Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Welcome to my podcast Drunkish. I'm Stephanie Wilder Taylor.
Last year I published a book called Drunkish, where I
told my story about quitting drinking. But now I'm doing
a podcast where I talk to other people about quitting
drinking and other stuff. So, whether you're sober, sober, curious,
or just like hearing stories about Whino's, you're welcome here.
And before we get to today's guest, please follow this
podcast on your little podcast appbscribe to it, Please review
it or rate it. It will help me grow Today.
My guest is a friend of mine, personal friend of mine.
Her name is Laura Capcart Robbins. She's the author of
a best selling book called Stash My Life in Hiding.
She also hosts a popular podcast called The Only One
in the Room, where she talks to people about being
the only person to have excited experienced something. And in
twenty twenty four, her New York Times Modern Love essay
was turned into an episode of the Modern Love podcast,
which is very cool. She was named the SDWF Memoirrist
of the Year. She's a teedex speaker. She's been on
a bunch of shows, The Tameron Hall show Doctor Phil
and her work has appeared all over the.
Speaker 2: Place, but she is with us now, so please enjoy
the show.
Speaker 1: Hello Laura, I'm so excited. All the people who listen
to my intro know how excited I am to talk
to you. We have Wow. We go back, we go back,
We go back to the beginning of both of our sobrieties,
which I want to discuss. But also we also have
been I've been on your podcast twice, You've been on
my pot. We know each other's stories, yes, yeah, but
now we're bringing your story to other people. I think
I'm going to say, like right off the bat, something
that's unique about your story is that you had to
quit Ambient, which a lot of people don't realize is
a drug that people get addicted to.
Speaker 3: Well, in fact, it's prescribed or it's touted as a
drug that is an addictive, isn't it. Yeah, it's one
of the things. One of the ways they prescribe ambient
is by saying that it doesn't have the addictive qualities
that other sleeping or sedation medications do. But I am
living proof that is in fact faulty.
Speaker 1: Well. Also, I mean I know quite a few people
who have gotten addicted to ambient Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not as common as other drugs, but I have.
I actually where I went to treatment. That place is
kind of famous for treating famous ambient addicts.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Really Yeah, Well I like Tiger Woods, Like that's the
first one. I There are more. I can't think of
who they are now, but there is like a series
of people who went there to address their ambient addiction.
Speaker 1: Now do you think? And I want to get into
your whole story which is so good and Laura's book,
which I already told you about at the beginning and
you'll hear about it at the end, but Stash is your book,
My life in Hiding, and it's such a good book.
It's so deep. But you, I mean, the thing about
the ambient is that I'm curious about is do you
think that people start taking it totally innocuously for sleep
and then or do you think it's people that are
already abusing, like already drink too much. Well, who are
the people that get like ooh this is good? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean I don't think there are a lot of
dealers dealing in per se, you know what I mean,
Like they might have it for cocaine addicts, so they
can come down, but it's like not the main thing
that they're dealing. It's it's usually something that people get
addicted to because it was they were it was prescribed
for them, and so people are typically addressing a sleep
issue when when they get hooked on ambient And like
for me, you know, I was able to take it
kind of normally for about a year I took I
got prescribed thirty of them, and it took me a
year to get through that bottle.
Speaker 1: But the next year I thought, you meant for a year,
like you were taking it every night, like you know,
thirty a month. Oh I got.
Speaker 3: I got a total of thirty the first year. And yeah,
I didn't get another prescription that year. It was just
like every once in a while, as needed, I would
take one and it absolutely did the trick.
Speaker 1: But did you notice did you have that period? Because
what I understand from the ambient use is that or misuse,
is that you cannot just fall asleep. I have taken
ambien in my life in the past and fell asleep
in twenty minutes, but there was no high period.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was the thing. It's like for me,
you know, I have been you know, like people look
for romantic partners all their lives, I was looking for
a drug partner. I'm like, what's the perfect drug for me?
And I never found it until I took that first ambien.
And you're right, I did fall asleep pretty quickly. But
there was a period of time right after I took
it where I had this euphoric high, something that I
never experienced before or since. I will add you know,
it's that thing I write it in the book. It's
that high that heroin addicts Chase. It's that euphoric disconnection
where everything feels floaty and warm and yummy and squishy.
And I would experience that, you know, for probably if
I were timing myself about ten minutes, but that was
enough for me, and then I would have the best
sleep I'd ever had in my life following that feeling.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm shocked that you didn't get addicted to it
faster than if you felt that feeling too.
Speaker 3: But you know what, I had really little kids when
it started. One was a baby, one was a toddler.
I think the way that my mind was wired at
the time was I just needed to I had to
be up too many times during the night, so it
wasn't really possible for me to knock out every night.
Then it became possible later on when they were a
little bit older and they were sleeping through the night.
Then I could knock out more off. But I couldn't.
I couldn't practically do that that first year.
