Category: Podcast

In this episode:

Link to Spotify

I share my recovery story a lot, but in this episode, I sit down with my big sis, Sofia, to have a raw conversation about her part in my story of addiction and recovery. Several key things we discuss in this episode:

1. Professional help. The person with the addiction isn’t the only one who benefits from it.
2. Managing guilt.
3. Understanding what is in your locus of control.
4. Setting boundaries.
5. Current worries.

If this episode touches your heart, you MAY feel inspired to follow my sister Sofia or say hello. Sofia’s boundary is she will not welcome strangers following her/adding her as a friend, so if you listen to this and want to send her a message, please message me, and I’ll pass it on to her. 🙂

Resources:

Op-Ed That Went Viral

Bipolar I vs Bipolar II: Breaking Down The Differences

What is the Baker Act?

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas (00:02.204)

Hey everyone, super happy to have you. So this episode is really near and dear to me because my first ever guest is actually my sister, Sofia. I call her Sophie, but you all don’t know her. So she is Sofia to anyone listening to this. And basically just to kind of give you all some context. So I am the youngest of a combined eight kids between my mom and dad. And so my sister Sofia, she’s the seventh, but

Sofia (00:17.134)

Thanks for watching!

Jessica Dueñas (00:30.644)

because our parents came to the US kind of like with already their older kids having been born and staying in their respective countries, Sophie and I really grew up together. And so a couple of cool things, Sophie is 11 years older than me and she got to name me. Thank God, because if I had been a boy, my mom would have named me Eduardo. So I don’t even know what my name would have been if my mom had named me. So Jessica came from my sister naming me. So she did a good choice there.

And honestly, she, thank you. And you know, and really I asked her to come on because I think it’s really important that we also consider the perspective of our loved ones. And when I struggled so much, she was there for me in ways that I, I mean, there’s no repaying it, right? All I can do is just continue to walk the path that I walk. And I feel like that’s the best that I can do. Chrissy, my dog decided to start playing with the bone now.

Sofia (00:58.902)

You’re welcome.

Jessica Dueñas (01:25.788)

But yeah, I thought that having her on would be really helpful if you’re listening and you have a loved one or if you are a loved one and you’re listening and you’re kind of just hoping. So here’s some perspective. I hope that you get something from this. And again, nothing that we’re offering is advice, but it’s just a perspective that may be helpful. So with that, thank you, Sophie, for coming. I appreciate you.

Sofia (01:46.926)

Well, thank you for having me. I’m honored to be the first guest.

Jessica Dueñas (01:50.484)

Yes, you’re always the most special person. So, all right, so the first question really that I have, and again, with my drinking, right, what was it like dealing with me in active addiction, especially when you found out that this was a struggle I was keeping from you?

Sofia (02:08.97)

I mean, it was so much, it was kind of overwhelming because the timeline of it all, we were like in the middle of COVID as well. It was very, very frightening, very scary because our family has a pretty extensive history of alcohol addiction, but I had never…

seen it to this level. And I was very much afraid for your life. And it’s a sense of helplessness because this person that you love so much and you just wanna be able to fix it. And as a big sister, I wanna come in, I wanna save the day, I wanna be able to fix it, but having to accept that there is really nothing that I can do.

Um, it’s, it’s a very kind of helpless place to be. Um, and, and frustrating because, you know, knowing you, and I know what an intelligent, bright individual you are. And I knew that like, intellectually you knew that you needed to stop doing this. And.

Also knowing that you kind of knew how to work the system. You knew the right things to say to let people or make people think that, oh no, I’ve got it under control. Like I’m good, I’ve got this, no problems. Yes, I know I’m drinking too much, but I’ve got it under control. That was just, that was frustrating for me because I knew that you…

You knew you needed help, but you weren’t in a place where you were, I think, accepting how serious this problem was really, was just affecting your life and your health, and that you were really at risk. That was really difficult.

Jessica Dueñas (04:24.84)

Yeah, thank you for that. And I mean, it’s funny because in my writing, I often reflect on how good I am at knowing what the right things to say are. And I have to look out for that today. Like I have to be very intentional with sharing with you or with Rashard or anybody, like I’m not okay because I’m such a good actor, right? And it’s like, I still have to watch out for that today and just…

practice that transparency because it’s so easy. You know, we learned it in our family to just always put up the front of being strong. You know, it’s like I feel like that’s very ingrained in our family history. One thing that kind of came up for me while you were talking, you mentioned helplessness and accepting that you couldn’t kind of like control me or the outcome. At what point did you understand that you were helpless in that or like, you know, that you couldn’t control me? And at what point, like how did that help you kind of?

hope, so to speak, if that helped or was it, did that make that worse?

Sofia (05:22.539)

I mean, to be honest, I ended up having to go to therapy myself because, you know, I don’t want to say I’m a controlling person, but you know, I’m used to being the person, the go-to person when something goes wrong. I fix it. I come up with solutions. And, you know, this was one of those situations where…

I really couldn’t do anything and I didn’t know how to deal with that. So it was affecting me. You know, I was, I had anxiety. I was a nervous wreck. And again, this is just one of those things that was in addition to the whole situation that we were living through at that time. So we just kind of compounded that and you know, I’m in healthcare. So it was just so hard and, and you know, really brought to light.

that life is so precious and it’s fragile. And I really truly, every time the phone rang and I saw that area code, I was always afraid what was gonna be on the other end of that line. Is this gonna be the call telling me that something happened to you? And having the idea of like, how am I gonna explain this to mommy? How do I say it? I couldn’t, there was nothing I could do.

It was, so I had to seek help for myself. You know, I finally got to the point and actually my supervisor told me, she’s like, you know, you have anxiety because I never dealt with anxiety before and I honestly couldn’t recognize it in myself, but you know, I wasn’t sleeping well, I was having trouble concentrating, you know, all the classic signs of anxiety. And so, you know, I did seek help for myself and.

You know, it was hard to accept and I don’t know if I ever truly accepted it, but I just had to deal.

Jessica Dueñas (07:27.839)

Yeah.

Well, thank you for that. I’m glad that you got help. And again, anybody who’s listening, right? Like if you don’t know what to do, like A, it’s okay to not know what to do. And B, there are resources out there. So you did therapy. Any other support systems that you leaned on during this time?

Sofia (07:46.67)

Um, you know, of course I have like, I have wonderful friends, um, you know, that just kind of listened to me, supported me, you know, again, there’s, there’s no right answer. Um, but, you know, they just understood, um, where I was coming from, you know, cause we all have loved ones, you know, and it’s kind of like, you know, you see someone on a train track and you see the train is coming and

that person just will not get out of the way. Like no matter what you do, like you can’t pull them off, you can’t push them off. And that’s all you wanna do. You wanna get them out of the harm’s way. And just, you know, it’s very, it’s hard to watch someone you love spiraling and hurting. You want, you just wanna be able to, you know, make them better, stop the hurt and…

not being able to do that for them, especially in a situation. I think like, you know, and I’m sure as like, if it’s a parent with a child, you know, you want to protect them. And, you know, me being your older sister, like I’ve always kind of been like in that like second mom role, even though obviously, as we’ve gotten older, our relationship has changed and became more of like a friendship than like me, you know, taking care of you. But

you know, that doesn’t ever really go away. And so, you know, it’s difficult to just let someone you love, you know, go through that process, whatever comes and just, you know, I just kind of got to the point where I was like, well, I will just be here, you know, in whatever capacity I can be and, you know, even though I hated it, I had to accept that I can’t, I can’t do this for you. This was.

work that you had to do for yourself.

Jessica Dueñas (09:46.996)

Absolutely. And again, for anyone listening, relinquishing that control is so powerful for whether you’re in recovery or you have a loved one, right? Just understanding that we really can’t control other people and outcomes. And that’s such a hard thing to accept, but I mean, I feel like it’s just super, super critical. Another thing I wanted to talk about was, and also actually to give context, so Sophie

caretaker role. So again, for anyone listening, there’s an 11 year age gap, right? And growing up, our parents were self employed, and they had like this little store in Brooklyn. So oftentimes, Sophie was tasked with being basically, yeah, like a like the second mom, you know, so I spent like, I mean, I used to go on Sophie’s first dates because she had no, there’s no babysitter. So I would go on Sophie’s dates with her.

Sofia (10:36.11)

I’m sorry.

Jessica Dueñas (10:40.564)

So just to give you context, I was always, always there. And we were super close. But yeah, our relationship has changed drastically once I grew. So the other question I had for you was, you know, I now, when I tell my story, right, like I openly admit to having struggled with alcohol for many, many years. You know, and I’ve probably known that I had a problem since.

you know, before I married Chris. So let’s say that’s like, what, 2011, 2010, you all, I’m not married to Chris anymore. Chris is my ex-husband’s name. But before, so if I knew I had a problem since probably say, 2011, 2010, and you didn’t find out about my problem until say about 2019, like that, that winter with the holidays and stuff when, so what, when you realize that I had a problem, right?

Sofia (11:13.088)

Mm-hmm.

Sofia (11:27.702)

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Jessica Dueñas (11:36.18)

What was your reaction to me having kept it a secret for so long?

Sofia (11:42.782)

I mean, it was shock, honestly. You know, and now like looking back, looking back, you know, I see that there were signs, but I think, you know, because I just, I could not like wrap my brain around it, or I would always kind of find another reason, like something, you know, I remember there were times.

Very few times but once or twice you called me and now I know you were drunk but because I would I could never kind of Assign that to you like I wouldn’t I would not you know if anyone said to me Oh, if someone’s gonna have a drinking problem the last person I would think would be you know And so I think I was in a little bit of denial. You know, I remember when you were in college

And you would tell me stories about stuff and I’m like, golly, like you’re partying a little hard. But I also like, well, you know, you’re in college, it’s your first time away from home. And, you know, we grew up in a pretty strict household. So I just kind of chalked it up to like, well, you know, you’re letting your hair down and you’re just having a good time. Not, you know, a little concerned, you know, for your safety, but never thinking it was like a real serious problem.

And, you know, so many times like we would travel together and you wouldn’t even have a drink. You know, you would just have so it’s like I never saw you drink. You never drink around me. And so it was all kind of like what I honestly I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. I was like, what is happening here? And you know, the way that I found out, you know, and do you mind if I tell the story?

Jessica Dueñas (13:36.271)

Nope, go for it, that’s fine.

Sofia (13:38.002)

Okay, so, you know, it was, it was the holidays, it was Christmas. And, you know, I am not a drinker. My ex-husband also was not a drinker, but I loved entertaining. Um, so I would always have people over and, you know, people come over, they always bring something and normally it was, you know, a bottle of whatever alcohol. And so I had quite a nice stock of alcohol in my house because I never drink it. And I would just collect.

collect and then I would bring them out whenever I had a party whatever but never even thought twice about it and so you know we had a big Christmas party or holiday party and you were here and you know I’m in the middle of the night you know Olivia my oldest daughter comes in and wakes me up and is like mom like something’s wrong with Jessica you know

So I’m like, Oh my gosh, what happened? And I, you know, run in there and by the time I came in, you were getting up, but she found you like passed out on the floor. Um, and then I, you know, in the kitchen, there’s like bottles and I’m like, what, what is going on? Like, you know, my main concern at that point was like, are you okay? But then once it started sinking in and then you admitted to me that, you know, you’ve been struggling with alcohol. Like.

One, my immediate feeling was a huge amount of guilt because I had all this alcohol in the house. Like, had I known, all of that crap would have been in the garbage because I couldn’t care less about it. You know, so that was my, I felt horrible that I, you know, had all this stuff out here for you to just access. But you know, again, and that was one of the things that I had to work through in therapy was like, you know,

I had no idea. And so it wasn’t my fault that I had alcohol in the house because I just didn’t know. And then, you know, sadness because you were so sad. Like you felt so broken to me when you like finally admitted what was happening. And that made me like that broke my heart. That you were

going through this by yourself and you felt like you had to keep it from me. Um, because you know, my main concern is you and like, doesn’t matter what’s happening, like I’m always going to be there for you. So it was a lot. It was just a lot to take in and to process because, you know, thinking like how long this had been going on and you know,

just finding out this way was just, it was jarring, you know, for like so many different reasons. And then understanding that all of these times that you were telling me, you know, that you were checking yourself in because you were depressed, but it was really you going into rehab. And, you know, feeling bad also that I didn’t probe

more, not to say that you were going to tell me even if I had, because I think, you know, until you were just ready to do it. And I almost thought that had to happen the way that it happened.

for me to fully understand how serious this was. Cause if you had just told me over the phone, again, knowing you, you would have said the right words and you would have made it sound like, oh, it’s not that bad. I know I’m just drinking a little bit too much and I’m gonna, like, you know. And as a matter of fact, you did one time I was visiting you in Kentucky and…

we went to an AA meeting together because you said that you were just drinking a little bit too much and you wanted to get it under control. So again, I was like, oh, that’s great. I’m so glad that you’re doing that. But I didn’t probe deeper because you know, you’ve always been just such a put together person that I assumed like, yeah, you do got this. Like you’re fine. And that’s why like it was just shocking to me because, you know.

It really brought home the fact that alcoholism, alcohol abuse can affect anyone. Like nobody’s immune to it. It doesn’t matter how educated you are. If you’re a professional, like, you know, we always assume, I think we have a picture in our minds that, you know, people are people that are downtrodden and, you know, on hard times.

Jessica Dueñas (18:21.907)

Mm-hmm.

Sofia (18:40.622)

are people that are struggling with alcohol abuse, but that’s not true. You know, it’s really, no one is immune to it. It doesn’t matter where you are in your life or how much you have, how educated, how professional you are. It can, you know, it can touch anyone.

Jessica Dueñas (19:01.697)

Yeah, it really can. And I mean, you know, it’s, I’ve been muting my microphone while you’re sharing just to avoid cruise in the background, making random noises. But you know, like when you were sharing the story of, you know, only finding me, you know, it’s like I felt that same like sadness just like wash over me again. And like I got really, really teary eyed. And I mean, I’m just like, I’m so glad I’m not, I’m really glad I’m not there anymore. And I’m so glad to have found like

genuine recovery because I remember that moment. And that also brings me back to, because I went to treatment when I flew back to Kentucky after that incident, I did go back into treatment and winter break was still going on. So no one at work knew what had happened either. And we are like sitting in a staff circle, like our first day back and we’re doing professional development. And they’re like, oh, share something about your winter break. And I just start crying because I don’t wanna say, well, I spent my winter break in rehab.

Sofia (19:36.881)

Yeah.

Sofia (19:53.25)

Yeah.

Jessica Dueñas (19:58.248)

You know, like it was, that was so, so painful. And the other thing too, that you said that stood out, you know, you mentioned that, you know, all those years, like we would travel and you know, you would never see me drink. And it was like, yeah, like I learned to really become a mirror and just mirror people’s whatever, however people were drinking. That’s what I always matched so that I wouldn’t stand out. And then that day, of course, like I had been holding back.

you know, I hadn’t been drinking. And then I got to the holiday party and there was all that stuff there. And I was like, oh, you know, thinking I could do it. And of course I like went overboard. Cause you know, with addiction, it’s just like, it’s that shame and that guilt just cause you to spiral. But yeah, I’m glad. I’m so glad that is not my story today. But the other thing I did want to ask you about is the today, right? Like it’s been, you know, thank God over two and a half years at the time of this recording.

Um, cause we’re recording this in July of 2023. If you’re listening at some random other point in the future. So it’s been about two and a half years since I got sober. Um, what is it like now for you? Like, do you ever worry about me relapsing now? Kind of like, where’s your head space around that?

Sofia (21:12.874)

Um, no. Well, to be honest, I was a little worried, like, of you moving out, because, you know, for background, like, Jessica came to live with me, you know, in what was that, 2020, right? You know, because at that time, everybody was working remote, and it just, you know, she was by herself in Kentucky, and that just was not working.

Jessica Dueñas (21:32.864)

Yeah.

Sofia (21:41.438)

Um, so she came to stay with me and she was working remotely. So it was kind of like an easy transition. You know, she and Cruz came to stay here. Um, and so, you know, I did worry. Like what would happen if you were to move out by yourself, you know, because I do think that, you know, loneliness, um, can play into that sometimes. Um, and so.

Like I was so happy with the way that you did move out because I felt like it was a great middle ground where you’re like on your own but very close to support people as well. So you’re not like by yourself. And if you ever felt like you needed to, you know have interaction with someone, like there’s people all around, so to speak, you know that’s the only thing that worried me but honestly not really.

that you would relapse, but more that you would just struggle a little bit with loneliness and those types of feelings. But I feel like you have really done so much work and learned so many coping skills and just like a self-awareness about yourself that when you are feeling a certain type of way that you address it right away. And that’s one thing. You know.

denial is a terrible thing, you know, and I think really being aware and being honest and open with yourself when you are struggling and you know you’ve come so far in being open and asking for help when you need the help that I don’t worry about that anymore. Like I feel like you you’ve just made and in our family again we tend to

We had to unlearn those things, you know, and learn how to ask for help because it’s always, you know, feelings get squashed, feelings get put away and you just, you know, you know, I’m fine, I’m fine, we’re good, we’re good, even when we’re not. So I think like you have come like, and done a complete 180 where now when you need help, you just ask for help and you’re aware of when you’re feeling that way.

Jessica Dueñas (23:41.58)

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Sofia (24:02.026)

So I think you have all the tools to maintain your sobriety.

Jessica Dueñas (24:08.628)

Yeah. I mean, I think definitely there’s been a lot of unlearning of previous like programming from like childhood that I’ve had to do. And then yes, like for all that unlearning that I had to do, you know, soaking in all sorts of tools and strategies that have helped me. And so to give anyone who’s listening context, so I guess I live with my sister up until March of 2023 and I do live on my own, but

because of my work, I get to live on a college campus, which is really amazing. And my partner lives really, really close by actually. So, you know, when I first moved in with my sister, I was like, all right, I’m never moving out until I’m getting married. That’s basically what I was thinking. But then this job opportunity came up for me to get back in education and have like a live on staff role, which has been perfect. So I am always interacting with people, but I do have my own living space. So for me, I am literally rewriting the narrative because when I…

Sofia (24:49.421)

Hahaha.

Jessica Dueñas (25:05.524)

first lived by myself was when I got divorced. And that’s when my drinking took off. And so for me, it was like, how do I do this living by myself thing without alcohol? And it’s been really like structuring my time in meaningful ways, giving myself lots of opportunities to rest, seriously asking for help. And yeah, like if I’m feeling lonely, pick up the phone, call somebody, go visit, whether it’s my partner or go swing by my sister’s because thankfully she doesn’t live that far. She’s like 25, 30 minutes away. So

I have really been able to build a new life of living solo that looks totally different from what my life looked like when I drank. I think that has been really powerful and it has been that self-awareness and doing the whole no longer saying all the right things, like letting go of saying all the right things because I’m very good at saying all the right things.

Sofia (25:56.886)

Yes, and I think that was the key. I feel that was the turning point for you really, because like when you came here, your last time, so another story. So Jessica was here, I was still married at the time and I get one night, you know, my house, it’s not a huge house, but you know.

The master bedroom is kind of on one side of the house. The other bedrooms are on the other. And I come out of the shower and I get a text message from Jessica saying, oh, don’t worry, I have a ride home. And I’m like, what? Because when I went into the shower, she was here. And then I had no idea when she left. So I guess she called an Uber and had the Uber pick her up like around the corner.

And she went to a bar and she didn’t know where she was. And, um, you know, we live in Florida and Florida is a very, um, has the highest rate, I think probably in the country for human trafficking. So I kind of panicked and I was like, do not get in the car with anyone. I will come get you. I was like, where are you? Where are you? Um.

