In episode 30, I interview my friend Katie on her 19th anniversary of being sober. I travelled the world with Katie for an entire year on Remote Year, we lived in the same apartment for a month in Colombia, and I even used her to secretly dance with a closeted guy at a music festival in Serbia. Through it all, Katie was always full of boundless energy, enthusiasm, and positivity, proving to be one of the biggest partiers in a program full of partiers — always game for an all-night dance party — and all without ever drinking a drop of alcohol or taking drugs. Katie inspired me to drink less and dance more! And she’s one of the few people I’ve met who talks almost as loud as I do (almost).
I’ve wanted to interview Katie for a while, to find out what led to her struggle with addiction, what she experienced in the process, and how she learned to control it. I also wanted to know more about Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization and belief system that has clearly impacted her life in a positive way*. Katie opens up in a very brave, radically honest, good-humoured, and highly insightful way, making for one of the most emotional and powerful episodes of the podcast to date, I think.
So much of Katie’s story and what she learned in recovery connects directly to the subject of overcoming shame and many other topics that I’ve explored on the show, and she even introduces a novel approach to spirituality that has inspired me to see if I can create my own “higher power” and determine whether that will improve my life or if there are any downsides to creating my own subjective “God”. So expect a followup episode about my experiments with a higher power in the future!
If you want to know more about AA, visit aa.org and if you want to contact Katie about being a sponsor reach out to me and I can put you in touch. In keeping with the tenants of Alcoholics Anonymous, I am keeping Katie’s full name off the record.
*As an interesting counterpoint to the AA process that worked for Katie, there are others for whom the 12-step process doesn’t work and scientific studies have shown that other treatment methods are in fact even more effective, have a read here for more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and interest.
