I think one of the worst things somebody can do is to just quit drinking or just quit using, because there is this beautiful, loving, authentic, welcoming community just waiting for you.
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, and 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 Today we have a collaboration episode with three amazing guests who, along with Eric, share their experiences and feelings in early sobriety.
It's a collection of incredible people from some of the top sobriety podcasts, including Paul Churchill from Recovery Elevator, Laura Cathcart Robbins from the Only One in the Room, Jillian Teats from Sober Powered, and of course our own Eric Zimmer from The One You Feed. Enjoy this incredible conversation.
Welcome to the show, Laura, Eric, and Paul. I thought for anyone that doesn't know any of us, we could take a moment to go around and just introduce ourselves. Laura, do you want to start us off?
I would love to thank you, Jill. I'm Laura Cathcart Robins. I am the host of the Only One in the Room podcast and I am also a debut memoir author. My memoir Stashed My Life in Hiding came out a little bit earlier this year and has been featured in The New York Times and Oprah Daily. It's on the Oprah Daily homepage as we record this an excerpt from it. And I am very active in recovery in the recovery communities, and I'm really excited to be here.
Thank you, Eric. Do you want to take a moment and introduce yourself?
Sure? My name is Eric Zimmer and I am the host of the One You Feed podcast and the creator of a program called Spiritual Habits and I can say that Laura's memoir is awesome. I read it, so I will say that it's very well done. But that's kind of me when you feed podcast and the Spiritual Habits program.
Thank you, Paul, want to take it away?
Yeah, Jill, thanks for having me, Thanks for the invite, Laura Eric. Great to meet you, guys. I'm walking in the footsteps of giants right here. This is going to be a fun conversation we're going to have. Okay, Paul Churchill is my name. I'm forty one years old. I'm zooming in right here from Bozeman, Montana. I was recently married last year. I have a standard poodle named Ben, four Nigerian dwarf goats, a couple reptiles, and I'm so thankful that sobriety is the main focus of my life
and then I'm not drinking alcohol anymore. And what almost killed me is a pathway to find accountability, and sobriety for myself has opened up so many doors. One of them has been the Recovery Elevator podcast, which I launched in February of twenty fifteen, and we've had an episode that comes out every Monday, and we're at like episode four hundred and thirty two and again I selfishly started this for accountability because I could not quit drinking. But
ten million downloads later, what an adventure. Here we are today, and I'm excited to see you again, Jill, and learn from Laura and Eric and connect with these other rock stars.
Thank you, Paul. I think Recovery Elevator is everybody's first podcast basically when they try to quit drink.
Oh yeah, I'm honored.
Paul's much better at the intro game Ryan. We can see the Nigerian dwarfs that got me totally.
They're the superstars in my life right now. One of them's name hot Dog, Oreo, Mocha and Elliott, and they are all about having fun. That's it. They are my teachers right now.
Yeah, those are great names. I'm going to go back to the simple intro of I'm Jill. If you don't know me, I host the Sober Powered Podcast. I have a community for support called Living a Sober Powered Life. And I'm also a chemistry professor in the Boston area.
That's my side hustle. And I'm really excited to do this conversation today because we're going to talk about our experience in the beginning, and I think a lot of people look at us and they see how much time we have and it feels overwhelming, like they'll never get there. And I also like to talk about the beginning because I never want to forget what I used to go through. I think the more distance you get from it, the easier it is to kind of minimize it in your mind.
So I love talking about early sobriety. So I thought the first thing that we could do is just talk briefly about our experience in the first week or the first month, whatever you prefer, any challenges that you had, surprises, and how long ago that was for you. So Laura, yeah, if you want to start.
I'd love to.
This is something I like to talk about a lot, so thank you for this question. So my first month was spent in rehab, which I hated and felt sentenced to and ashamed to be there and was really resentful about all the people who seem to feel safe there and enjoy it. So that's kind of what I consider to be my first month because I spent it, you know, sequestered basically, so I wasn't in real life yet. So my second month is kind of my first experience with
living sober. And I was in the middle of a divorce, and I was a mom to two young boys. I was the parent association president at their school. I had just been asked to join the board. So I had this very demanding outward life that I just didn't know how to show up for. I have no idea why I still went to three meetings a day. I went to twelve step recovery meetings, and I went to three of them a day, and again I felt sentenced. I was the only black one there. I was the only
black one in treatment. I was the only black one in these meetings, and occasionally there might be another one, but basically it was just me, and I saw all the reasons why I was different from everybody, and none of the reasons why I was the same until much later, And so all I remember is being incredibly physically uncomfortable because I was still going through withdrawal, night sweats, brains apps, the inability to make eye contacts, shakiness, headaches, showing up
for my kids and trying to put on a mile for them, and then just going through the motions of everything else, but the motions I went through in addition to my regular life, were of showing up in recovery meetings and doing what I was told.
Thank you, Laura. And how long ago was that?
So I will be fifteen years sober in August.
Oh my god, fifteen. I didn't know that. I thought it was like closer to ten.
Fifteen. Yeah, that's amazing.
It was two thousand and eight when I got sober. That thing you said about forgetting, I have not forgotten, Like it is impressed on my memory how bad it was. I remember it every day for some degree, only to remember to be grateful for what I have right now, Like I'm so grateful to wake up without body aches.
You know.
I can work out, and if I am sore, it's because I worked out, not because I went and withdrawal from pills, you know. And I can show up and I can remember conversations like so, I remember the bad stuff only because I'm so grateful for the good stuff.
Yeah, I think gratitude is so important. Back when I was drinking, I thought gratitude was dumb, And now that I'm sober and I can actually feel real gratitude, it's very important.
I agree.
So, Eric, what was your first week or first month, like.
