Kerry Andre grew up in the rural farming town of Williston, North Dakota. With alcoholism and her father’s opiate use running rampant in her family, Kerry’s exposure to addiction started young. After a series of traumatic events, she turned to alcohol to numb her pain and found herself in a downward spiral that lasted over a decade. 3 kids, numerous broken relationships and 4 DUI’s later - Kerry finally got the help she needed to start on her recovery journey, and she just so happened to find it with Lionrock! She is now living a life in sobriety that she is proud of, and has the love and support of an incredible partner.
Kerry Andre grew up in the rural farming town of Williston, North Dakota. With alcoholism and her father’s opiate use running rampant in her family, Kerry’s exposure to addiction started young. After a series of traumatic events, she turned to alcohol to numb her pain and found herself in a downward spiral that lasted over a decade. 3 kids, numerous broken relationships and 4 DUI’s later - Kerry finally got the help she needed to start on her recovery journey, and she just so happened to find it with Lionrock! She is now living a life in sobriety that she is proud of, and has the love and support of an incredible partner.
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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to the Courage To Change And Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am an alcoholic and your host. I am so excited to announce my guest, Kerry Andre, today. Kerry grew up in a rural farming town of Williston, North Dakota with alcoholism and her father's opiate use running rampant in her family. Kerry's exposure to addiction started very, very young. After a series of traumatic events, she turned to alcohol to numb her pain and found herself in a downward spiral, that lasted over a decade. Three kids, numerous broken relationships, and four DUIs later, Kerry finally got the help she needed to start on her recovery journey and she just so happened to find it with Lion Rock Recovery.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She is now living a life in sobriety that she is super proud of and has the love and support of an incredible partner. She just celebrated four years, clean and sober. This is a really amazing story and I can't wait for you guys to hear it. Kerry is an inspirational woman who has been through quite a lot. If you grew up in a rural town in America, this story will probably, very much resonate with you. Episode 44, let's do this.
Kerry Andre:
We actually had a squatter in our house. The people that were selling the house, their adult son, he was 50 years old. He refused to leave. He's got a sordid past and in trouble with drugs and things like that, and he had nowhere to go. He actually moved out into his car, but we had to go through the eviction process. My offer was cash, so we were supposed to be able to move in or close. Then, I had a lease on an apartment that would just be two months. I thought we were going to be doing the remodel during that time, but we had to go through the whole court process and get the eviction for this son, who had no lease, who's paying no rent. His parents were in their eighties. It was just this crazy situation.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There's squatters rights, right? That's a thing. Y
Kerry Andre:
Yeah. Yep. Because his parents let him stay with them, technically, since I think it was more than, it's either a 24 or 48-hour window, he was just basically considered a resident. Even with no leads, none of that. They had to go through the court process and I mean, he squatted till the very end. It was 30 days to get it through court. Then they kicked him out. Then they gave him a week to get out and it was still five days later. We had to keep pushing back the closing and it was a cash offer, and so we thought, oh just boom, we'd be able to get in, remodel, do everything, not have to worry about it. These poor people, in their eighties, dealing with a son with addiction issues and which I understand. I'm empathizing with the poor guy. I'm like, "He's got nowhere to go.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right.
Kerry Andre:
It's 40 below.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh. What a nightmare.
Kerry Andre:
It was. Needless to say, when we moved in, we had terminated our lease and didn't want to have to resign or be paying month to month or be paying double. We had to remodel, while moving in, with the three kids, because of all that time spent in the eviction process. Yeah, it's been an interesting year.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So, you're using all of your coping skills, basically.
Kerry Andre:
Well, yeah, and my kids just happened to be like me. I keep just going with the whole payback thing, that your parents always say that they're going to, you're going to pay back this when you have your own children. Well, mine are four, seven and eight and I'm hoping that's not my 19, the equivalent of my 19 or I'm hoping it is, I guess because 19 was when I went, "Nope, enough with the parents. I'm not listening." Well, my kids have been doing that since I think they came out. Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Mine too. Oh, my gosh. Well that's crazy. Well, I'm glad that you guys are, you're in the house now. No squatters.
Kerry Andre:
No. No. Interesting things though, because we knew that he had issues and we were trying to find this water line because we moved the fridge and so we wanted the water line to hook up to the ice and the water in the fridge. We're under the staircase or whatever and I'm telling Michael," Oh my gosh, there is a death list down here." I start reading off names because I'm underneath the stairwell in this little space that I can barely fit in. He's like, "What?" I'm like, "Gosh, we should get the old annuals from that guy, when he graduated, because he's been in this town his whole life.
Kerry Andre:
I'm like, "And make sure everybody's okay." I crawl out or whatever, and Michael's looking at me and not taking it seriously. He crawls under to see if he can find the water line and he's like, "Oh, my gosh. You were serious. It's a death list." I'm like, "Yes. It says death list."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. I was how did you know it was a death list?
Kerry Andre:
No, it says death lists right underneath there and it's this little hole that you have to climb through, and it has all these names listed. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this guy is so scary."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You weren't on there though, so that's good.
Kerry Andre:
No, you could tell that it was a younger person's writing. It was scratched on there. But, the worst part was is we're right across the street from the public library. So, when he moved out into his car, he literally moved across the street where he could sit in his car with his laptop and I suppose get wifi from the public library. We just watched him to make sure, like "Okay, he's still there. Oh, he moved two spots," and watched our cameras and changed all the locks and stuff, because he didn't, for a good eight months, I mean, that was his place. They must've finally told him to move on, find a new place to park.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Kerry Andre:
But yeah, just out there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you went in there, was he ... how did you, did you find him in there or how did that work?
Kerry Andre:
No, we had the Sheriff's and his parents take care of it. We didn't sign any papers until they came over.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got you.
Kerry Andre:
Then we had our locksmith come over and change the locks because ... And just waited a few days before we went over and had cameras installed just in case. Taking precautions, because you just never know. Always interesting stories.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh, that's crazy. Of course, it's so hard when you're in situations like that, where you're in recovery and you see someone struggling with addiction, alcoholism and you have compassion for their situation, but also, now they're pissing you off. Right.
Kerry Andre:
You're trying to be like, I have compassion for my fellow men, but also could you please stop squatting in my house?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, and to his parents, it's just like, Oh my gosh, to be in your 80s, retired and-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, I can't even imagine.
Kerry Andre:
... having to draw that line. They weren't letting him into their new house, considering the situation. They were drawing their line, but I mean, an adult son, at 50 years old, eventually it would have to. For them too, I mean, just heartbreaking.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How long ago was that?
Kerry Andre:
That was just a year ago.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Okay.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, that was our house situation. Now, we're just getting settled and clearing the dust. We knew remodeling would take quite a while anyway, because the housing situation where I live in Wilson, North Dakota, it's so overly inflated. Your options are buying new, for prices that just seem outrageous or buying something that's a little bit older and having to probably put some work into it. That's what we chose to do, because then we could get all the things we wanted. But our house was built in 1977.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah.
Kerry Andre:
It just needs a couple of couple steps up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Are you from North Dakota?
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, I'm from Williston, North Dakota. I've been here all my life. I grew up here and then I went to different places for college and just for fun and moved around and yeah, Minneapolis of course, doing the normal thing. Follow the boyfriend to Omaha, Nebraska of all places.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh yeah.
Kerry Andre:
... and Anchorage, Alaska.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Was he a fisherman?
Kerry Andre:
No, he wasn't. He had family up there. Yeah, just all sorts of different things. Went and lived with my sister, when she was going to college and worked at a sign shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is my current career right now. I do graphic design and work with vinyl and produce signage. I went down there and did, almost an internship, with FASTSIGNS down there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, cool.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, but just kept coming back to Williston. Luckily, I had bought a house, right out of high school ,when the housing market was very, very low. I got a really big house and I got it at a good price before everything inflated, because the oil boom is here in Williston. The oil boom that is a national headlines and stuff. We're the epicenter of it. All that oil that's coming from the United States, that's not in Texas or Pennsylvania. Ii is here in Williston. Yeah, I got lucky, because I didn't have to deal with the extreme rent prices or housing prices, when I came back to Williston. But, the ability to make money here and make a living is just above what the median average of, I would say, the United States is. I mean, some truck drivers, I guess what they would say is, even if you just have a CDL, you can be making $120,000 a year, just for driving truck or doing other things in the oil field. I'm in a different part because I do the signage industry, but with all the businesses coming into town, I stay very busy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Where did you go to college?
Kerry Andre:
I went to college in Fargo, North Dakota for a year, and then I actually after that, went to Denver, Colorado for a year.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, cool.
Kerry Andre:
Didn't do much college. I was enrolled in college, but I decided that I wanted to go and teach skiing and snowboarding.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kerry Andre:
I was kind of on permanent spring break up there, teaching little kids how ski and snowboard.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Love that and that. How long are you clean and sober now?
Kerry Andre:
Oh geez. It would have been four years, on January 5th, I think is the day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Awesome.
Kerry Andre:
2016.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Awesome. I'm the seventh.
Kerry Andre:
Yes. Christiana said that we're birthday-week buddies.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Just right after new year's. Everything's feeling real crappy and time to get sober. You grew up in an oil town. Did your Dad or Mom work in the oil fields?
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, my dad's family grew up farming. That's the other industry that's really big in town. It's very, it's rural North Dakota. Growing up, the city, Williston, that I'm nearest to, or town. I'm not sure. It was probably 10, 12,000, but we lived on a farm north of town. We didn't do farming like my grandparents did on my father's side, but we had the Old MacDonald type farm, goats, chickens-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, right.
