#2: Bahan McDermott is the Director of Admissions at Lionrock Recovery, and is originally from the East Coast. She will be walking us through her journey of surviving domestic violence and overcoming alcoholism, which ultimately resulted in her abuser going to prison. When this podcast recorded, she celebrated 6 years sober! And what a way to celebrate - we are so honored that she decided to sit down and share her incredible story with us.
#2: Welcome to the Courage to Change – A Recovery Podcast! For our second episode, Ashley is going to be interviewing Bahan McDermott. Bahan is the Director of Admissions at Lionrock Recovery. She is originally from the East Coast, and now lives in Southern California with her fiance, stepsons, and golden retriever Ghillie. She is celebrating 6 years clean and sober TODAY...and what better way to reflect on her time being sober than to share her story with us. Bahan is going to walk us through her journey with domestic violence and alcohol, which resulted in her abuser going to prison. You are going to be moved by this story of strength, perseverance, and the courage to change. We recommend bringing tissues!
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0:00 – Introduction
2:34 - Launching into Bahan’s story
4:22 - High school - Ecstacy during the week, alcohol on the weekends
6:31 - A supportive, loving family
8:31 - Getting sent off to a wilderness program and a therapeutic boarding school
11:52 - Moving back to the east coast and going to college; trying “this not drinking thing” (which lasted a week and a half)
15:06 - “It always began and ended with alcohol”
17:30 - Finding herself in an abusive relationship & falling into heavier drinking
24:14 - The escalation of abuse
27:36 - The first time he hit her, a panic attack, and the introduction to Klonopin
30:52 - Realizing that if she didn’t leave she was going to die. “I was terrified to leave, and I was terrified to stay.”
35:44 - Finally getting out, & the evidence that sent him to prison
45:35 - Owning her part in her addiction: “My problems didn’t go to prison with him.”
48:59 - “Alcohol was the answer to all of my problems, & the only coping mechanism I knew that worked.”
51:21 - The Intervention
58:04 - Treatment & the beginning of sobriety
1:02:29 - Life in recovery: “I couldn’t have planned my life better than the way it turned out.”
1:07:25 - Words of advice for someone in early recovery who has been through domestic violence
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello beautiful people. Welcome to episode two of The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. Today we will be interviewing Bahan McDermott. Bahan is the director of admissions at Lion Rock Recovery. She is originally from the East Coast now living in Southern California with her fiance, step sons and golden retriever Gilly. She is actually celebrating six years clean and sober today and what a way to reflect on her time being sober than to share her story with us. Bahan is going to walk us through her journey with domestic violence and alcoholism, which resulted in her abuser going to prison.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm really excited for you guys to hear this story of strength, perseverance and the courage to change. All right episode two, let's do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All right, how's it going everybody? Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. We have Bahan McDermott, and I am so excited to have her on the podcast today. Thank you for taking the time. You're celebrating six years sober today. That's pretty cool. What's that like?
Bahan McDermott:
It feels kind of surreal. I spent some time this morning just reflecting on the gratitude I have for where I am today. It's a lot different than it was six years ago.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah, I bet. If you're doing it right, that's usually the case.
Bahan McDermott:
That's the hope.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think that knowing that someone's six years sober is awesome but knowing where someone came from is a really big part of what we do in recovery is understanding what kind of things people have overcome. And I really wanted to have you on this podcast because your story is unique in that you were able to get out of this very serious domestic violence relationship that even had legal proceedings involved, and I think that that was a big part of your alcoholism and your story.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And what's amazing about that is that so many people we talk about the disease but we don't talk about the pieces of the disease that don't look like alcohol that aren't included. We don't classically consider it included in the alcoholism, but it's all part of the same thing, trying to achieve the same thing. I talked about how I was in a domestic violence relationship and how that contributed to my downward spiral.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So today, I know you as an amazing sober woman who has this great big beautiful life but I understand that it was not always like that. As someone recovering and doing that reflection on your six years, where does your alcoholism start? Where did you start to see it? Did you start when you were a kid or? Can you help us understand kind of what that looked like for you.
Bahan McDermott:
Sure. Looking back now certainly feels a lot different than I think it did in the moment. I think I'm better able to identify the pieces that contributed to my alcoholism as they come together over time kind of zooming out, but I definitely look back and remember. A lot of people who struggle with alcoholism talk about feeling different. I had a lot of friends and I had a good support network among friends and family, so there wasn't any particular thing in my childhood that would have indicated a budding alcoholic, but I certainly always struggled with a deep sense of insecurity.
Bahan McDermott:
I remember when I was, gosh, I think 13 years old, I was stealing alcohol from my parents and smoking cigarettes and the rest of my friends were just starting to notice boys and still playing with Barbies. It was definitely something that set me aside from the rest of the people around me. So I would say I began at pretty young age, but it definitely developed over time in a way that you couldn't ignore.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. When you say that people couldn't ignore it, did your parents, did your family... What did that look like when people couldn't ignore it?
Bahan McDermott:
My family got really concerned about me probably around high school age, freshman sophomore year of high school when I started not showing up to class, not showing up to school at all. They would get phone calls, "Where is she?" My behavior was out of control. There were definitely signs I think more my behavior that my parents didn't understand. They didn't know what was going on with me but certainly indications that something was wrong and something was off, but I think they were just so unfamiliar with the territory they didn't know what was happening.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right. And how much were you drinking in high school?
Bahan McDermott:
I was drinking at least every weekend. I was smoking marijuana throughout the week and then probably towards sophomore year of high school I was starting to do harder drugs like cocaine and ecstasy throughout the week with friends. I definitely found like companions in high school and people who-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You were doing ecstasy during the week?
Bahan McDermott:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Yeah, we were-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The full time party geek.
Bahan McDermott:
Certainly was. I didn't have any time to attend History or English class or do any of the assignments.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was a weekly rave.
Bahan McDermott:
Exactly. Sometimes a two or three person rave.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I remember those.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. There was serious erratic behavior going on that began to get identified as mental health stuff because my family I think was... I wasn't going to tell them everything that was going on.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's such a classic thing. I remember going to the doctor and going to a psychiatrist and he's like, "You're bipolar." I didn't want to tell him that I was actually detoxing from cocaine, which looks a lot like bipolar. I totally get that.
