The Zac Clark Show - ASK ME ANYTHING: The Questions Everyone Has About Sobriety

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

In this Ask Me Anything episode, Zac kicks off 2026 by answering real questions from the community about sobriety, recovery, and mental health.Zac shares honest, grounded insight on topics people are often afraid to ask about – including California sober, medication-assisted treatment like Suboxone, dry January, cravings, acceptance, and whether a relationship with alcohol can ever truly change. He breaks down why recovery isn’t one-size-fits-all, why community and purpose matter more than labels, and how autonomy plays a critical role in lasting change.The conversation also speaks directly to partners and loved ones: how to support someone in sobriety, how to recognize when drinking may be a problem, and why taking care of yourself is essential when someone you love is struggling.If you’re sober, curious about sobriety, supporting someone else, or just trying to make sense of it all, please give his episode a listen.If you’re struggling, you don’t have to do it alone.Connect with Zac https://www.instagram.com/zwclark/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-c-746b96254/ https://www.tiktok.com/@zacwclark https://www.strava.com/athletes/55697553 https://twitter.com/zacwclarkIf you or anyone you know is struggling, please do not hesitate to contact Release Recovery: [phone] releaserecovery.com @releaserecovery

All right, welcome back, 2026. I am Zach Clark. We are the Zach Clark show, and we are super excited about the year ahead of us. I have a lot of gratitude. I have a lot of gratitude. Yeah, I just have a lot of gratitude. I mean, we started this little show here, I don't know, 18 months ago. And we've had a lot of incredible conversations. I know we have a pocket of really loyal listeners out there. And I just wanted to start by thanking everyone who supported the show. And we are and have always been committed to taking this thing to the next level. And what I mean by that is two things. One, we're going to continue to have conversations and lift up stories that we feel need to be heard. That was the reason that we started this show to shine a light on the miracles and the hope that exist in recovery. And so we're going to continue to do that. And we are also going to

continue to try to be helpful to our community, to the community at large and to put recovery, behavioral health care, mental health on the map. And what better way to start the year than to answer some questions from some folks who wrote in. So we're going to do that today. I'm going to answer some questions. We're going to be with you here for about a half hour, start the year off short and sweet and solo with me. And we are ready to launch. But before I go into some of these questions, I should just say, you know, on putting the holidays behind me, I'm not a big holidays person. I typically kind of go into a hole. The holidays this year were very, very long. I don't know if anyone else felt that, but I certainly found myself wanting to get back

of work, wanting to get back into the swing of things. I kept telling people like, give me, give me January 6th, get me January 7th when people are back and the world is is turning again. And I think for me, that just means I need to learn how to slow down. I need to learn how to deal with quiet time. I am not good with that. And so I can look at that this year in 2026 as the year, you know, kind of launches here. So cheers to everyone who had a safe holiday, who had an exciting holiday. Holidays for me are kind of just eh. And that's just my honest assessment. But I stayed sober. We stayed sober. We got through it. And at the end of the day, we're excited about a big, big year here in 2026. And, you know, I appreciate the changing of the

calendar and one of the things that I know my recovery and sobriety has given me is this really ability to live this life one day at a time you know one day at a time and that mantra that way of living has served me well now for 14 plus years and I'm going to keep doing that so the hallmark holidays the new years the things that have kind of been created or dropped out of space are not necessarily my favorite uh world whatever day I believe that every day is an opportunity, and that's just the way that I try to live my life. So what we did here is I basically put out a little thing on my Instagram asking me anything about recovery, behavioral health care, and or mental health, sobriety.

Got a lot of questions, got a lot of responses. So people are certainly thinking about some of these things. I was very surprised at the number of questions. So we're not going to get to all them. But there were definitely some themes. they touched on California sober. There was a lot of questions about the role that medication kind of plays in treatment, in being sober.

And then there were a lot of questions around partners, partners who are living with someone who is sober, a partner who is living with someone who they want to get sober. And so, you know, we're going to get into some of those. We're going to start with some of the easier ones, though. So next marathons is one of the questions. I'm doing the Austin half from a running perspective in February. I've full transparency, you've been dealing with a little bit of a knee injury.

