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In this episode:

I share a recent talk I gave at a treatment facility for women about finding and using your voice to recover. I discuss the terrifying experience of almost being exposed by a former friend/love interest and how I turned that fear into courage. I also share the effects of intergenerational silence on mental health, and I emphasize the power of breaking the generational silence, encouraging you to reclaim your voice and use it as an essential tool in your recovery journey.

Resources:

Free Writing Workshop on Christmas Eve

New Year’s Eve Self-Forgiveness Workshop

Transcript:

00:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I’m Jessica Dueñas, and this is Bottomless to Sober, the podcast where I talk about anything and everything related to life, since my transition from bottomless drinking to a sober life. Hi everyone. So I was invited by my fellow sober sister, Kiola Raines, to share my story at a women’s treatment facility, specifically at their graduation ceremony, and sharing my story there was really powerful, and so I decided to go ahead and record it as a podcast episode, because I think that the message that I gave to those women is really applicable to anyone who is struggling to maybe find their voice, and so this episode is for you. If you have been struggling with tapping into your voice, if you are like, oh my gosh, why can’t I talk about these things, this is for you. So I invite you to get comfortable. Close your eyes, pretend that you are at a point of a transition. At the time of this recording, it is December, so we are getting ready to face 2024. But even if you listen to this at some point in the future, it doesn’t matter. We’re always at a transition point because we’re always evolving. So, with that being said, I’ll go ahead and share what I said to this group of women. Hello everyone, good evening and congratulations to this graduating class of the Alcoholism Center for Women. Getting sober during the holiday season is no simple feat, and I do commend all of you on planting seeds today that will blossom into strong, firmly planted and beautiful flowering trees later.

01:49
It was actually during the holiday season of 2019 when a former friend, slash complicated love interest, who is a journalist, threatened me in the middle of an argument to out me to the public. He was very angry with me because he had pulled me, in a nearly blacked out state, from an abusers apartment after I had called him to help me get out right and when he wanted to take me into a treatment facility, I was refusing to go. Mind you, I did end up going into the facility the following day, but at that moment I was very under the influence and I was angry and I did not want to go. I just needed to get out of that apartment space. So this man with his thousands of online followers turned to me and said how would you like it if I outed you right now to everyone on Twitter? Maybe I should go ahead and do that. He knew he was hitting me where it hurts with that threat because at the time I was titled the Kentucky State Teacher of the Year, so I had a lot to lose Because of my work as an educator.

02:51
I hid my addiction from everyone possible, so the very idea of someone telling my story without my consent was terrifying. What would others think of me? Would I lose my job? Would my students and their families turn their backs on me? My family and friends? And what about my mother? She had always been so proud of me. My sister and I are her American Dream children. What would my immigrant mother say to me if I was outed?

03:18
Mental health issues and addiction were not open topics for discussion for the women in my family, though I was raised not to talk about those issues. I’m here to tell you that that type of silence can be deadly for us. That type of silence where we don’t talk about what’s hurting our spirits is 100% a breeding ground for shame, which creates isolation. And then we start to believe the stories in our heads. Right the voices that are telling us things like I’m a terrible mother, I don’t deserve this opportunity or I’m not worthy of connection, I can’t do any better, so I’m going to stick through with this terrible relationship. Right these stories. When we start to believe them, turn us to want to numb with alcohol, other substances or behaviors and eventually we lose ourselves. My hope for you, as you transition to whatever your next step is on your recovery journey, is that you find your voice and, once you find it, that you never let it go. Your voice is going to be your tool for liberation from active addiction.

04:33
So the question comes up where did the silencing of women’s voices come from, anyway, right? So from my experience, my grandmother living in a Latin American country, my grandmother was from Nicaragua, where women had no rights. She protected herself and her children from the heavy hands of her husband at that time by staying silent, right. My mother was then born into that code of silence and carried it into the United States when she migrated here, and though my mother did not suffer from abuse at the hands of my father, for her she was undocumented, she was an unwelcome immigrant in a foreign country where she did not speak English right, and so, for my mother, she relied on silence to help her to not be seen and to avoid getting sent back. The less attention that she drew to herself the better. Even when she was struggling and needed help, right, just keeping that low radar was so important for her. Using resources from my mother would have meant possibly disclosing her status, so it just was not an option for her to get help, and I grew up witnessing her quietly carry everything that hurt her. And as I grew into a woman, she expected me, her US-born child, to do the same, and for years I did think that silence served me.

06:03
As I struggled to balance my life with my addiction, I found ways to cope with the shame. I worked harder for everyone but me. I worked to be the best teacher, the best employee and the best at everything that I tried to do, because it helped me sleep at night. I spent years at happy hours counting others’ drinks so I could pretend to drink like a normal person, when in reality I just wanted to go home, be by myself and drink how I wanted to. I knew I had a problem, but I was taught to not ask for help. And eventually my silence got me alcoholic liver disease, the tool that had once kept my mother, grandmother and the women before them safe. That silence was killing me because it was blocking me from getting help. Something had to change. I had to break the cycle that worked for the women who came before me.

07:09
So what did it take to find that inner voice and speak up? It took becoming willing to break the attachment to the things that staying silent was protecting, those things that staying silent was cocooning and protecting in that bubble. They fueled my drinking and I had to let them go. I had to learn to release things such as my old habit of keeping everything hidden because the idea of being seen as a person with an addiction was paralyzing. I had to let go of the idea that a person with an addiction was not worthy of love and support because I 100% bought into that stigma. Today I understand that whether you are actively struggling with your addiction on day one or day a million, you are as equally worthy of love and support.

07:58
Back then I did not understand that, believing that if I could do more at work for others, get more degrees, get more accolades, that I would have a higher value as a person. I had this idea stuck in my head that working harder at everything but myself would offset how poorly I felt about my drinking, which is not true. I had to release my unhealthy relationship with my brother. They often say blood is thicker than water, while family is not thicker than my peace. I had to learn that settling for breadcrumbs in romantic relationships was something I had to stop doing and let go of because I didn’t think I was worthy of anything better. I had to let go of my career that consumed so much of my time that I could not focus on my recovery and, lastly, I had to let go of worrying what other people thought of me.

09:02
On my day one, which is November 28, 2020, when I realized that I had to clear these things in order to make space for a life of recovery, I decided that it was time to say effort and use my voice. On December 3 of 2020, it wasn’t the journalist who told my story to the world. It was me. I wrote an op-ed article that I published on my terms in a local newspaper, where I told the world exactly who I really was, about my nearly deadly addiction to alcohol, and that I didn’t care anymore what anybody thought of me, because that shame wasn’t going to drown me anymore. I closed that article with the following words from darkness comes light.

09:48
Each day, as I go through this process of choosing life, of choosing to stay sober just for another day, I know I made the best decision ever. My dream is to attain long-term sobriety and I believe one day I will. But just for today, I choose to live in recovery until I fall asleep. I will fight my alcoholism daily. I no longer live in fear of anyone trying to out me. There were times this year I felt ready to die, but here I stand to tell my story of choosing to live. I will live a good life. I will have a family, find peace and still be of service to others, just not in the way I had planned. My mother has a saying in Spanish uno pone y ellos dispone, meaning we can have one plan, but God will have another plan, and I accept that as my journey. And so today I stand proud of who I am and embrace all parts of me. My recovery will no longer be a secret. Instead, it is my story to share, to tell others that we all deserve a fighting chance at a good life, no matter how many times giving up feels like it’s the only way out.

11:09
So I close my article with that piece, and I’m not telling you all here that you need to write newspaper articles and tell the world your business, not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that, in order to find your voice, first, I want you to recognize what role not speaking up has played in your life. What has not speaking up blocked you from Silence may have served the women before you or people before you. Let’s not deny those facts, and I challenge you today to face another truth you are not the women before you and you do not have to do things the way they did to survive and to thrive. What is one way that you will clean your voice as you move into the next phase of your journey after today? Is it a commitment to tell at least one person a day what you’re feeling? Will it be a plan to share in a recovery support group meeting? Do you have a community already picked up for you to participate in, or do you need to find one? What about journaling? Have you put a pen to paper lately? Today’s world will not read your mind and present you with the support you need on a silver platter. Every woman’s journey is going to be different, but at the center of every woman’s journey in recovery is the force of a woman who decided to be the change that she deserved. Thank you again for your time tonight and I’m wishing you all the success in the future.

12:33
So that was the talk that I gave at the graduation and it felt really really good to have kind of like that version of my story. I have been taking writing classes myself to really build on my writing craft, and so that that was very it just felt really good and soothing and healing to the soul. Again, reminders on Christmas Eve I will be doing my free writing workshop. So if you haven’t done that before with me, I totally invite you to come check it out. You can register on my site, bottomlesstosobercom. On December 31st I am doing a self-forgiveness workshop as well, just kind of again having offerings during the holidays, because I know holidays can be tough. And then, of course, you’re always welcome to check out one-to-one coaching and schedule a consultation for that as well.

13:22
So with that, and the funny thing too, speaking of writing, if you noticed, I did pull parts of my previously written story to kind of redo it. So again, it’s just been a really, really, really fun to play around with things I’ve previously written and remaster them, so to speak. So with that, have a lovely day. I hope to see you at some of my upcoming workshops and in the meantime, take care of yourselves and each other. Bye, hey. If you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast, but also go to my website, bottomlesstosobercom, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to writing classes to one-to-one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomlesstosober.com. See you then.

Return to Podcast Directory

Link to Spotify

In this episode:

I reflect on my personal experience with addiction and how storytelling helped me after years of keeping my drinking a secret as a teacher. I share my viral op-ed article, which was published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, and got me on Red Table Talk. I touch on the fear and shame surrounding addiction, reminding you that if you ever feel alone, you’re not. I also discuss some resources to learn more about addiction beyond the disease model, which is frequently presented in treatment facilities.

Resources:

Black Friday Discounts on Programs at Bottomless to Sober

Recommended Reads:

Unbroken by Maia Szalavitz

The Biology of Desire by Marc Lewis

Transcript:

00:02 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone, happy Thanksgiving, if you celebrate. I’m recording this on Thanksgiving morning and I’m planning on making this go live the same day, essentially for the fact that I know today can be really hard for a lot of us. I have a history, a complicated history, with Thanksgiving myself, and I just wanted to make sure that I could help as much as possible whether I’m leading meetings, putting out a podcast episode, just creating different touch points for people to feel connected to other folks and so the cool thing, too, is that my sober anniversary will be on Tuesday, the 28th. It will be three years since I last drank, and it’s also going to be the anniversary of me publishing my op-ed article that went in the Louisville Courier Journal. That went viral. That will also be the third anniversary of that in the next two weeks as well, and so actually, I want to share that op-ed with you guys, because if you haven’t read it, it is a first. It was courageous as hell because I was maybe three days sober at the time that I wrote it. I got sober on November 28th and this went live in the newspaper on December 3rd. So to give you that quick turnaround of how quickly I knew in my heart that I needed to get my story out. And I’m not saying that you need to get your story out in the same format, but I do want to speak to the power of healing that storytelling does provide us right. It’s just that power of connection, the strength and breaking stigmas and breaking the shame that really can keep us locked in silence and trapped, especially for me as an educator. So I want to go ahead and read that and also give you that heads up.

01:33
A lot of you know that I teach a writing program several times a year. It’s the six week writing for healing program. Because of good old Black Friday, I’m like you know what, let me go ahead and do a discount on that. So I’m offering that at 50% off If you sign up through Monday, the 27th. You can do that on my website, bottomless to sobercom. Then the other program that I’m offering at 50% off is my New Year’s Eve workshop, the self forgiveness workshop that I’m holding. That one is only $7.50. And we’re going to do 90 minutes of some pretty deep work on ourselves, talking about different tools and strategies, so that we can start the new year loving on ourselves a little bit more, because, especially if you struggle with addiction or have a history of it, that self love is not the easiest thing to come about. So putting that out there, take advantage. Those are both live. Those discounts are live through the end of Monday, november 27. So just that heads up, and with that, let me go ahead and share my story with you all. And again, this is the type of writing that we would be doing in that six week program, whether it’s that you’re actually writing it to share it or you just want to get your story down on paper so that it’s not like on your chest holding you down right. So with that, my story is called my Darkest Secret.

02:47
A Kentucky teacher of the year share story of addiction and recovery, published on December 3 of 2020 in the Louisville Career Journal. How would you like it if I outed you right now to everyone on Twitter? Maybe I should go ahead and do that. At the time, a friend threatened in the middle of an argument to out me to the public. They threatened me with telling the world what my darkest, most painful secret was.

03:16
My name is Jessica and I’m a recovering alcoholic. For years, I’ve struggled to balance my life with my addiction. To cope with guilt. I worked diligently to be the best teacher, the best employee, the best at everything. Because it helped me sleep at night. I spent years at happy hours counting others drinks so I could pretend to drink like a normal person, while aching to go home to isolate and imbibe. I hid my disease from everyone possible.

03:47
The very idea of someone telling my story without my consent was terrifying. Fear was crippling. How would others think of me? Would I lose my job? Would my students and their families turn their backs on me? My family and friends? What about my mother? She’s always been so proud of me. My sister and I are her American dream children. I’m a first generation American. I grew up in one of Brooklyn’s toughest neighborhoods, excelled academically and later became a nationally recognized, award winning educator as a 2019 Kentucky State Teacher of the Year. What would my mom say to me if I was outed? I’m not the first in my family to struggle with addiction, though I am the first to be in recovery. My mother’s disdain for those relatives’ choices was always evident. Some have died, some live in unfortunate living circumstances. Would she use the same language she’s used to describe them to talk about me? Would she look at me in disgust In December of 2019, I was struggling so much under the pressure of a new position and teacher of the year responsibilities that I had to relapse.

04:59
At that time I came out only to my family because I spent the holidays in a rehab facility. My family was blindsided but thankfully, through everything since, they have always stepped forward and believed in my ability to recover. I remember returning from winter break sitting in a faculty circle. When asked how our breaks were, I immediately fell apart. I had spent my holiday hospitalized and couldn’t tell a soul in the room where I was or how I was truly feeling. I was so ashamed of who I was. I was so disgusted with myself. I thought I could not tell a single beloved colleague about the significant part of my life I have to struggle with daily. I felt so alone. I had not accepted that I was sick.

05:44
I continued with my sobriety journey, feeling isolated, knowing my family was far away. I hated that. When I needed my mother’s hug or my sister’s hand on my shoulder, all I could get was a phone call. I was able to lean on my then-boyfriend, as he was also in recovery and understood the daily work it took to get sober and stay sober. Then COVID-19 came and I’m going to pause for a second and just give you because I didn’t do it at the beginning of this episode content morning. I do talk about tragic death. So if that is not something that you want to listen to on Thanksgiving or whenever you are accessing this episode, I highly recommend that you skip this episode. Otherwise you may continue to listen. Then COVID-19 came.

06:37
As the virus reached Kentucky, I assumed we were going to have an extended spring break. I anticipated an excellent opportunity to catch up on work. I hoped to build further on my relationship, get some well-needed rest and have an excuse to order food from local restaurants. Quickly, the truth was becoming apparent. This quarantine was not going to end anytime soon. I began missing my old life. The quarantine shattered my routine that was so vital to recovery. This new normal that was encroaching became terrifying as the many restrictions further physically removed him and me from our support systems. We entered grocery stores, fearing infection, just to get necessities, scrambling to get essential items such as toilet paper.

07:26
Life became increasingly depressing for the two of us and he relapsed. He struggled, he cried tears of shame and guilt, tears that I had experienced so often. One morning he said he would run out to the gas station and he would come right back. He never did. I went looking for him at his apartment and knocked no answer. I called his phone. I could hear it ring, but he didn’t answer. I banged on his door. I yelled, but no response. I grabbed a fire extinguisher to beat his door down. A neighbor called the police on me and when they arrived and got the apartment door open, I heard there is a dead male.

