Episode 26: Jada, Un-Addiction

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. What does recovery look like when it's not designed for you? I'm Dr. Zingah Harrison. And in season four of Unaddiction Podcast, we're featuring Black and Brown guests sharing their journeys through the unique barriers to recovery shaped by their identities. These guests have not only defined recovery on their terms, but they're also creating pathways and communities that can help you or a loved one find recovery too. We did and yeah, we went to Sioux Soul. That's amazing. Look at Unaddiction Podcast bringing people together. I know. I know. I wish you could have been there. You would have had some free time. And honestly, Chef Gregory's shit is popping. You know, you need to send him a picture of you and Jessica in the spot. I know. Just the environment looks so amazing. The food. I was like, I need the spoon. Yeah, you do. For real. It's all, you know, like Haitian inspired. So fucking good. How are you? Well, we can't. Good. Let me think. Let me see what happened. Oh, yeah. I had ZZKK at venture day. So I don't know if I told you with my nieces for their birthday every year what they get is an adventure day with ZZ. I picked them up in the morning. We go do like fun stuff all day. Spend the night in a hotel, eat breakfast and then take them home. So the birthdays were back in April and May. It took me until this long. Dang it. So KK is 14. She turned 14 in April. So we had ZZKK adventure day on Saturday. So we went to Golden Corral and stuffed ourselves and then went go-carding and 70 and virtual reality and laser tag and then walked around battery parking and went to a video game restaurant and then watched her band videos all night and stayed in the hotel and then ate cracker and then came home. It was amazing. She was 14 and I was like, okay, tell me all the tea on everybody at school and then she was just like telling me everything. It's great. What is the number one thing you look forward to when you go to a buffet? The bread. The bread? Yeah. First of all, you don't have to be all judgy. You asked? You asked? I answered. Okay. And then you were like judgy Mcjudgerson because I said the bread. The buttery sweet yeast rolls. This response is followed by the salad bar. Not a judgment on your choices. I just like, it never occurred. It's like, I didn't know there was bread at a buffet. Oh my God. Buffets have like the best fresh baked bread selection. Yes. There's more than just rolls. Usually. But at Golden Corral, specifically, they're rolls and then they're oven baked sweet potatoes and they're salad bar. I love all their vegetables. I eat the meat, but I mostly go for the rolls. Okay. Yeah. Now you know. Now it tells you a bit about me. And Ziggula loves bread, everybody. Oh shit. You had to disclose. We got a bread head in the house. We didn't plan on this, but it just came out organically. So I don't know. Yeah. Everybody in my family will tell you. And first of all, I don't even like all you can eat buffets because I cannot eat a lot. I never get my money worth. Like I can't eat a lot in one setting. Yeah. I eat multiple times throughout the day, smaller portions and so like at a buffet, I'm always wasting money, but that's fine. That one plate, that one plate is good. One plate is fine. And then you like fill compelled to go get some more just because you paid for all you can eat. Yeah. I'm like this plate, but I always get a cold plate, a hot plate. And a bread plate. And a dessert plate. Let's lost strategy. Let's lost it. All right. Well, should we start this episode, even though that might be the start of the episode? Yeah. Let's fucking go. All right. So welcome to unaddiction. I'm super excited because this is unusual. You've heard Jada probably only a couple of times, but Jada's the mastermind behind bringing the unaddiction podcast to you. She's our producer, mostly off air. And Jada and I would have the most amazing before and after conversations with each episode or if we were taping intros and outros. And I was like, Jada, your perspective is incredible. And what do you think about being on air and sharing your story as part of season four black and brown? And she was like, hell yeah, doesn't that sound like you? That was my day of impression. Yeah. It was on. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, it was totally on. I practiced. I practiced. So welcome, Jada, to unaddiction as a guest. Thank you. This is fun. Well, I don't always start out the same way we always start out, except I don't have to tell you what the podcast is about. Why don't you tell our listeners who is Jada and what is your recovery experience? I am. I knew this question was coming and I've been literally thinking about it for like three days straight. And I think the short answer and long answer is I'm literally figuring it out. So 2020, I am still, I think I would say literally like actively recovering from those events. It really did a number to my up here, you know? And what have been specifically Jada? Because lots happened in 2020. Yeah. So my experience of that was it felt very, I felt very numb and partially because it was overwhelming. I didn't know where to be or how to be. And that's like, you know, that was like common, I think for everybody. What I felt I saw was people grasping for something to help them decide how to move forward. And I think that I did all