Arlina Allen is a Certified Life and Recovery Coach, Teacher, and Host of the award winning recovery podcast, The ODAAT Chat Podcast. She has been free of addiction from drugs and alcohol for more than 26 years and has dedicated her life to helping others do the same. She has been married for 20 years and is a mother of two. Arlina is a lifelong seeker of truth and she shares lessons learned in her writings and podcast. Ashley and Arlina became besties through the course of this interview, and we really hope you enjoy their connection, along with Arlina's incredible story!
Arlina Allen is a Certified Life and Recovery Coach, Teacher, and Host of the award winning recovery podcast, The ODAAT Chat Podcast. She has been free of addiction from drugs and alcohol for more than 26 years and has dedicated her life to helping others do the same.
She has been married for 20 years and is a mother of two. Arlina is a lifelong seeker of truth and she shares lessons learned in her writings and podcast.
Ashley and Arlina became besties through the course of this interview, and we really hope you enjoy their connection, along with Arlina's incredible story!
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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello everyone. Quick update, the podcast has moved. We have a new website, which is, www.lionrock.life/couragetochangepodcast. Again, that's www.lionrock.life/couragetochangepodcast. Our new email address is, podcast@lionrock.life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change, A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame and I am your host. Today we have Arlina Allen. She is the Writer and Producer, and Host of a podcast called ODAAT Chat. I came up with a theme song.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
(singing)
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
ODAAT, One Day at a Time Chat Podcast. Arlina has been free of addiction from drugs and alcohol for 26 years, and has dedicated her life to helping others do the same. She's been married for 20 years and is a mother of two. She is a lifelong seeker of truth, and shares lessons learned in her writings and podcasts.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She's one funny and badass B. You guys, Arlina and I are going to be best friends forever, BFF. She is amazing. A podcast host, interviews other podcast host, so much fun. At one point, I'm pretty sure she was turning the tables on me, so it's a good thing I'm going on her podcast.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You guys, she's just amazing. She's just hysterical. She's amazing. She's been sober almost three decades, and has focused a lot of her work on building women's self-esteem. She's funny. She's smart. She's talented. You're going to love her. All right, episode 71. Let's do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
(singing)
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm so happy to have you here, Arlina. Thank you for being here.
Arlina Allen:
I am so excited to do this. I was like, "Oh, she's like my long lost little sister."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know.
Arlina Allen:
Or child, since you're like 20 years younger than me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'll take it. I'll be your sister. Your child, I'll take-
Arlina Allen:
Okay, we're family.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, just adopt me. I'm good.
Arlina Allen:
Part of the same crazy family, it's all good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly. We actually are a part of the same crazy recovery family.
Arlina Allen:
Yes ma'am.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How long have you been clean and sober?
Arlina Allen:
I quit everything. My first clean date was April 23rd of 1994. It's been a minute.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No one can do math anymore, don't worry.
Arlina Allen:
Oh, okay. Yeah, 26 years.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, so 26 years. Where were you living when you decided to stop?
Arlina Allen:
I was living in the San Jose, California. They call it the San Francisco Bay Area. I was actually 25 when I had my last drink of alcohol. It was on my 25th birthday, at the Saddle Rack, which no longer exists. It's a huge cowboy bar.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Saddle Rack.
Arlina Allen:
Yee-haw.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Arlina Allen:
Can we swear on this podcast?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arlina Allen:
I definitely enjoyed my cowboy wrangling days.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Your cowboy wranglers.
Arlina Allen:
[crosstalk 00:03:46] a cowboy wrangler, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wrangler, wrangler [inaudible 00:03:51]. I loved it. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I really loved the cowboys, because they were... I dated this guy who dressed like a cowboy, like real cowboy. It didn't dawn on me at the time, that there was absolutely no correlation... like this was a [crosstalk 00:04:14].
Arlina Allen:
There's no cows.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There're no cows. There're no cowboys. I was like, "This guy was in Halloween costume every day. That's what happened. That is what happened. This was a 365 day Halloween costume-"
Arlina Allen:
Halloween, there we are.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There's no other way you would be a cowboy. Like it just didn't happen.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, or he's a urban cowboy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and a very urban cowboy.
Arlina Allen:
It's so funny.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Maybe he needed it. We had-
Arlina Allen:
He just loved the look.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, [crosstalk 00:04:43].
Arlina Allen:
It's a good look honestly, yeah. I kind of like it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, yeah, it is a good look.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you grow up in the Bay Area?
Arlina Allen:
I did, yeah. I just moved out of the Bay Area a year ago, but I spent my whole life there. I never really made it out. I was born and raised in Santa Clara County, so like Sunnyvale.
Arlina Allen:
My father lived in Cupertino, just a few miles away from the Apple Building. Went to Cupertino High School, so yeah. I spent almost all my life in that area.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it's a nice area. What kind of household did you grow up in?
Arlina Allen:
Well, so my parents are very nice people. They were non-alcoholic to say the least. They were kind of on the goody two shoe side, very religious. [crosstalk 00:05:32].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They were super proud of you.
Arlina Allen:
At first, they were and then I strayed slightly, but yeah. No, so it was a very religious household. We went to the Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church and all that. My daddy's from Kentucky and my mother is from Mexico City.
Arlina Allen:
There was like a... people who are from Mexico City are typically known for being very Catholic. My mom wasn't very Catholic at all, but a lot of God in my house growing up, [crosstalk 00:06:02].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
A lot of God.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, a lot of praise Jesus from my daddy's side.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What do you mean? Mom was not super Catholic?
Arlina Allen:
Not really.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She would just like-
Arlina Allen:
I mean, she went to church. We went to the Presbyterian Church, which is very whitewashed, I have to say. Hopefully that's not super offensive to anyone, but yeah, that's how it was.
Arlina Allen:
It was kind of interesting being raised in a... I never thought of myself as biracial, because mostly that was directed towards people of African American and Caucasian mix.
Arlina Allen:
It was interesting, because when I'm with my mother's side of the family, they'd see me as the white girl. Then when I'm with my Caucasian family, I'm the Mexican girl. It's really weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It is, and so do you go back to Kentucky and see them?
Arlina Allen:
Well, so I don't know, I've never been there actually. Yeah, he's from there, but then they moved to San Diego, actually Carmichael, Southern California. Wait, where's Carmichael?
Arlina Allen:
Maybe that's... I don't know where that is to be honest. Carmichael is in Sacramento, but they did live in San Diego. That's where my father spent most of his childhood actually.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Arlina Allen:
Those Southern roots are strong. I did have a lot of praise Jesus in my house, well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you take to praising Jesus?
Arlina Allen:
Did I take to praising-?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[crosstalk 00:07:34].
Arlina Allen:
I love me some Jesus to this day. I still love me some Jesus, but I see that in a very different way. I'm very irreverent about it. I have to wonder if he was the ideal man. Did he have a huge penis? I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Maybe.
Arlina Allen:
Is there a reason why everyone says, "Oh God?" [crosstalk 00:07:52].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[crosstalk 00:07:52].
Arlina Allen:
I don't know. It's a religious experience.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God.
Arlina Allen:
I suck at many ways.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God, that's amazing.
Arlina Allen:
So fun.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What was it like growing up in your house, aside from lots of praise Jesus? What-?
Arlina Allen:
Lots of praise Jesus. Yeah, so my father was a civil engineer. He went to Oregon, the Beavers. I don't know, is that state or university? I get confused. He was a civil engineer, and he worked at places like Lockheed NASA. By the time he retired, he had a security clearance. I don't actually know what he did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[crosstalk 00:08:35].
