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Welcome to the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, the coach resource for women seeking to have a deeper understanding of the role alcohol plays in their lives. Women who are looking to drink less or not at all for any reason. I am your host, Christy Walker. I'm a wife, mom, and a joy-filled Catholic. And I am the Catholic sobriety coach. And I am so glad you're here. 25 years. That is how long I was sober before I said this to anyone. And here's what it is. I felt like an alcoholic every single time I walked into a room. I felt like everyone already knew this about me before I even said anything. And it's not because I was drinking. I wasn't. But because somewhere along the way, being a non-drinker became a fact about my life. And the alcoholic label, that just stayed the truth about who I was. It was something that I had taken on as part of my identity and I couldn't shake it. I actually even did a podcast episode early on about why I call myself a recovering alcoholic, but you don't have to. And even back then, while I was telling you that you don't need the label, well, I was still wearing it myself. So today I want to talk about the difference between being alcohol free and actually being free. Because I had the first one a long, long time ago. The second one that took me decades longer to find. And I think a lot of you are living somewhere in the gap right now, whether you've already released alcohol completely or you're just trying to get to a place where you can manage it instead of letting it manage you. Now, I want to take you to two specific moments because I think that they'll explain this better than me just telling you about it. So the first one, well, first let me just say my cousin and I are super, super close. We're like sisters close. When she turned 30, her husband threw her this beautiful birthday celebration at a restaurant. And then we were all going to go out dancing afterward. Actually, I don't know if that last part was planned, but it's something that happened later. At this time, I was over 10 years sober. So over a decade, I flew out to see her. I was super excited to celebrate with her. I love her so much. So of course I wanted to be there. And the dinner was lovely, but everyone was drinking. And by the time it got to the end of dinner, everybody wanted to go out dancing to a club nearby. So we walked over there. Everyone was feeling pretty good, you know. You know what I mean. Nobody was a mess. Nobody was out of control. Everybody was happy and fun. So it wasn't a bad situation or anything that I felt like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. Why am I part of this? Or anything like that? It was just, I guess everyone had that loose, worm, everything's fun, everything's funny energy going. And I was standing there completely clear-headed in the middle of it, taking it all in. And as much fun as I was having, I also remember just feeling a little off. Not sad, not judgmental, nothing dramatic. I wasn't like regretting my decision of going. I just felt off and kind of on the outside of everything, somehow. It's kind of like everybody has an inside joke, and you don't know what it is. So here's what got me though. Before I stopped drinking, going dancing like that, that was my favorite thing to do. Most favorite thing to do, drinking and dancing. That combination was basically my whole personality for a while. So being back in that same kind of room over a decade later, completely clear, and then realizing that I didn't actually like it anymore, it was a really, really strange feeling. And I think some of that was social anxiety because I just always maybe had that and never dealt with it because alcohol was always there to deal with it for me, right? So I had a great time that night. I want to be clear about that. I'm so, so glad I went. I had a great trip. And actually, my cousin and I went and got facials and stuff later, got our nails done. So it was just a fun girls' trip. And it was my first time away from my boys. So, you know, it was kind of a monumental thing, but I still felt like I was just kind of on the fringe of the fun. And then the second thing that happened is when I turned 40. And me and three of my high school girlfriends and I went to Las Vegas. I know it sounds crazy. One of my friends, though, she's just the connector of our group. She's she always has been. She was like that in high school. Like if there was a dance or a weekend or something, she was the one that just kind of got everybody pulled together. And she did that for us for this girl's trip. It was really, really important to her that we all celebrate together for our 40th birthdays. So now you need to know two things about me. Well, one, you already know I don't drink. And the second thing is I don't really gamble at all. Except while I was there, I did play the Wheel of Fortune slot machine, and I won $40. Thank you very much. But as you might imagine, Vegas is not exactly built for a person like me. We had fun. Oh my goodness. The food, so good. We had a great time. And my friends were having drinks by the pool in the afternoon. They