12oz of Sobriety

Finding Support

June 17, 2022 Pat, Robbie, and Carson Season 1 Episode 3
12oz of Sobriety
Finding Support
Show Notes Transcript

We're talking all things support groups: discussing our experience in different rehabs & 12-step programs. 

Bones.

Your that's your first time listening. Welcome. If this is not, then welcome back to the 12 ounces of sobriety podcast. I am pat sharp here with my wonderful buddies, Robbie and Carson. Welcome guys. I just want to thank everybody for the support we've had so far. This is our first recording since we've had episodes, uh, out on podcast network and the support's been overwhelming.

Just want to say thank you. I think we're up to, you know, seven or eight different countries. People have listened in and. I just want to say thanks for being part of our sobriety journey and allowing us to be part of yours. Uh, you can follow us on social media, all the social media's on the last couple episodes.

We've kind of changed them up a little bit. So on Twitter, we are at 12 ounces of sobriety, Instagram at 12 ounces, sobriety pod, um, Facebook, , 12 ounces sobriety podcast. And Gmail 12 ounces of sobriety pod@gmail.com. Uh, love to hear some feedback, , love to hear your guys' sobriety stories, whether you're thinking about getting sober early in sobriety, or you've been in sobriety for a long time.

Some of some message love to hear from you. Love to hear how your journey's going and, and hear from you. And again, love to have questions so we could possibly do a question and answer at some point, pretty excited today. We have a fantastic topic discussing support groups. Uh, If we're all getting sober here, you know, you get that first day or two, then what?

You got to have some support. . Obviously the three of us met and an outpatient recovery program. Um, Robbie, I know you've done inpatient as well. We'll briefly just touch on, , the rehab programs that we've done and then kind of get into the different support groups, , Robbie, why don't you start us out? Just let us know a little bit about inpatient rehab and kind of what to expect there. Yeah. So, um, all right. So, , first time I ever went to treatment, wasn't intensive outpatient, but, um, As far as inpatients go.

I wouldn't have gone to six different inpatients starting when I was 23. , I would say there's in inpatient. It's going to be a little bit more structured. , . You will. Be living at the rehab, there will be like a daily schedule. Usually you have to wake up at like seven in the morning, something like that.

You gotta keep your room clean.  And what happens is typically, the day will consist of different like education. It's where you're just learning about really the process of the disease. Um, you'll also learn about different support groups,  now with like inpatient.

I mean, do you bring all your own stuff? Uh, do they have, you know, food there? Is it like cafeteria where you can buy stuff? Yeah. So it's gonna, , be different based on where you're going, how long you're going in there. , so I've been to 3 28 day programs. , I've also been to, one treatment where technically is supposed to be three months, but mine got split up in between.

I was there 54 days, one time. And then. For 72 days with a few days in between, this stays every lapsed. That's what I had to go back. Uh, and, um, it really, it, it depends in part how long you're going to be there, but also like, A lot of treatment centers are going to want you to have like seven days of clothes, you know?

And, and I guess it also depends a little bit on access to washers and stuff like that. Now I did get one question from a listener and it was just a random one. They asked if we knew, if you do inpatient, can you take cigarettes with you? So that. 100% dependent on the facility. , I work at a tobacco free facility.

They will provide you in a lot of places are tobacco free now. And a lot of the polices are switching to tobacco or becoming tobacco free, which yeah, definitely. You know, I mean, that's a driving factor for a lot of people and understand that, , pretty much every place from what I understand, if you, if they're tobacco free, they're going to give you nicotine patches.

, that being said, there's still a lot of places that like to smoke cigarettes too. Now, like when you're staying there, do you have, do you share a room with somebody? Do you have your own room as a bunk? Style's kind of like, how does that set up work? The large majority are going to be, , Route, you're going to have a roommate and most of them, , there are a few inpatients that are an, I mean, I'll admit the price point is probably gonna change whether or not you have your own room.

Also, depending on if it's like inside the hospital, you're doing an inpatient inside of that. A little, a lot of the time you will have your own room. , if it's not in the hospital, don't be surprised if you have a roommate. Um, I have been to one rehab where he didn't have a roommate and that was only because the other bed wasn't filled everything.

