100th Episode of Alcohol Tipping Point

Pod 100 Welcome back to the Alcohol Tipping Point Podcast. I am your host, Deb Masner. I'm a registered nurse, health coach and alcohol free badass, an AFBA for short. And today we are celebrating episode 100. This is so amazing you guys. Thank you so much for listening. I had a lot of fun and a lot of tears also putting together this episode for you all. And what it is is just clips from some of my favorite episodes of the last 100 episodes, so it's been about two years almost, I guess. Over two years. When did I start? I started in March. Of 2021. Yep. I started at a studio in downtown Boise because they had a great deal going where you could record your podcast for free and they got paid through advertising or that's how it started out. So that was Speaks Studios. So shout out to. They're now called SB Studios, but shout out to them for helping me launch this. I actually took over doing the podcast by myself last year, last March just because of scheduling issues and time and whatnot. So I was pretty proud of myself for learning how to do all the recording and editing and all that good stuff. It's not perfect. , but I am all about progress over perfection, and I'm all about getting it done over being perfect and just letting that go. So anyway, I have been doing the podcast by myself and it's just been so fantastic to get to talk to so many people around the world about drinking and hear so many stories and talk to experts and, and just. Really be a voice out there to help people change their drinking because I know that it's possible, and I know if you're listening, you are wanting to do something about your drinking or you already have, and I just want you to know like how proud I am of you. How proud I am of you for making a change or wanting to make a change. You know, for going against the grain, for going against drinking culture that's so big, so big throughout the world. So I think that you are very brave and I. I think of you as a friend. So thank you for listening. If you've been with me from the beginning or you're just starting, I just wanna thank you so much. I have so much gratitude and I really, I love doing this. I really do. So it is my pleasure. It is my honor, and I hope you enjoy this episode. Reflecting back on some of the last 100 episodes and some. My favorite ones are some of my favorite people in the world, including my brother and my daughter Atlas. So let's get started. We're gonna start with my episode with Casey McGuire Davidson. She's the host of Hello Sunday, , . I mean, I had a Christmas Eve. That was not the point that I stopped drinking, which in retrospect, like Christ really where I don't remember going to bed. I'm pretty sure I just passed out. I forgot to fill the stockings, my kids' Christmas stockings and my husband's and I was the person who like collected the stocking stuff all year. I had a huge stash. I've been, you know, putting stuff away. and my husband didn't know where the stash was, right? So I can't imagine. I'm sure he tried to wake me up, right? Of course he needed the stocking shit. Could not wake me up. I went down in the morning with a brutal hangover. The kids' stockings were like a quarter full and Mike's stocking was empty. Mine was full cuz he'd done mine and the kids were already awake. I could not fix it. And that morning sucked. Like not only how I physically felt, but. The guilt and the self-loathing and the embarrassment and trying to pull it off. Like my mom I'm sure was like, where the fuck's Casey? Like I didn't put out the santa cookies and milk and you know, all that stuff. So yes, the first Christmas Eve dinner, not drinking was hard. And by the way, I went upstairs and like texted my sober bestie. It was like, these fucking people need to finish the wine. Like how the hell is it taking them this long? Like, you know, My God, the next day was amazing in, in comparison. So like, be realistic. Like don't just, I feel like so many people romanticized drinking, right? Like, oh, Christmas Eve, you know, my drink, my whatever. Yeah. But what about Christmas warning, like romanticized sobriety too? Yeah. And, and what that story, I mean, thank you for sharing that, that had to been so gut wrenching. I can't, I mean, I have moments like that too, and like you said, where it's that sh maybe should have been bottom , but then it's like, yeah, no, I, I was hungover. I drank that night. You know? Right. But what it made me think of is like, choose your heart. Would you rather feel uncomfortable at that Christmas Eve dinner? or feel like a sack of shit the next day. I mean, choose your heart. I love, I love that. Choose your heart. And I love, you know, I thank you for saying that because, you know, I truly believe like being sober is difficult, right? It's hard. Let's, of course it is. Otherwise it wouldn't take us a while to get away. . But drinking is hard too. Like people are always like, oh, people who drink have no willpower. They're weak. