Speaker 0 00:00 Hey you. Yeah, you, if you or someone you know, is struggling with anything mentioned on today's program, please, please, please, please, please. <inaudible> email
[email protected]. That's a U T H E N I C K. The
[email protected]. I am available 24 seven three 65 to help in any way that I can. I have resources. I have open ears and open heart and tons of hope. I've been freely given all these things and would love to give them to you. Be good to yourselves and each other. Follow me on Twitter, using the handle at authen, Nick and my dog, Marla on Instagram at DJ Marla dot Jean
Speaker 1 00:50 Mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum <inaudible>.
Speaker 0 01:18 It's not fat. Albert it's author. Hey, my name is Nicholas Thomas Fitzsimmons Vanden Heuvel and most people just call me Nick. And this is my show authentic thing. And with me as always is my dog. Marla,
Speaker 3 01:43 Give me a baby.
Speaker 4 01:48 <inaudible> well he's um, too blue to fly. The night train is <inaudible>. Oh, I'm still alone. I could cry. Boom, boom, boom.
Speaker 0 02:11 All right. That's that's enough. Marla, go back to your Monday night football audition here on authentic. We talk about all things recovery. What do I mean by that? All things recovery. What I mean by that is if you are still living and breathing on this earth, you yes, you are in recovery from something. As for myself, I am in recovery from alcoholism. I'm an alcoholic. I'm also a drug addict. I have an eating disorder. I'm a compulsive gambler. I bipolar disorder. Really the list could go on and on and on. The good news for you is that today's show is not about me. It is however about two people. First is my guest, Liz who will share her experience, strength and hope as it pertains to what she is in recovery from those second is the one person out there who is struggling. We want to you that you
Speaker 5 03:00 Are not alone. If we help one person today, then we have done our job. We are here to break stigma. We are here to provide hope and solutions without further ado. Liz, please. <inaudible>. Hello? My name is Liz Lenahan. I am an addict alcoholic. Welcome Liz. Thank you. We're not going to clap though. Okay. That's fine. That's all you got, huh? That's all I got. I don't want to say like your favorite color. Are you okay? So you were born in October that makes you a Libra Libra. Very proud of it. I don't know if they get along with Geminis. I don't know what you do. Balancing scales. You're the dual personalities. They balance you out. I'm crazy. Train. I'm crazy. Train Liz. How old are you? I am 30. 30. It's a good year. It was like a fine wine. Oh, did that, did that bother you?
Speaker 5 04:00 That I said, well, you're an alcoholic. Is that okay? That's fine then. That's so interesting because that is a stigma attached to people that are around an alcoholic that are aware that they are an alcoholic. Like, can I say that around you? Is it okay? Is it okay with you? Absolutely. I actually liked to go out. Well, I haven't done it yet, but I used to, before I started drinking, go out with my friends dancing and I love being the sober person kind of vibing off of their energy. All about it. You can actually remember what you did. Yes. And I can have a fantastic time. Wake up without a hangover. Exactly. As an alcoholic in recovery, I've never met an alcoholic that has said, you know what? I'm really mad that I didn't get drunk last night. Right? It's totally the opposite. It's like, damn I can remember shit.
Speaker 5 04:55 Like I had a good time. I had no idea. I could have fun being a sober person, but look at us. We're laughing. We're having a grand old time. Liz let's get down to it. Why are you here on authentic? I am here to send my message out into the world in hopes that it helps people specifically. I hope it helps young women. I think it's going to help with my process of recovery by getting my story out there. Where are you at in your recovery? As far as how long you've been clean and sober, I've been sober and clean for three months. Three a little over three months. That's a big deal. Yeah. That is so huge. Yeah. So many people in early recovery have no fucking clue about how they're going to stay sober for a day. I can't imagine being, I hear about these people being sober for years and years. Oh no, I cannot do that shit. What the cool thing about the 12 step program that we are a part of, which is great. That's how I met Liz. The great part about
Speaker 0 05:58 This 12 step program that we are a part of is that we are taught to live one day at a time. And that makes life so much more manageable, especially for people that are early in recovery from substance abuse, baby steps, baby steps. Indeed. Let's, let's start from the very beginning. What was your experience early on in life, around substances with your mental health, any traumatic situations? What is your early years look like from when you could first form memories?
Speaker 6 06:28 My parents had me really young 20, 21. They don't think they were done partying yet. My mom was slowly discovering that she was an alcoholic. So I kind of witnessed all of that unfold as a very young child and then going into my preteen years and my teenage years, that was confusing for someone who was so young, not really understanding what that big thing was that was happening to her.
Speaker 0 06:52 Is that the best way that you can describe your head space as a child looking back? Would you say that it was just a state of confusion
Speaker 6 07:01 For the first parts of it? When I was really young, I remember I had this weird thought that lasted for like a month. I must've been seven. My parents were drinking more kind of fueled by my mother's alcoholism. My dad is enormous.
