Recovery Advocate Lisa Smith, author of “Girl Walks Out of a Bar” Talks Alcohol, Addiction, and How to be Sober Curious
Sponsored by Joylux
Show Snapshot:
Eighteen years ago, lawyer Lisa Smith walked out of a double-life of “high-functioning” alcohol and cocaine addiction into a world of sobriety and recovery advocacy.
Now, she is a sober coach, host of the podcast Recovery Rocks and author of the acclaimed memoir Girl Walks Out of a Bar.
She joins me this week for a thought-provoking conversation on alcohol and addiction, how to be the gatekeeper of your own recovery, and steps to take when your head is a “bad neighborhood.”
Plus, ways to support friends and family struggling with addiction, and how to be “sober curious.”
In This Episode We Cover:
1. How Lisa moved from a nightly drinker to someone who needed vodka to get out of bed.
2. From rock bottom to 18-years sober. What worked for Lisa, what did she skip?
3. How society normalizes drinking, the feminization of alcohol, and why booze is the one drug people push.
4. How to be sober curious.
5. Micro-interventions, Dry January, and questions to ask if you want to reexamine your relationship to alcohol.
6. Surprising benefits of being sober. (Think more money and glowing skin!)
7. How to build a “sober toolbox” –plus, ways to support sober friends and family.
8. Sobriety in midlife -- the special challenges and opportunities.
Quotable:
I felt so alone in my drinking and in that miserable spiral and afraid. I knew it wasn’t just me. And I was fortunate to be in a position where I could speak up, raise my hand and say, ‘This is what happened to me and I want to show you that
if you decide to stop drinking, there is a great life on the other side of it.’
Alcohol is the only drug that society asks us why we don’t take it. And maybe you can spin it. Instead of, “Why aren’t you drinking?” Maybe the question is, “Why are you drinking?” Be more conscious. Are you drinking tonight because that red wine goes really great with the steak? Or are you drinking tonight because you want to get out of your head?
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Transcript
Katie Fogarty [0:21]:
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. I want everyone who is listening to think of a number. I want you to take a second and make a guess about the dollar amount that was spent on alcohol in the US in 2020… Say that number in your head. Okay, you know I’m not going to leave you hanging. Here is the answer: 222 billion dollars! Billion! In one year. And yes, it was a terrible year, but still, that number is crazy…crazy big. We live in a culture awash in alcohol.
My guest today is somebody who walked away from alcohol and addiction and now helps others do the same. Lisa Smith is a recovery coach, author, and the host of the podcast, Recovery Rocks. She wrote the acclaimed memoir, Girl Walks Out of a Bar, which recounts her descent and recovery from, “high-functioning alcohol and cocaine addiction in big New York City law firms.”
If you or somebody you love is struggling with alcohol and addiction, if you are sober curious, or if you simply want to make smarter decisions before you uncork that next bottle of wine, stick around, this show is for you. Welcome, Lisa.
Lisa Smith [1:37]:
Thank you, thank you. I’m thrilled to be here with you.
Katie [1:40]:
I’m so happy you’re here because this is a topic I’ve been wanting to cover for ages. Can we start at the beginning? Hear a little bit more about your story and what made you take on recovery as a field, both as a coach and an advocate?
Lisa [1:53]:
Sure, sure. So, my story is actually… I am a former practicing lawyer and law firm executive and in my first year of practice as a Junior Associate at a big law firm, I became a nightly drinker. I was self-medicating, and there were other factors, but that lead to a 12-year spiral downward, very miserable, there were sort of two parallel spirals going on through those 12 years. You go through one that is the physical, eventually feeling, having to drink physically; by the last 18 months I had to drink to get out of bed. And then there’s the emotional one, at least I can speak for myself, I was in fear and ashamed and I didn’t tell anybody, I had this kind of terrible secret, I felt like I was living a double life. Eventually, it all crashed down, but it crashed down in a way that I was in charge of; I didn’t have a DUI, I didn’t get fired from my job, I was doing quite well at my job – I was not practicing law at that point, I was in administration in client development. I was fortunate to one day, actually realize and say to myself, "I don’t want to die this way.”
