by Kris Oyen | Feb 12, 2024 | Podcast
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Episode 469 – 10 Facts About Americans and Alcohol
Today we have Lisa. She is 66 years old and lives in Atlanta, GA. She took her last drink on November 16th, 2022.
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[02:51] Thoughts from Paul:
Paul shares with us ten facts about Americans and their drinking habits that he found in an article from the Pew Research Center.
The article shares with us statistics regarding what people are drinking and where alcohol consumption is the highest, along with statistics about age and income ranges.
The biggest takeaway from this article is the first stat that says, “Only 62% of U.S. adults say they drink” while 38% abstain completely. Not everyone is kung fu fighting. There is a voice inside the head that says, “Everybody drinks”, but right there we just debunked that myth. A lot of people don’t drink because they don’t want to. Many people don’t drink because their forced to. Whatever the reason is, about 40% of Americans don’t drink.
And although alcohol consumption is rising, we’re seeing the younger generations say no, like no previous generation has done so.
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[10:00] Paul introduces Lisa:
Lisa is a repeat guest from episode 411. She took her last drink on November 16th, 2022. She is 66 and lives outside of Atlanta. She has been married for 37 years and they have two adult children. Lisa enjoys working out, traveling, reading, and listening to podcasts.
Lisa grew up in a close family, but her parents had a miserable marriage. Her mother drank to deal with it and the drinking increased when Lisa was in middle school. Upon trying her first drink in high school, she didn’t have the “wow” moment at first but quickly found it gave her confidence and she felt accepted and less insecure with her friends.
After graduating college and entering the booming computer software industry, Lisa found herself drinking at a lot of parties, conferences, and sales meetings. She says her husband didn’t drink much. Aside from when she was pregnant, Lisa drank in a way that she considered normal.
In her 40’s, Lisa and her husband left the corporate world and started their own business. It was successful but very stressful. She says her drinking ramped up and she was beginning to try and hide the wine bottles from her husband.
After a fall Lisa had during a blackout, her doctor referred her to a counselor. She discovered AA and was able to stay sober for a year without doing the work. Soon after the year mark, Lisa thought she could moderate and started drinking again. She was successful with moderation at first, but after retiring, finding herself as the sole caretaker for her elderly mother, the drinking increased again.
One night Lisa found herself pouring a glass of wine that she really didn’t want and it was then she decided enough was enough. This time Lisa decided to get help. She went to AA and didn’t feel it was working for her. She discovered a Facebook group called SoberSis as well as Café RE. After her last interview, she was connected with a lot of other ladies that she is still connected with today.
Last year found Lisa tending to several health scares, several surgeries, and the unexpected loss of her parents eight weeks apart. Lisa says that gratitude, using the tools she has learned in the sober community as well as her faith and family has helped her remain sober through it all.
Lisa’s favorite ways to relax deep breathing and exercise.
Lisa’s advice for somebody struggling with life and alcohol: find a way to connect no matter how uncomfortable it is, we have to have connections.
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by Kris Oyen | Sep 11, 2023 | Podcast
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/recoveryelevator/RE_447_mixdown.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe to the Recovery Elevator Podcast Apple Podcasts | RSS | More Episode 447 – Can You Be Addicted to Alcohol and Not Be An Alcoholic? Today we have...
by Kris Oyen | Aug 14, 2023 | Podcast
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Episode 443 – A Different Type of Alcoholic
Today we have Kelly, she is 46 from Minneapolis, MN and took her last drink on June 18th, 2023.
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[02:57] Highlights from Paul:
When saying the word “alcoholic”, these images, and thoughts commonly come to mind:
Living under a Bridge. Brown paper bag. Homeless. Hopeless. Unemployed.
Some of this is accurate but studies show only 5% of alcoholics fit these descriptions.
The other 95% are high functioning, tend to be high earners, more educated, are healthier and have more stable relationships than average.
With the estimated 452 million alcoholics that don’t fit the stereotypical description of an alcoholic, this takes the saying you are not alone to a new level.