It blew up kind of a week before the New York City Marathon. So I'm going to try and get through the Austin half and then pick a fast, flat fall marathon to really turn it up for. So more to be revealed on the next marathons. All right. So anyway, let's jump into this. Let's start as an ally wife, how to best support my husband. He is three years sober from alcohol. I think there's a couple answers to this question. I can tell you that someone who is in sobriety does not want to be nagged. Right. So we want to be trusted. We have lost the trust from everyone around us. when we are in our active addiction. And so we, as we launch into this sober journey, as we launch into sobriety,

have this deep-seated fear that no one is ever going to trust us again. So if your husband is three years into his sobriety journey and he is on good ground, let him know that. Reinforce in a positive way his sobriety so that he knows that he is on the right path. I know for me as an alcoholic with the alcoholic mind, I will question every little thing and decision I do in my life.

And I need, I know this, I know that I need validation. I'm assuming your husband is the same way. So if he's three years into his journey, sober from alcohol, he's not drinking, let him know how proud of him you are, let him know you're there to support him. It's the little things. I would also recommend, you know, getting into some form of therapy for yourself if you are not. It is very important for the loved ones to do their own work and to try their best to, you know, show their partner, whoever it is that they are, that they are working on themselves.

So in line with that question, there was a question here that I loved about my husband being three months sober. So if you go to AA meetings, you get these coins, right? one month, two months, three months, one day. And so this person is asking what her husband should do with his coins. The great thing about these coins that they give you in these meetings, they say, you can't keep what you don't give away. And that's kind of the spirit behind these coins. If you have a one month coin, a two month coin, a three month coin, a year coin, a two year coin, the spirit of those coins is then you hang around long enough so then you can pass it on to someone in your life or in your circle so that they can take your coin and then pass it on to the next

person once they hit their milestone in sobriety. So the coins are cool. I have a bunch of them. I've given a bunch of them away. And the spirit there is, yeah, you can't keep what you don't give away. So if you have someone close to you in your life who's working through the sobriety process and they've hit a milestone, it's really cool to hook them up with your coin. There's a little special meaning there. My hardest moment in your sobriety. I mean, look, there's been some jackpots. My hardest moment in my sobriety, there's been some jackpots.

But I think the reality of sobriety is it has taught me to deal with pretty much everything. I mean, I've seen a lot of things in my business. There's been some things that have happened in business that haven't been great. and I think that probably would be my answer. And without going into the specifics there, I just, you know, business can be challenging. You know, there's a lot of ego there. There's a lot of trust and loyalty that is built through partnerships and long lasting relationships.

And when an alcoholic like myself feels like I've been hurt or wronged, it's really hard to get past some of that stuff. And so what I see keep coming up in my sobriety 14 years into this is that I'm a human being. I have feelings. Most people are. And when I feel wronged, it's very easy to develop these resentments and start keeping score. And so it's all for me like relationship-based. Relationships are really the hardest thing to navigate, whether in sobriety or not in sobriety. But that's certainly, when I look at business, I look at my relationships, those are the two things in my life that have been presented, I should say, some of the hardest issues in my recovery. And I had a sponsor or someone

early on in my recovery. They said, you know, they sat me down. They said, money and women. You know, money and women are going to be two things that you're going to have to look out for your entire sobriety, right? And that has been true. Those are two things that have the ability to send me off in a tailspin. So definitely continue to watching for those things. Yeah, I'm going to move here to some questions here on medications, right? My thoughts on Suboxone specifically. So Suboxone, and we've talked about this here on the pod, Suboxone is called medication assisted treatment.

The thing that I love to point out about Suboxone or any other pharmaceuticals, that is used to help someone reach sobriety, to help someone detox, to help someone get to a new place in their existence is this. The word assisted. The medication, so I care less about what the medication is, right? There are smarter people. There are doctors that are prescribing these medications for a reason. For example, if someone has been a day.

addicted to heroin for 20 years, and they have a deep, dark, gnarly physical addiction to that drug. A doctor treating that patient may use Suboxone and infuse the treatment plan with Suboxone to help with a couple things. One, to help with cravings. Two, to help them get through the detox period, which if you can't get through the detox, there's no shot at actually maintaining sobriety. And three, there's this thing called post-acute withdrawal. So 30, 60, 90 days after putting a drug down,

withdrawals can come back in full force. And folks will use a Suboxone maintenance program to help get through that period of time. I have seen Suboxone be very helpful in folks' recovery journey. Assisted. Medication-assisted treatment. The medication cannot. be the whole treatment plan, right? And so anytime someone is using a medication to aid them in their