And I reached out for help and from then I was able – so far, knock on wood, that was about 18 years ago. And I didn’t talk about it professionally, I talked about it with my friends and family, but I went through my own recovery journey, and part of what I did to explain myself to my friends and family and also to explain myself to myself, was to start writing in the morning, kind of my story; what happened, how I felt, all of those things. It was just very cathartic. I would do that in the morning before I went to work, I never stopped working, I was the Director of Client Development at a big law firm in New York.
And then after 10 years, basically, pretty early on, I realized this could help the next person. I felt so alone in my drinking and in that miserable spiral and afraid. I knew it wasn’t just me. And I was fortunate to be in a position where I could speak up, raise my hand and say, “This is what happened to me and I want to show you that if you decide to stop drinking, there is a great life on the other side of it.” So, that’s really a nutshell. But I can delve into anything else you want.
Katie [4:47]:
That’s amazing. So, when you say 18, is that 18 years that you’ve been sober?
Lisa [4:55]:
Yes.
Katie [4:56]:
Congratulations, that’s an incredible, incredible milestone.
Lisa [4:59]:
Thank you.
Katie [5:00]:
And one that probably felt very far away at one point when you were having to drink to even get out of bed in the morning. So, how did you go from being in that place to getting started on the road to becoming sober. Did you do it yourself? Was it a traditional 12-step? Tell us a little but about how that worked.
Lisa [5:21]:
Sure, as I mentioned, it was 12 years going down; it went from drinking every night, to drinking more and more each night, to really realizing I needed to drink at night, I couldn’t not drink at night. And then – it’s funny, because it’s very powerful in our society when you talk about those numbers of how much alcohol is sold – I would, you know, rationalize it. “If you had my job you’d drink too. This is how I relieve stress so that I can go in and deal with the office tomorrow and deal with whatever else is on my plate.” And eventually, it took me all the way down, which is further than a lot of people go down, and I was at a point where I’d wake up in the morning and open my eyes and just think, “Ugh, I wish I hadn’t woken up today.”
And then it was a morning that I was – there were also drugs involved in my story – that I was on my way to work, it was a Monday morning, I was all put together, I had checked my teeth for lipstick on the way out of my apartment in New York City and I suddenly became overcome with something. And in that moment, I thought, “Oh my gosh, I’ve overdosed, I’m having a heart attack, I’m going to die.” I now know that what had was a panic attack. But something snapped in that moment and said, “You don’t want to die in this hall, you don’t want to die today, you don’t wish you didn’t get up, you’re going to have to do something.” And I knew I was sick enough to need a medicated detox, so that means that I was physically addicted enough that I required hospitalization in a detox unit and medication in order to avoid any heart attack or spikes in blood pressure that can be dangerous, physically.
So, I was there for five days, and I couldn’t believe the difference in how I felt physically, but also, there was a lot of relief. And while I was in the hospital they said, “Here’s the places you can go from here… You can go to this 30-day rehab, this place has horses,” whatever it was. And I said, “Oh no, no, I have to go right back to my job at the law firm because I will not tell them this.” Because again, stigma is brutal and we’re working on it, but I had all this shame around it, and I was not going to share it with my office. I was afraid that I would have walked out the Friday before being considered a reliable, competent, you know, smart member of the team and that somehow if I went to treatment, my secret would be found out and I would no longer be regarded that way; I would be looked at as somehow damaged, defected, or weak, possibly amoral, you know, certainly not reliable. And I wasn’t willing to risk that, so I refused to go to treatment and that’s part of what I suggest…why speaking out is important to me, because people should feel free to go to treatment, it’s the best way to do it, if you can, if you have the resources. So, I went immediately, I went right back to work which they did not recommend, but I did it and I started going to an outpatient intensive rehab two nights a week and I started doing 12 Step right away, and I still do 12 Step now.
Katie [8:55]:
That sounds like such a journey and it’s amazing that you were able to put yourself back into the office and put your game face on and really make that work out. Do you feel that you needed to kind of get to this sort of rock bottom place before quitting? When you look back at your journey, I know you just shared that working in an inpatient recovery program might have been more ideal but is there a better time to offramp when somebody’s on the journey? If somebody’s listening right now and thinking, “Kudos to Lisa but I don’t want to get to that place.” What could you have done differently? What should a listener be thinking about? When should the interventions begin?
