Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, It's me Stephanie Wilder Taylor. Welcome to Drunkish.
I wrote a book called Drunkish a couple of years
ago where I told my sobriety story, and now this
is my podcast so I can hear other people's sobriety
stories and we can all heal together. Unless you're not
an alcoholic, and then you know you do you. Today's
guest is Kate Anthony, and what a great guest she was.
She is the author of the book The D Word,
Making the Ultimate Decision about Your Marriage, and she has
a hit podcast called The Divorce Survival Guide, which is
such an amazing tool for helping women decide whether to
stay in their marriage or whether it's a tox successfool.
Speaker 2: Plus, she's a.
Speaker 1: Sought after coach and she does group advice or one
on one help to women, and you can find all
that information on her website Kateanthony dot com. But she
is here right now.
Speaker 2: And welcome to Drunkish.
Speaker 1: Kate. I'm so so excited. We were talking before we
even before I hit record, because I don't know, I
feel like we have like friendship chemistry.
Speaker 2: I'm well, we've been Facebook friends for years. Yeah, like
I don't even know how long, And yes, I one hundred.
Speaker 1: Agree because we have we have a mutual friend, our
friend Robin, and she was like, you should have Kate
on your other my other podcast, which is for Crying
Out Loud, because you're a divorce coach, and we thought
that would be very fitting for we have a lot
of a lot of married ladies or divorced ladies or
going through divorced women on my other podcast for Crying
Out Loud. So you came on and it was a
great interview and I think really helped my other podcast host, Lynnette.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think. So she was going through it, like you know,
when you're going through it, you're like, you know, there
was there was a lot, let's say, that she could
relate to in the stuff I was talking about.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So, as I already said in the intro, though,
you have a very popular podcast, which is The Divorce
The Divorce Survival Guide is your podcast, and you've also
written a book called The D Word, Making the Ultimate
Decision about your marriage. But you're also seven years sober.
Speaker 2: I am almost almost seven, and I guess like in November, yeah,
mid November will be seven Okay, So god willing. Well, yeah,
this doesn't make you. I really thanks. I have zero
desire to drink zero, so yeah, zero, and I rarely
do once I once I stopped, I was, I mean, well,
it took a while for me to get there. But
I really have never looked back. I really have never
looked back.
Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit about your drinking. Didn't
start young and then get bad later, No, tell me everything,
Tell me everything.
Speaker 2: So I'm not like your typical alcoholic. I've never I've
never identified as an alcoholic. I grew up with an
alcoholic dad, surrounded I mean surround, I mean, of course,
surrounded by alcoholics. So I was always in the other program,
and I was, and I went to a bazillion AA meetings.
My dad got sober when I was eighteen, So I
started going to AA meetings when I was pretty young
to sort of see what all this was about, you know.
Then my best friend got sober. Then my other best
friend got sober. Right, So I've always been surrounded by alcoholics,
and I knew that like I was not. I just
never related to the AA version of I'm an alcoholic, right,
And I was never a drinker like my alcoholic friends
would always say, and I call them alcoholics because they
identify as alcoholics. But just to be clear, they always
will say to me, they would say, would say, you
were so annoying at parties because you would be you
would hold one beer for like six hours and we couldn't.
We were like, what the fuck is she doing? Why
isn't she drinking that beer? Right? Because they were obsessed
with it, right, And so I feel for them. Yeah,
you would have done the same thing. You would have
been like, am is she holding that for you? I
don't understand. I got there later, you know. But so
I was never a drinker.
Speaker 1: And then and can I have to ask you what
can I just dig a tiny bit deeper? But your
dad was an alcoholic while you were growing up and
then got sober. So was there and I hear this
a lot. Was there kind of a fear of like, oh,
I don't want to drink like that?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: No, okay, no, because what's funny is that my dad's
drug use was more in the forefront, right, So to me,
I didn't even when he was like I got sober,
I was like, huh, because I never saw alcohol as
being the problem.
Speaker 2: I thought cocaine was the problem. I thought marijuana was
the problem. But then I was like, oh, right, every
single time I see you, we're in a bar. Like
I was going to bars when I was eight years old,
spending a whole weekend in New York City Tribeca bars
like grang GC bars. How I grew up, I would say,
I grew up in like a Wes Anderson movie on
my mom's side and after hours on my dad's side. Wow,
that's a good description. So I so yeah, it wasn't.
I never touched cocaine ever because of my dad, and
I like really didn't like weed because of my dad.
