Chapter 40 - NOT ENOUGH - The Story At the Root of Every Addiction

Addiction Isn't the Problem—It's the Symptom

What if addiction doesn't begin with alcohol, drugs, food, or any other substance? What if it begins with a single belief: "I'm not enough."

In this deeply personal episode of Burn It Down and Begin Again, Erica shares her own journey through addiction, recovery, and the emotional work that ultimately saved her life. Rather than focusing on the substance itself, she explores the hidden wounds underneath addiction—childhood experiences, low self-worth, victim mentality, unresolved trauma, and the stories we unknowingly tell ourselves for years.

Inspired by a recent experience with someone she loves who is struggling with addiction, Erica opens up about the heartbreak of watching someone refuse help, the difficult boundaries that recovery sometimes requires, and why no one can heal until they're ready to face themselves.

Drawing from psychology, shadow work, and her own recovery, she explains why addiction is rarely about the drink or the drug—it's about escaping the pain of believing you're unworthy, unloved, or broken.

If you or someone you love is battling addiction, this episode offers compassion, hope, and a different way of understanding recovery. Because lasting healing doesn't come from simply removing the addiction—it comes from healing the person who believed they needed it in the first place.

Because you are not your addiction.

You are not your past.

And the moment you begin rewriting the story you tell yourself… everything can change. 

🌸 About Chickology™
Chickology™ is more than a podcast brand — it’s a collective of strong, real women telling real stories. Together, we’re reclaiming our narratives, breaking cycles, and lifting one another up through truth, laughter, and raw conversations. Every show under the Chickology™ umbrella is created by women, for women, with love.

✨ Join the Movement
We’re always looking for bold voices and powerful stories. If you’re a woman ready to share your truth or host your own podcast with us, reach out! One honest truth at a time, we’re helping one isolated woman at a time feel less alone.

📍 Find Us

• Explore all Chickology™ podcasts at [Buzzsprout Podcast Directory link or Chickology website]
• Email us at: ChickologyPodcasts@gmail.com
  
  