those things like just doing, God, it feels so awkward talking about this because we're like out of it, right? But do you feel like you're out of it? Sounds like you might still be in it. Well, physically out of it. Uh-huh. Yeah. And, you know, like taking different classes that you would never, that you would never think about were like being accessible online. Uh-huh. Uh, I think I did like a tap, like a tap class. Uh-huh. I grew up a tap dancer, you know? Yeah, I know. I know. Um, it was very hard. It was so fucking hard. Um, but yeah, you know, it was like a tie, it was like a vortex and a vacuum at the same time. It was like on the one hand, you kind of, you had like the freedom to explore so much. But on the other hand, it was that freedom was like at the expense of like other sort of like liberties, I guess, of like traveling going outside, having community connections, blah, blah, blah. So I did that. Um, I was drinking a shit ton of alcohol. There, I think that was like the most that was like kind of what I landed on of like this is how I'm going to move forward. And um, it was different. And that was different. No, no, that's what I was about to say. It was like, it was a shit ton, but it wasn't like a shit ton more than usual. It was a shit ton in like respect to, um, you know, if there was like a scale of things that I was doing in the day, um, looking after myself or like caring for myself was like way up here. And, you know, and then like the things that I was engaging and that just like gave me a one second of escape, were very outweighed pretty much everything else. So at the time, I was working this job that I really liked and there were some things happening and being said it was a co-working space. And things being said by people not in our company, you know, it was close to downtown where the George Floyd stuff was happening, the marches and those kinds of things. Asian people were getting fucking beat up, you know, all of this like the racial sort of like tension and these guys were just like saying some like fucking stupid, it was basically like anti-Chinese whatever remarks. I was directed at you. - No, not at me. I was like, they were just like standing around talking as you do in co-work spaces and just like shooting the shit. But it was very triggering and it was the response or like my feeling activated was very, was already kind of like half-cocks, you know, because of everything that was going on. Had I been this version of myself and gone back and had that experience, it would have been completely different. I would have responded. - What happened to the J-Doh on that day? - I was like, I have to quit my job because my bosses are fucking racist. And one of them was standing there and he didn't say anything. He wasn't like, hey, that's like a little bit inappropriate. He just kind of like laughed it off and walked away and I saw that and I was like, oh my God, you're a fucking racist. I don't think that's the case necessarily. Like my emotional response did not match the what was going on. - But at the time, at the time, what you needed was for him to be an upstander not a passive participant. - Yes. - And so he didn't stand up in any way and so that was very injurious. - Yes. - And then you feel like even though that injury is valid, your reaction was bigger than it let's say had to be. - Yeah, absolutely. - Okay. - Absolutely, absolutely. So I quit my job and at first, I was like, yes, I was like feeling so fucking free. This was like spring of 2021. And I'm like, yes, this is creating space for something more aligned. And I probably sent out between 75 and 100 resumes or applications or whatever and was not getting hired. And it was, I was like, oh my God, I think I peaked. Like I think I peaked in my life. And catastrophizing and basically having this narrative of the absolute worst case scenario. Like it makes me emotional because I was taking on the responsibility of circumstances that were outside of my control. And I thought that I did something wrong. That lasted for a while, like basically up until you and I met that kind of like period of time. - Where you were in this kind of cast-testrophic, I have done something wrong. - Yes. - Type of energy pointed towards it or self. - Yes. - And drinking a shit ton. - Yeah. I kind of like leveled out a little bit because I didn't have a job and I kind of afford it. It was, I was definitely using it as a coping mechanism during lockdown and through the pandemic up to a point and then it kind of leveled out because I was sensing this, I've always gone through sort of like ebbs and flows of stuff. So like when I was like partying super hard, it would be like party really hard for a couple of days or whatever and then like try to back off or something like that after for like a couple of days and then party really hard again the next weekend. And that lasted for a few years, maybe like five, five-ish or six-ish maybe. And then I would have these like spurts of like, oh, I cannot look at or touch or think about another thing that I put in my body ever again. And those times felt like the beginning of something really important or something. I started seeing my current therapist. I moved out of Denver. I lived there for 20 years. I moved out and at the time I was like, I'm just doing something new, but honestly in retrospect, I was like absolutely trying to run away from something because