But Booze, I was like, I don't. I didn't identify
that as kind of being a problem for him, yeah,
or for me really as a child, I did identify
weed and cocaine as problems with my relationship with my dad.
So he so yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't an avoidant thing.
It wasn't like, oh God, I gotta be careful or
I don't like this. It was literally like I don't.
This is gross. This stuff doesn't taste good. It really doesn't.
Speaker 4: I never really objectively doesn't right, Like it's if anything
like I think any grace says like if anything is
an acquired taste, like probably it doesn't taste good, right,
it's probably gross, right right?
Speaker 2: So I uh, but and then you know, when I
married my ex husband, he was sober. He was a
sober I mean like ding ding ding, he was sober.
We were twenty eight when we met. He was already
eight years sober. And that's when I started my alan
On journey, Like I you know, went into in because
I was like, everyone around me is an alcoholic. Maybe
I should do something about this. And so I did,
and I dug really deeply into that program and spent
a long time working like a serious, like black belt
alan On program, which I know I'm not supposed to say,
but I also like I'm not I don't actively I'm
not actively in allen On anymore. So I can identify
that for myself.
Speaker 1: I always feel like with anonymity, it's it's about mentioning
other people being in there. It's not like you're allowed
to say.
Speaker 2: Anonymous at the level of press, radio, TV and film,
right right, like from the traditions, No no, no, no, no,
absolutely not, but just from the I want to honor
the traditions, which is right that we're not supposed to do.
But we're still a traction.
Speaker 1: Not promotion. You're not We're not here speaking for any
any program. I make that pretty clear, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: People, Yeah, if they want to get sober, they can
do There's a lot of ways to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm going to talk about that because I
didn't do it the traditional sure a way. Right, So yes,
I'm glad you said that. It's I mean, it's true.
I just I just like to be mindful of like,
so anyway, Yeah, I went I went into ellen On
when I was like twenty eight, and I had like
an incredible double Winter sponsor who was like just I
mean I would call her and I would be bunch,
be great, what step are you on? Or anybody?
Speaker 1: For anybody that I didn't know what a double winner is.
That that is somebody who identifies as an alcoholic and
has an alcoholic in their life that they're trying to
deal with.
Speaker 2: Yes, so somebody who was you know, alan On and
out right exactly. And you know they often say, I
don't know how much you go into this, Stephanie, but
you know they often say that alan On is graduate
school for alcoholics because it's the relationship program, right, It's like,
once the booze is gone, then we got to deal
with all this other shit. And so yeah, so she
was amazing. Amanda was amazing. She was like, you know, really,
I mean I was. I was deep in there for
like a good ten to fifteen years and then I
so I was married to a sober alcoholics. I never
drank like I did not drink when I was married
because and we would have the same thing where we
would go out to dinner and I'd order a glass
of wine and it would sit there and he'd be like,
are you going to drink that.
Speaker 1: Again?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Exactly, He's like what are you doing? He's like,
could you please chug it? Just make me feel better?
And chug it. Not that he cared about it being
on the table. He was just like, I don't understand.
Speaker 1: But can I ask you a question? Mm hmmm, like
what made you feel like you have to work really
hard at an alan On program? If he was sober
the whole time you met him, he was sober, it's.
Speaker 2: A yeah, it's a great question. I mean I think,
oh dear, there were so many things he was sober
and he was also emotionally abusive. And I think a
lot of my alan On journey was trying to fix
myself because he was telling me that there were all
these things wrong with me, right, and I cannsidered him.
We're evolved because he's been working a program for eight
years already, and he'll always I remember having this feeling
like he'll always be eight years ahead of me in
growth and development, which is so what a sad thing
to think, right, And he certainly didn't sort of disavow
me of that belief, right. I think you very much
enjoyed that he So there was always this like, well,
you know. And also, by the way, alan On is
not just for dealing with the alcoholic. Alan On is
for dealing with yourself, because I developed all of my
coping mechanisms, my relationship skills in the context of alcoholism,
and also my mother being an untreated alan On. Right,
So we develop a lot of character traits and behaviors
that have nothing to do with the alcoholic, sober or
not that you're living with. I mean, they are, you know,
sort of the I'm so articulate today, Stephanie. One of
the key sort of character traits right is control because
for people who were raised in an alcoholic home. Now
I was not raised in an alcoholic home because my
dad was not there, But is this sort of this
control you're trying to control everything because when you grow
up in an alcoholic home, there's a lot of chaos
and you don't know whether you know this, there's counting drinks,
there's you don't know when the who's going to walk
in the door. So you're constantly trying to you know,
backpedal or you're walking a egshelves right, And so you
develop all these character traits all by yourself that have
nothing to do with anyone else in your life. And
so my journey in alan On was really about undoing
all of that and not being so controlling and not
believing that anything that my okayness had anything to do
with the alcoholic or anyone else in my life. Learning
to become okay just by myself. And so if somebody
did something or didn't do something, or drank or didn't drink,
or was mean to me or cheated on me, like
I was okay, because before that I was not okay
on any level, right, Because unless you were okay, unless
you told me, I was okay. I had no sense
of self so regardless, So it didn't even matter that
he was sober, right, It was that I had all
of this stuff and he did not treat me well,
and I didn't have enough of a sense of self
to say that's not okay. Actually, I choose to leave, right.
