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Being A Parent In Recovery with Sarah Allen Benton

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

parent in recovery, high-functioning alcoholic, drinking culture, self-soothe, emotional regulation, family dynamics, social support, recovery challenges, parenting impact, genetic risk, alcohol education, recovery pride, over-scheduling, people-pleasing, nervous system

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Sarah Allen Benton

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a buzz, how to sit with your emotions when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Hi there.

Sarah, Hi there. Today we are talking about

being a parent in recovery

and my guest is Sarah Allen Benton. She is the author of Parents In Recovery:  Navigating A Sober Family Lifestyle. She also is the author of Understanding The High Functioning Alcoholic, Breaking The Cycle and Finding Hope.

She’s a licensed Advanced Alcohol and Drug Counselor, Addiction Counselor and Mental Health Counselor. She has been a Parent in Recovery from alcoholism for more than 18 years, and holds a Master of Science in Counseling Psychology, with an emphasis in healthy psychology, from Northeastern.

She’s worked as a therapist and a clinical consultant for various addiction treatment programs, practices and startups, and just has a wealth of background expertise and information that I think will be really helpful to you.

If you are listening to this, if you are trying to stop drinking, or you’re worried about stopping drinking, or if you’re in sobriety and figuring out how to navigate being a parent in recovery.

So, Sarah, welcome.

Sarah Allen Benton  02:35

Thank you so much. I’m really happy to be here and to connect with all of your listeners?

Casey McGuire Davidson  02:41

Yeah, I’m excited because I was mentioning that a lot of women who listen to this are often working moms or primary caregiver moms at home. And they may or may not have partners who understand or support their decision to stop drinking, and if you’ve been drinking for a long time and you have kids, or you’re in the mommy wine culture, stopping drinking in today’s society, as a mother is difficult no matter, no matter where you are.

So, I’m excited to talk to you about this topic, and also because you wrote the book on being high functioning, and I know, you and I were both sort of identified that way, so I think that that’s going to be a really good piece of this conversation as well.

Sarah Allen Benton  03:32

Yeah, I think that they all tie in in some way, especially with the societal norms. I think if you can keep up a certain level of functioning, and you know, when I when I wrote that book, it wasn’t just about people that worked, it was also about parents. That’s a role that’s one of our most important human roles, right? And if you can show up and get your kids where they need to be, and get their meals prepped and do all of that stuff, there’s your reward at the end of the day, right?

So, when I talk about high functioning, it doesn’t just mean for working. It means as a caregiver, that’s a full time job. We know that, right? I really want to clarify that the functioning that can be so confusing for people with their relationship to alcohol is around the fact that they may be performing really well in those areas, and therefore it feels mutually exclusive, like, well, I couldn’t be doing all these things, or I couldn’t be working and be a mom and also drinking with a problem, if right?

Because we have this image of this stereotype of this just, you know, really, I mean, the image of the alcoholic is it’s horrible. And I can say that. Honestly, I, for the longest time, I knew I had some kind of an issue, but I couldn’t really identify and put words to it. In fact, my friends couldn’t put words to it. Well, you know, you have that thing, but you’re not like those people, and so there was a lot of what I call secondary denial. And I think that’s kind of, some of what you’re talking about and alluding to within the family system, is that also, you know, there can be a minimization, or we, when we stop, can hold up mirrors to other people, and it can be very confusing, because maybe you were like, you’re saying, maybe your drinking was a little bit more severe than your husband. So, it’s like, Well, you’re the one that needs to stop, not me, right? So, this is when it gets all kinds of confusing, and the rules everybody sets for themselves, you know, like we’re the ones that cross the line, not other people.

Casey McGuire Davidson  05:34

And yeah, well, you know what’s interesting is my husband, or anyone else, anyone at all, never told me that I needed to stop drinking, and when I stopped, my husband thought that I was overreacting. Now, at the exact same time, I was drinking a bottle of wine or more every single night, seven nights a week, it was just it had become so much a part of my evening routine over the course years, and I was functioning, right?

So, I was going to work. I was doing well. I was taking care of the kids. I was like, I remember very specifically before I had, you know, glass number three of wine, setting all the alarms, making the coffee, doing everything, knowing that I might pass out on the couch or have a gray out or whatever, and getting up to work out in the morning. So, there were all these things. I mean, I remember telling my therapist like I’m still doing great at work. I’m still a great mom. I’m doing all this stuff. I literally said, I am only hurting myself. And so, that’s where you know you have a problem or you can’t moderate. I mean, I spent a decade trying to drink less or drink less often, and you feel horrible, and you beat yourself up, and yet you’re like, you’re so tied into it, you’re like, but this is my one thing. I work so hard. This is my reward.

Sarah Allen Benton  06:57

It’s powerful. The cycle is really hard, and I think that really, it sounds like you really had an honest moment with yourself, right? And not everyone around you can see how it’s impacting you.

I also think when you have a partner or friends that drink with you, but don’t drink the same level as you, it’s still a bummer when you get sober. Like, it’s, you know, I was very social. I had friends that relied on me to like, everybody would get together and I would be, I’m like, a connector. And, you know, I got sober before I had children. But the point is that, as much as I wanted everybody to be cheering me on, like I was this hero that had finally, like, gotten sober, even the people that had, you know, essentially confronted me were still a bit baffled at the process and how much I had to change in my life, which is part of why this book’s talking about lifestyle. Because they were like, knew there was something wrong, and knew that they were worried, and knew that I would just not show up. Like, after going out, I had dangerous behavior and blackouts and gray outs and all kinds of outs, but at the same time, I was just really successful, and I was able to maintain my friendships. And so, it was very confusing to them, as well as myself. Like, I couldn’t figure out my profile. You know, I think about FPI profiling and criminal profiling.

My first book was a lot about, what is the profile of this curious individual that can, you know, maintain this level of functioning while drinking or using substances in this, like, way, right? Like, what is it about your personality that allows you to do that? Why can some people, can’t do that, right?

Casey McGuire Davidson  08:42

So, what was the profile?

Sarah Allen Benton  08:44

So, the profile was really interesting. I interviewed a lot of people that were in recovery. It’s really hard to talk to people that are high functioning and still active because they’re not really identifying so I interviewed people who identified as having been high functioning, and what I found was a series of personality traits. Some of them were generational expectations of success that were embedded in the family system, that this is just what you do. You work hard, you play hard, that there was a goal oriented nature to these individuals, including myself, right? Perfectionistic traits, a high physical constitution, in the sense that just because we’re hung over doesn’t mean that we’re going to not show up for things, right? So, we push through.

We don’t milk the hangover on the couch. We power through the physical component of it, which is there and the psychological component of a horrific hangover. I mean, I can’t imagine the things I’ve done hung over are just insane, because to me, the people that didn’t do that had problems, right?

So, if it didn’t get in the way, then I didn’t have a problem. That there’s a lot of rules that were set.

You know, I won’t drink before I have certain responsibilities or a test or the academic component of it, or certain work things. I think what was interesting too is some of the most brilliant people that I’ve met are high functioning, and part of that is they have this immense skill set, could be just in intelligence, uh, photographic memory, academic skill set, ability to multitask, and so they’re able, like, I interviewed some people who, I don’t even know how they were passing med you know, getting through med school, right? I mean, they were drinking daily, and they were, like, getting through med school. I mean, that’s incredible. They were not going to class all the time, but then they were binge studying. It’s like, well, you have to have some innate and, like, foot, like your memory must just be so some of our skill sets got us through right? I’m super organized. Here’s over there, setting all those alarms and doing all that stuff. Well, I had all these rules, like, I’m not going to drink before I have a test and I don’t go out before my homework’s done, or I would never miss a day of work. Or, you know, I had all these rules because those are what people with real issues, or real alcoholics, that’s, that’s what happens to them, right?