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, I remember one time meeting him for lunch. He called me from a 510 area code, which is the Fremont Area.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Arlina Allen:
We met by a... where's that? In Santa Clara somewhere. I was like, "How did you get here so fast?" I was kind of alluding to the fact that, his work number had a different area code than where he was actually, which back then was odd, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Arlina Allen:
I almost felt like I was dating a married man. I was like, "This is weird."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Arlina Allen:
"What is happening? What's all this secretiveness?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He could never tell you... when did he start getting a security clearance?
Arlina Allen:
Geez, it was after I was out of high school. He worked for government agencies that built Bradley tanks, FMC. I don't even know what that stands for, but they built the Bradley tanks.
Arlina Allen:
He had been cited in some magazines about his opinions about... I didn't even know what the opinions were. When we were kids, he used to talk to me about work. There were government contract negotiations. I would just be like, I'd glaze over and I'm like, "Well, I'm 10. Why are you talking to me about this?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[crosstalk 00:09:44] so proud of you, oh gosh.
Arlina Allen:
Like, "What are you saying?" He was a really good guy. He's a really good dad. My mom being Mexican, had many jobs after they divorced. Actually you know what's cool? Is that, so my parents divorced when I was about seven, which was devastating to me. My dad was the nurturing one in the house. My mom was a bit of a hard-ass.
Arlina Allen:
She is a very different person today. You know what I tell my kids? I say, "You know that sweet little, old lady they comes to visit you? That is not the bitch that raised me. She was hardcore." Now I get it, because she was trying to raise two kids on her own. She was working a lot and so she'd be tired. I wonder if she was tired.
Arlina Allen:
I often say that, my predominant feelings when I was growing up was guilty and wrong. I felt like her predominant feelings were... she was either really happy or really pissed. I felt like she saved the happy face for the outside world. I felt like we were latchkey kids.
Arlina Allen:
When she came home from work at 5:00... we'd let ourselves in. Little kids too, we would let ourselves in. I'd walk home from school in the third grade. I can't imagine letting my kids do that. Second and third grade, I was letting myself into the house. She wouldn't come home until 5:00 or 6:00 or whatever.
Arlina Allen:
When she came home... I don't know if this is a Mexican thing, but the girls are expected to learn... I knew how to do dishes, laundry, mopped the floor, clean the bathrooms. I could clean that whole house top to bottom by the time I was in the second or third grade.
Arlina Allen:
She would come home from work, and I would hear her car pull up in the driveway. Then I would have that sinking anxiety feeling like, "Oh, shit." I look around the house and be like, "Oh my God, what didn't I clean?" I'm like, "What am I going to get in trouble for?"
Arlina Allen:
Try to hurry and do things, and then face the wrath of mom when she walked through the door. I almost feel like that was her decompression habit. She would come home and then just unload. She was just angry and tired. Yeah, lots of feelings of guilty and wrong. That was rough.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Where was your dad? Was he nearby?
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, he was real close. When he moved out, he was within a bike ride distance. Again, at seven years old, I can't believe I rode my bike to his house from my mom's house. He rented an apartment.
Arlina Allen:
My mom still had the house. I made sure I knew how to get to his house. I would ride my bike over to his house, a mile or two away. I would never let my seven or eight year old do that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it's quite different [crosstalk 00:12:26].
Arlina Allen:
Crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"Come home when it's not dark out." I'm like, "Oh my God." [crosstalk 00:12:30].
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, "When the street lights come on." Yeah, it was before Megan's Law.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, [crosstalk 00:12:34].
Arlina Allen:
We don't do that shit anymore.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was like, "My kids would not be able to figure out how not to get hit by a car." I mean, I just don't see it, but I know that that was how things were.
Arlina Allen:
It was, that was literally my mom. We went to a county fair or something. Have you ever seen those big, long plastic horns? She would legit stand on the front lawn and blow the horn when it was dinner time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God, that's amazing.
Arlina Allen:
It wasn't embarrassing at all. My mom was funny, she would do shit like mow the front lawn... we lived on kind of a busy street. She would mow the front lawn in her pink bikini and snow boots. Why? Why furry snow boots? Why, my mom? I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She was that amazing, that's why. Oh my gosh.
Arlina Allen:
She was funny. She was a fun mom, but she was intense both ways. Yeah, she was intense both ways. When she was happy, she was a lot of fun. When she was not happy, watch out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Why do you think she was so angry when she came home? What do you think that was about?
Arlina Allen:
Well, I mean, so I'm in my 50s now. She was in her late 30s, early 40s. We were in Silicon Valley, so she got some high tech admin type jobs. They didn't call them admins back then, she was like a secretary. I know she had some nice managers and things like that, but my mom is just a really hardworking person.
Arlina Allen:
She had no coping skills, she never did. I would imagine that after the divorce and after all that she had been through, that she was dealing with a lot of stress. Then she was so controlling. She was a total clean freak. I am such a slob or I was, I've gotten a lot better.
Arlina Allen:
My husband's a total neat freak too, so I had to step up my game. She was just so controlling, that everything... there was a way to clean everything, and her way was the only way. If you did it different, then there was hell to pay.
Arlina Allen:
It came in the form of this wave after wave of like criticism and, "You never listen. I've told you this 100 times." You know what I mean? It's just that barrage of... and just looking back, I go, "She was just unloading. She must have just been tired and stressed out, and the bills and the dogs.
Arlina Allen:
We had a couple of dogs too. Yeah, and I remember those. Yeah, it was those poor dogs. There were times when money was really tight and there wasn't enough money for dog food. I remember me and my sister as little girls, trying to feed the dogs cereal and soup.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah. I mean, they were... I don't know, starving. I don't know, it was really sad. I don't even know why she kept the dogs. I mean, she probably should have given them away sooner than she did.
Arlina Allen:
You know what she did one time? We got in a fight and I moved out when I was older. She put the dogs down after I've left. I was like, "Oh my God" It very much felt like a retaliation. I mean, she was hardcore.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She put the dogs down, because you moved out and she didn't want to deal with it anymore?
Arlina Allen:
I guess, I don't know. It was kind of out of the blue, there were no discussion. She took them to the vet one day and they never came back.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I guess, she was hardcore. Did you start drinking young, early? Was that [crosstalk 00:16:04]?
Arlina Allen:
Oh my goodness. Yeah, I started drinking really young. Another thing that happened is, I was abused by a neighbor when I was really little, like really little. Like five and six years old, by a neighbor.
Arlina Allen:
I was going to church, and there was all this talk about trying to live up to the ideals. What I got was perfectionism. Like you needed to be perfect in order to receive love and acceptance.
Arlina Allen:
This idea of perfectionism, combined with what was happening to me, there was a lot of guilt and shame. I think I couldn't articulate that at that age, but I felt dirty. I felt bad, like I was a bad girl. What I had come to accept later on is that, it was a very conflicting experience, because my body was responding.
Arlina Allen:
Then I felt super guilty and like, it wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want any of that, but my body would respond and I wasn't taught to have any boundaries. I wasn't given any... my feelings, my negative feelings were never validated.
Arlina Allen:
There was never a time when I could just be like, "Hey, I don't like what's happening. I'm going to tell. Or you can't do that to me." I was raised to be a people pleaser. I was raised to be a nice girl. "Don't upset anybody." I didn't want to upset my mom. You know what I mean?
Arlina Allen:
Anyway, I learned to stuff my feelings. I had my first drink at probably about eight years old, between 8 and 10 years old. I was really young. My mom had gone out on a date. I have an older sister, and she and I were left home alone. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to drink some of that alcohol.
