Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Liz engaged in binge drinking for the better part of 20 years and a google search about 3 day hangovers changed everything.

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

In this episode, we have my friend Liz who is originally from the Jersey Shore and was a binge drinker for the better part of 20 years. The cycle of drinking and then healing from drinking was exhausting. Despite this, the social connection it provided was something that Liz found helpful. After a few months of being alcohol-free, she began to notice the benefits of not consuming alcohol, and things started to make sense. Liz has not experienced a hangover since February 18, 2023. ----------------- Support the Podcast here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivation Follow Sober Motivation on Instagram here: www.instagram.com/sobermotivation/ More Information about Soberlink: www.soberlink.com/recover

Welcome to Season 3 of the Suburmotivation podcast. Join me, Brad, each week is 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. In this episode, we have my friend Liz, who was originally from the Jersey Shore and was a binge drinker for the better part of 20 years. The cycle of drinking and then healing from drinking was exhausting.

Despite this, the social connection it provided was something that Liz's found helpful. After a few months of being alcohol free, she began to notice the benefits of not consuming alcohol, and things started to make sense. Liz has not experienced the hangover since February 18, 2023, and this is Liz'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 as compact as a sunglass case, Soberlink devices

have built in facial recognition, tamper detection, and advance 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. Yo, welcome back to another episode, everyone. This is Liz. I want to tell you guys how I met Liz. So Liz made a donation on the Buy Me a Coffee page, and she left her email, and she said, if you ever want to connect with me, then here's my email.

I reached out to her, and I just said, thank you for the support on the show and everything. It's incredible. She sent a long email, but I'm going to read one part of it. She responded saying, it's so nice to meet you and share with you the impact that the podcast is having directly. Thank you for taking your time to say hello. It's only been a short period of time, but since I, I have been listening almost every day.

It feels like we are friends at this point. I've always tried to be grateful, but sometimes it felt forced, if that makes sense. I felt like the darkness I was feeling was crowding out the chance to really be present and experience the joy that comes with gratitude.

Part of me reaching out to you means that I'm starting to truly feel that gratitude and joy and share it with others. Look at me living in the moment. And that was a message from Liz, part of the email, and then she just finished it up at the end with you are a light in this world that has helped guide me out of the darkness.

I'm so grateful to be here and share that with you. I mean, incredible. Really incredible to be able to help somebody. I mean, it's not just me. It's everybody's stories that's being shared. Everybody who comes on the podcast and shares their stories, I'm not taking credit for this. So I just want to say thank you.

Now let's get right into Liz's episode. It's incredible. Thank you, everybody, for the continued support. Welcome back to another episode of, the podcast. We've got one of our listeners joining us today. Liz, how are you? I am so thrilled to be here. I can't even explain it. Thanks for having me. Of course. Well, thank you because you shared your story with me months ago. And then you're inspired in one way or another to throw your name in the hat to join the show and

share your story with us, with all of us. Well, it was your call to action, your solo episode. where I was like, do I not? And then I was literally talking to my partner, should I email Brad about going on the show? And he posted that episode that was like, your story matters. People need to hear it. And I said, well, that's the sign for my guardian angel for Brad over here.

I need to be on the show. I guess somebody needs to hear it. So here I am. Yeah, incredible. So what was it like for you growing up? So my first inclination to answer that question is to say it was wonderful. I had a sort of Steven Spielberg 80s riding bikes in the neighborhood childhood with a bunch of childhood friends. I have a huge family.

There's, well, not huge. There's six of us. And I have a twin sister. And we're the youngest in the set of kids. So I had a lot of siblings to look up to. We were all really close. We had a lot of pets. We grew up in the Jersey Shore.

So like literally right where that TV show was filmed. I always say I am so smart because I had to get out of there. That'll be come down the line here. So my dad is a musician. He plays quite a few instruments. And in the 60s and the 70s, he was quite a bit of a rock star. And my mom and dad met in that environment. And she was a housewife.

And to take care of all six of us, which I have no idea how he did this, he became a truck driver. So they are still together, but we were quite poor, right? So my mom really managed having six children across the span of 12 years on a truck driver salary. But I don't really remember feeling deprived in any way. It was very loving. We would go to the beach when it wasn't raining. When it was raining, we'd go to the library. We went to school. But when I start to dig a little bit deeper, I know that from as long as I can remember, there was a sadness. And for instance, one example, I was very young. I mean, maybe four. And I saw a commercial about the Yankees. And she was comparing, I think, maybe the Red Sox, the Yankees. And it made me cry. And I thought, why the heck am I crying? I don't even care about the Yankees. We were a Met's house. I'm like, there was a lot of emotion. And I know my dad used to tell me that as a little kid, I was very emotional. He said you could feel me enter a room before you can see me enter the room. So I didn't really understand what that was. I would cry before school. Sometimes

my teachers would find me crying in the corner. And so maybe I just thought it was separation anxiety. I had this loving, safe home. But it wasn't until very recently, I mean, the last eight months or maybe the last year, and TikTok has started talking about this idea. of growing up in a Christian home and how that can be a wonderful thing, but also how that kind of fire. And, you know, so for my parents, they were living sort of this rock star lifestyle. Both of their fathers were alcoholics. So they had a lot of trauma in their family.

And so they escaped into this rock and roll lifestyle, found each other and really wanted to do differently for us. My dad woke up and was like, wow, I have kids and I can't live this way anymore. I need to get it together. So he did. And part of that process for them was finding Jesus. That turned their priorities around. And they had that kind of saving experience, right? The joy, the peace. And they tried to instill that in us and brought us to church. But when I think back on the messages that I was getting from home and from church, they were conflicting. Because on one hand, unconditional love from my parents telling me unconditional love from God, he will bring you joy, he will bring you peace.

but on the other hand, I'd hear in church things about health and internal damnation. And we were in the kind of church that's non-denominational. There wasn't a lot of care taken in terms of what messages they were giving the children. And they said, oh, you're mature, you can handle this. And I think that was very confusing as a kid. And I don't think my parents realized it because for them, it was peace and love. And the thing they'd been looking for their whole life, of course they're going to bring us there. so we could experience that.

And I think thinking back on that as well as one of the messages that was sent to us was that human nature is the original sin, right? And a lot of it is denying yourself. So you can't trust yourself. And if you do trust yourself, if you do go with your nature, you are doomed for all of eternity, right?

