Beyond the Leaf: Navigating Marijuana Addiction and Sobriety...

Exploring Marijuana Addiction and Sobriety with Kati Reardon

In this episode of the Samantha Parker Show, Samantha sits down with Kati Reardon, an accomplished leader and founder of Shapeshift and Shift Happens. Kati shares her personal journey with marijuana addiction, from starting to use at age 13 to becoming a daily user for 30 years. They discuss the impact of marijuana normalization, the challenges of achieving sobriety, and the concept of a 'joy menu' to find natural joy. Katie also opens up about the societal misconceptions around marijuana addiction and her approach to life and leadership in sobriety.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:23 Katie Reardon's Background and Achievements

00:58 Diving into Marijuana Addiction

01:42 Personal Stories and Cultural Impact

04:06 Daily Usage and High Functioning

06:23 Escalation and Realization

10:48 Journey to Sobriety

18:09 Finding Joy and Recovery

20:40 Detoxing from Marijuana: The Struggle and Reality

21:08 The Hidden Dangers of Mass-Produced Marijuana

23:04 The Physical and Emotional Toll of Detox

24:59 Finding Joy in Sobriety: The Joy Menu

27:49 Exploring New Hobbies and Passions

29:10 Navigating Sobriety in Social and Work Environments

30:44 The Importance of Community and Accountability

35:23 Final Thoughts and Resources for Sobriety

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Transcript

 Hey guys. Welcome back to the Samantha Parker Show. Today I'm sitting down with the powerhouse guest, Katie Reardon. Did I say that right? Reardon that's always my biggest fear is you'll be like, it's actually not Katie. It's like Katai.

The, not the KATI does throw people, but you got it.

You just never know. Okay. I recently met you, a couple months ago at Crate and Cultivate in LA and you are quite the batty. Did we have lunch together?

did.

Yeah, it was fun. Katie, you've led teams for some of the world's biggest brands, Nike, banana Republic.

Worked with athletes like Serena Williams, Sean White, and you are the founder of shapeshift. And Shift happens, which that's fun, where you help leaders organize and adapt innovative and thrive. But today we're gonna dive into something that hits home, for a lot of people. When you started telling me your story and your experience, I was like, why has this never occurred to me?

But today we're gonna talk about marijuana addiction. I do think it's a topic that gets brushed off or minimalized because of the way cannabis is normalized in our culture, which even if you jumped back 15 years, it was still a drug. You were still going to jail

absolutely.

And it's been really interesting as an adult to watch it, get pushed to the forefront of the narrative and culture, especially here in the United States.

And I know different areas of the United States are a little different, probably where you live it's popping.

I'm in Portland, Oregon. It's the home of, every other backyard's a farm, 

is it legal to grow?

People have been growing here for a very long time and Oregon is prolific in terms of marijuana growth.

And it's been that way since, I mean, really 60 seventies, all the way through the nineties and into today. That plays a huge role in my story as to how I came of age and came into marijuana at a young age,

yeah. It really does impact, culture, families, personal growth in profound ways. My thing was alcohol, I want more and more, I always looked at marijuana as gross. I don't like it. It's never been for me like. I don't really do it.

Like I don't really care if people do it, you know? But it's just, it's never been my drug, it's choice. So I am really excited to have this conversation with you so that we can bring light to this, I do get in arguments with people on TikTok. They're like, the reason why alcohol consumption is down is 'cause everyone's just getting high.

Or they'll tell me you should just take up gardening instead, which is code for, marijuana. And I'm like, that's just trading one num for another 

I think there's a real range for people in a spectrum of what that can look like. What's interesting to me, and I think it'll be curious for you to track, is because of this trade off, 5, 7, 10 years from now, you're going to see an explosion in people dealing with. Substance use disorders around marijuana the potency of marijuana today is not what it was when I first started smoking weed at 13 I was a daily user for 30 years. When I built a tolerance and came into the potency of the marijuana available today in dispensaries my marijuana usage went to the next level and I couldn't control it. I had been a daily user since I was a teenager. What'll be interesting to study and see, unfortunately see the impact of, is a lot of people making that switch and a lot of women making that switch, getting into marijuana. Beyond just, hitting a pipe or smoking a joint it's gummies vaping and CBD sodas and layering of access. I think that's gonna be an interesting exploration for people, teenagers right now, their exposure to it is similar to how it was when I was a teen, meaning it's super accessible, but it also was not for us.