Arlina Allen:
I wonder if it came from the neighbor, because as it turns out later, that my next door neighbor's dad was a raging alcoholic and I didn't know that. I don't know where I got this idea to drink, but I did. One night, my mom was out. I decided to drink some of that brown liquid that was in a dusty, old bottle in the cabinet.
Arlina Allen:
Somebody must have left it at our house after a party or something, but I will never forget that day that I... there was this excitement of doing something bad, intentionally doing something bad. You get that rush, "Ooh, I'm going to do something bad."
Arlina Allen:
I took a sip of that booze, and it burnt my lips and it burnt my mouth. It burnt all the way down. When it hit bottom, it's like that warmth spread through my whole body and I felt really good. The feeling was relief, the feeling was good.
Arlina Allen:
I felt good. The juxtaposition between that good feeling and the self-consciousness, and self-loathing and self-hatred at eight years old, that I was feeling was removed. That drastic contrast between the two, left such a... like it burned. That experience was burning my mind forever. I chased that feeling my entire life.
Arlina Allen:
I used to say, "I chased that feeling until I got sober." If I'm going to be real, I'll tell you that, I still love that feeling. I still love that feeling of relief, elation, joy, freedom. I mean, I still love all those feelings, but I just don't use drugs and alcohol to get that feeling anymore.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you've had to find other ways. One thing that I think is interesting about what you've said was, that your body responded to the abuse. I think a lot of people look back and they think, "If I wasn't traumatized, if it wasn't a traumatizing experience.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
If I didn't feel like I was being harmed at the moment, I didn't understand, then maybe it was something I did." There's this self-blame that a lot of people experience, if they don't fight back.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
If they don't feel like they should have said something different. The expectation is that, abuse is always experienced as incredibly scary, negative, [crosstalk 00:20:24].
Arlina Allen:
Painful, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Painful, right. I'm just curious if that kind of resonated, like if there was confusion about that for you.
Arlina Allen:
For sure. I mean, I couldn't even acknowledge to myself that it felt good and that I liked it, for a long time. I mean, it wasn't even until recently, because it was a repeated thing that went on. I felt incredible guilt and shame about that. I was so confused.
Arlina Allen:
I didn't have that kind of relationship with my parents, that I could talk... I didn't have anyone I could talk to. As a matter of fact, my mom saw it happening one time and she... she lost her ever loving mind. It was like in a shameful... like I was bad kind of a way. It was super traumatizing. I didn't understand.
Arlina Allen:
I mean, I was just a little kid. It's like, it's normal that kids play doctor. That's not an uncommon experience. What I know now as an adult is, sometimes it's children being curious and sometimes it's children acting out what was done to them. That's what I learned.
Arlina Allen:
That's what I found out later, is that the older child that did it to me, a much older child did it to me, somebody had done it to them as well, is what I found out later. There's this grooming process that happens, that I wasn't... looking back, I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's what happened."
Arlina Allen:
It wasn't my fault, but I fell into it, because I had no boundaries and wanted to be accepted and wanted to have friends. It was so confusing. I was so confused for so long. The message that I received, Ashley was that I was a bad person. I was going to church, and I used to ask God all the time just to fix me.
Arlina Allen:
I never felt fixed. I never felt changed. At some point, I gave up on God. I decided that if I couldn't be good, that I was going to be good at being bad. I just said, "[inaudible 00:22:26]." Isn't that the short form of the serenity prayer?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, for sure. It's [inaudible 00:22:32].
Arlina Allen:
You know what that was though? That was self-abandonment. I completely abandoned myself. I decided that I was just going to... I went into survival mode for a very long time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I relate a lot to that. I had a similar experience with a neighbor, and I was young and he was much older. Just really not understanding... interestingly enough, my grandmother actually saw it happening and no one addressed it with me. She stopped it, similar situation and-
Arlina Allen:
She walked into a room and saw him doing stuff to you?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Into a tent, saw him... into a tent outside. My family went and talked to the boy's family. He was the son of the minister-
Arlina Allen:
Of course.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, something where you're like, "Yeah, okay. Who wrote that one into the script?" What was interesting was, they went and talked to his family saying, "Stay away from her, blah, blah, blah." I was 5, and he was 13 or something, but no one talked to me about it. No one talked to me about it. No one talked to me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What's interesting is for me, the trauma, the actual trauma that I experienced was how it was handled. For years, I would be in therapy talking about what happened. What happened in and of itself was confusing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Again, the grooming process, all those things. I wouldn't say that I was traumatized by it. I think I was changed by it, but I don't think I was traumatized by it per se. The traumatic piece was the reaction to it, and so I-
Arlina Allen:
Of being told it's freaked out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, right. Kind of what you're talking about where, when your mom saw and freaked out. There's this confusion around it and I get it. I don't know how I would respond to something like that. I don't claim to be the authority on how to respond to your child having this circumstance.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It took me years to figure out that the actual trauma was really around the way it was handled, more than my actual experience and that was why I wasn't healing from it. The healing had to be from the response, because that was the most traumatic piece for me. I didn't really understand the rest, but I understood the response.
Arlina Allen:
What was the takeaway that you...? Did you assign meaning about your value or who you were, or did it change how you saw your... did it damage your self-esteem?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It damaged... well, with my family, in my family, it got really complicated, because my parents decided that maybe I had... I came out with it when I was in third grade, and we had moved away from the area for a while. We had moved across the country. They had decided they couldn't deal with it, and that I must be making it up.
Arlina Allen:
Grandma saw it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I know. Yeah, that was-
Arlina Allen:
Okay, that [inaudible 00:25:44] crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and then some drama happened at Catholic School. A game of telephone happened, the whole school found out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
By the time it got back to the principal, and the principal was told that the abuser was still in the area... which we were across the country at this point. CPS was called, and so I was forced to go into his office and recant, yeah.
Arlina Allen:
It came out... so he was in junior high or something, and you were [crosstalk 00:26:17]?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He lived in Boston and I was already in California. I came out with it when we came to California, so we had moved. It happened in Boston, and we moved to California when I was six or seven.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I came out with it when I was in third grade. Then the school therapist told a bunch of parents in our school. Yeah, and it was super gnarly. My trauma was all around how the adults handled it.
Arlina Allen:
Oh my, yeah. Well, and then the whole school. That's your community, which threatens your security. You had to recant?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was taken into the principal's office, and told that if I did not tell them I made it up, that my sisters would end up in the foster system.
Arlina Allen:
Oh my God. Well, no wonder.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was like, "Well, there it goes."
Arlina Allen:
"Well, there it is."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There it is. The truth is though, as a parent looking back and as you're... though we don't have a handbook for this stuff. Some of it should be obvious, I'll give you that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I certainly have hashed that out with my family, but I always thought that the trauma had to be the incident. For years, I was in therapy trying to like... and every therapist wanted the trauma to be the incident. That's what every-
Arlina Allen:
What the f? What is the matter with these people? They're professionals, they're trained. Why aren't they...? This makes me so mad.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, but I think a lot of people, the trauma can be in what happens when it comes out.
Arlina Allen:
After, yeah. What happens after. Yeah, definitely. [crosstalk 00:27:59].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you when you first told someone?
Arlina Allen:
I never told anybody.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When did you start to open [crosstalk 00:28:06]?
Arlina Allen:
After I got sober. I was in my mid-20s before I started addressing it with a professional in therapy. Being with... it's kind of oddly interesting. It wasn't until I spoke to a recovery coach within the last year or so, who helped me address the... it was so strange.