Casey McGuire Davidson  11:08

They have, they can’t show up, or you have these expectations of yourself, and you’re like, okay, yes, I want to drink, and I drink way too much, but I still have to. When you said perfectionist, like, I 100% I that is spot on, and I identified as sort of a people pleaser, Gold Star Girl, meaning, like, I wanted to do everything right. I really didn’t. I did more than I probably should have, because I didn’t want to let people down, and I was super anxious, and always had too much on my plate. So drinking was the way I like physically shut down my brain at the end of the day. Or else I would have ruminated on the to do list.

Sarah Allen Benton  11:50

Who was your checkout and so you actually fit right into like the results of these interviews, right? Was perfectionistic, goal oriented, people pleasing and very charismatic, right? So, here’s the deal, the people that can talk their way out of things or that people really like, right? You get passes when people like you. I’m just, I mean, seriously, if you’re so some of it was just an, you know, an ability to sort of schmooze their way out of stuff, and so all of these traits, when channeled in recovery, led people to success beyond their wildest dreams, because now they didn’t have this barrier in their way.

Casey McGuire Davidson  12:32

Yeah, I totally resonate with that. And what’s interesting that you’re saying that you know so many of us, myself included. Was like, What is wrong with me? I can do everything else in my life. Why can I not handle this? And this idea of like, I have no follow through, I have no willpower. What’s interesting is that, oh my god, drinking a bottle plus wine every night, functioning, hungover every single day, with your nervous system shot to hell and not sleeping, being able to still function at a high level. Oh, my God, that is the most determined high you know, like the idea of like you’re running a marathon with this ball and chain tied to your ankle and you have no idea when you cut it off, how much easier life will be and how much more you can do nothing.

Sarah Allen Benton  13:26

If there’s something I don’t miss, it’s certainly pushing through with a horrific hangover, feeling like I might pass out because my blood pressure is through the roof, or whatever’s going on in our system for super important business trips and throwing up in the office bathroom, trying to be really quiet so that no one would hear me before I went to a client meeting.

Casey McGuire Davidson  13:38

I mean, it was the stupidest thing you could imagine.

Sarah Allen Benton  13:54

I mean, the tricks and the things that people all the energy that’s expended. And I think this is like one of the other issues. And you know, when people have questions around, what’s my relationship to alcohol? And I’ve been tried this, and I tried that. I mean, some of it is just how much headspace is it occupying for you. I mean, look at all the headspace just trying to fit drinking into your life. Took and mine too. I spent 4 years trying to control my drinking the amount of obsession and mental obsession. I would have when I would stop was so wild, how much head space it would take up, and that, in of itself, is a symptom of a problem. So that’s part of it, too. And I didn’t see that, though. I saw that as you’re very goal oriented, you’re just figuring out what the issue is. You’re going to fix it, because when you put your mind to something, you do it, right?

I didn’t look at it as, oh, one of the symptoms of having a problem with alcohol or substances is the fact that you are obsessed. And you’re obsessed about how to keep it in your life, despite it kind of not fitting in like, you know, and because for us, the ultimate. Inclusion of I need alcohol not to be in my life was what we dreaded the most. So, we would come up with every single possible way to keep it in our lives.

Casey McGuire Davidson  15:09

I mean, I remember very specifically being like, I never want to have to stop drinking. So, I need to figure out how to get a handle on this. Like, consciously put to my mind to it, like, if you put your mind to it, you’re going to figure it out. And that, and this is part of the high functioning purse. Is it’s actually, as a therapist and addiction specialist, the hardest population to work with are high functioning individuals. Tell me about that.

Sarah Allen Benton  15:20

Yeah. So, because there’s an element of when somebody is low functioning, or they have a lower bottom and their life is a total train wreck, and they come in with a white flag of surrender, saying, I’ve screwed my entire life up because of my substance use. There’s a level of humility there. There’s a level of like, okay, my way wasn’t working.

But when you have a client that comes in and they’re like, Well, I’m, you know, I’m doing really, really well. I’m a partner in a law firm, and I’m, you know, I am a parent, and I’m providing for my family, or I’m doing this and I’m doing that, but am I drinking la, la, la, when you start to work around, how many things need to change in in recovery, there’s a lack of willingness to give up certain pieces, because the brain has been and intelligence have been part of what has brought success to these individuals, right?

And so, you’re saying in recovery, oftentimes, and in therapy, if you think about cognitive behavioral therapy, where they challenge belief systems, when you think about different things that are trying to alter our perception somebody that’s really stuck in but my thinking and my brain and my intelligence got me so much. Why are you telling me not to listen to my thinking?

And so, it’s really hard to tease out what is the, you know, the drinking and the substance problem versus that? We’re not saying you need to give up, like your you know, your career information that lives in there, but we’re asking you to rethink other pieces of your life and of your reward system and of your like, some of this thinking is sick, right? Like the fact that we would go all of these lengths to keep alcohol in our life and think we’re only hurting ourselves. That’s like delusional thinking and well, and it’s hard to write, because you need to, and we’ll talk about this, and we should about the family and the shifts, but one of the things that I was really worried about is, you know, when I stopped drinking, I needed to lower the bar. I needed to not take on as much.

Casey McGuire Davidson  17:26

Yeah, do more self-care. And I was actually worried that stopping drinking would hurt me in my career, like because that, you know, I think Ann Dowsett Johnston, who wrote the book, Drink, calls alcohol like the modern woman steroid, like helping her do all the things, and then at the same time, because you’re so deep in it, you don’t realize the degree to which it’s making all the things so much harder.

But I remember coming home, you know, and if, after I got the kids to bed, if I got on my computer, I poured a giant glass of wine because I’m like, you mentioned multitasking. I was like, I can play Candy Land while drinking. I can cook dinner while drinking. I can get on my computer at night while drinking. Like, I actually was like, see, I’m doing all the things and I’m giving myself this reward.

Sarah Allen Benton  18:39

This is, this is the whole other part of why it’s hard for high functioning individuals to get into, get to get sober, is they usually feel like crap. They usually feel less efficient. You essentially took the glue out of the functioning, right? You took the glue and the puzzle pieces fall apart, right? Because really what’s going on is that you’ve over scheduled yourself. You’re performing. You’re not actually looking at what you’re able to do. You’re looking at what is possible on a high level, but maybe too high of a level. You’re not You’re not honoring your nervous system, and so you’re kind of transcending and bypassing the body signals to slow down, so when you pull the alcohol away, you’re left with this life that was too much for you, but that you weren’t acknowledging. And so you are able to handle less, because your baseline was probably lower and you were pushing above that. So this is where I remember just feeling like, gosh, I am not able to handle as much. I’m lower functioning. My nervous system is a rack, and it I started to liken it over time to boot camp, where you almost need to get kind of beaten down a little bit in order to get built back up. And so the curve, you know, again. Says, I tried to explain to people, because sometimes they feel like, well, why? What’s the incentive here? I’m feeling worse. I’m functioning at a lower level. What? What do you what are we doing here? Right? And so there is this level where you’re, you’re dipping down, but then the idea is that you’re going to come out and you’re going to be at a higher, yeah, higher longevity plane, right?

