In this episode, I shares my personal journey with addiction and the painful realization that no amount of love or intervention can save someone struggling with addiction—only the individual can choose to change. Drawing on my own experiences and a listener’s inquiry, I explain that while setting healthy boundaries is essential for those who support someone in recovery, self-care must come first. Ultimately, recovery is an inside job and that while support is available, the decision to heal must come from within.
00:04 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Hey all, today I want to talk about the idea of trying to save the person you love who is struggling with their addiction, because I’ve got news for you you cannot save them right. Here’s the thing earlier last week I think it was I received a message from a woman whose significant other is struggling with his own addiction and essentially the core of her message and inquiry was how could she get him to stop? We can’t right, and it hurts to just say that back to her, but essentially that is what my message back to her said. Right, they’re like. I get it.
00:40 It is so painful to watch someone struggle with their own battle. I remember in 2020 when I was with Ian and he was struggling with his addiction and he started to relapse on opiates, which were his drug of choice. I remember it was like grasping at straws. I had called his mom, I called his then sponsor, I hid stuff from him, I threatened with leaving him, I threatened with kicking him out of the house. Right, there were all these different things that I thought that I could do to somehow control the outcome, to somehow get the addicted person to drop their addiction. For me, as if I was so powerful and I learned very quickly upon his departure from this earth that there was nothing, nothing that I could have done. It was on him and unfortunately he was not in a place to stop. So I told this woman who reached out to me that that she can’t make her significant other stop drinking, that that choice has to come from within, from him, right? And so what do we do in these situations? How do we support those loved ones? How do we support ourselves? Right? Because here’s the thing.
01:55 The truth that I have learned in my journey is this we cannot love people into sobriety. We cannot love people into doing anything that we want them to do, right? I wish that love could have saved me from addiction. I wish that my sister, who practically raised me, could have loved me sober. Ignore that, sorry, that alarm that popped off. You know, I wish that. The people who had cried over me and begged me to stop drinking, you know, especially in 2020, when I was struggling so much, I wish that they could have protected me from myself. But their love, it wasn’t enough, right? Their calls, their concerns. None of that was going to change anything. It had to come from me, and that’s the truth.
02:44 The only person who can save someone who is struggling with addiction is the person with the addiction. I had to learn that the hard way right. I really thought that I could have saved Ian, and I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t, and even with my own sobriety, like I said, my sister tried so hard, but she couldn’t save me. My friends couldn’t save me. No one in my family, no one outside of me was going to be able to come and stop me from drinking. If love alone was enough to fix addiction, I would not have needed to go into treatment, because I’ve always been loved by others. You know, if willpower was enough to get me sober, I wouldn’t have again gone to treatment, I wouldn’t have spent years drowning in alcohol.
03:35 But recovery doesn’t work like that. It is absolutely an inside job, and so, yes, if you’re the one who is struggling with the addiction, you’re not going to be able to get out of it. You’re not going to be able to get out of it. You are the one who is empowered to change your life. The moment that you decide to take that step towards recovery, what you will find, however, is a community of people who are willing to walk beside you. There’s so many different places that you can go to for support, where someone, without knowing you, will a hundred percent have your back, simply because they understand exactly what it is like to walk in your shoes and struggle with a dependence to a substance. So there is 100% a life waiting for you on the other side. You are absolutely worthy of it.
04:17 But again, you need to understand no one is coming to save you. No one else can save you but yourself. But once you get started on that journey, do you need other people? Absolutely, doing it alone is incredibly hard. However, if you’re listening to this and you happen to be someone who loves someone that is struggling, you have to understand that you cannot save them. Your situation. You can absolutely set boundaries that protect your own peace. You can absolutely love this individual without enabling them no contact with the person who is struggling with their addiction so that they then can spiral even further and feel like they have even fewer things to live for. Right, definitely not saying that.
05:16 Are there cases where you’re going to have to go no contact because the person with the addiction is a risk to you or your family or your loved ones? Absolutely, there are times when that is the case, but if that isn’t the specific situation that you are in, then you don’t need to go to that extreme. But what you can do is set boundaries right, because what a boundary is? A boundary is a limit that teaches other people how they may stay in your life right. So, instead of going no contact, you can let the person know, with the addiction, what is okay or not okay for them to do around you and then, if they’re able to uphold that and stick to that, then that’s how you can show love, that is how you protect your peace, that is how you practice and protect what your limits are. But again, you can go no contact if you need to. If it’s a matter of protecting your peace, protecting your safety, protecting, say, your family, your home, your property, your career, do what you need to do. But you can offer them support as long as you’re not sacrificing yourself.
06:23 And the biggest thing that you always want to remember when you’re dealing with someone who struggles with addiction is that reminder, offering it to them that when they are ready, that help is out there, right. That when they are ready, you are willing to offer certain supports right. At the end of the day, they don’t have to go through the recovery journey by themselves, but you do have to protect yourself and your limits. So, at the end of the day, whether you are the one who loves someone who is struggling or whether you are the one who is struggling with the addiction, you’re not alone. Right? Addiction touches so many families in one way, shape or another, and so please remember that recovery is possible. There absolutely is hope. But while you’re holding out with the hope, right Like while you’re waiting for that miracle, remember that you are number one and remember to protect yourself, because if you aren’t taking care of you, there’s absolutely no way that you can be there for your loved one who is currently struggling.
07:32 So that is all I wanted to share with you all today, Food for thought. If you have any thoughts, any feedback, any tips that have worked for you and you want to reach out and share those, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me by email or on socials. I would love, love, love to engage more on this topic. It is definitely a difficult one. It’s a heartbreaker, for sure, when we wish that we could just love someone into doing the best thing for themselves and, the end of the day, they’ve got to save themselves. Thanks y’all, until next time.
Valentine’s Day once amplified my feelings of lack and low self-worth, fueling my drinking and poor relationship choices. In this episode, I share how alcohol blurred red flags in dating and the moment I first admitted, “I think I might be an alcoholic.” Sobriety gave me clarity—red flags stay red now. Let’s reframe this season as a reminder of what we do have: self-worth, clarity, and choice.
00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. So this weekend, at the time of this recording, it is Valentine’s Day weekend and if you are anything like how I used to be, this time, this day, or Valentine’s Day weekend, et cetera, it might not bring up the warm, fuzzy feelings of love and connection you know. Instead, it might bring up painful reminders. It might bring up feelings of lack, feelings of lack of worth, and if you are in that space, I get it because I have totally been there For years. I let Valentine’s Day reinforce this idea that I was missing something and that that I wasn’t enough. Um, you know, I kind of carried that feeling anyway, but Valentine’s day kind of really put it, put a bright spotlight on it, right, like you go on social media, you see all these messages of love. Um, I have always worked with students, whether K through 12 or higher ed. So you know, everywhere I go, you know I see all these like balloons and flowers, and you know I see all the works happening Right and so convinced that I wasn’t enough. You know, even when I would have like these accolades and these external wins, so to speak, like winning teacher of the year, that still didn’t do anything for my, for my sense of self-worth, right Winning teacher of the year while drinking a fifth of alcohol a day, it just it didn’t help me any with my self-worth, especially when it came to dating and romance. I remember shortly after winning my teacher of the year award, I did what so many of us do who struggle with addiction, and that was still rushing into things and doing anything that I could to fill the void. When I went one teacher of the year, I had just gotten out of a relationship where there was a big betrayal that happened and I was left heartbroken and devastated and instead of taking that time right to work on myself to heal, I was just jumping into anything that I could to fill the void. And so alcohol filled the void, but so did romance, right. So did men. And so you know, it was just like, man after man, with dating, one disappointment after another.
02:22 What I noticed that would happen with alcohol is that alcohol would really help me ignore the red flags that would come up while dating these people. Alcohol would not just help me ignore the flags, but alcohol would actually almost erase them for me entirely, or just totally change their color, right, so that I could tell myself a brand new story, and I could convince myself that whoever I was seeing that it was okay. So the red flags they suddenly became pink, maybe even beige on occasion, and that was the impact of alcohol on my dating experience when I lived with low self-worth, right, I mean, I was so embarrassed y’all. I was so embarrassed by the men that I would let into my life. I was embarrassed about what it would say about me, and so I drank. I drank alone, I drank with them. It really didn’t matter. I would just drink to avoid facing the reality of who I was giving my time to, who I was giving my body to, who I was giving my energy to. There was one person in particular. We’ll call him Thomas.
03:35 After dating for a few months, we took a weekend trip to New York and we actually stayed at his brother’s house or apartment, because most people in New York really have apartments, and this brother of his actually was not a drinker, so there was no alcohol in the house. And so that weekend my drinking was suddenly limited. At this point I was already drinking a fifth a day, just for context as to how much I was drinking. So when my alcohol consumption was suddenly limited by the day of like not having alcohol, my body completely revolted. Right, I was telling myself that I had a stomach bug because I spent. You know, I was basically attached to the toilet, either stuck sitting on the toilet or stuck facing and looking down into the toilet. But deep down, you all, I knew what was really happening. I knew the truth. I was in withdrawal and the only cure was more alcohol. When I finally got my hands on some, I felt a million times better, until the buzz wore off and that sickness it just came back. It returned by the end of that trip.
04:48 You know we, we went back to the airport and we were going to fly back to Louisville this is when I live in Louisville, kentucky. And you know I had, finally, you know, whispered something to this. You know, quote, unquote Thomas, that I had really never said out loud before. You know this was in the months leading to my, the beginning of my recovery journey. And you know, quote, unquote Thomas, that I had really never said out loud before. You know, this was in the months leading to my, the beginning of my recovery journey. And you know, I, I whispered and I said I think I might be an alcoholic Right. And here’s the thing. The reason why was because we get to the airport right and again.
05:22 What I was starting to connect this weekend that I was in New York was that, when my buzz was starting to fade, I was starting to get violently sick, and so the only thing that helped me feel better was alcohol. We get to this airport I forget if it was LaGuardia or Kennedy and I go straight to the bar to buy a drink, but it was an early morning flight and none of the bars in the airport were open yet. They weren’t serving anything. When I tell you that I was driven to tears to see that the bar was closed because I was horrified at how sick I was about to feel, knowing that I had to get on a plane and fly, that was the moment when I uttered those words, right when I could suddenly just whisper, like I think I might be an alcoholic. To be fair, just FYI, at the time of this recording, 2025, I don’t use the term alcoholic to describe myself. I prefer alcohol use disorder or a person with an addiction. I like people first language. But you know, back in 2019, when this was happening, I wasn’t informed and I just use the term alcoholic just for context, but anyway. So I finally whispered and like, admitted, like I think I might be one, I think I might be an alcoholic. But here’s what happened with this guy Again, going back to these red flags turning beige or pink, right, this guy, you know, fake Thomas, because his real name was not Thomas, but we’ll use that name.
06:44 He like barely looked up at me and he was just, you know, he was on some. No, babe, like if you were really an alcoholic, you wouldn’t be doing all the amazing things you do, because, of course, at this time I had become the teacher of the year, I had been doing all these big things. So, of course, on the outside I looked amazing. And why would anyone believe that I struggled with an addiction? Right? So, you know, when I brought it up to him, he totally dismissed it, not to mention the fact that he also drank like a fish. But he pretty much was just like no, you can’t possibly be an alcoholic. Look at everything that you’re doing, look at your resume, look at, look at all that you offer to others. So he was just like yeah, we’re going to relax and get a drink as soon as we get back to Louisville and you’ll feel better.
07:27 And again, going back to those red flags turning beige and pink, I was like, yeah, sure, you’re right, you know. I let that logic of his soothe me, I let that logic of his erase the truth that I didn’t want to admit. This truth was bubbling up a little bit, just a little bit, and him saying, no, you can’t be an alcoholic, because look at all that you do. That was enough to pop those little bubbles surfacing, coming to the surface. And so you know, for the rest of that flight, I just rested my head on his shoulder.
08:01 I did my best to ignore those knots that were so painfully twisting inside of me and I just kept telling myself I just have to get through the flight, I just have to get through the flight, then we will stop, go to the liquor store on the way home and I will be fine. And so this is what I was settling for, you all in terms of relationships. I was settling for someone who ignored the fact that I raised a major concern about my health and my well-being. I think I’m addicted to alcohol was like, well, you’re fine, we’ll get you some more. What if they had been a different substance? What if I had said I think I’m addicted to crack cocaine, or I think I’m addicted to heroin? Would he have said okay, well, we’ll just go get some on the way home, you’ll be fine. Remove the alcohol and put in some other substances, and you can see how wild it is that this person took my concern and just wanted to offer me more. It makes no sense. So, anyway, I really was willing to settle for anyone, because my self-worth was so low that, no matter what I was accomplishing in the world, I was settling for anyone, as long as I didn’t have to be alone, okay.
09:21 But here’s the thing about sobriety it doesn’t just take away the alcohol, right, it doesn’t just take away the drinking, but it gives you back your clarity, right. So now, today, for me, my red flags, they stay red, right. When I see that in another person, I see it and there’s nothing suddenly fading it away, there’s nothing suddenly making it pink or beige. They stay the same. And for the first time, thanks to sobriety, I just see people for who they are. And so I started to realize that my self-worth, it couldn’t come from relationships, that my self-worth can’t come from achievements anymore, and it can’t come from the next big title. It has to come from me, it has to come from within.
10:15 The other thing that sobriety granted me, right, was learning that love, real love it’s not going to be found in the bottom of a bottle, and it’s not going to be found in someone who doesn a bottle, and it’s not going to be found in someone who doesn’t truly respect me or care for my health and wellbeing, right. It’s not going to come from someone who’s going to offer me a poisonous substance. That’s it period. So if today, if this season, if this weekend, if it feels like a reminder of what you don’t have, if it feels like a reminder of a low sense of worth or lack, let me offer you a different perspective.
10:54 Okay, this time, sobriety, let it be a reminder of what you do have, because you do have your worth, you do have your clarity and you do have the power of choice, right. For as long as you are alive, for as long as you are breathing, you are empowered to make better decisions every single day, even if it’s small, little decisions. And so you have your choice to no longer settle for anything less than what you deserve. And so, before we wrap up, I want to leave you with a question to reflect on, and that is what is one red flag, whether it’s in relationships, friendships or even in yourself, that you once ignored but now you can see clearly, especially if you are sober.
11:42 So take a moment, sit with that, reflect on it and if you feel like sharing, find my email, send me an email, tag me on social media. I would love, love, love to hear from you. But with that, friends, thanks for listening. Happy Valentine’s day and remember to choose yourself, even in your partnership, even if as a part of a community. Again, we don’t live in isolation. But remember to choose and prioritize yourself first, and everything else falls, falls in line. Thanks y’all. Take care, catch you on the next one.
How we see ourselves shapes the choices we make every day. In this episode, I dive into the game-changing concept from James Clear’s Atomic Habits: the power of identity-based habits. I share how fully embracing the mindset of “I’m a non-drinker” can become a turning point in anyone’s sobriety journey—helping me push past societal pressures and self-doubt.
We’ll explore how shifting your self-perception can make or break your personal growth, and why the key to lasting change isn’t just about what you do, but who you believe you are. Plus, we’ll discuss why there’s no one-size-fits-all approach and how to create strategies that truly resonate with your unique path.
00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Hey everyone, great to have you this week. I wanted to talk a little bit about identity and how identity can impact the decisions that we make and the habits that we’re trying to build. Now this conversation realistically, it’s inspired by the fact that I am currently leading a book study for the community of the Luckiest Club, and we are specifically talking about James Clear’s book Atomic Habits right and one. I’m going to pull two quotes from the text and, yes, you might hear baby noises in the background because my baby’s asleep while I’m recording this but I’m going to pull two quotes from Atomic Habits for your food for thought as a listener today. So the first quote from his book is research has shown that once a person believes in a particular aspect of their identity, they are more likely to act in alignment with that belief. And then the second quote is that every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. So here is the thing Identity does play a huge role in shaping our actions In terms of recovery right and the sobriety work that we do if we see ourselves as someone who is struggling to stay sober or someone who is trying to quit drinking, we might unconsciously act in ways that actually continue to reinforce that struggle, right? A perfect example might be let’s say we have two different people and both of them are working on a sobriety journey. One of them believes that they are a non-drinker and the other one they just believe that they’re trying to quit drinking. And so they both go to dinner or a happy hour with friends or colleagues, right, and each of them is offered a drink. The person you know, james Clear, would say that the person who identifies as a non-drinker, they would literally sit there and say no thanks, I don’t drink, right. But then you have the person who is trying to quit drinking, who identifies as trying to quit, and what they might say is oh, I’m, I’m trying to quit, right, or maybe I’m doing a 30 day 30 day like the whole 30, or I’m doing I’m taking some medication right now, so I can’t have any alcohol right now. So, in terms of what is more effective, what is more likely going to get you to successfully actually stay a non-drinker, it would be the person’s attitude who is just like no thanks, I’m not a drinker or I don’t drink. It’s confident, it’s clear, it’s concise. It gets that point across.