Speaker 1: So well, take me all the way back, give me
a little of the childhood. You and I have some
stuff in common from childhood.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, my childhood is I guess it's a
pretty unique story. You know. I was in Cambridge, mass
I had two parents who divorced when they when I
was four. Dad moved to another state to go to
med school and then open his practice as a doctor.
I stayed with mom. She remarried a man who just
did not like me. You know, everything I did rubbed
him the wrong way.
Speaker 1: Same.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and yes, and that's when I learned kind of
to edit myself, you know, in order to keep the
household peaceful. I dropped out of high school right after
ninth grade. I was really just drowning in this three
thousand person school after being in a a school was
like maybe maybe one hundred kids. I don't think so.
In the whole school and there were eleven kids in
my class, and I was just so unprepared for that transfer.
I was very much on my own at my first
public school, and I just I just didn't make it
and didn't go to college. Had my first drink somewhere
around sixteen or seventeen. Hated it would pretend that I
was drinking when I was with my friends, but really
just dumping it in the bushes. Didn't like it. But
what I didn't did end up liking around nineteen was
freebasing cocaine, which is I mean, I went all the
way from like nothing to the to the worst.
Speaker 1: Right, You're like, no, I'll pass on the beer. Do
you have any crack?
Speaker 3: And this is even before crack, right, this is before
it was named crack. And it was very glamorous. There
were these big parties and it was being cooked in
the kitchen and people were like smoke in these gowns.
And I thought it was really cool. And I did
it on weekends for about a year and I started
missing shit, you know, like start not showing up for
stuff on Mondays. The weekends became longer, and my parents
confronted me, so I stopped which I thought was evidence
that I was not an addict or an alcoholic because
I just stopped in my tracks.
Speaker 1: But when you dropped out of high school, what did
your mom and stepfather say about that you drop out
in the ninth grade? Usually they have some feelings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I stopped going in the ninth grade. I
actually enrolled in the tenth grade and I was there
on campus, but I didn't go to any classes in
tenth grade. And that's when it came to light. There
was a lot of back and forth about where I should,
Should I go to another school, should I start ninth
grade over like? And I didn't want to do any
of the things that they suggested. So they said, well,
if you're not going to be in school, you have
to get a job. And so I got a job
and that I worked at Berkeley Sauna and my job
was to clean out the sauna rooms, which was disgusting.
It was like, you know, skid marked towels, oh off
the bench, and then you know, like carefully try not
to touch anything, and then like clean the sauna room
for the next person and check them. And I worked
at Ortman's ice Cream. I scooped ice cream there. I
was a waitress at Skates on the Bay, like I
did a variety of things.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, and then you just happened. Did you meet
some people that got you into freebasing?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, Well I had this group of black friends
that I met during this time period of my life.
And I'd had black friends before, but not like black
black friends. Like they were black like me, Like they
kind of grew up around white people and they kind
of fit in everywhere. This was a group of black
women that only grew up around black people. They grew
up in a black neighborhood. They went to black church,
black hair salons, black clubs, and I fell in with them,
and a friend of a friend took me to one
of those parties. They weren't into it. They weren't into
drugs at all, this group of black women, but I
lit up when I was introduced to it. So I
would go back by myself without them.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so your freebasing.
Speaker 3: Coke, Yeah, freebasing coke on the weekends and then going.
Speaker 1: Socially you're socially freebasing, of course, I get it.
Speaker 3: And then going to work during the week and that's
that was what I was doing. You know, up and
up through about nineteen and a half, and that's before
I turned twenty is when they confronted me, and then
I switched gears and started. I moved to LA to
direct commercials. That's what I thought I was going to
do here, really, Okay, I a commercial director and I
went to work for one and found out that I
was not going to be a commercial director. There weren't
any women directing commercials, and except for Penny Marshall, who
was an actress on who had just come off a
hit TV show, you.
Speaker 1: Bern and Shirley, of course. Yeah. Wait, so how old
were you when you moved to LA.
Speaker 3: Twenty one turning twenty two?
Speaker 1: Okay, because I moved to LA from the East Coast
when I was nineteen. Ah, yeah, to be an actress comedian.
I didn't know what was going to happen. Yeah, I
knew that.
Speaker 3: I knew that about you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so young too, I mean I did. I did
graduate high school, but barely. Yeah that's bad.
Speaker 3: People, right, like, yeah, it's but yeah, it's an odd
thing to be sixty years old, which is what I am,
and not have graduated high school. Because most people assume
that I got a ged or I went back at
some point and got a diploma and I just never did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know why, but I love that so much. Yeah,
and nowadays it's odd to have not gone to college.
People are like, wow, you didn't go to college. Yeah,
but and then I ended up being a writer.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, right, yes, exactly, Well, there there
are more. There's more than one way to get an education.
And I think that my education was obviously not a
formal one, but I still got an education.
