Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome to Drunkish. It's a podcast. It's
based on a book I wrote a couple of years ago,
which you can still buy. You know, it's available today.
I have a great guest. Her name is Cindy. She's
going anonymous on this episode, but she has an incredible story,
a lot of years of sobriety, some offs and some
on years. And I think you're going to really enjoy
it and relate to it. And before I get to it,
do me a favor, and well, first of all, subscribe
and like this podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and
also head on over to YouTube and subscribe to the
channel the show Drunkish podcast over there. It will really
help me out. And now let's go. Welcome to Drunkish. Cindy,
my friend. Hi, a person I look up to for
fashion choices for personhood.
Speaker 2: Today I'm kind of looking like a little school teacher.
But I was a school Wait, actually it's kind of better.
I was a school teacher and I love being a
school teacher.
Speaker 1: Really, I did not know that about you. You didn't,
Oh my god, Yes, what did you teach?
Speaker 2: I taught first and second grade for ten years?
Speaker 1: Wow? I bet you were the best at that.
Speaker 2: I had the best time. I loved it, loved it. Yeah.
In fact, someone that I am very close to now
is thirty six years old and she lives down a
mile down the street and she, like me, is sober.
I taught her in first grade.
Speaker 1: Are you serious?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually it's really great to have adults now
that you know, say Sydney, because they called us by
the first name. It was a progressive school, Sidney, and
I'll turn around and like, you know, I still see
the little the little fabulous. Yeah, that's in all of us,
you know. And that's what I love about sobriety because
you said when we were talking about I know steph
is going to I don't know what she's going to
ask me or what, but we were talking about before
the we started the podcast, that part of addiction in
alcoholism is just complete isolation and loneliness. Not complete like physically,
but just inward because you think you're the only person
that's living this lie. And finally getting honest, I want
to start crying, you know, because Stephanie knows me when
I was pretending to be sober and had all these
years and then you know, getting really honest. What has
happened is just like this, slowly, this lightness has come
back into my life, and I personally feel like a kid.
I personally feel like like the beauty of the innocence
that was just so buried deep deep deep inside.
Speaker 1: Well, take me back, where are you from? Originally?
Speaker 2: I am originally from the central part, which is the
very lovely, sexy part of Mississippi, a town called Newton.
My dad was the mayor, there was the mayor. My
nephew was the fifth generation to live on one piece
of property, and so steeped in that weird Southern stuff.
You know, a lot of great stuff about the South.
I mean, we like people, we like to talk, and
then there's this whole horrible racist segregation that you know
as a small child, because I was a small child
when segregation was starting to shift a little bit, but
you know, growing up with that and then as coming
back as an adult and just going, oh my god,
oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So were your family drinkers?
Speaker 2: No, not at all, which is well, I should say,
my mom and my dad were not the only alcohol.
Our house was above the refrigerator, you know, open it
up and there's the cooking sherry and and then I
don't think I ever saw my father take a drink ever.
Now my mom and when she got older, like in
her late fifties, early sixties, she liked Margarita.
Speaker 1: Who doesn't who does with.
Speaker 2: Salt and she would get like a little tipsy with one,
and it was just the cutest thing, you know. But
one of her brothers was Uncle Hollis I found out
was an alcoholic. Don't you love that name? Ulcoholic?
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, I love that name. If I
if I could have another kid, I'd either have a dog.
Speaker 2: A dog. Yeah, okay. Ulcoholis was an alcohol alcoholic and
he got sober, just white knuckling it. Sheer determination will
and his wife went around, ain't hit went to his
friends and said, if you care anything about Hollis, me
and the family, do not let don't don't take him
out with you, you know. Yeah, And then I think
that's the only one I know of.
Speaker 1: I just came out the room. So did you start
drinking in high school?
Speaker 2: Before I started drinking, Stephanie, all right, I had such
attic behavior as a little kid back in the sixties.
