Soul Boom - Eat, Pray, Toxic Love Addict w/ Elizabeth Gilbert

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love author) opens up about love, addiction, grief, and spiritual growth. She opens up about her relationship with Raya, the painful lessons of codependency, and why heartbreak can feel as devastating as substance abuse. Together, they explore life as “Earth School,” the healing power of unconditional love, and why telling the truth is often the only way out of life’s deepest traps. THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! Green Chef (50% OFF!) 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://greenchef.com/50soulboom⁠ reMarkable (FREE returns for 100 days!) 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://remarkable.com⁠ Ollie (60% OFF!) 👉⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ollie.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Fetzer 👉 ⁠⁠⁠https://www.fetzer.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I identify as somebody who's a blackout codependent, a skid row, sex and love addict. One of the hardest cases I've ever met. This story is so incredibly brave. How did you get out of that? I mean, I contemplated, plotted, and seriously considered murdering Rea. And I'm the nice lady who wrote Eaprelo. She was my best friend, the love of my life. And we thought that we were about to embark on a devastating and beautiful romantic love story.

But then she didn't die. It's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Liz Gilbert. Welcome to Soul Boom.

Boom. Boom, soul. Boom. Liz, I want to make a confess. to you. I failed you. I failed you and your mission. Because I think I know where this is going. You told me on an Instagram live about this mission of yours with these beautiful you are loved stickers. And I was like, I'm doing that. I'm totally going to do that. And you sent me, you went through the struggle of FedExing me or UPSing me. A bunch of these stickers.

I think a majority of which burned in my recent house fire, but more on that later, but I didn't do it. I didn't get off my damn ass and hand out a single sticker. Let's talk about it. Why? What happened? Okay, I just want to say this. I want to back up and let everybody know, I make these stickers, I carry them around, and I give them to everybody I meet. It's an uncomfortable thing to do, and I had this, I was thinking about you the other day, and I was like, I wonder if Rain ever gave any of those.

away to anybody. And then I thought, if you're a guy, it's different. It's weird and could be seen as predatory and could be seen as threatening. I'm giving you an out. This is my out. Right? Like as a woman, I can give anybody. I can give a man, a child. I can give anybody. As a dude to hand that to somebody, it might be like, what do you watch me while I sleep? What do you know, how do you know me? Have you been following me, like, and I actually realize that might be impossible differently. It would work for men maybe from older than their 40s. Or younger than 12. Yeah.

But I felt bad because it's such a beautiful little mission. Tell us quickly about how you got this little, this idea going, because you've seen transformational reactions and interactions with people when you hand them a You Are Loved sticker. So you and I. met and came together because I asked you if you would do a letter from love on my substack. So I have a substack called Letters from Love where I teach people how to write themselves letters from the spirit of unconditional love. Yeah. And every week we have a special guest. So I asked you to do it and you

did it and you wrote a beautiful letter, beautiful letter. You're very kind. It was great. And once I started doing that, I realized that that's one of the primary messages that people download when they write themselves a letter as though they are writing to a different person to themselves from the spirit of unconditional love, one of the first things that comes out is this reassurance. You are loved. You are loved. We are loved no matter what you do. You don't have to get it right.

We know everything you've done and we love you anyway. You can't do this wrong. There's some voice that's just communicating this. And so I was like, I think I think I need to make sure that people see this message even just once in their life. So I give it to Toll booth operators and baristas And Uber drivers and strangers

And I was saying to somebody the other day My thing with it is the more I don't want to give it to someone Because they seem cranky and grumpy and weird and scary The more I have to And those interactions are the most beautiful Like I was in a cab the other day in New York With a cab driver I actually thought might kill me Because he was so angry

And he was driving in such a violent way And he was obviously just like like out of his mind with some kind of rage. And I was like, you don't have to give that guy's sticker that says you were loved. And I'm like, but I do. So when I stopped, I gave it to him and he was like, what? What is this? Like he got so excited. And he's like, I'm going to bring this home to my daughters. And I said, wait, you have, how many daughters do you have? And he said three. And I'm like, then you get three of these. He was like, I get three of these. Like he couldn't even believe it. I'm like, you get four. You get one for you. And one for your daughters. It's like,

I'm going to put mine on the visor so everybody can see it. Like he got, it was just this transformation from, He's like, why are you giving this to me? It was just the, it's like the dearest. And it's scary. It's awkward. It's scary. It feels like they're going to be mad. Somehow it always works.

You know, that makes me think the hippies and Jesus both said God is love. And how far away are we from that? And me, I'm like, Mr. God guy. I'm far away from that. I struggle with this unconditionally. force of love that is just waiting there for us to harness its energy and call it forth and let it encompass us. And I struggled with that assignment on your substack. Like, oh, boy, this is, this is weird and all. And of course, as soon as I started writing a letter from love to me, it was just so like,

oh, and. And wasn't it like to your little, like your little boy inside of you? Like it was so It was like to little rain. And we learn that in therapy, don't we? And you talk about it in your magnificent new book. Good segue. All the way to the river about at the end, you talk about cradling little Lizzy. But let's go back to this idea like, isn't that where we really got off track? Maybe it wasn't in the hippie days.

Maybe it was far before that. But that if we really just knew God was love, if that was in. our bones, the world might be a really actually a different place. And how did we get so off track? Well, I think it starts with commandments, you know, and those are those are in all spiritual traditions. It's like, here's the path, here's the, here's the absolutes, here's the things, here's the things that you must do. But we need some moral guidelines, don't we? Oh, for sure. But what unconditional love says to me, whenever I communicate with it, is like, and this, I'm just getting into my own little thing here.

