Insights Into Addiction and 12-Step Programs Today with Angela Pugh
This is an episode about the change of addiction and 12-step programs throughout the years and where we are today, with a woman who proudly shares how AA helped change her life: Angela Pugh.
Angela Pugh is a Master Life Coach, speaker, and the host of the highly popular podcast, Addiction Unlimited.
Angela shares her personal experience from alcoholism to recovery. She discusses the challenges she faced when drinking and the positive changes she experienced once she entered the AA program at the age of 33.
Alcoholic doesn't mean anything except that I don't drink well. I needed to stop in order to have the life I wanted, and I'm kind of a badass. Angela Pugh
In this episode, you’ll hear:
How alcohol affected her life, and what her drinking looked like before she quit drinking.
Angela’s decision to seek support through AA after she caused a serious car accident.
A look inside AA meetings today and how to make the program work for you.
Angela discusses the terminology of drinking labels today and why labeling yourself is the least important part of quitting drinking.
The meaning of “high-functioning” and Angela’s internal struggle as a high-functioning alcoholic.
How the coping skills she built in recovery helped her through perimenopause.
Resources mentioned:
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[00:00:00] Hey there, welcome to To 50 and Beyond. I am Lori Massicot, your host. I am so happy that you are here. If you're new to the podcast, this is where we talk about living an alcohol free lifestyle later in life. You're turning back to the podcast. I welcome you back. I'm giving you, each and every one of you, a big virtual hug.
Today I invited Angela Pugh, who is a master coach, host of the Addiction Unlimited podcast, national speaker, and recovering alcoholic. To the podcast to share her story from addiction to recovery, Angela is very open and confident and saying, I am an alcoholic and she says that being an alcoholic is the best thing that ever happened to her because recovery made her dig deep and grow up.
Angela gives us insight into alcoholism and addiction today. Into AA and how 12 step meetings have changed throughout the years. Angela shares her thoughts on the myth of high functioning and talks about a severe car accident that she was involved in and that led her to seek support through aa. [00:01:00] Angela also shares how she discovered she was in perimenopause and how she has maintained her long-term sobriety.
There are so many great pieces to this episode. I know that you will appreciate Angela's story. Here she is. Hey, Angela. Hi Lori. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for coming on. We are both so excited to have this conversation and like I said, and we both decided we're not sure what the title of this episode is going to be, but I know there's going to be so many good points.
For our listener, who is the midlife gal who is curious about living alcohol free and this is why we are here today. I want to start off with congratulating you on long term sobriety and recovery. Can you share your sobriety date with us? Yeah. January 7th, 2006. Congratulations. I want to get into like what was happening on that day because you have such an interesting story, the work that you were doing that day.
And I want to. Thank you. Like I did [00:02:00] before we started recording. I want everybody to hear this. One of the reasons why I really was so excited for this episode is because of your openness and your willingness to share. I am an alcoholic. I appreciate that so much. I appreciate you for saying that and I appreciate the conversation that we're going to have around that topic.
Yeah, it's an important topic and it's so strange that it's taken on such a life of its own, right? Because when I got sober, that's all there was there. There weren't all these other terminologies and different things and where I really have a lot of respect for all the options that are available now.
Because 12 step programs don't, I think it's not that they don't work for everyone, but everyone isn't comfortable enough to do it and embrace it and a lot of people aren't comfortable enough to take the suggestions they like and the pieces they like and leave the rest behind because you can definitely be in that room and feel like you're kind of left out if you're not [00:03:00] doing the cookie cutter sort of thing.
But I didn't do it cookie cutter in a lot of ways either. I really did 12 steps even my own way. But it just the simplicity of it was really beautiful, and I knew I needed to be a person that didn't drink anymore. And I knew AA is where people went to not drink anymore. So that's where I went. And now it's gotten much more complicated, but also much more open.
And I think it's changed 12 step programs in a really positive way as well, right? Where I think. 12 step programs are even a little more open minded than they once were. Really? Can you share your insights with us on that? Because I'm very interested to learn about that. Yeah, I think that addiction in the last handful of years, addiction in itself has changed drastically, right?
The opioid crisis obviously has changed a lot. It also changed A lot of the age demographic, right? [00:04:00] All of a sudden, we're having people so super young, struggling with addiction. When I got sober, I was 33, and when I walked into my first 12 step meeting, I was the youngest person in the room by 25 years.