Your parents would because it gets cold in the South
in the wintertime, you'd have to start the car to
get it wont and get the motor going and get
the heat going and stuff like that. And when I
was a little kid, I remember standing out behind, you know,
where all those wonderful few ms were happening coming out
of the car, and I would stand right there and
I'd twirl around, and I love that feeling. I was
getting sucked up even as a little kid. Yeah, and
then as a teenager, you know, I guess somehow, I like,
up until I was about sixteen, I was a candy striper,
sang in the church choir and you know, all this
kind of stuff, and witness to my older sister and
her friends who were drinking and told them that they
needed to rededicate their life to Jesus Christ as their
personal savior and quit partying until I had a drink,
and then I was like, what, you know, game on? Yeah,
I was definitely crazy party girl at like sixteen from
the end.
Speaker 1: But even let me ask you this, because I'm already
relating to you so much, were you also boy crazy?
Because I found some diaries from myself at that age,
at like fifteen and a half, when I started drinking
and every page was like, here's all the guys I
like right now that I had addicty behavior, like with
guys wanting to kiss everybody.
Speaker 2: I think you're a lot younger than man. I'm can
I tell that I'm sixty four, almost sixty five?
Speaker 1: Okay, well I'm turning sixty this year.
Speaker 2: Okay. Do you remember the group Bred? You suret from? Huh?
Speaker 1: Of course?
Speaker 2: Da? Okay? Or And she kept running why like all
those And I would write in my diary and I'd
look at the covers and I just think about the
guys that I was desperately in love with. Yeah, yeah,
definitely boy crazy and always much older. Never I mean
a guy my age didn't interest me one iota, you know.
And in fact, I remember when I was fifteen, this
guy Larry, I don't want to say his last name
because he's passed. He worked. I thought he was like
he looked like Jesus, long hair and a beard, and
he would, you know, the fact he was like twenty seven,
twenty eight going out with a fifteen year old. Thank god,
I never had sex with him. But he had dots,
he had sores on his arms, and I didn't know
what that was from I thought it was like mosquito bites.
In hindsight, he was a heroin atic Wow, yeah, in
Mississippi and I found him. Uh huh.
Speaker 1: I just okay, okay, So so you finish high school. No,
I'm assuming, like, no big consequences to drinking at that point.
Speaker 2: No, But I was always a blackout drinker. I mean,
you know, it was like that's what people did though
in high school. Same you wanted to wanted to get
crazy and wild, and which was what we did. But
I knew I'd come to school on Monday and go,
I'm not going to do that. I would wake up
and I'd be I have, like not suicidal, but I
hated myself so much I did. I remember trying to
commit suicide on Remember the diet pills that used to
come in blister packs, Yes, Exatrim. Exatrim like eating a
whole one or two whole container like containers, which is
a lot, and getting so sick, you know, But that
was I didn't know any different. I was just I
was messed up from the minute my drinking released this beast.
And it was a lot of fun, or I wouldn't
have done it as far as long. But I knew
I was going to have to dance with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So then I went I finished. I had a
boyfriend in high school who was eleven years older than me.
I was madly in love, seriously thought I was going
to marry him. He was actually in a weird kind
of fucked up way. He was a good guy, but
he used that against me too, and he broke up
with me. After my first year in I stayed in
Newton and I went to like a little junior college.
And when he broke up with me and my dad
died suddenly, I basically from I started bouncing every semester
to a different school in Mississippi for like a year
and a half, and then I moved to New York City,
which is so I went from a little tiny town
where you literally knew everybody. You know, The biggest deal
was Friday night hanging out downtown, drinking beer, watching cars
go by, and then you hollering at people and getting
them to come and stop and party. That was how
we used to party. And from there to New York City.
Speaker 3: Which was was really hard, really really hard, and that's
where my drinking got just h And at that time
I was just a drinker, and it got really ugly
and sad.