💫 Because when women rise together, we change the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Addiction doesn't start with a bottle. It starts with a belief. The belief that you're not enough, that you're a victim of your own life instead of the author of it. And that the only way to survive the noise in your head is to quiet with something outside of you. That's true whether it's alcohol, pills, food, or anything else that people use to disappear. Today I want to talk about where that belief comes from, why it's so hard to unlearn, and what it actually takes to finally beat it. Welcome to Burn It Down and Begin Again, because sometimes the only way out is through the fire. I'm Erica, and this is my story told one chapter at a time. Not to relive the pain, but to reclaim the power that was buried beneath it. I share it boldly because I know I'm not the only one. Too many of us carry stories like mine of trauma, silence, survival, and shame alone. But healing isn't just about surviving what hurt us. It's about becoming the people we were meant to be, how we can transform pain into purpose and rebuild life on our own terms to show what is possible when we rise to the strongest version of ourselves. If you hear yourself in my words, know this. You're not crazy, you're not broken, and you're definitely not alone. This podcast is part of Chicology: real women, real stories, and real transformation. We're here to break cycles, rise higher, and create lives that radiate power, purpose, and passion. So if you've walked through hell and you're ready to grow, evolve, and rebuild, then stay with me. There's hope here, there's healing here, and there's an army of us rising with you. Now, let's begin. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Burn It Down and Began Again. This is Erica. I am so glad you're here. Welcome if you're new and if you're old hat, uh, you've been with me for a while. Welcome back. This podcast is about reinventing yourself. It's about finding life for yourself when you feel like you're somewhere that life can't change, when you're up against obstacles or walls or you're stuck in a maze you can't find your way out of, and what we actually can do to take charge and rebuild from exactly where we're standing, no matter how late we think we are starting. This is where you're going to get my unfiltered truth, things that I've actually lived through, not things that I read somewhere and repeated, but things that actually have happened to me and how I found my way out. And I share it hoping that it triggers something in you. I do not have all the answers, but I do hope that something that I say in these conversations make you realize that you're not alone. These are things that we all feel as human beings. Just saying the things that you feel in your head out loud, it can actually matter to your recovery and to other people. And that you are a part of a community of people as human beings. We all carry the same struggles. They're just dressed up differently, depending on the person and depending on the day. So many of us are dealing in ways that look nothing alike on the outside, but underneath it all, it's the same ache, it's the same search. And some of us just haven't found our way out yet. And that's what this is about is finding our way out of the maze. So if this particular episode lands somewhere in you, or if this podcast has helped you wherever you're at, please hit follow, leave a rating, drop some stars. That is literally how it helps the next person find the podcast through the algorithm, is how it works. So if you know somebody else that might help, please share it with them. Share the podcast because that's how we're going to grow this community. And again, the whole point of this, this isn't a moneymaker for me. This isn't something that I'm doing to, I have so many other things I'm doing in my life to further my financial well-being. This is being able to share my truths and they're mine, but maybe something that I say will trigger something in you to help you find your way out of something that you're dealing with right now. And that's what this is about. I have a pretty harrowing story. I found my way out of addiction that was literally going to kill me. And I mean, sincerely, it was very, very bad. I was living like a hoarder in an apartment. I had gone through a divorce. My alcoholism was raging. And everybody in my life, I think they never said it, but they thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die. And yet somehow I did find my way out. And it was a process and it didn't happen overnight. But from where I stand now, is my life perfect? No. Do I have challenges? Of course. But I can honestly say I love my life. I love who I am. I love myself, and I'm so comfortable in my own skin. And that is not the person who I was six years ago. I did it through a lot of self-reflection, through doing the shadow work, which is something that we're going to talk a little bit about today. There's so many people that deal with addiction. Maybe you're dealing with it yourself, or maybe it's somebody that you love. It's and they're ruining their life. And I found from you, rehabs and all the things that we think we can give to a person that's going to provide answers. Rehabs did not work for me. I went to program. I think that was the most helpful thing for me while I'm no longer in program. And I've explained why in previous episodes, I still take the things that I learned there and apply them to my life every single day. And I can tell you that the only way out is in through going inside and the shadow work that has to be involved of identifying the things that we don't want to look at that are alive and well in our head, the stories that we tell ourselves, how we feel about ourselves can only be that place can only be reached by fearlessly looking at why we believe the things that we believe. And then believing that we can rewrite a story that we're not a victim in our own life, because I did come from a place of complete victimhood. And I think that's the big change, is now I believe at 56 years old that the best years of my life are in front of me. I have