Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Navigating Sober Living with Torie: From Not Drinking Alcohol to Healing

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

In this episode, Torie shares her journey from growing up surrounded by alcohol in Rhode Island. Torie discusses her struggles with self-judgment, societal pressures, and quiet drinking. She embarked on international travels and hoped it would fill the void and change things.  Torie recounts her turning point in 2021, when she decided to quit drinking and focus on meaningful healing.  Her story emphasizes the importance of inner healing and addressing the different layers of life while maintaining sobriety. ------------- Contact Torie on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/teafortorie/  

Welcome back to season four of the Super Motivation Podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety as possible, one story at a time. Let's go. In this episode, Tori shares her journey from growing up surrounded by alcohol in Rhode Island. Tori discusses her struggles with self-judgment, societal pressures, and quiet drinking. She embarked on international travels and hope that. it would fill the void and change things in her life. Tori recounts her turning point in 2021 when she

decided to quit drinking and focus on meaningful healing. Her story emphasizes the importance of the inner healing work and addressing the different layers to life while maintaining sobriety. And this is Tori's story on a sober motivation podcast. Welcome back everyone to another episode of the sober motivation podcast. Today we have Tori with us. Tori, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Yeah, well. Great to finally connect here. Great recommendation from Luke to have you on the podcast and share your story. So I'm excited for it. I'm excited. Let's dive in. Let's do the dive. Yeah. So what was it like for you growing up? Okay. So growing up, I'm from Rhode Island. And for those of you who are not familiar with Rhode Island,

Rhode Island is pretty much primarily surrounded by water. It's a beach town or beach forward place to live. And growing up for me was a lot being out in nature, being outside, being by the beach. And sort of without saying this, but like being by the beach, there's this unspoken drinking culture. Something about being in the sun and being outside. That was something that I definitely grew up around. Wasn't necessarily like in the middle of nowhere where people were drinking all the time,

but there's definitely easy access to those things. And I grew up in an environment where I basically saw all the adults around me drinking. There's definitely family history of drinking. My grandparents, one of my grandfathers went to AA when he was 60. And so it was something that I thought was so normal. I think growing up was for me challenging being one of four. And I was growing up in the 90s and the early 2000s. And, you know, it was such a different time.

If you think about where we are right now, the stuff that we could do and got away with and not really having cell phones in the same way was a completely different experience. But loved being in nature. We spent a lot of time at my grandparents' beach house and obviously had very loving parents. But alcohol was there and it was a problem. Yeah. Where are you at age-wise for your siblings?

Are you in the middle? I was second. Okay. Of four. So the original middle child. Yeah. Well, it is so interesting too, right? I was even thinking I recently got one of these.

ring doorbell cameras. Oh, God. And it's like everybody that walks by, you see, it's just like everything. But going back to like when I was a teenager, oh my goodness, like I would have anyway been in probably a lot more trouble if everybody had one of these cameras. So I'm just kind of thinking back to when you say, I mean, I was born in 87. So, you know, 90s and 2000s of, you know, kind of growing up too. It feels like it wasn't even that long ago, but just with technology that's been brought

into things. yeah like a big difference we used to just go and like knock on our friends doors and now my daughters are coming to me like i need you write down your phone number dad so that the i could give it to the neighbors so that we can schedule something for us to get together and i'm like i guess that's just the thing of the past like knocking on somebody's door you have to give them a heads up i know i think about that all the time you know texting was the big thing um still but like the early stages of texting. Social media wasn't a thing.

And even I think about that with my sister and her kids, like, or anybody who has kids, really, and their cell phone addiction, because my mom raised four kids without a cell phone. Do you know what I mean? Like, we, and we would go on our bikes over to our neighbor's house to see if we wanted to do a play date, like, freely. And I don't know, it's just so wild how far we've come. And like you said, if I had a ring door, but I mean, I would have been in trouble all the time.

I like, I snuck out and did that sort of a thing. Kids can't get away with anything anymore. Yeah, so true. It's interesting to you bring up that. You know, we talk about it a lot on the podcast, just the overall normalization of alcohol, just being at the family gatherings, the events and just seeing it everywhere. I mean, was there a time in your life kind of there growing up where you picked up on that? because for a long time, for me, I never even really noticed too much about what was going on.

Is there a time you can reflect on to when you picked up on it being so around all the time? Honestly, because it was like a normal thing, like my dad always had a Budweiser can in his hand. It was like almost an accessory and I'd never thought twice about it. And as a young kid, I like had tasted it, you know, and been like, ew, it's so gross, like bitter. And it was just so well placed in our environment that I never questioned it once. You know, I think for me with my parents, one of my parents just has such an easy relationship with alcohol. Like my mom can have one drink and be fine. Like she doesn't have to have ten others.

I don't think I've ever seen my mom drunk. Like that's just her relationship with it. And then my dad definitely abused alcohol and had this relationship where he would drink beers all day long. And I never really noticed too much of a change in his personality. There were like times where as I grew older, I started to notice when he had been drinking all day. But growing up, I didn't think it was a problem. It was just sort of this part of this lifestyle, things that adults did. I didn't necessarily grow up in an environment where I could see bad behaviors and link it to alcohol.

