#21 – Melinda Dixon
Melinda Dixon’s Story
#21: Melinda has 9 years experience working in recovery programs. She has been in admissions in both large facility dual diagnosis rehabilitation centers and addiction rehabilitation programs. She recently completed her college courses and earned her certification as an Addictions Counselor. Melinda is currently studying for the state certification test, and will continue her studies to earn her masters and become a LMHC.
Melinda is also one of our esteemed colleagues at Lionrock Recovery, and we were so excited to have her on the podcast! Tune in as she shares about being a child who grew up in an alcoholic household and the effects that it has had on her life, along with ACA and how the program helped her heal from the trauma and take her life back.
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Show Notes
1:41 – Explaining about ACA – “Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families”
3:02 – Melinda describes her background and childhood
8:55 – Talking about Complex PTSD – how it applies
10:20 – High school, college and entering the work force
11:07 – Melinda talks about coming out
15:49 – The addiction to people (codependency) to fill a void vs. being addicted to substances
19:15 – The blueprint of love and how it affects your relationships
21:50 – Working with a therapist to break codependency
23:32 – Why her relationship went wrong
26:00 – Deciding to get a new therapist and what happened from that
31:42 – Melinda goes into detail what her therapist meant
36:30 – ACA and the effect that it has had on Melinda as an adult
43:45 – More about ACA
46:16 – How to identify if ACA is the right place for you
49:20 – The Laundry List in ACA
56:29 – The aspect of community in a 12 step program
1:06:45 – The focus of ACA – inner child work
1:13:25 – Melinda’s tattoo on her forearm – “invite love, create joy, own courage, release fear, stay present and accept growth”
1:20:00 – Living life in recovery
The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast would like to thank our sponsor, Lionrock Recovery, for their support. Lionrock Recovery is an online substance abuse counseling program where you can get help for drinking or drug use from the privacy of your own home. For more information, visit http://www.lionrockrecovery.com.
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#21 Melinda Dixon Episode Transcript
Ashley Welcomes Melinda Dixon
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 Melinda Dixon. Melinda has nine years’ experience working in recovery programs. She has been in admissions in both large facility dual-diagnosis rehabilitation centers and addiction rehabilitation programs. She recently completed her college courses, and earned her certification as an addictions’ counselor.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Melinda’s currently studying for the state certification test, and will continue her studies to earn her master’s, and become a licensed mental health counselor. Melinda currently lives in Florida, and is a practicing member of Adult Children of Alcoholics. Her story is a really important one for all of us to hear because alcoholism and addiction affect everyone in the home.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Melinda was a young girl in a home with an alcoholic mother, and she has been able to recover from her traumas and the effects of her family’s alcoholism. We are so excited to have the conversation about Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families on our podcast. I hope you enjoy my friend, you know her as Melinda Dickson. Episode 21. Let’s do this.
Explaining ACA
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Melinda, welcome to the program. I’m so excited to have you here and have you share your story with us. You have a little bit of a different story than a lot of the guests that we’ve had so far since you’re a member of ACA, Adult Children of Alcoholics Anonymous and Dysfunctional Families.
Melinda Dixon:
Yeah, Adult Children Of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Adult Children Of Alcoholics And Dysfunctional Families. I remember learning about this program, this 12-step program and not understanding what Adult Children of Alcoholics… You need a program for that? I didn’t know. I didn’t grow up with alcoholic parents, and the longer I’ve been sober, the more I see what that does to people. Having a group of people to relate to on that level is so cool, and the trauma and the dysfunction absolutely affects us. How long have you been in ACA?
Melinda Dixon:
It’s been like four years now, and it’s totally completely life-changing. I did a lot of other therapies before, nothing worked. Like getting into an intense outpatient program and having a therapist that had an ACA background. Nothing worked before. I tried everything before.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because you knew something was up.
Melinda Dixon:
Yeah, I knew I was always uncomfortable. I was always anxiety-ridden. I wasn’t comfortable in my body. I was hyper-vigilant. I was hyper-focused on everyone else but me. I was never comfortable. I was just never a comfortable person.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What was your… You went for… Obviously, there was alcoholism growing up, right?
Melinda Dixon:
That was my-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, a piece of your childhood?
Melinda Dixon:
A lot of my family struggles with alcohol and drugs, for sure. That’s rampant in my family, unfortunately.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you see that growing up?
Melinda Dixon:
I saw a lot of that, yeah. My mom and her sister were the admitted wild children of our town. Everyone knew their names growing up.
Life Growing Up
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Where did you grow up?
Melinda Dixon:
I grew up in this little town in Ohio, a really small town. It really was. They walked into a bar, and everybody knew who they were. They were the wild girls. I think my mom had us in bars when she had my sister and I, when we were very young because after she left my dad and she met up with her then-husband, he was a musician, so he played music all the time, and she bartended. So, we were in bars as very little kids. She was doing the best she could, but we were in a lot of unsafe places, and we were around a lot of very unsafe men.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I would imagine that. I would imagine that. The access to children in situations like that is definitely dangerous. We talked about pre-verbal abuse, and this is something we haven’t talked about on the program. I think that’s really, really important thing to touch on that has carried you into your adulthood. Can you tell us a little bit about how that came to be, how you came to work on that?
Melinda Dixon:
One of the things we know that our parents do the best they can, but my parents came from abuse themselves. Unfortunately, oftentimes we carry that baggage forward. My mom had me at 17 years old, she did not finish high school. She dropped out to have me. I was unexpected, and there are family stories of her having to be told how to hold me, hold my head up properly. Because she came from abuse herself, she didn’t know how to handle a screaming baby.
Melinda Dixon:
And so, there’s lots of family stories of me being left in a playpen with throw-up on me and bruises, and my mom running down the street to my aunt’s house and saying, “I can’t handle the baby anymore.” And leaving. My aunt having to come find me, and call my dad and say, “You have to come home from work, the baby’s here.” And my dad said, “Well, I’ve got to finish work.” And my aunt said, “Well, I’m going to call some child welfare place unless you come and get the baby.”
Melinda Dixon:
There was a lot of denial in my family too about what was going on. But I was raised in that. My memory of living with my mom is just fear. I was always scared.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Of her, or of everything?
Melinda Dixon:
I was scared of her reaction to whatever I may be doing. But I remember just feeling fearful. She recently shared a story, how good we were as girls, how good we were as a little girls, how people always came up and complimented her, like in the grocery store or something, how well-behaved we were. I remember looking at her and thinking, “We weren’t well-behaved, I was scared.” I was scared because I didn’t know if I was going to get a sarcastic put-down, or shamed, or hugged or hit because my mom just didn’t have the tools. She didn’t have the tools.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What are some of the big memories that you have carried through to adulthood from childhood?
Complex PTSD
Melinda Dixon:
Unfortunately, most of my memories are these traumatic moments that happened. I think that’s what happens to a lot of people like me that get stuck in codependency. We get stuck in trauma. I’ve been diagnosed with codependency, with complex PTSD because I have had these traumatic events that happened to me. My memories are getting shamed because I didn’t share the spiral graph paper with my cousin because he was using up all the paper.
Melinda Dixon:
We had scarcity in my home. We never had anything. There were times that we didn’t even have milk for cereal. So, scarcity was an issue for me. So, I was scared when he used all the paper, and I got a beating for that. I got hit with a belt, thrown into a closet, spinning around and the belt hit me right across the face at one point. I remember-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you?
Melinda Dixon:
Unfortunately, it’s hard for me to pin down age, but I feel like there’s this feeling of being six, seven, eight, nine, somewhere around in there. Yeah, young. I fell out of bed one time and saw my mom driving away. I now know as an adult she was likely going to work. It was at night, she worked in bars. She was probably going to work. But as a child, it felt like she left us because I was getting abandoned a lot. I was emotionally not nurtured.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think this is a really important topic because… And we’ve had a lot of people on this program who talk about their complex trauma, be in sex trafficking, and… We’ve had some really heavy-duty, obvious traumas. And what we don’t talk about are these traumas that happen for us that aren’t as easily diagnosed as trauma. I think they’re much more prevalent than the… My experience also has been that I’ve had traumas, and then the reaction to the trauma was where my trauma was like, yes, the big incident, whatever. But how everyone reacted to it, that’s what actually I internalized as trauma.
Melinda Dixon:
For sure. I think we don’t… I don’t know that we all, as Americans, have a good understanding of this either. I remember the first time my therapist said to me, “You have complex PTSD. You’re codependent. You have attachment, anxiety disorder.” Codependency, I already knew I got that. I understood it. The attachment anxiety disorder made sense to me because I have this fear of abandonment.