It says to me, I'm not God. I'm love. I'm contained within God, but God contains a lot more than just love. God is everything. I'm just love. Like, I'm just here to love you. That's it. So I actually have no expectations of you.

I have no commandments for you. I'm not capable of being disappointed by you. If I did, I wouldn't be love. I would be something else. And I remember one time when I was going through a really hard time, and I was in a lot of overwhelm, and I was in a terrible situation, and I was writing to the spirit of unconditional love in my journal like I do. And I said, I need to know when this is going to end,

this situation that I'm in that's so terrible. And love said, that's not our department. Like, I actually don't know. God would know, but that's not, we don't have access to that kind of information. So what you're talking about is polytheism, its best sense. This is the Department of Love. This is what it says.

It's like, we're the Department of Love here, honey. We don't have access to the Akashik records. We don't claim to know what's going on or how it will end or what will happen. And I said, if you can't tell me how this is going to end, tell me what to do or tell me what's going to happen. What good are you? And Love said, I'm here to sit with you during your darkest hour so that you don't have to do this alone.

That's my only job. That's beautiful. That's it. It's my only job. And I'll tell you, like having been on the receiving end of that now for years, because I've been doing these exercises for years. And then somehow, let me circle back, that settles my nervous system because that's the sort of foundational destructive question at the bottom is like, am I loved?

Am I worthy? And love's always like, you don't have to, I don't need you to improve. Like, I don't need you to get better. I don't need you get sober. I don't need you to get well. I don't need you be a different person. And I actually very, I have no notes, very happy with you exactly the way you are. I just can't help it.

You're doomed to be loved by me. I just love you. And having received that enough that it's kind of in my marrow now, I find it's a lot easier to sit with people who are in a lot of pain without trying to fix it. Because I now know that unconditional love doesn't try to fix me when I'm in pain. It's just present with me. It's just like, I'll just be here with you. So you have literally learned lessons.

Yeah. From love like life lessons. Yeah. Just like just how about you just be with me so I have company in my darkness. Yeah. I don't know the answers either. So I can, I'm a lot more relaxed now when I'm sitting with somebody who's suffering. I'm like, well, I don't know what you should do.

I don't know what I should do 98% of the time. But I don't think you should have to be in this by yourself. That reminds me of a good friend of mine was dying of cancer. and I would meet with him every week and we would walk on the beach for hours. And, you know, I realized swiftly that, I mean, there was nothing I could do to help him, right? I'm not an oncologist. Damn it, Jim. I'm not an oncologist.

But what he needed was just someone to listen, deeply listen. And he just kept telling me his life stories from beginning to end and in various, ways and how he met his wife and the ex-wife and how he felt about his daughter and his travels and something crazy he did in his 20s and we would walk and it was just I was just there to listen and to love I suppose because listening is such an act of love isn't it more so than talking yeah you know yeah and especially when you don't have any of the answers and I know that for me and my understanding like why is a question that I bring up a lot when I'm in pain. Like why is this? Why why is this happening? And a friend of mine said to me, why is not a spiritual question and it will

never get a spiritual answer. And that's why when I ask the spirit of unconditional love, why, it's like, oh, honey, I have no better idea than you do. Yeah. Because is. But I know why. And you talk about why. And it's my favorite part of your book. It's a teeny tiny part of your book. It's my favorite. I loved this book, by the way. I'm not trying to passive-aggressively demean it. I didn't feel demeaned. When you said I loved your book, it didn't make me feel demeaned. Well, this one aspect of it, you talk about life being earth school. And this is something that I have explored in my book and in writings. And this is essentially in every spiritual tradition. Life is earth school. And that is the why. Like when you're in your darkest hour,

and it feels like there's no hope and you're journaling letters to the cosmic force of love going, why? Why is like, there is a spiritual answer. Why it's Earth school? Good luck. Good luck with this one, kiddo. You're in grade six now, and the curriculum includes this devastation. And it appears to be contractual that nobody gets to move through Earth school without lots of devastations.

It really does seem to be that that's what you get when you come here. So what I talk about in the book is this concept of like, Earth School is the most accelerated curriculum in the universe for souls. It's a very difficult school. You come here to be embodied in these bodies of great apes, which is profoundly weird. And to be like crammed into this tiny material spacesuit envelope in order to have certain experiences.

They're so weird that you couldn't have any other way. Yeah. You know, and that aren't available anywhere else. Look around the universe. Where else is this happening? This is the only school I see. So it's like, and when I think of it as more like, I volunteered to come here. And when you talk to people who have had near death experiences, that's always reaffirmed.

They're always like, you know, they find their spirit guides come and say like, do you want to go back? And people decide to come back or not. And when I think of it's like, I'm willing. here. I'm willingly here because there was some stuff that I couldn't evolve through any other way. I quote in the book, Mark Twain, saying, a man who picks up a cat by the tail learns something that cannot be learned any other way. And some of us are slow learners. I have to pick up a lot of cats by a lot of tails. I'd be like, well, surely if I pick up the tabby cat by the tail, it won't. And that's a whole, that's the journey of addiction.

Like, how many more times am I going to, you know, pick up this cat before he was like, can't be around these cats. Addicts need to pick up the cat with tweezers or by the hind leg or a baby kitten. I'm going to get a rear end like a piece of machinery that picks up the cat. I'll put the cat in a bubble. I'll put the cat, you know, and it's like maybe you're just not supposed to be picking up that cat. Maybe indeed.

But doesn't that really address this big issue? We talk a lot about mental health pandemic here on the show and mental health tools for modern living, spiritual tools for modern living. But this whole idea that life is Earth school really, I think, could be so helpful for young people to hear. My parents are getting divorced. I'm sad. I'm struggling at school. People make fun of me online. You know, whatever. I'm overwhelmed by climate change and now war in the Middle East. Like what, you know, how do I get through this? It's like, I don't know how exactly, but just know there is a source of love out there. of, you know, just eternal, incredible, unquenchable, you know, benevolent love for you to draw upon.

