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Coming up next on Passion Strike.
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My first book was called Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay.
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It was my brand.
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My brand was joking about being like a wine mom.
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There was like a dark side to it.
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There were blog posts I wrote kind of drunk.
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There were emails that I sent out drunk.
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Every night after the kids went to bed, there was just buying things
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drunk on the computer and this happy kind of, Oh, it s fun to parent and have a glass of wine was not exactly what I was doing.
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I was having four glasses of wine and feeling like crap the next day.
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And like you said, not performing at my best and definitely not living my best life and just feeling sad all the time and discontent and not understanding why and victim me.
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Like, how did I get here?
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now, let s go out there and become Passion Struck.
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Hello, everyone.
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Welcome back to Episode 392 of Passion Struck.
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Consistently ranked by Apple, it s the number one alternative health podcast.
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And thank you to all of you who come back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world.
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I am so excited to announce that my new book, Passion Struck, was selected by the Next Big Idea Club as one of their must-read books for 2024.
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It s now available for pre-order, and you can find it at Amazon or at passionstruck.com forward slash passionstruckbook, where you can get access to over $300 free gifts that I ve curated for my community
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if you pre-order a book.
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If you re new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that.
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We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans  favorite episodes, that we organize in convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to our show.
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Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.
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In case you missed it, earlier in the week, I interviewed M.T.
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Conley, an elder justice expert and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient.
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Her transformative work in aging and elder care has reshaped policy research and practice, offering a new lens through which we view the golden years.
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And if you liked today s episode or MT Connelly s, we would truly appreciate a five star rating and review and sharing the show with your friends and family.
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They go such a long way to bringing more people into the Passion Struck community, and I know we and our guests love to hear from our listeners.
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As we approach the cusp of a new year, a time synonymous with resolutions,
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and transformative pledges like Dry January.
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Our next episode features an incredibly candid and resilient guest, Stephanie Wilder-Taylor.
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Stephanie s journey is a powerful narrative of transformation and a deep dive into the complexities of motherhood and the deceptive comfort of alcohol.
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For Stephanie, alcohol began as a companion in her high school days, evolving into a seemingly indispensable ally through the ups and downs of her motherhood.
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It was her go-to for stress relief, social lubricant, and a way to make life s adversities more bearable.
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Yet over time, Stephanie began to question her relationship with alcohol.
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Was their struggle with moderation a solitary battle?
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Was it normal to lean on alcohol for enjoying life s simple moments?
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These questions led Stephanie to a pivotal moment in her life.
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Facing the potential of losing everything she cherished, she chose to redefine her rock bottom, take a brave step toward sobriety.
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Her upcoming memoir, Drunkish, which publishes January 16, is not just a farewell to her dependence on alcohol, but an invitation to understand sobriety beyond the stigmatized stereotypical labels.
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Stephanie s story is one of empowerment and enlightenment, highlighting the often overlooked mommy wine culture and its normalization of problematic drinking behaviors.
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She sheds light on the perils of relying on substances like alcohol and prescription medication to navigate the challenges of life, particularly postpartum anxiety and the societal pressures of motherhood.
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In today s episode, Stephanie will delve into the critical moments of her journey,
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from choosing her own version of when she hit rock bottom to overcoming the slippery slope of substance abuse.
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We ll explore how she navigated the myriad of sober first and reshaped her mental outlook to make sobriety a sustainable part of her life.
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Her experience is a testament to the fact that alcoholism doesn t have a defined profile.
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That recovery is a deeply personal, unique journey.
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Stephanie Walter-Taylor is not just an author and TV personality, but a source of hope for many facing similar struggles.
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Join us as we explore her inspiring narrative, gaining insights, not only into the challenges she faced, but also the strategies and wisdom she discovered in her path to recovery and self-realization.
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Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now, let that journey begin.
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I am absolutely thrilled and honored today to have Stephanie Walter-Taylor on PassionStruck.
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Welcome, Stephanie.
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Thank you so much, John.
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I m really excited to do your show.
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I am so excited for you to be here.
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And today, as we get further into the interview, we re going to be talking about your upcoming book, Drunkish, a memoir of loving and leaving alcohol, which I can t wait to get into.
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However, I like to give the audience a chance to get to know my guest.
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And so I thought I would ask some background questions for you.
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And you re a comedian.
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I have just gotten done doing an improv class, which I loved.
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But to me, the thought of doing standup comedy is
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truly life-threatening.
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How did you jump into this at the age of your early twenties, knowing that this is something you wanted to do?
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Well, it s funny that you would ask me that because I was just talking about standup with one of my friends.
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I don t do standup anymore.
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It is terrifying.
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I m just going to be real with you.
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It was terrifying the first time and it s been terrifying every subsequent time that I did standup and I did it for 20 years.
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So it s really hard.
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I think that, so my father, my biological father was a standup comedian.
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His name is Stanley Myron Handelman.
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He was pretty famous in the late fifties, the sixties and into the early seventies.
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And so when I was a little kid, I had a father who was like doing the talk shows.
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Merv Griffin and Dean Martin.
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And I remember thinking it was really cool.
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And I was raised in a house with a lot of humor.
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And when I was a teenager, I loved to be made to laugh.
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I loved comedy and I loved comedy records.
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I played my Robin Williams album and my Steve Martin albums over and over.
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So.
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I always had it in my mind that was dream, but I was very scared to try it, really scared to try it.
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And in fact, I took an improv class before trying stand up because I thought, well, I could be funny with other people that seems less threatening than just being on stage by myself.
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And then that was so through those sort of baby steps.
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Then I wrote myself three minutes, that s it, three minutes.
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I had it timed exactly.
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I had an opening joke.
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I had every line of it completely rehearsed.
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And then I had six rum and Cokes and got up and tried it.
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It s interesting to me as I ve read about even some of the top comedians that they are, let s take Jerry Seinfeld or Steve Martin, how they are constantly writing jokes and then they go to sometimes just public standup get togethers where they re just trying to constantly test whether something s going to work or not.
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Is that something you found you had to do as well?
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Well, I spent many years doing open mic nights.
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And the thing that I ve noticed was that I didn t like that part of it.
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I didn t like the going up on stage and trying a joke and not being sure it was gonna work.
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I hated the feeling of bombing more than anything, but I liked the feeling of hanging out with other comedians and being funny and writing jokes.
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So it turned out that I liked writing a lot better than I liked the actual performance.
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Yeah, I was never one of those people that was just hanging out at the clubs hoping to get on.
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It was like, I only did that for the first couple of years and it was such a slog.
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And when I eventually, maybe six years into doing standup, I got a job writing on a game show.
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And it was at that moment that I was like, oh my God, this is what I was meant to do.
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I can write jokes.
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I was writing jokes for the host, but they have to go do it.
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They have to go stand on stage in front of the audience with my joke, not being sure if it s gonna work.
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They have to take the risk.
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I didn t like the risky part of it.
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I think I would prefer that much more, like writing jokes for Jimmy Fallon that he has to perform, but I get to write.
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Now that s relaxing and Jimmy Fallon enjoys going up and he doesn t fall apart.
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I m sure if a joke doesn t work, I would get upset.
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Given the fact he s probably done at this point, 10,000 of them.
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I got to imagine a good portion of them do fail.
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However, you brought up Robin Williams and good friends of mine were producers on Goodwill hunting.
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And they told me about this amazing night.
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where they had Matt and Ben and other members of the crew and Robin was there too.
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And they, I guess in Boston, their bowling is a little bit different.
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They use a smaller ball and it doesn t have as many pins.
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And they said that Robin turned this bowling alley into a comedy show.
