The One You Feed - Laura McKowen on Community and Support in Sobriety

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Laura McKowen Founder and CEO of The Luckiest Club, a global sobriety support organization, and host of Tell Me Something True podcast. Laura has been published in The New York Times, and her work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, the TODAY show and more and is the bestselling author of We Are The Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life,In this episode, Eric and Laura discuss her important work in building a sobriety support community.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!Laura McKowen and I Discuss Community and Support in Sobriety and…Her tendency for people pleasingThe use of fawning as a coping mechanismRecognizing codependency in relationshipsWhy she loves reading fictionHer creation of “TLC” – The Luckiest Club as a sobriety support communityHow there’s sanity and discernment in communityUnderstanding that it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibilityLiving your own values versus someone else’s values and choosing your actions accordinglyTaking on the mission of learning the role we are meant to play in lifeLaura McKowen links:Laura’s WebsiteThe Luckiest Club Online Sobriety CommunityTell Me Something True PodcastInstagramExplore the science behind weight loss and partner with your healthcare provider for a healthy approach to your weight management, visit truthaboutweight.comWhen you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed. Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you!If you enjoyed this conversation with Laura McKowen, you might also enjoy these other episodes:The Magic of Being Sober with Laura McKowen (2020)The Freedom of Sobriety with Veronica ValliSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everything we do is a negotiation with the world. It's a call and response and a conversation. 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 reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Laura McCowan, founder and CEO of The Luckiest Club, a global sobriety support organization, and the host of the Tell Me Something True podcast. Laura has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and more, and she's the best-selling author of We Are the Luckiest, The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life. Hi, Laura. Welcome back. Hi. Thank you for having me again. Yes, I am so excited to talk to you again. I love magic of a sober life. satisfactory. I have no idea what you said. I was trying to remember. I would imagine few of our listeners would remember, although I know a bunch of them loved it. And I often recommend your book to people early in sobriety, particularly people

who love good writing. I think it's such a great book about sobriety, but you're also such a good writer and people who appreciate literature appreciate your book. So yeah, in the parable, there is a grandparent 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, thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says that 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. Yes. So I couldn't remember how I answered it the first time. I almost went to look

it up and then I thought, don't bother. But what it means to me right now in my life and my work, the battle exists in having the courage to say the truth, speak the truth, even when it is going to disappoint and possibly piss off and possibly make people really hate me and knowing that that's not personal. I guess another way of saying it is the bad wolf is playing it safe or thinking that there is such a thing as safety when you have a public voice and desiring that. And the good wolf is wanting to be free and doing whatever that means in the moment, especially when it comes to telling the truth. I had no problem. Well, it's not that I had no problem, but I've been talking about hard

things for a while and I had no problem really doing that in talking about sobriety because it was saving my life. But I feel like I've reached this point where now there are other things that I really want to talk about, but I've got a bigger platform. There's more people listening. There's more people watching. And I get afraid. That's a good wolf, bad wolf thing in my life right now. Yeah. I think it's a really interesting point because I think there's two things that start to happen. At least this has been my experience. Thing one is just a genuine fear. Like I don't want people to not like me, et cetera. The other is I don't want to drive people away from what I feel is like really important content or messaging.

Like for you, you're talking about people about getting sober. It's life and death and feeling like I don't want to drive people away from that by sort of moving quote unquote off topic in a way that starts to drive certain people away. And so for me, it's been this balance, particularly as I've begun, not begun to, as I've thought more about how do I bring issues that are beyond personal development that I care about to other things I want to talk about. There's things I want to advocate for. There's all that. And so how do I do that in a way that is helpful and useful? But I also don't want to drive people away who can be getting

something valuable out of what I'm doing. I mean, obviously, there's the like not wanting to drive away people because you don't want your numbers to go down. But then there's a genuine there's a genuineness. So I find both those I find both, you know, I'm battling a variety of factors when I start thinking about those things. Yeah. All of those things are true for me too. I think 2020 and 2021 were traumatizing. I mean, that's an understatement for everybody. And one of the things that I experienced was being a person with a public voice. It can be really nasty in the online spaces and less so in the real world. But a lot of what I do is trying to present, distill and present information in an online space. And I'm choosing

to do that. So it's like, I don't want to be light and fluffy and easy and always be safe. Right? I actually don't want that at all. But I find myself challenged to, as you said, bring in other topics and not get sucked into the dark side of it. Yeah, it's tough. To put out what I put out with integrity and then let whatever is going to happen, happen. right? Like, that's not what we do, right? And then you hit these points, at least I did, where I went, is this a political issue? This feels like it's an issue about basic values. But even conversations about basic values seem to be political these days. And it's challenging, you know? Yeah, everything's political now. So I mean, this is a whole rabbit hole, but everything is political now, you know, up to a vaccine being entirely political.