And you're in Earth school. And, you know, we believe in you and you'll figure it out. Do you know Richard Roar? Do you know his work? Not personally. I love his work. I don't know him personally either. But he says, and I'll misquote it, but Katie Perry did a song about him.

You're hilarious. No, not really. That was a terrible dad joke. It was part of her series of songs about great spiritual leaders. I was thinking, hear me roar. I know, I got you. It's a bad dad joke. I'm sorry.

He says that if there's one thing that we can discern about God based on the evidence here in our school, it's that if God can be said to really love anything, it appears to be freedom. because God has outfitted everybody with these enormous freedoms to make all kinds of decisions about what you want to do. Even to the point of your own death, even to the point of absolute destruction, you are allowed. You are allowed to try all kinds of things.

You're even allowed to not believe in God. 100%. Yeah. Like, no, that's a free day. It's like up to you. Like, it's a make your own adventure here in our school. And you are allowed to collect or not the lessons that come from exercising these great freedoms. And I feel like when I came into

12-step recovery and started working the second and third step, which I know you're really familiar with about turning your will in your life over to the care of God, the conversation I felt I was in with God was just this very amused, infinitely patient entity that was like, I let you try everything. Right. And if there's anything out there that you still think might do it, I encourage you to go try. Like don't come to me thinking that you're being ripped off from experiences that you wanted to have. Go have them. Like really seriously, go have them.

And when you're done and when you've had them all and when you've sampled everything and everyone and you're still hollow, if you're still feeling hollow, if it works great, we're good. But if you're still feeling hollow, come to me. But come to me because you want to. And because you're curious, not because I'm going to make you come to me. Like, no one of my first sponsors said, no one's going to surrender to a God who is forced upon them. And I don't see God forcing itself upon us.

It's like, if you want this, which I've now come to think is like door A and door B. So like door A is everything I know, everything I do, all my habits, everything I've ever tried. And I've gone through that door so many times that I know what I get. It's like, if you're going to open door A, I know exactly what's on the other side of that. a mixed bag, some excitement, some despair, some failure, maybe some stuff, a mixed bag, right? Or there's door B, which is just this giant question mark that's like, God, with no promises and no certain outcome. And God's like, would you like to come here and not know what's going to happen? Like, are you willing to step into don't know mind and just surrender into the big mystery of

And like I remember in times I've negotiated with God. Like if I'm really, really good and I do everything right and I work the steps and I stay sober and I take care of people and I do service and I'm like perfect and exemplary, will you give me one more great love story? And God says, I will promise you no such thing. Do you still want to come with me? Because if you want the big great love story, you can just go right back through door A because you had a bunch of those already. or do you just want to give that, even that up, give up that all the fantasies and all the cherished outcomes and just come with me. And I'm like, I kind of want to go with you. Like, I kind of want to see what happens when I give up everything I want. Yeah. And just be like, okay, you, I have a friend

who has a tattoo that just says, okay, God, you do it. You know, and like everyone's somewhere else, she's just like, nice. All right. Door B. Yeah. Sometimes I'll call my sponsor and talk about my hard luck life and he'll just say well you know a big book says god either is or he isn't which is it and everything or nothing then he'll like hang up door a or door because that's what he's that's essentially that's it he's presenting you know and the first three steps are i can't god can let him yeah you have a quote here from earlier in your literary life look for god suggests my guru, look for God like a man with his head on fire, looks for water. Yeah.

Do you recall anything about that quote? Well, my head was on fire the first time I heard that. And I was like, well, that makes, yes, you know, that makes a lot of sense. Now that I'm at a place just for today where my head isn't on fire, like just, and you know and I know that it could be on fire tomorrow. It couldn't be on fire. You shaved your head. It's harder for it to ignite.

But it could still. But it could still get a tiny little spark. But given the fact that just for today, I'm pretty stable. When I hear God now, God's like, how about instead of looking for me like a man with his head on fire looks for water, why don't you just sit there quietly and contentedly like someone who has a glass of water in front of them? That's always available if they're thirsty. You know, let's take the, let's dial the urgency. I mean, addicts are always marked by urgency.

Everything's an emergency and everything's urgent. and I need 10 of them and I need them in blue and I need them yesterday. You know, like everything's always so panicked. So that panic has been a lot diminished. So I think at that moment that I heard that quote, that was exactly the perfect thing to begin my spiritual journey. My head was on fire.

My ass was on fire. My dog was on fire. Like everything was on fire. Like my bank account was on fire. Like nothing wasn't on. It was just inferno. And now it's like, well, now let's just sit in a moment of peace. And if you're thirsty,

There's a nice glass of water in front of you that will always be replenished if you need it. Hey, I wanted to give a quick shout out to our spiritual partners at the Fetzer Institute. They have just launched a brand new shiny website over at Fetzer.org. That's Fetzer.org. And it's full of spiritual tools for modern struggles, which is exactly what we're trying to cultivate here at Soul Boom. Fetzer believes that most of humanity's problems are spiritual at the root and they're helping people plant some deeply soulful solutions. So I urge you to go poke around their new website. Check out fetzer.org.

Thank you, Fetzer Institute, for helping sponsor the show and all of the truly amazing work that you do over there. Fetzer.org. That's Fetzer.org. You graduated NYU 91. I was 89. Really? So we were tooling around.

What dorm were you in, Ray? Greenwich Village. I was in 3rd Avenue South, right when I got... I was in 3rd Avenue, North. Oh, wow. Because that was completely like a year. It was brand new. You must have been the first person in there.

