Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Christina Rae struggled for years with addiction and when she got sober she wondered is this it?

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

From a young age, Christina embarked on a journey filled with challenges as she adapted to life in the United States. Throughout her high school years, she endured relentless bullying, leading her to seek connections among those who shared similar experiences, ultimately experimenting with drugs and alcohol. As Christina shares her story, brace yourself for an authentic, unfiltered, and profoundly inspiring account. Through her experiences, she illuminates that never quitting or giving up pays off. Tune in to Christina’s story on the sober motivation podcast. Check out Christina's Sober and Thriving Mastermind and use code THRIVE20 to save 20% Click HERE Click here to follow Christina on Instagram  Rae Rituals Membership website: https://www.raerituals.com/ Follow Sober Motivation on Instagram  

Welcome to Season 3 of the Subur Motivation 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. Join us on the podcast as we welcome our special guest, Christina Ray. From a young age, Christina embarked on a journey filled with challenges as she adapted to life in the United States.

Throughout her high school years, she endured relentless bullying, leading her to seek connections among those who shared similar experiences, ultimately experimenting with drugs and alcohol. As Christina shares her story, brace yourself for an authentic, unfiltered, and profoundly inspiring account. Through her experiences, she illuminates that never quitting or giving up pays off. Tune into Christina's story on the Sober Motivation podcast. Getting sober is a lifestyle change, and sometimes a little technology can help.

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to sign up and receive $50 off your device. Now let's get to the show. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Christina with us. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm happy to be here. Great pull for another beautiful day in the sun.

Isn't that the truth? Isn't that the truth? Well, why don't you start things off with us? What was it like for you growing up? I love that. That's the first question. So powerful. Growing up for me was really interesting because,

to many people surprised, I'm actually Mexican, Mexican-American. So I moved from Chihuahua, Mexico, to the U.S. when I was actually six. I spent a little portion of my childhood in Mexico, which was so different than the United States. So I have these little memories of, you know, the desert in Mexico. Where I lived in Mexico, there was like really nothing, but just family. So it was really family-oriented. I had so many cousins and my grandmother. We had to go every week to my grandmother. And then parents started having sort of, sort of, turbulent time and we moved to the U.S., moved to Dallas, Texas. And then all of a sudden I was introduced to like McDonald's, introduced to, you know, the U.S. culture. And I loved it. I loved every bit of it. Gained a little bit of weight, learned English. And it was just a big change. And then really quick after that, my parents split up, went through the divorce. So that was really hard for me as a young girl. So right after we moved to the U.S., my parents went through divorce. And I think as a young girl as a child, I really took on a lot of that as it being my fault. And my dad spent then most of the time in Mexico and he worked a lot.

And so I think I just spent a lot of time alone after that. And my mom was really, really bad. And she always says that I am her angel. Like I'm her guardian angel. I came to save her. And she went through a lot of really hard times. She had developed an eating disorder that she had pretty much her whole life. But she had her own traumas that she went through.

life as well. And so I spent a lot of time really trying to cheer her up, trying to be there for her, and I developed this sort of caretaking role. She's so grateful to me always she calls me her angel and, you know, that I was there to help her. But I think in many ways that was really, really hard for me. And at the same time, I'm very grateful for it because it has sort of developed into my life's purpose. And now I really love being there for women and being a caretaker and my life coach, a women's coach. I really fit comfortably into that role. It's something I've been doing in childhood. But it came at a time where I had to also realize that I am more than that. You know, I came to this planet to be more than just my mother's caretaker, more than just

there for other people. Then eventually I went into a space growing up where I started to rebel against it as well. Now I'm going to go more into the teen years, you know? And so while I wanted to be really there for my mom growing up as a child, eventually, I started to really resent her and hate her. And I think that's when I went to more of the rebellion phase. And that's when I started doing the drugs, the alcohol, the toxic boyfriend, and all hell broke loose. And then I feel like it's all just blurry since dead until I got sober. That's long story short of my childhood.

So you stayed with your mom mostly then, and your dad went back to Mexico. Yeah. Yeah, we were in Dallas. And it was me, my mom, and my older brother. Oh, okay. You have an older brother too. Okay. Cool.

And did you help him out too? So my older brother, he kind of became like the man of the house. And I think that it was harder for him to move to the U.S. because he was older. And so it was harder for him to learn English. It was harder for him. It was harder. Everything for him. And then becoming the man at the house also became difficult for him.

And so he got really angry. We had a hard time in our relationship. And he became kind of a big bully. He used to beat me up. And we had a lot of fights. eventually that came to a stop when my mom really got involved. Now we have an amazing relationship, but he went through some really hard times and, you know, he's done his own healing work in a different way.

But yeah, it was hard for both of us. And my mom was doing the best as she could, but she was basically just going through her own healing journey too because the divorce was really hard for her. So I think divorce is hard for anyone, especially for young children because they take on so much of that. So I spent a big portion of my life saying that I'm never going to get married. closing myself off to that kind of love. I never want to have children, never want to do any of that. And here I am. I just celebrated my one year anniversary of being married.

