Just For The Day
Just For The Day
#1 - Qualifying (Our Story)
Jay and Diane introduce ourselves and our recovery journeys as a recovering addict and codependent, sharing our decade-long experience navigating the challenges of addiction in our marriage. This podcast channel features daily support program readings with commentary for people seeking program support.
• Jay's addiction began with pornography and video games then evolved into prescription pills, alcohol and marijuana
• Diane's codependency manifested as perfectionism, criticism, and taking on a caretaker role from childhood patterns
• Our marriage nearly ended in 2015 after five years of struggles
• Both committed to recovery programs - Jay in NA/AA and Diane in Al-Anon, while also strengthening our relationship through therapy
• Ten years later, we've maintained sobriety and built a healthy partnership based on honesty and mutual support
• Recovery is ongoing - Jay still experiences addiction relapses while Diane falls into old patterns, but we believe in progress not perfection
We hope our story resonates with you as you navigate your own recovery journey. If you have comments or questions, we're open books and would love to hear from you.
Jay and Diane's Just For The Day podcast is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Just for Today, any 12-Step program, or any other recovery-based product or organization. They should not replace your regular group or sponsor meetings.
The views expressed are solely those of the hosts and guests. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Welcome to our podcast, Just for the Day. I'm Jay and I am a recovering addict.
Speaker 2:I'm Diane and I am codependent. I won't say recovering.
Speaker 1:You won't say recovering.
Speaker 2:I think I'm still very codependent in very many ways. But yeah, we thought that it would be nice to start with a qualifying episode and then we'll jump into. Our plan is to do daily readers every day and to share the reading and comment on the reading, so that people who are just looking for just that little bit of recovery program will have somewhere to land yeah, yeah, to really try to share with people some of the things that we found valuable, but also to build a community of sorts. Right.
Speaker 1:You know, because it's difficult Life, there's a lot of demands on our time and you know the goal of this would be 15, 20 minutes that people could listen to in their car on the way to and from work or just listen to while they're doing a chore.
Speaker 1:To get a daily dose of, you know, recovery based content, but coupled with commentary from a couple who has been in recovery for over a decade and have made it work right, which a lot of relationships struggle and or end when people go into recovery, and we have found a way to, you know, grow together. And so, you know, this podcast is for people who want that, but it's also for people who want to. You know, this podcast is for people who want that, but it's also for people who want to. You know, see both sides of the perspective, because the addict's perspective is different than the codependent's perspective. Did I get that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally so, Jay. Why don't you start by outlining what qualifies you to attend a recovery program?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I've been in. When was my first meeting, would you say?
Speaker 2:We went to our first meeting in March of 2014. Was it 14?
Speaker 1:So we were in the program for a year before we almost divorced.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Is that about right? So you know my experience with addiction is I've been an addict my whole life. I grew up with addicts, I grew up watching addicts and being codependent I and that was a fun dance to have to play in my, you know, infant and teenage years. And then you know it didn't really struggle with addiction. It did it in different forms, like video games probably, and other like more ben, benign, still damaging and hurtful to marriages, but rather not as destructive, probably in different ways. I was working a night shift to support my family while I was an undergrad and my psychiatrist suggested I take sleeping pills to manage the sleep difficulty and although, although that was great, what I quickly realized was that I could. If I stayed awake, if I pushed through the effort of the sleeping pill to put me to sleep, I got high.
Speaker 1:And that was my first say delve into an addiction. So it started with pills for in 2000, and probably 12, and then escalated to the point where I went from, you know, taking them as prescribed, to double prescription, abusing them, probably within the first couple of years, like really extensively, and then, when that became a problem, switched to alcohol, because, you know, the prescriptions only filled every once a month but I can get alcohol whenever I want, dabbling in marijuana at the same time, um, until it basically destroyed our relationship and our life that we had built, and so entered recovery in 2000 and, like you said, 14. And then, and then, when we almost divorced, um, basically committed myself to the program and have been in the program ever since, sometime between 2014 and 2015. Um, and now have, you know, over a decade of sobriety in alcohol and then a variety of other sobriety dates with all the bevy of other things that I've struggled with right Because you know, it's either been narcotics, it's been sex, it's been food, it's been drugs, it's been alcohol, it's been.
