X
Jun 12
  • Written By Scott Drochelman

    • #188 – Marsha Stone

    #188 - Marsha Stone

    Alcoholic Attorney Regains Custody And Becomes Sober

    Marsha Stone grew up in Southern Georgia to a family that struggled with generational alcoholism. She eventually married her best drinking buddy and quickly had three kids, then just as quickly she was alone. The responsibility of raising them fell squarely on her shoulders and the fear of how she would care for them left her with many sleepless nights. 

    She decided she wanted to go to law school and believed her three young kids and their situation seemed to guarantee that she would have a chance to get her school paid for. And sure enough, it did.

    In law school, her alcoholism took off, but she told herself it was all reasonable. Anyone in her difficult situation would do the same thing. The alcohol started to cause her to slip near the end of her education, but she was able to keep it together just long enough to graduate. Then came a law career speckled with heavy drinking and even saw her sneaking cocaine into the courtroom before finally getting sober in 2008. 

    Since then Marsha has found success in addiction recovery as one of the few female CEOs in the industry. In 2023 she founded Foundation Stone, a network of boutique, focused programs for individuals and their families struggling with mental health, substance use disorder and co-occurring disorders across the U.S. 

    Their first featured treatment center, Amend opened in Austin, Texas in spring 2023.

    Episode Resources

    Connect with Marsha

    Connect with The Courage to Change

    Lionrock Resources

    ****

    Episode Transcript

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Coming up on this episode of The Courage to Change sponsored by Lionrock.life.

    Marsha Stone:

    It’s a hard thing when you’ve been able to rely on your brain to make decisions, to set goals. Anything I set my mind to, if I really, really, really wanted it, I had the work ethic to do it. And when it came to alcohol like I would make a decision every morning, I’m not drinking today. And then about 3:00 or 4:00 that same day, I felt like I was starting to try to change my mind. I mean, that was probably an overreaction. Only in retrospect can I see my mind, my willpower making up my mind, making a commitment was of absolutely no avail.

    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 Marsha Stone. Marsha grew up in Southern Georgia to a family that struggled with generational alcoholism. Marsha eventually married her best drinking buddy and quickly had three kids. Then just as quickly she was alone. The responsibility of raising them fell squarely on her shoulders and the fear of how she would care for them left her with many sleepless nights.

    She decided she wanted to go to law school. Her three young kids in their situation seemed to guarantee that she would have a chance to get her school paid for. And sure enough, it did. In law school, her alcoholism took off, but she told herself it was all reasonable. Anyone in her difficult situation would do the same thing. The alcohol started to cause her to slip near the end of her education, but she was able to keep it together just long enough to graduate.

    Then came a law career that was speckled with heavy drinking and even saw her sneaking cocaine into the courtroom before finally getting sober in 2008. Since then, Marsha has found success in addiction recovery as one of the few female CEOs in the industry. In 2023, she founded Foundation Stone, a network of boutique focused programs for individuals and their families struggling with mental health, substance use disorder, and co-occurring disorders across the US.

    Their first treatment center Amend opened in Austin this spring. You guys are going to love this. Marsha and I had such a great conversation where we related to so many of the feelings that come up in recovery when trying to get into recovery and feeling like maybe we are terminally unique. Marsha’s experience with her children getting into recovery and having the language to help and ask is incredible.

    Her blended family, her being told she doesn’t look like an alcoholic, all of these incredible experiences she’s had, her relapse and doing a forensic analysis on how that happened, it was just such a great conversation about recovery. Without further ado, I give you Marsha Stone. Let’s do this.

    You are 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:

    How old are your boys?

    Marsha Stone:

    Well, I have five children. My daughter is 32. My oldest son is 31. Then I have a 28-year-old, almost 29. Then Wyatt is… How old are you, Wyatt, 22?

    Wyatt:

    Yeah. I’ll be 23.

    Marsha Stone:

    You’ll be 23 in October. And then Sheldon is 18. He’s graduated from high school. So my husband is a veterinarian and we told the boys, “If you guys graduate with honors, we’ll take you on a safari to Africa.” And they did it, both of them. I’m excited. It’s going to be a great trip. I don’t know, it’s just become more and more important to me to create these memories while they’re still within the nuclear family because once they start to branch out, then all of a sudden I’ve got to be less selfish to plan better and all those things.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That would be amazing. So getting into a little bit of your background. So let’s start with what’s your sobriety date?

    Marsha Stone:

    My sobriety date is May 6th, 2008.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Awesome. How long did you try to get sober before you got that sobriety date?

    Marsha Stone:

    I first went to treatment the first time in 2002, picked up a desired chip, and for the next five-ish years, I would say that I was a member of the sort of sober community. We lived in North Carolina at the time. I’m one of those people that I was doing what I thought I needed to do, going to meetings, having to sponsor those kind of things. But I did not really understand at that point that checking the boxes in recovery wasn’t going to be enough for me, that I was one of those people who actually had to have a spiritual experience and get to that place of just brokenness is the best way that I can describe it.

    Basically, I stayed sober for five-ish years, and then I relapsed badly in February of 2007. And I stayed that last year, February 2007 to May, 2008. I was in and out of detoxes, in and out of treatment centers. What happened at that time was I was a lawyer in Georgia and in North Carolina, and I kept signing contracts to participate with their impaired lawyers program and all that kind of stuff. And that had been going on during that whole six years.

    So by the time I relapsed really badly and things, they always say, “Your disease is doing pushups in the parking lot or whatever.” I never really believed that, but I can tell you from my own experience, even those five years where I was mostly sober, I don’t know, I don’t have an explanation. I’ve gone back to school and worked in treatment and all that, and I don’t know that anyone has the real answer of why that is, but I do know that once I picked back up, when I relapsed, it was like the wheels fell off so fast and consequences really piled up in front of me.

