E278: The Disease Model Doesn’t Let Me Off the Hook

In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about the disease model of alcoholism—not as an excuse, but as a way to understand why alcohol affected them differently than it does other people. The conversation starts with the idea of “getting better and leaving,” and turns into a deeper look at why staying connected still matters, even after years of sobriety.

They discuss personal responsibility, AA, the “built-in forgetter,” and the strange reality of still noticing alcohol in ways other people do not. The disease model may explain the problem, but it does not remove the responsibility to stay honest, stay connected, and keep helping the next person who walks in.

Click here to watch the full video referenced with Charlie Sheen.  I don't have the link to the original podcast.

Transcript

Matt: 0:01

Welcome to the sober friends podcast. My name is Matt J over there is Steve and you're in the right place if you are looking to I wasn't going to say get your drinking under control but that's not why we're here. We're here because if you have a desire to stop drinking or if you have not been drinking for a while or you're just questioning it you're in the right place. Steve, what's up? You had a busy day already today hiking going out to dinner and now

Steve: 0:26

very

Matt: 0:26

you're ready to pass out.

Steve: 0:28

Very busy, tired hanging out. We should tape this in the morning, on Sunday,

Matt: 0:34

tonight.

Steve: 0:34

I was hiking, we're taping at night totally spaced out till that text me. Luckily, I wasn't dozing. But here we are ready to go.

Matt: 0:45

We would have figured something out.

Steve: 0:46

We

Matt: 0:46

have

Steve: 0:46

would

Matt: 0:47

decided a busy morning too. We had soccer and on Connecticut shorelines so it was, a ways away. If you're listening to this and you know about it, we didn't get hit by the meteor. I didn't hear the meteor.

Steve: 1:00

I don't mean neither.

Matt: 1:00

If you've heard about that,

Steve: 1:02

I wish I did.

Matt: 1:03

I didn't hear it. All right. Somebody sent me a clip of Charlie Sheen of all people talking about why he walked away from AA. I don't want this to be an episode where I'm attacking Charlie Sheen. He has his own story and I respect anybody who's looking to live sober. But what he said hit a nerve for me a couple of things because it points to a bigger misunderstanding of AA and specifically the disease model accountability and what it means for coming back. I wish I could tell you what the podcast was that this was on. But I can't find it. The clip is from a podcast aggregator. So I'll put a clip into like the three minute longer clip that this is from. If you know who the guys are, I would prefer to give them attribution. I just don't know what this was from. It looks like this might be a smaller podcast. So it's that in mind that I'm, that's why I'm not giving the people credit because I don't know who to give this credit to. But very short clip I'm going to play and then we'll talk a little bit about it. And why Charlie Sheen walked away from AA because he didn't agree with the disease model.

Charlie Sheen: 2:26

Doing this for me, you know, and I finally just put AA in my rear view and just decided just to stop. Because as long as I kept worshiping their disease model then I was never going to ever be, you know, it was never going to fully be my decision. You know, they just, they want people to subscribe to this thing that you have an invisible something in your brain that makes decisions for you when it comes to booze. You know, I just, I can't live like that. So I can't live like that. Like the mentality push on you. Yeah. And it's also, it's, it sets it up as a, as a no fault right? disease or syndrome. It's a no fault. Like what would have happened to Dave? He was doing so well. Well, his disease, you know, he woke up one day and he was, there he was. You know, in the liquor store, did you midnight and next thing, you know, he spent the weekend in jail.

Matt: 3:29

It is, I'm sure that there are people in AA who absolve responsibility because of the disease. But that hasn't been my understanding or experience. With the clip, I'm kind of curious what hits for you, Steve.

Steve: 3:49

Well, that's the first thing that jumps out of me too is that listen, I think for those, this is not an unusual take. I've heard this take before in social media, right? People don't like that disease take on this and, and, but and we'll get into some of that. But the first thing that jumps out of me is, is that, I think, early, I think before we find sobriety, there's a little bit of I'm powerless over my disease, right? I mean, that's in AA, that's the first step, right? I am powerless over this over this,

Matt: 4:24

yes.

Steve: 4:25

my drinking, okay? We won't even call it my drinking, right? So, so early on, I think that's probably valid saying that, you know, why is Steve drinking so much? Well, because he's an alcoholic and he has a disease. Now, but I do think that for most of us, from what I hear in the rooms that I go to, is that once you find sobriety and you have sobriety, then it is a choice. Like then you

Matt: 4:53

hmm?

