Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Alcohol Addiction Led to Liver and Kidney Failure at 29. Christine’s Sobriety Story

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

At 29 years old, Christine’s alcohol addiction led to liver and kidney failure. Her brain was swelling, she had lost the ability to walk, and doctors told her family she may have only 48 hours to live.Christine survived, but that still wasn’t the end of her drinking.In this episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast, Christine shares how drinking progressed from teenage experimentation to physical alcohol dependence, withdrawal and eventually drinking nearly a bottle of vodka a day. She opens up about the denial that kept her stuck, the devastating health consequences of alcohol addiction, her relapse after nearly dying and the mental health crisis that followed.Christine eventually reached a point where she knew something had to change. On December 15, 2021, she decided to give sobriety another chance.Today, she shares how community, self-compassion and doing the deeper work helped her build a life in recovery that she once couldn’t imagine.If you are struggling to quit drinking, have experienced relapse, or are wondering if it’s possible to rebuild your life after alcohol addiction, Christine’s story is a powerful reminder to keep going.Connect with Christine: https://www.instagram.com/she_thrived/Sober Motivation Mobile App: https://apps.apple.com/app/sober-motivation-app/id6759266291Sober Motivation Website: https://www.sobermotivation.comSupport the Podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivationContact me anytime: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I woke up and he said I was just totally yellow. And so he called the ambulance. And they came. And that's when it was discovered that I was in full liver and kidney failure. And my brain was swelling. So they told my parents that I probably had about 48 hours to live. Welcome back to another episode of the sober motivation podcast. Today we've got Christine with us.

Christine, how are you? I'm doing good. How are you? Yeah. I'm well, glad to connect. So what was it like for you growing up? So growing up, I was raised just north of Boston, Massachusetts, and I'm the oldest. So I was basically an only child for the first six years. And my parents had me, I guess, what would be considered a bit young for today's standards. My mom was 26, about to be 27. And like most people, I don't think I can categorize my childhood as like good or bad.

There was a bit of both. You know, my parents really tried to give me a well-rounded childhood. So I played like every sport and tried every after-school activity. I played classical violin for 13 years. I was definitely a bit of a like bookworm and a nerd. My mom says that I was pretty much the perfect kid up until I hit my teen years. And then I gave her quite the run for her money. But on the other side, you know, my dad was an alcoholic growing up.

And I think growing up in a household where there is active addiction, when you're young, I didn't even know that that was abnormal. I mean, my dad was incredibly functional, you know, and he wasn't abusive in any way. So I just thought that everyone's dad drink every single night. And it wasn't until I was probably in my. early teens that a therapist I was seeing at the time brought it to my attention. Like, you do know that that's not the norm for every single family. And I do think that my dad's alcoholism caused a lot of problems in my parents' marriage. So there was definitely a bit of a tumultuous aspect at home.

I have a little brother. He is six years younger. So, yeah, then it's a little bit of a little bit of it became also like the role of being an older sister and taking on more responsibilities. And I definitely was a bit rebellious and less of a rule follower as I entered into like my teen years. Yeah. So that was like a shift that you noticed like kind of before that you were followed the rules pretty good and then a shift in your teen years. Yeah. I don't know if I can pinpoint when the shift happened, but I, I mean, that's when I, my drinking, I started like experimenting with alcohol and I was doing a bit of shoplifting and just being, you know,

a bit of a bad kid. I was still always a really good student. And in general, I would say, I was a good kid. I worked an after-school job, and I wasn't getting into any real legal trouble or anything like that. But I definitely started to kind of play with the boundaries. Yeah, touch the stove, the hot stove a few times in different ways. What's that like for you getting into drinking? I mean, did that feel pretty natural to experiment with drinking? And when was it, too? Like how old were you, do you know? I think it was either the summer after eighth grade or the summer going into eighth grade. And really from day one, I don't think I was ever a quote unquote normal drinker. The first time I drank, I drank myself until I was sick. I mean, me and a couple friends, we had stole some alcohol from our parents' liquor cabinet.

And on a sleepover, we decided to drink. But I definitely never really had any type of limit with it from day one. I was always the one that was more enthusiastic about drinking and ended up being the one that needed to be taken care of. And it's not like right when I started drinking, it became a super regular habit. It kind of like slowly crept up, I think, for a lot of my high school years. it would have appeared that I was drinking not that much more than the average high schooler in terms of like the number of times I was drinking, but it was always the amount that I was

drinking that was more than other people. I didn't have any off switch. Yeah. I'm always interested in this part of the stories too about how we get introduced to alcohol. Like why is it a thing that we're interested in checking out? out, you know, maybe not really knowing a whole heck of a lot about it or how this kind of plays out. Like, what drew you to alcohol and, you know, plugging into that with your friends? That's such a good question. I wonder, I can't say for certain, but I feel like it was probably because it was something

that wasn't allowed. And so it was a bit of that, oh, I want to see what I can get away with or more of the intrigue of like why isn't this allowed yet so many adults in my life were drinking regularly. So there was a bit of like, you know, you're telling me that I can't do it, but you're doing it. So I'm sure that played a bit of a factor. And, you know, within my age group, it wasn't abnormal for people to be starting to kind of experiment with alcohol. So if anything, I think I was just really curious, like, what is this all about? Yeah, to check it out. Yeah, I remember that too. A lot of people coming to school and sharing about having a party or a couple people getting together and alcohol.