Speaker 2: And I, you know, just slept around with I didn't
even know why, I just it just happened. And then
I would see the remorse and the disdain in the
other person's eyes, and I just felt so shallow, and
so it was really it was that's And it took
a few years of living there and living like that
and then getting into drugs and stuff that I finally
went to my first AA meeting nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: So what kind of drugs did you get into?
Speaker 2: Not horrible just coke?
Speaker 1: Yeah, pot.
Speaker 2: Hated pot. I never understood why people like pot made
my eyes feel big and thick and my mouth and
made me very paranoid. But in New York in the eighties,
coke was a big thing. Dancing coke dancing, you know
that had jerking dance that we used to do. And
but belows, when I would wake up, not wake up,
when I would start coming to in the morning in
New York City, there were I was so depressed and
I did have a lot of suicidal ideation with coming
down off coke, and something in me said, oh, this
is not this is not a safe drug for you.
Speaker 1: You know, so you went to a meeting, but how
did you How did that come about? Did you know
somebody who was sober? Did you just have a low
moment and look it up in the phone book, like what?
Speaker 2: It's crazy. I don't ever remember hearing Alcoholics Anonymous. It
wasn't something I talked about my family. I was going
to hunt the College on sixty ninth in Lexington, and
I worked in a shoe store on Lexington and no
on Madison sixty ninth in Madison, and I was drinking
during the day. We had those little refrigerators and I
had some vodka in the back and I was mixing
it and there was a phone on the wall and
I remember calling for one one Alcoholics Anonymous and asking
for help, and this woman told me there was a
meeting at the seventy ninth Street workshop and I went
in and I remember thinking there was a thousand people,
and there was one woman that I was sort of
drawn to shoot, beautiful, short hair, very tall statuesque. I
think I talked to her a little bit afterwards. And
they had all these sayings on the wall and it
didn't stick right away, but pretty soon it did. I did,
and for me. You know, going to meetings in the
late eighties and New York was a lot of fun.
Not late, but mid you know, eighty six, eighty seven,
eighty eight, dated a lot of guys, cute guys in
AA and we just had a great time. It was
easy then.
Speaker 1: But let me ask you this. Did you think it
was a little bit dorky because you were young? How
like that they had these dances and stuff. Were you like,
I'm not doing that or were you embracing it and going,
this is so great, this is how I'll have a
social life.
Speaker 2: Going back to your boys situation, I was so boy
crazy that literally if they had said, join are the
what is it the Quantius club where you wear those
funny little hats and you ride in the parades and
their little tiny cars. If they had said this is
what I'm doing on the weekend, not not this is
what I'm doing. Do you want to participate, it would
be like that's where I'm going to be. I would
be there, Okay, So yes they were, And you know
what was so cool. I remember going to one of
those huge dances, like black tie dances, and I was
so poor. I went to Goodwill and I found this
little tiny dress that was oh, it looked like something
Audrey Hepburn would wear. It was like white sequin here
at an empire waistline and fond it to the knee.
It was beautiful and I felt like a princess. But no,
it was just you know, I was boy crazy. I
want I want Stephanie. There was a guy oh gosh,
I can't use his name either, but he had He
was a very fancy New York family and his last
his everyone called him Trip. And I thought because he
was so and so the third No, it was because
his brain was fried. He had tripped so many times.
He literally was, as we say down South, he ain't right.
He was not right. And I chased after that poor
thing until I got him. And then when I got him,
I was like, oh my god, ain't right.
Speaker 1: Oh God, Okay, So you get sob you're kind of young,
you're in your twenties. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's I mean,
we wouldn't be here talking if it was like and
then you lived happily ever after, And sobriety was a breeze.
Speaker 2: How long do we have? No, I mean I want
to like five minutes, ten, No.
Speaker 1: We've got time we got it, you got at least
a half hour.