Lisa [9:39]:
I think really the way to think about it is if you are seeing… And you kind of have to check in with yourself because it can be easy to rationalize things and cover things up so people around you aren’t able to offer you help. But if you kind of tune into yourself and ask yourself… I mean the pandemic has just, there’s been a huge increase in drinking and in drinking habits. If you are someone who used to go out for cocktails with your friends a night or two a week and now, you’re doing it three or four times. Or you used to come home and unwind with a glass of wine, but now, you know, for a while it was two, now maybe it’s three, you’re seeing a change in your pattern; it’s good to question that and ask, why is that happening? Is that happening because I like wine that much more this week? Or is it happening because I’m trying to self-medicate some anxiety and stress that is going on right now.
And if that’s the case, then you can sort of ask yourself the next question of what do I want to do about that? Is there a better way that I can find to, you know, to unwind or to de-stress or to deal with some issues? Maybe it’s therapy, maybe it’s you know, really just deciding, “I don’t like how I feel when I wake up in the morning after I’ve been drinking, it wrecks my Saturday if I’ve been drinking Friday night, I’d rather not.” And if you are open to those kinds of things now, as there was not 18 years ago, there’s a ton of support of all kinds in different places, you don’t have to be…there are wonderful women who are just making the choice.
You mentioned the term, “sober curious” at the beginning of this and it’s true, there’s a whole movement and there’s a huge incredible industry of zero-proof drinks that you can have instead. But also just questioning… Alcohol is the only drug that society asks us why we don’t take it. And maybe you can spin it and say, you know, instead of, “Why aren’t you drinking?” Maybe the question is, “Why are you drinking?” And just being more conscious about it and you know, listen, are you drinking tonight because that red wine goes really great with the steak, and you appreciate it, and you enjoy it? Or are you drinking tonight because you want to get out of your head?
Katie [12:20]:
These are such phenomenal questions. We’re heading into a quick break, but when we come back, I want to continue to explore this with you.
Lisa [12:26]:
Great.
[Ad break]
Katie [13:51]:
Lisa, we headed into the break, you shared some wonderful questions to ask yourself; am I drinking because I want to? Why am I drinking? How do I feel about my drinking? We talked a little bit about this concept of being sober curious. I would sort of put myself into that camp, you know. You mentioned red wine and steak and I’m like, "I love red wine.” Anyone who’s listened to the show has heard me talk about it.
But as I’ve gotten older, I had begun to second guess my relationship to alcohol. You raised a great point; I had been drinking more in the pandemic than I had in the past and I’m not comfortable with that. I’ve seen other people in my life really struggle with alcohol so I’m curious about what you think about being sober curious. Do you recommend people try this on for size? How do you feel about baby steps like Sober October and Dry January? Do you think taking a break is a good idea? Or do you think that if you take a break, that maybe the break should be permanent? Where do you land on half-in-half-out?
Lisa [14:57]:
Oh, I think it’s a great thing to explore, I think we should be really, I think sober curious is such a great term and it’s actually, if anybody’s interested, my friend Ruby Warrington wrote a book called Sober Curious, which is all about this. And it’s kind of asking yourself the question, not, “Is it so bad?” But, “Is it good enough to keep it around?” And that can be, I would say, absolutely, Dry January, Sober October… If you just want to get curious about your drinking, why you are, how much, whatever it is under what circumstances, that’s a great way to do it.
I would even say, one of the things that happens with things like Dry January or Sober October, they’re great guideposts but any time you’re feeling curious about your drinking, just take a week off and see how you feel. It’s all so personal because a lot people… It is great that you love red wine and drink red wine safely, I can't drink that safely. For some people they may experiment with sober curious and say, “Yeah, I really still love having my wine,” even if it’s my glass of wine in the evening every night. If it’s something that fits your life and isn’t impacting your ability to do the things you want to do and enjoy the experiences you want to experience, then I’m all for it. I think it’s just a question of is it giving me the benefit here that I’m willing to say, “Hey, I’m going to go out with my friends and drink seven margaritas on Friday night and I’m okay. I’m going to be hungover Saturday and I’ll get through that.” That’s great! It’s all so personal and the question of what is it that fits for you; if you’re going out and drinking those seven margaritas twice, three times a week, that’s not so good.
Katie [17:06]:
That’s not so good. It’s probably not even so great on one night even though I do love a margarita. But to have seven drinks… You touched on something where you said that alcohol is the only drug where people are questioning you when you’re not taking it, like, “Hey, you’re not drinking tonight, why?” We wouldn’t be saying that to other people. Alcohol is so baked into our culture. You see drinks after work and like, mommy juice, it’s become…everything has alcohol-related to it, which is kind of amazing. Which I think must make it really hard to walk away from it.
