Hold on to your headphones. It's season three of Recovery Happy Hour,

where we talk about life beyond the bottle and what happens after we quit drinking.

I'm your host Tricia and my favorite super foods are adaptogenic coffee and lunchables.

All right today's interview is with a woman named Joy, so it's perfect that today's topic is the same. Joy.

If you're anything like me, you quickly learn in recovery that quitting drinking isn't about the alcohol. It's about changing the things

that you drank over. And in learning how to get to know myself better and dissect my bad habits,

I'm understanding how deep some of my habits really are and they all begin with my thinking.

My thinking habits are deeply embedded in my brain, so deep in fact that it's taken a lot of work to even recognize when I'm

thinking in a way that's unhealthy or destructive. Here's a metaphor. Imagine

going through life walking with your baby toe folded under the toe next to it.

It's uncomfortable, it hurts a little, and you start walking with a limp to accommodate

it.

And eventually you get use to your weird limping gate and the pain and this becomes your normal

But if you stop and become aware of the root of the issue then you can stop walking for a moment, to bend over,

move your baby toe back where it belongs, and try to walk normally.

It takes a little bit of mental and physical work to snap yourself back into it, right?

And sometimes your baby toe wants to fold back under where it was because it's shaped itself to sit over there.

So occasionally you again have to stop and be aware of this old pattern, move your baby

toe again to keep walking normally. It takes practice and a lot of it over time, but eventually

the old habit can be broken and you can start walking

normally and pain-free again. So this is your brain. Your thinking patterns

create deep grooves in your brain and the longer you think something, the deeper the groove becomes.

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