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Elizabeth Gilbert is the mega-bestselling author of several books, including, of course, Eat Pray Love and Big Magic. Her new memoir is called All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation. It’s about her relationship with her late partner and very close friend Rayya who died several years ago. It’s a story of addiction and recovery, for both Rayya and Liz. And it’s about what happened when Rayya relapsed as she was dying, and what has happened for Liz since then. It’s beautiful, dark, funny, and incredibly illuminating.
Even though Liz’s story sounds quite rare at first, today we talk about how many of us have experienced something similar: A chapter in our lives where, as Liz says, you look back and wonder, what just happened? How did I end up here? Where did the ground go beneath my feet?
Liz shares her process of answering these questions, and what she learned from the patterns in her relationships. Namely, why she was continually drawn into relationships that had exciting, addictive, and ultimately codependent qualities.
We talk about what Liz has learned from addiction, withdrawal, and recovery. And why she often asks herself: What would somebody who isn’t addicted to drama do today? We talk about the relationship between excitement and boredom, and the journey toward a third option, serenity.
We talk about why it’s so much harder for many of us to simply live our own lives when we could be trying to fix, save, manage, and control someone else’s life. This actually makes us laugh quite a bit.
Liz shares a handful of stories about simply being human that will really stick with me. And at the very end, she shares the kind of love that she aspires to today. It’s beautiful.
MORE FROM LIZ GILBERT:
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
ELISE:
So this is not your first rodeo and you have talked about your work for decades now, right? No longer and well, not longer than decades, not a century, but how
LIZ:
Centuries I've been out here talking about myself,
ELISE:
But what is this experience like? Is this your most? I know all of your books are personal, but is this the most personal
LIZ:
Knee-jerk is to say Yes, but it's not that it's the most personal. I mean, they've all been as personal as they can be. I would say that the better way to say it is it's the most excavating,
It's the most searching thing that I've ever written. And I think the way that I was thinking of it when I finally was able to write it and I didn't want to go near it for, it took me seven years after my partner Rayya died to even begin to imagine how I could possibly write about this. And I had promised her that I would, and it was a promise that I was in some way eager to keep, but I didn't want to unearth the enormous amount of pain and shame and betrayal and lostness. That was part of those years, that very short amount of time that we were together before she died. But the word that I kept thinking of as my instruction for this book was forensic. And because I don't think anybody, I don't care how much people are out there looking like they've got it all together, I don't think anybody manages to go through their experience incarnated in human form and not have chapters of your life that are like, what literally just happened?
How did I end up here and who am I? And where did the ground go beneath my feet? I have a friend who always says, I thought this was a parachute, but it's a backpack full of cinder books, different things that we're doing that we think, I thought I was going through door number A, but I'm going door number B that goes shoots and ladders style down to this kind of hell realm that I never even knew as much. So I don't know anybody who hasn't been in that, but I really was curious. I really wanted to know literally how did I get here? How did I end up in a situation that was so degraded and devastating? And also how have I done that before and how do I seem to keep ending up in these kinds of situations in romantic and sexual relationships? So that was my goal. My goal was forensic excavating exploration. And I don't think I've ever done that quite so deeply before.
ELISE:
Yeah, I mean, it's beautiful book and dark and very funny, which is all an equal part. It's really hard to do. And I would also applaud you. I feel like there's so much intensity and how did this happen that it would've been so easy to make the whole book. There's something about the book that's not dramatic. Does that make sense? It doesn't feel like I'm going to tell you the most exciting thing that's ever happened. It's a very we story as much as it's about your life and ray's life and death, and it would've been very easy to even make it salacious in a way. I don't know how you did that, but obviously you're an incredible writer. But throughout, I didn't feel manipulated. If anything, I felt protected from that. Does that make sense? And maybe it took you seven years.
LIZ:
That's true. Thank you for saying that. I didn't want it to be salacious, and it's hard for it not to be because the material certainly could be, but a forensic report isn't salacious a forensic report. A forensic report of a murder is very factual. You know what I mean? There were this many puncture wounds in the body, and if the body was found after these many days of decay, when there's almost a reserve that's needed to be able to report on something rather than trying to drum up drama. And I'm trying really hard, one of my definitions for myself as in my recovery and who I'm trying to become, I really am trying to live a drama free life. What would somebody who isn't addicted to drama do today is a question that I ask myself a lot going into various situations because drama is extremely seductive and very tempting and very distracting, and I also think a tremendous drain of my spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical energy, and I don't want to be living that way.
So I think the fact that I've been, at the time that I started writing the book, I was five years sober, which includes a real effort at emotional sobriety. Maybe some drama had drained out of me enough that I could tell that book in a way that didn't feel dramatic and just felt like literally this is what happened. And that's what I did. Every page of the book was be like, and what happened next? Like a police report, and then what happened? And then what happened, and then what happened, and there was enough that happened that it didn't really need to be jazzed up.