I’m curious, you said that a big part of your experience with alcohol was a sense of shame, you used that word, and that you didn’t want to share your story with your work. Yet, you then went on to write a very well-known book, Girl Walks Out of a Bar, it was covered in People magazine! What happened when you shared your story? Did you have a sense of release? How did people react in your life?
Lisa [18:11]:
Well, my friends and family all knew that I had been writing for a long time and I was at a law firm that I had been at … It’s funny, sometimes you hear the word high functioning alcohol addiction, or something like that, “She’s high functioning. He’s high functioning.” And so, I had been what you might call, high functioning, but you really are only high functioning until the day you’re not. For me that was the day that I actually thought I was going to die. So, nobody actually at my office had known what it was. I was considered somebody who went out for drinks with people from work. So, when I came back I just kind of, you know, kept it to myself. And then I found, 10 months later, that the other piece of high functioning is that you may be high functioning, but you’re not functioning at your potential, anywhere close. If you’re hungover three days a week, you’re not functioning at your potential. And when I got sober, I suddenly realized I could take a job about two levels higher than I was in at that time.
So, I moved firms and when I went to the new firm, I didn’t mention that I was sober for about a year because your story is your own, nobody is entitled to know it unless you decide to share it. So, I just kept writing. They knew I wrote, but they didn’t know what it was about, because I would go on writing retreats and things like that. When somebody would ask me, “So, tell me what your novel is about,” and I would say, “It’s actually not a novel, it’s a memoir about a challenge that I had that I think telling my story could help somebody else.” Then they all of a sudden get quiet and they’re like, “Oh, that’s great for you. Okay, next topic.” Nobody wants to dig in too deep on that.
Then I had been at that firm as the Director of Marketing for 10 years, they knew me, they liked me, I was doing great, and I had in fact just gotten promoted to be the Deputy Executive Director of that firm which came with a seat on the management committee which is the most powerful committee in the firm. And so almost as soon as I got on the management committee, I got my book deal. So, people had known I was writing, they didn’t know what it was about, so I had to go knock on the doors of first the Management Committee partners and sort of see how they were going to feel about it.
Katie [20:50]:
And how did they feel?
Lisa [20:52]:
So, I’ll tell you, the first one that I went to, I knocked on the door and it was the chair of the firm, and I said, "Hey you might have heard I got a book deal.” And he said, "Yeah that’s great, we’re excited.” I shut the door and I said, “Now let me tell you what it’s about.” So, I started telling him and you know, I felt like I had to fill the air, “But I was really high functioning, I never got arrested, I never got fired,” all this stuff. And he stopped me in the interim of it and was basically while I was babbling and said, “Listen. I think we all know people who struggle with this, and I cannot tell you what the response of every individual partner at this firm is going to be, but I can tell you that from the perspective of the firm overall, you had 1,000% support.” That was huge.
And then I kept sort of talking to people and what I realized was that they would all interrupt me and most of them would say, "Oh, my cousin, my brother, my law school roommate, my kid…” and it wasn’t in the way that they were just sort of patting me on the back, "That’s good for you that you got sober.” It was because people were curious and ready to talk. One partner said to me, “I’m so glad you brought this up because my brother-in-law just got out of rehab and he’s coming for Thanksgiving, is it okay if I serve wine?” People have questions and I realized how much this touches everybody. When I got that response that was so…yeah, this thing you’ve been sweating in your head forever— And I’ll say, it was behind me, I was 10 years sober at the time, they knew me for 10 years, so I felt particularly confident going into them. But it really opened the door to me thinking I could do something here to try and help break that stigma. People just aren’t talking about it, not because they think it’s so shameful but because they really don’t know what to say, and they have questions.
Katie [23:09]:
What a wonderful response from that partner. How fabulous to be greeted with that level of support.
Lisa [23:15]:
They were incredible.
Katie [23:17]:
It’s so wonderful and I agree that this is something that touches everyone. That number that I shared at the beginning of the show, I think is astonishing. 222 billion dollars in alcohol sales? Here’s another kind of astonishing number as well is that there are 40 billion dollars in tax revenues so, you know, as a country and a culture, we are constantly going to be advertised alcohol messaging because it just generates so much money. So, it’s not remotely surprising that when you started sharing your story, you started hearing other people’s because it’s definitely out there.