Melinda Dixon:
But I was like, “What are you talking about, this complex PTSD? What is that? Veterans only get PTSD. What does that mean?” And I remember going and looking it up, and thinking, “Oh, my gosh, this is what this is for me. It’s about this repeated yet unpredictable abuse, neglect.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And intermittent love.
Melinda Dixon:
And intermittent love, and not ever knowing what was coming my way, which caused a lot of hyper-vigilance on my part, caused me to be hypersensitive to other people, but not able to identify my own feelings. It caused me to develop coping skills, which absolutely helped me survive as a child, but they were sabotaging my adult relationships because I was reacting to adult situations in childlike ways. But it took me so long to figure that out, and so many bad relationships that were just a repeat of the relationship I had with my mom .
College & Entering the Workforce
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Where did you go after high school?
Melinda Dixon:
After high school, I went into the national guard for a while so that I could pay for college, and I did very poorly in college and dropped out. It’s hard for me to focus on stuff. I was never a focused kid. I always had a million dreams and about 18,000 different ways to get there, so doing one thing was always hard for me. So, I tried to go to college, and then I really just went into the workforce. I got into sales, and I was really, really good at sales because I really know how to read people. I can read people really, really well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because you had to.
Melinda Dixon:
Totally had to.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You grew up having to, that was your skill.
Melinda Dixon:
For sure. So, really, really good at sales. Eventually, built my own little small consulting firm, and did really well, but still was completely out of control in my relationships, my significant others.
Coming Out
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When did you come out?
Melinda Dixon:
Very young, like 18. Very young.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you know that you were a lesbian?
Melinda Dixon:
Yeah, I knew that I was gay when I was like 14. I was like, “Man, my best friend is pretty awesome.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Was there anything… Did you know gay people? Was that-
Melinda Dixon:
No. I’m going on 53 years old. So, this was in 1982-ish. I was a freshman, sophomore in high school. Nobody was gay. That wasn’t a thing that was cool back then. You have to remember-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were you worried about it?
Melinda Dixon:
I wasn’t worried because I was… When you are raised the way that I was raised, you become self-sufficient. Very independent. So, I was definitely… You look back at some of these old videos of marches on Washington, you’ll see me down there back in the ‘80s. My family was like, “Let’s be quiet about this. Let’s not talk about it.” And I’m like, “Dude, see you later. I’m going to NYC because there’s a Pride march this weekend.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. So, they were not excited about this news?
Melinda Dixon:
They were not excited.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And your grandparents were Catholic.
Melinda Dixon:
So, that side of my family didn’t find out till later, so that was kind of secretive on that side of my family. Unfortunately, sometimes the way we get along in my family is to gossip about the rest of the family members. It feels yucky to say that, that I participated in it for as long as I did, but I come by it honestly, as they say. I was raised in that. I don’t participate in that anymore.
Melinda Dixon:
But most of my family found out not because I told them, because other people in my family decided that I should be told on. So, there was a lot of that kind of stuff happening, but there was a lot of me being like, “I don’t care. I’m cool. I’m cool with this.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s interesting because there was a lot of fear, there was a lot of anxiety, but this… your identity being gay sounds like you were very confident in that. And especially during that time, that was not something you were worried about or shaky on.
Melinda Dixon:
There’s an exercise that I did early on when I first got into ACA, we do a workbook, much like a 12-step book, which a lot of the programs do. And this question came up about when did I ever stand up for myself in my life? That was the only time I had ever stood up for myself to anyone in my life. If I knew the sky was blue and you told me it was red, I believed you that it was red. I had so many mixed messages as a child-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But not this one.
Melinda Dixon:
… untruths. I don’t know why, I don’t know what it was, but you weren’t going to take this away from me. I was loud and proud and-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s interesting.
Melinda Dixon:
It was the very first time that I stood up, and probably after that time the only time I stood up for myself for many more years later to come.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I wonder if it’s because… And this is me doing… what do they call it? Monday morning quarterbacking. I wonder if it was because it was 100% you. Everything else was outside of you, or like what people are going to do, the sky was blue, that’s not you. I wonder if it was like, “No, this is 100% me, it’s all about me. No one else affects this. This is just like…” I wonder if there’s just a sense of control and owning it.
Melinda Dixon:
I think there’s always a sense of… Especially, again, this was the mid-80s. There was always a sense of this is the thing that makes me different. This is the thing that makes me-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
In a good way or bad way?
Melinda Dixon:
For me, in a good way. For me, in a good way. I remember a very early on, my sister who’s about two and a half years younger than me, had party, and she told all her friends that I was coming to the party and that I was gay. She told it in a way that was not cool. Like, “My sister’s coming, and she’s gay, but I’m going to let her come to the party.” It totally backfired in her face because all her friends were just curious about it. So, when I got to the party, I was queen of the party. But I remember that feeling of, “This makes me different, and this makes me okay. And it is okay.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that’s interesting. I’m glad that you had that, and that experience, I think it probably saved you in many ways.
Melinda Dixon:
I think it did too because in every other way in my life, I was completely unsure of myself. I was completely unsure of what other truths were about my family. I was completely unsure of what to do with myself career-wise. I was completely unsure of the relationships I was involved and getting in all the wrong relationships.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Given the anxiety, the discomfort, the fear, all the things I relate to feeling, not knowing what was true, what was not, how is it that you didn’t get… and the family history… get addicted to substance?
Filling the Void with People, Codependency
Melinda Dixon:
So I think it’s interesting to know, and I’ve come to learn this in my own experience through my career and everything that I do now, what we know is that people that struggle with addiction, most of us come from some sort of trauma, abuse, or neglect. And so, what I see is that my drug of choice, which is people… Some people use food, some people use booze, some people use drugs, some people use gambling. I used people to try to fill those voids.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Can you tell us about that? What does that look like for the person who doesn’t know what that means?
Melinda Dixon:
There was certainly… In my own drinking, I was definitely the type of girl that would drink and party hard on the weekends, and be a binge drinker because it made me more comfortable being out with my friends. So, I was drinking to be comfortable in my skin. But what I was really doing was trying to find someone to fulfill me, to fill the voids of me, to rescue me. I didn’t know this at the time, but I know now. I was always on the hunt for that perfect girl that was going to come and rescue me because I wasn’t going to be complete until I found that girl that was going to rescue me and make my life okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because then it would be okay.
Melinda Dixon:
Because then it would be okay. The problem was, my blueprint of love was, “Come here and I’m either going to put my arm around you, or I’m going to make a really rude comment and shame you, or I might hit you.” That’s what I looked for. So, what I ended up finding in all this searching was… I don’t think before I got into recovery, I ever had a girlfriend that was not in active addiction and completely unemotionally available, and was not fully committed to me, and couldn’t in any way, shape or form rescue me because they were stuck in their own addiction. Water seeks its own level. I’m not placing blame.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally. No, no, no, no, totally.
Melinda Dixon:
Water seeks its own level.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We find people that match, or mirror, or whatever , sit with our issues. And that is… And it’s not always a bad thing. When you get healthy and you do find people who are compatible or relate to you, it can be okay if people are healthy. I think a lot of people wonder how we seek out people that… How do I manage to get into a relationship with my father? How do I manage to get into… They don’t understand because in their head, they’re not seeking that out. They’re not seeking out like, “Okay, this person, she hugs, she hits, and she abandons. Okay, good. Yeah.” You check. But there’s something familiar about it, and I think that’s the piece that we get attracted to, that we experience that familiarity, and that the only way to change that is an internal change.
Melinda Dixon:
It’s totally, completely internal. But I think what happens is you don’t know something until you know something. It took me forever to understand this, but the way it hit me and landed, and made sense to me was that blueprint of love. My blueprint of love was… What I knew love was, was someone who took care of me but also treated me like a toy that they played with sometimes, and then put away sometimes, and someone who occasionally beat me up too. That was my blueprint of love.
Melinda Dixon:
That’s what I know love is, so that’s what I go seek in the universe. Now, I didn’t know any of this at the time. I thought I was broken. I thought I had a bad picker. I thought I was unlovable. I definitely had self-worth issues. That Smith song, You’re Unlovable, that’s like my song of my life. I thought I was broken. I thought I was broken is really what it comes down to. I thought I was unlovable, unworthy of love and broken, and I was never going to meet that girl that was going to rescue me because someone was coming to rescue me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But you were going to try.
Melinda Dixon:
I kept trying. I sure (beep) gave it good tries. I always met a prettier, little less violent, little more intellectually intelligent version of the one before.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, how did all of this experience culminate? I think you mentioned, when we were talking earlier, about your second bottom. What was your first bottom?
