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By the grace of God, I will mark 19 years of sobriety this Wednesday.

My journey to sobriety is truly a miracle. I can vividly recall the dark days of addiction and reflect on the deep fear that consumed me.

I was terrified of everything: scared of loneliness, of inadequacy, of scarcity—and the list went on.

Beneath those fears was a traumatized little girl who’d do anything to numb the pain of the impermissible emotions from her past.

Today, I can see my addicted part with profound compassion. I understand the immense effort it took for her to suppress emotions she couldn’t comprehend.

Now, 19 years on, I celebrate her freedom.

This part of me is no longer burdened by the role of putting out the fire because I’ve done the healing work to alchemize the flames.

In honor of my anniversary, and the miracle of sobriety, listen to this special talk.

If you’re struggling with any kind of a bad habit or addictive pattern, this is for you.

In this episode you’ll learn:

  • How I became sober and created a life beyond my wildest dreams
  • What the root causes for addiction really are
  • How ‘protector parts’ play a significant role in addiction
listen now

A key factor in my journey to sobriety and healing has been my dedicated practice of Internal Family Systems therapy— the model that informed the techniques in my forthcoming book, Self Help.

Want to learn the method before the book comes out?

Join me on November 16th for my full-day Virtual Masterclass.

It’s free when you preorder the book.

Together, we will master the 4-Step Check-in Process outlined in the book to realign your energy and amplify your manifesting power.

I can’t wait to gather with you live from the comfort of your own home!

Secure your spot here!

I will teach you how to harness compassion and love for every part of who you are.

Enhance your practice today with my

FREE MAGNETIC ENERGY MEDITATION

to supercharge your manifesting power

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Are you ready to unlock the greatest resource of your life?

My latest book is the ultimate self-help guide, offering a revolutionary practice to radically shift your core beliefs and connect you to an infallible inner guidance system: the energy of Self within you.

In this book, I demystify the power of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy, taking its life-changing teachings out of the therapist’s office and into your everyday life. You’ll discover how extreme patterns like addiction, rage, pleasing, or constant self-judgment often develop as ways to suppress old feelings of inadequacy, shame, or fear.

Once you bring these patterns into the light and care for them, healing happens swiftly.

Order your copy now!

If you feel you need additional support, please consult this list of safety, recovery and mental health resources.

disclaimer

This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

dear gabby #226 Sep 30, 2024 emotional wellbeing

the #1 reason we become addicted

[00:00:00] The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Hey there. Welcome to Dear Gabby. I'm your host, Gabby Bernstein. And if you landed here, it is absolutely no accident. It means that you're ready to feel good and manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams. Let's get started. Welcome back, my friends. Welcome back to Dear Gabby. This episode is a very beautiful episode that I'm very proud to say I get to do in some form every year around October 2nd.

October 2nd is the day that I got sober, October 2nd, 2005. And here we are just a few days away from October 2nd, 2024. Yes, I have been sober for 19 years. This is a big deal for me. My sobriety has given me everything in my life, and I'm so [00:01:00] proud to dedicate this episode to what it means to be sober, what it means to stay sober, what long term recovery can look like, and also, what are some of the steps that we can take when we're early in recovery?

Or wanting to get sober, to really open our hearts to the light and the possibility of what true healing and recovery may look like. So my friends, if you or someone you love are struggling with addiction in any form, or if you have a negative habit that you really want to heal, This episode is for you and we're doing something really special here on the show now where Josh and I riff, Josh, my producer, he and I will just sit and riff for a minute about a topic and then we'll play a clip.

You're going to hear this a lot now on the show, we're going to say, play the clip, play the clip, or we'll bring in something from an audio book or we'll bring in something from a lesson that I've given in my coaching membership or we'll bring in a clip from a live talk and then we're going to do a really beautifully produced episode around the conversation The clip, the message, and the learning and the teaching.

[00:02:00] So, here you are. If you are someone who is ready to take those negative habits, transform them, look at your addictions through the lens of compassion and the possibility for healing, then this is the episode for you. And I'm really, really proud that I can take this conversation so much further with you as well, because bringing the gang together, everyone, anyone that wants to join me on November 16th, I am leading a full day live virtual masterclass.

It's totally free when you pre order my book, Self Help. This virtual masterclass is where we're going to really start to look more closely at these patterns that hold us back. The addictive patterns, the negative patterns, the extreme patterns that may be keeping us small, blocking our manifestations, holding us back in life.

