Category: Podcast

In this episode:

Link to Spotify

Ever been on the receiving end of a hateful glare from your partner’s ex? We’re uncovering empowering ways to navigate such awkward encounters, emphasizing the power of stepping back to weigh our options and potential consequences, reshaping our mindset to construct a more positive narrative, and taking action without shouldering the responsibility for others’ emotions and responses. 

Then, I also share a part of my rehab journey from the brink of despair to belting out tunes at a karaoke session in rehab. I share the magic of “snapshot moments” – those randomly profound instances of hope and inspiration that encapsulate the resilience of the human spirit. Join me as I reminisce about Danielle, the staff member who illuminated the possibility of joy sans alcohol, and young Elly, whose bold performance became my unforgettable snapshot moment. 

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

My Full Rehab Story – Where I first meet Danielle

Jessica Doing Sober Karaoke

Transcript:

So today’s episode is going to be a little bit random, even though, honestly, this podcast is in general pretty random, because I just go with from my heart. But there’s kind of two different things that I wanted to talk about and both of them involve sort of some storytelling. But the first topic is more so a recent conversation that I had regarding an incident, and then the second one actually is I did want to share just a brief story with you. So for the first part I’m going to talk about a conversation I’m making up names, a conversation about Jane, her boyfriend John, and Melissa, who is the girl that John used to date. So Jane came to me, she dates John, and then Melissa is the third person involved in the story. So Jane and John like to frequent like a social outing actually to go dancing, to dance salsa, and when they go dancing, what Jane has noticed right, james perception of the situation is that Melissa, who John used to date, gives her dirty looks and, according to her, these looks are full of hatred and she’s like seething while she’s on the dance floor with John and, as a result, the looks make her very uncomfortable, the looks are making her wants to stop dancing and the looks are making her feel like she has to take action and do something about it. So she came to me and she was like Jessica, what do I do in this scenario? With that being said, my first question to her was how do you know that what appear to be dirty looks have anything directly to do with you? To which she responded I don’t know right, because I was like so did she straight up come to you and tell you I’m giving you dirty looks because you are dating the guy that I used to date, or are you assuming that because of their history? And lo and behold, she shared that she was assuming that and I was like so then you don’t know what she’s thinking when it looks like she’s looking at you. She confirmed that.

Then, with regard to her options, I was like so what? What possible options do you have? Because I think it’s important that, before we jump into an action, right, we give us, we give ourselves, the gift of the pause so that we can look at all the possible outcomes and see which of those we’re comfortable with. So I was like what, what might this look like? So she was like, well, option one, I can ignore it, or option two, I can confront her.

So I was like all right, well, let’s talk about your option one, ignoring it. How is doing nothing working for you right now? And she’s like it’s not. And I was like so, in terms of you say not taking any physical action and, quote unquote, ignoring it. You still have to do some work around your thoughts and your thinking. And she was like well, what do you mean?

And I was like because, right now, the story that you’re telling yourself is that this girl hates you because you’re dating her ex and because of that now you are blocking yourself from dancing, you are blocking yourself from having a good time, and you are creating this whole story in your mind where you are now a victim, when this woman did literally nothing but happened to maybe look at you with her eyes, and she was like, oh, that’s true. So I was like what can you tell yourself? Right, what can you practice? Instead of she must hate me, what can you tell yourself when you notice that it looks like she’s looking at you. What can you tell yourself instead? And she was just kind of like well, I don’t, I don’t know what you mean.

And I was like well, first of all, you already made up this whole story that she hates you, with no evidence. So you might as well make up a story that sits better with your spirit, right? So like, how about you tell yourself that this woman is looking at you because she’s admiring higher dancing and maybe the look looks a little bit dirty because she’s jealous? But let’s remember that jealousy is a sign of acknowledging and recognizing something in others that we would like for ourselves. So I was like how about you tell yourself that this woman is just jealous, that you’re a good dancer and you know?

And Jane was kind of cracking up, but she was like oh, I had never thought of it that way. And I was like, exactly, I was like you’re already making up the first story anyway, because you have no evidence. So if you’re going to go that route, make up a story that makes you feel good, so you feel less self-conscious when you’re dancing. And she was like okay, that’s a good thought, so anyway. So then I was like but let’s go back and explore your second route, right?

Because she also said that she could confront her. So I was like so tell me, what would that look like if you confronted this Melissa? And she was like well, maybe I could say hey, I noticed that when I’m dancing with John, I see that you’re looking at me and you look angry, and I just wanted to see if there’s anything that we could talk about. And I was like okay, fair, now tell me, how do you think that that would work out? What are the possible outcomes there? And she was like Jane said well, either she would maybe be more reflective about her facial like, how her face looks, or she might not care, or she might get offended. And I was like bingo, right. And I was like and I was like not, that it’s your responsibility to manage how she feels and responds to things. And I was like but if your original suspicion is correct, that this girl dislikes you, then she’s going to be like perfect, I found a way to make her uncomfortable, right. So I was like really like.

We are not in control of other people. We cannot tell someone how to look at us, how to not look at us, what to say, what not to say Never in your life and I was telling her this and I’m saying it now here never in your life will there ever be a person, even if it’s your own child and your parent, where you can genuinely successfully control them, because there will always come a time when that person will break free from that Right. And so that’s what I told her. I was like so, based off this conversation that we’re having, what are you going to do? And she was like you know, I think that I’m just going to when I see her looking at me, not that I’m going to ignore it, but that I’m going to intentionally tell myself that maybe she’s looking at me because I dance nicely. Maybe she’s looking at me because maybe she is a little bit jealous that I dance nicely. But that’s a better thought, energetically, for me to practice than this woman hates me. And now I don’t want to dance. And now I’m like self-conscious and I was like, exactly, bingo, I’m going to practice that thought.

So, anyway, I just wanted to share that because, again, just for anybody who’s ever like well, what the hell is coaching Like? I hear about it all the time that’s an example of how coaching would operate with me, just for your reference, and I think that again, for any of you who go into situations where you think that someone is looking at you right, and you start telling yourself this whole story in your head, if you’re going to tell yourself a whole made up story, then at least make up a whole story that’s going to make you feel good, because, dang, why are you stressing yourself out so much? You know what I mean. So, anyway, I wanted to share that. And then the second part is actually, I just wanted to read a little like a tiny short story that I had written to my email list and I just, you know it makes me happy to share it, and so I’m just going to go ahead and read it here to you all, and then we’ll close out for today’s episode.

So, for Um, to give you some context, when I was in treatment, I often called certain moments snapshot moments. Right, like literally. I spent my time in treatment thinking like, oh, I really wish I had a camera, and that thought lived in my head the entire time I was in a treatment facility. Every time I was in one in 2020, because no matter how long I was in a space, whether it was three days or five weeks. I always felt like there was always a moment in there, interacting with other folks, where I did feel a flash of hope, a moment of inspiration, right, and so for me, I call those snapshot moments. So I spent five weeks in one of the treatment facilities in Louisville, kentucky, and, honestly, I don’t remember. I vaguely remember how I got there, right, like, my memory of my rival is spotty. But again, there’s several snapshot moments from treatment that I hope I never forget and I’m so grateful to be able to record it because this is one of them.

Right, karaoke here in a rehab. No way, you’ve got to be kidding me. This is what I was saying, laughing. I was talking to my friend, andy. So, andy, is this massive six foot five like radiant, beautiful, personality, human being, and I’m so grateful I actually still get to text with him to this day. But back then in 2020, we were in line for lunch at the cafeteria after, you know, we had finished one of our group therapy sessions and it was funny, because there were eager murmurs among, like, the fellow residents that one of the staff members, danielle, said that she would bring in a mic and a speaker set, if we like the people who had miraculously not killed themselves in recent weeks were willing to do karaoke during her shift. She was gonna supervise this on Friday night. You know it was early summer, like I said, in 2020.

And after I had flipped my car upside down on Barge Town Road in Louisville, kentucky, I ended up at this treatment facility. So you know, for me, the idea of going from barely wanting to be alive to singing into a mic in front of other people without a single drop of alcohol in my body that thought was wild. I mean, I had to be locked away in a treatment facility because I couldn’t bring myself to stop drinking safely, and now these people want to get me to sing along on a microphone, you know. So there were so many thoughts that ran through my mind in response to this idea. Right, like I was thinking what if I’m not fun to others and I just bore them? I’m not good enough to get up in front of others and just be. I like my singing voice, but I’m scared it’s not good enough to be a strong voice and that I can’t be silly enough to be comically bad for karaoke. Is there even such a thing as fun without alcohol? I’d like to watch others try. I love karaoke, but me sober. I have to pass.

As we sat down to eat, danielle, the staff member of the buzz, was about how to approach our table. As usual, she was beaming. Did y’all hear about karaoke on Friday? You ready, jess? She looked me in the eyes and smiled, which slowed the racing panic of my detoxing brain. Danielle had always put me at ease because her lived experience really didn’t still hope in me that this repetitive cycle that I found myself in would one day stop.

In Drowning in Shallow Water, chapter one, which I will share the link in the show notes, I do share how I learned that Danielle had also lost her partner to a drug overdose and despite this loss she was sober, working with others. Danielle gave me hope that I could find joy and love after losing my boyfriend, ian. Her lived experience and confidence in how she conducted herself made me think maybe I can do this karaoke thing. On Friday night. I turned my face to Danielle, smiled while hesitantly shrugging my shoulders, and said I really don’t want to do it, but since you’re putting it together, danielle, I’ll try it. You won’t regret this, jess, danielle declared and damn it, she was right, but not for those reasons. So on Friday night Danielle came in for her shift. She decorated the residential lounge area, turned the overhead lights off and connected her karaoke machine to her phone. As the music started playing and I felt the bass of the music vibrate a little bit, the sensory experiences began to take me back, like the thumping with the darkness and the flashing lights from the machine took me back to being at a bar or a club. But I wasn’t at the club. I was in treatment.

One of the younger residents, ellie, got up to do a song. In our therapy groups she was often disengaged and rarely used her voice. I assumed that she did not want to take up space. So I remember my curiosity when I saw her awkwardly standing before us, her hand on the mic and the other on her hip. We waited for what felt like ages and then the words came. Ellie took a deep breath, closed her eyes, gripped the microphone with both hands and came to life. I wish I could remember the song, but I don’t. Honestly it doesn’t matter. What mattered was that Ellie was freed beyond the walls of the treatment facility in those few moments, as she danced and performed as if she was on stage somewhere else.

I elbowed Andy next to me and I held up my hands as though I was holding up a real camera and took a snapshot of Ellie. So what happened afterward? After letting herself be seen, ellie started to speak up more in groups after that, and me I did eventually sing too, just not on that day. So again, I just wanted to share that little snapshot moment because that’s the thing, right. You go to treatment and you meet these people and you spend so much time with these individuals, getting to know them on such a deep level as you rip your hearts open in these groups and then they’re just gone. So I had the pleasure of still being in touch with Andy, but Ellie I don’t know where she is. I have no idea. But I am glad that for a brief time in my life I did intersect with her, if that’s the right word to use, and I did get to see her light up and I did get to see her connect with herself and her body and feel proud and excited right. And I remembered her when later on, I eventually sang while I was in treatment of that facility.

And now I will happily grab a karaoke mic and without a single drop of alcohol. I will sing my heart and soul out and I will perform. I actually had recently reposted it on my socials, a video of me doing karaoke, so you’ll see that in the show notes. And, yeah, I hope everyone has an awesome week. Thanks for listening and take care of yourselves. Hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast. But also go to my website, bottomlesstosober.com, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to writing classes to one to one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomlesstosober.com. See you then.

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In this episode:

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I discuss maturity as presented in the context of a poem by Diego Perez, aka Yung Pueblo, how it’s different from “adulting,” and when to choose to use one’s word based on possible outcomes.