Speaker 1: But you're like a hustler, you know, which I think
is half of it. I think half of it is
just being like, you know what, I want to try
that thing? Okay, you know what. I'm going to try
that thing? All right? How do I who do I
need to know? What do I need to do to
make this happen?
Speaker 3: One hundred percent? Yeah, And that's how I spent my twenties.
I started looking for like the next thing. I was
drinking very socially in my twenties, like I would party
with my friends. But by the time I was twenty
six turning twenty seven, I owned my own PR firm
and I had that for four years and it was
a very strict schedule. Everything was back East client wise,
so I had to be in my office at six thirty.
This was like pre cell phones, you know. We had
fax machines, just starting to get email, but nobody really
used it. We had bike messengers, so everything was very
analogue and I needed to be in my office, hands
on to do anything. So drinking excessively would have gotten
in the way of that. And that wasn't even calling
me at that point. I was I was really just
running my company.
Speaker 1: Okay, then what happened.
Speaker 3: Got married, had kids, and pretty much pretty sure that
I had postpartum anxiety but undiagnosed. Same. Yeah, no one
said this, but I don't think there was that language
then either. I don't think people people talked about postpartum
depression right which when they asked me, you know, do
you are you crying, do you feel flat? Do you
feel listless? Do you want to end your life like those?
I was like no, no, no, no, So it was
ruled out that I didn't have this. But what they
were asking me the wrong questions, you know, And but
I didn't know. I didn't know. I was just like, good,
I'm not one of those postpartum moms like I don't
have to because you know, there was a lot of
judgment around that, then a lot of judgment around moms
who couldn't like make it or hack it.
Speaker 1: Was it before Brookshields wrote her book Down down Comes
the Rain. I think it was, Oh.
Speaker 3: My god, I think that's what. Yeah, I don't know
if it was before that or not.
Speaker 1: Probably it was before that.
Speaker 3: Probably probably she kind of broke.
Speaker 1: That open, like this is what happens. I had I
had gone to the doctor, uh for I was crying
all the time, but I wasn't flat. I was like
on fire, you know, yeah, hyper vigilant, very worried, and
I didn't know what was wrong with me. But I
just thought I'd made a huge mistake in having a baby.
That's what I thought. I really was, like, this was
a massive bad decision and it's I ruined my life
and I couldn't feel the I loved my baby and
I wanted to protect her, but I felt such a
huge responsibility, like it was all on me, like everything,
every decision was going to be huge and could be wrong.
So when I went to the doctor, he just said, yeah,
well you had a baby. It's a big responsibility, and
so I suffered for a while until I think I
think my daughter was like a year and a half
old before I went to a psychiatrist who said, yeah,
you have anxiety, and then he gave me Xanax and
I fell in love. That was my job of.
Speaker 3: Yes, really similar. Yeah, that book actually came out in
two thousand and six. Down came the Rain.
Speaker 1: I just looked it up, okay, which was yeah, sour
our My first baby was two thousand and four and
mine was nineteen ninety eight, so we predate. Sorry, Brooke,
he didn't.
Speaker 3: Help us too late, so nice, it would have been
really nice, but yeah, no, it was. It was too late.
But that's a really similar story Stephanie, yours and mine.
That's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so did you feel that way too, Like what
have I done to my life?
Speaker 3: Mine was really specific. It was like I felt fine,
except for I was very tired during the day. But
as soon as they went to sleep, I was afraid
to sleep, and every single like pre wake up whimper
got me up like a fireman, and I was hovering
like to see if they needed me, and I couldn't
ever fully get back to sleep because I was so
afraid of them waking up and needing me and me
not being there, and so that's where it centered. I
didn't really experience it that much during the day, except
for I was like snapping at people during the day
because I was so tired from having been basically, you know,
not wide awake all night but not really ever getting
into a deep sleep because of that. And they were
back to back, you know, Miles was ninety eight and
then Justin was ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, it was It was.
Speaker 3: Just kind of a continuous two years of that.
Speaker 1: So not to backtrack too far, but did you when
you were rebasing, did you just stop and go all right?
That was the old That was just that's young stuff.
Speaker 3: It wasn't not, no, It was just that my parents
confronted me and they were worried, and I was just like, one,
I did not want them to worry about me, Like
that felt too heavy and like I had done something
wrong and I didn't like that. So I was like, well,
the way to remedy this is for me not to
do this anymore. That way they won't have any thing
to worry about. And then because I moved also, it
just wasn't like I didn't even know where to do that.
And then it was crack and it had like that
ghetto reputation, and it was different. It wasn't cooked in
someone's kitchen where I watched it. It was sold in
viols on the street. Like I. It seemed dirty then,
like something that I was interested in doing. I'm I've
never been a drug dealer, drug user.
Speaker 1: Right, you want that bespoke freebase, that.
Speaker 3: Primo, you know, like winery experience. I wanted some Mollier
for my free.