So things changed, I guess. Yeah, wow. Congrats on that. Yeah, that's a tough transition. I can only imagine I actually moved to Texas too because I'm up in Canada. And when I was sick to Texas, but the culture difference between Mexico and the U.S. and then Canada and the U.S. is completely different in many different ways. But yeah, it was for me personally, it was really tough to fit in.

The culture is not completely different, but it was still tough because you're moving and you have to meet new people. You're kind of the outsider. A lot of people had known each other maybe since kindergarten or junior kindergarten. For me, anyway, that was a tough transition. And my mom was a single mom too with two kids. I have a twin brother. Yeah. It's a really tough transition.

And for us, particularly the different also from Mexico is obviously the language. So I think it was easier for me to learn the language because I was. just six. And so I learned pretty quickly. But I still remember the first day I went to school. They were like asking me to say the alphabet. And I'm like, I could say it Spanish. For some reason, that memory is always in my head. But even as I continue to mature like in middle school, I always really felt like an outsider. But the thing that was weird and different from me, so my mom actually is American. My dad's Mexican. And so I actually look American. I don't look Mexican. And what people think of as typical Mexican, because there actually is a lot of European

Mexicans in Mexico, but that's not really the generalization. So when I told people that I'm Mexican, they're like, you're not a Mexican. And I've literally had fights with people. I kind of fight with one guy telling me that he was more Mexican than me because he had darker skin. But he didn't speak Spanish. He never lived in Mexico. And so it's been a very strange thing with the culture. And so in one way, I think I felt very lost. There came a point where I didn't fit in in Mexico anymore either because I would go back and I started to develop an accent in Spanish. And so they kind of looked at me as an outsider like, I couldn't fit in in Mexico anymore. And then I came here and I sort of didn't really fit in here.

And so I started to develop ways to fit in. I call them masks. And so I would sort of put on a mask when I was at school to fit in with whatever group I wanted to fit in. When I would go back to Mexico, I tried to put on a mask there. So I was always constantly trying to fit into whatever people or culture I was at. And I honestly became really good at it. But it was so tiring. And eventually it became that the only time the mask came off is when I was drunk.

And it felt so liberating and so free to finally let that mask go and be myself, which I had completely lost. But sometimes when I got drunk, myself, whoever that was, came out. And I was just like a wild beast. Yeah. No, I hear you. And then in high school, that's when the substances entered your life. How did that come about? So in middle school, I definitely dabbled a little bit.

like there was the parties and, you know, we tried like drinking and I drunk for the first time. And then in high school, though, I basically went through a really hard time in school where I got bullied. Going into freshman year, I got bullied. And I was actually just reflecting on this this weekend because I was at a women's retreat. And it was really interesting how many women had this experience of being bullied and how that really like shapes you and changes you. I was bullied. And the summer before going into. freshman year, the whole varsity and junior varsity volleyball team came and told

it papered my house. And they came at like 9 p.m. at night. Like I was obviously still awake. Everybody was awake. And so we saw him all out there. And they came and there was this rumor going around about me that I had done all this stuff. And it just wasn't true. Like I had done all these things. And for some reason, the girls, they just really had it out for me. So going to high school, I was already really, really scared. I used to just get called a bunch of names walking through the halls called, you know, a slut or whatever. And so I really became an outsider. I got so depressed and traumatized.

And there was a very mean girl situation that happened as well, which I want to go into the whole details of it. But I basically got kicked off with the lunch table. And I became a bit of an outsider at that point. And I started hanging out with other outsiders. I actually am so grateful for them because they're very cool people. And as I am so grateful for every experience that I've had and it was very artsy people. But these people also were like smoking weed, doing drugs. And so we started doing a bit of partying together.

And then I met my first real boyfriend at a party who happened to be actually six years older than me. And he was a drug dealer. So that's when I first got introduced to really heavy drugs. He had a place for everybody to go party. And so that's when I started doing, you know, everything basically really did a lot of ecstasy. I tried everything, though, you know, cocaine. and then drinking a lot, even doing some like pharmaceutical pills and different things like that. And somehow just kept it all really concealed and nobody really knew what I was doing.

I was a very good liar, as most teenagers are, manipulator, very sneaky, very smart. I was not using my power for in the right way. Yeah, so that's kind of where it all started to go. And then I had an experience where I was raped and I was at a party. I was unconscious and somebody took advantage of me when I was. I was passed out and I blocked it for a little while, but months later, it kind of came back up. And I feel like that was the really big training point where everything just started to spin out of control. I think it affected me more than I even realized in that moment.