And I'm going to apply the four step method from my book, Self Help. It's coming out in December. From the four step practices from Self Help, www.selfhelp.com And you're going to get a real deep [00:03:00] dive into this book before it even comes out. So just head over to DearGabby.com/selfhelp. If you are feeling called to get this free live masterclass, totally free when you pre order the book, DearGabby.

com. If today's episode is inspiring to you, this would be the next step for sure to take the ideas and the principles that I teach on today's episode and bring them to life and start to apply them into your own world through my guidance on November 16th. So once again, that is DearGabby.com/selfhelp.

All right, let's take a deep breath. Let's open our hearts to what that healing from extreme patterns and addiction could look like and enjoy this beautiful episode. Where we riff, we talk, we teach, and we play the clip. All right. Enjoy the show. Well, I wanted to start today's episode for a very specific reason, because Wednesday is your sober [00:04:00] anniversary, and I think that's really powerful and really just beautiful.

And I just wanted to say, I love you, and I'm so proud of you. And I don't really even have the right to say that, but I do feel all that. Of course you have the right to say that. I just, I'm so. It just blows me away. It really blows me away. I want you to know that. And I wanted a very special episode for us to do around that.

It really is. You're making me cry already. Yeah, it really is. Thank you for saying that. Of course. Because, yes, on Wednesday, by the grace of God, October 2nd, I will be sober 19 years. It's unbelievable. It is pretty unbelievable. Isn't that wild? Yeah. I'm getting so emotional about it, but yeah, it's really incredible.

Yeah. Almost half my life. It's really crazy. It's really, really crazy. Stunning. Yeah. It really is. And I always like these episodes. We've had this show out for a while now, and I like these October 2nd sober episodes. Thankfully, I stay sober and we can keep celebrating year [00:05:00] over year. And I like them because, well, God bless, thank God I stay sober, but I like them because these are my moments to be able to talk about my sober recovery.

With an audience that may be sober curious Or someone who may be new to recovery or struggling with addiction right now They hopefully will hear a little bit in my story that And that's actually the reason that sober recovery really works is when people share their experience, strength, and hope with each other.

And when you hear someone that you maybe are friends with or somebody that you admire or somebody that you have respect for share where they were and how they got to where they are now, it's very empowering and it helps you recognize that you're not alone. I talk a lot about my sobriety. In general, I have been very, very, very open about it from the very beginning.

Yeah. It's important to me. You touched on [00:06:00] it, but. Why is it important? Like, because a lot of times sobriety is wrapped up in anonymity, right? And so it's not so forward facing. Why did you feel like for you? It had to be, let me break that down. So the big reason for anonymity and recovery is not because we're trying to hide something.

It's because. In 12 step recovery, it's really frowned upon to go out in public settings and say, Hey, I'm so and so celebrity, or I'm so and so with a microphone, or I'm so and so and I'm in 12 step recovery because whatever happens if that celebrity or so and so goes out, which happens all the time, right?

People slip. after decades of recovery. And so the fear that it's a PR issue, really, it makes it look like it doesn't work. And I really, really respect that. And I've been cautious to not talk too much about the origins of my recovery for that reason. Nevertheless, it's important, I [00:07:00] think, for me, from the get go.

It was not even important. It was a staple of my journey. It was the impetus for me to do the work that I do. When I got sober, I returned to spiritual faith and in my sobriety, I became a motivational speaker. Now I had been speaking prior to being sober. I knew that I had the. skill and the desire to inspire people.

I was like 20 to 25, right now speaking in marketing classrooms, now speaking in women's entrepreneurial networks, talking about PR and marketing and entrepreneurship, and I loved speaking because I was, it's really part of who I'm here to be, but it wasn't until I was sober that I really knew what I was here to speak and do it.

Very quickly, I started speaking about my sobriety, but in a way that I wasn't disobeying the rules and I was being mindful of the origins and the traditions, but primarily just being very outspoken about the fact that you, at the time I was 25, that you can [00:08:00] be young, you can be sober, you can make that choice at such a young age, you can live in New York City and, and stay clean.

And the way that I was doing it was through a foundational spiritual practice and personal growth and development. And that's been the journey of my life, truly. And you share the story often of how you were in the car and you were listening to this cassette tape of a psychic that you had seen months earlier and you just kept replaying it.

Yeah. And I love that. And do you feel that that was the moment, like, did it, did the light bulb go off when you're sitting in the car? Like we're in, cause I know what happens after. Let's play the clip. Let's play the clip. Let's tell the story. Okay.

It's 8am in New York City. I'm sitting in my double parked, beat up, white Toyota waiting for the street cleaners to sweep past me. I shield my eyes from the sunlight as I chug a red Gatorade. I'm dehydrated, nauseous, and still wired [00:09:00] from the after party that ended 30 minutes earlier. I'm a complete mess.

