Episode 157 – Conquering Fear, Addiction & Alcoholism, w/ Karla Juvonen

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their full upright position as you take your seat of Consciousness relax your senses and allow us to take you on a journey we are the intimate strangers thank you for listening ladies and gentlemen welcome thank you so much for being here tonight

we've got an incredible show planned for you guys this evening we are multicasting which means we are broadcasting live on one number of different networks right now if you're looking for everywhere we are live go to allmelinks.com the human XP

the biggest compliment that you can give us is by telling your friends and family about the show Word of Mouth Is How We Grow but if you haven't heard this show before you're in for a treat tonight we're going to be covering conquering addiction the trials

tribulations triumphs over a disease that some never survive we're going to be talking about living a healthy life so whether you're here with us live or you're listening to the podcast version of this thank you so much for your presence we

appreciate you so lean back relax grab a drink and enjoy this conversation the human experiences in session my name is Xavier Katana my guest for tonight is Carla javonen javonen Carla is an author and works as a physician's assistant Carla's written her first book titled

from the brink of the drink which we're going to be covering this evening in the book Carla Bears it all from the toll that addiction can have on a person's life and finally her Victory Carla's mission is to help others especially those who find themselves in situations

such as the one she's lived and survived Carla it's truly a pleasure welcome to hxp oh thank you so much Xavier for having me I'm so excited I just um it's just such a big problem and there's just so much stigma and so much hiding within alcoholism and I think some major

misunderstanding regarding who can be an alcoholic who looks like an alcoholic and I assumed that most people who knew me would never in a million years think that I uh was an alcoholic and I was right so putting my story out there that you

know what an educated successful woman can indeed become a raging alcoholic and lose almost everything but the most important thing is that you can get it all back and then some uh with entering into a recovery and it's just really remarkable and I'm so

happy to share my story I I share it all the time for this very reason to try to inspire people to keep trying to to kick it because you can yeah yeah I absolutely love that so much and you know in the time that I've known you you are you are one of the most tenacious

people that I've encountered and you're kind of like the little Phoenix That Could You Know The Rise From the Ashes so you know let's talk this is your first book and you know I love giving first-time authors a chance to tell their story and we I mean we do

cherry pick this and what I thought when I was looking at this book was um wow this woman has survived you know every possible direction that you could kind of cringe and hang on and wonder what is gonna happen next that's what I was thinking when I when I

read this book so you know being a first-time author how what made you want to write the book tell us a little bit about your your writing process as well please sure so um I had never really contemplated writing a book I thought it would probably be an undertaking that

was far too challenging for what um I was skilled with I had not done a lot of writing other than the required writing and coursework in undergrad and graduate school but um I had told my story to Ad nauseam really at many different places and

um someone actually my first ex-husband said you know you really should write this because it really could help some people and I just was like oh yeah yeah well I don't know about that that's haha and I started thinking about it some more and I figured you know what Carla

if you can figure out a way to start the book that would be interesting and and kind of a hook to to be like okay this isn't just going to be your run-of-the-mill this is what alcoholism is and this is what you need to do and you have to jump on this but it's just

more of a okay this is a story that I might be able to relate to and so once I came up with the the way to begin it then it was just a matter of I jotted down an outline filled in the blanks and it was written in three weeks I just came pouring out very cathartic and actually

um even if it had never gotten to anyone else it was actually a great exercise for myself yeah I mean it has to be that it has to be a type of catharsis to write that all down and look back at it and you know just self-actualize in a way this this

sort of Journey that you've taken and I mean as it turns out you've already you've almost captured lightning in a bottle here and your publisher is giving you you know you're working on your second book now yes it's in editing already as we speak

actually so wow okay okay so let's let's get into from the brink of the drink um you know there's we were talking about this a little bit in the pre-show uh you know there's such a stigma to people who suffer from this disease and you know where do you think that comes

from that that stigma that Society labels this as it starts from being ingrained that it's a choice that the first that the the first drink you take is a choice and that is true so I think it's just that um people look at it as if you know there's

the problem and we uh I don't know um it's a problem that was Choice be initiated so it should be a problem that they just can just fix right like it seemed I don't know it's hard to put into words why the stigma is such but I really think it comes down to the idea that

it's a moral failing that people drink they couldn't stop drinking because there was somehow less than they were a bad person they were the gruntial guy under the bridge with the paper bag around his bottle uh you know they got on skid row because of their own life

choices and so let's cast them away we certainly don't want to catch what they have um we don't want them part of our society we certainly wouldn't want them practicing medicine um and I think that it just becomes a situation where because of that stigma

professionals particularly medical professionals and Pilots really are reluctant to even seek treatment or help because it can be career ending absolutely and I mean a lot of this I think what you're hinting at is also is a lot of people are

functional alcoholics and you know they're they're kind of taking a drink and living life and you know they're functioning you know every day so it's such a strange thing you know and I and I think another reason that we connected was uh you know of Dr Gabor

mate's work and he's been on the show and a lot of this you know stems from childhood which kind of segues me into the book um you know you started this process of sort of running away from your problems and you know using using alcohol very

early on in your childhood how did that start for me for you and you know where did this where did this process begin of using alcohol in a destructive way uh for me it was destructive from the get-go I remember my first taste of alcohol I was a little girl and I had

