SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, recovery, life, drinking, addiction, alcohol, self-doubt, drugs, feel, experience, thinking, sober, bottom, world, yoga, procrastination, alcoholic, Tommy, struggling, person, self-sabotage, self-loathing, self-defeating, self-disgust, self-forgiveness, living life without drugs and alcohol, evolution, process, language, big 6, food addictions, people addictions, money addictions, technology, four aggravations, negative thinking, procrastination, resentment, awareness, acceptance, belief system, no longer serves you, path of evolution, path of discovery, wisdom

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Tommy Rosen

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.

And I could not be more thrilled today because my guest is Tommy Rosen. You probably know him. But he’s an internationally renowned Yoga Teacher and Addiction Recovery Expert who has spent the last three decades immersed in recovery and wellness. He holds advanced certifications in both Kundalini and Hatha Yoga and has over 30 years of continuous recovery from addiction.

 

Tommy teaches at yoga conferences, festivals, retreats, and online throughout the year sharing the power of breath and movement to build vitality, boost immunity and with optimally, he is the founder and CEO of Recovery 2.0 – where he is created the recovery 2.0 global community, the recovery 2.0 online conference series, the recovery 2.0 group coaching program, and the recovery 2.0 coach training. Tommy also leads yoga and recovery retreats and workshops internationally spreading the message of don’t just survive, thrive. So, Tommy truly could not be more excited to have you here.

 

02:40

And I’m so delighted to be here. Thank you so much.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  02:45

This is amazing. And just to jump in, you’ve done so much. I told you before we hopped on the podcast that I have a client who’s been to your retreats in Joshua Tree, and Kripalu and was a founding member of Recovery Troop 2.0 and just says that the work you do has been completely life changing.

 

03:12

Thank you for that feedback. I certainly hope so because I surely have needed to change my life over the years.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  03:20

Well, so tell me what got you into this work.

 

03:24

I come to this work through direct experience with addiction. I really struggled in my adolescence, my childhood, my adolescent years and into my 20s I really struggled with the outward expression of addiction that we know as drug addiction and alcoholism and oh gosh, codependency and sex addiction and gambling addiction and money based addictions and food based addictions that I really feel like my experience has been through all of these different outward expressions of the thing that we call, addiction. And so, I have learned so much through direct experience and through my own suffering and pain, and my own healing process, which has been extraordinary for me to get to live in freedom from all those things I just named. And to learn that there is such a thing as freedom from addiction. That’s a new concept from where I was coming from. And to be focused today. In this day, you know, on health and wellness and connection and love and spirituality and, you know, better relationships. Better, more showing up, more empowered, and more effective in the world. It’s been an extraordinary journey, truly. But I came to it originally really through my own suffering and having to get sober at age 22. Going off to treatment drug and alcohol treatment. Finding the 12 steps, which was really for me, the first step was sort of the 12 step work was really foundational for me, set me up for a lot of other work. And I’ve come to really look at, you know, these behaviors as really just ways that we’ve decided to cope with the joys and the challenges of life.

 

And for some of us, most of us, I think, whether somebody considers themselves to be an alcoholic, or an addict of any kind, or maybe they don’t identify with that language, as I no longer identify with that language. But anybody who struggles with a bad habit, and they say to themselves, you know, I, I think my life would be better if I didn’t have this habit. And they tried to release it, but they’ve had a hard time. That’s the space that I work in. That’s the space I’m interested in. It’s when a person can come to me and say, Okay, maybe some of them are really bad. And they say, you know, I think I’m an alcoholic, or I think I’m an addict, I think I have this, I think I have that. Other people come and they just say, you know, I don’t know what I am. But I’m engaging in behaviors that no longer serve me. Yeah, I’d like to stop, but I don’t really know how. And so that’s like, that’s a sweet spot for me. That’s exciting. And that’s the work that I do today. That’s where I’ve come to, at this point.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  06:23

I think it’s really interesting that you mentioned that you used to identify as an addict and alcoholic and now, you no longer identify that way, or use those terms to describe yourself. Can you tell me about that evolution?

 

06:38

Yes. Well, you use the word that the key word there is evolution. So, I truly believe that human beings are meant to excel, evolve. I really mean that. I mean, that human being like it built into our, our experience of life, is that we’re actually here to experience an evolution in ourselves, and evolution of the way we see things the way we perceive an evolution in our, our experience of life, and our experience of spirit beyond this life, and so, if that’s true, then just the process of getting, you know, moving from, for example, from using drugs and alcohol to not using drugs and alcohol, that’s, that’s an evolutionary decision that over time can bring evolutionary results.

 

And when I first made that decision, my life was really destroyed. I mean, really, really destroyed. I was really, really in a tough place. And I could say to you, honestly, wow, I don’t know if I can make it through this day. without drinking, without using some, you know, smoking pot or, or whatever it was. And that is for me, it would be accurate for me to say, at that time in my life, wow, I, I have this thing, I’m an addict. That’s my current state of being, my current way of getting through the world, seems to be in an addictive manner. So that’s accurate language for me at that time, and maybe even important language for me to recognize the depth of my problem, wow, I really have this thing, I can raise my hand and say, you know, yes. I’m an alcoholic. Today, like, this is what I’m feeling like, wow, I’m really feeling stuck. As a person moves down their evolutionary path is, you know, for example, if you, let’s say you put down drugs and alcohol and you’re doing you’re really facing your life, and you start to learn and you start to grow and, and you have maybe fewer difficult days than you used to, and you start to have more positive days than you used to. And maybe one day you wake up like I did, about 30 years ago, and I recognized, and I caught myself not wanting to use drugs or alcohol anymore. And I recognized Oh, my God. I sincerely, sincerely don’t want to do that anymore. Wow. How did that happen? Before like, maybe a year before, I couldn’t imagine getting through a day without alcohol and drugs. And here I am a year later. And I can’t imagine having those things

in my day. Was that after you stopped?