Yeah. So that's just the world we're operating in. So I'm learning how to have courage in that space. And it's honestly, for me, it's really humiliating. And like, it brings up a lot of my old junk around people pleasing. And that made me really sick. You know, it was dishonesty at the end of the day and really feeling like I lacked a center. That was not a good place for me. Yeah. There's a line that you said in a blog post not too long ago. You said, there are some things that still undo me. The worst feeling like someone I care about is mad at me. And I completely resonate with that. I think that is my biggest Achilles

heel is that very thing is like, when someone is mad at me that I care about, it's really difficult. Really difficult. Yeah. And it's a small circle of people that can undo me like that. It's the people that like that I actually care about, but it's so easy for me to snap into just my, my therapist says one of my defense mechanisms is called categorically wrong. I just go, you're right. I'm wrong. Everything I'm, everything I do is wrong. Yeah. Everything I'm wrong. And it's like this really dark shame spiral. Not helpful. In that blog post, we hear about flight and freeze.

And you mentioned that there's, you know, something called fawning. Say more about that. Oh, yeah. That was a big learning for me that we know of the fear responses typically as the, you know, fight, flight, freeze, the three Fs. But that there's actually a fourth. I can't remember the psychologist that coined it, but it's called fawning. And it's in response to fear, we fawn over someone.

We go towards them instead of running or freezing. We go towards them. We kiss their ass. We try to appease them. We abandon ourselves entirely and our needs entirely. And that's me. That was my primary coping mechanism is fawning. Not always, but with a certain type of person, you know, and of course it mimics childhood stuff and everything like that. That was really helpful to me because it named something that I've experienced so acutely. And you know when you're doing it, it doesn't make sense. It feels terrible. But it's all an appeal for safety, for keeping the attachment. It's like keep your enemies closer type of thing. If I just get closer to them, whatever I need to do to make myself okay in their eyes, then I'll be okay. Yeah, it feels terrible. And so does staying sort of centered in myself and what I think and what I

believe, which I think is the way we try and change a lot of old patterns. Sobriety being a great example. It's like early on in that change process, it's really difficult. Like, which of these feels worse? They both feel pretty bad. Yeah, no kidding. It's a true dilemma in the Greek tragedy sense of the word. You're not picking between one nice, peaceful road and one, you know, terrible road. It's both, both feel terrible. It's just, which is gonna, you know, good wolf, bad wolf type of thing. It's like, yeah, it does feel terrible. I mean, for me, you know, I found it was intolerable to sit with myself. Discomfort if someone was mad at me was absolutely intolerable. So, you know, I have to give myself some credit that I don't do it so much anymore.

But there, of course, still are instances here and there where, you know, one is where my partner and I got into a fight about three months ago. And we've been together for almost a couple years at this point and have a really beautiful, solid relationship. And when we got into this fight, and it wasn't like World War II, it wasn't even a big fight, but this is where we go, right, in conflict. For me, it felt like the relationship was on the line. And it took everything in me not to just try to fix it, just immediately fix it. And the couple days where the storm was brewing between us and just had to like, wait for it to settle were really, really difficult for me. And when I told him, you know, after we finally did talk that it feels to

me like the relationship is threatened. He was shocked. It's like, really? You know, we're just fighting like this is settle down, Laura. Yeah, we're just fighting like this is this is fine. But that's trauma stuff kicking up. That's right. It doesn't feel fine. I think with stuff like this, I think we often think that we'll get to a point where we'll do enough healing and enough inner work where we'll be able to do that sort of thing. Like I'm going to say something's not okay with me and then I'm going to step back and I'm not going to fall. I heard this from somebody recently, step into my power. And I was like, well, yes, you are stepping into your power. But it's really important that you recognize you're not going to feel powerful. Probably in that moment, you're going to feel terrified. If you wait until you feel powerful to do it, there will be no doing

it, you know. And so I think what you're saying is so important is like, yeah, I was able to do it, but boy, it didn't feel very good. No, it felt terrible. Not sleeping, not eating, you know, the full catastrophe. But you do it. And that's what it means to be in love with someone, whether it's a partner or a sibling or a friend. If you feel comfortable 100% of the time, and you're never afraid, and you're never never hurt and you're never feeling the weight of loving them. My friend, Jim Zartman, who's a coach and a pastor says, you know, like being married, this is quite gruesome, but it's like each of you has a revolver that you put your partner's finger on the trigger and you just trust that they don't point it at your head and you trust

that they're not going to pull it. You know, so that's just the way it is. If you're really open, you're going to risk being shot. You know, I think that's an interesting idea. I've seen more and more of this. I feel like when I first got sober, which was like 1994, but I think even probably around when you got sober and when I got sober again, the second time the second time, there was a lot of talk about codependency. And I think some of this I got from Buddhism, which can be interpreted this way if you're not careful. The sense was that the psychologically healthy person was this independent, whatever you do doesn't affect me.

I'm so secure that I don't get ruffled by anything. And what I've seen really change over the last, really probably last four or five years, is more of an understanding that, kind of like you're saying, that healthy love means that we are vulnerable to someone and we can be hurt. So I think it's sorting that out. Like what's trauma informed response? What's unhealthy response? And what's normal human like, my partner is upset with me. So of course it feels bad. God, yes, absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up. Codependency is real. You know, there, there is very dysfunctional codependency.