recovery, it's very important that they look at the other elements of the treatment plan. So how are they finding community? Are they in talk therapy? You know, are they moving? Are they working out? Are they drinking water? Are they sleeping? Like this holistic approach, it's a treatment plan. And typically medication is just one part of that treatment plan. Where I get nervous is when people are prescribed a drug and they think that is the miracle to get them to a place where they haven't been before, which to them is sobriety, right? And so in my journey, my medication protocol was kind of like I was in detox. They used Suboxone to help me get through the first seven to 10 days of my detox and then they took me off it. And I was in a safe place where I had really no medication that I

was taking. When I got ready to leave treatment, they gave me the Vivitrol shot, which Vivitrol helps with alcohol cravings and it blocks some receptors in my brain so I can't get high off of opioids. I took that Vivitrol shot monthly for the first five or six months of my sobriety when I moved to New York City and eventually I got to a place where I forgot about it. I was going to meetings. I was dialed into a community. I was working out. I was running. I found some new friends and some new relationships, and it just worked. That worked for me. I've also seen the case where a patient is on a Suboxone maintenance, a low dose for six months, a year, however long it is, and then they decide, once they are grounded in their recovery, that they want to get off Suboxone. Suboxone is a drug

that can be abused. You can get some euphoria from taking Suboxone. So that's the fear, I think, and why people always ask about this drug. There's also this stigma, I think, in some 12-step meetings that if you're taking a certain drug that you're not sober, and what I would say about that is like, that is no one's business but your own. You know, if you are working with a doctor and a team of professionals, I would insist that you lean into those folks that are treating you. Playing God is a really scary place to be.

So I think Suboxone has its place in treatment. I think that a lot of medications have their place in treatment. My experience is that I didn't want to be on medication. I told my doctors that very early on. I didn't want to be dependent on taking a drug every morning. And we worked together to get to that place. So it's a loaded topic. It's a loaded conversation.

I get it. You know, I have experience with Suboxone. You do get a little high. You do get a little loopy off it. But it does help you not do hard drugs. It does help you not. shoot heroin. And that was my experience. So good question for sure. A lot of questions here on, okay, so along the lines of Suboxone, here's my thing. My thoughts on California sober.

The landscape of sobriety is changing. The way that we define sober is changing. What I am going to say is I define sobriety for me as I am I am absent from all mood and mind-altering substances. I don't mess around. I don't play. I don't even like eating pasta with vodka sauce because I am terrified of having some trace amounts of alcohol or drug enter my system, which would then activate the craving in my mind and set me off on a run where I'm looking for copious amounts of alcohol, drugs, whatever it might be. That is my definition of sobriety for myself. Whenever I sit down with someone and they're starting out on this journey,

I give them some autonomy in their recovery process. That is very, very, very, very important. And there's really kind of three questions that I look to. One, have you found community? Finding community is key and essential. It's psych 101. As human beings, we need to be around other people who have some shared experience and moving forward with them. Two, do you know or have you found purpose. A purposeless life is probably going to end up in the exact same place time and time again. So for me, when I got sober, I found purpose in recovery. Other people get sober and find purpose in other areas. And that's totally cool. It doesn't, your life does not need to revolve around this thing. In fact, and when we had Kellyn Matthews on, who's Kellyn runs Philly, he talked about this,

like running became his purpose. Running became the thing that helped him stay sober. And I would say that he's doing a fantastic job of living a life of purpose and he has found community. The third question I ask people is your life better. Has your life improved? So as all this kind of comes forth and I think about California sober. California sober is someone who maybe was drinking, doing opioids, addicted to stimulants, whatever it might be, they've recognized the problem and they want to make a change. The way that they do that is they start smoking marijuana. They put all the other drugs and alcohol down and this has been coined California Sober. I don't know the origin story of why it's called it California Sober, I just know that many people practice this. What I know about California

sober is this. If the person has what I have, which I believe I have an illness, substance abuse, addiction, and they launch onto this California sober journey, I've seen many cases that soon find out that they can't safely use marijuana either. And so they try out this California sober lifestyle and almost immediately realize that their new addiction is marijuana. Fine. I have also seen some cases where a heroin addict has been able to put that to the side, stop doing heroin through marijuana. And their life gets better. They find some community and perhaps they find some purpose. I am not the one to tell people how to get sober.