Speaker 2: You know what, when you think about probably if you
think about your life and what you've done over the
course of the light, you go, oh my god, I'm
exhausted just thinking about that. Okay, so I get sober.
I'm in New York City, you know. Of course I
didn't think I was, but I was cute. We don't
think that still are. Well, you're sweet. But I met
this guy at one of those really kind of swanky restaurants.
Was it in the Oyster Bar or something insta Grand
Central seems like something like that. And he was handsome
and he was very interested in me. He was older,
of course, because that's how I roll. Every time I
do my glasses, I just smudge it up more. So
I hope you can. It looks like I've got one
eye wrong.
Speaker 1: Here, You're good.
Speaker 2: And he pursued me. And this guy had He was older,
but he was had a PhD in economics from Harvard
Harvard Law School, chief economist at a big farm, all
this written books. And I was like, oh my god,
me me and he happened to live out in sag Harbor,
Long Island, so I moved out to sad Harbor to
be with him. He was to this day. I married him. Okay,
I married him over forty years. I have not said
his name because I literally left in the middle of
the night with through suitcases while he was on a
business trip. And the women at the moms at the
school I was working at gave me a place to
stay and everything. And this guy, who was handsome and
all this kind of stuff, was very abusive, first emotionally
in uh mentally, but at the end physically, so I
had to get a restraining order. He kept breaking into
I went from that little apartment to an apartment over
It was a cute little apartment over a grocery store,
like a tiny sag Harbor grocery store, restaurant, little thing.
It was like you could have punched the wall and
with your fist, in which he did. And I remember
him breaking into my apartment to take back this faux
shirling coat that he had given me, and he would,
you know, he would just like be creeping around and
I had I did. The police said the only way
I stop this is to get a restraining order, and
I did, and he couldn't believe when the when the
cop showed up. He was just like, why are you
doing this to me? Can't believe. I'm like, yeah, bitch,
watch this. That's what sobriety can do for us. So anyway,
make a long story short, of course, I get another
boyfriend the minute that except and he can't fly because
he's scared of flying. So we take a train. He's
moving out to LA because he's got a writing gig.
He's a writer. We take the train across the country
to LA and my entrance into LA was that Union Square. Yeah,
all right, is that what it's called? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh is Union Station? Union Union Station, which is fas Yes.
Speaker 2: And then getting in a car and going up sunset
and seeing all the billboards and the boob and villa
and everything. I was just like, oh my god, this
is not what I imagined that. And we moved into
La Park Hotel in West Hollywood. That lasted for about
three weeks, that relationship, or maybe longer, I don't know,
but in it, you know, bless his heart, he got
me here. And from that point I started looking for
a place to teach. Teaching position. I got this big book,
got this thick the schools in La. I started interviewing
and it was just daunting, daunting, and being that the
park is in West Hollywood, there was a little cafe
bakery called Sweet Lady James on Melrose and I went
in and I said, I started talking to this woman
and it was it was Jane, and she said, she said,
what are you doing. I said, I'm looking for a
job teaching, And she said, there happens to be a
great little school behind me, so behind here, and so
I went, I interviewed, I got the job. It was
like it was truly life changing for me. And I
was I was a good teacher, I was sober. I
loved it. And I did that for many years until
my back went out. And then next chapter the back pills,
you know, backstore, all the surgeries and opiates.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's so common, Oh my god, yeah, yeah,
yes right.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: Most people who I know who are alcoholics that have
a relapse have such a similar story. It's a slow
It's not just I just decided to I mean, of
course there are people that are like, I'm gonna try
drinking again, but I feel like more often it's oh,
I got prescribed pills and then I started taking them
and then like oh, then I started slowly, not quite
as directed, and then before you know it, you're addicted.
Speaker 2: You know. And I will say that I had in
New York City. I was so plugged in to my
program and I had so many people around me that
were sober that when I came here, I loved the school.