But I think the truth is always somewhere in the middle, as we know. And healthy places in the middle and balance, it's murky. I've said to him many times, you could really hurt me. You know, at the beginning of our relationship, it was like, wow, you know, you could really hurt me. And I hadn't really been in a partnership like quite like that before. It's wonderful because you're all in and it's terrifying because you're all in. And we do depend on each other. It is murky. I definitely don't have the answers to that. It's like, you know it when you feel it kind of, but to give a point by point description of the difference is really difficult. I think even healthy relationships can have a small amount of codependency. You know, if you're an attuned

person, I mean, I'm very attuned to other people's energy, then my daughter too. And when they're upset, I feel upset. Does that make me unhealthy? I don't think so. It's, I guess, what I do in response to that if I need them to be okay for me to be okay then we are drifting into unhealthy territory but I think otherwise it's just loving I think what you said there's really important like how do I respond to them in a way that doesn't make it about me exactly doesn't make them being upset, them being down into suddenly about me. And there are people I've had in my life before, maybe I was one of these people at some point, where no matter what it is, it immediately sort of flips into like, they feel bad. You know, I no longer even feel comfortable feeling bad.

Yeah. Now I have to rescue you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's a responsibility thing, I think, at the end of the day. But it's overlapping circles. You know, there's not you exist here and I exist here and we never cross. We do. But at the end of the day, you feel responsible for your own experience. Yep.

You mentioned fight, flight, freeze, fawning. I heard another term recently for it, which was flopping. She made me laugh. I was like, that kind of just, yeah, I've been there. That sort of describes me. Fight, flight, freeze. Yeah. So none of those are flopping. That's hilarious. You just kind of collapse in on yourself. Yeah. Go to sleep. Yeah. I've flopped. The flopping and fawning feel more true to me than the other three.

Yeah, exactly. Me too. Me too. Yeah. We were talking about this a little bit beforehand, but maybe we could hit on this as a general topic. You recently published something on one of your social channels about some books that you've loved recently. And maybe before we go into what any of them are, the books you've talked about were fiction books. Talk to me about what fiction specifically gives you that feels so important and valuable. Okay. I love this topic. You know, I would say I'm traditionally much more of a nonfiction memoir lover.

Like that would be my first love maybe. But ironically, several of the books that have been instructive to me and helpful to me, I would say the top three or four of them are not memoir or nonfiction. They're novels. And I'd have to say it's the mythology of it all. What we get to experience in fiction is some representation of a myth. So then it kind of widens the aperture of what's possible because real life is just real life. It can only get as strange as real life gets or whatever. But fiction, I mean, you can include magical surrealism, you can include fantasy, you can include, you know, historical fiction, you can include things that are true and not true and anything, you know, and so you can use those tools to create a myth. And to me, the myths are what

we're always after. This timeless stories, the archetypal stories that live within myth. And to me, the myths are what we're always after, this timeless stories, the archetypal stories that live within us. And so, for example, one of the books that I posted was the Book of Longings, which you and I talked about, which is a fictional story about an alternate story of Jesus. Obvious as Sue Monk Kidd wrote it, obviously researched widely. And there was, I mean, it was beautifully researched. You could tell she abided by what we know to be true about the story of Jesus, but also had to add like all kinds of things. And there's something in that that made it feel more real and more true because she allowed

her imagination to fill in the blanks. So yeah, I just also love the writing, the literature of fiction. You can see that sometimes in memoir, but in memoir, you know, they're trying to tell a true story. So the writing tends to be different. I won't say always, but it tends to be different. Even if you look at writers who do both memoir and fiction writing, the fiction writing just has a different feel. There's more prose. It's more lyrical often. So it feels like you just can get immersed in that world. Yeah. It's one of the things about doing this show that is hardest for me is I have so much reading to do for guests that I don't get to read as much fiction as I used to, but I still try and squeeze it in. There's something about it that I deeply love. That Book of Longings book, I found so fascinating to see her describe somebody who is in relationship with Jesus.

Like what might it be like to be the intimate partner of somebody who's that single-minded? Of Jesus Christ. Of the, like, most meta character in history, you could say. You know, it's not easy. You know, you think like, well, you know, but if you really think about like, well, Jesus was kind of a not always an easy to get along with guy, like, you know, like, it's, it's just, it's, it's amazing. But that's not all it is, because she is an amazing character in her own right. I know you've got a line from that book that you love, which I'll let you share in a second. My favorite line

from it was, I think it was a prayer she offers or something, which was bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it. Oh, I just got goosebumps. Yes. That was also one of mine. Bless the largeness in me. Yeah. I love when I am dust seeing these words over my bones. She was a voice. That's so good. Yeah. I was going to interview her. I think I had read something of hers years before, but hadn't in a while. So I just kind of immersed myself in her world for like three weeks. And it was just lovely. You know, when Ginny and I drove to Atlanta and back, we listened to some of the books on tape. And I read that book. And it was just, I guess they're not books on tape anymore.