02:50 Oftentimes, when we sound kind of waffly in our messaging, when we sound unsure of a no, what other people might try to do is find solutions for us, right? If, for example, you’re saying, oh well, I’m not trying to drink right now because I’m working on a new health habit, or you know, I’m doing a 30-day cleanse, or something like that, the people that you’re with can easily respond with a solution for you, right? They can say oh well, girl, you can start this tomorrow, it’s okay, you know it’s Saturday, you can start this on Sunday, right? Or if you’re saying that you’re doing it, say, for weight loss not that I advocate for like weight loss, but you know, if you’re saying that you’re doing it for that kind of a reason, again someone could just jump in and say oh, you’re fine, you can do it tomorrow. However, when you identify as a non-drinker and you state that clearly to other people I’m not a drinker there’s not really anything that they can do. Oh, let me change your identity for you. No, no one is going to say that. And so when you state very clearly that who you are is a non-drinker, that message comes across very, very strongly. And so, yes, when you start to believe that I am a non-drinker, or I am a sober person, or you know I’m someone who prioritizes my wellbeing, it is much easier for our actions to start to align with that identity.
04:12 Because, basically, what James Clear argues in Atomic Habits is that when you try to have outcomes-based habits first, right. When all you’re focusing on is specifically the behavior I can’t drink, I’m not going to drink, I’m going to abstain it’s going to be harder for you, as opposed to just saying I’m a non-drinker. Again, there’s just that confidence at the core of that. That really helps all the decisions radiate from there. Right, you can use a guiding question what would a non-drinker say? What would a non-drinker say? What would a non-drinker do? What would a non-drinker drink here? Right, and that really helps the person move and navigate the different situations.
04:52 What I will pause and say, though, at this moment is however you get sober, you know it really doesn’t matter. So if you, right now, are listening to this and you are making up all sorts of little lies to the people around you just to avoid drinking alcohol, fine, right, like if you have to say that you’re doing a 30-day cleanse, or if you’re saying, oh, I’m extending my dry January into February. Whatever you need to do, that is working for you. Keep doing it right. The purpose of this is not to shame the people who are not being direct. It is not to shame you if you are still not comfortable with openly identifying as a non-drinker right. But what this is pointing out to you is that it might make your life a little bit easier if you do identify as a non-drinker right. If there is a little swag in your step when you say that you don’t drink. It will probably make your life easier. But again, if right now, what is working for you is, you know, sort of doing the little delicate dance around how you express this to other people, it’s totally fine, right.
06:00 Again, it takes what it takes. Everyone’s journey is different and no matter what you do to get sober, you are always going to learn really powerful lessons about every decision that you make and every action that you take. Lessons about every decision that you make and every action that you take. So, whatever you’re doing, pause, soak it in and learn from it, because it’s going to give you valuable experience that will either help you later on or it can help you help someone else later on. So carry on. But again, food for thought there, but anyway.
06:29 So just going back to again this idea of the non-drinker right, when we’re a non-drinker and then we choose not to drink, you know we’re setting these clear boundaries with ourselves and for others. We are showing up for ourselves Again, we’re showing up for that identity that we are holding on to, the non-drinker identity. And so we are. We’re doing that vote, casting right. Going back to that quote every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. Every time we’re identifying as a non-drinker and we’re taking action according to that identity, we are casting that vote. We’re building up that evidence. We’re building up that proof that look at all the things that I do to show that I am a non-drinker. It’s not a single moment that’s defining us right. It’s not our sobriety date that identifies us as a non-drinker. It’s all the different things that we do that build that evidence for that new life.
07:27 And so you know things to think about. How has your sense of identity shifted since working on sobriety? Do you identify as a non-drinker or are you still someone who’s trying to quit, a drinker who’s trying to quit. Think about the votes, right? What actions have you taken to support being a non-drinker? So, if you are currently in a space where you are struggling with your actual sobriety, maybe you’re getting a couple of days, then you’re drinking again, et cetera.
08:01 Think about that. What are your actions looking like? Maybe it’s time to take stock and write out all the different things that you do throughout the day to set you up, to see what you need to change, so that it looks like what a non-drinker would do. And then also, let’s say you are already practicing this idea of I am a non-drinker. Maybe you are having that little nasty voice that we all have in our heads, right, it might be creeping in and trying to tell you that you’re not right, trying to tell you like, oh, but you just drank a couple months ago. What do you mean? You’re not a drinker, right? So how can you remind yourself is built by your actions, right? And it’s not built by perfection, right? Progress, not perfection.
08:45 And then the last question for you to think about is what new identity are you working toward in your recovery? So, beyond the non-drinker part, is there anything else that you are hoping to be. So again, maybe you are the person who prioritizes your well-being, and how can you reinforce that in your daily habits? So I’ll share a little bit about some of my thoughts on some of these questions. So for me, you know, my sense of identity has absolutely shifted to I don’t drink, I’m a non-drinker, and you know the votes that I’ve cast in that direction. I mean, mean it’s, it’s included.
09:22 You know, earlier on in my journey, um, I was careful about where I went. So, in terms of the votes, right, the places that I went to were places where I was not going to be tempted to drink. Right, because I wasn’t trying to have to use a lot of willpower, so to speak, to avoid alcohol. So life was much easier if I was in places where practicing being a non-drinker was easy. So, opting for coffee shops versus bars right, when I was dating. Opting for dates where we could go get coffee, go on a walk, instead of doing a date that was like at a bar, at a happy hour, for example.
09:58 Whenever that negative voice creeps into my head, which it still really tries to, even today, right, I literally will pull out my journal and write a list of things that counter that voice. I’m very visual, you know, self-talk can be great, but for me I need to see the self-talk in action. See the self-talk in action. So sure, I can try to self-talk about certain things, but I need to see on paper the evidence that counters any negative voice in my head. And then, in terms of other new identities that I’m working toward in my recovery at this time, I would say probably, since obviously I just had a baby right, a big identity like I am a mother.
10:42 But I have decided that I define a good mother as one who nurtures and protects and provides guidance, and this is pretty much kind of following Kelly McDaniel’s framework from her book Mother Hunger. And so how do I know that I’m being that good mother Right? And it’s that I have to write down the different things that I do for my daughter. So far, I mean, she’s only a seven week old baby, but you know, if she’s crying I pick her up and I comfort her, right? I’m not like letting her just cry things out. I’m not subscribing to the narrative that I’ve been told in my culture that you know, you just have to let a baby cry, otherwise they’re getting spoiled. I’m like, just had to let a baby cry, otherwise they’re getting spoiled. I’m like, uh, I’m sorry, a seven week old doesn’t look like they can conspire to do much, so I’m going to pick up the baby when the baby is crying and that’s that right. So, um, there’s that nurturance piece, for example.
11:34 But again for you, I’ll read these questions again and please go grab a journal or just sit and reflect on these. How has your sense of identity shifted since choosing sobriety? What small votes have you cast recently that align with the person you want to be? When self-doubt creeps in, how can you remind yourself that your identity is built by actions and not perfection? And lastly, what new identity are you working toward in your recovery and how can you reinforce it in your daily habits? So it’s a lot of good stuff to reflect on. Again, life and I highly recommend reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear but seriously, practicing actions and transforming your habits becomes much easier when you identify as a person who does these things, as opposed to just this desperate grasp for having these outcomes, for having these behaviors. So again, thanks so much for listening and I hope to catch you in the next episode.
Can joy and grief coexist? In this episode, I reflect on welcoming my daughter, Amara, while mourning my mother, Amable Rojas Vargas. From her journey from Costa Rica to Brooklyn to the complexities of our relationship, I explore the beauty in duality through the lens of sobriety and recovery.
I also dive into the grip of fear—how it shapes our choices, from plane crashes to everyday risks—and the dangers of isolation. Let’s navigate these emotions together, finding strength in connection and shared experiences.
00:00 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Hey everyone, happy February. Well, I mean, I hope it’s a happier month than last month, but we’ll see. Right, we don’t control the future. So there’s two things I wanted to talk about in today’s episode. First, I wanted to talk about fear. I do have baby. I’m wearing the baby, so if you hear little sounds, that’s what you’re hearing in the background. But I wanted to talk about fear and I wanted to talk about my mom my mom. I’ll talk about her a little bit first and then I’ll talk about fear. So, just in a personal announcement, I think if you’ve been listening, you know that I delivered my baby girl on Saturday December 21st. Amara was born. Saturday December 21st.
00:44 Amara was born and five weeks later, on January 25th, my mother, amalia Rojas Vargas, passed away. She was 85 years old. She had been living, had gone back to live in Costa Rica since 2016. She was that’s where she was born and raised and she immigrated to the United States when she was about 30, maybe 31 years old and she had moved to Brooklyn in the early 1970s where she met my dad and then she eventually had my sister and then, way down the line, 1985 had me. I was totally unexpected.
01:20 She always tells me this funny story where she was 45 when she was pregnant with me and she was not trying, and so I guess when she was pregnant and her period didn’t come and then she was having all these symptoms, she wasn’t feeling good. So she goes to the doctor in Brooklyn and the doctor was a Cuban doctor, so he spoke Spanish also, and she apparently had told the doctor like I think I’ve la menopausia, like I think I’ve got menopause or I’m premenopausal, et cetera, and I guess the doctor probably did a urine test, right. And then essentially he comes back in and he’s like señora esa menopausa tiene patitas, you know, saying like ma’am, that menopause that you think you have has little feet. And she always, especially in her last years, you all, she loved telling me that story over and over and over again, right, as her like memory declined, that story like really anchored her whenever she saw me and she loved telling that story to other people. She just loved, loved telling people how she thought she was going through menopause.
02:26 And then, surprise, there came little Jessica, right, little Jessica who grew to be like five foot nine, over 200 pounds, you know, and my mom is tiny, my mom was tiny, she was barely five feet tall, so you know we had a sizable size difference, but anyway. So the thing with her right is that she was such a complex human being she was. I promise you, she was the most complex human being that I ever loved, ever, ever loved. And what I’m so grateful for in terms of recovery and the work that it takes to stay sober over the period of years, is that we can really recognize the beauty of the duality in things. Right, I often say and in many recovery spaces you hear people say two things can be true at once. A hundred percent the case here, right, because for me in this postpartum period, not only have I gotten to experience the immense joy of having this beautiful little girl that’s like latched onto me all the time, right, and I’ve also lost my own mother, and so there’s that joy and that grief that get to coexist and remind me that being a human is complex period. But then my mom herself was such a complex human being, right, I have so many beautiful memories with her and it breaks my heart. I will never hear her crack another joke. I will never hear her say that story again, y’all. I will never hear her imitate that Cuban doctor telling her that her menopause has little feet, never will get to hear that through my ears again. I have very curly hair. I have ringlets, tiny little ringlets, and my mom has pretty much like wavy, straight hair and she used to love just touching my curls, right, because it’s just such a different texture compared to her hair. I will never have a human being touch my hair with that same affection that she touched my hair with. Now I will get to do that to my daughter. You know I will get to tell her little stories. I will get to touch her hair. You know I will get to do all those things, but I will never get that done to me again and that hurts so much. On the flip side, right, I have these beautiful memories with her and I have some difficult memories with her.
04:56 If you’ve listened to my story, we I’ve been honest about how you know my mom had. You know my mom accepted societal norms, which many people do. Right, most people live in a space of accepting societal norms because most of us we don’t sit there and analyze if something really is like in alignment with us or if it’s not right. Your average person is just kind of going through the motions, like they’re told that this looks good and they’re like, yeah, that is beautiful, okay, I’m going to go for it. And you know, my mom was one of those people. My mom accepted European beauty standards.
05:28 So growing up there were comments made about my skin tone. Sometimes I needed to stay out the sun If my hair was doing a little too much. We had to go to the Dominicans I get it straightened out with some major heat and like relaxer and all that. And then especially body size, right Again, my mom was five feet. She was petite, tiny, tiny, slim woman. I am five foot nine and I weigh 200 pounds now Right.
05:52 And when I was younger I was even bigger and so that was not okay with my mom. She was worried for me in her mind that you know a, I mean, you know the narrative that you can’t be healthy at every size. But then to this idea that I wasn’t beautiful because my body wasn’t small and I was taking up too much space, and so I dealt with a lot of fat chaining from her. And again, am I pissed at her for it anymore? No, because I’ve done the work to realize that again she was operating out of like what was the best that she could do, and I can now do better, right. So I know what not to do with my daughter, for example. But again, my mom was complex and at the time when I was young, yeah, all that hurt. And so, yes, eventually, right, I ate to feel better and then, eventually, when I had access to alcohol, the alcohol made me feel a lot better too, until, surprise, the alcohol didn’t. I became addicted to it, and here we are right in recovery now, years later. Here we are right in recovery now, years later.
07:00 So I say that to hold space for the fact that there is this duality in so many of us too, right, and when we can see the beauty in it as opposed to just blatantly harshly judging the negative, there can be a lot of growth there. Right, again, the negative side of my mom. I see exactly where it came from and I’m not faulting her for it. I’m not knocking her for it, right, she didn’t have an opportunity because she was too busy working and trying to survive, being an immigrant in a country that can’t stand her right To really do much reflection and personal growth. So I can’t knock her for that. But you know what I have the privilege to do that personal growth and to do that work and that reflective piece so that I don’t have to, you know, put my daughter through some of those same things. But that’s the gift that I have from my mom, having worked so hard that I got to have some privileges. What I also do want to recognize, though, is that there are some people where there is no duality to be seen, and so I just want to have that kind of like as a sidebar for anybody who maybe has had a parent that was abusive, right, or completely like, only caused harm. I want to recognize that someone like that, there, there is no duality, there’s no duality to them, right, and so if you are hearing this and you’re like, no, there’s no way I can see a positive to my parent because of X, y, z, totally fine, right? I’m just offering my reflections on my mother and my experience with her as a parent, so I just wanted to really share that about her.
08:46 I encourage you to reflect on in terms of just dealing with grief if you have dealt with any loss right. First, I want to recognize grief is not always just after the death of a person. You can experience grief in just simply the change of a lifestyle right. There may be pain in letting go of alcohol, for example. There may be pain in letting go of certain habits or certain people that did not serve you while you’re doing this work of growing yourself. So, in a time of grief, how do you show your strength right and what can you learn about yourself in this process of shedding? So definitely, think about your own resilience and, you know, recognize the tools that you might already be having. You know you might you probably have some tools to help you navigate.
09:38 The other quick thing that I just wanted to mention before jumping off today is I wanted to talk a little bit about fear. So again, 2025 has been wild. It is only at the time of this recording, it’s only February 1st, and things have been incredibly heavy, incredibly difficult, and the headlines this week, especially with travel, with air travel, are terrifying. Right, there have been two plane crashes in the last few days and for some of you, you may have a trip coming up and you’re thinking like man, I really need to go ahead and just cancel this trip because it’s not safe to fly. I’m always going to say you need to do whatever you need to do to feel safe in your body, because if you are not feeling safe in your body, a lot of things are not going to be working in your favor. Right, it’s hard to make good decisions when you’re feeling terrified. When you are in fight or flight mode, or even fawning mode. You are not making the healthiest or best decision. So if deciding to not travel is the mood for you, go for it. Is the mood for you, go for it.
10:39 What I do want to offer is just that reminder, though, that when, when the news gets scary, when the world is falling apart, right, what can we do to protect ourselves mentally as well? Because the first thing that happens for some of us, for many of us, when these headlines pop up, is that we automatically insert ourselves into that headline. So if there was again, for example, the Washington DC incident with that plane collision with the helicopter, we’re automatically putting ourselves in that situation and we’re assuming that it’s going to happen to us next. I’m not saying it’s impossible, right, anything is possible, but what are the actual chances that it will also happen to you? And I think that that’s an important thing to reflect on, right, because here’s the thing for so many of us.
11:32 The reality is is that traveling in a car is way more dangerous than actually setting foot on a plane and flying. And yet so many of us, on a daily basis, we get into our vehicles and we drive somewhere. And I’ll even add that maybe you yourself are not the one driving, because maybe you do have some anxiety and you don’t like driving right, or maybe you have a DUI and your license got taken away so you can’t drive, so you’re not the one driving the vehicle. But even then you might be setting foot in a vehicle that someone else is driving, and so that’s even less control that you have over the situation, because now you’re trusting someone else with your safety and your life, getting into a car where, statistically, driving is more dangerous than flying. I point that out to say that we still trust the process and we still get into these cars and we still go right, despite the fact that driving is more dangerous than flying. Why? Because we can’t stop our entire lives and stay locked up in our homes and not go to work or not go to school or not go to the grocery store or not go to our appointments, right, we can’t just suddenly not do these things for the most part. So we just trust and we get into these vehicles and we basically put our lives on the line on a regular basis, but we still do it and we don’t even think about it. Or maybe we do, maybe we do think about it a little bit.
12:54 So my offering there is that, the same way that you have that energy to get into the car and keep going is go, continue your trips. Don’t cancel. Don’t cancel living your life because of the news headlines, because the only person that that is hurting is you. Right, it’s almost like when I have told people in the past you know when the world is falling apart, and sometimes the instinct to drink kicks in. The reality is that doing that drinking does not fix the world’s problems. It doesn’t make anything better for you. If anything, it’s hurting you. That’s the same thing when you remove yourself from things that you’re looking forward to, when you lock yourself up in your home right, you are only hurting yourself.
