Transcript:

 Julie: We are here today with Kate, James and Lacey. I’m gonna ask you guys all to introduce yourselves real quick. I think we’ll start with Lacey. Lacey is, I’ve actually followed Lacey’s story for quite some time. We quit drinking pretty close to the same time. I just hit 14 months today and I think you’re just like a week behind me.

Lacey: Is that right? Oh, congratulations. Yeah, I am. Just about a week behind you. I’m at 418. So I’m getting there. I surpassed the year mark finally.

Julie: Do you wanna tell us just a little bit about yourself?

Lacey: My name’s Lacey. I’m at 418 days sober. I live in Pennsylvania, work a full-time job, have a house with my fiance and my pet cat Storm.

Julie: Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for being here.

Lacey: Thank you for having me.

Julie: And we’ll go with Kate next. And we met Kate on Instagram. She is Walking the Straight Line on Insta. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about yourself?

Kate: Yeah, sure. I am. From England. I’ve lived in New York and Rome and all over the place.
I’m a writer and I’ve, I do writing for things. I write comics for Disney and I write about working in war zones for the UN, so massive spectrum. I’ve been a drinker since I was about 14 or 15, and I was drinking up until recently, about 10 bottles of wine a week at home when I was doing absolutely nothing other than watching Game of Thrones. I mean it just became habit. It became what I did. And I’m in my forties and I just thought, I can’t go on like this. I’ve had, I’ve been arrested, I’ve been hit by cars, I’ve fallen through glass doors, all that stuff. And nothing ever stopped me. And eventually I just thought can’t do it. I can’t do it anymore. And I am 327 days sober today, and yeah, I love it. Absolutely love it. No, going back.

Julie: That’s awesome. Really grateful that you are here. And then James, how are you today?

James: I’m good. I’m good. I’m from the UK. Two years on Monday from cocaine, not alcohol. Yeah, it was years and years of an issue and then getting a handle on it and then it coming back. And for about 20 years, give or take, among other substances and stuff. And 2020 was a definite wake up call. And I was six months sober. And the inevitable falling over. And then it’s yeah, on Monday it’s two years.

Julie: That’s awesome. Cool. Congratulations.

Steve: Congratulations, James.

Julie: So to introduce our topic for today. Something I see come up over and over in the recovery community is people struggling with feelings of regret.

I think we do a lot of things while we’re drinking or drugging that we regret terribly later, and it can be really hard to reconcile those feelings. So when have you experienced regret and how have you learned how to cope with those feelings?

Kate: Do you want me to speak?

Julie: Sure.

Steve: Have at it. Go for it.

Kate: I’ve got probably a different view on this to most people, because I hated myself every morning when I woke up.

I was disappointed in myself. I didn’t love myself. I was not proud of myself. I didn’t like myself. I felt shame, regret, embarrassment. Now I did that the same as James for 20, 25 years, and I did things that I regret. Obviously people, everyone does things that they regret, but I never really hurt anyone.

I never got in fights. I wasn’t that type of drinker. I hurt myself. So when I stopped drinking, I almost made the decision when. When I woke up and I realized that there was this new way of living where I didn’t wake up hating myself, and I started to love myself for the first time in my adult life. I decided to not have regrets about anything I’ve done, and I genuinely parked it and said, do you know what? The things that I’ve done have made me who I am. They brought me here. I haven’t ever left anyone and like I’ve hurt myself and I forgive myself for that. And I don’t only blame myself. I blame society and their big alcohol and myself, but I just thought the things that I’ve done, every left turn or right turn you make.

I can never go back there. So all I can do is say I’ve experienced things that other people haven’t, and I’m still alive and I’m changing, and that is what I’m gonna focus on. And I genuinely do not feel guilty about the things that I’ve done, and I know that’s not easy for everyone. And I know that’s not possible for everyone, but for me, I’ve managed to do that and I am just excited about the future and I will talk about the things I’ve done openly and say, of course it was embarrassing, but I don’t feel regret about them because I am who I am and I’m proud of myself for the first time in my life and I’m not gonna give that away.

