Claudia Christian is the most recognized global advocate for the Sinclair Method, a treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD). In 2013 she started her nonprofit C Three Foundation to help raise awareness of the treatment, which saved her life in 2009. In 2020 she was the driving force behind C Three’s launch of www.yoursinclairmethod.com to provide individuals on TSM with support from experienced coaches, and the release of “Journeys” a collection of stories from people on the Sinclair Method. Claudia has been in the film and television business as a performer for over 35 years. She is the author of two autobiographical books; “My Life with Freaks and Geeks” (2010) and “Babylon Confidential” (2012) and the sci-fi novel “Wolf’s Empire” (2016). In 2019 her first cookbook written with gaming expert Mark Michel came out to 5-star reviews. In addition to her nonprofit work, Claudia still appears in TV and film and lends her distinctive voice to the award winning audio series; Anne Manx, Disney’s Atlantis and some of the biggest games in the world including SkyRim, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft , StarCraft, Call of Duty, Halo and Fallout 4. She recently completed the first season of Netflix’s new animated series “Gods and Heroes” and “DOTA”. Claudia currently has a recurring role on the Fox series 911 playing the Captain of the LAPD.
Claudia Christian is the most recognized global advocate for the Sinclair Method, a treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD). In 2013 she started her nonprofit C Three Foundation to help raise awareness of the treatment, which saved her life in 2009. In 2020 she was the driving force behind C Three’s launch of www.yoursinclairmethod.com to provide individuals on TSM with support from experienced coaches, and the release of “Journeys” a collection of stories from people on the Sinclair Method.
Claudia has been in the film and television business as a performer for over 35 years. She is the author of two autobiographical books; “My Life with Freaks and Geeks” (2010) and “Babylon Confidential” (2012) and the sci-fi novel “Wolf’s Empire” (2016). In 2019 her first cookbook written with gaming expert Mark Michel came out to 5-star reviews.
In addition to her nonprofit work, Claudia still appears in TV and film and lends her distinctive voice to the award winning audio series; Anne Manx, Disney’s Atlantis and some of the biggest games in the world including SkyRim, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft , StarCraft, Call of Duty, Halo and Fallout 4. She recently completed the first season of Netflix’s new animated series “Gods and Heroes” and “DOTA”. Claudia currently has a recurring role on the Fox series 911 playing the Captain of the LAPD.
Claudia's story is nothing short of awe-inspiring. She has survived after losing her brother to a traumatic accident, ongoing rape from a next-door neighbor, and struggling through anorexia and alcoholism in various parts of her life. Her dedication to her own recovery and helping those around her is amazing, and we are excited to share her story with you!
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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.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Today, we have Claudia Christian. Claudia is the most recognized global advocate for the Sinclair Method, a treatment for alcohol use disorder, AUD. In 2013, she started her nonprofit C Three Foundation to help raise awareness of the treatment which saved her life in 2009. In 2020, she was the driving force behind C Three's launch of yoursinclairmethod.com to provide individuals on TSM with support from experienced coaches and the release of Journeys, a collection of stories from people on the Sinclair method.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Claudia has been in the film and television business as a performer for over 35 years. She is the author of two autobiographical books, My Life with Freaks and Geeks 2010 and Babylon Confidential 2012, and the sci-fi novel Wolf's Empire 2016.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
In addition to her nonprofit work, Claudia still appears in TV and film and lends her distinctive voice to the award-winning audio series, Anne Manx, Disney's Atlantis, and some of the biggest games in the world including SkyRim, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Call of Duty, Halo, and Fallout 4. She recently completed the first season of Netflix new animated series, Gods and Heroes and Dota. Claudia currently has a recurring role on the Fox series 9-1-1 playing the captain of the LAPD.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Whoo. That is the resume. Wow, what an amazing woman. Claudia was absolutely a delight and she really sold me on the Sinclair method.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm really about people getting help any way that they need to, whatever works for them. And the Sinclair method is something that I did not find out about until late in my career in the mental health and substance use disorder space. I'm really excited for you guys to learn about the Sinclair method, what that can do for people, and the ability to bring choice back into drinking for some and to extinguish the need to drink for others.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The Sinclair method is basically a way to extinguish the desire that urges the cravings of alcohol use. You take a naltrexone pill an hour before you plan to drink, you wait that hour, then you drink the alcohol and you do not have the same cravings. You're able to put it down. You don't have to finish the glass, the bottle and it changes the neural pathways, the habitual pathways that you have formerly created back into more moderate use pathways.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm doing a terrible job of explaining it. She will do a much better job. Please join me Sinclair method expert and actress and woman in recovery, Claudia Christian.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All right, episode 66. Let's do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Claudia, welcome to The Courage to Change. Thank you so much for being here.
Claudia Christian:
It's absolutely my pleasure. Thank you, Ashley.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Really excited to have you. You have an amazing background. We were just talking about this doing voiceover, but you have a laundry list of other things that you've done including your documentary One Little Pill.
Claudia Christian:
Correct. Yes. I've been an actress since the early '80s. And the voiceover actress probably since the '90s. And then I've been in the world of alcohol use disorder since 2009. I wear a lot of hats.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It sounds like the acting was the preparation for...
Claudia Christian:
No. I have a lot of #MeToo stories, but I don't think that was the real crutch that sent me into my own substance use disorder. But my career is something I value and I think that the experience has been amazing. I have nothing to really complain about my Hollywood story. I chose it and it's been very good to me. I've seen the world, I've met amazing people, and I still continue to work at my ripe old age. So it's great.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it. Do you currently live in California?
Claudia Christian:
I do. I live in Los Angeles.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Awesome. But you grew up in Connecticut?
Claudia Christian:
I grew up in Connecticut. My dad was in the oil business. We moved to Westport in Western Connecticut and I lived in Houston, Texas for a while. And then we moved around quite a bit. But I came back to California when I was 14. We lived in Laguna. I went to high school there. I left high school early and pursued my acting career.
Claudia Christian:
I was in Los Angeles at the young, tender age of 16 and on TV by 18. I got my first series then.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You were in Laguna-
Claudia Christian:
Laguna Beach High School and Laguna Hills High School. Both of them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I won't give my address away but I'm near Laguna Hills High School.
Claudia Christian:
I was just there for my birthday. Monday.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, awesome.
Claudia Christian:
I was went back to Laguna Beach. Boy, it's changed in 40 years. Boy, it's changed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you describe your childhood, what was that like?
Claudia Christian:
I think growing up in that era and especially near the woods in Connecticut and having more simple... People always say, "Oh, the good old times." The simplicity of, I guess you would say, friendships that were made organically really not the same pressures that kids have, not access to pornography and things like that. I would say that there was a modicum of innocence there in some shape or form, but we had trauma.
Claudia Christian:
My brother was killed when I was eight. He was 14. That destroyed our family. I would say that that was the turning point for everything. My other brother witnessed it and that affected him extremely adversely. He also turned to substance use later in life. I think that there was a lot of unresolved things. You didn't have therapy for kids in the '70s.
Claudia Christian:
We just brushed it under the carpet and then my parents slowly grew apart and we were isolated, not knowing how to really deal with the death of a sibling in a violent death at that. I think that that definitely had a profound impact on all of us emotionally and I think we all turned to whatever it was as a coping mechanism.
Claudia Christian:
For me, I developed a route. I had very bad OCD as a kid. I was a counter. That's something that I've really looked into over the past decade of working in the addiction world is that a lot of people who have OCD and also eating disorders. I became anorexic as well, have a tendency to slide then into alcoholism or drug addiction.
Claudia Christian:
By the way, the vernacular I'm sorry if I offend anybody, I use everything from alcohol use disorder, substance use disorder, misuse addiction, I use all the words because I think the message is more important than the verbiage. I apologize if I offend anybody, but I just speak from the heart.
Claudia Christian:
I think that that was definitely a trying time. But for me, when my father got transferred to California, I saw it as this beacon of hope because I had been performing on stage for so many years and I really loved it. It was the only time that I could feel in control, I guess. By that point, the OCD had drifted away. I had not developed an eating disorder yet.