I put myself into some. Super sketchy situations, buying weed. But in particular, the kids today, they're vaping hardcore the average vape cartridge holds, the equivalent of like 60 joints.

Oh wow.

you just puff on that all day, you have no awareness as to how much you're consuming and the potency and all of the other, frankly, chemicals, mold, fertilizers that are going into it.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it, but I think the addiction part of it is going to show up and society is a bit unprepared for that and what that could mean.

So when you say you're a daily user, what did that look like?

I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and I knew lots of friends in high school whose parents, grew Herb in their backyard or in their basement. It was illegal then, if you were caught with an ounce, you were going to jail. It wasn't a misdemeanor. If you were caught with a pound, you were definitely going to jail, and that was considered a felony. Today, none of those rules are the same you can go to a dispensary and buy an ounce. You don't have to be a medical card holder like many states. I had a lot of friends that were in and around the marijuana scene.

I had a lot of friends that sold marijuana. When I started using it at 13, it really was. A gateway to so many things, so many amazing experiences, connections to people, music, concerts, nature, like all sorts of stuff were available. Marijuana being available opened my eyes and euphoria to so many other experiences. If I'm honest about it, I just. Celebrated my second year of sobriety. Which I'm really, proud and happy about. But I had to dig into where my addiction began. It didn't actually start with marijuana, it started with cigarettes. I grew up in a smoking household. While I wasn't an addict of cigarettes, the first drug I ever had was smoking cigarettes and nicotine. The act of smoking is something that is a great comfort to me, whether it's a cigarette, herbal, cigarette, joint, et cetera. And so I think that actually laid the foundation for me turning to weed as a real, and you'll hear me use different terms.

Weed. I say herb a lot, you know, marijuana, like they're all interchangeable to me. But I really grew up having a comfort level with smoking. When I started to use marijuana at 13, we still had to hide it. In Portland, it was a little bit more lax, so you're hiding it from your parents, your coaches.

I was an athlete, so they didn't test us for it I always just found that alcohol was not my jam I grew up in a household with, alcohol addiction Irish Catholic family,. I definitely got out of control on it many number of times, but it wasn't like the thing that I was drawn to at an early age and then over the course of the last 30 years, marijuana was, and so every day started at 13, smoked my way through high school, college, jobs, life, et cetera.

Were you awake and baking? The second you got up you were getting high, or was it more

Yeah.

What did it look like?

Yeah, it really varied. When I was younger, it was anytime you're on break at school. As a high school athlete, I look back on it, I'm like, how the hell did I do that? Still graduate, get good grades get high all day and show up at practice? What was that?

And I'm like, oh, it was youth and energy. When I was younger, I was definitely using it multiple times a day, we were smoking out of joints pipes and bongs it was the spirit of doing something naughty.

And so you were attracted to it. My friends all did it. When I got into college, same thing. I was pretty reckless in college and partied my way through the first couple of years pushing the limits on consumption then it became a gateway to other things.

Then I started to try harder drugs. I started to try a lot of hallucinogenics and acid and like I went kind of euphoria centric, next level all the way through college and into early adulthood. When I was in my twenties and really started my career, went to graduate school, started a career, that's when I had to change the way that I consumed it.

So I couldn't wait and bake anymore. I had to go to work. And then I got home, I started getting high, I used it as a way to soften the edges of stress and anxiety and just functioning as a woman in business. I was never a person who, when I came home from work, went for a cocktail. I would come home from work and, in my mind I'm like, okay, the day is done. I have worked out, or I went running, now I could start getting high and can build into that until I go to bed. That's a really common story. That is something that a lot of people in my community live that same way, and for many people it works honestly, I kept that up. That was probably the next 2020. Yeah. First 20 year stretch of my career.