It was roommate with, was with the roommate, this nice. Yeah. And speaking of price point, that's one thing that you're going to need to take a new consideration. , if you are evaluating whether or not to, you know, check yourself in to an inpatient or outpatient program, I highly recommend looking at your insurance, um, and seeing what.

Because there are multiple, numerous different insurance companies, , and depending upon what they support, what they, you know, what the copay is going to look like, do your research on that to figure out because these, these facilities are not cheap. These, you know, the employees, the, , everyone that's supporting you and taking care of you, are they are, they specialize in this field and  they have gone through strenuous education in order to get and be experts in what they do. So do your due diligence and make sure that you have covered all of those bases before you decide to go into something like this, because a lot of people don't have the appropriate amount of capital, , to, to go into something like.

I would, I don't know if that's a hundred percent true. You have state run facilities. Uh, there are ways and you will get certain facilities. They will take your income bracket or your income level into consideration your age, your insurance. I mean, I have, I have pretty good insurance. I feel, , the, we did outpatient intensive outpatient.

It was reasonable. I think it wasn't anything crazy. I mean, my insurance covered a good portion of it. Of course I still owe some money, but it was, it was nothing that I thought was outrageous. And Robbie don't you work at a state run. I do. , one thing I will say about state run facilities, is that the best rehab that ever went to accepted Medicaid, the worst rehab, everyone to you, except in Medicaid.

, I mean, ultimately, it's, it's your motivation. I say your motivation for going there. Um, you get out of it when you put into it a hundred percent. Like even, even the, what I would consider my worst rehab, , At the very least to taught me humility. I mean, and it also taught me how to, how to deal with, uh, really just confrontation, um, in, in taught me patience.

So I mean, to some extent, sometimes he's bad or so-called bad and rehab experiences can be pretty beneficial. Now you say your worst rehab experience at best rehab experience. What made the one experience? The worst? What made the. The best. Um, so when, uh, referred of worse versus good, I'm thinking of really the attention, like the time that you can get one-on-one with counselors, , the quality of the groups, um, and really the quality of the counselors too.

, you know, at my worst facility, I would say the counselor was a bit of a pushover. So you would have clients sort of. Dominating the group in many cases said client wasn't, you know, particularly in the, uh, the mindset of getting clean. , and at the nice, the se the nicer facilities, the good facilities, , the counselors would generally lead the group directed.

Um, and I think there was one. Processing done. And those, , those facility is where if you had something that was really pressing, they would sit there and dissect it in, in kind of help you to at least, uh, they, they would help build a foundation for once you get out of. You kind of have an idea of what sort of things you need to be looking at?

Stuff like patterns of behavior that have consistently led you to drink and use. , now with the inpatient, do you get, do you run into people at some of those that are corn? Like courts made them go there and they don't want to be there. Do you find that disruptive or have you not really seen that? Um, it's dependent.

That will say, , generally, if, if you're getting more people. Really don't want to be there and are being forced there oftentimes, , it will sort of, I say lead to an unhealthy community. , and actually, you know, when you're in treatment for over a month, every few months, you start to see people come in and out in the whole community kind of changes depending on the state of motivation of like being there.

,  I would say that. Yeah. You know, if you're at a facility with a lot of, a lot of people being sent there by the court, there's a good possibility that there's a decent number of people who really don't want to be there. But at the same time, you know, there are people that were brought there by the court that are like leading the groups and doing a very good job.

Yeah. Yeah. I was actually, I was just thinking that I was like, well, you know, I do know that there are people that are forced into treatment that don't want it. I think that they don't have a problem or they just are refusing and they get there. And over time, all of a sudden, everything kind of starts creeping in their head.

They get some sober time underneath them and then they be thrive in that environment. So it was probably unfair to even classify that as people have kind of ask it even about that a little bit. So, but I appreciate you talking about the inpatient side. , we all three did the exact same outpatient program.

Uh, Carson, you wouldn't go in details a little bit of what our intensive outpatient program looks like a little bit. Sure. , intensive outpatient basically consists. And as Ravi had mentioned with the inpatient, you know, a lot of facilities are going to vary, , as to what the day-to-day looks like.

