#7: Emily McAllister is a writer, photographer and content creator. A Boston native, she now calls Southern California home, and lives with her husband and 2 daughters. Emily writes about recovery, honest motherhood and anything to do with personal development. She specializes in lifestyle, family and childbirth photography, capturing raw, candid, 'in-between' moments. Emily has been sober since September 25, 2009. She is fueled by spontaneous dance parties and copious amounts of coffee. Connect with Emily: Blog: https://chasingmcallisters.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/chasingmcallisters Instagram: http://instagram.com/emilymcallisterphotography Facebook: http://facebook.com/chasingmcallisters
#7: Emily McAllister is a writer, photographer and content creator. A Boston native, she now calls Southern California home, and lives with her husband and 2 daughters. Emily writes about recovery, honest motherhood and anything to do with personal development. She specializes in lifestyle, family and childbirth photography, capturing raw, candid, 'in-between' moments.
Emily has been sober since September 25, 2009. She is fueled by spontaneous dance parties and copious amounts of coffee.
Connect with Emily:
Blog: https://chasingmcallisters.com
Instagram: http://instagram.com/chasingmcallisters
Instagram: http://instagram.com/emilymcallisterphotography
Facebook: http://facebook.com/chasingmcallisters
Our Sponsor:Lionrock Recovery (http://www.lionrockrecovery.com)
Follow us here:Podcast Website: (http://www.lionrockrecovery.com/podcast) Facebook: (https://www.facebook.com/LionrockRecovery/) Twitter: (https://twitter.com/lionrockrecovry) Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/lionrockrecovery/)
Questions, comments or feedback? We want to hear from you! Email us at podcast@lionrockrecovery.com
Show Notes:
1:38 - Emily’s recent accident (hit by a drunk driver)
6:25 - “We still feel the same way everyone else who does NOT have the disease would feel”
9:22 - Where Emily was raised
11:45 - When Emily first started drinking and why
13:32 - Struggling with social anxiety
14:00 - “I thought that pot could change the world”
14:45 - Early stages of her eating disorder
15:23 - “It all started with depression”
17:50 - “I didn’t understand I was never going to look like that”
22:08 - The re-occurring theme
26:03 - Leaving Boston to make a new life
33:33 - It was “go time”
35:04 - The things we make okay / switching addictions
39:55 - The first time reaching out for help
44:30 - Technically homeless
48:35 - The broken toothbrush
53:05 - Relapsed right out of rehab
1:01:56 - The first time Emily and Ashley met
1:09:40 - The night they almost decided to drink again after getting sober
1:11:18 - The importance of being connected to a community, showing up and people knowing what is going on with you
1:11:55 - When Emily first met her husband
1:14:14 - Her relapse in Prescott
1:19:22 - Emily’s friend, Nicole, passes away from her addiction
1:22:22 - A spiritual awakening through grace
1:25:08 - “Your husband is a different person now”
1:29:10 - Emily’s life today and how it happens
1:34:12 - Getting present and changing negative self-talk
1:37:22 - “I’m not willing to kill myself to fit into one mold”
1:39:42 - My life looks so different
Our Sponsor:
Lionrock Recovery (http://www.lionrockrecovery.com) The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast would like to thank our sponsor, Lionrock Recovery, for their support. Lionrock Recovery is an online substance abuse counseling program where you can get help for drinking or drug use from the privacy of your own home. For more information, visit http://www.lionrockrecovery.com.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Today, on episode seven, we have an amazing woman and my dear friend, Emily McAllister. Emily is a sober mommy blogger who resides in Southern California with her husband, Mike, and their two daughters, Ayden and Frankie.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She started her blog, Chasing McAllisters, in 2014, and has been wildly successful. The blog has been featured on CNN, Scary Mommy, the Bump, Babble, Baby Center, Love What Matters, and What's Up Moms. Chasing McAllisters blog is an unfiltered, authentic, and honest account of motherhood journey from a woman in recovery.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Emily was also my roommate, and we got sober together, so we have some really fun, awkward stories to share with you that hopefully will make you laugh as much as we did, including the time she cut her own bangs. I hope you enjoy this very much. And we're off to episode seven. Let's do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All right, Emily, thank you so much for being here.
Emily McAllister:
Thank you for having me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
This is really exciting. I want to get into your amazing story, but we should talk about something that just happened. You were recently, like a few-
Emily McAllister:
last week.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... last week, hit by a drunk driver in the middle of the day.
Emily McAllister:
I absolutely was. Super crazy story. I was actually en-route to pick up my seven-year-old from school, I had my two-year-old in the back of the car. And ironically, we're driving on the freeway, listening to your podcast.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, dear Lord, dear Lord.
Emily McAllister:
You and Pat. So, shout out to Pat. And I don't even know her, but I'm shouting her up. And I just-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thanks for waking me through my car accident.
Emily McAllister:
If I died you would have been the last person I heard.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, thank you. Hey.
Emily McAllister:
Okay. I don't know what that was. I don't know. It's a flash mob singing. What's happening? Where am I?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know. It's like car accident speakers [inaudible 00:02:24].
Emily McAllister:
Just like I said, I was kind of zoned out listening. I mean, I was paying attention to the road, but I heard screeching tires, and then was like, that is getting closer, and then we were hit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
On the freeway?
Emily McAllister:
On the freeway.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh. My God.
Emily McAllister:
And miraculously the impact wasn't that crazy. I was able to get over to the shoulder. The girl ran. I didn't know it was a girl. I just assumed it was a guy. I was like, "That guy." But I kept waiting for another car to pull over, and I-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, wait. Tell us what time it was.
Emily McAllister:
It was 2:15 in the afternoon.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
We'll get to that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Emily McAllister:
But I was, kind of, looking at my rear view mirror, I was talking to 911 on the phone, and I was looking to see if traffic was backed up behind us because, I'm like, surely, somebody's stuck in the middle of the road, or I thought there was a pile up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Emily McAllister:
And then I was, like, "Nobody else is pulling over. Where is this ..." And she said, "You should pull off the freeway and go to a gas station. It's not safe to be on the shoulder of the freeway."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
This is the 911?
Emily McAllister:
The 911, as I'm dragging my muffler. I was like, what is that? And I'm like, "Is somebody can go back and get that car?" I was kind of pissed. We just got hit out of nowhere from behind.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, yeah.
Emily McAllister:
So, then when I pulled off to the gas station and the highway patrol finally got there, I could hear on the radio what was happening, it was a hit and run. But somebody amazing ... Well, when I was talking to the 911 lady, she had said somebody called in a patrol plate, which I was like, "Oh, man. That's it?" But then other people called in, and somebody amazing, or some people, I don't even know if it was one or two cars, took it upon themselves to follow the girl who wound up at a trailer park.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh.
Emily McAllister:
And they told her she needed to stop because the police were coming. And she went into the trailer park, and then finally she was apprehended. I found this all out later on. But at the time I was super mad. I was ready to ... I was like, "Take me to court. We're pressing every charge. You endangered my child. You bumped at Mama Bear." And I was ready to go.
Emily McAllister:
But then around 7:45 PM that night, this is after we had been towed, and all this stuff, I got a call from the officer, and he had told me it was a young girl, probably around 25-years-old, and she was way over the legal limit-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
From drinking.
Emily McAllister:
From drinking. And had apparently said she had broken up with her boyfriend, which sounds like a really lame excuse, but was on some sort of a bender. And she had been arrested. And it was so interesting because immediately I wasn't angry, and I just felt really compassionate for her. I felt sad for her. I felt ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
But the funny thing is just, my daughter's school, they were like, "At 2:15?" And I was acting all appalled that anybody would be drunk at 2:00 on a Tuesday. And I'm like, "This is so ..." Then, finally, I was talking to another alcoholic and she's was like, "Come on. Are you really that surprised that ... Don't act you could [crosstalk 00:05:11]." And I'm like, "Yeah, you're right."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[crosstalk 00:05:13] You dropped into your mainstream mom role.
Emily McAllister:
I did. I was, I know, I mean ... It's so silly because, I mean-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, I do that too.
Emily McAllister:
... 2:15 is probably late in a day for somebody.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And she broke up with her boyfriend. That's, I mean, very respectable reason.
Emily McAllister:
I mean, I don't know she broke [crosstalk 00:05:29]. She said that. That might have been what she-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
If she had that's a respectable reason for an alcoholic to get drunk.
Emily McAllister:
Yes. And she admitted to the whole thing, and said she got scared. Apparently, what happened is, she lost control of her car, hit us, spun, came to a stop on the freeway, and then she sped off to another exit.
Emily McAllister:
It's wild. It's just very surreal, and very like, oh, that could be me, right? If we could just trade places 10 years ago, I could be the person hitting somebody.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm just so glad you're okay.
Emily McAllister:
I know. It was crazy. It was literally a best case scenario of-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
My heart stopped when I saw that.
Emily McAllister:
I know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It really did, as I saw the-
Emily McAllister:
And that's why I was like, "We're okay."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I know, I know.
Emily McAllister:
"We're fine."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"We're okay, but we got hit by a drunk driver." I know. Pretty much in my head, I heard the, we're okay part, but you said, "We got hit by a drunk driver."
Emily McAllister:
[inaudible 00:06:18] other places, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And I just screamed.
Emily McAllister:
And you were like, "What's your definition of okay?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And then it's funny because we talk about drinking and driving, and all the debauchery that we do, and then when we're harmed by it, or our friends are harmed, right, it's really hard. Even though you and I both have all this history, all this understanding, compassion, we're married to people in recovery, we've been through rehabs, all this stuff, we have all the tools and knowledge, but we still feel the same way any other person who didn't understand the disease would feel-
Emily McAllister:
It's horrible.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... that's our immediate reaction.
Emily McAllister:
Well, I honestly assumed. I guess I just assumed whoever it was, was texting, or something stupid, or racing. So that was, for me-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Racing at 2:00 PM?
Emily McAllister:
I don't know. People get stupid on the freeway.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
I mean, it's, kind of, scary out there. Anyways. I don't want to bash my own driving, but you know, I'm not the best driver in the world, but-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But not the worst.
Emily McAllister:
... I don't know. I don't know. I'm not the worst. I'm definitely not the worst, but that's a sad feeling. I don't know why I even said that. I'm a great driver. I'm an excellent driver.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Let's just go with that. It doesn't matter how-
Emily McAllister:
No. I was paying attention to her. There was nothing extraordinary happening on the freeway that day, which was why it was alarming. Everyone was doing 65 miles an hour. It was just weird. But anyways ...
Emily McAllister:
But when I did find out she was drunk, she may not be an alcoholic, but I just immediately thought she probably is. You know what I mean? And, let's be honest, if I was 25-year-old, driving on the freeway drunk, and hit somebody, I would probably also be so scared, and not make a great decision, and probably take off as well. Because that's what you do when you're not in the right frame of mind.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, most people don't make good decisions when drunk at 2:00 PM in the afternoon, right?
Emily McAllister:
No.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, it's just kind of bottom line, right?
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, that's ...
Emily McAllister:
Anyways, we're good. And it's kind of a funny full circle moment, and I think I'm still-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Processing.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. I'm a person who tends to minimize things, so when something big happens, I'm like, no, we're good. It's all good. We're fine. I'm good. Apparently, I'm a number two Enneagram. I don't know if that means anything to anyone. But I'm just putting it out there, because that is a common reaction I guess.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
But then I'm also a very close seven.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, okay.
Emily McAllister:
You should look up your Enneagram.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I will.
Emily McAllister:
It's very interesting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'll do that. Well, I'm really glad that you're here, and that you made it in.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And, hopefully, this woman maybe she'll listen to this podcast.
Emily McAllister:
Oh, yeah. Or maybe she'll get sober.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Sounds good.
Emily McAllister:
She had some time to think in jail. The next morning I'm, she's waking up really sober this morning.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Really sober.
Emily McAllister:
Really sober in a cold cell.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm glad she's okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, kind of, shifting, let's talk about your story. I want people to hear, you know, you and I used to live together. We have this amazing history.
Emily McAllister:
Crazy history.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Just, yeah, crazy history. And so, you've been sober almost 10 years now.
Emily McAllister:
Yes. It'll be 10 years in September.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That is absolutely amazing. You grew up in Boston?