Melinda’s First Rock Bottom
Melinda Dixon:
My first bottom was really, really difficult. I was in a very toxic and abusive relationship with a girl that I was not in love with, nor did I even like her, but I couldn’t get out of it no matter how I tried or what I did. I remember one day saying to somebody, “She’s like a drug. There’s nothing of value that she brings to my life, and I can’t stop. I can’t stop having her in my house. I can’t stop seeing her.”
Melinda Dixon:
And the bottom was pretty bad. She was in active addiction. She ultimately brought some friends over to party and hang out at my house, and the very next day while I was across the country, they robbed me. They took 925 individual items out of my home, and what they didn’t take with them, they left on my floor for me to clean up. Of course, she didn’t admit that she knew anything about it. It took a while, but we figured it out with the police’s help. Ultimately, she went to treatment. And I bitched, and moaned, and whined, and complained for her to get out of treatment so she could come and fix all the shit she left me with. Because I still can’t break away.
Melinda Dixon:
A year later, I called, and I went away to an intense inpatient program for people that were stuck in codependency. I learned a lot in that program. I came home and I got a new therapist, and I still couldn’t completely break away from her but I was doing better. At some point, ultimately, I broke away from her. And I was doing well with my therapist. I was going on probably five years of doing really well being in therapy. I stopped drinking, which wasn’t, again, a big issue for me, but I thought it was something. I stopped drinking for eight years total, and I met a new girl.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, this is after the inpatient?
Melinda Dixon:
This was well after the inpatient, three years after the inpatient.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Things are going well.
Melinda Dixon:
Things are going well. I was hanging out with my friends, and I was having a good life, and I was doing well with work. I met a girl, and this girl happened to be married. She had two children, and we are very, very, very involved with each other. We thought we were being so mature about it because her husband knew about it. We talked about it with each other like adults. We did what we thought was all the right things, and it just got more, and more, and more, and more, and more chaotic. It’s sad and tragic because she’s amazing, beautiful, wonderful. She’s an awesome girl. I love her. I thought I was going to marry her, but we were seeking our own levels.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What about it particularly… How did your dysfunction manifest in that situation? Aside from the fact that she was married, which obviously is definitely a big piece of it, but what caused it to not be, “Okay, we’re going to amicably split up. We’re going to get…” Why did it go wrong?
Melinda Dixon:
Because if she left me, it meant that I was not worthy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
If she left you at all?
Melinda Dixon:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
To go to work?
Melinda Dixon:
Not necessarily to go to work, but I was suspicious. The way my mind worked was that I was constantly stuck in story. We call it being stuck in story in ACA. What it means is that if my girlfriend didn’t call me today, that means that she met someone else and she no longer loves me, and now I’m anxiety-ridden because the phone hasn’t rang for two or three hours. And now I’m going back through all my texts and all my pictures of us, and now I’m starting to just go down the shame spiral of, “I’m not worthy. I didn’t do enough. I can’t keep this going.”
Melinda Dixon:
It’s a constant state of agitation and anxiety, and worry, and looking over your shoulder. For me, it was trying to be what you wanted me to be so that you would stay with me. A friend said it very eloquently recently, he said, “The amount of time I’ve spent in my life trying to manage your experience of me.” I was like, “He literally just explained my whole life.” The amount of anxiety and energy and focus in my life that I put on you to manage your experience of me, to make sure that you were okay with me, that’s how I lived my whole entire life with every significant relationship I was ever in. And I was totally and completely lost, and completely out of touch with my own feelings, my own needs, my own desires, wants, because it didn’t matter.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, that relationship, how long did that last?
Melinda Dixon:
It lasted for a long time. We were friends for a couple of years before we got together. We dated off and on for about five years. It was hard. It was hard for both of us. Neither one of us wanted to be apart. She said the golden words one day, she said, “We’re not okay, and I want us to be okay.” The followup to that sentence is we’re not okay together, and we’ll never be as long as one of us is in active addiction. And so I wanted… To get out of my active addiction, I went kicking and screaming. I was kind of pushed into it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What did that look like?
Melinda Dixon:
After I decided that I needed to get a new therapist to figure out all the things that were broken and wrong with me so I could salvage this relationship, the new therapist that I got wasn’t buying my bullshit. That’s the worst. I was convinced that she didn’t like me, and she often pushed my buttons.
Melinda Dixon:
I remember going into her office in the beginning and she said, “How do you feel right now? How do you feel in your body?” And I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “I want to know how you feel in your body. What’s the feeling that’s going on?” I said, “I don’t understand what you mean.” She said, “In your body right now, how do you feel?” I said, “I feel like taking that stuffed animal in the corner and throwing it at you. I’m getting pissed off. Why are you asking me this?” She says, “Isn’t it interesting that you’re upset-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, being asked.
Melinda Dixon:
“… because I’m asking you how you’re feeling.” And immediately, it took me back to an exercise that happened when I went into inpatient, where we had to do a psychodrama, acting out thing. And the therapist had gone around to everybody in my group, there was 10 of us in the group, and said something to all of them but didn’t let me hear what she said to them. And I was one of the last people to act out my psychodrama that week. So, I had seen the way the psychodrama works. You pick people in the group, somebody who’s going to act like your mom, your dad, your sister, your ex, whatever it is. And you ask these people, and they act this out for you, this moment in your life so that you can move past it.
Melinda Dixon:
And so, she said to me, “Okay, Melinda, are you ready to ask everybody to work this out with you?” And I said, “Yeah.” And I went to every person, “Will you act like my mom?” “Yes.” “Will you act like my dad?” “Yes.” “Will you act like my ex?” “Yes.” “Will you act like my sister?” Everybody said yes. And then she said, “Okay, now it’s time to tell them to get up and work with you.” And I said, “Okay, guys, it’s time to get up.” And nobody stood up.
Melinda Dixon:
She looked at me and she said, “How do you feel right now?” I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean.” And she said, “You just asked all these people to help you and he told you that they would help you, but they’re not helping you. How do you feel about that?” I said, “I got to go clean something.” She said, “I’ll bet you have a really meticulous home.” I said, “I do.” So, that’s what happened a lot in my life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You asked for help and people didn’t show up.
Melinda Dixon:
Right. Especially after they said they would. That happened a lot. So, you become self-sufficient, and you become mistrustful, and you become hyper-vigilant, and all these… As you were asking me, how did this stuff show up for me? That’s how I was acting in the world.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s interesting that you say that, “I need to go clean something,” because I’ve seen that a lot. I think we joke around a lot about like, “Oh, I’m so OCD.” It’s interesting to see it as a coping mechanism of loss of control.
Melinda Dixon:
For sure. It also takes you out of the pain. So, if I’m over here cleaning up the sheets that I just got blood on because one of my ex-girlfriends pushed me into a corner that cut my head open, I don’t have to think about that incident that just happened because I’m now just cleaning. I’m cleaning. So, for me, it took me out of the pain. It also paused my whole life. I was just stuck. I was stuck in trying to manage my pain, really trying to not feel my pain.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How effective was that?
Melinda Dixon:
It was very ineffective.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. The funny thing is that we go to extraordinary lengths to not feel our pain and disrupt our lives in absolutely tremendous ways. And the truth is it doesn’t work. We’re still in pain. And when you get to recovery and you experience the pain, and you go through, it actually goes away much faster.
Melinda Dixon:
If you don’t believe that because you’ve spent your whole life staving it off, you know that your way to stop pain is to numb out. I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing. So, my numbing out was TV, my numbing out was cleaning. My numbing out was being really good at work. My numbing out was managing people because I’m really good at solving your life. I’m really crappy at solving my own.
Melinda Dixon:
But again, I go back to my therapist that really turned this around for me, and really, I started to make all these changes. I remember her saying to me one day, “You know what you need to do, you just don’t want to do the work. You don’t want to be responsible or accountable. And I was like, “Screw you. What are you talking about? I’m here. I’m doing the work. I’m doing everything you told me to do. I went to the stupid outpatient program. I’m going to the stupid ACA thing doing everything.” And she said, “Melinda, you don’t want to feel the pain, the amount of time that you spend trying not to feel pain.”
Melinda Dixon:
And I was like, “I don’t understand.” She goes, “You do understand. You know what I mean. You don’t want to do the work, you don’t want to be responsible.” It took me a while to start to process that. I was like, “What does she mean? Screw her. I need a new therapist. What the hell? I’m sitting in her office every week paying for this.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, and paying-
Melinda Dixon:
I’m going to three and four ACA meetings a week. I’m doing this intense outpatient program, and that’s the only time I was feeling relief. The only time I was feeling relief was when I was in meetings or going to my program, or even in my therapist’s office. She was challenging me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, what did she mean?
