I review the top three things I say to myself in the middle of a crisis/natural disaster to protect my sobriety as I prepare to go into a hurricane shelter with my students for Hurricane Idalia.
Transcript: Hey, I am recording this live from preparing to do a full on hurricane evacuation with about 4,000 students, including myself and the other staff who live on campus. So, why on earth would Jessica decide to record a podcast episode? Because this is actually soothing to my soul to talk about the things that I have going on in my life and how I stay sober through them. So that’s exactly why I decided to wake up extra early and do this recording before I get ready to dive right back into putting on my educator hat and being there for young folks on this campus. What’s actually really cool, I saw on Instagram a post from Simone Sol and she wrote something along the lines of like that she likes to remind people that some of the greatest, most successful writers, artists, like entrepreneurs, that they’ve done their creative work while holding down a day job. And so for me, In this moment, when I am getting ready to gather my life together and go into a shelter for a hurricane for possibly one or two days, I don’t know, I still feel immense gratitude for the work that I do daily. Because the work that I do on a daily basis in terms of my day job, when I was a teacher now working in higher ed, I realized how powerful and impactful it is. And I can do that and I can coach. I can do that and I can facilitate support group meetings, especially because I’m sober. I can do whatever the hell I want to because I have the freedom of sobriety. So just putting that out there, I am feeling, at this moment I’m feeling good and I am feeling grateful and happy to be of service to others during a really, really chaotic time here in the Florida, in the Tampa Bay area. So with that being said, right, I did want to talk a little bit about what to do when shit hits the fan, right? A lot of people approach coping strategies in different ways. For people who participate in my writing program, every week when we meet, I go through a couple of different strategies, whether we’re talking about a breathing strategy, a somatic strategy, meaning a strategy that you do something with your body to feel better, but then also self-talk. Me, I personally love self-talk. I feel like I can have a million conversations with myself and that helps me feel better, but for some people it’s the breathing, for some people it’s the getting up, the stretching. right, different things. So I kind of wanted to pause and record this and share this with other people because I know if I’m going through a difficult time right now, I’m not alone, right? There’s comfort in putting out vibes into the internet and knowing that someone else is exactly where you are. So if you need this today, this is 100% for you. So yeah, before I dive into finishing my preparations to evacuate 4,000 students, I just wanted to stop share what keeps me sane and sober right now. So like I said, I’m a huge self-talker. So I just wanted to share three things that I say to myself when shit hits the fan. So number one, the first question I always ask myself is, what is on my plate that I can ask for help with? I think a lot of times, especially for women, I have had it as a woman, especially a woman of color, of kind of like thinking that I have to do everything by myself. I have to be the strong woman, because my mother was so strong, my grandmother was so strong. I really pushed myself to fit into this narrative that was created for me without realizing that there’s people who love me who are willing to help if I open my mouth and ask for that support. And so going back to this situation, I have to evacuate to go to a hurricane shelter with students that I work with, but my dog cannot go. Yes, he is an emotional support animal, but he’s not legally a service dog, so he is not permitted in places like shelters. And there’s lots of options in terms of what I could do with him. But my preferred option would be obviously for him to be with someone who knows him and he’s been with, which would be my sister and my niece. You know, my dog lived with them for two years when I was living with them. The problem is, right, asking for help and how uncomfortable that is to be like, I know that right now this whole city is in a massive shit storm and I need your help. Right? It takes a lot of discomfort to say those things because I could also be willing to spend probably a couple hundred dollars and put them away in a shelter and not inconvenience anyone, except for my bank account that I’m working on saving money in, right? So I did, I picked up the phone and I called my sister and I explained that I have to evacuate with the students if she would be okay with taking my dog. And she said yes, right? So thankfully, if I hadn’t said anything, I would have been left with spending a bunch of money to put my dog away out of fear of inconveniencing someone when she was fine with it. But what happens, right? When people do say yes to helping us, sometimes we still dive into this little pattern of our brains telling us that we should be feeling bad, we should keep apologizing for asking for help, keep, you know, just kind of keep beating ourselves over and over again for having had the quote unquote audacity to ask for help. So that leads me to the number two thing that I say to myself when I am struggling and have to basically lean on other people. And that number two thing that I say is, people are allowed to say no to my request for help. So yes, I went to my sister, but she could have said no and I would have been okay with that, right? I had a plan B and honestly a plan C, but I have to remind myself, right? Before I let myself feel bad for taking my big old dog and dropping him off at her house, She could have said no, she was within her power to say no, but she chose to say yes. I didn’t put a gun to her head to say, you have to say yes to me, right? So when she tells me yes, I need to believe her. And likewise, if you’re listening to this, when people tell you yes, take them at their word, right? We’re not mind readers. It’s not up to us to be like, did they really mean yes? Or did they say that yes grudgingly, right? No, they’re grown adults the same way that we are. And if they are consenting to support you in whatever way you requested, take that yes for a yes and believe them when they say that yes. Because if they didn’t want to, they have every power to say no. Now, if you’re dealing with a people pleaser and they’re struggling with their own boundaries, that again is still their responsibility. It is not your responsibility to read other people’s minds. So when they say yes, believe it, because they are absolutely allowed to say no. So with that being said, the number three thing that I always say to myself to kind of help me get through really difficult times is just this reminder, right? Like all of us are descendants from different histories and different stories. And you know, obviously if we’re here, we carry some of that ancestry in us. And so for me, what I tell myself is that my ancestors faced plenty worse and they survived, right? And I carry their strength in me. Now, this is not to negate the fact that I often will like talk about, say, generational cycles that I’ve had to break, right? Especially in terms of addressing mental health and addiction. Absolutely. There’s a ton of stuff I inherited from my mom who got that from her mom and then the mom before that. That’s really problematic thinking. But at the end of the day, I also have to think about where did that problematic thinking originate anyway, and also just think about what they all went through. And there are so many things that my mother, the woman before her and everybody before them went through that they survived beyond natural disasters. I come from a lineage of people who have survived manmade human cruelty-based disasters and they stood firm and they survived that. And I have every bit of those survivor genes in me. So when The shit hits the fan and a current hurricane comes to town. And I start to feel that panic in my body. Like my body starts to feel anxious and my heart starts to race. And I start to think like, oh my gosh, I can’t do this. I have to stop and remind myself, my ancestors did this and more. And I absolutely can do this because I’m not drinking. Right? The second I were to put a drink in my body, it’s over. But if I can stay sober. I can absolutely handle this because even in my own lifetime and in my own existence, I’ve already gone through many things that have been very difficult and very challenging. And I’m still here standing to tell the tale. So I lean on that very heavily because it’s so important to remember that we carry the strength and the curses of our ancestors. And in times of trouble, I’m definitely leaning on the fact that I carry their strength, absolutely. So with that, I hope this helped send good vibes to Florida, you know, such a complex state, such a complex state to live in. It is a beautiful place to be. And yet it’s also so problematic for so many different things, right? But in all things, I try to practice gratitude. And so when I struggle later today, when I am overwhelmed, when I am dealing with students’ tears and students’ anxieties, Again, I’m going to be asking myself, what can I release? What can I ask for help with for myself? I can remind myself that those people can say no to my request for help. And I can remind myself that my ancestors faced plenty worse and survived, and I do carry their strength in me as well. So with that… Thank you so much for listening. Again, in a couple of weeks, I will be starting up my writing classes again, where we will be talking about all these beautiful ideas in storytelling form. Sign up at bottomlistdisober.com. And thank you, I’ll report to you after the hurricane.
I reflect on 1,000+ days of sobriety and two lessons learned. One, it’s a lot easier to “just” be myself. Two, quitting can be great, and I don’t mean just alcohol.
Hey everyone, on today’s episode, I want to do some reflecting on having hit a thousand days sober last week. I hit a thousand days sober, I believe it was on August 20th, ooh, maybe 25th, I can’t remember the exact date, but my tracker tells me, and it’s funny because I completely advocate for people doing whatever they need to do, whether it’s counting days or not counting days. I let devices count days for me, and then when it’s certain milestones, I’ll pay attention to it, and recognize it, and celebrate it. but I personally don’t go on a daily basis counting how many days I have because that’s just, that’s a lot for me to keep up with. Definitely in the beginning, I did love to keep track of my days once I felt like it was finally sticking because it absolutely felt really, really good to hit like 30, 60, 90, right? But now that the numbers are growing, I just let the apps do it and then I go back and check and celebrate. So anyway, with that, let me go ahead and jump into kind of like the two big things that I wanted to talk about with reflecting on lessons learned in a thousand days of sobriety. So the first one is that I don’t have to have multiple versions of myself, right? And I share that with you because I hope that if you have found that you compartmentalize yourself a lot, even in your current recovery, to invite yourself to kind of see where you can reduce or remove some of those barriers between yourself, right? Like, why is it that some spaces get certain parts of you and other spaces don’t. What are the questions that you’re, what are the thoughts that you’re telling yourself, right? That make you feel that you can’t just be who you are authentically everywhere. So I’ll give you a great example. I started working again at a college and the funny thing is I remember when I was a professional teacher, I refused to let my students see the fun side of me. Like of course I had fun with them. but they would have never seen Jessica the performer, right? Like if you give me a microphone and you put me on a karaoke stage, especially when I drank, I would completely take over that stage like no other. And for the longest, I really thought that was a side of me that was quote unquote unprofessional, that nobody should ever see, that students should only see me as this really serious focused person. And I really judged that part of me that. can be loud and can be fun and can be animated and dances and moves. And I never wanted the people that I educated to see that side of me, because in my mind, I believe that an educator just had to educate, period. And that was that. So this past week, I actually helped the group of students that I work with create like this whole choreograph routine to some 90s, like classic 90s songs that I really love. and they were like, oh, you should absolutely take the lead and do like a Mariah Carey version of it, of one of the songs. And I did it, right? And it was something that I never would have done when I drank because when I drank, I thought that I had to be a certain type of person. I was living in the word should very, very heavily, but to jump up on that stage, throw on a wig, pretend to act like Mariah Carey and lip sync. my soul out, right, and like dance and everything in front of others was so freeing and it was so liberating because now I know that I never ever have to worry about someone knowing a secret of mine. I’ll give you another example. Last week also randomly had an opportunity to share on my experience with drinking as an educator after the new story came out about the teacher who was arrested because she was drunk. And, you know, somebody that I know saw it out of context, and I guess they were worried that people were saying that I was drinking. And I was like, uh, no, anybody who listens to the story knows that the story wasn’t about me. And then, you know, however they spliced it, you know, I feel bad that they showed that woman’s video, personally speaking, I don’t think that was necessary for us to see. even though I was having a one-on-one conversation with a client, and the client stated that video helped her in terms of reminding her of exactly where she could land, right? So, you know, it is really hard to see people in pain. It’s really hard to be in pain. It’s really hard to be reminded of how painful these experiences are. But, you know, everyone gets what they need out of different things. And all I say is that, going back to the point, was that there were people who were alleging that, like, oh, did she start drinking again? because they didn’t like stop to actually watch the news clip. And the news clip gives context to everything. But it was funny because when my friend said that to me, I wasn’t stressed at all because again, I really just show up. I put very little effort into thinking about how I’m presenting today for the simple fact that I just let myself just be. And when I say I let myself just be, or I finally get to just be myself, right? The word just sometimes can be used to minimize something or make it seem less than or take away the value of it. When I use the word just, when I’m saying I get to just show up or just be me, for me, that’s really more of a celebration of the simplification of my life. Getting sober has allowed me to stop wasting so much mental energy on keeping track of who I am to who and what I offer to different people in different groups. Right? Getting sober for me has created this beautiful simplification of my life where I am myself wherever I go. It’s a gift. I’m very grateful for it. And it makes my life a hell of a lot easier. And honestly, it’s just so easy on the brain to not be constantly thinking about who I’m creating on the spot if I get to just be authentic. And by being authentic, I get to breathe and also accept that, like, I’m going to attract the people that need to be in my life. repel the people that don’t need to be in my life. And that’s okay too. So with that being said, right? Like I want you to, if you are currently in a place where you feel like you’re constantly having to show up differently in all these different spaces, how does that feel? Like how does that feel on your energy? How does that feel on your soul? Is it, does it feel good or is it exhausting? If it feels exhausting, what are some measures that you need to put in place? so that you can exhaust yourself a little bit less because it is tiring to have different masks on. It is tiring to be putting on different hats all the time and not being able to just be yourself. So that’s one thing that I learned from these thousand days. It’s just that being sober for me allows me to get rid of all those different versions of me and just be one person everywhere. Two, the second thing that I feel like I was taking away from these thousand days, is the idea that quitting is okay. And it’s not an original thought. I feel like I’ve heard it on social media plenty of times, right? But this idea of quitting is okay, and that’s quitting anything. I don’t mean just quitting drinking. I reflect on the fact that when I quit my teaching job, I thought that I would never go back to education. And here I am, right? Just in a different form. It looks totally different. But at the end of the day, the fundamental work of what I’m doing, which is helping younger people see their worth, see their value and help them contribute to their own lives and that of others. Like, I’m still absolutely doing that, right? Except this time around, I get to do it from a place of authenticity and not from a place of low self-esteem, from a place of lack, you know, not from the bottom of the bottle, so to speak. Quitting is okay. If you’re in a place where you have a job that is really impacting your mental health to the point that you are unable to cope healthily with your job and you have other options and you know that maybe you’re just not tapping into them, but you know you have a resume that you can update, right? You know that maybe there’s a cover letter that you can write. You know that there’s some opportunities that you just haven’t tapped into. I hope that you listen to this and you take this as your sign to go for it. You absolutely need to go for it. Because at the end of the day, you don’t know what’s waiting for you on the other side of taking a leap of faith for your own health. And I didn’t know two years ago, three years ago, I had no idea that I would be here exactly where I am today, but I definitely would not have made any strides. And I wouldn’t have made any strides in my sobriety journey if I hadn’t taken a break, if I had not taken a break. And there were things that kept me from walking and take breaks, right? Like for me, I was very attached to this pension idea, very attached to this retirement idea, but I’m sitting here creating problems 30 years in the future when if I didn’t stop drinking, I would probably not even have made it another year or two. Right? And so I invite you to like release your worries about future outcomes. if your today is looking really, really treacherous, right? Like, let’s get your today settled. Let’s get your present day at peace. Let’s get you some stability first. And then you can worry about the longer term goals. But there’s no long term if your short term is filled with alcohol, right? So I just wanted to, again, put that out there because for me, having quit my job basically a thousand days ago, to find myself back in the same field 1,000 days later, but 1,000 days stronger has been very, very empowering because now I understand that it wasn’t necessarily the career, it was just how I coped with life, right? And it wasn’t necessarily the career, it was maybe the positions that I was working with, right? Like maybe being the classroom teacher was the specific area where I have no business going back to, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t be in the field of education. And so again, you might need to expand your vision, step back, take a break, and look at what you do for a living, if it’s something that you love, or if it’s something that you really enjoy, and think about what that might look like if you did it differently. But if you did it differently in a way that it could help you in terms of your drinking, taking care of your mental health, meeting your needs better, you being able to be there and be more present for the people who love you and really need you, because at the end of the day, right, like… If you aren’t at your job one day, suddenly no longer, because your health failed you, guess what your job is going to do? Your job is going to immediately replace you. But you know who cannot replace you? Your family and your loved ones, right? Or your chosen family. The people who love you can’t replace you. Your job can always replace you. And so when you are looking at anything that you’re holding onto, but it’s draining you, and hurting you, I invite you to step away from it and give yourself the possibility of knowing that maybe one day you can come back to it. It doesn’t mean that it has to happen right now. So with that, just wanted to share those quick reflections for a thousand days of sobriety. Thank you so much for listening. Next month, about a month from today, I will be hosting a free writing workshop. So I absolutely invite you if you’ve been struggling with writing your story. telling your story. It is a free writing workshop. You can sign up at my website, bottomlisttosober.com. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great one.
Sara, a survivor of sexual assault, struggled with substance abuse to escape her pain. But realizing its temporary relief and the dark path she was on, she eventually embarked on her recovery journey. (Sara shared her story anonymously with me and asked that I change her name to protect her privacy.)
