So by now, I’m sure you already know that being sober, living alcohol-free, sober af, and every other way to say I DON'T DRINK is super cool. You hear me talk all the time about creating your own recipe for recovery- a collection of life ingredients that works for you, to build your self-esteem, self-confidence, and to love yourself so much you don't want to drink.

Introducing, Joe D. He has an extreme nature about him teaching survival for the Air Force, then turning to ultra marathons and sobriety. Can you really imagine running 100 MILES?!?

No way, not me.

Joe has replaced his party hearty lifestyle with one of discipline and self-awareness- and runner's high helps a bit, too!

 

Recovery is not a simple and straightforward journey- there are many 'rock bottoms' along the way. As a drinking person I spent more than a decade practicing bad habits in dating. I picked terrible partners, everything revolved around drinking, and I was gross, insecure, codependent, and every other unattractive quality you can think of. Finally, at 4 years sober it hit me.

No matter how old they get, they will always be your baby.

You must feel overwhelmed and scared when your child has addiction, and figuring out what to do is equally confusing.

This week on Addiction Unlimited Podcast I talk to a mom with an all-star son, college athlete, charming, and addicted to heroin.

A football injury shattered his dreams, and pain pills for medicinal purposes quickly turned to heroin. Her journey has many twists and turns, probably just like yours, and she shares her story of fighting for her son's life and love for her child that is unconditional.

It is a story heard across the nation; you get a prescription for pain medication for a legitimate injury, and the power of these medications can take control before you know it. Because of the difficulty of obtaining prescription pills on an ongoing and long-term basis, many people will turn to heroin because it is cheaper, and easier to get.

Be angry with the addiction, love the addict. They are two separate things.

This concept of a higher power really gets people charged up, including me. As true rebellious souls, addicted people love to go against the grain. Every grain. And higher power is no different.

It feels like people get so caught up in their rebellion against 'God' that they forget about the part that says 'of your own understanding'.

Yes. The 12 steps use the word 'God'. Yes. In the books utilized in Alcoholics Anonymous they use the word 'God'. So fucking what.

What I kindly (with a lot of F-Bombs) reminded myself of when I got sober was that I am an ADULT. No one can force me to believe in God and no one can make me go to church. I am perfectly capable of going my own way and figuring out my own higher power, I don't need to use someone else's. Thanks.

In this episode I explain my own struggle with the misconception that AA is a religious program and how I worked through it. I also explain how my higher power makes sense to me and how learning to mind my own business saved me a lot of anxiety in the beginning.

In this episode I explain my own struggle with the misconception that AA is a religious program and how I worked through it. I also explain how my higher power makes sense to me and how learning to mind my own business saved me a lot of anxiety in the beginning.

My higher power believes in hip hop music, puppies, and fast cars. How 'bout yours?

I love this conversation I got to have with Walter Wolf who is the father of an addict, and now works as an Interventionist and Treatment Placement Specialist.

In this episode, we get to hear the firsthand account of how Walter learned to navigate addiction, treatment, and recovery to support his son on his journey of getting clean and sober.

There are a few key concepts in this conversation I think are important-  we talk about the importance of looking at addiction recovery as a long-term process instead of thinking someone is going to treatment for 30 days and they are magically cured forever. Also, we talk about the process of choosing the right treatment center and the impact that has on the treatment process, and how imperative it is to know the recipe for long-term sobriety.

Website Coming Soon:  walterwolfassociates.com

To contact Walter directly call:  310.200.7530

A popular question no matter what stage of sobriety you are in.

 

12 treatment centers in more than a decade would be enough for anyone to feel discouraged and lose hope. And, although that sounds like a lot, this story has more layers of tragedy and heartbreak.

We are living in a time overwhelmed with fear and regret with the opioid crisis. Pills that once seemed like a blessing are destroying lives and families, and stealing the lives of people we love. This is why these stories are the ones that need to be shared the most.

At 17, David found pain meds prescribed to his mom.  He immediately started to experiment, taking a pill here and there, then mixing different pills to get the effect he craved. Once, he decided to share his new discovery with one of his friends, and recognized that his friend didn’t love the pills the way he did. It took some time for addiction to grow, but he knew he loved the feeling from the very beginning.

Early on, David was connected to a ‘dirty doctor’ who, for a fee, would give you a prescription for anything you want. When his script would run out he would get a script in a friend’s name and fill it that way. This went on for two years.

Unfortunately, his habit was expensive and pills were becoming harder to get so he switched to heroin.

We live in a world where people make the conscious choice to switch to heroin because it is cheaper, and easier to get. It is sad, but this is the reality.

Eventually, he was hooked and the physical pain of withdrawal was too difficult to endure.

After losing a close friend to a drug overdose David entered treatment for the first time. But the pain was so great that he called someone to bring him drugs to the treatment center, and he was shooting up in the bathroom every day.

Over the course of years, he had friends murdered, die from overdose, he was in a mental institution, and estranged from his family, and had multiple attempts at treatment, AA, and NA. He was living in Texas on the streets, or in a house with no electricity or running water. A dope house.

This is a smart kid, from a successful, educated family of doctors and helping professionals.