And one of the issues that I had in alan
On is that, like, there's a lot of like it's
okay to love an alcoholic, which of course it is,
but it made me feel or I took it to
mean that, you know, I kind of had to stay
like there was a way to work through all of
these things. It didn't give me the sense that like, well,
there's alcoholism and then there's asshole. Right, there's alcoholism, and
there are short maybe character traits and defects and all
of those things. But then there's also emotional abuse, which
is something completely different from the alcoholism. And I was
never really able to discern those things.
Speaker 1: You've said. And this is sort of off topic here,
but I think it's relevant because in a clip of
you on a different podcast, you were talking about couples
therapy uh not being appropriate for actual abuse, because that's
that's the other person's issue. They need therapy.
Speaker 2: But this is a thing I think.
Speaker 1: Especially with women, is no matter what's happening, we feel like,
let me just try to fix myself, let me try
to improve.
Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly, yes, one hundred percent. And when you're in
an abusive relationship, you're constantly being told that you're the problem,
and that any problem that you have is just because
well if you would just and I and the goalpost
is constantly moving, but you're gonna you're aiming for it,
it doesn't matter, like, oh, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
modulate my voice this way, and i'm gonna talk in
this way, and i'm gonna, you know, rush up to
you when you come into a party because that's what
you want. And I'm gonna be more effusive because that's
what will make you feel better. But oh now I'm
being an authentic Okay, wait now, I'll do it this way, right.
And it's fucking crazy making, right, it's crazy making, and
it's and it's not that's not the problem, right. The
problem is that this person is well, doesn't love you. Right.
I was constantly trying to get him to love me,
please love me. See me for who I am. Don't
you see me? And then but then I saw myself
less and less and less and less, and then I
was this empty shell of a person. But we are,
we are taught women in particular right, like, well, let's
do this work. I mean like something like seventy five
percent of personal development work is consumed by women, except
for the like pro productivity hacking and biohacking and whatever,
which really has nothing to do with relation, relational anything.
Speaker 1: It has to do with making money.
Speaker 2: It has to do with making money, and like optimizing
your body to stay around longer, to continue to be dominant.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yes, I feel like so anyway in a
spiral him No, but I was going to say that again,
this doesn't have a lot to do with alcoholism, but
not that you're an alcoholic.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it doesn't have to do with them.
But it's it's hitting home for me in the way
of I believe that a lot of women who grow
up in any kind of chaotic environment, be it whether
it's with alcoholism or drug addiction or just emotional abuse,
tend to find men where or women whatever your relationship is,
where you have to prove where you have to try
to get them to love you. And I find that
with a lot of my friends who have had similar
upbringings to me, that we tend to pick men, but
we have to prove ourselves too.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely, And it's.
Speaker 1: My husbanding my husband. I just just want to make
this just clarify. It was the first break in that
cycle for me, though. Every person leading up to him,
and he was my husband, was kind of boring to
me at first because he just he was consistent and
normal and just liked me. And I found that so distasteful, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, what's interesting. So I recently got engaged, So
just to clarify, I have been divorced for sixteen years
and I didn't date for eight eight of the last years.
I was like, I am so done, and through a
series of events, my friends were like, you have to
try again. This is ridiculous, and I did and I
met this incredible man who I've now engaged to. And
he's so consistent and he's so loving and he absolutely
adores me. And I'll tell you what, even years ago,
certainly eight years ago, certainly before I got sober, right,
I never ever would have I would have been like ew,
go away, right, not attractive, not interesting, And now I like,
oh my god, I just like I relish it. It's so amazing.
And I feel the same way about him, but like,
oh my god, it's like it's so incredible. There's no
drama like zero, there's it's just always consistent and fun,
you know, and goofy. Yeah, And I feel and in that.