You know, she didn’t know where she was. And I was like, just ask somebody, what is the name of the bar you’re at? So, you know, we, we figured that out. My, my ex-husband and I jumped in the car and go get her. And I told him, I said, we’re not going home, go straight to the emergency room. Um, so on our way there, she finally is realizing that we’re not heading to the house. And, um,

we pull into the parking lot and she’s like, no, I’m not going in there. I’m not going in there. And I said, well, you need to come in here because you’re not coming home until we figure something out. Like you can’t keep going like this. Um, and I think that was for me, like my breaking point because it scared me so bad that she was actually going to get into the car with someone that she didn’t know. Like just, it just,

that was it like that was my breaking point um so we’re in the parking lot of this emergency room and she said to me i will go sleep on a park bench before going into that emergency room and i was like the hell you will i was like you’re coming in here i was like i was like you’re either doing this on your own two feet or i will call the police and they will escort you in there

I was like, I’m not doing this again. And so we did end up going in there. Um, and again, it was COVID. They let me stay with her, um, because she was just in such a state. Um, but you know, my ex had to wait in the car. They wouldn’t let him inside. And the ER doctor, you know, in Florida, we have this thing called the Baker act where if someone is.

harm to themselves or others, they get admitted against their will if they’re not willing to go in for a minimum of three days. And so I spoke to the ER doctor and I said, look, like she is not safe. And I said, so either you Baker Act her or I will Baker Act her because as her family member I could Baker Act her. I didn’t want to be the one to do that.

But in speaking to her, you know, the emergency room doctor said, I’m going to big ractor because, um, by law, if she feels that the patient is not safe, she has to do that. So, you know, she spoke to Jessica and said, I’m going to order a psych evaluation for you because, you know, I just feel like you’re not safe. Like you’re putting yourself at risk. Your life is at risk. Um, and when, and again, because it was COVID the

psychologist was on, they rolled in like a TV screen and he did a virtual visit with her. And when I was sitting there with her, I was like, look, just please be honest. I’m like, don’t say all the keywords. I’m like, just be honest. You have nothing to lose. I’m like, you are at the point where you are telling me that you would rather sleep on a park bench. It can’t get much worse.

So you have nothing to lose by being honest with this person and just tell them what’s really going on with you. And he was a wonderful clinician. He reviewed her chart and he said to her, because again, Jessica has been, at this point, she was going to AA meetings, she had a therapist, she was on antidepressants, and this had been a cycle that had been going on.

for a while where she would go to rehab, not drink for a while, again, have a relapse, and it just kept going over and over and over again. And I think she was exhausted at this point. I could just tell she was kind of giving up, and I’m like, no, we’re not doing this because she kept trying and it just kept failing. And the psychiatrist picked up on that

records and stuff and he’s like look something’s not adding up here he’s like you’re doing all the right things but you still keep relapsing he’s like so get check into a facility let them do a full psychiatric evaluation like let’s figure out what’s going on here he said because I see that you were a person that is trying but something’s not working so let’s figure out why that is and

she agreed. Thank God. And I feel like that was really a turning point, where she just kind of stopped pretending that it wasn’t as bad as it was. And she went into this facility, you know, and of course, it was it was difficult. But I think if she hadn’t done that, you know, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation today because

Jessica Dueñas (32:32.233)

Okay.

Sofia (32:34.53)

I really, I didn’t think she was going to make it to be honest with you. Like she was going to be a statistic. You are going to be a statistic. You know, I’m just.

Jessica Dueñas (32:42.632)

Yeah. And I mean, it’s funny because I don’t remember, you know, I was definitely in a blackout when all of that happened. And I mean, obviously I wasn’t consenting to go to, to get Baker act that happened. But yes, once I got so to kind of fast forward that story, you know, once I got in the facility, when you are Baker acted, you don’t have to really do anything once you’re in the facility, you can just sit there for three days and say all the right things and go home.

Sofia (32:52.319)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica Dueñas (33:12.18)

But once I was there and I sobered up and that fog cleared, that same clinician, or maybe not him, because I don’t remember, but there was a clinician who was very kind and asked me if I was willing to do a more thorough psychological evaluation. And at that time, that was my choice. And yes, I was so sick and tired and exhausted, and it felt like I had been dying without dying, but there was just no way to continue living. So I said, you know what?

F it, yes. I mean, like literally all the light bulbs went off when I was in that facility. Cause while in that facility, I remember I called Sophie and I was like, I think I need to quit my job. I don’t know if you remember that phone call, but I called you and I was like, I think I need to quit. You know, I had already sort of been looking for other options in case I did need to quit. I think I knew it was coming, but I wasn’t ready to let go of my job either. But yeah, I did that evaluation.

Sofia (33:52.481)

Thank you.

Jessica Dueñas (34:05.308)

And that was a wild moment too for me because, you know, he hits me with the diagnosis, which was bipolar too, for those of you who need to Google it or look it up, it’s basically serious, heavy episodes of depression without the full blown mania that someone with bipolar one might experience. So, you know, there was no like breaking from reality, et cetera, but just very, very powerful episodes of depression, which literally lined up to like my story as he was saying it.

And I remember I started crying and I was like, oh my God, you’re telling me I’m crazy. Because of course stigma and ignorance. So that’s that was my initial reaction to the bipolar two react diagnosis. And he was like, well, you know, that’s the missing piece. Kind of talk like what he said to my sister or one of them said to my sister, you know, this is the missing piece. She’s doing all the right things, but chemically, there’s something off in her body and she needs to kind of like restore the balance.

before she can really have any sustained sobriety. And so they did prescribe me all sorts of meds, and I’m not gonna go into that because if you are suspecting that you have this diagnosis, you should absolutely see a psychiatrist of your own and get diagnosed properly. But they gave me the battery of medications. And yes, while I was in there, I decided to resign from my job as well. So when I come out, this was very early November. And remember, my sobriety day is November 28th. So obviously everything doesn’t suddenly click.

right away, the medications do take a couple of weeks to kick in, right? But by the time I had that last drink, it just, it wasn’t the same anymore. And again, because the medicine was doing what it was supposed to do. So even though I went and I repeated the old behavior of sneaking off and buying the alcohol and trying to drink it, it didn’t hit the same. And so I didn’t, I guess I got drunk and had a hangover and things like that, but I didn’t continue to spiral.

And I think that’s when I realized that biologically, the medicine did what it needed to, and I felt done. And so once I got through that first day without alcohol, after having like picked it back up after a few weeks of meds, I finally had that glimmer of hope of like, oh, maybe I can do this because something shifted. And so when I had that glimmer of hope,

probably I waited another day or two, and then I was like, you know what? I’m gonna go ahead and like tell my story. And I wrote that op-ed article. So my sobriety date was November 28th of 2020. That op-ed article that has gone viral, which I’ll link in the show notes, that came out live in the Louisville Career Journal December 4th. And my last day of work was December 3rd as a teacher. And then I started working at a tutoring company. So yeah, just lots of…

really important information and a lot came out just from me becoming finally willing, going from wanting to willing. And then again, letting go of saying all the right things and just saying the truth and speaking openly. So Sophie, what would you tell, kind of like as the last question, what would you tell anybody else who has a loved one who’s struggling? Like whether it’s another sibling, a parent.

Sofia (37:06.21)

down.

Jessica Dueñas (37:19.536)

and they have someone struggling, like what would you say to them?

Sofia (37:28.104)

Acceptance that you can’t fix it. You know, the person I’m in a relationship with is in the same situation with his brother. And unfortunately, you know, he’s still struggling. He’s going through that cycle of rehab, you know, being sober for a little bit.

relapsing, all that stuff, and you know, it’s a younger sibling. So the same thing, you know, he wants to come in and swoop in and fix it. And there is no fixing it. Like you just have to accept it. You know, support that person, let them know that, you know, you’re here for them. You love them. And pray that they finally get to the point where they are willing.

to get the help that they really need to make the changes, the permanent changes, to get the tools to get healthy and get sober. Cause that’s really all you can do. And talk to somebody for yourself, like get help for yourself because, you know, if you’re not okay, it’s really hard to help someone else.

or be there for someone else and it’s draining and that’s okay. Um, and it is okay for you to say like, you know, I’m not okay because this person that I love is struggling. So I would say, you know, take care of yourself too, in the process of accepting that you cannot change it.

Jessica Dueñas (39:13.896)

Yeah. The other thing that I would add to what you said, and again, this is me from the perspective of the person who was struggling is I think about the boundaries that you set to. Like for example, me ending up in that last hospitalization here in Tampa was absolutely a result of you setting a boundary. Like you were like, you’re not coming home. So like here’s your options, but you’re not coming back into my house. Right. And so, you know, you putting that on me, like then of course I’d

Sofia (39:24.18)

Mm-hmm.

Sofia (39:35.621)

Yeah.

Sofia (39:40.013)

Right.

Jessica Dueñas (39:43.688)

chose or will at that point, not really, but you know what I mean. Like you, you set that boundary that made a big difference or, you know, even when I was in your house, like there were times that like, you were very clear, like if you’re staying here, then I’m holding your car keys. Of course I, you can’t control everything I did. Right. Of course you didn’t plan for me to call the Uber, but whatever.

Sofia (39:46.818)

Yeah.

Sofia (39:57.674)

Right. Of course, I didn’t realize that was before. Right. Oh, but also I didn’t realize that Uber delivered alcohol. And that was like, I remember one time, the doorbell rings. And you know, normally people let you know when they’re going to come over, they’ll just pop over. So I was like, Oh, that’s weird. And it’s like, nighttime. I’m like, I don’t think you know.

Jessica Dueñas (40:08.849)

Alcohol. Right.

Yeah

Sofia (40:22.966)

Amazon doesn’t ring the doorbell. And I opened the door and this guy’s there with like a brown bag, a brown paper bag. And I’m like, what’s this? And he’s like, oh, I’m delivering this. I was like mind blown because here I think I’m like, oh, I got her keys. She’s like, I’m gonna get alcohol.

Jessica Dueñas (40:41.934)

Right. I mean, right. Well, you tried, right? And that’s what matters. But the boundary setting, you know, of course, these are perfectly good examples of like, it’s not perfect, right? But again, like people who are struggling with their loved ones, it is important to evaluate like what boundaries can you set? Like, are they welcoming your home and understanding that it’s okay if not? Like, again, you drew that line at that point when it was time for me to go into that last facility.

I was no longer welcome in your home unless I’d changed certain things and then I was welcome back in your home, right? And so I think that for people, you know, like yes, you’re gonna feel guilty and it’s okay to feel guilty. It’s okay to not feel okay, but you have to make sure that you’re protecting your home, protecting your family, protecting your loved ones, right? Like there was nothing that I would steal, but like if I had been desperate enough, I could have taken like money from, you know what I mean? So I think like it’s really important for people to establish boundaries.

Sofia (41:13.63)

Right. Yeah.

Sofia (41:28.014)

Wow.

Sofia (41:33.978)

Yeah, but I think, yeah, and like I said, for me, the breaking point was just, you know, that realization that you were going to get into a car with someone that you didn’t know from Adam, and who knows what, where that man could have taken you, you know, like the fact that you had such a disregard for your own well-being, you know, that for me was like, oh no, oh hell no.

Jessica Dueñas (41:53.257)

Right.

Jessica Dueñas (42:04.146)

Yeah.

Sofia (42:05.07)

Like, that’s it. Like that was the line kind of in the sand for me. Like I was not, I couldn’t sit by idly and let you just put yourself at risk that way. And you know, it’s funny because you weren’t like a drinking and driving person. Like I felt like you were, yeah, like you were aware enough that you would always Uber to wherever you were going. Like you didn’t try to drive.

Jessica Dueñas (42:22.304)

Thank God.

Sofia (42:31.706)

But you know that just scared you know excuse my language the shit out of me when you were like yeah I’ve got a right I was like what so for me that was the boundary like I just couldn’t I could not just sit by and let that happen you know so that was when I was like oh no this is something’s gotta happen here um you know and I’m grateful like today I’m just I’m so grateful

Jessica Dueñas (42:40.64)

Yeah.

Jessica Dueñas (42:49.889)

Yeah.

Sofia (43:01.098)

and proud of where you are and the fact that you are taking this experience and helping other people having an impact even if it’s one person and then that person pays it forward, it’s a ripple effect and for anyone who has a loved one going through this, I’m fortunate enough that this has been my outcome.

you know, that the person that I love is healthy and safe and happy. And you know, in such a good place that it just, it, it fills my heart and makes me so happy because that’s all I’ve ever wanted. You know, it’s like, that’s all you ever want for the people you love is for them to be healthy and happy. And so I think that you are helping other people get to that place.

And my heart goes out to the people that don’t have somebody supporting them. Because it’s not an easy journey to do on your own. Not that it’s not achievable, but it’s so much easier when you have somebody to lean on, I think.

Jessica Dueñas (44:12.552)

Yeah. And I mean, and I’ll close out by just, I mean, I’ve said it to you personally, but just so that it’s recorded for the internet to save forever. I love you so much. I thank you so much for believing in me. Like I’ll tell you, I know, but seriously, like you believed in me. I know. But you know, like there may have been times when there’s 8 billion people on this planet and you were the one who believed.

Sofia (44:30.614)

So now you’re making me get teary eyed.

Jessica Dueñas (44:41.972)

that I could, and I think that there’s the power of just one. And I think that our relationship, our sisterhood, is a testament to all that can come from just believing in a person. And so, you know, recovery is absolutely possible if you’re listening, and if you have a loved one, cheer them on healthily, work with a professional to set the appropriate boundaries for yourself so that you stay healthy.

And same thing, if you have a loved one who is still struggling, I wish them all the love. I wish you all the love in the world. This is hard. You don’t have to do this alone. If you want to reach out, my sister does not like random strangers reaching out to her, but you are more than welcome to reach out to me and send me a message through my social media or email, and I will happily pass the message on to her. She doesn’t like strangers following her, but you’re welcome to follow me. I take strangers following me all the time.

Sofia (45:37.827)

Yeah.

Jessica Dueñas (45:40.06)

So just thank you all so much, so much for listening. I really hope that you got something out of this. And just again, thank you to my sister, Sofia, for sharing her part of my story with everybody. So thank you everybody for listening.

Sofia (45:53.678)

My pleasure. Bye everyone.

Return to Podcast Directory

In this episode:

Link to Spotify

I share about navigating through a day of feeling triggered after a disagreement in a personal relationship, and share specific strategies for getting through the tough days without a drink.

Resources:

Poem From Agridulce – Dhayana Alejandrina

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas:
Hey, so today’s episode is brought to you by having a hard day and deciding that again, there’s so much power and connection, even if it’s me talking into a microphone by myself, knowing that at least one other human being is going to hear this. Like just that is comforting enough for me. So thank you for listening, but it has been a hard day. And if it’s been a hard day for you, I’m letting you know that I will not drink with you. Um, we

we need that reminder. And I wanted to record this podcast because I think it’s so important to just be really, really real and highlight the fact that this journey of being an alcohol-free person, of being sober, of being in recovery, it’s not sunshine and rainbows. I haven’t had a drink since November 28th of 2020 and at the time of this recording, it’s been two and a half years, over two and a half years. And today, my body…

has been experiencing the sensations due to emotions that in the past would have made me drink. I’ll say for the purposes of this episode, I’ll say that I’ve been triggered except that I don’t want to drink and I know that I won’t drink. So it’s not like I’m having cravings for a drink, but I never wanna forget what those sensations were that would set me off to drink in the past. And so I’m going to use the language of I’ve been triggered because I think that’s probably the best way for me to convey content that is…

helpful. I don’t know. I might be wrong. You might be like, I don’t know, just, you know, disconnect, click next show. Um, but for the purposes of all intensive purposes, let’s say that I’ve been triggered. I think that’s the best way to like go through this, except, um, like I said, I don’t want to drink, but the experience that my body is going through is the exact same experience that would have been a triggering experience in the past. So anyway, why the hell is Jessica triggered? Right?

For context, I’m in a relationship and it’s great and it’s healthy. And all healthy relationships go through bumps in the road. Right. And basically my significant other and I, he and I are experiencing some incongruence in terms of how we’re perceiving a specific situation. And, you know, I have been having one perception and he had been having a different perception. And we realized that yesterday. And so we’re taking a little space, like for a day to just kind of like think and reflect.

and then come back together and, you know, talk about what we’re each wanting and needing and how we can support the other person, et cetera. But the old me, like my brain is perceiving it as a major threat, right? Why? Because in my history of being in romantic relationships, a disagreement was way more than just a disagreement. A disagreement often led to like huge heated arguments with yelling.

Um, especially when I was much younger, you know, things would get physical really fast. Um, you know, I mean, I’ve had like the police involved in conflicts that I’ve dealt with romantic partners in the past, right? And so for me to now have a disagreement with someone, my body hears the word disagreement and is like, you know, sounding off all the alarms. And so me being by myself in my apartment for me.

that also is a previous condition under which I would drink. So of course it’s like all the stars are aligned for my body to really think that I’m threatened. And so my brain, I would say like the primitive part of my brain is feeling threatened. And when our primitive parts of our brains feel threatened, what usually does it lean toward if there’s a history of alcohol abuse? Typically it would be alcohol, right? What we would need to survive is, you know, food, human connection,

Food, human connection, what else do we need to survive? Oh yeah, water. You know, things like that. Those are the things that we actually need. But when our dopamine has been, like our relationship with dopamine has been distorted by the use of alcohol or other addictive substances, we don’t think that we need those actual things. We think that we need like alcohol or, you know, insert whatever addictive substance you used to dabble with. So with that being said,

My body has felt like today what it’s felt like, again, this happened yesterday. And so it’s still just been kind of like on a higher level of escalation. So like at work, while I felt this anxiety, which manifested in my stomach, feeling like a roller coaster was kind of like on the, you know, going down the hill on a roller coaster, I had to be really mindful of how I was interacting with other people because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t like lash out at, let’s say colleagues and et cetera. So you know, I kept to myself a little bit more. And um,

And you know, that was one thing. I was really mindful of how I was treating other people. So in terms of like how I got through the day, I was mindful of that. As soon as I got out of work, one of the important things that I did was get into movement. So I went to the gym, I lifted some weights and that felt good, but it really wasn’t enough. And so I got home and I put on salsa music and I did some, I started taking classes again. And so I did some dancing by myself to kind of practice and move. And that felt really good. But…

For me, somatic strategies aren’t enough. Like breath work is good, which I did do, taking deep breaths to again, help break up that physical manifestation of the anxiety in my stomach. If you take a deep breath and you stretch out that diaphragm and it presses on your stomach, you can feel some relief of the physical sensations that come along with anxious thoughts, for sure. But again,

I also had to kind of sit and talk to myself and like do some self coaching. So what that looked like for me in case this is something that might be helpful for you is, again, going back to that perceived threat, I had to first assure myself that I’m safe, right? Like my body is thinking like, uh-oh, there’s a disagreement with a romantic partner. She’s in danger. Like alert, alert. So I had to tell myself.

First, this is temporary, Jess, like you’re okay, Jess. And then two, I’m safe. Like those are old dangers. I’m not in those old relationships anymore where a disagreement could lead to huge outbursts. It’s like, this is safe. We’re having calm conversations. So that’s the first thing that I remind myself, that I’m safe. And then the second thing that I remind myself of is that my relationship is okay. Like I’m perceiving these threats, but again,

It is absolutely normal for two adults who consent to be together to have disagreements, right? And we’re handling it in a calm, mature manner, but I still feel escalated because there’s just that history that I have. If you read The Body Keeps the Score, our bodies remember things much more quickly than like our conscious minds do, which is crazy. So anyway, once I remind myself that

I’m safe and my relationship is going to be just fine, that this is normal. That really does help bring me down. But then the third thing that I did, so I had the movement, the somatic piece with movement and breathing, the self-talk, the coaching, self-coaching. But then the third thing that I did that really helped was also seek connection and community. And so I happened to have to facilitate meeting tonight, which was perfect because in the community, I shared that I was having a hard day.

And what that allowed me to do was connect with other people who were also having a tough day or even if other people weren’t having a tough day, they’d all been there and they knew that you get through it. So there’s just that encouragement piece of being with like-minded folks in that space to really feel accepted and safe and nurtured and cared for. Because sometimes self-nurturing can be hard. So when we can’t do it for ourselves…

we go into the community, we lean into the community, and the community can do for us what we can’t do for ourselves just yet. And again, and I’m pointing this out because even at two and a half years sober, I’m still leaning on community spaces, right? And so I wanna highlight that certain things may not just suddenly disappear just because a lot of time passes. And I mean, two and a half years is not even a lot of time in the grand scheme of a human life, you know what I mean? But anyway, then the fourth thing.

that I really leaned into was also moving into self-encouragement. Once I leaned into the to the community, we started having a conversation. I felt more inspired to lean into that self-encouragement piece, both for myself and then also helping others encourage themselves. And so I’ll share this poem that I read to the group. It’s super short and it’s by poet Diana Alejandrina. I’ll put the link to her book in the show notes in case you’re curious about her book.

