The One You Feed - Catherine Gray on the Joy of Being Sober

Episode Date: March 7, 2018

 Please Support The Show with a DonationCatherine Gray is an award-winning writer and editor. Her most recent book is called, The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober. What a brilliant title and what a brilliant book. In it - and in this interview - Catherine offers so many good ideas, phrases, and pearls of wisdom to take away and keep close by. She shares a bit about her journey to and through sobriety with Eric and the critical "ah ha" moments along the way that really helped her build the life she's living today. If you don't have a revelatory moment when listening to her in this interview, we'll be surprised.Our sponsor this week is Casper Mattress visit  www.casper.com/oneyoufeed and use the promo code theoneyoufeed for $50 off your purchaseIn This Interview, Catherine Gray and I Discuss...The Wolf ParableHer book, The Unexpected Joy of Being SoberThe challenge of training our brains to look for the good stuff in lifeThe question: Would my life be better sober? instead of Am I an alcoholic?Rock bottom being a different place for different people at different timesThe challenge of moderationThe beautiful clarity of zeroThe limbic system in distress with indecisionControlling vs Enjoying drinkingAlchohol being like a cheat code in a video game when it comes to inhibitionThat no one regrets being soberThe awful feelings at the beginning of getting sober are what you feel like because of the drinking, not the getting soberLearning the skills to enjoy life soberAddictive voice recognitionNegative Thought Patterns:B&B Children in a carBird watchingThat there are many different ways to get soberHow expectations are resentments under constructionDay counting in being soberI don't vs I can't Please Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When I was living in active addiction, I would nurture resentments, I would feed them, I would exercise them as if they were a dog. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living.

This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor. What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you?

We have the answer. Go to really know really dot com and register to win five hundred dollars. A guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The really know really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Catherine Gray, an award-winning writer and editor whose work has appeared in almost every newspaper and magazine you can think of, from The Guardian to Cosmopolitan to The Daily Mail and Shortlist to The Sun.

Catherine also works as a travel writer for Google and as a contributing editor for the Lifestyle Library. Her book is The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober. Stress happens to everyone. It's one of those facts of life. I'm sure you can think of a time recently when you were very stressed. We're working on helping people to better manage their stress. If you're signed up for our email list already, you know that we recently sent something to you about stress in your life, and we're going to be continuing on this topic, and we've got a new resource that's If you are not on our email list, go to OneYouFeed.net and sign up in the right-hand column, and you will get the next document

about managing stress. And the main focus will be dealing with our thoughts and responsibilities. So if you're not on our email list, OneYouFeed.net to get signed up for these free resources. And here's the interview with Catherine Gray. Hi, Catherine. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. Lovely to be here. It's a pleasure to have you on. You and I go back a little ways. I think you have written a piece for one of the papers in England about the show, and then I got an early copy of your book, The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober,

which I really, really liked and was really happy to be able to write a blurb for. So thanks for coming on. Well, I'm really happy to be here because I'm a big fan of the show. I've been listening to it for about three years. Is blurb the right word? Is that what they call those things that you put on a book jacket? Yeah, blurbs, right? That's perfect. All right. Well, we'll get into the book here in a second, but let's start like we always do with the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery, love,

and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and bravery, love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandmother and says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, I love this parable. I think it's just so perfect. For me, the bad wolf represents resentment. And when I was living in active addiction, I would nurture resentments. I would feed them. I would exercise them as if they were a dog. I would take them for long runs and fatten them up and feed grudges against people. And a really key mental shift for me was learning to feed my good

wolf, which for me is gratitude. So I had to retrain my brain, really. My brain was so used to looking out for annoyances and grievances and resentments that it wasn't used to looking out for annoyances and grievances and resentments that wasn't used to looking for good stuff. It wasn't used to looking for things to be grateful for. So, and it's still something that I have to do on a conscious level every day. Because evolutionary speaking, we are trained to look for threats and bad things on the horizon. So it does take time for our brains to get used to looking for good things. And so I write a nightly gratitude list even now. Yeah, I think you're right that our brains are wired to look for the bad. And for those of us that descend into active alcoholism or addiction, I think