I was so active, you know, the hours are pretty crazy,
and I just I didn't plug into a sober community
really not really, so I didn't have any support after
like you said, I mean, I had a huge, like
a big event where literally my back just went out.
It was horrific pain. I got drop foot. I drugged
my foot when I walked, and then and I finished
out the school year. That happened in the late spring,
and I finished out the school year, and then I
proceeded to have two back fusions back to back, and then,
you know, and so this is where it gets a
little hard for me to talk about because even in
spite it wasn't like I was I didn't realize I
was addicted. I still wasn't drinking, you know, but I
didn't realize how much I needed this. And I started
going to all the pain doctors and then putting me
on regimens of things like darvaset, which at the time
was actually a decent drug for me, and then it
was taken off the market so that we had to
find something else, and the oxycon came into the picture,
and that's when it just got horrible.
Speaker 1: And would you tell yourself? You know, I mean, I
feel like this is what I would do maybe before
I got sober. But I mean, where you go, well,
I mean, I'm just I'm in pain, so I really
need to be doing you know, because with the drinking,
it's so clear. It's like, well, I'm drinking and then
I blacked out again and then I humiliated myself. Oh
I gotta stop doing that. Oh no, here, I am
doing it again. But with pills, it's so much easier
to rationalize in your brain to go, well, I have
a headache. Me back then, right, but I have a migraine,
so I have to take vic it in. Okay, so
I'm taking so now I don't have a headache and
I'm taking it. But still maybe I do kind of
have a you know what I mean is that.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's so true. And you know, our
I don't know how my brain works differently than say
my husband, who asked recently, was because when he would
take a drink of something, it put it down. You know,
it just didn't it wasn't it just his brain didn't
pick up on it. Or if he never wanted to
take drugs, and if he had to take something for
a surgery, whatever, he took the bare minimum and he
hated it.
Speaker 1: Those people didn't really annoy me so annoying. How do
you not like drugs?
Speaker 2: Like? What?
Speaker 1: How? How do you not like feeling a bit altered?
It's so fun? Oh my god.
Speaker 2: In the and in the beginning, the romance stage of
all that, it was just like, oh, where have you
been all my life? Where have you been? I love
the world. That that which is happening to me, that
is really uncomfortable and really destructive, I don't care about
it doesn't bother me. And and then it turns, it turns,
and it turned on me. I had the I didn't
want to I didn't want to admit that I wasn't
sober because in my for a long time it's like, well,
I'm not I'm not drinking, I'm an alcoholic, but I
need these pills. Well do I need as many as
I'm taking no, nobody does, and uh and then it
just turns and I was too I dug myself in
the hold too deeply to ever get honest. So I
was in did.
Speaker 1: You have a sponsor at the time.
Speaker 2: I had a sponsor when I like twenty five years
ago for about a year and a half, and it
really scared me away, not even a year and a half,
for about a year, it scared me away from sponsorship.
It really did very no boundaries. You know, basically wanted
to be a female clancy, a young female clancy, and
was telling me things to do and never it was
just weird. It was weird. And so she had some
severe and ended up having some real severe mental health issues,
and I, you know, I kind of said, hey, you
go deal with that.
Speaker 1: So you didn't have somebody that you felt like, oh,
I'm keeping this. You didn't have anybody at that time
that you were like I better run by them, that
I'm going to be taking these pills and that I'm
going to be taking more. You didn't have that feel,
that guilt feeling except to yourself. At some point. Was
there a moment that you were like, oh shit, I'm
not sober.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have two adorable nephews who live in Orange
County and they're now early forties, late thirties, early forties,
and at the time they were I remember sitting up
on the hill and outside one night and they had
known me as sober aunt Cindy, you know, and they
were they were cute little party guys who were stoners
and you know, but they weren't. They're not alcoholics or addicts.