Bahan McDermott:
Exactly. And I was willing to take any medications they were going to give me so I was willing to sign up for whatever mental health-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally. I was like, "Bipolar. Sounds about right. Feels like that. Sure does."
Bahan McDermott:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. That makes sense. So what was your family environment? Did you grow up with alcoholic parents?
Bahan McDermott:
No. My family environment was an incredibly secure, supportive environment. I came from very well educated parents who were pretty strict about our manners and respecting people and really wanted us to succeed intellectually. They honestly were just super supportive loving people who I guess you could say were that kind of that well bred East Coast family.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think we came from the same place. And those families a lot of the time if you do well in school, or at least was my experience that a lot of the time, that was the benchmark for whether or not things were going well, was how is school going. Did you experience some of that?
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting as I've moved out to California, living now in an environment in Orange County where your level of success is determined by the expensive car you drive. Back on the East Coast it was where did you go to high school, and where did you go to college. It was all about the education. And that was an indication that you were a successful person. It was more defined by your intellect. And so if you went to the right schools, and you got the right grades, and you knew the right people as far as that world goes then yeah, that was the definition of things were okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right. And if you could keep that together. I grew up mostly on the East Coast, but my parents are New Englanders. And actually, our moms went to high school together. That's a whole other story. My parents the same thing, and I actually hid behind that a lot. I knew that if I could keep my grades up, or I knew that if I could keep the education piece going, that I could hide behind that and say, "Well, my school is still going well, my grades are still good." When did you know you had a problem?
Bahan McDermott:
Gosh. That's an interesting question because I for a long time... I think I went in and out of stages of denial where in high school I felt like I was just having fun and enjoying myself until I noticed that I was doing a lot of things that other people weren't doing and I would hear about people kind of talking about me behind my back in a way. I was a very popular person in high school, but in a way that I was that girl who was so far, had crossed that line that people just didn't cross in high school.
Bahan McDermott:
So I think the indication that I had a problem was when I was sent away in Junior year in high school and-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was removed from my-
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. Physically removed. I'll never forget the principal calling me into his office and just saying, "I don't know what to do with you. You are by far one of the hardest cases." I mean, the fact that I was a case in high school, and it was a small high school. I was in a class of I think 400 and of the years and years and years he'd been doing this, he had no idea what to do with me. I spent hours and hours in the guidance counselor's office against my own will, because they were trying to help me. I would get passes to go to therapy appointments and I would just go and get high and it was a quick spiral out of control and so that was an indication that something wasn't right when I got sent off to a Wilderness Program and subsequently a therapeutic boarding school and then-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, where'd you go?
Bahan McDermott:
I went to Second Nature, which was a Wilderness Program I'm sure you're familiar with?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, I am. Duchesne?
Bahan McDermott:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Duchesne?
Bahan McDermott:
In Duchesne, Utah. I spent a couple months in the Moab desert and then went off to Montana Academy, which is a... They call it therapeutic boarding school, but it's really treatment for adolescents.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That therapeutic part is pretty intense.
Bahan McDermott:
Yes. Exactly. Took a couple of classes there and earned my high school diploma from Montana Academy. So that was an indication but then after that-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you want to get well? It was an indication but was it... Were you thinking to yourself, "You know what? This is seriously out of control. I really need to pull it together." Or what were you thinking?
Bahan McDermott:
I was thinking, "Sure. Maybe I need to pull it together." Some things kind of were a bit rocky there but I also thought that all that therapy and stuff that I got was enough of like a fix that sort of realigned, got me re-calibrated and back on track that I thought I was okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You were like, "Yeah. It was fine. I'm ready to put me back. Put me in coach."
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. Exactly. Let's throw me back in. I'm ready to go back in for the-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. These people are awfully dramatic.
Bahan McDermott:
Seriously. I sort of thought, "All right, I took it. Took it a little far every once in a while, but I'm actually okay." I applied for college and moved back to the East Coast got re-acclimated to society.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Far from the desert.
Bahan McDermott:
Right, right. And from the rural part of Montana. So I went back to the East Coast and things were kind of okay for a little bit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So did you go back and go to college?
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. I went back to the East Coast, went to college in Massachusetts close to home. Right before I started college I thought, "Okay, well, I'm going to try this not-drinking thing." But I didn't understand sobriety. It was more of an abstinence thing. I went to a couple of meetings, AA meetings when I was in Montana, but I don't ever remember hearing a message. I remember being there but I remember going because it was a place I could go and smoke cigarettes and hang out after curfew.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Okay.
Bahan McDermott:
So I remember thinking I was going to try this abstinence thing, and it lasted I think maybe a week and a half or two weeks.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You were going to do it on your own?
Bahan McDermott:
Right. Well, I didn't know any other way. I didn't know that there was any. I didn't know that there was another way to do it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So the therapeutic boarding school, they did the therapy part, but they didn't actually address what it would mean if you had an addiction to substances and all that time?
Bahan McDermott:
Right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was much more focused on mental health. And yet, don't you think addiction has a huge mental health component?
Bahan McDermott:
100%. Yeah. I think there's ingrained in addiction is what I think a lot of mental health stuff that manifests in many different ways, but I think I was being medicated rather than treated.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. Yes. That's a huge component. So you get back, you stay sober, you're abstinent for a week, then you start drinking again, what would that look like?
Bahan McDermott:
Then I thought it was the cocaine and the tequila and vodka that was a problem, so I'm just going to drink beer and wine. I had a lot of friends. Let's just put it this way, I still had some friends, but I had a lot of friends that were kind of afraid of me. So I had a couple of friends who would still spend time with me, but I think a lot of people saw me as a liability. So the few friends that would hang out with me still were like, "Are you sure you can do this drinking thing?" So-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And you were like, "Oh yeah, I've been abstinent for a week. I'm ready."
Bahan McDermott:
So, yeah. Coming back dry from Montana and Utah and thinking, "Okay, I got this." And I really thought maybe I was just losing it and now I'm sort of... I've got these coping skills that they taught me and... So yeah, I started drinking beer and wine, and I'll tell you that quickly, quickly escalated right back to where things were before. All of a sudden it was a little beer and wine, those are going okay and I could seem to do okay with that. So it'll be beer, wine and vodka. I'll stay away from the drugs and then it was... It got out of control pretty quickly again.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. So you're trying to negotiate with the substances. Like, "Okay, if I get rid of this substance, then it'll be okay. If I get rid of that substance..."