You know what I mean? Nor did I grow up in that environment. Like I didn't grow up in an abusive environment where I know some other people can see the direct correlation. Like it's very clear that there was like alcohol-induced violence or something of that nature. For me, it was like almost more psychologically complicated because it. it was like okay or gave me the impression growing up that having a problem with alcohol is okay. And excessive drinking is okay because as long as you're not hitting someone or there's

lots of screaming that it's not a problem. We sort of have that Hollywood perspective of it. It's like, you know, if people aren't throwing plates at each other, then like it's okay. But it's not. So that was kind of my experience with it. I never had a defining moment I can reflect on where I was like really noticing it until my mom kicked my dad of the house because his drinking was a problem in the way that it would make him depressed in his mood. But like I said, that's what makes it so psychologically confusing because there wasn't like crazy arguments.

Like we weren't seeing a dramatic thing play out in front of us. It was quiet. And I think sometimes like the quiet alcoholism is hard to grow up with because it makes it like seem like it's okay. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, 100%. I think there's a I think I shared about it on the podcast too. before there's this clip with Steveo and he says like kind of, you know, air quotes, being

an alcoholic might be the most dangerous spot to me because it's like you're not really fully aware. But I think too, a lot of people are looking like what you mentioned there to check certain boxes, right? Do I have a problem with alcohol? Am I an alcoholic? Here's three boxes you have to check. We have a DUI.

You're losing stuff and everything like that. And then if those aren't checked, it's kind of easy to convince ourselves to kind of carry on. So I get exactly what you're saying there. Most people's stories, right? I don't know everybody's story. So I can't speak for all of them in the world. But for most people, they share a sense of it being progressive as to where, you know, we first start out and what's for this or that in high school or college or maybe afterwards. And then maybe we start to lean on it a little bit more and more. And then it's a very sneaky thing to where one day it's like, oh my gosh, this is playing maybe a bigger a role in my life than I ever thought possible.

When does your dad leave the house then? I was probably, I was like kind of out of pivotal age. I think I was like 12 or 13. Wow. And he came back, but like had to stop drinking and I think he went to some meetings. And eventually it's kind of like blurry. Like he came back and then it was sort of like nothing. ever happened, but then he eventually started drinking again.

But it was never out of control. And then he drank for the rest of his life, basically. And again, that's what makes it so twisted. I'm like, okay, we're just going to like pretend like nothing happened. And that was part of, I think, our culture growing up too, not talking about things, keeping things a secret, not dealing with emotions. and then you and I get to become adults. And it's like we're starting from square one because we never learned any of that.

And, you know, secrets and alcoholism, like go hand in hand. Yeah. And I can relate to that huge. Like just not knowing even, I mean, I didn't even know how to identify emotions until I went to rehab. I didn't know what they were. I didn't know. I obviously didn't have any coping strategies too. on like how was I going to work through these everything going on not really feeling comfortable

talking with people um and like I don't think I talk a lot of people too on the show right and I and I relate to what some other people have shared too I don't think my parents like intentionally told me like what happens in the house stays in the house it was never like that kind of conversation but I just it just wasn't role model for me that we can talk about stuff and we could share our emotions and you know how we were feeling. and stuff. And like it wasn't no blame on them. You know, that's just how things were. That was just the reality of it. But then, yeah, you kind of get out after that on your own. And it's like, oh, my goodness, you know, I'm a lot less equipped than maybe I thought I was. I was the guy who was

like, I can't wait to be 18 to get out of this house. I can't wait to just be on my own. And then I found myself on my own. And I was like, oh, my goodness. Now I know what they were talking about. So what do you do after high school? Like, did you start drinking in high school? Or was that not a thing? Yeah, so I drank early on in high school. I remember the first time had a drink was at my grandparents' anniversary party. And it was just like a beer or something like that, but enough to give me buzz. And that when I was just basically immediately hooked because I experienced like the two most potent things when I drank, which was one, I lost my judgment for myself. I was no longer judging myself partially.

And that gave me a level of confidence that I was like, oh my God, this is. everything I've been looking for. And I definitely went into party girl mode from there on out. That's kind of where it ensued and was absolutely and kind of have always been an all or nothing person. So for me, it was, you know, partying hard, drinking often until the point of blacking out or throwing up or something of that nature. And, you know, not for nothing. We're also growing up in this time where I didn't even question it because it was celebrated to like, you know, chug a beer and drink as much as you possibly can. Like we saw it in movies.

We saw it in school dances. Like it was almost like there was this sense that excess drinking was a right of passage. And I didn't think I had a problem because I wasn't drinking alone. and I was surrounded by people. So I basically told myself that it was fine. And, you know, in a culture that, like, encourages and rewards over drinking, I just kind of found it easy to stay in denial, if that makes sense. Well, 100%.

Yeah. I'm with you all day on that. You're encouraging, you know, excessive drinking. Yeah, that's kind of where I found my home with things, too, was like the keg stands and just doing. things extreme and taking just for maybe that for me personally maybe that validation or

this ability to fit in or be a part of maybe circles that I would otherwise not be a part of like I was able to kind of slide in and build relationships based off of things that I you know looking back that's what it was all about it wasn't

there wasn't that part of me that was like I just love the taste of bush light so much that I'm just going to drink it out of this you know canister that we had in a garbage can with ice in it. It was not that at all, but it was that I think I got a rush from fitting in by my entire previous life before my drinking career started. I felt like I was really on the outside of, you know, sort of the outskirts of the world. And so this kind of gave, you know, me personally a place to plug in an identity.

