What I Didn't Know: Building the Life You Recovered For

EP14: The Unorthodox Recovery | Atheism, Accountability, and the 12-Step Paradigm with Steve Sarin

• Netanya Allyson • Season 1 • Episode 15

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Is the standard recovery path the only path to a healthy life? This week’s episode features certified recovery coach and digital marketer Steve Sarin, who shares an open, honest perspective, challenging traditional concepts in sobriety to make room for a more flexible, individualized approach. This powerful conversation affirms that all pathways are valid. 

We dive into controversial but crucial topics with a welcoming approach. Steve shares his methods for making the 12 Steps work for the militant atheist, explaining how principles like humility and peer accountability can be applied to follow the program without the traditional concept of a Higher Power. We explore why the recovery community must move beyond stigmatizing language like "addict" and "alcoholic," and clarify the vital differences between peer support and professional clinical care. 

The conversation moves into personal development, where Steve offers practical advice on setting rigid boundaries with friends and family, and the emotional work required to identify and let go of superficial, substance-based relationships. We conclude with a powerful challenge: look closely at the concepts you are most resistant to, as that is often where your greatest personal breakthrough lies. If you believe your recovery should be flexible, personalized, and open to all options, this episode is a blueprint for creating a resilient foundation that works for you.

SPEAKER_02:

This podcast is about those moments. It's about the 20 points that change us. The things I wish someone had told me that I only understand and looking at. Come on in. You belong here. And we're gonna talk about all of it. I'm your host, Natanya, and this is what I didn't know. Before we begin, a quick note. This podcast explores themes such as mental health, addiction, trauma, and recovery. While the stories here are honest and heartfelt, they're not a substitute for professional advice, therapy, or medical treatment. Please listen with care and pause anytime you need to. Take whatever resonates for you and leave the rest. Today's guest is Steve Saren. Something that I'm really passionate about is bringing multiple perspectives about anything to the table. And Steve comes with that today. We get into atheism in recovery and what that experience has been like for him. We talk about non-12-step brands of service and other ways to do things that you may or may not know about. And overall, I just love, love, love what I call recovery a la carte, which is there are many different ways for you to be in recovery. There's many different aspects of how people will tell you how to do this. And I don't think there's one right one. And I think there's room for all of it. And what I have done personally is take different pieces of it, take what has resonated, and I leave the rest of what doesn't work for me. And I do that in order to do what I hope you can get from this too, which is to keep building a life that works for me to stay in recovery. I had to build something in order to keep me coming back. And so I hope that that some of that can provide a different perspective for those of you that may need it. So here's Steve. Steve, thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure, sure. Yeah, I'll leave out most of the drunchologs and give you uh give you kind of a timeline view. Thank you. So my my first experience with substances, I was about 12 or 13. Uh I had been having really bad anxiety attacks related to uh going to school. You know, I didn't know why at the time, but there were multiple factors at play there. The biggest one being I was a gay kid who was starting to go through puberty in realizing it. And I was growing up in a somewhat rural uh community outside of uh Ann Arbor, Michigan.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Um it was I I had gone to a different elementary school, and it was just a rough transition. I wasn't making friends, and uh, I ended up going to uh a mental health provider, and they gave me Atavan, uh, a benzo to cope with that. Yeah. Um, and thought I needed to be on that indefinitely throughout my teenage years. So, well, I in the beginning I took it as prescribed. I liked the effects of the clonopen uh that they eventually had me on. It got me out of the gay thing, it got my head out of that. I could just turn off and not think about any of my problems. So that is where I think the flip, the the the switch was initially flipped that activated those genes that definitely do run in my family. High school started drinking, made friends. That was the thing that brought me friends was there were these other kids who wanted to drink, skip school, smoke pot. And that's where it really took off. Uh the first time I drank, um, I drank three quarters of a fifth by myself. And not anywhere in that point did it occur that I had had enough or that I should stop at some point. It just never occurred to me. Started drinking more, eventually was not expelled, but politely asked to not return for senior year of high school. So I kept drinking. A couple years later, I went back and got my actual diploma. Um, but kept drinking. I worked in restaurants where the normalization of addiction is very common. Yeah. It's hard to spot that you're an alcoholic when all your friends want to go out to bars after work and drink too every single night. So I did that for a few years. Um and then in 2011 is where I went from what I would describe as a functional, very heavy drinker alcoholic into non-functional. I had a lot of spare time on my hands, and I started hanging out with a friend of mine who was obviously and self-admittedly an alcoholic. Um he sent me a text at like, you know, 11 o'clock in the morning on a Thursday. Hey, you know, I got to work at five. Do you want to come over and do some shots first? And I would do that. And then something, something really switched in me where it went from problematic heavy drinker with consequences to I was drinking when I woke up. I don't know if it was the frequency or what, but I by the end of that summer, I was drinking uh morning, noon, and night, about a fifth of vodka day. Um, and that went on for a few years. Um, I came out to Colorado where I live now. Um, my mom and a couple really good friends had moved out here. So I came out here for a summer to hang out and wasn't drinking when I first headed out here, but started drinking again and was back to the races. You know, like no time had passed, like uh back to drinking a fifth right away. So I I was supposed to go to treatment um in 2014, but that didn't quite work out for me. So I kept drinking. I uh I unfortunately got a DUI uh in that time frame and was mostly sober for that year. You know, I I am an addict at heart, so I found ways to skirt the uh the urine analysis testing that they do when you're on probation for a DUI. So I was able to get plastered drunk once a month, but the majority of the year I was not uh drinking, then got off probation early. Um and I left the probation office and went to a liquor store and a weed store and bought some marijuana and a fifth and it was back off to the races again. Then I year goes past, I'm still working in restaurants, uh, and I go out for drinks with some work folks and ended up at one of their houses. Um, and he had some Molly. I had never done MOLLE before. Um, I remember talking about doing it, and then the next thing I remember, there's EMTs in the house. It wasn't an overdose or anything. Um, I had fallen because I was so drunk with Molly, it cracked the back of my head open and had 14, 15 staples in it, tons of stitches. And I can remember uh standing on my mom's uh patio and smoking a cigarette and thinking this is one of those fork in the road moments in life. I can ask for help, ask for some money to pay for a treatment center to go get some professional help, or I can continue on this path. I clearly still enjoyed drinking somehow uh and working in restaurants, but I always there's nothing wrong with working in restaurants, but it always snagged at me that I had never finished school and then I was still just asking rich people how they wanted their steaks cooked. I thought I could contribute more to life than that. So I I sucked it up. I asked for for the money to go to treatment, and I went to a treatment center out here in Colorado on the 28th of March 2017. I count my sobriety as the 29th, because I was pretty, pretty hammered when I went in there, like most people do. And that was the last time uh I got drunk. I did what was suggested of me, went through treatment, then did sober living. I did the AA 90 and 90, um, went back to school, finished my degree, did a bunch of internships, uh, landed in working in recovery. So that is a somewhat abbreviated version of how I how I landed here. Primarily, alcohol and benzos were very were my thing.