Yeah. Ha! Yeah. I still lived in Judson Hall on the south of the park for a while. That's a nice place. And you worked at Coyote Ugly. Did you used to go there? No.

But I got rejected from the Caliente Cab Company on 6th Avenue. I got my job at Coyote Ugly the week they opened. Oh, wow. Do you remember the bar called The Village Idiot that used to be across the street from Coyote ugly on First Avenue between 9th and 10th. It was a like raucous roadhouse dive where the bartenders used to literally set the bar on fire to get the men to back off. Like it was great. It got shut down by the state eventually for multiple, multiple health infections. But one of the bartenders from the village idiot created the coyote of the saloon. I went with my friends one night to go to the

village idiot because it was our favorite place to go. And there were all these like shut down by the health department signs and then all this music coming from across the street. And I walked in and I'm like, I'm home. And I asked for a job and I started working the next night. Amazing. Amazing. Like week one. And they made a movie about your article for Esquire based on that and then Tyra Banks was like pouring shots out of a holster. Incredible. Yeah, on the big screen. That was that was a chapter of my life. I think like I have a friend who just always very philosophically says life has many chapters. And it's like, yeah, that was a chapter.

That was a chapter. I first got acquainted with you in your work like the rest of the world did around eat, pray, love, and funny story. And I'm not even, like, exaggerating it. And I know it sounds like a lame dad joke, but I, for years, I really pitched my friends on starting a furniture store called Eat Pray Love Seat. I'm sorry you didn't. I'm so glad I didn't. You could add it to the catalog of the billions of other eat blank blank titles that have sort of circulated the world. What are some other ones? Because, yeah, I'm sure you're right.

Well, the one that's really dear to my heart was on South Park, um, was eat prey quief. Eat pray quiff. Oh, man. That's my favorite. That's where I was like, oh, thanks guys. Oh, you made it. You made it. I made it. I made it. There's an, there's an episode of the Simpsons tour where Marge is really mad at Homer and you see her in bed and she's just reading Eat Pray Love. like that's perfect as well. Like there's no mention of it, but she's like angrily turning the pages. Now, I didn't read the book. I didn't see the movie.

Quite all right. I can tell you about it. I knew the idea behind it and I knew and I felt in my bones that there was something inherently wrong about this idea. And I haven't even read it. So judge, judge away. Put your comments in their YouTubers. This is, you are the definition of the internet right now.

Haven't read it. Haven't read it. But here's my really strong opinion about it. that I'm going to put out into the world. So please. Which is someone finding themselves outside of themselves through travel and through falling in love and someone else fixing them, which you kind of address in here in a lot of ways. This is a harrowing read. Is that a word harrowing?

Yeah. And it's a good description of it. It is a harrowing read. I was riveted. I couldn't put it down. I read it all weekend. I was reading it out loud to my wife. but this is kind of the antithesis of solution to and kind of explosion of

explosion of the eat, pray, love, ethos in a lot of ways. I don't want to judge that was your chapter, right? That was your chapter and you lived wholly and fully. Earth school, grade three. Or what I like to call good guess. Right? It's such a good guess. Yeah.

It's like, well, I'm hungry and lonely. Let me find sustenance and company out there. Outside of myself. It's such a good guess. Seems like it would work. Yeah. Yeah. Should work.

Yeah. Bali. Why wouldn't it work? Julia Roberts. Italy, pizza. Come on. A wonderful Brazilian man who loves me. Brazilians.

Nailed it. Big office fans, Brazilians. Shout out. I'll say this about you, pray, love. Keep your eyes. Also, everything you say is true. And good guess, Liz, good guess 34-year-old Liz, for what would get you out of a suicidal depression, sort of semi-worked, worked until the underlying causes and conditions returned

because they are going to return no matter what. Because it's a me problem. It's not an anything else problem. Here's the legacy that I do think is really beautiful about E. Pray, Love. the number of women who this book, through E Prey Love, gave permission to realize that they actually could change things about their life is inestimable. So I always, I always try to direct people and be like, don't look at me. Look at that, look at the 23 million women who read that book. Literally 23 million. Like, worldwide. Like, look at their story. And the fact that they read this and they were like,

Wait, I can get a divorce. Wait, I'm allowed to travel alone and have mystic experiences. I don't have to be on this path. I can choose my own spiritual journey. So that's where I feel like its legacy is so precious to me is the continuing stories that I hear that people come up to me. I'm like, because of you, I was able to leave this abusive situation, this violence. So sometimes you do actually have to change deck chairs on the Titanic. Some seats on the Titanic are better than others.

Some people in the Titanic lived because they were in a better chair. You know what I mean? So it's like when I see people changing their life to make their lives better, I still support that. For me, underneath all of that pain and suffering that I was in, in Eat, Pray, Love was a deeply unhealed, deeply unhealed, traumatized person that you could pour all the good stuff in the world into, and it wasn't going to reach that. And that's because I'm an addict. Yeah. And you know what that means. And it means like God size whole.

It's like whatever it is, it's not going to touch it. Other people, drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, shopping, food, you name it. It's not going to control. Workaholism. Like, what, it just doesn't. The list goes on and on. And so I was out there walking around thinking I was doing all right. But I had a secret operating system.