And I think that that was really, you know, even getting further down the road, like something I really struggled with, who was I without this thing that, you know, crept into my life and checked so many boxes for me, but was also becoming a really slippery slope. But at first, it's like, yeah, we, you know, we surround ourselves with other people doing it. It's like, yeah. And I mean, we see it kind of in other areas in our life. And it's like, yeah, I mean, everybody's kind of doing it. That's what I believed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's massively a social crutch. It gives you a false sense of confidence and not for nothing it was also like a big anti-anxiety hack for me like I would take shots sometimes if I had to do like a school presentation it was too worked up about it you know

because it'll chill you out yeah so like that some people talk talk or refer to it as like self-medicating too right you know in a sense yeah and I mean I did too I had a um I can't relate to so much of the stuff you're saying, Tori, sharing some of my story over there. I had ADHD. We just got high school together. Yeah, exactly. I had ADHD growing up and I had this bright idea. I was on all kind of medications and I was on Adderall at one point and I had this

bright idea in high school one day that I would skip out on taking a dose and everything in my life changed kind of in that day. And I stopped taking it from there but my parents thought I was still taking it. And being extremely impulsive, anxious, everything came back. And I'd been on the medication for years. Like I remember even in middle school going to the office, going to the office like twice a day before they had the, you know, before they had like the extended release type medication. You know, you have to, yeah, you'd have to go up there and get the medication.

So all that stuff came flooded in. And I think what the alcohol really a big purpose is solved in my life in the early days was it quiet those voices. It quieted that 24-7 chatter about not being good enough or all the anxiety and all the doom. And like for me anyway, I felt a sense of pressure. After high school, I had to have my entire life figured out. You know, what do you meet with the counselor, right? What do you want to do with your life, young man? And I wasn't academically doing well. Like, I knew that. I never did well for school. So it was like, I kind of felt left behind from everybody who, was going to school. So I gravitated towards other people like me who weren't going necessarily

to school right away. Like I did further down the road. But yeah, I can relate with that huge. One thing that you shared there earlier that really stood out to me was kind of that inner critic. I think you talk about like that judgment quieting sort of that down. Was that something you dealt with like all while growing up or since you can remember anyway? Yeah, I don't think I had the conscious awareness at the time. But definitely, like, I think there was just a period of time growing up where I really questioned myself. And I felt really unsure of who I was and my level of intelligence.

I had four siblings. So that's like the struggling itself would keep yourself distinct and afloat. Even though my parents, like I said, extremely loving, like beautiful people. But that was hard, you know? And I also, similarly to you, was not great.

at school. And early on, I remember being in a reading class and having to, like, get special help with reading. Not because I'm incapable or had necessarily a learning disability. It was when I, like, switched schools and had to do some evaluations and whatever. And I immediately felt so stupid. I was like, I'm dumb. Like, you know, I don't know what's wrong with me, but, you know, at the time you think something is.

Like, if you're slow at learning X, Y, Z that you're broken. And I think I was in like second grade. And so it shattered my confidence. And I also had this crazy teacher who legally, this should never have been allowed. but she just really bullied kids. This was in third grade. And she would make me so nervous before school that I would like throw up every day before school. And my mom would just like keep trying to push me along.

We couldn't switch me out of this teacher's class. And she made me feel stupid. Like I said, like I would not talk. Like I was very quiet. And she pulled my parents aside thinking that there was something wrong with me because I was scared shitless or so scared that I couldn't talk. And one day, and I'll never forget this, she called me up to the front of the room to answer a question like a math problem on the board and I was so scared.

And I froze and I was just like facing the wall and just couldn't even process it. And she said, let's all take a nap while Tori tries to figure out the problem. And I was just so mortified. And on top of already like not liking school. Um, adding like a teacher who is going to bully you and make you sick to your stomach when you're like eight years old is not really going to help. So it kind of like added to, I think, the self-confidence issues that I probably had as a younger kid. Um, and then you know, like how the system works. It's not meant to lift people up, you know, not everybody learns in the same way.

Some people are more emotionally intelligent and we only get a reward. rewarded for working like an employee by following rules. Like, let's be honest. Like, if you think about everything that we learned, how many hours did I waste learning calculus? How many hours did I waste, like, reading literature that didn't light me up at all whatsoever? You know, there was so much time wasted. And the fact that we were shamed or made to feel like a problem or like put in small special groups to like force that stuff down our throats. To me, I'm like, that's terrible. Like, of course that's going to make us into adults that have problems.

You know, if you don't fit into the system, you're going to have problems down the line because, you know, it just beats you up. So that's kind of more or less how I suppose it started. Yeah. And I think that kind of ties into, in one way or another, what you shared before of like the alcohol provides that false sense of confidence, right? So it's kind of like checking that box for us. I mean, I can relate to all that stuff, obviously.

I had so many troubles in school. When I look back to you, you feel like I did anyway when I was in high school. I couldn't see past Friday night. Like I didn't have the awareness or the ability to envision anything beyond Friday night, you know, the football games. We're going to hang out with friends and what that was going to look like. I couldn't see the bigger picture of things. And it really was a challenge to make things work. You know, because my parents, too, they wanted me to do well.

Like, of course, right? Your parents want you to do well. And so there was friction there was friction there in the classroom. And that's kind of like the tail end of high school when I just became like this sort of class clown. I wasn't aware of any of this at the time, but that I was just going to get attention and kind of do things my way, which obviously came with a lot of problems. Where do things go for you after high school? So I went to college and honestly I started getting bored drinking and partying because I started so early in high school and a lot of people wait for the partying for college or whatever and I kind of, you know, started the beginning of high school. And I continued to drink.