would have, you know, drinks just like normal drinks, nothing crazy. Nobody was overly intoxicated or anything like that. It was just normal vacation drinking. And then there was a night when we ended up at a club in our hotel room. It was like upstairs. And oh my goodness, there was a beautiful, gorgeous view up there. But as we were like walking around, they, you know, got drinks, and I don't even think I got anything. It just felt I felt old, like instantly old. And I hadn't really felt that way. And now I'm 52. So looking back, I'm like, girl, you were not old, but I just felt that way. I was surrounded by three women that I've been friends with since I was a teenager. And by the way, by the by, they knew me back in my crazy drinking days and they still love me. So props to them, right? But I still had that feeling like I couldn't be fully there with them. I couldn't fully participate in my own trip. I know it's weird. And here's the part that I think you might identify with. I still had this deprivation mindset at that point. So under absolutely no circumstance was I going to drink. That was never on the table. It was never a thought in my mind. But some small part of me still thought I'm missing out on something. And that thought didn't make me want alcohol, but it was there. And it did make me feel like I was on the outside, kind of like I've talked about way back in other episodes when I've talked about why I started drinking in the first place, because I kind of felt like I was on the outside of all the groups at the high school. And when I discovered alcohol, all of a sudden I felt like I instantly had a friend group. So because I didn't have alcohol, even though I was there with my friends and at my cousin's birthday with her and, you know, some of her friends that I'm friends with, I still felt like an outsider. I felt like I wasn't on the inside, like I didn't get the joke. But I have to tell you, it took me a long time to even notice that that was there. Because I would tell myself things like, you shouldn't feel that way. It doesn't matter. And I would just like push it, push it down. So why do I tell you those stories? Because for a long time I thought that the fringe feeling was just, I guess I felt like it was my punishment for all the screwy things that I did in my life. Like, this is what you get for being the girl who couldn't drink normally. This is what you get for making all the stupid decisions. You get to stand slightly on the outside of every good time for the rest of your life. That was the story that I was telling myself. And I want to give you a sentence that changed everything for me. And it's become something that I say to every woman I coach now. There are explanations for why you are having difficulty managing your drinking right now. Because maybe you're giving alcohol jobs that were never meant for it to do. That is an explanation, not an excuse. When I started drinking, I didn't think, oh, I hope that I become totally addicted and can't get enough, right? Nobody starts out drinking thinking that they are going to become attached to it, that it's going to take over their life, or, you know, at least to the point where it's causing a problem or raising concern. When I started drinking, I wasn't chasing a buzz. I was trying to do something. I was trying to drink so that I could have something, so I could have friends, a community, a place to belong, so that I could be someone. So I could be someone people liked, invited, thought of, actually seen. That's what I was chasing. And I thought that alcohol was giving me all of that. And I guess it did in a way, right? Alcohol gives us something, and that's why we keep returning to it. And that's not a character flaw. That's alcohol doing what alcohol does, and us humans, just being human, every person wants to belong. Every person wants to be someone. That just was never available to me. The very first time I drank, I got drunk. And every single time I drank after that, I got drunk. So that's not an excuse for what I did with it, but it is an explanation for why it got its hooks into me the way that it did. And once alcohol had done its job, once it had built the friendships, made me feel like somebody quieted that noise in my head. Well, it started charging interest in the way of shame because now I was making choices that kept me stuck there. And the alcohol that used to give me something started being the thing I needed just to forget what it had already cost me, just to feel normal. And that's the cycle. That's how it flips from being something that's working for you into something that you can't put down, even though it's maybe wrecking you. Okay, so if you've been listening to this podcast, you know I got out. I stopped drinking. Yay, good, right? Story over, roll the credits. Not even close, my friend, because here's the part I didn't expect. Releasing alcohol did not erase the shame, it just made it quieter. For years, I mean over two decades. I didn't talk about it. If someone pushed a little, I might say, Oh, I'm a recovering alcoholic, and my voice would drop, my eyes would drop, my head, that would drop. And then I felt like I