What's really interesting to me is that in that space,
and I do think sobriety has a lot to do
with us. In this container of safety and love and
consistency and steadfast business, I am able to like relax
into more of my full being and I am able
to be more of myself than I've ever been in
a relationship and also by myself right Like I like,
I'm I'm expanding into all of these facets of myself
totally goofy, totally like ridiculous, silly like in ways and
passionate and all of these things that I just didn't
really know that I possessed because he just like holds
this container of complete unconditional adoration of me and vice versa,
and it's fucking wild. That's it's crazy, but you know,
but you have to. I did have to be ready
for it. I definitely had to be sober for it.
Speaker 1: So drinking pick up. Yeah, so you're in this marriage.
How long were you married to this?
Speaker 2: So you know we were together for ten years? We
were married for five which let's also like, let's look
at that we were together, we were living together. I
had to give him an ultimatum for marriage. You know,
we started dating at twenty eight. I hit thirty thirty one,
thirty two, I'm like, like, are we doing this or not?
Did I just waste five years? And I had to
give him an ultimatum Like that man did not choose me,
nor did he let me go, and nor did I
push him away? Right, Like lots of responsibility, but like
like you're we were together for five years and I
had to give him an ultimatum. Like that's sad, No
one should have to do that. But anyway, I digress.
So we were together for ten years. We have an
amazing son. He's now twenty, and I should say that
he and I are very good friends. Now. He has
done a lot of work on himself. He has come
to terms with how abusive he was. He was also
chronically unfaithful and he has come to terms with all
of that and you know, joined other programs to deal
with all of that stuff. So you know, as he
has continued to do the work, we have developed a
very close friendship and I deeply respect the level of
work that he has done to really change who he
is in relationship and he's great now. So but so
we were in the butt as we were in this marriage.
I was suffocating in misery and there was It was
really when I got divorced, when I finally got out,
that is when I started drinking. When I started hanging
out with girlfriends on play dates. Well, first of all,
I remember going one of our first playdates when Emmett
was really little. He was like one or he was
maybe two, and my friend, my girlfriend, brought over a
bottle of wine for the play date and I was like, wait,
you can do that, and she goes, yeah, you have
to do that, right Mommy. Wine culture right there started
and I was like, oh my god, we drink on
play dates? How fun? And that was kind of where
it started. And what happened was as I got divorced,
I was doing more and more play dates on my own,
and I was I mean, really My drinking ramped up
in my early years of parenting. And it sickens me
to say this, like it's sick, it makes me want
to throw up, But it really was. It was playdates. First,
it was we would share one bottle of wine. Then
we were like, well that's not enough. Then we would
share two bottles of wine. Then we would go to
like ree I mean you know, and then I would
get in the fucking car with my child by the way,
and drive so really awful, really disgusting. But I think
what was happening was I was so excited to be
out of my marriage. I was very like when I
got out, I was having parties, I was drinking, I
was having fun, I was going out, I was dating,
I was having sex. Like I was living my very
very best life and not dealing with any of the
emotional fallout and the feelings. I was like, whoa, I'm free,
I'm done right. And then over time, this like thing
starts come creeping in. All of the trauma we now
understand is trauma. Back then, we weren't talking about it
like this. Sixteen years ago. We were not having the
conversations about trauma the way we are now, and all
of the trauma was creeping in. I was like, la
la la la, la la la, drink drink, drink, drink, right,
And so over the course of ten years, I was
my drinking was increasing, and as I hit perimenopause, I
was drinking every single day and it would either be
you know, sometimes a half a bottle, sometimes a bottle
of wine. Then in perimenopause, the wine was really not
like agree with my system. So I was like, well,
I should definitely start drinking you know, vodka or tequila
better for you, or whiskey because it's because yeah, it's
what doesn't interacts as poorly with the hormones, and it's
you know, it's cleaner, so it's much better for you.
Speaker 1: And you don't have to drink as much of it,
you know, that's that's the good news.
Speaker 2: You could just do shots, uh huh, right, yeah, uh huh.
So then it would be like, you know, two or
three whiskeys and they would get like a little bigger,
you know, I mean. And I was like, and this
was be mostly at home by this point, and it
was older, we weren't doing as many playdates or whatever.
So I was like drinking a loter home every single night,
hard liquor everything during this time.
Speaker 1: Were you seeing this in yourself where you like, this
is not good, let me try to stop. Were you
doing any kind of trying to moderate.
Speaker 2: You know, I think there were no. I was not.