I'm like, hey, what is this all about? I didn't see much drinking growing up. I mean, my parents did drink, but I didn't really pick up on it. I was like, I don't know if it was just naive or just didn't really connect the dots of drinking and everything too. But you mentioned there, you had family members too that were drinking, which I think, you know, looking at. back maybe overly normalizes it like, it can't be that bad. Yeah, I mean, my mom didn't drink at all, which was such the contrast to my dad who drank pretty much every day. He's also sober now at this point in his life. But both my grandparents on my dad's side also drank regularly. Actually, my papa may have already been sober by the time I was young. I don't remember exactly what the

timeline was. But I also went from private school, a very small private school. My middle school was 13 kids in sixth grade. There were three eighth graders. And then in my seventh grade, I went to the public school. And I mean, I don't know how many people were in my grade, hundreds. And I think that was also when a bit of my innocence bubble was burst, because, yeah, people were drinking, people were dating. There was just a lot of things that I was introduced to all at once. So I think it was, yes, a bit of family, but also just this like societal, not really pressure, but just a bit of like more of the norm than I had experienced before.

Yeah, going from, yeah, that, you know, such a small group of people to public school, what was the decision there for you to make the shift? It was my decision and I really did want a bigger social life. I think, I mean, I was so grateful that I got to experience Montessori-style schooling. I think that's what has cultivated such a desire even in my adulthood to learn and be curious. It's very student-led learning. But, you know, once people, People are, because I got my first cell phone at 12 in sixth grade. And so I just started to, I think, sense that I was missing out on some of the things that some of my friends that were in my extracurricular activities were getting to experience.

And so it really was a bit of this social life decision to shift over to public school and feel less of an outsider in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. that makes a lot of sense too. A lot of people share too, the drinking could be connected to a sense of belonging or hitting in or easier to make connections. Like, you know, when you drink, the walls can come down in a sense.

Where do things go for you kind of moving forward? You know, a lot of people you're hanging out with. It sounds like anyway kind of drinking the same amount or same like frequency. You're drinking a little bit more than them. Yeah. The wheels definitely fell off multiple times. The first time being I was. was a senior in high school, and I was partying with a group of my friends, and we had this

awful idea to do some type of, like, drinking competition. And so from what I remember, we were basically going, like, shot for shot to see who could drink the most. And I drank myself to the point where I had alcohol poisoning. At the same time, my senior year, I started dabbling in cocaine. And that was definitely not the norm in my friend group. I was kind of an outlier in that. But my friends were really concerned because I was like just throwing up constantly and probably going like in and out of consciousness. So they ended up pulling an ambulance. And I went to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, and they drug tested me at the hospital. And that's when I came back positive for probably marijuana and cocaine. I was also using marijuana a lot, my senior year of high school.

And so that I don't think that my parents, like, I think my parents probably had an idea that I was maybe dabbling in alcohol, but I was pretty good at hiding it. They for sure did not know about the cocaine. And so that was the first time I went to any type of treatment program. I went to a 90-day outpatient at Boston Children's. And I mean, it was definitely, I'm sure a lot of people in recovery can relate. Like, sometimes the first attempts at sobriety are way more for other people. And it's, it's almost just this attempt to make rights some type of catastrophic situations. that you get yourself in when you're drinking. So it wasn't like I was 17 and all of a sudden had this turnaround where I felt like I didn't want to drink anymore. It was more like,

oh, this is a punishment for my drinking. And, you know, I'll do the 90 days and I'll go through the program. And it was pretty easy for me because it wasn't like mentally I wasn't making a life change. It was just this 90 days I had to get through. So I did. You know, I abstained. I didn't drink. I wasn't doing any drugs. But shortly after that, I went to college. And I went from living in Massachusetts to going to college in Charleston, South Carolina. So I was super far away from my parents. And then the college drinking started. And it was similar in the way that I could maintain my schoolwork. You know, I still was getting good grades. But I was definitely drinking a lot on the weekends and was again the person that was always drinking to the point where I kind of

had to be taken care of a bit. Yeah. Like blacking out a lot, experiencing that or no? Yeah, blacking out, getting sick, just being sloppy, like not being able to walk. Yeah. Yeah. Just all of all over the above. And I was also my sophomore year of college, I started working in Food and Bev. So I was 19 and I was cocktailing at a like pretty nice like Scotch and Cigar Bar. And even though I was underage, we were allowed to drink if the customers bought us a drink. And we were also able to have a shift drink at the end of every shift. So then I started hanging out with people, you know, I think in.

the food and web scene, it's, that's kind of like what you do is you work your shift. And then you're getting off at like, you know, midnight 1 a.m. 2 a.m. And then you go to the bars or you go to someone's house to have some type of like after party. And so it was, it was similar where I was just then hanging out with people where drinking really regularly was was totally the norm. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people share that too. I mean, I had my running. My run with the restaurants. It's very, it's like a subculture in a sense of drinking and yeah, when most people are sleeping and you're getting off work and drinking and everybody wants to hang out and that is that is so relatable. And at this time, I mean, are you realizing how this is

impacting you or it's just what you're kind of seeing around you? It's all good. I'm going to, I'm going to turn this around sometime. I definitely. I definitely. had some awareness, but for me, when it comes to the denial portion of addiction, the denial was so deep that it wasn't even like I was aware that I was in denial. I was just totally in denial of some of my patterns and behaviors. And it was also kind of the only way of living that I knew So I didn't have an idea and I couldn't picture what my social life for sure, what my social life would look like without alcohol. My whole social life revolved around drinking. But I was experiencing some negative consequences. You know, I was, you know, every once in a while getting, you know,