It was all male and everybody in the room was strictly alcoholic. And in 12 steps, there is what's called singleness of purpose, meaning if you're at an AA meeting, we really want to focus the conversation around alcohol. If you're at an NA meeting, obviously focus the conversation around narcotics. If you're at an MA meeting, you focus conversation around marijuana.
The reason for that is you have people like me. I'm just a good old fashioned alcoholic. I never even did drugs. I never even tried them. So if I went to an AA meeting and a whole bunch of people were talking about drugs, then I'm in the alcoholics meeting and feeling left out, right? And that's kind of the premise behind singleness of purpose.
But when [00:05:00] addiction started changing, And it was becoming more, a lot more like alcohol led to drugs or addictions started with drugs and alcohol was kind of a side note, but still a major player. It just had, we all had to open. Our minds a little bit and let people speak really authentically, let people speak really authentically about what their experience was.
And if that involved drugs and they were in an AA meeting, then we can be okay with that. But every group is a little bit different. That's something I always like to stress. Also, every group you go to has its own personality. If you go to one meeting and you don't like it, just go to another one. And there are going to be people who are more rigid in their way of thinking.
In every meeting, you're going to have rigid people. And in every meeting, you're going to have flexible people. But don't let them sway [00:06:00] you one way or the other. Just know when you have any group of people, you're going to have a bunch of different opinions and thought processes and journeys, and that's okay.
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. I want to go back to that vision that you described of walking into that first meeting, it being all male, and that is the vision that I had back in 2013. And that was the vision that scared me and that I said, I just, I can't do it. I'm going to go it alone. And I've always said this.
I don't recommend that we got to find our own way with us. And there's, like you said, there are several different options now today. Okay. But that vision, today, it sounds like it's changed a lot, what you just described. Yeah, it has definitely changed a lot. There are way more women, for sure, way more young people.
We also have There are a lot of meetings to choose from, and I think that's something you have to be aware of as well. You can choose a women's only meeting, or a men's only meeting, or a [00:07:00] beginner's meeting, so a lot of the people in the room are new and just figuring it out. You can find a young people's meeting.
You can go to open meetings versus closed meetings. And a closed meeting means it's for people struggling with alcohol. It's those of us that are alcoholics trying to quit drinking. An open meeting means that we're open to because many of us end up with partners, spouses, whatever that aren't alcoholic.
So an open meeting means you're welcome to bring other people who aren't identifying as alcoholic, right? And they can be a part of that. Those are usually speaker celebration meetings, things like that. So there are a lot of different options. That you can choose. There are also literature meetings. I mean, you can go to a meeting that's just the big book, like they're just going through the big book and some of those literature meetings and open speaker meetings.
Those are really welcoming for people who aren't ready to share. Or aren't ready to say, Hey, everybody, I'm Angela. I'm an alcoholic, right? If you're observing [00:08:00] and just getting in the milieu, like some of those other meetings are a lot less intimidating, right? Where it's not going to necessarily go around the circle and the spotlight is going to be on you and you have to share something profound and life changing, but you get to be more of a spectator and still learning and being present and improving your situation.
It's so good to know, and I really do appreciate you for sharing that with us, because I feel like wherever we can get that help. We've got to ask for that help. We got to give it a try. And also we got to remember, especially as we get older, we can try something and not set it in stone. I want to get your take on the different terms that are used today.
Sober, curious, gray area, drinking, moderate drinking. What do you say to, let's say me and I was at the stage the night that I quit drinking, I was trying to figure it out for two years, am I an alcoholic? And I got to that point that night. I said, it does not matter. It doesn't matter. You're not going to have it figured out.
I [00:09:00] don't think I need to have it figured out right now. All I know is that I can't drink tomorrow when I cannot continue to drink for the next 30 years of my life like I had already done. What can you say about these different terms that are being used? How do you view them? I think where I can get a little irritated with some of the terms is they're really marketing terms, right?
They're people trying to target a different group of people. I think that everybody is trying to figure out, it's like, okay, have I overstepped that invisible threshold where I really can't go back to drinking more socially, drinking more quote unquote normal? And that's more about your relationship with alcohol.
People are trying to figure these things out, but they don't really know what they're trying to figure out. The truth is, if you are trying to control your drinking, you've already lost control. And that's the big factor. It's not about how frequently you drink. It's [00:10:00] not about how much you drink. It really is your relationship with alcohol.