Well, I have kind of two periods of sobriety to talk about. One was, you know, I was twenty four and I got sober from heroin use, and I stayed sober about eight years and very active in recovery, and then went back out and drank for a few years, and then got sober a second time and have been sober sixteen years since then. So there's these kind of two different recoveries for me, and they're both illustrated in
their own way. The first time, like Laura, I was in treatment and I desperately actually after a little while, did not want to get out of treatment. I was like, you keep me in this building as long as you possibly can, because I'm really anxious about what's going to happen when I get out there. The second time, the will or recent time, sixteen years ago, I did not
go to treatment and I did twelve step recovery. And I think the thing to me that I really remember about the early parts of recovery is it just felt torturous to me. And it felt torturous to me because it felt like I was being sort of torn apart inside in that there was this part of me that was screaming for drugs or alcohol, and there was another part of me that was equally screaming, like, do not do it. You know, when I got sober at twenty four,
I weigh one hundred pounds, I had appetitis. See, I was facing fifty years of jail time. I mean, there were very compelling reasons not to do it, and so I just remember that early phase. And that idea that I think is really important is that sometimes we talk about, well, just quit and everything will get better. Well that's not what happened, right, Things at least in my inside world felt worse for a while. And like Laura, I like to remember that a lot because that is fuel for me.
Often It's just like, I never want to feel that way again. I never want to feel that at war with my own sort of self inside like that. And the beauty of recovery for me is that that war ends, you know, and that over time eventually it's just not like that anymore. But that's what I remember about early recovery and just all the other stuff. I mean, the first time I was coming off heroin and a lot of it, and I was, I mean, I was just
in really bad shape, you know. And second time wasn't quite as much the physical withdrawal, but it was the psychological withdrawal of just all my nerves being exposed to the world. So that's kind of the two recoveries for me and what it was like early on, and what I remember most is that internal turmoil.
Thank you, Eric. I'm glad that you describe that because I think a lot of people can resonate with that, like you know that you don't want to do it, but you do, and it's just like a constant back and forth. So I'm really glad that you described that. Paul, how about you, what was your first weeker month?
Like?
Yeah, Jill, thanks for asking, and Laura and Eric, thanks for sharing your stories. Fifteen and sixteen years. Wow, what a rockstar group we have on this podcast. I'm honored to be here. So in August of twenty fourteen, about a month after getting a DUI finding myself waking up in a suicide proof jail cell I found myself driving drunk to a wedding where I was the wedding DJ. Greatest job ever, by the way, And we've heard these
words like surrender, moment of clarity, right. And I recall DJing the ceremony as the bride was walking down the aisle, closing one hand on one eye, praying, hoping that I picked the right song. And I did luckily. And I was in the reception for cocktail hour and I took four glasses of wine off the person into the circle like the waitress or waiter, and I knew I hit this moment. It's like, you know what, A, I'm going to ruin this wedding and B I'm in rough shape.
I cannot keep going on like this. And there was this moment of clarity and the universe had my back. I had another DJ who finished an event. He came over filled in for me. I told my parents, everybody and voice memos that I was going to rehab and that was the surrender component. The next day, I owann to woke up. I remember this. I heard birds form one of the first times, and the plan was to
go to the rehab, go to treatment. However that was going to go, but I remember hearing the birds and I told my parents, you know what, give me just a couple more days here. And what I did those first thirty days was I got in nature. There is a waterfall about thirty minutes away from me the trailhead and about a two and a half mile hike. I think I did that hike twenty out of the thirty days. In September of twenty fourteen, I also went to Alcoholics Anonymous.
What a phenomenal program and a drinking problem or an addiction can put yourself in such a difficult but a beautiful spot where I could clearly see I didn't have control and every problem that I've had, I was part of it, Like I was the problem. And so when that happens, yes, it sucks to realize that, but also you start asking for help. You're like, hey, this isn't working for me, Like how'd it work for you? There's the openness, there's a willingness, and I ended up not
going to treatment. Nature did so how much to my nervous system that first month AA, the support and really just doing anything that it took to stay sober. So I'm so thankful for my addiction. Obviously it was a difficult month, and those withdrawal symptoms that Laura and Eric spoke about, I went through all of them. The They're horrible, terrible,
and I don't want to forget them. We've heard the phrase that the newcomer is the most important person in the room, and I think for that it reminds us. Oh yeah, I don't got it, and if I go back, it's going to be rough. So yeah, thank you, Jill.
I resonated with so much of that, especially the one eye. I did that a lot, the close one eye so you can see, like trying to text people are.
So bad or driving, God forbid, I did that too.
Yeah.
To think about how reckless and dangerous that is now, but it was a common thing.
Oh yeah.
So I'm the baby sober in the room. As of today, I'm three and a half years sober. Congratulations, Thank you, guys, thank you. So I was a daily drinker, but I it together on the outside. I was the person that no one thought had a problem, even though looking back, I'm like, how did you, guys not like those times you were there and you saw all these things? How did you not think that was bad? But I used that to justify white and have to stop for a
really long time. I used my educational background to justify it. And I quit because I got really suicidal and I was afraid of myself. And what I would do, And because I felt that way, I thought that no one else had ever felt suicidal from their addiction before, which now I know like a lot of people do, but in the beginning, I thought it was unique to me, so I kept it to myself and I didn't tell anyone except my husband, and I tried to just be
sober by myself with no support. I really believed like if I started to telling people, they would do like the seventy two hour hold on me, even though I didn't feel that way once I quit, and it took me a while until Quarantine started when I was four months sober to actually start getting support and getting out there. So I don't recommend doing it on your own, but I was just really scared of how other people would
respond to me. And now I'm grateful to have so much support because as time went on, I started trying to talk myself back into it, like, oh, look at this person's story. You weren't that bad, Like maybe you just went overboard, and maybe you can drink again, and it's not a thing. So it's good for me to be present here and hear from all of you, because I remember the one eye thing like that's not normal behavior. You shouldn't have to do that, and it helps keep
those thoughts away when they pop up. I also had a gigantic pink cloud, so the beginning was the nicest time for me, and then the bad time came later when the pink cloud wore off and I realized, like, I still can't drink and I had to accept it again. But the beginning was actually a great time because I had so many benefits right away mentally, like I wasn't suicidal anymore, and that that's its own high when you when you hate yourself less than you did last week.