Melinda Dixon:
She meant…
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because you said I processed it. Tell us, what did you come up with?
Feeling the Feelings
Melinda Dixon:
She meant that I was going to have to feel the (beep) pain, and I remember thinking, “This is awful.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But did you know… When she was saying-
Melinda Dixon:
This is awful.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
… you know, did you know?
Melinda Dixon:
No, I thought she was accusing me of not wanting to do the work, and I’m like, “I’m doing the work.” I didn’t understand that the work was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got it.
Melinda Dixon:
… feel your feelings. I remember shortly after that happening calling one of the guys that I had met through ACA crying on the phone, and I said, “I’ve been doing this three or four months now, and I’m crying every day. This is worse than when I came in.” I go, “How much longer is this going to last?” He goes, “You’ve been how long?” “About four months.” He said, “You got about eight months left.” I said, “I can’t do this for eight more months.” He said, “You can.”
Melinda Dixon:
He said, “What’s happening is everything that you’ve shoved down, or numbed out, or avoided and didn’t feel your whole entire life is now going to start to come out. You’re going to get to work through it and move through it, and process it, and you’re going to be okay. You’re not going to die from feeling your feelings.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I remember having that conversation, and not having any idea what people were talking about. Really, truly, I wasn’t even aware that I didn’t want to feel my… I didn’t know what that meant.
Melinda Dixon:
Yeah. Like, “What are you talking about?”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, the level of not understanding and people saying these things… The value of being in treatment, going to meetings, doing the work and being in recovery with other people is that you hear it over and over, and over, and over, and over again, and suddenly, a little piece of it starts to make sense, and another piece of it starts to make sense. And another piece of… I was like, “What are you talking about? What do you mean I don’t want to feel my feelings? I feel my feelings. I feel pissed right now. “
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I just no idea. And I think we get so used to just stuffing that stuff down all the way down. There’s a saying I love that, “They buried us but they didn’t know we were seeds.” The other visual for me that I loved was, we ‘re in a station wagon, which is our life, and we’ve been packing all our baggage all the way up to the top of this station [inaudible 00:34:16] full.
Melinda Dixon:
For sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And getting into recovery is like slamming on the brakes, and it’s all coming forward.
Melinda Dixon:
For sure. In ACA, there’s a story about, we’re just carrying the family bag, that this bag is just passed from generation to generation. You have just your crap. But again, what keeps coming to mind for me is I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know that I was stuffing and numbing out. I didn’t know that I… I thought I just really liked TV like a lot of kids that grew up in the 70s. I didn’t know that I was using TV as my babysitter to numb me out.
Melinda Dixon:
I recently, for a project in school, I picked to abstain from watching television for a month. I’m like, “This is going to be no big deal up. But it’s going to kind of be a big deal because I do watch TV a lot. I can do it. All right.” By week two, I was pissed. I was pissed off.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
This is recently?
Melinda Dixon:
This was the last year. And I’m like, “Why am I so pissed off? I want to watch TV right now. Why? Because I’m bored. You can’t find anything better to do and now you’re mad because you can’t use your old numbing out skill?” But I think, again, there’s so many layers to not knowing what we don’t know. I didn’t know I had coping skills. I didn’t know I was hypervigilant. I didn’t know about all the abuse that I…
Melinda Dixon:
I remember the first time my therapist said my ex-girlfriend was abusive to me. I was like, “(beep), no, she’s not.” I was offended that she said that. Meanwhile, this is someone who had put her hands on me, had abandoned me multiple times. Again, I’m not taking somebody else’s inventory, I was signing off on all of this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. No, no.
Melinda Dixon:
I was participating in my part. But you don’t know what you don’t know until you come to it. And it took me a long time to acknowledge she was abusive. She did put her hands on me. She did lie to me. She did not respect me or us, or the relationship. She didn’t nurture it, but neither did I. I was abandoning myself every time I went back to someone who wasn’t nurturing me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. And you don’t know what you don’t know.
Melinda Dixon:
Right. And I wasn’t nurturing myself because I never got that skillset. I wasn’t taught how to nurture myself.
ACA, and How It Has Helped Melinda
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, talk to us about ACA, getting into ACA, and what that was like, and about telling your story and feeling guilty about your family, feeling like you’re outing your family.
Melinda Dixon:
It’s really, really hard when you’re an ACAer. We call each other fellow travelers.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Fellow travelers.
Melinda Dixon:
Because we walk the path together. It’s hard in ACA to tell your truth and not villainize the people that brought you up because I truly know, I know that my parents did the best they could, but I was a neglected and abused child. And to say that, it’s not easy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What comes up for you? What’s coming up for you now?
Melinda Dixon:
Sharing the family secrets. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I know my parents did the best they could. I know my parents love me. Some of the best parts of me are stuff that I got from my parents. My work ethic, my sense of responsibility, my sense of fairness, my sense of compassion, being a good human. I got some great skills from them, but there are things that I just did not get, and it’s hard to tell my truth and not shame or embarrass others that are involved.
Melinda Dixon:
But this is something that I’ve been grappling with. I’ve known for some time that I was going to do this podcast. How do I tell my truth and not villainize, or shame, or embarrass others? How do I do that? How do I be honest with what happened to me and not hurt the people that I love?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think that’s such a huge thing for so many people. So many friends are coming to mind where they avoid talking about what’s happened in their childhood, or their life, or whatever because they can’t stand the role that their family members played in it. They love them, and they respect them in many ways; that person was abusive, and that person is an alcoholic, and all these other things. You know that they were doing the best they could, but the reality is those things happened.
Melinda Dixon:
The reality is… One of the things I’ve learned in ACA is that we say name it, don’t blame it. I know that I developed coping skills because of some things that happened to me as a child that, like I said, served me as a child but ultimately sabotaged my adult relationships. That was my reaction to my trauma. So, I take a lot of accountability for how I’ve lived my own life in anxiety. Because other people grow up with trauma, abuse, or neglect, and they don’t develop some of the coping skills that others of us do. Using drugs, alcohol, people, food, whatever it may be, we all have our own path.
Melinda Dixon:
So, I don’t have the desire nor the need to villainize any of the women I’ve ever struggled with, my family members. I take accountability and responsibility for my part. But part of being true to Melinda and the inner child work that we do in ACA, that innocence that was brought up in a really rough, and tough, and abusive environment. I am not being accountable and true to myself if I deny that part of my life. Not to blame, but to name it. Because if I don’t name that abuse, I keep abandoning Melinda.
Melinda Dixon:
I can’t grow if I keep abandoning myself. I can’t shine if I’m always in somebody else’s shadow of what happened between us. And I’ve literally had to tattoo this stuff on my arm. I literally have a tattoo that I have to look at three or four times a day to remind myself of the things that… I literally wear my recovery on my sleeve because it can be very easy for a child that’s raised in abuse to fall right back into that shadow, and not meet their full potential.
Melinda Dixon:
I am on the second half of my life at this point, and just now starting to meet some of my full potential because my life is very different from what it was four years ago. It’s a complete-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How? How so?
Melinda Dixon:
I don’t live in anxiety and depression anymore. Let’s not talk about it in a way that I don’t… My life has become rich and full. I not only changed jobs, I changed careers. I work in recovery now, which is so filling to me. It’s just so fulfilling. I thrive on it more than anything else that I do. My career is like my number one thing. I went back to college after failing out in my early-20s, and just completed my certification-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Congratulations.
Melinda Dixon:
… to become an addictions’ counselor, which was awesome. And I’ve decided to continue on with school and become a therapist. So, that’s shocking. I think some of the other ways that are different is I don’t question everything that comes at me now with a distrust, and a scarcity, and fear. I don’t live in fear anymore. Now when something happens that sucks, it’s like, “That sucked, but I can figure this out, and I’ll be okay.” I’m more inquisitive about life rather than being fearful. That’s a huge thing.
Melinda Dixon:
I sold a home that was anchoring me down, the home that I was robbed in. It just felt like an anchor, a noose around my neck. I sold it. I live very minimally now, live in a beautiful luxury apartment, which I love. I never thought I would do something like that. I’m so happy. I literally walk from one room to the next one. I love my place. It’s not that I live in some beautiful, awesome place that you’re going to see on TV, it’s just I’m so much more comfortable. I’m just comfortable. Life doesn’t happen to me anymore. I am not swimming against the tide anymore. It happens for me now.
