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In this episode:

Imagine being at the pinnacle of your career, celebrated as Kentucky State Teacher of the Year, while secretly battling severe addiction. That’s the reality I faced, living a double life until a car accident shattered my illusions and forced me to confront my need for recovery. Inspired by Paulo Coelho’s wisdom, “The secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight,” I share my tumultuous journey through multiple treatment stints over 14 months, debunking the myth that recovery is a simple, linear path. Join me as I open up about the painful truths and the resilience needed to continually rise after each fall.

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Coaching Information

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

Transcript:

00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey y’all, welcome back to Bottomless is Sober. I’m Jessica, and I’m so grateful to have you here. So, whether this is your first episode or your 60 something episode, this is our space where we continue to get honest about what it means to recover, not just from addiction, but from shame, perfectionism, grief and, honestly, just life. So today, I want to anchor our conversation in a quote by author Paulo Coelho You’ve probably heard it before, but if you haven’t, I invite you to really feel it today and he wrote the secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight. It’s so easy to throw that around like a motivational slogan. I’m not going to lie, but when you have a history of having relapsed, right when you’ve fallen in a way that shakes your whole sense of self, it’s actually. It’s not just a quote, it’s a hundred percent, it’s a lifeline.

01:03
I want to share a story that I haven’t told in a while, but you know it came to mind when I read this line recently, um, back when I had won, you know, the Kentucky state teacher of the year award in 2019, this was a few months after winning that award, and you know like, on the outside, um, my life did look like everything was on track, right, you know, being an award-winning educator, considered a community leader, back in Louisville, kentucky, you know, someone that people legitimately looked up to, but the thing was that on the inside I was completely unraveling, you know. So I felt like every celebration that I came across it, really it just felt more like this really heavy pressure, and every compliment that I would ever receive honestly just felt like this huge reminder that I was living a double life. Right, I was deep in addiction, drinking every single night. You know, by the end of my drinking days, I was drinking a fifth of liquor a night, and that was numbing the fear that I was going to disappoint everyone. Right, I did not want to get caught, and so I literally lived my entire life in a way where I could drink heavily and yet appear really functional and successful on the outside. My liver was shot, I had been diagnosed with alcoholic liver disease and the thing was eventually trying to navigate all these different things at once that were completely opposing forces. It all came crashing down, and so there was one morning where I had actually flipped my car in Louisville and this street called Bardstown road after drinking, and I remember coming to hanging upside down in that car and realizing that I could have died right. I mean, honestly, I probably should have given the impact of that accident, but somehow I walked away physically unharmed, emotionally though, I was shattered.

02:56
So after that, that same night, I actually after I went to the emergency room, I went straight into a treatment facility where I stayed for five weeks, and while in treatment, you know, I started to put the pieces back together. I found a sense of community. I have a friend there that I’m still friends with today and, you know, I started to find hope and I started to start to connect with myself again. But let me tell you something that I wish more people talked about, and that is that assumption that just because you go to treatment, that you’re good, right, that the work is done, that if you go to treatment once you’re one and done no, no, no, I went to treatment like seven or eight times in the span of 14 months, so that’s already not true. I wanted to put that out there. Just because you go to treatment does not mean the work is done. Healing definitely not linear. If I would have been put in charge of creating healing and how it worked as a construct. Yes, I would have loved to have made it a linear process for all of us, but it’s not. In recovery, it’s not a straight line either.

04:02
So a few weeks after I left the facility, I had a relapse. I was completely overwhelmed. I was still dealing with so much grief after having lost my then boyfriend, ian, to his own addiction right. And so I just felt completely isolated. I felt tired of trying so hard and I slipped and I had the one drink. But of course the one drink turned into two, and then it turned into more, and eventually I had that old voice in my head whispering you know, you’re never going to change. Who are you kidding, jessica Right? And when you have that voice in your head, it becomes so easy to just want to say I’m done, I don’t care, why bother trying? If I can’t get this done perfectly, then I might as well not try at all.

04:46
And so that night I remember sitting on the floor of my bathroom, you know, crying, with the empty bottle having had thrown up. And I wasn’t just disappointed in myself, I was just in this place of feeling completely devastated. You know I had already promised myself and the few people who were aware of everything that was going on, especially my sister, that, like I, was done right. But here I was drunk on the bathroom floor again. But something shifted right. Things start to shift over time. The more that we practice our sobriety, the more that things start to click. And this time I didn’t ghost anyone. I didn’t disappear. I didn’t hide. For weeks, I didn’t try to pretend that it didn’t happen. In fact, I reached out to my sister. I had texted her and I said I messed up and I need help, which is a huge leap. Huge leap for me. I thought she would have been upset with me, I thought that she would have been disappointed, but all she said was I love you, come, come visit me and try again, right? How simple was that? How simple was that? And so that was the moment that I started to understand what getting up again really means.