Kerry Andre:
All those, everything in the song. After my dad got out of high school, he went straight into the oil field and it was boom and bust for a lot of years. It was really good times, where people are making good money and comfortable and really bad times. But, we didn't know that growing up, my sisters and I. My Mom was doing sign painting with her Dad, my Grandpa, and so that industry that I'm in now, came from that side of the family, although it's digital age now.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:11:48] Yeah. What are you see your birth orders with your sisters?
Kerry Andre:
I am the oldest of three girls. We are actually boom, boom, boom, right in a row. Me and my middle sister are 15 months apart and then my middle sister and my little sister are 10 months apart.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, my gosh.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, my Mom says because the oil field, my dad was constantly traveling. During the '80s it was a slower time. She said it was the only three times he was home.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Kerry Andre:
In the '80s, would be us three.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh wow. Your mother is a hero and that's coming from a twin mom. That's a lot of pregnancy.
Kerry Andre:
Yes. My sister's pregnant with twins right now.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, wow. When are they due?
Kerry Andre:
They are due in August, so we're thinking sometime in July.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Awesome. The farm was, you grew up on the farm.? It your dad's farm, but he also worked in the oil fields. The farm didn't actually, it didn't make money for you guys.
Kerry Andre:
No, that wasn't the primary source of income. It's just where we lived out, in the country. We went to country school actually. It's so rural, there was country schools. It was-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh man, a country school, like you hear about the one-room school houses on the prairie?
Kerry Andre:
That's kind of what it was. The first school that I went to actually look like that, and I think there was maybe four rooms in it for teachers and it was Grades one through eight. By first grade I think, no, second grade, they got a newer one that was actually close to our house. We jumped on the bus for about three minutes. The bus brought us to school and then brought us home afterwards. That was Grades one through eight and they were combined classrooms, Grade one, two, three, four and so on, all the way up. Schooling, a really small community, friends, family and stuff like that. Mostly, rural.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Kerry Andre:
It was.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Was it a happy existence?
Kerry Andre:
It was a happy existence. We had really good teachers, very close friends. Town was only eight miles away technically, so we were in town a lot of the times. We had relatives that lived in town. My Mom had really good friends that lived in town. Both sides of our family, my Dad's side and my Mom's side, they came from very big families. We had aunts and uncles and cousins and so all of the holidays and everything like that. We all went to school together because we were fairly rural and we just grew up with this big huge family.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's awesome. Well it sounds awesome. I don't know if it was awesome, but it sounds really cool. Did you, were there examples of alcoholism in this family at all? Did you or was that, are you the only person?
Kerry Andre:
No, I'm definitely not the only person. We grew up around alcohol and it was absolutely, completely normalized. The thing that I'm realizing as I've grown into adulthood, been other places in the world, in the country and things like that, and I actually had a counselor tell me this once too. She grew up here and this rural, farming, oil field community. It's almost that the standard of normal drinking is so much higher than it is elsewhere. You start reading some technical definitions of alcohol abuse and things like that. Any more than two drinks a day, for consecutive days, all those things, labels that they put on what's good and what's bad. Our bar was set so much higher. I mean, it wasn't unusual to see any of the family members bringing a case of beer each, to a family gathering. What they would drink, I don't know, because we were little and stuff like that. But, I remember my first, looking back, my first instance of realizing that my dad had a problem, which he's an alcoholic and a drug addict, has been his whole life self-admittedly.
Kerry Andre:
He said, the first strength that he ever took, he knew instantly, that he was different and growing up, I don't feel like we saw a whole lot of that from my Dad. He was constantly gone and my Mom hid it from us. I mean, that was her job, was to take care of us and hide his addiction. Now we know, as adults, and they since got divorced and things like that and it was addiction that broke them apart. But, going back to my first instance of really realizing that it was a problem for some people, drinking, I remember my dad coming home and my parents yelling and my Dad just basically collapsing on the floor Indian-style and me sitting on his lap and he was just different and I didn't know why. My Mom was mad and sad and crying, and maybe five or six years old, and just sitting on his lap and he was just talking to me and just saying, "It's just like Kool-aid. You can't just have one glass. It's just like Kool-aid."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hopefully.
Kerry Andre:
I was so confused, because my Mom was upset and my Dad is just like, "Blah-de-dah."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Kerry Andre:
Drunk and realizing he's just trying to tell me a cautionary tale even at that young.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Did you have feelings about Kool-Aid after that?
Kerry Andre:
I didn't have feelings about Kool-Aid after that. I really, I have a lot of memories where there were incidents that I have blocked out. I've remembered them after my sisters and I have started going to therapy and stuff like that, and we'll talk about stories and my sister Brynn has forgotten this story. My sister Lindy has forgotten this story and we remind each other or you the same with me. They're like, "Kerry, you don't remember that?" I'm like, "Oh yeah, I do remember that." I feel like that that story is specifically, I don't remember when I actually came back and it was, I made the connection, but I just can vividly remember it in my head, the way my parents looked.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, I definitely grew up in an alcoholic family and being the oldest, going through different treatments and therapies and things like that and trying to know, figure out why I feel the way I feel about certain things, I just ... I've remembered a lot more of a few instances where, it wasn't such a happy life but for the most part, yeah, my parents just tried to make our childhood the best it was. My Dad was a great father and my Mom's still, she would never, never dispute that. His love, his work ethic, everything like that, was amazing. I mean, it was very old-school. It was his job to take care of us, even though my Mom worked and stuff like that. But, she raised us kids. I mean, she tells stories about, he would get off of a 30, 40 hour job or he was up for hours and hours and hours and he could just walk in the house and would, could tell that she was just at her wit's end, with kids that age.
Kerry Andre:
He'd just be like, "Go." and he'd stay up for another 10 hours so that she could just have a break because he'd been gone.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. What did your dad's alcoholism look like, when he was around? Were there, was he happy, fun? Or, what was it like growing up in an alcoholic? What were the characteristics that made your house, aside from the drinking, the alcoholic home?
Kerry Andre:
Since, my Mom hid a lot of it, and actually, the drinking was a problem. He had a drinking problem. He is an alcoholic and he can't handle it to this day. But, being sober from alcohol, once us girls got older and we realized what being drunk was and all of those things, we just always knew that he didn't drink, probably for a good 12 to 15 years out of our life but we didn't know the other side of it.
Kerry Andre:
He was an opiate addict and he had a lot of injuries. He was in a really bad car accident, back in the '70s, '80s. The cure for that was here, opiates, painkillers and stuff like that. That's where he found his drug of choice, which would be opiates and it still is to this day. When we got into junior high and high school is when the jig was up. My mom quit hiding it and quit acting like, "Oh, we have the perfect life. We have the perfect family". Well, she had to. I mean, she had kicked him out. He'd gotten sober, then she'd let him back in. But then, with the opiates they were easier to hide and then she'd find out he was still doing them. It was only even, I guess I shouldn't say he was sober for 12 to 15 years.
Kerry Andre:
He was sober for most of that time. He probably drank once or twice a year, but it was always awful. It was stories of, he'd come home with a wrecked truck and it was, "Oh, two deer ran into my truck at the same time, simultaneously." It's like, "Yeah, no, nice try, but we don't believe you."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's an interesting point, I want to stop on. I hear a lot of the time from people, "I don't drink very often, but when I do, trouble finds me." Right? "I can, not drink for a year, but when I do drink I get in trouble. Is that alcoholism?" I always talk about, "Well, you have an alcohol problem, if alcohol causes you problems." That's pretty straight forward, right? But, that's a really interesting point that you make that every time it happened, but it was only a couple times a year, so that probably made it easier for him to justify, because there was distance between one problem and another.
Kerry Andre:
Yes, for sure. Well and then as family members being close, you empathize with the person that's feeling bad about themselves, because they know that they did something wrong and they love you and you just get caught up in that cycle. It's not that we had an abusive childhood, but the cycle itself can just be abusive and it's not even meant to be.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, right. Because it's just emotionally, such a roller coaster.
Kerry Andre:
Yes. That's probably the right word for it, is a roller coaster. After my dad's first treatment that we were aware of, which was grade school, it did feel like a roller coaster after that. It was just waiting for the ball to drop, waiting for the next time. For some reason, my Dad just, it seemed like he couldn't handle the pressure of certain things and it just didn't make sense. Whether, it was he had to go to a basketball tournament that one of us were in and he was going out of town and you knew he was going to be by himself, but he ended up drunk in a bar-fight. It was always a word, like holidays and stuff like that, the pressure of something, anything, just would have him on a tear. It was a roller coaster of, oh, is this going to get ruined? Pierre's not here yet, so where is he? Is something wrong? We lived a little bit in fear, once we realized that my Dad was, had a problem.
Kerry Andre:
One thing my Mom was really good at, despite their relationship now, is all throughout our childhood, When we found out about his addictions, she did say he was sick. She was angry. She was disappointed, but it was always taught to us that he was sick. Now, knowing what I know, and being, going through what I went through, it's just something that I hold on to, I guess, and really advocate for people to learn more about what addiction and alcoholism is and what it involves. Because, a lot of people just think that it's purely just a choice and people are making bad choices and that makes them bad people or all the different stigmas attached to it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah.
Kerry Andre:
I'm glad that my Mom always had that for us. [crosstalk 00:24:03]what she was going through.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What was her relationship with drugs and alcohol like?
Kerry Andre:
Drugs, never a thing for her. She hated smoking pot. I mean, we were very open when we were going into high school and college age. She would talk to us about it because she didn't have a problem with it and I think she wanted us to be prepared and she was very honest, admitting she ,in high school or college, she had tried different things and she just hated it and the reasons why she hated it and drinking, she always drank. Both sides of our family did. Her brother was a very bad alcoholic. He almost died and my Grandpa actually owned a liquor store when they were growing. My Grandparents always had a Bud Light every night, happy hour or whatever. I think my Grandpa would maybe have two Macs, and my Grandma's in the nursing home. She actually, she has Alzheimer's really bad, but we still bring her beer up every night.