owed them the whole story. It was awful in the beginning. I wish someone had talked to me about the neuroscience behind it, about the explanations behind why I did what I did, why I kept doing what I was doing, and what I really needed and where the healing needed to happen. I did not have that. So I just felt so different than everybody. I felt less than everybody. Like I, there was something wrong with me, something broken. I had screwed up so bad. And a lot of times I would overshare. But eventually I found a lighter way to say things. So if somebody asked me about if I would like an alcoholic beverage, and I'd say no, and they would ask again, I'd joke and say, like, oh, I drank enough in my late teens and early 20s to last me a lifetime. But under that joke, the label was still doing its job. That person could probably pick it up. She's an alcoholic. She's different. Maybe even there's something wrong with her. Well, that's what I thought that they thought. Again, I felt on the fringe of everyone else's good time. Literally at my cousin's party, at my 40th birthday vacation, and figuratively, every day of my life before that. So you might be wondering if releasing alcohol didn't get me free, if it didn't make me stop identifying as an alcoholic, what did help me realize what I was doing? Because something did it. And it was actually two things. So the first one happened about 10 years ago when I started walking with purpose. If you don't know what it is, it's a Catholic women's Bible study. Lisa Brennikenmeyer founded it. And I gotta tell you, I will be forever grateful to her for that. More than I can even begin to say in a podcast. And over the years, I've had two of the most beautiful women, hi Mary and Ann, co-coordinating these studies with me. And we started out not really knowing each other, and now they are two of my best friends. And what happened in those years wasn't just that I made absolutely amazing friends and the kind of community that I had been craving my entire life. It was that walking with purpose helped me actually apply scripture to my life instead of just reading it and memorizing parts of it. And somewhere in the middle of it all, my identity was being deeply rooted in Christ in a way that it had never been before. Now, here's the sentence I actually want you to sit with. For the first time, I didn't feel like I was on the outside of the fold looking in. I felt like I was actually in it. Now, remember that fringe feeling I told you about earlier. Standing at my cousin's party, standing at that club in Vegas, on the edge of everyone else's good time. Walking with purpose is where that feeling actually started to lift off. Not because anybody told me I belonged, but because I actually started to feel it and believe it. The second thing that shifted was building what's now the Sacred Sobriety Lab. I was coaching women, developing the course. And I kept hearing myself say the same thing over and over to my clients, to these women, you don't need shame, you need data, you need information, you don't need labels. And I'd tell them, we're not judging ourselves, we're getting curious, we're being scientists. What am I actually drinking for? What am I looking for in a glass? What's the real question underneath this habit? And then one day it hit me like a slap upside the head. I had been telling these women to release shame, to get curious, that they didn't need a label. And I had never once, not once done that for myself. I had been carrying shame the entire time. I'd been alcohol free every year of it. I actually realized that part of the reason that I didn't celebrate my sobriety for years is that I felt like I was celebrating something that was, I don't know, like it was I had done something sinful, and then I'm like, yay, good job. You're not sinning like that anymore. You know what I mean? So I still had so much shame about it. And it's not like I throw myself a party every time I celebrate my sobriety date, but I give thanks to God for the grace of not being attached to alcohol anymore. Now, most of the women I work with would not even use the word alcoholic for themselves. They just never say it. They don't identify with that label at all. And that's exactly who the Lord has called me to reach. Not necessarily the woman who's already gotten to that point where she is or feels like she has to use recovery language to describe herself. It's the woman who's just noticing, the woman who's thinking about her wine too much, who keeps saying that she's gonna cut back, who doesn't, who isn't sure that she has a problem, but knows that it's really feeling like it's becoming a problem for her. And that maybe she's making an idol of it. I know that some people in traditional recovery spaces hear how I talk about this and they wonder why I'm not harder on alcohol, why I'm not standing up, screaming from the rooftops, this is poison, get it out of your life, full stop, right? Especially, and I've had people tell me this, especially being where I was, and the fact that I'm free. But here's why I do what I do and why I speak about alcohol the way that I do. I am not trying to convince you that you have a drinking