Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. Just came to the end of a long season for me of ridiculously huge major milestone anniversaries. The last one was just this past week on Friday, August 9th, 2024. I celebrated 30 years clean and sober, and I'd been looking forward to this day for years because when I had 27 years, 28 years, I was very aware that 30 years was coming up. On Friday morning when the day dawned, I woke up at five something am well before my alarm, and I lay there in bed in a very surreal state for a long time. I really felt suspended in time where I could feel myself then and now and at all the points in between. I want to talk to you today a little bit about the passage of time on a recovery journey because we just celebrated 10 years as a Bright Line Eating® community, and I've just spent time with so many of you before the luncheon that we had to celebrate. I had lunch, actual lunch out with Shauna Keele Murph and Bridget Leone and Shauna's daughter, Amy. Shauna and Bridget have been around for a while. They're free. They're so dedicated to their Bright Journey and so active in our community, and they're at the point now where they're measuring their Bright Journey in years, not days. The years are ticking by for them. We've got Lois Boyd and Linden and several others from that first Boot Camp 10 years ago who are coming up on 10 years of their Bright Line Eating journey. I want to share some reflections on the passage of time from the vantage point of 30 years of recovery.
I haven't taken a drink or a drug in those 30 years. I've been very blessed to get into recovery and not relapse. It's interesting that I have that experience because I also have the experience of for various times in my food recovery journey being a chronic relapser and I can't stop eating. I don't know that I'll ever get this or get this back again. Having both experiences is really helpful. It's interesting, and they both feel very true to me. I mean, I am not someone I know. There are people who identify themselves as food addicts after putting down drugs and alcohol, and they tie the two together. They don't think of themselves as clean and sober if they're eating sugar. I'm not one of those people. I think for me, maybe the depths of where I came from with drugs and alcohol and the profound nature of the transformation I had when I quit using drugs and alcohol, even though I was still using food, to me that recovery is real and true. I do not feel like I was still using drugs and alcohol because I was using food. For me, they felt really separate. But I think I was a pretty low bottom drug addict. I was really living in the underbelly of the night scene of people who use around the clock nonstop and the insanity, the lack of safety, just the horrific conditions and environment and the desperate need for money and just the scene of it all was really intense. It had become my world. I had dropped out of high school. I didn't have anything else in my life for a stretch of time other than very, very, very intense drug using. When I quit that and got a legitimate life, got a job at a movie theater, and went to community college, moved in with my mom again, and sort of pieced together a stable aboveboard life, that was a huge change. Even though I was still using food, and I gained a ton of weight really fast.
Anyway, so all that to say it really feels true to me that I've been consecutively clean for 30 years even though I've had other addictions. I think that maybe if you only have a food addiction might relate to that, right? If a screen addiction pops up, and now you're grappling with that, if you're Bright for five years when that happens, I don't think you would feel that that screen addiction invalidates your food journey, right? So anyway, on Friday, as I was thinking, I thought about it all day. I was thinking about my 30 years and this journey I've been on. The metaphor came to me of flipping a coin, that me getting 30 years clean and sober feels so improbable in some ways. It feels like I've been flipping a coin, and it just keeps coming up heads for 30 years.
As I sank into that analogy, a few things emerged. One is that the early coin flips were not 50 50. They were stacked against me. The earliest coin flips were miracles. It was an absolute miracle that the day that I hit bottom spiritually, emotionally, and in many ways physically, I mean, I'd been smoking crack for days, days upon nights, upon days upon nights. It was Tuesday morning and I'd been smoking crack around the clock all weekend. That's a physical bottom. I mean, that takes it out of you. No food, no water, no sleep for what, five days or something. One could say I was hitting a physical bottom, but I did that on the regular, like 5, 7, 8, 9-day runs were not uncommon for me. The bottom felt spiritual is what it felt. It didn't feel emotional actually. It felt spiritual. The essence of it, and this is a theme I want to talk about today, the essence of it was an identity thing. I sat there in that crack house with my blonde wig on my head. I don’t know why I was still wearing that wig because I don't even remember if I'd been out working as a call girl that weekend or in between. Maybe I had, I don't remember. I was still wearing the wig on my head and the vision that I got the message of it was a sudden crystal-clear awareness of the contrast between where I was in my life, who I had become on an identity level, crack addict, prostitute, high school dropout, repeated drug addict who'd tried to quit, cleaned up, tried to quit, gone back in cycles and cycles and cycles several times already in my young life at the age of 20, those pieces of my identity suddenly came out in stark relief against the pieces of identity that I had imagined for myself when I was a little kid. I'm talking 10, 11, 12 years old, when if you'd asked me what I wanted to be for a living, this was right after I gave up the notion that I would be an actress, which was what I wanted to be when I was a little kid. When I was 11 years old, I would've told you I wanted to be an astrophysicist. I wanted to get a PhD in astrophysics from Cambridge and an MBA from Harvard. I had a business thing in there. I wanted mad success at Ivy League and prestigious universities, and I wanted to go off and do something great in the world, and that was an identity thing. I thought of myself as a scientist, and I thought of myself as an academic at the age of 11.