13:40 And what works for me? But it only works based off, you know, belief systems, right, and if you have a different belief system, this might not work for you, but I’m of the belief system that I I’m confident that when it’s my time, it’s my time and there’s literally nothing that I can do to push off whenever that time is going to be, to push off whenever that time is going to be, and I’m pretty confident that whenever my time comes, it’s not determined by a power on this earth, and I’m pretty confident that it’s determined by something much greater than me or you or anything else that’s going on systems, the government, et cetera. And I share that with you if it helps you, because that is how I help, that’s how my nervous system stays regulated, when I trust that whatever’s going on is beyond my control and that I stand to not gain anything from removing myself from the human experience. It isolation is a really difficult thing to deal with you all, and isolation hurts us incredibly, incredibly. So the next time that you are thinking of isolating yourself, removing yourself from the world’s experiences, you can right. If again, if it’s going to help regulate your nervous system, do what you need to do, but also just remember at what cost are you doing this? And is it like? Do you stand to gain anything from removing yourself from living life at this point? Because in a sense, it’s almost like you’re you’re. It hurts, it really hurts, to isolate yourself and be removed from the world. So, anyway, I’m about to just go off into a ramble, so I’m going to use that as a hint to just stop.
15:29 I offer you this affirmation and hopefully it lands with some of you, and Amara does too. She’s starting to grumble here on my chest. But the affirmation is I allow myself to feel the full depth of my emotions. I do not walk alone. I am supported, loved and strong.
15:51 Even if you don’t have an immediate personal connection right now that you feel like you can turn to and go to, I want you to understand that someone else on this planet is feeling whatever you are feeling, and if you close your eyes and just remind yourself of that, that someone else has the same or similar experience to you, that can really help. And the best way to find someone else who’s having a similar experience to you is to open your mouth and and share with someone, just one other person. Even if they don’t know exactly what you’re going through, they can say I hear you. They can say that sounds hard and maybe help point you in a direction for support. So with that, you all, I will catch you in the next episode. Sending you so much love. Take good care of yourselves.
Motherhood, success, and relationships often come with rigid societal expectations, but I’ve chosen a different route—one that prioritizes authenticity and personal growth over conventional norms. Living with 650 college students while navigating parenthood and sobriety was never on my life plan, yet here I am, embracing this unconventional journey. Listen in as I’ve learned to redefine societal norms and confront the often paralyzing feeling of shame.
00:00 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Hey y’all, for today’s episode, I want to talk about the idea of breaking societal norms, but also battling the shame that can come along with battling and fighting societal norms. So, for some context, right those of you who may not know this my day job. Right, because you can be a coach, you can be teaching classes, you can be doing all the things. But in this day and age, a lot of folks who are entrepreneurs still have day jobs, and so I am one of them. And so for work, I work at a university, in the office of residence life, and I run a residence hall. So my first career in education, I was a middle school public school teacher, special education. I taught for 13 years.
00:47 When I got sober, which was in 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, I needed to step away from the K through 12 setting because I needed to get my life together and get sober. In the transition from that job to working in higher ed, I was working with a private tutoring company, and then I decided to get back into education in the thick of it, and you don’t get much more in the thick of it than running a residence hall. I feel like I can compare it to almost being like a dorm mom, so to speak. Right Like fun fact. When I went to college and I lived in residence halls myself, I had no idea that every college has basically a professional staff member who lives in these dorms with students. Right, like who would have thought, but fun fact, they exist and pretty much every college has them and you have a team of live on professionals who they get staff housing and that is a part of their compensation for the work that they do. Right, because it’s really important to have some sort of professional available to live with these college students. And you have some on duty capacity. So, no, I don’t work 24 hours a day when I’m at work in my professional role, but sometimes I am available or I have to be made available if I’m on duty.
02:07 So anyway, just fun facts, right Like that, that’s the day work that I do because, obviously, like as much as I love being a life coach for people in recovery and things like that, at this time I need to make sure that the bills are paid. So you know a regular day job is required. So anyway, to give you some context about the specific community that I live in, I like I have this really beautiful apartment and it’s nestled in a building that houses 650 college students, most of them are sophomores, so I’m thinking about 19 to 20 years old. And when you think about, like you take a minute and flashback to when you were 19 or 20, right, your decision-making was probably not the best. Your brain was not fully developed, that’s for sure, and a lot of times you’re just figuring yourself out too. And this is your first time having roommates, right, your first time. All the firsts are happening at this age for a lot of the students that I live among and work with and help, guide and support and nurture when they need it, and all of that good stuff.
03:16 But the funniest thing happened the other day. Right, I gave birth to Amara, my daughter, on December 21st and the residence halls had been empty because it was winter break, so there weren’t really any students around, maybe a few who were taking like a winter class, but mostly everyone was gone and they all came back last week. The resident assistants came back two weeks ago and, again, for context, I run a team of resident assistants of RAs, right, I’m their supervisor, so, yeah, so they opened the building. Again. I’m still on maternity leave, so I’m around but not really working. But yeah, I’m obviously around. So I leave my apartment to go throughout the trash or you know, run an errand, et cetera, and my baby is here, right. So there is this little infant newborn, living among 615, 15, 19 year olds, which is wild and fun fact, because I felt at first like no one would ever have a baby. In a residence hall for people who work in this position, it’s really common for them to have spouses, children, et cetera. Again, who would have thought that entire families are raised on college campuses Did not know that. But now here I am doing the thing, right. So, anyway, the other day I had Amara wrapped up to my body using one of those really amazing wraps that I would die without, because it’s so great to be able to wear your baby and do things. So I was wearing her and I was taking out some trash to go to the trash room.
04:53 And as soon as I walk out of my apartment and I make eye contact with a student, I felt this hot shame just overwhelm my body and in my mind I’m like I only feel that way when I’ve done something wrong, but I’m not really doing anything wrong right now. So what the hell is going on, right? The thing with being sober and the thing about being in recovery the longer that you’re in it, those really uncomfortable feelings such as feeling hot with shame, where you want to like hide under a rock and disconnect from everyone and you think that, like you’re not worthy of connection and you know how dare you even exist on the planet. You can have those feelings and instead of just a hundred percent trusting those feelings and 100% believing that those feelings are accurate and the truth, you can stop and just get curious about those feelings and do a little bit of a deeper dive to figure out what is going on here, right? What else can be true? True?
06:08 So the old me, the Jessica, who was addicted to alcohol, would have felt hot with shame and would have immediately taken that shame at face value and been like you know what? There is something wrong with me, right? What’s wrong with me? Something’s wrong with me and I’m just going to jump and lean into this feeling that feels awful and believe it. And this feeling is a fact and I can’t handle it. And so I’m now going to go drink and go down this whole spiral. Right, that would have been the old Jessica’s behaviors. But Jessica, who has not been sober for years, felt this really uncomfortable feeling, recognized it, and I asked myself what else could be true, right Like what do I need to learn about myself, given this really uncomfortable feeling that I’m having? That’s so familiar, but I don’t know why it’s coming up. And so I had to slow down and dig in. And so here’s what came up for me, and hopefully you can go through this process for yourself and it can help you.
07:05 So, once I started thinking about what am I feeling ashamed about? The first thing is that I realized that it’s not coming from the students, right Like, at the end of the day, I am not worried about the opinions of children, essentially 19 year olds, who, like I said earlier, their brains haven’t developed. They’re figuring themselves out right, they are operating off the narratives that their parents offered them or that their homes or their communities offered them. So they don’t really know what they’re doing themselves. So clearly their opinions are not that important. But in the moment of that shame I really know what they’re doing themselves. So clearly their opinions are not that important, but in the moment of that shame I really felt that they were. So the shame really is not coming from them.
07:48 But the thing with the shame that I was experiencing was that it was rooted in societal norms that I hadn’t yet really been confronting, hadn’t yet really been confronting right. And I’m not a stranger to confronting societal norms right and challenging them. Because to get sober, I sold a house that I had in Louisville, kentucky, a nice house, a house with a yard, right, something that externally and in society would have been a marker of success. And I had to get rid of the house and move into my sister’s guest room with my dog. So from the outside that looks like a big L right, that looks like a huge loss. But the reality was when I confronted that norm that I recognized that I was better in my sister’s guest room with my dog because I was sober than if I would have stayed in Louisville, kentucky, in the nice house right, because I would have been drunk in that nice house slowly killing myself because I had alcoholic liver disease. So there was one example of a society, societal norm that I have confronted and challenged and understand that like I don’t live in shame because of that.
08:54 Another example of societal norm that for many years I challenged it was choosing to be childless. I’m 39 years old and I just had my daughter. She will be the only child that I have. I don’t plan on having more, but before her, before she came in the picture, I intentionally did not want to get pregnant, which goes way against societal norms for women, especially of childbearing age. Imagine I went through my entire twenties and essentially my entire thirties not wanting to have children. Even when I was in serious relationships, I opted to not get pregnant. And why did I go against that societal norm? Because it was in the best interest for myself, and it was in the best interest for myself and it was in the best interest for that child.
09:42 I was not going to rush to get pregnant by anybody, just so that I can say that I’m a mom, just so I can say that I have given birth to a human being, right? I refused to enter into the category of motherhood until I felt that I was in a place to be ready to do so. So what happened? At 39 years old, here comes my geriatric pregnancy, where I finally felt that I was safe enough as a person to be a home base and a rock and a foundation for a little vulnerable human being and I’m so glad that I challenged that societal norm of trying to have a kid when I was younger, et cetera, not to mention special mention to the fact that I once was married when I was younger right, a marker of success in this society and then got divorced by the time I was 31 or 32. Right, that was a technical failure right Again, based on society’s expectations. However, I was much better off being single than being with the person who I was married to. That’s a whole other story.
10:52 I’m not getting into it right now but, again, right, we can take any situation, any rule that we’re breaking, and slow down and ask ourselves like is this societal norm true for us? Is living by the societal norm serving us? Or am I just, you know, trying to regurgitate something that has been shoved down my throat? And if not, I can ask myself what is my truth? So now, moving into today, in January 2025, I’m looking at a couple of societal norms that I realized I had not really been confronting, because they’re all brand new to me, so to speak, because I only have been a mom for what a month.
11:33 So it’s this messaging that I’ve been kind of grappling with you should be married before having children. You should own a house to raise a child. Both parents should live under the same roof. So, for context, I am not married. I already just said that I live in, though it’s a very nice apartment. It’s a nice apartment, you know, bundled, you know, in the middle of a residence hall, right, and my partner and I, we actually we work together. We literally are right across the street from one another, but we’re not physically under the exact same roof. So we’re a non-traditional setup, primarily because of the work that we do, essentially. So it’s always funky to explain it, but essentially, like, think of us as being next door neighbors, essentially, but we’re just not in the same, under the same roof. So, with that being said, those are three societal norms right there that I am breaking by the walking out into that hallway and I’m feeling that shame, what others are seeing me. It’s that I just I hadn’t done the work to unpack these societal norms and decide am I fitting this or am I not fitting this, or does this serve me or am I choosing to make it my own definition? And so, as I broke down each belief, that was the clarity that came up for me, right, that none of these things. At the end of the day, none of them define the kind of mother that I want to be for my daughter, amara.
13:16 If you have not read the book Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel, I highly highly recommend it. The book Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel I highly highly recommend it. Kelly McDaniel in Mother Hunger defines what an ideal mother can be. Essentially that if a mother does not do the following three things, that her daughter will have some sort of a wound from her childhood experience which will then come up in her relationships with others, et cetera. So it’s these three things that a mother should be a nurturer, provide guidance and protect her child. Right, if there’s a lack of any of those three areas, that’s where you’ll experience some sort of a gap, and then the daughter experiences mother hunger. When and to put it out there, that’s the type of mother that I aspire to be. I want to be a nurturer, I want to provide guidance and I want to protect my daughter.
14:10 So when I think about motherhood in that regard, when I define ideal motherhood as that, I realize I don’t need a marriage certificate, I don’t need an actual house and I don’t need a traditional living arrangement to do that. I don’t need anyone but myself and, more importantly, I don’t need anyone but myself as a sober woman in order to accomplish these things. Now let me clarify before it sounds like I’m being miss, like hyper-independent I don’t mean that I don’t need anyone, period. I do need community, I do need support, I do need everyone in my life. I need my partner, I need my daughter’s father like a hundred percent. I need him and my family and everybody who’s involved in the childcare process. I’m not saying I don’t need them, but what I’m saying is that I don’t need my relationships with them to look a certain way in order for me to successfully nurture, guide and protect my daughter.
15:15 And so once I had this aha moment, right that I sat down and I broke down these beliefs and I realized that these beliefs don’t apply to me, it was like a breath of fresh air. I was like, okay, and so what I want to offer you, right, is that the next time that you might be experiencing shame, when it starts to creep in, just take a moment and pause. Right, there’s a reason why you’re feeling shame, but it doesn’t mean that whatever it’s telling you is true. It doesn’t mean that it’s a fact. Our feelings are not facts. So ask yourself, is this feeling coming up for me because of something I’ve done right, like, have I actually done something wrong or am I just buying into a narrative that doesn’t truly serve me?
16:10 Once you give yourself the opportunity to let go of these narratives, it really gives you the space to become who you need to be right, and so, in my case, letting go of these narratives has allowed me to show up for Amara and work on continuing to show up for Amara as she develops as the mother that I have wanted to be right, and so I couldn’t do that if I was still holding on to these requirements that were determined and put out there by society. I have to define what’s right for me, and then I have to move forward with what I’m defining for myself. But again, we’re humans we get busy, we forget to slow down, we forget to reflect, we forget to journal, and then it can be so quickly or we can just so quickly get caught up in thinking that really isn’t genuine to us. So that was all I just wanted to share, those thoughts for today’s episode. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll catch you in the next one.
In this episode, I share how my once-social relationship with alcohol turned into a hidden struggle during my early years as a teacher. We’ll explore the intense pressures of the classroom, the risks of unhealthy coping mechanisms, and the urgent warning from the U.S. Surgeon General about alcohol. Drawing comparisons to the historical shift in tobacco awareness, I highlight the importance of informed choices and self-care in the education profession. Featuring insights from my Education Week interview, this episode is a vital conversation for educators facing stress and its hidden challenges.
00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Hey y’all. So last week I had the opportunity to interview with Education Week to essentially discuss the Surgeon General’s new advisory on alcohol and the risks associated with alcohol, but also talk about it with regard to my teaching background and my experience as a classroom teacher, who was also addicted to alcohol. Background and my experience as a classroom teacher who was also addicted to alcohol. Now, in case you missed it, right, recently, very recently, the US Surgeon General came out with an advisory with regard to alcohol and specifically in this advisory, what was outlined was the direct link between alcohol consumption and increased cancer risk, specifically the fact that alcohol consumption right, drinking alcohol it is literally the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Right, the first two being tobacco and, apparently, obesity. And that alcohol increases your risks for at least seven types of cancer. And that, at this point, the recommended amount of alcohol to drink is not a drink. Right To not drink that’s actually the best outcome for anybody. Right, the best drink to have is to not have a drink with alcohol in it. Now, this is a big deal, obviously, for a person in recovery like myself, where having one is not an option. I don’t want to have one, because for me, to have one means that I can never have enough. This is huge because, if you think about, if any of you have read Holly Whitaker’s book Quit Like a Woman, I highly recommend it. But one of the big things that she talks about with regard to alcohol companies, in terms of big alcohol, is she draws the parallels between big alcohol and, in the past, big tobacco. Now, when we’re talking about big tobacco, right, if you think about I’m not sure which decade I’m throwing it out my butt right here maybe 1950s, 1960s but there was a time period, essentially right, when there were no cancer warnings for tobacco use and tobacco was heavily marketed, right, like you would have the cigarettes, for I think they were called Virginia Slims and those were targeted specifically toward women, right, and because they were delicate, long slender cigarettes, that that was supposed to be something that women just wanted to smoke. But lots of people smoked back then because there was no awareness of the risk of cancer that was tied to tobacco consumption. Then, once the surgeon general put that advisory out there and the warnings actually came out on tobacco items, tobacco products, we did see a decrease in the use of tobacco. Now, has tobacco been outlawed? Absolutely not. Do people still have the free choice to consume or smoke tobacco if they want to? Yes, they can, but people have the opportunity to be informed about the risks associated with tobacco use.
02:58 Now, fast forward to now, 2025, right at the time of this recording. Now this advisory has gone out about alcohol and the risks associated with alcohol. Now do I personally think that suddenly all the alcohol is going to have warning labels associated with it? I don’t know, probably not.
03:19 I’m not really optimistic about a lot of things going on in the world outside of my control and I don’t necessarily think that big alcohol companies and that legislation is going to pass where these labels will go out on these bottles, right and cans and such. However, what I think is a big win is that we do have an authority voice, like the surgeon general, stating what the risks are in terms of drinking alcohol, because I believe everyone should have free choice. If you want to drink, that is your business. I choose not to drink because I love my life without alcohol. If you want to drink, that is your business. However, what I do believe that the public deserves and especially educators I do believe that the public deserves to know what the risks are involved in the choices that they are making, right. So if you want to have your drinks, please by all means have them. Just be fully aware of what you’re putting in your body and what you are exposing yourself to in terms of risks for your health later on.