I had just like come to this point where I felt like everything I touched turned to shit. So I know that people that we've had on the podcast have maybe alluded to this thing of changing your location or your geography in order to like have those changes be the changes that you've needed to fix your life or whatever. I was an absolute denial. I was like, no, I'm just like, I'm over that city. I'm over that weather. I'm over whatever like very arbitrary thing about it. And I really like believed that for a long time. But I started seeing my current therapist in like March of 2022 when I moved out here to Oregon within a couple months of seeing them I kind of like described, you know, why I was like seeking support. I was like, look, my life feels like garbage and I don't know what to do about it. And we were talking about the events of 2020 and she basically was like, I think that you, I think that we need to go down this path of like a CPTSD framework because there are, it sounds like there are events that occurred that basically like triggered so many things in your childhood. - Yeah. So first of all, tell us what CPTSD framework is for our listeners who might be connecting to your story so far. - It's complex PTSD. And if whatever any of these things that I say are inaccurate, will you correct me? - Okay, yeah. - Okay. (laughing) But so PTSD would be things like, I went to war or I was sexually assaulted very big singular experiences that caused trauma. CPTSD is more, I'm not gonna say smaller, but let's say, let's say like less significant through the lens of our society and culture. Like they are quote unquote smaller things that happen more frequently over time. Using myself as an example, my parents, they would spank me. And then there was no repair process. So it was like I did something wrong, I would be hit for it. And then there would be no like attunement. One of my parents coming over to me, like maybe comforting me or, I'm still honestly like learning what that could have possibly been, but I do something wrong. I get punished for it. And then I am expected to like basically pretend like everything's okay and like keep it moving. If there are people listening who are curious about this CPTSD shit, Stephanie Foo, she used to be a producer on NPR for NPR. She wrote a memoir called What My Bones Know. And this is a memoir about her CPTSD experience. Her experiences, I would say are categorically, just very different. So things like her parents would threaten to kill her basically over and over again. Or either verbally or with an action, like overtly, like, I'm gonna fucking kill you. Or like, I think there was one time she got in a car and with her dad and like, he was driving off fucking crazy. You know, and she didn't know if she was gonna like live. So things that happened continuously where you start to begin to write this narrative for yourself, beliefs around those actions that happen. So my, my in were like, I don't deserve support. It's better if I am not seen. You know, like being small is safe and good, stuff like that. - You're really describing some nothing to correct. The initial kind of concept that we all call it medical establishment, had if PTSD was exactly what you said. Like these big catastrophic, I went to war. My experience to rape. I was in a natural disaster. And now SAMHSA gives us a definition of trauma that is the three E's and the three E's are an event or series of events that is experienced as harmful and has negative lasting effects, physically, emotionally, psychologically, socially. And so the complex PTSD framework uses that broader definition of trauma to understand that we don't get from the outside to define what trauma is for a person. - Right. - Because it depends on their experience and it depends on the negative lasting effects and all of those different domains. And so a lot of people don't recognize, we talk about it in the book, an addiction through the lens of ACEs, adverse childhood experiences, which is really part of what you're describing here in those formative years that then not only set up these narratives for you is better not to be seen, it's better to be small and really maybe even the word other than better is safer there, right? Like safer not to be seen, safer to be small, safer to be silent. Not only sets up those narratives that then begin to drive the output choices and quotes that you make in life because so much of our choices, so my camera just threw up balloons when I said choices and that's why Jada was laughing. It was like very not contextually appropriate to send up balloons as a solution. - No, no, this is crazy. - Yeah, it's crazy. Also changes your brain, right? It changes your brain, it changes your physiology through your body and this honestly sets you up when something as big as COVID comes, as big as George Floyd's murder comes, your resilience has been whittled away by those childhood experiences, right? And so sets you up for that moment at the water cooler where you quit your job running, but taking yourself with you and taking that whole childhood with you. So you get in front of this therapist, you start working in this complex PTSD framework and then what? - God. (laughs) What leads you to saying, yeah, come on on addiction podcast. