E249 Looks Fine on the Outside, Falling Apart on the Inside

ver tell yourself, “I can’t be an alcoholic — I still have a job, a house, and a family”?

This week, Matt and Steve dive into the myth of the high-functioning drinker — the person who looks like they have it all together, but is quietly falling apart on the inside.

We talk about how easy it is to compare our messy insides to other people’s polished outsides, why you don’t have to hit “rock bottom” to have a problem, and how the slow decline of high-functioning drinking erodes everything from your health to your happiness.

If you’ve ever said, “I’m still holding it together,” this episode is for you.

Transcript

Matt: 0:02

Welcome to the Sober Friends Podcast, here for the new guy or gal, anybody who's thinking of getting on that sober road and even for that person who has put a couple days of recovery. Listen, trying to say they have a couple of days. My name is Matt J over there on the other side of the screen is Steve. What shaken Steve.

Steve: 0:28

How much, Matt? Just enjoying this crisp weather here. In New England,

Matt: 0:36

It's

Steve: 0:36

ehm.

Matt: 0:36

better that the sun is out now.

Steve: 0:38

Yeah, I don't know,

Matt: 0:39

I,

Steve: 0:39

I,

Matt: 0:39

I was not a fan.

Steve: 0:40

Okay. I got up and walked to Dog 恩ose morning and I was like, 'Ooh, I like this weather'. So, uhm, I know a lot of people don't, but I like it.

Matt: 0:49

And it's sun is out. I, I can do that.

Steve: 0:53

Yeah. So,

Matt: 0:55

let's talk a little bit about the high functioning drinker. Kind of a myth. I think that was something I, I thought I was high functioning.

Steve: 1:06

Yeah.

Matt: 1:07

When, when I was drinking, but look good on the inside but you compare your insides, other people's outsides with your insides and it wasn't so good. And I just had a dribble wheel going on in my head all the time. And it's tough if you go to a meeting, especially if it's a big book meeting because a lot of bills writing is about the low bottom drunk.

Steve: 1:32

Yeah.

Matt: 1:32

Because he was trying to go for those gutter drinks first. And I don't have that story bill has and I don't have the stories of the people that they talk about and bills story and how it works. And then the last half of the book, which is they lost all. There is a spectrum now. That's how I look at it. And I think that that can be a turn off to people today who haven't lost everything. We would talk a little about that because I think we have in that I think we have some similarities on our story.

Steve: 2:08

Yeah. I don't think there's any question that nowadays at least my experience. And again, just not that I know at the alcoholic who walks into the room because I don't obviously. But for the most part, the alcoholics that I do know. And that I've gotten to know over the years. And that I continue to get to know. Right. Literally. Like, you know, like rich who goes to Monday night, like these were people who certainly they weren't high bottom drunks because they've had they have these horrific stories. But man, they showed up. They went to work. Like you said, a high functioning. I think that's a difference of high functioning drunk, right? What does that mean? Well, you went, you know, you got up, you went to work every day, all that kind of stuff. So most of the people who I see coming into a fit that bill, right? Most of them not all most of them. And again, most of the ones that I know, maybe differently where you are, it may be different for the people who maybe you associate with, maybe they're, you know, but I know a lot of people who came in didn't have to go to rehab, didn't have to get detoxed in a place, right? All that kind of stuff, which I fit that bill, right? I didn't have to do any of that stuff. So, but it's such a, it's such an interesting thing because I've said here, I say it a lot of times, meetings like I always came in said, you know, I think I was a fairly high bottom drunk, but I've come to learn that I said, if you really want to know what my bottom look like, I've said it on this podcast and I'll say it again, ask my wives. I'm both

Matt: 3:55

them.