Peter Loeb:
Hi, I’m Peter Loeb, CEO and co-founder of Lionrock Recovery. We’re proud to sponsor The Courage To Change, and I hope you find that it’s an inspiration. I was inspired to start Lionrock after my sister lost her own struggle with drugs and alcohol back in 2010. Because we provide care online by live video, Lionrock clients can get help from the privacy of home. We offer flexible schedules that fit our client’s busy lives. And of course, we’re licensed and accredited, and we accept most private health insurance. You can find out more about us at lionrockrecovery.com, or call us for a free consultation, no commitment, at (800) 258-6550. Thank you.
More About ACA
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did ACA… What happens in ACA? What is ACA about? How did it transform you?
Melinda Dixon:
I think the part that ACA has played is it’s allowed me… enabled me is probably a better word because we do a lot of freaking work in ACA. It’s enabled who I was always meant to be to come out. Because for the majority of my life, I was trying to be what I thought you needed me to be so you could be okay with me. Now, your opinion of me is none of my business. And when you get to that, then you can start to live your full, authentic self because it doesn’t matter what other people think of you. I’m not managing your experience of me anymore. I’m just authentically me.
Melinda Dixon:
So, in the past year when I got this tattoo, at the same weekend, I bought a motorcycle. I had a motorcycle 20 years ago, never got one again, always said I wanted another one. And I think at my age, getting a tattoo and a motorcycle in the same weekend, most people would have been like, “She’s having a midlife crisis.” No, she’s just doing what she always was meant to be doing. There’s no midlife crisis here. I’m doing what I want to be doing, and I’m okay, and I’m happy.
Melinda Dixon:
I’m not anxiety-ridden, I’m not depressed anymore. It’s a completely different way to live. I sometimes don’t like using all the words that we get because we get a new vocabulary when we move into recovery, and they sometimes sound cheesy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know.
Melinda Dixon:
But I now understand calm, peace, and serenity. When I first started going into the rooms, I’m like, “These people are full of (beep). They’re lying.” I literally sat up in an ACA meeting in the first month and said, “This is a cult. You guys are all crazy.” Now on the back of one of our books, it says, ‘I am whole, healthy, sane, and safe.’ I am whole. I’m healthy. I’m sane, and always was, and I am safe because I surround myself with people that don’t threaten me any longer in whatever that meant; emotionally, physically, verbally, whatever that meant.
Sponsoring Others
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you sponsor women?
Melinda Dixon:
Sponsorship has been something that’s been not something I’ve been open to yet because of working in recovery. I ran groups where I used to work, so I felt I was doing service and sponsorship that way. Now that I’ve gotten my certification, I am going to start doing some small groups though.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was curious. The reason I ask is curious how people identify that ACA is a good place for them, and the way… I’ll preface it with this that Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous… You do a lot of cocaine, and Cocaine Anonymous is a place you can go. Alcoholism, you drink a lot of-
Melinda Dixon:
Gamblers Anonymous.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, gamblers. This is pretty straight forward. It turns out it’s not for many people, but you know what I mean. It’s pretty relatively straight forward, where ACA, Dysfunctional Families, I think one piece of the dysfunctionality of these families is that they don’t know they’re dysfunctional.
Melinda Dixon:
It’s totally true.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’m literally thinking of people going… they would be amazing in ACA, but if I came up to them and said this, like, “What are you talking about?” And so, I’m wondering how people find ACA, or how people… I won’t say qualified, not qualify, but how do people get into the rooms that way? And when you talk to people and they’re unsure, what are some of the ways that you show them that they belong?
Melinda Dixon:
One of the things that we talk a lot about in ACA is… Because for most of us that are involved in ACA, our boundaries were always crossed. We don’t tell you you should come to ACA. Because I don’t know that for you, I don’t know what is or is not true for you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, you don’t say, “Keep coming back?”
Melinda Dixon:
We do say keep coming back when somebody new identifies themselves as, “This is my first time.” “Keep coming back.”We do say that. But I would never go up to a friend and say, “I think this might benefit you.” What happens is… And I think we have to instead of globalizing this, go back down to your own family unit. So, you go back down to your own family unit.
Melinda Dixon:
Nobody in my family has changed. Nobody in my family around me has changed. Melinda has changed, and therefore, my relationships with them have changed. They’ve gotten very much more connected and empowering, and good because I’ve changed, because I don’t have unrealistic expectations of the people around me anymore.
Melinda Dixon:
But what happens is, is that law of attraction thing. People see Melinda not anxiety-ridden anymore, not controlling everything that goes on, being more fun, more at ease with herself, enjoying themselves around her more. And they’re like, “What’s going on with you?” “Oh, I got a new therapist, she sent me to an outpatient program, and then I got into ACA.” “What’s all that?”
Melinda Dixon:
And then if they start to ask me, then I’ll talk about it. And then I’ll say, “If you want to know more about it, the best thing to do is read the 14 traits.” And the 14 traits are what most ACAers have in common. And when I read that list, I was 11 of the 14. It literally was like, this is my life on a piece of paper.
14 Traits of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Can you tell us what the 14 traits are?
Melinda Dixon:
We have this thing called the laundry list in ACA, and it’s basically the traits that people that find their way in there seem to have in common. So, trait number one is we became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures. That was me. I made everybody an authority figure over me. So, we became isolated and afraid of people in authority figures. I was afraid of pretty much everyone because I didn’t trust anyone, and everyone was authority figure, everyone knew better than me. I couldn’t trust my own judgment.
Melinda Dixon:
Number two, we became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process. I had no identity. Number three, we are frightened by angry people in any personal criticism. I always felt like I was in trouble when someone questioned anything that I did. That overwhelming sense of I’m constantly in trouble is hard to live with.
Melinda Dixon:
Number four, we either became alcoholics, married them, or both, or found another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fill our sick abandonment needs. That one is me all over. Five, we live life from the viewpoint of victims, and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships. I played the victim role for my whole entire life.
Melinda Dixon:
Six, we have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. It is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves. That enables us to not look too closely at our own faults. Seven, we get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving into others. Eight, we became addicted to excitement. That one was very difficult for me to understand.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s interesting.
Melinda Dixon:
Yeah, I didn’t get that for a long time until I remember feeling one day so alive that I was crying about this huge fight that my ex and I had. I remember feeling very alive in that moment. And then when I got to ACA I was like, “Oh, that’s some sick stuff. Some sick (beep) that you got to work on.”
Melinda Dixon:
All right. Number nine, we confuse love and pity, and tend to love people we can pity and rescue. Number 10, we have stuffed our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much, denial. Number 11, we judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem. 12, we are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold onto a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings which we receive from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us. That was my number one. That was my number one.
Melinda Dixon:
13, alcoholism is a family disease, and we became para-alcoholics, and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink. 14 para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors. That was a big one for me too because I never acted on my wants, needs, or desires. I always asked you, and then went with the flow, because I’m trying to manage your experience of me so that I will be okay. Because if you’re okay, I’m okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. I wonder how many people listening to this will relate to those traits. My parents aren’t alcoholics, but I related to a lot of those maladaptive behaviors. People do go for dysfunctional families even if their parents weren’t alcoholic?
Melinda Dixon:
Right. For sure. I think it’s one of the big topics of conversation now. There’s been a lot of talk about should we adjust the name a little bit? Because most people don’t know that ACA is actually an offshoot of AA. ACA started because of Alateen. So, the teens have their group, that their parents struggle with alcohol, so they have their own little support group. And what happened is the teens aged out. And they were like, “Well, we need a group now.”
Melinda Dixon:
And it just so happened that they started this group with Tony A, who is the founder of ACA in Palm Beach County where I live. It just happens be where I live that Tony A is from. And Tony A wrote his own version of our 12 steps. But ACA is actually Alateens, the teens just aging out. But what they wanted to do, and what the thought process is now is we want people to understand that it’s, you don’t have to come from alcoholism or drug abuse, or that being in your family. It’s the dysfunction. So, I’m a good example.
Melinda Dixon:
If I had children, they would have been raised in this dysfunction that I have been acting out, even though alcohol and drugs were never really a problem or an issue for me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. The intergenerational piece.
Melinda Dixon:
But the craziness that they would have been raised in with me, that’s the dysfunction.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I think that’s really a good thing for people to know, and to know that there’s a support group, the 12 steps and the things that we learn, and the new vocabulary, the things that we learn in inpatient and just recovery in general. Everywhere it touches our lives, it just absolutely transforms it. I wish that more people would explore it or know that it’s open to them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I see some times we’ll travel, or people are worried about moving, or whatever it is. And I always think to myself, “Well, if I move, I’ll just find a new homegroup and meet my new people.” Like, I don’t … “Oh, I’m traveling. I could go to a meeting and meet a bunch of people.” I know that my people are wherever I go.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
In fact, I went to Spain and lived in Spain for a summer while studying abroad, and the meetings there saved my ass, just going to… and having this group. I still am friends with people today who live in Europe, who I met there. I just know that my people are wherever I go. And I so deeply want that for other people.