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And he was just always on, always just the life of the party.
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And they said it was one of the most spectacular experiences that they had ever had.
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And just seeing that interaction and how natural it just came to him.
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So I wish I could have seen him perform because I imagine every night for him would have been a different experience.
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Yeah, that s, I have to say, I ve seen a ton of famous comedians perform and I ve never seen Robin perform, but I imagine it is just like you re saying, yeah, that s what, I mean, that s what I hear that he s very on.
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I m not, I have, even when I was doing improv on days and off days and it is so incredible.
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how what s been transpiring in your day influences that energy level that you bring into it.
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And even when I was trying to muster the energy to perform some days, it s just like a workout.
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You just feel flatter than you do on others.
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And maybe not as mentally sharp.
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Well, improv is really hard.
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Honestly, looking back, improv is harder for me than standup because with improv, you know, you have to think of things on the spur of the moment.
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If you re doing standup, you write an act.
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You can think about it, rewrite stuff, think about how the joke is going to come across.
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With improv, my worst thing that I hated was freeze tag.
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So freeze tag for those that.
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aren t well-versed in improv is you start out with a scene and then somebody in the, all the other players sort of line up behind them.
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And then somebody has to yell freeze and then just jump in and take the spot of somebody mid gesture or whatever, and make a brand new scene.
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And you re supposed to constantly go out there and say, freeze, and then take the person s place.
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And I never would.
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I would just be, I would be frozen behind everybody going, I m not going to be able to think of anything.
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I know exactly what you mean.
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And not only did we have to take their part in the scene, but however they were positioned bodily, we had to do that as well.
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So if they were leaning back with their left hand extended in the air, that s how we had to start the scene.
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And you re right.
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It certainly teaches you spontaneous communication, but it can be difficult to put yourself there.
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I used to write on the show, whose line is it anyway?
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And that was such a learning experience.
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So we would write the situations for all the guys and we would write Drew Carey s host lines, and then we would watch the show.
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And I m telling you, those guys were incredible.
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It was awe inspiring.
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Wayne Brady was really writing those songs off the top of his head.
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I can t put hats off.
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I could never do it.
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That was such a fun show and yes, just the intellect and how natural they made it appear.
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It s amazing that it was all natural because sometimes I would watch it and wonder, were these things pre-rehearsed?
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But the more I started understanding the show, they just got up there and did their things.
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They didn t see anything ahead of time.
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It was treated very respectfully for what it was.
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They really played by the rules.
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The actors had no idea what things they were going to be asked to do.
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Yeah, amazing.
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Well, I want to shift into your time becoming a mom because you became a mother when you were 36, 37.
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How did that becoming a mother influence the direction of your career at that point?
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Well, so before I got pregnant, I really was not sure that I was ever going to be a parent, not be.
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And I just wasn t sure I had done so many things in my career and I d stand up and I didn t know any other moms.
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And it always seemed a little bit like, I don t know if I really want to commit to this.
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Having a baby is a pretty big commitment.
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I decided I wanted to with my husband and right after we got married, we got pregnant.
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So I got married a little bit later in life.
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I was 36 when I got married.
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I turned 37 during my pregnancy.
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I was still working.
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I was writing on TV shows.
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and maybe still doing standup a little bit.
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And once I had a baby, it was so hard.
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I imagined that I would have a baby and life would just go on like nothing had happened.
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That s how I pictured it in my head.
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I was like, oh, I ll go right back to work.
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And my baby s going to be the kind of baby that I can go to a party and my baby will sleep on the coats in the bedroom.
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And that was just not how it was.
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When I had a baby, I was hit with some postpartum depression.
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I was anxious.
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I was kind of a wreck.
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Also, the idea of leaving the baby in daycare or with a nanny was very scary to me.
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So very early on, my husband and I decided that one of us was gonna have to stay home with the baby for at least the first year.
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That s how we had it in our head.
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And because my husband had a job, they gave him only a couple of weeks off.
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My husband works in TV as well.
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And the last job that I had worked on went on a hiatus.
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So it was easier for me to be the one to stay home.
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So I stayed home.
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I got incredibly bored right away.
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I don t know if looking back, I don t know if it was actual boredom or if it was just anxiety and feeling displaced because I d always gotten my sense of identity from working and from my coworkers and from producing.
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And so all of a sudden I m just home and the only thing I m producing is milk for this baby and not even doing that well because I had a horrible time breastfeeding.
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So I m like, well, the high point of my day is going to target, and this is no way to live for me.
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I felt trapped.
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And like I said, bored, that s how I would have termed it at the time.
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So I started a blog.
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It was the only thing I knew how to do was I had heard about blogging.
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It was in the kind of early stages.
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So I tried it myself and it was really old school.
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It was called blogspot.com.
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And I sent that blog to a couple of my friends at the time.
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I was really good friends with Chelsea Handler, the comedian and my sister, my best friend, Chelsea.
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And I just told them, Hey, I just wrote this thing.
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I sat down one night, have a couple of glasses of wine after the baby was in bed and just wrote this one blog post, 800 words.
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where I just ranted about motherhood and about how it was like a cult.
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And I called it the cult of mommy.
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And I was like, what is this?
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What s happened to me?
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Like all these moms that I meet want to do is talk about the price of vegetables and they re suddenly cutting bangs and wearing blue eyeshadow.
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That is just not going to be me.
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Anyway, Chelsea sent that to her agent and her agent called me on the phone and was like, I m going to get you a book deal.
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And I was like, wait, what?
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What has happened?
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I thought it was a prank call at first.
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I almost hung up on him and it was actually Chelsea s agent.
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And he actually did get me a book deal.
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Six weeks later, I had a deal to write a book.
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So I just never went back to having a full-time job like that.
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I ended up with a book and then I wrote another book and then I wrote two more books and it having a baby was a crazy.
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thing that just completely shook up my life, but it also gave me a whole new career direction.
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So I m grateful to my first little moneymaker.
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I love that story about the blog because I have a friend, Douglas Rushkoff, not sure if you ve ever read his stuff, but he wrote this blog, how the billionaires are preparing for the apocalypse, basically, and setting up their bunkers and stuff like this.
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And this blog post before he knew it had 30, 40,000 views of it.
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And that became a New York Times bestselling book for him.
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So it s interesting how you put something out there and how you can expand upon it.
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I want to go into a little bit of life advice from you, and there are a couple of different things I wanted to explore before we get in the book.
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The first was, I know a lot of the listeners are facing setbacks.
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Can you share some of the significant setbacks that you faced, like jobs disappearing or scripts not taking off and how you coped with those challenges?
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I faced a ton of obstacles in my life.
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I, and you and I were talking before we started recording.
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And I think that my main thing is I used to face like adversity with a lot of anxiety, just a lot of fighting it.
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How do I change this?
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The real thing for me has been figuring out what things that I can control and what things that I really just can t control.
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And when I can t control things, I try to take a more spiritual approach of just, this is going to turn out the way it s going to turn out.
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And the more that I fight against it, the more that it s not going to work out for me.
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And yeah, I spent years.
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One of my first real professional setbacks was my, one of my best friends and I in our twenties decided that we were going to write a script together, a screenplay.
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And we really set our minds to it.
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We really set our intention and we didn t just throw anything against the wall.
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We really, we read screenwriting books and
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We hunkered down and we really thought through our whole idea.
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We wrote this script and I had a friend who was an agent, a literary agent, and he took us on and he liked the script, but we got, we had so many rounds of notes with it.
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There were so many times where he was like, Oh, I don t think it s there yet.
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And we would be like.
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this is crazy.
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We worked on it so hard.
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It s been a year.
