E277: The Voice Didn’t Go Away When I Got Sober

Getting sober does not automatically make the voice in your head disappear. In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about the part of the mind that used to minimize drinking — you’re not that bad, other people drink more, you’re overreacting — and how that same voice can show up later in sobriety as doubt, fear, or the feeling that you don’t deserve what you have.

Matt shares how anxiety led his brain to start filling in the blanks with stories: that his work did not matter, that the podcast was vanity, that he was somehow a fraud. The conversation gets into why those thoughts can feel so convincing, why we are often poor judges of ourselves in isolation, and why recovery requires learning how to question the voice instead of automatically believing it.

Transcript

Matt: 0:01

Missed you. Welcome to the Sub-Refrends podcast. If you're looking for a place for recovery, could be brand new. You could be old. You just have a desire to stop drinking. You have come to the right place. My name is Matt J over there. Steve, Steve, what's going on in this rainy day?

Steve: 0:17

ehm,

Matt: 0:18

Rainy,

Steve: 0:18

not much. Matt, good morning. Good morning out there for those who are listening. Rainy day here in Connecticut.

Matt: 0:26

Yeah. Rainy and Memorial Day weekend. Hopefully, it'll be better tomorrow. Love to cut the lawn, love to do some gardening and stuff. We accept that we can't change it.

Steve: 0:37

That's it.

Matt: 0:38

Maybe. Maybe. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that fraud feeling. I've had that a lot. I'm going to give you some background. And we've talked about this quite a bit. I'm on a medicine taper. I'm still on a medicine taper. I have been on ventilafaxine, commonly known as a faxor. Maybe 10 years or so, which is a long time. And the way the medicine works, it has a very short half-life. So not using it becomes very difficult. And I'm on the last leg where it's the last, the smallest dosage, but it's the biggest percentage drop. And it is really messed with my head. A lot of anxiety, and this has been... long period of time. I made a discovery yesterday that when I'm feeling the anxiety or the bad stuff that gets kicked off because your tapering off this medication, my mind starts to reach for why. And then it tells stories, sort of like I have the feeling and then I try and fill the feeling in with the words. And then I'm like, "Ah, that's why it is." So I have had these thoughts about work, and even about podcasting around, "I'm a fraud and I'm doing this as a vanity thing, and it doesn't make a difference." So I do a lot of multimedia at work. I created the role. I'm the one who came in and said, "We should do this." And I started to think about, "You know, this is just because I wanted to do it. Not because it was a business need, not because it makes a difference." And I realized that is also one of the things that kept me drinking, because when I thought I had an issue with alcohol, my mind told me, "No you don't, you're everything." So they're kind of tied in here, and Steve, have you ever felt this way?

Steve: 2:46

Yeah, of course. Maybe some people don't. There's a name for it. I've talked about it on this podcast before, if you go back and listen, I don't know when, because it was a regular part of how I felt, and one of those reasons why I drank. So the first thing I would say is, you know, if you listen to this podcast and you're wondering why we're talking about feelings, because I drank over my feelings, plain as simple.

Matt: 3:13

it's

Steve: 3:13

I mean, that's why I drank. I drank basically the berry of those feelings that you're talking about, because I didn't have the emotional maturity for whatever reason to deal with them. So that's why we talk about these things on this podcast, because those were the reasons why we drank, and those are probably the reasons why lots of you out there have had a problem with yourself with yourself. So I talked about it for years, as I worked, I tell a story. We bought our house in 2002, and it's a nice house. We've talked about it, and I've told the story before in this podcast. And we had some friends over for dinner. They bought a really nice house in Avon. And both of these, my wife and this other woman who she worked with were very middle-class people. They bought a really, really nice house. And we were just admiring each other's houses, and we were having dinner one night, and this woman says at our dinner table, "Do you ever get the feeling that somebody's going to show up at your door and say, "Oh, wait, you don't deserve to live here?" And I went, "Yes, yes. I have that feeling all the time about all aspects of my life. I had never heard anybody express that same feeling to me. And I was just stunned. This woman felt the same way. She's not an alcoholic. To my knowledge. Then I started to look at myself after that, and I felt the same way at work. I felt at work that somehow I was fooling everybody. But I didn't deserve what I was getting. You know, that I somehow... yeah, had, had throtted my way up to the positions where I were. Took me forever, and it took me into about the third or fourth iteration of our company be emerged or bought, and watching all kinds of additional sales people be brought on. And my sales team enlarged. Now, I didn't run it, but me just being piece of it. And every time that happened, I thought this is the one I'm going to get laid off in. This is the one, and I made it, made it through every one. And I finally sat there one day. This was like, I was old, I was in my 50s, and went, hey, maybe, maybe I have something to offer. And this was after I would, I get into AA, it was really started doing some good work, I sat there. Maybe I do have something to offer. And, uh, it's called in Pastor Syndrome, right, a

Matt: 6:05

yeah,

Steve: 6:05

lot of us, a lot of us struggle with it. We think we're a fraud, we don't think we deserve things. Um, so, you know, it's out there. And like I said, I, I always had these, these crappy shitty feelings. And, um, and I drank over it.