stuff going on that you guys would not believe. I am recreating my life every second of every day. And I believe that the sky is the limit. I believe there's nothing that I can't achieve. I genuinely believe that. And man, that was not me six years ago. And that's what I want to give you guys is hope. And that's kind of what this episode is focused on triggers, shadow work, dealing with addiction, because I think this is a problem that I see more and more so many people are dealing with it. And I'm dealing with it in a different way in my own life, secondhand. So that brings me to my challenge of the week, which I always do, which is this week. Someone that I love very much forced me back into a room that I felt like I'd permanently left. They are in fact struggling with addiction and they literally refuse to see it. Boy, does that already sound familiar. And after trying everything that I know to try, and we all do this as enablers or people that are standing by, we have the best intentions, but we try to explain to them can't you see? Don't you see that you have a problem? What can I do to help? Um, let me make some suggestions. We all do the same things, right? And at the end of the day, it's got nothing to do with us. It has to do with the people that are struggling with the addiction. And the thing with that, the mistake that we make, I think at some point, and I certainly, I don't know where that line was for me, but for this particular person involved, it is someone that I love very, very much. And I had to draw a line in the sand. And that line in the sand was really hard for me emotionally, and it triggered me because there was an event that happened that affected me. And this event has happened repeatedly, versions of it, and I finally fucking had it. And I literally lost my shit, you guys. And I'm a Taurus, like, you know, don't mess with a bull, you get the horns. That's me. But I'm a lover, not a fighter, right? You know, I'm both people. And I think that's something that would surprise most people to know about me, which is I hate to fight. I hate conflict. I'll do it if I have to. I prefer to find a way through it that is non-confrontational. And I've had enough conflict in my life uh to last many lifetimes. And so I'd like to go as far as saying I avoid conflict if I can. I try and find another path. But I'm it doesn't mean that I avoid it to the extent that I bury it under a rug. I don't. I face things as they come up for sure, and I'll have a conflict. But this particular incident brought something out of me. I was kind of shocked by my reaction. I fucking had a trigger. Like I went off like in a scary way. The person involved was shocked. You saw their eyes go as big as saucers. What's wrong with you? You know, they said. And then they actually started throwing accusations back at me to deflect classic psychological behavior. And I know what all of this is, but I think they were just like throwing shit because they didn't know how to deal with my reaction, which was super strong. And I laid out some very clear boundaries. I don't think I said anything mean or I didn't say anything about them like you're this or you're that. I didn't. I just like, hey, I'm fucking done. I'm fucking done. I've tried and tried and this is it. This is my boundary. This is the line in the sand. This is my consequence for your action. If you can't deal with it, this is what you're gonna have to do because I'm not gonna do it anymore. I've tried every which way to help you and to be there for you, and I would do anything for you, but I will not watch you kill yourself. So this is my fucking line in the sand. My reaction was so strong that I'm sure you guys have had these reactions that after this was done, I literally felt my blood pumping through my body. I could feel my blood pressure. My mouth was like bone dry, my heart was pounding, and I felt like tingly. It was crazy, like my physical reaction to the anger. My first reaction was to feel kind of like ashamed. Like, why did I get that mad? And then very quickly I'm like, okay, why did it trigger you? And that was easy. I was like, in 30 seconds, I was like, why that triggered me? Because I thought to myself, this person who had a front row seat to my addiction and what happened, how could they be making the same decision? How could they possibly do that? Having watched and and even this person saying to me, Hey, you made it out of something that most people wouldn't have survived. I don't know how you did it. Yeah. So knowing those things and seeing you were on the exact same path, how can you make this decision? And the answer is pretty simple. When we're in addiction, or at least a stage of addiction, we are in complete denial. We cannot see it because giving up that thing, that addiction, the bottle, the pill, whatever it is, is more painful and more scary than dealing with the root of the problem, right? And that's what this is about this week. The challenge of the week is when you have people in your life that have an addiction, I don't believe they have an addiction problem. I think they have a self-worth problem that is wearing the addiction costume. They feel like a victim in their own life. They don't believe that they're enough. That's all of our story, right? I mean, every single person can relate to that. They are actually terrified of doing the one thing that could actually save them, which is getting sober. But what would that entail? That would entail living life sober. That would entail dealing with feelings sober. That would entail having to understand why it is that we drink and giving up our crutch. And that is more terrifying for the people involved than actually saving their lives. And that's what happened to me. And you think for somebody in a psychologically good place, it makes no sense. But from the person, and I understand that place completely, this person's journey, I understand because it was my journey, right? And I guess we all have to go through it ourselves, but uh giving that up was at first just too unfathomable because I used it to quiet my emotions. I just wanted to knock the fuck out and not feel. But then it turned, and