Having not slept the night before, I have no business being behind the wheel, even if it's to adhere to the neighborhood parking rules. I have to sit in the car for 30 more minutes before I can legally park, so I push a cassette into the tape player and press play. I've listened to this recording countless times.

It's a recording from a psychic reading I'd had five months earlier. The psychic's first words are, you're struggling with alcohol and drugs. I hear my voice quiver in response, well, it's not that bad. Within the next few minutes, she goes on to say, My dear, you are able to exercise free will in this lifetime, and you are caught between two choices.

You can choose to stay on your current path and severely struggle with drug addiction, or you can choose to get clean and make a major impact on the [00:10:00] world. I rewind the recording to hear it again, then again. Her words repeat in my head, you can choose to stay on your current path and severely struggle with drug addiction, or you can choose to get clean and make a major impact on the world.

I hear her words, but I don't believe them. Cannot imagine a world free from addiction, let alone a world where I'm making a major impact. I look at the clock, 8. 30am. The street cleaner should be arriving soon. As I listen to the psychic on repeat, I send a text to my business partner. Hey, late night. I won't be in the office until noon.

At 24, I own a nightlife PR firm. Getting to work at noon is no big deal. I rewind the tape and play it again. You can choose to stay on your current path and severely struggle with drug addiction, or you can choose to get clean and make a major impact on the [00:11:00] world. Outside the car, the noise of people walking toward the subway interrupts me.

They look so put together with their coffee cups and shoulder bags. As I watch everyone begin their day, I accept that mine is ending. The street cleaners sweep through the lane across from me, and I follow them from behind to secure my spot. I leave my empty Gatorade bottle on the floor of my trashed car and head back into my apartment.

I'm desperate to get into bed, but I have to wash my face from the night before. I jump in my moldy shower and let the water wash over me as my mascara runs down my face. When I'm done showering, I quickly get into bed and take some kind of downer. While I wait for my sleeping pill to kick in, I feverishly journal the psychic's words over and over.

You can choose to stay on your current path and severely struggle with drug addiction, or you can choose to get clean and make a major impact on the world. [00:12:00] I write so I don't have to face the severe anxiety and heart palpitations. As the pill sets in, the anxiety subsides. As if it's being shut behind a door, one that will reopen when I awake.

The sounds of the trash cans clashing outside my window and the people heading to work become softer and softer as I finally fall asleep. As I recall that morning, I have tears in my eyes. I can think my way back into that car as if it were yesterday. I can connect to those feelings of shame, insecurity, and unsafety.

I know that girl intimately. And I'm proud of the choice she made to be the woman she is today. Even though it would take her another year of self destruction, addiction, and near death to finally get clean and sober, she let the path unfold perfectly.[00:13:00]

I'm glad we were able to pull that clip because I share that story in the beginning of Happy Days, which is my trauma recovery journey. That book is all about my trauma recovery and talks a lot about sobriety in that book. experience of knowing that I had this choice of two paths that I could take and having somebody say it to me.

So point blank, someone that knew nothing about me, but was just reading my energy was like, you have two choices in this lifetime to keep on the path that you're going and really be quite destructive or to get clean and make a major impact on the world. I all of a sudden had held this responsibility and an inner knowing this was the path that I indeed was meant to choose.

Even though I didn't know how I was going to get there quite yet. And that was the new beginning for me, truly. Fall is in the air, my [00:14:00] friends. And one of the things I love most about fall is that I can change out my wardrobe. That's why I'm so thrilled to hear from one of our sponsors, Jenny Kane. Jenny Kane is a California brand through and through, and their staples make getting dressed effortless. And for a limited time, our listeners get 15 percent off your first order.

Go to JennyCain.com and use code DearGabby15 to get 15 percent off. I am wearing the most gorgeous Jenny Cain sweater right now, and I have not taken it off for five days. It's cashmere. It's the cashmere cocoon sweater. I just love it. It's cozy, it's warm, and it's It can dress up or dress down. And it's the perfect cardigan oversized, super soft, and goes with absolutely everything.

Another one of the gorgeous sweaters that I've got my eye on right now is the cashmere half zip. Just this perfect layer for dressing up or dressing down. Jenny Kane also has a stunning collection of home essentials too. Beautiful furniture pieces, cozy throws, and a line [00:15:00] of candles that I am obsessed with.

