Speaker 1Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Addiction Unlimited podcast, where you get to learn everything you want to know about addiction and recovery. I'm your host, Angela Pugh, co-founder of Kansas City Recovery, life coach, and recovering alcoholic. To learn more about me, you can listen to episode zero on your podcast app or find us on the web at addictionunlimited.com. Hello, my friend. Have you ever wondered if someday you'll be able to drink again? Wondering if you quit for a few months, a year, or even multiple years, if you'll be able to come back around and drink like a quote-unquote normal person? I'm willing to bet if you're listening to this podcast right now, you've had these thoughts. Today, we're going to take a deep dive into the absolute truth about the whole situation. We're going to talk about the different levels of addiction and recovery, and we're going to on the spectrum of problematic drinking, when you hit the point of no return, and why that happens no matter who you are or how high-functioning you may be. This is Addiction Unlimited. I'm Angela Pugh, your personal life and sobriety coach to guide you through this journey to transform yourself and your life. If you're done screwing around with all the starts and stops, you are in the right place. I remember when I was new to the quitting drinking game, and maybe this is the stage you're in now. I had stopped drinking for 30 days, not with the intention of quitting forever, but telling myself that I just needed to take a break, right? I just needed some time off, take a step back. And when that 30 days was up, my head was telling me all the right things. It was comforting me, telling me we have this under control. It was giving me the rationalization. It was giving me the rationalization I needed, telling me we just stopped for 30 days. Now we know we don't have to drink every day. And it even gave me a little pep talk, telling me this time will be different. We'll try harder than we've ever tried before. We'll be more committed than ever. We'll just drink on special occasions. That's what I told myself. And if you're anything like me, you know exactly how that turned out. It only took me a couple of times of falling for those lies my brain liked before I finally learned my lesson. And I would love to tell you that it was this beautiful story about waking up one day and the birds were singing outside my window. And I just knew I would never drink again. And my life was changed forever, but I definitely do not learn lessons quite that easily. Instead, I had to put myself through a bunch of trauma and drama and drive myself all the way to emotional bankruptcy before it finally clicked. And I had to put myself through a bunch of that my brain is a habitual liar. And I had to stop falling for the line of BS it was constantly feeding me. One thing you have to understand about sobriety is there's no way you'll stay sober if you can't be a hundred percent real, raw, and honest about the situation you're in. And I was the same until I understood in my core that I had to end my toxic relationship with alcohol completely breaking all ties. I struggled. You don't have to struggle. And I want to talk about three things today, the spectrum of alcohol use and abuse, the science, why it's not curable and all the lies you'll read on the internet. So buckle up. That's what we're getting into today. And let's start with the spectrum, right? Use, misuse, abuse. We'll narrow it down to those three use. I think it's probably pretty self-explanatory, right? This is when you first start drinking, having a couple of drinks, maybe having a couple of beers at a party, whatever. It's use. It's experimentation and use. You're just figuring things out, trying it out. Misuse is a little deeper, right? This is when you are starting to maybe use it a little more than you intended to. Maybe you're drinking more frequently, than you would like to. Maybe you're having more drinks than you really want to have when you do have some drinks and you're just misusing it, right? It's starting to become more of a habit than you're comfortable with. And maybe you've had some negative consequences. Maybe you've had what I used to call drunk bumps, right? Like I would trip, fall down, whatever, bruises and scratches from falling down or however they happen. Lord knows there's plenty of ways it can happen. I'll tell you all the ways. But maybe you're starting to have some blackouts or stuff, those things that are making you kind of pay attention. And this misuse phase is usually when I say the red flags are really popping up, right? And for me, misuse, I would say like, you've heard me talk about when I was 25 is the first time I had a conscious thought, like I wonder if I'm an alcoholic. Because I was starting to recognize that I just did it maybe more often than other people did it. Or it was just becoming too regular in my life. Like I wasn't having any major problems. I wasn't blacking out. I wasn't having legal problems. I wasn't having relationship or friendship problems. I didn't have any of that stuff at that time. But I definitely recognized that it was taking