So this isn't just me trying to be a good kid, just me trying to make sure my soul goes to heaven from a very early age. And I think that underlies a lot of the sadness and anxiety that I felt leaving my house because now I'm out in the world and it's unsafe and I can slip up. So it's funny too because my mom would say, heard her phrase is don't let anybody steal your joy. And I'm just like, where is the joy? So it's, it was just tough. And I don't think I could articulate that to my parents as a kid.

And I don't blame anyone here. It's just the fact of growing up in a complicated world. And so the way that I coped with this anxiety of my internal soul was perfectionism. I felt like I had to be perfect or I wouldn't make it to heaven. I wouldn't see my family in heaven. And so I had to be as good as possible. My sister and I joke because we both felt this way, but it was everything. If the dentist said, open your mouth.

So we were like, is this the right way to do it? Is this perfect? Like everything. And people loved that. People love good kids. So it, and there's a lot of rewards in that as well. You get praise from the adults around you. You get good grades.

Brad, I did not get less than an A in any class all through a college, all through grad school. I didn't get, I didn't get an A. minus I got an A in everything because that I don't know if I ever got an A before. I know. It's crazy, right? No, I mean, it's good. I don't know if it's crazy or not. I mean, I think it's good. I probably, in looking back, I could have put it in a little bit more effort in some areas, but I remember one year in college I got, I was doing three courses. I dropped the fourth one, but I got three Bs and my parents had this system. If I got an A, it was 200 hundred bucks and the bee was a hundred bucks. And I mean, that was the lotto at that time for me. Oh, heck. I got these

three bees and I could never do a repeat on it. But yeah, I think it's interesting too. The perfectionism part there because it's exhausting in a sense to keep that up in so many areas of life. Yeah. And part of that message is that you can't be yourself. You always have to be striving. There's no time to stop and just be because that's when you slip up. Right. And so you're always. thinking of the next thing and preparing and analyzing, predicting so that you can be adaptive in the future. So part of that did translate into some eating disorder type stuff. So the end of middle school and beginning of high school, I was restricting my eating. And I was just listening to Jill talk about the same kind of issue that she had. And I totally resonate with that because looking back on that,

it was a way to, it was something I could tangibly control and I could get success. Steam going, yes, I did it today. She called it the power, right? That it's, okay, here's this thing that I can tangibly know is working or that I did a good job on. And my brother-in-law is a, has a PhD in counseling. He works with children. He worked with teens at the time. And he had said something to me about, hey, he wasn't trying to be my therapist or anything,

but he did say perfectionism is related to eating disorder. So the perfectionism part was something that I was aware of, and that's something that even since high school I've been working on or thinking about. Of course, it was a good way to cope with my problems in some ways because it was productive, right? And it helped me have opportunities when college came around, right? I went on to an Ivy League school because I was valedictorian in my class. They gave me a full ride. So again, it's this thing of I'm getting these rewards, but I'm so worried that they're just going to slip away from me if I slip. So it's just this pressure.

So I wasn't exactly popular in high school because I was a nerd. People just didn't understand why I was inclined towards doing so well. It just was foreign to them. I think people liked me. I didn't get bullied too badly, but I think they didn't know what to do with me. And I had a guidance counselor who I was very close with, and she told me, you're not going to find your people here. You'll find them. You'll find the people who are smart like you or care about the things that you value.

Not to derogate those other people, but you'll find those people in college, maybe not even college, maybe in grad school. So it was this message of just you don't fit in, and you might not fit in for a while either. So it was just the way I lived. And I did have friends. I was in band and things like that. There was this sense of some people liked me. And also part of the Christianity was like, who cares of people don't like me? Jesus likes me. So there was a protective factor in that. So I didn't have a chance to go to parties. I wasn't invited to parties. I had friends who went to parties or my lab mates and biology went to parties and tell me about it and things like that. But I did. start drinking in high school in a typical way. I had a friend whose parents had alcohol. And by the way, my parents stopped drinking. So it wasn't in our house. My parents now moved on to maybe a glass of wine at Thanksgiving, maybe. So I didn't have any access to it or even see very much of it at home. I knew that their fathers both were and that both of their fathers are violent. So I did know that it ran in the family to be addicted to it and that it had bad

consequences. I had a friend whose parents had liquor. And so we would do the kid thing of taking some sips and filling it with water. And we thought we were so clever. Like they would mark it with a Sharpie and then we would fill it and then just mark it again with the Sharpie. And they wouldn't know who it didn't mark. They never figured out that we were marking it. So but none of that was ever like get drunk. It was like giggle and then play childhood games and watch TV or it was anything that. But so cut to when I was 16, I had a chorus teacher in my high school. And by the way, my dad was a musician, right? So music was something that was really bonding for our family. My family was actually the worship team at the church. So we would sing together and we'd play music together. And so I was

inclined towards band and chorus and things like that. And so I had a chorus teacher I was very close with. I'd spend a lot of time rehearsing in the chorus room. And unfortunately, that situation turned into a bad one for me because the chorus teacher was not a good person. I guess he misinterpreted my inclination to be around him as one of attraction. And he invited me over to his house to do a lesson, which was not uncommon in the sense of he did give lesson, but he gave me a milkshake that had a lot of alcohol. And that situation turned into him trying to have sex with me. And it was a really awful experience. I mean, I was puking everywhere because of the amount of alcohol that he had given me, and I couldn't get away for a while, right? But that was the first time I got drunk.

And it's curious to me that didn't stop me from drinking later because I think the mental loops we go through with alcohol is that it's like we see everything else as the problem. And in any events, we prosecuted, right? We luckily had some good experiences in the justice system in the sense of the cops we went to believe me and the judge even at one point during the sentencing throughout the plea deal and said, this isn't. good enough. I want a better deal for this girl. And it took a long time. It took into college for this trial to play out. But that experience was really hard because he was a very loved chorus teacher. Everybody loved him. He was everybody's best friend. So when the students found out that this happened because it was in the newspapers and everybody was talking about it, their inclination was to defend him. And because I was a minor, no one knew it was me. So I had to sit and listen to

everybody talk about it and there was no way for me to defend myself. And so what it did was really make me feel very more isolated than everybody else. And I remember my, my boyfriend at the time, we went to Blockbuster to try to rent a funny movie, some funny movie just to get our mind off of things. And I said, I'm going to sit in the car, you go in, you pick something funny. And I remember sitting in the car behind the windshield and just watching people walk back and forth. in and out of the blockbuster and me just feeling like this is a glass box between me and the world now. And it was, I always think of Will Ferrell, the movie where he's, I'm in a glass box of emotion when he's in the telephone booth. Yeah.