Casey McGuire Davidson  20:25

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Right in the beginning, in your first two to three weeks, like you feel tired, you feel worse, you feel irritated and anxious. And you know, everything is difficult, everything is harder because you’re navigating life without this substance that made it easier to go to a work happy hour, to relax at the end of the day, and then you don’t realize until you get further away, how like, I didn’t know what it felt like to be healthy. I literally didn’t. I didn’t know what it felt like to sleep through the night. For years. I thought I was, but I wasn’t. I didn’t feel know what it felt like to feel a lower level of stress because I wasn’t spiking it with alcohol and then going further down. And so, you sort of come through the wall, and then, I mean, I remember going to work and being like, how is this so much easier? How am I less stressed? How do I feel like I’m able to cope with more, but it takes a while to get to does, and that’s the part where you need social support, because these things, you can’t figure this out on your own. And you know, I see clients and people in my life that they don’t get the social support they need. They don’t understand these patterns. They don’t hear someone like you explaining, well, I felt worse before I felt better. And they get scared, and then they just go back, because it’s the path of least resistance, and it’s so much easier in their mind to just go back to what was working.

Sarah Allen Benton  21:30

But the truth is, if you never get to the other side, then you keep reinforcing that that’s the right way. And so, it’s almost like a phobia, you know, where you just keep avoiding and you don’t know what you don’t know, right? If you know, if you’re trying, which I did for a decade plus, to quote, unquote, ‘moderate’, and you’re like, Okay, I’m on.

Casey McGuire Davidson  22:06

I mean, I remember getting four days drinking a bottle of wine, getting four more days drinking a bottle of wine. Like I was like, well, that’s better than seven bottles of wine a week, which it was, but I never got out of that, like drinking withdrawal, stress cycle, and I was so irritated and stressed out and pissed off I wasn’t drinking. I literally was like, I’m a nicer mom when I drink, which is total and complete bullshit, but it takes longer than four days to get to that, over a year.

Sarah Allen Benton  22:49

Yeah? I mean post-acute withdrawal like that. Doesn’t mean that you not everybody. I was a binge drinker, so not everybody’s even going to have straight up need to go to detox withdrawal, even people that have, I mean, there’s weird stories of people that had a glass of wine a night and still really needed medical support when they stopped, like their body was just really attached to it. But for me, I wasn’t physically addicted, because I binge a couple of times a week, right? So, I wasn’t nightly, like you, and so that doesn’t mean I didn’t have my nervous system wasn’t wrecked for a while, a long time, and I couldn’t understand it, because I’m like, isn’t that just that, what happens to daily drinkers?

Yeah, it’s so, you know, I think understanding how we impact our brain chemistry, how long it takes for that healing process to go on, how you yourself were saying, you set yourself up in the cycle where you needed it because you were having it, and you were setting off that craving in your in your mind, and then you were irritable in between. It reminds me of the smoking where, if you don’t or caffeine, even if you don’t drink caffeine, you don’t need caffeine to wake up.

Casey McGuire Davidson  24:08

That’s it. If you don’t drink, you don’t need to call drink coffee. And everyone’s like, Oh my God, how do you not wake up? Blah, blah, blah, how do you wake up? Well, because I don’t need coffee, you know what I mean? Like, my body doesn’t rely on it, so it’s the same with you and the drinking, with that pattern where you wouldn’t have been having that irritability if you hadn’t set off that Dan, ding, ding in your brain 4 days earlier.

Sarah Allen Benton  24:13

Yeah, your brain was like, give me that back.

Casey McGuire Davidson  24:40

You know, it’s interesting, though, being a daily drinker, I started to feel better. Like, within two weeks, I was just like, oh my god, I’m not waking up with a hangover. Oh, my like, just it, because I had felt sick for so long and didn’t even. Realize it. It was easier for me to be like, holy shit. This is night and day. Like just waking up and not having my eyes be bloodshot. When I was putting on eye makeup, I was like, such a gift. This is amazing, like not feeling shaky. I mean, you have that lull, but the benefits are recognizable much more quickly.

Sarah Allen Benton  25:28

I think daily drinkers noticed it more. And I also think it depends how you know how many years it’s been. I mean, I have a friend that got sober, a mom that got sober in her 40s, and her experience was much like yours. She was rocking it out. When she stopped drinking, she physically felt so much better. She wasn’t sick in the morning. She just was living her best life. And I was a little jealous, I’m not going to lie, because in my experience, I was like, I didn’t feel good. How come you’re like, you know, so quickly, just feeling the physical benefits, I was a little bit jealous of her.

Casey McGuire Davidson  26:00

Yeah, because I like, I stopped when I was 40. That sounds very similar. And within 2 months, I finished a 10k that I hadn’t done in like six years. And so, for me, I was like, Oh, my God, this is incredible, which helped me keep going.

But everyone’s experience is totally different. And if you’re listening to this, regardless of how much you drank and how you feel like, you are going to feel better when you get like.

Sarah Allen Benton  26:31

It doesn’t matter how much time you just like. I, I’ve worked with clients where I’m like, you know, they’re having withdrawal. You know, some substances have worse withdrawal than alcohol over time.

To be honest, alcohol’s got the most deadly withdrawal that in benzodiazepines. People don’t realize that. But when I’m working with clients that have, you know, other substance withdrawals that they’re just their dopamine is just shot and just guiding them through that process to get to the place where they can be happy in everyday life and just visualizing, and I, you know, to people listening, just visualizing yourself on the other side, when you just can feel content and at peace. You want to wait to get there, because if you go back, you have to start over.

And I remember somebody in a social support meeting saying, you never have to feel this way again. And that was so powerful for me, because I never wanted to wake up feeling the way I did on the last time that I drank. I didn’t have it in my soul, I didn’t have it in my spirit, I didn’t have it in my body. And that was just so reassuring that I don’t have to go through that again. But unfortunately, have to go through whatever it is. So yeah, everyone’s experience is different, and just whatever you’re going through. There’s somebody out there that’s having your experience, right, like you and I had different experiences, but we still end up on the other side.

Casey McGuire Davidson  27:54

Yeah, okay, this was so helpful to go through the profile of the high functioning person, and honestly, the personality traits, I think that’s really interesting, because I’m sure a lot of people who listen to this identify with that. That’s what I’ve heard.

And so, let’s take that to your new book. So, Parents In Recovery. Let’s talk about you are combining this idea of the over scheduled, high functioning, goal oriented. You know you talked about people pleasing, perfectionism, multitasking, they stop drinking, and what do they need in their family systems, and what do they need for their kids and themselves to set themselves up for success?

Sarah Allen Benton  28:51

Well, first of all, I like to keep it simple in the beginning, because I think this is the other piece is I talk about this concept, and it’s in the subtitle of navigating a sober family lifestyle, because a lifestyle is eventually the goal.

In the beginning, though, here’s what happens. Right. Over achievers, they stop drinking, and then recovery becomes their new obsession, and they over schedule self-care and everything is so extreme. So, really, what part of this is about is moderation of everything, and so keeping it simple, trying to get support in terms of delegating and not being the super mom like this is part of like I was saying to you, you weren’t able to recognize your limits because you were numbing them right, so you were overriding them correct? And I did that too. I just wasn’t a parent, because I am a different person today than I’m I was. I got sober when I was 27. I’ve still before over 20. 20 years.

Casey McGuire Davidson  29:58

So, congratulations.

Sarah Allen Benton  30:02

It’s weird, such a weird thing to think, but I have to say, though, the way I’ve structured my life since I got sober is consistent. I have to have downtime. There are things I’ve had to integrate into my life, my lifestyle, my family system. I started that before I became a parent, right?

I interviewed people for my book that got sober before they were parents, got sober after they were parents, were single parents and had children before and after. So, there was all these different interesting scenarios that I think everybody can relate to.