Arlina Allen:
I wish I could remember what the line of questioning was. When you're in therapy and you're the person, someone's asking you questions and you have to go inside for the answer. He was asking me things about the anticipation of it happening, because it was a repeated occurrence and so I knew it was going to happen.
Arlina Allen:
He gave me a little bit of space and he made it safe to say, "Was there some excitement knowing, and pleasure that came out of it and enjoyment that came...? That you liked it or whatever." I had always seen myself as a victim.
Arlina Allen:
I had always seen it... but when it was reframed in a way like, "What are the...?" I forgot how he framed it. It was like a pros and a cons' thing. I don't know, it was so bizarre, but it was like, "Oh, okay."
Arlina Allen:
Once I could kind of own that there was this excitement about it, there is something... and I hear drug addicts and alcoholics talk about it all the time. This excitement about doing something you're not supposed to do. The anticipation was something exhilarating.
Arlina Allen:
It took me out of myself as... and at the end of the day, that's what addiction and obsession is about. It's about taking a lot of the present moment, that for whatever reason is unacceptable.
Arlina Allen:
For whatever reason, there is this mild river of misery or discomfort, or anxiety or depression running in the background of our lives that we don't really connect to, because we've been practicing disassociation for so long.
Arlina Allen:
That we've become completely detached from our feelings, from ourself and from all of that, that matters. It's like, our feelings are there to serve us and protect us. We have an intuition, internal alarms that go off, because we are so good at disassociation and disconnecting from ourselves, we can't read the signs anymore.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We paint those red flags green.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, it's like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, absolutely.
Arlina Allen:
Anyway, to go back to your question about when I started to address it, I did a process therapy. I did counseling. I did all kinds of stuff. For people like us, it is so important to go tell somebody who has personal experience and who has done their own work. That's not always obvious, who has actually done their own work?
Arlina Allen:
A lot of people go into counseling and therapy, because somebody has helped them. Then we all have like this... it's human nature. It's like, once you've been saved and rescued out of your suffering, you want to shout it from the rooftops, "Oh my God, everybody needs to do this."
Arlina Allen:
It's a very common experience. When you see people get into recovery rooms, it's like, "Oh my God, everybody needs to know this, practical life skills and coping skills." Yeah, and I was no different.
Arlina Allen:
It is so important to find somebody, but not all therapists and counselors have done their own work and there is a difference. All the people that you went to, who didn't recognize that it wasn't the incident, it was what happened afterwards. That is like Trauma Therapy 101.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think I didn't mention it. I don't think I... yeah. I mean, they didn't-
Arlina Allen:
That's not your job, is to mention it, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you're right. You're totally right, yeah.
Arlina Allen:
Their job is to ask the questions. If you were sexually molested when you were a child, then sometimes the incident is the trauma, but there is all this... the trauma typically happens in a very short span of time like an hour, 30 minutes.
Arlina Allen:
An inappropriate touch at a... or sometimes I go, "Listen, that's not the point. The point is the years after, the re-occurrence, the self-blame." It's really like the self-abuse that happens after, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. The self-abuse, yeah.
Arlina Allen:
Any therapist or counselor worth their salt should be addressing that, because we go to them because we need. If I had known what to do, I would have done it already, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, absolutely.
Arlina Allen:
That's their job.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely, there's no shortage-
Arlina Allen:
[crosstalk 00:32:44] about that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There's no shortage of clinicians who haven't done their own work. That's a first absolute sure. [inaudible 00:32:54]. It's a big thing that I look for when I look at clinicians and like, "What have you done for yourself?"
Arlina Allen:
It's always good to get a referral too, from someone who's been able to achieve some results and resolve some things.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely, so take me through your alter egos and your using. What did Arlina out there... getting it on, what did that look like?
Arlina Allen:
So funny that you bring up the alter egos, because I always talk about... when I share my story, I always talk about my alter egos. There were two alter egos, Wimpy Wendy and Badass Betsy. I was either fighting or crying once I started drinking. I had no off switch whatsoever.
Arlina Allen:
I had spent some... the way I dealt with my feelings is suppression. I would just stuff it. Then I'd drank and it would all come out like a volcano. What are the two things that you want to suppress when you're trying to be a nice girl?
Arlina Allen:
You suppress your anger and you suppress your sadness. All that came out like an explosion, and I never knew who was going to come out. Later I realized... much later, within the last five years I realized, "You know what? I had a third alter ego, Slutty Karen." It's so funny that-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Karen.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, now Karen is the nomenclature for an angry, middle-aged woman with short hair, who's overweight and very demanding. My Karen was a total whore. [crosstalk 00:34:30].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know. I was going to say... I was like, "Did she sleep with the manager while she was making a complaint?"
Arlina Allen:
[inaudible 00:34:37].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is that [inaudible 00:34:38] Slutty Karen? That's amazing.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah. No. Yeah, and she joined the party every night at some point along the way. I sought my validation through men mostly, married and not married. It didn't matter. You asked about how I was. I had this experience... and I think a lot of people have this experience, where you wake up the next morning incredibly hangovered.
Arlina Allen:
You open your eyes and you're like, "Oh my God, that's not my ceiling." You look down and go, "Oh dear God, that's not my comforter." You look under the covers and you're like, "Oh f, I'm naked."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're like, "It's still me."
Arlina Allen:
You're like, "Oh, [crosstalk 00:35:19]."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, afraid to look over. Yeah, so I had a lot of those nights or mornings. I used to sort of encapsulate my whole drinking and using experience by saying that, "If it was in a bottle, a bag or blue jeans, I was doing it."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, I love you.
Arlina Allen:
Anything to fill the void, whoever the void may be.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, so accurate. Stay tuned, to hear more in just a moment. Hi, this is Ashley Loeb Blassingame. I am here to tell you that National Online Recovery Day will debut this year on September 22nd.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
In celebration, Lionrock Recovery is sponsoring a live sober influencer panel on getting clean and staying connected. Join me as I moderate an hour long interactive discussion, with three prominent panelists live on the Lionrock Recovery's Facebook page.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
September 22nd at 2:00 PM Pacific Time, 5:00 PM Eastern Time. Mark it down. Visit, www.nationalonlinerecoveryday.com for more event details. In my experience, there's been a lot of younger women coming... and younger I guess girls, women coming into the rooms.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Into sobriety, way younger than even I came in. There was one woman who came in, and she had been drinking and she was a virgin. I remember saying to her like, "You are like-"
Arlina Allen:
A unicorn.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"You are the unicorn in all of 12 Step Program, because I don't think-"
Arlina Allen:
How does that happen?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, it's like women drinking in AA or not in AA. When you're a female alcoholic, things just get wild quickly and-
Arlina Allen:
Getting a little loose.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, they just-
Arlina Allen:
Is she a lesbian by any chance?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Arlina Allen:
Not a lesbian, okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She was just that young. She was just that young, that her drinking... I don't know. I think-
Arlina Allen:
That's amazing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:37:27].
Arlina Allen:
I used to joke around, because this lady came up to me afterwards, after I spoke at a meeting one time. I said it, and everybody laughed and I'm a sucker for a joke. This lady comes up to me afterwards.
Arlina Allen:
She was like, "Oh God, I was embarrassed for you when I heard you say that the first time." I know, and I was like, "Bitch, please. You were not a virgin when you showed up to Alcoholics Anonymous." What happens to people, that they get so prudish once they get sober?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She was embarrassed for you?
Arlina Allen:
She told me she was embarrassed for me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because you said [crosstalk 00:37:59].