SPEAKER_02:

Fair. Um do you do you currently work in recovery at all, like as a job, or did you just in the past?

SPEAKER_00:

No, I do now. So I am actually I actually work for myself. I'm a digital marketing uh consultant and strategist for two addiction treatment centers here in Colorado. So basically what I do at work is the behind-the-scenes stuff on the internet to make sure when someone searches rehab near me that we would show up in results.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And are you are you also a recovery coach? Did I make that up?

SPEAKER_00:

Nope, nope. I'm a certified recovery coach. Um, I don't put those skills into practice too much these days, but yes, I went through all the training.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I love that you said that also, that you don't put that into practice because I think about that a lot. There's a lot of things. I have two college degrees that I don't quote put into practice. Um and I have a lot of training from my time working in recovery in in different parts of recovery that I got trained in. And I don't work in that space anymore, but I still find all that so valuable, right? Even if I don't utilize it per se in the way that society would call it useful. I still have the I have the maintaining of all of the things that I've learned in those spaces and still utilize them in different ways, even though that's not, you know, my job anymore.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, same for me. I found it really helpful. I mean, just with the I mean, just how to communicate with people and it it helped how to communicate, you know, uh from a marketing perspective about treatment centers is being more conscious of the language that we use to talk about recovery. But that part uh I uh really stuck with me. It definitely changed how I the the terminology I use when discussing addiction with uh with normies, at least.

SPEAKER_02:

What talk more about that. What specifically, how do you think it's framed, how do you think it's harmful, what language specifically do you not find useful, and how do you, you know, suggest that people use it differently?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, uh I think the most obvious one is is the word addict and alcoholic. Those are undoubtedly used as pejoratives. And it uh it really makes me angry that, you know, in mental health, this is one of the only areas uh in medicine where it's okay to call the person the disease. Like I've never heard an oncologist say, Yes, I have a patient who is a cancer and they need this regimen of treatment. But they would say, I have a patient who is an alcoholic and this is his treatment regimen. I don't I think that stigmatizes those two terms. I'm not an addict, I'm not an alcoholic, uh, I'm a person in recovery from substance use disorder. I think that is a much better way to frame it. And I think that goes for all mental health conditions. Someone is not schizophrenic. They have schizoid personality disorder, or I I think that's the one they've renamed it recently.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm curious, something I specifically wanted to ask you about was non-12-step brand of service. We've we got into it a little bit in an offline conversation, and it was something that you were really passionate about. I always am for 12-step things for many reasons. A lot of it has helped me. Um, I've been a part of it, I'm still a part of it. And I'm a big fan of like the ampersand, you know, like the and symbol, like recovery and 12-step and and what else is there to be more inclusive because I think that's just kind of what society has done for a lot of the time, and and that's what's been available and that's where people go. Um, but I am always interested in other ways of learning, growing, healing, changing, serving, giving back in any way that is outside of that paradigm because I think it works for some people and it doesn't work for everyone.

SPEAKER_00:

For sure. Absolutely. I uh I would.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm just curious what you think about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I think I think I I think that's spot on. So I my recovery and service started off like uh most traditional folks in a 12-step program. You know, I I waited until I'd gone through the steps with a sponsor and everything, and then was expected to get sponsees. And I resisted that for a long time, probably a year and a half, two years before I actually of recovery, before I actually took on a sponsee. I was giving myself far too much credit. Like, oh my gosh, what if I ruined this person and say the wrong thing? Um But I but I've had sponsees, I've done it, I've I've been a uh a GSR, I've done the higher level uh 12-step service. Um I've had sponsees that have been successful, but you know, working in behavioral health where you know I'm exposed to clinicians and seeing people get better in a clinical setting really had me question um not the value of sponsorship. That's not the right way to say it. I think sponsorship can be incredibly valuable, but I also see some folks who maybe shouldn't be sponsors. Uh I don't think and and who am I to tell them that? And uh, you know, part of that's the recovery coach training, wiring.

SPEAKER_02:

I want to hang on to this because it's a good point. I have my own thoughts about it, but can you say more about why you think that is?

SPEAKER_00:

You know, fourth and fifth steps are not a substitute for therapy and clinical care. I think they are incredibly valuable in a 12-step framework, but that is only one time where that exercise should be done. Sure it can be done with a sponsor, but it really needs to be done with somebody with at least a master's level education in uh psychology addiction, somebody with experience that knows how to do that. I I totally understand that, you know, 12-step programs are community-based organizations. They uh it's they say that they are forever non-professional and they absolutely have a place. I still go on a weekly basis. I got a home group, I'm the treasurer at my home group. Uh so I don't mean to disparage 12-step programs at all. I just think that there are more options for service out there that aren't made available or easily accessible to folks when they're involved in a 12-step program. You know, I I kind of took a step back a few years ago, um, and I stopped taking sponsees because I didn't feel I was qualified to do like a fourth and fifth step with them, rightly or wrongly. But um, yeah, I just wasn't feeling, you know, making coffee at meetings or or doing service like that. So what I did was I joined a board of Colorado artists in recovery to do service. I can you know give my 10, 12 hours a month, um, which is probably more than I would have spent with a sponsee in that situation, and use uh the skills I am confident in. Uh marketing, public relations, uh organizational efficiencies, project management, those things I feel confident in my ability to do. Um and it's just burned out. I was just burned out on uh on the 12-step brand of service.