So that’s how I see that.

Julie: I’m similar. I’m in the best place I have ever been in my entire life. Life is good. There’s so much hope for the future. I like who I am. None of that could have been said before. And so while there are things that I’ve done that I do regret, it’s easy to not dwell on them because all of those things had to happen in order for me to be where I am now.

So I think really similar thoughts on that.

Lacey: Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly where I’m at with it too. I did a lot of stupid things, ingested quite a few different substances over the years, but it all had to happen. I was hardest on myself because it was me doing all of these terrible things.

There was one instance where I actually did hurt someone. It was actually my fiance and him and I are still together, but in a fit of rage. Drunk, fit of rage. I, him and I ended up getting into, a little argument and I bit him. My teeth sank into his arm and it’s so embarrassing to think about now.

And then, there was the time that I broke down crying on my back porch whenever my dad tried to drop me off. Like it’s just… I spent a lot of moments embarrassing myself, maybe even humiliating myself. Ruining my one friend’s college graduation party because I ended up downing an entire bottle of vodka and then throwing up all over the inside of my car.

My car somehow ended up in their parents’ backyard, and I don’t really know how that happened. And just various things like that. Yeah, they haven’t. All I can really do is just show everyone now that I’m not that person, I’m more responsible. I’m not gonna act like that between me and my fiance and involved an awful lot of communication, about why it happened. I’m quitting drinking because things like this aren’t gonna happen anymore. And it just took a lot of willingness to communicate on both of our parts. To reconcile all of that.

Steve: Takes a lot of time, doesn’t it?

Lacey: It did. It took a lot of time. Even now, situations will happen and he’ll expect me to freak out.

He’ll expect me to lose my cool. Start yelling. And I remind ’em all the time I’m not that person now, but I understand why you think I’m gonna act like that but I’m I’m a lot more clearheaded levelheaded now than I was whenever I was, say a fifth deep or however.

Steve:Yeah, when you have a partner in there, when, like I know if you add mine, there’s all the lies and the deceit and the hiding and all of that stuff. There wasn’t a lot of truth told in that relationship for a very long time and for that to, even to reconcile that. But listening to you guys, it sounds, the regret’s used as motivation.

Kate: listening to you lot now. I’m thinking when I say I never hurt anyone. I obviously did hurt. I did have fights with my partners and I did, ruin people’s evenings and stuff like that. I meant like I physically didn’t drive a car into a school bus or something, like that. But I did hurt people individually in small ways, but, so what you’re saying, Lacey. I was certainly no innocent person who just went around getting drunk and blacking out. I was a nightmare, but I didn’t leave anyone without limbs or anything like that, which is for me, how I justified in my head for so long. I could carry on drinking I think, cuz I thought I’m only hurting myself.

Everyone else has gone to work today. They might be upset or whatever, but actually, sometimes those emotional. Things are harder to come to terms with. I know. I just pretended they weren’t happening for so many years and I’m lucky that people still talk to me, quite frankly. But they do and I am lucky for that.

But yeah I’m the same. I wasn’t blameless at all.

Lacey: I am grateful that none of my friends just cast me aside. Hey, screw you. We’re not gonna talk to you anymore. Yeah, I was pretty lucky there and like I never caused any like real true physical damage to anybody either, didn’t have any crazy accidents or anything like that.

It was mainly just all emotional damage.

Kate: I think people can tell. The alcohol is playing a part and they know that’s not us because they see us when we’re not high or drunk and they know that we are kind people and that, I think that’s why they hung around personally. I hope that’s why they hung around.

That’s certainly what they told me. And that makes me happy because it meant people didn’t think I was this sort of crazy person.

James: But I’m in a very similar place myself, as in I’ve come to terms with a lot of the things that I did and, just got the lies and that was a very long process and definitely led to my first relapse cuz I just couldn’t get over the feelings of guilt.

It’s the shame, isn’t it? The shame and regret is such interlinked emotions. I think, to anyone listening like that’s, it will be the fuel to a certain degree in early recovery. The shame of when you actually come out of the… I felt like I was in a fog for 20 years, with times of sobriety in between and stuff, but, And like you come out the fog and you start seeing what you’ve done and the person you became to a certain degree.