Arlina Allen:
A bottle, a bag or blue jeans. Yeah, I'll say that shit in front of me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, he knows how I got good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
My husband is just... he always says like, "You don't need to share with the kids all the grimy details of using."
Arlina Allen:
True, right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm like, "I don't think that my small boys want to know. I don't think that they're-"
Arlina Allen:
You're free, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, he's worried about when they get older.
Arlina Allen:
[crosstalk 00:38:27].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm pretty sure that my sons will never want to know of my sexual escapades, when I was drinking and using. I think there will never be a time where they will be interested in that.
Arlina Allen:
They'll be like, "Mom, I'm just curious. Were you a whore?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"Mom, when you were a whore, what was that like?" Yeah, I just-
Arlina Allen:
You what I tell people now? I tell people now... because I'm a changed woman, don't you know? I tell people now that the only married man I sleep with now is my husband.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There you go. The one I married. Yeah, exactly.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, my husband. Yeah, he's the only one I married, which he appreciates.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I know. It didn't have to be that way, so they absolutely appreciate that. What did it look like? How did it start to get bad? Obviously probably the quality of the room you woke up in, probably was like a trajectory downward, right?
Arlina Allen:
Downwards.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You went from like beautiful ceilings, maybe [crosstalk 00:39:25].
Arlina Allen:
To cracked [crosstalk 00:39:27].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, to [inaudible 00:39:27] to a popcorn ceiling.
Arlina Allen:
Popcorn ceiling.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, other than that-
Arlina Allen:
Other than that-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... what did that look like?
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, so I started having what I called episodes. Where I'd wake up the next morning and I'd just feel like, "Oh my God, what was that all about?" The crying jags, or the fighting with people. I was losing all my friends. I had this one drinking buddy, me and this girl, she was so much fun. She was hilarious.
Arlina Allen:
We would smoke weed, and go out and drink and chase men, or men chase us, whatever. We would have a great time, but we would get into these arguments. I was losing all my friends, my family didn't really... they distanced themselves from me.
Arlina Allen:
It was my mom and dad, and my older sister and I have a younger stepbrother. He was too little, so that really... and oddly enough, he and I always had a great relationship. That was not an issue, but yeah, I couldn't keep a boyfriend, weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Weird.
Arlina Allen:
Who's that weird? Why not?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don't get it.
Arlina Allen:
[inaudible 00:40:37] so strange. I mean, the way I drank, I was a puker, which is super attractive.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, no.
Arlina Allen:
Oh, yeah. I used to joke around, and say that if I didn't have splash marks on my shoes the next day, it wasn't a good time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, boy.
Arlina Allen:
[inaudible 00:40:51] see you puke, kind of was like my motto.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh.
Arlina Allen:
You really minimized all my drama with humor, but it just wasn't funny anymore. It got to that really, really dark place where it got really dark. I hated who I was. I wanted to be anybody but me.
Arlina Allen:
I had always been super hardworking and ambitious. I had this sales gig where I was a field rep for a transportation company, and I was blowing it. I lived in a really nice apartment. 25 years ago, if you had a cell phone, you were badass.
Arlina Allen:
The cell phone was like an old phone, with a curly cord to a battery pack that weighed like 20 pounds. I was like, "Hey." I thought it was hot shit, it was funny. I couldn't keep a boyfriend. I was just such a hot mess and I was terribly lonely.
Arlina Allen:
I always thought that two things were going to save me. God was out, He was done with me. I asked Him to fix me for years, and clearly I was a hot mess and so I gave up on that. I couldn't even be good at being bad anymore. I wasn't making the kind of money I wanted to make. I couldn't find the boyfriend.
Arlina Allen:
I totally fell into that. I totally bought into the Cinderella that's... that I was this poor victim. If I could just be good enough like Cinderella and Snow White, and crazy ass bitches who were so good, despite all the victimization that they were-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know, right?
Arlina Allen:
How did that happen?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Seriously.
Arlina Allen:
Right? It's like, "How was Cinderella so happy all the time? She was insane." A little Stockholm Syndrome, I don't know. Anyway, I thought a man or money was going to rescue me. That whole prince charming, that [crosstalk 00:42:44].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, or men with money.
Arlina Allen:
Men with money, yeah. That's why I really liked the married men I think, because they always had a lot and they were older. They always had a lot of money, and they were always desperate for love. Oh my God, I never wanted to have a marriage like they did.
Arlina Allen:
It was so funny, because it really wasn't that far off. It turns out that it was love that saved me, but it showed up in a way that I really would not have recognized. It showed up in the way that people didn't care about what was going on the outside. They cared about what was going on in my mind and in my heart.
Arlina Allen:
They validated my pain and they loved me. That didn't happen until I showed up into the 12 Step rooms. I got to tell you, 26 years ago, there really was no... I was not aware of any options.
Arlina Allen:
I was always so jealous of people who got to go to rehab. I didn't even know that that was a thing at the time. Even though when I was 14 years old, my mom had dated a guy that was in the program, in a 12 Step Program. I didn't know.
Arlina Allen:
There was like a seed or an idea that was planted that life could be different, or that there was a solution somewhere else. I didn't key into that. I ended up living in the self-help section at Barnes & Noble, basically looking for the answers in a book.
Arlina Allen:
I thought I could think my way into the right living, instead of... turns out, it's the opposite. You live your way into right thinking, and it was my thinking that was a mess. Oddly enough, I came across... since I was in sales, there is a lot of training that goes on in sales.
Arlina Allen:
I came across a Tony Robbins cassette tape series. That's how old I am, this 30 Day cassette. It was the first time I was introduced to the idea that if I changed my mind and my thinking, I could change my life. That it was about cause and effect.
Arlina Allen:
That it was about finding the right mentor, and just modeling somebody else's behavior. I found that two years before I found the 12 Step rooms. What ended up happening was that, I had been dating a married police man for a while.
Arlina Allen:
That's why I never had a DUI, is because I literally had to get out of jail free card. Four times I got pulled over by the cops loaded, and they would let me go or call my boyfriend. I never went to jail because of that.
Arlina Allen:
One night my sister and I went out, I had to move back in with my mom. My life fall apart, I had to... or no, I wasn't living with her yet. That wasn't till I got sober. One night my sister and I went out, because she was the last person-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
To hang out [crosstalk 00:45:12].
Arlina Allen:
... to hang out with me. Yeah, not a lot of friends in her world. She went out with me and I got super hammered. On the way home... actually we went out to the bar, because the married police man, I started dating his best friend. He was supposed meet us at the bar and he wasn't there, so I was really sad about that.
Arlina Allen:
Then on the way home, we passed by the police man. He'd pulled somebody over for a field sobriety test and I saw him, and apparently I lost my mind. I say apparently, because this is second-hand information. I was blacked out for this part. My sister told me the next day, it was humiliating.
Arlina Allen:
It's such a humiliating experience to go to my sister's house the next day, and have to find out what happened. Apparently, I lost my mind and I punched the windshield with my hand, it cracked, broke in a couple of places.
Arlina Allen:
I'm a small person. It must have been a really shitty windshield. It broke in a couple of places. She said I was pulling on the steering wheel, trying to make us... she was driving my car. She said I was trying to crash the-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Boy, was she relieved.
Arlina Allen:
I know, right? She was trying to get us home, we were so close to being home. She said I kicked her in the face while she was driving. She was trying to get me home. We were only two blocks away from my mom's house, where were going to stay that night, where she was living.
Arlina Allen:
Through a series of events, the police were called. I don't know why I didn't get taken to jail. The next morning, I woke up with that sinking, sickening feeling that something terrible had gone on the night before. It was that pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization that you hear about.