SPEAKER_02:

And yeah. I love that you said that, all of it. Um, I'm gonna break it apart into a few pieces. The first I want to touch on is that not everyone may be necessarily equipped to be a sponsor. Um I've thought that many different times. I don't and and again, there's not a right or wrong. It's just an interesting thing to consider that someone that walked through this before you doesn't necessarily mean that they're trained to help you walk through it. And some are, like absolutely are. I happen to have my first sponsor was fabulous. Um, and is is my second sponsor, but I just I've had really great experiences, but I've also witnessed some people get re-triggered or re-traumatized through trying to help someone else when they weren't solid in their own stuff or didn't have the knowledge and awareness around how to hold space for some really heavy stuff. And I think it's just valid to point it out. And I I also think it's well intended, right? I think everyone wants to help. But I'm always interested in I kind of had that same thing of uh different spaces feeling pressured, like I had to go do this and this was the only way. And that's where I get into what else can you do? And board of directors for a nonprofit recovery is a great option. And there's so many other things, right? I'm curious as to what else you've seen people do that is not 12-step sponsorship.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, um, I have seen folks work for other nonprofit organizations not uh 12-step related. Uh there's an organization called the Phoenix that does phenomenal work all over the country. Uh, if you're listening to this, you should definitely look them up. They're fantastic. Give them a quick plug there on your podcast. Um thank you. I I I know folks that um that are heavily involved with the Phoenix. That is their fellowship, that's where they make friends, they go to those events regularly, and that is how they do recovery. Not so much the sponsorship piece, but that that is their main uh uh entryway into the recovery community. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, you know? Uh it it I think it's a toolbox. I think A-A-N-A, uh, I think those are tools within the toolbox. And if I was gonna build a shed in the backyard, I probably wouldn't just bring the hammer, I'd bring the entire toolbox. Yes, I could build the shed, but it would be pretty janky looking. And I want people to have the strongest possible foundations for recovery going into it. Uh yeah. Did that answer your question?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it did. I had um I've had different people in throughout this experience. One of them is a good friend of mine who is very 12-step oriented. And we had this great conversation one night because we were not necessarily seeing eye to eye about recovery. And because I am a person that needs variety, um, I get I get disinterested, I get the re repetition sometimes isn't helpful for me. If I feel like I'm being mothered or just kind of held down in a way that I have to stay in this box and I have to do the system, I kind of shut down. That's how I function and respond. And we were talking and he was like, I am the opposite. And I I I listened because I hadn't, we hadn't like had this conversation before and I found it really useful. But he was like, I can't do what you do. I would relapse without the structure and without the rigidity. And so it was very eye opening for me to like recognize. Remember that we're all different.

SPEAKER_00:

Um I think that's right, and I'm so glad you brought that up that it's not what recovery is not one size fits all. What works for me is not gonna work for the person sitting next to me at a 12-step meeting, and it needs to be more individualized. And I I don't know if the 12-step framework is uh as forgiving and flexible as I, in my personal opinion, think it should be.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And I think, and again, it's same same to what I was just saying, is I try to remember that some people do better with structure, some people do better with the rigidity, the repetition, the the meetings, the um the accountability that I think it provides, which is beautiful. And I just personally choose to do that and other things as well, right? It just it just I think helps me stay here. It helps me to keep going. Because I if I if I close down too much, I think I would leave at some point. Something else I want to ask you about was I wanted to know because I don't I really don't know the answer to this. Is your husband in recovery?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh he would tell you no, but I think he kind of is. He had he had uh his substance issues were far less severe than than me or a lot of the folks I know that were in recovery, but it had definitely become problematic, and he saw a therapist and stopped using, but he doesn't uh do 12-step or or anything like that at this point. So recovery-ish.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. How does that how does that work for you, the two of you?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, it was it if he had been, you know, as bad as I would, I don't think we would have made it past a first or second date without me finding out that he was working some program of recovery that would have been a a red flag for me. Given that his substance use misuse was on the serious side, but uh low intensity, him not actively doing a recovery program was okay with me because of the severity. But yeah, if he if he if I'd have been going on a date with someone with twin stories with me, uh, there would not have been a second.

SPEAKER_02:

Um I'm curious to know. I'm gonna go back a little bit because we talked about when you talked about being gay and substances when you were young, how did that unfold as you got older in terms of like getting more right with with that experience?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh as far as the recovery side of things, you know, I've always been uh a bit of a contrarian. I provocative.

SPEAKER_02:

That's why that's why I wanted you to be on the show.

SPEAKER_00:

So that was the point. Fair, fair. So the the gay thing, other than the initial discomfort being in a small rural town, late 90s, early 2000s, I don't know if that had a a really uh large effect on my substance use or recovery. I was okay with being gay once I had come out of the closet. And, you know, I was, you know, I throw it in people's faces. I took pride in it. I didn't use it as a I didn't use drinking as a coping mechanism for that at all. Those skills had uh skills, though. I mean, you're not wrong.

SPEAKER_02:

It's just it's just like, is that a useful skill? Maybe not, but definitely not.