Yeah. And I've definitely smoked my fair share of weed. I can remember the first time I got high and then I used to go to the store and buy an apple and build the bong, you know? 'cause then I could either eat it or throw it out of the window so I didn't get caught, when I was 19, I remember, I was pregnant, so I'm pregnant, 19, living with this douche bag, you know, as the stories go. And I remember going into the kitchen and there was like guys in there that I didn't know, and I opened the fridge and the whole bottom of our fridge was just full of weed.

He was just selling weed, out of our house. And I was like, I'm pregnant. I gotta get outta here.

Right.

but it still took me like an extra year to get out. Obviously I didn't smoke when I was pregnant, but then it's never been my thing. I remember a little while ago, going with friends, we would go to Mesquite 'cause you couldn't buy it here in Utah for a long time, so we'd have to drive across the border to Nevada.

I remember buying some edibles and I ate an edible and I was like, I don't freaking like this. It's just never been the thing that I turned to. In high school, I was using it to kind of numb out and just go to classes.

Yes,

I was like, Hey, do you wanna get high?

I was like, yeah, sure.

Yes,

but

It's so interesting because I was joking with a friend of mine, my best girl. She and I had this, unspoken and spoken understanding that I would get, I

I.

like in high school, the DD because I would get high and she would get drunk and she had a car and I didn't.

We were joking the other day because we lived our life that way, right? I would always drive us around. She could get faded in whatever way she wanted. I was just getting high, so it was totally safe. I'm a high school driver out there in these streets, in her big old, truck taking bong hits while I'm driving around

Yeah.

It's amazing to me the amount of times. I drove under the influence of marijuana for 30 years. And never even questioned whether or not I was putting myself at risk or other people or safety, like any of that. And I just, I look back on it. I went to high school in the nineties.

I graduated high school in 1994, so I was going to grunge concerts, the Grateful Dead reggae shows, where Herb was such a part of all of those experiences, and it just felt like second nature, frankly.

Yeah, I have someone very close to me in my life, who's the way you're describing, like very high functioning, but is high all the time outside of work. It's kind of a great mirror, right? I can look at the things I wanna say to her, but they're the things I could have said to myself during my own, active addiction.

I wanna say why are you not happy with your life? Why can't you just be happy with your life and with yourself that you have to go through this world so high?

It's such a good question. Honestly, that's what I've been contemplating for the last three years. I've been sober for two. About five years ago it started to occur to me and it was during the pandemic, I was working a super high stress job and my relationship was failing. My long-term relationship was failing, we ended up splitting I went and got my own place during that time I had taken this thing that had provided me comfort and a softness to the edges, to the next level because there was nothing to check me.

I wasn't going out in public. I was working, but look, we're on Zoom. You might not even know if I have pants on right now. You can hide out in these environments and I could fake it. Really well. So all of a sudden I found myself. Layering a lot.

I had sort of stopped working at that point, in big corporate jobs and I had started my business or was thinking about starting my business. It just so happened that the year before I did that, I caught myself standing on my balcony one day, looking out at the clouds,

and I was smoking a joint and by this point I'm like smoking a gram at a time. Which is a fair amount of verb, especially at 20%, 22%, like the potency is insane. And I was like, oh my God, I can't get any higher. And what was interesting is it's not like I took that as a red flag. I took that as a challenge and then I started to be like, hmm, I think I start microdosing more often, which is psilocybin, which is very

Yep.

here

Yeah.

And I had always been in and around mushroom, so it wasn't gonna be my life, right? It wasn't gonna do me in, but it was available. I started grinding my own mushroom capsules and self administering microdosing, and now all of a sudden I'm smoking grams of weed a day and microdosing every day.

And now portals are opening up and you're like, whatever.

I think nobody can notice. I'm just like flowing in this world by, everything's fine. Groovy, we're good. then all of a sudden I caught myself. I have, friends in and around alcohol and drugs. I caught myself using cocaine more often, and I was like, weird.