Steve: 4:53

do take personal responsibility of whether you want to pick up a drink or not because now number one, and regardless of your method of getting sober, whether it's AA, whether it's Sinclair, whether it's abstinence by yourself, whether it's an online community, whatever it might be, right? Once you get sober, then you have a solution, and then you need to make a decision, again, pulled by something. I don't know. I certainly think it feels like a disease to me. That wants you to do that. Again, we talk about obesity. You and I talk about it on this podcast, being a disease. Now I never, in my whole life, where I struggled with my weight, I never considered that. Now all of a sudden, there's a lot of information and a lot of evidence out there that it is a disease. And not everybody buys into that, just like anything else. Some people still buy into that itself as a willpower thing, but there's more and more evidence that it is. So that's where I think I disagree with that. Listen, lots of people leave AA for lots of reasons. Some of them good reasons, right? Some of them good valid reasons. But I don't think that doesn't feel like a good one to me.

Matt: 6:29

I went out for ice cream tonight with the family. There is this place Zenz in Elington that does soft serve. And they have, you can get like a twist comb, but you can also get sort of a mix-in type thing that is a lot like a blizzard from Dairy Queen. And they are excellent. And they give you a lot of ice cream. And that was very easy for me to down before GLP ones. And we went tonight and I had a small cone because as lovely as that blizzard-like concoction is, I just couldn't mentally handle the richness of it. It has like peanut butter swelled in and it has chunks of Reese's peanut butter cups. And even at my best, I usually can maybe sometimes do half of it because it's just too rich. And that was not the case before I took my shot. And I'm mentioning this because to me that underlines the disease mentality that something in my brain was not bolted down and was weevil wobbly and was making me eat in a different way that I don't want to eat like now. Now today is shot day. So the first day or two of shot day, I kind of have to work pretty hard to find things to eat because I'm just not, I could take relief a lot stuff, which is it's still very bizarre to me because it's like, damn, I could down this stuff, but now something's blocking that. And I know that food is a crutch for me as alcohol was. And I was giving a lot of thought to this because I was on TikTok. I was looking at autism and ADHD type accounts. And it came to me that substance abuse sometimes can be a disease, but it also can be a symptom of something else that it is a disease, but almost a second secondary comorbidity of something else. It's like when you have Alzheimer's, you don't die of Alzheimer's, you aspirate and you get pneumonia and you die. But the underlying thing was the underlying thing was the Alzheimer's. And it's almost like alcoholism is sort of like that aspiration and pneumonia type thing. It's a secondary thing of you for whatever reason that's where your brain goes to, to compensate for the other thing that it can't control. And my time in AA and therapy has been treatment to address the other thing, so I don't need to drink. And that's where I see it as a disease that there is a propensity for me to want to drink and want to use to cover up for something else. And if I go to AA and I do the things that have worked for me in AA, I'm handling that stuff to keep it up back. So I see the disease mentality here as it's a way of explaining why you have these feelings. It's not to absolve you of responsibility. It's to give you this is the why. Now that you know the why, there's something you can do about it.

Steve: 10:01

Yes, and again, when you know sitting here thinking about it, that was the first time I heard this clip, right? So I had no, you know, the way we do this podcast, Matt might have an idea of what we're going to talk about because he's done a little bit of thought and research into it and I come in pretty cold. So that was the first time I heard it.

Matt: 10:19

And honestly Steve kind of by design. I prefer to get your.

Steve: 10:23

No, I, I

Matt: 10:23

Take.

Steve: 10:24

insane it. No, oh, I, I just wanted to audience know that that's how it works. So if I feel like you know, like I'm working through this. It's because I am.

