get into debates. Buddhism says you're all good, Christianity says you're all bad, And I'm like, well, what point you start from? And I just sort of think, well, it's all in there, right in there, and so and then it just depends what life experiences we have. What's you know, everything that we

have that happens. Yeah, where I want to start from here is a slightly less usual place than I normally would, But I want to talk about this because I think it's great for this time. In your book, you're saying every big transition in your life, pregnancy, becoming a mother, marriage, divorce, and especially getting sober, you've been gobsmacked by the messiness and difficulty of it all. And then you go on to say there's a term for these phases of life

in biblical and psychological terms, liminal space. Limon is a Latin word that means threshold. It's the time between what was and the next, a place of transition, waiting and not knowing and goodness, gracious, are we in one right now? And so it sort of stood out to me as very topical for where we are. So let's talk about living in this liminal space. How do we do it so that what we come out with is positive? Yeah? You know, I hadn't thought of us living in a

liminal space right now, but we most certainly are. Richard Rore Yes, who I adore, I really admire his work, and he says we we should seek liminal spaces whenever we can. We should embrace them and desire them and invite ourselves into them whenever we can. And I believe that's because that's where transformation really takes place. When we're going along and the ground is pretty steady, we don't grow much, we don't change much unless we, you know,

force it on ourselves. For me, it was many things, but getting sober, becoming a mother, the things I just said, Like any time when change is forced on you, like it is right now for everybody literally in the world, how you look at that time is so important. Like I think the primary thing is not looking at it like a mistake or something that you want to rush through, but something that you can say, what is this trying to teach me? Right? What is this trying to teach me?

And to assume that there is something to be taught in that time. And that doesn't mean you slap on positivity and say it's all good, because it's not. It's extraordinarily uncomfortable, extraordinarily uncomfortable. But I think that's what is

that quote. Great change is always preceded by chaos. If you think of it as something is completely busted, like you have a vase and it fell on the floor, and it's completely busted before we put If we decided to put that vase back together in some kind of other shape or make a mosaic out of it, or whatever you might do. When it's just lying on there on the floor, it's in this liminal space. We don't know what it is yet, and we don't know what we're going to become in this next phase. We don't

know how we're going to come out of it. So I don't know how to say, let's come through it with positivity in a positive way. But I do know that how we feel about it and how we look at it in the perspective that we have about this time is not being a mistake and not rushing to get to the next part is sort of where the magic is. It's like, this is reality, this is what's happening right now, and I am in the in between. I don't have the answers and sort of in bring

seen that mystery because who knows. Right when I've tried to force myself out of that type of state. Um, first of all, it doesn't really work because that's not on our timeline. But whenever I've tried to impose some order or impose my will on the forces of change in a liminal space. It doesn't really work, and oftentimes I miss the blessings at that time. Yep, I think that's right on it. It's embracing it to the extent

we can. And I am always sensitive to talking about deep suffering things that are happening to certain people in the world is like turning them into like a growth opportunity for me totally. The reality is when we are forced into difficult circumstances, and we all are varying degrees of difficulty, we have the opportunity to grow. And change doesn't mean we will, but we have the opportunity. And when I read your book, that just jumped out to

me liminal space. I was like, yes, liminal space, and just the acknowledgement the first time I heard it, just even acknowledging that that that's a thing. Yeah, it's been philosophically true and and spiritually true from the beginning of time. There's some rest in that, like, oh, there's a beginning of middle in the end to everything, there's the beginning of middle in the end. So this is the middle part. So your book starts off pretty early on with this line,

and it hooked me immediately. You said, on July two, thousand thirteen, the night of my brother's wedding, I left my four year old daughter alone in a hotel room overnight because I was black out drunk. And the reason that that grabbed me, beside the fact that it's a completely compelling statement, is that I got sober this most recent time for me, which has been about twelve years ago, because I passed out and left my son alone. Now he was home with my my partner at the time,

so he wasn't alone alone. She got him up, she got him to school. But the point is that, like I just dropped the ball, and like you, I had thought, yes, I've got some problems, but I'm not going to miss the boat. That's never gonna happen. That won't happen. And it did, and that was what brought me back to recovery again. And I had one short relapse after that, but I've been sober since. I got sober young from heroin, stayed sober about eight years, drank again for about four years,

and have been sober since. But that was the event that for me too that it was just like, Okay, something's got to change, you know. And I know for you that that really sort of woke you up and then it took you about a year to get all the way sober from there. But yeah, like you, I just really resonated with that because the horror of it for me was, even though I could say, well, she was home with him, I was supposed to be there to wake him up. Yeah, I was supposed to be there.