Speaker 1:There's a whole slew of those things. So what about you? Where would you say? What would you say? We can go into those in deeper, deeper. That's just kind of the overview, but in terms of what would be your overview of, kind of like, your recovery path and what qualifies you to be a codependent, slash addict.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that this is definitely an overview episode. We will go into details and more specifics over the course of our readings. Things will come out and we'll share those details because we're willing to be vulnerable if that helps other people to be able to connect.
Speaker 2:For me, I mean, the standard response would be you're my qualifier, but we both hate that. We hate that I qualify by myself to be a codependent. I got to deal with a childhood that was very anti-emotion, anti-difficult discussions. It was very neglectful. I was a latchkey kid, right, I was coming home. I was a latchkey kid from the time I went to school, but by the time I was 12, I was coming home and making dinner for myself and my older sister and just kind of figuring things out in my world by myself for a lot of it and that kind of created a very self-reliant and that kind of created a very self-reliant personality. But it also created a caretaker role.
Speaker 2:So I ended up getting into a lot of different relationships and all those relationships I was the perfect girlfriend, I was the perfect friend. I was the perfect student, the perfect employee, whatever I was, just whatever people needed me to be. And I have a lot of connections with the idea that I need to be perfect in order to earn affection or love or acceptance. And there's just a lot of reading the room, reading people around me and living up to what that expectation is and held you to a very high standard which you did not live up to and um? My responses to your ineptitude is that a terrible way.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting way of saying that. Okay, yeah, my response bring the gloves off.
Speaker 2:You were so stupid you, you just were a very kept man, boy, child and um, and that worked when we were dating because it was, you know, I let, I had the experience and I'm, you know, five and a half years jay's senior. So I, I came in and I was able to take care of you and show you the world and all these different things and I liked being the expert. And then you, um, you had to deal with a lot of my criticisms and a lot of my corrections and that didn't help with your addictions and and and so you kind of escaped from me in all the different ways that you knew to escape, and the more you escaped resentment, just built and built, and so over the course of our marriage we had a lot of issues come up that became off-topic subjects that we couldn't broach without the other one getting upset yeah and and all of that I think led to kind of the breakdown of the marriage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we were married for five years before it.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was difficult up to that point but it was getting increasingly more difficult and you know that was, I guess, when I had had enough. You know, because while you're criticizing me, and marriage is tough and I can't measure up to your standards, I'm also just trying to, you know, do the best I can and you know, going to school and working and trying to support the family, and so feeling, and then coming home and being verbally beaten up that I'm just not measuring up. Great, that's how I feel, generally right, so that now that's not the reason I as addicts we talk about oftentimes that marriage is a dance and I didn't drink because of those things, but they definitely helped reinforce the need to escape.
Speaker 2:And so I would. First they were a convenient escape, yeah.
Speaker 1:So early in our relationship. I, before I had drugs, I would escape to friends and friend groups and social outings and things I was interested in right, which made you feel more isolated and increase the criticisms and you're trying to pull me back.
Speaker 2:And anyway, right, as newlyweds he'd have like five days nights a week where he'd be hanging out with friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which in retrospect, you know, made sense to me because you know, when I came home I was beaten up Right and so, uh, later in life that turned to drugs because I could escape in your presence if I was high and drunk and that's why, and part of that, staying up late in the evening, and anyway, we don't go into details.
Speaker 1:But over that five year period up to 2015, I had this escalating pattern of trying to escape into more, more and more harder things and in the end, before I had had enough, you know, I had started to realize that my life had basically become unmanageable and I had convinced myself that I could, and yet it wasn't at all. You know, I would basically, you know, use up my prescription pills within the span of five days, then eat into my second prescription set of pills in another five days and then white knuckle it for the remaining 20 days of the month and using some combination of alcohol and marijuana to to deal with it till I could fill my prescription again. And I first recognized that unmanageability in prescription pills and then, as I tried to get away from that, it then transitioned to alcohol, at which point it then just escalated and got worse. Right, and so, you know, right before the end, I would say the end of our first relationship. Now, Esther.