Speaker 1: Base, exactly. I get that. I feel that. Yeah, yeah,
so okay, so you're not really abusing alcohol or anything.
Then at this point, right right, you're a grown ass
woman with kids and a husband, and you're nothing's wrong really.
Speaker 3: Except for the anxiety and the not sleeping at night. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then you get some ambient and I get some ambient,
and then the kids get old enough that you can
take it a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, sleep that night. I loved it, Stephanie. I
loved it. I loved everything about it. I couldn't wait
to take it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It definitely rivaled my my love for my children, it
really did. And it was my treat at the end
of the day. That's how I thought of it, because
I went one hundred percent for my kids, one hundred
percent through my day. I was doing everything. You know,
Even before I was the PA president, which is the
year I write about in Stash, I was the kindergarten
you know, like room mom.
Speaker 1: I did too. Now, I was the room mom in
preschool two years in a row.
Speaker 3: And and but ill I was the chair of the
fair like I did. I was always around campus a campus.
I was always with my kids, and you know, then
I was a hostess, you know, in the evening, not
at a restaurant, but at my house. We would have
dinner parties, we would throw different kinds of parties. We
were at premieres.
Speaker 1: So your husband, we should say, was a big deal,
a big Hollywood deal, A big Hollywood deal, ran stuff,
ran shit in Hollywood. So you and so you had
stopped doing your PR firm at this point.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, as soon as I got pregnant with my
first son, I started shutting it down, and by the
time he was born it was completely close.
Speaker 1: Was there any part of you that was like, Okay,
now I'm married to this man who's sort of like
the big like he's the name in the relationship and people.
I mean, he was He's a powerful guy. I'm sure
that you guys had a connection that you didn't. I'm
sure he didn't try to make you feel that way
at all. But did you feel like, oh wow, so
now my sense of identity is gone because I don't
have my job or were you just like, no, you
know what, this is what I want. I want to
be a stay at home mom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think it was. I think it
was a little bit of all of that. I honestly,
by the end of my PR company, I was so
glad to shudter it. I was, you know, dealing with
a lot of hip hop music acts and they would
not show up, and they would neat babysitters and they
you know, do mushrooms before at MTV interview. But I'd
have to like hand all them. And I was out
late because there were all these parties that I had
to either facilitate or run or walk them through and
then be at work, you know, like I said, at
six point thirty the next morning. And I was really
burning the candle at both ends, and I was finding
it not very fulfilling for me. So when I got
pregnant with Miles, there was no question in my mind
that I wasn't going to try to work part time.
I was glad to get rid of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't.
Speaker 3: Think that I thought of and my husband at that time.
I mean, he was still a big deal, but he
was a director. He wasn't running anything. He could a
job to job, a lot of it on location. We
would go with him when he shot on location, So
that seemed like, how could I do anything else I
would interfere with us being able to go with him, right,
It didn't seem like a sacrifice to me at the time.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, But so as he did start running things,
I guess I mean when you were starting to have
dinner parties and did that feel like a big responsibility.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the idea of it was really fun
to me, Like I loved the idea of it. I
loved meeting these celebrities that I had grown up watching
or had you know, just recently started watching. But in
practice it was quite difficult for me. And I'm not
domestic at all, Like I don't cook, I don't clean,
I don't decorate. I'm really not interested in how a
table is set, I don't care. And so these are
all things that I was in charge of, you know,
kind of by default, and so that the practicality of
it logistics were challenging for me. And and I think
the other thing was I really thought that I would
grow into it. I thought, like, you know, the practice,
you know how practice makes a practice. The more I
practiced this, it would become second nature, and then I
would be Martha Stewart and who was at the time,
you know, the consummate house of course, And it just wasn't.
It didn't work that way for me. The more I
did it, the more weary I became in it, and
the less I liked it, and the more I needed
ambient at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you start to take the ambient, you love
it of it, You're like, this is my treat at
the end of the day. Yes, what Then it starts
it's fun, Then it's fun with problems, then it's just problems.
But so are we at just fun at this point?
Speaker 3: I mean kind of you know, it's that Hemingway quote.
It was gradually and then suddenly, and that's what it
was for me, was we're talking about a six year period.
Speaker 1: Woh okay, So you know.
Speaker 3: Year one was the one that I talked where I
only had one bottle and it was great. Year two,
I was taking one every night. This is approximate, This
isn't exactly three hundred and sixty five days.
Speaker 1: But this is not a deposition. It's just I've got
no fact checkers.
Speaker 3: And somewhere at the end of year two, I started
needing like a one and a half to get to
sleep at night. By the middle of year three, I
was taking two to sleep and two in the middle
of the night to get back to sleep, because it okay,
really fast, and my tolerance was just you know, growing
at this really alarming rate. And so the thing that
I didn't like, which was alcohol, came into play then
because if I boosted it with alcohol, I would get
the effect I wanted and it would last longer, but
that also wore off. I got a tolerance for that
as well, so you know, and for anyone who's watching
or listening who doesn't know, that is a lethal combination.
