Transcript:

Julie: Tonight, we are here with Summer, Keith and Melissa. I’m going to have you guys introduce yourselves for me first =. Summer, do you want to go first?

Summer: sure my name is Summer. I am from Germantown, Maryland and I am six months sober and happy to be here.

Julie: Awesome, thank you so much for being here. And then Keith, we met on Instagram. Keith is known on instagram as Sober Inspiration by Keith. How are you tonight?

Keith: I’m well I hope you guys are. My name is keith Williamson and I’m 44 years old and I’m from Greensboro, North Carolina. I work in the wholesale auto parts industry and I’ve been sober for over two years now.

Julie: Yeah, very cool, well thank you for being here! And I will include all of Keith’s social media links in our show notes, so you guys can get to know him a little bit better there. And last but not least we have Melissa

Melissa: Hi, I am Melissa and I am 36 years old and I’m just shy of nine months sober right now and I live in Black Mountain, North Carolina, so another North Carolinian in here. I work as a beer rep and I’m a musician and I am in graduate school, the whole lot.

Julie: That’s quite a combination for sober person! Sounds like you have your own share of challenges! So the topic for tonight is triggers and cravings. If we define the word trigger as any occurrence, thought , feeling etcetera that brings on a craving – when have you experienced triggers, how have you overcome them? And are there any that are still just really hard for you.

Keith: Well the first seven days in the beginning of my sober journey was the most challenging in regards to dealing with cravings and triggers because that was the first Sunday through Saturday that I was breaking that bad habit of drinking. In response to dealing with triggers, cravings and at the same time developing new and productive habits, I once heard someone say bad habits are difficult to form, but easy to live with while good habits are difficult to form, but easy to live with.

I already experienced a version of myself that was developed through easy and bad habits of drinking and I grew tired of him and did not like him.

So I wanted to challenge myself to do what was difficult, which is developing new and productive habits that would help me to develop into being a person that I not only like, but also a person that I loved and admired.

So after facing and overcoming those triggers and cravings in my first seven days of sobriety, I felt awesome, I felt liberated and then I felt proud of myself and I discovered the beauty and sobriety.

Julie: Nice, yeah, those 1st 1st 7 days, 1st 30 days if I’m being honest are brutal. I know for me, a big part of the drinking was just routine, it’s just what I did every day. I would start making dinner and I would start drinking wine. Like those two things just went hand in hand, and it was like I don’t know, there were just certain things that were routine. And that was really hard because those things just went hand in hand together. For me changing my routine made a huge difference for me.

I just, I couldn’t, I actually stopped cooking dinner. I think I’ve said this before, but I stopped cooking dinner, I started putting dinner in the crock pot in the morning so that I didn’t even have to walk into the kitchen at five o’clock in the evening. And instead I just made a completely different routine so I didn’t have to deal with that trigger. And it really helped a lot in the beginning. I do cook dinner now, like a normal person. But I think I must have done everything in the Crock Pot for at least the 1st 30 days, I had to.

Keith: And I was drinking beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So yeah, uh so, you know, after the first seven days I could see it, uh I was like, I got this, I got this from here now, I’m good, It’s a smooth sailing. So it’s been awesome.

Melissa: I wish that I could say that my journey into sobriety was was a smooth one when it came to the triggers and cravings. But it’s interesting listening to y’all talk about routine and switching that up and I think that as a person who’s analytical, which I definitely consider myself. I get really heady about things and trying to come up with formulas to, well if I just, you know, only drink three beers on this day or if I only switch up my routine in this way that I can, I can fix things and I spent all this time in my journey to get sober resetting because I kept trying to get some sort of a formula right?

And I think for me it was just really recognizing that I had to, I had to pretty much make it about as simple as possible. And for the first, I want to say it was like the first 100 times, I reset – because that’s about how many times I did- the one that stuck, it was just really making it simple and laying in my bed and asking my body and asking myself what I needed in that moment. And making one rule for myself, which was just don’t pick up.

Like I couldn’t make it any more complicated than that.

And so sometimes that meant that there would be nights that I would be in my house and I’d start getting this restless itchy feeling. That’s the feeling that would always lead me out to picking up a drink. And when I would get that feeling, I would I would sit with it and really kind of just get to know it and get really familiar with it instead of running away from it.

