The One You Feed - How to Embrace Sobriety with Gillian Tietz

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Gillian Tietz is the host of Sober Powered, a top 50 mental health podcast, and the founder of Sober Powered Media, a podcast network of top mental health shows. She has a master’s in biology and worked in research labs in the Boston area. Getting sober in 2019 inspired her to start her podcast to help others understand why addiction happens and how to develop the coping skills they need to stay sober. After 2 years of consistent, hard work she left her career in biochemistry to start her network.  Eric and Gillian discuss her journey to sobriety and how she shares what she has learned with others on her podcast, Sober Powered. But wait, there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you! Gillian Tietz and I Discuss How to Embrace Sobriety and … Her podcast, Sober Powered How she learned that watching TV did not support the life she wanted The start of her journey to sobriety Struggling with emotions that lead her to destructive habits Her struggles with body image Realizing how drinking caused her mental health to deteriorate How alcohol enhanced the problems she was trying to hide from Learning to accept that moderating drinking wasn’t possible The idea of harm reduction and the controversial opinions Finally seeking professional help when at the start of the quarantine How she wanted to start the podcast to share what she had learned to help others The value of finding support from sober communities on social media How we often don’t see the cause and effect of drinking when you’re in it The effects that alcohol has on the brain and mental health Post acute withdrawal and how the brain needs to learn to re-regulate without alcohol Gillian Tietz Links Gillian’s Website Instagram Facebook By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Gillian Tietz check out these other episodes: The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober with Catherine Gray The Magic of Being Sober with Laura McKowenSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you don't drink every day, maybe you drink and then you have like cravings that you're fighting off for days. That's part of the drinking experience too. So I think not just taking that instant gratification piece, that one to two hours as the whole experience is key. 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

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Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Jill Teets, a biochemist and host and creator of the Sober Powered podcast. In her podcast and teaching, Jill talks about what she's learned about why it's so hard to stop drinking, why alcohol makes us so miserable, how to embrace sobriety, and how to develop the life skills you need to stay sober. Hi Jill, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I am excited to have you on because we are going to be talking about all things addiction and recovery. But before we get into that, let's start like we

always do with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent 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. I think this is all about which thoughts you indulge and the things that you do every day to support the kind of life that you want to have.

So an easy example for what I mean is as someone who's sober, my mind will often send me thoughts like maybe it's been long enough, maybe you weren't that bad, maybe you're cured. And I can indulge those thoughts, which will then lead me down into allowing them to convince me to give moderation another try. Or I can try to, you know, recognize that indulging them probably is not a good idea for me. And then, you know, with lifestyle choices, I think the way that I structure my life also either helps or hurts my sobriety and probably has an influence on those thoughts too.

So something that I used to do is sit around all day and watch TV. I'd work all day, I'd come home and I'd watch TV all night for hours. And that doesn't support the kind of life that I want to have. So I think it's all about recognizing destructive thoughts and not indulging them. And then making choices in your life for your day-to-day that just support the kind of life that you want. There are so many different directions we could go from there. But the one I want to explore for a second is probably the least obvious, which is talk to me about watching TV all night. And tell me in what way does that not support the life you want? How do you know that it does or doesn't?

Yeah, so back when I was drinking, I would go to work and then I would come home and I'd say hello to my husband and I'd get some wine and I'd watch TV. And then I would do that until it was time for bed. So like four hours or more. And then every day I repeated the same thing and I wouldn't take the best care of my house. Sometimes I wouldn't cook and I'd get takeout instead because I just wanted to sit around and drink and watch TV. And when I stopped drinking the first time, I did just keep the same exact lifestyle. And it made it really hard because I realized like sitting around and watching The Bachelor for three hours is actually kind of boring. And that made me feel the void. And it made me want

to go back to the old routine, which, you know, seemed to be more fun. And when I quit for good this time, I actually did not watch TV or even go in my living room for a month. I went in my bedroom instead and I read or I did some research on the computer and that helped me a lot. And now even almost three years in, I'm very mindful about the amount of TV that I watch

because it's so mindless and can lead to, you know, wanting to eat more than I would want to or get like extra sugar or drink or so. That's why I'm not anti-TV, but I'm mindful about TV. Yeah, it's interesting because this is a question that's alive in my life right now, because I have been anti-TV for most of my life. However, Jenny and I have developed a routine of watching some TV in the evening, usually a show. It's something we have picked that we really like, that is really good. And I have a knee-jerk reaction that says, that's not good. But then when I try and examine why it's not good or why it's not giving me the life I want,

I start to find that I'm like, well, is it a problem? I'm watching something that is edifying, that stimulates me intellectually. You know, I could be reading, but reading fiction is very similar to watching a really good TV show. I mean, I'm reading, but I read tons anyway. So I say all that to say, it's just really interesting to think through, you know, what behaviors support the life we want. Something you said there though, that I think was really interesting and instructive is does that behavior enable other behaviors or is that behavior taking away from other things that are important, right? So if eating well is important to you and you find that you overeat or you get takeout, then you can see that that behavior is enabling one. So anyway, I ask about that just

because I'm thinking about it in my own life. Yeah. And I appreciate you sharing that about your TV too. And I try not to watch too many things like The Bachelor, like no offense to anyone on The Bachelor. It's just easy go-to because that was my favorite show when I was drinking. But I try to be mindful of when I do watch TV, that choice that I'm making too. Because you could watch a podcast episode from Dr. Huberman on YouTube and you could watch that for an hour, but that's very educational. Or sometimes you do just need reality TV and you need to disconnect and watch a little bit of drama unfold. And that's something I've been drawn