I know some of the negative side effects of smoking marijuana. I have people in my life who smoke marijuana pretty regularly. I love them. It doesn't affect them. They lead pretty cool positive existences. Where I get nervous is when, someone is not being honest with themselves about their substance use disorder, about their addiction, and they latch on to this idea of being California sober because they're too scared

to actually abstain from drugs and alcohol. That's why I get nervous. Because ultimately, that cycle, that dopamine hit that we experienced from marijuana or any mood or mind-altering substance, lead back to, you know, where they were previously. And so it's just like anything else in behavioral health care in this world. If you are happy with your life, you have autonomy over your life. If California sober is working for you, then then cheers. You know, cheers to you. And, and that's okay. That's great. It's about the behavior change, right? It's about

us being able to define what sobriety is. And so, you know, it's a loaded topic. I don't think it needs to be. And that leads into this whole idea of dry January, right? California sober, dry January. There's all these kind of buzz phrases out there in the recovery world, which have grown from this movement of people being curious about what sobriety is. And so all of these things, ultimately, I think lead to a positive place, which means a human being is curious about the sober lifestyle, about what sobriety is. So every month or every year in January, there's a large group of people that say, I'm going to try dry January. Of course I'm going to support that. It's amazing. It's an opportunity to walk through on a daily basis a real behavior change.

It's an opportunity on a daily basis to really understand and get a baseline for who you are without drugs, without alcohol, et cetera. And so anytime someone comes to me in my life and says, hey, I'm doing dry January, I say, that's awesome. And I've seen dry January turn into dry February, dry March, dry life. I've also seen dry January and in disastrous fashion where people who are alcoholic put down the booth for a month, get to February 1st, and go on a knock down, drag out run because they were craving the alcohol and they were holding on for dear life in January. But ultimately, all of these

things, the California so over, the dry January, it's part of this bigger movement in sobriety, in wellness, in health, where we as a as a subset of people are being seen. People are seeing how I live my life. People are seeing how sober people live their lives and they're attracted to it. And that's one of the core tenants of early AA. Bill Wilson said attraction, not promotion. And that's really the thing that I've tried to embody in my journey is I don't need to sell this thing to anyone. I just need to show people that my life is incredible today. and by showing people that my life is incredible today, I hope that you believe that you can live the same way that I live.

And so if dry January is a jumping off point to that or California sober is a jumping off point to that, then let's go. You know, we spend so much time agonizing over what's right and wrong. I don't have the answers. I know that. I know that I'm not God, right? I did some things that were shown to me,

early on in my sobriety and those things have remained steadfast in my program and the way I live to this day 14 and a half years later but I don't wake up agonizing over drinking or drugging I don't have cravings today very very rarely do I think about a drink I mean it is so rare and that was one of the questions you know that was one of the questions and and the other thing I should say is like the other reason that the the landscape is kind of changing dry January, right? California sober. Is this idea that the goalposts, right? The goalposts are being moved continuously.

Me and a group of our friends down, it was really cool actually. I'll tell the story. My friends from home came to me and said they want to do some service work this holiday season. And so we put together a day where we went down to Kensington. And we teamed up with Britt down there from the Philly. a known project and we did a day of service, right? So we collected a bunch of blankets and sleeping bags and sweatshirts, gloves, hats, hand-womers, and we went down to Kensington, which is one of the largest open-air drug markets in Philadelphia, and we did a day of service, which basically means

that we met homeless people and we were giving them the means to stay warm through the cold season. And some people question that, right? And what I say to them is like the goal there, is to keep someone warm so that they can get through the holiday season alive and then hopefully find some glimmer of light that is going to put them on the path to a better existence. That's why we try to keep the homeless, warm, and safe during the cold. So we did this and I was talking to some of the people down there and they just talked about how the market has changed in Kensington. And that's a great example for the drug landscape at large.

Back when I was doing drugs and I went to Kensington to buy drugs, I was getting heroin, right? Some time after that, the heroin started to be laced with fentanyl. We know that fentanyl is 50 times stronger than morphine. And that's when we saw this large uptick in overdose deaths. That's when we saw Narcan come onto the scene, which is the overdose reversal drug. And it was scary. People were dropping like flies. Eventually, in the last few years, the goalpost has moved again, right? So from heroin to fentanyl. And now there's this drug called xylazine, which is a tranquilizer, right? And that's being infused in the drugs on the market. And that's creating a whole new set of symptoms and ways that we need to detox people. less people are overdosing because it's not technically an opioid, but it's, it's turning people into zombies, right? So this goalpost continues to move. And then even more recently, I'm not even

going to try and say what the drug is, but it's basically rhino tranquilizer. It starts as metacontin something, but anyway, that is now on the streets. And so my point in saying all this is we live in a world where people, drug dealers, drug manufacturers, the illegal kind of like street drug game continues to evolve. And that's really scary. So people like me who work in behavioral health care, we have to be on our ship because there is new stuff coming down the pipe every single day. Right. And so this goalpost continues to move. Even with marijuana, right? Like if you look at the studies, the marijuana being smoked today is so much. stronger than the marijuana that I smoked. What does that mean? We need better treatment.