Resources:

Yung Pueblo’s Poetry

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas (00:01.59)
Hey everyone, on today’s episode, I wanna talk about the topic of maturity. Now, the reason I wanna talk about maturity is because yes, many of you are probably adults, many of you are probably paying your bills, showing up to work, taking care of any living creatures that depend on you. And so in theory, you are taking care of everything. So you’re adulting, but…

you can adult and not be mature, right? You can adult and be struggling wildly with addiction, which is what I was doing for years. I struggled with addiction while showing up for work, while winning awards, while completing all the checklists and completing all the tasks. That did not make me mature. Today, I’m sober almost three years and I still struggle with maturity, which I recently struggled with. And so I wanna go ahead and talk about maturity in the context of this poem.

and I’ll go ahead and I’ll read it to you. So it was written by Diego Perez, also known as Young Pueblo on social media. And his poem goes like this. Maturity is realizing that half of what you want to say does not need to be said. Being able to see the difference between ego reactions and helpful points that can uplift harmony or reaffirm your values makes a real difference. Speak your truth does not mean speak your ego.

I’ll read that again. Maturity is realizing that half of what you want to say does not need to be said. Being able to see the difference between ego reactions and helpful points that can uplift harmony or reaffirm your values makes a real difference. Speak your truth does not mean speak your ego. So I wanted to give an example to highlight this. And I’m recording this on a Saturday.

And usually Fridays are my evenings where I get to spend time with my partner and we get to unwind from the week. Now, yesterday our time together was disrupted because of his work and rightfully so he was upset by what had happened. And he had actually had a really hard week. So he tells me that he needs to decompress. And I’m like, OK. On the inside, however, what I’m doing is I’m suddenly making

Jessica Dueñas (02:21.354)
his issues with work and his stress about me. Suddenly, I am valuing myself based on the fact that he needed to take a break and take care of himself. I’m suddenly questioning my value and my worth in the relationship and it’s like, whoa, I’ve done so much work on myself. What is going on here? I mean, I’ll tell you what’s going on. I was being a human, right? And anyway, so I like literally start almost like.

coaching myself in terms of what can I say to make him come and sit on the damn couch with me and watch TV and have like a cozy night in, right? Like my brain starts rapid firing all the really probably hurtful things that I could have said, all the things that I could have said to make him feel bad about himself for actually prioritizing his mental health and going to decompress.

Right? There was a ton of things that could have been said, but I didn’t say anything. Right? And why not? Because I gave myself the gift of the pause. That is a gift that I have today that I definitely didn’t have when I drank early on. And frankly, on any other occasion, maybe a couple months ago even, I may not have had the gift of that pause. Right? The gift of that

Jessica Dueñas (03:44.086)
What might happen if I said, well, I don’t understand why we can’t just focus on our time together because we get so little time together. Right? The gift of the pause allowed me to see that had I said that, there could have been a variety of outcomes and the most likely outcome would have been an argument because he would have taken it as a personal attack, which honestly, it basically would have been, right?

And so giving myself that pause allowed me to see what the possible outcomes were going to be. And it allowed me to see if I wanted to deal with any of those outcomes, if any of those outcomes were worth me saying what I needed to say. And I determined from assessing the situation by pausing that no, I don’t really want to have an argument. Right? I determined that I didn’t want to have an argument. But the other thing that was really important was

handling the emotions. Because the emotions didn’t just suddenly go away. Just because I knew I didn’t want to have an argument, didn’t mean that suddenly everything evaporated and everything was better and it was sunshine and rainbows. What that meant for me was that then I had to take a moment and coach myself with some self-talk to get through that really uncomfortable moment because I still did feel frustrated. My Friday night plan was not going how I wanted it to go.

And so I had feelings about it, right? And I’m entitled to have all the feelings in the world. I just don’t need to act out on them. So while I was feeling frustrated and disappointed that I didn’t have my special time and to watch some trash TV together, what I reminded myself was, number one, my feelings can’t hurt me, right? Like this discomfort, this urge, this crawling out of my skin, wanting to say something sassy, that urge.

can’t hurt me and so I can just sit through it and it will eventually go away. And that’s what I told myself, right? I told myself my feelings aren’t facts, my feelings are just information and I can act on it or not and I chose not to act on it. As the feelings stayed in my body, what else did I tell myself? I was like, well, it’s late, I can just go to hell asleep, right? Like…

Jessica Dueñas (06:00.77)
He’s over here listening to whatever thing helps him calm down. I can just go to bed and get a good night’s sleep and start my day over tomorrow. And that’s exactly what I did. Right? And so I’m highlighting that to you all because maturity is deciding, you know, like young Pueblo said, you know, deciding if something needs to be said or not needs to be said. And sometimes maybe things do need to be said, right? Like in my case,

that I gave you my example, I chose not to say something. But sometimes you are gonna have to say the thing and that thing may lead to a conflict, right? Maybe in your situation, you may be facing someone, right? Where you have to say something to establish a boundary and setting that boundary may actually hurt that person’s feelings. And so they might have something to say about it, right? At that point, when you’re weighing your outcomes,

Right? When you pause before you speak and you weigh your outcomes, that is a perfect example where that uncomfortable outcome may just be worth it. But you won’t know if you don’t pause to reflect on it. You won’t know if you don’t pause to think about what are the possible outcomes that can happen from any given situation. And so with that, really, I just encourage you that to slow down, right? That’s like step one. Slow down.

What can possibly happen from me making this decision? Is there any possible outcome from me making this decision that I am not ready to handle right now? And if you’re not, let that guide you in terms of what your next steps are.

So I hope you found that helpful. And the other last note that I will mention before I go is just a heads up that next week, starting September 30th, I will be running and hosting the last cohort for 2023 of my Writing to Heal program. We did the free writing workshop today. It was a beautiful experience as it always is. And I invite you, there’s a small group of folks who have signed up. It is going to be a really powerful program to help you with storytelling. So if you are interested, sign up on my site.
Bottomlesstosober.com. Thanks, I’ll talk to you in the next episode.

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In this episode:

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Do your loved ones make decisions you don’t feel are best for them? This episode is for you. to help you manage your frustrations.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas (00:01.514)
Hey everyone, I am personally getting ready to travel to Washington, DC this coming week. I’m going to attend the Mobilize Recovery Conference. So for me, it’s really important to, you know, continuously be an active learner in recovery, especially as a coach and as a facilitator for community meetings and different, you know, online sober communities. So really excited for the learning opportunity and to connect with peers from all over the place this coming week.

I go, I did want to stop in, do a quick podcast recording. So I had probably a couple weeks ago written about self-sabotage on my blog. And I realized that I really should have recorded that too. Again, I have been reading this book, which I recommend. It’s called The Mountain is You. It is a part of the book club that I facilitate for the Reframe app, which is an online alcohol reduction app.

They have two tracks, one is to quit drinking, the other one is to moderate your drinking. And I personally don’t moderate, but I do facilitate meetings on there. And so the book club meeting is awesome. So if you haven’t checked out Reframe, you can definitely check it out, do a free trial and see if it’s something that is a community that you would be interested in. So with that being said, the book that I’ve been reading for the book club, it’s The Mountain is You.

And there’s one section about self-sabotage that I thought was really, really powerful that I think I need to give a little bit more voice to. So I’ll read it. It’s from pages 17 to 18 of the text, The Mountain is You by Brianna East. And it goes like this. Self-sabotage comes from what’s unfamiliar. Human beings experience a natural resistance to the unknown because it is essentially the ultimate loss of control. This is true.

even if what’s unknown is benevolent or even beneficial to us. Self-sabotage is very often the simple product of unfamiliarity, and it is because anything that is foreign, no matter how good, will also be uncomfortable until it’s familiar, aka sobriety, right? This often leads people to confuse the discomfort of the unknown with being wrong or bad or ominous.

Jessica Dueñas (02:16.782)
However, it is simply a matter of psychological adjustment. We are programmed to seek what we’ve known. Even though we think we’re after happiness, we’re actually trying to find whatever we are most used to. So I have actually referenced this passage several times in conversations, especially with one-on-one clients. And sometimes we might have a friend or a loved one and they are making a decision.

that we don’t believe is in their best interest, right? Like for example, there was somebody that I know who has a loved one whose husband is possibly cheating, right? And in her mind, she felt that her loved one should walk away from the husband, right? And I get that because maybe like for many of us, we would walk away too. And so after we see somebody that we love, deal with infidelity, right? And what is supposed to be like this monogamous relationship.

we may see our loved ones still choose to take this person back and be like, what the fuck are you doing? Right? And we might be thinking like, you deserve so much better. What are you doing? You should leave. You shouldn’t tolerate that. I would never tolerate that. And you know, as we dive into that thinking, as a result, we start to get angry. We start to get disappointed. And we’re actually taking it personally that the person that we care about chose to take someone else back. When at the end of the day, we have nothing to do with that.

relationship, right? Them choosing to take someone back has nothing to do with us. So that’s the first reminder, right? Nothing that other people do, and this is a very, I would say this is like a foundational tenet in the Four Agreements by Domi Ghebreyes, but you can’t take things personally if you understand that nothing that other people do is because of you, literally like never ever ever, right? You might want to be the most supportive friend.

You might have all the evidence in the world as to why they should leave their possibly cheating partner. Or if you have a friend who’s staying in this job that treats her like trash and you’re like, why are you still working there? Right? Let me just offer you that idea of putting yourself in their shoes first. Now, I’m not saying that I’m supporting, say, like if they’re in an absolutely abusive relationship or in an absolutely.

Jessica Dueñas (04:35.406)
horrific workplace that is damaging to their mental health. But even in those situations, you still have no control. We still have no control, right? And so, but putting aside say, situations that are genuinely harmful to their health and safety and wellbeing, right? Just in general, like crappy partners, crappy jobs that you’re like, why, why don’t you leave? Let me offer you the idea of putting yourself in their shoes first, right? And keep this line in mind from the text.

We are programmed to seek what we’ve known, even though we think we’re after happiness, we’re actually trying to find whatever we are most used to. So to you, it may be frustrating to see that friend go back to that partner. It may be frustrating to see that friend not put in a resignation letter. It may be annoying to see that friend not even go and look for a new job after they complained about it, right? But…

you have to understand that for them, it is very possible, I’m not a mind reader, but it’s very possible that the idea of something that is unknown to them may be more terrifying than whatever they’re currently dealing with, right? So to you with the loved one who has that shitty partner, they may be like, well, at least I know what I’m dealing with here, rather than cutting off that shitty partner and going into the unknown world.

right, in the unknown world of say like dating again or navigating life on one’s own, or if you go from being in a two income household to a one income household, right? Like let’s not even, I mean that could be a whole other conversation, right, but let’s talk about the rates of poverty that women deal with when they go through divorces, right? It’s like you instantly go from being middle class to struggling. And that in itself is very, very scary. Financial security for a lot of people will trump

say that sense of loyalty. And it’s not us to, it’s not up to us to judge those things. So the other thing that I wanted to say with regard to this passage, again, going back into choosing what’s familiar, even if what is better for us is unknown and scary, is I want you to do some self reflection work, right? Like stop.

Jessica Dueñas (06:54.698)
take a few minutes and either think on these questions or journal about these questions. But how does this passage apply to you as well? So like one, what is a familiar pattern that you keep diving back into because you’re scared of what might happen if you enter unknown territory? So again, let’s apply it to dating. What if you are dating someone who you can already predict that you’re gonna have a certain outcome because you’ve seen all of this before?

Right, you’ve seen all this before, you know exactly what’s going to happen, but it’s familiar so you stick with it because you don’t want to go back out there, you don’t want to get back on these apps, you don’t want to put yourself out there and so you’d rather stick with what you’re dealing with. Right, another question, what do you think is the worst that could happen in this unknown realm? Like, seriously, what is the worst that could happen if you broke up with the guy that you

completely giving you all the red flags that you already have recognized, but you’re kind of turning a blind eye to, what’s the worst that could happen if you had to put yourself back out there? Like realistically, is the worst that maybe you might be single for a while, that’s okay, right? Because what’s the best that could happen if you leaned into the unknown, right? The best that could possibly happen is that because you’re cutting out somebody who doesn’t serve you,

that you’re creating the space to meet somebody who’s actually going to be a good fit for you, a right fit for you. Not someone who’s gonna have glaring red flags that you basically are putting sunglasses on to ignore. And the other thing too, is I want you to think about what’s the worst that could come from you staying in the pattern that you are in today, from choosing to stay in the familiar. So think about that, and then I want you to compare

the worst thing that could happen from what you are familiar with to the worst thing that could happen in your imagined scenario. What are you noticing? Going back to that dating example, if the worst that would happen from you cutting someone off is that you’re alone versus you staying with someone who’s familiar and you already know where that outcome is, right? Is it that you’re constantly feeling stressed, your cortisol levels are raised, you’re losing sleep?