08:16
Everything was a blur until the coroner let me in. I saw him lifeless and there went my sobriety. At that moment I thought my dreams of a future vanished, dreams of marriage in a family just gone. I was utterly devastated and horrified. I couldn’t have my family rush over to help me because of COVID-19’s travel restrictions at the time, and since then I had gone back and forth fighting the battle of my addiction to alcohol. At the time of writing this, it was early December of 2020. So since the spring of 2020 to then, I had experienced seven hospitalizations, with stays from three up to 35 days.

09:00
My summer of 2020 was a complete blurred wreck that almost killed me, and I would have accepted that fate at that time. However, each time I fell, I was able to get back up with other support and as the fog cleared, I tried my best to move forward. Yes, the grief was too much and I would fall again. Thankfully, covid-19 allowed for remote work, so I decided to risk travel to leave Louisville and stay with my family. I sought their help because I could no longer try to do this recovery work daily on my own.

09:35
Ever since I’ve started to feel better, I have had more solid days than rocky ones. Each time schools were possibly gearing up to return to in-person classes, I noticed that panic filled me. The idea of being forced to return to Louisville for work permanently triggered my trauma. I tried once to go back and it was a failed experiment. I knew that I narrowly escaped death over the summer. Going back to Louisville would have set me up to die by prioritizing my career, so I finally decided finally to truly embrace my recovery. I decided to let go of this beautiful thing called teaching that has consumed every part of my being, and resigned.

10:19
My last day is December 4th. Do I love Louisville Absolutely? Is it a place full of trauma for me? Yes. Did I ever think my 13 year career teaching would end like this? No, however, from darkness comes light.

10:38
Each day, as I go through this process of choosing life, of choosing to stay sober just for another day, I know I made the best decision ever. My dream is to attain long-term sobriety and I believe one day I will. But just for today, I choose to live in recovery until I fall asleep. I will fight my alcoholism daily. I no longer live in fear of anyone trying to out me. There were times this year I felt ready to die, but here I stand to tell my story of choosing to live. I will live a good life. I will have a family, find peace and still be of service to others, just not in the way I had planned. My mother has a saying in Spanish uno pone, dios dispone, meaning we have one plan, but God can have other paths to our goals, which I accept as my journey. Today, I stand proud of who I am and embrace all parts of me. My recovery will no longer be my secret. Instead, it is my story to share, to tell others that we all deserve a fighting chance at a good life, no matter how many times giving up feels like the only way out. I hope and pray.

11:53
If anyone gets anything out of my story. It’s the following. Number one death is never a solution to any problem we have, no matter how overwhelming it may feel. Number two always lean on others for help. We don’t have to suffer in life alone. Number three recovery is possible. If you fall eight times, get up nine, fight for your life. You are worth it. And number four, which I have changed my stance on since reading tons of neuroscience literature, but I’m gonna go ahead and read it.

12:31
Number four addiction regardless of the substance is a disease period. No one judges a person with diabetes. Don’t let anyone devalue you for your condition. 標. And that’s my story. So first I want to thank you for listening to it, right, and I’ve got to say that when I read that story back years after it’s been written, first, I’m grateful for progress, right, just in that last bullet where I say addiction regardless of the substance is a disease period, with such firm belief. At that time I was repeating what I had been taught in treatment facilities, and in the treatment facilities that’s pretty much the only model that they function off of, which is the disease model. And to be fair treatment facilities, they have to get paid by insurance companies, and health insurance companies aren’t paying for things if they aren’t medically necessary, right? So, yeah, addiction is absolutely going to be categorized as a disease. In order for my health insurance to pay for my stays when I was in treatment facilities and in my case, was I sick? Absolutely, I had alcoholic liver disease, right, my liver was shot. So, yes, I was sick, I was very, very sick.

13:51
But I do have recommendations for a couple of resources that have helped me sort of reframe how I look at addiction, and I don’t necessarily look at it as just a disease, right, for me, I look at it as an incredibly powerful habit that is learned through repeated actions having to do with the substances, right, and so I’ll put a couple of books that I do recommend in the episode note so that you can kind of check it out and make a decision for yourself. Right, and that’s the beauty of this whole journey, right, the journey starts when you stop drinking, and so when I wrote this, it had been a few days since I had stopped drinking, right, and to see kind of where my beliefs are in terms of what addiction is three years later, that’s really powerful. But the other part that, to me, is really powerful is just this assertion that I made early on, right, that, like I understood and I had come to accept that the path that I thought I was going to be on was definitely not the path that was meant for me. And as hard as that can be to accept sometimes and if you may be sitting there as you’re preparing some food or you’re getting ready to maybe just sit around and have the day to yourself, right, that acceptance is so, so powerful because it’s just the path of least resistance and the path of least pain. And so, no, I’m no longer a classroom teacher, right, like now.

15:14
In the daytime I work out of college, sort of like in an entry level position in a residence life job, right. And then at night I like spending my time coaching people, I spend my time running meetings and I do all this other really powerful, meaningful work. It took a lot of humbling, you know. My recovery definitely humbled me quite a bit because, yeah, I went from state teacher of the year to working at a tutoring company to now being like entry level at a college, and you know what it’s fine and you know why it’s fine Because I’m sober and I’m free to do whatever the hell I wanted to when I was drinking. Sure, I was at the top of my career in the position that I was in and I was miserable and I was unhappy and I was constantly drunk and sick and making myself sicker every day. So, you know, when I read this piece, it’s just very powerful to see the transformation that came since then.

16:07
And I really do believe that writing this piece was the springboard for me to really, or the catalyst for me to really just seize the different opportunities to grow myself and really help other people as well. And so, with that being said, if you have been thinking like man, I would like to write my story, right, you don’t have to write to publish. I wrote to publish in the newspaper, but you don’t have to right. Sometimes just getting it off of your chest, getting it out of your head, can be incredibly healing as well, and I have had lots of folks. You know this is going to be the fifth time that I run this class and in the first four rounds, like I have had plenty of folks who take what they write. Then they take it back to their therapist, right, like it’s an awesome opportunity to bring content back to the professional that you’re working with to really help you do a deep dive here, and so, again, I would totally take advantage. It’s a 50% discount, so it’s $62.50.

17:03
If you sign up through Monday, the dates are on my website at bottomlesstosobercom and you can see the different dates. If you can’t make any dates, the sessions are recorded and will be sent back to you. So just that heads up as well. And then again, like I said, we also are doing that 90 day self-forgiveness workshop on New Year’s Eve, right. So kind of give you some tangible strategies to practice when you want to beat yourself over that and you’re frustrated with yourself and you don’t want to practice self-compassion. You’ll have some solid ideas for what to do with that kind of energy when it comes up.

17:38
So with that, I am wishing you a happy holiday, if you choose to celebrate. Yes, this world is on fire and sometimes it can feel very hard to celebrate anything when you know you turn on the news or you turn on your phone and things are falling apart. I also want to recognize that things have always been falling apart. It’s just that the amount of access that we have to news and to media today is overwhelming, right, and so if a part of you is like why should I bother trying, you know, because the world’s gone to shit. My invitation to you is to think about what. Will you be contributing to this world if you’re drunk Right, if you look at what is within your spheres of control.

18:25
You can’t control what’s happening in the world you individually, but you can’t control not making things worse and you drunk you under the influence of other substances. That is, you not helping in any circumstance. And somebody needs you sober. It might not be somebody across the globe who needs you sober, but it may be a loved one, it may be a colleague, it may be a friend, it may be that person that loves to hear your shares on Zoom. They need you sober. So, even if you’re not able to do it for yourself for today, think about somebody who has thanked you for something recently and do it for them until you’re able to do it back for yourself. So, with that, have a lovely rest of your day, take care of yourselves, and I will talk to you on the next one.

m Thanks so much. Have a great one.

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Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Kiola Raines takes us beyond getting sober. As a Black woman, her recovery journey unfolds against a backdrop of unique challenges that fuel her mission to establish safe havens for individuals like herself. Join us as we explore the distinct hurdles Black women encounter when seeking support for addiction, from the glaring lack of representation to the enduring impact of the “war on drugs.” Kiola not only sheds light on these issues but also takes proactive steps to rewrite the narrative and dismantle beliefs that could impede recovery. Check out this insightful conversation that goes beyond the surface, delving into the transformative work of reshaping the recovery landscape for Black women and other women of color.

Resources:

Kiola’s Site – KiolaRaines.com

Follow Kiola on Instagram

Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction by Maia Szalavitz

Stack ’n’ Days Podcast by Ray Donovan

Transcript:

00:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I’m Jessica Dueñas, and this is Bottomless to Sober, the podcast where I talk about anything and everything related to life since my transition from bottomless drinking to a sober life. Hey everyone, so today I’m really excited to have my fellow colleague and friend, Kiola Raines on the episode. I really just wanted to have her on, so just have a conversation about sharing her story. I think Kiola is a really powerful story that a lot of women can benefit from all women, but also women of color, considering the different options for what may work for them in recovery, and so I am honored to have a busy mom, fitness coach and also recovery meeting facilitator on here. So thank you, Kiola, for coming on. I appreciate you.

00:51 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yes, I’m glad to be here, looking forward to it Coming in straight from the gym, eating my post-workout meal and then taking my son to a birthday party. So you covered all of the things. Yeah, you covered all the things that I’ll be doing today?

01:07 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yes, basically. So first, if there’s anybody on listening who has not heard of who Kiola is, can you introduce yourself a little bit and just give the listeners a background of your story?

01:18 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yes, I just did a presentation yesterday and the woman said lots of folks in our class have heard about you. You have got such a good reputation. I was like good, because if you met me seven or 10 years ago, I don’t know if I would have had such a great reputation. So I come into the recovery world with four years and 10 months almost 11 months in my journey and I am really happy to be able to share a fitness and nutrition foundation with one-on-one clients that I work with in a peer recovery relationship and then also sharing that knowledge in communities as well. So my education background is in kinesiology. I have a bachelor’s and a master’s in sports and exercise psychology and I spent about 15, almost 17 years actually now that I think of it in gyms, in group exercise classes, doing one-on-one training, running boot camp classes and achieving what I thought was my ultimate dream, which was opening a gym, and that was an amazing experience. But I also was not prepared in my sobriety to take on a feat like that, and now I get to share all of the things that I wanted to share in that space in a community that’s even more near and dear to my heart. So not to say that I don’t have a passion for sharing fitness and nutrition education with everyone. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be able to do what I love to do and pair that in sobriety and recovery. And, looking into the new year, I’m definitely being called back into the fitness world and into the coaching world in that aspect, which will drive my programming a lot more geared towards people in recovery still, but really focusing on implementing movement and nourishment so that you can have a strong foundation in your recovery.

03:25
What else? And I have a three-year-old son and an awesome partner, a sibling to four folks. I’ve got three sisters and a brother. My parents met at Disneyland. That’s always a fun little random fact about me. They’ve been together since they were 15. And I guess that’s my first experience with recovery is watching my dad in his sobriety recovery journey. He’s got over 25 years and one of my foundations and values is family, love, love, love, family, love. To be able to have such a supportive family as well.

03:58 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
That’s awesome and congrats to your dad. I’ve seen his content pop up on occasion. He’s like I can see where you get the motivational, inspirational vibes from, yeah.

04:08 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
That is him.

04:10 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So you mentioned that your first experience in recovery was actually witnessing your dad, or what motivated you to actually get in recovery. Was your issue with alcohol showing up the same way that they did with your dad, or did it look different?

04:28 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
It looked much different because I was single, with no kids, so I could go deeper and deeper and deeper, Not to say without anybody concerned about it, but there’s less concern when you don’t have children and a household to upkeep and all of those responsibilities. But my family did reach out. They had an intervention that didn’t go so well, Also lots of individual conversations of concern, and so for me what sparked it this time around was the full on moment of clarity. I deserve better. I know I can do better, and if I’ve achieved what I’ve achieved so far while drinking and misusing alcohol and other substances, then I just had that conversation with myself. Imagine what your life could be like if you just get this out of the way.

05:22
But that wasn’t the first time I tried to get sober. Not at all. My first drink was at 15. And until I got into recovery I assumed everybody’s. First I just thought isn’t that what everyone does? You get into high school, you get a little access to it and you just kind of experiment, and from then on it was just something that I thought was part of my social life, part of my personality, and I had that first really bad hangover and did the I’ll never drink again thing.

05:55
And then, in 2015, got a DUI. But this is all after a decade over a decade of whoops. That might have been a little too much or, oh, I don’t know if I need to keep it up at this rate. A lot of little signs and experiences that I realized were telling me you’re doing this in a completely different way than your friends. And my parents don’t even drink. I didn’t grow up in a household with alcohol In my dad’s substance. He never brought it in the house or anything like that, but for me it wasn’t. I need to do this for my family, like with my dad, it was. I need to do this for me because I deserve better and I know that I can do better. So they were prompted for different things, but I will say losing relationships with my family members was a part of, was a part of the reason that I knew I needed to recover.

06:56 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So kind of leaning into that next part, what were some of the obstacles that you faced in recovering? So I mean, I think one thing that sounds like it may have been helpful in your family was that your dad was actually a model of someone being in recovery, Culturally speaking. What’s been your experience about the narrative around? The conversation of mental health and addiction, and what barriers did you face in the beginning when you were trying to get help, if you did?

07:22 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yeah.

07:23
So ironically my dad doesn’t. He doesn’t consider himself to be in recovery. I know that he is, but he’s one of those people that was like I will I don’t want to call myself an addict and so he wasn’t going to regular meetings or anything like that. I just I saw the stone cold like hard quit, I can quit. I knew this on my own and we didn’t talk about it. That was a huge barrier. I knew what was happening and my mom shared at one point one of the weekends he had, you know, disappeared on his little weekend getaway. My mom shared what was happening and she, I said where’s dad? And she said you know what? I don’t know where he is, but you can ask him when he gets home. So she was at that point of like I’m sick of making up stories, I’m not going to tell these kids anymore lies. And he she made him face the fire himself.

08:21
So that was when I understood drugs addiction and I saw his behavior changing over time. I would notice that was longer amount of periods of time between his disappearing, which was that was kind of a good thing, like okay, he’s doing this less and less and then one day it just not happening anymore. But because we didn’t talk about that, I didn’t quite understand how the whole thing worked. Like, how did sobriety work? Do you just stop and you start going to church? That’s what we did, that’s what he did, and so that was also a barrier. We didn’t talk about it and then I thought the solution was church and it was also a different substance. So those were challenges.

09:04
The benefit is that I knew it was possible. I knew that it was possible to break free from addiction or substance misuse. I just didn’t know exactly how to do it. So my only outlet, the only thing I thought was available, was 12 step, and when I got a DUI, I walked into that space because it’s required in California. You get a DUI, you have to get a breathalyzer in your car. I mean thousands, tens of thousands of dollars in fines and fees and you have to go to 10 AA meetings. And I walked into that 12 step room again with this message kind of from my dad that, like I don’t go to those meetings because I’m not an addict anymore and I’m not going to go up there and say I’m an addict. You know and this is my story he believes that he’s been delivered from addiction. He’s free from it and he is a former addict.

10:01
So I already had that kind of mindset and I went in to the room and my sister was with me my younger sister but I looked around and it was me and her and we were the only people of color in that room and I was like, oh hell, no, I’m not doing this, like this is not, this is not it for me. And that was another barrier that I stayed. Who knows, you know what would have happened, but I just wasn’t ready to share my deepest, darkest secrets. I wasn’t ready to share my energy. I also just wasn’t ready really to quit and that kind of turned me away.

10:40
I lasted eight months on my own, doing my own thing. There was some benefit that I got from the alcohol education classes that I had to attend, but I didn’t have any community. I had some support from my family, which was great, but I didn’t have any tools, and so that was the next barrier. And because I didn’t see myself in that room, because I had this message from my dad that was different than what I believe about myself now, and because we didn’t talk about the sobriety piece, it was just kind of like this understood thing that was happening. Those were several obstacles for me.