 

09:43

That was after I stopped. I had stopped and I had I had, you know, been going to meetings to 12 step meetings. And I had been talking to a lot of people in recovery and surrounding myself, with people in recovery who were in Interested in this experiment of living life without drugs and alcohol. And it was beautiful and, and I hadn’t done that much work on myself or, I mean, I had. I had made a decision to try to face life every day without drugs and alcohol. And I got a lot of suggestions along the way about how to do that. And I went to lots and lots of meetings and I communicated my emotional stuff, what was coming up for me in life and what was hard for me, and lo and behold, I, I came to this place. And it was really remarkable. And I started to work the 12 steps. And that feeling of freedom started to grow in me. My point in this is to say that the language that I was using at the beginning, later on some years down the line, I said, You know what? I’m not an alcoholic. I’m not a drug addict. And that can be very confusing for people. Because they always ask me a question when I tell them that, oh, if you’re not an alcoholic, well, that must mean that you can drink and there’s no problem with it. Yeah. And I say, oh, no, no, no, no, that’s not the way to look at it.

 

The way to look at it is, is I’m not an alcoholic. I recognize that alcohol is so counterproductive for my life, I would never want to engage with it. It’s not actually helping me in any way. It’s only a form of distraction, a form of emotional manipulation. And it, it’s actually poison to my body, it makes me a little less alert, a little less aware, a little less conscious. It messes with my extensive self-confidence. It messes with my sense of like intuition. Like a sense that I know, I know what I’m doing. And I know what to do and how to get through a day. God, that it really brings so much negativity into my life.

 

The fact that I’m not an alcoholic. I make that statement, is to say, I’m free from the illusion that that’s going to do anything good for me.

 

Yeah, and they’re like, oh, wow, that’s a new kind of idea. You know, so I, I just want to finish, I have needed different things, at different times, as I’ve gone along my evolutionary process, and I need a different language. At the beginning, certain language was appropriate for me, in the middle, you know, middle being 15 years ago, and other language was appropriate for me even now, still more different language and different approaches aren’t. So, the point is, is I’ve been in an evolution. And that is the most liberating and wonderful thing. So, it’s not a life sentence, these two, raise your hand and say, My name is Tom. My name is Tommy, I’m an alcoholic. My name is Tommy, I’m an addict. It’s not a license. But I have no illusion about what substances could do to destroy my life very quickly if I if I returned to them. So is I am just free. I’m liberated from it.

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.

 

The Sobriety Starter Kit is an online self study sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step by step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one on one coaching. And the sobriety starter kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it. And when it fits into your schedule. You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time.

This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step by step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking, from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better. You’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach, you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course 

 

 13:19

Yeah. I love that. I’m truly one of my favorite things I’ve seen is Craig Ferguson did like a monologue on sobriety. And, and I believe one of the things he said is,

You know, I haven’t had a drink in X number of years. I don’t have a problem with alcohol, I could get one really quickly you know.

If he drinks again, and I definitely feel that way, when you said, you’re free. One of the things I think, you know, in terms of like the word recovery, and I actually do use that sort of interchangeably with, I quit drinking, I no longer drink anymore, but at the same time, I feel like it kind of describes it in a way that for me isn’t completely true, because I’m like, when I was drinking, I was recovering. Every single day. I was at the bus stop with my kids with a brutal hangover and bloodshot eyes and kind of trying to pull myself through the day. I was like, I’m not recovering daily anymore. I’m just living, and I loved when you said, you were free.

 

14:34

Thank you. Yes. Well, that, um, thing you said about, you know, what Craig Ferguson had had mentioned in his monologue around this, about having a problem. You know, the problem is being in a society that’s so skewed, and it’s thinking that navigating a day without alcohol seems like that’s a problem. whereas if you drink alcohol in what society deems as a responsible way, well, that’s normal. And you know, and it brings up the wonderful quote by Krishna Murthy.

It’s no boast to be well adjusted to an extremely sick society.

Wow. Yeah. And so, we have to break out of that confusion around substances that, you know, this is the way it’s supposed to be, oh, wait, you know, we you know, alcohol is everywhere in our society. And so, we’ve come to really believe that if you don’t use it, it’s probably because you have a problem with it, forgetting that. The problem is that we’re not facing our problems, we’re not facing our emotions, we’re not facing our lives, and we pay terrible prices for that. Yeah.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  15:55

I mean, I saw just last night, clearly the Instagram algorithm for a sponsored post targeted me and they made a mistake, but it was this retail thing of all these products, you know, between wine glasses, and tea towels, and every signs that were like, you know, wine stoppers are for quitters. And, you know, my job is to drink all the wine. And, you know, I mean, I’ve even seen ones like saying, I’m not slurring, I’m, I’m talking in cursive. And it just, it’s so gross to me, than the things from your birthday cards to everything else or are targeting us to drink more to encourage it to normalize it. Like you said, it’s so normalized in our society. And I mean, those products in particular, are so clearly targeting women. And, you know, you see it in the numbers in terms of the number of women who are dying from alcohol related diseases.