Arlina Allen:
That was my bottom, but it took me two years of research and asking the questions. "What is an alcoholic? Am I an alcoholic? When did I cross the line? How come all the people around me can drink like this, and they're not an alcoholic? Or are they an alcoholic?"
Arlina Allen:
It was like all these questions that revolved around this idea of alcoholism. It took me a lot of pain to come to the conclusion that, yes, I could not handle the alcohol. I had my last drink on my 25th birthday. I had a really bad night, and I woke up the next morning with alcohol poisoning as it turns out.
Arlina Allen:
Didn't go to the hospital for it, because I was accustomed to it. I was accustomed to it. I would throw up so hard, that I would have petechiae. Petechiae is broken blood vessels underneath your eyes. I was so accustomed to alcohol poisoning, that I didn't recognize it for what it was.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, so the next morning I woke up and I knew I was never going to drink again and I haven't. I took a big bong hit after that to handle the nausea, but yeah, I showed up to 12 Step rooms, not having drank for five months. I didn't know you couldn't count your sobriety date, until you quit everything.
Arlina Allen:
It was shortly thereafter, I had to move into my mom's house, because I had to get rid of the... I guess I did the sales job for a little while after that, but it was just like a name only. I wasn't making very much money. I had been dating this guy and we had the breakup. He had to break up with me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We had to break up.
Arlina Allen:
We had to do it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Arlina Allen:
He had to do it. He was like, "I'm done." He's very nice guy, but yeah, he must have been kind of sick too, because who allows that kind of drama into their life? I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[crosstalk 00:48:36] around for that.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, water seeks its own level. When someone is like, "Oh my boyfriend's really sick." I was like, "Oh, what does that say about you?" Yeah, so that's how I got sober, is I had a really bad night. Two years of investigation, and then finally made it to the rooms as we say.
Arlina Allen:
That's when everything changed. I found a sponsor who would show me what... I did everything she told me to do. I was terrified. You get to these rooms and they say, "Oh." There's two things that terrified me, working with women, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah.
Arlina Allen:
Because women, we're competition. They were not my friend, because all my validation came from men. I spent a lot of time and money decorating the outside, but I had felt like I had nothing on the inside and that was terrifying.
Arlina Allen:
I was like, "Oh shit, what am I going to do with another woman? I don't know how to be friends." It's like, my mom would disown me on the regular. I was terrified of the women, but I was more scared of getting loaded again.
Arlina Allen:
I kept hearing that this fourth... like some people would do steps, one, two, and three, then relapse before the fourth step. I was like, "Hell no." Somebody said, "Oh, only 1 person in 100 gets sober." I was like, "That is absolutely going to be me." I'm super competitive.
Arlina Allen:
I was like turning that defect into an asset. I asked this lady... you know what I asked her? I asked her if she would listen to my inventory, but her response was so sweet. She was like, "I would be honored." It brought tears to my eyes. She said that we're going to start with step one.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it.
Arlina Allen:
That's what we do. I sought the solution, with the same intensity and vigor that I sort drugs and alcohol. I'm an all or nothing girl. "Listen," they said, "Oh, all you have to change is everything." I was like, "Sign me up." I hated myself. There was nothing I wanted to keep.
Arlina Allen:
I didn't think I had anything of value. As it turns out, they loved me in a way that allowed me to blossom and to find out all the good parts about myself. It was in recovery that I found out that I had this limiting belief that I thought I was bad.
Arlina Allen:
I used to joke around, and talk about it in my story all the time about... and I have already said it today. Where I thought, "If I couldn't be good, I was going to be good at being bad." The keyword is being bad. I thought I was bad. I believed in my subconscious that I was bad.
Arlina Allen:
It turns out that I was just sick. It was not a moral issue. I was just mentally... I had such low self-esteem, and no coping skills. That's when the work began. I'll just tell you that it's been a magical journey over the last 26 years, just this self-discovery, the lifestyle.
Arlina Allen:
Finding new purpose and meaning for my life. The thing that I thought was going... I thought it was the end of the fun. I thought it was going to be the end of my life. Turns out it was just the beginning. Not only do I have more fun, but it's cheaper and I remember it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, exactly. I really thought that it was going to be the end. I got sober at 19.
Arlina Allen:
For sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Same thing, is I thought it was... my life was over and-
Arlina Allen:
Did you think about your wedding? You're like, "I'm not going to be able to drink champagne at my wedding."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I have a great story about that, which is that I was like, "Well, what am I going to do on my 21st birthday?"
Arlina Allen:
Oh, shit.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"What am I going to do on my wedding?"
Arlina Allen:
Priorities are a little jacked.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally amazing. My sponsor said to me... she says, "Do you have someone that wants to marry you right now?" I said, "No."
Arlina Allen:
No.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She goes, "Why don't you wait and worry about that, when there's someone that wants to actually marry you?" I was like, "Oh God, okay." It was actually-
Arlina Allen:
Stop being so practical.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I was like, "Geez, rough." My husband and I, when we-
Arlina Allen:
It's called spiritual rudeness.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly. I was like, "Okay, fine."
Arlina Allen:
To find out the obvious.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When my husband and I were planning our wedding, and we sat down to... and he's sober a few more years than I am. We sat down to talk about the signature cocktails and this whole thing. I'm sitting there and just laughing at the moment, because I let other people pick. We toasted with apple cider, whatever it is. Like-
Arlina Allen:
I think Martinelli's or something.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I almost said apple cider vinegar.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, it was Martinelli's. We toasted with Martinelli's. I mean, it was like nothing. It was a blip on the radar, but that-
Arlina Allen:
The things we worry about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... that was a real concern of mine.
Arlina Allen:
I know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
My 21st birthday, I was so worried about that. My 21st birthday rolls around, I'm still sober. I had done all the things, Vegas and I had done all the things.
Arlina Allen:
All the things.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Whatever the things or the people were, I had done them. I took a group of my friends and we went skydiving. I had my 21st birthday-
Arlina Allen:
Okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, outside-
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, in an airplane.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Out of an airplane.
Arlina Allen:
I was thinking, Vegas has the [crosstalk 00:53:52].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh yeah, the indoor things. No.
Arlina Allen:
I was like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I took a group of friends and I said, "Okay-"
Arlina Allen:
[crosstalk 00:53:58].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... "I've done all the other things. It's my 21st birthday, we're going to jump out of a plane." My mom goes, "Do you have to risk your life at every turn? Is it a requirement?"
Arlina Allen:
[crosstalk 00:54:11].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like, "What are you doing?"
Arlina Allen:
"Why does this have to be a thing with you?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly. We had a great time. I had a great time obviously jumping [crosstalk 00:54:19].
Arlina Allen:
You survived, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I survived, I did. I did survive, but those were things... I was so worried. I have been to more clubs, more parties. I mean, I have been to more crazy things sober, than I ever did. I mean, I was such a gnarly drug addict and alcoholic. I barely made it out of the house. I drank and used by myself.
Arlina Allen:
You pregamed so hard, you didn't make-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. I pregamed so hard, that I often didn't make it to the game. I really did... I thought the party was over. Not the party, I thought the fun was over. Tell me about your Marijuana Maintenance Plan. This is a huge thing that a lot of people experience and I get it.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, it's so [crosstalk 00:55:05].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What is that and how did that work?
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, there's so much talk about it now. I mean, we used to call it the Marijuana Maintenance Program, but that is... and it's such a hot topic now. Marijuana is legal, and a lot of people see it or think of it as a medicinal thing and I suppose.