Yeah, but what the real important piece of this is that it one, you have to give yourself grace, because you’re going to. Everything’s going to change in some way. And I liken this to the glass of water that you spill on your table, just a little bit of water on your desk, and it’s like, oh, it’s just a little bit of water. But every single piece of paper gets the water. And that’s what drinking does, whether you’re aware of it or not, and whether you however you label yourself. It affects the people you hang out with. It affects the way you reward yourself. It affects your schedule. It affects your functioning. It affects your family, your children. Affects your spiritual life. It affects every domain of your life, whether you see it now or not, when I removed alcohol from my life, I was able to see how it impacted everything. I didn’t see that when I was drinking.

I thought, to your point, it really, I’m just affecting myself. I didn’t have a lot of people like commenting again. I was high functioning. People were afraid to say things to me because they were afraid that I cut them off, things like that. It’s not it’s an awkward topic, let’s be honest. So, when you remove this glue out of your life, one it’s important to have social support. And what I mean by that is, if it’s not your immediate family system, because of whatever reason, there are so many and post pandemic silver linings are all of these support groups out there that are available to you virtually and in person from all over the country and from other countries. There are programs like she recovers, which is started in Canada, and there are programs like women for sobriety and celebrate recovery and dharma recovery, and 12 staff meetings and secular organization for sobriety and like, I could go on and on and on.

Casey McGuire Davidson  32:25

I’m actually, I’m a She Recovers Coach as well. I love that organization. And, yeah, I mean, I have a group and a program where women are coming together online as well to support each other and identify with each other and talk about the you know, what’s going on in their lives. They’re realizing they’re not alone, and also getting advice from people further along than they are.

Sarah Allen Benton  32:51

Exactly. So, you know, I don’t think that you should rely on your spouse or your partner or your friends that don’t know aren’t doing this with you to be that support, um, but I also think it is helpful within your family system to know how people can be supportive, right?

Yeah, so some of this is saying I’ve reached my limit. I can’t do this. Can you either help me or I need to do this tomorrow. My daughter’s only known me to be sober, okay, she’s 12 years old. Within our family culture, I have limits. So, I have. I’m just in full transparency. I have anxiety disorder, and so in recovery, I’ve had to regulate my nervous system, right. So, I don’t have, and I don’t even know, and I want to get into the whole self-medicating thing with myself, because it really wasn’t. That wasn’t really how I used alcohol. But the point is, when I put took alcohol out of my life, my nervous system was really sensitive, and so my daughter has grown to know Mommy needs downtime. Mommy is going to say no to like, I say no to themes, like, I don’t show up to everything. I’m not the A plus mom. I’m okay with that. She loves me for who I am. She knows my limitations. My husband will, you know, pick up and he’s also in recovery, but he has a larger social battery than me, so we acknowledge those pieces. I didn’t even know that I was needed downtime when I was drinking. I literally didn’t even know I was so extroverted and so social. And I’ve learned these things about myself in recovery.

And so, when you think about somebody removing alcohol from their life. Everything maybe doesn’t change at all at once, but just think about the really simple things at first. Like, Do you have a friend that you have a connection with beyond drinking? And I think women more than men. I think men, when they get sober, have a hard time bonding, because they have just a different level of vulnerability, and drinking brings that down.

A lot of my female friends and I had bonds outside of drinking together and ways we connected differently, and if we didn’t, then that friendship wasn’t going to fly, you know, yeah, and, and some of this is just this surrender of the people that are meant to be in your life will be there, and those that aren’t won’t, and having kind of radical, radical acceptance around that, getting again, support from people that have done through this process, because if you try to do it yourself, you’re going to be lost.

And part of why I wrote this book was to create a roadmap and to support specifically around these challenges unique to parenting, because to me, having recovery without being a parent is a more selfish pursuit that you have more of that luxury around right? Like, I feel like going to meeting, I feel like going to do this. It’s all about right, you and whatever you feel like doing in some ways. Then when you put another layer of being a parent, there’s pieces of being a parent that are not really up for debate, like you kind of have to do certain pieces of it. There’s parts that are negotiable, but there’s parts that are just like you got to do them right? And so, it changes your schedule and structure and life in a way that maybe for me, having years of recovery under my belt by the time I was a parent became a parent, it rocked my recovery.

Yeah, like I was doing like a podcast and speaking with a mom who said she had twins, she said she has she called it postpartum recovery because her life was so different from before being sober before having kids to after. So, there is this idea of things going, first of all, in phases, and second of all, realizing that the parenting layer is real, it’s big, and your battery only has so much. You’re working mom. You’re not a working mom. You’re giving whatever your scenario sometimes not being a working mom, I

Casey McGuire Davidson  37:06

think it’s a lot harder. Actually, it’s harder. And when my work, you get to commute, you get to drink coffee, you get to have adult come.

Sarah Allen Benton  37:14

You’re with more adults. You’re like having an outlet and escape. I mean, for me, I needed to, I mean, I needed to work for multiple reasons, but that just, I’m just, that’s just my personality.

Casey McGuire Davidson  37:25

I needed to have that balance, but I had such I stayed home for four months and was like, Oh my gosh. Like, this is Oh my god, yeah, I stayed home for 8 months after my daughter was born, and I started drinking again pretty soon after, I actually was like, This is why so many moms. I’m not lying. Before I had a daughter, I actually, I used to do women’s counseling, therapy groups for early recovery, and I didn’t have a child, and I didn’t understand what the big Ruha was about being a mom and sobriety. I was like, why are all these moms drinking? Like, how? Why is it so hard to be a stay at home mom? Like, I literally didn’t get it right. And then after I had my daughter, I was like, holy, earth shattering. One mind numbing board on holy, wow. Like using yourself identity, like who you were, like so much, it’s earth shattering.

Sarah Allen Benton  37:39

What changes?

Casey McGuire Davidson  38:17

Well, I think for so many women, drinking actually scales up once you have a child, and I found that too, because you were mentioning you need downtime, you need self-care.

So, before, I trust me, I drank a lot. But before I had kids, I also went to Pilates. I also had guitar lessons after work. Once a week. I also used to go running. I used to do all the I went to the gym in the middle of the day at work. And then once I had a child, my schedule at work was so compressed, you know, oh my god, I can’t work out at lunch because I have to leave at 5:30 to pick my kid up before.

Sarah Allen Benton  38:58

Flexibility completely changes..

Casey McGuire Davidson 

Hi there. If you’re listening to this episode, and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit®.

 

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Casey McGuire Davidson  39:01

So, basically everything left, other than parenting, work and drinking, because I could drink while I was, like, freaking, Feeding My Kid whatever, and giving him back time and, you know, all that stuff, and my stress level went way up, you know, because you’re adding this whole second job. So it is, I have anxiety as well, and I thought that drinking was helping me, and it wasn’t until I removed it that I realized the degree to which it made it worse. But because I had been drinking for so long, it was very, very hard for me to identify that while I was drinking.

Sarah Allen Benton  39:45

Totally, because you don’t know what your baseline is, exactly. Exactly. You just don’t, right.

I didn’t even know my anxiety was, like, as bad as it was, until I fully got sober and then, like, and this was as weird it would take like, a month or two because I quit drinking several times. Just didn’t stay stopped. I feel okay for a couple weeks, and then all of a sudden, I get hit with, like, just chronic pain system and my stomach and my this and that I was like, what? I wasn’t even really connecting at all, because it wasn’t so like the next day, because I wasn’t daily. So, it’s very confusing, but this is exactly it. The extra layer happens whether you’re in recovery or not, right? That extra layer to your life, therefore something’s got to give, right?