I sat there in that crack house and my hopes and dreams for myself and my sense of identity that I'd always held, contrasted against the identity elements that I had thus far racked up in my life. The cognitive dissonance of it was so intense. It felt surreal. It felt like, how did I get here? What happened to me? Then the knowing came very, very clear. If you don't get up and get out of here right now, this is all you're ever going to be and your life from here until you die. A very, very long time from now will be cycles of cleaning up your act and then relapsing back into drugs and prostitution. That will be your life in endless painful cycles of nothingness from an identity standpoint, from a who you will be in the world standpoint. I knew that to be true. I wasn't about to die. I was about to live cycles of this into a very long, hopeless future. I picked up my jacket and I walked out the door.
So, that was the first coin flip, and that one felt maybe 50 50. Well, I mean, what are the odds that it would even dawn on me in that powerful away? But after it dawned on me, I had a choice point. What am I going to do with this knowledge? I sat there thinking about it, and then I chose, I remember choosing to get up I and walk out. That's the first coin flip. It came up heads. I walked out the door, then the improbability kicks in because I went to my friend Baltazar's house. I wasn't living with him, but I could sleep there sometimes. I had some clothes stashed there. I didn't have anywhere I was living at that time, not regularly. I slept and I showered, and I put my pager on my hip, and I felt better. I thought that I was just going to quit drugs and alcohol. I didn't think that I would have a hard time doing that. I thought that that's what I was doing. Now, I didn't know that I was an addict. I didn't know that I was an alcoholic. I didn't know that recovery existed. I didn't know that it wouldn't last. It would've lasted a couple of weeks maybe. I don't know.
But the next coin flip is that I had a date that night with this really, really cute guy that I'd met at a gas station a few nights prior. At two or three in the morning, wee hours of the morning, he'd gotten my phone number, and he took me to a 12-step meeting for drug and alcohol rehabilitation, a 12-step meeting that night on our first date. Now that coin flip feels way, way, way less than 50 50, right? The odds of that happening feel very, very slim. But it happened. And it happened because that guy had four years sober and he was a sex addict. So, he was picking me up, and he just liked going there to that meeting. It was a scene. It was the happenin’ place. It was where all the hip people went. It was two or 300 people in the basement of Grace Cathedral, and it was the happenin’ scene. He just brought me because that's what he did on Tuesday nights. He wasn't trying to help me. He was just wrapped up in his own world. Then he thought we would go out afterwards and have fun. It happened to be Tuesday night that I was free and that we went out. That's where we went to Tuesday downtown, this epic meeting in San Francisco.
So, that coin flip is ridiculously improbable. Then I flipped the coin again. I stayed clean and sober all week without any other meetings, without any other support just sitting on my hands. That guy took me back to that meeting next, the following Tuesday, and at my second meeting, I didn't get a week coin. I thought I was getting, I got a 24 hour coin the first night. I really liked that coin. I sort of held it and rubbed it and studied it and had it with me all week long. When I didn't get a week coin for my efforts, I was pretty horrified and despondent and shocked at the thought that I had to get 30 days to get my next coin. But that was another coin flip. I made it that first week, sitting on my hands, not working a program, not getting support, not doing anything. The coin flips continued on and on and on, and they just keep coming up heads. As I was reflecting on Friday about this metaphor of making it through early recovery, feeling like flipping a coin, and it is just so improbable, addicts by and large tend not to get clean and stay clean.