Am I using cocaine at noon on a Tuesday? Okay, well we're just gonna keep going with that. It started to escalate and escalate the thing about marijuana addiction is now there's so many mediums available, to your point, gummies, dabs, sodas, whatever. I might be smoking a couple grams of weed a day, and then all of a sudden I'm also drinking a soda or taking a gummy before bed and not tracking. That, you layer it with microdosing and other illicit narcotics and you're just in la la land. No one really knew because I was doing it on my own. I was doing quite quietly and I could kind of hide out in this space of not having to show up in a big corporate job in the way that I was prior to that.

So I got by on that for probably a solid eight, nine months of hiding out that way. No one really called me out. One person called me out on it, which was a huge game changer for me, but no one really kind of stopped to interrupt it. I think they all just figured I had figured it out. Well, I didn't until later, until I basically went off the cliff and had a full emotional breakdown.

And here we are today.

And look at me now. 

Working through it.

Yeah, culturally marijuana is kind of viewed as harmless, I do know that has some great uses.

Absolutely.

first career life, I worked in healthcare and the very first big professional job I had is I worked in the oncology unit. They had a pill that mimicked marijuana, I can't remember what it was called, but they would give it to cancer patients.



I don't

It was like.

My mother took it when she had cancer.

And I would see that be very helpful, to people. So I'm not gonna say all of it's bullshit, I just think it comes back to we're viewing it as harmless or even celebrated, but where do you think the addiction comes? You're the first person I've ever had, sit down at that lunch table and you were like.

I'm a marijuana addict or in recovery. I was like, this is a thing.

What's interesting is, if you go online and dig around in social media, and this is what I find really interesting is a lot of people won't talk about marijuana as an addiction, there is scientific backing that. Says it's not an addictive substance. Now I'm of the belief you do anything every single day for 30 years. You're an addict. Whether that's running, having sex, drinking coffee, whatever the thing may be.

It,

Right.

You're going through the drive through getting pizza and donuts.

Exactly, and so for me, the habit of reaching for marijuana as the salve to my life was the trigger to realize like, okay, something is not. Right here. And to answer your question that you first started with, which is what are you not happy about in your life? I was realizing that I had been living this very, self isolated, highly anxious.

I was heartbroken because my relationship had ended, my career had had some disruption my career for me has always been a solid anchor and I was hitting menopause. That hot mess of a time period really gave me the foundation to say like, oh, well this is just, I'm just taking care of myself.

It's totally fine. What's interesting is, my theory on the addiction part and why I think in society right now, people aren't really talking about marijuana addiction. They're not using the term addiction. They're using the term use disorder. I think that's really interesting. And you'll see that on TikTok. You'll see that just in social media in general. People will talk about marijuana use disorder. The part of that that makes me like super questionable. I'm like, why give it a different term than what it really is? Maybe that's not the technical medical term, which is that people don't think marijuana is addictive.

But to me, if you have a use disorder or you're an addict. The behavior looks the same and the connection looks the same and the need and the desire and the thirst look the same. what's interesting is, when I first decided to explore getting sober, a, series of things had to happen. I had been talking about having a challenge and a problem with it for years before it did, and no one believed that was the case. I was kind of self isolated anyway, in thinking and feeling this way, and I was like, well, nobody else thinks I'm an addict. I'm fine. We're good.

Well, it's no offense to my friends and community and loved ones, but they all use. Drugs every single day of their life. To them, I didn't look any different so That's not an addict. Right? And I was holding down a big girl job and I was fine. That was the first trigger for me why does nobody think this is a problem?

And I'm looking around, I'm like, all my friends have problems I love them all equally. That's their own journey. But we were all doing the same things. Then I realized I read this book, dopamine nation. It's an excellent read if you're curious about dopamine addiction and our need and desire to consume things that make us feel good and to chase it.

And I realized when I was reading that book that every day for probably those 30 years I had been on a rollercoaster of chasing dopamine, it was the. cups of coffee in the morning, the stress at work, the getting high, the spending money, the pursuing, whatever the thing is. All of that had me on this rollercoaster of highs and lows, which we as human beings do every day. And I realized that I didn't think I could actually create natural joy. Because I had started using a drug at 13, which is puberty. never realized what it felt like to create natural joy, substance free. So that's what led me on the journey to cut everything out of my life. I spent the first six months of sobriety not spending any money, not drinking, not using any drugs, not having sex with my boyfriend, not doing anything other than taking my body and. And spear it down to the studs and saying like, can I actually create natural joy on my own?