there's an even more of a approach to that because we feel so bad about ourselves in a lot of cases. Yeah. And I think when you're really in the doldrums, when you're really depressed, it just infects everything. You look for the bad. And it just takes time to get used to really looking for the helpers and looking for the good things and seeking them out, really, like a lighthouse. and looking for the good things and seeking them out really like a lighthouse. Yeah. So I'd like to start by something that you say late in the book, but I think it's important to frame up the whole conversation. And you say the question to ask yourself is not, am I an alcoholic? Swivel that focus. The question is, would my life be better if I was sober? If the answer is yes, then shoot for sober. And I love that because

it really gets us out of the discussion about am I an alcoholic? Am I not an alcoholic? What does that even mean? And really gets it pretty much down to the very basics. And I love the way you frame that. And I think it's a great way to start this conversation for people who may not think of themselves as alcoholic, but may question their relationship with alcohol. Well, thank you. Yeah, I've read a lot about it. And the way that the experts are now thinking about alcoholism is that it's a spectrum of dependence. It's not black and white, normal drinker and alcoholic and somewhere you tip along from one to the other. It's like a one to 10 spectrum. And so therefore, a lot of people will be Googling, am I an alcoholic at 2am when they've had three or four glasses of wine?

And I don't really think that's what they should be asking themselves. Because it's a spectrum, you can get out earlier, right? You you know I didn't get out until I was at number nine on the spectrum but if I hadn't been so hung up on I only need quit drinking if I'm an alcoholic then I might have got out a lot earlier at six or seven before things really got dark for me so I think that's an important flip for people to do, which is think more, you know, will my life be better if I'm sober? That's the only thing you really need to ask. Yeah, I think as you in the UK would say, I think that's brilliant. Because it is such a different way to look at it versus the concept of bottom. And I want to read something you wrote

about bottom because I just thought it was a great phrase. And you say, one person digs until they are just about losing the golden tops of autumnal trees. Another digs until they're nearing the earth's core and are surrounded by skin melting lava. And I just think that is so true having, you know, been in recovery sobriety for most of my adult life, I've just seen these staggering differences between people. And even in my own life, the first time I got sober when I was 24, I was much closer to the skin-melting lava. When I got sober again, I was sober about 10 years and I had a relapse and I went out for about three or four years. years. When I came back, I was certainly past the top of the trees, but I was nowhere near in the state of external consequence that I was the first time. And I really had to work with that idea of bottom for myself because I kept having to say to myself, do I really need to take it there?

You know, I know where this elevator is going. Can I step off earlier? And I'm so glad I was able to do that. And I think to your point, lots of people can do that also. It doesn't have to be a question of disease, of alcoholism. It's just a question of, I love the way you put it, is my life better this way? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think if people did approach it that way, then bottom, as you say, just it looks different for everyone. I know somebody that quit drinking after her first ever blackout.

And I had hundreds, maybe even thousands. Yeah, me too. And her first one, that was it for her. That was her bottom. It just, you know, different levels get off a higher floor than I did, you know. So it's I think it's a very important flip for people to make. Just look at look at it more of a positive way. You don't have to wear a label. You don't have to look at it in a black and white way. You can just decide to quit drinking.

And, you know, you don't have to call yourself an alcoholic, you can just call yourself teetotal or alcohol free. You know, it there's so many different options out there for people. Teetotal. Is that a British phrase? I had never heard that till I read your book. I really? Yeah, never heard it. Maybe. Maybe it's because we love tea so much. I don't know. But it starts with a double E. But tea total would be about right because I do drink a lot of tea. Yeah, I think the idea is, as you were saying that, I was thinking, you know, you don't have to wait until you have a heart attack to start not eating as many

French fries and jogging from time to time. Yeah, that's a really, really good parallel. It's just something you can make a decision about at any time. And as a result of me quitting, a couple of my friends who, I mean, absolutely nobody in their lives would say they have a problem with drinking, they've decided to quit as well. And they just feel so amazing for it. I think sobriety gets such a bad rep. It's seen as something that you only have to do if you

become addicted. And that's not true. Anyone can make that lifestyle choice at any time. And even people that only drink two or three times a week may find that they feel vastly different and better, which has been the experience of my friends. Because it does affect our health, it does affect our mental state, it makes us more anxious, it costs a lot of money. And if you do overdrink, it ruins the entire next day, and maybe even the day after, which is what started happening to me in my 30s, that hangovers became two day events. Right. And there are countless health implications to drinking alcohol. And again, this isn't a, if you like to have a few drinks, you know, you're a bad person