Speaker 1:Perel says that. She said that many couples will have multiple marriages over the course of their life and some of those couples will have those multiple marriages with the same person. And we had, we had a one relationship that ended in 2015.
Speaker 1:That's right, and the end of that relationship. What it looked like was, you know, I was in between my master's degree and my undergraduate degree, uh, taking care of the kids, but not really. You would leave in the morning, I would get up in the morning and I would put the kid in front of, put one of our children, uh, in front of a show and play video games all day, and then I would get off the video game a couple hours before you got home, sometimes a half an hour, and hurriedly clean the house, thinking that I was smart and that I you wouldn't be able to tell. And you would walk in the door exhausted from a day of work, right, and I would go oh, I'm so exhausted from cleaning and working with the kids all day. Could I just lay down and play a video game for a bit to relax? And you, what are you going to say? You'd, you'd always say yes.
Speaker 1:So then I would sit down, even though I had played video games for, like you know, six hours. I would then sit down at the end of the day and play video games for four hours, starting to drink in the evening at some point to escape, and you would make us dinner and then clean the house'd love your perspective on where where it was ending, but my enough came shortly after the end. So what was like that? What was that like for you at that time?
Speaker 2:oh, I definitely had a martyr mentality during that period of time. It was a woe me, it was. What did I do to deserve this god? Why can we not have a successful marriage? You know, I'm putting everything into it, I'm doing all the work. It was a tally system of what I'm doing versus what you're doing to contribute. I could tell that you had. Only you were either a really crappy cleaner or you weren't doing it until the very last minute.
Speaker 1:Both are probably true.
Speaker 2:Both may have been true, um. So I definitely felt alone in my marriage, and now I went through a couple of different phases. I went through phases where I would vent to other friends who were also newlyweds, or to my sister or my mother, and I would vent to people and what I found was they had lots of things to vent back and so it would feed. We'd feed on each other, and not just that, but I would. When I would vent to these people, then I'd get together with them and their spouses and our spouses, whatever, and jay wouldn't feel comfortable with them because he wouldn't know what I had told them and it was a very it created very unsafe social atmosphere for him, and so I started to hold it in and I started to not share those details with other people and instead what ended up happening was the, the addictions grew and they got worse and they got worse, but I had nobody I could talk to about it.
Speaker 1:You were isolated alone.
Speaker 2:I was completely isolated, trying to clean up after you, trying to pick up all the pieces and not being able to connect with anybody not just, but with anybody about it yeah, you also.
Speaker 1:You mentioned a couple of things. That's one of the things. One of the other things that maybe you weren't going to touch on, but you wanted me dead I did.
Speaker 2:I did go through phases where I thought okay, he eats so much and he sits around and plays video games all the time just like heart attack.
Speaker 2:Come on, take him out of my life. This would be so much easier. We have life insurance, I can pay off the house and then I don't have him draining like you were just a drain on me, it was just another child, but you ate 10 times as much as the other kids did and, like when you started with the drinking, there was definitely a fear and my you know my miser came up of. There goes all the money.
Speaker 1:I'm the main breadwinner, I'm bringing in the money and now we're going to be spending 300, $500 a month on pot and alcohol which we did for a long time, which we did, um, yeah, so that's, that's a pretty good description of what it was like for you at that point. Um, so then that takes us to kind of like, at least I would say, my moment of I had had enough when it was like really unmanageable. So you know, we painted the picture of what my day pretty much consisted of in your day, and that was pretty typical, right, of how we were feeling internally.
Speaker 2:Are you going to get into the day that I asked you to move out?
Speaker 1:That's what I was going to go to next. Did you want to cover something? Yeah, before that, when you were struggling with prescription drugs, we did go through the phase of me counting your pills.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. We went through the phase of me holding onto your pills to divvy them out to you, which was a terrible idea. He just got mad at me and it just didn't end up working. But then, when you had decided that you were going to take up drinking, I gave the suggestion of you. Everything else is out of control and if you're going to start drinking, you're going to quickly become an alcoholic, so we need to attend an AA meeting. And so the two of us went to an open AA meeting, and that was in March of 2014. And they had a speaker who was an AA speaker, and they had an Al-Anon speaker.