Claudia Christian:
I was in a safe place on stage. I could be heard, I could make people laugh, and it made me feel comfort. It made me feel... I guess it was escapism. I really think that that's what it was. It was escapism from the trauma that was not dealt with.
Claudia Christian:
When I came to California, unfortunately, we moved into a house next to a pedophile. I was at that point raped continuously for about a year until we moved away from him, that I'm sure contributed to other issues later on in life, and once again, never dealt with it, never found a good therapist, never did anything like that.
Claudia Christian:
But then I moved away again. I was always running away from death or rape. I ran away to Los Angeles and I found a manager who kept weighing me and always was on me for my weight. So then I started starving myself and then I got a series so that was a reward, reward for being skinny.
Claudia Christian:
I was making money, I was getting my own apartment, and my career was taking off and I started getting movies. It's just that vicious cycle of never quite... In hindsight, I'm 55 now, I look back and I wish to hell that I could just hug that little girl and tell her what to avoid, what to do, how to cope, what friendships to pursue, how to speak to her parents, all of that stuff that. Of course, hindsight is always clearer.
Claudia Christian:
But I think also it makes you who you are and it makes me extremely compassionate to people who are misusing substances now. I think that not having gone through that journey, I wouldn't be, of course, where I am today and able to give back to people in society.
Claudia Christian:
I say this all the time. I would not change having been an alcoholic. I wouldn't take that back out of my life because it's given me a life that's beyond joy. My father said it so succinctly in my documentary. He said, "No Academy Award could ever equal saving a life, even one life." It's true. It makes you feel like you're here for a reason, not doing something superficial with your life.
Claudia Christian:
That's pretty profound. Did I go through a lot of pain to get there? Yeah. I'm not going to lie, man. It was a tough ride through the recovery world and just feeling such guilt and shame and stigma and feeling horrible about myself for so many years that, boy, it is a process and I wish that everybody comes out in the happier end of this. That's my whole goal is to try to avoid that decade of absolute agony of trying to really find your way through the recovery world and find a treatment that works for you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. So much there. I want to go back a little bit to your brother. It was a violent death. Was he involved with something that affected you up until that point because-
Claudia Christian:
No, he was killed by a drunk driver. Ironically. He was crossing the street properly on his bicycle and my brother was with him and tried to comfort him in the middle of the road because he was a Boy Scout. He was taught never moved somebody who has a head injury and another car came and ran over his head and almost killed my other brother as well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God. When your parents moved you guys to Laguna... You went from Connecticut there to Laguna, right?
Claudia Christian:
That happened in Texas and they immediately transferred us right back to Connecticut. That was six weeks. We went back to Connecticut and then we went to Laguna Hills.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did they support you guys in this?
Claudia Christian:
Nothing. I had three older brothers. The youngest one and I were stuck at home and then they put us at their neighbor's house waiting to find out what all this trauma is going on. I was eight and he was maybe 12 and then somebody came in and said, "Oh, my God. Some kid's head was smashed." And then I saw my mom come in with my brother's bandana dripping with blood. That's pretty much what I remember.
Claudia Christian:
And then we moved and we went back to school and people made fun of us. "Oh, your brother's dead." There was no sitting down and talking about what lost mean. No therapy, no guidance counselor, nothing. Not one adult just saying it. All I saw was my father. I'd never seen my father cry. I saw him on his knees throwing up on the lawn and my mom, just on her knees holding a bloody... It's like a movie. It's like cinematic trauma. Those images are so ingrained in my brain. But no, there was never anybody that said, "Let's all just sit together."
Claudia Christian:
I think we attended church briefly in Texas. We'd only been there two months. I think a priest came by at one point but he talked to my parents. Nobody took my other brother who witnessed the whole thing into therapy immediately. He should have immediately been speaking to somebody because he was thinking about the guilt of not dragging him out of the middle of the road. How do you live with that? You're 13 years old. You're going to live with that for the rest of your life? No. It destroyed him.
Claudia Christian:
He's still alive but he struggled immensely with substance use disorders. Immensely. An overachieving, classic everything. And look at all of us. Classic overachievers. We have a genetic engineer with a PhD in physics. He was a master builder now. We have veterinarian. We have somebody tried Kollywood who was on TV, movies, and have to write books, have to always fill your life with so much achievement because we're avoiding that internal struggle.
Claudia Christian:
I'm sure we're all stunted at the age when that happened and I'm sure I'm stunted at the age where I was repeatedly raped by somebody. I'm sure I'm 14 in my body.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You went back to Connecticut and then you went to Laguna?
Claudia Christian:
We moved to a place called Nellie Gail Ranch where that occurred and then a year later, we moved to Laguna Beach where things finally settled in. I had a wonderful guidance counselor and I went to her and I said, "I know I'm 15 years old but I'm 40 inside. I want to get out of here. I want to work. I've already got a bank account. I've changed my name. I'm ready to leave. Can you get me out of high school now?"
Claudia Christian:
And she was so sweet. She said, "Honey, I would never do this for a kid but you are a 40-year-old trapped in a 15 year olds body." She was just wonderful, just so much empathy and concern for me. She allowed me to work three jobs including in the school office and I got a drama scholarship, which I actually never used and then she got me my GED when I turned 16 and I was out of there. I was out of there. And I left.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's amazing. There's a book, I don't know if you've... The Body Keeps the Score. It's an incredible book about trauma and it talks about what happens in the brain of a traumatized person. It is unbelievable how much neurochemistry goes on. I'm rereading it. One of the things that it talks about is they've done experiments, which I won't tell you about because I'm glad they got the information, sorry, about people who had trauma where they couldn't leave the situation.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
With your brother, that was a one huge traumatic event. But with you, you had that and then you also had the ongoing sexual abuse and how that changes the brain of someone when it's something is ongoing and they can't go anywhere. They can't leave. They can't escape. It actually down regulates because you have to figure out a way to survive the situation.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
As someone who went through sexual abuse with a neighbor, much younger age but similar situation, but I think a lot of people don't understand why a 15, 14-year-old girl would never say something to somebody.
Claudia Christian:
I know why.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Why wouldn't you say something?
Claudia Christian:
I didn't say something because I was told that I looked like a whore if I had shorts on. If an adult tells you, "You look like a whore," and then somebody rapes you, you feel like you deserve it because you look like a whore. Mind you, when I say that I was a skinny little 14-year-old that wore shorts, I didn't have lascivious shorts on, I had a pair of shorts on and a tank top like a normal kid and no boobs. I was tall and skinny.
Claudia Christian:
And you're budding. You're confused already with the new hormones and you’re physiologically changing and it's a scary time plus you're new in school. You have all these insecurities and you're starting to wear makeup and you want attention but then you get the wrong attention. It's such a complicated thing and if you don't have a really strong parental guidance at that point, both of my parents were not only moving tremendously away from each other, but they also were super infused with their own needs and desires in life and work.
Claudia Christian:
I was a latchkey kid. My dad was working. My mom was working. There wasn't that family structure. There was very little communication. I've never had good communication with anybody in my family. We're not a family of talkers. We're very stoic, like carry on. My mom is German. My father was Irish.
Claudia Christian:
I never really felt comfortable approaching my parents because there was a stoicism about their own experiences. For instance, my mom lived through World War II as a child and was raped and lost friends and relatives. That was an extreme version of trauma. My dad was sent to military school at the age of five. His parents were never around. Both of them had such difficult things to overcome themselves that I just felt like, "I should handle it the way they handle things and I'll just keep it to myself." Because I felt shame and I felt that it was partially my fault for roller skating in the neighborhood in shorts. Seriously.
Claudia Christian:
You look back now and you're like, "No, it's not your fault for wearing a pair of shorts." It's a person with a real problem. I should have reported it because the men had a little girl. He had a daughter that was about three when he was doing to me.
Claudia Christian:
Later on in life, I felt really, really horrible about it and I did come out to my dad just when I was moving out of the house and moving up to Los Angeles. We were in a screaming match. He was saying, "If you're going to be an actress, get out of here." Because he just wanted me to go to medical school or whatever, like the boys. He wanted me to a real profession as he put it. It just came out of my mouth. I said, "And you didn't even protect me when," the guy's name, "was raping me."
