vol 302. “I am Alcoholic” with Christina B.

Show Transcript

We believe that alcoholism is a disease, and that Alcoholics Anonymous is one solution to that disease. I'm here to bring you the voices of its members. Everyone that comes on the show, including myself, is an active member and has found recovery in the rooms of AA. As you listen, please take what works for you and leave the rest.

Okay, so my name is Christina. I am alcoholic. My sobriety date is November 15th, 2011. Which means as of today, I've been sober for 14 years, six months, and seven days.

One day at a time. I have a sponsor. She has a sponsor. I sponsor other women.

I regularly attend AA meetings. I work the steps. I work a program because I have learned that AA is a program that works if you work it. I have been a member of AA not exactly since November 15, 2011, because I was really, really scared of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was not comfortable identifying as an alcoholic.

Even today, I will often say, I think I did say that I am alcoholic because it might sound like a small distinction, but alcoholic as an adjective versus alcoholic as a noun. I'm somebody who is alcoholic and cannot drink safely or responsibly, but I don't identify as an alcoholic. I am much more than someone who cannot drink safely or responsibly. I'm a whole human and my alcoholism and my addiction is a part of who I am, but it doesn't define me today.

And if I'm really honest about it, it didn't fully define me even when I was using. And I think that's part of what made it harder for me to get sober. Because if I were constantly getting blackout drunk every single night, um, maybe that would have been an obvious problem. Not that I would have necessarily done anything about it faster, because I've heard from many, many friends in program who were that kind of drinker and didn't get sober right away.

So it's no guarantee. But I think because I was able to hide my problems with alcohol behind a different addiction, it took me longer to be willing to see myself as an alcoholic or as an alcoholic person. So to that end, the way I came in to sobriety was not through AA, because as I mentioned, I was afraid of AA. I thought alcoholics were scary old men in trench coats.

I don't know why I thought that. I do have a memory from childhood of watching a TV commercial about alcoholism, where it was, I think, a guy in a trench coat. Maybe he wasn't wearing a trench coat. I'm not sure.

He was leaning on a bar and he was like, hit me again, I can quit anytime. The night is still young, like these kind of catchphrases. And I remember absorbing, oh, that's bad. That's alcohol, that's an alcoholic, and that's something you don't want to be.

And my logic was that would kind of settled that. It was like, okay, it's bad to be an alcoholic. Don't be an alcoholic. I'm not an alcoholic.

The end. That didn't mean that I was able to successfully drink alcohol. In fact, that has never been true for me. My family, I personally feel that there is a strong genetic component to alcoholism and that I could identify many alcoholic traits in many of my family members.

That being said, as far as I know, I am the only person in my family who is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm the only person in my family who has straight up acknowledged an addiction to drugs or alcohol. Yeah. I don't believe in taking other people's inventory.

And I do think it is interesting to notice, though, that the drinking habits of people in my family and even my extended family have shifted since I got sober. So I do think there's something to like a ripple effect and the way that living by example can be effective and is one of the most effective ways to be a member of AA is just to live my life and let other people decide if they want to understand why I made a change and what they could do if they so chose as well. Yes, so from a young age, I was afraid of the idea of being an alcoholic or of alcoholism. I thought you never know, don't take a drink because you might be an alcoholic.

And the only way you find out if you're an alcoholic is it's too late once you find out. So I had a decently healthy fear of alcohol, even though I was around it. You know, I remember one of my first drinks was my uncle giving me a sip of beer out of a shot glass that was shaped like a beer mug. So it was a itty bitty little beer mug.

And I think I was about six years old and I didn't like the taste, and he thought it was so funny, you know, little tiny beer mug, little kid. And that was kind of that. And I have a six-year-old now, and the idea of offering beer to him in any form is abhorrent to me, but whatever. That's what happened.

My parents drank, but they didn't drink in a way that I would recognize as alcoholic. Uh, they had maybe a beer with dinner, and it was one beer, and they had beer mugs in the freezer that they would pour the beers into. So it was like it just seemed to be more about the ceremony or the experience, which again, I don't personally relate to with drinking. They also drank cocktails and they taught my sister and I how to make those.

And so I would make a Manhattan for my mother most nights while she cooked dinner. But again, it was one and I didn't want it, and I thought it smelled kind of intriguing, but I wasn't that interested. So it just wasn't something that really caught my interest. And then I guess parallel to all of this, I was really, really lonely, and I wouldn't have known to call it that.

I had all of my material needs met. I had a sister very close in age who lived right down the hall. We hung out a lot, we fought a lot, but we weren't emotionally connected. And I also wasn't really emotionally connected to my parents.

And I went through a lot of things by myself that now as a full-grown adult with a lot of therapy under my belt, I can understand. I should not have navigated alone. I don't have to get too much into that, but it any, I don't know. For example, I was bullied, I had a skin problem, so I had eczema, but a really severe form of it, to where my entire body was covered in dry, scaly patches that itched a lot and would kind of weep or bleed.

And I got made fun of for that at school. And at night, I would be up all night scratching and bleeding all over my sheets, and I would go through that alone. Uh, I don't think that my parents had any intention of ignoring me or not paying attention. I just I don't think they noticed.

I really don't, which again, now as a parent myself is very hard for me to grapple with, but I just have really come to understand that my parents were having a totally different experience in their lives than I was having in mine. And that goes back to the solitude and the loneliness. Except because I was so young, I did not know to identify it as lonely. I just thought this is life.

Uh, I love to read to this day. It's one of my favorite things to do in my free time. And I think that habit really got going when I was five or six. I was reading way above grade level, big novels, nonstop, because it was a way to, I would say now, feel less alone and certainly to escape.

Again, what was I escaping? It wasn't a horrible, terrible, violent environment. And in fact, in getting sober, it was hard for me to accept that my bottom was allowed to be as high as it is. I think a lot of a lot of stories are really gripping and full of dramatic details about how terrible things got.

