461 Transcript

Angela (00:45.582)
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to Addiction Unlimited. I’m your coach, Angela Pugh. You know, when I got sober, I actually had a couple of people say to me, like, I didn’t know you drank like that. And it kind of shocked me because I thought, like, we drink together. Do you think how we do it is normal? But when I took a step back and I looked at it logically from their point of view, I could see where they were coming from.

Because they would come into my bar. I was a bartender. They would come into my bar and drink with me for a couple of hours. And then they’d go home.

What they didn’t see is that I did the same thing with the next group and the group after that. And at the end of my drinking, I’d keep going after the bar closed. Like two in the morning became four in the morning. Then there were a couple of times I was still drinking at seven or eight in the morning. Everybody saw a couple of hours, but I lived the whole night.

And when I talked about how I was doing back then, I could tell you I drove the right car, lived in the right zip code, I wore the right clothes, I had plenty of money in the bank. And all of that was true. And I was disgusted by myself, completely confused as to what the fuck was wrong with me and felt completely out of control in my life.

Angela (02:22.742)
It was like Groundhog’s Day, the same thing over and over again. No progress, no growth, just escape. And I knew I was an alcoholic, but I looked okay to everybody else. And as long as I could keep drinking without anything forcing me to take it seriously, I did. And that’s what I want to talk about today. We take the things other people can see.

And use them to decide how we’re doing, even when we have firsthand evidence that something is wrong. You can be great at your job and spend half the day waiting to get home so you can pour a drink and finally exhale. You can be the person everybody calls when they need something and feel like you have nobody to call yourself.

And when somebody asks how you’re doing, you can give them a whole list of things you got done without ever answering the actual question about how you’re doing. Not what you’re doing, but how are you doing? How does it feel to be you right now?

When somebody tells me they’re high functioning, sometimes I can hear them developing a cover-up in real time, right? And I don’t mean like they sat down and decided to lie about it. I mean they tell me the things they’ve learned to use as evidence that they’re not that bad. They go to work, the bills are paid, the kids get where they need to go. And all that tells me is that you’re good at handling your to-do list. It doesn’t tell me.

anything about how you feel about the way you drink.

Angela (04:18.506)
I know how much work can go into that outside picture because I put a lot of work into mine. And not on purpose. I didn’t know that I was creating this sort of facade. I was just living my life. But what I realized as I healed and started to understand myself more is that the outside persona was an important piece of my addiction because it allowed me a space to hide the real me.

I wanted people to see somebody strong and capable. When you look like you’ve got it all figured out, people generally take your word for it. They’ve got their own shit to do. So they’re not going to expend too much energy worrying about what anyone else has going on. Most of us are just hanging on by a thread anyway. And I kept people at arm’s length so they couldn’t see my real habits or how much I struggled to just deal with life.

Angela (05:18.252)
The external picture was my mask, but I knew what was behind my mask.

Angela (05:31.48)
For somebody else, that same outside picture or mask can keep them in a place of denial because they can’t fully reconcile they have a drinking problem, because they’ve got a picture in their head of what a person with a drinking problem looks like. That person has a DUI, they’ve lost jobs, their family’s falling apart. And when you look at your own life and think, I don’t fit there.

It can leave this space where you’re always uncertain if you fit the drinking problem or if you don’t. It took me 14 years to get a DUI. I was sober less than a year later. I say that only to point out that I drank my whole drinking career without getting a DUI. That didn’t make me less of an alcoholic.

And everybody’s habits are different. A lot of people do most of their drinking at home. They may never get a DUI, or maybe their spouse always drives. Who knows? They can still wake up every day feeling embarrassed about how much they drink, scolding themselves most of the day, and be drinking again by 5 p.m., feeling lost and overwhelmed and confused. That’s what makes high functioning a dangerous label.

Because it’s not a description, it’s a permission slip. As long as the outside looks fine, you get to keep going.

Angela (07:17.29)
You know, I take my cozy time seriously. My bedroom is my sanctuary. Dark, cozy, fluffy, and my cozy earth bubble cuddle blanket fits right in. And apparently, one cozy earth blanket wasn’t enough for me. I loved it so much, I got a second smaller blanket, the super plush cuddle blanket, for my living room because I need a designated blanket for each location.