Jessica Dueñas (09:19.926)
You’re crying, you’re missing work because you’re wrapped up in drama. It sounds like the worst that could happen from the unknown seems a lot more mild than the worst for the familiar. So just kind of giving you some food for thought questions for you to really think about, because for many of us, even if we have already quit drinking, we can still be stuck in a lot of old patterns. The work starts with

stopping, right, stopping drinking, right? The first bit of the work comes with getting a handle on a relationship with alcohol, but I really like the whole thriving piece comes from all the work and all the reflection that you have to do afterward. So hope that was helpful. Couple of things, I have a writing workshop, free writing workshop that is coming up on September 23rd, which is followed by the last of my six week program for 2023.

So I highly recommend that you sign up for that. If you’re like, oh my gosh, I don’t really want to, I recommend it. A, the workshop’s free. But then also honestly, that writing class, the six week program is so powerful to help you tell your story. Even if it’s a story that you’re just telling to yourself. You deserve to not be carrying that in your heart. So putting that out there, and I am open to taking one-on-one clients. So all this information and more is available on my site, bottomlisttosobr.com. Thanks so much, have a great day.

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In this episode:

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I share some insights about feeling jealous and how to shift the experience of jealousy into something either practical or into an opportunity to practice acceptance.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:
Hey everyone, before I start on today’s topic, yesterday I was interviewing for someone else’s podcast talking about education and drinking. This crazy story came up and I thought that I would share it because again, it’s so wild the things that we do while drinking and the red flags that we see and how easily we can still just ignore these damn things. We were talking about how heavily embedded…

drinking is in teaching culture, right? And recently there was a new story about an educator in Oklahoma who was found drunk on the job. And I was telling the podcast hosts, I was like, yeah, we drink a lot in schools, like in the teaching environment, not like actively in a school. But so to give you an example,

There was a school that I taught at in Brooklyn, not gonna say its name, or the principal’s name, but I remember that one of our goodie bags, like as a welcome to school bag, included the airplane size bottles of like liquor. Like everybody got like a random liquor bottle, and that was given to us at school as a joke to like keep it in our desk in case of emergency, right? Like that’s pretty wild. And that’s not actually the red flag story though. My other red flag story.

has to do with a different school administrator who was an assistant principal who had hosted a holiday party in Brooklyn also a different school and you know all my fellow colleagues were at this party and Of all the people to like introduce the weed and the marijuana, right? There were drinks there, but it was the school administrators like they pulled out, you know blunts and things like that and I remember smoking and drinking

And back in those days, the way that I would drink typically around people was I always tried to watch what other people were drinking and match what they drank so that I never went overboard and I never would stand out as drinking too much. But because this was a party and the drinks were kind of like all in the kitchen and it was really hard to gauge how much people had been drinking because everyone was just kind of like standing around holding a cup in their hand, right? I started to just kind of drink based off of

Jessica Dueñas (02:23.074)
how I wanted a drink, which always was way too much. And then I added like marijuana, smoking on top of that. And basically what ended up happening was when it started snowing, and when it was time for me to leave their house, you know, it was a brownstone in Brooklyn. I like walked out down the stoop and it started snowing pretty heavily. And I walked maybe like a block and I was like, I can’t function, I can’t go home. So I literally went back to that assistant principal’s house.

knocked on the door and said, I’m so sorry. I’m way too out of it to go home. Can I stay here? So I stayed the night. And then the awkward part was in the morning, their kids, I guess, had gone to sleepover. So their kids come back. And when I wake up, I’m like sitting there to breakfast with the, you know, assistant principals, kids, like having cereal and just like, Hey kids, nice, nice to meet you. Um, and the funny thing is I remember being mortified, but I remember, you know,

First of all, like my AP, my assistant principal brushed it off and she was like, no, it’s okay. It happens to all of us, right? But there were so many times throughout my career where there were times that I had like a big embarrassing moment like that. Like again, I was pretty good at keeping it together and matching other people’s like drinking energy, but when things got out of hand for whatever reason and things like that happened, people were always so quick to be like, oh, you’re fine. These accidents happen all the time. It’s not a big deal.

And nobody stopped to think that these episodes were problematic because I did such a good job at work, right? Because I was such a high performer, nobody would stop to question like, oh, maybe Jessica has a problem, right? That wasn’t ever a topic of conversation that at least was brought to my face. So anyway, it has nothing to do with today’s podcast topic, but those stories were fresh in my head and I just wanted to share them. So with that being said,

What I did want to talk about today was jealousy. I started reading a book recently called The Mountain is You, Transforming Self-Sabotage into Self-Mastery by Brianna East. And as I’ve gone through it, this one section really jumped out at me about jealousy. And so I wanna go ahead and read it to you and then talk about it a little bit. This is from page 76 in case you happen to have the book. Jealousy is a coverup emotion. It presents as anger or judgment.

Jessica Dueñas (04:49.526)
when in reality it is sadness and self-dissatisfaction. If you want to know what you truly want out of life, look at the people you’re jealous of. No, you may not want exactly what they have, but the feeling that you are experiencing is anger that they are allowing themselves to pursue it while you are not. When we use our jealousy to judge other people’s accomplishments,

we are siding into its shadow function. When we use our jealousy to show us what we would like to accomplish, we begin to recognize the self-sabotaging behavior and get ready to commit to what we actually desire. You can think of it this way. When we see someone who has something we really want, but we are suppressing our willingness to pursue it, we must also condemn it in them so we can justify our own course of action.

Instead of this, we can see what we’d also like to create. So pretty short read, but it’s really powerful. And I think the first thing is, it’s almost like the first step to any problem, right, is admitting it. And I think the first step with jealousy is actually being willing to admit, like, yes, I am jealous of this person.

And even for me to say that sentence, it makes me feel physically uncomfortable and I feel almost like a slightly nauseating feeling in my stomach saying that, even though I’m not even talking about a specific example as I say that, because I think about how I was socialized since I was a little girl to believe that jealousy was like a sinful emotion to have and that if I felt jealousy, it was, you know, up there with, you know, several other terrible sins and, you know, like.

would make me morally lacking as an individual if I experienced jealousy. And so to admit to such an emotion to me is still a really uncomfortable act because I still have to work through that socialization of the fact that jealousy, jealousy is just another emotion, right? It’s just another emotion on the spectrum of the human experience. But for so many of us, we’ve been taught that it’s like this evil feeling.

Jessica Dueñas (07:08.406)
because of that, right? It’s so easy to try to deny the feeling, to cover up the feeling, to hide the feeling, to be ashamed of the feeling, right? If we feel shame around a feeling, it’s because we’re worried that experiencing that feeling makes us less worthy of human connection, makes us less worthy to be considered by others, right? And so the first step in this process, for me, when I think about jealousy, is letting go

of the moral judgment of the feeling. It’s a feeling like any other feeling that we experience. Now, like the text says, right, that the shadow function of jealousy falls into judging other people, right, and condemning other people. But the other side of jealousy, I guess the opposite of shadow is, I don’t know, being in the light, but the other side of it is…

using that to commit to what we actually do desire, right? So what I would say with that being said is take the jealousy that you’re experiencing and get curious about it, right? It’s giving you information. Everything that we go through gives us information. So ask yourself, what am I feeling jealous of? What is it in this situation that I would like to have?

Right? And then when you are able to identify what it is that you would like to have from that situation or person that you’re feeling jealous of, ask yourself the next question, why have I not gotten there? What’s blocking me from getting there? Is it a circumstance? Is it you? Right? Like, is this something within your control that you actually can take action and move towards? Or is this a situation that

unfortunately is out of your control. And so maybe you need to do some work around acceptance. I think those are really, really important questions to ask yourself the next time that you feel jealous. Instead of self judgment, right? Instead of being critical towards yourself because since you were a kid, you were socialized that it’s an evil feeling to have, release that, get curious. What is it that I want? Why don’t I have it right now?

Jessica Dueñas (09:30.29)
Is it within my control to work towards that? Or is this something that I have to accept that I don’t have, cannot have for whatever reason? So like, I’ll give you a personal example that I take to heart in terms of that. Lately, I have experienced jealousy when I see images, media, particularly social media of pregnant women, women who are

pregnant women who have just recently had babies, right? And I swear, I feel so uncomfortable to say this, but this is how we go through the healing, right? Shame dies when we speak our stories. And so anyway, I have been experiencing that, right? And for context, if you don’t know, I don’t have children. And so one of the things that I have been telling myself, right, like, well, why am I not in that situation? And it’s because for years, I have not…

tried to be in that situation, right? I have very throughout my act of drinking, I have been very dedicated to avoiding having a child because for all those years that I drank problematically, I didn’t think that I was fit to be a mother. And I probably did myself a favor by having that mindset at that time. However, at this point, right now I need to look at what is in my control and what is in my control is…

at least trying, right? I can try to get pregnant. I’m in a healthy relationship with a partner who is already a wonderful parent to his son, right? And so that is something that I can try to work towards. That’s like an end goal, right? However, the other part of it is I’m a little bit older. I’m 38 years old, even though my mom had me at 45 with no problems, so whatever. I technically probably have a ton of fertile years left. But you know what I’m saying? The point is,

is that there’s always the possibility that this may not happen for me, right? And so at the same time, I have to work with my thoughts and practice the framework of also acceptance that right now I do not have a child, that right now, today as I record this, I am not pregnant. And so I have to also practice acceptance of that present reality too, right? So I just kind of wanted to share that to give you an example of how

Jessica Dueñas (11:54.682)
I can take something that makes me feel jealous, get curious about it, ask questions, identify what is in my control, what is not in my control, and also see where I can practice acceptance to help me make sense of the feeling. Because again, when you feel that jealous wave initially to start, all that is, is that’s giving you information. And I always tell people and I always tell my one-on-one clients, right? Like we, our…

We are our own science, like living breathing science experiment. We produce data for ourselves all the time. It’s up to us to do our own personal data analysis and then decide what we’re gonna do with that information next. So I hope that you found that helpful. Again, I do recommend that read. I always have books that I recommend and I do definitely recommend The Mountain is You. I think that it provides a lot of really valuable insights. And with that, I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up. I hope to hear from you soon. Again, in…

Two weeks I’m hosting my free writing workshop. And then in three weeks, I am starting my last round of my Writing for Healing program for 2023. So I highly recommend that you sign up for those if you are interested in storytelling. Storytelling is so powerful. So with that being said, have an awesome week and I will talk to you all soon.