What strikes me as most important in this story is how long the journey is, and how discouraging it can be. To have addiction beat you down to nothing, and still overcome.

There is never a moment to stop trying. After 3 treatment centers, 6, or 12 with a stint in prison. You NEVER know when it is going to be the right time that you will be in the right place, or the right information will sink in, or it will just come together and you will be clean and sober. It can happen at any time.

I always say, I just want something to happen today that will make you want to do it again tomorrow.

On January 21, 2019 David will be one year clean and sober. He has turned his life around and is using his story to help other people. He is repairing relationships with his family, being an active member of AA, and he is an inspiration to everyone who has fought this battle with multiple losses.

He is proof that recovery happens.

Many of the symptoms you read about on checklists across the internet are very accurate and I want to cover some of those also. But in my head, noticing that my drinking was different from other people was a long process and it was just a small detail here and there that got my attention.

I’ll tell you the things that really make sense to me:

*

 Do you sometimes feel guilty after drinking?

This is a big one for me. It is so simple when you think about it; when you feel badly about something you did, the implication is whatever you did was not ‘right’. And I can apply this to many different areas of my  life. If I am thinking about a conversation or situation over and over again and I don’t feel good about how I handled it or what I said, then it’s a pretty good indicator I did not do the right thing.

2.  Do you sometimes regret things you’ve said or done while drinking?

For me this is an absolute yes. There were many times I regretted driving home, or making a phone call to someone I wished I hadn’t, or gone to a party I wished I would have skipped, or said things I regretted. I think most people can relate to this if you’ve ever had even one night of overdrinking.

3.  Have friends or family ever mentioned concern about your drinking?

This, to me, is a good indicator there is a problem. I have never met a non-addicted person in the world that ever had a friend or family member approach them about their drinking or drug use. If you are doing it enough for other people to be that aware of it… we may have a problem.

Now here are some of the big ones that did not apply to me:

Blackouts. I was not a black out drinker. I drank every day of my  life, a lot. And I can count on one hand how many times I blacked out. That doesn’t mean I’m not an alcoholic! Blacking out just wasn’t a regular part of my drinking story.

Drinking alone. This also was not a big thing for me. Sort of. I wouldn’t necessarily sit at home by myself and get drunk. I would, however, get home at the end of the night and have more drinks. So many people bring this ‘symptom’ up when they are defending their drinking habits and I always tell them this was not a part of my story. I didn’t go out of my way to drink alone or isolate to drink alone, but I was willing to drink at home when no one else was around or everyone else had gone home.

Morning drinking. Another one that is brought up over and over… “I don’t drink in the morning like alcoholics do”.  Wrong. I didn’t drink in the morning either. Don’t get me wrong, there was a time or two that this happened. But it was a time or two in more than a decade of hard drinking. And I certainly wasn’t getting up in the middle of the night to have a drink either. But I am still an alcoholic!

So here’s how it made sense to me: The first thing I noticed was that my friends were always ready and willing to go home at the end of the night, and I couldn’t figure out why they would go home when we could drink more. I was always ready for more. Whether that meant going to another bar or party, or having the party at my house, I just didn’t want to stop. And that doesn’t mean I was getting wasted every time.

When I was a new drinker in my early twenties, I didn’t drink that much because I hadn’t built up a tolerance. A night of drinking may have been 4 or 5 beers for me. Nothing crazy at all. Except that it was every single night and there is nothing normal about drinking every single night regardless of how many you have.

The next thing that caught my attention was how much time I spent thinking about alcohol. What I mean is, I was always in some sort of thought that involved drinking. I was either thinking about the next time I would drink, or planning the next time, choosing the place we would drink,

As a result of personally overcoming multiple emotional, mental, physical and professional situations, she learned numerous ways to keep moving forward.  Her tenacity pushed through roadblocks, that may have stopped others, to positively impact her own life and those around her significantly.  Equipped with the knowledge and expertise that she has sought out over the years, she is able to create a dynamic and positive influence on her clients.

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sha-sparks-8a120b50/

Email:       [email protected]

 

 

Hey everybody welcome to the Addiction Unlimited Podcast- I’m your host, Angela Pugh-

Today I will answer a question I got from Nancy in Seattle asking me about my experience in early sobriety and how I felt physically and emotionally.

And by the end you will have a powerful understanding of the different stages and what is going on inside us as we navigate new sobriety and how it comes out on the outside.

I’ve written many articles on this topic and I include this in the training I do with my own staff, and I wrote a training curriculum to train treatment center staff and I do a whole segment on early sobriety in that training that I do in treatment centers nationwide.

This is incredibly important information whether you are getting clean and sober, have a friend or family member going through it, or have someone coming home from treatment. I know in my sober living houses we are in consistent conversation about this because we have people in their first month of sobriety and that is a perilous time for anyone.

And for those of you on the Addiction Unlimited email list you will get a little bonus information on this topic and for those who want on that list you can go to addictionunlimited.com and fill out the popup, or leave me a voice message right on the home page, click record and leave me your name and email and I will gladly add you to that list.

For full readable version go here:  Early Sobriety Rollercoaster