in trouble at a job or fighting with a boyfriend or something like that. And ultimately, that's why I left Charleston is because I knew, even though I graduated with my college degree, I was still just working in food and Bev. And I knew that if I stayed in Charleston, I would probably just stay bartending for years and years and years and years and drinking for years and years and years. So I moved to San Diego. I just kind of like up and left decided to move across the country. And ironically, I then landed in San Diego and started working at a, at another bar. And that was, so the year after I moved to San Diego was when I had like my first real big consequence, which I got a DUI. And it was like, I was so ashamed and I really,

yeah, it was just like, how did I get to this place? And so I had lots of court-ordered treatment. I had to do, you know, intensive outpatient. I had to do all these DUI classes. I actually had an alcohol monitoring bracelet on my ankle for 90 days, which was like, I just remember being so embarrassed because it looked like it's the same. It's the same look as home arrest bracelets. But it detects to alcohol in your sweat. So I had to walk around with that for 90 days.

And yeah, it was, I don't remember how long that structure of sobriety was, but I would say at least six months. And unfortunately, it just didn't stick. Once all of the, like, boxes were checked, I had this false idea that I could start to control it again. And I fell back into the same patterns. But this time I was like, oh, I will get out of food and Bev and I'll get a nine to five job. And that will be the accountability that I need to get sober. There's always these like attempts to just control and moderate rather than actually giving up the alcohol, the what's causing the problem. So I did.

I started a career in tech sales. and a lot of my experience working in food and bev translated really well to sales. So then I started making more money. But it turns out the sales world is also a career where there's a lot of drinking involved. So, yeah, I kind of started living that same pattern where I was pretty functional. But then outside of work, all I was doing, my whole social life was just going to bars and getting really drunk with coworkers and waking up hungover and rinse and repeat. Yeah.

This reminds me a lot of the expression wherever you go, there you are. You know, like I'll change up this, I'll do that, but not remove the alcohol because that feels very scary and I'm not seeing that that is really what I need to be doing at this point. But it's a very familiar story of us trying to really make adjustments in so many other areas of our life. this alcohol monitored it. So are you not allowed to drink at all for those 90 days while you're wearing it? Yeah, I know. It will set off the alarm and it will go straight to like my probation officer. And I was also getting drug tested in addition to that through the intensive outpatient program that the court had ordered me to do. So those were great, you know,

regulations to keep me sober, but unfortunately once the bracelet came off and I wasn't being drug tested, I think there is this hope that, okay, I've had a little bit of time sober. And so maybe that's the reset I needed. Now I'll have this new relationship to alcohol somehow miraculously. Yeah. But that really didn't happen. And I just continued to drink. You know, I'd show up for work. I was doing well at my job, but, you know, I was, I was living with a partner at the time, and he also was drinking. He had similar drinking patterns as I, you know, we would get home from work. And first thing we did was start drinking. And really, it was just drinking until we fell asleep. And then COVID hit. And that's really where things started going real bad, real quick, because we got sent home, my company, we all got sent home from the office. Yeah. like mid-March of 2020. And then I was able, you know, I didn't have the accountability to be physically present anywhere. And so I could be on a Zoom meeting with a mixed drink in a coffee

cup and nobody would even really know the difference. I had already been, I had already gotten to the point towards 2020 where I was physically addicted to alcohol. So I had had already, even before we got sent home from the office, I would have to have a drink before I went into work. I mean, not to get drunk, but to stop the physical shakes and like the physical withdrawals. And then I'd also have a drink or two at lunch. And then after I got home from work is when I really started drinking heavily. But then with getting sent home from the office, I mean, I was still waking up having that first drink. But then I was just continuing to drink all day until the end of the day when I would, you know, eventually just pass out.

Yeah, passed out for the night. Was that something you knew was going to happen with drinking? Like if I drank, then I'm going to get, you know, physically addicted to it and have, you know, have these withdrawal symptoms? No. No. The first time I had the shakes, the physical shakes was, I mean, probably four years before that, maybe even longer.

And it was when I was still in my bartending job. And I showed up to work. And I remember talking to my coworker being like, my hands are so shaky today. I don't know what's going on. And she's like, have you had a drink today? I was like, no. She's like, that's probably why. You probably are, you know, getting the shakes.

And I hadn't even heard of that before. And so, you know, I snuck a drink at work. and sure not, they went away. And I didn't, I mean, I probably knew that physical addiction to alcohol was a thing, but I didn't know how quickly it could happen. My body got physically addicted very quickly. Yeah. I think, too, we do a good job at convincing ourselves that, like,

this is kind of what other people go through. Like, I know better than that. You know what I mean? So other people go through, not somebody who's showing. growing up to a nine to five and doing what they need to do. And, you know, everybody around us probably thinks things are, you know, okay. Yeah, we do a good job at that. Yeah.

Yeah. And maybe that feeds into the denial, the denial element too. It's that denial that you're the one that has the problem. It's like you're saying, it's very easy to be like, oh, well, you know, I am not, you know, I'm not homeless. I, you know, I have, like you said, I have a job. For me, you know, I had a boyfriend. So there were certain things where I was like convincing myself that the rules

didn't apply to me where that could not have been farther from the truth. And I think that's what's so powerful about sharing stories about addiction is to remove some of that stigma that addiction only happens to certain people because it happens to anybody, all walks of life. yeah oh for sure for sure and especially too you mentioned i mean there's a lot of it seems like it anyway throughout all these stories there's a big correlation between family members struggling and then you know down the line right the generations of of people that you know find themselves in one way or another could be struggling with alcohol too so there's like that family history piece there which

um i i hear a lot of stories a lot of stories i'm trying to even think about it in like the 300 episodes. I'm like, is there anybody who hasn't had somebody in their family? And I don't, I can't think off the top of my head that there hasn't been somebody who has in one way or another struggle with drinking. You know, so you have these too. I mean, even reflect back of like, hey, what are the earlier, earlier red flags of, you know, this may be how this is going to play out. So you do like this other 90 day program, you have the DUI. You know, things kind of worked out there. You did what you had to do, which I think is relatable. to a lot of people too.