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In this episode:

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I review the top three things I say to myself in the middle of a crisis/natural disaster to protect my sobriety as I prepare to go into a hurricane shelter with my students for Hurricane Idalia.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:
Hey, I am recording this live from preparing to do a full on hurricane evacuation with about 4,000 students, including myself and the other staff who live on campus. So, why on earth would Jessica decide to record a podcast episode? Because this is actually soothing to my soul to talk about the things that I have going on in my life and how I stay sober through them. So that’s exactly why I decided to wake up extra early and do this recording before I get ready to dive right back into putting on my educator hat and being there for young folks on this campus. What’s actually really cool, I saw on Instagram a post from Simone Sol and she wrote something along the lines of like that she likes to remind people that some of the greatest, most successful writers, artists, like entrepreneurs, that they’ve done their creative work while holding down a day job. And so for me, In this moment, when I am getting ready to gather my life together and go into a shelter for a hurricane for possibly one or two days, I don’t know, I still feel immense gratitude for the work that I do daily. Because the work that I do on a daily basis in terms of my day job, when I was a teacher now working in higher ed, I realized how powerful and impactful it is. And I can do that and I can coach. I can do that and I can facilitate support group meetings, especially because I’m sober. I can do whatever the hell I want to because I have the freedom of sobriety. So just putting that out there, I am feeling, at this moment I’m feeling good and I am feeling grateful and happy to be of service to others during a really, really chaotic time here in the Florida, in the Tampa Bay area. So with that being said, right, I did want to talk a little bit about what to do when shit hits the fan, right? A lot of people approach coping strategies in different ways. For people who participate in my writing program, every week when we meet, I go through a couple of different strategies, whether we’re talking about a breathing strategy, a somatic strategy, meaning a strategy that you do something with your body to feel better, but then also self-talk. Me, I personally love self-talk. I feel like I can have a million conversations with myself and that helps me feel better, but for some people it’s the breathing, for some people it’s the getting up, the stretching. right, different things. So I kind of wanted to pause and record this and share this with other people because I know if I’m going through a difficult time right now, I’m not alone, right? There’s comfort in putting out vibes into the internet and knowing that someone else is exactly where you are. So if you need this today, this is 100% for you. So yeah, before I dive into finishing my preparations to evacuate 4,000 students, I just wanted to stop share what keeps me sane and sober right now. So like I said, I’m a huge self-talker. So I just wanted to share three things that I say to myself when shit hits the fan. So number one, the first question I always ask myself is, what is on my plate that I can ask for help with? I think a lot of times, especially for women, I have had it as a woman, especially a woman of color, of kind of like thinking that I have to do everything by myself. I have to be the strong woman, because my mother was so strong, my grandmother was so strong. I really pushed myself to fit into this narrative that was created for me without realizing that there’s people who love me who are willing to help if I open my mouth and ask for that support. And so going back to this situation, I have to evacuate to go to a hurricane shelter with students that I work with, but my dog cannot go. Yes, he is an emotional support animal, but he’s not legally a service dog, so he is not permitted in places like shelters. And there’s lots of options in terms of what I could do with him. But my preferred option would be obviously for him to be with someone who knows him and he’s been with, which would be my sister and my niece. You know, my dog lived with them for two years when I was living with them. The problem is, right, asking for help and how uncomfortable that is to be like, I know that right now this whole city is in a massive shit storm and I need your help. Right? It takes a lot of discomfort to say those things because I could also be willing to spend probably a couple hundred dollars and put them away in a shelter and not inconvenience anyone, except for my bank account that I’m working on saving money in, right? So I did, I picked up the phone and I called my sister and I explained that I have to evacuate with the students if she would be okay with taking my dog. And she said yes, right? So thankfully, if I hadn’t said anything, I would have been left with spending a bunch of money to put my dog away out of fear of inconveniencing someone when she was fine with it. But what happens, right? When people do say yes to helping us, sometimes we still dive into this little pattern of our brains telling us that we should be feeling bad, we should keep apologizing for asking for help, keep, you know, just kind of keep beating ourselves over and over again for having had the quote unquote audacity to ask for help. So that leads me to the number two thing that I say to myself when I am struggling and have to basically lean on other people. And that number two thing that I say is, people are allowed to say no to my request for help. So yes, I went to my sister, but she could have said no and I would have been okay with that, right? I had a plan B and honestly a plan C, but I have to remind myself, right? Before I let myself feel bad for taking my big old dog and dropping him off at her house, She could have said no, she was within her power to say no, but she chose to say yes. I didn’t put a gun to her head to say, you have to say yes to me, right? So when she tells me yes, I need to believe her. And likewise, if you’re listening to this, when people tell you yes, take them at their word, right? We’re not mind readers. It’s not up to us to be like, did they really mean yes? Or did they say that yes grudgingly, right? No, they’re grown adults the same way that we are. And if they are consenting to support you in whatever way you requested, take that yes for a yes and believe them when they say that yes. Because if they didn’t want to, they have every power to say no. Now, if you’re dealing with a people pleaser and they’re struggling with their own boundaries, that again is still their responsibility. It is not your responsibility to read other people’s minds. So when they say yes, believe it, because they are absolutely allowed to say no. So with that being said, the number three thing that I always say to myself to kind of help me get through really difficult times is just this reminder, right? Like all of us are descendants from different histories and different stories. And you know, obviously if we’re here, we carry some of that ancestry in us. And so for me, what I tell myself is that my ancestors faced plenty worse and they survived, right? And I carry their strength in me. Now, this is not to negate the fact that I often will like talk about, say, generational cycles that I’ve had to break, right? Especially in terms of addressing mental health and addiction. Absolutely. There’s a ton of stuff I inherited from my mom who got that from her mom and then the mom before that. That’s really problematic thinking. But at the end of the day, I also have to think about where did that problematic thinking originate anyway, and also just think about what they all went through. And there are so many things that my mother, the woman before her and everybody before them went through that they survived beyond natural disasters. I come from a lineage of people who have survived manmade human cruelty-based disasters and they stood firm and they survived that. And I have every bit of those survivor genes in me. So when The shit hits the fan and a current hurricane comes to town. And I start to feel that panic in my body. Like my body starts to feel anxious and my heart starts to race. And I start to think like, oh my gosh, I can’t do this. I have to stop and remind myself, my ancestors did this and more. And I absolutely can do this because I’m not drinking. Right? The second I were to put a drink in my body, it’s over. But if I can stay sober. I can absolutely handle this because even in my own lifetime and in my own existence, I’ve already gone through many things that have been very difficult and very challenging. And I’m still here standing to tell the tale. So I lean on that very heavily because it’s so important to remember that we carry the strength and the curses of our ancestors. And in times of trouble, I’m definitely leaning on the fact that I carry their strength, absolutely. So with that, I hope this helped send good vibes to Florida, you know, such a complex state, such a complex state to live in. It is a beautiful place to be. And yet it’s also so problematic for so many different things, right? But in all things, I try to practice gratitude. And so when I struggle later today, when I am overwhelmed, when I am dealing with students’ tears and students’ anxieties, Again, I’m going to be asking myself, what can I release? What can I ask for help with for myself? I can remind myself that those people can say no to my request for help. And I can remind myself that my ancestors faced plenty worse and survived, and I do carry their strength in me as well. So with that… Thank you so much for listening. Again, in a couple of weeks, I will be starting up my writing classes again, where we will be talking about all these beautiful ideas in storytelling form. Sign up at bottomlistdisober.com. And thank you, I’ll report to you after the hurricane.

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In this episode:

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I reflect on 1,000+ days of sobriety and two lessons learned. One, it’s a lot easier to “just” be myself. Two, quitting can be great, and I don’t mean just alcohol.

Resources:

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

Hey everyone, on today’s episode, I want to do some reflecting on having hit a thousand days sober last week. I hit a thousand days sober, I believe it was on August 20th, ooh, maybe 25th, I can’t remember the exact date, but my tracker tells me, and it’s funny because I completely advocate for people doing whatever they need to do, whether it’s counting days or not counting days. I let devices count days for me, and then when it’s certain milestones, I’ll pay attention to it, and recognize it, and celebrate it. but I personally don’t go on a daily basis counting how many days I have because that’s just, that’s a lot for me to keep up with. Definitely in the beginning, I did love to keep track of my days once I felt like it was finally sticking because it absolutely felt really, really good to hit like 30, 60, 90, right? But now that the numbers are growing, I just let the apps do it and then I go back and check and celebrate. So anyway, with that, let me go ahead and jump into kind of like the two big things that I wanted to talk about with reflecting on lessons learned in a thousand days of sobriety. So the first one is that I don’t have to have multiple versions of myself, right? And I share that with you because I hope that if you have found that you compartmentalize yourself a lot, even in your current recovery, to invite yourself to kind of see where you can reduce or remove some of those barriers between yourself, right? Like, why is it that some spaces get certain parts of you and other spaces don’t. What are the questions that you’re, what are the thoughts that you’re telling yourself, right? That make you feel that you can’t just be who you are authentically everywhere. So I’ll give you a great example. I started working again at a college and the funny thing is I remember when I was a professional teacher, I refused to let my students see the fun side of me. Like of course I had fun with them. but they would have never seen Jessica the performer, right? Like if you give me a microphone and you put me on a karaoke stage, especially when I drank, I would completely take over that stage like no other. And for the longest, I really thought that was a side of me that was quote unquote unprofessional, that nobody should ever see, that students should only see me as this really serious focused person. And I really judged that part of me that. can be loud and can be fun and can be animated and dances and moves. And I never wanted the people that I educated to see that side of me, because in my mind, I believe that an educator just had to educate, period. And that was that. So this past week, I actually helped the group of students that I work with create like this whole choreograph routine to some 90s, like classic 90s songs that I really love. and they were like, oh, you should absolutely take the lead and do like a Mariah Carey version of it, of one of the songs. And I did it, right? And it was something that I never would have done when I drank because when I drank, I thought that I had to be a certain type of person. I was living in the word should very, very heavily, but to jump up on that stage, throw on a wig, pretend to act like Mariah Carey and lip sync. my soul out, right, and like dance and everything in front of others was so freeing and it was so liberating because now I know that I never ever have to worry about someone knowing a secret of mine. I’ll give you another example. Last week also randomly had an opportunity to share on my experience with drinking as an educator after the new story came out about the teacher who was arrested because she was drunk. And, you know, somebody that I know saw it out of context, and I guess they were worried that people were saying that I was drinking. And I was like, uh, no, anybody who listens to the story knows that the story wasn’t about me. And then, you know, however they spliced it, you know, I feel bad that they showed that woman’s video, personally speaking, I don’t think that was necessary for us to see. even though I was having a one-on-one conversation with a client, and the client stated that video helped her in terms of reminding her of exactly where she could land, right? So, you know, it is really hard to see people in pain. It’s really hard to be in pain. It’s really hard to be reminded of how painful these experiences are. But, you know, everyone gets what they need out of different things. And all I say is that, going back to the point, was that there were people who were alleging that, like, oh, did she start drinking again? because they didn’t like stop to actually watch the news clip. And the news clip gives context to everything. But it was funny because when my friend said that to me, I wasn’t stressed at all because again, I really just show up. I put very little effort into thinking about how I’m presenting today for the simple fact that I just let myself just be. And when I say I let myself just be, or I finally get to just be myself, right? The word just sometimes can be used to minimize something or make it seem less than or take away the value of it. When I use the word just, when I’m saying I get to just show up or just be me, for me, that’s really more of a celebration of the simplification of my life. Getting sober has allowed me to stop wasting so much mental energy on keeping track of who I am to who and what I offer to different people in different groups. Right? Getting sober for me has created this beautiful simplification of my life where I am myself wherever I go. It’s a gift. I’m very grateful for it. And it makes my life a hell of a lot easier. And honestly, it’s just so easy on the brain to not be constantly thinking about who I’m creating on the spot if I get to just be authentic. And by being authentic, I get to breathe and also accept that, like, I’m going to attract the people that need to be in my life. repel the people that don’t need to be in my life. And that’s okay too. So with that being said, right? Like I want you to, if you are currently in a place where you feel like you’re constantly having to show up differently in all these different spaces, how does that feel? Like how does that feel on your energy? How does that feel on your soul? Is it, does it feel good or is it exhausting? If it feels exhausting, what are some measures that you need to put in place? so that you can exhaust yourself a little bit less because it is tiring to have different masks on. It is tiring to be putting on different hats all the time and not being able to just be yourself. So that’s one thing that I learned from these thousand days. It’s just that being sober for me allows me to get rid of all those different versions of me and just be one person everywhere. Two, the second thing that I feel like I was taking away from these thousand days, is the idea that quitting is okay. And it’s not an original thought. I feel like I’ve heard it on social media plenty of times, right? But this idea of quitting is okay, and that’s quitting anything. I don’t mean just quitting drinking. I reflect on the fact that when I quit my teaching job, I thought that I would never go back to education. And here I am, right? Just in a different form. It looks totally different. But at the end of the day, the fundamental work of what I’m doing, which is helping younger people see their worth, see their value and help them contribute to their own lives and that of others. Like, I’m still absolutely doing that, right? Except this time around, I get to do it from a place of authenticity and not from a place of low self-esteem, from a place of lack, you know, not from the bottom of the bottle, so to speak. Quitting is okay. If you’re in a place where you have a job that is really impacting your mental health to the point that you are unable to cope healthily with your job and you have other options and you know that maybe you’re just not tapping into them, but you know you have a resume that you can update, right? You know that maybe there’s a cover letter that you can write. You know that there’s some opportunities that you just haven’t tapped into. I hope that you listen to this and you take this as your sign to go for it. You absolutely need to go for it. Because at the end of the day, you don’t know what’s waiting for you on the other side of taking a leap of faith for your own health. And I didn’t know two years ago, three years ago, I had no idea that I would be here exactly where I am today, but I definitely would not have made any strides. And I wouldn’t have made any strides in my sobriety journey if I hadn’t taken a break, if I had not taken a break. And there were things that kept me from walking and take breaks, right? Like for me, I was very attached to this pension idea, very attached to this retirement idea, but I’m sitting here creating problems 30 years in the future when if I didn’t stop drinking, I would probably not even have made it another year or two. Right? And so I invite you to like release your worries about future outcomes. if your today is looking really, really treacherous, right? Like, let’s get your today settled. Let’s get your present day at peace. Let’s get you some stability first. And then you can worry about the longer term goals. But there’s no long term if your short term is filled with alcohol, right? So I just wanted to, again, put that out there because for me, having quit my job basically a thousand days ago, to find myself back in the same field 1,000 days later, but 1,000 days stronger has been very, very empowering because now I understand that it wasn’t necessarily the career, it was just how I coped with life, right? And it wasn’t necessarily the career, it was maybe the positions that I was working with, right? Like maybe being the classroom teacher was the specific area where I have no business going back to, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t be in the field of education. And so again, you might need to expand your vision, step back, take a break, and look at what you do for a living, if it’s something that you love, or if it’s something that you really enjoy, and think about what that might look like if you did it differently. But if you did it differently in a way that it could help you in terms of your drinking, taking care of your mental health, meeting your needs better, you being able to be there and be more present for the people who love you and really need you, because at the end of the day, right, like… If you aren’t at your job one day, suddenly no longer, because your health failed you, guess what your job is going to do? Your job is going to immediately replace you. But you know who cannot replace you? Your family and your loved ones, right? Or your chosen family. The people who love you can’t replace you. Your job can always replace you. And so when you are looking at anything that you’re holding onto, but it’s draining you, and hurting you, I invite you to step away from it and give yourself the possibility of knowing that maybe one day you can come back to it. It doesn’t mean that it has to happen right now. So with that, just wanted to share those quick reflections for a thousand days of sobriety. Thank you so much for listening. Next month, about a month from today, I will be hosting a free writing workshop. So I absolutely invite you if you’ve been struggling with writing your story. telling your story. It is a free writing workshop. You can sign up at my website, bottomlisttosober.com. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great one.