Obsessed with you can find your new uniform with jenny kane.com. Our listeners get 15% off your first order when you use code Dear Gabby 15 at checkout. That's 15% off your first order, so when you go to jennykane.com and use the code Dear Gabby 15, to get 15% off,jennykane.com promo code DearGabby15.

Let getting dressed be one less thing to worry about. Embrace your fall aesthetic with Jenny Kane. If you're enjoying this episode and you're someone who's going through any kind of extreme patterns or addiction or struggling with a family member or loved one with addiction, the best way to feel the support that you need is through therapeutic guidance.

I'm 19 years sober now. There's no way that I would have had this long term recovery if it were not for my devotional practice of therapy. Having a therapist has been such a [00:16:00] incredible. It's a gift in my life. It's given me everything. It helped me get clean and sober. My therapist helped me recover from my addictive patterns, helped me heal the beliefs and the core wounds that live beneath the addiction.

And that's why I'm really proud that our sponsor today is BetterHelp. BetterHelp is a easy way to connect to a licensed therapist online and have all the support that you need. to get to that therapist that is exactly right for you. Believe me, sometimes it's not that easy to get a therapist and so they have made it simple.

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Well, that's exactly how I feel about Land's End. Land's End is an American lifestyle brand that designs solution based apparel, swimwear, outerwear, and accessories for anyone and everyone who values time, test, quality, and classic style. And my friends, I've been hiking a lot lately and I've just been going into my closet and right there are my Lanzan products that are designed specifically to keep me ready for life's every journey.

And Lanzan is a brand that makes sure that you're prepared for anything, whether it's the last minute trip or just like a quick hike in the woods, or you're planning to just make a little weekend getaway. I like to think of Lanzan as that one suitcase solution. And it's because all their products are super versatile.

They're filled with timeless pieces and you can just mix and match them. And they make packing so easy because they're wrinkle resistant fabrics and they're lightweight materials and lots and [00:18:00] lots of styles. And here's my tip for you, ladies. Lands ends. Fan favorite swimsuits are amazing. Land's End is an American lifestyle brand that designs solution based apparel, swimwear, outerwear, and accessories for anyone and everyone who values time, test, quality, and classic style.

They're constructed to ensure that you can really unwind, feel totally comfortable and at ease because their innovative body shaping fabrics are not only stylish, but beautifully flattering. So head over to landsend.com and use code Gabby to get 30 percent off your fall purchase.

Just getting sober was the first step. There's so many layers of recovery. 19 years in, I've lived 300 lives since then, right? I have so many, so much newness and I've had so many other bottoms that I've hit. I remembered 10 years into my recovery. I remembered childhood sexual abuse. I came to [00:19:00] realize, I wrote about this in Happy Days, how I remember being around so many of my sober female friends and they'd all be like, Oh yeah, that happened to me.

That happened to me. And so we just brush it under the rug because it's so painful and so scary to face. And the problem is, is that that's what we drank over. And so the traumas from our childhood are why we become addicts and that's it. Period. An addict is someone who has unresolved emotional disturbances that they do not have the resources to manage on their own.

And so they use drugs, sex, love, money, gambling, whatever it might be as a way of protecting against the impermissible feelings that live beneath the addiction. And in my new books, we've got self help in my hands. We talk about these parts of ourselves and these parts of ourselves that are called protector parts, but the parts of us that are protectors could be something like a manager, which is like day to day with us, that might be controlling.

Like for me, it's the controller or the, you know, maybe sometimes a manager might be a perfectionist [00:20:00] like you, whereas the extreme protection mechanisms are the firefighters. That's what we, that's what the addicts. So there's two types of protection mechanisms, and in the book, in IFS, we call it protector parts.

We're starting to leak some of the methods from my book, guys. So in self help, I'm taking the therapy that actually healed me most in my recovery, in my sober recovery, and I'm demystifying it for the self help reader. And what it's so cool about what we're talking about today as it relates to recovery and sobriety, is that the more I studied IFS, the more compassion I had.

For my addict and you pulled a really good passage from the book that I'm going to read. This is from my new book, self help. It's coming out in December, December 31st, 2024. Have you ever had an experience of both resentment and relief? Maybe you were at a crossroads between the life you once knew and [00:21:00] the path to a new way of living.

Perhaps it was a 12 step meeting or a recovery center where you were torn between frustration and overwhelming sense of release. Or the day you finally walked out of the house, ending an abusive relationship, finally free, but terrified of what it would mean to be on your own. Let me take you back to that moment when I walked into a sober recovery room, standing on the precipice of a decision that would redefine the trajectory of my life.