And that is danger. Period. For quite a, for different times from different people. But it definitely fueled my first relapse and I can’t really say I haven’t hurt people without just obviously don’t wanna incriminate myself. But I was involved in supplying stupid stuff like that 10, 12 years ago.

And, I lost track of who I was. We became quite successful in that area. And yeah, it’s and industry dominated by violence and, misery and fear and in my justification was always looking after people. And look, and that was I had to keep them safe without the realization that I was creating a lot of that unsafety.

And it’s when you, that definitely led to years of more of addiction because when I realized what I’d become, we’ve got out, we stopped. I could never really face up to that. And because that was never me. I’m not that. But the addiction and the need to feed the addiction had led me down a very dark path.

And it’s a lot of the forgiveness that I found within the community, and the ability to overcome that regret because some of the people that I’ve met, the people I was perpetuating in the past by the things I was doing, and that took a long time to come to terms with, and, but it’s very important.

The point of it is in the past. You’ve gotta get up every day and do better. And I personally feel like I’ve got quite a bit of makeup for. I try to be better on a daily basis and not let that person out of the cage again. Because I don’t like him very much and and it’s, you lose who you are, you lose your identity. In early recovery, regret is gonna feel you and you have got to get a handle on that. And you’ve got the past is in another country and there is a certain selfishness to being locked in regret because the people around you who are supporting you and are put up with your shit and are there for you now. You’re not helping them if you’re beating the shit outta yourself. And you aren’t getting better if you are living in regret and it’s only gonna lead you one place. So you have to park that. It’s like acceptance, isn’t it?

Steve: Yeah, that was my first thought about this was using regret for motivation. It was the motivation.

It was like every time I’d have another piece of that past that I regretted, it came with a whole slew of things. It came, it came with. Healing it. It came with tears. It came with the acceptance of, okay, this is what I’ve done, and now what am I gonna do about it? I have to do something about it now.

Like, why am I regretting this? I’m regretting this because I’ve failed myself. I failed my daughter, I failed my wife, I failed. There’s a whole bunch of that kind of gets all wrapped in there. And James, like you said, you’re just a shell of yourself, right? You let your boundaries go.

You don’t stand up for yourself at all. You, your moral compass is absolutely shot. Your version of right and wrong is the version of selfishness that you see today. So you can feed the addiction. Like that is whatever… whenever I can get my next drink is the selfishness that I’m gonna use. So I can go and Get it.

Regardless of who around me is in the way, I’m still gonna try and manipulate. I’m still gonna try and lie. I’m still gonna try and deceive because this is the first thing on my mind is to get another drink cuz I’m already six deep and that’s not enough for today. So I think a lot of it for me is that regret’s been very much a driving force into figuring out the things that I do regret.

And being able to accept and move on from them. You guys talk about hurting people and there’s the physical pain. My daughter was at daycare and I picked her up and I dropped her over my shoulder. What did I do there? I was drunk when I picked her up. First thing I did was grabbed her and I moved as far away from all the other teachers as possible.

Tried to get outta there as soon as I could, and I made up an excuse as to why she came over my shoulder and then I went and bought her french fries to try and make her feel better so she would stop crying. And I took a sideways way home. So if somebody called the cops, I wouldn’t get caught. And then when I got back home, what did I do?

I drank. Like that took me a long time. I can still hear that kid scream, I can still hear the scream in my head. Do I regret it? Yeah. Do I accept that’s what happened. Now what am I gonna do about it? I have to make sure that I don’t ever meet that man again. It’s like what James said.

I don’t ever meet that man, the man that ran from instead of stood in front of. That’s hard stuff.

Kate: It’s a bit like it. It’s like walking away from someone but not forgetting them. You keep, you remember what’s happened because you don’t wanna go back there, but you can’t stay holding that person’s hand and feeling the regrets of that person anymore because what James said, which I’ve never heard anyone say before.

