This episode of Unpolished Recovery is an exploration of the gritty realities of battling addiction and the transformative power of recovery. We welcome Andrea, a fearless warrior of sobriety and a graduate of our support program, who shares her battle with alcohol addiction and the perils of withdrawal.
Listen as she reveals the challenges of being a functioning alcoholic, the necessity of finding purpose, and the irreplaceable role of community in recovery. Tune in to this episode to be moved by these extraordinary tales of perseverance and the deep understanding of the essential role that community plays in overcoming addiction.
This episode of Unpolished Recovery is an exploration of the gritty realities of battling addiction and the transformative power of recovery. We welcome Andrea, a fearless warrior of sobriety and a graduate of our support program, who shares her battle with alcohol addiction and the perils of withdrawal.
Listen as she reveals the challenges of being a functioning alcoholic, the necessity of finding purpose, and the irreplaceable role of community in recovery. Tune in to this episode to be moved by these extraordinary tales of perseverance and the deep understanding of the essential role that community plays in overcoming addiction.
Welcome back to Unpolished Recovery. My name is Trey. Most stories of recovery start with how bad addiction was, how they entered recovery and how great life is now that's a polished story.
Speaker 2:My name is Chris. I'm your co-host of Unpolished Recovery. Today we've got a special guest named Andrea. She is a recent graduate of our recovery support program. Andrea, how long ago was it that you graduated? I graduated in August and now you continue to stay on site as alumni and a peer leader. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:That is correct.
Speaker 2:What kind of just starts straight off the bat with how, what caused you or what was the thought process that you wanted to continue to stay here even though you graduated?
Speaker 3:The reason that I want to stay here is right now. I feel it's the best place for me. When I am by myself, I have a tendency to self-isolate. I fall back into my old habits, and self-isolation for me leads me back to my addiction, which is alcohol. So I like that. I have other people in recovery this is the first time I've done a program, so I have people that understand where I've been, where I am and where I'd like to go. So if I need somebody to sound off to or talk to, they're here and for me that's really safe right now.
Speaker 2:That's great. That is a big deal when you realize, when you go back and see some of the ways that you've started off on the wrong path and you've identified that and you're trying to make it different. How long have you been cleaning sober?
Speaker 3:My clean and sober date is January 1st, so it was just 10 months this time.
Speaker 2:Oh, not too far from your first year Now, when you come in to our recovery support program. Or, mami, did you come from treatment?
Speaker 3:I did Okay.
Speaker 2:You did Dr 28 Day.
Speaker 3:Well, I did 17.
Speaker 2:And then I ended up here, which was better for me Okay, but that kind of started the process going to inpatient. Did Jeff go through the detox and everything?
Speaker 3:No, I did that at the hospital. I was not in a healthy place mentally, so I had myself admitted to the hospital so that I could get into a better mindset, and I detoxed there.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes it gets overlooked just how dangerous it is to withdraw from alcohol. My drug of choice is opiates. Of course it's all poison to me alcohol I made many have many relapses that started with a drink because I didn't have a drinking problem, supposedly, but I've never been physically dependent on alcohol. But in the working in a field I have seen people with dronists were alcohols legal If you're over 21 years of age, if you're going into stores, commercials, whatever the case may be. That to me and of course, like I said, alcohol is not my primary struggle, but it seems like it makes it that much harder to be able to sustain from it.
Speaker 3:It can be, and the thing is it's widely accepted and I'm an older person so growing up it was even more widely accepted. It was always in the household. You had company, you had holidays, whatever. There was always drinking going on. It wasn't unusual and in my teen years if we were drinking and driving and we got pulled over, the cops would just basically pour it out and send you on your way. It wasn't such a stigma to it as it is today, where there is such a danger of drinking and driving, but when we were young they would just let us go and overlook it. So it's definitely different. It's needed laws, but Things have changed.
Speaker 2:I think people have identified addiction and alcoholism better, that there's a more awareness of what it does.
Speaker 1:An understanding of the risk. Now I'm curious when you say so, you were drinking as a teen. When, would you say, you identified that there was a problem?
Speaker 3:At a fairly young age I started drinking because we had a bar in our basement, so when we had company they were able to serve drinks or whatever, and so I experimented there and decided I liked it. So not that I didn't try other things. I tried marijuana and stuff, but alcohol was always my go-to. At 15, a month before I turned 16, my father passed away and I had already been drinking before that, but that really set me on a definite course of drinking at every opportunity At 19 years old. I had just turned 19 in September and in November I put myself in the hospital. All I had known I had a problem for a while. I mean when I was drinking, guys under the table and this was my life and I knew I had an issue. I went to college and when I found out they had a bar on the campus. As soon as the bar opened I went to no more classes. I was at the bar. So obviously that didn't work out too well for me. But at 19, I did put myself in the hospital to stop drinking.