04:19 Because one thing that I did not have when I was first exposed to alcohol I did not have the understanding that alcohol was or increased your risk for cancer. Right when I was growing up, the only story that I had about alcohol being bad was that there were these people called alcoholics quote unquote and that they couldn’t handle their liquor. And then I eventually became one of those people that couldn’t handle liquor and I thought there was something wrong with me. My entire life I didn’t realize that the problem itself was alcohol. Holly Whitaker, again in Quit, like a Woman, does an excellent job of pointing this out and writing this out in a beautiful manner. Highly recommend her book. But in the meantime, I’m glad that we have finally moved from it being said in her book to having someone like the US Surgeon General stating this.
05:08 Anyway, all that is to say is that Education Week, which is a news source for educators, typically in the K through 12 setting. They reached out to me to have a conversation about my relationship with alcohol as a teacher. A conversation about my relationship with alcohol as a teacher. The reason why is because, with this advisory coming out there, we know that educators, especially K through 12 educators, they like to have their drinks right. One of the surprising not really surprising facts. I had an intuitive feeling that this was accurate, but educators do rank among the top 10 professions who are most likely to abuse alcohol. This is data collected from SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. So we wanted to have this conversation and we wanted to have this conversation now, early on in the year, to talk about the stresses that educators go through.
06:05 In my interview I interviewed specifically with journalist Elizabeth Hubeck. She asked me Did I know how stressful teaching would be? And here’s the thing Going into the classroom, I had no idea how difficult public school teaching would be. And the thing was that I went into teaching directly after college, so I had had no real professional exposure to any other kind of work outside of classroom teaching. So, yes, I knew that it was stressful. Yes, my body was always on high alert because anything at any time could go wrong in my classroom, especially that first year. But I didn’t know, I had no frame of reference for what other work would look like, right, and so the daily stress of being in the classroom was absolutely overwhelming.
06:59 And this episode, in a sense, is just validating. If you are an educator or if you know an educator, pass this on to them, because I want to validate that, if you are a classroom teacher, that you are 100% not alone in terms of feeling absolute overwhelm. Right, I was hired on. I’m going back to my first year teaching in Brooklyn. I’ll tell you this quick story. Maybe it’s not so quick, but my first year teaching in Brooklyn, I was in the New York city teaching fellows program and, coming straight out of college, I was hired on to teach at this small public school with about 10 other first year teachers who were also recent college graduates.
07:39 Most of us were New York City teaching fellows too, which means that we did not have education degrees. We were pulled from whatever kind of major that we had and we were given a classroom and were told go, go teach. And we really we knew we were in the thick of the chaos, but again, we were all young professionals. So we didn’t know how chaotic our world was in comparison to other people, but essentially we would get to the end of every work day, right, and there was almost like this desperate need to lock eyes with one another and, you know, just almost silently, confirm and communicate to one another telepathically, almost that, yes, we’re going to happy hour, right, because that’s the thing with educators. It’s almost like if you have a good day in the classroom, you want to drink to celebrate it, but more likely than not, you’re probably having really rough days and you’re coping by drinking. And especially when you have a happy hour kind of setting, you have that opportunity to almost commiserate with one another.
08:40 So the thing with my classroom experience too, especially that first year, was that I had classroom brawls that were almost a daily occurrence, had, again, no training, no skills to deescalate these really highly volatile middle school kiddos who didn’t even know how to be comfortable in their own bodies, right. And so I feel like I just the sound of desks like screeching across the floor and chairs being knocked over, like that sound is permanently ingrained in my head. It’s like a soundtrack that I’ll never forget. And, speaking of people, I’ll never forget I had a student, I’ll say their name was Tyson. Their name was not Tyson, but I’m just making it up and I remember again, this was a sixth grade student back in 2008 or so, so way back, and Tyson adored Nicki Minaj, before I even knew who Nicki Minaj was. Like, this kid just like, knew who she was and like if you as a teacher had a misstep in your lesson plan and there was like a minute of idle time, just any moment where things were not happening actively in the classroom, this kid would jump out of their seat and just start twerking to whatever Nicki Minaj song was like playing in his head silently.
10:05 And the thing is that you know Tyson was a sixth grader and at that time I do know Tyson now as an adult and Tyson since has now come out but back then Tyson hadn’t openly shared that they were a part of the LGBTQIA community, right, but they’ve still have become a target for their classmates. Cruelty, right, because you know, for someone who was identifying as male or perceived as a male by their peers, rather loving Nicki Minaj, wanting to twerk and dance, nicki, that made the student a target. And the problem with my other students was, again, they’re, they’re so young too. They were just parroting the ignorance that they were learning at home, right? So they would throw slurs at Tyson and all sorts of hateful labels at the student Tyson. But Tyson also did not play around and would not let any of that slide either. So I admired how much fire Tyson carried as a sixth grader.
11:08 And you know Tyson would straight up, challenge anybody who tried to call, call them any names, right? So Tyson would be like, oh, you want to call me this? All right, well then, come say it to my face. You know they would just straight up, snap, and you know they would just like stand tall, like even as their voice is cracking, right, and before I could even intervene, y’all, this room, this classroom would erupt. And again I was a first year teacher, I was like 22 years old, and the desks were flipping, the desks, the chairs were sliding across the floor. You had a circle of students, you know, forming and yelling, fight, fight, fight, and security would bust into the classroom to break it up. And then you know suddenly like my whole classroom was destroyed right, furniture everywhere, and having to put it back together.
11:56 But the thing was, scenes like this were very common, not just in my classroom, but in the classrooms of the other first year teachers that we were in, right, we were literally drowning in this sea of chaos and that shared stress was absolutely creating a strong bond for us. But we were bonding at happy hour over glasses, over bottles, and so what for me was becoming what I thought was just simple socializing, right, it very quickly was becoming a habit and then eventually it became a crutch. And then eventually, you know, it was a trap that I was in, that I didn’t even realize that I was basically setting for myself. You know, from this happy hour pattern as a teacher is where I first started to hide my alcohol consumption. Right, so we would be, you know, at our usual happy hour spot, and there was one time that I had had a couple of drinks, probably too quickly, and so my words were literally tumbling out of my mouth. Right, my words were too fast and they were getting too slurred, you know, because I was venting about a surprise classroom observation that day, and I remember that day, my observation went so badly that, in a moment of complete frustration, I literally stopped trying to teach altogether in the middle of that observation, with the principal in the back of the room and I said to my students do you want me to get fired? Because my boss is right there in the back of the room and the way this is going it’s looking like I can’t teach y’all. And I remember I pointed straight to the principal in the back who was just like hunched over her laptop, you know, taking notes. And um, you know, back at the bar like I was just downing my drinks and talking about that and how I was just like man. I thought this principal was going to like send my behind pack in and had to go.
13:56 And I was getting up to go get another drink when one of my coworkers at that time just abruptly stopped me and was like whoa, jess, I totally was drinking too fast. But when they called me out, you know those words they didn’t just land on me, like they literally sliced through me. It was like in that moment I was taken back to being a kid and being called out for, say, eating too much, when I used to get in trouble for overeating, for example, with my mom. So I mean that humiliation was just. It was just a lot, it was a lot. My cheeks were flush with shame and all I could say to myself is what is wrong with you, right? And I used to ask myself that all the time since I was a kid what is wrong with you? So I didn’t drink anymore there at happy hour.
14:49 But on my way home this was New York city, so I was riding the subway. When I got off the train and I was walking out of the train station, I saw that there was a liquor store and you know, I had the thought like, ah, like I could keep this going at home and no one’s going to say anything to me there, right? So I went in, I got a little bottle, slipped it into a brown paper bag, put that bag inside of my work bag and you know, I walked home feeling a little bit cocky, feeling a little bit good about myself and just thinking like y’all ain’t catching me drinking more than you, right? That was, that was the logic that I had, and from that point forward I always made it a point to never be seen drinking more than whoever I was with. So if somebody I was with was drinking like six drinks, I would have six.
15:38 But if I was in the company of someone who slowly nursed one drink, I was slowly nursing one drink and you know, just like that, just like that you all, my secret of drinking started, and it started from some of the stress of being a classroom teacher. Right, I’m not saying that that was the start of my addiction to alcohol. If you’ve listened to my story before I talk about more of the deeper roots, go back to my relationship with food, and I also think that one’s complicated descent into addiction goes through many layers, and this is just one of the layers. Right, because I have a whole college time story too. But I just wanted to talk a little bit about the teacher part because, again, if you are an educator, if you are a teacher, and you are struggling right now, I promise you that you are not alone. I promise, you, promise, you, promise you. Again, teaching is one of the 10 professions, according to the statistic cited in the article that I’m a part of, where the stress drives people to drink, and so you don’t have to spend the rest of the year attached to the bottle.
16:51 Don’t hesitate to reach out for support. Again, I will start coaching people again, starting in March of this year. So if you are interested in one-to-one coaching, check that out. If you’re looking for a community online communities like the Luckiest Club are great, great, great places. If you need free support, there’s always Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s not my preferred support, but it works for a lot of people right. So whatever you need to take care of yourself at this time, go do it. You deserve to free yourself. So thanks. I’ll catch y’all in the next episode.
In this episode of Bottomless to Sober, I return after a long (super long) hiatus to share life updates, including the birth of my daughter, Amara, and my journey into motherhood. I reflect on how sobriety has equipped her to navigate the fear and uncertainty of major life changes, from her early delivery due to health concerns to the sleepless nights of newborn care. I also revisit into the importance of setting and honoring boundaries in 2025, encouraging you to stay committed to your limits and prioritize self-care amid life’s challenges.
00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Hello, and I would want to say happy 2025, but we’re about two weeks into this to take care of yourself and to cope and to manage with everything that the world throws at us, because it seems like we live in forever unprecedented times and I don’t think that we will ever live in precedented times ever again. So a couple of quick updates. It’s been a long time since I have recorded a single podcast episode, a single podcast episode, and the funny thing is I was moved to record today because a family member who I had had a disagreement with and who I’ve mentioned before on this podcast, decided to, I guess, listen to enough episodes of the podcast to hear something about themselves that they did not like and call me out on it, which they already knew. And I was like you know what? Like, that was the fire that I needed to start recording again. Like, yeah, like, let me, let me go ahead and start recording again. So, y’all, I am back and I cannot promise you with any consistency that I’m going to be back, but I’m going to record when I can and when I feel fired up, and I do feel fired up today. So, fun fact, I’m a mom. I had my daughter, amara on December 21st.
01:34 I did not talk about my pregnancy at all on the podcast last year because I didn’t want to. I really just wanted to savor and enjoy this pregnancy on my own, and it was great. It was great I came out publicly about my pregnancy towards the end. I shared in late October, early November, and then I had the baby in December. So I really gave myself and my family a lot of time to enjoy my pregnancy on my own, trying to think of what else I was going to say.
02:02 Sorry for the random pause. It’s been a long time since I’ve recorded anything, so it’s just like Ooh, my brain is, my brain is a little bit mushy. Another thing I will say is that my daughter, amara, is currently strapped to my chest, sleeping as we speak, and so if you hear any random baby noises, that’s just going to be a part of my background noise, I assume, moving forward, as I don’t plan on editing her out. You know I’m recording as my life is and I’m a mom now, so there’s a little human on me. Fun facts, right, but anyway, um, so yeah, I I’ll share a little bit about actually having Amara, right.
02:40 So she was originally due January 6th. That would have been when I hit 40 weeks of pregnancy. However, because my pregnancy was determined high risk due to my quote unquote advanced maternal age of being 39 years old and pregnant, the doctors from early on told me we would deliver week 39, which would have been around December 29th. Me we would deliver week 39, which would have been around December 29th. However, on Thursday, december 19th, when I was going in for one of my routine checkups, uh, things changed quickly. My blood pressure was starting to spike for about a week and they were worried. The medical team was worried that I was developing preeclampsia, which can be a deadly blood pressure spike that can impact your liver and all sorts of other things, and so they were looking out for that. And around this time, my mother had also had a fall where she broke her hip, and that was a very solid health scare where we didn’t know at certain times if my mom was going to make it. So my blood pressure, in my opinion, was justifiably elevated, right, because my mom was not doing well. However, the doctors didn’t care about that. They just cared about the fact that my blood pressure was elevated and I was pregnant. So, regardless of the cause, right, my risk for preeclampsia was significant enough where, as soon as I hit 37 weeks, they said hey, it’s time for us to go ahead and deliver this baby. She’s full term and we need you to be healthy, we need your baby to be healthy.
04:20 And so what I will say is that, as as soon as the doctors told me that I had to deliver, like a few weeks early, my eyes just completely welled up with tears. Like, yes, I wanted to meet my daughter. Of course I did, but I was holding on to that December 29th y’all. Like that was my lifeline, um, you know. And it wasn’t because I wasn’t prepared. I’m a type A person so you better believe that I had that nursery put together for her in September. There were so many people including, I’m sure, some of you as listeners who contributed um to the registry, right. So I had all the things ready for her.
04:59 But mentally I didn’t feel like I was ready. Yes, I, I wanted to get pregnant and I was already nine months pregnant, so you would think that I would have been ready, but there was just something in me that was was just not ready for the official, the formal transition, right. Like I was terrified of going into labor and of stepping into motherhood. And so when the doctor said we’re probably going to need to deliver, we’ll call you and confirm in a couple hours I left that doctor’s office and I ran to the grocery store and I filled my cart with anything I could think of. I was just in this panic, almost frenzied phase of oh my goodness, like I’m not ready, I’m not ready, I’m not ready. But here’s the thing Even though I was experiencing that panic in that moment, the reality was that I was ready. Right, sobriety had always prepared me for navigating fear and uncertainty, right? Yes, this was a new test, but deep down, there isn’t anything that I cannot face, that I won’t emerge stronger for facing.
06:14 There is a Brianna Weiss entry of the pivot year that I love and I adore, and it’s entry 170 of the pivot year, and this is what Brianna Weiss wrote how do you finally stop worrying? You realize that the version of yourself that will be able to handle every situation that might arise in your life will be born in the precise moment that situation comes to be. No matter where your path might take you or where you go, the version of yourself that you will need in those moments will emerge right as you need it and not a second before. You cannot call upon all the parts of yourself to exist at once. Different versions of you are needed for various aspects of your life. Find peace in knowing that you are more than one thing than one thing, and within the layers of who you are, both visible and invisible, exists a strength that is equal to or more powerful than anything you may come to face. Right, I love that.
07:21 And at the end of the day, when the doctor did call me back and said hey, jess, it’s time to report, we need you at 9 pm in the hospital for induction, yes, I let out some heavy sobs oh, my gosh. And I was like holy crap, this is it, isn’t it? But you know what, two days later, 36 hours of labor later, when that baby girl, amara, was born and I crossed that threshold into motherhood, I realized that I would be good. Even if this is all brand new to me, even if it’s also confusing sometimes and exhausting, sobriety has taught me that I can face anything and all things and still be just absolutely fine. And you know, the funny thing is that now you know my baby. She’s been here for a couple of weeks. She’s about three, three and a half weeks old and there’s certain principles about sobriety that just sort of translate. And and that’s what I love about this recovery work that we do is that once we get the handle of staying sober, we can take those basic principles and apply them to everything else. Right.
08:38 And so with sobriety being patient right, not giving up no matter how tempting it is to and that’s the same thing with this baby thing. Right, it’s only been a few weeks and the first week especially was so, so challenging, just kind of navigating the hospital issues and figuring out things with, like, her nutrition and some health scares that we had. There was a lot there and there were a few moments where I was like I don’t know how I’m getting through this, but I did, but I did. I’ve gotten through 100% of the worst days of my life. There’s absolutely no reason why I can’t get through motherhood. Right. And the same thing with sobriety Also, just the value of showing up every day.
09:28 Even when it’s hard, eventually things start to get easier. Again, it was a harsh reality to wake up every two to three hours in like the first week and a half, two weeks. Now there’s more flexibility there in terms of it still hurts like hell don’t get me wrong to wake up every two to three hours, but oh, and you hear her making her little cue noises. But we get through it and I’m getting more comfortable with the schedule of being a mom, right? And so, again, you go through the heart adjustment and you start to slowly get through it, and that that’s what I’m learning, and from what I hear from all the mothers with more experience than me is that it continues to just get better, right? So, with that being said, I wanted to also just talk a little bit about today the power of boundaries and just those reminders of how powerful boundary setting is and continues to be in 2025.
10:35 Now, I had completed a book study with the luckiest club for the book of boundaries back in October, and it has been very important to continue to set the boundaries that are necessary. Like I said, um earlier, there, I had had an interaction with a family member who was insisting that you know we should, you know, be in touch and that you know I had to have this daughter so that they should be, you know, receiving pictures and like having the opportunity to celebrate her, and you know all these different things, except that, at the end of the day, right, that’s not happening because it’s a decision that I made and it’s a decision that I’m I’m sticking with Right. And so if any of you in this time of the year, now that the holidays have passed and now that we’re slowly getting into January, right and quitting day passed the other day quitting day for those of you who don’t know is I want to say it’s the second Friday in January where people set resolutions and then, by then, they decide to quit them. And what I’m encouraging you to do is to stick to whatever you, whatever your limits are, continue to honor them. Right, the the hard work is continuing to stay true to whatever you said that you were going to do, because it’s very easy to get wrapped up in what other people have to say.