Steve: 3:55

of Right? Ask them, ask them what my body, what my bottom look like from their perspective. It's very, very different than what my bottom look like in my own head, right? And some of that is self-preservation. And again, now I realize my bottom was a lot worse than I thought it was. And again, you know, we can get into a lot of different things, how that manifests itself, you know, I certainly today I understand that while maybe I worked for a while, I understand today that I was under employed based upon my skill level and stuff like that for a long time. So, so lots of things play into that where we start thinking about high functioning versus, you know, high bottoms. But you know, again, and what I'll say is that for a lot of people, it's why we stay out longer than we we need

Matt: 4:52

Yes.

Steve: 4:52

to. Right? And I can I always want when people come in even like yourself, when people come in and like they just woke up one day and they said, Hey, I think I'm drinking too much. I think I need to stop this when people have that type of self, self knowledge of themselves or whatever it might be.... I get my lot of credit,'cause I- I mean, I had a beat. I had a beat drinking pretty. I had to drink a lot to get into these rooms.

Matt: 5:23

Mm-hmm.

Steve: 5:23

A lot of volumes very often, uh, drank into I passed out. So, uh, it's an interesting topic, and, uh, like I said, it's something that, depending on who we are, sometimes we like to lie to ourselves about really what things look like. At least I did.

Matt: 5:41

The best analogy for this for me is the idea of somebody who says, 'Well, I can get by on 4-hour sleep'.

Steve: 5:48

Right.

Matt: 5:48

'I don't need more than 4-hour sleep'.

Steve: 5:51

Yeah.

Matt: 5:53

'You son of a bitch, you're yawning now, and now you're gonna get me to yawning'.

Steve: 5:57

Yeah, right, right.

Matt: 5:58

Uh, you

Steve: 5:59

mentioned sleep.

Matt: 6:00

Yeah. There are times I don't get enough sleep, and I feel like I can get by, but it turns out I can't. And I end up things end up falling apart. I wasn't getting enough sleep before, and I wasn't going to the gym, and my conditioning was slipping. And I had the epiphany, I had to go to bed early. I had to get it a certain time, and I'm getting up going every day, even planning. No, I have to make that sacrifice on the weekend. Oh, and lo and behold, results start happening and they can happen quick. With this, it's, I wasn't losing my job, I wasn't losing my family, I wasn't getting a DY, but I was slowly degrading everything on the inside. And sooner or later, we're going to get to a

Steve: 6:47

crash,

Matt: 6:49

because you are just chipping away just a little bit all the time, and you get into that place where you get used to living that way. And so you don't think that it's abnormal because you're used to doing it. And it's like you go and like, oh my gosh, I've been. This is the not drinking thing or food wise, I think about this, like it's fine, it's fine, and then you look back on things you're eating, I'm like, my God, I was eating butter with everything, and I didn't think about it, because I get used to it, and it's like, you can't eat that way. So, yeah, I'm just. Good Lord, I'm yawning like crazy. You just, you look back and say, oh my God, it was it was as far worse, and I wasn't living in a gutter, but it wasn't a great life. And I was one of those people that all of a sudden I woke up, I can't do this anymore, sort of, because I had that moment of like, no more, but there was this stuff building up to it in that self doubt. But then you get to that point, it's like for me, it was no more, and that's where I've kind of been.

Steve: 8:01

Yeah, I think the thing that is really, really obvious to most people today is the fact that alcohol, alcohol use disorder is a spectrum. That alcoholism, and certainly you and I see a lot of it, and I talk a lot about this in my meetings mostly, mostly my Wednesday meeting, because my Wednesday meeting is a noon meeting, so it's a lot of older retired people. And I can remember when I didn't want to go to that type of meeting, but I love that meeting today. But I talk about because, you know, for someone who's a little bit on the other side, I do a bunch of social media. We do this podcast, you know, I follow some people on social media who do sober podcasts and post sober stuff. I get a lot of that fed into my algorithm, so I watch it, so I get fed more of it. And I realized today that it's a spectrum. And that whole thing of being a real alcoholic, right? Because that's a term I started to use a little bit, that I'm a real alcoholic. And when I use that term, and listen, this is, I mean, I'm working this through right now when we're talking about it. When I use that term, I'm a real alcoholic. I mean that alcoholic that Bill was talking about in the book.

