Episode 7: Jillian C.

An architect, a mother, and 15 years sober, Jillian built her recovery not just through AA and EMDR therapy, but through a simple reframe — learning to say "my brain isn't working today" instead of "I'm a mess." She traces her journey from blackout drinking and cutting to a full life in Providence.

Transcript

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February 2003. That's when my life changed. My name is John Knowles, and this is Keep Comin', a podcast about recovery from substance abuse. In the 12-step rooms, you get to share your story or you sit and listen. That's the format, and it works. But there's something missing. The conversation. The questions no one gets to ask. This is that conversation. All right, Jillian, thanks so much for joining the podcast today. Where are we having the pleasure of talking to you from? I'm in Providence, Rhode Island. Providence. You're no stranger to Providence, but you did leave for a while. Remind me where you left when we were, you know, hanging out and part of the same recovery crew. Where did you go after that? Yeah, I very much started my recovery journey in Providence. And then I went to Boston for a bit, got very connected there, and then I moved to Rome for about 10 months to a year and got really connected to the program over there, then back to Providence, and then moved to Boston for like eight years and then Brooklyn and then Blaze. And then now I'm back in Providence. And your Block Island stint coincided with COVID, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, believe it or not, I stayed sober on an island, a very isolated island during COVID and loved it. Yeah. What are you recovering from, Jillian? Alcoholism. I definitely dabbled in cocaine, loved cocaine, but that alcohol was my ride or die main part of my story. The cocaine part of your story, I actually don't know if I've heard you talk about that before. To what extent was cocaine a factor in was it just party mode, or did you have a little bit of uh time with it where it was slightly problematic? You know, it's hard because that's something that I don't like, I don't always identify as a like pure addict. I would say I'm an alcoholic first, but the cocaine really just took my drinking to a whole nother level. And it was sometimes just like an eight ball on the weekend, and then it started to being every day, and it was a pretty short-lived, like six months to a year of it, because that kind of ramped things up and took me down really fast. It was just kind of extending the party. I think I mean the worst part of the cocaine was just the the come down after, and that just maybe compounded on me being still drunk from the night before. But what's your sober date? May 29th, 2011, 15 years ago. I don't remember the actual year. It was two days before my birthday, and so it very much was I woke up, same shit, different day. And I was like, not another year out of this crap. Tell us about what your last week of drinking was like. My last week of drinking was actually a relapse. I had been sober for a year. I'd gotten sober because I was my body was physically addicted to alcohol. And I said, okay, well, this makes sense. Let's get if you give anything something every single day for years, of course it's gonna be addicted. And so I really hadn't fully understood how integrated in my life was, and so I figured, okay, there's no way that if I started drinking again, it could be the same, like, you know, I'm off of it. And it was the relapse was immediately the same into the same kind of intensity drinking, calculating where am I gonna find it, all this, and this only lasted for about two, three weeks. It was just blacking out, waking up on the floor, and I had a boyfriend who was always trying to wrangle me. It was just immediately chaotic, I think. I think it was just a lot of the same waking up on the floor, waking up under my desk that had just happened for years before. But that week in particular, my boyfriend who was an orphan, just gave up. Like I was the last person in his life that he had. And he just was like, you know what, just fucking go drink. Like that's what you're gonna do, anyways. And he was the last person I expected in the world to give up on me because he had no, I was all he had. And that kind of just gave this intensity and also clarity at the same moment because I it was just up to me. I never I no longer had him to just kind of pick up all the pieces and get me together. Um, so after he did that, then I said, okay, well, if you can help me kind of detox a little today, and we can tape, then I think I can do this. And that was my sobriety date. And you mentioned your body was physically addicted to alcohol and you just said detox, but what it what was that like for you? You you had to withdraw from alcohol. Yeah, the withdrawal was scary and awful. I think it started with kind of like sensory stuff. Like I would my phone would be off and I would think it was ringing. Like I would start to kind of hallucinate auditorily, or and of course, like the skin crawling was it's like viscerally very difficult to go back there because it's like you want to kind of rip off all your fingernails and skit, like you you feel kind of almost like dirty all over. It makes you insane. It makes