the chickenpox and I had them everywhere including in my mouth and throat and my parents made me and my sister um grasshoppers with cream DeMent the whole thing and um it did help soothe my throat but more importantly uh I was able to sleep and

from the get-go in my life as an infant as a toddler and really through till today Sleep has been a real challenge for me and so I noticed that that really helped fast forward just a couple of years and I had really been watching my parents they drink but they only drank

socially here and there they'd get friends all the kids would be involved we'd play games and have a good time and I could totally see something change something switched in the adults where they got a little sillier they laughed a little louder everyone was less uptight

and and I totally noticed that because I wanted some of that I wanted some of that peace or that relaxed or that decrease self-consciousness that I could see even from a very young age that was helpful for them and so I I kind of made a plan and thought well I wonder if this

will be helpful for me and it certainly was the the first night that I decided this is what I'm gonna try I was uh 12 years old and my parents had a liquor cabinet in my dad's office and it was actually a closet a small closet but you could walk into it turn on the light

shut the door that kind of thing and I had a particularly stressful day at school trying to be perfect and getting straight A's and doing everything I was supposed to be doing and that was my first high school year and in my little town seventh through 12th grade was high

school and high school was a hard transition I think it is for almost everybody but I was feeling pressure and stress and so I snuck in there with a little tiny Juice Glass and gin was what they had the most of so I just poured two ounces into my little Juice Glass

then I went to the kitchen and grabbed what I could find that was sweet and it happened to be ironically ginger snaps and I took my my my medicine I guess my My Gin and my Ginger Snaps down to my room and sipped and snacked until I felt was

fully asleep and that was how it started the beginning of the end so to speak yes I mean a slow slow process but for me it isn't for everyone some some have issues with blackout drinking and things you know first time they use that wasn't the

trajectory for me huh you know it's amazing that you know this this compound this drug is available on any Street Corner that you go to you can go and find find this substance and you know so it's interesting and you know with with prohibition that happened it it's I mean

it's they've tried to regulate this but you know it seems like people use this as as a way to you know loosen up sometimes if they're feeling nervous and they don't really recognize you know the harm that they're doing the conditioning that they're setting you know this this

substance sort of conditioning where they need a substance to you know function at some point and you know when did you go from drinking I mean you started as a kid in high school and and that's when and that's when you took that first you know

drink but as you progressed into college how how did that work you were doing your master's program and um you know were you drinking by yourself again or how did it work yeah I always drink by myself because I found it to be safer I didn't want the

headaches of the party at the you know University of Minnesota with a bunch of people you didn't know and potentially drugs and trouble in cops and I just know so the risk of getting a mine or the risk of getting in trouble in one way or another either with the police or

with my parents or with the school that was enough of a deterrent for me to to decide this one I love but there's one I'm going to do for the most part by myself and it was very very functional for me for a long time in college I I would get all my studies done I carried

two part-time jobs I go do what I needed to do but then at night when it was finally time to go to sleep I had my bottle of brandy right next to my bed kind of tucked underneath it and I would take a few pulls off of that and that would would do it and I would get up get

up the next morning not hungover or anything because I hadn't gotten drunk I had just relaxed and and then that's an Insidious pattern because with alcohol just like almost every substance eventually you need more of it to get that same effect and then it's also easy

to kind of overshoot because I want to get that relaxed I'm not feeling I'm getting it fast enough and so I'll drink more than I did before and then tomorrow night I might eat even a few drops more and over a year years and years that just progresses in some people like me

into a really serious serious problem yeah I I definitely you know can understand that but it's it's odd to me because it's it's kind of like a parallel you know of other people I would think that they start drinking socially and then move to drinking alone

when they're trying to cover up their problems or the way they feel about something but you know it's it's funny to me that you had this thought well I don't want to get in trouble with these other things so I'll just kind of drink by myself

oh yeah sneaky and sort of manipulative from the from the get-go and it wasn't that I really didn't want to be social but I just didn't want to get in trouble huh but I mean it it did lead to that and so just just moving forward in the timeline a bit

um you you got into a relationship and you know I want to talk about this because I think when we are in these types of relationships that are mutually destructive I think it can be hard to recognize that immediately so tell us about a little bit about you know this

relationship you were in and the marriage and how that worked how that Dynamic works yeah yeah absolutely um well I met him in our Graduate Studies for physician assistant master's degrees in Iowa Iowa City and um my undergrad had been at a Christian

College they were all studying to be uh parochial school teachers or pastors or whomever and who I was the only one there that seemingly the drink I was the only one there that wasn't a virgin I was the only one there that was less than in my own uh mind and so that's

another reason I kind of kept my drinking to myself during undergrad and I wouldn't have chosen uh such a conservative school had I not been given a scholarship to go there so that sort of made the decision uh an easy one but it wasn't an easy three years of time in

fact I say three years because I powered through it as fast as I could because I really didn't care for it it wasn't an environment that worked for me for me I certainly couldn't be myself and so I was hiding for a number of reasons but that but that was just one of them but

when I got to the University of Iowa that's a big ten you know big School Iowa City's college town town so much fun restaurants and bars and nightlife and everything catering to The Graduate students and and older undergraduate students and um I was struggling with

our first summer we had a really really tricky biochemistry course and we were going through the Krebs cycle diabetes and glucose and insulin and how this all works and it was really hard for me but I met Jim and Jim was also a Minnesota native and at that point there weren't