How important is it to you? How frequently are you thinking about it? Right, like I had three stages of life. I was either actively drinking, I was recovering from drinking, or I was planning drinking. And a lot of my other life choices, at the end for sure, my life choices started to revolve around my drinking.
Deciding where I was going to go based on what drinks they had or drink specials they had, what people I was going to go with, because do they drink like me or were they, did they drink less, which I had no interest in, right? Was I going to have to? worry about my habits and not fitting in with certain people, then I wouldn't hang out with them.
Right. So all those other life choices started kind of revolving around protecting my drinking. That's an unhealthy [00:11:00] relationship with alcohol, right? Putting rules on your drinking is another indicator. of an unhealthy relationship, right? If you're having to bargain with yourself and set limitations on yourself to try to control your drinking, that's not good because non alcoholic people don't do that.
And I always say, envision somebody that you know who is a non alcoholic person who has like no addictive tendencies whatsoever. For me, it's my mom. I always think of my mom, and I'm like, when I would sit back and be obsessing about, like, how much alcohol I had in my refrigerator, or if I was out with my friends and they did last call, and my thought was, oh my gosh.
Do I have something to drink at home? Do I need to leave early? Are people coming to my house? Am I going to an after hours? Right? Just those simple words, last call, had a whole different meaning to me. And I sit back and go, huh, would that happen to my [00:12:00] mom if she were at a bar and they called last call?
Like, no, my mom doesn't think like that. So it really is about that relationship with alcohol. And where people get off track in the terminology is they put so much energy into trying to figure out what to call themselves because they have hang ups around these words. They consume so much of their energy trying to figure out what to label themselves.
And it's like, that's the least important part. Like who cares what you're going to call yourself. If you don't want to drink anymore and drinking is not serving you, then your energy needs to go into figuring that out, not what label you're going to use, right? There are plenty of us that are alcoholics that are very high functioning people.
And I think all the connotation around the word alcoholic, that's an internal struggle, right? People that think, oh, there's so much stigma and negativity, that's how you feel about that word. I [00:13:00] never felt that about that word. Even when I was actively drinking, I called myself an alcoholic. And I lived in L.
A. For a lot of years, and maybe this was part of it, too, because I saw so many celebrities that were sober and going to 12 step meetings who were so proud of that and call themselves alcoholics. Like it just never had that stigma to me. So I think the stigma is more about internal insecurity than anything else.
Right. I own, I'm an alcoholic and whatever that means, that doesn't mean I'm homeless. It doesn't mean I lived under a bridge. I could easily be those things, right? If I wanted to keep drinking, I could get myself there for sure. But it's such an internal thing that people like to project onto the outer world.
That just isn't the case. There's plenty of us that are fine with being alcoholic. Alcoholic doesn't mean anything except that I don't drink well. And I needed to stop in order to have the life I wanted. And I'm kind of a badass. That's the other thing it means. Oh, hell yeah. Hell [00:14:00] yes. This is some badass work that we are doing here.
Being able to accept the fact that that's not where the importance lies. That's not where your energy should lie because it exhausts you. It is coming internally. It is coming from the things that we learned, that we're seeing. But then we can also shift it around like anything else and say, I want to be proud of this.
I want to use others. I want to use Angela as my inspiration and doing something and, and telling myself it's okay to let go of the idea that I have to have the label slapped on me to be able to quit drinking. People get really hung up in this high functioning thing. And I want to touch on that for a minute because it's a piece of the equation that will really hold a lot of people back from seeking help.
There is what people think high functioning is the myth is that people believe the outside picture they create for the world makes them high functioning, meaning you have a [00:15:00] job, you make money, you have a place to live, you have a beautiful family, you drive the right car, you wear the right clothes, your hair is done, that's what people perceive high functioning meaning.
But I promise you, if you're struggling with this, if you're struggling with drinking habits, or marijuana, edibles, like this is a whole thing that has gotten crazy now too, if you're struggling with substances of any sort, or behavior, right? It can be sex, shopping, gambling, it can be any of those things.
The functioning piece is internal. So for all intents and purposes, I was a hardcore alcoholic. I drank all day, every day. I was a bartender. It was my life. Alcohol was my life. And I was also high functioning. From the outside, my life looked beautiful. Right? I lived in the right zip code. I drove the right car.
