A down deep and real interview with BOLD Health’s Dr. Katie Hirst, MD. A star doctor who comes face to face with her own postpartum depression and anxiety that leads to debilitating addiction. We so often see addiction as an affliction of the poor, of the other, of anyone but us. What happens when we take our blinders off and really look at the addiction issue. We find that it hits everyone, regardless of class status, race, gender, education and anything else. This is an extraordinary story of struggle, self realization, and overcoming mighty obstacles to get her life back. Interviewed by BOLD Health colleague Dr. Thomas Paulus, this is an episode not to be missed.
BOLD VOICES Ep. 3 – Dr. Katie Hirst, MD – Part I
BOLD Health
Podcast Transcript
00:03 – Hey, everybody, this is Tom Paulus.
00:06 – Just a quick announcement here at the beginning of the show.
00:10 – Today’s episode was originally one interview with Doctor Katie Hurst.
00:13 – But we’ve decided to split it into two parts.
00:18 – So enjoy the first part. And don’t forget to tune in in a few weeks for part two.
00:24 – Also, don’t forget to listen to the preview of an upcoming episode on Unlocking the Unconscious.
00:30 – The truth is that addiction is a killer, and you can defeat it by facing what you’ve been avoiding.
00:34 – It’s high time to get real about the feelings you ignore,
00:36 – but you can’t do that alone.
00:38 – Form an alliance with the best.
00:43 – Team up with the doctors at Bold Health to build your capacity to bear those painful feelings.
00:45 – Get strong.
00:48 – Face the truth. Author. Your life.
00:52 – Bold health located in Encinitas, California.
00:55 – Or visit us online at Bold health Inc.com.
01:01 – If I were a lady long blond, none.
01:05 – Following your lead.
01:10 – Addiction to words, to food, to phones, to TV,
01:15 – to video games, to porn, to news and to drugs is all around us.
01:18 – The core habit of bourgeois life.
01:23 – Deferred gratification has lost its grip on the American soul.
01:30 – We seek instant, easy highs, and it’s hard not to see this as the broader context for the opioid wave.
01:36 – Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine, 2018.
01:37 – Thinking twice.
01:45 – Hey everybody, this is Tom Paulus, and you’re listening to Bold Voices, a podcast about mental health, addiction and the human condition.
01:48 – Welcome to another episode.
01:50 – Today’s episode has a more personal flavor.
01:53 – We’re going to hear from our own doctor, Katie Hurst.
01:56 – She shares her story of addiction and recovery.
02:01 – Katie’s story is interesting because it reminds us of the universality of addiction.
02:08 – Her story reminds us that addiction cuts across factors like education, income, gender, etc.
02:17 – behind and beneath the social cultural causes that we often look at, like consumerism, individualism, instant gratification.
02:23 – There are also personal and psychological causes, and this is something all of us can relate to.
02:27 – A bold we like to say that everyone is addicted.
02:33 – Following John Frederickson, we like to say that we’re all addicted to avoiding reality and our feelings about it.
02:39 – All of us want to change reality instead of accepting it on some level.
02:41 – That’s bad news and good news.
02:44 – The bad news is that we’re all affected.
02:48 – We can all tune out on Netflix due to much work,
02:53 – spent too much time on social media, scrolling the internet, whatever.
02:57 – Use too many drugs.
03:03 – The good news is that we’re not powerless to ask for help or to make change in a positive direction.
03:07 – We can all address our own struggles.
03:12 – We can all move inward and face what’s in our own sphere of influence.
03:17 – We can all move toward facing and embracing reality and our feelings about it.
03:19 – Again, some of us avoid reality.
03:26 – Use it by using drugs or alcohol, but others of us find more socially more socially acceptable means of avoiding.
03:28 – But the point is, all
03:33 – avoidance can be destructive, and that’s why it’s not enough to focus on sobriety or substance.
03:40 – We need to be sophisticated and practical approach to working with the psychological function of addictive behaviors.
03:46 – Namely, we need to help ourselves with the anxiety that we’re feeling over our feelings.
03:51 – We’re getting anxious, and then we’re going to avoiding.