Funny version of what I'm saying, but it was like that. It was like a mine, like I'm behind this glass and I don't know how to get around that. And I don't know if I ever will be a part of the world again because I have this secret. And so this was between junior and senior year of high school, I continued with high school, graduated allocatorian, ever more determined to make sure I just get through this with my A's. And I got into an Ivy League school. And my dream at that point was to get away, you know, just let me get out of here. I'm going to find my people at college. I was in the Jersey Shore. The New York City was like the most exciting thing. So I got into a school in New York City and I moved to New York City. And my first week of school was 9-11. So this place that I had really wanted to come to, in fact, I drove to the city all the time once I had a car, I would hang out in the city a lot, just walk around, just feel a part of it.

So there was a sort of another kind of betrayal experience in terms of the city that I loved and wanted to be a part of now has drastically turned. on me. So my first year of college, I would basically on the weekends, take the train back home, go back into school, go to classes, take the train back home. I still had my high school boyfriend at the time. So sometimes I'd take the train to his college. She went to a nearby New Jersey school. So, and we would drink there. We would occasionally have a party. And this was like maybe once a month, maybe once every two months. It was fun. It wasn't like over the top parties. It was just a bunch of us in his dorm room doing nothing. We're just, oh, we're drinking.

We'd go get McDonald's afterwards, so we wouldn't get hung over. And it was innocent, and it was an escape from everything that was going on in terms of being in the city that year and being in a new environment coming from this sort of sheltered Christian home in New Jersey with people who, in a school that people didn't really value being smart to being this in this huge pond. I remember in a poetry class, so on was talking. about seeing the Mona Lisa. And I'm just like, what?

Like, how old are you? You've seen the book? And they're talking about the poetry of it. And I'm just like, wow, I think the Jersey Shore, I guess that is poetic. So I still felt a little over my head in terms of that. And I felt isolated. I didn't have the same background as a lot of the people at this Ivy League school. My dad's a truck driver.

It was like, for all intents and purposes, I shouldn't be here. And I'm here, damn it, but this is hard. So I wouldn't really say that alcohol became a thing until later on in college. I remember when I left my first year, my dad came to pick me up. And there was like no one for me to say goodbye to. And I thought, wow, this is my first year of school. And I don't know anything. There's some people, but it wasn't like, it just wasn't what I thought it would be.

And I thought, well, I'm really not getting out of this experience what I wanted to. So I want to do something a little different next year. And I joined an orientation thing where we run orientation and you go ahead of school like a couple weeks early, plan things and train on things. And there were parties. And for the first time in my life, I was invited to parties and people wanted to hang out with me. And I had dumped the high school boyfriend because I just felt like I have so much to experience. I want to move on with this. And so here was my chance to start new, make friends.

And it's what everybody on the podcast talks about. But even that like first sip feeling of just everything washes away, like a warmth. And it's in my family. The gene that responds to that is there because it made everything easier. The anxiety of not fitting in, of being different, of it, it didn't matter. We were all drinking the same drink and we all could. hang out and bond and have friends. And there wasn't really a lot of drinking. This was just the occasional party again, but I befriended somebody on the men's rugby team. And I'm laughing because

you can imagine where this is going. His friends started hanging out with the men's rugby team. And I would go to their games and sit on the sidelines. And rugby is a drinking culture. It's drinking songs. right, that are rugby related. And they would run off the field and grab a beer and chug it and run back on. It was funny, but looking back on that, that's really where things ramped up. And at that point in time, I remember thinking, okay, all right, there was a Wednesday night near the school that you could get, you could purchase a cup for 10 bucks. And then you could just drink from the cup all night. So Wednesdays was like everybody from the rugby team and all the girls and all the friends who hang out.

let's all go on Wednesday nights. And then Thursday night was a big college night. And then Friday would be Friday. And then Saturday would be Saturday. And then Sunday would be the game. So Monday, Tuesday, we would take off. But sometimes we didn't take off on Monday and Tuesday. And I was really good at drinking.

Just as much as I was good at going to class and getting A's and being like the good person, I could hold my alcohol, sometimes better than most of the rugby team. So the consequences weren't there. Occasionally I'd be hung over or tired, but not in a way that this was affecting me in any way that would make me go, there's a problem here. But the sadness was still there.

The anxiety was still there. And I think because I had that experience being young, I didn't connect how alcohol was adding to it. I didn't understand that. I just thought, oh, this is just who I am. The alcohol is a separate thing. It's actually a wonderful thing. Yeah.

Well, I first, yeah, I mean, even on that thought, too, yeah. At first, it's a lot of people refer to it as I found my home or I'm home now because you can feel comfortable. I relate to that a lot, feel comfortable in your own body. Like, I was never invited to high school parties. I was not a popular person at all. I knew a lot of people. And towards the end, I maybe became more of that. But I mean, I went to treatment too when I was 17.

So I just fell off. And I, which people probably wouldn't have noticed, but I had a twin brother as well. Oh, you have a twin. Yeah, I have a twin brother. So he still went to the same school. So obviously people were like, well, that's weird. They didn't move anywhere. Just the one, the troublemaker is gone.