Speaker 0 07:14 What do you mean by a normie?
Speaker 6 07:15 He can have a couple of drinks at night and be good. And he doesn't have to get shit faced.
Speaker 0 07:21 That is a great way of putting it. Yeah. Well I think what Liz is, he is a nonalcoholic,
Speaker 6 07:28 Right? I remember having this weird thought. I thought that my parents had suddenly left this earth and aliens taken over their bodies and they were different people because of how my mom was acting. It was off a lot of the time. How was she acting? Just a little sillier. It wasn't necessarily something I could put into words. It was just different. Like for someone who gets high, not everyone can tell you're high, but some people can tell that something's a little off. Does that make sense?
Speaker 0 07:57 I can. Well, that makes sense. That makes tons of sense to me. I guess that's a wonderful way of explaining it. A lot of people don't know that someone is mildly intoxicated all the time, because however, when you're with someone all the time, like with your mom, you can recognize those little things that look in her eye that twinkle in her eye is no longer there. It's like someone else's they're like aliens had taken over there. That was such a really interesting way of like, damn, that was so true for me. My body was there, but my mind, my spirit was almost extinguish. Just going through the motion. How did your experience with your mom influence how you viewed alcohol? Did you think it was fun? Did you think that it was bad or something scary?
Speaker 6 08:46 I thought it was really bad. I actually didn't have my first drink until I was 25. At the age of 15. I vowed to never drink in my entire life because a, my grandmother, who I looked up to who was my guiding light when I was younger, she had never drank. And I just loved her and I wanted it to be her, my mother and my relationship was becoming more and more strained as I became a teenager. And I didn't want to be my mom. So I vowed to never drink. Or I promised myself that I would never drink. You didn't want to be your mom. What do you mean by that? I didn't want to, Oh God. I know. I love my mom. Now. I have to say that. I, I, uh, she's like my best friend. I didn't want to be the mother she was being when I became a mother. If I became a kind of mother, was she being, I found her to be a little absent sometimes. Not totally, but just absentminded a little standoffish of me if I was poking her too much or she'd say something like I bruise easily stop. No, I don't know. Aloof a little bit to me. And a little selfish. Yeah.
Speaker 0 09:53 What did your relationship look like when you were early teenage years? Middle school?
Speaker 6 09:58 Yeah. That's when it really started to explode her alcoholism. I had, there were a couple of bad experiences. I was home alone with her one weekend. My dad had gone on a golfing trip. My brother was at a friend's house. She was out in the hot tub. I was going to go out and sit in the hot tub with my mom and at night and I walked up and her face was so drooped. She was so drunk. She couldn't put words together. I panicked and I ran to my neighbor's house. Long time friend, her parents came and helped. My mom helped me feel better. And then in the morning when I woke up, my mom was upset with me for bringing the neighbors into it, but I was scared she was going to drown or die. I was just, I went into panic mode and went to get some help. Why do you think she was upset? She was embarrassed. Probably not wanting to face herself yet. And what she was doing.
Speaker 0 10:50 She was upset with you because you went to go get help and you didn't know what was going on. Was there ever a conversation between you and your mom about maybe an excuse as to why she was like that?
Speaker 6 11:02 Well, I mean, I knew at that point that it was because she had drank at that point. I knew it wasn't an alien. I was a preteen at that point, I knew what had happened. I knew that she had a problem. I had just never seen it like that. I hadn't been face to face with it like that. Before
Speaker 0 11:17 You knew she had a problem, did you ever see her addressing it or were you kind of hoping that she addressed it?
Speaker 6 11:25 She was sober for four years. She had gotten helped with a 12 step program. And then she relapsed really hard around that time that I found her in the hot tub and started drinking again. My dad was trying to let her do what she needed to do. He was allowing her to drink thinking that he could help her control it, obviously that didn't work.
Speaker 0 11:44 As you continue on through high school. Did that relationship continue to be strained? What did that look?
Speaker 6 11:49 I didn't talk to my mom for a whole year. Well, I mean, I'm sure I right, exactly necessary words. I didn't have much to do with her.
Speaker 0 11:59 What did you think about your mom? What did you feel towards your mom at that point in your life?
Speaker 6 12:04 I hated her. I hated that she was hurting my dad so much that she wasn't being this woman that I could look up to, that she was just using excuses and some of them were good. She lost both of her parents my freshman year. So I lost my grandma and my grandpa the same year. If someone's already relapsing, of course, they're going to go even harder when they lose both their parents at a young age, she had excuses, but I felt like she was using those excuses and I found her weak for it. I thought she was weak. You
Speaker 0 12:33 Said you want it to be like your grandma? Is that your paternal grandmother? My maternal grandmother. Did you ever have conversations with her after she passed pertaining to how you viewed your mom? You mean like I'm talking to her via prayer meditation?