to in my sobriety. I don't know if you feel that way, but my life is so drama-free and calm that sometimes I need a little bit of drama. So I like reality TV for that reason. But like before, it was all reality TV. It was like whatever new thing was on Netflix, even if it wasn't very good, I would watch all of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're more discriminating than that. We're usually watching a series that we think is good. And if we get an episode or two in and it's not good, I'm like, I am not wasting my time, you know, on this. But again, it's sort of back to, I know one of my great loves in life is reading fiction, but I've started to sort of go, well, you know, these things are really well-crafted. They are like a fictional world and the characters are

really developed. Anyway, I don't want to spend the whole episode talking about TV because that is not why we're here. But I'm wondering if you could maybe give listeners a brief overview of what your drinking and early sobriety journey looked like, you know, just a minute or two of the big pieces of it. I think the most important thing to start with is that I started late. I didn't drink in high school and I started drinking at 22 when I went to grad school. So I think that is something important to say. I really quickly became a daily drinker. Like within the first year I was drinking every day. Now I know that this is called telescoping, but I wasn't aware of it then. But once I started drinking, I very quickly progressed into problematic drinking and daily drinking and mental health took a huge hit. That was the inspiration for quitting. I became really depressed. I developed anxiety, which would keep me up. I used

to do this really lovely thing on the nights that I got really drunk, which was a few nights per week. And I would force myself to stay awake until the sun came up, just thinking about like what a horrible loser I am, which then makes you feel even worse the next day, because now you didn't sleep at all. And eventually that thing that I was doing in the middle of the night turned into that plus suicidal thoughts. And that's why I ultimately stopped. And I tried for 90 days to cure myself because I thought I just had a high tolerance. It was a bad habit. Then I went back to drinking, blew everything up again, suicidal thoughts again.

to drinking, blew everything up again, suicidal thoughts again. But then that allowed me to really accept that I just can't change the way that I drink. And it's been just about three years. And I did it all by myself in the beginning. I was very resistant to getting support. I thought that it meant I was strong if I could do it on my own. And so it took me a few months to get some support, but eventually I did. And I started working with a therapist and that just changed everything for me. So I wish I had done it sooner, but, and I still work with the same therapist today. So you mentioned you didn't drink until you were 22 and that when you drank, your emotional health began to suffer. You developed

anxiety, suicidal thoughts came. I'm curious what your mental and emotional health was like at 21 or 20 or 19, because very often we are drinking because we're not feeling great in the first place. Yeah. I just had other strategies that were self-destructive pre-22. So my first love was restricting food and over-exercising and like trying to control my weight. That was my first love. And when that's your main interest, drinking isn't really a priority because people get the drunchies and everybody knows like drinking and weight loss, like it kind of doesn't go together. It's hard.

So that was the main reason that I had no interest in it in college because I just wanted to be super thin. But then in grad school, everybody drank except for me. And I thought they wouldn't want to be friends with me if I didn't drink too. So then I started trying it. And then I almost immediately realized like, this fixes my problems way better than restricting food and overexercising ever did. So I dropped the disordered eating. I didn't need that anymore. And then I just started drinking. So I had other things that I did. I was never good at dealing with emotions. I got very overwhelmed and things felt out of control. And then I didn't know what to do with that. So that's why I was drawn to self-destructive things to just like calm me down very quickly. to self-destructive things to just like calm me down very quickly. Yeah. And so after you got sober, and I want to explore your getting sober period a little bit more because there's some really interesting things in there also. But after you got sober, did you find that any of those eating and exercise issues came back?

No, actually, which is really good. And I know not everyone's going to have that experience, but I had worked with a therapist when I was 22 to work on that stuff. And that helped change my mindset around it. And I realized like the way that I was obsessing was leading to all of the stuff that I hated. And I learned to eventually just take care of myself and not worry so much about tracking or macros. So I learned to just kind of relax. And also part of my sobriety journey was improving my body image. That was always a struggle for me. And it took a while. It took probably like six months before I looked in the mirror and I gave myself a compliment for the first time, just like a quick one, not even a good one, just a quick, like neutral comment.

And then I realized like, wow. So yeah, body image was always a struggle. It still is sometimes, but it's a lot better. But thankfully, I didn't return to that. You mentioned that your mental health got worse as you drank. And I think this is an area that's worth exploring. And it's sort of an obvious one in a way, which is that we start drinking drugs, whatever it is, as an emotional coping tool. And it works. You know, it's why we throw ourselves into it wholeheartedly. Or I should say for some of us, it works really well. And those are the ones of us who end up having a problem.

But then over time, I often think of it as this sort of scale, right, of positive versus negative benefits, right, from alcohol. And for me in the beginning, alcohol and drugs were like 100% positive, zero negative. You know, there was a period of time where, and then that ratio slowly starts to change, you know, until, at least with me, I was completely upside down. The benefit I was getting at the end for me, it was heroin. The benefit I was getting was the end for me, it was heroin. The benefit I was getting was so marginal compared to the extraordinary cost I was paying. So it sounds like something similar happened to you, which was these things made my emotions easier to deal with at first until all of a sudden it made it all worse. Yeah. And my problem was I didn't recognize

that it was alcohol for a really long time. So I still thought I was getting 100% benefits. I thought I was just a suicidal, anxious person that hated myself. I thought that was all me and it was my fault. And like, oh, look, just another problem to add to my list. And I never realized it was alcohol until I actually stopped. And then I saw like, wow, I don't feel this way anymore.