And still, I didn't deal with it until 15 years later is when I actually started to heal that. I feel like so much of addiction and really losing control and everything that followed came back to those moments in high school. Yeah, high school for me was maybe the hardest four years. years of my life because of everything that went on too. Yeah, I mean, some of the stuff I can relate to of being bullied and being outside or then connecting with other people who aren't fitting in with the sports teams or the sports players or, you know, doing well in school. I never did well in school. So everybody would celebrate and I always felt like I would just put the test or the school exam or whatever in my backpack really quick because it wasn't anything to really celebrate on other people's

terms. But that's a lot of stuff. Most people here, Christina, I would maybe ask the question about what was the reason for the escape for the substance use play? You've done a great job, I think, outlining things to a T about, you know, why this stuff was working so good for you and why you maybe kept coming back to it. Yeah. Like I said, a lot of these things that had happened. I was running away from and I really couldn't deal with the pain. So I later went to rehab a couple of years ago where I was finally, for the first time, diagnosed with having PTSD. And I think it's interesting because, I mean, a lot of people think that PTSD is something for just war veterans. I think I sort of had that notion as well. And so when they told me that I could potentially have PTSD,

I was so surprised. And so they explained it to me a little bit further of how, you know, it's just something really the body in the mind is sort of protecting you for something that you can't handle. It just made a lot of sense. It made a lot of sense how I would drink and sometimes I would get so out of control. I mean, motions would come out. And in those moments, it was like it all came back. And so once I finally became aware, I think that's the first step, you sort of become aware. I was able to start healing it through the different modalities that I now share. But yeah, I think that's what sort of kept me in the dark. My mind did not have the capacity to deal with the pain of the realities of what had happened those years. And that boyfriend that I was with for those years as well,

he was very abusive. So he was physically abusive, emotionally and mentally as well. And there was just so much that I couldn't deal with. And there was a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. And I think if I ever admitted what had happened, I had to admit the feeling of guilt. And it was just too heavy. It was too heavy for me at that time. In many ways, I'm also grateful for the substances at that time

because they helped me get through. And I don't know that I would have survived otherwise. So you go through high school. What do you do after high school? I went to college in Dallas at SMU. And I did a study. Broad program in Paris while I was SMU, which was really amazing. And it was a good time, but it was peppered with bad times because the substances were always really keeping me back from being my

best self. So it was amazing because I finally got out of that toxic relationship. And so I was trying to spread my wings. But then I was really still always coming back to the drugs. I think my time in Europe was the one time where I really didn't use drugs. So I didn't have access to that much there. but I was still drinking a lot and I failed all of my classes. I failed French. I failed everything while I was in Paris. And then I came back to the U.S. and I was not doing well in school.

And so I went to a psychiatrist to tell him my problems. And it was at that point that I got prescribed a lot of medications. And when I told the psychiatrist, you know, what had happened to me about the abuse, about the rape, about all the different things, it was like, you know, well, you need antidepressants. you need the anti-anxiety. You're not doing well in school. So let's give you the Adderall. Let's give you the Vivance.

Let's give you all this stuff. And so at one point, I was prescribed like hundreds of milligrams of prescription medications a day. And I started doing really well in school. I got, you know, all A's on everything. I was functioning. I was really back as part of the system. But I had never been more crazy in my life.

And I couldn't sleep. And so I started drinking way more. alcohol and then I had to take Ambient to sleep. I had to take the anti-anxiety medication to just bring me down off of all the Adderall, live-ans, and I lost a lot of weight. I weighed like under 100 pounds and over 5'8 and so it was super skinny for me. So on the outside, I know, maybe somebody would be like, oh, she's doing well. She's finally doing well in school. But that was the beginning of the end for me. And then finally I hit a point where I was like, I can't, I don't want to take any of these pills anymore. And I did something, which nobody.

should do, I just stopped taking everything one day. I was like, I'm done, not taking anything anymore, cold turkey. Then I had my first seizure and I was feeling so tired. I'm like, I drink a Red Bull and I hop on a treadmill. So it was like, yeah, my 21 year old brain was really thinking, I got on the treadmill and I had the first seizure on a treadmill, which was, you know, withdrawal to seizure from the medications I had been on. And then I got taken to the ICU where I had two more grandmall seizures. And at that point, the doctor told me you need to go to rehab and get your shit together. And I was like, nah, I'm not going to rehab. I was not ready to hear that. So instead, I actually just ended up moving to L.A. and going a little bit deeper into everything. And the seizures continued. And it got a little bit darker. And I ended up developing epilepsy, which actually still have epilepsy to this day. I take antiseasure medication. every 24 hours. I haven't had a seizure in a really long time, which is great in years. But the medications I was prescribed, they permanently altered my brain chemistry. And so I obviously didn't take

as prescribed, but I do feel like I was prescribed negligently. And I feel like so many people now are overprescribed and they don't know what they're doing. You know, these are very potent chemicals that we are taking on a daily basis. And we aren't aware of. of how powerful they are and what they can actually do in the short term and in the long term. And I wasn't thinking straight, you know, when I was taking it. And I was really addicted. I was addicted physically, but I was also addicted emotionally and mentally. Like I couldn't stop.