SPEAKER_00:

But those drinking skills were already uh hardwired in me. Uh and I didn't it didn't really come up until I was in treatment. I can remember some of the other guys in treatment. It did create a wall between us um a little bit with some of the straight guys, but I was able to kind of break those down. And I I like to think change their opinions of of gay men in generally by meeting me. I think we made some progress on that front. Uh the only other time it came up also was uh fresh out of treatment when I was looking for a sponsor. Uh I was gonna do uh 12-step exactly by the book. I'm like, oh gosh, you know, I'm I don't know if I'm allowed to have like a should I get a straight guy sponsor? Gotta make sure he's not too hot because I could get I could I could get attracted to him. Like we wouldn't want to do, you know, catch feelings with a sponsor. Should I get a lesbian sponsor? Should I so there was a little bit of uh navigating that part of it, but generally speaking, I would say not a huge issue uh in the ongoing addiction. Like I was never into the to the club scene too hard. When I was 18, 19, I went a bunch, but then you know, quickly grew out of uh the club drug scene.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Um so what was that experience like for you in recovery or in not recovery treatment with men who are straight? Like was that the part of it that was not well received or not, you know, super open? What was that experience like?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh there were a couple uh blue-collar guys who were in there with me, and they were the ones who they never said anything that uh uh they never threw any slurs at me or said anything that I would that anyone would say was offensive. The way they interacted with me changed after that. Like if we'd be out smoking cigarettes, uh they'd stand further away and they wouldn't make comments uh that they probably would have made in front of a straight guy. They were a bit more reserved and they seemed to me, my perception was they were a bit more protective, closed off in their interactions with me. But I I told jokes to them for a month and was especially outgoing. And by the end of that experience, I think I don't think they had any issues with it.

SPEAKER_02:

That's great. I love that you told them jokes.

SPEAKER_00:

Um trying to be funny. Everyone likes the funny guy. It's hard to hate on and dislike somebody if they're, you know, constantly cracking you up.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and it's hard too, I would imagine, is like if nobody's directly saying anything, but you can feel it. Like I'm a human that can feel other people, but I've always struggled a little bit with where I can feel something is off or something, but I don't have tangible evidence, but I can just sense it or read the room.

SPEAKER_00:

I was a server for way too long. If there's one thing I'm really good at is I can read people from 20 feet away, and I could read that there was just something off, something had changed in those interactions with us.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. No, that is a skill I've also gotten I probably from serving, among other things, but you have to know how to people, right? And you walk around a restaurant. I used to say, like, I I'm I'm constantly in a in a state of assessing, analyzing. Um once I've analyzed something, I'm strategizing and then I'm putting that strategy into action. And then I just do it over and over again, right? And so not realizing that that's a skill that you develop in the restaurant industry, but also how that's lent itself to me in life and how I function, I didn't realize that that was a side effect of that experience.

SPEAKER_00:

There was one other time in treatment that I was made to feel other than the rest of the folks. Yeah. I I I won't name the treatment center, but they were short on space when I was there on the men's side of the treatments. So they got together and they're like, well, Steve's gay, his roommate's like 70 and married. We can get two more guys to come in and take their rooms and move them to the women's side of it. And I did get who you swear on this podcast. Yeah. I did get a lot of shit from these guys uh about being assigned to live on the women's side of this treatment center. I did not appreciate that. I didn't think that was the right move to do because I had I had uh voice to my uh primary therapist that, hey, I had noted what I just said to you. I had noticed that there was a little bit of change in the demeanor of the folks I was interacting with. And I thought this just really put a div literally and figuratively put a divider up between me and the straight guys I was in treatment with. So there was a little, you know, trying to con back out of my gay hole uh and prove to them, you know, that I'm uh like them uh after being assigned to the women's side.

SPEAKER_02:

So did they move you over there?

SPEAKER_00:

They did move me over there. They did. They did. They did. So I was over there for three out of my four weeks in treatment. They tried to move me out afterwards, and they're like, yeah, we probably shouldn't have done this, but I had my own uh little suite to myself at that point, and I was like, no, no, no, nope. You guys want to be on the women's side because I'm safe. I'm gonna keep my little private suite and not have a roommate for the rest of the time I'm in treatment.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, how did yeah, how did women respond to that? Like, do you I I haven't been to treatment, so I don't know how that works. But like, how do you have to interact with them more because you're on that side?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh they did that they did their best to keep all the the uh the clinical programming is segregated by gender. Uh with the living quarters, they just had us down at the end. There was an empty spot in between us, and they specifically told us like do not interact with the females on site. You are not allowed to. There'll be consequences if you do it. I'm assuming they told the same thing to them. So we were just kind of like you can't see me right now, but you'll blinders on. Don't look to your right, don't look at me, we can't talk. So it was just we we went out of our way to not talk to the to the female folks on site. Which was weird. It was weird. Yeah. The whole thing is weird. Especially being gay. It's like these are my girls over here. I should be talking to them. Right. I'm gonna get along better with them.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. Oh my god, that's insane.

SPEAKER_01:

Isn't that weird?

SPEAKER_02:

I mean Yeah. Man. So what are you? I'm curious with with all the things you've done with business, with recovery coach, with you know, the board of directors, what are you most passionate about in recovery, just kind of overall at this point?

SPEAKER_00:

It's gonna sound weird to say this after everything I've I've led up to with this, but my favorite thing about recovery to do is when I am in a 12-step meeting and it gets when I'm in a 12-step meeting. Yeah, I like to play devil's advocate and be a contrarian. So I am uh I'll out myself again as a militant atheist. Um, I really struggle with 12-steps because of the God language for a long time. And if I'm in a meeting and I hear five people go in a row about how much Jesus or religion or their higher power deserves all the credit for their recovery, I will jump in with my thoughts and of course preface it with this is my experience and just my perception of everything. And let them know that I don't think higher power is even necessary. I think the principles of AA and NA are very, very important. But I do think we can be very, very flexible on some of the messaging here. So I'll go on a little kind of atheist rant about how I don't think it's necessary to have a higher power as long as you have humility, acceptance, you're willing to make a change, and you realize that you are not God, you are not the proverbial director in this situation. I think that is enough for some people to find recovery. You know, I was in and out of the rooms for six years before I actually went to treatment and got sober. And what kept me, that revolving door, was the God thing. Like I just could not wrap my head around getting to a third step. And like, how do you do a third step if you're a militant atheist? So my favorite thing to do is give a slight critique of the language 12-step programs use and just offer, you know, another path. I often say to folks in those shares, and it gets me into trouble sometimes, that these programs do not have a monopoly on recovery. There are there's smart recovery, recovery dharma, there are all sorts of these community-based or the Phoenix community-based organizations that can help provide similar support as 12-step programs that aren't quite so heavy on the dogma.

SPEAKER_02:

Can you, for my own curiosity and also for listeners who may not know, can you give me like an actual brief definition of atheism? Because I don't want to assume that I know what that means.