This is shocking. Yeah. Well, what's really interesting about that is the nuance in it is that you probably were an anxious person who didn't like herself before you started. So that was actually there. So it wasn't like alcohol caused all that. But over time, I think what starts to happen, and you write a lot about what happens to our brains scientifically, biochemically around alcohol, is that over time, alcohol now starts to magnify and starts to amplify what was already there. And there are good reasons why alcohol causes anxiety. Yeah, exactly. It took the problems that I started with, that alcohol was fixing for me, and then it just enhanced them, which then made me want to drink more

to deal with my problems, which then enhanced the problem even more. And it created this awful cycle that eventually I became desperate enough to try to get out of it. But yeah, it made it worse and worse and worse. And over the years, I would blame tequila. That was my first. It's tequila that's making me so depressed. So I can't drink margaritas anymore. That must be why. And I would blame like certain little things or it's this person's fault. It's not precious alcohol. But then as time went on and it continued to get worse, eventually I had to face it. I lost all the excuses. Yeah. It's really interesting because I think I, like you, I started my heavy drinking a little bit later. I was 18, which is still even late by some standards. I had done it a little bit

in high school and I drank strangely from the beginning, but I didn't do it often. And then I quit for a number of years completely. So when I started again, I've never heard that term telescoping. I telescoped really, really quickly. But I think I realized relatively early on that there was a problem, that there was something not normal about my drinking. I'm amazed I sort of even realized that because I was around a ton of hard drinking and hard drugging people. And yet I just something inside me had this sense something wasn't right. You know, I think at the age of 19, so I've maybe been drinking a year, maybe I was 19 or 20 a year and a half at that point, I moved, I moved to San Francisco, because I was trying to change my drinking. But it's interesting how we can sort

of have a sense of it a little bit, but denial being so strong. And when we see alcohol or drugs as truly our salvation, it's very difficult to question it. I wanted to hit something else that you said in there. I think you said it really well. You said that I realized I couldn't change the way I drank. Say a little bit more about that. Yeah, so I started questioning my drinking two years in when my tolerance had doubled and I was getting blackout drunk on my couch by myself often. And I realized one day, like, this is a lot of alcohol. That was why I first started questioning it. I'm like, you are drinking a lot every day. Like, this is a lot.

So then naturally, I thought, okay, well, let's moderate. Let's just moderate our drinking. That's the solution. Drink less. And I couldn't, I just couldn't figure it out. But I was obsessed with figuring it out. And I would spend the next five years researching it. Like I would wake up every day and I would research, how do you moderate your drinking? And I would find all these strategies online, or I would make them up myself. I'd get my husband involved. I did the craziest stuff to try to control it. And I thought like, if I could just practice starting and stopping enough times, I'll be able to stop naturally. Because that was my problem. I just needed practice drinking moderately. I tried so hard. I was so desperate. And that was the main reason I

did the 90 day challenge. It was because nothing was working for five years. And I thought like 90 days will reset my tolerance and then I'll moderate. So I was so desperate to change my drinking. And I really believed that it was possible. I thought if I just practiced enough or found the right strategy that I could change it. And I never thought I would have to be sober. I just thought I had to keep trying, even though I had five years of failures. I never succeeded at it. Yeah. Well, you used a word in there. It was my obsession. And there is a line in the AA Big Book that says something like the idea that he would be able to drink normally is the great

obsession of every alcoholic, right? That is the obsession is to figure that out. There's another line in there that I didn't understand with as much nuance as I do now. And the line was that, the alcoholic cannot control and enjoy his drinking. I realized that there was something very specific in there. And what it meant was I could try and control it. And I wasn't very good at it, but I could really lean in and work, but I hated it. It was miserable. Or I could enjoy it. Just let my hands off the wheel, let it go. But I could not do both. And that was really important to me. And some listeners know, I got sober at 24 from a

heroin addiction, stayed sober about eight years, went out and drank again. And when I was starting to realize the second time around that, oh God, I might, this is not going well. There's a problem here. I was like, well, I know what sobriety means. Like it's abstinence. It's back to AA. Like, no, no, no, no. So I joined moderation management, which is a program out there to teach you to moderate. And I joked that if it came down to the effort I put into it, I would have been the valedictorian of moderation management. I so desperately did not want the answer to be zero, but I utterly simply could not do it. There were some nights I could do it. Some nights I could sit there and be like, all right, that's my three drinks. But I was cheating from the beginning. Like, well, they say

like two drinks, four ounce drinks. So I'm having two, eight ounce drinks. I mean, immediately I was gaming the system. And I just remember these nights, I'm sure you can relate, of standing by my kitchen sink. Let's say it's 11 at night and I have maybe already gone over my goal or I'm right at it. I'm about to walk upstairs and go to bed and the whiskey bottle is sitting there and the agonizing I did. There was no reason on God's green earth to take another drink at that point. None. I was going to bed and yet it just tore me apart inside trying to do it. So that moderation is such an interesting thing. So you realize your last attempt at this is if I stay sober for 90 days, that's going to reset the clock and I'm going to be able to moderate. And so you do that. Then what happens?

Then I actually moderated and I never moderated. For two months? Three days? Okay. Two months. And I didn't start my drinking by moderating. I just like went nuts right from the beginning. So I never knew moderation ever. So I took the 90 days off and then I went from being a daily drinker down to having two glasses of wine out on a date with my husband on Saturday nights, stopping on my own because I was good and then not wanting any more. I thought like, I did it. I cured myself. Look at me. I can do it. But what was happening in the background was I was completely isolating.

I refused to see anyone because if I hung out with other people, they would make me drink too much. So I didn't hang out with anyone. I just stayed in my house where it was safe. And then I went out with my husband for my two drinks. And then we went on a cruise. And that's where it ended. So before we go on the cruise, I have a couple other questions about this period of moderation time. You weren't actually drinking more than that. Were you thinking about drinking? No. Or was it kind of just not really a big deal? I was actually in my mind cured. I was completely cured. I wasn't resisting cravings. I wasn't like white knuckling it and forcing myself to stop.

I wanted two glass of wine on Saturday night and that's all I did. And I didn't want any the other six days. So I didn't have any. And I thought like, wow, look at me. I did it. Yeah. It sounds like it. Yeah. So then you go on a cruise. And we had the drink package. Oh, yeah. And, you know, the goal was always to drink on special occasions and then do my little two drinks a week moderating. Vacations are special occasions, right? They are. Even though it was a 10-day vacation.

