Speaker 2 0:12

Welcome back to the Practical Spirituality Podcast. We are so excited to have you on this journey with us, where we explore all elements of mind, body, emotions and soul through the lens of everyday life. In this week's episode, I share my journey of addiction how it began, what happened, what it's like now and the spiritual insights I gained along the way.

Speaker 3 0:41

I believe on this week's episode we're going to be talking about addiction.

Speaker 2 0:46

I think that that's kind of what we landed on, isn't it?

Speaker 3 0:49

Well, as we both know, there's so many different ways in which we can approach the subject of addiction. It is something that I know we're going to come back to time and time again. For this particular episode, I feel we both want to focus on actually talking about your in-depth experience with addiction within your own journey throughout life. Coming into this, we don't have any script or any plan, necessarily, but we're just going to flow with it and to see what it brings up in mind, body, emotions and soul, as well as the experiences that have shaped you into becoming the incredible person you are today. Thank you, I really, really look forward to hearing and sharing your story with everyone listening, and I look forward to this episode being about Kim. So where would you like to start?

Speaker 2 1:30

To start it off, I'd just like to say that this is about my story and it could be very different for so many different people because, as we've often said, there's a lot of different people. There's no cookie cutter, but we each have our own individual experience. So maybe, if we start, let me just tell you what the definition is. If someone looked up addiction, what they'd get for a definition. So the definition of addiction is a state of psychological or physical dependence, or both, on the use of alcohol or other drugs. The term is often used as an equivalent term for substance dependence and sometimes applied to behavioral disorders such as sexual, internet and gambling addictions. That is the clinical definition of addiction.

Speaker 3 2:17

And there's of course different variations of those definitions also.

Speaker 2 2:22

Absolutely, and so many people say that it is a disease Like there's the disease concept, there's the trauma concept, there's a concept that it's genetic, hereditary. Onward we go, Do I know if any of those are correct? In the beginning, when I first got clean and sober, I went with the disease aspect and I don't know if I necessarily argue that, but it's not my point of view today.

Speaker 3 2:47

Yeah, so, as you mentioned at the start of this episode, is that we're going to be coming out of from your experience, or your angle, or the journey you've done with your addiction. So where would you like to start?

Speaker 2 2:56

I think that's hilarious because quite often you would have heard me say over the years I think I was born an addict. I don't necessarily really believe that. After all these years and all the work that I've done on myself, I quite often will refer back to my early childhood, because I talk about in my early childhood, when I was like three years old I was diagnosed as hyperactive and then, right before I started school, I was put on medication for that. And I think what's funny about that is I can remember, prior to going to Canada, my mom constantly saying why a person has to stay away from marijuana because marijuana is a feed or drug and it's going to cause you to go to heroin and everything else. And I remember thinking that's a bit extreme by that time. But having been on the medication for the hyperactivity and I was only on it for a few years I still struggled in school.

Speaker 2 3:53

I had quite a few traumas. So anybody who's worked with me they've often heard the spiel about the different traumas that I've gone through. It might just give a quick little rundown. So when I was eight my mom was passed away. She didn't, but the priest came and gave her last rites and we had to say goodbye and I went with my father to pick out coffins. My mom survived, but then she left and went to Canada and stayed with her mom for a while and while she was gone, my brother fell off the high dive and landed half in the water and half on the concrete. We were in the pool and witnessed it, and I also was sexually abused that same year. So that was a year I was eight years of age and quite a bit of trauma, I think, garrett.

Speaker 2 4:35

The other thing I want to say about this is for so long, in fact as long as I can remember, I didn't feel like I fit. I didn't feel like I fit with my family, I didn't feel like I fit with life. I felt different and odd and uncomfortable in my own skin. So, basically, what happened was when I was about to turn 14, or just after I turned 14, my mom decided we needed to meet our relatives up in Canada. So she, my dad decked out our van as a camper van and she took me and six of my brothers and we camped our way from Memphis, tennessee, all the way up to Newfoundland, canada. Quite the adventure Me, the only girl, and my six brothers who love to give me all kinds of grief.