Even though they were giving me seizures, I couldn't stop taking them. I just didn't want to. So at some point, I like to say it was divine intervention. It's like a thunderbolt of lightning coming from the heavens because it literally was like that when I had seizures. One of them finally woke me up. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. I'm going to die. And so I finally decided to go to rehab. Wow. So were the seizures from like withdrawing

from the medication or just from taking it regularly? The initial seizures were from withdrawing from the medication. But the way that the seizures work is that the more seizures you have, the more likely you're to have more. There's something called a seizure threshold. So you have the seizure threshold and you have one and it lowers a little bit. You have another one. It lowers. And then you can start having them from really common things. And so you can have a seizure from being tired. You can have a seizure from low sodium. And for my seizures and my diagnosis, they don't really know why I have them anymore. In the beginning, it was just from the withdrawal, but obviously I haven't taken those medications in so long, haven't drank in so long. And yet I've still tried to get off medication once and I

still had a seizure and they don't actually know why. So it's something now that has been altered permanently and it's perhaps just my seizure threshold is just now too low. Wow. Okay. Gotcha. Now I understand that a little bit better. How old are you now when you're deciding to go to rehab? I think about 25. Yeah. 26. Okay. Interesting too, though. In the last part where the doctor had mentioned that you should go to rehab that you move to L.A. It's the opposite of rehab. I'm not doing that. I'm moving to L.A. And then at 25, 26 range that you add another seizure. And then that was like your divine intervention of I should. get some help for this? What was that like? Where did you go to rehab at in California? Yeah. And actually from the time that the doctor told me I needed to go to rehab to the time that I actually went to rehab, which is a couple of years. I had a lot of seizures until I found a medication that worked.

It wasn't just one after that. You know, I would have seizures like every couple of weeks. I would have one because I continued to drink really heavily and I was still taking Xanax, mainly was the one that I think caused the seizures. And I was doing drugs. as well. And so, yeah, I really was in a dark place. And to be honest, I think part of me actually just wanted to die. And I just didn't care. I decided to do an outpatient rehab because I felt like safe. So I found a program in LA, which was an outpatient rehab. And it was a good first step. And actually before that, I think what led me to sort of this moment of truth was I just found a group of people who really were a bit more healthy.

I decided to do a yoga teacher training. I was really just trying to figure out my life. So I did this yoga teacher training. And it was just two months devoting your weekend to yoga. And everybody there was just really inspiring to me. I was like, wow, there's all these people who are really not partying and not drinking all the time who are just willing to devote their weekends to do yoga. There has to be, you know, I just started to light something within me. And even in the yoga practice, we were learning to breathe.

We were doing the stretches. And I think in the beginning coming from where I was at where I really hadn't done. done any of this work, I was releasing so much. So even some of the yoga poses that you do, you open up your hips, you open up different parts of your body, it releases emotions, it releases trauma. And so I was starting to already release some of that, and I didn't really even know what I was doing. So I would be in a yoga class and a yoga pose, and all of a sudden I would start crying.

Something would be released from my hip, and it was emotion because we still were emotions in different parts of our body. And so that started to happen. And so I finished the yoga teacher training. And then I realized I wanted more. I wanted to continue the healing. And so that's when I decided to find the outpatient. And that's the first rehab that I did.

And it was basically just intensive group therapy a couple times a week. And I did that program. And then I stayed completely sober for a little while. But sober from the medications, from the prescriptions, from those drugs forever. You know, that was the first step. And so I never went back to that. And then that was the beginning of the healing journey and getting completely sober. All then came in steps later on.

So the yoga really got the wheels turning in a little bit for you. Yeah, I did. What about sober people? Because you're hanging out with these people that are doing the yoga and they're living healthier lives, like maybe sober, maybe not sober. But had you been exposed to people that were like living like that or sober people? Did you know sober people? No, I didn't know anyone that's sober.

And I actually started working with one doctor as well in L.A. and he helped me see that there was other people out there as well. And I remember he told me some statistic that was like 10% of the people who drink, drink 90% of all the alcohol or something like that. So it was like most people don't drink like you guys. You know, like most people don't drink that much. It just began to see that it wasn't really normal when I was around. But everybody that I was around was a really big partier.

but that wasn't really the norm. That wasn't really what people are generally like. And so as I started to meet these yoga people, which they weren't completely sober, most of them, but they didn't really care that much about drinking. They didn't get blackout every time they drank. And maybe they have a drink like once a week or something like that. And so I just started to see that there was more out there

when I had completely surrounded myself of people who were like me, who did drugs, who every time they drink, blocked out. And so it was sort of just expanding. my field a little bit and started to see that there was people who were a little bit more conscious even and they're drinking or conscious in their life. And then when I did the rehab, obviously there was people there and we started to share their story and obviously coming in community, hearing each other. And I started to see that there was people just like me who had been through things and who were ready to just commit to the life of sobriety, which was really powerful

to be around those people for the first time as well. I think that was really pivotal as well to see that community, to see that there was sober people out there. But I was with another boyfriend at that time, and he was still doing a lot of drugs and drinking. And so it made it really hard for me to stay sober afterwards, although I never went fully back to doing all the drugs. It wasn't until I left that relationship and then eventually moved to New York that I actually was able to, you know, start my own real journey of what I wanted to do

because I was still around him, still around all the people he wrought around. So I think sometimes in order to get fully sober, in order to start your own real healing journey, you have to change your surroundings completely and as your friends. I was wondering, too, if there's going to be another boyfriend in the mix here for this part of the story. It is so true. Yeah, if you're hanging around,

