[00:31:00]

Yeah. And yeah, so that might resonate with people who, who have been physically active. You know, it’s just like you have to just do it.

Yeah. And that’s, I think the thing that the essay, the idea and why I wanted to talk about this because mm-hmm. We keep trying to kill the want. Right. Yeah. Like, and I always tell women if you wait until you want to not drink, you’ll be waiting forever because Oh yeah, absolutely. I absolutely a virtue of the substance and the drinking cycle and how much it’s.

Messed with your brain and your beliefs and your habits and the cravings are real. Like you in your first week, if you, I tell women, if you tell me you don’t want to drink, I won’t believe you because it just doesn’t happen. You don’t get to the point where you look back and say, oh God, I don’t want that. I don’t want the way I was living.

Mm-hmm. Until you get far enough away from it, you know, until you get to like 45, 60, a hundred days. Yeah. Yeah. When you can see so longer it clearly.

[00:32:00]

Mm-hmm. And so, like, you actually need to stop drinking even though you wanted, and that’s, yep. That’s what you said in the, in the article you said like, I kept trying to kill the want and I needed to kill the Yes, where you said.

Exactly. Okay. You know? Yeah. I, yeah, I really did. And I, I absolutely did not understand that. I just kept, and I think part of it was I had this way of being like. Are you just, you’re just punishing yourself if you don’t give yourself this thing you need why are you being, and, and I’m someone who came from like a real culture of achievement and overachievement and, and so I was like, why are you trying to perfect yourself in even one more way?

Why are you trying to optimize every part of your life, you know, like the way that you would optimize running or optimize your career. And so I was kind of like selling myself again in like the guise of feminism. This idea that I should just keep drinking the way that I was drinking because it was self-punishing to stop.

[00:33:00]

Yeah. because I don’t think I realized like what it would mean to be, I had to be a little bit tough with myself and just be like, will you? Yeah, I know you want to keep drinking, but you’ve, I remember thinking like, well, there’s other things I would like to do that I, you know, I don’t eat like five pints of ice cream a day.

Like, because I know the consequences would not be good. You know, like left my own devices.

Yeah, absolutely. Oh my God. I would, I was like, I would love to just slack off at work sometimes, but like, I don’t do that. So, but yeah, it was a, it was really shocking to me, and I, I just remember that first night.

I couldn’t, I was like, well, I’ll read. No, no, no. I was not going to read. I couldn’t watch a movie. I couldn’t focus on a TV show. I just kind of wandered around my house. I was alone, you know, and just sort of looked at stuff in my house. My husband’s parents were our glass dealers, and so we have all these little cute pots they’ve given us over the years from like Czechoslovakia and American Art Pottery. And I looked at all those. I was like, oh, look at these things in my house.

[00:34:00]

And I played, oh, so much Farmville. I think I played Farmville for five hours that night. Five hours until, that’s okay. I, I binged my way through white collar. It’s a show about this, like FBI agent and this like mm-hmm. Bingeing shows playing Farmville going to bed at 10:00 PM like, legitimate strategies for early sobriety.

 

It’s fine. It’s totally fine. Like playing Farmville 20 hours a day if you have to, is better than having that drink. Like you do whatever you need to do. And then that first week, you know, I was kind of lucky because again, I didn’t have responsibilities at home and I would like. My kind of witching hour was like seven to 9:00 PM and I knew if I could get past there, I’d be okay.

So like, I would just go, I, there’s a multiplex near my house. I would just go there and be like, okay, which of these six movies seems fine? And I would just pick one and, and watch it.

[00:35:00]

I love movies. I love going to movies. So, like getting myself into a movie theater to see a movie I didn’t particularly care about would be enough to be like, okay, well that’s two hours have passed.

I’d go to a bookstore, you know, I definitely, I, and I started to buy myself. I always like to buy myself stuff anyway, but I was like, you can buy yourself little treats. Buy yourself a bunch of like dumb magazines. This is when print magazines were still a big thing. And back in the old days. And just being, I started to realize I had to be really nice to myself at the same time as I was being really tough to myself.

Yeah. So, it was like, well, you can’t drink. No, but yeah, you can eat absolutely whatever you want for dinner. Like, we’re not going to worry about, you know, are you getting enough vegetables? It was kind of like, let’s focus on this one thing. And physical exercise helped a lot too. Like, when you’re exhausted, it just, it’s just good, you know?