Speaker 2 5:22

When we got there, my mom very promptly had had enough and so she said you're going to stay with your aunt and her daughters. Well, for me that felt like she just didn't want me and she was trying to pan me off. So I went and stayed with my aunt and my cousins were pretty excited because, you know, I had this really southern accent. I thought they were speaking a different language because they had such thick Irish accents. So half the time I just stood there nodding my head yes, because I had no idea what they were saying and my cousins decided that I was way too naive and that they wanted to introduce me to alcohol and cigarettes because I was 14 and they couldn't believe I hadn't really been going at it by then.

Speaker 2 6:03

So we went out one night and I tried all these different types of beer Quite a few of them I liked. I was getting quite a little buzz on. We were trying all these cigarettes. As we went through the cigarettes I kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker. Then one of my cousins said to me I've got the one that you'll really like. I've never tried this one. I was very naive I thought it was a cigarette. I took one hit off this and every cell of my body felt like it went into relax mode and I went ah, is this what normal people feel like? As I often say to people? And my addiction was born.

Speaker 2 6:43

And so from that point forward I spent three solid months in Canada drinking, smoking weed, partying, having a great time. I went from about 95 pounds to 145 pounds in three months. Got home and my dad cried. He said to my mother what you do to my daughter. You're a rwinder. But the bigger problem when I got back to our house after that summer was I had had a paper out. I still had a paper out.

Speaker 2 7:12

All I knew was I needed the weed. I needed the weed like nothing else the alcoholic could sneak from my parents. I've been doing that a little bit. That wasn't a big deal, but I needed the weed. And I say that's when the addiction was born. You know, a lot of people say what comes first, the chicken or the egg. When I look at the family history because I think that's only fair my mom was Irish Catholic. She came from a very Irish family. I would say that out of 11 kids that survived. There were probably eight of them that were alcoholics. My dad's side of the family. He had a brother and a sister who were alcoholics.

Speaker 2 7:47

You know, was it the genetics? Was it the trauma? I don't know. I think it was a combination of all. So that's the beginning and from there, like, I didn't think it was a problem. First time I knew it was a problem was you know, I had been going and collecting money from people's houses on the paper route so that I could buy weed. And it came time to pay my paper bill, I didn't know who I'd gotten money from, who I hadn't. But when I was 17, my dad said to me one night you know what, kim? You have a problem. You have a problem with alcohol and drugs and you either get some help or you need to move out. So I very promptly gave him the salute, said see you later.

Speaker 2 8:28

But I think I need to back up and tell you this beforehand when I was 16, I had been taken to the hospital twice and got my stomach pumped because of alcohol. So when that had happened, the doctors had told me you're highly allergic to alcohol, you can't drink. And I remember being in that hospital room going yeah, I know my mom put you up to that. So it's okay, no worries. He's like no, seriously, you can't drink. I'm like no, it's okay, I get it.

Speaker 2 8:55

And so, from 16 to 26, I went at it pretty hard. I moved out and things went downhill very quickly from that point forward. But what I can say, and what the very definition to me is did I have a change of personality? Absolutely I did. Did I continue to use, despite the negative consequences? Absolutely I did.

Speaker 2 9:18

You know I'm not proud to say this, but I remember towards the end, I was trying so hard to get clean and I just I had a day where I couldn't stand it and I drove from West Palm Beach, florida, all the way to South Beach, miami, for one joint. So, as you know, it's like a two and a half three hour drive. It took what? Five, 10 minutes and I was already not stoned again by the time I got home, which was like pretty devastating.

Healing Trauma and Acceptance

Speaker 2 9:45

I think the thing that most people get confused about is I felt like I was a pretty high functioning alcoholic and addict, like I never lost a job. I showed up. I might have been hungover, I might have not been able to perform very well, but I never missed a day of work. I went to work, still not proud of it, but that is kind of how I function. I went to some pretty dark places with some pretty dark people, as you've often heard me say on this podcast. There, for the grace of God, go I, because I don't know how I survived some of them, but I did.