About it’s being, it’s selfish to hold on to those, and I think that’s so true. That really has just hit a nerve with me and it, I agree completely. We’ve taken enough time from people, haven’t we? We’ve used enough. We’ve tested their patience, pushed them away, and expected them to come back. Now is the time for us to put our big girl pants on and go right, it’s time for me to do some stuff. That’s good. And I think that’s why a lot of people in the sober community get this kind of, I love myself and I wanna help people because we just, it’s so unique for us to be a nice person and not hate ourselves, that we suddenly realize how incredible it is. That other person is gone.

That person’s the shame, regret, the annoying, embarrassing person. And we just, we think we want to help other people realize it’s possible. But you do have to park that person and say, I will never be you again. But you are in the past.

Steve: I think it’s interesting when you get into the communities, like the sober communities, like we’re all a part of, when you share your regret and you share your shame, you help someone else with theirs.

That is probably when you talk about helping someone. That’s the first thing that came to my mind is this. You end up sharing those stories and those, the crazy things that you did, Kate, when you went through the glass door or whatever that may be. You never know about those stories.

Lacey ended up in a backyard.

Kate: No, and I tell people that. I tell people that because people feel so much shame. And I’m like, look, I went to a knitting group and ended up in a police cell locked up. I went to a knitting group in a town hall because I was dragged along and I ended up locked up. Honestly, it’s, it is, it’s funny if it wasn’t so awful, cause I had two little children at home and my husband didn’t know where I’d gone.

I, he thought I’d pop down, would come back with half a scarf, and I came back at six, seven in the morning. But it’s by telling other people and saying, look, this happened to me, but it wasn’t really me. That then they feel so much. They feel less shame, like you said. It’s actually, if she can talk about that, and that’s worse than anything I’ve ever done, maybe I shouldn’t beat myself up so much.

And I agree. It makes you feel like you’re not alone and that goes so far in the healing process.

Julie: Yeah. Yeah. I think I struggled a lot with regretting all of the time that I wasted. I was definitely a problem drinker for at least a decade. Probably the last six years of my drinking, I was pretty well checked out and that’s when my kids were, they were little and I was there physically and I pretty much missed a good chunk of their childhoods.

And I just look at all of the time that I wasted. And that’s, maybe one of the hardest things for me to reconcile is just that huge, like that whole decade of my life that I essentially threw away to addiction, to alcohol. And it’s still something that hits me and then I just feel really bad for a while.

I think I sometimes I manage to talk my way through that. Sometimes I can acknowledge that 10 years had to happen just the way it did for me to have the kind of future that I have now. I appreciate my life so much more.

Kate: But Julie, I do have a question. Cause I used to think that and I said that and this woman said to me, Kate, I’m 70 years old, I’m getting sober for my grandchildren.

And when I hear you talk about missing out on the first 10 years of your. Because I, I’m nearly a year and I’ve got an 11 and a 13 year old and she said, I know it feels bad for you, but I drank throughout their whole lives. My children are now 40 and I’m doing this for my grandchildren. So when you say it’s bad, imagine how it is for me.

And do you know what? Since she said that, cuz it made me feel awful. And she said, don’t feel bad. I wish I’d done it before. But that’s my point. She said I could carry on again, but I’m not, I’m stopping and it doesn’t matter. You can’t keep worrying. And have you had that experience as well? Because it made a real impact on me when someone said that.

Julie: I don’t think not, I don’t think anybody’s ever put it quite like that, but that’s, it’s a good point, I think. If I’m so grateful for my life now, and I appreciate what my life is more now than I ever could have if I had not lost that decade, if I had just gone about my life floating through it, letting life happen.

I don’t think that I would appreciate every day the way that I do now. And so maybe that 10 years had to be what it was. For me to appreciate everything that I have now the way that I do. I think a lot of us in recovery see our lives in a different light. We really grab onto life and we live it like we mean it.

And I think without an experience like ours, some of us wouldn’t do that. Some of us would still just be sitting back letting life happen the way it does, and now we live it with intention. And I think for me, I needed that to happen in order to live a life with intention. So I can hold onto that feeling.