And I do have my share of that, that comes a little later, but for the most part, it's just sort of like I was missing something and I didn't know what that was. And when I was getting sober, which I'll again I'll come back to that, but the I tricked myself into getting sober. The way that I managed to do it was I told myself I was gonna write a book, a memoir, specifically about my marijuana addiction, because in 2011 nobody really believed that you could be addicted to marijuana. And I was very addicted to marijuana, and I couldn't figure it out my own self.

And so I thought, if I write this book and I'll do it in 30 days, I'll do it during the month of November, because there was like another writing contest that happened during the month of November where you just push out a draft of a novel in 30 days. And I thought, what if I did that but as a memoir? So I was tricking myself into, I thought if I if I don't smoke pot or drink for 30 days and write this book, then I'll have a really great analysis of why I have this problem and why I have these addictions and I can go from there. Well, I wasn't able, I did not succeed in not being able to smoke pot for 30 days.

I did manage to get there at the halfway point, which is why my so party date is smack in the middle, November 15th. But um, the the point that I want to mention with that is that I I reread that recently. I had never read it because I just assumed that whatever I wrote during that 30 days was total garbage and catharsis and all of that, and it did its job because it tricked myself, I was able to trick myself into actually noticing my addiction and taking care of it and getting help. And it's wild to me that this coming November will be 15 years, one day at a time.

And it's just amazing to me how time passes. And people sometimes I'll meet a newcomer and they'll say, like, oh wow, you have so much time. And the thing is, I don't. I it's just that that's how much time has passed since I stopped using.

I didn't earn anything, I just kept living, but without those things that I used to have in my body every day. And it's all relative, you know. Really, I really, really believe that the most sober person in a in a room of alcoholics is whoever woke up earliest in the morning because it's a it's genuinely a daily reprieve. And I know that I could, I could drink today, I could drink tomorrow.

Like I don't think I will because I I don't want to, and I I have a choice about that because I I do have sobriety, and sobriety gives me that choice. But all this is to say, I reread this stuff and it wasn't it wasn't half bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, and it was really insightful. I I got to be like inside my own brain of when I was getting sober.

And at the end, I was musing about something, and I was like, you know, I was just trying to figure out how I got to this place. I hadn't smoked or drank in two weeks at that point, which was like a huge accomplishment. I'd never gone that long in in like 10 years without having something maybe a little longer than that. And I said to myself in my journal, I guess we can just call it a journal, it's pretty much what it was.

I said, I wonder why did I even start all of this? Like, where did this even come from? And the answer I came up for for myself was I was lonely and I needed love. And if I had had love as a child, which I'm not saying my parents didn't love me, I'm sure they do and certainly thought they did then, but I what it didn't get through to me.

I wasn't feeling it. I didn't have that sense of connection and belonging and security and self-confidence. I genuinely think that if I had had those things in place, I wouldn't have wanted anything that drugs or alcohol offered me. I wouldn't have needed those things, so they wouldn't have been a solution.

And maybe that is oversimplifying, and we'll never know because that's not how things played out. But even before I got sober, I kind of developed this life motto sometime in my 20s. Um, try to make sense of the world. I said, I I believe that if we didn't have self-hate, we would have world peace.

And I still believe that because I think that everything, everything bad comes from self-hate. When I'm not being kind to myself, I can't be kind to others. And when I'm not feeling secure in myself and I don't feel love for myself, it makes sense that I would reach out beyond me for something else. So even though I tasted alcohol, I wasn't interested in alcohol, I knew alcohol was bad, I understood I shouldn't become an alcoholic, all of that.

When I got involved in a situation with other people who would be my friends if I would drink with them, I was all for it. It was not something I had to think twice about, honestly. I wasn't like, oh no, what should I do? Is this good?

Is this bad? It was just like, this is what we do now. The cool kids drank, and I wanted to be cool really badly, having been bullied for the majority of my elementary and middle school years. And then I really one thing I love about alcoholics addicts, like we are just so smart and so adaptive, and we come up with so many clever ways.

I mean, when you hear people talk about the way they were able to track down the drugs or alcohol that they wanted, we can be very creative. And I see that in myself even as an eighth grader, when I I really did strategically break into the popular crowd. I I analyzed the situation, I figured out what I needed to do, I figured out who I needed to talk to, what I needed to say, what I needed to wear. You know, it was not an organic transition.

It was very calculated and it was successful. So by the time that I started high school, I was a cheerleader, I had popular friends, I liked the way I looked, I was able to dress, you know, in a way that all the other kids were dressing. My my sister and I convinced my mom to start taking us to the mall instead of to the department store or whatever. And I was ripe for peer pressure because I had no sense of what I really wanted or who I wanted to be, or I shouldn't say that.

I had a little bit of a sense of that, but it didn't matter. It paled in comparison to the opportunity to belong, the opportunity to be accepted, the opportunity to feel cool. And yeah, I could get more into that, but I think the main thing to understand is that I had choices to make, and I didn't have any regrets about the choices I did make. And I didn't drink safely from the beginning.

One anecdote I'll share is in ninth grade, I had a cluster of best friends. One lived behind the alley. She's still my best friend today, actually. And uh another couple girls were sleeping over, and it kind of divided into factions of my best friend wanted to get alcohol, my other friends did not.

I was somewhere in the middle, and so I kind of ended up siding with my best friend. It was very hard to get alcohol for 15-year-olds in the small Texas town where alcohol isn't even sold. Uh, it was a dry town, so you had to go, you had to drive like 30 miles to get alcohol. And then again, as I mentioned, we're underage.

So it was this whole ordeal, and we were trying to figure out how to get this alcohol. We were scheming and who do we call? And of course, and it's older guys, and I don't know why 22-year-olds are hanging out with 15-year-olds. That's again, as an adult, I just find that really disturbing.

But that's what our situation was. And these other girls said no. They said, This isn't right, like this isn't what we've been taught. We don't want to be part of this.