Matt: 9:25

Yeah.

Steve: 9:26

That low bottom, right? And again, maybe I wasn't living in the streets, but drinking wise, morality wise, emotionally wise, mentally, all those things, like I was a low bottom drunk. I was a real alcoholic. When I quit drinking, I could not stop on my own. Like, you know, I could not stop on my own. I drink all the time. I drink all, I drink all the time when I didn't want to drink. I drink all, I drink all the time, much more than I had planned on drinking. I was really a real alcoholic. And now today there are some things out there that maybe if they were available when I came in, maybe I would have tried something different than a, I don't know. I don't have no clue. But when I came in the first time in 95, it sort of was the only game in town. like it's where everybody went. If you had a problem, that's where you went. At least that was my understanding of it. So that's where I went. And it worked for me. So that's the whole thing. We have this spectrum. So now you do have high functioning. You do have some very high functioning alcoholics. Listen, we have them in the room. So I got people who were, again, they were professors and major universities. They were lawyers and they never lost their job. They kept doing. They didn't get thrown out of. They didn't get to sparred. You know, like they kept functioning in their life, even though they were, you know, severe alcoholics. So a lot of the people fit that bill of high functioning. But the question is, well, just like you described, what was really happening with them inside, right? How is their insights going on? So yeah, it's a great thought. When I love doing this podcast, it makes me think about these things about myself.

Matt: 11:26

It's really the only way. I know how to do this is to be vulnerable and think about the things going out myself. I kind of like the term high functioning better than high bottom.

Steve: 11:36

Yeah.

Matt: 11:37

Functioning

Steve: 11:37

Yeah.

Matt: 11:37

is is better. I don't know what it makes. Somebody high functioning versus low functioning. There are some people who can handle the pain. I think in many ways that lawyer who is a severe alcoholic, but still has the practice and still has the family. There's not much of a difference between the person who is in the gutter. I think in many ways, it's kind of circumstance. Some of it is luck. Some of it is circumstance that if you built up the resources, sometimes you can still have the house and dog, but still be as bad of an alcoholic as somebody who has lost it all. We have moved away from the outcome-based classification of alcoholism. There has been, in time, you're an alcoholic based on how much trouble alcohol is causing you and those outcomes. I don't know if that's the best way to go with it because we all have, like, those relatives, grandpa who's a prick, who drinks, clearly is an alcoholic, but has never gotten help because what have they lost? Except, they've cotterized the insides of themselves. That's the other issue. Keep doing it, and everything looks fine on the outside, and then the health problems start. And then you realize you really are low functioning because you have cirrhosis or a fatty liver, cirrhosis, cancer, heart issues. Those things are real and likely will eventually happen. I know of somebody I believe has a pretty severe problem, and the stumbling and falling has started. That they have broken a foot, broken a foot because flip flops were

Steve: 13:43

they

Matt: 13:44

were dangerous. And then that starts to happen, and you start slipping and falling and breaking things, and that can be the downward spiral. But you never know when that's going to It could never be the case that my not yets are not I'm living in the gutter. My not yets are oh my all of a sudden my health goes and it doesn't come back.