SPEAKER_00:

I can give you one for how it applies to me. Um I'm sure you'll get different ones out there. That's great. For me, uh, I don't believe that there is a creator of the universe, an all-powerful being who was watching folks at all times and sent his son to earth to kill him because of a I I you know, pregnant virgins are a bridge too far for me. Can't wrap my head around that. So atheism is to me is a complete rejection of monotheism, polytheism, any sort of idea of a controlling entity in the universe. I've always been scientifically minded, you know, it's just like I said, I know it sounds like a joke, but uh pregnant virgins and people coming back from the dead just don't fly with me. That's not gonna be effective in my recovery.

SPEAKER_02:

And how do you, when you talk about that or when you bring that up in a meeting, how is that normally received?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I will say I do go to meetings in Boulder, Colorado, which definitely skews uh more to my line of thinking than some other places where you could attend meetings. Um but I do get a little bit of hostility. I've had a couple people, after I've you know shared for the full 45 minutes at a meeting, come up to me, hey, maybe you shouldn't have said that. And my response is always, I am just trying to be honest in what has worked for me. I don't think that this program is the literal word of God. I mean, come on, this can't be an infallible program. I mean, it was started by a failed stockbroker and a proctologist. And for those of you keeping score at home, that is a specialist in the human asshole. I don't know if these people have the perfect way how to get sober, you know? They're just people. They were guys who met in the basement of a church in the 1930s. You know, they write about in the book that one day people will uh fly on rockets to the moon and they speak of addiction as an allergy, which we know is not an apt analogy these days and could use a rewrite. So I I get a lot of I I don't say a lot, I get some pushback, but the vast majority uh I get someone coming up to me who is usually in a treatment center and says, Hey, you know, I really like what you said. I have been struggling with wrapping my head around these programs, and it's really been an issue for me. Will you be my sponsor? I feel like you might have something more aligned with my thinking than what I hear generally in these rooms. So a little bit of pushback and a lot of those, a lot of people want me to be the sponsor.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and that's why I'm asking is because I'm always interested in all perspectives, right? Because it doesn't matter what I think or what you think or what she or they or whatever, you know, it's it's that someone out there is in the same boat, right? And if if talking about that, if making space for that, if if hearing people hearing you say that and someone out there goes, me too, I'm having a hard time with this for any number of reasons. I think that's valid.

SPEAKER_00:

And that is my only goal.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh-huh. Is to is to get people to hear that, you know, they hear a lot of the other folks in the room who've had these sort of religious experiences or or maybe were raised in a Christian household, and that part of recovery, 12-step recovery comes a lot easier for them. They get plenty of those. What they don't hear a lot of are the, you know, contrarian views on recovery that are a little bit, you know, 12-step unorthodox, but have worked for plenty of other people who are just not comfortable being vocal in meetings about how it worked for them. I just want them to hear another perspective. Whichever one lands with them, excellent. Um, but they should be able to hear all perspectives and make a decision.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And I like that, um, like I said, it's not I just like holding the space for the possibility of alternative versions and the fact that those are valid experiences. And many people, for a variety of reasons, struggle with religion, spirituality, whether they were raised in one and didn't go well for them. And so there's stuff there to work through, or the opposite, were raised without any context for it and don't know what to do with that either, right? And in anywhere in between, but just the fact that that I think that's a valid experience and a lot of people struggle with that, those steps in particular.

SPEAKER_00:

For sure. I do want to say, you know, I d so I just shit on religion uh a fair amount there that I don't care if you go to church every Sunday and worship your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, if you're into that, more power too. Yeah. I just, like I said, all perspectives.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So what do you, and I'm curious, just being nosy, when you are in the seat of being in a 12-step meeting and they're talking about higher power or surrendering to something greater than yourself, do you do you like transfer that to something else? Or do you how do you make sense of that in your head to make it work for you?

SPEAKER_00:

You know, I don't even I don't even know how to quite explain this. Like, do I believe in a higher power? Probably not. Probably not. I'm not gonna say definitively no. Um I don't think it's necessary to believe in a higher power for recovery to happen. I just think you need to be able to accept that you are not the controlling force in the universe and that there are plenty of things in the world that are beyond your control, and you should generally speaking stop trying to control things that are out of your uh ability to control. Um Yeah. Cool.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'm just curious. I I've never asked anyone, and I'm so interested right now, so I'm gonna keep going on this. I want to ask about control also. Is that how have you changed your relationship with control over time since we're talking about that?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, nobody's perfect, it definitely ebbs and flows. Uh, I do like to be in control, I want everything to go uh my way. But I accept that uh that is unreasonable and probably a little bit of a crazy idea to try and control everything. So uh, you know, it's a constant battle for me to not, you know, micromanage things at work, or uh if somebody's doing something that I think should be done differently, or God forbid someone's taking too long in the self checkout uh ahead of me. Yeah, if you ever want to see a real lesson in human efficient inefficiency, check out that use scan lane. But you you know, I find myself you know getting angry. I'm gonna roll that example in the use scan lane. I'll get angry with people in front of me. Like, why would this lady walk around in her car to scan? This thing and she could just do it like that. And I realized that I'm doing it. And this took a lot of practice was to stop myself in the moment and realize hey, maybe this lady has a bum knee. Maybe this lady is having a rough day. Maybe this lady is just the most inefficient human that has ever walked the earth. But this is only going to make your life inconvenienced for another 90 seconds. And you should probably shut the fuck up and focus on something that you can actually control, Steve. And then I'm fine. I just have to go through that mental process of checking myself. It's essentially, you know, active in the moment tenth step is what that is.