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And then we would go, okay, one more effort.
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We re going to do this.
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We re going to do one more polish on it.
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So we, we finished the script.
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Our agent really liked it.
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He sent it out.
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People went crazy for it.
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All of these production companies loved it.
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We were like the hottest thing we felt like of the month.
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We had all these meetings.
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We had like 45 meetings at production companies with companies that were like, we love this script.
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We, you know,
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What else do you have?
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That was the feedback we got.
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We love this script.
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It s a little bit small for us, but what else do you have?
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But we love you guys.
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Maybe we want you to help us do some rewriting.
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Well, I was thinking in my head where I was like, Oh my God, we re going to get a million dollars against a million dollars.
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My, the main thing I was worried about was how my husband was going to cope with all my success.
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He was my boyfriend at the time.
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And I was worried that success was going to ruin our happy home.
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He was going to be intimidated by me being a millionaire.
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That was, I m not being funny.
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I really did think this was it.
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I was, this was going to be, and thank God because I meant to be a writer and I m meant to be a screenwriter.
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And anyway, you can probably see where this is going.
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Out of all of those meetings, nothing came out of it.
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So because all of these companies had told us, what s your next thing we want to meet with you.
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We want to have first look at your next project.
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We wrote a whole second script that was even more sort of high concept.
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It was about two hookers that are on the run from their pimp.
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See this, you could not make this now, but at the time this seemed like a hot idea.
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So these two hookers that are on the run from their pimp and they go hide out in this little farming community and we called it horticulture.
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And of course they turn this town upside down and they bring, anyway, it had heart.
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It was really hilarious.
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We finished that script.
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It took another year.
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We have like few meetings.
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Nothing happens.
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I mean, that was a couple of years of my life where I really was like, how do you fail when you ve put everything that you have?
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And I felt like it was such a knock on who I was as a person and my ability to make things happen.
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And
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what I m meant to do and I felt very lost for a long time.
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I remember just having to feel that feeling of just, well, I don t know.
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I don t know what I m going to do.
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And I had to go back to, I had been working in game shows and I was like, well, maybe that s all I m going to do.
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is work on game shows and maybe that has to be enough.
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And I got okay with it.
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I kind of decided that, Hey, I have a great life.
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I found some gratitude in this is fun.
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I like my jobs.
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I m not on a sitcom, but I m, I was writing on Hollywood squares and whose line is it anyway?
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Like I said, and I was like, you know what?
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This is okay.
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This is an okay life and I can be happy.
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I think.
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For me, and this is not really life advice, but I ve always been a person that could be happy doing a lot of different things.
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So I had to go back to that feeling of like, you know, when I was really young, I was like, I want to be a lawyer.
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And then I realized that if you want to be a lawyer, you have to go to college and then maybe like beyond college and take a bar exam.
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Seemed like a lot of work and not really up for all that hard work.
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So.
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I changed my mind about that, but I was like, I had other things that can make me happy.
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And for a long time, I was like, I really, really want to be a standup comedian and I can t be happy unless I m a standup.
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And then I did stand up for a very long time and realized this isn t actually making me happy.
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And that s when I pivoted to writing.
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So I ve just been a person that s
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Let s see what else is there.
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And even when I felt really down and well, I thought that was my life s purpose, but I guess it s not.
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I ve been able, I think the ability to pivot and go, well, let s see what else, let s see what else can make me happy.
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I think that s a really important thing.
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Cause I noticed that some of my old friends hope they re not listening, but a lot of comics that I came up with just couldn t pivot and they re not happy people.
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They re still trying to do standup.
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at the same age that I am now, and they never found other things to make them happy.
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And I think that s sad.
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Stephanie, as I was reading some of your background and doing research, I think something that I read coincides with this.
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And that is that you believe being flexible and up for anything is the secret to success.
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Can you elaborate on how that mindset helped you to not overcome just the things we were talking about, but the unpredictability of the industry that you were in?
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Well, shockingly, I have very little confidence, but I have a lot of balls.
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I think that I say yes to things because everything sounds interesting to me.
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So for instance, when Chelsea said, oh, this blog should be a book and her agent called me, I was absolutely scared to death.
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And in no part of my being did I think I could write a book.
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I didn t.
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I was very sure that I could not write a book.
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But I just said, yes.
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And the agent said, do you have other stuff that you ve written?
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And I didn t, I didn t have any, I d written on game shows.
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I had jokes.
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I hadn t written anything long form.
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So I was like, absolutely.
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Yes, I do.
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And he said, okay, don t put it online.
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Just send it to me.
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Well, I didn t have anything, but under pressure of, I said, okay, I will.
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And then I worked through the fear because I was now on an
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not an official deadline, but if I wanted to make something happen, I was going to have to write something.
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So under duress, I wrote a couple of chapters.
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Well, actually I didn t, I tried to take a shortcut and write just what some chapter ideas would be.
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And then I sent it to him and nothing happened.
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And then I followed up with him and he was like, no, I meant like, I want you to write some stuff.
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Like the first thing that you sent me, no, he said, I was wondering if you had anything like that.
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So then I had to write four essays and I was scared to death.
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But the fear of not getting this opportunity overrode the fear of actually doing this kind of work.
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So I tried, did my best and I sent it in and then I got a book deal and then I was really scared again.
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And the whole time writing that book,
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I was like, I don t know how to write a book.
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I cried so many times.
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I thought about giving the money back.
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I thought I can t do this.
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Like, I m not good at this.
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This isn t my thing.
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I don t know how to do this.
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So many self-critical voices.
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I didn t go to college.
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I didn t go to college.
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I took one creative writing class in college.
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Who do I think I am that I can write a book with all these?
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Also, I compared and despaired with my writing constantly with other writers.
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I would read other things and go, I can t write like this.
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Eventually, through a lot of conversations with my husband, I would cry to him and he would calm me down and he would say, you can do this.
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Yeah, you re not writing like this poetic prose.
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You write the way you talk, write the way you talk.
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And so that s what I did.
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I just tried to infuse it with standup and a lot of jokes and the way I talk and the way I think.
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And it worked and it worked.
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That book did really well.
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Now, the next time I got an opportunity.
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I was still just as scared, but what I learned a lot was to just say yes.
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I would just say yes to things because my mindset was just like, well, what s the worst that can happen?
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What is the worst that can happen?
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Somebody is offering me money to write a book.
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Who am I to say no to that?
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Like, why not say yes?
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So what?
2
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So I have some imposter syndrome.
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Even in this book, I wrote this in this book.
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I have rampant imposter syndrome.
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I had imposter syndrome.
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This was my sixth book that we re here to talk about.
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I was still like, who do I think I am to be writing a book about this?
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And I was the one who pitched this book to my editor.
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I hadn t written a book in seven years and I had an idea.
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So this is what I do.
2
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This is like how I work.
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I get an idea and then I just email somebody about it and go, hey, do you think I should do this idea?
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And I don t think it all the way through because if I think it all the way through, I will come up with reasons why I shouldn t be doing it.
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SPEAKER_01
So I will write letters to people or emails to people that have power.
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And I just don t, I don t really care because the writing the email part, isn t that hard for me?
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It s the follow-through that s hard.
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So I have to get somebody to say yes.
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And then I have to do the thing.
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It s kind of backward.
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I don t do the prep work.
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I m glad you brought up all those feelings that you just went through because one of the reasons I wrote my book that s coming out and it s because it s one of the biggest questions I get is people see high achievers like yourself, like others who are out there and
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I think that these people are confident all the time that they have it all together.
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And yet I find some of the biggest high achievers or most successful people I know have as much self-doubt and imposter syndrome and fear as anyone you would ever know, maybe even more than a lot
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of people.