Jessica Dueñas: Hey everyone, in today’s episode, I wanted to just take an opportunity to do some storytelling. So Bottom List of Silver, originally, like the project in the first place, started back in February of 2021, and I had maybe five months over. And I knew that I wanted to dedicate myself to telling people’s stories the same way that Ian, my boyfriend who had passed away, told his story. To learn his story, go to bottomlistofsilver.com. I’ll link it in the show notes. but I do have a page on my site dedicated to him in memory of him to learn more about him. So check that out. But back in early 2021, I would interview people and then write their story and post it on my blog. And so kind of just wanted to go back in time and pick one of those stories and read it to you because again, I think that there’s so much power and connection and the more stories that we hear, the more that we realize that we are not alone in the struggles that we are dealing with. So this story names have been changed, but this is Sarah’s story. And her sobriety date is actually September 23rd, 1994. I still believe that voice telling me that it was my last chance to this day. I knew it was my last chance. Sarah reflected on her sobriety date. After listening to her story, I stared at my phone in shock. How? How have you stayed sober continuously for 26 years? That’s an entire lifetime. I could barely get through a couple of weeks at a time last year. Sarah paused for a moment. I could hear her breath drying in as she braced herself. Well… Let me tell you how it started. It’s a long story, because I’m old as fuck. Oh, another note before I continue with her story, significant content warning for sexual assault. So just that heads up, and obviously substance and drug abuse, but this is bottomless to sober, so you should know by now that we’re gonna talk about substance use. But just to put that out there, content warning for sexual assault. I’m gonna go ahead and continue. Well, let me tell you how it started. It’s a long story, because I’m old as fuck. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Sarah’s upbringing led her to believe that the only acceptable and valid family structure was the one she was brought up in. I definitely related to some parts of her experience when she talked about her childhood. She was bright, looked good to others, all around excellent behavior and grades, and was an award-winning student. She was the type of child that any parent would be proud of. The only facet of her childhood that I couldn’t relate to was that she was a dedicated athlete. to what felt like a laundry list of sports. I mean, she was ice skating, swimming, she did it all. She should have walked around feeling good about herself. Right? Well, shocker, she didn’t feel good about herself. Sarah and her mother had a turbulent relationship wherein Sarah desperately sought her mother’s affirmations, love, attention, anything really. What she actually received was the opposite. Sarah’s mom was usually too busy for her. She was on the phone. always telling Sarah to go away. Sarah paused her story. At this time, she did wanna clarify that despite what she was about to say about her upbringing, that her parents took care of her physical needs. And I remember at that time, I laughed because I knew that feeling too, right? Of like, you having to always explain that your parents did the best that they could with what they had, and that is absolutely what Sarah was stopping to do. And you know, I recognize that, right? Like I also carry scars from my childhood. And at this point, the best way for me to be at peace about my past is to accept that my parents, and frankly most parents, honestly you listening on here, they probably tried their best given the circumstances they were in. And that’s not true for all parents, I absolutely recognize that. There are some really cool fucked up people out there. But in general, if our parents were majorly flawed, oftentimes they were still working within the constructs of the wounds that they carry too. So anyway, she proceeded to explain that she grew up with a roof over her head, food on the table, but at the end of the day, she felt perpetually ignored or in trouble. That didn’t make sense though. So, and I asked her, I was like, so wait, how are you in trouble if your mom wasn’t even paying attention to you? And she took like another deep breath and she started. I remember being threatened to be taken away to an orphanage when I was five. That was the beginning. when getting in trouble started happening for me. I had a tantrum, and while in the shower, my mother dragged me out to the car, wet and naked, shampoo still in my hair. She had a suitcase packed, telling me that she was gonna take me to an orphanage. I shrieked in terror and threw a fit. Ever since, I always felt and believed that I was bad, you know, just bad, that I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t good enough, that nothing I ever did after that was good enough. Sarah carried those same feelings with her into middle school and then into high school, where the awkwardness of teen behavior did nothing to help her, right? Like nothing to help her feel like she belonged. There was gossip and kids constantly turning their backs on one another. You know, that really just didn’t provide Sarah with any kind of secure relationships with her peers. Her teachers loved her, but that was about it. And around this time, you know, Sarah discovered cigarettes. She was 12, and within a week of her first cigarette, she discovered marijuana. She actually calls it pot, so I’ll probably call it pot as I move forward with this episode, but she discovered pot, and then she also discovered alcohol. So by the age of 12, she had found cigarettes, marijuana, pot, and alcohol. Well then, correction, she had backtracked. Her father would also, when she was little, would actually let her have a nightly beer and an orange juice glass from the time she was three. Right? And so… Um, she, I remember her telling me, you know, I want more, I want more that she would say that when she was like a little kid to her dad about the beer in that little orange juice glass. So, you know, for her, she felt like she’d always had that feeling of craving since she was little. And Sarah participates in 12 step programs. So you know, she uses the language phenomenon of craving, right? Um, so anyway, so Sarah learned to sneak around with alcohol after that. And now in terms of Sneaking I remember when she was telling me about that like I knew that all too well Some of the things that she did she replaced liquor with water in her parents bar She would fill nail polish bottles with liquor and then she would also snatch her dad’s beer when he wasn’t paying attention I’m really she was just doing anything that she could to get to get to a drink and you know And I remember her telling me this and you know It’s like I couldn’t help but laugh because it resonated so much and it was just like she was probably my first interview for this project And just hearing that story and feeling so seen was wild. And you know, Sarah’s much older than me. Like I said, she’s been sober for 20 something years at the time that she told me this story. So for me to see someone who felt like almost like she could be my mom telling me this, it was just really powerful as an experience. So anyway, so I had told her, it’s so funny to me how we’re all so good at hiding things when we need to. We can be so creative. But it’s true, right? Like if you struggle with substance use, alcohol use disorder, you probably are a really innovative person to get to your substance, and that’s pretty wild. But, you know, too bad that those same smarts don’t sometimes save us from our own addiction. So anyway, I’ll continue. Older teens and adults started to take an interest in Sarah once she crossed over to drinking and using drugs. Suddenly she found herself to quote her, not giving a shit. She said, I didn’t care if my classmates liked me or if they didn’t like me. I just started partying really hard. It was the 70s. People would call them the freaks and that’s what I was. I was a freak. The feeling of rejection that Sarah experienced from her mother and her other peers quickly disappeared. Alcohol and drugs started to give Sarah feelings of power, a sense of belonging and a false, a very false sense of maturity. I mean, she described the relief that she felt of no longer worrying about anyone else, of their judgments, and she felt like at that time that she was in control of herself and of her feelings. But of course, you know, that feeling was only temporary. That relief was temporary. We know that now, right? So Sarah, she started to hang around gas stations back then with girlfriends. You know, they would just wait for the creepy uncle types who would be willing to buy them alcohol, right? Like, ooh, you see young girls. You’re you’re a pervert, you’re a creepo, you’re gonna buy them some alcohol. So they waited for men like that to buy them alcohol. And any and every party that she was invited to and she attended, there was always using and drinking. And she would use and drink whatever she was offered. So at that time there were things like Quaaludes, which are examples of tranquilizers. I forget if they fall under barbiturates or benzos. Pot, alcohol, and then… I had to stop her and ask, so where was heroin in all this? Because I’m asking her this in like 2021 when I interviewed her. And for us in this day and age, I’m recording this in 2023, we all know that everything is all about opiates, at least that’s everything in the media that we see. And so I was just curious, like, so where are the opiates in all this? So she responded, what did she respond? I just lost track of my notes, I hear you up. So yeah, so I mean, I was curious about the 70s and early 80s because of course, you know, today overdoses with opiates are just so prevalent. And so her response was, you know, that heroin got really big after Big Pharma got everyone hooked on pain pills. And she noted that was way after I got sober. So back then, you know, when she was in active addiction, people died from drunk driving, on occasion from suicide, but not from overdoses, at least not like today. And I decided to go do some research. So she was spot on, right? So according to the CDC, in the United States in 1980, the number of people who died from drug overdoses was 6,100 in 1980. By 2019, it was 70,630. Then out of that number, 49,860 had specifically died from opiates, whether it was a combination of pain pills or heroin. But those are wild numbers. So in 20 years, well, more than 20 years, 30 years, from 6,000, 6,100 to 70,000, that’s a lot. So anyway, drugs and alcohol, they had become so instrumental to Sarah’s life that she really leaned on them. And unfortunately, she leaned on them even more after surviving what would be anyone’s worst nightmare, which would be surviving sexual assault. So again, This may be a time where you need to stop and like leave this recording and that’s fine But if not, I’m going to continue telling her story So while on our liquor run she had run into some older friends who invited her to a boat party And you know, there were over a hundred and people who had crowded this boat and they were mostly older kids So, you know Sarah drank there’s whiskey. She drank that quickly. She smoked some pot and really all the while There was somebody at that party who was targeting her And to read what she wrote or read what she said, she had said, this guy came and grabbed me. He pulled me off of the boat and it was dark. It was night. I had a swim meet earlier that day and this girl on my team had French braided my hair. I left the French braids in. Anyway, I remember I escaped from this guy. I got back on the boat and hid from him. He came in there and he found me and he dragged me out. I was screaming, screaming to all these people, help me! And nobody would help me. They just let me, they just let him take me away. He took me out there and he raped me. Then this other guy raped me. I think I knew who one of the guys was, and possibly the other guy. And they were in on it together. My heart broke for her, and I was scared to ask if this was even her first time being sexually active. And it was. And she continued. They beat me up. They ripped my hair out. I was covered in dirt, in pee, their pee, grass stains, mud. They tried to shovel gravel down my throat to keep me from screaming. I was left there for dead, and someone from my neighborhood found me and dumped me on my lawn. My brother found me out there, carried me inside, put me in my room and closed the door. I came to the next day. My parents never noticed. They didn’t even know. I woke up torn up. I think that was my first hangover. I was 14. That was the first time I felt true fear, horror, how awful everything was. So I put my clothes on, snuck out, and went back to the gas station to get more liquor. I went to another party, did acid and Quaaludes. I knew then I shouldn’t go around these people anymore. My soul told me not to, but I would do it anyway. After that, I left my body mentally every time I had sex. I just felt like men were always going to take it anyway. I hated it. And though I don’t share the horrifying experience that Sarah had described, I recognized. somewhat, you know, the feeling of the pain, the dread, and the need to drown a terrible feeling out. I recognized the need to cope through oblivion, the feeling of knowing better, yet being driven to do the exact opposite. I absolutely recognize that. Needless to say, Sarah’s behavior continued to spiral. And once again, she was betrayed by friends and nearly drowned when she drunkenly fell off of a boat and into a river while hanging out. You’re gonna drown by the time we get to you, they shouted. Panicked that even her swimming experience couldn’t save her, she felt herself swallowing water and was prepared to give up when she heard a voice reminding her to do the dead man’s float. So Sarah survived, but her risky behavior led others to think that she wouldn’t live to her next birthday. So they contacted her parents. Sarah’s mother and father acted like they were shocked. And maybe they were, maybe they weren’t, but… Sarah ended up in treatment and got sober for the first time. I remember that I, you know, like me, Jessica, I was terrified my first time in treatment. And that was being a grown woman. By the eighth time that I went, I was just tired of it. But what was it like for a teenage girl? To Sarah? It was okay. You know, she was a teen. She got used to it. And being a sober high schooler, she said wasn’t bad. She had a tiny circle of sober friends and they did normal teenage things. She remembers that she’d go to meetings with people who now have over like 40 years of sobriety. And things were steady for Sarah and she got to finish high school, she kept her good grades and she got to start college. But getting to college, right, it wasn’t too long before things started to fall apart again. So Sarah managed to stay sober for the first semester of freshman year. But the day she moved on campus, literally semester two, Day one, right, first semester she stayed home. Semester two she had moved on campus. As soon as she got there she got drunk. And this time around, Sarah didn’t go back to drug use though. She just stuck to alcohol. So I had asked her, I was like, well you knew that being sober worked, so why did you go back out and drink? Mind you, I asked her that knowing damn well why she did. Because she struggles with addiction. And I feel like so many times when we struggle with addiction or if we weren’t really ready, right, we weren’t in a place where we were ready, nothing we ever do seems to make sense. And so her response was, I wanted to fit in. When I was younger, I didn’t want to fit in with my peers, but this time I did. The classmates that she hadn’t cared for in the past had now grown into actual binge drinkers and partying college students. So they had become Sarah’s kind of people. So, you know. The other thing too was that at this time, Sarah knew that she had a problem, it’s just that she was ignoring it, right? So while in college, she started having run-ins with the police and despite like her having increasing numbers of arrests, about six of them were actually for public intoxication and what felt like never ending community services that judges just kept giving her and she also nearly got expelled from school, despite all these things, right? Like she didn’t stop drinking and. How common is that for so many of us, right? Like we go through so many consequences and we still keep drinking. It’s the nature of addiction. Addiction is incredibly baffling and really, really hard. And so I, well, I’m sorry, y’all, I lost my spot. I found it. So, you know, and she was horribly sick every morning and she barely took nights off of drinking. And really like at this point in her story, In my mind, I thought she was gonna tell me that she dropped out of school, right? Because she had been constantly getting arrested and all of that. But she was funny. She was like, no, girl, like, I’m smart. I still got good grades. I was on the dean’s list. And she was also on the dean’s list for her conduct, AKA when she’d get in trouble, she’d go to the dean’s list. But academically, she was good. So, you know, again, it’s funny because how many of us are successful Outwardly right and so it’s very easy to hide that we’re struggling or that we have struggled with alcohol and other substances So she’s just another person another high achiever with a major addiction And you know, it’s funny too because in reflecting if I wasn’t naturally bright myself I also don’t know that I would have ever even finished schooling either Like I got by because a lot of things academically were easy for me and you know, that’s basically the same thing with Sarah She was getting by because she would take night classes to accommodate her drinking schedule. And yeah, she eventually graduated with arrests and all. And you know, as she described, you know, her life after college, she was like, I don’t know what living like a normal person was. You know, she was telling me, she was basically describing the old school dot matrix printer that it would like print her arrest record. and it would be like page after page after page that it was like attached to each other. I didn’t even know what a dot matrix printer was. Like I had to Google it. And I like looked up a YouTube video to hear what that sounded like. So she said that, you know, you all have to Google that. And actually I’ll put that in the show notes too. And you can hear it and it’s such a funny sound. But again, it’s just like when I looked it up and I saw what felt like almost like an artifact, right? Like a type of a printer that doesn’t exist anymore. The big light bulb moment for me was that people, despite us being from different generations, addiction is still addiction, right? And so there’s still so much to be learned from people across age groups. And that’s what to me was just so powerful about her story, that the undercurrent remains the same, right? Our experiences might be our own, but addiction remains the same. So after college, Sarah met her husband, who she stated became her new drug. She still drank not as much. And I think the reason why her drinking decreased, right, was because she was now getting validation from her husband and not just the bottles. He joined the military and they were living a really nice life in Florida by the beach and she felt like it was like a, but for her it was actually more like a return to her childhood. So things looked really pretty on the outside for her marriage, but on the inside she felt really far from it. She was still living in fear and she was telling me that she was still having that emotional and spiritual emptiness. And even when she would skim her yearbook, she realized that even though her classmates described her as joyful and cheerful, that she knew she had a void then that she always needed to fill. So while she was married, you know, she was a periodic drinker instead of a daily one. And even though she could stay away from alcohol for periods at a time, when she had that first drink, once she had it, she couldn’t stop, right? And it was like, Sarah basically required an intervention just about every time she drank in order for her to stop. She wanted to seek help, but her husband at the time discouraged her strongly. He would tell her, you don’t have a problem, despite the fact that he would get angry with her every time she got drunk at his suggestion, right? Because then she couldn’t be his designated driver. And Sarah knew better, but she just felt like she was ignoring what she knew because she valued her husband’s word at the end of it all. even when he became verbally abusive toward her. And she lived with low self-worth, so she suffered in silence daily until one day he abruptly divorced her before he got stationed in Japan. And once he abruptly left her, she got back to Kentucky, and her drinking picked back up. So at that point, her drinking escalated. So Sarah started drunk driving, she would lose cars on weekends. she would wake up with a sick feeling in her stomach, you know, just dreading the unknown, right? Like had she hit something, you know, she vaguely remembers near death experiences. And then in July of 1994, which is a few months before her sobriety date, she actually got her first DUI. She really should have gone to jail, but on her fifth court date that September, the arresting officer didn’t show up, right? And so that DUI got dropped, or dropped down to a misdemeanor. Now… Did Sarah stop and think, oh, maybe I should stop. This is a great opportunity, right? Fresh start? No. You know, that night she got drunk and she drove to celebrate getting out of the DUI situation. But that was the night of her last drink. So she remembers that she woke up in the morning at home. She didn’t know where her car was. She really didn’t remember much of the night before. However, she was incredibly sick and she had dragged herself into the bath and she could barely hold herself up, right? Like she sat down in the tub and as that water washed over her, that same voice that saved her from drowning years ago, right when she had fallen off that boat when she was drunk, that same voice had spoken her again. And what she heard was that voice saying, “‘This is your last chance. “‘You better take it.'” And you know, Sarah said, “‘I believe that voice to this day.'” I knew that was my last chance. And she is a person of faith. And so she said, you know, it was the voice of God. And that was September 23rd, 1994. So the Tuesday after she went to her first meeting since her teenage sober years. And interestingly enough, her reception was not a warm one, right? Like the people at that meeting were not warm and fuzzy to her. But she decided then that she would be sober. despite other people’s attitudes or behaviors towards her in that space, even if they didn’t reach their hand out to help her, she was gonna stay sober anyway, and she was going to stay alive. She had gotten through the worst of times in the past when people betrayed her, and she was going to stay sober, even if it was just her and God carrying her through. For her, it was a moment of clarity, and she thought to herself, well, this is the end, right? I literally have nowhere else to go. I couldn’t drink, I had no other choice. Am I going to do this? or not do this. And yeah, it had been at the time of her, that interview had been 26 years. So for now it’s about 28 years of sober living for Sarah. And you know, we were running short on time in terms of our conversation, but you know, I had to also ask her about what it’s like for her living sober, right? Cause she did share a lot about her life drinking, but I was like, man, you’ve been sober for longer. thing you drank, so like tell me about that. So you know, she jokingly was like, well that her first motivation to stay sober was just the desire to stay out of jail. She was like, that’s the easy reason. But then she seriously, she was like, you know, that her first two years sober were the hardest. So if you’re listening to this and you’re like, what is it like to live a sober life? Again, this woman has been sober a long time. She described her first two years as the hardest. And at 105 days sober, she had looked at herself in the mirror. And it was the first time that she could actually see herself, right? Like she was actually present. Her soul, body and mind had basically what she feels like they converged for the first time. Um, it was St. Patrick’s day and you know, the other days that people and other days that people like to celebrate by drinking, they weren’t easy to get through. And she remembers that she was salivating and craving, right? Like, again, she was early on 105 days is really early on. And she remembers, you know, that she got off work at five and she was definitely like, about to say, F it, and get off the expressway to go to a bar. And in my mind, I thought she was going to tell me that this was maybe a point in her story where she had like a relapse or something, right? But no, she said that while she was driving, she remembered someone telling her in a meeting to, you know, pray for cravings to get removed. And basically she had like decided to focus on driving and praying because she was driving and praying. she didn’t pay attention to the exit and she missed the exit that would have taken her to the bar and that helped her. And so you know, a couple other things that were really important, you know, for Sarah staying sober isn’t all about socializing and like being in fellowship or in connection with other sober people. She definitely recognized that in her 26, now 28 years of sobriety that being around other sober people is very important. But for her, it was actually really important to break her co-dependent tendencies. And she realized that she had spent her entire life using everything external to bring her internal joy. And so she was always, that joy was always fleeting because it was never from within, right? And so for her, outside of, again, in her 12-step program, she worked with a sponsor, but then also she worked on really building a spiritual base. And for her, she also worked a lot on her connection with a higher power. So again, if that resonates with you. food for thought, right? Like something that you can take away to help you. But Sarah definitely recognized that sobriety is not easy and she wants, when she talked to me, she wanted to make sure that anybody who heard her story understood that, right? We of course did not get to cover in detail the 26, now 28 years of her sober life, but she’s definitely acknowledged dealing with life on life’s terms. She’s dealt with death, heartbreak, loss, ailments, she’s really lived through all of that and she’s stayed sober. For her, the biggest thing about sobriety means having power and you know it means knowing that she is enough, that she has freedom, that she has peace. Anytime that she’s been triggered, the biggest thing that she says or she asks herself is, if I drink what will my life look like in six months? And then whatever, basically whatever trivial thing was triggering her becomes insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Whatever is going on, you won’t remember what pissed you off in six months. It’s not worth it. It’s temporary. I asked myself every day, what is worth more than my peace and serenity? And nothing is. I’m willing to give up everything to have peace and serenity. And when I heard Sarah say that, honestly, I felt inspired myself. You know, it was hope for me. I literally had at the time of this conversation, given everything up in December. just to have my own peace and serenity, right? Like I walked away from a 13 year teaching career. I left Kentucky, I had done all these things. And hearing a woman with 26 years of sobriety essentially say the same exact thing, let me know that I needed to keep doing what I was doing. And that maybe one day I’ll be like her, you know, with 20 something years, telling my story to a newly sober person. So, you know, after all that she’s been through and lived through, how does Sarah feel moving forward? And her comment was this, and I’ll quote her directly. If you’re a victim, you’re never free, you’re never happy. Everything you feel is always dependent on what someone else does, says, doesn’t do, or doesn’t say. I don’t wanna be dependent on other people for my happiness anymore. I learned to write a new story. I mean, I always used to tell my story with a negative connotation. That was who I was. I always framed it as something that kept me from succeeding. I was held back by self-pity because I kept blaming everything that happened. Telling that same old negative story kept me stuck in it. I tell a new story now. My story is now about me living how I want things to be. I firmly believe that anything is possible with God. There is power in our words. If you say you can, if you say you can’t, you’re right. Even if things aren’t how I want them to be right now, I’m still going to speak them into existence in the way I want them to be. And so I hope you enjoyed Sarah’s story. Again, she participated anonymously. So her real identity is a beautiful secret that I get to keep for myself. But I do hope that you enjoyed her story. Again, check out the site for other stories. There are much older posts on the bottom of the silver blog, which are people’s individual stories. And again, if you wanna share your own story with me, don’t hesitate to reach out. Thanks so much for your time and I will see you on the next episode.