Lisa [23:55]:
And it’s particularly pernicious for women because alcohol companies target women. When you mentioned “Mommy Juice,” there is a very intentional – and it got worse during the pandemic – a point of saying, “Hey, we know you have a stressful life, let us help you relax.” So, it got worse over the pandemic, I remember seeing in a big box store there was a big sign that said, “Back to School Supplies” and it was sitting on top of a pile of cases of wine.
Katie [24:30]:
Oh my gosh, that’s insane. You know, I walk into liquor stores now too because as I said, I drink red wine. And when I go to buy it, I’ve noticed this feminization of alcohol…
Lisa [24:40]:
Exactly.
Katie [24:40]:
So, there are these beautiful packaging, there’s like rosé in a can with beautiful flowers and vines, and all the wine bottles look like stationary, and it catches my eye because I love pattern and I love color. They’ve really feminized it in a way…because this is how they’re driving sales.
Lisa [25:04]:
it’s sells, right.
Katie [25:06]:
It totally sells. So, you launched a podcast, which I talked about at the top of the show, Recovery Rocks, which is a great name. I love podcasting so I went through all of your shows and all your show titles. And I saw that you did an episode called, “The best skincare routine is sobriety." And this totally cracked me up and by the way, it felt very motivating. I was like, “Yeah, I’ve done two shows on skin, and nobody mentioned not drinking.” What are some other surprising benefits to being sober, beyond better skin?
Lisa [25:38]:
Oh, beyond better skin. First of all, for me –and I think for a lot of people who don’t necessarily go as far down the scale as me – you just feel a different kind of, there’s less tiredness, you sleep so much better, sleep is so adversely affected by alcohol. So many of us can't sleep and then we sort of feel like, “Let me have a drink, I’ll fall asleep.” That’s going to wake you up in the middle of the night as you’re processing that sugar. So, you are not in fact going to sleep better, you might pass out quicker but you’re not going to sleep better.
And there is something also that a lot of people experience, and I used to experience this really profoundly which is, with a hangover comes an increased level of anxiety – we actually call it, “hangxiety” – that accompanies… I mean, part of it I think is that sometimes when we drink too much and we wake up in the morning we’re wondering, "Oh gosh I hope it didn’t sound stupid last night, or I didn’t say the wrong thing,” or whatever it is that can make us anxious. But also physically, our nerves are jangled when we wake up like that.
It’s also that for me in a 12 step program, it’s interesting for anybody who is familiar with 12 Step programs, only the first step mentions alcohol. Every other step is about basically figuring out your thinking so that you don’t feel compelled to turn to alcohol. So, I am able to, without drinking… I think you gain more confidence when you just decide you’re not a drinker anymore, there’s something very empowering about that.
Katie [27:30]:
Sure. You’re owning yourself and having that clear head, the less anxiety… And you probably have more money, frankly.
Lisa [27:40]:
Oh forget it, my income doubled.
Katie [27:43]:
[laughs] That is hilarious. You also did a podcast on your Sober Toolbox and that caught my eye because I love a toolbox. I love whatever kind of bag of tricks one can pull out and put into action. What’s in your Sober Toolbox that you can share?
Lisa [28:01]:
Oh, okay great. So, Sober Toolbox, yeah, it’s just what we go-to sort of…. And it’s funny, with the skincare thing, I would have never done an episode of skincare except my millennial podcast partner is obsessed with it, so this is what happens when you podcast with a millennial.
Katie [28:20]:
That’s a good podcasting buddy to have. We’re into skin care so that’s fun.
Lisa [28:27]:
Yes. So, in my toolbox is typically… What will happen, I deal a lot with, I was diagnosed when I was in the detox with major depressive disorder and an anxiety disorder. I do what I would normally do. Like, if I had diabetes, I’d see a doctor who specialized in it, I would take the medication that doctor prescribed as prescribed and I would make the lifestyle changes like diet, exercise, sleep that that person suggested to keep my condition in remission.
