vol 280. Life Through AA with Kylie

SPEAKER_00 0:01 We believe that alcoholism is a disease. Alcoholic is a disease solution to the disease. I'm here to bring you the voices of its members, and everyone that comes on the show, including myself, is an active member and has found recovery in the rooms of AA. As you listen, please take what works for you and leave the rest.

SPEAKER_01 0:25 Hi, I'm Kylie. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is July 10th, 2013. I have a home group and I have a sponsor, and I owe my life to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I started drinking at a really young age. My story is very similar to most people's. I blacked out the first time that I drank, and I loved it, and I couldn't wait to do it again. I grew up in an alcoholic household.

My parents got sober when I was 10, and I don't really remember a lot about my life before the age of 10. Most of my childhood memories involve waiting for my parents outside AA meetings, meeting their friends from the program. So obviously, I had an introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous at a very early age. Throughout my time in high school, I dabbled in drugs.

I started drinking a lot. It kind of unfortunately seemed like the norm. So I didn't really think that I was anything different than any of the people that I was hanging out with. At a certain point, that kind of switched.

When they would turn it off, I would still be going. But at that age, I couldn't really comprehend alcoholism and addiction and how I was different from them. But thankfully, I had two sober parents, and I had my first intervention when I was 17. I didn't really have any options.

It was basically just you are going to go to treatment. And being 17, I couldn't really make any other decisions for myself unless I wanted to move out. And I would not have survived if I moved out on my own at 17. So I went to treatment.

I did four months in two different treatment centers and got introduced to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, met people who were like me, met people whose stories were the same, different, didn't have anything in common with them, had so much in common with them. I'm all the people. I can remember being at this clubhouse in Houston, Texas, which is where my second treatment was. And people would share in the meetings about their relationship with God and how they would wake up in the morning and they would pray and they would ask God to keep them sober.

And I loved that, but I couldn't comprehend how I was going to incorporate that into my life. Growing up, uh, we went to Catholic church every weekend. I did everything that I needed to do, my sacraments, I guess. Obviously, it made a really big impact because I don't practice any of that now.

But I grew up with a God that in my mind was punishing. And when I came to AA and they told me that I could come up with my own conception of a higher power, it took me a really long time to learn how to put aside that punishing God that I grew up with and come to form my own conception of what I wanted my higher power to look like. While I was in Houston, I worked the steps with a sponsor. I can remember doing my first fourth step, fourth and fifth.

And after my fifth step, I remember just falling asleep for like three hours. Like I was exhausted from getting all of this stuff that had been built up inside of me for so long out to another person, you know, things that I thought I was never going to tell another person. And I built a really great foundation for myself. And I decided to move home at the end of my 90 days in Texas.

And I enrolled in college, lived at home with my parents, and went to meetings and built a really great life for myself. I would go to meetings and it I was living in a small town in upstate New York. I was the youngest person in meetings by I mean at least 20 years. But I kind of loved that.

Alcoholics Anonymous was definitely a huge part of my life, but I wouldn't say that it was everything. So I went through college and I decided my senior year that I wanted to study abroad. And I ended up going to Italy and I lived there for four months, and I turned 21. This was in 2009.

And in the small town that I was in, there was no AA meetings. So at this time, this is way before Zoom was cool. I think we used Skype, and I would do a Skype meeting every week with people from all over Europe. And it was incredible.

And turning 21 in a country that has so much drinking, and my parents had come to visit me, and I drank a Diet Coke with them and was like, man, this is a really good life. I went back to New York, I graduated from school, and I landed what I thought was my dream job, like kind of you have arrived. And I got this job in New York City working for Calvin Klein, doing advertising, and really thought I had just kind of made it. And I moved down to New York City and I never established myself in AA.

So I didn't go to meetings because I didn't have time. There were things that were much more important in my mind. And the big, beautiful life that AA had given me was now getting in the way of me showing up and participating in my program. So about four months after I had moved to New York, and by this time I have a little over four years sober.