For me. It was the most horrific thing that could happen to me, you know, Like you said, I thought, although there was plenty of evidence, plenty of evidence to the contrary, I thought, even when I was really drunk, you know, it wouldn't supplant my instinct, my mom instinct that I would always make my way back to her, and I didn't. And you know, the reason I started the book that way was because I wrote this book for anybody who wants to, you know, is struggling against

something within themselves of any kind. But I wrote it especially for mothers because there is such a special vitrayol and shame for mothers, and I assume fathers too. I can only speak to mothers who drink or use, and I wanted to invite them in and say like, this is where we're going. I've got you, you know, because I don't feel shame about that anymore, which is the miracle of it all. And obviously there was a lot of work involved, but yeah, it goes against everything natural. Right.

But you say elsewhere in the book, if there's one thing you can count on, it's that addiction will always demand more, more attention, more loyalty, more time, more everything. It will demand everything everything, you know. And it's a phrase that you know, we hear in recovery, which is like, I didn't do that yet, right, I know, for me in my addiction, it was all a matter of time. There was no horrific thing that I wouldn't have been willing to do at some point to get high or drunk,

and it just I just didn't have to. You just thren't there yet. Yeah, you hadn't had the time or the or the circumstances or whatever. Right. Yeah. More, it's like everything another thing that really struck me. And you gave this description and it's so good because I often talk about I think the worst place in the world to be is stuck between really really wanting to drink and really knowing that you shouldn't like to me that

as a as a special kind of hell. And I stay sober a lot of times because I simply never want to be there. But you describe it as widely coyote. At that moment when the earthquake hits and the ground splits into and the poor coyote is grasping all wide eyed and panicked at both sides of the earth, the divide becomes bigger, bigger, bigger, and his body starts stretching like a rubber band until he's unable to keep any grip.

I love it, that is, so you know, you call it this purgatory, this unbearable wishing for one side or the other, this unsustainable stretching. It's just a nightmare. It is the nightmare. The nightmare. That year plus between when that incident happened with my daughter and when I finally got sober was honestly the worst year of my life. Um, because I didn't want to get sober, you know, I really didn't. I mean, let's just say that, I just didn't.

I thought it was the end of everything, and yet I knew I couldn't keep going as I was, and I tried desperately like call it like the third door. There has to be another option, you know, And that's what I spent purgatory looking for, was that option. And and you know, it's funny. The crazy thing is I knew it didn't exist, but I just couldn't accept that it was over yet. I just couldn't accept that all that was over. I didn't know how to do that life.

So yeah, I mean, in in psychological terms, I think it was young maybe Fred who knows? That's that a split mind as hell, like a split a split mind is hell. I think a really good analogy is like if we hear conflict, like say other people having a conflict, Say you have kids and they fight, it jacks your nervous system up. It's like freaks out, you know, or even through strangers fighting, it immediately causes such internal friction in you and your heart rate goes up, you know,

feels terrible. But the purgatory is like the one foot in, one foot out was like that friction inside of you. And we withstand so much of that when we are caught in addiction. We withstand it every day, even not just related to the drinking, but the lying, the presentation of two different versions of ourselves seeing one thing and

doing the other thing. The cognitive dissonance of who we think we are and yet what we're doing just doesn't match up, and that causes that's an extraordinarily hellish, painful place. Certainly is I agree with you. I don't know that I get so wor again, I don't know that I would come out on the side of sobriety. So I just can't. I'm out because of that. No matter how sobriety might get, I'm the same way. I literally think back that feeling. I think back to that feeling, and

that's what I go. I can't and I know that if I go drink, I will I will be forced to that juncture again. You know. You know it's not like you know, it's not like it's going to go well, um, and so you know I'll be forced forced back to that juncture. The other thing you talk about that I think is really important. As you say, without the drinking, life should have come easier. Everybody thinks it will be easier, and I think it's really important to be able to