We need better therapy. There's going to be more people ending up in treatment for marijuana addiction, for marijuana-induced psychosis. And we have to be mindful of it. That doesn't mean that marijuana overall is this terrible thing. Like I said earlier, I know people that safely use marijuana. I cannot. I know a lot of people that cannot. And so as people start to get into the sobriety journey and we try to think about holding on back to California sober, which we think about holding on to one of these behaviors, maybe this California, this idea of California sober and this person who is on this journey

and starting to try to consider what it would look like to be sober for the first time in their lives, wants to hold on to this one thing, which is marijuana, maybe that is a little bit of light or hope that we need to eventually get that person, to a full everlasting recovery. It's not always a straight line. And that's, I think, what's really hard for family members.

I think that's what's really hard for behavioral health care professionals. This, this, the way that we used to do interventions, right? It's not the same. You don't get 10 people in a room read letters and the person's out the door going to treatment. This thing has changed. The drugs are stronger. the disorders are more pronounced, but there's hope.

I sit here and I'm someone who should be giving you guys hope. And so these are all the things that we're looking at heading into this year. I'm going to answer a couple more because I just got on a little bit of a tangent, but I think that was helpful in kind of answering a bunch of these questions. There's a question here on how do people in recovery handle needing pain meds after surgery? I actually recently worked with a company and I'm still kind of working with them that, manufactures Genavics, which is a opioid-free pain medication that they're using now after surgeries, which is incredible. It was built and designed so that people did not have

to take opioids or opiates after getting a major surgery. Early studies are showing it's been very, very effective. I wish it was around when I had my brain tumor surgery because I would have had a shot to maybe not get addicted to the pills the way that I did. But once I was introduced to those pills, my addiction took off. So who knows, maybe that was a good thing. But there are definitely, there are definitely options for people needing pain meds after surgery. I will also tell you that the combination of Tylenol and ibuprofen is very strong. You know, like I think we forget that there are some over-the-counter pain medications that have been around for a very, very long time that work. right and so um there's definitely there's definitely alternatives um can a relationship with alcohol

ever be healthy and get better even thinking you have a problem so basically the question is like i don't know can you safely drink that's the obsession right of of everyone who ends up in rehab they they talk about this in aa is like the the great obsession of every alcoholic is to drink like a normal person and for me i i know i can't Have I seen people in very rare instances who end up being able to control third drinking? Maybe, but like that sounds like torture. People that drink the way that I drink can't comprehend drinking a half a glass of wine and leaving dinner and signing the check.

If I'm getting up from a dinner table and I am active in my alcoholism, you bet your ass that I am finishing every single drink on that table to the point where if we walk out of that restaurant, I will act like I left something at the table to go back and finish the half a glass of wine that someone in my party left on the table. That is what alcoholism looks like. So knowing that about me, can I really enjoy a drink? No. Quite frankly, I don't want one.

And I think that remains true for most people. Again, will I get some messages of people saying, hey, I was a knockdown, drag out, out drunk and now I'm able to have two glasses of wine at dinner. Good for you. Your life got better. That's incredible. I don't have that luxury. And I know that. Right. And that goes into some of the stuff here. Someone asked, you know, what do you say to a newcomer about acceptance? I mean, acceptance is everything. Acceptance that I have an issue, a problem with alcohol, with drugs was the first thing that I needed to have in order to move forward in this journey. And it's also the hardest because accepting that I have an addiction is terrifying. The thing that we forget about addiction is that

the drugs and the alcohol are my medication. That is what works. So if I'm accepting that I have an addiction to drugs and alcohol and you're going to take away the medication, you're going to take away the medication that worked for many, many years, that is terrifying. And that is what keeps a lot of people drunk. Once I'm able to cross that line and say, hi, my name is Zach, and I'm an alcoholic. I finally have a chance to get well. How did you know you're ready for step four? I mean, step four is a step in the program of recovery that I'm familiar with and hang out in.

you know, that's, I listen to someone else. You know, there's sponsors and mentors and people that are going to guide whoever you are, wherever you are. And the easiest thing to do in my experience in this journey is this, the first 27, or the, I'm talking about myself, but for the first 27 years of my life, the decisions and the places that I ended up were based on myself will, were based on the things that I did, the decisions that I made. That was my best work. So for the first time in my life, I'm getting sober and I'm going to listen to someone else. And that is what I would suggest to anyone who is embarking on this journey of sobriety. There's just classic saying, you know, you put, you take the cotton out of your ears and you put it in your mouth so that you listen to people.