My relationship with my parents is fantastic and transparent and supportive. And we go to meetings together and blah blah blah. And being away from meetings, I stopped thinking that I was anything like any of you guys. And I started to get those thoughts like, well, maybe you were too young when you got sober.

Maybe you didn't really have a problem. Maybe your parents overreacted. All the thoughts, all the what-ifs. So I made a decision and I decided that I was going to relapse.

And I was going to relapse on weed because that wasn't a really bad thing. And I ended up sending my parents an email. This is before everybody kind of texted all the time. And I just said, okay, so I've made this decision.

I am going to try smoking weed and drinking again. And I don't really want to talk about this any further. I will reach out when I'm ready. And as somebody who's now been sober for a long time, I cannot imagine how devastating that was.

And everything was actually okay for a couple months. It was fun. I got to go out, I got to participate in going to bars with my friends and actually drinking with them and going to clubs and doing things that I kind of had felt like I missed out on. And it was a lot more work to worry about drinking and using drugs every single day than the joy that I was getting out of it, if that makes any sense.

But I kept going because, you know, the book talks about that point where it's like we don't know how to stop, but we don't know how to keep going while we're drinking. And that was kind of the point that I was at. I can remember walking into AA meetings in New York City and just feeling like I would never belong. And this was a place that I had belonged for four years of my life.

And when I'm drinking and using the little voice inside my head that tells me, you should pick up that drink, you should pick up that drug. It talks to me in my voice. And so I have no reason not to believe it. And I would walk into these AA meetings and I would see people laughing and being happy and making plans to go out to eat after, and all the things that I had once been a part of.

And everything inside of me just said, nope, you will never be a part of this. You're not good enough. You will never get sober again. All the negative thoughts.

One of the things that is kind of a big point from my first time getting sober is that uh I have had anxiety since I was young, but it was never diagnosed until I was about a year sober. And at that point, I had this anxiety that, you know, they tried to put me on different meds for and they didn't work. And so they ended up putting me on clonatin. And so for the whole four and a half years that I was sober the first time, I was taking clonatin as prescribed, never abused it.

But it is a big part of my story that I didn't realize was so significant until getting sober this time. So as I'm drinking and doing drugs and living in New York and taking benzos every day, eventually it just stopped working. And I still had this anxiety that I was trying to fix with a drink and fix with the drug and fix with the benzos. And I would go from doctor to doctor to doctor because I was hoping that somebody would just say something like, Wow, you do have anxiety like no other human being, and this is how we're gonna treat it.

You know, I just wanted to be different. Eventually, all of the medications that I was on started counteracting each other. And it got to the point where I couldn't leave my apartment. I couldn't get in a cab, I couldn't go on the subway, I couldn't go to work.

I could not function as a human being because I was paralyzed by fear. I can remember when I got sober this time, and one of the things that we did in treatment was every couple days we would have kind of like a book study in the house. It was pretty casual, but somebody would just pick a story in the big book and we would read it and talk about it. I can remember one day opening it up and seeing that story called Fear of Fear.

I felt like, oh my God, somebody actually understands. Because my whole life I had been afraid of being afraid, but I didn't have the words for it, and I couldn't explain it to anybody, and no one had given me anything that made sense. And that was one of my first spiritual experiences in this sobriety. So thankfully, I still had a really loving and supporting family, despite just kind of running my life into the ground.

They helped me get into a psych facility. And I checked in thinking, okay, they're gonna help me get my anxiety under control. And while I was in there and I stayed for a week, I, like the good alcoholic that I am, convinced them to increase my dose of glanatin, just manipulated the entire situation. There was one night that we were in there, and it's not like they keep you busy with activities while you're in there.

