Let's Chat | Addiction, Willingness, & Choosing You

The most dangerous drinking question is also the most common: “Do I have a problem, or am I just having fun?” I sit with that honestly and without judgement, because so many of us live in the grey area where nothing looks “bad enough” yet, but something feels off. If alcohol has started to feel necessary to relax, cope, or be happy, that’s a signal worth listening to.

We build on Lily’s sobriety story and dig into the real-life signs that fun can quietly turn into dependence. I share what I saw firsthand being married to an alcoholic, including how the pattern can escalate from late nights to hiding it, and even dangerous choices. The point isn’t to label anyone, it’s to help you notice what’s happening inside you when you say, “I need a drink,” and to give you a clearer line between choice and reliance.

Then we go deeper into a word that gets thrown around in recovery and personal growth: willingness. My favourite reframe is simple and confronting: we’re always willing, the question is what we’re willing to do. Are we willing to go back to what’s comfortable, or willing to choose what’s right? From there, we talk about choosing yourself when everything in you wants to go back, and why self-care, alignment, faith, and purpose are not one big decision but a series of small ones you repeat daily, sometimes moment by moment.

If you’re navigating sobriety, questioning your relationship with alcohol, healing from trauma, or trying to build real recovery habits, come join this conversation. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find Real Stories, Real Recovery, and Real Freedom.