11:22 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So I have a question. I know back then your dad didn’t talk about his journey. I know now that you’re so open with it and you know, I know that you have a really tight relationship with him.

11:31
Have you ever like? Asked him about back then, like if he had ever looked for spaces? Cause I’m curious and, based off what you’re saying, I’m like well, did Keel, does that ever go? Maybe into a 12 step room? And he was like I don’t see anybody. It looks like me. So I’m going to go to church, Cause at least people look like me in church. I’m just curious what happened there.

11:49 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
That’s it Exactly. And I didn’t learn until I was 30 days into recovery. So, January of 2019, January 1st, I walked into a space and was just like help. You know, I don’t want to leave this room without some kind of support and I started off really on fire, you know, for that program and ended up moving back home, you know, had no car, no money, was this at the bottom, bottom, bottom, and because I got to see him every day, I was on, I was on his ass like dad. So how come you never went to, you know, these meetings? How come you never did this? How come you never made a mess with us? How come you and he’s like actually and he, you know, pulled out some stories. He’s like this is what happened for me.

12:40
He had gone to rehab two or three times and he had gone to NA meetings and CA meetings and he was experiencing people outside of the meetings trying to sell him his drug of choice, because they knew that everybody at that meeting probably wanted it, you know. And so he experienced that. He experienced pushback. When he would name his higher power and say who he believed in and what he believed in, he got pushed back from that he got pushed back from not wanting to call himself an addict, and so I learned a lot. And I joke with him I’m like, well, this would have been helpful, dad, 20 years ago, If you would have been helpful. We talked about this then I would have had a little bit more understanding of what you experienced. And we also talked about the reason that he chose to go into his religion. That is where he found his peace, that’s where he found his power. Through prayer, through joining the choir, he found his community. That way he found his ministry in coaching, specifically football and track, so ministering to young men. He felt very called to be the father figure or the coaching figure to try to steer these people in the right direction. And that’s. These are things that I had no idea. I thought my dad was coaching to avoid coming home. I thought that he was like too too, had too big of an ego to say he was an addict. I didn’t understand that he had gone through all of these experiences and I pulled out those conversations, which also allowed me and him to have a closer relationship and him to be a part of my recovery.

14:34
Now he’ll come on Any meeting. I ask him to come on, but he’s talking about his recovery much more, which I think is I think he really needed to do that. I think there was a lot of shame for him and me being so proud and open about like I have no shame I mean, you already know like I am proudly in recovery. I’m so happy that I got sober. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and I think I’m showing him that we don’t have to be ashamed, we don’t need to be feel guilty or ashamed that we fell into a cycle with substances that are highly addictive. It’s not like we chose to become addicted, you know, like TLC, it’s not our fault. It is our responsibility, though, and I’m showing him that you don’t have to have this dirty little secret. You can walk proud that you are sober now that you are in recovery now. So I learned a lot in those conversations. They just I wish they had happened sooner. I’ll say that for sure.

15:33 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and you know, I mean I’m so grateful for that kind of like new opportunity that you’ve been giving your dad, right, Because it goes to show that you know we learn from them, they can also learn from us. And also it’s just a beautiful image of like literally just breaking the cycle, Because I feel like that’s the thing in a lot of our communities we don’t talk about things, we go through the worst of things and we have to put up these masks of being like strong and we’ve got this, but there’s so much help to be had when we open up and share our stories. So you’re a mom now and my question is obviously your son Ziggy he’s only. You said he’s three, right, he’s three, yes. So as he gets older, what is that going to look like, like the conversations that you’ll have with him?

16:17 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yeah, any and everything, I hope. Whatever he wants to know, I want to do that opposite of what my parents did. My parents both of them, especially my mom, will say they were in full on panic survival mode. My mom was trying to protect her kids and so she didn’t want to share too much. My dad was ashamed of his actions and ashamed of his addiction, so he would kind of just hang his head down when he came home from those weekends and reach out to mentor other kids because he thought we didn’t like him which was sometimes true, but we were hurt and because they were in that panic survival mode, they just didn’t share a lot of things that were going on with us and then they dove into their religion, which also brought on shame and guilt about so many things. I want to do the opposite. I want to let my son feel free to ask me any questions me or Nathaniel and I want to keep an open line of conversation, age appropriate. I’m happy to share with him what I’ve experienced. He’s going to grow up hearing the word sobriety, hearing the word recovery. He’s going to grow up in a household where there isn’t any alcohol and he we’re also on a different topic. We’re also open about letting him choose his own spirituality and his religious beliefs.

17:50
So I grew up in a Christian household. My partner is Jewish. We agreed that we’ll present both of the things to him. We’ll celebrate all of the things and let him decide what works for him. So that’s very different than either one of our households. We were not encouraged to have our own spirituality, even just the sex conversation. Nathaniel’s parents didn’t talk to him about it. My parents were like no, no, no, don’t do that, that’s bad and I don’t want to do any of those. I want to change the narrative in our household to open conversations, ask whatever needs to be asked. Teenagers get a little awkward. They don’t necessarily want to talk to their parents about everything, but I want to make my son know that I’m available or his dad is available, or, if he doesn’t want to talk to us, we’ll find you a resource that you can talk to. But no shame and guilt and fear around these conversations. I just want him to be curious. I really do want to have a child that’s open to asking questions.

18:51 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and that’s so powerful and I’m so grateful to hear that that’s an opportunity that you are going to give your son, because a lot of us our parents generation did not encourage the curiosity or the questioning right.

19:03
It was very much just do as I say or you know, maybe not even as I do, but do what I say. There is something you touched on. You talked about survival mode, which I think is an important question. There’s been in spaces where I’ve heard people say well, you know, the decisions that our parents or their parents made were made in survival mode, but we’re not in survival mode anymore, so we can be free to loosen up in certain ways.

19:29
I would say yes and no, because I think, that, as people of color, especially say black people in America, there are times when, especially when there’s police violence or any other like systemic inequities happening, that people might still feel or genuinely actually be under a threat. Right, and so when people like I feel, like sometimes I like some of my one on one clients, like, let’s say, if something really harsh happens on the news, their first go to is why bother, jessica? Why should I bother being sober when this world is so fucked up? Right?

20:04 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yeah.

20:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I’m a black woman and such and such just happened on the news. Why should I try to get sober? Why should I even bother? And so I guess my message, my question for you is like what’s your response for people, whether they are people of color or there are allies right, like when the world is falling apart, like how do you respond to it and stay focused on your recovery?

20:28 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yeah, oh, that’s a good one. I definitely was used to be in that this world is shit, let’s get faded, because, you know, let’s just stay faded to not think about it and ignore it and avoid it. I was very much in that cycle. I was just so sad and so upset and so broken. Sandra Bland’s death, murder, I should say it really impacted me because at that time I realized I would have, that could have been me. I was that feisty person. You know I was smoking cigarettes at the time. Everything she did and that could have been me. I don’t need to put the cigarette out this like I just it hit me really hard and I did spiral.

21:09
You know, there was a dark time for me in that, realizing the world is so dark, in recovery I have truly found serenity and peace. It’s something that I I didn’t realize. What a gift it would be to have a peaceful mindset and to lean into calmness and serenity. And I would encourage folks to focus on being the light in the dark world. You know, yes, there’s darkness, there’s war, there has. I don’t think there’s been a time since the beginning of humanity where there wasn’t some kind of war going on or some kind of fight going on or struggle or hunger or death destruction. It hasn’t happened. It’s a part of humanity and I think it’s okay to give space to honor people’s lives being lost and honor that that is happening and acknowledge it and then to fuel your fire to be a light. Show up in a way that is peaceful, show up in a way that is encouraging. In your own small space, you can be impactful in your community. You can be impactful in your household, being a peaceful person, and I have definitely switched from the doom scroll and the deep dive and looking at the pictures and looking at the videos and looking at all of that stuff, I just don’t.

22:41
I just don’t look. I know what’s happening, I’ll hear it, you know one of my family members is going to mention it or someone’s going to say something about it and I acknowledge oh man, yeah, that’s really tough. So the best thing I can do today is stay sober, which I feel like is an act of revolution. It is a rebellious act. To be sober and be clear minded.

23:00
Rather than numbing myself or numbing ourselves and staying on that low vibration. The best thing we can do is become higher with our vibration and our energy and be the smile that someone sees that day, be the light, be the helping hand, be the peace that someone can experience. That’s the gift that we have in sobriety, rather than adding to the negative energy. And I really want to go towards being more positive and being light. It’s not easy, it’s not, and I also thought about toxic positivity like, oh well, there’s a war, you know that’s okay. No, there’s a war, and that’s fucking sucks. People are dying every day. That’s horrible, and the best thing I can do while I’m here on this planet is be peaceful and be a light and be encouraging, be positive.

23:49 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, definitely Like one of the things that I will always share and I think like that’s the same thing, like we have always 100% been living in unprecedented times. It’s just that nowadays we have the technology to access it like 24 seven and be connected, but sadly, humanity it can be a very like a source of beautiful things and also a source of really dark spaces and horrible, horrific things that you know, you’re spot on with that and I think like that’s the same thing that I tell people, right that look at what is in your control and focus on that.

24:22
Maybe we are not able to suddenly execute world peace, but you know what? We sure as hell aren’t contributing to the population of the earth if we’re trashed right. And so we can at least maintain sobriety. Then at least there is the opportunity a for us. Like you said, you can make an impact within your home, you can make an impact online, you can make an impact with another human in some way positively, but you can’t do that if you are just gone into the oblivion of substances like you just can. That’s right.

24:48 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yep.

24:50 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So the other thing that I guess I just wanted to ask you in terms of recovery as a black woman, right when, what are barriers that you’re seeing for women, other women of color, whether it’s black women or just black and brown women?

25:05 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
what are?

25:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
barriers you’re seeing and what are some recommendations that you might have for any woman of color who is like listening to this and kind of exploring what her next step might be?

25:17 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yeah, barriers are when you walk into a lot of in person spaces. Depending on where you are, you will likely be the only one in the room and if you grew up experiencing that like I did, I grew up as the only black person in my classroom from kindergarten to about seventh grade and the last thing I wanted to do was experience that awkwardness all over again. So that was definitely a barrier. Also, culturally and I know this is true for a lot of Asian cultures, because when we think of people of color, I know a lot of groups there’s black, brown, latin indigenous, and then there’s the Asian Pacific Islander have kind of like a separate, they have that API designation and so I think that group also is missing out on experiencing sobriety because they will walk into a room and be the only one in the room or not feel included in this person of color by pop group, because now there’s a separate designation. That’s a whole separate issue. I think we need spaces together and I think we all need separate spaces to to heal in our own ways to address different cultural challenges. So that’s another barrier, the lumping together plus the separation. It needs a little work, it needs a little attention.

26:42
When I walk into. I say walk into me virtually. So if I go to a virtual meeting, the what? The meetings I’m hosting? 99% white women, 99% white women. Even for white men that might be intimidating because it’s like, wow, is this a women’s group? Nope, this is just. This is just the community. That’s the new age virtual space. Years ago and still in, I think, 12 step, it is predominantly male. In that 12 step space where they made women’s meetings, in that space, smart recovery has started to add on women’s meetings and by pop meetings. But when you walk into or log into a room and there’s 200 people and all the folks that have their cameras on you see me hosting or you hosting, and then that’s it, it’s.

27:35
It makes it challenging to be vulnerable. It makes it challenging to talk about your mistakes, your shortcomings, your character defects, when we know that the media has painted us as defective for many, many years, has painted us as lazy and addicts and or loud and just, you know, not getting the work done that we need to get done. Like we’ve had this negative story being told about us and I’m supposed to go into this space and talk about my personal challenges and in 12 step, you’re not even allowed to bring up race, you’re not even allowed to address the fact that you’re not in the same or your socioeconomic status or the things you’re seeing in the media are affecting your mental health, which is then affecting the relationship with substances. And there are there are not enough spaces specifically for sober black women or black women in that are not just social spaces. I’ll say that there’s one space that is a club, that is more exclusive. I’ll say like a sorority. That’s my experience.

28:50
And then there are some by Poc, 12 step spaces, but you have to search for those. It’s much more challenging just to walk into a space. I’ve gotten lucky and the reason I’m in recovery is because the 12 step space I walked into in my neighborhood and LA was predominantly black and that was the miracle. That was the miracle of the higher power or whatever that was like. We need to make sure that she stays this time. So find a meeting in your community, but if you’re not in a predominantly black community or predominantly Latin or Asian community, you are going to have a hard time. You know walking into spaces and being vulnerable.

29:32 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
You know it’s funny when you were talking about kind of like painting the picture of like the defects quote unquote, the defects of different populations. You know the book I’m going through right now with the book club on the reframe app, it’s Unbroken Brain by Maya Salavitz, and she goes through the history of addiction, specifically legislation. And it’s wild because the first cocaine laws were written during the Jim Crow era to target black folks, under this assumption that black people were the ones predominantly using cocaine. And around the same era there were laws written against opiates because Asian people, there was this association with opiates and Asians, and so there were all these opiate laws written around the same time period.

30:15
And then the other wild fact was that the KKK was a huge proponent of prohibition because of immigrant groups being associated with alcohol consumption. It was really really fast, sad and infuriating but fascinating information because you know when we were talking about it, right, like just this idea that, like you know, for some people it’s. You don’t even realize that that’s the subliminal programming that’s happening to us as a society, that we just start to picture the faces of addiction looking like you or me, just because of like laws that had been written so long ago and it’s just like the. And then you know if you go to the 1980s and the war on drugs really war on people.

30:57
Yeah right, really a war on people. Because now that we have say like, I don’t want to say predominance, I don’t know them stats, but now that we’re seeing, say, opiate addiction impacting so many white Americans, you know, now we’re getting it, the people are getting the opportunities that they need for treatment, whereas, say, in the 1980s, 1990s, when you had the black community getting affected by the crack cocaine epidemic, not the same, the access was jail. That was a treatment. You know, yep, it’s wild.

31:24 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
I’m curious how that what are the responses? Will be in that book club from this book. So you’re dropping gems on them, which is like a beautiful thing for people to see that truth it’s we people of color, specifically black folks in the US have been the picture of addiction, but we have not been the picture of recovery, and that is a huge problem. That’s the reason that I reached out to the creator of the sober summit and I was like look, this is great and I’m so happy you want to make this summit, but this is not the picture of recovery. This is the reason people are not going into spaces, because they log on to a meeting or they walk into a room. They don’t see themselves and so they don’t stay. But we are recovering too. You know, I get to see that.

32:13
That’s one of the reasons I go to that in person meeting I go to is to be reminded that there are black folks surviving and recovering and overcoming, just like everyone else, and it needs to be broadcasted.

32:30
That is something like if I have a project in 2024, it’s to align with the podcast stack in days and and similar to what you’re doing highlight our voices, highlight our stories, highlight our faces. You can see that we are recovering as well and we are not going to stay the picture of addiction. We can be the picture of recovery. And even I mean with the whole war on drugs versus opioid epidemic, it’s like, oh, this is, we need to help these people, we need to solve this disease, this epidemic. But then with crack and black folks even though I mean we could go down a whole rabbit hole with that it was a war on drugs, just the verbiage around it is completely different. So we definitely need to continue talking and sharing. And so I tell my dad, like, don’t be ashamed. Don’t be ashamed because you, speaking about being sober, will help somebody else realize that it’s possible. They see it in you, they can connect to you and your story, your language, all of that stuff.