You know, a lot of people are in there getting electric shock therapy and doing EMDR and doing some serious work on themselves. And I was just in there, like, you know, doing puzzles and eating saltines and just kind of taking my meds and take treating it like a little vacation. And I can remember one night they said, okay, well, we have this group coming in to talk to you. They're from something called HI, which stands for hospitals and institutions.

Do you want to go sit in on this meeting? And I stood there with my arms crossed and fully in my core believed what I was saying and told them, thank you, but I don't have that problem anymore. I used to have that problem. I used to be an alcoholic.

Now my problem is anxiety. And I really, really believed that, and that is terrifying. So I got out of the psych ward and I moved back to New York and was still hopped up on a bunch of meds and still drinking and doing drugs the way I had never changed anything. There's a story that I actually remembered recently that just so accurately describes the insanity of my disease.

And most people, when I tell them this, if they aren't in the program, they just they can't even comprehend that this was like a functioning human. But I had just gotten back to New York and I was going to see, I don't know, some new psychiatrist to probably get some new drug. And I'm on my way there. I remember I had these big black sunglasses on.

I'm walking down the street, and this man comes up to me, and he says, Oh my God, you would be so perfect to do voiceovers. And I thought, oh my God, me? Like, how did you find me here? Like, thank you so much.

He goes, Okay, so all I need from you is we're gonna walk over to this ATM. You're gonna give me $300, and then I will get you hooked up with an agent. And I thought, oh my God, this is fantastic. How did somebody just find me like this and is offering me this great opportunity?

He had pulled out this business card from his pocket and it looked like it had gone through the washing machine 25 times. And it was some Warner Brothers, who even knows? I don't even remember what it said. And I happily gave him $300 and I went on my way and thought, okay, this is gonna be the beginning of my career as a voice actor.

Obviously, nothing ever came of that. And I don't even know how he targeted me, but he picked the right person. And that is just the insanity of the disease that I have. So I managed to, I kept my job in New York, and a lot of my story is that as long as I looked okay on the outside, that nobody would know what was going on on the inside.

It's not like I lived this big perfect life, but I didn't lose the things, you know, I didn't lose the job or the house or the car or a lot of the things that sometimes beat people into that submission of surrendering. And unfortunately, it wasn't helpful because it continued to help me live in the delusion that everything might be okay. And when I went home for Thanksgiving that year, I ruined Thanksgiving dinner. I had gotten too drunk from the night before and was too hungover to participate and hang out with my family.

And again, you know, I have two sober parents and I'm the oldest of five children. So it's not like any of my siblings are drinking because I was 23 at the time. And I thought, you know, this isn't that bad, actually. Let me just go back to my life in New York.

Everybody will forget, no one will remember. And we had this kind of family therapist that we all saw individually, and he was in the program. And I went to him while I was home for Thanksgiving, thinking, okay, let me just go in, I'll check in, I'll just like make sure to tell him all the good things that are happening in my life. He can then relay that to my parents, and then I'll be off the hook.

So I was driving to meet him, getting stoned, and I walked into his office, and there were my parents and three out of my four siblings. Obviously, because I had had an intervention before, I knew what was happening, and I wish that I could remember the things that my family said, but I have zero memory. I remember walking in and I remember walking out, but I don't remember the in-between. And unfortunately, another one of my huge character defects and something that is just kind of I've always struggled with is people pleasing.

And I was given kind of an ultimatum during this intervention. It was, okay, you're gonna go back to New York and you're gonna quit your job, or we're gonna quit it for you. And God forbid, anybody knew what was actually going on with me. And so I thought, nope, I will quit it on my own.

I don't want anybody else to be involved and to judge me, as if that's what was important at that time. But I quit my job and I moved home and I thought, okay, this is this is actually getting pretty bad. I I really need to take this seriously. And so I enrolled in an outpatient and I went back to all of the meetings that I had been in three, four years earlier and threw myself into the program.