Steve: 14:10

Yeah, it's interesting you said. It just bring me back to a time. I remember, you know, I talked about I grew up in an alcoholic household. My mom was an alcoholic. And I can remember my mom, you know, really when I first started sort of realizing it, I was in my early teens. And I remember my mom spraining her ankle once and her saying, oh, I stepped off the curve rung, and me knowing that she did it because she had been drinking, right? And I'm sure this is probably true. She whatever it was, but she, and I just remember when you said that, I haven't thought about that, and that brings back that memory like that, right? When you talked about breaking a foot as long, I just thought about that so quickly, like, oh yeah, I remember seeing that and I remember where I was. I remember the night. I remember standing there listening to it. And I also have a brother who was his experiencing. He's five years older than me. So not that I was 72 years old. Experience lots of health problems. And he was always one that I said probably could have used his program. And I'm sure if I talked to him, he would say that none of it to do to his drug and alcohol use, but I don't think there's any question that it's taken a toll on his body. And his body is just, it's not as healthy like, yeah, some of this stuff is just health issues. But some of some of it's been just exasperated by,

Matt: 15:41

yeah,

Steve: 15:42

by the health issues, by the drug use and the drinking, right? So I don't know, it's, it is, you know, we, again, hindsight's 2020, you know, we're in 2025 or not in 1970 or 80 or even 1990, where today it's pretty much understood by most, people who out there that alcohol is not healthy at any levels, right?

Matt: 16:13

no,

Steve: 16:13

It's just not.

Matt: 16:14

There's no safe

Steve: 16:15

amount. What's that?

Matt: 16:16

There's no safe amount

Steve: 16:17

health.

Matt: 16:17

of

Steve: 16:17

No, that's what I'm saying. So it's just, it's just not healthy for you. Now, again, that doesn't mean you shouldn't drink it. That doesn't mean, you know, same thing like eating overeating pizzas, not healthy for lots of things we do that are not healthy for us. That doesn't mean we shouldn't engage in them, but it just, it's one of those choices that we have. So, so, you know, you know, again, and it's easy to say to ourselves, you know, something I, you know, listen, right? You were late getting on this podcast because you had a meeting that ran, ran along. You're a busy guy, like, how long did you say, like, after a day like today, like, man, I need a, you know, I need something to calm me down. I need something to make me feel better. I deserve this, right? How many times have we said that to ourselves, right? That's what I deserve. Hey, I went to work all day. I did all this stuff. I deserve to have something that makes going to make me feel better. Maybe we're not wrong with that, but for, for me, I can no longer do that. I can longer, I can no longer say I deserve it because I can't be responsible with it.

Matt: 17:28

So

Steve: 17:31

but yeah, for a long time, I think I did that kind of stuff. I think I just convinced myself that, hey, I went to work, you know, I was busy guy, I had young kids at home, all that, all that kind of stuff that we would justify in our heads. We lied to ourselves that I deserved to have a few drinks in order to make me feel better.

Matt: 17:52

My thing is taking the dogs for a walk, getting out, d some exercise, or a nice fountain drink of Coke Zero. Those are, my vices are so small now, but those are the things I go to. The thing is ice cream, and with that, I've got to fight because really sugar is, sugar is also my enemy.

Steve: 18:11

Yeah. Now I get it. Yeah, I'm a dark of pepper guy. It's one of the two thin, and there's a while where I took that away from me and I finally just said, and I don't drink a lot of it, like I really, like I'd limit myself, maybe, I mean, I don't even drink it every day. And if I had two in a day, that's a lot, but I took it away because I'm like, oh, it's not healthy for me, and I finally said, come on, you know, I need, you know, I need to have something like that. So,

Matt: 18:36

yeah,

Steve: 18:37

and that's what I have. It's my, it's my bite. I get out there, I get it, I stalk up on it, put it in the garage, and then make sure I always have something in the fridge. And it works for me. Again, it's, it, it is those little vices that I need to be able to give myself a little bit of pleasure in life, and

Matt: 18:53

yeah,

Steve: 18:54

so that, yeah, so that life's not all, you know, all work and no play.

Matt: 19:00

Now in this also goes to perfection. There's a doctor on tick-tock and sub-stack that I really like, Dr. Terry Simpson. He talks about the Mediterranean dye, and he talks about things that are healthy, and things that are not. But he also does say, I don't eat cardboard all day, every day. There are some things that I like to eat because food is pleasurable and life is short. It doesn't mean you can go around drinking if you have an alcohol issue. What it means is, if you need to have a diet coke, go have it and have a diet coke.