11:59 It is very easy to start to feel guilty and to start to feel uncomfortable. And what I always say to other people, when you start to feel guilt about setting boundaries and limits for yourself, is what Dr Pooja Lakshman says in Real Self-Care about guilt, and that is that she reminds us that guilt is always going to be there. It’s just a default feeling that we’re going to feel, and we can treat it like those check engine lights that we have on cars right, if you’re driving on a highway and you see that check engine light, it doesn’t mean that suddenly you abruptly stop driving, you pull over and that’s it. You’re not getting to your destination. No, you continue to get to your destination, you continue driving, you’re aware of that light going on and maybe you’ll check it later but you’re not letting that light completely derail what you’re doing.
12:49 And so when I started to feel slight guilt, when I started to question myself and my boundaries earlier today, I had to stop and remind myself that, no, I made this decision for a good reason, and the people who I allow in my life, they earned their spot in my life. People don’t earn their spot in my life simply because we’re related. They have to actually earn their spot in my life. And so same thing for you. If you are in a situation where you are questioning things, where you are doubting the limits that you put on yourself, remind yourself of your why, remind yourself of why you made the decision that you made and go with it. The other thing worth noting is that if you are exploring your why and that why is no longer relevant, is no longer powerful and you are giving yourself, you’re questioning it. You can also give yourself permission and that flexibility to change your mind right. We don’t have to. The boundaries that we set don’t have to stay boundaries forever. It’s good to reevaluate and when you reevaluate you can decide if you want to keep that boundary as it is or if you want to change it or adjust it.
14:11 So with that, really, I’m just going to kind of end up just rambling on if I stay on here, but I just wanted to get back on and I wanted to use my voice and I wanted to say hello. There’s so much that has happened, I suppose, and this is just the beginning of catching up. But thank you for listening, thank you for following my randomness on today’s episode and I look forward to getting getting back on here with y’all and talking more. So thanks so much for listening and I hope to catch you all soon on the next episode. Bye.
Feeling like you might be the odd one out at social gatherings because you’ve chosen sobriety? You’re not alone. In this episode, I share tips to help you decide if navigating social events where alcohol is often front and center is something you are ready for.
00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Hey everyone. Jessica here and it is so nice to be back. I have taken huge intentional breaks over the course of this summer that I’m not apologizing for. I needed to take time to myself and so I took it, but I’m happy to be back. I felt moved to create a podcast episode to talk about the decision to go out or not to go out as a sober person when we know that alcohol is going to be at whatever venue we’re going to. I recently had an opportunity to go out to dinner with my coworkers and I had so much fun. It was such a great opportunity to just connect with my colleagues outside of the university setting.
00:43 But what I realized is that there are a lot of things that have to be in place before I can go out with people and be comfortable with them drinking to their heart’s content. While I have water or whatever else I choose to drink that has no alcohol in it, right, and so I wanted to bring that here. In case this is something that you struggle with or are struggling with, or if you know someone who’s struggling with, then send them this episode to listen to, because that’s the thing, right. Like how often have any of us said to ourselves or thought I don’t want to be left out because I don’t drink. Or, you know, if I skip the happy hour, or if I skip a boozy meal, or if I skip, you know, the holiday party, right, if I skip insert event here, I will stop getting invited altogether. And again, if you have thought these things, you are absolutely not alone. And here’s the thing a person who is strong in their recovery can go anywhere. I’m gonna say that again. A person who is strong in their recovery can go anywhere. I’m going to say that again. A person who is strong in their recovery can go anywhere. When I am feeling very well, taken care of, when I feel strong in general, and I know that I don’t want to get out of my feelings, get out of my head, get out of the skin that I’m in, I know that I’m good and I can go, do whatever and partake in any activity that I want to, whether or not there’s alcohol there. But if I am feeling weak, if I am feeling insecure, if I am doubting my decision, if I am feeling like I want what they want, then those are all a lot of good reasons to potentially say no for now and stay home, then those are all a lot of good reasons to potentially say no for now and stay home. So, essentially, this is how I knew that I would be fine.
02:28 So the first thing that I want to point out right is that whoever you are spending time with, there should be someone in that group that knows that you are not drinking. I’m not going to sit here and tell you, to tell your whole entire life story to this one trusted soul that knows that you’re not drinking. I’m not saying that. But what I am saying is that someone should be made aware in that group of your intention to not drink. Why One? That’s going to establish an opportunity for accountability, right? If you know that someone else knows what you’re trying to do, that automatically helps you stay focused and stay on track with your goal. But secondly, it also gives you the opportunity to have some built-in support at whatever this event is.
03:12 Because the thing is, people often want to help us, but if we don’t explicitly open our mouths and ask for that help, if we don’t say, hey, if you notice me going for that wine, can you like just give me a look? Right, just a look can be enough, but if we don’t communicate that need for support, people won’t know how to help us. They won’t even know that we need the help or the support. So it really becomes our responsibility to make sure that there’s at least one human being in that space who we can trust to know that we are not going to drink. Fun fact, my dog is drinking, like got super thirsty right now and was drinking a lot of water. So maybe you heard him lapping up the water, maybe you didn’t, but I’m not editing it. So moving forward, here’s the thing If you find that you don’t feel safe telling at least one person of your intention to not drink and you are still insisting on going to this event, let me tell you something there’s going to be a huge probability of you drinking.
04:15 Why? Because there’s not going to be any human soul there physically for you to like, look to or talk to or confide in right, you’re going at it alone. For you to like, look to or talk to or confide in right, you’re going at it alone. And then B, if people don’t know that you are not drinking, they’re going to be offering you alcohol. So imagine how many more times you’re going to have to say no or decline right. That’s a lot of mental energy for yourself to be constantly having to decline something, as opposed to going in with the established fact that, no, you are not consuming this.
04:45 For example, with my colleagues, my coworkers they have known a since they won that I don’t drink Like I walked into that job interview and I was like I want to work here because I I’m in recovery and I want college students to know an adult in recovery. So that has been well established on my part and obviously my storytelling style and my level of openness is very unique. But again, you know what’s never going to happen. There will never be. Well, I can’t say never, but I highly doubt that a coworker of mine is ever going to offer me a drink because they know not just that I don’t drink, but they know I have a history of addiction. You are never going to offer a heroin user who’s in recovery you know heroin right going to offer a heroin user who’s in recovery you know heroin right. Same way, people who know someone has struggled for real with alcohol aren’t about to give them alcohol. So again, if you find that you cannot tell anybody that you are not drinking tonight at this event, then you know what. You are better off protecting yourself and staying home. You’re probably not ready to say yes, and that’s okay.
05:44 The other thing to consider is what is your attitude toward the people who are still drinking? Right, Because this can go about three different ways. One you might be looking at people who are drinking and you are like, oh my gosh, I wish I could still drink. I’m so jealous, I hate it here. I hate this stupid sobriety thing. It’s so unfair that I have to stop drinking. Why can’t I just drink like them? Right?
06:13 If that’s the stream of consciousness that comes up for you when you see other people drink, right, then you’re better off staying home again, because it’s just going to fill you with yearning for something that you don’t have and can’t really have right now, or at all, or it’s going to fill you with resentment. And why do you want to put yourself in that position again? I mean recovery. I’ll be the first one to tell you that being sober is not the easiest thing, right, and sobriety doesn’t guarantee you, like this, easy life. However, what I will say is that if you struggle to recognize that your relationship with alcohol is different than other people’s and so you’re still wanting what they have. Then again, just stay safe and stay home. Right, wait until your relationship with your sobriety is stronger, so that you’re not necessarily wanting what other people have.
07:02 The second way that this can go in terms of attitudes towards alcohol or people who still drink is that maybe you are loving sobriety, maybe you are on this pink cloud and you have seen the light and you have read what’s that book? Quit Like a Woman and you are just all about how, like, big alcohol is just producing this mass amounts of poison that are killing people and everyone should just be sober, right, maybe you’ve got that level of enthusiasm, which is great, except that if your friend is about to down a flight of shots of tequila, you have no business in that moment saying anything or trying to change their behavior. Right, like good for you that you are happy about your recovery and that you are proud of your sobriety journey. But the point is it’s your journey, right, and you walk it on your own right. You. You can’t do it alone, but it is your path and it is your responsibility.
07:52 So what you need to recognize is is that you know, especially a social event is not the place to try to convert people who are drinkers into sobriety right. And so if you are sitting in these spaces looking at people who are still drinking with judgment or thinking almost that like you’re now so much more elevated because you’re sober, then you should save your energy and save their time and not go have dinner or go out with them, because, for what? Why are you gonna sit there filling your body full of that energy of just judgment? You might as well stay home. The third way that that can go is that you’re you’re not judgy and you kind of you don’t care what they’re doing with themselves, because you recognize that they are in their own bodies, they’re walking their own paths, they’re living their own journeys, and so you get to just really enjoy their company. Again, I had a blast with my coworkers because I focused on enjoying their company. I had a blast with my coworkers because I focused on enjoying their company. I focused on enjoying their humor. They’re silly, they’re funny, they’re charismatic, and I did all of that without judgment. But if I was sitting there judging them for whatever they were consuming, there is no way that it would have been an enjoyable social event.
09:03 The other thing to consider if you’re going to go to a social event is will you have an exit strategy? If you can’t get out by yourself, then don’t go, because what’s really important is for you to be able to leave when you are ready to and when you want to. Tired, then you need to protect yourself and not go, because when you stress your body, when you exhaust your body, that is absolutely going to increase the risk of wanting to drink. So it’s so important that you honor your limits and just go home when you need to, but if you can’t, then don’t go. And then, really, the last thing that I just wanted to talk about here is finding a place of acceptance. If you can accept that you are on a sobriety path which will absolutely look different from the path of the people that you are with. If you can’t accept that, then that is not the space for you to be in.
10:04 Right, because it’s important for you to acknowledge, like number one, you’re going to have to probably drink water or see if they maybe have a mocktail or alcohol free option on the menu, which a lot of places still don’t have, right? So that means that if you want to have like a drink that’s not a soft drink, you’re going to have to sit there and ask the server, right, can I have an alcoholfree version of insert, whatever mocktail that there is? And, yes, there will be probably some awkwardness, right, that comes up for advocating for your special needs, your specific needs. But you have to remember that any awkwardness that comes up is definitely well worth waking up the next day without having to worry like what the hell you did the night before, right. But if those things are too much for you, if you think that everyone is going to swivel their head and stare at you the second that you say alcohol free, you know whatever, then don’t go.
10:59 But the reality is people don’t really care if you’re not drinking. That that really is it, unless they have a problem themselves with alcohol and they look at you changing your relationship with alcohol as a threat to their relationship with alcohol. They really don’t care. And so, with that being said, you know, just remember, you weren’t born to be like everyone else, right? If you were meant to conform in the first place, you would have been born like, exactly like everyone else. But we were born to be individuals. We were born to just be who we’re meant to be.
11:36 When you start to feel like, oh my gosh, I’m so different, I’m so unique from my coworkers, you know, and you start to feel sort of like this sense of absolute isolation. If you haven’t joined any sobriety support communities, I highly recommend that you do. Why? Because when you go in there and you open your mouth and share, you’re going to find that shocker. You’re not the only one who feels this way and it helps you feel a lot less isolated. So I would highly highly recommend it. I host meetings at the luckiest club, the luckiest clubcom, but there’s tons of other communities and tons of other options.
12:10 So, again, everyone is going to find that their readiness level for certain. You know, situations, experiences comes at different times, if it ever even comes right. Maybe you just don’t want to partake in these kinds of events, and that’s okay. But if you realize that you would like to be able to go out to meals with friends or different social groups and be okay with other people drinking, don’t force it. Wait until you’re ready. Wait until you feel strong enough, right Again, look to some of the things that I mentioned in this episode and also consider what else do you need for yourself? What other metrics for yourself might help you decide if you can handle these situations or not. They’re not for everybody and there’s no need to rush into them. And again, you are different because you’re an individual and you are unique, and so it’s okay if you don’t blend in with everyone at work. It’s okay if you don’t blend in with your friend group exactly as you used to. You’re not meant to be like everyone else. That’s that.
Preventing substance use in children starts earlier than you might think—right from kindergarten. In this eye-opening episode, I welcome Jessica Lahey, an educator, New York Times bestselling author, and speaker, who shares insights from her book The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence. Jessica highlights the developmental differences in how young people respond to substances and provides parents, educators, and community members with the tools they need to have effective and informed conversations about substance use and safety. Discover how cumulative, consistent efforts are far more impactful than one-time discussions in fostering healthy habits and mindsets in children and how to find the courage to name the things that are happening as opposed to keeping things hidden.
High: Everything You Want to Know About Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction by David Sheff and Nic Sheff
Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain by Daniel Siegel
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Nadine Burke Harris
Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls by Lisa Damour
Transcript:
00:19 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Hey, everyone, it is so good to be back, especially after having taken a brief time away, and today we are discussing an incredibly timely and important topic, especially because summer is here and so you’ve got everybody home right, and that topic is preventing substance use in our kids, especially, again, like I said, everyone is home for the summer, but really focusing in on this topic with our families who have parents who are navigating recovery. So for today’s episode, I am super honored to have very special guest, Jessica Lahey. So, yes, it’s a double Jessica episode and Jessica is an educator and author and speaker whose work has really transformed folks’ understanding of addiction and resilience in young people, right.
01:05 So Jessica is the author of two books. The first one is a New York Times bestseller, the Gift of Failure how the Best Parents Learn to Let Go so their Children Can Succeed. And then the text that we’re focusing on more today is the Addiction Inoculation Raising Healthy Kids in the Culture of Dependence. So both are excellent breeds for parents, educators, the aunties who are seeking to understand and prevent substance abuse among children and teens, and so for today’s episode, we’re going to discuss what the risk factors are for substance abuse and also how parents, educators and other family members and community members, especially those who are in recovery, can help equip this generation of kiddos to handle these challenges. So Jessica will share insights from her book and, again, her extensive experience as both a researcher and a teacher, and also a mother. So listen along. I hope you enjoy the episode and take good care. Jessica, hi, welcome.
02:03 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Thank you so so much for having me. This is just. This conversation is so much fun to have and I’m so grateful for those of us who are for the people who are sort of opening this up and making it less scary for other people.
02:15 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Yes, cause talking to kids can be really scary. Teenagers and young adults are are an intimidation. I know that from having taught middle schoolers for many years and now working with college students. They are an intimidation. I know that from having taught middle schoolers for many years and now working with college students. They are an intimidating bunch, and so I’m so glad that you are here just to share your expertise. So my first question is if you could share, just for anyone listening, a little bit about the work that you do and the core message of the addiction inoculation, especially as it might relate to, say, high school or college age students. I know in your book you do provide frameworks, which I think is awesome for anyone listening. If you check out the text, there are even frameworks for how to talk to the littles about this. But yeah, what would you say is sort of like the core message behind the high schoolers and the college age students?
03:01 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) So in order to do that, I have to back up one second and just say so. I was a teacher for 20 years, and when I was teaching in middle school is when my first book, the Gift of Failure, came out, and it was also right. When I sold that book was the same moment that I realized that this sneaking suspicion that I had a major problem with alcohol for a while really got to the point where it couldn’t be ignored anymore and led to a whole I talk about it in the book sort of how I ended up there. But so the minute that I got sober and had this realization of, oh my gosh, like I was raised by an alcoholic and one of my parents was raised by an alcoholic, and so on and so on and so on. So is this just like? Are we doomed or is there what’s up? I have these two children, I have these two children in front of me and I don’t want them to have to go through what I went through. So how do I even begin to talk to them about what I’m doing now in terms of getting sober? But then, what the heck like? What’s myth? What’s reality, what’s evidence-based? How do we go, we as parents and we as educators go and mentors and people like that go about doing sort of best practices for substance use prevention in kids, and I just couldn’t find that book. So I mean, I have the coolest job in the world and I get to get curious about something and then I get to write it.
04:23 So you’re absolutely right, though, that the best substance use prevention programs that we know of start really early, like kindergarten, pre-k, kindergarten is where the scripts in the book really start, because there is nothing more maddening than you know a school who feels like they’re doing a really good job, for example, and they don’t even start talking about this until high school, for example, and that’s just too late. Middle school is too late. I mean, anytime is the right time to get started, but with really really little kids, you know we’re talking about things like bodily autonomy and about things that we put inside our bodies and things that we don’t put inside of our bodies, and then it goes developmentally up with kids and by the time we get them to high school, especially high school, them to high school, especially high school, these conversations should be a regular part of talking about your safety and how your brain is developing in particular, and that’s why I spent so much time on brain development, because I, you know, the substance use in kids is a completely different game than substance use in adults. The you know the brain art, the human brain is not done developing until the early to mid twenties and the damage that we do to our brains when we use any addictive substances while that brain is done developing does short and long-term damage. That is just not a thing as much when we get older. And helping adolescents understand that and giving them sort of all of the evidence they need in order to make the best possible decisions, and then giving them some refusal skills in order to make the best possible decisions for themselves, that’s sort of at the heart of what we do with the middle school, high school and even into college.
06:03 Because, you know, I almost didn’t even put a college chapter in this book because I, you know, I grew up, I’m 50, how old am I? 54. So to me, college was animal house, right. Everybody drinks, everybody drinks to excess. It’s just a big alcohol fueled, you know, whatever I was like. Well, why bother? Why put a college chapter in the book?
06:25 But it turns out, the minute I started digging into the research.