parade we're having here, right? At all. I think it's just broadening the ability to think about your relationship with alcohol versus, like you said, this black or white, either I'm an alcoholic or I'm not. Let's talk about moderation. Because for those of us who are on the further end of that dependency spectrum, right, moderation is just, if not impossible, absolutely torturous, right? But I do think that even for people who aren't quite that far along, moderation can be really challenging. And I have a saying I say to people when I'm talking to them about recovery, and I say, you know, there is just a beautiful clarity to zero. Like, it's just, if you're always in that spot where

you're like, well, should I? Shouldn't I? Have I had too many? Well, I had three last night, so I only have one today. That spot is just exhausting. And there is just this clarity of like, I don't do it. I think later in the book, you quote Alex Korb. You quote him throughout the book, and he was one of our earlier guests and great guy. And he talks about how when we're in that undecided state, our limbic system, our emotional center is a little bit worked up. And that by actually making the decision by having a decision, it allows that to settle down. And that is one of

the gifts of sobriety is not being in that constant trying to decide should I shouldn't I how many? What's too much, etc. Yeah, it's exhausting. It's like a mental spin cycle. And I think you're absolutely right. Even if you're on the lower ends of the spectrum, it's difficult to moderate. It's a tricky thing to do purely because alcohol isn't built for using it moderately. It's a disinhibitor. So once you have one or two, that erodes your ability to say no to the third and fourth. Because it's a disinhibitor, it lowers our inhibitions. It causes us to make more reckless decisions. It causes us to behave more impulsively. So the very nature of it means that once you have one or two, you're probably going to have three or four. The innate nature of alcohol makes it difficult to moderate it. as you say Alex Corb he's a legend and he just summed it up so well which is that the limbic system is in a state of distress when we're caught between it's similar to the you know am I going to go to the gym I don't want to

go to the gym oh maybe I should I'll do it tomorrow you know it's that sort of indecision and and if you just make a clear cut yes or no then your brain does calm down dramatically and like you say about the zero the beauty of zero once you take it off the table completely your brain is freed up to think about so much more interesting things I find it really liberatingating not to have that constant ticker tape in my head anymore of, oh, I need to only drink two drinks. I've got that thing to do tomorrow. How am I going to only drink two drinks? So yeah, it's such a freeing thing to take that away. Yeah. There's a line in the AA Big Book that says the alcoholic is unable to control and enjoy his drinking. And I thought about that for a while.

And I, and I realized what, what that was really saying was you can't do the two at the same time control, maybe right for very limited short stretches of time. When I came back to recovery this time, I went to moderation management because I knew like, okay, I'm going to have to give this up entirely. And what person who loves drinking isn't terrified by the thought of giving it up. So I was like, I'm going to figure out how to moderate this. And so I, I mean, I did moderation recovery. I mean, I, I was probably the most hardworking student ever because I was like, I want to make this work. And it was just miserable. And I remember so many nights, it's at like 11 at night. I'm standing by the sink in my kitchen.

I know it's bedtime. There is no reason under God's green earth to take another shot of whiskey. And yet I sit there 5, 10, 15 minutes wrestling with it and I lose, you know, three out of five times. But that control effort takes all the fun out of the drinking. You know, I could enjoy it if I just like let the rains loose, although by the end there wasn't much enjoyment. I want to talk about inhibitions though, because you've got a great line in the book that I wanted to make sure we got to at some point. So you say

inhibitions are great. They kill bad buzzes, not good buzzes. We should not want to turn them off. They protect us. Removing them before striding out into a night full of horny men is like disabling the automatic braking system in a car and then driving straight into a wall. So good. It's so funny and so true. And yet there is that thing, right, where we do feel like we want to lose our inhibitions to some degree. I mean, I think I still wrestle with that sometimes. Like, I don't think I want to lose them to the extent that I used to lose them, but there's a part of me that's like, this would be easier. And you also reference that by talking about it being like a cheat code in a video game, alcohol. Yeah, it enables us to zoom from sort of level two insecure to level seven, which is bouncing around a dance floor.