But it's that thing too. When I got into college too, I got invited. I'll never forget it. I got invited to my first party. And they had that cooler something and had all the fruit. the ever clear in this mix of this juice and I grab a cup. I have no idea how to do this. My folks too growing up, they did drink, but it was never around. I might have taken one swag out of a bottle of vodka. And I was like, okay, this is the most disgusting thing in the entire world. This was,

I was like, I've got this completely wrong. And I was never really interested. And yeah, that first party, I would for once, maybe not for once, but it was really intense that people were actually interested in people messaged me. And I just drank way too fast and way. too much. It was a great time for three hours. And then my world was completely spinning and I had no idea. But people loved it. They connected with that. They were like, yeah, you're the life of the party. And I played it off like I, that was just a regular Saturday night. I had never done that before. I felt a lot of the same stuff. And I didn't this, I didn't have the same experiences, but those feelings of just not being good enough and not being able to connect with other

people and like the whole being on the outside thing too yeah i was like watching the world go on around me wondering for years what the heck was wrong what was wrong with me why wasn't i able to do it and i didn't share the success in the classroom yeah and i saw a lot of my peers they would celebrate that type stuff and they would connect based on that and they would do group projects and i was always the last guy to get picked nobody wanted to be with me just because the effort wasn't there in the interest so it's like here we when i look back i can connect connect so many dots to where why I felt the way I felt. But at the time, I had no idea. Yeah. I just had no idea what was going on. Interesting though, up to this point, I want to just

thank you for sharing everything that you're sharing to go through. It's not easy to share stuff, but incredible. And I'm proud of you for doing that. So where are we at now? We're getting into it. We're hanging out with the rugby crew. Yeah, I mean, the culture of rugby and everything is drinking. And it's part of my story. Some people, I know Jill, since we talked about a little about Jill, she never had a good time with drinking. Yeah. I had a lot of fun at first. I had a good, I had a good time. And maybe when I look back, maybe it wasn't all the best. But look, I was willing to make the sacrifice to belong somewhere. Once I found that, the alcohol was great. But I was more in it for the sense of belonging in the community it provided. Without it, I wouldn't have had that.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. I know that alcohol is an addictive substance. I know it runs in my family, but for me, the addiction was the social connection. It was that I started to leave my Christian faith in school, and I didn't have that like kind of church safety group anymore. So at least when I was away from my family, I was away from my twin, which is complicated in and of itself, right? and different kinds of pressures

in terms of distinguishing yourself from the twin. By the way, Sarah was number two in the class and I was valedictorian. So things were tense between us. And in high school, that it was me trying to find that family, like what they call the found family of people who, and it's not really fair to ask of people,

I think, looking back, that to come into these things with such high expectations for the people, people that you're drinking with. Like rugby is about camaraderie and about the team and that thing, but ultimately it's about rugby, not about meeting Liz's needs of safety and belonging. So it works for a while, but then the members of the team changes and I graduate and now I'm left without another community or we graduate and everybody moves away. That's normal, right? But okay, now you're moving away.

You're moving away with my sense of safety, with my sense of community. And I still have a lot of those friends. I'm sure some of them are going to listen to this. And that's, I'm so grateful for their friendship. But I don't talk to them every day in the same way that I did when they were right here, right? And so drinking was my way of every time I had to restart. So especially in New York City, I feel like there's a four-year turnover. People come here.

They make it or they don't, right? Or the rent gets raised or they get it. They end up getting a job somewhere else. So it's every four years you're having to start over in terms of the friend groups that you have. Coming out of college, I mean, I did great in college. And I studied psychology. And I did a minor in existential philosophy, which met those kinds of needs that were started by hearing about death and eternity and the afterlife from such a young age. So intellectually, it was very satisfying, and I poured myself into doing research in psychology,

relationship research, actually. And I wrote two theses. This is what a crazy person I am in terms of this need to achieve. I wrote two senior thesis. It's exhausting. Even thinking about it in the middle of all this drinking, right? So I graduated and I got a job working at a psychiatric institute doing research. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go into sort of the therapy kind of psychology or the research science side of psychology. So I took a couple years to see what it's like to be exposed to clients. And I was interviewing clients and I found out that I found myself calling out on the days that I would have clients like, oh, I don't feel good today. So that told me that side of psychology probably wasn't the one for me, and I focused my efforts to applying to ones where I'd be more

behind the computer doing research kind of psychology. And part of that, part of the reason that I couldn't do therapy was because I'm just so susceptible to the presence of other people that the question would be, what's your birth year? And they would be going on and on about a crack house that they were at or their depression symptoms or the family that they hurt. And I couldn't finagle just saying, great, okay, we'll get to that. What's your birth year? And I knew that could probably be trained into me, but I didn't want it to be. And again, that's something that at the time wasn't, I wasn't making the connections, but it's just saying I'm highly susceptible to the influence of other people. It's just something that's there. So when I'm putting myself around people who are drinking,

then I'm getting swept up in that social aspect, not necessarily the addiction aspect as much, but the addiction aspect is there. So once it hits my lips, again, well, thorough, I guess. I'm drinking six or seven on a casual Thursday night when I have to go to work in the morning. And so I happened to date somebody who was still in college, after I got a college, I dated someone who's still in college and in a frat.

So I was hanging out in a frat house after college. Again, surrounding myself with people that made it seem totally normal, that this is what you do. And consequences, we would laugh at them. Oh, I'm so hungover, but it's such a wild night. And going back to what you said, I gladly traded my Sunday. Gladly. That was just part of the plan, right? I'll be hungover on Sunday, but I get my Saturday night. That's what I was living for. And again, alcohol definitely part of it. But, but, but, but, that social thing. It was, let me give it to these people. And that, it worked in the sense of I could go to work and I could do what I needed to do and let off steam on the weekends. And I got

into a really good PhD program for social psychology was my top choice school. So I started that when I was, I think now we're talking about age four, 23, 24. And a couple of the people. So in my whole cohort, there was five of us that got into this program together. So tiny program. And the five of us all stayed in an office together. And it was really nice. They actually became another little family for me. We were all going through the same things. And two of them in particular really liked to drink. So great. And I was really, again, relating to what Jill was talking about in terms of what grad school is like. The grad students are like the two people in my, that to drink had, spreadsheet where they would find events at the school, like there's a library opening reception

and there's going to be wine there. Or, oh, there's a club event that has free drinks. So we would go in and get the wine and then sneak out the bags or talk to someone real quick, shake someone's hand and then go eat and run. So it was a goal. It was normal. It was the way you dealt with the pressures of being a grad student. It's a very unique environment. You're a very unique environment. with these experts, the experts have certain expectations of you that they don't necessarily articulate. It can be very hard to know when to stop because there's always work. It's not you check out at five o'clock. You check out at five o'clock and you're like, are they expecting me to still be here? Should I still be here? The person who's publishing something right now, they're still here.