We justify or benchmark our drinking according to what an alcoholic looks like. I’m not that bad, I have a job, and money in the bank. We surround ourselves with other drinkers who don’t fit the alcoholic stereotype to solidify our own positions on the addiction scale. Now a classic trait of an addiction is that we are blind to where we actually are with the addiction process. The hole you find yourself in is probably deeper than you think. My recommendation is to stop digging. You CAN put the shovel down. Another classic trait of an addiction is the progression. We have 452 million alcoholics on the globe who are not living under a bridge or drinking out of brown paper bag yet.
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[09:30] Paul introduces Kelly:
Kelly took her last drink on June 18th, 2023, and has 6 days at the time of this recording. She is 46 and lives in Minneapolis. She leads software development teams for a living. Kelly loves the outdoors and enjoys running, hiking, and paddleboarding. She enjoys movies, music, and museums as well.
Kelly first tried alcohol at a party in 9th grade. Drinking was not something that she wanted to do but she succumbed to peer pressure. A year later she started spending time visiting her brother at college, and she enjoyed hanging out with him and his friends and started drinking more frequently. It was a good escape from the abuse she was dealing with at home.
In college Kelly was drinking and dealing with an eating disorder. She worked hard to overcome her bulimia but then her drinking ramped up after that. After college she married a fellow engineer, and they would drink heavily together. After they started having children and settling down, her husband was able to quit the excessive drinking, but Kelly was not.
While raising her children, Kelly was able to cut back on drinking and started putting rules around it. Her relationship wasn’t going well, and Kelly was going out more frequently and drinking almost daily. After a few drinking and driving charges, Kelly began to realize that she could no longer control it. Over time she recognized that she was starting to isolate more and then would go out to bars to find connection with other people.
Kelly has been able to have more gaps in drinking days over time and has been acquiring tools throughout the process. She is recognizing that she needs to treat her sobriety like a baby and nurture it daily. Each morning she meditates and uses the Reframe app. She attends AA meetings frequently and has recently found a therapist to help her with her childhood trauma.
Kelly’s plan for recovery moving forward: keep doing things that make her feel uncomfortable, attending more meetings, and new meditation practices.
Kelly’s parting piece of guidance: keep trying, be open to new resources.
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by Kris Oyen | May 8, 2023 | Podcast
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Episode 429 – The Connection Between Alcohol and Anxiety
Today we have Dale, he is 55, from Roanoke, VA and he has been alcohol free since March 23, 2019
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[02:34] Paul’s thoughts:
Paul knows now that there is a connection between his drinking and his anxiety but while actively drinking, he could not. We are told that alcohol relaxes us – which it does by shutting down important parts of our brain.
According to Dr. Sheila Shilati,”Alcohol ultimately replaces those important chemicals like dopamine and serotonin in the brain, which mitigate anxiety, therefore, in episodes where you are not drinking, then your brain is searching for those all-important ‘feel-good’ connections, which become diminished because the supply has been mitigated,”
We hear a lot about “self-medicating” in recovery. Which isn’t a bad thing, but when we rely too much on this strategy, it stops working. This becomes an even bigger problem because we don’t realize it so we just drink more and now our coping strategy is becoming the reason we can’t cope.
Paul shares in episode 417, this is the best place you can be because the tipping point isn’t far off in the distance.
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[10:48] Paul introduces Dale:
Dale is 55, lives in southwest Virginia, has been married for 25 years with no children. He works for a shipping company and also owns and manages rental property. Dale enjoys music of all varieties, loves reading and learning and also enjoys gardening.
Dale’s first experiences with alcohol came from his parents using it to medicate him as a child. He worked in the hospitality industry in his late teens and early twenties and drinking was a glorified part of the lifestyle. His tolerance grew and he became a daily drinker throughout that time.
The recent years found Dale questioning his drinking and realizing he wasn’t living life within his values. He had sneakily drunk some of his wife’s special whiskey which prompted an angry text to Dale. He used this message as motivation and although he was not able to quit right away Dale feels this was the start of his recovery.