I wore the beautiful clothes and carried the right [00:16:00] handbag. Right? I did all those things. I didn't burn my life to the ground, but internally, I was a disaster internally. I could not cope with life. I had to drink my way through every feeling. I had zero self awareness. I wasn't a super nice person. I mean, I was really nice in a lot of ways, but I was also superior, condescending, quick tempered.
There were a lot of things about me that were very unattractive because I was so unhealthy. I was a toxic person to a lot of people. I was really fabulous to a lot of people, too. But everybody who gets caught up in this term of, Oh, I'm high functioning. I'm like, that's just your outside picture. I would encourage you to look inside.
And inside is where we are not high functioning. So you can be as the celebrities have shown us. You can be rich. You can be famous. You can have all the things. I mean, look at Matthew [00:17:00] Perry. Right? This beautiful guy who was incredible and so beloved had everything he could ever possibly want. The next 20 generations of his wouldn't have to work and look where he ended up.
So high functioning is a myth, right? Because how you're functioning is internal. It's not the picture you paint on the outside. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah. It's hard because it's. It's a part of the population who will really separate themselves and think, well, I'm not like those people like I sat in my 12 step meeting and my 12 step meeting was full of millionaires.
You know what I mean? So again, I think that's probably what shaped my thoughts and opinions about a and alcoholism and whatever because I was never surrounded by anything different. So it is internal. It's what you make it right. People will [00:18:00] say, Oh, I'm high functioning and they separate themselves from the herd because they think they're different and they think they're unique and they don't match.
And it's like, really, there's a whole lot of us that were high functioning. It didn't mean my drinking was high functioning. It just meant I was a master manipulator and I could create an external picture of who I was so everyone else would believe I was high functioning. Fantastic. That was fantastic.
Yeah. Thank you for adding that for sure. Talk about the day that you stopped drinking, January 7th, 2006, after the first of the year, what was happening in Angela's life? Crazy. So what ultimately made me quit drinking is I had a car accident and my car accident actually happened on January 5th, but it was in the middle of the night.
So it's like I went out on the 4th. But after midnight, I crashed my car, so technically it was the fifth, and [00:19:00] I was so freaked out because I hit another car at 70 miles an hour. I crashed on the freeway, hit another car, and there was a moment that I thought I killed the person I hit. I don't remember a lot about my accident.
I had a couple of very profound moments that were life changing for sure, but it had never crossed my mind that I could hurt somebody else. And that was the biggest thing, right? And I would say it was probably only a few minutes, honestly, it was probably only a few minutes that I had this thought process like where I really thought that I had killed this guy.
And all I was thinking was, I have to call my mom and tell her that I just killed somebody. Like how do you have that conversation? Like I'm going to ruin her life in one sentence. And it sounds so ridiculous, but like, I didn't care if I hurt me. I hated me so much. I didn't care if I hurt me. I didn't care if I died.
But I never thought I could hurt somebody else. And then [00:20:00] it was all the what ifs. What if he had a kid in his backseat? Or what if I was on a side street and he was walking on the sidewalk and I hit him? When you recognize how out of control you really are, it was a defining moment for sure. So I knew at that moment, alcohol was no longer an option for me.
I did drink one more night. So the sixth was I probably have these dates a little bit wrong. I know the days of the week, but I had, I had bought, I had concert tickets with a group of friends of mine and they weren't people I knew super well, but we had had these concert tickets like for a couple of months and small venue show and it was like an hour from home.
Well, I had been in my house Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The concert was on a Friday. I had been locked up, not doing anything. Obviously I was injured from my accident. So my face was deformed. It was pretty crazy. And my [00:21:00] friends were like, come on, Angela, you have to get out of the house. Like we've had these tickets forever.
You've been locked in the house for three days. Like, let's just get out, go to this show. You have to do something. You can't stay locked in there forever. My Mistake was, I assumed that they would understand I wasn't drinking because I just crashed. The truth was me crashing my car meant nothing to them, right?
Again, these weren't super close friends, so my situation really didn't hold any weight with them. So now we're an hour away from home. We're waiting in line to get in the venue and my buddy looks at me and he's like, I'm going to go get some drinks. What do you want? And I said to him, like, I was shocked, right?
Like, internally, I was shocked, like, what the hell? Why is he asking me if I want to drink after what I just did? And I looked at him, I was like, I'm not drinking. And he looked at me and he's like, Angela, I know you're going to drink if I bring you a drink. So you may as well just get what you [00:22:00] want. And in that moment, a thousand things went through my head.