I guess that's not really what it is. Well, that's okay. I understand what you mean. I listen to books on tape,. I guess that's not really what it is. Well, that's okay. I understand what you mean. I listen to books on tape, too. Okay, good. On my iPhone. Yeah. She is an extraordinary, extraordinary writer and woman.

And her female characters are some of the best that have been written. You know, her first book, The Secret Life of Bees, that was when I fell in love with her work. And I think when a lot of people did first, it was her first novel and with the women in that book. And then, you know, Anna in The Book of Longings was among the best I've ever read too. And strong female characters. The divine feminine is what she really captures. 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

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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. Let's change directions a little bit and talk about, you know, your book was called The Luckiest, but you've created something called The Luckiest Club. Tell me a little bit about what that is and what's happening there. The Luckiest Club. So TLC. Very nice. Makes it easy to remember. And it's also kind of meaningful. So yeah, I created TLC in,

well, what happened is in around early March of 2020, when the world started to shut down, I remember sitting on my couch. School had already been canceled, so my daughter was home. And we were still in that stage of where, is this, like, how, okay, it's going to be for a couple weeks. Or, you know, it's like, it was all new. We weren't quite sure how big it was or how long it was going to last. And I remember sitting there working and saw a Facebook post from the AA group in my local town saying, we're not hosting live meetings from here on out. We'll stay tuned. And I went, holy okay. For some reason, it was that. Not school closings or... because that room had stayed open in every blizzard. I'd never seen it get shut down.

So I thought, this is bad. People need that meeting, those meetings to be open. And, of course, it wasn't just my town. It was, like, everywhere. So I thought, I know how to host meetings. Not AA meetings, but I can host a meeting. And I put together this format. My experience in AA helped me actually think of a format, but I included different readings of my

own choosing. So I got to include poetry and literature and whatever I felt like reading, which was really fun to me. And I just kind of decided to do it. I didn't think through much. I posted something on my website. People could sign up. When they signed up, they came to a page that showed the schedule and I just, and I was hosting all of them. And I was hosting one or two a week, right? So seven meetings, at least a week, a couple of times a day. And, you know, I did that for two months and it was awesome. It actually helped me so much in that time. And hundreds of people started to show up. And you know when you just know something is happening? Like something was happening. And so many of these people had never been to a meeting because they never did AA or

they weren't even sober yet, but they had been on my email list or followed me or whatever. So this was their first experience of community and sobriety. And that's life-changing for people if you've never felt that, never experienced that. And they could do it, you know, especially with what was going on. It was really neat. But it got to be obviously like, okay, I can't keep doing this because this is a lot. And so I thought I was like in real time, in meetings, talking to them, like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm thinking about it. I'm trying to figure it out. And then I set a date. I was like, I'm going to end, I'm going to stop

them at this point. It was like three or four weeks out. Right. And people were like, please don't stop them. We would pay money, do what you need to do. We hope these continue. And I, over a couple of weeks, put together a team, hired people to lead the meetings, came up with a format, essentially rolled up a quick business and TLC was born. So we started with about 10 meetings a week. I led one or two of them, but the rest were led by other people that I knew in sobriety, which was really neat because people that from all different traditions and backgrounds and demographics and experiences. And it was just really cool to see what was going on. So we started, you know, we had a private forum off of Facebook where people could talk and then

just the meetings. That's all it really was. There was nothing much to it. And then, of course, it evolved because it was really working. Like, it was giving that core group that I started with were like, some of them had been in sobriety for 20 years and they were like, this is, I needed this. Like, this is revitalizing my own sobriety. And, you know, we have a guy named Mike B who's in his early 80s who's a host and he has been sober for 35 years and he's like, this is the best thing that's happened to me. And, who's a host, and he has been sober for 35 years. And he's like, this is the best thing that's happened to me. And we have younger people, older people. It's something that I knew was really special. And we all felt that. So fast forward to now, February 21st, 2022, and we have 35 meetings a week. We have newcomer meetings and beyond one year meetings and BIPOC meetings and queer meetings and newcomer or did I say a newcomer and all kinds of other programming to beyond just meetings. We have something that's called the Academy, because, as you know, like we get sober and then it's like, OK, then what now what? Yep. So we have content to help people. The way we sort of look at it is like your life is a relationship, you know, with several different things.

And in sobriety, you have to strengthen that relationship, go from unhealthy to more healthy, if to body, the relationship to money, finances, and the relationship to work are the ones that we focus on right now. And it's been quite a ride. I bet. Do an AA get sober miraculously and change and then go on to, you know, start a subgroup in their own area or for their, you know, like something that they're interested in. And this will be our two, you know, I can't even remember what year we are in 2021. This will be our two year anniversary in May. It's wild to think that this didn't exist at some point because it's just this like almost fully formed child now. I'd

say it's like a teenager. I was saying before we got on that I didn't really expect to do it, but it's also like, of course, it makes sense that this is what was going to happen. Yeah. This is what was coming. Everything was sort of in preparation for that. And it's probably the most special thing that I've ever been a part of. You know, in AA, there are different aspects of what make up AA. There's obviously the fellowship, the getting together, the meeting with people. And then there is the program, which is you follow the 12 steps. I'm kind of curious