Speaker 6 12:47 I actually, I was kind of freaked out that I lost my spirituality and faith. I was raised Catholic. I lost all that in sixth grade. That was about three years before my grandma died. And I was actually really scared that if there was an afterlife and if my grandmother could tune in to my life from this afterlife, but she would find out that I didn't believe in God anymore. So I didn't really communicate with my grandmother much. I had one amazing dream and it was very short. I was at my grade school. She had come for grandparents' day. She was sitting on the bench. It was a warm spring day. The wind was blowing and she tucked my hair behind my ear and smile. And that was it. And then woke up. And that was the only experience I had with connecting with my grandmother. Way back when, after she had passed. So no long answer short, no, I didn't really converse with my grandmother about all.
Speaker 0 13:33 That's unfortunate. Looking back, especially at that age, having no tools to deal with that, knowing that your mom had a problem with alcoholism. The one thing that was a constant, as far as your spirituality goes, was renounced right? At a very young age, at the age of what? 12. Right? What does your spiritual life look like moving forward? Did you believe?
Speaker 6 13:57 Ah, no. I became an immediate atheist. I don't know. I started painting my nails, black dying my hair, black. You know, I went way the opposite of that. I actually retrospectively, now that I'm older, I can see that I replaced my spiritual void with always
Speaker 0 14:15 Boys. Yes. Would you say that that was your first addiction?
Speaker 6 14:20 Absolutely. Relationships boys thinking that every single boy that I ever had a crush on who had a crush on me back or that I ever dated up until meeting my husband, I thought I was going to marry all of them. I thought they were the one. They were God to me. They became God.
Speaker 0 14:35 What happened when those boys left you or left your life? How has crushed, what did you do to deal with that?
Speaker 6 14:43 I arrived around in my bedroom and listened to sappy music. Drink or use drugs, right? Yeah. I'm just
Speaker 5 14:52 Like, how the fuck do you deal with that? So you heard it here, folks just ride. If you don't feel like drinking over the end of seventh grade relationship, just ride around in your bed for a bit. Listen to the cure or the Smiths. That's how you were dealing with the loss of these relationships. What correlation in hindsight, do you think you have losing those relationships with losing the relationship with your mom? Oh, do you find any correlations there? Yeah. I mean, absolutely. It's a, it's a grief in a way. I know a lot about grief. It's a grieving process. If you ignore it, it gets really mucky. What did your grieving process look like when you stopped talking to your mom for a year? I guess I was like, fuck it. I had like that kind of attitude. I don't care. Just ignoring it, ignoring my grief, trying to be a powerful woman of my own.
Speaker 5 15:44 There were never times of tears. Oh, of course. Anger tears though. How did you take that out on her being sarcastic teenager, not giving her responses, saying things under my breath to her mean things. I guess, as you continued on in your education got a little bit older. What did your relationship look like with your mom? When you graduated from high school? I had this big turnaround. I met somebody fell in love. Again. I'm not in love with this boys every time. And he had a problem with prescription medication and this was at the very end of high school. I was with him for awhile and my mom didn't like him. She was getting to the end of her giant relapse. I realized one night while I was pondering late into the early morning hours, that if I could love this guy who kind of treated me like shit half the time and then treated me like I was a goddess the other half of the time.
Speaker 5 16:45 And I could deal with his crazy and with his addiction and accept him. How come I couldn't do that with my mom? It kind of was this one 80. And I realized that I loved my mom still. There were a lot of great things about her and she wasn't her addiction. That's quite the revelation to have at that age. I think I was 18. Still. Most people don't have those revelations until they are quite further along in their life, forties. My mom was actually pretty awesome. Like she was a good mom beyond like her fault. In my opinion, the reason that we find those places is we've gone through some shit ourselves and it's Oh, right. She was just going through life. And I was a shitty little teenager that didn't know anything. It was pouring salt on her wounds. It's that compassion piece. It's that understanding piece. It's that selflessness piece that does not exist in our younger years. And that's just part of growing up. It seems like you were growing up pretty quick in that respect, having empathy and compassion
Speaker 0 17:50 For a mom that scared you for a mom that you did not want to be like, and you stopped talking to for a year. That's pretty intense. How did you approach your mom after you came to that revelation? What did your relationship with her? Look,
Speaker 6 18:06 I didn't like run to her and say, mom, I love you. You know? And I think by that time I had our relationship had become a little bit more normal. I still like resented her for a lot of things. But very shortly after that, she actually came to me and asked me to drive her to a facility. Cause she was like, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. I'm calling into work and I'm not going into work and I need to go away for a month. And I was wondering if you could drive me up there. And I said, okay, I'll do it. I went in with her. I took her in and we cried and I'm going to cry. Now. They asked me some questions. I, when they were taking her and we sat down in an office with some gentlemen and he asked me a few questions about her. And I said goodbye. And, uh, she has been sober ever since
Speaker 0 18:49 Gift. That really was a gift to a daughter that was so fearful for her mother's life that didn't understand what was going on. That resented her for what she was doing. What was going through your head on that drive to that treatment?