    The bar association joined together and took my license. I surrendered my license for five years, which is true, but they were going to take it whether I surrendered it or not. And then my mom took temporary custody of my four biological children and my husband’s ex-wife took custody of his son that we prior had had joint custody to. You have these big things that are so important to you, the custody of your children and your career. When both those things are pulled, the rugs pulled out from under you in a way, but I needed that to happen so that addiction could really get my attention, alcoholism really get my attention.

    Sometimes I hesitate to talk about that because not everyone has to go through major consequences, but I just didn’t… Why is that? Am I worst alcoholic or who knows? I always say, “I don’t know how I got the car in the ditch, but I’ve got to get the car out of the ditch, number one.” Going through and looking through genetics and family history and trauma, and there’s a spectrum. There’s all kind of different contributors. I just am one of those people that I think I have a high tolerance for pain or something because I think I would’ve stayed in high functioning alcoholic for much, much longer if I hadn’t had the people that were around me that loved me enough to stop to it using consequences.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So there is a big genetic component for you and your family. What was your family life growing up? I know your father eventually get sober, but did you see alcoholism as a kid?

    Marsha Stone:

    So the thing about it is I grew up in the deep south in South Georgia, and my whole life, believe it or not, even in my family for generations had been riddled with alcoholism. Even though it was fact, and some people knew some parts of it, it just wasn’t discussed. And so the messaging to me was basically if your uncle so-and-so loved his family, he would’ve shown up at the barbecue. And because he didn’t, that means that he’s selfish and doesn’t love his family. That was the messaging. And so I had all these old ideas about basically alcoholism being a moral failure, and that meant that you didn’t care about anybody or anything.

    So when I started to struggle with my own relationship with alcohol, I knew that wasn’t true. I loved my family dearly. I loved my children and vowed to protect them in ways that I wasn’t protected, and I meant those things. One of the things I talk about a lot is these days in recovery, I can match my intentions with my actions, but back then I couldn’t do that. And there was this big chasm between what I wanted to do and what I intended to do and then what my actions showed.

    So when I was able to look at that from the perspective of my own experience, I knew that that early messaging wasn’t true, but I didn’t know anything else. And in my hometown, the AA meetings were for some reason at the VFW. I don’t know why that was, but in my mind, growing up, I thought alcoholics had something to do with veteran. I knew nothing. I knew nothing. My family didn’t talk about it. School discuss it. We were all drinking like fish in high school and no one thought that that was even alarming.

    Looking back, the drinking that I was doing early on looked a lot like my friends drinking. But now I understand that alcoholism was doing something for me that I couldn’t do on my own, which is to feel safe, to feel secure, to feel loved, to feel a part of. And again, all this stuff is in hindsight because it looks very normal because that’s what everybody that I knew was doing.

    And then when I finally got to the point where… And one of the things I’m really grateful for is when I was the most active in my alcoholism is right before I went to treatment the first time in 2002, and I was the assistant district attorney, a female of a small town, and my aunt was the judge, and my stepfather was an attorney, so it was big fish in a really small pond.

    And I had a bad wreck. There was wine bottles in the back of my car. I flipped the car and I was blacked out, and I was trying to get home. Anyway, all this stuff happened and it got to the point that my family couldn’t ignore it or deny it. And at the time, I was so ashamed. They were ashamed. It was bad. Everything about it was bad, but looking back, I’m so grateful to God that happened that way because we had to talk about it because it was so in our face. It was so in their face. And that’s when I started having conversations with my uncle who was in AA. Started learning about my grandmother’s brothers who died of alcoholism. Started learning about my great-grandfather. He was extremely abusive to his children. And because I don’t have the good sense to stay home and drink quietly, I’m out there and guns blazing.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I’m picturing us drinking. It’s very symbiotic in that where it would be-

    Marsha Stone:

    Yeah. We’re like Thelma and Louise like put the top down, throw your beer can.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    [inaudible 00:11:18]

    Marsha Stone:

    Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so although that’s awful to live through and embarrassing for people that love you sometimes, it can no longer be ignored. So I stayed sober. And then in Asheville, North Carolina is where I moved because that’s where my second husband was working. He’s a veterinarian. We relapsed together. The same thing happened there as happened before. Big news, everybody knew. I was a small town attorney. He was a veterinarian. And you have the white picket fence and the kids in all the good schools, and the Mercedes in the driveway, and a pool in the backyard. Everybody is looking at you like, “Why are you doing this? Your life is amazing.”

    We give that alcoholic response, which is the truth. I don’t know. I don’t know. Actually, it’s almost like I had to… My first time around, I was blaming my alcoholism on my stepfather was abusive. My mom turned her head. My first husband was active addiction and abusive, and left me and da, da, da. I had this story. And then I get a treatment. I’m sober. I get all my kids back. I’m married the man of my dreams. We have an amazing businesses. We have an amazing family. And when you get your ducks in a row, you think they need to be in order to stay sober and then you drink again. Then it’s kind of like terror, bewilderment, and despair.

    Despair meaning I was just as confused as everybody else about my behavior. And so then I ended up going to long-term gender-specific treatment and my husband did as well in Texas, which is why we kind of ended up back here. He’s from Texas. But it was the first time that I had really understood recovery is not just an idea or going to sit in a chair in a 12-step meeting. Recovery is changing yourself from the inside out and making a decision that for the rest of your life, you’re going to be on a different basis.

    When I finally understood that and I finally started to try it out because I had no other options left, honestly. But I do like to talk about my recovery because I like to talk to people especially that are driven, ambitious, professional, to be able to talk to people that clean up really well, really fast, and they’re very convincing that they’re okay because they can read the room and they have the vocabulary and all those things. I was dying. I was dying behind all those assets.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What were some of the thoughts that you were having in that time between… So you get everything back, you put the life together. You marry the man in your dreams, everything, get the kids back. What were some of the thoughts? What did you find when you went and did a forensic analysis of this relapse?