Emily McAllister:
Yes. Raised in a suburb of Boston. I also heard on your other one, that she was claiming Cleveland and thought that that was maybe lying. So I claim Boston, but really I'm from Newton. Some of it felt like, oh, my God, now I have to claim-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
I just say Boston because it's seven miles outside of Boston.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, everybody knows that.
Emily McAllister:
But Newton is not Boston.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's why I told her, I said, "We all do that."
Emily McAllister:
Newton is a very Is a very affluent, wealthy suburb of Boston, but it is seven miles away. So, it's ridiculous. Newton's right next to Cambridge, which is where Harvard is housed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Housed.
Emily McAllister:
Housed. And anyways, I grew up in, I grew up in a suburb of Boston. The town I grew up in was very, kind of, high pressure. There's a lot of old money, a lot of overachieving. There's a lot of random celebrities that come from my town, because the school systems was very art-centric.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Emily McAllister:
And there was a lot of opportunities there to do those types of things. Anyways, I grew up there. I had an older sister who is not alcoholic, although she's got her own ... I mean, she's amazing, but she just never manifested for her with drugs and alcohol, and she more identifies ... We both come from a family with lots of fun food stuff.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, that's funny.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that's funny. Me too.
Emily McAllister:
I don't really know what to say about that, other than, I had this older sister who could walk the line and I couldn't. I just was a misfit. I felt like a misfit, I felt like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you do well in school?
Emily McAllister:
I don't even know. Like when I went to school?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Right.
Emily McAllister:
No, I did well. I was smart, but I definitely could have ... I don't know. I had, kind of, a short attention span. Okay. So, I did well until I didn't go to school. But then I would come back and-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Try to do well when you go.
Emily McAllister:
... go to an English class, and write this paper. And the teacher would be like, "You are failing the class because you don't come, but this is an A+ paper. What is wrong with you?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Emily McAllister:
And so, it was kind of like that. The thing that was always said on every report card was, she's not applying herself, which was so annoying because it just becomes cliché. And you're like, I know I'm not applying yourself. I am not sitting in your class, so I'm clearly not applying myself.
Emily McAllister:
I was just that person in high school who I could be on my way to class, and then somebody would want to go smoke pot, and I'd be like, "Oh, okay, let's do that."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When did you start using?
Emily McAllister:
I mean I started ... When you're young the opportunity to drink is not as prevalent as other things. But I remember drinking the first time in seventh grade, and it was so cool. And then I went and visited my sister at college in ninth grade and got really drunk. She was in a sorority, and they had big festival fraternities and sororities, and I was drunk, and I felt cool. And a boy proposed to me while he was drunk. And I felt really pretty.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, wow. It took me a very long time to make that happen.
Emily McAllister:
I know. Well, I don't think ... I'm gonna go ahead and assume he wasn't serious. But it was fun to feel important, and special, and I get this attention. Because, for me, when I drink part of the appeal is I like to feel confident, and pretty, and I get attention. I like to go out, and be seen, and get attention. And so, anyways, yeah, so I started, kind of, just dabbling in high school.
Emily McAllister:
And then when I was freshman, I think freshman high school, I started smoking pot, and felt I had arrived a little bit. And I just kind of, I don't know ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What do you mean, like felt like you had arrived?
Emily McAllister:
I just, kind of, felt at ease. I had something to do with myself, I had somewhere to go. I had people I could connect with. I think, honestly, if I really look back at those years, I think I was struggling with depression. I probably knew it, but it was just such a different conversation back then, we didn't really talk about it, and you were weird if ... And I just didn't know what it meant to be to be that way.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, you didn't feel comfortable in your skin or what was-
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. And I would just get ... I'm very social and extroverted, but also introverted in some ways. I guess that's an ambivert. I've just learned that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
But I would get social anxiety, overwhelmed. I was at the beginning stages of an eating disorders, so I would panic to the point about what to wear. I couldn't find something to wear, and I would just not go, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
Just really uncomfortable.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[inaudible 00:13:47].
Emily McAllister:
I know, I think.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, so it was marijuana first and-
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. Honestly, when I was 15, 16, I thought that pot could save the world. I literally thought if everybody just got together and smoked weed, we would have world peace. I'm not kidding.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, I believe you, because when we lived together, you wanted to be a pot farmer. So, we'll get get there. I believe it. [crosstalk 00:14:12]. I've seen that part of you.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. I just thought because it numbs you down, and it slowed me down, and I was like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were you too fast?
Emily McAllister:
I felt like I was too much. My whole life I felt I was too much energy, took up too much space. So, I did a lot of things to make myself smaller, I threw up my food, I took drugs. I just wanted to be this tiny little cute person that needed to be taken care of or something. I don't know. I was just very lost, very lost.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you're starting an eating disorder? I mean, I know what mine looked like, but what was an early eating disorder for Emily look like?
Emily McAllister:
This is really good, because I don't think I've ever really ... I mean, I talk to people, but I've never ... I'm a blogger, and I share really openly, and recently got really honest about my recovery and sobriety, but I don't think I've ever really delved into the eating disorder side of things. And that's honestly what took me down. I mean all the things took me down.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, but that's-
Emily McAllister:
But that was the thing I felt I was going to kill myself over because I could not stop. And it's so funny, it started with depression. I had gone to S overnight camp every summer, and I remember, specifically, it was probably eighth or ninth grade. I came home and I was sad, because when you come home from being away for two months with people, it's depressing. But also I think I had depression going on. And I remember I felt so sad that I didn't want to eat. It was amazing. I have to be really sad too not want to eat.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, wow. That's happened to me twice in my entire life.
Emily McAllister:
I used joke with my husband like, can you just pretend to leave me so that I don't eat?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, yes.
Emily McAllister:
It's really sick.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, no. I completely ...
Emily McAllister:
But, yes, I have to be very sad.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The eating disorder in me sees the eating disorder in you.
Emily McAllister:
Yes. Namaste. But, yeah, so I didn't eat for a week or something. And I felt really empowered by that, because then I felt thinner. And then I thought, hey, I'm going to do this because, I don't know, it was like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you?
Emily McAllister:
I'm going to say 14.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Emily McAllister:
Young. And I also have a very vivid memory, I guess we're going down this lane, this is where this conversation is going.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, let's take it. Let's go. let's go down the rabbit hole.
Emily McAllister:
We're about my drug and alcohol, [inaudible 00:16:29] talking about this. As I say, I want to preface this, for me, drugs, alcohol, eating disorder, codependency, it's all under the same exact thing. It's all the same void, the sameism, and I just reach for different things to fill it. But I do have a very vivid memory of being 14, laying on my bed on a Saturday afternoon, and spent three or four hours staring at Vogue magazines. It was a very, it was a double issue, and studying these women.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They don't make those anymore.
Emily McAllister:
They don't? I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They don't.
Emily McAllister:
And these women, I did not know that they were six feet, and I was five, three little Jewish girl with a short waist, but with those genetics.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right.
Emily McAllister:
And studying their like hipbones. It was the early 90s, so like bell bottoms were in, it was like that 70s heroin chic look was very, very popular, Kate Moss.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, hanging off the hips.
Emily McAllister:
I mean, I literally studied this magazine, it's imprinted in my memory. And I was just fascinated and wanted to be like that. Here's the thing, I was playing soccer very competitively, and I will always err on the side of having like an athletic build. I will always have muscle even at my thinnest. And so I did not understand, this is why it's so important for us to like break down these things, but I didn't understand I was never going to look like.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Emily McAllister:
I could ... Even at my like skinny smallest going into treatment, I still could pass as healthy because it was lean muscle, but it's all over genetics.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. It's just your[crosstalk 00:18:08].
Emily McAllister:
So, I just remember that. And then from that point, there was a point in which I would try to starve myself, but then eventually I would binge because I was freaking hungry, and I would freak out, and felt like I wasn't doing it perfectly and then throw up, because I was like, oh, well, I ... It was damage control. The literal words in my head for bulimia was always damage control.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's interesting. So where did you get the idea to throw up?
Emily McAllister:
I really don't know. I think it was just like ... I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because people didn't talk about it as much back then.
Emily McAllister:
No. I don't know if I'd seen an afterschool special. I mean, literally things were so cheesy in the 90s. I've been rewatching 90210 for five months. It's taken me that long, before he passed away.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, no.
Emily McAllister:
I know. I was on Season Five when Dylan died. I was really sad.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, no.
Emily McAllister:
But that show was, kind of, cutting edge at the time. [crosstalk 00:18:57]
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, I remember.
Emily McAllister:
And it's so cheesy, if you go back-I
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The peach pit?
Emily McAllister:
Just all of it. It's bad. It's the worst show ever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What?
Emily McAllister:
And I was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I haven't re-watched it.
Emily McAllister:
You need to go back and rewatch it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
My memories are that this is-
Emily McAllister:
I'm telling you, I don't know how they made it to Season Two because season one was so bad.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Really?
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. You really should. It's on Hulu. Everybody, this is a plug for Dylan McKay, reignite your love.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, Luke Perry.
Emily McAllister:
He was really great. But anyways ... I've digressed.
Emily McAllister:
Yes, back then I don't know where I got the idea, but I got the idea, and it had the same effect. In fact, it made me feel, oh. I would go out with friends, and we would go eat, and then I would race home and throw up, and I felt like I had one up on you, because-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How would were you doing that?
Emily McAllister:
This is like 14.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, this is 14 still.
Emily McAllister:
This is when it started.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Okay.
Emily McAllister:
And then-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were using it ... Sorry.
Emily McAllister:
I mean, I was. I was smoking pot, but I was also really isolating a lot too, because you, kind of, just have to when you're in that type of an eating disorder. It's not very social to be throwing up your food. But I got really good at it, you know? And then it progressed through high school, and I got really thin, and I got a lot of positive feedback because of that. A lot, boys noticed, girls noticed, and I felt like cool. Yeah, it was just everything I wanted it to be. I still felt like crap inside, I still felt like not good enough, I still felt not thin enough, not pretty enough.
Emily McAllister:
But, yeah, and I was drinking sometimes. I mean, when I could, you know. I feel we should move out of high school, because that's just, kind of, the way it was. I got expelled in high school actually.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you moved yourself out of high school, it sounds like?
Emily McAllister:
Well, no. I switched schools in 10th grade because I was having issues. Really, my parents decided my high school was too big, and I was getting lost in the shuffle, and that was the problem.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, fix it, fix it.
Emily McAllister:
That was a nice excuse for it. So, I switched schools to a smaller school that was part boarding school part day school. But there was a lot of drugs there, because all those rich kids from overseas had all the good stuff. And so we were doing really random things like ketamine, and just experimenting, just mushrooms, whatever, crushing up my Ritalin prescription.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
I got arrested during school hours, and they frowned upon that, and I got expelled as a result. And it was really sad, because I had grown up doing acting, and dancing, and singing, and I loved performing. And then I had started playing soccer, and I was really good at it. So, basically, when you play club soccer, you play at a certain level, you have to decide what are you committed to? So, I committed to soccer, but by the time I was ... this was when I was a senior in high school now, and I think I had just turned 18 because I'm a November kid, and I had played my last season of soccer. I decided I was done. And I randomly on a whim auditioned for the school musical just because it was still in me, and I got the lead. It was crazy.
Emily McAllister:
It was little shop of horrors. I was the dumb blonde Audrey. And I was so excited. It was such a fun character. And I got expelled two days before the performance. So, it just was like this reoccurring theme in my life of ... I had this thought in my life that when things were going well, this was my concept of God or the world, that God was going to come pull the rug from under my feet. Little did I know I was pulling the rug from under my feet. But I had this belief that I was living out all the time, oh, just some things are good, they're going to go away.
Emily McAllister:
I was just so bummed and I was in a lot of trouble. And the Dean of the school showed up at the jail and gave me that look. Do you know that look like?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Emily McAllister:
That look of you're a piece of garbage look, of the shame, and the head shake, and the incomprehensible demoralization. And that was a result of hanging out with really bad people. I was hanging out with these guys, they all had records, fake records, and we were drinking.
Emily McAllister:
And at this point, the eating disorder had subsided.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, because you were switching.
Emily McAllister:
And I was drinking 40s every day and gaining a lot of weight, because if you drink a 40 ounce every day for 6 months, you're going to fluffy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's like eating a pizza every day.
Emily McAllister:
Well, then we would eat sandwiches. I just was hanging out with these guys, they were such pieces. I was hanging out with one of them specifically, I know he's dating other friends of mine. It was just gross. I was really have low self esteem, which is why I always say that self esteem is probably the most important thing that I have to instill in my kids because I just think-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Everything else comes after that.