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And I remember as I was looking you up and you ve been on shows like the Today Show, Fox and Friends, et cetera.
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And I just put myself in that position that you were in that if I m in front of Al Roker and being asked questions, like it just feels so intimidating.
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How did you being a person who you said you didn t have much confidence, how do you put yourself in the position to perform when you have moments like that?
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You re asking me such good questions, I have to tell you.
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These are things that I haven t thought about in a long time.
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But so when I wrote my first book, all I had done was I had been on some pretty big, I had been on television doing standup before, but it was all written and it was scary.
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So when I was told that I was going to be on the Today Show, when I got the Today Show, which by the way, was something that I went after pretty hard.
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So then I was told, yes, you re going to be on the Today Show.
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And then I promptly was so scared.
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I obsessed about it for a long time.
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What am I going to wear?
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I went shopping many times.
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I wasn t eating.
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I was barely sleeping.
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I was so nervous about it, but it was happening.
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That s the thing that I put myself in positions where, well, this is going to happen whether you like it or not.
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You re not going to not do it.
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You re not going to let fear make you not do it.
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But I was really terrified.
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I woke up that morning in my hotel room in New York and I was shaking.
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I remember trying to do my makeup and get ready and just feeling like I was at a high altitude, barely able to breathe.
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But somehow I are, and I had the kind of the jokes pre-written.
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I knew the certain things I was going to hit on.
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So when I was out there and Natalie Morales was my first, was the anchor that was interviewing me.
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And she was so nice.
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And she was a new mom herself.
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So I just decided to just be myself.
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No, I was going to be myself.
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I had thought about all these people that are on the Today Show.
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They re so professional and they re wearing suits.
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I wore this little top with sort of spaghetti straps.
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SPEAKER_00
I always feel like a misfit toy.
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But I just did my thing and, and it worked once I was out there.
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Once I was talking to her, I just decided I m just having a conversation.
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I just tried to put it out of my mind that I was on TV or who was watching.
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SPEAKER_00
And I was like, look at her be in the moment and answer the questions and have fun.
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SPEAKER_00
And once I did that the first time, I realized that being on live television is actually more comfortable for me than doing stand up like it just felt different because it felt like you re just kind of thrown out there and you can t really fail because
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You re just answering questions.
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You know what I mean?
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Nobody knows what jokes you thought you were going to hit on that you didn t hit.
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Nobody knows.
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Nobody has an expectation of how it s supposed to go.
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SPEAKER_00
Whereas if you re doing standup and you walk out on the stage, this is why it never stopped being scary to me.
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People are looking at you like, okay, make me laugh.
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The expectation is that the first thing out of your mouth better be funny.
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And so.
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a lot of things can ruin that for you.
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It could be the temperature in the room.
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SPEAKER_00
It could be who you just followed.
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SPEAKER_00
It could be what type of crowd it is.
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SPEAKER_00
It could be people that just don t get your joke.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s so many variables, but to me, it s different with doing live television.
3
SPEAKER_00
There are no variables like that.
3
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Nobody has any idea what you re supposed to be doing or if you re failing.
3
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So that s what I keep in my head.
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Every time I go and tell it still makes me very nervous.
3
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Don t get me wrong.
3
SPEAKER_00
I still get terrible butterfly.
3
SPEAKER_00
I got nervous coming on here to do this with you.
3
SPEAKER_00
I, Oh, I still get nervous.
3
SPEAKER_00
It all feels like public speaking.
3
SPEAKER_00
It all feels like expectation, but I just know intellectually that the audience doesn t exactly have an expectation.
3
SPEAKER_00
They don t know you re just background for them.
3
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I m going to unpack a few of the things that you just said there because I can talk.
3
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I love this topic.
3
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I have been doing some TV interviews myself over the past couple of weeks, nothing like going on the Today Show.
3
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But the thing that always strikes me is it s almost like you are in an improv performance because you don t know exactly what they re going to ask you.
3
SPEAKER_01
And for me, it s been really challenging being a podcaster, being someone who s used to storytelling that you ve got to cadence your answers 20 or 30 seconds and get very specific on what you re doing.
3
SPEAKER_01
That has been one of the hardest things for me to pivot and do.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I do agree with you that when you re on there, I don t think anyone has an expectation and heck you don t know the host most of the ones that I ve been interviewing with.
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It was intimidating at first, but I
3
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kind of put myself in that mindset to have fun.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I have met Natalie Morales, and it was a great story.
3
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I used to be the CEO of a company called Genius Central Systems, and we were in the health food business.
3
SPEAKER_01
Our application was used by many of the independent and large
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SPEAKER_01
supermarkets, and we worked with a lot of the CPG brands.
3
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Long story short, we had these two major conferences that we did, Expo East and Expo West.
3
SPEAKER_01
Expo West is out where you live in the LA area, and it s this huge conference that has tens of thousands of people coming.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I m in manning the booth, talking to different people who are walking up and up comes this lady in a jogging suit with, I m guessing was her husband and it s Natalie Morales.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I couldn t believe it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And she was as nice could be.
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SPEAKER_01
She was just there because she s a huge health addict and was
3
SPEAKER_01
just trying to find what the latest and greatest things are, came to the booth and talked to us for five or seven minutes.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you would have had no idea who she was other than that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that was my Natalie Morales story.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s really nice.
3
SPEAKER_01
She is.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m glad she was my first experience.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, but I have to ask you, how do you go after being on the Today Show?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, when the first book was coming out, I was a completely unknown author.
3
SPEAKER_00
All I d ever done was stand up.
3
SPEAKER_00
But my husband had been in the talk show business.
3
SPEAKER_00
He was a producer on some small talk shows, and he still had friends from that side of the business.
3
SPEAKER_00
So he sent my book to a couple of his friends, and then they made different people know people, and that s how it worked.
3
SPEAKER_00
So although the Today Show had originally said no to me,
3
SPEAKER_00
got in through the back way, friend of a friend sent the book to the book producer and she put me on.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then they ve had me back for every book, except for this one, by the way, apparently the today show passed.
3
SPEAKER_00
We ll see though.
3
SPEAKER_01
We will see.
3
SPEAKER_01
All these things have a long lead time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I would only wish that they would have me on the today show sometime, but you never know what could happen.
3
SPEAKER_00
Ask all your friends, put it out there on your podcast.
3
SPEAKER_00
See if anybody that knows you know somebody there and they can recommend you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, that s a great idea.
3
SPEAKER_01
Stephanie, I m going to switch into your book, which you just said today s show hasn t wanted you to talk about.
3
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I m going to do this in an interesting way.
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Sounds like you and I have both had a relationship with alcohol since we were in high school.
3
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And I don t think I ve ever publicly told this story.
3
SPEAKER_01
I started working as soon as I could.
3
SPEAKER_01
And when I might ve been 14 years old, I got a job working for a supermarket in Pennsylvania called Giant Foods.
3
SPEAKER_01
And by the time I was 16,
3
SPEAKER_01
I was now in charge of running the truck crew, which is when the truck comes in, you have to unload it, and you typically do the night stocking of the supermarket.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I get this job not knowing that every single person on the truck crew besides me is an ex-con.
3
SPEAKER_01
And after a period of time, this could have been a comedy show.
3
SPEAKER_01
Here I am this puny little 16 year old, I was a cross country runner, probably weighed buck 40.
3
SPEAKER_01
But to earn their respect, I am going into this 150 degree trailer and unloading the whole truck myself because I did not want to let them see that I was going to fail because I felt like if I did, there s no way.