We're gonna go home. This one girl called her dad, and her dad came and picked her up. And I could have gone home with her. I could have said, Yeah, that's true.

Or I could have, you know, I could have said, I'm gonna go to my house. Like, this is uncomfortable. I don't want to be part of this. But instead, I was just really sad that my friend left.

I was like, oh man, that's so uncomfortable. She's gonna be so mad at me. But I stayed with my best friend, who was the more confident one in the bunch and had kind of organized some of this. And these guys came over and I didn't want to drink anymore because the whole thing had been so full of tension and conflict, and I didn't feel good about how it had turned out.

So I was like, you know what? Never mind, I don't want to drink. But these guys who had gone all over and found alcohol for these younger teenage girls were pretty adamant that we drank. They were like, no, we didn't do all this for nothing.

We got over here. You better drink. And so I remember it. It was like a handle of warm vodka with a McDonald's cup of flat sprite as a chaser, and I drank.

And then they were gonna leave, and I volunteered. Nobody said, Oh, hey, Christina, do you want a last sip before we go? No, I was the one who grabbed the handle from them and chugged from it before they put it back in the trunk and drove away. And that was one of the first times I ever drank alcohol.

I woke up the next morning on my friend's bathroom floor, passed out with a teddy bear. She had, I think her mother as well, which don't have to get into that, but I think they had like tucked me in and given me a teddy bear. And I think her mom had that sort of belief that if the kids are doing it at my house, that's better than them doing it somewhere else. So my best friend's house was kind of a safe haven for experimenting in that way.

And to a certain extent, that makes sense because we were safe there and I was taken care of, but I think that's a pretty clear example that from the beginning I did not drink safely or responsibly. I didn't have just one drink, I didn't just have what somebody offered me. I grabbed the handle and shrugged it. And even though I didn't like alcohol, that is my relationship with it for the rest of the time that I drank.

So I drank from like 14 to 28. Again, never necessarily seeking it out, but if it was there, I was gonna have it. And I wasn't gonna know what was gonna happen when I had it. So maybe I would have a glass of wine, maybe I'd have 10.

I really don't couldn't tell you. Maybe I'd be funny and clever, or maybe I'd be surly and angry, couldn't tell you. I just, it was an unpredictable relationship with alcohol, which explains why I loved marijuana so much. The first time that I got high from marijuana, I felt like I'd come home.

It felt like I was safe and loved and accepted and in on the joke, you know, in on the joke, not being laughed at, but but like part of. And the funny thing about that is that even though I have such a positive memory of being high for the first time, something bad happened that night too. I ended up having my first kiss, which you would hope would be a nice story. But in in this particular scenario, that kiss was with someone I didn't know too well, and they went and spread a bunch of dirty rumors about me afterward.

And so today I don't think I would care too much, but at 14, it was humiliating and devastating to have all of my peers in high school thinking that I had done sexual acts that I 100% had not done. And I was really innocent, but not anymore. You know, like I was still innocent on the inside, but not on the outside to what other people would see or think. So I went to college, I went to a really good school, actually, and that again furthered my ability to continue using because I was functional.

I did really well. I graduated extremely high up in my high school graduating class, and I graduated with honors from my university. Among that group of really nerdy high achievers, I was perceived to be a stoner. Among the real world or actual stoners, I'm not sure if that would if I would have had the same reputation, but I loved it.

I embraced that reputation because I thought of myself as laid back and relaxed. And like I said, I was able to pull it off. You know, I got good grades, and if I didn't get good grades, I justified that because I've always gotten good grades, and so can I just can I just get a B for once? What's the big deal?

Even then, I was not really feeling the consequences, and it didn't help matters that I was surrounded by people who normalize drinking and using. I had a great group of friends my sophomore year, where we would smoke pot every single night. My girlfriend and I would go over to these guys' apartment and we would all sit around and listen to music and listen to the Beatles and classic rock, and it felt like a family. I mean, it really did.

And it wasn't until the end of that year that I realized that. We were drug dealers. I just didn't notice because they didn't ever ask us for money. And yeah, I guess it's true.

The people that came and hung out with us would come and smoke, and then they would hand over some money, and our friends would open up their little box and give them things. But like I just wasn't tracking that. Like I was just unwinding after a long day of going to class and studying and stuff. You know, it's just, it's so interesting to me that my brain genuinely, it wasn't like it, it didn't feel like I was in denial.

I just didn't notice. And then I did. I noticed it at the end of the year, and I was like, oh my God, what have I, what am I doing? Not that it changed anything.

They graduated, so I stopped hanging out with them. But anyhow, marijuana was definitely my drug of choice, but it wasn't the only drug I used. It was just, it was just what I preferred because the effects that it gave me were my preferred effects. So I get through college, I moved to New York after college.

I try to stop smoking weed because I think I'm gonna get drug tested. I'm trying to get a job in magazine publishing, and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get drug tested. So I stopped smoking weed, and that lasted for about two weeks because everybody in my life was begging me to start smoking again. They were just like, you are a real bitch, and they were not wrong.

And then I realized that the publishing industry does not drug test. So I, like I said, that lasted about two weeks. And again, alcohol is still part of this picture. It's just more sporadic.

It's like we would drink before we went out on a Friday night. We would pre-game at our house. So, you know, my I lived with a couple girlfriends from college. We moved to New York together, and we would we would drink at our apartment, and then we would go out and get, you know, drink more.

And like I said, I just never knew what was gonna happen. So I definitely made poor decisions, or I wouldn't even say I made the decisions because sometimes things just happen to me that I don't remember choosing. And that was all really bad, but again, it was still normalized because other people around me drank the same way. So I didn't think of it as, wow, it's really not nor you know, I really thought it was okay to not remember half of the night or to just wake up and not know where I was right away and piece things together.

Like I just that was that was just normal. In college, we had this joke, we call it a UPI, but it's like you'd notice a bruise on your body and it was an unidentified party injury, and you would just, haha, you have a UPI too. That's so funny. You know, it just wasn't again from my adult perspective, and again, as a parent, I'm just like, that's really bad.

