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Feb 11
  • Written By Guest User

    • #33 – Kimberly Russell

    #33 - Kimberly Russell

    Kimberly’s Story

    Kimberly’s “rock bottom” was a serious suicide attempt that left her in a coma on life support with a collapsed lung. She got sober at the age of 27 on July 2, 2017. Since that time, Kimberly has walked through losing a job of 4 years, losing multiple relationships, her sponsor relapsing, a sexual assault and overcoming multiple addictions to self-harm, sex and love, codependency and an eating disorder. Her saving grace through every one of these experiences has been spiritual growth and dedication to working a 12-step program.

    Kimberly wouldn’t change a single experience she’s had because it has empowered her to discover her passion for helping others. It has forced her to be constantly self-reflective, pushed her to reach out for help and realize that there has always been something reaching back.

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    Episode Transcript

    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, I will be interviewing Kimberly Russell. Kimberly’s rock bottom was a serious suicide attempt that left her with a collapsed lung, in a coma, on life support. She got sober on July 2nd, 2017, at the age of 27. Since that time, Kimberly has walked through losing multiple relationships, her sponsor relapsing, a sexual assault, overcoming addiction to self-harm, sex, and love, codependency, an eating disorder, and losing a job of four years. Her saving grace through everyone one of these experiences has been spiritual growth and dedication to working a 12-step program.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Kimberly wouldn’t change a single experience she’s had because it has empowered her to discover her passion for helping others. It has forced her to be constantly self reflective. It has pushed her to reach out for help, and realize that there has always been something reaching back.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    All right, episode 33, please enjoy and let’s do this.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Kim, thank you so much for being here, coming to the podcast booth.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Thank you for having me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Welcome, thank you for allowing my giant dog to be here.

    Kimberly Russell:

    He’s a sweetheart.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    He’s sleeping.

    Kimberly Russell:

    He’s a sleepy baby now.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. So we were just talking about you grew up in Anaheim, in OC, so you stayed in OC.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And you are sober… You got sober a couple years ago, right?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, 27. I have two and a half years right now.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Awesome. Congratulations.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Thank you.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Awesome. When’s three?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Will be July 2nd of 2020.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Awesome, awesome. So from what I understand, you had a super loving home family, really… whatever normal is, you had that normal family.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Which I think is a really great story because I think on here we hear all the traumatic upbringings that people have and I think it’s awesome because there’s so many people who are like, “I didn’t have anything. What’s wrong with me?” Almost like nothing to grasp onto and say, “This is what happened. This is why I did this.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    And almost makes it more frustrating, because I have nothing to point to to justify my behavior and to explain it away. I remember actually wishing that something terrible would happen in my life so that it would give me an excuse to do what I was doing.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Totally. And I think so often… I know people who did grasp for things. Where they would grasp for things to happen because otherwise, it’s like, “Oh no, it’s just me in my head.” So what was your childhood like?

    Kimberly Russell:

    It was very peaceful, a lot of love. I have two parents who are still married to this day, who still love each other very much. I’ve never seen either of them call each other a name. When they would get into an argument or a disagreement, they would politely excuse themselves from the room and then go have a conversation until they felt like they were on the same page, and then they would come back and talk about it. So I had a really beautiful example of what a loving and functional relationship looks like.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I have an older sister and two younger brothers. We were all homeschooled together. We were middle class, so we had clothes on our back, we had a roof over our head. We never had to worry about where is this meal going to come from. We were all homeschooled together so we were very close. There was a lot of support. A lot of sibling time together, parent time together. It was just a very normal upbringing.

    Kimberly Russell:

    They were very conservative. So they did… I felt very controlled growing up. I was very aware of the fact that they were filtering everything that was coming through to me and what I was exposed to, and so that was something that I from a very young age did not like and that I pushed against very hard.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Why were you aware of that?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I’m not really even sure. I’m somebody who is very sensitive to feeling controlled and feeling manipulative and I have been since I can remember. I just noticed when they would fast forward through parts of a movie if there was sex in it or if there was the F word, they would say, “No, we’re going to fast forward through this part. You can’t watch it.” Or my friends would be going to watch the TV show F.R.I.E.N.D.S and my parents would be like, “No, you can’t watch that.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay. And so was that part of their decision to homeschool you guys?

    Kimberly Russell:

    That was part of it. It was mostly because of my older sister. She was reading by the time she would have been going into kindergarten and my mom went to the public school and they were kind of like, “Yeah, we want them to know their ABC’s and to know how to count to 10,” and my mom was like, “My daughter’s reading.” And she wanted to be able to have us skip grades and so that was really the main reason, but also when they started becoming more religious, that kind of an added benefit of it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, and so they homeschooled you guys through eighth grade, right?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And but then you went into high school.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, I went into regular school.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    How was that transition?

    Kimberly Russell:

    For me, it was very, very difficult. I was terrified of letting people know how innocent I was and how little experience I had in all of the things that they were doing. And so I just started lying about everything. I would make up stories to fit in. I literally changed my identity based on whoever was around. I had no sense of self and I immediately started trying to expose myself to all the things that I feel like I missed out on.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What did your siblings do? Did it-

    Kimberly Russell:

    Their transition was very normal. I think my sister experienced a little… They all experienced some mild bullying, but other than that, it was nothing like I created mine to be.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And so, do you think that yours was based on who you went and sought out, or?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I think that was a big part of it. There were things that I would do and instigate, and I didn’t at the time… I was 14 years old. I struggled with social interaction and I didn’t realize I was doing it. But there was a girl who approached me and said, “Hey, I’m interested in this guy. Can you introduce me to him and set us up?” And I responded by going to her friends and talking badly about her and being like, “Oh my gosh, can you believe that she asked me to do this?” And she’s this water polo player and she comes and she beats the crap out of me and I’m sitting here like, “Oh my gosh. I’m this innocent victim.” Like no, I went to her friends and I talked badly about her and I created this whole situation, but I didn’t understand that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. You didn’t know the rules.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Exactly.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You didn’t know the rules of engagement. Which would be really hard. It was interesting, when you were talking a little bit ago, you said that your siblings didn’t mind being homeschooled but you hated it. We talked about how you would have hated school because you would have hated anywhere that you were.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I obviously relate to that tremendously which was like anywhere I was, I felt like (beep). That was how being in my body, being in my skin. When did you start to have that feeling or that realization?

    Kimberly Russell:

    The earliest that I remember it is probably fifth grade, but it was just that feeling of, “I will be okay once I reach this destination.” I never wanted to be where I was. It was always, “I need something else,” or, “I need somewhere else to feel okay.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. And did your parents notice that about you?

    Kimberly Russell:

    They did. They thought that it was just a phase originally. I don’t know exactly how young I was when they started looking into options that might help me, but they… Because I would fight and fight to go to regular junior high school and they said that, “We know out of all the kids, you more than anyone needs to be homeschooled until high school.” So they definitely knew that I needed to be where I was.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Do you think that that saved you from using earlier?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I think it saved me from using earlier, yeah. I’m sure that I would have gotten into things sooner if I had known where to go or how to get there.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, because you would have been seeking.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    When did you seek out drugs and alcohol or some sort of outside coping mechanism first?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I was at a party my freshman year. I was with some girls from the volleyball team. They had a party. I got there and I look around and everybody is drinking out of red cups. And I was like, “Oh my God, what. How do I do this?” And I look over and there was a liquor cabinet that’s open and I just see a bunch of bottles of alcohol. And so I just go and I pour an entire red cup full of just straight aged tequila.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh no.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And I don’t know that people mix drinks. I don’t know what’s going on.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What do you know about alcohol at that time?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I knew nothing.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You just knew it was alcohol.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I just knew it was alcohol.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Did you know it was intoxicating?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Oh yeah, no I definitely knew that. I’d seen it portrayed in movies. I’d heard friends talk about their experiences. It was something I was definitely… I knew that I wanted to try it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And then it was presented to me and so I went. I filled up the whole cup. I drank it in probably 15 minutes.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh no.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And then I started to notice the change. I started to notice my head get really quiet and for the first time, I felt like I fit in my skin. I stopped caring and obsessing over everything. I didn’t even realize how loud my head was until it was quiet.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yes.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And so as soon as I felt that, I wanted more. So what do I do? I go and I pour another full red cup of aged tequila and it’s absolutely disgusting. I’m choking it down in the corner, trying not to let anyone see the reaction that I’m having. And by the end of the night, I blacked out. I don’t remember a whole lot. I remember walking around on the top of the sofa and yelling at people. That’s about all I remember.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    The fact that you remember anything after the first cup and having never drank before, oh my God. That’s impressive. Or not, whatever. I don’t know-

    Kimberly Russell:

    Impressive, concerning. It’s a combination.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, exactly.

    Kimberly Russell:

    So I did get alcohol poisoning.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay good. Then your body was responding in kind.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I threw up all over myself. So my friends dragged me out onto the driveway. They sprayed me down with the garden hose and then they dragged me back inside-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Thank you friends.

    Kimberly Russell:

    … and they left me dry heaving on the bathroom floor. That was my first drunk.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And when you got home, did anybody know? How did you play that whole situation off?