you feel insane on top of. So why would I stop drinking? But my boyfriend and I kind of had we had a routine when every time I would try to quit drinking, where he would, okay, clean out the apartment, I would get in bed, I'd take off all my clothes, and just kind of like we would also try to taper a little bit too. Um And what amount of alcohol would you drink or need to drink to get rid of the withdrawal symptoms if you were in that mode where you said, I I'm I'm not getting sober, I just need something to not be sick anymore. Probably like three to five drinks of like Jim Beam and Coke, something like that. Definitely three. Yeah. Cause I just would I really very much remember sitting and just getting through the first drink and being concerned that like, well, the second one and the third one has to come really fast. Like this, you know, it's really coming. The whole logistics of being alcoholic. What was helpful was because I was, you know, younger, was drinking late into the night, I could roll into work still relatively drunk. And so I wouldn't actually start to go into withdrawal, maybe until like four or five in the afternoon. So I could kind of make it until I needed to start. Yeah, until I mean my hands would just it was a whole process. I'd have to think through like the whole steps, but I wasn't really trying, I wasn't trying to not drink at that point. I wasn't functional when I wasn't drinking. Who do you feel was most negatively impacted by your drinking? Probably my mother, actually. Like, definitely my boyfriend. Like, he's been through like that, he was very immediately in it. But my mom's parents were both alcoholics, and she has a few siblings that are alcoholics, and watching me go down that path was just terrifying to her. And also being a mother where you have a teenager or you know, young adult, and you just can't control it, it just she was just constantly living in this fear state, and I think and she has this unresolved childhood trauma of walking in on her parents just like drunk and naked, or her sister shooting up, or something like that. And so when she was dealing with me, when we're older, she's dealing with the past and the present all the time, and it just was really intense for her. I always had a I mean, since I was a teenager, that was always a problem. I don't think she understood the depth of it, but she knew I had a drinking problem. And when I was waitressing for a period, I was on Block Island, and she was living on the island at the time, too. And so I remember just kind of like running into her and her and I just looked like a I don't know, ghost of myself, and she just looked at me being like, What's wrong with you? Like you like I can tell your skin your skin looks like the you know how mothers just kind of just kind of critique every this is wrong, this is wrong. You smell awful, and so what kind of conversations have you had with her since then or shortly after uh getting sober about your recovery journey? It's been pretty limited, honestly. Basically after I got I got fired from a job on that island because I was drunk on the job, and I wrote them an email saying, I'm gonna go to a detox, don't come don't contact me because she was so kind of um obviously concerned, but the whole addiction thing in relation to me, it just was really in that relationship is very intense with her. And so it's kind of like just don't contact me, I'm gonna go lick my wombs, do my own thing. I really haven't had that many conversations with her. Usually she would send my father, who was a little bit more my speed, same temperament, to have more deeper conversations with me. So I do remember him asking, like, after I got out of rehab, how are you making this decision? Like you're so young, how's this actually you know, how's this working? That's about it. I never did the I haven't done the ninth step yet. So I assume that will reveal some stuff. Do you have a sponsor currently? No, I don't. When was the last time you had a sponsor? It was at least eight years ago or something like that. My friend Olya, who I met in Rome, we had kind of you know, we were talking through things, and there was a scenario that I was going through something intense, and she just said, I will like she has this Russian accent, and she's the only one that I really enjoy when she tells me what to do. And so she just was like, Jillian, I will be your step coach. We'll meet every week, I will be your step coach. And so that's what we did. We met every week and we went through the steps together. Um, and she was very systematic with it. I think we probably got to the I'd previously gotten to the seventh step before. I think we went through like the first five or something together. And then I ended up just kind of deciding to work on more therapy. Like moving away from A and saying, okay, there's other things that I need to look at at a deeper level with a therapist. Let's go back a little bit to when you first started drinking and the time between that first drunk and when you started realizing you had a problem. The first time I drank was I definitely had tastes, you know, at New Year's or something like that when I was younger. But the first time I got drunk was at my friend Bobby's house. And it was like kind of classic scenario where his