I really hope my kids don't have those experiences, but maybe they will. I can't, who knows? I hope not, but I don't know. And I really had no intention of ever getting sober.

That's not something that I wanted, it's not something I thought I needed. And then when I was about 23, 24, I got into a relationship with an alcoholic. And I mentioned earlier that I try not to take people's inventories, but I'm gonna go ahead and just take his the word raging alcoholic. I mean, that is that is the phrase that accurately described this person.

He was 20 years older than me. So I was 23, turning 24, and he was 43, turning 44. And I thought we were equals. I thought we we joked around that we both had the uh emotional maturity of a 30-year-old.

And we partied together. I uh hung out with him the night I met him because he had drugs in his pocket. I had no intention that it would ever be a real relationship or a serious relationship, but somehow it turned into one. We went for a walk the next day that ended with champagne and more drugs, and he let me smoke pop the way I wanted to, and he drank the way that I didn't know that I could.

I would match him drink for drink. I would be very possessive about drinking and not wanting to be out drank. I started out splitting a bottle of wine and two bottles of wine, and then it was two bottles a night, and just like I really ended up being in a relationship with him for over three years. I moved in with him, we lived together in a studio apartment in Manhattan.

Oh my God. Um, it made sense to me because my rent was extremely affordable, and I did work in publishing at that point, and it was not that was not a small consideration. Uh yeah. So I didn't have to see that I had a problem with drugs and alcohol because he so obviously had a problem with alcohol.

And the the rage part of raging alcoholic didn't show up until a few months into our relationship. And by then I was so codependent and so under his spell and so wrapped up in that situation that there was no way I was leaving. I remember thinking the first night that I saw his explosive anger and his violent behavior, you know, my first thought was to run away. And I did try to do that.

But within five minutes, he called me and I came back and he was so sorry. And I thought, you know, this guy is really, really hurt, and I'm not gonna give up on him. Well, uh, it would have saved myself a lot of time and pain if I had just given up on him. But instead, I did my best to be a good partner to him.

And I believe he, I believe we tried, honestly. It's just neither one of us could really see that we were completely ruled by addiction. And we really were. It was, I mean, that was the primary driver of the next three, three plus years.

And I still think it's the first miracle of my life was getting out of that relationship. And then the second great miracle, I would say was sobriety, third great miracle, meeting my husband the way that I did and my family now. And not that there haven't been more than three great miracles in my life, but those are like really big milestone ones. I didn't think I could ever get out of that relationship.

And I stumbled upon a type of therapy called inner bonding that is six steps. And at the time I thought it was really funny that it was six steps and not 12. I remember I made that joke to myself when I started learning about inner bonding. I thought, well, hey, at least it's only six steps and not 12.

And what inner bonding did was it taught me how to connect to my higher power, uh, which was really helpful later on when I did make it to the 12-step program. But essentially the six steps are something like be willing to feel your feelings, be open to feeling your feelings, looking at your feelings, talking to your inner self, talking to your guidance or your higher power, taking action on what you learn from those inner conversations and then re-evaluating. That's I'm probably getting that a little bit wrong, but that's the gist of it. And learning about inner bonding is what ultimately led me to getting into therapy, getting into therapy.

Also, I was doing a lot of yoga, specifically hot yoga, which that really made me aware of how unhappy I was and how bad things had really gotten for me. Because when you're in a hundred plus degree room with 40% humidity for 90 minutes, you really can't, or at least I could not hide how I was feeling about my life. I couldn't really stuff things down. My emotions would just bubble right up, even though I was so good at stuffing them down my entire life.

I couldn't do that in the hot room. And so that, like I said, the hot yoga, the inner bonding, I got trained as a yoga instructor. That's what helped me leave my relationship. I couldn't live in a studio apartment while I was training as a yoga instructor.

So I moved to a different neighborhood in Manhattan. And I thought that was going to be the turning point, honestly. I thought I was gonna leave this relationship, leave New York, see what, see what unfolded from there, go back to Texas, try something different. Well, what ended up happening instead was I didn't, I didn't drink for almost the entire time I got trained to be a yoga teacher.

So that was about two, two or three months, which is pretty good for me from like I mentioned, I had become a daily drinker in this relationship. And it was kind of reassuring for me to see that once I left the relationship that I didn't have to drink daily, but I did still have to smoke pot daily. And when I did drink, it was bad. I was blacking out.

Like I drank the night of my yoga teacher graduation, and I don't remember how I got home. I went to go meet some high school friends that had come into town. I went to go meet them for a brunch one Saturday morning, and I didn't even think any of them drank because in high school a lot of kids didn't drink. I think I mentioned it was a dry town, and I was hanging out with the cool kids that were bad or something, but a lot of kids just didn't drink and they were super boring, I thought.

But anyway, it was some of these boring kids that came to New York, and I thought we were just gonna go have brunch, and then I was gonna go, I had made plans with different friends to see a poetry, a poetry performance in Central Park. It was supposed to be like a shell silver scene, a shell abration, if I recall correctly. Anyway, I went to the drink with the high school friends. Turns out they did drink.

It was a bottomless alcohol brunch, unlimited alcohol. I don't remember how I got home from that. I woke up at like 6 p.m. in my bedroom with my pockets empty, with a bunch of missed calls from all the friends who were trying to meet me at the poetry festival.

And I really genuinely didn't understand why. I was so confused. I was so perplexed. It was like, I don't get it.

I got out of this relationship. I I'm I I'm feeling called to do. I've fallen in love with yoga. I'm like trying to follow a peaceful path, I'm trying to follow a spiritual path.

Yeah, I'm still smoking weed every day, but like, you know, I'm I'm keeping I'm keeping it all together. So why did this happen with the alcohol? And it just never occurred to me that it truly never occurred to me I could be alcoholic because my ex-boyfriend was alcoholic. And also I learned as a kid that being alcoholic was bad.