[00:36:00]

Like, like physically and also sort of like, it gets your anxiety out, at least for me. Yeah. Yeah. It also made me feel like I was building something at the same time. I was just building up days of not drinking.

 

Absolutely. Right. Yeah. Like you’re sort of positively moving forward. Mm-hmm. During the time it feels like you’re just in this groundhog day of like getting through a craving, going to bed right. All that kind of stuff. Then trying not to think about it during the day, like how you can’t drink that night. And yeah, like even just a long, I mean, a long walk I think is like, it’s proven to like. I don’t know the science of it, but like it, I know anecdotally it always calms me, me down. It doesn’t have to be going out and running sprints like I did, you know?

 

Well, I went for a walk. I like blocked out. Blocked off my calendar every day at work. Mm-hmm. For like an hour, but sometimes I could only do 20 or 30 minutes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then I brought my shoes and I would go to my car, get my shoes on, and I would walk for 20 or 30 minutes and I would listen to a surprise podcast.

[00:37:00]

Yeah. And sometimes I’d walk to Whole Foods and I’d like wander around. I’d get a latte, I’d wander around. Then I’d take pictures of things that could be sober treats or anchor activity. Oh, I love that. Oh, there, there are a bunch of biking trails in Redmond. I took a picture of that. There was a flyer for the farmer’s market.

 

There was like a foot massager thing. Whole Foods has the most random stuff. They stuff like a journal? Yeah. Or an orchid, whatever it was. I was just like, there’s beauty products like mine. I was just noticing things that I could enjoy that weren’t called. Yeah, I remember I think I wrote about this in the book.

There was a time I might have written about this in both my books. Amazon was right next to is it Lake? Lake Union? And there’s this place called the Center for Wooden Boats, which is basically like a museum for wooden boats. And I had never been there. I’d worked there for like 8 years or something. But like the idea that I could cross the street and just go, go there had never occurred to me. And so, one day at lunch, I took a lunch. Like I actually left the building and I walked over there and I was like, oh, these boats, oh, they’re really pretty. Like, I’m not into boats, but these are beautiful. And I kind of admired them.

[00:38:00]

And then I walked to one and there was a little thing of strawberries that was like an honor system thing, like leave $3 and take a little pallet of strawberries. And I almost started to cry because I was like, somebody grew these and then they put them in these little boxes and they brought them here and they put them in like presumably their boat, on this card table.

And it was this whole hobby that they had, like, I don’t think anybody was making their living this way. And I was like, this person can do this. Like, they can manage all this. It hit me that like, oh, you could also probably do this kind of thing now that you’re sober. Like you could do this planning and this thinking ahead.

And it just overwhelmed me like that, that I could maybe have that kind of clarity and that kind of time to, you know, not literally grow my own strawberries and sell them, but to do something that took thought.

[00:39:00]

It was incredible challenges. When you’re drinking, you get these tunnel visions, you get these blinders like, drinking is your favorite thing. Drinking is your only thing that relieves your stress. Drinking is your, what you do in the evenings, like what are you going to do? Sit around and like stare at the TV with no alcohol. Like, what the hell? And then when you could drinking, right? Like I, mm-hmm. My first Saturday I was like, okay, I am going to leave my kids.

 

I’m going to tell my husband I’m leaving my kids. Mm-hmm. With him, which should not be. Rocket science, but somehow I was like, right, I was a martyr. And then I drank, like that was my, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so, I went to this like running shoe store down in Redmond and I, you know, it was February, so I like, and it was right next to top pot donuts, so it was like this running store right next to, I missed top hot donuts.

And I bought running shoes for the first time in years. Mm-hmm. And then I went to top Pott Donuts and I got a latte and I got donuts. Mm-hmm. And I did not buy for my family.

[00:40:00]

I was like, fuck that up. And I sat with my heated seats and I was just like, oh my God, why have I never done this before? Right. Like, I would just be getting through to the witching hour mm-hmm. When I could drink and Yeah. Just the simple thing. You don’t open your mind like the strawberries. Mm-hmm. And you know what I did? Yeah. When I was sober, I went on Amazon, we had plum trees and I never mm-hmm. The plums would just fall out the trees and rot, like, I’d eat like three.