    Kimberly Russell:

    No, nobody knew. I stayed the night there. They didn’t notice anything. I woke up and I said, “I want to do that again every single day for the rest of my life. I love this.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, that’s the beauty of the alcoholic response. Which is on the outside, that looks and sounds like the most horrendous experience, but to us, the quiet of the head that we didn’t even know was that loud, that experience… There’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like, “oh my God it’ll make it stop.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    And that’s why in your story, I heard you say that you believe you were born an alcoholic, and I feel that’s the same for me. I think that… My parents have asked me so many times, “What could we have done differently to have prevented this? To have changed it?” I tell them, “Nothing. I believe I was born to be an alcoholic. I was born one and nothing could have changed that.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    The interesting thing about you being born into a normal, regular, whatever the words we want to use to describe calm family life is on the one hand, yes, there’s nothing to blame it on, so it feels like there’s something wrong with me. But the flip side of that coin is when you do have trauma in your life, there’s this urge to blame it on the trauma. “I have early trauma.” And I’ve said this before, but I don’t think that’s what caused my alcoholism. I don’t think it helped it. I think it may have been the reason I started so young or whatever it was, but on the flip side is there is this idea when you have all of this stuff, “Well of course she drank.” When I think back to how I was thinking, my thinking, that piece was always there.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, absolutely. That was my experience, too.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And you’re validating that, which is yeah, you don’t need a lot of trauma to still have the same thoughts and not want to be in your skin.

    Kimberly Russell:

    No, definitely not.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. So did you drink that way? Did you continue? That was the first drink experience. So going forward, did you figure out how to drink?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I did. I immediately-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    More economically, at least?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes. I started asking friends at school who had older siblings and I would give them money and have them bring me alcohol. I would go into a store with my family, I’d bring my backpack and I would throw a handle in there and I would just steal alcohol. I started going through our medicine cabinet to find anything that would change the way that I feel. I did cough syrup. There was some leftover painkillers. I was smoking cigarettes and looking for men for attention. I was self-harming. Really, anything that would change the way that I felt.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Did your family… Given how put together your family sounds and this big transition. If I’m your mom and I know what I know… sounds like she knew about you. I’m going to be watching closely to see the transition, especially if I was monitoring all the things that were coming in and that kind of stuff. Did she notice? Or were you just really good at hiding all of those things form her?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I lied about everything, which was originally how I started getting away with it. But in time, they did start… They noticed the self-harm. They sat me down. They talked to me about it and I told them, “I don’t know why I did it.” And honestly, looking back, that’s the truth. I had no idea why I was doing the things that I was doing.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What were you doing?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I was cutting myself with razors. I would drink alcohol in the morning before school out of a water bottle. I’d bring it with me to school. I would smoke weed on lunch breaks.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So this was not social.

    Kimberly Russell:

    No. It was never social. I would endure people’s company if that’s what I had to do to get what I needed, but-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But you had no desire for it to be social.

    Kimberly Russell:

    It made it easier for me to be social. For me, I was actually relatively social when I was intoxicated. When I was sober, I wanted nothing to do with people. But once I was intoxicated, then all of a sudden, I’m engaged in class. I’m interacting with people. I feel like I’m connecting. I’m not so afraid of them and everything just felt easier.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. Now with the self-harm, did that just pop into your head one day?

    Kimberly Russell:

    No. I saw… I don’t even remember what show it was. It was something on MTV and I somebody self-harming on the show and I was just kind of… I saw it and I was curious. Like, “I want to know what that’ll do. I want to know why that person’s doing that.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, and I’m sure your parents were freaked out.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes, they were terrified and I don’t really remember the ages at which everything happened, but eventually, they did have me start going and seeing a therapist because they were just at a loss as to what to do.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Was that the catalyst?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I think it was the combination of self-harm and finding cigarettes on me. And I don’t even know if at this point, they knew that I was drinking. I don’t think they did. I think it was just those two things. And then they caught me in multiple lies. They caught me… My mom walked up… She was running around the high school campus looking for me and she walks around the corner and sees me on the steps making out with this guy and she just loses it and drags me into the car. They would ground me. I was grounded for all of high school. But I would sneak out. I would lie. I’d say, “Well I have to go to this school project and do this,” and then I would go off and go wherever I wanted. I would sneak out at night and so most of it was they… It wasn’t so in their face.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, okay. And your siblings, what was their reaction to… Did they go to school with you?

    Kimberly Russell:

    No. My sister went to Troy, which was a magnate school. I didn’t want to go to Troy, so I went to the local public school and then I was transferred to a Lutheran school sophomore year just because of all of the problems I was having. And my brother didn’t start going until my senior year, at which point, everything was already… They knew and everything was completely out of control. But my sister’s initial reaction when she found out, I think she thought it was just normal and I think she drank with me maybe once or twice, but she was so wrapped up in her studies and trying to get into Columbia and everything she was doing that I don’t think there was a lot of time or thought put into it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, probably normal for the age range. I was going to say when did it spiral out of control, but the two red Solo cups on day one is kind of… That’s pretty out of control day one.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah. My drinking and using was never normal. It was never social and I never had any desire to control it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. So how did that change? How did you… So you graduated high school?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And you said that by your senior year, the cat was out of the bag.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, I was dealing drugs by the end of high school. It became an every day thing for me. And the crazy thing is I was playing a really high level of volleyball.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s right. Okay, so you were playing volleyball… was that starting freshman year?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Starting freshman year and then I played on varsity in the high school and then I played on club teams. I think to be honest, I think that’s what helped me keep it together and stay at least mildly functional for a period of time because I had to physically perform in order to… That was my freedom to me. Because that was what was going to make me go to college and get me there and that’s what I wanted. I thought, “Well once I get to college, I’ll be happy.” And so yeah, I think I held it together. I would play and be intoxicated, but I wouldn’t overdo it because I knew I had things I had to get done.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Did the other volleyball players know you were intoxicated?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Some of them did, yeah. I was careful with who I let know. And then the people who I wanted to know, I intentionally let them know because I felt like I would be more accepted and I thought it was funny that I could play when I was really high or really stoned or whatever it was.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. And it’s interesting. It definitely was not… None of the normal social high school piece that you could say, “Well I’m just in high school, this is just… We’re just partying.” It just never was that for you.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, no. I was doing cocaine in the bathroom and I would take too many pills and then I’d have to run out of class and I’d be throwing up in the hallway. Just not normal behaviors.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So then, did the volleyball get you to the college that you wanted?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes, it did. I went to BIOLA University, which is a small Christian school. And I still to this day don’t know why I chose to go there because you have to sign a contract saying that you won’t drink, you won’t do drugs, you won’t smoke during the time that you’re there and I have no idea why. I remember I liked the coach and I liked the girls.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Did you think that maybe by signing that, that would turn things around?

    Kimberly Russell:

    No, because I had no intention of stopping. Because my parents sat me down the summer before I went to school and they said that, “You can either go away to school, because we’re not paying for you so it’s your choice. Or you can go to rehab. But if you get kicked out of school for doing all the things that you’re doing, you don’t have somewhere to come home to. We’re done.” They had already cut me off financially. They were already putting things in place to try and protect me from myself.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. So you go to this Christian university, and you sign a contract that you’re not going to do any of the things you do daily.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yep.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay. So how does that work out?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Not well. I actually lasted longer than I thought that I would. I was there for three years. I was suspended twice for drinking. I got in trouble for getting other girls on the team drunk. I was again selling drugs there. I was involved in the underground party scene. I never to class. I would show up to practice, but I never went to class. I was on academic probation. By the middle of my junior year, I drunkenly crashed my car into a set of Metrolink tracks up in central LA with a drunk freshman girl in my car and had the cops called. I didn’t get a DUI, which was remarkable. My parents had to come get me and it got spread around. For the school, that was their last straw. They said, “We’re done. You need to go find somewhere else to go.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And you were a junior?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, so they let me finish out the year and then I transferred to Cal State Fullerton, also on a full ride for volleyball and with that… The less structure I had in my life, the worse that I got. Because I’m somebody that I will maintain. I will check off the boxes that I need to check off to stay where I am, but I’m going to continue to do whatever I want in the meantime.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And so Fullerton got worse and by that season, I was so skinny, I couldn’t really even play volleyball. I started the first I think two or three weeks of the season, and then after that, I sat on the bench the rest of my senior year because I couldn’t play. I was throwing up. I would pass out at practice and by the end of that semester, I was living out of the locker room, smoking meth and heroin. I would steal bikes off of campus to get places. I would steal from the girls on the team and I just… In my mind, I was like, “I’m living my best life. This is what I’ve always wanted.” And I was really content. And I was sleeping on a couch in the locker room.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    How did you get in… Were you looking for meth and heroin? Or it just was part of the next phase of what people were doing or?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I don’t really know how it started. I think it happened very gradually and very naturally.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It was an organic process.

    Kimberly Russell:

    It was!

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I got to meth organically. I don’t know about you, but.

    Kimberly Russell:

    As my drug use progressed, the people who I was spending time with before that started to pull away from me, and so then I started to pull more toward the people who were drinking and doing cocaine like I did, and then spend a little more time and then they let you know, “Oh actually, this is what we’re doing on the side over here if you want to come into this back room.” And that was kind of how it started. I think I probably-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I was always ready to go in whatever back room you had.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Exactly. So it was something… I don’t think I sought it out, but in my actions, that’s exactly where it took me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, right. You just kept following. So question. I tried to deal drugs. I am a terrible drug dealer. Now, I thought that drug dealing equals making a lot of money equals paying for your drugs. That was the calculation that I did in my head. You were homeschooled, so you probably had better math skills than I did. What made you decide to drug deal and was that a good career move for you?

    Kimberly Russell:

    What’s funny is it was actually by accident. So my sophomore year of high school, there was a guy in my art class who was in his third senior year. He took six years to graduate high school. And so I get in contact with him and it turns out, he can get me literally any drug I want. So I-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Date him!

