Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Casey: From red wine girl to 7.5 years alcohol free.

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

On this episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast, we have Casey from the (Hello Someday Podcast) Growing up as a child of diplomats, she struggled with fitting in due to constantly moving countries, and that contributed to her anxiety and need to be liked. Her battle with alcohol didn't start until college when social pressures and the ability to 'turn off her brain' led to her consuming alcohol excessively. Despite the occasional blackouts, she managed to maintain her life and career, and at times thought she was only hurting herself, and not affecting anyone else. After a plea for help on an online support group, Casey decided to turn her life around, starting with a 100-day alcohol-free challenge and gradually transitioning to professional therapy and eventually sobriety coaching certification. Now seven and a half years sober, Casey navigates life with a newfound clarity, joy, and less anxiety, helping others navigate their journey as well. ----------------- 👉 Check Out the SobahSistahs Retreat Info here: https://sobahsistahs.com/bali-2024 👉 Follow Casey here: https://www.instagram.com/caseymdavidson/ 👉 More information on SoberLink: www.soberlink.com/recover 👉 Grab Charmaine's ‘Delicious & Doable ~ Recipes For Real and Everyday Life’ Cookbook: 👇 https://www.amazon.ca/Delicious-Doable-Recipes-Real-Everyday/dp/1989304559

Welcome to Season 3 of the Suburmotivation Podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible, inspiring, and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety as possible one story at a time. Let's go. On this episode of the Sobermotivation podcast, we have Casey. Growing up as a child of diplomats, she struggled with fitting in due to constantly moving countries, and that contributed to her anxiety and need to be liked.

Her battle with alcohol didn't start until college when the, the social pressures and the ability to turn off her brain led her to consuming alcohol excessively. Despite the occasional blackout, she managed to maintain her life and career, and at times thought she was only hurting herself and not affecting anyone else around her. After a plea for help on an online support group, Casey decided to turn her life around and starting with a hundred-day alcohol-free challenge and gradually transitioning to professional therapy and eventually sobriety coaching certification. Now seven and a half years sober.

Casey navigates life with a newfound clarity, joy, and less anxiety, and helping others to navigate their journey as well. This is Casey's story on the sober motivation podcast. Getting sober is a lifestyle change and sometimes a little technology can help. Imagine a breathalyzer that works like a habit tracker for sobriety. Soberlink helps you replace bad habits with healthy ones. Weighing less than a pound and has calm, as a sunglass case, Soberlink devices have a built-in facial recognition, tamper detection,

and advanced reporting, which is just another way of saying it'll keep you honest. On top of all that, results are sent instantly to loved ones to help you stay accountable. Go after your goals. Visit soberlink.com slash recover to sign up and receive $50 off your device. Here's a quick update from Sobysistas, your go-to community for women's sobriety and empowerment. Megan from Soba Sisters is hosting two incredible sober retreats, Bali in April and Vermont in May. These retreats are all about empowering your sober journey

in magical settings and building friendships to last a lifetime. If you're interested, head over to SobaSistas.com slash Bali-2024 for more details. If you've been a fan of the show for a while, going all the way back to episode number two, Megan came on the podcast and shared her story. I'm definitely grateful for the friendship that Megan and I have developed over the years working together on several projects. Check out these retreats that she's putting together.

She's already done a couple and they've been nothing short of incredible. And I've got to give another huge shout out to her other new sponsor. Charmaine cooking show hosts and author of delicious and doable recipes for real and everyday life. Charmaine prides herself on living a drug and alcohol-free lifestyle, and she's also a huge fan of the show. So if you're hungry for fun, delicious, and doable dishes, Charmaine's collection of over 70 mouth-watering recipes will be sure to please your hungry gang.

Pumpkin muffins with coconut crumbled toppings, lemon walnut tuna melts, cranberry turkey burgers with sweet horseradish mayo, and grilled chocolate sandwiches are just a few of the fabulous and flavorful dishes. you will enjoy preparing and devouring with ease. Check out Charmaine's cookbook today. I'll drop the link in the show notes below to the Amazon listing. Let's go.

Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Casey with us. Casey, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. I'm happy that we can connect and share your story with everyone. Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

I love your podcast. Thank you so much. Look, how we start every episode. is what was it like for you growing up? I have an unusual story. My parents are diplomats. They're foreign service officers. I grew up moving sort of countries and continents every two to three years.