Sedatives and alcohol is something that one takes to end
one's life. And I was taking more and more of
that every night until that six year where I was taking.
I say I was taking up to ten a day,
which is true, but I didn't usually have ten to
take during the day, so it wasn't like I took
ten a day every day. If I had them, I
would have, But typically I only had four to five
a day to take, and so I would try to
like ration those out, and so I would probably end
up taking like four a day. And I say a day.
This was all at night after my kids went to sleep,
for the part, and at the very end it was
twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 1: So at the like at the end, could you take
one in the middle of the day and just feel
high from it and not need to go to sleep?
Speaker 3: Yes, and no, I couldn't take a whole one in
the middle of the day because it would be visible.
People would be able to tell that something was wrong
with me. But I could not be without anything because
I would go into withdrawal, like really debilitating. So I
would break off what I called corners, like part of
one probably you know, maybe an eighth of a tablet,
and I would take that, like before I went into
school to give a speech to the parent association, to
steady my hands, I would take one afterwards because I'd
have so much adrenaline in me that I would need
to calm down a corner and then I would save
the whole ones for after my kids went to sleep,
when I went to sleep.
Speaker 1: So when did you start at this point? Were you feeling?
I mean, I just remember from the book. Now, it's
been a little while since I read the book, but
I remember scenes about like getting your prescription from the
doctor and just knowing that you had that full prescription bottle.
Best feeling in the world. I remember it from And
I wrote about it too, about like get if I
could get like a whole thing of vic it in
or a toothpain. It was like Christmas morning, It was like, Wow,
I have a whole bottle of pills. So or were
you already at that nervous too, like, Okay, I've got
this many pills. But unless I mean, take me to
the part where you're like doctor shopping and trying to
figure out how to get somebody else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so yeah, I got I got my
prescriptions from different doctors. They were all my doctors, but
I would go to them, you know, I would figure
out what the right thing to say to each of
these doctors would be like my obgyn. I don't remember
exactly the story I told him, but I would tell
him one story. I had a psychiatrist who I was
telling another story. I had my general practitioner, who I
was telling another story.
Speaker 1: You didn't feel like you could just say I'm having
trouble sleeping. I need ambient.
Speaker 3: I did, but it had me a variation of that
that made sense specifically for them, And it had to
be like, well why am I The question would be
like why do you need another one so soon? Oh? Okay,
So I would need to come up with reasons why
I need another one so soon? And you know, I
use the story of our houses being tinted and we
had to leave, and I left my medications there.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good one, isn't that good? That's so specific. Yeah,
it's really specificity that really sells it.
Speaker 3: And because it had happened once and it was true,
and don't you know I went back in that tinted
house and got my meds.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean I don't think they hadn't turned on the gas yet,
but it was still and I was just like, I'll
be right back as they're running after me. Miss missed no, no,
but yeah, I mean I needed to come up with
different reasons why someone like me was needing refills sooner
and sooner and sooner, and eventually that wears them with everybody, right,
each doctor. And this was really at a time when
the way that it works now, I think is that
it's all in one day database. You know, you get
a prescription filled and the state of California knows.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. The thing you don't want to hear, the
word you do not want to hear is triplicate.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 1: So when I found out that percoset for which I
got from my C section, and then when I got
it from my second C section, they were like triplicate,
I was like.
Speaker 3: Ah, wait, what does that mean.
Speaker 1: It just means that it goes to different copies of
it are like filed. Basically, it's not just between you
and your doctor. It's between you your doctor, the state.
Like it's you know, everybody knows.
Speaker 3: Everybody knows. And and so I started using my my middle name,
which is my I don't like the word and the
maiden name I have to think of it because that
sounds so like Victorian my maiden name, but the name
I was born with which is part of my my name,
but I just started using that instead of my full name,
and that got me like another month or two under
the radar, right, Oh, can you just call it into
this name please? And but you know, then I went
to see like an orthopedic surgeon, like I started having to.
And then people weren't playing ball though, because they immediately
wanted to call my GP and get my files. Oh no, yeah,
and so, and I would like to forget it, forget it.
I'm not, don't do that. And you know, eventually I
started running out faster and faster. I would boost it
with alcohol and benadryl at that time, because those are
both extenders for it. I could take less ambient if
I took more of those things, okay, but that ran
then too, And you know, on July fourth, two thousand
and eight, I got to this place where I wasn't
like sobriety. If I was sober, and I don't mean
sober as in recovery, I mean like if I didn't
have anything in my system, I was a shaky, in
pain mess. Just I could not be in public. And
if I were loaded, I also couldn't be in public. Right,
So that's very isolating. Those two states, and those are
the only two states I knew at that point. And
on that date, I took everything I had, I washed
it down with the booze that I had, and I
was still I couldn't get loaded and I didn't have
anymore and so I was that shaky, you know, that
excrewruciating mess. And I made the decision to go to treatment.