Can I actually have a fulfilling and beautiful life free of addiction I mean, I didn't even drink coffee. Like I haven't really been a coffee drinker since then because I just didn't know if it was possible, that was kind of the way that I. stepped into my journey I think in society we are all addicted to so many things.

Right from the phone, in our hands to the coffee we're drinking, to the stress in our relationships. If you're not careful, that hook can take you on quite the rollercoaster.

So you took yourself down to the studs. That's how you said it, right?

Yeah.

You stripped yourself back. What did that look like? How did you find joy? Where do you find joy?

Yeah,

how's this evolved?

I did it solo, so I had a therapist. I reached out to my therapist who had been talking about this for a while, she's not a substance abuse counselor, she's more of a family systems therapist,

it really was a huge enabler to me getting sober alone. I had been dating someone who also is sober not because of addiction, but because he's just never been into drugs and alcohol. It was helpful that I had a partner during this time, that also wasn't into drugs and alcohol, the real enabler for me was my therapist, what happened was I knew I probably wasn't gonna go to NA or MA or aa, and it wasn't because I didn't think the program was effective.

It was just I, that's not how I work. I tend to be in practice on things very quietly and on my own. I'm a practice person. I like training. I don't care as much about the marathon, but I like the training I was like, okay, give me a way to train in this and, trick my brain into thinking about it that way so I can start to take myself down to the studs and get clear on building self-awareness and learning about myself and discovering joy we created, which it still is with me today, I have it in five different places, from my car to my desk, to my bathroom mirror. A joy menu, she had me generate 10 to 15 things that bring me joy from small to big. Anytime I had a craving, however big that craving might be, I went to the joy menu and picked something until the craving went away. For the first six months, I barely left my house. I was so socially awkward. I was detoxing so hardcore,

Yeah.

in the world.

Did you get sick?

Oh yeah, I was

Yeah.

to my best

Okay.

and I was telling her I was coming here to have this conversation with you and she reminded me how like day eight, how gray I looked I showed up at her kids' soccer game and I had my sunglasses on and she was like, you were so gray, both in terms of palor and in terms of just energetic, right?

Like just. Ugh. And I think that detox was really important because, you know, obviously you have to go through that, but detox from marijuana, some things that people don't know. It's kind of like if you consume wine every day,

Mm-hmm.

little differently than hard alcohol because hard alcohol is so distilled, so it's like wine and beer, right? the amount of mold and fertilizers and toxicity in those products, binds to you over time. And marijuana has a ton of mold and fertilizers and just, frankly, toxic substances now because it's mass produced differently than when I

Really?

Differently

That's crazy.



Right. And it was like hippie land, and my friends were growing it in their backyard. people are growing for mass volume. There are premium farms, absolutely. But most dispensaries that make their money, because the price of marijuana has bottomed out our selling ounces for $45. Right. That is like the cost of what an eighth of marijuana cost me high quality marijuana in 1994. So

Oh, I know. I was in Phoenix and it was on a billboard, like an ounce for $49, and I was like, you should be able to buy an eighth. This would've been 20 plus years ago

Yep.

it was 50 bucks. It was always just 50 bucks. Like I would go get a 50.

Right. And how do you enable an economy of scale, like how do you create more yield for cheaper? You use fertilizers, you don't care as much about the quality of the product. You do it so that you can sell in volume. Well, that's chockfull of some nasty shit. And there is not a really adept, like organic type certification like you do in produce, like you do in agriculture that has been developed for marijuana yet. So you're gonna get varying degrees of whatever has been sprayed on it, used on it's in the soil. Et cetera. And mold is a really big one as well. That first week to three months of detox was both the THC detox, the habit of smoking, detox, and the chemical detox as well.

Oh,

and I looked rough

Then

do,

What I'm finding is that people in addiction, a lot of times they get sick. Like I got COVID. I have a friend who she's like, early in our sobriety process, she just got COVID. And you know what's funny is I was talking to her and she's like, I'm so mad. And I go, I was so mad when I got COVID.