So I think it's interesting how much our experiences differ and how similar they are at the same time.
I agree.
I don't know as much about your story, Jill as I would like to, but I think the feelings you just described are so easily relatable. Whether the particulars in the story match or not, does it matter. And you know, Eric, I know your story pretty well now from listening to you and from interviewing you. But Paul, I love that you got out of a suicide proof cell and drank and drove to do a job, because that makes perfect sense.
It wasn't the same day. But yeah, I mean, it.
Just doesn't make sense to anyone else, right, that seems like insanity. And then for us it's like, of course you did.
Of course. You know.
However, many days later you're going to DJ at a wedding, so you have to drink, right, you can't show up there sober, that would be dumb, no way, no way. And then looking back at it with the perspective that we have.
That's the thing.
I think that people would like me to impart to them when they're in it, when they're in the addiction, is that perspective, And I can't. I mean, I can tell them my story, but I can't give them their own perspective. You know, they're like, what's the secret? How can I get out of this? And you know, it's
just so hard. I love to be able to say, look, you're going to look back at you know, driving or you know, drinking again, you know, whatever it is, and think, you know, this was a left turn for me, But I had to go through all those left turns and get there myself, and nobody else's perspective was particularly helpful to me.
Yeah, that mystery of when it's time for someone yes, and then what the best path for them is is certainly a mystery. And I've listened to Paul on your podcast. I've heard you really break down the components of recovery and the internal external splits and lots of really great thinking about how we can think through this recovery journey.
And I know, Jill, you do, and Laura, we've all spent a lot of time around this, and yet there is to me a fundamental mystery, a little bit about what causes somebody to suddenly be at that point where they're done.
Now.
The problem with that we say that all the time, like, well, you know when you're ready, when you're done, We only know that in the rear view mirror, Like I didn't know it at the time, right, because every single time up till then that I had said I'm done, I was not done, right, I'm ready no more of this. Well, clearly that was not the end then, And so that question I think we can get a little bit hung
up on sometimes, like am I really ready? When we feel a call towards any sort of recovery, I think it's worth jumping on it to the best of our ability at that time, and then we'll see over time. Was that the last time or was that one of the learning experiences? You know, because I could have given you six other stories about my first thirty days in recovery right where it was like I got five days,
I got thirty days, I got eighteen days. I mean my first time around, I guess stayed sober thirty days. I went on my thirtieth day sober, I watched my sponsor talk and immediately left and went and got high, which I love to tease him about what a great message he had. But again it's like, we don't know we're done till sort of looking back on it.
I want to comment a bit on that as well. I think the when you're done component it is so confusing and so baffling, but I feel it's almost this universal divine intervention and an idea or concept that I could be totally wrong on. But I found traction with is that nothing in this universe exists without a purpose. This is called endowment theory and biology, and that applies to an addiction like what's the point of it. I
don't think it's a malfunction. I think it's something that flexes us so intensely internally with the pain points that we get a front row lesson. You know, it sounds great on paper to say, you know, you can be right or you can have peace. That's a beautiful phrase on a key chain or whatnot. But I think those who go through addiction get a front row seat like you can be right or you can have peace. And piece of sobriety and right is continued drinking from me.
I really struggled with that, and Eric, as you said, I made those internal declarations I'm done, I'm done forever, forever, but it really I wasn't until I was. And if somebody's listening right now, my advice is to keep going, keep building the idea of your sober life internally with the very powerful human brain, which could be leveraged either way for destruction or to create love in an environment where alcohol isn't needed. But that's a tough one, it is,
for sure. It's great to hear your perspective, Laura, as you as well.
Eric.
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People used to say to me when I was trying to moderate. For years, I was in sober Facebook groups and I didn't make the connection there that I wanted to moderate, but I had joined sober groups, but people used to say to me all the time, like you're just not ready, And that used to make me so mad, like, of course, I'm ready, Like.
What are you talking about?
How can I know if be ready? I'm so ready, Like I'm so sick of this. I feel horrible. And then when I finally quit for good and I felt that readiness and that peace I knew what they meant when you guys quit for good? Did you know that it was forever or did it take a bit before you realize that.
For me, I went to treatment not to get sober, but to stay in my children's lives. Sober was not at all my goal, but I did think, you know, I'll get a system reset and I can use and drink as needed and not be mastered by it. So the idea of quitting for good didn't really occur to me until I was about a year or sober.
So were you just moving the goalposts? Like after you got out of treatment, were you saying, like, I'll just do another month? Did you set a goal for a year?
I had a very prescriptive divorce attorney who put me on a ninety day plan of drug testing and therapy and AA meetings, and so those kept me away from drugs and alcohol because I didn't want to blow a drug test, and I also wanted all the ammunition that she was asking for in case we went to court, which we didn't end up doing, but that became my priority over getting loaded. Like those switched for whatever reason,
and it could be divine intervention. Like Paul said, I believe there are moments of grace in my life that I stepped through. Basically, she just kind of gave me a third rail, like this is a thing that will kill you, so you must do all these things so you don't get electrocuted.
And so I did.
And then that took me to you about four months sober because it was ninety days out of treatment. And then I was scared. I think the thing that kept me sober that first year was just fear. Then I was newly divorced with two little kids. So what happened for real if I knocked myself out in the middle of the night, You know, I was by myself with my kids, Because I did, I vowed, I swore off many many times before I actually got sober. If I allowed myself even a little bit, I wasn't sure, Actually
I was sure. I was sure that that little bit wouldn't be it. It was so unpredictable. So I decided to stay away from it for fear of harming my children or not being able to be in their lives.
And what changed around a year in California.
In Los Angeles, anyway, we take cakes in twelve step recovery to celebrate milestones and I was not going to take one. Someone made me take one, and I took one, and I gave like the shortest kind of cake speech ever and someone came up to me afterward and asked me to sponsor them. And I'm like, oh, you don't want me. I'm not even staying and I don't know anything about this program, and they were like, no, I've been watching you.
I want you.