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Do you know how hard it is to do a job and be a parent with a brutal hangover and a fuzzy memory like every goddamn day? Like that is determination, right? Like that is difficult, but not drinking gets easier, right? It gets so much easier month after month, and you get. Drinking is hard and it only gets harder. Episode nine, myths and facts about rehab and addiction with John K. How addiction develops over time and how it varies from person to person. You have somebody who is, you know, born into this world, maybe they have an alcoholic parent maybe they have an alcoholic grandfather, or they have addiction somewhere in their family. But it's not necessarily a prominent thing in their life. And maybe they go through life without a lot of trauma and maybe they don't start drinking until 19, 20, 21 years. Versus somebody else who maybe has a pretty disruptive home life, active drinking in the home, maybe some abuse. They start drinking earlier, maybe 13, 14 years old, and then they experiment with other drugs and get into trouble there. Those are two people that have two very different starts as far as whether or not they're gonna become problem addicts. Both of them have that potential to be addicts, but the second person I talked about has that higher potential to develop addiction earlier on, whereas the second person might not develop addiction at all. Or if they do, maybe it happens later in life because of something else that, you know, maybe they go through a, a, a divorce and they don't know how to cope with it. So they start drinking every day. I worked with some folks who became addicts in retire. because maybe they were, you know, they'd get off work and they'd have a couple drinks and they'd go to bed and they'd get up and go to work in the morning, and then here they retire and all of a sudden they're thinking, huh, I could have a drink at 11 o'clock in the morning cause I don't have anything to do. And, and if you maintain that pattern before you know it, you get dependent on it. So it's really just sheer amount of use. . So if you take somebody and just say, I want you to become an alcoholic , and that person decides, okay, I'm gonna try to become an alcoholic, and they start drinking every day trying to develop addiction, they'll get there no matter who they are. If they stay committed and they drink daily for long enough, they're gonna develop addiction. So that potential is in all of us. So kind of accepting that and. because I, I'm sure you've heard the term normies. How alcoholics, well, it's a i aa term, but you know, you talk about the alcoholics and you talk about the normies, and those are the non alcoholics that Okay. Social drinkers. But even the social drinkers could be addicts if they drank enough. So wiping that out and just saying, everybody has the potential for a. . It's just whether or not their life has pushed them into that area yet. But once you've reached that ceiling, that addictive ceiling, once you're there, you don't get to go back down. And everybody's born with a different ceiling. So sometimes, you know, you talk about the trauma and the, the things I've been through in the G genetics that I have my predispositions to alcoholism all of. goes into determining when I reach that addictive level. But once I get there, then I don't get to go back down. Episode 59, my brother shares how he quit drinking. We can have this, we can talk about religion. I mean, that's a whole nother topic here, but far as it, it relates to my drinking. I mean, that was a big part of having that internal dialogue within myself to say to myself that I'm worth being sober for because that person of who you are sober, Is worth knowing. I don't think people understand just how valuable they are not valuable to make bricks and be quote unquote productive, but really how special you are to who you are, to who God is and to, to even to creation around you. You matter. So, and you matter your. Yeah, exactly. When we have that kind of, and then that, when that penny drops for a person, I think it makes the fight that you have to help yourself. It's like effortless effort. It, it's, it's not gonna be easy by no means, but you have that hope that you can persevere through that. It, it's going to make that sweat lodge worth sitting in for. I still reme, I would do a lot of sauna. and just sweat out stuff and just, I would just be just thinking about these subjects and it's like, yeah, why? And it really put in front of me a lot of the questions that I had, but the main question that came up was, why am I doing this? Why is this worth it? And the only answer for me that. Was able to replace drinking was because who you are is worth it. And you get on the other side of this and you are going to have some, some pretty deep philosophical, you're gonna have some pretty deep, oh, hey man, things. When you drink, you just, you feel so good when you drink, you. , you're gonna have those silver and it's gonna be even deeper and more meaningful than they have been. Yeah. Tell me how your life has changed in this last year. Well, I would guess from the outside it probably doesn't look a whole lot different. If other people were observing me internally. There's this new drive that I have going to bed, waking up, I I, I have this new urgency in. The time feels different to me. That's a big difference. I'm like, wow, I can't believe how much time I spent thinking about drinking, drinking and recovering from drinking. Oh yeah. I . See, I mean, the bandwidth that it takes up in your head, it's, it's