#120 – Teri Homan

Lesbian & Recovering Gambling Addict Discusses Battle Against Clinical Depression

Teri Homan is an award-winning filmmaker and solo piano composer who received her bachelor of arts in social work in 1991 and holds a master’s degree in IT Management. She identifies as a lesbian, is twice divorced, and has two children. Teri is known for her compassion and sense of humor and considers herself a life-warrior who manages three different, but intertwined recovery journeys – childhood and adolescent trauma, mental illness, and gambling. 

Teri’s battle with mental illness is a tumultuous experience. At a young age, Teri’s mother had her committed to a psychiatric hospital. In her 30’s she was diagnosed with severe clinical depression, and about four years ago, Teri hit rock bottom when she spent all of her rent money at a casino. 

As a result, Teri entered treatment for gambling and started therapy and EMDR. Today, Teri works regularly with a shaman to promote physical and spiritual health.

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Episode Transcript

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Coming up on this episode of The Courage To Change.

Teri Homan:

I only left the casino when I had to. Either when I was out of money or I had to be someplace. And so if I had money in my pocket when I left, I thought I was golden. Unfortunately I did win a jackpot once.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Why do you say unfortunately?

Teri Homan:

Because then I was chasing that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Hello beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage To Change, A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame and I am your host. Today we have Teri Homan. Teri is a filmmaker and solo piano composer who received her bachelor of arts in social work in 1991 and holds a masters degree in IT management. She identifies as a lesbian, is twice divorced, and has two children. Teri is known for her compassion and sense of humor and considers herself a life warrior who manages three different but intertwined recovery journeys. Childhood and adolescent trauma, mental illness, and gambling. Teri’s battle with mental illness has been a tumultuous experience. At a young age, Teri’s mother had her committed to a psychiatric hospital. In her 30s, she was diagnosed with severe clinical depression. And about four years ago Teri hit rock bottom when she spent all her rent money at a casino. As a result, Teri entered treatment for gambling and started therapy and EMDR. Today Teri works regularly with a shaman to promote physical and spiritual health. Teri’s in the house.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I had a great time talking to Teri. She has some serious nuggets of wisdom. I think we talk about a lot of the nuggets of wisdom towards the end of the episode and there’s a lot in here that I believe people who grew up in an alcoholic home, particularly alcoholic father, might relate to. And I always love representing and having people come onto the podcast who are adult children of alcoholics because I believe this is something not usually treated in our society. And so when people here oh, I was an adult child of an alcoholic and that there are these traits that people who have this experience grow up with and they’re coping mechanisms in their childhood but they turn out to be maladaptive behaviors as they get older. I know several individuals who have heard someone’s story and realized they were an adult child of an alcoholic and that there is a program called ACA for people who struggle with this. So without further ado, please enjoy Teri Homan. Episode 120. Let’s do this.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re listening to The Courage to Change, A Recovery Podcast. We are a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Teri, welcome.

Teri Homan:

Thank you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Excited to have you and excited to hear your story. We always start with a haircut picture. Now, your picture, the one that we posted on Instagram with your episode so people can go check it out there. Tell me about the picture that you gave us.

Teri Homan:

I gave you my kindergarten picture.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

They put different ages into it, right?

Teri Homan:

Well, it’s from a collage that I did.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Teri Homan:

The one in the middle is my kindergarten picture and my mom cut my hair. You know, like they do.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

As they do. Love that. And tell me about what’s going on for little Teri at this age in this photo in kindergarten. What’s home life like at this time?

Teri Homan:

Pretty awful. So at the age of right around four, I had a bunch of life saving surgery. And so my very first memory is of the inside of a hospital. And it all worked and I’m fine so that’s all really good but my dad was a pretty big alcoholic. Very violent. And my mom didn’t really do anything about that. So she wasn’t protecting us from him. I knew in kindergarten that I was a lesbian. I knew there was something different about me and I also knew that that wasn’t okay. In a variety of settings I was raised very strict Roman Catholic and totally not okay in the ’70s to be gay.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So your dad being alcoholic and mom not doing anything about it, this is a common theme often for women who marry alcoholics and have children with them. Did your dad … Was he violent with you? Do you have siblings? Was he violent with all of you? Your mom?

Teri Homan:

Not my mom, just us. I have an older sister. She’s a year older than I am and I have a younger brother. He is three years younger than I am. And apparently when I was right around five my dad hit my mom once. And she told him if he ever did it again that should would leave him. But somehow it was either okay to be violent with us or some other variable. I kind of don’t understand it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Do you think that she felt like it was discipline? Like in her head she marked it off as he’s the disciplinarian?

Teri Homan:

Yeah I do. I do. Still not okay.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. No. Not okay.

Teri Homan:

And so as a five year old, that atmosphere … Abused kids don’t stop loving their parents.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s right.

Teri Homan:

They stop loving themselves.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s right.