SPEAKER_02:

So Well, and so if you're if control is one end of a spectrum, and we'll say the opposite of the end of the spectrum for the purposes of this conversation is trust, right? What is your relationship with trust like?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say, generally speaking, I assume people are being honest and forthcoming and know what they're doing right off the bat. I'm not going to start anybody off at a trust deficit.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, I like that word, a trust deficit. Continue. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So I will let somebody bury themselves. If somebody is untrustworthy, they will prove that in their own time without any help from me whatsoever. So I give everyone the benefit of the doubt until I am proved that that is an incorrect way to go about it. So I try and trust everybody, take everything at face value. You know, I'm often proved correct that most people are generally trustworthy, and some people aren't. But more often than not, people are good. People aren't trying to get one over on you. Um it's been a long journey, but I'm much more trusting of people now than I was eight or seven and a half years ago.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So in the same token, what is your relationship like with self-trust?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh I trust myself 95% of the time. There's I I don't think I'm any danger of a relapse. You know, I'm active in one of these 12-step programs. I do my own service thing. So I'm not super worried about it. But there's that 5% because I know if I don't continue to do these things, that dark passenger, that thing that I currently have locked up and cemented in my brain, that addict brain, will come out. Yeah. That it takes constant reinforcement on that, the cages on those locks to make sure that he can't get out.

SPEAKER_02:

Was that always true? Did you always trust yourself? And if you didn't, how did you build that relationship with yourself over time?

SPEAKER_00:

I realized about I'd say 10 days uh before I was supposed to be discharged from treatment that I had zero trust in my ability to maintain sobriety after I was removed from this safe, sheltered environment. So I made the decision to go to sober living afterwards because I did not trust myself. Figured, hey, if I'm gonna, you know, feel this way, uh take an action. How do we build up your own self-trust so that in a year, two years, you know, you're not in a sober living, that you can drive by a liquor store without even noticing it, rather than, you know, noticing every single one as you drive by down the street. So I looked for accountability to answer your question. I didn't trust myself. I wanted somebody to drug test me, make me take breathalyzers on a regular basis, force me to do my 90 and 90. I replaced my own self-doubt with uh trust in others to hold me accountable until I was ready to trust myself. I I almost I was gonna say I did 90 and 90, but for the sake of rigorous honesty, I did like 86 or 87. It was like a couple below. But I did damn close to the 90 and 90 because it was you know instructed to me to do. I trusted that what they were telling me that this would be helpful was right, even though everything in my head was screaming, this is a religious cult, don't go near it. But yeah, yeah. Worked out in the end.

SPEAKER_02:

But that's beautiful, right? In the fact that it is a process. I think most of us don't trust ourselves in the beginning and have to learn how to practice that and develop that over time and accountability and asking other people to kind of hold you to it is a great place to start. I'm curious if you if you have other people in it around you and are accountable for you, what is your experience like with boundaries, particularly beginning with yourself and your own boundaries? Or was it, I guess that was I I didn't ask that correctly. What was it like then and how is it now?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you know, growing up, I um I didn't there were no boundaries in my childhood. My mom was a hoarder. She had no boundaries. I was I think I was like nine when I saw pulp fiction for the first time. A little young for that one. Um boundaries, no, you know, parental, you should not be exposed to this. So I had no boundaries. I would say anything to anybody. I did not care how it was received. Professional boundaries didn't exist for me, no boundaries existed for me. And it took a lot of mental health work and treatment and one-on-one with a therapist to be able to recogn, learn how to recognize what are appropriate boundaries. You know, because of that upbringing, you know, I made a lot of excuses for my mother. Oh, well, she was busy, she was working to support us. My dad didn't help that much. I made excuses for the lack of boundaries, and I stopped doing that. I was able to step outside myself and take an honest look at my upbringing, what was wrong with it without excuses, why I have a lack of boundaries, and then work on baby steps, setting boundaries with people. And you know, it started off, you know, small at first, telling uh my mother that I would not have a conversation about X topic with her because it was unhealthy and it was never productive, kind of setting those little boundaries. And now it's become, you know, sort of second nature to me. I have very strong boundaries. I could probably, I've probably gone a little too far the other direction. I could probably be a little bit more flexible with some of my boundaries these days.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Um I had that same experience, actually. The very first time I practiced boundaries, I um I didn't have any. I used to say I was a doormat. And I think because I didn't trust myself to uphold them when I was new at practicing them, it was almost like like a brick wall. I went from being a doormat to just being this giant wall, and almost you want to just like yell, like, no, don't do that, you know, because you can't, you just like don't trust yourself to uphold it. So I have to scream it at people. Um but it took me a little bit. It took me a minute to get and to realize that like, and I don't know that it was a bad thing actually to go too far in the other direction so I could learn how to kind of come down a little bit from because I needed, right? I needed to learn how to say no. So when I put up the walls, and again, therapy in tandem, right? But I had to be like, oh, okay, this is maybe maybe too aggressive. And you sort of have to learn a go to go back to trust, right? I had to learn how to trust myself to be in the gray, to be in that middle area that's like, I I know how to set boundaries now and uphold them and be kind.

SPEAKER_00:

That's really insightful. I think, I think that's where I am still struggling is that gray area you're talking about. Like I like things to be black and white. Very few things are black and white. And residing in that gray zone, because I had such a lack of boundaries, it does scare me a little bit. Like, oh gosh, am I am I regressing? Am I reverting back to uh let it being a doormat or being codependent or these things? So I get scared in the gray zone.

SPEAKER_02:

That makes sense. What does that feel like when that comes up for you?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh I was supposed to say guilt, guilt and disappointment. It's like, oh gosh, are you regressing? Are you not moving forward like you're supposed to be? Because it's that 5% we talked about keeping in. That little dark passenger that I know is trying to get out. And I worry, oh, is that is that gonna unlock the cage? And am I gonna be like the slip? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Right, which is again back to self-trust of having to learn how to and I try to do this for myself. I have built that up so much at this point. And I try to check myself for my own accountability to make sure I don't get too cocky or too complacent either, like is which sounds silly, because as much as I'm involved in things, I think you can still sort of get a headspace of like I'm good. And so I try to chill still check myself on that. But when you started setting boundaries, especially with your family, how did that go? How was that received?