Still special. It's still 10 days of specialness. I could drink the way I wanted, which meant waking up in the morning and drinking and then drinking all day and drinking all night. And I did that for 10 days straight. And it was my first time in Europe. It was a cruise I'd wanted to go on for my whole life. It was my first time in Europe. It was a cruise I'd wanted to go on for my whole life. And I humiliated myself so bad all across Europe multiple times. It was constant.

So much humiliation. I cannot even look at the pictures. So drunk. Awful. All I did was drink. And then I came home and I was right back to normal. Daily drinking, no control, no off switch. And I couldn't, I'm like, where'd my moderation go? What happened? And I couldn't get it back. I was in Europe this summer and they are still talking about your creatives over there. I'm sure they are. Jill was in town. So your moderation disappears

and you're back to drinking kind of in an out of control way. And then you decide, okay, that's it. This isn't going to work. I can't change my drinking. And you give it up. Yeah. So I tried for four more months to get back moderation and all the bad stuff came back right away.

There was no gap between the vacation and the bad stuff. And I suffered for four months. And then one day I was just like, something bad will happen to me if I keep doing this. Because I was so suicidal on nights that I would get really drunk. And I was afraid I'm going to do something about this. Because my husband will sometimes go away for work or he'll go on a motorcycle trip. So sometimes I'm alone. And those were the nights that I really went for it.

So I started seeing my future where something like that would happen. And then I would act on those really scary thoughts that I was having. And that was enough for me to just say, I can't do this anymore. I knew I didn't want that stuff, even though I hated myself so much at the time. And I just stopped. And I told my husband, we were watching the sun come up because I had kept us up all night with my misery. And he always tried to take care of me and comfort me. And I looked at him and I was like, right? Poor guy. It was years, years of not sleeping for him. And I looked at him and I said, I can never drink ever again. And that was that.

So I have a few questions related to that. The first is, as we've said, every alcoholic or addict alcoholic has this idea like, well, I could handle it again, right? I could do it differently, right? I mean, that's how I drank again after eight years, right? I was like, alcoholic, has this idea like, well, I could handle it again, right? I could do it differently, right? I mean, that's how I drank again after eight years, right? I was like, well, you know, I was doing heroin then, and we all know that's a bad idea, right? I'm not going to do that again. Like, let's just leave that off the table. And I was so much younger, and I've done so much therapy, and I've done eight years of recovery. I was looking, I was like, I make good decisions in my life. Like, you know, I'm a dad. I make good decisions about my son. I'm successful in my career. I make good decisions there. Surely I can do this again. And like you, I actually had

a short period of moderation where I was like, oh, look, the world didn't end. I took a drink and the world didn't end. But I feel like I had a lot of cycles of this and maybe you did in your own way, but it sounds to me like part of my brain, if I was you, would be saying, all right, you've quit and we know when you quit again that you reset and you were doing fine. So let's just reset and then let's not go on a cruise. How do you work with that thought when it comes up? Because I'm sure it does, right? Yeah, 18 months was very challenging for me because I had a lot of those thoughts. I thought often around that milestone, maybe it's been long enough. Maybe you weren't actually that bad and you went overboard.

And I was getting to know more people in the sober community. And some people just have more extreme stories. And I would hear their stories and I'd be like, well, I wasn't that bad. So maybe I wasn't bad at all. Maybe I just, you know, went overboard with this whole sober thing. And that's what I meant in the beginning about like indulging the thoughts, because even though I had a lot of those thoughts, I didn't follow them down into the hole. I recognize like, no, you've talked yourself into this before and you know how it goes. And maybe I could moderate if I completely isolated and didn't do anything. But you can't isolate 100% of the time forever. And it's just not worth it for me to go back to that place.

Because between the cruise and stopping for good, there were four really, really painful months. And it's not like you can moderate a little bit and then have a bad night and go back to sobriety. Sometimes it takes months or years of blowing up your life before you can get back to sobriety. Sometimes it takes months or years of blowing up your life before you can get back to sobriety again. And what helps me the most is like being a part of the sober community, like with my page and my podcast and the work that I do. So I feel a lot of accountability and that helps me resist the thoughts too. But I do have them. My mind like desperately wants me to try to moderate again. Yeah, you bring up several, I think, important things there. And one is, I think it's really important to realize

like we can't always come back. I know people who got sober when I did the first time and went back out like I went back out and they are still out. Every time I see them, they talk about getting back in and year after year after year, they can't do it. They simply cannot make it stick. So again, the reasons why some of us are able to get sober and others aren't is truly one of life's great mysteries to me. I don't understand it, but that's one thing that helps me is like, you may not have

another recovery in you. Like the second time around for me was so much harder than the first time. I don't know why. I mean, I can isolate some of the variables about why it might have been harder. But I mean, I just was plagued by cravings for a long time, far longer than the first time around. It felt like a real battle. So I think that idea of what you're saying is really valuable, which is that you don't know that you're going to get back. And then the other thing I think you touched on, which is another point that I kind of want to call out is the risk to reward factor. The reward for you if you moderated would be two drinks on Saturday night, right? Okay, that's nice.

The risk is outsized, right? It's suicide in your case. It's a likely progression to suicide. So I think that's the other thing for those of us that get trapped with moderation thoughts that works for me very often is to be like, okay, yeah, maybe, but what's the reward to risk? You know, if I moderate, I'm having a couple of drinks a week. I mean, is that going to make my life incredibly better? No,

it might make an hour of my life better, but the risks in my case have been proven over and over again, which I will burn my life to the ground. You know, it will happen. It might take a month. It might take a year. It might take three years, but that seems to be the thing. So I think that risk to reward ratio. And then the last piece you called out there, I think is also really valuable is recognizing the impact of what I'm doing on others. And that impact is easier to recognize when we're sober and not in denial. When you're drinking, you have to do everything in your mind to minimize that, to keep drinking.