I discuss my experience of having alcoholic liver disease (ALD) and answer common questions. How did I know that I had it? What was the treatment? What were the signs of ALD?
Hey, so for today’s episode, I wanted to talk about ALD, alcoholic liver disease. I have a couple of posts on TikTok that had gone viral in the past, and it’s funny because I still get recurring messages and questions from those posts. And I thought, you know, I have a new platform, so let me go ahead and talk about it here. So first to give you context in terms of what, because one of the questions, first question I get is, well, what did your alcohol consumption look like? So I’ll tell you. From when I was 18 up until my divorce in 2017, I drank, I didn’t drink every day. I was definitely a heavy drinker when I drank. So definitely a binge drinker, but I didn’t have opportunities to drink daily because I lived with my parents or I was living with my then husband, you know, ex-husband now. And so living with other people, in those days always kept me sort of in check, right? So I only got to binge drink on occasion, but I wasn’t able to drink how I wanted to drink. I got to drink how I wanted to drink come my divorce, which was 2017. And at that point I transitioned to daily drinking. So the daily drinking went from 2017 to about 2019. And so I’ll talk a little bit about that. So when I started drinking on a daily basis was when I lived on my own, and that was about a bottle of wine a day. Bottles of wine on average are about five servings, let’s say five servings of alcohol, which is already heavy, right? So the CDC states that for women, heavy drinking is eight drinks or more in one week. So I was having five drinks in a day. So five times seven is 35. So that’s already four times the amount of what. they state is their limit. And that’s the CDC specifically outlining heavy drinking. They, you know, so we already know there’s tons of newer research that is pointing to the fact that just one drink a day is harmful, right? Like one is not necessary. With that being said, let’s talk a little bit about tolerance and dependence, right? So if you think about your central nervous system, it’s got a general set point, right? Like there’s a certain place where everything is balanced. But then if you introduce a mind-altering substance like alcohol or anything else, right, your brain is going to counter it because it wants to establish that equilibrium, that homeostasis, so to speak. So if I’m drinking the five servings of wine a night and I’ve made it a habit because I’m doing it every day, what my body is going to start doing is my body is going to, A, counter it with that same energy, But then B, my body is smart. The brain practices neuroplasticity, which means its ability to learn, right? And because it’s learned this new habit, it’s also going to prepare to receive that amount of alcohol. So it’s going to overcompensate, which means that by it overcompensating that opposite action, it’s gonna take more alcohol for me to feel the way that I felt when I drank the five glasses of wine, the one bottle. which means that over time, I had to go from the one bottle of wine to the bottle of wine plus a shot, plus the bottle of wine to a half pint. And then eventually I was like, oh, you know what? This wine is actually rather inefficient. So I’m gonna stop drinking the wine, give me the liquor. And then it was from the half pint to the pint to the fifth. By the time I was drinking a fifth of alcohol, a fifth of alcohol is about 17 units. So that’s 17 drinks in a day. And that was probably by late 2018, early 2019, that I was drinking that much. So I probably, at the time of my diagnosis of alcoholic liver disease, it had probably been about a solid nine months or so of drinking that extreme. But overall, heavy drinking for about a period of two years. So that’s one of the questions that I get often. The, and the… Yes, so the next question that I often get is, how did I know that I had alcoholic liver disease? I mean, the way that I officially knew was when I got the blood work back that told me that I had alcoholic liver disease. But what I will say is, how I knew that something was wrong, that feeling was kind of always inside of me, right? And the thing is that I always had… the ill feelings, I always had the side effects of alcohol. It’s just that over time, they were just getting worse and worse and worse. So I don’t know because obviously I wasn’t taking an enzyme test every day to tell you when, what I was feeling went from bad hangovers to actual alcoholic liver disease. But what I will do is go through kind of like what I was feeling and going through. So as my alcohol consumption stayed consistent on a daily basis, right? Things that I started to notice was I was waking up with shakes. So my hands were shaking. They were shaking to the point that if I wanted to drink a cup of coffee, I would have to grip the cup with both hands to hold it steady enough so that nothing would splash or spill as I lifted it to my mouth, right? To give you some sense of that. I was a teacher and I have this very clear memory of I was helping my co-teacher with doing measurements and I was holding a ruler out. And when I was holding that ruler out, that ruler kept shaking. And I had a student say, Ms. Duenas, why is your hand so shaky? And I mean, I covered myself immediately. And I was like, oh, I drank so much coffee. It makes me so shaky. Sorry about that. Can you come hold this for me? And that’s how I covered myself. Insane, right? But that was the reality of how bad my hands were shaking. Another symptom that I dealt with was my digestive system was messed up. So what that looked like was waking up with nausea, vomiting bile. Like I would sit there and gag over the sink and if something came out, it was like green and nasty and like it felt like acid burning. That’s what it felt like. And then I would feel this also throughout the day. So I had a really hard time eating and even the most delicious of foods, they really lost their flavor for me because I had no desire to eat them. So I was also losing weight, but I still kept the belly because when you have liver disease, you also retain fluid. So my belly was full of fluid, and then my feet and my ankles were swollen, my fingers were swollen. And I remember with my feet, if I wore sandals, it was almost like you were baking bread and there was a string tied around your foot and you could just see like the little crease of the sandal straps cutting into my feet and my ankles. That’s how swollen my feet were getting, right? And my fingers, I mean, I couldn’t wear any rings because it was just like my hands were always so swollen. My cheeks had also been swollen. If you look at old photos of me, I look like a little woodchuck a little bit because my cheeks were just so poofy all the time. So there was a lot of swelling even though there was weight loss. Another thing that was affected was my vision. I, if you look at pictures of me from about 2018 to 2019, you will see that I was wearing prescription glasses. Now I went to the doctor about two weeks ago, this is August, 2023 as I’m recording this. And I went to the doctor about two weeks ago and my eyes were checked and my vision was 2015. Normal vision is 2020. So my vision is even better than your standard good vision, right? Other, another really weird symptom that I had was coughing. I had the worst cough ever. It was like I was hacking. There had been a few times that I was sent home early from work. I was sent to urgent care. I had gotten prescribed asthma inhalers. I had done all sorts of breathing tests and doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong with me. And of course I wasn’t disclosing that I was drinking heavily. And the only thing that made my drinking feel better was drinking. alcohol. That was the only thing that would make that cough go away. And so I think I’m covered just about everything. Oh, and the other one, of course, bruising. If I bumped into anything, I would get a nasty bruise. And the other thing too, actually, I think that’s it. Yes, I had like a brain fart. So yeah, the heavy bruising, the weight loss, the swelling. the shakes, the nausea, also going to the bathroom, everything was runny, right? So like if I went number two, it was just straight up like diarrhea. There was like nothing solid ever coming out of my body. Right? And so I felt horrible. Suffice it to say, like all that is to say, I felt horrible. And I knew that I wasn’t doing well, but instead of taking that as a sign of, oh, maybe I need to go. get some help and explore what I have going on. I did my research and I found a medication that is typically used to treat alcohol withdrawal, but it has different purposes. And I got that to address my withdrawal symptoms. And what did that do? That enabled me to drink for more time how I wanted to drink, right? So when I would wake up in the morning, instead of missing work, because my withdrawal symptoms were so bad, I could take this medication and then go to work and function. And again, and I did more than just function. I excelled at work. I was, this was the year that I won the Kentucky State Teacher of the Year award. So even though I was drinking a fifth a day, I was still being a really phenomenal educator, right? It was the weirdest like split personality type of thing. And I kept that up because I had figured out how to manage those withdrawal symptoms. But again, my body… was going through so, so much. Again, like I said it earlier, right? You have a set point that you’re at, and then you introduce a mind-altering substance, your body’s going to counter that. And when your body counters that, what you are going to feel in your body is the complete opposite of everything that mind-altering substance does. So in the case of alcohol, if alcohol was relaxing, the counter to that is going to be huge waves of anxiety, right? that nauseating feeling in your stomach, the shakes. And then when you drink the alcohol, the shakes go away, hands become steady, et cetera. But again, because my body had gotten in such a habit, it needed more and more to create that sense of ease. And so it really wasn’t creating a sense of ease because again, my body would counter it so hard that all the withdrawal symptoms were incredibly, incredibly strong. So come August of 2019, I finally have my annual physical. And when I go to the doctor, my blood work comes back. And then I officially know, right, that I have alcoholic liver disease. And so there’s two enzymes that are tested when you get your liver checked. The first one is ALT, the second one is AST. Each of these essentially are enzymes that if your liver is damaged, these enzymes leak out into your bloodstream and it’s found, you know, obviously throughout your body, right? And so for example, what is normal to find in the bloodstream of ALT is anywhere from 13 to 69 units per liter of blood. In my case, I had 160 ALT as a reading. So I had 160 units per liter of this liver enzyme flowing through my body because my liver was that damaged. Then with AST, the normal range was 15 to 46 units per liter. And in my case, it was 429 units per liter. That was nine times higher than what it was supposed to be. Nine times. So that goes to show you how hurt, how injured, how sick my liver was. that these enzymes were all over my body because my liver wasn’t well. So again, if you are feeling like you are potentially at risk of having liver disease, I strongly encourage you to go check with your doctor. Their treatment, what they prescribe for you may be different than what was for me, but what worked for me, because the other question I get is, well, how did you fix it? all I had to do was stop drinking. And I say that saying, oh damn well, that all I had to do was stop drinking is a really hard, I think, thing to do, right? Like, let’s be honest, it’s not that simple to just quit drinking because we’re talking about a crippling addiction that caused the liver disease, right? It’s not that simple to just, oh, oops, and my mic just fell. It’s not that simple to just like, oh, you know, stop drinking and that’s that. because obviously the liver disease is a physical manifestation of a problem with huge psychological roots, right? Because alcohol is just a symptom of whatever else we had going on. But that is what worked for me. I didn’t have to take any additional medications. I didn’t have to do anything else. I just had to stop drinking and stay stopped. Other things to note that are really important. So when I got this diagnosis, the doctor made it pretty clear that probably within six months to the year, I could have developed cirrhosis. Now, the wild thing about cirrhosis is that once you get that diet, alcoholic hepatitis can heal, right? What I was dealing with was liver damage, but the liver is a really resilient organ. So my liver had the chance to heal. But if I had gone farther down the line, farther down that spectrum into the area of permanent scarring, which is cirrhosis, at that point, there’s no coming back from that. Now, some people with cirrhosis can live longer lives, right, if they stop drinking and stop additional liver damage, there’s ways to manage also adjusting your diet, etc. But if you have cirrhosis and you keep drinking, you are cutting, you’re counting your days essentially. And so that’s what the doctor had warned me of. So with that being said, a couple other things that I wanted to mention, right, another question that I had was, Oh shoot, what was that question? Oh, well, I don’t drink a fifth a day, so I should be good, right? That is one of the great questions that I get. And no, it doesn’t take a fifth. It takes a lot less than a fifth to cause liver damage. So first, any recent resource from 2022, 2023, in terms of alcohol consumption will tell you, especially if you’re looking at anything coming out of Europe or Canada, will let you straight up. No, just one is a problem, right? Just one is a problem. The CDC defines heavy drinking, which I’ve said it already, but to reemphasize, as eight drinks or more per week for a woman, 15 drinks or more per week for a man. So somehow biologically different if you happen to be a woman listening to this, right? You already are at a disadvantage in terms of alcohol consumption because your body handles it less well than men’s bodies do. I mean, nobody’s body handles it well, but women’s bodies… really don’t handle alcohol well, and it has harder side effects. With that being said, there was a, well, an article from NPR that I actually was a part of, the article was titled Sharp Off the Chart’s Rise in Alcoholic Liver Disease Among Young Women. And that article was showing that something drinking up to a bottle of wine a day increases a woman’s chances of liver disease severely enough to require hospitalization. And even binge drinking can put a woman at risk of liver damage to the point of hospitalization. Right? So it doesn’t, you don’t have to be to the extreme of where I was drinking a fifth a day. For you, it can be as simple as that bottle of wine a day that seems really classy and cute. That can be enough. And so that is just really, really important information for you because there is this conception that you have to be much older or drinking so heavily to get sick. And it actually does not take that much. Again, if you think about my time period of heavy drinking, my time period of heavy drinking was only two years. And I was 34 years old when I was diagnosed with alcoholic hepatitis. So I was very young, had not been drinking heavily for that long. And honestly, I probably was already having liver damage at about a year of drinking heavily because I remember feeling sick. only a year into drinking heavily. It’s not like it didn’t take that long. So in terms of what do I do with this information, right? You’re listening to this podcast. So step one is you do need to address the drinking. Now, what can that look like? Obviously I do provide coaching support. What that looks like is also encouraging you to find community. It is incredibly hard to get sober on your own and you don’t have to do it on your own and you don’t deserve to do it on your own. You deserve to feel welcome in a part of a space where you aren’t the only one in your world dealing with this, right? So I encourage people always, and my clients always to find community. But then also there’s a lot of work to be done. Is some of this work to be done with a therapist? Do we have old history that we need to work on healing? And if so, I absolutely recommend getting a therapist. Are you needing support with action plans and accountability and support and looking at different routes to recovery and get a coach? I would say schedule a session with me and see, let’s see what we can do together, right? Aside from that, do you need medically assisted treatment? There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting on medication. So all of these different things are questions to explore. It’s food for thought. And I believe that I, at this point, I’ve covered everything that I really wanted to say in terms of the alcoholic liver disease, but it can get better for many, not for everyone, right? If you go far down enough to cirrhosis, you can’t necessarily bounce back from cirrhosis, but you can still manage cirrhosis. And I think that that’s the other important thing, that if you’re listening to this and you’ve got a diagnosis of cirrhosis, I want you to understand that you have the power to make it worse or you have the power to manage it where you’re at, right? So I think that there’s still a lot of power even with that diagnosis. But if you have alcoholic hepatitis, you absolutely owe it to yourself to give yourself a shot to heal that liver. Because today my enzymes are absolutely normal. I had a physical a couple of months ago and I don’t remember the exact numbers, but my numbers were both for the ALT and the AST. They were both within the healthy range. Right? So there’s absolutely that opportunity to bounce back. um, you know that weight that I had lost, I have gained it back, right? Um, I’m healthy. I have a very healthy appetite. And so my vision is perfect. You know, I don’t scar. I go to the gym and lift heavy things and bang into heavy things all the time and I’m not bruised up like I’ve been in the fight. So there absolutely is hope in getting alcohol free, getting sober and staying away from that damn poison. It takes very little alcohol to cause a lot of damage and it’s just not worth it So if you’re needing support again reach out my website is bottomless to sober.com I have other resources that are not just coaching so check them out and Yeah, I if this was helpful to you, please share it with someone else. Thank you so much
In this episode, I discuss the power of looking at your past as full of learning experiences rather than letting shame and guilt overpower you. You’re the best source of knowledge for how to navigate decision-making moving forward. It’s a matter of tapping into yourself to be able to do so.