And the cunning, baffling, powerful thing about addiction is that it's a disease that tells you that you don't have a disease. I love that quote from the book. Right. I was beautiful. So I'm out here projecting all this stuff into the world, having lots of successes being loved, you know, like doing well. And then this secret below ground layer of an operating system is doing push-ups in the corner

getting stronger and stronger, which is what untreated addiction does. So I identify, just to back up, I identify as somebody who's a blackout codependent, a skid row, sex and love addict, like one of the hardest cases I've ever met of, I recently saw this. Let me, I won't go through all my whole history, but I will say this because I think it encapsulates it. I recently had lunch with somebody who used to be my couples therapist, who I essentially kept on retainer because I brought him. I said, Mark, when, did you ever have anyone else who brought you three different relationships over the course of 20 years? Whoa. None of whom were the people she was married to. And he was like, only you, honey.

Only you. So I would just routinely come back into Mark's office and be. like, Mark, meet. Now make this work. I've found the one. Yeah. You know, and by the third time I came in, he was like, who do we have today, Liz? You know, and I'm like, blah-da-da-da, meet this, you know, just insert this person into this situation. So, so that was always happening, and satisfaction could never last, and suffering could never end. You know, that's the torment. What you beautifully did in this book was dovetail two stories, this epic love story, and the story of you bottoming out in your addiction, discovering addiction. And I thought the way that you wove those two together was really profoundly moving. But can you tell us a little bit about the subject of the book,

about Naya and your... Yeah, Reya was her name, but that's okay. Sorry. That's okay. Come on. They just came out of, which is interesting. Why I spent the whole weekend with the fucking. But I have a beloved friend named Naya.

So that's lovely. I have to ask that again. Well, knowing Kartik, he'll try and keep it in. Asshole. Tell us about Raya who's at the center of this book. So Raya Lias was my best friend. And I think in the book, the way that I described the progression of our relationship.

She was originally my hairdresser. Somebody sent me to her East Village, badass, punk, heroin and cocaine addict in recovery, newly sober when I met her, my God, 25 years ago. She described herself as a glamour, butch, dyke, musician, post-punk, just a cool East Village chick, who I met, loved, and became friends with. We started our relationship as hairdresser and client, and then we became social friends, and then we became personal friends, and then we became neighbors, and then we became best friends, and all of this is over the course a long time, over the course of 13 or 14 years,

during which time I married my husband, who is the gentleman that I met at the end of I pray love, and I was going about my life. But we were falling in love with each other. She was my best friend, and then she became what I could only call my person. I couldn't even find, I couldn't allow myself to say what she really was, which was the love of my life. And that went on for a few years. no boundaries crossed.

You know, like I had, you know as addicts were good at compartmentalizing things. So I was like, nobody needs to know about this. I don't even need to really know about this. I'm going to just keep this tucked away. In my consciousness, I love Rea. I don't want to ruin my marriage. She's my person. We're going to just keep going.

And then as love would have it, Raya was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer and given six months to live, at which point it was no longer possible. It was no longer physically emotionally or spiritually possible for me to not be open about what she was to me. The idea of her dying without ever knowing and having people come into me, I'm sorry, your friend died.

And just never being able to have expressed to her what she was was, it made my soul feel appalled. So I very swiftly left my marriage to be with her for the last six months of her life. And we thought that we were about to embarking. on a devastating and beautiful romantic love story. Here's what we didn't know. First of all, she didn't live for six months.

She lived for 18 months. We had six months of a beautiful love story. She went fully back into drug addiction in her cancer journey. She got maybe the world's biggest case of the fuckets. Like, I'm dying. There's no more rules. She always sort of had a punk attitude toward the world anyway. She was like,

there's no reason for me to not be shooting speedballs up into my arm again because I'm a hospice patient. So let's roll. And I was like, I see your point. You know, and everyone around her was like, why not? You know, like she's going to die. But then she didn't die. She didn't die for like almost a year after that. She just became a ravenous, vicious junkie.

And then what also happened is that I. slid into love addiction and codependency with her because for every raging addict there's an enabler who's ready to step right in and try to be there everything. And so the book sort of as you said dovetails is the right word for it, these two stories. And one of the reasons that I speak so openly about identifying as a sex and love addict, identifying as a blackout codependent is because I talk a lot about Ray's drug and alcohol addiction in the book. And I don't want anyone to think that I'm judging my friend as being anything different than what I was. She and I, what she had, I also had. It's just that my addiction expressed itself.

She used cocaine and heroin, I use people. And when I get very honest, which I've had to do and which I write about in the book with as much accountability as I can, I have a long history like a speedball addict of trying to get my levels right where there are people that I, I mean, my definition of emotional sobriety is any day when I'm not using somebody like a drug because I use people as sedatives and I use people as stimulants. And my romantic and sexual history was just constantly going back and forth between Xanax and cocaine, Xanax and like Valium and, you know, meth. It's like I need, I have such a disordered attachment style. And it's like I need tremendous comfort and stability and safety. And then I'm crawling out of my skin and I need to get

high, so I need to go find somebody who I can probably kill, who will probably kill me. Like somebody who is so dangerous and so wild that I might not survive it. And then I need to go get super high on that. And then I almost commit suicide when they withhold that drug, which they inevitably do because I become incredibly clingy and needy and desperate. And then that blows up. And then I need another sedative. And then I need another stimulant. And then I needed another sedative. When I was living with Rea, when she was an active drug user, it was actually incredibly educational in my Earth school curriculum to watch how much time and energy drug addicts spend trying to feel good. Like just trying to get the right amount, like how many grams of cocaine do I

have to add to how much fentanyl to just get that spot where I'm not jonesing, but I'm not tweaking and I'm not hallucinating and I just fucking feel good for a minute. Right? That's their whole job. You tell that one beautiful story about where you you're having your real like heart to heart with her. And you're like, hey, listen, I know you want to like chemically get right in order to have this conversation. So you can go in the back room and use and tweak and inject whatever you need to do to kind of get yourself at the place where we can have this conversation. Maybe it's going to last an hour, maybe less, you know, go ahead and do that. And you're the rattling around back there and like.