in the luckiest club, is it primarily fellowship? I know you're starting to offer program related things. Say a little bit about that. And what I think this raises the more interesting question is, we see more and more recovery modalities starting to pop up, which I think is wonderful. You know, as I think about that, I'm like, well, what is it that makes a modality more successful or less successful? And I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are on that having been through a bunch of the ones that already existed and now having two years of working on your own. Great question. So, you know, we read a script. There's a few things we say in every meeting. We do have a culture, but I wouldn't say yet that we have a program. We don't have,

okay, here's the steps that you work or here's what you go through. And that's being developed right now. That's actually the book that I'm writing. What I wanted actually was not to have that in the beginning. And what we say is we respect all paths to recovery. We don't do dogma. We lead with compassion. We welcome you as you are. That's who TLC is today. And I don't ever want to do dogma. But I have also seen the need for something for people to work against, to apply themselves against and kind of, yeah, a program, an actual program. Say what you mean by the word against. Like we need a program. I've seen people go, okay, I love going to these meetings because right now it is, I would say 99% fellowship. It's community. It's not that we just get on the

meetings. It's very intentional. The meetings are very structured. We have speaker meetings and topic meetings, and there's a lot that goes into those. So it's not like this free for all, but it's mostly community fellowship. And that's great. And it's a big part of it, but people want something to work. They want to be able to do the work of sobriety against a program. And of course, I would say what we have as far as a program goes right now, which isn't really a program, it's more like a mission statement or a credo or something is at the beginning of my We Are the Luckiest book, the epigraph is actually a list of nine things.

And it says, one, it is not your fault. It is your responsibility. Three, it is unfair that this is your thing. Four, this is your thing. Five, this will never stop being your thing until you face it. Six, you can't do it alone. Seven, only you can do it. Eight, you are loved. And nine, we will never stop reminding you of these things. And that is what we say at the end of every meeting. And that's what my new book is built on, is those nine things. So to answer your question, it's been largely fellowship up until this point. And then we've started to add in programming. And the reason I think that's interesting is because I think there's this idea that modalities show up fully formed, you know, but the best ones are built in community. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, they're built as a response to a community need, not dictated from on high. Even Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson did that. You know, they weren't, they wrote the book, they wrote the big book. And I think one of the places where it's unfortunately fallen short is that they haven't updated that literature to be inclusive of modern times. And every spiritual tradition, that is the marker of whether something stays relevant or not. And it's usually done as an oral tradition. You know, it gets modernized and relevant to the context of the times. But that is what we're doing with TLC, what we're trying to do. You know, it's imperfect also. As soon as you nail something down,

you're saying what you think is important. Yeah. And you're excluding other things, right? You can't do all the things. No program can be all the things. And that's something I've had to come to terms with, like that I just have to say, this is what we're about, and make it as expansive and open as possible and open to interpretation, but also be clear. Right. Yeah, there's a little bit of that idea, like, if you stand for everything, you stand for nothing, kind of thing, right? Like Like if you at a certain point, you have to start to say, well, there is something here that works. But I think you're right that these things emerge over time and AA emerged over time. I mean, Bill Wilson didn't suddenly sit down one day and be like, oh, I've got AA figured out. Like it happened by meeting, you know, Dr. Bob and these things happen.

And Carl Jung and all these other people that we don't hear about. But it was very much a project of many minds. Yeah. And the thing I've heard also, just to tag onto that, is that there were some people in AA who really pushed on that line at the end. God, as we understand him, that they pushed for that. Whoever the few people were who pushed for that saved millions of lives. Absolutely. Well, it's like founding father language. You kind of look back and you go, how? How did that decision get made?

And it was very prescient at the time. Yeah, that did save millions of lives, God, as we understand him. It's been really interesting. Yeah, that did save millions of lives, God, as we understand him. It's been really interesting. You know, for example, a lot of people said, well, what about like moderation? And what about harm reduction? And why can't that be part of this? Or California sober? You know, what's your stance on marijuana? And it's like, I know, I know, I know. I'm not close enough to the recovery community that I hear that term very often. So every time I hear it, it makes me laugh. Me too. Me too. But it's like, no, we're not about moderation management. We're not a harm reduction. We're abstinence-based community and that's okay. So, you know, stand for something, you fall for anything or try to say everything, you say nothing, all those things. It's a good check for me because as you know, we get pretty self-righteous about certain things. And I've had my mind changed about a lot being in community. And that's why, as my friend Jim says,

there's sanity in community. Yeah. Right. That's why we have it because one person doesn't know. That is a great line. There's sanity in community. Makes me think back earlier in this conversation, we were talking about like, how do you know, when you know, something is like sort of healthy love or dependence. And, and the word that came to my mind was, well, it's really about discernment. And one of the things that I certainly have come to believe, I think I believed it a lot earlier in my recovery, and then maybe I lost it a little bit. And I've really picked that thread up much more strongly is that like, well, discernment happens in community, it happens with other people. If you're trying to discern all by yourself, it's not to say that none of it's possible, but you know, for me, I almost feel like

true discernment needs a community, even if that community is one or two other people. 100%. That's why we talk about relationships. We're always in relationship to things. We're not islands. As much as we like to think we do things alone, we don't. Not well, you know, ultimately. It is a relationship and discernment happens in community. And everything we do is a negotiation with the world. It's a call and response and a conversation that we have, right? I think when something gets to be unhealthy and cult-like is when there is no conversation, when there's only rules, when there's only one way. Again, it's that middle way, that fine balance. Yeah. And some people might say AA is a cult, but I think the fact that the traditions were created is what sort of, to me, stopped it from becoming truly cult-like.