Teri Homan:

And so that’s how I grew up.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Teri Homan:

Very, very chaotic. Very loud. Very violent. And then we moved up to northern Minnesota, which was something straight out of The Shining. I swear to god. My parents bought an inn with the intention of opening it and renting out rooms and serving meals and all of that. Apparently they really got kind of screwed over on the deal and we got evicted like six months after we moved up there. And so we ended up a couple of miles down the road being caretakers for somebody’s summer home. I’m not really sure what it was but it was an old, old house. And so by that point I was 14 and my mom decided that she was going to “go down to the twin cities and find work”, but what was really happening is that she was leaving my dad. And that was right around the time of my first suicide attempt a couple of days before my 14th birthday.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was the thought process that at 13 caused you to attempt suicide?

Teri Homan:

The whole situation with my parents felt really hopeless. I felt really worthless and helpless. That I didn’t have any power anywhere. And so I was having a lot of stomach aches and my mom took me to the doctor and the doctor said, “Yeah, it’s nerves. Here, take this.” And gave me an enormous bottle of a drug called Donnatal which is just a sedative essentially. I don’t even think they use it anymore. And so I had them and I was at school waiting for my dad to pick me up and I called him because he wasn’t there and he was at home and he said something like, you can wait until I drop off your sister at whatever time, like six and this was at like 3:30 or 4:00. He was kind of nasty and gross and so I hung up the phone and I was like, “You know what? That’s it. I don’t know how to do this.” So I went to the drinking fountain. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to swallow a bottle of pills at a drinking fountain.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No, I have not.

Teri Homan:

It’s really not very easy.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That sounds very difficult.

Teri Homan:

And sheer force of will, I took the whole bottle so probably 50 pills. And when he came to drop my sister off he failed to wait for me. So this is a couple hours later. I’m pretty f’ed up by this point. So in March, in northern Minnesota I left school. I don’t know where I thought I was going. And I came across a church that was open.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And this is while you’re overdosing basically?

Teri Homan:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Teri Homan:

So I went into the church, I sat in a pew, and I just started bawling. I just wept and wept and wept and just said, “Please God, let me live.” It didn’t occur to me to get myself to a hospital.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Naturally.

Teri Homan:

So I don’t know how long I sat in that pew but then I went to the back of that church and fell asleep up against a radiator and the priest, a Catholic priest, woke me up the next morning and said, “Have you been here all night?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You need to call your dad and tell him where you are.” So I called my dad and he came to get me and I gave him the empty bottle of pills and he took me to a friend’s house. He didn’t take me to the hospital. That was not on his radar screen for whatever reason. And my friend’s mom called the hospital. They apparently said, “Okay, first of all, she’s not supposed to be alive at this point.” Because of the sheer amount that I took. And, “Wake her up. She should not sleep today.” And I remember that it was during lunch because we had green jello and fish sticks for dinner. But she woke me up every 15 minutes. I kept dozing off. And I just was pissed. Let me sleep. And then nothing happened after that. Nobody noticed. It was really strange.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

When you’re describing it, it’s almost insult to injury because it’s like you do this thing like I can’t take it anymore, you take these pills, dad doesn’t notice or doesn’t … Then you go to the church, nothing happens there. Then you fall asleep at the back of the church, the priest says call your dad and dad isn’t even looking for you so he doesn’t care again. And then you had to give him the bottle, say, “I tried to commit suicide.” Like wave a flag. And then he took you to someone else’s house to deal with it. It’s like insult to injury. There’s this lack of showing you that he cares.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. And I found out years later that apparently they had had the police out looking for me from northern Minnesota to Minneapolis thinking I had run away but I was actually in a church.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Your mom committed you to a psych hospital. Did that have anything to do with the attempted suicide? Tell us about the psych hospital and being committed to that as a teenager.

Teri Homan:

That happened about a year and a half later. My mom sent me to a psychiatrist who was about 150 years old and completely out of touch with teenagers. Like just unbelievably out of touch and so I wouldn’t talk to her. And because I wouldn’t talk to her and I was really starting to form my identity as a lesbian I had not even really come out to myself at that point because it was so not okay but my mom apparently had several conversations with my sister and she was not very kind about the fact that I was gay. And so it was her hope that I would get fixed after she committed me for three months. So the combination of not talking to a psychiatrist and pretty clearly gay from outward appearances landed my ass in the hospital, yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And was it the psych unit of a big hospital? You stayed for three months.

Teri Homan:

It was the adolescent psych unit of a big hospital and that was in the early ’80s. And so the treatment method at that point was to strip you of all your defenses and then build you back up.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yep.

Teri Homan:

And we now know that that was a really shitty, shitty model for anybody to ever …

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yep. I’ve been to that. They did that in a program I went to in Utah. It’s awful. It’s an awful experience.

Teri Homan:

It’s terrible. And so they successfully stripped me of any defenses that I had. And it took them three months and then they sent me back to the same shitty living situation. And then I felt like I had no way to cope.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Because you didn’t want to go back so now there’s this experience of not wanting to go back but everything is the same so you come back with the trauma of … Now we’ve compounded the issue right? And there’s fear of that. Fear of the hospital, fear of getting help. Did they talk about fixing you of being a lesbian in the psych hospital at all?