 

17:07

What I’m seeing rampant is that we’re under the influence. So, I’m going to use that term in a broader sense than we often use that, so we’ll usually use that term as we all know, in related in relation to being under the influence of a substance, or alcohol. Oh, you’re driving under the influence DUI, you’re under the influence, you know, you’ve drank, you know, that idea. What we’re all under is the influence of marketing, and media. And unfortunately, I can I, I do feel, you know, being a man, there’s, there’s obviously a male version to I’m about to say, but I think we’re speaking to a lot of women here. And I and what I can observe from my vantage point is that it is really, really difficult for a woman in our society for young girl, and then a woman in our society to feel confident. Because we’re being told from the beginning that we’re missing something almost like an original sin. We’re missing something to begin with. And we’re going to need a whole bunch of products and services and changes and things. And if we can just get the, the approach if we can just get our approach just exactly right. Maybe we can eke out some sense that everything’s okay or that we are okay.

 

Yeah. What do we know about addiction, it comes from a sense of lack. It comes from a sense of insecurity. It comes from a sense of I’m not enough. It comes from a sense of I don’t fit in. And it comes from stress and anxiety and our marketing and our media machines in the society. And there’s no one you can point to, there’s no one person you can point to. The system is set up to create insecurity. And I do believe that women to a great extent take the brunt of it. And are told from the beginning of their lives that things aren’t going to work out for them unless they buy this or do this or change this or data. So very painful. And so, we’re under the influence. What can we do? We have to get sober from those influences. We have to spend time around people who celebrate us as we are. We have to get into the habit of celebrating ourselves as we are. This for me is where the practice of meditation and yoga come in. Because if you’re really doing yoga, the way I feel yoga, I feel the promise of yoga is to bring you into connection with your true self, and your true self is a perfect divine essence within you. From that place, you can start to sort of really be connected and really be show up in the world in an authentic way, which isn’t fraught with insecurity and fraught with this feeling that something’s, you know, wrong beyond repair. And so, it’s an it’s a difficult time. And I think particularly for women I do.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  20:26

I mean, I know that yoga and meditation are a huge part of your movement and healing. Can you tell us more about that, like how that manifests in terms of practice? Or, or how you work with people with that in recovery to point out?

 

20:47

Yes, I love this question. Yoga for me is central to my life into the work that I do in the world. And I feel that it’s not something that people, especially people who are trying to evolve. And this is this is everyone, I believe, if we’re interested in evolution, and showing up in better and better ways in the world, to have a practice, a yoga practice and a meditation practice are essential. These are like the great gifts to our humanity. And it’s really, it’s not a give or take thing, it’s just figure out a way to get onto the mat, get with some teachers and start practicing. For me, as I told you, I was struggling in so many ways in my head, my mind was not my best friend, I would say for a long time, my emotional body, my emotions were so stuck, my body, chronic pain, a lot of pain in my body. And all these things go together, of course, the insecurities and the mind and the busy mind and the stuck emotions, and all of that works to create pain in the body.

 

And so, I say that anyone in recovery, anyone on this evolutionary path has experienced chronic pain, everybody, every 100% of the people, because if it wasn’t a physical chronic pain, we certainly know emotional, chronic pain. And let’s not disconnect that from the rest of the body, because it all goes together. So, yoga, yoga comes in. And it’s basically like this, you get on a mat. We’re talking now about the physical practice of yoga. But of course, yoga is so much more than that. But just at the beginning, you get on the mat. And a teacher might direct your attention to your breath. And the teacher might put you into a particular posture, oppose a yoga pose, and ask you to breathe long and deep for say, five breaths. And you do that and while you’re there, you’re not pushing beyond your limit. You’re just experiencing the feeling of being in that posture for five breaths. That might be the most present moment you’ve had for years. When you first start. Yeah, and I remember my first yoga class ever. I, it was the hardest thing I ever did to that moment in my life. Physically, the single hardest thing I had ever done. And I had done some difficult things. This was the single most difficult, the being present for five breaths. That part.

 

23:20

The physical? Well, the physical reality of getting through a 90 minute yoga class. Oh, yeah. In three minutes, there was sweat pouring off my brow. I was shaking in all of my muscles, I had so much tension in my body that I wasn’t aware of. Yeah.

 

And so, to try to stretch my way into these postures was me literally fighting me. There were no weights. There was no competition. I wasn’t going up against anybody else. It was just me and me. And I felt like I was losing, you know? And 90 minutes, how would I do it? It seemed like an interminable amount of time. Now 90 minutes is nothing. My whole relationship with time changed through the practice of Yoga also. But I sweated so much, and I moved so much. And I began to open up this body and create more mobility, more, more, more flexibility, and also more strength, more stamina. I became strong from the inside out. And it felt great. And it was like, wow, this is an amazing feeling. And that’s where it began because my drug addiction and my alcoholism, and all of it was It all began with Wow, this is an amazing feeling. Yeah, I like the way this feels.