Emily McAllister:
Yes. Because girls, even alcoholic girls, but girls with high self esteem don't find themselves in situations that girls with low self esteem do.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That is on point for sure.
Emily McAllister:
I mean, it's gnarly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't know if you had this experience, self esteem isn't what I thought it was. Because, for me, I thought self esteem was thinking that you're smart and pretty.
Emily McAllister:
Right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Really, I remember going to treatment, and they were like, "You have a low self esteem." And I'm like, "Well, I know I'm smart, and I know I'm attractive, so I have self esteem." And it was completely-
Emily McAllister:
No, it's liking who you are.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I missed that.
Emily McAllister:
And feeling like you're contributing positively to the world.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's a feeling you have. It's a feeling of worth. It has nothing to do with, I know that I have fast firing brain cells.
Emily McAllister:
Yes, or that somebody will sleep with me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. I'm like, I know I'm pretty, that guy will sleep with me.
Emily McAllister:
But that's what I placed value in.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Me too.
Emily McAllister:
I needed to feel attractive. I mean, to no discredit to my parents, and it's so funny because we grew up in opposite homes, I grew up in a home where we didn't talk about things.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Emily McAllister:
I basically watched like Sixteen Candles, and wondered like, okay, where's Jake Ryan? Is he coming with my cake at the end of the movie? I don't know if you guys ... I don't know. Now, I'm feeling old because that's a 1980s movie.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know. No, I'm with you on the Sixteen Candles.
Emily McAllister:
It's probably like my very favorite movie too, that and Dirty Dancing. But I literally felt like these John Hughes movies from the 80s shaped how I viewed how love, and sex, and all that stuff was supposed to be.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because you didn't talk about it.
Emily McAllister:
Because it was awkward. It was uncomfortable. So my parents-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
With your parents?
Emily McAllister:
We didn't have a drug and alcohol talk, not really. We didn't have the sex talk. It was like, God forbid, somebody be kissing on TV, everybody just clams up and don't look at each other, do not make eye contact, really uncomfortable. And so, we do things very differently in their home.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. But here's the thing though, we talked a lot in my family, and we're very open. Now, turns out where adults, but when that happens in a movie-
Emily McAllister:
You're still-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's still uncomfortable with my parents in the room-
Emily McAllister:
It's so awful.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
-which is stupid because I have kids and I'm married, so they know what happened. But I still-
Emily McAllister:
It's just not okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So people start to have sex, I'm like, I really wish my parents weren't in the room right now. This is so awkward.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, it's awful. It's terrible. It's terrible.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, how did you ... Okay, so you get arrested, things keep falling apart. How did you get out of Boston?
Emily McAllister:
Okay. So I was on probation for a little while, and I had to finish school a semester late, so I-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you?
Emily McAllister:
I was 18.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
18 now. Okay.
Emily McAllister:
And I don't even know if I had friends anymore, it was just like ... I mean, I did, but the friends I had were like lower companionship, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
I was not hanging out with the people who I'd come up with, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I do.
Emily McAllister:
As people went off to college, and I had to make up a social studies credit, so I volunteered at a preschool. It was so ... And then I got my diploma, you know what I mean? And then how did I get out of Boston?
Emily McAllister:
So I had an opportunity to go work at an overnight camp. I'm Jewish. My family grew up Jewish. I'm not a very good one, but I grew up doing Jewy things, like going Jewish overnight camp. And I had gone to camp in New Hampshire. But then somebody knew somebody, and they said that I could go be a camp counselor at this camp or go work in the preschool. It was something at this camp in Northern California. And I was like, okay. I was just so ready to get the heck out. I literally am the definition of the geographic relocation because I will completely reinvent myself somewhere else, and be somebody different. I will decide who I want to be, and then go be that. So I went to this camp and that was great.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
In NorCal?
Emily McAllister:
In NorCal. I think it was in Saratoga and camp swig, whoop, whoop.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're giving them a bad rap. You're like, yeah-
Emily McAllister:
I don't think they exist anymore because they combined them up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... I was on probation and then I went and volunteered.
Emily McAllister:
Then I was working with kids.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and then I was working with the kids.
Emily McAllister:
No, no. And that was super fun, and super good for me, and it kind of got me back to like me a little bit because I was around non felons.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Its amazing what that'll do to a person.
Emily McAllister:
Yes. I don't remember. I went back, and then I came back to Boston, and I was a hot mess with my eating disorder again. That's what it was. I got very, very sick with that. Like real isolated. I was kicked out of my mom's house. I was staying with my dad. They were separated at this point.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You were kicked out of your mom's house for your eating disorder?
Emily McAllister:
No, for being a schmuck, for being an A hole, because I was drinking and using, but I was so irritable. I was just a mess. And I actually probably could have used to be drinking daily, you know what I mean? But I wasn't. But I was really in it with my eating disorder. Actually, I don't know, I'm all backed up. It doesn't matter. Lets skip that part.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. We'll skip that part.
Emily McAllister:
So, then I went back to the camp the following summer. And then after that I had a friend, then I was in Boston, I was doing nothing good. And I had a friend who was living in Prescott, Arizona.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Prescott.
Emily McAllister:
We had become really good friends at camp, and she had a psycho roommate, little did she know, who was moving out and she needed a roommate, and I had frequent flyer miles from going back and forth to California. So I had a free round trip flight anywhere, and I decided to use them in Prescott, Arizona. And just on a whim, at 3:00 in the morning, I booked a flight. I booked a one-way flight actually because ... No, maybe I booked a return flight, I don't remember.
Emily McAllister:
But anyways, I ended up in Prescott, Arizona. I think it just turned 2000.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And how old are you?
Emily McAllister:
Well, I was 21. Oh, how old was I?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Emily McAllister:
Oh, God, don't make me do math. I was 22.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.Just make it up.
Emily McAllister:
I was 22.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She was 22 folks.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, folks. And it was awesome. Prescott is a bar town, so it was amazing. I was a big fish in a little pond.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yep.
Emily McAllister:
Like I was, I was so happy to be the cute new girl. And she was actually pretty alarmed, because we had spent the summer together, and was really thin because I was still engaged in an eating disorder, but I had gotten really thin, like I had been really isolative between those times. And she was a little taken aback because of that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You didn't look well.
Emily McAllister:
I never know if I didn't look well, but I was really skinny. [crosstalk 00:30:07] I was wearing a size one, you know what I mean? Size zero, size one.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think I skipped all those.
Emily McAllister:
I don't think I possibly could ever go back to that size, even if I did starve myself. But, yes, I was like very happy with myself, because I was skinny, and in a new town. And it was a town nicknamed with a street named Whiskey Row, and I got a job at one of the local restaurant bars, The Palace.
Emily McAllister:
And I met a boy who was a line cook and the local pot dealer. He was perfect for me. He was such a dirt bag. I didn't know that. And we started dating, and I took to the bar life. I mean, I loved it. I loved drinking in bars.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And for people who don't know. Emily and I met in Prescott. And for people who don't know Prescott, it's like a biker bar town.
Emily McAllister:
Is it biker? It's like half Cowboys-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Half Cowboys, half-
Emily McAllister:
... half retirees. [crosstalk 00:31:03]. Well, then my memory is very bad, but I'm going to say another half were Local like punker barrettes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
And then there are some bikers I guess. So, that's quarters.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But it was ...
Emily McAllister:
All those halves make quarters. I didn't major in math, I didn't major in anything. I went to cosmetology school.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So it's a very unique place.
Emily McAllister:
It's weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's a weird place, yeah.
Emily McAllister:
Because it's weird, it just is, and then has-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We're not doing a very good job of the [inaudible 00:31:31] yet.
Emily McAllister:
The engineering school, so then there's like, all these ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Embry–Riddle.
Emily McAllister:
I remember drinking with this one guy. He was such a gnarly alcoholic. And I was like, "Well, what do you do?" He's like, "I'm in school, I'm a rocket scientist." And I started laughing. And he was like, "No, really." I'm like, "Oh you need to use that. That's a great pickup line." Because like, you know, I'm a rocket scientist.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Embry–Riddle, right?
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, Embry-Riddle.
Emily McAllister:
So, anyways, this town was like ... At first my friends were, kind of, the hippie. Well, not the real, there was the fake hippies, but just the people who were like all the restaurant workers, everybody smoked weed, and drank, and partied, and had a good time. And that suited me.
Emily McAllister:
And I stayed with this guy for about two and a half years. We took a three-month trip in his RV up the coast. We lived in his RV. It was a site. I totally burned my bridge with that roommate. I actually have tried to find her to make an amends, and I cannot find her. Maybe I should try harder. Because she was great, and I just came in like a freaking tornado. I was a tornado. I hung out with her for the first few weeks, and then boom, was off and running.
Emily McAllister:
And then his and I relationship came to a screeching halt when I learned that he had been sleeping with my best friend.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, my gosh. Been to that party.
Emily McAllister:
That was really traumatic.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's amazing what that does to a relationship.
Emily McAllister:
It's amazing what that does to a person.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, I know.
Emily McAllister:
And I was like more mad at her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Of course.
Emily McAllister:
Because I'm like, you're my friend, we share clothes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For sure.
Emily McAllister:
You're in my home. And then you have those punch in the gut flashbacks of like, oh. Like now I have all these other things, I see the same scene that we were in, but I see it from a different camera angle, where I'm like, Oh my God, that's why you were at my house, that's why you were making that funny face.
Emily McAllister:
And it was actually really traumatic. But, yes, that was a whole another ... We'll get there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
Because that's confusing probably.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's confusing to take that up.
Emily McAllister:
But, yeah, and that sent me on a eight-month downward spiral. It was like a license to let go. And I was doing a lot of cocaine at the time. I was doing anything that I could put into my system. But it was go time.
Emily McAllister:
So, then, gosh, I was hanging out with kind of bar drinkers at that point, but then I burned through those people real quick. And then I was hitting with like the real bar rats, and your ex boyfriend. Then I graduated to the people who when the bar shuts down, then they'd go and party somewhere else until like the sun comes up.
Emily McAllister:
And it was classic, fun, fun with problems, then just problems. My life quickly became unmanageable.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love that, fun, fun with problems, then just problems.
Emily McAllister:
And that was literally me. I am not a functional alcoholic. I stop showing up places, I lost my job bartending at a bar that used to party after hours, I couldn't keep that job because I couldn't show up, I couldn't show up sober.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You lost year utilities?
Emily McAllister:
Oh, yes. I was living in this little studio. I was actually thinking about that earlier today, about just my weird neighbors and stuff. But anyways, I lived in this little studio. And it was walking distance from the bar I worked at, walking distance to Whiskey Row. Then I wasn't paying my bills anymore work because I wasn't managing my money very well. I was spending a lot of money on cocaine. And then I had no lights, I no electricity, but that was okay because I would get off my shift and the sun would be setting, and it was just enough daylight left that I could change my clothes, and freshen up my makeup, and go out. And then I think my water got turned off, and that was okay because, I could just shower at the party house, you know what I mean? It was just the things we make okay to like fit so we can continue to drink and use.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Emily McAllister:
And it was just this vicious cycle at that point of, I would go on a bender, not even a bender. I hate that word. But I would go drinking. I'd be drunk for days, then it would turn into drug use. Then I'd be up for a few days, and then I would crash, and then I would lock myself inside, and be in my eating disorder. And then I would come out of that and it would start again.
Emily McAllister:
So, I think it was this weird way of me switching addictions so that I never felt I really had a problem, even though I knew I had an eating disorder.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's really interesting.
Emily McAllister:
I Knew I had an eating disorder. I knew that wasn't normal. I always knew that. But all the other stuff, because I would lower the bar, and hang out with people who were drinking like me. Or worse than me, I never felt I was a problem. It was me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Emily McAllister:
It was always like other things.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love that saying, that you, kind of, touched on, which is that, most people change their behavior to meet their goals, and we change our goals to meet our behavior present.