The chemistry experiment. Yeah, yeah. Like I'm going to hear a little bit of. little zanics, a little bit of speed, some crushed out of alcohol, a shot of whiskey, and then now I think I can actually talk. Okay. Yeah. Right. So I do that too. I've done that too my whole life, but I do it. I use people instead of drugs. I use people to make me feel away. And a not very nice reflecting very poorly upon me, but extremely true way to describe that is massive manipulation. You know, like whatever I have, to do or become or trick you into doing or becoming to get you to give me the thing that I cannot provide for myself because I can't generate esteem or well-being because I don't know how to and because I don't love myself. I need you to do that for me and I need you do it for me just perfectly because if you're off at all, I'm going to go find somebody else who's going to

give it to me better because I am barely surviving here. And that's been my history. And so part of the reason that I felt it was so important to be so candid in this book about how I'm a junkie is so that I can make it perfectly clear like this person who I loved who almost killed me with their binge, I was also binging. And part of my rage at her when she went into being a junkie was that she took my drug from me because my drug was her. So once she checked out on drugs, I no longer had, my plug was gone. You know, I was like, who's got me? Now I'm the term I always use with my friends is the abandonment wound is like, we call it

the Siberian baby. It's like there's this Siberian baby just left on the tundra in this blizzard with thousands of miles of vacancy routes, just screaming into the void, right? I become the Siberian baby. I'm like, there's no one. There's no one here. Like, who's got me? And that's what withdrawal looks like.

from love addiction and codependency, and people die from it. One of the major causes of suicide and homicide in the world is brokenheartedness. Wow. Open the newspaper. The second leading cause of death for women after heart attacks is death at the hands of a romantic partner. Accidental death. Like, it's a big deal. Yeah.

It's a big deal. Yeah. And suicide as well. It is, and those people aren't stupid because they are so devastated. They can't live with the amount of pain that they are in. Like, that's what it feels like. And all of us have experienced that. And I write in the book that the closest I've come to suicide is because of love addiction,

and it's also the closest I've come to murder. And I'm not saying that dramatically. It's simply a fact. Yeah, that's just true. And I'm the nice lady who wrote, You Pray, Love. And I mean, I contemplated, plotted, and seriously considered murdering Rea. And not in a way like, I could kill her, like, planned it because I was so out of my mind with devastation. Like, this is a true thing that I experienced in my actual life.

And there was not a substance in my body, you know, not a substance in my body. In one of the programs that I go to for 12-step programs for relationship issues, I heard a woman say, and I quote it in the book, she said, I walked into the bar. looked at that guy and said, I would follow that man to hell. And then I did. And she said, I was 20 years sober off substances. I did not have a gram or an ounce of any mood or mind-altering substance in my body. And I did that. And I blew my entire life up. And I ruined my kids' lives. And I ruined my husband's life. And I lost my job. And we ended up homeless. And she's like, and I did it sober. So there are things that happen in the brain for process addictions that create, they call it the internal pharmacy, that create highs and lows that are so extreme that like I don't even need drugs to get high.

I mean, nothing would make me, nothing out there will make me more high than disappearing into a bedroom with someone, turning off all the electronics, pulling down the shades for 10 days and just diving into each other. It's like snort that right up in rails, you know? Like nothing can touch that. You know, and most of the people that I know who identify in the rooms as drug addicts and alcoholics will say in the relationship and sex rooms of 12-step, giving up alcohol and drugs was so much easier than giving up this person or giving up this fantasy or giving up this behavior. Like, I could not put this thing down. I could not put this person down. I could not stop stalking them. I could not stop what we call digital cutting, getting online and looking, chasing.

them down online to see what they're up to, who are they dating now, like harming yourself, punishing yourself by not letting it go, you know, like calling them at 3 o'clock in the morning, begging, degraded, you know, all of these things that have every possibility to destroy your life. So I don't know, I'm not an expert on addiction, so I'm not, I just know what I have. And I don't, and like when I came into the rooms of 12-step for recovery addiction in relationship, and I started hearing people tell my story, I was like, oh, this is a thing. Like this, I thought I was just uniquely broken in this way. But, oh, there's a thing and there's a program.

Yeah. And there's names for everything I do. Like all this stuff that I do, like instimacy. I was like, oh. Wait, say that again? Instomacy. I haven't heard that before. That's great.

Right? Yeah. It's like, oh, like all I had to do. do is hear it and I was like, a hundred percent know what that is, you know, like queen of that. You know, so it's just naming it and claiming it and then seeing other people create lives of dignity and being like, I never thought I would have a shame-free day in my life, rain. Like, never. Oh, wow.

Never. Yeah. You know, and now it's like, I'm okay today. So how did you get out of that? You described this situation where she's in total relapse, surrounded. by not only drugs, but druggy friends. And I'm paying for everything as a good codependent. Yeah.

You hit a real bottom there and things did shift. Yeah. Remarkably. I mean, it was interesting because not to see it as a game of power, but the Trump card she was playing was, I can live a consequence-free life because I'm a terminally ill cancer patient who might die tomorrow. So how in the world are you going to have an intervention with somebody in that headset? Like, what are you to do? Say you're going to die if you keep doing drugs? She's already dying. Like, I'm going to send you to rehab. There's no rehab in the entire

world that would take her because she needed the opioids for her cancer pain. Like, you know, there's this thing that the Zen's, it's a co-on. It's like, I'm in a trap. And I promised you I would take care of you until you died and you keep throwing that in my face and saying you promised me you would take care of me, go to the ATM, get some more money, get me some more cocaine. You know, like, this is, now I'm in, I'm trapped in like the bardo. There's no way. I can't leave her alone because she's smoking in bed and dropping cigarettes on the sheets and setting them on fire.