I was very much enjoying it. Okay, it was very
much enjoying it up up to a point. Then there
came a point where, quick, quick, I didn't realize did
you have were there any consequences like even doing the
play dates?
Speaker 1: Did you ever did you ever drive home and go,
oh shit, I shouldn't have been I really shouldn't have
been driving.
Speaker 2: Oh all the time, time, all the time. I would
wake up in a yes, So what I what would
happen is I would wake up at three o'clock in
the morning, as you do because of the alcohol and
the hormones and the you know, adrenaline hitting your system.
I would wake up at three o'clock in the morning,
and then I would have this like incredible shame of like,
holy fuck, I can't believe I drove. I can't believe
I drove my child that like I was door runk.
If I had been pulled over, I would have been
had it I definitely would have gotten a DUI. I
probably and I would have had my child taken away
from me. Like that's where we were at. But I
was still like, oh, I shouldn't do that right like this,
the shame was still like it wasn't deep yet, got it.
It was definitely a like ooh girl, yeah, let's not
do that again. And then you know, cut to next
week we're doing it again, or we should do it
at my house, or like let's have a play date
to Natra this time. Like I'm not going to drink
this week or I'm not gonna you know, or I
would do Whole thirty and so like I can't drink
for a month, but like by day like fourteen, I'm
like I can have like vodka. Vodka's clean on Whole thirty.
There's no sugar. That's fine. So yeah, I mean, just
looking back on it, it's like, wow, sometimes it really
it really does. Like when you start to pick through it,
you know, it's not it's not cute.
Speaker 1: One of the things about you know, being in a program,
I guess, is that you do tend to because I
definitely tended to while I was drinking. Go, it wasn't
that it's not that bad. But when I got sober,
I only remembered a couple of the big instances where
it was that bad. But through doing some of the
work of that program and writing it all down, I
was like, it's much harder to fool yourself into going
like it wasn't that bad, because when it's like it
was a game of comparing myself, like I'm not bad
enough to need meetings, I'm not bad enough to like make.
Speaker 2: This a forever thing.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 1: But once I really took a look at my whole history,
I was like, oh, yeah, it's noth was that great?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so you know, so I'm glad you said
that because one of the things that happened around It's
funny because it was really early on I think around
I hadn't gone off of wine. I was in a
relationship with somebody who later got sober. Surprise, surprise. We
drank a lot of white wine. He drank like cheap chardenay,
that's like his was his drink of choice, and so
we drank a lot of that. And I would have
these emotional roller coasters and I would be like, I
need to quit drinking. I think maybe I have a problem.
I feel like I feel like there's something wrong. I
feel like I have a problem. And then I would
call my alcoholic friends and be like, take me to
a meeting. I really don't feel I feel like there's
something wrong, and they'd be like, you know, come on,
and so then I'd be like, no, I don't know.
And then I would go to an AA meeting and
I would sit there and be like, I don't relate
to these stories, and so I and my friends would
be like, yeah, you're not an alcoholic. So I'd be like, Okay,
I guess I can keep drinking then, right, right, because
I don't relate to the stories that I've heard for
decades in many meetings in many cities, right, Like, I
don't relate to the you know, the alcoholic experience as
you see most often in the rooms of AA. Right.
Speaker 1: We've made it such a black and white thing, and
I'm glad that.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that.
Speaker 1: And even a podcast like this has hit at a
time where were much more accepting of all different levels
of like, if you want to not drink, like it's
a valid choice, regardless of whether you're fit into this
box of what you think alcoholism is exactly I call
it alcoholism because because it needs to be really black
and white for me, I need to not drink. I
need to have no wiggle room because and by the way,
I've tried, like I've tried many times before, I got
sober this time, but yeah, I just think I was.
Speaker 2: I was also.
Speaker 1: Really caught up in that, like, well, I'm not that,
so I can't be I can't be this. I it
doesn't make sense for me to just never drink again.
And I bought into like people my friends too, being like,
you're being too hard on.
Speaker 2: Yourself, right right, because they don't want you to stop
drinking because because it's fun. Yeah, so you know, I so.
But but the alcoholics were like, yeah, you're not an alcoholic.