there's a point where addiction turns. And then all of a sudden you really want out, but you can't get out. You're you're stuck. And there is a very clear place that happens, but it's a kind of a line of demarcation that you can't see beforehand, but afterwards, even then you're kind of, it's muddled. You're like, God, where did that actually happen? But now I can't control the drinking. I literally can't stop. I'm having blackouts. I don't remember things that happened. And those are all very clear patterns. And so this particular person is in the blackout stage where they'll do things they do not remember and they'll say, I didn't do that. What do you do when you're a person standing and seeing clearly from the outside? And everybody else that knows this person is worried, concerned, like they all see it. And even people that don't know this person, friends of friends, like, hey, I saw so-and-so, and boy, they look rough, man. They look like they're not physically well. Are they okay? When all of those things are staring this person that you know I'm talking about in the face, oh no, I have no problem because they don't want to give it up. And the story they're telling themselves is the same story we all tell ourselves, guys, which is I'm not enough. And I think that's the thing, right? We all have different ways. Some people choose super destructive ways, which is alcohol, drugs, gambling, all these things. But some of us work too much, you know. Some of us throw ourselves into things that remove us from our current reality in our head into a place where we don't have to think about that anymore. Those are less destructive ways of doing it, but make no mistake, it's still an addiction pattern. Those things I'm not so worried about, but it is the substances that we use that literally alter our lives. And then let's talk about how that affects the people involved. And I don't think this person that I'm speaking of is thinking about the fact that were something to happen to this person, which eventually it will, I mean, let's call a spade a spade. There's no way a person can live like this and not have serious consequences in some form, whether it be their health or something catastrophic happening as a result of, it's going to affect everybody around them in ways that will profoundly change other people's lives. And so I think my reaction was also based on how can you be so fucking selfish? But of course, you know, once I step outside of that, because that's a a me perspective, right? I have complete empathy for this person. I have complete understanding of that place. Because the real problem, guys, is that most of us, if we're really honest, walk around feeling like we're not enough. Somehow, between childhood, there's a place in childhood where you're like, God, I remember having a happy childhood. And then I don't know. Somewhere around adolescence, I started really like seeing the world, and then I started having this battle with myself that I wasn't enough. Some people come out of that and they're able to transition into adulthood very well. But most people, once we make that transition from being a child and being cared for into our own autonomy, somewhere in there, it seems to be a standard thing of human experience that everybody, whether they have an addiction or not, experiences, which is that thing with ourselves where we're like, I'm not enough. I, you know, I'm not worthy of this. I'm afraid of being abandoned, that deep, I'm not enough feeling. And I will tell you that the shadow work that I personally have done was the only thing I think that got me through. I mean, I went to rehabs, guys. I went to program, I heard the same things over and over again. They were ingrained in me. I went to psychotherapy, I tried drugs for antidepression. Uh, my God, the amount of therapists that I went to, the books that I read. Somewhere along the way in that journey, I began to hear the same things over and over, and I began to understand that the issue was not the addiction, the issue was why it existed in the first place, why I was outsourcing my sense of self to something that ultimately was going to destroy me. And then the real physical thing that happens, which is it kills your fucking body, takes over your mind and your soul, and then you can't get out. But it was the shadow work that saved me. Understanding as much as I can why I believe the things that I believe. Why is it that I felt like I wasn't enough? What story was I telling myself? Those very painful things where we go back to moments in our life that we really just spent our life running from. It takes courage to do that. What moments really hurt me? What were the moments that defined me? Those silly things I can remember in second grade. Silly, the things that define us, right? I had a teacher that just hated me. I do not know why. And here I was a kid. I moved from school to school all the time because my parents were gypsies. And so being accepted was super important to me. And this teacher, like, literally had it out for me. He did not like me for whatever reason, and he targeted me. And every single week I would miss the popcorn party. Every single week, I was the only kid that was left in an adjacent room by myself, literally, and everybody else was having popcorn, but he would find ways during the week that I had done something wrong. And I remember those moments poignantly. And there are other moments in my life that are silly little moments, right? Where I just felt like I was not enough, that there was something wrong with me. And that's usually it, guys. It's it's like the accumulation, the adding up of all these little stories in our head from childhood, from adolescence. So I think that's a good starting point, by the way, is just looking back at moments that defined us that seemed like silly little moments, but weren't silly little moments. They told us a story. So I kind of gone off in a tangent because I really believe that I have lived there most of my life. And the whole episode today is about these things I've just shared. How do we get to that place where we need to shut off our feelings or quell them or bury them or