You can find it on Amazon. And listen to this poem. It’s from page 93 in her book, super short and beautiful. The poem is titled Vulnerable.

I’ve always been beautiful. I just waited too long to tell it to my reflection. I’ll read it again. I have always been beautiful. I just waited too long to tell it to my reflection.

So I love that poem and I shared it with the group and then encouraged them to fill in the blank. So instead of I’ve always been beautiful, just kind of have them all fill in whatever else they wanted to. But I really love that poem because one thing I realized also that being unsettled in one area for me quickly leads to spiraling in other areas. So like I noticed that again, we had that incongruence with me and my partner.

And so then today I was also then having like random body image issues, like out of nowhere, like just not feeling comfortable in my skin. Um, you know, looking like jumping into comparing myself really quickly. And so reading that poem and then again, being in community reminded me that like, a I’m exactly where I need to be. I am a beautiful whole human being.

right, most importantly from the inside. Like, seriously, like what I have to offer in terms of my heart and for you listening, right? Like tap into your heart, like what beauty does your soul have to offer this world, right? Like the gifts that you have to offer other people because you take care of yourself and nurture yourself and you work on your personal development, like wow, like that shit is beautiful, right?

And if you haven’t told yourself that you’re a beautiful person, like, please stop, like press pause on this, go to the mirror and tell yourself that. Or even if it doesn’t feel natural, like I’m willing to believe that I’m a beautiful person. Right? Like sometimes positive affirmations can be a little, eh. Like if, you know, I don’t want you to be talking to yourself in the mirror and saying something that feels phony because being phony, that’s not, that’s not it. That’s not the way to go. I try my best to be really authentic and you know.

you when I’m having a bad day because I think that that’s important. So don’t call yourself beautiful if you don’t feel it, but at least say something good to yourself. What have you always been that like, you know, you are and just say that, right? Like, so anyway, um, suffice it to say by the time I was done being in community and talking about this, I felt more self-encouraged and

reminding myself that I am enough. I am a beautiful person. I have cared for myself so much. Perfect example, random side note. To add to my interesting day, my dog decided to, he ain’t decided to, he got sick. He threw up two times and had diarrhea two times, all in the span of me having this meeting. And I heard weird noises going on, but obviously I’m busy facilitating, so I can’t just leave a Zoom meeting hanging.

But I sign off the Zoom meeting and I go out there and I open the door and whoa, it was like biological warfare. Like all my senses, like my nose felt attacked. And you know, poor doggy, he’s okay, he’s fine. Just letting you know, Cruz is good. But anyway, like of course I go to clean up everything. And here’s evidence, right? Like again, if I wanna dive into my paranoid fears of like, oh, my relationship is in danger, what did I do? I called my boyfriend and I said, hey, Cruz threw up.

can you come over? I need some help. Or like, I needed, he had, he had my dog cleaning solution. I left it over there. So he came over, he got out of bed, he came over, he brought me the cleaning stuff so I could clean up the poop and the vomit, you know, with the enzyme cleaner. And he gave me a big hug and a kiss and then he left because, you know, we had agreed to like have time to ourselves tonight. And again, that was evidence for me of that my relationship was totally fine.

Right? Like we’re grown people. We can have disagreement, have some space, but then show up for each other. But then being the fact that like, I thoroughly cleaned up this dog’s poop and vomit, and I wasn’t upset at him. I was calm. I was like, okay, like poor puppy, let me clean all this nastiness up, you know? And that I cleaned it well, also spoke to the growth that I’ve experienced because there was a time when I had him initially.

that I had gone into like an eight month bender because my boyfriend, my then boyfriend had passed away. Right? And so being able to like thoroughly clean up after a dog, after several messes that I left behind, just reminded me like there was a time that I wouldn’t have had the physical capacity to do that because I would have been passed out. I would have been too drunk. I wouldn’t have, I would have been so uncoordinated that I would have like sneered everything even more. So.

there’s been a lot of growth. There has been a lot of growth. And so to kind of close out a couple, just again, concrete things that you can do if you’re having a hard day. Number one, practice some sort of a somatic strategy to bring you into the present, right? Again, if you are feeling triggered, chances are your body is perceiving some sort of a threat, even if you’re safe.

And so first, like bring yourself into the present moment. Remind yourself that you are here in the now, right? That craving that you’re having, don’t get upset with yourself over having the craving. Get curious about it. What need do you have that is coming up for you that is being interpreted as a need for an alcohol, right? So is it that you’re needing a human interaction or you’re needing rest or you’re needing food, water? What do you need?

Ask yourself that, what do I need, right? So anyway, the somatic strategy, ask yourself what you need, get curious with yourself, remind yourself that you’re safe. Again, remind yourself that you’re safe. Get in community. If you are not a part of a community, I strongly recommend that you find yourself one. If you’d like 12-step programs, do a 12-step program meeting. There’s also online resources, Smart Recovery is free.

The Reframe app offers a seven day trial. Theluckiestclub.com also offers a seven day trial. Those are two communities that I work with. I’m a coach and I still firmly encourage my one-on-one clients to go get in community because your mentors, your coaches, they come and go, but your community is there forever if you choose for it to be forever. So I always strongly encourage people like get in community. You…

You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. You don’t want to lean on just one person. So find community. I still lean on community. And then, yeah, like the last thing I’ll say is find some way to encourage yourself, right? I mean, like I said, I invite you to take that poem that I read and fill in the blank with something that applies to you. I have always been blank. I just waited too long to tell it to my reflection. What are you? What phenomenal thing are you?

and tell yourself that, right? And nurture that and encourage that because you’re not drinking, because you don’t need to drink today just because you had a crappy day. You don’t need to do it. I’m not doing it. You don’t need to do it. We cannot do this together.

I think that’s all I have for you folks. Sending everybody lots of love, sending myself some love too. If you are wanting some supports, you can find writing classes at bottomlisttosobre.com. You can schedule a free consultation for one-to-one coaching. If you’re a teacher, I am running a free support group for educators on August 3rd. So just a couple of things that are popping up. And yeah, subscribe to my email list and that way you’ll also have a heads up whenever anything cool is happening that I am running. But my next free writing workshop will be in September.

And then my current six week writing program just started, so I’m not taking in anybody for that, but I have one more six week writing program coming up, Writing for Healing in September to close out the year. So thanks for listening, sending you lots of love. And if you are enjoying the podcast, please write a review, please share it. Thanks so much.

Return to Podcast Directory

In this episode:

Link to Spotify

I talk through the process of identifying that which is in our control (or not) in order to help alleviate stress. I also walk through a journal exercise you can do on your own, or you can grab a free worksheet if you prefer to print and do this exercise on a handout. 

Resources:

What Is In My Control Worksheet

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas (00:01.59)
Hey everyone, in today’s episode, we are going to talk a little bit about how we really have to let go of trying to control things that are outside of our control. And the reason I’m saying this as a message to you in the podcast is because it’s a message that I honestly need. And so it helps me by talking about it on here. Also, to be honest, I’ve noticed that it’s been kind of coming up as a theme, right? Like that we are giving our energy and time and stress over to things.

that honestly are out of our control. And that’s energy that we could be putting into ourselves. Because if we put that energy into ourselves, that’s change that we can actually affect, but we can’t change our jobs. We can change jobs that we can’t change the job that we have. We can’t change the people that we’re dealing with, but we can change who we deal with. Right. And so this episode is really about acknowledging where we have power and where we don’t so that we can take all that energy and use it productively. Because again,

It’s not worth, especially if you’re listening to this and you are a person in recovery, you’re quitting drinking, et cetera, it’s not worth giving your mental energy to a space where it’s just going into the void, right? So this episode is accompanied by a worksheet that I made. You can find the link to this worksheet in the show notes. You’re more than welcome to follow along with that worksheet, or you can just kind of follow along, use a journal, et cetera. But first I wanna start off by reading a quote

from the book, Set Boundaries, Find Peace, A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself, and this is by Nadra Tawab. And she wrote, “‘Nothing other people do is because of you. “‘It’s because of themselves. “‘All people live in their own dream and their own mind. “‘Even when words seem personal, such as a direct insult, “‘they really have nothing to do with you. “‘I constantly work with my clients “‘to depersonalize events and interactions with others.

When we personalize, we negate the personal story and history of the other people involved. Personalizing assumes that everything is about us. And I really appreciate that quote because at the end of the day, the world really doesn’t revolve around us. We might feel like it does because obviously we are looking at everything through our lens.

But if we step outside of ourselves, everybody really is just walking around in a bubble of their own personal lived experiences. And so when people do things, it really has nothing to do with us, even when it really feels like it is at us, that there’s always something going on there. So just that invitation that if tomorrow someone says something to you that frustrates you, it’s okay to feel frustrated because you’re a human and that’s a part of the human experience, but I invite you to think.

I wonder what’s going on with them that made them talk like that to me. I’m not saying become a doormat and accept terrible behavior and people talking to you all sorts of ways, but what I am inviting you to do is to work on detaching yourself emotionally from what people might say to you sometimes. But anyway, I digress. So if you have the worksheet, it’s there for you or in your journal or in your brain or in your device, however you wanna do this.

I want you to think about different areas of your life right now that you may be struggling with emotionally. So maybe it’s work has been pissing you off, or maybe it’s your romantic partner or your perspective romantic partner. Maybe it’s a friend or a family member. But I want you to take a moment and just jot down maybe two or three different areas of your life where like right now you are finding yourself struggling with.

Body image is another one that just jumped into my mind, right? So just kind of like a free for all. Now you’re going to do this separately for each area, but we’re going to pick an area and in that area, I want you to draw a T chart. So on one side on the left side, you’re going to title that side. What about this is not in my control? And then on the right side, you’re going to title it. What about this is in my control? Now the reason I’m wanting you to write this out,

and visualize it is because visualization is a really powerful way sometimes for us to wrap our mind around things. And I know a lot of people when they’re told, oh, go journal, journaling seems weird if you don’t really have a structure with how to write. So if I give you a specific tea chart, right, with a specific title, it’s going to help you generate ideas. And then you also see it in front of you and it’s easier for you to digest it in your brain. So what about this is not in my control? What about this is not?

I’m sorry, what about this is not in my control? What about this is in my control? And then skip down, because you’re gonna give yourself some space to write. And at the bottom of the sheet, you’re going to write, what questions can I ask myself when I feel set off? Right? So if you have the handout, there’s a second page where I kind of go through this on my own and just kind of model it, right? So on the second page, I’m pretty much using myself as an example.

And I want to emphasize that this is not an example of a right answer. I just threw something out there. So let’s close our eyes and transport ourselves to Jessica in mid 2022. I just picked a random time. Um, at that point, to give you all some context in terms of what was going on in my life, I was dating, but not in a relationship. I hadn’t met my current partner. Um, I was growing increasingly frustrated at work. I was getting ready to visit my mom at that point in the summertime and

you know, visiting her is always stressful because I’m always waiting for her to comment on something about my appearance. Anyway, I’m gonna pick one of those areas and I’m going to follow the directions that I just gave you. So I have the T chart on the left side. I have what about this is not in my control? And on the right side, I have what about this is in my control? So for, I picked myself as the topic just in general. And so on the left-hand side, I wrote,

Things about myself that I cannot necessarily control. If I have a craving, right? And my cravings are not just for alcohol, but sometimes I struggle, say, with food and other things. So just impulses, right? So cravings, when they pop up, again, I’m a human, and I’m a human who was once fiercely addicted to an addictive substance. So when my brain gets set off on occasion, I can’t help it that it does that.

And that’s okay. And I can be forgiving of myself for that. Next, another thing that I can’t control are my initial thoughts and feelings when something happens, when something is said, when I have a sensory experience of processing something that happens, right? So if I see someone on the road swerve, my initial thought might be, oh my God, I’m gonna crash, right? That’s an initial thought, which leads to feeling fearful.

I can’t help that. That’s an automatic response of mine, but I can control how I react. I can control what I do with that thought or with that feeling, but I’m not on that column yet. Another thing I just threw out there in terms of what is something that I cannot control are the things that happen outside of me, like people’s actions, decisions that are made at my job, et cetera. And you can apply this to dating. You can apply this to anything. But…

I want you to think about what else is outside of your control, right? Especially in any area that might be bothering you. So now I want to focus on what is in your control or in my case, in my control. So what I listed was I’m in control of how I choose to react to cravings or feelings or thoughts, right? I can have that initial feeling and thought and be kind to myself for having it.

And especially with regard to craving alcohol or other things you might be addicted to you all, I really want for you to understand to practice Greece with yourself. Because again, you at some point were heavily addicted, well, maybe not heavily, but you were addicted or struggling to let go of an addictive substance, right? So you were being a perfectly functional human with a perfectly functional brain when your functional brain…

acted accordingly and got addicted or found itself liking alcohol or other substances a whole lot. So when you have a craving, those sit there and be angry with yourself. Say something like, oh, this makes sense. Neurologically, this makes sense. I mean, I don’t know if you talk like that. That might be a little, a bit much to be like neurologically, this makes sense, but you get what I mean. Be kind to yourself when you have an initial craving. Be kind to yourself at whatever feeling or thought jumps out when you experience something. Because again, that’s just…

your brain and your body responding to stimuli. With that being said, you can then control or choose how you react or act based off those things. So if you are feeling fearful and you’re driving that car and something suddenly jumps out at you, you can choose to panic, right? And maybe drive in a slightly erratic manner that may not be safe, or you can pause.

take a deep breath and remind yourself you’re still safe. And the safest thing to do is to drive safely and like keep an eye on your peripherals, right? Slow down, drive defensively, et cetera. Same thing with the craving. You can have the craving and run straight to the liquor store and buy alcohol, or you can have the craving and choose to set a timer, choose to tell yourself, if I’m still having this craving in 15 minutes, I’ll think about it. But for right now, it is not an option for 15 minutes, right? There’s a lot that you can do.

when you are set off to either give yourself time to react or to say, I’m not going to react in any specific way. I’m going to change my actions. And then the last thing that I just threw in there in terms of my notes of what is in my control is that I’m in control of being able to take action to change circumstances I don’t like. So if for example, I’m at a job and I don’t like the way the company is going, I

can choose to continue to stay there and continue to be frustrated, or I can choose to create an exit plan, which might include updating my resume, starting to look online at job postings, et cetera. Right? So I am in control of those things. I can’t change the job. I can go to the CEO and make a complaint, but it’s, I might not be able to change anything, but I can change where I work. Same thing with dating. Right? I may, I can’t control

If someone is into me, I can’t control how someone chooses to communicate with me. I can’t control how someone acts, but I can choose to entertain that person or not if I don’t like what they’re doing. That is what I’m in control of. So kind of transitioning then into the next part of that activity is what questions can I ask myself when I feel set off? And I listed a few, but honestly, I want you to think about what can you ask yourself?

I wonder why I’m upset. What is it about the situation that is bothering me? I wonder what’s going on with that person that they seem upset, right? Again, being curious is really helpful. In terms of what I actually listed on my worksheet, I put, am I trying to manage an outcome? Because that’s a pretty good sign of if I’m trying to control something or not, right? Am I trying to push for a specific outcome? Am I trying to control how someone else is acting, right? Am I getting into

putting expectations on other people’s behaviors because I am not here to control other people. We are not here to control other people. Then the next one is, is this situation in general? Is this situation even in my control? Because if not, let me release it. And if it is, what action can I take to change the situation that it is? And then the last one that I always recommend for folks to kind of think about is

Do I need to take a break and come back to this? So if someone sends you a text message and that text message, your initial reaction is anger and you want to respond, I’m not saying it’s wrong for you to feel angry. Feel the anger, but give yourself a moment to pause and think about if you need to react to it, if it’s something that’s in your control, or if it’s something that you can let go of, right? So food for thought, even just slowing yourself down a little bit.

can be incredibly empowering because if something does warrant your reaction, you can react with confidence because you know you weren’t just jumping the gun with whatever you said in response. So I kind of just wanted to really talk about that because for a lot of people, again, we really can lose sight of what’s important and what really matters when we are trying to control outcomes, control other people’s behaviors.

control how systems that we might be a part of do things. Whereas we can sometimes elect to opt out of dealing with certain people, elect to opt out of working in certain places and really put our energy into that which can grow, that which can change, which at the end of the day, that’s us. So that is all I have for you. Again, I have a worksheet. That free worksheet is available. The link is in the show notes.

And then of course if you want to work with me feel free to schedule a one-to-one coaching session I am open for clients. You can do that on my website at bottomless to sober Calm take care of yourselves, and I hope everyone has an awesome day. Take care

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In this episode:

Link to Spotify

I discuss how I went from wanting to get sober (but still drinking) to actually becoming willing to do the work to get sober, including information on how I got my bipolar II diagnosis, being willing to use medication, deciding to get off prescription medication, and what I do today to maintain sobriety. 

Resources:

National Institute of Mental Health – Bipolar Disorder

Bottomless to Sober – Blog, Writing Classes, Workshops, and Coaching Support

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas
Hey everyone, so today we are doing my story since sobriety. In episode six, I pretty much told you everything that I could remember in terms of my life up until getting sober. So in this episode, I really wanna dive into the beginning of the alcohol-free journey, what that has looked like ever since, how it’s changed, and then also kind of like where I see it going. So I’ll go ahead and I’ll get started.

My sobriety date is November 28th of 2020. And as I mentioned in episode 6 2020 was the year where I had lost my boyfriend tragically Due to a drug overdose and between my own Shame and my addiction to alcohol that I wasn’t really addressing openly and then that grief Everything I completely just fell apart, right?

And so I had been hospitalized seven to eight times in facilities and hospitals, in hospital stays from three days all the way up to say five weeks. So my final hospital stay, it started on Halloween of 2020. So my own little horror story, right? I was doing another one of my classic relapses where I was staying with my sister because I was working remotely, schools in Kentucky were closed

all fully virtual because of the pandemic. So I was working in Tampa, but you know, working in Louisville, but out of Tampa. And I had ordered alcohol, she found it. I was ashamed, embarrassed. So I got in an Uber and I went to a bar not far from her house and she found me at the bar. I don’t know how I probably texted her to say that that’s where I was. At that point, we get into it and she’s like, you can’t come home. You know, like you have to go get help.

And I was like, well, if I can’t go home, then I’m just gonna be homeless. And I like sat down on the sidewalk thinking I was like big and bad or whatever. So she called 911 and I ended up in the hospital. And at the ER, I remember that I was so angry being at the ER, I just didn’t wanna be there. And everybody had stepped out of the room that I was in and I eyed a bottle of hand sanitizer, like off in the distance. It wasn’t that far off.

I get up, then I grab that bottle of sanitizer, I open it up and I like chug it back. And then I like jump back in the bed, fade to black. And by the time I come to, my sister had apparently Baker-acted me. Baker-acting in Florida is when somebody is a threat to themselves or to other people, you can say this person is a threat to themselves or other people, so they need to go into a psychiatric hold, which is exactly what happened to me. So by the time I come to in the psychiatric hold,

Obviously Halloween has come and gone and it’s like November 1st or so. I’m invited by the social worker that I’m having a conversation with to stay longer. She’s like, you can stay here for your psych hold for three days, 72 hours, or we can do a full psychiatric evaluation and dig into what you’ve got going on because it seems like you’re suffering a lot. Fair enough. Solid point. So I consented to stay. I w-

woke up in that hospital and I was like, this shit is not sustainable. I can’t keep doing this. This is exhausting. So exhausting. It was like I wanted to die, but couldn’t and wouldn’t, but it also just was no way to live. And so I feel like that was the moment where I finally became willing. And I’ve talked about this before in other spaces,

For me, wanting and willing are two different things. I can want sobriety. I wanted sobriety that whole time. Nobody, like I didn’t wanna keep going in and out of hospitals. I didn’t wanna wreck my car, right? I didn’t wanna give up five weeks of my life to be in one of the hospitals and being in the ICU. I didn’t want those things, but I also wasn’t willing to do whatever it took for me to avoid those situations as well.