And I like what you said, Kate. That’s actually a really good point. I haven’t met a lot of people who are that much older. Who have that to share. But yeah, I think all the, it all goes back to we can either choose to look back

at the past or we can look forward toward the future. I think that’s our only option if we’re gonna keep going.

Steve: Yeah, I like, my story is similar to Julie’s. It’s kind like that lost decade, but it’s the lost decade that I needed to show me that I can appreciate today, cuz I never did before. I never did.

James: Yeah, that, that’s a really important thing, recovery as well, isn’t it? Be you learn to exist in the now and once you get over them or you put the regret in its box where it belongs, right?

And you stop treating happiness as a destination. No, like the, like it’s a lot of addiction or it is about, isn’t it like I’ll be alright if I have a drink or whatever, that’s all that’ll solve. How I’m feeling is that, and lots of people do it with holidays, shopping or, whatever it may be.

The destination they think is happiness or fulfillment, and I think like we, the thing that we do that we were doing was gonna kill us. And it, that’s the hard cold reality of it. So I think in a way we’re lucky because we get, we have to deal with it. We haven’t just got a bit of debt or we haven’t just unhealthy relationships.

Not that there’s, what’s better or worse, but they, we have to wise up and we have to start living in the now and still existing. Yesterday and what’s gonna happen tomorrow. And that’s kind the gift from recovery, isn’t it? You learn a very fucking hard lesson.

It’s the price I pay. Someone giving me time over, I probably do the same. I don’t avoid some of the things.

Steve: And I know, like Julie and I have had the conversation, whereas I don’t know that I would be here without having gone through all of that. So I feel like I, instead of regretting it, I have to feel grateful for it.

I’m here, I’m alive. I can do my best to rectify all of those things in my past, and I can do my best to try and be here for today. So I’m not, I don’t feel like I’m losing. It is a gift

Julie: And it’s not just here and alive. Most of us are actually thriving in a way we never would’ve been.

If it weren’t for all of the wasted time and all of the poor decisions. And yeah,

Kate: I think that’s I’ve just been asked to write a chapter for a book and it’s 15 or 16 people recovering and they’re each writing a chapter. And it wasn’t until I wrote down the words. I feel like I haven’t moved on since I was 15.

I’ve been mentally, I’ve just stopped and I’ve got to learn about myself because actually alcohol just stopped everything and it was constantly recovering, drinking, recovering, and I’m like, I haven’t grown in so many ways since I was 15 years old. And I think it’s that, that appreciation and excitement for life that you have when you’re younger.

That we are all experiencing. And that’s why with these ridiculously happy middle-aged people and younger, obviously. Lacey, I’m not including you. James, maybe. (laughter) We’re acting teenagers and we’ve been given it life and we’re like, we can do something. We commit something, we can do something today and we can remember it tomorrow.

Yeah. It’s so exciting. And it’s that incredible charisma that I think I see in people that is just amazing. And it is that realization that you haven’t really been moving on as you should have for all those years. And I find that quite interesting cause that just came to me and I was writing it and I thought, yeah, it’s true.

James: It’s the ability to sit with emotions isn’t. Like the one thing you are learning in recovery. You’ve gotta sit with that shit and feel it because there ain’t no hiding it no more. There ain’t no, I feel great tonight, tomorrow’s tomorrow or whatever. And that’ll take it away.

And it’s that, yeah. Learning to sit with that is a, it’s a pretty damn healthy way to live. And when you’re in recovery, you, because you still have to be careful. Years down the line, I still have to be very careful. I have to acknowledge that monkey’s always gonna be there. And, learning to sit with you’re emotions and learning to, to be, doesn’t give him any food doesn’t give him any power.

Lacey: I just think it’s amazing to finally love myself. Everything that’s in the past is in the past. You can’t change it, but you do have to come to terms with it. Whatever way that you choose to do and move forward. Build a future for yourself. Remember the past so you can prevent it from happening again in the future.

But you gotta forgive yourself for it and keep going. No matter what you did. You still have a life to live and it can’t be spent thinking about the past.