Speaker 3 10:16

There's some details, obviously, that you're mentioning on this episode and all the different experiences and stories you've shared with myself and listeners.

Speaker 3 10:23

You've mentioned some specifics of some of the traumas when you were eight years old. Let it be the near death experience with your mom and that trauma, the trauma with your brother and his accident, but then also the sexual abuse that occurred all when you were eight years old. I know from the listeners and for people that actually have asked us on Patreon or even in person, when it comes to sacred contracts, divine design and even when we would say we chose all of this, it's just our immediate instinct is I didn't choose those traumas to be a part of my life and we just want to fight that understanding. So much For somebody's been on a similar journey to you with similar traumas. How do you begin to actually do that healing journey of coming to a place of marrying in the understandings that we've been talking about on this podcast, with the mental and emotional, physical and spiritual journey, getting to a place of healing, acceptance, whatever that might look like for you or any person for that matter?

Speaker 2 11:17

One of the things I would first say, gareth, is it took a long time before I married those concepts together, like there was no way in the beginning of my recovery that you could have convinced me of anything that we're talking about here on the podcast. The denial was very strong. Like, as people might have heard me say, I was 26 when I stopped drinking, stopped using drugs and got into recovery, and I do like to mention that I used a 12-step program, and I used that 12-step program for a long time because I had no support anywhere else and it literally saved my life in so many aspects. It worried me because there were a lot of rules being raised in a military family and I rebelled against rules constantly. I didn't give myself a lot of hope. In fact, in the beginning I only gave myself six months. I actually gave them six months and I went. After six months I'm out of here. But the interesting thing that happened was after six months I started to feel much better. But if you had said to me oh, this isn't your sacred contract, kim, I would have said you know what? You don't have any clue what you're talking about. Get out of my face. That's what I would have said to you.

Journey of Recovery and Spiritual Exploration

Speaker 2 12:27

It wasn't until many, many, many, many years later, and I'm not talking a few years, I'm talking quite a bit of life experience, as you guys have heard me say quite a few times, of my head being dunked under the water, even while sober, before I even could consider it. I want to say till after my brother, kurt, died and I was 12 years clean Before I could even open my mind to it. And the reason for that is, in the beginning I believed in the disease concept, and so that was great, because the disease concept relieved me of a little bit of responsibility. It was like oh, it's not really me, you see, it's not my fault. I have a disease. And you know, I don't know whether that's true or not, and I'm gonna say that honestly because I've never gone out and questioned it, because by the time I got to the end of my drinking and my using of drugs, it was pretty bad, and so my family had disowned me at one stage, so I didn't really ever want to test that again. So as we talk about how do I link it back to that? I think it was.

Speaker 2 13:30

I got clean, I went to the twelve step program, I did everything that everybody told me to do. I went to psychologist, went to psychiatrist. I got told I was a hopeless cause and I was getting angrier and angrier and angrier because all I wanted was to get back to that feeling. When I took that first hit on, that first joint was feeling comfortable in my skin, I can honestly say that I didn't care about. I didn't care about anything else, I was just trying to figure out how to keep my head above water. You know I had lots of people trying to tell me.

Speaker 2 14:04

I remember people talking about the spiritual aspect. You know you have to turn your will in life over the care of God as you understand him. I tried that and I did do that and I would take it back as quick as I gave it because I was deep into control. I'm not trying to say that's wrong, but there's a spiritual concept out there that says one of the reasons we're addicted is because we're absent of, you know, a faith or a higher power or a religion or a belief. I didn't agree with that. Because I was raised Catholic. I always had a strong connection with the higher power. I, even through my addiction, like I walk through some pretty hairy situations, and I always knew that my spiritual connection was what got me through that. It didn't stop the addiction, though, and all the times I said that's it, that's the last time, didn't stop that either. So the only thing in the beginning was just don't, don't pick up, no matter what. Now I have to get really clear here, because this is a very important point when it comes to me and my journey. You know what?