But when we're sober, we're able to see it. So I think you identified like three really useful strategies there for like working with, maybe I could moderate thoughts, which I think everybody in recovery has them. I think they are just part of the territory. Some more than others, but we all have them from time to time. Yeah, and for me, just the fact that I have those thoughts means I can't moderate. I also accept that.

I'm like, my husband would never think about it. Sometimes I get so envious of him, but he just randomly stopped drinking for like three months last summer, in the summer too. And he never had like, maybe it's been long enough or you know he just randomly didn't want it yep and i can compare my experience to his experience and see like the way that i try to talk myself back into it means i can't do it. So having him in my life has been so helpful for me because I have an example of like how different my drinking is from what like I wish it could ever be.

Yep. Yep. Totally. I heard you on another podcast and the woman said something that I'm amazed in having been in recovery more or less since I was 25. I've never heard before. You guys were talking about this question of, am I alcoholic or not? And she said, you know, nobody ever has to ask themselves, like, am I a frog? Which cracks me up. Like, you just know, like, well, I mean, it never comes up because I'm clearly not a frog. But if I asked myself often enough, if I was a frog, we would know there was something wrong. And I thought that was great because, you know, the answer to am I alcoholic or, you know, maybe that's not even the right word anymore, right? Do I have a problem with alcohol? Or

there's lots of different ways to phrase it. The answer is sort of embedded in the question to some degree, if we have to think about it that much. Because like you said, your husband does not have to think about that. He does not have to wonder, am I? Am I not? Because he simply isn't. Yeah, there's no questioning it for him, because he's truly a take it or leave it drinker. He can take it or leave it. He doesn't care. That's the definition. And the fact that we have the obsession part means we're not a take it or leave it drinker, which is the goal. Like we don't want to be a controlled drinker. We want to be a take it or leave it drinker.

And we just can't because our mind thinks about it 100% of the time. That's all I thought about before. 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?

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, 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. Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So you're in the sober community, the sober world, and one of the things that I've seen emerge from that world a lot over the last number of years that simply was never present when I was getting sober is this harm reduction idea. This idea that, you know what, not everybody maybe will get sober. Maybe not everybody has to get completely sober. But if you go from 15 drinks a week to three drinks a week, that's a vast improvement. You know, as I refer to it, my inner addict perks its ears up at harm reduction and goes, well,

they got a really good point, right? And I think they do have a really good point, point, right? And I think they do have a really good point, just not for me. So how do you think about this idea of one size doesn't fit all? I don't even know if the word would be recovery, but let's use recovery. Let's throw harm reduction under recovery and say this one size doesn't fit all. Because it seems to me that there is somewhere between where your husband is, which is truly don't care, and where maybe I am, there are clearly places in between there. How do you think about that? Yeah, I think that's an amazing question. I think about what you were saying about how you did moderation management. Like imagine if you and I were both drinking today and we had all of these options. Like there are apps. This would be a good podcast.

Yep. There are apps that help you drink less and like, you know, teach you. You can hire a coach to teach you to drink less and give you accountability. Like there's so many things that you can do now to try to learn to drink less. And I would have given them all of my money, all of it.

Yeah. Take it. Please help me. And I think it's a mixture of people. I think it's some just desperate, desperate people that go into that and try to learn to moderate and they stay stuck for longer because there's more options for them, like more options of giving it a try, where I had less options. So I was able to just throw up my hands sooner. And I think there's other people in there that are super curious. And they're not as far down the spectrum as you or I am, where they don't completely lose control. They are able to moderate sometimes. Other times they go overboard. They can resist cravings occasionally and stop at two drinks.

They're early on, but the way that I see it is you can't go back down the spectrum. You can take a pause and you can chill. Like I'm paused. I'm chilling where I am in the spectrum. But you can't go back. Yeah. That's what I think. I think harm reduction, obviously drinking less is better.

If you used to drink 30 drinks a week and now you drink 10, it's just better. It's obviously better. But the obsession might be exactly the same or it might be even more intense because you really want 50, but you're forcing yourself to have 10. So I think it just keeps a lot of people stuck in the loop or it slows down the progression to them just giving it up. And I also think it's just like a stupid drink. Like I know if I said that to me three years ago, I would have been like, you don't understand me. Get out of here

with that. You don't understand my struggles. But now that I'm sober, we're fighting for just a stupid drink. It's not essential for life. It's not like it's food or connection with other people. It's just a stupid drink that's not required. And now, thankfully, we have so many non-alcoholic alternatives that people can enjoy. So I think fighting so hard to keep something that's not essential in your life should also just kind of be a sign. If you're giving a coach thousands and thousands of dollars to help you learn to drink less because you can't drink less on your own, like it just slows down the quitting in my

mind. I think it works for some and it pushes the pause for a bit on their progression, but I don't think it takes them backwards to where my husband is. What do you think? I have a lot of different opinions. You know, I tend to agree with you to a certain extent. The premise of moderation management was not everybody's bad enough that they need to give it up completely. I think that is a valid premise. What I saw in moderation management, and again, this is 15 years ago, was a bunch of people who were just like me, who are desperately trying to take it from alcoholic drinking to normal drinking. And it wasn't working for the vast majority of them. You know, now I am very glad that I did moderation management, by the way,

and maybe spending thousands of dollars on a coach and spending time with an app is sometimes what we need to kill off the belief that we can moderate. Like moderation management was good for me because I, whenever I start thinking about it, I'm like, look, we've tried this. You worked really hard at this. You know, you joined a program for this and it did not work. So I think there is some value in that. I think your point also about it's just a stupid drink is a really interesting perspective. Like, why are we fighting so hard to keep something in our life that shouldn't be that valuable? If it's that valuable, it might speak to how reliant we are on it. It was interesting