Should I be doing that? Is something going to happen if I don't? And so it's a very ambiguous kind of pressure. And you could just not stop working. You could just work and people would love it because you'd be the star student. So trying to work on my perfectionism meant knowing when to stop working. But knowing when to stop working meant I would go drink if that makes sense. Yeah, 100%. And there was nothing else I was doing.

I mean, I'm in New York City. We'd go to museums occasionally or things like that. But we'd have a flask and we'd be drinking at the museum. So that was what we did. did when we weren't working. I started to really feel deep episodes of depression in grad school. Like, I would feel like a black hole opened up in my throat. Or there's a scene from the movie Mulan Rouge. I don't know if you know that movie, but there's a scene where Ewan McGregor is screaming out of a tower just in anguish. And it was like, I would always say, oh,

Eum McGregor's back. He's screaming out of the tower. And it was, it was. It was. It was, you know, was that familiar feeling of the anxiety and the sadness and the existential terror, but it was amplified. And I would call my mom and I'd say, I don't know what to do. Like, how do I get through my day when I feel this way? And she said, oh, have some electrolytes. Like, have a cup of tea. Take a Tylenol. Take the edge off. I'm just like, that's not going to do it, mom. But throughout this, I had tried therapy here and there. In college, I tried therapy right after. I was not After the incident with the chorus teacher, I tried therapy. It's a little bit difficult when you're studying psychology to go to therapy.

And I was prescribed Xanax. So I remember telling my medical doctor, I'm not sleeping. And he said, well, what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm in a PhD program. And he was like, oh, stop right. There you go. Didn't even stop. Done with the conversation.

Here's Xanax. So I was like, okay, I'm supposed to be anxious. You know, I'm supposed to be depressed. So I know you said you had blackouts. I was, yeah, definitely blacking out because I was drinking on the Xanax too. And I do know at one point during grad school, I was out drinking and I came home and I took some Xanax to go to sleep. And then I thought, let me take another one. Let me take another one.

Let me take another one. And then I swallowed them and I thought, what did I just do? And it made me realize I did it. I was like, oh, well, maybe I'll die. And that was my attitude. because I was exhausted and anxious and depressed. It was about that time also. I was nauseous all the time.

I carried ginger with me. I carried lifesavers with me. I carried Alka-Seltzer with me. I am prone to migraines, so I had to carry my migraine medication with me. I never connected it to the alcohol. Because... Looking back, though, that's what you...

Oh, definitely. Yeah, that's very good. It's just because I thought that like you're supposed to be anxious and depressed and stressed out in grad school and and being a professor, right? So I graduated from the PhD program. I have a doctorate. I ended up getting a really great job in Philly for a little while and then I came back to New York after that. And again, it's the same thing every few years finding new people by going to a bar being a bar fly, finding people who like to drink, hanging out with them, connecting with them immediately. And after a few years, that ends because they move away, go to a bar, find new people, connect with them. Yeah. So you're meeting people at, you're meeting people at bars that turn into, like, friends.

I've never done that before. It's very easy in New York. Yeah, yeah, the opportunity. I grew up in a relatively small town. We didn't have many, many bars. But that's interesting. What about your peers or other people you're working with? Did you try to make friends in that direction or no?

I think because there's a. a little bit of an imposter syndrome of I'm I shouldn't be here because my dad's a truck driver my mom's a housewife right I have no idea what I'm doing and somebody's going to figure out at some point that I shouldn't be here that it's a mistake that I'm here and now I'm going to go to hell right like again it's like your brain takes it back to that childhood thing of I'm making a mistake and it's not just a consequence of here it's a consequence of everything you know um so I didn't spend a lot of time connecting with my colleagues as much as I was going to school, doing the work, teaching, connecting with students, doing the research, but then having this

sort of alternative life outside of that. There's a community in Brooklyn and in New York that listen to emo music, and they have emo nights. I don't know if you've heard of this, but I would go to these emo nights and there were these people who were screaming and singing and crying to these songs together. So I did always find communities at bars. And if there wasn't people at the bar, the bartender would eventually just be your friend. Tip really well. They start paying attention to you and then they know your order as soon as you walk in and they'll talk to you all night. If there's no one else there, they'll put the movie on that you want to see because they know you. So New York is a big city, but it's a friendly small town vibes in the immediate surroundings of your deepahuts.

Yeah. So and I would date and then I'd break up with the person and then, I'd have to go out dating again, so dating would be drinking, right? So even when I would start to feel like I need to cut back on this, it was just like, well, here we go again. I need to drink because I'm not going to date without drinking. What was that like? Like your first thoughts of I need to cut back. I need to figure out something here.

I need to rein it in a bit. I had a three-day rule in college. I read somewhere that your liver needs three days to recover. So I would try to go Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday, Tuesday. Like I would try to do that kind of thing. And not very well at it. But I was in a relationship that was very alcohol-based, as most of my friendships were. And I remember the only person who ever said anything to me about my drinking was my sister.

Emily, shout out to Emily. She said to me, why do you guys always have to be drunk when you go on a date or when you do something. And I didn't have a very good answer to that, but that got the gears going. I actually broke up with that boyfriend because he started to get into cocaine. And by the way, I could pick up other kinds of drugs. I have tried almost all of them. But it was never the same as alcohol. I try it and go, that was fun. Next year, two years or three years or four years, maybe I'll try it again, you know. So there is that addictive element, right? And in terms of the socially acceptable element, in terms of it.

And we did a cocaine occasionally here and there. I didn't like it, honestly, so I wouldn't really do it. But his friend moved to town, who was a big user, and it became very casual. I remember saying to him, can't we just go back to when you would do it once a year on a special occasion? And he said, no. So I broke up with him over that. So that's where I was like, I'm going to do something different, right?

but that's when I moved to Philly. And I'm in a new place. First place I go, find a local bar, right? Make new friends, drink. But in Philly was when I started to do things like that. I'm going to limit myself to three. I'm going to have water after every single drink. Right?

You make those rules. Some of them refer to it as the drunk math, right? Like you do the calculus of how do I not be hung over tomorrow, but still have a really good time. And it was becoming a thing where I was anxious about going somewhere where there was alcohol because I was anxious about that drunk math not working because you would never, you'd have the rules and you'd, come on, Liz, you can do it. And then you'd have the first sip and you're done.