While I was an outpatient, I met a boy, and if you're new, they talk about not getting into relationships for the first year because they'll take you out. And I got into this relationship, and at 89 days sober, he told me he was moving away. And I thought, you know what, this is a good reason to drink. And so I picked up again, and that was in March or April of 2013, and from that time until the beginning of July, I managed to lose every single thing about me that makes me me.

I was working as a nanny, I was living at my parents' house, I was drinking all day, every day. I was driving this kid that I was nannying around drunk, and doing things that perfectly describe that incomprehensible demoralization. And I didn't know how to stop. You know, when you're doing acts that don't feel good, the only solution in my head as an alcohol as an active alcoholic is to continue drinking because I don't want to think about what a piece of garbage I am.

I had gone to a family wedding at the end of June in 2013, and I come from a family of big drinkers, and for whatever reason, I still always stood out. I always had to take it a little bit further and ruin something. Whereas everybody else could just get drunk and kind of fade into the night. And I got home from that wedding, and my dad told me that I owed my uncle an apology for kind of ruining the reception of this wedding.

And for whatever reason, that was it. That was what I needed to hear. I woke up the next day, and it wasn't even a decision. It was I cannot do this anymore.

So I started reaching out to people that I knew who were still sober and asking my parents for help and calling my insurance company and and trying to figure out how I could get sober because I knew that I couldn't do it on my own. But I also was still very delusional. I sent a message to this friend of mine that I had gone to treatment with when I was 17. So we went to treatment at Hazelden in Minnesota, and then they Sent me to Houston and they sent her to Long Beach.

And when I wanted to get sober, I thought, okay, well, I might as well, I'm living in New York, I might as well go to California, live on the beach, do some yoga, acupuncture, go to kind of like a passages Malibu kind of place. That'll be, that'll be really good for me. So I sent this girl a message and I said, Oh, you know, can you tell me about where you went to treatment? Send me some numbers.

And she's like, Yep, absolutely. She sent me the owner of this treatment center's number. And I said specifically in my message to her, I don't need detox, and I probably just need an outpatient. I definitely don't need to go to an inpatient.

And the joke was on me because when I got out here two weeks later, I was in detox for 14 days, coming off of the benzos and the alcohol and all of the other psych meds that I had been taking. And then I did six months in inpatient treatment. And it was the absolute best thing that could have ever happened to me. At the treatment center that I went to, they are heavily focused on AA and you go to a meeting every single day.

And in order to get to these meetings, you have to make phone calls to sober women and have them come and pick you up and take you to the meetings. And there was a house phone that we could only use for two 10-minute phone calls a day, and you could only call your family and friends who were girls. And you know, they brought me back to, although I felt like a child, they brought me back to a place where I could just learn basic life skills. And that was a huge thing that I was lacking when I first came out to California to get sober.

They helped me to get a get well job. And I ended up working at this beauty store for almost a year. You know, another thing about kind of the just the way that your mindset can shift. When I came out to California, I still had this huge ego.

And that ego gets in the way of me and members of Alcoholics Anonymous and opportunities and friendships and family. And it just can be one of the worst qualities about me, if not the worst. And when I got out here, I thought I was better than I hadn't gone that as far down on the scale as you had gone. I had never gone to jail, I had never been homeless, you know, all these things that kept me separated from the group.

When they told me that I needed to get a get well job, I think the first thing out of my mouth was like, well, don't you know that I have this degree? And basically, I'm better than that. And they kind of laughed in my face and they said, Okay, well, you're still gonna go get this job, and then you can do whatever you want with it. And I had to take the bus to this job.

And somewhere along the line of just following my feet and doing what these people told me to do, that ego got smashed. I am so grateful for that. Because when I am just pointing out the differences rather than the similarities and thinking that you have something different than I have, and I will never have, you know, the sobriety that you have or the story. It just keeps me apart.