And I also got a bubble cuddle blanket for my sister-in-law because she loves all the coziness just as much as I do. And that’s the kind of gift I love giving, right? Something you know they’ll reach for when it’s dark by 530 and they’re finally sitting down after a long day. Especially that person who takes care of everybody else and would never buy something this nice for themselves.

Give them something they can curl up with after a long day and enjoy all winter. Plus, Cozy Earth has a hundred night trial and a 10-year warranty, so you can try it with confidence. Cozy Earth’s biggest sale of the year ends December 3rd. Go to cozyearth.com, use code ANGLE for 35% off home and sleepwear. That’s cozyearth.com code ANGLE.

And when they ask at checkout where you heard about them, let them know you heard about them right here on Addiction Unlimited.

Angela (08:55.904)
The AA book talks about drinking with impunity, right? Impunity is no harm or consequences. And as long as I could drink with impunity, I would keep drinking. I could keep going. I didn’t have anything forcing me to take it seriously enough to show up for myself. But when I think

Angela (09:19.202)
But when I think about what my life was like then, I was completely stuck. Honestly, I was trapped. Alcohol had me trapped in a vicious cycle and I couldn’t figure out how to break it. I didn’t have hobbies. I wasn’t accomplishing anything new. I didn’t trust myself with the smallest decisions because I knew what happened when something was hard. I ran straight to the bottle.

I wouldn’t try anything new or different because I didn’t know if I could handle different. I knew how to get through the days as I did them, but I didn’t know how to get through days if they were different. I had very little confidence that I could handle anything bigger. And I knew I was living at about 25% of the person I was capable of being. And that’s a shitty feeling because I knew somewhere deep inside that I was capable of more.

I just couldn’t count on myself to show up for more. So when I look back at that version of my life and think about whether I was functioning well, I have a different way of looking at it now. Because really, there are two different issues at play. And people always want to blur those lines. Was I doing well on my life checklist?

Have a nice place to live, nice car, beautiful wardrobe, hair and makeup, going out to beautiful dinners and parties and laughing. Check, check, check. Yes, I was doing fine with my life checklist. But how was I emotionally? How was I with myself? Was I proud of myself? Was I confident with myself and how I lived my life and the choices I made? Absolutely fucking not. And that’s not high functioning.

Regardless of how well you’re doing with your life checklist. When we talk about functioning well, we have to include your ability to deal with your life. Can you trust yourself to make a decision? Can you sit down at the end of the day and feel okay about how you showed up? When something goes wrong, do you have some confidence you can handle it? Or does the whole day become about getting through it until you can drink? Those were the things I struggled with.

Angela (11:40.268)
And I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t handle my own life that I made sure people didn’t get close enough to see what a mess I was.

Angela (11:52.344)
So my outside picture stayed pretty convincing. I was killing it on my life checklist. And I could use the fact that nobody seemed worried about me as evidence that I could keep going. And when I look at all of it now, I can see how much I was struggling.

Angela (12:15.218)
And when things get really sad is when you start to recognize the toll it’s taking on you. You start to see the real effects drinking has on your life and the small ways it holds you back. Like maybe you’re good at your job, but you know you’re capable of more and you’d love to make more money. A job opens up in your company and you really want it. It would be a good fit, a nice pay raise. This could be huge for you and your family, but you don’t even apply for it.

Because your confidence is shot. You’re afraid of the competition, afraid of the rejection, and you just don’t trust yourself to handle more. Nobody else ever knows how much you wanted it. You’re the one who knows you stayed where you were because you couldn’t count on yourself to show up fully, or you don’t believe in yourself to handle the discomfort of going for more. And that was part of living at 25% for me. I kept my life small enough.

that I could keep managing it the way I was managing it. And then I pointed to how well I managed that small life as evidence that I could keep drinking.