06:28 Far, far fewer kids in college drink than we think and the vast, vast majority of college students drink. The vast sorry, the vast vast minority of college students drink the vast majority of alcohol on college campuses. And the nice thing is, college students report that they still get a fair amount of their information on sort of safety and health from their parents, so they’re still listening, even when they’re in college. So sorry, very long answer to say. You know, we are still able to influence our kids and talk to them about healthy decisions. The problem is is for so long we’ve done it wrong. We’ve tried to scare them straight, and that doesn’t work. We’ve tried to, you know, give them the worst possible examples of everything that could happen, and that doesn’t work and just say no, doesn’t work. What works is giving kids really good information about their brains, about their bodies, about how alcohol functions differently in an adolescent brain and body than it does in an adult brain or body or whatever the drug is, and then trusting them to make some good decisions.
07:29 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Yeah, and you know, I totally agree with the college student part in terms of their parental influence. Now that this has been my first year and a half working on a college campus and working very close with college students, and they absolutely still go to their parents for everything and even like my strategies to manage my student staff that I would do with my middle school students have really worked with high school I mean college students, right. So I think that you’re absolutely spot on to include the conversation about college students for the parents, because I think that, yeah, their influence is still really, really big. So, you know, as I was listening to you speak, I was thinking about the parents, and I’ve heard many parents in my years of teaching say well, I’m the type of parent who wants to make sure that my kid knows how to drink, so I’m going to get them the alcohol. Their friends can come stay over, they can drink in the basement and I know that they’re all safe. What are your thoughts on that, based off what you mentioned about the brain?
08:26 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Okay.
08:27 So, first and foremost, there are two main myths I hear. Which is? The first one is I want to teach my kids model for my kids what moderate drinking looks like, and modeling for your kids what moderate drinking looks like, that’s all great and wonderful, but hoping that giving them alcohol in order to teach them about moderation or to make it no big deal so they don’t freak out later these are all myths, and the other one is the whole. They’re going to do it anyway. So therefore, you know they can do it at my house and I’ll keep them safe by taking away all the keys, that kind of thing. Both of these actually raise your children’s lifelong risk of developing substance use disorder when they get older.
09:06 There are a couple of things to think about. Number one parents who have a consistent, clear message of no, not until your brain is done developing. Some people choose to go with no, not until it’s legal, except that for me is a for a lot of adolescents anyway is a because I said so kind of argument which doesn’t tend to go over too well. But if they understand how their brain is developing and the particular harms that drugs and alcohol can do in their brains, when you say no, not until your brain is done developing. That’s just not what we do in this family. You’re you know those kids have much lower rates of substance use disorder in their lifetime than kids who have parents with a permissive stance on drugs and alcohol before it’s legal for them or before their brain is done developing. The other thing is that, like attempting to teach moderation to a kid by letting them sip. The problem is is if they’re going to have a problem with drug and alcohol, like, for example, myself, I can’t learn moderation. It’s just not something that I’m going to be able to learn.
10:09 Number three the younger a kid is when they first try drugs or alcohol, the higher their lifelong risk of developing substance use disorder. So if you have an eighth grader and they have their first beer or their first whatever, they have almost a 50% chance over the span of their lifetime of developing substance use disorder. If they wait two more years, we can cut that in half to about 21%. And if we can get them to go another two years till they’re 18, then we can cut that in half again down to about 11%. So again, delay, delay, delay has to be the message here, and that happens best couched in the hole. Let me explain to you what’s happening in your brain. Let me explain to you why alcohol works differently in your body than it does in the body of an adult, that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I don’t have a lot of patience, for well, I have lots of patience, but I don’t have a lot of.
11:05 I don’t truck with those sort of myths about teaching kids somehow to be moderate. And the last one that I hear a lot is yes, but what about those European families, those European kids, where the kids are given sips and it’s not a big deal to them and they grow up being moderate drinkers? Well, the problem there is if you go to the World Health Organization and you look at their site on alcohol consumption and other statistics I’ll go into in a second in Europe, europe as a whole, has the highest rates of illness attributable to alcohol in the entire world. They have the highest rates of death attributable to alcohol in the entire world. They have the highest rates of death attributable to alcohol in the entire world.
11:46 And, depending on the country, you know, there’s a lot of variability across Europe and this is where people tend to scream at me but what about? What about Greece? What about France? What about Italy? You know they tend to yell at me, which is fine because I can break it down. I can break down Europe by every single country, because I’ve had to go into great detail in order to counter sort of those yeah, yeah, yeah, but in this country it’s totally cool and people are moderate drinkers. But as a whole, the European Union is not really the end all be all example that maybe we should be holding up.
12:20 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Yeah, that’s, that’s a really powerful example too, because, you’re right, I’ve always heard the whole European example for both alcohol and then just other habits, and it’s just like okay, like let’s, let’s look at the facts here. So I appreciate and I’ll I’ll definitely take a peek at the world health organizations on site, cause I’d be so curious, and I know you mentioned this also in your texts as well.
12:40 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) I also, by the way, if, if you want to get into the intricacies of it, if you go to JessicaLaheycom there’s a menu option for videos and under that is the addiction, inoculation or the gift of failure, and there’s almost 200 videos and they’re indexed by topic and I go into super deep detail about the European stuff and actually it’s really fascinating. And actually it’s really fascinating Even the countries that buck that tradition, that go against that sort of culture of having a lot of death and disease attributable to alcohol. It’s because those countries have a lower tolerance culturally for out-of-control drunkenness in public. So it just underlines the fact that we can create cultures around drinking and that can affect public health on a larger scale.
13:31 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Absolutely. So I’m adding that definitely to my notes for resources. And so, Jessica, now that it’s summertime, or you know, I know in the Northeast they’re probably still in school, like in New York City, I think. Like probably still in school until July, as all these kids start to come home for the summer and they’re just there, obviously there’s increased risk for all sorts of trouble that they’re going to get into. So, with regard to substance use, and again this idea of delaying, delaying, delaying, what strategies do you suggest for parents in the, with the summer being here and their kids just being probably unsupervised a whole lot more than they’re used to? It’s?
14:10 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) a fantastic point. It turns out that transitions are. When you look at risk factors for kids with drinking, there’s all sorts of. There’s a whole bunch of different risk factors we could talk about, but one of them is transitional periods. Whether that’s you know, parents are getting divorced and we’re going through a transitional period and it’s uncomfortable and it’s emotionally challenging. Or the transition summer is a transition or the transition from middle school to high school, or the transition moving to a new place. Transitions in general can be risky times for kids just because they’re, they upset the apple cart kind of thing.
14:44 So and here’s where I run into big problems, because I wrote my first book was called the Gift of Failure how the best parents learn to let go so their children can succeed and learn from their mistakes. And, on the other hand, we know for a fact that kids tend to. If they’re going to pick up drinking or drugs, it’s going to be more often during the summer, because kids tend to congregate with other kids and have more time unsupervised in the summer. However, the answer is not well, I’ll never, ever let my kid be unsupervised and hang out with other teenagers. I mean, that’s just ridiculous. My husband is a physician. And his joke in response to that is you know we could. We could prevent a lot of skin cancer if we just never, ever let our children go outside. Right, but that can’t be. That’s not a realistic response.
15:32 So the idea is really pick up the conversations before summer about you know the best practices, stuff that’s in the gift of failure and or, sorry, in the addiction, inoculation, and it would take up a ton of time to sort of go through all of that.
15:46 But pick those conversation up a little bit more before summer starts and have your kids have ways to check in with you and I’m not implying that you survey, surveil them more, whether on life 360 or you know all of those apps that you can like, trail your kids, but come up with a good, healthy medium where your kids feel like they have some independence and they have some of your trust and at the same time, you’re having more frequent conversations about what’s going on with your kid, what’s going on with their friends. Knowing the parents of your kids’ friends, that’s a major protective factor when it comes to substance use. So there’s a whole bunch of tips in the book, but I just amplify all of them right before summer starts. It’s just a time when kids yeah, they are at more risk, but if you’re having and it’s not something that you can prevent by having like one conversation in June about here’s what you need to do over this summer, it’s part of a big cumulative effort.
16:44 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Yeah, I mean I feel like a lot of what I’m hearing is that it really has to become almost a practice on the part of the parent, like practice of being transparent with your kiddos and I know for some families that can be really hard Like if you’ve been kind of raised to, I’ve got to be strong. We don’t talk about those things here and now.
17:01 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Suddenly it’s like, well, the only real way to delay the start of any substance use is to really have these tough conversations that can get really uncomfortable for a parent. It’s so uncomfortable. I mean, the first time I had to talk about the fact that I am an alcoholic with my kids was I wanted to throw up, I was. It was so scary. But on the other hand, because they have a grimp, actually they they have multiple relatives who are have issues with substance use disorder.
17:30 We’ve had multiple conversations like one year Christmas went down the toilet because there was a relapse with one of their relatives and we pretty much had to not do Christmas the way we were planning on doing Christmas. So we didn’t make something up to explain away why Christmas blew up. That year we said your relative who has issues with alcohol, you know, just decided to start drinking again and it’s my job as your, as your mom or as your parent to keep you safe from that, because I grew up with a lot of that and it’s very upsetting and so we’re just going to do something slightly different. So you know, being transparent and also keep in mind I was raised in a home where we were never, ever allowed to talk about it Like my sister and I would tag team like okay, whose turn is it to try to bring it up with the other parent.
18:19 We think our parent might have a problem, and then the other parent would gaslight us and say no, no, no, no, no, it’s just a headache, or they’re just taking a nap or whatever. So I think, in reaction to that, I’ve become one of those people that names things as what they are and euphemisms drive me crazy. And gaslighting kids is so incredibly dangerous and so incredibly emotionally challenging for kids that you’re better off having some honesty with them about what’s going on. And you know, from a kid’s perspective, it’s really important if they know that, for example, heart disease runs in their family or they know that type two diabetes runs in their family or whatever that thing is. That’s important information to have so they can make good decisions about that. My oldest admitted during high school that one of the things that rattles around in his head when he’s deciding whether or not to have a beer is Ooh, you know my mom and my grandparents and my other grandparents and all that, all those people, and that just became a part of his calculus of decision-making, which is important.
19:21 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Yeah, yeah, and I mean that’s how we’re equipping I almost said students, kids to make, I mean, and students, right, for anybody who’s an educator. This is how we are equipping kids to make the best choice. You know, because I think about, I’m not a parent, but I sure as hell know kids, right, like with all my years of teaching and I really do think that what really helped me the most with the toughest students and everything was just being really open, honest and transparent. Like they, they eat it up and they really respect the hell out of an adult who can just be honest, right.
19:51 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) So it’s amazing the minute I admit that I I am so sorry. I promised I would look this thing up for you last night and it completely escaped me. I won’t make that mistake. Same mistake again, like that’s how you earn the trust of adolescents and admitting that you don’t get it right all of the time is and modeling how you react to that is so important. So I’m so glad you said that.
20:12 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Well, and actually and that brings me to one of the questions that I had prepared for you as well, because one of the things that has come up as an issue sometimes with other sober parents that I do know is if they have had a relapse right, and so their child was aware of their problem with drinking, the child was aware of them stopping, and then the child witnesses that they’ve relapsed right, and how do you come back from that with your child in terms of rebuilding trust and just even approaching that conversation, Because I know that that has been really, really difficult for some families. So if you could speak to that, that would be great.
20:49 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Oh my gosh, relapse discussions are the scariest. And there’s the problem is is you know, add, take the shame and stigma and guilt that we have from having an issue with alcohol in the first place and then compound it when you come, when it comes to like relapse place, and then compound it when you come when it comes to like relapse. But understanding, especially especially if we put our heads in the in the, in the space of what, what recovery is like for kids. Relapse is a part of younger people going through recovery and a relapse is a very big part of a lot of adults recovery as well, and so I’ve felt that it’s really, really important that our response be okay. But what did we learn from this?
21:29 And when you share that with kids as well and you say, you know, sometimes when people get better, sometimes they’ll get better for a while and then they’ll kind of not, and this happens with lots of illnesses, sometimes people will get better for a little bit and then they’ll have a little, they’ll step back for a little bit and then you can start getting better again, because you learn what happened from that little period where you weren’t getting better, and I’ve learned some stuff, and now I’m even more prepared to be healthy and for a lot of people.
21:58 A friend of mine relapsed during COVID and she now says that she doesn’t think that she was ever really truly sober that first time around, like she wasn’t drinking but her headspace was still in a very sort of just a hair away from drinking the whole time. And it wasn’t until she relapsed and really learned where her head is when she’s in that place, where she’s using drinking to compensate for other things, and so that’s the way she talked about it with her kids. You know I’m I’m even stronger this time around because of the things I learned from when I had a misstep.
22:34 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Yeah, and I think that that that is so important again, both to break down the stigma, because I think there there can be the stigma that if you don’t have this perfect linear sobriety where I’ve decided to stop and stayed stopped for years, that there’s something wrong with how you are recovering Right. And I think that being able to recognize like, hey, I’m learning something from this and I’m going to do even better, moving forward, I think that that can be really powerful for kids.
23:00 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Absolutely.
23:01 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) And what about with children, though, who maybe you haven’t had any slips or any setbacks? But your children hold your drinking against you or your previous drug use against you, and it’s just like it’s really angered them and they. They don’t trust you, they haven’t let it go and they don’t believe that this is real. Any suggestions for parents like that?
23:21 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Oh, I would have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m just joking. So my mom has. I haven’t really talked about this publicly, but my mom feels appropriate to share, so I’m going to go ahead and share.
23:34 My mom has dementia and to me dementia short-term memory loss feels a lot like drunk right the forgetting, like not being able to hold a train of thought. So when my mom first got dementia I used to get angry with her and I had no idea why. I could not figure it out. Like why am I getting mad? It’s not her fault. And then it just sort of I realized it in the middle of the night one time and the next morning I went downstairs and I said you know what? I had no idea I was doing this, but I realized I’ve been getting angry with you because when you forget things it makes me feel like a little kid. When you were drunk it feels exactly the same for me and I’m so sorry and I’m so grateful to you for having gotten sober, because it means more to me than I can ever express. And we’ve not. It’s. What’s so weird is I’ve never gotten mad at her again about forgetting things.
24:25 It was like that got out there, so having, I think, that openness and being able to talk about things, the more my mom and I or whatever I have lots of relatives who are in recovery as well and lots of relatives who aren’t the more we talk about it, the less freighted, the less weighted the whole entire conversation is, and the more the anger can slip away and the more the distrust can slip away.
24:50 And you know, I think the best thing to do is say you know, we can never 100% trust anybody that they’re not going to hurt us or that they’re not going to be, because we’re not perfect beings it’s just not what humans are. But I promise you that I love you and I love myself enough that I’m going to show up and I’m going to try every single day to be the best parent that I can be for you, and part of that is is not drinking or not using, and that’s just something I have to do every single day is having that conversation gives your kids opportunities to reflect back to you things that they may not be able to write at first, but my kids are old enough now that they reflect back to me, now that they know people who have parents who are active drinkers or active users, how appreciative they are that I show up for them as a parent, and how different things could have been if I hadn’t. I don’t know that I’d be alive if I hadn’t, so that’s a very clear line right there.
25:52 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Absolutely, and I think that that’s incredibly helpful. Again, just that reminder that we’re not going to be perfect and it might be having to have that conversation with our kids, right, like I’m not going to be perfect, I’m going to do my best every single day, and you, like I’m not going to be perfect, I’m going to do my best every single day, and you know, I just think that that’s a really important reminder because, again, recovery it really isn’t linear and there’s sometimes people think that you, you decide to stop drinking and you’re magically done forever, and that’s not necessarily the case for many people. So that’s a really great reminder.
26:22 Coming back to sort of the summer idea, in chapter two of your book, the Addiction Inoculation, there was one line where you mentioned that it was addressing the why behind the first might stop kids from telling the story of their worst day, and I thought that that was really really, really powerful, like the addressing the why. I’m coming to that because another conversation that I have a lot with fellow sober adults, especially with kids, we talk about adverse childhood experiences, right, and sometimes what I notice is that we can totally fixate A on the ACEs that we went through, but then also again on the ACEs that we put our kids through, so to speak. But you also talk a lot about positive factors for children, and so could you speak a little bit to that, like, what are these positive impacts that parents can make for them?
27:17 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Yeah, yeah, what was so interesting in writing this book is I started seeing all the risk factors I was going to possibly heap on my kids all over the place. So like, as I mentioned, summer and the gap between middle school and high school is a really risky time for kids and my daughter. We moved my daughter in between middle school and high school and and she’s also queer, so like I was seeing like risk factors all over the place. We moved her during this delicate transitional time and she’s and she’s on this, she’s LGBTQ plus T, all the things plus and there. And I’m just heaping all this risk on my kid.
28:00 And I was on the phone interviewing Dan Siegel, who is, if you want to read a book on the adolescent brain, his book is absolutely the Teenage Brain is or actually that’s not what it is, but Dan Siegel’s book on the teenage brain is fantastic. And he said you know, you could view everything as a risk factor and all this bad stuff you’re heaping on your kid, or you could sort of reframe that and start thinking about some of the opportunities that you’re giving your kids. So, for example, the adolescent brain is just craves, novelty craves, new experiences, because that’s the function of the adolescent brain right Is to try new things and to figure out who they are in the context of all these new life experiences, and moving presents your kid with all these amazing new experiences. That and moving presents your kid with all these amazing new experiences that they can learn how to master. And, by the way, mastery and developing competence gets the dopamine going in the brain and helps build self-efficacy, which is one of the other most amazing protective factors for kids against substance use.