Jessica Dueñas: Hey everyone. So this is the part two to the self-compassion theme. I just felt like making it into two separate episodes. So in this episode, I wanna focus on the self-compassion for ourselves based off the things that we did in the past, right? And understanding that we are in different places today than where we were before. And again, that a huge block to anyone’s recovery journey is going to be that self- I don’t even know what the word is, but just being hard on yourself, not forgiving yourself, being resentful towards yourself, being embarrassed. And really it comes down to shame and guilt, right? If you are trapped in shame and guilt, you’re not going to make as much progress as you would if you practice kindness towards yourself. And so I’ll actually want to start off by reading this poem. It’s been kind of all over the internet in the past couple of days. It’s written by Emery Hall. And the poem is titled, I have been a thousand different women. And if you’re listening to this and you are a man, or you identify something different, just think about you’ve been a thousand different yous. Okay. Um, but the poem is titled, I have been a thousand different women. Make peace with all the women you once were. Lay flowers at their feet. Offer them incense and honey and forgiveness. Honor them and give them your silence. Listen, bless them and let them be. For they are the bones of the temple you sit in now. For they are the rivers of wisdom leading you toward the sea. I’ll read that one more time. I have been a thousand different women by Emery Hall. Make peace with all the women you once were. Lay flowers at their feet. offer them incense and honey and forgiveness. Honor them and give them your silence. Listen, bless them and let them be. For they are the bones of the temple you sit in now. For they are the rivers of wisdom leading you toward the sea. Now, such a beautiful poem and What I really, really love is the imagery of the past versions of ourselves being rivers of wisdom, right? Because the past versions of ourselves, we can definitely let those versions of ourselves fuel shame, fuel guilt. And by doing that, we can let those versions of ourselves stunt our growth. Or we can look at all the past versions of ourselves, recognize that we were doing the best that we could with what we had. and also extract a ton of knowledge, a ton of wisdom from the past versions of ourselves so that we make decisions moving forward that are in alignment with where we wanna go. So I will give you a personal example of mine. So I’ll use dating. I feel like dating is always kind of like a really easy way to explain things, at least for me. So I think in the previous episode, I talked about a relationship I’ll just give you the context in case you didn’t listen to the episode. So right after I got divorced, like back in 2017, I got into a relationship with someone who I was super excited about. Everything seemed great, except that I noticed that this person was always very resistant to anything having to do with social media. So even if we had hit a milestone and I were to tag him in the milestone, he would be resisting towards it and he would either remove himself from the tag or then he would just say, no, I’m just a private person. You know, I’m private. I don’t like to put my business out there. Back then, an old version of Jessica, she knew that there was something wrong with that. The old version of me had a very strong inclination that there was a serious reason why this man did not want to be tagged by me in anything. Right? And of course, time revealed itself that there was a whole other woman. And that’s why he did not want to be tagged in anything, right? Because he had two different worlds that he was living in himself that he couldn’t be tagged from one because it would then be revealed in the other and his whole world would blow apart. Spoiler alert, his life did get blown apart because eventually everything did get revealed. But back to that moment when I knew there was something really wrong with the secrecy of it all. But here’s where old Jessica operated from. Old Jessica was operating from a wounded broken heart from going through a divorce. Old Jessica was just happy that someone, anyone would give her attention and validate her who was attractive, educated, you know, and felt like she could get along with. Therefore, old Jessica was willing to put up with anything, including not listening to her own judgment because she was so scared of being alone. Right, I want you to sit with that. Now, let’s fast forward to current me, right? So I did take, thankfully I did learn from that experience and I did learn that if someone is operating in secret, it means that they’ve got something to hide. And so fast forward to me today, and in the last two years when I started to like date again after losing my boyfriend, That was one of the things that I really paid attention to, right? Like, do you operate in secret? Are you being secretive? Because if you are, that means that there’s something that you’re hiding, and I’m not OK with that, and I’m not sticking around for that. So there was somebody who I had met back in early, I think it was early 2022, and he was incredibly secretive. Again, and I mean, it was so early on, I didn’t need to, like, tag him in anything, so to speak. But there, it was like he never could look at his phone where the screen was visible and he always had to remove himself from the space to go take a phone call, right? Everything that he did had to be done in a way that it wasn’t visible to me. And that was a huge red flag for me. Now, I had that same feeling, that same old feeling of, well, I don’t wanna be alone, I really like him, he’s really cool, we get along well. He checked off all the boxes for me, but I had that same… sick feeling that something was wrong that I had years ago that I didn’t listen to years ago. So what did I do this time around? I listened to that feeling and I removed myself from that situation. I, to this day, I don’t know. Did he have a secret? Maybe, maybe not. But the point is, is that I didn’t stick around to find out because when I confronted him about his secrecy, he gave me a vague wishy washy answer. And that was all that I needed. I didn’t need to sit around and go through a whole entire relationship to then become heartbroken for me to find out that there’s probably something going on that wasn’t in alignment with what I needed, right? And why is that? Because I leaned on my prior experience, that prior river of knowledge to lead me to the sea. So as soon as I removed myself from that situation, in time, I found my current partner. And I don’t know where things are gonna go with me and my current partner. Like sure, it’d be great to have a great long lasting outcome. I don’t know that yet. But the point is, is that with my current partner, I pay attention to the things that he does. And so say, for example, with the online thing, there’s clearly no secrecy in that current situation that I’m in. If there’s something special that happens and I choose to post and I choose to tag him, that man is not hiding a single post. He’s very open and very transparent. He’s not running to his phone to hide it when it’s ringing, right? So that I can’t see who’s calling. Those are all the things that have led me to the sea. So I’m like at that point with regard to say dating other things. No, I’m not at the sea yet. I’m on my, I’m on my way down the river to get there. But I highlight those examples, you all, because that is a manner of how I leaned on my prior self to lean on that experience. so that my future decisions don’t backfire on me, right? But the way that could have looked differently, right, was when that, with that guy from early 2022, if he had been secretive, if I had felt that there was something wrong there and I would have still chosen to go along with it, right? That would be me choosing to not learn from the river of wisdom that I have. And so I love that poem because There is so much value in our past experiences, no matter how dark they were, no matter how awful they were, no matter how shame we are for them. There’s so much value in where we come from that we really can outline a great future for ourselves if we just tap in and pay attention to everything that we went through. But when we’ve gone through something, and we choose to ignore it when we see it coming back up again, I promise you that your life is going to put you in experiences where that situation is going to repeat itself over and over and over again until you choose to break from that pattern and do something different. And so in terms of what’s a tangible takeaway from this conversation that we’re having, a.k.a. this one-sided conversation that I’m having with the microphone and hopefully you’re listening to, I would say it is this. When you are today facing a situation that is making you uncomfortable, it’s making you take pause. I want you to stop. I want you to pull out that journal or however else you like to process and write. And I want you to think about a time in your past where something similar was happening. Right? Obviously, circumstances are not always going to be identical, but when does this go back to in time to? What do you remember? And I want you to think about what you learned from that prior situation. What is similar? What are the parallels? Write them down. What do these situations have in common? Then I want you to pay attention to what did you do in the past and what was the outcome and did you like that outcome? If you did not like that outcome, what could you have done differently in the past and notice I’m not asking you about the other person. I’m not asking about the other circumstances. This whole conversation is focused on you because you’re the only one that’s in control at any given moment, right? So from your previous situation, what was the circumstance? What did you do? What outcome did you get? Did you like the outcome? If you did not like that outcome, then go back, what could you have done differently and what may have that outcome look like? And then I want you to look at your current situation and look at what your options are. What are your options? What are you empowered to do right now? What is option A and what may be the outcome there? How does that outcome sound to you? Is it like something that you can, that you can get with? Do you like it, dislike it? It’s okay to dislike, to dislike outcomes if they’re the right thing for you. Right? Like every choice that we make is not going to be pleasant and it’s not going to be easy. but it’s going to be right sometimes. So I want you to look at your current situation and outline what you can do, what are the possible outcomes for doing those different actions, and then use that information to guide you, because I promise you that you carry all the wisdom that you need within you to make best choices for yourself. And if you’re struggling, then this is a great opportunity for you to find where you can reach out. who you can connect to help you tap into yourself. Right? So really that’s all that I wanted to kind of share in this episode. I want you to be kind to yourself and rather than feel shame and guilt for what you used to do, what type of person you used to be like, use that previous person to provide you all the information that you need. for how to move forward because you are a source, you are the best source of information for how to live your life. So with that, I’m gonna go ahead and close out. I hope that everyone has an awesome day, share the podcast and I will talk to you soon.
You don’t have to be a sober person in recovery to have a history of making poor choices. In this episode, I discuss coping with the highs and lows of dealing with other humans being flawed individuals and how you can extract information from your experiences to keep you mindful and not jaded. People only show us what they choose to reveal, so how can we be kind to ourselves when we miss red flags?
Jessica Dueñas: Hey everyone, welcome to today’s episode. So I wanted to talk about the topic of self-compassion. And the reason why is because I realized it’s something that I need to practice more for myself. There’s a recent circumstance in which I found out some really unfortunate news about somebody who I highly respected and admired. And I feel like a part of me immediately made it about myself and judged myself really harshly. and was like, well, you should have known better. You know? And so with that being said, I’m honestly probably going to break this up into two episodes just so that each episode is more clear in its topic. So first I want to talk about practicing self-compassion when other people let you down, essentially, right? Like you have this vision or an idea of what a person is, and then their true colors and you’re like, holy shit, I did not anticipate that. And it’s funny because this is totally it’s totally unrelated, but not so, you know, recently I’ve been also kind of following the media about Lizzo. And obviously I wasn’t there and I don’t know what happened or didn’t happen. But again, it just it just kind of stings like to have someone that I admire and then see these new versions of. these people come out. And I think, A, one of the big takeaways is it’s just that reminder that we as humans are very imperfect. And if anything, I as a person in recovery need to always remember, right, where I was at one point when I was making deceitful choices, right, selfish choices, choices that didn’t benefit anyone except for that urge to drink. And… reminding myself that I’m not the only person who struggles with poor choices, right? And that you can have other people, like just because somebody isn’t struggling with addiction, it doesn’t suddenly make them like a perfect angel or a human being. Because I think that I have this notion of, well, people in addiction or in recovery, they can have these struggles and they can have these dark, sordid histories, but no one else on the earth’s population can. And then I suddenly like hold other people to these weird higher standards. And really what I think current events are showing me is that I totally need to check myself and that anyone, anyone and everyone is subject to having a vast complexity in their lived experience, not just sober people. So anyway, with that being said, I’m going to read a little passage that I’m going to post on my Instagram at some point. And I wrote. When people show you who they are, believe them. However, people don’t always show their real selves. We don’t know what we can’t see. So remember to be kind to yourself for not knowing certain truths. You’re doing your best. I’m gonna read that one more time. When people show you who they are, believe them. However, people don’t always show their real selves. We don’t know what we can’t see. So remember to be kind to yourself for not knowing certain truths. You’re doing your best. So I, I had to write that down because it is very important for us to first remember that right. There are times when people will show you their true colors very clearly and it falls on us to decide what we are or are not going to do, right. So I’ll give an example, say, with friendship. Let’s say that you are early in recovery and you told a friend that you are quitting drinking, you’ve decided that you don’t want it to be a part of their life, of your life, and this friend is like, oh, well, can’t you just have one after you’ve already said that you’re done with alcohol? Now, that’s giving you information that you can choose to believe or not to believe. The information that I’m getting from a scenario like that is that friend does not care about your wellbeing. Point blank period, right? What I’m getting from that is that friend is more concerned with maintaining a relationship with alcohol than they are with you maintaining your health. Right? So at that point, when a situation like that presents itself, you have the information that you can decide what to do with it. You can either choose to continue that friendship, see what happens, or you can choose to remove yourself from that person, understanding that they’re just not in alignment with where you are in terms of your relationship with alcohol. Another scenario of people showing you their true colors. I’ll give an old example from someone I dated in the past. So after I had gotten divorced, I was in a relationship with somebody who never would let me tag him on social media. where if I were to tag him, he would always remove the tags and remove the tags. And his argument was, oh, you know, I like to be a private person. And there was something about that really bothered me because he stated that, but then, you know, I had gone to meet his family, I had been in his community, et cetera. I had gotten very, very involved. And in my mind, I was like, well, then why can’t… You know, I’m not blowing up the social media posts even back then in terms of my personal stuff, but I was like, why can’t I post like happy anniversary and tag you? And something about that seemed very incredibly suspicious. And I knew back then that I should have been like, well, if you are hiding me, there’s a problem and I will not be hidden. So I am done. Right? That’s what I quote unquote should have done. that’s what I would do today. And now that I know better, I would do better. But of course, I didn’t know back then. Lo and behold, what the time reveal time revealed that he was actually in a whole other relationship. And so that was the specific reason as to why he couldn’t be tagged on social media, because he was holding a huge secret from me and from like everybody else, right? Like he was basically seeing two people at once. So He showed me who he was. He showed me very clearly that I needed to be kept a secret, but I chose not to believe it. And so then I got burned, right? The beautiful part of it is I know better now and I do better now. So one of my very clear things in relationships is that if I get a sense that you’re hiding me, I’m just not going to entertain you because I will not be hidden. So I wanted to give those two examples of to just hit on that point, right? That people can show you who they are and it’s up to you to believe them or not believe them and then just deal with the consequences. Life is always gonna teach you a lesson. It’s just a matter of how you choose your path. But the next thing I wanna focus on is the idea of people not always showing their real selves. Because that’s the thing. Sometimes people will give you the very clear signals. Sometimes you will see the red flag. And again, it’s on you to either act on it or ignore it and then deal with the consequences later. But people don’t always show everything, right? And some people are very good at being deceitful and compartmentalizing the parts of themselves that they don’t want other people to know. A perfect example of this, and I’m not saying that social media is deceitful, but a perfect example of this is someone’s social media feed, right? Like Right now, my hair is in the bonnet, like I am up early and I’m just recording, but I’m not posting myself and what I look like when I get right out of bed on my Instagram. The reason why, because I don’t really want people to see what I look like when I get out of bed. I don’t care to share that. I mean, I look pretty much the same, but I choose to curate my Instagram feed so that you see what I want you to see, right? And the point there is that everyone does that with their social media. Whatever people put out on their social media, is a curated story that they want others to see of themselves. So they’re not going to show, like I’m not going to show when I’m cleaning up my dog’s poop, because again, I don’t think that that’s relevant. I don’t think that you need to see that. If you want to see that, let me know. But I think that that’s not a valuable thing to share. But if we take the concept of the curated version of ourselves from social media and apply it to regular life, it’s very similar. People… show what they want you to know. And so in the cases of folks who are very vulnerable and open and transparent, that’s great because you get a better sense of the whole picture. But even then you still don’t see everything and you still don’t know everything. So when you are close to someone or where you have been close to someone and then you find something out major about them that came completely out of left field, it can be really hard. to process that information. And you might want to be harsh on yourself, right? Whether it was say deception, like in a relationship, right? But it doesn’t have to just apply to that. It can be literally anything that comes out about this person that you didn’t know that might be a disappointing truth about them. And now suddenly you of course make it about yourself and you might be feeling really bad about yourself. Like, how did I not see this? How did I not know this? And the reason I’m bringing that up is because you didn’t know, right? Some of us might say, well, what about my intuition? How did my intuition not pick up on the fact that this person was a liar or a deceiver or a cheater, or a gas lighter? Why didn’t I pick up on that? And I wanna invite you to think about the fact that even our intuition is our body having a response. to the stimulus that it receives, right? So as humans, go back to just basics, we see things, we hear things, we experience our environments, or we experience someone else who is in our environment, and our body scans that person and creates a decision of whether they’re safe or not. If someone is purposefully hiding something or compartmentalizing