    Marsha Stone:

    Yeah. I’m glad that you ask me that. Most people don’t ask me that, but it’s really important. And looking back, number one, I did not fully buy into the idea that I was an alcoholic and powerless. I bought into the idea that I was under a lot of stress. I bought into the idea that if you had my life, you would need relief too, which may or may not be true, but I really hung my hat on that. And then I really did not believe that my disease would be advancing during periods of abstinence.

    I sort of had this idea like I’ve been sober for five years. I have a great husband. Nothing’s going wrong here. The lights aren’t getting turned off because he cashes his paycheck and went to the track or whatever. I just really had not surrendered to my own powerlessness, my own relationship with alcohol. And this is sort of an embarrassing thing to say, but I think most people, if they’re really honest with themselves would say this. I really felt like the rules didn’t necessarily apply to me.

    I thought that I was unique. When they say terminally unique, it was crazy the way it happened. I was sitting in my office one day and this guy came in and asked me to represent him on a small little bar fight case or something. I knew this guy because I had done some work for him before. I told him that’ll be $500 or whatever. He said, “Oh, I don’t have that much. It’s winter.” Back then sometimes people would trade. “What about I’ll give you three quarters of firewood for the winter, whatever.”

    And so he said, “I don’t have that much cash. Can we do something on a trade?” I was like, “Sure.” I found out he was not a landscaper, he was in the import, export business like that. Suddenly, the thought occurred to me that it wasn’t the white powdery substance that made me feel like I can dance real cute. It caused me problems. It was the booze. And that happened so fast in my mind. And that’s why I say suddenly because I had never had that thought before. I’d never delineated those two substances in my conscious mind.

    I’d never entertained doing this substance and not drinking with it. But all of a sudden it was the best idea I’d ever had in the world. Because my secretary is always late for work, my husband is annoying when he asked me for the receipts every day for the debit card. My kids are ungrateful. All these things happen in my mind so fast. And it’s that swan song of terminally unique and undervalued and underappreciated.

    All those thoughts that I guess I’d had somewhere along the way came crashing into my conscious mind. And when he offered me that supplements, it’s just like we say, I was without a spiritual defense. Why is that? Because I was not participating in my recovery. I was a bystander. I was a voyeur looking at what’s happening in meetings that I go to. Giving my sponsor the answer that she wants to get.

    All that stuff, all that stuff contributed to it. But the bottom line is what was missing in my life was rigorous honesty and a real surrender and a real decision to turn my life to this thing where my will in my life, meaning my thoughts, my will and my life and my actions over to this new way. I had not done that. You can say you’ve done it. You can say you understand. You can say you’re an alcoholic. Especially if you’re high functioning like we said, right? I can parent lots of things, but it doesn’t matter what people think of you and what people think of your recovery. It doesn’t matter.

    What matters is my relationship with myself, my relationship with honesty, my relationship with my higher power and my willingness to continue to show up with humility. I had none of that because I thought I was just a little smarter. I thought the rules didn’t apply and frankly I thought I deserved it. And right then at that moment when he left my office, I did that. And then actually it was like my car was on autopilot to the liquor store. Got the booze, went home, closed my bedroom door, told my husband what happened. He’s a drug addict like me too. He was sober, but someone is going to pull you down before you can pull them up.

    And that was the beginning. And it was like gas to a bonfire. It got really bad and really scary really fast. And I think it’s really important when people have a slip or a relapse or whatever you want to say, “It’s really important for them to go back and do the work to figure out what happened.” Because there’s no one, there’s no one on the face of the earth that could have done my own relapse autopsy. Because people never know you. They know what they see. They know what you say, but when I lay my head down on my pillow at night and it’s just me and God. Either I’m being rigorously honest or I’m not. That’s black and white to me these days. Then it was very gray.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I’m actually relieved that alcoholism is so versatile. I use alcoholism to talk about-

    Marsha Stone:

    Me too.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    … everything, right? Because it’s-

    Marsha Stone:

    Right. Food, exercise.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Everything.

    Marsha Stone:

    Everything.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I love that you thought that you had an alcohol problem, but not a cocaine problem because I could not get past the fact that I had a cocaine problem and I would separate out alcohol, right? Okay. Cocaine is the problem, right? It’s illegal. It gets you in trouble. It’s a drug, blah, blah, blah. But alcohol, I’m too young to be an alcoholic. I’m too female to be an alcoholic. But the cocaine I could demonize is in the drugs and the heroin and blah, blah. I could demonize all that stuff.

    Marsha Stone:

    So you’re like the total opposite of what-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I was the opposite. But what I love in your example, you and I had the same exact thoughts in our relapse. It was, “Well, this is different. This is why I deserve it.” My mine was, “I deserve alcohol. I’ve given up all these things. Why shouldn’t I?” I’ll just only do this one thing and then it won’t get out of control after everything I’ve been through. I mean, don’t you know I gave up smoking and don’t you know… And da, da, da, da. Don’t you know what I’ve been through? And all the things I deserve relief.

    And then picturing the relationship aspect of it. I’m picturing from my end, my husband coming home and starting to do… And if I’m not in a great place, that sounds like a great time to me. We could be in this together then I’m not by myself.

    Marsha Stone:

    Yes. We had so many plans. We’re only going to drink and do drugs on the weekend together. The weekend is going to start Thursday night and it’s going to end on Sunday night and we’re going to have the nanny here. The kids are going to the mall and they’re going to get the cutest new tennis shoes. What’s the problem? What’s the big deal here? Well, I would think like people in the northeast, they just send their kids off to boarding school for the whole year anyway. I’m gone three days. That’s a crime. I mean, just so much. Just rationalization.