very many PA programs in the country so people were from all over the country so he and I sort of met and became friends just simply because we were both minnesotans but then he had recently graduated from about from a biochemistry program so this biochem class was piece

of cake for him and he was also a fantastic teacher and loved to sit down and go through it and and and share and teach and so that's how it began he agreed to kind of tutor me and we studied hard and I got it I passed it that type of thing but

um we also began to realize realize how much we had in common we laughed a lot we studied hard and then we drank hard and I could tell right away that Jim was just as heavy of a drinker as I was if not even heavier and that was so refreshing to me it should have been a

turn off but instead it was refreshing because I felt like oh thank God I can drink how I want it out in the open with him him normalized it and yes it normalized it because he was using just as much or more and people with substance disorders tend to do that

um you know that you'll see the the ones on Skid Row are kind of congregated together in the in in a drug house or whatever um like likes like it just simply does you know a smoker will typically seek out another smoker to be in their relationship with in their romantic

relationship with anyway because it's pretty challenging to have one with it and one without and um so for for me it did it gave me sort of a license to drink how I wanted to and um it gave him the same license in reverse and because it's sort of normalized it for us it

just kept insidiously getting to be more uh more frequent we went from just in the evenings to okay we'll do evenings and and and Saturdays during the days because we lived on the lake and people would come over and go boating and whatever we

could use for an excuse to drink we'd do it um and then pretty soon it was as soon as we walked in the door door at night and it was all weekend long and over time that just kind of became this gradual march to death by alcohol and I just didn't see it and I certainly

didn't want to see it because as as the book shows later on that that marriage fell fell apart uh which will happen if there are three uh entities within a union it just doesn't work very well Princess Diana used to say that about Prince Charles

and her marriage that there were three of us in this marriage because of his involvement continuously with Camilla and I feel like that was the case with our marriage there were three of us from the get-go and really the god in our relationship was uh was booze and

it's just not a very solid foundation to base your relationship on absolutely not I mean what a dangerous mix of different elements that you could lead to you know such an explosive state which it kind of did you know moving along in the story

um but you know I I just want to pause here for a second and you know see if we can give the crowd different ways you know to recognize this I mean maybe there is someone out there listening to this and perhaps they're in a relationship where this is going on you

know and you know I think what you said rings so true that you know you weren't just in a relationship with Jim you were also in a relationship with alcohol and it was like you know you guys had this love triangle with you know drinking together and each other and you know I'm

just wondering was is there anything in your mind that maybe if you could go back and talk to your younger self that you would tell yourself like you know this is this is what you need to watch out for oh absolutely I the the first thing there is if you're in a relationship or

uh contemplating getting into a relationship and the one of the main reasons is that you feel relief that you won't have to hide something that you otherwise do I mean that's a giant red flag right there but for me um and anyone I think who's already

abusing substances um you also feel pretty crappy about yourself you feel pretty lonely and so it's very easy to glom on and settle for something that isn't necessarily right and I ignored so many red flags Jim was actually married uh to someone else when

I met him in Iowa City and we proceeded to become friends and then more than friends and he ultimately divorced her and married me um him being married should have been a giant red flag right yeah um you know and and and him having Tendencies even early in our

relationship to become the angry drop the explosive drunk the punch holes in doors drunk um I should have no way um but I married him and even on our honeymoon we were drinking the whole time of course many people do on their honeymoons but for us we use it as a

reason that we should be hammered every single day for the two weeks that we were there and the first night very first night um we drank way too much and we ordered room service late at night and I passed out before the room service showed up

and he was so Furious fueled by alcohol Fury um this wasn't how he really was but you know that he ended up waking me up by throwing all of the food and the everything the bottles everything all around the room so I I took a blanket and pillow and barricaded myself in the

bathroom on the first night of my honeymoon but instead of yeah instead of eating crow tucking my tail between my legs telling my folks that yeah yeah you just spent 12 grand for nothing I want out which is what I should have done I didn't want to embarrass myself I didn't

want them to know that I had made a bad choice even though uh they already knew it um and and I I mean we just kept doing our thing and kept covering it and kept plotting along and if it sounds like Jim is a bad man he is not he's funny and

he's charismatic he's scary smart he can speak and he's a professor and he's such a great teacher and he's so talented in a lot of things um so I don't I guess I don't regret that I know him and that I knew him what I regret is us not getting ourselves together before we

contemplated actually moving forward any further in our relationship because had we quit drinking uh either we would have decided we didn't have that much in common or I think our relationship would have been much better in the long run you

know we have two beautiful kids together and now Jim has just celebrated uh just about to celebrate two years of sobriety which is fantastic and um so you know it has really come full circle and we're able to co-parent the kids and I gave him his one-year tip I've invited

him to my meetings talk about what sobriety can bring if you're out there wondering if you'll be better or worse if you get sober it might take some time to figure out what your new normal is but it's so possible and and anything can happen Jim

and I are friends we practically tried to kill each other when we were getting divorced and now we are friends because we are both sober hmm yeah I mean wow that's it's such a powerful thing to hear about because I think most of the time we don't realize

like when we are when we are subjectively in a situation that is oh in overall negative for us we don't we don't immediately recognize that it is that you know or if we don't if we do we don't want to acknowledge that you know we don't want to admit it to ourselves

and so adding adding alcohol to that I think is a very dangerous mix of you know a very in an already toxic sort of situation you know Carl I want to talk about someone someone mentioned this in the chat and I I wanna I wanna talk about um the neural chemistry of this you know