'cause I'm like, okay, God, I will do this. I will get sober. And I was so sick, I was laying in my backyard and I was just like, fuck you. I thought that, if I got sober, it really, takes you on a journey.

It's funny that you say that. I actually hadn't connected those dots right now, but I got COVID pretty close to getting sober as well. And what was interesting is it was kind of a gift because I was already so socially awkward, could not function, did not have the, smoothing out that herb gives me to be in society. I had COVID for symptoms for like 12 days or something. I remember just being there and I have a dog who's like the top of my joy list. I felt like such utter shit and I'm like, we gotta go for a walk because otherwise I'm gonna lose my mind laying here for 12 days. So yeah,

Yeah, I think it's part of the detox process. I spent that whole first year of sobriety, so sick. I had signed up to do two races 'cause I picked up running and both of them I ran with bronchitis, and I was like, what is this punishment, karma?

No. It's just your body healing and then you're like, this is how it heals. Oh, man.

Yeah.

Use hard alcohol as a tonic. I liked drinking when I drank and I liked to party and all of that, so I'm not gonna front, like I don't. I like to sip hard alcohol like mezcals tequilas and really good gins

so I always use that as like, oh, it's just gonna kill everything anyway. You're fine. Maybe there's some truth to that, and then you take it out and you're exposed and raw to the world.

You have no immune system.

No, know.

Sure, sure. Let's go with that. Let's go. I like that. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I love your concept of this joy menu to kinda like help you through this time, like what was on your joy menu.

Yeah, so I have a big brown bear of a dog named Spud a 90 Pound Love, and he was at the top of that joy menu. When we first adopted Spud, in 2018 I had just come off a pretty gnarly running injury and was in recovery, learning how to walk He and I hiked something like 20 miles a week during that whole first couple years of recovery. So he was at the top of that menu and so was being in nature. Any hike, any walk, any place we could go, any snow shoe, any whatever, 'cause he's super outdoorsy that we could do in combination of him and the outdoors.

And moving my body was like one, two, and three on the list. Reading a lot of books I love to read. So it was like I would go to the bookstore, we have this amazing bookstore here at Powell's and I would spend like, $200 and buy 10 books and read them back to back. That was always on the joy menu. Honestly, that was the thing that helped me turn my brain off when my brain is racing sometimes physical movement doesn't appease that, but getting into a really good, rich story, is like a, modifier for my brain. Other things I had, like, there are a couple key friends on that list. Calling them and just having them, tell me a good story was on the list. I would call a few friends and I'm like, please just tell me a good story right now. Make me laugh, or tell me some gossip or something that I can create a little bit of joy around that doesn't create a huge dopamine hit, sleeping. I've never been a big sleeper. So I discovered sleep, which was great. A lot of just like self-care and sleep and all of that. And then some of the fun ones that I didn't discover until later, I love painting my nails

okay.

small little things that would give me a moment of pretty and self-care like paint your nails and do things like. Blow out my hair. I have really curly hair and spending an hour doing my hair seems like, what? No, I'm not doing that right now. But all of a sudden I didn't spend time going out. I wasn't in the bars, I wasn't smoking weed with friends, so now I had all this social time. Some of these little beautification, which I had always sort of felt like didn't really matter, became little luxuries to me. I love a good road trip. I can do that in my hometown of Portland. It's just absolutely beautiful here. Oregon's

Mm-hmm.

beautiful. So I would get in the car make a playlist and drive for two hours with no destination just disappear and be like, okay, this is what we're doing now. We're gonna listen to some amazing music. Deal with all the thoughts in our brain, and we're gonna take two, two hours outta life and just go explore something. it was like a

Yeah.

Adventure, little luxuries being with friends and in nature was the key. And the other thing is I took up skateboarding.

Yeah, when I met you at Creighton Cultivate, you were like, I like your shoes. I have 'em on today. They're my purple Metallica, Adidas. And you're like, I like cool shoes too. 'cause I like to skateboard.

Yes, yes. So I love board sports.