And we moved from Southern Africa to South America, back to southern Africa, to the states. And all around, I ended up going to boarding school when I was 14. So never really lived with my parents again. again after a month after, I turned 14. And my family, wine was always on the dinner table every night for dinner. There were lots of dinner parties. They did a lot of entertaining, but no one in my family struggled with alcohol at all or overdid it. I think I've seen my parents like tipsy three times in their lives. And I didn't drink it all through high school because

I was terrified of getting kicked out of boarding school. I felt like I had nowhere to go and the government was paying for my boarding school because my parents were in third world countries. But I had a lot of anxiety. I felt like I needed to be hypervigilant. I felt like I was very much on my own emotionally and literally physically. I talked to my parents once a week on a pay phone. And moving a lot, I always wanted to fit in and was a chameleon. I was very concerned about being accepted and people liking me because otherwise I felt like I'd have no friends. So it was just when I went to college was the first time that I drank because I didn't have that fear of being kicked out. I went to a big keg party, small liberal arts school.

and I played women's rugby, which is like a crash course in problematic, binge drinking to the point of blackout and throwing up as sort of a badge of honor. And I loved it because I felt like for the first time I could turn off my brain and anything could happen. I could have adventures because I stopped thinking so much about how I was being perceived or what would happen. And so that's when I started really drinking heavily. Yeah, thanks for sharing all that with us. Yeah, that's an interesting dynamic there too with moving around and living in different places. Boarding school I always thought of as somewhere that if you're not behaving, you go to boarding school. So this was just because of your situation to where there maybe wasn't the availability at where your folks were?

I think there are two kinds of boarding schools. There's definitely, you know, the ones that you go to if you're not doing so well. But there are a lot, especially in New England, that are fairly upper crust, straight-A students. You're either very wealthy or incredibly smart. When you go there, the school I went to JFK had gone to it. And so it was the kind of place I found my people, but where you could never be too rich, too blonde, too thin. It was a competitive sport in terms of how successful you were with your eating disorder in the storm. Not everyone was like that. I had good friends. I played a lot of sports. It was a

great education. But it was definitely a place where if you were prone to imposter syndrome or not feeling good enough, it fostered that. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. So there's two sides of that. Okay. The overall experience that you had there, it was a good one then. It was. I played lots of sports. I made good friends. I'm actually much closer to my high school friends than my college friends, possibly because I wasn't drinking on my way through high school. But also, we grew up together and leaned on each other.

Yeah. So you hit college. Then you played rugby ad, somebody else previously on the show. And they weren't part of the rugby team, but they hung out with the rugby team. And they shared a similar story to where that was. That was a part of the extracurriculars that they were involved with. What else was going on for you in college? That's it.

I got pretty much straight A's and drank a lot, had some good friends. I was pretty happy in college. I did well when I was getting close to the end of college. I also went to Australia for a semester abroad and was there for eight months because my parents were living in Australia at the time. and that was a ton of fun. I traveled all over Australia with friends in college. I played on the women's rugby team there. I lived in sort of their version of a frat house at the University of Melbourne. But I was a really good student. And I was a total people pleaser. I really wanted my parents to be proud of me. I really wanted their acceptance and approval because I didn't see them that often.

and just always wanted their attention because there wasn't a ton of it. And so I was mostly very concerned my senior year about getting a job because I felt like I had nowhere else to go. I needed to be employed. My mom was in Africa. My dad was in Australia. I just needed a direction. And so I got hired right after college by a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. And it was a tough job for me.

I felt utterly unqualified, mostly because I had put on my resume that I spoke German. You know how you put everything that could possibly sound good that you've ever done? So I took German in high school and my freshman year in college. But somehow I had put that I speak German, like in the skills at the very bottom. And I got hired by this consulting firm that basically did competitive intelligence, like in the times before. the internet and computers were really widely. I graduated in 1997. So my job, my first assignment for them was we were studying air purification respirators. Our client was a big one, competitive time to market in Japan, Italy, Russia, Germany, a couple other places. So I was put on Germany where I would come in at 10 p.m.

and call till three in the morning, trying to talk in German and get the scoop on an industry I had no idea about. And so that was not the best first job for me. It got much better. And my dad was also diagnosed with pancreatic cancer pretty soon after I started my job and was told he had six months to live. I was a total daddy's girl. My mom told me not to go home to Australia because I had made a couple of kids. commitment to my first job, their stiff upper lip kind of fam. And I just started drinking. I was already a big drinker, but I would come home to my little apartment. I had no idea how to cook

dinner. I'd spend eight years in dining halls. So I would have Chef Boyard D. Ravioli or Lucky Charms with a bottle of red wine and thinking that I am very sophisticated, which I was not. And remember vividly, being on the floor, throwing up yellow bile, sweating for hours on weeknights, and thought it was working for me, which I know sounds ridiculous, but I was like, oh, if I'm trying desperately not to puke and I'm flying up to American Express in York, I can't be nervous as I'm trying not to throw up in the meeting. It was just messed up, clearly. But it does work for a bit, I think, right? Like the whole drinking part of things. Yeah, I wasn't stressed out.