And I think what people are seeking in alcohol, and I absolutely understand why they do. I did it for 21 years, you know, is to take the edge off. They just want to take that nervous edge off when they go into a party or go for dinner with somebody new or go on a date you know it's these are nerve-wracking things um and then the nature of alcohol as we've discussed means that you go too far you erode too many inhibitions and then end up doing things that you would never dream of doing. I mean, I once got into a hot tub topless at my work Christmas party. That's an insane thing to do. And, you know, I did so many other crazy things I would never do because my inhibitions were completely gone by the time

that I drank a bottle and a half or two bottles of wine. So I think it's a natural instinct and urge to just feel instantly relaxed in a social situation, which is what we get from alcohol. It is a relaxer. You know, it does help us relax into a social situation, but it's something that comes back to bite us. It really does. And you can learn other methods of doing it. It takes a little bit longer. I find that when I get to a party, especially if I don't know anyone, I'm on edge for maybe half an hour, but then you do settle into it. But people do that by chucking back a drink. Yep. Yep. I agree. I mean, it's great in that regard. It's useful in that regard. And, you know, for me, I've said many times that two drinks of

alcohol is the best antidepressant I've ever found. Like still to this day. I mean, it was like if I could put that in an antidepressant pill and take it, I would. The problem is that just, it doesn't work. It doesn't keep working. It's the elusive two. Yeah, because then two is three. And before I know it, it's 10. And I mean, my history is just so clear cut in my case. But there are those moments still where if I'm feeling depressed, or if I'm feeling particularly stressed. I have that moment of like, I wish I had the fast lane here, right? I wish I had the, but I think without a doubt, my life is so much better. And I think even if you take the really horrific pieces out, that my whole life is still much better. You know, even if it hadn't become the horror show it was,

I think myself being sober is just a better way for me to be. You know, even if it hadn't become the horror show it was, I think myself being sober is just a better way for me to be. You've got something you said later in the book somewhere that no one regrets getting sober. I know they really don't do that. I don't. Nobody ever does. And yeah, I know what you mean the fast lane. It's a quick fix but then when you learn other tools whether they're you know say for instance I will always exercise before I go on a date and I know that that flushes adrenaline and cortisol from my system and I will be a lot more chilled um I always meditate before a work meeting I carry around essential oils basically the me of five years ago would have hated me today. She would have thought she was a real hippie, very annoying. But I do all

of these things and they work. And actually, my anxiety in the last maybe five years of my drinking just went up and up and up and up until I was basically agoraphobic. Leaving the house freaked me out. I had to have a drink to leave the house and go to the supermarket to buy more drink. And now my anxiety is basically gone. Like I went on live TV a couple of weeks ago and I never ever could have done that in the last five years of my drinking because they've shown shown that anxiety, it does work. It's a short term solution that dampens down anxiety. But over time, it makes us less able to deal with stress. So it's, you know, it doesn't work long term. So we just need to remember that. Right, right. And when I say, you know, two drinks of alcohol being the best

antidepressant I found, that's true in a very short term sense. But alcohol as a whole made me very depressed. You know, it made me made me more depressed overall. Yeah. Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to talk a little bit more about sort of the front side of getting sober, you know, the decision. And then let's move into some of the ways that you did it and some of the things that were helpful for you. You're describing how awful you felt when you were first getting sober, you know, the first week and you say, but let's get one thing straight.

This is not life without alcohol. This is not how you feel sober. This is how you feel because of the drinking. This too shall pass after just 10 days. Don't blame being sober. Blame the booze. That's the real villain of this piece. And that's one of those things that I say to people so often in early sobriety is like, don't mistake what you're going through now. Don't mistake the process of getting sober for what it's like to be sober because they are very different. Yeah, that's so true. And here in the UK, we have something called Dry January. I don't know whether you have that in the States. Do you have Dry January? Well, there may be some sort of small challenges, but I've not heard of it as a large thing. But again, I'm pretty removed from alcohol culture, so I don't know.