Right. I didn't have anybody to call to pick me up like I had burned all those bridges. I was an hour from home. I didn't have 100 for a cab ride. We didn't have Uber then, right? I wouldn't have been able to afford that then either. But it was, I was like, what am I going to do? Am I going to go through this whole night and not drink and it's going to be miserable and everybody else is going to be drunk.
And how am I going to do this? And I just thought, okay, I'm going to drink This will definitely be the last time I'm just going to drink to get through this evening. And that's that. And that's what I did. It was like survival, but it was kind of a survival mechanism. I didn't have any coping skills. I had the strength to say, I'm not drinking once, but I didn't have the strength to stick to that.
And I woke up the next morning, it was a Saturday morning. And the first thing that went through my head was, thank God that's over. And just thinking about my drinking life. I was so excited. To break free [00:23:00] from my alcoholism and everything that went with that just the soul sucking prison that I had lived in for a few years.
My last two, maybe three years were really, really ugly. And I was really excited just to be done with it. And it just wasn't an option anymore. And that's the beauty of having a rock bottom moment because it really takes the option off the table. Like I was not going to hurt another human being. When I found out the guy that I hit was okay, I was the only one injured.
That was the greatest relief of my life. And it was not an option to ever be in that situation again. Yeah. Wow. And so that day, did you go to the AA meeting that day? No, because that was a disaster. I detoxed. That was a Saturday morning. I got up, that was my first day without a drink. That was January 7th.
I think the next Friday was my first meeting. So I just laid on the couch [00:24:00] and detoxed. I had my Rottweiler back then and he was very patient and understanding and I just got through the withdrawals. I had no idea that alcohol withdrawal was dangerous back then. For anybody listening, in case you don't know, alcohol is one of the most dangerous withdrawals.
Alcohol and benzodiazepines, which are anti anxiety medications, those are the only two withdrawals that you can die from. They are very, very serious. There's no rhyme or reason how it's going to affect somebody. It's not correlated to how much you drink or how often you drink. There's just no rhyme or reason.
I didn't know that then. I just laid on my couch, detoxed. And then I found a beginner's meeting, a newcomer's meeting on a Friday night that was right down the street from my house. I was very clear for myself that I knew I was very lazy, so I knew I had to pick a meeting that was close to my house, otherwise I wouldn't go.
I knew I was going to have to go more than once, you know what I mean? So it's like, it [00:25:00] needs to be convenient because I know myself, I will not go. It has to be right up the street. It's a mistake. I see a lot of people make where they want to go to a meeting like across town because they don't want to know anybody.
They don't want anybody to know them. And it's like you're already setting yourself up for failure, right? Like set yourself up for success. Like go to the meeting that's close by where you're in your neighborhood where you're already comfortable. You already know the kind of people that are there because you live there.
Right. That's how I ended up around like minded people because I went to a meeting in my neighborhood. That's how I fit in because I already fit in. But that's what I did. I went to my first meeting on that, that following Friday night. The next morning I went to a different meeting and that ended up being my home group still to this day, 18 years later.
Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. I want to ask you going back. Did you suffer legal consequences from the accident? Yeah. Can you share? Yeah, of course. I was [00:26:00] actually already in legal trouble. So the April before I got a DUI, I And this is another thing people will say too in this high functioning thing where people are like, well, I haven't lost anything.
I haven't any consequences. I've never had a DUI. It took me 14 years of drinking like a lunatic to get a DUI. Like, that's not an indicator. Like, not having a DUI doesn't make you less of an alcoholic, right? But people love to say that. It's like, dude, I drove drunk every day of my life as a bartender. I drove drunk every day of my life and it took me almost 14 years to get a DUI.
So that's not how to gauge where you are in the journey, but so I had gotten that DUI. And, and then of course they give you all of these things, all these hoops to jump through, which I was great. I'm great at hoops, but the one thing I couldn't do is stop drinking, right? That's the main thing they want you to do and I couldn't do it.
So I had violated my probation, first diversion, which is a little bit different. [00:27:00] Diversion is just like probation, but if you complete diversion, then they remove the charge from your record. So I violated my diversion. Then my diversion was revoked and I was on probation. I violated my probation. And then I crashed.
So, in eight months from DUI to sobriety, I violated three times. In eight months. So I was in substantial legal trouble because they had given me a lot of breaks and a lot of opportunities to self correct, but I couldn't stop drinking. Right. So I knew when I crashed, obviously it was going to be a whole new charge or charges.