Speaker 6 19:04 I don't remember. I was excited for her. Something felt different that time. What felt different? She was ready to be done. She was, I mean, she was still a little drunk.
Speaker 0 19:15 I think that's the best way to go into treatment. So something felt different. Was it courage? She felt courageous to you.
Speaker 6 19:23 Yeah. I felt like she was glowing a little bit. I think she was, she just seemed fed up with herself
Speaker 0 19:28 Almost like she was agreeing with you from all your years of fear and pain and sadness. It was this concession that I want you in my life. I don't want to do this anymore. And I trust you and I want you to trust me that I'm going to go do this and I'm going to go be the mom. I want to be the mom. Yeah. You said that you started drinking when you were 25, you take your mom to that. Impatient. Your relationship changed. It got better. You started drinking when you were 25. Interesting. There's a gap there. Yeah. Where you dabbling a little bit in between.
Speaker 6 20:03 Yeah, pot was my first addiction. My first smoking pot first, actually the year that my grandparents died the summer after I started experimenting with pot, I would say I was a pretty normal user.
Speaker 0 20:17 What do you mean by normal?
Speaker 6 20:18 I wasn't smoking all the time. I wasn't addicted to it yet. I was just dabbling and I was actually still a little fearful of it because of some of the bad highs that I had. And so I would say maybe like six times, my entire freshman year I smoked pot. And then I dated a guy who didn't like it. So I didn't for a couple years. And then I started again. So it was just kind of like here and there
Speaker 0 20:38 For a while you could take it or leave it alone. It was more of a recreational type thing. How did that progress?
Speaker 6 20:43 Oh, remember I said, I dated a guy who had an addiction and he was kind of the I've rekindled my relationship with my mom. I didn't join him in taking pills or doing any of the things he did, but I would smoke pot with him. Then our relationship was kind of a disaster. I mean, I was very, very head over heels for this guy. He was cool. He was smart. And introduce me to things like the magnetic fields, this American life and books and things that I'd never thought about. I put them on a way up on a pedestal. So I did pot sometimes, but it was a bad relationship. I don't know how to say this easily. Basically at the end of our relationship, I cut them out. Like I'm done with you. Fuck you. I left him. I started dating someone else. Immediately moved in with them.
Speaker 6 21:30 Three months later, this guy who I was head over heels for killed himself. That next day I started smoking pot and I didn't stop for like 10 years. I don't know what happened immediately. It was like, I don't want to deal with my grief. I don't want to deal with this. This is stupid. This is insane. I feel guilt. I also feel like I shouldn't feel like guilt. Cause then it means that it was about me and it wasn't. I am sad. I know what makes me feel better. And that is pot and I need pot and pot became my new boyfriend basically and replaced him.
Speaker 0 22:03 What was it about pot that allowed you to put all that grief, pain, anger on the back.
Speaker 6 22:10 I didn't have to feel my feelings. Everything was great. Every, every movie that was I've thought. Every funny movie that I thought was stupid was funny. The sky seemed prettier. I liked doing anything and everything because I was high. It felt good inside my body. What kind of person were you when you weren't high? I was fiending. I was constantly trying to find a way to get high, trying to scrape together, money, hitting Rez bowls, anything I could do to get that good gooey center feeling going again. Sounds like hot gave you comfort. Yes.
Speaker 0 22:43 Sue there to take you away from all that pain, all that grief. I want to know if you think people can be addicted to marijuana, being someone that smoked it for that long, that had that experience with pot. I don't even know that it gets thrown around all the time. Is pot addicted. I don't know. All I know is that I liked it. It was like irritable when I didn't have it. Sure. Does that make me a pot addict? Maybe. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 6 23:13 Right? That it's not physically addictive. It's not like you go through some severe withdrawal symptoms that are dangerous to your body when you don't have pot. But I think it can be mentally addictive for the right person. I think you can get really lost in your head and become just this messy. Emotional. You don't have control over your emotions whatsoever when you're not high. If you've been smoking it constantly later on, which I'm sure we'll get to. I found out I had borderline personality disorder when I got pregnant. Oh shit. And so mixed with fiending for pot. It was just, I was just an angry, angry bitch. Yeah. Just terrible person. Didn't like going out with anybody. If I wasn't high, didn't like doing anything. If I wasn't high, I just wanted to be a slug and wait for a drug dealer to drop a bag.