Matt: 6:24

I'm a big proponent of using AI the right way. I know a lot of people who are terrified of AA.

Steve: 6:30

Yeah.

Matt: 6:31

Oh, if you use it, you're going to get stupid. Well, I use it as a personal assistant. And talking about it in in pastor syndrome. I have been trying to update my LinkedIn profile and my resume and I just, I had some time last night. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to sit down and do this. I have a page chat GPT account and I go between quad and chat GPT and I have each one challenge each other. And so I took every review that I have had and quarterly check-in at work since 2017, able to pull that off of work day. It's like 17 documents, pull it, pull that out. These long PDFs. And I threw them into both Claude and chat GPT, but the point of I need you to help me extract this. Here's the type of stuff I'm interested in. And I need this to help me with a resume and a LinkedIn profile. And it taught me. I'm underselling myself when I start to think about, well, I'm not that good at that. It's pulling not just my own words, but what my managers have said about me and it pulls it and pulled out the common themes. And there was a lot of guiding, it didn't just like, here's the dock. Do it for me. It was, here's the dock. Now help me self-explore. I need you to ask some questions so that we can highlight things I'm good at, but not, not either undersell or oversell. Then it was a great exercise in, no, you're not a fraud. As a matter of fact, you're probably not telling your story the right way. And this is what I battle with. And I do think about that losing the job thing because we have had staff reductions every year for about six years, and yet I'm still here. Now that may not continue, but I've made a lot of cuts.

Steve: 8:35

Yeah, I mean, that that was it, too. And what do I know you say I a lot. And I'm not afraid of it. I just don't use it. I don't feel like I have a lot of need, although I probably would enjoy using it more. Just like I have used it. And that's, and that's interesting. And what a great way to use that to sort of, again, it doesn't do anything that you couldn't do. It just makes it so much easier for you to sort of look at that and go, yeah, yeah, I do an okay job. Listen, this still happens to me. It's not like I don't still suffer from this, right? When I do a project at home, or when I do something, I always, You know, he always said, oh you know, am I going to do this? And you know, I, you know, what happens to me, too, is like I measure myself against other people, right? Which we all I think we all might do.

Matt: 9:28

yes.

Steve: 9:29

And I went to a technical high school for carpentry. So I do that and I enjoy doing that. And I like doing projects. But I always measure myself against the guys. I never, I worked for a very short time out of high school as a carpenter. Never worked. I would never call it my profession or anything. But I know my, I have good friends who worked their whole lives as carpenter's. So I compare myself to them, right? And I'm thinking, oh, you know these guys are, oh, I'll need help with this project, right? And I feel like for some reason, that makes me a fraud because I need help with this project, because I just don't have that skill for the proper design or something like that. And I often say to my, to my buddy Edson, who we talk about here all the time, is most of the times I just need another brain, maybe another set of hands, but another brain to make sure that I'm

Matt: 10:21

some.

Steve: 10:21

looking at And I think that's what AI is giving you that neck

Matt: 10:24

absolutely.

Steve: 10:25

It's giving you that bounce off. It's like a human in the past that would have been a human being. You would have a friend, a mentor, and maybe you go through some of these exercises with a mentor. Today you can do that via, if you know how to use it, and if you understand that not everything AI is going to tell you, it's going to be 100% accurate or good. If you understand how to use it, which I'm sure you do, it can be very helpful. And you can do it in the comfort of your own home, on your own time schedule, all those things which, in the past, you couldn't. So it's just a wonderful way to evaluate ourselves. And it's constant. I'm in the middle of a project right now. And I'm just like, and next week, I'm gonna hopefully finish it up. I had to build some doors like a shed door project. It's a storage area that I have. And it's like, I got to build out this wall and I got to hang these doors. And in part of it, frightens me. Like, I'm gonna, like, get there and I'm gonna find that my doors don't fit because I messed up. Even though I, I, I worked on this and I drew out these plans. Like, I didn't just wing it. Like, I have, I took time. I thought about it. I thought about how they, I wanted them to work, how do they look? I drew them out. I got all my measurements. And then, and we'll see how it goes. But I saw, I could still struggle from with it. But in my heart of hearts, I know that I'm okay. And I know I have something to offer today, right? The other thing that, that, you know, again, just popped in my mind, is that because of this program, because of step four and five, I mean this, because of step four and five, I know how to evaluate myself today. And I could take a little bit of time to evaluate myself and think, okay, just like you said, am I being too hard at myself? Because that's one of the things we do a lot of times. Like, and that's one of the reasons why we do steps four and five with a sponsor. It's because you're able to say, hey, here's something I'm struggling with. And that sponsor might say to you, that's not yours.