And that was probably the most uncomfortable thing I think I’ve ever done. I had to do a whole lot of that for the 1st 30 to 60 days and when I started to, it’s interesting, I feel like the first little bit was trying my best not to look so far into the future or compare myself to people in the sober communities that were getting six months a year, two years because that just felt so far away and impossible for somebody that reset as much as I did.

So for me, it was like a moment to moment with my triggers and cravings and I could not overthink like systems to put into place. I just had to go whatever you do, just don’t pick up right now.

Steve: Yeah, it was for me, I don’t remember ever having a lot of cravings there on and off. It was normally either situational, like, you know, I’m going out mowing the lawn, always having a beer. Or kind of like what Julie said, it’s very routine, situational. I’m in a place, it’s almost like romanticizing it, you know what I mean? Oh, this would be a great time to have a beer, you know, sunny out. Whatever it is, sit on the back porch, that sort of thing. And then it’s that voice in your head going, no, I mean it was, it would be nice to have and then you’re like, wait a second, would this really actually be nice to have because I know if I have one, then it just gets ugly.

It’s just so, it’s not nice to have at all. It’s just it’s the one that sounds good and it’s the ugly after that I end up reminding myself about. But it’s normally for me now at this point in time and fairly early on was whenever I had a really, really heavy emotion where I sat in it for a really long time.

If I sat in in that for a day maybe a little bit longer and I couldn’t break myself free of it then I felt like I needed to escape and when I felt like I needed to escape I have had enough of feeling this way.

I know the way out. I know the way out. I have experienced the way out. I know how to not deal with shit really easily. It’s at the bottom of one bottle because it will send me to the bottom of a whole lot of other bottles and it’ll make it all disappear. The problem is it will make it all disappear for a very short period of time because it never goes away if you don’t deal with it. That’s why it hurts so freaking much.

So that’s kind of where it landed, where it still kind of lands for me every once in a while when when something gets really hard, like trying to squeeze a square peg through a round hole and you’re just sitting there and you’re like on the edge of doing, I don’t know the next freaking hard thing because I’m of a pretty good procrastinator and normally if I leave things too long, they hurt harder.

Julie: Yeah, I know, I don’t, and you guys say like, you don’t really have cravings anymore. So I’m close to a year and a half in and I don’t want to say have cravings necessarily, but and like, Steve was saying the big heavy emotions. When I get to the point of almost like hopelessness, which I still experience occasionally… kind of that like, what’s the point in all of this anyway? Why am I even bothering?

That’s a really dangerous place for me to be and I don’t end up there very often anymore. Not like I used to, not when I was drinking. But it wasn’t maybe about three weeks ago, but I was definitely there. I, everything felt like it was going wrong. I was curled up on my bed sobbing just thinking, what is the point in even doing all of this? Why am I even bothering? And when I get to that point, that’s like a serious danger zone, like I wished I could drink if that makes sense. It wasn’t a craving.

It wasn’t like I felt like I was really at risk of going out and buying something, but God, I wished with all my heart that I could drink that night. Because everything just hurts so bad and I couldn’t see the way out of it, I couldn’t see the other side of it.

It’s that – when you can’t see the possibility of everything being okay and better on the other side. And for me that night, the solution ended up being calling Steve and just letting him sit there and listen to me while I just cried and vented and got everything out. It gave him a chance to show me the hope that I couldn’t see and I just realized, I think at that point how valuable that is and how important it is to have these relationships that we really develop so that when we get to that point, we have people in our lives that know us well enough that they can say, hey look, here’s what I see, here’s what I know of you, here’s what I know of your life, here’s the hope that you can’t see right now.

And for me that was really powerful and really important.

Summer: I definitely understand that. I feel like in my drinking days, every day was bad, like every day was bad for me. I didn’t really see a way out then.

But what I’ve seen in sobriety is that like I’ll have, you know, a bad week or a bad day or a bad couple of weeks and I’ve been seeing the other side and seeing my growth and seeing how much happier I am when I do get through it. And it’s just so much better than picking up a drink and being like, you know what I’m going to deal with it this way this time instead of just sitting through and sitting with my feelings. Like it just felt so much better for me. I got sober in the springtime and like she was saying, I was very like drinking by the pool, drinking on my balcony.