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In this episode:

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Content Warning: Discussion of sexual assault.

Sara, a survivor of sexual assault, struggled with substance abuse to escape her pain. But realizing its temporary relief and the dark path she was on, she eventually embarked on her recovery journey. (Sara shared her story anonymously with me and asked that I change her name to protect her privacy.)

Resources:

Ian’s Dedication

Original Blog Piece Cited

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas:
Hey everyone, in today’s episode, I wanted to just take an opportunity to do some storytelling. So Bottom List of Silver, originally, like the project in the first place, started back in February of 2021, and I had maybe five months over. And I knew that I wanted to dedicate myself to telling people’s stories the same way that Ian, my boyfriend who had passed away, told his story. To learn his story, go to bottomlistofsilver.com. I’ll link it in the show notes. but I do have a page on my site dedicated to him in memory of him to learn more about him. So check that out. But back in early 2021, I would interview people and then write their story and post it on my blog. And so kind of just wanted to go back in time and pick one of those stories and read it to you because again, I think that there’s so much power and connection and the more stories that we hear, the more that we realize that we are not alone in the struggles that we are dealing with. So this story names have been changed, but this is Sarah’s story. And her sobriety date is actually September 23rd, 1994. I still believe that voice telling me that it was my last chance to this day. I knew it was my last chance. Sarah reflected on her sobriety date. After listening to her story, I stared at my phone in shock. How? How have you stayed sober continuously for 26 years? That’s an entire lifetime. I could barely get through a couple of weeks at a time last year. Sarah paused for a moment. I could hear her breath drying in as she braced herself. Well… Let me tell you how it started. It’s a long story, because I’m old as fuck. Oh, another note before I continue with her story, significant content warning for sexual assault. So just that heads up, and obviously substance and drug abuse, but this is bottomless to sober, so you should know by now that we’re gonna talk about substance use. But just to put that out there, content warning for sexual assault. I’m gonna go ahead and continue. Well, let me tell you how it started. It’s a long story, because I’m old as fuck. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Sarah’s upbringing led her to believe that the only acceptable and valid family structure was the one she was brought up in. I definitely related to some parts of her experience when she talked about her childhood. She was bright, looked good to others, all around excellent behavior and grades, and was an award-winning student. She was the type of child that any parent would be proud of. The only facet of her childhood that I couldn’t relate to was that she was a dedicated athlete. to what felt like a laundry list of sports. I mean, she was ice skating, swimming, she did it all. She should have walked around feeling good about herself. Right? Well, shocker, she didn’t feel good about herself. Sarah and her mother had a turbulent relationship wherein Sarah desperately sought her mother’s affirmations, love, attention, anything really. What she actually received was the opposite. Sarah’s mom was usually too busy for her. She was on the phone. always telling Sarah to go away. Sarah paused her story. At this time, she did wanna clarify that despite what she was about to say about her upbringing, that her parents took care of her physical needs. And I remember at that time, I laughed because I knew that feeling too, right? Of like, you having to always explain that your parents did the best that they could with what they had, and that is absolutely what Sarah was stopping to do. And you know, I recognize that, right? Like I also carry scars from my childhood. And at this point, the best way for me to be at peace about my past is to accept that my parents, and frankly most parents, honestly you listening on here, they probably tried their best given the circumstances they were in. And that’s not true for all parents, I absolutely recognize that. There are some really cool fucked up people out there. But in general, if our parents were majorly flawed, oftentimes they were still working within the constructs of the wounds that they carry too. So anyway, she proceeded to explain that she grew up with a roof over her head, food on the table, but at the end of the day, she felt perpetually ignored or in trouble. That didn’t make sense though. So, and I asked her, I was like, so wait, how are you in trouble if your mom wasn’t even paying attention to you? And she took like another deep breath and she started. I remember being threatened to be taken away to an orphanage when I was five. That was the beginning. when getting in trouble started happening for me. I had a tantrum, and while in the shower, my mother dragged me out to the car, wet and naked, shampoo still in my hair. She had a suitcase packed, telling me that she was gonna take me to an orphanage. I shrieked in terror and threw a fit. Ever since, I always felt and believed that I was bad, you know, just bad, that I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t good enough, that nothing I ever did after that was good enough. Sarah carried those same feelings with her into middle school and then into high school, where the awkwardness of teen behavior did nothing to help her, right? Like nothing to help her feel like she belonged. There was gossip and kids constantly turning their backs on one another. You know, that really just didn’t provide Sarah with any kind of secure relationships with her peers. Her teachers loved her, but that was about it. And around this time, you know, Sarah discovered cigarettes. She was 12, and within a week of her first cigarette, she discovered marijuana. She actually calls it pot, so I’ll probably call it pot as I move forward with this episode, but she discovered pot, and then she also discovered alcohol. So by the age of 12, she had found cigarettes, marijuana, pot, and alcohol. Well then, correction, she had backtracked. Her father would also, when she was little, would actually let her have a nightly beer and an orange juice glass from the time she was three. Right? And so… Um, she, I remember her telling me, you know, I want more, I want more that she would say that when she was like a little kid to her dad about the beer in that little orange juice glass. So, you know, for her, she felt like she’d always had that feeling of craving since she was little. And Sarah participates in 12 step programs. So you know, she uses the language phenomenon of craving, right? Um, so anyway, so Sarah learned to sneak around with alcohol after that. And now in terms of Sneaking I remember when she was telling me about that like I knew that all too well Some of the things that she did she replaced liquor with water in her parents bar She would fill nail polish bottles with liquor and then she would also snatch her dad’s beer when he wasn’t paying attention I’m really she was just doing anything that she could to get to get to a drink and you know And I remember her telling me this and you know It’s like I couldn’t help but laugh because it resonated so much and it was just like she was probably my first interview for this project And just hearing that story and feeling so seen was wild. And you know, Sarah’s much older than me. Like I said, she’s been sober for 20 something years at the time that she told me this story. So for me to see someone who felt like almost like she could be my mom telling me this, it was just really powerful as an experience. So anyway, so I had told her, it’s so funny to me how we’re all so good at hiding things when we need to. We can be so creative. But it’s true, right? Like if you struggle with substance use, alcohol use disorder, you probably are a really innovative person to get to your substance, and that’s pretty wild. But, you know, too bad that those same smarts don’t sometimes save us from our own addiction. So anyway, I’ll continue. Older teens and adults started to take an interest in Sarah once she crossed over to drinking and using drugs. Suddenly she found herself to quote her, not giving a shit. She said, I didn’t care if my classmates liked me or if they didn’t like me. I just started partying really hard. It was the 70s. People would call them the freaks and that’s what I was. I was a freak. The feeling of rejection that Sarah experienced from her mother and her other peers quickly disappeared. Alcohol and drugs started to give Sarah feelings of power, a sense of belonging and a false, a very false sense of maturity. I mean, she described the relief that she felt of no longer worrying about anyone else, of their judgments, and she felt like at that time that she was in control of herself and of her feelings. But of course, you know, that feeling was only temporary. That relief was temporary. We know that now, right? So Sarah, she started to hang around gas stations back then with girlfriends. You know, they would just wait for the creepy uncle types who would be willing to buy them alcohol, right? Like, ooh, you see young girls. You’re you’re a pervert, you’re a creepo, you’re gonna buy them some alcohol. So they waited for men like that to buy them alcohol. And any and every party that she was invited to and she attended, there was always using and drinking. And she would use and drink whatever she was offered. So at that time there were things like Quaaludes, which are examples of tranquilizers. I forget if they fall under barbiturates or benzos. Pot, alcohol, and then… I had to stop her and ask, so where was heroin in all this? Because I’m asking her this in like 2021 when I interviewed her. And for us in this day and age, I’m recording this in 2023, we all know that everything is all about opiates, at least that’s everything in the media that we see. And so I was just curious, like, so where are the opiates in all this? So she responded, what did she respond? I just lost track of my notes, I hear you up. So yeah, so I mean, I was curious about the 70s and early 80s because of course, you know, today overdoses with opiates are just so prevalent. And so her response was, you know, that heroin got really big after Big Pharma got everyone hooked on pain pills. And she noted that was way after I got sober. So back then, you know, when she was in active addiction, people died from drunk driving, on occasion from suicide, but not from overdoses, at least not like today. And I decided to go do some research. So she was spot on, right? So according to the CDC, in the United States in 1980, the number of people who died from drug overdoses was 6,100 in 1980. By 2019, it was 70,630. Then out of that number, 49,860 had specifically died from opiates, whether it was a combination of pain pills or heroin. But those are wild numbers. So in 20 years, well, more than 20 years, 30 years, from 6,000, 6,100 to 70,000, that’s a lot. So anyway, drugs and alcohol, they had become so instrumental to Sarah’s life that she really leaned on them. And unfortunately, she leaned on them even more after surviving what would be anyone’s worst nightmare, which would be surviving sexual assault. So again, This may be a time where you need to stop and like leave this recording and that’s fine But if not, I’m going to continue telling her story So while on our liquor run she had run into some older friends who invited her to a boat party And you know, there were over a hundred and people who had crowded this boat and they were mostly older kids So, you know Sarah drank there’s whiskey. She drank that quickly. She smoked some pot and really all the while There was somebody at that party who was targeting her And to read what she wrote or read what she said, she had said, this guy came and grabbed me. He pulled me off of the boat and it was dark. It was night. I had a swim meet earlier that day and this girl on my team had French braided my hair. I left the French braids in. Anyway, I remember I escaped from this guy. I got back on the boat and hid from him. He came in there and he found me and he dragged me out. I was screaming, screaming to all these people, help me! And nobody would help me. They just let me, they just let him take me away. He took me out there and he raped me. Then this other guy raped me. I think I knew who one of the guys was, and possibly the other guy. And they were in on it together. My heart broke for her, and I was scared to ask if this was even her first time being sexually active. And it was. And she continued. They beat me up. They ripped my hair out. I was covered in dirt, in pee, their pee, grass stains, mud. They tried to shovel gravel down my throat to keep me from screaming. I was left there for dead, and someone from my neighborhood found me and dumped me on my lawn. My brother found me out there, carried me inside, put me in my room and closed the door. I came to the next day. My parents never noticed. They didn’t even know. I woke up torn up. I think that was my first hangover. I was 14. That was the first time I felt true fear, horror, how awful everything was. So I put my clothes on, snuck out, and went back to the gas station to get more liquor. I went to another party, did acid and Quaaludes. I knew then I shouldn’t go around these people anymore. My soul told me not to, but I would do it anyway. After that, I left my body mentally every time I had sex. I just felt like men were always going to take it anyway. I hated it. And though I don’t share the horrifying experience that Sarah had described, I recognized. somewhat, you know, the feeling of the pain, the dread, and the need to drown a terrible feeling out. I recognized the need to cope through oblivion, the feeling of knowing better, yet being driven to do the exact opposite. I absolutely recognize that. Needless to say, Sarah’s behavior continued to spiral. And once again, she was betrayed by friends and nearly drowned when she drunkenly fell off of a boat and into a river while hanging out. You’re gonna drown by the time we get to you, they shouted. Panicked that even her swimming experience couldn’t save her, she felt herself swallowing water and was prepared to give up when she heard a voice reminding her to do the dead man’s float. So Sarah survived, but her risky behavior led others to think that she wouldn’t live to her next birthday. So they contacted her parents. Sarah’s mother and father acted like they were shocked. And maybe they were, maybe they weren’t, but… Sarah ended up in treatment and got sober for the first time. I remember that I, you know, like me, Jessica, I was terrified my first time in treatment. And that was being a grown woman. By the eighth time that I went, I was just tired of it. But what was it like for a teenage girl? To Sarah? It was okay. You know, she was a teen. She got used to