Matt: 12:35

Yeah.

Steve: 12:35

Like, like, you don't own that. Somebody else owns that, right? That happened to you as a child. You could do nothing. Whatever it might be, right? And that's what a sponsor does, right? And again, this is, this is what this exercise for you. It does like, hey, you don't own that. You're being too hard on yourself. So that's that whole mentor, sponsorship, other bouncing off somebody else. But I also have that skill that I could do some of that self evaluation myself today, which I couldn't do, honestly, and clearly, right? And that's the other thing. We really have to talk about an honestly evaluation. Are you overselling yourself, right? And of course, if you're trying to get a job, everybody wants to, maybe you want to oversight your resume a little bit, right? Because you need a job or you want a job. So you want to oversell it maybe a little bit. But there is that fine line, right? That you don't want to you don't want to be a fraud. You don't want to get a job because you lied on your resume that you have skills that you don't have.

Matt: 13:31

Right.

Steve: 13:32

So, so it is a fine balance. And again, we talk about these things because these are the struggles that happen within our head. And they happen within, I think, a lot of people's heads, not just alcohol says, but for those for for those of us who struggle with addiction issues, they become problematic. They become problematic because we start to just struggle with this whole thing. And like I said, question are are are worthiness and all that kind of stuff. And mom, when I know when I did that, I know that I did that, whether it was in a job, whether it was in a relationship, that was the other place that that that kicked my ass all over the place. In my relationships, from my early 20s, my relationships up until, and I mean, again, recently in my current marriage to my wife, I struggled with feeling that I was worthy to be in the relationship in the way I was. And, and, and I had a I had to work with that. You know, I had I had to figure that out. And certainly the fellowship and the steps have helped me do that. You know, so that's why I love this program is because we can have this conversation. We can talk about real world stuff. We can talk about how we navigate through life. And how do I navigate through life without getting to a point where I go, you know, something, I don't give a shit anymore. I'm just going to I'm just going to drink. I'm just going to pick up. I'm going to use. I'm going to, I'm going to take some medication that's really not mine to take or, or I'm going to eat a gummy. See, what you know, I'm going to start doing some of that behavior, which is where my brain goes, right? So where my brain goes if I let it. If I sit here without any help without, if I sit here without this podcast, without going to my meetings, that's where my brain goes. Like, oh, it's not worth it. So, it's an ongoing issue for me to fight those feelings and uh, and then to realize that, even though I, if I have those feelings, I don't have to pick up a drink about it, right? So, um, I'm grateful for that

Matt: 16:03

today. I don't know if you have the same issue later in the week. Today is after, after this podcast, I'll, I'll take my-- Why would go a bit shot? I have noticed that as the week goes on, the desire to eat the bad stuff starts to creep in. But you mentioned, you know, I don't have to do this, I don't have to do that. It's as though I don't have that release, probably through Thursday, 'cause even if it's like, "Wow, an ice cream sundae would be helpful." I'm a little repelled by it, and it's like, "Uh, I don't want to, uh, I don't think I have it in me for that." And even, last night we went to Dairy Queen, and even then, it's like I go and instead of like the double cheeseburger, I will get the single cheeseburger. And if I get the blizzard afterwards, I get a kiddie blizzard, because that's about what I could handle. I probably could eat more, but I don't have to. And sometimes it feels like when I've got that jumping out of my skin, I still would be searching for something else. But it's like, I'm still-- I'm blocked from that, too. It's like, ugh, that thing that might make me feel good just doesn't have a peel to me, which is an awfully strange feeling, and it just made me think about that. There are these conversations that are worthwhile to talk about, straight up drinking and alcoholism, and what it made us feel like, and what it is now. I would say most of the recovery conversations are just real life stuff, that we were drinking because we needed an outlet. On the other side of this being a fraud, I remember what stopped me for the longest time. Was that feeling that I am being a drop my queen thinking I had a problem? You don't have a problem. Look at the people who do have a problem. You are overreacting, and that kept me the longest time because I didn't want to be a fraud. Thinking I was an addict without really being one. So this went both ways. And I'm sure there are people feel this way. I will say if you have that feeling, you probably have a problem because normal people don't sit there and question their drinking continuously. That is sort of like one of the alcoholism questions I think in the big book, not in the big book in the schedule guide, that they're like 10 questions, and if you get like one or two that you're saying yes to, you have a problem. If you're just thinking I might have a problem, I'm concerned about the way I'm drinking. That in itself is a sign because people who don't think about it at all. It's like saying I have a problem with my coffee drinking, or I have a problem having a glass of milk. People just don't think about it. They just do it. I have a problem brushing my teeth. No, they just do it. That is something thinking about, and you can, on the other side, minimizing your accomplishments. You minimize your drinking. Oh, I'm overreacting. You're not that bad. Look at the thing for me, look at the people who drink a lot more than you. That's a tough one because people who have a problem tend to hang out with people who have a problem. So it's very easy and that's a dangerous voice.