Kerry Andre:
Somebody goes up and brings her a beer, but it was never anything more than that, except for my uncle, that we knew of. My Mom always drank. Her friends always drank. It was always a part of our family gatherings and it was a part of my Dad's side too. But as far as we knew, with my Mom, she didn't have a problem. She wasn't an alcoholic. It really, was all to my Dad. My Dad was the alcoholic. My Dad was the problem, because he always caused problems when you drank.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, right. Did you want to get out of the house or were you like, "Oh, when I get out of here," or did you have dreams of the big city? I mean, what did you, when you thought about growing up, what were the things that you thought-
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, I did. I graduated early from high school. When I was finishing my junior year, I realized that I only needed for state standards, one more class to ... well, it was actually half a credit to graduate early. Then, we had a small community college in our town. At 16 I took that half a credit, got my high school diploma, and then went a full year of-
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:26:04]
Kerry Andre:
... got my high school diploma and then went a full year of college while I was taking my senior year, technical senior year, at my high school and got a full ride scholarship there, because then I was a year ahead, but I still got to walk across the stage with my class.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Kerry Andre:
So when I graduated from my high school, I also graduated, I guess, or I finished my freshman year of college. I was out, and I was out before the senior year even finished. I didn't drink all through high school. I probably had my first taste of alcohol at 15, 16, I think. My boyfriend at the time, he was ... I, of course, had the boyfriend all through high school. We were going to get married. We were going to do the things. We were going to live the life. He was well aware of alcoholism, and I think he's been off and on in recovery, actually, since. We don't have a relationship now, but I've heard and stuff like that.
Kerry Andre:
But we got busted, basically, our first time, me feeling drunk off of two wine coolers, the gross, icky wine coolers. But it's just like, "Oh, okay, so I'm not going to do that, but I still want to go with my friends." So I was kind of ... I think I even had the nickname Gatorade Girl, because I was always driving, and I was always at all the parties. I was never drinking. So I was the safety net for everybody, and it never bothered me.
Kerry Andre:
But then senior year, it was like, "Okay, well, I've technically graduated high school, graduated early." School was never hard. So those last few months of senior year, I mean, it went from zero to 100 miles an hour, and small town-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What do you think changed? Have you gone back? Did something happen? Were you just anticipatory? What do you think changed in that time?
Kerry Andre:
Well, in that time, I think it was just I had put so much stress on doing the right thing. I had always done the right thing, got good grades, done with sports, did what my parents wanted me to, always listened, didn't really break curfew, and it was just like, "Okay, now it's my turn to have fun with my friends." We had older friends, too, and so it was just like, "Oh, now we're all going to college, and we're all splitting up."
Kerry Andre:
So it was all summer long and all the way to college, and, at that point, it was just ... I always put my foot down the summer before I left for college, so I would have been 17. I mean, I don't even know if there was a night that I can remember that we didn't drink, and, I mean, it was keg parties and, I mean, 30 packs piled as high as the ceiling. Yeah, that's just ... It's what we did, and we did it with everything. It's like going to the lake, "Okay, fill up the cooler," and booze cruising. It's crazy.
Kerry Andre:
I was telling my cousin's wife. She grew up in Alaska, in Sitka on a small island, and my cousin and I were talking one night at dinner about booze cruising and going out to the lake and bonfires and drinking and driving and things like that. I'm still astonished that it's so shocking, because, to us, it was so normal. But she's like, "I have to stop you guys. You guys are just making me nervous, and I can see you. You're sitting right here, right in front of me. You're fine. But do you guys realize this is not normal? People don't grow up doing those kinds of things."
Kerry Andre:
We were like, "But everybody did." We grabbed the case of beer and all of our friends and we drank until we couldn't see, and we drove home.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right.
Kerry Andre:
It is insane now, thinking back about it, all the different times that we could have been hurt, injured. But it was absolutely the normal thing to do here. It was just the way that people had fun.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you think that that ... I dated a guy who grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, and his stories are the same. It was kind of a rural town. I wonder how much of rural America, this is the story for the teenage growing up experience. Do you have perspective on that? Was there anyone where it could have been any different to have ... other than someone who just sat at home? I mean was there anything else to do?
Kerry Andre:
No. There wasn't a lot to do, and I think, too, when you say dreams about getting out and doing other things, a lot of us all did go to bigger schools. But it's funny, because a lot of us just went in groups, and then we didn't branch out. My specific friend group, a few years younger, a few years older, we all seem to have had the same experience with high school and college.
Kerry Andre:
But yeah, I mean, it really was the thing to do, and dragging main and all of those things. My parents tell stories about doing the same things that we did when we were in high school when they were in high school. A counselor did tell me that it is very common, higher instances of alcoholism and stuff in the rural communities. The counselor speaking of that was from here and stuff, and she said, "No it isn't abnormal for this type of community, but it is abnormal elsewhere."
Kerry Andre:
But we didn't have a lot of other options, say, clubs or ... I mean, we had the bowling alley, but we always got drunk before we went to the bowling alley. We would sneak beer into the movie theater, and it probably wasn't everybody, but most of the friend groups that I hung around with were. I wasn't stuck with just some outside friend group. I was in sports, so I was friends with the people that did sports. There was the potheads. That was a group, of course, in high school, and I was friends with those people. Then there was the partiers, and it was just everybody was kind of friends, because we were a small enough town. But I don't remember people not doing it. I remember I didn't do it, but I probably also wasn't paying attention.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Right, right. What did you think an alcoholic was?
Kerry Andre:
Oh, well, the only example I really had was ... Well, I had two examples, my uncle, and we had heard stories about him. He just drank so much alcohol that he almost died, so then he quit. No really reasonings, necessarily, why. So it was just, "He's an alcoholic," and then there was my dad, who he wasn't that bad, in my eyes, probably, growing up, because it was intermittent. It was maybe once a year, where it'd be a big blowout. But it definitely ... Alcoholism wasn't how much you drank. For me, it was what happened when you drank.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which is unusual. Usually, people associate it the other way around.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, no, not for us. None of us kids were alcoholics or going down that path, even though we had week-long parties where we had to have 15 kegs, that whole week, between not a big group of us, either.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. So then you go off to college and have a whole different ... You go off to a couple colleges, have a whole different experience. When do things start to kind of take a turn for you, or how did you go from that normal kind of what everyone else was doing to "This is weird. This isn't normal" or "Maybe this is problematic"?
Kerry Andre:
I probably didn't until I was about 26. I went off to college, and we continued to drink that way. Everywhere I went to college, except for Colorado, I had friends, and so we just did the same thing. I mean, and I didn't go very far with school. I mean, almost a straight A student all the way through high school, and it was ... I just gave it up to party and be with my friends. That's all I really cared about, was just doing my own thing, really not doing anything.
Kerry Andre:
I ended up moving back to Williston after my first year of college and had completely failed out, not because I wasn't smart enough to make it, but because I didn't go. Our house was party central. I didn't live in the dorms. I was paying for it myself, which, in hindsight, it's like I would think, if I'm paying that much money, that I would've wanted to make it worth my while. But no, I didn't.
Kerry Andre:
I came back, and I moved in with a friend from high school who was about a year younger than me. We continued to party, and then, somehow, at one party, cocaine got introduced. So that was probably a week-long experience, off and on, of partying and cocaine being around. Then some of the friends, once all the cocaine ran out, continued, and then meth came into the picture. Little did I know that it had been going on and through, I think, my apartment and the next door neighbors, that they were all doing meth, dealing meth, things like that.
Kerry Andre:
Well, I come home one drunk night and make friends with my friends, and, all of a sudden, they're accepting that, "Oh, you can do a little math too."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
This is in Williston?
Kerry Andre:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Kerry Andre:
They'd been so nicely hiding it from me, because I was only a drinker, and they didn't want to get me in trouble.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, right.
Kerry Andre:
Yep. So the next three, four months of that was experimentation with that life, with a whole different group of people, and isolation with that group of people, because, to me, it was just such a bad drug. That was just horrible, but it was fun, and we were having fun doing it. I didn't really realize, on the food chain, I guess they were on the high end of the food chain, not the best people to just jump in with. If you're going to get in trouble right away, that's where I would have done it, and I could have easily ended up in, probably, prison, had I stayed in that.
Kerry Andre:
But my parents figured out what we were doing, and so they said, "We're either going to commit you, or you can go to treatment on your own," because-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
After four months, you were bad enough that you had to go to treatment?
Kerry Andre:
Well, I probably-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Or they felt that you were?
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, they didn't have any experience, I don't think, with those type of drugs. Things were still really differentiated between alcohol is not really a bad thing, because that's legal. Everybody does it. They'd experimented with cocaine in college, but that's just something you do every once in a while. But meth and them crackheads, per se, in town, are those scary people that don't have teeth and steal things. It's the dirty drug. So they were just scared that ... and they'd hurt all the stuff, probably, at that pointm where it was the ads about meth. "Even once it's too much, and you're"-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, right, right, right.
Kerry Andre:
I was completely opposite of what I used to be. At least drinking alcohol and being in college, it was like, "Oh, okay. The kids are going out. They're in college. They're having drinks. That's normal." But doing meth was something completely different. So it was, "Get off of this and do it now." So I said, "Okay, I'll go," I mean, not with a lot of protest. I mean, my mom, I was so awful to her back then. It was like anything that ever had bothered me in my life, I took it out on her. I mean, I was a raging capital B-word from hell.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I mean, also, meth doesn't exactly make you the nicest person on the plane. My experience, at least. It doesn't help anger towards Mom.
