How Do You Know if You’re an Alcoholic? Transcript
Preeti Davidson of Maya4life.com (00:00.532)
And if you don't like the results of the tests Google is showing you and you keep looking for a different test that says you're not an alcoholic, it might be the second side. Okay, good. Here we go. Ready? Preeti you've been sober a long time now, but how do you know if you're an alcoholic? How does someone know? Thanks, Curt. It's a good question. If you're googling, am I an alcoholic? Chances are there's a problem. If you are taking quizzes online to see if you're an alcoholic, chances are there is a problem.
If you're downloading moderation apps and sort of counting the number of drinks that you're drinking, chances are there's a problem. I did all of these things. I've been sober for three and a half years. And I think I always knew that there was a part of me that did not have a healthy relationship and could not have a relationship with alcohol. Although from time to time, I would have a healthy relationship with alcohol and for every
10 unhealthy things I would do with alcohol. That one time that I did something super healthy and drank in moderation would be evidence to show me that I was not an alcoholic. Now alcoholism has been kind of reclassified a little bit in the last 10, 20 years to AUD, alcohol use disorder. And I know of one story I read online. She was a woman who said, I was always the one who
who wouldn't switch over at the end of the night to the coffee at the table. I'd be the one ordering one more glass of wine when her friends were like, okay, time for a coffee. And that's when she realized maybe I do have a problem. Is there a kind of, Is AUD (Alcohol Use Disorder) alcoholism or are we kind of expanding the definition to include more than casual drinkers but not quite our stereotypical, he's an alcoholic? Well, so the reason that alcohol use disorder.
is the term for alcoholism now, and they're interchangeable, is because we're trying to emphasize that alcoholism and alcohol use disorder, substance use disorder, addiction is a disease. Addiction is not a moral failing, addiction is not a lack of willpower. There are genetic predispositions, there are environmental factors, there's trauma history, and there is 100% a neurological and biological.
Preeti (02:15.394)
difference between alcoholics, addicts, and normal people.
In 1956, the American Medical Association recognized alcoholism as an actual disease. And one of the things that we've been trying ever since is to have it recognized societally as such. But when you think of an alcoholic, you probably think of somebody under a bridge, a man probably under a bridge with brown bag. And while that is absolutely what an alcoholic is, an alcoholic is also somebody who looks like me.
who was a very successful professional with a good family and friends and a happy life in a lot of ways. But there was this other life that I led that was sort of a secret.
What, you know, with the work we do at MAYA with teens and teens are starting to drink, you know, it's not 21, just like it's been for a thousand years. There's an older brother or a cousin or someone who buys and has booze somewhere. So 16 to 19 and 20 are trying alcohol. Some are trying it a lot and, know, certainly numbing some pains and things going on in their life. But what's the message to teens that we're doing at MAYA about alcohol, underage drinking and
To be fair, some parents are put in a tough position because as a parent of three teen boys, when these subjects come up about drinking and every parent will tell you.
Preeti (03:43.994)
The first rule is no one dies tonight. So there is a line where do I want them out doing this somewhere or should they be in a safe house and no one's driving? And that's a whole different topic. But how does MAYA work with teens who may be trying alcohol and liking it for the first time at 16 to 20? Psychologists often call addiction maladaptive coping mechanisms. And I think that that's really important to remember.
What we do at MAYA is try to instill true confidence, self -esteem, and a sense of intrinsic self -worth, internal validation, so that our teens are not looking externally for other people, places, and things to validate their existence. And oftentimes when we come up against our fears and our insecurities and we're not able to actually know what our values are, we don't, we
developed a true self -esteem, we turn to other things to make us feel better, to soothe, to help us relax. I know that when I was younger, I remember my first drink and a lot of addicts will tell you that they remember their first drug or their first real alcoholic beverage. So I remember mine and what I remember, I was 16 years old, I did it in a very safe environment. My parents knew it wasn't sanctioned and it wasn't condoned, but and it was only one drink, was was it was for all intents and purposes it was responsible. And I was with my best friend who is not an alcoholic and I that drink, I remember the way that it felt. I remember it going down my throat. I remember the smell and I remember this feeling that I did not ever feel comfortable in my skin.