say that not right away. Sometimes you know that sometimes it feels worse for a little bit, you know, I always say that being sober is amazing. Getting sober sucks, you know, and and so, but it's important to realize because I think that's what confuses a lot of people. Confused me. Well, I quit. I feel terrible why this doesn't seem worth it, you know, And I think if we don't have somebody saying to us, we'll hold on a second, what you're experiencing right now is not what

you'll be experiencing later. You gotta get through this. It took me a while, for whatever reason, coming in and out of recovery a couple of times before I got that message clearly enough, like, oh, I see, I need to hang on here, you need to hang on. Well, there's so much to that, right, there's so much to why that's true, because the drink was never the thing, right, that the drinking actually served a purpose. I say, like, not drinking is not a replacement for drinking. It's just

not enough because it's just taking away the anesthetic. And then you're left you're left with yourself. Yes, you're left with the wound. You're left with the wreckage and the wounds. And like, by the time I got sober, and this kept me drinking for so long as I was afraid of what I was going to have to look at, you know, my wrecked marriage. I felt like a shitty person just all the time, and I didn't know how to feel things. You know, the reasons why we end

up drinking start so early. It's just like this accumulation of limiting beliefs and bad conditioning and bad patterns, and then of course when we get sober, we're left with ourselves. One of the first guys I talked to, one of the only two sober people I knew when I was trying to get sober, he had like twenty years of sobriety at that point. You know, what you want to know so desperately is like does it get better? And that's what I would ask sober people, like do you

like your life now? Because I just didn't believe they could. And I said like, is it better? Are you better now? You know, twenty years sober? And he just like I had the best laugh. He's like, oh, honey, He's like, it gets better because you're not creating all this wreckage anymore. Like that does feel better? It gets better, and then it gets worse, and then it just gets different. That's a pretty good description, although I will unequivocally still stand

on the yes, it's better. Oh yeah, the difference is not a bad difference. I mean the equivocally it's better almost not even a comparison. It's like an apple in an orange, like well, right, you know, the sort of the crux of my entire book was like everything I thought I wanted and everything I thought that made life worth living, and everything that I thought I was so wrong. But it took time. Like I hated sobriety for a good year. Hated it because I wanted to drink all

the time. Yeah, and that's really painful. That obsession didn't leave me for a long time. I was piste off, I was ad, I was in so much, and yet there were births of such extraordinary joy and hope and love and all of that in there. Yeah. So yeah, no, it's unequivocally better. But it's not easy. It doesn't mean life is easy right now. I had two very different getting sobers. I mean, when I got sober at twenty four, it was from heroin addiction and it was a low bottom.

I was homeless. I was looking at going to jail for a long time I weighed a hundred pounds. I had hepatitis C. I mean I was in bad shape. And I went in and I got into treatment, and I stayed in treatment, and then I went to a halfway house. I wouldn't say that it felt easy, because it was not easy. But life was less complicated, probably right, good life was way less complicated. And it was so

bad that it was like, oh my god, relief. And I was supported and I was carried, and the second time, I had just gotten the best job I'd ever had. I had, you know, a family, I lived in the suburbs, and I drove a nice car and had a lot more to lose, and nothing bad had happened. I mean, okay, yes I didn't go home to take care of my son that one night, But compared to my earlier one, which was such a such a bad thing, I was like, what this isn't so bad. I had enough wisdom to

know that inside I was just the same. Yeah, you know, but it was harder, and like you, the desire to drink didn't leave. It just it dogged me for like six months. I was like, is this you know? First time it felt like it went away, kind of quickly. The second time, I was like, oh my god, it just you know, and it was a little bit more of an intellectual exercise because I hadn't fully had my ass kicked. Yeah, I had it pretty well kicked, but it was still enough. I found my way through it.

You feel like that's because alcohol is just everywhere. It's so there, it's so socially acceptable, it's so totally benign to most people, whereas Heroine's obviously everyone's like, of course, now that's what I mean. Inside, I was exactly the same person. I was out of control and desperate. It's just that alcohol. I could walk down to the store and for ten dollars by a pint of whiskey. For heroin, I had to have all this money, and I kept having to spend more, And how where am I going

to get three hundred dollars a day? And I've got to start stealing it and I've got to engage with a different group of people. That's dangerous. But fundamentally, the mechanism of addiction in me was the same both times, and so I luckily had had enough time in sobriety. You know, I'd have been sober about eight years that I could see that, you know, I could think back and and and I learned enough in that time that I was able to see, Okay, this is the same thing.