when I got sober from heroin, I knew a couple people who got sober on methadone. And I know methadone and suboxone have a big community out there of a lot of people who are helped by those. The opinion that I had at that time, and I have tamed it a little bit and been willing to go like, well, not everybody is me. It's a different opinion. But the feeling I had at that time was I am so glad that I am fully sober. And the reason was not that I think taking methadone is a problem if it stops all that behavior, but not having any substance forced me to grow mentally, spiritually, emotionally. It made it a criticality and it drove me into community. And so when I looked at my life then versus these people's lives, I went, my life feels really rich and alive and theirs just doesn't in the same way. And again, I don't think

that's for everybody, but I think there is something to be said for that. I think the other thing that harm reduction points to, and this is another one that I have mixed opinions on, is that not everybody is capable of full abstinence. And it goes back to, I don't know why some of us get sober and others don't. It's a mystery, you know? And there's a part of me that wants to be like, everybody's capable of it. But there's also a part of me that says, maybe not. Maybe not for a variety of reasons. Maybe not. And if full abstinence isn't within the realm of capability for that person, then harm reduction is a great strategy. And I think if we look at harm reduction

as a global public health measure, it's a great thing. But when you trickle it down to an individual, I think we have to really look at, are we selling that person short perhaps? So I don't know. These are controversial opinions, right? I mean, nobody talked about this when I got sober. It just wasn't in the air. It was, if you end up in an AA meeting, you're an alcoholic and the only thing for you is to get sober. And even more so, here's the only way to do it, broadly speaking. So the recovery world is so different than it was 25 years ago in Columbus. I'm stunned by its diversity. And I think ultimately that's a good thing. Yeah. I think that's really interesting what you said about how trying everything you can to

moderate is helpful. And that was true for me. I just didn't have as many options as there are today. But the reason I don't return to drinking is because of the 90 days and because I moderated after and then I saw I blew up my life again, the same loop. But without that, I would still be going back and forth forever. And what I've seen in the sober community because I've been in it for so long is there are some people that unfortunately fall for moderation and those thoughts of, you know, maybe I can give mindful drinking a shot and you see them kind of disappear. And when someone disappears, not always, but sometimes it's because they've returned to drinking. And I've seen some people, you know, come back and they say, you know, I tried moderation. I blew up my life again. I'm miserable.

I'm back. But then they like don't fully come back and then they like try to give it a go and they disappear and then they're back in the loop. So I think having so many options for trying to learn to drink mindfully can also harm people where they wouldn't have so many options before. And they would just give up and be like, okay, well, you know, I tried it. But now there's so many more things that you can try and new things are coming out all the time. And it's like, this works for this person. Maybe it would work for me. And so I think it can also trap us too and make us think it's possible again. Yep. Yep. Let's change direction a little bit. You said that you got sober without help in the beginning, and then you realized that wasn't the best approach. So you got a therapist.

And then from there, you started to build more of a community around yourself. I would love to just maybe examine that journey. At what point did you realize like, oh, help really would be a good idea here? What was going on that caused you to go from your, I'm going to do this by myself because I'm strong, to like, eh, that's not the best idea. What was happening then that brought that realization on? Quarantine happened. So if it didn't happen, I probably would have just continued on my way, doing it on my own because I'm so strong.

So I quit drinking in November right before the holiday season. And there were so many parties and so many happy hours and people in science just drink a lot. So there were a lot of drinking parties to go to. And I would go to them and not drink and I would, you know, get through it. And then I would cry from the stress. And then I would feel good about myself afterwards. So it wasn't all negative. But I kept doing that. And, you know, I got through it and it was fine. And then quarantine happened and we all got sent home and I was a lab worker, so I could not do my job from home. So for me, going to therapy before felt like everybody would know,

like I'd have to leave work early, like the same time every week. And so that was why I didn't do it. But then when we were all sent home, I was like, now no one knows if I use my lunch break for therapy because I don't have to leave. So that convinced me to give it a shot. And then I found my current therapist and she helped me so much to learn just like how to deal with stuff. I still wasn't learning that. In the beginning, I was sober and like I accepted, you know, this is just the way that it is. But I wasn't working on how to deal with stuff and work through problems without getting super overwhelmed. So I don't know what would have happened if I didn't find therapy. But thankfully, I did. I don't know what would have happened if I didn't find therapy, but thankfully I did.

I don't know what order this happened for you, but I can see two points in time. I can see I started therapy and I can see I started a sober podcast, right? What was going on in between there? Did you build a community and that community gave you the idea? How did that all happen? So I had a bit of community in sober Facebook groups. Okay. happen? So I had a bit of community in sober Facebook groups where I would post and interact with people and make some friendships there. But I didn't know about all the other options

for community. I was just on Facebook and going to therapy and living my life as normal. And then in my spare time every day, I had been researching addiction because I just wanted to understand, like, why me? That was my main mission in sobriety, to help alleviate, hopefully, the shame, unless I discovered it was actually my fault. So I spent every night educating myself about addiction and why it happened. And eight months into sobriety, that's when I got the idea to do the podcast. My body image had improved. My self-hatred had improved. And I was feeling so much better and more comfortable that I just woke up one day and I was like, everybody needs to know what I know. And I just started it that day. And I just wanted to share with people like, why did this happen to you

and why it's not because you're a loser or because you're a weak person. I just wanted them to understand like you're not a loser basically. Yeah. And then, yeah, I just put it out there. That's really interesting that you did that and I want to go to that.

And I think that speaks to one of the dangers of going it alone. I think you don't hear that message often enough, like you're not a loser, you're not broken, you're not, which is one of the great things about a support group, whichever one you might pick, whether it be Alcoholics Anonymous or Rational Recovery or Smart Recovery. I mean, there's so many of them, Refuge Recovery or Dharma Recovery, is that, you know, one of the biggest things I got out of AA early on was seeing lots of other people who I looked at and I'm like, they seem like normal, good people. And they would tell stories like my story. And I'd be like, oh, yeah.