and keeping something away from you, There’s no way for your intuition to scan and pick up that this person is some sort of a risk, right? Again, there are times when those flags are visible and we choose to ignore them. But I’m talking about the invisible flags that we didn’t even have the option to choose to ignore. Right? We can’t see, we don’t know what we can’t see. And we can’t sense something that has been completely cut off and blocked away. And so I really just want us to practice that self-compassion when we don’t know the entire truth, when we don’t get to see the entire picture, because sometimes that does happen. And the other really important thing is to not take it personally when some sort of dark truth comes out. Right. Because at the end of the day, you know, to quote Dominguez-Ruiz from the four agreements, everything that other people say. has nothing to do with you. Everything that other people do has nothing to do with you. Even, and you know, he does say this in his book, someone could straight up come up to you and shoot you in the head, and it still has nothing to do with you. And the argument there that he states is that when people make decisions, it always has something to do with something internal that they’ve got going on. So when there’s someone in your life that you may have respected, or a celebrity who you really admired, And it turns out that there was something secretive and dark about them that has come to light. It is so important for us to remember that we did the best that we could with the information that we had. Right? And when more is revealed, it goes back to us now being empowered to make a choice. What do we do with this information? Right? Do we… ignore it. Do we act on it? Right. But again, practicing that self kindness is so important, especially in the world of being in recovery, because you’re going to find that there’s no such thing as at least in my opinion, there’s no such thing as like the good person or the bad person. We’re all humans and we’re all incredibly flawed. And sober people aren’t the only people who have a history of making shitty choices, right? It’s a human experience. In the human experience, there’s a lot of terrible choices that are made, and it’s up to us to decide what we’re okay with and what sits right with us and what doesn’t sit right with us and act accordingly. So with that being said, what are some actionable items you can do kind of given this information? Like if you recently had somebody in your life who totally let you down, what can you do? So number one, write about it, right? Get all the feelings out, write them a letter. Don’t send them the letter. Go through the art of writing them the letter where you say everything that’s on your mind, but don’t send them that letter. This is an activity for you to practice healing and for you to let those emotions that are weighing on your heart and mind off of your chest. This is not for you to go interact with them. If you choose to interact with them, That is something that you can do after you consult with like a mentor, a coach, a therapist, some sort of professional. Like I said, I’m not going to sit here and tell you on a podcast to go talk to someone because I have no idea what the context is. And if this was like an abuser or something, I’m definitely not going to sit here and be like, yeah, go talk to them. But I will tell you to go ahead and write everything down on a piece of paper. Okay. Then the next thing that I want you to do is I want you to recognize the… good that you did see of what was shown to you, what was good and what was helpful and beneficial. Because again, not all situations are just this or that. We live life on a spectrum. And I want you to acknowledge the positive sides of the spectrum here. Then I want you to go back and look at if there was any sign of a flag that you missed. Was there any hint of red in there that you just turned a blind eye to because the good was so good? And what I want you to do with those hints of red, maybe pink, I want you to just lock them away in your mind as a source of information, as a reference catalog, like an encyclopedia, for the future. And this information does not mean that it’s law for everyone that you come across in your future. But what it does mean is that if you see this hint of pink or red, again, with a person that you interact with in the future, that you step back and take a close look at the situation that you’re in, whether it’s a friendship or romantic relationship, a work partnership, et cetera, and you use that to help you decide if you’re going to move forward with this person and how, right? What safeguards can you put in place? What I don’t want you to do. is to take this one example of a person and apply it to all blanks. You know, like if you are a heterosexual woman and a guy cheated on you, I don’t want you to be like, oh yeah, all men are cheaters. No, that’s not going to be helpful. And that kind of thinking is going to be very alienating and leave you isolated in like an ivory tower because you’re trying to protect yourself. And really you’re… just not going to experience any joy or any pain because you’re sitting there and isolating yourself. So that’s not healing either. Isolation is not healing. So just putting that out there. So anyway, I hope that this was helpful. I hope that if you are dealing with a slightly wounded heart because you’ve been let down by another human being, being a human, that you remind yourself that it is okay. And again, reflect on it, write out your feelings, identify what was good. And then also lock away the red, lock away the pink, but don’t make the pink or the red law. And hopefully that’ll just kind of help you in terms of practicing some of that self-compassion to yourself for not having seen everything, right? People show what they choose to show, even you show only what you choose to show others. So when somebody finds something out about you and they’re like, oh my gosh, I didn’t know that. Again, it’s okay. It is all right. So thanks so much for your time today. I’m going to do a second part to this with regards to self-compassion, specifically with regard to ourselves, but I just wanted to do this one first. So thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed it, share it, and I will talk to you soon.
In this episode, I sit down with Brian, a school administrator with a remarkable journey to share. Brian opens up about his past as one of the few Black male elementary school teachers he knew. On top of that, he shares how he battled alcohol addiction and navigated the challenging road to sobriety. Listen to learn about educators’ struggles as they balance teaching responsibilities with personal demons and what tools you can take for your journey.
Jessica Dueñas Hey everyone. Welcome on today’s episode. I’ve got Brian, who is a fellow educator who I’ve connected with here in the beautiful world of the internet. And really, I just wanted to invite him on the show today because I think it’s really important with back to school season being right around the corner for folks to hear about the perspective of an educator with regards to his story in recovery, and hopefully you are able to walk away with some tangible strategies to either help you or the educator in your life in terms of.
making some strides in your own journey. So with no further ado, Brian, tell us about you.
Brian Well, I’m Brian and yes, I am an educator. I have been an educator for, I don’t know the years now, 24, I think. And part of the education journey that I’ve had has been partly, mostly as an alcoholic that I could honestly say.
I’m originally from Michigan. That’s where I spent the first 30 years of my life, growing up in a very Southern Baptist Christian home where alcohol was…
just no, a big no-no. Alcohol was bad. And I’m 46, I grew up through the 80s and 90s. So a lot of the advertising and things like that were out there for us and what we were learning in school had to do with not doing drugs. That was a big deal. But alcohol really never seemed to be
deal they didn’t Nancy Reagan the former first lady didn’t really talk a lot about don’t drink don’t drink or anything like that so it was such an acceptable thing in society but I really got through middle school through high school without ever doing anything I believe it was because I
was raised that way and that wasn’t something that I was gonna do but by the end of my senior year of high school in 1995 I was just turned 18 and in February of that year and it was the end of the year it was a memorial day weekend and I went quote-unquote camping with my friends.
And because that’s what you do. It was senior skip weekend. So we skipped school, went camping at the rifle river. I have no idea where that is. I just know I was in the car. Drinking beer and enjoying it. And I was like, oh, this is cool. This is what this is what camping is. So I think that first night. Because my bloody recollection is not all that good, but.
I’m pretty sure I went through a case of beer, smoked weed, did everything that 18 year olds did or teenagers did at the time. I did it all in one night and I was like, yeah, popped up the next morning and did it again. And that started a life of drinking. So I was a commuter in college, so I still lived at home and lived…
the college life even as a commuter. So I would still go out and party. I would still start my weekends on Wednesday and go to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then start over calmly on Monday with a new week and focus on my school and all that kind of stuff. It wasn’t…
crazy alcoholic drinking and when I looked back on it, it was, you know, what a lot of people were doing at the time. It was just partying as a college kid. Then around 22, I ended up abruptly ending all that party stuff and got married and was a father immediately. So
I had to make some different choices about how I dealt with alcohol because that was still there. And honestly, I don’t think I’d be sitting here talking to you if I hadn’t gotten married and become a dad. When I did party, it was blackout drink party.
piss yourself at some point, puke wildly. I had fun, but there were a lot of times that I’m pretty sure I was not the life of any party because I was always focused on the drink. Always focused on the drink instead of focused on the fun. So I took that into marriage, and I think I was more of a…
heavy drinker, but I tried to restrain myself to weekends because I had little kids. I have three daughters and I needed to be present as dad and as husband for my wife to be able to do that and be an elementary school teacher. So in my town of about 35,000, I think everybody knew who I was. I was a kid.
black kid who grew up in a white town where I ended up teaching in the district and town that I grew up in. So people knew who I was and if I did stupid stuff with alcohol, people knew that. My wife, when we got together as just dating and stuff like that, she was not a drinker. And I…
Introduced that to her at some point. I guess in order to date me you were gonna have to drink With me or you didn’t have to but that was that’s part of the decision that she had made so It became a thing for us, but I can remember many times As a young dad and young teacher and young husband still doing stupid drunk stuff
not all the time, but enough as to where I should have known that there were some issues there. But I was able to survive and be successful. And as a teacher, my kids were in the 90% reading, and they were very high in math, and they were good kids. Nobody messed with Mr. Johnson’s class. I guess I can say my name. I don’t care.
Brian Nobody messed with my class. They were well behaved. They were good kids. They knew what the expectations were and what they were supposed to do. And I think at that time back in the early 2000s I didn’t spend a lot of time drinking during the week where I would show up to work hungover and smelling like alcohol or anything like that.
I was good about that. I was always really good about separating work and alcohol. Even though sometimes I do remember I occasionally, you know that wake up time when you’re like, oh shit, I’m still a little fucking drunk. Can I cuss on here? I just did. Oh, sorry.
Jessica Dueñas No, you’re fine. Totally fine.
Brian Yeah, but I would wake up a little drunk or hungover or whatever you want to call it. And I’d still be able to go to work because it was a small town. So I could just hop in the car, drive a half mile to work and push through the day. And when you get good at teaching, you can figure out those days that you don’t really want to do anything.
And I’m not promoting this at all, but we figure it out. If it’s a day that as a teacher, I just need to be alone, even though I’ve got between 20 and 36, 38 kids, whatever you, it’s all changed over the time. But I was very good at not being drunk at work and never would have thought to drink at work.
or drink before work or you know head right to the liquor store after work that was not part of anything. I would have laughed if anyone had asked me that what my routine was. My routine was to get up really early, do lesson planning, do grade grading papers and
be the first one out the door because I wanted to be there with my kids and my wife. My kids didn’t even know I was a teacher. They never saw me grade papers, they never saw me lesson planning, and they were little, but they really had no idea. Not until they got older. Around the… sixth year, fifth or sixth year of my career was when the economy started to really be messy and that was the first experience that I had with being laid off and not knowing what I was going to be able to do, not knowing what the future was.
with my job even though eventually I would always get my job back but sometimes it was less like last second I remember they were like hey you’re gonna be teaching this kindergarten in the morning and eighth grade math in the afternoon and I’m like okay at different schools yes yeah I can do that of course
Jessica Dueñas That’s insane.
Brian super teacher, I guess, but I was gonna do anything for my family. But the cycle started of not knowing where I was going to be. And I think the last year that I was there, I ended up at a different school and it felt like a… I don’t want to say an imposter, but if you know schools, schools really… I think if you have a good school culture, you can…
sometimes become very family-ish and sometimes that can turn a little clickish. So I would show up and felt like an outsider. And through all that, I think my wife and I had decided that we were going to leave and my wife and I ended up deciding that we were gonna go to somewhere. We didn’t know where and we landed on Arizona. She had lived in Phoenix in 99 and said it was beautiful. So we ended up.
coming here, I’d say probably about 15 years ago around today. I got a call to be a Dean of Students. And I think by that time we were, I know I was drinking more. We had sold our house and were living in her parents basement until I.
was able to get a job in Arizona and then we finally did move, but I know I was drinking more then. I don’t know if it was because of the stress. I don’t know if it was because of the progression of the disease. It’s a lot that I look back on and wonder, you know, where the red flags were, should have been. Can’t go back and change time.
So I know that alcohol was way more of an issue. And I’m telling this story from what I recall and how I’m recalling it. I could be way off base. My wife could have another version of this and I’m sure she does, which there’s nothing wrong with that. She was there for that and any kind of trauma that I caused. And…
Brian as I tell this and try to go back so many years, it is an interesting trip because I see things from my perspective. Having little kids, I don’t really think about, having little kids then, I didn’t really think about, you know, what any of this was doing for them, to them, or how it was affecting them. I should have thought of that stuff because I was an educator and…
I knew the effects of substance abuse and trauma and all that stuff from being a teacher. And I did not apply it at my own home. And that was a fail. That was a fail on my part that if I could go back and change time, I wish I could. But like I said, I can’t. But I get to do that now. So…
Coming to Arizona with no money and nothing. I had a job and I was excited, but we had really pushed all the cards on the table to be able to sell the house and move and do all of that successfully, which we did. But there was a lot more drinking in my house, probably on my part.
I don’t know if it was because the job was more stressful. It just always felt like we were behind on a lot of different things financially. And moving to Arizona with three kids is hard. And then the thing that we tried to avoid in Michigan started happening in Arizona.
where the economy was, it’s like Arizona always has to be able to catch up from the bottom. So two years into working here, they’d already cut my job in half and I was basically instructional coaching and Dean of Students at the same time. And then by the third year, the my position was gone. They had eliminated that. So I was in
What I really didn’t know was this long series of not knowing what the hell I was doing in education. I didn’t know what the next job was. I didn’t know what the next school was. And as a teacher or as an administrator, that’s not a good feeling to have. And within that, I used alcohol as just a way to basically shut down.
I think I was still successful during that time doing what I needed to do, but that was what I used to just basically say, fuck it. I’m doing what I can. I’m doing the best that I can. And it doesn’t seem like enough. And I was, my gosh, after I was a dean of students, I was a…
specials teacher where kids came to me and I Just basically did what I did him from my office in the classroom talked about so what we would call social emotional learning now I was a social emotional learning teacher before that even Was a thing and I got to do that kindergarten through eighth grade, which was a nice No, it wasn’t a nice experience. I’m looking at it now. Like I’m glad I did that
But I was at one school for two weeks, and then I would go to another school for two weeks, then I’d go back to that school for two weeks, and I didn’t have any kind of home again. I was just that dude that taught that specials class, and I knew that that’s what I was, because they had called it like a gap position. We just need a special, we need a body, we need somebody who can do this, and I was like, yeah, I’ll do it, just to, you know, I didn’t know any better.
but it didn’t help me out in dealing with alcohol. It really allowed that to increase. Yeah.
Jessica Dueñas Right. So when did you like, when was like that turning point for you where you had to stop drinking? Like, what was it that brought you to that turning point? You know, for some people, they use the term bottom, other people don’t resonate with that term. But I’m hearing like your career was getting increasingly, increasingly more stressful. The budget was affecting your role.
Brian Yep.
Jessica Dueñas also kind of like not really being honored and respected as a professional, which happens to so many teachers. And so yeah, I’m curious, like, where was it that you started to realize that the alcohol had to go?
Brian Um, well, after all a few years in flux, I ended up getting an assistant principal job in a different school district, which was great. That was 2012. And I was in that school district for seven years where I was an assistant principal and I was a principal. Uh, I was drinking during that time. I, my principal would tell me that sometimes when I was an AP.
And I think I knew I had a problem. I was still drinking when I was a principal. And then we had the change in leadership. So as an educator, you know this, you get a new superintendent that comes in, new superintendent, cleaned house, of all the administrators put her people in. And I was one of the people that,
Brian was part of that deal. And I had to go back to the classroom. And that was really not the rock bottom, but it was bottom enough as to where I should have known, yo, you got to stop. During that time, I had my first seizure in 2019. I didn’t know why I didn’t and I ended up in the hospital for a few days. And
Jessica Dueñas Wow.
Brian I didn’t, it was not attributed to alcohol. So I was just like, all right, let’s just keep going. So I continued on with life, but then the pandemic hit and I was teaching at home, like many teachers across the country, across the world. And my alcohol definitely very much,
exponentially increased as to where I would be on a Zoom and I would have bottles next to me and be able to put kids in breakout rooms and then be able to break out my own bun and there was there was no supervision there was no administrators coming to the classroom or anything like that so I became a drinker at work at home.
Jessica Dueñas Hehehe
Brian And during that time I had COVID, I lost my taste and smell, but with that I also ended up in the hospital. I had a car accident where I believe I had a seizure. My blood pressure was really low. My, and then by the time that they had done all the scans and checks, they’re like, dude.
your kidneys aren’t functioning, your liver’s fucked up. You got a lot of stuff going on. I burned my esophagus because I couldn’t taste and smell. I was drinking 100 proof, you know, the 99 brand. I was drinking 99 bananas, like it was water and I was chasing it with water. Like either my chaser, I wasn’t mixing drinks anymore. I was just like.
Jessica Dueñas Oh god.