But for ours specifically, , we meet three hours a week for a, excuse me, three days a week for three hours at a time. And typically there are two different segments that we go through each day. And the first one is more of a group session. Anybody who is attending, , our night session, we're going to gather up and we're going to go through numerous different.

, types of treatment and it's actually pretty cool. It's not, it's at least not what I expected initially, going into something like this, but we talk about a lot of different things and most of it can fall back to old. Does fall back to, you know, the addictions that we. I have, whether it be alcohol, whether it be drugs, et cetera,  we go through numerous different coping skills and talk about each person's experience and how they have, you know, whether it be on a day-to-day basis or, , you know, what are you going to do if you had this sudden craving, you know, how are you going to cope with this?

And everyone deals with these things differently. Some people like exercise, some people want to just, you know, complete. Get out of their minds and watch Netflix or play video games. , some people, you know, call their sponsor, call a friend, a trustworthy friend or mentor. And so we'll kind of discuss that and, um, and help each other, you know, add to that list of coping mechanisms that we can all utilize whenever it's necessary.

Uh, we'll go through nutrition. We've had numerous different nutritionists, , come in. Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. I think her Cory, her is her name yet. I'm hoping we can get her on sometime because I had no clue how much nutrition can play a part in sobriety. You know, her big thing is, is, you know, if you don't eat your blood sugar gets low.

Your chances of relapse go up tremendously. And she's very fascinating to talk to her views on food and the word she, you know, likes and doesn't like good and bad. She's like, Nope, there is no such thing as good and bad when it comes to food. It's about all about maintaining. And keeping your blood sugar normal and you know, not, not going long periods of time without eating and becoming as she calls it hangry because then your  susceptible to a relapse at that point, which, you know, she would talk to us.

I think I had two or three deaths, three different, , lectures with her that were an hour and 15 minutes each. And I learned a ton each time. So. That's another important thing, you know, talk to, if you don't do a treatment program or something, you know, research on nutrition for substance abuse, because her specialty is nutrition in substance abuse and recovery.

Right. We, we loved having Corey come in. She started the forum with, Hey, what questions do you guys have? And we filled up that board in about five minutes from any. You know, macros to, , is sugar bad or what sugars are good and bad.  

All of the variables that go into your daily diet. And one of our favorite things, I think we can all agree is her answer to it was listen to your body. And we all got a kick out of that because, and you don't want to take that for granted, but she would say, listen to your body and what does your body need?

And then evaluate it afterwards. And that really helped us because there are so many misconceptions, uh, on what is healthy and not healthy. And. All of these diet plans and things that we are, it's constantly poured into us on a daily basis of you should do this, or you should try this diet and that's not good for you.

And then they're all conflicting. And so it's really just being able to narrow down and figure out what is best for you because all of our bodies are different. We all work in different ways. And so that's very beneficial and was an essential part to our treatment. Um, but we learn all kinds of things.

We get very psychological. , we, we talk about the. The brain and the disease of addiction, because it is truly a disease. And so we've kind of walked through that, but there's a lot of good content that we've got out of this. You know, we watch Ted talks. We we've actually watched a movie on the foundation of a particular support group, , and how it was formed.

Uh, and, and. There's a lot of lifelines that are, you know, we're able to use on a daily basis, their support that's absolutely surrounding us and we just don't know it. And so we need to learn that and we need to take advantage of that because it's very, very hard to do this alone, but having the right people around you that are going to support you in that, understand what you're going through.

Uh, that's going to be beneficial and it's a huge part of your. Yeah, absolutely. I'm very happy with the process. , I've made and, and I enjoyed the intensive outpatient. One thing I get to meet you guys. And, , that's kinda where we formed this idea to even start doing a podcast about halfway through. I said, Hey, what do you think let's do a podcast in.

Al here we are episode three and you know, we were there. I went Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from six to nine at night. Then we had to do four Saturdays from 12, or I'm sorry, from nine to 12 and then a full Friday evening and all day Saturday, plus you have a one hour meeting with your therapist a week, which I would do on zoom.

So I mean, it is very time-consuming. However we did ours in the night cause we all had full-time jobs. So that's a thing. If you're, if you're looking to get into a rehab and you're worried about work or something involved with a, , inpatient facility, find a intensive outpatient facility where, you know, that have nighttime classes or daytime classes, if you work night to where you can still work it in your schedule.