I think when when you're in love you know your neurochemistry is already sort of going you know in all directions but you know when you add alcohol to this what is alcohol doing to the brain when we're we're drinking you know kind of in this way

right well exactly uh it's it in most simple terms when you drink or use any kind of substance certain neurotransmitters in your brain uh are fired up so everyone's heard about dopamine and serotonin and there's also Gaba and glutamine and all these

different Pathways and different neurotransmitters that help to their Messengers so they send one message in uh to another neurotransmitter in the brain dopamine helps you with your your mood and it helps with learning and it helps with movement and pleasure and serotonin it

increases people's mood increases their appetite helps with sleep all those things and when you're in love you're getting some natural surges of those hormones uh or chemicals I should say uh when you're when you're drinking you're also releasing massive amounts of

dopamine serotonin and then of course there's the inevitable when you when it starts to wear off you have this awful crash where either you have to get through some time without your your drink or you just say forget it and go ahead and start drinking and decrease your

standard a little bit more okay I was going to start drinking only at five now I'm going to start at 4 55 because I just can't take it anymore and you kind of change the change your own rules based on that so basically when you get a relationship let's say that's the fire

so Jim and I were the fire and and alcohols obviously have the fuel when you put that on you'll get that surge of flame at the beginning that is just so addictive and so amazing and oh my God you want more and then when you crash it's just like and there's not even

Embers anymore fire just goes out it's done it's dead it's awful so the highs and lows in a relationship like that are addictive in themselves but when you add alcohol to it the swings are even greater and it's just nearly impossible to find a time in a relationship like

that to actually have coherent logical conversations or to make decisions wisely it's just sort of crashing through life hoping that there isn't an explosion at some point but inevitably there usually is unless you can get a hold on it wow I mean yeah it it seems like just a

series of near escapes and you know you're you're avoiding sort of inevitable tragedy and I mean wow it's it's amazing to hear about this from you know perspective like yours in in February of 2012 there was an event in your life that you know

for most people it's going to be hard to deal with an event like this what what happened in your life in February 2012 and how did you know the drinking aspect of things come into play with with what happened yeah absolutely I'll apologize after I

was up front if I get a little choked up with this one it's a tough one for me um my cousin um she was four years older than me so at the time she was 43. um I had been in her wedding you know we we grew up together um she uh owned a bar and uh struggled

with her own alcohol use although I'm not sure to what extent because she had sort of begun to isolate away from the family and had a failed marriage and just some things I think she was possibly embarrassed about her anyway she just wasn't around much anymore

which is something something that I'll always regret having not taken the time to reach out to her a little bit more than I did not sure if she would have taken the calls anyway but um she shot herself in in the head in her bathtub fully closed with the curtains

shut and everything because you didn't want to make a mess left to left a note just basically saying she knew she wasn't living the lifestyle that she should be and sorry that she let everyone down that type of thing um and it was devastating I mean when I saw

my aunt draped over her casket when they were trying to lower her into the ground you know that's just oh it should never happen where parents have to bury their child and when it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound you just had to know what pain was involved there

and I did really work hard to help my aunt through it because they were doing a lot of what everyone does when there's a suicide what if what if I did why didn't I you know you should have a blame and guilt and shame and just all of these horrible emotions that that

come into play and it just it was just awful and I could see I could I knew that there was a lot to do with alcohol with her and and so you'd think huh she got so depressed because of her alcoholism that she resorted to suicide and and that could be my my fate if I don't

get a hold of this um but at that time I was already kind of in survival mode at that point I was I was within a year of going to my first treatment myself um and so for me it actually just increased my drinking because I needed to mask that pain that loss and that

sadness and that fear that all comes with something like that I just wanted it to go away but the problem is is if you don't deal with grief you know you know the stages of grief denial and anger and acceptance finally um if you don't deal with with those and

in my case just numbed it then and then every day I'd wake up and I'd have to relive the pain because I had numbed it enough to forget the day before but it was still there the next day and I think it was much more intense each day because I hadn't started even

to deal with with actually grieving um it's it's impossible to fully accept or grieve or understand anything if you're drunk it just doesn't work it's just impossible yeah I mean um wow um first of all my condolences I mean what a what a story and it you know it

and as you said it it should have scared you straight you know it it should have woke you up in a way and it didn't you know and I and why I mean why do you think you know it obviously the drinking is directly related to this and perhaps you know the the level of the pain the

intensity of the pain wanted you wanted to to mask this as much as you could and so absolutely you turn to you know alcohol to do this right and and alcohol going back just a little bit to again the neurobiology um it rewards Us in two ways there's a

the positive reinforcement of drinking is what you would think you know relaxed or forget the pain or or whatever but at that stage in my life I was already definitely a alcoholic and so there's also negative reinforcement and what that means is if I if I don't drink I'll

feel terrible um but if I drink I'll feel not so bad and and so you know that if you don't drink that's going to be negative so that that that is a reinforcement to drink more and so when there's a physical dependence that has started and it had definitely Started With Me by

that point point and if a person like me was already into a physical dependence that's pretty intense and the first is that of course alcohol does what we'd expect it to the reason that many people drink is to relax is to forget and for me at that

point it was to numb the pain of having lost her in such a horrific way but by that point there's also the negative reinforcement and what that means is that if I don't drink I'll feel like crap and so you know that I'm gonna get this crappy feeling to go away or I'm