Speaker 2:And the Al-Anon speaker when she stood up and was sharing her story. It was the first I'd ever heard a Al-Anon speaker and the Al-Anon speaker when she stood up and was sharing her story. It was the first I'd ever heard of Al-Anon and I was thrilled at the idea of a support group for people affected by other people's drinking, and so I ran up to her after the meeting, got the information and I, as of March 2014, I became a diligent. Every week I was at that meeting.
Speaker 1:Before we go into, like maybe just kind of the destruction, I want to tell everyone who's listening is you know, if you're feeling like you're resonating with a lot of what's being said and these have been your experiences there is a way out. We didn't have the tools. There are simple tools you can deploy to help you do that, and so that's part of what we're hoping to do here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, over the course of you know the next, however many years of readings, we're hoping that we'll be able to touch on some of the tools, obviously some of the program tools, but we've also been through years of therapy and all these other things that we've been able to bring into our marriage and into our lives.
Speaker 1:And so, like an addict, hearing your story would feel quite triggered, right yeah, because all the things you said were true. And yet they're harsh and you know, having been on the other side, I no longer look at those things as hurtful. I look at them as important building blocks on who I am today.
Speaker 1:And I'm actually grateful for them because they brought me to my rock bottom, and my rock bottom was the thing that propelled me to make the change I needed to become a better man, and and that doesn't change any of the things that we experienced, but I'm grateful for them now. So, uh, let's, can we dive into the events that may be and then that'll we could share, kind of like where each of our rock, each of our kind of enough stages were, that's okay. Where we had enough, we're like okay, I'm done.
Speaker 1:Teach me higher power. I guess it was the 24th of June the 25th was when you asked me to leave. We had gone out to a friend's to have dinner with a cousin and in a conversation I had started to live a second life, essentially, and was presenting to Diane a different person than who I was with other people. And it just so happened, in the conversation we had with my cousin and his at the time girlfriend, that what came out was is that I had made a comment that was quite incredulous to Diane's beliefs in front of Diane.
Speaker 2:And, and so casually that it was like it just flowed off your tongue, like oh, this is how he actually feels and he would never have said that in front of me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so Diane walked away from that evening feeling like my husband is not my husband.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, after that experience, on that date, I I definitely felt like we had grown apart and you had changed and you were no longer the man I married and I didn't like this man that I was married to, and so I had finally reached the end. And that was the kind of the straw is he's living a double life and I don't know who this man is. And so, yeah, the next day I went and I worked, and then after work I went to counsel with a couple people who had had divorces to say what's the process, how do I do this? And they gave me the advice that I should send you to church the next day and, when you leave, change the locks, pack your bags and meet you outside with all your stuff outside and don't let you back in the house.
Speaker 1:Which that advice was given because they had been burned right. They had a spouse who, for probably good reason, had or at least they had that those thoughts for a good reason, because the spouse had hurt them and made it a lot harder for them, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had made plans. I had. I had called um. I had called a couple of people that I thought would support Jay so that when I did this he'd have a support system, and when I talked with one of them, it happened that Jay's dad was in town.
Speaker 1:He was visiting.
Speaker 2:And he had done a renovation project with Jay and was there and she had suggested that I have someone with me in case her brother lost his Jay's dad lost his temper and my father got violent or got upset, because he can be quite scary when he gets upset Right and so.
Speaker 2:So I had plans, I had people lined up, but I had it all figured out and then in the morning I woke up and I looked over and you were sleeping and you just look like this innocent boy and I couldn't do it. I laid in bed. Finally you kind of woke up, and as you woke up, you, you know we're doing your stretches and whatever. And I said, jay, I need to talk to you. And I said I don't want to be married to you anymore. I had a lot of plans today and I kind of ran over kind of what I had been told to do to you and I said I don't, I don't want to do that, I just want you to leave. Do to you. And I said and I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't want to do that, I just want you to leave. Yeah, and from my perspective, you know I was hung over. So, like you know, I'm waking up to this, like I'm thinking I went to bed that night, the evening prior, feeling like man. Life is good. I've got this all situated. I can be who I want when I'm not with Diane. I can be who I need to be in front of her to get my high and to get my fix, and then I get to play my video games and life is great.