Like, I love the ambiance of just the vibes of drinking and I was like, I cannot do this in the spring and summer time. There’s no way that I’m going to get through this. Like, these three months are going to be the hardest months of my life. So I have to do it during this time. I have to prove to myself that this can be done, and it was definitely a challenge. I think that it was like, trigger after trigger and I did, you know recently mention that I don’t have as many cravings, I don’t think about alcohol as much, but it’s more like thinking about the triggers, it’s more knowing that I’m not going to have the hangover the next day and thinking about how much better I feel now. That gets me through those hard weeks and just every day, like that’s how I stay sober.

Melissa: It’s interesting that you say that summer because like, I… The one thing that I keep coming back to whenever those triggers do come up for me and it’s the, it’s the piece that I hold on to and it’s the, it’s the idea that when I feel a trigger or I experience a craving or something that I feel like I cannot sit through.

I know how things will turn out if I make the choice to pick up a drink because I’ve done it hundreds of times, I’ve done it hundreds of times, expecting a different outcome.

I don’t know what comes on the other side, if I continue to choose to not pick up a drink. And that, like I was looking at my current partner the other day and just thinking about how healthy my relationship is with him, and remembering where I came from and how bad that was, and thinking that what I’m experiencing right now was not in any way, shape or form possible, but it is possible because of every single sober moment that I’ve made the choice to continue engaging in whenever.Whenever that that trigger comes up with that craving and I have that choice, I go, if I choose to pick up a drink because I’m one drink away from going right back to where I was.

I know how that’s going to turn out, but I don’t know how full and amazing my life can be if I keep making the choice to stay sober.

Keith: I knew I would face and encounter triggers and cravings in my sober journey and my early on in my sober journey. So I figured it would be a great idea for me to develop some mental toughness. So I started doing things that would uh help me to do just that.

I started taking cold showers and got into public speaking and my fear of heights and the water by learning how to swim. And I figured if I can face those fears and overcome them, facing and overcoming cravings and triggers would be easy, would be less challenging. Doing something such as that has definitely helped me to become strong in my sober journey. You know, it’s truly has been an adventure for me and uh I have, I truly love and admire the person that I have become because of it. In today’s society, you know, with drinking is so connected to so many things in our memories, from birthdays, holidays, New Year’s. So many things, it’s connected to so many things that we do in our lives. It almost seems impossible when you’re first starting off in your sober journey. It almost seems to stay sober because it’s connected to so many things, but when you find the, I believe that when you find the audacity to believe in yourself and courageous act of actually committing yourself to being sober, you introduce yourself to the most awesome version of yourself, it’s just a beautiful experience.

Summer: And I feel like drinking is like getting away from, it’s getting away from, like like for me, ,I’m very self critical, so I’m always judging my body, judging what I’m saying, judging how people like think about me, like thinking too much about what other people think about me and I just like run to the drink and that it’s not solving the problems and I’m just like, why don’t we fix these problems now? Like why don’t we go the other way, go the other route and instead of hiding from them and shoving them down more like let’s actually solve this and fix this and grow as a person. Like that sounds like a better plan to me than drinking myself blind so

Keith: right

Melissa: or even just like learning to accept that person that you’re afraid to be in public, like to have the audacity to be that human because I don’t know about you all, but I know that my social awkwardness sometimes can feel so uncomfortable in public situations. I’m like, why am I not this way? Like this other person that seems to be so graceful and you know, learning to embrace the quirkiness that is Melissa. You know, or embrace the body things that I’m uncomfortable in because we get one, you know? It’s like, I’ve learned that I don’t need a drink to be in social situations or to go to the pool in a bathing suit or whatever it is, that makes me feel uncomfortable. Because being quirky is kind of cool

Summer: and it’s so freeing, so freeing to learn that

Keith: part of your individuality as well.You know, you gotta embrace your yourself, who you are as an individual, not depend on alcohol to help you become someone that you think you should be. You already possess within you. You don’t need alcohol to bring it out in you all you need to do is believe in yourself and know that you already possess these qualities and show it to the world.

Julie: I was just going to say for me that whole authenticity journey has been like the foundation of sobriety for me. Because yeah, like Summer said I was and I still am to some extent, completely uncomfortable with who I am, who I am in public, what other people think of me. All of these things that I see when I look in the mirror that you know, I just made me completely self conscious. The authenticity piece is huge and I think that you know when we talk about cravings and triggers like all of those things that are so uncomfortable when you get that uncomfortable feeling, that’s like your, your cue to figure out what, what work do I need to do here so this doesn’t stay a trigger. And I think that’s where the growth is when it comes to the triggers and the cravings. Because those things pop up and they’ll continue to pop up. It doesn’t necessarily turn so much into a trigger.