Steve: 19:39

If

Matt: 19:39

you're drinking 12 a day, then that's a problem. If you're having one a week, it's not a problem. If you have ice cream once in a while, it's not a problem. So long as, you know, you don't just pound away at it, that there are sometimes that it is okay to eat certain things and you swap around. It's sort of like this of cut yourself some slack. Not with the alcohol, but cut yourself some slack with, if I'm not doing this one thing, it's okay to try this other thing. I'm going to swap alcohol for a Cog Zero. It's a pretty good swap. Be okay that it's not the most nutritious thing, but it's also not going to kill you.

Steve: 20:22

Yeah, but you make a good point there too. Like you said, yours is going for a walk with the dogs now, right?

Matt: 20:26

Yeah.

Steve: 20:28

And it's nice to substitute something out and that's a good, that's a good piece of advice for, especially for new people. how are you going to deal, right? How are you going to deal with that situation when you want to drink? You know, and the great way to do it is to find something pleasurable that you like to do. Again, not destructive, like, I'm going to eat a tub of ice cream, but I want to drink. So that's destructive, too, but find something that's pleasurable that you can do. Take a walk. You know, we know lots of people go to the gym exercise in general. It is a great thing to do, right? It's a good, um, and then I said this to my wife a lot, when she's struggling, you know, mentally or emotionally, I always tell her, you know, it's a saying in a move of muscle, change your thought. And I always tell her like, if you're struggling, get up and do something like this, there's stuff you can do. I mean, literally just get up and do something. there used to be a guy like who would say, get up and go shave,

Matt: 21:36

Yep,

Steve: 21:37

right, right? Get up and go shave. Just do something. And I think that's great advice is to is to do that kind of stuff and just to keep yourself functioning, right? I mean, just to keep yourself moving because again, and the big book tells us in an AA that most alcoholics are very intelligent, right? You think about it, right? They're durbin, they're intelligent. They're the good workers. So we need to have that high functioning stuff going on. We need to replace most of us. We need to replace that alcohol with something that's a positive. A positive attribute to our high functioning personality. I know I did. Right? And I found different ways for me again. It was different for me when I first came in and all that kind of stuff. I look at it differently now. But some of that was work for me. Some of that I realized like, oh, wait a minute, I spent a lot of years messing around. So I put a lot of effort into my work. I've certainly done the exercise and the healthy stuff too, but always trying to stay like, what do I need to? I don't know, so I just don't sit around and moat because I'm not drinking, right? That was the biggest thing, especially early on. And I think that's really good advice for new people who are new to the program, people who are new to not drinking, not filling up that time and space. Because there's some social stuff that went on with that too for many

Matt: 23:11

us,

Steve: 23:11

of not for me so much. Some of it was, I did a lot of drinking alone, but for a lot of people, there was a big social part of their drinking and man, you take that away. And it's hard. So you got to figure some of that stuff out and you got to do it fairly early. Otherwise, you can struggle with being in and out and having time, you know, struggle putting time together.