    I mean, the stuff that my mind can tell me to protect this cancer that’s actively killing me is unbelievable. I often talk about that with people. They’re like, “Would you miss being a lawyer?” I was like, “The only thing I miss about being a lawyer, I love to help people.” When I was a lawyer, people get in trouble, they come in, they give me money, I tell them what to do. They nine times out of 10 will go and do it because they’re scared.

    People come to me with horrific drug problems, alcohol problems. They give me a bunch of money. I told them what to do and they told me to F off and I’m trying to ruin their life. That is alcoholism. Anybody that was trying to help me, they were the enemy. I was convinced that the impaired lawyer’s division of the Bar Association, that this man was stalking me. He was doing his job trying to figure out if I was sober, walking into the courtroom, and I was telling everybody, “This is misogyny.” I mean, it’s crazy town. I mean it’s crazy town.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    One thing it isn’t is a representation of how we feel about our loved ones.

    Marsha Stone:

    Amen.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I think that’s very confusing and totally it should be confusing. It’s confusing for us, but it isn’t an accurate representation of how we feel. It is an accurate representation of our ability to make sound decisions being hijacked.

    Marsha Stone:

    I had a large financial amends to make to lots of clients that… I mean, it was never purposeful. There was no meanness or thief behind it. People come in to hire me. I would take their money. I would go use their money on alcohol and drugs. Their court date would come, I’m hungover, I forget about whatever. I’m basically not showing up for them. I’m stealing from my clients.

    So I had to go back and repay all that. My brain, my ability to process information and make decisions was hijacked. I look back now at some of the decisions that I made during that time, and I don’t even think I can really classify them as a decision. It was just like one ping pong ball reaction, one thing to the next.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I think the confusing part for people when you are a person who can speak well and as an education and at one time could have been credible is that we are able to convince people by using the same voice in the same body, and the same face, that we are the same person on the inside.

    No, really you’re judging me because of my problem. You’re this, you’re that. And unfortunately for everybody else, it’s very, very confusing. It reminds me of… This is the very millennial of me, but the Men in Black, when the alien comes down and the guy, and takes into his body, and he’s drinking the sugar water and the wife is like, she knows something is wrong. She knows it’s not him, but it sounds like him and it looks like him, and it’s his body. What other explanation could there possibly be?

    It talks in literature about conceited to our innermost self that we were alcoholic. And I remember thinking, “Oh, well that’s a real relief because I thought I had a mental illness that was so bad that if anybody knew that the calls were coming from inside the house, that I would be put somewhere and never get out.” Looking back, alcoholic thinking, alcoholic logic is indescribable.

    Marsha Stone:

    The last idea that I had was and actually told my counselor this at the rehab, even though I was sober a few weeks at that point in time, my brain was still not my own. I basically walked into her office and I said, “Okay, I’m going to stay here as long as you tell me I need to stay. I’m going to do everything you tell me to do. I’m going to not complain. I’m going to give it a hundred percent complete every assignment, never be late for a group. And if I do everything you say and you tell me I’m ready to go and I go and I drink again that makes it your fault. And I’m going to go to Belize and drink dark rum until I die.” Very dramatic.

    Okay, first of all, I’m negotiating. There’s nothing to negotiate. This lady doesn’t give a flip where I live. Right? But at that time it was like, “This is the best idea. This is the mountain I’m going to stand on.” But thank God she didn’t laugh or say something like I probably would’ve said if I’d been in her shoes and somebody else’s knee. But she just stuck at her hand and she was like, “I’ll take that deal.” And for whatever reason, it felt very serious to me. It felt very much like a contract. Almost like a covenant, a little bit above a contract.

    I did everything she said. And I think honestly, they say when you get to be that desperate, you can have a blind monkey holding up flashcards of how to do the 12 steps and all of a sudden they work. Because I was just ready and I was scared and I was tired of hurting and disappointing everyone and everything I loved, including myself.

    It’s a hard thing when you’ve been able to rely on your brain to make decisions, to set goals, anything I set my mind to, if I was really, really, really wanted it, I had the work ethic to do it. And when it came to alcohol, I would make a decision every morning, I’m not drinking today, and then about 3 or 4:00 that same day, I felt like I was starting to try to change my mind. I mean, that was probably an overreaction.

    Only in retrospect can I see my mind, my willpower making up my mind making a commitment was of absolutely no avail because forever I might have been out of options, but I had lots of ideas about how I could win this thing. But I was finally at that spot. And when she committed to me to go on this journey with me, I don’t know why, but something shifted and I just started to take suggestions.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I can’t tell you how much I relate to… I don’t know how to deal with the fact that my brain has always been the thing that has helped me to get ahead in the world to manage and do things. And that suddenly with one topic or one grouping of decisions that same asset is not only a liability, but my biggest liability. I’m supposed to discard my broken brain because I cannot fix my broken brain with my broken brain. I’m supposed to go and operate from my heart and in this connection.

    To this day even 17 plus years later, it’s a struggle for me. I go back to the logicing. I always go back to the logicing, and then I remember. And then I bring in the mantras and I bring in the other things. I talk to the people and then I get there. But it’s still is so difficult to have your brain be an asset in every area of your life except for this one piece that you want so badly.

    Marsha Stone:

    So bad, so bad. It took me a long time to really understand. It was actually a medical director in a facility that explained it. You’re not changing your mind. You’re not. Because it feels like you’re changing your mind. “I was going to go to Wendy’s and you know what, now I have to then go to McDonald’s. I changed my mind.” But under this set of circumstances, because you don’t have control, because you are powerless, because the way that we process alcohol is different from the way that other people process alcohol even within our bodies.