And I point that out because a lot of times we are in that headspace of, Oh, I want to, I want to be this, I want to do that. But there’s wanting and then there’s willing. And in that moment of waking up full of exhaustion and frustration and anger, I finally had become willing. And so even though in the past, anytime I was in a treatment facility, as you all know, if you listen to the episode, my rehab story, you all know that I was

always paying attention to the social workers to figure out how I could get discharged. And this is the first time that one of them asked me if I wanted to stay and I said, yes, I’ll stay. So again, there’s that big switch from wanting to willing. So in that hospitalization, when I get evaluated, I meet with a psychiatrist and he jumps into my story and we notice that there’s patterns of

not me being depressed all the time, like consistently depressed, but me having these waves of incredibly crippling depression, right? Like starting from college where I stopped going to class abruptly and failed and lost my scholarship at Barnard College, a part of Columbia University, and lost that Ivy League scholarship. So I switched schools. Or times that as a teacher that I would go kill through, like just eat up my sick time and be left with nothing.

and like forced myself to come back to school. But otherwise, there were just always these periods of my life where I just suddenly like disappeared on everybody, right? And there were a couple other things that he noticed kind of talking about my work ethic, periods where I could go with very little sleep on occasion and just have like these moments of massive creativity, et cetera. He also noticed that I spoke really fast.

at the time. And it’s funny because I could talk really fast. I’m very intentional about slowing down how I speak, especially obviously right now I’m recording into a podcast mic, so I’m slowing down on purpose. And this man was like, Jessica, you have bipolar disorder, bipolar two to be specific. Let me tell you, when this man said that, I was like, oh my God,

Back then I used the term alcoholic. Not only am I an alcoholic, I’m bipolar too. I was like, oh, this is the worst news ever. And I started crying right then and there. And he’s like, whoa, like slow down. Like, why are you so upset? And I was like, again, old mindset, old thinking. I was like, because you’re telling me that I’m crazy. Mind you, I was already in a psychiatric facility, but whatever. I was so upset.

And you know, here’s the thing you all right? Like when you hear a diagnosis and you take it in, it’s hard to take it in, especially when you come from a family where people with mental illnesses are made fun of. We don’t talk about the actual mental illnesses that people are dealing with and the trauma that they’re dealing with. We don’t even talk about the people who are blatantly addicted to different substances, right? So obviously for me to sit there and have a man tell me that I have bipolar disorder, like I was expecting him to say that I have depression maybe, anxiety. I was expecting something generic.

quote unquote, run of the mill. But no, he hit me with the bipolar two diagnosis and that was a lot to take in. And he was like, Jessica, all I’m saying is, and he put it in layman’s terms, he’s just like, you go through waves of getting very depressed and it impacts you badly. And you’ve been self-medicating with alcohol to get through it. But he’s like, you self-medicate with alcohol enough times, you eventually become addicted.

When he said it like that, I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense. I can work with that. But then the powerful thing came next. When I said, so what do we do now? Right? Again, that switch from wanting to willing, because I’m asking him, all right, you’re giving me this information, what the hell can I do with it doc? Because I’m really tired of living how I’ve been living.

And so the next step was medication. Before I talk about medication, the other question I wanna tell you all that, the other question that I had for him, I was like, so have I always been bipolar? Like, where did this come from, right? And so basically the way he explained it, he was like, well, it’s kinda like the trick or the egg. He’s like, some people have psychiatric illnesses and they find substances to be soothing to them.

they use the substances, but because they’re addictive, they become addicted, which I kind of already said. And he’s like, on the other hand, some people start using the substances and the repeated use of the addictive substance because it’s so toxic, it changes your brain chemistry, which then creates the mental illness. And so he’s like, I honestly don’t have any way of telling you which one it is, but the point is, he’s like, right now, you can’t stay sober very long.

unless we do something to support the brain chemistry that you’re working with. And so he’s like, however your brain got that way, I don’t know, but we’ve got to medicate you so at least help give you like a fighting chance to overcome the addiction and then you can do the rest of the work. And so when he framed using medication like that, again, I was like, oh, okay. I can do that. It’s almost like if you break your leg, you get a cast on and then you get some crutches, you’re not going to need the crutches forever.

You just need it until your leg is healing, right? Or heals. So when he framed it in that manner, I was like, you know what? Let’s do this. Let, you know, bring on the pills, bring on the medications and let’s see what happens. Because again, I can’t keep living like this. So if you’re listening and you are having this debate about, well, do I use medication? Do I not use medication? Talk to your doctor, have that consultation with your doctor and tap into yourself and tap into your heart.

If you are feeling like you’re at a point where you’re only fighting chance at beating this damn addiction is to get some assistance, get the assistance. Don’t let anybody, don’t let social media, don’t let somebody who isn’t walking in your shoes make you feel any less than because you’re seeking assistance. Because I use, and I’m about to talk about it, lots of medications to help me get through. And you know what? Today…

I don’t use any medication, right? Because at a certain point, as we said, I didn’t need those crutches anymore. And some people need the crutches for the rest of their lives, right? Some people walk with a cane forever and that’s all good. So everybody just has to walk their own journey. But again, if you’re sitting there and you’re listening, you’re like, hmm, I wonder if I should, go have the consultation with the physician. Like it’s not gonna kill you to go sit in a doctor’s office and have the conversation.

You know, you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do, but I’m letting you know in my story, there was absolutely medication in the beginning. And so let’s dial it back to that time when go back to me being like, all right, well, what’s next? So we go through the medications with bipolar disorder, bipolar two specifically. He gave me a mood stabilizer, an antidepressant.

a sleep aid because I was having like major night terrors. And then he also gave me a medication to assist with alcohol cravings. The other thing that I wanted to mention in case I didn’t, the reason I was diagnosed with bipolar two versus standard bipolar one, in bipolar one you deal with manic episodes. I’ve never experienced manic episodes outside of hypomania. And hypomania is kind of like a more…

quote unquote chill version of a manic episode. So like, yeah, like sometimes I wouldn’t sleep as much. Not, yes, I would get like busy and creative and like produce a bunch of information, like lesson plans that were really creative and things like that. But really, I never lost touch with reality. I was never doing anything very risky. I mean, my drinking was risky, but even my drinking was happening more so in isolation, like in hermit mode in my apartment. So.

I never got diagnosed with a manic episode. So that was what differentiated bipolar one from bipolar two. Bipolar two, again, the heavy depressive waves. Anyway, so I had all those medications given to me. But the other thing that also happened when I was in treatment, again, cause like I said, this is about going from wanting to willing. So I became willing to use medications as a tool, which I was not willing to do before.

The other big thing that I became willing to do was I was willing to walk away from the job that I had. Like I said before in episode six, teaching was my passion. I had literally just won the Kentucky State Teacher of the Year award in 2019. Now in 2020, I’m sitting there and being like, I’ve got to walk away from this? Yes. Here’s why. As I’ve said before, the worst that I felt about my drinking.

the more that I dove into my work. And I did absolutely love my work with all my heart. And because as a kid, my teachers made me feel so loved when I didn’t always feel that. My teachers made me feel that I was more than what my appearance was, that I was more than what the outside could bring. Because of people like my educators that I had, I wanted to be that for my students.

But the problem was I really couldn’t separate in a healthy manner how I could do that for my students and then take time to take care of for myself. And honestly, I don’t even know how public school teachers do that today. So I knew that in order for me to really take the time to figure out this whole not drinking thing, things were gonna have to change drastically. And all that time that I struggled in 2020, I wasn’t willing to quit my job. I wasn’t willing, I wasn’t willing. I’d rather miss a couple days.

do family medical leave, you know, exhaust my sick time, I would do everything but resign. So in this facility, I was like, damn it, I’m gonna resign. I’ve got to, I’ve got to, like, I literally in my mind, while I was in treatment for this week, week and a half, I was like, I’m uprooting everything, everything. Some folks will say, don’t make any big decisions in your first year of sobriety. I made every big decision.

And so while I was in that facility, I wrote my resignation letter. I drafted it out in a little journal that they had so that I could type it up later when I got out. And I decided in that moment, I was done. So it was another thing I became willing to do. Then when I exited, I resigned. I gave in my couple weeks notice and I had accepted a position I applied for and I accepted a position with a tutoring company, something very low key that was not going to be…

taking a lot of my time. So by the time November 28th comes, right? I’d been taking the medications and kind of waiting for them to kick in. Psych meds do take several weeks to kick in you all, so it doesn’t happen overnight. I felt triggered over something and I don’t remember what it was. I did drink, but by that point,

the medications had started kicking in. And so you can say that my last episode of drinking was very anticlimactic, because I thought that by drinking, I was gonna end up spiraling and going to the hospital, but by the time I drank, it was like, ugh, that’s it? Like, that was my reaction.

I was going for the bottle to get some like major relief because again, I was triggered and I wanted to get out of my skin and get out of my head and like escape all the feelings. But when I had it, I just, it didn’t feel like anything. I felt flat because the medications, I mean that whole combination of medication, like damn, it better do something, right? All those meds. And so I like kept drinking and I got somewhat drunk, but it just,

it didn’t feel the same anymore. Something had happened. And obviously, like I said, you take that many medications, like something better be happening, right? And so November 28th came and that was my day one. And when I got to the end of that day one, it was like a fire was lit in me. Cause I was like, holy shit, like I’m not drinking, right?

Like I got through a day without alcohol and I actually didn’t really want it. Right. Do you know how amazing that feels? If you’re listening and you are sober and you are in recovery, you probably know what I’m talking about. If you’re in a space where you don’t miss the stuff to go from a lifetime of feeling addicted, like there were times you all that I felt like a fiend, right? There were times that like.

All it would do was like run through my mind day in and day out. That’s how I felt all the time with alcohol. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t live or breathe without knowing where the nearest liquor store was, how I was going to go get my next drink. Where could I hide it? Is someone going to find out? Am I going to get caught? Going through what felt like a lifetime of that to suddenly have the first 24 hours without an obsession.

for me was otherworldly. And so I was like, what’s next? I don’t wanna lose this. I don’t want to lose this. So suddenly the idea popped into my brain that I should tell my story. I’m going to resign on December 4th. Anyway, December 4th is my last day of work. I should go ahead and tell everyone exactly

what’s been going on. Because then maybe, just maybe, I might be able to break myself free from this. So I contacted a local journalist at the Louisville Career Journal and asked if I could write an op-ed and share my story.

She of course was like, yes. Because of course like, what newspaper is gonna be like, oh no, we don’t want the teacher of the year to tell us about their secret addiction. Like that’s crazy, right? Like of course they’re gonna want the readings and the clicks and all of that. So I got to write it, it was published, it went live December 3rd and it went viral. Like it literally blew up and went everywhere. But more importantly, I was freed.

I kid you not, I was freed. And again, you all, I have not had a drink since. And it was that shift from going from wanting to willing. Wanting to willing. So let’s talk a little bit about what support looked like back then and how it changed, okay? So in the beginning, like I obviously mentioned, I was taking medications.

Throughout the entire time that I was struggling, I was attending AA meetings on and off, mostly online, they were based in Kentucky. It was the only thing that I had ever been exposed to, it was the only thing that I had ever known. So I continued to attend AA meetings early on. I was paired with a psychiatrist, a therapist who was, excuse me, I have hiccups. I was paired with a psychiatrist, damn it, a therapist, when I first quit drinking.

through the clinic that was associated with the rehab that I had gone to, he was sober, but he didn’t attend 12-step programs. And he tried to like open my eyes a little bit to that, but I wasn’t trying to hear it. I was like, no, I’m good with AA. I have a sponsor, I’m good, I’m working the steps, et cetera. And that was fine. But a few months passed and I was five months sober and I got an email in my inbox and it was from a woman named Jennifer. I can’t remember her last name.

but she was like the executive producer of Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith. She’s like, hey Jessica, we read your op-ed that you wrote a couple months ago. We’d love to have you on the show. So I did a Zoom call with her, interviewed with her, and she really enjoyed talking to me, sent it off to the director, they approved it, and they flew me out a few days later to LA. A wild whirlwind, and I couldn’t tell anybody that I was doing this. It was like the biggest secret ever. So.

When I go to a table talk though, the craziest thing is that I met Katie from the Sober Black Girls Club. And then I also met Annie Grace, who is the author of This Naked Mind and also runs that program. And I remember just, again, being amazed to meet these women who I know were pretty high profile folks. And I remember being like, so what do your sponsors think? And they were both like, we don’t have sponsors.

And I was like, what do you mean you don’t have sponsors? And they were like, no, it was like, you don’t do AA? They were like, no, we don’t use AA. We use, you know, we just do our own thing, you know, like support groups, other types of groups. And when I saw these successful women who had been sober for years and realized that they don’t do 12-step programs, it planted a seed.

I didn’t like suddenly change everything that I was doing, but I really noted it because I was like, wow, they’re doing great and they’re thriving and they’re not in a 12 step program. But I thought that if I were to not do a 12 step program that I would die because that was the impression that I was given. And honestly, that was what I would see. I would see people in these 12 step programs that I had befriended and grown to really care for, including my own boyfriend. Right?

relapse and subsequently pass away. So in my mind, I was like, to leave the rooms equal death. But it’s not that black and white. I understand that now, right? So anyway, once I get back from my trip to California, can I start talking to my therapist? I’m like, hey, so I met these women. I was like, hey, they aren’t in AA and they’re doing okay. And…

I decided, well, my therapist was like, well, you’re working with me too, so you aren’t alone in your support. And she’s like, why don’t you see how it feels to not go to a meeting, specifically an AA meeting? Because again, for me, there were times that I didn’t necessarily feel great about the meetings I was attending, but again, it was all that I knew. And so there was one day that I like just didn’t attend a specific meeting.

And I kind of was waiting for the craving to drink to come and overtake me and like make me drive like a mad woman over to the bar or the liquor store, but nothing happened. And then I actually kind of felt happy that I didn’t go to that meeting because again, that specific space, it was just one that I wasn’t comfortable in. And so then it just happened again and again. And then I started getting online and looking at other programs and other spaces.

And over time, I found online community to become really powerful and resonating with me, more so than the 12-step spaces. So at the end, I stopped attending 12-step programs. By the time I hit six months sober, I never got a six-month chip. And again, I think that they save lives and shit. It was a safe space for me many, many times. But

We also always just have to look for what resonates with us. So again, if you’re here listening, look for where you feel comfortable. It’s absolutely okay to be picky about the spaces that you choose to spend your time in. It is absolutely okay. Don’t use those as an excuse to isolate and not be in community, but look around. There’s a lot, a lot of spaces out there.

So anyway, so yeah, so at about six months over, I decided to just like fully dive online. And then as time passed, I also decided to open up, actually at about three months over, I created my blog, Bottom List to Sober, where I decided that Ian, my boyfriend who passed, always talked about his story. And I wanted to dedicate that kind of work to him, the work of storytelling. And so,

My blog initially started off with me just interviewing people about their recovery stories and typing them up and sharing them. And you know, the blog just continued to grow. And I decided at one point, like at about a year or over a year sober, I decided that I also wanted to focus my energy on helping others. And so I learned about life coaching. I took some courses, got certified there. And then…

I just, again, continued to stay online, continued connecting with other people, and eventually stumbled upon Reframe. And I started working on Reframe, and even more time passed. And I started working, this is now more, say 2023, with the Luckiest Club. Other things that I’ve done, I’ve joined the National Association of Addiction Professionals, NADAC. I may be saying that wrong.

But it’s a great source for continued education in terms of just anything recovery based education. And I would say that now my recovery has also changed because about eight, nine months ago, before I hit two years sober, I made the decision with my doctor to stop taking psych meds. I was so scared you all to make that decision.

because I was like, oh my gosh, what if I stop and what if I spiral out of control, right? And like go straight to the liquor store. I always remember when I was checking out of treatment, the last facility, you know, one of the techs, which is like the people that work there, like an assist with everything, you know, he was like, oh, make sure you don’t stop taking those meds, otherwise you’ll end up right back here. And that really stuck with me. So when I was thinking about like, do I really need to still take meds? That guy’s message.

really was stuck in my brain. But my therapist was like, we don’t have to do it abruptly, because that’s not safe, but we can do it, we can taper appropriately, and we did that without disclosing details, so none of you just go off and do this on your own. Again, I want you, any decisions that you make, I want you to do them with a professional working with you. But we transitioned me off of medication, and

Now it’s probably been, yeah, that was in September of 2022, and we’re in July, so it’s been a long time. It has been a long time, you all. And I am here, it’s been 10 months without psych meds, and I haven’t experienced any depressive episodes, and I haven’t experienced anything that I would consider to be manic or hypomanic. And again, that question of the chicken and the egg comes back. Did I?

Do I have bipolar? Bipolar two? Was it the alcohol? Has my brain healed? I know my liver has healed, right? So many good questions that I’m always gonna explore and I’m always gonna continue to learn and figure that out. But ultimately, at this point, I really don’t want to drink. I hope I never drink again. I don’t see that in my future, but I never like to say never,

You’d never know. But what my recovery looks like today is a lot of being just really in touch with my feelings and letting myself feel my feelings and not escaping them and understanding that everything is absolutely temporary. What I do the most today is dive into texts. Reading is really powerful for me. So is writing. And…

really unpacking the thoughts that dance around in my head has been incredibly powerful. So before diving into my thoughts would be triggering because I wouldn’t understand that so many of my thoughts were not necessarily based in reality, right? Like so many insecurities I thought were real when I realized that I was just believing beliefs that were handed to me that I didn’t examine if they resonated with me. And so…

I know that probably sounds really like wishy washy or like very woo woo, but nowadays that’s what keeps me sober. It’s the ability to really pick apart my own thoughts and kind of like coach myself into like, oh, that doesn’t make sense, Jess, or yeah, that makes sense, but what are you going to do about it? Right? Continuing to work with a therapist. I’m in a group coaching program, so I always have access to a coach also to kind of like

dive into my thinking and my work. But I would say that that’s how my recovery has transformed. Certain things that I tried doing, I once was very into the super structured morning routine. I’ve gotta meditate and journal and pray and do all these different things. I have to do 10 things before my day starts. I stopped doing all that. I sometimes meditate, I sometimes don’t. I let my body be my guide.

If I have to slow down and pause, then I feel the need to slow down and pause, then I do it. If I feel the need to have a spiritual connection and pray to a higher power of my choice, I do, but I don’t force it. And that’s almost been like my greatest takeaway. There isn’t anything that I’m forcing myself to do now. Same thing with exercise. Exercise can feel very therapeutic and…

Sometimes I do it and you know, any of you who follow me on Instagram see that I’ll lift the hell out of something. And then there’s other times that I don’t feel like it and I just don’t do it. And so a huge part of me staying sober today is I do what I feel like doing and I don’t force myself to do anything that doesn’t feel right. And that has been working for me.

and I stay in community. I talk, I share, I stay absolutely connected. And like I said, I spend a lot of time reading about how the brain works. Been diving into books a lot to really just understand the science of this crazy shit. And it’s been really powerful. So as I sit here, I feel pretty content about how I explained my life since recovery.

And honestly, I’m excited to see where it continues. It’s been a hell of a journey. I’m incredibly grateful for it. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to record it and to have you listen. So with that, I’m gonna stop there. If you’re listening to this as it airs, a couple cool things I’ve got going on. This weekend, I am hosting a, I’m starting my six-week writing program, Writing for Healing. You can register.

at bottomliststosober.com for the six week program. It also includes a one-on-one with me in your writing, because storytelling saves lives. So just that reminder, storytelling saves lives. So come join me so that I can help you with telling your story. And then on Sunday, July 16th, I’m hosting a one-time workshop where we talk about goal setting with, I’m co-facilitating that with Dr. Diane Marie. She’s…

phenomenal. She’s a phenomenal coach and I’m really excited for that opportunity. And so if you’re feeling stuck about your goals, I’m like, what the hell am I doing this point in the year? Come join us. Um, it’s 15 bucks to do that. And it’s like literally the cost of what it would be like to get Starbucks for you and a friend, except it’s a self investment and that and other opportunities you can find at my site, bottomlesstosober.com. Thanks you all so much for listening. Have an awesome, beautiful, beautiful day. Take care.

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Content Warning: language, death, drug use

In this episode:

Link to Spotify

Initially, I was going to tell my general story, but as I recorded, I realized this episode is more about my life before I got sober. I share how things started for me in childhood as a daughter of immigrants with all the pressure to fulfill the “American dream,” and how I eventually managed to win Teacher of the Year while drinking a fifth of alcohol a day, up through the loss of my partner and finally coming to a place of stopping drinking and how I stopped.