3
SPEAKER_01
that they would ever want to listen to me about anything.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, over time as I gained their trust and at one point they all come to me and these are men who are now, some of them in gangs, opposing gangs, but they come to me and say, Hey, we ve got a proposition for you.
3
SPEAKER_01
We think that we could create an alcohol network for you to supply the local schools.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we will be your backer.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so I get into this business model where at first I m doing a few parties for my high school and the word gets out and before I know it, I m supplying six or seven high schools alcohol and we re storing it in my friend s shed.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the whole time they re like, if you ever get caught and you rat on us, you re done.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I ve got that looming over me, but I started experimenting with alcohol probably far too early in life.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it was my ticket to friendships and other things.
3
SPEAKER_01
Cause I was the person in that movie who could hook you up.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I started drinking, I don t know, 14 or 15 years old, probably way too early in my life.
3
SPEAKER_01
How did you first get introduced to it when you were in high school?
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, I went to high school in Spokane, Washington.
4
SPEAKER_01
That was my first high school I went to.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there s not a lot to do in Spokane.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was a big drinking high school.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it just felt like a natural thing to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
At 14, I went out on a date, on a double date, me and my friend with two guys that we had a huge crush on and they,
4
SPEAKER_01
procured a six pack of beer and I tried beer for the first time tasted disgusting.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I, once I had one of them down, I was like, Oh, I kind of like this feeling.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then once I d had three beers, I felt great.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that was it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was off to the races.
4
SPEAKER_01
I love the way it made me feel.
4
SPEAKER_01
I d been a pretty anxious kid.
4
SPEAKER_01
I d already had a lot of turmoil at home.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m not saying that causes alcoholism, but I think that for me, I loved it.
4
SPEAKER_01
It felt magical to me the first time I drank.
4
SPEAKER_01
Loved the feeling.
4
SPEAKER_01
Couldn t imagine that it had taken me that long to find it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I know for me, uh, the reason I liked it is I am an introvert.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so social settings for me have always been very intimidating and just being out there.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so it loosened me up enough that I felt like I could talk to people and be more part of those gatherings.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s what attracted me to drinking in the beginning and, uh, doing it socially.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I know when we had our kids, I noticed that after having them, especially my son, because he was one of those boys who was just full on 24 by seven.
4
SPEAKER_00
I noticed that, uh, at that point in our lives, our drinking increased.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I wanted to ask you in what ways did your own motherhood influence or change your drinking habits?
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think that looking back all the way to high school, the reasons that I ve drank more or less at the time are usually tied to stress and to in high school.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think it s, I was not an introvert.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m pretty extroverted, but when it comes to intimacy, boyfriend stuff, sex, all that stuff, I felt like I needed something.
4
SPEAKER_01
I would add a lot of fear around it, so I used alcohol to kind
4
SPEAKER_01
propel myself into a new sexual relationship or even just having a boyfriend or intimacy in general.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then when I was doing standup, you know, the alcohol played a really big part because I had so much fear about going on stage.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I always felt, Oh, this is something that works for me.
4
SPEAKER_01
So even though when I was pregnant with my first daughter, I barely drank.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is a story in the book in case anybody s barely my OB was this was a long time ago.
4
SPEAKER_01
My daughter s 19, but my OB said, you can have two drinks a week.
4
SPEAKER_01
That means a drink, a beer, a glass of wine.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I moderated like a rock star.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was like, Oh, okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ll have one on a Friday night and one on a Tuesday, but I never really had more than that because during pregnancy, I felt very calm.
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And the hormones had the opposite effect that they do for some women.
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Some women feel terrible when they re pregnant.
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I felt fine.
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And I felt laid back.
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I was like, what is this new personality?
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I have, I m like kind of cool with everything.
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It s going to be fine.
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The second I had my daughter.
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all hell broke loose.
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I felt like my whole life was demolished.
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I was anxious.
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I was anyway, I think some of those same reasons that I drank in the past came back once I had my daughter.
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And even though I had struggled a lot with being somebody who drank too much or being unpredictable with alcohol, I never thought of myself as having a drinking problem for real.
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I always saw it as something that other people like what alcoholism looked like to me was other people that you could clearly go, Oh, that guy s an alcoholic, that girl, that person.
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For me, it just felt very socially acceptable.
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It s Trader Joe s is right down the street.
4
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I m going to grab a bottle of wine.
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Having a glass of wine makes me feel better.
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Having a glass of wine sort of softens the edges.
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So once I got back into drinking, when I had a baby and I was
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medicating anxiety, but I wouldn t have told you that at the time.
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I would have told you this is just something nice.
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It s something for me.
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It feels good to have that bottle of wine in the refrigerator that I can reach for at the end of the day.
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I deserve it.
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The baby s in bed.
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It s my time.
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It was the only thing I had.
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I couldn t go to the gym.
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I had this little baby.
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I had no time for myself.
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I was exhausted all the time.
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So it was like a treat for me at the end of the, that s how it started.
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Looking back, I was clearly medicating postpartum anxiety.
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Eventually I got put on an antidepressant and then that helped a lot, but it never quite took it away.
4
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And the drinking was always really hard for me to define because it was the way that I drink and the way that I identify with having a drinking issue, having substance use disorder is the way it looks for me is unpredictability.
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So it was always hard to go.
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I was never somebody who went from, okay, now I have this baby and I m stressed all the time and now I m drinking all the time.
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I m drinking during the day and I m drinking in the morning.
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It never looked like that for me.
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It was always like, oh, I m feeling stressed.
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You know what ll make me feel better?
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A glass of wine.
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So the problem was that once I have some wine and you never know when this is gonna happen, if I have a glass of wine, more seems better to me.
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Oh, I feel good.
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I ve had a glass of wine.
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You know what?
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Two would be a little better.
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Oh, I ve had two glasses of wine.
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Now I m really starting to feel relaxed.
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Well, you know what would be better?
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Three.
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And it s just like, I just don t have an off switch.
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I was reading in the book how you said when you were dating your husband before you got married, you were living in an apartment in Santa Monica that you guys would be late at night drinking a bottle of wine.
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And it became easy because right across the parking lot was a supermarket where you could get more.
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And I think for a lot of people, that s how it happens.
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You just get into this custom where one becomes two, two becomes three, and it just becomes a normal part of your life.
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And you write that, and I m not going to read this whole thing, but you said, I did worry about my drinking.
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Sometimes I got brutal hangovers that didn t seem quite normal.
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At times you had blacked out, couldn t remember anything the night before in high school, you d gotten into a couple of car accidents.
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Where I m going with this is I think a lot of people have these kind of early warning signs where these things might happen to them, but either they think they can control it or they don t think it s had a negative impact.
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They haven t gotten into a DUI or they haven t had an impact where it s cost them a relationship or something else.
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When for you, did you start questioning whether your relationship with alcohol was normal compared to it not being normal?
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Well, I think that I d always kind of questioned it because of those things that you re saying, but I rationalized it as well.
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I mean, I told myself things were normal, such as I used to drive drunk a lot.
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I drove drunk when I was young.
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I drove drunk in my twenties and you d go somewhere.
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And it just seemed, well, how else are you going to get home?
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What are people taking cabs home from?
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Like, it just seemed like something that everybody does.
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And I never thought I was that drunk.
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I always felt, Oh, I ve had a few drinks, but I can totally drive.
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It s a miracle that I never got a DUI or, or crashed the car.
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So those were things that were happening when I was younger.
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And there were times where I would just have just such a bad hangover, need to go to the hospital.
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I thought I was never going to feel better.
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And those times I would question, I would be like, this doesn t seem to happen to other people.