Because nobody had the power. I mean, in cults, very few people have all the power. As brilliant as I think maybe the steps are in some ways or what they did, I think the traditions are the thing that most blow my mind. That I'm like, how did they see that coming? Like, how on earth did they design a decentralized organization like that in like 1940? I think there's God in that, you know, not God as a creator person, but Christ consciousness, God consciousness. It makes so much sense. Mere mortals did not create that.

We're not that good at that stuff. You know, our egos get in the way. They were certainly working from a deeply inspired place. Yes. Regardless of how you want to quantify that, they were working somehow from a non-egoic place. Absolutely. Yes. 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, 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. So I want to go to the nine things that you

read at the end of the meeting, which were the epigraph to your book. We covered some of these in our first conversation, but given the fact that you read them in every meeting means you, like I probably believe you, you can't really hear these things too often. And I love it that at least some of them are just pairs. They're paradoxes, right? That you sort of put in there. And I'd love to talk about, it's are just pairs. They're paradoxes, right, that you sort of put in there. And I'd love to talk about it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. Because I think this is such a critical piece of recovery, regardless of what it is we might be trying to recover from, you know, whether it be alcoholism or addiction or trauma or any number of different things. But this idea that, you know, it's not your fault,

but it is your responsibility. And share a little bit about why that's so important and maybe share what happens if you get stuck on either side of that. I agree. This isn't specific to recovery even. This is just life. This is, I think, what delineates the difference between like what Carl Jung called the morning of life versus the afternoon of life, or what Richard Rohr called the first half of life versus the second half of life. You know, in the first half of life, you're usually very entrenched in one or the other of those things. And in the second half of life, you hold them both. So what they meant to me, and why I wrote them that way, I think people tend to fall. Well, I don't think I know from

talking to lots of different psychologists in the research for this book that our tendency is to blame. It's sort of our innate reaction as kids and even as adults is to not take responsibility because we're not really taught how, you know, something you have to learn. And so a lot of what we do going throughout life is either take on all the blame or put all the blame somewhere else. And, or we mistake responsibility for things like duty and obligation. So we think we're being responsible, but we're not, we're doing something out of obligation. And women especially do this. Like I I am being responsible to my family, let's say. I do everything they ask me to do. I show up everywhere. I am at the mercy of everyone else's needs. No, that's not actually responsibility because you're not in there. You're not taking responsibility for your experience. You are

excellent at duty and obligation. But that's like below the line of responsibility as Christopher Avery developed, it's called the responsibility process. And he was really helpful at explaining these things to me. So when we enter into recovery or when we're mired in addiction, our self-blame or other blame, blame on others, is very thick. It's a world that we're living in. It's a world that we're living in. Tons of shame. Not only is this terrible, but I'm terrible. And nothing happens there.

We can't get anywhere with just, it's my fault. It's just all my fault. And obviously, for cultural reasons, do believe it is our fault. We still very much live in a world that doesn't understand addiction, where addiction is a moral issue, where people who get addicted are just need to make better choices. They lack control, willpower, all those things. It's getting better, but unfortunately, that's still very, very true. And so we feel like pieces of crap. So when people first hear, it's not my fault, it gives them permission to breathe, essentially.

And then when you say, but it is your responsibility, that also actually gives them permission to breathe. Because people actually really want to take responsibility. They might not think they do, but we actually really do. But we just have it confused. Like, the reason we want to take responsibility is because that is actually where our freedom is. That's where our power is. That's where we can actually effectuate change. That's where we can have peace. For me, I thought everything was my fault. I never was, it's that person and this person and, you know, the world's against me. I was never that. I was like very much the opposite, which is equally as damaging, right? Because it's not true. And

they're two sides of the same coin. As long as I'm blaming myself or other people, I am unable to be effective right now. It's just a bad story. I think what you just said there really caught my attention, which was when I say it's not my fault, that really caught my attention, which was when I say it's not my fault, I can breathe, right? Because up to that moment, even if I do think it is my fault, there is still I'm trying to defend and justify myself to some degree. Of course, if I think it's all my fault, I'm sort of in a battle, whereas if I can go, oh, it's not my fault. Like you said, I can drop blame for a second. I can stop fighting something for a second. And then yeah, oh, it's not my fault. Like you said, I can drop blame for a second. I can stop fighting something for a second. And then, yeah, oh, it is my responsibility. Opens that up. I want to go