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there are so many answers to this question. I feel like part of I want wanted to be sitting here was to talk about or recognize an aspect of religious based trauma on people who are, have been displaced or been in the foster care system or in my case adopted. I like to say legally trafficked and how there was a perfect storm, I guess, of situations and behaviors and dynamics in the most important relationships where. - Meaning the relationship with your parents? - My parents and my family, yeah. - Yeah, family. - The, I want to say, it happened, it kind of like clicked later in my life. Like I did start drinking when I was in high school, but it didn't really, it didn't feel the best until I was probably in my like 20s or 30s. - And the best is defined how? - In my, I would define it as, it was a just like feeling nothing. It was feeling nothing. - So removing all of those feelings bad that are constantly around to a feeling nothing? - Yes. And doing that in a basically like a community of people who I mean the sort of like rave party scene, I think thrives because there is a level, a certain level of community there. - For sure. - And. - Community and lack of judgment. - Community, lack of. - Lack of being judged is what I mean. - Yes, yes, yes. - That's like lack of judgment. - Absolutely. That's in fact like I would say maybe like the core principle of like the roots, you know, the rave scene is like we can all gather and we can all be together and it doesn't matter who you are. - Yeah, acceptance and belonging unconditionally. - Yes. In many ways like it felt like what church should have felt like. So I'm bringing that up to say after establishing a CPTSD framework with my individual therapist what we started working on and are still working on and we'll probably still be working on for a really long time is honestly like sitting with my feelings, having my feelings, feeling my feelings and recognizing that they mean something like they're. I'm told trying to tell me something. - Yeah, information. - Yes. So along with the CPTSD stuff, we're also doing some internal family systems. So it's really just like, you know, feelings come up and it's like where are these coming from and what are they saying and, you know, taking that part of me that is having that feeling seriously instead of judging it or suppressing it or shaming it away. - Yeah, so one, recognizing the feeling, two, where is it coming from? Three, what is it trying to tell me for validating it? It is real. It is based in something. It is trying to tell me something. And what do I do with it? It also seems like part of this work with your therapist is helping it be safe for you to feel those emotions because you have some skills about what to do with them as opposed to needing to drink them to nothing. - Yes. There is a large part of my work, my personal work that has to do with like just managing my feelings, but also, you know, making space to be curious about them and what it takes to be able to allow myself to feel curiosity versus disgust or fear. - I think so, anyone who has read the book or who hasn't, obviously, please pick up the book. The framework that we lay out in unaddiction is really like how our childhood create risk for us as it relates to substance use disorders and you're really talking about that inherited psychological pillar, right? Like the childhood you were born into and those experiences that you had. But we also talk about in the acquired environmental the, and this is why season four is black and brown because the experiences of being black and brown in this country really can be a risk factor for developing substance use disorders. And it's all about what you said about the rave scene that judgment, that discrimination, that lack of belonging, that lack of acceptance. that we put on so many different types of groups. I'll call it here in the country. And what I love about your story that you're sharing, Jada, is that this is not typically the pathway people think about to recovery. So you didn't move Denver and say, I'm drinking too much, I'm going to find someone to help me stop drinking. And yet it has been a pathway that has led you to be able to look at what role was drinking, playing in your life and make choices about the role that you want drinking to pay in your life. And so play in your life, not pay in your life. And so this is kind of getting into that magic formula part of the book, which is like once you start to have awareness of your inherited biological, psychological, environmental risk factors, and you're acquired biological, psychological, environmental risk factors. And I will say being adopted isn't a acquired risk factor for you. Absolutely. Sounds like the church you grew up in, the religion you grew up in, sounds like an acquired risk factor for you. Evangelical Christianity to be specific. I know there are especially, you know, black church, black Christianity is totally completely different. The way that white supremacy and, you know, Christian nationalism is a mix of things, of two things that benefit one another. And when you are the only not white person in a stiff, boring, viewed like my religion growing up lacked beauty. It lacked heartfelt expression of whatever Jesus and God and things like that are supposed to give you. I went to a Christian college and yes, there where you could count on like one or two hands, the number of black people at that college and one hand, the number of Asian people at that college. So when I