April 16th 2001 was 25 years ago apparently

In this episode, it’s just me.

No guest. No back and forth. Just me marking something that actually matters. 

25 years clean and sober.

This one is not about storytelling. It is more of a reflection. Not the polished version. The real one.

I talk about what it actually means to be sober. The difference between being abstinent and actually doing the work. Because putting the drink down is one thing. Changing how you live is something else entirely.

I go back to what drove it in the first place. Feeling different. Not fitting in. Needing something to bridge that gap. And how alcohol did that for a while until it didn’t.

This episode sits inside that shift. What it takes to live in the world without needing something external to make you feel okay. And how that is still a daily practice. Not something that gets ticked off and finished.

I also speak about selfishness. Not pretending it’s gone. Not pretending I’ve fixed it. Just being honest about the fact it’s still there. And that awareness is what keeps me from falling straight back into it.

There is also something deeper in this one. The idea that we are not broken. That the cracks are part of it. That the work is not about becoming perfect, but about being willing to look at yourself without turning away.

This is not a lesson. It is a check in. A reminder of where I came from and what it actually takes to stay on this path.

No fixing.
No wrapping it up.

Just being honest about the fact that if I forget who I am, I lose everything.

It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME. In Session with a Psychotherapist
Hosted by Chad Taylor

Author or It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME.

No tips.
No fixing.
Just real conversations.

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Email- chadtaylorpsychotherapy@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hey guys, welcome to this special edition of It's You, Oh Fuck, It's Me in session with a psychotherapist. Today's a pretty significant day for me. I am 25 years clean and sober. So this time in 2001, I would have been on my way to rehab or on my way to a detox. And I think I shared a bit about this on my last podcast, so I don't want to bore everyone to tears with that. But also felt for me like there's a bit of accountability in sharing this. My partner Sophie or my fiance today asked me, what are some highlights and what are some things that you wish you could tell your younger self? And it's a hard question because I think a lot of the time it's what we go through that makes us us. So would I change anything? I don't know. I've been reflecting a lot today. I went to work, got to hang out with some amazing clients. That definitely wouldn't have been possible without all these years of recovery. And, you know, what is it, what does it mean to be recovered? There's a lot of people out there who I would think are abstinent from alcohol and drugs, but to me there's a big difference between being abstinent and also being recovered or recovering. And even in the world of AA, there's or NA or GA or whatever A we're talking about, whatever 12-step program, there's also a lot of people who think that just putting down the alcohol, the drugs, or the poker machine or whatever it is, is enough. And it's not enough. And I knew that from very young. You know, I was somebody who had, you know, imaginary friends and all these sorts of crazy things that a lot of kids never really had that I had. And I felt like I was always a bit um different. And I was fucking different, very different. And I guess for me, the more different I was, the less I felt like I fit in. And the more, as soon as I found alcohol, the more I needed that substance to make me feel like I was okay to fit in. And I suppose what I've learned in the last 25 years is how do I fit in as to the best of my ability, how do I fit in in the world without needing alcohol and drugs? You know, I'm still a bit different. You know, I've written a book in the last few months that clearly shows how different I am. And that yeah, that book was written for me, like I said many times throughout the book, and I've also said on this podcast that it was almost more of a journal than it was a book. And I suppose what would I what would I change and what are the highlights and the lowlights? You know, I don't know, there's there's you know, I've got two amazing daughters, I've got an amazing fiance now, I live in an amazing place in Australia on the south coast here. I do I wouldn't change the job that I do, I wouldn't change the clients that I have. Does it come with its challenges? 100% life comes with its challenges. But the other option for me is that I forget that I'm an alcoholic, then I forget that I'm an addict, and I try social drinking again. I've got too much to lose. That's that's the thing for me. Why do I why do I stay sober? Why do I do what I do? Because I've got too much to lose. And I see how strong that black wolf in us is, that egocentricity. You know, this egocentricity gets formed fairly young. You know, when we're born, we're connected, we're almost having a spiritual experience. The thinking and the feeling are connected. And as we start to form and as we start to experience life, that thinking and that feeling get disconnected. And I know for a fact I'm a feeling, function, dominant person, I always have been. And we live in a world full of thinking, function, dominant people, and that can be an issue. Carl Jung talked a lot about this a hundred years ago. A lot smarter man than I am, a lot more wise than I am. He dedicated his whole life to this journey. And he talked about the the psyche being cut into four quadrants of thinking and feeling and perceiving and intuition. And I think we we live in a world now, and it's even worse. I was born in 1978. It's even worse now for those kids where if you're not in your thinking function, you almost become redundant in the world. Everything's geared around this thinking function. So a lot of artists, a lot of less left hemisphere dominant people rule the world. And the problem we've got is that right hemisphere is just getting left behind. So for me, I I'd like to work with more people, I'd like to do this more, I want to keep on my journey. You know, I'll read anything and everything. And you know, there's so much wisdom everywhere, and as what I want to leave to people today, is there's no right or wrong way to do this journey. You know, what we need is we need something that'll reconnect ourselves to ourselves, and I think that's what the 12th steps does. It gives us an understanding of who we really are underneath all that. Like I shared a little bit about in my previous podcast, where I at the last one about Easter, where I shared about you know that the Japanese almost repairing vases and broken things with with gold, because to show the significance of we're not broken. We're actually just we're all in need of repair. It's the cracks, is where the light comes in. It's the crack, it's the brokenness that when it forms back together is the magic. And every spiritual teaching and every religious teaching, every religion has always talked about these that things like why do we see the why do we see the the splinter in the other person's eye when we miss the log in our own? Because it's so easy to point the finger and have a look at what you're not doing or what you're doing. And I suppose for me it's always come back to what I'm doing. How do I stay sober on a daily basis? I pray, I meditate, I try and do a good deed, I try and look after people, I try and give back a bit to the world rather than taking from it, because by nature, I'm a selfish person, I know it. I'm so fucking selfish, and that was my biggest problem, and even now I can still be selfish. There's probably people out there thinking, if they're listening to this thinking, you're still selfish, Chad. And I probably am. But I know I'm on this journey and I think I have the ability to look at myself now. So for anyone out there, if you're struggling with anything, and you can use these 12 steps, you can use there's so much information out there on self-evolving or self-evolution, self-awareness. And how do we become more aware? Because Socrates said an unexamined life is a life not worth living. I'm not sure he's the only person that said that, and I'm not sure if he said it exactly, but I know that there's this inability for us to look at ourselves, it's always Trump's fault or the government's fault, or my partner's fault, or my mum's fault, or my sister's fault, or my uncle's fault, or it doesn't really matter my kids' fault, the other team's fucking football's fault, the referee's fault, it doesn't really matter what it is. There's always a reason why it isn't us. And I think for me at such a young age, I was forced to see that actually chat it is you, it is your fault. It's not actually my fault, I'm an alcoholic, but it's my fault, my life got to where I was. And once I learned that there was a way around that and that I could actually stay sober on a daily basis, if I just didn't have the first drink, that was like fucking groundbreaking for me that if you don't have the first drink, you can't get drunk. Like it's so simple, but not so simple. So I just wanted to do a quick podcast because for me it's a significant day, it's a quarter of a century. It feels like a lifetime ago. It it feels like I've lived multiple lives, but I wanted to do this more for me than anyone else. And if anyone listens to it, it's more of a journal entry. So thanks for tuning in. And I won't make this a habit of doing these uh what do we want to call them, special edition podcasts too often. So thanks for listening, and we'll leave it there.