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This seems like a me thing.
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But then I would just convince myself.
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I would try many times.
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I m not going to drink anymore.
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That was terrible.
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I m never going to drink again.
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And then of course, a week or two later, I would be like, ah, what s one drink going to hurt.
4
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But.
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I think it was after having a baby that I felt like this is not cute anymore.
4
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There was a specific time where it was a Halloween night and my daughter was my older, my first daughter was only about two or turning two.
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Yeah.
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It was like October, her birthday s in November.
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So she was almost two years old and we went out for Halloween.
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We went trick-or-treating with some friends and I got really drunk.
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And the thing was my, nobody really said anything about it, but it was my own.
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I am a mom now, and this is not, I m not in high school.
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This is, I got trashed out with friends and nobody else did.
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And I remember thinking what is wrong with me and having a real feeling that I don t want to be a drunk mom.
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I do not want to be somebody who s getting trashed around my kid.
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And I seem to not be able to control it.
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So I quit drinking at that time.
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I was like, I m not going to drink anymore.
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I m going to get help.
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I went to a support group.
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I meant business, but I wasn t fully committed to it because I don t think I really thought it s alcoholism or it s, you know, I just thought I, I
5
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I want to be somebody who doesn t drink.
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So I tried and then I got pregnant and it was twins.
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And then I stayed totally sober through that whole pregnancy.
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And I was like, Oh, okay.
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Well, people that have a problem with alcohol can t easily stay sober for as long as I just have.
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It s been like, my twins came a little bit early.
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So all in all, I d probably not had a single drink in nine months.
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Let s just say.
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So once my twins were born, I was like, now I got these little babies and I ve got a three-year-old and newborn twins.
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And I went nine months without drinking.
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So I think I m fine now.
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Let s not worry about this because now I really felt like I needed a drink as you can imagine.
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So I kind of went back to drinking and it just got bad really quickly.
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I started trying to make a lot of rules for myself and then not was not able to stick to those rules.
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And I think we re,
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what you re leading me to is the actual moment that I quit drinking for good.
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And that was 14 over almost 15 years ago.
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So I was toying with it in my mind a lot.
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I kept thinking I m only going to drink on weekdays.
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Cause I was like a stay at home writer mom.
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So it seemed like I want to drink on the weekends, but I won t drink on weekdays or I m only going to drink on weekdays, but I won t drink on the weekend.
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Or I was making rules.
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Anybody that s struggled with drinking has done this.
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This is just trying to moderate.
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I m going to do better this time.
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I m, but each time I made a rule, it felt.
5
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too hard.
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Okay, I m only going to drink on weekdays.
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So that s Monday through Thursday, because obviously, Friday is part of the weekend, then I m only going to drink on you know what I m saying?
5
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So I would do that.
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And then I would go, it s Monday, but I m going out with some friends.
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Let s just not have that rule just for today.
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Eventually,
5
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I realized moderating is hard.
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It was a struggle every single time.
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And I kept disappointing myself by breaking my own rules.
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So I decided, you know what, I m going to just be easier on myself.
5
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I m just going to be someone who drinks.
5
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Let s stop fighting it all the time.
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That just seems too hard.
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I m just going to be somebody who drinks, but I m only going to have two drinks at home and I m never going to drive drunk.
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So that went on for a few months and I thought it was going pretty well, but
5
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If you re somebody who drinks every day, eventually you are going to go somewhere.
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And that place that I went was to a little get together with some friends.
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And I had two of my kids with me who are now what my twins were 18 months.
5
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I had one twin with me and I had my daughter who was four at that time.
5
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And we re hanging out at this person s house and I had a martini.
5
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Then I had another martini.
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There was a nanny watching the kids.
5
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I was having an amazing time.
5
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I felt like this is so nice.
5
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I have these little kids, but I still feel human.
5
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I m around other adults.
5
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And it was just like a really good time.
5
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And I felt like I deserve this.
5
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I deserve to be having fun.
5
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And then I had another drink and probably another, and then I drove home like that.
5
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Well, I get home, my husband s in the driveway.
5
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He d been trying to call me all night.
5
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He was furious.
5
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He accused me of being drunk.
5
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He couldn t believe it.
5
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He was mortified.
5
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He told me I was staggering up my driveway.
5
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I was mad at him for being mad at me.
5
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How dare he?
5
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I was fine.
5
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See, that was my whole thing though, is I always felt like I was fine.
5
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I always felt fine.
5
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I always felt like I was fine to drive.
5
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I always felt like I was fine to do whatever.
5
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I didn t ever feel drunk.
5
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I always felt like I was fine to perform on stage.
5
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And I woke up in the morning with one of my classic horrible hangovers.
5
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I m so happy that I was graced with this moment of clarity where I was able to see myself very clearly.
5
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I was puking.
5
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I had a splitting headache and I was like, well, my husband was obviously right.
5
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I was obviously drunk.
5
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And then I was so completely mortified by what I d done.
5
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And it just hit me.
5
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It hit me like a ton of bricks that people that don t have a problem with alcohol don t make a line in the sand that they re not going to ever drive drunk and then immediately do it.
5
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Who does that?
5
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I was somebody that the sober me would have very harshly judged.
5
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I was a person who did a thing that risked my whole family.
5
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And I just had a moment where I was like, I need help because obviously if I did it this time, I m going to do it again.
5
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That was what I realized about myself.
5
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I was like, I think I m a good person who has a good heart and normally has a decent moral compass.
5
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So if that s how I see myself, and yet I did this thing that was obviously beneath my moral compass, then how can I say I m not going to do it again?
5
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This all happened within the first hour of waking up with that hangover.
5
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But I thought, I m making this pretty big decision that I need help, and I don t want to ever drink again, because I don t want to take that risk.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then I had to do something about it.
5
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And that s basically what changed my life.
5
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Well, thank you for sharing that.
5
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And Stephanie, I have a few follow-on questions, as you might guess from that.
5
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Probably a lot of people who are listening, many of them probably don t want to talk about their alcohol use.
5
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Who likes that conversation that you have with your doctor when you go in for your physical and they say, how often do you drink?
5
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And the funny thing is my fiance is a primary care physician.
5
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And she says, whatever answer we get, we automatically multiply it by a number that I m not going to tell you, but we assume everyone s lying about it because everyone tries to make it seem like it s not as much as it is.
5
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But for so many people, alcohol becomes a social lubricant.
5
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It s something that is amazing since I haven t been drinking.
5
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You walk into a restaurant.
5
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and 95% of the people in there are having a drink.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it becomes this public identity with alcohol.
5
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And I realized for myself, and it was part of the reason that I stopped drinking, was that I just realized that so many of the activities that my friends were doing and that I found myself doing were all alcohol
5
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driven.
5
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That was the reason where we were at, whether it was at a brewery or at a festival or this or that, it was alcohol was the common point.
5
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And I just started to sit back and think if I want a 10x life, or if I want what I m pontificating here on the show to have a passion struck life, that you re not having that if your identity and the things that you re doing
5
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are so consumed by alcohol and that is taking you away from performing at your best because as I started to do my own deep dive into this I can think of so many situations where maybe I ve gotten home from work and I ve had a couple drinks and I get on email and I send one out and it absolutely does not have the tone that I want it to have or I say things that I wouldn t have
5
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said if I m in a sober mood, or how many of us have been in a relationship with our partner and we get in a fight and the foundation of that has been because we ve both been drinking.
5
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Or the same thing, we re out with a group of friends and we end up getting in a fight and it s because alcohol has been part of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Long-winded way of putting it out there, if you re a person who s drinking,
5
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How do you start separating your public identity in this social aspect that drinking is part of what we do from who you are?