    Kimberly Russell:

    This is awesome.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Marriage material.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I kept in close contact with him after he graduated, and then my friends started to hear… And I have no idea how this started to spread. I overheard somebody say, “Oh I’m trying to get ecstasy,” and I was like, “Oh I can get that for you.” And then they’d be like, “Oh, what else can get me?” I said, “Literally anything you want.” So that just started to spread around school and people started to come to me. And what’s funny is that’s how I started trying different drugs. Was people would say, “Can you get me cocaine?” And I’d say, “Yeah.” And so then he’d bring me cocaine, and I’d have it sitting on my desk. I’m like, “Well it’s here. I’m just going to try a little bit.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It would be weird if I didn’t.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And see what it’s like. And then I started whatever he would bring me, I’d take half of that out for me and then I’d double the price for that person and then sell it. It wasn’t that I was a good drug dealer, it was that I was a very dishonest one and it worked because I was dealing with rich Orange County high school kids. I’m not dealing with gangs and people who are going to, you know.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    The rich kids are the best kids to sell to.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Absolutely, yes. That’s where you stay safe. Same at BIOLA. I made so much money just selling my Adderall because people are just trying to do well in school.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. Totally. That’s a whole other thing of the Adderall thing which is interesting. That’s not considered drug use. People do not consider that… Snorting someone else’s Adderall as drug use. I’m like, “You do know, you don’t have to snort it? You can actually take it as a pill. That was the original form.” But they were like, “No, I want to snort it and that’s not using. I’m not a drug addict.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Just enhancing the experience.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, exactly. Just studying. It’s interesting where we draw those lines and where we tell ourselves or other people… I mean, for you, it sounds like your drug dealing was much more successful than mine. I didn’t have a scale. So I would buy weed and be like, “This looks right.” Let me tell you, it only took a few times for me to be put out of business. Going out of business sale immediately.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So you have nowhere to live. Why do you have nowhere to live when you’re at Fullerton? You had been kicked out?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I’d been kicked out of my parents’ house. They had said… I don’t even know if I was kicked out, honestly. I think the conversation was probably that they said, “You have to stop drinking if you’re going to stay here.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    “If you want to live here.” Yeah, yeah.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And I was like, “Nope, that’s not going to work.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Looks like I’m homeless.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah. So I just decided to stay at home. I ended up-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And they didn’t object? School didn’t object?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Well, they didn’t know. I’m shocked that the girls didn’t report me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So you would just get locked in there at night?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Well so there was a code. And because I was on the team, I had the code. So I would just come and go as I pleased.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    They were like, “She is dedicated to this team.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes, exactly.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    She will not leave this gym.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes. I think the girls just didn’t care, because they knew how checked out I was. And they could see what was going on.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But that didn’t piss them off?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I’m sure they weren’t thrilled with it but nobody ever confronted me about it or said anything to me. I think every now and then, the girls would ask, “Is everything okay?” I think it was more concern than anything to be honest.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Is everything okay? That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s great.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, no I’m doing great.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Hence the sleeping in the locker room, but thanks for asking. The nice thing about living in Orange County is everybody will talk behind your back. If you were in New York, you probably would have gotten seriously confronted.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Oh yeah, and that’s the funniest thing. I had this girl who I had stolen her bike. I had taken it for days. And then I’m just walking back to put it back where it was and she’s standing there. And she looks at me and she goes, “That’s my bike.” And I was like, “Oh. Well here, I brought it back.” And she goes, “Oh, thank you. I was almost late to work because I ride my bike to work. If you’re going to take it again, can you just let me know?” I was like, “Yeah, totally. Okay.” And I walked away. And it was like, if someone did that to me, if someone stole my bike and I’m like, “Oh my God.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    We’re so… It’s just sunny enough that we’re still polite to each other, even when we’re stealing. That’s amazing. So what happened? Did you graduate from college?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I did eventually. I almost flunked out because I met these two guys who were hitchhiking through a friend. There were four of us living out of my friend’s car in Huntington.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I hope it was a Suburban.

    Kimberly Russell:

    It was not. It was a little Subaru. I really liked their lifestyle. I saw what they were doing. They had hitchhiked from Chicago. They were on their way up to San Francisco and they ended up staying with us for a while in this car. And I loved the freedom that they had.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Wait, wait. So they hitchhiked and you had already secured the Subaru. So you were already living in the Subaru?

    Kimberly Russell:

    It was my friend’s, yeah. I was living in there with her.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay, so you guys were living in the Subaru. They hitchhiked and moved into your Subaru.

    Kimberly Russell:

    They met us, yeah. They were kind of also staying on a friend’s house in Huntington, so we would kind of bounce back and forth between the couches and the car, depending on how drunk we were and where we ended up that night.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, right and you were like, “This is the best freedom ever.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    I looked at them and they just said, “We have no money. We do odd jobs or we’ll play…” One of them had a guitar and the other one had a drum and they would play music for money on the side of the street and they did whatever they wanted. They did drugs as much as they wanted and they didn’t know where they were going to sleep that night and they just got around by hitchhiking. And I was like, “I want to do that.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    So they left. I got super depressed. I was trying to finish school and I was like, “I have no interest in this,” and so one spring break, I flew out to New York to see a friend and then we spontaneously took a road trip down to Cleveland, Tennessee in this weird Bible belt area. I found myself in a prayer barn and all of these weird situations. It was a dry county. So I was sober for like three days and I thought I was going to die, and so I ended up stealing a one-pedaled bicycle that I could find, rode that outside of the county-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    A one-pedaled bicycle?

    Kimberly Russell:

    One-pedaled bicycle. Yeah, that was I could find that wasn’t locked up. So I ride that bike to a gas station that’s right outside the county line. It was at least a couple miles. I got really drunk. I missed my flight that next morning because I was still drunk. I went to the airport bar. I had about seven cranberry vodkas and then decided I want to go home. So I missed my flight and I walked out of the airport and I stuck my thumb out and I hitchhiked from Tennessee to Denver, Colorado, where I ended up staying for I think another six months or something. I flew back home to take my finals. I failed half my classes that semester. And then I flew back to Denver and was like, “I’m dropping out of school.” Did that for a while.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But you eventually went back and graduated?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah. I eventually went back. When I was in Denver and we were in a bedbug infested apartment. The guy I was living with was super abusive and I popped my bike tire and I couldn’t replace the bike tire to get to work and I was just like, “I am so sick of relying on other people.” So that motivated me. I ended up flying back to Orange County. I was still motel hopping, doing meth and heroin, but I channeled all of the motivation I had into finishing school and so I graduated.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Has that been useful?

    Kimberly Russell:

    In its own way, yes. I don’t think it was necessary for me to get where I am. But I’m definitely grateful that I finished, if for no other reason than so many of the classes that I took were really, really beneficial for me in just developing… Because I got my degree in English… in developing critical thinking, the ability to communicate. I don’t believe they qualify me for anything, but I feel like they’ve prepared me for a lot.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay. So you went to Tennessee. You went with a friend. But the friend went home on the flight?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah. No, she wasn’t on the flight. She was continuing her drive down to Arkansas where her husband was in anger management and she was going to try and repair her marriage. I was supposed to fly home and go back to school.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Got it, okay.

    Kimberly Russell:

    So I got dropped at the airport and was just there by myself so nobody knew where I was for days.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And those three days that you were sober. Did you detox? Did you have symptoms of detox? You said you felt like you were going to die. What was that like, that forced sobriety?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I thought that shaking was just part of a hangover. I thought that was just normal. So the detox that I went through… I think I threw up a couple of times. I wasn’t really able to keep food down. I just drank a lot of water and was pretty useless. And then my head was just really, really loud.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    How long do you think it had been, and how old were you then?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I think I was… Oh, I turned 22 when I was in Denver. So I was like 21, 22.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So how long… Those three days. Before that, how long do you think it had been since you had been three days with no substance use?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I don’t know if I’d ever gone that period… Maybe during a long tournament-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Since you started?

    Kimberly Russell:

    But yeah, I honestly don’t think I ever had gone three days before that. I think I had one time on a New Years Eve resolution. I think after a bad hangover tried to get sober and I think I maybe went a couple days when I was 19. So there were a few times here and there where I would string some days together. And I wasn’t… I could go… If I really, really needed to, I was able to go maybe a week without using. It wasn’t easy, but what got me through that week was the thought of, “When am I going to be able to use again?”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But you would drink alcohol?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So you get to Denver with the abusive boyfriend. But then you go back to OC and you graduate. How old were you then?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I was 23.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay. And so, you’re back in OC, you’ve graduated, but you’re still drinking the whole time?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I’m still drinking and using heavily.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay, meth and heroin.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And really anything that I could find. It didn’t really matter. I was someone who was always… I was okay without drugs. If there weren’t drugs there, I wasn’t going to freak out, but if I didn’t have alcohol, it was I’m not okay. So yeah, that was more… Drugs are a big part of my story, but I feel like for me, everything always started and ended with alcohol.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. So you graduate. Now what?

    Kimberly Russell:

    So nothing as far as plans. I originally wanted to be a teacher and I was taking classes for the teaching credential program at Fullerton and then I just realized, “I don’t want to do this.” I was coaching volleyball and I was around the kids and I didn’t feel right. I was like, “I’m not a role model. I’m not someone they should look up to. Why am I even doing this? What do I even think I’m here to teach people?”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So that’s interesting because your story… A lot of this, it sounds like there wasn’t a lot of shame. There was a lot of confidence in what you were doing. But then, it sounds like somewhere in that 20-23 range, that started to change. Because you saying, “I shouldn’t be around people. I’m not a role model,” that sounds like a different tape running through your head than the one the years prior.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah. And I think what shifted it was not wanting… I loved what I was doing for me. Never did I want to encourage anyone else to do that. I didn’t want to feel like I was leading anyone else down the path that I had chosen. Yeah, I was very shameless about what I was doing and who I was. I still to this day don’t believe that I felt guilt until I got sober.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Hi, it’s Ashley, your beloved host. When I’m not hosting The Courage To Change: A Recovery podcast, I’m running the recruiting department at Lionrock Recovery. We are always looking for amazing licensed mental health counselors, along with various other sales and operations positions that pop up from time to time. The Lionrock culture is one of collaboration, support, and flexibility. Our employees work from home offices all over the country, utilizing technology to connect to one another. We are always hiring. So if you want to have the best job ever, check out our open positions and apply at www.lionrockrecovery.com/about/careers.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So you didn’t want to be around… What did you do after that?