Melinda Dixon:
I think what most people don’t understand is that these programs, these 12-step programs are really about fellowship and maintenance. And what that means for me is exactly what you’re just talking about. That I’m never alone wherever I go, that I’ve got these safe people that I can turn to. Therapy is for working out your crap. Intense outpatient programs and outpatient programs are for working through your stuff, and teaching you new coping skills so that you can have the life that you want to have.
The Community
Melinda Dixon:
But for me, fellowship, the meetings is about that maintenance of sobriety that I can go do whatever I want, whenever I want with people that are safe, whole, healthy, sane and safe for me to be around, that I’ve got this fellowship wherever I go. It doesn’t matter where I live, I could move away from my home tomorrow, and I’d be okay because I can find a meeting, just like you were talking about. And I can find people that get and understand what I’ve gone through because they’re fellow travelers. They’ve been down that path.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s such a sense of community… It’s something indescribable. It’s funny when you talk about the cult aspect. I think it’s such a huge issue that people struggle with. I long ago… And I came in at 19. I went to my first meeting at 15, but came in at 19. I really grappled with is this a cult? Are they brainwashing us? Is it a Christian cult? All the stuff that people talk about. I got to this point where it’s like, “Well, the people are really cool. Most of them are really cool, and they get me. I don’t really have to believe in any of this stuff they’re saying. Most of them are suggestions. If it’s cult, it’s cult.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You get to the point where… Especially being sober, and I think this is the same when you… Sobriety is simply… Your sobriety is the same as my sobriety. It’s putting down our tried and true coping skills. That’s it. It’s the same thing. The things that alter us from the neck up that change how we feel. So, you get to a certain point when you’ve put down all your major coping skills where you’re like, “I don’t care if I have to wear a clown suit and run around naked on PCH. If that’s what’s going to make me feel better, I’m going to do it because I can’t manage feeling like this without coping skills.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I refuse to do it, and my tolerance for that emotional… What we experience is almost… I want to say like dry drunk, but the emotional duress without the work is very low, particularly 13 years in. I don’t have a lot of tolerance where I’m like, “Okay, I’ve done something. Okay, what do I need to do?” In many ways, actually, I find I try to move to the solution too quickly.
Melinda Dixon:
But I think what you’re talking about is the same for us. Even though it might’ve been drugs or alcohol for you, and it was people for me, it was relationships. It’s emotional sobriety [crosstalk 00:58:41].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. And it’s the same.
Melinda Dixon:
It’s emotional sobriety.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It’s the same thing.
Melinda Dixon:
It is the same. It’s the same. It’s that you have figured out how to self-soothe, how to create and live within your boundaries, how to be whole, healthy, sane, and safe, in whatever way that works. I love you talking about like the cult aspect of it because I was very worried about that in the beginning, and the religious aspect. And I’m glad that you’ve reminded me of that because I am an atheist. It’s scary to go into a 12-step program with everything we think we know about 12-steps to say I’m an atheist or I’m agnostic.
Melinda Dixon:
But again, one of the things I love about ACA is, we believe in a higher power, and I had to come to what does that mean for me to feel comfortable in those rooms? Because there is a lot of God-talk-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There is.
Melinda Dixon:
… around the room.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There is.
More About ACA
Melinda Dixon:
And we’re very careful in ACA… When we read from the readings or from the book or whatever, it’s all higher power, higher power, higher power because God for you might be different than for somebody else, which is fine. But that was a turning point for me too. I’m like, “You’re not going to get me in this room, and suddenly I’m going to believe in God. It’s not going to happen. It’s never been something in my life and it’s not going to be moving forward.”
Melinda Dixon:
But what happened for me is I had an understanding of higher power that opened me up to say I want what these people have, which is what you said a moment ago. What happened for me is somebody said to me, “Your best thinking got you here.” We’ve all heard that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Melinda Dixon:
Your best sick thinking got you to the point where you haven’t worked for four months, don’t have a job, or in a toxic relationship, and you’re sitting in a chair in a room that you’ve never been in before, snot rolling down your nose, crying uncontrollably. Your life is unmanageable and out of control. And I remember somebody telling me about that, “You can’t trust your own best thinking.”
Melinda Dixon:
So, for me, what higher power became was, “Okay, these people seem pretty solid. So, the more I’m around them, the more I want what they have. So, for me, higher power is going to be my therapist, my group, and my sponsor. Because these people all do appear to have what I want.” Now, that doesn’t mean I’m going to go to them and ask for permission or validation. It doesn’t. What it meant for me is when I was struggling with something, I would just put it out to my universe, and my universe became my group, my therapist, my sponsor, and I would just see what would come back.
Melinda Dixon:
But what was coming back to me was messages from healthy people who have walked the path before me. And so, I knew I could trust it. So, it enabled me to start to see things in a different light, started to change my own thinking, and then I was able to start to trust the people around me because they proved themselves to be trustworthy to me. So, this whole shift started to come where eventually I could start to trust my own thinking.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. I remember that shift for me too, where it’s like, “Okay, I think…” You go from like your first thought is… They talk about your first thought when you first come in, “Your first thought is terrible, throw it out, whatever it is. Okay, your second thought terrible, also throw that out.” Eventually, you’re like, “Okay, first thought bad, second thought’s getting better.” And then eventually, you’re like, “Hey, my first… I can actually trust what’s coming to mind.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And every now and again I’m like, “That is a terrible idea, Ashley.” There are fewer, there are certainly fewer, and that does change and you learn to trust yourself. I fear so often that the God piece-
Melinda Dixon:
Turns people off.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
… turns people off. I don’t want to be, for lack of a better word, evangelical in selling the 12-steps because there are other ways of getting sober.
Melinda Dixon:
For sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There really are.
Melinda Dixon:
Whatever works.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Whatever works for you. Truly, it’s just what worked for me, and I know many people it’s worked for. But if that’s the one thing keeping people away from this community, I beg you, beg you to trust that it will be okay. You don’t have to pay attention to that, that you can be an atheist, you can be agnostic. Sometimes I do… Every now and again you go to a meeting, there’s a lot of God going on, and you cringe. Like you [inaudible 01:03:18] like, “I hope no one’s new here.” That’s what I always think. And a lot of the time when that happens, I’ll share and it’ll be like, “I came in here, and I didn’t believe in any of that Hocus Pocus.” I just share it because I’m like, “Oh, my gosh.”
A Power Greater Than Yourself
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But you do, you see on the… Alcoholics Anonymous is like third step made a decision to turn your will and life over to the care of God as you understood him. I remember looking at this like, “Okay, I am shooting heroin.” You know what I mean? On what planet is this step going to do anything? I don’t even know what that means. What do you mean turn my care… You give my keys to God. You want me to throw my keys in the air? What does that mean? This is the most insane… And I had to come to that higher power piece.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I remember there was one person who said to me, “Ashley, I want you to go to the beach, and I want you to look at the waves. And I want you to make them stop braking.” And I said, “Okay, well, I can’t do that.” And he said, “Well, then that’s a power greater than you.”
Melinda Dixon:
That’s awesome.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I was like, “All right, well, okay, I can start there.” So then it was like, “Pray to the ocean.” For me, I’m kind of a nerd that way. And so, the ocean… I know a lot about different ecosystems and whatever. From a scientific perspective, I was like, “Well, the ocean is a grand place that has all these amazing ecosystems.” So, when I think about it as a power greater than myself and praying to it, I really see it as a magical thing. I could do that, I could do that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I will tell you, I had a sponsee once who… she was like… I said, “We got to find a power greater than yourself.” And then she’s like, “I don’t believe in God, and this.” And I said, “Okay, well, just a power greater than you are.” And I came up with the normal ones that we usually throw out. And she said, “Well, what about the United States government?” I looked at her, I was like, “It is a power greater than yourself, but I’m not sure I’d use that.”But just funny…It was so funny. I was like, “I’m stuffed. You got me. I don’t know. You can pray to them all you want, good luck. I think you’re in a long line of people who are praying to the United States government.”
Melinda Dixon:
Yeah, really.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But yeah, I love the story of your transformation from that, and the co-dependence piece. What do you think… I went to treatment for… I went to the Meadows for love addiction, did my own psychodrama because I could not stay away from substances until I dealt with that piece because that piece was too painful to not use substance, period undestroyed. I just couldn’t do it. And so, I did do that, and I did do a lot of work around that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What do you think the difference between Co-Dependents Anonymous and ACA would be? Because ACA has a lot of the codependent piece to it, and that was a lot of-
Melinda Dixon:
Pressure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
… what you dealt with. And in my head, codependent people certainly have dysfunctional families.