Teri Homan:

It wasn’t an overt conversation. I do recall that the staff generally speaking was pretty homophobic. Comments. Don’t touch the other girls. Like not even for a hug. It was just gross. So not only was I stripped of every defense that I had which made me exponentially more vulnerable. My mom came at me with, “Do you know how much it f’ing cost me to put you in the hospital?” And I’m like okay, not my choice.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Teri Homan:

Not my deal.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Let me tell you, you are barking up the wrong tree.

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [0:16:32]

Teri Homan:

So at that point there was a man living with us that she said was a boarder and he was pretty gross. Like he was sleeping with my mom and making moves on my sister. It was gross. And he was awful. He drank heavily, yelled and screamed and some of my trauma that I deal with is from him. He was very into really f’ing with my head.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What did that look like?

Teri Homan:

So that looked like … So my sister and I have kind of … We called them grilling sessions. So it’d start out sitting at the kitchen table. It was always around the kitchen table. And he would say something like, “You’re being fake today and I don’t like it.” And I always started out pissed off. I was like, “F off. Who the hell are you?” And he would just go at it and at it and over and over and over and I would always end up crying and apologizing. And this went on for hours. This is not a 20 minute thing. The longest time period that this happened was eight hours.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Wow.

Teri Homan:

Like it started at 8:00 at night and it went well into the morning. And I would just walk around in this fog for days afterwards and as soon as that fog started to lift it would happen again. And so my favorite place to be was work because it was out of there. Like I started working when I was 14.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So you could get out of the house.

Teri Homan:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, and my mom was charging me rent.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. So tell me, you come out as a lesbian at 16 at the height of the aids crisis and continue to struggle with what comes to be diagnosed as clinical depression. The clinical depression is probably a thread throughout your entire story. This depression gets so bad that you cannot work and then you turn to gambling. Will you tell us a little bit about how that went? You did get electric … Oh my gosh. ECT.

Teri Homan:

Shock therapy.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Shock therapy basically in a hospital. I don’t think they do that that much anymore. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Teri Homan:

Sure. So in 2002 I crashed emotionally. I had been crying uncontrollably for several weeks. I had been seeing a therapist and she said, “I think you need to be on medication.” And so the first person that I encountered mental health stigma from was myself. I didn’t want to go on medication. I felt like it made me weak.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. That’s a common thing.

Teri Homan:

So I started medication and the suicidality got pretty bad after I started medication. So those warning labels.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I haven’t met anyone who’s had that experience but I have heard about it.

Teri Homan:

It’s pretty horrible. It’s just a downward spiral in your brain, in your heart, and you can’t escape it. So I got actively suicidal and was afraid to go into my house. And this was before really the prevalence of cellphones so I ran into the house, grabbed a phone, and locked the door behind me so I was on the front porch. And I called a friend and I said, “I’m not okay. I want to die. I can’t do this anymore.” She said, “Call your doctor.” And so I called my doctor. Well, I called my doctor’s office and they put me on hold. She answered the phone and she said, “Hello?” And I didn’t say anything and she said, “Hello?” And I said, “I can’t do this anymore.” And she said, “Oh jeez, hang on just a second.” And she put me on hold. And I was like this is my life.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s wonderful. Please hold.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. So long story short I saw my doctor and she said, “You need to be in a hospital.” And then when I got to the hospital it was a different doctor because she didn’t have her privileges at that hospital. And so he said, “I think you need ECT.” And at that point I kind of didn’t care.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah. Like whatever. If it’s going to fix me let’s do this.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. Let’s do it. And I remember fighting with the nurse while I was sitting in the chair waiting to get anesthetized for the ECT with my arms. Fighting with her and saying, “Put me to sleep forever. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Teri Homan:

And so that was a month in the hospital with ECT and then I had some out patient ECT. And at that point they were still doing both sides of the brain. Now typically they only do one or they use a different technology altogether. But I lost my short term memory completely. I had to be kind of supervised all the time. I could turn on the stove to make some tea and leave and forget.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How helpful of them.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. So it was 12 years before I worked again.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh my god. As a result of the ECT?

Teri Homan:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And the medication journey and it took us two years to find the right cocktail and then I got re-diagnosed as bipolar which was inaccurate and so I was mis-medicated for 10 years. And about five years ago, six years ago I got reassessed and they said, “We don’t see any bipolar.” And so they took me off the mood stabilizers and I’ve been super stable since then.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, the irony.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But in the middle of this you’re getting married.

Teri Homan:

In the middle of it I was married.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You were married, yeah.

Teri Homan:

I was married. And sadly that relationship did not endure. There was a dynamic that was created between the two of us that was she took control over everything like money and shopping and driving because I couldn’t do any of that stuff for a period of time and we were not ever able to level that back out.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Yeah. But it was a 22 year marriage. I mean it was a long-

Teri Homan:

It was a 22 year relationship, yes. And we had-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Teri Homan:

Two beautiful children that I can’t imagine my life without.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s a big part. You had community. You had people who were in your corner. When did the gambling start as an outlet?