problem. That is not my job. I'm trying to help you notice when alcohol is becoming a problem for you before it turns into something so much harder to undo. That's what the Lord told me that He wanted me to do. Help my daughters before they get to that point. Because I don't know if it would have changed anything for me, but I really feel like if if someone had stepped in in the middle of my struggle before it got to the point that it did, I feel like I might have been able to get a hold of it a lot sooner. Not that I would still be drinking, because I don't think the way alcohol reacts with my body and my brain that it would ever work, but would I have saved some time? Could there have been less hours and days that that I wasted being wasted? You know? But it is what it is, and I wouldn't take anything back because I have the family that I have, I have the life that I have, and I get to do this beautiful work that the Lord has called me to to help women. Invite the Lord on the journey. And I'm so honored to journey with them. I know not everyone listening wants to release alcohol completely, and that's fine. Some of you just want to get to a place where you can manage it instead of having it take up so much space in your thoughts, in your life, where you can take it or leave it and actually feel peace either way instead of negotiating with yourself every single evening. And that's a completely legitimate place to start. This is not an all or nothing conversation. But I wanted to do this podcast because wherever you're at, I don't want you to wait until you've accumulated years of shame and consequences and a label before you get curious about your relationship with alcohol. I know that because I waited. I waited until it cost me things and time and experiences that I can't get back. And I don't want that for you. You don't have to identify as an alcoholic to decide that alcohol isn't working for you anymore. You don't have to hit rock bottom to be allowed to ask questions. You just have to be willing to get curious before shame convinces you that you're the problem instead of that thing in your hand. And this is really the whole reason my work sits on four pillars and why none of them work by themselves. Take faith. This is the peace Walking with Purpose gave me, and it's foundational under every version of who do I have to be to belong here? There's already an answer, and it's not in performance, it's not in what you do or what you have. You were made, you were known, you were loved just for being you, but because God loved you into existence. And then there's the neuroscience piece, which oh my goodness. I wish someone had explained this to me decades ago. But I think the the science is finally catching up. Your brain isn't malfunctioning, it's actually doing exactly what brains are built to do. It found something that worked fast and it kept reaching for you. Once you understand that mechanism, it takes that moral drama out of the whole thing without taking away your responsibility for what you do next now that you know. And then the inner healing component, because really alcohol was never really about the alcohol. It was standing in for something, it was standing in for belonging, relief, escape, numbness. You have to actually go find out what it was doing for you before anything changes, whether that means releasing it completely or finally being able to have it be neutral. You could have it or not. It's not a big deal. And then, of course, underneath all of that is identity. That's the part that really, really was missing for me. Because the real question was never how do I quit drinking? I got that. It was who am I apart from this? Who am I apart from alcohol? Who am I becoming? What do I actually want? Once you are able to strip away that deprivation mindset and release the identity that you've built around alcohol, that will help you release the shame. And that's much bigger conversation than hey, you need to put the glass down. And it's the only conversation that actually gets you free, whatever that looks like for you. So here's what I want to leave you with. Whether you're already alcohol free or you're just trying to get to a place where you can take it or leave it, you don't have to wait for this to get worse before you get curious about it. Ask the questions now. There were reasons, not excuses, but explanations. And if any of this has you thinking that you want to talk this through with me, I would be happy to. And I promise, no pitch, no pressure. We'll just talk about what's going on for you. And if you want, you can find out different ways that you can work with me. There's a link in the show notes. There's a link in the show notes to grab a spot on my calendar. All right, friends, I will talk to you next week. Well, that does it for this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I would invite you to share it with a friend who might also get value from it as well. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing. I am the Catholic Sobriety Coach, and if you would like to learn how to work with me or learn more about the coaching that I offer, visit my website, the Catholic Sobriety Coach.