Emily McAllister:
We change our goals. 100%. And I even remember one night talking to this girl, [Mo 00:36:05]. Talking to this girl. We had been on ecstasy, and all sorts of things, and I don't know how long we had been awake, but it was like the sun was coming up, and we were sitting. And I just had that feeling of, how are we going to get from this part of our life to what adults do? You know, kids, family, real jobs. I didn't understand how people adulted for real. I was like, how am I going to not be doing this anymore? When's that going to happen? [crosstalk 00:36:30] come and tell me what to do. I just didn't get it. And she was like, "What?" And I'm like, "Never mind." Just, such an over thinker. Even, especially when I started doing drugs like that, you really start thinking.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You really start overthinking things.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. So, eventually I had no more job. I was dodging my landlord because I hadn't paid my rent. I don't know if I was dodging him or the shadow people. But I was dodging everybody. And I threw my stuff in trash bags, and put it in a storage unit, and showed up at the house I was partying at and just decided I would stay there for a little while.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah. Wait. No, back up Back up.
Emily McAllister:
Back that ass up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Back that Ass up. Okay, wait, what did you really do?
Emily McAllister:
Okay, so I was hanging out with this guy. I was dating. I don't even know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like friendly.
Emily McAllister:
We were friendly. We can't really call it dating because that implies exclusivity, which I was not, neither one of us were very good. But we had a lot of fun together. That was also the house everyone partied at, and I would get free cab rides there because I'd be so wasted, and I would probably very belligerently tell the cab driver, "Take me to the clubhouse." And he was like, "Okay." They would just drop me off. People would receive me there, and be like, "Okay, thank you for delivering her."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
But I showed up there, and just the poor guy, I just was like, "I'm going to ..." I had a bag of laundry I think. I just decided I would stay there, but not with him, I would just stay at the house. There was plenty of ... There was a couch.
Emily McAllister:
And I did. And it was short lived. But I stayed on the couch and I remember-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm here.
Emily McAllister:
I just thought of a memory, God ... Cuddle with anyone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Just hold me.
Emily McAllister:
No, no. I just stayed there. I was like the dude on the couch. I can't believe it. I was the dude on the couch.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, my God, you we're.
Emily McAllister:
I've hosted many a dude on my couch.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Many a dude.
Emily McAllister:
Yes. Then at that point I was literally just selling drugs. But I'm a terrible drug dealer because I just sell enough that I cannot pay for mine. So, I would sell, at the time I was selling ... There were these mushrooms in chocolate, and I would have a two week period, where I just was eating those like three meals a day, and just existing, tripping, but didn't tell anyone, because I just wanted to live in alternate world. It was so weird.
Emily McAllister:
I was selling that, I was selling Coke at the bars, and did not realize that the police were watching and would come out of ... I remember, I'm coming out of Coyote Joe's, I would go into the bathroom with someone, sell my gram, I think 60 bucks or something, it was cheap in Prescott. I don't know what the prices are actually right now. So that might be standard. But anyways, I would come out ... You can cut that part. I came out of the bar ones, and one of the cops, I can still remember what he looked like, he was like, "Hi, Emily." And I was like, "Oh, shit. He knows my name." I don't know his name, but he knows my name. And they were really big on busting all the meth out there, because there's a big problem in those small towns.
Emily McAllister:
So, I think the only reason they, kind of, left me alone was because I wasn't involved in that yet. But I felt that feeling. I know why they call it heat, because I felt hot. I was like, I got to get out here, I'm going to end up in jail. I just knew I was going to get arrested. And I didn't have any money.
Emily McAllister:
So, I called my mom who is 12-step friendly. I did not think I was an alcoholic at this point. I knew I had an eating disorder. I always knew that, right? I did not know what an alcoholic was. I thought it was the homeless guy under the bridge with the brown paper bag. I didn't look that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Except you were living in a couch.
Emily McAllister:
And I felt like I could stop, because I would stop but I couldn't stay stopped. So, I called my mom and I did what I perceived was lying, and I said, "I'm an alcoholic, I need help," because I knew she would help me if I said that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And you knew that because she was 12-step friendly?
Emily McAllister:
Because she was. I said, "If I say I'm an alcoholic and I need help, she'll help me."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Why not say you have eating disorder?
Emily McAllister:
I just had so much shame in that. I just held-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
With the irony, right?
Emily McAllister:
It's so silly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But you lied about this other thing.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, but it wasn't even ... Yes. So, she flew me home in which was just a site for sore eyes. And at this point, mind you, Oh, gosh, this point there had been a night, where the sun was setting, and I was changing, and there happened to be a People Magazine on my floor, and Jennifer Aniston had cut bangs. It was a big thing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, no.
Emily McAllister:
Yes, this is well before I ever entered cosmetology school, and I thought I should have bangs. I was buzzed. I should also have bangs. I did not understand. People, first of all, don't ever cut your own bangs, ever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And that's coming from licensed cosmetologist.
Emily McAllister:
It's just like a rule of thumb. But there is a way to part out cutting bangs. You make a triangle here, and the way the hair falls is right. If you do this, you end up with a diamond dumber broke [inaudible 00:41:27] bangs.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Emily McAllister:
And then I kept trying to fix it, and I literally had a shelf. And I began to bring back the trend of wearing a pump, which was not a trend at the time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[crosstalk 00:41:42] back.
Emily McAllister:
I just had to pin them back or wear a hat. I'd wear a hat. And, oh, it was so bad. Okay. So, I had stayed with my aunt for a night discussing-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wait. Did your mom say anything when you got home about the bangs?
Emily McAllister:
No. My mom is like ... How do I explain my mom? She was an opera singer turned elementary school music teacher. She tried pot once and it burned her throat. She did not like it. She is an affirmation speaking ... My friends would like to do drugs and go to be around my mom because she was freaking cartoon character. We would be purposely make ourselves fugly, and she'd be, "Emily, you're beautiful on the inside and on the out." Literally will still now, will not. So she did not even notice.
Emily McAllister:
But I was a mess. I'd stayed with my aunt the night before I got on the plain. She has lupus, I stole a bunch of her Somas. I took a bunch of them on the airplane. I could barely walk. I walked on the airplane carrying a skateboard, because now I was a skater, and probably just sucked up, and just looking rough. I thought I was really cute. I mean, maybe I was. I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you think the bangs were good?
Emily McAllister:
I just thought I looked good because I was skinny. I was like, I'm skinny, I look good. Nothing else matters.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't care if I look like [inaudible 00:43:02].
Emily McAllister:
No, I think I was probably wearing a hat, or maybe I had them pinned. I don't know. I made it work. There's sound ways to use bobby pins.
Emily McAllister:
So, I got home, I think I lasted week in my mom's house. So, now at this point I'm coming off of a lot of drugs, and I'm not having access to alcohol, and I don't have money to go get alcohol. And I remember, looking up on the internet, because there was internet, I think this was 2004, and I looked up in the internet home things you can get high on. And you could smoke peanut shells.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, geez.
Emily McAllister:
And I made my mom go to the store to get peanuts, but she got salted, and then it had to be unsalted, so I never smoked them. But I was like you could trip on peanut shell. I don't know. I was just trying to find something. So, this was the state I was in. I was willing to smoke peanut. And I was like maybe, I don't know, whatever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mom, they can't be salted.
Emily McAllister:
It just never occurred to me to drink mouthwash, nothing. It just didn't occur to me. But I could have. So I was angry and mean. I was really mean, and really disrespectful. And my mom was not having it, because at this point she'd been going to Al-Anon and Tough Love groups, literally called Tough Love.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, no.
Emily McAllister:
And using the jargon, and it was just ... So, I was back in Boston, she gave me a T pass, T is the public transportation, and sent me on my way. She gave me a one month T pass. Then this is the point in which you and I have talked about it for like, I technically was homeless. I did not have to sleep on the street.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You didn't have anywhere to go.
Emily McAllister:
I couch surfed, I stayed with my friend Leah, who actually was one of us, and did not make it eventually, which is just sad. But I stayed with a friend of mine. She had a young son. I would drink all day. It was just kind of a gross existence.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Something that people ask me a lot, and I have a hard time answering. Maybe you probably will too, but people are like, "Where did you get your money?" And I have a hard time answering because sometimes I don't remember. I don't know.
Emily McAllister:
I do remember one thing I did for $25. That sounds really bad. It's not-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Whoa.
Emily McAllister:
... it's not sex. I'm just kidding. No, I looked. I don't remember if it was online or in a personal, I took a bus at 7.00 in the morning (beep) faced, or hammered to a college survey about abuse or something. Something so weird, and I lied about ... They asked me all these intrusive questions, and I just was ... I don't know. I just made up answers for $25 so that I can ... And I was writing bad cheques, is what I was doing.
Emily McAllister:
But I was writing bad cheques for both alcohol and binge food. It was really weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because of cash-
Emily McAllister:
Because Walgreens would accept a cheque at the time. So, I did that for as long as I could. And I did really weird things, and I would manipulate people. There was one guy I knew he liked me, I let him pay for hotel one night. I mean, he didn't stay with me. It was kind of crazy. And then my friend, Leah, who I was staying with, she had a neighbor who was ... I don't know if she was a lesbian, or transitioning, or whatever, but I knew she loved me, and so, I would drink her alcohol. I mean, I never had to do anything but I basically-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Found situations.
Emily McAllister:
... just really was good at using people.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. Because it's just interesting, people will say-
Emily McAllister:
It doesn't feel good to do that. It feels gross.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, no.
Emily McAllister:
But I just need what I want to need. And, yep, so I just did that. I mean, you hustle, is what you do. And thankfully, luckily, I know it can be a lot worse. I know people have to do a lot worse things than I did.
Emily McAllister:
But I think the turning point was, one of my last nights in Boston, I knew I was going to rehab at that point. We had gone out and I got really drunk. And I just had a very specific moment, where I was sitting at this bar in Boston, and I saw the whole bar with all the alcohol, and it just didn't feel enough. I was so afraid there ... I had a backup drink.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I totally get that.
Emily McAllister:
Because I didn't want to have this one to be empty, and then have nothing out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally.
Emily McAllister:
It was just weird. It felt that panic. And then apparently I stole a bunch of jackets that night [inaudible 00:47:16], and I woke up on the floor of my friend's place passed out in jackets from people, poor people. And then I took my T stops so my mom could pick me up, and I got proposition because the guy thought it was a prostitute.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. And I was like, oh.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were you wearing all the jackets?
Emily McAllister:
I was not wearing the jackets. I was probably wearing a very short skirt and very tall boots, just being sassy. But I looked probably ... I mean, I had been drinking all the night, so it was just one of those moments where it's, this is not you, but it was.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Emily McAllister:
Like that's exactly who you are right now. Oh, so weird. It was so weird.
Emily McAllister:
So, the breaking point for me was, I had been in Boston, my friend's boyfriend got over me staying on their couch, because literally, who wants that? And then I stayed with a friend's mom. And she was pretty oblivious to what I was doing, and she had gone out of town, and I would wake up at 7:00 AM, and at this point I have lost my access to drugs and alcohol, and I'd swear I wasn't going to get into the bingeing and purging. And by 7:00 AM, I was bingeing and purging, and it was 20, 30 times a day, all day, just like really in a prison, really aggressive.
Emily McAllister:
I had really scary things happen. When I had first started my eating disorder I would use a toothbrush to make myself throw up. And there was a time when I was staying with my dad and it snapped, the head snapped off. And I just had these-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
In your throat?
Emily McAllister:
In my throat. And I had this ... so gross, sorry guys. But I had this flash of being dead on his tile bathroom floor, and my dad having to find me like that. And I think I was, mostly, I didn't want them to know I was throwing up. It was so sad. But I reached into my mouth, into my throat, I don't know how, because it's wet in there, and pulled the broken toothbrush out, and didn't die.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God.
Emily McAllister:
But it was just like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Stuff like that.
Emily McAllister:
... my solution to that was, I can't use a toothbrush anymore. And then I realized I didn't need anything because my stomach was trained to throw up food. So, anyways, it's very graphic and gross. But at that point I was so deep in that, and it was just awful. And I wanted to end it. I was like, I'm going to kill myself. I can't stop, I cannot stop. And I went into the kitchen, picked up a butcher knife, did not kill myself because I was too scared.