03:56 – Can we come up with a way of addressing that anxiety and the underlying emotions?
04:01 – Well, we believe we’ve done that.
04:04 – Katie is going to share her own story.
04:10 – So without further ado, let me offer some specific words of introduction, and then we’ll roll tape.
04:12 – As you’ll see, Katie has accomplished a lot.
04:17 – She was a double major at Stanford, an honor student at UCSD Medical School,
04:25 – and then later she was a resident and family medicine and psychiatry, which basically means she’s a family physician and a psychiatrist.
04:30 – She’s also an expert in maternal mental health
04:35 – and reproductive psychiatry, and the founder of UCSD Maternal Mental Health Clinic.
04:40 – She also founded one of the first IOPs for maternal mental health in the southwest.
04:45 – She was faculty at UCSD School of Medicine.
04:48 – She’s been an international speaker, etc., etc.
04:54 – I could go on, but more than any of this, Katie is an imperfect human being who is courageously
05:00 – facing life’s challenges head on and humbly sharing what she’s learned with others.
05:04 – And that’s what I would want you to know about Katie.
05:07 – She’s a role model for us here at bold in that way.
05:12 – She’s also a generous spirit who keeps the office stocked with Lacroix and coffee.
05:15 – Go, Katie.
05:16 – So, without further ado.
05:21 – Once again.
05:26 – Well, welcome, Katie.
05:29 – Hers. Thank you. So glad to have you today.
05:34 – You are a physician.
05:36 – Pure bold health. Yes I am.
05:41 – But you’re also someone with experience on the inside of one of our patients
05:46 – are going through, and, someone experience in the recovery community.
05:53 – And so it made sense that we would have you on the show as, like one of the first people we talked to.
05:58 – So what’s your story, Katie?
05:58 – Who are you?
06:03 – Where do you come from? Wouldn’t I like to know what actually.
06:06 – Isn’t that an easy question? If we could all just spend some time reflecting.
06:07 – What’s our story?
06:08 – Just. Yeah.
06:12 – Could you just sum up your existence? You know, the existential struggle?
06:15 – Totally. And, you know, 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah.
06:17 – As I say to my kids. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
06:18 – There you go.
06:19 – Awesome.
06:26 – Right, so I my my story has, I guess a few kind of main parts.
06:32 – There’s the before the, the during my really active substance use.
06:38 – And then kind of the intervention that happened for me, what led me to actually,
06:47 – try and, and really put effort into and get into recovery from the substances and then the life after and what that has been like.
06:49 – Okay. So I’m here in like three parts.
06:54 – There’s like there’s a before, during and and after and then after.
06:55 – Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
06:59 – And but I think that, you know, I’ve, that’s how I’ve really conceptualized it
07:05 – and how I think a lot of us in recovery conceptualize, our stories as we tell them.
07:11 – But at the same time that before and during really are very similar in a lot of ways.
07:17 – And that’s what I think you and I have talked about, at other times, and I’ve come to have more of an understanding
07:26 – through my work here at bold and also through just a lot of the, my own personal therapy work that I’ve done, with my own therapist
07:36 – and through my mindfulness practice is really recognizing how even before I started abusing opioids, I was addicted to other things.
07:43 – And, you know, we talk about this relationship between avoiding our feelings, how that leads to anxiety,
07:47 – and then all the different things we do to try and cope with the angry pressure.
00:07 – Oh, you know, like.
07:50 – Yeah.
07:59 – And, you know, I mean, I was raised in this super functional, super traditional household with, two really loving parents.
08:07 – I was the oldest of three kids, and I was just really good at school from a very young age.
08:12 – And so, you know, when you’re growing up, and now that I have kids of my own, I see, you know, school
08:21 – kind of provides us the easiest source of either external validation or, you know, feeling really reasons to feel really bad about yourself.
08:30 – And, luckily for me, it was a source of huge external validation, just because I had good school smarts.
08:37 – And my best friend from high school would very much argue that I had no street smarts, but I had really good school smarts.
08:42 – And so I was. It’s hard for me to believe you had no street. Oh my gosh.
08:43 – So how do you meet her sometime?
08:48 – And so, so school just always came easily to me.