And so, being like the good student or whatever preparer that I am, I decided to read this book so that I could take her through it and be done. But she touched my heart and she needed help, and so I read the book and in the process of reading it with her, I found myself in bits of it, not all of it.
And then someone else asked me.
Once they saw kind of the bond that she and I were forming, someone else asked me to take them through the work.
And so I stayed.
And probably about two years is when I was like, oh, I'm better. I don't like the stuff I had to do to get better, but it's like working out, Like I hate working out, but I'm better because of it. And I didn't like the process. I didn't like the meetings, I didn't like the joining and the end agement and the fellowship, And you can tell by the tone of my voice.
I still don't love all that stuff.
No, but I'm much more tolerant of it now, and some of it is desirable. But I started falling in love with who I was as a result of it. And for me, it was really just the honesty piece.
I had been so dishonest my entire life. The program as I worked it required me to be honest, as honest as I could be, not just cash register honesty, but vulnerable honesty, being real with people, not everyone, because that would be an appropriate of it, being real with the people that I entrusted with my recovery, and sometimes just in big rooms for the people I didn't know
or trust. And that was helpful to me, which shocked the shit out of me, because I always thought, I have to keep this close, this yucky stuff close, because I've thought it was life or death. It felt like survival to me, and then in the end, not only was it not survival, I saw the harm I was doing myself and keeping it close.
When I got sober at twenty four in treatment, I don't think I knew it was the end. But there was a process of going from I'm here because I don't want to be dope sick, and I'm here because I don't want to go to jail for a long time, and the fear of that started to mix or mingle a little bit with some hope around the fact that life could get better and could be a good thing. And so, you know, I often think about the consequences
get us, you know, sometimes to recovery. But as I've thought more about it, I'm like, well, consequences sort of need to come together about the same time that some hope shows up, because just consequences, at least for me, I went through a phase like that where I went to treatment a couple times and didn't get sober, and bad things kept happening, and that was a really dangerous and dark period for me because I thought, I don't think we say it much anymore, but in the early
nineties we did, which is once an addict, always an addict, and I thought, I'm going to die like this, and so all the bad wasn't enough. It was actually dangerous, and so I needed the hope too, both those things to come together, but in both my recovery periods. I think there's that mixture of I'm trying to get away from the bad things, but then I'm starting to be pulled towards the good things, and they both play a role for me in getting sober and staying sober. They're
both there. There's all the amazing and wonderful things I've gotten out of recovery that I never would have gotten otherwise, liking myself and all the things Laura that you talked about. And then there's also, as we said a little while ago, like looking back going uh huh, no, thank you don't want any of that either. So for me, it was kind of a blend. But I don't think I knew it was the end, but there was a certain point where I really hope deeply that it was, you know, like,
I really hope this is the last time. I don't know if it is, because I have a healthy fear of this, but I want.
It to be.
How long did it take for you to start feeling hopeful?
I would say within the first thirty days. There started to be moments of it, you know, There certainly started to be periods, And I think that's why community, wherever we find it is so important because I could not have seen that hope on my own. I simply didn't have it in me. It was seeing other people saying I was just like you, and now my life is really really good and going, oh well, I didn't actually
didn't think that was a possibility. I thought, I've got to give this up because it's killing me or it's going to send me to jail. But it's going to suck, you know. I got to do it, but it's going to suck. To seeing other people saying no, not only can you get sober, this can be a beautiful and
wonderful life, and that was really powerful for me. So I think we sometimes talk about these stages of recovery as if they're monolithic things, like I was in despair, I was happy, And the reality for me is my motions were probably kind of all over the place, like I'm feeling really hopeful for two hours and then for the next two hours I'm feeling deep despair and want to get high, and then you know. So I think for me, there was a lot of kind of back
and forth between all these states. But over time, the states that begin to become more prevalent were the ones of hope, and you know, the despair was going down and the craving was going down.
I like that. It's not just a switch, like you get sober and everything's hopeful and lovely. It's the slow switch over time, and then the good stuff starts to become more and more.
Yep. How about you, did you know you were done?
Yep?
When I quit, my husband was with me because he used to stay up all night with me. Wow. Yeah, I have a good husband. He's like, he's a really supportive guy. He used to stay up all night with me and like try to help me when I was hating myself and like having really bad alcohol anxiety, and we were sitting on the couch and watching the sun come up. I had kept us up all night again, which was like not new. And I looked at him and I was like, I can never drink ever again.
And I knew, and I felt so much peace when I said it. So I know a lot of people don't like the idea forever, but like that helped me because now I don't consider it like I just knew never. And I had had an experience where literally the same experience five point thirty in the morning, watching the sun come up, and I said to him, I can't drink for ninety days, like the same copy paste, like same
spot on the couch, everything. And I did the ninety days and I went back just like you were saying, Laura, where like you just need a reset and then you know, just sometimes our tolerant is the problem. And I found that it was the same, and that, I think was why I could say forever, because I had a very clear example of what happens when I take a break, that it just relaxes back to normal. I immediately said forever, and then it stressed me out later when my pink
cloud went away. But in the beginning I did say forever, and I knew how long?
Did you say? Your pink cloud lasted.
Almost six months? Yeah, the benefits were increasing a lot, and I was really excited about those. I mean, it was obviously more intense than like month one. But then around like five to six months, the benefits completely stabilized, and then I just couldn't drink and it's like, okay, so now my life is good, but then I can't do my favorite thing, and that was really hard for me to accept. So month like six to nine was really really hard emotionally, and then I worked through it.
I want to ask you a question, but I want to grab.
Paul Wise here catch kim by.
Tho falls in and out, So just could I put a pin in the question. I want to ask you, Jill, and then go to Paul to talk about what were we talking about.
We were talking about whether when we got sober we sort of knew right well that this is it, you know, or you know how we thought about that question, you know in the beginning.