I think one of the main reasons why I've been able to stay sober this time is because I have gone right into the middle of the program. Everything in my life revolves around Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's only because I was able to put my ego to the side and become just a member among members and a worker among workers. Just be willing to hear something different and hear suggestion and hear feedback, and I'm my own worst enemy.

And that doesn't have to be the case every day. I I worked that job for almost a year and I absolutely loved it. Then I landed a job working in treatment, and I thought, oh my God, I cannot believe that I'm getting paid to do this on a daily basis. I get to hang out with people who are newly sober and help them, and it just was amazing.

For when I was two years sober, that was exactly what I needed. Another bad quality that I have is that when I'm drinking and using, I like to do the bare minimum. I want everything to be handed to me and I want to do the least amount of work. And when I was working that job in treatment at two years sober, I remember seeing the therapists and um, you know, the group facilitators and the program directors and all of these people and thinking to myself, I want to do that.

I want more. And that was a new thought for me, wanting more for myself, wanting to actually do work to become better. So I left that job and I had always wanted to work in the medical field. Ever since I was a little girl, I can remember faking sick so that I could stay home and watch episodes of ER.

And always wanting to be a nurse or a doctor. But then once I got older and found out what you needed to do to be a doctor, I was like, absolutely not. So, okay, maybe we could do something else. But again, that voice that talks to me in my own voice, in my head, told me, you're not smart enough.

You will never succeed at this. And so I believed it. And I never tried. And one of the amazing gifts of this program is the people.

I have met some high-quality human beings that I get to call my friends today, that I'm worthy of being friends with today. And one of them, her mom had worked at a hospital, and she told me, Well, what if you just tried to go back to school and tried to do something with this? And I thought, no, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna be good at it.

And she's like, just try. And so I went back to school because by this point I had a decent amount of practice with taking direction from other people who knew better than I did. And I did great at school, and I got a job in a hospital, and I loved it. And I applied to nursing school, and a lot of my story is not, this isn't me that has done these things.

This is 1000% a higher power and me getting out of the way of his work. So I applied to nursing school, and in California, the schools are really competitive, unless you go to a private school. But I thought, no, you know, let me just apply and we'll see what happens. People wait years to get into these community colleges.

And I applied to two schools and I got into one, and that was kind of the first sign that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. And I went to school and I actually did really well. It's crazy what happens when you actually apply yourself. I became a nurse.

And for a person like me, that was never in the cards. Never even, wasn't even something I thought about, let alone would even try to do. All I ever wanted was to deliver babies. That's it.

And I found this hospital that's really close to my house, and they weren't hiring. I had missed the application process because it was also COVID at this time when I had finished nursing school. But I went up to the unit and I made friends with the educator and the director, and I said, What do I need to do to work here? And again, that's not me.

I used to want them to just say, Hi, here's your job. This is this is what you're gonna do. You don't have to work for it. And here I was doing everything I possibly could to get this job that was my dream job.

I had no control over when I was gonna take my boards, and COVID just obviously threw everything for a loop. And I got a call on a Friday afternoon, and they said, Hey, somebody dropped out of our new cohort. Would you like to start with our new cohort starting on Monday? I hadn't even applied to the job.

I hadn't even interviewed for the job, but I had gone and let them get to know me a little bit and told them that I would do whatever it took to get this job. And somehow they heard me and God heard me. I landed a job as a labor and delivery nurse, and it has just been the most incredible experience of my entire life. From a person who was not welcome at family holidays to now being a person who gets to participate in one of the best days of people's lives is an absolute miracle, and that is only because of God.

Again, I've been working this job, and something inside of me thought, okay, I think I want a little bit more. So I decided to get my master's, and I just became a nurse practitioner in the fall of last year. And again, it just most days I don't believe that this is my life. But the difference between the person that I am now and the person that I was then is that I know that I am worthy and deserving of this life.

I have made Alcoholics Anonymous the center of everything. I have done my absolute best not to let this big, beautiful life that I have gotten, right? It's something that I got. It's not, it's not um something that I take for granted.