That will you're, you know, you're not taking, , like Robbie said, BNN, one of his treatment centers for 72 days. That way you're not take a, you know, two, three months off of work, if you can do that. , of course, if you need to then do that, but if you can, you know, look at an outpatient rehab center, like we did, where we could still work and it worked out, so, all right.

Switch gears a little bit here. So we've discussed inpatient. We discussed outpatient,   some of this is going to pertain to be in an outpatient, like I said, three nights a week, but what do you do on those other nights? Or what say you get out of rehab or you decide to quit and you don't go to rehab.

What kind of support groups are out there because part of staying sober, you can't just say, well, fuck it. I'm done drinking and live your life. That's not gonna work. You gotta have something going on. , so wanted to discuss some of the different support groups out there. I know I'm very big in the 12 step program.

There's a couple of different 12 step programs for different, , addictions, uh, alcohol narcotics, things like that. , I'm very big into the 12 step program dealing with alcohol. Robbie. You are as well, aren't you? Yeah. , I like 12 step programs. , what a big fan of like how many differs. 12 step programs.

There are they're all for different, you know, whatever your focus might be. , they have like Alanon for example, it's,  I think family members of alcoholics, , got codependents anonymous for three co-dependence cocaines anonymous sex addicts anonymous. Pretty much, pretty much anything. Yeah, absolutely.

And even within any of the 12 step programs you go to, you know, we live in. The Charlotte area. So we're in a very large city, , or suburban I'm in kind of the outskirts. I guess we all kind of are on the outskirts of Charlotte, but in the Charlotte vicinity, there are so many meetings everywhere and, and truly around the country, you can go anywhere, find a great meeting and around the world, I know internationally 12 step programs are go on as well.

In your experience can differ from meeting to meeting, you know, my home group, I go to, it's a smaller, more intimate meeting and I enjoy that, you know, 8, 10, 12 of us, very similar almost to our process groups in rehab. We're a little bit different with the rules and stuff, but you know, an hour long meeting, there's four or five of them at where I go a day, but you can drive two miles in any direction.

You're going to find a place that has a meeting. And so. The structures of the meeting. There's a couple things that I think are good. One, the sponsorship program that goes along with the 12 step program to let's say you work a eight to five or nine to five or whatever. And your big trigger is you get out work because used to drink when you go to work.

A lot of us did that. I know I did. And when I say drink, when I get it I'll work. I mean, you know, crush up 18 pack and about two hours unhealthy drinking for sure it, but if that's your jam, then find a meeting when you get out of work. That's my big thing. I go to a meeting one y'all work every day. , whether it's at the rehab center or at my home group, I go to a meeting when I get out of work.

Uh, every once in a while, I'll take a night off. Maybe if I'm having dinner with my parents or something like that. But. That way, it switches me from work. Then I go to a meeting then, you know, I, at that time, it's eight o'clock where I'd go home, have dinner and relax, relax a little bit. And I know if I go to that meeting right after work.

I'm not going to drink that day because you go to that meeting gives you the power to stay sober for that, for that day, for that night and, and wake up the next day. I also like, you know, a lot of the 12 step programs are spiritually based and we'll pray. I might touch on that a little bit more. , but they're not religious based.

I would say they're spiritually based. If for some reason, if you're against the realist. they are more spiritual. Um, don't make that a factor of why you're not going.  Pat, you said at first, but I'm going to reiterate meetings are everywhere, especially if you're in a large metropolitan city, such as Charlotte, you'd be surprised at how many meetings are going on right around you.

One of the first things that they told me to do when I joined the, , inpatient or excuse me, the intensive outpatient program was they told me to download an app and I highly recommend this app because it's very, very helpful. It's almost like funding, an Uber it's called meeting guide. And what you do is you just download it, download that onto your phone.

It's free, uh, get it from the apple store or if you're a psychopath and you have an Android, I'm sure you can still download it that way. If you, if you like the green text, I don't trust you, but you didn't get an iPhone. Please get just conformed for love of God yet. Eric, we're calling you out by calling you out.