06:00
It’s not flashy. It’s not always about heroically turning your life around in one grand gesture. Sometimes it’s literally about reaching out instead of retreating. Sometimes it’s sitting in a meeting that next day, even if you’re hungover and ashamed, but still showing up. Sometimes it’s saying I fell, but I’m here. And here’s the thing right In this work, because some of you may have been, maybe sober for a while. It’s not just relapse that makes us question ourselves. So I want to recognize that the fall here is not always directly tied to alcohol. Sometimes the fall that we go through in life can be subtle, way more subtle than taking a drink, but it can be just as discouraging.

06:45
So maybe you snapped at your kids or you snapped at your partner and then, damn, you’re like instantly I just undid months of inner work. Or maybe you had recently committed to a morning routine whether it’s like meditation or journaling or moving your body and then you fell off for a week and now there’s a shame kind of looming over your head of not following through which makes you feel like you just want to give up altogether. Or maybe you shared something vulnerable right With a friend or in a group and someone gave you a response that was really uncomfortable, like maybe they sounded judgy or they didn’t respond at all. So you feel like whatever you said landed on like deaf ears. Now you’re questioning if you should have even said anything or if you should even bother going back to them and opening back up, and I just want to say whatever else it could be for you, whatever that fall could look like that these moments count too. They’re the quiet heartbreaks, right? They’re the mini falls and, just like with a relapse, they still offer us the same invitation, which is get up again, try again, stay in it, right? And as you’re looking at these invitations to recommit, maybe ask yourself what can I do differently? Right? What tool do I need to use that maybe I haven’t explored yet In sobriety, right?

08:10
That’s why I love this quote the secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight, because, in sobriety, falling does not mean that you failed. It simply means that you’re a human and standing back up. That’s where the magic is, that is where the healing happens. So today, right, whether you’re celebrating getting through another 24 hours sober, or whether you are in the middle of picking yourself back up, in general, I want you to know, I want you to understand that you are not alone and you don’t have to get up, gracefully, right, this doesn’t have to look magical and beautiful, you just have to get up. And so take a moment, let’s reflect, right? Whether you’re journaling or you’re out on a walk or you’re listening to the podcast, just kind of, you know, with your heart open.

08:58
Here’s a couple of questions for you to sit with. When was a time that you got back up after a setback in your sobriety? How do you talk to yourself in those moments when you feel like you’ve fallen short? And, lastly, what support or reminder helps you to stand back up again? And as I close out, I just want to remind you for this week, right, that you deserve grace, you deserve support and you deserve to keep going.

09:26
Okay, thanks so much for being here with me this week. A reminder again that the reason we rise, it’s not because we never fall, it’s not because we never fail, it’s not because we never fail, it’s not because we’re perfect, but the reason we get up and we keep going is because, no matter what, we can always rise again. Right, as long as you’ve got breath in you, as long as you are still here and alive with us, you can absolutely do something to get back up again. We don’t need to stay down that perfectionist narrative, that black or white thinking. It gets us nowhere really, really fast. So, thanks so much for hanging out this week. I will catch you next time.

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In this episode:

Jessica explores the emotional cost of people-pleasing and the liberation found in breaking the “good girl” script. Reflecting on her own experiences before and after sobriety, she shares how unlearning the need to be liked led to deeper self-worth and authentic healing. This episode speaks directly to women in recovery who are learning to say no, set boundaries, and reclaim their truth—without apology. Jessica leaves listeners with heartfelt reflection questions and a bold reminder: you are still good, even when you’re no longer the “good girl.”

Resources:

Coaching Information

Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops⁠⁠

Transcript:

00:03 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Bottomless is Sober. I’m your host, jessica Duenas, and so glad to have you here this week. So, whether this is your first time listening or, you know, reaching out to your support system or simply just breathing through a tough day, that is a victory, right? That is recovery in action. So I just want to take a moment and recognize that Now, today’s episode is, for all my recovering people pleasers, especially if you have been socialized as a woman, right, and you were taught, directly or indirectly, that being nice is the same thing as being lovable, right? I think for so many of us, that was definitely a message that we were taught, and essentially, we’re talking about something that I’m calling breaking the good girl script, because that internalized role that so many of us were handed early in life right To be agreeable, to be helpful, be easy to be around. Don’t rock the boat, don’t say no. Smile, and especially smiling at family members that creep you out, right, even when you’re dying inside, right. Smile no matter what. Being in recovery means breaking from those things, and so I want to open with a quote that I absolutely love, and I’m even using it in sobriety support meetings that I lead, and it’s from Nedra Glover Tawwab, the author of Set Boundaries, find Peace, and she wrote this line. She wrote when you consistently prioritize yourself over others, you diminish your self-worth. People-pleasing is not kindness, it’s self-neglect in disguise. So take a deep breath and let that quote sink in.