Okay. Well, it's basically a 30-day thing that about um five million brits do every year and they think that that's what it's like to be sober long term and a lot of the time it takes two or three weeks for your body to actually detox from alcohol if you had a really boozy december um so they'll only just be starting to feel normal before they start drinking again. So I always recommend even if people don't want to go completely alcohol free, if they just want to take mini spells for people to do at least 90 days, because you need to get past that withdrawal stage, which pretty much every drinker will go through even if they're drinking low levels and to start feeling your body start functioning properly and your sleep start getting

deeper and you know sober sleep was such a revelation to me I'd always woken up five times a night when I was drinking and now I can sleep right through for eight or nine hours so those things only happen once you've crossed the hurdle of the first couple of weeks or three weeks when your body is just getting used to living without alcohol. So yeah. Yeah, I agree. And I think the other piece of that is that if it's a temporary thing, or if it's just like, I'm just not going to drink for 30 days and see how I feel. That's different than saying, I'm going to learn the skills to enjoy life sober. Because it's one thing to be abstinent, and that's a great step, right? Or it can be a great step in a lot of ways. But my, you know, I know for myself, if I had not changed, if I had not learned how to work with my patterns of

thought and emotion, and all that, I wouldn't have stayed sober. I wouldn't have been able to. So it was all that work that I did that allowed me to be not depressed. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what you miss if it's just like, I'm just going to take 30 days off because there's no investment. And I'm not saying, again, that's a bad thing, but I'm agreeing with you that it's the investment

into what else do I do instead that can be so valuable or is so valuable. it's you're not going down into the mental machinations of why you drank in the first place which for me was social anxiety and then I discovered I had raging love addiction so I had to unravel all of that um you know it's it digging deep and tinkering in the engine of why your drinking became so runaway and out of control and fixing it at the source and continuing to maintain it just as you would a car that's how i think of it so you know you have to make sure the oil's topped up or what have you and take it for regular mot's um because otherwise you'll find yourself broken down on the side of the road crying, you know, right? It's very much an under the hood thing that you to in order

to maintain it long term. Yep. And one of the things you talk about that was so helpful for you early in sobriety and maintaining sobriety, and I think is, you know, a theme of this show for everybody, whether they're in sobriety or not. But you talk about addictive voice recognition. Can you talk a little bit about what that is? Yeah, sure. So I stumbled upon a blog called Tired of Thinking About Drinking in Early Recovery. And it was one of the things that was such a seismic change for me.

And she calls her addictive voice wolfy he's the big bad wolf which is apt for the show and um it's based on this technique called addictive voice recognition which was i believe it was in the 1950s it was created and it hasn't had that much recognition but i just found it to be such a game changer for me and it's about separating out the voice in your head that wants you to drink or use and seeing it as separate from your core self your core self wants the best for you this voice doesn't it wants you to go on a massive bender till 4am and spend all your money on shots so um i ended up using this and i called my addictive voice voldemort from harry potter because that just that just seemed to sum it up kind of evil but silken

and persuasive um and now i mean it was something that i battled with all the time. You know, Voldemort was always in my head in early recovery. And now I barely hear him. It's barely a whisper. So it just fades and fades and fades and fades. But that technique was so key for me. So, yeah, I really recommend it to everyone. Yeah, I think it's, like I said, in cases of addiction, it's very critical. You know, I've often said that, you know, my, my addictive bad wolf was

was a particularly, you know, bad, bad case of a bad wolf, right? And, and you talk about, you know, Voldemort, I think that's a that's another good example. I've also found and I think, like I said, a lot of this show, I think, has been about realizing that we all have those voices, even if it's not the voice of addiction. And that technique of giving it a name or personifying it is one of the techniques that comes out of acceptance and commitment therapy as one example of it. It's about being conscious of it and personifying it. But you also talk about some other ways to work with that addictive voice or with negative Rumi? I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly. I think so, yeah. Okay, great. It's a poem by Rumi and it's about treating thoughts that come into your head as if

they're visitors and you're running a B&B. And so if you're running a b&b if somebody comes through the door and they're an unwelcome guest like anger or annoyance or jealousy you're still going to welcome them in and treat them nicely and it just I think we tend to think that we're bad people if we have bad emotions and that's not true the human experience is it comes with a range of all the emotions, the good and the bad. Even Mother Teresa got really angry sometimes. You know, we're not robots. We're not in Ex Machina. She was such a bitch.