We know who you are. We know where you live. But, uh, download meeting guide and you search it, you can put the radius that you're looking for, the type of meeting that you're looking for the times or the day of the week that you're looking for everything that fits into the equation, and then it'll pop up.

You can also choose Nina this day and age, especially with COVID. You can find everything via zoom, so you type it in. And I, uh, my first, my first meeting that I attended was actually on zoom because, uh, do you have a very strenuous schedule? , busy job and I'm at work a lot. So I was unable to, you know, attended in person.

So I typed in my, you know, I didn't need to type in an area, just something local, uh, what I was looking for in the time of day, I think it was eight o'clock at night and boom, four meetings popped up and I was able to choose one of them and just jump on it. So it's very simple. Um, but if you are attending a face-to-face, you can jump on there.

You can say, Hey, I want, you know, I'm looking for this, you know, fill in the blank. Uh, I want to go north east Charlotte, , anywhere between six and 8:00 PM on a Wednesday, and then it'll populate and you'll find any, and every meeting that's going to be occurring at that time. So it's very beneficial and it's makes it a lot easier, um, to find out, you know, where you need to go and be able to join some like that to, you know, get through that day.

Cause it's a, it's a daily thing as pat had mentioned, , you just try to get through each day one at a time and you know, if you are involved in the community and involved in me, That's going to supplement your recovery and it's going to, , it's going to really help you get through and not, not feel that urge to drink or to use.

Yeah. So one thing that before we get into some of the other ones, , one thing I do want to touch on that I think is important to know people call it California suburban. That means where you quit drinking or you quit drugs, but you still use marijuana. I highly recommend you do not do that.

Marijuana affects the same pleasure centers that alcohol does. So if you're using marijuana, it's triggering those. You're not healing your brain at all. And you're going to be a lot more susceptible to relapse by using marijuana, you know, easiest way to get sober is quit.

Everything don't do any drugs.  Don't smoke pot, don't drink alcohol, go a hundred percent clean. You know, I I've heard that a lot where people have said whether it's in a 12 step meeting or people in rehab, like, yeah, well, I, you know, I quit drinking and then I just kept smoking pot and that led me back to drinking or, you know, I quit drinking, I smoked pot.

And then I actually found out that that means I wasn't being sober. And it's like, well, yeah, that's a hundred percent. And so not doing that. I would avoid that. If that's something you're thinking about doing, just try to quit everything altogether. So we'll get into a few other ones. Um, smart recovery is something that's, that's been popular.

Smart recovery stands for self-management and recovery training, , kind of focuses on four steps, four steps. Building and maintaining motivation, coping with urges, uh, managing thoughts and living a balanced life. I have never been to a smart recovery meeting. I'm sure they're fantastic. Have either you guys ever been to one?

No, I have not. I have not. So if you have. Reach out, let us know. , you know, that's one thing I do want to explore more of is different types of meetings and stuff, because I understand the 12 step groups are the most popular and those are the ones I like, but that doesn't mean that's the only option that works.

So, if you have your reservations about that, look at some of these other ones, you know, you have women, so sobriety, that's a great group as well. Yeah. What, what other ones have you been to or heard of, or, or kind of what else is out there? , so there's refuge recovery, , in that pretty much consists of a, uh, Buddhist based recovery.

And I think it follows the eightfold path, which is, uh, you know, I don't know much about Buddhism, but I think that's like one of the key concepts 📍  Um, they place, I mean, I think 12 step programs definitely place importance on meditation. I think refuge recovery, places of larger importance on that and at the meetings, there's commonly meditation meetings and, and in, I think in general, you're going to be meditating and most of the meetings for Dharma, if not all of them, You know, one thing that I do as well, , since I've gotten sober is I've gotten into a religion a little bit more.

, I've gotten in church actually, , got baptized at a, into a church, , to become an official member a few weeks ago. And I find that very helpful as well, you know, and it was funny last, , last Sunday I was at church service. The pastor's message that he was preaching about the day was knowing your enemy and about knowing your enemy in life, in those things that can drag you down.

And alcohol is clearly my enemy. So we'll how do we deal with it? And that's what some of these programs are. There are ways to help you battle that enemy you have there. How, how do you not go back out there? How do you not relapse? Well, . similar to what Robbie had said in the first episode regarding the study with a group of rats where?