CoDA, ACA, NA, AA
Melinda Dixon:
I haven’t been to a CoDA meeting for many, many, many years, although it was something I absolutely tried in the beginning when I was… This is going back 10 years ago when I was really struggling, maybe even longer. So, I don’t know that I can speak to what’s the difference between CoDA and ACA because I haven’t been to a CoDA meeting for years and years and years.
Melinda Dixon:
But I can tell you what we concentrate on in ACA is we concentrate on… they call it the inner child work. Some people might be more comfortable calling it your lost innocence. If you come from trauma, abuse, or neglect, what skills did you develop that helped you survive as a child but now are sabotaging your adult relationships? That’s the true nature of the work that we do in there.
Melinda Dixon:
A lot of my AA and NA friends will say… One of my friends, in particular, I’m thinking, who was involved heavily in AA before she got into ACA, she said AA put the cork on the bottle and saved her life. She said Al-Anon saved her relationships. She said ACA saved her inner child, saved her lost innocence, that she was able to work through that deep, deep, deep, deep, deep stuff that she was never able to work through in the other programs.
Melinda Dixon:
I don’t think that most people… first of all, they don’t know about ACA. It’s not as popular as the other programs. I don’t think they have a clue of the amount of healing to your lost innocence, whatever that is for you, that we do in those rooms. Most of my friends in ACA came from NA or AA, and obviously, those programs work. They got sober there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, for sure.
Melinda Dixon:
I mean, saved their lives, but they didn’t work through the why did I get here in the first place? They were able to change coping skills, but they never got to why.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like the deep…
Melinda Dixon:
Right. And that’s what I think ACA does. ACA figures out why I got here, how I got here in the first place.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What are some of the common ways or things that you see in ACA for people coming in? Aside from obviously substance abuse.
Melinda Dixon:
What do you mean? Why they’re coming in?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, like coping mechanisms. What brings them there? What are-
Melinda Dixon:
All of us come there because we went through a (beep) breakup. Everybody that… Listen, I’m overgeneralizing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s interesting.
Melinda Dixon:
You don’t come into ACA going, “Life is great and wonderful. What do you guys do in here?”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For sure.
Melinda Dixon:
You come into ACA going, “I just up (beep) another relationship. I just met the third guy who stole from me, lied to me, cheated on me.”
What’s Wrong with Me?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like, “What’s wrong with me?”
Melinda Dixon:
What is wrong with me? You’re totally, completely broken. You are unlovable. Why? Why do I keep doing this same behavior over and over, and over, and over, and over? We have a lot of the universe doing for us what we can’t do for ourselves. One of my friends in ACA one time said, “I just couldn’t shake this guy. This guy was totally bad for me, completely toxic. I couldn’t shake him. He calls me from jail one day and said he got a year in jail.” So, she looks up at the universe and she says, “I got a year, I got a year to shake this guy because he’s going to be in jail for a year. The universe did for me what I can’t do for myself.”
Melinda Dixon:
That’s why most of us… Most of us end up in ACA because of broken relationships, or that same relationship over and over and over that’s toxic and abusive just with a prettier girl or more handsome guy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Because our family relationships are our blueprint.
Melinda Dixon:
For sure. Absolutely, for sure. That’s how most people end up in ACA, it’s broken relationships. And you can always see the new people crawling, crying snot everywhere. She just broke up with so-and-so. We all know it. We all know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, because they’re all involved.
Melinda Dixon:
That’s how we all got there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Melinda Dixon:
Nobody comes in there on a winning ticket, my friend says.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No. Yeah, that’s what we say that no one comes in here on a winning streak in AA too. Yeah. No, it’s true. It’s true. And yet I think for most of us who’ve accrued recovery would say that it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us.
Melinda Dixon:
I think for sure. I remember one time my therapist saying to me, “Your ex has given you the best gift you’ve ever been given in your life. She’s pushed you in to do this work.” And at the time my therapist said that, it was, again, one of those (beep) , I think I need to find a new therapist moments. This is just not working out between you and I. I keep telling me all this bullshit. But yeah, it forced me to change and it was uncomfortable and painful, but the alternative was to stay in uncomfort and pain.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, that’s the thing. That’s the funny thing is you’re like, “Oh no, that’s going to be uncomfortable.” It’s like, what’s going on right now? Right now is I’m uncomfortable. This is uncomfortable. I’m going to… It’s just different. It’s the devil we know. That’s the difference. That’s the difference between staying in our discomfort. It isn’t as painful as you think it’s going to be.
Melinda Dixon:
It’s also, I think, a lot of fear of the unknown. We were talking a moment ago about the God aspect of it. People don’t know that we truly, in ACA, we truly do mean higher power. That could mean a tree to you. I don’t care.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yup, don’t matter.
Melinda Dixon:
Nobody’s going to… I am an atheist and a national speaker for ACA. I promise you, all are welcome. I think the big part of fear is fear itself. The fear of fear kept me stuck.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The fear of fear.
Melinda Dixon:
The fear of fear kept me stuck. The fear of anything. But one of the things, it’s on my voicemail, it’s on my Facebook, it’s actually in my emails when I send an email to people, everything you want is on the other side of fear. That’s not a quote that I made up, that’s somebody else made it up. But everything you want is on the other side of fear. So if anything that I’m sharing today or talking about rings true to you, and you want out of this life of anxiety and depression and PTSD, and comfortable in your body and being overwhelmed, 24/7, 365, I promise you, everything you want is on the other side of that fear.
Melinda Dixon:
Because I don’t live in that anymore. I don’t live in that. Even when I get triggered or stressed, like we all do, it’s easy now for me to say, “Something’s going on. You’re a little triggered. You’re little stressed. Look at your arm if you need to.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What does your arm say?
Melinda Dixon:
I just look at my tattoo and I’m… It’s soothing. I’m okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What does-
Melinda Dixon:
So, these are the things that are important to me for my recovery, so I put them on my arm. Invite love, crave joy, own courage, release fear, stay present, and accept growth.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it. I will touch that on my forehead.
Melinda Dixon:
These were all the things that were important to me, you’ll have to pay me a royalty because I made this up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it. I love it.
Melinda Dixon:
When I’m stressed, triggered, trauma, when I’m scared, when I’m nervous, own courage. Okay. When I’m not in the present moment, stay present. When something’s happened that’s really not comfortable for me, got to go see the boss about something that you’re nervous about, accept growth. Accept growth, it’s okay. You have good people around you, you can trust these people. They may have to tell you something that’s not going to feel really great right now, but it’s okay. Accept growth.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. That’s a hard thing. That’s a hard thing.
Throwing Out the Old Blueprint
Melinda Dixon:
I think the others like the inviting love. Love is scary when you have a new blueprint of love, when you’ve thrown out the old blueprint. What’s this going to look like?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is it going to work?
Melinda Dixon:
Is it going to work? How am I going to do this? So, you have to be open. I think the craving joy is-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s my favorite one.
Melinda Dixon:
Crave joy is probably my favorite too. But the reason I had to put it on my arm is because we do a lot of work in ACA. ACA is not for (beep). And when you come out the other side of it, you’ve been doing a lot of work for a long time, even work you didn’t even know you were doing. It’s a lot of work to keep yourself safe in isolation, which is what most of us do. And to come out of that means life is going to be different. It’s going to be more fulfilling, and you have to crave joy again. You have to let go of the work, which is very hard because it keeps us safe.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And the best way to do that is to surround yourself with people who are doing the same thing.
Melinda Dixon:
For sure. And that you can go have fun with, and that you can trust. And then you do and you go, “Wow, that was fun, and I trust you guys.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, this feels good, and life is good.
Melinda Dixon:
And life is good. I think the true testament to this craving joy… And this is going to sound so silly to you guys, but this is a testament of surrounding yourself with people that get and understand you and being safe, and being able to become who you want to be in the world. Last weekend at my Saturday meeting that I go to for ACA, I was on the way out the house and I have these pairs of tennis shoes… I have like eight different pairs of these tennis shoes that I wear all the time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Same ones?
Melinda Dixon:
Right, same style, but they’re all different patterns or whatever. And so, I was walking… I put one pair on and I was like, “Man, I really want to wear the other pair with this outfit.” And I was like, “Okay, just forget it. Just wear the one pair you got on.” Get all the way to the door and I’m like, “I really want to wear the other pair.” Go back to my closet, and I put the other ones on it, I get to the door again, I go, “I really want to wear both. I want to wear both pairs.” One is a checkered pattern and one is stripes. Yup, I’m wearing them. Who cares?