Teri Homan:

So I left that 22 year relationship because I didn’t like the way that I was being treated. The first 19 years were pretty good but the last three sucked ass. I got remarried a few years later and my … First of all, I got married for the wrong reasons. I needed heart surgery and I was afraid of dying alone. Which now I realize is-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

While those may be the wrong reasons, it’s not exactly inconceivable that-

Teri Homan:

Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You know what I mean? Okay, you had a coping mechanism that you didn’t want to be alone so you got … Okay. That’s understandable.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. So my second wife was a gambler and it is my firm belief that she is a gambling addict. And so I learned how to gamble from an addict.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. What was her … Do gambling addicts have a favorite game that they’re really good at?

Teri Homan:

She liked to play the slots.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. Okay.

Teri Homan:

So it’s all random “luck”. And at that time I was also taking a drug called Abilify.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Usually for bipolar.

Teri Homan:

It’s actually an antipsychotic but it has antidepressant properties to it and so it was just an augment to the antidepressant that I was taking. And I was at a higher dose of that and there is a huge body of evidence that links gambling addiction to Abilify.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Interesting.

Teri Homan:

It plays on the same part of your brain that addictions happen in. So I had those two things going for me. A gambling addict for a wife. I had never gambled before I met her.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. It’s how it happens.

Teri Homan:

Exactly how it happened. And so it started small and it just increased in frequency to where I felt like I needed it. And I wasn’t aware at the time that my Abilify was playing a role. It really, really drives cravings to pretty high level.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How helpful for an antidepressant.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Just what a clinically depressed person needs is the part of their brain that gambles activated. That’s really helpful.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. Really f’ing helpful.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Really f’ing helpful. What did your gambling look like? So I’m a person who when I go to a casino and I win $5, I turn around and go oh, got to walk. Like I won. I got to leave. Like I’m so … The mentality is so scary to me because it’s not … To me, I’m like they’re just taking my money. I didn’t have an experience. I’m not paying for an experience. I’m not paying for an object. And my brain does not compute the experience of playing as what you’re buying. I’m like I don’t care to buy this experience but that’s what you’re buying. You’re buying the experience right? And it doesn’t translate for me. So I had a roommate who was a gambling addict and the very end she was always at the casino. We lived in Arizona so there was an Indian casino nearby. At the end I took a picture of her son in a frame, never forget this, and walked up to the table she was playing blackjack on and slammed it on the table. And she’s screaming f you, blah, blah, running out of there. So I saw glimpses of what that looks like but I’ve heard that it can totally vary.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So your gambling addiction, what did that look like?

Teri Homan:

At the time, I told myself a lot of different things. Like oh, just is just how I blow off stress.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Teri Homan:

Or oh, it’s an escape. Or whatever. Incidentally that marriage did not last long. It was terrible.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It was a bad gamble.

Teri Homan:

It was a bad gamble. Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

A bad bet.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. Well said. So I was going to the casino two or three times a week at the height of it. It wasn’t every day because I didn’t make a lot of money and so it was rare that I would leave with money. I very often won but I left it all there. I would spend it all. And it was like … I went through treatment for gambling and we can talk about that in a minute, but I had what he described, what that counselor described as a gambling blackout which is not remembering taking out as much money as I did. Because I would do it in small amounts but I would keep going back and back and back and back. And all night long until there was nothing in my account.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And then what? Then what do you do when you run out of money?

Teri Homan:

Then you go home and you … Well, I just shit on myself. I just was like, “Oh how could you do this? That was your rent money. What the hell?” And then I swear it’ll never do it again. And then a week later after I get paid, I’m back at it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.

Ashley Jo:

Hi. It’s Ashley Jo, producer of The Courage to Change, and I wanted to chime in and let you know about our new mobile app, Lionrock Life. It is now available for download on your phone or tablet from the app store or the Google play store. So here’s the download on the app. The app is designed to streamline your online recovery experience, allowing you to view live meetings in progress, join meetings quickly, and build stronger connections in recovery. So whether you’re newly sober, have many years in recovery, or you’re in recovery for something other than drugs or alcohol, the Lionrock Life mobile app has a space for you. On the app you’ll find alternative recovery meetings and traditional meeting offerings. We have everything from recovery fellowship, to community workshops, LGBTQIA+, women’s meetings, men’s meetings, 12 step meetings and more. With over 75 meetings on our weekly schedule, you’ll find a meeting that meets your individual needs. And with the app, you can personalize your recovery experience, join with privacy in mind, and recover with the support of an incredible community. Join us and find inspiration for a lifetime of recovery by downloading the Lionrock Life mobile app today. If you have questions or need help simply visit Lionrock.life/mobile-app. Thanks.

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [0:31:46]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So what’s the high? Is it like you walk into the casino and you smell the cigarette carpets? Is it a visceral? What’s the high for you?