a more prominent seat in my life. And those were the only dots I was connecting in that misuse stage. And then you cross over into abuse. And abuse is when you're doing it despite some pretty negative consequences. Like this is when it becomes important, right? Like in the misuse stage, I would still go do things socially and go out places, go to parties, whatever that didn't involve alcohol. I probably wouldn't stay very long in the misuse stage, but I would still go. Where once I was in the misuse stage, I would still go. And I would still go. And I would still go. But when I was in the abuse stage, I really didn't do anything that didn't revolve around alcohol, right? It was going out to bars. Or if it wasn't to a bar, it was a party. But drinking really was what everything else revolved around. And if it was a non-drinking event, like if one of my friends was having a baby shower or something like that where there wasn't going to be drinks, I probably wouldn't go. And that's the abuse stage. And there's this really great chart. If you are in my Sober Society membership, it's in your member portal. You can log into Sober Society and go to the first 30 days tab, and you'll see this chart. And it really is a great chart to break down kind of the stages and a lot of the emotional things that are happening in these different stages of use, misuse, and abuse. And one of the things that really stands out to me in the abuse stage, once I was abusing alcohol, it was my priority, right? And I was abusing alcohol. And I was abusing alcohol. And I was abusing alcohol. And what I mean by that is, like I was saying about going out, like I didn't do anything that didn't revolve around alcohol, but also all the negative consequences, right? And I had some pretty crazy things happen, really random things that were pretty scary. And it happened because I was drunk, but it didn't stop me, right? Just like people will get DUIs and continue drinking. I got my first DUI. It didn't even slow me down. And I had done some other, other things too that didn't even slow me down. For some people, negative consequences are relationship problems. Maybe your significant other is coming to you and saying, you know, do you think maybe you're overdoing it a little bit? Are you going to drink again tonight? Are you really having another glass of wine? You know, those things, those are major red flags. There's not a non-alcoholic person on the planet that has ever had anybody talk to them about their drinking habits, right? Because they don't drink enough for anyone to notice. So those are some of the negative consequences that we'll just ignore and we keep drinking. And that's one of the telltale signs of abuse for sure, whatever the substance is, is when you're still doing it despite negative consequences. You're still doing it even when it's affecting your work performance. You're still doing it even after getting written up at work for being late. And really, you know, you're because you're hungover, right? You're sleeping in, you're missing things, you're disappointing your family. Those are a lot of those negative consequences. Some people have blackouts. I was not a big blackout drinker, so that's not a great criteria for me. I do talk about things being very fuzzy. I've heard the term brownout. People say that's a brownout. Like maybe I might remember seeing you at the bar, but I wouldn't remember exactly what we talked about. You know, like everything was just a little bit fuzzy. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know or I'd remember driving home, but I wouldn't remember pulling in the garage or I wouldn't remember going upstairs and going to bed, right? Just like these few minutes here and there that were just fuzzy. Another thing that can happen in the abuse phase is those personality changes, right? When you're really like for some people, their anger comes out and they can get really aggressive. Another thing is when we start having these starts and stops, right? We say we're going or we're gonna cut down on drinking and then we don't. make all of these promises to ourselves and to other people, and we break all of the promises. We're making excuses for everything. We feel terrible all the time. We feel bad about how much we're drinking. We have guilt for how it's affecting our family or the type of parent we're being or the type of child we're being to our parents, right? We have all that guilt and remorse and shame of our own behavior. And I always say to family members, like, whatever pieces the outside people around you know, whatever pieces they have is usually about 25% of the truth. And for us as the drinking person, I know all the truth. So I have all of the information to feel guilt and shame about, right? Where the people around me just had little pieces here and there. So that's the abuse phase, right? When you're doing it, no matter what, it becomes important. I always say too, I had three stages of life, and I know you're going to relate to this. I had three stages of life. I was planning drinking, I was drinking, or I was recovering from drinking. That was it. That was my whole life, was one of those three