Mine is a brain disorder so I need to do, you know, just another organ in the body, and I need to do those things. But also, there’s moments where I will be feeling like it’s a panic attack, I’m freaking out about something, I’m nervous I’m stressed, I’m dreading something. One of the things I find most valuable in those moments is to just plant my two feet on the ground and say okay, “Let me center myself right here. Where are my feet? What is really happening here and what is not?” Typically, my feet are in a safe place on the ground, there’s food in the fridge, money in the bank, the world is not about to come crashing down, that’s a story I’m telling myself. I learned to tell myself different stories than what I did before when I was drinking, where I was living in a lot of fear.
So, I will go to that kind of just a grounding for a moment, I’ll meditate. I started taking long walks, which I never used to do, and now that will help me get out of my head. I have to say, my favorite thing in my Sobriety Toolbox to help me from spinning is just to reach out to another person and just see how they are doing. When my head is a bad neighborhood, it’s really great to get out and I can do that just by calling somebody else and saying, "Hey what’s up?” Listening to what’s going on with a friend, those kinds of things.
Katie [30:33]:
Your head as a "bad neighborhood" is something that’s going to stick with me. [both laugh] We’ve all been in that bad neighborhood. It’s really interesting that the stories that we can tell ourselves, the things that keep us awake, the things that make us nervous, I love this notion of grounding yourself and saying what’s really going on, where am I? how am I doing? And choosing a new, more optimistic, more powerful story. Sometimes I think we forget that we can choose the stories that we’re telling ourselves and that we’re responding to. Thank you for reminding us all that.
What happens when your friends or your partner aren’t sober? I know you talked about your law firm partner who said, "My brother-in-law is coming over, can I serve wine?” How does this work in your own life? What do you recommend to our listeners who might be thinking, "I want to support somebody, do I need to stop drinking myself? Do I need to check myself in some way or change my behavior?”
Lisa [31:29]:
That’s a great question. I really think that it’s a conversation. My close friends – who are in the book, who went through the whole thing with me – are still my close friends today. When I got out of detox and when I got sober, you know, we used to go out and drink on the weekends, that was what we did. And I was in a place where they said, whatever we can do to support you, how can we help? And I said really, I have to be the gatekeeper of my own recovery, but what you can do is be there to listen to me when I want to talk about it. For instance, they said, “Okay, we’re going to dinner Friday night, you going to come?” For me, I knew that if I went to dinner with them regardless of whether or not they were drinking on a Friday night, I would get triggered. So, I had to watch for myself first and I would say, "I’m not going to come to dinner with you but let’s go to the museum on Saturday instead.” So, finding different things to do with someone you know has gotten sober, is big.
It is very personal really how they feel about other people drinking in front of them. I can tell you, for me, from the day – and I wrote about it in the book, the day I came home – my parents, my family always had cocktail hour. And they picked me up from the hospital, after five days in the detox and nobody knew what to do and they were like, well it was cocktail hour, “Can we drink?” And I didn’t know anything, and I said, “Yeah I mean, I’m going to have to be in the world where people drink, go ahead.” And they did. But they didn’t know that somebody fresh out of that situation really shouldn’t be watching other people drink. I kind of went through it with no guideposts, I would say that you want to check in with the person for sure, but also just kind of using your better judgment, put yourself in that person’s place. If they had just gotten out of detox, or if they, had recently been fairly newly sober, you can ask them if it is okay? But you can also just take an initiative and say, “Why do I need to drink tonight if this person isn’t drinking?”
If it’s your partner, it’s something else because then it’s the rules of your house, how are you going to deal with this? For example, my husband, I met a year and a half into recovery. And he drinks but he is a total lightweight. I tease him when I see what he drinks, I’m like, “That is not even breakfast, what you’re doing right there.” [Katie laughs] But he was living in Connecticut at the time that we met, and I was living in New York City, and we would go back and forth. But the way we did it was that there was booze in his house in Connecticut, but I was more than a year sober, and I felt okay with that. But there was not alcohol in the apartment in New York. So, when he was staying in the city and he wanted a drink, he could go out and sit at a bar and eat dinner and have a drink at the bar or whatever it was, I didn’t want it in the apartment. So, you really have to figure out ground rules if you’re living with somebody who is in that situation.