Kerry Andre:
No, no, it didn't. I just wanted to be an adult. It was my life. "I have my own apartment. I can do what I want. I don't have to go to college," just the child temper tantrum that I can look back and see now. Even my dad, he just had said, "I've been down these roads with drugs," and he had done everything in his lifetime. So I went, and I got sober for two weeks. When I was telling my story in treatment there, I didn't have any withdrawal symptoms, really, nothing physically that was going on with me. But I was 19 at the time and hadn't done it very often. It was just intermittent for those few months.
Kerry Andre:
Anyway, so telling my story and stuff like that, I don't know if it was intentional, but I was trying to spin everything away from me being a meth addict. So I would tell them about my drinking stories in group and stuff like that. At one point, the counselor stopped me and was like, "Well, I'm not so concerned that you're addicted to meth. It doesn't seem like that's your drug of choice. But have you ever thought that you might be an alcoholic? Have you ever thought that sharing a 12-pack and a liter of Captain Morgan straight for your night of drinking with one other friend is a little much?"
Kerry Andre:
It's like, "Oh, no. No, I mean, that's a daily thing. Then we get up and we go do our stuff," like a bunch of complete functioning alcoholics. So yeah, I was like, "Well, I'm cured. They said I'm not a meth addict. Great." So I called up, actually, my drug dealer, of all people-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
To let him know, "Hey, here's the good news. Turns out."
Kerry Andre:
"Yep, here's the good news, and the smoking shack is right out this store, on this street. Come and get me at this time." I bounced. I bounced right out of treatment and went home, disappeared for a couple of days, and just told my parents, "Nope, I'm done. This is what they said," of course, of course, failing to mention, "Oh, yeah," that little tidbit about how they think that my drinking might be a problem, that that type of drinking, the way that we're all drinking is alcoholically and abusive. Just didn't say anything.
Kerry Andre:
Within about a month, I was involuntarily committed to the treatment center here in town, in Williston, for a full 28 days, because, of course, I went back and did meth a couple times and just drinking. It was like, "Nope, cured, good after two weeks," and right back in.
Kerry Andre:
So yeah, I guess I've always considered it that one time I went to treatment, but it was over the course of probably two months total, by the time I got out of the 28 days and skipped out on that last two weeks of the first one. Then, after that, too, it was ... Yeah, in my head, it was, "Well, I'm not addicted to meth, so this isn't a problem."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. It's funny how I'm sure you've seen this. I've seen ... You're around long enough, you're around enough people drinking and using long enough, you see all the different types of justifications, and some of them might even be valid. But it's still the reasons, the justifications. "Well, I'm not a drug addict, because I didn't use needles." Okay. "I'm not that bad, because everybody I use with is worse. I'm not that bad, because I can stop." Well, can you stay stopped? "I'm not that" ... or whatever it is. Whatever we figure out, "I've only done it this many times, as opposed to" ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There's just this long list of ways that we kind of figure out how we're different from the people who have the problem, because we so desperately don't want to be the people who have the problem. Right? Anything to not be that person. I remember going to treatment for the first time and them telling me blackouts weren't normal. Normal drinkers didn't black out. I don't know if they told you that, but I vividly remember that, and I was astonished. I was like, "There's no way that's not normal. Absolutely normal. That's a bus. You're blacked out. That's just what happens when you drink." No, that's not normal, and just so many things and just feeling like I was in an alternate universe, them telling you these things, that whatever X, Y, Z behavior or whatever thought process and them telling you, "Normal people don't do that," and me thinking, "I don't believe you. That's not possible." My behavior's not that abnormal."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But then there comes a point where you do go, "Oh, Lord, my behavior is abnormal." You do get there. But I just remember, the very early stages, I mean, especially if you're hanging out with the people that you talked about hanging out with, it's so easy to be like, "I'm not doing what she's doing. I think I'm in good shape."
Kerry Andre:
Yes, for sure. Well, and I always had the bar set so high, because I had my dad as an example of what not to do. Then, by the time I got to that point, 19 20, 21 years old, my relationship with my parents was open. So I started hearing more stories of the things that my dad went through and him telling me those things more of a cautionary tale, but he is always bigger, better, faster. So as well as being a cautionary tale, it was almost bragging.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It bumped your bar.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, really, really high, because, "Oh, well, Dad's an alcoholic drug addict, but I didn't do those crazy things that he went through," and things like that. It was. It was crazy, and I was blackout drinking, by that point in my life. It was probably, actually, only really a couple years into my drinking career. I remember that the involuntary committal, my dad just had begged me, and he had said, "Just think of this as a vacation. You're young."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The worst vacation.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, worst vacation ever, just 30 days away from life. Now, at 36 years old and three kids [crosstalk 00:18:21].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, send me away. Send me away.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, please. Institutionalize me, 100%. I will sleep the whole time. I don't care.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'll go to therapy.
Kerry Andre:
I don't care if I gain 40 pounds, eat whatever I want. Please, just take me away. But yeah, at 19, it was like, "Yeah, you don't know what you're talking about, Dad." But he was like, "And the other thing you can do is they've got a lot of tools. Then, later in life, if you do decide that you actually really do have a problem, when you finally start believing it, then you'll have those tools and you'll have those resources."
Kerry Andre:
I look back now, and it's just hilarious, because it just furthered my drinking career. It furthered my own ... It furthered me to enable myself, because I had those tools. So, as my drinking career progressed, I mean, I knew what to tell the people when I got a DUI and I had to do the evaluation to see if I had a drinking problem. I knew what to tell them, because I knew what their standards were, as far as what boxes to check, of that I'm a problem drinker. Plus, I had my dad as an example of how to get out of everything or hide everything, because, I mean, he is practically genius level IQ. In our family, the apple didn't fall far from the tree, as far as that goes.
Kerry Andre:
But, man, it was such a catalyst, knowing what to say to people, knowing how to hide, and it just ignited everything in me, like, "Okay, I got this. I'm a professional now," which is so dumb. But I was. I became a professional at weaving my story to make it sound good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, everybody. This is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, the cofounder of Lion Rock Recovery and your host. Lion Rock Recovery has introduced a support meeting specifically for people struggling with anxiety related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Structured as an ongoing workshop, the COVID-19 anxiety support meeting will teach coping skills and be a place to share and connect with others also feeling the effects of this crisis. Everyone struggling with anxiety about COVID-19 is welcome. Let me repeat that. Everyone struggling with anxiety about COVID-19 is welcome. To view the meeting schedule and join a meeting in session, visit www.lionrockrecovery.com and click on the orange banner at the top of the page. You can't miss it. Together, we will learn to feel more centered and empowered in the face of this great challenge.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You said something that we in recovery often say, which is that "my drinking career," right? I don't think normal people talk about their drinking career, right? It's not a career. They talk about their other endeavors, but we had a drinking career, right? It was a full-time, professional activity that we did, which includes, but is not limited to, getting out of tricky situations, rehabs, conversations super drunk that you have to ... whatever it is. We get expert level at it, because you have to. If you're going to continue to do it, you either have to step it up in order to maintain that at that level, or you have to or you have to stop, because there's no really great in between there. Then you, at 21, had an experience that really escalated your drinking.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah. So, at 21, I actually met my boyfriend, who lives with me now. We're raising my kids together, and he was from just a little bit north of town. So to get out of my problems and to get out of the crosshairs of my parents, I just latched onto him. He was mine, and we were in love instantly. Looking back, it's kind of funny, because he was fresh off a two-year meth addiction. So him drinking and us partying, it was just kind of an escape for him, and it was great, because he wasn't on meth. So he was happy, and I had the freedom, because of my financial situation. Like I said, I had bought a house early, and it was a big house. I wasn't living in it, so I was renting it. So I had the cashflow to be able to just move and go up there and be with him.
Kerry Andre:
So, early in our relationship, we were up there, and my best friend ... Actually, I got a call asking me if I was okay. I couldn't figure out, "Well what do you mean? What do you mean, am I okay?" They're like, "Didn't you hear about what happened to Carmen?" I was just so very confused.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Carmen's your best friend? Carmen was-
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, Carmen was my best friend. We grew up together, going to country school, and she was a grade lower than me in school. Then her mom was the cook at our school, and they were kind of a second set of parents to me and my sisters. My mom and her mom, Karen, were best friends. So they would have coffee every morning at our house, where the school bus was just one mile away. The pickup stop was at our house from school. So she was over every day, and we just kind of grew up together. Her brother babysat us, me and my sisters and her.
Kerry Andre:
So when I get this call, I'm up in Crosby with my boyfriend, and it's that Carmen had murdered her mother. It was completely unbelievable. So I'm calling, frantically, their home phone. Nobody's picking up. Back in the day of actual answering machines, I can't even imagine what that recording would sound like on the answering machine, like, "Hey, it's just me. Just checking in. I heard something really strange. Please, somebody call me back."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you were like, "That didn't happen"?
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, like, "What are you talking about? I just was with her last weekend. We were supposed to get together this day, which didn't happen, because she was in Bismarck," and all these different things. Come to find out, yeah, it did happen.
Kerry Andre:
So, immediately, I drive back to Williston with this boy that I'd been dating just a short amount of time and find out it happened. Went and talked to her family and everything like that, and it was just unbelievable.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What had happened?
Kerry Andre:
She apparently just snapped and stabbed her mom, and I don't even know how many times, but apparently multiple. Yeah, she murdered her mom.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Had that been a tumultuous relationship, growing up, or did you have any idea that the two of them had-
Kerry Andre:
No.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
None?