going to Ward it off if I just drink and I'm also going to have the benefit of being able to forget this pain but then like I mentioned earlier the problem is is that when you wake up the next morning here we go again the pain is still there right I mean you have to

deal with this at some point or it's just going to it's going to haunt you until you do it's gonna haunt you until you eventually do that um you know I want to I want to move forward a little bit in the story and you you started drinking at work

right and it's it got worse and worse um you know what brought you to the point where you felt like you needed to drink at work how did you get away with it because you know I mean wasn't was wasn't there someone around that would have seen you working and and drinking

and noticed that you were doing that um tell us about that please yeah well I'm a physician assistant and at the time I was working Family Practice I had done that for 17 years and um so in Family Practice I wasn't working with a team of you know surgeons and scrub techs and

the whole deal it was just me and I had a nurse but the nurse and I as most people will know when you go to see the doctor you don't see the nurse and the doc at the same time the the nurse checks you in and does all that stuff and then you kind of are two ships

passing so my nurse and I would just sort of dance around each other so that wasn't an issue I had an office made but she and I only overlapped one day per week so I had my personal office to myself most of the time as well but how it got started

um for a long time it had been where I got home from work and I never even took my coat off wore my shoes off and I went straight to the liquor cabinet and I wouldn't even bother with that first pull with a glass just right out of the bottle

um and then I could barely wait till I got home so I started keeping a traveler or a flask in my car my house was two miles from my work but I did not think I could make it from work to home after a stressful day without having that so I I would start

drinking in the car on the way home um and right I mean two two miles can't make it two miles usually can we wait two miles if you gotta pee I mean this was crazy right but that's the way it was and um as you can imagine the the story going and the

ball rolling uh pretty soon at home at night wasn't enough and I started going home for quote lunch and at that point I would take a few slugs of vodka I wouldn't eat anything but I'd take a few slugs of vodka to get myself a little bit less shaky kind of ward off

the nausea and the sweats that I'd been feeling and that would give me the Boost to get through the afternoon and then I'd start drinking as soon as I hit the car and as soon as I was at home until I passed out whether that was in my bed or on the floor or who knows uh

it was it was always drink to to pass out that was always the purpose but even that was not enough after a while um and I think we addicts and alcoholics frequently make little rules for ourselves um like okay I'm only gonna drink on the weekends okay I'm only gonna drink at

the bar okay I'm only gonna drink at home okay I'm only gonna drink beer and not anything hard and it tends to be that when we make these little rules with ourselves if we're truly an alcoholic we blow right through them you just you just can't

it just gets worse it's a progressive and chronic primary brain disease it doesn't get better if you're continuing to use a substance and so my lunchtime trysts were not enough and I just decided you know what nobody has picked up on this I have not had a single

patient complaint I have had nobody in the office ask me anything I I have I'm getting by with it I'm getting away with it so I started filling my water bottle with vodka and that way in between each patient I could go back to my office and take some sips

and do a note or write some orders or whatever I needed to do and then go back and see the next patient and so then I wasn't in this giant rush to get out of work anymore because well it was there I was I was able to have my drink and do my work at the same time which is crazy

and took way more effort on my part than it should have um I could run circles around myself six years sober now but comparatively as far as my energy levels and but still got it done um uphill battle but sorry I didn't mean to bump you there why do you think we

have this persistence to go back to these things that are essentially bad for us we know we know this is bad for us but we continue to go back into it and do it over and over well it kind of depends on what exact thing you're talking about but with

substances it goes back to the brain and we know so little about how about the brain about we we do some of these neurotransmitters and some of these Pathways and and it truly is you're when your brain has got the compulsion and your body's

physically addicted to whatever it is oh it's really hard to kick that and that's why I think we keep coming back to it because the effort required to either avoid it or stay away from it or go cold turkey or whatever is worse and harder and more challenging

than just staying with the status quo and against that adapting that you referred to earlier when we were talking about my marriage and in that when you're in it you don't necessarily realize how bad it is um you've probably heard the story of

the boiling frog thing but um it goes that you know if you put out a little dish of cold water for your pet frog that she'll Frolic and she'll play in it and she'll jump around and she loves it because frogs love water well tomorrow you make it a little warmer she still

frolics she still messes around a little bit in the water but you can tell it's not quite as enjoyable but she still gets used to it because she wants to swim and she wants to drink keep fast forwarding every day heating the water and that frog will jump into that

boiling water and boil herself because she is adapted and that's true it's a real real deal um but it's a great foreign representation um uh although somewhat cryptic I guess of of what we do it's it's we're used to it and even though it's a completely

messed up normal it is still our normal and it still feels normal and it still feels like it's easier than the alternative because with the alternative there's also a lot of unknowns which creates giant amount of fear who am I going to be without the

drink will I have any fun without the drink am I gonna have to lose all my friends if I quit drinking is my marriage going to fail if I drink and he doesn't or vice versa and what if I go get treatment and I have to tell them at work why I'm gone for 12

weeks or what if you know will they take me back or I won't be able to pay my bills for three months the excuses for not doing something about it are miles long hmm yeah I mean that's so true and I mean you nailed it I mean you you enter this state of you know substance

dependence where you feel like you need that to behave a certain way and you know I think I think with alcohol specifically they're you know just neurochemically you know it's it's psychologically as bad as it is physically and I mean that's what's the