Yeah, like, I do this thing I love. It’s this pie chart. It’s a, literally, a pie chart of the different domains of your life, and it’s when you’re awake. So, sleep’s not included, although sleep’s very important, but it’s really your awake life balance, and you put down kind of every little area of your life, like, and the percentages, so family, what percentage does that take up work? What percentage spirituality, self-care, you know, whatever it is that is in your life, like, if you are training for a marathon, or, like, whatever it is, you know, like, whatever the domains are, you put into this pie chart, it has to add up to 100 right? You can’t that. Has to be the math. And then you’re like, Oh, but I know that I need to do more self-care. Most people will say that, or I need to put more time into my recovery, right? Most people will short themselves in some of those areas, especially moms. But here’s the kicker, where’s the percentage coming out of the pie chart?

Casey McGuire Davidson  41:25

Yes, because you’re already strung so thin. Oh, right.

Sarah Allen Benton  41:28

So are you going to have 110%? No, you can’t. It’s 100% pie, right? So, so you have to pull off of other parts. And that’s where people get themselves in trouble with new year’s resolutions and all these huge things that they start to say, I have these huge goals. I don’t love the huge goals because I feel like they’re, one, not maintainable, and two, you haven’t created the space in your life to even implement them.

Yeah, so yeah, to do that. The other part of the pie chart is energy arrows. How many arrows are you putting out and how many are you getting back? So, if you put friendships in there, I give three, I get back one. What’s wrong with this picture? Right? I mean, yes, you’re going to give a lot to your family, but you’re, you know that exchanges, but sometimes you give too much self-care. Hopefully it’s a little bit of an even exchange work. Sometimes you’re giving too much, and it doesn’t need to good enough can be good enough, right? So, you’re giving out 4 and getting back to again. So, the arrow distribution can be off. So, you have several reasons. Many people have several reasons why their batteries depleted, their pie chart doesn’t add up to 100 and their energy arrow distribution is completely off balance. Yeah,

Casey McGuire Davidson  42:40

I totally resonate with that, and I can think of a couple examples in early sobriety that kind of like when you’re talking about something half has to give.

Like, for example, my husband was a coach, still is basketball and baseball, which meant he always had something to like six or seven at night and lots of games. And so, I did all the all the daycare pickups, all the dinners, unless he could, quote, unquote, “help”, which lets we can have a whole discussion about that idea. But when I stopped drinking, I needed to go to therapy after work, and I started going every week, which meant my husband had to figure out how to pick up the kids and get them dinner. And, I mean, it was once a week. I did 5. This is a Tetra situation, years, right? And he was like, okay, cool, absolutely, I can do it. But like, how long is this going to go on? That was one question.

The second thing was, my husband’s a baseball coach, and he wanted my son to play summer ball. My son was 8years old, and but my husband also plays in his own league. He also goes fishing. I mean, you know, you got to love how men set this up, and we do it by not requiring them to do more. And so, I said to him, like, I don’t want my kid to play summer ball. I don’t want to take him to 3 practices a week. I want to chill at home and read books. You know? I mean, these are 3 hours, 3 times a week. I was like, he can do it. If you can guarantee that you will take him every time he couldn’t do it, he was like, Well, I can’t promise that. I have my own games, I have fishing, I have whatever. And I said, if it is not important enough for you to give up some of those things so you can do it, it is just not important enough. It wasn’t your priority. The guy was 8 years old. I mean, I love my kid, but I’m just like, you know, not in the Olympics.

Sarah Allen Benton  44:40

It’s like, everyone’s going to be okay if, you know, do it.

Casey McGuire Davidson  44:45

But that’s the where is it going to give and that’s hard to do, because then you’re like, I’m a bad mom. Why am I not willing to take my kid to baseball? But I’m like, Well, my husband’s not willing. He’s just saying it’s important, you know.

Sarah Allen Benton  45:01

I totally get it. And I have a similar example with my daughter in soccer. So, my daughter is started off in like, first grade, playing soccer with the town, and then it, you know, then it starts to go on. And then there’s, like, you know, I when we were growing up, when I was growing up, and you two, probably, there wasn’t all these, like, it was, you just did it with the school, starting in that sixth grade, right? I did it with the school, yeah, starting in sixth grade.

Okay, so I didn’t know what was going on. I entered into some foreign world of premier soccer. And, you know, I didn’t know what this was all about. But my husband was super into it right then. And I love that for him. He even was assistant coach with the Town team, like, like, what you’re talking about, and I’m not, like, that’s not my jam. Like, there are things I do in my daughter that are my like thing. That’s not one of them. I definitely will go to the games and stuff, but I’m just, it’s just not.

So, what I decided is, first of all, he is the soccer dad, not, I’m not the soccer mom. And if he wants her on, you know, and if she wants to be on three teams, then he can bring her. Because if I were a single parent, she would be at the town before school even started. Because of sixth grade, I would have just done the like, obvious stuff that you just do normal, you know, like with this town or the school, I wouldn’t have her in all this soccer. That’s his choice. And like you said, that was your husband’s passion. So that’s the decision we have, is that he’s responsible for that, for that part of it, because it’s a level that my nervous system can’t handle.

Casey McGuire Davidson  46:34

Yeah, yeah. And I love that. You said, like, how is it going? What is going to give? Because so many of us who are high functioning, we’ve already set up our life to over give. Like you said, we’re overriding our nervous system constantly. And so, when you stop drinking, it’s not just that you need to do less, but you also need to stop overriding what you’re doing already. So, I mean, it is this, like, what’s going to give? And I always tell women, I’m like, I want you to do instead of a plus, like, a b minus, job at work for at least 100 days. And they’re like, oh my god, I’m going to get fired so hard. But they do it, and most of the time, nobody says anything or notices, right?

Sarah Allen Benton  47:25

Just critics, okay, where are horses? Critics, like, it’s so funny, I know, but, but see, like, that’s but that’s something right there. That’s an example of pulling from the pie chart to give yourself something in another area. And listen, I am not preaching like I’ve got this figured out. Okay, I just know that one of the secrets to my long term recovery is I’m willing to, like, look at this and reshuffle things around and say no, and have those hard conversations about my boundaries and limits. And that is just not optional. Like, you have to be able and willing to get the courage to get over the people pleasing.

And I had a therapist once say, because I remember being like, I feel like such a horrible friend. And I’m like, take note of this. And I’m not going to this party, you know, because I was 27 and sing, you know, single in 27. It wasn’t married or whatever. And she’s like, you’re going through people pleasing withdrawal. It’s okay. Keep with it. Keep with it. And once you get over that discomfort and feeling like the shittiest person in the world, you’re going to be okay, saying no. And she was right.

I have helped so many clients like I think it’s probably one of the most common things I’ve seen, is this people pleasing, and it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s dishonesty. We’re not being honest about our limits. We’re doing stuff we don’t even want to freaking do.

Yes, like, yeah, like, what, like, what is going to because we’re afraid that people won’t like us if they don’t like you because you didn’t do x, then you don’t want them in your life anyway, and that’s really not very good friends.

Casey McGuire Davidson  48:56

No, we do that with our partners, too. For sure, I’ve definitely seen that with my clients and with myself.

So, I know in the book, you talk about adjusting to the changes in the dynamics of your relationship with your co-parent, but likely also with your partner. You know co-parent, whether you’re living together, married or divorced, but also with your partner, if you’re in a romantic relationship, right? Because you still want to make them happy, you feel like, I know a lot of people myself included were like, well, this is my thing. I don’t want anyone else to have to adjust, and my husband was my drinking buddy, so it was an adjustment. He didn’t understand that. Like going to an Italian restaurant when I was a month sober, when I was a red wine girl, like I could not do that, you know?

Yeah. So, what do you advise?