Claudia Christian:
He just dropped. He got a gun and he got in his car and he drove to the guy's house and the guy wasn't there. But his wife was there and my dad burst through the door and the woman looked at him and said, "I know why you're here." I talked about traumatic-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my God, that just give me chills.
Claudia Christian:
I know. But once again, we didn't talk about it. My father passed this April, on April 24 this year, and we still had never talked about it. I've never sat down with either of my parents and just said, "I think that may have had something to do with some of my actions later in life." Because I denied it. I had always believed that addiction was completely biological and that this has nothing to do with it. Childhood trauma has nothing to do with it. It's a biological aspect. Your brain changes. You have a genetic predisposition. I had grandparents on both sides that were alcoholic. Clearly, that's why I became alcoholic.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But you're not actually wrong which is that your brain... There is a biological piece to it and when you have massive trauma, your brain changes.
Claudia Christian:
Yeah, exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And becomes susceptible.
Claudia Christian:
Yes, you can crosshatch it in any way, shape, or form, but I'm sure the trauma contributed to-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, 100%.
Claudia Christian:
Your brain changes and also having the genetic predisposition, drinking before my brain was fully developed, because I started drinking... I was in a European household. I'm sure I had wine at nine and engaging in that behavior over and over again. I learned the behavior. But you're right. I'm sure due to trauma, those biological changes in my neural pathways made me far more susceptible.
Claudia Christian:
That's why I love the whole idea of pharmacological extinction and medication assisted treatment because you can actually see in brain scans, you can see the difference between a pre-Sinclair method brain and a post-Sinclair method brain when somebody has reached what we call extinction. You can see that the neural pathways have reduced, the neural pathways that are strengthened from endorphins that are released by alcohol, they've gone from superhighways down to little country roads. It's just phenomenal. Science is... Well, it's god.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, it's god. I love that. I want to get into the Sinclair method and all that because I as someone who got sober abstinence based, AA treatment, I have lots of questions. In your 20s, you were a light drinker. In your 30s, you were a social drinker. But by the time you were in your 40s, you developed alcohol use disorder which I've been hearing... It's not my experience.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The drinking for me was the eating. For me, when you're describing the OCD and eating and then sliding into alcohol, I remember thinking to myself, yeah, because alcohol is so much easier. You switch into alcohol. It's so much easier than being OCD or having an eating disorder, whichever direction you go, alcohol is like, "I rather do this, geez."
Claudia Christian:
It's a no brainer. Yeah. Counting calories or counting bricks in the building.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah, forget it. You're like, "Get me drunk. This is just the way out." I'm sure we'll discuss but you take out the alcohol guess what's still waiting for you. How did you not slide in? How did you make it through your 20s and 30s without having alcohol use disorder and then it came up?
Claudia Christian:
Work. I was working. And vanity, because you can't be puffy on camera. A good director of photography can tell in a second if you drank the night before. They can see the puffiness around your eyes no matter what age you are. I learned that very early on and i really valued my work. I was married very young. I married an older man who wasn't a big drinker. When I was 23, I got married to him and honestly, a big weekend of drinking was us splitting a bottle of wine on a Saturday night. That for me was like, "Wow. We split a bottle of wine." He, I'm sure, had more than me.
Claudia Christian:
It just wasn't in my-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[crosstalk 00:25:06].
Claudia Christian:
Yeah, it wasn't in my wheelhouse. Alcohol just wasn't interesting to me. Cocaine was because it kept me skinny and once in a while I would-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[crosstalk 00:25:16].
Claudia Christian:
Yeah. Once in a while, I would have to use alcohol to bring me down from the cocaine. And then when I stopped doing blow to keep my weight down, just once again, I was really busy. I was living with partners that weren't alcoholics. It wasn't until I was in my 30s that I lived with someone who was a regular drinker, a really big drinker. I started getting in the habit of drinking with them nightly if I wasn't working the next day and if I was working the next day, I wouldn't drink or I'd have a glass of wine. I wasn't abusing it yet.
Claudia Christian:
I would say that I would abuse it when I went to... I used to go to Renaissance fairs and stuff with my friends and we would all drink all weekend. I guess that is considered abuse, but it was isolated incidents like that or like Halloween, you drink too much, New Year's Eve you drink too much. I was still, in my mind, a normal drinker because I was drinking exactly like everybody else at that age.
Claudia Christian:
And then it didn't escalate until my mid to late 30s. When I started collecting wine and then I started gaining weight and my family and friends started saying, "You drink a lot," or somebody would say, "There's a lot of bottles in the recycling bin." That's when I decided... And my boyfriend at the time said, "You're the fastest drinker I've ever seen in my life." Because I could drink the mimosa in two sips.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did you feel about that? Because I would feel very confident and very flattered by that. Were you the kind of alcoholic [inaudible 00:26:50] like in your life ever? You should tell someone about it. Or were you like, "Oh my God, that' so embarrassing"?
Claudia Christian:
No, I was actually self-conscious about it and I realized that they were right. I did the logical thing. I stopped drinking. I just said, "I'm going to show them." It was like an FU, I suppose. It was like, "Oh, yeah? You think I have a problem? Watch this." By quitting drinking, I caused, what I now know is the alcohol deprivation effect and that's when my brain was starving for alcohol because I was feeding it, alcohol five, six times a week.
Claudia Christian:
I guess you would call it a relapse. When I went back to drinking, I became a binge drinker. I went from a light drinker to a normal drinker to a social drinker to a five times a week drinker to a binge drinker. That was a profound change because binge drinking was not only adversely affecting my health, but it was something that I couldn't control at all. I had gone from somebody who could say, "I'll take a night off," and it wasn't a problem. I was not drinking during the day or in the morning to somebody who had a really serious alcohol use disorder.
Claudia Christian:
And that just went lickety-split, from "Okay, I'll quit," to "I've now relapsed and I'm a binge drinker." That means four or five days out of my life, I am doing nothing but drinking and then I'm recovering for two weeks.
Claudia Christian:
That was the scary thing. I believe I was about 38 years old. My life from that point was broken down into how many relapses did I have this year. So that happened until I was about 43, I guess, in 2009 when I found the Sinclair method. For that amount of time, five years of my life was literally broken down by...
Claudia Christian:
As a little interesting segue, every single relapse was when I was PMSing. There's a hormonal connection as well. Especially in coaching women for the past 10 years I found that postpartum, premenstrual, menopausal, perimenopause... Oh my God, this is like, "This is when you drink." I literally track every single binge, every single time I started drinking when I was PMSing. It's remarkable. They just come out with a paper recently about the hormone connection with women and drinking. Just finally recently.
Claudia Christian:
I was basically relapsing maybe... I think the most I ever got was 10 or 11 months under my belt of sobriety.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
During that five years, did you go to treatment?
Claudia Christian:
Oh yeah, I did. I did AA and multiple different meetings. I did one rehab stay in a place which was just a joke. It was really silly. I did cognitive behavioral therapy with a therapist who never worked with addiction, which was really stupid to pick her. I did hypnotherapy. I did vitamin therapy. You name it. I did anything that was accessible at the time, that I had heard of and when I was in treatment, nobody told me there were medications. They just wanted me to sit and talk about my feelings all day.
Claudia Christian:
I knew exactly my body. I was the three-month honeymoon period of sobriety. I was literally a three- to four-monther after three to four months of sobriety, after a binge, I would start to crave and become mentally obsessed.
Claudia Christian:
I knew that that was coming. I just knew it was coming. That was my timeframe of beauties, I called it, like my honeymoon. I was in the pink cloud of sobriety and everything was great and I was determined and motivated and then the obsessive thoughts would click in again about drinking, "Oh, I can't go there because I could...." "I can't see that person because maybe they'll drink." "Oh, I smell alcohol." "I can't go down that aisle in the supermarket because there's alcohol."