33:41 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and the same thing with your dad, right, like your dad, when he was struggling, he was probably constantly receiving messaging that told him that there was something terribly wrong with him. Yeah, he was lesser than human being because of his addiction, right, and thankfully. I mean the good thing about the internet, right, the bad thing about the internet is that there’s sometimes so much bad information out there. But the good thing about the internet is that, when, say, there’s mainstream recovery programs that aren’t necessarily representative of what recovery can look like, there’s just people like us, regular people in recovery, who are able to speak up and use our voices to really help cast this message far and wide. And for anyone listening the Stacking Days podcast, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes.

34:22
It is a podcast that highlights the stories of people of color in recovery to get a good sense of what recovery can look like from a whole range of perspectives and a whole all sorts of different recovery paths, whether they’re 12 step connected or not. Because the 12 step programs do save many people’s lives because if they didn’t save lives they wouldn’t still exist but they don’t resonate for everyone. So how do you approach 12 step program spaces now? Because you do still attend meetings in person. What does that look like? How do you stay true to say what works for you while attending different programs meetings?

34:57 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yeah, first I will say me and you are not regular people in recovery. We are rock stars. We are rock stars in recovery and humble also. We know we take it one day at a time, but I think some people really dive into this work and want to share it. There are a lot of people who will keep it for themselves, which is great and fine. I’m not saying one is better or worse. And then there are teachers and coaches and leaders. We cannot help but want to share and spread this message.

35:28
So now, when I go into 12 step spaces, I’m much more confident than I was. Obviously, at 30 days and 60 days I thought this was the only way and I need to just do what they say. I didn’t know about smart recovery, I didn’t. Reframe didn’t exist, tlc didn’t exist, silver black girls club didn’t exist and I didn’t know there were spaces like celebrate recovery and women for sobriety. I thought if I don’t do this, I’m going to be fucked up forever. Basically, now, fast forward.

35:58
Years later I put myself out there in the social media world and I learned so much like oh wow, I can use therapy, I can use fitness, I can use nutrition, I can create my own social circle of sober people who will share their tools with me. I can participate in virtual spaces and I built my own program or building, still building. I’m learning things all the time of my own program. So I walk into that space very confident because I, in January I’ll be five years sober and even though they a lot of people don’t remember me because it was three years in between since the last time they saw me, if I go up and share and I say I’m four years sober, they’re like how, who’s your sponsor? What is this miracle of sobriety that you speak of? So I’ll share. But I honestly do much more listening in that, in that space I go in and unless I’m called on or there’s, you know, nobody is sharing. I listen, listen, listen and take in the information and the stories, the reminders of why I stay on this path and I don’t go there to campaign for my journey and my path. I go there with respect, you know, drink a little coffee, maybe have a donut, and just I. Honestly I’m sitting in that room like I mean I wish I could record it because I am just like giddy, big old smile ear to ear, just like sitting next to this 68 year old woman and this 30 year old woman and seeing this man get his 40 year chip, and just it’s like a celebration for me. I take the things that resonate with me and I leave behind what. What doesn’t resonate, but there is, and there always will be, wisdom in that room.

37:53
The reason that I started and stayed on my journey is because of that room, because I was given the opportunity to reflect on me and realize that it’s not just alcohol. You needed something, you needed a feeling. Why did you need that feeling? Why were you trying to escape certain things? Why were you trying to numb certain things?

38:15
So it’s the first place I learned to reflect and if I met anybody in that space that was new to sobriety, I would not say, hey, you know, there’s, there’s other things you can do. I’m not here to disrupt anybody’s journey. If somebody asks me, what am I doing, I’m happy to share. But I’m not going to go in that space and try to deter. I go in as it’s a celebratory space for me. It’s like a reflection space for me and I honor it. I respect folks that are doing what they’re doing. I could maybe laugh a little under my breath about things and I’m like, okay, well, there is another way. But that’s not. I don’t need to go in there and like fight people about it and debate people about it.

38:58 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, for me definitely. So I got exposed to 12 step programs through the different treatment facilities that I had been hospitalized in by default. That’s kind of like at least the treatment facilities that I was in in Louisville, kentucky, and I don’t know about other places.

39:12
They automatically just kind of feed their patients into the 12 step programs and they have speakers coming in from 12 step meetings and you know like since getting sober I’ve reached out to treatment facilities to share my story and they pretty much has been like well, if you’re not a 12 step person, we were not taking your story. The only place that let me share my story was a facility I was hospitalized in myself, so they’re like okay, you graduated from here so you can come back and share your story.

39:36
But you know, at that time being that early on I was told this was the only way. I was so desperate to not die that I was okay with complying and, honestly, to this day I would probably still be in the program if I hadn’t been exposed to other people. So you know, the way that I ended up leaving 12 step programs was when I did my Red Table Talk episode back in May of 2021. So I was like maybe seven, six, seven months sober. I was on set with Khadi and Annie Grace.

40:08
So Khadi was Black Girls Club and Annie Grace, the author of oh my gosh, I’m blinking on her book right now.

40:13 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
The.

40:13 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
This Naked Mind yes, thank you. And I remember I genuinely asked them. I was like, oh, what, what like, something about. Like, what did your sponsors say about doing this? You know, I have no idea and each of them was like no, we don’t go to AA. And I was like, like how you said what’s this miracle?

40:31
I was like what, you don’t go, you don’t do AA? And they were like no, we don’t do AA, you know, we do whatever. You know each of them does their own thing. And I came back, I flew back to Florida and I saw my therapist and I was like you mean to tell me I don’t need to do this? And she was like you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it’s a good idea to have support. So as soon as she said that, that’s when I just started like looking at my options and exploring Because you know, again I was fine, I was totally fine with the space.

41:02
But yeah, there were certain things that frustrated me, like, you know, not being able to really talk about certain things when they were happening, like when the Black Lives Matter protests were happening in Louisville, kentucky.

41:13
You know that was one of the primary effects because of Breonna Taylor and I taught at a school for black males and I knew that if they weren’t protesting, their family members were out there protesting and I couldn’t talk about that at a meeting and the one time I brought it up because it was stressing me out, I was told that’s an outside issue, you can’t talk about it, and I was like I’m a teacher who loves my students desperately and I can’t talk about an issue that is directly impacting them and that left me very disheartened. But again, I was complying because I really wanted to stay sober. So I was still showing up. But once I learned that it wasn’t something that I had to do, I definitely got out there and stayed curious. But I told my support group what I was doing so that they could hold me accountable, like if they saw me suddenly flying off the handle.

41:56
Because I’m not gonna lie, when I stepped out of my normal routine with the 12 step program, checking with the sponsor every day and doing that, there was a part of me, there was a seed of fear that had been planted in me that I would die, that I would drink and that’s exactly how I felt, and I had seen people relapse and die most of them not alcohol, to be fair, but still, and so I was just really worried that I was gonna rapidly become a statistic that they talk about in meetings, like the people who go back out and just die. But years later I’m still here. Thank, God.

42:30
And I do appreciate those spaces and like, let’s say, if anyone comes to Tampa who I know from Louisville and is in recovery and they want a meeting, I’ll help them find a meeting and I’ll go to the meeting with them. You know what I mean. And it’s just like yeah, if you need a meeting, I’ll go with you. When I work with one-on-one clients and I always encouraged them to find a community, like I talk about the online communities and then I’m always like what are your thoughts on 12 step programs? And if it’s something that works for them, great. If it’s not, I let them know. It makes perfect sense. Especially when my clients a lot of them are women of color, it makes perfect sense that it doesn’t resonate with them and I just let them know it’s okay. Mainstream recovery isn’t for everybody.

43:08 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, the whole outside issue thing is like I’ll never understand it, which is fine, because I don’t. I’m not stuck in a place where I have no other tools, but if you understand addiction and you understand human nature and human experience, you have someone write down these resentments right that they have, like I resent this and I resent that. Well, one of the things for me that I resented was the fact that I grew up the only one in the room, and so how is that no longer an issue in my sobriety or my recovery, when it caused anxiety which caused me to drink? So if I’m in this room with people, anything that’s affecting me is an inside issue. I’m in this room, we’re in this room together, I’m looking around, I’m sharing what’s happening inside my physical body, my mind. That’s up for discussion. So I think it’s great that we have spaces where you have freedoms to share and.

44:10
I call it new age, sobriety, new age recovery, where we’re in this evolving space that is much more predominantly women, 12 step spaces originally were mostly men, and so it is cool to watch it evolve. And the next thing I’d love to see and it’s slowly but surely happening is predominantly black spaces, predominantly Latin spaces, predominantly Asian spaces and then everybody together, so having diverse spaces. I do think that it is important for each culture to have a space and we need to be able to heal from the things, especially in the US. All different ethnicities need to be able to heal from the things that we’ve experienced as a country, which then impacted our relationship with substances, and it’s different for each community, but we’re moving in that direction of not being afraid to talk about it, or at least I’m not afraid to talk about it.

45:09 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and also helping us heal our relationships with ourselves, because one of the things that’s just wild is that I didn’t realize how much it took me putting down the bottle to realize how much personal development work there really is just to be done and how much of the healing process also involves like shedding beliefs that have been instilled in us since we were little, telling us that we were less than that.

45:33
We didn’t realize that these came like. These were like total, like colonial, imperialist mindsets that were just brought down generation to generation. That really did like trigger drinking, like I was talking about my hair the other day to someone and I was thinking that when I was little my mom would take me to the Dominican salon and put hair relaxer in my hair just to get it straight, when, mind you, all I need is water in a little brush. But to my mom it was so like, oh my gosh, this is so critical that she would have to take me to the Dominicans. And there was this language use of pelo bueno versus pelo malo good hair, bad hair.

46:08 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yep.

46:09 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
And I genuinely had grown to believe that there was something bad about my hair or my skin color, because I came out like my dad, who was a black Cuban, like just being told when I was little, to stay out of the sun and things like that, because you didn’t wanna get too old schooled, I didn’t wanna get too dark and those little things still would feed into my dream because, as I had low self-esteem, I thought that the things that made me black or made me worse and no, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that but I really did internalize that and I remember I used to think that I was less pretty, say, than other Latina girls, because I had the darker features and the curlier hair, and it’s so false.

46:52
But that was doing exactly what it was meant to, which was keep me small, keep me drunk, keep me invisible.

46:59 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
It’s breach. I can resonate with that. Growing up with, my mom is Creole and so she’s more fair skin with straight hair, and all my cousins on my mom’s side light skin, curly hair, which I wanted because that was good hair, you know that was. Which is so interesting, how across cultures one thing is so desired and the other is not. And then there’s my dad, who is darker and family on that side is darker and wanting to try to fit in on the one side and feeling like an outcast on the one side. And then there goes the Utah white. Oh, that was the killer. Like growing up in, and you know, predominantly white community.

47:39
But I would also hear my parents using that same dialect when they were on business calls. So I was like, well, is I talk business? I don’t know. You know like, no, actually I have a. I have the dialect of the secretary and an appraiser. That’s what it is like a business owner.

47:53
So there was all those messages which, yes, they affect your self-worth. I didn’t realize until I got into recovery that as much as I liked myself and thought I was cute and friendly and funny and pretty, and I’m like, yes, I have a good smile, I didn’t value myself. So it didn’t matter how cute I thought I was, it didn’t matter how funny I was, I had no value and that was something that I had to address. And I’m still learning how to address and be accepting of who I am, the way that I like things and how I feel about myself, learning that everybody’s not gonna like me. And that is a healing journey, because when you are the only one in the room, when you are the tallest one, the darkest one, the only one with braids, then you go to your family and you’re the one that talks white. And then you go to your church and you’re the one that talks white and you go to these. You start to wanna try to shape and shift and you don’t really accept. You just wanna try to fit in. And that is what I’m moving away from being okay with the fact that everybody doesn’t have to like me.

49:04
My coach said if everybody likes you, you’re doing something wrong, Kiola, like, if you don’t have at least one person who’s like oh, I can’t stand you, then you’re probably being nice and you’re not being kind. Being nice is wearing a mask of like. Hey, everything’s always good. Kind is I care about humanity, I care about people and I will tell you also the truth. And the truth sometimes hurts and that’s okay, but I need to focus on being kind, kind to myself, valuing myself, knowing that I don’t have to fit in, and also accepting. That mindset caused some of my anxieties. Also, I’m a person with anxiety, but that didn’t help, it didn’t lessen it when I felt awkward and felt different and it’s one of the reasons that when I walk into that space that is 99% black folks I just like, I just sit back and I’m just like I’m at, I’m home. Oh, it feels so good, it feels so freeing.

50:06 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and you know, the people pleasing comment is just so funny too, because I can completely resonate with that.

50:12
And you know, and that’s the thing it’s like at a certain point, going back to survival mode, right, like for us, like our mothers, our Grandmothers, they had the people pleased to stay alive because not only were you a woman, you were a woman of color, you were a black woman in America. Like you had to make sure that people were liking you, for you to be just safe, right, and and that that’s wild, because again, we in a we’re in a place of privilege and like that in 2023, like it’s okay, Kiola Raines does not need to be liked by everybody, right, and that’s definitely a gift and I think that that can absolutely empower recovery. And it’s just wild, too, because I Don’t think that I there’s no way I would have done this much personal development work if I hadn’t had to get sober. So there’s times, like you know, there’s people who will ask me like, do you ever wish that you like had just been quote-unquote normal, which even like normal doesn’t mean anything anyway?

51:03
But yeah at this point. No, like I I’m not. Like I didn’t sign up for this life. But now that it’s mine, I am so grateful for it because I I can’t see my brain Living under any other like construct anymore. Like this idea of like is like leaving the alcohol behind To give myself the gift of clarity to have these conversations with other people. Like I wouldn’t change this for the world, and if it meant that I had to go through a hell of some hard years, that’s okay, because I’m here on the other side of it.

51:37 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yep, ah that. I agree with that completely. This is our thing. I’m so glad this is my thing.

51:45
I was always into this growth mindset and and the whole personal development world, and what that means for me or confirms for me, is my spirit and my soul knew that, like you need to grow, you need to look at these things, you need to get into therapy. I’m the first person in my family that went to therapy. We we needed it, lord knows we needed it, but my mom didn’t know that that was a tool. She didn’t know that was a resource, so it was something that was like always in me to search for, and Getting the alcohol out of the way was the big obstacle that let me live this way. You know being called to teach and be an educator. There’s that desire. Like you are a lifelong learner, you’re always looking for knowledge and seeking knowledge and ways to connect, but we have this bottle that was in the way from allowing us to grow and develop and I agree with you. It’s the best decision I’ve ever made. I, like I said, I have no shame. I’m so proud to be in recovery.

52:51
I think that there are a lot of people who need the support that we have, not for substances necessarily, for other things going through a divorce, having a child with special needs, recovering from financial Challenges, mental health, all kinds of things. We have not gotten stuck in that cycle. We have found communities and Friends and social circles that we can connect with and tools for us to grow. I, when I first started recovery, I used to always say Everybody needs to do the 12 steps, like everybody needs to do them for something. Everybody needs to look at where they are, where they want to be, how they got where they are and dig, peeled out. You know, dig a little deeper, peel some layers back and learn how they can grow and evolve. Everyone, every single person, could benefit from that, that self-discovery and that personal development. So this is, this is our thing and I’m I’m glad that this is our thing.

53:54 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Me me too. So, to wrap up, I had a question Are you currently taking clients and, if so, who should be looking for you and how can they find you to work with?

54:05 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Who should be looking for me. So, yes, and you should be looking for me if you are open to using fitness and nutrition to support your sobriety. So if you’re someone that Loves to move or would love to learn how to move, if you’re someone who wants to learn how to incorporate nutrition into your sobriety and your recovery journey. I Work with predominantly women. I’m not opposed to taking on a male client here and there, but you have to be willing to take directions from a woman, you have to be willing to take guidance from a woman, and I’m really moving towards folks who are open to working in 90 day to six month coaching cycles. I’m not looking for 30 day at a time. I’ve learned that the work that I’m doing and the work that you need to do takes time to implement, and so, starting in January specifically, that’s gonna be the programming that I’m offering 90 days and six months of coaching, implementing fitness and nutrition for sobriety and how can people say like reach out to maybe learn more?

