Talking About Recovery

Barry Ebert and special guests, Jim Weiss, and Carol Wilke talk about the power of recovery from addiction to support health and well-being. This interview can support any 12 step program, including Alcoholics Anonymous, or "AA." It doesn’t matter if you have 1 day or 30 days or 6 years or 15 years; it’s the quality of your recovery, not the quantity.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Mile High Church podcast.

Join us and some very special guests as we dive in together,

Open our hearts and get real to discuss what we've been thinking about.

So it's Barry,

Glad to be back,

Glad you're with us today and today we're talking about recovery and I brought in two friends here,

Reverend Carol Wilkie who's one of the ministers at Mile High Church and Jim Weiss who was a good friend on our board and also does a lot of work in recovery too.

So welcome Carol.

Thanks Barry,

Glad to be here.

Jim,

Glad you're here.

Thanks for coming in.

So just to kick off the recovery thing and just that idea,

I'd like both of you to just kind of give a quick synopsis of how you got into it and how long you've been at it.

I think for me Barry,

I started drinking at the age of 16 and started drinking to be more clever,

Funnier,

Wittier,

More comfortable in my own skin and by the time I reached the age of 46 I was drinking to keep from seeing who I had become and so that journey for me was just one of shame and remorse and guilt and having to then step into a new way of being and completely do everything in my life differently.

I've now been sober for 20 years and it's been probably the most amazing,

Gratifying and rewarding journey of my life.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Congratulations by the way.

Yeah,

Thanks.

And Jim,

How about you?

So I was also the same as Carol.

I started about the age of 16.

I started more with drugs than I did with alcohol and like most people I did it to feel normal,

To fit in,

To be funny,

To be good-looking to 16 year old girls,

To not have to deal with my insecurities and that journey led me on for 35 years,

Letting go most of the drugs but the last 20 years was I couldn't let go of the alcohol and despite all the heart and want and desire I had no idea how to do it.

I had a place one day where I had to make a choice and pretty much in an instance I made the choice to let go and that was the first time in my life I ever said these words to anybody,

I need help and I reached out to friends and family and community and thankfully that was over 18 years ago and as I ran that journey and lived that journey I also realized that I fell in love with the idea of recovery and I can say that it's the hardest thing I've ever done and it's come with the most rewards of anything I've ever done in my life.

Having that love for recovery I also stepped into the industry as a certified addiction specialist and I've been doing that for the last 15 years and it's just an absolute passion for me to give back to so many people what so many people gave to me.

So I'm just grateful for that.

Great.

Well you know one of the phrases that you hear in recovery all the time is that people get started when they hit bottom,

That someone has to hit bottom.

Is that true?

Is that a cliche?

Where does that fall into the spectrum of people seeking recovery?

Well I think such a huge part of this disease and of alcoholism and addiction is denial and so so many of us are in denial that we even are an alcoholic.

It's the only disease where the person who has it is in complete denial that they even have it,

Right?

And so it's Robert Louis Stevenson said,

Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of our consequences and that's what hitting bottom is.

When all of those consequences start to pile up they get so overwhelming they might land us in jail or have tremendous consequences we may ostracize everyone from our life and then something will happen that is the final piece.

It can be something super devastating and it can be something that might just be a small thing but it was the final piece that needed to happen for someone to say,

Oh my gosh I'm I cannot go on living this way.

And for all of us it's different but it's it's catastrophic enough that it gets us to change our behavior and to as Jim said those three little words that are so important I need help and once we can have the courage to say that and reach out and ask somebody for help whether it's going to a recovery meeting or reaching out to a minister or a friend or someone like Jim who does this great counseling work.

It's simple and it's really hard.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Well in your in your counseling work I mean you're talking with a lot of people obviously who are close,

Close to making that decision.

So how do you how do you help them get there?

Well I get people from all over the spectrum.

I get some people to walk in and say they're ready and they demonstrate it with their actions and I also get people that walk in and they're still questioning whether they're ready.

They've got this duality going on.

They're they're starting to see the consequences and experiencing the hurt and the pain for themselves and perhaps family members and such but there's that part of them that still is struggling to to let go and envision a life without alcohol or drugs.