older brother has alcohol and we go, and we would also, he lived very close to the movie theater. And my friends had gotten drunk the weekend before, and they said, Oh, we went to Bobby's house, you gotta come. And so the next weekend I went with them, told our parents we're gonna go see this movie, walked to Bobby's house and had like Twister and vodka or something like that. Yeah, had a lot of fun. I think I don't know if I had that kind of like, oh, and immediately I was a whole person again or something like that. But it was very apparent that that's what we were gonna be doing for forever, you know. No more kick the can and and playing tag and hide and seek. Yeah. And then I think that was just, you know, I grew up in DC and I went to a private school. And so there is a little bit of this kind of future elite of America, also it won't happen to me mentality of adolescents, teenagers. And so the drinking culture there was pretty intense. So it was a lot of house parties, drinking heavily. And I think my friends were telling me that I had a problem even before I thought about it. I don't think I ever really started to acknowledge it until uh until college when I realized some of the physical symptoms showing up. But my friends were saying to me, Oh, you they say, you know your fa it runs in your family. You need to you need to watch yourself. I remember a friend of mine who's she's just she's super preppy and cute and she pulled me aside one day and she was like, Jill, if you keep drinking like this, you can't like you're not gonna be able to drink on your wedding day. Which I don't I I didn't f understand what she was saying, but it's just like if it keeps going like this, it's gonna blow up your life or your that your drinking could just get to that level. I went to a private school, similar culture, party, house parties, drinking everywhere. And there was a guy that had transferred into the school who I think was sober if I look back on it, but he would still go to parties and he would have to pin me down. And I was, you know, 140 pounds sopping wet. He would have to pin me down because I just turned into such a maniac. And he was telling me at age 16 that I had a problem with alcohol. And um I like you, I didn't really believe it. I s just didn't seem like that. You know, I I my perspective of an alcoholic was my mother who was an alcoholic, and I said, I'm nothing like that. I never seen like I didn't grow up with alcoholic parents, so I don't actually know what they're talking about. So I didn't seen it. But it was there was a real difference in terms of me and the other girls because, you know, I was in my my group, and while they were trying to, you know, make out with the hottest guy, I just was focused on the drinking. And I remember there was a point when all my friends had boyfriends, I think it was our junior year, and it was just me and my friend Jasmine, and we just had the best time because we were going to every single part, like that's all we were doing, uh, was going to parties or tricking guys to bias, you know, alcohol or something like that. Yeah, and we were also the popular girls who were getting taken out and it was a blast. But there also was a lot of drinking and driving in that whole culture and ended up getting a DUI when I was like 18 or something like that, which again with the whole mother thing just killed her. I can't believe that I nor any of my friends in high school, at least that I know of, got DUIs. I mean, similarly, we drove around the east side of Providence drunk on Satur Friday and Saturday nights for years, doing going down intentionally going down one-way roads the the wrong way when we're drunk. And it was just, I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, sometimes it's nice when you're in a because not that this is like the reason why I got a DUI was because I was in a different town, but but it was like that, you know, I was in like Towson, Maryland at some college party or something like that. Maybe if I was at home, I would have been able to make it home. You were told you had a problem by many people. When did you start feeling that you had the problem? In college, there was this one morning where I woke up and I just couldn't put my day together. I was just kind of lost, like going from room to room, trying to figure out how like what I was actually supposed to be doing that day. And it was like 10 a.m. and I just decided to have a drink. And it it all just kind of came together. This is why I was feeling lost was because I hadn't started drinking that day. And that was just the first kind of thing that I was like, oh, that's different. And I started thinking about it and remembering whenever I was drinking the night before, you probably had this experience where you've got your drink, you put it down, and you go to the next room, and then you're in the next room and you realize you don't have your drink with you, and you start to have a little mini panic attack. And that was something that I don't think other people were experiencing. And so I knew that there was some sort of dependency thing going on. And you know, I talked to my friends about it because I just thought I I just didn't think of alcoholism. I was like, this is different, right? And they said, Yeah, you should