Emily McAllister:
And I did the thing, they say that thing in program, oh, all the tough guys do and you call your mommy. And I was really honest, and I just said, "I have an eating disorder. I can't stop, and I'm going to die." She's like, "What do you mean you're going to die?" I'm like, "I'm going to die if I don't get help." And she was like, "Let me call you right back." And she's like, "I will help you go to treatment, but it has to be a 12-step base treatment facility." And I was like, "I don't care. I don't care." I need to go somewhere where they take everything away from me, and I don't have control over my options. Because at first they wanted to send me some place in Florida, where you live in an apartment with other people. And I started crying because I was like, "I can't be responsible to make my own meals."I was like, no, you don't understand. I can't do that right now. It was really depleted and I had nowhere else to go. Literally next step was going to be live on the streets for real.
Emily McAllister:
So, a couple of days later I was out back to Arizona, I was out to Wickenburg.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Good old Wickenburg.
Emily McAllister:
Anyways, so I went out to Wickenburg, I went to Rosewood Ranch. I thought I knew what I needed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And Rosewood is a-
Emily McAllister:
Dual diagnosis.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... dual diagnosis eating disorder, and alcohol, and addiction.
Emily McAllister:
Eating disorder and if you had ... And I still didn't know I was an alcoholic. I really didn't. And honestly the withdrawal of not ... It wasn't even just the drugs and alcohol, it was that life, knowing that people were out at the bars, and this was the bar they were at that night, because it was this drink special, killed me, that FOMO. But it was addiction to that as well.
Emily McAllister:
So I marched in there and told them that I needed to be out by a certain date, because I was going to go to reggae on the river. And they were like, "Yeah, you're not going to be out by that day. And that's not how this works at all."
Emily McAllister:
But thankfully, I knew we didn't have money. My family didn't have a lot of money, and I knew this was it, if I'm going to go to treatment, this is my one chance. Because there were people there who don't take it seriously. I mean, people go back, and back, and back.
Emily McAllister:
And I just felt like I had good treatment there. I had a great psychiatrist who honored and respected my intelligence. He was like, "You're smart." And I had therapy before because I had been in trouble, and they were terrible. I had a woman telling me I was a terrible person, I mean at 15.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Emily McAllister:
Just not good. There's bad psychologists.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There are bad therapists and psychologists.
Emily McAllister:
I just had bad experiences, like where this guy was ... I feel like him being there, because I didn't like my counselor because she was reminding of my mom, and I was like, I have to not to have her. And they were like, maybe ... But I did. I ended up staying with her. But he changed it. That one psychiatrist treating me that way was a game changer. I like okay, Dr. [Cop 00:52:28]
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's so cool. I had that person too.
Emily McAllister:
I don't his first name, but I should write him an email.
Emily McAllister:
Anyways, I stayed 47 days there. And because it was all-female facility, where you don't leave, and you cannot leave unless you're an alcoholic, you can go to a meeting two times a week, and there will be other people there of the opposite sex. So, I raised my hand, and I'm like, "I could say I'm an alcoholic." But I was an alcoholic.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Emily McAllister:
So, just denial. For me, my disease lives in denial. So I went there, I got out of treatment, I went back up to Prescott for the night, relapsed right out of rehab.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
After 47 days.
Emily McAllister:
I went to the bar I used to work and I was bragging about 47 days sober. And then I found this guy and asked him to go get me some Coke, and drank, and then I proceeded to drink three captain Cokes. And then I partied with your ex that night and he let me crash on his couch, because I didn't know where I was going. And then I drove down to Phoenix the next day in a tizzy because I didn't really sleep there, and I was coming off of cocaine, and was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were you freaking out about not being sober, and all that?
Emily McAllister:
I was freaking out that they weren't going to let me in. I had nowhere to go. The reason I went to aftercare ... I forgot to say this, after treatment, they recommended to go to aftercare [inaudible 00:53:45]. They put me in a place in Orange County. And I literally went because I didn't know what else to do. I had I know where to go. I couldn't go home. Prescott wasn't really home anymore. It kind of was, but I just didn't ... I don't know. I just took direction.
Emily McAllister:
And I called ... There was a lady who worked there as well, who did their intake and she was awesome too. There was a couple of key people there who really were on the level. You know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
In the Orange County place?
Emily McAllister:
No, in Rosewood.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Rosewood.
Emily McAllister:
Who really made it so I felt respected. Because I'm a smart girl. One of my things, an old story for me is, people think I'm dumb. You know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
And I cannot stand that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Me too.
Emily McAllister:
So, yes. And sometimes people do think you're dumb, and that's okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It feels like, I mean, that's the thing that we talk about too, is our behavior looks really dumb, right?
Emily McAllister:
And when you're not sober, and you're kind of spacey, and flaky, and don't know what's going on. So anyways, on the way down there, I was bingeing and purging on cliff bars. It was so gross. I just didn't know what to do. I was spinning. And I called the lady and she was like, "Just get on the plane." You know what I mean? She was talking to-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The Orange County?
Emily McAllister:
No, the Rosewood lady.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The Rosewood lady.
Emily McAllister:
Because I didn't have anyone else to call. I was like, "I don't know what to do. This happened." And she's like, "I will talk to them. We will figure it out."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[crosstalk 00:55:04] plane.
Emily McAllister:
So in a tizzy, I get off the highway to get up to the Phoenix Airport, and I pulled to a red light, and I pulled behind a car. And all this is going on, I'm spinning out of control, I'm flicking cigarette out of the window, it's coming back, and the cherry is burning me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh the cherry is burning you.
Emily McAllister:
And I'm like, that's my state of mind. And pull up behind this car, and there's a bumper sticker that says, "Trust the process." And I just got really calm, and felt, okay, just get to the ... I didn't even feel I could get to the airport, but just get to the airport. Drop off the rental car, go to the airplane.
Emily McAllister:
And I did. And I wound up in Orange County, and I ended up at a aftercare facility. It was Sober Living slash, but it was for eating disorders as well. It was called Rebecca's House. And I was there for a couple months. I got a get-well job, stamping tickets at guitar center, and I literally was getting paid 750 an hour.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wait. Tell everybody what a get-well job is.
Emily McAllister:
Okay, get well job like ... and not everybody does this because some people have careers. But it's like when you get sober you just get a job to have a job. It could be anything. But usually it doesn't pay a lot. Something kind of mindless.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Entry level.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, entry level. Not that there's anything wrong with that at all, even if that's somebody's actual job. But at that point that's what I can [crosstalk 00:56:16].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. You just take what you can get and start.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. Just get a job to go somewhere and make some money. Because I didn't have any. And so I did that. I got really lucky to get plugged in with a bunch of young people, who were in 12-step program, and they all had a couple of years, which was nice, because they were pretty solid at that time. I thought so ... They graduated, they are sober. And I started going to meetings, and socializing, and they call it going into the meeting after the meeting, where you go to coffee or dinner. We used to go dancing in LA or we would go and just do all these things. And I started really doing the deal. I had commitments had sponsors and then-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wait. Was that when I knew you?
Emily McAllister:
It was before.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Emily McAllister:
So I had to have relapse at six months and then I got two years.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Okay.
Emily McAllister:
So, we met during that time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
At the two. Okay.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. So, this is kind of when our paths crossed, which is-
Emily McAllister:
Which is wild.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I'm living in-
Emily McAllister:
Prescott.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... Prescott. I've got, whatever. I'm in Prescott.
Emily McAllister:
I'm super sober.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you're super sober. I am-
Emily McAllister:
And there was a convention, right? [inaudible 00:57:24] Joanne? They came back with Joanne, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't remember if Joanne was there, but I-
Emily McAllister:
Where did I go?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, there was a convention in Prescott. And at the time, I'm a piercer at a tattoo shop, and I'm dating the lead tattoo artist.
Emily McAllister:
Who I used to party with.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right.
Emily McAllister:
Whose couch I crashed on the night before I went to Phoenix.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, he was a big partier.
Emily McAllister:
But he was also such a great friend.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He's a great friend and not-
Emily McAllister:
Don't date him. Not a great boyfriend.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But really great friend.
Emily McAllister:
Has a good heart, guy. I Love the guy. We're still friends.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We love you Donnie. Sorry.
Emily McAllister:
Are you saying his name?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Emily McAllister:
Okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, you come to town and I find out you're sober. And he introduces us as this guy you partied with-
Emily McAllister:
And also I was getting tattooed by him.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Oh, I was looking up your tattoos. That' right.
Emily McAllister:
Which was so funny because he's like, "Oh, I had my girlfriend." And I was kind of bummed. I was like, "Your girlfriend? Who is this chick?" And just knowing his track record with having multiple girlfriends. I was, "Oh, God. Is this girl going to be some crazy, jealous. Oh, who's this girl? And like mess it up." But you did a good job. It looks what I wanted.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. No, I mean, I think-
Emily McAllister:
She was pulling images from something. I
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, again, luckily am competent enough to use Google.
Emily McAllister:
But I didn't know that. I didn't know who I was dealing with. But then we met, and I was like, "Oh, she's really cool." And Ashley was blonde.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was blonde.
Emily McAllister:
You do pull off blonde really well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you. Thank you. It's better when I see the sunlight.
Emily McAllister:
It's was platinum one. So, you pulled the tattoo images. We met. I was there for ... Was I even there for a convention? I think I must've been.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think you were.
Emily McAllister:
I think I must have gone for a convention. You know what I think it was, Kylie was speaking, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, it was a 12-step convention-
Emily McAllister:
A young people's convention.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Young people's convention.
Emily McAllister:
And I was doing all that stuff.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
All the fun things.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was not super-
Emily McAllister:
Were you sober?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. But I was not super connected.
Emily McAllister:
Oh, we went to the convention together and then we went to the bars.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
Remember? When we were sober. We didn't drink.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, we did. Right.
Emily McAllister:
Like, "Do you want to go downtown?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But see, that was the thing about that town, was that, I was in the same, I had a similar experience except I was sober in Prescott, which was, I partied at the bars with everybody.
Emily McAllister:
It was so fun.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was so fun. There was that whole lifestyle. But I was sober. I wasn't drinking. I was definitely playing with fire.
Emily McAllister:
Right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And eventually it burned me. But I had that same experience that you had, where it's wanting to be a part of this whole scene.
Emily McAllister:
It was fun. I mean, I loved to go to ... I thought I was so cool and mysterious because I would go to the bar alone, and just be there. And run into to my friends that thought I was so mature, and what's the word? Worldly. Because I wasn't afraid to ... I'd just go and play the video game, or read a book. You know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
Just be that person. That felt like confidence to me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
But also the real truth was, is like to go to the bar alone because I had to be accountable to nobody.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Emily McAllister:
Nobody was looking for me. I mean, I was the queen of, if I went with you to the bar, I'd be like, "I'll be right back. I'm going to the bathroom." And then not return.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
And then people would be like, "Where did she ..."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And that was the kind of place you could do that?
Emily McAllister:
It was the kind of place, just slip out the back door? [inaudible 01:00:42].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Emily McAllister:
I was like our home group. I swear the bars were different home groups.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They were.
Emily McAllister:
Different nights of the week [crosstalk 01:00:50]. There was a bar.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah. They were. Those days was Irish. We would go to-
Emily McAllister:
[inaudible 01:00:54]
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[inaudible 01:00:56].
Emily McAllister:
There was a bar there. I don't think it's still there. It was called Prescott live.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Emily McAllister:
And it was penny drinks. It was like you pay a penny, women, and you get an entire alcoholic beverage, with no cover.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I wonder what the point of ... What's the goal with penny drinks?
Emily McAllister:
The men pay. They just want people in.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. No, I get that. But I'm saying, do they-
Emily McAllister:
Well, it's stupid. Maybe you pay a dollar for the tip. But I would be, if I give him a dime, it's like a hundred thousand percent tip. No, I would give a dollar I think. I don't know. I probably didn't.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The mathematics.
Emily McAllister:
No, it was just like go get belligerent for basically free.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. But that's the point. We want everybody to get super belligerent.
Emily McAllister:
Oh, and it was a weird dance pit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, God. I think they had closed that by the time I was there.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, what happened? So, you were sober, we went there ... Oh, then I moved in with you.
Emily McAllister:
So, tell that part, because that's the part, there's a connector part. We met once.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's right. We met-
Emily McAllister:
Got along.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Okay.
Emily McAllister:
I don't even know if we kept in touch or anything like that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't know how I-
Emily McAllister:
[crosstalk 01:02:02] was it my space maybe?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Probably.
Emily McAllister:
What was your mind space name?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Little miss murder.
Emily McAllister:
My mind space name was ambassador from kick your ass.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yes.
Emily McAllister:
Oh, my God. Sorry, that was loud.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, that was awesome.