Speaker 1:I wake up the next morning to. You know you've had enough. And I remember, you know there have been a few times in our life where I've seen you as convicted and I could tell I'm a pretty good judge of character and a judge of like, um, like intention and a person, what they're communicating. And I remember very distinctly feeling oh, oh, she's a hundred percent serious. There is firmness here and I'm not going to be able to change this. And I begged you. I sat there and I begged you, um, I had also running in my head all the damage from my parents' divorce that was so ugly Right, and the and the shots that you took at each other.
Speaker 2:I'm like this is what am I and I'm just reaching just begging you to to not do that begging, to let me stay, um we eventually settled on that I could live in the basement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, not in that conversation. And that conversation you the one thing that you did bring up, that that caused me to change my plans was you saying but my dad is here and we can't do this while my dad is here. And so you had proposed me going to church with the kids and you'd help your dad pack so that he could go stay the rest of his vacation with his brother and um, and that's where we we separated and we said you're right, that makes more sense. So then I went to have a shower and you went downstairs.
Speaker 1:Yeah and uh and just wept in front of my dad, which completely triggered him because he had an incredibly messy divorce, and I remember you coming down the stairs after and I said I'm not your wife, I'm not going to hurt him, I just, I just can't take it anymore.
Speaker 2:And then I went back upstairs.
Speaker 1:Well, yep, His response to you was Diane, you have no idea what you've just opened up upon the family, which makes sense to me from his perspective, because he wasn't taking any responsibility. He was basically saying you are going to do everything that my wife did and it's destruction, right. So you went back upstairs. I basically composed myself, told him you know he couldn't be there, so he was going to go to his brother's house right.
Speaker 1:I came back upstairs to kind of get dressed or whatever. I can't remember what happened after that. Then, the next 10 minutes, as I went down to check on my father, he had then drunk the rest of the alcohol that was in the house that he had access to, because he couldn't handle it, because that's what I was growing up with right.
Speaker 1:So then I took it and this is. There's a little bit of, you know, lack of clarity in around the timing of events, because what I remember is then at some point driving him to his brother's house and then we engage in a conversation.
Speaker 1:Where it was, it was in the car as we were driving to my uncle's house, you and your dad, yeah yeah, because you drove him to the church church where he then switched to his brother's car and left and then, on the way there, my father's thoughts to me was you know how much money do you have access to and take care of yourself? Uh, take all, just pull all the money. Same thing that was being communicated to you on the back end right. And I remember coming home. I do remember talking to you while you're in the shower and I remember a couple things I communicated to you. The first one was the first person to take the shot sets off the war yeah, essentially, can I recount the shower?
Speaker 2:go ahead. So this was before you drove your dad, so he must have said something and then gone into more detail in the car, because when I was in the shower after you went down, you found him drunk. You came back upstairs to use the bathroom. I was in the shower and I said Jay, I'm scared. I'm scared that I'm going to go to church and now you're going to do everything to me that I was told to do to you that's right and that's when you said, and I said the first person to take the shot starts the world.
Speaker 1:I didn't say it that way, but I don't remember exactly what I said, but I had observed from my parents that it just gets nastier and nastier, and as soon as one person like had you taken the shot, who knows what would have happened? Right, had I taken a shot, who knows what would happen? And then regardless. Anyway, he then encouraged me to take a shot.
Speaker 1:He encouraged me to take all the money to give you no access, to deny you, because that's what happened to him by the way, he came home one day from a trip and every all the bank accounts were emptied, all the lines of credit were drawn and he had no money yeah and so, but I, but I, I came home and shared I don't think I think this, I don't think you had shared with me what the advice that had been given to you specifically, but you would kind of generally, and I came back and shared with you guess what?
Speaker 1:this is what I was told, but I can't do that to you, and so I'm grateful in this moment that you and I chose not to hurt one another.
Speaker 2:Our friendship managed to overcome all of that animosity and all the advice.