So part of the work I do is just to help open them up to see what their life can be like,

How they can grow,

How they can evolve and I know quite often I can tell people either as a therapist or a man in recovery how good this is and I know they don't believe me.

Yeah.

I know that I know and I'll tell them to their face I don't expect you to believe me but what I try to do is as a as a therapist I consider myself a salesman and I'm just gonna sell love and hope and get them engaged long enough where they can start experiencing even at the very beginning some of the gifts and the rewards that come with recovery and for many of those people once they get that little snippet of my life can be better.

Some jump in with a little toe some jump in head first and everything in between.

Well a lot of a lot of what both of you guys have been through a lot of meetings right and I think that's what stops a lot of people from getting going is I don't want to you know I don't want to go to a bunch of meetings and so you understand that but where is the gift in that?

I think it's that community piece and for me personally when I got sober I'd ostracized everybody from my life so I was tremendously alone and I knew I couldn't do it by myself and so for me going to meetings the first thing that struck me was oh my gosh I am in a community of like-minded people these people get me these people have been where I've been it made me feel less alone I kept hearing my story told in all different ways by all sorts of different people and it gave me hope more than anything and I was so bereft of hope for so long that to walk into a meeting and see people joking and laughing who hadn't had a drink for 30 days or you know 10 years or whatever the amount of time was but I'm like oh my gosh how's that even possible and as I started to start feeling better and I went to a meeting every single day for three years because that's what I needed for me and it kept me sober and it gave me a new community but most of all it gave me hope.

All right good yeah.

Tim what's your take on talking somebody into going to their first meeting?