Kerry Andre:
No. I mean she, Carmen, my friend, was obviously a part of my party group, our party group. We were friends with all the same friends, and her parents were on her butt all the time, too, about getting her shit together and either finishing school or getting a job or whatever, just being an adult, because, at that age, we should've been doing adult things and not just running around partying.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Was she smoking a lot of meth?
Kerry Andre:
No, I actually never did any of that with her. That was the weird part about it, is I was with that girl, I mean, probably 75% of my days, up to that point, whether it was talking on the phone or ... and this is my whole life. I just couldn't see it. I mean, she had gotten in fights.
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:52:04]
Kerry Andre:
I just couldn't see it. I mean, she had gotten in fights. Which I had too. We're country kids. I mean, and her beating the crap out of some girl or something like that when they were at a party fighting. I mean, that was an unusual thing. I could not think of anything that would have done that.
Kerry Andre:
She had this new boyfriend. The weekend before this happened... March 15th is when it happened. Beware the Ides of March. My gosh, never forget that saying ever again. But I actually, the weekend before, was supposed to be hanging out with her, but she went with this boyfriend to Bismark, which is a town a little bit southeast of us. When I got in the jail to see her... Because I said that I was her cousin, so then I got face to face contact with her, because I wasn't going to go through glass. I just had to see my friend and had to see... Just ask her what the hell happened.
Kerry Andre:
I mean, that was my personality. I was scared to be in a jail more so than being around her.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, of course.
Kerry Andre:
I made my mom come with me. She was just kind of huddled in the back corner and just crying. She just still had all these cuts on her fingers, and what I'm assuming are from knives. Your hand slips. I listen to enough true crime that I... Nowadays that-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right.
Kerry Andre:
And-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The blunt [inaudible 00:53:23] looked like it had been... Yeah.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, exactly. She went through this story. It was face to face of what happened. Supposedly, they had gone to Bismarck and they had done a bunch of drugs and a bunch of pills.
Kerry Andre:
She remembers coming home to her parents' house, because she was living there at the time, and hiding in this little kind of cellar thing that they had. She remembers hiding there for what she had said was about a day. My memory could be a little bit off on any of these timelines. But in just thinking that she was, I think the story went something along the lines of... Well, she was basically hallucinating is what she says. She thought she was pregnant and that her mom was going to take the baby, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and this and that. Just this big huge story. I'm going, "What?"
Kerry Andre:
At that time, what I had heard was that there was no drugs found in her system. But looking back at the different timelines of when she would have been tested, when she would have done these drugs and stuff like that, they metabolize out of your system different. PCP, you hear of people cutting in between their ribs because they can't breathe and they're going to make gills, or crazy stuff like that.
Kerry Andre:
So of course, searching for a reason. I'm looking for different drugs or something.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, I'm searching for a reason this many years later.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, exactly. She tells this story. It was really crazy. It was believable to me, because when she goes through this story of her reasoning... And she's crying through this whole entire thing, just shaking. She almost doesn't dare get near me. It's like she's almost afraid to come near me. I suppose you would be almost... I don't know. I just wanted to grab her and hug her, because I could never believe that that person, the person that I knew, the person that was my best friend would ever be capable of doing that.
Kerry Andre:
She'd tell her story, and then she'd backtrack. But then the story would be the same as she went forward. Then she'd backtrack again, and then the story would be the same. No matter if she backtracked and went forward, in her timeline of events, it was always the same. So it seemed really believable to me that there was something that snapped in her brain.
Kerry Andre:
I went up to visit her a few times. Her family was like my family, and they were kind of really against that. I felt really strange going up there and almost being there for her, but then also being so mad and angry that something like that could happen. Because I mean, how do you deal with being friends with a murderer? And how do you at 21 years old, that would've been the year I turned 21, how does that even register? When you don't fully understand why, there was no reason that we could pinpoint that it happened, other than a psychological snap.
Kerry Andre:
I mean, I was never afraid of her. I mean, I remember being at a party on New Year's Eve at her house, and I was riding my snowmobile. That's what I was driving that night. Because you're going to go get drunk at a party and you better drive your snowmobile, because you don't want to drive your car.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. That makes sense to me.
Kerry Andre:
Kind of like that saying... Well, I had to drive. I was too drunk to walk.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Kerry Andre:
Anyway, she didn't want me to get hurt driving home, and we ended up getting in a fight. Then she pushed me, and my head went through a glass window in her house. Gosh, her mom was so mad at us, because we broke out the window. But she literally got in a physical fight with me because she didn't want me to drink and drive my snowmobile home because I might get hurt.
Kerry Andre:
So when the cops interviewed me later and stuff like that, I never had to go to court or go on the... Well, I'm sure it was on the record, but have a formal interview. Because I really didn't have anything bad to say that I can pinpoint, as far as convicting her of this murder.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, after that, I had a really good excuse to be escaping for everyone. My parents were empathetic that I had lost my best friend. They were sad because they lost some of their best friends. They lost a person that was like a daughter to them. I was losing friends over the fact that I had some contact with her after the fact, and being judged because of that. If anybody hears this, the people that don't know probably will judge me, because I've had contact with her.
Kerry Andre:
It was about caring about her as a person, but also just me not understanding how something like that could happen, and wanting to find answers. I try to figure things out. I like answers.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I mean, that's, to me, like... I don't know, maybe other people have judgment. I have zero judgment about that. You know someone your whole life as this one person. They snap and do something that is inexplicable, and that you weren't there for any of that. And you're supposed to erase a lifetime of relationship? I mean, what happens to her... Particularly, I take it she's in jail, in prison.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, she is. It happened... Over the course of a year, she was in the county jail here. And then I'm not exactly sure how the agreement was reached, but I think she pled guilty in turn for a deal. I think she got 15 years. So she's 13 years into a 15 year sentence.
Kerry Andre:
She was eligible November of 2019 for early release for good behavior. But apparently, the victims, which would have been her brother, her brother's wife, probably some of her aunts and uncles and cousins, I think they went and testified against an early release. With getting only 15 years for murder, I can totally see their point. I'm sure it was devastating to her, because she had gotten emails from her over the course of this 13 years and stuff like that.
Kerry Andre:
I just told her that I don't know how to feel about it. I don't know if there's ever any sort of relationship that we could necessarily have. But if anything that I want out of the relationship, she said that she would talk to me and explain things to me, so maybe I could have some understanding. I don't know how I feel about that. But it's just some of those things, yeah, I feel like there's chapters in my life I need to close. That's one that's never been closed. It really did turn me into a downward spiral.
Kerry Andre:
With that excuse of, "I'm going through a lot," and people constantly asking. All of our friends, which were mutual friends, would always be asking like, "What happened?" Or, "Did you hear anything?" And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Kerry Andre:
A lot of my drinking from then on out was hiding. My parents, at the same time, were divorcing. My sisters were leaving for college and stuff like that, so they were getting away. So that wasn't an issue with my parents getting divorced and my sisters having to see anything. I was kind of always the protector. The little mama and the two little ducklings following along.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'm the oldest of three girls, so I get it.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah. Whether you have to take on that role, I think it just kind of with-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It just happens.
Kerry Andre:
... age, you just kind of do it. So everything was kind of falling apart.
Kerry Andre:
Then Michael, my boyfriend at the time, he was up in Crosby, which was close to my family. It was just an hour away. So we just hid together. He was drinking, but not using meth. Nobody really knew that at the time from him. So we got a house and we just... He went to work and I went to work sometimes, and partied. It was an even smaller town. It was a town of about 800, so I mean, that was the only thing to really do was go and go to the bar. That's where everybody our age was that was there.
Kerry Andre:
We continued in that pattern for about five years. As much as we loved each other and wanted to have a life... We could say what we wanted out of life and what we were going to do, but we weren't making any positive steps towards that. You just get in the holding pattern of every single day doing the same exact thing. Go to work, come home, go to the bar, go to work, come home, go to the bar, go to work, come home, go to the bar. That's what we did. I knew something had to change, but I didn't know how to change it.
Kerry Andre:
We got out of that relationship, because we fought a lot after we were drinking. Mostly me. I was going through so much, and he was my sounding board. It wasn't necessarily anything he was doing, but unresolved parental issues.
Kerry Andre:
During my parents' divorce, that... I think their divorce lasted two years. We learned a lot more about my dad's addiction. Our parents, with me and my sisters being adults, just they got to the point where they didn't shield us from anything anymore.
Kerry Andre:
My mom wanted to, even though she didn't have to, to justify her reasons for leaving him, because he just would never be sober. My sisters and I didn't need that, but we learned a lot of stories from her about when we were little. Things like, "Yeah, you all three got your tonsils out. He drank all your bottles of codeine. So then I was sitting there with three kids with no medication, with their tonsils ripped out, and it was 70 below windchill. Your dad filled it back up with water." But that's how bad his addiction was. It was like no big deal to drink our codeine cough syrup. And all of it at once, because I mean, what kind of buzz are you going to get from codeine cough syrup? Children's codeine cough syrup.
Kerry Andre:
Then we had this whole new light shed on my dad too, at the same time. They were fighting. And then of course, my dad is trying to look at it... Or trying to justify himself, and the love that he didn't receive from my mom, because she was all shut off to their relationship, that she had made her mind up a long time ago. It was just this back and forth of almost whose side we were on.
Kerry Andre:
Divorce is horrible at any age, I feel like. But as adults, it was just mind-blowing to hear all of these things that were going on in our childhood that we thought, for the most part, was super, super happy and everybody loved each other. It was like there was all this hate and resentment coming up. Yeah, just so many unknowns. Then dad would tell stories about mom, and mom would tell stories about dad. It's just this constant battle between them.