Eyes on adjusting and changing those dynamics when you’re like, Fuck, I’m not connected with my partner, or he’s unhappy with me because we’re not going to this dinner party or whatever it is.

Sarah Allen Benton  50:15

First of all, I commend you and your husband, because I think it’s really hard when one person has a different experience and needs to get sober in the other you know? And I, and there’s actually somebody in in the couple people in the book that I interview that have a similar scenario where their partners and normal drink are in there, they got sober. I mean, I think what you have to do is look out for yourself at a certain point, right? And so, also help. I think people are not, I mean, we didn’t go to school and learn about early recovery, right? Like, nobody’s I mean, I didn’t even learn it in my Master’s degree. Okay, so I’ve had to figure some of this out through my own experiences.

Um, this is, this is something that it’s a parallel process. So, you’re having your early recovery process, and then your husband’s having his own process around the fact that this is something that you both like, enjoy doing. However, statistically speaking, women actually have a lower tolerance. Metabolize alcohol differently, are more prone to a more progressive, higher progression Intel, because of their bodies, right? Because of, yeah, exactly. Hormones, metabolism, the water to like our muscle to fat content is different than men. So, there’s all these different reasons, but it’s called a telescoping phenomenon, and it can happen quicker. And so, you could be drinking with a husband who’s kind of steady, and you’re progressing, and they’re kind of just like, what happened? You know what I mean? Like, where’d you go? And it’s real.

So first of all, I think it’s, it’s hard when you’re both not in the same space, but at the same time, finding other ways to connect must be crucial, because that just can’t be the bonding piece for you, and also helping to educate. And I even think, you know, it’s funny because my mom, my mom, read my book, and it taught her a lot about my experience that, I mean, listen, I’m very close with her, and she’s known everything about my recovery and parenting. I thought, then she reads the book, because my journals at the end also of each chapter, and she was like, gosh, I’ve learned so much about what the experience is as someone in recovery being a parent that I didn’t know. And I’m like, you didn’t know this like, so, you know. So, some of it is also, they’re getting education around it, and are assuming that they understand, right?

They also need support. I think it’s important for spouses to get their own social support. And again, you know, she recovers isn’t going to work for husbands. But, um, you know, of course, there’s Al Anon and Aaron on and there’s cares groups, there’s, um, learn to cope. There’s quite a few different groups that are for people that are like loved ones, because they have their own mourning process, you I mean, there’s a lot that they go through too. It’s not again, it’s everything’s all about us, right? You know? But even recovery, it’s all about us.

Casey McGuire Davidson  53:14

Yeah, I think my husband was afraid of how our relationship would change if I stopped drinking. He never, he never drank like I did, and he did want me to, you know, like he didn’t want me to pass out on the couch on a Tuesday night or not be able to, like, drive home. That was pretty standard. He always drove home. But he didn’t want to give up our date nights, where we do, you know bar crawls, and he didn’t want to have me not drink when we went to Italy. Like it was like, Okay, I get it that you’re healthier, but like, Are you seriously not going to drink in Italy?

Sarah Allen Benton  53:56

I think for somebody also that is able to drink in a way that is essentially safe and okay and balanced. You know, for him, they can’t understand why you couldn’t shut off, right? Yeah, the lack of shut off.

And I equate it, really, there are a lot of people that don’t get it, and I’ve had to explain it. It’s, I mean, food’s the only example I can come up with that everybody seems to be able to relate to. But it’s like for the person that struggles with one potato chip or one Oreo that they eat the whole bag. It’s very similar with alcohol, and so for some people, that first sip sets off this craving for more. And you know, what is it? One glass is too many, and a million is never enough, something like that.

So, with your husband, it sounds like and with many normal drinkers, they’re able to have a couple and shut off and be content. And for those of us that have whether it’s a gene because there is a GABA receptor gene, whether it’s just that we pickled ourselves because we drank ourselves into alcoholism, there’s different reasons. It’s not all genetic.

Okay, so I want to state that for sure, there’s, there’s no shut off. So, there’s something that goes on in the brain that gets Ding, ding, ding, ding. And part of why, again, there’s many people that do, I did moderation management and failed. There’s harm reduction. I’m not a person that can do that, because if I put that substance in my brain, it sets off the craving, and then I also have to deal with the mental obsession, right?

Casey McGuire Davidson  55:23

So, yeah, and just thinking about it, rationalizing it, trying to stop, like now that in my much more work to try to work.

Sarah Allen Benton  55:30

Yeah, 100% and it’s boring as hell.

Casey McGuire Davidson  55:35

First of all, boring as hell, like, our life will be less exciting if we stop drinking. And once you get away from it, you realize how boring it was to just be obsessed with drinking or not drinking for weeks and months and years, to have that dominate, like you said, it impacts everything, your priorities, your schedule. I mean, you know, oh, do I mean, I remember driving home and being like, do I have enough at home? Like, do I have time to stop? Always pick up a bottle of wine before I have to pick up my kid at daycare. I mean, it’s exhausting.

Sarah Allen Benton  56:12

Full time job, yeah, along with your job, another job.

Casey McGuire Davidson  56:19

So, um, like, how do you deal in recovery if your partner won’t stop drinking at home like they’re just like, great, you stop drinking. Why do I need to, and my husband actually did stop having wine in the house, full stop. Because I was, like, you can drink beer, you can drink cocktails. But like, literally, if a bottle of wine is there, either I’m going to drink it, or it’s going to be so much fucking work for me not to drink it. I will, you know, like, I’m going to break at some point. But like, what if your beverage of choice is the same as your partner or they are just like, No, I’m not going to get the alcohol out of the house. Like, how do you deal with that?

Sarah Allen Benton  57:10

It’s, I mean, here’s the thing, if the other partner also is claiming that they don’t have any issue, and you’re the one with the issue, which is always the case. But I My question is, if you were truly an indifferent, normal low risk drinker, then you would be able to get it out of the house, because that’s what a normal low risk drinker would do.

So, I really think at least for the first 90 days, I would really highly recommend that your partner or your spouse or your loved ones, or whoever, whoever you live with that they have some mindfulness and some consideration for where you’re at least totally agree, at least the first 90 days. And I’ve written up family agreements. I’ve worked at treatment programs, and this is just a standard requirement that we say to all families. And if you can’t do this for your loved one, then you need to look at your relationship to alcohol or substances. I just, I mean, that’s just really the facts. I’m not saying forever, but the first 90 days are really important. In fact, the first year really is the most. But if I could just get 90 days out of people, I’m happier.

Casey McGuire Davidson  58:16

Yeah, because then you’re stronger and then you’re better, it’ll be more of a muscle, right? So our non-drinking muscle in the beginning is very weak.

Sarah Allen Benton  58:19

I’m not saying that because I’m 20 years sober that I am, you know, Hulk Hogan over here. I’m just saying that I am not I can go to a party and be around people drinking and not be afraid. I’m going to just start chugging. Yeah, I don’t really love it. I don’t love being at those parties, but I do have muscles that have.

Casey McGuire Davidson  58:45

You know, I am 8 and a half years sober, and to this day, I don’t have wine in my house. Now, I could have it, and I’m sure I wouldn’t drink it, but why the hell would I have it like, if my husband’s like, I’m totally cool with not having wine in the house, thank God, because if it was there, it would just be like the elephant in the room, haunting. And I don’t think people understand how powerful.

Sarah Allen Benton  59:03

You know, alcohol is legal. It’s socially acceptable. You know, there’s other drugs in this country that have provided you know, they’ve had horrible consequences for people. I don’t think people realize we hear about the opiate epidemic. 100,000 people died. 140,000 have died from alcohol related issues. So, I really think here or within you, yes, and I feel like people don’t talk about it. I feel like because it’s so especially during the pandemic and afterwards, everybody just justified. And still, I don’t think people have recovered from the aftershocks of the pandemic around their substance use. We’re still seeing increased numbers of people in treatment, in therapy, mental health issues, escalated, self-medication, all of that.