This is ridiculous, right, And I'd be like, okay, so
I guess if I'm an elk. If I'm not that,
then I'm it's fine. But I don't have to worry
and I can just keep drinking. And so, like another
many years went by, and I that relationship, that that
very alcoholic relationship was very devastating. White wine Guy, very devastating,
very very toxic, the most toxic relationship I've ever had
in my life, and it was it did a number
on me for many, many years, and so I think
I went deeper into the into my drinking. And at
a certain point, I around twenty seventeen eighteen, I think,
I what year are we in? Now We're in twenty
twenty five. Yeah, so I was twenty eighteen. I think
that I got sober. I was like, this has to
there's something wrong. And I but I'm not an alcoholic,
but I can't stand what I'm doing to myself. But
I'm not never gonna not drink again. That's ridiculously And
then their little voice in my head was like, if
you're that concerned about never drinking again, then like maybe
that's a problem, you know, because someone who does not
have a problem and be like okay, fine, you know.
But I was like, you're gonna tell me I can
never drink again? Like fuck all the way off. So
and there was a little voice inside my head that
was like, maybe that's part of the problem. And I
was looking for ways and like then it got to
the point where every single day, and this probably lasted
a year, every single day I would wake up and say, Okay,
I'm done I'm not doing this. I cannot do this anymore.
And by four o'clock, three o'clock, my anxiety levels would
be so fucking high that I could barely function, and
the only thing that would help would be a drink,
whether that was wine or booth. Usually at that point
we were, you know, into the harder stuff, just to
take the edge off, right, and then the night would happen.
It would just then it would be one, two, three,
and then I would, you know, go to bed, pass
out whatever, wake up at three o'clock in the morning
when the adrenaline would hit my system, and oh, usually
throughout the evening. Then I'd be miserable, crying, an emotional
just basket case. Then I would wake up at three
o'clock in the morning in a shame spiral. What's wrong
with you? Why do you keep doing this? You have
to stop? This is crazy. Wake up in the morning, Okay,
I'm not going to do it. And then by three
o'clock the anxiety was so high that I had to
do it. And this went on for a year, and
I was I was, I was desperate. And then I
would be out with my friends and they would be
like and I'd be like, no, I don't want to drink,
like I don't feel right. It's just then they'd be
like why, what's like? And I was sure that everybody
else was really knew that I that I had a
problem or thought I was an alcoholic or whatever. And
they were like, no, like you drink like we drink.
And I'm like, I drink like you drink when we're together,
but I'm also doing that like when we're away for
like a girl's weekend, but I'm also doing it every day, right,
And also I don't feel good. Also I feel like
I'm going crazy. And and then again went to a
couple of AA meetings and I was like, I don't
relate to this the story, Like I just I have
not been drinking since I was a child. I am
not like. This was not something that I felt like,
I don't know. I just I was like I was
searching for help. And then I don't remember who recommended
Annie Grace's book This Naked Mind, but I was like, okay, Vine, okay, Vine,
And I read it and I was like, oh, oh,
and have you talked do you? Have you talked about
this on the show? This book? So she basically breaks
it down as to like the science why you're like
that alcohol is a poison, it's a carcinogen, that it
becomes addictive to pretty much everybody over time. That the
emotional highs and lows that I was going through is
actually the body's hormonal system trying to regulate itself and
sometimes overshooting the mark. I thought when I woke up
at three o'clock in the morning that it was because
I was it was the sugar. I thought it was
the sugar from the alcohol, And it turns out it's not.
It's that when you've been pushing pumping your body full
of a depressant and you go so low, your body
shoots it through full of adrenaline and cortisol stress hormones
to like bring it back up, but it overshoots the
mark and then you're hit with a shot of adrenaline
at three o'clock in the morning, and that's why you
like you wake up and you literally can't go back
to sleep because your body's like right, and that the
come down later in the afternoon and the depression is
the body coming off of that, and that like the
emotional roller coasters that I thought alcohol was fixing, Alcohol
was actually causing. And she talks a lot about how,
you know, a lot of people. She doesn't detigrate aa
at all, but she does talk about how like some
people don't relate to that, and then they're told that
don't they don't have a problem like me, and then
they keep drinking like me when it's like, alcohol is
the problem, right, alcohol can just be the problem without
it being you or anything like that. And so there
was something so liberating about it. I was like, Oh,
there's a whole other way that I can look at
this that's more scientific, right, that like actually I related
to and somehow just kind of gave me license to
be like, Okay, I surrender, like and and she says
she has this thing called the alcohol experiment, which is like,
just try it for thirty days, right, just try it
and see how you feel. And I but what I
when I quit, it was a very planned out I
am now quitting, I'm done. And I remember having I
was like, Okay, I'm going out with my friends this night,
so that'll be my last night, and then starting on
Saturday morning, that's it. And I just made a very
conscious decision I was done. And once I did that,
like I remember that night, I was like, well, this
is it my last hurrah, and I thought I would
like and I just didn't want it. I just didn't
want it. Like I had two SIPs and I was like,
I'm done. And it was kind of as simple as that.