Speaker 2 15:07

Years later, when I started working at a drug and alcohol rehab and I was learning about the neurobiology of addiction, we were told that Most addicts and alcoholics have about seven attempts at recovery before anything sticks. And, of course, the self righteous Kim. So what happened for me? First time? I decided it's over. That was it until the till. The lecture said really, that's interesting. So you only ever said one such. You never gonna pick up a drink again. And I want, well, you know seriously. But he helped me see that I did have several attempts, and so, after having all of those attempts and I finally went okay, I actually had three events happen to me, and the last event that happened to me was I. It was a suicide attempt. I talked to people about it before my father had passed away two years prior that's when you know my brothers and said enough, lose phone number. We don't know you why you're still drinking. And then I went back, my relationship ended and I truly didn't think I could stay alive. So had the suicide attempt in the ocean I was a scuba diver, is at the bottom of the ocean, decided to turn off my air.

Speaker 2 16:13

My tank right you know dried up and I started to lose consciousness right about the time that my dive buddy found me. What all I remember is kind of coming to with him shoving his regulator in my mouth. He pulled me up on the boat. He started working on me. He was angry, is all hell. He's so mad at me. And I was sitting at the front of that boat thinking, oh my gosh, can't even kill myself. I mean, I messed everything up and I can't even kill myself. But as I was sitting there and I was feeling really bad, he called out to me and he threw a beer at me and he said here, have one of these, maybe you'll feel better. And I sat there holding that beer and I was looking at it. I heard this voice in my head that said maybe, just maybe, if you put the alcohol down long enough, you'll find out why your life so messed up. It's a little bit more colorful language than that, but that's the gist of it. And my head whipped around because I thought it was my dive buddy, but he was back at the engine starting the engines, and at that point I was like oh my gosh. And what transpired after that was three days of an absolute emotional breakdown. So he dropped me off. I don't think he wanted to know me anymore after that, because it would have been a lot of trouble for him if I had succeeded and I spent three days in my apartment, probably the worst three days of my life. So then, that's when somebody came by, knocked on the door, they invited me to a 12 step program and I started that journey.

Speaker 2 17:36

So now let's go fast forward to when my brother died. 12 years later, my brother passes away. It's about a couple weeks later and I get up in the morning, I go into the kitchen and I'm trying to get started and I just have this overwhelming compulsion to use. And it took me by surprise and I ended up on the kitchen floor rocking back and forth, because every single cell in my body wanted to use and it was strong. It had happened to me before over the years, but I had always been close to an AA medium or to pick up the phone and call somebody.

Speaker 2 18:09

At this point, I had three kids and all I kept saying to myself is this too will pass, this too will pass. At the end of that, it was like four hours later, I got up, as you guys have heard me say. I was mad as hell. I was mad at God, I was mad at the psychologist, I was mad at the psychiatrist, I was mad at the 12 step program. I was like everybody can go get stuffed, because I was so angry that I knew in that moment it was not about alcohol and drugs.

Speaker 2 18:34

I knew that I didn't have the ability to deal with the emotional stuff and the trauma that was starting to surface that I could no longer keep bottled in. And so that is at the point of the journey where my life started to change, because I mean it had changed exponentially. I don't want to get people give people the wrong idea. I was married, I had three small kids, life looked very successful from the outside, but I was really crippled with anxiety, crippled with fear, couldn't move forward. When I started searching in another direction is when I came across this concept of sacred contracts and I was trying to make sense of why everything had happened to me in my life. Why was I the alcoholic and addict? Why did I have the traumas? Why, you know, why does everybody else get to have a nice life and I'm here still struggling? But on the other hand, of that I was thinking because by that time I'd started working at a drug and alcohol center.

Speaker 2 19:29

Why did I get clean and sober and so many people I'm watching not be able to make it, and that used to baffle me because I couldn't understand what. Why did I stay clean? Why aren't they staying clean? So that was the point when I started to marry it up, because I started looking out of mainstream. I started looking at spiritual concepts, I started looking at spiritual books, I started reading personal development books and I was searching for an answer as to what that was about.