And we would talk about how, you know, alcoholism, the prevailing idea then was it was a disease. And we may get into that because I think that's an interesting area to talk about. Is it a disease? Is it not? What does that mean? But it certainly took it from moral failing, right? It took it out of the moral failing. And so I think that's one of the benefits of being around other people in recovery. So you started the podcast because you had kind of learned all this on your own. And then you had a desire to share with others. Then once you started doing that, did you start to develop a community around yourself and then think to yourself like, oh boy, this is really great. Yeah. So that same day that I started the show, I also got an Instagram and that was when I learned of the whole sober community on Instagram. And that community is much tighter than what's inside Facebook groups. And I was making like real friends and just interacting with people more

and more. And then I observed the same thing, like someone would share a story. And it would be someone that I admired that had, you know, much more time than me. And I would see her story and she'd share maybe something really embarrassing that she did. And I would think like, I don't think she's a loser. So why do I have to be a loser? And then that helped me a lot. And what helped me in Facebook groups was I thought like people were going to take me away because I felt suicidal from drinking alcohol. I thought I was going to get the 72 hour hold, even though it had been like months. And therefore, like I can't tell anybody, I have to keep it to myself forever. And eventually, like months and months and months in, I got the courage to share in a Facebook group. I think it was just like a little comment.

I didn't even make a post. And so many people commented in response to my comment. And they were like, me too. And people were messaging me their story if they didn't want to comment publicly. And I saw like, wow, that didn't just happen to me. Like, I really believed all of my struggles were unique. Yeah. And I think that's really bad about doing it alone too, is none of our struggles are unique,

even down to the teeniest, tiniest detail. And once you learn that, it's like, well, of course I'm not a loser now. Like, I'm seeing it better. It's not just me. It happens to thousands of people. Yeah. And I think what we're speaking to here is that it may be possible for some people to do it alone. I don't think it would have been for me, but it might theoretically be possible to do it alone. But that's not the important question, maybe. Maybe the important question is, what's the way to do this that's going to most enhance my life? You know, what's the way of doing this that's going to take something that has been up till now a terrible

struggle and shame and turn it into, for lack of a better word, an asset, right? And my experience has been that's what happens in community. Right. Because we're a giving other people the ability to do that for us by sharing their story. They're able to help us. And then vice versa. We're able to help others by sharing our stories. And that reciprocal community relationship is so healing. Yeah. And just knowing that someone that you look up to has also done a bunch of stuff that's shameful or bad, like whatever you want to call it, just seeing that other people have struggled too in a way that, you know, was some kind of consequence or something negative, that helps me a lot. And you see all types of different sober people too. You see people that completely blew up their lives

and that's why they're sober. You see sober curious people that didn't have too many consequences, but they just decided, I don't wanna feel like crap anymore. You see all sorts of people in the middle. You see people that gave it up for health. So wherever you're at in your journey,

you can see like, wow, that person didn't blow up their life and then they quit and now they're happier. So maybe I don't have to be like the worst drinker ever to give this a shot too. So I think seeing all the different types of people in the community is so helpful. Yeah. And I think another important piece in there is that you're pointing to the diversity and community. And if you're not finding people that seem like you, either one of two things is going on. One is you are focusing totally on the

ways in which you're different, not the ways you're similar, which is a very common thing in early recovery, right? We just want to disqualify ourself, you know, I'm not like that. But the second is you may not be in the right spot, right? So there are a lot of different options out there in a way that again, for me, there just wasn't in, you know, Columbus, Ohio in 1994. There are so many different places that you can seek community and you can find people that are like you and that you can relate with. And so I think A is try to look for the similarities, not the differences, but B, keep looking. If what you find doesn't make sense to you, keep looking. And I say the same thing, even if the recommendation or somebody is like doing AA, it's like, don't go to a meeting

and decide it's the wrong thing. Don't even go to that same meeting five times and determine it's the wrong thing. Like, try some other ones. Because even within one group like AA in one city, the differences in the type of group and the spirit and the energy in that group can be radically different. I mean, almost night and day in some ways. And so community is there if we're persistent in looking for it. Yeah. And you can even lurk in a community now. You can just follow people on Instagram and just kind of observe or join a Facebook group and observe or Twitter, TikTok, like they're everywhere, YouTube. So you can just observe until you're

comfortable and then enter the community. So we're really fortunate that there are so many sober people on social media now. Let's talk a little bit about an idea that I think you have said that I think is important. And you say, I believe that one of the keys to maintaining sobriety is breaking down those beliefs that alcohol is good and recognizing what alcohol actually does. Say a little bit more about that, why that's important, and maybe your top instance or two of what we think alcohol does for us and what it actually does for us. Yeah, so because alcohol provides instant gratification, we get fixated on that beginning part. And we think the rest of the story, all the suffering later, is more like our fault, and it's us. And we don't connect that alcohol's contributing to it. So a good example of that would be someone drinking

to manage anxiety. They feel very anxious. So then they drink and the alcohol slows down their brain. So then they feel more calm and they think, oh, alcohol helps my anxiety. Done. But then when they wake up in the middle of the night, they have the jolt, the racing heart, the anxiety, you know, all night, all the next day, their anxiety is worse. They don't connect that to the drinking that they did that night. think it just helps. And that's the end of the story. And all the rest of it is us. Same thing with depression. Like I thought I was just a depressed, bad loser. And when I drank, I had these two hours of happiness and fun and connection with my husband. And then I went back to being a miserable loser. But I wasn't connecting that those like two hours of instant gratification were fueling all of the suffering that came after. And then when I finally took a break, I recognized it. So we don't see cause and effect of our drinking. We only see