Claudia Christian:
Even though I was sober, I was a dry drunk, and I hate that term. But I was just obsessed with alcohol whether I was drinking or not. I knew that I couldn't live that way. I knew that I couldn't see a life of me being constantly still obsessed with the thought of drinking regardless of whether I was drinking or not. Besides the white knuckling, I think it was just the mental obsession and that's what drove me crazy. I could not focus on my life without always thinking about booze.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's the part that just sinks you. I think that is why and with whatever obsession it is the counting, the eating disorder, the alcohol. It's so loud in your head.
Claudia Christian:
All-consuming.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You can't do anything else so you might as well drink or you might as well eat or you might as well insert, whatever, count. You might as well... It just gets to this place where you're like, "I can't go on normally so I might as well just shut the voice up." The problem is that it shuts it up for that short period of time and then it amplifies it, right?
Claudia Christian:
Of course, it does. If you finally relent and wash your hands for the 90th time that day, you have a moment of relief while you're washing your hands, but then it clicks right back up again. You got to wash your hands again. Whatever.
Claudia Christian:
And with booze, it's worse because it releases cortisol so now you're feeling anxious after the alcohol wears off and you need another drink and then your tolerance is raising. You're rising tolerance. Now, you can tolerate so much booze that it's this vicious circle of now you need a drink every 20 minutes. Now, you need a shot every 20 minutes because your tolerance is so high.
Claudia Christian:
And the second it starts to wear off, you start to feel withdrawal symptoms, which is anxiety and stress and you can't function and then you get to the point where I got to the point is literally I could not function without alcohol in my system. I would start to go into major withdrawal. That's where you get the handshakes. Horrible. Oh my God.
Claudia Christian:
It's so weird. I was thinking about it the other day and I thought it's almost like it was a different person and it is a different person. It's a person who has been taken over and hijacked. Your brain is hijacked. Your body is hijacked by this entity, which is addiction, and nobody else can understand it unless they've actually experienced the feeling of looking down on yourself and seeing yourself stealing alcohol from your local store. You are a grown ass woman with a profession, with everything to lose, and you're putting a bottle of beer in your pants. Who does this?
Claudia Christian:
And then you drink it in the car and you throw it up because you're so poisoned. Your body's so poisoned. And then you drink the second one to keep it down.
Claudia Christian:
It's mouthwash. Vanilla extract.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Rubbing alcohol. People drink...
Claudia Christian:
Oh my God.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love when you say that... You've probably heard this before but I thought I may be possessed. I was like, "Maybe I'm possessed." Of course, I'm not going to say that because then I'm like, "Great. I need an exorcism. I've really gone and done it now. I need an exorcism." But one of the things that was for me when I figured out that I was an alcoholic, it was such a relief because I thought I was going to end up being committed. There is something in me that is not right and the other thing, I thought I might be schizophrenic because I had-
Claudia Christian:
Yeah, it makes you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, because I had voices. It was my voice. It was loud. My [inaudible 00:34:49] husband calls it K f radio in your head. And it's loud. I remember finding out this is what alcoholism was and being relieved that it wasn't something I was going to need electroshock therapy-
Claudia Christian:
[crosstalk 00:35:05].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah. I was like, "I'm going away. I can't tell anybody about this. They're going to put me somewhere."
Claudia Christian:
Do you know how many alcoholics are misdiagnosed as bipolar? Because they're in the throes of... Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Me too. They put me on... Although I was a teenager, they put me on lithium. But I was detoxing from cocaine, I couldn't tell them about that. But I'm up and down because I'm drinking and using
Claudia Christian:
Yeah, exactly. And then when you're high, my family all thought I was bipolar because when I was in the midst of a drinking binge, I would be effervescent and high and fluid and talking a lot. And then when I was, of course, sober, my normal kind of shy self with strangers. They thought, "Oh, something's wrong with her mentally." I tried to explain over the years. No, you're seeing somebody in the throes of alcoholism. That's what you're saying, highs and lows, highs and lows.
Claudia Christian:
I'm not bipolar. But that's what people think because you... I'm sorry, I don't want to use that word but you're acting crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, no, you're legitimately [crosstalk 00:36:15]. It's not logical, but I think every alcoholic, every person who's really been in throes of it when you say like you feel possessed, you feel taken over, you feel like... That is real. You really feel like you're a different person.
Claudia Christian:
I hallucinated too. I totally hallucinate on booze.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
People see us that way too. The Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. That whole thing. You go in and out of different types of programs and then you find this thing. How did you find the Sinclair method?
Claudia Christian:
In 2009, I was coming off of a really bad binge and I did what I always do which is cold turkey and I started to stroke out at home. I couldn't move. I couldn't get dressed or anything. So I called a friend and she took me to a medical detox which was my only medical detox that I've ever done. It was horrific. It was so awful. Demeaning. Horrible. They eventually gave me a medication to stop shaking because I couldn't even hold the pen. It was so bad.
Claudia Christian:
And they finally hours later gave me a medication. I guess it must have been valium or something and I totally sorted me out. Had I known then what I know now, I would have kept the Pentin the house and I would have been fine or something and I would have been absolutely fine through my withdrawal or I would have tapered off alcohol, which is far safer. But instead I just went cold turkey and it was horrible. I didn't know any better. Think about the brain cells that were killed.
Claudia Christian:
I checked myself out immediately because I felt 100% better and then I'm a cockroach. They gave me one valium. I was like, "Okay, I'm sorted. I want to go." I was not going to spend the night there. I checked myself out and on the way out, I grabbed a whole bunch of flyers because I was just desperate for maybe there's something new and one of them was the shot Vivitrol. I took the pamphlet home and I read it and it said it would get rid of cravings.
Claudia Christian:
I called the treatment center back again and I left a message. They didn't answer and I said, "I wanted to get that shot." It was really expensive, but I was desperate because I knew what was going to happen. I would stay sober for three months and then I would go right back to it and this time, I would die because this was such a bad relapse.
Claudia Christian:
I started researching because they did not call me back. It was almost divine intervention. It was weird. They never called me back. Days went by and I thought, "I've got three months to sort this," because I'm going to relapse again, maybe even sooner.
Claudia Christian:
I researched Vivitrol. I found out it was naltrexone and then I researched naltrexone and up popped a book called The Cure for Alcoholism and I'm like, "Yeah, right. Cure for alcoholism." Dr. Roy Eskapa and I thought, "This is a load of horse, donkey..." I clicked on it and they had a couple free pages to read. So I started reading it and I said, "Oh, my God, this makes total sense." I come from a family of researchers and physicists and I just thought this is science and it really makes sense.
Claudia Christian:
So then became my hurdle of getting naltrexone and that's when I called my GP and I said, "I need an appointment." I went down there with the book that arrived. I got the book and I said, "Here, I want to try this method." And he just looked at me said, "I'm not prescribing you an opiate. You just go to AA." And I said, "It's not an opiate. It's an opiate blocker." He said, "I don't care what it is. You don't exchange a drug for a drug." And I was like, "It's not addictive. It's not fun." I was trying to explain to him what this was. I said, "They already use it but they use it with abstinence and I just want to do this." And he said, "I'm not giving it to you."
Claudia Christian:
I ordered it from a pharmacy online. I had never done that before. I put my credit card in. I thought I was going to be arrested. I thought, "Oh my God, this is illegal." But I was so desperate.
Claudia Christian:
Six weeks later, it still didn't arrive. I call this pharmacy in India and I'm crying on the phone going, "This is a life or death situation." I'm crying. I'm literally screaming at them. It's been six weeks. At this point, I'm starting to feel the cravings kick in and they apologized and they said, "We'll get another package out to you," and that next day, the original package arrived at my box. I was feeling like, "Oh, thank God."
Claudia Christian:
I had never forget this. It's so funny. I've lost so many memories due to drinking in my life, but I never forget this. I picked up the package and I went to Trader Joe's and I bought a bottle of red wine and I was eating meat back then. So I bought a steak. I was PMSing and I bought that little step stuff and I had not had alcohol in my house for eons.
Claudia Christian:
I went back to my house and I literally just said a prayer and I made myself dinner. And I took the pill. I waited an hour just like you're supposed to and I felt really weird. I felt spaced out because my body was so clean. I felt kind of loopy, but I just persevered.