stages. And that is definitely in that abuse category on the spectrum. The thing to understand about getting to that abuse category also is this is when oftentimes we start to withdraw, right? We withdraw from activities. We're not showing up to family functions. We just feel like crap. We look like crap. We don't want everybody to see us like that. Or we're trying to hide it. You're lying and hiding alcohol from your partner. All these things are an abuse. And once you get to that stage, that's the point of no return, right? Once you've crossed over where alcohol or whatever substance has taken the passenger seat next to you, and it's that important in your life, and it's kind of running the show, that's when you can't go backwards, right? When you're in use and misuse, you can move in and out of those stages fairly easily. I've definitely worked with people in that misuse stage dangerously abuse, right? But like if they're going through a major life event, like a divorce. I worked with a guy probably 10, 12 years ago going through a divorce, and he drank pretty out of control through that divorce. But once he kind of got to the other side of it, working with me as his coach, also working with a therapist, he started to work through a lot of those issues. He started to work through his feelings, the resentments, the disappointment, all the things we feel when a relationship ends. Even if you know ending the relationship is good for you, you still have disappointment, anger, and resentment, right? So once he really worked through a lot of those things, he resumed his normal life where drinking wasn't front and center with him. So in that use-misuse, you can kind of go back and forth. You can still turn it around and cut back. But once you're in that abuse phase, that's where, as we say in 12 Steps, we say once you're a pickle, you can never go back and forth. So once you're in that abuse phase, that's where, as we say in 12 Steps, you can never go back to being a cucumber. And that's the truth. Once you're in that abuse stage of the game, it's very different and there's no turning back. I couldn't go back to just misusing, right? It had me at that point. So Yale Medicine published in 2022, I want to start getting into the brain part of this. And I want you to have, I'm not going to bore you to tears because you guys know I'm obsessed with the brain, but I'm not going to make you fall asleep while you're deep into the brain science. But I want you to understand the impact that substance abuse has on your brain so that you can understand when people say it's curable or someday you can drink again, there's not a lot to back that up, right? And addiction really happens in the reward system of our brain, right? In the pleasure center. You'll hear those two terms more than anything else. Reward center, pleasure center. Reward center, pleasure center. Reward center, pleasure center. Reward system. And the reward system developed as a way to reinforce behaviors that we need to survive. Like eating, that's considered a natural reward, right? When you eat foods, all the reward pathways light up and they activate a chemical called dopamine. I'm sure you've heard of dopamine. And dopamine gives you a little jolt of satisfaction, right? It's a little feel good and that's what encourages you to eat again, right? You get the positive reinforcement. You eat food, you get a shot of dopamine. You're like, oh, that feels good. Then that tells you, oh, I should eat again because that feels good. But when a person develops addiction to a substance, it's because your brain has started to change, right? And addiction is considered a brain disease. It physically changes your brain, right? And this happens because those addictive substances, whatever we use, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, opiates, whatever the thing is, it gives us, instead of the little jolt of satisfaction you get from dopamine, it gives a surge of dopamine, right? And it floods the reward center two to 10 times more than natural reward like eating. So the brain, remembers this surge of dopamine and that euphoria, right? That's what the euphoria is. And it associates it with the substance. So over time with chronic use, your brain adapts and it becomes less sensitive to dopamine, right? And now we're talking about tolerance. So your brain becomes less sensitive to the dopamine, but now it really wants to do more. It wants the surge of dopamine. But now that you built a tolerance, it takes more of the substance to generate the high level of dopamine surge that you want. And that's the essence of addiction. And you know, too, I mean, I think most of us have this awareness addiction, again, any substance, it doesn't matter what it is. It affects so many different pieces of us, right? It doesn't matter what it is. It affects so many different things. It affects so many different All of those things are affected once we're, I mean, they're all affected when we're, even if you're only drinking a couple of times a week, all of those things are affected, but certainly with long-term use, chronic use, we make all those things a lot worse. And the University of