Matt: 10:32

It's

Steve: 10:33

because I am working through it. But here, here's my thought of that. Right? Is like, so I think about all of the people that I hung out with and grew up with and party with hard like me who didn't become alcoholics like me. Who never felt a need to go down into a basement and drink alone until they were blitz like me. What's the difference between me and them like that. You know, like what is that difference? And, and this is where the disease thing. So, so I understand where again, where he's coming from and says the disease, the disease mentality absolves people like so. And that's somewhat true at the beginning. Like, oh, Steve has a disease right? I've heard, I've heard that other people I have relatives who drink a lot and probably need this program. And I heard one of my relatives say about their brother. He can't help it that he's an alcoholic. Right? Like that. So that's mentality. Right? Like he can't help it that he's an alcoholic. And, and so that's where it gets a little tricky. Right? Because what's the difference between me and and I just say right there and my sisters, right? Now my sister's partied hard just like I did. Like my my especially my two youngest sisters, even my older sister too. Probably not as much. But my younger sister's partied every bit as hard as me growing up. Probably more because like they were the youngest of six and they watched all of their siblings do it. And they came around and they were doing it hard. And yet neither one of my youngest sisters became alcoholic or drug addicts. Why? I don't know. So, and so, so when you start thinking about it being a disease, then you start thinking, well, why do some people? Why do some people have high cholesterol? And here's here's another thing I'll tell you, I remember my brother town without us, right? town saying this is that his cholesterol was always really good. And we talked about it being genetic. My brother would be baking cheeseburgers all the time. And still, like the cholesterol would be under 200. Right? Why? Why does somebody just like they don't they eat healthy in their cholesterol? Like it's just a different makeup. And you want to call it disease, we would call it whatever, but it's something there's something different. So, to me, I guess what I'm working through is that when I start comparing my alcoholism to other aspects of health related stuff because it obviously is a health thing. Right? It it tracks like a disease to me. It tracks like a disease. It affects some people and doesn't affect other people. So that to me, like has disease written all over it. Because the other thing is just weak character, right? It that's the other thing is if if you like, you know, it's weak character. Or you're in moral or whatever it might be. Like that's that's the other choice. And I don't think that's the case at all, especially the people that I've met in the a. Right? Like again, they we know when when people are using or they're drinking. Yeah, there, there may be they may be doing some things that are not really good, but deep down inside. It's not because they're weak character or they they have bad morality. Because as soon as they become they clean it all up that you really see, they're pretty decent people. So I don't know, it tracks like a disease to me and and I get it that some people don't love a and luckily today, luckily today, and I mean this. I'm really happy. Is that there's other options for people out there today. And I'm happy that there's other options out there for people to go try and see if these other methods work. And and let's be honest, some people some people don't need anything and they don't some people don't know anything. And

Matt: 14:38

Yeah.

Steve: 14:38

this not to encourage you if you're out there struggling to say, I don't need anything because if you don't need anything, that means you don't need to drink. And if you keep finding that you need to drink, that means you probably need a program of some type. And the nice thing about A A is it's pretty much a free program you just show up

Matt: 14:55

and

Steve: 14:56

and you can you can do it and up to really little to no cost to you. So, I mean, that's my take like I said, as I worked through this for the first time.

Matt: 15:07

I do have criticisms of AA. I like to couch my criticisms of AA in a way of, I criticize because I care. I want to be productive and the program of AA could be better a number of different ways. I am not of'kill it off' because I still think it's the gold standard, but I have some things that if it were up to me and I could wave a magic wand, there some things that I would say could be done differently, that would get more people sober and make for a better program. That's where my thought process is. You were talking a little bit about weak willed. I would say that is the best argument for the disease mentality because the thing that's gonna keep somebody out there a lot longer is even if it's indirect that the reason you have a problem is not a disease is you being weak

Steve: 16:05

willed. Right?

Matt: 16:06

It's a matter of fact, most people tend to be very strong willed that I know who had a problem with alcohol. The exception being alcohol, like you have told stories, like you, you have built, think about your own story, you build a career kind of from nothing being a factory type worker, putting yourself through college, building a career, having two marriages, having a family, owning what I think is a pretty nice home and did that a lot of that way being addicted to alcohol.

Steve: 16:45

That

Matt: 16:45

would have taken a lot of moxie and a lot of drive and the one place that it fell short was the alcoholism not the other parts of your

Steve: 16:56

life. Right?

Matt: 16:56

So that's to me, I can think of a whole bunch of things that I can just plow my energy through and get something done and yet it would fail me with food and with alcohol. So that tells me if there's that donut hole there, there was something in the brain that was not right. It was at this ease as Joe and Charlie would say. So I think there is a mindset of we keep going back to AA because at any time this thing could hit us like a thunderbolt and without us even thinking we're going to drive the car somewhere to pick up weed and smoke and do crack and we have no control over it. And that's not true. If you talk to people and they even say it, even in the big book of AA, the people who relapse early on, there was something that was happening that the people who relapsed ignored or overlooked. And it was this mindset of you have to be on guard for the unguarded moment to protect yourself from those things. If you do those, you probably are not going to relapse. And Charlie and that clip does talk a little bit about like at any time like the disease mentality says it could hit you out of the blue and you have no control over it. And I can understand hearing that message in AA. I can understand hearing it that way. I don't believe that that's the case. If you put in the effort, the likelihood that you're going to go and fall off the wagon is pretty low, it can happen. But there's often other things going on that makes picking up a drink feel viable