Food addicts by and large tend not to rack up consecutive Bright days. Sometimes they do. We've got people in our community who've been doing it for years. Statistically speaking, they're the minority, but they're a significant minority. They're a solid minority. If you're a 100 percenter, if you're a crystal vaser, if you haven't broken your Bright Lines, I see you. I love you. I honor you, and I know that it's not trivial and it's not easy. It's not. Just because you have a few years sparkly Bright doesn't mean that the food doesn't call sometimes. It doesn't mean that you're different or special than anyone who's having to make it through a day bright, right? It does get easier though. The metaphor that I like to think about here is that what happens over time is that you take actions that weight the coin in your favor. Because today, I'll tell you, I don't wake up and feel like I'm flipping a coin, and maybe I'll stay clean and sober, and maybe I won't. It feels like, I don't want to say a certainty, but it feels very, very solid that I'm going to stay clean and sober today. It's not a 50 50 coin flip. The reason for that is that yesterday and the day before and the day before, and last year and the year before that, I have taken so many actions to weight the coin that when I flip it, it's going to come up heads. Now, it may not.
I'm still flipping a coin. It may not. But the coin is very weighted at this point. The actions that I took over the years changed my identity. I am now someone who identifies as a recovering addict, alcoholic, clean, and sober in recovery. I do not drink. I do not do drugs. I do not eat sugar and flour. I weigh and measure my food. I eat three meals a day. I don't eat bites, slicks, or tastes in between. I don't play Russian roulette with my food. I don't do anything with my food that would disrupt my peace. I saw someone at the family, not the family reunion, at the luncheon that we held for the 10-year anniversary. She had tattooed on her foot a saying. I believe it said, “If the cost is my peace, it's too expensive.” If the cost is my peace, it's too expensive. She had “expensive” underlined in tattoo ink. Too expensive. I relate to that. That is what I do. Last night, I went out to dinner with my family. The salad came and I tossed it, and I'm thinking, I get six ounces of salad and my food plan right now, six ounces of cooked, six ounces of raw at luncheon and dinner. I tossed it up and I thought, I think that's a little too much salad. We were in a cafeteria style environment. I picked up my bowl, I brought it over to the trash can, and I just, with my fork just flicked, I don’t know, 25, 30% of that salad out of the bowl and into the trash. Then I came back to the table. At that point, my salad might've been a little light, but I think it was about right, and I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to be thinking, did I have two extra ounces of salad? Because if the cost is my peace, it's too expensive. That thought was my salad a little heavy tonight. I don't ever want to walk out of a restaurant situation or a cafeteria situation having that thought, maybe, did I eat too much food? If that thought starts to come up while I'm eating, I take more food off. I didn't have a side plate at the time, so I went to the trash and I just put it into the trash before I finished. I've tried to trust that I'll leave some behind. Yeah, it's not the best move. It's better for me just to get it off my plate so I can finish my food in peace.
I have an identity now that is so strong that today picking up is a thought train that starts to think, could I change my identity so that I pick up and it would be okay, could I? I've had that thought train before. I think a few years ago I considered picking up alcohol. I remember really going down, it was a mental exercise, of imagining myself drinking alcohol responsibly and safely, having it work, and then having to rearrange my identity. Who would I be then? I brought it all to David, and he basically said, I said, “What do you think? Do you think that's a reasonable experiment to try?” He was like, no, no, no. I was surprised. I thought I'd made such a convincing case. He was like, no, no. I was like, you don't think it'll work? He's like, no. I was like, okay. He really snapped me out of it. But if I think about picking up today, there's Parts of me that have to undo years of identity work to even make it make sense to do that because my identity now is very strong. Not to say there aren't Parts of me that want to undo it and rethink it. For sure, there are. And that week, that month, whenever that was a few years ago, the coin flipped again and it came up heads, thank you, David. It came up heads.
I woke this Friday feeling like it was a miracle of tightrope walking, that all of those coin flips had come up heads. I want to share a little bit about the passage of time. If you're one of these beautiful, amazing people, all the people in our community are beautiful, amazing. But right now, I just want to speak to the people who are Bright, who are on this path and who are watching time pass time and recovery takes time. Time takes time. That's a saying. Time takes time. You don't get 30 years, you don't get five years. You don't get one year Bright without putting in some time. It's not something you can do all at once fast and a big Herculean effort. It takes time. But the time passage of recovery is not linear at all. It seems like mostly it's logarithmic, meaning the early days take forever.