Dale has found self-awareness to be a catalyst to helping him stop drinking. He has utilized Recovery Elevator and the Café RE community as a large part of his journey. It was a scary first step for him, but he found getting out of his comfort zone to be very helpful. He has made many friends that have helped him move forward and be strong in his sobriety. Focusing on the good has been an important tool for Dale, specifically in the early days. As he closed in on a year, he felt the veil had been lifted and he was seeing the world differently.
Year two for Dale was unpacking everything that led him to drink so much in the first place. He feels that was the mucky part of the journey and it is a process to unpack it.
Year three Dale feels that learning to let go of control was a big thing. Learning that life is going to happen, and he didn’t have to cling so tightly to everything. He finds that the service work he does in the community has helped him deal with life as it happens while approaching the four-year milestone.
Dale feels that success comes by building the wall one brick at a time, stepping outside of the comfort zone and being willing to learn. He also feels that service work helps strengthen us and keep us connected to our foundation.
[53:36] Closing thoughts:
Paul’s tips for dealing with anxiety without alcohol:
Perception – anxiety pangs are messengers. Your body is sending you signals that something is off balance. Tell your body this will pass and will soften with each passing day or month.
Get the body moving to cue the release of endorphins whose purpose is to mask physical and emotional pain.
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by Kris Oyen | Jan 2, 2023 | Podcast
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Episode 411 – The Grateful Alcoholic
Today we have Lisa who is 65 from Atlanta, GA took her last drink on 11/17/2022.
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Highlights from Paul:
Paul didn’t understand a fellow AA member’s references to being a “grateful alcoholic”. Only after getting to know Jim, did he understand what they meant. It took a few years for Paul to get to that point to be grateful for his addiction.
He reflects that our addictions are signposts trying to guide us to a more authentic life and that there are no such things as failures. They are learning opportunities and we should never give up. We should trust the process of healing from the addictions, and we can all become grateful for the role that alcohol has played in our lives.
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[00:00] Paul introduces Lisa
Her last drink was November 17, 2022 – a little over three weeks from the time of this recording. She says it feels wonderful, relieving, liberating, comforting, all positive things.
Lisa is 65 and lives in Atlanta area with her husband of 36 years. They have two grown children and remain close to them. She enjoys reading, travelling, exercise, nature and family time.
Lisa’s drinking started out on the weekends in high school. She drank throughout adulthood and always knew she drank abnormally. She discovered she had her first blackout and fell when she was nearly 50. That scared her into getting sober with AA but she feels she never did the work or found a good sponsor. After one year, she thought she could handle drinking again.
Over the last two or three years she has known she needed to stop again. She was starting to notice the health consequences and began finding resources including The Huberman Lab podcast episode about alcohol, and This Naked Mind.
Journalling about her drinking past has helped her recognize some of what drove her to addiction. She became aware that her drinking ramped up after she retired in 2015 as she felt a loss of identity. She has recently become a caretaker for her mother who has been in recovery since Lisa was 15, but they have never been close. She thinks she used alcohol for stress and anxiety relief over that and the loneliness she found in retirement. Now that she knows that it is her brain reacting to the disease which she finds helpful to her recovery. She embraces that she must do things differently this time and get comfortable with being uncomfortable. She has joined several recovery communities and asked to be on the podcast. She has not shared her journey with her immediate family but plans to do so very soon.
In recovery, Lisa says that routine is vital to her success. She exercises daily while listening to podcasts. She enjoys volunteering to stay busy. Her faith is very important to her and she finds prayer and journalling helpful.
One thing she has learned in sobriety – she can find the courage to do hard things and is stronger than she realized
Parting piece of guidance – you can control your thoughts, just focus on what you are gaining, not what you are losing.
[00:00] Closing thoughts from Paul:
Paul encourages us to stop labeling things as a problem. We need challenges to appreciate rewards. He compares this to alcohol as being the invitation to step into a rebirth and make great changes in our lives for the better. He has yet to meet someone that regretted quitting drinking. Paul also revisits his thoughts on Big Alcohol and his view on legalization of drugs and alcohol.
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I love you guys.
We took the elevator down; we’ve got to take the stairs back up.
We can do this.