    So when I began to understand, not only am I not changing my mind, but something that is inside of me that I don’t know how to counter is changing my mind for me and I’m taking action on that. And that seemed so crazy. I could not wrap my mind around that. But still, even though I knew I was failing and I knew I couldn’t trust my mind, it was still really hard to trust someone else to have a better idea about my life than me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So you have run treatment centers. You’ve been an attorney. You’ve done all these things. So many people do not believe, do not understand, cannot imagine that there are high functioning, high-powered successful people who have great jobs, who are in active alcoholism and addiction. From your perspective, having been at all ends of this spectrum, what do you think of when people talk about the fact that you can’t have a good job and you can’t be successful if you have active addiction?

    Marsha Stone:

    Well, the first thing that came to my mind is how could you imagine that unless you’ve experienced it? I think I probably would’ve been in that loud judgey category if I hadn’t literally walked through it. But to our sort of agreement earlier that if we think of this ism of alcoholism, what is it? What does that mean if it’s an ism? Well, it’s going to be something that changes the way you feel that you might understand that there might be consequences for, but the relief that you’ve experienced in the past somehow makes it worth it for you to do that Russian roulette.

    And the reason I say it that way is because I believe that whether it’s genetic, whether it’s trauma based, whether it’s adverse early childhood experiences, whatever it is, we have right now, and I’ve called it a pandemic, I’ve called it a tsunami of mental health crisis going on in this country that sometimes includes substance abuse that sometimes doesn’t include substance abuse.

    The question to ask is why are we here? Especially in the United States, a nation that is running as fast as we can from feeling pain, can we begin to talk about why do we have problems with mass shootings with a suicide rate that’s off the chart with the isolation that happened during the pandemic. Tripling the admissions into mental hospitals, right? Because it’s not about the substance, it’s about this nation. It’s one that our system is broken and we are all in so much pain that we do anything we can to feel just a little bit of relief. Then when we sort of get caught, whatever happens, then if we’re lucky, we start going down this path of recovery where we can find peace, where we can find security, where we can find community.

    So my question is this, how about if we just start admitting from the very beginning that we need community and that we need help, and really look at why are we as a people in this beautiful United States of America with freedom and justice and education and opportunities? If all that is true, then why are we the most medicated nation on the planet?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    There are a lot of people who are seeking relief, but not all people who are seeking relief are addicts or struggling with addiction. What are some of the ways that you explain the difference between the need and the cultivation of relief in a healthy way versus in an addictive way?

    Marsha Stone:

    I have a home in Costa Rica and I’ve been going there for about 12 years to the blue zone. It’s in Nosara. It’s one of the blue zones. People live there to be over 100 and they do all this studies on it. And why? Because a lot of people don’t have a lot of money there. I learned so much from those people because they don’t care about money, they don’t care about wealth, they care about family. They take care of their elderly. They take care of their children together.

    I mean, this one family that are there down there, the grandmother’s daughter had a baby and her son’s wife had a baby about the same time. I started asking questions like, “What do you do with the baby here? Do they go to daycare? They don’t even know what daycare is, Ashley. They don’t know that because families take care of one another.” They very rarely eat processed food. If we’re having fish at their house, they caught it and it was swimming three or four hours ago.

    It’s just a different way of life. It’s simpler and it’s slower. It’s not based on Louis Vuitton and Mercedes or whatever. Listen, I’m guilty too. We get swept up into this. But I think maybe it’s the older I get, the longer I’m sober, the longer I spend really studying. My friends in Costa Rica is like, “You cannot buy your way into peace. You can’t. You cannot fake your way into peace. You cannot fake your way into a relationship with other people that you have spiritual consent with and with your higher power.”

    When these two little babies were born, my friend takes care of one of the babies and the mother of the son’s wife takes care of their baby. Anyway, my point is that it might not be forever. It might be for the next three months. They don’t think in terms of, “I can’t take care of this baby for five years until it goes to school. They’re very present. It’s very pura vida, pure life. I think that we can all really begin to take some lessons from that and start to really unpack why we are in a nation with so much pain.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I think one of the things that is really scary for people like us who are sober and we have kids and we’re trying to model this behavior and thinking through how we share about our recovery, what’s public, what’s not, how we talked about substance use. You have taken your kids all the way through 18 at this point, and they’ve witnessed addiction, they’ve witnessed recovery. They have also asked for help. What’s your experience with raising the next generation and as it relates to recovery and substance use?

    Marsha Stone:

    Well, one of the most painful things for me to think about is the harm and the pain that I caused my children when I was active in my disease. My older three children I had with my college sweetheart, he was also my best drinking buddy. We split up and he actually ended up… He died of suicide, but really he died of alcoholism. And that was in 2011 that happened. But my kids had seen me from 2002 to 2008 be in that really dark place up. “It’s going to be okay. Mom is drinking again. She’s going back to detox.” I mean, and they’re teenagers. They’re embarrassed. They’re in junior high school and all those things.

    Of course, I’ve made amends to them and I have a great relationship with all the kids these days. My oldest three came to me when they were in their early 20s and told me that they were struggling and they were all three in recovery. Today, I’m really proud of them for that. But if I’m able to find the silver lining because they saw me struggle, they were hurt, but because they saw me never give up, they were encouraged. And they had the language to ask me for help. I didn’t even start thinking about being an alcoholic till I was so far gone that it was really scary.

    I’m just grateful that they know about it, that they know about the genetic component, that they don’t feel shame. They didn’t feel shame when they called me to ask for help. They didn’t feel like they had to hide it. When I think of my life and things that I did right. One of the things that I think that I did pretty dead right is to talk to them honestly about my struggle. And I kept explaining to them, “My relapsing is not an indication of me not loving you”. There were lots of tears and it was really hard. And they heard me. But when they experienced it themselves, they really understood.