escape from them? And then why is it that we ultimately feel like we're not enough? I don't pretend to have an answer for that. Again, I think it's the little moments in our lives that told us the story. And that's the journey is going back and looking at the silly little moments and writing them down. I remember in fifth grade, blah, blah, blah, whatever it was for you. And then those are things that just confirmed you're not enough. And what's funny is in life, we can have a million great experiences, wonderful Christmases, wonderful times that people have made us feel like we are enough, that we are loved. We we forget those. And we tend to, as human beings, glom on and remember the ones that told us were not enough. We could have all these amazing experiences in a year during childhood, one given year of childhood in our life, and then have two or three incidences in that year that told us were not enough. And that's what we remember about those years. We don't remember the good stuff. I can't remember a damn thing that happened to me that was good that year of my life in second grade, but I do remember the bad things. And that is human nature. And I think that is the essence of the addiction. I believe it was never about the bottle. I think that we spend so much time and so much energy asking why people drink and why people use, why people can't just stop. And I think we're asking the wrong question. We've been asking it wrong for so long. We've built these entire treatment systems and family dynamics and identities around the wrong question. And I think that substance, in my opinion, was never the actual problem. It's the symptom. The bottle, the pill, the food, the shopping, the man who's bad for you, the woman who's bad for you, whatever your particular costume is, it's not the disease. The disease is underneath it. And it's pretty much almost always built out of the same two materials, a victim mentality and a core belief that you're not enough. And if you put those two things together, you get a person whose mind becomes too loud and too uncertain to live inside of itself comfortably. And then when your own head becomes a place that you can't stand to be, you have to start looking for an exit. And that's where addiction comes in because it's the fastest and most available exit that most people find. It certainly was for me. And the thing that I keep coming back to in my head is you take two people and have the exact same hard day and situation, same disappointment, same rejection, failure, loss, whatever. One of them thinks, well, that sucked, you know, what can I take from this and move forward? And the other thinks, there it is again, more proof that I'm not worth anything. And maybe that's not the exact dialogue they have word for word, but it's the internal belief system. And I can say that I have been both people in my life, and I'm currently the first uh version, which is like, oh, fuck, that fucking sucked. Oh, look, what can I learn? How can I be better? It's just a bump in the road, baby. Let's look at it and let's move on. I don't pretend it didn't happen. That's the big difference. We can't pretend that things don't happen. We have to look at them. Why did I have that reaction? Okay, this happened to me. I had no control over that. Why did I react the way that I did? Or this bad thing happened. Hey, maybe it's because it's a door to something else. And I've said this in other podcasts. I think about things that have happened in my life. And it's the difference between a victim mentality and a winner mentality, which is, oh, this happened to me, poor me. These things always happen to me. And then you go into that depressive mode of like, why does my life suck? Versus, okay, this happened to me, it sucked, I had no control. What can I learn from it? Hey, you know what? In recollection, I can look back and I can say bad things have happened to me, but they turned out to be great things. So given that that's the story of my life, I'm gonna just trust that this shitty, sucky thing is gonna be something great for me going forward. And that's what I choose to believe. That latter, that is who I am every day. If something bad happens, and I'm not talking about catastrophic stuff, guys. I mean, we lose people in accidents or like people die or people leave our lives. These things are hard. I'm not discounting that. But I can look back at even the death of my mother and her journey. And it was very hard for me to let her go because she was my greatest support system. She's been gone six years now. There was a point a couple of years in where I was able to be completely at peace with her death. I don't grieve her anymore. I look at her life as a lesson in what not to do and what to do, because she was both things. She was a person that made decisions that I ultimately ended up making myself in terms of relationships and patterns and codependency, but then how loving and beautiful and amazing and strong she was, and how she saved my life by being there for me with her empathy and her kindness. So I was able to look back at the whole thing as a picture, kind of like that bird in the air we've talked about many times, the perspective, right? It's perspective. I'll recap if you're new. If you are on the ground looking at a tree, you see the tree. If you're a bird flying over the tree, you see the tree and everything around it. And the higher you go, if you're an airplane or if you're a satellite, you see the bigger picture. And I think in healing, we begin to rise, our altitude begins to rise, and we can see things that we couldn't see before. And I think that's the big shift is instead of living in the thing in our head, we're able to rise above it much, much quicker and be like, hey, this is happening for me, not to me. What do I take from it? So why we oftentimes drink and use, I believe, is because we are locked into that very base core mentality of why is this happening to me? It's all about me. Poor me. I'm a victim. I'm not putting that down. That that is part of the journey. I believe spiritually that life earth is a learning experience. Whatever happens to us on the next plane, I believe