Steve: 19:49

Yeah. Again, it goes back to one of the things I mentioned. It's an honest evaluation, right? And it's hard, right? And it's hard. Again, if you're alone, right? In the big bucket, it tells us it's almost impossible to do a good inventory by yourself. It tells us that. That's why you need help for most of us doing honest inventory. And again, that doesn't mean you're always going to say, oh, no, I don't drink that much. I'm not an alcoholic. It could be the other way. It could be that you're too hard on yourself. It could be like, oh, I'm a piece of shit and I don't deserve to be in this world. I mean, it could be that serious, trust me, it is. So it's... It's really about evaluating ourselves in that way. And like you said, if you go to a meeting today, it's real world problems. 90% of the discussions at meetings are real world problems. Which, and again, the reason why the real world problems is because we drink over real world problems. And this is what I'll say. It's two things I'll say. We went out to a play in dinner last night. And the woman we have a friend that goes with us. So the story of us and, and the woman who went with us is, is on zettbound, just like I am. So we're talking. And when I talked exactly, like what you said, right? And again, this is not a medical podcast, but we're both doing that. And it does come into some of the urges that we have. And we were talking about how on Saturday, I take my shots on the mornings, which I just thought about I haven't taken yet. Um, and that by Friday or Saturday, my appetite has kicked up some, right? Monday, Tuesday, I don't feel like eating at all. Wednesday a little bit more. Like so. And you know, it was Friday night. And here's the beauty is like I was I was able to let myself eat whatever I want last night. And like you said, a lot of it doesn't appeal to me anyway, um, but and that is a weird feeling. And here's the other thing, like I love, and I mean this, I love diet, Dr. Pepper, right? Um, and I always have some of my fridge. And I wouldn't mind having four or five diet, Dr. Pepper's a day, but I do limit myself because it's caffeine. I just don't want to, right? So I limit myself to probably, I mean it. I limit myself to two. And most days, most days, I don't have any. Um, and what you were saying was like, we don't think about it. Here, here's the differences. Like I could, I could limit myself to one or two Dr. Peppers. And I don't walk around my house thinking, oh, when am I going to have my next Dr. Pepper? When can I have it? Can I have it? Can I have it at dinner? Oh, can I wait for lunch? I don't start doing that kind of stuff, which is what I did with alcohol.

Matt: 22:46

Mm hmm.

Steve: 22:46

So if you're starting to think about, oh, maybe I have a problem. And like you said, oh, I lied to myself. Oh, maybe I'm not that bad. I did the same thing. I had a brother who was way worse than me compared myself. Said, oh, I don't have a problem for years. It kept me out there denying that I had a problem. Um, it's the old thing. Just just try quit and drinking. Just stop drinking for a month, two months. And, and the truth, you know, evaluate it. And if you start walking around thinking about when you could have your next drink, oh, I can't wait until, you know, it's the old dry January. Oh, I can't wait until February first so I can have a drink. Then you got to start questioning why is my relationship with alcohol like this? Right? That's how the evaluation starts. And because you can, you know, you maybe able to, you know, again, I don't want to tell anybody, but you may be able to moderate your behavior before you go over that edge. I don't know. I feel, and I don't know if it's just true or not, I feel that if I had come into the program and maybe I had tried to moderate my drinking early on, that maybe I could have because it felt like for years I was able to do that. But once I crossed that line, once I crossed that line to where I was a, I had to drink every day or I was miserable, there was no calm back. Right? We have a saying that once you're a pickle, you can never be a cucumber again. And I feel the like I crossed that line. I can never go back to drinking safely again. But I feel like, and again, I don't know if this is true. You know, it's way, way, it's past history, but I felt like if maybe in my 20s, I realized I had a problem that maybe I could have done something, and then maybe that would have led me not to drink at all. I don't know, but it's about an honest, and this is the whole thing. It's about an honesty evaluation. Really, how are you feeling about alcohol? And that's why a lot of times is some people, you don't see it that much. We had a guy come into our Friday night meeting a couple of weeks ago and a friend brought him in, a friend of mine, and he said, the friend told me he's here to try to see if he's, things, if he's a real alcoholic or not. And that's one of the things you can do. You can go to an open meeting, you can sit there, you can listen, you don't have to raise your hand so you're an alcoholic, you could just listen to people and try to see if you relate to what their stories are, what they're telling. To try to see if maybe you fit that profile.