Speaker 6 24:03 In that respect. It was controlling your life. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't want to do anything. I didn't want to talk to anyone unless I was high. Right. It was interesting. The way that you put it, you don't think it's physically addicted, right? But no, no. I've never heard of it. Put that way. It's not physically addictive, but mentally psychologically. It's yeah. It's not going to kill you. Whereas if you don't drink and you've been drinking too much, you could, you could have a seizure. You could die. People can die from alcohol withdrawals, other drug withdrawals with pot, you could, I'd say you're more in danger of killing yourself than dying of withdrawals. If that makes sense. It does make sense.
Speaker 0 24:40 Interesting that you've put it that way. Alcoholism, as it is described, we are bodily and mentally different from our fellows when it comes to alcohol, when it comes to what happens to us when we consume it. And when it actually turns into alcoholism, when you started drinking, when you were 25, what led up to that? Why, why 25?
Speaker 6 25:02 This was five or so years into my chronic pot smoking. And I was dating yet another boy who I thought I was going to marry. I put on a pedestal. Oh my God. Seriously. No, really. I it's embarrassing talking about my younger self, which is not that far away from
Speaker 0 25:21 The beautiful thing about you being here today and opening up about that is there are other people out there that have gone through that and that haven't been able to address it. And can't laugh about it in a healthy way. Instead of laughing it off, that is how I dealt with stuff. That's not how I have to deal with it today. It may be funny and maybe jovial to people that have gone through it and have picked up a spiritual, physical, mental tool kit to deal with life. But there are so many people out there that are still engaging in those behaviors. So it is funny once you've gone through it and find humor in it because kind of have some fun, got to have some laughs in life, but on the serious side, that's what you did. That is what you did, right? When it came to alcohol, you said you were five years into your habitual pot-smoking years. What happened to 25?
Speaker 6 26:16 So I met another boy. He was a brewer and um, he worked at a brewery and um, I think at one point, um, we, uh, the relationship was a little strained because at my fault, I will openly admit that most of my relationships becoming strained and ending was my fault because my borderline personality disorder and my tendency to verbally and mentally abused my boyfriends anyway. So it was strained. But he said on the phone to me, as he was trying to end it, he's like, I just don't see myself with someone who doesn't drink, which it makes him sound like such a bad guy, but he's not. He's such a good guy. He's a normie too. And his life was brewing at that time. And he drank, well, he did a good job. He enjoyed to have a couple drinks with friends. He had fun.
Speaker 6 27:08 He was a fun person. And he wanted that out of his partner. And I can't blame them for that, but I did not want to let go. I wanted to sink my claws into this person and keep them. So I said, I've been thinking maybe I could drink. And I had my first glass of champagne with my best friend and roommate at the time. And that was that I started working at the brewery with him, by the way, all of those people are amazing. And I don't want to say that they had anything to do with my problem. They are just amazing people, still friends. I, it definitely we could drink on the job of rule of thumb was if you ruin it for everybody, you're the person who went down in history of this brewery who ruined it for everybody. So no one ruined it for everybody. It definitely helped fuel my drinking. I liked the,
Speaker 0 27:51 You said this wasn't their problem. It was my problem. Taking ownership of that. Is that the same sort of mindset you had back then?
Speaker 6 28:02 I didn't think I was one. I thought I was just having fun. I guess. I wasn't really thinking, Oh, I have a problem at all yet.
Speaker 0 28:09 Yet. Yes. Her famous last word. We are going to take a short break. And when we come back, Liz is going to talk about how her alcoholism progressed. We will be right.
Speaker 7 28:22 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 29:43 <inaudible> we are here with Liz, Liz before we took that music break. You were saying that your drinking hadn't really gotten that bad. Yeah. How did your drinking progress from just having fun, not thinking that you were an alcoholic, how did that progress to it being a quote unquote problem. Maybe a point where you recognize, Whoa, I need this thing. Just like I need pot, except it's physically hurting me when I don't have this thing.
Speaker 6 30:18 Right. Because I had an alcoholic mother growing up. I kind of knew everything I needed to know. And so I was always doing checks. What were your like, like, well, I don't buy a bottle of wine every night. You know, I'm not an alcoholic yet, you know, but I also was like, I definitely have an addictive personality as history has shown me. So I was kind of making sure that it wasn't happening with alcohol as I was going along. How were you making sure that it wasn't happening? Keeping tabs on myself? Hey, well, I had six drinks tonight. I should slow down or I should always get home before I have a few more or so not wanting to embarrass myself in front of other people, not wanting to affect other people with it, wanting it to be my little secret in a way.
Speaker 0 30:58 So you were self-regulating. Yes. When were you unable to regulate
Speaker 6 31:04 Yourself and your drinking? There were a couple of definite blackouts that happened throughout the years that were just bad for the wrong reasons, just drinking. Cause I was upset, whatever, but then I got pregnant. I decided I needed to get mental health because obviously my relationship with my soon to be husband was turning into what all my other relationships had turned into, where I was just being like abusive, not physically, but in every other way, just destroying this beautiful thing we had. And then I got pregnant. I was like, I need to go to therapy. I need to figure my shit out. I went into a clinic, had a conversation with a man named Joe. He told me that I had a mild to moderate case of borderline personality disorder. And I should come his groups once a week and then do a one on one therapy once a week as well. And I said, I'm going to do it. It was called dialectical behavioral therapy. Good old DBT. Yeah. DVT.