Kerry Andre:
So then that really made me feel bad, because I didn't know what my family was anymore. They were always so loving growing up, even our extended family and stuff like that. It all kind of just seemed like this big lie, this big cover-up. A lot of the covering up when we were growing up, I get it, my mom wanted to shelter us, because children don't understand everything that's going on.
Kerry Andre:
All that was going on. I mean, that was horrible. That was a two year battle. Then Michael and I are just doing the same thing. So nobody really paid attention, I don't think, to what I was doing. Even though I got DUIs, which I was really good at hiding those for some reason. Probably because it's rural enough out here that... I mean, I just drove around. No license for two years because I blew 0.21? Shoot, that's not that bad. I'll just drive. I just won't get caught, and I never did. So I could hide that.
Kerry Andre:
In my search for some sort of like stability, I think I kind of turned to just finding it in other people. Then I got a new boyfriend. That would last a couple years. Then it was another boyfriend. That would last a couple years. The pattern just... It kept repeating. I probably had some sort of addiction to love or it was codependent. I mean, we grew up in that, coming from an alcoholic family.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah. It was funny, because it was just like I wanted to do things for myself. I had a picture of the life that I wanted to do. I was smart enough to attain it, but I just couldn't make the steps myself to get there.
Kerry Andre:
It all changed or started changing when I had my kids. That would have been... 2010 I found out I was pregnant with my son. I was in a relationship with my son's dad. We'd been in a relationship for over a year. We'd moved to Alaska. Because again, everything's going to change in geography. When your geography changes-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you're a different person.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, exactly. Finally, I was sober for the first time in, gosh, 10 years. Because yeah, I would have been... No, I was 28, so it would have been... Yeah, so the first time in about 10 years I was sober. It wasn't a problem for me, thankfully. But I found new addictions like Mountain Dew, which added about 60 pounds to my poor body.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, we were just up in Alaska. I was isolated, I was away from everything. Then he was a different religion than I was, and he would find ways to isolate me even more and just got really controlling, trying to use his religion against me.
Kerry Andre:
I had one friend that flew over to Anchorage. He was there and he needed a ride, so he was just waiting at my apartment. My boyfriend at the time, I'm six months pregnant, he says to me after my friend had left, like, "It's completely inappropriate. You basically are cheating on me. You're an unmarried woman with an unmarried man in an apartment by yourselves. What is wrong with you?" From that point on, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I have to get out of this." There were obviously other things, but I'm like, "He's literally grasping at straws to try to control me, and I'm not even doing anything wrong."
Kerry Andre:
So I started making plans of like, "If I stay, what are we going to do? If I leave, how am I going to get there?" Being in Alaska, away from all my family, and pregnant, it was like, "Okay, what do I do?" So I stayed until my son was born, tried to work everything out with him.
Kerry Andre:
He really wasn't working at the time. In going to Alaska, that was the plan. He was going to go work with his brother who lived up there, and I would find a job, which I did. I worked. I worked at a golf course. When I was up there, I was just like, "I don't really want to do anything professional right now. I just want to chill out. I've worked hard my whole life, and I'm just kind of going to chill. But I need to have something to do." It was really, really fun.
Kerry Andre:
But he never got a job. This was also one of my biggest downfalls in picking a partner, how I don't see these patterns or how I didn't during that like 15 years from when I started dating until now. I always fell in love with the idea of what this man could be.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Their potential.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah. Maybe that's a daddy issue, because my dad is so full of wasted potential. That's just what it boiled down to with the father of my son.
Kerry Andre:
After my son was born, I moved back to Williston. At that time, the oil boom was going really strong. I had told him, "We have a son. If you don't want to work, that's fine. You want to do daddy daycare, that's fine. But if I'm going to be the one that's working... Because obviously, this child is not going to survive on love. As much as you want me to breastfeed until he's 18 so we can save money, it's just not going to work for me. So we're going home, and I get to pick where I'm going to work if I'm going to be the breadwinner." Which once we got home, he of course went back to work. He still actually works for me.
Kerry Andre:
But my son was six months old, and I finally called it quits with him. During those six months, I really wasn't drinking. I was breastfeeding off and on, and stuff like that. I feel like in a drinking career and when you finally realize that you're drinking alcoholically and you look back, the excuses become so much more apparent. They say, "Well, you always have an excuse." It's like, "This person died. My cat died. I had pneumonia, so I should drink myself stupid instead of taking antibiotics." Anything.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, I mean, during those six months, I did have excuses to drink. Or I'm stressed, because now I'm a new mom, and I deserve to have three bottles of wine if I want to. He was drinking right along with me. In his religion, that was... He was LDS, Mormon. So for him, I think it was a personal problem. He was flip-flopping back and forth between what he was raised in for 40 years and what he actually was doing with his life. Because it's not like I started him on drinking. I mean, he was always... Did a little partying here and there. So he was struggling personally too.
Kerry Andre:
We just parted ways. Little did I know when we parted ways, I got a going away present, which would be nine months later, my daughter. Shortly after I left him and moved out and took my son with me, he was actually still working for us, which was fine. So we saw each other daily. We got to raise our son side by side, but not be together. I didn't even tell him. I think it was six or seven months along when I finally couldn't hide it anymore that I was pregnant with-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh.
Kerry Andre:
... his daughter. Yeah, that story with the priest. I'm Catholic, so when I got him baptized, he's like, "Well, are you with the father?" Blah, blah, blah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh geez.
Kerry Andre:
It's like, "I'm married. A Catholic mother. Can I please baptize my children?" Like, "No, that one was a going away present, Mr. Priest." Yeah, that's a whole other story. He's like, "Did you really just say that to me?"
Kerry Andre:
Actually, when I had that conversation, my mom was in the room. She just looked at me like, "Kerry, stop. I know you get nervous and I know you ramble. But come on, you're smarter than that."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They're jokes, they're jokes. Oh my God.
Kerry Andre:
Just slapping her head like, "How could..." Well, it's the truth.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh boy. That's hysterical.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah. But I didn't tell him that because I didn't want him to be a part of our daughter's life. I was actually really excited, because if we were going to be apart, then my kids wouldn't be alone in this. They wouldn't be bouncing from house to house. In the long run, I just thought that that was a nice thing that they could go together, they could have each other. Just because we screwed up as far as our relationship goes, our kids wouldn't be alone in that.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, we were both really happy about it. Of course, he went through the whole, "Oh my gosh, it's not mine," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The abuse of trying to be just... I don't know, make me feel bad about myself. And, "It must just be a lie." I guess I can see that. But at the same time, I mean, what was he going to do? Hold my hand while I was pregnant for nine months? I just didn't see any need to have to fight about what I was doing while I was pregnant again and not being apart. I didn't want to get drawn back in.
Kerry Andre:
I had her in November. I started having contractions. I was staying with my mom, because I knew that I might go into labor. So I left her house at gosh, 1:00 in the morning. I had to pull over like five times in between the hospital, having contractions. Showed up at the hospital. By the next morning, I had a baby. Yeah, cleaned up, was walking around the hospital, and the nurses were trying to tell me, "Your sister's in this room." I'm like, "No, no that's my room." They're like, "What are you doing?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness.
Kerry Andre:
Do you want to call somebody to be up here with you? Because nobody was up there. I was just always very self-sufficient.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, then that started our journey with two kids. We co-parented very well together, but we both went back to drinking. We were taking the kids every other weekend. Like I said, he was working for us, so then it was... At my work, which is so strange, probably as far as getting sober. My desk at work is a bar, a fully stocked bar. I think I said earlier, my grandpa owned a liquor store. Well, at our sign shop now, it's all decorated with the signs, but they're all liquor signs.
Kerry Andre:
Then my uncles and some of their friends and my grandpa's old friends, they used to come down for happy hour. Well, the tradition has continued. Now they've got a bar. One of our friends died, and he had this bar in his house, and so they dropped this bar off at our shop. So every day at 4:00, they come down and watch Jeopardy, and 4:35, have a beer or two.
Kerry Andre:
So when I had my kids, that's where the pattern began again. It was basically two years of not drinking, and then binge drinking in between when I wasn't pregnant. I was an adult now. I had my own family, and still have a couple drinks after work, before I had to go home with the kids. It just went right back into it, except for it was new. I was by myself, other than my kids. I was normal drinking again, because that's what everybody did. That was happy hour.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. So now it looked normal.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah. I got back into that pattern. And of course, found another boy. A boy that I'd known my whole life. We were going to make a life together. He knew my kids, he knew me, he'd always loved me, and got married, and had another baby.
Kerry Andre:
Our whole dating and then up till, I got pregnant with my youngest daughter. I mean, it was just a big party. Because then I also, I had somebody there, so I had a backup so I could drink as much as I wanted because I had somebody else staying there. It was two people with their eyes on the kids. They were babies. They slept. They didn't know anything.
Kerry Andre:
I had my daughter in June of 2015. By January of 2016 is when I got sober, because just in those six months from June to January, the couple times that I drank, I mean, it was just awful. I don't know if something chemically changed in my body or my tolerance had just gotten so high that it went backwards like they say it happens to some people. But I mean, two bottles of wine is a lot, I'm sure for some people. But for me, I mean, it was face first-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Kerry Andre:
... through glass windows and getting 90 stitches in my face type of putting down-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You got 90 stitches in your face?