Teri Homan:

The high was winning. Chasing was the high.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So them celebrating. So them saying you won or like that moment that they tell you or that the machine tells you you won. Because as soon as you get the money … It’s a rollercoaster so you’re paying to get back on. Here’s the problem with being a gambling addict. That’s a really short window. If I do some cocaine at least depending on how good it is, at least it’s going to give me some time or whatever. You eat an edible you’re going to be done for a day. Your high is like 30 seconds.

Teri Homan:

If that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

If that. And then you’ve got to buy back in. I mean, frankly it’s not a very good bet on … What’s the word I’m thinking of? Not a good return on investment.

Teri Homan:

Investment. Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. Exactly. The high was … There are no clocks in a casino. You don’t know what time it is ever. I would gamble all night long until I had to go to work the next morning. And I only left the casino when I had to. Either when I was out of money or I had to be someplace. And so if I had money in my pocket when I left I thought I was golden. Unfortunately I did win a jackpot once.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Why do you say unfortunately?

Teri Homan:

Because then I was chasing that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How much was the jackpot?

Teri Homan:

Just a little over $2,600.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay.

Teri Homan:

Which for me-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

After taxes.

Teri Homan:

Well, before taxes, yeah. And so I chased that for a year. And those things are random. The algorithm for slot machines is random. There’s no way to predict when a machine is going to pay off. And so you’re constantly chasing, chasing, chasing. And it was … Let’s see, it’s 2021. Three or four years now that I went through treatment for gambling and I didn’t find it very helpful.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was the bottom that had you-

Teri Homan:

The bottom was that I spent my rent money. I spent all of my money. So I couldn’t buy food, I couldn’t put gas in my car, I couldn’t pay my rent. And it was devastating financially and had been for a while. I took out a personal loan to help pay off my debts. And I’m still paying that off. So treatment was really educational in terms of what happens to the brain during addiction. And incidentally, in the state of Minnesota gambling addiction treatment is free. Every time they sell a lottery ticket a percentage of that money goes into a fund for gambling addiction so nobody ever has to pay for it. And how could you?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes. That’s a great point.

Teri Homan:

So it was educational and I appreciated that. But it didn’t get really to the heart of the issue. And I thought to myself, this isn’t going to go away until I can figure this out. What am I chasing really? So my doctor lowered my Abilify way down and the cravings kind of stopped and it’s only been really recently, like in the last month, that I have actually gotten to what I call the kernel. So in computer programming the absolutely core of an operating system is called the kernel. And when you f with the kernel the whole operating system gets screwed up. And so I feel like touching the core now is … It informs everything that I do. It informs all of my relationships. It informs my relationship with myself, my relationship with money, my relationship with my friends, all of it. Because what I’ve actually been chasing is the validation that I’m lovable. Because as an abused child I stopped loving myself, not my parents. And I’m 54 years old now. I think it’s time that my parents are accountable. I don’t talk to my mom anymore.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

How did you make that decision?

Teri Homan:

I sent her a letter last January and I was asking for accountability. She was pretty mean. She did things like when I was 15 she told me I was a mistake. And as a parent I can’t think of any circumstance I would utter those world to my child. She came at me with the hospital bill and just consistently tearing me down to a small version of myself. And so I asked for accountability and her response was pretty lame. She was like, “Well, I did the best that I could and don’t send me anymore letters.” It paled in comparison to what I needed her to say.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Interestingly though, you were going to the desert looking for water, right?

Teri Homan:

Right.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

She had already proven that there’s some accountability there when we go to people who aren’t capable of giving us what we need and never have been and we ask them for what we need and they still can’t give it to us. That’s also something I often say. You don’t go to the desert looking for water.

Teri Homan:

Yep. And so I felt like for whatever reason I needed to give her a chance to weigh in and she didn’t take it. And so I just said, “Do you know what? The fact that you don’t want to know how I feel is heartbreaking to me and I will always love you but I no longer want a relationship with you.” And this huge weight just lifted from my shoulders and she hasn’t tried to get in contact with me and that’s fine.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s interesting to me that it’s your mother who … And actually when I think it through I get it. But that it’s your mother that where the pain and that situation and that weight gets lifted lies because your dad was the one that was being violent and abusing. But there’s this … My guess is that dad was doing what dad does which is he’s an alcoholic, he’s acting out, anger, whatever. But mom was watching and letting it happen. And there’s something about when you’re in a situation like that about the person who let it happen, who didn’t save you that feels worse than the abuser.

Teri Homan:

Yes. And when I was I’m going to say 15, my dad came to me and said, “I quit drinking. If there’s ever anything from the past that you need to talk to me about I want you to do that.” And so we did. And he apologized and took responsibility for his actions. We don’t really talk now. He’s very fundamentalist in his religious beliefs and so being a lesbian doesn’t really fall under those people who are saved. He told me I’m going to hell and I said that’s fine. I don’t believe in hell.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love it. That’s fine dad.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. That’s good. You know, whatever.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes. Thank you.

Teri Homan:

Yeah.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Thank you for that. That’s so helpful.