the beginning. And we're not connecting the rest of the story. And it's hard. Sometimes you can only do that through a break, like what happened for me. But we need to consider the entire story, the whole thing from after the drinking to before you start drinking the next time. If you don't drink every day, maybe you drink and then you have like cravings that you're fighting off for days. That's part of the drinking experience too. So I think not just taking that instant gratification piece, that one to two hours as the whole experience is key. 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 tonight. 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 reallyn, really. Yeah. No, really. Go to really, no, really.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. In AA, they used to say that was playing the tape all the way through. right? But I think you're doing something even a little bit beyond that, right? Which is playing the tape all the way through would be me observing my experience all the way through. And that is very valuable, very important, and very instructive, and maybe ultimately the most instructive, if I can connect all the dots. However, what you're doing with your background, you're a biochemist by trade, what you're doing is actually looking at the science and sort of providing not

the subjective experience of what happens when I drink, but the objective, here's what happens to human brains when they drink. And I think that's another valuable perspective to add. I don't think one is better than the other, but I think that's a helpful extra piece there. So let's do this with anxiety because I think you've written very well on this and I'd love to bring a little of it out here. What's happening in the brain that is causing alcohol to make me feel calm for a little bit, but then make my anxiety worse overall. What's that process? What's happening?

Yeah. So when we drink, alcohol slows down our brain. So it slows down the messages that are being sent around the brain. Or if you drink a lot, it'll stop some of them completely. So because your brain is slower, you can't have as many racing thoughts that are contributing to your anxiety. So that's why it calms you down. It doesn't help you relax. It just slows down your brain or turns things off for you.

A particular neurotransmitter? Yeah. So alcohol will stimulate something called GABA, which is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. So that is what is slowing down your brain. But as you train yourself to rely on alcohol to calm you down, the brain's going to recognize that this same process is happening over and over. And just like you develop tolerance when you have two drinks a day, and then eventually you need three and four, you develop the same kind of tolerance with your mental health. So the brain is going to want to maintain a balance at all times. And if you're constantly slowing the brain

down with alcohol, it's going to try to counteract that so it can stay at its normal brain activity level. And it does that in two ways. It makes it harder for GABA to be released. So it's harder for you to feel calm and it increases excitability in the brain. So it increases a neurotransmitter called glutamate. So when the alcohol wears off, that's why we have anxiety. So your brain is now sped up from all of this extra excitability and the alcohol is not there to balance it back out. So then your brain just is like going nuts and you can't release GABA as well as normal. So you're having trouble calming yourself down too. So then now you have all this extra anxiety and we know the perfect solution for anxiety because we've taught

ourselves that's alcohol. So then you drink some more alcohol and then over time, again, your brain will adapt, make the problem worse. And then some people will get to the point where like withdrawal for them, they just can't tolerate the anxiety that they feel because it's so intense and they keep, they'll stop for a couple of days, the anxiety's out of control, and then they'll go back to drinking again because they just can't handle it. But the longer they stay with drinking, the more their brain is adapting and the worse and worse and worse the problem is getting. And the same thing happens with depression. That's why eventually I became very suicidal. That will happen to a lot of people too. Your baseline just keeps dropping or raising depending

on the symptom. Like anxiety, the baseline is just raising over time. And yeah, so alcohol is then fueling the problem that we're trying to cope with. And it gets worse and worse and worse until it's hard to stop. Yep. And this is happening with every drug that we take. I mean, kind of across the board, right? Our brain is trying to achieve homeostasis. So if you've got something that's speeding it up, it's going to be like, hey, hang on here. Let's slow this down. If you've got something that's slowing it down, it's going to be like, whoa, we're going

to move this up. We had a guest on the show and I don't remember how she referred to it, but the essence of it was every drug has a cost, meaning that there's no free lunch. Like if you feel calm for a couple of hours, that's going to come back around on the other side. And you're probably going to pay for that with two hours of, of worse anxiety at least. Right. And as they immediately feel a little bit better. But for some people, when they get sober, they immediately feel worse and they may feel worse for a little while. And that's what this is about. Would you group all of this under sort of post-acute withdrawal? Is that sort of what all this is? Or is that even something different? So withdrawal, which happens in the first like week or two, is your brain's like, whoa, where did this thing go that I need? And it's trying to, you know, figure itself out. And it doesn't figure itself out 100% in a week or two, but it does it enough where you don't have have horrible symptoms anymore

for most people. But post-acute withdrawal is the brain chemistry balancing back out. And that's a slower process. Your brain has to learn like, oh, I need to regulate myself now. I have to do this work. I don't remember how to do that. I've been relying on alcohol or whatever it is for 20 years. So it takes more than two weeks for that process to happen. And post-acute withdrawal can last for a year, a year and a half for some people. And that can drive them back to relapse too because it's emotional symptoms.

And what fixes our emotional problems better than drugs and alcohol? So yeah, that's like the brain balancing back out. And that takes time. Even though you might feel normal, your brain is still adapting back because all the adaptation that happened didn't take two weeks. You didn't drink daily for two weeks. And then like you had all these problems. It took years and years and years. That's right. So it takes time to undo it. Well, we are out of time. I could continue doing this forever. You and I are going to talk in the post-show conversation a little bit about a couple of really important ideas. And the first is emotional sobriety, right? You say that emotional sobriety is about taking your power back, which I think is really important. So we're going to talk about emotional sobriety. you say that emotional sobriety is about taking your power back which i

think is really important so we're going to talk about emotional sobriety and then we may also talk a little bit about the brain disease model which is basically saying is addiction a disease is it a moral issue is it a choice issue what is it you know there's lots of different ideas out there and so we'll talk about that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you would like access to that and all kinds of other great things, you can make a gift to us and become part of our community by going to oneufeed.net slash join. Well, Jill, thank you so much for coming on. It has been such a pleasure to talk with you and I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me. If what you just heard was helpful to you,

please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling

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