And at that point, because I had already violated a couple of times, it would put me in a different category and I was facing jail time. Wow. Yeah. Goodness. I'm glad that you got help. And yeah, we've got to switch that up. I hear that so often. I drink, but I haven't gotten a DUI. I still work. I still [00:28:00] function all of those things.
Like, yeah, those aren't markers to anything. I mean, honestly, it really like, I mean, it's so progressive. And if I look back on my three decades of drinking, there were so many rock bottoms, there were so many rock bottoms and, uh, I feel like I just lucked out and I lucked out a lot and, uh, that's how I look at it now, but yeah.
Thank you for sharing your story with us. Can we switch gears and talk about aging and long term sobriety and how you making it? I would love to. Let's get to that. Oh, it's so colorful. We love it here. Can you share? Okay, so you were 33, right? When you stopped drinking? 33. Yeah. Okay. What is your age today?
Am I sharing? No, not at all. I'm 51. I'll be 51. I guess I'll be 52 in a few months. Wow. When did you go through perimenopause or are you going through perimenopause or have you not gone through perimenopause? [00:29:00] I'll tell you, it was all kind of a mystery to me, to be honest. I noticed hindsight is always 20 20.
So now I can look back and I can connect dots, right? I would say around 45, I gained a little bit of weight. And I mean, I say a little bit, it was a lot for me. I'm a very small person and I gained 20 pounds, which was huge for me. I went from 97 pounds, uh, gained 20 pounds. So, but it was the first time that I had put on some weight, like my whole life, I fluctuated a few pounds, right?
Like no big deal, but it would fall off super easy. And this was the first time that I gained. A substantial piece of weight for me, and it wouldn't go away. Like, it was hard. It wasn't just a matter of, Oh, let me get focused for a few days and drink extra water, and I'll be back down to my regular side. I just couldn't get it off.
Now, I had no idea That it could be the beginning really [00:30:00] of perimenopause. I had no idea. I was going through a breakup at the time, and I just attributed all of the stress and sadness and disappointment, right? Like, that's the weight gain, but also the difficulty in losing, and that's why I don't feel great and all those things.
So I really, after that breakup, moving back out on my own, I had to really rebuild my life from nothing. I gave up everything. I gave up my practice, everything moved across the country to be with my person. And so when that relationship ended, I mean, it was. A huge transition and rebuilding my life and putting it back together.
I didn't own anything, right? Like I got an apartment and moved into this new apartment. I had like a 30 card table. I got at Walmart to put a little television on and my couch and my dog. Like, I had nothing. It was, it was crazy. So I blamed or [00:31:00] attributed, I should say, how I felt right and being feeling dysregulated, I blamed on all of that stuff because it just made sense from that point forward.
It's been starting businesses. I mean, I had two startups at the same time. I started two businesses within a year of each other, which is insanity. Anybody that's ever started a business, a serious business knows that's crazy, right? And then I was continue to grow it growing both of them also. So a lot of stress.
Thank God I have great coping skills now because of A. A. And my sobriety right that I can deal with those things. And I have people and I know how to reach out to my people for support and and really to troubleshoot and get through stuff because I didn't have any of those skills when I was drinking, but.
The wait continued, and then it was my mood. Then it was like, what is going on? Like, I felt horrible. My [00:32:00] energy plummeted. My thoughts were getting very dark. And that's how I was at the end of my drinking. I hadn't been that sad since the end of my drinking, and just feeling trapped and hopeless, and having no idea what to do, and having no idea why I felt the way I felt.
I had actually gone to the doctor for something completely unrelated, joint pain. Because I had a lot of joints in my fingers and stuff were hurting. I'm on my computer a hundred hours a day. So it's like, you know what? If I've got the beginning of arthritis, I really need to figure this out and start making changes to figure that out, right?
Instead of just making it worse or trying to ignore it until it's too bad to do anything about it. So I went for thinking that I had some arthritis and she did some blood work and, and it came back my thyroid. Was off and like way off like I, from what I understand a healthy thyroid, a really high functioning thyroid is like a one or a two and I was a 12.
So [00:33:00] I started reading about that and that made more sense. And that's what led me into thinking about perimenopause and one of my good girlfriends had started hormone replacement a year before. And so she had been going through that journey and I'm so grateful that I had her. And, and had been with her through her journey and figuring that out because that wouldn't have been the first thing I thought of.