55:21 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
is it your website, your Instagram?

55:22 – Kiola Raines (Guest)
Yeah, yeah both of those Kiola Raines calm. If you go to my website, there’ll be a link for free consultation, and that link is also in my Instagram as well. I think all of my handles are KiolaRaines. I try to make it real, real simple. Just find me there. Thank you so much for having me on.

55:44 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I always appreciate a good conversation with you. Mind you, I see you all the time online, but still, it’s nice to like sit and just talk with no interruptions. Yes, hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast, but also go to my website, bottomless to sober calm, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to Writing classes to one-to-one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomless to sober calm. See you then.

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Link to Spotify

In this episode:

Listen in as I discuss the challenging and sometimes very uncomfortable decisions I’ve made that led me to recovery and, ultimately, saved my life. The journey to recovery has not been easy, as I share about selling my beloved house and moving into my sister’s guest room in Tampa. I also recount how I had to quit my prestigious teaching job and switch to working an entry-level sales job, a decision that, although humbling, was crucial to my recovery. Oh, and dating? My recovery definitely made that interesting.

Tune in as I continue to shed light on the other critical aspects of my recovery journey, including the use of medication and the idea that no matter when and where we start on this path, we are exactly where we need to be.

Resources:

Feeling’s Aren’t Facts: A New Year’s Eve Self-Forgiveness Workshop

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

Hey everyone. So on today’s episode, I wanted to share a list of tough decisions that I have had to make to save my life and recovery. It actually comes inspired by Deisha Kennedy. She’s a financial educator. Her Instagram handle is at the broke black roll and she recently shared a list of tough financial decisions that she had to make that essentially saved her life, and so you know, I found her list incredibly inspiring. So I figured, you know what. Let me do some reflecting and list some of the decisions that I have had to make in my recovery to basically save my own ass. So, with no further ado, here’s that list, right?

00:42
So, number one, I sold the house that I was super proud of buying all on my own in Louisville, kentucky, and I moved into the guest room of my sister’s house in Tampa. So for me, giving up that house that I bought all on my own after having gotten divorced in 2017, it was a huge sacrifice, right? And for me, I grew up in a home where, culturally, we were taught to be quote unquote strong, independent women. Right that we don’t need anybody, and you know, my parents so often emphasize that I was supposed to go to school so that I wouldn’t need anybody else’s help. And yet here I was identifying the fact that I desperately needed someone’s help and that it really wasn’t good for me to live by myself, and I sold the house that was, in a sense, like a dream little house right so that I could move with my big ass dog into my sister’s guest room. But you know what? That allowed me to move into? A home that was full of love, a home full of people who were cheering on my recovery and a home full of support. So I had to make that really, really tough call to lose a space that was online, an actual piece of property whose value would have increased drastically since the pandemic right, and I gave all that up for the sake of having a safe environment. And so I wanted to recognize that that was one of the big decisions, that it was a hard decision but it was a necessary one.

02:10
Number two I quit my job as a teacher in a school that I loved, that was a part of a community that I actually felt really involved in and loved by and accepted by, except they didn’t know I was drinking, right. But I walked away from all that and I had even been named the state teacher of the year in Kentucky the year before and I walked away from all of that in order to start fresh, right. And so when I walked away from my teaching job I don’t talk about it often but like my day job for about two years in my early recovery, I mean I still consider myself to be early on enough, but you know, at the very start my day job was I was a salesperson for a tutoring company and I was an entry level salesperson for a tutoring company, making a little bit above minimum wage as an hourly rate right, going from being like state teacher of the year to that. However, it helped save my life right, because I walked away from a very demanding job that was absolutely exhausting, that, even with all the recognition that I had, I still felt like I struggled to feel successful when my students were constantly being measured against these like standards that were being thrown on us right, and I taught students with disabilities and even though they’re just as successful as their peers, it didn’t always show on tests, right, and those tests directly spoke. Not that they’ve directly spoke, but they directly affected me in terms of my evaluation as a teacher. So for me, I needed to let go of that paperwork, let go of the increasing demands, let go of all the stress and lack of appreciation that teachers overall deal with, even with my accolades again, for the sake of seeking my sobriety, right. So I just want to recognize that like if you’re listening and you’re wondering do I need to walk away from my job? I’m obviously not going to sit here and advise you through a podcast that you need to quit your job, but it is something that you might need to look at right Next up I have, when I started dating again, that I made it a priority to discuss my recovery from addiction very early on with any man who I decided to go out and date with, even if it felt uncomfortable, even if I remember thinking, man, I might miss out on a great opportunity here.

04:31
Right, I still went forward and shared and disclosed my status as a person in recovery because I knew that there is no way that I could build a long, lasting, long term relationship and foundation for a possible family with someone who didn’t know and accept my story fully. That is so important to me. It is so important to me especially because of the work that I do being a life coach for people in recovery, facilitating support group meetings in different communities, openly writing about my story and sharing about my story. There’s no way that you could be the man in my life if you don’t see all of that and see it as an asset. You’ve got to see my recovery as a win. If you look at me and you think I’m a liability, if you look at me and you feel like you don’t trust me, if you look at me and you have your own negative perspective of what recovery looks like, if you buy into the stigma behind addiction, then you’re not the person for me. Frankly, I wanted to know that really really fast. I always brought it up as quickly as possible so that I can clear the path. If you weren’t with it, then you could go and free me up so that I can meet somebody who would see me as a value because of my recovery.

05:54
Next thing on my list is that I accepted medical assistance and I used medication for the first one and a half years of my recovery. I had to let go of that idea that I could do this all by myself and I had to accept that it was okay to work with a licensed medical doctor who can prescribe me something to assist with what I needed, and then, when I no longer felt that I needed it, I worked in conjunction with said licensed professional and let go of the medications. Now, obviously, my journey with medication is not going to be the same as your journey with medication, and just because I have stopped taking medication does not mean that other people need to stop per se. There’s nothing wrong with taking medication long term. It’s just that, for me, I decided that I no longer wanted to take the medications, and the way that I looked at it for myself, in my personal experience, was, if you break a leg and you have a cast, you have crutches. You don’t keep the cast on and you don’t use the crutches for the rest of your life. That’s the way I look at it in my experience for myself. For me, I was, once I felt strong enough in terms of having learned alternate coping tools that had nothing to do with drinking. Once I took the time to design a life that I wouldn’t want to escape from, I figured that I would be good in terms of working on gradually releasing the medication under medical supervision, and I did. Again, not to say that that’s everyone’s experience, but it is mine, and it was very humbling efforts to accept that I probably needed some crutches, that I wasn’t going to do this without the crutches, because I had already been trying for 14 months and repeatedly failing.

07:36
The next big decision that I had to make in terms of supporting my recovery was actually making time in my schedule to show up for my recovery. I clearly was able to manage the logistics of making time in my schedule to drink every single day. That meant that, likewise, I could turn things around and make time in my schedule to go to meetings, to journal, to reflect, to work with Early on. I was in a 12-step program, so I had a sponsor in the beginning. Then eventually, it became mentorship and working with the therapists and coaching. No matter what was going on, I had to dedicate the time to my recovery the same way that I did with my drinking.

08:18
The next big thing that I did was assess my spending. Listen, I used to be such a spender when I drank. I’ll give you an example. I one time when I lived in an apartment before I had built the house, so this was probably around 2016, 2017. No, I’m sorry, I’m giving you the wrong year. Let’s say 2018, approximately. In 2018,.

08:43
There was one day that I had fallen asleep from drinking and when I wake up and I come to, my apartment is full of smoke and there is a man in my apartment who was one of the managing operators of the apartment complex in which I lived in. And apparently I had gotten so drunk and fell asleep to the point that the food that I had cooking in the oven burnt. My apartment had filled with smoke, the smoke alarm had been going off and I noticed neither the smoke nor the alarm. I didn’t hear any of it, I didn’t smell any of it. Nothing woke me up until that man was keyed into my apartment and woke me up out of my sleep, right. So if he hadn’t come in and if that alarm hadn’t like tripped up the security system, could a fire have happened? Absolutely, Could I have died in this fire? Maybe, right, I don’t know, but the fact that it took someone coming into my apartment and waking me up, and that being the only way that I came out of my my like passed out state, speaks a lot. So, anyway, the following day, I had gotten a certified letter from the apartment complex stating that I had a warning and that, if that incident happened again, that I would have my lease revoked and I would have to move out, right. That I would get oh my gosh, I wanna use the word evacuated, but evacuated is not evicted. There we go, that I would get evicted.

10:05
So when that happened, rather than stopping and saying, okay, this is a sign that I need to stop drinking, I became really innovative because people with addictions are incredibly driven people, and when I was still driven to drink and I decided to transition into using Uber Eats and other food delivery services so that that way, I could safely eat when I wanted to eat without risking burning down the house right, and risking burning down the apartment complex. To me, it was an innovative solution to a problem and so but here’s the thing I was on a teacher’s salary, right, and I was my own. I lived by myself, so I took care of all my bills. I was dealing with student loans, et cetera. So my credit card took a big hit because every single night I was ordering Uber Eats, that I was, first of all, barely eating because, as I was getting sick or with alcoholic liver disease, my appetite basically disappeared. However, I still would buy food because I felt like if I forced myself to take a few bites at least. That was doing something right. Doesn’t make sense at all. But that’s drunk math, so to speak. So anyway, over time, after about a year or two years of just buying so many Uber Eats deliveries and then I started doing alcohol delivery as well all those fees, all those charges really really added up and I took a big financial hit.

11:29
So when I stopped drinking, I finally had the courage to actually, like, look at my credit card account and look at my bank account and assess the damage that I had done. That was really hard, that was really really uncomfortable. I’m telling you, right To feel like, oh my gosh, I’m at a negative right, but that was. You can only go up from there if you stop drinking, and that’s how I felt. I was like, well, I’ve got to pick up the pieces financially, create a budget and get on a plan, and so and even to this day, like I have signed up recently for a financial literacy class, and so, as I used to dedicate so much of my money to alcohol, now what I try to do is save. I’m still working on learning about investing and then on occasion, I treat myself within reason to nice things. But I really had to completely overhaul my financial situation, and alcohol made me not give a shit about how much I was spending every single day on food delivery, which was not good at all. So that was a big decision. Another big decision that I had to make was I had to stop telling myself that I was bored every time. Things were quiet when I was drinking alcohol, especially so heavily.

12:44
After my divorce, those few years between my divorce and me quitting drinking, I find myself in romantic relationships with really problematic men. Right, and there was always drama, there was always a conflict, I was always saying something that I couldn’t remember, and then there was always gaslighting happening because people were telling me that things were happening that weren’t maybe necessarily true, but there was no way that I could really hold them accountable because of the fact that I was drunk all the time. So there was just so much chaos in my life that I had gotten accustomed to. And even when I dated Ian, who passed away, obviously we were both sober during the length of our relationship, but then, immediately after he passed away, I spent eight months just in and out of hospitals.

13:30
So for me, my life, I had just gotten used to this sort of like base level line of chaos that in sobriety it went away for the most part and then it was just really uncomfortable to sit with the stillness of some evenings. And sometimes that stillness would lead me to have thoughts that start ruminating and almost like I would just start looking for problems. So I had to really just stop and tell myself that when I was bored that there was nothing wrong with the stillness. Right To not confuse boredom for peace, or rather I think that’s the other way around, so not confuse peace for boredom. Then the last thing on this list that I would say that was really important for me to come to as a decision was to accept that I wasn’t behind quote, unquote anyone else and really embrace that where I was and where I am today is exactly where I’m supposed to be. Right For me.

14:38
There is a lot of ways that if you were to say, compare my personal situation to that of other peoples, it’s very easy to be like, oh yeah, she’s behind, right, because I no longer own property, so I had no home, divorced right, so in theory, behind there in terms of like having a marriage, having a family, no children. So again, especially I mean at that point, when I got sober, I was 35, now I’m 38. But you know, like there are all these societal markers that are external things that you can say that they’re look for is that I was missing and, oh, also being in debt, right. So I had all these things going on where I would start to feel bad for myself and I would start to internalize this idea like, dang, my parents came to this country for me to just be this far behind, right, and I have had to learn to let that go because, frankly, like, yes, I gave up my home, yes, I gave up a job that I was kind of like a little like angel rock star at, so to speak. Like, yes, I was in debt, etc. But you know what y’all like, I can go, eventually I could buy a home again, if eventually I can have a career that I want, right, I can fix my financial situation. But you know what I can’t do? I can’t recover any of that shit if I’m dead because of my drinking. So, at the end of the day, right, it’s like it’s about really just having that very realistic perspective that all those external things don’t matter if I am not alive, and recognizing that I am alive today because I was willing to step away from all those external factors to work on myself.

16:16
So, with that being said, I hope that this podcast episode helped you reflect a little bit on some of the tough decisions that maybe you have had to make, or some decisions that you are sitting with that you might need to complete or move into action. What are they? Feel free to reach out to me and let me know here. Just quick announcement on December 31st I am offering my Feelings Aren’t Facts workshop. It’s a New Year’s Eve workshop on self-forgiveness. It is only $15. If you are interested in work, doing some self-development work with me, I highly recommend it. It’s going to be a beautiful 90-minute workshop where we do some serious reflecting and some writing, where we just kind of set the stage for a beautiful start to 2024. So, with that y’all, thank you so much for listening and I will catch you in the next episode.

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In this episode:

Content Warning: Discussion of pregnancy loss and abortion

As I sat down with Kenneth Watson, known as 12 Faces of Sober, a rush of raw emotions filled the room. His story of struggle, transformation, and the joy of fatherhood took me on a journey that deeply resonated with me. From his past experiences with abortion and miscarriage fueling his addiction, to finding strength and hope in fatherhood and sobriety, Kenneth’s candid revelations served as a powerful testament to human resilience and the invaluable role of a supportive community.

Walking us through the dark alleys of his life, Kenneth was open about his mental health struggles and the impact of his father’s alcoholism. His transition from casual drinking to addiction, taking him through the military, a tumultuous marriage, and multiple rehab stints, was a stark reminder of the havoc addictions can wreak. But it was equally inspiring to see how he found light at the end of this dark tunnel, breaking free from addiction and embracing the joy of fatherhood.

However, our conversation did not stop at his personal journey. We also delved into the larger implications of addiction, highlighting that it knows no racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic boundaries. Kenneth brought forth the necessity for mainstream recovery to be inclusive of people of color, and how sobriety can serve as a rebellion against historical alcohol-induced control mechanisms. Join us on this enlightening journey as Kenneth shares his path to sobriety, the joys and challenges of fatherhood, and the empowering lessons he’s picked up along the way.

Resources:

12 Faces of Sober Site

Follow Kenneth on Instagram

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

Hey everyone. I’m Jessica Dueñas and I’m so, so, so excited to have Kenneth Watson aka 12 Faces of Sober on the show today. We were literally just about to get into the conversation and I was like oh wait, let me hit record, because Kenneth’s wife is literally ready to give birth at any moment. So if this episode abruptly gets stopped, it’s because he had to go to the hospital.

00:53 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
So this is Well. Hello, jessica. Thank you so much for coming, allowing me to come on Bottomless to Sober and share a little little something from my past. I greatly appreciate it and appreciate all what you’re doing in the sober community.

01:13 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Thank you, thank you. So Kenny, like I said, literally his wife is due at any moment now, which is really really exciting. And you know, kenny and I have had opportunities to talk a little bit like on and off, probably over the past, like year and a half, maybe two years at this point, and you know, I remember like when we both talked about like relationships and dating and all of this, and boom out of nowhere, kenny’s married, there’s a baby on the way. So tell us a little bit about that because I think, like for anybody who’s followed you, whatever you’re comfortable sharing, of course, but yeah, like Kenny, what’s been going on? Mr Soon, to Be Sober Dad, this is beautiful.