say that like I had a black friend in college, like it's literally because they weren't very-- There were two? --and many. I wanted them with your friend. Exactly. So we have had conversations around, you know, I'm like, how are you still a part of this? And, you know, basically she was like, it's not what you think, actually. It's way fucking different. It's different from your thing that you grew up in. So I want to be specific. Like it's evangelical Christianity. And it's not all church. Like it's not all Christianity. It just happened to be this one. And I think it's the one where the most people are walking away. Like I talk to a lot of people on like a monthly basis, I'll say, who I find out like they were raised in evangelical Christianity and they're no longer religious. And children are born into the religion of their parents, right? And into the religious traditions of their parents or adopted into. And I think this word you use earlier of displacement is a really important word because it sounds like even all the way through-- correct me if I'm hearing it wrong-- until you found the rave scene is like a persistent experience of being in spaces where it didn't feel like you belonged, even at home. Absolutely. 100%. And I mean, this is the magic formula of trauma, of childhood trauma, right? Like a persistent, deep sense of not belonging in what feels like all aspects of life is really damaging. And so how are you now then just because time is flying? Because that's what happens when the conversation is good. How then are you finding your sense of belonging these days? And how is that part of what you would call? I guess also let's just ask that question. What would you call the definition of recovery that you have developed or are developing for yourself and what role is belonging playing in that for you? Absence from alcohol definitely means a lot and not because of what it looks like. It's purely like I'm about to be-- I'm turning 39 in 40s. You have the same birthday as my mother. November 8th. No way. Oh my god. Happy birthday, your mom. Oh my. Thanks. Happy birthday, your Jada. Thank you. So I'm turning 39. The reason why I stopped drinking literally was because of a weird, crazy thing that happened. Well, we want to know this weird, crazy thing. If you can share it, no pressure. Yeah, totally. So I had gone to bed after probably several drinks. And I woke up kind of in the middle of the night. And my heart was racing faster than I've ever felt it race. It was a feeling I've never felt before. I was nauseous. And it was just really alarming. And I like immediately knew because I don't think I have any chronic disease. Last time I went to the doctor, I, as a result of being adopted, I don't have any history on my any sort of genetic anything. So I do have a fear of medical institutions as far back as when I was a kid, like I grew up in a county in North Central, Kansas, where the senior citizen population per capita was the highest in-- I don't know-- the state or something like that. So everybody around me was old and dying constantly. And I remember as before I was a teenager, I was like, I think I'm dying of cancer. So my relationship with my body and my health is like, has been a complicated one. Yeah. But I woke up and I was like, I know exactly why this is happening. I don't know what's happening, but I would love it to not happen again because I don't want to spend time in a fucking hospital. The abstinence is just a sort of-- it creates space. That's all it does. It creates space and it creates time and it allows me the energy to explore ways of finding belonging, for instance. I go to the gym often. It's purely for my mental health. I started because I'm not drinking. I'm not smoking weed so much. I need something to help me sleep. And I realized that I have a body type or whatever. I just need to literally run until I'm tired or work until I'm tired or do something to wear myself out. So I've known that for quite a while, but it's just-- it's way easier to just get a little bit slightly wasted and sort of just go to sleep. My relationship to my-- I'm just going to say wellness, well-being or health has is number one relationship in my life. So I'm still in the process of trying to figure out what offers me the feeling of belonging, but things that I've discovered along the way are, you know, like, hang out with people, like, new people need to be based around an activity. They don't need to be based around an activity, but it really helps. Otherwise, it helps me form connections and feel bonded. So that's something that I can apply to anybody or anything. If I am feeling like I need to feel connected to somebody, I can be like, not just like, I need to call you and vent or whatever. That doesn't really help. I really need IRL hangouts where-- Yeah. - Thanks, it's happening. - Yes, yes, yeah. - No, it's super insightful. So what I love, and we're gonna use this to get us to round it out. What I love the comment, what I think is for many people mistaken concept of recovery is that abstinence from the fill in the blank is the destination. And the way it's the end, right? And the way you just described it is as the means to the destination which for you is health and well-being. And I think if we start thinking about which is not an American perspective at all, but this is my soap box to try to get it to become, is health as the presence of fill