night before at all. And in the morning, I was just trying to pull myself together. And looking back, it's amazing to me, one, how I succeeded, God knows. And then two, how much I self-sabotaged. What do you mean by that, self-sabotaged? I feel, so I work, I'm a coach, I work mostly with pretty high-achieving women who also struggle with drinking. And so I was, unless I was trying really hard to moderate. I was a 365 night a week drinker. I quit when I was 40. And I was a bottle of wine a night plus. So I'd come home from work. I'd pick up the kids at daycare. I quit when my kids were two and eight, do all the things and then jump back on the computer or watch TV to relax and often pass out on the couch. If I didn't, I woke up at 3 a.m. with just crushing anxiety and tried to

pull myself together for the day. I felt like I could barely cope with life. I was hung over for every job interview I ever did, every big presentation, and just felt like I was faking it the entire time. And once I stopped drinking, which sounds ridiculous looking back, after I got through the really hard part and figured out some of the stuff I went to a therapist, I got on some anti-anxiety medication. I was self-medicating. I found that I could do my job and handle my family and go back to coaching school on top of it with less stress and just less anxiety. And I was better at my job and I was calmer and happier. And to spend my entire career until I was 40 years old just strung so thin, feeling like any additional request would break me. I just feel like I self-sabotaged.

whole way. Yeah. You got seven and a half years now, I'll call for you. So, yeah. Things are a lot better now. Let's back up a little bit, though. Let's back up a little bit into the story, which that's incredible. So huge congrats on that. But was there a time, two questions here. When was the first time you picked up or had that? I know some of us have that inner conversation, that dialogue with ourselves. Oh, this is not headed in the right direction. Did you have something like that? Yeah. Oh, yes, for sure. And when you mentioned, the first time I picked up, I actually, the first time, I should have seen this as a sign, but I didn't. The first time I really drank, we had gone. It was the weekend of my sister's

graduation from boarding school. We went to different schools in different states. And I went to my girlfriend's house. There were like eight of us. It was the first time we had alcohol, which I know sounds ridiculous. I was 16, almost 17. And we played that drinking game. And we played that drinking game. drink while you think, but with hard alcohol, we were drinking Bacardi without anything else, just pure Bacardi. And I loved it because I was like literally taking longer thinking than I needed to because I wanted to chug more. I got so sick.

Obviously, I don't remember any of it. My friends took care of me. Like crawling up a small hill all night, puking all over myself. They put me in the shower, carried me upstairs. and my dad, who I adored, picked me up the next morning, hadn't seen him in six months. And I was so ill that he offered to let me drive the car. I just got in my license. I said, no.

We were on the highway, and I needed him to pull over because I had to puke. And I tried to pretend I really needed to go to the bathroom, which clearly he saw through. But we went to my sister's graduation. I was with my grandparents who were pretty buttoned up. And the class, my sister's class was like walking down the aisle. And I had to jump over my grandparents, run down the aisle in front of the class because everybody was looking and puke on the side of the building. I didn't even make it around. And all my dad said to me was like, well, he thought it was funny.

He thought it was really funny. He was of the, his favorite movie was Animal House, but he was a nerd. He was never a big drinker, but loved that idea. My mother was like, you could have picked a more appropriate time. That was all she said to me. I was a blackout drinker. I was threw up a lot clearly. I always worried about it, but I also just was like, I need to get a handle on this.

And it wasn't until my son was born that I read Drinking a Love Story by Carolyn Knapp. It's a fantastic book. It was the first book I read about drinking problematically, going to A, struggling, recovery. And the way she wrote about alcohol, I was like, this is me. She talks about like the love affair with it and the obsession with getting more and punishing herself in the morning by working out and all the things. And I read it on my Kindle, pulled out a word document, wrote myself a letter. oh my God, you have a problem with alcohol.

You have to stop. This is going nowhere good. And then that was on a Tuesday in terms of rationalizing and going back and forth. On Thursday, I came back on top of that on the word doc and typed up. Just kidding, nothing to see here, move a lot, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. That's interesting how it makes sense. One moment.

There's clarity. And then there's not again. And I can relate because I got wrapped up in that cycle too, where the consequence is just wore off the next day by lunchtime by three o'clock how bad it was just wore off and then I made the pack with myself again and that it's just going to be a couple it's just going to be six it's just going to be this and it'll just take the edge off and my life's going to be better and I'll be able to relax and get some things done and bang bang boom you're back into it again and just clear that I would just fit clear everything in the fridge and then wake up and then for a long stretch too I

only would buy six or eight beers because I made a commitment to myself the next day I'm So I did this like literally this insanity, probably for a year. Yeah. Where I did that where I was like, I'm giving it up tomorrow. So this makes a whole lot of sense. Is there anybody else in your life that says, hey, hold on here. What's going on? Is there anything we can do to help you?