Matt: 23:38

My number one fear of quitting drinking was the social aspect that without alcohol, how am I going to be social? Not realizing that I was using alcohol as a crutch to be social. I had to figure something out of why that was the case. Living sober is a great read for some of this stuff because it has practical advice. And one of those things is to distract yourself and to create new habits, even if they're small. Exercise is a great one of those things. I have started high intensity training again. Where I get on the stair master, I'm trying to get to my beats per minute above 154, try and keep it there three minutes or so. Then I bring it down, then I go back up. And I feel like I'm going to die when I'm doing this. There is no immediate payoff then. It hurts. As time goes by later in the day, I realize when I have done that type of training because I do feel better. I'm tired now. It's the end of the day. But I feel better than I normally would. And I feel like I'm going to be in a place to sleep better. So it's like it's maybe an hour or so later, I start to feel better. And with us without alcohol, there is that whole instant gratification piece. I think this is why a lot of us are high functioning and work or push at things because you need that dopamine hit. You need that immediate thing. So you push and push and push and push and push. Well, some of the healthy things, you don't get that immediate hit. But it is a much better hit later on. Like exercise is one of those things. Maybe I don't feel I feel good with the dog walk because I'm with them. I know I'm doing something good, but I'm accumulating something and I will feel better long term because of that. And that's it doesn't have to be exercise. It could be something else, but find something different. pick up a hobby that you haven't done before. And these are all, you know, we're not talking even steps right here. We're just talking about different things that you can do to distract yourself and to rewire your brain so that you don't need alcohol.

Steve: 26:06

Yeah. That's a good clarification. We're not talking about the work that we had to do or we suggest that some people do in order to find that path. We're talking about things you can do to distract yourself when maybe there's some urges going on or maybe you're starting to feel restless, right. That's what we're talking about. There's like, what do you do with that restless time? What do you do? Like if you're a happy hour person, you know, what do you do with that time between five and seven? Right. And that's just it. Maybe you throw a gym in there. You throw some exercise in there,

Matt: 26:46

Yeah.

Steve: 26:46

right. How do you, how do you feel that time? Yo know, for me early on, it was, that was my go-to-the-meeting time, right. I mean it. That was like it. All right. Come home. I'd have my dinner. And then it, I mean, it was out the door to a meeting. That's what it, that's what it was for me for a long time. I needed to go and be safe somewhere. And that, again, that's why for me, that AA model worked because I needed something to do because what I would do, my drinking was like, I didn't drink during the day when I worked. So I would start drinking after I left work. And then I would continue to drink until I went to bed or mostly passed out and stumbled into bed. And that's really, that's how I drank. Like on a Wednesday, you know, and it wasn't like on the weekends. I'd drink that at a Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. So I needed to fill up that time. So what I did was I would come home. Most of the time, come home, I have dinner most of my wife and my kids and then out the door, out the door to a 7, 38 o'clock meeting. And then fill that time, and then, you know, hang out and then come home and into bed. I needed to fill that time. And again, you know, the other programs which I don't know much about, but the other ways other people stay sober, I don't know how they feel that time. But again, that's the spectrum too, right? That's the whole spectrum of maybe there's people who came in like, hey, I'm drinking too much and I don't want to drink anymore. And I need a little bit of help to get over that hump, right? Versus me who drank alone in my basement, right? When I need a lot of help to get over that hump, that's where some of these other programs that you can come in and they probably could help the spectrum of people who really realize like, you know, something, I need to nip this before it gets too bad. A that's something like I said, that's why I look at those people when they come in and I go, oh, good for them. Really? I always say good for them that they got here. And they're able to do it, right? One of the guys I look at right now, there's a few guys who came in on our Monday night meeting who sort of fit that bill. And the truth is most of them aren't around like there's a bunch of them that all came in together and most of them aren't, aren't, they're not staying sober. But a couple of them are and it's nice to see them like, hey, these people got in here. They're trying to figure this stuff out. And while they might not be doing it perfectly, they seem to be staying sober. So

Matt: 29:25

that's the

Steve: 29:26

key. And that is the key. That's the key. I always say the key is not picking up that drink. Right? You could you could work everything else out if you don't pick up that drink.

Matt: 29:36

We'd love to hear from you. Were you considering yourself a high functioning alcoholic low bottom low functioning somewhere in between? Was it easy for you to stop? What were your tips? And how does this land for you? Matt at sober for Matt@soberfriendspod.com. You tips can help the new guy. Steve, thanks for jumping on today.

Steve: 30:03

Hey, Matt, you're welcome. Have a great night everybody.

Matt: 30:06

See everybody next week. Bye everybody.