Emily McAllister:
Okay. I just feel everybody has a secret past my space life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and they do.
Emily McAllister:
And it's if you didn't have the word "Lil" in it-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Little miss murder.
Emily McAllister:
You were little miss murder?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. If someone stopped me at a bar-
Emily McAllister:
It's like you're suicide girl stage.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Someone stopped me at a bar, and was like, "Are you little miss murder?" I was like, this is going too far.
Emily McAllister:
You were Insta famous before there is Insta famous?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know.
Emily McAllister:
Okay. It's kind of crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know, because I was into the suicide girl stuff. Don't look that up.
Emily McAllister:
Thank God. That was ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, yeah, that's right. So, our connection was, I found out that my ex boyfriend, that we were talking about, he had cheated on me with another one of my friends. And it was like-
Emily McAllister:
It was like your closest friend, wasn't it?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It wasn't the one that he ended up being with.
Emily McAllister:
Oh, yeah. I didn't know that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[inaudible 01:03:04]. That was [inaudible 01:03:04].
Emily McAllister:
Donnie. You dirty dog.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. No, it was another one. It was a friend who I moved into my house, this girl, Vanessa. And we had gone to treatment together. And she was out, and needed help, and I moved her in, bought her a bed and was taking care of her.
Emily McAllister:
Oh, that's not good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And then I left to go back East for a week.
Emily McAllister:
You don't leave them together.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know. Well, that's who I am.
Emily McAllister:
I know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And I learned that, I learned a lot of good things from that relationship. And one, was that, I'm the kind of person that I have to have friends I can leave my boyfriend or husband with, because I'm just not capable of having that level of concern.
Emily McAllister:
Yes. And I feel at this point in life it's a little different.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But it just was one of those things where I'm not capable of having those friends where it's like, "I trust him but not to leave him alone with ..."
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, that's just not who I am. So I don't have those friends.
Emily McAllister:
So you left, Vanessa does Donnie.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There was a lot of. And you know what was crazy, it was one of those things where I just knew, like no one ever told me.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, I know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And I came back ... and I won't get into this story ... but it literally hit me like a wall. And I just knew. And then she left town, and I ended up calling her, calling her for months. And finally, she had called Donnie and I picked up his phone. And I had no idea they were talking, or whatever. So, anyways, it's long story. So, anyway, I finally-
Emily McAllister:
It's so hurtful for people to do. It's so annoying.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, that had happened, and then something else had happened. Oh, I found him in bed with Jill. And I don't think they were hooking up, but they were in bed together. I was just over it.
Emily McAllister:
It's just, kind of appropriate when you're dating somebody else.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah, yeah. I just was over it. So, I was like, "I'm going to see ..." I don't know if I called you.
Emily McAllister:
I don't really remember the conversation, but I do remember, I think you asked me if you could come stay with me. And I was like, "Yeah, when?" Because I think my roommate was moving. My roommate and I shared a one bedroom apartment with a den. And she and I shared a bed. It was, whatever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
And she had started dating one of our friends, and they were moving in together pretty quickly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's right.
Emily McAllister:
And I was like, "Yeah, actually, you can totally move in."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because I really wanted to move to Southern California. Because Donnie's from Southern California, so that's how I had visited, and I really wanted to move to Southern California with him. And he didn't want to go. Then when I decided to run away ...
Emily McAllister:
Yes. And you asked if you can come stay with me. And I was like, "Yeah." I'm really not ... Well, I've gotten better. But I don't pause to think about things, which is fine. But I just say yes a lot, or I have in the past, where then I'm like, "Oh, man. Why didn't I ..." But I was, "Yeah." And I was like, "When would you be out here?" You were like, "Well, it would be the end of the week, or something that." It was very soon.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, it was very.
Emily McAllister:
But I was crazy enough to be like, "Sure. Come on in."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah.
Emily McAllister:
And I just thought we would share the big room. And you were, "Oh, no. I'll take the den." And you didn't really fit in the den, but you've stayed there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No. The doors closed on the end of my queen bed. They touched.
Emily McAllister:
Because it was not meant to be-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it was not meant to be.
Emily McAllister:
... housing a queen bed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Emily McAllister:
But, yeah, so like a week later-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Week later.
Emily McAllister:
You showed up with your dad and the 72 pound Rottweiler.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And no car because my car broke
Emily McAllister:
Oh, yeah, your car broke?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's why I was using the [inaudible 01:06:16]. I was using your car.
Emily McAllister:
My car. It was a little Geo Prizm.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
[crosstalk 01:06:22].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And then we were living together, and we were just hot messes in early sobriety.
Emily McAllister:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean that was ... It was so much fun but-
Emily McAllister:
It was fun.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was fun. I mean-
Emily McAllister:
Because it was like I finally had someone. I don't think I had like that. I didn't have someone, that person to match my crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
And so you-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I matched your crazy.
Emily McAllister:
And like I lost Elaine to that because now they were like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Your roommate.
Emily McAllister:
And then they got pregnant. But, yeah, you matched my crazy. In fact, it was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I might've outdone your crazy.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. You definitely outdid my crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, but-
Emily McAllister:
Remember I would find things out, and I'd be like, "Ashley."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You would.
Emily McAllister:
But it was kind of awesome because I felt very comfortable to be-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you introduced me to 12-step in Southern California, which was such an amazing experience for me.
Emily McAllister:
I think I Connected you with your first sponsor because I had a commitment. Remember? I was a match maker.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You connected me with my first sponsor and that was the meeting where I met my husband.
Emily McAllister:
Oh, yeah. So, I am responsible for all your greatness.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You were responsible for my whole life.
Emily McAllister:
I am. I tell my husband that too.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
"I'm responsible for you being a person."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I mean it's true.
Emily McAllister:
But I met my husband at that meeting too.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Emily McAllister:
Weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was a big meeting, the talk show meeting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, what I would like to talk about, and it's fun to talk about this with you, because you were there for it, but we in early sobriety-
Emily McAllister:
We had some weird times. We had some really ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We were really young and we got sober really young. I mean, I was 19.
Emily McAllister:
I wasn't that young. I was young but-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You were in your late 20s.
Emily McAllister:
Oh, yeah. Because that's when I ... I was in my 20s. Okay. I was young. I was young. I didn't think I was that young, but I was now looking back and being of this age.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So many people have the concern that when they get sober they're not going to have a good time. And I think that if I could flash back to all the things that we did. I mean, we onetime went with our other friend to a nightclub in Hollywood and we danced all night.
Emily McAllister:
Is this the sober rave or just a different thing?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't remember. It was-
Emily McAllister:
They were not sober. We were sober.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, we were sober. We went to a rave-
Emily McAllister:
In some underground warehouse situation.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. And, and it had a blast.
Emily McAllister:
Joanne was giving people who were rolling light shows..
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Light shows. Our first sober friends.
Emily McAllister:
Our friend was a raver back in her day, and she was really good at-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Light shows. All these people were tripping.
Emily McAllister:
And I was, "I kind of jealous. I can't do that."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Oh, there was all these people rolling, and she's sober doing light shows. And then it's all of us together. We had a blast.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And then I was driving at like 3:00 in the morning-
Emily McAllister:
Ashley crashed the car [crosstalk 01:08:56].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was driving my car, and it's raining, and we're in Hollywood. I'm driving my car, and I look over to the ... I'm really hungry.
Emily McAllister:
And there was a hot dog stand.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There was a hot dog stand.
Emily McAllister:
We did end up getting hot dogs I think.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We did. Well, we had to, because I looked at the hot dog stand, and my hands looked at the hot dog stand too because-
Emily McAllister:
She threw the car into the curb.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... threw the car into the curb and pop the tire right in front of the hot dog stand. I didn't know how to change a tire.
Emily McAllister:
We called Wang.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, we called one of our friends, and he came in. I don't know why I didn't call AAA, but we called a friend. It was raining, and then we got hot dogs.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And those were, I mean, so many fun times. Figuring out how to be adults was just-
Emily McAllister:
Oh, my God.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But another thing that happened that was really interesting too, was we, long list of them, was the night that we almost decided to drink again.
Emily McAllister:
Right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Where we were in the bathroom getting ready to go to your ... for you to take two years sober.
Emily McAllister:
Take two years, and my Monday night meeting [crosstalk 01:09:55].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And we were over it. We were like, let's go get drunk, let's do this.
Emily McAllister:
I think I was just really uncomfortable because all the like food stuff would come up for me again. I wasn't engaged in it or I was, but I felt really uncomfortable in my skin, because I'd probably gain a few pounds, or who knows what it was. But I just felt like ... I remember thinking like, I didn't get sober to gain weight. You know what I mean? Because it was very important to me. People say eating disorders are not about weight, but it kind of was for me. I really equated like my value, and worth, and attractability, and any failure or success in my life was going to ... I felt like I got treated differently. I can't even explain it. So it was like there was an element of that. And yes, I was like, "F this." We were like, "Lets go to the bar."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We were like let's go to the bar.
Emily McAllister:
And also just the prospect of going to the bar, and getting all that stupid drunk attention, and getting filled with false self esteem, it's a drug. It's like, "Oh, fill me up with feel good stuff." But then I think I was like, "Okay, well, let me take my chip first, and then we'll go."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I was like, "Come on, let's go." And then you're like, "No, I have a commitment at this meeting." I'm like, "Ugh."
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, I've got friends coming. Like Angie bringing flowers, she always brings flowers.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And you were like, "All right. Fine. We'll go after." I'm like, "All right, fine."
Emily McAllister:
But then we didn't go.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We didn't go, we didn't get loaded. But there were so many little things.
Emily McAllister:
It doesn't matter what you think, it matters what you do.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's exactly the point, is that it didn't ... And it also speaks to being connected to that community, having a commitment, being, kind of-
Emily McAllister:
Showing up to the [inaudible 01:11:25].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Showing up and people knowing what's going on for you, because neither one of us would have been sober if we had not had those people waiting for us, that community.
Emily McAllister:
Right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, we would've gone.
Emily McAllister:
For sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We would have gone.
Emily McAllister:
For sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So that's one of those amazing things, seconds and inches, right?
Emily McAllister:
100%.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Eventually we weren't living together, and things ... So, I was with you when you met your husband.
Emily McAllister:
I met my husband. I had a commitment at that talk show meeting, and I was the host. It was like the secretary commitment, but basically interview people. But I was sitting up there, and he walked into the meeting late in the back of the room. At the time I was really into the look like you had just been to jail, and he had like the Dickie shorts, and the socks pulled up, and all the tattoos, and the buzz cut. And I was just like, I would like to hang out with that guy.
Emily McAllister:
And we did talk that night but we didn't hang out that night. And then I think we had exchanged numbers, and I had tried to text him, and he didn't text me back. I did not realize he did not have text messaging, because at the time it was like not everybody had text messaging.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right.
Emily McAllister:
And I was like this guy ... what a joke? He totally acted interested. And I loved texting because I'm a good writer, and I can be really witty, and cute, and flirt with. I don't know. I thought that I loved the banter like I just did.
Emily McAllister:
And then I ran into him again like a couple weeks later at that meeting, and we did hang out, and I really like thought we were just going to have like a very short lived one night time of hanging out, and then we kept dating. And now it's been like 12 years of a one night stand.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Longest one night stand.
Emily McAllister:
Ever. No, but we just clicked in a way, but it was also really, I knew that it was going to be really toxic too. Because it was, we were both really sick at that point of our lives.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Lied about his age.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. He lied about his age. He said he was older than he was because he thought I was younger than I was, and I'm actually almost eight years older than him. And it was just very Sid and Nancy from the start, really like, good when it's good, not good when it's not good. We ended up getting loaded together.
Emily McAllister:
I had a moment in a noon meeting where I just felt like God would not be able to like help me with my eating disorder stuff. Like it would never get better. And within a week I was loaded, because it was just like the God I believed in was still like ... or the higher power I believed in was still this punishing thing, like, all things are going to get ... Just you wait little girl, just you wait, when things get good, that's when we're going to pull the rug. That's when things are going to come crumbling.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So back to that original beliefs.