5
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That s a really good question, especially because for me, my first book was called Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay.
5
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It was my brand.
5
SPEAKER_01
My brand was joking about being like a wine mom.
5
SPEAKER_01
There was like a dark side to it.
5
SPEAKER_01
There was a dark side, exactly what you re talking about.
5
SPEAKER_01
There were.
5
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blog posts I wrote kind of drunk.
5
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There were emails that I sent out drunk.
5
SPEAKER_01
There was every night after the kids went to bed, there was just buying things drunk on the computer.
5
SPEAKER_01
And what was this happy kind of, Oh, it s fun to parent and have a glass of wine was not exactly what I was doing.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was having more than I was having four glasses of wine and feeling like crap the next day.
5
SPEAKER_01
And like you said, not performing at my best and definitely not living my best life.
5
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just feeling sad all the time and discontent and not understanding why and victimy.
5
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Like, how did I get here?
5
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Oh, I have all these kids and this is, I see myself as, I don t know, something else.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I think that once I really accepted the fact that I m just, I m not going to go back to drinking.
5
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This is who I am now.
5
SPEAKER_01
I started looking for other sober people was a big part of it.
5
SPEAKER_01
I spent time with people that are sober.
5
SPEAKER_01
I spent less time with the other wine moms and more time with people that were trying to live the way that I was living.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it was really hard.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m not going to lie.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the first year.
5
SPEAKER_01
I wrote a chapter about all the first things that I had to do, going to a concert, going to a wedding, going on vacation.
5
SPEAKER_01
These were all things that I had always been very connected for me with alcohol.
5
SPEAKER_01
First it s hard.
5
SPEAKER_01
And at first you re like, this just.
6
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feels weird.
6
SPEAKER_00
I feel out of it.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m not able to relax and have fun, but you do get used to it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And eventually I was able to see that I m, we re far from the only ones that aren t drinking.
6
SPEAKER_00
It feels like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
It feels like that when you give up alcohol, because you re right.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s so many commercials and it s so tied with people having fun and you think everybody is drinking, but if you are
6
SPEAKER_00
If you really are looking around and being observant, you re going to notice they re not.
6
SPEAKER_00
And in fact, the first time I went to a concert, I went to go see a band with my husband and I was like, Oh my God, this is going to be so uncomfortable.
6
SPEAKER_00
What am I going to do?
6
SPEAKER_00
Everybody s going to be drinking.
6
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drinking activity, going to see a band.
6
SPEAKER_00
So we get there and my husband does order a beer and I get a water like a loser.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh God.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m sitting here with my stupid plastic water bottle.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I got a pretzel.
6
SPEAKER_00
Cause God damn it.
6
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I m at least going to have a snack if I m going to have to sit here and I m sitting there feeling sorry for myself, eating my pretzel and drinking my water.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I look around the theater and I m like, Oh, that guy s drinking a water too.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that girl s drinking a water.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, well, this is so weird.
6
SPEAKER_00
Why are all these people drinking water?
6
SPEAKER_00
And eventually I lean over to my husband and I said, look, all these people are drinking water.
6
SPEAKER_00
I said, we were seeing Wilco.
6
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I said, is this a sober band or something?
6
SPEAKER_00
And my husband s like, I don t think so.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I go, I don t understand why everyone s drinking water.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he goes, well, it s a Monday night.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, Whoa.
6
SPEAKER_00
I couldn t believe that I would just assumed that everybody would be drinking when actual people that don t have a problem with alcohol, maybe don t drink on a Monday night.
6
SPEAKER_00
Maybe they have to work the next day.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s in our imagination that everybody s doing something.
6
SPEAKER_00
And now I really do.
6
SPEAKER_00
I look for people who aren t drinking and a lot of times they re either sober like me, then we have something to talk about.
6
SPEAKER_00
or they just don t drink.
6
SPEAKER_00
I am shocked by the number of people that I meet these days who just don t drink.
6
SPEAKER_00
Not because they ever drank too much, just because they just don t really drink.
6
SPEAKER_00
I have a big circle of mom friends now that could drink or not drink.
6
SPEAKER_00
Maybe they ll have a glass of wine.
6
SPEAKER_00
Maybe they won t, but it s so not important to them.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think when you re in the mindset of drinking all the time and drinking every night, that s what we re putting out there.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that those are the people that we attract.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so that s, we re going to be doing a lot of drinking activities.
6
SPEAKER_00
And when you really make a decision in your life that you re not going to drink,
6
SPEAKER_00
I think you will find yourself starting to be surrounded with other people who are on that same path.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m glad you brought up the concert aspect because I am a huge concert goer.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I used to think that I needed to be enumerated to enjoy the concert and get the feel from it.
6
SPEAKER_01
But over the past months, I have to say I ve seen some great concerts and I feel
6
SPEAKER_01
Like I ve actually enjoyed them more being completely sober because I m more in the moment enjoying what s happening and remembering it better and experiencing it better.
6
SPEAKER_01
But I know for a lot of people, those first experiences, like you brought up, whether it s holidays or going out with your friends where everyone else is drinking and you re not, and maybe they re dancing and.
6
SPEAKER_01
Before that was your gateway to feeling more comfortable to dancing or social events.
6
SPEAKER_01
I like to watch football with my friends and all of them drink and they re asking me why I m not drinking.
6
SPEAKER_01
It is tough to navigate those first.
6
SPEAKER_01
But what I have found personally is it s actually not that difficult.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
And also nobody needs to dance, really, if you think about it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
6
SPEAKER_00
So maybe you don t feel that comfortable dancing.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, then just don t dance.
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SPEAKER_00
Unless you re just like dancing is my whole life and I have to go out dancing every single night and I have to be drunk to do it.
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But do we really, do we really need to dance?
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You can still go places and just.
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I m making a joke.
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You can dance if you want.
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It s you just have to get used to it.
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Yeah.
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It makes me think of that song.
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You can dance if you want to.
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You could leave yourself behind.
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Exactly.
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So I was going to ask this question about advice for struggling mothers, but I think I m just going to make it more open-ended advice for anyone who s struggling with finding themselves having an alcohol issue.
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How would you tell them to take the first steps into confronting it and doing something about it?
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Well, you brought up a point earlier about doctors and being honest with your doctor.
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And so that s not something any of us are going to do.
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Let s just, let s be real.
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Like we re not going to go to our doctor and go, I drink too much.
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If you have the guts to do that, go for it.
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But I would say everybody probably has one friend who doesn t drink.
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Think of somebody who you know that doesn t drink and just tell them
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Hey, I m kind of questioning myself a little bit.
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I m wondering if I drink too much because people asking for help.
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That s like catnip to people that don t drink.
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We love to help.
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Other people who think they might have a drinking problems.
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They can hit me up.
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They can find me on Facebook and reach out to me on messenger or go to my website and email me, but find somebody that s been through it.
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And it doesn t mean that you have to get sober tomorrow.
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It just means that find somebody to talk to about it and explore
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your feelings and see if you relate to that person and nothing wrong with just being sober curious doesn t have to be.
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I think that s a really hard thing is for me.
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I just never wanted to admit straight up.
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I think I have a drinking problem because that would mean that I had to stop.
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And I definitely did not want to actually stop drinking.
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So had I known that I could just explore it and talk about it with somebody or read some books, read my book.
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read some memoirs, read some self-help stuff that, and explore it and try to see if you have anything in common with people.
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But I would say that there s so much help out there these days.
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There are 12 step groups, they re on Zoom now.
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So that s even less intimidating.
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Like I said, there s books, there are, you know, go to therapy, bring it up with a therapist.