Teri Homan:

But we have this understanding and this quote of forgiveness is giving up the hope that the hope that the past can ever be any different. For me it just means acceptance. And so we just came to a mutual understanding and again, he took responsibility for himself.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What does recovery look like for a gambling addict? Do you have … In sex and love addicts anonymous you have a bottom line behavior so a behavior that you don’t cross and their bottom line behavior’s different for different people. Do you have anything like that? Like this is a bright line that I just do not cross?

Teri Homan:

I think the biggest thing that I do every day is get in touch with my heart. I have a daily journal practice every single morning. Rain, shine, snow, kids, no kids, I do it. And that is a promise that I made to myself. Because it tells me where I am and what I need to do. And it keeps me on top of my shit basically. In addition to that, I go to therapy, I do art, I play the piano. I try really hard to follow my soul and what my soul and my heart want. And it’s not in a casino. That’s just not where it is. It’s inside of me. So I work pretty hard on myself in therapy and I am hard on myself which is something that I’m also working on but I work my ass off in therapy to stay on top of triggers. To stay on top of reactions that I don’t notice until they’re over. Like a response to something that happens in life. And then I go oh, no. I need to do that over again.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Do you write in your journal by hand or is it-

Teri Homan:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay. And is that an important piece of the puzzle, like that actual writing it out? Because I’ve heard that.

Teri Homan:

It is. I used to journal on the computer. I stay in my head when I do that. I can’t access my heart when I do that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s interesting.

Teri Homan:

And it’s the same thing with the drawing. If I don’t have words for something I can usually depict an image that will say exactly what I want it to say.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I’ve heard a lot of people use their writing as a really powerful tool and they say just something magic happens when pen hits paper that you just can’t replicate. Because I type so much faster than I write so there’s that temptation to use a computer but I think there is something valuable about the actual experience of writing and working hard on yourself and identifying triggers. What are some big triggers for you with regard to gambling?

Teri Homan:

Safety. Casinos are actually really safe places. They have cameras absolutely everywhere. They have security guards absolutely everywhere. So when you’re talking about your physical safety, it’s a pretty safe place to be. And so that’s kind of where it started. And then I peeled back another layer on the onion. The more you peel back the more you want to cry. And it was like oh, it’s emotional safety too.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Teri Homan:

I want to escape and just continue to go deeper and deeper and deeper until I get to the core which is I want to feel lovable.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What kind of assignments or projects or otherwise is your therapist having you do in order to work on loving yourself?

Teri Homan:

Most recently she wanted me to write out how I survived my childhood so that I could give myself credit for surviving my childhood and I ended up making a very scary painting. I said, “If you want me to stay out of my head when I do this I’m going to have to draw it.” Like that’s direct access to my heart.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Teri Homan:

So it turned out really scary and it was like one foot in 1975 and one foot in 2021. And just feeling so uncomfortable and so shitty about myself and then bringing it forward and having Emily, my therapist, say, “Okay, it happened, it’s over, you’re safe. What do you need to say to that little person inside of you?” And it is infinitely you are okay, yes you are. Every time in my life when I was dealing with my parents that I was authentically myself, that was crushed and squelched. And so it’s okay to be a lesbian, it’s okay to be a woman, it’s okay to be smart, it’s okay to have your feelings.

Teri Homan:

And part of what I’m learning then is it wasn’t safe to have any feelings. And so the ones that are really uncomfortable are the hardest ones. Because I’m like okay, how do I fix it? And my therapist told me this week, “There is nothing inherently wrong with you. You don’t need fixing inherently.” Like I am worthy as a person. Which was a very profound moment for me. There are things that I’d like to improve about myself. There are things that I sure as shit need to work on. All of that but at the same time that feel like we are all broken, I also feel like none of us are broken. We are whole as we are. Everything I need to walk this journey is inside of me right now, I just have to access it. So that’s part of the work that I’m doing.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s really interesting the way that you talk about that. I have four year old twin boys and we read these books. I think they’re called like Spot Of Emotion. They’re basically coping mechanism books. It’s social emotional learning. And we read them every night. They’re way above my kids’ heads but one of my sons who is definitely probably one of us loves them. And it’s talking about how … One of them is confidence, anger, anxiety, joy, and love. And each one is a spot. An emotional spot. And it talks about how the emotion is this spot and it comes to you and you can make it big or small. You can help other people grow their spot big or small. How to identify it. And I’m thinking about what you’re talking about. Like how do we create, how do we give children the things that we didn’t have or the things that our parents didn’t know how to give us, right? We teach them these things. I have to tell you, it is so hard to teach these things to young kids. These concepts. Even though they’re really simple. Because you have to have this understanding of self. Like confidence. Or you have to have this sadness anger and … What was it? Sad, anger, and joy. Those are the ones that are easiest to explain. All the other things …