Steve: 18:52

to you. There's been some studies. I've seen them come across again in my social media. So and I don't have them. So I don't, you know, I take everything with a grain of salt when I hear it. But these these ones felt felt right to me. And they talked about people who are, who are getting clean and sober through programs and trying to match up the, the success rate of these programs, right? And some a lot of people say that all the success rate of AA is so low, whatever, um, sex rate. I think the success rate of any program dealing with addiction is really, really low, right? And again, it tells you how, how difficult it is. Um, but I have seen recent stuff when I haven't dug into the studies that says that for the, for the people in this, what they talked about for the people that did do the program, right? Again, if you're not doing the program, you know, wait wait, watchers isn't going to help anybody if you don't follow the program. Right?

Matt: 19:56

Correct.

Steve: 19:56

So you can't say, well, you know, then, you know, nothing's going to work if you don't follow the program. Even even the, uh, GLP ones that were both taken, you know, if you don't take them, right? If you have the medicine and you said, I'm not going to take it as prescribed and it doesn't work, well, then you're not doing the program. But

Matt: 20:17

And you also can't just eat like shit still, too.

Steve: 20:19

I

Matt: 20:20

You

Steve: 20:20

agree.

Matt: 20:20

do have to exercise and you have to, you have to try and eat properly. It,

Steve: 20:24

Right. You

Matt: 20:24

this

Steve: 20:24

have,

Matt: 20:25

is

Steve: 20:25

you have to do

Matt: 20:25

GLP

Steve: 20:25

some

Matt: 20:25

one

Steve: 20:26

work.

Matt: 20:26

is the thing. It, it gives you a boost so that you can do those things.

Steve: 20:31

So, the point is for people who do the program, the success rate after one year was much higher in AA, and they attribute that to not the steps and not the God part, but to the fellowship, to the support group. That's what they attributed it to, because the support group is so strong. And the availability of AA is so widespread that more people stayed clean and sober after one year of working a program than any other program out there. I believe that. I do. I believe that, because I've witnessed it. So, you have to, the other opposite, you touched on it. If it's not a disease, then it's weak willed character, right, which will keep, that'll kill a lot of people,

Matt: 21:31

because

Steve: 21:31

right? I'm weak willed I'm a piece of shit. I'm not, it's not worth trying. My whole family is good. Look at my whole family. Nobody else has got alcoholism. You know, somebody could be out there saying, it's not true, my family, but nobody else has it. So, I'm just a piece of shit. I don't belong around, right? I'm not worth saving. So, that's where the disease, whether you liked this description or not, is so helpful and beneficial, to give those people who feel that those people who have other health issues, mental health issues, besides just alcoholism or addiction, it gives them the opportunity to work on some things, right? It literally, like the GLP ones, as we talk about, we talk about all the time here, it gives you that boost that extra leg up to be able to do some work. So, by saying, hey, I have this disease that I'm not responsible for creating it. I'm not responsible for it happening, right? If I'm a diabetic, and I have to take insulin, I can't eat cake all the time. I'm responsible not to eat the cake. Once I understand that I have, before I understand that, and I'm beginning sick because I don't know I'm a diabetic, and I'm eating cake, and it's making me feel like shit. Right, I don't know, I'm sick, right? But once I know I'm a diabetic and once I have medicine, then it's up to me to do something about it. That's how I think AA tracks for me, right? I don't know why I drank, I don't know why I became an alcoholic because for a part of my life, even though I drank excessively a lot, I didn't drink excessively all the time, part of my most of my life, most of it. But all of a sudden, at some point, I couldn't control my drinking anymore. I think that's... I think that tracks like it's a disease to me, I think it does. I think there's people, some people are type 1 diabetes, but most people are type 2, where it is due to some other stuff. that's how it tracks to me. And again, just thinking about the whole diabetic thing, a lot of people have a tendency to be diabetic.

Matt: 24:03

Yes,

Steve: 24:03

But if they eat healthy and if they exercise, they don't become diabetic, they don't become a type 2 diabetic. Right? I think that happens with alcoholics. I think there's lots of people out there who have a tendency to become an alcoholic, but because they refrain from drinking for whatever reason, for whatever reason. And this is where I look back at it, and I don't spend a lot of time doing this because I don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about what I could have done when I was 20-something years old. I think there was a point where I could have done that. Like I could have done... You know something? This could be a problem for me. Maybe I should stop now. Right? Before, and I could have been one of those people who stopped and didn't really need, I maybe needed AA to get me there, but maybe didn't need AA as much as I feel like I needed today. I'm not sure. And again, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that, but I have thought about it. Again, it keeps tracking and, you know, and not coming back to AA. I mean, that's a scary message to put out there. That's a scary message. I always talk about this woman. I won't drop her name here because I don't know if anybody listens to it. She used to come to my meetings when I was going to Vernon. She went to the Monday night meeting a lot that we go to. This woman took more 24 hour chips than I ever saw anybody else taking my life.