    Kimberly Russell:

    What shifted for me, this guy who I had been in love with in high school had come back into Orange County. He had just gotten out of jail and he was sober. And he was someone who had always kind of come in and out of my life. We would get together and he would take off again and I wouldn’t hear from him for like six months. He came back into town. He was sober and I convinced him to relapse and then he went out on a run and he overdosed on heroin and he passed away. And I think that was the first time that I realized that I needed to change something. Losing him absolutely devastated me. I couldn’t even enjoy being high. I was hallucinating and I just-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Were you there when he overdosed?

    Kimberly Russell:

    No. No, I got the call the next day. That was the first time that I think I realized that this isn’t what I want for myself. And so I decided that I needed to clean up my life. At least on the outside. Of course, I never wanted to look internally. I never wanted to really be self reflective or change who I was. I just wanted to change who I looked like. And so I said, “I’m not going to do any hard drugs.” And I went and I got this job at a property management company. It’s 9-5. It’s in an office. It looks respectable. And I was like, “I’m just going to drink.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    I for the most part did that for four years. What I can tell you is that trying to pretend to be normal around people who are normal was far more painful and isolating than being homeless, than being on the streets, than being in abusive relationships, than being strung out on meth. That was absolutely awful.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, I think that’s a really great point. I haven’t thought about that in a long time. So you talked about… I didn’t use for as long as you did because I was not quiet. I was just in your face about all of it. But the times that… Part of the reason why I was like that was that I found it too painful to try to fit in. Trying to fit in and trying to be normal and realizing that you’re just not and that it’s too hard and you’re doing a half-ass job of it, which is at best. I found that to be so much more painful like you said, than being insane and living out loud. It just was. At least I could find my people. At least I could live in my truth. But when I would just try to… There was nothing more exhausting than trying to keep it together.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes, exactly. During those four years, I was in one year and a half relationship with another alcoholic and then I jumped from that relationship to another year and a half relationship with another alcoholic. I think that was the only thing that even allowed me to do what I was doing as long as I was because one I got home, I didn’t have to hide my drinking. They drank the same way that I did.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Were you drinking at the office? Were you someone who had to drink all throughout the day?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I would wake up and I would take a combination of Adderall and benzos. And then on my lunch break, I would do a little bit of cocaine. And then I’d come home and then I’d drink until I was ready to go to bed, and then I’d smoke weed and go to bed. I would do that pretty much every day.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay so you weren’t drinking during the work day.

    Kimberly Russell:

    No.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And the cocaine, benzos, and amphetamines were not considered hard drugs in your mind?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Nope.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, okay.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I just thought meth and heroin. Those are hard drugs.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, right exactly.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I thought I was functioning and I thought I was doing it gracefully.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. So what happened after those years of holding it together?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I really, really started to unravel. I had made my whole identity work. I was working 70-80 hours a week. I didn’t really have a life outside of work or an identity and things at work were not going well because obviously, I wasn’t really functioning. Probably the last six months leading up to getting sober, I lost the relationship that I was in, which is… It’s strange because I didn’t even want to be in the relationship, but then when I lost it, I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know how to be alone anymore, which was terrifying for me because I was someone that always used to be alone.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I started to watch the people around me growing up. Because at this point, I’m 27. I’m now in my late 20s. I’m watching people change around me and people aren’t drinking the same way that I am and that’s just me trying to drink normally, and they still don’t want to drink the way that I want to drink.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right exactly. You think you’re seriously… I’ve done that too. Where you think you’re like, “Let’s just keep it low key,” and your version of low key is still heavy drinking for them.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And I’ll be going now.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Exactly. And so I just became very, very isolated. What I started to realize was that… Because this is when I really threw myself into it when I didn’t feel like there was anything holding me back because I wasn’t in these relationships anymore.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Were you still working at the company?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I was still there and I… Every time I used or drank, I couldn’t escape anymore. That was for me when I hit that point, that inevitable point for every addict and alcoholic is when it stops working. And I couldn’t get high anymore and even when I was drunk, it didn’t shut my head off and I would go into psychosis. There was one night I tried to throw myself off of a building. I tried to fight people. I assaulted a taxicab driver. I tried to run into oncoming traffic to prove to somebody I was in a dream. Just weird things.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    How did you not throw yourself off the building?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I was with people.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I had gone down to San Diego to see college friends and they were literally dragging me down a flight of stairs trying to stop me from doing that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Fun night out for them.

    Kimberly Russell:

    It was, yeah. I would just wake up the next morning, “Wow, last night was fun, wasn’t it you guys?” It just became progressively more and more isolating. So then to find people to drink with me, I’m going online, trying… I can really, only strangers will spend time with me because they’re the only ones that don’t know my patterns.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I pretty much would wake up every morning and decided whether or not I wanted to kill myself that day. And I started self-harming again which was something I thought I’d outgrown. I just could literally feel my mental faculties unraveling. I started getting really really crippling panic attacks and I was someone that never had anxiety before and I was just like, “What is happening to me?”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And you’re taking benzos, so you’d think that… you know.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, well I was terrified to go tell a doctor because I didn’t want to lose my prescriptions. And so I always lying. So my doctor is sitting here trying to figure out what is wrong with me but I won’t tell him the truth. And I had never really known anyone that had gotten sober. I had had no experience with 12-step programs and I truly believed that I was the only one in the entire world that felt the way that I did. And so one night, I think I had been drinking for 36 hours straight… Because when I broke up with the last boyfriend, I had moved back into my parents’ house.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And so I was living there with my two younger brothers and they ended up having to… Someone had filed a missing persons report because they’d seen me drunk and then I took off. I like caused a scene at their place of work. I don’t really remember much. But the police were out looking for me, my brothers were out looking for me. They ended up finding me with no shoes walking down the street, seven miles from wherever I’d been seen last and I didn’t believe that they were who they said that they were and they had to tackle me, drag me into the back of the car, close the door. I tried to jump out of the car while it was moving-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Naturally.

    Kimberly Russell:

    They get me back home. They lock me in my room, and I’m just sitting there and I was very drunk but I do actually remember this. And I was just sitting on the bed and I see bottles of sleeping pills that I had saved up. There was a bottle of Gatorade and I just felt like, “You know. I’m 27, I think I’ve lived a long life, and I think I’ve seen everything that I need to see in this life, but I’m really tired and I think I’m done.” And so I took about 70 sleeping pills and I just remember sitting there watching… There was the black around my vision and it was moving in slower and slower and then I just remember this feeling of panic. Of like, “Oh my God, I don’t want to die.” And I hadn’t felt that feeling ever in my entire life. Then that’s the last thing I remember.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Apparently, my brothers came in to check on me. My breathing was really funny and there were pills all over the bed and they couldn’t get me to wake up and so they drove me to the hospital. And the doctor said that if they brought me in probably even five minutes later that I would have been dead. And of course, my parents were out of town while all this is going on, so my two brothers are going through this by themselves. They are just completely at a loss.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Did they pump your stomach?

    Kimberly Russell:

    So they weren’t able to pump my stomach, because they said that my gag reflex was gone and so they were not able to do that-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh my God really?

    Kimberly Russell:

    … and so, yeah. So they had to do what’s called an electrolyte flush. Which is basically where I had like 14 IVs in me and they’re having to flush my system. And I had a collapsed lung, so they had to put a balloon in my lung and I was on life support and I was in a coma. Yeah. They said that my brothers literally saved my life.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    How long were you in a coma?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I think a couple days. The first day that I remember is maybe three days, four days after I had overdosed. And I remember waking up in the hospital and I had this very distinct feeling of, “I’m supposed to be here.” And it had been maybe a week or two before that, I had been driving my car and I was really drunk, and I was driving over this freeway ramp and I was having a panic attack and I just started screaming and crying up at the sky and I just said, “If there is anything, anything that is listening to me or that can hear me, please help me, because I don’t know how to do this.” And when I woke up in the hospital, I had this distinct feeling that that prayer had been answered. And I just felt like I’m supposed to be here. I’m worth the space that I’m taking up. I never felt that way before. The only thing that I knew for sure was that I was supposed to be sober.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s incredible. You woke up feeling that way?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Immediately.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I’ve never woken up from a run or an overdose or any sort of anything feeling like, “Yes, I a supposed to be here.” That’s different. That’s different. I got to tell you, I don’t think a lot of people feel that way.

    Kimberly Russell:

    No, definitely not. I don’t know if I’ve heard anyone else that’s said that or felt that way.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    No, I think most people wake up like, “Oh (beep) what did I do? This is going to be really bad. Where am I?” I think we have a lot of questions. That’s pretty different and remarkable that you woke up like, “I’m supposed to be,” with that belief. Honestly, I think it took me years into sobriety and a lot of work to get there. That’s really amazing.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, and well I still didn’t believe in a higher power that’s necessarily super caring or super involved. But I did definitely believe that there was something keeping me there.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So then at that point, you were off life support?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, as soon as I woke up actually, the first thing that I did was… And I was strapped down to the bed. But I hoisted myself up somehow and I ripped the breathing tube out, which they said did some serious damage to my throat. Because I just remember waking up and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t realize the machine was breathing for me, so I was terrified. So actually, all of that happened first. Then once I kind of settled down, and I started reflecting and recapping-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay, that’s much more normal.

    Kimberly Russell:

    … exactly how I’d gotten there, and then it was like, “Oh my God, I’m supposed to be here.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Did you remember, “Oh I took the sleeping pills.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay.