probably stop drinking or something, or go to the c go to the guidance counselor is what they told me. I don't think I ended up going for a while longer, but that was just the first signal that maybe this is different for you. And were you in a dorm at that point with roommates? Yeah, I lived with two girls in a college dorm. And they were I picked them because they were very much like the girls I grew up with. So I I knew how to kind of navigate and make them happy in terms of okay, we're gonna party together, but all I really need to do is compliment you on your outfit. So it was kind of like this relationship where I could do what I want as long as I was like, oh yeah, your shirt matches with your belt, we're all good. But over the course of me living with them and drinking increasingly heavier I sort of becoming the antagonist in in the household. Would you say that during that time that you would have been uh a shitty roommate looking back at it? Or do you do you look back and say, ah, even though I was drinking a lot, I probably wasn't that bad of a roommate? I don't know if I was shitty, I just was entitled and self, I just self-involved. I just didn't really care what they thought, or you know. And I think any sort of criticism, I just I have a pretty big ego too. So any sort of criticism, I'm like, they don't know what they're they're just dumb blondes or something like that. But my the roommate I had after them, we drank very heavily together. She was great, and she's sober now. And I talked to her like a couple times a year. It's funny, my my wife she said to me, uh it's so weird. Everyone in your life is either sober or needs to be. Yeah, my husband just was realizing that a couple nights ago because he was I I've never taken him into meetings. He just kind of knows that that's a part of my life, but we haven't really gotten into a lot of detail. And he was like, Wait, you know, Olia from AA? You know Bosker from like and he's starting to put together the pieces. That's all these people are actually from AA. And I was like, Yeah, that was a huge part of my life for years and years. You mentioned a rehab, uh, and maybe there's more than one, but uh you went to uh an inpatient facility for rehab, yeah. So I went to Butler Hospital. We did uh detox, they put me in the psych ward. I'm not I also was uh I also was a cutter too. So that was part of it where I had like yeah, they asked about it and I said, Oh, which is superficial. It was mainly for Endorphins, but that was kind of borderline why they put me in the psych board or not. But anyways, I was in the psych board for like five days or something detoxing. And then I went to their outpatient program, which was like a 9 to 4 p.m. kind of thing. And you had like group sessions, and then you had your counselor who I of course hated. But that at least was that allowed me to get like put together a certain like a almost a month sober, which I hadn't been sober for that long since I was 13. I didn't stay sober. The first couple years were kind of rocky in terms of I went to a detox and then a rehab. I was sober for three months and then started drinking again. And that happened a few different times. And each time just got darker and darker, where it just and it also, when they talk about it, it just wasn't fun anymore. It was just immediately unmanageable, not fun, and pretty cryptic in there in my head. That is. Walk us through a little bit about when you were, you know, put yourself right back when you would uh be using your tool of choice. I'm gonna guess it was a whatever you call it. Literally an X-acto knife? Well, I was an arch, you know, as an architecture at school, so yeah. Yeah, I think well, I haven't talked to that many cutters other than my old roommate, but that was really just an endorphins thing. I don't have I don't feel like I have a lot of maybe at that time of my life I didn't like who I was. I was very that that was a component, sure. But it really was around me trying to get sober because I was trying to be sober and I didn't like the feeling of being sober. And so I was really trying to do anything to get some sort of little high. And cutting was a great way to do that because you get this rush. Yeah, I'm able to feel anything else. And what's the rush from? You you you cut your skin and you start bleeding. Where's the where does the rush come in? Uh, the adrenaline of like the pain, you know, pain, adrenaline, pleasure, that whole kind of mixture of things. I mean, that was one of the tools in order to like feel anything else. I think I'd also like, I mean, you could also just take a hot shower too. But like, and I could that pretty much like I think subsided after after the first once I was sober for like six months or something like that. But just I learned other tools. And was it routine-based? Would you go to a specific room or play music or what how did that unfold each time it happened? Yeah, it was really just I think it was, yeah, definitely that first year when I was trying to be sober. Yeah, and I was just in my apartment at my desk. I would just do that. Um, I still have some scars on my forearm, but it was always like it was I was never like sneaking into a bathroom to like slip my wrists or anything like that. It was pretty methodical. And the