Oh yeah, that's called rat park. Oh, did you read it? Well, my girlfriend reminded me. She's like, oh yeah, that's called the rat park experiment. I didn't go and look at it, but okay. But part of it was when the rats were in a community together. They were not going to go and use the drug that was there for them in the experiment.

And I think that's very similar here getting a group, talk it out, talk your problems. You know, that's one, some, one of the good things about, , doing, outpatient rehab was the process groups, the group therapy. It's nice to sit there and talk about a. When you go to these groups, whether it's 12 step programs, Dharma, recovery, smart recovery, whether it's any of those are going to be, , you're going to be with a group of people that have been through the exact same thing that you're going through.

That's why I like the 12 step program. I go to everybody there's alcoholics. We all have been through the same thing. We all go through the same struggles. They, you know, and you get people at different stages, you get people in early sobriety. Like we are, you get, you know, the old timers that have been there 20, 30 years, they have advice.

They been through it. They can help you and lead you along the way. It that's kind of the important thing in one of the main messages is there is the best way to stay sober, help another alcoholic. That's a big message, you know, helping others. And helping other alcoholics as a way to help yourself, which is the main reason we're doing this podcast.

We're trying to help other alcoholics drug addicts, uh, any kind of addicts where there's gambling, sex, anything like that.

So I'm just getting to the point that the support is what's very important and helping others is also very important. And I'll be honest. We had a lot of fun hanging out. You know, we are all there for reasons. We didn't want to be there, but when we got in our process group and we, we laughed, I want to say we cried.

I don't think we cried very much, but all the emotion that had been bottled up for, you know, months and years. Of going through what we were all going through and our struggles, we were able to laugh about it and share each other's stories and empathize with each other. And that's, that's always nice, you know, having people to do life with, but furthermore, having people to, to share that experience with, and, you know, I remember one time we know we always get out at nine and you know, you have some people in there that are just, they're just miserable and they don't want to be there and I'm not faulting him for it.

You know, you can't, you can expect someone to have the time of their lives, but we get out at night. And we were talking and just carrying on conversation and we look at the clock and I think it was like nine 20 or something one night. And we looked at our therapist really? Why didn't you tell us? And she was like, you guys were having a good time.

I didn't want to stop you. And that just goes to show, I mean, if you go in with the right mindset and you're surrounded by the right people, despite the circumstances, you can really get a lot out of it. And I think we, we did just that. And that's why we are choosing. To do this and to hang out outside, you know, we're not an inpatient right now.

We could be doing whatever we want. Um, but we're here sharing in this together and, and reaching out to others because we know how it is. And it's, it's quintessential to, to really band together and to share this with each other. So it's a lot, you know, it can be a lot of fun. It's just all about what you make of it.

Well, getting sober as a vulnerable decision and you know, what happens is when you go into these groups, You get vulnerable, you feed off of other people's vulnerability. And what happens is they see the real side of you and, um, you get to it, you realize that, wait, you know what they like accept me for who I am.

Maybe I can accept myself for who I am. And, , ultimately that leads to greater connections, , you know, closer friends, real friends. And, , I think that is. Essentially. I mean like the meat of staying sober is the people that you are around. Yeah. I think another point to that is you'd be surprised at how similar other people's stories are to yours.

And it's honestly kind of funny and it makes you feel a little bit better about, you know, the, the faults that you have in, in the. The mistakes that you've made. I remember, you know, we, we do something called a life story and it is exactly what it sounds like in a point in your, in your journey there with the inpatient or excuse me, the outpatient, uh, you just basically take it from, start to finish, you know, how you grew up, you know, what was your relationship with alcohol, et cetera?

And I remember, , Eric, who was the guy we shouted out earlier for having green text. Uh, he shared his story and, and he was, and he he's a nerd and he was talking about. You know how he, I hate to use this word, but manipulated his life and the people around him in order to get what he wanted. And that was alcohol.

So he had hiding places. He had moments in time where, you know, here's this segment of time and I know I can drink then. And he would basically run his schedule and a lot of us. Um, Ray ran his schedule according to his alcohol schedule. And he was telling the story and I, and I was taking it back and I'm like, oh my God, this is exactly like me.