I did a lot of like international travel and studying abroad. And it wasn't until after college that things kind of started to like go downhill in the sense that the reality of student loan debts and working a desk job and realizing that wasn't for me and never really having the opportunity to like evaluate that before. It was just like, oh, you're going to college. You know, there was no take a year off or whatever. I ended up studying abroad, which was sort of my way of doing that. but there was never any contemplative moment where I was like, hey, think about what it might feel to have like thousands of dollars worth of debt after you complete this degree and like whether you're okay with that, you know? And I don't think we ever get that opportunity to sit down and reflect on that or we didn't back then. And so it was a harsh reality when I found myself stuck in a situation that I didn't want to be in.

and I started drinking more solo. I didn't really like socializing anymore and drinking. I was like over the partying scene. Like it just kind of like didn't do it for me anymore. But it was when I was completely lost, disconnected for my purpose and just like overwhelmed by this debt that I started like drinking quietly alone. And it didn't feel wrong, you know, at the time. because everywhere I turned alcohol was still being offered.

You know, like even in the corporate world, it's glamorized. Like brunch, airport lounges, work events, whatever we see in movies and TV, like business class flights, you know? Like, it was always there, so it made it really easy for me to justify, like, drinking alone. And, you know, I think. it was to help to obviously numb myself. But at some point, I thought maybe if I changed my environment, like, I could shake this.

So I actually made a big move. I moved out to Australia and I lived there and I backpacked Southeast Asia for a while. And I went through long periods where I didn't drink at all, sometimes like six weeks or even like months at a time. but then I would find myself daydreaming and romanticizing drinking and watching other people and thinking I can have one or two like you know I can ease back into this slowly and just not overdo it until I inevitably eventually kept overdoing it you know and then would just go too far and I didn't necessarily like I said think I had a problem but I like started to recognize like I said that I didn't do well with it that like okay like I'm not partying anymore like

I shouldn't be drinking so much that I'm getting hung over and I think like it was in those moments where I was like stopping and then starting again that I started to realize that I might actually have a problem um but it took me like nearly a decade from like that realization that point on to finally quit. It was never this big dramatic rock bottom moment. I just like started to suspect that like drinking by myself probably wasn't good, but I knew that I could not drink for long periods of time. So I felt like it was okay, but it was almost like more twisted psychologically. Do you know what I mean? It's like I felt like I had control over it and like gave myself permission to like occasionally drink and like go so hard that I would forget everything that happened.

But that's still like not okay. You know what I mean? Obviously learning that later. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, 100%. I mean, a lot of people share about that too, about like the wheels are not completely falling off.

So it's like in that middle ground. You know, I was the same way. A lot of times it wasn't a problem drinking. It didn't end up in, you know, negative. stuff, but then I never really knew when that was going to be the case or when it was going to be the other way where I was going to just push it way too far, drink way too much, and kind of rinse and repeat the cycle. So you're going through all this. How old were you when you went to Australia and did the backpacking and stuff? I was like, I did that from like 23 to 25.

Okay. And also while I was doing all that and like not working a desk job anymore, I was in hospitality. And I've been in hospitality since my first job. So working at restaurants. And if you worked in restaurants, you know that it is laced with alcoholism and drug addiction. And I wasn't necessarily like, I mean, I was definitely partying with coworkers. Yeah. But like that was something else that made me think it was okay.

I was literally serving it to people. It was part of my job. It was how I made money. You know, it was like. the permission slip for me to like get completely wasted. Yeah. Oh, the restaurants too. I've got a lot of experience in the restaurants.

And you're right about that. Is it a lot of people there, I want to say everybody, but a lot of people there, they were, you know, when I was younger, I started working there like maybe 18 at this restaurant. And a lot of people else worked there, you know, might have been in their 30s or something. And we kind of hung out. It was like a crew, you know, after your shift here.

Yeah, where are we going tonight? What place is open late? We're going to shoot pool. We're going to do this. Even though I wasn't of age, I mean, everybody knew somebody, right? So all the bartenders. I mean, I worked in the kitchen, but all the bartenders and everywhere, everybody, they knew each other.

So it wasn't like there wasn't a problem. And it was, you know, it's so interesting to look back to on, you know, that's, I think, too, for me, like, that's what I gravitated towards because like whether they were kind of co-signed my BS in a sense about this lifestyle, right, of how to live. And I looked up to it. I mean, I'll be honest. I looked up to the kind of the way they were living now in my life. I wouldn't want to be living like that.

But at the time, I was like, this is cool. Like these guys, you know, we start work at four. We work till maybe midnight, 1 o'clock. We go out. We stay out until 3, 4 in the morning. We're, you know, building connections. We're meeting people. Like, I mean, come on.

I could. At that time of my life, it's crazy to say it now. But I could not have envisioned a better life. I thought it was just the most incredible thing. always have, you know, friends. I mean, I use that term a little bit loosely there, but you always have friends. You always have somebody to hang out with. There's always somebody who wants to kick it to party to do whatever.

And you just feel like you're just so important. I did anyway. I felt like, man, I'm just so important to all of these people. Then you realize I did anyway when I sobered up. It was like, okay, you know, maybe maybe a lot of those relationships were built on quicksand because they didn't last very long. So I'm with you on that, too, the hospitality thing. And, you know, I think a lot of people can relate with that, too, about being in the mix,

the scheduling, you know, and everything. And it's just like further reinforces that idea that, you know, I think because we're looking for that too. I think we're looking for this to be okay. Like, you don't want to say, like, the way I'm living is like, you know, too far out of bounds. So I did anyway. I looked for people, whether it was conscious or not, I don't exactly know at the time. But I was looking for people that were living the way I did so that I think it made sense to me to continue living the way I did. Yeah, no, definitely.

There's some sort of like bond that happens in hospitality, like because you're commiserating together and you're dealing with like heavy stuff. You know, when you're in hospitality, you know, depending on the environment, I mean, it's high pressure. And you work in a team in a way different way, like experience. And like you said, the parting is a part of it. But there's some sort of like bondage that happens between you and those people. And it's very different. And again, it reinforces, like you said, it perfectly, the permission slip. Yeah.