That's what I heard, too. I'm probably going to lose like half of our subscribers for that, but I couldn't resist. Mother Teresa. Yeah. So I just think it's really important to recognize that, you know, these thoughts and emotions, they might be unwelcome, but just, just be like, oh, hi, anger, you know, just just be like oh hi anger you know you're a bit annoying but I guess you're here so you know just treat them with respect as you would a guest if you were a B&B owner. Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who

figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called really no really. And you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I think there's a phrase in Buddhism, I think there's a phrase in Buddhism, invite Mara to tea. Mara is the embodiment of a lot of that negativity. And it's about, well, just apparently the Buddha would used to, the stories would be he'd see Mara or his attendant Ananda would see Mara and be like, Buddha, he's here. And Buddha would be like, well, just invite him for tea. And so, you know, it's a very similar idea. The next one was children in a car. So, yeah, I love that one.

That's from one of my sober friends who said that feelings are like children. You don't want them driving the car, but you shouldn't stuff them in the boot either. you don't want them driving the car but you shouldn't stuff them in the boot either um so yeah and i assume the boot is the is the trunk for for people who aren't exactly you're not going to put the children in the trunk that's downright child abuse so let them chit chatter away in the back and get on with your life you know drive away um and just let them get on with it and I really love that because feelings they don't have to drive us we can just let them exist we don't have to shove them away they can just be there um and that's something that I really learned how to do through meditation mindfulness meditation meditation. So, and before that, I think I felt

like I was just sort of kind of hostage to my feelings and emotions and they were driving the car and I had no choice as to where we go. If I was angry, then I was going to have a rant at somebody. And that's just not the case. You can observe these things and let them come and go. not the case. You can observe these things and let them come and go. Yep. And then the next one was birdwatching. Yeah. So that's something I got from a meditation app called Buddhify. The idea is you pretend that you're a birdwatcher and you're in a hide and you're just really quiet and you're observing your thoughts and emotions just as you would birds and just as you would name the birds if you're a bird watcher you know there's an eagle there's a blue tit there's a sparrow um you name the emotions like jealousy rage disgust what have

you but you don't disturb them you just let them go about their way as you would birds. Yeah, that's a great one. I think there's lots of variations on that theme. You can pretend you're watching them float by in a river or clouds in the sky. But yeah, I think all those are really useful ways to work with those negative thought patterns or those voices in our heads. Thank you. So I want to talk about a couple other things here before we wrap up that I think are really useful. And one of them is a phrase that you put in there called, don't try harder, try different. If something's not getting you sober, keeping you sober, try something else.

Your successful combination will be unique to you. If something's not getting you sober, keeping you sober, try something else. Your successful combination will be unique to you. There is no right way or only way to get sober. Yeah, and that was something I feel strongly about. I'm very pro-choice when it comes to recovery. I don't believe that there's only one way to get sober. And I think it's a case of just trying absolutely everything that you can find. I mean, some of my friends use things like EFT tapping or, you know, things that I've tried and just don't work for me at all, but they work a treat for them.

So that's brilliant um and just finding your unique pattern that works for you and sticking to it because everyone is different even if they're in the same program they use it differently and they have tools outside the program that you might not know about that they use i think every recovery path is completely unique um so i think it's important that people know that, that they have choices. And there are so many different ways to do this. Some of my friends try 15 Xanax a day, but I don't think that's what you mean. No, that doesn't sound like a good idea. I wouldn't recommend that.

I'm exaggerating a little bit. No, but I think that is really true. And, you know, I came up in 12-step traditions, and that's where I got sober. I wouldn't recommend that. write in the 12-step literature, it is not the only way. I find myself a little stuck because when people come to me about it, the only thing I can say is, here's what I did, right? This was my plan. And I don't feel comfortable dispensing advice about, well, that might work or that might work. But I agree with you. Try lots of different things because people are different and we respond really differently. And our degrees of dependence are different and we respond really differently and our degrees of dependence are different and our social support situations are different and our lifestyles are

different. I mean, there's so many factors that there just simply isn't a, this is the only way to do it. What I think is interesting in looking at AA or 12-step programs is I sometimes marvel at how brilliantly designed they were in certain ways, you know. Now, recovery, you know, people in 12-step programs, the idea is that it's a higher power or God that gets you sober. And I actually don't think that's what it is at all, unless you want to consider the group your higher power. But they built in so many of the things that we would recognize in different recovery approaches, you know, social support, not doing it alone, some way that via the steps, but can be lots of different ways to actually start to change the way you look at and you view the world.