if that's who you're hanging around, then that's like more likely than not where we're going to be headed, right? We kind of keep the company of people that are going for it. When we're drinking and stuff, we're not necessarily going to hang out with people who are going to say, well, don't be drinking or you should cut back or, like,

who want to party. So rehab and then you give up the other drugs, but the drinking kind of sticks with you because of the environment. I think that's a really big challenge, honestly, for people who struggle with different substances and don't necessarily go to rehab just for the alcohol. A lot of people I've heard stories over the years that want to hang on to it, want to hang on to the alcohol and somehow we're able to put it in maybe a different category. Like this is the real hard stuff and then this is the stuff we see it on every commercial,

on every billboard and it just looks really cool. I think that that's an interesting part of the story. I think because drinking is really social, you know, and so that's sort of like you're giving up a lot when you give up drinking. You're giving up the dinners, the wine, you know, the cool vibes and the friends that come along with it. And so that was my biggest fear when I was thinking about giving up drinking. I'm like, what am I going to do?

How am I going to hang out with people? Am I ever going to dance again? Who am I? Who am I without alcohol, actually? you know, and what is the world even a look like without alcohol? And honestly, you can't even imagine it without alcohol when you've been in it for so long. It seems like me back then, if somebody would tell me, you know, they didn't drink, I would call them boring. I'd be like, oh, you're so lame, you know, you're boring.

And so I wouldn't want to hang out that person. And I was the biggest person who would pressure people too. If somebody wasn't drinking, I'd be like, no, you need to drink. And I would pressure people to drink with me and take shots and get blacked out with me. I was always the last person at the party at the bar and probably the most fucked up as well. So I think that as well when I started the sobriety journey, I was like maybe I can go to N.A. And just eliminate the drugs and keep on the alcohol. So I tried to do all ways.

But the problem is when you get drunk or when you're drinking, you sometimes end up all of a sudden doing a line. And you're like, wait, where did that come from? That's kind of what would happen to me. you lose your motivation, your inhibitions, and your walls come down, you become more vulnerable, and things are around you, and then all of a sudden you're left to like just exposed. So for me, when I would drink, I ended up in situations that obviously I normally would not have been in, and I couldn't really stop myself anymore. I wouldn't even need to be that drunk to lose my boundaries, yeah, to let down my boundaries.

So when I would drink, all of a sudden I ended up texting a drug dealer. if somebody had drugs and I would just end up doing that. And so it's, I think, very difficult, especially once you've been somebody doing drugs because that neural pathway is already created in your brain of like feeling good. And honestly, drinking when you are a person who's done drugs, it's just boring because it doesn't work the same way. And you're somebody that's been drinking and doing drugs and having all that stuff and you try to just drink a little bit.

It's like, what is actually the point? That's kind of where I came to do. Yeah, that's the conclusion you came to, which I think is a great one. You jump ship on L.A. and you're headed to New York. How do you get the idea to move to New York? I was sort of planting seeds, and I had applied to a master's program at Parsons, and I got accepted, and I got a scholarship to go there. So I was sort of like, should I go? Should I not go?

I was cleaning on to that boyfriend in L.A. And then I went on a retreat in Mexico just to go into the nature, and it was the first retreat I had ever really been on. I came back and within two days, I moved out of my house. I broke up with the guy and moved into an Airbnb. And from that moment, I had been with him for six years. But I just made this very intense decision. I never saw him again.

And I just left, moved out, moved into an Airbnb. And then I was just like, I'm going to New York. And I moved to New York. And my mom came. She helped me. And I did that master's program in New York. So I arrived in New York to, apartment I found really fast, completely empty, just lived on an air mattress for a little while,

and began a new life. It was, again, a little bit crazy. It was just arriving there in New York, and I didn't get sober right away or something like that. I was sort of like a caged animal set free New York 27 and coming out of a relationship where I really hadn't been feeling pretty or loved. And so I kind of went through another wild phase in New York. And at the same time, started to find myself again. And actually it was like the first place that I ever really felt like home in New York since I had left my house. So I started to finally feel comfortable being alone. I really built up my home, my nest, made a little sanctuary for myself and connected with really cool people in New York and did this master's program that was at Parsons, strategic design and management,

and was introduced to sustainability and started to really connect to the planet. Just funny, because in New York, you know, it's not that much. But that's why it was really important. We were building like sustainable business models. And it was all about really how can we bring more sustainability into the world and into different businesses. And I became really inspired. And that's when I first started my first business actually, which was called Pildora,

which was a sustainable fashion marketplace for a better world. I started that halfway through the master's program. So I just got really motivated there in New York. And meanwhile, at the same time, I was still drinking a lot. So I was doing a lot and I was functioning really well, but I was still drinking a lot. So imagine what I would have done without the alcohol. But I started this business and I was bringing designers together in a marketplace. And I think it was a really important time for me because I started to really realize my connection to the planet and my purpose. And I think that was a really pivotal moment as well because until then, I really didn't.