Arlina Allen:
In reality, that's what happened to me, is I smoked weed for another five months before I got sober, until I had to... that was five months. That wasn't a long-term plan. I had to recognize that I was... and I did have an experience, it took me 60 days to get 30.
Arlina Allen:
I did smoke some weed, and then I realized how... I was aware of how it affected me. It made me really irritable with my family. I just wasn't the person I wanted. It made me feel bad about myself or whatever. I had to recognize that I was powerless over that too.
Arlina Allen:
If I was going to smoke it, I could not control what was going to happen afterwards. I had to admit that I was powerless over everything, and that's when my abstinence journey began. That was April 23rd of '94. That's when I was free of everything.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Free.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's when the work begins.
Arlina Allen:
It did, because when you're smoking weed, you're not really... I mean, it's self-medication. You're creating more problems. You're not really resolving anything. It's only when you're free of every mind altering thing, that the feelings can actually come up. They need to come up, so they can come out.
Arlina Allen:
They need to be processed. I didn't learn how to process any feelings until I found recovery. I'll just give you a quick... I love this. I came across Tara Brach, not that long ago, maybe the last few years. She has this process called RAIN. It's a RAIN meditation. RAIN stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate and Nurture.
Arlina Allen:
She's got a free 10 minute guided meditation on YouTube, that you can look up. It's so such a easy, practical way of resolving negative feelings. I learned about this term called spiritual bypassing. It's like, it's very... I want to do some spiritual bypassing. Last summer, my son broke his back, my 16-year-old.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, he broke his back, but it wasn't a spinal cord injury. Thank God. It was so close. He crushed vertebrae on an ATV, and had to wear a back brace. My instant response to that situation was, is I wanted to do some spiritual bypassing. I was like, "Oh, thank God he's okay. It wasn't a spinal cord injury."
Arlina Allen:
All he has to wear is a back brace. Thank God we have the money to pay the hospital bills. We have the insurance, let's get grateful. My life could have been very different. His life could have been changed. Let's get grateful."
Arlina Allen:
I have this hurt button that's on delayed reaction. I don't typically feel my feelings right away. It happens later. Even in a stress... something stressful can happen and I'll be like, "Oh wow. I handled that so well." Then two days later, I'm on the floor crying.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I do that too.
Arlina Allen:
Or a couple of days later, I'm like, "Why am I so miserable? Why am I so angry? What is happening?" Over the years, I've recognized that it's almost like trauma and then it's on delayed reaction. It shows up later.
Arlina Allen:
If you're smoking weed and doing stuff like that, you don't give yourself the opportunity to process your feelings, because you're high. You're disassociating. That Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb, that was my favorite thing. That's what's happening when you're smoking weed.
Arlina Allen:
I don't want to live like that anymore. I want to learn how to resolve my feelings, so that's what I did. I was fine for a second. I recognized there was spiritual bypassing. Then I leveraged the RAIN meditation, where you go into this meditation. They say that the issues are in your tissues, and I totally believe that.
Arlina Allen:
I held on to the sadness, I held onto the fear that racked my body. I was having tension headaches, and that's anxiety, generalized anxiety. It's not generalized. It was specific, but I think it was disassociating.
Arlina Allen:
I didn't know where it was coming from. It's so important to have tools to help you resolve, process feelings to resolution, so that you're not carrying baggage, that emotional baggage with you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, absolutely.
Arlina Allen:
If that don't break your back, I don't know what will so-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was funny that you mentioned that. Did quarantine do that to you? The delayed... for me, quarantine, the hit of quarantine, it took me... or the pandemic rather and everything that went down with that, it took me three months. Then all of a sudden, I had a freak out. Whereas, my friends had been freaking out the whole time.
Arlina Allen:
Interesting, you're the strong one, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I had such a delayed reaction, it exactly like that. I was a mess and it was super delayed. It's been my coping mechanism, because I know that in the moment, I have to be the strong... I can't fall apart in the moment.
Arlina Allen:
Right, survival.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The world needs me [inaudible 01:00:36]. Yeah, so with your son and the spiritual bypassing, you needed to feel the feelings of being afraid and what happened?
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, our lives could have been so different. It was such a close call. I saw that X-rays and it was centimeters, millimeters. It was a very small margin. It was like this close to him being paralyzed. Like the bone spurs, it was like, that you see the X-ray and how close it was to his spinal cord.
Arlina Allen:
I don't listen. Anyway, if it had been worse... you know what happened? This is such a God thing. This is why I was grateful at first, is because when he fell, the ATV landed on top of him, but he fell into a little ditch.
Arlina Allen:
There was a divot in the ground. When the ATV... and it was big, when it landed on him, the majority of the weight of the ATV was on the ground, because his body was physically in the divot. If that's not a God thing, I don't know what it is. That is not to say that it didn't scare the crap out of me. It scared me so bad.
Arlina Allen:
Then everybody was telling me... everybody has an ATV story about how somebody crashed and died. Once I talked about what happened, everyone had a story about it. I don't know if it was the stories that... like you said, it's not the incident. It's what happens later. It just really scared me.
Arlina Allen:
It really scared me, and I didn't acknowledge it or process it right away. It took a few days, maybe a couple of weeks for me to acknowledge what was really happening. I had to process, I had to be sad. I had to be angry. I was angry at the people who let him ride it. I was angry that it happened.
Arlina Allen:
I was just so scared and grateful. I mean, it was hard. Yeah, and we as alcoholics and addicts, we're emotional people. We're super emotional, which is why I chose that kind of medicine to cope with my feelings.
Arlina Allen:
I often say that it saved my life at a point. If I was young and I didn't have any coping skills, if I didn't have drugs and alcohol and had to feel all the feelings I was feeling when I hated myself the most, I don't know if I would have survived. That's already close as it was.
Arlina Allen:
Really, I kind of had a little bit of suicidal ideation at 14 and 24 or 25, but nothing serious. I didn't have a plan or anything, but I certainly wanted to die. Thank God for drugs and alcohol, because that kind of saved me. Yes, it's just crazy how it all works out, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I relate to that. Yes, absolutely. You are doing a lot of cool things with your sobriety and your life right now. You have this amazing podcast.
Arlina Allen:
Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
One of the top recovery podcasts, ODAAT, what has it been like doing that?
Arlina Allen:
Oh my God, it has been so amazing, so because I'm 12-Step oriented, I was so afraid to do the podcast. This is actually my second podcast. My first one was, I was in Silicon Valley as a high tech sales rep. I had started... there were no women doing those podcasts, so I had started that.
Arlina Allen:
I wanted to do one on recovery. It was really on my heart, and I just was wrestling with this. "Oh man, it's against the traditions, and blah, blah, blah." Then my friend... so I named podcast after my favorite 6:00 AM... we met daily. If you're meeting at 6:00 AM to go to a meeting, you are hardcore.
Arlina Allen:
You are serious about your recovery, and it attracts people who are very serious about their recovery. It's an amazing meeting, still going. I get to go because of COVID, so that's super fun. My dear friend, Gina was at the 6:00 AM meeting and she got in a car accident and died three hours later.
Arlina Allen:
She and I are about the same age, and things were taking off in her life. It was so tragic, and I thought to myself, "You know what? I don't want this dream to die with me. I have this intuition." I had this feeling. It felt like a God thing. I had tried to deny it for a really long time.
Arlina Allen:
After that happened, death has a way of clarifying things. I just felt like it was important to recover out loud and be visible. I was visible about being an ass, when I was drinking and humiliating myself. Why am I not proud of overcoming something deadly? It's a near death experience.