08:52 – And what I was always taught by my parents was just try your best.
08:54 – As long as you try your best, it doesn’t matter what grades you get.
08:57 – We just want to make sure that you’re putting the effort in.
09:01 – And what I learned was that when I put the effort in, I did really well.
09:05 – So I skipped a grade in school, went from fourth to sixth grade.
09:11 – That, obviously put me on a very awkward social footing, with peers going into middle school.
09:16 – And then I did really well in high school. And, you know, I played sports.
09:19 – I wasn’t that great at it, but I was good enough.
09:24 – And some sport, well, I was a pretty bad swimmer.
09:26 – Okay. But my real sport was soccer.
09:33 – And so I was a goalie, and, I went to a high school that was actually an all boys Jesuit high school for 150 years.
09:36 – And I was in the second class with girls. Wow.
09:39 – And so I somehow managed to make it on the varsity soccer team.
09:40 – I was kind of crazy.
09:45 – So, like when I was a freshman, the juniors and seniors were all boys, and they were like on the second and third floors,
09:47 – and you kind of didn’t want to go up there.
09:50 – It was a little scary. Boys dorm, essentially.
09:52 – So I played soccer.
10:00 – And I did, you know, fairly well at that when I actually tried, but, school wise academically, I did I did really well.
10:08 – And, so I was able to get into a good college, and then when I tried hard in college, in fact, I did pretty well.
10:11 – There were times.
10:14 – Where did you go to count? I went to Stanford.
10:20 – And there were, you know, my my freshman and sophomore year at Stanford, I kind of discovered alcohol.
10:24 – And the idea of not trying as hard as I wanted to or, you know, was supposed to.
10:29 – And, there was a pretty rapid return to reality.
10:34 – At the end of my sophomore year when I realized that I wanted to go to medical school, and I was not earning grades
10:40 – that were compatible with getting into medical school, mostly because I had spent a couple of years, as you
10:45 – know, an active member of a sorority, drinking a fair amount, you know, doing okay in classes.
10:50 – But BS, even if they’re at Stanford, aren’t going to get you into medical school, anywhere.
10:55 – So, I had to really cut back on the amount of time that I spent socializing and partying,
11:00 – and that was easy to do, because I had this larger goal.
11:04 – And drinking was never really my solution.
11:09 – It was a way to be social with people and kind of, you know, not be as stressed. But it didn’t,
11:14 – resolve the anxiety and the magical way that opioids later did.
11:17 – So giving us a foretaste.
11:19 – Yes, yes, a little foreshadowing there.
11:24 – But, you know, the other important part about about growing up was that,
11:30 – I had this model in which my parents, were both very successful at what they did.
11:39 – My dad was in business, and, my mom was a nurse and a clinical nurse specialist, and she was actually a professor at UC San Francisco. Wow.
11:46 – And so I had this model growing up of dad runs businesses and, is pretty good at it.
11:53 – And mom, you know, teaches nurses how to be nurses, and let go advanced nurses at that and is really good at it.
12:00 – And mom and dad are both working full time, raising three kids, homemade dinner on the table seven nights a week.
12:09 – You know, it was kind of like the super family where clearly mom was able to do it all and seemed to have her sanity intact the entire time.
12:12 – And so that was my model growing up.
12:15 – High bar, very high bar, very high bar.
12:17 – And I received so much love.
12:20 – I mean, it was just a wonderful household in which to grow up. Grow up.
12:28 – But I realize now, looking back, that that’s the idea of success, that I had in my mind was I can be everything to everyone.
12:32 – And be happy, at the same time.
12:34 – Yes. Right.
12:35 – So an impressive feat.
12:37 – It really is.
12:38 – It really is.
12:43 – My, My mother and father are both very impressive people, and my mom is a very impressive woman to this day.
12:49 – But, what happened then is as I got to medical school,
12:55 – or as I just graduated from college, I went and taught for a couple years, at a high school in Boston.
12:58 – To make up for some of my poor grades.
13:04 – And then I got into medical school, and while I was in medical school, again, I just succeeded.
13:12 – When I studied, I did well at things, and I have a pretty kind of, personable, extroverted personality.