This is what we see. What did that look like? No, which is weird. I think I had one friend who confronted me and said, you're drinking too much. And she wasn't one of my best friends. She was in my friend group. and said, this isn't good for you or your son or your husband.

And I was so defensive about it. You don't know what's going on in my life. I felt like she attacked what kind of mother I was. And I was a good mom. I really was. I was also very lucky that my husband was always there. I was a smile in the corner and pass out in the couch drinker. But I got everything done.

I remember saying to my therapist, I'm only hurting myself. I'm taking care of everything else. And she was sort of like, listen to yourself. And I'm like, nobody else is being affected, which, of course, looking back, was in no way true. I met my husband at 22. He didn't feel like it was his job to be my father or my parent. I used to, one, I was very defensive about my drinking. So he broached it a couple times or, you know, when I was opening bottle number two on a Tuesday night,

He was like, Casey, what am I, what are you doing? But I was pretty defensive about it. You know, in the morning, I felt like it was very loaded when he would be like, how are you feeling? And I would just be like, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm great. It was always, I have a stressful job. I have a busy life. He was pretty busy too. He was a baseball coach.

He was a and a teacher. He was away. Most evenings or on the weekends. He wouldn't get home till eight. So he was in charge of. of any time we were go out, it was unspoken that he was driving home. And it was sometimes I was totally dead weight. But nobody called me out.

And in fact, the first time I stopped drinking and I went to a 12-step program because it was 10 and a half years ago and that was the option there that I didn't know of anything else. He thought I was overreacting. he was like, I don't, he wanted me not to pass out on a Wednesday night, but he didn't want me to stop drinking. He just wanted me to not overdo it. And even the last time I quit drinking, which was seven and a half years ago, I never shared with him how much I struggled with it, how worried about it I was. I was, had two bottles of wine going. So he would only think I finished one bottle. That was somehow better or acceptable. And the week I quit, he said to me, oh, why don't you just join the wine club up the road so you won't have to buy a couple of bottles of wine a couple of times a week. And I was just like, oh, my God, listen to what you're saying. This is a problem. But of course he didn't know because I desperately didn't want him to because I didn't want to stop.

Yeah. No, and that's a story that I hear a lot, a lot of people can relate to. They might go to somebody and mention, I've got a problem. And it seems to be so common that people talk them out of having a problem, whether they want things to change. And I think even in relationships, too, we connect often when it comes to alcohol, and talk with a lot of people, too, about alcohol brings us together and we're able to maybe let loose a little bit.

And that's some people's experience. But I think for those of us that struggle with it, the letting loose was a lot. thing of the past. Eventually that it went maybe maybe at the end I felt a little bit of relaxation, maybe 30 minutes or 15 or maybe even before I even started. I worked it up in my own head and my mouth would water a bit. This is going to be great. And then I would get to the point where I knew that I had to get up in the morning and I had to do a job or do whatever it was. And I knew once I crossed that threshold, things completely changed because now I'm in a spot where I don't want to go forward and I can't stop.

And I was like, man, this sucks. I promise myself, I'm not going to end up here again in this spot. And here I am again. And that was the really hard thing. But yeah, thanks for mentioning that because I think sometimes too, when we struggle with this, if other people aren't mentioning it, we feel like it's okay. And I always encourage people to look within. You have the answers within and pay attention to that stuff that you might be the only person

standing in front of you in a better life. The sky might not open up and somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, hey, Brad, you've got a problem with this. You should do something. I think it's also this combination of I had a lot of friends who were big drinkers. I was definitely in the working women, work hard, play hard, and the mommy wine culture and the let's let off steam because we're away from the weekend from our kids. And so all my friends who are a lot of them drank a lot too.

And it was just something that I rationalized. And yet when I was trying to stop or when I knew it was unsustainable, like by the end, I was like, I could probably play this out for a couple more years. But I am going to have to stop drinking. This is a problem. I felt doomed. I literally was terrified. I was going to screw up my marriage and my kids and my health and my life. And it was going to be my own fault.

And I was so angry and unhappy and unsatisfied and sad. And I had a great life. And I was like, what is wrong with me? And getting away from it, you were like, it was the alcohol. That's what it does to you, right? It's a depressant. It causes anxiety. It messes with your head.