And we were sitting out one night and I remember
being fucked up and nodding off. I think we were looking,
you know, at stars or whatever, and one of them
looked at me said, yeah, Syd, are you okay? And
you know how that I don't know if you had
that moment where people who you just knew, they knew
that you that was something was really wrong. And that
was the kind of one of the first times I thought, oh,
I'm not I'm not fooling people. I'm not fooling them.
And these are people that look up to me, and
that that her That was the you know, so when
you when I had moments like that and then and
the my my relapse was I'm seven years, three months,
and four days. The only reason I know this because
for some reason it came up. I mean I looked
at it today and I was like, oh, okay. I mean,
I know I was seven years but I didn't know
all the change.
Speaker 3: But for.
Speaker 2: Four or five years before, you know, it was I
was taking pills, kind of kind of sober, mostly sober,
sober ish, sober ish. There you go. And then the
last was last fourth five years, especially the last couple,
the wheels went off. I was such a mess. I mean,
still pretending I was secretary of meetings.
Speaker 1: Were you married?
Speaker 2: I've been married with with Bob for thirty five years.
And the thing is I had I have a chronic
back condition, so I've had ten spinal surgeries. Wow, got
challenging orthopedic surgeries. So he didn't know. I like, how
do you.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, what's he gonna do? Go, you shouldn't be
taking anything for pain, Like, he can't say that, he's
not gonna police you. I get it, And he didn't
know that.
Speaker 2: Yes, the pain management doctor was prescribing something, but I
had also been going to this doctor and getting this
and that. I went to this doctor and got that,
you know, So I was and then in the last
two three years I started ordering stuff online. Because I
needed more, and who knows. I just think it's it's
pretty crazy that I'm a rational person and that I
was putting things in my body, a lot of them
that would come DLS delivery and they would be they
would be rapt as like the packs rapt ast toys
look like gifts and little toys. Or one time I
got a big book where the inside had been carved
out and the pills were all inside the book. They
would this woman would call me up I had a
I would wire her money and she would say, well,
we're having a special on valium.
Speaker 1: Oh well throw some of those in hell Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I think. And it was.
Speaker 1: Jeans at the gap, you know. Oh you're saying like
buy one, get one fifty percent off. Yeah, okay, give
me the second pair. Am I stupid?
Speaker 2: Am I fool? Right? Oh? My god? Even though I
taste like gasoline, uh huh literally, I mean literally, you know,
it just was. I don't know if you've ever done
that where you've gone to think someplace in China or whatever,
and the you'll get say this and it'll smell like diesel.
Well that's all the pills that I were taking tasted
like diesel.
Speaker 1: You know what else tastes like diesel is soaki, and
I used to swear by it. I mean, the biggest
thing that was depressing to me was when I quit drinking,
was that I couldn't have saki with my sushi, and
I always had to remind myself it tastes terrible. It
tastes like light fluid. What are you so sad about?
Speaker 2: I love Papa. Yeah, it's kind of the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Papa's a little bit better because they'd throw some raisins
in there.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what's the moment that you're like, this can't go.
I gotta I gotta come clean. Because you don't have
somebody calling you on it exactly, so you have to
do this yourself. You don't have somebody who's like, Cindy,
you are not sober, you're fucked up. You have your
nephew saying you don't seem sober, the hinting, oh, but
you don't have somebody going you gotta come clean. So
that came from you. That was a moment of vulnerability,
a moment of strength.
Speaker 2: What happened last the last few months in twenty eighteen,
because I got sober on the twenty third of January
twenty nineteen, like, I started having seizures. Oh, and I
can't question what was what my husband? I mean a
lot of times he would find me after seizures, so
I would be out cold on the floor. He had
called nine one one a couple of times. I went
to the don't I don't know how I somehow I
convinced him it was a combination of the pain meds
the doctor was given me and I had eaten. But
I was just such a mess and he was He
had to have been in denial, so much denial. Yeah,
that's you know, and that's between I mean, he's as
you know, past So I can't say hey, but I
will say it wasn't a moment that I was like, oh,
I think I need help. It literally was an evening
after a day of trying to get high, remember like
when you try to get drunk, and it just didn't
get that warm, fuzzy feeling anymore. Yes, I spent the
entire afternoon trying I'm just going to take a couple
of more. I'm going to take a couple of more.