You know, it's just kind of a one-off. I'll learn my lesson. But let me see. I'm just curious how when you go through these, you know, this intensive outpatient, I'm only guessing here, but they must have talked about sort of this phase or this stage of, yeah, I can just have one.

I can figure it out. I can manage it, control it, whatever word we insert there, that must have come up. Oh, for sure. But it's like you were saying, somehow you can convince, to yourself that you're the exception to the rule.

It's like, oh, well, you know, I am intelligent. I'm hardworking. I'm a really good person. So I will be able to have that self-will to moderate in some way. And that was clearly not the case. Yeah, yeah. So you do all of this stuff. and then six months later you get back into drinking,

does it pick up right where it left off, or how does that look? Yeah, so for me, it tended to be, because I had, so in addition to the 90-day program at 17 and the DUI, I also did one more 90-day outpatient treatment. And after all, of those scenarios, there was this small amount of time where I had kind of convinced myself I could moderate.

You know, it wasn't like I was blocking out every single time I was drinking. My body had had time to reset, so I wasn't getting, you know, the shakes. And there, you know, there may have been like a month or maybe two months where it felt like I was in control, but then slowly, but surely things would just creep back up to the point that they had been at before and then some. It always got worse and worse and worse. Yeah. Yeah. What did that look like for you as things kind of picked up? And that other thing you mentioned there too is I think that that's what maybe makes it confusing for a lot of us because it's not always disastrous.

It's like, okay, I remember when I would kind of do it again, I'd say, I'll just have one, one drink. I'd get a little bit of time and I have one beer. And I would have one beer. And then my brain's like, yeah, man, look, like, you can have one beer. I was miserable. I'll admit, looking back, I was pissed off. Like, what the heck?

What's the point of one beer? But I could do it. But I couldn't do it consistently for longer than like a week maybe or, like, it always went back to what it was. It just became like, this is not fun. I'm not enjoying this. Why does everybody else get to drink? And why can't I just let loose and do what I thought I loved at the time? But it can be maybe confusing in that spot of like, hey, it wasn't that bad at times. Yeah, that's how it was for me too. There was a lot of convincing like, oh, it's not, it's not that bad until, yeah. So when we got sent home from COVID and I started drinking really,

heavily all day, every day, that very quickly became unsustainable. So for me, my addiction story was very physically manifested. So I remember it must have been sometime in April, maybe, so we got sent home in March. Yeah, so like pretty shortly after, I remember I was shaving my legs in the shower and I noticed that I had this like one part on my shin that was a little bit numb. And now looking back, that was kind of the first signal that something was really going on. But over the next couple of months, I physically deteriorated so fast. I had, I was even going to the doctor too, but I was not telling them how much I was drinking. It was part of that denial where it's like, No, it's got to be something else that's going on.

So I had cyclical vomiting. I was throwing up, you know, multiple times a day. And I also had something going on with one of my eyes where it was almost like a permanent lazy eye. My eye was just always going out towards the, out towards the side. And so I remember for a little while I was like wearing an eye patch because they weren't sure it was going on with my eye. And then I started having really bad pain in my feet, just like excruciating pain in my feet to the point where over the course of a few weeks, I was not

able to walk because the pain was just so intense. And yet I was still drinking. I don't have great memory of this time because my body was just like really starting to fail me. But what I later on learned what's happening was I had developed alcoholic peripheral neuropathy, which is where your nerves, because alcohol is a neurotoxin, the nerves, my nerves were literally dying because of the amount of alcohol that I was consuming. And so I went to the hospital once in May, once in June. and that was when they were like, your liver enzymes are off the chart. You know, you really need to stop drinking. But I don't think I was cognitively fully with it at that point.

And a doctor had excused me from work. And I remember he excused me all the way through the end of July. And I was like, that's a long time to be off work. And he was, he just looked at me. He's like, you are not able to walk right now. Something really serious is going on in your body. And it was almost like I just thought magically overnight I was going to get better. And I did not. So July 4th of 2020, I don't remember any of this. So I tell the story from what I was told from my boyfriend at the time. But I woke up and I didn't know who he was. And he said I was, you know, just totally yellow. And so he called the ambulance. And they came. And that's when it was discovered that I was in full liver and kidney failure. And my brain was swelling. So they, you know, they checked to see if I would be eligible for a liver transplant, which I was not because I had a history of addiction. And so

they thought that that was really it. You know, they couldn't control the swelling in my brain. They told my parents that I probably had about 48 hours to live. My parents had to call my partner at the time and tell him what was going on. And by the grace of God and my guardian angels on my side, I slowly started to take a turn for the better. And I was in the hospital for about a month. I was on, you know, like a feeding tube, I still was not able to move, really, my legs. They had classified me as permanently, partially disabled and like paraplegic. And it was unknown of, you know, what my prognosis would be. And, yeah, that was definitely like one of the bottoms of the bottom, you know. I had lost total physical independence at that point. Wow. And was that in 2021, July 4th or 2020? That was

2020. So like we got sent home from the office mid-March, July 4th, I was in full, full organ failure. Wow. What was your drinking routine like? Like what were you drinking? Towards the end, I was drinking vodka and I used to mix hard seltzers with vodka and make a mixed a mixed drink out of those. And, um, I mean, I was drinking all day. I would have to drink in the morning. So I'd have like a couple drinks in the morning. And then it was just like all day. I probably was drinking almost a bottle of vodka a day. Yeah. And is this the same boyfriend like that throughout this time? Or is he saying anything or? Um, yeah. He, We were together for four and a half years, and obviously he was very concerned.