 

Well, here was a yoga practice a difficult physical practice. And at the end of it, I was like, Wow, I feel like I’m high And what I meant by high was just I feel like I’m free. Yeah, I like this feeling. And I’ve only known this feeling through using drugs and alcohol. Wow, what a liberation. Yeah, so that’s the physical. That’s the initial physical, but then you’re all yoga leads to stillness, silence, and meditation. And this is where when you really finally get to know yourself, I had always known myself as an anxious kid, hyperactive kid. Someone who had a lot of potential, but never really felt he was going to realize his potential. He knows there’s always like a lack of motivation, lack of completing of tasks, this kind of thing, procrastination, a lot of self-doubt, and negativity. And little by little, I was able to work on that through the practice of yoga. And the practice of recovery. And the practice of abstinence is really where it all began.

 

And so, yoga, the word yoga literally means a union. It means to bring together. And if you think about that, by definition, it’s kind of the opposite of addiction. Addiction is where nothing comes together. Yeah. It’s where everything is disconnected. And one feels disconnected from oneself disconnected from others, disconnected from any sense of spirit. There’s a reason we call alcohol spirits. You know, yeah. And so yeah, we’re trying to make up for that lack of connection. And so, yoga comes in, and it starts to reestablish these core relationships, relationship with self, relationship with others, relationship with spirit, relationship with the breath, relationship with this body, relationship with the planet, and all that it gives us, we may even start to develop this thing called gratitude. We’re actually, you know, happy to be alive, literally happy to be alive. And, and at the end of the day, whether it’s been a hard day, or an easy day, or a wonderful day or whatever day, you can just simply say, and mean it. Oh, thank you for this day. Sometimes, you know, you don’t even know who you’re saying thank you to some people, for some people, that’s God or spirit or higher power, whatever. Other people don’t have that sense of, of God or things like that. And for them, it’s just like, Well, I’m just saying thank you just to say thank you. And that’s a sweet thing to do. Yeah. So, you know, everything changed through the practice of yoga, and it took my recovery, my healing, and my evolution to the next level.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  27:41

I love that you said that it gave you the sense of being, you know, quote, unquote, high. Because I hear so often, from people that they’re, you know, one of their biggest fears of stopping drinking or drugs is, Will I ever feel that? Hi, that buzz, that relaxation, that, you know, transformation of just being chill and being happy and being fuzzy again? Yeah. Do you hear that too?

 

28:17

Oh, gosh, I think it’s one of the things that keeps people using drugs and alcohol more than almost any other fears. Oh, my God, I What, what will I turn to? How will I you know, for some people, it’s how will I turn off my mind ever? Yes. How will I find a sense of relaxation, you know, and, you know, for some, it’s like, oh, God, the party, as I’ve known it is over, the party’s over.

 

The party’s not over when you stop drinking and doing drugs. The party is changing shape. You’re about to come to the greatest party of your life. I tell people in recovery that they need to get high every day. But the way to get high now is through natural means. Really profound ways to get high are to experience a true sense of freedom, wellness, and connection. I do it through the practice of yoga, meditation, athletics, singing, dancing, listening to music, going to live music, immersions in nature, connecting with my wife and the people that I love. I also love to cook and look at art. It’s such a rich, wonderful, and extraordinary experience to alter your consciousness without chemicals. You don’t need drugs and alcohol to do it.

 

And I’m not coming out here, you know, anti-drugs, anti-alcohol, you know, there are people who, who, you know, do engage in drugs and alcohol at some point in their life, where it can actually serve them. Like it served me when I was a young kid, I had nothing else at my disposal. I was hyperactive, I was unable to turn off my mind. I didn’t have yoga; I didn’t have meditation. I had a very difficult situation at home. And so, you know when I used to smoke cannabis, it served a purpose for me. And I evolved. And then I needed something else. And cannabis no longer served me. In fact, it took so much from my life. I needed to put it down, but I never would have known that. If I didn’t put it down.

 

Yeah. A lot of people come to me and they’re like, you know, I don’t like the word alcoholic. I hear this all the time. I don’t want to call myself an alcoholic. I’m like, Well, don’t? Don’t, that’s not really the point, is it? And they’re like, Well, it’s kind of the point because, you know, if I’m an alcoholic, then that means I can’t drink.

 

31:58

And if I’m not an alcoholic, then that means I can drink. And I’m like, Oh, so you’re coming to me for permission.

 

32:07

Because you want to ask if I think you’re an alcoholic or not. You know, what you’re really wanting is you want permission to continue in the same behaviors you’ve been engaging in, which no longer serve you. Yeah. And so, whether you use the label alcoholic or not, the better question is, how would I like to show up in the world? What would I like to do with my time? If I could write out the script of my life? Would I be drinking? Is that the thing I would be doing? You know, in order for me to realize the fullest expression of my life. And if most people are honest with themselves, you know, nobody wants drinking is a lifestyle. You know, it’s, it’s just I, you know, I was I don’t think it was ever meant to be a lifestyle. But we took it a little far. Yeah, yeah. And then we looked at it as the thing as the thing that we do, you know, does that make sense?