amazing. Oh, Yeah, so now I'm, I'm, I'm really, I mean, the difference now is like, like, okay, I really have some long-term. Like, why am I having this business? Okay. Why, why am I now wanting to, like, I'm really looking forward to understanding more about this whole Eastern Orthodox Christianity side of it. That gets completely blocked off from our conversation about Christianity. I'm like, well, what happened in there? What's the history? What did other early people, because they had these questions too, what did they have to say about this? So I'm looking forward to getting into those kind of subject matters. And so that's on the spiritual side. You know, physically I'm not really interested in running Ironmans or swimming. In the lake or you know, doing these kind of things. But I am interested in getting back, maybe back into like a jiu-jitsu practice. A movement practice. I really need that for my, my back. I got a squirrely back and if I do something physical that helps balance it out and that really helps me. And I like to do something where I could see some progress. So I'm really kind of getting back into not just quote unquote working out, but now it's like training with some real goals ahead of me. And now that I've kind of got past this year, I'm not subjecting myself to so much comfort food. Mm-hmm. I you, which I think is fine. And like look, there's times where I just came home from the store with a chocolate cake and I just ate that. Well, I did. I mean, you bring up a good point, like the first year is about sobriety and doing everything you can to just keep the momentum, not drink. And then the second year, like you're already talking about like, how can I grow, you know now, now that I've got that milestone under my belt, like how can I grow spiritually? How can I grow? Physically, how can I, you know, just all those different things now. Yeah. How can answer that, that, that Go ahead. Thing about, about, about health. I remember counseling and she was saying like, you know, we're, you're, you're, you're, how do you know when you're healthy? It's like when you're thinking about growing, when you see growth, I mean, that's, that is hell. That's gonna also be in a healthy relationship where you're growing closer together, you're plan, you're doing stuff together. It will naturally. Progress. I mean, it just, it just, it's like that effortless effort. There definitely is discipline involved in this, but it's not a white knuckle. Agreed. Like it's, it's worth it. Just like you said, you're worth it. It's worth it. How, how has your relationship changed with your wife and. Well, yeah, she, she decided to quit drinking too, but she, her relationship with alcohol is wildly different than mine. Yeah. But it, it, which really makes it easier, what I can tell in a relationship, especially if it's a long-term relationship and just one side of it decides to go on the sober side of it. Mm-hmm. , I could see where that would be difficult cuz I'm also seeing the other side of it, which, which I'm, you know, thankfully I'm. She's like, this is great. I wanna quit drinking too. I don't know if she really appreciated how much drinking was within my identity and just how it intervened. All parts of me. We grew, Debbie, we, we grew up thinking that if you're an alcoholic, you're dead on the street. Right. . Yeah. We've never had a term for being like, Hey, I, I can't, I have an issue with drinking. And it's like a really good virus that doesn't kill you. It still keeps you right in that zone of like, Hey, if we take this guy too far down, he may quit on us. Let's just r just, just ride the clutch here a little bit, you know? Well, and like you were saying, like you have your own business. You're a, you're a c p A, you're an accountant, you're married, you have a kid. You're, you know, like you're, you don't fit that stereotype of someone who has a problem with drinking. Oh, hey. They say that they said the same thing about getting counseling. Like you go to work. I do like you take care of your daughter. I do. You love your wife? I do. Did you yell at her? Do you hit her? Do you know? Like, are you abusive? I was like, well, no, there's just, just, I'm just telling you there's n there. I'm telling you I need help. It's like, well, according to R Research you're doing just fine. No, ma'am. Yeah, I do. I mean, I. Kind reach out for help or say something to my, at my medical appointments and they were like, you're okay , because you are, you're a mom. You're working as a nurse. Like, you're fine. Just maybe cut back a little bit. But it, it was always, it was, yeah. You're still married. Got any DUIs? No. Okay. You're. Episode 67, how to Get and Stay Sober with Judy Cook. I know that you had written a poem about alcohol and, and leaving it behind. Can you share that poem? Yeah. Well what that did when I first started my journey, I, I, I sort of used to lie in bed wide. And the mind was worrying, and I actually did. I made a poem up, right? This is right at the beginning of my journey, and then later, rather, I did a divorce letter, but I've got the poem here. Here we go. I was worried about my drinking and so got me thinking. My name is Judy Cock, but I didn't know where to look. One day I looked on Facebook. Where should I start to look? I came across Simon