Speaker 0 31:57 How did that help your borderline personality disorder and for those who aren't well versed in mental health issues, what is that in your words?
Speaker 6 32:06 It's a lot of things, but the biggest thing for me, the biggest part of it for me was that I would literally take all of my anger out. I would be the nicest person to everyone in the world. And then I'd even if I hated people and then I bottle all up, all my anger and my bad opinions and I'd take it out on the people closest to me. I don't know how to define borderline personality disorder. There's a lot more to it, but that was my problem with it. That was, that fell into the category.
Speaker 0 32:32 Was your chemical dependency addressed when you went in?
Speaker 6 32:35 Yes, I was to remain sober, which I did not. I was lying through my
Speaker 5 32:40 Teeth to my pregnant at this time, correct? Yes. How far along were you when you went to go talk to Joe? I was 11 weeks. And you did not say to Joe, I know I'm pregnant and I know I have borderline personality disorder, but I'm not, I'm not drinking. Well, I wasn't drinking, but I was smoking pot. How did you feel about that? What sort of feelings surrounded your pot use? There was a lot of me justifying it. What were some of the justifications you made? I found being a pregnant woman and also being able to smoke pot. I found this study. They had done in Jamaica. When you were nodding your head, like, yep. I know it. I I've heard that one before. I've heard them all before. Actually I'm a professional. These justifications, you read a study and they claimed that the children whose mothers had smoked pot daily while pregnant, those children actually turned out to be a little further, a little ahead of the other kids in the study of the mothers who didn't smoke pot.
Speaker 5 33:39 And so I was like, that's it I'm going to smoke pot while I'm pregnant. I'm kid's going to be a genius. And that was all I needed, but there was guilt and there was second guessing myself. There were times of me stopping for long periods of time during my pregnancy. And then falling back into it. You had found the one thing that gave you permission to engage in smoking pot while pregnant on the flip side of that, you really knew in your heart of hearts, that this is bullshit. Guess what? I read this thing and that's my justification. I mean, people are doing studies, right? There are children that are mentally further along than kids whose mothers did not smoke pot every day when they were pregnant with them, there was also, I wasn't getting morning sickness. I had a beautiful pregnancy because I was happy the whole time, pregnancy and marijuana, they go together.
Speaker 5 34:30 How long into your pregnancy did you smoke marijuana? I smoked the whole time all nine months. All nine months. Except for the periods of time that I stopped for a week or two. Why would you stop for a week or two? Because I was second guessing myself because I was worried that I was going to hurt my son. Then why did you start back up? Because I was getting into serious fights with my husband and my anger and my fiending started building up and then I'd explode and I felt like, Oh, well hybrid blood pressure. Isn't good for my son either. And anger and shouting. Isn't good for my son either. Even when he's in my belly, does he want to call mom? Does he want a lot of weighing the pros and cons and always kind of falling back into I'm. Okay. I can just smoke a little bit here and there. And it's fine. The anger is what fueled you to go back to smoking pot. However, going back to smoking pot also gave you moments of guilt, maybe shame and hiding. Can't tell anybody that you're smoking pot, right? I am terrified of what anybody would say or do. If anybody found out you smoked the whole time, how do you feel about that? Now? I am embarrassed. I feel like when I was a little girl telling myself,
Speaker 6 35:38 I'm not going to be like my mom here. I was doing something even worse. My mom was sober when I was in her belly. She was sober. When my brother was in her belly, I couldn't even do that. I wasn't drinking. That was another thing I was using to justify why I'm not drinking while he's in my belly. I was becoming even worse than what I didn't want to become. What would you want to tell pregnant Liz that was smoking marijuana daily. I would slap her upside her head and say, are you fucking kidding me? You have a child, a life growing inside of you. You could damage his entire life before he even comes out. Thank God. He's totally fine. As of right now, he's only two and a half. Like I can't, he's amazing. And he really is blossoming into this incredible little human being and there was nothing wrong with him. And I'm very lucky, very lucky for that.