Emily McAllister:
I lived that ... Well, I never lost them. I don't think ... I've been in two years of sobriety, two and a half years. So I was sponsoring four ... And we relapsed in Prescott, or I did. You know what, I had smoked pot in Orange County, but I drank in Prescott, and it was oblivion. And we stayed with Don. We stayed with your ex, and his now ... I don't know if they're married, but his person, baby mom.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
My former close friend.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah. They've got kids together. I mean, we stayed with them. And it was just crazy. I had to like tell all my sponsors I wasn't sober, which was like really heartbreaking to one in particular, who that was really hard. And it was just on and cracking. We were often running in all the things that we weren't going to do. We started doing hard drugs, I mean, literally garbage disposal.
Emily McAllister:
But my husband's drug of choice was speed. And I am a person who will do what you're doing. I really do think that like God spared me by not putting a heroin addict in my life, because I've done heroin a handful of times, and it was literally everything. I am such a thinker, and moving all the time, and it really did ... It was like the answer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know.
Emily McAllister:
So, I think I had somebody I dated, or been spending time with been into that, I probably would've died. I just really have this strong feeling like ... Because I would feel like, why am I doing speed? I don't even like speed. But I did it alcoholically because that's what was there, you know?
Emily McAllister:
And my husband, Mike, was like ... When we were just drinking, he's six foot two, almost six foot three, he's a big guy, he's like 200 pounds. He's a big guy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, he's a big guy.
Emily McAllister:
And he can drink a lot more than I can. And also, because of my eating disorder, sometimes I would make myself throw up the alcohol. Regardless, I could not keep up with him with alcohol. I would get full. I would just be ready to move on to something else.
Emily McAllister:
And so, when we started doing drugs together, he had a very rude awakening because he probably just thought like it would be the same, and he would get to do more than me. But it's not like that for me with drugs, I am like, you will not, we will split this right down the middle to the gram. I don't care. I'm just really [fiend 01:16:16] when it comes to drugs.
Emily McAllister:
So, anyways, we did a lot of stuff together, and things got real ugly, and real white trash. It was not cute. And then it's like, suddenly I'm 30-years-old thinking this is not cute anymore. And things got really bad between us to the point where when broke up because he is a much different alcoholic. He's like you. He's a hope to die suicide mission. And I'm like, I just want to go have a good time. But we would like stay in our little studio. It was gross. I'm like it's not partying when it's just you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I though it was.
Emily McAllister:
That's not partying. Partying is going to the bar.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Because that's your personality.
Emily McAllister:
I want to be the people and he's very-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But he and I are like that. Let's do this.
Emily McAllister:
... he's like, "But I don't want to share, and I don't wanna like pay extra." Because it's expensive to drink out. You can get a 40 ounce or a tall boy for like $1.50 50 down at Circle K, why would you go to Hennessy's and get a $9 beer? You know what I mean? But fro me it's like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Very different mentality.
Emily McAllister:
Yes. So we broke up. And then I thought he was the problem because he's a really Jacqueline Hyde alcoholic, and I thought he was the problem. And I thought once he's gone, I can figure it out. But like it turns out that I'm still an alcoholic. When I was with him and he was drinking, it was like I became the codependent, even though I was drinking and using alcoholically, I was still like counting his, especially with the drinking.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you were trying to fix him?
Emily McAllister:
Well, I was trying to stop him from crossing over, because he would like hit a certain number. If he had three tall boys it was okay, but if he had the fourth tall boy, he would want to go drive up to Santa Ana. And at one point we were not trying not to do drugs, we just drinking and smoking.
Emily McAllister:
So it was just very sick. It was like trying to fit into just ... Insanity is what it is. It's insanity. So I started going back to meetings, but I couldn't stay sober in between meetings, which was very humbling, because I just thought ... When I got loaded, it was that cliche thing where you're like, well, if it gets bad enough I know where to go because I've done this before.
Emily McAllister:
But the problem is with that, is that, A, you don't always get to choose if or when you get sober again. And, B, it doesn't work that way. Alcoholism doesn't work that way. It doesn't give you a choice. So it's like, yeah, you might be ready to come back, but you may not be able to stay sober.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And that's what you were experiencing?
Emily McAllister:
It is, because also I came back, and I was like, it had been a couple of years, and there was new faces, and I felt really full of ego, like, don't you know who I am? I was really active in this program. I didn't want to hang out after. I didn't want to have to be the new person. It just sucked.
Emily McAllister:
And so, I would like go to the meeting, and then come home, and sit on my couch, and twiddle my thumbs and like walked down to Hennessy's because I lived walking, and go get trashed. Just doing the things.
Emily McAllister:
And then, eventually, I started putting ... I did this for three or four months, just in and out, in and out, like new, new, new, new, new, all the time. And then, finally, I don't know, a bunch of people died actually. I was like, "What happened?" Oh, yeah, that's right. My friend Nicole passed away. But I didn't get sober right away, but that was like shocking.
Emily McAllister:
So I had a friend. She had been sober for years, and had gotten loaded. And she came over and spent the night one night, and we both sat on the couch, and talked about getting sober again, and being like, ugh, because we knew what it took. So it was like, I don't have the energy, but I know I'm going to have to come back, both of us. Both sat there, we had like both had our little thing of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, and like just hung out. And had a really good time and chatted. She slept over, left the next morning for work.
Emily McAllister:
And then I would say a week or two later I got a call that she had passed away. So she had been with the wrong person, and was in a hotel room, and was found dead. And didn't show up to work one day, and they were looking for her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was alcohol or drug related?
Emily McAllister:
It was drug related, and it was jarring. It was like the feeling of the way the disease works, where it's like you can ... that 50-50 ... It could have been me. We're sitting on the couch, and it was very humbling to be like, how does one of us get plucked, and it's not me. Like how did that happen? It was just really like crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Eye opening.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, eye opening. Also I just ... I don't know. It's just something about like a young pretty girl dying. I don't know, just felt different. So, then she passed. I got drunk that night because that's what you do when somebody's left highs and you're not sober.
Emily McAllister:
And then I was still going to meetings. And then I think Jimmy passed away that summer. I mean, I wasn't super close with him, but was just like another young person I've known my whole sobriety. And he was like very charismatic.
Emily McAllister:
I came back from my cousin's wedding in Scottsdale actually, and I had gone there sober. I think I had almost a month sober.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Emily McAllister:
But my whole family, all my cousins, they were like partying, and having the best time, and I ended up drinking, and I got wasted. My God, I got so sick. And I had to go to the wedding so sick.
Emily McAllister:
And I came home, and I didn't drink again. I think I took a pill. But after that, my sobriety date is September 25th. So, that wedding was like September 9th. And I was like, wait why isn't my sobriety date that? Oh, and I went to Prescott after the wedding, and got loaded there too. But I came home. And I was thinking about it like year five or something. And I was like, wait, when is my sobriety date? But then I remembered I had been given a pill. I didn't know what it was. And I took it one night and like freaked out because I didn't know what it was. I think was a Xanax, so I ended up getting very calm. Thankfully, the panic attack subsided.
Emily McAllister:
And then from that point, I had a roommate, and I remember telling ... I was having a panic attack, because I was like, "I just took a pill, and if I die you need to call ..." I mean, she was like, "Whoa, dude."
Emily McAllister:
And so, I ended up putting time together. And what happened for me was that, in putting the time together, I experienced what can only be described as grace, which has been explained to me as like an undeserved gift. And I had a sudden spiritual awakening or spiritual experience, where I realized if I don't keep myself sober, I can't stay sober on my own. But something's keeping me sober, and whatever that is can't be punishing, because if it's punishing it wouldn't be keeping me ... It was this weird knowing. And my whole concept of what God was or my higher power. I don't even know.
Emily McAllister:
I mean, source energy, whatever, shifted to the point to where when those old thoughts would creep up, and even Ken sometimes, I mean not so much now, but like those old thoughts of like, oh, things, hold your breath. I'm like, oh, no, I don't believe that anymore. I was able to actually like tell myself, I don't believe in that anymore. I don't believe in a punishing God anymore. And I suddenly felt like God could in every area of my life, including food stuff even if there's a struggle. I just knew that it was possible. I just knew that like anything was possible because, here I was unable to stay sober, and now I'm staying sober, and that's weird. I'm not doing math.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Now you're almost 10 years sober.
Emily McAllister:
I know, it's really weird. And then my husband, we had been split apart but we had a dog together. The dog really kept us in contact because I was like, I'm not going be one of those weird people who doesn't let him see his dog, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah.
Emily McAllister:
And he started coming back around, and I was just kind of done. I didn't want to be with him, and I told him I was really emotionally shut down from him. And he was desperate for sobriety. And he started ... I actually, had gone to some of these sober birthday at Linda's, where every party was at that time. And I told them I was there because he was like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "I'm here." And he was like, "I didn't think you would really come." He drove a motorcycle at the time, I was like, he's not going to come.
Emily McAllister:
But he came. But then by the time he got there, I was we'd hung out for a little bit, but I was getting ready to leave, because someone was moving away. We were going to karaoke. We were doing something and it was really hard for me not to change my plans to babysit him. But I also had learned that the part of the reason he couldn't get sober was because I kept throwing a pillow under his ... Every time he was about to ... I was there. I was the safety net. And I went. I went to karaoke. It hurt my skin.
Emily McAllister:
And he met a guy, who saw him, and Linda gave them her bedroom and sat in her living room and they worked the steps on her bed. And he cried, and opened up, and I mean, it saved his life, working with him that night. It's really wild. And he's a hope to die drunk. And he had his own experience.
Emily McAllister:
And then, weird, I used to tell people, "Oh, I'm done. I am done, done, we are done." And then the universe has a sense of humor. And then I married him. Then we got pregnant and we got married.
Emily McAllister:
And he's sober, almost 10 years too because his sobriety date's November, because I'll always be more sober than him, always and forever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Always and forever. And what's crazy about ... I mean, your husband is a different person.
Emily McAllister:
It's totally different. People who know him now have no ... I couldn't even explain him to them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Emily McAllister:
He was very dark when he was loaded, and he was very angry.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He was very scary. He was very, very-
Emily McAllister:
He had a lot of childhood trauma, and horrendous things happened in his teen. Just things that people shouldn't go through, and I think it made him ... And then his parents went through this terrible divorce. I just think he had so much anger to work through.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
I mean, before he and I met, he would get in fist fights all the time, really hurt people. He's never been in a fist fight since we've been together, but I've seen it almost happen. When we were first started dating, [inaudible 01:25:51], because I was scared. I'm like you really hurt somebody.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, no. He's a big guy.
Emily McAllister:
He's strong. He's a man.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He has really ... Watching him.
Emily McAllister:
That's the thing. Having a front row seat to that has been the most incredible thing because it's harder to see it in yourself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. But you can see it in others.
Emily McAllister:
But I can see it in him. And even before, yes, I was a hot mess, but I could still pull off a bit of a double life. I knew because of where I grew up and how I grew up, how to say the right things, and to present a certain way, and to be socially acceptable, I mean, up until a point. But I could I could turn it on. I'm an actress. You know what I mean? I'm a good liar, maybe not now. I can't really lie now. But I was a very good performer at that.
Emily McAllister:
But he was straight up, had no interest in even pretending to be normal.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's how I was.
Emily McAllister:
There was no interest in-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Nothing.
Emily McAllister:
He wouldn't even lie. His mom would be like ... He'd get in trouble. I shouldn't tell his story. But anyways, his mom always jokes that he was like, she's like, "Well, he would leave when I told him not to, but he would tell me he was leaving. And tell me where, nope, I'm going here. Bye." Just really, really honest. But also that's scary because you can't stop a person like that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was interesting. It's funny you say that. My mom once, she found I had a big dictionary under my bed and-
Emily McAllister:
It's not what I thought you were going to say. Holy moly. Oh, my God. Okay, keep going.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We should keep that in.
Emily McAllister:
You can cut that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, don't get that.
Emily McAllister:
Okay. Don't get that. That's so, good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I had a big dictionary under my bed. Why? I don't know. And I had a bunch of meth on it.
Emily McAllister:
Oh.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And my mom finds this, and she does what parents do, which I do it now too, which is, what is this? The whole like, you know what it is, and you're, "What is this? What is this?" And I'm like, "It's meth." Then we just had this moment where she just looks me.
Emily McAllister:
She's like, "Oh, I can't even try to lie."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
I was a liar. My mom would ask me what that funny smell was coming from my room and I would tell her it was herbal incense. It was pot obviously.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. That's a whole other thing. I was-
Emily McAllister:
But she ... It was so different. My family was sheltered or something. I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, if she had found like ...