Preeti (05:44.698)
And that one drink gave me comfort, made me feel like I belonged. And I chased that high for 26 years because I did not know how to give it to myself. I did not know how to validate myself. So I think that a lot of people in recovery who I've met have that story to tell. And so I'd say to teens, if this is something that makes you feel a part of and you're not able to feel a part of in other ways, we have solutions to that.
And there are predispositions that people are predisposed to addiction Addiction runs in families. It's a family disease, but we have ways to before things get out of hand to help mitigate circumstances and one of the things that our mission at MAYA is really to help help kids know who they are and have a sense of self so that if they're feeling apart from or unbelonging or unlovable, and just that you know, they were
sort of not invited to the party and kind of showed up and didn't really know what to do. if you feel awkward in social situations and alcohol or drugs make you feel more a part of, there are better ways and long lasting ways that won't actually be detrimental. because at the end of the day, by the end of my alcoholism, sorry, By the end of my drinking career, all of the benefits that I got from drinking initially were completely gone. And what also happened is that all the coping skills that I did have, I lost along the way. And I've spent the last three and a half years building those back up, relearning how to sort of, how to deal with life and how to cope with difficulties without a drink or drug.
What do you tell the parents of the kids at MAYA who are drinking and we've talked about being a very insidious drug because it comes in like a wolf in sheep's clothing and it's condoned. The parents come in with the groceries with it, now sold at grocery stores, they drink in front of their kids. It's poison. There's no medical study in the world that will ever tell you it's good for you. But now and only is it a social pressure to belong with your friends, i .e. the cool kids club or don't you want
Preeti (08:02.424)
whatever, drink or smoke this joint, be like us. You have your own parents who are drinking and handling stress and anxiety and the travels of life with alcohol. Does that kind of mean a teen almost doesn't belong to their family if they don't grow up with this generational pattern of drinking and having a couple of stiff ones and going out and tying one on?
Right, well alcoholism runs in families. And so I guarantee that if you want to have a conversation with your teen about addiction, you only need to look to your own family. And I really wish that we talked about this in medical terms and in psychological terms, and we didn't put so much of the judgment and the moral responsibility on this. This is an actual disease.
Imagine a world where your parents warn you!
Stranger danger when you're little. Your parents warn you about cancer runs in the family, heart disease runs in the family, diabetes runs in the family. And you learn or they bring you up to understand that these are ways to mitigate these illnesses. So you don't eat too much sugar. You exercise. If you're overweight, you try to lose some weight. If there's heart disease in your family, don't pick
cigarettes or a vape. If there's cancer in your family you get checked out and those are just normal things that we talk about with our with our kids and and we feel really comfortable doing. Imagine a world in which we said we also said hey addiction runs in our family so and so really suffered and I watched them suffer or my parent or my grandparent or my uncle or aunt had a really hard time and it was really hard on the family and we had these open conversations. It would mean that kids, when they start to feel that something's not quite right, they would also have permission, whether it's then and there when they're young or when it's years down the line after it's become a problem, they would remember those conversations. They would connect those dots a lot faster. So one of our mission at MAYA and at The Unloveables is to raise this awareness so that we're talking about this and that we're not afraid and that we de -stigmatize this very real and very crushing disease that by the way has a solution. It's an incurable disease that can absolutely go into remission. I would consider myself a recovered alcoholic and my disease has been in remission for three and a half years and I've never been happier, more comfortable in my own skin and ready to help others.
If you look back and through the, when you had that first drink to when you full blown alcoholic and hit a bottom or went to recovery, what's one thing you wish you could change? Was there a moment, a drink, a party or an event that you look back and said, man, I wish right there.
I zigged instead of zagged. Is there anything in your past that one or two specific spots in the story that you wish something, you did something different or went a different direction? Yeah, so I look back at my college experience and I realized that I was already in the grips of my alcoholism then and I didn't have a lot of experience with drinking. I didn't really drink in high school. That was that one drink at 16 was pretty much what I drank in high school. I was a goody two -shoes.