Bahan McDermott:
Sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It sounds like there were drugs involved, but you were mainly drinking very, very heavily.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. There were certainly drugs involved at every point in my journey, but I always say that alcohol is like my one true love when it comes to substances. It always began and ended with alcohol. And I was now in college where excessive drinking was socially acceptable.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know. It's a very confusing place for people with alcoholism.
Bahan McDermott:
Absolutely. Because binge drinking is just like part of what people do, and you can very easily surround yourself by people who are doing what you're doing that normalize it for you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting to watch it from, I have two younger sisters, and it's interesting to watch it from the perspective of being sober. I was sober when they went through college and saw this binge drinking, not necessarily them, but the people around them and would think to myself, "Oh, that's what alcoholism looks like." But it in that environment people excuse it, it's totally acceptable. But then as soon as you're out, that's when it's no longer acceptable.
Bahan McDermott:
Right. As soon as you've graduated from college and everybody else is going to their 9:00 to 5:00 job, and you can't seem to show up more than two days a week or whatever that is.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I always thought that was interesting. If you drink mimosas in the morning, then it's okay, or a bloody Mary at this time. There were rules of alcoholism that I felt like I didn't get the handbook for. Like I was drinking the wrong drink in the morning, but if I had been drinking a different drink, then I wouldn't have been an alcoholic, it would have been acceptable.
Bahan McDermott:
Totally. Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Bottomless mimosas. Apparently that's a totally normal thing. Very confusing. If you binge drink an alcohol... Sorry. If you binge drink in college, that's normal but the day you graduate if you continue to do it... And there's a lot of interesting societal excuses or circumstances where alcoholic behavior is allowed to be okay.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah, and I think a lot of situations that allow a person with alcoholic thinking the ability to rationalize why they're not sick. Which can be very confusing because there are certainly people out there who are heavy drinkers who can do the things that alcoholics do and not have a problem with it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. No, it's definitely confusing. So you go through college. Did you graduate?
Bahan McDermott:
I did. And I actually graduated with almost a 4.0 GPA. I did phenomenally in college. Which was surprising because it was all through my college experience, well sophomore year and on that I had started dating a guy where I found myself in an abusive relationship. So I look back on that experience of college where I was able to get almost perfect grades. It's like, "How was I doing that when I was an alcoholic and in an abusive relationship?" I still to this day have no idea how I achieved that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's incredibly impressive because it was just not my story. So you started dating. Did he go to college with you?
Bahan McDermott:
No. I met him when he was visiting a friend of mine over a weekend who went to the same college as me. So he was a friend from my friend's hometown. So he was visiting somebody at my college.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What year was that? What grade was that?
Bahan McDermott:
Sophomore year.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Sophomore year of college, okay. And what did your drinking look like?
Bahan McDermott:
So it's interesting. My drinking at that point was probably Thursday, Friday, Saturday, day drinking Sunday. It was light.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally.
Bahan McDermott:
It was light at that point.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was light at that point. Okay.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. So you had thirsty Thursday, and then naturally had to drink Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday to prepare for the week. That was sort of the normal drinking, and it was... I look back at after meeting him how am I drinking changed and began to change throughout the course of our relationship. So it definitely got worse and it transformed in different ways.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you're saying he was an alcoholic?
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. Well, I can't be one to say. Only he can decide that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you're saying that he had alcoholic traits?
Bahan McDermott:
Yes. He definitely had alcoholic traits for sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. So take us through, how do we get to the place where you're heavily drinking?
Bahan McDermott:
Gosh. That didn't take too long. I mean, heavily drinking... God. It was heavy and then it just got heavier and heavier and heavier, but it was probably within that year that... And even my roommate, so I was living in the dorms at that point, and even my roommates started saying things like, "Man, you're drinking a lot." I was drinking Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday... I was drinking after classes, at night, by myself, in our dorm suite, just watching TV, drinking, trying to find stuff to do on a Monday night when everybody else is in library studying.
Bahan McDermott:
I would call this guy who I had met, and we had quickly decided that we were going to be a couple however that happened. And he would be at home drinking and I'd be like, "Oh, well. Okay. When we're talking on the phone, well, I guess I'll make a drink." And I just found myself kind of falling into that. Like finding "Oh, well, if he's drinking, it must be okay." I found a lower companion. I found somebody who if he was doing it, then it must be okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right. The excuse to normalize what we're doing.
Bahan McDermott:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So what happened in that relationship?
Bahan McDermott:
When I first met him, he was nice and charming and well dressed and pulled together and sweet and he was just an all around attractive person. And he... I don't know. I now look back at this statement thinking well that's actually not true but at the time I felt like he swept me off my feet in a colleague drinking party, playing flip cup. So it's very romantic-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Sophisticated and romantic.
Bahan McDermott:
All best relationships start off. Yes, so the relationship started off just kind of like this infatuation with each other, just remember being super intense and thinking, "Wow, this guy is great." Up until then I had sort of flaky relationships and this just seemed like an intense investment in one another. Things were good for a long time I would say. For the first year, things felt pretty good.
Bahan McDermott:
I noticed some sort of strange behavior. So this guy ended up being super violent and very abusive. And people ask, "How did you end up in a relationship like that?" And it's like well, we didn't meet and he punched me in the face. Things were good for a long time. But I do remember him making some comments about me going out with friends at college. "Are you going out this weekend? I don't..." Controlling sort of comments about what are you doing, where are you going, wanting to know what I was up to, where I... I had always lived like I do what I want, with my parents, with... That was just my attitude. I always did what I wanted. So this was a little unusual for me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So this was a gradual?
Bahan McDermott:
Very gradual. It was very sneaky. So there was sort of some control about what I was doing at college. So I stopped going out with friends as often. I remember friends kind of getting frustrated with me because I wasn't as social as I used to be. And I was a lot of times the life of the party. I was very well connected, so I also had friends who were kind of mad at me because I knew where all the parties were, and they're like, "Come on. You're the person who takes us out."
Bahan McDermott:
So it started with that. And that actually in turn led me to moving off campus and moving into an apartment by myself. That's how sort of twisted the mind control was around that. I just was like, "Okay, well. I'm going to move away from the..." He's very protective of me being around other guys. So I thought, "Oh, that's so sweet."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally. Convinced they love us.