The further along you get it, it’s not like it turns directly into this deep, powerful craving, But you still get that oh, this is uncomfortable, Gosh, I wish I could have a drink and make this easier kind of feeling. And those are your, your signals that hey, here’s, here’s a piece of work that you still need to do to become more comfortable with yourself or become more comfortable with the world or whatever it is. And in a way those are really cool because I don’t know, it just that keeps the forward momentum going to when you notice them.

Steve: It’s interesting when that happens too, right, because if you don’t deal with it, it’ll happen again.

That’s just how that works. It seems to like with me, it’s, you know, you have that whatever situation was you got through it, but you didn’t do anything about it, chances are I’m going to experience that situation again. I’m going to have that same feeling again because I didn’t do anything about it and I’m going to have to figure that out. Like I’m just forced to figure it out.

The I like what Keith brought up is how we associated. It’s everything. It’s everywhere. It’s with everything. No matter what you do associated with fun, you associated with sadness, you associated with cooking dinner, you associated with all of the things. I did anyways, because I drank throughout the entire day. It was just the worst best friend I ever had, right?

It lied to me. It stole from me. Like, I mean, I mean I made all of the decisions, I sure did. I made the decision to drink. But you talk about having the audacity, you have the audacity to tell that best friend I don’t need you anymore. This isn’t how a best friend treats anyone. I’m gonna put you away and then I’m gonna tell you to stay there. That’s the trigger and that’s the craving, right? Yeah, bye.

I’ll acknowledge you and sometimes I have to tell on myself because that’s the one thing I know I’m gonna have, I have to do if the thought crosses my mind, I give it to someone else.

Summer: But I still also feel like sorry for that person and like bad for that person. Not like sorry for them, but like (it’s me), but I want to give that person a hug. Like I don’t know if you guys have ever experienced being around like really mean or like nasty person and you just know that they’re like going through some stuff or like dealing with stuff and you’re like, oh I just want to give them a hug even though they’re being really mean right now.

I just want to like give my drinking self a hug because it’s like she never dealt with things the right way she was going through things and she was angry and I just want to like sometimes I feel just sad for her and I’m just I’m so glad we’re here now and we’ve made it here and I’m so proud of the accomplishments that you’ve made and the growth that you’ve made.

But I don’t know sometimes it’s just as much as it’s like screw you to the best friend.

It’s also like, I want to give you a hug.

Melissa: Yeah, I was gonna say that’s what we talk about in therapy all the time as parts, like you have to be accepting of all of the parts of yourself. If you’re going to grow through anything, to deny any part of yourself is to not truly do the work. Much like Julie was talking about, how those triggers and cravings and uncomfortable feelings. That information, those are parts crying out for something, whatever that thing is, and it’s, it’s a really powerful thing to get to know all of those different parts of yourself. And my therapist would probably argue and say that you, you can like hold yourself and be like, you know, young Summer, you were doing the best you could with the information that you had at the time. And ultimately that’s what we’re doing on this journey is the best that we can at this moment in time, with the information that we have and the tools we have. Because sometimes we didn’t have those coping mechanisms at that point in time. We didn’t have that information or we weren’t ready to use it.

Steve: There’s the key right there, there’s the key right there. You’re not ready to use it. Or you don’t have the courage to use it or whatever that may be. That’s like the money shot right there.

Julie: I like what Melissa just said that the craving is like queuing you. I can’t remember how you just worded that it was perfect. It’s letting you know there’s something you need to look at even in the very beginning. You know, those cravings a lot of times where this is stress or this is sadness or this is grief or whatever it was. And if we stop and ask ourselves, what do we really need? And I think Melissa said that early on – what what really needs to happen here because this, we’ve always answered this feeling with a drink before.

Now we know that we’ve been answering this feeling the wrong way. So what’s the right way to answer it? And I think just recognizing that really helps even the early, early cravings that seem to happen, god, every 20 minutes. But it’s, there’s always something, it’s always a signal and you just have to figure out what that signal is. We just at some point, every signal for me, it was a reason to drink whether I was happy or sad or outside or inside or if it was winter or summer or anything that was always like that was a signal to drink. It turns out that, you know, summer should be a signal to go outside and go for a walk and winter should be a signal to sit inside by the fire and be happy about it. And you know, happiness should be a signal to share it with someone else and smile and be joyful, not drink.