Okay, it's good to be back. Thank you. Apologize. In springtime in Montana, it was it was sunny this morning, and I looked up and there was a massive hailstorm and I might be here for twenty seconds. I don't know, but let's take advantage of it. It's good to be back, Okay. I wasn't certain that September seventh, twenty fourteen, was going to be my last drink of alcohol, but I mentioned when I woke up right before, about six days before
that I heard the birds for the first time. My last dream was about six days later on a Friday night, and went camping with people, and we talk about this moment of clarity, whatnot. I drank half of a beer and I looked at it, and I knew unequivocally internally that if I finished that beer, my entire life was going to go down a totally different route, and the entire life would have been condensed two three years more. Suicide was already gave it a go. So I didn't know.
I didn't know that was going to be my last sobriety date, but I knew something was different. And after interviewing hundreds of people for the Arid podcast, that's a line that sticks out that, you know, I just knew that something was different that time, and I didn't know at the time what I had done or what I was doing. Was I was connected. We've all heard that phrase, the opposite of addiction is connection. But I was connecting with the land when I walked up to that waterfall.
Almost twenty days out of thirty days, I was connecting with the stars. There was a time where I wouldn't go back to Bozeman, the town I live in, until I saw the first star. So I would sit on this picnic bench in the wilderness, in the forest, and I'd wait till the sun went down. As soon as I saw that first star I would come back, and those are the links that I had to go to.
I just knew that's what I had to do. And at about two months away from alcohol, I went to an AA meeting and the voice was like, ah, I've got this. And I remember I was going to turn around in my car. I looked at my watch, like, you know, I don't have time for this. I've got two months of sobriety totally under wraps. And this bigger voice showed up was like, no, Paul, you don't have this. You're going to that meeting and you need to do everything.
And I had loved podcasts, and at that moment, there wasn't a lot of sobriety podcasts. Thank goodness, Now there's a lot, which is awesome. And so I selfishly started a podcast just to keep myself accountable. And so, yeah, I didn't know that was going to be the run, and that run might not stick forever. I really truly have accepted the just one day at a time, and that simplifies everything. And another thing, there's a spiritual phrase that has been remixed hundreds of times. Whatnot is asking
you shall receive. We've all heard that. And when we get to those moments of such intense pain, such intense discomfort, internally, we don't know who we are. There's a bigger voice that starts to emerge. It's like, dear God, please help. It's the foxhol prayer. And I began asking for help right. I didn't know it at the time, but I was like, ah, I can't live like this anymore, Please help. I remember turning my gaze to the stars, to the clouds, to
the earth, to whatever. I can't do this anymore, please help, And the help arrived. It did. The help arrived in a beautiful format of a standard poodle, and he went to the waterfall every single time I went there, and I leaned into other energies on the universe that were there to help me. And yes, my parents were there, and yes, had great friends the AA community, and I'm so thankful for the RI community as well. I needed a lot of help to quit drinking. I did, and
everybody needs help to depart from an addiction. And I asked for help to the universe and I got it. And before the hailstorm kicked me off, I heard Laura say something about loving herself right, and I think and again an addiction. One of those points is to unite ourselves with our true selves, right all the higher self, the lower self, and when we are ready. We talked about this earlier, is you have to get all parts
of you on board before quitting drinking. If you just internally say I'm done quitting drinking, that's kind of the conscious self. It's like, yeah, I'm done quoting drinking. But you need to You need to line up the soul, the conscious, the unconscious, the heart and mind, the whole body, the whole compartment that is you, and say we are doing this. This is the trajectory we are moving in, and it takes a long time to gather all the parts of the personality to do that and move forward.
So hopefully the streak goes. I've already learned a lot from Eric and Laura and you too, Jill, so so thanks for having me, and hopefully I'll be here fur the remainder of this. I really do. I wish I'm sorry I missed a little bit there.
With a hailstorm. I'm worried about the goats. Yeah right, that's the main thing that's kind of on my mind. How are the goats? Are they sheltered.
They I thought about that. They're on in the backyard. They know where to go. But my wife's outside on her on her bike. I called her and I think.
We'll be okay, but I'm worried about it, like a storm.
I think will be okay.
Yeah.
Well, there's just something so illustrative about the way you speak. It's really like having the beer in your hand and having it be half empty and knowing that that's your crossroads and you know, like the jail cell, and it gives me a visceral response. I can visualize your story really well. I just I'm appreciating the description that you're giving us.
I love that. I love stories.
That's why I have a storytelling podcast because I love these stories. And yeah, I love to have you come on. I wanted to ask Jilla question. I kind of piggybacked on your experience from getting sober and having that pink cloud and that last drink that you talked about or that last night on your sofa, and it kind of goes into the trigger conversation that I know we were
going to have. But what was your experience, like your first experience that you remember being out at a social situation where cocktails were being served.
What was that like? And did you prepare for it?
Good question. So my first almost four months of sobriety, I was doing it entirely alone, although I was listening to Craig Beeck's podcast and he was like saving me. So I was reading some quit lit and listening to like I eventually discovered Paul's podcast. But I was not like doing very much, and I just knew I would go and not drink. And there's a lot of drinking in science. And I quit in November, so I quit right before the holiday season. So there were a lot
of parties. There were a lot of happy hours, and the first one I ever went to was like a goodbye party for somebody they had quit and got another job. And I got a little mocktail, and I was like, Okay, I'm good, nobody's gonna detect that I'm sobered. They're gonna leave me alone. And somebody had heard me say it, or like someone mentioned they got a mocktail too. Because a couple people were trying to be supportive even though I wasn't really telling anyone, and this woman cornered me.
When I tell the story, I always call her like the crazy lady, and she cornered me, and she very loudly was like, you're still not drinking. Why, Like she demanded to know in front of everybody, like all the bosses, all the way up the chain, and I was cool. I was like, yeah, I'm not thanks, and I just kind of looked at her and made it uncomfortable, and she answered her own question. She decided I was on
a cleanse whatever. But every time I went to one of these happy hours, I would leave and I would cry in my car from the stress. And it wasn't that I was like having an internal debate like I want to drink, but I can't. Oh, but maybe I can if whatever. I knew I wasn't going to drink, but it just sucked and I felt really uncomfortable and I didn't know what to do with the uncomfortable feeling, so I would just hold it in for two or
three hours and then cry. But then after I cried, I remember, I felt like insanely proud of myself after I got the feeling out, and then it got easier, and then quarantine happened and I didn't have to socialize with any of those people at all.