that we have to ascend to get there. I believe that life is a place that we are put to learn the lesson or not learn the lesson. I believe we repeat until we will learn. I think in essence, My souls learn lessons until we get to a place of ascension. Life is life. We get so wrapped up in life, right? The car payments, the house payment, keeping up with the Joneses, like all these things that define who we are. That is not life, you guys. Life is the experience. It's the love. It's the learning. It's the traveling. It's the expanding who we are inside. But most of us are caught in the material world. And that's the human journey. And addiction is part of that whole journey where we become completely physical beings, understand that we're more than physical beings, and we begin to search for the light, the ascension, which lies within ourselves. God lies within us. The universe lies within us. Every answer, every story that's ever been told, every story that we tell ourselves, and the solution to the problems lies within us, nobody else. So what's the answer to addiction? Ascent. How do we get there? That's not an easy process, right? We have to be brutally honest with ourselves. We have to stop looking at ourselves through the material world's eyes. Well, I don't have a good career. Bad things happen to me. I was dealt a shitty family, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying that these things aren't real. There are people living in huts in parts of the world, but they have no food or water. Their reality is different than mine. But again, that's just geography, you guys. I mean, ultimately, I'm not saying I'd want to do that, but it's geography. It is the internal journey of the soul. How do we treat people? How do we treat ourselves? How do we learn from things and move on? What is the story that we tell ourselves? And in that journey lies the answer to addiction. All of these things said, and these are just my inner musings, but I do want to ask, what is the difference between that first person who is operating from a place where they believe at their core, they're going to be okay no matter what happens, bad things happen. They're not verdicts, they're just events, and we move past them and we learn from them, to the second person who's operating from victimhood, where every hard moment becomes one more piece of evidence that they're not enough. What is the difference? And it's really hard to explain to somebody who hasn't lived through addiction, but that's the story. That's the core story. How do we transition out of that? So I think we have to ask the real question, which is what is the substance giving you that you don't believe that you can have without it? What is it that takes a person who's living in victimhood and a lack of self-worth and makes them pick up a substance to fill in the void in their life, to fill in the loneliness? Because these are all real things. You know, for some people, some people drink. I remember talking to people, they say, man, I don't have any confidence. And when I have a drink in social situations, I feel like all of a sudden I have it. For some people, it's about that permission to stop performing. And then for some people, like for myself, it was the shutoff valve from the thoughts in my head. And the thing is, addiction is incredibly efficient at solving a problem in the short term. And it really is that a person hasn't figured out any other way to solve because it quiets whatever that voice is, it fixes the problem initially. And that's why it's so hard to put down. Because you're not just fighting a chemical, you're fighting something in its own twisted way that takes care of you. So I remember my relationship with alcohol started very early. I had a horrible home life. My dad was beating up my mom. I had this horrible self-esteem. Nobody knew it from the outside. I was such a great actress. Everyone thought I had the world by the tail, but I didn't feel that way inside. And so I started drinking and I realized that it kind of made me not care. I was like, I don't care when I'm drinking, I don't feel like I care. And then that transitioned later on into I don't want to feel anymore. Let me just knock out. That it fixed that. And then it took over my life and I couldn't stop, right? That is the addictive journey. So the funny thing is people act shocked by denial. Like, how is that person in denial when everybody else can see what's wrong? It's not about that. People live in active addiction, knowing inside, they know, even if they deny it to everybody else, they know inside, but they're not ready to face it. They're not ready to give up their fix. That's why they call it a fix, right? Is because it's a fix. It fixes how they feel inside for a little bit so they can escape who they are. Isn't that sad? But it's true. You can know that something is destroying you and still not be ready to let it go because the fear of living without it is so much bigger than the fear of dying with it. And I think ultimately we also just don't really feel like we're gonna die at some point. We we can't see in that addictive process what it's doing to the people around us, what it's doing to our health. We can't honestly look in the mirror because it lies to us and see, man, I look like shit because we just can't give it up. It's the lie of addiction. And I don't think that's weakness. I think it's like a trade that the nervous system has been making for years. And it doesn't get renegotiated just because somebody in your life, you know, yells, cries, can't you see? No, you're not ready to give it up. So the question that actually matters is at what point does the desire to live sober finally outweigh the fear of losing what the substance gives you? That's the turning point, not an intervention. I just know that there was a point for me where I'm like, okay, I mean, I was able in the end game to know fully that I had a problem. I I was very verbal about it. I knew I had a problem, but it would sneak up on me, and that's the trap. I couldn't get out of it at that point. That's the scary thing I see happening for this person in my life. Are they already at that point