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  33:05

Oh, it makes complete sense. And, I mean, I loved so much about what you just said. I was smiling when you said yoga and meditation, but then I loved how you added in music and art and cooking and connection. It’s kind of funny, I today am taking my first guitar lesson in 14 years. With the teacher I absolutely loved. I took lessons from him for five years, up until my son was born. And then my son was he’s 14 now, but when I play guitar, it’s so funny. It I like literally almost start crying. Sometimes when I’m singing, and I am not good. I’m not a great singer. I’m not a great player. But it’s weird that it’s one in there like happy emotional, overcome with whatever emotion feelings, and I don’t really get that anywhere else, despite the fact I’m alone. And I’m not good at it. You know what I mean?

 

34:12

Right? Well, I mean, I love what you’re talking about. And you’re talking about your creativity, tapping into something that touches a lot of different levels of a person’s being. And you just, you just like opening your throat and your mouth and your lungs. And using your instrument your body to sing is incredible thing to do.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  34:37

And it does light up your brain in that. Yeah, of course it does. So, I remember being in India. No, no, no, we were in we were in an ashram in the United States. And an Indian, a revered Indian teacher would happen to be there, and a woman asked a question of him and said, you know, what do you recommend for depression? Like, you know, there’s rampant depression these days, and people are really struggling and, and without missing a beat, he said, for depression, we recommend singing and dancing. Those are the those are the two most powerful natural antidepressants. Yeah, we sing, and we dance and, and you’ll notice that people who are depressed are not doing those things. And this if they’re actually the last things that those folks want to do. And so, we have to, we have to get ourselves up by, by any means we can get up and sing and open our mouths and sing and dance and move the energy. And I truly, truly, truly believe that that would be super helpful for almost anyone who’s stuck in anxiety or depression or whatever it is. So, get high every day.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  35:56

Do it. Yeah, I love that. I know, you also talked about a few different things you mentioned, of course, being a hyperactive kid being having, you know, negative thinking. And I’ve heard you talk about the four aggravations, the thought addictions that we get trapped in. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

 

36:22

Yes. The four aggravations came from out of essentially a meditation or contemplation when I was thinking about what are the things that lead a person into addictive behavior? What people normally think of as addictive behaviors, like taking drugs or drinking addictively or I call it the Big 6. So, the Big 6 just quickly… drugs, alcohol, food addictions, all of them. People addictions, that’s relationships and codependency and sex addiction. And then, Money addictions. So gambling, shopping, or constantly being in a state of debt, I consider that an addiction as well. And then six would be technology and the ways that we use technology and addictive fashion. Yeah. So those are the Big 6.

 

And I was contemplating like, well, there are addictive processes that are in place in a way before we use those substances or behaviors.

 

And so, the four aggravations came out of that their negative thinking, self-doubt, procrastination, and resentment. So those are the four there probably one or two or three that I could add, under further sort of reflection, the four aggravations, you know, you could, you could look at shame and guilt is possibly another one and, but those for self-doubt. The idea here is that addiction is any behavior, you continue, despite it bringing a negative consequence into your life. So, with self-doubt, that’s a behavior. That’s a belief system, you doubt yourself, you doubt your ability, you doubt your worth, in some way that it brings a lot of pain into your life, and it just continues. And some people feel like, like, they’re not doing that. Like, I have self-doubt. It’s happening to me. I’m not I’m not doing it. No, you’re participating in a belief system that no longer serves you. And this is where we start to look at addiction in a much broader perspective.

 

So now, rather than thinking about a substance, and sometimes people can relate to this, they’ll say, Okay, well, I certainly have dealt with self-doubt. And some people have even said to me, I am plagued by self-doubt. Wow. And I mean, even people who outwardly are successful, plagued by self-doubt, they’ve told me. And so, my reflection is that you cannot be successful in this life. If you are plagued by self-doubt, that we cannot have a successful existence and that if you kept on with self-doubt, and you kept believing, whatever the story is, that made you feel poorly about yourself, eventually, I believe that you would need to adopt a behavior that would treat the symptoms of those belief systems. And what are the symptoms of self-doubt? Misery, depression, repression, suppression, anger, anxiety, stress. You don’t even know where it’s coming from. And in the back of your mind, maybe even unconscious subcon Just stuff. You’re thinking somewhere back there. It’s not going to work out for me. I can’t handle this. I don’t belong here. Nobody loves me the way I need to be loved. You know, whatever the stories are. Yeah. And those stories keep you stuck. So that’s just self-doubt that says an example. And then, you know, negative thinking is just this, this almost like a, like a forcefield of that people put out into the world of just judgment, condemnation, negative, blaming, complaining, terrible, terrible negativity, you can’t have a successful life and be stuck in negative thinking. Yeah. And procrastination. I’m sorry, please.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  40:48

Oh no, I’m just wondering, I completely agree with you. But how do you shift people out?

 

40:55

Yes, yes. Yes, you can shift out of these things, for sure. You know, for one thing, you have to get around positive people, your environment makes a big difference. I’m very, very we are affected by others, I would the way I would put it is consciousness is contagious. So, you need to be around people of a higher level, so that you can be you can sort of catch their consciousness, if you will. So yeah, I mean, if you’re, if you’re stuck in negativity, you have to begin to work that out.