So it kind of backed right up into that, right, the quarantine. That's awesome.
Yeah, and then I got out of practice though, so coming out of quarantine was a little bit hard. I had a lot of time, but I had not very much experience.
Really interesting, what about you, Paul, for repeat the question basically, like we were talking kind of about triggers and jess, if you were at your first experience at a place where where drinks were being served and you weren't drinking, and what was that like?
And then how did you prepare for it?
For sure? And again I had to get to the point where unequivocally every cell in my body knew right, and I'd burned the ships an MP three format. I was terrified, but it had landed that I can't if I drink, I die, right, So I had versed that, and we make it so over complicated of you know, we think the planets will fall out of orbit. But
I burned the ships completely and equivocally. And one of my favorite stories with this is I was on an adult kickball team probably three years of sobriety, and we won the championship. Hell, yes, I still play in that kickball league. And we won the championship and we were at the sponsor bar or you know where we go afterward,
and the team we played against. I went up to get a water or soda, water, whatever, and there's about six or seven people getting shot and they saw me show up and they're just like shot shot shots, just like the LMFAO song. I decline. I like, no, no, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. No, no, no, no shot shot shots, and just like do it, and I go, guys, I appreciate it. My last drink was three and a
half years ago. I can't take a shot. And there is a chemical response in people when somebody's vulnerable and authentic and they lay it out how it is not one of those people was like oh everybody was like oh shit, great job, Like that's incredible, No way, we'll take the shot. And so if you stand in your authority and know who you are, as I mentioned, a part of an addiction is to connect you with your more authentic self, the deeper you, then you're gonna be okay.
And people ninety five percent of them are like, wow, great job, like you do you They want to support your mission, but a couple of them sometimes get defensive when you say you don't drink, but here's why. They're also questioning the role that alcohols playing in their own life. And we can be intimidating some people, like wait, Jill
quit drinking, Laura did, Eric? I drank more than did so A lot of the results are mixed, but overall, not drinking and relaying that information to people has been the best filter I could have ever asked for, especially dating right I found out date one if this was going to be a fit or instead of five ten dates down the road. It's been a phenomenal filter for friends,
for family, for workplace, for everything. Yeah, thanks for asking, Laura, I can I can tell you a very good podcaster, and same with you, Eric, everybody is very attentive and good listeners. So thank you well.
And clearly the dating work because you are newly married, you said.
Right, yeah, yeah, mid pandemic, I had had enough of quarantine and I went to the country of Columbia. Very cool and yeah I met my wife. It was phenomenal.
What about you, Eric, Well, I feel like a Dickens novel right because I'm like the Tale of two sobrieties, but they're so very different. And I talk about them, because the first one was significant enough in that, you know, I got sober for like eight years and was so in recovery that it didn't feel like a I'll run.
And so the first time I was in treatment and my primary addiction at that point, well, I was addicted to everything, but the thing that was most on my mind was heroin, and so I just stayed as far away from all of that as I possibly could. But I remember I went into a halfway house after the treatment center, and I was in there, and one day they admitted a new guy, and he was in the kitchen and they were sort of unpacking his stuff and I walked in and there were like ten syringes on
the counter. He was a diabetic. But the response in me was so overwhelming that I turned around and to start vomiting. The trigger was so like, oh, just brutal. And so there's a lot of benefit, I think, to being like just totally away from it, right, But then you do have the challenge of when you run into it, you've got to be particularly prepared because, as Jill said, you didn't have a lot of practice with that. When I got sober this second time, I was primarily a
drinker and a lot of marijuana smoking. I had a job where I was in a sales role. Part of my job was to take people out who were drinking, and my wife at the time was a daily drinker, and so from day one I was around it all of the time. And I don't recommend that is a strategy. I think if you've got the choice to kind of get away from it, that's probably wiser. I feel like I made it a lot harder on myself. You know, I wanted to drink the first time. My cravings went
away semi quickly. This time, it felt like I was dogged by them for six months. And I think part of it is I just was around it all the time. But I was pretty well used to it at that point, and so, you know, my triggers that second time were far more emotional. I think the first time they were location based, they were certain situations. The second time they
were very emotionally based. You know. Over time, what I would notice is my brain would just sort of start saying, I need a drink, I need to drink, I need to drink. And it took me a while to sort of go okay. Well, in the beginning, that's just kind of what the brain does. But after the early stages, I was like, this still comes up pretty regularly, and so then I had to kind of do the next level down, like what am I actually feeling when that
tape goes off in my head? You know, I was able to identify what some of the different things were for me, what those triggers were. So I think triggers come in different kinds.
You know.
There is that location based trigger, right I drive by the bar where I got drunk every night after work, I'm triggered, right, There's the people triggers, like, oh, I'm seeing Bob and Bob and I used to get drunk all the time together. But there's time triggers, right, Like for me, right at the end of the day when work ended was always a very difficult time. And then there's like emotional based triggers, right, the things that are going on inside me or the situations and the people
around me. And so I think for me, sort of understanding all of those and how to respond to each of them is an important part of kind of getting to the point where I felt pretty safe and secure in recovery.
I'm really struck by what you said about examining what's behind I want to drink. I mean, I think that ability for a self examination in that moment, that's wonderful. That you have that ability to even slow it down long enough to see. I think for me that was practice to get to that point. It feels like stopping time a little, right, Like you can feel like you'reself reaching for something and you freeze it.
What I've learned about triggers here is they pass.
Yeah.