29:02 So there is this tendency to look at all of the whether it’s divorce and separation or you know, some of the really really common adverse childhood experiences that are on the list, whether it’s the CDC’s list or the list that Nadine Burke Harris put together for the Deepest Well, which, from my in my opinion, is one of the most important books we could read about adverse childhood experiences is that if we look at those and we say, yeah, those are challenges and that’s important that we do early intervention for those challenges and it’s important we talk to our kids about those challenges. But here are all the opportunities that the stumbles, the difficulties, the risk factors that happen to kids as they get older can present as well and to help kids learn to reframe. Lisa DeMora does a beautiful job in her book Under Pressure helping give scripts to help adults reframe stress for kids, because kids are like they like to blow the stress up. So it’s all toxic stress, it’s so much.
30:08 But Lisa has this great way of talking about the fact that stress some stress is really really positive. It helps motivate us, it helps us moving forward, it helps give us drive. You know, as a writer I impose self-imposed deadlines for myself because having deadlines makes me a better writer, even though it puts more pressure on me. All of these things that we can do to help kids reframe some of the difficulties in their life and help use those and become more competent in the context of those is going to be really, really great for kids. There’s a lot of really great books about that. Dopamine Nation by Anna Lemke is another book where she talks about that as well.
30:49 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) And you know, reframing is so important for us as adults as well, because it can be so easy to look at a setback and go down a whole spiral and make ourselves convinced that our lives are absolutely miserable and like, yes, life is. But I think being able to look at incidents and reframe them and see what can we get out of these situations, versus what are these situations just taking away from us, can be really powerful, and building that skill up in a child is going to help them so much more just as they grow.
31:14 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) So I when you were talking about relapse. By the way, one of the things that I meant to add on and then this, this question, segues beautifully into it which is I talked to my kids about why I drank and the the quote that you gave about talking to kids about that first drink, that’s from Chris Herron. He was a Boston Celtic. He was addicted to opioids for a long time. He’s also a substance use prevention speaker. He’s fantastic. But you know, what I do is I have anxiety disorder, I have social anxiety, and so does my daughter, and so one of the things I say to my daughter is you know, one of the reasons I drank was because it was so freaking scary for me to go out and like, go to a party and not feel imposter syndrome and not worry that everyone thought that I was, you know, stupid or an idiot or shouldn’t be there or whatever. But when I and so I drank at it because I didn’t want to feel that or you know things that made me feel bad, I drank at those things and my anxiety was a big one. But when I stopped drinking, I had to actually develop tools, actual tools, to help me with that anxiety, and now I have actual tools that really help me and in having those conversations in addiction and inoculation, for example, I talked about like mindfulness practices and my daughter totally had disdain for the mindfulness practices that I tried to get her to engage in, that I talked about in the addiction inoculation. But she has, on her own, figured out that she does need mindfulness practices of her own, the ones that she has selected in order to help her with her anxiety as well. So that’s been talking to them and saying you know, I didn’t just drink because it was fun, I drank because I didn’t want to feel these bad feelings. And it wasn’t until I stopped drinking that I actually learned how to manage those bad feelings instead of just drinking them away. And that doesn’t actually make them go away. If anything, it makes them get worse.
33:10 So that’s another thing that my daughter or my son, both of my kids have in their quiver back here that when they need to take out evidence about like, okay, when should I choose to drink here? Should I choose not to drink here? They can say, oh yeah, why am I drinking? Oh, cause I’m feeling some anxiety and I have some tools to deal with that. You know it’s not always quite that linear and logical. But they listen to us and they, they watch us, and so when parents say like, oh, does this mean I can’t drink in front of my kids? I never said that, but what I will say is that the reasons we give for why we drink when we do drink in front of kids, if you say things like oh, this was the worst day at work, I need a drink, or Thanksgiving at grandma’s house is going to be there. Better, be enough wine there. This is going to be a long day. When we say things like that to kids, what we’re telling them, what we’re showing them, is, if I have emotions that are unpleasant to me, I drink at them.
34:08 So we need to talk first about that messaging that we’re sending kids about why we drink and why we drink in certain situations, and that all kind of hangs together with having healthy responses to the bad emotions that we feel.
34:22 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) I love that and I love that that. Just that question to ask yourself like why am I considering drinking right now? So, with that being said, I love those examples of the context, right, the context in which it matters what would you say would be an example of choosing to drink, that would again, I know we’re both sober, but if this was a person who did not have a problematic relationship with alcohol they wanted a model to their kids Like this is drinking. That is likely not going to take me down on a downward. What might be an example of an okay reason to drink for an adult who is not struggling with addiction.
35:02 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Yeah, so there’s evidence to show this is in the college chapter. There’s evidence to show that when people drink in order to not feel the bad feelings, or they withdraw and drink, or they drink alone, or they’re drinking because they’re depressed or they’re drinking because they want to isolate, those sorts of that kind of drinking is more likely to result in a problem. So, for example, in women and anxiety, we know that women who drink and have anxiety are actually more likely than not to have an issue with that alcohol over the long term. If you are drinking because you’re already happy and you’re with other people and you’re drinking to sort of elevate that experience, then that tends to be less problematic just over the long term. And that’s, you know, it’s always.
35:51 I always hate saying stuff like that because then I give my. I would have given myself all kinds of ammunition for places that it’s totally cool for me to drink, and it wasn’t until I saw that there were no contexts in which it was cool for me to drink, that I sort of got that through my head. But I think that’s a really great question. That’s a really good question.
36:10 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Right For sure For those of us in recovery, we know, but you know there are the folks who aren’t might be listening to this and it’s just you know they’re like, well, what about? What about me? So another part of your text that jumped out at me, and again, this, really, this is really more the teacher in me. So in chapter seven of the addiction inoculation, you are talking about kids and their friends and just how important, right these relationships are and I mean, oh my goodness, they sure are.
36:39 One of the things that you brought up is that sometimes children might have to break up with certain types of friends. And I guess my question because I have never in my life seen a good like friendship breakup with an adolescent. So I was just kind of curious how would you support that? Like, let’s say, when a friend, when there’s two friends and one of them is just needing the space to protect themselves from the other one, how do we support our kids and having those conversations? Because so many of us as adults can’t even. I mean people ghost each other all the time because they don’t know how to have these conversations. So how does a kid make space for themselves so that they can be safe?
37:22 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) You’re asking such good questions. This actually extends back a little bit further. I’ve done when I used to write for the New York Times and the Atlantic and somewhere in there I’d written an article about the fact that, you know, the function of friendship sort of morphs over time. You know, when kids are really little it’s because our parents are friends and so it’s just proximity. You know they want us to be friends, we’re friends, and then as you get older it has to do with sort of trying out different identities, like, oh, that person seems new and interesting and might have some things about them that I might want to take on. And then you hang out with them for a while and you realize, oh, some of that is for me and some of that’s not, and stuff like that, as your kid is going through that, because that trying on identities things freaks parents out right, because if suddenly your kid is hanging out with a kid that seems dangerous or reckless or has tattoos or whatever you want to say like do not, you can’t hang out with that person. And of course we know when we tell a kid that that’s the one person they’re going to want to hang out with. But if you’re constantly talking to your kids about what makes good friendships and I’m talking about for myself as well, like when I talk to my kids a lot about the fact that one of the things I love about getting older is that my friendships are about supporting each other and making each other better, and I don’t have any friendships now that are about tearing each other down. I want all of my friends to succeed and to be better people.
38:48 And if you find that I, if I were to find that I’m, you know, friends with someone who sort of took some delight in my screwing up or not doing so well that I might have to say, huh, that doesn’t seem like a really healthy relationship. And on the other side, what you say to your kids like if they’re going out with if you find that a particular relationship is weighing on your kid, you can say you know what, when you go to so-and-so’s house, you know you just come home kind of sad and I’m wondering what it is about that relationship that makes you feel that way. Or going to that person’s house and having these conversations from a really young age about what makes for good relationships that make us better and what makes for bad relationships that make us sad. That is a great entry point to these conversations. So if your kid has to break up with someone especially when it’s a positive move although we do want to keep our judgment out of it as much as possible Supporting them and saying you know, if this friendship is making you unhappy, then I am so proud of you for drawing that line and saying I can’t be a part of relationship that’s bringing me down.
39:55 I’m so proud of you for that. And even if someone is not going down the right road with someone, find moments that you can say to them you know, you know it just seems like you’re having trouble with this person and maybe taking some space from them is a really good idea. And I’m really proud of you for sort of having the wherewithal to think about a little bit of space from this thing that seems to make you really sad. Because you know if we put our judgment into it then that can really make things go in the wrong direction really quickly. But when we’re saying how proud we are of the way they’re managing the parts that make them healthier and make them better, then they’re usually pretty responsive to that.
40:36 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) And so and then there might also be the case and I’m curious about how do you support a child in this case. Like, let’s say, there’s two kiddos again and one of them might actually be struggling with substance and the other one wants to still be their friend and be supportive, how do you help that child still be present for the friend who’s struggling with an addiction?
40:59 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Well, as you know, that is very much what chapter seven is about. My son who’s now 25, wanted to stay friends with a kid who was really struggling and had been kicked out of school and was having to go to rehab. And it was really scary for me as a parent, because I know the statistics are clear that if your kid’s friends use, your kid is more likely to use, and so I said, okay, well, I’m so proud of you for wanting to support your friend because he’s going to need support and this is a really hard time for him. On the other hand, I know that if your friends use that, you are going to be more likely to use. So we’re going to have a lot of conversations about this.
41:39 I’m going to be checking in with you more often and in a way, it made it easier to have those conversations because we could talk about his friend, brian, who is so generous to give us his story in the book. That’s his real name. We can talk about what’s happening with Brian, and my son then could use Brian as a proxy for things he wanted to work out. So in the, in a sense, it was almost easier because we were able to talk about the friend. You know, like I have a friend too and you know Ben could stick some things in there that maybe maybe were about him and not about his friend Brian.
42:16 But it made it easier because I had said from the beginning I will 100% support you in this relationship. But because the statistics are so clear, it makes me really scared and it’s my job to keep you as safe as possible, and so we’re going to be talking about this more often. And he was okay with that, yeah, and in the end, as you, as you see in that chapter, in the end, um credits the support of those friends as the factor that made recovery finally really settle in for him. He saw what he had to lose and he’s doing great now, by the way, that is so awesome to hear as a continued follow-up from the book.
42:58 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Um, and I guess, like my other question for you too, is, well, as a parent, as a person, I know like what I had to tap into in terms of to find my courage to be so open and honest about my story. Where did you, where do you get your courage to just be so, to be the cycle breaker? You said in your family nobody talked about anything, and so you know now you want to name things and have these conversations. How do you find this courage? How do you encourage parents, educators, to find this courage within them, to have these courageous conversations?
43:34 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) You know that’s a really good question. I think a lot of it came from being angry that I was not allowed to name things for what they were, as I say in the book. There was like this elephant stomping on our whole family and none of us were allowed to point to it and say that’s an elephant and that was. I got very angry about that and being gaslit was really horrible. No, no, no, that’s not what you’re seeing. I want you to replace your reality with my own and having substance use disorder be at the root of a lot of family chaos. It was exhausting and for me I’ve always been.
44:15 I’m better at holding myself accountable when I’m as honest as possible with as many people as possible, and it was really scary, especially at first. I was still teaching. I thought I’d get fired. I you know I didn’t. I had done some not great things to the people around me and I had. I had a lot of amends to make.
44:36 But being as honest as possible not just whether that was in recovery meetings or with my friends and, you know, letting them know that I needed their help and that I was really sorry All of that stuff sort of has made it easier and easier and easier for me, like there’s no anxiety in me whatsoever when I tell people that I’m in recovery or that, you know, I just celebrated 11 years and that’s something that I’m in this position now where, because I’m public about the fact that I can’t drink, lots of other people talk to me about being scared about their friend or being scared about themselves or being scared about their mom, and I get to be a resource for people.
45:19 And there are people who are now sober, who weren’t when they first started talking to me about this stuff and like that’s. That is way more important in terms of a legacy that we leave to our kids than you know, than just about anything else I can think of in terms of like work and all that stuff that we think is so important, but, you know, than just about anything else I can think of in terms of like work and all that stuff that we think is so important. But you know, some of the people that are sober now, that weren’t before, have families and those are their kids aren’t going to have to do. You know, there’s there’s just so many dominoes that fall when one person gets well, and I just see that as an incredible privilege, and I never, ever take that for granted. So I think that’s a big part of why I talk about it so much.
46:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Yeah, yeah, absolutely Right. Like we, we never know who we’re impacting when we, when we speak openly about our, our journey. So congratulations on 11 years. That’s awesome, Thank you. And so when we have somebody who we are suspecting, like, let’s say, if we are suspecting that there is, our child has a problem. I guess what might be some of the signs for a parent again, summer’s here, kids are home around more what might be a sign that there is a problem, versus say it was just like a one-time use, and what might be the best way for a parent to approach that conversation with the child. You know, I I’m aware of say, like different rehabs and things like that.
46:42 But you know I feel like I’ve read mixed things about like how rehab can be a very traumatizing experience for a child. I’ve gone as an adult so I can only imagine how scary it would be for a teen. So just any thoughts that you have about that.
46:55 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Yeah, this is a big big. There’s so so much to talk about here. What’s so scary about treatment for kids is that treatment for kids does not look the same as treatment for adults, and it’s the places that have figured that out that do a really, really good job at that, like Hazelden, for example, in Minnesota has its own adolescent treatment center. That’s just fantastic, because they’ve figured out that the same tools we use for adults don’t necessarily work for kids as well. So if you’re worried about your kid, the big baseline question for all the like when should I get concerned? Questions whether that’s you know, for any reason is change like change from baseline sleep, less sleep, more sleep, like change from baseline less sleep, more sleep, mood changes, appetite changes, all of those things, and that includes for the positive.
47:46 So if you have a kid who has been really, really depressed and then suddenly they’re just happy as a clam all the time and your temptation would be to look at that and go, oh, don’t question that gift, that’s fantastic. But there are a whole lot of reasons that a kid can have big mood swings and one of the reasons could possibly be and there are lots of other ones, you know using addictive substances. But, like the sleep thing is a big issue. You know, appetite, mood changes, things like that. Anytime we see a change, then it’s important to start asking about. You know, sweetie, this is interesting because for a while you seemed really down and and suddenly now you seem like really really up and really happy. What are these? What are the reasons for that? You know what’s what’s got you, you know, headed in either direction, one or the other, and talking about that, you know, in a relaxed way, maybe around dinner, that kind of thing.
48:38 And then if you really do think that your kid a really great resource for your kid, you need look no further than your child’s primary care physician. So a lot of primary care physicians now pediatricians, you know, rns, that kind of thing use these screening tools. A big one, for example, is called SBIRT Screening, brief Intervention, referral to Treatment. So when your kid goes to the pediatrician or whatever, you could even front load that conversation with the primary care physician and say I’m a little worried about my kid and substances, could you make sure you hit that on your screening questions? You, you know, make sure you hit that on your screening questions. And physicians, these screening tools have become so important that the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that they’re used for all kids and there and physicians can be really really great resources for helping figure out where you are on that line between like, is this, you know, experimentation or is this becoming problematic? And they’re they’re well-equipped to handle those questions as well.
49:44 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) That’s really great and I actually remember now in your text you suggest also like giving your child a little bit of privacy when they’re having that yes. So the provider can ask them those questions without your child worrying that you’re going to be there like eyeing them down.
49:59 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Often it’s on like a tablet and they’ll. It’s the same thing Like. I just went to the physician recently and I had a whole page on. You know, do I feel safe at home? You know what are my drinking habits? That kind of thing. Give your kid a little bit of privacy when they answer those questions and, especially as your kid gets older, they do need time alone with that physician, especially as they hit puberty, to start asking questions about things that they may not want to ask about in front of you. Just give your kid the opportunity. Is there any, you know? Do you want me to go and so you can have some time to talk with your doctor all by yourself and you don’t need to make it a big deal, but it’s going to be increasingly important as they get older.
50:37 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Yeah, yeah, no, super, super, super helpful Cause I think like I wouldn’t even have thought about using a physician to help doing to help do a screener. So that’s super helpful. Well, I mean, jess, my last question really is because, again, I think a lot of parents who I know and adore, um, they, they really do feel that they’ve just caused this irreparable harm.
50:59 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Yeah.
51:00 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Right. And so what? What hope can you give someone who’s listening to this so that they know that you know, I mean, I know that as long as we have breath we can change, but you also are the master of research and data, and so what can you share with anyone listening who’s really worried that they’ve just like screwed up their kid and like they don’t know that anything could go right moving forward?
51:22 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Yeah, so my kids, great kids, so many risk factors. You know there’s um, but here’s the cool thing about prevention. So I, when I talk about getting to a place where you know when, when you start to have that sneaking suspicion that you may need help, and, um, when you finally get to the place where you’re able to ask sneaking suspicion that you may need help, and when you finally get to the place where you’re able to ask for help, that I think of that as like a 100 piece puzzle, right, and my dad happened to be piece 100. That fell into place at the right time, when I was in the right headspace when he said, you know, I know what an alcoholic looks like, and you’re an alcoholic and you need help. And I was like, yeah, I do, that was my 100th piece. But in order for the 100th piece to slide into place and we are hardly ever the 100th piece, we’re often like piece 37, piece 62, piece 81. All of those pieces need to be in place in order to get that piece 100 in place.