Six later. Oops. I was always supposed to have one or two or three. Yeah. Yeah, that's cycle. Yeah. It's so common, right? But then, you know, the one of the while, this thing for me is then you wake up the next day

and you're like, yeah, it didn't work last night, but for today, I'm going to do it. And then it's like the next day. Today it's going to work. Yes. Today it's going to eat a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. And the nausea, the headaches.

And now it's like starting to think, okay, what am I trading for that? When I moved back to the city, again, I've blown up my life by breaking up with that person. So when I moved back to the city, I had to start over. And in there is where I would say, I'm not. going out tonight. And so it was I had to just not. And as things go, the pandemic happened. It's interestingly, during the pandemic, the longest I had ever gone without drinking was because I got COVID really early on, like in early March into February of 2020, like before they even were, did you go to China? You know, no, okay, we can't give you a test, but you have it. And I went

a month or maybe two months because I was so sick for a month without alcohol. And that was the the longest I had ever gone without alcohol since I had started. So we're talking about close to 20 years of drinking here, maybe having three days in between, but this is a long career. In the end of the summer of 2020, my sister passed away. She wasn't from COVID. It was a longstanding illness. It was a really difficult time. And I didn't drink. I said, we're not doing that right now. And I think that was where I had my first clues of, well, why aren't you drinking? Something in there must be not working for me. And I know right now I'm too vulnerable to do that. Well, what is that? It could have just have been like, I don't want to be nauseous, was might have been enough. There was something

else in there of this is going to get real messy if I drink. But it took me a couple more years of that drunk math getting worse and worse, that anxiety getting worse and worse, the next day getting worse and worse of what did I do? Why did I do that? What's wrong with you? I wasn't finding joy at work. I was getting through the day. And I felt very guilty towards my students. I don't think they noticed. I remember one student once sitting on a Zoom meeting with a student and she said, because I'm cheery at work. She was like, you, your life just must be perfect. And she meant that in the nicest way and that should have made me feel good in the sense of, oh, I'm succeeding. Perfectionism. I would change it. Yeah. But I see. I see.

sunk. Everything sunk because no, it's not. It's not. And I deserve better than this. So one day, I typed in three-day hangover to Google and Google directed me to a Reddit post of someone who had posted to Reddit, what do you do about a three-day hangover? What they wanted tips for the drunk math? And someone had facetiously commented our Reddit, another Reddit subsection called Stop Drinking. And I laughed at that, but I was like, let me click on that. And that's what sort of started the, wait a minute, maybe it's actually the alcohol. So in terms of what I saw on there was people talking about the things that they had gained. Their skin was glowing. They were hydrated.

They were rested. They were getting promotions at their job. They liked going to work again. And I was like, I want that. I want that. I want that. I want that. I want that. And any other time that I thought about not drinking, it was, what am I going to lose?

I'm going to lose the friendship. I'm going to have no friends. I'm going to be a loser. This was the first time I saw how much there was to gain. So in January, I found your podcast because I started looking up sober podcasts because I thought, let me follow things. Let me put this content in my face as much as possible to keep that goal. in my face of you have to gain, you have to gain, you have to gain. You're going to lose some things, but you have to gain, you have to gain. And that's when I just was gobbling up the Sober Motivation podcast because first I went to all the women that you had interviewed at the time, because they have stories that I thought maybe I could relate a little bit to more. And some of the stories, like not involving a DUI or losing their job or I was looking for those stories. But then I

went back in time and went through all of them because I realized all of the stories. show me what's to gain. And all of them have little tips of how to get through New Year's or a birthday or a Fourth of July. And so that's what I want. I wanted to study it in the same way that I study psychology.

And one of the reasons that I didn't go to, like, meetings was because I was so afraid of being susceptible to other people. Like, that vulnerability I have of just, I felt like there was a danger. I was very vulnerable. and if I go to meetings, I'm going to get sucked in a way. And I don't know if that's true or not.

But this helped me have that community and get those stories while allowing me to keep myself separated and work on that sort of people-pleasing side of myself, if that makes any sense. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. And yeah, you're able to pick up a few things from every episode, hopefully, and you're putting us under the microscope.

You're putting us under the microscope for our show. my goodness, I can only imagine, but I know it's been great because we've talked. I'm just thinking here too. I mean, this is all just incredible. Thank you so much. Thinking too, with your background, right, being a doctor and having the experience and doing all this research, that I'm just thinking, I could be way off, but that that must have been a conflict in itself, right?

You're able to get all of this other stuff done. You're so successful. If anybody's looking from the outside, I mean, wow, you've made it. You're doing incredible work. You're helping your teaching students. or progressing. And then you hear that comment about how your life must just be great. And it almost in a sense maybe reinforces some of that imposter syndrome feelings.

And I'm with you on that too. I have it. We're recording a hundred and something episode. And I'm just thinking to myself, what in the heck am I doing the, am I the man for the job, the person for the job? And my first answer is no, but it's a whole other thing. And yet here we are. And here we are.

But how was that internal dialogue you had with yourself from where you were professionally to what you were struggling with internally? I mean, it was a constant state of conflict. It was, I can't even explain why. I just tried to ignore it. I just because if I tried to change something, then maybe it would change my success. You know what I mean? There was maybe it's, this is hard, but it's supposed to be hard. It's normal for it to be hard. So, and it's working. And if I stop having that outlet and I have to work on new outlets, that might cause everything to crumble. Yeah. So it was just keep every, this is working in some weird way, even though, and I think what clicked with me was like, I should be enjoying my life. I should be enjoying my successes. I should want to be talking to my students.

I actually do like my students. I do like my job. But why am I not enjoying it? why am I just trying to get through it these days? And it was the sort of I want better for myself. And I would be standing in the shower and I would say out loud, I hate my life, I hate myself. And I'd go, wait, what? Did you just say?

What did you just say with? Or I'd be falling asleep and my partner would hear, I hate this. Just fucking kill me. It would slip out. And I'd be like, oh, what was that? Push that deep. That's not true. That I'm not so it was.

And when you're drinking, you don't have those thoughts. because everything is, you've got those, the high. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I was thinking about this. I think that like alcohol eventually wasn't making me feel any better. And in fact, over time, the relationships weren't really happening anymore either in the sense of it would be all sitting at a bar and the people would be talking about the people who weren't there and gossiping and that felt ugly. And I realized over time, I wasn't doing it because it made me feel good.