Chapel, as he says Simon. Then Apple, and so begun my journey to sobriety with tools to help me of every variety, podcasts, YouTube, zooms, and Facebook. That was to be the last drink I took. Discover your. Your belief will be bigger. Train your brain. Stand in the rain. Sit with your craving. It will be your saving. Change your mindset and you'll forget that. Drink. You once yearned. Another milestone was earned. Minutes, hours, days, a week. Alcohol. Is what I seek. Thoughts of alcohol? A few. And my life is now incredibly new. I am now alcohol free and I'm very proud of me. With all the help of all my sober, my journey will never be over. I'm now 800 days and counting. Thanks to. For never doubting. I strive to be my best. My passion will never rest. Well, that is wonderful. That is so good. It took me about a week to write. Episode 69 from Prison to Purpose with Martin Lockett. So there you are, you're 24 and you. You know, had this tragic event, this crash, and, and then what was life in prison like, what happened next? So let me just say that everything changed for me. About three or four days later when I'm in my, my cell and I'm just minding my own business and I noticed that someone has slid the Oregonian newspaper underneath my door. And, and I, I didn't understand why I didn't ask to see a newspaper. And I pick it up and I begin to thumb through it. And I see my picture on the front page of the, the metro section of the Oregonian and the columnist is, is detailing the lives of my victims. So it it, now they're, you know, these faceless victims become, and these people had an incredible story and I'm reading about their lives and how they were addicts who had turned their lives around and were now living in recovery. And they were very involved in the community, as you mentioned, and they were actually coming home from a clean and sober New Year's Eve party that night when they were killed by a drunk driver. And the columnist ended the article with the statement that that frankly shaped the next 17 and a half years, which was. Perhaps the person they will have ended up helping the most is the man who's charged with killing them. End quote. And in that moment, I knew that those words were profound, right? But I couldn't fully grasp what they were supposed to mean for my life, because again, I know I'm looking at 20 years in prison at the age of 24 or something, you can't even fathom. But I, I couldn't ignore that phrase. So I literally meditated on that phrase. Hearing it multiple times in my head for the next several months, and I prayed, you know, for, for, for God to, to show me and reveal what those words were supposed to mean for my life. And then it, it came to me that the only way this tragedy will, will not be in vain is if I carry on their legacies. If, if I literally make it my life's mission to do everything I possibly can to ensure that nobody else follows in these same catastrophic footstep. Episode 65, talking with your kids about drinking. My daughter Alice is on the show I didn't really know what. You were like when you were drunk before you started doing weeks without alcohol? Like I would, like before you started getting serious about being sober, it was just normal to me. But then when you'd go like a week or a month without drinking and then go back to drinking, I would notice like drastic changes. Oh, that's a good point. Like that's what I would. . That's kind of what made me realize and like turn into little gr gremlin. So when I was drinking or you were the gremlin? Yeah. When hot. Yeah. Like I didn't realize that it was bad until you, like you were better without it and then you drink again. Oh yeah. Well, what kinds of things did you notice with it versus without? . Well, like when you, like were drinking, you were like loose and tired and just like careless, but then when you weren't drinking, you like kind of could focus more on like, like work and life and stuff and like, like cleaning and cooking. But when you were drunk, you would just. lay on the couch and like he'd like get mad or like laugh at things and it was weird. Yeah. And then you got to where you were liking sober mom. Better than drunk mom. Mom, I didn't like drunk mom at all. Laugh. I didn't like how you did Weeks. And I'd like be mad cuz at the end of the week you'd always get a bottle of wine to like celebrate a week sober. Yeah, I, I remember at one point because you were so invested in it, and that kind of broke my heart a little bit because you, you were just really like on me about it. I was, and I would say, I'm, this is my treat. I'm gonna have wine tonight. Cuz I went a week without it. Like, like kind of comparing to you having candy or something like, I remember, I would say, I have to go 21 years without alcohol and you only had to go a week, so why are you making such a big deal about it? Or rewarding a week, I would say stuff like that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. You were, in a way, do you think you're like, what is the big deal? Why can't you go longer without, yeah. I didn't get why it was so hard for you. , like longer than a week without alcohol. Mm-hmm. . And then I remember at one point I had to tell you, I felt like I had to take the responsibility away from you. Cause I feel like you carried a lot