And so I bought these, like, those cute little, you’re talking about those little quart things, like those cute little quartz. Mm-hmm. Of course on Amazon you can get like 200 for seven bucks. Yeah. Right. I had them shipped to me and I, I harvested all these plums and I put ’em in this turquoise tray and I brought them to work and I handed out like fresh plums to, they were so good and everybody was like, who the fuck are you?

Because usually I was like, hungover and anxious and a little bitter.

 

[00:41:00]

I always joke that I kind of became like a Mennonite, my first sober summer. Like, I went to petting zoos. I went to like the state fair, like everything that was wholesome, I was like, we should do this. We should do this. It was kind of funny. I didn’t know how to just live my normal life of like going to sweaty rock shows and underground clubs and skulking around and buying shoes.

 

I just kind of became like this very wholesome farm person. But you’re also like cultivating new interests. Like you don’t realize how many things you didn’t even notice. That might be.

Exactly. It’s like, being a kid again, or exploring hobbies. It’s like I went to a garden store and I saw a flyer for like, by the way, early sobriety, just look for flyers.

Like, they’re so random. Like guitar lessons, you’re like maybe pottery classes. Sure. Right, right. But it, they had garden classes right on like Saturday afternoons on like how to do whatever, how to build a vegetable garden, how to, I, I went all those You’re really basic stuff.

[00:42:00]

Yeah. Like, oh yeah, I built a vegetable garden. And people go, Yeah, right. And I was like, this is interesting. You do this and these people are not, you know, brutally hungover constantly, I don’t think. Right. It doesn’t seem like it, you know? Yeah. I mean, there is all the stuff you can do and you start to realize that, you know, quote, normal people do things like they’re out there.

They’re doing things and it’s not, you know, I’m an introvert and I love to hang around the house, but like, yeah, I’m much more likely as a sober person to be like, well, yeah, this flyer is interesting, or I should do this, or I should try this, or I could do this. You know, like it, things become much more possible.

 

I mean, I love traveling alone now, especially internationally, because I know I can count on myself. I’m like, I’m not an idiot. My judgment is not impaired. At least, you know, relatively speaking. I can get myself around like a foreign country because I am like a, an adult and I’m not. Yeah, I’m not drunk.

[00:43:00]

I’m not hungover. Oh my God, I, I was so unsafe when I was alone. Mm-hmm. And drink, oh my God. Yeah. In foreign countries or business conferences. I mean, I think I was just really lucky. Same, same. Yeah. I mean, I would basically, I was probably coasting on the fact that like I was a professional staying in nice places and people were not going to let anything too horrible happen to, like the nice American white lady who clearly needs help. You know, that is not how I want to live, you know? Oh my God. I don’t want to be the one who needs help all the time. No, no, not at all. I mean, I remember I was like flying home. I can’t believe my husband put up with me. He’s very sweet. But like, I was flying home and a, a, our flight got delayed, right?

Mm-hmm. It just like, mm-hmm. We had to stay overnight. So I was with these two people, a young woman and a young guy who happened to be gay. Mm-hmm. We decided to like stay in one room together. I’d never met in line and like full our vouchers to buy alcohol.

[00:44:00]

Oh my. So the three of us went to the bar, got like ridiculously drunk.

Mm-hmm. And then, slept in a room together. Mm-hmm. And then went, and just this men, and by the way, I was married, I was 30. Right. Like, this was crazy. And you know, just like, again, super lucky that these people were kind and nice and good people and you know, whatever. But of course I’m like, yeah. Oh, that was an awesome night.

I don’t remember it. I don’t remember going to bed. Right, right. Like, oh, we had an adventure, but it’s like. Did you really like, did you really have an adventure? You know? Yeah. I mean, I had a night in London Adventure waking up and going, holy shit, what time is it? I feel like I’m going to throw up. Yeah, exactly.

Now I have to deal with people in my room, like, you know. Yeah. I mean, I would have these wonderful, and like some of them were fun, you know, like drinking in Tokyo, drinking in Beijing, bring drinking in London. But like, I don’t really, a lot of it was just always like, look at me drinking by the canals in London, you know?