So, I’m not saying we need to have a prohibition. But what I am saying is that, alcohol is very insidious because it’s part of our culture, whereas social heroin use, and social cocaine use is not as prevalent in a lot of circles.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:00:13

I mean, one also truthful. You know, the whole idea of like, drink responsibly. No one’s like, do cocaine responsibly, do opioids responsibly. People are like, Yeah, I don’t know how you do that and not get addicted, but somehow we are supposed to have alcohol all around us, have it be pushed on us, you know? Because people think, oh, it’s not really addictive. You know, the same with pot, right? Everybody’s argument is, it’s not addictive.

Sarah Allen Benton  1:00:40

Well, I’ve actually seen and had clients that are solely addicted to pot. There’s gummies, there’s gummy parties, there’s parents passing all kinds of edible mushrooms and micro dosing. And I don’t know what’s going on, but my whole point is that when things become socially acceptable, it’s a harder experience for the person in recovery. I’m not saying it’s easy to get sober from heroin at all, but I do know that moms in my in my book that were interviewed that had more of a drug problem than an alcohol problem are able to tolerate social parties, sometimes a little bit more, because people aren’t whipping out the heroin as much.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:01:20

Yeah, and your partner probably doesn’t have heroin in the home where they’re doing it in front of you, right.

Sarah Allen Benton  1:01:25

So, I think that there’s something very difficult about alcohol and pot. I think as pot becomes more, you know, legalized in more states, and I just hear more and more about people at adult parties passing gummies around and stuff, I think it’s becomes in that same category of socially acceptable, minimized, minimization around it, right? There’s this. It’s not that big deal. It’s, it’s everybody. I mean, there’s more shame in getting sober than there is in just drinking.

Okay, you know, the last chapter in my book is about recovery pride, but the shame I felt when I admitted that I needed to abstain, and that I had this problem was more than when I was just drinking and trying, you know, what I was doing, humiliating, embarrassing, Blackout stuff, but, like, I felt the shame when I got sober. Why?

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:02:13

Yeah, and some of that is our own perception and our fear about not drinking. But I remember, you know, being I mentioned being afraid that it would hurt my career if I stopped drinking, not only because I went to happy hours with my boss and they, you know, when you’re on a business trip, they buy wine or beer for the table, and you’re like, Oh, if I don’t participate, I won’t Have those bonding conversations late at night, but also because I was like, if I stop drinking, they will think I have a problem with it. And if I keep drinking, it’s a little bit like nothing to see here, because even though I definitely drank at work events, I usually pulled it into two or three drinks, and then went home and kept drinking.

Sarah Allen Benton  1:03:04

Oh, 100% you did the whole I pretend I’m a social drinker, but then I’m going to really finish this off when I get home.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is. The other part of it is, I’ve worked with people in different fields, and, you know, especially, I’d say business and the legal profession, um real estate, just some of those more social schmoozing networking fields. The norm is that there’s even, I mean, it’s crazy, even at when they’re trying to recruit people from like, like law school and business schools, they’ll the firms will bring alcohol to the event at the college. Like, crazy. Stuff goes on, and it’s like, this is our culture, work hard, play hard. Oh my god, play hard. But don’t get too shit faced, right? So, you got to keep it under control, especially for the women out there, right? Like, don’t get sloppy. But this is how we roll.

And so, there’s there some feel like I work in addiction treatment, so it’s pretty easy for me to be open about my recovery and think there’s, like, a lot of our events don’t have substances at them, because a lot of people in addiction treatment field are in recovery or respecting that. So that’s easy for me, right? But I work with people that are in other fields where they’ve had to figure out how to keep a glass in their hand just to keep people to back away from talking to them about it, you know.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:04:24

Well, thank you. I feel like that’s changing. I really do with like dry January and sober October and the sober curious movement and the younger generation, I agree being less and people knowing the health impacts like you. When I stopped drinking, I was like, Oh, I’m doing this 100 day no alcohol challenge because I want to sleep through the night or sleep better. You know, have more energy and less anxiety. And people were like, okay, like, I could never do it. That sounds crazy, but yes, I can wrap my head around why not drink? Keen, would be healthy for you?

Sarah Allen Benton  1:05:04

Yeah, no. I mean, there’s also the new research that came out at one point. It was, remember the whole, like, have a glass of wine a day. It’s good for your like, antioxidants and then, but you could have drank great, um, drink grape juice, right? So, there was this whole, like, you can get the antioxidants from other sources, but let’s just say it’s wine. So then, so then people would take that as an excuse, but now they’re saying alcohol in any amount is actually not good for you. So that’s the latest research. Can you scare people that drink too much with health things? Not really.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:05:35

You couldn’t have done it for me, but the expression can’t scare a drunk, but there is a movement towards health and wellness, that I think you can have a more open discussion with people, and not just feel so shamed, but just say, You know what, I wasn’t just starting to not feel good, and I just wanted to take this out of my life. It wasn’t anything positive, and I just can’t see what the argument is for that if people are arguing with you, it’s because of their issue.

Sarah Allen Benton  1:05:37

You’re holding a mirror, and it’s their stuff, not you.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:06:09

So, let’s talk about kids. Either if you have been drinking and you’ve stopped, or if you’re still drinking, like the guilt and shame you might feel on how it’s impacted your parenting, or if you didn’t feel like it impacted your parenting, but you’ve stopped drinking. How do you talk to your kids about that?

Sarah Allen Benton  1:06:31

Parents that it was more obvious than the kids knew that they were drinking, and they were a little older, it was an it was a better conversation to have than the conversation around why you don’t remember half the night? So, you know, there, you know, there were parents that were able to be very open with their children about the fact that they’ve decided to take alcohol out of their life, and their children are very supportive, because, quite honestly, children don’t feel that safe when you have personality changes and there’s unpredictability in a home. So, that was a much easier conversation.

I think, for people, the harder conversation, I think, lies with the parents who either got sober when their kids were really young and didn’t know they were drinking, or they never saw them drinking and didn’t know them to be drinking and don’t know why they don’t drink. So, like, you know that your parents don’t drink. Like, in my case, my daughter knew that we didn’t drink, but she just thought it was for health reasons.

And so, at a certain point, and this is actually how I got the idea for my book, was the book, Mother Noise, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, by Cindy House, and I was at a bookstore, and I saw, I saw this book on the memoir shelf, and I just it appealed to me, and I grabbed it, and she, on the front cover, is talking about how she’s really wrestling with this idea of the quote, unquote telling, the telling to her 11 year old, and how strange it is to feel like you’re so close to your child, yet they don’t know this huge part of you. And is it going to change your dynamic? Is it going to make them think it’s acceptable? Is it going like, what just that fear around the telling? And I walked out, I got the book, and I walked out of the bookstore, and I remember thinking, Gosh, this is kind of where I’m at, because my daughters are on the same age.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:08:19

And what age was that at a kid around 11, okay?

Sarah Allen Benton  1:08:20

And I remember thinking, Well, is there a book about this whole parent recovery thing? And then I was like, Well, this is a memoir, but, like, is there a non-fiction book? And it really is. What prompted my idea for writing this book, because I saw there just wasn’t much at all out there for non-fiction, not just straight memoir. And so, I basically asked that question to all the different parents around what their comfort level was around the telling. And it seems that everybody was different.