understand why I mattered, why I was here on this planet. I think many of us don't really think that we matter. We don't have an impact, but we do. And every decision, every choice we make matters. And I decided that even if I could help one person or help, you know, one tree or help one thing, it mattered. You know, we can make a difference. And so my life started to have meaning. And that gave me motivation to change and to just slowly be better. And I started to fuel everything. And I started to fuel everything else that eventually I've done in my life. Wow, that's powerful. Yeah, that meaning part. In abusing drugs and alcohol, too, I feel like in my story, that really was like blinders to ever even find, I struggle to even find that meaning of life or meaning for myself or

anything because, I mean, this probably goes real deep, but I just didn't really feel worthy. I was just like, well, how am I going to be able to do anything in this world when I can't even get out of bed in the morning. You know, so it kept me personally stuck for a while. So I think that's incredible. You do this master's program. How in the heck do you keep all this together with the substances and the drinking? I mean, you're doing extremely well with your education. Was this become natural for you? You got to share the tips with me. I need to know how to keep it together, you know? I mean, not that I'm drinking and doing drugs anymore, but how are you able to keep that stuff moving forward? Well, when I was in New York, I did actually continue doing yoga.

said that's when I started to really develop my rituals and my practices. And so honestly, like, I had a slew personality. It was like one Christina by night, another Christina by morning. It was hard because I'd have these really wild, crazy nights. And then I was like trying all these things to really recover. And then I would be filled with guilt. And I was really fighting for myself. I was fighting to figure out who I was. And so I remember I even saw like a hypnotherapist at one point. Somebody had hypnotized me. And I wanted her to make me stop drinking someone. much. I was like, can you just hypnotize me so that I

can just like stop, like make me stop at like two drinks because it would just spiral out of control and it would be like all of a sudden after the third drink and then I wake up the next morning and I had done all these crazy shit. And so I'm like, just hypnotize me. So I'll just like calm down, you know? And so I'll just

keep it mellow. I got to hear what was that like now. I remember when you get hypnotized. Do you remember the whole experience afterwards? I do remember it. You know, some people they go really deep and maybe don't. Honestly, it didn't really work for me with this woman. I was really open to it, but I just didn't really go deep into it. I was like trying to believe, trying to go into it. Close your eyes. And she basically like counting back numbers. And then you're going to this like,

you know, hypnosis state. And she's saying things and sort of like rewriting subconscious programming and different things like that. And maybe if I had stuck with it, but I only went like once. And so I think perhaps it just takes more time and just persistence. But I think, yeah, that one time probably didn't really do much. It didn't really work. But you were trying. I was trying. I was trying all those things.

I went to this, started meditating. There was a place in New York, really cool, called Mindful, is MNDFL, and you can book a cushion, and you just go and they have all sorts of really cool meditation teachers. So I would do this stuff during the day, and then all of a sudden, a night would come and I'd have a couple of drinks, and I don't know, would end up having a real wild crazy drinking evenings and every once in a while would still do drugs. It was sort of like two different people.

But I think the practices at least kept me grounded and going. But at my core, I was still really filled with grief and guilt. And I really didn't like who I was in those moments. And I was confused. And I was really depressed. And I was really sad. So I was just lost. I was lost.

But I was trying. and I was fighting to figure it out. I think tips for keeping it together, the rituals and the practices is what helped me just keep it together to continue to be a functioning person. I started journaling, and that was really important to and I'll have so many journals, and I started at that time. But I just kept trying.

You know, I didn't give up on myself. I kept trying, even when I fucked up, I didn't give up on myself because I think a lot of people, you know, they fuck up, they have a bad night, and they just lose it all and they go on the rampage, but I would just be kind and I would just forgive myself. and I would keep trying and I keep going. Eventually that turned into my life.

Eventually, that turned into enough forgiveness, enough trying where it led me to where I am today. When did you start the sober journey? Eventually I met my now husband. And that was very grounding for me and also chaotic because he has never done drugs in his life and he doesn't really drink. And so him and I coming together, he didn't really approve of. a lot of the wild drinking that I did. And so we had a lot of fights about that. And a lot of, like, him pulling the wine glass out of my hand, literally. And so that created a lot of chaos.

And I'm very independent. So I'm not the kind of person that is going to have somebody tell me what to do. So I was like, you're not going to control me. You know, you're not going to tell me what to do. If I want my wine, I'm going to drink my wine. And so it wasn't really him ultimately. Like, eventually it had to come from me. And it was not going to be him who was going to stop me. It was not going to be anyone who was going to stop me. But the pandemic, it brought things to a bad place. I think the pandemic for people just made everything a little bit worse. I was keeping it together, you know, like I was functioning.

I was doing well. I had the business and then I was kind of crazy at night, but then I'd pull it back together with my yoga, but then the pandemic happened and everything that was like, weaved together and the band-aids were like in place holding the wounds. Everything got ripped off. And it just like, shit is here. The pandemic's happening.

And like, if you were kind of okay and keeping it together, like it's going to be exposed now. And so everything that was keeping me in place fell apart. We moved out of New York for a little bit to Texas, stayed with my mom, and being back in Dallas, reopened for me a lot of wounds because that's sort of where everything went down for me as a teenager. Even just driving by back around streets, I would get triggered. Being around old friends, we drink a lot. That triggered me. And I just started drinking a lot, a lot more.