I remember the chaos of my addiction. The cocaine, alcohol, codependency, and work addiction ruled my life. And then on October 2nd, 2005, I made a choice to walk into that recovery room and begin my healing journey. Resentment and relief coexisted that day. That day I consciously chose to enter a room that held something I couldn't fully grasp.

Words that seemed foreign but resonated deeply. The group shared a vulnerability and connection I'd never seen before. And although it was [00:22:00] unfamiliar, I knew I was home. I had found my people, my community, and most importantly, I'd finally made a choice. Choice is the operative word. Choice is the word.

When we, I have full body chills right now. You can testify to that. When we witness our addictions or in cases of people who don't identify as addicts, maybe extreme patterns. or behavioral patterns or reactions, and we have the bravery to witness them through that lens of compassion or witness them as a part of us, not who we are.

That's when we have choice. That's when choice becomes possible. Choice to pick up a self help book, choice to go to that 12 step meeting, the choice to walk out the door, the choice to ask for help, the choice, the choice, the choice is available to us. But we have to be first. In a seat of compassion where we can look at these extreme patterns and behaviors through the lens of witnessing that they are protection [00:23:00] mechanisms.

They're not who we are. They're a part of who we are. Later in the book, you quote Gabor Mata, he says, instead of asking why the addiction, ask why the pain. Yeah. In my experience, when an IFS therapist works with a firefighter, which is what you were This is me speaking now, yeah. Yes. Instead of asking, why do you keep doing this?

They'll ask, how is this part trying to help you? Addicted firefighters should not be asked to provide an excuse, but be given the chance to share the reason. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And now I have full body chills. Yeah. Yeah. Why the pain? Why the pain? And that's a big issue. I think that comes up in a lot of recovery work is the, why do you keep using, right?

And it's not the, why do you keep using? Why the addiction? It's why the pain? What is the pain? Because we don't want to use, we don't want to pick up. We don't want to be addicted. We don't want to destroy our lives. We don't want to stay in extreme and chaotic patterns, [00:24:00] whatever they might be. We don't, but we have suffering.

We have belief systems and wounds that live beneath the surface. And we use these protection mechanisms, firefighters, right? The protectors, the addicts, the addict, the addict behavior as the number one way to put out the flames of the impermissible shame, fear, inadequacy, and trauma from our childhood.

You know, I. Many of my friends went through different levels of addiction and I was very young and I didn't know how to help them and I think I really judged them harshly like, Oh, why can't you just stop? And I think that a lot of times people do think that it is within your power to just stop and that's not really no, no, because remember.

If you have an exiled child inside of you, and that's what, in IFS, [00:25:00] we've got these experiences from our childhood where we're super traumatized. We weren't given, or even, even slightly traumatized, big T or small T, doesn't matter, and we weren't given the adult support and resources to process that experience, whatever it might be.

Big or small and as a result of not wanting to ever feel that feeling again, we created protection mechanisms and those are protector parts and those protector parts exiled these young parts. And so those young traumatized children are called the exiles. And so the protectors would manage our lives with control or perfectionism.

And when the managing no longer worked, that's when they would turn to the firefighter protectors to put out the flames. That's the addiction. And so for an addict. There are no different than you who may not identify as an addict, but there are no different than you in that we all have protectors and we all have exiles.

It's just that their protectors became so much more extreme because the [00:26:00] pain and the suffering of the exile was so unbearable that just trying to manage it no longer worked. So just trying to manage it with day to day managing protection. Raging or writing or, you know, work, whatever, rage, raging could be an addictive pattern too.

So these, these protection mechanisms or protector parts of us become so extreme when the flames are so strong. You speak with it with such clarity about it. And I don't know how to put this, but you speak with such clarity that it's almost as if like everybody needs to know this message, which comes back to the book, obviously, and the ability to share this message, because that should be the way we approach not only our own addiction, but the people in our lives who we see who may be addicted as well, because had I had some of these tools and the ability to look at it like that, as, as the pain and the trauma within this person.

As opposed to just this thing that was constantly getting in the way of my life, right? Like just blowing up in my life [00:27:00] constantly, I would have had a much different relationship with this person. I think, I think that's right. If you can see someone through the lens of compassion, now you may be in relationship, someone listening might be in relationship with someone who's an addict and it may be very, very destructive for their life, friend, partner, whatever it might be.

And if that is indeed the case, You can have compassion for them. And when you do the work in self help, you will end up seeing them through the lens of compassion, but that doesn't mean you necessarily stick around because sticking around for the behavior means now you're enabling it. So the greatest gift we can give an addict is to separate ourselves from the, from, from them because the, The more we stick around, the more we pick up the pieces, the more we enable their behavior.