13:15 – And so I was able to be really social.
13:23 – I was able to use alcohol to kind of relieve the stress and download, as some people, in my recovery
13:28 – meetings have called it, they just kind of would, you know, build up the stress during the week and then get super drunk on the weekends.
13:31 – And that was their way of relieving stress.
13:38 – And, you know, I was in a peer group that did that, but it didn’t get in the way of, studying or accomplishing anything.
13:42 – You can still you can still accomplish work. Yeah. Yeah.
13:46 – And then I met my, now husband when I was a third year medical student.
13:49 – And he, interestingly, is somebody who doesn’t drink.
13:51 – Used to go to raves, totally sober.
13:55 – He’s such an interesting guy.
13:57 – It’s it’s so bizarre to me.
14:02 – But he, you know, he was just somebody who was like, well, why would I want to change how I feel?
14:06 – We’re not laughing at you, Jeremy. No, not at all. Not at all.
14:09 – But he, you know, never smoked a cigaret. No. More like nothing.
14:13 – And so that didn’t really jibe with my.
14:15 – I go out and drink a fair amount.
14:18 – Life at that point. And so I adjusted it.
14:20 – And that wasn’t very hard for me.
14:27 – You know, we would go over to friends houses for dinner, and I remember thinking before going out over to the house,
14:28 – you know, gosh, it’s going to be great.
14:33 – I’m going to have a couple glasses of wine or some margaritas, and I can really relax.
14:38 – And having the glasses of wine and feeling relaxed, but also feeling like,
14:42 – this isn’t really, you know, the way that I was hoping to feel like there was that.
14:47 – Yeah, there was that anxiety that was building and that kind of internal discomfort.
14:52 – And I would look forward to the alcohol as a way of keeping the anxiety at bay.
14:58 – And I would, then enjoy the alcohol, but I, you know, I get pretty disinhibited when I drink.
15:01 – And so I really just get obnoxious.
15:03 – I’m sure you can’t do that.
15:04 – You’re obnoxious. Drunk.
15:09 – I am an obnoxious, even in noxious, you know, minimally intoxicated person.
15:13 – So my husband might say that there are times where I’m obnoxious, even not drunk, with nothing in my system.
15:16 – So, you know, it didn’t really.
15:19 – It wasn’t great for my, you know, for our relationship.
15:23 – When I was drinking on a regular basis, even at friends houses. Just a little bit.
15:26 – You didn’t like you, and you were acting that way. Yeah. Right. Right.
15:27 – And so I’d pull back.
15:29 – Because again, alcohol.
15:33 – I look forward to it. But it was really like, oh, there’s some relief coming.
15:37 – And then it never really delivered what I was hoping to get.
15:46 – And so, so then we, you know, I moved on through medical school and there was kind of some intermittent drinking, nothing.
15:48 – All that, you know, exciting or remarkable.
15:52 – And we got I got into residency, we got married.
15:55 – I was really kind of continuing to climb that ladder.
16:03 – And I think that the relief that I was looking for from alcohol that never got would come in spurts from achievement.
16:11 – So getting honors on a rotation in medical school, getting awards at medical school, graduation, getting into the residency I wanted.
16:17 – And then, you know, the great thing about residency is if you’re good at being a resident, you get an evaluation every month.
16:23 – And so then I would get evaluations every month, and I’d get this lovely external validation from my attendings.
16:27 – Do you remember how that felt? Oh my gosh. Yeah. And it’s, you know, and it’s a brief.
16:27 – Yeah.
16:32 – It’s a brief kind of happiness, you know, a little dopamine surge, but it feels good.
16:32 – Yeah.
16:34 – And then I
16:39 – would get, you know, praise from the patients that I was working with, and that was extremely fulfilling.
16:45 – But at the same time, you know, you can’t take those voices with you, telling you how wonderful you are.
16:47 – All the time.
16:51 – And so that discomfort still kind of creeps in at times.
16:52 – Yeah.
16:53 – And then you go back in
16:59 – and hopefully do a good job and somebody else tells you, you know, that you’re wonderful to work with or thank you, doctor or all of that.
17:04 – So still really using everybody else telling me I was good enough.