I got this life through AA. And so I do my very best not to let that get in the way of me and my program. And I work with a sponsor and I work with sponsees and I go to meetings. I probably talk to five people every single day that are in this program who hold me accountable.

Celebrating 12 years feels like a really long time to be sober, but it also feels like I'm kind of just getting started. Emotional sobriety is a whole different beast that I couldn't comprehend when I still had the the physical obsession. And thank God the obsession to drink and use was lifted. But now it's learning how to live like a good person.

And I don't always do that perfectly every day. One of the things that AA has taught me in in terms of putting my ego to the side is is just this state of humility. And when life throws life at you, which it does on a daily basis, I get to show up, participate, walk through uncomfortable situations, and be okay. And a drink or a drug is the furthest thing from my mind.

Like I don't do this thing perfectly, but I wake up every day grateful. And and I didn't have any gratitude when I was drinking. And I talked to my higher power. And there's multiple times during the day that I try to take my control back, and then I have to realize wait, hold on, I'm not in charge, and I have to give it back.

But that's not something that comes naturally to me. I still try to control the outcome. And every time I do that, I mess it up. And you'd think that I would learn after doing it a million times, just give it up in the beginning, but I don't, and I'm really hard-headed.

And honestly, I'm grateful for that because then it becomes a daily practice for me. I love that there is still always something that I can work on. Today I am a good daughter and a good friend and a good sister and a great nurse and things that I say because I've worked hard to get to be this person. It didn't come naturally and it didn't come easy.

Alcoholics Anonymous has given me this freedom that I was always searching for in the bottle. Today I get to take a deep breath. I can relax, I can turn my head off. I have a solution today.

And I am not my solution, and a drink or a drug is not my solution. My solution is my higher power and this program. And as long as I stay humble and willing and teachable, I feel like I can kind of do anything. And it's okay that it's not easy.

I can remember people when I first got sober saying things like, man, you got to get uncomfortable to get comfortable, and thinking that that just sounded like the worst possible thing. And it's not like I welcome uncomfortable opportunities today, but I don't resist them because I know that something even greater is gonna come out on the other side. And this transformation, this isn't me. This is this is gone.

This is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's just learning to take life one day at a time. So thank you so much for letting me share. SPEAKER_00 36:45 Thank you, Kylie.

That was lovely. I love your optimism. It's refreshing. Thank you.

And congratulations on becoming a nurse practitioner. Do you do nurse practitioners still deliver babies, or does that mean you're in the office seeing patients? How does that look? SPEAKER_01 37:04 I will probably end up working in an office.

Right now, I'm still delivering babies as a nurse, and then I do home health assessments as a nurse practitioner. So I will probably have to leave my job at labor and delivery, but yeah, still haven't figured out exactly where I'm gonna be yet. SPEAKER_00 37:24 It seems like it'd be such a different career being a nurse practitioner than delivering babies. SPEAKER_01 37:30 It is, for sure.

And now I get to prescribe drugs, which is absolutely insane. And um, I I don't know. I know that I will find where I'm supposed to be, and that it might not be the most conventional nurse practitioner job. I don't really want to work in an office five days a week, but I kind of just have to hold out hope that that the right opportunity will present itself.

SPEAKER_00 37:57 Nice, nice. I I'm impressed with I I got to see my grandson born a couple weeks ago, as you know. And I didn't realize that the nurses really do all of the work. The doctor didn't come in until the last minute.

And yeah, they come in to catch the baby. Yeah, 3C section, so I had no idea. Well, you guys do it all. You love it.

Yeah. SPEAKER_01 38:21 Yeah. And it's it's incredible. And thankfully, I don't really have to take care of sick people.

So I kind of get the benefits of being a nurse, but not having to do a lot of the really hard stuff that happens in healthcare. I mean, my job is happy maybe 95% of the time. That 5% that it's not happy, it's really, really, really sad. But again, I get the opportunity to show up and and be there and support these women.