or are they right before that point? Because it's one of the two. That person is at the place where it is one of the two. Now that they don't see it or they say they don't see it, but I think deep inside they know it. I don't pretend to have this fully figured out, you guys. And I know that nobody does. That's why we have so many groups and stuff like that. And I think honestly, uh rehab facilities for the most part are a money game. Sober living, it's a money game. I think real truth lies in the rooms. I think a first place that anybody should start is definitely AA, because even though I don't go there anymore, and I explained that in previous episodes, but I live with the concepts and the principles that AA gave me to this day. And the foundational work, I remember when I was going through it, I'm like, really? I have to do these 12 steps? I don't what I don't understand. When I look back at the 12 steps, they're actually brilliant. And I live a version of the 12 steps every day in my life for every single thing. I think the closest thing to an answer is that it's in two places and they're really saying the same thing in two different languages, languages. And in recovery work, they call it a searching moral inventory of yourself. On paper, in detail, no editing. From a psychological standpoint, they call it shadow work. It's going into the parts of you that formed you, that hurt you, what I was talking about earlier, the silly little things in our lives, the reactions that we've never actually examined. We just inherited and repeated these things without question, not going back to the source of where they came from and why we tell ourselves the story that we do. Different language, same instruction. So we have to stop dancing around the actual issue and look directly at it. And that's painful. That can be hard. Some of these things that we face are very serious things that have happened to us or moments that were silly little moments that changed our life. And underneath of all of that, how did those incidents tell me that I am not enough? I cannot tell you the exact day that it flipped with me. I don't know, but I do know what it took. And it was finally looking at myself in the mirror and saying, man, I know to the deepest part of me that I've got to quit drinking, but I don't know how to do it. And just that simple, I don't know how to do it, going into I need help, getting into program, and yeah, I fall down and get back up. But in doing those things and making that change, being willing to do whatever it took to get sober, that changed my life. But the real thing that kept me sober was the shadow work, understanding why deep down inside I believed that I wasn't enough and how to quiet the voices in my head. So back to what happened this week, I found out what was lying underneath it. I wasn't actually angry about what happened in the moment. I was grieving, watching somebody that I love interpret their own pain as proof that they're not enough and they're struggling. They would never say those things out loud, but I recognize that and I recognize that pattern because I've lived it for most of my life. I lived it. I know exactly what it sounds like in your own head, and I know what denial sounds like, and I know where it comes from. And that's why I drew the line that I drew, not because I think anger fixes anything. It doesn't, but I'm glad that it happened because I think in that moment, the person knew it was so out of character for me that it did make them listen. I'm sure it hurt them. I'm sure they're telling a story within themselves around it, you know, villainizing me. And that's what we do when we're in the addictive process, right? We victimize everything and we turn it into it's them, it's not me. But somewhere, I think on some level, I believe that it is going to hit home with that person. And so if you take one thing from this episode, I want you to understand that substance is not the point. The point of it all is the identity underneath and the belief that you're not enough and that things happen to you instead of for you. And that every hard moment is proof that you're not enough. Whether it's the drinking or pills or whatever it is, it's the symptom doing its best to keep you comfortable inside a story. And it's the story that's killing you, along with whatever it is that you're addicted to. I don't have a clean resolution for any of this, but I think it's an important conversation because if you or somebody you know is struggling with an addiction, it has to come from, and I think every single one of you will understand this that is struggling or know somebody that's struggling. If you're intimately enough involved with that person that you know their story, it's a self-worth issue, guys. It is a I'm not enough. It's an I'm a victim story. And at some point we have to decide. It's like that old quote, you got to get busy living or get busy dying. I think that's from Sha Shank Redemption. And that is it. You either make peace to live in addiction for the rest of your life until it kills you, which it will eventually, whether it be directly or through an accident or something like that, or it just takes a toll on your body. I I've known so many people that have died young from addiction. Or you say, fuck that. I am not gonna let this happen to me. I'm going to find a way out. And then have that humble moment where you look at yourself and you're like, I have a problem. I have to stop denying it, but I have no idea how to fix it. It's taken hold, it's got its teeth in me, and I don't know how to fix it. And my go-to is this addiction, and I don't know how to step out of that. I don't know what to replace it with. And that is the thing that I don't have the answer for because that's where AA really comes in. And I gotta say, whether it's AA or a support group for whatever it is you're facing, when you're around people, especially initially, and you're struggling and you might be going through withdrawals or you might be having cravings, which is very, very real, or you just want to be around people that understand your journey, that's where it's so important to be in those rooms. Because