So I wasn't gonna do that. And then I finally had the wherewithal to see that the marijuana was a real problem. Um, I wanted to get a job with a presidential campaign, and I made it to the final rounds of interviews and I freaked out because they really were gonna drug test, unlike the publishing industry. And so I had to quit to be able to do that, and I really was struggling to.

I finally managed to put it down for a couple of weeks or maybe it was a month, um, but it was agony. And in order to put it down, even for that period of time, I did have to find my way to 12 step. And I went to marijuana anonymous, and that was the right place for me, and it did feel good, and I did feel like I belonged there, but I didn't believe them when they said not to drink. I said, I'm here to stop smoking pot.

It's okay if I drink. Well, fast forward a couple months later, and my higher power saw fit to give me a beautiful night out where drugs and alcohol combined to show me that I can't do either ever again. Again, I I've kind of alluded to it. I've definitely had situations because of alcohol where I've been in places I don't want to be with people I wouldn't have chosen.

Things happened to me that I didn't want to happen to me. I just wasn't in control. And it wasn't my fault exactly, but I also, you know, I was intoxicated. How could I keep my body safe if I'm not in my body?

So uh from a really pragmatic perspective, I woke up on the morning of I think it was November 12th and just thought, I'm done. I am done. My mattress was soaked in beer, I had bruises all over my body. I was just done.

I was like, okay, I get it. I can't drink alcohol, I get it. And I'd already gone back to drinking and smoking pot at that time, but I just I was just done with all of it. I should mention, well, I already did, I guess.

I had been trying to write this book about my marijuana addiction. This this event happened November 11th. That's not before November 1st. So the whole time from November 1st to that point, I'd been hating myself and like, why can't I quit?

What's going on? And so hitting that bottom for me, there could have been a worse bottom. I'm sure I can have a worse bottom if I go back to it. But uh, that was enough for me to take it seriously.

I went back to marijuana anonymous. Very quickly, I was also going to AA meetings, which I was terrified to do. But the people in MA were so welcoming and so understanding and so kind. And they took me to my first AA meeting.

And they met, you know, I had friends my first AA meeting because of that. And I realized very quickly that I also belong in AA. Without a doubt, 100%. I might not have drank the way that everybody else talked about it, but we learn in the rooms like it's not necessarily the way you drink, it's what happens when alcohol is in your body.

And by those standards, I a hundred percent have my seat. I certainly meet the, you know, the third tradition. The only requirement is for membership is a desire to stop drinking. Like, yes, check on that.

So I haven't found it necessary to smoke weed or to drink alcohol for any period of my life ever since that day. And I mean, sometimes people describe that kind of thing as like a one-ship wonder or that kind of thing. I guess so. That's true.

Like I haven't gone out of the program and come back in, but I also didn't come into the program until I had gone out and back and tried and quit and tested and explored everything I could possibly think of. So I realized that I hope I've been able to kind of get my experience, strength, and hope all bundled up. And this hasn't just been one long ramble about what it took for me to get sober because obviously it's not like the last 15 years have been a total blur. Or I shouldn't say 15 because I don't have 15 yet, but the last 14 and a half years have had plenty of ups and downs.

But the key, the undercurrent of it is that I have I joined the no matter what club and I'm really stubborn. And so the same stubbornness that made it really hard for me to get sober is also helping me stay sober because you cannot make me drink, you cannot make me smoke no matter what. You just can't do it. You could tie me down and pour it down my throat, but that wouldn't be my fault.

And I would talk to my sponsor about it. I would do everything I in my power to stay sober, and I do. And there have been times when I've questioned AA, when I've thought maybe this isn't what I need, maybe I'm ready to graduate. I hit like an emotional bottom around my fifth year where I thought, come on now, I get it.

I'm over this, I've I'm happy, my life's gotten bigger. I'd gotten a lot of cash and prizes for the things I wanted. And then my higher power did a really fun thing where it took away everything I wanted and loved and helped me see that next up was gonna be losing my sobriety. And it's a cliche, but I um I heard early on anything you put ahead of your sobriety, you'll lose.

And I found that to be true. I experienced that firsthand. I was fortunate that I didn't have to lose my sobriety as well as all the other things, but I did. I lost a relationship, a job, an apartment.

And like I said, I was able to stay sober through that because of the role modeling of other people in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I left New York about eight years ago to move to Virginia because my sister had moved to Virginia and I wanted to be present in her life. I ended up meeting my spouse while I was visiting her, and we eloped and got married in a month, and then I picked up and moved everything, and it felt sober. It was the most sober thing I've ever done, even though on the surface it might look wild to do something like that.

I was guided. I had never been more immersed in my program, I'd never been more guided by higher power. I was going to meetings almost every day. I was hanging out with sober women all the time.

And it just felt like one of my girlfriends taught me this acronym for faith, which uh finally allowing it to happen. And that's the way that my my marriage ultimately unfolded. And it's not like it's been all sugar and candy since then, but I do feel like I am on path. You know, I don't feel alone.

I really don't. I feel connected. And AA is this amazing community that sometimes I lean into and sometimes I turn my nose up at. And it really stinks during those phases when I'm turning up my nose because AA's doing fine.

That people are in there having a great time, getting sober, having good lives, and I'm the one who's missing out when I'm not feeling it, and I'm just gonna do my own thing for a while. But at least I know where to go when that starts to happen. And like I said, I've been fortunate to I worked with the same sponsor for about 12 years, and I got a different sponsor about a year ago because I finally was ready to to get to know somebody who actually lives in the same state as me. And it turns out that her sponsor, sponsor, sponsor, sponsor, sponsor, sponsor was uh Dr.

Bob. So it's like I feel literally more connected to the program than I ever have because I have this, I can trace my lineage back in a way I never could before. But that's not what makes it so special. What makes it special is that the people in my sponsorship line are people who really want this program.