it. And being a sober high schooler, she said wasn’t bad. She had a tiny circle of sober friends and they did normal teenage things. She remembers that she’d go to meetings with people who now have over like 40 years of sobriety. And things were steady for Sarah and she got to finish high school, she kept her good grades and she got to start college. But getting to college, right, it wasn’t too long before things started to fall apart again. So Sarah managed to stay sober for the first semester of freshman year. But the day she moved on campus, literally semester two, Day one, right, first semester she stayed home. Semester two she had moved on campus. As soon as she got there she got drunk. And this time around, Sarah didn’t go back to drug use though. She just stuck to alcohol. So I had asked her, I was like, well you knew that being sober worked, so why did you go back out and drink? Mind you, I asked her that knowing damn well why she did. Because she struggles with addiction. And I feel like so many times when we struggle with addiction or if we weren’t really ready, right, we weren’t in a place where we were ready, nothing we ever do seems to make sense. And so her response was, I wanted to fit in. When I was younger, I didn’t want to fit in with my peers, but this time I did. The classmates that she hadn’t cared for in the past had now grown into actual binge drinkers and partying college students. So they had become Sarah’s kind of people. So, you know. The other thing too was that at this time, Sarah knew that she had a problem, it’s just that she was ignoring it, right? So while in college, she started having run-ins with the police and despite like her having increasing numbers of arrests, about six of them were actually for public intoxication and what felt like never ending community services that judges just kept giving her and she also nearly got expelled from school, despite all these things, right? Like she didn’t stop drinking and. How common is that for so many of us, right? Like we go through so many consequences and we still keep drinking. It’s the nature of addiction. Addiction is incredibly baffling and really, really hard. And so I, well, I’m sorry, y’all, I lost my spot. I found it. So, you know, and she was horribly sick every morning and she barely took nights off of drinking. And really like at this point in her story, In my mind, I thought she was gonna tell me that she dropped out of school, right? Because she had been constantly getting arrested and all of that. But she was funny. She was like, no, girl, like, I’m smart. I still got good grades. I was on the dean’s list. And she was also on the dean’s list for her conduct, AKA when she’d get in trouble, she’d go to the dean’s list. But academically, she was good. So, you know, again, it’s funny because how many of us are successful Outwardly right and so it’s very easy to hide that we’re struggling or that we have struggled with alcohol and other substances So she’s just another person another high achiever with a major addiction And you know, it’s funny too because in reflecting if I wasn’t naturally bright myself I also don’t know that I would have ever even finished schooling either Like I got by because a lot of things academically were easy for me and you know, that’s basically the same thing with Sarah She was getting by because she would take night classes to accommodate her drinking schedule. And yeah, she eventually graduated with arrests and all. And you know, as she described, you know, her life after college, she was like, I don’t know what living like a normal person was. You know, she was telling me, she was basically describing the old school dot matrix printer that it would like print her arrest record. and it would be like page after page after page that it was like attached to each other. I didn’t even know what a dot matrix printer was. Like I had to Google it. And I like looked up a YouTube video to hear what that sounded like. So she said that, you know, you all have to Google that. And actually I’ll put that in the show notes too. And you can hear it and it’s such a funny sound. But again, it’s just like when I looked it up and I saw what felt like almost like an artifact, right? Like a type of a printer that doesn’t exist anymore. The big light bulb moment for me was that people, despite us being from different generations, addiction is still addiction, right? And so there’s still so much to be learned from people across age groups. And that’s what to me was just so powerful about her story, that the undercurrent remains the same, right? Our experiences might be our own, but addiction remains the same. So after college, Sarah met her husband, who she stated became her new drug. She still drank not as much. And I think the reason why her drinking decreased, right, was because she was now getting validation from her husband and not just the bottles. He joined the military and they were living a really nice life in Florida by the beach and she felt like it was like a, but for her it was actually more like a return to her childhood. So things looked really pretty on the outside for her marriage, but on the inside she felt really far from it. She was still living in fear and she was telling me that she was still having that emotional and spiritual emptiness. And even when she would skim her yearbook, she realized that even though her classmates described her as joyful and cheerful, that she knew she had a void then that she always needed to fill. So while she was married, you know, she was a periodic drinker instead of a daily one. And even though she could stay away from alcohol for periods at a time, when she had that first drink, once she had it, she couldn’t stop, right? And it was like, Sarah basically required an intervention just about every time she drank in order for her to stop. She wanted to seek help, but her husband at the time discouraged her strongly. He would tell her, you don’t have a problem, despite the fact that he would get angry with her every time she got drunk at his suggestion, right? Because then she couldn’t be his designated driver. And Sarah knew better, but she just felt like she was ignoring what she knew because she valued her husband’s word at the end of it all. even when he became verbally abusive toward her. And she lived with low self-worth, so she suffered in silence daily until one day he abruptly divorced her before he got stationed in Japan. And once he abruptly left her, she got back to Kentucky, and her drinking picked back up. So at that point, her drinking escalated. So Sarah started drunk driving, she would lose cars on weekends. she would wake up with a sick feeling in her stomach, you know, just dreading the unknown, right? Like had she hit something, you know, she vaguely remembers near death experiences. And then in July of 1994, which is a few months before her sobriety date, she actually got her first DUI. She really should have gone to jail, but on her fifth court date that September, the arresting officer didn’t show up, right? And so that DUI got dropped, or dropped down to a misdemeanor. Now… Did Sarah stop and think, oh, maybe I should stop. This is a great opportunity, right? Fresh start? No. You know, that night she got drunk and she drove to celebrate getting out of the DUI situation. But that was the night of her last drink. So she remembers that she woke up in the morning at home. She didn’t know where her car was. She really didn’t remember much of the night before. However, she was incredibly sick and she had dragged herself into the bath and she could barely hold herself up, right? Like she sat down in the tub and as that water washed over her, that same voice that saved her from drowning years ago, right when she had fallen off that boat when she was drunk, that same voice had spoken her again. And what she heard was that voice saying, “‘This is your last chance. “‘You better take it.'” And you know, Sarah said, “‘I believe that voice to this day.'” I knew that was my last chance. And she is a person of faith. And so she said, you know, it was the voice of God. And that was September 23rd, 1994. So the Tuesday after she went to her first meeting since her teenage sober years. And interestingly enough, her reception was not a warm one, right? Like the people at that meeting were not warm and fuzzy to her. But she decided then that she would be sober. despite other people’s attitudes or behaviors towards her in that space, even if they didn’t reach their hand out to help her, she was gonna stay sober anyway, and she was going to stay alive. She had gotten through the worst of times in the past when people betrayed her, and she was going to stay sober, even if it was just her and God carrying her through. For her, it was a moment of clarity, and she thought to herself, well, this is the end, right? I literally have nowhere else to go. I couldn’t drink, I had no other choice. Am I going to do this? or not do this. And yeah, it had been at the time of her, that interview had been 26 years. So for now it’s about 28 years of sober living for Sarah. And you know, we were running short on time in terms of our conversation, but you know, I had to also ask her about what it’s like for her living sober, right? Cause she did share a lot about her life drinking, but I was like, man, you’ve been sober for longer. thing you drank, so like tell me about that. So you know, she jokingly was like, well that her first motivation to stay sober was just the desire to stay out of jail. She was like, that’s the easy reason. But then she seriously, she was like, you know, that her first two years sober were the hardest. So if you’re listening to this and you’re like, what is it like to live a sober life? Again, this woman has been sober a long time. She described her first two years as the hardest. And at 105 days sober, she had looked at herself in the mirror. And it was the first time that she could actually see herself, right? Like she was actually present. Her soul, body and mind had basically what she feels like they converged for the first time. Um, it was St. Patrick’s day and you know, the other days that people and other days that people like to celebrate by drinking, they weren’t easy to get through. And she remembers that she was salivating and craving, right? Like, again, she was early on 105 days is really early on. And she remembers, you know, that she got off work at five and she was definitely like, about to say, F it, and get off the expressway to go to a bar. And in my mind, I thought she was going to tell me that this was maybe a point in her story where she had like a relapse or something, right? But no, she said that while she was driving, she remembered someone telling her in a meeting to, you know, pray for cravings to get removed. And basically she had like decided to focus on driving and praying because she was driving and praying. she didn’t pay attention to the exit and she missed the exit that would have taken her to the bar and that helped her. And so you know, a couple other things that were really important, you know, for Sarah staying sober isn’t all about socializing and like being in fellowship or in connection with other sober people. She definitely recognized that in her 26, now 28 years of sobriety that being around other sober people is very important. But for her, it was actually really important to break her co-dependent tendencies. And she realized that she had spent her entire life using everything external to bring her internal joy. And so she was always, that joy was always fleeting because it was never from within, right? And so for her, outside of, again, in her 12-step program, she worked with a sponsor, but then also she worked on really building a spiritual base. And for her, she also worked a lot on her connection with a higher power. So again, if that resonates with you. food for thought, right? Like something that you can take away to help you. But Sarah definitely recognized that sobriety is not easy and she wants, when she talked to me, she wanted to make sure that anybody who heard her story understood that, right? We of course did not get to cover in detail the 26, now 28 years of her sober life, but she’s definitely acknowledged dealing with life on life’s terms. She’s dealt with death, heartbreak, loss, ailments, she’s really lived through all of that and she’s stayed sober. For her, the biggest thing about sobriety means having power and you know it means knowing that she is enough, that she has freedom, that she has peace. Anytime that she’s been triggered, the biggest thing that she says or she asks herself is, if I drink what will my life look like in six months? And then whatever, basically whatever trivial thing was triggering her becomes insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Whatever is going on, you won’t remember what pissed you off in six months. It’s not worth it. It’s temporary. I asked myself every day, what is worth more than my peace and serenity? And nothing is. I’m willing to give up everything to have peace and serenity. And when I heard Sarah say that, honestly, I felt inspired myself. You know, it was hope for me. I literally had at the time of this conversation, given everything up in December. just to have my own peace and serenity, right? Like I walked away from a 13 year teaching career. I left Kentucky, I had done all these things. And hearing a woman with 26 years of sobriety essentially say the same exact thing, let me know that I needed to keep doing what I was doing. And that maybe one day I’ll be like her, you know, with 20 something years, telling my story to a newly sober person. So, you know, after all that she’s been through and lived through, how does Sarah feel moving forward? And her comment was this, and I’ll quote her directly. If you’re a victim, you’re never free, you’re never happy. Everything you feel is always dependent on what someone else does, says, doesn’t do, or doesn’t say. I don’t wanna be dependent on other people for my happiness anymore. I learned to write a new story. I mean, I always used to tell my story with a negative connotation. That was who I was. I always framed it as something that kept me from succeeding. I was held back by self-pity because I kept blaming everything that happened. Telling that same old negative story kept me stuck in it. I tell a new story now. My story is now about me living how I want things to be. I firmly believe that anything is possible with God. There is power in our words. If you say you can, if you say you can’t, you’re right. Even if things aren’t how I want them to be right now, I’m still going to speak them into existence in the way I want them to be. And so I hope you enjoyed Sarah’s story. Again, she participated anonymously. So her real identity is a beautiful secret that I get to keep for myself. But I do hope that you enjoyed her story. Again, check out the site for other stories. There are much older posts on the bottom of the silver blog, which are people’s individual stories. And again, if you wanna share your own story with me, don’t hesitate to reach out. Thanks so much for your time and I will see you on the next episode.