Claudia Christian:
I started eating my steak, I poured myself a glass of wine, and I couldn't even finish it. I drank maybe an inch and I thought okay, "That was weird." Maybe it's a placebo effect or something. Whatever. I had a really bad night's sleep from the medication that night and then the next night, I didn't feel like drinking.
Claudia Christian:
And then the next night, I did feel like drinking. So I did it again but the same bottle of wine so that I poured it back in. There's still like, what? Three quarters of a bottle at least. I drink nothing, like a little inch of it. I poured another glass of wine, the same bottle, and I drank that and I drank a second glass.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you take the medication?
Claudia Christian:
Yeah, of course, I took the medication. I waited an hour. I did the same routine over again. I took the medication at 5:00, had a drink at 6:00 PM. I did it fastidiously because I was so concerned that I would spiral into a binge that it wasn't working. So I did it again. I drank two glasses of wine and I honestly didn't want anymore. And I thought, "That's amazing." There was still wine left in the bottom of the bottle, which is unheard of. I never had a half empty bottle of wine in my home for years. I put the bottle back in the kitchen.
Claudia Christian:
And then the next night, I took a pill waited an hour and I finished that bottle of wine and that was it. And then I didn't drink for a week. I thought, "This is just too good to be true." It kept improving from then. I would go out... I was really careful. I had my pills everywhere, in the wallet and this, in the car and with my friends.
Claudia Christian:
I was paranoid. I just cautiously kept just thinking to myself, "Oh my God, I have control," which is so weird. I have control. I wasn't really thinking about. I would plan it so yes, I was thinking which much falls into anorexia and OCD. I was planning every drinking session. Thursday night, I'll allow myself to take a pill.
Claudia Christian:
I'm sure that was feeding the addiction in my brain as well because hiding is a thrill. Planning is a thrill. All the mechanisms of the ritual of using any substance is a thrill, the wineglass, the opening of the cork, that all releases endorphins and dopamine. We know that. But at the time, I didn't know I was just so thrilled that this was working.
Claudia Christian:
It was about three and a half, maybe four months at the most, into using the Sinclair method that I had my big "aha" moment which I talked about my TEDx Talk. There was a billboard in Studio City that I always drove by and I had this big glass of red wine on it and a steak. The glass of red wine would always make me think I have to have a drink of wine. Or if I was sober, I would think, "I can't have that wine," and it would upset me.
Claudia Christian:
This one particular day, after three or four months on the Sinclair method, I was driving down and I looked up and my brain said, "That's a billboard, nothing else." I literally pulled over and I started to cry because I realized my brain was fixed. It had no impact on me. I didn't crave. I didn't get stimulated. I didn't get angry. It was just a billboard. I knew at that point I just was weeping in my car. I knew I was better. It was such a profound moment. I couldn't stop weeping because I felt like I had an off button again. I was back. Claudia was back. I was back in the driver's seat and I was back, just back in my body.
Claudia Christian:
That was when I really decided, if I don't talk about this and if I don't do something about telling other people about this, then I'm not a worthy human being at all. I don't deserve to live because it was such an impact and such a miracle. It was going from having this beast, this possession as you call it in your body, and being possessed and suddenly it's gone. I'm free. Now, if I don't tell other people about this, it's not fair.
Claudia Christian:
I thought there are people coming out as actors and actresses and maybe it's okay. I knew I would be judged. I knew that I would probably lose some jobs. I knew that I wouldn't be considered for things if I came out and I also knew that I would be thought of as a lunatic because this is something that nobody had heard of. Man, if it was that easy, if you could just pop a pill, we wouldn't have any addiction and I knew all of that was coming and I also knew that the 12-step community that I had left would attack me because trading a drug for a drug which is not in any way, shape, or form, but that's a very easy way to...
Claudia Christian:
It's also completely counterintuitive to tell an alcohol to drink. I get that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hi, this is Ashley Loeb Blassingame. I am here to tell you that National Online Recovery Day will debut this year on September 22. 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, September 22 at 2:00 PM Pacific Time, 5:00 PM Eastern Time. Mark it down. Visit www.nationalonlinerecoveryday.com for more event details.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For people who don't know, tell us what the Sinclair. We've described it, but can you tell us? Claudia, what's the Sinclair method?
Claudia Christian:
The Sinclair method is the targeted use of an opiate antagonist or opiate blocker in order to unlearn addiction in the brain. How does that work? I'll take you through the layman's terms.
Claudia Christian:
Every time somebody with an alcohol use disorder drinks, they are reinforcing the neural pathways in their brain, it's a reinforcement and a reward, because when we drink alcohol, the endorphins are released. The endorphins then cling on to the opiate receptors and they make the neural pathways more strengthened. If you have an opiate blocker in your system like naltrexone, nalmefene, naloxone which is used for overdose from opiates, if you've got naltrexone, nalmefene is the sister drug that's used in Europe, you know that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know about Narcan. I had it.
Claudia Christian:
Narcan, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Not a good time.
Claudia Christian:
No. You go into complete withdrawal. It's very dangerous. That's why people who are using opiates can't use the Sinclair method. If they have a coexisting disorder where they're addicted to opiates, they will go into full withdrawal by popping a naltrexone.
Claudia Christian:
You've got the naltrexone in your brain. I like to tell people it's like a condom over your opiate receptors. You've got your condom on and now you're drinking and these endorphins are being released and they're literally bouncing off the opiate receptor. They cannot adhere to it because you're covered it with a condom. Your condom is naltrexone.
Claudia Christian:
What happens? You drink and you're not getting the reinforcement, the reward. You can feel relaxed and you can taste the alcohol but your brain is missing something. What does the brain do? The brain learns to unlearn the behavior because it's not getting the reward. Why would you do something continuously? Your brain is very smart, obviously. It's like Pavlov in reverse. You keep ringing the bell but you're not feeding the dog, the dog is going to stop salivating.
Claudia Christian:
If I keep drinking and my brain is not getting the reinforcement or the reward, the endorphin release, then why should I keep drinking? You become disinterested. I like to tell people, "You don't give up alcohol. Alcohol gives you up." That's what happens on the Sinclair method is slowly but surely you start to drink less, you start to think about alcohol less, you obsess about it less.
Claudia Christian:
Now that I know so much about it, I also change their behavior at the same time. There's no more hiding. There's no more lying about alcohol. You're drinking out in the open in front of your loved ones. You're tracking your drinks, you're keeping the drink log so you understand units. You are also accountable.
Claudia Christian:
You're also hopefully doing some coaching or some therapy in changing your life habits because if you pop a naltrexone and you're still drinking out of the same glass, sit in the same chair, watching the same Netflix show, you're not changing your habits.
Claudia Christian:
If you've been on the Sinclair method and suddenly you've got all this time on your hands because you're not getting drunk every night, you need to have things to do. You need to start new hobbies or old hobbies. You need to change your life. You need to start working out.
Claudia Christian:
The wonderful thing about TSM is it's a dual therapy. On the days that you do not drink and you do not take naltrexone, if you engage in good endorphin producing activities like working out or making love or eating spicy food, playing with your kids, animals, being in nature, you get so much more reward on those days because your brain has been blocked by the days that you've been drinking on naltrexone. It's in your body for 10 hours.
Claudia Christian:
On those days, your endorphin levels have been blocked from the alcohol and now your brain is starved for it. If you go on a beautiful walk or jump in the ocean or make love to the person you're with or eat a beautiful meal or cook or play an instrument, you're going to feel high in a good way. It really is a dual therapy which is something I didn't understand in the beginning when I was doing it. I was just fastidious about compliance.
Claudia Christian:
I will touch upon something that is extremely dear to me. The reason why I always tell people if you don't comply, if you don't treat this like your life saving medication, you will relearn the addiction. I did in year six on TSM. I relearned it like that, one week and I was readdicted.