blood, would it drip on the table? Would you get a a cloth, a paper towel? Where would the blood go? I would just get a paper towel and call it a day, and then put a piece of some blue tape around it or something and some sleeves on, and then I immediately felt better. And so that would just kind of take me out of wherever I was mentally. Did anyone introduce it to you? You know, with alcohol, we go to a party and someone shares it with us. But does someone say, hey, you should try cutting? How do you discover it? The show de Grassi. It's a Canadian show about teenagers and you know, one's getting pregnant, the other one's drinking, it's all this stuff. And there was one girl that was a cutter, and I think I knew that that was a thing that you could do. I think I had experimented with biting my hand or something when I was a teenager to feel something else. So that's the kind of like, okay, that's where the addiction starts to come in because you're you're really just trying to alter your reality and feel something else. And so I knew that that felt good based on the mental pain or you know, emotional pain I was going through. So that was something I experimented with, but it didn't really come into play later in life. So let's go to the final sober date that you're currently experiencing now in your journey. Um you get sober. When do you start going to meetings and how did that help you? I had been going to meetings since I was starting to try to quit drinking, which was way back when not too soon after I realized that my body might be addicted. Because there was this kid named Noah in in college with me. He was fr he was friends with, and he he was very vocal about being sober. And because I knew that that was possible, uh, he ended up taking me to my first meeting. What was the hardest part about early recovery for you? I mean, early recovery, I think was just a lot of white knuckling. And I was also young and I was in this culture where everybody's drinking. And so I had to lose, I just had to lose a lot of friends. What was the best part about early recovery? When I moved to Boston, I started going to, I was freelancing as a designer. And so I had very flexible days, and I started going to meetings where just kind of mistakenly went to this meeting called Open to All, which was a gay meeting. The men in that meeting just kind of swooped me up and said, You're fabulous, you're fabulous. Uh, it was very cliche almost, and said, You should come to this meeting with us in a couple days, or this guy, Rob, specifically, who ended up being my roommate, said, I just started this meeting on Tuesday. You gotta come. And they really took care of me and almost planned my whole week for me. And so the best part was just I had this immediate friend group who just loved me, whatever state I was in. I could be totally dark and cryptic, and they would just make fun of me and just be like, you're so girl interrupted right now. I love it. And they also just taught me how to laugh at myself, which was really in a talking about changing your mental state. Once you're able to break that lapse, laughter, then you're in a totally different place. And so that really helped me get out of myself was like how witty they were with jokes and everything. Really helped me a ton. What's something that surprised you about living a sober life that you would never have believed while you were active? Well, I think just how much I can like do and accomplish. You know, I've traveled all around Europe going to AA meetings, and I've met all these wonderful people who are really uh like dynamic and interesting. Like that perspective of a sober life where it really does feel like I have this almost like competitive edge and can really I think of it as you can have anything you want or you can have a drink. And I think that's just kind of the the biggest part that I I almost wouldn't have believed is what my life is like now. Tell us a little bit about a day in the life of Jillian now. I live in Province, we have a two-family, which is great uh in terms of flexibility. I wake up, I've got a one-year-old son, and so my life is pretty ideal in terms of I get to both work on my creative projects and then I get to spend a few days with him. And so I hang out with my son basically until 10 a.m. when he goes to sleep. And then I am an architect, so I'm either working on one of my architecture projects, or I've got some sort of side creative project that I'm working on. My husband works in my company as well, so we'll usually have lunch together. We try to spend a lot of time outside, and working out is like a big part of our life too. So we're always either going on a run or we walk a lot together. So a lot of walking the dog. You know, I have some really great friends that are both in the program and outside of the program that I have this deeper conversation with. So I'll talk on the phone with one of my AA friends for like an hour or something. A lot of them live far away now. So that's always just a really nice way to, yeah, I really need that connection, which probably is also the place of where meetings used to be. What about growing up for you and your family dynamics, siblings, parents, etc.? You know, my mom, Irish Catholic, they were drunks. She was one of ten. And my dad was, he