And I didn't have my work to ground me. I didn't have my yoga studio, my little routine that I had built to keep me intact. And so things started to really spin out of control for me. and I also used to self-harm and that's something I hadn't done in a long time and then I had another episode, it would call it. That was sort of like the beginning of my rock bottom, I would say, my last rock bottom.

And then we ended up moving to Miami to just get out of New York and then things just really fell apart. And I had one really, really bad night where I ended up getting really drunk with my employees, just getting really out of control, really inappropriate, honestly, with my employees who are younger than me. I'm supposed to be the role model or leader. And I did things that were just not okay. The next morning, I didn't remember anything. My husband was, like, shocked and learned telling me of things that had happened. And I was

completely sick. At that point, I pretty much, whenever I drink a lot, I would get really sick for like the full next day, which I'm sure so many people can relate to until I was, you know, sick throwing up and I realized that I couldn't continue. I couldn't live with the life like this, you know, even if it was just every once in a while that these things happened, it was just, there had to be more. And I was ready to choose more. If I ever wanted to have a family, if I ever wanted to build a real successful career, then I had to do something drastic. And so I got on the phone with a couple of different rehabs, inpatient rehab. I ended up talking to one here in Florida. and we talked for like two hours on the phone and I was crying.

A very sweet guy that runs it and the next day I went. Then I was there in that rehab facility for 30 days. People, I think, have a wrong idea about rehab as well. It has such a stigma. Like, you have to be like drinking every day or using every day really like addicted to go to rehab. And that wasn't me. Like I was functioning on the outside and more or less. But I had so much healing that I needed to do on the inside.

And I kept coming back to these things. You know, it was like a cycle. It just kept going around and around. And I knew where it was going. I could see that the doors had been opened again. And so I decided to just cut it before we got there. And so I went to the rehab. And it was an amazing experience. You know, to just be pulled out of your life and into a space for 30 days where you can look at yourself. That's where I got diagnosed with PTSD. It was like four hours of therapy with different kind of therapists every day on a lake, nature. I started painting. I had a little gym there. and just like by myself, really reflecting. And I was scared shitless the first day when I felt like a failure. I was like, what the hell am I doing? I posted on my Instagram that I was going to a wellness retreat. So I lied to everybody. But no, it was all necessary and good.

And then when I left the rehab again, I was scared because I was scared and I was going to fail. I was like, what's the next step? What am I going to do now? And when I came out, that was again, the beginning of another journey because I had to find myself. And I feel like I just passed two years sober. I'm just now starting to actually really, really feel comfortable in my life and like feel really joyful and really happy. And it's taken a while to just reconfigure and figure out everything about my life, friends,

people, family, travel. What I like to do for fun? You know, you have to try so many different things to just figure it out. Everything changes. It's such a big change. but it's the best decision I've ever made in my life to get sober. And what has happened in the past few years, I feel like everything happened 10 times faster, 10 times bigger.

The dreams, they just go like 10 times more big. Everything is possible. Everything that was holding me down is just gone. So many dreams have come true. I just got a five-acre farm riding horses from the middle of Manhattan to a farm. So I'm so clear, like I'm following my heart. Everything is just open. And I don't know where tomorrow will take me, but I'm just excited and I'm ready.

I know I can take on anything, you know? Yeah, no, that's incredible. Well, huge congrats on, too, the sobriety over two years, you said, right? That's amazing, especially hearing your story, too. I mean, from the beginning, and I'm sure there's a lot of stuff in there that we just don't have time to cover, but even what you shared there, to be able to come back from that and really take away the one thing that really worked for you. Like, for me, I could always count on the drugs and alcohol to be there for me.

It was always there for the escape or to escape the pain or to escape the emotions that I wasn't able or capable or willing to deal with. And for you to move away from that and be open to something else with all of that stuff, with everything in your life that happened, I think is truly incredible. Like my goodness, so incredible. Thank you. And I think the biggest thing has really helped me too. It has been, I was so much in my mind. And I think coming out of rehab, I went a little bit. bit to AA, but I actually resonated a lot more with practices, again, different sort of

meditations and breath work. So I started doing a lot of breath work. I ended up getting actually certified in breath work because it's been so powerful for me. And I think people who are in addiction were so much in our mind. And so to have something that was helping me get out of my mind and into my body has been really, really powerful. And meditation has been a little bit hard for me because I have so much in my mind. And so when I try to sit and meditate sometimes, it's really hard. but when you're doing breathwork, it allows you to just focus on breathing. And so you're able to actually go into that meditative state through the breathwork. So breathwork has been the number one thing. I think that's helped me really stay sober and release a lot of the emotional residue

around the trauma, around all the different things that I had in my body. And then connecting to women and to other mentors in the space has been really powerful for me as well in these past two years, which I found so many in those different spaces. Yeah, that's incredible. How would you describe breathwork to somebody who's hearing it for the first time? So it's just basically conscious, connected breathing, and it's using your breath to manipulate your nervous system. And there's different types of breathwork. So you can do a relaxing breath work, an energizing breathwork, or a balancing breathwork. And it can be anywhere from one to five minutes. And it can be anywhere from one to five minutes for a typical daily breathwork practice. The very transformative