Bahan McDermott:
Right. He loves me, he wants me all for himself. So I moved off campus so I would be away from that scene and safe from the looks of other men. And then there were things that would happen where we'd be sitting at a dinner table together, and I don't even remember what I said, but there would be some comment made and he would pinch my leg really hard under the table. I thought, I remember the first time happening thinking, "Why are you doing that? That really hurt." And it was not like a little... It would leave bruises.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. So little things like that. And then grabbing my arm to the point where it would leave a thumbprint. It was bit by bit. It was very, I don't know if insidious is the right word, but-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No. It's gradual. It's really interesting to hear you talk about that because when I reflect on the relationship that I was in, which really wasn't... Didn't lead to wear yours did, but it actually started with pinching.
Bahan McDermott:
Oh, yeah. Interesting. That's crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. Because it's gradual. You don't opt in to a relationship with someone who you know is... You're so shocked when they do those things that you don't even know how to react.
Bahan McDermott:
Totally. Well, you don't want to believe it. You think well, that's strange, and you sweep that under the rug.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm not the kind of girl who is in a relationship where someone hurts them. I would never put up with that. Those are the things that you think about yourself.
Bahan McDermott:
100%. Yeah, yeah. You never imagine that that's actually what's taking place and there's also a lot of... When I finally made my way out of that relationship I just remember feeling completely brainwashed. Like my mind was just in a... It was completely flipped around. I didn't know what was up or what was down. It's crazy the level of control... Just sort of the way that your brain rewires itself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. In our first podcast, I talked about that. If you understand what happened to the women in Charles Manson's group. I never understood how the women were convicted of doing something... He was convicted of doing something that he never did, but the mind control is so intense. It's so real, and you almost have to experience it to really understand to like at the depths of core, understand what that is like because it's pretty... It seems impossible until you're there. So what ended up happening?
Bahan McDermott:
I'm trying to think of the most important details to share but over the course of four and a half years the abuse escalated just significantly. Each year as it went by, just more and more and more abuse. The abuse started off with the little physical stuff, but a lot of the emotional and psychological abuse and then it got more and more physical and I'll never forget the first time he actually hit me in the face in the apartment that I had moved into. I'll never forget that.
Bahan McDermott:
That was almost like a line that had been crossed and after that it was like there was no going back. And from there it just got worse. The first time he hit me we're actually in my bathroom in the apartment and I was at that time prescribed Ambien, which was awesome for-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Nothing like a good night's sleep.
Bahan McDermott:
Oh, yeah, I remember waking up and my refrigerator been taken apart, and it was all over my apartment. All the drawers and all the shelving, I'd taken it apart when I combined Ambien and alcohol. Don't ever do that. So he being the good alcoholic that he probably is, he had to wake up the next morning, he wanted one of my Ambien. He was always trying to steal my drugs.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Rude.
Bahan McDermott:
Right. And they're prescribed to me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There are manners.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. And I had very strict policies, following the doctor's orders on when the bottle says my name, you can't have any. So he wanted some Ambien and I told him I wouldn't give it to him because I wanted it for myself and I had some friends over. He just been the narcissist that he was, he backhanded me in the bathroom and I remember just falling against the towel rack, and bruising my arm and the towel rack and just thinking, "Holy smokes. I can't believe that just happened. I can't believe that he just hit me."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And your friends were in the house?
Bahan McDermott:
My friends were in the house. And I came out of the bathroom, and they knew something was wrong. I mean, we're all drinking, but they knew something was wrong, and I was having trouble breathing... Again, brush I was like, "Okay, that didn't just happen. That didn't just happen."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because it's so shocking.
Bahan McDermott:
Completely shocking. I was like... I could not wrap my head around the fact that was the reality. So I just proceeded to sit down, back down with my friends and continued to drink, he went to bed. I think I may be ended up giving him the Ambien. I don't really remember. But all of a sudden, I was having trouble breathing, and I couldn't catch my breath. And my friends looked at me and they asked what was wrong? And I said, "I don't know. I think I'm having an allergy attack. I'm having trouble breathing."
Bahan McDermott:
Turns out I was having a panic attack but I didn't know it. They woke him up and they all took me to the ER, and he came into the room with me when the doctor was in there. And the doctor asked me, "Have you ever," like doctors do, "have you ever been physically harmed or anything like that?" And I said no, and he never asked him to leave. The doctor never asked him to leave, which I think doctors should always do to give you the safety and privacy that you need to maybe talk about that. Not that I necessarily would have but I think that doctors should do that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's a really good point. Did you have any facial... Was your face red at all or anything from that situation that they would have noticed?
Bahan McDermott:
I honestly don't remember, but I'll never forget that my ex was sitting with me and he said, "She overreacts with everything and she's having a panic attack or she's having anxiety." So then the doctor introduced me to Klonopin, which was amazing. All of these things that lead deeper and deeper. It's amazing looking at all the connecting dots. Like they all just feed into my alcoholism and also my reasoning behind why I didn't have a drinking problem.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. But over time, I mean, the abuse got so aggressive that it was a regular thing where I'd have one black eye or the other rib's broken. I still to this day have a broken bone in my nose and my face. I look, I think relatively normal but-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You look normal to me.
Bahan McDermott:
Thanks. Yeah. But I mean, the scars are on the inside. It got to a place where I knew at one point... I was strangled on many occasions and was told ways that that my body was going to be disposed of. And I continued to tell myself, "I can't believe I'm in this situation." I was terrified to leave and I was terrified to stay. It got to the point and I'll never forget this moment where I finally realized that if I did not leave I was going to die.
Bahan McDermott:
Thankfully, before that time, the months leading up to that point where it was getting so bad where I had them to the ER Several times, gotten stitches on my lip. He split my lip open and I kept being very literally beaten to a pulp. I had started documenting what some of the... I've pictures of my black eyes and the bruises all over my body. And I started taking pictures of all of this stuff to let my family know what had happened to me when I die. I wanted my family to know that he had done this. For them to have a peace of mind, I guess. I don't really know, but I just felt some obligation for them to be aware of what it happened to me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What's coming to my, I mean aside from trying not to cry listening to that happen to you, I'm pretty sure my producer is crying. What's coming to mind for me is the way that you're talking about it is the way that we also talk about our relationship with alcohol and drugs and that [inaudible 00:33:00] you said I can't live with it, I can't live without it and same with him, and that you took these photos. In your mind you were going to die from him, from this. In your mind you there was no way out. There was no way out. And so you were going to do the next best thing and that's... That mindset is something that you just don't ever think you're going to be there.