Speaker 2 20:01

Hi there, we hope you're enjoying this week's episode. We've been so delighted to see such a fantastic response to the show and we're excited to now offer you a way to get even more from the podcast. We've been building our patreon community and are now offering a range of benefits, including weekly bonus episodes, articles, early access to our regular episodes and weekly check-in polls. And here's something special we are hosting monthly live question and answer sessions a fantastic chance to interact directly with us and get your questions answered. We've designed different tiers on patreon, ensuring there's something for everyone. Find your fit and join us by clicking the link in the episode description or visiting wwwpatreoncom. Forward slash practical spirituality podcast. We're excited to welcome you to our patreon community.

Speaker 3 20:59

Let's continue our journey in practical spirituality together once you realize for kim but for her journey, that she had to go back and actually look at the emotional traumas, the triggers, these realities that were happening in your life. What were the specific therapies, support groups, even spiritual understandings that really helped you on that journey?

Speaker 2 21:24

I was already going to 12-step programs. Yeah, and on that particular day that that happened to me, I went to a meeting that night and I shared what had happened and there were a few people in the meeting that shamed me for sharing that, because I was 12 years sober and I was painting a not so great pretty picture of recovery. And that frustrated me even more because this was my safe place, and so from that moment forward, I started to feel like that particular program was no longer safe for me. It was like they wanted to pigeonhole me into this little thing and keep me stuck there and I could only tell the side of the story that looked good instead of telling the truth about what was happening. And that really was scary for me because I once again felt like I was stuck out in the cold all by myself trying to figure out how to navigate this nightmare that was kind of showing up. I had anxiety to the hilt. I had all these emotions I didn't know what to do with and I was starting to have these traumas come to the surface that I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 2 22:24

As I mentioned, I was working at a drug and alcohol recovery program and I was studying the neurobiology of addiction and I didn't even want to mention it to them because I was afraid I would be shamed as well. We had just we had just gotten a new therapist for the people in the rehab to go to and so I needed to go and check that therapist out. I know you can tell that I'm smiling because it's such a fond memory for me because I went to go see this therapist and she had no credentials. So I knew at that point already liked her because she didn't have any credentials, um, which is the rebel in me. But I wanted to see what she was going to be talking to the clients about. I I didn't want a whole bunch of this yucky stuff that I had already gone through, and so I sat down and did a session with her and kind of was don't. I can't even remember the first session. I was so blown away by some of the things that she approached in me that no one had ever gone to. So I was like, oh, so I work very closely.

Speaker 2 23:26

I modeled my work after her and she was, as I, if I look back now and I would quite honestly say, an angel on my path. I think she was heavily guided. She always seemed to have the answers that I needed, and she continued to take me back to understanding what those traumas meant to me, why I couldn't cope with those traumas and how to stay present. She is the person who taught me present moment awareness that we've talked about, and she made a bet for me, and so that was the first step, and from there I went on to study quite a few different things. You know.

Speaker 2 24:03

I studied neuro linguistic programming, which is all about how our language affects what we do. I studied hypnotherapy. I studied emotional freedom technique. Then I studied faster emotional freedom technique. I liked all of them, but by the time I got to the last one, what had happened was I had neurobiology of addiction.

Speaker 2 24:23

I had some of the spiritual concepts from the therapist that I was using, and when this guy started talking about how to go back and change the perception of what you were holding, I understood what he was talking about and I understood how powerful that could be. Now there was still a couple steps to the program that needed to be added, but that was the point when I went. You know what? This isn't too woo, woo, it's not mainstream, but the most important part about it was I started using these particular techniques together on myself, with the help of someone else, and I started getting significant changes. That's kind of how it all transpired. That's what went down.

Speaker 2 25:04

Do I think it's the only way? No, do I think that there's many different ways? Yes, I do. I think what I probably want to say more than anything, gareth, at this point about you know some of the misconceptions of addiction.