Well like I think Martin Luther King said it you don't have to see the whole stairway you just have to take the first step and that first step is walking that first meeting and I know when I walked into my first meeting I realized that I was suffering from two diseases I was struggling with the disease of addiction and I was struggling with what I learned of it called the disease of terminal uniqueness so I walked in that room and I saw 25 35 people and none of them drank like I drank none of them hurt like I hurt none of them felt as bad about themselves as I felt about myself mm-hmm and I did what most people do and I sat in the chair closest to the door half my butt on half off and I was given at least a gift to listen and by the end of the meeting I was cured of the terminal uniqueness because everybody in that room was Jim they were younger they were older they were male female black white doesn't matter everybody was me everybody told a part of my story and I can say that was the first time in my life I have ever felt I belonged these people heard me they understood me and I also realized as part of that process I learned that I actually speak two different languages I speak English and I spoke drunk and they were speaking drunk to me and we connected yeah well I know a thing that you've talked a lot about Carol is just the importance of community when you're doing this work that you that addiction is kind of fostered in isolation and it's cured in community and I think that's what both of you are saying about walking in pushing that door open the first time is is a step into a community that you might not have wanted to join but here you are and it's the best one that you can find so what about for people who have a loved one who have a family member who have have a friend who who is in this in a position where they would like someone else to go into recovery so what do they do that's an incredibly challenging place to be and what I always tell people is sort of the the three C's of codependency you know you didn't cause it you can't control it and you can't cure it and you have to take care of yourself first and foremost and the thing about someone who's an addict or an alcoholic they're though they're only ready when they're ready and who knows when that is and it's so easy to go down the rabbit hole with them and just get sucked into the tornado or the dysfunction that is that addict and so you know that journey of having a loved one who is suffering from this disease is really challenging and you know there's also resources there's Al-Anon there's codependence anonymous so there's a lot of groups for people who love someone as well and again it's those three little words I need help it's the same principle applies absolutely yeah what's your take on that Jim for the family members and the friends well it's interesting and certainly everything Carol said but it's it's interesting because there's this commonality with the addict alcoholic and with the loved ones they're both struggling with this this feeling of powerlessness for the attic or alcoholic it's like how do I quit why can't I quit and for that loved one it's the same thing they love them they want their the help and support for their loved one but there's only so much they can do people generally don't get clean and sober from begging coercing yelling screaming or demanding that usually sends them farther into their addiction like Carol said I think the most important thing is and what I advise people who suggest to people is your number one priority is yourself because you've got one person in the family that's struggling if you don't take care of yourself physically mentally emotionally or spiritually when that person is ready if you don't take care of yourself you won't be ready to be there and support them so to me the number one priority and that's a hard one particularly for parents to take in yeah their parents my priority is my kids I don't care if your kid is 37 years old your kid but it's most important if you don't take care of yourself you're not gonna be there for your loved one when they're ready yeah yeah I get that another thing I wanted to touch on since we got a couple of ministers here is the spiritual aspect of it I think you know a lot of people I've talked to that kind of is a a game breaker for them if they're gonna talk about God or the God of my understanding how do you how do you wrap your head around that if you're a person who's really been kind of turned off by religion or spirituality how do you how do you break through that because it's an important part of it it's a huge part of it and that was my story I did not believe in God I didn't want to go to church and that you know and so I got dragged to my Ohio Church which for me personally really got me turned around because it changed my perception of what I was raised and how I was raised to change my perception of religion of a higher power God spirit whatever you want Jews to call it and so it is a huge component and most of us I think in recovery have at some point or another struggled with it yeah and it's a personal journey and we just have to come to terms with the most important thing is that it wasn't me I all my drinking adult life I was pretending to be God I controlled everything I ran the universe and so when I got sober I realized oh my gosh that's not correct and so the journey towards humility and the journey towards surrender and turning it over and realizing that there was a power greater than myself was such a gift and it was a process great I like that I like that and I think that goes into what you were talking about your terminal uniqueness and I think that that's an aspect of a spirituality that you have to take on when you're in recovery as well wouldn't you say absolutely and you know I'm disappointed to hear Carol say she was controlling the universe because I thought I was and then I realized we had a lot of company but it's everybody's journey I walked in like Carol did just kicking screaming I didn't want to hear about God or you know I hear people say higher power and I know they were just tricking me they were really talking about God and part of the the real purpose of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous it speaks to it in the 12 step having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps so that that got hammered into me to go through these steps and see what happens yeah and by the time I got to that 12 step I got it I realized that you know if I was the greatest thing in this universe we're in big trouble and the number of care caring loving people reminded me of that and I appreciate and I'm grateful for those people so to me it's about when I first got sober and went through a treatment program counselor asked me one night after talking about God in a group she goes would you be willing to believe in something greater and I contemplated it for quite a while about a half a second and said no and then she being a very wise woman she goes would you be willing to be willing to believe in something greater and my first thought is that's a trick question but it opened me up enough to stay open-minded and then in Alcoholics Anonymous they have a number of different acronyms but the one I really love is for the word how honesty open-mindedness and willingness and I call that a formula if you honestly connect to that and practice that the universe is yours yeah so yeah as we wrap it up here how how do you start somebody that's listening to this and they say all right maybe maybe I could start maybe it's time for me to start where do they go well I think Alcoholics Anonymous works for a lot of people there's meetings every single day almost every single hour every place in town and just keep going to meetings till you find one you like we also have a meeting here at Mile High Church every Wednesday at 6 that's on zoom and you can get the link on our website and we apply science of mind principles to recovery so it's a little bit different of a recovery meeting just reaching out and asking for help whether that's me whether it's another trusted minister a trusted friend just asking for help is such a huge first step and there are so many hands just waiting to help pull you up yeah yeah what would you say where's where's step one here step one is you know to me stop fighting what is and with that again whether it's reaching out to any kind of support community AAA smart recovery anything that is of a community reaching out to professionals whether it's something somebody like myself or any other types of treatment programs it's giving yourself permission to be held to be guided to be loved to be supported there there's infinite resources just those three magic words ask for help yeah well I know that a lot of people it's been pointed out many times that because of the pandemic and people being in isolation that recovery is up and there's going to be more people who are looking for support and looking for connection so anybody that's listening today we encourage you to do that to get support and I like what both of you said that it begins with asking for help and that's that's part of being in the humility workshop as you put it you know we don't like to ask for help and we don't like to think that we need help but sometimes we do so I want to thank you both for coming in and thank you both for what you do all right and thank you thank you for having me we will see you next time thanks a lot

Reviews

Thank you for the reminder on what is important, that is my sobriety.