Brian I’m gonna get fucked up and still do whatever this is. And during that pandemic time, I was hospitalized a few times. I would pass out in parks. I would go, quote unquote, walking. And when I went walking, there’s lakes here where we can walk. I would hit the Safeway first and get some little of the airplane bottle type.
drinks, put them in my pocket, walk around my three miles and be halfway through that little pack knowing that I had stuff at home. I started driving out in the desert just because there was that was the only way out of your house because it was mask up or don’t go anywhere, you know. So I would drive out, I would drink, throw bottles out the window.
there were never any cops around, so I wasn’t really worried about it. And throughout all this time, doctors would be like, dude, your liver enzymes are bad, your, these numbers are bad. Every time I would have to go to the doctor, it was like, I knew something negative was gonna be there and it was about alcohol. I stretched through that and I was like, I’m gonna be a principal again.
I’m going to do this again and I got that last year. And. At Labor Day of 2022.
Brian I was told in the morning, this is the best, I was working at a target school, the guy that ran it said, this is the best start we’ve had in our 10 year history. Thank you. And that afternoon, I was given a letter of termination because they said they didn’t have enough students. They had cut my Dean of Students position the week before. And I was like, yeah, I can manage this on my own, which I could. And then I lost that job and that was pretty much.
the way and I just didn’t care anymore. I felt like a failure for the third or fourth time in my career. Everything was defined by my education career, by being whatever that position, whatever that title was. That was an important thing growing up, was going to college and becoming that thing and being that thing for the rest of your life.
And I clearly wasn’t doing that from what the world was telling me. And I just started drinking all the time at that point last year. Uh, crisis team had come in. I’d been to the hospital several times. I really wasn’t doing anything good as a dad or husband. I was terrible to my wife. I was really angry with her.
and displayed that regularly. I didn’t care about education anymore, which, you know, that was my heart. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.
Brian Eventually through a series of events, I ended up checking myself in to a behavioral hospital and or psych hospital, whatever you call it. And
That was October of last year. So almost 10 months ago, just over nine months ago now, I finally had said, you know what? This isn’t gonna work anymore. This marriage isn’t gonna work. Being dad isn’t going to work. Being teacher guy or educator or whoever the, whoever I thought I was supposed to be, none of that was going to work if I was going to…
keep drinking alcohol. And on top of that, physically, medically, I had a seizure in January of 2022 in my glass with my students. And thankfully I had a, my teacher’s assistant was a paramedic and my wife worked there too. So she was around the corner.
but I was able to not help. But again, that should have been a red flag of stop, stop. And I had tried to stop during that year in 2022 because I knew going into that next job, having alcohol be a part of it was not going to help me be successful as the principal that I wanted to be. And when I lost it, I lost pretty much hope. But then…
something clicked that said, hey man, the next seizure you have, it could be your heart. It could be, you know, I didn’t know. And I made a point of saying I’m not going to be the guy that dies with a bottle next to me or in my classroom because I was drunk. And I was in the psych hospital for a week. And really…
I think through the use of medication and therapy and, uh, seeing other people in similar circumstances and meeting people who I still talk to today and we still have connection, uh, that ended up being really important. And I was listening to your podcast today.
and one of the ones that you did before about you know being in a hospital and it was the best thing I could have done and I honestly don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner except for when I think back and I can think currently is the stigma that goes around with being an alcoholic that exists here in this country
and probably around the world. I haven’t been around the world, but I know it does because I have friends that I talk to around the world now and they said the same thing, but I finally succumbed to that. And since October 15th of 2022, I have not picked up again and I have not had any cravings. I have not thought about it. And every time I think or see alcohol, I…
do a little dance in my head or sometimes physically and say, fuck you, I win. And that’s how I am here today. As a nine month sober person, my life has entirely changed and I’m a better everything for it. And I wish I’d done it much sooner.
But I’m glad I’m still here and get to be able to talk about it, share my story with other people. When I was a principal, education stories were huge to me. That would be part of every PD that we would have was education stories. And I would have teachers share their stories about how they got to where they are today.
Brian I’ve been a speaker at a conference on stories and education. So coming up on you, you have a similar thought process when it comes to storytelling and storytelling and education with alcohol. That’s like sort of a cool bonus. I don’t know.
Jessica Dueñas Right.
Brian But it allows you to be able to use the things that you have used as an educator and be able to, honestly, I put them into place in my own life and they have been part of the toolbox. I was gonna talk about toolbox, but…
Jessica Dueñas Go for it because I mean that, I mean, I was going to ask, well, now that you are so sober, now that you are sober, how are you staying sober as an educator? So yeah, like what does that toolbox look like for you? Schools right around the corner.
Brian Yeah, so once I got out of the hospital last year, I started going to, I tried AA meetings, because it was a different world. I’d gone to AA once or twice, a few times before in town, and it was in person, and I live in a small community. So it wasn’t really anonymous. Everybody, you’d see people and you’re like, oh shit, I know who that person is. Oh shit, that lady teaches at my kid’s school. Oh shit, like, oh.
It didn’t feel good. It felt weird. It felt vulnerable and exposed and what’s the talk of the town going to be? This teacher guy is drunk and I didn’t like AA when I first went. And then I went zooming on AA and for a period of time that was very helpful for me to be able to hear.
other people’s struggles and stories within their addiction. And to know that I wasn’t the only one who was on the struggle bus when it came to this. I remember going in 1998, I was 21 years old, one of my buddies, he had to go to AA court mandated because he got a DUI. And I went to the meeting with him. I’m like, I don’t have anything else to do. I’m living at Michigan State for the summer, living my best life.
waking up drinking, going to bed drinking, eating Subway, like 21 year olds do. I went to this AA meeting in person, because that’s all there was then. And this, I just remember it vividly, this man talking about how he couldn’t function. He’s like, I had to wake up. And he said that he drank a case of beer a day. And I was like, you can’t drink a case of beer a day. What the fuck? These people are crazy. And…
He said I couldn’t I would wake up and I would drink and I would drink throughout the day and I would drink at night And I’m like God that’s an alcoholic. That is not me. I am NOT that person and Eventually that became me Spoiler alert! It happens! So I Listened to these people I had really determined that I was not going to be drinking anymore because I didn’t like I said I didn’t want to die
Jessica Dueñas Right. Spoiler alert, it is possible to drink that in a day.
Brian and I knew that I only had so many chances left. That’s really how I felt. I felt like if I was a cat, I was on life 12 and shouldn’t have been there. So, putting my toolbox together, when I got released from the hospital, I got set up with a therapist. I got set up with an intensive outpatient program, which was…
uh what I’ve really been doing during this time of uh I don’t want to say not working because I’ve worked off and on here and there but I had to and everybody doesn’t get to do this I had to call time out on my life in order to keep my life I could have kept grinding I there’s I could have after I lost my job in october or september of last year I could have
easily gotten another job because they need teachers and I’m a little unicorn-y in teaching because I’m a black male elementary educator and there aren’t a lot of us. There aren’t a lot of black educators but there aren’t a lot of black elementary male educators on top of that. So I could have jumped back into it but I had support from my family and I had support from my wife to do whatever I needed to do to…
help myself be better. And I did the intensive outpatient all online and that included physical therapy. My body was broken down from the seizures that I had had. So I couldn’t even lift my arms hardly. And my wife would make fun of me when I was trying to bag groceries because I couldn’t bag groceries.
I was so slow and I couldn’t put dishes away and all of this stuff and there was an app that had come out before I went to the hospital and it was called Sober Together and you basically had to there was a guy that moderated questions a question of the day and you got on video and answered the question of the day.
That was great. We had a little community. Uh, you got to learn a little bit more about people. Um, it was a way to keep accountable by checking in every day. And through that learning along with my IOP, I had put together a lot of tools for the toolbox to be able to.
do something different than alcohol. To be able to color and draw and sing and find joy in doing laundry and the little things in life and still being able to go to some meetings and stuff like that. Well, early this year in 2023, the Sober Together app, they couldn’t maintain it.
and they shut it down. And that was a interesting time. But this group of alcoholics, we were very slick and we shifted our questions of the day over to Marco Polo. And we started assigning people weeks to have questions of the day. And with Marco Polo, there’s no time limit.
And that’s how I ended up where I am now with this group of people and being able to talk and getting on TikTok. TikTok, man, that’s been one of the best things I could have ever had. No lie.
I was a TikTok watcher like a lot of people are back in early TikTok. And then when I got out of the hospital, I’m like, I’m going to tell my story on TikTok. I’m going to go through recovery, check it in on TikTok every day. And I think my first one was maybe day 20 or I’m walking with my daughter. We’re on a walk. And
It got a lot of likes. A lot of people liked it. I was like, oh, okay, maybe people will. I was just a watcher and laughed at people dancing and I learned how to grill really good. And all the stuff that happened in the pandemic, I got really good at some things because I learned them on TikTok. And I thought, why couldn’t someone learn from me on this platform and see that you can be an almost dead.
puffy-faced, fat Elvis, alcoholic, at the bottom of whatever the bottom is, to be someone who today is 280 days sober and living the best life that I could possibly live as a school leader. With my family being happy and…
the changes that are actually occurring in my world because of the actions that I’ve taken. I would never have imagined that, but that’s where I am today and I’m damn proud of it. I work hard at it. For anybody who thinks they can just not work at it, they’re kidding themselves. It takes work, it takes determination, it takes plan, it takes support and I have…
all of those things at my fingertips right now. And I am so thankful to be here and get to share this story because there’s a second half to it. I look at it as the one of the questions recently was what would you call a chapter, this chapter of your life? And I went straight to Dr. Dre and I was like and Snoop and I was like this is going to be called the next
And that’s where it is. That’s where I am right now. I am living the next episode of Brian, and I’m no longer identifying myself as an educator. I’m just me. Everything about me as an educator defined who I was, what school district I was in, what position I was in, how many years I’d been somewhere. It was always important to be that guy.
Jessica Dueñas I love that.
Brian And now I could care less. I’m glad I have a school job and as a school leader, but I would be happy working at the safe way where I used to buy all my alcohol or working at the liquor store where I would pull up and the guy would be like, hot damn, hot damn, cause he knew my drink or the liquor store on the main street down the road where I can walk in, the guy sees me.
and pulls out my bottle of 99 bananas and I pull out my $9.67 and give it to him. I went in there and bought for my wife a few weeks ago, a few months ago, and he goes, the guy that owns the place, he’s like, damn, you look good. And I go, I’m not drinking anymore. And he literally walked back, put the little bottle down that he knew I would get. Then he goes,
Jessica Dueñas (49:15.051) Thank you.
Brian (49:26.998) what would you like? And I got whatever it was that my wife wanted. And I walked out of there just like I had won the lottery. Like I have done this and I’m going to keep doing this. And it took therapy, it took meds, I take naltrexone every day for cravings. I take gabapentin, which I think helps with that. I take
Zoloft, which helps me with my, which helps my brain. I’m taking things now that actually help me. And I listened to, you had mentioned on your podcast, your most recent one about if you break your arm, you put a cast on and you don’t have to wear the cast for the rest of your life and you don’t have a broken arm for the rest of your life. And
Brian (50:26.126) And I looked at these things like, okay, I needed AA for a little bit. I don’t need that anymore. I don’t foresee always needing to be on medication for cravings or for anxiety or for any of that stuff forever. I don’t really see that. I see these things as temporary so that eventually I will be free of all of that. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.
Jessica Dueñas Mm-hmm.
Brian And that’s part of the story too is like you said, if you need something that’s going to help you just be your best self, what’s wrong with that?
Jessica Dueñas Exactly.
Brian I don’t think anything’s wrong with that. And that is what I’m telling people in my recovery is the point is not drinking. The point is being sober. And if I have my own way of doing that, then that’s totally 100%, not just fine, but awesome.
And I can share that with other people who get stuck in the AA trap or the big book trap or I don’t want to sponsor trap of what that is. And I love to read. I’ve read so much about the brain and the body and how alcohol really does mess that up. They would always show us that black lung back in the day when it was about smoking, but they never showed you.
the effects of the alcohol on your brain and your body. And I wish they would have, but now I get to be that person to be able to share those things with people like you who know that there are many paths to recovery, not just one. And that whatever your path is, if you’re successful at that, it’s…
it’s good. If it’s good for you, it’s good and it’s a path and a journey. And I was listening to somebody the other day talking about the journey. And if you’re driving from Michigan to Arizona and you get a flat tire, that’s just a little bump. That doesn’t mean you go back to Michigan and start the trip over. It means you fix your tire and you keep going to Arizona.
And if I were to relapse, which I don’t foresee, but I’m not, I always say confident, not cocky, Brian. If I were to relapse or for people that do relapse, you don’t have to go back to square one. You get back in your car after changing the tire and you keep moving forward. And that’s my mindset right now. And for anybody that talks to me, that’s where I’m at. And I’m…
best Brian I’ve ever been in my life. Well, maybe outside of that cute kid that I used to be, but that’s a different podcast.
Jessica Dueñas Right. Well, Brian, I mean, just thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. Again, I mean, just for anyone who’s listening, I feel like a couple of the key takeaways here is, yeah, like exploring that toolbox. You know, again, nothing that was said here is medical advice. However, both Brian and I have benefited from collaborating with medical professionals, including…
going to treatment when you need to go to treatment, having a psychiatrist prescribe you medications that, you know, hey, you don’t have to take forever if you don’t need to, but really be open to whatever pathway is going to get you there. It doesn’t matter how you get there. The point is, and like Brian said, the point is getting to be a sober person, getting to be an alcohol-free person so that your life doesn’t have to revolve around this damn substance because…
we do already have enough to worry about, and we don’t need to have alcohol be that added thing that complicates things. So, I mean, Brian, again, thank you, thank you, thank you. And we are close on time. So I’m gonna go ahead and wrap us up. Did you want to say any last word? How can people find you if they want to find you? Or do you want to not be found?
Brian I can be found on TikTok at teacher hootenhowl. It’s a weird name, but it’s a name that, this is gonna sound really silly. The hootenhowl was a bar that my buddy, teacher buddy and I would go to after, on Fridays, to finish our week, cause we hated our jobs and hated our lives. And we were just talking one day during the pandemic.
Brian like we should come up with a podcast called Teacher Hoot and Howl. And I sat down and wrote out a whole little plan for it. We never did it, but I just took the name and, uh, have kept it. And it’s been really cool. I know one thing that you asked me to talk about was, um, still being sober when your partner is drinking.
And all I will say to that is if you stay focused on yourself and the things that you need to do for you, people can do whatever they want to do. It’s their choice. And my job is not to go in there and try to solve their problems. Even if it’s the problems of people that you care about and love. My problem is.
Brian my alcohol problem and…
being preachy and all that shit is not going to help anybody stop. I know that for a fact. So I just try to like in teaching, be a model of what an alcohol free life can be. And currently on July 22nd, 2023, I think I’m doing a damn good job.
Jessica Dueñas Yes, that’s awesome. And plug for my latest podcast episode, episode 10, I actually interviewed my sister on her experience as a loved one dealing with me and my addiction. So for anybody who is out there and is kind of listening to this and you’re like, Oh, I have a podcast. episode for that. Like go listen to it. It’s really helpful for folks who are dealing with a loved one struggling. Maybe you’re not, but someone you care about is. So I’d definitely recommend that. All right, Brian. Well, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
I connect with Martin Lockett, who recently reached the second anniversary of his release from prison after serving 17.5 years for a DUI manslaughter charge. Martin provides an insightful reflection on his childhood, particularly the mindset of a teen trapped in a cycle of making poor choices and how an environment can impact an individual. Martin also discusses how the experience of causing a tragedy and subsequently going to prison, instead of cementing the ceiling placed over his head by society, enabled him to shatter it.
Content warning – Description of a car crash and death
You see someone on a train track. You see the train is coming, and that person just will not get out of the way.
No matter what you do.
You can’t pull them off. You can’t push them off. All you want to do is get them out of harm’s way, but you can’t. It’s hard to watch. You want to make them better. Stop the hurt. Me, being your older sister, being in that second mom role, made that hard.
It’s difficult letting someone you love go through that process, but I had to accept that I couldn’t do this for you. It was work you had to do for yourself.”
–Sofia Dueñas
I interviewed my sister, Sofia, on her experiences dealing with me while in my active addiction for episode 10 of Bottomless to Sober, the podcast. I wanted to pull this line out and discuss it in a greater context: I had to accept that I couldn’t do this for you. It was work you had to do for yourself.
Two and a half years into this new life I live, as I listened to my sister’s words, two questions came up for me for self-reflection, which I’m sharing with you in case you find them helpful:
What do I want for myself that I keep waiting on some external force to accomplish?
Is there something I continue to try to do for others that they really should be doing for themselves?
I’ll pick question one to reflect on here:
What do I want for myself that I keep waiting on some external force to accomplish?
I started a book, a non-fiction self-help/memoir hybrid. I wanted to finish it, but I had been waiting to get picked up by an agent and a publisher. In my mind, I told myself the story that that is the only good reason to finish a book. I had gotten TONS of rejections from agents with no feedback and had stopped working on my book because I felt discouraged. Then, recently, I had a kind book agent who corresponded with me and gave me valuable feedback.