SPEAKER_00:

A little bit uh with a little bit of hostility because the the people in question definitely had their own mental health struggles and weren't capable of setting or respecting boundaries on their own. So it was very difficult to, you know, explain why I'm not gonna engage on this topic because it's not gonna, we're not gonna have a healthy conversation about it. People are gonna get mad and and say things, and that was met with resistance. Um I I I've definitely been told, oh, now that you're in recovery now and went to therapy that you're, you know, better than us or no more than us. And no, I'm not better than you, but I do know more than you. I I've just been a learning experience in therapy. And um it was kind of disappointing and eventually realized that if people are not gonna work on their own mental health issues, then I don't need them in my life, regardless of their blood relation to me.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Have there been people that are that you had to step back from?

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, 100%. I mean, not just in my not just in my family life. I can remember this this incident always sticks out in my head and comes up in a lot of shares, is that I can remember before I got sober, one of the things I was afraid of was losing my friend group. And it's like, oh, you know, we have the same we hobbies, we drink together. I'm not gonna be as funny, I'm not gonna be as cool, I'm not gonna be as likable if I stop drinking around them. And I could remember being out of treatment for, I mean, I was real fresh, like two, three weeks, and went out with the restaurant crew to a brunch, and they were all, you know, third mimosa bloody merry in. And I really didn't have a lot to say at the table. I thought, oh my God, my biggest fear has come true that I am not as likable of a human if I don't have a substance in me. And I had this like panic moment for a minute. I must have turned white at the table. And then I had an overwhelming sense of calm and relief come over me because I realized that I wasn't the problem here. They were the problem here. They still drink. The only thing I have in common with these people is that we work in the same place and bitch about our tables after work and drink like alcoholics. This here's a guy right here I've worked with for three years. I have no idea if he has any siblings. I have no idea where his hometown is. These are all superficial substance-related relationships. And that was really peaceful with me and allowed me to set boundaries with these people. It's like, you know what? I don't need to go to brunch to prove I'm cool to these people because I don't give a shit if they think I'm cool. And going to brunch where people are drinking three weeks at a rehab is not a good idea. So I'm just not gonna do that anymore.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Um, what advice would you give someone if they were in that situation or in something like it where they are in a space of trying to set boundaries, trying to figure out like who can I still keep or what can I still keep of my life while in the space of trying to reinvent themselves? What advice would you give them if they're running into that?

SPEAKER_00:

For boundaries, I would say stay strong. Keep those boundaries in place, even if they're too rigid in the very beginning. You can always soften them up later, but it's important to have firm ground rules with whatever unhealthy situation you're putting up, boundaries for. As far as uh what uh what I would say to someone who was kind of struggling with the friend thing, you know, nobody likes hearing this. I didn't like hearing it. But the friend group will change. Whether or not you cut them out altogether at the beginning, you will not have the same friends in two years that you have right now. Uh I would challenge them to take a look at their relationships with the people that they're uh, and I'm putting friends in air quotes, they're friends. Uh what do they really have in common with them? Is it substances? Is it do you have a deep, meaningful connection on an intellectual and spiritual level with someone? Or do you like to get fucked up together? Because if you're just getting fucked up together, I mean, that's not a friend. That's someone you use with. I would challenge them to look at who their real friends are and invite them to know that uh of the friendships I have now, seven and a half years in, versus the ones I had seven and a half years ago, night and day. Night and day. I have friends that are mentally healthy, have a good grasp of who they are, uh, and won't bullshit me. You know, before, like I said, I was hanging out with other addicts, other people with substance use disorder who had just not gotten treatment yet. So I would say challenge who your friends are. Take a look, take an honest look if those are really your friends.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Um, and what advice would you give someone if they were struggling with the self-trust piece or that balance between how do I trust myself again and how do I learn that and where do I need to let go?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say don't trust yourself in the beginning. Don't. Because your your addict brain is still very loud at that point, and it's going to try and trick you into doing something. You know, people say all the time, my uh what are they? There's a hundred of these. Like, uh, well, I'm here in this meeting. My addict brain is doing push-ups in the parking lot to try and trick me. There's a bunch of these.

SPEAKER_02:

I've heard that specific one also.

SPEAKER_00:

I I think that's I think that is very, very true. And to put in accountability pieces so you don't have to trust yourself when you're in early recovery, somebody else is going to hold you accountable regardless of your level of honesty that you bring to the table in early recovery. It's definitely a gradual thing to be able to build back your trust. And I think most people will kind of come to that on their own. You know, it was months and months before I could drive by a liquor store or a weed store without having a thought I want to go in there. And then sometime I was driving around, I don't know, probably a year, year and a half later, where I was like, I'd probably just pass 10 liquor stores on my way to Fort Collins, and I didn't even notice them. And yeah, once you once you start to learn more about yourself, you can pick up on these little things that these little progress points that you're making that you may have not picked up on yet. Because if there's there's many common threads, but one definite common thread we have is I don't think we give ourselves enough credit for the hard work uh that we have done related to, you know, bringing this whole conversation full circle with, you know, my light beefs with 12-step programs and higher powers. I don't think we give ourselves enough credit for the hard work that giving sober, clean is. And, you know, there's no there's no sky fairy, there's no mythical father figure up in the clouds who did a hundred percent of that for you. You still showed up to your treatment, you still showed up to your therapist, you still called your sponsor, you still did your fourth-step homework, you did all of those things. Nobody, no magic wizard did that for you. And I, you know, it really digs at me that when I see people give credit to magic when I think it would do a lot for their mental health, self-esteem, and just general self-awareness to take a little bit of credit. Who got me sober? I got sober with the help of uh heavy one-on-one therapy before I went to treatment, then got to a place where I was good in a good enough mental health space where I could go to treatment, then sober living and did the and did the 12-step things. I did all of those things with the help of the 12-step community and my therapist. Was it all me? Absolutely not. I'd give 85% of the credit to other people and accountability structures that I had set up. But it's okay to take credit for doing the hard work in recovery. It is okay to do that. And we should not shun it.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, well, I've I've said that on different occasions in meetings, actually, which is that I've heard people what I've said specifically is that I've heard people sort of credit like their sponsor, or if someone hadn't found me or whatever, put me in this program, I wouldn't be here sort of giving all the credit off of themselves. And I've also heard people do the opposite, where they stick in of like, I did everything and I did all the things, and it's an I, I, I sort of space. And I just think both things can be true. Like you absolutely, you had to walk that walk. You had to make those choices. You are the one that didn't walk into a liquor store or didn't pick up again. Like nobody can control that you did or didn't do those things, literally, physically, and you didn't do them alone.