not every room is gonna be great. You're gonna go to some meetings, and be like, oh my God, this is not my meeting. But if you go in with an open mind, get something out of it. And having people that you can call that really understand that journey is really important. But the ultimate thing, whether you go through the 12 steps, which is a you know, really something that I recommend that you do, look at the 12 steps because it can be applied to any single thing in your life, not just alcohol or drugs or whatever, any problem that you face. It is about understanding the core of the problem. And I can tell you that addiction for 90, I can't give you a percentage, but for most people is about self-worth. And it's the story that we tell ourselves and it's victimhood. So I just wanted to address that today because it has profoundly affected my life, me as a mother, as a person who fought that. And then for this person that I know that's going through it, that is so important to me that I love so much. And it's so painful to watch this person go through this, and it's so painful to be like, how can they make the decisions they're making when they watched my journey? And then having empathy for that person and knowing that they feel broken inside themselves. They feel unworthy, they feel unloved, they feel like they don't know how to pick up the pieces, they don't know how to fix things because man, all those feelings I felt that was my journey. But when a person's that sick, they don't want to hear about your journey. They're like, yeah, yeah, whatever, that's you, not me. But man, this person, if they only knew, I understand. But I also have to protect myself and I also have to make a stand for that person, be like, hey, I've tried everything I can. There's gonna be consequences for your actions. And that's hard. That's really hard. But I challenge you, you guys, if you know somebody that has an addiction, if you're struggling with that, or if you don't know how to help somebody, the ultimate thing is, especially if you're trying to help somebody, you can't. That person is not gonna stop until they're good and ready. And that's the truth. No rehab is gonna fix that, nothing is gonna fix that. And it's hard to accept that when you love somebody. It may be something horrible and catastrophic that happens to them that makes them stop. It may be something simple and one day they just wake up and they're done. Usually not, but that can happen. But the thing is, they have to get there. But you can help them by understanding that what they're going through isn't a selfish, a lot of people feel that. Why are you doing this? You're so selfish. Come on, guys, it's not about that. They don't want to live like that deep down inside. They're not keeping it in their life because they love it so much. It's because there's something broken inside of them that they don't know how to fix, they don't know how to quiet the voice in their head, and they don't feel like they're enough, and they don't feel like they're worthy, and they don't feel like they're lovable or loved. And you could tell them you love them all day long, and it's not gonna reach them because that's the story they're telling themselves. And it is only through the journey of breaking down the walls and doing the shadow work and understanding what moments formed the belief pattern inside of ourselves and making a conscious decision. I am not gonna be a fucking victim anymore. I'm gonna change this. I don't know how, but I'm gonna do it. And then being humble enough to reach out for help and admit that we are struggling with something. When that person makes those steps, they change. But when we're from the outside standing in, you can ask my ex-husband. He tried absolutely everything he could to help me, but I wasn't gonna quit drinking until, and they say until you're ready. It's not like I was ready. I couldn't quit. But there was a point where I had that moment and I was able to save my life, not alone with surrounded by people that loved me and understood, but the journey was alone. I had to make that journey within myself alone. So I just wanted to address that today because I think there's so many people that are dealing with secondhand addiction or addiction themselves. Guys, this is real and this is a soul issue. This is a self-worth issue. This is something that we can change, but we have to have the courage within ourselves to change it if we're dealing with it ourselves. Or if the person that we love is facing it, they have to dig deep and they have to deal with those issues. If this has helped you in any way, great, leave a comment, uh, share it with somebody that you know. If it's you that's struggling, I can only say you don't have power in other people's lives, right? But you do have power in your own. Make the decision, start thinking about these things, even if you're not ready today. Start thinking about the things that have formed your belief system about yourself and why is it that you need to quiet the voice in your head? What's so hard to face? And I will leave you with this. I never imagined a time that I would feel this way, but I would never drink again. Like some people like romanticize, they're like, oh, I wish I could. No, fuck. I am so happy living my life sober. Because guess what? Anything that comes my way, I process it and I move on. I'm so mentally healthy, and that is by choice, and that's by repeating the same actions over and over and digging deep and understanding what triggers I have and what is formulating the thoughts that I have in my head, the quality of the thoughts in my head. That's a journey, guys. It's a journey that you got to take, but it is possible to change your life. Thank you so much for being here and holding this part of my story with me. If today's episode resonated with you, please don't stay in silence. Share it with somebody, guys, that might need to hear it. And if you are walking through your own fire right now, hear me now. You are not too broken, you are not too late, and you are never ever alone. This is Burn It Down and Begin Again. My name is Erica, and I will see you in the next chapter.