[00:45:00]

Then the next day you feel awful. And it’s not like anything really fun or good had come out of it. It was just a night, you know, it’s, and like now you go to London and what do you do? Do you just sit around staring at the wall when you’re not Yeah, no, I couldn’t get a little hotel reminder look at it.

Yeah, you have like a fabulous time. And I’ve realized also, and I think the world has changed too, but like I was in Copenhagen. Actually twice in the last couple of years. And that’s a pretty big drinking city. Like they love their beer. I think Denmark has some of the highest binge drinking rates. There are mocktails and non-alcoholic beers everywhere and nobody cares if you’re drinking.

I mean, it wasn’t, I was like, how could I go to the continent and not drink alcohol? You know? No one cares. Nobody cares. You know? And, and, and I had a great time and I remembered things and I got a lot of work done. I like to do trips where I just go live somewhere for a couple of weeks and, you know, I don’t do that much tourist stuff.

[00:46:00]

I just kind of, I’m like, I want to exist in Copenhagen for a while. Hey, I want your life. And I swear I told you I’m going to have it as soon as Lila graduate high school, which is only 7 short years away. I know sometimes I’m so, I’m like, oh, I realize how much of my life would not. Have been possible or as easy, you know, if, if we’d had kids.

I mean, having dogs is bad enough. But, but it is nice. Like we were able to just be like, let’s go to Copenhagen for three weeks. We’ll get a fairly cheap Airbnb and we can both work and we’ll just work in Denmark. You know? And, but like, I never feel like I’m missing out by not drinking anymore. The only time I feel like I’m missing out is if like, I’m in a group of people and they’re all kind of drunk, but I feel like I’m missing out on their company, then I’m not missing out on the alcohol because they’re not really after the first couple drinks.

They’re all in a different world. And it’s lonely, but it’s not lonely in a way that makes what they’re doing look good to me.

[00:47:00]

You know? It would be like, if they’re all scuba diving, I don’t want to do that either. Yeah. You know? So I’m curious, one of the reasons I love hanging out with you and love reading all your stuff is one because I completely resonate with your life, right?

Being in Seattle mm-hmm. I know a million people like who worked at Amazon. Mm-hmm. Working with Bell, struggling with alcohol. But I also love it because you are really funny and your writing is really funny. So, I wanted to ask, like, do you think humor has helped you in getting sober and staying sober?

Like how, how has that worked in terms of your perspective on it all? Yeah, it helps me enormously and I just have a temperament where I tend to see what’s funny in situations. And I tend to see what’s funny about myself which I think is really helpful. So, one of my big fears about getting sober was that I would have to be really earnest all the time.

That I would only be hanging out with like people who were very earnest and I was like, well, that’s not going to be fun.

[00:48:00]

Like, I don’t, I don’t want to do that. And that is not, you know, the case. I mean, sometimes, of course everyone’s earnest sometimes, but I realized pretty quickly when I got sober that it was sort of funny because I was basically like, it’s like a fish out of water, so to speak.

You know? It was in all these situations where I would normally drink and I’m just flailing around being like, well, what do I do instead? What do I do with my hands? What do I do here? So I remember just being like, lean into finding this funny because it’s going to help you find it entertaining and like, remember these things.

I wasn’t writing at the time, but I was kind of mentally just putting things away, like how this is just kind of goofy. And yeah, it really helped me. I mean, finding things funny. I. Helps me with all kinds of stuff. But I think a lot of it was also just finding myself funny in like an affectionate way.

Like, oh, look at you. You don’t know how to like go to a rock concert without drinking. Like you, like you literally don’t know what to do.

[00:49:00]

Like, the idea of walking in and standing there feels impossible. And, and that way I was gently able to be like, why don’t you just try it? Why don’t you just try walking your little FSOs in there and standing there and you can look like a doofus.

You can feel bad, but just try it. I and it’s, yeah, it’s just kind of the way I look at the world. So, I always tell people like, it doesn’t have to be so serious all the time and it’s an experiment and like, you know, I don’t go to AA very often, but I dabble or in, in sober. And anytime you’re in a group of sober people, like there’s a lot of laughing.