Bahan McDermott:
Right. Oh yeah. It's not one of those things that you sign up for or that you think is... Telling this story now, and there's so many details that I've shared with people over the years and I'm always willing and open to share the details of that relationship, of my struggles with substance abuse because there are so many people who are struggling who are afraid to talk about these things but when I tell the details and I talk about the story, I still can't believe that it was my life. I still feel sitting here today like, "Oh my God-"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Who is this girl?
Bahan McDermott:
"Did I really sit through that and endure that and get to a place of acceptance? Where like, yeah, I'm just going to die. So I might as well just take a couple photos." I'll never forget this one experience where I had a blackberry back in the day and I'd taken all these pictures on and I swear to God, this is God, the universe, my higher power, whatever, but I had this blackberry, taken all these pictures on and there was some violent eruption as there normally was, but he took that phone and smashed it to bits. I mean, complete bits. And I panicked.
Bahan McDermott:
I took the bits of the phone, the remnants of the phone. I had two black eyes at that point I put on sunglasses. I looked like a complete mess. I went down to the Verizon Wireless store, sunglasses on, wouldn't take them off in public. And I said, "Is there anything you can do with this phone?" And they said, "No." I mean, what?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"When you say do with this, what exactly do you mean?"
Bahan McDermott:
They looked at the phone and they said, "What happened?" And just like I made excuses of walking into walls and doors, and all that kind of stuff for the excuses for my bruises, I made up an excuse. I told them that one of my brothers had an insane party and somebody, I don't even know, some somebody smashed it somehow. And they were eight. They said, "Well, all we can do is give you a replacement phone." And I said, "Can you transfer anything off of that phone?" And they said, "Your contacts are all gone. We'll see what we can do." The only thing that was saved was the photos.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow, that's crazy.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So what did you do with the photos? How did you get out?
Bahan McDermott:
So the photos actually became a key, key piece of my story. It was just honestly... It had gotten to a point where I... It was actually shortly after that experience, but I had two black eyes, hand prints on my neck, on my arms, all over my body. I'm thinking about the family I come from, and what I looked like, I looked like I didn't belong. I looked like I belong and not to talk about stereotypes or anything like that but it didn't add up. The pieces did not add up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's unimaginable. Did they know? Were they around? Did you see them?
Bahan McDermott:
My family? I did a really, really good job of... I learned how to expertly put on foundation and makeup. When I was seen, I made it very short to a point where, I'd wear always long sleeved pants and shirts. I would cover it up as best as I could. There were a couple of times where things were questioned but I think my family never imagined.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's so crazy. It's so out of this world.
Bahan McDermott:
That's not right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That makes sense.
Bahan McDermott:
They never imagined something like that was going on, but at this point it had gotten to a place I had seen my family in a couple of weeks, and it had gotten to a place where I realized there's no hiding this. It had gotten so bad that there was no way I could hide any of it. I'll never forget deciding, I have to leave. I'm going to die if I don't leave. And walking out of the apartment he was staying in and realizing that I was never going back.
Bahan McDermott:
And they talk about, I like to call people who have struggled with domestic violence survivors not victims, but those who have survived domestic violence go back an average of seven times before they actually leave the final time. That definitely was the case for me. So I went home and went home to my family, I didn't put makeup on that time, and I just walked in the door and I took off my sunglasses and my family just... They just lost it. They didn't know what to do with that situation.
Bahan McDermott:
They couldn't even imagine like, "Oh my god!" They were completely broken down about it and we sat in my living room and my parents asked me, they said, "What do you want to do?" And they went over the options with me. They said, "Do we need to take you somewhere to be safe? Do we need to send you away? Do you want to go to the police?" We walked through the options, my father called the district attorney who he happened to know and talked about those options, and I decided to move forward and press charges. My family said we'll support you 100% of the way if this is what you want to do. It was one of the most difficult decisions to make because in that moment, I still loved him.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. What do you think brought you to choose that option?
Bahan McDermott:
At that time I was doing it for other people. I was doing it more not for myself because I was such a shell of myself. I had so little emotional connection to what had happened because it had become a defense mechanism for me. I had to protect myself [crosstalk 00:39:29] shut down. Right. So my psyche, I guess, had learned how to do that. And so I was doing it for other women at that point.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. What was that like, pressing charges? Did that go through?
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. It was a grueling process. I thought it was going to be relatively swift and easy, and we'll just go through this real quick. I went down to the police station. They took additional pictures. I gave them my photos that I... I never took those photos with any thought in my mind that I would ever be involved in legal action. When I talked about that being such a key piece, I mean, it was amazing that I had that evidence.
Bahan McDermott:
So I went down and I sat down with some detectives and they photographed me and I went to a hospital, that's where they found all these old broken bones, my face and fresh broken bone. My nose was broken at the time. So they had all these records and everything documented. And they told me that it would take six months. They said, "It's going to be hard, but it will take six months, start to finish. Here's what the process entails." It took two and a half years.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. From the time I went into the police station to the end of the whole process, it was two and a half years, and that's the result of, I think a broken judicial system. That is the result of the defense attorney in this case coming up with a variety, a slew of inexcusable reasons to continue the case and continue the case and what it really was and I truly understand why most women do not follow through with pressing charges and through with cases. They were trying to intimidate me the entire time. I mean, there were so many things that took place-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like what?
Bahan McDermott:
Well, they would try and pull for old therapy records and things that... He knew that I had gone to Wilderness and therapeutic boarding school. Things that did not pertain to the case. They'd just try to exhaust you and they just drag you through so many things where you get ready, you prepare to face your abuser in a trial and then last minute they say, "Oh, we have to continue. We need three more months. We need five more months." So I consistently had to prepare with the assistant district attorney to testify over and over and over again.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So did you eventually testify?
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. Two and a half years later the trial date was set. There were no more continuances allowed and I testified for six and a half hours.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh. Was he in the room?