in the blank rather than health as the absence of, right? So health as the absence of addiction, health as the absence of alcohol, health as the absence of cancer, health as the absence of symptoms, right? Like what is health the presence of? And you're learning about yourself that health is the presence of meaningful activities with other people in real life that lead to a sense of connection and belonging and therefore well-being. And so you won't have a magic formula. There's a million ways to do that, right? But you could be completely abstinent of everything else and all of your symptoms and by the medical chart, completely healthy, but without the presence of that meaningful activity in real life with people that allows you connection which drives a sense of belonging, you wouldn't have health. And so I just like hope people will take that from your story and start figuring out for them health is the presence of what? And maybe it is that the absence of a substance creates space for you to pursue the presence of what defines well-being for you. I thought that was really beautiful. To bring it full circle, it really is the presence of pleasure in certain aspects. And that is something that I have been programmed to reject. Thanks to the church since I can remember. It can be a mind-fuck sometimes. Like when pleasure becomes the thing that is helping me or fixing me, I'm just going to say fixing. Like I'm saying that kind of in a cheeky way, but when that's the solution, it really is a matter of being like, why am I rejecting this? Why am I avoiding this? And then kind of comparing. And it gives me agency. So being forced into abstinence is no way to feel full in your life, in my life, I guess. And to your point, like, yeah, I can be doing the most healthy behaviors. But if there isn't some essence of pleasure, of having pleasurable experiences with others, it still sucks. Yeah. So I think let's close it out with a question we always close it out with, who would you already know what it is? What do you want to leave our listeners with? So unaddiction is a word that we made up. What are the stigmas we want to undo that are killing people? What are the things we want to unlearn that we think we know that are actually harmful? What are the conversations we want to uncover? So what on do you want to leave our unaddiction listeners with today? Uncovering conversations. And it doesn't even have to be explicitly about kind of like an interventionist style of like, hey, I noticed that you had two fucking bottles of wine at dinner. Like, are you fucking OK? It can be just conversations around-- and I think that we're doing this really well, black and brown communities are doing this really well. And it's being rejected by internalized homophobia or internalized xenophobia or internalized supremacy of like, don't talk about that because it goes against all of our American principles or whatever. So one of the conversations that we're-- that the adoptee community is having is around abolishing adoption. And that brings up a lot of questions around, oh, this is an option, though, for people who really do want to not be parents anymore or whatever. But it is-- it's like you're not going to find what is underneath things until you are brave enough to break that ground. Like, if nobody else has done it, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. And I really respect and honor the people who have been having the first conversations around things because there is so much to learn. And we have to catch up to the needs our modern needs, the solutions that exist are outdated. Even within the adoptee community, there are so many different experiences. They're not all terrible. Some people have incredible experiences. But uncovering these conversations, uncovering curiosities within yourself, for me, it was like, oh, this behavior, this activity that has actually been really, honestly, probably killing me, it serves a purpose. What is the purpose? And how can I do the same thing with different tools? I love it. I love it. Thank you, Jada. So I love that this episode is going to be a place where adoptees can see themselves. Because I think that's uncommon, unless you're like specifically at some adoptee resource page or situation. So I love that. Obviously, for our brown and black people, for our Asian people, specifically, for our folks in Kansas. Just kidding. I had a thought it was open there and letting it up. But I love this. I love this. So I think I would sum it up by saying I heard your magic formula come down to at least three things, not necessarily only three things, but curiosity, connection, and pleasure, as must three ingredients for Jada's health and well-being. Yeah. Awesome. All right. With that, I'm going to roll us out of here. Thank you for listening to Unaddiction Talk to You, so-- Thank you so much for tuning in. And if you like this episode, please check out my book Unaddiction, Six Mind Changing Conversations That Could Save A Life, available at Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org, Union Square & Company, Amazon, and wherever books are sold. We want to hear from you. If you identify as Black or Brown and have a recovery story to share, something you've learned, a stigma that you've undone or a conversation that you've had about addiction, send us a voicemail at SpeakPipe.com/UAPod. That's SpeakPipe.com/UAPod. Guaranteed Human.