Claudia Christian:
You are not cured. That's the one thing about that book that I wish they would have changed is the title. You are in remission. You are in remission as long as you comply. There is no cure. It will be a little thing in the back of your brain that if you feed it alcohol unprotected by naltrexone that thing will grow again and you will become addicted. It may take you a day, it might take you a year but you will become readdicted.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I have a question about that. When you do TSM, the Sinclair method, are you able to drink moderately? When you say year six, does that mean six years without drinking or six years drinking normally?
Claudia Christian:
Like a normal person. For six years I was able to go travel and remember the trips because I would have one glass of red wine in Italy. I was able to go to France and remember and drive the whole time because I would have one glass of wine at the end of the night, maybe three days a week. I was a normal person again. I didn't abuse alcohol. I was back to my 20s. I reverted back to the behavior of my 20s as long as I comply. I was very good about compliance until I wasn't. That was the grand poobah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But what does that look like?
Claudia Christian:
That looked like me losing somebody very dear to me and not coping with it, going straight down to the bar and ordering a drink without taking my naltrexone and relearning the behavior.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Within a week, what did it look like at the end of the week?
Claudia Christian:
I was on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride binge and then I crawled out of that and went back on TSM. And then in 2018, I just stopped drinking altogether because just hormones and age and it just wasn't offering anything to my life anymore. Having that choice was like you proved your point. You have a choice. But are you happier without it? Absolutely. Do you look better? Absolutely. Do you sleep better? Yes. You don't want to be going through menopause while you're drinking alcohol. It's just not smart. I will tell any woman that it screws up your circadian rhythms, your sleep is going to be so messed up. I'm talking about even infrequently.
Claudia Christian:
I was seeing somebody who was in AA for 20 years. It wasn't like alcohol was around me. But once in a blue moon, take a pill and go out but even that was like, "You know what? I've done it to death and it's just not bringing anything into my life and I feel so..." Sleep was the biggest issue. To be honest with you, it changes. Even drinking once a month will screw you up for days. That's just a fact.
Claudia Christian:
The more I study brain chemistry and neural pathways, it's just a fact that alcohol or any other drug really messes up your sleep and sleep is vital for your happiness and your health. It's more important to me to just get great sleep than it is to be able to have a glass of wine in an Italian restaurant. Certainly not important to me anymore.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. What was-
Claudia Christian:
I only have chocolate. Seriously. Now, I parlayed my addiction into a British Cadbury chocolate addiction.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There's going to be a new method for that. It's funny. I was thinking that. I was like, "I wonder if it works with sugar."
Claudia Christian:
It actually does work for sugar but you have to comply to the TSM.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
As a member of 12-step program, someone who was kind of raised in that, I know exactly what people would say about it. For me, my belief system is we came here because we had a problem and we were looking... It depends what your goal is. AA works, 12-step works. If your goal is to be abstinent and to... Go ahead.
Claudia Christian:
I'm sorry. This works for abstinence as well. About 45% of people go abstinent on TSM and some of them miraculously quickly. The difference is they go abstinent because they are no longer interested in drinking. I like to lose my coaching clients. I like to lose them because when I lose them, it means that they're just done with alcohol and they have no longer need for coaching. They don't take the pill anymore because they don't drink anymore. What's the point? It's behind them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For me, I don't think about drinking every day anymore either. I've been sober 14 and a half years.
Claudia Christian:
Congratulations.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you. But the crazy brain piece, it's still there. My husband would attest. One of the greatest gifts I've gotten from recovery, forget what kind of recovery, it doesn't matter what program you're doing, but from recovering, is the mental support, the community support, the mental support, the ongoing self-exploration and accountability.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When I look at the Sinclair method, the way that you describe it, and someone says, "I'm just not interested anymore," that's great. But to me, for my life, I would be missing out on so, so much if I had just been uninterested anymore because of what I've had to do to stay sober. What do you think of that?
Claudia Christian:
I had this, I wouldn't say, argument but this discussion with on the Larry King show with the actress, God, I'm forgetting her name, Meredith Baxter, who's big in the 12-step community and she said your words exactly. "There was so much I wouldn't have gained in my life without the 12-step community." And I said, "That's totally understandable."
Claudia Christian:
What about everybody else? Surgeons, police officers, lawyers, people who cannot come out, first of all, and second of all, what about people who are strictly biological? What about people who have a beautiful childhood and a perfect marriage, but they became addicted due to neurology, to biological aspect of it. What about the rest of us who don't want to carry on saying, "I'm an alcoholic for the rest of my life?" I want it to be behind me. I don't believe I'm an alcoholic anymore. I'm not drinking and I'm not thinking about alcohol. I don't want to label myself.
Claudia Christian:
What about the fact that you can combine them? What if I say to you, to somebody who's a chronic relapser going into the rooms, chronically relapsing, and instead of being filled with shame, I can give them medication, send them back in the rooms in three months or four months from now because their goal is abstinence.
Claudia Christian:
AA states, "The only thing you need to attend a meeting is the desire to stop drinking." This person has a desire to stop drinking and they're on a medication to get rid of the cravings and suddenly, they get rid of the cravings and they're free and they're still getting the support of AA and the community. What's wrong with that?
Claudia Christian:
And if somebody wants to go to meetings and they want the camaraderie, we have seven meetings a week online. We have seven Facebook pages. We have online forums for people on TSM. We have coaches. We have a whole coaching page. We have telemedicine companies throughout the entire United States offering comprehensive programs with cognitive behavioral therapy and medications, and if naltrexone doesn't work for you, try something else.
Claudia Christian:
What I believe in is everything. I believe in it all. If AA works for you, fabulous. If baclofen worked for you, wonderful. If naltrexone with abstinence works for you, I'm thrilled for you.
Claudia Christian:
What I don't believe in is a my way or highway attitude about any treatment for any substance use disorder because that is an archaic standpoint and it's also barbaric and it is inhumane because not everybody is helped by the current paradigm, period. If they were helped by the current paradigm and the current offerings, we wouldn't have deaths progressing at a rapid pace. We wouldn't have substance use disorders escalating especially during COVID-19. During this time, you know who's winning? The alcohol companies are winning.
Claudia Christian:
There was literally an article I read this morning celebrating the fact that they've never sold so much hard seltzer in history. That is not something to celebrate. People are coping the best they can but they're coping in the wrong way. They're using alcohol to try and destress and it's a vicious circle and you're going to see so many people coming out of this thing fully addicted. Fully addicted. And it is shocking.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We already area.
Claudia Christian:
Already are. It is shocking. And who's going to monetize that? Alcohol companies and rehab facilities. All I'm here to say is there's another option. I'm not judging anybody's way of recovering. I'm simply saying it is their right to know every single option, every medication, every therapeutics, every rehab, everything. We should all be enlightened and educated.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, I 100% agree. I do agree with you. I think that as long as you, one, uses their alcohol problem, or insert whatever problem, to gain new coping skills, new habits to look inward, and obviously in terms of making their life more manageable with the actual substance, my piece is the one place that there's one outcome that I think is good, I don't think it's optimal, and that one outcome that's good but in my opinion not optimal is simply stopping and not doing any internal work.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's the only one where I say, you got there for a reason and I don't care if you have to go meditate in a forest, you go to church, you Sinclair meetings, you're coaching, whatever, it doesn't matter.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
AA had to work for me because I was going to die but I didn't believe anything that was going on. I just didn't have a choice. I literally and like you talked about, there were no other options and I took what was there. I was so miserable. I took what was there and they say, "Take what you like and leave the rest." I was like, "I don't know what you're talking about with the God stuff. I don't care. Fine, whatever."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I took what I could and I reinterpreted it for myself so that I could get through it and then it became whatever for me. I totally get. I relapsed many, many times because I was like, "I'm not doing that shit." I totally get it not working for everybody, it not being the only option. Completely understand that. The only place where I say to people is it's so important to do some work, any kind of support. That's the piece that I just hold on.
Claudia Christian:
We see tremendous results with people who combine it with anything from coaching to cognitive behavioral therapy to psychotherapy. But let me ask you this, wouldn't it be easier to listen to your therapist and really, really hear what they're saying if you don't have cravings?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, absolutely. Even for cravings, I think that Vivitrol and those types of things... I will outwardly say this. I actually have a guest coming on to talk about their journey with Suboxone. I have a hard time with Suboxone as a lifelong medication. However, if my child...