For drinking. But they become family. Like that's the beauty and also like the downfall. of hospitality is like they're kind of your like work dysfunctional family. But I feel you. Yeah. Hospitality is like, I mean, I still do it just in a different context. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, that's the thing too is I look back. And at the time I was like, everybody's doing this. But I can look back too and like be honest about it now. There were, there was like half and half. Some people were partaking. And the other half just kind of went home and did their things. thing too, but I wasn't really interested in hanging out with the other half of people.

You know, I wanted the excitement and what felt like the thrill of everything, the thrill of the unknown. And it was kind of like your college experience, I would assume, because you said you didn't go right off to school. Yeah, college too. Yeah, college was, you know, that's the same. It was the same. Yeah, I mean, we got plugged in.

You know, I, I was living, well, right before I went like, well, no, I was already in college, but I was dating this girl and we were living together. It was my first department. I got this apartment right at a high schoolish kind of. I graduated high school from a rehab. So it wasn't like a traditional high school, but moved back home and was actually doing well in life. And I was living with this girl and started going to college. And then after her and I broke up and I had a buddy of mine move in, that was really a downfall, a downfall. A downfall. thing. A buddy and mine moved in and, you know, that's what we just started. We partied every night. I mean, we went to a party literally every single night. I'd get off from the restaurant.

All my buddies would be there waiting for me. I think I was the only one in the group of the job. The other ones had rich parents. So they had, you know, they had money. I had a job. So they'd wait for me. I'd show up the, you know, greasy smelling, you know, T-shirt, I'd take that off. I'd grab a beer out of the fridge and I'd go for a shower. And halfway through, I'd yell out, hey, grab me another beer. Like, I couldn't go. I couldn't go out. It was so much anxiety and insecurities.

But once I had a couple drinks, like I was on top of the world, but I had to make sure. And that's kind of like college too. And I mean, you can only live like that for so long. I wasn't able to keep things between the lines. You know, a lot of the buddies I hung out with, they were able to do. And I was always fascinated by this. I could never understand it. How can you guys still go to school, still work?

still have these relationships in your life, not lose your jobs, not get kicked out of school, do well. I couldn't understand it. I got academic probation time after time, eventually got kicked out of college, failed so many courses, wasted so much money. But I do try to like keep up with the party lifestyle and, you know, my academics. And of course, like the party always, you know, was the priority because it checks so many other boxes for me in life. It wasn't. Like I just loved a party, but I was just looking to escape. I think my reality, and that was the kind of the magical doorway to do it. But people around me were able to keep things decently together.

And I was like, what the heck guys? Like fill me in on the secret here. But I was drinking. When I look back, I was drinking in eventually using drugs for completely different reasons than what they were for. You know, I had stuff that wasn't healed from the past. It wasn't like, you know, I talk with a lot when I share my story too. Like not that I was destined to struggle with substances, but I was on a path in life to find some sort of escape from myself. And it just so happened.

It was almost perfect timing in a sense that these things popped up in my life when they did. And it made a whole heck of a lot of sense as opposed to when I was younger and my grandfather gave me a sip of his beer, you know, on a tailspin. So it was really interesting kind of reflecting there. you know, on those times when it played such an important role in my life. Yeah. It's a crazy, crazy time. I think when we're in it, we're like, this is the best time of my life. Like, I don't want to ever get older.

And now I'm like, wow, thank God I'm not there. Like, here's where life has been the best. But yeah. 100%. Yeah. So moving forward there. I mean, where did things go for you? And, you know, how do you end up making this change and like when does it happen for you?

Yeah. So at this point, I think I like have it dialed in, but also would like in my dream life love to never drink. But it's not cool at this point. At this point, I'm back from Australia. I'm trying to figure my life out. I've really got into studying herbal medicine. I've always been very health focused. I actually started my first jobs were in the health and wellness industry before I realized,

like, even those businesses, the ones that are, you know, supposedly doing good for the environment and all that other jazz, that I just, I could not spend my life making someone else's dream come true. And I think that's what led me to do all the traveling and living abroad was like, I wanted to make a bigger impact. And I've always been, about health and wellness and, you know, finding ways to make people live healthier. And while I was in Southeast Asia in Australia, I was studying things like yoga and, like I said, herbal medicine and astrology and all these different, I guess, alternative healing methodologies. When I came back, I really wanted to put it all together.

But like I said, I've come back from Southeast Asia at this point in Australia. All of my friends are like five years deep into a career, saving up for their first house. And I come home and I'm studying herbal medicine, which is sort of this hoopty thing while working at a restaurant. And I just remember some guy that I was waiting on at the bar. telling him about my herbal studies and him being like, when are you going to get a real job? And I just felt terrible. Like I was definitely depressed and I really wanted to do something bigger than myself,

but I didn't know what that was. And so I was trying to piece all these things together, educating myself. I started infusing a bunch of different herbal tonics behind the bar at this bar. job that I had and people were really responding to it and this was back in like 2015 um and doing all these different workshops with infusions and alcohol and thinking to myself again trying to convince myself out of the fact that I have a problem wow alcohol has such a rich history and herbalism you can literally see it all over the world lemon cello has a back note of bitterness in it from the lemon peels, that's supposed to help with digestion. If you go to Greece, they have

Uzo, that's anis base, again, a really therapeutic herb that's great for digestion. Or you can go to the Netherlands, they have absinth that has wormwood in it, that's a really great antiparasitic herb, and started to discover how the history of drinking is really rooted in medicinal herbalism. But it wasn't meant to be abused. And that's That's like the part that kind of went missing is cool. Yeah. You know, you can use alcohol to extract the medicinal properties of herbs.