They want, they want it. You know, they sought out a type of sponsorship that ties back to the original founders. They they're committed to living the steps. And that was the takeaway from that five-year bottom I mentioned, where I realized I'm not gonna graduate from this.

This is who I am, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. It's actually exciting. Like this is a community that I belong in, I qualify for, and I can do good in. I can actually stand with my head held high and have a purpose and still be involved in the mainstream life and still look to other people like I'm a quote normal person.

But what really drives me is my spirituality and my membership in my secret society. And um, the last thing I want to say is I learned about five years in as well this idea that uh it's in the big book, so I should have learned it sooner, but my sobriety is not really about what I put into my body. It's about, it's about my spiritual connection. And when I'm spiritually fit, anything is possible.

My my sobriety is contingent on my spiritual fitness. When I'm not spiritually fit, I can be using all the tools or have all the resources, and I'm still just as likely to go pick up again. When I am spiritually fit, I've been through some some really big challenges. I really have.

And they don't feel like they were that challenging because I was just doing it one day at a time. I I just show up. I have some favorite prayers, you know, this or something better is one of my favorite prayers. Um, this too shall pass, basic, really helpful.

Uh help. I use that one a lot. Uh, I use it, I try to do the like regular meditation, get on my knees and pray type thing. But more often, I'm just living life and I get in a hard moment and I pause and I and I pray.

And I'm just like, okay, I don't know what to do. Please show me what to do. Please guide my thoughts, words, and actions. And that's exactly what happens.

An idea comes into my head, or suddenly I do know what to do. You know, I know the things that used to baffle me. Don't baffle me anymore. It's it's a miraculous way to live.

It really is. Um, I guess I I feel like I sound like I'm promoting it. If you're listening to this, you're probably already kind of interested. So you don't need me to sell you on it.

But I also, I know I said that was gonna be the last thing I'll say, but the other thing I want to say is just what I've learned is you really do get out what you put into it, or you actually get out way more than you put into it. But if it feels like the program isn't working, I would pause and ask yourself how much of the program you're working. Uh, that because that catchphrase, it works if you work it. When I was getting sober at the meetings I went to, everybody always said, it works if you work it, so work it, you're worth it.

And I had to hear that over and over before I actually understood that I am worth it. But if it feels like I notice for myself, if I walk into a meeting and I'm having a, you know, I want to turn up my nose, or I'm like, I don't belong here, or what is this? I might not think AA is working. But if I walk in and I'm like, how can I be of service here?

Who can I talk to? What can I, what can I take away, you know, what can I hear tonight? What can I contribute tonight? It does feel like it's working.

So it's that inner perspective, you know, um, that shift of perspective that that showing up for AA allows me to continue having one day at a time that I am extremely grateful for. So with that, I will stop. Thank you so much for letting me share. Thank you, Christina.

That was lovely. You are so well spoken. Definitely an artist of words. Well, thank you.

I do want to pinpoint your unique experience of coming in the rooms through marijuana anonymous and then pivoting to AA and uh sharing maybe some insight. I don't hear a lot about MA, I'm assuming that's what it's called. Yeah, M A, yeah. I would love to just uh hear how it differs, or do you ever go back?

If you have anything to share around that. Yes. I'm so glad it exists. It was founded in the 80s in California.

So it's very similar to AA, it's absolutely credits, the AA 12-step model. It's just got different literature. Their book is called Life with Hope, and it's written by stoners or stoners. So for me personally, it was just a little bit more relatable, especially in the early days, because as I mentioned earlier, a lot of people don't think that marijuana can be addictive or don't think that it's an addiction.

So to have something carved out just for those of us who would beg to disagree based on our Experience is incredibly reassuring to read the literature and be like, okay, I wasn't imagining this. And it's really tailored to what it's like to be addicted specifically to marijuana. So for example, one of their phrases, um, oh man, I'm gonna get it wrong, but I'm gonna call it the wrong thing, but the front of functionality. Basically, that it's common for people who are addicted to marijuana to be able to get away with it.

But that what's really eating you away is your intrinsic motivation and your self-hatred and this sense that there could be more, but you're not able to get to it. Now that said, there are people who just smoke weed all day, every day, and have psychosis and can't, you know, like it's it's a very severe, they just as much as you hear in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous with consequences. But there's, I would say there's probably more people with higher bottoms. So there is that.

It's complicated because I was fortunate to get sober in New York City where there was an MA meeting every single night of the week. That's one of the bigger hubs for MA. Like I mentioned, it was founded in California. There's a lot of MA in California.

There are meetings in other places where I live now. There is one meeting a week. I went to it when I first moved here, and then COVID hit, and I had a baby, and I, you know, it's just like, and now it directly conflicts with my AA home group. So I haven't been back, but I still consider myself a member.

I make seventh tradition contributions to MA and I also work through the steps through MA with sponsees when that's appropriate. Like I have a sponsee right now who stopped drinking but was still smoking weed and couldn't put the pot down. So her sponsor at the time referred her to me. And we're working through MA also has a workbook that goes with Life with Hope, but there's a Life with Hope workbook.

So we're working through the Life with Hope workbook, even though we meet at AA meetings and she's primarily going to AA, I'm going through the steps with her with an MA angle. Oh, I love that. I love that, like a hybrid model. Yes.

I know we we hear in the tradition no outside issues, but I feel like speaking about different 12-step programs and different addictions is so helpful to the masses. And they are not an outside issue. You know, that reminds me too, like in Marijuana Anonymous, one of the readings they do at the beginning of most meetings is about cross-addiction and they warn about it, which I think I mentioned when I was sharing my story. I ignored that at first.

But one of the things that comes up in their fellowship is how they enforce the third tradition, because the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop smoking marijuana. However, many of the meetings have total sobriety as a requirement for service or for leadership. So it's enforced in a there's no way they don't overlap. And they're, and even within that fellowship, the way they have chosen to manage the third tradition is still to acknowledge that alcohol is part of the problem.