If somebody doesn't, this is important, someone doesn't want the help, they can't be helped. Right. So of course there's instances where someone might be, there may be an intervention and that intervention isn't something they wanted, but it did indeed save their life. It's gotta be a, they say in, in 12 step recovery, a mustard seed of hope.

I mean, you gotta have a little [00:28:00] willingness. It's all you need, but if you don't have any willingness, oh my God. And when you were talking. Specifically about your recovery, you were saying that you lived 300 lives since then in those 300 lives. Was there any point, like what were those bottoming out points along the way again?

And how did you keep from just picking it up, picking up a drink again? You know, Josh, I have had a few moments in my life where I thought of picking up a drink and they were at those moments at the bottom. So 2016, remembering the trauma, I remember being at a point where I was like, I just want to end this like this.

I was really in a dark place. Then postpartum depression, having suicidal postpartum depression, worst experience of my life. wanted to end it. And I remember standing over my, my husband has like a glass of wine, not even anymore. He drinks like fake beers now, but like for a while he would, you know, have a glass of wine at night or whatever.

And I had always, always had wine in the house. I never cared. I have a whole bar in my house that was for parties or whatever. I don't even see it. Like it's not even in [00:29:00] my mind, but at this low, low of my postpartum depression experience, I hadn't slept the entire night. And I looked at that bottle and I was like, I'm going to pour myself a glass of wine right now.

And thankfully I had a sponsor. Thankfully I had it. You know, my sponsor was on speed dial at that time and my therapist, and it was just, but I was going to pick up a drink. And then the third time was four months ago, going through the absolute hell of being hit over the head with a truck of hormonal disruptions during perimenopause.

And now I've been on hormone replacement. I've been on amazing estrogen and progesterone for four months now, and I'm going to shout it from the rooftops, you know, turning 45 right at the time this starts to happen. Cause it's happens 10 years. It can happen 10 years before you go into menopause. I started getting so overwhelmed with so much extreme fluctuations of my emotions.

Plus the not sleeping plus, plus, plus. I, I think there [00:30:00] was a point where I was having such a meltdown that I said to Zach, I want to f ing pick up a drink. I know these are empty threats. I'm not going to, I never was going to do it. Not, never say never, never say never. But these are the three points in my life that were three huge bottoms.

There was others along the way, but those are three pinnacle turning points in my life where I literally was like, I'm, I want to just light shit on fire. And that's hence the firefighters, right? They want to, you know, they, the firefighters are trying to put out the fire. So they're just like, like, you know, fighting the fire with whatever it is.

And in this instance, like the fire was so flaming that I was just like, I got to put this out and I wanted to pick up a drink. So is it fair to say that like it's the journey just continues like it's you don't ever end you never want to end your journey That's why 19 years later. I'll go to a meeting and I'll say I'm Gabby.

I'm an alcoholic You might be like, what do you mean? You're not alcoholic. You haven't a drink in 19 years. Oh, no no, no you say you're [00:31:00] alcoholic and a drug addict and all the things that you are because You don't want to forget where you came from.

You know, I love getting nerdy about things, so here I go. Did you know that the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging and enhancing our physical prime is a class of ingredients called senolytics? When I heard about this, it really got my attention. I had to know everything about it, right?

It's a product that can combat aging. aging. Are you kidding me? You see, when we age, we accumulate what are called senescent cells. They're kind of known as zombie cells. And these are going to really create some of those early signs of aging, like aches and discomfort, slow workout recovery, sluggish mental and physical energy associated with middle age feeling.

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Would you say, and I know this about you personally, but part of it is sort of giving back, being a sponsor. I know you sponsor a lot of people. You do a lot of talks at recovery [00:35:00] centers. Is that part of keeping on the journey? 100, 000%. The reason it, it works is because of the fellowship. It works because the people carry the message.

It works because we have the courage to show up for folks in need. You know, there have been people in my life that I didn't even know and I paid for their treatment and recovery. I've never shared that, but there, there was an instance in my life where a, a, a sibling of a friend was going to be put on the street and he probably would have died.

And I just, you know, wrote a check and put him into recovery. And that was, for me, the best place for my philanthropic endeavors that year, or part of it, was to say, I'm going to give a human a chance to live. And there have been times in my life where a stranger might call me and say, and I'm not suggesting that every sober person should pay, you know, thousands, thousands of dollars for somebody to record, but that was something I was capable of doing and I was going to do it.