So you were not separated at this point though, right,
or were you? I filed for divorce, but we were
still living together, okay, Yeah, And so he sent you
to rehab. No, No, he didn't know. I told him
after I'd made the decision to go that I was going.
Speaker 1: Well. I mean, he supported you, he did. He actually
flew you to rehab. Yeah, he flew me there.
Speaker 3: In Wickenburg, Arizona.
Speaker 1: That probably wasn't the most common thing to get flown
into rehab. Did you feel othered because you'd flown in
like was? Did anybody make fun of you? They probably
didn't know.
Speaker 3: They knew because I told them, and I just felt
better than everybody. Nobody made fun of me. I mean
they probably did behind my back, but not to my face.
I felt like I was better than everyone there who
like flew commercial or drove.
Speaker 1: So when you went to rehab, were you thinking I
just need to get all this out of my system
and get myself like, I just know we all go
into rehab with different thought process. Not we all. I
didn't go to rehab, but a lot of people that
go to rehab that can go to rehab either feel
oh my god, I'm so done, thank god, I'm totally surrendered,
or I just need a reset, like I need to
get all this out detox so that I could take
and being like a lady.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really was thinking I just needed that break,
like you're saying. I did not think I had no
intention of staying sober, none at all. But I did
have the idea that I probably needed to try to
stay sober until my divorce was final.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: I knew that I wouldn't be able to without that
break and the assistance that would be offered there. Yeah, okay,
so you finished rehab. There's so much to your story.
Speaker 1: But you finish rehab, you meet a guy in rehab,
by the way, who just who just us, I'm doing
the math? Do you want to know something? And this
won't really matter to the people that are listening to this,
But today is my sixteenth birthday? Is it really?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh, Hatsie's soberversary.
Speaker 1: So you must be seventeen in August. Okay, but you
stopped in July or that's when you made the decision.
Speaker 3: But then I went to rehab in July. I count
my sobriety date is August fourteenth. That was the last
day of rehab, because they detox me in there, and
I don't know what day. I think it was like
ten or eleven days in so I don't know exactly
what day in there I was free of drugs and alcohol.
So I just counted as a day I left because
I know for sure that was that I was sober.
Speaker 1: You were trying to sneak stuff into rehab, though I wasn't.
Speaker 3: Trying to sneak stuff into rehab. I was planning to
pick up stuff after I left. I called in a
refill to pick up on my way out to the airport.
Speaker 1: Okay, And then now it's coming back to me. But
then you didn't.
Speaker 3: I did not pick it up because Scott, the man
who interrupted us a few minutes ago, left with me.
He and I checked in an hour apart from each other.
We left on the same day at the same time,
in the same car, and I had made all these arrangements,
like you know, very covertly for this rehab, because the
way you're allowed to do it is like on your
last week, in your last week in rehab, you can
use the phone, which is a big deal, to make arrangements.
You can call like a therapist and set up here. Fore,
you can call people that you want to meetings. You
can make your plane reservations, you know. I ordered a
car to pick me up to take me to the airport.
And during those calls, while a tech is walking around
kind of making sure we're on the up and up
and not calling our dealers, I called the pharmacy where
a refill had miraculously come through in Los Angeles and said,
can you transfer it to the one here in Wickenburg
because this is where I am now. So they did,
and then I called the Wickenberg pharmacy to make sure
it was ready and it was.
Speaker 1: So after all this time and your detox your brain,
and this is so important for especially for the people
that are listening that are not addicts, to understand is
with all that and all the money spent on getting
better your brain goes. You know it would be great,
you know it would be such a great after rehab.
Treat ambient well.
Speaker 3: And I can't go home without it. I don't know
how to be without it. Like even getting on the
plane without ambient was terrifying to me. So I was like,
I'm going to need something in order to go home.
You know where I am now, at the end of
a divorce with kids that I've been away from for
three for three weeks, for thirty days, going back to
the school as the parent association president starting that year,
you know, like I had to face all this stuff
all at the same time, and I was sure that
I could not do it without ambient positive. It was terrified.
Speaker 1: So but you don't, you don't take the ambient.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to get out of the car
without Scott realizing what I'm doing. And he's bound and
determined to go to Starbucks because we haven't had caffeine
for a month. Ah, that's what he's excited about. And
he's talking to the driver and he's like, where is
there a Starbucks? We've been dying for right, hund Like
we're dying, not how you didn't call me Hun then, right, Laura,
We're dying for Starbucks And I remember him talking, but
I didn't hear him. All I was trying to figure
out was Okay, I can say I need to jump
in and like maybe get something that he won't be
interested in the drug store, like tampons, right, Like I
got to go get some tampons. But he hadn't been
in a drug store for thirty days. I was sure
that he would also want to go in and get something,
and I just didn't know how way get the pills
in front of him. And the feeling I had when
we drove past that drug store and got on the
highway going toward Phoenix was something I'd never experienced before.