Emily McAllister:
One time she found a bong, made out of a honey bear, and they went to get a test for hard drugs. I lied and said it was somebody else's, like a friend, and they got it. They were like, "Let's just test it for pot." And I'm like, "Did you think that was a crack pipe out of a honey bear?" And I genuinely think that they thought it was a crack pipe made out of a honey bear. That's the house I grew up in.
Emily McAllister:
My dad drank but not alcoholically. But drugs were bad. Do you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah.
Emily McAllister:
And he was in Vietnam. I'm like, "why were you not a pot ..." You probably could have used to smoke a little weed, mellow out a little. But they were just ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Professional [crosstalk 01:28:49].
Emily McAllister:
... they were not tuned in. They were in a different place, living in a different, operating in a ... I would to think that I'm a little bit more in tune with what's going on with the youth. I mean, I'm still kind of [inaudible 01:29:01].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The youth-
Emily McAllister:
The youth.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... of America. Oh, my God.
Emily McAllister:
I know I'm not the youth anymore. It's kind of sad. Anyways, I have a lot of things to say about that too, but it's a different podcast.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. So, let's talk a little bit about your life today.
Emily McAllister:
Okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And I want people to-
Emily McAllister:
Like see the contrast.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, I want people to understand that making this change, how this happens, how this comes to be and the work that goes along with it. And, kind of, where your eating disorder is today and where that is today.
Emily McAllister:
So, like I said, the big relapse, I was still struggling, but then we were doing speed, and so then I was skinny again and I was happy. I mean, I wasn't happy. But you know what I mean? It was just a solution, which is really sad.
Emily McAllister:
Then we got sober again, or I got sober again, and I wasn't engaging in any use. I mean, look, the brain of somebody who has had an eating disorder, especially, at least my experience, it's only my me, I think that there's a lot of recovery that comes after the physical parts of it. It's the thinking and stuff.
Emily McAllister:
So, if you flash forward, I guess the best thing to flash forward to, is getting pregnant. So, I was struggling on and off up until I got pregnant. I would have bouts. And I got pregnant, and it was done. There's no more throwing up your food on purpose. There's just not, it's not just an option. I was sick my first trimester. And it was kind of weird because I would throw up and I was like, am I making ... But I wasn't. But it's this weird mind screw, where you're-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. That totally makes sense to me.
Emily McAllister:
And I was like, even if I get sick now, I have to check with myself because I could still be probably bend over and throw up if I wanted to. You probably could, you just don't know you can.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I know.
Emily McAllister:
Actually, no, you're really bad at throwing up. That's gross.
Emily McAllister:
So I got pregnant. I had after I was sick the first trimester, but then after that, and that's hard. Then I had a very healthy pregnancy, had a really long labor, had the baby. And then I experienced postpartum anxiety, which I had ... It was just hard. I jus was like, I didn't ... I had a really long labor. I was in labor for 36 hours, and I hadn't slept in that whole time. And then when we were at the hospital, I didn't sleep much at all. I think I was really sensitive to the hormones.
Emily McAllister:
And then we came home, and I was very sleep deprived. I was delusional. This is so crazy. I had fallen asleep when we got home, and I woke up in a frenzy, and I asked Mike, I was like, "Where's the chicken? Where's the chicken?" I thought she would have a baby chicken. That was so ridiculous. So that's my starting point at home. [inaudible 01:31:54] she is in the coop. I thought we had a baby chick. And I then I settled into ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Are you sure that is postpartum anxiety?
Emily McAllister:
No, I think it was sleep deprivation. I was extremely tired. I hadn't slept, but sober. And so ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The chicken.
Emily McAllister:
Please just don't joke about it. She did kind of look like a baby chick. But she was in the crib. He was like, "I moved her," Because I passed out on the bed.
Emily McAllister:
And so, that was my starting point. And I did experience baby blues, I felt down. But what happened was ... And I ended up treating it. But that was the beginning of my postpartum experience was like, obsessive thinking, and imagining falling down flights of stairs holding the baby, crazy stuff. I mean, I felt connected to her. So, you could file that under postpartum depression, but it really really manifested more in a sense of not being able to sleep when I was given opportunities to sleep because my brain was spinning. So, I ended up getting on medication six weeks postpartum, which totally helped.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
Emily McAllister:
Oh, my God. I just had that feeling of, shouldn't I be enjoying this more? This is crazy because I was ... Yeah. Anyways, so I went through that-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm the wrong person to answer.
Emily McAllister:
And I did ... Yeah, I don't know what normal is. Then you're left with this postpartum body, which is totally crazy for somebody, for anybody, let alone somebody who's had body image issues their whole life. Then I trained for a half marathon, and that was helpful because, I was really active, and I was going to the gym. But then I was, would they just fluctuate? I was still with, I mean, I still, whatever, I was still struggling with food I just wasn't throwing up, so it was like up and down, up and down.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was your bottom line?
Emily McAllister:
That was my bottom line. I mean, I definitely, I don't know specifically when ... I'm sure in that span, there was a relapse at some point. I'm sure. I don't know. I don't think ... I can't specifically put my finger on it, but I don't have a date in mind that's like, Oh, this day I haven't thrown up, this is the day, but it's been a long time. I mean, this was seven years ago.
Emily McAllister:
But then I have struggled with my relationship with food, and really have been five years sober, got to a point, where I got really present to the way I was thinking, and talking to myself, and realizing I was just really done being mean to myself. And that was where a lot of the stuff was stemming from, was just this mean voice inside, negative self talk. So, I started to work on that, and started to change the negative thoughts into affirmations, and did a bunch of work on it.
Emily McAllister:
And I felt so freaking good. I had probably never felt like that whole or good in my life. I was really in a great space. Then I got pregnant again. I was like, Oh my God. I had a very rough pregnancy with my second because I was sick the whole time. I literally felt hungover every day. And you did too. You were going through it too with twins, which is like, well, I don't know how. But it felt like a spiritual hit, because I was doing all this great stuff, and feeling so good. And then I was just lethargic, and nauseous, and tired. And my husband and I were arguing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, I remember that.
Emily McAllister:
It was a hard time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it was just hard.
Emily McAllister:
I was so grateful to be pregnant because I really wanted to be pregnant, but it felt a big setback, spiritually, and emotionally. And after I had Frankie ... But then after I had Frankie I felt really good. And since then I don't engage in an eating disorder, which is a miracle, and a blessing. And I do consider myself to be in recovery. But that doesn't mean that everything's always easy, and I'm like nothing's ever a struggle, and I still can fluctuate. You know what I mean?
Emily McAllister:
So, it's like I still have that voice that I have to be, shh. You know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
But I don't throw up my food no matter what. And it's like all learning, and it's loving yourself anyway, loving yourself unconditionally. Deciding that you're going to accept and love yourself in this moment, and embrace ... Life's too short. If I died tomorrow, would anybody talk about what size my jeans were? No. I was going to say probably not, but definitely not.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Emily McAllister:
Like for me, recovery from the eating disorder looks like, I don't utter one negative word about my body in front of my children. I mean, I just don't talk negatively about my body mostly. I mean sometimes I joke with my friends, but even then it'll seep in. So, I have to be careful with that?
Emily McAllister:
I want them to have a positive body image? I have a squishy tummy, and guess what? Mommy has a squishy postpartum belly, and it's so great. Isn't it so great? It carried you guys. Isn't that great? Or they touch you, and notice you, and smother you. No, I'm just kidding. But I don't know.
Emily McAllister:
Just being okay with who you are, because there's beauty in that. When I see people who I think are beautiful, they're not perfect. They could have cellulite, but it's the way they carry themselves, or think of themselves. So, where we live there's a lot of pressure. We live in a beach culture area. There's a lot of genetically blessed people.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Very blessed.
Emily McAllister:
It's very weird. But I don't know. At the end of the day-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But we're-
Emily McAllister:
... I want to feel good. I want to feel happy, I don't know. I'm not willing to kill myself to fit into one mold. Who decided that, that's the one way to be, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. No, it's amazing. And your life now is so cool and all the ...
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, it's a great life. We are sober without wine o'clock. We're moms, we're sober mom's.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Without wine o'clock.
Emily McAllister:
Which is a miracle. Sometimes I need a glass of wine.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Emily McAllister:
But then I think, I just don't need a glass of wine because I won't drink one glass of wine. I've never drank ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like I need a bottle.
Emily McAllister:
Then I'm like, the bottle is really only four glasses.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know.
Emily McAllister:
So you really need two bottles.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It gets starts to get out ...
Emily McAllister:
Or maybe a bottle and a Xanax?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
100%
Emily McAllister:
Is that normal? I don't think that's normal.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't know.
Emily McAllister:
Do normal people drink a bottle? No. We're getting a no.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. We're getting a no. Producer [crosstalk 01:38:07] says, no.
Emily McAllister:
She's not alcoholic.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She's not alcoholic so she knows. That's our gauge.
Emily McAllister:
No it's just not a realistic idea that I would have a glass of wine at the end of the day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's just been so fun growing up sober with you.
Emily McAllister:
Totally.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And seeing us from the kids, and seeing these relationships, and these are ... People have friendships over long spans of time. I mean, I see that out in the world. But when you have been through what we've been through, and together. I was around when you got loaded, and I was around when you got sober again, and all the different things you've been around for my dramas. And just the beauty of having that community, and knowing someone at that level has been a real blessing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, yes, people in Orange County, there are many genetically blessed whatever. But I think that our life has been really blessed by our recovery, and what we've done, and the hard work that we've come through to change our lives.
Emily McAllister:
Totally. It's wild. It's that whole thing like two lives in one lifetime, or whatever they say that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They say like 10.
Emily McAllister:
Yeah, really, it's 10 lives. And it's almost like I have to remind myself of what it was like. I think that's why we continue to go to meetings, continue to tell our story, because I-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Have to.
Emily McAllister:
... Pain has a short term memory to begin with. Then beyond that, my life looks so freaking different, that it's like I don't even relate to the girl in Prescott. You know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know. I know.
Emily McAllister:
To the drunken skateboarding bangs having girl [inaudible 01:39:51].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I feel the same way.
Emily McAllister:
Who is that?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So removed from it.
Emily McAllister:
[crosstalk 01:39:56] It's a weird thing, and then it's just like also making peace with that girl.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And feeling compassion for her.
Emily McAllister:
And not being ashamed, I guess.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Which has been a big thing for you with the blogging stuff and coming out thing.
Emily McAllister:
Been a really big thing. Because I didn't share that publicly, because I felt like ... Here's the thing. I felt really conflicted about breaking my anonymity, because I didn't want to represent the recovery community, because it's just me, it's my story, it's my opinion.
Emily McAllister:
And if I'm being really honest, I was afraid of being judged. I have a kid in first grade, and I felt, I didn't want to be the weird person. I didn't want to not be invited places or whatever. Then it was like, this is so stupid. I'm sharing my whole life authentically. I'm sharing my motherhood journey, I'm sharing about postpartum anxiety, I'm sharing about struggles with marriage, all of it. Just everything is on the table, and then this major part of who I am.
Emily McAllister:
And then it leads to these really awkward situations with people when they're wanting to have a cocktail with you because they don't know. And then it's like, how do you make ...It was just almost got harder to not tell, then to tell. And now it's just out there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's out there for the world. I love it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, thank you so much for coming, and sharing your story, and being authentic here. And hopefully, hopefully people will relate to your story.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And your blog is amazing, chasingmcallisters.com. Will you spell that for us?
Emily McAllister:
Yes. Chasing McAllisters is chasingmcallisters.com, or on Instagram Chasing McAllisters. I mean, same spelling.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. So, Emily is an amazing blogger.
Emily McAllister:
Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And writes about motherhood and lifestyle. And she also is an amazing, amazing photographer. So stay tuned for that. Check that stuff out, and we'll talk soon.
Emily McAllister:
Peace out. Peace.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast would like to thank our sponsor, Lionrock Recovery, for their support. Lionrock Recovery provides online substance abuse counseling, where you can get help from the privacy of your own home.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For more information, visit www.lionrockrecovery.com\podcast.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Subscribe and join our podcast community to hear amazing stories of courage and transformation.We are so grateful to our listeners, and hope that you will engage with us. Please email us comments, questions, anything you want to share with us, how this podcast has affected you. Our email address is podcast@lionrockrecovery.com. We want to hear from you.