And she told me, she's like, why don't you just go and get the blood work done and just see where you are. So I did that. And then we found out that I had like zero testosterone. Well, I start reading about that and I'm like, Oh my God, no wonder I've felt so terrible the last few years. Like my body is just not functioning at all.
So that's really what started the journey. I started with just testosterone replacement, which made a huge difference, obviously in tandem with starting thyroid medication, and I am a [00:34:00] person that does not. I'm not a fan of medication like I don't want. I do not trust Big Pharma and I do not want to play in their game.
So like they told me I needed to start taking medication for my thyroid. I cried for two days. Like I was so upset about Having to get on medication and thinking I got to take this the rest of my life Like it's just not what I want and it has been fantastic No side effects like I have been fine It the thyroid part helped too because my mom took the same medication and had been on it for many years and is perfectly fine So that gave me a lot of comfort, but once I was in The testosterone replacement and getting regular blood work right then we could see what my hormones were doing and it was pretty shortly after that that my estrogen plummeted because when I started testosterone replacement, I was still having periods.
I think when I first went, I was still having periods. [00:35:00] I never had another one. But then, like I said, shortly thereafter, my estrogen plummeted, and so I've been on full hormone replacement for a year and a half now, I think. How do you feel about your sobriety, how it prepared you for this time? Do you look back with gratitude?
Alcohol wreaks so much havoc on your body and your brain, right? So it's the same thing with mental health. It's like you can't, it's really challenging to treat mental health if you're drinking because it interferes even with medications. And it's also alcohol mimics so many things that mental health is.
So it's hard to know what's mental health and what's alcohol. It's like you don't even have a clean slate. If you're still drinking, like you don't even have a clean slate to start from to figure out what's going on and to then figure out the solution. That was a beautiful thing about being an alcoholic for me too.
I was so relieved when I understood like, Oh, I'm an alcoholic. [00:36:00] Because then I knew what to do about it. I knew where to go right before and I was like, I'm just a mess. I had no solutions. I just felt like a disaster of a human and I know solution. But once I understood I'm an alcoholic, I was like, Oh, well, damn, that's not that big of a deal.
We can fix that. I love that. I love that. I was giving yourself that relief. Yeah. Because it's so confusing. When you don't know what's going on, regardless of whatever is going on in your life, if you don't know what it is, when you can come to some point where you figure it out, or you accept the fact that you will figure it out and stop doing the thing that's being so confusing in your life, it's like you just open up and make life so much easier and better.
Same thing with midlife. Right, like once I understood what was happening, then I knew what to do, what to Google, what lifestyle changes to make, like, yeah, it's the solution. I think people freak out about the problem. It's like that really is what leads you to the solution. Yeah, it's all about the solution.
How do you maintain long term [00:37:00] sobriety today? What are your key essential pieces? I know you're going to say, and what we've already talked about, of course, attending your meetings and being in that home group from day one until now. CASTIC is that for you. Yeah, and I don't go to nearly as many meetings as I used to, of course.
I will say my first five years, I did not miss a meeting. I literally was at a meeting every day for five years, but I had a blast. All my friends were there. I had so much fun there. I couldn't wait to get there every day. I felt like my whole entire life was starting to make sense. When I would sit in those rooms and listen to all these people share all these people who were just like me, not just like me in that we look the same or we were the same age or we have the same financial situation or family situation because I'm very non traditional in a lot of those ways.
So not that we were the same like that, but that we have the same issue with the same struggle. We have the same brain and people don't understand being an alcoholic. [00:38:00] It's a personality. Also, the way our brains are wired really creates a certain personality. It is why we're awesome. We're incredibly smart.
We're incredibly funny. We are also stubborn, obstinate, right? We don't like authority. Like there are all of these things that create a personality. So when I'm sitting in a room with all of these people that were just like me in all those ways, they take in the world and respond to the world in the same ways.
Like, it was a miracle to me. I was like, oh my gosh, that's why I'm like that. Since I was five, I've been like that and I never knew why. I just thought I was broken. I thought I was defective, but all of a sudden I was in a place where it all made sense and I just loved it. I loved every second of it. And there was a moment.
That I realized all these incredible things that I was learning, sitting in those rooms. I [00:39:00] was like, huh, this isn't the only place to learn these lessons. Like these are general life lessons and my sponsor is one of the greatest gifts of my life. I mean, he really, I attribute him to everything that I am today.