01:52 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
I met my wife. Let me see, five years ago I was on one of my many I made it a point early in sobriety to, you know, travel and go to sporting events. And I was in Cleveland, actually, at Chargers, chargers, cleveland Browns game, and she had posted something Well, actually it was a black, a black vegan group on Facebook. And so they were like, hey, you know, post the post a picture of you know guys wearing the suits. I was like, shoot, you know, I’m doing community work or whatever. So posted it and you know, got a few likes and everything. So I’m going through.

02:32
It was like all right, well, I’m single, so let’s see. And so she was one of the first persons that I actually, you know, slid in the DM and she responded. So I was like all right, cool, so we hit it off, you know, no kids, both while I was in completion of my master’s degree, because she also had a master’s degree. So it was a lot of things you know as far as that. And so she’s, you know, we’ve been together Like I think it just I think, yeah, this past.

03:07
I think it was October, october, 14, may, five years when we first met, and then this upcoming February will be our first year anniversary of being married and probably, you know, people are probably wondering like, where did this come from? How to let feel. But I, you know, I told I made it a point to be very careful in terms of my relationship. You know, being posted on social media, learning from my past mistakes during the days of drinking, and other people on social media chiming in on my mess. You know my mistakes and mishaps, so that was more or less where I didn’t really do it. You know I’m not ashamed of my wife. I love her to death, but it, you know, I just there was times where I shared, you know, things on there, but I just felt like right now that’s not the goal at hand, and so a lot of people who were definitely surprised when I started posting certain things, but I just felt like I didn’t want that you know part of it to be, you know, in my life.

04:09
But we more or less like I don’t know, like we knew we were going to get married. We proposed, I proposed to her, like I think it was a couple of years ago and you know we took a little time off to you know, get ourselves together and then we got.

04:25
You know, she came to Minnesota in December and then the baby came, you know, and it was like, all right, well, let’s go ahead and push the waiting date up a little bit. And so we got married in April and but we were going to probably get married within, probably like within the year. You know, that was a plan even before the baby was, even, you know, a thought. We were going to do it. So but, yeah, but as far as that like it, I’m not going to lie to you. My a part of my past drinking was from situations you know, dealing with an abortion in 2008.

05:01
A miscarriage in the year that I don’t want to mention, but you know, just it, it, it. I knew that there was a part of me that always wanted to have a child, even, you know, dating back to when I was 14, being in the first pregnancy situation. And so to go all those years not having, you know, having a child, and now, you know, having one of my own. It’s truly a blessing. It surpasses anything thus far within my sobriety of almost seven years.

05:33 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So powerful Congratulations. I know a big question that I’m sure people wonder right, especially with conversations around relationships. Obviously your wife is pregnant, so I know she’s nine months sober, for sure, but is she a non-drinker, or what does that look like for you all in your dynamic?

05:52 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
I got lucky. I got lucky. Yes, well, I’m not going to lie. You know she has you know, drank. You know, I think she drank last year, but that was on our separation time, so I can’t hold that against her. But no, our, our home is is 100% alcohol free as long as, even when we were, you know, in Jacksonville and you know she was, you know, staying with me there there was no alcohol.

06:19
It didn’t matter who my guests were, you know so that the good thing about it is is that you know with our family.

06:25 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Now you know our son is going to.

06:28 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
You know, we’ll be born into a sober household. Like I said, my wife I’ve never seen my wife drink and I don’t plan on it. So if she drinks outside of me that’s her business, but she doesn’t. I’ve never, not once, seen her drink in five years.

06:42 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, well, that’s super powerful. And, again, like I, I am so stinking happy for you because it’s like I know we’ve been having these conversations over, like I said, the last year and a half, two years. At this point, so to hear that is is really, really awesome. Um, you know, one of the things that you mentioned that kind of like being careful and past relationships and kind of like some of some of the loss that you’ve experienced in the past what are some of like the hopes that you have? Like now that you’re looking at parent, like this is a whole new level of sobriety right. Like now you’re looking at parenthood, like I know for me, I hope to get there at some point. You know that’s something that I have like come around to deciding, like it’s something I want and obviously it’s not just the matter of hopefully when and if right. But I’m curious, like what are like your hopes? Like now you’re about to be a father, you’re about to have a son.

07:36 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Right just to be the best father possible. My father was in my life and to all my friends. They thought that we were like the Cosbeads, but it’s like nah. We got our own type of issues and I witnessed my father abuse alcohol, so I know that.

07:58
I don’t want my son to ever see me intoxicated, because I saw that as a kid. From as far as I can remember, I can remember my dad drinking. I can remember issues with the police. So those are definitely two things that I don’t want my son to witness. I know that it’s no longer. I know that once I got married it was no longer about me. Now I have my wife to think about and my son to think about.

08:25
So just a different thought process. I’m not gonna lie to you. I’ve been a stepfather. I’ve dated women who’ve had kids and of course, your thought process isn’t the same, because these aren’t your kids. Yeah, they may respect you, they may not respect you, but those are still not your kids at the end of the day. And so for me, I guess I just, I just wanna I’m glad you asked that, because I just text two of my close friends from college and I was like they’re both fathers and I’m like, man, can you give me any type of advice? Man, like I got, my anxiety is just crazy right now. And they’re just like stay prayed up and there’s no right or wrong way to do it, but just be present in your child’s life. And I was like that’s all I’m trying to do and the good thing is I’m not working. So it’s like if my wife needs to rest I can do whatever, even if she’s at work. We don’t have to pay to do daycare because I’m at home all day.

09:30 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So, well I oh no, cause I was gonna ask you actually like so what is like, what are you doing to prepare? Because I think again, like when we get sober, we get a lot of tools. And one of the things that’s been interesting about watching you very recently too, I feel like you’ve been very vocal about how you’ve kind of done your own thing and kind of worked on your own path, right, and so now that you’re, you’ve been doing your own path. That has had to work for you, because different spaces didn’t resonate with you. As black man, I’m curious, like what’s the preparation for the parenthood piece been looking like? So you mentioned your friends and I was curious, like, are you work? Like, is there any mentorship going on? Like what, what does that whole preparation look like?

10:09 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
I have plenty of good men, plenty of good men, not only black men, it’s probably the majority. And so you know, my father’s still alive, you know we’re definitely on good terms. So I go to them. Like I’m not gonna lie to you, I did have like a mental, a mental health breakdown a couple of weeks ago and I think that it was just a harsh reality of a lot of things. It was like okay, I’m just going by, you know, the last eight months, eight months and change, and it’s like okay, I’m going to be responsible for a whole nother human being.

10:46
You know what I’m saying? That, according to the ultrasound looks a lot like me. So it’s just kind of one of those things. It’s like it’s something that I envisioned, but to me it’s like you can’t prepare for it, no matter how. You know you can sit here and you could watch all kinds of videos, watch other people’s profiles it’s still not going to prepare you for you know you being in that situation and I’ve been in it before, but to 100%, no, like this is my child, there’s no questioning. You know you shouldn’t have to deal with that, but that’s what I had to deal with, you know, and I paid the price in the process, because I didn’t know how to deal with my emotions at that time.

11:32 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So how do you deal with your emotions now? And you’ve been sober. What is it seven years or six years?

11:37 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Yeah, it’d be seven years next week.

11:39 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Okay, wow.

11:40 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
One to 15. Like I’ve been, honestly I’ve been struggling because therapists like I’m, you know, big shots out to Miss Charlene Smith. I’ve just go. You know she’s no longer my therapist but by far the best therapist that I’ve had since 2010. And it was to me like she was more of like an auntie than she was my therapist that the government was paying, you know, to have these sessions. And once I left Jacksonville, I think the last session I had with her was when all hell broke blue excuse my language last year and I had to move back up here and she was like I don’t care if you’re out of state, but I’m gonna take your. You know, I’m gonna take this call and I was like all right.

12:32
So I’ve been battling in terms of trying to find the right therapist.

12:36
You know, like in Minnesota there aren’t therapists of color and I want to have a therapist that has some type of knowledge of what a black person goes through or you know what I’m saying because they’ve experienced it when you have someone that’s not of your own ethnic background, unless they’re married to somebody and they still want 100% no. And so I had a therapist. She was black, she was in St Louis, we were doing virtual, but then it was issues because you know she would forget that we would have the appointments. And I’m like, okay, you know, I don’t know if you saw, but like I think during the summer like I would go for walks while I was having my therapy sessions and stuff like walk around the lake in my old neighborhood. So now it’s just more or less of me trying to, and even though the therapist that they have me scheduled to see next month, I got rid of her last year because it affected she was non-African-American and I’m telling her the stuff that I’m going through, but it’s just not resonating, she’s not understanding it.

13:42
And so I was just like I can’t. I’m sorry, you know disrespect, but I can’t have you as a therapist if we can’t relate. And so, and then now, like I said, they scheduled it and I just told my wife I was like, wait a minute, they just said the same the lady I had an issue with last year. So now I just how I more or less already belong with it, but how I usually handle it now I have really, really good friends. I have good friends from childhood, from junior high, elementary, college, military.

14:13
I can reach out to a lot of people, and even in the sober community, and so you know we help each other and that’s kind of how it is. So I will definitely say that. So shout out to the sober community, thankful, thank you, because I know that I’ve had some hard days and I can reach out, including you is like, look, I’m struggling, I don’t know what to do, and that’s kind of how it is, even though I haven’t met a lot of people, obviously in the sober community, but I still feel like we have that connection and of course we’re gonna meet one day, but it’s just a matter of time.

14:47 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Oh, for sure, like either something’s gonna bring me to Minnesota or I know you have connections in Florida. For sure, like one of the biggest issues in terms of access to appropriate medical care for people with addiction is that right that we don’t see ourselves represented in service providers and that can create a really big barrier. You have to feel seen and if your provider doesn’t know that, doesn’t understand that, then it’s a really difficult thing.

15:13 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Yeah, and then one thing I have an issue with, too, is that this is for any healthcare professional make sure you read the chart before you see the client. Because I’m gonna give you an example. I was in Phoenix, like I might’ve been, maybe like within the first six months of me being out the Army and, like I said, I was still. I was on the tail end of my addiction and I volunteered to go have a therapy session and the lady come you know, calls me in the office and was like, yeah, so what are you here for? And I’m like, did you read anything? I’m like I’m a victim of domestic violence. I struggling with alcohol. Hell, I probably smelled like alcohol the day I went up in there and I was in tears and I was like, I mean, I’ve cried before in the therapy session, but not like that was like dang.

16:06
What’s the purpose of you having me come in here for this appointment If you don’t even know anything? I mean you could have, at least, just five or ten minutes before I walked in here, looked over something. No, that lady had no clue and I said I’ll never see that lady again. Sure enough, I switched there. It’s like the next day or that same day I was like I need somebody else.

16:26 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and I mean even just that little personal touch, right Like that, that can go a long, long way.

16:33
So, kenny, tell me a little bit about your story, because obviously you know my podcast is like pretty new, like I just started in July, so you know I haven’t been on before and for anybody who’s listening, you might be like a totally brand new human being that I’m introducing on here and so obviously, so far they know that you are super excited to be a dad. But you know you’ve done some major things. You’re a vet, right, and I think like that’s important. Um, so can you tell us a little bit about yourself and just kind of like how you, how you got to a place of struggling with alcohol and how you came back from it?

17:06 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Hmm, okay, uh, you mentioned florida. I was uh born in florida or raised in san diego, california. My dad was in the navy so we kind of moved around a little bit and kind of around the country in the 80s. Um, as I mentioned earlier, my dad um struggle with alcoholism, um while he was in the military, so I saw it and so a lot of the his actions Eventually carried on to me the love for music, playing it all, day and night, um stuff like that. Um I would. I’m the youngest of five, two brothers, two sisters. I was the only one who had the issue with drinking. My other, some of my siblings they drink, but no one had the issue like I did.

17:52
Um, I was like anybody, you know, I ain’t gonna say anybody, but I was, you know, an athlete. You know, growing up, you know I played baseball, basketball, football. It’s pretty good at some of those sports. Some of them just kind of kept me off the streets. Um, all right, I wasn’t. I would say I was For rather, you know, intelligent until I moved to one of the worst school districts in the county in san diego and I was in the top percentile.

18:17
I have to say this I was in the top percentile in california, all the way up until like fourth grade gifted classes and then we moved districts and then I just lost all of it and so my parents didn’t have education. So always in my mind was, like they’re working so hard. I know that once it’s time for me to get out of school, that I need to go to college, that so that I can have, hopefully, a better opportunity. So I folded around and went to four colleges and universities one, hbcu, carcass, and university um. But the problem was is, once I got the degree in 2003, um, the job market, you know, wasn’t the greatest. And so in my mind I’m thinking, like, okay, if I go to college, I invest all this time, then I’ll be able to get a job. Oh no, that wasn’t the case. And the job that I did end up getting in my field, it was only paying me seven dollars an hour. So of course I’m hustling, I’m I’m substitute teaching, I’m working at a prison out here, and that’s that was my hustle. And Because of politics and everything, me being a young, on their personality, you got these older personalities. They didn’t like it because of the fact that, like, okay, this guy’s gonna steal my job, the hundred thousand dollar job that they got, now potentially I can take. And so clashes, and so I ended up leaving there and I went to Arizona. And when I went to Arizona I’m thinking like, okay, I have the degree, I have the experience and now I’ll be able to Get a job in radio. No, I didn’t. I didn’t get a job and I had to go get a job Just like anybody else, working in department stores, post office and so on and so forth.

20:00
But in between that time I’m hanging out with my brother, my brother’s 10 years older than, or is 10 years older than me. So they’re drinking, they’re smoking. You know, at that time I’m drinking Budweiser, they drinking malt, liquor, hennessy and all this stuff. So now I’m going from, you know, as some would say, the mommy wine culture to now I’m drinking the, the street stuff. And so when I’m drinking this now it’s bringing out a whole different person. And so I’m hanging out with these guys. They’re miserable in their marriages and I’m just a guy who’s Not trying to get married, but I’m absorbing all of what they’re doing.

20:37
And so I started to pick up that habit then because I couldn’t find work. I wasn’t happy with the work that I was getting. The pay was horrible 10, 11 dollars an hour, barely surviving and so I ended up getting with someone. She got pregnant and ended up having an abortion, and he completely drove me crazy. And so I told her. I said, if you do this, you’re not going to get the same person, and eventually that relationship lasted for a little bit longer, but I ended up doing a night in jail and, you know, lost everything, was homeless and had to come to Minnesota and that was my first day in rehab.

21:15
So I did Three stints in rehab before I actually Got to where I’m at today three rehabs, two detoxes, one homeless shelter, um, but as far as where, it continued to carry over, I was in the military. I served in your army for six years. If anybody knows about the military culture, you work hard, you play hard, but then you drink even harder, and I was already with the addiction before I got in the army, and so it was magnified, and at that point I was needy, I needed the attention of a woman, and so I got married to somebody that I had no business being married to, and I was with her for for six years and she basically Told me that I wouldn’t be shit excuse my language that I would be a drunk with um, but a bachelor’s degree, and she’s all right, she’s absolutely correct, but I’m now sober with a master’s degree, so I don’t know. But, and so I, in 2016, after I got the army 2015 but 2016 Um, I was in a hospital.

22:17
I did nine days. I had issues with my pancreas it almost exploded Gained a lot of weight, lost a lot of weight within a nine day span, but I still didn’t learn. I still didn’t learn that, okay, this alcohol is taking me out. And so, finally, um, I I called my mom like I said I mentioned a few minutes ago, I was in a homeless shelter and I got kicked out. The homeless shelter Called. My mom was like, hey, can I come back to Minnesota? And she’s like but you got to get sober. I said all right. And so I was on the bench for like two weeks and then, finally, I went ahead and um.