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In this episode:

Link to Spotify

I discuss my experience of having alcoholic liver disease (ALD) and answer common questions. How did I know that I had it? What was the treatment? What were the signs of ALD?

Resources:

TikTok on ALD

NPR – Sharp, ‘Off The Charts’ Rise In Alcoholic Liver Disease Among Young Women

Bottomless to Sober – Workshops, Writing Classes, and Coaching

Transcript:

Hey, so for today’s episode, I wanted to talk about ALD, alcoholic liver disease. I have a couple of posts on TikTok that had gone viral in the past, and it’s funny because I still get recurring messages and questions from those posts. And I thought, you know, I have a new platform, so let me go ahead and talk about it here. So first to give you context in terms of what, because one of the questions, first question I get is, well, what did your alcohol consumption look like? So I’ll tell you. From when I was 18 up until my divorce in 2017, I drank, I didn’t drink every day. I was definitely a heavy drinker when I drank. So definitely a binge drinker, but I didn’t have opportunities to drink daily because I lived with my parents or I was living with my then husband, you know, ex-husband now. And so living with other people, in those days always kept me sort of in check, right? So I only got to binge drink on occasion, but I wasn’t able to drink how I wanted to drink. I got to drink how I wanted to drink come my divorce, which was 2017. And at that point I transitioned to daily drinking. So the daily drinking went from 2017 to about 2019. And so I’ll talk a little bit about that. So when I started drinking on a daily basis was when I lived on my own, and that was about a bottle of wine a day. Bottles of wine on average are about five servings, let’s say five servings of alcohol, which is already heavy, right? So the CDC states that for women, heavy drinking is eight drinks or more in one week. So I was having five drinks in a day. So five times seven is 35. So that’s already four times the amount of what. they state is their limit. And that’s the CDC specifically outlining heavy drinking. They, you know, so we already know there’s tons of newer research that is pointing to the fact that just one drink a day is harmful, right? Like one is not necessary. With that being said, let’s talk a little bit about tolerance and dependence, right? So if you think about your central nervous system, it’s got a general set point, right? Like there’s a certain place where everything is balanced. But then if you introduce a mind-altering substance like alcohol or anything else, right, your brain is going to counter it because it wants to establish that equilibrium, that homeostasis, so to speak. So if I’m drinking the five servings of wine a night and I’ve made it a habit because I’m doing it every day, what my body is going to start doing is my body is going to, A, counter it with that same energy, But then B, my body is smart. The brain practices neuroplasticity, which means its ability to learn, right? And because it’s learned this new habit, it’s also going to prepare to receive that amount of alcohol. So it’s going to overcompensate, which means that by it overcompensating that opposite action, it’s gonna take more alcohol for me to feel the way that I felt when I drank the five glasses of wine, the one bottle. which means that over time, I had to go from the one bottle of wine to the bottle of wine plus a shot, plus the bottle of wine to a half pint. And then eventually I was like, oh, you know what? This wine is actually rather inefficient. So I’m gonna stop drinking the wine, give me the liquor. And then it was from the half pint to the pint to the fifth. By the time I was drinking a fifth of alcohol, a fifth of alcohol is about 17 units. So that’s 17 drinks in a day. And that was probably by late 2018, early 2019, that I was drinking that much. So I probably, at the time of my diagnosis of alcoholic liver disease, it had probably been about a solid nine months or so of drinking that extreme. But overall, heavy drinking for about a period of two years. So that’s one of the questions that I get often. The, and the… Yes, so the next question that I often get is, how did I know that I had alcoholic liver disease? I mean, the way that I officially knew was when I got the blood work back that told me that I had alcoholic liver disease. But what I will say is, how I knew that something was wrong, that feeling was kind of always inside of me, right? And the thing is that I always had… the ill feelings, I always had the side effects of alcohol. It’s just that over time, they were just getting worse and worse and worse. So I don’t know because obviously I wasn’t taking an enzyme test every day to tell you when, what I was feeling went from bad hangovers to actual alcoholic liver disease. But what I will do is go through kind of like what I was feeling and going through. So as my alcohol consumption stayed consistent on a daily basis, right? Things that I started to notice was I was waking up with shakes. So my hands were shaking. They were shaking to the point that if I wanted to drink a cup of coffee, I would have to grip the cup with both hands to hold it steady enough so that nothing would splash or spill as I lifted it to my mouth, right? To give you some sense of that. I was a teacher and I have this very clear memory of I was helping my co-teacher with doing measurements and I was holding a ruler out. And when I was holding that ruler out, that ruler kept shaking. And I had a student say, Ms. Duenas, why is your hand so shaky? And I mean, I covered myself immediately. And I was like, oh, I drank so much coffee. It makes me so shaky. Sorry about that. Can you come hold this for me? And that’s how I covered myself. Insane, right? But that was the reality of how bad my hands were shaking. Another symptom that I dealt with was my digestive system was messed up. So what that looked like was waking up with nausea, vomiting bile. Like I would sit there and gag over the sink and if something came out, it was like green and nasty and like it felt like acid burning. That’s what it felt like. And then I would feel this also throughout the day. So I had a really hard time eating and even the most delicious of foods, they really lost their flavor for me because I had no desire to eat them. So I was also losing weight, but I still kept the belly because when you have liver disease, you also retain fluid. So my belly was full of fluid, and then my feet and my ankles were swollen, my fingers were swollen. And I remember with my feet, if I wore sandals, it was almost like you were baking bread and there was a string tied around your foot and you could just see like the little crease of the sandal straps cutting into my feet and my ankles. That’s how swollen my feet were getting, right? And my fingers, I mean, I couldn’t wear any rings because it was just like my hands were always so swollen. My cheeks had also been swollen. If you look at old photos of me, I look like a little woodchuck a little bit because my cheeks were just so poofy all the time. So there was a lot of swelling even though there was weight loss. Another thing that was affected was my vision. I, if you look at pictures of me from about 2018 to 2019, you will see that I was wearing prescription glasses. Now I went to the doctor about two weeks ago, this is August, 2023 as I’m recording this. And I went to the doctor about two weeks ago and my eyes were checked and my vision was 2015. Normal vision is 2020. So my vision is even better than your standard good vision, right? Other, another really weird symptom that I had was coughing. I had the worst cough ever. It was like I was hacking. There had been a few times that I was sent home early from work. I was sent to urgent care. I had gotten prescribed asthma inhalers. I had done all sorts of breathing tests and doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong with me. And of course I wasn’t disclosing that I was drinking heavily. And the only thing that made my drinking feel better was drinking. alcohol. That was the only thing that would make that cough go away. And so I think I’m covered just about everything. Oh, and the other one, of course, bruising. If I bumped into anything, I would get a nasty bruise. And the other thing too, actually, I think that’s it. Yes, I had like a brain fart. So yeah, the heavy bruising, the weight loss, the swelling. the shakes, the nausea, also going to the bathroom, everything was runny, right? So like if I went number two, it was just straight up like diarrhea. There was like nothing solid ever coming out of my body. Right? And so I felt horrible. Suffice it to say, like all that is to say, I felt horrible. And I knew that I wasn’t doing well, but instead of taking that as a sign of, oh, maybe I need to go. get some help and explore what I have going on. I did my research and I found a medication that is typically used to treat alcohol withdrawal, but it has different purposes. And I got that to address my withdrawal symptoms. And what did that do? That enabled me to drink for more time how I wanted to drink, right? So when I would wake up in the morning, instead of missing work, because my withdrawal symptoms were so bad, I could take this medication and then go to work and function. And again, and I did more than just function. I excelled at work. I was, this was the year that I won the Kentucky State Teacher of the Year award. So even though I was drinking a fifth a day, I was still being a really phenomenal educator, right? It was the weirdest like split personality type of thing. And I kept that up because I had figured out how to manage those withdrawal symptoms. But again, my body… was going through so, so much. Again, like I said it earlier, right? You have a set point that you’re at, and then you introduce a mind-altering substance, your body’s going to counter that. And when your body counters that, what you are going to feel in your body is the complete opposite of everything that mind-altering substance does. So in the case of alcohol, if alcohol was relaxing, the counter to that is going to be huge waves of anxiety, right? that nauseating feeling in your stomach, the shakes. And then when you drink the alcohol, the shakes go away, hands become steady, et cetera. But again, because my body had gotten in such a habit, it needed more and more to create that sense of ease. And so it really wasn’t creating a sense of ease because again, my body would counter it so hard that all the withdrawal symptoms were incredibly, incredibly strong. So come August of 2019, I finally have my annual physical. And when I go to the doctor, my blood work comes back. And then I officially know, right, that I have alcoholic liver disease. And so there’s two enzymes that are tested when you get your liver checked. The first one is ALT, the second one is AST. Each of these essentially are enzymes that if your liver is damaged, these enzymes leak out into your bloodstream and it’s found, you know, obviously throughout your body, right? And so for example, what is normal to find in the bloodstream of ALT is anywhere from 13 to 69 units per liter of blood. In my case, I had 160 ALT as a reading. So I had 160 units per liter of this liver enzyme flowing through my body because my liver was that damaged. Then with AST, the normal range was 15 to 46 units per liter. And in my case, it was 429 units per liter. That was nine times higher than what it was supposed to be. Nine times. So that goes to show you how hurt, how injured, how sick my liver was. that these enzymes were all over my body because my liver wasn’t well. So again, if you are feeling like you are potentially at risk of having liver disease, I strongly encourage you to go check with your doctor. Their treatment, what they prescribe for you may be different than what was for me, but what worked for me, because the other question I get is, well, how did you fix it? all I had to do was stop drinking. And I say that saying, oh damn well, that all I had to do was stop drinking is a really hard, I think, thing to do, right? Like, let’s be honest, it’s not that simple to just quit drinking because we’re talking about a crippling addiction that caused the liver disease, right? It’s not that simple to just, oh, oops, and my mic just fell. It’s not that simple to just like, oh, you know, stop drinking and that’s that. because obviously the liver disease is a physical manifestation of a problem with huge psychological roots, right? Because alcohol is just a symptom of whatever else we had going on. But that is what worked for me. I didn’t have to take any additional medications. I didn’t have to do anything else. I just had to stop drinking and stay stopped. Other things to note that are really important. So when I got this diagnosis, the doctor made it pretty clear that probably within six months to the year, I could have developed cirrhosis. Now, the wild thing about cirrhosis is that once you get that diet, alcoholic hepatitis can heal, right? What I was dealing with was liver damage, but the liver is a really resilient organ. So my liver had the chance to heal. But if I had gone farther down the line, farther down that spectrum into the area of permanent scarring, which is cirrhosis, at that point, there’s no coming back from that. Now, some people with cirrhosis can live longer lives, right, if they stop drinking and stop additional liver damage, there’s ways to manage also adjusting your diet, etc. But if you have cirrhosis and you keep drinking, you are cutting, you’re counting your days essentially. And so that’s what the doctor had warned me of. So with that being said, a couple other things that I wanted to mention, right, another question that I had was, Oh shoot, what was that question? Oh, well, I don’t drink a fifth a day, so I should be good, right? That is one of the great questions that I get. And no, it doesn’t take a fifth. It takes a lot less than a fifth to cause liver damage. So first, any recent resource from 2022, 2023, in terms of alcohol consumption will tell you, especially if you’re looking at anything coming out of Europe or Canada, will let you straight up. No, just one is a problem, right? Just one is a problem. The CDC defines heavy drinking, which I’ve said it already, but to reemphasize, as eight drinks or more per week for a woman, 15 drinks or more per week for a man. So somehow biologically different if you happen to be a woman listening to this, right? You already are at a disadvantage in terms of alcohol consumption because your body handles it less well than men’s bodies do. I mean, nobody’s body handles it well, but women’s bodies… really don’t handle alcohol well, and it has harder side effects. With that being said, there was a, well, an article from NPR that I actually was a part of, the article was titled Sharp Off the Chart’s Rise in Alcoholic Liver Disease Among Young Women. And that article was showing that something drinking up to a bottle of wine a day increases a woman’s chances of liver disease severely enough to require hospitalization. And even binge drinking can put a woman at risk of liver damage to the point of hospitalization. Right? So it doesn’t, you don’t have to be to the extreme of where I was drinking a fifth a day. For you, it can be as simple as that bottle of wine a day that seems really classy and cute. That can be enough. And so that is just really, really important information for you because there is this conception that you have to be much older or drinking so heavily to get sick. And it actually does not take that much. Again, if you think about my time period of heavy drinking, my time period of heavy drinking was only two years. And I was 34 years old when I was diagnosed with alcoholic hepatitis. So I was very young, had not been drinking heavily for that long. And honestly, I probably was already having liver damage at about a year of drinking heavily because I remember feeling sick. only a year into drinking heavily. It’s not like it didn’t take that long. So in terms of what do I do with this information, right? You’re listening to this podcast. So step one is you do need to address the drinking. Now, what can that look like? Obviously I do provide coaching support. What that looks like is also encouraging you to find community. It is incredibly hard to get sober on your own and you don’t have to do it on your own and you don’t deserve to do it on your own. You deserve to feel welcome in a part of a space where you aren’t the only one in your world dealing with this, right? So I encourage people always, and my clients always to find community. But then also there’s a lot of work to be done. Is some of this work to be done with a therapist? Do we have old history that we need to work on healing? And if so, I absolutely recommend getting a therapist. Are you needing support with action plans and accountability and support and looking at different routes to recovery and get a coach? I would say schedule a session with me and see, let’s see what we can do together, right? Aside from that, do you need medically assisted treatment? There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting on medication. So all of these different things are questions to explore. It’s food for thought. And I believe that I, at this point, I’ve covered everything that I really wanted to say in terms of the alcoholic liver disease, but it can get better for many, not for everyone, right? If you go far down enough to cirrhosis, you can’t necessarily bounce back from cirrhosis, but you can still manage cirrhosis. And I think that that’s the other important thing, that if you’re listening to this and you’ve got a diagnosis of cirrhosis, I want you to understand that you have the power to make it worse or you have the power to manage it where you’re at, right? So I think that there’s still a lot of power even with that diagnosis. But if you have alcoholic hepatitis, you absolutely owe it to yourself to give yourself a shot to heal that liver. Because today my enzymes are absolutely normal. I had a physical a couple of months ago and I don’t remember the exact numbers, but my numbers were both for the ALT and the AST. They were both within the healthy range. Right? So there’s absolutely that opportunity to bounce back. um, you know that weight that I had lost, I have gained it back, right? Um, I’m healthy. I have a very healthy appetite. And so my vision is perfect. You know, I don’t scar. I go to the gym and lift heavy things and bang into heavy things all the time and I’m not bruised up like I’ve been in the fight. So there absolutely is hope in getting alcohol free, getting sober and staying away from that damn poison. It takes very little alcohol to cause a lot of damage and it’s just not worth it So if you’re needing support again reach out my website is bottomless to sober.com I have other resources that are not just coaching so check them out and Yeah, I if this was helpful to you, please share it with someone else. Thank you so much