But as most addicts know, I mean, there's nothing that anybody in your life can really, that they can really say or do that's going to make a big impact if you yourself don't want to make a change. So we definitely got in arguments around my drinking, but he was also drinking every day. I wouldn't say that he was drinking nearly as much as I was. But there was definitely a little bit of like, this is. one of the things that our relationship is, is built around. Yeah. And he was, you know, obviously really, really concerned and really showed up for me throughout

my recovery after that major hospital stay. Yeah. Wow. Like, what was your reaction to? I mean, the doctors, you mentioned, I told your family, did they mention to you, too, like 48 hours? Yeah, I don't remember most of being in the hospital, to be honest, because I had so much brain swelling. And because my liver and kidneys weren't filtering out toxins from my blood, I had so much ammonia in my brain that it actually, it actually manifests similar to like dementia or Alzheimer's where I wasn't really in touch with reality.

So I think the realization of what damage I had truly done, I think that came in layers over the course of many months of like physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, regaining my physical independence. You know, it took me about six months to relearn to walk. So I had plenty of time to contemplate on. on my actions, but it wasn't like the doctors told me one thing and it just all hit me all at once. It was kind of this like slow unraveling and this this slow acceptance of, yeah, of what I had done to myself and where I had ended up. Yeah. How old were you at this time? I was 29. 29, yeah. I feel like too, like listening to people's stories and had a few other guest too. Like I feel like a lot of people were under the impression that this, you know, to have liver failure, to have sort of these physical consequences from drinking. I mean,

you have to be doing it for decades. It's got to be a thing that goes on forever. I mean, was any of this a surprise to you of, you know, 29 experiencing this or no? Yeah, totally. And I still haven't heard of too many people that have had the alcoholic peripheral neuropathy where it really has affected their, yeah, their ability to walk. So for sure, I thought that I had many, many, many years to figure out my sobriety before it had a major impact, especially because I was still functional to a certain extent. You know, I was still working up until I was not able to, but there were certain markers in my life that I was using to fuel that denial of how bad things had truly gotten. Yeah. How common do you think that that is? I mean,

where people are like, they got this box checked and that one checked, and maybe that helps they keep going. You feel like that's pretty common? Yeah, I totally think that's common. I think it's easy to cling to the things that are right in order to. to turn a blind eye to all the chaos and destruction and lying and manipulation, all the things that just inherently come with being in active addiction. Yeah. Is hiding your drinking part of your story or no? Oh, yeah, yeah.

I can't believe that. In my sales career, which was seven years, granted, a couple years at the end, I was sober. But my whole sales career, I never once got caught or had like a manager set me aside or talked to me. I don't know if maybe they had suspicions and didn't feel comfortable. But I definitely hit it because there was so much shame. There was so much shame. Even though there was the denial, there was also the embarrassment of like, oh, I need to have a drink to get up in the morning. and I definitely hit it from a lot of people.

Like my parents, my work, I mean, obviously my partner knew, but even a lot of my friends didn't know quite the extent of how bad I was drinking. Yeah. How did you feel about yourself and where you were at kind of leading up to this, like on the inside? I think that's a huge reason why I started drinking in the first place. I think I had just a discomfort being in my own skin. It was just this low-level anxiety and sense of disconnection from myself. And as I drink to try and cope with that, but alcohol disconnects us and numbs us from

ourselves. So over time, I was just compounding the problem until I got into this point where it was like, who even am I? You know, I had no sense of who I was and what I enjoyed or what life could look like. It was just very rinse and repeat, all revolving around alcohol. Yeah. Yeah, it becomes the identity becomes all consuming. And life without it, it's like, I always wonder sometimes, is the biggest fear quitting drinking?

Or is the biggest fear sort of what comes next? Like, who am I going to be without it? or how am I going to get to know myself again? Or, you know, like, what does that look like? As opposed to sort of the decision to quit drinking, it's like what comes next maybe feels scary, but I don't know maybe if we realize it at the time. Yeah, I definitely resonate with that.

I think it was just, yeah, I couldn't even imagine what life would be like without drinking. You know, it was my whole social life. It took up so much time, so much mental space. It was like what could possibly be there instead? I really didn't have anything that I was working towards in terms of like this vision of a beautiful, sober life. I didn't even know what that could really look like. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's like a common spot where, you know, so many of us start out. It's like we get to this spot. We know that, you know, the way we're living is just going to be many, many, many more consequences, but maybe we just try something out. So is this time leading up to the hospital? Is that the last time you drank? It's actually not. It's actually not.