    They really understood that it wasn’t personal. I’m really grateful for that. Again, that goes back to what I was saying about my alcoholism was so out loud. It couldn’t be ignored. So then the same thing happened with my dad. He lives in Austin now, and he’s been sober living with us for about five years. And that’s another example of community of family ’cause he had a 300-acre farm in South Georgia. He’s riding his lawnmower around all by himself, drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels or whatever. I don’t know. At some point in time, I think that we have to acknowledge that we need each other.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    The loneliness is so bad for our physical health, forget mental health. It’s atrocious for our mental health. But for physical health, it’s very, very damaging. And the surgeon general came out and not that they’re the end all be all of health, but if they’re saying it’s really bad that we have an epidemic of loneliness. And what that means is that our health is going to rapidly decline. People die as a result of loneliness. People’s substance abuse, people’s mental health, people take their own lives.

    There’s so many loneliness is like you said, this precursor. It’s so important to remember that substance use is the symptom of whatever’s underneath. It’s like a dental care being considered separate, dental and vision being separate from your health insurance. It’s like, “Well, wait, they’re in my face. They’re next to my sinuses. If I go to an ENT, they’re looking in my throat that’s right next to my teeth. Are they not connected?”

    Well, that’s substance use and mental health. Somehow we’ve decided to separate these two things, but I don’t know a single person who wasn’t experiencing some depression and anxiety who had substance use issues.

    Marsha Stone:

    Absolutely.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Even if they caused it themselves, it was there.

    Marsha Stone:

    Yeah, exactly. I mean, even if I invited the trauma into my life based on my lifestyle, I still have trauma.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It is so prevalent and people do not understand that… Just because you aren’t seeing me drinking, you aren’t seeing my life spiral out of control doesn’t mean that you have the whole story.

    Marsha Stone:

    Exactly. I think as a mother, I think as a woman, I think as a professional for all these reasons, my hope is always when I’m talking about this, I don’t do it for entertainment purposes. I really do it because I feel like this is sort of part of my service work. If I can have a platform to talk about the truth about addiction, pain, family, I mean all the different components, I just feel like the more we can talk about it, the more normalized it is. Because when you can normalize something and you can own it, then there’s no room for shame. I did a talk on the steps of the capital in Austin several years ago. And afterward, I don’t know how it got on there, but somebody put it on YouTube.

    Somebody called me. I don’t even remember the situation, but they were like, “How did you have the nerve to stand on the steps of the capitol in Austin, Texas and say you’re an alcoholic?” And I said, “Because I am an alcoholic. And if I own it, and I own my stuff, and I own the bad decisions, and I own the financial ruin and making great decisions, making bad decisions, here’s the freedom. I am an open book. I am absolutely as transparent as I can be.”

    Hell, it’s 2023. You can find out anything you want to me about me in 15 minutes on the Google. You know what I mean? So it’s like I might as well embrace this to the extent that I can do some good with whatever happened to me and whatever I am comfortable sharing. I mean, talk about taking the wind out of the negative sail. You know what I mean? Because then all positive.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    For sure, it is very disarming. I always giggle to myself about how if you’re going to hold stuff against me that I did nearly 20 years ago while I was drinking and using, when I have this more than a decade long track record of something else, then I don’t know what else I can do. I often think to myself, “Gosh, I’m more embarrassed about the things that I do while I’ve been sober.”

    Marsha Stone:

    No, that is true.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    There you go.

    Marsha Stone:

    If I’m going to have to clean something up, it’s helpful and more comfortable if you have an excuse.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I was drinking whatever.

    Marsha Stone:

    Right. I didn’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. But when I say something really nasty to my husband and then I have to apologize later-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re like, “Nope, that was in… Yeah, I was fully sober.”

    Marsha Stone:

    Fully sober, 100% present and did not pause for an instant before I let you have it. That’s human. That’s being a human being. I think to the extent that we can really, really serve up as much grace in relationships as we would like to receive. My sponsor always says it’s like, “I want justice for what they did, but I want mercy for what I did when it’s the same thing that becomes a little uncomfortable.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yes. I was talking to someone about this the other day where somewhere along the way, and I think we all did because I hear it from everybody, is that we have this feeling that we are owed comfort. That comfort should be the baseline, that comfort is our right. I find it really interesting because so much of life, even the best parts of life, childbirth, family, all sorts of things are not comfortable even growing.

    You have growing pains. You get taller. You get puberty all these things, all these transitions from one part of life to the next. They’re not without discomfort, sometimes even acute pain. And so I don’t know how we came to this idea that discomfort is always a bad thing. It’s not. It’s a transition, it’s a change, and it’s a normal part of life and growth. I have to remind myself on a regular basis, I’m like, “Oh, this is uncomfortable. This conversation with my kids or explaining something or whatever it is, I feel discomfort. My brain feels discomfort and goes 911, we’re in danger. This is not good. High-“

    Marsha Stone:

    Stop it, stop it, stop it. Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Right? And the training I work on, and sometimes the training is just picking up the phone and calling someone I know who’s going to say, “Hey, dumbass. You aren’t owed comfort. It’s okay.” And the beauty of that community like we were talking about is that I don’t have to always rely on my brain to do anything but pick up the phone or anything, but go talk to my community in order to bring me back to whatever baseline truth reality I need in that moment.

    If I am relying on Ashley to remind me that I am not owed discomfort, I don’t know what percentage of the time I’m going to be able to rewire those messages. But I know if I call three different people in my community who live the same way by the same guidelines and principles that I do, that I will be given the opportunity for redirection and then given the opportunity to remember. And that’s part of why the community piece is so important because then you’re not just relying on you being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps at every moment. Tell me about what you’re doing now and the program that you have coming up.