I was doing it because it made me feel different. And if it was a different kind of bad, at least it was a different bad. Yeah, it could take the focus off of the other thoughts. I mean, that's what I was doing. That was part of it too, right? Those thoughts and that inner critic that gets awfully loud, right? And then it quiets right up after a couple. Yeah.

So keep it going. It's always interesting, too, because I've been noticing this theme. And I don't know if I've ever really noticed it before, but we go through these stages and there's probably more in your realm, there's probably more science to this. But what I'm thinking here is that we do this moderation. We try to moderate. We try to make sense of it all.

And then we seem to slip into this acceptance realm, this acceptance area to tell ourselves. And I think it's just to soften the blow a bit. I know I've got a problem with this. I know this is something I need to change with my life. But I'm just going to accept it. This is how it might be for here to the end of things. And it's for some reason, in my story,

It just offered some comfort to where it wasn't like I was in denial. If anybody said, oh, you have a drinking problem. Yeah, I know. I know. I can't change it. And it was not like this conference. I was never confrontational with people. I understand that I drink too much sometimes and I get it.

But I've just accepted that this is my life today and this is going to be my life forever. And I'm okay with that. Even though deep down I knew that I definitely wasn't okay because like you've mentioned, right, we end up sacrificing a lot to drink. And then we think by giving it up, we're going to be, even though we do lose some stuff, the amount of things to gain.

I mean, it's just, it's just enormous. But I've always. Yeah. And I'm always interested for people and to hear their stories when that takes place about where we try to moderate, we try to figure it out,

and then we just jump into that. Yeah, this is just the way it is. I'm going to roll with it. And for me, just like you, just like a lot of the guests, it wasn't a rock bottom.

I mean, emotionally, it was a hidden rock bottom, but it was just a matter of me typing in three-day hangover and seeing those posts and going, today is my day. I'm going to start tomorrow. And they say on there, I will not drink with you today. So I just popped on there and said, I will not drink with you today. And I knew from reading those stories,

from, again, gobbling this all up, like I have a PhD now in Sober Motivation Podcast, that there was going to be out, of my life now that I spent drinking, that I spent recovering from drinking, that I was going to be bored, I was going to be uncomfortable, I was going to feel lonely. And so I was prepared for that. I would tell to myself, just because you're alone doesn't mean you're lonely. Just because you're alone doesn't mean you're lonely. And I picked up a workout program. Actually, I tried a few. I like typed in like cardio YouTube and got through 12 minutes and then was sore for a week.

And it was like, all right, not that one. And then I typed in beginner cardio. One where you start on a chair, like the grandmas. And I was like, all right, I'll just start here. Like it's one step at a time. And the relief I felt immediately was not magic. It was just like, okay, I'm starting to feel good about the fact that I am able to not. just one day, I can do this.

And whoo, I'm not doing all that drunk mat. Wow, that drunk map was really exhausting, you know. And so just the immediate relief of that. And then after a couple weeks, it was, I'm not as headachey. After a couple more weeks, I started sleeping better. After a couple more weeks, I think I emailed you and was like, I'm starting to feel really grateful. I'm not standing in the shower going, I hate my life.

I'm going, I love my life. I catch myself saying, oh, this is great. That didn't happen right away. And I knew that from listening to the podcast and reading those posts of you have to, that comes with being consistent. You don't just get rewarded that the day after you stop. So I knew that this was going to require a persistent. And I said, Liz, you have a PhD.

You can be persistent. Quite all odds. You can do hard things. You can. And so I wouldn't have been able to do that. And actually, I did go back to drinking a couple times after I made that decision. And in fact, I did a thing by shaking them, but I was like, I'm going to have one last hurrah with my college friends. So I did do that.

But I think I needed that kind of research phase. Yeah. Quick question on that. And your, so for your last party, your last thing there, when you really look at it, was it really any different than the rest of the times? No. That's the most. See, and that's the interesting part, too, is, man, we just buy into it. We buy into that it's going to provide the release.

I did anyway. I can't speak for everybody, but I bought into the idea that it was going to offer the relief it once did. And that relief that it once offered was long gone. But every time I would go into it, convinced that I was going to be provided that again. And I don't know if I ever really found that again. Like I mentioned, I had my good times and I had bad times.

But I don't know if I ever had that incredible time again. And I was maybe on the pursuit of that along with other things. Definitely. Drive it into the ground. But interesting. Yeah. Well, that first sip feeling might be there. But the first sip feeling comes along with the anxiety of, oh, no, how much am I going to drink?

How much? How am I going to feel tomorrow? The Anvil was waiting to drop just as much as the relief. So it was a different kind of anxiety for me. But it was just, if not stronger than that, washing away that feeling of community. And again, the community aspect became so peril. now. I guess I'm just getting older. I'm in my 40s now. So it's not the same kind. It's not people in their 20s or 30s that are hanging out at bars. You know what I mean? They have kids. So it's a different

group of people and they're not exactly open to meeting Liz's needs of safety and community in the same way. You know what I mean? And the work started years ago in terms of looking at that people pleasing. So that's the other thing is that you don't have to not drink tomorrow. I mean, I would like people to not drink tomorrow if it's a problem. But if you still drink tomorrow, but you're doing that research, that, I mean, you talk about how many times you went to rehab, right? Like, eventually all of that came together and served its purpose, maybe not right away or as soon as you had wanted it to. But if I hadn't done work in terms of I was following people pleasing accounts on Instagram and reading books on that stuff and learning how to meet my own needs of safety and

community and or having appropriate places to ask for that, right? And I'm still working on that. But if it wasn't for that pre-work, then it wouldn't have come to me now. It wouldn't have been, it would have been, okay, three-day hangover already at okay, sober motivation, cool, because I would have still been looking for that. So a lot of the things, it took many years of that pre-work, plus a little bit of extra research in there in terms of this. And then once I got that ball rolling and a lot of your guests talk about looking into what alcohol is and what it does to you, I just don't think I could ever go back. I feel too good.

And part of that is having a regular fitness thing that works for me. It's not a lot, but it works for me. And so physically, I'm in the best shape of my life and I'm over 40. Who knew that would be, did not see that in my future. And so I really feel like the best is yet to come for me. And I really wouldn't have seen it that way. If it wasn't for that community and for the podcast in terms of showing me, it is so worth it. It is so worth it.