She enjoyed what I presented and encouraged me to consider self-publishing because her inside scoop is that publishers are looking for people with longer-term sobriety if you aren’t strictly writing a memoir. After reading the email from the agent and reflecting on my sister’s statement, “I couldn’t do this for you. It was work you had to do for yourself.” I realize that I don’t need an agent to write a book. I don’t need a publisher. I don’t need anyone’s validation to finish what I started. I just need to finish what I started. So I’m formally declaring that I will refocus on writing my book! How it gets published isn’t relevant, the point is that it gets done.
So back to you, start the week with these questions:
What do you want for yourself that you keep waiting on some external force to accomplish?
Is there something you continue to try to do for others that they really should be doing for themselves?
I share my recovery story a lot, but in this episode, I sit down with my big sis, Sofia, to have a raw conversation about her part in my story of addiction and recovery. Several key things we discuss in this episode:
Professional help. The person with the addiction isn’t the only one who benefits from it.
Managing guilt.
Understanding what is in your locus of control.
Setting boundaries.
Current worries.
If this episode touches your heart, you MAY feel inspired to follow my sister Sofia or say hello. Sofia’s boundary is she will not welcome strangers following her/adding her as a friend, so if you listen to this and want to send her a message, please message me, and I’ll pass it on to her. 🙂
Hey everyone, super happy to have you. So this episode is really near and dear to me because my first ever guest is actually my sister, Sofia. I call her Sophie, but you all don’t know her. So she is Sofia to anyone listening to this. And basically just to kind of give you all some context. So I am the youngest of a combined eight kids between my mom and dad. And so my sister Sofia, she’s the seventh, but
Sofia (00:17.134)
Thanks for watching!
Jessica Dueñas (00:30.644)
because our parents came to the US kind of like with already their older kids having been born and staying in their respective countries, Sophie and I really grew up together. And so a couple of cool things, Sophie is 11 years older than me and she got to name me. Thank God, because if I had been a boy, my mom would have named me Eduardo. So I don’t even know what my name would have been if my mom had named me. So Jessica came from my sister naming me. So she did a good choice there.
And honestly, she, thank you. And you know, and really I asked her to come on because I think it’s really important that we also consider the perspective of our loved ones. And when I struggled so much, she was there for me in ways that I, I mean, there’s no repaying it, right? All I can do is just continue to walk the path that I walk. And I feel like that’s the best that I can do. Chrissy, my dog decided to start playing with the bone now.
Sofia (00:58.902)
You’re welcome.
Jessica Dueñas (01:25.788)
But yeah, I thought that having her on would be really helpful if you’re listening and you have a loved one or if you are a loved one and you’re listening and you’re kind of just hoping. So here’s some perspective. I hope that you get something from this. And again, nothing that we’re offering is advice, but it’s just a perspective that may be helpful. So with that, thank you, Sophie, for coming. I appreciate you.
Sofia (01:46.926)
Well, thank you for having me. I’m honored to be the first guest.
Jessica Dueñas (01:50.484)
Yes, you’re always the most special person. So, all right, so the first question really that I have, and again, with my drinking, right, what was it like dealing with me in active addiction, especially when you found out that this was a struggle I was keeping from you?
Sofia (02:08.97)
I mean, it was so much, it was kind of overwhelming because the timeline of it all, we were like in the middle of COVID as well. It was very, very frightening, very scary because our family has a pretty extensive history of alcohol addiction, but I had never…
seen it to this level. And I was very much afraid for your life. And it’s a sense of helplessness because this person that you love so much and you just wanna be able to fix it. And as a big sister, I wanna come in, I wanna save the day, I wanna be able to fix it, but having to accept that there is really nothing that I can do.
Um, it’s, it’s a very kind of helpless place to be. Um, and, and frustrating because, you know, knowing you, and I know what an intelligent, bright individual you are. And I knew that like, intellectually you knew that you needed to stop doing this. And.
Also knowing that you kind of knew how to work the system. You knew the right things to say to let people or make people think that, oh no, I’ve got it under control. Like I’m good, I’ve got this, no problems. Yes, I know I’m drinking too much, but I’ve got it under control. That was just, that was frustrating for me because I knew that you…
You knew you needed help, but you weren’t in a place where you were, I think, accepting how serious this problem was really, was just affecting your life and your health, and that you were really at risk. That was really difficult.
Jessica Dueñas (04:24.84)
Yeah, thank you for that. And I mean, it’s funny because in my writing, I often reflect on how good I am at knowing what the right things to say are. And I have to look out for that today. Like I have to be very intentional with sharing with you or with Rashard or anybody, like I’m not okay because I’m such a good actor, right? And it’s like, I still have to watch out for that today and just…
practice that transparency because it’s so easy. You know, we learned it in our family to just always put up the front of being strong. You know, it’s like I feel like that’s very ingrained in our family history. One thing that kind of came up for me while you were talking, you mentioned helplessness and accepting that you couldn’t kind of like control me or the outcome. At what point did you understand that you were helpless in that or like, you know, that you couldn’t control me? And at what point, like how did that help you kind of?
hope, so to speak, if that helped or was it, did that make that worse?
Sofia (05:22.539)
I mean, to be honest, I ended up having to go to therapy myself because, you know, I don’t want to say I’m a controlling person, but you know, I’m used to being the person, the go-to person when something goes wrong. I fix it. I come up with solutions. And, you know, this was one of those situations where…
I really couldn’t do anything and I didn’t know how to deal with that. So it was affecting me. You know, I was, I had anxiety. I was a nervous wreck. And again, this is just one of those things that was in addition to the whole situation that we were living through at that time. So we just kind of compounded that and you know, I’m in healthcare. So it was just so hard and, and you know, really brought to light.
that life is so precious and it’s fragile. And I really truly, every time the phone rang and I saw that area code, I was always afraid what was gonna be on the other end of that line. Is this gonna be the call telling me that something happened to you? And having the idea of like, how am I gonna explain this to mommy? How do I say it? I couldn’t, there was nothing I could do.
It was, so I had to seek help for myself. You know, I finally got to the point and actually my supervisor told me, she’s like, you know, you have anxiety because I never dealt with anxiety before and I honestly couldn’t recognize it in myself, but you know, I wasn’t sleeping well, I was having trouble concentrating, you know, all the classic signs of anxiety. And so, you know, I did seek help for myself and.
You know, it was hard to accept and I don’t know if I ever truly accepted it, but I just had to deal.
Jessica Dueñas (07:27.839)
Yeah.
Well, thank you for that. I’m glad that you got help. And again, anybody who’s listening, right? Like if you don’t know what to do, like A, it’s okay to not know what to do. And B, there are resources out there. So you did therapy. Any other support systems that you leaned on during this time?
Sofia (07:46.67)
Um, you know, of course I have like, I have wonderful friends, um, you know, that just kind of listened to me, supported me, you know, again, there’s, there’s no right answer. Um, but, you know, they just understood, um, where I was coming from, you know, cause we all have loved ones, you know, and it’s kind of like, you know, you see someone on a train track and you see the train is coming and
that person just will not get out of the way. Like no matter what you do, like you can’t pull them off, you can’t push them off. And that’s all you wanna do. You wanna get them out of the harm’s way. And just, you know, it’s very, it’s hard to watch someone you love spiraling and hurting. You want, you just wanna be able to, you know, make them better, stop the hurt and…
not being able to do that for them, especially in a situation. I think like, you know, and I’m sure as like, if it’s a parent with a child, you know, you want to protect them. And, you know, me being your older sister, like I’ve always kind of been like in that like second mom role, even though obviously, as we’ve gotten older, our relationship has changed and became more of like a friendship than like me, you know, taking care of you. But
you know, that doesn’t ever really go away. And so, you know, it’s difficult to just let someone you love, you know, go through that process, whatever comes and just, you know, I just kind of got to the point where I was like, well, I will just be here, you know, in whatever capacity I can be and, you know, even though I hated it, I had to accept that I can’t, I can’t do this for you. This was.
work that you had to do for yourself.
Jessica Dueñas (09:46.996)
Absolutely. And again, for anyone listening, relinquishing that control is so powerful for whether you’re in recovery or you have a loved one, right? Just understanding that we really can’t control other people and outcomes. And that’s such a hard thing to accept, but I mean, I feel like it’s just super, super critical. Another thing I wanted to talk about was, and also actually to give context, so Sophie
caretaker role. So again, for anyone listening, there’s an 11 year age gap, right? And growing up, our parents were self employed, and they had like this little store in Brooklyn. So oftentimes, Sophie was tasked with being basically, yeah, like a like the second mom, you know, so I spent like, I mean, I used to go on Sophie’s first dates because she had no, there’s no babysitter. So I would go on Sophie’s dates with her.
Sofia (10:36.11)
I’m sorry.
Jessica Dueñas (10:40.564)
So just to give you context, I was always, always there. And we were super close. But yeah, our relationship has changed drastically once I grew. So the other question I had for you was, you know, I now, when I tell my story, right, like I openly admit to having struggled with alcohol for many, many years. You know, and I’ve probably known that I had a problem since.
you know, before I married Chris. So let’s say that’s like, what, 2011, 2010, you all, I’m not married to Chris anymore. Chris is my ex-husband’s name. But before, so if I knew I had a problem since probably say, 2011, 2010, and you didn’t find out about my problem until say about 2019, like that, that winter with the holidays and stuff when, so what, when you realize that I had a problem, right?
Sofia (11:13.088)
Mm-hmm.
Sofia (11:27.702)
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Jessica Dueñas (11:36.18)
What was your reaction to me having kept it a secret for so long?
Sofia (11:42.782)
I mean, it was shock, honestly. You know, and now like looking back, looking back, you know, I see that there were signs, but I think, you know, because I just, I could not like wrap my brain around it, or I would always kind of find another reason, like something, you know, I remember there were times.
Very few times but once or twice you called me and now I know you were drunk but because I would I could never kind of Assign that to you like I wouldn’t I would not you know if anyone said to me Oh, if someone’s gonna have a drinking problem the last person I would think would be you know And so I think I was in a little bit of denial. You know, I remember when you were in college
And you would tell me stories about stuff and I’m like, golly, like you’re partying a little hard. But I also like, well, you know, you’re in college, it’s your first time away from home. And, you know, we grew up in a pretty strict household. So I just kind of chalked it up to like, well, you know, you’re letting your hair down and you’re just having a good time. Not, you know, a little concerned, you know, for your safety, but never thinking it was like a real serious problem.
And, you know, so many times like we would travel together and you wouldn’t even have a drink. You know, you would just have so it’s like I never saw you drink. You never drink around me. And so it was all kind of like what I honestly I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. I was like, what is happening here? And you know, the way that I found out, you know, and do you mind if I tell the story?
Jessica Dueñas (13:36.271)
Nope, go for it, that’s fine.
Sofia (13:38.002)
Okay, so, you know, it was, it was the holidays, it was Christmas. And, you know, I am not a drinker. My ex-husband also was not a drinker, but I loved entertaining. Um, so I would always have people over and, you know, people come over, they always bring something and normally it was, you know, a bottle of whatever alcohol. And so I had quite a nice stock of alcohol in my house because I never drink it. And I would just collect.
collect and then I would bring them out whenever I had a party whatever but never even thought twice about it and so you know we had a big Christmas party or holiday party and you were here and you know I’m in the middle of the night you know Olivia my oldest daughter comes in and wakes me up and is like mom like something’s wrong with Jessica you know
So I’m like, Oh my gosh, what happened? And I, you know, run in there and by the time I came in, you were getting up, but she found you like passed out on the floor. Um, and then I, you know, in the kitchen, there’s like bottles and I’m like, what, what is going on? Like, you know, my main concern at that point was like, are you okay? But then once it started sinking in and then you admitted to me that, you know, you’ve been struggling with alcohol. Like.
One, my immediate feeling was a huge amount of guilt because I had all this alcohol in the house. Like, had I known, all of that crap would have been in the garbage because I couldn’t care less about it. You know, so that was my, I felt horrible that I, you know, had all this stuff out here for you to just access. But you know, again, and that was one of the things that I had to work through in therapy was like, you know,
I had no idea. And so it wasn’t my fault that I had alcohol in the house because I just didn’t know. And then, you know, sadness because you were so sad. Like you felt so broken to me when you like finally admitted what was happening. And that made me like that broke my heart. That you were
going through this by yourself and you felt like you had to keep it from me. Um, because you know, my main concern is you and like, doesn’t matter what’s happening, like I’m always going to be there for you. So it was a lot. It was just a lot to take in and to process because, you know, thinking like how long this had been going on and you know,
just finding out this way was just, it was jarring, you know, for like so many different reasons. And then understanding that all of these times that you were telling me, you know, that you were checking yourself in because you were depressed, but it was really you going into rehab. And, you know, feeling bad also that I didn’t probe
more, not to say that you were going to tell me even if I had, because I think, you know, until you were just ready to do it. And I almost thought that had to happen the way that it happened.
for me to fully understand how serious this was. Cause if you had just told me over the phone, again, knowing you, you would have said the right words and you would have made it sound like, oh, it’s not that bad. I know I’m just drinking a little bit too much and I’m gonna, like, you know. And as a matter of fact, you did one time I was visiting you in Kentucky and…
we went to an AA meeting together because you said that you were just drinking a little bit too much and you wanted to get it under control. So again, I was like, oh, that’s great. I’m so glad that you’re doing that. But I didn’t probe deeper because you know, you’ve always been just such a put together person that I assumed like, yeah, you do got this. Like you’re fine. And that’s why like it was just shocking to me because, you know.
It really brought home the fact that alcoholism, alcohol abuse can affect anyone. Like nobody’s immune to it. It doesn’t matter how educated you are. If you’re a professional, like, you know, we always assume, I think we have a picture in our minds that, you know, people are people that are downtrodden and, you know, on hard times.
Jessica Dueñas (18:21.907)
Mm-hmm.
Sofia (18:40.622)
are people that are struggling with alcohol abuse, but that’s not true. You know, it’s really, no one is immune to it. It doesn’t matter where you are in your life or how much you have, how educated, how professional you are. It can, you know, it can touch anyone.
Jessica Dueñas (19:01.697)
Yeah, it really can. And I mean, you know, it’s, I’ve been muting my microphone while you’re sharing just to avoid cruise in the background, making random noises. But you know, like when you were sharing the story of, you know, only finding me, you know, it’s like I felt that same like sadness just like wash over me again. And like I got really, really teary eyed. And I mean, I’m just like, I’m so glad I’m not, I’m really glad I’m not there anymore. And I’m so glad to have found like
genuine recovery because I remember that moment. And that also brings me back to, because I went to treatment when I flew back to Kentucky after that incident, I did go back into treatment and winter break was still going on. So no one at work knew what had happened either. And we are like sitting in a staff circle, like our first day back and we’re doing professional development. And they’re like, oh, share something about your winter break. And I just start crying because I don’t wanna say, well, I spent my winter break in rehab.
Sofia (19:36.881)
Yeah.
Sofia (19:53.25)
Yeah.
Jessica Dueñas (19:58.248)
You know, like it was, that was so, so painful. And the other thing too, that you said that stood out, you know, you mentioned that, you know, all those years, like we would travel and you know, you would never see me drink. And it was like, yeah, like I learned to really become a mirror and just mirror people’s whatever, however people were drinking. That’s what I always matched so that I wouldn’t stand out. And then that day, of course, like I had been holding back.
you know, I hadn’t been drinking. And then I got to the holiday party and there was all that stuff there. And I was like, oh, you know, thinking I could do it. And of course I like went overboard. Cause you know, with addiction, it’s just like, it’s that shame and that guilt just cause you to spiral. But yeah, I’m glad. I’m so glad that is not my story today. But the other thing I did want to ask you about is the today, right? Like it’s been, you know, thank God over two and a half years at the time of this recording.
Um, cause we’re recording this in July of 2023. If you’re listening at some random other point in the future. So it’s been about two and a half years since I got sober. Um, what is it like now for you? Like, do you ever worry about me relapsing now? Kind of like, where’s your head space around that?
Sofia (21:12.874)
Um, no. Well, to be honest, I was a little worried, like, of you moving out, because, you know, for background, like, Jessica came to live with me, you know, in what was that, 2020, right? You know, because at that time, everybody was working remote, and it just, you know, she was by herself in Kentucky, and that just was not working.
Jessica Dueñas (21:32.864)
Yeah.
Sofia (21:41.438)
Um, so she came to stay with me and she was working remotely. So it was kind of like an easy transition. You know, she and Cruz came to stay here. Um, and so, you know, I did worry. Like what would happen if you were to move out by yourself, you know, because I do think that, you know, loneliness, um, can play into that sometimes. Um, and so.