It makes you physically feel ill. Yeah. No, exactly. All of those things. And that's a question. too that I think that a lot of people face too is like what is what's wrong with me what's wrong with me why can't I get a grip on this and another thing I see from time to time trolls on the internet right you'll post a story or post something and people say just cut back or just moderate and I can't help

but think to myself look we've all tried that probably and if that was the answer to all of this then we wouldn't even be here to begin with if it was just as simple as just moderate just You know what I mean? I would have saved myself a lot of trouble. That's the holy grill. That's why we keep drinking. We keep holding on. And when people would be like, just don't have the third glass of wine, I'm like, oh, why didn't I think of that? Sarcastically. I tried every, I'll switch to white wine or beer because I don't like it as much. Like you said, I'll just buy one bottle. I won't have anyone in the house. And then, of course, you convince yourself when you're driving home to get something. I'm going to. Do running club at night so I won't drink so much. I'll sign up for 530 and boot camp so I won't drink so much. I'll go on a diet like Whole 30 so I won't drink. You name it.

I tried it. It didn't work. Yeah. Did some of those interventions in a sense work for a bit? I never made it past four days during multiple years of trying. Whole 30, please. I would come back from Running Club at 8 p.m., still drink a bottle of wine tonight. I can, I always made it to my workout classes and I got to tell you doing burpees with a hangover and a bottle of wine in your belly is a freaking nightmare.

So no, none of them worked despite my best intentions. It was just a slog. Yeah, no, I, yeah, I can barely do the burpees on a good day. I'm with you. Even that, that can also even confuse things a bit more, I think, right? Because if you're doing the run club, you're still. working out. A big part of what I hear too regularly with people that I can relate to is it's like a reward, right? I've done it. Right. I got the job. I got the kids. I got the dinner made. Bang,

boom. Everything is lined up. Look at me go. Now when we kick back, it's like we earned it. And then if anybody else comes into the picture, hey, what are you doing? It's in most of us are going to do more than maybe other people. We're going to really show up. And that way, when they come, or it's justified to us, or somebody does mention it's, hey, have you seen everything I've done today? This is, it's okay, right? It's, it's like definitely overcompensating. So it's some combination. Of course I deserve to drink. Have you seen everything I'm doing? And there's nothing to see here because the kids got to daycare on time and I'm still doing my business trips, even though I don't remember how I got back to my room last night. I am up and on the

convention floor at 8 a.m. So you can't say anything. Part of me was like, as long as I'm holding everything together, there's nothing to see here. And yet it was so hard to hold things together. And I didn't have some really awful moment, but I had certainly the death of a thousand cuts where little things and big things were slipping. And I was just trying to gloss over it. Yeah, it was almost, sounds anyway, it was close to that tipping point. Like it could have really pour it over big time any day you could have lost maybe this control that you had on everything and the situations. Yeah, and then make a decision. So let's get back into that, seven and a half years.

How do you do it? What does the first day look like? Yeah. It was honestly one day not like any other day. I had been in one of the communities, one of the online communities. At the time, it was a secret private Facebook group of people, you know, called the Booze Free Brigade. I didn't remember there for three and a half years. And I did a year, alcohol free, but honestly, it was really four months.

And then I got pregnant with my daughter. I did two years of drinking. I was a member the entire time. I just didn't post. I read everything. I felt guilty. you know, did that slow shuffle back where you're like, I'm not going to say anything. But I kept reading. And just one day after a hundred cuts in the previous month, woke up at 3 a.m., not at all unusual.

And was reading it. And someone recommended a sober coach. And I had heard these names five times before. that time I went into the office at 10 a.m. I logged on and I signed up. And that was my day one. And what I was signing up for was a hundred day alcohol-free challenge because I could not imagine never drinking again. And that was like a bridge too far for me at the moment. Like I said, I could barely make four days and a pen pal for a year. And I think you got fours. Zoom calls. And I was like a star student. I wrote her seven days a week for my first eight months. And then I wrote her for two years, five days a week. Like I was going to get an A plus in this sobriety thing. And I didn't tell my husband anything other than I was doing 100 days alcohol free at first. I joined hip sobriety school with Holly Whitaker. She wrote quit like a woman. I joined that when I was six. days alcohol-free because I was going to Italy with my whole family at four months. And I was a red wine girl. So I was like, I need to solidify my support and mindset and commitment before I go.