Okay. So I was sober for about a year. Okay. So from July 2020 through June, 2021. And in the summer of 2021, I had a severe manic episode. And within that manic episode, I had a couple of drinks just thinking in my delusion. It wasn't so much the denial delusion that had existed before. This was actually just pure, like, delusional thinking that was going on. And so I had a couple of drinks in the

beginning. And then I was actually hospitalized in a psych hospital for three months because of that manic episode. I just, the way that I look at it is there was definitely a bit of a conscious choice to just check out mentally. I had a lot going on. Me and my, that partner at the time, we had broken up. My parents were really going through a tough time. Understandably, you know, they had just gone through this huge trauma of thinking that potentially they were losing their daughter and witnessing me trying to come back to life, to vitality. You know, I had a family member pass and my job was really just sucking my soul dry. And so I think there was a little bit of this conscious decision of just like, I just don't,

I just don't have the capacity to be here right now. And so, yeah, it was, I, because. I was much more aware, you know, I didn't have toxins floating through my brain where it wiped out a lot of my memory. You know, I was much more aware of what was going on. And being in the psych hospital for that long of amount of time was incredibly traumatic. And it was just kind of this point where I was like, is this what life is going to be. It's just going to be now like one major trauma after the next. I had lost my physical independence in, in 2020. And then I had lost like any sense of trust in my own thoughts and emotions in 2021. So when I got out of the psych hospital like the end of August of 2021, I relapsed. That was like a real true relapse because I had just kind of given up. I, I think. it was almost this slow suicide attempt where I just wanted to numb and I didn't even care if it led to where I had been in terms of like my body giving out. I just didn't want to really

fight anymore. And so so it was similar like you know like I was just drinking a little bit here and there but pretty quickly it it spiraled into drinking wine all throughout the day and yeah, just a really dark mental place that I was in. Yeah, thanks for sharing that too. For the hospital, was that like your choice to go into the hospital or for three months you were required to stay? Yeah, I was involuntarily committed. I was committed for 13 weeks in Florida.

They have something called the Baker Act so they can involuntarily commit you. I was there for the first couple of months, and then they had stabilized me enough to let me out, but I was still so manic. And so I flew back to California. And within like a week, I was 5150 there, which is basically the same thing. They can involuntarily commit you. And so I spent about another month. month in the psych hospital in California. And that's, I mean, because they can, they can involuntarily medicate you. They can restrain you. They can put you in an isolation room. Because you're also surrounded by people who are in the midst of their own mental health crisis. So it's so chaotic. You know, I got punched in the face there. There were people that were just like, you know, smearing their poop on the walls. and just a lot of screaming.

And it was so tough. That was definitely, that was definitely the hardest point in my life, I think, thus far. Yeah. So you mentioned it started in Florida. Were you living in Florida? Or how did you end up in Florida? Yeah. So when, so in like March of 2021, because it was still COVID,

Florida was really opening everything up again versus California was still really shut down. And my parents have a vacation house in Florida. So I decided to go there and spend a bit of time there. It also was a single-story house, which was much different than the three-story condo, like three-story duplex that I was living in in California. So because I was, I mean, I was mobile at this point. I didn't need a walker. but I still had a lot of sensitivity on my feet. And so it was also just easier for me to get around with it being a single-story house. So that's how I ended up in Florida. Okay, gotcha.

And then what's starting the process for you to get in California, the 5150? Like, is that something your parents initiate, police initiate, you initiate? It was probably a mixture of both. I mean, I was definitely like very manic and very delusional. In Florida, well, I was posting incessantly online, just ramblings. Because in a mania, everything feels like this, just so monumentally important. Every little thing, you know, you read a line in a newspaper and you're like, wow, this is a message from the universe. And so I was like sharing all of this basically.

nonsense stuff, but to me it felt so profound, which immediately raised red flags of my family. So my dad flew down to Florida, because my parents live in Massachusetts. So nobody was at the Florida house as this really started to ramp up. So my dad flew down and that alarmed me, you know, for him just to show up unexpectedly. So I actually went to the local police station and told them that I was scared that my dad had just showed up out of nowhere. And of course, they're like, but it's his house, right? Like, he can, he can just show up at his own house. And so I think they came with me to the house. And my dad explained what had been going on that he was concerned. My dad, I think, both of my parents, actually, I think they thought originally I was doing drugs.

They didn't realize that it was mania. They thought that maybe I had taken something or I was doing like math but so he explained the concerns to the cop and um yeah the cop um put me in handcuffs and took me to the like intake area of the mental health unit and then um yeah they put me into the actual like mental hospital and i thought i was only allowed to be held for 72 hours so I was kind of like in this delusion of whatever, I'm going to get out. And then over time, it was like, oh my gosh, like, am I ever going to get out? And they couldn't get me to come back down from the mania. It was, I mean, they were medicating me. But again, I think it was partly because it was this conscious choice that I just wanted to mentally check out. So, yeah, I just stayed in the mania for for weeks and weeks and weeks. And then when I went to, when I flew out to California,

I don't actually know how that all happened. I am assuming that somebody, again, I was posting incessantly online. So everybody knew where I was like in real time. And so I think a friend or a family member called the local, I was in Santa Monica. I'd made my way up to Santa Monica. And I think a friend or a family member alerted the police that I was there. And so they came, they came and got me and took me into the, the psych hospital up there. Wow. Yeah. So they, with them interacting with you for a little bit, it was like, okay, we need to to, you know, look into this little further. Like they could tell, I guess. Yeah, they could tell. Okay. They could tell that I was definitely just not all there. I was, I was just, you know, I was just delusional. And again, like, it's trying to explain the importance of all these things that were just everyday normal things. and I'm sure that they have training and education around what mania looks like. Yeah.