Michigan Medical Lab, I think it's called Health Lab, says also that with the continued use of the substance, the brain starts to actually produce less dopamine and it can also reduce the number of structures in your brain that receive dopamine. And dopamine is a feel-good thing. So the impact that dopamine has on you and giving you that surge of pleasure, satisfaction, happiness, all starts to go away. And our ability to experience pleasure starts to go away. And this is what I was talking about a minute ago, where when we get in that abuse stage, we pull away from things, right? We start to withdraw and we start to isolate a little bit more. And this is what happens, right? Because we don't feel pleasure the same way or at the same level. And this is when, especially when you stop drinking, right? You're what we call a hangover, which really is just withdrawal. It's the alcohol or substance leaving your system. This is why you feel lethargic and depressed and unmotivated. Your anxiety shoots super high. You don't get the same pleasure from the activities that you used to love to do because now your brain is all screwed up and it's not firing that dopamine correctly. And obviously this just creates the vicious cycle, right? It exacerbates the problem. Now you feel sad and unmotivated and depressed and your anxiety is super high and that makes you want to drink more, whatever substance you're doing. And your tolerance means you need more of it. And it's just the same thing. You don't get the same pleasure from the activities that you used to love to do. That's the vicious cycle that goes around and around and around. That University of Michigan article also talks about that circuitry in the brain and how it is changed in fundamental ways, right? So the more those reward circuits are associated with the substance and you getting that euphoria, then the more your brain is going to want the substance. And what that means is you have cues or triggers, right? What we call triggers. I did a whole episode about all the different kinds of triggers. I'll link it in the show notes if you want to go back and listen to that one about all the different kinds of triggers. So once your brain is so accustomed to associating the substance with the euphoria, any cue you get, right? A social cue, which would be like being around your drinking friends. That's a social cue or your family members that drink. A geographic cue, right? Being in your old favorite bar or a physical cue, right? Where you get super stressed out from work or whatever. All of those cues become stressors. strongly associated with the substance also. So you have these triggers that have such a powerful impact on the brain. And the University of Michigan Medical Lab says it doesn't matter if you've been abstinent for 15 days or 15 years. Those cues can trigger a relapse. And a lot of the changes that happen in your brain can persist for years once you quit. A lot of the effects you can fix for sure. Like I'm sitting here 17 years sober. I don't have a ton of deficits that I'm aware of from my drinking. And I was a hardcore chronic alcoholic daily drinker. And I seem to have come out pretty unscathed. Now that doesn't mean I'm not going to have some wacky health stuff down the road. I don't know. But I know that I have done a lot of repair to my brain, which is exactly what you're working on in recovery. We're fixing the things that we have manipulated through our substance use. And you can definitely do that. And your brain wants to support you in doing that. As you change your behaviors and your habits and your perceptions, you start approaching life differently. Your brain will also adapt to support you in those new behaviors and changes. Part of the problem too with this rollercoaster is when you're a person with an unhealthy relationship with substance, any substance, you use it for the wrong reasons, right? I drank alcohol to create an effect. I didn't have a drink in my hand just because alcohol was around and I drink half of it and then go home, right? I didn't drink that way. I drank to numb the anxiety or numb the insecurities. I was feeling social anxiety for sure. I drank to avoid all the things I was avoiding in life. I drank to cure boredom. I drank to have companionship when I was lonely because face it, you can have drinks and anybody is tolerable, right? You can hang out with anybody after some drinks. You don't care who it is. I drank to quiet the noise in my head so I could sleep, right? Alcohol was my solution. I know you can relate to that. People that don't have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol don't have any expectations of its performance, right? They don't expect it to provide a service. That's what we're doing when we're drinking. They have other coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety and insecurity and boredom and loneliness. Alcohol isn't their solution to most of life's issues. Alcohol isn't their solution to most of life's issues. Alcohol isn't their solution to most of life's issues. And I think that's where it's so hard. No matter how much you want to get sober, you're fighting all the stuff that's