back to something you said a minute ago, though, because I'd love to get your thoughts on this. You talked about duty or obligation. And I'm really interested in values. What are our values? Living out of our values. But living out of our values and duty and obligation are very close cousins, right? Like if I go, well, my value is that I have a value that caring for family members is important. Okay. There's a value. That very quickly can bleed into duty and obligation, right? In feeling. Yes. And so I'm kind of curious for you, how do you keep those apart, do you think? Yeah, great question. I've thought a lot about this

because it's complicated. If you're truly operating out of your values, that means you're living in choice. And if you're living in choice, then you are taking responsibility. But a lot of times people, their actions and the way they're running their lives are actually not in line with their values. They're in line with someone else's values, with society's values, with their parents' values, with someone else's script. And then they're just resentful, even if they won't say it. then they're just resentful, even if they won't say it. So it's not that when you live in responsibility that suddenly your life looks different and you're not doing anything you don't feel like doing. It's that you're choosing and you know why you're choosing, even if it's things that are terrible, that feel terrible, I mean, or that aren't your preferences

necessarily. You can be in responsibility in them by making the choice and knowing why you're choosing it. It's when we follow a script that we either aren't aware because we've never actually thought of what our values are. And for good reasons, like it didn't occur to us that we could. You know, we just took what was given. We did what we were supposed to do. We don't know why we're so miserable. And someone telling you, have you thought about what you want and what's really actually important to you? That can be a revelation. And then letting that animate your choices is another revolution. And it might mean your life looks wildly different, or it might not mean that.

But it's the energy of which you approach things. Are you just reacting to your life? Or are you consciously choosing the things that you're doing because they're based on your values? And look, this is a lifelong process. But that's the difference to me, is that. I totally agree. And I think the thing that's important in there also is to sometimes keep circling back to choice, right? Like I think that we can get clear on what we value and what's important. This happens with me taking care of my mother, right? Like, sorry, mom, if you're listening, but it starts from a place of like, I care and I want to do it and it's a value. And then if I'm not careful,

it starts to start to feel like duty and obligation because I forget that you're choosing. I forget that I'm choosing it. So then I have to go stop, hang on. Nobody's making me do any of this circle back. What's my value? You know? So it feels like there's a loop that needs to be maintained, you know, which is like value driving choices, choices start to become habitual because we habituate, right? And then going, all right, I don't want to be driven off habit back to choice. Oh, yep. Still lines up. Okay. You know, and it's this looping process. It's an active living process that we are in every day. It's not, and your values change over time, you know, of course.

That's another thing people don't necessarily get or appreciate or feel they have permission to do. The things that were important to me 10 years ago are not important to me really anymore. Part of that is I'm older. Part of that is I'm sober. We change, we evolve. And I would say you're allowed to change. You're allowed to change. This is such a fascinating topic to me. I am actually about to start on a two-year program in existential psychology. It's very popular in Europe. It hasn't quite come to America, but it's this merging of philosophy, which talks a lot about the concepts of freedom and choice and responsibility, but also psychotherapeutic models. How do you humanize that? So I spent a lot of time thinking about responsibility and the difference because it can get really

murky for me and other people. It's probably one of the most worthwhile endeavors is to commit yourself to discerning the difference to that in your life and to finding a way. Because look, the other thing is like, we don't have control over so much. So it's always done through the lens of your own skills, your reality, your present circumstances, your values at the time. It's always very contextual, right? Yeah. There are, of course, many times in our lives where we're faced with things that we

didn't choose. You know, you're taking care of your mother. She didn't choose that and you didn't necessarily choose it either, but it's something that you're faced with making a decision about now. The way to not become resentful of that is to be in responsibility in that choice. Yeah. Yeah. I think the other thing that's really difficult, and I'd love to keep hearing from you about this as you go through this program and as you learn more and get your thoughts now, but like determining our values and which values are really ours and which values are the ones that we inherited and recognizing that what's the way to say this? Everything about us is conditioned by the past. I get kind of not hung up, but I spend a lot of time thinking about like, well, what's my real value? Well, okay, what does that mean? Like, how do I know? Because like, who am I? I'm a combination of the forces that have acted upon me. And so I don't want to be just that. And that's very real. And I think this idea of figuring out what we value is an easy phrase to say, but is extraordinarily difficult work.

Yeah, it's some of the hardest work we do, because it often means rejecting people and institutions that have many times done well by us, you know, have sometimes even raised us. And, you know, I read something amazing from Adam Grant the other day. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but I shared it actually. He said, too many people spend their lives being dutiful descendants instead of good ancestors. The responsibility of each generation is not to please their predecessors. It's to improve things for their offspring. It's more important to make your children proud than your parents proud. And the phrase legacy sort of being like a connective tissue between generations, right? Like, I inherited a legacy, and I'm passing one on and getting really clear on which parts of that, like, yep, keep that flowing. And nope, that stops here. You know? way to put it like a river. We're going to keep this part of it going and we're going to put a block up here. Yeah, I love the word legacy. And I think that has a tremendous amount to do with values. It is the hardest work that we'll do. I mean, some of the values that my parents had are

not mine. And some of them aren't mine because they weren't part of my DNA, like written, not literal DNA, but it's like not in my soul. I was born not valuing those things. And maybe I assimilated and tried to value them for the sake of pleasing my parents and just getting along. But then you grow up, Carl Jung thought that the highest evolution of a person is individuation. And I think that has everything to do with values and being in touch with yourself. I mean, that's the prerequisite is you have to actually be in touch with yourself at any given point in time. And what does that mean? You know, be in touch with what? I think there's a couple answers to that and shit.