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. Yeah. He was in the room. I had to look at him and address the questions that his lawyer, the cross examination, which is absolutely brutal because you're prepared to answer your lawyer's question, but you're never prepared to answer the things that they're going to ask of you. They try to make you out to... They put you on trial. Somebody who's endured just massive abuse they try and, point the finger at you and it's an incredibly flawed system and of course innocent until proven guilty is totally understandable, and I'm all for justice for those who are guilty and, freedom for those who aren't but it's a crazy experience.
Bahan McDermott:
I actually had some jurors come up to me the day after the trial was over. So after the last day of the trial is conviction and then the next day is sentencing and during sentencing, so he was convicted of several felonies. And unfortunately, the jury on my case didn't understand beyond reasonable doubt. Nobody explained that to them. He was charged I think with, gosh, 10 different actual charges. But the only ones, I think six out of the 10 that he was convicted on both felonies and misdemeanors, were directly connected to my photographic evidence.
Bahan McDermott:
That was the significance of me taking those photos is that they felt like they needed to corroborate the evidence to the actual specific dates of the charges. So thank God I had those photos and I had jurors come up to me the day of sentencing when they were allowed to talk to me and they just talked about my bravery and that they believed me and he actually got up on the stand and testified himself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. Talk about narcissism.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. No kidding.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So he went to jail?
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah, he went to prison.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He went to prison.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah, he went to prison for... He was sentenced to two and a half years, because first offender.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Two and a half years.
Bahan McDermott:
Two and a half years. Yeah. I think he only served two, and was let out and he actually... I just got a phone call from his parole officer probation department last year letting me know that he's finally off of probation.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did that feel?
Bahan McDermott:
Ah, it felt surreal. I almost was like, "Who are you talking about?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right.
Bahan McDermott:
"I'm sorry. You have the wrong number." It just felt right bizarre.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like who is that girl?
Bahan McDermott:
Right. Yeah. I'm about to get married this year and I'm getting a phone call from this-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
From the past.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. Oh, my God. Insane.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How do you think that your alcoholism related to that because the relationship and the alcoholism, how many stories do we hear of young women in the throes of this disease who are in these relationships?
Bahan McDermott:
Right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How do you see it? How do you see these two things being so closely linked?
Bahan McDermott:
It's a great question and something I enjoy talking about and sharing with other people, because you hear a lot in abusive situations, it's not your fault, which is absolutely true. You're not responsible for their actions and the things that happened to you. And then you come into, for me my recovery and my program today is aligned with a 12 step program, and one of those 12 steps has to do is looking at your part.
Bahan McDermott:
And so I had to look at my part and it's like wait, that's very confusing, because I very much use that relationship as an excuse of like, "Oh, well. That's why I was drinking." But I finally when I was ready to do the work, I had to look at what my part was. And I think that the two are connected in the sense that I had an inability to set boundaries, I had a complete lack of self love and self respect. I wasn't able to say what was okay and what was not okay, and I think that those are probably the biggest things that I've had to work on in my recovery is developing a strong enough relationship with myself that I have a deep level of self love and self respect and that I'm willing to say what's okay and what's not okay.
Bahan McDermott:
And sometimes to the degree where I'm now a little bit bossy. So I think I swung to the other side of the spectrum-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, we're are so extreme. Yeah. No. It's crazy hearing the story, because it's just anybody who knows you today, you're so far from that person. It's truly unimaginable. If I didn't know that... I remember the first time hearing that. It just blows my mind because that's not who you are today. And that's what happens when people get into recovery and make those life changes is they become totally different. They become who they were meant to be. And I think that's what's happened for you. So, did you get sober when he went to prison or were you sober during the trial?
Bahan McDermott:
No. I was not sober during the trial. I did not drink the days that I testified but... That would have been a mess. But I was definitely drinking during that time. I dove really heavily. It's kind of interesting, and I was thinking about this recently, how when the trial was over, it was supposed to, I think, give me a great sense of relief. That's what I always assumed that it would do, but it didn't. It was the sense of a lack... I sort of had closure, but I had no closure. And then all of a sudden, I still had all these problems.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But your problems didn't go to prison with him?
Bahan McDermott:
No. No. They were all alive and well. And I feel like things just continued to spiral and get worse and my family waited until the trial was over to offer me an opportunity to get help. So he went to prison in October of 2012, and then I quit the job. I had a full-time job during this time, which I've no idea what I was doing there. I say full-time like that's a big deal. Like a full-time, 40 hour a week-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Are you kidding me? That is a big deal. I am blown away.
Bahan McDermott:
So I quit that job in November after all of this to give myself some more time for my drinking because I had to just dive more deeply into my only solution that I knew at that point. Alcohol was the answer to all of my problems, and it was the only coping mechanism I knew that worked.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. No, I completely relate to that. So what did that look like? How often were you drinking?
Bahan McDermott:
At that point, my drinking had become very glamorous. I used to drink out of a plastic gallon bottle of vodka.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh. Yes, me too.
Bahan McDermott:
In my bathrobe. In my parents basement-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wait. That's not glamorous?
Bahan McDermott:
Living at 28 years old with my parents drinking a handle vodka in my bathrobe. So, it had just gotten bad, it had gotten beyond sloppy. I had DTS, I was having seizures-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For people who don't know what DTS are.
Bahan McDermott:
Delirium tremens. So it's when your hands shake as a detox symptom of alcoholism. I would have to wake up in the morning and immediately drink because my hands would be shaking.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You know it's crazy people don't know that one of the most dangerous substances to detox from is alcohol and many people die as a result of attempting to detox from alcohol alone.
Bahan McDermott:
Super dangerous. Alcohol and benzos. The lovely combination-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Especially the combination.
Bahan McDermott:
I was engaging in.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That lovely ER doctor that gave you the Klonopin.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah, exactly. And Klonopin was alive and well in my life, and that was my happy combination that I partook in every single day, all day. It was an existence between drinks at that point.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, how'd you end up getting sober?
Bahan McDermott:
I one morning woke up, and just as I did every morning, I pulled open the bureau drawer next to me where I'd snuck the bottle of alcohol and I pulled the alcohol out, like it's like, open my eyes, grab for alcohol, took a big swig of straight vodka and went downstairs and one of my close friends was there and he would stop by to come hang out with me. He was close with my family, but usually not unannounced. He usually would tell me if he was there. He was in my living room, and I looked at him and I thought-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"Oh, oh. Don't. Don't. Don't."