Speaker 1:But it didn't change your conviction you were still getting a divorce. I remember the end of that night. We had agreed to let me move into the basement, moves, my things downstairs Because we had a separate apartment.
Speaker 2:We had a separate apartment.
Speaker 1:You know, I remember saying goodbye to you, closing the door and walking down the steps to the basement, the fear of the reality that I could not see my kids now unless it was authorized, that I was now limited in terms of my access to my wife. And I saw. I view that moment as the most important moment in my life because I saw into the future. I saw two paths On the one hand, me not doing enough to recover from my addiction and continuing to have the struggle which meant divorce, and it meant part-time time with my children and financial destruction and all of the things that that meant that I had watched my family go through. And then I saw this door, this second path, that I knew what was required. It required me to commit myself wholeheartedly to recovery because I couldn't beat it.
Speaker 1:I had tried, I'd tried for a year and couldn't and couldn't defeat it. And in that moment I remember that this was my option and it was either divorce or it was recovery. And I made the choice to recover and I got a home group and I got a sponsor and I talked to all the people I needed to. I got a counselor and since that time have done nothing, but now made mistakes. I've relapsed many times.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But, um, that was probably my moment where I had had enough and I'm like, okay, my life is unmanageable, and what do I want? Do I want my, my father's life, or do I want this opportunity to potentially recover and I didn't know.
Speaker 2:anyway, you should share what your sponsor said to you when you told him your motivation for getting clean.
Speaker 1:Uh yeah. So it was around that time I was starting to connect with people in the program more meaningfully and I remember going to get coffee with a gentleman before a meeting and kind of he was asking it was for Narcotics Anonymous, I had gone to AA and I was like I remember, like trying to figure out but it didn't. Aa didn't fit with me because my drug of choice was prescription pills. Alcohol was great, but I always wanted the prescription pills. So I went and talked with this gentleman who was introducing me to Narcotics Anonymous and I told him kind of what I was trying to do and that I wanted to, you know, get clean for my family, to save my family, and his immediate response is it's not enough. He's like it's not enough, you'll fail. And I was like what do you mean? Like that's how, frankly he said it to me immediately.
Speaker 1:And I said what do you mean? He said well, if it's not for yourself, period of recovery where you know I had to learn and adapt and it was uncomfortable, but anyway, we can go into that. But I'm interested. So that was kind of like my low point. And then the actions, and we're going to talk about all those that we all learn in the podcast, all the actions that we took, which were many, but that's kind of what took me to the point where I needed to change.
Speaker 2:Right, well, and I told you that I went into the recovery programs when you started drinking. And then, you know, six, eight, ten months later, whatever, um, we ended up having that separation and we had three kids at the time. We had a pretty newborn baby, a two and a half year old and a four year old really right, and it was terrifying the idea of being a single mom, with those young kids having to be the main breadwinner. That was all terrifying to me, but I did it and we were separated for three months and shortly after we got back together again, we were having a conversation in the kitchen and I was critical.
Speaker 1:Just railing on me, just railing, just like you know, complaining, arguing, yeah.
Speaker 2:And Jay had made all kinds of sacrifices and he had given up so many of his addictions and it just was never good enough, right? And you said that you had a feeling when I was doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, like cause I, you know, I like a three. The winds of recovery are swift, just like the winds of addiction. And and I had gone in I was in recovery for probably three months, 90 days. That was right around the time where the obsession had started to leave me. So I was starting to get some relief from my mental anguish of wanting drugs. But I was cleaning up after myself, I was taking care of myself better, I was showing up like a man, I was doing a lot of the things, which was obviously why we were getting back together and I'm sitting.
Speaker 1:I remember doing dishes, I was doing something and just listening to you just sit there and just kind of circle back and forth around me as and just just berating me. And I remember I was just listening, cause that's like I'm like, okay, I'm just going to hear, I'm just going to try to you know, understand. And then I'm watching inside myself as I'm like, man, I want to drink. I could really use a what I said. But I said, if this is how you're going to be, I don't want to be married to you because I want to drink. And this is inappropriate. And I remember you feeling looking quite shocked. I don't know if you remember that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was one of my moments, right, my moment of I need to work on me. When I first went to recovery and for those that, basically first year I was focused on on you, my interactions with you, how to maintain sanity despite being in a relationship with you, and then other addicts that I had discovered in my life, and and it was that kind of a focus. But this is the one that turned the microscope back on to me. And when you said I've made all these changes and if you don't change your crap, I don't want to be married to you anymore. And I had already recently heard somebody talking about where we lived.