Claudia Christian:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm a heroin addict. I didn't have Suboxone, blah, blah, blah. But if it was the difference between my child being alive or dead, I would sign up so freaking fast. You know what I mean? I wouldn't normally think it would be first resort. I would think it would be more of a last resort thing and to see if someone can develop coping skills without it. But if it was my child, I would jump on any bandwagon that would save their life, I would have no stance as long as it helps them live. I know that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I really do think what you're telling people and going out and telling people about this option is so important because I had never heard of it. No one ever told me, granted, that didn't make a difference for me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But I do think that having these options, knowing all the different ways we can save lives, different things work for different people, and different amounts of brain trauma, different levels of traumatized people are going to have different outcomes in terms of this stuff. Certain brains, you take away all the substance, there's so much damage from the trauma, they may need more help than someone who had less trauma.
Claudia Christian:
Absolutely. As I said, the statistics show. We've done casual research. Anecdotally, people who have support do so much better. That's on every level. People who have family and friends, loved ones, people who do attend our meetings. Everybody does better if they're accountable.
Claudia Christian:
You also have to be motivated. If you're not motivated to take the tablet and wait an hour, then I can't force you to do TSM. This is not for somebody whose wife is sending their husband to me. I can't force the husband to do TSM. This is somebody who's tried everything else, who needs privacy in their treatment.
Claudia Christian:
There's certain types of personalities that work really well with this, some people who look at it like a scientific experiment, they take the pill and then they start taking guitar lessons. They join the classes that we have. They get a coach. They keep their drink log fastidiously and they're on a mission. They are motivated to decrease and then maybe even stop drinking. Those are the people who do really well.
Claudia Christian:
But once again, you have to have the motivation. If you don't comply, this ain't going to work. It's like an AA. If you don't show up, it's not going to stick. You have to have people who-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's not for people who need it. It's not for people who want it. It's for people who do it.
Claudia Christian:
Exactly. This is the exact same thing and I strongly urge people to get help at the same time. You don't just pop the pill. That's not what I'm advocating. The pill will help you lose the cravings and the desire but of course, you have to discover why were you drinking to that extent. It's not just because Uncle Charlie was an alcoholic as well.
Claudia Christian:
There was a combination of factors that you need to address in your life and you have to change things. You have to change your friendships, you have to put boundaries up as a woman and a man, youngster. Youngster, that's a funny word. I deal with people who are 20. They have to be able to say to their friends, "Look, this is my boundary. We don't need to do activities that involve alcohol every time we get together." These are all things that you learn and grow.
Claudia Christian:
But in the meantime, I want to get rid of that obsession in their brain. I want them to stop thinking about booze and having that alcohol control their lives so much. In that regard, it helps. But by all means everybody needs a comprehensive program to deal with this because it is a comprehensive issue. It affects you holistically. It's everything. Everything.
Claudia Christian:
You need to love yourself. You need to really understand your relationships, your triggers... That's another thing is triggers. If you don't understand why you drink around your mom, you better find out why. You better dive deep and really understand why because even if you do get the control of the drinking under control, you haven't dealt with the reasons why you drink around her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. What about Vivitrol? With Vivitrol, they give shots that can last a month and help reduce cravings. How is that different?
Claudia Christian:
It's completely different. First of all, I advocate Vivitrol. It works for some people but I think it's very expensive and I don't like the idea of the medication being in your system 24 hours a day because then you can never do the dual aspect therapy of it. You can never go for a long walk and feel natural endorphins.
Claudia Christian:
I'm not going to quote anything, but there's been some research that indicates some people get depressed by having that in their body all the time. I think Vivitrol had an issue with that. But hey, if it works for somebody, God bless him.
Claudia Christian:
I have two former patients that ended up having to get the shot and they take the shot because they didn't trust themselves to comply. And then what they do is they take an additional tablet before they drink. They've got naltrexone in their body all the time and then they take another targeted dose an hour before they drink alcohol and it works for them. You know what? Whatever works for you. Some people have to get the implant because they cannot adhere to the method which is to take the pill before they drink.
Claudia Christian:
It's the same with Antabuse. I remember they gave me Antabuse. I read all the side effects and I was like, "This is the stupidest thing in the world." It could kill you. I just didn't take it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's what I always wonder about-
Claudia Christian:
[crosstalk 01:09:13]. Because it's not going to fix me, it's just going to make me sick. But if you want me to take a medication that's going to fix my brain, now that makes sense.
Claudia Christian:
I don't want punitive action. I don't want to be punished but and get violently ill and maybe ruin my liver by taking something that could kill me. Nobody's ever died taking naltrexone. It's not an addictive substance. It's something that's helping your brain unlearn something that you've learned. That just made so much more sense to me.
Claudia Christian:
Antabuse, I threw it away. It was $300 prescription. I just chucked it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When I first heard about the Sinclair method, I was like, "Why would I take the pill?" Again, it's about your motivations, right?
Claudia Christian:
Because you don't want to get drunk. I tell people it's your freedom pill because a lot of people are so harped up on, "Oh, I just want to be able to have a tequila when I go to Mexico." Okay, you're still in the stage of romanticizing alcohol. I was even in that stage of romanticizing it, but I want to have the choice. It was so important for me to have the choice. I couldn't give a fig about it now, but back then it was important.
Claudia Christian:
I'm dealing with people who are still in that stage. They're 30 years old and they're hooked on the fact of, "What do you mean? I can't drink at my wedding?" I'm saying, "Look, yes, you can. I'm giving you a freedom pill. This is a pass, but you have to drink mindfully. You have to track your drinks. You have to be accountable. You have to start joining in on the weekly sessions. You have to get a coach. You have to get a therapist.
Claudia Christian:
Yeah, you can drink at your wedding. If we work toward that goal, you can drink and actually remember your wedding and not make an ass of yourself at your wedding. If you follow the protocol." But if that's so important to her at 30, it might not be important to her at 40. She might be done with drinking.
Claudia Christian:
All I can do is deal with the person in the stage they are right now. This is why nine out of 10 people don't seek treatment is because they're faced with one truth, their truth, which is you got to stop drinking. If I can get those nine people to understand that they don't have to stop drinking right now, they can unlearn the habit of misusing it. It's classic harm reduction. If I can get them through harm reduction in using this and then maybe in their 40s and 50s and 60s, they just give it up and isn't that what we all want is just to be free from it. That's my goal.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love that. I think however you get in the door of bettering yourself and improving coping skills and getting into a meaningful lifestyle, then that's what matters. I have to remember sometimes this gets really intense in the 12-step community which is this idea of time and have you worked this... If you're in a long time, you can get into these almost rankings in your head. They're not actual rankings but they're rankings.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Over the years, I've had times where I got into this to save my life and to have a happy, better life. I'm not here to achieve something in this program. I'm only here to achieve what I need to achieve and then give back to the world in whatever way makes sense for me. When I get back to that, when I remember that as opposed to getting caught up in ego stuff because that's the ego stuff is like, "Where do I rank against you? Am I accepted in this way or that way?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think that it's so important to remember we're just trying to live a happy life. That's why we started.
Claudia Christian:
I couldn't agree with you more and I like to use the analogy of dieting. This is my classic analogy. If you, Ashley, have two morbidly obese siblings and one of them uses a Lap Band and loses 150 pounds and she's healthy and happy and the other one does it with diet and exercise and he's happy and healthy, do you judge them? Do you care?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Claudia Christian:
You're just happy that they're alive and healthy, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Claudia Christian:
That's the way I think about recovery is you're exactly right. What you wanted was sobriety, you wanted health, you wanted happiness [crosstalk 01:13:37]. You wanted to live.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I wanted nothing to do with sobriety. I wanted to stop the pain... It was even more primal than that. I just wanted to not be in pain. I connected the dots. That's what you're saying, which is if you want to be thin and sibling A connecting the dots, "I want to be thin in order to get there-
Claudia Christian:
I want to be alive. I think I'm going to die. I'm morbidly obese. I want to be alive. I do not want to die.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Then I need to be thin and I need to do it quickly. Okay, I'm not going to be able to run because I'm morbidly obese. I'm not going to be able to blah, blah, blah, blah. It makes most sense to expedite the process by getting the Lap Band.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Working backwards from your goals of, "I want to live, I don't want to be in pain," and then getting to where you need to go is, and that's what you're saying, just work backwards from that. However you get to where you need to go is fine as long as it's not hurting anybody and it's best if it includes some sort of support and introspection.