It's just that the consequences aren't here yet, and they may not be here in the same way for a long time. But the question I kept asking myself was like, do I really need to keep riding this elevator down? Like do I need to get in a car accident with my son before this is enough? And I just kept going, No, I don't have to do that. No, I don't have to do that. And that's a different game. It is a little bit of a different game. But

I was fortunate to support so and and help. I could go on and on about how fascinated I am by alcohol and that we basically think it's a spinign or celebrated drug. But you know, that's that's a whole different conversation. But I think that you don't have to explain. Also, I'm not using heroin. No. You know, people wonder when you don't drink. It's like a conversation they were, you know, because it's a thing. This thing did not do heroin similar to you. When I got sober, the second time,

I had a job that was a professional job. I was in sales for a software company, and my job was taking people out, entertaining them, going to conferences, you know, And so I'm just I'm just waltzing into these drinking situations all the time. My wife at the time continued to drink. It was a strange getting sober, but it worked, which thank god, thank god, the elevator continuing to go down. I guess my primary feeling because I obviously didn't stop

drinking after the most horrific thing happened. But I think that what scared me the most is that I just really didn't know what was going to happen when I drank anymore. I just anything was on the table. I just didn't know. And so you said, you know, do I have to get in a car accident with my side and then it's like that might be the best thing that was going to happen to you. I agree. It was the same situation for me, Like when I start,

I don't really know. Most times what happens is I do this, then I do this, and I do this. But then there's those other times I was a complete blackout drinker, you know, so like all the time, I often think back and I'm like, well, there's probably horror stories back there that I just fortunately don't recall, you know, and I just don't. I just don't recome blackouts are

a blessing. I suppose let's talk about another complicated topic, which is A. A. It seems like maybe we've had a similar relationship to A, Like I think A saved my life twice, and it's saved my life. I think that's all I can say about it. And yet I'm not really that big a part of it anymore, and there's lots of things with it that I have some some challenge with. But I love to be able to have a nuanced dialogue about A, because most of the dialogue that we hear out there is not nuanced, as

you say. So well as in politics and religion, the beliefs on both extremes of A or dangerous and limiting,

and I think it's really important. So I thought, maybe we could just spend a couple of minutes about what are some of the good things about A that we love and what are some of the things that maybe we don't love as much, And then I'd love to hear some of your ideas on alternatives to A Sure, you know, I'm always really hesitant to say too much about getting sober without A because that's what I did right, right,

and it would be disingenuous to that. I can say, well, I've heard good things about this and that this seems interesting, but I don't have firsthand experience with it. Yeah, so I'd love to just kind of talk a little bit about it. Sure, that was a chapter that I wrote many times, like at least ten times, and I still wasn't sure if I wanted to include it, because I just didn't. It's a delicate topic and at the end of the day, my feeling is the same the people

in a saved my life, period. So my arguments are kind of, um, it's not even an argument. It's a luxury that I can have this conversation. But you know, I would say, even since I wrote the book, I have different opinions now, so which is beautiful. It's like we get to change our mind and we get to grow, and that's the reality of people in nature, is right.

We just don't like to acknowledge that. Um, my arguments against a A, we're largely about the fellowship of a I didn't really grasp and I don't think people largely do from the outside or even inside the program. That there's the Fellowship, which are the people, and they're all kinds of dysfunctional things that happen in the fellowship because it's people. But then there's the Twelve Steps, which is the program of recovery. That is the actual program. I

think the program is beautiful, incredible. I wouldn't change a thing, I wouldn't touch a thing. I think it's ancient spiritual wisdom. It's not even unique to the Twelve Steps. You can find a sort of process in other places. But the Fellowship is where I struggled because I really had a

hard time. I would often leave meetings feeling more depressed and not more hopeful, because I felt like, in some cases there was just this overwhelming sense of fear this these things, you know, like my addict is in the parking lot doing push ups and meetings or my medicine, and if I stay away from meetings, I'm going to, you know, drink and die. And not just that that's fine, but it was more telling other people they can't be sober,