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [0:48:57]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And so I’ve had the thought too where okay, so I’m re-parenting. That’s what you’re talking about. You’re talking again re-parenting yourself. And very big in ACA, adult children of alcoholics, which we’re looking at that re-parenting. And it’s interesting to me, I always think to what would be … If I have to re-parent myself today, if I have to redo, what would it look like originally? What would it have looked like? What would I have understood? And I have the experience now today of going through this and thinking to myself oh shit, am I going to hear about this at family week? Trying to figure it out. I’m like oh, I know it’s coming. I process those things and think, what’s the re-parent? What does it look like as you … And it’s so different for each kid. It’s so complex. And its given me this compassion. You have two children to you probably understand this.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

In some ways it’s given compassion for the difficulty of building that and stoking that flame because it isn’t as straightforward as I would have thought. And I remember … I’m sure this is relatable to you. I remember being so angry at my parents for so long. Just rage. And the way that … As I’ve gotten older and see it from these different perspectives and understand what my inner child was doing and what my thought processes were, the more I’m able to heal and also have some compassion for what that process is like. For your mom, we can forgive your mom for example and still not have a relationship with her. Forgiveness does not mean that you need to continue to engage with them if they are harmful. It just means that that is that process that you go through where it’s not activating for you. And I think a lot of the re-parenting stuff seems really woo woo and silly. When they started talking about my inner child I was like oh, good lord. If this is what they’re going to do to save me I’m f’ed.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. F off.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Like oh, inner child. It was like that is absolutely … How cliché. Interesting to me how even today when I am nervous about something I literally say Ashley … I talk to myself. And I’m talking to that younger being and how powerful that work is.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. Spending time with my own children has been very healing for me and other kind of principle and psychology where when you reach the same age that your child is that you were when something happened that lots of times it will resurface. My daughter though biologically has none of my biology. We had a donor and my ex gave birth to her so I adopted both my kids because it wasn’t legal for us to get married. So my daughter is a lot like I was.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Interesting.

Teri Homan:

She is highly sensitive. She is very artistic. She is much more articulate at the age of 10 than I ever was about how she feels.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Interesting.

Teri Homan:

I don’t think could have navigated myself out of a paper bag with that language at the age of 10.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Well, maybe that wasn’t a skill that was valuable to you. There was no … I think you probably would have developed that skill had it been useful in your environment.

Teri Homan:

Right. Yeah. And instead what was useful was to daydream or to draw or to listen to music and stare out the window or to ride my bike. Like any number of things. Anything but being fully present in the environment that I was in. And I feel like my childhood should have taken me out and it didn’t and I’m really proud of that. Having survived all of that. As an adult trying to bridge the pieces together from then to now, now to how I would like to be in the future. But a big part of it for me has been to accept that I am a person and as a person I am inherently worthwhile and inherently lovable. That’s the bottom line for me. And I work on that every single day. Every single day. And I actually had a quote that I wanted to read to you at some point during this podcast and you can edit it out and put it somewhere else if you want to but it’s by Anne Lamott, who is one of my favorite authors. And she said, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write normally about them, they should have behaved better.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh god, that’s funny.

Teri Homan:

I love that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It’s great. It’s great. It’s very accurate. Oh, that’s funny. Yeah. The work that you’ve done I think is really important. The therapy. I know you’ve done a lot EMDR, even working with a shaman. You’re seeking. You’re seeking that healing and I think that is … When we talk about the work, just looking and seeking the healing is such a huge part of getting you … Even if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Just looking for that support and looking for the therapy and the help with your dis-ease. That is how you get to wherever you need to go. If there was one thing that you could tell people who are embarking on the type of journey that you have been on, what knowledge or wisdom would you impart on someone early in this process?

Teri Homan:

Seek inner peace. Because with inner peace the side effects are things like happiness and joy and the ability to celebrate and be proud of yourself and the work that you’ve done. If you’re seeking happiness you’re going in the wrong direction.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Interesting.

Teri Homan:

Inner peace is a very fluid state and so is happiness. Happiness is fleeting. It comes and it goes. But when you pay attention to your sense of peace, what will calm your soul, what will calm your heart, what feeds you to sustain you physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, all of that. Part of working with a shaman for me was to really attend to my spirit in a way that I had not before. Seeing myself as a warrior, not a victim. That was a big shift for me about 20 years ago. So yeah, I would say if you’re going to seek something look for peace. Look for things that bring you peace internally, not happiness. Happiness is a side effect of peace.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I like that a lot. Because you can be peaceful in very uncomfortable situations where you may not be happy and can carry peace through the myriad of emotions whereas happiness is just not going to be indifferent in those places. So that makes a lot of sense and super, super valuable.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. I have a quote on my wall above my desk that I’m going to read to you. Because I read it every day and it fits with what we’re talking about. It says, “You should give a f, you really should. But only about things that set your soul on fire. Save your f for magical shit.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love it.