    Kimberly Russell:

    But I was so terrified to be 5150ed and I didn’t know what they would do if I told them that I’d taken the pills and so any questions they asked me, I only just continued to repeat over and over, “I don’t remember, I don’t remember.” So I wouldn’t even tell them-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    They didn’t 5150 you?

    Kimberly Russell:

    No. Because they said that I wouldn’t admit to it being on purpose. And so they didn’t 5150 me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Who takes 70 sleeping pills by accident?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I don’t know.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Wow.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Do they think that that’s a thing?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Well no, I think that they knew that it was-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But they can’t 5150 you unless you admit to it?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, because I wasn’t suicidal in that moment.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Interesting. I got 5150ed for overdosing on heroin. And I was not intentionally doing that.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, it was very strange because my mom kept coming in and saying, “The doctors need to know if you’re suicidal or if you did this on purpose,” and I knew why she was asking me. Because I was like, “No, no no. They’re going to lock me up. I don’t want to go there.” So I was just like, “No, no. I’m fine. I feel fine. I don’t remember. Too much partying.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, too much partying.

    Kimberly Russell:

    That’s all I would say to people. Just, “I don’t remember.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, wow. That’s incredible. So then, how long did it take you to get out of the hospital?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I got there on a Saturday night and I was released on a Wednesday night. I still couldn’t really walk. I couldn’t really keep food down. I felt like, “Okay, this is going to be it. This is when I change everything for myself.” And so, I got back home and then I think probably the first day I was able to walk and function was like, Saturday. I left my house, not with the intention of getting high, but I left my house and I was high again that night. And that was when I realize no desire to stop was going to be enough. That I needed outside help. That I had no idea what I was doing. That I was completely out of control. And for the first time in my life, I was terrified that… Because for me, this whole time-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Because you used against your will, right?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Exactly. Because this whole time, I thought, “Well no. I’ve just never wanted to stop.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right.

    Kimberly Russell:

    That’s why I couldn’t stop. And then-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    There is nothing like that feeling of, “Okay, no seriously. I want to stop,” and then your body does something against your mental will. You’re like, “Oh no. I’m in so deep. I don’t even know how to…” You know how insane that sounds. So you don’t know how to tell people because first of all, you’ve already been labeled a liar and a cheat and a thief and all these things. So to go and tell someone, “I used against my will,” you’re like, “No one’s going to believe me. That’s an insane thing.” But it literally is what happens.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So how did you get that help?

    Kimberly Russell:

    I had already been going to a therapist that was in addiction medicine. I was going to her for trauma and anxiety. She had before all of this had happened had already suggested that I go to rehab. At the time, I said, “Absolutely not.” And so she was the only person who I knew to go to. So I went back to her and she recommended that I go into treatment. So I went through a day treatment program that was 30 days. You’re there all day long and you just go home to sleep and they drug test you every day. They teach you about the disease model of addiction. And all of these pieces started falling together, explaining why I was the way that I was. And everything started to make sense. That program really promoted going to a 12-step program and so they didn’t take us there, but we had a signature card that we had to go get signed every week.

    Kimberly Russell:

    So I started doing that. And then there was a family night at Kaiser and my family came. I finally for the first time was honest with them about everything that I was doing. They were extremely, extremely supportive and I think just relieved. They were relieved that I was alive. They were relieved that for the first time, I was admitting that I had a problem and that I was doing something about it.

    Kimberly Russell:

    So I was at a family night at Kaiser and I met this girl who was a sister of someone who I was in treatment with who had a year and a half sober. And she was pumped on life. She was so stoked about sobriety. And she was just on fire. She shared at the meeting and was just like, “If anyone needs anything,” and then she comes up to me afterwards and gives me her number and says, “We are going to best friends. And I’m going to take you to all of my meetings and it’s going to be great.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    The first thing going through my head is, “This girl is not sober. She’s way too happy. She’s not sober.” But she was happy. And I was like, “Well if she’s happy, I want to feel the way she’s feeling because that looks awesome.” So I followed her to those meetings and that was where I found a group of people that were primarily young people that were very rowdy, very loud, and very fun and very boisterous, but took their sobriety very, very seriously. So I think my first meeting there I was 11 days sober and I have never left since then. I think I was very lucky to have basically had somebody show up and just take my hand. I still did the footwork. I still pushed through the discomfort to get there, but I think, looking back, there’s just all of these little guides that were there for me and that guided me through everything. All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other and things fell into place for me very, very naturally.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Has your sobriety been pretty… What’s the word? We talk about being on a pink cloud. Have you had moments where you’ve questioned your sobriety or what were some of the big change points?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes. I do think to a certain extent, I experienced a little bit of a pink cloud. I don’t like that term for some reason. Because for me, honestly, I still feel like I am on one in the sense that I feel really, really, really good most of the time. And that has never changed for me as long as I’m doing everything that I need to do for my sobriety. I think the first big change for me was vulnerability, was opening up. That was very difficult for me. I was extremely closed off. I was very skeptical. I was very quiet. People terrified me. And for me, I felt like I was in a position of power if people didn’t know how I was feeling.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And so, my first sponsor was this… She was like a 23 year old high school dropout. She was a total hippie. She believed love was the answer to everything. And I was like, “I do not want what this woman has, but she’s my sponsor so I’m going to do what I need to do.” I think it took me five or six months to have a conversation with her that was longer than five minutes and to just open up and let her know what was going on in my head. To let other people know what I was feeling and what I was thinking.

    Kimberly Russell:

    When we have alcoholism which is in our head, it’s so important that we’re doing that. Because any time we’re holding something in, you have guilt, and you have shame. And then it gets so much bigger than it actually is and it holds so much power. We literally just have to say it out loud to remove that power from it and I was very unwilling to do that in the beginning. So I got into a lot of pain. I was very isolated. I was around people, but I wasn’t really letting anybody in.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And then, over time, I started to watch people share their stories and I started to watch them heal and get better and just something in me slowly shifted where I just started it a little bit at a time. I just started really pushing myself where I was like, “Okay. I’ve got to do this vulnerability thing if I’m going to stay sober and if this is going to work.” And so I did it. It was very rewarding, and so over time, I started to continue to push myself to do that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What did you think about when you came into your first 12-step meeting, what did you think about that whole set up? You talked about being skeptical, not wanting to be vulnerable. And you also had this history with a conservative family and a Christian school and all that. Was the word God scary to you? Were you like, “These people are cray cray”?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Definitely, the word God, I didn’t like that it was there. I was into deism at one point and then kind of went more atheist and then transitioned kind of into agnostic. So yeah, when I saw the word God, I definitely didn’t like it but someone just said, “Look, it’s not what you think. This is your own conception of a higher power. This is not religious.” And so honestly, after that, I was just kind of like, “Okay, cool.” And then I didn’t really put much thought into it again until I probably had about nine months sober and then realized that I’d been tricked into spirituality.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And I got really upset and I was like, “Wait what?” It hit me in this whole new way where I was sitting there, reading a chapter in a Big Book study, and was reading a chapter I’d read so many times before and it very clearly states that our only way out is a spiritual solution. And all of a sudden, I was like, “Wait, I don’t want it though.” But at that point, I was already so far in, I was like, “You guys tricked me.” But what I’ve come to really realize is that it has nothing to do with religion. You don’t ever have to define it. It’s based purely on our own experiences and that whatever preconceived notions we come in with about God, about religion, about any of it that those just kind of go away. And we’re able to form something new based on concrete experiences.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. I think it’s a huge speed bump for a lot of people. I completely understand that. It’s funny, I read that so many times and I don’t think it was until 10 years sober that I was like, “Well I guess I better start really doing this spirituality thing because I’ve done all the rest of the stuff. I faked it until I’ve made 10 years and now I have to seriously put some work into that,” and I remember feeling very afraid when I realized, this is the depth. This is the core of the onion that we talk about peeling. This is where… This is the final frontier.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I remember feeling really afraid. Like, “I can’t do this. I can do the step work. I can write the stuff out. I can do the columns. But this for real?” Because I can’t fake… My spirituality has nothing to do with what I tell you, right? So it’s like, I can read you my fifth step or tell you what step I’m on, but my spirituality, that has nothing to do with you. It’s an internal thing. And so if I’m not doing it, I’m the only one who’s suffering from that.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, it’s very much a personal, internal journey.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. But I do think it is a barrier to entry for a lot of people, especially young people. So I’m always curious what people’s initial response and how they get over that if they continue. I think it’s great that you didn’t question it. That you’re like, “All right, whatever.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, because my sponsor would always say, “The universe,” instead of God. She never said God. And even still, to me, I still don’t even say God. I say higher power. I say source. I say universe. And so that was kind of my way around it. And it has not hindered me at all.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, yeah, same. So what does your sobriety look like? You’re two and a half years sober now. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of internal work. So you started getting vulnerable about nine months. How long did it take you to really start to feel like vulnerability was a habit?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Probably about a year and a half. I started working with a group called The Tribe of Elephants, that specifically worked on exploring spiritual laws. That part in the book where it talks about perfecting and enlarging on our spiritual life. So to be in the group, you don’t have to be in a 12-step program, but it’s open to anybody. We would really just start to work on questioning the beliefs that we have and figuring out if we have those beliefs because we were taught them or if it’s because they’re actually our own truth. And then exploring what form spirituality actually has in our lives and what we’re doing to strengthen that connection. So I think it wasn’t until I joined that group at around nine months and that was my turning point of really starting to want to push myself and actually having a desire to get better. Having a desire to work on who I am as a person and to actually care about what I’m bringing to the world rather than what I’m taking from it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And that was a big turning point for me, because I very much had the attitude of, “Hey, I agreed to get sober. I did not agree to try and be a better person.” And that was very much my attitude in the beginning. It was like, “I am here because drugs and alcohol stopped working, not because I wanted to get better.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, right. That was a huge… I don’t think I thought about it that clearly. I sort of thought about it in the way of, “Oh, I have to be a better person in order to stay sober.” That was my interpretation, but I definitely remember thinking, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m here because I have a drugs and alcohol problem and you’re getting really carried away over here. Now we’re talking about all sorts of stuff that…” and I remember looking at the steps and talking to people and I was like, “Why is no one in this meeting talking about using or alcohol? What is going on? How is this going to help me with my near-fatal drug addiction? What are you talking about? I don’t care about your day at work,” or whatever. I just remember thinking, “Okay.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Be like, “Where is the connection here?”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. And really, for me, everything else had to fail. I really had to feel like, “I don’t know what’s going to work for me, so I’m just going to do what they’re doing because I don’t understand what this is. I really don’t.” I still think to myself, “Oh, I’ll feel better when I go to a meeting,” or whatever. I’ve been in meetings since I was 15 years old. What am I possibly going to hear? And then every time I do, I do feel better. I growl and blah blah blah. So I just have pushed part of my brain to stop asking questions around that.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s why that desperation is so necessary when people come into the program because-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    The gift of desperation.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Exactly. Because you have to be beaten into a state of reasonableness. You have to be out of your own ideas and you have to be done fighting. And for me, I’m so grateful that I waited until I was really ready to show up and to try. Because otherwise, I think I would have ruined my experience with it and then I would have walked away believing that it didn’t work for me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I think a lot of people do that. I’m grateful that you survived long enough to have your own experience with that because I also think that a lot of people, they would not live if they didn’t have those periods of sobriety. I’m definitely one of those people. If I had waited until I was ready without any intervention, I would not have survived.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Absolutely.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I would not have survived. Just because of the way that I was using at people. I think that there was just no way I was going to… And in this Fentanyl climate, there’s not a chance in hell I’d survive. Not a chance.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Well and that’s why I even loved hearing your story because any time I have a woman who comes to me and they’re 17, 18 and I have a hard time in my mind really wrapping my mind around the idea that was it bad enough for you to be ready? And I loved hearing your story because that was so apparent that you were going to die and you needed to do something about it right away. And so I love that your story really demonstrated that and I think it will even help me moving forward in trusting that if somebody is here, this is exactly where they are supposed to be.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh well thank you. I’m glad it was useful. It’s funny. I don’t know if I talked about it in my story, but it took me two years in sobriety after that to admit to my innermost self that I was an alcoholic. I still wasn’t sure. I was like, “Yeah, I’m a heroin addict, but I don’t know about this alcohol.” I remember telling myself that I was not going to drink or use… No, I’m sorry. I was not going to relapse… Because I was trying to justify drinking. I was not going to drink… Meanwhile, I’ve already done this experiment. It didn’t go well. But I was going to justify.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So trying to justify drinking, and I was like, “I’m not going to drink until I know either way and then I can make a decision. I can say, ‘Screw it, I want to do it anyway,’ or I can say, ‘No, I really am.'” And I remember where I was sitting. I remember what I was doing. I was rewriting a first step and I was writing out all the things specific to alcohol… Because I think when you do a lot of drugs, at least for me, it can get confusing about, “Well alcohol’s different.” In retrospect, it literally does effect you from the neck, up. It’s just legal in a bottle. It’s a drug.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I remember sitting on my bed, writing out this first step. Then, “Oh my God. I’m an alcoholic. Oh my God.” And I was writing out all the different things and I was writing out that when I was 16, I would wear diapers because I would constantly pee myself. And like, what 16 year old wears adult diapers instead of… And I’m writing this. That realization. Two years sober.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah. Well and I love those little negotiations and compromises, just those little deals that we make with ourselves about, “Okay, I’m not going to drink until I know for certain.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Mine when I got in there… Because the thought of going the rest of my life without drinking was absolutely incomprehensible to me. I was just like, “I can’t even begin to wrap my head around that.” And so I said, “I’m going to do six months. And if my life isn’t better in six months, then I’m going to go back to what I was doing.” So that got me through six months. And then six months came around I was like, “You know what? Things are… I feel better. Things are slowly improving. I kind of want to see where this goes, so I’m going to give it a year.” And then by the time I hit a year, I was like, “I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the entire world.” I was there. But I needed those little deals with myself to get there.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh yeah. Another one I had was if I wanted to drink, I was… Because I’m like you. Don’t control me. Do not tell me what to do because I will do exactly what you tell me not to do. So one of them was, I can drink. I’m allowed to drink. Not this BS of, “Well just have a drink tomorrow.” I literally am going to drink. But I cannot make the decision to drink and take the drink in the same 24 hours. So that was… I was like, “If I want a drink in 24 hours, if it’s still a good idea, it’s still going to be a good idea.” And so that was a good deal that I made with myself. But not like how a lot of the sponsors were, “You can drink tomorrow.” I was like, “You know what? That’s a trick.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, exactly.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re lying. You’re going to say the same thing-

    Kimberly Russell:

    You recognize if someone else is doing it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Totally. You’re going to say the same thing tomorrow. But my thing was like no. I’m going to make the decision now and if it’s still a good idea in 24 hours, I’m going to do it. It was never a good idea in 24 hours. But I meant it. I was really like, “I will drink in 24 hours.” But the conviction that those little rules and knowing that I could, if I needed that out or if it still made sense. If I could still justify it, then I would do it. I don’t know, that made me feel better than one day at a time. We’ll discuss it tomorrow. I felt like, “I see what you’re doing. I see through this.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah. And that’s why it’s helped me a lot when I’m working with women not trying to force them to mentally take it off the table before they’re ready. And that’s been very important and that’s why I’m so grateful I’ve had that experience because if I had just come in and said, “I’m swearing off forever,” and then I was successful, I would be so much less patient with other people.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Totally. That’s true, having had that experience. Yeah, it’s the same with the toxic boyfriend. They’re ready when they’re ready. You just have to accept they’re going to go back and you just leave a space for them to show up when they’re ready because people just… When you’re in a relationship, whether it’s with a substance or a person like that, you have to be ready because it’s too hard. The work is too hard to do if you’re not totally desperate and willing.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Absolutely. And in a weird way, I think… Looking back at some of the behaviors that I kept with me all the way up through a year, maybe even a year and a half of really unhealthy behaviors, in a weird way, I think those things kind of kept me sober before I was ready to rely on a higher power. Because for me, my higher power was the group for a long time. Before I was really ready to give up this control and to… I just wasn’t ready to change everything from the very beginning and I think that those things helped me along in a lot of those ways and so that’s why I don’t get to determine the pace of anybody else’s process. Because had I had somebody who didn’t understand that and had not been patient with me, I don’t know if I would have made it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. I still try to control my husband’s process.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Oh I do too, yeah. My boyfriend is six months sober right now and it has just been a whole learning lesson.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re like, “Can we hurry this up? When do we get to the good part?”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes. My sponsor is the reason I’m still in that relationship because she has saved me from being a controlling psychopath.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    My sponsor too, actually. She was in my wedding for that reason.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I love that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Because I just… Still, you’re just like, “What do you mean they get to move at their own pace? Don’t they know I’m involved in the relationship? This cannot happen.” But it’s the same thing. No one’s going to move me from where I am. Not him, that’s for sure.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And I don’t know if you’re this way, but I definitely am. The second that I figure something out, even if it’s been glaring for a year and it’s been causing harm in everyone’s lives around me, but the second that I figure it out, I’m like, “Oh this is phenomenal. This is incredible. I feel so enlightened.” And then I go around demanding that everyone who is in my life figure it out at the same time because I have figured it out.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re just trying to help people, jeez!

    Kimberly Russell:

    It is out of control how quickly I will shift from just complete obliviousness to, “I’m so enlightened and I have something that I need to teach you.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You need to know about this. Well the best is when you first get sober and you start looking around and you’re like, “Wait a minute, you need this! And you need,” you’re like Oprah with 12-step program. Looking around like, “And you need a 12-step and you need a 12-step.” It’s as they say a new pair of… You literally looking and you’re like, “Oh my God.” But of course, you feel like you’ve made this tremendous change. It’s been two months your family is like, “Are you joking?” You’re like, “I’m a new person. What are you talking about? Give me the keys to the car.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, that demand to be trusted and to have everybody forget-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Like what are you talking about? I’ve been sober two months. I am a new person.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Exactly. It’s been forever.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Why are you still bringing up the past? That was three months ago.

    Kimberly Russell:

    It is so easy for us to forget that we’ve been talking about this stuff. We’ve been healing from it, we’ve been growing. Unless our families are going to other programs, they’re not really healing from any of it and so it still feels the same for them.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    In fact, they’re real pissed.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, they’re really upset.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Now that they’re not terrified, they’re actually relieved.

    Kimberly Russell:

    They’re actually pissed. Yes, exactly.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, exactly. They’re like, “Okay, she’s not going to die. God I’m so pissed at her.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Right and we just want them to be stoked that we’re not adding new harm on it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Totally.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And then there’s the whole thing of like okay yeah I’m better, but I’m still not great. I’m still not super pleasant to be around all the time in early sobriety because there’s still so much discomfort and so much growing-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, fully crawling out of my skin.