and that they're not really sober. If they aren't doing a a That's what I took a lot of issue with it. No one has any right to tell anyone how to do their sobriety or their life or what constitutes being a healthy sober person, right, So I didn't like that there's that just this overall sense of that people who are or sober were coming into meetings, I heard them say the same story every time they shared, and it was like, I don't know how. This just

feels like being stuck. It didn't feel expansive to me. At certain points. I also felt like there's this over identification with being an alcoholic and that being the center of all your issues in life and why you do everything you do, and I just I rejected that so hard. It's like, no, you're a human being, that's why you're doing these things. I agree. That was one of the things that that drove me crazy was this idea, this this constant delineation between us alcoholics and normal people norm

and I went, no, I don't think so. Yes, there are some things that are specific to my alcoholism, but all humans struggle, all humans go through all this kind of stuff, and we're not so different and we're not so unique. I I sort of related with that, and similar to what I think you're also saying. The thing I sort of got tired of hearing was you know, I'm still sick. Yes, you know, so over ten fifteen years,

I'm still sick. I'm still a liar, a cheat. And I was like, well, I'm not the same person I was when I came in the door, Like, I'm not saying that my alcoholism is fixed. But the Big Book says we recover. It does not say we are forever sick.

It says we recover that. But that's missed. There's a lot of misinformation that gets spread through the fellowship because people go to meetings and then they take what someone says in meetings and they passed that on, and they passed that on and they passed on and that becomes common knowledge and it's really not what was intended, you know, and it's not actually even in alignment with the program.

So those were my arguments. And the literature. There are parts of literature that I was like, come on, can we please update. It's you know, like the further Wives chapter and if your if your husband is you know, just be gentle with him and let him do the things he needs to do are ridiculous at this day and age. Okay, so those are my arguments. Some of my arguments in the beginning were like arguments against getting sober.

They really were. I just didn't want to get sober, and so it is the problem, right, But some of them were legitimate and they were real, and I wasn't discerning enough to really just take what worked for me and leave the rest. I just wasn't there yet, So that stuff got to me over a time. However, there is such incredible community in A. The Fellowship is beautiful.

I have met some of the most loving, wise, peaceful, serene people in the Fellowship of A And if you have an alcohol problem, it is a place where you can bring that. I think the tenants, you know, service, being of service are huge. That's a massive part of my life, and I think what sustains my sobriety and keeps me healthy. I never had an issue with the God thing at that was always very easy for me. But I know a lot of people do, and so that didn't bother me. I love, you know, the trust God,

clean house, help others. I think that's a pretty decent way to live. You know, it's a good foundation for a life. And um, and again I think the tall steps are beautiful. What I've noticed is that over time, and especially since this pandemic has started. Almost immediately when it started, I kind of was like, oh, I need to go back to my roots. I need to be in meetings with other people that are struggling. I need I want to be a service specifically to those people.

And I want to sit and hear other people too. And you know, so it's interesting that that I found that to be my foundation, the foundation of my recovery. And yeah, so those are my general thoughts. I mean, uh, I think it's okay for it to be complicated too. Yep, I agree. I have very similar fee And I mean, I think one of the things about a one of

the best things about it is it's just ubiquitous. It's just everywhere, and it's free, you know, and it's like pretty much anywhere you can find free places to go that you will get support and care and an opportunity and people who will understand you. And um, you've got a great line. Nothing is such a bomb for a broken soul as this to know you are not alone and you'll get that in a or twelve step room.

You'll walk in and you'll hear people telling stories. You're like, oh my God, like yeah, okay, that's the only one that was this way. So it's ubiquitous and it's everywhere, and I think that's amazing. Um, I agree with you. Some of the literature I think is outdated. It's just you know, A has got this. We're not going to change anything from what was nineteen thirty nine. It's you know, it's got a little of that like it was written,

you know, right out of God's mouth, you know. And I'm like, well, and I do have a little challenge with the God thing, not so much that there's a there's that element of it. And I thank God for the line. Thank God, it's something. I don't believe it for the line as we understood him, because I think

that's probably saved millions of lives. But I still do think like the Lord's Prayer, that is a severely Christian prayer, Like I think there are places that we could not lose the heart of a but we could de emphasize the Christian God piece of it, mainly because it would open it up, I think to more people Yeah, it's interesting, but I think that you can come to a a you know, like I just translated, when they say this, what does that mean to me? When they say this,