Speaker 2:There was a rehab center. I called them after that conversation. I called them and they happened to have an opening like the very next month. So I rearranged all my schedule to get time off of work month. Yeah, so I rearranged all my schedule to get time off of work and I um had you stay with the kids for three weeks and it was a three-week codependent rehab that I did you locked your phone up.
Speaker 2:You didn't, you couldn't communicate I remember you being able to make a phone call occasionally, but like you were, yeah, one day a week one day a week I could call home and I was completely unreachable. I basically worked my steps four six in that center and got a lot of information about um, a codependence, and about childhood trauma and all kinds of stuff from that. But it was basically the catalyst that got me started working on my own crap, which is completely independent of all the addicts in my life and their crap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that was the turning point for our relationship. What then ensued post that was two individuals wholeheartedly committed to their own program. We would work our own separate program and come back and just tell each other how it was going, and we were trying to manage our relationship. But what became important was we knew that we would fail if we didn't work our program.
Speaker 2:But what became? Important was we knew that we would fail if we didn't work our program, if we didn't ingest the 12 steps of AANA Al-Anon, whatever it is, and I think something we did that a lot of couples don't do when they enter recovery is that we kept each other apprised of our progress, our learnings. We checked in with each other a lot through that process, you know.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you brought that up, because that's one of the things we did. So, while working on ourselves, we also worked on our relationship, and I remember reading marriage books and going to couples counseling and going into individuals counseling. There was a ton that needed to happen, right, but at the core it was we had a friendship that we didn't want to lose, and then we, and then we were willing to have the hard conversations and then work on the things that we were communicating to each other, and so you know, that's kind of our story and the today. I guess we should probably give a picture of what our life is today, cause, you know, that was, uh, 2015. So 10 years ago, over a decade.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, and then the climb out of that and so. So I guess, what would you say? How would you frame your life today with our relationship and and addictions and stuff like that today?
Speaker 2:our life is completely different now. We we have still our friendship, and there's nobody I like to spend time with more than my husband. We spend an excessive amount of time with each other, but we enjoy that. Um, we also are partners in everything in everything. We help each other, we support each other, we work together. We face every difficult conversation. If somebody has a feeling of jealousy or something that's like, oh you just triggered something from my youth.
Speaker 2:we sit down, we have very long conversations to work it all out and make sure that each of us knows who the other is and what they need, and we are giving that to each other.
Speaker 1:And we're still progressing, like we're learning. It's like it is literally like an onion, where we were peeling back major components back in 2015. Well, now we're still peeling back things, we're still learning, and the result of that is a deeper intimacy with my partner, a deeper feeling of being seen and heard and loved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we just tackle different topics, right um, I, we also have four children and we consider ourselves pretty good parents. We talk about all the difficult conversations with our kids and for my progress, I mean you can speak to your sobriety, but for my progress, my kids will tell me that I am gentle, that I'm patient, that I'm not critical. They tell me about their friends, parents and the mean shameful things that they say and all these different things and they're like I'm so glad that, that's not you.
Speaker 2:And what they don't realize is that was me, yeah, but we have worked so hard to get out of those habits of shame and criticism and tearing people down what's coming up for you there.
Speaker 1:That was really tender, so I wanted to I would love the audience to hear kind of what was going in and then I'll share a similar perspective. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't know. I just definitely teared up there that, um, I've come really far. I had someone come up to me and tell me something's different and he asked me what was different. He said you used to walk around and you were so bitter and you were angry and you had a chip on your shoulder and he's like I don't see that chip anymore. What's going on? So I explained to him about the recovery program. Yeah, and then I had another conversation with your father.
Speaker 1:This is the one you laughed about.