It was beyond regret. It was it was absolute grief.
I was leaving the thing behind that I understood to
be the only way I could face life, and I
wasn't going to have it.
Speaker 1: And then get back. And at this point, are you like, well,
I didn't pick it up at the drug store, so
I guess I'm gonna have to try to go. I mean,
because at that point you could have gone home transferred
it back to yeah, but you didn't.
Speaker 3: I could have, but my divorce attorney had a whole
list of things for me to do, and one of
them was drug testing twice a week.
Speaker 1: This is the story I wanted to get to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 3: She was smart. She was just like, no one's asking
for this, but let's get ahead of it so that
when we get to that point, if anyone says, well,
we don't know if she's been sober, we have documentation
that says yes, she has. In fact, she's been voluntarily
drug testing for the last three months, and here is
the proof. And I just didn't know how to beat it.
Twice a week drug test. I thought about it, you know,
and the information available on ambien was pretty scarce then.
There wasn't just wasn't that much information. There was information
on beating other kinds of drug tests on there, but
not too much about ambient. And I was really I
was more scared of coming up dirty and losing my
kids than I was of going through a day shaky.
And I wasn't in withdrawal anymore, but I kind of
was for like six months, Like I still had night
sweats for like six months, I still had brains apps,
you know, I still just I was very like my
nervous system was so dysregulated for like six months.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, though, when you get drug tested,
you could probably still drink, right or would it check
for that too, Like it was your ex. Your ex
knew what you were going to rehab for. But was
he Did you feel like, oh, he's going to look
for a reason to try to take my kids because
he didn't even know you were an addict of any
kind at that point until you told him.
Speaker 3: I didn't think that, but my attorney did. Okay, she
and she knew his attorney, and she's like, even if
your X does a want to, he's going to go
for that. He's going to look through everything. He's going
to make sure that he gets his client the best
deal out of this, which might mean trashing you and
your reput.
Speaker 1: So did your attorneys say you also shouldn't drink, because
I'm assuming I probably felt like, although I do remember
a scene in your book where you like drained all
the stuff from your bar.
Speaker 3: I finished most of the bar, you know, like there
were a few things that I didn't like to drink,
like gen. I never liked gen, but most of it
I had taken down and refilled with water to the
point where it was too watery, you know, so the
alcohol wasn't all gone. But if he had poured himself
a drink, he absolutely would have known. So I refilled
it and stopped it so it was whole again. But
here's the thing. I didn't never drink if I didn't
have ambient. I never like how to drink during like
even when it was the worst, when I was completely
out of ambient, I never drank in between. I didn't
like it and it didn't do the same thing for me.
So yeah, I probably could have drank, but I didn't
want to.
Speaker 1: So you went for these drug tests, and this is
just a good story. Can you tell me about like
you felt like this is so ridiculous You're going into
like it's not fancy.
Speaker 3: It was not fancy at all. It was you know,
in between like a circus liquors and a check cashing place.
There were you know, just people hanging out outside who
looked like they were unhoused. It was also a needle exchange,
so I would like park my range Rover in front
where I could see it, and then you know, try
not to touch anything when I was inside. And the
deal with the drug testing. Was this woman whose name
was Veronica, would have to walk back there with me
and watch me pee into a cup. I thought I
just had to pee there behind a cloth stall door,
but no, she had to watch me do this. And
it was the first time I couldn't even do it.
Speaker 1: I get so pea shy, Yes, for real.
Speaker 3: It was. It was humiliating. The second time, I really
hydrated so that I could produce something, but it was
still really hard. And you know, we went on for
a few weeks like that, and finally we started talking
about like the Real Housewives of Atlanta while I was peeing,
and then we started talking about her kids while I
was peeing, and then we got to know each other
really well. And by the time I ended, we started
in August, right when I got out of treatment. I
ended in December because that's when the mediation was. And
by the last visit with her, you know, I had
Christmas presents for her kids, she had a present for me.
We hugged each other and we were both crying, like
it was this. It was this this bond, this very
unexpected bond with the most unexpected person. She was like
all tatted up and like the tattooed eyeliner, and like
she was just somebody that I would have kind of
rushed past if I saw her on the street and
not looked at. And then just to have this bond
with her, it was really magical.
Speaker 1: So you make it through, but it's only for a
few months that you have to even do the drug
testing and then yeah, then you have the mediation. Yeah,
and you're not in danger of now losing your kids.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, so what I made you decide to stay?
Stay with it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, at that point I figured because yeah, we were divorced,
and you know, I obviously got to stay in my
children's lives. But you know, there was a clause in
my divorce that basically, if I was caught using or
drinking again, he could take them and then we deal
with it later, right, Okay, which is smart. If I
was loaded and he found that out, he should be
to take the kids and then and then deal with
whatever I was dealing with. It felt harsh, you know
when it was spelled out for me at the time,
like I was being punished. I understand it better now
and I have more compassion for the position he was in.