most scary about being the availability of it you know being able to go down the street and acquire this stuff you so you know moving forward moving along here you you hit a point where you know you eventually got to detox you your first trip to detox and I mean your your

father took you to detox right yes he did so okay so I mean there's a few things here you you felt like it was a jail um why why do you feel like you had that reaction um I I find I find that when I read stories about this that you know people

don't respond to you know their first treatment well it seems like traditional detox seems ineffective in relationship to you know curbing these types of addictions so you know what was your experience like in this in the center if you call it a prison

um how did it how did it work yeah well oh gosh it's yucky for me to even think about it um but first of all um and we can get into this much more as the call progresses but um detox is not a solution it is not fixing it is very different than rehab

or a program that whatever program you might decide to do whatever it is detox is getting you stopped that's it but you alluded to that it's both of psychological compulsion and a physical one well detox gets you out of the scary withdrawal of the physical addiction but

it does absolutely nothing to curb that psychological addiction that needs months weeks years of work at least in my experience but um yeah so I went to detox and I was going on my own accord it wasn't that I uh didn't think I needed it um but once you get in there and say okay I

want I need detox and then I was very honest with the counselors and everyone because I thought okay here I go I'm going to get the help and it was really um it was really shocking what it felt like to have my a bunch of my rights taken away

um and they take away your rights as a new detox or any detox participant because your risk of suicide your risk of eloping your risk of doing something stupid is really high when you're in a withdrawal period as is your risk of especially if you're addicted to alcohol

or benzos the actual withdrawal part can be fatal if uh not medically managed because of the risk of seizures um but yeah so I went in and I told him what I needed and told him my whole truth and nothing but the truth and so then what happens is you get stripped

and strip searched and they take all of your belongings I couldn't have makeup because it was in a glass bottle and I couldn't have a compact because it had a mirror that could be sharp we didn't have mirrors over our sinks or anywhere the bathroom doors were kind of these

weird kitty corner with cut out on on the top and the bottom so that you could never lock yourself in there or anything uh there the water was all run on little and those little ones you have to push a button to get like 10 second spray they

were all like that so you couldn't drown yourself um there were no plastic bags allowed every the garbage cans and things were aligned with paper sacks there was uh just all these things that door handles are real weird because then you can't

tie something to it they cut out the strings of my sweatshirts and my sweatpants and everything and I couldn't have any shoes and uh they take away your phone and take away your person take away everything and I felt like that was Overkill I felt like I should

just get in there they'd give me some Valium I get over it and I could play on my phone while I got through it nope wasn't like that at all wow I mean it it seems like the system is almost you know designed to kind of push people away from wanting to go into

you know processes like disco like recovery um I I want to know you know what for you was the bottom you know something common that we hear is you know you'll oh okay you'll recognize this when you hit you know your bottom uh was there a bottom for you

uh yes there was um but it was a low bottom uh for me personally I had to lose my um relationship I had to lose my job and then my medical license and then my national board certification and my drug enforcement agency licensure none of which are easy to obtain and certainly

not easy to get back if you've lost them um I had to go on uh estate medical I um and then ultimately I lost the ability to even see my children because I drank through a paid parenting supervising time visit and so I lost them and so the only person who is still

taking my phone calls was my mom and even she was pretty wary because I had manipulated and lied and worn her out caused a rift between her and my dad and them and my sister and it was it was just a mess and um I had to I had to lose all of that

before I realized okay now what am I going to do about this and that is where I got to on one February uh morning where I um I had already been in detox uh twice in rehabbed twice in that 10 month period of time and I had continued to drink through it and I had continued

to just lose more and more and there I was in my walk-in closet I had a mansion really at the time 6 000 square feet and there I was in my closet you know the joke about closet drinkers that was me I really really was a closet drinker because I had begun to

hide it in there for so long and so there I was me and every pill in the house that I had left over from years and years of you know how you keep leftover prescriptions and I had all that and my laptop and my phone and my vodka and I was in my closet and I was

researching online how do you kill yourself with pills what concoction of what I had would do it because I was done I knew that it was over and of all things one of those annoying pop-ups that I usually hate and ignore came up on my computer screen

um I'm sorry this is hard and it said uh do you need help and for some reason I called the number wow and the guy on the other other line on the other end was his name was Phil I never knew his last name I wish I did Phil if you're out there I owe you my

life um and here he's a rehab broker he's just trying to find placement for people at rehabs and fill rehabs and get a commission right but he spent two hours on the phone with me really turned into a suicide mission uh Suicide Prevention mission

and before that phone call was out he had uh got me hooked up with a rehab in Florida that would accept the crappy insurance I had at the time uh a plane ticket a cab ride coming and he kept on the phone with me until all of this was in place I think partially so I wouldn't

back out but partially I think I scared him um and um he wanted to stay on there with me until you knew I was safe um it was pretty remarkable Good Samaritan Duty there I wonder if he quit the job the next day I don't know but um and Angel it sounds like you had your

own angel that day and I mean it's like the pop-up that saved your life basically oh for sure I I smile every time I see pop-ups now because you just never know god wow you know Carla we're we're running out of time here quickly but I you know I want to get into you know the