happening in your brain, where your brain has become so accustomed to believing alcohol is the solution, believing alcohol is the fun. You're not fun, but alcohol is, or it makes you fun, makes any situation fun. And then it's hard to get really honest that it's time to give it up and that you're not moderating, but you really have to give it up. That's a hard place to get to. And it's not for me or anyone else to tell you you have a problem with alcohol or you're an alcoholic or whatever word you want to use for it. That is a very personal decision. And that's a place that you have to get to on your own. But if you are really done screwing around with this thing and you want to get it together and you want to take the right steps and really make progress, you have to be able to get to the point where you're not just a hundred percent real and honest about your situation. Not thinking I can control it, or maybe if I take a year off, then I can drink again. I just need to take a break. All those things. My brain told me the same lies. And a huge piece of the puzzle for me also was understanding my brain was a liar. In my early sobriety, I was very clear, again, real raw and honest that my brain was a liar. And I was very clear that my brain was a liar. And I was very clear that my brain was a liar. It had nothing to do with me. It's like that thing had a life of its own, right? But it was a liar and I couldn't listen to it. Even on the most simple things, you know, we talk about in AA, we talk about whatever in early sobriety, whatever your brain tells you to do, do the exact opposite. And I really lived by that. You know, if people came up and invited me out to dinner, my brain would be like, hell no, I'm not doing that because my mouth came. Yes. Because I knew if my brain didn't want to do it, it was exactly what I needed to do. So you have to get to that place that you understand your brain is lying and you have to talk back to it and tell it to be quiet. Tell it that we're not drinking anymore. No matter what, we have to figure out a different solution. And when you take the drink away, because you've used it as your solution for so many things, then people can be shocked. About what's going on. Why don't I feel better? Like you have this period of time where your energy comes back and you do feel better and you feel better than you felt in a long time. And maybe you're sleeping better now because you're not just passing out, but you're actually sleeping. Your body's actually getting restorative, restful sleep and you feel better. And then all of a sudden you realize that life is still happening. You realize you still have anxiety. You realize you still have all these relationship issues that you've brushed under the rug. You realize you didn't want to think about it or deal with it or confront it because it's uncomfortable to do those things. You realize you're still avoiding the things in life. You realize you still have a spending problem and financial problems and credit card debt and student loans, right? All of the life things don't go away just because we quit drinking. The key is we have to start figuring out other coping skills because we can't use alcohol as our solution. Alcohol is the core of my problems. It was not my solution. It just numbed the feelings so I could continue to ignore the problems, right? And the last piece of this that I want to get into really quickly, I won't keep you all day, but the last part of this I want to get into is a lot of the things that you'll see around the internet, right? Whenever people are talking about statistics, success statistics, percentage of people get sober doing this thing or that thing. Statistics are really challenging. I'm not saying that people are intentionally misleading you or lying. I'm not saying that at all. Some of them are. Yes, that definitely happens. But what I'm telling you is you're talking about statistics and numbers that they get from alcoholics and addicts. So as maybe a year down the road and going, Hey, how are you? Are you still sober? Well, listen, I could be drunk off my ass and I'm going to go, Oh my God. Yeah, I'm doing great. Thanks so much for calling, right? There's no way to know the accuracy of those numbers when those numbers are based on self-reporting and the self-reporting is coming from a population who has a problem with honesty. I am the most honest person on the planet when I am sober and in my right mind. But the moment a substance enters my body, my relationship with honesty no longer exists. And that is true for almost everyone. So when you see these statistics and percentages and all of this stuff, you have to understand that there is a flaw in the system just in how these numbers are, how this data is gathered. That's what I want you to be aware of. And when you see things like there are so many alternative therapies now that involve hallucinogenics of various sorts and spiritual experiences. And I'm not against anything, right? Everybody's got to find their own path. But what I would tell you to ask if you're looking at doing one of those things is what you need to ask is what is it actually doing in your