Speaker 3:The first time they recommended, of course, aa and working some type of program, getting a sponsor, but at 19 years old I knew everything they couldn't tell me. I knew I didn't need a sponsor, and the AA meetings were to me something that just reminded me of the alcohol, so that I just didn't go to those either. Then they recommend you don't get in a relationship, but at 19, you own the world. So six months later I got in a relationship, not realizing quite at first that the person had a drinking problem of their own. So I stayed sober. I got pregnant very quickly, and I stayed with him and ended up marrying him after our son was six months old. So now I lived with an alcoholic. I was sober, but I lived on the other side of it, and he was a very abusive alcoholic, and eventually, I'd say in my mid to late 20s, I relapsed with him, because it was to the point where it was join him or continue this fight. If you can't beat him, join him kind of mentality, and I started drinking again. My mother passed away. That put me back into full-blown addiction and stuff, and it seemed, though, unfortunately, we got along better when we were drinking than when we did when I was sober and he wasn't. But I stayed in that marriage for 16 years before I finally got the courage and the help. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:I did get sober in my early 30s so I had maybe about four or five years of drinking again, but I did go back into the hospital and get myself, helping get sober. And then through that I got help with counseling and they started planting seeds about what I could do To get away from him at some point. You know, we owned a home, we had cars. He wouldn't let me work, so I never had to work. I was always able to be home with the kids.
Speaker 3:So there was the fear of finally going out on my own. How was I gonna do this? I haven't worked since I was younger and he could, you know, made sure that I didn't have the ability to leave. But they planted the seeds about a battered woman, shelter and Eventually situation happened which led me to make that phone call and that's what I did and it was the best place I could have ever gone in my life. I mean, it really was. I was one of their success stories.
Speaker 3:Most women go back to their abusers because that's all they know and I did not. I Got a job at a bank and I was doing pretty well for myself, but every time I feel like I'm doing too well and I can handle it. I Start the self-sabotage. You got it, you know, and it's the loneliness I'm by myself. And so to meet people, you go out and you go to a bar, and one thing leads to another. It starts as one night a week, and to two into three, into every night, you know, until I sabotage myself again. So it's been a roller coaster for me my whole life.
Speaker 3:So you know you'd mentioned that you went into Hospitalization on multiple time, like what's the longest amount of time you've been able to remain sober almost 15 years, and this last one, it seems, when I have a big change in my life and most of those have been somebody passing away Instead of reaching out for help I go back to what I know and the depression and the alcohol which leads to more depression. So my husband passed away suddenly two and a half years ago At 61. I found him on the bathroom floor and during the course of our relationship he didn't drink, but he would always say to me I had gotten sober a year after I met him. He'd always say you know, you got to promise me, andrea, if anything ever happens to me, that you won't pick up a drink. And I tell him I can't promise you that. No, you have to. No, can't promise you, and you know time would go by and he'd bring it up again. Got to promise me if anything happens to me. Well, as soon as they wheeled his body out, I was gone. I was up at the store because in Ohio that's where I'm from you can buy cheap vodka at the convenience stores and I Was off.
Speaker 3:So in the course of two years, that first time I I relapsed. I probably drank about six months. Thank God for my brother. I had some money and stuff, but he helped me with my rent and my car payment. My car wasn't paid yet and we I had been in that apartment 18 years, so what I knew and I Went. Then I put myself back in the hospital to detox, knowing, especially Older, that it's very unsafe to detox and when you have the shakes like that it's scary, you know. So I put myself back in detox, got out. I'm now, mind you, I'm still maintaining a job through all of this, you know, because I have responsibilities and I Got sober again, go to work, do my thing.
Speaker 3:A couple months pass, relapse again because I just got stuck in my head. I got stuck with losing my husband. I felt like I lost my purpose. So it was a repetitive thing for about two years and the last, the last year, I tried to commit suicide twice. The second time, when I was there, I had to give up my cats to the humane society, society when I was in the hospital. So when I got out and I got home, I just felt like I lost everything. My husband was gone and he was the one that rescued the animals and stuff. So now my cats are gone and I had nothing.
Speaker 3:So I went to the store again and got me some more alcohol, just got out of the hospital. But there I am and I said you know what? I don't want to do this anymore. I just don't. I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I packed up some clothes, my makeup, threw it in my car. I owned my car. Now it was paid off and I abandoned everything. I left it behind all my possessions and my personal belongings and I took myself and I got on the road and I drove down to Clarksville mine that's where my husband's sister was from Just not knowing where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3:I kind of felt like I just wanted to live in my car and never have to worry about another thing in the Short life that I was hoping I'd have. That's how my mentality was. I just kind of wanted to die. I felt like there was nothing for me anymore and After about two, three months of living in my car, I just thought to myself God, do with me what you will.