But it was my, I mean, I had never had any history with mania. Nobody in my family either. So it was definitely an outlier of an event. Yeah, wow. So then you get out of the hospital and I think you mentioned before you, do you drink, you start drinking again? Yeah. So I got out of the psych hospital in California and went back to Florida.

and right before the manic episode really happened, me and my ex, my boyfriend who had taken care of me. Yeah. Throughout the addiction, we had split up. So it just made more sense for me to just stay in Florida because we had been living together. So I went back to Florida. And, I mean, I was seeing a psychiatrist and I was seeing a therapist, but. But again, I was just swimming and embarrassment and shame. And that's when, yeah, I started turning to drinking again. So I drank for about three and a half, four months. And so December 15th, 2021 is my sober date. Wow. And what happened there? What, yeah, what was the day before like? Was there, you know,

was there something that, I guess, encourage you to make a shift? Yeah, I think it kind of got to this point where, you know, something needs to change. The way I was living, the way I was feeling, was just so incredibly unbearable. And I didn't want to take my own life. So I was like, I, I'll give sobriety one last shot. And because it was much more of like, this is my conscious decision, it wasn't some disaster that was leading up to the commitment to get sober. I was able to be a little bit more intentional about how I approach sobriety. You know, for me personally, A, A, although I went to many, many meetings, it was just not,

it was not resonating in the way that I needed the messages to resonate. So I found a three-month online women's group program that was much more like spiritual and personal development slash wellness focus, but specifically for women who are looking to let go of drinking. Yeah. And I think that community, that sense of community and that sense of accountability really made the difference for me because in the past I didn't feel like I really had either. Yeah, so adding other people in. So you just make this decision like, hey, tomorrow I'm going to give this one more try or was it like you woke up that morning and you're like, okay, I'm just not drinking today and figure it out as I go. Um, well, I had drank a lot. I think it was wine. I drank a lot of wine and I was taking anti-anxiety medication to prescribed by a psychiatrist. And so I took like a bunch of the anti-anxiety medication. And that was, it was like that night slash that next morning where I was like, I have to make a change.

And so I reached out to my parents and I reached out to a couple of friends. And that was kind of like, you know, me proclaiming my commitment to stop drinking. Yeah. What were some of the challenges you face early on too? And this is all in Florida, like you stay in Florida for all of this part? Yeah, I stayed in Florida up until like January of 20th. So the first few months of, no, no, sorry. Hmm.

I must have stayed, maybe it was February of 22. Yeah, it was February of 22. I got back to San Diego shortly before my birthday, which is February 6th. And the initial challenges, I think, were, yeah, just overcoming some of the shame and trying to speak kindly to myself and not just listen to the incessant inner critic that was there. And to begin to forgive myself and show myself some compassion and self-love, those things were all really, really tough at the beginning.

It was like I didn't even really have a sense of what self-love and self-compassion looked like. And that's why that's, I think, what had got me into my addiction in the first place was just the fact that I didn't know how to love myself or be kind to myself. Yeah. So this was like the numbing or forgetting about it or escape in one way for all those things. And it carries on. It's so funny how it's such a self-perpetuating cycle. You know, it's like we feel shameful because we've been drinking or because of these habits or whatever happened when we were drinking. And so then we drink to try and numb the shame.

And then we're shameful because we drink. And so it's just this like never-ending loop of shame and guilt and criticism. And so breaking that cycle was. was quite challenging. But having other women that were also along the same part of their journey was really, really helpful. Yeah. In what ways? In what ways did you find it helpful to, you know, connect with other people too? Because you did have that other, like almost a year, right? If I'm getting the dates correct, of sobriety. But this way you went about things different of connecting with other people or did you do that before as well?

So the first year that summer of 2020 to summer of 2021 that I had sober, I think I was, first of all, just fueled by fear because I had nearly died. And so I was like, oh my gosh, you know, can't do that again. And I was also so focused on my physical recovery that I wasn't really working on the emotional behavioral challenges that were also present. It was so much more focused on, yeah, like, relearning to walk and trying to manage my nerve pain. And, yeah, and kind of like proving to myself that I was getting back to my old self. Like, I started putting so much effort and emphasis into my job, really proving that I was going to come back strong. And the, you know, after the decision, the end of 2021, that was a lot more of like, okay, I need to focus on

also my mental and emotional health. Yeah. And then, you know, sharing space or having a space where you could go. I hear in so many stories is so helpful, the place where other people that are on the same quest or going after the same goal, place where you can feel comfortable and maybe connect with other people that you relate to? Yeah, just to know that you're not alone, you know, that it's not just a you thing. I think for me, my shame often tells me that, like, I am bad and that I am the only one that is experiencing this. And so just hearing other people be like, oh, yeah, no, me too.

Like, that's all so hard for me. Or I also used to do that, these things that I felt like, oh, I don't want to tell anybody about that. Having other women that were like, oh, yeah, no, I used to do that too. You know, it just kind of made it, you know, a little bit more normal, at least in terms of, like, how addiction manifests. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. Being around other people to share and, yeah,