I don't I don't take that for granted. SPEAKER_00 38:56 Very sweet. Okay, so you talked about pivoting back to your story away from your career, though it is impressive and and worthy of um recognition. The you talked about uh having been afraid of being afraid, uh that chapter um fear of fear in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And what you said was something about that being your first spiritual experience in this sobriety. Do you want to talk about that in respect to it being a spiritual experience or any other spiritual experience that you may have had during this um during your your 12, the last 12 years? SPEAKER_01 39:41 Yeah, sure. I mean, there's been so many.

And and it's funny having the perspective that I have now, I probably have been having experiences like this my whole life, but I wasn't open to them. And it's crazy the things that you realize when you are actually open to seeing this. That definitely was the first. It was one of those moments that, and this is how how I describe a spiritual experience.

It's like you couldn't make this up. You know, I couldn't have manipulated this situation if I tried to. I had done the footwork, but I had given the rest up to God. I find little things today, whether it's seeing numbers somewhere or hearing a song, certain things that bring me back and just ground me.

And I read this book pretty early on in my sobriety called The Universe Has Your Back, and it is life-changing if you haven't read it. In there, it talks about kind of picking a sign. Because in the beginning, I also didn't really identify with the concept of God, that the ocean was my higher power, like something that was tangible. And that has obviously morphed over the last few years.

But in this book, they talk about picking something that will just be your sign from the universe that the universe has your back. And they want you to pick something that has no meaning to you. And so I picked hummingbirds because they they meant nothing to me. And every single time I have ever been in a place where I'm questioning something, where I don't know if this is where I'm supposed to be, where you know, I'm asking God, like, what am I supposed to do next?

Every single time I see a hummingbird, whether it's one that's hanging in somebody's car off the rear view mirror or in my backyard, or on those stickers from papyrus greeting cards. It is everywhere as long as I am open to seeing it. And it literally is just me getting out of my own way. And and thank God I have those experiences because I think that's one of the things that that keeps this whole thing exciting and fresh and and just fun.

SPEAKER_00 42:19 Your parents are sober and probably very happy that you are 12 years in. You're on the other side of the country, though, it seems like. Do you have any sort of um update on your relationship with your parents and both or all being in the program? SPEAKER_01 42:42 Yeah, so it's funny now.

Actually, three out of the five of us of the children are sober. So I moved out to California in 2013. My brother moved out in 2015 to go to treatment, and he will have 10 years this fall. My parents moved out about three or four years later, and they now live in San Francisco.

And then two of my younger siblings live in California, um, in LA. I have one sibling that's still on the East Coast. So most of us are out here, and I actually live with my brother and his wife, and family is it's everything. And and it's only because I get to to show up and participate today, and like I'm welcome today, and that that's huge.

SPEAKER_00 43:34 That's so sweet. You're kind of the family trailblazer. SPEAKER_01 43:37 I know, and but it's actually it's so fun because my brother who I live with works in treatment, and my dad actually is an interventionist, and so he travels all over doing interventions, and and we all kind of get to do this together. SPEAKER_00 43:56 That's so sweet.

Yeah, probably it's cool. Sweet, but SPEAKER_01 44:00 also there was probably a lot of pain in there for your parents to oh for sure to get you guys where you're at that's um I imagine rough yeah I think I think we all know kind of how how much turmoil there was that now it's like we just really enjoy everybody all kind of being on the same page and and being in the same space. SPEAKER_00 44:23 Healing families is there anything that you left out of your story or anything that you may be thinking of now that you would like to share you know there was kind not really but when I was in high school before I got sober the first time I lost four family members in a matter of two months that was kind of when my drinking really took off and out of those losses we ended up um adopting my cousin who is now my youngest brother who is also sober now and it just was a very traumatic experience but one that now I'm able to look at and be like wow look at all the good that came out of this but the experience of losing that many family members in such a close or small amount of time definitely was one of those things that made me feel like I was entitled to to drink and entitled to use and well if this happened to you you would do the same thing and I don't know if it's it's a super relevant part of my story but it's part of it. Hmm it's interesting you didn't talk about needing an excuse to drink during your story so it did surprise me to hear that you had something that you you pointed to to justify yeah yeah for sure yeah I don't know that I that I um that I ever did that I I drink because life was boring like whole if you I used to say if you like drinking as much as I do you would drink this much too you just don't like it as much as I do.