22:53
Like I did a night of a binge. I went to the casino, spent about four, five hundred dollars. My mom was like how can I help you? How can I get you sober? How can I, you know, get you on the right path? Because I I don’t want to bury my son. And when she said that I just completely sobered up. I still drink until I went in the rehab.

23:11
But I just knew that there was that this alcohol stuff wasn’t for me, and so I did treatment. When I was in treatment, I got my furniture, my car, from Arizona. Um, I, I’m not gonna lie, I like to say it. Um, men, we do get a chance to take furniture from the women. I took a four bedroom house full of furniture In my car. My car got shipped up here when I was in uh in treatment.

23:34
And so once I knew that, when I got out of the hospital, once I knew that, when I got out of rehab, that I knew like, okay, maybe this is going to be different. I had the keys to my car, I had the keys to my apartment that day of, and then, a couple weeks later, I started grad school, because I applied to grad school when I was in uh treatment, and so that I mean I did that and and pretty much Over the six or seven years I’ve traveled. Like I said, I love sports, so I’ve tried to go to sport and then talk throughout the country. Um, I did a study abroad, and also Mandela University during my graduate studies. Um created a podcast author to book. Um, what else? Got married, have kids, you’re about to have a son. I mean, sobriety has brought a lot of stuff that I honestly did not think that I would be able to experience, and I love it and and I encourage anybody to just try and just see what happens. You never know.

24:33 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
That’s awesome. One of the things that I noticed, also that you had a kind of posted about lately, was sort of navigating your own path. So for anybody who might be listening and kind of trying to figure out what works for them especially if they’re a man, especially if they are a man of color, a black man, who might be listening right what do you recommend or like what worked for you and what didn’t work for you? Like, obviously I know you went to rehab, but once you get out, you know rehab is this protective little fortress that we’re all in, because I went to rehab too and you’re finding your safe when you’re in there, but as soon as you come out, the real world is waiting for you. So how did you transition into the real world and stay sober all this time? Like what did those supports look like? Was it just sober people? Was it all sorts of people who you were connecting with? Because you know some people will say, like you have to only be around sober people, etc. So like what did it look like for you?

25:28 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Did you do like?

25:29 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
step programs, etc. Things like that.

25:32 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Well, I had the it’s no longer open, but there was the next town over and I had been going to that AA group since like 2008. And so I would probably say like I did a combination of a lot of things because for me AA was kind of triggering, because I was going to AA and I was still drinking. You know, I would either go into AA intoxicated or the moment I left I was intoxicated. So it was more or less like I tried it but I just didn’t. I didn’t feel comfortable in the room because I was an old black person in there and it was. I wanted to be in the rooms where I can hear some similar stories, like maybe some childhood trauma, certain things that that may not. You know, because you know how it is in in in in black people’s homes, they don’t necessarily address those hotbed issues mental health, you know, addiction to a substance and stuff like that, and so that was it. But now, like I would say, like some of my friends didn’t understand, like fully understand, because they still drink, and so I was still being invited to to functions early into sobriety and I was like look, no, I can’t go, I don’t trust myself, let alone being amongst a bunch of people that this is the main focus of this get together is you’re going to be drinking. And so I had to say no and be firm, like no, I’m sorry, I don’t want to hang out. You know now, if you want to come, you know, come, hang out at my place, where I know like I’m not going to be drinking. Then yeah, so I had to be have limitations even, you know, had company, you know of the opposite sex. They knew they couldn’t come over and have it. You know, out on now they chose to drink before they came over. That state business.

27:31
But I would have to say, learning to say no, that was probably by far one of the hardest things. For me was to say no because, like I’m boring, I can’t have fun without alcohol. But then once I realized I didn’t see that I can and so I would say, like getting to know myself because of the fact that, like I was lying to myself for so many years. So it was like I had to retrain my thought. Like you don’t have to lie your way out of everything, just be honest. Now, if they don’t like your honesty, guess what? At least you know what I’m saying. You’re not intoxicated and getting caught up in lies. So I say that a lot of things that I couldn’t do, that that was key, like when I was married, like it was only going to Phoenix. When I lived in North Carolina, living Texas, we only went to Phoenix to visit her family.

28:22 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Now, you know, in the last seven years.

28:24 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
I’d have been to more states in these seven years that I did in the sixth that I was married, and so it’s like, okay, now I can do it. I love sports, so I’m trying these things that I couldn’t do, that I was doing when I was drinking, and am I comfortable? I tried one game. Okay, let’s try another one, let’s try another one. And so that’s more or less with that. But I would say, just be.

28:50
I think that for me it was this is all I had. It was like either I get sober and continue to live this life or you might as well, just, you know, go down the road about 10 miles to the maximum prison where they got the Duke that took out George George Floyd. I can go in that prison where I used to work at, because that’s where I was heading, and so now it’s like I don’t want that and that’s why I try to spread the message like a it’s possible, yeah, try a. Try everything. If it don’t work, try something else. So that’s what I did.

29:25
I put myself, I got active in the community. I was, you know, doing community work up in St Cloud, hanging out with the mayor, the police chief, stuff like that. So it’s just kind of keeping myself busy, you know. And then I had grad school. Grad school was my therapy. Going to class every day, studying writing 2025 30 page papers was my therapy. And, like I said, now, the blessing of my wife and having an in house therapist 24 seven, you know what I mean. So it just you know. Just I guess, given myself a chance. I didn’t give myself a chance when I was drinking because I spent more time drinking than doing anything else. Now I got time. I want to go do stuff and I do if I’m financially able to do it.

30:10 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
If not, I go do something for free. That’s always a good point, thank you, and so I know earlier I had asked you like what are you hopeful for with your son coming? Is there anything that you’re like fearful of with this new transition? Um?

30:30 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
I just, I just don’t want my diabetes to take me out.

30:33 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hmm.

30:42 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
You know, I said I was going to be like super healthy, super strong before he gets here, but that’s not a harsh reality. So I mean, I think, just be present, I think what’s most important, like when I played sports my dad wasn’t there, and so the luxury of now to date, is that I don’t have to work.

31:01
My dad At least that’s what he said he was working, so he didn’t have time to watch my games. Now I do. You know, I know I post on. You know I’m going to my nephew’s games on Friday nights. He plays basketball as well, so I’ll be doing that here in the next couple of weeks. So that’s kind of I’ve been preparing myself for a lot of years. I’m looking forward to whatever activity he’s involved in. I will be there. If my wife came, I will be there.

31:27
You know what I’m saying, yelling my, you know, to the top of my lungs, but I don’t know. I just as far as fear, I’m going to be honest. No, I don’t. I’ve seen enough fear in my life. I’m so that my son don’t have to. You know what I mean and I guess some of my past relationships prepared me. So this is, I don’t know, like I don’t want to. I don’t want to think about fear, because I live that life of fear when I was drinking, because it was like I didn’t want to deal with nothing in life. So I guess I don’t know. I don’t know if that makes sense.

32:08 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, no, it does so. Like well, what advice or what message would you give to anybody who maybe, yeah, like, for example, like I’m 38, anybody who’s listening, who is in their late 30s, their 40s and they’re feeling like time has passed them by, right like that? When that that voice comes out, that’s like it’s too late. What did you say to Summer?

32:32 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
It’s never too late Because, like you said, as you, you, I want to use it. Please say, but the fear of the unknown, like I didn’t, I didn’t know what long term sobriety look like, I know what a 30 days look like, I know what a week or two or 24 hours look like. But but this, right here, and I’m living proof, just by removing alcohol, that all these opportunities have, you know, came available. I’m, you know, hanging out with, you know, like minded people in the sub community that’s trying to spread awareness to it. So I would say, on social media, find some people that are truly genuine, that, even though that they’re behind the phone and you may never met, but are these people would you hang out with, would you truly trust?

33:37
telling personal information to Just keep a diary of how it’s going right, Document the good days and the bad days, Okay, so that when you have that long, long-term sobriety on your belt, you can go back and be like okay, how did I get myself out of that situation? Okay, I was anxious, I was frustrated. Oh, I know I can go to drinking, but what are you doing now so that you’re not putting yourself in that situation? I would say be as active in the sober community, Be careful for some snakes out there, but just be as active as you can ask questions. You know what I mean.

34:24 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
That’s what I was gonna ask you about too, because that was the other thing that I had noticed on some of your shares, like on your posts, there had been sort of like a few people that made reference to, I guess, like rejection from people in the sober community, and I was curious if you could speak to that a little bit.

34:47 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Yeah, when I first got into the sober community, like you say, 2017, because I was in treatment and I wasn’t really using my phone.

34:56 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I would reach out to people.

34:57 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Hey, I’m newly sober, what advice can you give? Okay, some people wouldn’t even respond, the majority of them would. So I was like, all right, well, all right, then I’m gonna continue to keep posting my stuff and hopefully somebody will catch on.

35:15
And then I started, like you know, after like maybe I would say, maybe like year three, so like either 2019, 2020 is when I started to like people started to. I don’t know it was. I’m dealing with this, so it was. I’m dealing with different types of people in the community. But it was tough because, like I said, I wanted to try this. You know what I mean. I wanted to really be active within it and it’s like, okay, some people have you know that I reached out to, had years under their belt. I’m like I just want some guy and I’m like, look, you don’t have to be my sponsor, I don’t want a sponsor. But you know, can I lean on you? Can I? You know, if I’m having a tough day, can I just be like I wouldn’t get no responses? And even now, like even with some of the stuff that was like that was said, like last year, like I was in an interview and someone was like, as if, like that I can’t go and study abroad in South Africa and you know the government pay for it. You know what I mean and I’m like, okay, who are you Like if that’s what happened? You know I served my country, I earned that right. Why are you upset? You know what I mean. And then they made another comment like oh, my son, he was on the airplane and he pointed out this black guy and asked me why is he so dark? I’m like, so you telling me this on a podcast interview? This is no joke. I said okay.

36:47
And then you know other instances, you know people telling me oh, you’re not promoting AA. And I said I never said that. I said you can try it If you like it, cool, but if you don’t, yeah, just know that you can. You can say that you tried it. But, like I said, it’s four, some and not for all, but I don’t know Like it. To me this ain’t a popularity contest and to a certain extent that’s where it what it, what it seems like. And with me having a master’s degree in communications in this media, I analyze this every day and I know that this is not how this community should be, but it is and I want to change it. But you know there needs to be a few more voices out here. But, like I said, when I first started there was nobody. Now there is, so it’s kind of like alright, let’s keep going.

37:48 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
What would you envision it to be like if it was like ideal?

37:53 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Morey, more events, more events, more sponsors, more, more inclusiveness, then you know, if you guys don’t want to include us. You know we on the panel we was in this summer Like we shouldn’t have to put up a fuss like we were seeing at least I know I was seeing I brought it up to kill. I said wait a minute, like so you telling me that this is the face of sobriety? Is nobody of color? Or you got one person, one person. Okay, there’s more out here, and a big chunk of them I ain’t gonna say big, but a handful have been on my podcast. I had to go do the legwork to find them. You know what I mean. So, and then it kind of trickled down. Now, everybody’s ever, you know, it’s cool with everybody, which is cool.

38:45
I wanted to continue to grow, like I said, I just want to be happy in this community. I want to meet as many people, however, and so on, but the other bs y’all could keep that you know. But I just I realized after what happened a couple weeks ago, I’m just not gonna address it, I’m just gonna block the individuals and keep it moving, because I don’t want, you know, those People that do support me and follow me and understand like I’m trying my best in this journey To get deterred because of somebody else. You know, because they’re of their ignorance and stupidity. You know saying.

39:21 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I mean that’s crazy that somebody would ask you that, like in a podcast interview, like that.

39:26
That’s wild. And yeah, I mean I would say I know that I remember in the summer I was, I was out of the country visiting my mom, but I remember that’s actually it was the sober summit which is getting redone and you know, I know you spoke up about it, kyola spoke up about it and the woman who runs it, maggie, she stepped up and for the holiday version which is out actually this week, um, she was very intentional about bringing on Making it a more diverse panel. So, you know, I’m I’m glad that I remember Kyola having like a big post about it and calling it out and you know, I appreciate that, like, maggie took that feedback and did something about it. Um, and, like you said, it would be great to see that happen more, because addiction doesn’t just affect one population. Like addiction is seen in all races, all ethnicities, all backgrounds. But the way that you know mainstream recovery puts that, you would think it’s just like white folks We’ll deal with addiction right, and it’s not.

40:32 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
It’s not like I said I, I love to see it like more and more just the you know different different pages. I’m like, okay, that’s what’s up, let me follow. You know what I’m saying. Every time I see if, if it’s something that’s tagged, like, I think j, I think j had somebody on there like somebody else, uh, like tagged him or something. So I was like I clicked on the that individual’s profile. Okay, yeah, I’m following them too. You know what I’m saying.

40:59
Because, that’s just to me is what it is. I, I love to see it. I love you, know. Even if it’s somebody’s promoting something, I try to share that too, because I know that I’m not gonna see that on other people’s pages, you know yeah, yeah, and you know.

41:13 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
And the other thing too, with addiction, I think, like you know, I remember well I don’t remember because I was a kid, but you know, when we were talking about addiction in the 80s and 90s, it was the crack epidemic and that was affecting predominantly black americans, right, and we, I feel like we didn’t really talk about addiction, it was just criminalized. Nowadays we’re dealing with opiate addiction, you know, sweeping across the country and you know, now the conversation is happening, right, because we have a certain demographic of folks that are being impacted. But the crazy thing is that there are actually plenty of people of color who are also being affected by by opiates. But you know, of course, because the majority are white folks, you know that that has had more attention, which is Wild, because I I almost feel like now, for example, like when you hear about people talking about addiction, like sometimes you would think that it as if it’s just white people who are impacted, but like no populations of color have been impacted historically.

42:14
I mean, you know, like I remember one of the wildest things that I remember reading and learning about once I got sober Was how alcohol was used, like I went to. So I went to New Orleans last year and did a tour at I cannot remember the the name of the plantation, but it was like they went through One of the ways in which like alcohol was used with enslaved populations and like you gave them alcohol and you especially gave them alcohol during the holidays so that they wouldn’t plan like to escape, right. So like, what a powerful way to subdue a population, to give them mind-altering substances, because then they’re not going to be coherent enough to like plan any escape, right? We don’t have those conversations enough about how like rebellious sobriety actually really is right like, if you’re clear-headed, you are way less likely to be controlled.

43:03
And you know, we don’t. We don’t talk about that enough, especially for populations of color Like. It’s so important to have our clear heads. You know.

43:11 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
I agree 100%. I was just. I was on the phone with Kiehl’s dad last night and we were having this exact conversation real, because it’s it’s. It’s hard because, like you said, you know, because it’s affecting One community. Now they have, like you said, they got these initiatives Okay, but where were these?

43:31
initiatives, when you was going directly to our hoods and and putting and showing us how to cook the stuff. You know what I mean. Well, we’re gonna take you out, we’re gonna take the mail out the home, but this is what it is and you guys got to deal with. And so now it’s like okay, you got people of color talk about. We don’t want this stuff, no more. We want a different life, and sometimes we’re not as welcome. I’ve even had people who have black in their tag name and people will reach out to them like why does it have to be about race? You know, somebody matter of fact, somebody gifted me a sober black veteran. Somebody inboxed me. No, they commented on my post and was like can you make me a white sober veteran shirt? I’m like you can go make your own damn shirt. You know what I mean, but she’s not gonna come on my page with that stuff, you know.

44:25 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and that’s the thing it’s like. To me, the most dangerous conversation is the one where it’s like I don’t see color, like no, I need you to see me. I need you to see me exactly as I am, because this color that I carry is a huge part of my identity, my upbringing and also a lot of the trauma that’s been put on me and my family for generations, you know. So it’s so important to recognize it. Well, we’ve been all over the place in this conversation.

44:57 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
I won’t. Hopefully I didn’t talk too much, you know.