Resources:

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

Red Table Talk – Are You Drinking Too Much? A Wake Up Call for Women

Bottomless to Sober – Writing Classes and Coaching Support

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas:
Hey everyone, in today’s episode, I’m gonna tell my story, kind of like my general story. And it’s funny because I had started recording this earlier and then I was abruptly interrupted and in the spirit of me just doing this podcast as a like, just spit out whatever needs to be said and not editing, I was like, you know what, f it, I’m just gonna start fresh. And I will also trust that whatever I say is what is meant to be put out there into the interwebs.

You know, I’ve told my story so many times at this point that it’s always interesting when I say it and to see what feels right and that that’s what comes out. So again, I just trust that whatever I share is what needs to be heard. So I’ll go ahead and I will share and of course, you know, the standard content warning for just about lots of things stands for this episode. So there will be talks about.

alcohol abuse and sexual abuse and things like that. So just kind of putting that difficult stuff out there. I’ll do my best to remember to pause and give you that heads up before I say something explicit, but just giving you that heads up. So anyway, enough rambling. Now I’ll go ahead and start. So I was born in Brooklyn, New York, born and raised, and I was born to a Cuban, an Afro-Cuban father and a Costa Rican mother.

I each come to the US in the late 60s, very early 70s. And I was born, I was kid number eight and I’m the youngest. My parents each had their fair share of relationships. So I was actually only raised with one sister even though she’s the seventh and I’m the eighth. And so my sister Sophia is 11 years older than me and then there’s me. And I was born February 4th, 1985. So I’m an elder millennial, woo woo.

I’m just putting that out there too. I don’t hide my age, I don’t care too, so just putting that out there. Anyway, so with my parents being immigrants, they definitely valued education, the American education system very, very much so, to where it didn’t, almost everything else didn’t matter as long as I did well in school. And the other thing actually that they did value a lot in terms of American values,

I think really is just the adoption of beauty standards, which are, I mean, and I would say honestly, those are more European beauty standards, right? I am taller. I have brown skin because my father was an Afro Cuban. My hair is curly. And then I also have always been a heavier person. And so since I was little, my academics were always celebrated because I’ve always been really good at school. But my appearance has never fit.

that standard and so there’s always been non-stop attempts to change how I look. Like stay out of the sun, go get a relaxer at the Dominican salon, go lose some weight, you know, ponte en dieta. Like always, always like something about how I looked had to be changed and something was always wrong with how I looked, right? And the thing is, when you’re a little kid and that’s what you hear, you start to really believe that shit, right? Like if you’re constantly told that you’re fat, that you’re this, that you’re all…

you know, this, that, and the other, you start to really believe it and you start to see yourself as less than everyone else around you. So from a very early age, I had incredibly low self-esteem because it just wasn’t built up. And I will take this moment to pause and say, my parents did the best that they could with what they had. And honestly, I’m so grateful to say that I am so not pissed at them or at my mom, really, who probably perpetrated this way more than my dad.

because I’ve done a lot of work to understand that folks tend to repeat what they were taught and they tend to repeat what they grew up in and it takes a lot of work to pause and examine what the hell you grew up in and make a change and so I’m grateful that I get to do that but my parents as immigrants as struggling folks they didn’t have the opportunities that I do to stop and do serious self-reflection and like work with professionals and get help so

they grew up in those environments where they rip people down to pieces based off of parents. And so I definitely got ripped down quite a bit. And so the other thing that I developed early on was a really complicated relationship with food and just tons of shame around it, right? Because like if I wanted, if something tasted good and I wanted a second serving of it, I immediately got yelled at, right? And so for me, I immediately started to associate wanting more food or like…

food as something to get in trouble over. So really early on I started to learn how to hide food that I was trying to eat, sneak food in my drawers, sneak a couple dollars out of my mom’s purse aka steal money from her to go buy food and then eat it, hide it in my backpack, get to school, throw it out of my book bag so that nobody knew that I was eating all this extra food because I grew to like it but I felt like it was this forbidden thing and so I was always hiding it.

flash forward 15, 20 years, right? Like that’s exactly what I was doing with alcohol. The second that alcohol for me became something that was bad in my mind, and it made me a bad person to consume it, I started to hide it from everybody else. So anyway, backtrack to childhood. Like I said, I was academically gifted. And so by the time I got into eighth grade, I had picked up like a scholarship to go to this very elite private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Spence School.

Where again, I knocked it out the water academically. I was really on point but as I got older and became a teen the heavier I got right and so Even though I’m so grateful for school and honestly, I’m so grateful for my teachers, right? like my teachers inspired me to be an educator because When I felt like shit about myself Those men and women whose classrooms I went into

made me feel whole. And I was like, you know what? Like one day I’m gonna do that for someone else and I’m gonna do that for someone else’s kids and I’m gonna make other people’s kids feel really good because my teachers made me feel good when I felt like shit. And I’m so grateful that I got to do that as a classroom teacher for 13 years. But that’s the side point. Anyway, back to the story. So anyway, my self-esteem is really rough in high school.

But academically, I just soared. So by the end of high school, then I had a full scholarship to go to Barnard College, which is a part of Columbia University. So I mean, I had made the Ivy League, y’all. I literally was living and breathing my parents’ American dream, while at the same time feeling incredibly insecure because they still were always commenting on my appearance and how I needed to lose weight and I needed to do all of this. So anyway, carrying all that low self-esteem into college and onto the college campus.

was a perfect recipe to fall in love with alcohol because as a freshman, I was invited to someone’s 18th birthday party at NYU’s campus. There are these guys from the Bronx who had brought some liquor bottles down there. And I stayed out of trouble. Honestly, I did. I minded my business for the most part. I mean, I would get into shit sometimes, but overall I stayed out of trouble. And so when I was on at this party, they were drinking shots. They were taking shots.

And I remember I think one of them was like Goldschlager. I don’t know, whatever it was nasty with gold flakes. And I’m pretty sure that’s what it was called. So anyway, one of them was like, oh, you drink ma? And I was like, before I could even respond, my former friend was like, no, she doesn’t drink. And I felt like, you don’t know that. Like, uh-uh, like I’m gonna talk for myself. And I was like, let me get one. So I took a shot.

And I remember everybody was staring at me and I felt the nastiness and the heat go down my throat and then light everything up like it was on fire. And I wanted to react, but people were watching me and I was like, I’m not gonna react. And so, you know, as they said, I took it like a champ. So they offered me more and I was like, yeah, let’s do this. Because once I started to feel the effects of it, right, and I felt my inhibitions go down and I felt more relaxed, suddenly it was like I was freed.

from feeling physically undesirable, which is something that I always felt every moment of every day. I always felt physically undesirable because it had been programmed in me since I was a little kid that I was not attractive, right? That I was not beautiful because I was fat. That I was not beautiful because my skin was too dark. That I was not beautiful because my hair was too curly. All of that had been programmed in me real hard at that point. So the alcohol made that go away.

and it allowed me to socialize and relax a little bit around these people and relax a little bit around cute guys, right? And I was like, oh, this is good. So time passes in college and I’m doing good in school in general. My class, I’m doing good in my classes or doing well in my classes. And my drinking stays pretty much limited to weekends and binging and stuff like that. But then I get into a relationship with somebody, another guy from the Bronx, nothing personal.

towards the Bronx by the way. That’s just, I don’t know. I always ended up with guys from the Bronx back in the day. And that was a really, really problematic relationship. My family, again, we just didn’t talk about anything. So when I got into a relationship and all the red flags were starting to go up and shine bright in the sun, I didn’t have anyone to talk to, to be like, hey, he did this, he said this.

is this okay? Am I safe? And so basically like by the time we got to Thanksgiving of you know our that first Thanksgiving that we were together, we ate at his family’s house and then we came back to my dorm and then the morning when I get up and I get on my computer he had been on Facebook. Yes, Facebook is that old. And he was logged into his account and when I opened my computer I can see the messages were there and I at that time I was so

I knew nothing about healthy relationships or anything. So of course, if you leave your messages out, I’m gonna check your messages. And that’s exactly what I did. I checked his messages and in there, there was an exchange between him and his previous girlfriend. And clearly he had been cheating. That was incredibly devastating to me because again, this was like my first real legit boyfriend and we just spent the holiday together and oh no, now you’ve cheated. So now like I’m heartbroken. And I had zero standards for myself at that time.

So when I found out that he was cheating and I threw him out, I let him back in a couple of days later, right? And it was just like, no matter what would happen with him, and it would increase up to the point of like physical violence at times, I kept letting him back in because I was just so scared of being alone because I thought that I would always be alone because I had been told since I was little that nobody’s gonna want me, right? But here somebody wanted me.

So it’s okay if they do all this horrible shit to me because at least they want me. That was the old thinking that I used to have when I was younger. And suffice it to say that relationship finally ended, but by the time that relationship ended, my drinking had escalated to the point that I had gotten so depressed that I wasn’t going to class. And so here you had this real bright ass girl from Brooklyn in an Ivy league institution who flunked the semester and lost a scholarship. So…

I took that as a sign that maybe I wasn’t meant to go to college, maybe I needed to drop out, and that’s exactly what I did. I went and I unenrolled from the school. As soon as I get back to Brooklyn and get back home to my mom’s house, because I was living in the dorms like I mentioned, my mom was like, I did not come to this country for you to drop out of school. So she basically was like, you’re going to have to get the hell out if you don’t go back to school. So I was like, fine. I’m going to get a day job.

and I became a secretary at a law office in Staten Island. And at night, I started taking classes at Hunter College at the City University of New York. So I did that and I actually, I got to the end, I got to graduate and I applied to be a New York City teaching fellow because let’s not forget, I still remembered the only adults that ever made me feel good and accepted were my teachers. And I was like, I still wanna do that. I still wanna help make some kids feel good. I still wanna do something good in this world.

So I became a teacher right after college. And I started, I was a special ed teacher in Bushwick in Brooklyn, really close to where my parents had their store. And I taught at my first school for about four years. And I met my ex-husband there. I also started working at the school with a bunch of other fresh out of college teachers. So everybody was fresh out of college. We were all super young. And the funny thing with alcohol, right? Like we all basically just carried our drinking habits from college into our teaching profession.

But now we gave it a new name and it was Happy Hour. So we would go to Happy Hour and one day my relationship with alcohol changed. And I’m not gonna say that this is the day that I became someone with alcohol use disorder. I still can never tell you when it was official because I don’t think there’s such a thing, right? But I had about three drinks in an hour and one of my coworkers was like, dang Jess, like, isn’t that a lot? And I was like,

That is a lot. Inside, that was like my thinking. But then my thinking spiraled to immediately jump back to when I was a kid and I was getting yelled at for eating too much food. And so that wave of shame like, practically knocked me over. And I was like, oh snap, I’ve got to hide my drinking. It wasn’t like, oh snap, let me evaluate my relationship with alcohol. Like, oh snap, maybe I am drinking too much. Nope, it was oh snap.

I don’t want people to see me drink how I want to drink. The exact same way that in the past, I didn’t want people to see me eat how I wanted to eat because I didn’t want to get yelled at and trouble judged, et cetera. So that was basically the start of me drinking more in secret. And so from that point forward, I always matched other people’s drinking. So if we were sitting at a table and we were hanging out for the night, whatever you drink, I would drink it. You had one drink, I’d have one. If you got…

plastered, I was getting plastered right there with you, right? But what would always happen is once I would leave the social gathering, there was always that little pit stop at the liquor store on my way home so that I could finally drink how I wanted to drink. Now, this heavier drinking early on got pretty much like stopped because I got into a relationship with my then husband and he was a

He didn’t have any addiction issues, so he didn’t drink how I wanted to drink, and I obviously was not trying to have problems. So that kind of kept me in check for enough time for the years of our marriage. But even in our marriage, there was one incident where I did start drinking in secret because we were living in a fixer-upper and I couldn’t stand being in that mess. And so he would go to work, and I would drink when he would go to work because I was on summer vacation from teaching, so it was like, you know, I would day drink.

But then one day I accidentally drank too much and I blacked out. Well, I passed out, but it was also a blackout because I couldn’t remember it. So FYI, passing out and blacking out are two different things, but they can both happen at the same time. And all I remember is that I woke up at the University of Louisville Hospital. By the way, we had moved to Kentucky at this point, which is where he was from. And that scared me enough to make me stop drinking for about a year. I mean, and I like joined AA at that time and I…

soar off alcohol for about a year because, you know, it scared me, it scared him. And it was so early on, it wasn’t, yeah, I was early on enough in our marriage where I cared about keeping that marriage intact. And I knew that if I drank, it would basically be me saying, I’m over this marriage. So for as long as I wanted to keep the marriage, keep the house, keep everything, I didn’t drink. But that was the thing, right? I was not drinking for an external reason.

not for an intrinsic reason. And so once I became unhappy with the marriage and I realized that I was okay with things if they fall apart. And I was okay with letting go of this house if it had to go, right? I decided to start drinking again. And so after that, it was only a matter of time before we ended up splitting apart. And I mean, some other things were going on there too, but that’s more his story. And I’ll let him tell that someday if he ever chooses to on his own. But.

Once we got divorced, I finally was like, woo, I can drink how I wanna drink, right? Like going back to that theme. And when I got into my own apartment, that’s where it really was on. And I wanna say we got divorced, I think it was 2017. And by 2018, 2019, I was drinking a fifth a day of alcohol. And by the summer of 2019, I got diagnosed with alcoholic liver disease.

At the same time that all this is happening, right? Because my drinking has escalated so much after the divorce, I also really dive into my career. Because if you all remember, since I was a kid, I always was priding myself on what I can do academically. And so as an adult, obviously I wasn’t in school anymore, but I was working. So I always loved being a good teacher, but I was really like going above and beyond, right? Like staying late, doing all the things, and then.

treating myself by drinking to excess, blacking out, passing out, waking up at like three in the morning to get up, lesson plan, deal with the hangover, self-medicate, and then go back into school. Because in the mornings what would start happening as I got sicker and sicker, I was going through really bad withdrawals, so I got a prescription for benzos to help me in the mornings so that I could go to work and function. And then once I got home and finished all my responsibilities, I scratched off my to-do list.

then I would indulge. But our bodies can only take so much, right? Like the CDC states that heavy drinking for men is 15 drinks or more per week. And for women, heavy drinking in a week is considered eight drinks or more. If I was drinking a fifth a day, that means I was consuming 17 drinks per day when the limit for the week was eight. So that is just to give you a sense of how much I was stressing my liver.

how much I was really, really hurting myself. So anyway, the other thing like I was saying is because I dove into my career and was doing such an excellent job, I did such a good job of teaching that at the peak of my alcohol addiction, while being diagnosed with alcoholic liver disease, well, I didn’t know that at that time, but I won the State Teacher of the Year Award.

Like I literally took the title home for the top teacher in the entire state of Kentucky for 2019 and I got to represent the state in the national competition for the national teacher of the year. And yes, this in the depths of alcohol use disorder. So if any of you are sitting there with your fancy career wondering, could I have a problem? Yes, you absolutely can have a problem. You don’t have to be any kind of stereotype to have a problem.

If you are consuming too much alcohol and you’re questioning your relationship with alcohol, you probably need to address it, right? Like let’s be frank. So anyway, I won the Teacher of the Year award, which brings me so much attention and really all this clout, but I’m drinking so much. And so you can imagine that on the inside, I really felt like my heart was being ripped apart. I mean, not only did I win this award, I won this award two weeks after my father passed away.

And a few days after learning that my then boyfriend after my divorce had also been cheating on me, I was like, dang, right? Like I was not catching a break. The one break that I caught was the teacher of the year award. But you know, I will say again, going back to the academics and going back to work, I do think that school saved my life. I do think that teaching was a part of saving my life because if I didn’t have school and if I didn’t have teaching in the depths of all that addiction.

I don’t think that there’s anything that I would have found worth living for. But I, every day, I did find showing up and bringing smiles to those kids’ faces was worth living for. But once the alcohol got to the point that it threatened my career, that’s when I finally was like, okay, I need to do something about it. So by September of 2019,

My liver disease was getting worse and I was now starting to develop like actual like straight up panic attacks where I could not get in my car at all or drive because I was like jumping or screaming at anything. Like I was starting to, I didn’t hallucinate quite yet but I feel like I was like a step away from starting to hallucinate. Like that’s how bad the effects of the drinking were getting to be.

So I was like, it sounds like I need to go to treatment. I mean, I looked into like how to stop drinking on my own and I knew there was no way, there was no way that I could have safely stopped drinking. You cannot put a fifth of alcohol down your body every single day and then just put that to the side. Like you can’t do that. So I did go into a treatment facility, but I went in telling everybody like, oh, I’ve got the flu and I’m gonna be out for a few days, like don’t call me. That’s what I said.

But in reality, I was detoxing and struggling a whole lot. When I got out of that detox, I did go back into AA, but I couldn’t take it seriously enough. I wasn’t willing to come out and tell people what I had been struggling with. I was going to meetings and I had a sponsor who I was sort of listening to, but my heart wasn’t fully in it.

I just wanted to be able to show up to work because A, I cared about work and B, I lived by myself and I had to make sure I could pay my bills so I couldn’t be missing work because of alcohol. But I wasn’t really ready to transform my life. So because I wasn’t ready, of course, whenever you’re not really doing the work, you’re setting yourself up to have slips and relapses, etc. So by the holidays, when the holidays came around, that’s exactly what happened. I felt really lonely and sad and I started drinking again and I ended up in a treatment facility.

all over again. And this time my family found out because it was the holidays so obviously they noticed that I was missing. And the other huge thing that happened while I was in that treatment facility was that I met Ian. And I remember when I walked into that treatment facility and I was doing my intake, I was drunk, but I do remember this. So it’s a drunk memory that I actually have. He was like in the common area. Treatment facilities have common areas, FYI, most of them do.

and the TV was going and I look up and I see this beautiful man just sitting there like watching the TV and he looked right at me and then he looked away and he like went back to looking at the TV and I remember drunkenly being like whoa he’s really cute I need to not talk to him. That was literally my first thought. My first thought was don’t talk to him. But of course why would I listen to my instincts right? Of course not.

So I did avoid him for a couple of days, but probably at about like the third or fourth day, he sat next to me in one of the activities that we were doing, and he just starts asking me questions about myself, and he’s like, where are you from? And I was like, oh, I’m from New York. And he figured that I wasn’t from Kentucky, because you can hear in my accent, I do not have a Southern accent of any kind, or Midwestern, whatever you wanna call it. And so he was like, oh, what’d you do in New York? Did you model? And listen, y’all, like,

That is such a cheesy line, but it worked, right? Because I was like, oh my gosh, ha ha. And yeah, we just hit it off after that. Like he said that and that opened the door to conversation. And by the time I left the facility then, and again, this was during winter break, so no one at school even noticed that I had gone missing, right? That’s like the crazy shit about it. But anyway, when I left the facility, I gave him my number and I was like, yeah, call me. And honestly,

I didn’t think that he would call. But a few days later, my phone rings and it’s him. And he’s like, yeah, like, do you wanna go to a meeting together? And I was like, oh my gosh, of course. And so we went to this meeting together. And at the end of AA meetings, I mean, I’m not gonna say all, but at the end of this meeting, there was a prayer and everybody got up and held hands. And you know, this is before the pandemic too, right? So…

I remember putting my hand in his and it was just like this big strong muscular hand. You know, I mean, he’s a vet. And you know, I just felt like my heart just like, whew, flutter. And I was like, wow, you know. And yeah, we got into a relationship and everything was great. Of course, we got into a relationship against everyone else’s advice, right? Like our sponsors were like, no, terrible idea. You shouldn’t do it. You both are literally brand new to recovery. And of course, we were like,

you know, we don’t care what you have to say because, you know, little did I know that I really like learning lessons the hard way and that’s basically what happened there. And so, you know, we were off in this like beautiful La land, but then the pandemic hit and when the pandemic hit and everything shut down, those church basements that we were having meetings in closed and the community centers closed.

and there was nowhere to go. People were starting to use Zoom, but I wasn’t aware of resources that existed the way that they do today. Today there’s platforms like the Luckiest Club, Tempest, Reframe, right? I work with the Luckiest Club, I work with Reframe. I had no idea those things existed back then. I mean, the Luckiest Club, I don’t even think existed until May of 2020, right? So we had nothing and we were ticking time bombs.

for relapses or slips, whatever the word is that you like to use. And he was the first one to relapse. So it was funny because I had done like, I had like a fake Twitter account, like a fake sober Twitter account. And somehow this woman from NPR, Yuki Noguchi,

I caught her eye with my tweets. So we did an interview and I was talking about my relationship and how cheery and happy I was. And it’s really eerie and I’ll put the link in the show notes to that interview because she met with me then. And then we did a follow-up a year later and this was after everything had happened. And I told her and I updated her on everything that happened and it was really heartbreaking.