Angela (13:25.208)
So I want you to give yourself a more honest assessment. Start with how you feel about your drinking. Do you regret it? Does it have more power than you want it to? Have you tried to skip a night or take a break and felt confused by how hard that turned out to be? And what happens between drinks? How much time goes into thinking about it? Maybe you’re at work figuring out what time you can leave, where you can stop, and who you can invite. Or you’re having an argument with yourself about whether

Or you’re having an argument with yourself about whether you’ll drink tonight. And by the time you get home, you’re exhausted from thinking about it all day. That’s alcohol taking a front row seat in your life. It’s getting your time and attention even while you’re doing everything on your list. If somebody asked how your day went, you could tell them what you got done. You could also tell them that you spent half of it negotiating with yourself about drinking.

Both of those things happen. Include both when you look at how you’re doing.

Angela (14:36.064)
Then look at how you feel about the way you show up at home. Maybe you got dinner on the table and got the kids to bed, but you were short with everybody because you didn’t feel good. You know how you spoke to them. You know whether you were present or just trying to get through it so you could have another drink. How do you feel about that? Are you proud of the way you handled the evening? And when you think about the things you do for fun, are you doing things and hobbies that light you up? Or are you just sitting?

In different places, drinking. These are the parts of your life that deserve a place in the conversation. Your confidence matters. Being able to trust yourself matters. Feeling fulfilled and having something you look forward to beyond your next drink matters. You can spend years getting everything done on the life checklist while all those other parts of your life get smaller and smaller and smaller.

And you don’t have to figure out every reason you drink before you can acknowledge that you don’t feel good about it. A lot of us built a whole lifestyle around drinking because it’s what we’d always done, right? It’s where we went, who we saw, how we spent our time. By the time we started questioning it, we couldn’t picture how to do life any other way. You may be in that place right now. You can know.

How to run a household or do a complicated job and feel completely overwhelmed by the thought of changing your drinking. Give yourself room to admit that. You can start with the truth you already have. I don’t like how this feels. I don’t like how much I think about it. I don’t feel like myself, and I want more than this. That’s what I want you to take from this conversation.

If you’ve been calling yourself high functioning, look at what you’ve been using to make that assessment. Including the mornings you regret. Include how you talk to yourself and whether you trust yourself to handle life. Included the things you want to do that you keep putting off because you don’t feel capable of showing up for them right now. Because the hidden cost is everything you leave out when you only count the things other people can see.

Angela (16:56.536)
For me, it was years living at twenty-five percent of who I knew I could be. I had a life that looked great, and I didn’t like myself or the way I lived it.

When I look back now, I want to give that version of me credit for how hard she was working to keep going. I also want to tell her she deserved to feel better than that. And so do you. So give yourself an honest answer to the question we started with. How does it feel to be you right now? When you think about your drinking, what do you already know that your life checklist keeps letting you brush aside? It’s time to get honest.

Because paying your bills on time has nothing to do with your drinking problem.

Angela (17:47.8)
So here’s what I want you to do. Next time you catch yourself saying, I’m high functioning, stop and ask which list you’re checking. If it’s the job, the bills, the kids, the house, that’s your life checklist. And good for you, seriously, because it takes a shitload of work just to keep those things going. Right? Like I’m not minimizing that. But that’s not the right list when you’re thinking about your drinking. The list to check about your drinking is how are you?

Do you trust yourself? Do you feel okay about how you showed up today? When something hard happens, do you believe you can handle it? Or do you just count the hours until you can drink?

If the honest answer to those questions makes your stomach drop a little, that’s your answer. It doesn’t matter how good the outside looks. You don’t need a DUI, a divorce, or losing your job to decide this isn’t working. You already have the evidence. You wake up with it every morning. The outside picture will hold up a lot longer than you will. Don’t wait for the external mask to crack.

Before you take yourself seriously. And if you’re ready to stop living at 25% and you’re ready for more, that’s what I’m here for. And you don’t have to be at day one to work with me. I’ve plenty of clients that start working with me after they’ve been sober and they’re ready to level up in their life and their recovery. You can book a call with me at addictionunlimited.com forward slash call. We’ll talk about what’s going on, where you are in your journey.

and what it would look like to start doing this differently. AddictionUlimited.com forward slash call. You know that link is always in the show notes. AddictionUlimited.com forward slash call. I love you guys. I hope you’re having a fantastic day and I will see you next week.