44:59 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
No, no, no, this has been great. I mean, again, I’m just really excited to have had the opportunity to touch base with you. I know your life is about to completely change, you know, in the matter of days, weeks, right. So I’m just really honored that you took the time to talk to me because, again, you’re getting ready for a big transition. I’m really honestly happy. I’m so happy for you. Like I remember when you first told me that you had a baby on the way, and then I saw the marriage announcement. You know, I’m just really grateful to see people reaping the fruits of this work, you know, and it’s like I wish more people could, right, and not everyone gets this blessing. And you know, I do feel very fortunate and I know you feel very blessed and fortunate too, like we’re definitely a minority and I’m very grateful to be here and I’m just so glad to see that you’re happy. So I was like oh, let me reach out to Kenny because you know, I appreciate it, I really do.

46:03 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
I appreciate it all because, like I said, it’s you know, being on the interview side is totally different than, you know, me being the host, because I, at one point, that’s all I was doing was just interviewing, interviewing, interviewing one interview, you know, and then about 20 more. You know what I mean. So it was like, but it’s you know, it’s cool and it’s I’m definitely happy to be in this community and I’m happy to, you know, really meet people like you that definitely keep me, you know, on the up and up of you know, about this sobriety and not giving up. You know what I’m saying, because if there’s been too many times where I’m like man, I could just delete this account and just go live my life and I’ll be okay. It’s kind of how I is, but I don’t want that. I want to continue to spread the message and, like I said, coming from a different perspective, you know, with attitude. Basically, you know what I’m saying, but it’s people are relating to it. You know what I mean, and so I got to keep going.

47:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, exactly, I mean because your son is only one of many lives you’re touching, like you’ve been touching lives for years and now you have this beautiful life that’s coming and you know the work that you’re doing. It’s just like you’re planting a seed, like who knows what your son can do? Your son can do like anything, and that’s so wild because you get to be sober, like you literally are. It’s almost like you’re creating the most fertile soil for, like your son to grow. Like, if your son is going to be this flower, he’s going to be like this big, beautiful, like just gorgeous human being, because you’re giving him like the best environment to have a head start. It doesn’t mean that he won’t have like his own challenges. He’s going to be a human being in this world. That’s a crazy world, but like what, what a better parent than like a sober parent right to have? So that’s just awesome.

47:58 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Yeah, because I definitely don’t want to. You know, hear, you know I don’t want to be apologized to my son every single time I made a mistake because I was drinking, right. That was the only time my father apologized and it’s like, okay, but what about all the other stuff? You know what I mean. So I’m just like I don’t want that. I just want to be present as I can, and I know the only way I can be present I have to be sober, and I’m definitely looking forward to it.

48:26 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah Well, kenny, thank you. Thank you so much. So if folks want to find Kenny again, his handle is 12 Faces of Sober I’ll link it in my Instagram. I’ll also link. Your book is on Amazon, right?

48:43 – Kenneth Watson (Guest)
Amazon and on Walmart. All you gotta do is type in the 12 Faces of Sober as well, as you can get it on my website, 12FacesofSobercom. I became a best seller last February 22nd 2022. I have a few more books in the works. I just I don’t know, I don’t know if I’m gonna kind of scare you to put them out, but you know, we’ll see one day. But, yeah, Okay, that’s pretty much it.

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In this episode:

Join me as I tackle the challenges of navigating the holidays while maintaining sobriety. This episode takes a hard look at our programmed thoughts, particularly those we’ve clung onto since childhood, and how they might not truly resonate with us. To help you combat these, I introduce a simple, yet profound question to ask yourself: “So what?” This question is a handy tool to challenge your thoughts throughout the holiday season. The second half of this episode discusses the concept of safety in recovery and how to establish it within ourselves. We explore how alcohol can make us feel like we need it for survival when in fact we don’t.

Resources:

Sober Summit Holiday Edition – Get A Free Ticket!

New Year’s Eve Self Forgiveness Workshop

Addiction and The Brain Video

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:
Hey everyone, and somehow, just like that, it’s already November. I literally do not know where the time went this year. I feel like I literally it was January. I closed my eyes and, boom, here we are in November. And it’s also just hilarious because I maybe I feel it stronger this year than in other years, but I also feel like it really feels like it’s the holidays. Maybe it’s because of, like, the never ending jokes online, of like when the clock struck 12 on Halloween, that people are bringing out Christmas trees, et cetera but it really really feels like it’s that time of the year which, for some people, it can be like the most joyous time of year and for many, many others including you, if you’re listening to this, because you’re probably somewhere on the spectrum of addiction, right it can also be just a really triggering and difficult time of year. So I wanted to talk about the holidays. With that being said, first, I wanted to point out a free resource the sober summit holiday edition is featuring myself, but 23 other really like phenomenal speakers. I’m going to have her as a guest on the podcast. Keo Lorraine’s will be one of the speakers, jay Chase, chris Marshall, founder of Sandsbar. Lots of other really phenomenal folks are going to be on there and we’re all essentially telling our stories and also talking about getting through the holidays sober, right. Lots of really valuable tips, et cetera, and all of that is free, and so I will have the link in the bio for you to register for that. It is coming up actually right next week, november 8th through the 10th is when all these interviews and conversations and events go live, and resources. So I will put that in the show notes so that you have an opportunity to sign up for free for that.

But let’s go ahead and let’s transition into the topic, right? So the key question that I want to introduce to you, for you to really having your back pocket anytime you find yourself battling your thoughts this holiday season, is literally asking yourself these two really short, simple words so what? So what as a question is going to be so important for you to challenge yourself? Because one of the biggest barriers that we can often have in our recovery and just in our personal development in general is that we have thoughts that we have been programmed with since we were younger, that we firmly believe are true and, at the end of the day, if we sit with them and push back against them. We realize that they don’t actually resonate truly with us in our spirits. Right, it’s usually something that we were taught either in our family or by society at large. Right, but we have to really sit and examine what matters to us and use that as a way to kind of help guide our path, moving forward as we go through the next two months here, through this lovely human existence. Right, because not only are we going into the holiday season, but also, like the world itself also really feels like it’s on fire, and I feel like the world is always on fire.

And now we have you know, we have crisis and conflict in the world, a lot of people who don’t know, kind of like, how to respond, how to feel about it all sorts of mixed feelings. And, frankly, wherever you are, wherever you are, right, I just want to recognize that your feelings are valid, but it’s also important to recognize that your feelings aren’t necessarily facts. So, with that being said, let’s talk about some different scenarios and how you can use the question. So what, right? So first, let’s say that you, either you have been in an online support group community or you recently joined an online support group community, and you know that during the holidays there will be meetings. Most of these communities do not drop their meetings during holidays because of the importance of being able to have a safe space to go to.

On Christmas, for example, when there’s way too many people talking in your family and you’re losing your mind, you might need to get on a meeting to talk, right. But now you’re worried about getting on a meeting because you don’t want to be caught having a conversation about your recovery journey, right? You don’t want to be caught working on your recovery. You don’t want to be caught getting support from other people. You don’t want to be heard being on any of these calls, right. And so you’re thinking, hmm, maybe during the holidays, even though I would love to get on a meeting and connect with, like my fellow sober peers, I don’t want my family to know that I’m doing this.

And so, first, I hear you. It’s scary. But second, I want to ask you to ask yourself so what if they find out? Right? I really want you to think about that. I want you to follow that.

So what up with asking yourself what is the absolute worst thing that could happen from your family finding out that you are working on yourself Seriously, like write it out. If you need to get a piece of paper and write out, what is the worst thing that could happen from your family finding out that you’re working on yourself, and then look at the worst thing on that list and you tell me if that worst thing on the list can actually hurt you or harm you more than alcohol, or if it could just hurt you or harm you, period Right. That’s something that’s really really important to focus on because, especially in terms of, say, family members or loved ones right, who chances are if you struggled with an addiction to alcohol or other substances are these family members have seen you struggle, right, even if they didn’t know that you were directly consuming alcohol or other drugs, they probably saw the erratic behavior, they probably saw you acting out. They know, they know the people in our lives are not dumb. They know exactly what was going on. So, without being said, let’s go back to that question If they can see you drink, why can’t they see you recover? And these are hard questions, but I think it’s really important to ask ourselves that because I know for me my old answer to if they can see you drink, why can’t they see you recover, simply because I was ashamed that I had a problem Right.

And where did that shame come from? It came from the belief that used to be instilled in me that there was something wrong with me if I had a problem with alcohol, right. But since then, what have I done? I have done a lot of informing myself and I know that my problem with alcohol was not my fault. Like, first of all, in my case, I was primed ready to become addicted to a substance, right, I grew up in a family where substance abuse was definitely prevalent. So, whether it’s a nature versus nurture thing, the point was that I was primed for it. Second, I had gone through several traumatic events that also primed me to become addicted to a substance.

And then three, let’s talk about the fact that alcohol itself is an addictive substance. And when people, repeatedly, are exposed to anything that’s addictive, their chances of becoming addicted to the addictive substance go up drastically. Right, nowhere in that formula is there there’s something wrong with Jessica, right? Absolutely not. And so, again, if you’re like, I don’t want them to find out that I am struggling with addiction, I I, you know. Sure, they can see me using, they can see me drinking. But they can’t know that I’m working on it, right? I really want you to stop, slow down and do some really serious digging, because chances are is that you, like many of us, are just struggling with shame.

You probably don’t understand enough about the sources of addiction and where they come from, and so you think it’s something that’s wrong with you, when you are a perfectly functional human being, responding to either your environments or, again, addicted substances, right. So again, if you, if you’re like oh my gosh, they can’t find out, ask yourself so what? What’s the worst that could happen from them knowing? And is that worst thing actually a source of danger to you? All, right, let’s look at another scenario, kind of along the similar vein or whatever.

So let’s say, your family always drinks during the holidays and your plan is to not drink. So either you’re going to tell them I’m not drinking today, I’m not drinking right now, or you’re even wondering if maybe you should just say that you’re sober. Right, regardless of how you say it, you are planning on letting them know that you are not consuming alcohol with them, but now you’re in a panic because they’re like oh my gosh, my family. What are they going to say? Right, and that’s what you’re thinking. What are they going to say? How are they going to react? And so those two questions that you’re asking yourself are yet again fueling a lovely spiral, fueling a lovely panic, and you’re not sure what to do with yourself.

So I want you to, in this case, write out all the possible things that they could say, write out all the possible things that they can do, and then I want you to ask yourself those same two words so what, right? So what If they say whatever they’re going to say, or if they do whatever they’re going to do? Here’s where I want you to stop and analyze yet again what is the worst thing that they can say to you, what is the worst thing that they can actually do to you? And you need to evaluate if it’s something that can actually harm you. Right, I don’t know your family. Like, if your family is literally going to Physically hurt you and harm you because you’re not drinking with them, that’s one thing. But if your family is just going to talk shit about you because you’re not drinking with them, is that talking shit going to actually hurt you? Yeah, I might hurt your feelings, but will you be safe? Right, and if you’re going to be safe after you look at what’s the worst that can happen, then. So what? Right now, if you’re not going to be safe with them because there are patterns of abuse right, there is a history of endangerment Then we need to talk about the next scenario, which is you’re not needing to fucking go to spend the holidays with your family, right, like if you are actually at risk.

So let’s move into that third question and that third or a third scenario. So maybe you know that in your case, you just all together have no business going to visit your family this season, right, and you’re deciding to stay home. But now, yet again, guess what. You’re now worrying about what they’re going to say about you from a distance, right? What are they going to say? Are they going to cut me off? Are they going to block me? Are they never going to invite me to anything again? Right, like, your mind is just racing with all sorts of things that are just coming up for you. And again, that’s okay to have these racing thoughts, but let’s, let’s slow them down. What is it that your family can possibly say about you? Write it down, what can they possibly do from a distance? And write it down right? And yet again, I’m going to ask you to ask yourself so what? What is the worst that is coming off of that list that you wrote down Right, and can that actually harm you or are you safe, right? Essentially, I really want you to assess if you’re safe or not in these situations, because for so many of us and I do an okay job of explaining neuroscience I’m going to put a link in the chat to some other resources not in the chat, a link in the show notes to some other resources, but essentially right, when we think about alcohol and dopamine, our brains.

Alcohol completely distorts our dopamine and our dopamine has often been used as a signal for us humans as oh, this is something I need for survival. So things that can often like cause spikes and dopamine are things that feel good, that are also directly tied to our survival. So it might be things like food. It might be things like sex right, let’s keep the human race going. It might be things like affection and connection with family right, because, again, these are all things that we essentially need as human beings.

Alcohol totally hijacks those sensors and makes your brain think that when you’re in need of survival, that you need alcohol, right. So suddenly you’re hungry, but you’re not really paying attention to your hunger singles. So you think you want a drink. You’re tired and you need rest, but again those survival signals are totally thrown off. So you want a drink. Instead, you are in need of human connection and you’re feeling lonely, but your brain is hijacked. So your brain is like no, you don’t need people, you need alcohol, right.

So let’s go back to this whole establishing safety thing. The reason why I want you to go back and say so what? The reason why I want you to look at what’s the worst that could happen and if you’re still going to be safe, is because the second that your body and your brain perceive that you are being threatened. If it’s not a real threat, it doesn’t matter. Your default is going to be I want a drink, and so it’s your job to slow down and tell your brain and tell your body hey, I know you think I’m in danger, but I’m actually safe. I know you think that my mom giving me attitude is a total threat to my life and now I have to go drink because my body is perceiving that as a need to survive. But actually my mom talking shit. Despite her doing that, I’m actually still safe, so I don’t need to drink, right. So that is why it’s so important to consistently establish safety all the time. One of the biggest things that I still tell myself at almost three years sober is anytime I get stressed, I quietly tell myself, just, you’re safe. Because I need to remind my body that, even if it perceives something harmless as a threat, that I am not threatened and that I’m okay. So I hope that makes sense In terms of safety, though and I made reference to this a little bit earlier but in terms of safety right, most of the time you are going to be safe.

In this day and age, most of us do have the privilege of not having our lives being threatened just because we say no to a drink of alcohol. What I do want to recognize as I’m saying this, is that there are still some people who do have situations where their safety actually may be threatened and, for example, in cases of intimate partner violence, some people may have partners who intentionally use alcohol as a tool to subdue them and to control them, and In those cases, saying no to alcohol may actually put you at risk. So I will also put a resource in the show notes. If anybody listening does struggle with intimate partner violence, or not even intimate partner violence, it can be just Violence in the home, right. You may have, like I said earlier, you may have family members who Do actually cause you harm, right, and we do need to establish safety. So I will put a link to some resources in the show notes so that you have Access to tools for wherever you are to get out of those situations, because you also deserve to be freed from those situations and you absolutely deserve to be safe and nobody should be using alcohol or other Substances as a tool to subdue and control you and hurt you. So I will put those in the show notes.

The last thing that I wanted to share is before I close out again in this holiday theme yay, again, I want to invite you all to my New Year’s Eve self-requivocist workshop. It is on New Year’s Eve, on December 31st. There’s more information on my website. I will put a link in the show notes to it. But essentially we’re gonna be doing some self-reflection. We’re also going to be doing an exercise on evaluating our guilt, resentment and anger specifically towards ourselves, and then also doing some work on both outreach to our younger self and Outreach to our future self. It’s a 90-more in that workshop. It’s a beautiful opportunity to build some community and support right before transitioning into the new year.

I’m super, super excited to hold it. It’s gonna be an awesome 90 minutes on New Year’s Eve and, chances are right, new Year’s Eve Again, you’re probably gonna want to break from your family. So join me in this workshop. It’s only $15. So you should come join. Can’t wait to see you there. With that being said, I cannot wait to see you all. Next episode I will be having Kiola Raines, my friend and fellow sober sister. Share her story and also just some information on the work that she does and support that she provides. So thanks everybody so much. I’ll see you soon.

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