And my body wasn't working properly. I couldn't hold things.
I literally, like if you had asked me to my hands,
neurologically couldn't do it. And Bob came home early one
from work and I didn't want him to see me,
so I went upstairs. I don't know what I thought
I was going to do, maybe take a nap or something,
and that's the last I remember. He said, he heard
me fall. He went in. I was seizuring, he said,
for a long time. He called nine to one one.
The paramedics came while while he was waiting for them.
At the time, we had three dogs were barking. He
was on the phone with the person her giving me
him directions of what to do for me, so I
didn't vombit and throw up or whatever you do when
you're you said. My eyes were rolled back and my
body was all rigid, and he was terrified. And the
next thing I know, I remember being put begging, you know,
in sort of a haze, no please, please, don't take
me please.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: Wheeled into the ambulance to go with the fire trucks
and everything to I think it was Saint Joe's and
it's it's all very vague, but I just coming to
and the doctors standing there and Bob's standing there and
them saying, we need to know what have you what
have you been taking? And it was just like that
moment of just like I'm busted, I'm so busted and
I'm so exhausted. So here's what I've done. And that
that was my moment.
Speaker 1: And that was it. Or did you tight trade off
or did you just stop cold turkey?
Speaker 2: I stopped cold turkey everything except for the valume, because
valume you cannot I had to tie trade off that.
But when I got out, they were going to fifty
one fifty me because I said something to the effect of, oh,
what's the use I don't want to be here. I
said that, I guess in the emergency room, and I
remember them bringing this monitor and talking to the psychiatrist
there at the hospital, and then my Bob having my
therapists on the phone, and somehow we convinced them that
I would be okay, I would be supervised at home.
So I came home. I cold turkeyed off all the vicodin,
the tramadol, the extra strength tramadoll is getting online and
it was brutal for a few days. Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then.
Speaker 2: I just throw this in if anyone list is listening
as hard as it was, because you get you know,
by the time I got here, had sores in my mouth,
I had thrushed in my throat because I had quit
producing saliva. I was going to a specialist at Cedars
for to produce saliva. They were giving medication for that.
I had really bad hemorrhoids, not only because I couldn't poop,
but I literally could not be urinate. I would sit
on the toilet and try. My body was so shut down.
So when I got home, and I was so scared,
and I knew physically, but I thought, you know what,
if you're an addict, you've gone through withdrawals all the time.
Maybe not the big one. I'm about to hit the
big one, but probably on a alm a daily basis,
because or weekly basis. I could never get the drugs
and enough drugs that I wanted to keep my body
in that sustained point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's it. So you went through that, and
then you slowly got off the volume. When I got sober,
I had to get off of a xanax. Yeah, same thing,
so hard because the anxiety is just a killer, and
and uh, withdrawal syndrome off those kind of metas are
is intense. But I was so happy when I when
I was done.
Speaker 2: Me too, me too, and and and I have to say,
I was just I think I still had that plan Stephanie,
that I was going to uh not tell anyone what
was really going on, and I would still go to
my meetings and and seriously, my plan was I was
going to get a year on my own. I mean
like going to meetings, but get a year. And then
I'd raise my hand and say, hey, I don't have
eighteen years. I've got one year. But everything's fine.
Speaker 1: I like that plan.
Speaker 2: It was a good plan. It was an easy plan.
And about a week after my detox, you know, like
at home, I went to a women's meeting and I
was the last person. This woman looked at me and
she said, I don't know what. I don't know what
gave it away. The fact that my clothes were falling off,
my hair was you know, kind of coming out, and
she said, would you like to share? And I just
let it all come out as a guy, I haven't
been sober, and la la la, la la la. And
that's when that's when it just I was so grateful. Yeah,
that's when it kind of changed for me.