And at four months, I had a major anxiety attack. And I went to my doctor. It was work-related. And I went to my doctor and said, I cannot go back to drinking, but I cannot feel this. this way anymore. You have to help me. And so that's when I went to therapy. I went weekly for a year. I got on anti-anxiety meds. I made sober friends. I hung out with them. Like, it was just these layers of support I kept adding as I built up my days and then got really convinced that alcohol was not. I had problems that I needed to solve and alcohol was not the solution. It was just going to add another problem. And I knew how hard it was. to stop drinking if I started again because I had two years of promising myself and trying and white knuckling it. Once I got to 100 days, I told my husband I was doing six months. And this is what I told my work colleagues, my friends, my workup group. I didn't tell anyone how worried I was

about my drinking. But I had all these sober friends online and these groups and my coach where I worked through all of that with people who actually got it. And then at six months, I was like, I'm going for a year. And at a year, I was like, I think I'm done drinking. I'm not going back. And that was seven and a half years ago. That was my process. Everyone's different.

Yeah. No, that's incredible. When you were able to find those communities and really plug in, because you mentioned you were a part of it too. And that's a lot of our journeys is the seeds seem to be planted before we get plugged in, before we really plug into these resources. and the seeds were planted, you were a part of this community, you're reading this stuff, you're taking it in.

Did you feel less alone when you were able to take that leap and get some help and really get in there and get plugged in? Because, you know, what I find a lot too, and I did this too, is I would convince myself I wasn't like everybody else. But once I got into the programs and into the communities and started talking with the people, yeah, of course, everything wasn't alike. But our stories and how we felt,

about it in stuff. I was able to find a ton of similarities and then that kind of crushed that idea of I'm so alone and I'm so unique in that sense. And it's only something I struggle with. And did you feel less alone getting plugged into those communities? Oh, yeah. My thing was that before I stopped drinking, I literally did not know pretty much a single other person who was sober. Not everyone drank like I did. But I didn't know anyone who. who had struggled with alcohol internally or externally, who had stopped drinking and told me life was better on the other side. The first time I heard that, I don't even remember how I thought.

I think there was an article in the New York Times about a former mommy blogger, Stephanie Wilder Taylor, who stopped drinking. She had a blog. She had a post, and this was 10 years ago, don't get drunk Fridays. she had a Facebook group, which was a Yahoo group. I felt like it was pulling this thread and just starting to find things. And then, of course, you find more, which is why I started my podcast, why I love your podcast, because I didn't want other people to just be wandering around in the dark and not find these resources.

But I found this group. And I remember sitting in my office and terrified. And I posted finally a couple weeks after I found it. I posted a picture of me and my five-year-old son, Little Redhead. He's adorable. Now he's 6-1 and 15 and towers over me. But just wrote, I'm however old I was, 37. I have a five-year-old son.

I drink a bottle of wine in night. I desperately don't want to stop. I'm terrified. Basically my story. and posted it and then was like, oh my God, went back to Facebook refresh. Tell me this isn't on my personal page. I'm going to die. It was in the group.

And then I went to a meeting and I came back and there were 28 posts from women who are like, I'm just like you. My story is just like you. Your son is beautiful. It's going to be okay. Life is better. I was crying. And I cut and paste it.

Apparently, I was big. get word docs, cut and pasted all of that and put it into a word doc. And it was, it was amazing. The support people were so freaking nice and so supportive and funny and fun and good. And I was on there all the time. Friday night, my husband's, what are you doing on your phone? Oh, nothing. Yeah. I hear you. Isn't that it's strange. Out of all places that we come to a Facebook group. And from total strangers in a sense, we find maybe the most support and the most understanding that we might have experienced on the journey. I mean, whoever would have thought such a thing. Yeah. And I told them more than my best friend from when I was 15 because you have to talk about

your triggers. And so it's a Tuesday night and all the mundane stuff. Like my boss said X and my husband was supposed to do Y and he didn't do it and my toddler's having a meltdown. And I'm worried about my marriage or whatever it is, you're telling these people and they're holding you up. And this is stuff I didn't tell anyone because either it was too mundane or it was too scary or we don't talk about our marriage or you're supposed to be like, motherhood is the best thing in the whole freaking world. And you're like, yeah. And to be able to go to a place and talk to that, talk about that with people. So where do you go from here? You do the hundred days. You get to, was it two years? And then you come to the conclusion of this.

I'm done? It was one year. At one year, I was like, I'm done. And I had done a ton of work in between then. And when I announced it, I think at 100 days, I knew I was pretty much done. But I was easing myself and easing my husband into it. At a year, I was like, I'm proud of myself. I feel better.

I know alcohol was the problem. I'm done. And then I just wanted to live my life. I didn't want to be defined by not drinking or drinking. So where I used to be like, oh, I live in Seattle and I work in tech and I do marketing and I'm married and I have two kids and I'm a red wine girl and I love to travel. It became that same list except I'm married. I'm a mom. I quit drinking.

I love to travel. Like I just wanted it to be a part of me. It was important to me. I stayed so close to my sober supports, but I didn't want it to be the thing about me. So for years two and years three, I just focused on joy. I focused on health. I really loved my life for the first time in many years. And then when I hit three years, you spend all this time going to, I went to sober retreats with women.