    Kimberly Russell:

    … and so, my parents were like, “Well what’s the deal? You’re sober. We thought things were-” Because they let me live at home for my first two years sober. Which I’m so grateful for and looking back, I can’t believe that they stuck with me because I would just at times had this attitude of like, “Well, I’m sober and I’m doing what I need to do and I don’t owe anyone anything,” and not really fully grasping the damage that I’ve done and that desire to just move on from it and not really wanting to go back and actually clean up the wreckage from my past.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. Seeing it from the other side, seeing what it looks like… I was doing interventions for a while-

    Kimberly Russell:

    Oh that’s cool.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. I really enjoyed it. Being with the families and the parents and experiencing it from that end was… It was so hard. It was just emotionally so hard to see what I did through the eyes of the parents and see how much they just wanted to lay on the train tracks for them and just make it go away. But also seeing how the translation of that came out. As I would spend the time and the parents see this incredible love for their child and then the child would show up and they’re pissed that they’re strung out. That’s what it looks like. Totally having this understand that they just don’t know how to… Everybody is is just completely in fight or flight, totally panicked. Not at their best. Doesn’t have coping skills. But behind the curtain, seeing what that looks like for the family that’s truly afraid that their child is going to die and they can’t do anything about it? It was so heartbreaking.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I remember calling my parents and just saying, “I’m so sorry.” Just painful. Yeah, it’s like I really didn’t understand how… I always said to them, “I’m doing this to myself. This is my choice. I’m not doing anything to you. Stop acting like I’m hurting you when this is something I’m doing.” I just did not get it. I really thought that too.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah. I was the same way. I used to think that people’s problems was just that they cared too much. They cared too much what I was doing. They needed to mind their own business and then maybe it wouldn’t impact them so much.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, exactly, just let go.

    Kimberly Russell:

    It’s just that delusional selfishness of I’m only hurting myself.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, and it’s hard when you get to face that upfront when you realize how much… And it’s over time, too. I think certain things have hit me. When I had my twin boys and over time just looking at them and thinking about that and from a parental perspective. Knowing how you feel about your child and your child… Toddler boys? They’re suicidal. Don’t get it twisted. They jump off of things.

    Kimberly Russell:

    No self preservation.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Or they’re running into the street. It is seriously might as well be a 5150 situation at my house at all times. So I can just imagine… I know what that feels like when my child, who’s not unhappy but just apparently wants to die, jumps head first off into the ground thinks that this is a great plan. I know what that feels like being the parent just watching that. Just feeling like so helpless. I’m not prepared for this. Where are the grown ups? Someone help.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And taking that and multiplying it by 100000 to a teenager or a young 20s or whatever and them doing what they’re doing. I just can’t even imagine. I just can’t even imagine. And then that’s when I start praying that karma is kind to me.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yes. Well and I think the two biggest pills for me to swallow in sobriety were… The first one was I’m a people pleaser. Because me, I was like, “No, I’m fearless. I say what I want. I say what’s on my mind. I tell people the truth.” I’m so manipulative and I hide and I pick and choose when to do that and I’m harming people in the things that I’m telling them. It was that, and then the second one was that I’m a control freak. That was so difficult for me to come to terms with.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Really?

    Kimberly Russell:

    Coming into it, I was just like, “I’ve never cared what anyone else is doing. I’ve never thought about what anyone else is doing. No, I don’t even think about… I’m so wrapped up in what I’m doing, I’m not even thinking about other people.” But then it was when I got sober that that started really coming out and I started to realize how much of a control freak I am and how strong of a desire I have to control other people’s experiences and believe that I need to protect them from pain. I need to shelter them. And it’s all that same stuff that I was pushing away from my whole life. So it’s been really cool getting to work on that side of things too, because I think for so many… You see people who are sober but aren’t doing any kind of a program, that’s probably the biggest trait that comes out is that desire to control. And it’s like they-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Miserable.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It looks miserable.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Absolutely. And so I’m so grateful that I’ve gotten the opportunity to really work on that, because it comes out in the sneakiest ways. I’m only two months into actually working on an eating disorder that I didn’t even think I had. You know just starting-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Wow, two years? Don’t let it go. Do it now. Do it now.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Exactly.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, I ended up going into OA for real, 2019. And I was saying to my sponsor… Oh, OA for those of you who don’t know is Overeaters Anonymous and it’s all eating disorders, binge, purge, restrict, overeat, whatever it is. And I remember saying, “I have been here six months and I am not losing weight! What is the problem?” Still missing the fact that it’s a spiritual… wherever you go. It doesn’t matter that I have 14 years sober. Absolutely not. You cannot cash your AA chips in any other program, sorry. Not happening. And she goes, “Well if you had lost the weight in the last six months, you wouldn’t stick around to get the recovery.” I was like, “Oh my God, it’s so true!” Six months, if I lost all the weight? See you, I’m out.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And it’s still, I always say, I will use, no matter what happens. I will use against my will no matter what happens if I’m not treating my disease. It won’t be something I’m intentionally doing or I won’t be aware of it or whatever it is. But rest assured, I’ll find something to fixate on and use and it will become that problem.

    Kimberly Russell:

    I will find something to do obsessively.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Obsessively, yes.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And that’s what I’ve even started to realize because when I started working on this, I felt literally like I’d gotten sober all over again. It was incredible. I felt this physical and emotional and spiritual connection to myself that I didn’t even know was possible. What I started to realize is how blocked off I’ve been. And I’ve started that anything that we’re doing obsessively, anything that we’re using to cope is what cuts us off from that spiritual connection. And that was something that I really didn’t fully grasp until recently and that idea that now, I’m back to praying and meditating like my life depends on it because I know. I know for a fact how unmanageable this eating stuff is for me and I know that if I’m not putting in that work, I’m not going to be successful. So I’m remembering what it looks like to really surrender that area of my life and it’s improved my sobriety and it’s improved every other aspect of my life because all of it is just digging deeper spiritually.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s so funny because I just went into deal with the eating disorder and I was like, “Yeah, you know, I’ve done… I got this.” It just knocked me on my ass and it was back to those feelings and all that stuff and I was like, “Oh my God it’s still a spiritual program. Oh no!”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, and I’m not sure if it makes it easier or harder.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah.

    Kimberly Russell:

    That it’s like you’re doing the same thing, but just-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh it makes it way harder.

    Kimberly Russell:

    … differently.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It makes it way harder because I was like, “Okay, you know, I know.” And then like, no. I need worksheets. I need homework. I need a retreat. I need a plan of action. I need all these… I was like, “No, no no. Give it to me concretely.” And it’s like, “It’s a spiritual program.” What does that mean?

    Kimberly Russell:

    What does that mean?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I cannot survive in these conditions. But it’s the same… I think what’s great for me… I don’t know if this is your experience, but what’s great for me is that because I had no options left when I got to program, I experienced the things I didn’t understand helped me, and so now I have that to refer back to. Like, “Hey, dumb dumb. You don’t know how to fix this problem on your own. So this is that again. Just keep remember.” That reminder of, “Remember how you didn’t know this was going to work last time? Well that’s the same thing here.” And like, okay okay okay, I’m just going to listen and do what I’m told.

    Kimberly Russell:

    That’s funny. I just had a conversation with one of the women I’m working with on… She kept using this term, “I have to just have blind faith. I have to just have blind faith.” And I was like, “Why do you keep calling it blind faith?” And she goes, “Well, I’m having to just trust that I’m going to be okay even though I don’t know that.” I said, “Well, has there ever been a time since you’ve been sober that you haven’t been okay?” She goes, “Well, no. I guess not.” And I was like, “So, you have almost a year’s worth of experience that shows you that you’re always okay. So it’s not really blind faith. You have concrete, past history to look on showing you that you’re always going to be okay.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    And so it’s the same idea with that where it’s like, I just have to keep trusting, I have to keep trusting. And at this point, it’s barely even… I barely even think of it as trust anymore because I already know it’s going to be okay.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, if this were Law & Order, the case would be shut. You’d win.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, you know it’s going to be fine. I just have to do what people tell me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh that’s the hardest part.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Who know what they’re doing and I will be okay.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But I question everyone if they know what they’re doing and that’s been my control and my ego and my all those things of I don’t want to be told what to do. But my life depends on being told what to do.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Well and also our… I love that fact that you ask questions because what it means is you really learned the lessons. When you’re going to help somebody with that, you’re going to be able to tell them what they’re doing, but you’re also going to be able to tell them why they’re doing it because you asked questions along the way and because you were so conscious of the process as you were going through it. Because in a lot of ways, I’m the same way. I approach it as, “I’m super willing to do what you want me to do, but can I ask some questions as to why? I just want to know.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    My husband puts me on question ban. That’s a thing in our house. Because I ask so many questions and I produced a mini-me and now I know what it’s like to have someone ask you questions all day. I’m a questioner. I have questions about everything. That’s why I do a podcast. So I can just ask people invasive questions but in a dome that allows me to do that. But yeah, I think that’s a great part and it’s also the hardest part because I saw a lot of people who didn’t ask any questions and they got it much faster than I did. They healed much faster than I did because… Now they can’t answer the same questions as well, so they’re not great sponsors in that way for people like me, but they just shut up and did what they were told and didn’t ask, “Yeah, but how does this work?” And their lives got better much faster.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, it was definitely… The question asking is in its way a form of resistance.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh totally.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And that’s all. So yeah, it just slows down the process a little bit. It doesn’t… You’ll still make it. But it’s just going to take a little longer.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Just going to take you longer. I heard someone in a meeting the other day talking about how the pain is in the resistance. The pain is in the resistance. And with my personality, it’s like I’m on default resist. I resist before I know what I’m resisting or why. So changing those default settings is so vital to living a comfortable.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Oh yeah. What’s ironic is the law of nonresistance is that whatever you resist, will persist. It’s going to get bigger and I talk with… That was first introduced to me in talking about emotions. It was that if you’re really depressed and you’re resisting the idea that you’re depressed, you’re going to feel more depressed. Because you’re already depressed. Now you’re rejecting yourself for being depressed. So if you just lean into the feeling, accept it, love yourself for exactly where you are in this moment, that is what will allow it to pass. The pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Suffering comes from the resistance.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    From the resistance, yeah. I’ve been listening to the books, doing a lot of Gabby Bernstein. I’m obsessed.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, I’ve read Judgment Detox and what’s the other one?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Super Attractor and The Universe Has Your Back.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Is it Spiritual Junkie?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh Spiritual Junkie.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, I’ve read those.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, yeah yeah. She’s in recovery as well and talks about a lot of ideas that work with my brain that wants to know the scientific reason for things and that’s been a really hard piece of spirituality. But the spirituality I’ve been able to access in these later years has been really cool around learning about how all things are made of atoms that are vibrating. Everything is actually vibrating and not like woo woo. For real. And anything that vibrates is going to vibrate at a frequency. So learning this stuff, stuff that I was not open to and stuff in language I can digest… because my brain wants to go to prove it to me. And then I’ve come far enough that I can take the leap of faith with it. I can go, “Oh there’s some science around this,” and then I can take the leap of faith of we attract… The kind of more abstract stuff. But I’ve really had to seek, really had to seek. Everything has been about if I stop seeking, I stop growing and I get close to a drink.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, 100% if I at any point am feeling stagnant, yeah I don’t believe that there’s such a thing as being stagnant in the program. I think you’re either growing or you’re moving closer to a drink. And I’ve seen that in others. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to learn from other people’s experiences in that and so for me… And I push this with all the women that I’m working with that I’m like, “You’re not here to maintain.” We don’t get that luxury. We have to constantly be inspiring ourselves and pushing ourselves and growing and learning new things and then ideally teaching it to the people who come after us. If you’re not doing that, then yeah, you may stay sober. You see lots of people who stay sober who just maintain. But they’re not thriving. And I believe-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s the whole goal.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Exactly. I think that we’re here to thrive. That is going to be our natural state of being if we don’t get in the way of that process.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And I think that’s about learning that we’re here to thrive, believing that we’re here to thrive, and then taking the action or in my case, figuring out what the action is in order to thrive and seeking and pushing toward that. I do think there’s a lot of life just sucks and that’s just the way life is and life is hard and-