Speaker 2 25:17

You know my family told me so many times just stop, just say no. You know I was an addict at the time of Nancy Reagan's program in the United States, saying just say no. And I remember I'd hear it on the radio or on TV. And I think you know what, if I could say no, don't you think I would Like. It was such a compulsion because this is why I go back to the trauma and the emotions when it came to the addiction. I had no way of dealing with that. No one had ever helped me with that, and so, knowing the neurobiology of addiction the way I did, there was a loop in my head that would say you know what to do, go do it and you'll feel better. And it was so compulsive that the minute it would hit. It was almost as if you couldn't deny that, and all I ever wanted was to be out of the pain.

Misconceptions and Sacred Contracts of Addiction

Speaker 3 26:04

And what was interesting there is that you actually mentioned your family's comments on your addiction. It's quite incredible how a lot of people have a lot of opinions on addiction without actually anyone who've ever been having exposure to it educated on it. But I guess, for you on your journey, what are some of the misconceptions you had about addiction before you even realized that you were an addict yourself?

Speaker 2 26:27

So I can remember people talking about alcoholics in my teens and in my early 20s when I was very much an active alcoholic and I just thought it's not me. I thought an alcoholic was a homeless person on the side of the street drinking out of a paper bag. That's what I thought an alcoholic was. I thought an addict was a heroin addict that was there shooting up. I didn't realize that some of the first drugs that I used that got me into some really big trouble. I just thought that they were like the ADHD medication. I just thought, oh yeah, well, it helps me stay alert, helps me get my job done, it's no big deal, it's fine.

Speaker 2 27:05

And even through those early 20s when things kept going badly, you know there were negative consequences. I always had an excuse for it, always had an excuse. You know I moved from the middle of America to Florida, the party city, you know, the party city of the world just about in North America, and so I was in good company. There was a lot of people partying, people were partying all the time, and so I just thought this was normal. It was.

Speaker 2 27:32

It took a long time before I started to realize and you know the my dive buddy that I told you about. He was also a bartender and I can remember one stage towards the end of my drinking and my addiction, he cut me off and I remember being so indignant going what what are you talking about? You're my drinking buddy, how dare you cut me off? And he's like you're done. And I was like no, I'm not, I'm just going to go to another bar. Yeah, like I just didn't understand and I couldn't see, because of the denial how far it was taking me, some of the misconceptions around my family and what my family thought, thought I had no control.

Speaker 2 28:07

No willpower I had no willpower, no control. You know, if I really wanted to, I could stop, and that I was just wanted to party Like that. I don't think they had any idea the level of pain that I was in on a regular basis. And if you talk to any addict, any recovering addict because most addicts won't let themselves get to that pain point, because the pain starts to set in and the brain says you know what to do, go get it, do it again. And even though there's a part of us going, I never want to do it again. The pain is too great and so the pain outweighs the other part.

Speaker 2 28:39

Quite often when I talk to people today and you know, when I worked in drug and alcohol, I often talk about how I made a decision. I made a decision that weekend when, when life was really bad and it's really easy to gloss over that, like it was a suicide attempt, I went home. I spent three solid days crying my eyes out. I was so upset because I thought I can't live and I can't die, I'm in hell. And so I thought I'm either going to figure out how to live or I'm going to have a speedy death. You know, and that's the moment I knew that things were going to change. Now, that wasn't willpower, you know that was. I heard you talk about it when you were saying you went to the depths of hell, and that's kind of what it felt like for me that weekend, those three days of just pure hell, and it was like I didn't feel like I had a choice. I had to figure out how to live and how to get clean.

Speaker 3 29:29

You know, a question I'm going to ask you next, right?

Speaker 2 29:31

now what?

Speaker 3 29:33

so, kim? Why did you choose this as part of your sacred contract? Oh God.