Speaker 2:Where, after the separation, probably a couple years after we were in recovery, a couple years after we had come back together again, we were sitting and playing cards with your father and at one point he said you know, diane, you used to be such a bitch and you're such a great person now. And so I think that a lot of it's not as easy to see sobriety and codependence, but knowing how many cycles that I have broken, yeah, already yeah, and obviously there's always still progress to make, but I I'm more pleasant to be around and I'm kinder to people and I'm and I love people more I'm empathetic of people I don't judge people like I used to you still criticize people.
Speaker 1:I do you still fall back into patterns of that and you can't, but we catch it right and we, and we and we, we know how to deal with it better now because we have the tools. We're still the same people to. If we flip the coin on me for a second, you know, yeah, I've got 10 years of sobriety from alcohol, 10 plus. But we were in Cabo just recently and I accidentally took a sip of a mojito or whatever.
Speaker 2:They brought over free mojitos and I thought it was horchata and we took a sip and it was like, oh no.
Speaker 1:Well, no, you didn't. I don't know if you recognized it right away you may or may not have. As soon as it touched my lips, I knew what was in it and I hadn't had an obsession about alcohol for over a deck, over almost a decade. And that alcohol touched my lips and the first thought I had is oh, that's alcohol, how can I get this in my system right now? And I and I literally. The next thought was I was watching your eyes until you turned away so I could down it without you watching and I caught myself like whoa. I put it down and I said Diane, don't leave me alone with this drink. Sobriety is, and you were told early on in our relationship that you should expect relapses. I have relapsed more times than I can count. Right, I haven't necessarily relapsed, I don't think, in alcohol. I don't necessarily count that as a relapse. Yeah, Cause you didn't do it on purpose. I have relapsed in marijuana. I grew marijuana at one point in our relationship since then in our basement, right, Because?
Speaker 1:I was using it for pain management, but I was also using it to get high. Yeah Right. So, like there have been a journey of sobriety, and especially with, I still struggle with prescription pills. I still. And the difference is, though, is is that and this is something my daughter said to me you know, it's the grace of God that I can still be the same addict inside. I can still struggle with the same things. My daughter told me just yesterday we were talking about something. She said, dad, I don't think you do anything wrong. And I said what do you mean? And she said I just don't think you do anything wrong.
Speaker 2:That girl idealizes you so much Well and that's my measure as a man.
Speaker 1:Right, I am her example. To hear her tell me that is such a blessing, because I was once not a man and and yet I struggle I still have addictive tendencies.
Speaker 1:I still have some active addictions, and yet we talk about it, we work through it, we have the and so it's possible's possible right, with sobriety and without sobriety, and so that's why we're here. We were, we hope. I guess that would be my heart. What I would want my odd the audience to feel is you're welcome here. This is a space where we're going to talk about the hard things.
Speaker 1:We're going to. It's going to be recovery focused, where we're demonstrating both perspectives with honesty and openness and willingness, which are the principles of recovery. But we're also going to, you know, hopefully grow together. We hope that you contribute, that you know, if you have something to say, that you'll comment on that wherever you find these podcasts, because we're going to look at them and we want to engage with you. We want to and we're hoping that this is useful, not just to us as we, but it's an effort.
Speaker 1:This is a 12th step for us where we're giving back to the community of what we have gained in terms of the life that we couldn't have without the program and so this is a pretty long episode because it's our qualifying episode.
Speaker 2:What we're planning is a daily reader, hopefully every day, but you know progress not perfection. We'll do the best that we can, and they're usually going to be shorter, um, but if you, uh, if you have any comments, if you have anything that any questions, we are open books and we'll share it with you and hopefully some of our story will resonate with you and hopefully some of it will help you guys as you're trying to figure out what to do with your own situations.
Speaker 2:We don't give advice, but we've been through a lot of different issues trauma that's right challenges that we've had to overcome and, uh, we're happy to share anything from our story that will help you.
Speaker 1:Our heart goes out to the still suffering addict. We feel for you who are in relationships that struggle and you see no way out. We're there for you when you feel like you can't beat that addiction or that you're so obsessed with your partner. We have found a way, and it's through these 12 steps of recovering, and we hope that we can get that too and we can enjoy recovery together we'll talk with you later.