Yes. It’s funny. Yeah. And I used humor to deflect as well. Mm-hmm. Like I just needed it. Like I remember, yeah. When the first time I stopped drinking, someone invited me to an AA meeting and I liked her very much and we had a lot in common. And she was like four months sober and said it helped her a lot and in order to like get past that threshold and I didn’t end up going down the 12 step path, but I literally was saying to myself like, well, bucket list.

[00:50:00]

Never thought I’d do this. Like, it was.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like there’s skydiving and there’s walking into an AA meeting. Like Yeah. Just things you never thought you would do, right? Yeah, exactly. Like my first AA meeting, I was, I ran my first 10K and went to my first AA meeting in the same week and the AA meeting was so much scarier and I, because I You trained for a 10 KI mean, I was still nervous, but I was like, well you.

I’ve basically done this, you know what to do. But like the, and I just had to be like, but you also put the sticker on your fucking car and post about it on Facebook, and everybody’s like, a million lights. Right? Like, it’s different. Everyone’s like, you’re amazing. Right. You can’t be like, I went to my first AA meeting Yay.

And everyone’s like, Ooh. You know, oh my God. You’re like, you know those people. And I’m not one, because I don’t Yeah. Run marathons, but who put the like 26.2 on their, their car? Yeah. Like, yeah. 14 years later, they’re like, I, at one point in my life ran a marathon.

[00:51:00]

Right, right. It’s like, I too also did things 25 years ago. I used to know how to do a swan dive, you know? Yeah. Like my first AA meeting, I was so terrified. And so I, I tried to find that funny too. Just like, you’re so scared to walk into a room and sit in a chair, you know? I tried to really bring it down to the elementals, like, ultimately that’s really all you have to do is just sit.

You just have to sit. Like, that’s fine. I was surprised you said that you weren’t like. Writing this stuff down because you’re such a writer. Mm-hmm. Were you?

Yeah. Like at what point? because I could imagine you being like, you know what, I’m going to capture this from a writer’s perspective mm-hmm. In a humorous way. But at what point did you start being like, oh, I want to write about this process?

It’s funny, I, so, you know, I had gone to school, I had an MFA in creative writing. I got it when I was 22. I was a like published prize winning. And then when I wasn’t famous, by the time I was 30, I was like, well, clearly this is never meant to be, this is also like the part of me that couldn’t just gut things out and have stamina.

[00:52:00]

And so, I didn’t write for 12 years, you know, I thought, I thought it had been a childhood fancy or something, and. When I got sober, I didn’t think I was going to be writing about anything. I just wanted to make my life a little better. And I guess about, oh, maybe three months in, I started a blog anonymously because I was reading other sober bloggers and they really helping me.

And I just wrote these little entries. And then I started to find that like, oh, they’re starting to shape the entries, and they were getting longer. And I was starting to really think about word choice. And I was like, oh, right, I forgot you have a graduate degree in creative writing. Like you’re a prizewinning writer.

I wonder what’s happening here. And so I was writing to like communicate with other people and help other people. But I was also starting to like do the clinical thing as a writer where I’m thinking about how do I want to shape this? How do I, you know, not just spill my guts and.

[00:53:00]

Then, I posted one essay called, it’s in the book, called Girl Walks Into a Room on Medium. And it got some like, you know, it got some feedback and people were like, this is really good. And, and that was incredibly validating. And the woman who became the editor of that book, who was actually a coworker of mine and longtime friend from Amazon, texted me and said, I just read this. We should talk because there’s a book in this.

And I was flabbergasted. It had never occurred to me that I could write a book at all, let alone a book about sobriety. And so, I was like, well, sure. I was like, having coffee with Daphne and we met and she’s very persuasive and, and really persuaded me that like, that voice, which was funny and not the usual, like very earnest sobriety voice could.

I remember she said, it could really help people. And I had this terrible reaction, which is like, I was like, I’m not trying to help anyone.

[00:54:00]

And she said, okay. But, and what I meant by that was like, I don’t want to be a self-help writer. That’s not my primary thing. And she said, well, if it accidentally helps people, is that okay?

And I was like, sure. That’s, that’s fine. That might accidentally help people. As long as I don’t have to try. I just want to write what I, and, and what I meant by that, I think, and this is proved true, is that I saw a, if I was going to have a writing career, it’s writer first. It’s not so writer first. You know, like the book I’m writing now, this novel I’m working on, like, it’s not, alcohol’s not a theme in it.