    Kimberly Russell:

    It’s out to get me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. All these things that we tell ourselves. Really flipping the script on that of like, “Yeah, that’s one choice you have of how you look at the world.” I think when you’re sober, you just don’t have any… Especially the longer you stay sober, you just don’t have any tolerance for pain anymore. You just don’t. You’re just like, “Get me, I’ll do whatever.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Whatever I need to do right now.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Clown suit, whatever needs to happen. Just tell me what to do. And so that willingness and knowing you don’t have an easy out pushes you to actually work harder to create a thriving life because the opposite for you is something you have to feel every single day. You don’t ever have a break from that, a mental out, an anesthesia. So whatever you’re going to experience, you’re going to experience. You might as well make it good.

    Kimberly Russell:

    May as well. Well and that was probably the first barrier that I made it past in my journey of spirituality. I think was just allowing myself to say that I wanted to be happy. That was something that was so hard for me to admit and I carried with me this idea that happy people are only happy because they’re too stupid to know why they shouldn’t be happy. It was literally what I believed.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    No, I get that.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And it took a long time for me to even recognize that I carried that belief with me and that I was terrified of admitting that I wanted to be happy because then what if the people around me know that I want to be happy and then what if they fail and then they know that I’m failing-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And now I’m a people pleaser.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Exactly! And I was just all of this everything in my head was screaming at me to hold onto those beliefs. Once I started to shed those and allow myself to adopt new beliefs, I remember my first sponsor told me… I came to her and I said, “I think the universe is testing me.” She goes, “Well why do you think that?” And I said, “I don’t know. Because bad things are happening.” She goes, “Well does it make you happy to believe that the universe is testing you?” And I was like, “No, not at all.” She goes, “Cool. Then don’t believe it. Say it right now. Say, ‘My higher power doesn’t test me.'” And I said, “My higher power doesn’t test me.” She goes, “Great. You just changed a belief. Look at that.” I was like, “Wait, it’s that easy?” She goes, “Yeah.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, okay, cool.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I have to say it a lot more times. My brain is slow.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Usually, I think it’s between 10 and 20 times before… There’s a certain amount of seconds that if you repeat it over and over again like with an affirmation, that it will actually start to develop into the start of a belief.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, which is wonderful and terrifying. Because that means that other people can develop belief systems based on telling themselves that many times. Good news is we can change it. Bad news, there’s people out there creating all sorts of crazy stuff. But that’s for another podcast.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Absolutely, yes.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yes. You and I could talk about that for hours.

    Kimberly Russell:

    That’s the scary part.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So okay two questions. One is what does the next six months of Kim’s sobriety look like? What do you want it to look like? And what advice would you give to someone who is really struggling with… Wants to get better, but is really struggling with this whole spiritual crap?

    Kimberly Russell:

    So next six months or so of my sobriety… Honestly, I just hope that it continues moving exactly in the way that it is right now. I am at a very exciting time as far as my career. And I’m hopefully soon going to be transitioning out of my very practical property management job into something that I’m more passionate about, which is life coaching and really working with people one-on-one and creating something that I believe is meaningful and impactful and that I really, really care about and something that I think is utilizing all of my strengths and all of the experience that I have. Just continuing to be immersed in my 12-step program, the work that I’m doing with other women. A lot more growing, a lot more healing. Reading more books, more travel. We do retreats periodically.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I need a retreat.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Oh they’re so good. I get so antsy if I… I just got back from the one in Hawaii. We’re planning another one in the next few months.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That sounds amazing.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah. It’s definitely… I’ll send you the info for it if you’re interested in it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Please do. I’m so interested.

    Kimberly Russell:

    It’s going to be phenomenal. But honestly, I’m in a point in my life where I’ve already exceeded all of my expectations in what I ever thought that I would have or accomplish and I’m now reaching a point where I am starting to achieve things that I didn’t even know I had goals for.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s awesome.

    Kimberly Russell:

    So yeah, that’s pretty much. That’s really all I am looking forward to. Just more growth and more connection with people, because that’s what makes me happy.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And then to somebody who’s struggling with the spirituality of things, my super honest advice is to not rush. I don’t think that everybody needs to get it right away. I don’t think that if you don’t get it right away that you won’t stay sober. I believe that everyone truly moves at their own pace with that and that the most important thing to do is to accept yourself exactly where you are, be super honest and transparent about your beliefs and what you think and what your questions are and to ask all of the questions that you want to ask. Whether your belief is there or not, it doesn’t change what is actually there.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s good, yeah.

    Kimberly Russell:

    And that base your beliefs on your own personal experiences and nothing else. Not based on what people taught you. Not based on what you think you’re supposed to believe. Create your own experiences with it. It’s not going to be what you think.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah.

    Kimberly Russell:

    But that it’s so much better than I ever imagined.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. I love that. It’s definitely not going to be what you think. Whatever you think it is, it’s not that. That’s definitely been my experience.

    Kimberly Russell:

    That’s been my experience with all of sobriety and all of life in general.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Totally. I’ve gotten to this phase and I’m like I have no idea what’s happening.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, I don’t even bother creating expectations anymore, because I don’t know what I’m walking into and it’s much better that way.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    My kid turned to me the other day. He’s three. He’s my questioner. He asked me if I was a grown up.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Oh yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I have never been hit with such a challenging question in my life. I looked at him and was like, “F. What do I tell this sweet, innocent child?” I’m like, “Yes? I am technically considered a grown up.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    Some might say that I look like, yes.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Physically, you know, age-wise… definitely. But it was such a funny experience of the older I get, the more sober I get, and I don’t know. I have no idea. At this point, everything I thought I knew is wrong. Every time I think I know something or I’m like, “Yeah, I know what’s up,” and it changes. So at this point, I’m just going to go with a hard, “I have no clue what’s happening.”

    Kimberly Russell:

    And it’s so freeing when you can just say that. I have no idea and it’s not my responsibility to figure it out.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, it’s true. Although to him, maybe it’s my-

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, a little. There’s some responsibilities there.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, exactly. I’ll leave that. But for now, I’m just telling him I’m a grown up.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Well it’s been so nice having you here. I think that you’re going to do amazing things in this program and out of this program. I just really love that you’re a perfect example of someone who took the… Whether it was hard or not, you took the, “I had a nice home and a nice family and I’m just an alcoholic.” That’s just the plain and simple of it and you took that in stride. I think that’s so valuable to people because I think there’s so many people who are really confused and maybe get themselves into traumatic situations so that they have a… There are so many different situations and I always feel terrible talking to those people because my story is full of all sorts of weird stuff. So I can’t affirm that in them, but I see it and I get it. And I just hope you continue to share your story because we have plenty of us who have all the trauma and blah blah blah, but people need to talk about the fact that this is a brain disease. You can be born with it and nothing in your family went wrong.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Absolutely.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s okay. You’re still one of us. We still accept you. We still love you. And you don’t have to have any trauma. You don’t have to be a #MeToo victim. You don’t have to. It’s okay. We don’t look at you differently. And I think that’s a message we need to start talking about because I really am starting to feel like people who don’t have trauma or people who haven’t been sexually assaulted or whatever, they feel left out.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Yeah, I think it’s definitely something that it’s so important to understand the different forms that it takes and that it doesn’t discriminate. And it’s not necessarily… It doesn’t have a cause that you can pinpoint.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. And that’s okay. That’s okay.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Absolutely.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Awesome. Well thank you so much for being here.

    Kimberly Russell:

    Thank you so much for having me. And I think the coolest thing about this podcast… It’s even just in the name. When I came into this experience, I did not believe that people were capable of change until I got sober and that’s why the second I saw the name, I just yes. I love what you guys are doing here and what you’re creating is absolutely beautiful and I’m so happy to be a part of it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Thank you, thank you so much for coming in.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    This podcast is sponsored by Lionrock Recovery. Lionrock provides online substance abuse counseling, where clients can get help from the privacy of their own home. They are accredited by the Joint Commission, and sessions are private, affordable, and user-friendly. Call their free helpline at 800-258-6550 or visit www.lionrockrecovery.com for more information.