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That s not going to be the first time they ve heard.
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And there s a lot of ways.
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I had been feeling in the back of my mind that too many of the activities that I was doing in the precious spare time that I have were all encompassed by us hanging out with people or doing an activity or something else that involved drinking.
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And I just found that there were too many days where I needed to be a hundred percent
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And it was impacting my sleep.
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It was impacting me cognitively.
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And I was getting mad at myself for not holding myself to my core values of the life I wanted to lead.
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And that this for me was the gateway that I kept slipping into where if I drank, then it would lead to other decisions that were taking me farther away from where I wanted to be.
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I guess in January, I was on my birthday.
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We happened to be in Puerto Rico.
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The whole weekend was consumed with drinking.
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And I kind of came away from that just thinking, was this how I want to live the rest of this year?
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And so I just said to myself, come August 1st, I m drawing a line in the sand and I m just going to stop.
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And I remember we went out with some group of friends a couple of nights before and had a happy hour and drinks and
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48 hours later, I told my fiance, I m just going to stop drinking.
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And that was it.
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Didn t go back to it.
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I don t feel that I m an alcoholic, but who really knows the answer to that question?
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I guess it s how it s impacting your life.
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But I haven t felt like I ve needed a support group or anything else.
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I just made the decision I was going to stop and I stopped.
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That s good for me, support groups are the easier way because I like support and I like feeling not alone.
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And I like feeling like there s just other people who understand makes it a lot easier for me.
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But I also think it s important not to, we don t have to label it.
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Like it doesn t have to be like you re an alcoholic or you re not an alcoholic.
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This is why I m glad that we re taking some of the judgment out of it, that the new vernacular is a substance use disorder.
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There s a lot of ways to abuse alcohol and there s a lot of ways that addiction can manifest itself in our lives.
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And I think being able to decide to stop drinking, I also did not label myself an alcoholic at the time.
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I ve come to realize that I do fit alcohol.
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That unpredictability is a good sign.
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But now when I look back at all of the different ways that I ve behaved with alcohol, I can very much say that, yes, I have that problem.
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But I do think it s great that you re able to explore and go, Hey, I might not.
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be an alcoholic by that definition, but alcohol isn t serving me.
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And I think that it s nice that society is going that way.
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I think it s much more socially acceptable to not drink these days than it used to be.
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Yeah.
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And thank God they re doing so many more mock cocktails and mock drinks to variety.
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So you re not drinking soda water.
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or water everywhere you go.
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Stephanie, I wanted to conclude today because I think it s good to talk about confronting alcohol and that shift.
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I think it s also important for people to understand what s on the other side if they do.
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How do you think, since you ve been sober now for over a decade, that it s impacted not only your identity, but the creativity and the way that you re able to perform as both a mom, a partner, and in your career?
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I think it s helped me enormously.
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I didn t know that it was, that the drinking was holding me back, but I m much more productive.
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I have currently, I wrote several more books.
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I didn t know if I was going to be able to write sober.
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I was able to write sober.
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I think I m a better writer sober.
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I do three podcasts.
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I was sober when I started my podcast that I do with my partner Lynette Carolla called For Crying Out Loud.
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And it s ostensibly about parenting, but our kids have grown up.
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on the podcast basically.
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So my twins are 16 now and my older daughter s 19, but I m able to talk on my podcast a lot.
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I talk about addiction a lot on that podcast and I m able to share my stories.
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And I m just as a person, as a friend, I m much less flaky.
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I was definitely somebody who didn t return phone calls, didn t answer my phone.
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Sometimes didn t return emails.
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Sometimes I d forget people emailed me.
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There were a lot of ways that I didn t even realize
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alcohol was affecting my life.
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And as a mom, you know, I ve mostly been a sober mom.
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I got sober.
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My twins were babies.
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They don t remember me drinking and my older daughter was only four.
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So I think that being sober has allowed me to, this is hard to explain, but to take criticism, to be less defensive, to take accountability for myself, to apologize.
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I think apologizing to my kids is a really powerful thing.
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And I think when you re,
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hiding an issue that you have, it makes you defensive.
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It makes you feel like, I don t want anybody to really see me.
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Now I feel like I have no secrets.
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I don t have, I m not doing things that I secretly maybe knew were wrong.
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So I m able to live more authentically.
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And I think that as a partner, I certainly don t have drunken fights with my husband and haven t in since I quit drinking.
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I didn t really know.
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I relate to what you re saying though, about the way I would argue when I was drunk was ridiculous.
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I was so defensive and aggressive and raised my voice and swore and because of alcohol, even though at the time I would have told you, no, I was just really mad.
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And, but we don t fight like that.
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that at all.
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I have, we have very calm discussions.
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I m no saint, believe me, but I still have an edge, but I don t behave in ways that I regret anymore.
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And if I do, I apologize.
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Yeah.
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And to me, the other really interesting thing about it is just observing other people who are drinking when you re not and just fun.
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Yes.
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And other things.
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Well, Stephanie, I have enjoyed the conversation today.
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You have these three great podcasts that you mentioned, one you ve been doing for years, and you have over a hundred thousand listeners per episode, which is just phenomenal.
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If people want to know more about you and the books and everything else, where are some great places they can go?
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Well, I have a website, stephaniewildertaylor.com, Stephanie with an F. You can go to my, listen to For Crying Out Loud.
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I have a podcast called Board AF.
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That s just like a funny little once a week slice of life.
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And I do, if people are into The Bachelor, I do a Bachelor sort of companion podcast called Rose Pricks.
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And buy the book though, Drunkish.
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That s for anybody that s even thinking that you might be struggling with alcohol.
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It s a very nonjudgmental book.
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All these stories, I m very painfully honest in the book.
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Stephanie, thank you so much for being a guest on today and being so vulnerable with your story.
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Thank you.
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Thank you for having me.
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I love your podcast and good luck.
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Thank you so much.
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I thoroughly enjoyed that great and vulnerable interview with Stephanie Walder Taylor, and I wanted to thank Stephanie and Simon and Schuster for the honor and privilege of having her appear on today s show links to all things.
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Stephanie will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.
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Please use our website links.
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If you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.
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Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at Jon R. Miles and our Clips channel at Passionstruck Clips.
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Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals.
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You can sign up for my personal development newsletter on Passionstruck.
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It s called Live Intentionally.
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You can find me on all the socials at Jon R. Miles, or you can go to LinkedIn and sign up for our Work Intentionally newsletter.
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You re about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview that I did with Dr. Anthony Yoon, a plastic surgeon, author, and social media influencer.
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Dr. Yoon is the author of the upcoming book, Younger for Life, a complete guide to turning back the clock holistically using a process called autojuvenation.
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In our discussion, Dr. Yoon explains how virtually anyone can see great changes in their skin energy and how they feel using their own body s regenerative ability.
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The question that I ve always wondered and something that I was looking into when I was writing this book is does looking younger make you live longer?
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And the answer actually is it appears to be so.
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There was actually a study from Denmark where they looked at something like 1,100 people and they re all identical twins.
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So genetically they were identical.
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and they found that the younger looking of the identical twin tended to live longer than the older looking one.
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But we don t know if that s causation or correlation.
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Is it that the person looked younger because they had a better lifestyle?
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Maybe they had healthier habits?
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Or is it actually the fact that looking younger seems to help you live longer?
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I don t know and it probably is a combination of both.
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Remember that we rise by lifting others, so share the show with those you love.
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And if you found someone who could use some advice around how to overcome alcohol abuse in any form, then today s episode is a great one to do that.
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In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.
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Now, until next time, go out there and become Passion Striker.