Dealing with resentment, right? That's something that's right in the middle of the steps that you talked about. One of the things we talk a lot about with changing habits and recovery is accountability. You know, it's built right into the 12-step programs because you've got those little chips. I mean, there's so many of the things there that, again, I think are very brilliantly designed for something that was figured out in, you know, essentially 1939. Yeah, it's remarkable. Right, right. But it has a lot of baggage with it, too. And I think that's unfortunate. You know, from my perspective, that's the unfortunate part, because I think there's so much good in 12-step programs. And the thing that I think is so useful about them is they're just absolute

ubiquity, right? Like, they are everywhere. And for some people, that having somewhere to go every day and have people to talk to at any time can be really helpful. But my point being that I think there are some principles we can look at that are useful in making change or in getting sober, but we can find lots of different ways to fulfill those principles or those needs. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. I mean, I, I learned a lot. I went for, I went, I was in 12 step recovery for six months and I took a lot of lessons from that. As you say, I mean, that's where I learned about resentments. That's where I heard, um, expectations are resentments under construction for the first time and a light bulb turned into my on in my head i had such high expectations of people and that's why i was frequently

disappointed and frequently resentful so it was about undoing the foundation which was building the expectation um and i you know i met so many wonderful people and social support is so crucial building a tribe and i ended up um moving away from aa and finding that elsewhere but you know it doesn't matter how you do it as long as you find these things which is social support as you mentioned accountability and that's really important i think i personally think day counting is really important and now I do that via an app and if I ever drank I would obviously tell people um and you know undoing the ways that we think about the world and rebuilding them um talking to other people going through the same thing so important yeah there's so much there to be mined. But there's also other ways to create it. So who's relatively new on the recovery journey, doing it his own way, which is great.

But we talk about this idea of one day at a time or, you know, forever because, you know, forever freaks a lot of people out. And I love what you said. You said, I needed something larger than a day but smaller than forever as far as your time frame. So you say, choose your own time frame. Find the one that works for you. Yeah, yeah. I think that's, I mean, the one day at a time, I definitely did it one day at a time in the beginning. One hour at a time, one minute at a time. It was just, you know, hanging on to my sobriety by a thread. know hanging on to my sobriety by a thread but um later on i think i was maybe a month or two in i started looking for a bigger time frame and that for me was a hundred days i signed up to a hundred day challenge and now i actually find it really comforting to say forever because i i don't know

that doesn't scare me the thought of drinking scares me being sober forever is lovely and comforting it's like a duvet um so i think it just depends on you and how you um approach the one day at a time thing i would see more relationships as one day at a time you know take it a day at a time rather than looking at a big scary scary picture. So I use that for relationships. But for sobriety, I'm happy with forever. I never want to drink again. So for those of you who are recently engaged, I think she's saying you might want to rethink that. No, I don't mean that. I know. I'm kidding. No, I think and I also think that the timeframe that's right for us can often change

for our own selves. I mean, there are times, you know, there were certainly times for me, you know, where one day at a time was really what it was like, okay, just get through today. And then there's other times where, you know, I think the idea of forever is very comforting. And then there's other times where, you know, I have a little bit of like, well, is very comforting. And then there's other times where, you know, I have a little bit of like, well, and, and that leads into the last thing that you say. And I think this is really so powerful with drinking. And I've talked about it on the show with everything you say, choosing not to drink rather than being forced into it is a subtle but powerful mental shift. I don't versus I can't. And I think that that feeds into the one day at a time or the

timeframe, because if it's an, I can't, then we start negotiating with that. Can it be then, you know, versus I don't is really our choice. And, and I just think remembering that we have choice is one of the most freeing things we can do. Yeah, definitely. And they've shown that in studies where if you say, I can't eat chocolate, then you feel deprived, you feel angry about not being able to eat chocolate. Whereas if you say, I don't eat chocolate, then that's liberating. It makes you feel empowered. It makes you feel like you've really chosen that path. And that's how I approach sobriety. I choose not to drink and I really never want to do it again. So I think it's how you approach it, whether you see it as being caged in, you know,

not being able to drink or being free of having to drink. So it's, it's, yeah, definitely for me, it's more of a freedom than a cage. Excellent. Well, I think that is the perfect place to wrap up. Thank you so much for a, your support of the show over the years and be taking the time to come on and writing a wonderful book. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure. Okay. Take care. Bye. Take care. Okay. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.

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