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. "What are you doing here?" And then I saw my aunt walk in. And I knew.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah, for those of you who don't know that, those are the key signs of an intervention forming.
Bahan McDermott:
Exactly. So I had sort of been to that party before when I had been ambushed in a therapist's office for Wilderness years before, when I didn't know my parents were going to be showing up, so it was a familiar feeling. I immediately resorted to anger and sarcasm. I was already drunk and my family read these heartfelt letters about how you know I'd affected them, and I congratulated them all for expressing themselves so eloquently.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, God. That's what you do in that situation. It's so intense.
Bahan McDermott:
Absolutely. Yeah. Actually it's funny because the interventionists who was sitting in my living room that day just commented on the Facebook posts I put up this morning congratulating me I'm six years sober and I had some choice words to say to her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
Bahan McDermott:
I refused to get on a plane with her and called her a variety of names. Yeah, so we had an intervention and my mom asked who I wanted to fly out with me since I refused to go with the interventionist. She did not volunteer herself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Naturally, all mine had to do was offer me cigarettes. I was kind of a cheap date.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah, you were.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was just like, "Okay, well, in that case, I guess I'll go."
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean it was god-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Who did you pick?
Bahan McDermott:
I picked my friend. My friend. Yeah. My friend Chris. He felt he was willing to get on a plane and fly out to Southern California. I think he ended up spending about a week out here enjoying himself. But he was somebody I felt super safe with. He was like a brother to me. And my younger brother was there too, and I think that that was just a little too difficult for me to ask my younger brother. I sort of felt a sense of responsibility for him.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were you drunk on the way here?
Bahan McDermott:
Oh, yeah. I immediately went upstairs and... It's so funny thinking about the story. I went upstairs I had a... At this time I had a Svedka glass. So it's a glass but yeah-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You are stepping up your game.
Bahan McDermott:
Things are good. I had a glass bottle glass.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You know things are on the up and up when we've moved from plastic to glass. Okay.
Bahan McDermott:
I had a little extra money in the bank those days. So I had a glass handle of Svedka in the shower sitting on the shower floor. And-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
With the shampoos?
Bahan McDermott:
Right. Well, yeah. So I had the bottle with me and my mom leaned into the shower, I told them, "Fine. Eff all of you. I'll go." And my mom linked in to try and take the bottle away from me and if you know anything about an alcoholic you never try and take the alcohol away from them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, no.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. So our housekeeper who's actually like a second mother to me, she said, "No, no, no. Don't do that to her." She was a part of my intervention. This poor woman. She's been to the party with a couple of us.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, I'm sure.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah, so she went and got a plastic, a big pot and she knows what size I mean, she got a big plastic glass and poured me a tall glass of vodka and let me drink that in the shower while I just screamed and yelled and whatever. And I took half a bottle of Klonopin and had a couple of drinks on the plane and was, I think blowing a... Who even knows .39 or something like that when I got to detox in Southern California.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah.
Bahan McDermott:
I almost didn't make it through security on the way there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's actually one of the problems with... My husband did a transport for someone from North Carolina to Malibu, and he was doing his last hurrah too. He's on the way to detox.
Bahan McDermott:
You have to.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. But then he had he kept having to explain to the flight attendant, "Look. Don't kick us off. We're going to detox."-
Bahan McDermott:
"I'm taking her to treatment."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
Bahan McDermott:
That's what my friend kept saying, "Please let her through."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"Please let her through this is an emergency." So you get to SoCal and what a hardship and detox, how was detox? That's kind of a trick question.
Bahan McDermott:
Detox was long. [inaudible 00:56:43]. Yeah, they kept me for a while. I got there, and it's funny because they asked me about what was in my system and I'm like, "I don't know. A lot of stuff." My friend Chris who came out here with me, he wasn't aware of the extent to which things had gotten and they were asking me are you at risk for a seizure? And I'm like, "Are you kidding me? I only drink on the weekends." It was just comical and he looks at me and goes, "You're at risk of a seizure? You couldn't... That's ridiculous you're not that bad." And I mean little did everybody know it was that bad.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah, so I was in detox for-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you have a seizure there?
Bahan McDermott:
No, no, no. They had me on a lot of, a lot of detox meds. A lot of Phenobarbital and such.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For those of you listening, FYI if you do need to detox, a note would be to go have a medical detox because it's-
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah. Do it safely.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do it safely because they will take care of you. It's actually much more pleasant than doing it at home.
Bahan McDermott:
100%. I was grateful for the supervision I had. I had people coming in taking my blood pressure and all that stuff. So I am-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Grateful for supervision.
Bahan McDermott:
Yes. I needed all the supervision I could get.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The way things change. Okay, so you detox and get sober. What year are we?
Bahan McDermott:
So that was 2013.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. And did you go back to Boston?
Bahan McDermott:
No. No, no, no. I detoxed for... I got probably, I don't know, gosh, 10 days I think? Eight days, something like that. It was a long time. And then I went to 90 days of residential treatment.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Bahan McDermott:
I needed the long stay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
A long stay here. Girl you're telling me. I did multiple long stays.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So 90 days of treatment and what do you think... There's some people, they get sober without treatment. People get sober in so many different ways whether that's AA treatment, Life Rings, whatever. There's all sorts of different types of programs. What do you think that inpatient treatment did for you?
Bahan McDermott:
Inpatient treatment allowed me the safety and the space to actually figure out what recovery was going to look like. And it allowed me a space to hear the message that I needed to hear. I mean, if I hadn't been in... First of all, it took 30 days for the fog to even clear up. For me to even feel like my brain was even firing on half of a cylinder, it took some time because I'd spent so much time just living in an oblivion. That was the first 30 days.
Bahan McDermott:
And I honestly don't think there was a whole lot of absorbing of information during that time. So I needed this controls environment to not only help me stop, but I needed a space where I could then be introduced to the solution that I know today. And there are so many different support groups and different ways of getting sober out there and the way that I did things doesn't necessarily mean that that's the way that it works for everybody, but for me, that's what it took. I needed a safe environment that could protect me from myself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. The one underlying factor about all the different types of recovery or recovery programs is that you're not doing it alone. That is the same in every single type of program, philosophy is that you don't do it alone. I think if you have that sober support, that sober community that you can achieve longterm sobriety, longterm recovery, but you just simply as they say, cannot fix your broken brain with your broken brain.