Or the instances in my life where I've been picked up a phone and somebody said, Oh, you know, my, my brother in law's, you know, gone [00:36:00] out and And I'm like, give them my number, they'll call me and they're my best friend in five minutes because we have a shared bond. And that's the beauty of being a sober person.

When you meet another sober person who has recovery and you have recovery, it's an instant friendship, an instant friendship. I remember one time I was on a plane back from Vegas. And he might be listening, my friend. And I was sitting next to this guy and like, he was like, you know, cool. Like, you know, got his like watch on and he's like, you know, coming back from Vegas and he's obviously looks tired.

We'd been in, I was obviously doing a job in Vegas and he was working or whatever. I don't know what he was doing. I just put a label on him the whole flight. Like this guy must've been partying so hard last night. He must've been so, you know, hung over right now. Like, ugh, like how gross is that? You know, just like our judgment.

Right. And at the end of the flight, we just started talking and I was like, So, were you out partying a lot last night? And he's like, I was like, you had to be partying in Vegas, you know, just like what people do. And he goes, no, I've been sober for 10 years. We're still friends. Like we still message each other.

I'm sure he's listening [00:37:00] to this episode. Right? So, and he's always checking in on me. He's asking about my sobriety. And so these are the kinds of connections that you can have. Some of the most judgment I've placed on people at parties or whatever, like have become my best friends because later I realized, Oh my God, you're just like me.

We're both sober. We're having, you know, maybe you were acting that way because you have the same qualities that I have, you know? Yeah. I, that, that again resonates so deeply with me about the judging part. Right. And so for all those people out there who are like me, who have friends or family members that are addicts, like how do we remove the judgment, begin to even help?

You pray for them. You recognize your powerlessness. and you call on a higher power because you are powerless over the addict. You can't stop them. You can't force anyone into stopping, right? It's not asking why the addiction, it's asking what, why the pain. And so what you can be is a powerful example. You can offer support, you can offer guidance, but you can't force it.

Yes, maybe you can do an [00:38:00] intervention. Maybe that'll work. Maybe it won't work. You know, maybe somebody goes to treatment because you did an intervention. Maybe it doesn't work. You know, I put somebody through treatment, hopefully it worked. I don't know. But we can approach it with compassion. Yes, the intention is to get to the place of seeing your own addict parts and the addicted parts of others through that lens of compassion.

But again, when you're witnessing another and there's an addict in your life, you can have a tremendous amount of love and compassion for them, but that doesn't mean you stick around. Do you ever think about how your life would have been different if you? I do. I do. I see a lot of people that I used to party with and I see how they're living now, many of which are still partying.

And I don't doubt that I would have had maybe some career successes or whatever it might have been because I was just such a hustler, but maybe I wouldn't have lived. I probably, I might not have lived because I [00:39:00] was doing cocaine. So at this stage, I probably would have snorted something that might've killed me.

Or I would be really ill, really, really ill. Unfortunately, I have friends in my life that are older and still using, and I just, I can't even contemplate it. Like, I can't even contemplate drinking in my forties, right? Let alone, you know, doing drugs. And these days, you know, I was doing drugs when it was like safe to just buy drugs and, and do cocaine.

It is like fentanyl and everything now. I mean, it's, it's horrific. And, and so I have conversations with my child. He's only turning six, but I say things like mommy doesn't drink alcohol. And he says, well, why that's, you know, daddy drinks like, you know, daddy beers and whatever. And I'm like, well, daddy only has like his fake beers now.

And he has to drink from wine because he's get relaxes him. So a lot of times when we drink, we can get really, we can get silly. We can get a little bit tired. We can not be ourselves. And for me, this is the consciousness that I choose. And so planting the [00:40:00] seed, Not that he has to be sober, but that he has a healthy relationship with, with whatever it is.

And look, I mean, addiction, addicting is so rampant with children, not just drug addiction, but phone addiction, porn addiction, social media addiction. I mean, it's just, it's horrific. So these young, young littles are, are activating their addict parts with these, with these devices, really little. And I think we've talked about this, but I sort of want to bring it back to the IFS part, like how IFS, and we don't have to go too deep into it, can actually be an incredible tool for, for addiction.

So, in the book Self Help, First of all, IFS is like, there's IFS for addiction. I mean, it's a trauma therapy. So this is something I would highly recommend to everybody. And to get your, you know, just sort of like dip your toe in with IFS, you can start with my new book, Self Help. And in Self Help, I talk about how we can start to perceive these protection mechanisms as, like I [00:41:00] said, protectors.