Like I was so happy with the way that you did move out because I felt like it was a great middle ground where you’re like on your own but very close to support people as well. So you’re not like by yourself. And if you ever felt like you needed to, you know have interaction with someone, like there’s people all around, so to speak, you know that’s the only thing that worried me but honestly not really.
that you would relapse, but more that you would just struggle a little bit with loneliness and those types of feelings. But I feel like you have really done so much work and learned so many coping skills and just like a self-awareness about yourself that when you are feeling a certain type of way that you address it right away. And that’s one thing. You know.
denial is a terrible thing, you know, and I think really being aware and being honest and open with yourself when you are struggling and you know you’ve come so far in being open and asking for help when you need the help that I don’t worry about that anymore. Like I feel like you you’ve just made and in our family again we tend to
We had to unlearn those things, you know, and learn how to ask for help because it’s always, you know, feelings get squashed, feelings get put away and you just, you know, you know, I’m fine, I’m fine, we’re good, we’re good, even when we’re not. So I think like you have come like, and done a complete 180 where now when you need help, you just ask for help and you’re aware of when you’re feeling that way.
Jessica Dueñas (23:41.58)
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Sofia (24:02.026)
So I think you have all the tools to maintain your sobriety.
Jessica Dueñas (24:08.628)
Yeah. I mean, I think definitely there’s been a lot of unlearning of previous like programming from like childhood that I’ve had to do. And then yes, like for all that unlearning that I had to do, you know, soaking in all sorts of tools and strategies that have helped me. And so to give anyone who’s listening context, so I guess I live with my sister up until March of 2023 and I do live on my own, but
because of my work, I get to live on a college campus, which is really amazing. And my partner lives really, really close by actually. So, you know, when I first moved in with my sister, I was like, all right, I’m never moving out until I’m getting married. That’s basically what I was thinking. But then this job opportunity came up for me to get back in education and have like a live on staff role, which has been perfect. So I am always interacting with people, but I do have my own living space. So for me, I am literally rewriting the narrative because when I…
Sofia (24:49.421)
Hahaha.
Jessica Dueñas (25:05.524)
first lived by myself was when I got divorced. And that’s when my drinking took off. And so for me, it was like, how do I do this living by myself thing without alcohol? And it’s been really like structuring my time in meaningful ways, giving myself lots of opportunities to rest, seriously asking for help. And yeah, like if I’m feeling lonely, pick up the phone, call somebody, go visit, whether it’s my partner or go swing by my sister’s because thankfully she doesn’t live that far. She’s like 25, 30 minutes away. So
I have really been able to build a new life of living solo that looks totally different from what my life looked like when I drank. I think that has been really powerful and it has been that self-awareness and doing the whole no longer saying all the right things, like letting go of saying all the right things because I’m very good at saying all the right things.
Sofia (25:56.886)
Yes, and I think that was the key. I feel that was the turning point for you really, because like when you came here, your last time, so another story. So Jessica was here, I was still married at the time and I get one night, you know, my house, it’s not a huge house, but you know.
The master bedroom is kind of on one side of the house. The other bedrooms are on the other. And I come out of the shower and I get a text message from Jessica saying, oh, don’t worry, I have a ride home. And I’m like, what? Because when I went into the shower, she was here. And then I had no idea when she left. So I guess she called an Uber and had the Uber pick her up like around the corner.
And she went to a bar and she didn’t know where she was. And, um, you know, we live in Florida and Florida is a very, um, has the highest rate, I think probably in the country for human trafficking. So I kind of panicked and I was like, do not get in the car with anyone. I will come get you. I was like, where are you? Where are you? Um.
You know, she didn’t know where she was. And I was like, just ask somebody, what is the name of the bar you’re at? So, you know, we, we figured that out. My, my ex-husband and I jumped in the car and go get her. And I told him, I said, we’re not going home, go straight to the emergency room. Um, so on our way there, she finally is realizing that we’re not heading to the house. And, um,
we pull into the parking lot and she’s like, no, I’m not going in there. I’m not going in there. And I said, well, you need to come in here because you’re not coming home until we figure something out. Like you can’t keep going like this. Um, and I think that was for me, like my breaking point because it scared me so bad that she was actually going to get into the car with someone that she didn’t know. Like just, it just,
that was it like that was my breaking point um so we’re in the parking lot of this emergency room and she said to me i will go sleep on a park bench before going into that emergency room and i was like the hell you will i was like you’re coming in here i was like i was like you’re either doing this on your own two feet or i will call the police and they will escort you in there
I was like, I’m not doing this again. And so we did end up going in there. Um, and again, it was COVID. They let me stay with her, um, because she was just in such a state. Um, but you know, my ex had to wait in the car. They wouldn’t let him inside. And the ER doctor, you know, in Florida, we have this thing called the Baker act where if someone is.
harm to themselves or others, they get admitted against their will if they’re not willing to go in for a minimum of three days. And so I spoke to the ER doctor and I said, look, like she is not safe. And I said, so either you Baker Act her or I will Baker Act her because as her family member I could Baker Act her. I didn’t want to be the one to do that.
But in speaking to her, you know, the emergency room doctor said, I’m going to big ractor because, um, by law, if she feels that the patient is not safe, she has to do that. So, you know, she spoke to Jessica and said, I’m going to order a psych evaluation for you because, you know, I just feel like you’re not safe. Like you’re putting yourself at risk. Your life is at risk. Um, and when, and again, because it was COVID the
psychologist was on, they rolled in like a TV screen and he did a virtual visit with her. And when I was sitting there with her, I was like, look, just please be honest. I’m like, don’t say all the keywords. I’m like, just be honest. You have nothing to lose. I’m like, you are at the point where you are telling me that you would rather sleep on a park bench. It can’t get much worse.
So you have nothing to lose by being honest with this person and just tell them what’s really going on with you. And he was a wonderful clinician. He reviewed her chart and he said to her, because again, Jessica has been, at this point, she was going to AA meetings, she had a therapist, she was on antidepressants, and this had been a cycle that had been going on.
for a while where she would go to rehab, not drink for a while, again, have a relapse, and it just kept going over and over and over again. And I think she was exhausted at this point. I could just tell she was kind of giving up, and I’m like, no, we’re not doing this because she kept trying and it just kept failing. And the psychiatrist picked up on that
records and stuff and he’s like look something’s not adding up here he’s like you’re doing all the right things but you still keep relapsing he’s like so get check into a facility let them do a full psychiatric evaluation like let’s figure out what’s going on here he said because I see that you were a person that is trying but something’s not working so let’s figure out why that is and
she agreed. Thank God. And I feel like that was really a turning point, where she just kind of stopped pretending that it wasn’t as bad as it was. And she went into this facility, you know, and of course, it was it was difficult. But I think if she hadn’t done that, you know, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation today because
Jessica Dueñas (32:32.233)
Okay.
Sofia (32:34.53)
I really, I didn’t think she was going to make it to be honest with you. Like she was going to be a statistic. You are going to be a statistic. You know, I’m just.
Jessica Dueñas (32:42.632)
Yeah. And I mean, it’s funny because I don’t remember, you know, I was definitely in a blackout when all of that happened. And I mean, obviously I wasn’t consenting to go to, to get Baker act that happened. But yes, once I got so to kind of fast forward that story, you know, once I got in the facility, when you are Baker acted, you don’t have to really do anything once you’re in the facility, you can just sit there for three days and say all the right things and go home.
Sofia (32:52.319)
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Dueñas (33:12.18)
But once I was there and I sobered up and that fog cleared, that same clinician, or maybe not him, because I don’t remember, but there was a clinician who was very kind and asked me if I was willing to do a more thorough psychological evaluation. And at that time, that was my choice. And yes, I was so sick and tired and exhausted, and it felt like I had been dying without dying, but there was just no way to continue living. So I said, you know what?
F it, yes. I mean, like literally all the light bulbs went off when I was in that facility. Cause while in that facility, I remember I called Sophie and I was like, I think I need to quit my job. I don’t know if you remember that phone call, but I called you and I was like, I think I need to quit. You know, I had already sort of been looking for other options in case I did need to quit. I think I knew it was coming, but I wasn’t ready to let go of my job either. But yeah, I did that evaluation.
Sofia (33:52.481)
Thank you.
Jessica Dueñas (34:05.308)
And that was a wild moment too for me because, you know, he hits me with the diagnosis, which was bipolar too, for those of you who need to Google it or look it up, it’s basically serious, heavy episodes of depression without the full blown mania that someone with bipolar one might experience. So, you know, there was no like breaking from reality, et cetera, but just very, very powerful episodes of depression, which literally lined up to like my story as he was saying it.
And I remember I started crying and I was like, oh my God, you’re telling me I’m crazy. Because of course stigma and ignorance. So that’s that was my initial reaction to the bipolar two react diagnosis. And he was like, well, you know, that’s the missing piece. Kind of talk like what he said to my sister or one of them said to my sister, you know, this is the missing piece. She’s doing all the right things, but chemically, there’s something off in her body and she needs to kind of like restore the balance.
before she can really have any sustained sobriety. And so they did prescribe me all sorts of meds, and I’m not gonna go into that because if you are suspecting that you have this diagnosis, you should absolutely see a psychiatrist of your own and get diagnosed properly. But they gave me the battery of medications. And yes, while I was in there, I decided to resign from my job as well. So when I come out, this was very early November. And remember, my sobriety day is November 28th. So obviously everything doesn’t suddenly click.
right away, the medications do take a couple of weeks to kick in, right? But by the time I had that last drink, it just, it wasn’t the same anymore. And again, because the medicine was doing what it was supposed to do. So even though I went and I repeated the old behavior of sneaking off and buying the alcohol and trying to drink it, it didn’t hit the same. And so I didn’t, I guess I got drunk and had a hangover and things like that, but I didn’t continue to spiral.
And I think that’s when I realized that biologically, the medicine did what it needed to, and I felt done. And so once I got through that first day without alcohol, after having like picked it back up after a few weeks of meds, I finally had that glimmer of hope of like, oh, maybe I can do this because something shifted. And so when I had that glimmer of hope,
probably I waited another day or two, and then I was like, you know what? I’m gonna go ahead and like tell my story. And I wrote that op-ed article. So my sobriety date was November 28th of 2020. That op-ed article that has gone viral, which I’ll link in the show notes, that came out live in the Louisville Career Journal December 4th. And my last day of work was December 3rd as a teacher. And then I started working at a tutoring company. So yeah, just lots of…
really important information and a lot came out just from me becoming finally willing, going from wanting to willing. And then again, letting go of saying all the right things and just saying the truth and speaking openly. So Sophie, what would you tell, kind of like as the last question, what would you tell anybody else who has a loved one who’s struggling? Like whether it’s another sibling, a parent.
Sofia (37:06.21)
down.
Jessica Dueñas (37:19.536)
and they have someone struggling, like what would you say to them?
Sofia (37:28.104)
Acceptance that you can’t fix it. You know, the person I’m in a relationship with is in the same situation with his brother. And unfortunately, you know, he’s still struggling. He’s going through that cycle of rehab, you know, being sober for a little bit.
relapsing, all that stuff, and you know, it’s a younger sibling. So the same thing, you know, he wants to come in and swoop in and fix it. And there is no fixing it. Like you just have to accept it. You know, support that person, let them know that, you know, you’re here for them. You love them. And pray that they finally get to the point where they are willing.
to get the help that they really need to make the changes, the permanent changes, to get the tools to get healthy and get sober. Cause that’s really all you can do. And talk to somebody for yourself, like get help for yourself because, you know, if you’re not okay, it’s really hard to help someone else.
or be there for someone else and it’s draining and that’s okay. Um, and it is okay for you to say like, you know, I’m not okay because this person that I love is struggling. So I would say, you know, take care of yourself too, in the process of accepting that you cannot change it.
Jessica Dueñas (39:13.896)
Yeah. The other thing that I would add to what you said, and again, this is me from the perspective of the person who was struggling is I think about the boundaries that you set to. Like for example, me ending up in that last hospitalization here in Tampa was absolutely a result of you setting a boundary. Like you were like, you’re not coming home. So like here’s your options, but you’re not coming back into my house. Right. And so, you know, you putting that on me, like then of course I’d
Sofia (39:24.18)
Mm-hmm.
Sofia (39:35.621)
Yeah.
Sofia (39:40.013)
Right.
Jessica Dueñas (39:43.688)
chose or will at that point, not really, but you know what I mean. Like you, you set that boundary that made a big difference or, you know, even when I was in your house, like there were times that like, you were very clear, like if you’re staying here, then I’m holding your car keys. Of course I, you can’t control everything I did. Right. Of course you didn’t plan for me to call the Uber, but whatever.
Sofia (39:46.818)
Yeah.
Sofia (39:57.674)
Right. Of course, I didn’t realize that was before. Right. Oh, but also I didn’t realize that Uber delivered alcohol. And that was like, I remember one time, the doorbell rings. And you know, normally people let you know when they’re going to come over, they’ll just pop over. So I was like, Oh, that’s weird. And it’s like, nighttime. I’m like, I don’t think you know.
Jessica Dueñas (40:08.849)
Alcohol. Right.
Yeah
Sofia (40:22.966)
Amazon doesn’t ring the doorbell. And I opened the door and this guy’s there with like a brown bag, a brown paper bag. And I’m like, what’s this? And he’s like, oh, I’m delivering this. I was like mind blown because here I think I’m like, oh, I got her keys. She’s like, I’m gonna get alcohol.
Jessica Dueñas (40:41.934)
Right. I mean, right. Well, you tried, right? And that’s what matters. But the boundary setting, you know, of course, these are perfectly good examples of like, it’s not perfect, right? But again, like people who are struggling with their loved ones, it is important to evaluate like what boundaries can you set? Like, are they welcoming your home and understanding that it’s okay if not? Like, again, you drew that line at that point when it was time for me to go into that last facility.
I was no longer welcome in your home unless I’d changed certain things and then I was welcome back in your home, right? And so I think that for people, you know, like yes, you’re gonna feel guilty and it’s okay to feel guilty. It’s okay to not feel okay, but you have to make sure that you’re protecting your home, protecting your family, protecting your loved ones, right? Like there was nothing that I would steal, but like if I had been desperate enough, I could have taken like money from, you know what I mean? So I think like it’s really important for people to establish boundaries.
Sofia (41:13.63)
Right. Yeah.
Sofia (41:28.014)
Wow.
Sofia (41:33.978)
Yeah, but I think, yeah, and like I said, for me, the breaking point was just, you know, that realization that you were going to get into a car with someone that you didn’t know from Adam, and who knows what, where that man could have taken you, you know, like the fact that you had such a disregard for your own well-being, you know, that for me was like, oh no, oh hell no.
Jessica Dueñas (41:53.257)
Right.
Jessica Dueñas (42:04.146)
Yeah.
Sofia (42:05.07)
Like, that’s it. Like that was the line kind of in the sand for me. Like I was not, I couldn’t sit by idly and let you just put yourself at risk that way. And you know, it’s funny because you weren’t like a drinking and driving person. Like I felt like you were, yeah, like you were aware enough that you would always Uber to wherever you were going. Like you didn’t try to drive.
Jessica Dueñas (42:22.304)
Thank God.
Sofia (42:31.706)
But you know that just scared you know excuse my language the shit out of me when you were like yeah I’ve got a right I was like what so for me that was the boundary like I just couldn’t I could not just sit by and let that happen you know so that was when I was like oh no this is something’s gotta happen here um you know and I’m grateful like today I’m just I’m so grateful
Jessica Dueñas (42:40.64)
Yeah.
Jessica Dueñas (42:49.889)
Yeah.
Sofia (43:01.098)
and proud of where you are and the fact that you are taking this experience and helping other people having an impact even if it’s one person and then that person pays it forward, it’s a ripple effect and for anyone who has a loved one going through this, I’m fortunate enough that this has been my outcome.
you know, that the person that I love is healthy and safe and happy. And you know, in such a good place that it just, it, it fills my heart and makes me so happy because that’s all I’ve ever wanted. You know, it’s like, that’s all you ever want for the people you love is for them to be healthy and happy. And so I think that you are helping other people get to that place.
And my heart goes out to the people that don’t have somebody supporting them. Because it’s not an easy journey to do on your own. Not that it’s not achievable, but it’s so much easier when you have somebody to lean on, I think.
Jessica Dueñas (44:12.552)
Yeah. And I mean, and I’ll close out by just, I mean, I’ve said it to you personally, but just so that it’s recorded for the internet to save forever. I love you so much. I thank you so much for believing in me. Like I’ll tell you, I know, but seriously, like you believed in me. I know. But you know, like there may have been times when there’s 8 billion people on this planet and you were the one who believed.
Sofia (44:30.614)
So now you’re making me get teary eyed.
Jessica Dueñas (44:41.972)
that I could, and I think that there’s the power of just one. And I think that our relationship, our sisterhood, is a testament to all that can come from just believing in a person. And so, you know, recovery is absolutely possible if you’re listening, and if you have a loved one, cheer them on healthily, work with a professional to set the appropriate boundaries for yourself so that you stay healthy.
And same thing, if you have a loved one who is still struggling, I wish them all the love. I wish you all the love in the world. This is hard. You don’t have to do this alone. If you want to reach out, my sister does not like random strangers reaching out to her, but you are more than welcome to reach out to me and send me a message through my social media or email, and I will happily pass the message on to her. She doesn’t like strangers following her, but you’re welcome to follow me. I take strangers following me all the time.
Sofia (45:37.827)
Yeah.
Jessica Dueñas (45:40.06)
So just thank you all so much, so much for listening. I really hope that you got something out of this. And just again, thank you to my sister, Sofia, for sharing her part of my story with everybody. So thank you everybody for listening.