02:04
I don’t know about you, but I spent years confusing people-pleasing with kindness. You know, I thought that I was being a good friend, a good daughter, a good employee, a good partner, right Like the desperate, clinging girlfriend. But really I was abandoning myself over and over again and I wore the good girl mask so well that most people could not see how much I was suffering. And I’ll be honest with you, I wore that mask so well. There were times I couldn’t see it either. I remember there was a time back when I drank where I was just constantly saying yes to everything, you know, whether it was a social gathering, whether it was a work commitment or favors for people you know who rarely return the energy. I was just always in this yes mode, and one weekend I had three different events lined up back to back and I was just always in a space of burnout. Right, I was emotionally raw and I knew deep down that I needed just some time alone. But I didn’t want to seem flaky, I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I pushed through. But what did I do? I smiled when I didn’t want to smile. I drank, I drank heavily, I charmed other people, I made other people laugh, and then I went home and got really, really wasted and probably cried and, just you know, woke up on my couch hung over. I wish that I could say that that was rare for me. I wish that I could say that that’s a rare experience period. But you know, it’s not. It’s not rare, and I’m sure some of you listening can be like oh yeah, I’ve been there before.

03:43
What I’ve learned in sobriety, and what I’m still learning, is that practicing kindness, the practice of real kindness, absolutely includes yourself. You have to be the first one who you’re being kind to. Being liked by others is nice and all, but it means nothing if you are rejecting your own truth in the process. Sometimes the most loving thing that you can do is say no, not just to others, but also to that part of you that still believes that your worth is tied to your usefulness, letting go of that good girl script, you all. It has not been easy and it still is not easy, it’s still a struggle for me. But what I realize is that every time I choose myself that, every time I say actually I can’t make it or I need time to think, or this doesn’t feel good to me, what I start to find is that I feel stronger on the inside, I become freer and I get closer to the woman that I’m becoming in recovery. And this is someone who’s been sober almost five years, right. And here’s the thing recovery. And this is someone who’s been sober almost five years, right. And here’s the thing for women in sobriety, this kind of work can feel especially radical, right, like especially badass.

05:02
You know, we were so often praised for being selfless, for putting everyone else before ourselves. We’re told that we’re strong when we stay quiet, when we carry the load and when we don’t ask for help. But sobriety actually flips that upside down. It tells us you matter too. You and your needs are valid. Your peace is not a luxury, it’s a requirement. And so when we do these things, when we believe these things, that is when we’re actually practicing strength.

05:37
But I also want to recognize that that’s where some grief can come into our process, right, once we choose to break the script. We do often have to let go of certain identities, certain relationships or certain expectations that we’ve had. We’re going to disappoint some people, we may lose some friends, we might see family dynamics more clearly, which might mean that we start to see family dynamics more painfully, and we may feel like we’re walking away from a version of ourselves that we’ve tried so hard to perfect and in many ways we are. But at the end of the day, we’re also walking toward something better. Right, we’re walking away from an old version of ourselves and we’re walking toward authenticity. We are walking toward boundaries, toward peace, presence, wholeness.

06:31
So if you are in a season, right, where you’re unlearning people pleasing, where you’re trying to say no more often, or where you’re realizing that being nice has just caught you or not caught you, cost you too much, you know, please stop and understand this. You are not selfish, you are not broken. You are not broken. You are becoming free, you are allowed to take up space and you’re absolutely allowed to be misunderstood. You are allowed to say no without having to do like a whole 10 paragraph text explanation. Right, no itself is a complete sentence and you are still good. Right, you are still a good person even when you’re not. The quote unquote good girl, right.

07:19
And so just some reflection questions for you to take with you. Um, these can be great journal prompts or just something to sit with throughout the day. But first question to think about what messages were you given growing up? You know directly or indirectly, about being a good girl or being liked. How has people pleasing shown up in your life, especially in your journey towards sobriety? What does it look like for you today to choose yourself over others’ expectations?

07:52
And I want to recognize that this episode I’ve mostly talked toward women, but I also want to recognize that you know men, there have absolutely been expectations placed on you that sobriety flips upside down, right, and so feel free to take this and adapt it to your experience as a man. I’m just obviously speaking from my perspective as a woman, but you know the same expectations placed on people based off, you know, gender happens to men as well, and so, anyway, if this episode resonated with you, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving a review. Right and again, if no one’s told you today, you are doing an amazing job, even when the work is messy, even when the healing feels slow or incredibly painful and you want to throw up. You know you’re here, you’re showing up and you’re doing it, so keep on keeping on. So thanks so much for spending this time with me. Until next time, be absolutely gentle with yourself. Being bottomless is not a part of your story anymore. Thanks y’all.