I love board sports. I love surfing snowboarding and skateboarding, I took up skateboarding during this time period, and it has been magical, magical friend to me because I can do it on my own. I can go and do it with friends. You're always constantly learning something. It challenges you. I've been injured one gajillion times. Let's be clear, I'm 49, but it's been amazing. There's a whole, sober movement in the skateboard community that I discovered

Oh,

Skateboarding has been a huge love and it made it onto the joy menu immediately.

dude, I love that. Okay, so I'm gonna talk about this on TikTok. I will credit you, a lot of times I talk about like, you have to find other things to do, and so many of the things that you listed were things that I did I took up reading really bad smut, it was like nobody looked over my shoulder.

It would, keep my brain busy and just different things like that. I definitely took up running, running definitely saved me, I actually did a lot of isolation. I was talking about this in aa, on Monday. 'cause they were like, you have to tap into the community.

And that was the theme of the talk. I didn't for months and I'm okay with that,

yeah, I'd be curious for you because I haven't gone through AA and I haven't really participated in that. I love community, I love being in community, when I am in deep self exploration, I can't do it with other people, including a partner, so I don't think I really socially emerged until like 18 months in.

Yeah.

six months where I'm like, okay, can actually be in society in the world and not have everything be so raw and nerve like bending on the surface. I'm super curious about the experience of doing that in community.

I went into AA with a little box around me. I was like, I'm showing up to hold myself accountable, but don't talk to me. They laugh at me 'cause I talk about it openly now. I'd sit in my seat and bolt.

I did not stay to socialize. I did not get a sponsor. I'm not saying that's how you should do it, but I knew for me, I'm a highly accountable person, if I said I'm gonna do it, I'll do it to my own detriment. And I knew I was gonna do it.

So for me, that was just like holding myself accountable every week. 'cause I was like, I'm gonna go, they're not gonna not see me again.

Right.

But

Yeah.

I didn't open up. I took a sponsor like six or seven months in. I got a sponsor. She's super cute. She's actually coming by today.

I just love her. She's gotta be late seventies. She's like this cutest Mormon lady.

I love it.

Yeah, and I love her. But two weeks ago was the first time I went to a dinner with other people from aa.

Wow. Interesting.

And again, not, because there's not cool amazing people in there. Some of my old friends are in there, new friends again, but that was the experience I was having.

Mm-hmm.

I.

I've been thinking about this a lot too, I have a lot of friends who are in recovery from alcohol, in Portland, we have a whole NA movement here, you can go out and have

Mm-hmm.



It's great, but there's almost more context around it of how to be with people who maybe are california sober, Oregon sober, we call it, right? Where it's

Yeah.

But they use marijuana or microdose

Mm-hmm.

And so there's a way to not drink alcohol and still be social. I'm really curious what that looks like and how, you know, even folks in this sober community view that, and whether or not that's challenging. I have lots of friends who, have given up alcohol for health and wellness reasons some were pushing the limits on addiction, but it was almost more socially acceptable for them to do that.

Socially it seems a little different with all this new NA opportunities and options.

It is very interesting to watch. For myself, I see it for what it is. If I hopped over to microdosing mushrooms and taking weed, I know exactly what I would be doing that for, I think I've just been extremely accountable with myself and it's a weird thing.

I think it was, age, I was turning 40 and I was like, I'm done with this bullshit. Not everyone's like this, but even me, I block my hip flexor a lot, so I have a prescription for muscle relaxers, I'll take one. But I'm watching myself,

and it's like, so I know if I'm picking up my phone too much, even to consume social media. I have an addictive personality, but I think I've just gotten really self-aware and I'm very accountable to myself.

Beautiful. I love how you articulate that. I mean, until you've said that, I hadn't really considered that for myself. Like you, I'm quite accountable to myself, which is why the practice of it and the joy menu really worked for me or continues to work for me. It's interesting.

I. Started my own business during this time period, and it's been amazing and I've loved it. But solo entrepreneurship is really hard for me because I am a team person, team sports, team leader, all of that. right now I'm considering. Taking on some new full-time opportunities, still keeping parts of my business that I really love more workshops, facilitations, thought leadership, et cetera.