And I think we just need to pay attention to those, those signals and figure out what it is we’re actually supposed to do in response to them.

Keith: Um I feel like alcohol never has and never will fix the damn thing, but it certainly will cause you a lot of issues. I know in my marriage I definitely had more issues as far as arguments with my wife. Now it we don’t have any arguments. Of course we have disagreements in any couple does, but as far as arguments is concerned, that’s, that’s not an issue anymore.

Also, I was a beer drinker and because I drank so many beers, I saw how it was affecting me physically. I’m into working out and maintaining a six pack and everything. And when I was drinking all those beers, I had developed this beer belly and I was like, wow, I got to do something about this. Because when I was in my twenties, I was like able to drink as many beers as I possibly could and it would not affect my body. But the older I got, the, my metabolism slowed down and other things changed, my body and I just couldn’t drink poison, like I used to because it affects me differently. I had to come to terms that I am no longer a spring chicken anymore. So uh, just drinking alcohol, it has no benefits. There’s no significant purpose.It doesn’t serve me to becoming a better version of myself. So I was like, I gotta cut this mess out. This, this is not helping anything in any shape form or fashion. So I had to give that so called friend the boot

Steve: it’s just as empty as the gift it gave you. That spare tire, you couldn’t even use it to change a flat tire on your car either because you can’t get it off crying out for crying out loud. I know I had one too

Julie: Seriously. Like I drank beer and then when I started gaining weight in my thirties, my solution was to switch to vodka. Like, you know, you have a problem when you’re like, I’ll drink vodka because it’s fewer calories.

Keith: Yeah, I was just a beer drinker, but with wine and liquor, wine tasted like what I imagine drinking shoe polish, it tastes like, I imagine drinking tastes like. So I never got into drinking those types of adult beverages, but it was, it was just beer for me. But oh my God had me so bloated and beer belly and everything. Yeah, I made a personal goal to lose my beer belly and I got obsessed with running and I would only run three days out of a week.

But in those three days I would run 30 miles, also ran a solo marathon. And yeah, Within five months of running I went from a bloated 210 pounds to 167 and needless to say I got my six pack back and uh that was definitely a sigh of relief for me and made me feel great and it truly helped me to see even more so why I could just while alcohol is just terrible for you and so so many aspects of your life. It’s just not the way to go regardless of what the triggers and cravings you face. Push through it because the better version of yourself is on the other side. So you just got to push through it and keep on striving

Steve: Keith, what you’re telling me is you put the six pack down and now you carry one around with you all the time.

Keith: Yeah!

Steve: Yeah, that’s what I thought I heard, that’s what I thought, I don’t carry around a six pack but the spare tire’s gone, it’s all good.

That’s pretty awesome man.

Melissa: Yeah, I wish that that happened for me. I I you hear these stories about people getting sober and losing all this weight and it definitely did wonders for my skin and my hair for sure. And I think that because I was I did much the same as Julie did. I stopped drinking beer. Beer was like never the thing that I craved, which is hilarious because I work in the beer industry and I’m around it all day every day and I started drinking vodka and I was like, whoa, this is a quicker route to get to the place that I am mentally trying to go right now and um there are fewer calories.

But so yeah, I stopped eating and I was just drinking vodka all the time and then when I got sober I actually gained weight. Which was so frustrating, but it’s because I had been probably malnourished from, from not eating enough food. But the skin thing was definitely a benefit for sure.

Steve: I mean, I think that’s one of the ways we dealt with the triggers to.

I know, I mean I ate chips or I ate food, candy, sugar, whatever it may be instead of and you know what, that’s okay.I mean in the end it’s, it’s the lesser of two evils, right?

So we talked about triggers and I think everyone experiences cravings and triggers in a different way. Whether it’s routine, heavy emotions, Melissa talked about getting the itch, right? We talked about seeing the other side. Melissa, you mentioned you don’t know what’s on the other side if you don’t pick up the drink, but you do know what’s on the other side if you do pick up a drink and I think that’s really important. I think that it’s really a choice that we have to make when that happens and that a craving or trigger is a signal and it gives us a chance to redefine it.

So I want to thank you Melissa, thank you Keith and thank you Summer for being on the podcast tonight.

We appreciate really appreciate your time and your thoughts.