Speaker 0 36:28 Many women have this story where they had admittedly had a problem with alcohol or other substances. And all of a sudden they get pregnant and they stop and they stopped for their child. And this is what fueled their sobriety. And they realized all these bad things they were doing. And this child saved my life. This literally I gave life to something that saved
Speaker 6 36:53 And I thought that that was going to happen when I was younger and thinking about becoming pregnant. I thought that that would happen to me too. Once I got pregnant
Speaker 0 37:00 Didn't and your addiction took over, it justified for you. It gave you
Speaker 0 37:07 All the material you needed to keep on using the way that you wanted to use addiction is such a selfish illness, malady disease, whatever you want to call it, addiction. It's just addiction. It's a selfish, selfish thing. And it does these crazy things to our brains. It tells me yo it's okay. It's okay to smoke pot the entire time I'm pregnant. Even though you sitting here with me right now would slap the fuck outta that bitch. What the fuck are you thinking? That is the strength of addiction. And I want you to know that that wasn't you, that wasn't Liz, that was purely your addiction. It's a part of you. It's a part of your story, but it's not you. And I want you to know that. Thank you. You're a beautiful person inside and out. Thank you. I also want to touch on how your other addiction with men fueled your drinking and your pot use not getting help for those issues. Those addictions is what carried you through that pregnancy that fueled the use. What happened after you had your child? What did your use look like after you had your child?
Speaker 6 38:18 Because I had been smoking marijuana. We did get visited by what is it? That CPS child protective services. I hear that float around all the time. I don't have any kids that I know of, but I hear quite often, I don't know it was, it was kind of like this no big deal thing. She came in, she observed our living space. You know, we had jobs, we had a nice little place. It was very, baby was healthy and safe. Obviously seemed to care. She came in and Jamison was sleeping on my shoulder. Why did CPS get involved? Okay. So I was in labor for 70 hours. I was going to do a natural birth at home, kind of mostly at home and then go to a midwife to the middle.
Speaker 0 39:00 I hate to say it sounds like a pothead. <inaudible> going to be so natural and I don't want any <inaudible>
Speaker 6 39:13 And my husband's rubbing my back.
Speaker 0 39:15 It's going to be there. He's going to be so helpful.
Speaker 6 39:21 Got it. Yeah. I remember thinking we can do this. We're going to do this. It's going to be great. And just nothing was progressing. Finally. She said, I'm going to let you know if you want to go to the hospital at this point. It's okay. Cause we were like 65 hours in. I turned to my husband and I go, I'm so sorry, sweetie. I think I got to go to the hospital and he laughed and he's like, it's okay. We went to the hospital and as they're about to give me the epidural, the doctor is shouting questions to me because I'm going through contractions and breathing really deep, making a lot of noise. And one of the questions is, have you used any substances recently? And I said, yes, I smoked pot instead of using drugs while in labor, because I thought it would help.
Speaker 6 39:58 And it didn't. And it was, I regret it. That's like what I said, which was a bit of a BLI because obviously there was a lot more pot-smoking throughout the whole pregnancy. But anyway, of course then they, they had to do a test. They had to take my son's blood and test my blood. And because there was, they said they found a trace amount and the nurses were very sweet. They're like, you're going to get visited by CPS, but it's okay. You know, it's, they're just going to make sure everything's okay. And the baby's fine and all this stuff. So it was a lot of people telling me everything's going to be okay. They're not going to take him away from you. Kind of
Speaker 0 40:28 That blows my mind. I know God bless nurses. Yes. I have a history with nurses and an amazing history with nurses that have helped me physically, emotionally, spiritually, God bless nurses. Nurses have saved my life. I'm not just talking about a nurse that I saw when I went to the doctor. I'm talking about nurses that are in my life and it's that judgment, that judgment that doesn't exist with nurses. I don't understand it. That's a sweeping generalization. However, there's just something about nurses. They have that immediate unconditional love, unconditional love free of judgment, free of shaming. I don't know what it is anyway. Hey, this is a perfect time to introduce our safe word. Before the show. Liz chose the safe word in case we got off the beaten track. And instead of Liz getting off the beaten track, it was me and the word is watermelon. So Liz watermelon, they tested your son's blood found trace of THC nurses told you that CPS is going to come visit you. How did that play out?
Speaker 6 41:38 So they came and visited woman about my age, I think. And she just asked us a couple of questions. And then before she left, she said, if you're going to smoke pot, don't do it around the kid and left.
Speaker 0 41:49 Wow. Interesting. What do you think would have happened if your son was taken away from you? Would you have quit using drugs?
Speaker 6 41:55 I want to say yes, but considering my past,
Speaker 0 41:59 Well, that's how you dealt with grief and yeah.
Speaker 6 42:02 Yeah. And sadness probably shut myself in my room and cried in my bed for a week straight. And then I would have come out and I would have said, I'm going to get really drunk today. And then I would have had a one really good drunk. I would have anticipated that the next day I would wake up and I'd be like, all right, we got to figure this out. We got to get him back. But most likely I would have just kept drinking
Speaker 0 42:24 One last hurrah and then we'll figure it out. Selfishness. Self-centeredness self seeking. That is what addiction is. It's this selfishness that just emanates. And it comes out of our pores. It's our very being. And we look back and we say, Holy shit, because it's not us. It's not a cop out saying, it's not us. It's our addiction. It's not the point. No, it's not trying to cop out. It's just saying that is how I act when I'm using substances. And when I become an addict, I lose control. I have an allergy to substances when I start, I can't stop. And it's a physiological thing that happens inside my body where it not only affects my body, but it also affects my thing.