12 Steps there's a bunch of stuff that I didn't cover here um I what is your regard to the the 12 Steps because I know that you you know you you connected with that and you write about this and so you know what is your experience with this and and the

experience of other alcoholics I mean do you do you feel like the 12 Steps work did they work for you uh they absolutely 100 worked and work for me um it's not something that uh much of my sugar in as a list writer and Checker offer of boxes uh it's not something

that you do the 12 steps and then you're done and you graduate and you get your little card to put in your wallet and you're good to go that's not at all the case it's a lifelong thing um but that is not to say that a 12-step program is the only way that people get

their drinking under control there's smart recovery there's harms reduction there's medication assisted treatments there's oh a plethora of other ways and I honestly am of the school of thought that I do not care how you get sober if just do whatever you can to get

there but for me that the 12th steps really resonated probably again because I am a list keeper and a and a box Checker and I like that kind of structure it's really good for me and I had lost a great deal of structure during my alcoholism as all substance

abusers do uh structure becomes a thing of the past but um it was really really good for me um the first step is the most important one and the only one that you need to do perfectly and basically that's admitting I got a major problem here and and it's

Wrecking my life and that's it with any addiction if you can fill in the blank there with you know I'm eating too much and it's ruining my life I'm gambling too much I'm I'm watching porn whatever it is you just fill in the blank and um so any of these 12-step programs that

you attend kind of use the same premise so I'm not ascribing to a specific program by any means um nor should I if I if I were because I think that that's not how helpful to say there's only one way I think that everybody's recovery is a little bit

different but for me getting step one right was perf was really important and by doing that my counselor had me write out an exhaustive list of what happens to me when I drink and and on the flip side you know he also had me write a letter like a like a longing goodbye

letter what is it you love about alcohol what is it that you're gonna miss about alcohol and I really wrote it as if I was writing to a lover because honestly at the end that was my lover it was my best friend my lover my partner had slept in my bed with me you know it was

really all I had left um so step one was incredibly important except four is when they typically ask you to search through your past um what kind of things did you do that hurt people what kind of things were done to you that hurt you what kind of

resentments do you hold what kind of sexual indiscretions have you been involved with in your life and basically writing it all down and for me a person who'd always thought that oh I'm a really good person I'm a really nice person in that 106 pages that I wrote of

my fourth step I really couldn't find a whole lot of evidence to support that I was a good person not not much at all and I it was really helpful for me to look at all that because I was like God good good God I do not want a sequel to this I don't want to have to write this

all out again in another 20 years that oh look at all the crap I've done now so that was really helpful but the letter was also helpful to me because I hadn't realized how much I loved it and that was I had to grieve it even though it was killing me I had to grieve

that loss yeah I actually bookmarked the the list and the letter just because it's so cringy you know to be honest just reading it it made me feel like oh my God you know wow you know I'm never drinking again and so you know I I just moving along here

right you know I wanna I think this is important I think the spirituality part of this is crucial and how did that take place for you how did that come into play for you that's a great question and it was um pretty easy for me personally because I

had been raised um Lutheran Christian and um I believed I had a God that I believed in and I was pretty solid in in my faith um so much so that I had really distanced myself from anything God anything church I had even stopped praying unless it was a really

particularly bad bender and I was praying to die because I didn't feel like I was the I didn't feel like God would want me I was a piece of crap and I knew it he knew it everyone knew it and so I had really veered away from that but the the 12-step program step

two and step three do get into spirituality and and this actually hangs up a lot of people it's like I'm not joining a 12th step program I don't believe in God I'm an atheist so I'm agnostic I don't there's no way I'm getting spiritual and that's okay you

still can totally do the programming even a 12-step program if that's not your thing what's spirituality is is getting to is is that connectedness that being whole in body and mind and most importantly realizing that we are but a speck each one of us in this great

universe and that we don't have control over very much and that we don't have control over this either and we need some help and that is so hard especially for professionals I think with alcoholism to ask for help because we've been independent and we've been well

educated and we've cared for ourselves and others for as long as we can remember and now all of a sudden we're supposed to be asking for help we're supposed to be reaching out to others when we have a craving to drink we're supposed to be sharing that 106 page

fourth step with another human being are you kidding me but that all ties into the spiritual component I've got a lot of friends in my health care recovery meeting who just they're just that group is their higher power they know that if they need help if they need to run

something by people bring it to the group and we're all in their corner and if anyone has a crisis there'd be half a dozen people at at least showing up to help them and that is a that's a pretty spiritual experience in itself feeling that sense of belonging that a lot of

times many of us started drinking to try to belong or to try to feel better about ourselves socially and so to find that type of connection with people a real genuine authentic connection that doesn't have anything to do with alcohol that's new for a lot of us and it's just

incredible it I cannot say enough for the fellowship of any type of support group because nobody's going to be able to help a person the same way that someone can who's been there who's done it and gotten through it is more important you know we share these stories I go to

treatment centers and the jail and meet with these women who are kind of brand new and gosh that's so important for me to look back and see oh yeah that's where I don't want to be again I remember that I remember that but then on the flip side they can hopefully look

at me in my story and what I was able to get through and how I'm able to do good now and find that inspirational that even if someone is bottom Barrel as me made it that they can too and and your listeners out there I know it can seem awful and you've got an intelligent base

that listens to you and that actually is a detriment because we tend to think ah this 12-step thing that's way too simple um or we're we're we can outsmart it we got master's degrees phds we're whatever right and we should be able to be smarter than this