brain? Because even with trauma, a lot of these hallucinogenic therapies too is about trauma and reprocessing trauma. Well, trauma also has a role in the process. It happens to your brain. It is a brain injury. So what I want to know is if I go eat your medicine, whatever it is, and I hallucinate for 14 hours and somebody's watching over me and keeping me safe while I lose my shit, is it actually changing my brain in the way that's necessary to actually heal those issues? And I'm here to tell you, probably not. And I am intrigued by all of this stuff. You guys know I am very much a believer in anything that works. I don't care what it is. And I am actively researching some of these alternative therapies to see what they actually do, right? Because I want everybody to have help. And as soon as the thing comes out that cures addiction, or they have something they can do to our brains to rewire that reward circuitry so it functions properly, I'm all over it. I want to know that, you know? So I am researching all that stuff. up and I'll be doing some episodes about it so that you can learn more about it also and know what's what, but that's what I want you to think about. When people are talking about, you know, someday you can drink again. If you fix this, that, and the other thing, you'll be able to drink like a quote unquote normal person. You just have to be very wary of those claims because I'm telling you in 15 years of working in addiction and literally thousands of people I have worked with, I have seen people return to some level of normal drinking three times. I will also tell you two of those three times they could drink in a more controlled manner, but they were also you. Other substances. It wasn't a true sobriety, no intoxicants, right? So there was still some kind of crutch there. And what happens is that we don't heal the underlying stuff, right? It doesn't matter though, how much I heal my anxiety and how many coping skills I develop and how much I can manage my life and live happy and free. I'm telling you right now, I couldn't have a drink today and do it any more successfully than I could do today. I couldn't have a drink today and do it any more successfully than I could do today. I couldn't have a drink today and do it any more successfully than I could do today. I couldn't have a drink today and do it any more successfully than I could do it 17 years ago when I quit. Now it might take me a little bit of time to get back to drinking crazy. Maybe the first few times or first few weeks I would control it because alcoholics also are very stubborn and we love to prove people wrong. So we love to go, Oh, you don't think I can drink. Watch this. I'll quit for 30 days. And we'll walk down that time just to prove people wrong. But when I quit drinking for 30 days, it didn't make me less of an alcoholic. It actually kind of, proved that I really was an alcoholic because I was quitting for 30 days and taking a break. And you only need to take a break from something that you've already lost control of. So if I started drinking a day, I'm not going to do it more successfully. It's just not how I'm wired. But those are the questions I want you to think about as you're looking around at different things and having these questions. Can I drink again someday? Would it be okay? You know, relapse is not uncommon for exactly this reason because our brains kick in and give us all this information. They say all the right things, you know, the romancing us and making us feel good and like it's not our fault and we're okay and we're fixed and we're all better. But the truth is I was never broken. I don't need to be fixed. I wasn't broken. I don't drink well. I had to really focus my time and energy on developing other coping skills because alcohol made me lazy and I didn't grow up and develop coping skills, but I was never broken. To be fixed. But your brain will tell you it's okay now. One drink's not going to hurt. Nobody will even know. You could drink this one time. Nobody will find out. And I've been doing this a long time. And three times I've seen people be able to drink again with some level of control. But like I said, two of those three were just using a different substance. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be your coach through this transformation and figuring this stuff out. If you want to work with me, walking side by side with you, guiding you through this whole process, definitely book a call with me. It's worth finding out if we're the right fit to work together and I'd love to talk to you. I hope you're having a fantastic day. I'll see you next week.
Speaker 2You've reached the end of another great episode of the Addiction Unlimited podcast, candid and honest conversation about addiction and recovery. Be sure to visit us at addictionunlimited.com to join the conversation and access show notes and links to everything we talked about. Love this episode? Please take 30 seconds to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes to help us improve and give you the information you want. Thanks for listening. See you next week. Thank you.
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