Melinda Dixon:
This seems so silly, but this is the ability now for me just be silly and be who I want to be. So, I literally went to my ACA meeting with two different shoes on. Same style of shoe, just two different patterns. And everyone there was like, “That is so cool. You’re starting a new trend.” And I’m like, “Nah, just letting me be me, man. And I knew if I was going to do it, I’d be safe doing it around you guys and you guys wouldn’t make fun of me or shame me if I did it.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I bet people thought they came like that.
Melinda Dixon:
People thought they came like that. People thought it wasn’t any big deal. And one of the guys came up to me and said, “I really love the shoes, but I love what’s in more. For real.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love that.
Melinda Dixon:
That’s some for real stuff.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s some for real. That’s the stuff that goes on though.
Melinda Dixon:
That’s the stuff that goes on. You touched a moment while ago on we don’t sometimes get what we needed from the folks that brought us up, but what we can find in therapy, in counseling, in meetings, in groups, is people that can fulfill these roles that weren’t our natural family. I do have father figures in ACA, and I also have my father, but my father can only do what he can do. And I can get some of… What I envision a father might do, I can get that from some of my ACA guys. And I can get the mothering from my sponsor, and the nurturing.
Melinda Dixon:
I can get the sibling friendship from the girls that I hang out with in ACA that we go run around and do things together. Those things that I need to have a fulfilling life can just be given by maybe not the people I was born to, but the people that I’ve chosen to walk the path with.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it’s a scary prospect but once you… All you have to do is show up. I think that’s the biggest thing is that that’s… I think it’s more than half the battle. It’s just showing up-
Melinda Dixon:
It takes tons of bravery and courage. Own courage, like it says on my arm, it takes tons of bravery to walk into the rooms, and nobody there is going to judge you with snot coming down your face, because that’s how we all arrived.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I was talking to a woman, she was saying, “Well, if I go into an AA meeting, they’re going to know I’m an alcoholic.” I said, “Well, everyone in there is an alcoholic, so they’re going to be relieved that you are as well.” All the stories that we tell ourselves hold us back.
Melinda Dixon:
That’s what being stuck in story is. That’s being stuck in story and shame. And shame to me is the number one emotion that keeps people stuck in addiction. I remember a few years ago, one of the girls coming up to me going, “God, your eyes look so pretty.” I go, “Well, I have makeup on. You’d never seen me in makeup?” “Why haven’t you ever worn makeup?” I said, “I just spent the first year here crying my eyes out. I don’t have to cry every day anymore. So, you guys actually get to see me in makeup.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s so funny.
Melinda Dixon:
And these are these little subtle fun things that happen though. We all come in there and looking like a mess.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally.
Melinda Dixon:
You put a nice pair of shoes on, everyone’s like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know.
Melinda Dixon:
“Gosh, you clean up real nice.” “The first year I was here, dude, I barely got peeled myself off the couch, got in the car to get here.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. It was… Oh, God.
Melinda Dixon:
A (beep) mess, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Absolute mess. But it’s okay.
Melinda Dixon:
The transition is beautiful.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And I will say that I’ve fallen apart and gone back to being that mess in recovery.
Recovery is Not a Straight Line
Melinda Dixon:
It’s not a straight line.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No. And that that was okay too. I was embraced as well, and there was solution there too, and there was new solution. I was worried. I was like, “Oh, you’re just going to tell me to pray. You’re just going to tell me do this.” No, there was new solution, and there were new 12-step programs. I was like, “Oh, my God, if I belong to one more 12 program, I’m going to have to quit my job.”
Melinda Dixon:
I think that safety though is so important. That safety of… again, in ACA, we call them fellow travelers or if you’re in an outpatient program, it’s your group. You have the safety of these people that get and understand what you’re going through because they’ve been through it too. And that comfort to fail, lapse, relapse and not be shamed, and judged, but to have somebody look at you and go, “Man, I get it. I get it. I did it. I’ve done it. And we all slip.” I spent the first year in ACA talking about nothing but my ex.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For sure.
Melinda Dixon:
And I don’t have any of my friends that were there have ever shamed me for going back to the hardware store for bread. The first year I was going to the hardware store for bread.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh man. I got back with my ex. I went to the Meadows for love addiction and got back with him, and tried to bring him to family week.
Melinda Dixon:
Of course.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was like, “Are you doing any…” But as you said, each individual relationship was an upgrade from the last, and each learning lesson was a valuable… some of the most painful learning lessons. I remember I learned to leave. I picked up and moved to another state, which it’s a bit of a geographic, but I ended up in Southern California. I left the boyfriend. Best thing I ever did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Literally, I had never done that. I had never been able to do it. And I was like, “This is no longer working.” And from that point on, and it was such a cheating relationship, the checking the phone, it was just like… And you know that feeling when the phone rings and your stomach drops, and you’re like, “Oh God.” You know what you’re going to find whatever, all that stuff. And it just went away.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When I finally had enough, I had the tools because I had gone to treatment, and it wasn’t in vain that I had gone to treatment. I knew what to do, and the feeling came over me of, “You cannot control people. They’re either going to love you and treat you well or not. And that is out of your control. The only thing that’s in your control is if you stick around.” And again, I’m not going to say that the next relationships were super healthy, but that one piece, that one jealousy piece went away.
Melinda Dixon:
I think that’s what happens when you start into recovery and you go down this new road. It’s not a straight line.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Melinda Dixon:
There’s lots of bumps, hills, trees, logs that you got to climb over, all this work that you have to do.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Moguls.
Melinda Dixon:
Yeah. Ponds.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. Sinkholes.
Melinda Dixon:
But what you’re doing is little tiny changes that slowly push you towards who you are always meant to be. Because again, for me, I was never meant to be a person who was stuck in anxiety and depression, and trying to cope with PTSD, and all of that. That’s not who I was meant to be. I was meant to be who I am now today. Happy, joyous and free. Having fun, enjoying the life. Got my career that I want, living the way I want to live.
Melinda Dixon:
But it’s not a straight line is what I’m getting at. It’s little incremental changes that don’t even feel like changes when they’re happening. But you look back on these moments that you’re sharing with and go, “I did that. I did that.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How pivotal it was.
Melinda Dixon:
And how pivotal it is. It doesn’t seem like it at the moment, but you look back and go, “Man, I did that. I did that.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And it’s okay if you looked like (beep) doing it too.
Melinda Dixon:
Yeah. And you probably did. I remember standing up a couple times for myself… This story isn’t really important, but I remember standing up a couple times for myself, and then immediately contacting my sponsor as I was sitting on the floor of my bathroom bawling my eyes out going, “What did I just do.” But there in lies the, “I did it. I still got a ton of feelings about it, but here’s this safe person to help me talk that out and not judge me.”
Melinda Dixon:
So, you did it. You did this really hard thing and you’re okay, and you’re still alive, and you’re better for it. The other thing that happened recently is my therapist said… And this hit me in the face big time because I had to do something hard… “The universe is going to keep asking you if you’re sure you don’t want this until you tell it you don’t want it.” So, she said, “You’re going to have to go do this hard thing that you don’t want to do.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That’s a really interesting thing.
Melinda Dixon:
Dude, the universe is going to keep asking you if you sure you don’t want this until you tell it, “I don’t want this anymore.” Because I recently found myself attracted to someone who’s in a relationship, who’s married. And I’m like, “I don’t want this. Why is this happening? What is going on? What is this about?” Talked it out with my sponsor, talked it out with my therapist, figured out what was going on. I had to say, “Yeah, universe, I don’t want that. Thank you. I’m good.” And it was scary, but let me tell you, this wave of relief came over me and I was okay, and I was fine. And it was one of those standing up for myself moments. Yeah, I’m sure I don’t want this anymore. You don’t have to keep asking me. I’m good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’m good.
Melinda Dixon:
I changed. I want this now. And it’ll come.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it will come. It will come if you do the work.
Melinda Dixon:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, thank you so much for coming and sharing your story. It’s really important that people hear it. I’m really grateful for your authenticity, vulnerability, and sharing this time with me.
Melinda Dixon:
Thanks for having me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The Courage To Change: A Recovery Podcast would like to thank our sponsor, Lionrock recovery for their support. Lionrock recovery provides online substance abuse where you can get help from the privacy of your own home. For more information, visit www.lyonrockrecovery.com\podcast. Subscribe and join our podcast community to hear amazing stories of courage and transformation.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We are so grateful to our listeners, and hope that you will engage with us. Please email us comments, questions, anything you want to share with us, how this podcast has affected you. Our email address is podcast@lionrockrecovery.com. We want to hear from you.