52:16 And this prevention stuff are pieces. So many pieces come through the prevention stuff, whether that’s about, like I said, about how the adolescent brain works, what we put in our bodies all that sort of stuff, and so I can’t guarantee. I’m like an expert on this, an expert on substance use prevention in kids, and yet I cannot guarantee that my children will not have a problem with substances once they get older. But I do know that I’ve put a lot of pieces into their individual puzzles, and so we talk all the time about the difference between occasional use and looking forward to it at the end of the week just a little bit too much, and maybe when the end of the week becomes Thursday, and then when the end of the week just a little bit too much, and maybe when the end of the week becomes Thursday, and then when the end of the week becomes Wednesday, and all that sort of stuff that is a little scary to talk about with kids.
53:06 I have to because my kids are at an elevated genetic risk. Genetics is about 50 to 60% of the risk picture. My kids are at elevated risk. My kids have other risk factors on top of their genetics. I can’t afford to not have these conversations because I need my kids to have as many pieces of their puzzle in place as possible to a either prevent they’re having a problem in the first place, or B to help them get to a place where they need help. They know they need help and can ask for it If they do go down that road. I just don’t want that to suffer as long as I did.
53:40 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Yeah, absolutely, and that’s for any young people in our lives, right, like whether or not we have kids again, I don’t, but I have my nieces and these really open, honest conversations make a huge, huge, huge difference.
53:52 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Being the auntie, by the way, that is one of the greatest pleasures of my life. My sister has two children. My sister does not have a problem with alcohol. She got very lucky, came from the same genetics, but she got lucky. But her daughters are still at elevated risk and so I am. I’m just the addiction auntie, like I talk to them about it all the time.
54:12 When my oldest niece moved to Los Angeles, I helped her find resources for harm reduction. I helped her find naloxone. I helped her find naloxone. I helped her find fentanyl test strips, not because I want her to go out and use drugs and think she’s going to need a fentanyl test strip, but because if she’s going to be around people who are using drugs, these are the tools that she needs. She may never use them and that’s fine. But I want her to have Narcan in case she goes to a party and someone uses an overdoses. Then she has it. So having a having another adult in their life who can talk about this if you find it too difficult to talk about, that’s great too. It doesn’t have to be always you. It could be auntie Jess, or it could be uncle Peter, it could be. You know, there are lots of people who can be resources for your kids.
55:00 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) For sure it takes a village. You know, when I was a classroom teacher, right Like there was my, my parents and then my impact and like together we really did have to work to to help the kiddos. So, yeah, well, jessica, it has been amazing. Yay, I’m so glad that you made it again. I love books and a lot of people who listen to my podcast love books, and so I hope that everyone will check out the addiction inoculation. I actually listened to it and listening to it was really fun because I can. Obviously, I can totally tell you’re a teacher, so you read it Like it’s listen. Um, so really, whether someone checks it out like on audible or grabs a hard copy, um, definitely check it out. There’s just so much to it, and so, whether you’re a parent and educator or you just have, like young people in your life that you want to take care of, and I give you one more recommendation that one of the questions I get most often is is there a book like the addiction inoculation, but for adolescents?
55:56 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) And while I would absolutely love to write that book, I don’t need to, because there is a wonderful book out there and it’s called High and it’s by David Sheff and Nick Sheff. David Sheff was the guy who wrote Beautiful Boy about his son, nick, who is the beautiful boy who became a movie with Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet, and that book is specifically geared toward adolescents. It’s got it’s. Even the adolescents that I taught in recovery centers, who were so cynical about these things, really liked this book. So get the book. Do not get your parents stink all over it by like handing it to your kid and say, sweetie, read this book for me, would you leave it around? It’s brightly colored, it’s really cool looking, it does not talk down to kids and hopefully they’ll pick it up and read it themselves. So it’s called high. It’s really brightly colored. You can’t miss it. David chef, nick chef fantastic resource.
56:52 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) That’s so awesome. I’m going to grab that book too. Thank you for the recommendation, for sure, absolutely.
56:58 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) Well, although I’ve I’ve heard from a lot of parents who have listened to the addiction inoculation in their car and that they didn’t think their adolescent was listening, but their adolescent was listening and then brought up stuff from the book later. So there are definitely parts that could benefit your adolescent if you’re listening in the car.
57:14 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Yeah, for sure. And I mean, I think a lot of times they like to hear what we’re talking about, you know, without acting like they’re actually interested. Yeah, well, awesome, well, jessica, thank you. Thank you so much.
57:28 – Jessica Lahey (Guest) So welcome. Oh, I’m just, I’m so. I love having these conversations so much because the more we talk about it, the more we all talk about it, the less shame, the less stigma. That we don’t have time for that, it’s just. This conversation is too important. We have to get rid of all that stuff.
57:51 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) So thank you so much for raising the whole conversation in the first place, but also go to my website, bottomless to sobercom, 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 sobercom. See you then.
Join me as I share a deeply personal journey through grief and family dynamics in this heartfelt episode. Through the lens of my own story, I explore the impact of my oldest sister Sandra’s sudden passing and the intricate relationships among siblings with significant age and cultural differences. Despite these gaps, the bond we share as our mother’s children remains a powerful common thread. Sobriety, though not a cure-all, equips us to face life’s challenges head-on. During my trip to Costa Rica, I balanced mourning with the need to continue our travel plans, allowing myself to feel deeply and openly. This episode highlights the beauty of experiencing multiple emotions simultaneously and underscores the significance of getting better at feeling rather than just feeling better.
00:00 – Jessica Dueñas (Host) Hey everyone, jessica here, and for today’s episode I wanted to talk a little bit about this Gabor Mate quote. It’s not about feeling better, it’s about getting better at feeling. This quote I came across it fairly recently and it really stood out to me. A content warning for today’s episode I will be talking about loss. So just that heads up. If you don’t want to hear about loss, please tune into another episode next week, but that will be the topic of discussion for today. So at the time of this recording it’s Sunday morning.
00:37 I’m recording on June 2nd, and so about two days ago I left Costa Rica. I had spent the week there. I went there with my partner, his mom and his son, and basically the intention of the trip was to spend a week there and just kind of show them around different parts of the country within the scope of a week. Costa Rica is a tiny country and there’s so much to see there, and you know, having spent much of my childhood there, I feel like you can never have enough time to see all the things right, and so we picked a couple basic destinations to go to to keep it simple for that week. However, this trip started with the sudden and completely shocking death of my oldest sister, sandra. She died on Friday, may 24th, and that’s like probably within an hour of us landing.
01:28 A lot of you have heard of me talk with my sister, sophia, and so I want to clarify, because there’s a sister that I was raised with who is Sophie, and we grew up together. We grew up in Brooklyn and she’s 12 years older than me. She’s the one who I often talk about in terms of my recovery and, you know, the one who pretty much dealt with a lot of my like, wildness and my struggles when I was still drinking. But I actually come from a much larger family of many siblings, because my mom and my dad each had kids when they were in their respective home countries before they came to the United States. So in my mom’s case, my mom has six children. I’m the sixth and Sandra, who passed away, was her first, and so I’m 39 years old, but my oldest sister was actually 66 years old. So you know we had like what like a 27-year age gap, and so my mom had four kids and when she came to the United States, the four kids stayed with my grandmother and other relatives in Costa Rica and my mom came here. She ultimately met my dad and got set up with him and had my sister and then eventually me.
02:37 But just to kind of give you a sense of that, and so you know, with sibling dynamics it’s interesting because you know. So, with sibling dynamics it’s interesting because when you are raised A I mean literally generations apart. Again, she was 66 and I’m 39. There’s the age gap. And then there’s also the big cultural gap because, again, I was born and raised in the US and though I spent a lot of time in Costa Rica as a kid especially, again there’s still big differences.
03:07 However, there is a certain bond between all of us and I think the biggest bond that we have is that we are our mother’s children, you know, and by being our mother’s children, in whatever way, shape or form that it looked like, you know, we have some very common experiences in terms of how our mother treated us, how she raised us, the ways in which she showed love and care, the ways in which she couldn’t show love and care Right, and so we all have that commonality in between our experiences, and I will also say that between all of my sisters, they’re they all. All of us have a growth mindset, really in different ways and shapes, right, of course, but we all have had really intimate and powerful discussions where we recognize the strengths of where we came from as well as the areas of improvement. And so the beauty of my sister my oldest sister is that I got to see how she really nurtured and loved my nieces and nephews who fun fact, they’re older than me, right, but I got to see that and I got to see how beautiful and tight their family was. And she was married to her husband, alan. They had literally been together since they were teenagers, right, and so basically being together for 50 years. They had a been together since they were teenagers, right, and so basically being together for 50 years. Um, they had a beautiful like they were genuinely like, still in love.
04:30 Like I feel like you often hear about these married couples who stayed together for a long time and all they talk about is how, like, well, they basically learned to just tolerate each other. Like no, no, no, no, no. I’m telling you my sister was not tolerating anybody. Like she was head over heels in love with her husband, probably up until her last breath, and like he, one of the hardest things was seeing him and how, how broken he was after losing his literal lifelong partner, right.
04:57 And so, anyway, just to kind of give you a sense of like, what our relationship was as sisters, we, we had a little group chat. You know, for those of you who are either in the U S and have family or friends outside of the U S, you know WhatsApp is like the big texting platform used across the globe outside of the U S. So you know, we had a little WhatsApp chat thread and and, yeah, like we were, we talked every day. That was the thing, like there was almost 30 years between us and thousands of miles in between us, and at the end of the day, that didn’t matter, you know. And so for her to suddenly be gone on Friday, like just after we arrived, that was a huge, huge blow, right.
05:38 And so what happened was my brother-in-law, who is married to my second oldest sister, and they’ve been together since before I was even born, right. He came to pick us up from the airport and that was one of the first things that I asked him. I was like, hey, like como esta Sandra? How’s Sandra? And he told me that she was. She was a little delicate, you know, and so when he said that I felt that familiar feeling and for those of you who have lost people, I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about. Maybe you do, but for me it’s this sinking feeling and any of you who know me have or have heard me kind of like tell my stories in the past.
06:23 When I talk about a sinking feeling, it’s usually like something bad is about to happen and I’ve gotten to the point, at this time in my life I’ve lost enough things, I’ve lost enough people that I know what that feeling is when it’s coming. I remember I felt it when Ian was dying. I felt it when my father was about to die. I felt it when I was about to miscarry. It’s just this little heavy feeling, like right at the bottom of my ridge cage and so like right where my stomach is at, and that that’s my body. Like my body knows before I do that I’m about to lose someone. A hundred percent, you know. Like she knows exactly what’s going on before I do. Except that at this point, going back to that Gabor Mate quote right, it’s not about feeling better, it’s about getting better at feeling instead of going into a panic like, oh no, something’s about to go wrong. It’s more like what I do is I go into a self-talk mode and self-talk Self-talk for me is a coping strategy that works.
07:26 Some people need to do more somatic strategies. Self-talk works great for me when I still have a perception of feeling safe. Typically, you need to do somatic strategies if you need to first establish safety in your body, but because I still felt safe, I was able to immediately perceive, okay, something’s about to go wrong, and so I’m going to tell myself that I can face anything, and that’s the important thing, right, I’ve. I’ve talked about this before and I will continue to talk about this.
07:55 Sobriety does not guarantee us a problem-free life. Sobriety does not guarantee us a happy life. No, it really doesn’t. But what sobriety does guarantee us right is the ability to move through all of the hard things, and so when I sense that a hard thing is coming, I remind myself that I can do the hard things right. I can face absolutely anything, anything. I believe you know there’s someone in the luckiest club who said in sobriety we trust, and that’s kind of how I feel Like I have total faith in my ability to go through the hardest of things because I can stay sober. If I stay sober, I can do it all If I start drinking, nothing’s happening. And so as soon as he told me that she was delicada, I, literally I just started to tell myself I can face anything, I’m going to be okay, right, Like I am safe. Very short, simple sentences that just drive that message home to my body that, like we, we’ve got this right.
09:02 And so we had driven off into, we actually went to the Starbucks farm. Costa Rica has a Starbucks farm. It’s called La Hacienda Alsacia. I’m probably butchering that, but so we went to the Hacienda, which means farm, and it’s a Starbucks farm. They have like a Starbucks there too. And we, you know, we went to like get some coffee. We were going to like walk around, take some pictures. It’s very beautiful up there.
09:24 And that’s when my sister, lorena, the second oldest, reached out and let me know that Sandra had passed away. Again, we had barely been there an hour right. Again, we had barely been there an hour, right. And so again, I reminded myself that I can face the hard things and I let myself just start crying right then and there, right, the younger version of me would have absolutely felt like, oh, I need to run to the bathroom. Oh, I can’t let these people see me like this. I can’t. You know, I can’t be seen in this state, and really that that wasn’t the case this time.
10:05 This time I was not trying to hide the tears. This time I was not trying to make explanations or excuses for like needing to, like apologizing for the sobbing and things like that. There are no apologies to be made. We do that a lot as a society. We apologize for crying, we apologize for being human, when there’s absolutely no need to apologize for these things.
10:21 And so, with that being said, we lost her, we lost her and we obviously, like I, had to completely shift gears in terms of like, oh well, we’re, they were already sick in the hospital. They’re not going to do an autopsy. I feel like in the US they’re going to do an autopsy for everything, in Costa Rica they don’t. And so when you pass away in Costa Rica, if you were already known to be sick, you have about 24 to 48 hours max for the family to take care of the body, why? Because people don’t get I believe it’s called. They don’t get embalmed, and it’s a warm tropical climate, right. So, again for sort of like a public safety, public health sort of thing. It’s always been like that. So, basically, if you die in the morning, at that night there’s a viewing and the next day is like your funeral and your burial, et cetera.
11:28 So, with that being said, we literally we had 24 hours to deal with everything with regard to my sister and her funeral and all the services, and so my partner’s family was great about just taking care of themselves while I was with my family, and after the 24 hours passed, right, it was kind of back to the travel mode. And here’s where, again, this quote really was powerful for me about it’s not about feeling better, it’s about getting better at feeling, because there would have been a time where I would have told the three people I was traveling with, who were not directly impacted by this, like, oh, your trip is over, because I’m going through this, you can’t do the rest of your plans and your itinerary is completely thrown out to the wind. I didn’t do that. I have learned to give myself permission to grieve in whatever way works for me, and so we still continue to travel.
12:37 How did things look different, though? I took a lot of breaks, I took naps if I needed to. If I needed to suddenly cry. I suddenly cried right. There was no such thing as me holding back Like I was totally fine to continue with everything as planned, but I gave myself the permission to outwardly express emotion if I needed to, and for me, with grief. I needed to cry and I was. I was not going to hold back those tears, not one bit.
13:09 I took the opportunities of being in nature and did a lot of grounding opportunities, so I was sticking my feet in the sand, I was sitting in the rain when it rained, I just let myself really feel connected and rooted, and that allowed me to both grieve my sister while traveling through a beautiful country that I call home and showing it to my partner and his family, right, um, one of the things that comes up a lot in sobriety is this idea that two things can be true at once. Right, I can be seeing beautiful sites and I can be grieving, and grief is one of those emotions that, at the end of the day, it sticks with us. It sticks with us when we’re happy and it sticks with us when we’re sad. And we can be going through all sorts of different life transitions years later and grief will still be there. Grief is going to live with us, and so grief is one of those emotions that really allows us to practice. The two things can be true at once, right? So, with that being said, I’m I’m just very grateful that I gave myself that permission because, again, with grief, sometimes we have this sort of image of what it should look like that you should just be in black, that you should be holed up in your home, that you should be doing nothing and that you should be kind of like leaving work and doing all the things.
14:38 And it’s not to say that you can’t do that, right, you can absolutely wear black, you can stay home, you can take off work, you can do all those things. But it’s one thing to should on someone, right, or to should yourself with an expectation, and it’s another thing to do it because it felt right. And so for me, um, the rest of the week was a whirlwind, because there were these really beautiful moments that I shared, right, um, again like sharing, like my family and my culture with my partner and his family, and there were other moments that were really, really hard, and they, they all existed all together. So I would love for you to take a moment, you know, after listening to this and reflect, when you have, in moments like these, right Like, how do you navigate grief with the rest of your everyday life?
15:31 How do you hold space for grief to exist with everything else that you’ve got going on? Because grief is valid, grief is needing to be heard, Grief is needing to be felt right. Our grief, the magnitude of it, is a direct sign of how impactful that relationship was that you no longer have right, or really I wouldn’t even say that you no longer have but of this impactful that relationship was that you no longer have right, or really I wouldn’t even say that you no longer have but of this person that has transitioned. It’s a magnitude of how great that relationship was while they were here on this earth and now that they’re not here, right, that gap is felt and that is the grief that you experience, that’s the grief that I experience. So with that I will let you all go. Just a reminder Monday, june 3rd, which is tomorrow, I’m starting my six-week writing for healing course. I hope that you will consider joining. Thank you again, have a great one and I’ll catch you on the next episode.