Arlina Allen:
Addiction is no joke, it kills tens of thousands of people, millions of people all the time. It's like, "Why are we hiding this?" I just decided to be bold and do it and I got zero blowback. Nobody has given me a hard time about it. In fact, I get letters from people sharing how it has helped and it's what keeps me going.
Arlina Allen:
They always say, "Oh, if I just helped just one person," my podcast has been downloaded in 53 different countries. The message is getting out there. People are sharing their stories, so I feel really good about that. I've had some amazing experience.
Arlina Allen:
My dear friend, Katie was the second person to be a guest on my podcast. She died suddenly two weeks after her 40th birthday from the flu. This is way before COVID. I don't actually think it was the flu. She had an injury on her hands that I think gave her a blood infection, and it presented like the flu.
Arlina Allen:
That's a whole nother can of worms. After she passed away, I had her interview and was able to share that. She had three kids. Maybe one day they'll get to hear her story through the podcast.
Arlina Allen:
Her sister told me that they had had a falling out, around her using experience. Katie had forgiven her sister and her sister didn't know that she had forgiven her about it, until after she heard the podcast after she died.
Arlina Allen:
It felt like... I mean, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Amazing things happen, when people start sharing their truth and sharing their vulnerability. That's where true courage is.
Arlina Allen:
It's not in white knuckling it, or holding your mud or suppressing your feelings. That doesn't require any courage. It takes courage to do that self-examination that's required of recovery. Those are the people who are the badasses in my book.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I agree. Doing a podcast and having seen people have those incredible transformations, and be able to share those experiences that other people didn't know about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Watching it be downloaded in different countries is really... it is pretty cool. It's a really cool experience. I think death absolutely has a way of clarifying things. I just love that you were willing and able to step out and recover out loud.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think the more of us that recover out loud, that don't look like the man under the bridge with the brown paper bag, I think the more of us that are out there doing that, the less stigma will be around this topic. There's just so many people suffering in the shadows and you hear about it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, I'm sure you have it where people see your podcast and then they reach out to you on Facebook. It's someone you haven't heard from in 20 years, and I can't tell you how often that happens to me. I go, "Oh my sister, oh my this." I haven't heard from this person in I don't even know how long.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They know... because I'm recovering out loud, they know that I'm someone they can talk to about it. It just happens. I am not sure that I would believe someone who said they've never been touched by addiction in some way, shape or form.
Arlina Allen:
It's very rare.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Arlina Allen:
It's very rare.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, maybe [crosstalk 01:08:20].
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, so now, after doing this for so long, I felt like now my life's work is about helping people rebuild their self-esteem after addiction. I feel like there is one thing that determines your relationships, your money and your health and fitness. That's your level of self-esteem.
Arlina Allen:
If I track all my stuff back to the beginning, all my dysfunction happened, because of a low sense of self-esteem. Now I have this class, it's called Reinvent. It's how to rebuild your self-esteem after a heartbreak, addiction and trauma. You can find it... it's for women.
Arlina Allen:
Sorry guys. Some other dude's going to have to step up and do it for the men, because it's a very intimate women's... these small classes for women. A new class is starting every six or seven weeks, depending. Yeah, so I know by the time this is published, the next class will have already started. It's at selfesteemcourse.com.
Arlina Allen:
That is my life's work now. I've actually done a presentation that's going to be aired in the women's prison system. Yeah, I'm super... because I feel like this is information that they need. The rate of women returning to... and most of the women in prison are there for drug and alcohol related issues.
Arlina Allen:
I feel like if I can help them rebuild their self-esteem, that they will be less likely to return. I mean, granted they have to do all the work and it's not that easy. It's an ongoing process. I often talk about it like, you wouldn't eat a salad and expect to be skinny for the rest of your life, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I do.
Arlina Allen:
I'm so sorry.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I 100% eat a salad and I'm like, "Why am I not skinny immediately?"
Arlina Allen:
Spoiler alert, yeah. Yeah, or you go to the gym once and you're like, "Why are my abbs at?" "Oh, it's under all your fat. That's where they're at."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, so self esteem is the same thing. It's like a plant, you have to water it. If you don't water it, it shrivels and dies. Your self esteem needs constant... so I have a membership site called the Brainwashers Club.
Arlina Allen:
I'll leave a link for that too. The Brainwashers Club came from, when I was first in recovery. Just before I met my husband, I was dating this guy and I... when I stopped drinking, suddenly men were everywhere. Suddenly I was a catch.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Who knew?
Arlina Allen:
Who knew? The one thing-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[inaudible 01:10:57] growing up stopped.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, the vomiting in public?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, apparently that's not attractive.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, who knew?
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, but I was dating this guy and I was trying to break up with him. He was like, "I think those people are brainwashing you." I was like, "Yeah, my brain needs some washing." I always thought that that was super funny.
Arlina Allen:
I was like, "Okay, that needs to be the next step after the self-esteem class, is this ongoing support, which is Brainwashers Club," so-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it.
Arlina Allen:
That'll be fun.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it. Well, we're going to have all the links to your podcast, the ODAAT Podcast.
Arlina Allen:
It's ODAAT Chat.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
ODAAT Chat.
Arlina Allen:
It's a chat. Yeah, we're having a little chat. I love it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
ODAAT Chat.
Arlina Allen:
Yeah, ODAAT stands for One Day at a Time. We're chatting about how to stay sober, one day at a time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
ODAAT Chat Podcast and-
Arlina Allen:
I didn't think it through when I named it. I thought everybody knew what ODAAT meant.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What ODAAT... yeah.
Arlina Allen:
Turns out, no. That's just a little sub-culture nomenclature, and I didn't spell it right either. Some people spell it, O-D-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
OD-
Arlina Allen:
It's spelled odaatchat.com. I didn't think that through.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All right.
Arlina Allen:
That's okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I knew what it was. Does that count?
Arlina Allen:
You did? Yay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I've been in 12 Steps since I was like 14.
Arlina Allen:
You better know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I better know. Well, what you're doing is amazing and I love the Brainwashers Club.
Arlina Allen:
It's so fun.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's so good, and Reinvented is available on self-esteem work?
Arlina Allen:
Selfesteemcourse.com.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Arlina Allen:
See, I was thinking it through a little bit there, because that's SEO, the Search Engine Optimization. People type in self-esteem course. Hopefully my class, the Reinvent class will pop up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got it, selfesteemcourse.com.
Arlina Allen:
See, you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[inaudible 01:12:55] I'm impressed. I like it. I liked it, and so all of this will be in the show notes. Arlina, you're amazing. I so appreciate you and-
Arlina Allen:
Thank you. I had so much fun. You bring out the best of me. Thank you so much.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it. Thank you. Thank you for being-
Arlina Allen:
You got a gift for this. You're going to be on my podcast-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm so excited.
Arlina Allen:
Me too, we're going to have fun. I had to hold back. I had 1,000 questions for you, but I'll-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love doing it with a podcaster who wants to interview [crosstalk 01:13:28].
Arlina Allen:
Right, "Hold back girl. Hold it back. This is not your show."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, hold it back, I love it. I love it. Well, I'm so excited to be on your show and to have you. Thank you so much for being here.
Arlina Allen:
Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was awesome.
Arlina Allen:
Awesome.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you. This podcast is sponsored by lionrock.life. Lionrock.life is a recovery community offering free online support group meetings, useful recovery information and entertainment. Visit www.lionrock.life, to view the meeting schedule and find additional resources. Find the joy in recovery at lionrock.life.