experience. And there is also longer breathwork practices that can be a little bit more, you know, spiritually transformative, like a 45 minute transformational breathwork journey where you can actually release trauma and release stored emotions. And that is something that you then tap into the subconscious space. It's a little bit more like the hypnosis and the subconscious reprogramming. But I think for, you know, introductory is breathwork, just like the one to five minute breathwork practices is just becoming conscious of the breath and there's different breathing patterns, techniques that you can do to relax your nervous system. Because the breath is really powerful. It's one of the only things in our body that is automatic, but we can also control. And it controls

your blood pressure. It controls your heart rate and actually controls your emotions because of that. When we go into the survival, like traumatic fight or flight response, our breath speeds up and it's actually, you know, preparing our body to either run away to fight to do any of those things that we need to do in survival. So when you control the breath, you slow it down and you do a conscious breathing of slowing it down, you are then telling your body that you are safe and you can come out of the fight or flight survival response mode. So then the nervous system relaxes. So then the brain relaxes, the emotions calm down. So if you're having, for example, angry response and you're all of a sudden seeing black, you know, you're about to want to fight somebody. You're being

triggered, for example, you can come to a breathwork practice and do like a one minute relaxed breathing practice, it's going to reset your nervous system, it's going to take you out of that fight mode, you're going to tell your system that you are okay. You're then going to be able to move out of that angry state, at least for a moment, pause, reflect, and think about if that's actually what you're going to do. So it's taking you from that reactive state into a proactive state. Wow. That really breaks it down. Thanks for sharing that. And thanks for sharing too, a tool that's been so helpful for you. What else are you up to now? We've got a couple more minutes here. How can we check you out? All you look up everything you're doing. Share some of that stuff

with us. So all of my programs are on my website, which is I am Christina ray.com. And that's Christina with a C-H and R-A-E.com. And I have a membership space, Ray rituals, which is R-A-E rituals, where I share all of these breathwork practices. And it's just $21 a month. It's a healing space, mainly geared towards women, but we actually have a lot of breathwork. practice is on there really for anyone. And we also have women that are sharing their healing rituals on there. We have a cow ceremony on there. We have some beauty rituals. We have a lot of different sorts of rituals. I'm going to be sharing also some of my rituals that have helped me in sobriety on there. So that's our membership space. And then I'm going to be launching a sobriety program later this

summer that's called sober and thriving, which is really to help people move from sober and surviving to sober and thriving. So it's taking all of the things that I've learned on my sober journey and putting them into an online program. And it's a self-paced program. It's basically eight weeks, but you can do it at your own pace.

And it's a foundation of knowledge, of education around the brain, the body, the nervous system with breathwork tools, with workshops. And it leaves you with a whole basis of knowledge around addiction as well.

When I first got sober, I sort of wondered, like, is this it? Am I just going to be like labeled the sick person, like, you know, the diseased sober person? And I eventually came to realize that I could rewrite that story and I could define what it meant to be sober. And so I started that journey and I came to realize that sobriety can be fun. The variety is fun. Sobriety is sexy. It's cool. It's thriving. So I started to rewrite that story for myself. And that's sort of what the journey of this program takes you. it's rewriting that story. It's finding your power and stepping into it with the tools, with the practices that I lead you through and then connecting to a community that will then support you through that. So that sober and thriving program is going to be released at the end of the summer. Yeah. So that's going to live on and you'll have access to that. What do you sign up with the program?

Wow. That sounds incredible. And I love that you're bringing this thing together with your own personal experience, what's worked for you, what's helped you get to where you are. because even though you share that you were in this dark place and you had a lot of this stuff go on and all these experiences, you are like glowing. You're happy. You're smiling. You're joyful. I can just tell. I mean, we're only connecting on Zoom here. But I can just tell and you can feel it that you're really thriving in this whole journey and really embracing it. And it's letting you really be your true authentic self, which I think is just incredible.

Because I think a lot of people do get stuck when you first start. You know, it's kind of miserable, kind of grumpy in a sense. your life is getting a little bit better. It's still that fear, right, and missing what you're so deep for so many years. And you're just like, oh, my goodness, is this it? And a lot of people I find have a hard time getting through that. You know, 90 days, right, is a really tough time for a lot of people. And I think that probably plays into it. So I think this is incredible. I've really enjoyed the conversation and I appreciate you sharing your story with us today on the show. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. It's been an incredible conversation. I appreciate you creating this space and continuing to inspire the sober community and people all around.

Yeah. Thank you. Wow, another incredible episode. Extremely grateful for Christina Ray to come on here and share her story with all of us. Be sure if the sober and thriving sounds like something you'd be interested in, check it out. I'll drop the information in the show notes of this episode. And be sure to check her out on Instagram and give her a follow. Send her a message if you were able to connect with any part of her story.

Or if you just appreciate her coming on and sharing her story, I know I sure do. Look, everyone, have a good week. Have a good day. And I'll see you on the next one.