Claudia Christian:
Don't you think both siblings will have to relearn how they feel about food? They can't keep eating their feelings. Even if the Lap Band person has to relearn how to eat and what they were using food for and the one who's dieting and exercise is going to continually have to change their lifestyle, that they're going to have to incorporate tons of fastidiousness about diet and they're going to have to weigh themselves. If it goes up a couple pounds, they have to diet again.
Claudia Christian:
It is. They're both working towards a common goal and it doesn't matter how they get there. If 10 years from now, you look at both your siblings and they're happy and healthy and they're alive and they don't have diabetes, you're going to be, "Okay, job's done. Good on both of you."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Agreed. I think it's just so amazing. The Sinclair method, is that available... If someone's interested in finding out more about Sinclair method, someone's interested, what are the steps? Do they read the book first? Walk us through what the...
Claudia Christian:
Anybody who is interested to learn about the Sinclair method can go to cthreefoundation.org. That is my website and that is a one stop shopping in the United States for... You can find a provider.
Claudia Christian:
If you would prefer somebody in office, there's a tab that says Find a Provider. Right underneath that tab is telemedicine, if you want to do it on the phone or video. If you want the prescription today, you can choose a telemedicine provider. The entire United States is covered. Doesn't matter what state you're in. We even have Arkansas, finally. And Alaska. There is a provider in every state, all of Canada's covered.
Claudia Christian:
We have a sister foundation in Europe, C3 Foundation Europe. If you're in the U.K. listening to this or Europe, you can contact them. You go to the website. There are scientific research there. There's Peer Support tab. You can watch our recent conference where you see doctors discussing it. You can read the cure for alcoholism. You can read my new book, Journeys, which is a compilation of stories from people on the method.
Claudia Christian:
You could also for free if you have Amazon Prime, you can watch One Little Pill, my documentary. I made that for loved ones. If you want to sit down with your loved one who has a problem, it's less than an hour long. It's free on Amazon Prime or you can rent it onelittlepillmovie.com for $3. The money goes to C3 Foundation. You can buy it as well.
Claudia Christian:
But this is a great tool for you to sit down and say, "Here's a method that I really think would work for you. You don't have to quit. You can take the medication and we can do this together." I could say to you, "Hey, we're going out. Did you take your pill?"
Claudia Christian:
Or if you're somebody who's suffering and you want to see what the science is behind it, you could sit down by yourself and watch One Little Pill.
Claudia Christian:
My TED Talk is also a good opening line for somebody saying, "I saw this actress talking about this method and she was on it for a decade and look, it worked for her. Can you watch this and let me know if you'll support me in this?"
Claudia Christian:
You can also go to your GP and say, "The entire United States is covered by doctors. I don't want to go to a different doctor. I want to go to you." On my website is a specific tab for doctors. The doctor can go there and see all of the paperwork, all of FDA approvals, all of the research and everything in one stop that's specifically for doctors and they can say, "Oh, my patient would like to try this method. I want to support them in doing that."
Claudia Christian:
That's really the way to do it. There's enough information now.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Does insurance cover the medication?
Claudia Christian:
It does. Yes. It's an FDA-approved, non-addictive, declassified medication that's been approved since 1994 for the use of alcohol misuse. Insurance covers it. When I still got it years ago, it was $10 for 30 pills. I know some people that it's free for them. If you were to purchase it and actually have to pay for it, I think it's still around a dollar a pill which if you think about it, especially because the more often you take it, the less you're going to end up taking it obviously down the line. You might take it once a week. It's certainly worth it. For a few hundred dollars, you can really get your drinking under control. It's worth it.
Claudia Christian:
But as I said before, there's comprehensive telemedicine programs. There're companies all throughout the United States that will create a program for you. They have breathalyzers. We have drink logs that you can download onto your phone for free. There's free peer support. There's a whole community out there of people on TSM now, young and old.
Claudia Christian:
It's not like when I started when there was nobody in the United States that knew about it or supported it. Right now, you're in a really good position to do TSM.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We also offer a moderation management program and our therapists that runs it is Michele Perron. She is just-
Claudia Christian:
Oh, she's on my coaching page.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Michele Perron. She runs Lionrock Recovery's moderation management program. She's all about it and loves it and talks about how many lives it's helped and saved.
Claudia Christian:
And there you go. There's a perfect example of somebody doing it in combination with a therapist. For the accountability, the mindfulness, and to learn all the tools about how to handle triggers, that's where you get the best outcome, by combining the medication with a comprehensive treatment program. As we said, holistic.
Claudia Christian:
It's a mind-body experience, addiction. It's not just about popping a pill. It's not just about going to a meeting. You have to do all the whole work around the whole mind and body and heal your brain with diet and supplements. There're so many things. Exercise is imperative when you're in recovery.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. It's huge. I am so grateful for your time and for what you're doing and getting the message out and willing to go and come up against the 12-step community who I'm sure has been a formidable opponent.
Claudia Christian:
Ah, Lord. I always say let's just combine forces. Come on. Give me all your chronic relapsers. Let me send them back to you with no cravings. Let's combine it.
Claudia Christian:
It's up to the individual. If you love the camaraderie of AA, that's great. If you want to get rid of your cravings, you can be on TSM and still attend meetings because your goal is abstinence. We can all live and work together. I know that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We started, and I helped write it, a peer support program called Community and it is for people in any type of recovery in any way, shape, or form. It's for people who are using Suboxone, using Sinclair method, whatever it is.
Claudia Christian:
Yeah, I've heard that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
An impetus for that was that I know so many people who have been shunned in one way or another for not having the perfect, whatever the perfect, recovery is or looks like and have sought out other things and they haven't been robust enough.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
A group of three of us, clinicians, people in 12-step, we took who are into all sorts of other things and have been in lots of different programs, we have taken our collective experiences and ideas and put that into something that's like we don't care what you're doing. The key to recovery is about creating community, self-reflection, self-care, self-love, and being a better person and giving back, period. Doesn't matter what you're recovering from and you're welcome here.
Claudia Christian:
I love that. I'm going to send people to Community. I don't care if you use ayahuasca to get better. I don't care if you ate grapefruits for a year and you're sober now. Great. Fabulous.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. I think in treatment purity, we've become puritanical, which is just... There's all sorts of jokes there back to Christian Bible stuff. But that aside, we have forgotten the point. We've lost the plot and-
Claudia Christian:
Plot to help people.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We got to get back there. We got to get back to like, "Here's the smorgasbord of things. Find what works for you and get better."
Claudia Christian:
Exactly. I couldn't agree with you more and I appreciate you having me on the show so I could maybe reach those in need that have tried a lot of things and maybe didn't know about this. I really appreciate that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, absolutely. So cthreefoundation.com or cthree.org.
Claudia Christian:
.org.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
.org. cthree-
Claudia Christian:
cthreefoundation.org, and the three is spelled out. But if they just put Claudia Christian or C Three or the Sinclair method, they'll find me. They'll find my TED talk and One Little Pill is on Amazon Prime for free.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We're going to put everything in the show notes. If you are listening and you want to go back and you can't remember any of this stuff because you're driving or what have you, it's all in the show notes.
Claudia Christian:
That's wonderful. Thank you, Ashley. Appreciate it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Awesome. Thanks for being here.
Claudia Christian:
I deeply appreciate it. You have a beautiful day and thanks for having me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
This podcast is sponsored by Lionrock Recovery. Lionrock provides online substance abuse counseling where clients can get help from the privacy of their own home. They're accredited by the Joint Commission and sessions are private, affordable, and user friendly. Call their free helpline at 800-258-6550 or visit www.lionrockrecovery.com for more information.