Speaker 1: That was you said twenty nineteen. I mean, I remember
you very well from that period of time. I remember
a lot of your your shares and uh, really really
beautiful and inspiring and my favorite when people are just
really honest about where they are. So then I'm sure
you're going regularly and like recommitting. But then a year
into that COVID hits. Was that hard because if it
was January, by March, by March the following year, no meetings,
everything's shut down, everything's online. But at least you had
that year.
Speaker 2: I you know, I'm I had. Oh my god, I
was just so grateful not to be doing that whole scam.
Oh my god. It was exhausting. And that my life
even before COD it was so simple, meeting every day
I did. I saw a wonderful addiction specialist. I went
to a hypnotherapist from UCLA once a week for a year.
I have her sessions on my tape on my phone
to help me learn how to deal with pain without meds.
So no, it wasn't when we shut down, you know
AA and my well, my community AA, our community went
right into zoom, and I was on two or three
meetings a day because it was not really and since then,
I mean, I have friends all over the world. It's insane,
it's crazy. I love it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that it's such a hopeful story,
and just for me personally, I appreciate a story like
yours because it's hard when people are like and I'm
talking about could be programmed, could be outside. It's hard
when people are just like yeah, and I realized I
was an alcoholic and then I quit, and I'm just like,
my life, my life became amazing, and I'm just so
grateful every day. It's like usually there's some work involved
and also some shitty times involved, and some truths that
we discover about ourselves. I feel like, if you're doing
it in a meaningful way and not living life on
a really surface level, you're going to discover some things
about your life or about your past, or about like
how you how you operate that are not going to
be pleasant and you're gonna have to have some moments
where you go, ooh, I wasn't doing as well as
I thought I was.
Speaker 2: Stephanie Taylor, I was crazy as a loon here, crazy
as a loone grateful, but I think of some things
I did and said, I'm just like whoa, sister, Whoa,
And yeah, you're right, it was hard, but I also,
you know, I had my own you hear people like
this wonderful lady Lily who spoke at my meeting this morning,
and beautiful young girl in prison, was in prison and
now she's she's out. But I didn't have that story.
But the prison of like just the lies and the
getting and trying to figure it all out. It just
I think the baseline for me was just gratitude not
to have that. I gained a bunch of weight when
I got sober. You know, for me that was hard
because I've always been a certain and you know, part
of being Southern is you got to look a certain way.
And my prayer was, God, I am willing to stay sober.
Please help me stay sober, even with his big fat ass,
you know. And you know and like, yeah, and so
much has changed. Like you said, it does take a
lot of work. And whether it's therapy or for me,
it's twelve steps of just looking at where I was
constantly trying to manipulate people so you'll like me and
you'll tell me. I'm okay. I don't want to manipulate anymore.
I still try, you know, it still happens, but it's
a lot less and I'll just catch it and go,
oh no, I'm not I'm not going to get that
validation from that person. I got it. There's got to
be something and for me is become a joy whatever this.
I do believe there's some sort of a force that
connects us. I'm different than I was seven and seven
years and three months ago or four months ago. I'm
a different like inside how I can and that is
just there's something going on there.
Speaker 1: Well, it's beautiful and I thank you so much for
sharing your story with our listeners. I think there's so
much hope there. I even got to chapter two.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Cindy.
Speaker 1: I love that's it. But don't hang up, But don't
hang up.
Speaker 2: Yeah wait, yeah, one more blast this costume change?
Speaker 1: Okay, keep a lot.
Speaker 2: What about these?
Speaker 1: Oh those are cute? Okay, very cute.
Speaker 2: I'll sit here and be quiet. Bye.
Speaker 1: Everybody in line.
Speaker 2: If is good, luck is geting.
Speaker 1: Getting a dart, it's time to come.
Speaker 2: It be