For some individuals, they had their kids going to, you know, self-help meetings from a young age because of child care reasons. And, you know, at the time, virtual wasn’t an option, and so they were just always very like, oh yeah, this is what’s up. I’m going to this meeting, that meeting, and they would talk about it with them. There were others that really felt like they wanted to hold off until their kids were a little older. And I get that I waited until my daughter was probably 12, or 11. 12 when she articulated to me some grasp of understanding around the concept of addiction, because she was talking about it in relation to a cell phone, and I started to realize that she got the concept that it wouldn’t be lost on her, because you can sit there and talk to a five year old and they’re going to not get what you’re saying, like, the gravity of it, right?

Like, yeah. And so, I felt like she conceptually could get it. And I thought she already knew, to be honest, I thought because we work in addiction treatment, we have a million friends in recovery, we’re always saying, Oh, this person’s sober, that person’s sober, and she didn’t even put it all together, which is weird for her. Uh, she was shocked. She was like, couldn’t even imagine it. Couldn’t even picture it. I thought that’s just other parents, not you and she, I mean, it just shocked me how shocked she was, um, but you know, it’s from a therapist standpoint, because I have been asked this question, like, when should we tell you know our children?

I’m not an adolescent specialist, but I do know that my recommendation to any client that I would have would be, I think it’s important to have that discussion before alcohol and drugs are or like at least before at the time when they become a thing culturally in their school, because you have a genetic connection to your children or environmental both and just like diabetes and cancer and other conditions, we want to prepare our children and set them up for success with the way that they eat or the way that they live their lives, or different preventative things.

So really fascinating stat, so the Surgeon General found that genetics account for 50% the chance of developing an alcohol use disorder. It’s staggering. It doesn’t mean that if you’re both, you both have an issue, that that’s 100% in fact, I know a lot of people that both are in recovery, and their kids, like only one of them, maybe has an issue, or maybe none of them. I don’t know. It’s not just, like a total, it’s not a total course, but at the same time, it’s something they should be aware of, that they should be on the lookout for.

What does happen to them if they ever did take a drink? Like, do they have a shut off all the things that I didn’t know about, right? So, like, just and you have an open dialog with your children about it. But the best part about this, the most hopeful to me, was the finding by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the NI AAA, where they found that if you delay the onset of drinking until age 15, there’s a 40% less of a chance that your child will develop an alcohol Use Disorder, regardless of family history, and then it’s about 7% less of a chance with each year that they delay it. That’s important information for our children to know so that they have a possible chance at being a normal drinker. I just I do think there’s a certain point where the secrecy doesn’t necessarily help, and in fact, could be unfair that you didn’t necessarily give them a chance to make these choices with more information so well. And that’s my take on it.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:12:29

Totally agree. I mean, I think it’s really interesting the 50% genetic, because that means 50% isn’t genetic, and in my family, there is literally zero history of alcohol use disorder at all.

Now, my parents had a bottle of wine on the table every night dinner, tons of dinner parties, but like they had one or two and socially, I went to college. I played rugby, huge, huge, huge drinking culture for four years, and that became my normal. And so, you know, I was used to binge drinking on a regular basis, but when, when I stopped drinking, my son was 8, my daughter was 2, and I was pretty open about the fact with my son, like, Hey, I haven’t had a drink in 30 days. I stopped drinking 100 days ago, and he was like, okay, at eight years old, like, what?

But, you know, it’s even before I became a coach and had this podcast, it was very openly talked about that I stopped drinking because I didn’t feel good when I drank. And, you know, just high level anxiety, sleep, not healthy for me, and yet, my husband drinks, and it was just very clear that, like, either was a choice, but I very much like the fact that my kids don’t witness me getting drunk.

Yeah, it’s something that is quote, unquote, “normal”. You know what I mean? Like, they’re like, Oh, Mom doesn’t drink. Dad does either. Is completely valid, and something to think is okay. I would be not cool if my husband was getting drunk every night. You know, with that being the model.

Sarah Allen Benton  1:14:16

So, you know, the other piece of it is, first of all, it’s, you know, there’s something to be proud of, and your kids will never forget, even if they don’t fully understand the importance of what you’re doing for yourself. But they’ll never forget that.

Oh, when I was younger, my mom made this choice, and was like, putting your health first, you know. So, there’s nothing really negative to come from that. I think that one of the things I’ve noticed that I never thought I would notice, because I thought if, if a child gets brought up in an environment where both where parents are drinking and that’s just part of what goes on.

I actually thought they developed immunity to that, to those circumstances, that was just an assumption, the negative consequences of it, or they just, it was just a normal thing in their house, like I just, I just thought, Yeah, like that would just, I don’t know that it wouldn’t stand out to them, but what I’ve seen is that actually it’s not. I think that the kids are really perceptive, and they pick up on the personality change piece, and it scares the crap out of them. And because a parent is drinking in oblivious, they don’t notice the subtleties. But my daughter has had several people say, like you’re so lucky that your parents don’t drink. And I think that’s such a crazy thing to me, because I didn’t think that the kids who just had, you know, even normal drinking parents, that they’re they would really notice that. I just thought it was just normal to them, right? But it turns out that, you know, the interesting part of this whole mommy culture thing is we’re going to be a perfectionist about all these things and PTO and, you know, a million soccer games and baseball and all this stuff, and then we’re going to overdo it, and then we need to check out at the end of the day, we end up hurting our kids, right? I mean, at  the end of the day, your reward is actually poisoning yourself, let’s be honest.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:16:00

Like, what is alcohol, and you’re modeling that. Not okay. I’m going to go for a run, or I’m going to go to bed early, or I’m going to tell people I can’t do anything or take a bath. You are modeling. I am stressed out. Get me a drink ASAP.

Sarah Allen Benton  1:16:14

Exactly, but yet, you care so much about all those other pieces and maybe even doing them to such a point that you can’t actually handle it, yeah? So, you’re not doing anyone a favor by being such a super mom.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:16:29

Yeah, you’re and by the way, if anyone’s, if anyone wants to learn more about parenting and working with trying to figure out how to talk to your kids, or the stat you were saying if you delay the age of drinking and other strategies taking down risk. The book Addiction Inoculation. I’ve interviewed the author of that is a really good one to dive into. In addition to your book on, you know, Being A Parent In Recovery and setting that up, it’s, it’s sort of a great companion piece to look into it.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, okay. I know we’re going over time, and I suggest anyone who is looking at their relationship with alcohol or trying to stop drinking, or worried about how it’s impacted your children and what you can do, get Sarah’s book. It’s Parents In Recovery. It’s a great model for what you can do to set yourself up for success and sort of avoid the pitfalls that you might find.

Sarah, can you tell us more about where people can find you and follow up?

Sarah Allen Benton  1:17:39

Sure. So, my website is bentonbhc.com and the book is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and roman.com, which is my publisher.

Also, I’ve started a Parents In Recovery support group on Facebook. I’m really hoping to grow that kind of a community. I would also love in the future to start Parents In Recovery support groups and utilize each of the chapters as like different topics, because they really are kind of like the main pillars.

So, I also have a LinkedIn and Facebook page myself, but I have a Psychology Today blog called, The High Functioning Alcoholic, and I’m right now going to be doing a very long series on parents in recovery.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:18:30

Okay, that is awesome. Thank you so much for being here. This has been a great conversation.

Sarah Allen Benton  1:18:37

Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed talking with you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Hello Someday podcast.

If you’re interested in learning more about me, the work I do, and access free resources and guides to help you build a life you love without alcohol. Please visit hellosomedaycoaching.com. And I would be so grateful if you would take a few minutes to rate and review this podcast so that more women can find it. And join the conversation about drinking less and living more.