People, there are people who drink a beer and it, you know, it’s not Yeah. And there’s not the narrator voice being like, oh, hopefully. Right, right. You really should quit. So, and I’m going to give a plug to exit interview your book about Amazon, because I loved it so much. Thank you. I mean, thank you. Just for any woman who’s in a male dominated tech bro, or any male dominated workplace mm-hmm.

[00:55:00]

You are going to resonate by the, with the like death of a million cuts of…Yeah. It’s funny. It’s real. You’re just like, yeah, this is, I, I don’t know. I loved it and interviewed about it. So, that’s right. Yeah. I’ll link to that one. Yeah, I am. And, and the drinking, I mean, I realized when I was writing that book that there was no way to write it without revisiting drinking.

You know, I didn’t want to write the same book twice. But, well, a, I couldn’t assume that everyone who read Exit Interview would’ve read my first book. And also I was like, there’s no way to write this book without. Bringing the drinking into it because Amazon, Amazon did not turn me into an alcoholic, but Amazon allowed it to blossom and then that’s where I had to deal with it.

And I ended up doing my career there, almost 50/50 drinking and sober. And so, it’s, yeah, anyone who’s felt sort of driven to drink by the workplace will, will also resonate with it. But I wrote it for any woman who’s worked in an office. I remember thinking like, that’s my ideal reader. Like tech women will especially resonate with it, but it’s like if you’ve worked in a corporate setting, if you sit at a desk for your job.

[00:56:00]

Oh my God, you will. Yes. Probably be pulling your hair out within like 60 pages. I mean I had, oh God. Like I had to read it. My husband, my husband is a middle school head. He’s like middle school head of this, of this private school and then there, this is totally off topic, but I’ll tell it anyway because it resonates with like working in an office.

There was like some kid who got to be middle school head for a day or whatever. Mm-hmm. You know, chose to like show a movie at lunch and like ride around in a golf cart or whatever. Yeah. But also met with the head of school and my husband and had to do a SWOT analysis and I was like, oh my God. I quit corporate, God, five and a half years ago to work for myself.

I have not had to do a fucking SWOT analysis in five years. And that makes me so damn happy. That is amazing. I would just, I like, my whole body just felt like, ha ha.

Fun for the kid. Probably the kid was like, what the what? I’m like, yeah, kid. Choose a different career path. Yeah, exactly. Kid. Like you’re, this is valuable, valuable information you’re getting.

[00:57:00]

Then I remember, it’s not golf carts. I took Hank to work at L’Oreal. Mm-hmm. When I was there, you know, it was bringing your kid to work day and he sat in on a marketing meeting for a launch.

Mm-hmm. And it was like two hours long and out. He was, God, he was eight, maybe Uh huh. And afterwards I was like, oh, what’d you think Hank? And he was like. It felt like you guys just talked to each other like in circles, and I was like, yep, that’s pretty. Yeah. Accurate. You were paying attention out of the voice of the babes or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. Like no real decisions were made. You kicked a lot of things down the road for later. Yep. That’s, no, it’s easy to drink in that situation, just to be like, yeah. Oh yeah. Okay.

So, I don’t even know how long we’ve been talking, but to wrap it up with the theory of like, want not mm-hmm. Meaning like, you have to Kill The Yes. Not The Want. Yeah. What do you wish, like you could tell that version of yourself who was like on the kitchen floor that first night where

 

Yeah. You’re just like, I can’t do this to myself anymore.

[00:58:00]

Yeah. I would say,

 

you have somehow managed to hear an incredibly wise voice in yourself. It’s from within yourself, so give yourself credit for it.

It’s not from anyone else, and it is going to be worth it, like you could not imagine. But right now, it has to suck. And it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It means you’re doing something right, but you’re just going to have to build these muscles and you have to build the muscles by using the muscles.

 

I mean, that’s what I would tell myself. Like, you just don’t worry about the fact that it sucks right now. This is not, you are not. And, and even for me, it was within like three weeks, I was like, oh, this is a really good thing I did. It was so hard, but I was like, I feel so much better. So, it would just be like, yeah, it sucks right now, you’re going to have to gut it out.

And that doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re doing it right. Because you can’t get there with, you can’t.