Matt: 25:35

That's hard.

Steve: 25:36

And, and I watched her, but I was so proud of her every time she did. I got to know her, I talked to her, I saw her a lot of meetings, I don't see her anymore, I don't know if she's around, I don't know if she's alive or dead, but I used to tell her, I am so proud of you because I don't know that I could do what you're doing. Uhm, I hope she still does. And, um, not a fact, if I see anybody who knows her, uhm, actually if I know, if I talk to somebody from the Rockville area, they'll probably know who she is and I should ask around. But anyway, that's, but that sort of makes me think of is like, if you start saying, "Oh, I don't want to go back or you shouldn't go back, man, it's a scary thing." I think, for most people, when you say that, you're setting them up for a really, really bad life

Matt: 26:36

you're,

Steve: 26:36

and, uh, that's, that's the scary part of that message to me. And again, this is not just an aunt Charlie. This is not putting him down. Everybody's gotta write,

Matt: 26:45

he's just another person in recovery just like us.

Steve: 26:48

Right. That's,

Matt: 26:48

he's done knucklehead of things. We have just seen all of this knucklehead of things because he's in the public eye. His stupidity is no more stupid than a lot of other people

Steve: 26:57

"Oh,

Matt: 26:57

like, we'll have a problem." He just had a camera in front of them.

Steve: 27:01

I agree. And yeah, yeah, he was, no, no question about it. No question about it. Listen, um, I, we always said it, right? And, and people talk about it all the time. Like, there's an uncle out, everybody didn't have a camera in their pocket when I was growing up.

Matt: 27:14

Yeah,

Steve: 27:15

right. That they couldn't fill me doing all the stuff I was doing, when I was in my teenage, when I was drinking and, and acting like a Yahoo. Yeah, that, that was, that was a good thing for me that there's not video evidence of it out there.

Matt: 27:33

So he did say he, he, I, he, I referred to this earlier that he talked about not continuing to go to AA.

Charlie Sheen: 27:42

Watch AA's mono. Keep coming back. I'm not like, get, get better and leave it.

Matt: 27:51

So I, to the uninitiated, I do understand that that if you have to keep going after 20 years, what does that say about your ability to stay sober that you have to white knuckle it and the only reason is to go to these meetings. And what does that share somebody else that you are stuck in your life there? On the other hand, who is going to teach the new people if you don't have people with institutional knowledge? It's not a professional organization where you have people working there. The only way you're going to learn about the program are people who have gone through it already and have good sobriety. Otherwise, you've got people a 13 months of sobriety teaching people with three days. And that's, that's not going to work. I mean, it did work early on early on, the people who were sponsors and the grizzled veterans six like 10 months of sobriety because it was so new.

Steve: 28:47

had

Matt: 28:47

That's not the way it is now. So the reason you keep going is you've got to teach other people, but you also touched on something. It's that we component that it's just a good feeling to see your friends and to see the people that you have known for a while, and you have a way of doing this together. It's less about, I'm going to go drink and more about, I'm comfortable with these people. They make me feel better. And when I see somebody new, it is a reminder to me, and that is also a good feeling. So it's not that it's the only thing stopping me from a drink. It's it's a nice thing to do to go to a meeting to be around other people and be reminded.