I didn't really drink my freshman year in college and I didn't really drink that much. My sophomore year was introduced to a bar scene in my sophomore year and what happened was that I was so uncomfortable other times during the day that I started longing for that time of night where I could go to the bar where I felt liberated from this sort of mental prison that I lived in day in and day out. And I also didn't know that other people felt that way. I felt that there was something really wrong with me.
I thought that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. And really all it was was this medical condition we call addiction. So I wish that I had been given a front row seat to what recovery looks like early on. I wish that I'd been told that if you're going to bars fairly regularly and all of your friends are bar friends, like if you have bar friends, there's probably a problem. That's actually not a normal way to walk through life.
It's a way that many people do walk through life. And so it seems like it's normal, but it's actually not. It's a maladaptive coping skill. And I really wish that I had been treated for alcoholism in college so that I could have enjoyed that experience. It was something I had to get through. I'm grateful that I got through it. And I had a lot of support at my college. I had a lot of support from deans and other members of the administration who really knew that there was something wrong with me but didn't understand what it was. And I honestly thought that that's what you were supposed to do in school. You were supposed to go to college, you were supposed to let your hair down. I worked so hard, I went to a very competitive high school, I got into a great college. And I thought, this is my reward. It was sort of the first time that I thought that partying and drinking and acting out was a reward for good behavior. And I spent the next 26 years of my life working really hard, becoming very successful in my career and my reward was always a drink at the end of the day. What would you say to parents that are wondering if their kids are drinking or going down a path of say aggressive pretty frequent drinking not a one -off?
Preeti (14:09.914)
What should they say to their kids? How do you approach that subject with a child? So your kids are going to drink. think Things are changing in our society and there's more of an awareness about how one drink is actually not good for you and there's that alcohol is 100% a toxin. But there's still so much social pressure and there's a lot of, mean, you honestly can't go anywhere without alcohol being involved and you can't watch TV, you can't watch a movie. Somebody is always very casually pouring their third or fourth drink, which is not normal behavior. People who are not alcoholic do not have three and four drinks. So I would say that it's really important to model different coping skills with your kids for them to understand that there are other ways to deal with stress. There are other ways to celebrate. And, you know, if you're not able to do that, I would say that It's probably really important to have an open and honest dialogue and let your kids know that they can talk about these things with you. That you're not afraid to have complicated conversations even if your behavior is not stellar. Even if maybe you drink a little bit more than you would like to be drinking, it's still okay to have that conversation. We can heal together and we can always get up in the morning and try a different way. And so there's a ton of shame around these conversations. Sometimes it's because we as parents are not doing the things that we wish our kids would do. Sometimes we as parents have also developed some unhealthy coping skills, but other times it's because we had a parent or a loved one or a friend or a partner, a husband, a wife who has these problems. And there's so much shame.
and Alcoholism and addiction thrive in the darkness. They thrive when we are not talking. And when we can take back our power from these diseases, from these incredibly, incredibly powerful diseases that had its grip on me, and I didn't really know what was wrong with me. I didn't really know what it looked like. And nobody, nobody dared talk to me about it. Not a single person in my life said,
Preeti (16:28.577)
I think you drink too much.
If somebody needs help on finding that person and wants to look up your courses and how you work with teens and parents, what should they do? So if you have a problem with addiction and other mental health, and there are great online resources like SAMSHA.gov is one of them, the Association for Substance Abuse and Mental Health run by the government.
You know, what we do at MAYA is that we really help talk to parents and teens about what it is to develop healthy coping skills, what it is to develop confidence, how to validate internally and not constantly be looking externally, how to enjoy the process of the journey of life and not just look to the result, the grade, the job, the promotion, all these things that we think bring us happiness, but it's really
being able to move through our lives and do so with self -worth, with a sense that we are here for a higher purpose and that our lives have meaning. It's really what brings happiness and lasting happiness. So if you want to talk about those things, if you have a child who seems to not be adapting to their circumstances, if you have a child who's not thriving,
And you think that there might be something that we can help we would be more than happy to do that You can find us at MAYA4Life.com that's MAYA4Life.com and on social media we are @maya4lifeofficial All right. Thank you, Preeti
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