[00:59:00]

You can’t get conditioned to be a sober person without doing the workouts, essentially. I mean, it’s like, talk to yourself like an athlete, you know? Yeah. I mean, I just realized that I had gotten in the habit of quitting on myself, of saying I was going to do something and then giving up pretty immediately.

 

And it just, it bleeds into every other part of your life and your confidence in the ability to follow through. I mean, when I, you know, I grew up like achievement was such my thing, and so what happened is I didn’t really do things I wasn’t good at. If I wasn’t good at something right away, I would just kind of be like, well, I, I guess I just shouldn’t do that.

Like, I want to do the things that get me praised. And I also remember thinking after like five days of waking up sober, I felt like a superhero. And, and I would tell I miss that sometimes. I never think of myself as a superhero anymore. And I, I would tell myself like, you are going to feel a kind of pride.

[01:00:00]

You have never felt in yourself just for not drinking. Yeah. And you should, so you’re going to have to wait a few days, but it’s coming faster than you think. And hang onto it. Like don’t, don’t look at that as like a dumb reason to feel like a superhero. Like you’re doing something incredibly hard. I also would tell myself, this is going to make other things you have to go through.

Not only be easier, but seem easier. Like so many times I told myself like, of course you can run a half marathon. You quit drinking. Yes. Like you can get through this day. You quit drinking. You know, like just over and over. It’s like, if you can do that, you can survive. It’s one of survive the things I’m most proud of in my entire life.

Mm-hmm. Like genuinely, I. You know, just the hardest thing mentally to do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Physically it’s hard for a couple weeks. Right. But like mentally and like getting there and like mm-hmm. Moving through that. And I remember I was like in tears at two months. I ran my first 10 K in years. Mm-hmm. I had done it before, but in sobriety.

[01:01:00]

Yeah. I ran it by myself and I remember crossing the finish line, like literally in tears. Yeah. And all I was thinking. Was like, I am now a person who does what I say I’m going to do. And I hadn’t been that person in so long. Yeah. You can stand, you can, you can be there for yourself. I remember wishing that a cop would pull me over at times because they’d be like, you were driving kind of weird, you know, or you drinking.

And I’d be like, no officer, I haven’t had a drink in, you know, eight weeks or something. Like, I was so proud of myself and I fan, I fantasized that he’d be like, I’m proud of you. And I was just, just knowing that, like, I remember saying to my husband, like, if you have a heart attack, I can just drive you to the hospital.

And he’s like, oh, okay. Good to know. Terrific. You know, don’t like try to cause one. But I, yeah, you just, that pride, I, I didn’t realize how proud I was going to feel and you know, I hear people just with like the world being sick, so chaotic these days be like, oh, I could never quit drinking. In this time, I wouldn’t drink in this time for anything.

[01:02:00]

Yeah. I am so happy to be sober because it means I have more autonomy. I can think clearly, I can make decisions, I can put things in perspective. I mean, like, I don’t think people realize like, in some ways how much easier their lives if you’re, if you’re relying on alcohol to get through world events I don’t know it. It may be actually making things much harder on you.

 

Yeah. I mean, I can’t believe I used to like come home and basically knock myself unconscious with a bottle of wine. Mm-hmm. As quickly as I possibly could, and that took away one all of the good stuff in my life, like mm-hmm. I have friends, I have a husband, I had two little kids.

 

I had a beautiful home. Like life is good. Yeah. But yeah, also was like just taking away half of my life in terms of time. Which was just really sad and incapacitating myself, like I was not physically able to truly function.

[01:03:00]

Right. It, and you don’t necessarily realize it if you have like the sort of high bottom, whatever people say, like, I never, you know, had to go to the hospital because I drank so much, or my doctor didn’t even know.

My liver enzymes are fine. But once I quit, I realized how bad it had been and like, oh yeah, my ambition especially like my ambition had just shrunk to like, what do I have to do to get through the day? You know, like I didn’t have like big dreams. I didn’t have big plans. I think of writing books like that seemed ridiculous because like, I.

Sobriety gave me stamina. That’s the other thing is like when you build up stamina and sobriety, you have stamina for other things. You know, it transfers over just, and not to belabor athletic metaphors, but like, if you become a runner, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be a great weightlifter, but it gives you a base to start from and vice versa.