Speaker 3:Now I had turned my back on my beliefs, but I did. I said do with me what you will. Wherever you put me, I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna go with it, and that's what I did, and I ended up. I went to the hospital and from there to treatment and treatment. They knew that I wanted a recovery program this time, and they got in touch with Restoration House. And this is where I end up, and it is only by the grace of my higher power that has put me here to save my life, truthfully save my life, and give me a purpose again. I don't know where I'm going to go from here. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do, but I know that I'm in the right place.
Speaker 2:Now would you say like that, what I hear and when you talk about your story getting to that point to go back into the hospital for last time, to go to sober living, like you just can hear the desperation, like where you said that you just won't live anymore Would you say that was the breaking point, that was the breaking point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I tried twice. There's obviously a purpose why I didn't succeed, because I'm obviously good at sabotaging myself. So there was a purpose for me, and I may not know what it is today, but I know there's a purpose.
Speaker 2:If it makes you feel any better. Most of us addicts and alcoholics, and even some that struggle with substance use disorder or good at self-sabotage, is kind of common theme, I believe For my own story. I hear just bits and pieces of my own story, and especially that point of desperation. You get to a point like if I have to live like this, I'd rather just die. There's got to be something better when you're just willing to try anything.
Speaker 3:I had to control everything too. So for all the years I'm holding a full-time job, I'm paying my bills, I'm doing everything. It was a control thing too. So every time they would tell me that I needed a program, I'd say I can't do that. I have bills to pay, I have rent to pay, I have things to pay. So it took me abandoning all of that and leaving it behind to find me again.
Speaker 1:Which I'm assuming is a terrifying experience, to just to leave it all. But I'm certainly curious what do you think is working so differently this time, besides recognizing and giving it all, putting everything aside and putting this first?
Speaker 3:Well, like I said, I never worked a program before and I had kind of turned my back on my higher power. So now I have my faith again. I have faith in my higher power Putting me where I'm supposed to be, and because of that I take every day a day at a time, and because of that I'm moving forward a day at a time. I'm sober another day. The program has worked so tremendously for me because I'm actually working the steps. I have a sponsor and I have a network now that I didn't have before. Most of my friends were not addicts, so they didn't understand. To them it was just well, just stop. So I didn't have people that I could talk to, that really just knew me without knowing me.
Speaker 2:I can definitely tell just the kind of work you put in. It's going on a year. Like I said before long it'll be a year that you've been here. But you can tell here you speak about the work you've put in to self-discovery and there may be other ways out there. I know personally that the steps did that for me. It gave me a chance to get to know and that's what the first step is. Right, you said you found you. I believe that's the very first step Getting back to just taking care of yourself. It would be like Trace said, it's scary to just, but sometimes the past just holds you down. You've got to get a fresh start. So I know since you've been here you've done a wonderful job.
Speaker 2:Like I mentioned for your peer leader, you help other women coming in the program, kind of get off on the right foot. You share your experience, strengthen hope with them. But what's been? Because for the most part you sound like you were a functioning alcoholic for so many years. You continue to pay bills. So what being in sober living for the first time? We were joking before we started the episode that you're the oldest person in our program?
Speaker 2:I didn't know that, but you were proud of it though, which I like it because it shows, hey, if you still got a heartbeat, you got hope. This game ain't over, you can change. But what was the most difficult part about coming in a grown woman into? And we have such a variety of clientele's parts that the demographics like the age. So what was the most difficult part of adjusting to this?
Speaker 3:Boy. I wish I could say there was a difficult part to it. I mean, it's a new experience and, ok, I'm 60 years old but obviously I'm a free spirit. If I was willing to. Well, you know they say you've got to give it away to keep it. So I gave it all away and left it and I will refine it. But to me it wasn't difficult because everybody here was so welcoming.
Speaker 3:It's such an educational process and it doesn't matter how young you are or how old you are. There's always room for growth and learning. You know you're never too old to learn. And, like I said, I felt like I lost my purpose and I want to find my purpose and I think being here is putting me on the road to that discovery of what my purpose is going to be. At the end of the road, I want to give back to people in addiction. Just because I used alcohol doesn't mean I didn't experiment with other things. I did opiates and stuff too. You know I mean I did a lot of different things. It's just part of addiction, you know it. Just my go-to was always the drinking. It was easier to get, you know, but as far as being difficult, no, when you want it. This program is not difficult.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean Chris regularly says that the people who succeed here, the people who work as hard to say sober as they worked to not to get whatever their addiction was and so it sounds like that's the case for you is that you're willing to do whatever it takes.
Speaker 3:I'm willing to, but it's a one day at a time. I can't promise tomorrow, I can only promise today.