Kerry Andre:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I can't see that at all.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, no, it was in my nose right here, right here, and then right here, and then under my eye. I'm lucky I didn't lose my eye. That was probably after a bottle of wine. I mean, I wasn't even wasted at all. But just drinking, slipped, went through a wall, a glass plated wall. Even that didn't slow me down though. I mean, it was, "Well, I slipped and I put my hand, and there was a table runner." I mean, even that wasn't a problem.
Kerry Andre:
It was funny, because I was staying with my mom, it happened at her house, and my kids were there, so I called the ambulance myself. Even a pillow on my face would not stop the bleeding. I was taking selfies of myself to try to see if I could stop the bleeding and where the cuts in my face were. I didn't even know if I still had an eye on the one side. Came home just zipper faced.
Kerry Andre:
My family is calling me like, "Is enough enough? Is enough enough? We've realized you weren't that drunk, but still, is enough enough?" I'm all embarrassed, thinking people are going to think I was wasted. It's like to me, I wasn't super wasted. I mean, I wasn't-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you're like, "I had a bottle of wine."
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, I wasn't blackout drunk and it wasn't absolute-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Because you're comparing it to what you've normally drink or what you've drank before. We do that, right? Where we compare, we say like, "Well, this X, Y, Z thing happened. I fell through a window. But I only had a bottle of wine. I used to drink or I have drank a liter before, and I was fine." So it's not about... We're just comparing the intake of alcohol to the situation. By those rules, it's not that big of a deal.
Kerry Andre:
No, absolutely not. For me too, it was like, "Yeah..." Telling my sister... Which my sister at that time, my little sister, she had been sober for probably three years at that point, maybe two. She had gone through her own stuff with drinking and really bad depression and stuff. At that point in my life and my drinking too, it's just like from her sober mind... And a lot of my family wasn't sober, so they could almost justify it too like, "You only had a bottle of wine. What the heck happened? That's not like you. That's not like you. We drank seven bottles of wine between the three of us, and we were all fine."
Kerry Andre:
Yeah, I mean, that didn't even stop me. I knew it was bad, but at the same time, not bad enough, because my standards were so much higher.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What made it bad enough? What made-
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:18:04]
Kerry Andre:
... because my standards were so much higher.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What made it bad enough? What made you make, and how did you make a decision to get-
Kerry Andre:
Well, I was married at the time to my husband Mark, and we have since divorced, but he was over it. It was scaring him, and for him to be scared considering he's had an up and down past with drinking. But he can have two beers and quit and he doesn't care. I mean, not that he doesn't drink like the rest of us and party like the rest of us in growing up where we've grown up. I was scaring him too. I was at the point where they were going to commit me. I got drunk, within one week got a DUI, said I was done drinking and it was just a horrible mistake, as always, and then went out a week later and ended up in the drunk tank in detox in the jail because I didn't really understand what the cop was trying to do. Even though he was just trying to tell me like, "Hey, it's winter, I'll give you a ride home." But he had to take me into detox because I wouldn't tell him where I lived and I literally was two blocks away from my house.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh.
Kerry Andre:
And so then after that nobody knew where I was and I had my kids. And I just, I couldn't do that to them anymore. The thought of them seeing some of the things that I had seen with my dad at that point. Because during this whole period after my parents got divorced, up until I quit drinking, my dad spiraled out of control. He went from his drug of choice, opiates, to heroin because it was less money and now they've since cracked down on prescription drugs. So I think that was just his next stepping stone. I'm not necessarily up to date on how that all works for opiate addicts, but so that's what happened to him.
Kerry Andre:
So I saw a lot as an adult from him and having to commit him because once my mom was divorced, she was done. She'd done her job, she couldn't save them. All my sisters and I, even though it wasn't our job necessarily either, we took on that role. And thinking about my kids having to see what I've seen of my dad in that state, it was done. Enough is enough, and I wasn't going to be forced into anything. I wasn't going to let my parents, my husband, my friends, anybody, my sisters, I wasn't going to let them send me away for 30 days away from my kids. There had to be a way.
Kerry Andre:
So I got out of jail and they talked to me, and my marriage was falling apart at the time too. Not all because of drinking. Of course that played a role in it too, but just different adulting things between me and my husband as far as making money, supporting the kids, all the things that take a marriage apart.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh my gosh [crosstalk 01:20:41].
Kerry Andre:
Yep.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Kerry Andre:
Paying bills and how we should do it and retirements and we just couldn't come up with a good schedule, and we just couldn't come together on it. And so knowing that everything was just going to fall apart, I could read the writing on the wall. And I told my husband, I told my sisters and my mom, "I will figure it out. I will get help. Don't commit me. Just let me do some research. I'll figure it out." And I told my husband, "I'll quit drinking. I don't have a problem with that, but I'm just going to tell you right now that's not going to fix our marriage." So we'll take that out of the picture for all of you. I promise you guys, and I know that I can't make excuses anymore, but I can show you. I can stop drinking and I can show you that I will do what I say I'm going to do.
Kerry Andre:
And I was driving around, and I'm one of the very few smoking unicorns left out there, and smoking cigarettes and Googling on my phone. And I ended up in the parking lot of Walmart and I had come across this online treatment center, which is Lionrock. And I called and it was Bahan. Is that how you say her name?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Bahan, yeah.
Kerry Andre:
Bahan, she was at the other end of the line and I'm ... thinking about it now it's like, I'm surprised I wasn't a sobbing mess. Maybe I was and I just don't remember it. Because I feel like I should have been. And knowing now, how it changed my life, I mean I should have been sobbing some happy tears. Here it is, this is what I've been looking for, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. [Willison 00:04:23], the town that I was living in and still am in, doesn't have a lot of resources. There's been times where there's been treatment centers there. There's been counselors here, good counseling services and stuff like that, but it's pretty hit or miss, and there's not a lot of funding. And so to find something online, because at the time in 2016 there wasn't anything here, that I could do from my home was amazing.
Kerry Andre:
And so when I called, she said, "I'll get right back to you." Maybe she heard the desperation in my voice or maybe it's just standard within your company, but she told me, "I'll get back to you within two to three hours. Give me your insurance," which I had at the time, "and let me see what we can do." And she called back and she's like, "Oh, yep, you're in. And this is going to be what you have to cover, but all of this ..." and I'm like, "You're kidding. When does this start?" And so then I think I started the next week and continued and haven't drank since. Haven't even really thought about it.
Kerry Andre:
It wasn't even hard, which is really amazing after all those years that it wasn't hard for me. And I was still going to work, and sitting on my bar stool, and having people come in for happy hour every day at four and kick me off my desk, my bar, AKA desk, and standing there for happy hour and not drinking. And every day having to say, "No. Nope, I don't want one." And it was easy to say no because I have kids. I always had excuses to say no.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. So it was easy to come up with reasons. But, what did you get from that experience? What did you get that really changed your ability to deal with the things that you had been running from?
Kerry Andre:
I just finally realized that it was okay to have problems. I always made my problems, to myself, seem really little because there's always people that have worse problems. There's always people that just can't do it. You get through it every day, so it's okay, you're surviving, that's okay. I wasn't living, but I was surviving and that was just okay. I just didn't have the drive to reach for more. I don't know if I didn't think I was deserving or if there was just so much going on, because of co-dependence issues, that I distracted myself putting out all the other fires in everybody else's lives and just could completely, it took the spotlight off of me. So it was a double edge sword.
Kerry Andre:
And so when I finally knew there was help ... and any help that I had received before, I guess it was kind of always people that were like me. And the thing about Lionrock that was so different is the people that I was connecting with were from all over the world. There was people on the East coast, there was people over in Hawaii that were getting up at 4:00 AM to make these meetings that we were in, these group sessions that we were in. And they did all sorts of things, lawyers and farmers and very successful people on the paper scale, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. Right, resume, on paper [crosstalk 00:07:38], yeah.
Kerry Andre:
And it was just like, oh my gosh, wow. Because everybody always told me my whole life that I could do anything, that I could be anything, that I was so smart, I can always figure it out. And everybody always did call and rely on me. From friends, to family, to anything, and for little projects and for hard things, and I'd always figure it out. So to see that there was other people that were struggling that were high functioning, that weren't, I don't know, in the gutter.
Kerry Andre:
And you do realize in the program and things like that, we are all the same, but I wasn't that person. And just coming to terms with, but you are. You're that bloody person with 90 stitches in your face. You're that person that face planted and has a black eye. It's you, you are that person. But two things can be true at the same time. You can be that person, you can be that addict, but you can be successful and functioning and happy and have love. That was just interesting to have to see people that were not from my community that were doing that, for me to realize and to realize it's okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Do you have relationships with any of those people?
Kerry Andre:
I follow a few on Facebook and the ones that were in my program for the longest, they seem to be doing really good. There's this other girl, I doubt that she would care if I mentioned her name, but her name is Sheila, and she is on the East coast. And she's running a foundation for recovery and does a lot of work and stuff like that. And it's funny because, as people and accepting people, we want to say that we don't judge, but when I first met Sheila in our program, it was like, "Oh that girl's not going to make it."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally, totally.
Kerry Andre:
And just like this East side Jersey type accent, knows everything, and she's just beautiful and she's just outspoken and stuff like that. And it's so funny because, she is, she's making it and she's overcome so many mountains and it's so awesome to see that. And she's very out there. I don't tell my story. I actually had a friend Snapchat me last night and say, "I heard you've been a good girl." And I'm like, "Well yeah, I mean, I always kind of am." And this is one of my oldest friends that used to come out to my house and do my parents' dishes so that I could go out and go drag main in town with him. Because that was my chore before I got leave. And he said, "No, I heard you quit drinking." I was like, "Oh my gosh. That was like four and a half years ago that I quit drinking." He's like, "Oh my gosh. Good for you."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. It's not ... What does your life look like today, and how has sobriety changed your life?