 

First of all, you have to be able to see it. Wow. Like, you know, somebody might say to you one day, oh, my God, you are such a negative person. And you would not receive that? Well, you might say a few expletives to that person. You might deny the statement. No, that’s not that’s not me. That’s not me. You don’t really know me? Or you might try to defend it. Well, yes, I am negative. But if you really knew what had happened to me, you don’t understand why I have every right to be negative. Now, that’s a self-defeating way of thinking, yeah. But we can understand it, we can have compassion for it. Because some very difficult things have happened to some people. But we want to help those people to get out of living a life that’s affected by whatever traumas or difficulties they’ve experienced. We don’t want people to be stuck there for a lifetime. It’s not fun for them. And it’s not fun for anybody else.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  42:28

Yeah. And this victim resentful.

 

42:32

Absolutely. And so, the first step is, is awareness. Wow. And acceptance. Well, I’m aware that I’m carrying a lot of negativity. That’s a that’s a huge thing for someone to admit. Yeah, that’s so powerful. And then you can begin to work on it and catch yourself, wow, I’m being negative right now, what’s bothering me? Where’s this coming from? You can work with therapists; you can work the 12 steps. And really learn where your resentments are coming from. You know, we can learn where our triggers are coming from, and we can start to grow beyond them. And we can have compassion for ourselves forgiveness for ourselves. And that leads into forgiveness for others. This is called evolution. This is emotional maturity. Yeah, growing up, we’re not just waking up spiritually. We also have to grow up emotionally. And sometimes when somebody says to us, Wow, you are such a negative person. That might be just the wake up call we need that changes our life forever. Yeah. And so, for me, the wake up call came because I was destroying my life with drugs and alcohol. Of course, I was behaving poorly. That’s what people who are drug addicts and alcoholics do. It’s not because I’m a bad person, but I was behaving badly, and I would have to change those behaviors. But I wouldn’t be able to do it until I let go of drugs and alcohol. And began to see what was going on with my thought process and my beliefs and my insecurities and all the things that we’re working on me. And I’ve been working on those things for a lifetime. I work on them this morning. I work on them this evening. I work on them right now with you. I’m thinking about literally thinking about myself and the things that I’d like to work on in my life and be even better at and the whole while I’m in a shower of self-forgiveness. Because I’m human, and I accept my humanity and my imperfection. And underneath, all of it is gratitude. Just for the opportunity to be able to see to see my own blind spots. Yeah, and the places that I have to grow and to give everybody else a break too. You know, we need to give each other a little bit of a break. And ourselves.

 

Yeah, procrastination and resentment were the final two of the four aggravations, and I don’t think they need too much explanation. You know, procrastination is just that very silly thing where you, you decide I’m not going to do the thing I know I need to do. Instead, I’m going to distract myself from the pain I’m feeling because I’m not doing the thing I’m supposed to do. That’s, that’s procrastination. And it doesn’t work out. It’s mathematically a poor way to live this life. And then resentment, you know, carrying these negative emotions towards the person or place or thing that we that did something we perceive as wrong, or that was wrong. And that hurt was hurtful for us at some point in the past, and we also must work these things out to live a great life.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  45:54

Yeah, because resentments sort of poisons you in the same way that alcohol and drugs do in terms of just, you’re feeling all this anger, but at the same time, it’s only hurting yourself.

 

46:09

I’ve never heard it put better than that. And then I would say that resentment is as destructive to a human being as alcohol or drugs.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  46:21

Yep. Yeah. And it’s wonderful the way you put that, because it sounds like when you when you were talking about that, you said, you know, you stopped alcohol, you stopped drugs, and then you had all these other things to work on. And I really do feel like the first step of healing if you have a problematic or difficult or you’re addicted to alcohol, is stopping that self-sabotage and that cycle and that poisoning of your body and mind. But then there’s so much more healing to be done.

 

47:01

Yeah, they’d be healing begins. In a sense, once your primary addictions are put down, or released for a moment, that’s, that’s when you finally you know, I guess what I would say it like, like this, if there are people in this world who, you know, are not, quote unquote, alcoholics, in the sense of, they’re not drinking to excess, and they’re able to drink in their life and have a life that works for them. They to, in my opinion, need to release the habit or the habitual use, even just, hey, I come home at night, and I unwind with a couple glasses of wine. In order to walk, what I call the path of discovery, which I believe, which I have experienced in which I believe leads to freedom for anybody. You have to take periods of time, where you’re not changing your emotional state, you’re not unwinding through the use of chemicals that you are present to your emotional experience. You’re present to the things that are happening for you in your life. And you’re looking for the lessons in your challenges, rather than trying to you know, shift them. Yeah. Now, there are extreme examples of people in the world who are under, you know, some abhorrent poverty, or they’re subjected to slavery, or they are in a war zone. And these are extreme examples of suffering and pain at the human level. And I’m not really speaking about these situations. Because the recommended a, I don’t have suggestions for people in in those extreme situations, because they’re so extreme that those people just have to get through a day. They’re in such a difficult situation that they are in the mode of survival. Literally, yeah. And so, some people, you know, might say, you know, well, what’s your saying Tommy really doesn’t apply for the people of Ukraine. You know, who are you In the middle of a war right now, and I’d say, well, some of what I’m saying does apply to anybody. And let’s be aware of and take into consideration these extraordinary circumstances that a part of humanity is experiencing in in abject suffering. So, I just want to say that as a sort of a note that we’re talking about people in our society in the United States of America, who are able to put food on the table, and who are struggling with their mind. And, and struggling with belief patterns and struggling with, you know, insecurities and struggling with the human condition. So that’s what we’re really talking about here, you know.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  50:51

yeah, I think it’s really interesting that you put it that way. And I know you also talk about the three bottoms. Can you tell me a little more about that?