I read all the books. I did all this work in therapy. And suddenly you're like, my job stresses me out. I don't care. I don't want to be doing this five years from now, 10 years from now. I don't want to be doing it tomorrow. And but I was the primary breadwinner, all the things.

I had a young kid. I was like, I can't quit. So I ended up going back to coaching school. My therapist was the one who encouraged me. And so I did the same thing. I'm very incremental. So I was like, best case scenario, I'm good at it. I love it. And it's my next career. Worst case scenario, I can put it on my resume as like executive coaching. I'll meet some cool people, do some personal development. And I just, I loved it. I started coaching women nights and weekends. I did that for about a year. And then I left my corporate job four years ago. And I started doing it full time and started my podcast. And it's amazing.

Yeah, wow. You just congrats on that. Leaving that, leaving that, leaving comfort for the uncomfortable is never an easy thing. But sobriety makes so much of this stuff possible. I mean, that not drinking in a sense builds up confidence. You just get so much in tune with what do I care about and what do I want to do with my life. And if you can stop drinking, I can do anything. I did that. That's the truth. Yeah, it's so powerful in that sense. Yeah, things that were maybe only far-fetched dreams. are within reach. Or at least we can start to work on stuff. Look at what you've done. You touch so many people. I can't believe all the connections you've made and all the people you've helped. And you were working out of rehab and you quit your job without even telling your wife, right? And she was pregnant.

That's impressive. Yeah. And it came down to that. Like I was just, it came down to the feeling, right? When I was wrapped up in the madness of addiction, I didn't have any goals or anything to work for it. I didn't feel worthy of it. I didn't feel like anything would be possible. And it really wouldn't have the way I was living. I lived on my brother's couch. And then when he was embarrassed of me living on his couch, I lived in his bedroom on his floor. And what was I going to,

you know what I mean? Where was I going to? Yeah, like where was I headed, right? If we were able to get 24 keystone light, it was a good day. And that's what I used to do. So dreams and goals and taking risks. Like I was just lucky to get a job of any sort. And but when you start to improve your life and you start to like you mentioned get clearer on what you want to do the risks are still there and you'll have to take them but my goodness at least you're in the game. At least you're in the game to win or lose and to learn and do something. So yeah, she just scared me there Casey. Flashbacked me back to that day. I go into work on a Sunday and I'm like I told the two guys I work with I'm like, hey dude guys I love you too but I cannot work here for another day. They're like

oh, you've got another, you got something else in the works. And I'm like, actually, no, I don't. But I knew in my mind for a while that it was not healthy for me, but that day and I'd been feeling it a couple days before my body, this anxiety, this is like a car without oil. Your body locks up and you get these panic attacks. Yeah. So I just threw that thing in there. And that was the whole journey that started all of this, which is like to where I am now. I never could have envisioned it to really make a difference for people. But yeah, it's just weird. It's funny. You were flashing me back because I remember I went into a performance review with the general manager of my company. And she was like, I used to be like deep breathing, like so nervous before these. And so

she was saying to me, what do you want? Do you want more scope to manage more people to do X, X, Y, Z, a bigger impact. And I was panicking because everything she said, I was like, no. Like, I was like, dear God, no. And I was sober. It wasn't like I was drinking at this point. And I'd already gone to coaching school. And so she was this hard driving professional woman. She had two kids, but a nanny. She was on the road constantly. And I just looked at her and blurted out, I want to be a life coach. I've never seen her stunned or quiet in my life. I felt like I was this wolf who was like biting off my arm when it was caught in a trap. And she was like, I don't know what to do with that.

And I was like, I know. And I went back to my desk and I told all my co-workers what I'd done because everybody was intimidated by her. And they were like, no, you did it. That was like, yes, I did. I was like crying. that was laughing so hard, but also what have I done? So nowhere near as dramatic as quitting like you did, but I was gone within six months.

I was like, well, I just shot my career in the foot. So what? Yeah, she's probably, oh, I hear you on the life coaching, but it's strange, we don't have that position here. So you must be on the way out. She was more like, what the hell I don't understand. And I don't know what to do with this, but I'm definitely not putting you in charge of me.

It's wild though. It's so wild like looking back at things. In the moments we're so terrified in a sense, right? We have no idea what, how things are going to play out. But I don't know. Since that day, that was probably one of the,

I've taken a lot of risk, but that was probably one of the ones that really panned out that I didn't know where it was going to go. When I looked back, I was literally just comfortable just playing small. Just showing up and doing what I could and not taking any risk. listening to people around me, oh, you can't do that. You can't do that. Oh, that's not possible.