Came across somewhere that the average timeframe of the trigger were an emotional front that is extremely uncomfortable is twenty minutes, right, And I remember those first thirty days. I would set a timer with serious, Hey, serious, set a timer for twenty minutes. And I would also trick myself and say, Yo, dude, let's just go for a run first, Paul, and then we'll drink. Yeah, And then I would say, it's cool, we're gonna drink, no worries, but let's do laundry first. Hey,
they're big guy, not a problem. Let's just cooked dinner first, and then we're gonna get blasted, right. And then after four or five of those, they'd go away. One of my favorite resources or techniques here is Look, you can't outthink your drink. You cannot think yourself out of an addiction. If you could, we wouldn't be on this call right now. You just can't. But we've got a lot of data
in our past. You can play the tape forward. I've got a pretty good idea right now, after not having a drink for almost eight plus years, I've got a damn good idea of what will happen when I take that drink. I can play the tape forward. Is it going to be one? Probably not? Is it going to be under five? Probably not? Well, I cut it off after a night. You know, the last fifty hundred times I drank, I was unable to stop in one night.
It would go into the next morning. So I'd play the tape forward, and I would keep playing it forward, be like, yeah, we're probably gonna end up in jail perhaps, or you'll five or six day binge. And I would sit with that, like, ah, you know, alcohol, it's not working for me as much anymore. Is that really worth it? Again? You can't think yourself out of an addiction, but sometimes you can see things. You've got a good idea based off the past experiences of what is going to happen,
and that doesn't always work. Sometimes, you know, just the universe lines up. It's more of a challenge than that I have pound my fists into the grass before. I've gone out to the forest and yelled. And sometimes I'm still learning tools on how to get through triggers. But thank you universe and the help I have had that. You know, alcohol, that's not the go to right now. I don't think about taking a drink when I have
difficult times. I'll throw a temper tantrum, you know, in my basement and yell, and I'll pull my ukuleli off the wall and strum some chords, a minor chord and just sing and make a song up. And really, you know, sometimes you can get messy and ugly to get through a trigger or craving, but it doesn't matter at the end of the day. And here's the neat part about sobriety and this stuff is Eric, I've just met you, and I heard about your podcast a lot. I love
your logo. It's really cool to finally meet you, Eric. I've had seen your stuff for years now, and Laura is great. But there's a camaraderie with sobriety, and you don't have to go through any of the stuff alone. You can go to one AA meeting, you get thirty numbers, call any of those people up at any time the next year or two whenever, and they reach out to help.
And I feel honored to meet Eric. Can thank you, Jill and stay with Laura because I feel like I have three new new contacts that we go to bat for each other at any moment. So to leverage the community that is just waiting for you, and I think one of the worst things somebody can do is to just quit drinking or just quit using, because there is this beautiful, loving, authentic, welcoming community just waiting for you.
I've gone to AA meetings and I think seven or eight different countries, and it's the same thing every country. You walk in. Hey, I don't know the language, but I'm at a barbecue afterward, right, somebody always think your home, your family, right, And the camaraderie of this sobriety or sober movement, which really is authenticity. It's the movement of finding your true self without an external substance, alcohol, heroin, drugs, whatever it may be. That's a badass movement like sign
me up for that? Has it been easy? Hell? No, I think life in general is not easy, right, But what a beautiful trajectory, what a beautiful pathway. When I'm triggered, I recognize that what is that phrase? All things pass? This two shill pass? Just wait it out, live to see another day. Sometimes, as I mentioned, sometimes it's not pretty at all. But you know what, you wake up the next day and say, O, what was the problem yesterday? It doesn't matter.
Yeah, yeah, I love that idea of delay. That is a very useful strategy. Just not now, you know, put something else in front of it, because yeah, it does tend to pass.
Yeah.
Well that's the opposite of addiction, though, isn't it. Because addiction is instantaneous. It's a fix, and so to delay that fix is very counterintuitive for me, and I just yeah, I was just really struck when you said that, that that was the process through which you went, And I think if I were new and I heard that, that
would be what I would work toward. After I heard someone say that, I would work toward giving myself even a timer, you know of Okay, I'm just going to wait one minute in my car before I go back in and order a shot or whatever it is.
And you know, I don't know if I.
Would be able to reflect back, like you said, an examp and what's underneath it, but it is what I do now as well. It's second nature now, you know, it's not something that I have to kind of talk myself through. I observed myself doing it, and I'm like, you go, girl, look at that.
Look at you just did. That was dope.
Yeah, I'll just say really quickly, I was gonna just talk briefly about an experience I had the other night where I was invited to a party where I was the guest of honor and everyone was drinking. It was a small cocktail party, and for the first time in a really long time, it looked fun to me like it usually doesn't.
I'm usually really.
Bored and irritated by drunk people and I just want to go home. But this time they weren't drunk. It was just convivial. You know. It was that Black people call it kiking, when everybody's like talking over each other, and I was like drawn into that. But what I realized toward the middle of the party is that they were all matching my level of vulnerability and generosity, Like I was already like that. They came in a little bit stiffer, and as they drank a couple of drinks,
they kind of became like. I was like, you know, I'm very affectionate. I hug people. I want to listen to what they're talking about. I have a warmth about me that is authentic, it's natural. And I think when I was, you know, in my addiction, that was squelched, like I couldn't be that person. So that's who I am naturally now. And I was like, oh, I don't need to drink to have what they're having because I actually have this naturally. And I know not everybody does.
I know their social anxiety and people go and rigid and they endure and then they leave, which is sometimes my experience. But at this particular party, I felt very free and warm and just like able to navigate it in this again observing myself like, wow, look at this, you don't need a drink to have fun basically, And when it really looked like everybody was having fun with their drinks and I was the only one not drinking there, I was the only one.
Was it when you had that insight like, oh wait, I'm already kind of where they're getting to. It no longer looked good to you. I'm curious where the transition happened because in the beginning, right you were like, wait, that looks really good. But it sounds like at some point maybe I guess you didn't say that explicitly, but at some point maybe that changed.
Yeah.