Teri Homan:

And it totally fits.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s hilarious. That’s hilarious. Yeah, there was a woman who … Her name was Lesley Fightmaster and she was sober a long time. Over 20 years. And she started drinking again and died during the pandemic. And she used to say … She taught us this that … She would ask us … We’d go shopping or we’d do something and she would say, “Is It a f yeah?” About everything. T-shirt, candy, going to a movie. She would say, “Is it a f yeah?” And if you could now say, feel that that thing, that object, that experience was a f yeah, she would say, “We don’t do things that aren’t f yeah. We got sober to live a life of f yeahs.” That’s in my head sometimes where I think to myself, how great do I feel about this? Am I making decisions that nourish my soul, my being? And many times I’m not. But it’s a great exercise.

Teri Homan:

One of the things that comes with permission that I give myself to feel all of my feelings is to embrace the darkness to make room for the light. There’s a lot of power in darkness. Good things can happen in darkness. And when you shed light on them they’re even more beautiful. So embrace the suck.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. That takes practice. It takes practice. Acting yourself into a new way of thinking. You don’t always feel excited about it but you do it anyway because you want to change the way that your brain thinks about it. It’s hard. When we say it’s hard work, that’s what the work is is putting one foot in front of the other and doing things that you don’t understand or you don’t want to do that are going to help change the neural pathways in your brain. You’re going to get feelings of inner peace. All the things are coming but man, when you’re in those moments I would say particularly in early recovery, you don’t want to do that. You’re doing shit you don’t want to do because of the side effects. We liked the side effects produced by gambling, by alcohol, by cocaine. Well, we like the side effects produced by recovery. That does not mean that all the shit we do we want to be doing, it means we appreciate the side effects and sometimes you just got to march your happy assessment through it. Whether that’s a meeting or you’re writing or calling someone. Whatever that is. To people who think that we’re just on fire all the time about recovery and we just want to jump in and do this blah, blah, blah and we’re excited, no. We’re like I don’t want to go.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. It’s bullshit.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I’m going to cancel. I’m too tired. I don’t need to do this. I’m fixed. I’ve been doing this for a while. I don’t want to go to that meeting because those people give me funny looks or whatever. It’s the amount of excuses and then my ex boyfriend used to say, “We have smart feet.” He says, “Ashley, we have smart feet. They take us where we need to go even when our head is telling us it doesn’t want to be there.” And that’s where that training of going to like 90 and 90 meetings or doing those things because there’s that muscle memory. And that’s how you build those muscles that allow you to have peace during a f’ing pandemic or whatever.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. It’s a practice.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Just for example.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. Just for example. Yeah. And if you think about … For me, when I think about recovery, when I think about all of the f’ing work we have to do, it’s overwhelming sometimes. And so they take it just a little piece at a time which is usually a day. Sometimes it’s an hour. I mean you know all of this. And what we think of ourselves we really do become. If I think I’m a piece of shit, I start not doing things very well. If I think that I can do something well, chances are … I have a thing up on my wall that says, “Teri, don’t stop until you’re proud.” And it is that state of excellence that I strive for. Am I proud enough of what I’ve done in the last week to say okay, that was good enough? And again, hard on myself but also but also working my ass off at the same time.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s how it works. That’s how it works. I think to myself I was told I could and be anything I want so I thought I believed I could do everything so I tried to do everything at once and then the system overloads and shuts down. I have a little too much confidence in myself as it relates to being a human doing and not a human being so those are my what we tell ourselves. I don’t want to be superwoman but I got to get grounded.

Teri Homan:

Yeah. My shaman actually said to me, “Just being is very feminine energy and doing is very masculine energy.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Checks out.

Teri Homan:

To balance those two things is really powerful. Every morning I sit for an hour in silence and sip coffee and just listen to the birds.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You’re making me very jealous.

Teri Homan:

Be in the quiet. Sorry.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Don’t worry, I just have young children and sipping coffee in silence is literally my life goal at this point.

Teri Homan:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I don’t live with my kids anymore. They live with their other mom so I am afforded the privilege of silence in the morning and it has been a game changer for me. My stress just kind of goes all the way down and I get up and I get another cup of coffee and I sit down and my cat comes over and screams at me or smashes his head into my face. And it’s just that time to just be. Not I have to go to work. Not I have to do this, I have to do that, just be. And in the moment with myself.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah.

Teri Homan:

And learning how to be comfortable with just being with myself.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. We want to be good company right?

Teri Homan:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Exactly.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Well Teri, you are awesome. I really, really enjoyed our time together and your authenticity and willingness to share these difficult things with us so that other people may get something out of it and find their way, their path to peace. And apparently silence which … Okay, fine.

Teri Homan:

Which eludes you right now. Yeah, whatever.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Cool. I definitely don’t have that. I’m never going to be peaceful. But I do. I really appreciate it and I know a lot of people will get a lot out of this so thank you so much.

Teri Homan:

Thank you so much. It’s been a real honor to be here talking to you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Thank you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

This podcast is sponsored by lionrock.life. Lionrock.life is a recovery community offering free online support group meetings, useful recovery information, and entertainment. Visit www.lionrock.life to view the meeting schedule and find addition resources. Find the joy in recovery at lionrock.life.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [1:06:26]