Speaker 2:Well, I know I think most people are looking for their purpose, but for what it's worth. You know, I've watched you through the months, like you're a very giving person, you're really quick to listen to someone and I know the women that have been around you have benefited from that. So you know, I have no idea what God has in store for you, but I have a sneak and suspicion it may be. In helping other people, people with the struggles because I'm one the, whatever flavor of poison it is doesn't really matter. When you've been in bondage, and that's what it is, just straight bondage to a chemical or a person. Like it's just when you go over in that line that you know the, the, the choice is gone. That's devastating, you know, and it does.
Speaker 2:It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of help to come back from that. So you know I know you said it positive. That's what we were talking about we want to get someone to graduate just recently to kind of see where they're at right now. You know, and I liked that part about you where you're like, okay, I'm at where I'm at and I'm good with that. Like, whatever you know, whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be ready for it. So now would you say that now that you're graduated, you've checked off all those boxes that restoration house requires to complete? Like, what are the things you're doing now to continue your sobriety, your growth? Like, what are some of the tools you're using today?
Speaker 3:Well, the tools that I use are still. When I have a rough day, I reach out to my sponsor and I and I, I talk to her and, like I said, it's the network you know. It also helps me listening to the other women here. It reminds me of you know, where I've been and where I wanna be, and I do like to, you know, listen and try to help if I can. My whole life that's the type of person I've been, and to help somebody else in recovery is a motivation for me every day. You know, I just want more time and more knowledge and more experience so that I can share it.
Speaker 2:Like you said, you gotta give it away and keep it right. Yeah Well, I know Now you work full time. You also maintain your recovery program. You serve as a peer leader. Does it help to stay busy?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, absolutely. I love staying busy and when I'm not doing all of these things and I have some time, I like to go roller skating still, and I you know any of the girls want to go, any of the women want to go. They're more than welcome to come with me and we've done that. And they were nice enough at Restoration House to let us skip a meeting one night for my birthday and all the women from the house went roller skating.
Speaker 2:So that was fantastic, because that's the men will start asking.
Speaker 3:Sorry, but I mean it was a beautiful gift.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it is about new experiences. You know I've shared it before and get my own story that. You know I'm my mid-40s now and I used to worry that I waited too long, that I'd passed up on all the opportunities to really do something with my life, and you know there was my sponsor's in hang in there. It gets better. You know, and I've shared many times, that the last several years of my life outweighed the first 75%. You know the quality I have, the life that I have today. I believe I live life abundantly. Does that make sense? Yes, so there's nothing I would trade for the process that I went through to get to this point, and it sounds like you can kind of relate to that.
Speaker 3:I can and I can't tell you I'm really grateful for the fact that I am sober. My first husband, who was the alcoholic, passed away a couple weeks ago from the effects of alcohol abuse over the years, and my daughter, who, her and I, have not always been on best terms because, you know, they didn't know, my kids didn't know when they picked up the phone to call me or what, how were they going to get their mother or were they going to get the drunk you know. So this time, going through what they're going through, they were able to know they had their mother this time and that is the biggest blessing to me, that to finally have my daughter talking to me today. I mean, I can't. I just can't tell you how much that means to me, and if I wouldn't be here I wouldn't have this.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Would you say that who you are today is closer to the real you?
Speaker 3:Yes, definitely.
Speaker 2:You are a free spirit. That's the first thing that comes to my mind when your names mention that's a perfect description. So I always usually ask this of the, the, the people we have on, if there's you know anything you could say to a woman or man and they're thinking about we're getting into recovery or just getting in, you know, just trying to start that process. You know a lot of people say the first steps the hardest. Is there anything that comes to your mind that maybe your sponsor told you or that you told yourself when you were starting this journey?
Speaker 3:I think the hardest thing is giving up control. But if you want this, just give up the control and take it one day at a time and see what comes your way. Things get better. It doesn't feel like it when you're going through the process. Once you get through it and you look back it it's like a drop in the bucket. You know people come here and they're like a six month program. What am I going to do? Six months? That six months is over and done with. So fast when you look back at it. And six months is a drop in the bucket for you to get on your feet, have an opportunity to get your life back, your children back, your relationships back, just life. Life on life's terms, but it's life and it's a blessing every day. So it's just take it one day at a time. If you want this, it's doable. It is doable. You just take one thing at a time and you work on it and before you know it, you know you're going someplace.
Speaker 2:Well, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing some of your story. I know that people will benefit from hearing it. And that's what we do. We believe that the stories matter. Just hearing people say, hey, I'm not by myself, this person went through it. So thank you for making the time. I know you work and I know that you jumped at the opportunity to maybe give someone else some hope.
Speaker 1:So thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Addiction isn't going to get better with tougher laws. It's going to come from people like Andrea sharing their story, and we know every person's story is important and it matters. If you're interested in joining us as a guest, you can email us at info at crossbridgeorg to our listeners. Thanks for joining us today.