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In this episode:

Link to Spotify.

In this episode, I discuss the power of looking at your past as full of learning experiences rather than letting shame and guilt overpower you. You’re the best source of knowledge for how to navigate decision-making moving forward. It’s a matter of tapping into yourself to be able to do so.

Resources:

Poem – I have been a thousand different women

Bottomless to Sober – Workshops, Writing Classes, and Coaching

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas:
Hey everyone. So this is the part two to the self-compassion theme. I just felt like making it into two separate episodes. So in this episode, I wanna focus on the self-compassion for ourselves based off the things that we did in the past, right? And understanding that we are in different places today than where we were before. And again, that a huge block to anyone’s recovery journey is going to be that self- I don’t even know what the word is, but just being hard on yourself, not forgiving yourself, being resentful towards yourself, being embarrassed. And really it comes down to shame and guilt, right? If you are trapped in shame and guilt, you’re not going to make as much progress as you would if you practice kindness towards yourself. And so I’ll actually want to start off by reading this poem. It’s been kind of all over the internet in the past couple of days. It’s written by Emery Hall. And the poem is titled, I have been a thousand different women. And if you’re listening to this and you are a man, or you identify something different, just think about you’ve been a thousand different yous. Okay. Um, but the poem is titled, I have been a thousand different women. Make peace with all the women you once were. Lay flowers at their feet. Offer them incense and honey and forgiveness. Honor them and give them your silence. Listen, bless them and let them be. For they are the bones of the temple you sit in now. For they are the rivers of wisdom leading you toward the sea. I’ll read that one more time. I have been a thousand different women by Emery Hall. Make peace with all the women you once were. Lay flowers at their feet. offer them incense and honey and forgiveness. Honor them and give them your silence. Listen, bless them and let them be. For they are the bones of the temple you sit in now. For they are the rivers of wisdom leading you toward the sea. Now, such a beautiful poem and What I really, really love is the imagery of the past versions of ourselves being rivers of wisdom, right? Because the past versions of ourselves, we can definitely let those versions of ourselves fuel shame, fuel guilt. And by doing that, we can let those versions of ourselves stunt our growth. Or we can look at all the past versions of ourselves, recognize that we were doing the best that we could with what we had. and also extract a ton of knowledge, a ton of wisdom from the past versions of ourselves so that we make decisions moving forward that are in alignment with where we wanna go. So I will give you a personal example of mine. So I’ll use dating. I feel like dating is always kind of like a really easy way to explain things, at least for me. So I think in the previous episode, I talked about a relationship I’ll just give you the context in case you didn’t listen to the episode. So right after I got divorced, like back in 2017, I got into a relationship with someone who I was super excited about. Everything seemed great, except that I noticed that this person was always very resistant to anything having to do with social media. So even if we had hit a milestone and I were to tag him in the milestone, he would be resisting towards it and he would either remove himself from the tag or then he would just say, no, I’m just a private person. You know, I’m private. I don’t like to put my business out there. Back then, an old version of Jessica, she knew that there was something wrong with that. The old version of me had a very strong inclination that there was a serious reason why this man did not want to be tagged by me in anything. Right? And of course, time revealed itself that there was a whole other woman. And that’s why he did not want to be tagged in anything, right? Because he had two different worlds that he was living in himself that he couldn’t be tagged from one because it would then be revealed in the other and his whole world would blow apart. Spoiler alert, his life did get blown apart because eventually everything did get revealed. But back to that moment when I knew there was something really wrong with the secrecy of it all. But here’s where old Jessica operated from. Old Jessica was operating from a wounded broken heart from going through a divorce. Old Jessica was just happy that someone, anyone would give her attention and validate her who was attractive, educated, you know, and felt like she could get along with. Therefore, old Jessica was willing to put up with anything, including not listening to her own judgment because she was so scared of being alone. Right, I want you to sit with that. Now, let’s fast forward to current me, right? So I did take, thankfully I did learn from that experience and I did learn that if someone is operating in secret, it means that they’ve got something to hide. And so fast forward to me today, and in the last two years when I started to like date again after losing my boyfriend, That was one of the things that I really paid attention to, right? Like, do you operate in secret? Are you being secretive? Because if you are, that means that there’s something that you’re hiding, and I’m not OK with that, and I’m not sticking around for that. So there was somebody who I had met back in early, I think it was early 2022, and he was incredibly secretive. Again, and I mean, it was so early on, I didn’t need to, like, tag him in anything, so to speak. But there, it was like he never could look at his phone where the screen was visible and he always had to remove himself from the space to go take a phone call, right? Everything that he did had to be done in a way that it wasn’t visible to me. And that was a huge red flag for me. Now, I had that same feeling, that same old feeling of, well, I don’t wanna be alone, I really like him, he’s really cool, we get along well. He checked off all the boxes for me, but I had that same… sick feeling that something was wrong that I had years ago that I didn’t listen to years ago. So what did I do this time around? I listened to that feeling and I removed myself from that situation. I, to this day, I don’t know. Did he have a secret? Maybe, maybe not. But the point is, is that I didn’t stick around to find out because when I confronted him about his secrecy, he gave me a vague wishy washy answer. And that was all that I needed. I didn’t need to sit around and go through a whole entire relationship to then become heartbroken for me to find out that there’s probably something going on that wasn’t in alignment with what I needed, right? And why is that? Because I leaned on my prior experience, that prior river of knowledge to lead me to the sea. So as soon as I removed myself from that situation, in time, I found my current partner. And I don’t know where things are gonna go with me and my current partner. Like sure, it’d be great to have a great long lasting outcome. I don’t know that yet. But the point is, is that with my current partner, I pay attention to the things that he does. And so say, for example, with the online thing, there’s clearly no secrecy in that current situation that I’m in. If there’s something special that happens and I choose to post and I choose to tag him, that man is not hiding a single post. He’s very open and very transparent. He’s not running to his phone to hide it when it’s ringing, right? So that I can’t see who’s calling. Those are all the things that have led me to the sea. So I’m like at that point with regard to say dating other things. No, I’m not at the sea yet. I’m on my, I’m on my way down the river to get there. But I highlight those examples, you all, because that is a manner of how I leaned on my prior self to lean on that experience. so that my future decisions don’t backfire on me, right? But the way that could have looked differently, right, was when that, with that guy from early 2022, if he had been secretive, if I had felt that there was something wrong there and I would have still chosen to go along with it, right? That would be me choosing to not learn from the river of wisdom that I have. And so I love that poem because There is so much value in our past experiences, no matter how dark they were, no matter how awful they were, no matter how shame we are for them. There’s so much value in where we come from that we really can outline a great future for ourselves if we just tap in and pay attention to everything that we went through. But when we’ve gone through something, and we choose to ignore it when we see it coming back up again, I promise you that your life is going to put you in experiences where that situation is going to repeat itself over and over and over again until you choose to break from that pattern and do something different. And so in terms of what’s a tangible takeaway from this conversation that we’re having, a.k.a. this one-sided conversation that I’m having with the microphone and hopefully you’re listening to, I would say it is this. When you are today facing a situation that is making you uncomfortable, it’s making you take pause. I want you to stop. I want you to pull out that journal or however else you like to process and write. And I want you to think about a time in your past where something similar was happening. Right? Obviously, circumstances are not always going to be identical, but when does this go back to in time to? What do you remember? And I want you to think about what you learned from that prior situation. What is similar? What are the parallels? Write them down. What do these situations have in common? Then I want you to pay attention to what did you do in the past and what was the outcome and did you like that outcome? If you did not like that outcome, what could you have done differently in the past and notice I’m not asking you about the other person. I’m not asking about the other circumstances. This whole conversation is focused on you because you’re the only one that’s in control at any given moment, right? So from your previous situation, what was the circumstance? What did you do? What outcome did you get? Did you like the outcome? If you did not like that outcome, then go back, what could you have done differently and what may have that outcome look like? And then I want you to look at your current situation and look at what your options are. What are your options? What are you empowered to do right now? What is option A and what may be the outcome there? How does that outcome sound to you? Is it like something that you can, that you can get with? Do you like it, dislike it? It’s okay to dislike, to dislike outcomes if they’re the right thing for you. Right? Like every choice that we make is not going to be pleasant and it’s not going to be easy. but it’s going to be right sometimes. So I want you to look at your current situation and outline what you can do, what are the possible outcomes for doing those different actions, and then use that information to guide you, because I promise you that you carry all the wisdom that you need within you to make best choices for yourself. And if you’re struggling, then this is a great opportunity for you to find where you can reach out. who you can connect to help you tap into yourself. Right? So really that’s all that I wanted to kind of share in this episode. I want you to be kind to yourself and rather than feel shame and guilt for what you used to do, what type of person you used to be like, use that previous person to provide you all the information that you need. for how to move forward because you are a source, you are the best source of information for how to live your life. So with that, I’m gonna go ahead and close out. I hope that everyone has an awesome day, share the podcast and I will talk to you soon.

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