I mean I don't think that the drink itself looked good. I just thought it looked fun. And I think once I realized that I too was having fun, there was an aha moment like oh, I don't need the drink to have fun. And mind you, the first year that was not the case for me. I went to several events where I was pivotal in these kind of leadership positions at my kids' school galas where I had to fake it through the whole event and then get home
and like you said, Jill, cry in my car. But the stress of it just I've like griped the steering wheel when I got in the car and be like okay, I can breathe now. I got through it, and you know, it was like being frozen for two hours and then getting in the car and thawing afterward. But I didn't have to get in the car and thaw this time.
I was already thought and I was fine. But there wasn't aha moment for me that it wasn't like I don't want a drink, but I did want to have fun like that, and that I was able to do that without a drink was a really cool thing for me to witness of myself.
I think that learning to do what a drink naturally did for us is a really interesting learning experience and one that I've played with different ways. I mean, still it takes me a while to warm up around people. I mean I don't even mean like twenty minutes. I mean like I met you like six times, Like I mean, it just depends on the situation. But that is one thing that like I just have sort of gone, you
know what, like that's kind of who you are. It's okay, Yeah, it's okay just to be the way you are with this and the fact that if you put me in a room full of people, I don't know, it's going to take me a while. And instead of going that's bad, that's wrong, boy. If I had a drink, it would just just go okay, you know what, that's who you are. Eric, It's all right. The other thing that's been interesting as you were talking, I was thinking about I just did
this not that long ago. We went. Me and a couple of friends went out there, both sober, and there was a sober bar in Columbus, Ohio. You've probably got these all over the place in Los Angeles, but you don't have many of them here. As matter of fact, that was the only one and it is now gone. And we went and it was a very very strange environment and they were doing karaoke, and part of me wanted to do it, and then like ninety percent of
me was terrified to do it. And then I went, you know what, if I was drunk, I would just hop right up there. So to me, there are times where I'm like, I try and push myself almost again, not trying to make myself be somebody not, but when I recognize, like there's a part of me that would like that, but I'm afraid. So I was like, I got up and I did karaoko.
Really but I did it.
I wish I was.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did a Leonard Cohen song. You know, sometimes I'll do that with dancing. Same thing, Like, there's a part of me wants to dance, but I'm afraid I just didn't. And I'll just be like, just come on, kind of push myself a little bit to kind of learn to do some of these things that are harder for me that alcohol used to make easier again without trying to be somebody I'm not, but I have found there are times it's helpful to kind of give myself a gentle nudge.
Dancing is one of those things. It's like the level of self awareness that one has sober when you step out onto the dance floor is so much different than when you've had a couple of drinks totally and you're aware of different things. You're aware of the music and like it's making you feel this way and let's go and as opposed to is this the right move?
You know, it's just it's just so much different.
Yep.
But I love that you shared that. Thank you.
How about you, Jill with that kind of stuff.
I did that same thing. Actually the first time I went to a sober wedding, I was sober at the wedding. The wedding was a lot of alcohol with an open bar, but I worried about it for like a year and a half and then.
I did.
And then I went to the wedding and I was really stiff and uncomfortable about dancing. I was secure in my not drinking. I was like a little under two years sober at the time, and I was I was okay. But then I thought, like, it's okay if you don't dance. It's fine, you don't have to. But I think Tomorrow's Jill would feel really good if you danced a little bit.
Then like one of my favorite songs came on, and I grabbed the groom who's my husband's best friend, and we went and we danced and it was like like awkward and I had like bad moves, but I did it. And I made friends with like the drunk girls that just want to dance all night, and I dance with them and dance by myself, and I felt really proud of myself. And I've been to weddings where I haven't
danced at all. But I try to think, just like you were saying with the karaoke, like that you would have done that and you felt good about it the next day. I don't think I'll do karaoke though, because drunk Jill has done a lot of karaoke and I think it would be like it hurt my heart to do karaoke again, But dancing I can do sometimes.
I love the way you put that about you don't have to go out there and dance, but you know the Jill of tomorrow will look back and be like, I'm glad. I like that's a very like self compassionate way of nudging yourself.
Like.
I just love the way you put that. I think that really describes the right way to do that way that helps us grow instead of making us feel bad about who we are.
So, guys, this was amazing. I feel like we have to do this again. This was really helpful for me. But where can we connect with you and learn more about your work and if there's anything that you're up to that you want to share. Laura, I know you've been like insanely busy.
I have it.
It's actually slowing down now. But everything that is me is on the Only one pod dot com and there you'll find all the events, all my speaking engagements, all the episodes of the podcast, everything about the book. The only place I really live on social Media's Instagram and that's at Laura Cathcart c at h c art Robin's robb In s. And I just want to thank you all. This has been incredible and thank you Jill for organizing it. I'd love to do it again, so I'm looking forward to the next time.
Thank you, Eric. Where can we connect with you?
Yeah, oneyfeed dot net. That's kind of all spelled out, O n E you f e ed dot net the podcast. Is there any programs we're doing. I'm co teaching a workshop at the Corpalu Institute in Massachusetts this summer. It's about awakening in nature. I'm co teaching it with a Buddhist teacher, Ralph day l Rosa. So information on that is on the website and we are trying to do more Instagram and that's one underscore Yo, you underscore feed.
I didn't know that you were coming to Massachusetts.
Yeah.
I'm going to talk to you about that later, but we have to meet up.
Okay, all right, deal Paul.
Where can we connect with you and learn about your work?
Okay? So it's Recovery Elevator dot com. We're also at Instagram at Recovery Elevator. We're private community Cafe Ari. We do sober travel trips. We just had a trip to Costa Rica and we'll see what happens in the world of sobriety in the future. And this is so cool to be here with Eric, Laura, Jill. Thank you very much for organizing this. This has been a lot of fun.
Thank you. Yeah, and if you search for Sober Powered you can find me. That's my show, my website and my Instagram. And thank you guys so much for being here. All the links to everything will be in the show notes if you want to connect with us, and we will definitely do one of these again, so we'll see you in the future.
Thank you so great to meet you, Paul, and see you two again Jill and Laura.
Yes, same same.
Saying, thanks Eric, Laura and Jill. Great stuff.
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