Matt: 25:25

Yep.

Steve: 25:27

And I'll just tell you this, if you do that, and maybe you feel weird about it, and I get it, trust me, I do, you can save yourself a lot of pain and suffering and pain for the people around you. If you're drinking, if you're If you're drinking... Because of your feelings and all of that is impacting your relationship with the people you love and your family, your work, then you owe it to yourself and to them to at least take a look at that. And because again, it was devastating for me for as long as I was out there before I found this program that There was a lot of pain and suffering before I came in here and figured out this room and this problem. And there's not today, I mean, it's not all brain bowls and unicorns, but it's much better.

Matt: 26:21

I didn't know nutrients and alcohol that you need,

Steve: 26:26

none, none,

Matt: 26:27

Like a glass of beer, if you don't have it, you're not missing, you're not going to miss your protein count for the day.

Steve: 26:33

none. Right.

Matt: 26:34

So it's not something that you need. But if you feel like, how am I going to get through this situation without a drink, that's a sign in and of itself.

Steve: 26:47

Yeah, I talk about I live with a woman who's not an alcoholic and she's able to drink and she's able to have a glass of wine and I still I'm still amazed at when I watch her because I'm an alcoholic, I watch it closely. I'm still amazed at how she can do this and most times she never matter fact, I'll tell the story. She always hates when I talk about her. The other the other day I asked her I'm like, you run another glass of wine, I don't know why, but I just felt like, do you want another glass of wine? And she said, no, she goes, um, second glass will make me feel

Matt: 27:22

weird. Totally,

Steve: 27:24

totally foreign to me, right? That that that thought, no, I'm going to pass it up because it's going to make me feel weird. That's why I drank my second or third or fourth glass of wine because it made me feel weird. So, you know, that's a person who can do it and that's a person who if she has an anxious day and wants to have that second glass of wine because it helps her find. I just, you know, for the alcoholic out there, just not available, it's not it's not a way that I can, that I can try to deal with these feelings, right? So, um, I have to find other ways and for me, again, for me, it's easy today, right? I mean, I'm in touch with my program. Um, I do my stuff, I do service work, I do this podcast, I do my meetings, I do speaking commitments, I do everything I need to do. So, I'm never far away from my program. And the way I have my meeting structured and I always had them structured is that I always like to have a meeting or do something that's related to my recovery. Every other day or every three days at the max, I don't want to go three days without a regular basis. So, that's the way I structure my stuff is so that I always have something that I'm touching a. and it just for me it works, keeps me healthy, keeps me sane, you know, we do this podcast on early on a Sunday morning, it helps me, it helps me set myself for the rest of the day. I mean it,

Matt: 28:57

Yeah,

Steve: 28:57

all right? Just like my meetings to it helps me set myself for the rest of the day. And, you know, for me, that's that's the way I deal with all these, all these different feelings of being a fraud or being or being too big for my own bridges, which I get trust me that I, and that's the whole point right? I don't only get their fraud feelings. I get the feelings like, oh, I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. I get that feeling too sometimes. So, I just always have to manage those type of things because that's not a good place for me.

Matt: 29:30

Now, in recovery, the win is not always confidence. The win is a lot of times saying I recognize that this is the voice that is telling me things that's not

Steve: 29:38

Right.

Matt: 29:38

real. I'm not giving it the final word today.

Steve: 29:42

Yep.

Matt: 29:43

And I'd love for you to tell me, have you ever felt this? What do you do to minimize the voice before being sober after? Where did that voice move to? Now, that it's over friends pod calm, and if you like what we do, give us a five star review on Spotify and Apple, Steve. Thank you for Passing the Sound today.

Steve: 30:12

Glad to be here, Matt.

Matt: 30:14

And we'll see everybody next week. Bye for one.