Just stay the course. Do it. Just do it. Just try it. I like the way you say. Give it three months. Give it two days. Start somewhere.

And some of these benefits didn't come until six months. I'm about nine months, I think. So February 18th was my last hangover. That was the way I like to think about it. Love that. What a gift. What a gift. Never hung over again.

That alone. If nothing else happens, if nothing else not being hung over ever again, would have been worth giving it up. Yeah. And then one email the correspondence to and I want to wrap things up here soon. But you had just mentioned too and you mentioned a lot on your story about having this depression and this anxiety and then things really improving once you're not drinking, right? Oh, that thing. It's like not even on the forefront of my mind. I mean, the depression side

of things just for me has gone away completely. The black hole in my throat, Ewan McBregor, screaming. I have not felt that in nine months. And what's interesting is that I can now distinguish the anxiety from the depression because I still feel, I still have anxiety. I mean, that's something I'm still working on. And the funny thing is, and I know another guest or two have said this, but I didn't really stay on medication because I wanted to keep drinking. I prioritized drinking. And now, you know, there are things that I can explore because I'm not drinking. You know what I mean? So, and it's much more manageable. Again, my day to day isn't, what am I doing later? Is it going to bust me up? It's definitely gone down. And again, And I can see the difference between the depressed feelings and the anxious feelings.

And part of that I think is just this wiring from a young age of I'm anxious. But my day to day is it's the joy. It's that joy my mom always said, don't let anybody steal that joy. So it can coexist with the anxiety because it's tampered down. And it's just triggered by regular things, not just everyday life things. Yeah. And I think, I mean, anxiety is going to be part of, I think most people are probably going to have something, right? whether it's anxiety, but we can maybe more pinpoint.

Like what's causing this? When it's come to drinking, it doesn't matter if the newspaper guide and deliver the newspaper. It's everything that happens. And at least on this side, we're able to, I think, better connect the thoughts about what's going on. And then that gives us the opportunity to work on those things other than just this every single thing or just waking up with it.

And because after a while, that would be, some people say anxiety, that would just be the automatic. And it wouldn't matter really what I did. I just could not get out. The only thing that would help with that was time. And it would have to be like one, two, three o'clock or it gets longer, the more you're into it, I think. And then with time that go away. And then I would be like, oh, by lunchtime, I was like, oh, let's get back.

I can't wait to get back into it tonight. What the cycle keeps going. I'm wondering, too, just to wrap things up, if somebody's listening to the show, and they're struggling with getting started on this journey, what would you say to them? Don't think about the things that you have to. Think about the things that you have to gain. It's so motivating to listen to these stories

and pay attention to the things that they get out of doing this. Because once you start to see that for yourself, and I know a lot of people struggle with even feeling like they deserve good things. So I understand why we wouldn't pay attention to those things. but I feel like when you stop drinking, it's not a matter of deserving it or not. They just come because you're eliminating this thing

that's contributing to all these negative things. So even neutral is better than those negative things. The other thing is it's hard to maintain that hamster wheel. So if you're like, well, quitting drinking is going to be hard. I'm going to say, you can do hard things because you drink all the time. That is hard. So I believe in you are a champion in many ways if you're living that life. So why not try a different part for a little while?

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And that's it too, right? Both ways are going to be hard. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, the one that's going to provide some serious change for your life to get you to

where you want to is we've got to be able to make that mental switch to see that is what's going to happen. It's going to take time for everybody. It's going to be different. It's going to look a little bit different. But there is like literally one guarantee out there that your life will get better. It might not happen right away. Some say it gets worse before it gets better because we've been avoiding emotions and we've been avoiding trauma and we've been avoiding stuff for so long. That might

come up in the beginning. But look, the opportunity to start working on yourself. I mean, what a beautiful thing. I don't know the, I don't know the exact number, Liz, but I imagine there's a lot of people who go through life and in born and then die and never really work on a lot of stuff. And I think to get sober, to get off drinking, gives us that vision, that clarity and that connection with ourselves. I always look at alcohol. It's the ultimate disconnect from self. That's the problem. And when we're right in there, my buddy Mike said way back in the episodes there, he just celebrated two years too.

But you can't see how big and bad the bear is when you're dancing with it. And that's what I think it's life. But look, I appreciate you so much for being willing to share your story. I mean, it's just incredible. And you did a great job. Thanks, Brad. I really, it meets a lot coming from you. And we said this before we recorded, but I want to say it while it's recording that

to everyone, Brad is my hero. He's my hero for doing this podcast. And the people who have been on this podcast are my heroes. It's an honor to share my story and be amongst such a group of courageous, insightful. You've got the best people in the world as your friends, Brad, right? And it makes me want to hang around more sober people when I'm ready to because it's, they're the best people in the world. I'm sure many flaws, but because of that insight, it's gold, especially for a psychologist. It's interesting to me to see people who are giving that good functioning a go,

a great functioning a go. It's inspiring. Yeah. Thank you. Well, thank you so much. I mean, What kind of show would it be without a few people listening, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I will keep listening. So, you know, you'll know I'm here, okay? All righty. Well, there it is. Incredible job, Liz.

Thank you so much for reaching out. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Extreme bravery for everybody who shares their story on the podcast. There's a ton of stuff in there. I can personally relate with it. I know a lot of you are going to be able to relate with, too. And I just was having this thought. If you're really lucky and you work really hard,

you'll be able to live a sober recovery, alcohol-free life. It's going to take some work, though. And if you're really lucky and you work really, really hard, and maybe we could make a difference in someone else's life, which is really hard for me personally to wrap my head around just with my life and the way it was and nothing really led in the direction of being an influence or helping anybody else.

It just didn't. I just completely burned my entire life to the ground, put myself in positions where other people made decisions for me and what was best for me. And to be in a position now to be able to give back, maybe inspire the next person to give this a shot or inspire the next person to share a story that might change someone else's life

is truly incredible. So we opened up the episode with gratitude from Liz. We're going to end it with some gratitude for me. Thank you, everybody, for your support on the show. And I know everybody who does a show and does anything, they say that. But I truly mean it. Like, really, really, really mean that. that I appreciate all your support to keep this thing going.

And let's help the next one.