17:13 – To keep me feeling less anxious to deal with all of those emotions that I didn’t want to deal with.
17:21 – I have this other memory that, you know, looking back now especially that I’m working in this field is so powerful.
17:28 – In second year of residency, the psychiatry residents, do a group therapy experience together.
17:35 – So one evening a week, we all get together and there’s a psychologist who facilitates essentially a therapy group experience.
17:38 – Sounds great. Right? Says the psychologist.
17:42 – So, you know, I’m somebody who.
17:43 – And this is still a pattern.
17:48 – You know, one of my favorite defenses is just to make everybody else happy and keep everything okay.
17:53 – And so when people start complaining about, you know, the residency program or life, I’m very quick
17:59 – to see everybody else’s side as well and justify it and make everybody happy and make everything sound okay.
18:01 – I’m a fixer very much.
18:06 – And so I really played that role in the group,
18:11 – and never, never displayed anger or never really allowed anger to come up
18:18 – because I could always very easily see the other person’s point of view and so minimize dismiss my own feelings.
18:26 – And that is, you know, a very short term affective, way of keeping anger down, but does not really help in the long term.
18:27 – Right.
18:34 – And so this therapist who was running the group, towards the end of the year, the group was kind of getting ready to finish up.
18:39 – She must have decided that she needed me to get angry, or that she felt like that would be helpful.
18:41 – I did not know of this plan.
18:50 – So, it was a small group one evening, and, and this was looking back at somewhat inappropriate, way to make it happen.
18:55 – But she started saying things that, I think she anticipated would make me angry.
18:59 – Like, you totally provoked me. And I was the psychologist.
18:59 – The psychologist?
18:59 – Yeah.
19:04 – And I, I might I might still need to do some anger work on this later.
19:05 – Later?
19:08 – Later.
19:11 – But. So she was saying these things, and I did not get angry.
19:16 – I got really sad, right? I turned it, I couldn’t feel the anger towards her. Was too uncomfortable.
19:21 – I turned it in on my suppression, totally repressing, just crying these tears.
19:25 – I was one of those like, I don’t get angry, I start crying. Yes. Type of people.
19:32 – And so, you know, we finished that group therapy and I’m like, maybe a little frustrated with her.
19:35 – I would acknowledge, but not angry. That’s horrible.
19:39 – You weren’t feeling that? Yeah. And just really sad. Like, how could she.
19:41 – I feel so hurt and betrayed.
19:47 – And so then as the next week goes by, I start to actually get angry at her because how dare she say these things?
19:50 – And then they go crazy.
19:53 – And so then it really pisses me off that what she did worked
19:56 – gets my anger going even
20:02 – more because she it like it was like she got the power over you or something or know like you know that I, I feel like
20:11 – that was not an effective way to get me to see that I was repressing it and to get me to transform it into real anger and allow it out.
20:16 – But at the same time, it was effective in my case.
20:18 – And so I’m like, oh, damn it.
20:19 – Exactly.
20:23 – I hate it when psychologists are right. Oh,
20:26 – so that was actually effective. And it was a really interesting lesson.
20:31 – And she kind of talked me through that at the next group about why, you know,
20:36 – that happened and that didn’t really resolve any of my anger towards her because I was still pretty angry.
20:40 – But it definitely taught me, you know, a while ago.
20:41 – Oh, wow.
20:43 – This is what anger feels like now.
20:47 – I didn’t understand that there are sensations in the body that anger feels like.
20:49 – I just knew I could name that I was angry.
20:53 – Yeah. And I felt a lot of what I think was tension. Yeah, right.
21:00 – But it wasn’t really that anger that we work so hard to allow people to actually experience and then release.
21:00 – Right?
21:06 – Because once you feel the anger physically, then you don’t have to hang on to it because you’re not still trying to push it down.
21:14 – But that was a really formative moment for me when that I was allowed to actually say I was angry because we didn’t growing up.
21:14 – We didn’t do that.
21:20 – We didn’t really talk about anger or, you know, it was irritation or frustration, but it was just,
21:24 – you know, really minimized because you had this, this perfect household.
21:27 – People or parents are working so hard. Yeah.