    Marsha Stone:

    Now, I sold the majority of the stock with the healthcare system that I’ve been working on for the past 13-ish years. Now I just opened a brand new program that is focusing more on mental health. It’s pretty exciting because one of my best friends that I grew up with, one of my best drinking buddies growing up, I was going to law school at the same time she was going to med school and she was a high risk ob gyn for 20 something years. And about five years ago, she went back and got a fellowship and integrative medicine.

    We stay in contact and we’ve been talking. I was using her to look at some hormone issues I started having when I turned 50 and all the things. Anyway, we just started talking about how integrative medicine could be so much more utilized when it comes to mental health. So we had this idea to start a program. It’s called Amend Wellness. It’s right outside of Austin. We’ve only been open about two weeks. It is a program that really is focusing on depression, anxiety, bipolar, seeking a diagnosis, feeling like you’re family or might have the wrong diagnosis.

    There’s certainly people there that have been medicating their symptoms of their mental health and dedicated 50% toward the western medicine that we know works, tried and true psychiatrists, great medications, med management, that kind of thing. But we also are doing half the program dedicated to really teaching clients the different ways that they can help and take control and responsibility for their diagnosis.

    Yes, take your medication, but let’s talk about your genetics and what sunlight does for you, and what cold plunge does for you, and how you can use infrared sauna to really begin to regenerate cellular levels and all different things like that.

    We’ve got the [inaudible 00:45:38] with the sound bath meditation and just some really cool things that are part of the program. Also, the chef that we hired, I had worked with him in treatment years ago and he’s also in recovery. He has a whole nutritional system that’s based on basically anti-inflammatory types of foods. Because one of the things that happens, whether it’s just poor nutrition, whether it’s poor hygiene, whether it’s alcohol, whether it’s just organic problems from a mental health perspective.

    But the inflammation that can be caused and exacerbate those conditions through diet is something that I’m still learning a lot about. But basically at Amend, we’re doing great diagnostic work. We’re doing tons of education about different ways that people can manage their illness. One of the things I always say is your diagnosis is not the definition of you. Yes, I was diagnosed at some point in time as primary substance use disorder. But that is so not the definition of Marsha Stone and who I am today and what I have the ability to do and what I’m interested in doing, and how I can take care of myself.

    Because I think for me everything started to change when I realized I can take responsibility for my recovery. We’re telling them the very same thing when it comes to, “Yes, you may be prone to depression.” Let’s talk about what we can do to make sure that that can be managed in your life as effectively as it possibly can so that you can live the life that you deserve to live, and that your family can have the wife or the mom or whatever, sister, daughter that they deserve for you to be.

    So it’s really just a very new program. I just had this idea and I worked on it for about a year, creating the program with some really smart people, and I’m excited about that. Amid Wellness is the first program in a platform that I started called Foundation Stone Family of Programs. And the reason I chose that, I always say it’s not because my last name is Stone, but if that’s the way you remember it, then good on me.

    In our literature, I’m sure this, it says helping others is the foundation stone of our recovery. And one of the things that I have always found, no matter how bad I’m feeling, no matter what kind of day I’ve had and no matter what fear is haunting me. As much as I can take all that sort of self-focused thought and focus it toward helping others, the relief that I get from helping other people and the joy that I get and the peace and the serenity is unmasked.

    I’ve never had a drink or any kind of substance in my body or engaged in any kind of activity that even begins to hold a candle to the way I feel when I know that my experience and my ideas and my drive, and being able to put together these different programs. When I see people help, I feel like I’ve won the lottery every day. I’m an entrepreneur. I’d like to create programs and create events and create workbooks or whatever that are going to go out there and help people because I could not have done it without people taking some time to design things that helped me.

    Now, I feel like I’ve got a very clear sort of bird’s eye view about what we need, and what we need and continue to need to begin to address in a meaningful way the pain and the suffering that people are walking through these days.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, you’re amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you if they want to-

    Marsha Stone:

    Thank you.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    … learn more.

    Marsha Stone:

    I have a website marshastone.com. You can reach me if you want to email me, marsha@marshastone.com. Amend Wellness, I think it’s amendwellnessaustin.com is the website for the program here, and just stay tuned. Foundation Stone is the platform. Amend is the first program that we’re doing and then maybe when we open… I can’t say the second program right now, but I’ll check back with you in a few months and maybe we can talk about that because I can say it’s going to be a women’s only program and I feel strongly about some people needing gender-specific programs for a number of reasons. So we can talk about that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so, so much. I really appreciate your time.

    Marsha Stone:

    No, thank you for having me. It’s been great. Again, I’m so glad I met you now. I think that we can do a lot of good together, and God knows we didn’t need to meet 17 years ago. Thank you. Thank you, again. It’s been great. Have a great day.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So I want to jump in with what I related to most and what I felt very connected to. I felt like there are these moments where people pull the words out of your mouth and describe your experience. She pulled the words out of my mouth and described the experience of having a smart fast working brain that you’ve used to achieve other things, that you set goals, and you execute on goals, and you can do all these things and move in the world.

    It’s an asset for all intents and purposes. And then there’s this one thing that you want so much and your brain, that intelligence, that speed of neural connections completely fails you. And yet you can’t help but continue to try the same thing over and over again because you literally have only known this one thing to work. You use your brain to make it work. None of the logic, none of the project management, none of the switching from vodka to wine or wine to vodka or drinking on the weekends only or cocaine only from Colombia or whatever the situation is that you’ve decided is going to solve this problem, nothing works. No matter how badly you want. I have never in my life experienced something so intensely defeating as wanting something with every cell in my body and not being able to achieve it.