Yes I don't know what to tell you you just don't know how to do it like I do. That's right. Right. Oh yeah but much like your meds counteracting each other and making your anxiety worse and everything the drinking like they say stopped working and turned on me and where it once would be a high to drink became a I want to sleep or die.

Yeah stopped working for sure. SPEAKER_01 46:54 Yep and and I can remember so many nights falling asleep making sure that I fell asleep on my side so that if I threw up I wouldn't choke on my throw up and die. You know and normal people don't think like that. And this was just a part of everyday life.

SPEAKER_00 47:17 So you have all these promises in your life today and you you did I think you didn't stumble but you were kind of saying these things were given to you by the program but you worked really hard for them it sounds like you suffered and worked really hard. You did a six month inpatient did I catch that right at the end yeah so I was headed towards the last question but let's pivot for one moment before we get there. SPEAKER_01 47:43 What did re-entering life uh look like if you can give us a glimpse from leaving that six month inpatient so this was probably in 2014 what did that look like the treatment center that I went to they just they have it all figured out so they helped me get that get well job and then I moved into kind of a transitional living where I still had to go to a couple groups a week but I was living in an apartment with other girls from the treatment center and we were all working and had to still find our own rides to meetings and buy our own groceries and kind of learn how to be responsible while still being under that umbrella of of treatment. And when I moved out in January of 2014 I moved into a studio apartment about a mile down the road from the treatment center.

So I established myself in NAA in Long Beach and I got to stay in that little bubble and that was huge. I could go back there anytime I wanted if I needed anything I was able to start sponsoring girls in the house starting when I had a year sober I think they had an alumni meeting every week that I would go to you know I just had created this support system only with the help of the treatment center. So everything that I did everybody that I knew was sober. And it just was kind of the perfect transition into being able to live on my own and paying bills and keeping a clean house and like the little things that you don't think of that really add up.

SPEAKER_00 49:32 Do we want to give a shout out for that treatment center are we going to leave yes it's up yeah to Newfound life. SPEAKER_01 49:39 Yeah newfound life in Long Beach saved my life and I've sent a lot of people that I love to this treatment center and and it works. It's not fancy there's no yoga and acupuncture you cook your own meals you clean the bathrooms but it taught me how to be a productive member of society and that that was all I ever really wanted honestly and it's so focused around the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and that's what I love the most about it. SPEAKER_00 50:17 It just they throw you right in there so absolutely that place saved my life thank you for that thank you Kylie we are going to come now to our last question for the listener who is suffering with or without some sobriety under their belt what final message would you like to leave them with I would love to tell them to just stay to just stay even though it's uncomfortable and it doesn't feel natural and it's really hard but if you just stay there is nothing in your life that cannot be solved.

SPEAKER_01 51:09 When we're praying out like at the end of meetings the thing that I always think because there's so many people that I want to pray for and I I don't have enough time to do that is that I hope that people see that this is where the miracles happen is in these rooms that truly this is the easier softer way. It might be harder and more uncomfortable and you have to do a little bit more work but it really is the easier softer way. And and I hope that if you're new you can just get out of your own way and maybe realize that you don't know anything about staying sober and start talking to some people who do know a couple things about being sober. SPEAKER_00 52:00 Just pray for the willingness because that's really all you need is just the willingness to stay for more information read the first 164 pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous or visit keepcoming back.net