Steve: 29:33

Yeah. Absolutely. Like, you're right. Who's going to it's not a professional. Right. We're not. There's no paid. There's no well, there are paid people and eight but we won't get into the service structure of it. Yeah, but, you know, for the meeting point of view, there's not. So who is going to teach right who is going to teach the other thing is, and this is listen. You like it. You don't like it. There's lots of people out there. I buddy John who shows up at Monday night once, once, once in a while, says he talks about being an alcoholic and then he has a little spiel where he says, and I say that for myself, because I have a built in. Forgetter that makes me think it wasn't so bad out there. And that's the truth. Okay. For this alcoholic for me is that I have a built in forgetter that I forget. I forget that when I drink alcohol, I can't control it. I forget that when I drink alcohol, eventually I end up drinking alone by myself. You know, I talk about my basement. Sometimes it's not my basement. Sometimes it's out in my, you know, cries, sometimes it's wherever, sometimes it's in a bar, sometimes. But I forget all of that stuff. And that's why this alcoholics don't need to go to meetings. And I, but I'm pushing 16 years, right? Um, and I still, for that reason, need to go to meetings. Um, Plus, talk about it. There's, there's one person I will always be indebted to and that was my sponsor, who reached out his hand and offered me help. One on one help. And that person is the one that changed my life by introducing me to this program. Um, and I left this program and my life did not get better when I left this program, and I am thrilled that I came back so that I could have the life to like you talk about that I could get back into this program and and build this life and, you know, build the life that I, listen, I went, we talked about. I went hiking this one and we didn't, we didn't taped this because I was hiking and I hiked with four other alcoholics, right guys we, you know, right, regular guys. We all have our own stories. Some of them, you know, some, some of the guys have been on this program several times, John was hosted for a while with us and Timmy's been on this program. some horrible stories, right, horrible stories. Um, and yet by going out, we can do something like we can hike together, spend basically three hours in the woods, doing something, uh, that doesn't require us to drink, right, we have to be really slow, um, yeah, that's because so many things these days, these days, we, you know, I, we revolve around alcohol, but I'm not saying just because if you're an alcoholic, could not because, but so many things like, they just think about everything that people do. What they bring alcohol to, right, you go on the watch, a kid soccer game, maybe you have something cooler, right, alcohol is just around everything. So it's nice for me to know for other alcoholics to know that yeah, there's, there's an opportunity out there to do some things with other people. Normal things like hiking, like going to baseball games, well, I went to a baseball game this week with three other alcoholics. Um, that we can do this stuff and not have to think about drinking. You know, my wife doesn't need to talk about my wife and you know, you're, we do talk about you, but my wife doesn't need to think about those things, right, she

Matt: 33:27

Nope,

Steve: 33:28

doesn't.

Matt: 33:28

mine too.

Steve: 33:29

Doesn't need to think about those things. Um, so I don't, again, what does that tell me that tells me that my, that's what it tells my, my brain is wired differently than my wife's brain. That's what it tells me that's something in my brain is wired differently. Now, maybe, maybe it's genetic and maybe one day they'll find the gene. The, oh, there it is. Every alcoholic has this, this problem on this gene. We, we finally isolated it and they can go back and take that, make sure they, you know, take that gene out and never have another alcoholic well, you know, I don't see that day coming anytime soon. Um, but who knows, uh, I just know that, you know, I act differently around alcohol than anybody that I consider normal. And my wife and I went out, right, it was her birthday yesterday. We went out today because we couldn't get into the restaurant. We wanted on a Saturday nights. We went out on a Sunday. Uh, and my wife, you know, we went out to lunch. Here's what we did. My, we're not to lunch yesterday. We delivered a shopping on her birthday for her. We're not to lunch. And she does what, uh, we talk about all the time. She left wine in her wine glass at the,

Matt: 34:44

uh,

Steve: 34:46

right. And I noticed that, right. And this, this is how I know that I noticed it. Like she's going to leave and it's only a gulp. But why see this is a different, my wife doesn't go alcohol. Right. She sets it. She drinks it like a normal person. Uh, yeah. So she left it and today we are out and she, we don't, what do you want to six ounce or nine ounce. Well, you're asking me that question. I'm again, nine ounce probably multi and probably getting multiple nine ounces.

Matt: 35:21

And then they are the values

Steve: 35:22

right. Um, and I'll take a six ounce and then I'll, I'll leave, I'll leave an ounce and a half

Matt: 35:27

glass.

Steve: 35:27

in the

Matt: 35:28

Uh-huh.

Steve: 35:29

Doesn't make sense to my, it doesn't make sense to me. Not

Matt: 35:32

sense.

Steve: 35:32

only does it make

Matt: 35:32

I will never understand it.

Steve: 35:33

I, I, I, I see it. It bothers me that I paid for it after they're like all those things. That's why I know I'm different. I don't know. I said, if it walks like a duck and waddles like a duck and talks like a duck. It's probably a duck.

Matt: 35:50

Yeah. I'd love to hear from you. Matt. At soberfriendspod.com. Put it in a review for the show on Apple podcasts or on Google. It'll help somebody know that this is a safe space to hear something good about recovery. Thanks for sharing today, Steve.

Steve: 36:11

Thanks, Matt.

Matt: 36:12

We'll see everybody next week. Bye, everybody.