what does that mean to me? It's just with like an additional step of processing that that I sort of had to go through. And if you work with the right people in a and you talk to the right people, which I have to acknowledge that experience varies wherever you are right widely. So I got sober in Boston, a A means, which is like extraordinary because there so many there. There's LGB too, you know, meetings, there's literally every sort

of faction just to find your own meeting. That's not the case in a lot of places outside of big cities. So yeah, yep, agreed, that's a really good point. Women's meetings exists and men's meetings exists. That's about as far as the yeah, I love what you said there you sort of summarize you said, it's a it's for people who who didn't catch it. It's an a line that says trust God, clean house, help others, right, and clean house means clean up your inside messes, you know, take

care of your your internal things. You feel bad about the things that haunt you that you know, clean your life up resentments that you have, and that I think it has resentments right to Like I'm almost six years sober. I will be this year. It's like, resentments are this sort of thing that makes me the most sick, you know. And that language I think is brilliant, you know, because it is about cleaning house. I like the distinction you made in A. There's a fellowship and there's a program

of recovery. But I think what's really useful and what I often do is, particularly as I've drifted away from A a second time. First time I drifted away from A and I ended up drinking. Yeah, so moving away a second time, I'm like, we'll hold on here, Like do you not learn your lessons? You know? But but what's been helpful for me is to think about what is it that I got from A A that I think helped me to stay sober? And how else did

I get that in my life? And I think community people to talk to that I can share with and that understand me, you know, recovery community, not friends and family, you know, right, And then some method for dealing with my internal things some sort of spiritual life, some sort of connection to something bigger than me. Again, words can can can be different, and then opportunities to help others service. Right. You know, A A is really great in that way

because it's sort of it's just customing. You just keep going to meetings and new people keep coming in and you've got your opportunities. So outside of that, I've had to figure out, like, Okay, how do I patch those things together in my life? And when I sometimes talk with people who are thinking through their addiction, they're like, A is not for me. I'm like, okay, well, here are some things I think you might want to make sure,

like how are you going to get these things? Because it's the combination of those factors that is what I think makes A when it works work. Absolutely. I totally agree with all of that, and I think there are ways to deal with underlying causes and conditions and the really mental health. Right. Um, I say, I threw the

book at it. I was like, I'm gonna do a A and I'm gonna read all the books, and I'm gonna do therapy, and I'm a yoga teacher and because I'm just sort of nerdy and curious for for one, but also I didn't find it all in A. You know, for for example, A doesn't address the body, the physical body, And to me, that's a massive, huge, massive part of and I'm not that's not a fault of A. It's

just not part of the program. Yeah, that's a fascinating point that I've often thought of a lot of the times when I think, well, A A doesn't do that, and I think a little bit more about it, I'm like, uh, I don't want it. It probably shouldn't try that, Like what do you want to fitness program in A Not exactly exactly, yeah, but but even in the literature it sort of doesn't address the body. And again it's not a criticism of A, but that's a huge that has

been a massive part of my healing. What I've learned about trauma, what I've learned as a yoga teacher, is that so much of our issues are in our body and have to be released some deically, and and that required something else, you know, it's also therapy. Like I needed therapy, I needed more, and that is encouraged in A. There's a line I think it's like one page thirty three that says, you know, we encourage you to seek

the help of professionals in all these other areas. And so I bring that up not to cite the Big Book, but because some of the misinformation you hear is people saying ignore that in a saying ignore that, don't go to that. This is all you need, and that's what spreads and perpetuates this sort of dysfunctional side. Yeah, I agree,

And what you were just saying, I often say. I use a similar phrase when I talk about dealing with my depression, which is I just throw the kitchen sink at it, Like I continue, it's just everything, yes, yes, yes, yeah, Like if there's a way that's been suggested to work on it, I'm yeah, I've probably given it a shot, you know, like yeah, because it requires that, you know, it's for me, requires that, or I can slip into

really bad states. To use a buzz word, it's holistic, right, That's what it takes for me, you know, And that's what recovery took. Also agree, So I think I think that covers it all. You know, those are sort of the summary of how I feel, but that at the heart of that is so much gratitude and so much reverence for my life because I don't think I would be here if not for that foundation. In a So, you and I are nearly out of time, but there's a couple of small things that I'd like to talk about,