Like so trapped. And what I now know about trapped is that I'm never trapped. When I think I'm trapped, it's always that there's just a door I don't see yet. There's something I don't see yet. And that's when I go to God and I'm like, I don't see. This looks like a trap to me. And this feels like a trap and it feels like I have no options. And the option always is you're going to have to tell the truth.

That's always the way out. Well, that was such an interesting part of this story too is that your image management throughout this. When people would call like, how's it going with Reya? Look, great. Yeah. I mean, she's suffering and we're struggling. we're together and we're such a good caregiver. We're trooping.

She's so strong. Yeah. You know, she's so strong and I'm so admirable. So people on the outside didn't have any idea. Because I wasn't letting anybody now. And so what ended up happening was that I had to tell the truth. And I started calling some people who had experience with addiction and being like, I'm in the ninth circle of hell.

What do I do? And what was interesting was that a number of people were like, you need help. like you need to go and get support for it. Because you started with like, what do I do about her? Yeah, she's the problem. She's the problem. Yeah. Obviously, she's the junkie nodding out in the corner with this moldering cigarette in the bed with like $6,000 of cocaine next to her screaming at me.

That's obviously, the problem is obviously not me. Because obviously her, anyone would see that. I'm the good one. Like, I'm the nice one. I'm the generous one. I'm the kind one. I'm from Connecticut. I'm the nice lady from Connecticut.

I'm the sweet one who wants to help, right? I'm the angel and she's, like, obviously, like, that duality was what we were in. But they were like, there's programs for people who have loved ones who are in addiction and you should go to a meeting tonight. And a friend was like, there's programs for people who have sex and love addiction. And I've been watching you for 30 years. And this is just another thing you're in that you're always in. and you might have a bigger problem than that junkie in the corner. And that was like a moment of like, what?

Pearl clutching. How very dare you. I wrote books about how to recover from, you know, like, what? 23 million women left their marriages because of me. You know, like, I can't possibly be the problem. So that began my own recovery journey. And the conversation that I had to go and have with Reya was to say,

I can't be in this story anymore because it is too degrading to me. And I co-created this with you. Like you and I built this nightmare that were like. We built this whole nightmare together 100%. And I deified you. I gave all my power to you. I enabled you. And I haven't drawn a boundary ever around you.

And I decided that you were my answer to everything in life. and you did all this and this is what the end game of this is and I can't be in this anymore and I wanted to be with you until you died but I think I'm going to have to say goodbye to you now because otherwise I'm also going to die and you and Rea when she was sane and sober

would have been the person to tell me to do that I mean I watched her for years counseled people who had family members who were addicts and say the very best gift that you can get to them is to leave and let them experience consequence. You know, like you can't save them. You can't control them. You didn't cause it. You've got to get. And they're going to take every single thing that they can from you until you have nothing left. She taught me that. That was the real Yoda thing. The Obi-One-Kan-Kanobi thing is like, she taught me that so that when she became that, I knew what

to do. And what I said to her was, if you were here, the real Rea, you know, like even behind all those drugs, you know. This is what you would tell me to do. But I have to tell me to do that now because you're no longer here to protect me. You're actually destroying me. I mean, I was actually destroying me. She was doing what she wasn't doing it at me. She was just doing it.

But after that, shockingly, she had an awakening. And she got off the drugs long enough to die clean. And for us to have some sort of resolution before she died. me to be able to be with her and she died, which was incredible. That's all in the book, too. But that moment of, you know, the feeling, what I said to her was like, I actually have done too much work on myself to allow myself to be this abused by anybody, even you, and even under these circumstances. I can't, I just can't, I can't, I can't let this continue. And she, it's interesting, she got it. Like, even in the midst of her insanity, there was something in there.

I mean, the truth without accusation, I think always feels like freedom in a way. The truth is always liberating. I think of times in my life where I've been told absolutely awful truths where I was like, oh, yeah, I see. You know, like there's something you can kind of, my friend Martha Beck says, the truth is always kind, like even when it's awful. And lies are always cruel, even when they're kind. And so there was a kindness, I think, that we found in that moment of like, which is, I think, step one is just surrendering to reality. We've got a substack. If you love the Soul Boom podcast, you're going to want to get our weekly newsletter substack sent to your inbox. A lot of them delve into the ideas around the podcasts that we're doing that week. So sign up. Please subscribe.

Go to soulboom.com. Thank you. One of the sections I was also struck by was about your ongoing conversations with Rea after she passed. And I've shared about that on this show several times about when my father passed away five years ago now about the conversations I would have with him, especially in that first year. But even to this day and how strangely real they feel and how strangely satisfying they feel. don't judge. But talk a little bit about that. And do you still have some occasional conversations with Raya? She was more present.

I mean, I think in the very first chapter of the book, I say Raya was so vivid. That was the word. Her presence was so vivid in the immediate aftermath of her death. She was more vivid in death than most people I know are in life. Like vivid, funny, opinionated, helpful. Like she was so available. Like I kept saying to people like she didn't go. Like she left her body, but she's super here in a way that didn't feel at all occult. It was just a fact like this is here. You know, like the cup is here, the chair is here and Ray is here. And I could access her effortlessly.