I don't know. This is like, well, out of my depth, but this is how I understand it is my unique blueprint, you know, my dharma inic philosophy, my fingerprint, my soul, what I was set here to do. And I look at that as the part of me that is most connected to God as I understand God. I feel we all have a role that we're here to play. I mean that quite literally. If you think of nature, everything is sort of by design. You know. And I don't look at this like. There's a big creator.

And it's all. You know. Pulling strings. It's bigger and more weird than that. But animals for example. Don't get confused about their dharma. You know. Like a cat is not trying to be the dog.

Or the squirrel. Or the frog. Or whatever. In my yard. They're just just freaking cat. And we're a lot more complicated than that. But I do believe that we have in us a blueprint of sorts. And this isn't something I made up. Like this is the story deals with archetypes, but it's also the story of like Arjuna and Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita. You know,

it's this idea of dharma. And I do believe that. And I think that ironically, when we do that, when we take on that mission fully, it actually destroys the ego. And we become less us in the egoic sense, and more in service of world. Boy, I could unpack that for about six hours because I have so many questions in there and so many thoughts that we can't follow that down its deep rabbit hole at some juncture. I would love to, because I'll just say this about it, as I've gotten deeper into my various spiritual awakenings, it's almost that the deeper I've gone, in some sense, it's been that the personality sort of dissolves. And so the question that I end up with is, is there a particular nature of quote unquote, Eric that

exists beyond the genetics that I came into this world with and things that have happened to me? Is it I've just sort of brought that form into my source energy that came flowing in, right? Or, which just means that then, okay, you know, there are these elements, but at which point do I go, oh, that experience was part of my dharma, that experience is part of my conditioning that I don't want, you know, it gets very philosophical very quickly. Well, I think one way that makes sense to me, this is why I really love the first half of life, second half of life idea. I'm rereading right now, Richard Rohr's book, Falling Upward. So it's fresh in my mind, but that the first part of life is all about building the container.

We actually need the first part of life. It's not that it's less important or it's somehow stupid or like it's not, you know, we need ego. We need to have a healthy ego. It's like you need to learn all the rules so you know how to break them type of thing. We need a healthy ego to establish ourselves in the world, to build that container and to begin the individuation process. And then the second half of life is deciding what to put in that container. And I think as we put the things in the container, we kind of disappear. At the end of my book, one of the last lines was what I've come to understand about sobriety is like this unfurling and over time it's become less me and more God. And I didn't even write that. Like, I know that's true. I don't want to sound like this

religious person because I'm really not, but I am becoming more and more spiritual as time goes on. I'm just drawn to those teachings because it's what feels the most true to me. There's a quote I used in this spiritual habits program yesterday that I love from Jack Kornfield. He said, there are two parallel tasks in spiritual life. One is to discover selflessness. The other is to develop a healthy sense of self. Both sides of that apparent paradox must be fulfilled for us to awaken. Ah, that's beautiful. I need to look at that. Yeah. So we're kind of doing these two different things in our desire to be like, is it this or that? Right. I, you know, I've often been like, which is it? Wisdom would say, well, of course you're doing both, you know, and whether you're doing them in parallel, whether you're doing one of them at one point in life,

another at another point in life, as you were talking about Dharma and Christian, I was thinking about, I think there's so much wisdom in some of the older Hindu teachings. And one that has always struck me has been that there are different things that you do at different stages of life that make sense that are absolutely like, they're all part of your spiritual path. Like there's a period where family and career are part of your spiritual development. It's not a distraction from. It's part of it. You go through it. And I just love that instead of saying, like you just said, that early part of building the container is like, it's only there so you can get to the later part. No, it's all important and all part of it. It all belongs. It's all important. Yeah. The second part wouldn't be meaningful if you

never did the first. What Richard Rohr says and what Carl Jung has said is that most people don't get to that. They don't accept the mission of the second half. And I think that's absolutely true. That's why I get excited when I actually talk about sobriety. I've learned that's what is most animating to me about it is because I knew even when I didn't want it with every cell in my body, that it was my invitation. I knew it. Yep. Yeah. Well, we are out of time. Like I said, I feel like I could go down 50 different rabbit holes here and hopefully we'll get to do it again sometime, but thank you so much for coming on. You've got a new book coming. That's really

exciting. You've got the luckiest community. We'll put links in the show notes where people can get access to your book to that community and another wonderful place for people to have a chance to work on recovery. So thank you so much, Laura. Thank you. 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 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?

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