But so I kind of had this clause hanging over
my head, and so I figured a year would be
a good amount of time to stay sober, and that
way he wouldn't even think about me getting loaded because
I would have been good. I'm putting air quotes around that.
For a year, and that's what I did, and I
didn't like it. I really hated it. Actually, I hated meetings.
I went to twelve step meetings. You know, I came
in the back, I sat in the back. I came
in after the meeting started. I left before it was over.
I talked to no one.
Speaker 1: You talk to me.
Speaker 3: I talked to you.
Speaker 1: But that was a year later, okay, almost a year later. Yeah, yeah,
you're right, Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. But at first, those first few months, I
was very much dark, glasses on, arms folded. And then
you know, I heard someone tell my story, which is
what you hear in these things, and I guess I
asked her to take me through these twelve steps. But
in my recollection, she offered, I don't remember exactly what happened,
but anyway she did, and that everything I was just
kind of like waiting for the other, like until it
was time for me to leave, basically, and I figured
I would know when it was time for me to leave,
but I just kept staying. And then eventually, like I
meet you, and I meet a few other people, like
we have a few friends that I won't name that
I met that really allowed me to find my place
in this and feel comfortable, more comfortable at times, and
I felt in my world outside of this, and I
started realizing that, you know, being honest, being authentic, not
just telling the truth, but like living truthfully was so
much better for me than the way that I had
been living before. And the reason I was able to
live that way was because of what I was learning
in this program and so that and my kids, you know,
really liked who I was, not that they didn't like
who I was before, but I felt like there was
a deeper connection with them, Like I was much more
present for them because I wasn't planning, you know, I couldn't.
I was trying to wait till they got to sleep
before so I could get high, or I was planning
how much I you know, I was strategizing all the
time prior to that, and I wasn't strategizing anymore. I
was just with them, and I did all the same
stuff you know, I joined the board of trustees, I
helped with the galas, like I did all the same stuff,
but I was present for it, and I really liked that.
I really liked how it made me, so I stayed.
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, when I was new and then
I had to lead a meeting and you came up
to me afterwards. We've talked about this since, but and
somebody had said something a little bit rude, and it
was a person who says something who's kind of rude
to everyone, and you came over to me and you
were like, don't worry about that. Like you told my story,
I really relate to you. And then it was like
a newcomer meeting. And then you were the first person
you asked me to help you celebrate your one year,
and you were the first I only had. I mean
I had a couple months, I guess at the time,
or less if I'm May and you're August. Anyway, the point, yeah,
the point is I had a couple months of sobriety,
and it was so exciting to me. And I remember thinking, like,
my gosh, what do you get somebody for their birthday?
And then I think I got you, like some can't
a card and like some can. And I was very
into it. I was so excited and like really honored
to do it. But you know, we always don't realize
how much our story can like impact the next person,
which is really like what this podcast is because I
think that regardless of how you do it, and whether
you go to a twelve step program or whether you
you know, read a book about I don't care how
you do it. I think the thing that helps people
is recognizing their feelings, their same feelings in somebody else's story.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm so happy that you you shared with us.
And now it's been all these years later, you're still
with the guy they you met in rehab, which is
just so cute. He's the cutest and you guys work
together and you live together, and your podcaster, are you
still like? What? Tell us where we can find you?
What you're doing? You have a beautiful book book? Thank you?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the podcast is called the only One in
the Room and it all dashed my life in hiding.
Thank you for holding that up. Is that the hardcover?
Speaker 1: Yeah? This is the hardcover. Yeah, this is this is
a for YouTube so they can see the book.
Speaker 3: Good, good, Yeah, the only one in the room. Of
the podcast Dashed My Life in Hiding is the memoir.
The memoir came out in March of twenty twenty three.
The paperback came out last year. The audible. I don't
know if you found this with with your books. My
audiobook is going crazy, like it's doing really well. The
hardcover and the paperback sales are far less than the audio.
Oh yeah, yeah, So that's really nice to see and
I appreciate however you read it or listen to it,
consume it. I appreciate it. And the podcast focuses on
anybody who's ever felt alone in a room full of people,
whether that's sobriety or infertility or divorce, or someone with
a disability, whatever that is that might you might feel
like you're alone. We have those stories on the podcast.
And uh yeah, and I'm on I'm my name everywhere.
My my website is at Laura No my website is
Lauracathcart Robbins dot com. And on Instagram, I'm at Laura
Cathcart Robbins. I'm want other platforms, but not really. I
don't really check Facebook or x but I'm on them,
so you know, you can find me there, but if
you want to engage with me, check out Instagram.
Speaker 1: Okay perfect. Laurakafcart Robbins everybody, thank you again. Thank you
for sharing your beautiful story and I adore you and
we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 2: Linda Darty Times you can't be the