And I love this idea of creating beautiful homemade herbal elixirs with alcohol. But I have the all or nothing attitude. And it didn't matter. It didn't matter if I had it dialed in and was like taking all of these antioxidant supplements every time after I drank to prevent it hangover. It didn't matter if I was drinking a homemade herbal liqueur. that wasn't as bad for me. I still had a problem.

And I think a lot of people don't know that about alcohol. And that's not supposed to be a permission slip for people to drink, but that was like the true intention. And they actually started like banning alcohol in history during the time when people were drinking gin and tonics, tonic water was supposed to be really great for quinine in it, which is the compound that's anti-malarial. and um all the times in history when alcohol was banned it was because people were like crazy drunks you know they weren't using it the way that it should not for nothing they were dealing

with issues that like i would definitely be drinking over you know people are like getting killed for crazy reasons and getting crazy diseases and it was just the wild west and super rogue but um but again i gave myself this illusion that if i center it in health it's not as bad or it's okay. And, you know, I built a career on it. In 2020, like, I started teaching these online workshops and classes where we would drink herbal mocktails and cocktails, but it was cocktails at first. Like, that was my focus. Yeah. I got really great corporate gigs. I got the attention of like some really great companies because up until that point, I was just kind of in hospitality, you know, studying clinical herbalism, studying.

astrology or yoga and I was still in the student phase and then when 2020 happened I pretty much had no choice but to like make my own thing happen and that's when I started teaching the classes and workshops virtually and again that gave me validation because I was making money doing this for big businesses um but I knew that like after every online class I did I was like finishing off the and then drinking more. And I didn't really have this, like, one pivotal rock bottom moment, but basically for me, what happened was I had some drinks with a friend, and we just drank too much.

I remember waking up just being really hungover. And I just kind of had this moment where it was sort of quiet. and I felt empty, empty spiritually, empty emotionally, empty energetically. And I just knew that in my bones, I was starting to build this beautiful business and getting somewhere doing something unconventional. Like I wasn't working in a corporate gig. But I knew that I would never reach my full potential if I kept doing it. And I basically stopped.

And the last time I had a drink was 2021. And I haven't drinking since. so that was like four years ago now um and you know like i said it was tricky it was psychological it was quiet my relationship with alcohol and i had tried in every way possible to convince myself that i could make it healthy and that i can make it work and i still couldn't and so i just gave it up um and you know there are other things that kind of led to that i think during 2020 it was like a very pivotal year for me my dad had passed that year I had like some very challenging breakups that went through that happened um and I had started working with a therapist

and really like pulling back the layers pulling back the layers on codependency pulling back the layers on the relationship in my family dynamic like really finally looking at it and And I think that's what helped me finally give it up as well was the fact that it's not just about quitting alcohol and replacing it with a fancy mock tail. It's about like the true healing, the peeling back of the layers and really understanding where that's coming from. Like you mentioned earlier, the anxiety was one big thing. You know, the anxiety from school and social situations and, you know, being in a big family.

and having hard things happen with parents, you know, when you're young and your family dynamic is, you know, something that if you're on the healing path in one way or another, have had to peel back the layers on. And just like being really real with myself about, you know, how much I've, like, avoided it in that I've tried everything to convince myself that this is okay to do. And I think that brought me to kind of some even darker moments because I think we don't quit for just one reason. It's never like, oh yeah, of course I have an all or nothing complex. Or yeah, like there's a lot of trauma underneath it. and it's never just the parents.

It's never just the social experiences. It's always layered. And I think the darkest part that I uncovered with my therapist before like really, I guess, giving the full, like, effort or realization into healing is, I don't, I'm debating whether I'm wanting to even like say this or like air this, but like, here's the part that I rarely say out loud and it's not just my sobriety story. I think this is in so many other people's stories too. But like a lot of

dangerous things happened to me when I was drinking and things that I know were not my fault even though the world told me they were. And I personally experienced sexual assault and harassment more than once while I've been drinking. But the way that I was raised, the way that we came up in this culture, taught me that if that happened while I was drinking, that it was somehow on me. And that it was my fault. It was my fault for wearing that. It was my fault for not saying no, loud enough.

So I didn't talk about it. I shoved it down. I blamed myself. And I kind of want to say this like really clearly for anyone listening that being drunk doesn't mean that you deserved what happened to you, that drinking doesn't make something like a salt or anything like that your fault. And although that's not like the center point to my story, it's very layered, I just feel like it's never talked about.

and it's so common and it doesn't have to be something like you're drinking at a bar and some guy takes you in the back and holds you up to gunpoint like I said we talk about this many times already it's not like the drama that's played out on TV it can be like someone you know or a friend or like just like creepy men like thinking they can touch you for no reason like that's happened to me so many times just being at a bar I'm like get your hands off me like And I think that takes a toll on us. And it can happen to men too. You know what I mean?