Speaker 6 43:11 When we say it's not us, it's not that I'm not trying to say, it's not my responsibility. It's just, that's not who I am meant to be. That's not who I am inside, but it's still my responsibility. And I think sometimes people, there's a stigma around where people who are in recovery, they don't take responsibility. They put it all up to God and it's no, it's 100% my responsibility to take care of myself and keep myself from doing that. And these are my consequences with that being said, that was not
Speaker 0 43:40 Me. What did your continued use look like after your child was born? After CPS left? Did you get high to celebrate CPS leaving?
Speaker 6 43:49 Pretty much. I continued to go about my usual and then my drinking started to get really bad because my husband started saying, you know, you're a, you're getting high, like way more than I get high. And I get high a lot. This is crazy. You need to calm down if we can't get any. And I was upset, how can you put this all on me? And so then, you know, I was like, well, I can drink. I don't have a problem with drinking yet. Or so I thought suddenly pot wasn't as appealing. It started giving me anxiety. So drinking was better. So then I started drinking more. What did drinking do for you? That pot didn't I guess it didn't give me anxiety. It made me feel more confident in myself. I could have conversations really well. My thoughts were, or so I thought it got to a point where at the very end of it, every day on the way home from work, I'm picking up something for us to have with dinner. And I am always buying myself a little shot to have in the car on the way home pregame on my own before drinking with my husband,
Speaker 0 44:46 By the way, that is not normal drinking. BA
Speaker 8 44:49 <inaudible> those of you out there are thinking about,
Speaker 0 44:56 About what did she mean by normy? When she said a normal drinker that right there is the example of not being a normal drinker.
Speaker 6 45:05 And then it was two shots and then it was three and then it was four. And then I was asleep an hour after I got home and out for the night and it got bad. At one point, this was the last weekend of my hurrah, but a bottle of vodka. And I took my shots and I didn't stop drinking the entire weekend. And my husband left with my son and went to his mother's house. And he popped back in later the next day. And I was still drinking in the living room. And I barely even noticed that they had come home, put her son down for a nap. And he went to take a shower. And at this point I'm asleep, but he told me later and he cried and he prayed. My husband is a complete atheist. He has no faith. No, he has a spirituality for sure.
Speaker 6 45:49 But he has no faith in a religion, total agnostic, which, but he just fell to his knees. And he prayed. He said that when he got out of the shower, he had seen a missed call from my dad, which was weird, called him back. And my dad was just checking on him and Pat broke down and said, have you got to come get her out of here? She needs help. Something's wrong. And then he left shortly after I hear my front door being unlocked. I think Pat had brought them the key and I'm still very drunk. I had somehow obtained another bottle of vodka at that point. I don't know how my mom and dad come in and my mom, she comes in and she's glowing again. And she goes, hi, sweetie, are you ready for some help? And I said, yeah. And they got me my clothes. And they dumped out my booze and they took me home, pulled me out of that.
Speaker 0 46:32 So many addicts and alcoholics don't really know what happened, how it got this bad, how it got to this point. And at some point it just doesn't matter anymore. Nothing matters. Nothing. Not my child, not my husband, nothing fucking matters. All these gifts. You were given a lot of them for a long time. It appears as though they were being squandered. However, they were not being squandered. They were seeds, seeds being planted to blossom and flower at just the right time. Your mom being sober, your dad being a normal guy in respect to drinking. Pat who recognized that you had a problem, took your son away and still that did not stop your drinking. What stopped your drinking was another alcoholic coming into your home and asking you if you wanted help, how beautiful, how fitting, what a gift. And they just began to get better and better from there.
Speaker 0 47:27 These gifts, these growing and flowering relationships, finding new ways to live life, being a human being, again, not being controlled by something that got you out of control. We're going to take a little break. We'll be right back and talk about what getting help looked like for Liz. Thank you so much, Liz, for being authentic on authentic, we'll be right back. Hey. Hey you thank you for listening to today's episode. Listen to this. Due to the length of this recording, I have decided to split the episode into two parts. Next week, you will hear part two of listen to this where Liz talks about help. And my favorite four letter word, Whoa.
Speaker 9 48:20 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 48:22 It's always here on authentic. We have to pay credit where credit is due, the musical stylings you heard for part one of listen to this first. You heard what you always hear at the beginning of my episodes. Mama, mama, mama, mama, mad, mad nurse by muse at the first break you heard? Yeah. Oh yeah. By the magnetic fields to take us off. Liz has chosen Lotus flower by radio head and let's eat for, get, be good to yourself. It's important.
Speaker 7 49:55 Oh shit. <inaudible>.