I felt like he was telling my story. And I told him after we just kind of laughed about it. And I was like, Hey man, like same here. I literally did 90% of what you did. And I had no clue. You were 30 minutes away from me completely. I had no idea who you were and we were doing the same thing. I'm surprised I didn't run into him on a, on a, on a quick, uh, uh, alcohol run, uh, trying to hide it from my wife.

Love you, Jamie. , it's just funny and it, but it's always nice to have folks around you. Literally have done the same things and able to laugh at what you've done and, and get better together. You know, it's funny, me and Robbie were in a process group last night together, and we were talking about things that come up and I brought up how I'm going on a trip to a wedding up in New Hampshire here, uh, next week.

And one of the guys in the group talked about how he's got to go to Atlanta for business and he's driving. And it makes him a little nervous because. W driving and in his car was where he always drank. And I think every guy in that room was like, yeah, I was the same way. And we all came to the conclusion that our favorite place to drink was in the vehicle because you're alone.

And, and so you're, you're right where you do share those, you know, similar bonds and, you know, the comradery you get out of these experiences and, you know, One of the things that my therapist has helped me with is when I got into treatment and started me with a therapist,  whether it's rehab, , or rehab plus, , 12 step program or any other recovery program, the basis of, of those is one showing you how to live a sober lifestyle, but more importantly to.

Why did you abuse, substances and undercover those truths? Well, anything that bad ever have to me or any emotion, I would just shrug it off and start talking to my therapist. And I realized, I didn't know how to process emotions or even talk about them whatsoever of any of the traumas. I. In my life at, which have mainly all been in my adult life.

And once she helped me kind of start understanding those and digging down deep and it got easier and easier. And like Robbie said, you know, being vulnerable and talking through those things and all of a sudden it's like a weight's lifted off your shoulder because I finally have started figuring out, okay, well, I was trying to cover up some stuff, especially the last couple of years.

And. Getting that out there and talking about it and realizing like one, , what I'm, I'm discussing. And maybe I'll talk about it later on. Maybe I won't. And when I say later, I mean, down the road in a different episode, but that it wasn't like. And you could start looking at things a little bit better. , you're, you know, it's all about positivity and learning to live a just better and happier life all around.

Yeah. It's a, it's amazing when you find the right therapist and the right community, how you can dig deep and get. Introspective about your past and the things that you can find out about yourself. I've seen not an incredible number, but I certainly have seen numerous therapists in my past. Some have been wonderful, helped me through some serious issues that I was dealing with mentally and emotionally, some were shoddy.

Some, you know, I, I don't believe that they should still be in the profession. But we won't focus on that, but it's amazing, you know, digging into these things and realizing why you abused alcohol, why you abused drugs or whatever it was, and being able to then figure out how you're going to proceed forward.

And, and it's, it's life changing. To be honest, I remember when my therapist. Digging through some trauma, , from my past and, and me thinking it wasn't related at all, I'm like, no, I just like to drink. There's nothing more to it. And she asked the right questions and I, she stunned me and I just stared at her and she's like, do you have anything to say?

And I remember I replied damn you're right. That's all I said, that's all I said because I had nothing else to say. She, she got me and, uh, but it was, it was wonderful to, to open. Open that can of worms and, uh, and really be able to address everything that was really going on. I'm a fan of the saying more is to be revealed.

Um, I enjoy learning the why personally, , that being said, my brain runs a million miles per hour and I can sit there trying to figure out what I'm going to like, figure out the root cause of everything. , in Y. , for me, I find that what I'm doing celestial, Y more real, like a what? Or like, how is what's going to at least keep me sober and then Morris, to be revealed as I'm following some sort of direction on how to live.

, I realize more of my, , my shortcomings really, you know? Yeah. And we all have shortcomings. We all have faults. We all have personal defects and character defects that we have to work through. And. When you're whether drunk or high or whatever, your substance choices, you're never going to work on those.

They're just going to get worse. And they come out at the worst times as you're sober and you're clear headed, you can start really working through those. That's what a sponsor's for. That's what therapies for that's, what your church is for. You know, you can start truly working on yourself to get through those and be a happier person.