As you put in more time, the time that it takes to get that time takes less time. Then when you get a decade or two out, the years tick by shockingly quickly. What it feels like, honestly, is that you're getting credit for not dying. It just feels stupid like, oh, here's another year. Here's, here's another five years. You're busy living your life, and suddenly you're just being gifted. More years, more years, more years. That's what it feels like. But the early days take forever. I mean, the time it takes to get your first 100 days of Bright Line Eating is several eternities packed into there because you're changing everything about how you live and how you think of yourself and how you relate to family and how you structure your days. There's so much focus that it takes to undo all your old habits and create new habits. And many, many, many, many coin flips in those first 100 days. Sometimes it feels like several coin flips a day, right? So many choice points where you could choose differently, go off the rails. The way you make it through is by taking mad action to weight the coin. Every day. Every day you got to weight the coin. If a few hours go by and you haven't done a few things to weight the coin, it could come up tails. You don't want it to come up tails. You're just doing everything you can to weight the coin. That's how you get through. But it's an eternity that it takes to get those first 100 days. Then to get the first year, it feels like you're a reborn person at the end of a year. I mean, to go through every season, every season of holidays, of birthdays, of picnics, of events, all the way through the seasons. It's just miraculous to make it that full trip around the sun. Then when you do it again and you get to two years, you kind of start to feel like you know what you're doing now. I mean, the coin flips at this point. If you're really doing it and you're in the game waiting, the coin really working a program now, a little bit of swagger comes into play because people are coming in new and you know what they're going through and you know how it works. You're not desperately flipping the coin praying. It comes up heads every day. It feels like you're getting a lot of those days for free almost. It's, whew, it gets a lot easier.
Now, I'm assuming you're working a program here. If you have let your foot off the gas, maybe that's not going to be your journey, but that's not the journey of a 100 percenter. If you're not still working a program between one and two years, you're not making it squeaky clean Bright to two years, right? Then when you start to get to 5, 7, 10 years, you start to experience some of what I'm experiencing, which is it feels like crazy town. It feels like so much time has passed that you can't even fathom. You're such a different person. You're such a different person. When you reflect on it, when your anniversary milestones come around, it just feels like you're in this incredible state of grace. You're walking this improbable path and getting to experience bounties that feel almost too good to be true. It's like, pinch me. Really? This is my life. I'm just Bright and in my right-size body and peaceful and living this life now, and I was on that path before and now I'm just on this path. Can it really be this good? Then the years start to tick by really, really, really, really fast, and 10 years turns into 20 years, certainly in less time than it took to get that first year. Now, how that works, I don't know, but I'm just telling you, that's my experience. It's not linear at all.
The last thought I want to leave you with is that I think the secret to staying willing to weight the coin as much as it takes to actually get something like 30 years in recovery without a break, the secret is to absolutely fall in love with the growth that you experience on the journey, and pour yourself into each new challenge of stretch, of growth, of change, whether it's working on your marriage, whether it's addressing that next addiction that comes up, whether it's caffeine or screen time or whatever it is, whether it's stretching into some new field of professional achievement, getting a new degree or certification or changing, opening up a coaching practice, or changing what you're doing in terms of your impact and purpose in the world. There's always a new layer, a new frontier of growth and change. When you stay fresh and green and you're growing from that growing tip, that's where the green, beautiful tender shoots come out. You're in it that way, savoring the journey and becoming, always, becoming not stagnant, not complacent, but growing and serving and grateful. When you stay engaged like that, you're doing what it takes to weight the coin with the foundation of all the habits, keeping your food really clean, really simple. If the cost is my peace, it's too expensive. Really, really doing it that way. If you're a 100 percenter, if you're a crystal vaser, if you've gotten 100 days a year, two years, five years, seven years, nine years up in this Bright Journey, or if you've had some rocky times and now, you're back solidly Bright, you're a miracle. You're such a miracle. I honor you and your journey today, and I honor the time that it's taken to get the time that you have. Time takes time, and it's worth it. So worth it. Thank you for being on this journey with me. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