21:29 – And there just wasn’t yeah,
21:36 – there’s wasn’t conflict growing up, which is a, you know, far better than, you know, the conflict in which a lot of other children grow up.
21:38 – Stream.
21:41 – Yeah. So I’m extremely grateful for that to some extent.
21:47 – But then I needed to learn as an adult how to handle, conflict and within myself, and then how to handle,
21:52 – you know, anger towards this therapist. So is this therapist especially,
21:54 – and, and that
21:59 – really, you know, didn’t get resolved until I can’t say it’s resolved, but, you know, I’m still working on that.
22:05 – And that didn’t really, become something that I was able to continue working on until, like, until I got to recovery.
22:12 – Because what happened is when I spent the next several years still using achievement to make me feel good enough,
22:18 – still using, titles and praise to make me feel feel good enough.
22:25 – And so when I was getting towards the end of residency, we had a child, this beautiful daughter that I have,
22:32 – who’s ten now, and, I had a C-section with her, because she just did not want to come out.
22:39 – She was a stubborn child then, and she’s still a little bit stubborn, which I glad she gets from me and not from her father.
22:41 – But. So after the
22:46 – C-section, I was given opioids, to help with the pain because it’s a major surgery.
22:53 – And I remember actually, in my early 20s, after college, I had that was my other exposure to opioids.
22:55 – I was,
23:01 – given a prescription of like 25 Percocet and for really severe ear infections.
23:07 – And I remember taking two every four hours and still being able to teach high school coach function.
23:12 – Completely. Is that the nobody effect? Yeah. No, no, no.
23:18 – I mean, a lot of people either would be super nauseated right at that dose or just totally spaced out.
23:21 – Like, I would sedate them and put them to sleep.
23:25 – You had this different kind of paradoxical.
23:28 – Well, not paradoxical. More just like a high tolerance. Okay.
23:34 – I mean, I think, you know, we see in people who develop an alcohol use disorder, they tend to have a higher tolerance.
23:36 – It takes more to get them intoxicated.
23:38 – And that’s very true for me.
23:41 – I just have a really baseline high tolerance for opioids.
23:43 – So I could take this high quantity.
23:45 – And I wasn’t feeling euphoric from it.
23:48 – I just was getting pain relief. I wasn’t using it.
23:52 – It wasn’t, like, energizing you to go do all these other. No offense.
23:53 – I didn’t notice it.
23:54 – It was more just you. Yeah.
24:01 – At that point I wasn’t abusing it, but I remember and I even left, like 5 or 10 in the bottle, you know, because I didn’t need them anymore.
24:06 – It was a very healthy use. It just indicated my high tolerance. Got you.
24:10 – And so fast forward to after the C-section.
24:13 – You know, I’m using the Vicodin that they prescribed me appropriately.
24:21 – We’re home with this beautiful newborn baby girl, and my husband goes back to work, and I’m off of work for eight weeks at that point.
24:28 – And I went into what I recognize now is this real withdrawal from praise and achievement,
24:33 – because, you know, newborn babies don’t tell you how wonderful you are.
24:35 – No, they don’t, they just pee on you.
24:42 – And you know, you know, make various parts of your body hurt more than they had before and exhaust you.
24:45 – And so I’m in this sleep deprived state.
24:48 – I’m still in pain.
24:51 – And I’ve got nobody telling me how wonderful I am.
24:54 – And, and that’s really what had been sustaining me.
25:00 – Like, I have no nothing to work towards except for keeping the small human alive
25:07 – and because of the way that my brain worked at that point, that was not enough to kind of keep me happy and motivated.
25:07 – Yeah.
25:13 – And so I noticed that when I would take the opioids for pain relief, they kind of made everything better
25:17 – and they kind of made everything more tolerable, more pleasant.
25:21 – It just felt better to be at home by myself with this little one. Right.
25:28 – And so that’s when I developed, you know, started this little habit of just, you know, 1 or 2,
25:34 – I wasn’t really impaired from them, would notice that, you know, whatever hole that, you know, we talk about
25:39 – in recovery circles a lot about kind of filling up this hole with the drugs or alcohol or behaviors.