Like people when they're drinking don't have boundaries. And amongst other things, that's just like one of the bigger things that I feel like resonates with me that's not talked about enough, if that makes sense. Yeah. No, thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah. No, I mean, you're right. What you say there, I think is so valid too. about the layers of things, right? Like at first, we hear all the time, right, I just have to quit

drinking. I have to quit drinking. That's kind of like the big mountain to climb. And then as we kind of peel back the layers too, maybe get a better understanding of what's kind of going on behind the scenes. And I mean, four years ago, that's incredible. How have you found things since? What did the early days look like for you as you go on through the journey of things? well kind of like how you were talking about it was it was quiet it was not a loud like dramatic thing and it was also drinking at that time was not like a regular part of my life so for me it was more okay because my like literal life like work life has been designed around drinking because i've worked in restaurants because now i'm making money off of doing these classes

I have to figure out something else. So that was kind of a big deal because I basically said to myself, I have to shift what I'm doing. So I started to slowly focus more on just mocktails. And again, at the time, it's 2021. It's not like fully the mocktail movement has not popped off yet. And I started to get gigs where people wanted to hire. made for just mocktails. I probably went through a period of time where I was really not doing

anything with liquor for a year where I was just like working 40 hours a week, trying to make something happen, cold pitching people every day, whether I was going to be doing like mocktail making workshops or classes for them in person, applying to do events like festivals and whatever. And I just like wasn't getting anything. It was that weird in between period where it was like early 2021. People weren't like fully back outside yet and doing things. And so it was a really hard year financially because I was making this transition and like the world was still figuring itself out. And then I finally started to like get these big gigs. I got Newport Folk Festival, which is a big festival out here, doing mocktails for the festival and backstage. I got like really exclusive

experiences like right off the bat. But. again, it took time. I got to do Burton snowboards company party every year and like got in these experiences and opportunities that like I didn't really anticipate because I was on it, I think really early. And I was doing pop-up mottail bars and like I said, classes and other things. So sobriety wasn't like a hard thing for me to do, but it was still taboo.

Like I felt uncomfortable talking about it because people were like, oh, you don't drink. I'm like, well, yeah, like run this macktail bar situation. And I guess I could do that drinking, but it sort of doesn't feel congruent to continue drinking and doing this. So it wasn't hard for me. It wasn't like, and I've talked about this before, it wasn't this situation where I hit rock bottom where I stopped drinking and lost 30 pounds and balance out my hormones and got the job of my dreams and started making millions.

Like, that's not the case. That wasn't what happened. It was sort of like I was already in a really self-isolating situation. the world was in a self-isolating situation, so it was kind of easy for me to not be drinking. And I just know that I never look back. Like, I just know that it was a experience in my life that I had. You know, I think about it like an ex-boyfriend. Like, it was a great experience, but I've grown from it and it was right in the time,

but we are on different paths and that's just how it is. And I think some people have a great relationship with alcohol. If I were the type of person who could make some really beautiful medicinal elixirs and have like a really cool herbal cordial that I drank every once in a while, I think that would be phenomenal. But that's unfortunately not me, even though I've healed my nervous system a ton and done tons of therapy and energy work and all sorts of things to dig up the skeletons in my closet.

I just don't even want to go there. You know, like, you don't want to go back to your ex. Like, you did it. You're done. I appreciate it. It was challenging. But, like, we're moving forward. It's kind of how I think about it.

Because people ask me that actually all the time, they're like, well, would you think about going back? I'm like, no, I wouldn't. Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you so much for sharing. that too. You know, you brought up there that at the end, right? It's just so interesting, right? Because some people are, I don't know what it is. They're just like, what do you just have one or

whatever? Like, I don't get this really anymore. But it's like, for me in my life today, it just makes absolutely no sense. And there was a point in time where alcohol made all the sense. This doesn't make any sense to just go and gamble with that. Like, when you get away from it, you get that true clarity of seeing it for what it is. You know, I always always. look at it like people with, you know, like say somebody you're at a gathering or something and people are smoking. I mean, you don't ever have a person who's smoking offering cigarettes to people who are not smoking. Right. I mean, you know, I've never seen that. But it's with alcohol and it kind of goes back, I think, to like even the beginning of your story, just how normalized it is,

right? So it's just like, oh, yeah, do you want to drink this? But then when we know on this side of things, okay, this is disastrous. I mean, it's poisonous. for humans and all this stuff we learn. And it's like, no, I don't have any interest in going back to the way things were. And it seems to take people off guard though sometimes because I think when you're wrapped up in it, it's like, oh, my goodness, I don't know if our brain has the capacity to even think that that's a possibility. I know I sure as heck didn't.

If I knew somebody that didn't drink, I'm like, that's the weirdest, craziest thing I've ever heard of in my life. But when you're on this side, it's like drinking again is the weirdest, craziest thing that I hear some days. Great stuff. And I love that, too, that you shared. Continuing sort of that other work, too, of things and how it's been. And I always, you know, taught with people all day, every day for years about the journey. So many different stories about kind of what brought people to that moment of getting things started, how their life has been since.

And it's always really interesting to me, sort of how people move forward to with their life. But you know, you continuing to work on things and just further improve all areas of our life, I think is, you know, really helpful to keep us on the path for where we're going. And you mentioned it too. Like if there was a perfect world where you could mix up these fancy drinks and have one and stuff, but he just kind of described my romanticization for a long time, a world where I could drink like gentleman, you know? Right. But I got to the spot where I'm just like, man, I tried it all. I tried so many different ways to make it work. And it's so much easier for me to have none

than to go back trying to figure this out or that out. Like, that was exhausting. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's, like I said, I tried every way to make it healthy and okay, but I never could until I started making my own stuff using herbs. That was the only way that I could do it without alcohol. So being that I have a clinical herbalism and bartending background, and that's the next stage of my business right now, after doing the mocktail bars and the mocktail classes, I found that a lot of the drinks that I was making or products I was buying from other people and you probably, I don't know if you drink mocktails or you're just, you know, are a seltzer drinker,

everybody has their fix now. But a lot of the mocktails out there, I was like, okay, they're high in sugar and all of them are claiming benefits and I don't feel anything. And unfortunately for these companies, I have a background in clinical herbalism. So I know how they're formulating and what they're putting in this. For example, and I always tell people this when I do a podcast, reserve adaptogens for supplements, not for drinks. This is like the most overplayed word right now. Adaptogens are basically a category of herbs that help to acclimate the body to stress.