basically, his parents were with the State Department. So he grew up living all over the world. And he was always kind of raised by nanny or something like that. And so I think they were very much both making it up as they went along in terms of how to raise us, because neither of them really had strong parental figures in their life for two different reasons. And he's almost like, I call him like a foreigner, but he speaks English. So there's totally like a language barrier with him. You know, I have a sister. I think growing up, it was like uh we grew up very middle class. It wasn't like I was lacking in anything, but it was really my mom was like the very dominant personality. Um, because my dad, the reason I call him like the foreigner with the language, you know, he's a he has a language barrier, but he speaks English was he was really so quiet and uninvolved. And she was this kind of big personality who had a crazy temper. Um, so there was just a lot of yelling all the time. And I think for like an for me, that was just like that was really hard. And I have a sister who's older, and we don't have like a strong family cohesion, to be quite frank. My sister kind of is like, well, I love you, obviously, because you're my sister, but it's like we're almost like acquaintances sometimes. I get what you're saying. It just like everyone was was their own thing, and it didn't feel like a a tight-knit team. Yeah. And at the same time, it's like I am a little bit more like my father, where I'm a little bit more withdrawn. And people are always telling me I am kind of like aloof when I'm really just kind of like listening and assessing the situation. But my mother, because she came from 10 children, she always expected us to be really tight-knit. And a and a lot of her kind of, she's one of those people I describe as like she grew up with, she has like a hole inside of her still that she's trying to fill that came from her parents, her upbringing. And so me being a little bit more distant, she's was, I mean, her my whole life, she's kind of saying, I wish we were closer. And I always, which is a really sweet sentiment, but it was always trying to solve her childhood issue through me. And so I always took that as I mean, it wasn't like I took it as she was criticizing me constantly, that I was aloof, and that I wasn't capable of having intimate relationships. And so I hear that every few years, and that she needs more from me and I'm not meeting some sort of need, which from my perspective was there before I got here. But it's always been like a kind of tense relationship because when something is going on in her life and that hole feels really especially big, she goes to me because I'm a little bit more introverted, and you can kind of emotionally dump on me if you want, because I'll just listen. So we just always had a really yet tense relationship because of that. The dynamic of my mother was like she would yell at me and get angry, and then she would want me to comfort her because we quote got in a fight. So I really like I always have this visual memory of holding her, being like one, two, three, four, five. Like, what like I'm still obviously upset with all the yelling, but like she needs to be like taken care of, which I think is the you know, adult child of an alcoholic, whatever. I haven't studied it, but there is some weird dynamic there between us. It's almost kind of like funny now. I mean, like, I this is part of the humor that I can kind of take from, you know, the man I was friends with in Boston, where I'm like, it is kind of funny where she'll like, you know, hang up the phone on me and because she's angry because I was doing something to take care of myself, and then I'll get a call from my dad being like, you need to apologize to your mother. And so I'll like quite literally pickle up and be like, I'm sorry. I was just trying to take care of myself. And she's like, Yeah, totally. Like, yes, you you should be apologizing to me. What is or were some of the most challenging parts of your life? The hardest part for me was learning how to be a woman in a male-dominated industry was really difficult. Being a young, attractive architect walking onto construction sites and just getting harassed all the time. And then that now I realized with someone who obviously was a drunk young girl who had her many run-ins with men that was quite scary as a young kid, and then being on construction sites with like just kind of like boss and blue-collar guys, just like harassing you constantly, that my body was always in this kind of like fight or flight mode for years. And I was having like night terrors, and yeah, it was really difficult. And there weren't any older women in my industry to talk to about this. Because if you were to go, you know, and it obviously if you talk to someone in graphic design or something like that, you don't have that issue. But learning how to navigate that, especially when I grew up with this is just me being a general feminist, where it's like you grew up thinking, yeah, we women's suffrage, we're here, it's all the same. You can have everything. And then realizing where I actually was in my industry was a real rude awakening, and then having to deal with my own nervous system around being scared of aggressive men. That