Speaker 2 29:44

This is taking so long. So I'm sure everybody has heard me say over this podcast over the time you know that I'd get my head above water and feel like I get dunked down again, like when I finally got to the 12 step program. From that point on I didn't pick up or use again. Now that doesn't mean I was happy, choice and free like they promised me. I certainly wasn't at all, as you've heard me just say. But I never picked up. And so through the years of trying to find my way out of this hell hole that I thought I was in, this hell hole that was Kim, because I couldn't live with Kim. Kim was intolerable at that stage in my life. So as I started to grow and as I found these alternative therapies that I used and started slowly making some progress. One of the things that happened is my brother passed away and my brother and I had the same spiritual belief. So I said to him okay, you get to the other side. You know what the job is. You gotta get me the answers and get him back to years after that event that happened on my kitchen floor.

Speaker 2 30:53

I went to a 12 step meeting and a woman came walking up to me and she said I know you don't know me and I don't know why I've done this, but I was compelled to buy you this book and I have to give it to you cuz I've heard your story and I think this is a book for you. And I remember looking at her thinking that is so weird. She said do me a favor, please don't open it up till you get home. So I left. The meeting where I lived was like 30 minutes away from my house. I drove, I got to the last intersection before my house and I opened up the bag and the book was conversations with God, book one, and I started reading it and I just saw and saw and saw, because I felt like Kurt was talking to me through that book and there was a lot of things in that book that we're starting to make sense for me. On the emotional journey that I was on. It started to validate some of the feelings that I had had and started to help me understand that you know what it's not all by accident, and so it was. It was a tough read and after that, when I was doing this, looking and growing, I started to realize it can't be all in vain. I can tell you guys.

Speaker 2 32:01

It wasn't until about 10 years ago. I was sitting with a client and this client had had a horrendous past and it was my very first session with that client. And that client had a reaction and in that moment I knew what to do. Because of what? Had everything that happened in my life and that was a moment at all made sense? That was a moment I could go. That's what all that was about. That's why I had to go through every single one of those events so that I could be here right now helping this person.

Speaker 2 32:31

After having that experience with my client, one of the things that I really started to understand is, if I hadn't had every single one of those experiences, I wouldn't have been equipped for that moment. And so we talk about it all the time. We talk about our sacred contracts, we talk about there's no choice, we talk about how our energy chose this for us. The first, probably 3740 years of my life. I would have told you you can take that and the sun doesn't shine.

Speaker 2 32:59

But after this moment I was like, oh, it's like the penny dropped. I can see. I can see that the addiction wasn't a choice. I can see the traumas wasn't really that choice, it wasn't the choice of this personality. I needed to go through every single one of those events that happened and there were many so that I could be here today helping people along their journey.

Speaker 2 33:23

And one of the things I often say, gareth, is this as I went through this journey, I felt like the coal miner who had been in a collapsed mind, trying to find my own way out. And when I got to the end of that part of the journey, I was like, oh, if I hadn't dug this tunnel to get out, I wouldn't be able to share it with anybody else. And I think that's one of the things that we're saying when we talk about our sacred contracts and we talk about these choices that were made by that part of us that's connected to that universal energy Is that we know what we're here to experience, but our personality doesn't, and so I think part of that journey is coming to terms and finding out how to you know, understand it and be at peace with it. So, just to conclude, I don't really think anybody chooses to be an addict. I don't think anybody ever wants to experience that. You know, on a conscious level, but I think on a spiritual level. We go through these Events in our life, whether it is drug addiction, alcoholism, gambling, love addiction, you know, internet addiction, gaming addiction, all of those things that we go through our part of what we're here to learn about ourselves and to grow and evolve, because without them we're not going to get to this place of understanding of our cell.

Speaker 2 34:50

Thanks so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you would like to explore these topics more with us, please go to wwwpatrioncom. Forward slash practical spirituality podcast. Not only will that help us keep producing these shows, but you'll also get advanced access to each new episode. The opportunity to ask questions directly of gareth and I. Input into what topics we will cover on the show. Access to exclusive content not available anywhere else. See you over on patreon.