 

[01:04:00]

Yeah. You know? Yeah. You have a certain amount of like, strength and stamina, and it’s same with sobriety. If you have that stamina, then you’re like, well, you know, if I, if I can do this, I have the energy and the will and like the planning ability to do these other things, like maybe I want to restore a house, or I want to, you know, go on and live abroad for six months or whatever it is. Change my job. Anything. Anything you want.

Yeah. You can figure it out and you settle for less. I mean, my husband, I’ve had a lot of private coaching clients who have quit their jobs. Mm-hmm. And my husband’s like, are you coaching people to quit their job? And I’m like, no, not all. But like, these women are so capable.

And once they stop numbing themselves, they’re like, this is bullshit. I don’t have to put up with this anymore. I deserve better. They want more.

Yeah. Yeah. And they can, and they can figure out how to get it, too. It’s not even just like, I quit my job with no plan.

[01:05:00]

You know, it’s often like, well here’s, here’s the 5 things I want to do to get to a better life for myself and I can do them.

You know? It’s like you can trust yourself. Not that you never made Yes, dumb mistakes. I made plenty of them, but they’re better dumb mistakes than my old dumb mistakes mostly. Yeah. And the one thing I wanted to say at the end is, I feel like everybody, I mean, you are one of my people in early sobriety who made it fun and adventurous and not lonely and exciting. And I wish that everybody could find that.

I have to say, I found that in online groups.

Oh, oh yeah, me too. But I found that there and in some of, like, we had this thing in this group and it was with Ingrid and Kim and a few other people.

Yeah, yeah. And since you know them, but we would like, for some reason our motto became like, you are a Badass fucking rainbow unicorn. Like for some, like you would go to like a happy hour and they’d be like, oh my God, you’re a rainbow fucking unicorn. How badass or whatever.

[01:06:00]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like you got through, we would gift each other your party like rainbow unicorn shit.

Like there was like rainbow unicorn. Because if you look around there, rainbow unicorns thing everywhere. We had like erasers, we had crowns, we got a giant rainbow unicorn pinata and brought it to, oh my god, I love it. Like a brunch. And we would pass around the rainbow unicorn pinata. Like someone different took it home every, every time we got together.

But like, oh, I love that. That’s fucking funny. Awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. And you need to give yourself that like exaggerated praise for all because what you’re doing is amazing. Yeah, you are kind of a dissident, you know. I mean, you’re living in a counterculture way and it’s hard and like you should feel like a rainbow fucking unicorn.

Yeah. You know? So like, if anyone’s wandering around, just open your eyes and if you see a rainbow unicorn, I want you to buy it. Buy it. Just do it. Take it home. Put it on your desk and like, just know, I’m be looking now, actually, like when I got into the city, they’re everywhere. Like it’s weird.

[01:07:00]

They’re everywhere. It’s like ,once you look for this, my dog has one.

Yeah. Yeah. My dog has 2 actually. Yeah. See. Oh. And he’s sober, so there you go. So winning.

Cool. Well, thank you so much. I, I love talking to you. This has been awesome.

This has been amazing. I don’t get to talk about this stuff as much anymore, and so, I’m always grateful for the opportunity. It makes me feel like, it, like renews my sense of my own sobriety in a really, really nice way. And it’s just always nice to talk to you too.

 

 

Hey there before I jump off this episode, I want to remind you that you can sign up for my brand new 60-minute masterclass, The 5 Secrets To Successfully Take A Break From Drinking, even if you’ve tried and failed in the past, by going to hellosomedaycoaching.com/class. Now, this training will not be around forever. So if you’re interested in figuring out what you’ve been doing up until now, and why it hasn’t been working, and exactly what to do. Instead, I encourage you to take a few moments, sign up, pick a time that works for you, and actually attend the session. I’ll teach you how to shift your thinking. So you can get out of the really shitty cycle of starting and stopping and starting again, and it’s okay if you’re thinking that you don’t actually want to stop drinking. I promise you, if you attend this class, you will change the way you’re approaching this process. So save your spot. Go to hellosomedaycoaching.com/class, and I can’t wait to see you there.

So thank you for coming on here. I couldn’t appreciate it more. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Hello Someday Podcast. If you’re interested in learning more about me or the work I do or accessing 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.