But yeah, I did that first interview with her and I was like, yeah, my boyfriend is great, we’re going to go walk the dog, blah, only to find that he didn’t come back and it was because he had relapsed on his drug of choice, which was opiates, specifically heroin. And so that day I found him, he was alive and he was in his apartment and he was high and it was so scary because he looked devastated at his choice and he was so embarrassed and so ashamed.

And I tried to convince him to go to rehab, you know, like go back to treatment, like you need to go back. And he was finishing up his degree in social work at that time at, I think it’s Sullivan University in Louisville. And he was like, no, I’ve got to finish my work. And this man finished his work. He got everything done that he needed to submit for that semester. I remember him working really hard through like the high and the withdrawal. And he got it done.

And then what happened after that was he used again. And that was so difficult because I was like, if you’re gonna keep using, you’re not gonna be able to stay here with me, you know? Because I was like, I’m gonna end up drinking again. And so he was like, okay, well, let me go to the gas station and then we’ll talk about it. So he left to go to the gas station and this was on April 28th of 2020 and he just never came back, you all.

He never came back. I had called him, he wasn’t answering, and I had such a bad feeling as soon as he didn’t answer. So I drove over to his apartment and I saw that his car was in the parking lot for the building. So I get into his building and I go up to his apartment door and I start banging on the door and he’s not answering and I call the phone and I hear it ringing from inside the apartment. So I’m like, he’s in there.

but he’s not answering. So then I grabbed the fire hydrant, just as like one of the neighbors slash people who works in the building comes out, and I start slamming his door with the fire hydrant, and the guy is like yelling at me to stop, and that he’s gonna call the police on me. And I was like, go ahead, like please do. So then of course, like I hear him on the phone, and he’s like, yeah, there’s this tall black woman at the door, blah, blah. And you know, this was shortly after Breonna Taylor had passed away, and I was like, oh, great.

But honestly, I was just so focused on trying to get into that apartment that I didn’t care that he was calling the police. And I was, I welcomed it because again, we needed to get into that apartment. So the police come and you know, he of course does open the door for them. And content warning, you might want to mute this for a few minutes, but they opened the door and they say there’s a dead male.

and I immediately start screaming, screaming at that man. It’s with PTSD, I learned from reading The Body Keeps the Score, another great resource, that our memories get really, pretty much fucked up. And so it’s hard for me to remember the sequence with which everything happened. I just remember the bits and pieces. And so I remember, like if I close my eyes, I can remember.

the police officer putting my hands behind my back and pushing me against the wall. Then it’s like, it fades to black. Then I can remember calling his mother and telling her that her son was dead, like fade to black. Then I remember seeing her appear, fade to black. And then I remember the coroner telling us that we could go into the apartment and see him before they rolled him away.

And so I walk in and he’s on the stretcher and I look around the room and I can see that there’s blood splatter on the wall, probably from him trying to hit his vein with the needle. I see the belt on the floor, the syringe, and he’s just there. And he was blue. He was so blue. And I touched his hair. He had really soft hair. I touched his hair and I said, bye.

and the coroner took him away, his mom followed, and I walked out and I got into my car and I went straight to the liquor store because I didn’t have anywhere to go. I hadn’t set up systems in place for real support. I hadn’t even really told my family that I was dating someone in recovery. You know, there were so many things that I didn’t do for myself that, so I had no place to land.

when life hit the fan. I had no place to land except at the bottom of the bottle. So I went to the liquor store and I got drunk and honestly from that point on, it was eight months of me on a bender. You know, I mean, there were car wrecks, I was in about seven to eight treatment facilities, you know, I was in hospital stays from like…

three days to like five days in the near ICU, all the way up to like a five week stay at a residential facility. You know, it was like I had run through the gambit of interventions and I kept drinking. It was like, what the hell? But I still wouldn’t talk about what was going on, y’all. Like I was still in between hospitalizations. I was showing up to work and trying to teach and.

You know, I kept trying to pretend that I could just move forward, but I was so heartbroken and I couldn’t tell anybody why I was broken. Do you know how hard that is? That’s really, really hard. And by November of 2020, I was staying here with my sister in Florida in the Tampa Bay area. And I went down another spiral down the bottle and she called.

I forget how I ended up in the hospital, so I don’t know what she called or she took me. But point is, in Florida there’s something called the Baker Act, which is if you are a risk to yourself or others, that you can be hospitalized in a psychiatric hold for 72 hours. So that’s what happened. And once I was there and I finally came to, I was like, oh my god, I’m so exhausted. So exhausted. I cannot keep going like this. This is not sustainable.

It was like I was dying, but I wouldn’t die, but there was also just no way to live, right? So I was like, I’m waving this white flag. I give up. And by giving up, I mean like I give up resisting, not that I give up on trying. And so I gave up resisting my addiction and I finally was like, I will get help. I will take medicine. I will talk about it. And so the biggest…

act of liberation that I did for myself was to break the stigma that I grew up in, right? Like coming from a family that we didn’t talk about anything, I said, no, we’re talking about this. And I wrote an op-ed for the Louisville Journal, Louisville Journal, the Louisville Courier Journal. I wrote an op-ed that came out, it went live on December 3rd, where I told the world, back then I used the term alcoholic. I don’t really use that term anymore. But

Basically I was like, hey, I’m your Kentucky State Teacher of the Year and I’m an alcoholic and these are all the things I’ve been going through in secret and I’m done with it, I’m so over it. At the time that was published, I barely had a week sober because my sobriety date is November 28th, 2020 and I wrote that piece around December 1st and it was published on December 3rd. So it was a really quick turnaround, but that, it had to happen.

There was no other way that I could free myself from alcohol because it was so ingrained in everything that I was doing and the shame was so powerful that the only way I felt that I could free myself was to just completely put myself out in the open where I knew that I was safest by being most vulnerable. I knew that I was safest by making myself incredibly vulnerable. Because

No longer could anyone judge me if I put my story out there myself. So the narrative of my mom shaming me when I was little about what I wanted to eat, to the time that co-worker embarrassed me at happy hour, to the time that I was afraid of losing my marriage, like all of that was squashed when I wrote that piece and I published it.

in the career journal. And immediately after that, I resigned from classroom teaching. I started working at a tutoring company instead so that I could really just focus on my recovery. Because again, I did really love teaching and there’s no way that you can teach well in this country and practice perfect self care, at least not me. If you all are, if you’re a teacher and you’re listening to this and you’ve got to figure it out, please email me so that we can talk about it. But I don’t know how you can be a public school classroom teacher.

and truly take care of yourself and be balanced and do both things well. I don’t have that magic key. So I decided to let go of teaching so that I could take care of myself well. And yeah, and initially in my journey, I was in 12 step programs. And then eventually I realized that they didn’t resonate with me. And when I ended up being a guest on Red Table Talk at about five months sober, and I met several sober women who were not in 12 step programs, I was like, whoa. So

you can be alcohol free and not go to AA. And they were like, yeah, like, look at us. And I was like, oh, snap. And so then I started to explore more and find other communities to get involved in and find other ways to do self-development work, which essentially it’s still, a lot of it is all the same, like 12-step work and a lot of the other work that you have to do to develop yourself. A lot of it has similar undercurrents, right? It’s just a matter of just finding the space that you’re comfy in. And so I eventually, I found my space

My journey started with medications and then eventually I did a lot of self-assessment and work again with my therapist and psychiatrist to decide when it was good to let those go. And eventually let those go. And yeah, ever since it’s been, it’s been quite a journey. I feel like this episode really captures more of like my pre-recovery journey. And I should probably do another one at some point about life, like sober life.

Um, cause honestly that would be a whole other conversation, but yeah, I think that sums it up. I have been alcohol free since November 28th of 2020. I don’t regret any of it. I lost a lot as a result of alcohol, but honestly, I do feel like I stand to gain everything from the world and, um,

I’m so grateful for people like my sister who never gave up on me even when I wanted to give up on me. And for all the people who maybe had an inkling that I was suffering but they didn’t know to what extent and so they just loved on me, so grateful for them too. And yeah, I just, I thank you for listening. If you want to work with me, say, on writing your own story.

and check out my website, bottomlisttosobre.com. If you want one-to-one coaching to help you with breaking past whatever the hell’s holding you back from getting better, feel free to reach out. Schedule a free consultation. There’s a lot of different fun things that I do. Most of the things that I offer are free or super low cost and then, yeah, just like come hang, come connect. Thanks so much for listening and you have a great one.

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In this episode:

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I talk about the shame that can be experienced from feeling stuck on goals that we may have set early on in the year, and do a dive into some of the work around goals that I facilitate to make sure that what you’re working on is resonating with you.

Resources:

Upcoming Workshop: Summer Soul Mid-Year Check In: How Are We, Really?

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas (00:01.95)
Hey everyone. So on today’s episode, I wanted to talk a little bit about goal setting and really giving yourself the permission to say, a fit with regard to some of your goals, if they’re really not meant for you and like giving yourself permission to let them go. Now I’m talking about goals because on July 16th, I will be co-facilitating a workshop around kind of like a mid-year check-in, right? It’s called the Summer Soul Mid-Year Check-in.

How are we really? And the reason why it’s called how are we really is because I feel like right now, social media especially is so full of like, you got six months to have six months of progress or six months of being stuck exactly where you are. And I almost feel like the pressure in a lot of social media content right now is that if you’re not working on a goal, I feel like it’s almost like shame as a motivator to affect change. And I’m here to say first of all,

Shame is never an effective way to get things done. Yes, does shame get things done? Sure. Is it longstanding change? Probably not, right? Shame is not really an effective motivator. It’ll get things done, but in terms of that type of change that’s gonna be permanent, that’s gonna feel good to your body, shame is not it. So I welcome you to mute anything that makes you feel guilty if you have fallen off track.

with anything or if you haven’t really been working on anything and if you have purposely not been working on anything and you’ve just been focusing on living and existing, I want you to recognize that as being totally valid too. You don’t have to spend every season of your life working on something. So I want to give you permission for that too, right? Like if you needed someone to say that, I’ll say it again.

You don’t need to always be actively working on something. It is okay to enter seasons of rest and seasons where you pause. So with that being said, yes, going back to what I was originally saying is that I am hosting or co-hosting a workshop on goal setting on July 16th. And if you wanna sign up for that, it is $15. You can spend $15 like at Starbucks in a heartbeat, right? Like buying like…

a drink and a snack. So, you know, if you feel that investment is worth you diving into yourself, please join us at this workshop and you can register at bottomlesssober.com. So first, let’s talk about whatever you may have set out to do in 2023. Why did you select whatever it was as a goal? So I feel like, for example, I’ll use myself. I have in the past,

use weight loss as a goal, right? And so I want you to pause and think about why, if let’s say we’re selecting weight loss, why you’re selecting that as a goal. And I want you to stop, you know, press pause if you need to, but in your journal or in your device, however you’re writing, really dive into why are you trying to accomplish this? And there’s two things I want you to pay attention to when you’re looking at your why.

Like, are any of your reasons related to you being happy if and only if you accomplish this? Or do any of these whys relate to you feeling worthy if and only if you accomplish this? And the reason I want you to think about that, and we’ll be talking about this in the workshop too, is because I want you to understand that when you’re attaching like you’re worthening your joy to outcomes or results from goals,

You’re basically setting yourself up to have a really, really hard time. You’re setting yourself up to really feel a lot of pain if you experience a setback because you’re tying your value to these outcomes. And also you’re kind of denying yourself the joy of being able to appreciate the journey of being able to appreciate your today, the present, because today is really what you have guaranteed. And so if you were no longer on this earth tomorrow,

Would it be that you’re unhappy because you didn’t have these results? Or can you find joy in what you have today? And so, again, if you are setting goals because you think that you’re gonna be happy only when you accomplish something or that you’re gonna feel worthy only when you accomplish something, I really want you to pause and think about that because what is it about your today that you can’t find some appreciation in or that you can’t find some sort of joy in?

And then the other thing too that I want you to do and that we’ll be doing together is I want you to dig into Where did your why come from in the first place? Right. Um, so again, you might want to press pause While you’re listening and journal this But I want you to answer the following questions like when was the first time that you wanted this result for yourself? Was this a norm that was pushed on you either by your family or society?

Or is this something that genuinely came out from yourself for yourself? And I also want you to ask, who stands to benefit the most from you attaining this goal and why? Is it really you who’s benefiting or are you perceiving some outside force to benefit from this? And sorry, there’s some weird background noise in the building that I’m in right now, so please excuse that extra noise. But coming back to this, I really,

want you to examine your why, and I also want you to examine it with self-compassion. Because first of all, if you’ve been struggling with accomplishing a certain goal, for example, for me with weight loss, right? I’ve always been a pretty active person, et cetera, but weight loss is not really a thing that seems to happen for me. And I can fight myself on it, fight the resistance, get really angry, and judge myself harshly on it. But if I look at it from a lens of self-compassion, I can ask myself, where did all of this come from?

And when I look at my history, I wanted to lose weight when I was younger because my mom told me that I needed to lose weight. Where did she get that from? She got that from my grandmother, who got it from probably her mother, right? But nobody ever stopped to really talk about why should we lose weight, right? And

If I then say for health reasons, right? I can dig into that a little bit more because when I weighed the least, I also was the sickest because I had alcoholic liver disease, right? So I really want you to examine the why because sometimes you may discover that you thought you really wanted something, but it was more so that it’s been a message that’s been programmed in you maybe since you were little that you really wanted this.

at your true heart of hearts, maybe you don’t want it. And I want you to give yourself permission to explore that and ask yourself, where is this desire for this goal coming from? And if it is in fact something that you want, that you generated yourself, and if it is something that you are not tying your worth to and that you are not tying your happiness to, then let’s go for it, right?

then let’s make that something for you to focus on for the rest of the year or whenever you wanna focus on it because it is not tied to your value, it’s not tied to your worth, and it’s actually a goal that you can own and that you can claim, right? Like it should be something that feels tough to do, but you would feel like a badass if you accomplished it, but if you didn’t accomplish it, you would be able to be kind to yourself, right?

This is a goal that maybe you can learn something about yourself with regard. It’s a goal that can excite you But again, it’s you’re not attaching your value to it and it’s something that you truly want to do So I just wanted to like kind of have that little brief conversation with myself and record it Because again, I think that right now

the narrative is, oh, it’s July, and if you haven’t been working on something, you’ve been wasting half a year. And again, that language is really shaming, and that language is really, it’s not helpful. And so again, I want you to practice kindness, I want you to practice self-love, and I want you to also practice authenticity with yourself because you absolutely deserve it. And if you wanna do this activity and some more activities in a group,

Please join me on July 16th at the Summer Soul Mid-Year Workshop Where we’ll be doing this in a group and some other activities as well and you can register for that at bottomlesstosober.com Thanks so much. Have a great one.

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In this episode:

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What’s going to treatment like? Listen as I read my story, Drowning in Shallow Water, written for Love and Literature Magazine, in this episode. My experience is my own, but it may help answer questions about what rehab is like if you’re curious. If you want support with your own storytelling, I invite you to sign up for my Free Writing Workshop, and if you enjoy that, register for my Six-Week Writing for Healing Program. 

Content Warning: car accident, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, strong language

Resources:

Using Family Medical Leave for Substance Abuse Treatment

Types of Treatment Programs

Love and Literature Magazine

Free Writing for Healing Workshop

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas:
Hey everyone! So today we’re gonna do some legit just storytelling. I am going to be running the third iteration of my writing program, Writing for Healing, with a free workshop on July 8th, followed by the six-week writing program that starts July 15th. Check that information out at bottomlesstosober.com. I’m always open for more folks if more folks want to join. So yeah, so today I just want to tell a story. So sit back, relax, get comfortable.

Content warning, there are parts that talk about car accidents, going to treatment, death, suicidal ideation, drug overdose, etc. So in general when we tell stories about our life in active addiction, there tends to be a lot of content that is really rough. So just giving you that heads up, some strong language as well. So you might need to skip this if you’re not into hearing any of those things. But otherwise…

Get comfortable. I hope that if you have never been to rehab and have been curious that this answers some questions for you. If you are going to rehab and you’re thinking, what can I expect? Obviously this is my personal situation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw something similar. And then lastly, if you have a loved one in rehab, I hope this also answers some questions for you about what they may be going through. I went to rehab about eight times, I believe. Seven, eight hospitalizations.

So that gives you a sense of my experience in facilities, which is plentiful. So I’ll go ahead and I’ll get started. This story, I wrote it in 2021. It’s called Drowning in Shallow Water. It was originally published for Love and Literature Magazine. And now I get to read it to you here on the Bottomless to Sober podcast. So I hope you get comfy and enjoy. Excuse me while I clear my throat. Part one.

racing to the bottom. I’m fine, I’m fine, I said, narrowly opening my eyes, trying to make sense of what was happening while hanging upside down. It was the morning of May 25th, 2020, and I had just gained consciousness after wrecking my car on Bartstown Road in Louisville, Kentucky. I vaguely remembered that my dog, Cruz, and I were on our way to meet a friend for a walk. Instead, I found myself suspended in the air

by my seatbelt, realizing that everything was upside down and feeling the pressure of blood rushing to my head, awake and still alive, unfortunately. Wait, my dog. I started to mumble when I looked out and there he was. His tail was still as if he was holding his breath waiting for me. Relief. Then the waves hit my body, one after the other. Not pain, but first,

fear. What’s happening to me? Next, anger. I shouldn’t be okay. I don’t want this. Lastly, shame. I’m awful. How could I want to die with my dog in the car? What kind of sick person am I? I deserve to die. I’m fucking hopeless. I wanted to walk away from the scene to escape the best way I knew how. Racing to the bottom of a bottle of cheap bourbon.

first things first, these damn first responders weren’t letting me go if it wasn’t in an ambulance. I hadn’t even realized that I lacerated my elbow and had pieces of glass embedded throughout my skin like some sort of glittery decor. “‘I don’t want any goddamn help,’ I muttered under my breath as I got into the ambulance. I had to answer the same rote questions I’ve responded to many times in ambulance rides. Wait, how do you spell your last name? D for David.'”

U, E for Edward, and it went on until getting to the hospital. Though I was furious and incredibly resentful at going to the hospital, there was one positive, pain pills. My favorite mind-altering drug has always been alcohol, as I never had the umph in me to work as hard as people do to go get illicit drugs. However, I certainly wasn’t going to reject a nice prescription either. I could already feel the euphoria just before blacking out with

burning splashes of Evan Williams. I couldn’t wait to escape my misery and get away for a day or two. Here’s your prescription for ibuprofen 800s. Excuse me? Ibuprofen? I felt myself clutching my nonexistent pearls. Yes ma’am. But I just flipped my car over. I just got out of a terrible wreck. Sorry, you aren’t experiencing enough pain for anything stronger. Wow.

Immediately, I wondered what the fuck someone would have to do to get a pain pill around here. I mean, lose a limb? Well, there went any slight, on-the-bright-side feeling I was starting to have. My stomach started sinking again. I rolled my eyes and groaned. Getting home from the hospital, I knew I would have to tell my sister what happened. I had already been hospitalized several times since April 28th when I found my then-boyfriend dead from a drug overdose.

Ever since, I was trapped in what felt like a never-ending bender from hell. In less than a month, I had already gone twice to detox. I had several emergency room visits with dangerously high blood alcohol levels. So to prepare myself for this call, I got a few liquor bottles dropped off thanks to alcohol delivery and opened one of the bottles. No need to pour it in a glass. I drank it like water. Jess, you’re dying. You need help. Please go somewhere.

I can’t handle this. Every time the phone rings, I’m terrified,” Sophie cried. I sighed and thought to myself, damn, I don’t wanna be hurting her like this. So I picked up the phone and called the local treatment facility inquiring about their five-week program. Deep down, I was hoping they wouldn’t have a bed open. Deep down, I wanted to just keep drinking and shut down.