25:45 – And it was just like the anxiety was there and it wasn’t even a physical anxiety.
25:50 – I was still keeping it at bay really effectively with my worrying and controlling behaviors.
25:56 – And there’s lots to control when you have a newborn or try to control at least and anything else
26:01 – that the achievement and all that external validation had been doing for me, the Vicodin did for me.
26:04 – I’ll just try to see everything. Okay.
26:08 – Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of scary. You know, I can see your I mean, you’re describing this like,
26:12 – very subtle entry of this drug.
26:13 – Totally.
26:17 – I mean, it was super subtle and it was like an immediate.
26:19 – Oh, this is it.
26:22 – Like, this is what I had been looking for
26:27 – when I was trying to relax with, you know, a couple drinks at the end of the day or at a dinner party.
26:30 – This is what I had been seeking.
26:35 – Wow. And as a physician, and this is, you know, gosh.
26:40 – Well, ten years ago. So, you know, it was easier to get opioids at that point.
26:46 – Both because I’m a doctor and so other doctors, you know, were like, well, of course you don’t have a problem.
26:49 – There’s no way you’re abusing it. You must have legitimate pain.
26:51 – So it’s easier to get at that point.
26:56 – And, you know, I have such a high tolerance that I don’t ever look intoxicated.
27:00 – I just look like my normal self.
27:04 – So that started a pattern that continued over the next,
27:07 – kind of 3 or 4 years
27:12 – of having access using more, and getting them either
27:17 – legally prescribed to me because I’m quite manipulative and, and I’m pretty good at getting what I want.
27:24 – And just for those of you who are listening, Tom is currently smiling and
27:27 – looking like I’m smiling and noting I’m just going to do it that way.
27:29 – Like I’m right there with you.
27:34 – So yeah, I think I know how to, you know, I can get what I want. At least I could at that time.
27:39 – And, and people didn’t really say no to me, at that point.
27:47 – And so as time went on and I finished residency training, I go on the faculty at this academic medical center,
27:53 – you know, and not one, but two and then three departments, which is just, you know, totally unnecessary.
27:57 – But like, I remember that thrill of, oh, another department wants me to be on there.
28:01 – Wait, this was after everything you just said about the birth.
28:03 – This was after I had Alice, my daughter.
28:03 – Yeah.
28:09 – You know, six months later, I graduate from residency and I get board certified in two specialties.
28:14 – I go on faculty. I’m harboring this, you know, little early addiction.
28:20 – And interestingly enough, I’m sitting on a committee at the hospital that is actually charged
28:25 – with taking care of physicians who have mental illness and substance use disorders.
28:30 – So I’m I’m getting this little addiction going, starting to realize, okay, this is this is unusual.
28:36 – Like, I think I think I’m developing a problem, but really being forced into not being forced into
28:41 – but forcing myself into denial because I’m sitting with a group of people
28:47 – who tell the doctors who get called or who ask for help what to do, and what am I going to do?
28:50 – Come before my peers and admit that I have a problem? You know?
28:58 – Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Bold Voices.
29:01 – And thank you, Doctor Katie Herz for sharing your story.
29:06 – Tune in next time to catch the second half of the story and find out what Katie decided to do.
29:14 – Don’t forget to listen to the end of this episode to hear sneak peek of an upcoming episode on Unlocking the Unconscious.
29:17 – I’m still working on it, but it’s going to be really good.
29:20 – Until next time, let me offer my usual shout out.
29:24 – Credit where credit is. Credit where credit is due?
29:25 – Dead professional.
29:27 – Thank you for that opening song, John Drexler.
29:30 – Thank you for the mini music.
29:31 – Here’s your problem.
29:35 – Thank you for more music. Paul Flores, thank you for your help and moral support,
29:41 – and for sharing your experience of unlocking for a future episode.
29:43 – And of course, thank you to our listeners.
29:48 – See you guys next time.
29:50 – Hey dude.
29:52 – Hey, check out bro.
29:53 – Hey, Kobe.
29:54 – What’s up?
29:58 – Hey, I got you on the the speakerphone here.
29:59 – You really?
29:59 – Yeah.