Like we were constantly having like you described with your father these dialogues inside of our head where she would be directing me. You know, like watch out. Like. Don't do that. He's lying to you. You know, just like, you know, just like giving me really great advice. And usually that advice was because Reyes whole thing with me, because I relied upon her so much. And I made her into the person who I held responsible for taking care of me in the world so that I didn't have to be the Siberian baby. Her advice was always like, you got to face this thing. Like, you can't dodge this. You can't evade this. You have to make the phone call you don't want to make. You got to say the thing you don't want to say. You got to tell the person the truth you don't want to do. You've got to defend yourself here. You've got to demand this thing. You know, like all this stuff I don't want to do as a tremendously conflict. She kind of became a voice of your conscience, in a way, a voice of your integrity. Yeah. She's like step up, suck up, man up, you know, like, I got bad news for you. The only way out of this is that you have to address it head on. And you can. And she used to say to me

before she died, when she was first diagnosed, she would say, I'm not, because I'd be like, what am I to do without you? Like I can't, I literally, and I'm using the word literally, literally, it was like, I don't know how to do earth without you. I can't. And she would say, I'm not going to leave until we're both ready. And I'm not going to leave until I see you standing on your own two feet in every single circumstance in your life. So when she died and I still didn't know how to stand on my own two feet, I was like, you broke that contract, except she didn't leave. Like, she was still incredibly present. And then as I got stronger and more competent and more capable of taking care of myself, her presence diminished. And I barely ever hear her anymore. It's hard for me

to find her now. Like, I don't feel like she's right here. And, and then I was like, oh, she must have left because I can stand on my own two feet now. Like, she must have honored. She must have honored that contract. She must have seen that she's good now. Like Liz is stabilized. Yeah. She's got it. She's got herself. So now I can go to whatever the mystery is that they go to. I think this story is so incredibly brave. I mean, you talk about warts and all. I mean, you shared every last blooming thing about yourself in here in a way that I never could. bless you, but bless also the legacy of this story and this book and how it can impact so many people, not just women, to dig into this very real and devastating addiction.

You know, I feel like my life has been, again, I'm not using the word exaggerately saved, so many times by people who are willing to learn in public. you know, like to do their learning in public so that I could see the thing they learned and watch them learn it. And people who are long dead, I mean, people who did their learning in public 500 years ago, you know, people who did their, you know what I mean? Like, people were like, I'm in Earth school. It's like we're sharing notes. Like, here's what I learned. You know, here's what I learned in my curriculum. What did you learn in your curriculum? And I feel like, why in the world would I not, if there's anything that I've ever learned that could be of service,

why on earth would I not tell everybody? You know, because I, like, I sat in therapy for 25 years talking, like 45 minute section after 45 minute section after 40 minutes section of time about my relationship, chaos with really lovely, intelligent, compassionate therapist. not one of whom ever were like, bitch, you with sex and love act. Well, that's... There's a, like, you, you're... That's astonishing to me.

But then I went actually, because I was curious, and I spoke to some of my therapist, and I was like, did you know that there's a 12-step program for some of this stuff? And they were like, never, never heard of it. Because of how carefully,

and this is the beautiful thing about 12-stuff that we love, how carefully things are kept private. And I also think specifically in the programs that are about sex and specifically, sub-specifically in the programs that are about women in sex. Like, there's so much stigma and there's so much shame. And I was like, well, I'll do it.

I'll talk about it. You know, because, God, like, I sure wish somebody had sat me down. That conversation where somebody finally was like, hey. I mean, if you had read this book 20 years ago. I always write the book I wish someone had written. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Eat, Pray, Love was written, was the book I wished I'd had when I was 30. You know, Big Magic was the book I wish I'd had when I was 18, and I wanted to be an artist. And committed was the book I wish I had when I got married. And this is the book I wish I had my whole life, you know? Like, because I didn't know.

You know, and who's to say, I mean, you know when you know, it very well could have been that somebody could have sat me down 20 years. ago I've been like, girlfriend, you got a problem. And I would have been like, I'm good. I mean, I remember multiple times people saying to me, you seem like you're moving a little fast with this person you met last week, who you just moved into your house and opened a bank account for. And I'm like, oh, no, I'm just passionate. Like, I'm just a passionate person. I'm just a, I'm a free spirit. You know, but if I'm such a free spirit, why do I always end up in trapped and in

bondage in these relationships that end up feeling like, the exact opposite of freedom. So I don't mind, what am I here for except to your friend in mind, Mike Barbiglia, is like whenever people say, you're sharing stuff that's so personal, he's always like, what do you hold on to it for?

Like, what do you need it for? You know what I mean? Like, why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I? So people will take from it what they need and leave the rest, I hope. Do you think it's going to piss people off some people? There's nothing you can do that doesn't piss some people off.

And that's become, and I think I'm at a place in my career where there's like a big enough, like I get enough attention that I can count on that. Absolutely. Yeah. What am I going to do though, Ray? Like not make the thing that I feel I'm supposed to make. And also nothing is going to, what? I mean, my, if anyone has.

put in the hours trying to figure out what she has to do to make everyone happy. Like, man, I got, I had like 10,000 hours of training about that before it was five. I'm like, what do I have to do, be, or say to keep these people happy with me, right? And I'm pretty comfortable with the reality that I can't do that. Liz, it's so great to be able to sit down with you. And I just so love the book. And this conversation was really impactful and meaningful. Thank you so much.

One thing that we ask everyone on the old soul boom comedy hour is. And what a hoot this conversation is, Ben. That was laughs. This was hysterical, is what is your definition of the word soul? How would you define it? It's the thing that I am that doesn't die. and that keeps coming back for more, and we'll be back again

to pick up the lessons I didn't get this time. I suspect that I'll see you again, and we'll be in different classrooms for different lessons. I know that to be true. No more lessons, please. Thanks, Earth School. And God's like, we'll see. Thank you, Liz.

Oh, my God. Thank you so much. Thanks for everything you do are and be. You are loved. You are liked a lot. You're tolerated. The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.