So even if you don't think you have an alcohol problem, total sobriety is required to be of service in that way in their in their fellowship. So I thought that that was really interesting to me too. That is, I mean, that is uh like a I don't have a fancy word, but I bet you do. But it's almost um there's you're welcome here.

You can come no matter what, however, to serve this is our expectation of our members that serve. So okay, I'm gonna move on from that because that can go on a very long time. Okay, so it's really fascinating to me. The whole premise of supporting full sobriety in MA, but welcoming everybody through the door with that same tradition of just the desire to stop is appealing to me.

So, you know, I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about probably because you're coming up, you know, you have 14 plus years. You made it sound very easy to get sober. I suspect it was not easy because it's true when somebody stops smoking pot, they are an asshole. Like it is it it's like the anger thing.

They're just they're like their nerve endings are raw and they're just like everything's touching them and they're losing their shit. Anyone who's been around somebody who stopped smoking pot knows exactly what the heck I'm talking about. Yeah, it couldn't have been easy for you. No, okay, you know what's funny?

Can I I'm staring at because I thought I was gonna use these notes and I didn't, but I I mentioned I reread that manuscript I wrote all those years ago. I'm staring at this paragraph that I wrote 14 days sober, and I wrote, I feel raw and slick, the opposite of healed. It's as though in sobriety was a scab, thick and protective, and I've pried it off carefully with a butter knife. Despite stopping cold turkey, the transition from false security to wild vulnerability has been gradual rather than sudden, but my current condition is nonetheless painfully uncomfortable.

It was awful. I mean, it was awful. And I was reading through, like I when I was reading through these things, it was the meetings that saved me because I really couldn't come up with a good reason not to just get high again. I like really, because it because I loved weed.

I mean, again, I know I hope I've made it clear. Like, I definitely can't drink safely or responsibly, all that good stuff. Like, I'm not gonna drink. But I knew I wasn't gonna drink.

I still had bruises on my body. Like I didn't need proof of that mentally, but but marijuana for me got so psychologically insiduous. It would every single day would whisper to me, like, well, you thought you didn't need it, or you thought it was a bad thing, but remember how comfortable you'd be. Remember what it could do for you.

And the thing is, it could do that for me. If I got high, I would feel better, maybe only for 10 minutes, but I would feel better. It was just so, so, so tricky. So, not having that was really hard.

It really was. And knowing that other people were doing it too, and that I could get to a meeting. I mean, again, I hadn't even remembered this until I reread this stuff. But the night before I got clean, I went to an MA meeting and I made a point of going while it was high because I was being uh rebellious, and I just was like, they say they'll accept me no matter what.

Well, what are they gonna do if I I'm just gonna get stoned and go? Like the same way people talk about going to AA meetings when they're drunk. And I did, I did do that. And the speaker that night blew me away.

It was, it made a huge impact on me. He talked about losing a decade because he picked up again. He was at a point in his early 30s where he thought he should quit, and then he didn't, and then before he knew it, he was in his 40s and he'd lost all of his like fancy house and nice stuff and all these things that had looked good on the surface, and all of a sudden he had nothing and he's in his 40s. Now I was 28 at the time, so that really hit for me.

I thought, wow, that yeah, I get it. I see, I could do this every single night again and again and again for another 10 years. I already did it for 15, you know, it made sense to me. So hearing other people gave me the courage to, oh, and I talked to him afterward because you're not allowed to talk.

They ask you not to speak during the meeting if you're not sober. But afterward, I went and talked to him. And he said something to me that I I never forgot. He said, Sometimes the smarter you are, the smarter your addiction is.

I took a cab home that night, which was a big deal because I was very frugal and didn't have a lot of money. And to me, that was a huge gesture of self-care. He said, just be take it easy, be kind to yourself. And that's what I did.

So it wasn't easy, it was very painful internally, and I'm sure I was a bitch, like, and I was so tired too from just, you know, when you're the physical act of detoxing is so exhausting. But it also was easier than I would have thought because the path was there. It was like get to a meeting, go to that meeting the next night, know you're gonna go the next time, send somebody a text. It I knew what to do for the first time.

It was like, this is what you do. All I had to do was do it, if that makes sense. It makes it, I don't know, it's oversimple, but it is simple, it's not easy, but it's simple, right? Yeah, yeah.

I think that you elaborated on this idea that taking the next right step. Just do the next right thing. It sounds like what you're saying. So you may have been painfully miserable inside that you kept doing the right thing.

Eventually, I'm assuming it got easier. In addition, I'm sure there have been times in your program that were more difficult, but it sounds like you've had a pretty easy go of it. Yeah, I I think that's fair to say. That's so funny.

Like the the alcoholic in me was like, excuse me, I have had a very hard time. And it's like, actually, no, I mean, yeah, no, I have because because I've stayed pretty close. I really credit it to that. And I also credit my I'm grateful.

I know people come in and they don't, they have a lot of issues with the spiritual aspect and the God thing. And like, I get that, I do. For me personally, I was a spiritual seeker. I was trying to find that for so long before I landed in 12 step that for me, it was like the last piece of the puzzle.

So for me, once I got in here, it was like, oh, great, there is literally a list. There are it's on the wall. The steps are right there. Like there is a framework for something that I've been trying to put my finger on for a really long time.

And I love that in this program, we do not define anybody's higher power. I love that so much because it means that my higher power can be different today than it was yesterday, as long as it's not me. And that's really true. And my higher power has changed a lot over the years, and that's totally fine as well.

But I have that reliance and that faith. And another thing I'll say about that, like growing up in the South, where there was a lot of religion, and I even for a time was saved and get to that part, but I went, that was one of my efforts to try to fit in with a different crowd before I decided to go for the drinking crowd, was to go for the religious crowd. And I tried to be saved. And the thing about that is like that's very prescriptive.

It's like some religions will tell you exactly what you should be doing to feel a certain way. And AA doesn't do that, but you still get to have the feeling. Like the feeling I would get when I would go to church and be around other people and sing a hymn, and the feeling that I would get when I would take my a big hit of a drug, you know, like both of those feelings actually were a semblance of connection and belonging. It's just that they were like proxies or shortcuts.