 

51:07

Well, so the three bottoms are not necessarily the three bottoms, that every human being is going to experience. But maybe I haven’t thought it through all the way to see if I feel, and since this extends to all humanity, but it certainly was true for me, my first bottom. So, let’s just define bottom. First of all, a bottom is a point that you reach with a behavior or a belief system that is not serving you. And you reach the moment where you recognize the truth, which is that you have to let it go. Whether it’s a behavior or a belief system, you have to let it go. Because you won’t make it if you don’t, you can’t imagine going forward thinking and believing the same way you’ve been. But the bottom aspect of it is that you also don’t know what to do next. You’re stuck. Yeah, you reach the bottom and what precipitates out of that as a surrender. So, a bottom also has been defined as a moment when you’re ready to finally tell the truth. So, my first bottom was the bottom of desperation. Bottom of desperation, and the desperation, we speak about the gift of desperation in recovery. Why is it a gift because I was so desperate, I had no other choice. So, I could no longer fight myself. And it gave me the opportunity to move on to a new path. Whereas if I had another option, or another way, I might not have chosen that. Yeah. So that’s how I got sober the first time. That’s why I went off to treatment, drug, and alcohol treatment, I got sober. That was because of the gift of desperation, that was my first bottom. I’d stay sober for a year. And then I went out and I had more experimentation, I wasn’t done yet. And I, I’d be out relapsing, using drugs and alcohol for the next year.

 

53:09

And then I came to my second bottom at the end of that next year. We’ll call this the bottom of self-disgust. So, this was this was no longer about desperation, to actually had a job.

 

53:26

I had a home, I had a car, I had sort of the basic trap, I had friends. But I had come to a bottom, which in some ways is a more powerful and more, more longer lasting bottom, which was I had become sick of myself. And I had started to feel, well, I’m really fed up with this behavior. I’m really fed up with the way things have been going in my life. And I can tell that this could go on for a lifetime. And I don’t think I can stomach that.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  54:05

And at that point, I’m curious, were you hiding that? You were drinking and doing drugs again, after going to rehab and being sober for a year or did pretty much everyone know at that point that you were you were doing that again?

 

54:21

No, I was. It was well, yes. And no, I was. I was hiding it. Certainly, from my family. Yeah. For sure. I was hiding it from many of my sober friends. Yeah. And then there were there were the people that I could find in the world who knew I had been sober, but they were still using drugs and they were willing to use drugs with me.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  54:43

Yeah, I find that common right. So, you have a period of sobriety. And you make a lot of connections with people who are also on that, that sober that recovery path and obviously the people closest to you I have witnessed, you know, your desperation originally or your commitment. And then when you go back it, it’s sort of a dual thing. I mean, you know too much, right. That’s the self-discuss, you know how you felt without it? And then also, you’re hiding it. So, it’s almost harder to ask for help sometimes.

 

55:21

Absolutely. There was, for sure there was a sense of I don’t I don’t I’m not in touch with a feeling of shame at that time. Yeah. I’m not in touch with that. I think it was more about there was certainly an arrogance to me. You know, I’m doing this. And you know, I don’t know where it’s leading. It’s probably not leading to a great place. But I’m doing this because I’m doing this. And, you know, I don’t want to hear from anybody about it.

 

Yeah. Arrogance. But that underneath that arrogance is me. Quietly, sort of contemplating the fact that I know this isn’t going well. Whereas before, I didn’t have the benefit of treatment, I didn’t have the benefit of recovery at all. Now, I was like, wow, I really don’t know what I stand for. Yeah, I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m kind of floating through each day, I’m just sort of, again, surviving, but I’m not thriving. And I can’t, I can’t tolerate that. I’m guessing that the people who are listening to this, don’t want to live a life like that, either. Yeah, that’s what I guess got sick of myself. And so, I stepped back into meetings, I raised my hand, I got a sponsor. It’s a long story. But I wrote about it in my book, Recovery, 2.0. And I got sober. I got sober for the final time, June 23, 1991. And then later, in my recovery, I would, I would reach another bottom much later. And this was the bottom around my core issues. This was the bottom that I had to face if I was going to grow into an adult and grow into someday hopefully an elder, meaning a wise person, that if I could be a wise person in his life, that would be about the greatest thing I can imagine. And maybe aside from just being completely awake, but that would include wisdom.