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“When we drank, goal setting felt impossible because we were so trapped by the ‘now appeal’ of alcohol. All we could think about was where our next drink was coming from, itching to get off work so we could swing by the liquor store. We didn’t have the mental capacity to consider goal setting realistically. Now that you’ve been sober for a few months, you can visualize a future, make plans, and set goals. Isn’t that crazy?”

After I said that mouthful, I grinned at my client. She sheepishly smiled back as she processed that what I was saying was true.

Marc Lewis, in The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease, talks about “now appeal,” which is the idea that choosing our substance of choice instead of abstaining at a moment of craving is driven by dopamine uptake, so immediate rewards (the alcohol and/or the other drugs you want to consume) are more compelling than long-term rewards (not pissing off your partner who you love dearly for the 10th time). Now appeal explains why when you have a craving, you feel like you will die if you don’t drink right then and there because alcohol hijacked your brain. Your brain mistakenly thinks you need alcohol to live instead of essentials like food, so it goes into survival mode and freaks out if you don’t have alcohol now.

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Once you’re sober for some time, your brain starts to rewire itself, and this panicked need for a drink eases up. You can come up for air and look out onto the horizon, and what do you see? Your future. What a gift.

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Once sober, you can start to set goals for anything you want, which is my favorite thing to do with clients. If we were able to stop drinking one of the world’s most addictive substances, we can absolutely do anything.

Speaking of goals, here is a worksheet to help you walk through goal setting and of course, if you want further support, schedule a consultation for 1:1 coaching with me here.

I’ve been very open about the losses I’ve been dealt and how, early on, I wondered if I could recover from a broken heart. “Getting sober AND working through grief, ha!” I thought. 

Despite my doubts, I knew that if I trusted the process of getting sober, everything else would fall into place. I just had to stay the course. 

Today I witnessed my partner, a single father who has raised his 12-year-old son by himself, graduate from business school with his MBA. I sat side by side with his son, chatting and taking in the special moment. When the music playing switched to a violin instrumental of Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” I whispered/squealed to his son, “OMG, they’re playing Lady Gaga!” To which he replied, “Lady Caca?” We both covered our mouths to stifle our giggles.

What a silly and precious moment. 

When the moment came that I saw my partner walk the stage, I flashed back to this piece that I wrote that I had written as part of a larger piece I published in the newspaper:

“My dream is to attain long-term sobriety, and I believe one day I will, but just for today, I choose to live in recovery until I fall asleep. I will fight my alcoholism daily…I will live a good life. I will have a family, find peace and STILL be of service to others, just not in the way I had planned.” 

Today is exactly what I wished for years ago when I wrote those words and put my trust that things get better when we recover. Today is part of a continuing to-be-revealed answer to the question I often asked myself, “Why the hell is this not working out?” or “Why is this so difficult?” The things that didn’t work out for me before didn’t work out because they weren’t supposed to. What was meant to work out for me, is revealing itself daily. I just have to stay the course.

If you’re early on in trying to quit or wondering if quitting drinking is worth it, I’m here to tell you that it’s worth it. 

Everything you think you’re going to lose, or everything that you already lost, you only stand to gain it a million times better by taking that leap of faith.

Chapter 3: The Truth They Wanted

Jessica Vivian Dueñas, 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, Grettel, Victor, and Sofia, and her friends, colleagues, students, and her dog, Cruz …

We have a lot of assignments in treatment designed to teach us to not 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 and in fact painful. The thinking of those “left behind” knotted my stomach as I visualized each crying face. I could 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. Dueñas died yesterday.” 

Suddenly, his almost-shut-from-laughing squinted eyes soften, his cheeks that stood high from smiling drop 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. 

“Whatchu mean, Momma?” 

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. Phew.

I was in the fireplace room. 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 who knew how 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 thirties 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 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. 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?!” Oh no, no, no no no! My secret! I panicked. Then that same night at our evening meeting when we did our prayer circle to wrap up, Shanika grabbed my friend’s ass in the middle of the prayer with no hesitation. She just latched on. 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 interrupt your connection with God here, but Shanika’s grabbing my ass?” 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 “ants.” The scuffle caused security to run to the room and quickly snatch her up. Shanika was gone for a few days to complete her detox in 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 so you can’t hang yourself. It’s the type of place where techs have to lay eyes on you once every ten 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, settled, 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 either. 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 ten 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 to drink, I’m not going to say, ‘Hmm, where is 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 were 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 those last few items. I didn’t want to keep them there and 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 go home list. 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 salt-less 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.

Originally written by Jessica for Love & Literature Magazine.

Read the previous chapter, chapter 2 here.

Read the next chapter, chapter 4 here.