I was just done. And I want to say it
was like as simple as that, it was easy. It
wasn't easy because what ended up happening was it was
easy for me to not drink. I literally never looked
back in terms of like oh God, oh God, I
need a drink, or I want to drink, I want
I just did not want to drink. Ever again, I
felt I was so fucking over it. And I finally
understood that the reason I felt all the ways that
I did was because of this thing that was poisoning
me and I not just that I couldn't handle it.
That like alcohol itself is like because I think that
what I thought up until that point was that alcohol
itself is not a problem, it's me in relation to it.
And then when I was like, no, it's actually it's
actually the booze, it's actually this thing that's a poison
it just it freed me up to be like I
don't ever want to do that again. But then I
had to deal with this tidal wave of grief and
trauma that I had been suppressing for ten years since
my divorce. And that's where the shit got real, you know,
and where it got again not hard to not drink,
but really hard two be like present, sober with all
this shit.
Speaker 1: During this time when it, you know, leading up to
quitting drinking. Did your son ever comment on your drinking
or never? Never?
Speaker 2: Never, Nope, he would say when he was little, he's like,
oh and you have wine, you get louder and you
laugh a lot more. But he never commented on it.
He never said he never saw it. Is that like
he was like, yeah, this is just normal. It's like
grown up, grown up drink wine when they get together.
But dad doesn't raize alcoholic right yeah, but because he's
an alcoholic, right right right? So yeah, I mean even
now I'll ask him, I'm like, did you And he's like, no,
I didn't think you had a problem at all. Interesting,
so I probably hit it well.
Speaker 1: So then you get sober, you're having all these feelings,
but you and that there was never a time you
were like, uh, be so nice to have a glass
of wine to just check out.
Speaker 2: No, and that's weird. I really didn't. I really did not.
I I mean I did not go out anymore. I
was like, oh, so much of my life revolves around,
you know, going to bouro. My social life revolves around alcohol,
and a lot of the people that I hung out
with obviously their lives revolved around alcohol. And so I
was like, I can't do any of those things, and
maybe I can't see those people, and maybe I need
to just like whoop, like hunker down and you know,
just sort of batten down the hatches for a bit.
And I did. But yeah, I never felt like, oh man,
I sure love to drink right now.
Speaker 1: And how are your friends, especially your drinking buddy friends,
how did they take you not drinking anymore?
Speaker 2: They were wonderful. I you know, I have heard so
many stories of people being such assholes to their friends
who quit drinking because it challenges them, because they're like,
if you have a problem, then you know, what does
that say about me? And they don't want to know
about that, right all of these things. My friends were like,
if you feel like shit, then like, okay, I support you.
What do we need to do? And one of my
you know, sort of chronic drinking buddies ended up quitting
drinking a few months after me, so that was really fun.
But you know, people like our mutual friend Robin, our
friend Kate, she was one of my biggest drinking buddies.
And you know, Robin would come over every once in
a while to like, you know, go out with us,
but not as often because she doesn't live very close
to us. But Kate and I a couple of times
a week we were out and we were drinking, and
you know, we have a friendship beyond that, and she
was like, I support you, I love you. Whatever you need,
I'm here for you. Let's go have dinner. Oh yeah, yeah,
I have good friends. I didn't I never felt like, yeah,
I didn't lose any friendships when I got sober.
Speaker 1: So what about dating, because that can be really challenging
dating sober sober sex, like you had to go into track.
And also, I'm going to combine this with another topic
which I know you are familiar with. But a lot
of times when we leave a toxic relationship, like the
next one, you know, it's we follow patterns. Oh yeah,
and the next one's also toxic and so how did
you break your breaking your cycle with drinking your breaking,
and by cycle, I mean your habitual. This is how
I deal with stuff. Yeah, and so how did you
know you probably have to change a lot of things
at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I did. Uh. So what's interesting is that
I got sober ultimately in what became my eight year
dry spell. Right. So, I hadn't dated for eight years
when I met my fiancee Ethan, and I was sober
for like just over six So I did not date.
I was like, I didn't I think, I didn't know
how how I think. I went on a few dates
and but yeah, I used to be all my dates
were drunk, all of them, I would So I went
on a few dates, and I was much more loveable,
headed and clear about like oh I like this person
or oh this I don't like this person? Right, And
I felt much more in control of my environment and myself.