And you'll even see it on like granola bars or whatever. Adaptogens are like the cool hot word. Ashwaganda is probably the most famous one. I don't know if you've heard of it. Yeah. We heard of it? Yeah. So adaptogens take weeks to work, so you need to take them consistently.

And when you're seeing mocktail products that say they're formulated with adaptogens, that is like a marketing manipulation. Because half of the time, they're adaptogens that are in there that the dose is insignificant. or they're claiming herbs to be adapted gins that are not. And they're not saying that you need to drink this drink every single day for at least six weeks. They're claiming that you'll feel mooboosing effects immediately. So to me, I was like, that's a lot of shit. Or that's like that's manipulation. You know, they're not being honest.

And so that's when I started formulating my own stuff. Way over my head, but I'm following you. I'm following you with it. So, I mean, this is definitely your passion and probably safe to say your purpose, kind of part of it of getting this stuff out there and building this. It's always interesting too. You kind of mentioned too, like 21, right? Kind of like maybe right before things kind of tipped over for macktail, non-alckspace, stuff like that.

So it's, yeah, I mean, it was really cool. You kind of had some insight there on, you know, it's almost, it's always weird to me with timing, right? Like how we look at our stories and our lives and how this timing, you know, and this is sort of what you're really fired up about these days and how it, you know, kind of came when things were about to head in in this direction. Just thinking about wrapping up here shortly, too, is there anything you would leave people with that are struggling to get or stay sober? Maybe people in there after their first year, I mean, stuff they could, you know, that you could take from your own journey to share with them?

I would probably say that the healing is the most important step. And we have a tendency to hyper focus on the health and wellness aspect of it, like the swapping out for, you know, a seltzer water instead of a beer or the supplements and the workout routine. And while all of those are immensely important, doing the inner work is like the most important thing. Like you can't green juice, yoga and breath work your way into healing. That will help your body. But you really got to like dig in and do the inner work.

And that looks different for everyone. So whether that's seeing a therapist, maybe it's like somatic therapy. I don't know. Everybody can be their own thing. It doesn't have to be that. It could be journaling. It could be nature, you know, walking outside of nature. Yeah.

But the inner healing and like the deep work and the inner reflection, I think, is the piece that sometimes gets forgotten. And it ends up going straight into like, I finally worked out. Like we get into like the aesthetic obsession. Like now I have a body that I want or I've lost the weight that I want and like the health benefits, which are like I said, all great and I don't diminish them. but don't forget your soul. And there's one of these, it's called a Zen story. But basically it's all about this man who has like five wives. And in the story, he basically is dying.

And each of his wives like basically ditches him except for one. And I don't know if this is the story is going to hit. But basically the moral of the story is we take so much of our life. We spend so much of it pleasing other people, attaching our. ourselves to the aesthetic or this, that, and the other thing. But the only person that's going to be with you at the end of the day, like crossing over, I guess, on your deathbed is your soul. So, like, yeah, you can have the perfect body, but you leave that behind. You can, like, have the great job, but you're going to leave that behind. You can have the great family and the,

you know, girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever. But, like, you are the only one with you, like, when you die. And hopefully. that's not like harsh but actually you know what it's the truth it is you know it's um i could go on for kind of maybe an hour or so in that direction because i think there's just so much importance to that because like a lot of us get into the thing about giving up to drinking and getting sober but i think that to stay sober you know because that's what people always ask me brad how do you get sober well just don't drink i mean i don't know what else that's really it it's that simple don't drink but the bigger question and the right question is how do I stay sober? And I think the healing kind of feel it

to heal it. You got to go through that, right? And like you mentioned there, get support from somewhere else. And, you know, it can be many different ways of people plug into support groups or therapy or more traditional stuff or maybe some sort of outside of the box stuff, whatever is working for you to plug in, right? Because I do believe if we don't engage in that healing process, we'll end up potentially back to where we were before, you know, if we're not plugging into that stuff. You know, it's taking me years. I mean, I'm still into it. 15 years later. I mean, I'm still like uncovering like, oh, whoa, you know, what's that all about, right? What's going on here? I'll probably forever be, hopefully in that journey of improvement and

awareness and just staying open to have a look at things. It does take time. But I think that's good. And you're right. We do attach. everything else to at times to things around us and people pleasing comes up so often in people's stories and um you know we forget about ourselves to look after ourselves and take care of ourselves and just do everything for everybody else so i think that's an important message to wrap things up well thank you tory so much we'll uh i'll drop the information everything where people can get a hold of you and check out all this incredible stuff you've got going on to um any Final thoughts?

I love sharing stuff on my email list. And I love pumping out cool information on my social at T for Tori. And yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much, Tori. Thank you. Well, there it is, everyone, another incredible episode here on the podcast. Thank you so much, Tori, for sharing.

I'll drop the contact information for Tori down to the show notes below. Good to get back to the stories. The updates were great, too. We've got a lot more that are going to come out as we go along here, but wanted to bring a story back into the mix. That's a big part of why we're all here. If you enjoy the show and you have yet to leave a review, please, please jump over to Apple or Spotify and drop a written review or even a five stars, either or five stars all day. And I'll see you on the next one.