30:04 – I’m wondering in the locking of the unconscious and any amount of detail you’d like to share.
30:08 – Well, just essentially, it’s an experience of dreaming while you’re awake.
30:11 – I mean, that’s the only way to describe it.
30:19 – And I’ve never been high on LSD or used any other psychotropic kind of substance.
30:25 – But the experience I had with an unlocking seemed like it was probably similar.
30:28 – Wow. And,
30:32 – the circumstance was
30:40 – I got into dealing with a conflict with someone important in my life, and I was driving in my car,
30:49 – trying to experience my anger versus using defenses of devaluing or going getting really anxious with, say, smooth muscle anxiety.
30:52 – I was really trying hard to block my defenses and regulate anxiety.
30:56 – I kept oscillating between smooth muscle anxiety and defense.
31:01 – Self attack, for example. And
31:03 – after about
31:09 – 5 to 10 minutes of doing that while I was driving, my mind started to get these images
31:16 – that then just kept building, and the images were perfectly consistent with my upbringing.
31:25 – And the setting was the baseball field of my high school, which is the source of tremendous conflict for me.
31:28 – So I’m
31:33 – paying attention to my anger, and it’s deepening, and these images start to come into my mind.
31:39 – Conscious mind, of course, while you’re driving, while I’m driving, I’m awake and my my physiology starts to,
31:44 – you know, feel like I’m on fire or something, or like this lightness, this, like, euphoric feeling.
31:46 – I guess it’s a better way to describe it.
31:51 – Kind of like, Nirvana moments.
31:52 – What I’m looking for.
32:00 – So the more I deepen that, I just kind of fall into this trance and I, and I get this image of.
32:07 – So I’m at the baseball field of my high school and Canyon City, Colorado, my hometown, but it’s just me.
32:09 – But then I start to see my dad.
32:18 – These images of my dad wearing his baseball hat, wearing his shirt of our team, the Kansas City Tigers baseball team.
32:20 – You can see all this, like, clearly.
32:23 – Oh, so clearly.
32:27 – It’s like I’m there. It’s like I’m just dreaming. Yeah. It’s,
32:32 – the his physical movements, his facial hair, just like everything is there.
32:37 – He’s walking down the sideline in this, you know, next to the fence.
32:41 – And like, I’ve seen him do hundreds of times for.
32:43 – And then
32:47 – so this really clear image of my dad in his baseball hat
32:52 – and his shirt and him walking down with his camera because he’d always bring the camera.
33:01 – And then it jumps to he and I sitting on the bleachers together having a conversation.
33:08 – And just like reporting a dream, it’s it’s really hard to convey the images and the the emotional tone.
33:10 – Sure, the images.
33:13 – So recounting it right now, I’m already like, yeah, it’s not even doing it justice.
33:15 – Just like when you have a real dream.
33:21 – So, but we’re sitting there on the bleachers and I feel so safe with him.
33:24 – It’s an experience I’ve never had with my father.
33:28 – And and my conscious, my conscious life. I’m great.
33:34 – I’m crying because I feel so much joy over finally getting to meet the real dad.
33:39 – The dad who was safe and available to me on the baseball field and
33:42 – just while I’m driving.
33:46 – It’s it’s a total integration between my unconscious and my conscious life.
33:51 – I’m literally feeling the safety with him for the first time.
33:54 – But it’s the images from the unconscious.
34:00 – It’s my dad’s not actually there with me in the car, but my unconscious historic dad is.
34:03 – But in a in a in a healthy way.
34:06 – And so I’m just I’m just communing with my dad there on the bleachers.
34:10 – He’s really quiet, like he always has been. My dad’s a quiet guy.
34:15 – But the truth is that addiction is a killer, and you can defeat it by facing what you’ve been avoiding.
34:20 – It’s high time to get real about the feelings you ignore.
34:22 – But you can’t do that alone.
34:24 – From an alliance with the best team.
34:29 – Up with the doctors at Bold Health to build your capacity to bear those painful feelings.
34:31 – Get strong.
34:32 – Face the truth.
34:41 – Author your life Bold Health located in Encinitas, California or visit us online at Bold health Inc.com.