of the responsibility and just tell you like, this is my thing. I'm working on this. You don't need to. Manage it for me. This is what I'm working on. Like, I, I didn't want you to be so stressed about it. Yeah. I don't know. I guess I felt like you were going to like, go down the wrong path. Episode 50, how to Live an Authentic and Sober Life with Claire Pool. . , one of my, listeners she really loves your book and she loves your description of the obstacle course, and that was where you. Go over basically the hard part of quitting and doing the first few days over and over again, and she was wondering how you came up with that story. She said it's really spot on and a really creative way to explain being stuck. Oh, that's lovely to hear. I mean, it is, that's the blog post, the ob, the obstacle course, which mm-hmm. I've then re reprinted in, in the, in the Sober Diaries has been shared thousands and thousands of times since I, I wrote it sort of nearly, you know, six and a half years ago I wrote that post. And it's, it's it's still. Constantly shared on the, on the internet, which is amazing. And I think I wrote it when I was about, Seven months sober. And I just had this, I, I was following a lot of other sober bloggers and there were some who I'd followed who'd I followed since I quit drinking myself. And I was seven months sober and they were back at day one or day seven or day 14, and they kept. Getting a few weeks under their belts and then starting all over again. And I was just trying to work out how I could explain to them why, why I found that really sad and really frustrating and. and I, what, what I figured is that the problem is that the first few weeks of quitting are the hardest. You know, the first, you know, anyone who's quit for for dry January knows that, that the first four weeks are really tough. Mm-hmm. . But the really good bits don't kick in until about a hundred days. So if you only do two weeks and then start drinking again, and then you do three weeks and start drinking again, and then you do four weeks and start drinking again, you are doing that hard. Of the journey again and again and again, and you haven't yet got to the good bit. And that's why I came up with this analogy to try and explain that, which was about the obstacle course. And, and what I said is that I felt like I had been living in this field, which was once beautiful and filled with fresh flowers and bunnies and, and rainbows and what have you. And over the years it had got more and more miserable, but it had happened so gradually I'd hard. So it started getting, the weather got worse, it was Rainier, and the flowers died and it got colder and colder. And I talked to people who said, you know, there's another field. Some distance away, which is just like the field who used to be in. It's really beautiful. And there are lots of bunnies and fresh flowers and, and you know, beautiful music and, and there's, there's lots of people there who are really happy and you should go there. But in order to get there, you have to go over this really tough obstacle course and, and. You think initially, yeah, I can do that. And you throw yourself at the first obstacle and you go over the sort of six foot war and the leech infested ditch and you know, you and then you, you start getting more and more tired and you think, I don't know how long it takes to get to the other end of this obstacle course. And I don't know whether that. Field actually even exists. And where I was was miserable, but as not as miserable as this obstacle courses . And so what you do is you go back, you go back to your field and you think, God, I'm glad I'm back here. But before long you again, you know you are. Wet. You are cold, you're miserable, and you throw yourself at the obstacle course again and you go, oh, you know, this happens again and again and again. Until somebody says to you, look, you have to keep going. It only takes a hundred days and you will get to that other field. You will get there and it will be amazing. And eventually you keep going through the whole obstacle course over all the obstacles which get easier and easier and easier and further and further apart until you end up in the field of bunnies. And people share little bunny emojis, on social media all the time, which is really cute. And say, yeah, that field really does exist, and you really can get it there. You just have to get over those obstacles and it takes about a hundred days. And once you are there, life will get better and better and better. Thank you so much for listening to this 100th episode of the Alcohol Tipping Point Podcast. I hope you enjoyed those clips and enjoy the show. It was really hard to choose what to pick. Cuz there's been so many great episodes, so many great guests. I hope that you. Make it over the obstacle course. I am rooting for you. I am helping you along the way. I'm helping make it easier for you. Hopefully I'm helping you. That is my goal, just to make it easier and let you know you're not alone and we're all. over here in that happy little field rooting for you to get here and join us. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Alcohol Tipping Point i, I really appreciate you all and I look forward to a hundred more episodes. Have a great day and I'll talk to you next.