But also then kind of testing some of the things I've been working on and going, into a workplace again. I haven't been in a physical workplace. Since January 2020. What's interesting is, I certainly haven't done it sober. It reminds me that I'm going to be challenged to have practices, this joy menu.

Like you might need some new support. I might need more therapy. To step back into the workplace in the way that I know that I will, because I haven't actually done it sober.

Oh yeah.

what it's gonna look like.

Oh yeah. That's gonna touch you on a whole new level. It's kind of cool 'cause you already have the awareness and the tools.

I think this is where the community part will be really interesting. I'm definitely curious for anyone who has gotten sober and had to reenter something, work relationship, whatever, like how did that go? What did that look like? What should I be aware of? What am I going to learn?

I'm super curious about that journey.

That's exciting.

I'm here for it. I'm ready for it. I think my fortitude will be tested, but I also think it's gonna make me a better leader,

For sure.

Yeah, leadership's always been my jam, and I love to develop talent, it's challenged my ego so much to get sober that I actually am a better listener. I'm far more in service to myself and others, and honestly, in the workplace, I'm a calmer human. I'm less anxious without weed and alcohol and other drugs, and I actually think I'm probably gonna be far more effective than I even was before, and that's super exciting to see. So,

I mean, you get to find a new part of yourself and experience a new version of yourself.

Right. And what's cool is like don't even know what to expect. So I'm like, cool, what's this gonna be like? Is it gonna be hard? Will it be hard on those super stressful days where I'm like, whatever. Yeah. But I think that's where the joy menu and that practice will come into play. I don't necessarily wanna sign myself up to be a sponsor or support system, hardcore support system for anybody else. I'm just not prepared for that. But I also know myself that, like in the workplace, people are not talking about this stuff. They're not talking about getting sober, they're not talking about the journey of doing that.

They're certainly not talking about marijuana addiction. I think it's important to be authentic and be honest about that. I think it's a huge part of who I am now. I can't really make any, apologies for it, but if I'm asked, I'm gonna talk about it. So that'll be interesting too.

I'm excited to hear about it. Did you take a job? Is that what you're doing?

I'm in the process of working through some opportunities right now.

That's amazing. Where can listeners connect with you and learn more about your work at shapeshift and shift happens.

Yeah, so I'm on IG a little bit. My IG is shapeshift, underscore unfinished. I also have my personal, which is K-T-K-A-T-E seven six. I'm always on LinkedIn. LinkedIn's a good place for me, just professionally.

I tend to connect there a lot. Until I met you and we started having this conversation, I hadn't have not been public about this journey. Like, al this is the most public I will been

If anybody wants to talk about it, explore it. The hard part is there's not a lot of great resources around marijuana.

Yeah.

every book I can find. I follow all this stuff on TikTok and, on social media. It's kind of spurred an interest in maybe writing about it.

I'm here for anybody who's going through addiction and especially marijuana addiction, I would love to connect and learn more.

Yeah, I always tell people, DM me, I answer every DM that I get. If I can help, I will. I'm not, some leading pillar of here's how to get sober, but it helps to know that you're not alone.

Sure.

Katie, thank you so much for sharing your time. Thank you for being on the show, and thank you for sharing your story with me.

It's beautiful and I know it probably feels like a coming out moment, so congratulations.

Thank you so much for the opportunity, Samantha. I really enjoyed meeting you, I've watched all of your stuff and listened to all your stuff, and I think what you're doing is amazing and a beautiful resource.

I also think, like, know, you're in your forties, I'm in my late forties. really hope that women who are going through, in particular, women going through this, new phase of life called Perry and Menopause, have resources and can find community to balance out their lives.

Not even balance, but find harmony in their lives. That's where I think the conversation around sobriety could, impart space wisdom and freedom for how to move forward through a time period, which, drugs and alcohol do not support at all.

They make it far worse. I'm also really curious about the relationship of drugs and alcohol and this time period and season of life.

Yeah. I love that. Thank you.

. Hey guys, thanks so much for listening to this Samantha Parker show, and we'll see you on the next episode,