To look at the addict and say, oh my God, you've been working so hard for so long to protect me from feeling this impermissible pain. And that shift in itself, if somebody listening right now is an addict and struggling with addiction, and they can look at this, and it doesn't matter if you're drug addict or food addict or sugar addict, whatever you're dealing with, it's just outta control and just too much for you.

Josh is a, uh, ex sugar addict here. Recovering sugar addict, let's say recovering sugar. Recovering sugar, we can look at all, I mean, sugar's just like cocaine by the way. It does the same thing to your brain. So whatever it is, whatever the addiction is, and you can look at it and you can say, oh, you helped me check out.

You helped me not feel you helped me. Speaking to that part of you, this part of me helps me.

And while I don't want it to be in this extreme role, the first step is I have [00:42:00] to have compassion for it. Or you don't have to do anything, but just to, to open your heart to that. And the four steps inside the self help check in process are created so that you would feel Choose to check in with that part so that you would become curious about that part and offer it curiosity Like you would a little child and then you'd extend Compassionate connection to that part by seeing what it needed and then you'd look for the qualities of that more Resource energy inside of you and see what's available and it's four steps It takes you to this process of getting to know these protection mechanisms and offering them a glimmer of self energy.

And self energy is compassion. Self energy is connection, curiosity, calmness, commitment, courage, creativity. And that starts to develop inside of you as you make this four step inquiry happen on a regular basis. That's the crux of the book. I don't know why you wouldn't want to do it. Well, I know why. Why?

Because You, if you're listening to this episode and you [00:43:00] read my books and you're willing to hold a book that has a cover, has big red letters that say self help on them, and you're willing to hold that book up in your hands in the park or in the, then you would want to do it. And it might still be a resistance, but you'll still want to do it.

And look, there's millions and millions of self help readers out there that are going to say, yes, I want to do this. And then there's far more people that are going to say, no fucking way, Gabby Bernstein, Get that book out of my fucking face because it's terrifying, Josh. It's terrifying for people to, to face these wounds.

But the beauty of this book is that it's not about going into a therapy session and ripping off the band aid or talking about your past. This is a very, very subtle adjustment to just have a subtle shift in your perception about these parts of who you are and start offering them a little relief. It's a much more gentle process.

And as we sort of close this out, how do you acknowledge or celebrate your anniversary each year? Pizza party! Really? Every year, pizza [00:44:00] party. Genius. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll, I'll be here. So we'll be here in, in the city. We'll have a pizza party. We should all have a pizza party. That's amazing. Let's do it. I love that.

Wednesday night. All right. Let's go have, let's go. Pizza party. Should we do like a tour? Should we do like Joe's and then maybe, what are those new ones on Bleecker Street? We gotta go. Let's do it. I'm in. You ready? Re money. We're going. Pizza party. Pizza party. Pizza party. Yeah, that's my way. Well, congratulations again.

Happy sober anniversary. Thank you. So thrilled. I didn't really mean for this episode to be quite so intense. I think it was one of our best. I think this is one of our best. I think we're getting so good at this and also, by the way, this is such a huge ask of Josh. He comes to our company, we're like, you're the VP of production.

This is never on his job description, was it? That he'd be sitting in the studio talking to me, but it is just evolved into like your talent now. Well, I'm thrilled to do it. I, I, as I say to Rio all the time, I'm, I'm so selfish because I get to ask the questions that I really want to ask you. [00:45:00] Yeah. Yeah. And we get to hang out.

Well, congratulations again, and off to pizza. Let's go get pizza! So fun! And I also want to just let everybody know that, that if they're intrigued by what we're talking about with this book, then definitely go pre order it because I'm going to give you a full day with me where I'm going to bring it to life before it even comes out.

So there's a pre order gift when you go to deargabby.com/selfhelp. You submit your information and then you get this gift of me giving you a full day masterclass self help masterclass. I'm going to bring the book to life and teach you the principles a month before they even come out a month and a half before the book's even out.

So that's my, that's my message to you guys. And I love you. And if you're struggling with addiction or recovery, we'll put some resources in the show notes and make sure that, that people have the support that they need. Absolutely. We love you guys.

If you made it to the end of this episode, that means you're truly committed to [00:46:00] miracles. I'm really proud of you. If you want to get more Gabby tune in every Monday for a new episode. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of the guidance or special bonus episodes. Your experience at this show means a lot to me, so I really want to welcome you to leave an honest review.

And you can follow me on social media at Gabby Bernstein. And if you want to get in on the action, sign up for a chance to be Dear Gabby'd live at DearGabby. com. See you next week.

Hi there, Gabby here. This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from a psychological or medical condition, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may [00:47:00] have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.