um but it has nothing to do with brain power it it's it's it's not that at all so making those little deals with yourself or trying to figure out how you can use parts of what's recommended to you in rehab and not other parts that's a recipe for disaster I know this

because I did it I lived it and I know it God you know I think the most powerful aspect of this book was that I felt like I was with you through the Journey of it you know and as I was reading it I felt like I was connected to you know your

struggle with it and I think the first time that I felt like as a reader reading it I felt you know the first time that you kind of there was a light at the end of the tunnel so to speak was the moment where you you know sort of recognize that you are in fact blessed

that you know you you started to have gratitude for you know your life and who you are and I think I think that was the first time unless I'm mistaken that you know there was this positive acknowledgment from you you know about yourself and I

think that that's so important yes um and I think that that removing the substance and starting to get a hold of what it had done to me how it hurt me and uh realizing that again that's step one work just admitting holy cow this has caused this

and then doing something about it and feeling like as I was learning from these people who had a couple years or eight years or however many years of sobriety and looking at them and being like oh oh I I think I can do this I think I want what she has or he has and

they're not drinking and that gave me counselors and anyone in the program continually stress gratitude and so at first you know my gratitude list was fairly small I had my health back I had plenty to eat I was warm I you know those those Basics uh so already out of

the gate fresh in rehab I was better off than half of the world's population and so it was really important for me to look at it that way and then as time passed I start adding to that gratitude list and little things that I had taken for granted before I got to add back on

that list I tell you that's a pretty cool thing when amazing relationship with your kids gets to be added back to a list that it had previously disappeared from um that's that's what this is all about is regaining some things and and and getting a life that's authentic genuine

real and meaningful that that I never imagined was possible so am I grateful recovering alcoholic absolutely when people used to say that my first meetings I would be so upset like seriously grateful recovering alcoholic there is nothing to be grateful about

here this sucks I don't want it I don't want to be it I don't want to be in this group but eventually over time you start to see that oh wait a minute um I've gotten some pretty cool things happen because because of my alcoholism not inspired but because of

um and I am indeed grateful uh every single day that I get to wake up and get to be sober and get to do it another day um I'm not cured I'll never be cured in every days but a reprieve from the addiction and if I would pick up today I'd be worse off than I was the last

time I drank in that airport toilet stall back before I got sober um because it progresses even if you're not actively drinking it gets worse it's just waiting for you um and a lot of us including myself had to test out that theory there's no way

this disease gets worse uh if I've been away from booze for three months it should be much easier for me to control it now right not at all those those neurotransmitters start doing the exact same thing they were doing before and it's you need more you need it more

often it's it's confounding I mean I had I think another reason that this story is so resounding is that it's just it's just real you know it's it's just raw and real and that's the way life is you know it's not it's not pretty it's actually quite ugly and it that's

sometimes that's that's exactly how life is you know and but you know I I want to give you a chance to address you know the the audience and if if anyone's out there and they're hearing this message and you know here you are you are you know in every way a success story you're

still alive and you have this opportunity to you know write about this experience that you've in a way you've conquered you know you didn't let it conquer you conquered it and you know here you are on this show writing a book about it what about you

know what about the people that are alone out there and they're struggling what what can you say to them what can how can we reach them yeah oh it's so hard because often when you're in the throes of the addiction you you don't want to be reached

um and and usually there's very little that anyone else out there can say to make someone want to get better or to fix their problem for them or to push them into rehab I know for me I I couldn't truly get better until it was my idea um but I would encourage particularly

you chronic relapses out there who think your lost cause you've been in 30 treatment centers and it you just can't get it um e keep trying I've seen it I've seen people go through that many rehabs and detoxes and centers and finally finally

something happens and they get it but that's because they kept trying and they didn't give up and let it kill them because that is what's going to happen um you end up if you're a chronic serious alcoholic it just leads to Jail's institutions and death it's a

very Grim prospect that starts from a few sips of alcohol so it's very dangerous and I would implore you to keep trying to read everything you can get to join some online support groups to find websites and blogs where you connect with somebody go on Twitter there's recovery

Posse there's all these different groups on on Twitter where it's you don't have to even tell who you really are but you can get some major support that way and that can help you feel not so alone but yet in somewhat of a safe Anonymous way

get out there somebody has gone through what you're going through and they can be able to tell you their story how they got there and how they got better it's all about experience strength and hope in this program it's why it works that you know no matter

what your program is the the people who've been in it for a while helped newcomers and that's the way it should be in life don't you think for sure I mean Carla this is I mean I'm so glad that you are here still with us today and that you've written this story

and done this in such a as I said it's such a resounding just realness to this where can people go to pick up this book is there a website that they can go to find this book yep absolutely of course you can get it on Amazon um and Goodreads and Barnes Noble Target

any place books are sold um as far as reaching me which I invite and love you can reach me at um from the brink at yahoo.com that's my personal email and also I have a website of the same title from the brink.org and there you'll find some blog posts and some

connections and a link to the book there are two um but um hopefully with those types of not just my links with all of the different supports available out there your listeners have a lot to choose from and you can do it guys you really can

wow guys I mean what a story and Carla I just thank you so much for being here um guys we're gonna get out of here and the book is called from the brink of the drink I highly recommend this read my guest Carla Juvonen hopefully I'll get that

eventually but you guys can find this book from the brink of the drink online as Carla said and if you made it this far thank you so much for listening we will be back next week it's another episode have a good night thank you foreign