The Bubble Hour is a weekly podcast hosted by recovery author and blogger, Jean McCarthy. Real People. Real Stories. Real Hope. The "Bubble" is what we use to stay safe and happy in sobriety (especially early sobriety). We surround ourselves with things and people who bring us joy, laughter and comfort. What do you put in YOUR bubble?
"I was running so much for a decade that I was already on a hamster wheel of dysfucntion and if you throw alcohol on that burning flame, it will never end well."
Jean as an experienced podcaster talks with ease and shares how her seemingly high functioning fabulous life as a successful business woman, a wife, a mother became a heavy mask she wore daily hiding her secret drinking. For all her success she craved outside validation from others not valuing her own opinion in any way and in some ways described how she controlled the dialogue presenting a one-dimensional perfect picture to the world . Always on the go, always seen as a go-getter and in many ways hiding in plain sight. Her drinking began innocently as it does for so very many of us, as a sleep aid fearing that stillness and quiet that comes when it's lights out. "When you crawl in to bed and your head hits the pillow and it's just you and your thoughts, your God, your universe, your guilt, your shame and I was terrified of that voice every day. That was when the voices of shame came to visit, the voices of bad patenting, bad judgement come to visit and it would replay on loop and if I got into that I was in for a long night."
It took an epiphany at a Gala Awards Ceremony for women and a motivational Speaker to bring about a wind of change in Jean's life in a moment for the woo woo among you that will make your heart sing! "The Guest Speaker at the ceremony was motivational and took us on an exercise of goal setting and imagining ourselves reaching our goal. I was coming up to a big birthday and wanted to hike Machu Picchu, so I closed my eyes to focus on this goal. But then I felt something on my chest almost as if I had been slapped and a voice that said 'I need to quit drinking' and I gasped and I looked around the table as I was afraid that I had said it out loud as it was so real that I thought others may have heard me say that out loud." On repeating the exercise the same voice returned to Jean and said very clearly a second time "I need to quit drinking." and so she found herself standing in a professional setting feeling naked and exposed yet no one had heard those words uttered. They were an internal voice in surround sound in her head. Jean knew deep down, giving up drinking was her greatest desire yet also her greatest fear and she headed home that evening very shaken by the whole evening - but her addictive brain made sure she finished the glass of wine she was drinking at the dinner before she left.....
Jean explains she is of Northern European descent, so with a combination of genetics and
dysfunction in the equation it wasn't long before one glass became two glasses which became a bottle. She fell into that all too familiar pattern of women in addiction with bottles becoming boxes of wine and Margaritas in coffee cups. At this point in the conversation Jean talks about not only hiding her drinking from the world but from her own self " I was hiding my drinking frommyself with the thinking being - it was okay if I knew as I didn't count. What mattered was that nobody else knew." As her drinking progressed un-noticed she became increasingly fearful of the hold alcohol was having over her but she like so many of us believed that an alcoholic must hit rock bottom before seeking help. But what Jean did know was that whatever rock bottom was destined for her, she didn't want to go there.
Link to buy book or further information: www.jeanmccarthy.ca/books Instagram @jeanmccarthy_writes Facebook pages for Unpickled (www.facebook.com/unpickled) and The Bubble Hour (www.facebook.com/thebubblehour) Also websites: https://jeanmccarthy.ca/, https://unpickledblog.com/, https://jeanmccarthy.ca/the-bubble- hour/, https://www.amazon.com/dp/1999299906
Jean's Media links
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