Katie [35:16]:
That makes so much sense. That’s great advice. We’re sort of nearing the end of our time, but I do want to explore one area before we move into our speed round. How do aging and midlife impact sobriety? Do you think it’s gotten easier? What do you hear from women in midlife who are struggling? Who might be thinking, “Wow I didn’t realize this was becoming an issue for me” or, “I can’t imagine reinventing myself in this phase and I’m kind of just stuck being a drinker.” How does aging impact this in any way?
Lisa [35:49]:
That’s a great point. Aging actually, I found… I was 38 when I got sober, I’m 56 now. At 38 my friends were sort of aging out of the kind of drinking thing; they were starting to have kids, your tolerance generally gets lower, and you feel worse. As you get older, I think you feel worse after drinking. So, it was actually a pretty convenient time for me to do it because all of a sudden I looked around and I was like, “Wait a minute, I’m the one drinking the most anyway, these guys don’t even really care that much, the way I do.”
And it’s interesting because it had been my identity; I drank. What was I if I wasn’t a drinker anymore? The answer is: you’re someone without hangovers, [both laugh] you have better skin, for me, I lost weight, you can make more money. There’s stuff like that, but also in general, I think it’s an easier social environment because I don’t think people really flinch. It’s not as much like you’re going out to bars to meet people or that’s how everybody hangs out. I think that there is… You’re never too old to decide to be sober. I know people who got sober at 70, it’s just a decision of how you want to feel each day. And a lot of, you know, I mentioned meditation and grounding myself in the moment, is really just thinking about what is this doing for me, right now? And you know, it’s interesting because more and more people are not drinking, it’s much more common now. When I got sober it was a big secret, it was AA or nothing, whatever. Now, there are non-alcohol bars, there are all kinds of non-alcohol companies; there are sober music festivals, there are all kinds of stuff and they’re not just for sober people they’re for people who want to enjoy something and are okay with not drinking.
Katie [37:52]:
Right, this is so fantastic to know about all these resources, which is another reason why people should be following your podcast and reading your book, to learn about these things. We’re going to move into our speed round Lisa. These are just quick one-to-two-word answers that I ask all guests to close the show. Recovery has taught me _____.
Lisa [38:12]:
Humility.
Katie [38:13]:
Creating the podcast, Recovery Rocks, is _____.
Lisa [38:17]:
Beautiful.
Katie [38:18]:
I love it. Sober celebrity you admire _____.
Lisa [38:22]:
I’m going to go Bradley Cooper.
Katie [38:23]:
Nice. A book or podcast that the sober curious should explore _____.
Lisa [38:29]:
Sober Curious by Ruby Warrington.
Katie [38:31]:
Fantastic. Favorite non-alcohol drink _____.
Lisa [38:36]:
Crisp & Crude, Mellow Mule.
Katie [38:39]:
Ooo! Best way to celebrate a sober-versary _____.
Lisa [38:44]:
Little splurge gift.
Katie [38:45]:
Nice. Finally, your one-word answer to complete this sentence: as I age, I feel _____.
Lisa [38:52]:
Grateful.
Katie [38:53]:
Nice.
Lisa [38:54]:
I didn’t think I’d be 40, so this is all gravy.
Katie [38:58]:
Amazing, amazing. You’ve had such an incredible 18 years; you’re making a difference for other people; you’ve given me so much to think about. I have so enjoyed this conversation, I’m going to explore more of your podcast as well, because I love hearing people share their stories and, you know, this is something that touches everybody, and you’ve given us a lot to think about. So, I really appreciate your time. Before we say goodbye though, how can my listeners keep following you, your work? Learn about your podcast and your book?
Lisa [39:30]:
Sure. So, on my website, I do a lot of speaking and things like that in the legal profession particularly but in general, for women. My website is lisasmithadvisory.com. And my handle on both Instagram and Twitter is @girlwalksout.
Katie [39:50]:
Thank you so much Lisa.
Lisa [39:51]:
Thank you for having me.
Katie [39:53]:
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Join me next Monday, when I talk with author/illustrator Wendi Knox who creates art and storybooks that remind us it’s never too late to soar.
Thank you to everyone who has already signed up for May Zoom Book Club. We are reading Find Your Unicorn Space by A Certain Age guest and author Eve Rodsky. You can sign up by emailing me at katie@acertainagepod.com.
Want to stay on top of other book events and new episodes? Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, AGE BOLDLY, over on acertainagepod.com or follow the fun on Instagram @acertainagepod.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music, see you next time, and until then: age boldly, beauties.