I always say my mom raised me and created a really solid foundation. And my sponsor raised me as an adult and created a really phenomenal human being and I was just learning so many incredible things from him and life lessons from him and and how to behave and respond and how to understand life and how to have Clarity on who I want to be, and then to get an alignment to live that way.
Right. It was so beautiful, but I realized I'm like, well, this isn't the only place to learn that. This is just where I'm getting the information. Right. And that's where coaching really happened for me. When I saw. The [00:40:00] transformation of my own life and who I was as a human being. And I saw how awesome I was becoming coming from a person who never even thought I was capable of being good to all of a sudden be where I would call myself awesome.
It was so beautiful. And all I wanted to do was help other people do the same thing. And I understood too, that. All of this sort of secrecy around AA and nobody talking about it openly and don't talk about it and publicly all those things where I understand those principles are very important in a lot of ways.
At the same time, what happens is nobody really knows what the hell we're doing and why. And it creates a lot of weirdness where people think that we're weird and weird things are happening and it's a cult and you've got to drink the Kool Aid and all this stuff. And I'm like, we are the same idiots that you were drinking with at the bar.
We're just sitting in a different room now drinking coffee, but we are exactly the same people. We're the same people that you're doing happy [00:41:00] hour with. We're just in a different room now. We're not doing anything weird. All we're doing is trying to be better humans. And we do it in a really cool way that is no different from any other program you would do, where there are certain methodologies and things that work and there's a process and a system.
And that's all. So I knew it was important to talk about it too and kind of hold the curtain back and let people know like we're not weird. We're just regular people with lives and families and jobs and all of that stuff. I love it so much. I respect AA's principles. We talked about that off recording and I respect you for being open again and just sharing your story and your experience with it to help because I know that it's going to help so many people.
It's already helping so many people. I'm talking about the gals who are listening, the guys who are listening today to this podcast. You're going to help a lot of people and continue to, how can people work with you? So I think the best way to find me is [00:42:00] probably through my podcast and that website, addiction unlimited.com.
The podcast is Addiction Unlimited. We talk about all things addiction. Really a lot. Remember, I'm a life coach, so I'm really into the personal development side and and just really getting our act together. That's the part I love. I loved really growing up and becoming an emotionally mature person. I did it much later in life because I was very busy drinking before that.
But yeah, I just, I love that piece of really growing up and owning who you are and owning your behavior and in making the necessary changes to become who you want. So where the podcast is about sobriety and recovery, it really is about rebuilding your life and being the person you've always wanted to be.
Yeah, that's what it's all about. Do you work with people coaching and virtually in person? I do work with people virtually. I have a six week program called Renew [00:43:00] You. It's personalized coaching for alcohol free living. And that is the only way I work one on one with people. I'll have everything linked in the show notes to find you.
I welcome you back to the podcast at any time for sure. Any final words for anyone who is listening today who is struggling with this acceptance, maybe of their drinking and where they should go from here? I would say the cliche of one day at a time is such a lifesaver. You don't have to figure out forever.
Don't think about 10 years down the road. Don't freak out about how you're going to make it happen and how will you survive and how will you have fun and how will you go on vacation and how will you go to weddings. Don't worry about all of those things. Just look at today and what you can do today to make sure that you don't drink if you don't want to drink.
And then when you wake up tomorrow, you think about tomorrow and like, okay, what are the things I have to do today? What are the things I don't have to do that could be triggering? Maybe I take those things off my plate. And what can I [00:44:00] do to reinforce that I'm stepping into this new version of myself?
And just do it one day at a time. Beautiful. Thank you, Angela. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. Please go and check out Angela's website and her podcast, Addiction Unlimited. It will be linked in the show notes. I will see you next week with a brand new solo podcast, just me and you. So meet back here.
And if you are someone who is ready to join Team Alcohol Free, my online community for women 35 and over, there is an interest list link down in the show notes that is coming your way. Enrollment. March 20th coming up very soon and I am so excited to welcome in new members into this wonderful group that we have created over the past year.
Please take care of yourself this week, my friend. I'll see you next week. Peace.
Related episodes:
High-Functioning Alcoholism and Hiding Your Drinking with Noelle Van Vlierbergen
From Limiting Beliefs to Personal Transformation with Cody Kreutz
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