When I was like, I don't know if anything's possible, but the only way we're going to find out is if we give it a try. And that's a way that it's been carried. But thank you so much for jumping on here and sharing. You've got an incredible podcast, too. You've been doing it for a long time. So huge kudos. Share with us a little bit about your show that you do. Oh, yeah, my show. you've been on it, which is awesome. We're talking about sober motivation and how to keep it, how to get it, what motivated you, which is really cool. So my podcast is called the Hello Someday podcast. It is geared for women who want to drink less and live more. It's a coaching approach. So every week I bring on authors and coaches and therapists and thought leaders and trying to give you tips and tools to. take away from the episode to help you not only stop drinking, but just handle all the other things in your life that you've seen drinking to cope with, like marriage and parenting and perfectionism and stuff. So yeah, I've recorded 190 episodes and it's amazing. It started small

and it's going incredibly well. Yeah, that's awesome. How did you come up with the name? Hello Someday Podcast. Yeah, you know what? My business name is is Hello Someday coaching. And so it's Hello Someday podcast for sober curious women, but, but I didn't originally want to coach specifically women who wanted to stop drinking. Like I said, I was at the point where I didn't want quitting drinking to define me or to be, I wanted it to be one of many things about me. And I basically, the idea for me was I saw so many women working with me who,

had in theory done everything right, followed the path. They've gone to college or grad school, gotten the job and gotten the promotion and got married and had kids or whatever was on their list. I happened to work with a lot of women in corporate. But they were really unhappy. And the idea was like the questions we talk about were, is this what it's supposed to be like? Am I supposed to just put my head down for another decade and just get through it? Why aren't? Why are Aren't I happy? And so Hello Someday for me was like, don't put off things for another decade. Hey, I'll do X when my boss is better or my job is better.

My kids are older. I retire. The idea is you can start it incrementally today. And by the time I started the podcast, I was specializing in coaching women to stop drinking. I work with a lot of working moms. But I just took that name and went with it. I love that. When I didn't even talk with you or know of you, but I saw your show, I just got that,

I got that idea from it. It's like, you can make changes today. That's just, I know it's not really, but I just got, you can do it whenever. It can be tomorrow. Just begin. Just begin. Just start. And I love that.

Because you know what? That's so many people's stories. That's so many people's stories is that, you know what? People are waking up one day. And there's this light bulb that kind of goes off. There's these new thoughts that come in and people are deciding. that day that they're going to change their relationship with alcohol. It's not an impaired driving.

It's not getting thrown in the slam. It's not crashing the car. It's not losing the job or the relationship. It's like you said, a thousand cuts over time, right? Slowly, but surely we get a vision and an understanding maybe of where we're headed,

where this is headed. Eventually, I think a lot of us think we have that idea that I'm going to have to quit this someday. Very early into my journey. Yeah, someday. I was like, someday I'm going to have to quit. I could probably play this off, but there is no question I'm going to need to do this.

I just didn't want to do it yet. And then once you take that first step, you take another one, you take another one. And it gets easier and you get more confident and less depressed and more energy. Yeah, those are all great things. I'll take all of them. Thank you so much for joining. Is there anything else you have before we wrap up here? No, just thanks for bringing me off.

I've loved getting to know you. So hopefully we'll keep in touch. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. Well, there it is, everyone. Another incredible episode. Huge shout out to Casey on seven and a half years. Alcohol free, sober, incredible stuff.

Be sure to reach out to her on the Hello Someday Podcast, Instagram channel. I'll drop that link in the show notes below. Let her know you appreciate her. Jump in on this show and sharing her story with all of us. Look, over at Sober Buddy, too. We're having a ton of fun. We're connecting so much. much with the groups that were hosting every week. I'm doing three groups over there every week.

Our last one, too, we had somewhere around 30 people, which was so cool. And I just want to invite all of you. If you need some extra support, I want to connect with a community that's incredible, that's kind, that's compassionate, that meets you exactly where you're at. Be sure to come and check us out over on the Sober Buddy app. Download the app, do the free trial. There's a seven day and there's a 30-day free trial. So you get a lot of time to see if it's a right fit for you before anything comes out of the bank account, but I promise you you're going to love it. We have over 40 groups per month, 40 support groups,

and members of the community also host some incredible meetups on the weekends and during the week and the evenings where everybody just gets together, gets to know each other a little bit more, and it's so, so supportive. It's incredible. I can't say enough good things about it, so if you could use a little extra support,

and we all can. We all can over the holiday season and moving forward, in your recovery journey, be sure to check out Sober Buddy now. Check out the app, Your SoberBuddy.com, and I hope to see you on one of the groups soon.