although they're not small. Um, but I'm just going to read a line from the book and ask you just to say a little bit more about it. You say, and you're talking about being lonely or alone. You say, we think it's the loneness we fear, But I believe what we actually fear is not having a home within ourselves. I've been thinking so much during this time that this is like we're all being forced into sobriety of of

of sorts because we're just left with ourselves. And I don't know about you, but but I think, um, it's causing a pretty large to mental health crisis because we have created a world where we barely we don't have to be with ourselves at all. If we don't want, there are million ways that we can escape. So just you know, commentary on this time. But my first two thoughts when I went to get sober, where what if

I'm boring? And Who's gonna love me? I was so afraid of that a loneness, even though I had been out, not really been in a lot of relationships. It was just the irony of that is that I was so much more alone. I didn't have a home in myself. I couldn't be trusted in my own house, you know, I couldn't be trusted in my mind and in my body. It was a scary place to be. It was a painful place to be. And when I went to get sober, I was just recently separated, like a year separated from

my husband at the time. The loneliness of that was like crushing at first. It's like I need someone in my life. I just need someone to come in and fix this I need. And that's narrative. You know, I have uncovered through a lot of work in sobriety, is that I had this belief that someone else was going to come and save me and that that was going to fix me. And man, did I do everything to try and make people do that for me. And that has been that has been the real work of my sobriety,

That has been the real crux of it. That was underneath the drinking was this medicaid and this inability to be with myself, this fear of being by myself, and this crushing fantasy, crushing because it's a fantasy and not real that someone was going to save me. And when that didn't happen and that didn't work and no one could ever do that, Oh my god, what a painful place that was. And it's ongoing forever. I'm not in this perfect place. I still desire to be in a partnership.

I still want that, but it's it's not a need. It's not like a fix that I need, like that anxious feeling if I need to be fixed like you did when you were drinking or using. It's like I need this because I can't be okay without it. It's more like I truly do have a home in myself, and the reason for that is because it's like, this is a safe place to be now, Laura, is a safe place to be. I trust myself. When I was very early in society, there was this like I don't

even know if you could call it a poem. It's just more a line that I wrote and it says, but there is this I am awake and I am alive, and I'm not afraid of myself anymore. And that was my baseline. It's like, at least I'm not afraid of myself anymore. And then you can you can build on that, right, and then you start to build self esteem through a steemable acts, and you start to build dignity. And by a steemable acts, I mean, I didn't know how to

be a functional person. I didn't know how to pay bills. I didn't know how to do laundry. I didn't know how to keep my word. My boundary are all screwed up. So I would say yes when I met no, and I was like, know when I met yes, Just try to get you to like me and two people please, and bend myself in different ways and and all of those things. All of that that work adds up to being a place that internally I am proud to be in, that I am content to be in. Any Way, there's

still loneliness, but it's not that loneliness. I think that totally makes sense. And I think it's a natural and normal human desire to be in a partnership. I think it's a it's a desire that's part of being human. Right. I had to learn that too. I always thought it was like this very embarrassing weak thing. Yeah. No, And I think sometimes we're given this idea that, like, well, for psychologically independent, then we just would never need that

sort of thing. And it's not a need in the way you say, but it's a pretty strong human desire. But there's a very big difference between this is something I would like to have in my life and I want to have and my life is worth living without it, or my life is broken without it, or I am

broken without it. Those are very different because what it becomes is you essentially end up using people to fill something You're not really in relationship, right, You're you're using people to fulfill something in you and um, and that's not a relationship. I mean we've all experienced though. Yeah, it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Right. My history of relationships was I'd go into a relationship thinking that's what

I needed. I needed this person to fix me. And then when we'd finally be in the relationship and I wasn't fixed, I just go, you're the problem. You're the problem. You're not like, why aren't you doing what I need you to do? I still believe like a relationship will fix me. You just have clearly the wrong one, and

so I'm going to the right one. Yeah. Anyway, you and I are going to continue in the post show conversation by talking about this line from you, and you say, in my experience the primary difference between those who recover and those who don't. So we're going to talk about what that is in the post show conversation. Listeners. If you'd like access to that and many episodes, add free episodes and all kinds of other good stuff, you can become a member by going to one you feed dot

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