And because what happens is when you start checking all those. The box, you start dealing with them, or guess what? Those cravings start to get less and less because you don't have to, you're not looking to try to cover up anything. And another thing, I just want to make a point of whether it's at a meeting or a therapist, or you're know you're in a group talking and whoever you're talking to, I guarantee you, there's nothing you can say.

That's going to shock that person that they haven't heard before. You know, I've heard people in meetings say, I think that they are telling some story that nobody's ever heard before. And half of us were like, yeah, I was there too. I did the same thing. And they're like, huh? I'm like, yeah. You know? And so be open, be honest, the, I think kind of the moral of all of this at, I think Robbie said it earlier at the beginning of.

You got to, whatever you put into it is what you're going to get out of it, you know, go to the meetings. I know, even if you're shy, even just say you don't say one thing, just say one sentence even, and start to get to, you know, get more comfortable, talk to people before meetings. Talk to them. After like Carson said, You sit there and we'll be processing then all of a sudden, you know, we're 20 minutes after when we were supposed to be done.

And none of us knew it because we're in depth, we're involved. Uh, we got things going on in that's healthy behavior. That's healing. That's keeping us sober, which is the main point of everything drinking an excess and abusing. Substances. It's all a form of escapism. We are all trying to escape something we're running from something.

So, you know, just to reiterate, go, go to a meeting, surround yourself with people that care and that have been through this, um, you know, figure out what you are running from because most people are running from something and figure that out so that you can hit it head on and you're going to be, you're going to be much happier.

Awesome. Robbie, anything else from you today? No, I don't think so. Before we get out of here, how many days you. One 13, approximately lemme at 97 or 98 today. I don't remember 98 today. Actually. It was a perfect segue for my last plug before we leave. I know exactly what day I'm on. I'm on day 65 and it's because I have an app.

There's an app for it. Um, so if you are looking at we're giving free ads, now we're given for it just as once, but we have like a hundred and was 120, , ads that were, yeah, they're supporting people are lying. They're lying. They're out the door. Actually. I see them. Um, but I, I downloaded this app. I found it.

It's called, I am sober. Very clever name. I know. But, , what you do is you can just type in, , you know, first of all, you track your sober date, that's going to track it for you. So you don't have to do the calculation, um, which is easy, but you can also, you can have a little fun with it and kind of laugh about it, but it's also kind of scary, uh, you type in the average amount of money that you spend.

On, you know, whatever it was, whether it be alcohol, drugs, you know, , and, , you type in the average, and then you type in the amount of calories you were taking in per day. Um, and so I did this and I'm embarrassed to say it, but I'm going to go ahead and share it. So I typed in on day one. , $20 on alcohol.

That's probably a little low, but I'm giving that as just a decent average, just to kind of a benchmark on what I was spending a day and then 1500 calories, which also might be slightly conservative depending upon the day. But after 65 days that's adds up and, uh, I have saved in 65 days. I've saved $1,300.

And I have saved 97,500 calories. So when you look at it that way, it kind of makes you sick to your stomach. You're like, good Lord, no wonder I've lost 17 pounds in 65 days. I mean, it was easy cause that alcohol was just shedding off of me. So if you want to have a little fun with it, you know, go ahead and download an app, track your progress.

It'll it'll shine a light on a, what you were doing that was really, really bad, but also be, uh, what you're doing now. That is really changing your life for the better. And so, uh, so yeah, 65 days here. Yeah. I good job. I'm proud of you and I'm proud of you, Ravi, and I'm proud of myself. Like we're out of anybody.

If you have one day sober, good job, you know, it all starts with one and you can't get to two without the first day and you can't get to 90 days without 89 day. However, it goes. Absolutely. You know, I have a sober rioty app from our rehab center that they send you when you finish a intensive outpatient rehab, which we in Robbie have done hurry up Carson.

And, uh, I'm just kidding. And it says you've been in recovery for three months and five days. So you've got to actually like do math because, um, they're just as three months, a five day. Yeah, I agree. So, uh, with that, want to thank everybody again for the amazing support. , again, send this question, send us feedback, let us know what you think.

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