    Scott Drochelman:

    Yeah. You just can’t trust the thing that has been your protector, your success, your whatever. I mean, anytime that you have something where you can’t trust your reality or you can’t trust the information your brain is giving you, and then especially for someone who’s a high achiever, who leads with that, what are you supposed to do with that? It’s your tool. It’s the thing that’s supposed to get you out of the situation and it can’t.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s like putting on the virtual reality goggles and going out to grab something. And every time you reach for it, nothing happens. But other than using your vision and seeing through this prism of these goggles, what else are you going to do? That’s all you know how to do. So you just keep grabbing it and you keep doing the same thing. Or maybe you walk towards it, and all the things, and none of it works, right? In this shitty analogy, what you have to do is actually take off the virtual. You have to leave the game and use your ears to listen to what other people are telling you and then do that.

    But it doesn’t make sense because what you’re used to doing is operating within this game, and it’s always worked. It’s always been effective and suddenly with the one thing you have to have, all the stakes are on this. If you don’t get sober, if you don’t figure this out, if you don’t stop making these really terrible decisions, everything is going to fall apart. It is a feeling like no other.

    In 12-step, when we talk about powerlessness that moment of using of drinking and using against my own will of making a decision and then not being able to keep it moments later. Literally, I had a bottle of wine in my closet and I would take a sip, and then I would leave the closet and I would go do whatever the fuck I was doing. I was like, “That’s it. No more for the day or whatever.” And then I’d be like, “Just one more.”

    So I’d go back to the closet and I’d have another sip. This charade would go on all day. I would put it back into the closet behind the clothes with every intention of leaving it there and not having any more. And within however long it was, depending on the time I always went back. I mean, some people would just bring the bottle of wine out of the closet and drink it like a normal person. But I’m like, “Well, you got to keep it in this private place.”

    Scott Drochelman:

    Well, you were covering with the clothes so that it’s like when you hide your wallet at the beach and you hide it in the back of your shoe. You know what I mean?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Exactly.

    Scott Drochelman:

    You think you’re not going to look there. It’s the same sort of thing. If it’s in the closet, if it’s behind the clothes, how are you supposed to find that again?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I’m never going to find it again. And then I find it again every 10 minutes and I put it back.

    Scott Drochelman:

    I mean, it’s pretty solid logic I have to say. Did you try disguising it as other things like-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, you bet.

    Scott Drochelman:

    … putting a little hat on it or…

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So many little hats on my wine bottles. I logic all the things. I tried it all, but ultimately you end up back in the same place. Well, actually you end up in a worse place because by the time you get to the end of that rope that trying to control it rope, you’re so pissed and so defeated. You’re like, “Screw it.” And now you’re drinking out of a box of wine.

    Scott Drochelman:

    The analogy, the thing I keep picturing in my head is those dumb team builders they have you do at corporate events and they’re like, “Put the blindfold on and your teammate is going to navigate you through the maze.” I was thinking of it, but it’s as if it’s like, now the maze is covered in broken glass and barbed wire.” There’s a fire pit of some kind somewhere.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Sleep depravation.

    Scott Drochelman:

    And they’re like, “Okay. Let’s start the team builder. They’re going to lead you out of this one. Just listen to everything they say and pay really close attention to your teammate.” And it’s like, “Well, who’s signing up for that? I know my eyes work just fine. Thank you. And if I’m walking through this, my eyes are the only things I’m going to trust.” But they’re not giving you the correct information.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And it’s not usually a person you know that well. Even in recovery it’s not usually a… I mean, the whole thing is, so I love how she’s… You got to be at out of ideas. The intersection between out of ideas and out options. That’s when you’re willing to do the Spartan race where it’s the barbed wire, and the broken glass, and the fence, and the whatever and all this shit. In this case, they blindfold you. Otherwise, if you still have ideas or you still have options, you are not doing that. And that is insane. That’s an insane thing to do is to not use your intellect or your brain and to just follow these other people.

    It feels like brainwashing. It feels like a cult. What the fuck? This is terrible. Now, I’ve gone and done it. I remember getting into treatment and sobriety and all the things, getting into that community and going, “Man, I thought it was bad before. This is the pit of hell I have reached the moment. We’re holding hands. We’re talking about feelings. We’re talking about our problems.” I was like, “Does it get worse than this?”

    Because this feels like the actual pit of hell. I want to jump out a window. There was nothing I wanted less than to talk to a bunch of people about my feelings, tell them shit about me. Hold their hand, say a prayer. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? And this was like what was in front of me as the solution to my heroin and alcohol addiction. It was truly unimaginable to me how this was going to help.

    Scott Drochelman:

    Which is great that holding hands was the how you led that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I was real.

    Scott Drochelman:

    Can’t we just have sex or something? I don’t want to hold your hand

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    110%. Let me tell you, for those of you listening, don’t do it in your home group. Just saying, out of your county is pretty good too.

    Scott Drochelman:

    Well, we are root for you this week. We hope this week is wonderful for you that maybe after you get done with this episode, you go and do something for yourself really nice. Ashley, anything that you want to leave the people with?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yes. If you want to hear more about what Marsha is doing, check out Marsha, M-A-R-S-H-A, Stone, S-T-O-N-E .com. Have a great week. We’ll see you soon.

    This podcast is sponsored by Lionrock.life. Lionrock.life is a diverse and supportive recovery community offering weekly over 70 online peer support meetings, useful recovery information and entertaining content. Whether you’re newly sober, have many years in recovery or you’re recovering from something other than drugs and alcohol, we have space for you. Visit www.lionrock.life today and enter promo code, COURAGE for one month of unlimited peer support meetings free. Find the joy in recovery at lionrock.life.

    Scott Drochelman

    Scott Avatar