was really intense. And that's why being in like the gay AA community was also so uh comforting and satiating for me because I was really taking care of there. To your point, you know, uh very much to your point, growing up and and thinking, okay, you know, women's rights and equality uh in 2000 at that time, I'm guessing 2014, 15, when you're in Boston doing these things, uh we certainly should be as a culture evolved enough, as we know, uh certainly since 2016, and a certain president in office that's all gone downhill. But I need to understand what the hell guys are doing that are is even something that they can do without getting arrested these days, because it happens all the time. I don't see it. Women experience it all the time. I have no clue. Well, so remember that it's like there's one component to look at where it's just like, yes, what was going on, which I'm getting into detail is harassment, etc. But the other component was that I was dealing with my own quote trauma from years ago. So everything was so intense and magnified. And so my uh I'm trying to deal with them in like a normal business way, but then I have to regulate my nervous system to be able to be successful in my career. And so that was wild to do at the same time. But I mean, it was like they're when you're on the construction site, it's like you it always happens with men over the age of like 45-50. Um, so this was like what 15 years ago or something like that. So like you do the math because they haven't really quite learned that like women are in the workforce yet. And they're and so it escalates where you are trying to, you know, talk with them about a project. Uh, and so you have coffee together, and then you allow them to buy your coffee. And that one admission of saying you've you're allowed to buy this coffee, then they think they have the right to, you know, go into talk to how pretty you are or drop you off and like take you in your car or something like that. And then it turns into black straight up hitting on you while you're like on a construction site in front of all the guys in terms of asking you out. And then when you say no, then they would say, Well, what are you again? What are you gay? And then they go into you must be sleeping with the engineer, and then it turns into anger, and then it turns into them calling the office and making bullshit up, so you got to run to the construction site just to watch you run. And then yeah, this one guy was just wild in terms of and the only way I learned how to deal with him, with him just constantly like making sexual comments to me while I'm at work. Like you don't know how to talk to a woman, just be like, is your brain so fucking broken that you don't know how to speak to a woman without just saying something sexual or like are you or just do like basically being more Boston than they are. It's like that. And then if I go back into the office, then I had these other guys where this one guy where if I stood up, he was watching me. If I wore a different kind of earring, he was like he was just always like, What are you doing? And he just was constantly watching me the whole time. Or it'd be like, if I I remember those I was wearing a sleeveless shirt and like my bra strap was like showing a little bit, and so he like, you know, put it back in place and tucked it underneath my shirt. So it was that, or there were especially with um at the next company I worked with, there was this one guy that was always doing that like crotch box in thing when you've got the like L-shaped desks. Like if you had an L-shaped desk and then he's always boxing you in with his crotch into your like little desk corner and like touching you. And so Oh, I I need to I I'm I'm closing my eyes trying to visualize what the heck you're talking about. That sounds intense. You've got an L-shaped desk, and then he's rolling up in his chair and just boxing you into this corner, basically. Like he's got his leg stress spread open, and then he's like touching your arm, you know. There's all these like little moves where it's like, is it I mean, some of them are much more blatant than others, but when you take that and somebody who's been, you know, in really um scary, violent scenarios with men, it's like your alarm bells are going off all the time. And so that's when I ended up breaking out of AA and going to real therapy, like EMDR therapy, because it just was like I was living in this hell. I remember I like hadn't there would be some scenarios where it would be like a man would be like kind of following me on the street or something like that, and just literally start running. And I knew that my like reactions were way. Too extreme for what was going on. I mean, given that's like kind of scary, but like I could tell my reactions were way bigger than what they should have been. And I remember someone in the meeting just being like, You're 28, like go to a fucking therapist. You're too old, like you know better. We're doing our work now, but it's just like you gotta take care of yourself and just deal with the issues when they arise. And I've taken that kind of mentality to heart since then, where if something comes up that you're obviously not dealing with an A, just address it and go to a therapist. And so that's been periods of my life where