But I really I didn't want to be then. I
just didn't really want to even go down that road anymore.
There was something about sort of coming home to myself
and taking away all of stripping myself of all of
the barriers that then I was like, I don't I
don't really need this. I don't really want this. I
don't because I think I was dating for years from
a place of save me, save me, save me, And
I think once I saved myself from drinking and this
sort of checked out life that I was living, I
didn't need anyone to save me anymore. I finally I
saved myself at a very core level. And then I
went through this process of dealing with the trauma, dealing
with the grief. I ended up going away to a
a trauma recovery program. Oh wow, impatient. Yeah, because I
was getting hit by everything. My ex husband was also
like repeating patterns in his second marriage. He was cheating,
he was doing all the things. And it was like,
now I'm sober, Now I'm not in the marriage. Now
I can see really clearly. Oh actually, all the things
that I thought were my fault in our marriage, actually
he's doing them again. And oh wait, it wasn't me
at all. It was it was him. It was the relationship.
It was all of the things I thought. And I
get hit with this again, full title wave of a
realization of all of the shit that had happened in
my marriage, and got really clear because I didn't know
he had been cheating on me as much like I
really didn't know when we were I was so checked out,
I didn't realize that that's what was happening. And when
I saw him repeating the patterns in his second marriage,
I was like, oh my God, and I and it
was like I got smacked by all of this stuff
and I couldn't function. I was in a free state
for like a week straight. I could not get out
of it. So I went away. I went away to recovery,
and that was incredibly healing. And so I was doing
all of this healing work on myself, this emotional healing work.
Once I got the physical stuff out of the way,
I really wasn't interested in dating for a long time.
And in terms of like repeating toxic patterns, like yes,
like like I said, like that relationship that I had
three a four years post divorce was white wine Guy
was the most toxic relationship I've ever had in my life.
He damaged me far more than my husband ever did.
And I did not think I was going to recover
from that. So, you know, I just had a lot
of work to do on myself and to get to
a point where if I was going to choose someone,
I was going to do it from a place of recovery,
from like a healed place, from a place of I want,
not I need and I needed. I wanted to choose
somebody who was gonna bring something to my life and
wing to enhance it. And in order to do that,
I had to create like a really fucking kick ass
life that I loved, that I was interested in bringing
someone into, but that I would be totally really fine
if I if I never did. I love that.
Speaker 1: I think it's great. So you know, before we go,
tell me how you got into I mean, you took
all this healing, and now you help other women heal, yeah,
from their toxic relationships. Like how long after you quit
drinking did you go?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: I want to I want to give this back to people.
I want to help people get out of their marriages
or figure.
Speaker 2: Out of things. I had been doing it all along.
So I started my business in like twenty twelve. So
I had been doing it all along. I will tell
you that my business did not start becoming as successful
as it is now until I got sober, did the work,
and was really living authentically aligned with my message. Right,
I was actually practicing what I preached, and I don't
preach sobriety, but I certainly talk a lot about healing
and being present with oneself and being having this emotional
and mental clarity which I certainly didn't have when I
was drinking. And so all of the pieces of my life.
I can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt
that all of the pieces of my life got better
and were became aligned, and we're like all on the
right tracks once I quit drinking. Every piece of it,
from relational, my relationship with my mother, with both of
my parents, my relationships, my relationship with my ex husband,
although he had to do his work first too, my
relationship with my son. You know, when I you know,
when you become present with yourself and with others, it
can be pretty magical.
Speaker 1: Right, So tell us, tell us where to find you,
How do we sign up for coaching? How do we
get out of our shitty marriages?
Speaker 2: Yes? Not you? Not you? No? No don't. I mean,
just if it was I would say sure, but I
know it's not so so so uh yeah. Everything about
me is really on my website Kateanthony dot com and
my podcast is The Divorce Survival Guide podcast, which is
on all of the podcast platforms. If you type divorce
into the search bar, it'll come up, I think usually first.
And if you're questioning whether you should stay or go,
I've got a lot of content on that.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and the book is the D word.
Speaker 2: The book is the D word out of making the
ultimate decision about your marriage, and it really helps you,
walks you through, Like if you are just trying to
decide whether it'sdayre go. The D word is I think
sort of the clarifying, hopefully clarifying Bible for that.
Speaker 1: Well, this has been amazing. Thank you so much, Kate Anthony.
I hope you guys all go check out her stuff.
What a great talk.
Speaker 2: Dank it. Yeah, I've this good. I've just culling, yeah
Speaker 3: Yetting my dark This time you got me