I feel like we're not the only one because I think along the path, we convince ourselves in one way or another that I'm the only person doing this. There's nobody else who's doing it. And then when you share with other people of similar stories and journeys, they're like, yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, I can relate to that too. So where do you go? I mean, do you feel like you hit a stride here, you know, early on with your with your sobriety and like are you telling other people you mentioned you told

some friends and your parents and like how is this feeling is it feeling real like hey i'm gonna i'm doing this thing i'm going to be able to make this happen yeah it did feel pretty certain pretty early on that time finally yeah and all the other times it didn't feel quite as quite as certain But I could just tell that it was going to stick. You know, it felt like I was committed. It felt like things were shifting. And so I really dove in deep in terms of emotional and mental and spiritual healing, you know, working with somatic therapists and really diving into things like yoga and breathwork

and some practices that may have been considered a little bit more like alternative in more of the traditional recovery structures that I had gone through in the past. And then about a year into my sobriety, I got trained to be a recovery coach and supported her program for about a year. And that was really a rewarding experience for me. Yeah, helping other people, supporting other people, utilizing your skills. And I think I hear from a lot of people too. And I don't know if it's relatable to your journey,

but I feel like we lose a sense of purpose in the addiction somewhere. It's like I remember so many times when I would commit to quit drinking and then I would get sober for a bit or quit drugs, whatever it was. And I would say, man, my life still sucks, you know, 20 days in. I'm like, nothing changed but my underwear. And I would go back. It was kind of, I was a pretty easy pushover to go back. But I think going through that cycle of like when I look back now, it's like I just didn't

have a vision. I didn't have a purpose. I wasn't working really towards anything. And that just kind of kept me stuck. So I think like whole like working with other people and helping support them on their journey and like, hey, this is all a great thing. And we have a purpose here and it's bigger than us. And yeah, I see that as being really.

really cool and really essential to the process. Yeah, I could not agree more. I think, you know, I say that when I was in my addiction, I was just existing. I wasn't actually living my life. I was just existing and going through the motions and just going in a circle. Like you said, there was no direction.

There was no vision. And also, I had built my whole life while in active addiction. So it's like, I got sober and, you know, that first time, it's like, I'm in this partnership and, you know, thank God for him. He really, really was my caregiver for a long time. But at the core of it, we really weren't that aligned. You know, the majority of our connection was that we were drinking buddies. And then I also was in this sales career that I had already committed, you know, four years or so into. And it's like you wake up in sobriety and it's like, this doesn't even feel like my life.

But of course it doesn't because you made all these decisions when you were totally disconnected from yourself. So part of the process for me along recovery has been stripping away all of these layers that I put on myself that actually were not a good fit for who I truly am. But I had to first get to know who I truly am in order to start making those decisions. Yeah, 100%. Who truly are you? Like, what did you discover along this journey? What a beautiful question. Yeah, so I've discovered that I am a very wandering and empathetic spirit.

I left San Diego and I now live in Costa Rica and I spent six and a half months solo traveling through Central America and left my corporate career to focus on all of the things that helped me along my journey, you know, yoga, breathwork, somatic therapy. And I now work with others in that same way. and I have developed this sense of self-trust, as well as trust in the universe. And so I'm now in this process of co-creating a really beautiful life, just day by day, tapping into my intuition and what feels really good for me. Yeah, wow. What a shift, Christine. What a shift?

What would you mention to somebody out there who's, you know, like, They're at this spot, too, where, you know, they want to quit, but it just feels like the heaviest lift or the tallest mountain to climb in the world. And they've tried a couple times, right? I think similar to your story, a lot of people are going to go through it, right? Ken, do I have another one in me, right? Is it going to be any different this time? Because every other time, I've kind of fallen short on my goal. Like, what would you mention to somebody?

I would just tell them that I promise that they're, There is an incredibly beautiful life waiting for you on the other side. And yes, it takes some clearing. And yes, it takes some realignment. And that can be really challenging. But there is so much more out there to life than just living in that cycle of regret and shame and self-hate. And I would just remind them that, you know, they are in control of creating any life that they truly desire in that it is incredibly possible for them.

Yeah. So true. It is. And you have to get through. Like sobriety is the doorway. You have to block away from the drink and the substances, whatever it is. Because without it, I don't know that we can see clearly. And I like what you mentioned earlier, too, the disconnect.

I mean, I think alcohol is sold as they. this ultimate connector, right, easy connection, cheap connection. But in those moments, I reflect back on my journey, because it was so easy and cheap, I never developed a skills to do it naturally. So I never picked up on how do I connect with people when I'm not drinking? How do I make friends? How do I be okay with maybe being a little bit bored at times? And how do I be okay?

The piece was kind of weird because I was used to chaos. And really when I look back, it was so much less. about drinking than I thought it was. Everybody around me too before they were all kind of educated on this. We're like, maybe you just quit drinking. It'll be good. And I'm like, I quit drink. I'm freaking miserable.

My life sucks. I have nothing. I have nothing now. And I had to really look, you know, within about, you know, what was really going on. What was the story I was telling myself? And I think, too, a lot of people, and maybe you relate to it, a lot of the fears or maybe all of the fears never really. come true of a sober life of like, oh my gosh, it's going to be this or it's going to be that.

People share quite often that none of it really comes true for us. Yeah. And a sober life is so much more enjoyable than a life of just like you said, the chaos that comes with addiction. And I also agree. I think that the drinking is just the physical manifestation of what is going on. inside. So if there is someone that is at that point where they want to set down the drink, you know, find support, find someone you can talk to, find other people that relate to the

journey that you're going on because just setting down the drink is not going to create the shifts that ultimately will lead to that really beautiful life. It's an amazing first step. It's probably like the most important first step. But there is so much more. in terms of self-discovery and self-love and patience and compassion that you can weave in, that leads to a really, really beautiful outcome. 100%. Well, wrapping up here, is there anything that we've missed that you'd like to mention? I'm just really grateful to have the opportunity to share my story.

And, yeah, if there is anyone that is still struggling, struggling, you know, they can feel free to reach out to me. Yeah, awesome. Well, enjoy another day in Costa Rica. Thank you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Of course.