 

So, in order to get to that place, we’re all going to have to go through the portals of our core issues. And for me, that was codependency really struggling with relationships with women, and romantic relationships. Oh, God, so much pain and so much difficulty. And you know, now I’m in my very happy 22 year relationship with my wife Kia, who I love so much and who loves me and, you know, my old friends are like, I don’t know how you did it. You know, because they saw me when I reached my third bottom, that codependent bottom, that money bottom. Who am I in this world? How do I use my gifts? How can I make money in this world and support myself? How can I, you know, all this human struggle? How can I be here effectively as me? And that was the third bottom. It’s the bottom of the I would call it just the core. Right down to the core. Yeah. And, and I’m working that core. And those issues are like, part of the tapestry of my life. Rather than looking for like, you know, a cure because I think that is a trap. Like when people say, is there a cure for addiction? I’m like, let’s ask another question. Let’s ask another question. Let’s ask how can we be free today? Yeah. How can we be on the right path today? You know, let’s, let’s ask that question. And if we can be on the on the right path today. And we do that on a successive number of days. We’re going to be on our evolutionary path, and everything is going to turn out today and every day exactly the way it’s supposed to be. Well, it’s the same way with our core issues. We are who we are, and we’ve experienced what we’ve experienced. And so, what we’re interested in is healing, processing through and ultimately transcending. And when we transcend something, there’s also this fluctuation we’ve all seen this. We call this relapse.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  59:55

Yeah, I was just about to ask you about that. You know.

 

59:59

And so that’s the situation energetically can take place. But we, we continue to do our work on a daily basis, and then we establish ourselves at that new place. But we don’t have the illusion that that new place is going to be without its struggles. And without its lessons. And this is what we’ve signed up for as human beings. And so, we are on a path of evolution, our path of discovery. And, and this is what it is, and it’s exciting, and wonderful, and we’re lucky to get to do it. This is how I feel. You caught me on a good day. If you catch me on a really bad day, I, you know, I’m trying not to complain and blame ever anymore. I don’t see the value in that anymore. There’s no value in blaming and complaining, zero, I mean, no value. And so, when I catch myself doing that, I’m like, oh, Tommy, I forgive you. You’re so human. Let’s keep moving forward. You know, you’re responsible here, you’re in the driver’s seat, let’s, let’s learn what we need to learn. Yeah. So, these are some of the musings from out here in the field of Recovery 2.0 these days.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:01:16

I love that. And it was really, I’ve never heard it put this way. But when you talked about your first bottom being desperation, and your second bottom after having a period of sobriety and doing work, and then going back out to experiment to use alcohol and drugs, again, being self-disgust, I had such a similar experience, meaning I, I got to that kind of breaking point where I’m just like, you know, I can’t cope, I can’t deal, stopped drinking through lots of help, and then got pregnant, so I didn’t drink for a year. Amazingly, my life was so much better go figure, I felt better, I was happier. I was more calm, more confident. And then I decided, okay, now I’m going to moderate again, and drank for another 22 months really quickly back to where I was really quickly back to not being able to cope and waking up asking myself what’s wrong with me and the self-loathing and the defensiveness and the guilt and, and the second bottom was, I can this is leading nowhere good, which is what you said. And you knew too much, right? You knew that it’s for me, I knew it was the alcohol, I knew it was self-sabotage, I knew I could feel so much better. And I’ve never heard that, you know, the self-disgust. Bottom. But that is definitely what helped me stop for the last time. And I feel like having that experiment, like you said, experimenting, again, having that period of sobriety and work. And then having that period of, of drinking again, was what finally got me to stop for good. And then there’s the other work.

 

Would you tell us about recovery? 2.0? How I mean, I know you do so much. I’ve had friends who just rave, you know, to different friends who rave about your retreats and your membership? And all it includes but will you share with us how that how that works?

 

1:03:31

So, thank you for the question about Recovery 2.0 this, you know, is really a group of people who have embraced a holistic approach to recovery we offer a multi-pronged program and lifestyle and weight a way to you know, move forward along this evolutionary path that we’ve been talking about called life and it includes a membership we have now we have over 30. I think 35 meetings a week on Zoom now, so all day, every day, multiple meetings a day, that are open to the general public free to anybody who wants to attend. We have our paid membership which is for people who really want to get into our Monday Night Live events that we do every week and our Thursday night coaching events that we do every week and all of our music events, we do a lot with music and a lot with song and dance, you know, it’s about celebrating and so our membership is really fun and powerful.

 

And we have you know, we’re just we have a new podcast that’s coming out soon called, Inner Circle with Tommy Rosen and, and that’s going to be is really straightforward Recovery Q&A. I’d say it’s like profound questions coming from normal everyday people about addiction and recovery and about all areas of human experience. So that’s coming up.

 

And yeah, you know, we do our retreats, our live retreats and workshops and classes in person across the United States, we bring people to Costa Rica for Thanksgiving every year, we’re about to go with about 75 people in various stages of recovery, which is so exciting. And then we I take a group of people to India every March. And we have a spiritual immersion in India, it’s just extra ordinary experience, I highly recommend it to anybody interested in taking their whole life and their program to that next level. And those are some of the things we have going on, you know, check into our YouTube and our Instagram, and we’re always putting up inspiring content and trying to make a difference in the way people, you know, see themselves and see recovery and see addiction in this world.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:05:49

Amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

 

1:05:54

My pleasure. I’m so I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:05:58

Yeah, I know you have to run. But this has been amazing. So, I’ll let you run. Thank you.

 

1:06:04

Well, thank you so much, Casey, and thank you for your incredible podcast and all the work you’re doing. And I look forward to connecting hopefully, you know in person sometime.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:06:14

Oh, I would love that truly. All right, indeed.

 

Yes. Oh my god. That total bucket list.

 

Okay. Okay. Bye.

 

1:06:24

Thank you. Bye for now.