James: I was reading for a couple my old posts today, and then like I came across one about acceptance and that’s almost the opposite, like the polar opposite to regret it and I start like acceptance and even when it’s really difficult, but it’s not, again, it’s not something you get to and then you go on after that day and you’ve accepted it.

It doesn’t work that way. It’s a choice you’ve gotta make every single day. Even when you get up and, I’m a lot happier than I used to be, but of course, we all have bad days and you’ve got to actively make the choice to accept your past, accept your reality, exactly where you are, the mess you may have made, or the, the things you, the good things as well.

And that’s gotta be an ongoing choice. An ongoing journey because again, it’s another, you can get cocky, and that’s where it can lead to a couple of years down the line problems. Because you think you’ve got there and you have in a lot of ways, but you’ve always gotta keep doing those practices and going through that journey and accepting those things and not letting the regret monkey out of its bloody box.

Steve: The regret monkey!

James: Sat on your back just whispering in your ear. Yeah.

Julie: Lacey said something really important that I don’t know how much we’ve touched on, and that is forgiving ourselves. And most of the people in my life that I did hurt in some way or made a fool of in front, made a fool of myself in front of, they have forgiven me.

We have to give ourselves that same forgiveness. We have to show ourselves the same grace that all of these wonderful people in our lives are willing to show us. I think it takes a lot of work. But I think we owe that to ourselves. We owe that same level of forgiveness to ourselves.

Lacey: I agree. What would you tell a friend, if a friend were to approach you and say, Hey, I was at this party last night and I tripped, I fell, I embarrassed myself and it was a birthday party for my friend and it was ruined.

And it’s, and it’s all because of me. It’s all my fault. What would you tell your friend? If they approached you with that situation and they wanted to try and rectify it and they couldn’t forgive themselves, and they were beating themselves up over it. Like you have to show yourself the same compassion that you would show to a friend who was in that situation.

Kate: Yeah. We always say that. I’m very good at giving advice and, but I beat myself up so much more than I would ever, I would never make someone feel bad. I would always say, are you okay? I would always say, do you need some help? Or, this is what happened. Why did that happen? Work it through, you’re right.

But I never do that to myself. I make it 10 times worse. I work through all the different feelings that what are they thinking? What are they speaking about? Then this’ll happen and you are right. It is, it’s important to always say, how would I, what advice would I give a friend in this situation?

It is never the way that I treat myself. We all are our own worst enemies. I think

Lacey: We really are. We’re so harsh on ourselves, but for no good reason. We think we have a good reason, but in reality, no. We’re just beating ourselves up whenever the people around us, they’ve probably already forgiven us and we don’t even know.

Steve:Yeah.

James: Yeah. I will say there’s a counterpoint to that though. We can’t be permissive to being kind to yourself, because sometimes being kind to yourself in the old days was having a drink or having a whatever. You know,you can’t kind give yourself a blank check. You do have to, sometimes you do need to have a stern word yourself, but it’s not when it’s calling yourself a dickhead. It’s, that wasn’t the best moves.

The thing to call it is honesty, isn’t it? And being like, honest with yourself as well as, cause sometimes you would say to a friend, that dumb . And sometimes you do have, it’s a balance between things as with everything. It’s the balance of being, not being permissive, not allowing yourself to getaway because we still have behaviors and patterns that will possibly come out in other ways. And we do have to recognize them, cross addiction and like I was in NA for a bit and I got quite involved in like the organization bit of it and that, and I went to this monthly meeting and a few of the people there were high and they weren’t high on drugs.

They were high on what they were doing, and that was a real clear example of cross addiction and okay, that thing they were doing was good and they were helping people and they would throw themselves into it, but it was still the same thing. It was still the same reality. They were still running away to a certain degree from maybe what they’ve done.

Regret . It’s the monkey. It’s always gonna be there.

Steve: I just wanna say thank you, Kate. Thank you James. Thank you, Lacey. I really appreciate you guys coming on. Kate and James from across the pond. Really nice having you guys on the podcast and taking the time, Lacey, on a Saturday afternoon.

Really appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your thoughts and sharing your stories.