Bahan McDermott:
No. I did a lot of stupid things, but I'm a very smart person. This is not something I could have ever figured out on my own.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I relate to that. So you stayed in Southern California after the 90 days.
Bahan McDermott:
I did. I had every intention of going and being a good student as I had out in Montana and Utah and all of that and returning a new version of myself, returning to Boston and going back to the same life, I had no intention. I came out here thinking that the reason I was drinking was because of the abuse I'd been through. That was what I pointed the finger at.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And you know what? It would have been so easy. What's amazing about you and the work that you've done, honestly, it would have been so easy to go with that narrative. But the narrative that is required for recovery is that you were drinking before you got into that relationship. That the drinking was what attracted you to him in some way. Because he was drinking the way you were drinking. And we forget that stuff. We come out of this tornado of destruction and chaos and pain, and we blame it on that. But the most recent thing that was behind us when in reality, we entered into that tornado with the problem.
Bahan McDermott:
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And come out pointing fingers at everybody and everything rather than back at myself for some of the things that I needed to take a look at. And that was all of the work that I needed to do in figuring out why is it that I time and time and time again turn to substances to treat whatever I had going on internally.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. That void that we share and what's your life like now? So you got sober. I mean, gosh, went through all this stuff. You come to Southern California, you go through treatment, and what does it look like now?
Bahan McDermott:
My life's amazing. It's super simple. And I live in suburbia in Irvine, California, with a golden retriever, a white picket fence.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it.
Bahan McDermott:
It's really a simple way of life honestly. I am in a loving and healthy relationship today with a man who's also in recovery, who is kind and gentle and respectful and believes in me and, doesn't get upset at me when I boss him around.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you ever even think that that was possible after everything you've been through?
Bahan McDermott:
Absolutely not. I didn't imagine myself getting into another relationship, let alone that being possible. I didn't even know where to even begin to rebuild my life and where I am today looking at that compared to where I was when I first came out here. It's just unbelievable. What I heard when I first started my recovery journey about just trusting in the process and allowing things to evolve if I just focus on staying sober. I've never experienced something more truthful than that. And I immediately just wanted relief from all of the things that I had experienced. I wanted the quick fix, the quick answer. I wanted life back on track. But I didn't know what that meant. And I just trusted in the people who are giving me that guidance and that advice and it's amazing if I look back at how all the dots have connected and how it all has led to something that is pretty amazing but so simple and so secure and so safe.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful thing what happens when you just work the program or work whatever recovery you have or do the work as its laid out without your own twist, without you... You just do it and unbelievable things unfold.
Bahan McDermott:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I tend to be a person and I think I've always been like this at the core. I'm a solution looking for problems. I love to give other people advice and not in an egotistical way or self righteous way or anything like that, but I just love sort of giving direction and giving people advice. And it's amazing how, in my own recovery, I have really trained myself to not do that with myself. I have remained teachable. And I have continued to remind myself to remain teachable, because when I start allowing my best ideas to get going, that's what leads me into trouble a lot of time. And I need to have a support system that I get to run things by and ask people have you had this similar experience and find people who've had similar experiences so that they can give me the advice of how they did things. And that's probably been one of the things that has served me the best in this journey.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's amazing. And I totally relate to that. I think the older I get, the less I know, and the better it is when I just let things unfold the way they're meant to unfold. That was a very, very difficult concept for me when I first came into recovery.
Bahan McDermott:
Definitely I heard somebody share a couple days ago about I couldn't have planned my life better than the way it turned out. If you left it up to me, I couldn't have planned it this way.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The one I heard that I love is, I have everything I never knew I wanted.
Bahan McDermott:
Yeah, absolutely.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And it's so true. It's so true. In Orange County where you are as successful as your car and I'm driving a Toyota minivan, you'd think I was on the struggle bus but the truth is, is that it's perfect when you look for the beauty and the joy and you force yourself to find gratitude first. Then when the problem surface, the gratitude, if you've already found the gratitude, if you've already looked for it, the problems start to pale in comparison. At least for me they do.
Bahan McDermott:
Absolutely. I agree with that. And I think what I've been able to find in the sense of comfort and peace that I have had the gift of in this recovery journey, whenever life gets going, those challenges come up and that discomfort arises, I still know how to get back to that comfort. I still know how to get back to that sense of calm and peace and ease, which was what I was searching for the whole time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, right. That's what we were searching for the whole time. What do you think you would tell someone who was in early recovery with your story, who struggled with and the intersection of alcoholism and domestic violence as part of their story and they're trying to get sober now?
Bahan McDermott:
Well, I think as far as the way to approach that, I think it's important to find somebody that you trust, somebody that you're safe with sharing that information with, and I would direct somebody to take a look at not only the relationship with substances, but the relationship in the relationship and how no matter what situation we find ourselves in, whether it's a relationship with substances or personal relationships, that life can get unmanageable pretty quickly. I think there is definitely a parallelism with the two. And that I was, for me, I found some escape in that relationship. It awarded me something that alcohol did as well. So, there's always a conclusion, I think that can be drawn from the two, if that makes sense.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. You can be addicted to people and frankly, it's harder to detox from.
Bahan McDermott:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think that there are a lot of things in life that we can find ourselves struggling with and I think relationships just like people who struggle with eating disorders, we can't not eat, we can't not have relationships with people. So finding how to have a healthy relationship is definitely challenging. I know for myself that started with finding a relationship with myself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you so much Bahan for coming on and talking about this. I know that it is not an easy subject to discuss particularly in detail and I'm really grateful that you were willing to do that with us and have listeners get the opportunity to know you better and maybe relate to things that they may or may not have told people about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
If you're listening to this and you find yourself struggling in a relationship where there is domestic violence going on. Please know that there is help out there. You can call 1-800-799-7233. The National Domestic Violence Hotline can help victims, survivors of domestic violence. Chat with an advocate on the website as well. That is the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Thank you so much for joining us today and we will catch you on the next episode.
Speaker 3:
The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast would like to thank our sponsor Lion Rock Recovery for their support. Lion Rock Recovery provides online substance abuse counseling where you can get help from the privacy of your own home. For more information, visit www.lionrockrecovery.com/podcast. Subscribe and join our podcast community to hear amazing stories of courage and transformation biweekly.