And that makes sense to me. That makes sense to me. Have I ever been tempted to drink again, do drugs again? Sure. There's been temptation over 14 years, yeah, but like rare, rare instances where I might think about being tempted to the place of using advice for being sober with a non-sober partner leaning to who you are. You know, my experience is that the people who I am closest with in my life, whether they

are sober or not, they know me, they love me for who I am and they understand me. So if you're sober and you're dating someone that's not sober, it's very important that they understand who you are, the way that you move around the world, what's important to you. You know, for me, like I have principles in my life that I don't, I'm not bashful on. And so if you're living a sober lifestyle, it's not just about the drugs and the alcohol. It's really not. It's about the behavior change. It's about the things that are now important to you. I lived my life for 27 years as a liar, a thief, a cheater, whatever you want to call it.

And so when I got sober and I got grounded in my sobriety, being the opposite of those things became very important to me. So my tolerance for dishonesty, people that aren't loyal is very, very, very low. And the people in my life understand that. Let's get to one more here, one or two more here. And we can dive into these topics more. We're going to have a ton of great guests. These here, guys, but I think this is a great primer for, you know, what is to come. Someone said here, if you didn't own release, what do you think you would have done and said, I don't know.

That's a great question that I've never really contemplated. I have always, since I've been sober, wanted to work in behavioral health care. I feel very blessed. We had an awesome year at release. We grew in tremendous ways. We helped a lot of people. And we are super motivated going into 2026. I mean, like the fantasy I think I would have probably worked in sports, worked for the Eagles or the Phillies or made a living that way.

But I know today that I have found my purpose and my passion, which is helping others. And I'm able to do that in my personal life. I'm able to do that in my professional life. I know how to separate those two things. And it's been the absolute greatest gift I've ever been given. We're coming up on nine years, nine years for release here soon. So it's been a wildly, wildly excited. exciting ride.

The last one here. How do I know my husband has a drinking problem? He does not want to talk about it or seem to care. I am worried and scare. Can you shed some light on this? Look, if you think your husband has a drinking problem, he probably does most of the times when people reach out to me with a question like this. It turns out that they only know half the story.

My suggestion is always going to be one. get your own support, get your own therapist, go to other support groups, connect with people who are on a similar journey as you are. And then that is going to allow you to get really clear on what you are able to tolerate. And you can decide what that is for you. Because tolerance and love and empathy for the people that are struggling is. it's very, very important. I would imagine that your husband does not feel good about drinking the way that he is drinking,

which is why he does not talk about it, which is why he shuts down when you ask about it, and which is why you're writing in to me asking this question. The other thing is that you can get him at a sober moment and you can sit him down and you can say, I love you. I care about you. I am worried about you. And I am concerned that you're drinking too much. And then let him respond. Let him respond. Because it is those moments where our loved ones hear us the most. They do not hear us during the yelling and the screaming and the finger pointing and the blaming. It is in those brief moments of clarity

where the addict or the alcoholic really hears the person. And so the short answer is take care of yourself, be honest, and understand what you can tolerate. If you work off of those things, you're going to slowly start to move the ball downfield. And ultimately, I believe, I have to believe that your husband will engage in a conversation with you around his drinking where he is able to be

honest, where he is able to be open, and where he's able to accept that you are not the bad guy, that you're simply trying to help. And that's what we're doing here. We're trying to help. We're trying to have conversations that are confusing and complicated to people. So, you know, these questions were awesome. This episode is nothing without the questions that were written in here. If I didn't get to your question, I'm sorry. I'm doing my best. But I do think that we covered a lot of really important ground here as we launch into 2026. And here's the thing. I'll close with this. I don't have all the answers. I've been doing this for a long time. I think Malcolm Gladwell says 10,000 hours makes you an expert. I've got well over 10,000 hours in this space. And I still see things

every day that blow my mind. So this is just one man's perspective. I believe my perspective's helped a lot of people. So I'm going to keep going. Until next time. Thank you.