I was already dreading the feeling of detoxing and withdrawals. The woman on the phone said, yes, we can take you. How about we pick you up later today? I went to clutch my imaginary pearls again. Today? But I’m not packed. That’s okay. Someone can drop clothes off for you. I tried to deflect. I can’t come tomorrow? Well, sweetheart, you can come tomorrow. But will you make it till then?

I sighed and rolled my eyes. Fine, but can you come in the evening? Yes. Rubbing my hands together, I realized I had a few hours so that I could give myself one last hurrah before I went into this place. I couldn’t imagine five weeks without drinking. I dreaded the idea of having to feel everything, of only being unconscious to sleep. So I swallowed hard, I drank fast. I threw the ibuprofen 800s in the trash.

I vaguely remember a friend coming to get Cruz, and then everything went dark and silent. I couldn’t feel a thing. Things were exactly how I wanted them to be, always and forever. I came to on a couch in an unfamiliar space. I looked around. There were people watching TV, others were playing card games at a table, someone was writing in a notebook while reading out of what appeared to be a Bible.

I could tell I needed a drink. My head was starting to throb. My hands were beginning to shake. I looked down. As I examined the dried blood on my clothes, I suddenly felt like my elbow was being stabbed. There were some rough stitches in there. The thick, black surgical threads stuck out of my elbow like a porcupine’s needles. I got up only to feel the room starting to spin. And a woman, to this day I don’t remember who it was, grabbed my good arm and walked me to a room.

She pointed me to a plainly dressed bed. Immediately I got in, back to black, relief. I finally woke up with a clearer head in that same bed and walked out of the room. It looked like I was in a college dorm setup of some kind. I saw people sitting in a courtyard, cigarettes, and vape pens in hand, surrounded by a cloud of smoke to the left of me. In front of me, standing at a desk, a young woman looked at me and smiled.

Hi Jessica, how are you love? I’m Danielle. Danielle was a tech, so she was introducing herself to let me know that she, alongside the other techs, supervised the area to make sure that all was in order. She was also a few years in recovery from all kinds of drugs, and she just glowed. As she walked me around the facility to give me a sense of where I was, she ran down basic things like the schedule, the rules, and our responsibilities. Yes, we as the patients had chores.

Some people eagerly waved hello as we passed them. Others looked like they had just gotten there too and moved about like zombies. You know, Jessica, my boyfriend died two years ago from a drug overdose too. I was immediately caught off guard. First, I wondered how she knew. Then second, I felt a surge of relief. It had basically been a month since Ian died.

And I had yet to hear that there was another soul on this earth who also had a boyfriend who died from a drug overdose. She sat me down and shared her story with me. There was so much I related to, I had to ask. But how did you live through it? How are you still here? In my mind, I thought this life experience was supposed to come with some sort of death sentence. That I would just

bide my time until I killed myself or died of alcohol poisoning. But Danielle, here she was, joyful, glowing, and with some solid continuous silver time under her belt, and proving me wrong. Oh, trust me, she said. It was the worst experience of my life to date, and my heart is still broken. Eventually, though, you start to find your way in this world with grief. I promise you it gets better.

I’m a testament to that. Immediately, I felt a tiny shift in me, a butterfly in my stomach. Maybe it does, in fact, get better. I mean, if Danielle did it, perhaps I can too. She gave me a hug, which also surprised me, and she went off to finish her shift. Before leaving for the day, Danielle came back to find me and handed me a sheet she pulled from the tech desk printer.

The paper read, “‘People think a soulmate is your perfect fit, “‘and that’s what everyone wants. “‘But a true soulmate is a mirror, “‘the person who shows you everything “‘that is holding you back, “‘the person who brings you to your own attention “‘so you can change your life. “‘A true soulmate is probably the most important person “‘you’ll ever meet, “‘because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.'”

But to live with a soulmate forever? Nah, too painful. Soulmates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you and then leave. A soulmate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control.

that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master. This was an excerpt from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love. I knew then that although it was going to be a long five weeks, that maybe this was exactly what I needed. And now we’ve got chapter two, or part two, surrounded and alone.

Well, the funny thing is I didn’t tell him that I had the Holy Trinity. Natalie cackled while talking to some of the 20-somethings in the courtyard. Off to the side of everyone chatting, I was sitting in a beat up camping chair, trying to mind my business and enjoy the sun and its warmth on my skin. But Natalie’s voice carried over to my ears and I could feel my ears perk up. Holy Trinity, I wondered, what’s she talking about? Even though I initially wasn’t listening,

Her gleeful energy in between cigarette pulls caught everyone’s attention, including mine. “‘You know,’ she said as the smoke slowly floated up from the side of her mouth, “‘Hep A, Hep B, and Hep C.’ Immediately, my jaw dropped with a slight gasp and laugh. What? Then I had a flashback to the night before when I saw some of the younger ones, as I like to call them, scurrying around the facility.

They were trying to distract the techs from supervising so Natalie and some other kid could run off to have sex. What was another conquest for Natalie to brag about was about to become a really uncomfortable situation for that kid. Days later, he came back to us saying he tested positive. Originally, I thought it would be for hepatitis, given, you know, Mother Teresa and her Holy Trinity, but it turned out to be some other STI. So maybe the joke was on Natalie.

I don’t know. There were no condoms around because of course, no one was supposed to have sex, except they did, and clearly, it was not safe. I remember one morning coming back to my room after brushing my teeth. As I approached, I noticed that the lights were off. Hmm, did I do that? Our doors didn’t lock at the facility, so as I leaned on the door with my arms full of toiletries, I heard heavy breathing coming from the other side of the room.

and saw shuffling under the covers. It was my roommate with a particularly creepy man who made my skin crawl. I cringed when I heard him moan then loudly whisper in her ear. He definitely was not a 20-something. Do I interrupt, I wondered? Do I tell a tech what’s happening? I knew the rules, but I didn’t know what was considered right and what was wrong. I was quickly learning during my stay that it wasn’t about the rules.

It was about what I needed to get through those 35 days in peace. It hit me that my five weeks would quickly feel like 10 weeks if I had a conflict with anyone. So in that moment, I decided that I hadn’t seen or heard anything. Before they noticed that I had walked in, I stepped out and took a seat in the common area. I exhaled, putting my face in the palm of my hand to wait. It only took a few minutes for him to come out of the room. I was not surprised.

While the techs occasionally played whack-a-mole trying to control the 20-somethings, I found myself entertained in my own way thanks to another patient. No, I did not have sex with this man. I didn’t even touch him. But I still found myself distracted in his company. Our connection brought me comfort at a moment in my life when I was grieving the man I knew was permanently gone. He was no replacement, but he took me away from my pain. If I couldn’t have alcohol while in treatment,

at least I could have some male attention, and he was exactly what I needed for those five weeks. I always looked forward to early evening when we could work on crossword puzzles by the tech desk. We chatted with each other and the techs who, like Danielle, were all in recovery and helped remind us that getting better was possible. As it got close to 9 p.m., I began to dread my nightly trip to the nurse’s statement, nurse’s station. As soon as I took my night meds,

the clock started counting down. Slowly my eyelids got heavier and my head started to knot off, which annoyed me. It was a nice change for once to actually want to be awake, but those meds sapped my energy. I was finally laughing with others after not having done so in over a month. And even more surprising, I was smiling again. I didn’t want the meds to take that little bit of joy away from me every evening.

As we worked on the crossword one time, I looked at him and wondered, why isn’t he sleepy? It was then that I learned from others how to cheek my meds. So that night, I went into the nurse’s station, I took the little paper cup with my medications, emptied it into my mouth, and said, ah, like a little kid, as I stuck my tongue out so the nurse could take a look. All the while,

I tasted the bitterness of the pills hidden between my gums and cheek as they started to break down. I rushed to the bathroom to spit them out before they disintegrated, wrapped them up in tissue, stuffed them into my bra, and saved them for when I actually wanted to go to bed. Back to the crosswords. I rapidly fell into the daily routine. I was so wrapped up with therapy, groups, and classes that I started to forget about the world outside.

the world that treatment was shielding me from. I was vaguely aware that it was a world that seemed to have fallen apart. Every now and then, someone would flip past the news channel while looking for another episode of Botched. I remember hearing snippets of COVID’s numbers going up as the TV abruptly switched to Naked and Afraid or some other reality show. I remember being allowed to watch TV briefly while the protests broke out around the country and just miles away from where we were. Then…

as soon as gunshots rang out live on TV, it suddenly became silent. TV off. A part of me was relieved to be away from it all, away from one unprecedented event after the other, as well as the alcohol that waited outside patiently for me. Every week, I got 30 minutes to speak to someone from the outside on video chat. I always chose my sister, Sophie. It had hurt her so much to see me struggling.

that I wanted to show her how good I looked the longer I was in treatment. You have no idea how much at peace I feel knowing you’re safe. I’ve been taking the family support classes and I’m learning a lot, she would say. That facility provided classes for both families and patients on addiction and how it is a disease and not a failure of character. I still felt like a failure, but I didn’t have to think about that in treatment. Instead,

I could just relax like I was at a summer camp for dysfunctional adults. I knew what was waiting for me on the other side of the fence. It was the people outside, those people and their opinions, and that ran chills down my spine. Mommy doesn’t know where I’m at, right? I asked. Each time I spoke to my sister, I asked if people had figured out where I was, fearful that my secret would be revealed.

I just wanted people to think I was taking time for myself and unplugging after the loss. I didn’t want a soul to know that I was locked away in a treatment facility, that I was institutionalized. The very idea of anyone knowing where I was made my heart race and my stomach sink fast, like a freefall with no end. I’d seen people get ripped apart publicly because of their secrets, and I didn’t want that to be me.

As I watched my sister chat on the screen about her days and what things have been like for her, my mind wandered to thoughts of how I would rather die than have others know where I was. I mean, how could I, this teacher loved by the community, be an alcoholic? How could I be such an extreme case that I couldn’t be trusted with my own life and had to be locked away? How could I be a good person but be hooked so badly? It just didn’t make…

sense. I didn’t tell my sister that those thoughts raced through my mind while we spoke. I didn’t tell my therapist when I looked her in the eyes across her desk. I didn’t tell anyone in my group sessions during those heavy pauses when I could have said something. I did not tell a single soul how torn I felt inside. Even in those moments surrounded by people just like me, I was alone.

That was part two. Now we’re at part three. If you’re still with me, thank you for listening. Part three, the truth they wanted. Jessica Vivian Duenas, beloved teacher, community member, friend, sister, daughter, and aunt passed away on May 25th, 2020 at the age of 35 in a tragic car accident. She had a great passion for education and community engagement.

and a great dedication to her family. Jessica leaves behind her mother, Amable, her siblings, Sandra, Lorena, Gretel, Victor, and Sofia, and her friends, colleagues, students, and her dog, Cruz.

We have a lot of assignments and treatment designed to teach us not to drink or use drugs, but writing my own obituary wasn’t an activity given to everyone. A tech, this older lady named Lisa, felt I should write it given my recklessness. The process of starting to draft it was awkward, but in fact painful. The thinking of those left behind nodded my stomach as I visualized each crying face. I can imagine my middle school student, James,

He was usually smiling, often with his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh at something silly he just did or saw some other kid do. I pictured a woman, his mother, walking into the room he’s in and saying, I’m so sorry, baby, Ms. Duane has died yesterday. Suddenly, his almost shut from laughing squinted eyes would soften and his cheeks that stood high from smiling just dropped down.

and water wells up so much in his eyes that the single tear he was holding back slowly starts to roll down his face, past his nose and onto his lip. What you mean, mama? She sniffles. I’m sorry, baby. She leans over to embrace him, and at that moment, I’m so broken at the thought of another’s pain that I shake my head like a dog does to bring myself back into the present moment.

I was in the fireplace room in the facility. Our women’s group usually did most of our sessions in that space. Today we had to meditate, but instead we were all doing different things. No one actually meditated because no one you had to sit still unless you were drunk or high and basically knocked out of consciousness. Some women, like Denise, decided to take a nap because she was still detoxing. She ended up here after her husband found her on the floor next to a shattered bottle of wine.

She had just shared in a group that she was a full-time mom in her 30s who loved Mommy Needs Wine jokes until she realized that in fact, Mommy needed wine. I’m not a mom, but I nodded my head as soon as she spoke because I knew that needing feeling really well. Shanika walked over to the bookshelf, pulled a book at random, sat down and cracked it open. It was nice seeing her back from the other psych hospital. She was more calm and settled.

On her first day here, she was under the influence of God knows what. She had the wildest eyes, looked at me, and immediately said, I know you! Where do I know you from? I panicked. Oh no

Jessica Dueñas (24:43.634)
I saw his eyes open wide and then we made eye contact. Clearly he didn’t know what to do. Shit, I didn’t know what to do. So I just looked at him, raised my eyebrows and shrugged my shoulders. It was funny to be honest. We were trapped in a circle of prayer. So what were we supposed to do? I’m sorry to connect your connection with God here, but Shanika’s grabbing my ass? Like, no. Thankfully the circle eventually ended.

and off she went. He and I looked at each other and laughed, perhaps a bit uncomfortably. It turned out Shanika was hallucinating and having a psychotic break. Her breaking point with our facility occurred when she climbed onto her roommate’s bed in the middle of the night and picked at her because she was covered in supposedly ants. That scuffle caused security to run into the room and quickly snatch her up. So Shanika was gone for a few days to complete her detox at a higher security psychiatric facility.

Those are the type of hospitals that take your bra from you so you don’t stab someone with your underwire. You can’t have shoelaces there so that you can’t hang yourself. It’s the type of place where techs have to lay eyes on you once every 10 minutes, even when you’re asleep, to make sure you haven’t suddenly died. You’d be in a deeply medicated sleep and abruptly wake up to a flashlight in your face. I’ve been in those places too. So to see her back with us in the fireplace room,

calm and quietly reading was a testament to how we can slowly come back from the dead after a few days of being in rehab. She didn’t recognize me anymore. That was a relief. My secret was still safe. Once we finished meditating, a social worker came to work with us to discuss relapse prevention planning. Essentially, we were going to sit there and outline everything that triggered us to get drunk or high and then a list of 10 things to do instead.

As I listened to her, I tilted my head to the side and scratched my scalp a little bit. I raised my hand. Yes, Jessica. She turned to me. This isn’t my first time writing a relapse prevention plan, but I just don’t get how it’s supposed to work. I mean, I’ll be honest. If I want a drink, I’m not going to say, hmm, where’s my prevention plan? That just doesn’t make sense, I said. She paused.

Sure, that’s a great point. So you put it on sticky notes and you place them all over your home. Alrighty, I thought to myself, shaking my head. Inside, I wanted to scream. Don’t you get it? I’m addicted to alcohol. So my default setting is drinking. If not drinking, we’re as easy as opening up some sort of almanac reference guide, filling out a handout or looking at a sticky note.

We wouldn’t be sitting here filling in the blanks on this paper in this treatment facility right now, would we? Instead, I just went ahead and started to fill it out. Triggers. Grief, sadness, loneliness, anger, darkness, joy, light, anything? Better scratch off those last few items. I didn’t want to keep them there and then be accused of being cynical. I knew how these places operated.

The social workers keep notes on patients, their behavior, their participation. Good behavior gets sent to the discharge team and puts folks on a list to go home. Poor behavior keeps you around longer. You can’t just leave treatment one day because you think you’re good to go. The only ways out are to either hop the fence and run, break the rules badly enough to get kicked out, run out of insurance, or wait until they let you go.

and that is contingent on you finishing the program to their satisfaction. I didn’t have the energy to run or rebel, and as a state employee, I had good health insurance, so my only way out was to comply. I was down to my last couple of weeks, and it was nice to be on a little sober vacation. I had actually made friends with some people, but I wanted to go home. However, I didn’t know if I was in fact ready to leave.

I just knew that if I kept the social workers checking off the boxes on my discharge list, I’d be getting the green light to leave soon enough. I needed to get out and be on my own, away from everyone, away from the cigarette smoke in the courtyard, the saltless meals throughout the day, from the lack of privacy. That was my goal. I wanted to be in complete solitude whether I was really ready or not. That was, uh.

Part three, and now we’re up to the last part, part four. Thanks for listening with me. And part four is called, This House of Broken Promises.

Jessica Dueñas (29:47.498)
Rehab is like a fortress. When you come in, we protect you from your demons, but when you leave, those demons are right where you left them, waiting. So how are you going to be different when you walk out those doors? We were in a women’s session and the counselor, Catherine, stopped to ask us that question. Shit, I don’t know. Was I different?

My eyes shifted from side to side to see if anyone showed signs of having morphed. Then, as I processed more of what she said, I also realized that this so-called fortress didn’t do that good of a job of protecting us from our demons, or even ourselves while inside. The counselors always sat around in meetings each morning before coming in to work with us. Catherine was always in the know about all the patient gossip and drama. But how could she ignore?

that the day before one of my friends found a 20 something slumped over in the bathroom stall. He had snuck pain pills in and knotted off after using them in the restroom. He had to go to the ER. Did she not get filled in by management on how the week before Melissa, a mom in treatment on a judge’s order, was caught high on meth? This was her last chance to get her kids back from foster care and she ended up high after almost 20 days sober.

I just didn’t expect to see it right in my face. When Connor snuck meth in and showed it to me, I didn’t know about anything but that feeling right then. I just want to apologize to the group for using drugs here. Now I don’t know what the judge will do with my kids.” Melissa cried. I remember her trying to hold back the tears as she apologized to us.

I wish I could go back to that moment and hold Melissa and then shake her and yell at her and say, don’t apologize to us. You thought you were safe and some idiot used what he knew would be a weakness against you. Don’t be ashamed because you relapsed. You’re not a bad mom. You’re not a bad person. Be proud that you’re still here and willing to continue to try. Be proud that you accepted another chance. Be proud that you’re getting help. That’s what I wanted to say to her. Really.

These were all things I wish people would have said to me each time I relapsed last year in 2020. I say these things now to others when they relapse. I can’t help but wonder how Melissa is today and where her kids are. She always carried these slightly crinkled pictures of them in her folder and liked to pull them out in meetings and sessions. They had big smiles, glowing skin, big messy curls that looked just like they got tussled while they had a blast playing.

I hope they’re all together. I left the facility before she did and lost touch quickly after. Did she become that different person that Catherine, the social worker said we had to become? Was she able to ward off the dragons laying awake outside of rehab after the five weeks were up? Five weeks, what a long time for her, for anyone. 35 days.

I have 35 days of peace away from everything. These five weeks in rehab were meant for me to cocoon myself before I emerged and flew away like some big beautiful butterfly. My days in rehab were coming to an end, and as I felt my discharge day getting closer every morning, I saw the new date on the board. June 27th, June 28th, and finally June 29th, the night before my departure. All right, Miss Jessica.

Let’s review and sign off on your aftercare plan. We are confirming that you are in fact going back to your house where you live by yourself and you will be attending IOP, intensive outpatient, for nine weeks,” said Nancy. Nancy was a social worker in charge of our transitional plans. “‘Are you sure you don’t want to go into sober living?’ she asked. I shook my head. Hell no, I thought. There is absolutely no way that I was going to move into sober living.”

I was ready to be in my own space by myself and back with my puppy, Cruz. I’ll be honest, I had the fleeting thought that maybe going straight home wasn’t the best idea. Then I had another thought that if I wanted to drink, my location wasn’t going to stop me from doing so, so I might as well go home. These back and forth conversations in my head were draining me of any morale I had left.

After weeks of classes and group sessions, I could teach someone else the ins and outs of treatment. I could tell you exactly what triggers are and the science behind addiction and why we were all after dopamine, whether you drank cheap liquor or shot heroin. I could tell you all about 12-Step and other recovery programs that we were introduced to. I was the valedictorian of rehab, a perfect mirror. Anything that I was taught, I reflected back to everyone else well enough to make them think Jessica’s got it, when in fact, I did not.

My last night in our group meeting, we went around the room and everyone had something nice to say about their time knowing me and their confidence in my ability to do well. I smiled at everyone and gave big hugs and promises of staying friends and keeping in touch. Internally, I cringed as each kind word make my stomach sink further. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. I remember going to bed, bags packed, outfits selected to go home in.