And now I know how to get to that from prayer and meditation. And yeah, sitting in an AA meeting, it does. Like, I I argue with my spouse about this because he's not, he's not one of us. And sometimes he's like, Is this, is it a cult?

Is it a religion? And I'm like, no, not at all, because they don't tell you what you have to think, but it does check some of those same boxes, particularly of a religion, because it is like a shared set of values and a community that helps you be your best self. So I can see why people get confused. I'm so glad that we naturally got to this place because I wanted to hear about exactly this.

And you mentioned the other day when we spoke, and also on this call, you mentioned yoga training and some spirituality before you were sober, attraction to it. And then when we spoke the other day, you had talked about having fear that when you remove the weed that you would lose some pseudo-spiritual. Oh, yes. Do you want to uh talk about that at all?

Yeah, I'll thank you for reminding me about that. Yeah, I really thought, like, genuinely thought that my connection to God and to creativity was through marijuana. Like I really believed that. And I think that says something about how unhappy I had become as a daily smoker who couldn't stop doing it no matter what, that I was willing to give it up because I thought I was giving up God and I thought I was giving up creativity.

And that's for a person whose career was in like writing, and you know, so like to give up creativity. I remember weeping the night I made the decision. I didn't get sober for a while later, but I remember sitting, like just weeping, like, goodbye, God, you know, just really thinking that would never happen again. And I don't love being wrong, I admit, I really like to be right, but that is something I'm so glad I was so wrong about.

Like I couldn't have been more wrong. I have had more clarity, more spiritual connection, more creative ideas, and not just more creative ideas, not just like the quantity or you know, the quality of them, but like the reliability of them. Because when I would get inspiration from while intoxicated, I never could feel sure about it. I could never feel quite confident in it.

I would always have this self-doubt the next day. Oh, is that really a good idea? I'm not really sure if that was good writing, you know, all these things. But now it came to me while I was sitting and meditating.

Like that is not mine. Like I had a I had a book idea that I'd had for seven years. And within my first year of getting sober, I wrote it. And it's it's not like a it's not a novel or anything.

It's like a short, it's basically a short story, but I wrote it down and I didn't know how it was gonna end, and the end came through my fingers. Like I was watching the screen as the words came out, and I was like, I got shivers and I was grinning because it was the perfect ending to the story, and I didn't write it and I didn't doubt it. I was like, oh, this is good. This is the ending, and this book is gonna sell, and it did, but that's a separate note.

Um, I I could trust, I can trust myself and I can trust my intuition in a way that I just couldn't do when I thought I needed an outside connection to to get me that inspiration. That's so well said. That was a beautiful answer. I love that.

I'm gonna have to track down that book when we hang up. Oh yeah. So we are down to the final two questions. And as a listener, you probably know what they are.

Don't know. Yeah. Is there anything that you left out of your story or that you would like to share? You could take as much time as you need.

I you know, I think I said a lot. So I don't I'm not really sure. I can't really say what is I would like to say something that someone listening would benefit from, you know, like what do they need to hear? What did I not say that someone might need to hear?

But I don't know what that answer is. So I'm just gonna be selfish about it and um take the opportunity to share again a little something I came I found when I was reading through this thing. I I tried for so long to figure it out. And someone told me when I was new, like, figure it out is not a step.

But when I was 15, like, yeah, it's not, right? I mean, don't react like it is. But when I was 15, I just started drinking and doing drugs and stuff, and I was I I wrote poetry a lot. And I wrote this poem, uh, really short poem.

It just said, I don't want to be fucked up, I want to be a me, I'm proud of. I don't know what I'm proud of. So I guess I'm fucked up. And like that was it.

That was the poem. But I it felt like so, you know, meaningful and it really was accurate. It was like, yes, like this is how I feel. And I have identified with that poem, like I identified it throughout the the entire time of my using.

I would think of that poem and it'd just be like, yes, like that, it's such a circular, it's circular logic, you know. It's like I want to be a good person. I don't want to, I don't want to screw things up, but like I don't know what to do. And so, so um on my first day sober, the first day, like the first morning, I was writing and I and I was reflecting on that.

I was like, wow, I wrote that, you know, I I've identified with that poem my whole life. And I and I wrote, but I do know what I'm proud of now, me. So maybe I don't need to be fucked up. And I just, yeah, yeah.

I just felt a little like choked up saying that because it's like what I said before, like if we didn't have self-hate, we would, I really, really do believe. I know it sounds simple, like oversimplified, but I do believe we'd have world peace, but I also don't think we'd have addiction because like I wasn't proud of myself and I wanted to be, I really did. And again, early in sobriety, I heard um you get self-esteem from esteemable acts. So I started doing things and I started trying to be of service.

I started just showing up and doing esteemable acts so that I could get myself some self-esteem. And it took a it took a long time. I wish I could say it was an overnight job, but it really was, and it took actual years, and I'm still working on it. I mean, I'm having a good moment right now, but like I'm still working on it.

But I know that I'm I am proud of myself, and I don't, I don't have to get fucked up. I really don't. That's so well said. It's so simple.

I feel like simplicity is what gets to the heart of things a lot faster than a bunch of words that are not necessary. Yes, yeah, no fluff. Yeah, so that came up for me to share, so I have now shared it. It was lovely, and it wasn't selfish at all.

Because the final question allows you to speak to those that are listening that are suffering with or without time under their belt. What final message would you like to leave them with? I would just say none of us is terminally unique. Uh so this is for you.

It's for you if you if you want it, it's for you if you don't think it can be. If you're thinking maybe it could be for you, it's probably for you. But if you're not sure, it's also okay to try it out and decide it's not for you. But uh, if you're hearing this, like you're probably in the right place.

And I'm glad to be a part of your story. For more information, read the first 164 pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous or visit keepcomingback.net.