SPEAKER_00:

100%. I absolutely agree. You know, uh, I don't think any of us are uh great with moderation. It's always each of the extremes is where we're most comfortable. And I do think, yeah, to your point that yes, um, it plays into humility. It's like you can, if you are, if you have humility, you can realize that, well, yes, you did have a part in your own recovery, indisputable, but you did not do it. I don't care how you got sober, you didn't do it alone. Somebody helped you. Somebody gave you advice, somebody passed along with them. It was everything.

SPEAKER_02:

I agree with you. Um, I have one last question for you.

SPEAKER_00:

All right.

SPEAKER_02:

What is one truth that is guiding you in the life that you're moving forward and creating today?

SPEAKER_00:

That my life is infinitely better than it was seven and a half years ago. And it very rarely happens. These days that I'm ever think about drinking alcohol. But every once in a while it'll pop in, usually in a high stress situation where it'll seem like it's a good idea. It's not a good idea. And to be able to recognize that it is not a good idea. I think that's the key part there.

SPEAKER_02:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Steve. I appreciate your time. Thank you for being here and just going down rabbit holes with me. I'm I'm very glad that we got to to hang out and have this conversation, especially when I'm a big fan of Devil's Advocate, always, ever. I do it in work meetings. I I think it provides value because there's value in different perspectives and all emotions, all perspectives are valid. Um so thank you for for sitting here with me and and being in that space and showing up. I really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00:

Of course. Thank you so much for the invite. You know, I I don't think these things get said enough or loudly enough. So I'm happy to happy to try and spread the word that there's not a right way or a wrong way to do recovery. Each person has their own way. And the most important thing is to just be accountable, make it your own thing, and don't trust yourself for the first year.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so we actually we signed off and then we just signed back on because we we kept going in our conversation. And so what I just said and what Steve and I kind of went on a tangent about was that I just think there's so many ways to do this. And I've watched people for different reasons piece out because a system or a structure or you know the rules of something didn't work fully for them. And so they left. And I get I get worked up about it a little bit because um I think there's room for everybody at this table. I think there's ways to make it your own, and you don't have to follow or believe every aspect of it in order to build a life in recovery.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I just wanted to talk about what I think was the most impactful thing for me when I was in treatment that made uh the 12-step programs palatable and understandable, more importantly. Uh, I found a book when I was in treatment called Beyond Belief: Agnostics Musings for a 12-step life. It's written by some guys that have long-term sobriety, they're in a 12-step program, uh, but they take a more honest look at the structure of AA and how it works. Um, and it presents it in a completely secular way. So if you want to look at, okay, I've got to do a third step with my sponsor, you can find essays about a third step for atheists, agnostics, people that aren't ready to dive back in. This book had the single biggest impact on me being able to swallow a lot of the 12 steps out. It literally, after I read this book, I thought, you know what? I can do this 12-step thing and I can make it my own. Because that's what the book emphasizes. It takes a look at 12-step programs for what they are, which is community-based support systems focused on peer accountability and behavior change. And I think that's what they are. And this book reflected that.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that. And I just, like I said, I'm always interested in all the ways that we can, you know, it's almost like a big puzzle. Like, what are the puzzle pieces that you need to put together to make this work for you? And and I'll throw a challenge in there while I'm saying all of this because devil's advocate, you know, um, is that like I would also caution you to look at things you're resistant to, whatever that is, because there might be gold there. So rather than just piecing out and being like, no, this isn't work for me, I'd I would challenge you to look at it before you totally opt out of it, whatever it is, whether it's, you know, control, self-trust, all the things, or atheism, you know, but just w whatever those things are that a lot of times some of the biggest reactions I've had um where I didn't want to look at something or I wanted to to not deal with a thing is because there was something I needed to look at in me, whatever that is. So with a caveat.

SPEAKER_00:

And whatever those things that you're resistant to, there might be a reason that you are unaware of that you are so resistant to something. So don't throw anything out out of hand and look for similarities for what you hear from people in recovery. Don't look for the differences because there's a lot more in common. And it's really easy to be like, I am not as bad as that guy. He lost his family in his house, in his car, and was homeless. That never happened to me. And I think I know for me, that was my reaction when I first went into the rooms. It was, I'm not as bad as him. That's a totally different story than mine. And I would find reasons to make it not work for me.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Or I will throw you mine, which was the opposite of what you just said, which is that I went in and heard a lot of people's stories, and I thought I'm not bad enough. Like I'm I need to be worse. Like, like I'm not worthy of being here. Not in an arrogant way, like a, oh, my story's not as good, a juicy or difficult or painful as theirs. So somehow, like, I'm not worthy of being here as much as they are in a reverse sort of way, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00:

But how fun is it now as a recovery person to look back and be able to laugh with someone like me on a podcast and be like, God, look how crazy we were.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, just I just think I get really soapboxy about this, and I don't do that very often, but I just think there's room for everybody here. And whatever your experience is, you know, I happen to be alcohol with my drug of choice, and I frequently like my my group of choice is NA. I have never done a narcotic, but I just the community, the people that I found in there, I happen to meet people through that route. And it's like that it doesn't matter. Just go anyway. Because at first I was, I was hesitant to even go to a meeting because I was like, they're not gonna, they're not gonna let me in there. I haven't done all that, you know? But it's it's what it comes down to, and what I think always matters more than anything, is that when people get caught up in the language, whether you say sober or you say clean or whatever meeting you're in, it doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter because we're all here for the same reason.

SPEAKER_00:

We're all here for the same reason and stop looking for differences.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep. I'm just gonna end on that because it was great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here. It means more than you know. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a quick rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps more people find the show. If you want more of me, head on over to NataniaAllison.com and enter your name and email for behind the scenes updates in between shows. New episodes air every Tuesday. We'll see you next week.