Kerry Andre:
Everything is still a complete (beep) show.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it.
Kerry Andre:
But that boy, that back in the day from Crosby that I dated for about five years, after my marriage broke up he actually ended up coming back to town. We'd always kept in touch and everything. And so he knew my life, I knew his life. He did go back to drugs. He's in recovery now. And so about a year after I filed for divorce and everything, he asked me out on a date. And so we went out on a date and now we've been together for almost two years now. And by the time that we got back together we were both sober. And so we had really honest discussions of like not falling back into old patterns and just getting into that point of, back when we really loved each other 10 years ago or eight years ago. And he was all right with me having three kids and him having to deal with two exes. And so we decided to try it out.
Kerry Andre:
And now, he didn't not know, back when we first dated, we had this dog that we got and she's horrible and she's a German short hair and she's never calmed down. She's the worst one of all of our kids. If there was anything to prep to of having wild kids, this dog was it. I mean she still to this day, she's 13 years old, she pulls out the whole cupboard that the garbage can is in and will tip it over and somehow figure out the child safety locks and get the garbage out every single day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah. They're really smart.
Kerry Andre:
So smart. And so throughout the years, 13 years of this dog's life, even when we were broken up, I always watched the dog. She's a hunting dog. I like to hunt. He would rather shoot a camera and thinks she's very pretty and will shoot the camera. I shoot the birds. And so he knew my family, he knew my kids, he knew my ex husband and we'd maintained a friendship. So yeah, now we're just raising the kids together and doing recovery together. Our recovery is pretty personal. We don't do a lot of things together, but we talk about it a lot. You know, where are you at and where are you at? And it wasn't something, I guess, that we went through together. So it's kind of, we bring something to each other's sobriety in different ways. And so it works well for us. And it's just no pressure. I feel like we both got really lucky in sobriety in that way. We don't, right now and it could change, we're just so comfortable in it and it's really nice.
Kerry Andre:
And the kids are, they're insane. They're insane. I love my kids more than anything in the world, but if there was ever a hard job, it is that. With everything going on right now and having to consider homeschooling and being a stay at home mom type of thing and all of that, it's like, no, never been my dream. Never in my life been my dream and now I'm being forced into it. And it has been pretty insane.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's been ... you're talking about the COVID, the Coronavirus and the pandemic that we're talking about and kids staying home. And I have a lot of friends who are in recovery, particularly mothers, who this is testing us at a level. I mean, I am sure that it's testing everyone, so I don't mean to say that only alcoholics ... But to those of us in recovery feeling like there's an out, or there's a release, or they're, desperately needing that, it has been really difficult for many people. And what's great is that you had the experience of seeking support online. So that's not new, that's not a new concept to you. But I do know a lot of people, it's a brand new concept to them. And there's that transition time, and it is.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think that's kind of what recovery is. So much of the time is like life on life's terms, and suiting up and showing up to what is happening, not what I've decided I want to happen, what I've decided needs to happen, all the different aspects of it is just really ... Because that's I needed alcohol for, was to deal with the fact that life was not going the way that I had anticipated or planned or wanted or whatever. I needed alcohol for that, and so now I need the tools of recovery and the community and the different things in order to deal with that same problem. Turns out life still does not go exactly as I plan. This is case in point. But yeah, it's been a wild time.
Kerry Andre:
Yes, very, very true. When I had originally reached out, and I guess how I did that is I found the podcast and I'm really into listening to podcasts at work. And I just, I am not the one to put my face on anything, especially anything having to do with, hi, I'm Kerry, I'm an alcoholic. Labels just have really not been my thing. I mean it's funny how, hi, I'm Kerry, I'm an alcoholic, versus, hi, I'm Kerry, I've abused alcohol in my past. One makes me feel a little uneasy and one makes me feel like, oh that's kind of okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Also a person in longtime recovery. I'm a person in longterm recovery. That's a new one that people are using.
Kerry Andre:
Yes. And that was one of the reasons that I reached out to Lionrock and then the more I thought about it, I really, with a lot of my co-dependence, a lot of my family issues and stuff, I was worried about doing an interview about my story because I don't want to call out anybody specifically. Because there's a lot of people in my family that are really close to me that could use time to work on themselves. A lot of people that I currently work with and have relationships with, and a lot of those are family members.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Whose names start with B and end with rad.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah. Right, and so I was worried about that because I just didn't want them to maybe hear this and think that I was pointing fingers at anybody. Because any sort of recovery, any sort of mental health issues, you have to, a lot of times, come around and accept that part of you on your own. And then I just finally, I had to get over myself for a minute. I've kind of been hiding my sobriety and embarrassed of my sobriety for so long. And it's kind of becoming a movement, and I can't say that I will ever be the face of a whole lot of things, but I do want people to realize that there's so many different ways.
Kerry Andre:
Lionrock, I mean anybody that I've seen struggling, I send them the link. It's just such a resource. When I talked to my counselor and stuff like that there's just so many things that I found valuable from my experience. She had to reassure me, it's okay, your story is your story and what you get out of it. And I did just want to share that and have people know that there are resources. And if you want to hide and do it, you don't have to be that person that's on Facebook counting your days down for all your friends. And if that's your way, cool.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Kerry Andre:
If that's what gives you the courage to change, or if that's what gives you the pat on the back to keep going, fine. Me, I was so embarrassed of myself that I just never wanted to let go of that control and have to break myself down to, that I was that person. And I am that person. And I think everybody is really that person in one way or another, whether it's drugs, alcohol, whether they're a bad partner, whether they're a bad employee, whether they just can't get off the couch because they're depressed and all those different things. And so that's just why I decided it was probably time because it is becoming more and more apparent. And it does help people to hear other people's stories, whether or not it's the little things or whether they've done humongous things. It's everybody in between. It really is. It's kind of like the coronavirus right now. It doesn't discriminate, at all.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. I know. It doesn't discriminate, exactly. Yeah, it was so cool to get your email and feedback about listening and that the episodes and hearing other people's stories had helped you and you get to do that too. You get to add something back to the pot. And of course it's always funny to me because people are scared to share their story. And then I'm like, "Okay, well if you come on, it's a global podcast. So it's definitely alcoholic to go from zero to 60, but I support it entirely.
Kerry Andre:
Yes, it is. And that is so much my life. I've gone back and forth. My sister, she writes songs and stuff and she's got a couple albums and everything, and she's the writer in the family and that's what she went into in college and everything. But we usually let her stick with the writing and everything like that and the speaking and the performing and all of that. But we always laugh because in a combination of all of our stories and then especially a lot of mine with being in Willison and dealing with my dad and having firsthand stories of still a practicing alcoholic. Not a functioning, but he sure is still practicing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He's practicing so much he's gotten really good at it.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah. Well I don't know, I think we might be on the downward slide but-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, no.
Kerry Andre:
Yeah. But anyway we've been just talking about like, gosh, one of us has to write a book. And so I've kind of started to do that too. And coming on here too, that was like another thing. It's like I need to find another, a community. I'm following this community, but it's one thing to watch but you got to put in a little effort too. And that's part of recovery-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's so scary though.
Kerry Andre:
It is. It is.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'll tell you, for me, which might sound ridiculous given I now tell bits and pieces of my story in like 60 episodes, but I was terrified to do this. I resisted it, and then once I agreed to it, I wasn't sure that I was going to have anything with my face on it. Our producer, Christiana, was going to kill me. We had 25 images that we were going to use for the artwork. And there was all this debate about which one to use. And they had originally mocked up the one that we ended up using. And I was like, "No, we're not doing that. I don't want my face, I don't want people to be able to search me and see this, that." At the 11th hour I was like, "Oh, I don't care. Fine, whatever, just use it." And they scrapped the 20 other images and just put my face on and I was like, "Oh, here we go." I just remember hitting like, and seeing it download in China and seeing it download in France and going, "Oh my God, what have I done?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But then I get emails from people like you who tell me that it's helped them in some way, shape or form. And that people's stories have helped them, that Lionrock has helped them, and I'm like whatever. It comes down to that like, are you going to judge me for getting better? Ultimately, is that what I'm afraid of? That someone's going to say, "Wow, you did all those things and you got better. What a bad person you are."
Kerry Andre:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like what do I have to do on this planet to be absolved from the crimes and misgivings of my past, right? Have I not done enough at this point? And I feel like I have.
Kerry Andre:
Yes. Well you guys definitely have amazing stories and your story was amazing and it's just really fun to see a community that is so well rounded too. That's one of the most important things that I need to remind myself, and everybody should. And the acceptance among our group is beyond anything that you'll really ever experience. And yeah, there's just nothing like it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. Kerry, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it and think that you are wonderful and look forward to your book and your story. And when you finish the book, please call us and we'd love to hear more about it. We'll come talk about it.
Kerry Andre:
Well, if nothing else, it should be pretty funny. I just had said something on my Facebook, my personal Facebook, about the first step for homeschooling is 80s and 90s dance moves class. And if nothing else, it'll be so hilarious that we'll get an ab workout. So, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There you go, there you go.
Kerry Andre:
So, if nothing else we'll fall back on that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. Exactly.
Kerry Andre:
So, and I sure appreciate you guys taking the time to talk to me and I hope it reaches whoever it needs to reach and that it helps.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It will. Yeah, it absolutely will. Thank you so much.
Kerry Andre:
Okay, well you have a great day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You too.
Kerry Andre:
Talk soon.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. Bye.
Kerry Andre:
Bye.
Speaker 1:
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 help line at 800-258-6550, or visit www.lionrockrecovery.com for more information.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:42:22]