it's just okay, I'm just gonna go for a little bit, work on this little thing, and then everything's good. And then a few years later, something else might come up, and then I address that. And you know, maybe that comes a little bit from just kind of addressing things when they come up. Yep. Because otherwise, if you're holding on to that, it just that's what gets you closer to a drink. You know, in my day-to-day, I still seem super cool, but but in terms of what's going on in my body, it's like I'm shaking, I have to lay down. That was the other component was like, because my body would go into freeze state, I would have to go find a place to like lay down. But after working on that, you know, I had a scenario when I was living in New York, and my boss, who I liked, did this thing where he was like, Can I talk to you? And he, you know, all architects are not very uh, they're not great socially. But he pulls me this tiny room, closed the door, locks it, puts his chair in front of the door. The most like such an aggressive move. But then just wanted to talk to me about like how I thought the team was doing. And I think five years ago, I would have been like crying on the floor. But because I did the work, I was like, all right, he's just, you know, a little inept socially. This is a very like intense scenario, and he doesn't know what he's doing. But it's not, you know, the end of the world. That does sound a little creepy and alarming to close the door, lock it, throw a chair in front of it. This was totally had no idea what he was doing. Jillian, I end each podcast with this following question, which is what didn't we talk about today that you thought you'd be asked and didn't get to tell us about? Or what would you like us to know that I didn't ask you? You know, a friend of mine that I grew up with, he's in detox right now. And so I've been thinking about like where I've been and my journey a lot and why, you know, it's so rare to get sober. Like the probability that you're actually gonna stay sober, get sober and stay sober is just so slim. And I think the one thing that I just almost didn't even realize that I was doing right was that I started almost talking about my addiction and myself and how my brain was working in the third person to myself when I was in early sobriety. So if I was like craving for a drink, or if I was just like being a normal alcoholic, I would say something like, My brain's just not working today. And just that difference of saying almost like my car isn't working today, that separation instead of saying I can't do anything right, I'm an addict, I'm gonna die an addict, whatever, that kind of internal self-hatred that people get into. The fact that I was just like, it's not that I'm all awful. It's just my brain just not working right. And I think that separation allowed me to build up my self-confidence just way faster. And I was much more resilient because of that. Cause it really was just a process of getting my brain back online, which took a long time. And that's where AA and therapy really like it really felt like after 10 years of being sober, I was actually like I actually woke up. And I think if I went the other route, it just would have been a darker, long. I don't know if I would have stayed sober if I just didn't make that subtle shift in terms of how I talk about myself. Well, for me, some of the subtle things have been the biggest deal breakers or deal makers, I should say, for me. For example, before I officially got sober, I had gotten to a point of desperation and picked up the yellow pages and looked under rehab or whatever it was back in 2002, 2003 timeframe when there was still a yellow pages and I called an 800 number, and they try to, you know, when you do that, they try to convince you to go into a rehab right then and there. My protest at that time was, I just need my own room in rehab. I'm not doing a roommate thing. Uh, I'm I'm good to go if I can get a roommate. And they're and they're or if I don't get a roommate. And they were like, yeah, that's not how it works. And I said, Well, what if I hate my roommate? And and the only thing the guy said was, What if your roommate turns out to be a lifelong friend? And that was all it took. That one response to my protest is what got me sober and got me under rehab. Wow. That tiny little shift in thinking, like, oh, maybe it won't be the worst thing ever. Yeah, I had a similar thing where it was like the day, you know, I had been going to meetings when I was living on Block Island. I had been going to meetings, so I knew some people in the program, but I wasn't sober. And I got fired from my job from being drunk on the job, and I ran into this guy named Chip who was sober at like a cafe. And I was like, Do you want to hear about the worst day of my life? And he said, Maybe. And after I told him what happened, where I, you know, threatened my boss to kill him and just was drunk on the job. He said, Well, maybe in a few years that'll be the best day of your life. And that's when, you know, it's just that shift where there are those moments where it just, it just changes. Jillian, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. You are uh awesome to be a guest. Yeah, of course. It was great to reconnect. As we stay in recovery, keep coming.