In my head, I plan to go back to normal and just not drink. But deep down, there was that damn sinking feeling. I felt it every time I tried to convince myself that I was going back to normal. I tried to replay everyone’s kind words, but I couldn’t find ease or comfort in them. I pulled my hidden sleep meds from my bra and swallowed them quickly so I could fall asleep fast and escape the sense of impending doom I hated so much.

The morning came and my friend, who had been taking care of Cruz since the day I went into treatment, was waiting there to pick me up. I walked out into the sun and into her arms. It was so good to hug a friend from the outside world. We went straight to the grocery store where the smell of cilantro in the produce aisle made my mouth water. I remember filling my basket full of bright fruits and other healthy snacks. I was planning to keep up with the balanced eating habits I had picked up in treatment.

Though I was dead sober, I don’t remember the ride back to my house. It was a blur. My friend came into the house with me, did a quick safety check to make sure there weren’t any bottles remaining, embraced me and asked, Alright girl, you gonna be good? Uh, I thought, but I said, Yeah, it’ll be tough, but I’ll be good. As I shut the door behind her,

I turned around and looked into my house. It was an empty, painful sight to take in. So it’s just you and me, I thought. Just me in this house of broken dreams. I went to turn the TV on, but nothing happened. I forgot that I had fallen onto it while drunk at some point and broke some cables. I opened my laptop to get online, but

There was a picture of my dead boyfriend, handsome and joyful, so I slammed the computer shut. I sat at the table, but the seat felt too hard. I went to the couch, but the seat was covered in dog hair. I moved to another chair, but it felt empty. Then, like a small drop of water that will eventually overflow a bucket, the thought of having a drink made its way into my head.

From this one thought, the desire immediately rushed throughout my body. I was overcome by the fiendish sensation. I know I shouldn’t. I told myself. This thought was immediately followed by rationalizations. Well, I can order a bottle and I don’t have to drink it, I said to myself as I got on my phone to get on the alcohol delivery app. Yeah, I said to myself.

I can pour it down the drain after a few drinks,” I told myself when I closed out my cart and completed my purchase. I repeated these same thoughts over the next hour as I waited for the delivery. I reawakened my old routine of pretending everything was fine. I called my sister, Hey, just letting you know I’m finally home. Yeah, it’s definitely weird. Yeah, I promise I’ll call if anything.

Yeah, I’m so sleepy. I’m going to go to bed early. I also sent a few texts to other people to let them know that all was good and that I was going to quote unquote bed because I was quote unquote tired. Um, this was around 7 30 PM though. I was not going to bed.

The alcohol was in my hands and then my mouth. It burned in my throat. I gagged at first because I had forgotten what it was like and had chugged it straight from the bottle like I had been in a desert and hid in an oasis. I was finally out of this protective space that treatment was intended to be for me, this so-called fortress, this cocoon. I was in fact a beautiful butterfly. But my wings…

My wings were crumpled. I couldn’t fly. And so I crashed hard. As I lay there flat on my back on the floor, a song played on repeat that I fell in love with while I was gone. It’s called Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues.

Never reaching the end, letters I’ve written, never meaning to send, beauty I’d always missed with these eyes before, just what the truth is I can’t say anymore. I took one last breath, closed my eyes, and everything faded to black as I went back under the water of my addiction.

And that is Drowning in Shallow Water, originally written for Love and Literature magazine back in 2021. Obviously I have now been sober since November 28th of 2020, so I have over two and a half years of recovery at the time of this recording. If you want help with writing your own story, join me on my free writing workshop on July 8th, and I have another one coming up in September. That is at bottomlesstosober.com.

You’re also more than welcome to join me in my full six-week writing program where I help you do what I just did. Thanks so much for listening. Feel free to send me a message if you listened on what resonated with you from that story. Thanks again so much. Have a great one.

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In this episode:

Link to Spotify

I share about why we should stay sober even when the current events repeatedly show themselves are darker and grimmer. I offer an alternative to the thought, “The world has gone to hell, so why bother getting sober?”

Recommended Resources:

Why Bother Getting Sober When The World is Falling Apart, TikTok by Jessica Dueñas

Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas
Hey everyone. So today we’re gonna talk about basically how to survive, how to stay sober when it really feels like the world is going to shit. So quick story, I remember there was one time I was working with a client and something happened on a federal legal scale that was incredibly discouraging, which happens at this point all the time now. And her comment to me was, I don’t even.

see why I should bother getting sober when everything’s gone to hell anyway. And so if you’re listening to this and you feel that way, I hear you and I recognize that yes, things often do feel like they’ve gone to hell. However, I’m going to encourage you to still stay sober, to still try despite the world apparently falling apart.

The first point that I want to bring up, right, for any of you who might care about any kind of social activism, social supports, etc. for others, is that if you in any way expect to contribute to changing things or to helping to change things that are not directly in your control, I promise you that you in the throes of addiction are not going to be able to help anybody else. So that’s going to be like my first point, right?

You’ve got to be sober in order to help other people. If you are struggling with addiction, you’ve got to be sober in order to truly show up for yourself and for others. Now, when I was an educator, I was in the throes of addiction. And yes, I was helping a lot of other people. I was helping students. I was able to amass massive amounts of money to fundraise for the school that I worked at, et cetera. But you know who I wasn’t showing up for? For me. And the way that I was doing that, I would eventually have died an early death

and never seen the fruit of all the work that I was putting in. But if you’re sober, right, you can show up for any cause that you want to support and know that at least you are giving yourself the chance in your lifetime to see things through. But if you are not trying to fight your addiction, your addiction is eventually going to get you. So I want to bring that up as the first point. The other point that I want to point out

I know things seem really terrible now, but I promise you that throughout, like, humans’ existence, we have always gone through, the generations before us have always gone through unprecedented times, right? I personally speaking, as a descendant of people who were colonized, as a descendant of people who were enslaved, if my ancestors had said, well, fuck it, like, now I’m a slave, so why bother?

or if my ancestors had said, well damn, now the Spanish came in and took our lands, right? Why bother? If my ancestors had said those things, I wouldn’t be here. And so I encourage you, regardless of your own background, regardless of who your ancestors are, et cetera, I want you to understand that if you sit there and say, why bother, that you are robbing future you.

or not even you, if you, I’m not even saying that you’re gonna have children or not, but like you’re robbing like the future, the opportunity of what you can accomplish if you choose to stay here and fight for your recovery. And really, I don’t feel like I have a third point, and this is gonna be like a super short randomness of me just talking, but I just wanted to point those things out, that you matter, your recovery matters. You.

While you are still on this earth, you deserve, you owe it to yourself and to anybody who might be impacted by you to show up fully. And if you’re fighting addiction, that means getting help. And that’s all I’ve got.

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In this episode:

Link to Spotify

I talk about my experiences with dating and provide suggestions for managing navigating dating while in recovery. What I won’t do, is tell you to avoid dating in your first year.

Recommended Resources:

Dating While In Recovery Blog Piece by Jessica Dueñas

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Transcript:

Jessica Dueñas:
Hey everyone, so today we’re going to talk about dating, which is always of course a hot topic in the recovery world. And first I’ll start by telling a little story, which I think is probably going to be how I model this podcast, always starting off with a little story. So when I first got sober, if you don’t know, I was single because I had been in a relationship with a boyfriend who passed away.

due to his own addiction. So I was totally like not looking at anybody for a while and then honestly early on in my recovery journey probably about like five six seven months sober I had a an interest but I lived in Tampa and he lived in Louisville, Kentucky and you know, obviously Nothing serious could happen because we were so far away, but at a little over

or almost at my one year mark, I don’t think I had hit a month yet, a year yet. You know, I decided that it felt right for me to pursue a serious relationship. And when I told him that, he wasn’t ready. And that was fine, so I left. Or you know, I like ended things with him. And that was where I first learned the lesson, don’t chase.

and don’t stay waiting around for people who aren’t ready for you. So I always tell that to folks and clients I work with. We, no need, someone who is ready and willing will appear when they’re meant to. So I let him go. But then I had to start, I was like, okay, I want a relationship. I’m feeling good, I’m feeling healthier, I’m feeling like I have a better sense of what I want. I do believe I can love again, et cetera. So I created online profiles.

And I remember one of the very first people I connected with, everything seemed great until I told him my story. And when I told him my story, he was just like, no, that his mom was an alcoholic and he didn’t, he wanted nothing to do with me and he blocked me. I remember I felt so hurt, like so hurt and I cried and I was just like, oh my gosh.

I’m never going to find anybody, like how could I, like how am I going to recover from this? Like I’ve got like a scarlet letter on me, that’s what it felt like. And so I paused for a little bit with dating and did some work on that mindset. And you know, I came to the realization, right, like that other people are allowed to have their preferences. And the same way that other people can have their preferences, so can we.

Because at the end of the day, yes, being in recovery can be a possible turnoff to some people, but it’s not going to be a turnoff to the right person. And everybody’s recovering from something. So just because someone doesn’t have a substance use problem doesn’t mean that they’re automatically this supposed healthy person. So I want you to keep that in mind if you are a person in recovery listening to this, that I really want you to think of being in recovery not as a liability.

but rather as an asset. Because is it humanly possible for us to relapse? Yes, I personally have seen someone relapse and someone pass away as a result of a relapse. So I know how bad a relapse can go. I’m fully aware of that as I say this to you. However, for someone who is really strong in whatever program of recovery they’re practicing, they’re actively involved in their community or with their therapist or their coach or whatever, their church community, whatever keeps you sober.

If you are firm in that, you’re good, as long as you keep doing the work, right? So with that being said, you are a complete asset because to go from the depths of addiction to be freed from a chemical dependency and be like functional and in this society as a human being who contributes regularly to it, that’s huge. So I want you to welcome that thought into your life. Like if you’re sitting there thinking like, oh my gosh, no one’s ever gonna.

date me because I am dealing with addiction, recovery, like no, the right person is going to see your story and see all the value and the knowledge and experience that you carry with you for that. So I want to remind you of that. So with that being said, I want to kind of talk a little bit about that, about mindset with dating, right? So as I already said, being in recovery is not a liability. It is absolutely an asset if you feel firm in it.

If you feel shaky in your own recovery, maybe that’s a sign that you have some work to do. But if you’re feeling strong about your journey, then I want you to embrace it and move forward with it. I also want to encourage you to not settle just because you are in recovery. Because like I said, being in recovery doesn’t make you any less than or better than the person next to you on that date. So it’s so important to understand that.

Recovery does not suddenly give you this excuse to lower your standards because you’re feeling insecure. It absolutely does not. The next thing that I want you to think about also is paying really close attention to your body and trusting yourself when your instincts are telling you something is wrong with the person that you’re seeing. Because again, I think a lot of us are recovering from substance use disorders, whether it’s alcohol or other.

substances, right? We tend to feel really low about ourselves. We think we deserve less than. We think that we’re lucky to be alive and we should just be grateful for whatever human just graces us with their presence. No. Like, let me say that. No. You absolutely deserve to have the standards that you want to hold. You absolutely deserve to have whatever standards it is that you want to hold, right? Like you shouldn’t be…

dealing with someone who feels questionable to you if your body is telling you not to. You’ve got to trust and listen to yourself, okay? I don’t regret anybody who, within the first time that they showed me their true colors, I did not sit there and be like, oh, well, let me make some excuses for them. No, I just said, you know what? This person does not feel good for me, so I’m going to let them go. And I let them go.

and I let them go knowing that like this universe or whatever you wanna call it, there’s eight billion people on this planet. And I knew that if I let one go, there would without a doubt be another person. You have to remember that. If you don’t wanna be all woo and all spiritual, then be a mathematician and do the math. There’s eight billion people on this planet. There’s gotta be at least one person that you can get with. Think about it that way. So in terms of like moving forward and what to do,

Really I encourage you to try different things and see what sticks with you and what doesn’t, right? So like, if you’re doing online dating, maybe for a while, put that you’re sober on your profile and see who you connect with and see how that feels. Or don’t put anything about drinking on your profile and maybe when it’s time to actually meet up, suggest having coffee, suggest going for a walk, suggest going for tea. Or if you decide to meet up at a bar, right?

give them the heads up in advance like, hey, just so you know, I’m gonna be having mocktails, I’m not drinking tonight, or however you wanna frame it. Or just be bold, go crazy, and tell somebody that you’re in recovery and see how they respond to that. Why not? This is literally like a whole experiment, like our lives. Like our lives are like science experiments and we get to try things out.

see the results. If we like the results, we keep doing what we’ve tried. If we don’t like the results, we try something different. And literally, regardless of how you do it, you are, you’re never going to get like a letter from the universe telling you that you did it right, right? So like, you might as well just go try different things and your body and your instincts are going to tell you if you’re doing something that feels right for you or if it doesn’t feel right for you. And eventually you’ll navigate and find what you’re looking for. So really, I don’t, you know,

It’s like, I wish I could have told you, oh, you listen to this podcast episode and I tell you something really specific or like a perfect trick to dating. I don’t have that. It took me almost two years of dating before I met my current partner and it’s all good. I’m grateful for it. I learned a lot from the different people who I went out on dates with and got to know. I’m grateful for all of them because they all taught me something. So with that being said, I wish you all the happy experimenting.

Safe experimenting as you get to know folks. And again, trust yourself. I know you’ve been told for a long time not to trust yourself if you’re someone in recovery because your best decisions got you your addiction. Sure, that’s true, but your best decisions also got you sober and you’re sober, right? So trust yourself. You know exactly what you need. It’s just a matter of trying things out and seeing what sticks and feels right with you. Thanks and I’ll see you in the next one.

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In this episode:

Link to Spotify

I share a story about my mother recently attempting to fat shame me, how I handled it, and I share strategies for how you can handle your loved ones.

Recommended Resources:

Book of Boundaries by Melissa Urban

Set Boundaries Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab

You’re Fat Honey. You’ve Got to Take Care of Yourself Blog Piece by Jessica Dueñas

Upcoming Opportunities

Free Writing for Healing Workshop. July 8th. Register here.

Six-Week Writing for Healing Program. July 15th. Register here.

Summer Soul Mid-Year Check In: How Are We, Really? July 16th. Register here.

Free Support Group for Educators. August 3rd. Register here.

1:1 coaching is open. Schedule a free consultation here.

Transcript:

Hey, so today we’re gonna talk about our loved ones because they’re so precious to us. And just as precious as they are, they also have this amazing capacity to really set us off, right? So let’s talk a little bit about some strategies to employ to not cope in a manner that can be hurtful towards you. Like for me, that means not drinking, right? Or even eating in a harmful way, getting really emotional and down on myself. So… Story time. I was recently in Costa Rica visiting my mother. She’s an 84 year old woman. And I was visiting her with my sister and my boyfriend. And again, I highlight my mother’s age because it’s important to understand that she is of a fixed mindset. There are many people in their 80s who are still open to growth and learning and changing. My mother is not one of them. So I just wanted to like put that out there to start. So anyway, I was getting ready to go out and I was brushing my hair. And she just comes into the room and real casually and with like the sweetest voice. She’s like in Spanish, esta gorda mamita tiene que cuidarse. And meaning in English, you know, you’re fat honey to take the edge off, I guess. You’re fat honey. You’ve got to take care of yourself. Now, listen, I love, admire and I embrace several of my mother’s traits. I think she is an incredibly generous woman. She is. very smart, especially with numbers like she will count any whiz kid that I ever taught when I was a teacher under the table. So certain things about her are like these wonderful things. And I see some of those traits in me and I’m like, yay, I’m so glad I have them. But the body shaming part, the fat shaming part is definitely something that I have been working on cutting ties from and like releasing myself from that shit. So you know, my grandmother definitely practiced it. And again, my mother did and does too. And again, they do these things with the best of intentions, but our intentions don’t mean anything if we’re causing harm, right? So we’re still getting some terrible results from this well-intentioned fat shaming. And so I’ve just decided for me, it ends with me. I won’t drink over it, I won’t eat emotionally over it, and I won’t do it to other people just because that’s the way I was raised. I refuse to do that. you know, just because somebody’s aren’t elder, it doesn’t mean that they have it right. So anyway, when she said that though, like I want to put it out there because especially if you are early on in any kind of wellness journey, whether you’re in recovery from addiction or anything else, like I want you to understand that even with me doing this for some years now, two and a half years of not drinking, going to therapy, working with coaches, et cetera, when she called me fat, when she called me gorda the other day, it immediately took me right back in time. It was like throwing me back in Brooklyn when she was yelling at me for going to grab a second plate or throwing me back to that time that I was like caught by a coworker sneaking an extra drink and I was called out for maybe having a drinking problem. Right? Like that sinking feeling for me, that’s how I feel shame in my body. It’s like a sinking feeling. It feels like I’m going on a roller coaster without going for the actual ride. That’s exactly what I felt. And that’s despite the fact that I’ve done a lot of work to grow. And I do in general feel pretty good about myself. So I just say that to say, um, our bodies remember everything, even if we’ve done a lot of work to move past certain hurts. So just saying that. But I also say that because when you feel a feeling and you feel that manifestation in your body, it doesn’t mean that you’re actually in danger. Your body might think you’re in danger, right? Your mind might be processing whatever as a threat, but chances are you’re okay. Anyway, in the past though, when I would have had a comment like that from my mother, old me would have, number one, completely gotten defensive and argued with her. I would have been opening my phone, showing her pictures of me being at the gym and working out and being like, don’t you see? I am exercising. Why would you say that? I need to go exercise. I already do that. I would have just let… I would have been speaking from the wound instead of just not. Speaking of, speaking from the wound or acting from the wound, I would have been crying really hard in front of her, purposely trying to make her feel bad. It’s like, I’m hurt, now I want you to feel hurt. I would have started to spiral into the old narrative I used to really believe, which was that I wasn’t good enough. Then of course, as a result of that spiraling, I would have drank over it or I would have eaten emotionally over it. Frankly, I would have done that in an attempt to show her, which obviously is not showing her anything. So anyway, what I did instead, which I hope you find helpful, is that I walked away from her and I went into the other room. Again, she’s 84, she’s more delicate. Like I already said, she is of a complete fixed mindset, so nothing is changing her mind. And also, right, like when we set boundaries, we don’t change other people’s behaviors. We address our own behaviors in response to whatever they do that’s undesirable to us. So in my case, I can’t control her, but I sure as hell can control. me being in that conversation, so I got up and I left the room, right? The second thing that I did was I allowed myself to feel uncomfortable and feel that roller coaster sensation in my stomach because it’s just a feeling. It’s a temporary feeling and it can’t hurt me. As awkward and as painful as it is, it can’t literally come out of my body and kill me. So I just let myself ride the feeling for a little bit. And then I started to use self-talk to soothe myself. So here’s some examples of some of the things that I was telling myself. I’m safe, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, this one is a big one. My weight isn’t a reliable measure of health because when my weight was at its lowest, I drank a fifth a day. I am heavy because I’m strong. My mom is projecting old thinking passed down for generations that she hasn’t unlearned. And then the last thing I did when I was able to soothe myself and I got out of that mini upset, I celebrated my win and I told my sister and my boyfriend, hey, I didn’t lose my mind, woo, that’s a big deal. Because it is a really big deal, right? If you go through a situation like this with one of your loved ones, and you are able to feel the feelings, set up and hold a boundary, and stay true to yourself, that is a really big win. And again, family dynamics are complicated, so what worked for me may not work for you, but I do invite you to try the following steps. if you’re feeling emotionally set off by a family member. So like number one, set and hold the boundary by either saying you’re not accepting whatever they said that upset you or remove yourself from the conversation. Two, remind yourself that the unpleasant sensation that you’re feeling, right, like that shame or whatever you’re feeling, that is just your body perceiving a threat and you don’t have to drink over it. and you don’t have to use some other maladaptive coping strategy to deal with it. You can feel it and it’s not going to kill you. Three, use self-talk to debunk whatever nonsense your loved one just said. Or use a somatic strategy like breathing or grounding to soothe your body. And then the last thing is share your win with someone whether you are in a support group community and you go to your community or whether you just tell one person, send a text, make a phone call, but let some human know that you just experienced a win. So with that being said, I hope my lovely, uncomfortable situation and how I handled it is helpful for you. It is really hard. It can suck sometimes. Navigating relationships with people that we love can be incredibly difficult, but it’s also really difficult to continue to let them do the things and say the things that hurt us too. So hope you found this helpful and I will talk to you soon.

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