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Transcript

Welcome Back And Season Intentions

Heather 0:02

Hello friends and welcome back to the Free Advantage. I'm your host, Heather Davis, and I want to invite you into a new season of Real Stories, Real Recovery, and Real Freedom. This show has always been about self-discovery, authenticity, and recovering a life of freedom. And this year, we are taking that journey together in a deeper way. You're gonna hear raw, honest conversations with people walking this path in real time. Stories of growth, healing, purpose, and becoming whole. You'll also hear from me as I reflect on these themes that rise from the stories, answer your questions, and offer small, meaningful takeaways that you can carry back into your week. This is not just a podcast you listen to, it's a place you belong, where you are part of the conversation. Welcome back, everyone. Today's episode is our Let's Chat Real Questions and Real Answers. If you've been following with me over the past few episodes, we have been diving into Lily's story, um, what it looks like to actually grow and to change and to recover, and what it looks like in her sobriety. And um I know that I've had a lot of questions sent in about that very thing. And I wanted to dive in and get right into it. Um, one of the questions that somebody sent in was, I'm drinking. How do I know if I actually have a problem or I'm just having fun? And I know this was something that Lily had brought up in her conversation. And it's such a real question because I know that there are so many that sit in this space, right? And it's like, how do I know if I actually have a problem? And, you know, something that Lily had said was super powerful. You know, she goes, I realized I had a problem when I couldn't be happy without alcohol. I couldn't be happy without it. And that really is the line. You know, it's not about how often you're doing something, it's about whether you need it to feel okay. Um you can't relax without it, you can't cope without it, and you can't feel like yourself without it. Um, that really is it's just not fun anymore, right? You're not drinking just for fun. It becomes something that you're dependent upon. And I think that's kind of how you know, right? And I mean, coming from me personally, I was married to an alcoholic. Um, and it was always that we're having a good time, right? It was always that we're having fun. We go out every night with our friends and we're drinking, and that's the life that I lived with him. And being being somebody who ne who never drank, it was kind of hard, right? From the outside in, it was easy to see that there was an issue, but he didn't realize he had a problem. It wasn't until later when, you know, it was after, it was after the fact, after we'd been at a bar and he'd been drinking all night, and we would go home, and it's, you know, it's time to go to bed because it's three o'clock in the morning, and he still wants to sit up and drink, or later on in our relationship, we had issues where you're hiding it. You're, you know, you're you're drinking and driving on the way home. There is a lot of things that are kind of those triggers where they start getting worse and worse when you start getting further on into your addiction. But how do you know if there's a problem versus just having fun? But I think that's it. I think it's when you really start to find that you're dependent upon upon it to even have a good time. Um, and you have a hard time being without it. If you're starting to look at it to numb or escape, like if you're having a hard day and you're like, I need a drink. I think the words I need are a good thing. It's a good trigger for the brain to be like, I need this. Do we really? Do we really? Um, I say it too with with no judgment at all. I don't want to ever anybody to ever think that I'm judging you for the space that you're in because I don't. We all have our path to walk and we all have those things that we struggle with. Um, mine may not be alcohol, but it's other things, right? But you don't always just start in an addiction. You don't just pick up the drink and you're addicted, right? We all start somewhere. And it's somehow, sometimes it creeps up on us slowly, and before you know it, we're in too deep. So um I hope that answered your question. Um but yeah, so the next question I have is what does it actually mean to be willing? Because I hear it all the time. Um, yeah, that's a thing, right? Just be willing. If you're willing to do this, if you're willing to do that. Um, we hear it, it's it's a word we hear on social media all the time. If you're listening to anybody talk about anything remotely in the recovery or growth or trauma um sphere, you're gonna hear this. You're gonna talk hear about willingness. And I love the question. I love it because I like to talk about willingness a lot because um when I was in coaching school, they they want you to pick a niche. Like, I'm gonna be this kind of coach or I'm gonna be this kind of coach. Like they want you to have a niche, like a specialty. And for me, I found it really hard to find a specialty or a niche. I couldn't just pick one. And I'm like, well, I'm like, I don't really know what that looks like. You know, I really feel that I have an opportunity to help people, and I don't really need them to be something specific in order to do so. But as I started going along, what I really did learn was that I do have a niche, and my niche is the willing. Um, it doesn't matter where you're from or what you've done or what you've been through or what you need help with, or what maybe the issue might be. But no matter what it is, you need to be willing and you need to be willing to do what it takes in order for you to get to where you want to be. And if you're not, you're not gonna be. You're not gonna get to where you want to go, right? Um, but something that Lily said really completely kind of reframed the idea of willingness for me. She said, we're always willing. We're always willing. It's just what are you willing to do? And I was like, that's good because it's so true. You know, I I've even taught it like sometimes we're lacking the willingness, but it's not about that. I don't think it's about lacking the, I think it's exactly what she said. It's not about the lack of willingness at all. The truth is, is we're not unwilling. I mean, we're willing to go back to what's comfortable, to avoid what's difficult, we're willing to choose what's familiar, we're willing to continue in on our addictions, we're, you know, we're willing to stay in toxic relationships, we're willing to do what's, you know, the easier thing to do for us. So it isn't really a lack of willingness, but it is the question of what am I willing to do? Right? What are you willing to choose? You know, we're willing to do a lot of things, right? And I think that's real important to understand. Um, so what does it actually mean to be willing? It means being able to choose and wanting, willing to choose what's right for you versus what's not good for you. Right? I don't you know what it's will, you're willing to get up every day and do the things that you do. What is it that keeps you from not doing these other things? Even things that you may want to do. We've I've talked about it in the past. But it is it is that state of of willingness, and it's basically turning our willingness from this direction over to this direction. Um, and question three, how do I actually start choosing myself when everything in me wants to go back? Wow, this is this question for me when I read it, I just kind of laughed because I'm like, yeah, let me tell you. Choosing ourselves is it's not an easy thing to do. We think it is, right? We think it is. We we do we do choose things for parts of ourselves. You know, our ego, our pride. We're always choosing on that side of ourselves. But we never really just stand up and be like, oh, I'm gonna choose this vulnerable side. I'm gonna choose the side of self-care, I'm gonna choose the side of growth, I'm gonna choose to lean into my truth versus these other things, right? Um, Lily had said, even after choosing sobriety, even after choosing what was good for her, even after choosing the right thing for herself, that there were still moments where she constantly questioned it. I think it it's it's not it's not just a thing that we just do. We just like, okay, I'm gonna choose myself, and that's what I do. It is not a one-time decision. It's a repeated one. It's one that we have to choose over and over and over again. And sometimes in not just in a day, sometimes it's in every moment. Sometimes it's in every moment. Sometimes when I wake up, I have to choose myself. I know what works best for myself. I talked last week about alignment and having to get up and do the things that I know ground and center me and bring me back to the connection with myself and with God. And that is something I have to get up and choose every day because sometimes I'm gonna tell you, I'd rather choose sleep. I'm a night owl, I stay up late, and uh it's hard because sometimes I have to choose sleep even when I'm not tired. But sometimes after I've stayed up all night and have to get up and I wake up and I'm groggy and I can't even see out of my eyes, and I'm like trying to put my glasses on, I'm like, now I need to write. You know, the bed is super cozy. I'd much rather be in in bed cozying up with my cat than, you know, in next to Sean versus then writing three pages of, you know, the random thoughts that are coming out of my head. But I have to choose myself in that moment, and after I do that, I have to get up and choose myself again, and then I have to go and do my movement. I have to go and spend my time, you know, building and growing my spirit, and then I have to come in and I have to start my day, and then I have to choose myself when it comes to my purpose. So choosing ourselves is something we do repeatedly. It is in the uncomfortable moments we have to choose ourselves, it's in our emotional ones, and it's in the moment where the old feels way easier. Right? We always want to choose that easy path, but it's choosing ourselves instead of what's comfortable instead of what's easy. You know, one of my mottos is that that comfort is it's the cancer of growth. It's the cancer of where we want to be, of where we want to go. Right? And sometimes it looks like us pausing instead of reacting and staying instead of escaping, instead of running. Sometimes it's it's feeling instead of numbing, it's choosing to feel the space that we're in. I know that those things can feel small, but they're not. Sometimes those are huge steps that we can actually take, and they're powerful in our life. So though it is not easy, though it's not easy, it is something that you can do, right? It's also ties into the willingness question, being willing to choose yourself. Being willing to choose yourself. Um, if you've been listening to this series and you have found yourself in any of the conversation that we've had over the past few episodes, if you have found yourself in any of these questions here today, I want you to know that you're not alone. Right? I've said it last week. Growth isn't linear, it is a process, it is a step-by-step process, and there's no right or wrong way to do it. There's no right or wrong way to recover. As long as we keep moving forward, we keep our goal in mind, our spirits in check, being willing to choose ourselves over and over again. Having the awareness of the things that when we are doing them, that they could not be good for us. Whether you find yourself in a di in addiction, whether you find yourself in your own sobriety, I pray that you keep moving. I can't I pray that you keep seeking and that you keep reaching for that freedom every day. I pray that you find the support that you need. And if you don't have it and you can't find it, reach out. Reach out to me. Reach out to me, or you can email me, you can reach out on my social media. You can reach out, I'm here, I'm willing to support you, I'm willing to help you, and if I can, I can help you find the right support that you do need. I am super grateful that Lily came on and was willing to share her story with me and with all of you. I hope her story reaches far and wide, and that somewhere along the line in it that you found something that you can take away from it. Um, I thank her for coming and being a part and letting me dive more into her, into her story, into her things that she's been experiencing. And I can't wait till I have my next guest and you guys get to learn more about their story. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for indulging me, for listening, for letting me be vulnerable, for letting my guests be vulnerable. Um, you know, if you are willing to share your story and you would like to share your story or you have questions, you can email me. You can go on my website, and I have all the buttons at the top. You can click on them and send me stuff that goes straight to my email. Um, but yeah, no matter what you've been through, where you're at, where you're going, that freedom is the advantage you already own. If you're just willing to reach out and grab it. I'll see you guys next time.