ELISE:
Well, and this I think is friends of mine who are memoirists, and I dibble dabble in that too, in the work that I do though less though. But one of my great anxieties for them is that the craft becomes about the story. And in some way you almost have to harvest the drama in order to feel like you have something to write about or there has to be some sort of crisis. And I don't think that's true. I feel like some of the most incredible memoirs are writing about the most simple and mundane things, these common experiences that we all have. But I feel like you walk to the edge and then you retreat. You're like, this is the making of a made for TV or law and order episode, not law and order, but you know what I mean. And then you exercise a tremendous amount of strain after it's an afterschool special afterschool, special meets law and order. But I do think that I don't choose drama, I don't choose conflict. It's such important advice, I think, for the rest of us because why are we tuned? Why do you think we're tuned for that tuned to go, and is that because that's how we grow?
LIZ:
Well, I can speak to myself that it's been a real education to learn that there's such a thing as excitement, addiction. It's interesting, even in the big book of aa, which is the sort of mother book of all 12 step recovery, they talk about being addicted to excitement. And I think that that's 1934 language. And one of the things they warn about is excitement. Got to be a little careful if you've got an addictive mind and you get high on excitement, and they didn't know the neurobiology of that at the time, but they were absolutely right that you can get the sort of speed ball high of adrenaline, cortisol, epinephrine, all these things that are manufactured within the neurological pharmacy that we all contain. And if you are a person who grew up where emotional stability was difficult to access or to be around and where there was a lot of trauma and trauma, your body is kind of accustomed to these massive swings of adrenaline and collapse, adrenaline collapse.
And that's what adrenaline junkies and excited junkies and drama junkies are all about. And what I've really learned is that for me, and I'm just speaking to my own experience here, that I think I swung my whole life between excited and bored and overstimulated and then deeply bored, which also feels like depression. And then you go seek overstimulation because you're feeling bored or as the big books has restless, irritable, and discontent. But my first sponsor pointed out to me that something I had never heard before, that excitement and boredom are both side effects of the same diagnosis, which is anxiety.
And so if you are in a constant state of anxiety, then you really only have two choices, which is do I rev it up to excitement and drama, or do I back it down to unbearable, boredom and depression where I can't even sit with myself? So if serenity is not on the table as an option, then the only options you have is and excitement. And if the only options you have are boredom and excitement, you're going to choose excitement. But once you've actually, again, I'll put it on me once I have actually landed in serenity, which took some doing and undoing, I think once I've tasted serenity, I am no longer very interested in excitement because excitement isn't as good as serenity. And excitement also feels very disruptive. And it's almost like I don't want to do anything that makes me high anymore or that alters my state because I'm most days these days serene. And that's so priceless to have that feeling. I don't feel like jacking it up. So I think it's a trauma response. And then of course our entire culture here in the United States is built on drama and excitement and salacious and various multitudes of ways to get high and check out. So it's a culture that has created the world's biggest economy based on manipulating people's unease. So it doesn't help growing up in that culture.
ELISE:
When you're on that pendulum swing, how do you experience yourself historically when you've chased excitement? Are you escaping yourself or is that how you feel have felt most alive? And then conversely, when you're bored, is it that you're present with all of these really unsavory and uncomfortable emotions and you would rather not be there?
LIZ:
Yeah, I would say both of those things. And when I write about it, and I wrote about it a lot in Eat, pray, love, because I went and spent almost five months in an ASAM in India that was all about meditation, and I couldn't bear it. So much of Pray Love was me talking about the incredible discomfort that I felt in meditation. I was crawling out of my skin. It was murderous for me. Meditation for me back then felt like I'm pinned in a torture chamber where my mind sees that it's got me pinned and I can't go anywhere. And so here it comes with the weapons of war. Here comes my mind turning on me to remind me, show me the worst movie ever made, which is a movie of all my sins and failings and shortcoming and shame. And so the inability to be able to sit with myself because of my shame and my fear made it impossible for me to sit. And so it was really better to just make sure every hour of the day is filled with some sort of an activity.
ELISE:
Sounds familiar,
LIZ:
Because it's like, who wants to see that movie? Who wants to see that? I mean, honestly, I never thought I would have a shame-free day in my life. And I grew up in a very shame-based family where a lot was sort of done by shaming and a lot of people were carrying a lot of shame, and there was a lot of addiction and a lot of checking out and a lot of running away. And it's a shame-based culture, capitalist consumer culture just figured out how to push the shame buttons in all of us. So yeah, it's taken me a lot of years in the rooms and a lot of amends. The amends process of addiction recovery has done wonders for my ability to sit with myself because there were certain shame stories that we kind of came to the end of that one. That person was tracked down and if amends were owed, they were given. And there's something about that process that is deeply, deeply, deeply restorative to,
ELISE:
And I would imagine excruciating to undertake as well.
LIZ:
The idea of it is a lot more excruciating than the reality of it. And when I was working with my sponsor, she had me do a list of, she said, let's do three columns. And one of them is people you're willing to make amends to right now, and one is people that you're maybe someday willing to make amends to, and one is people that you are never willing to make amends to, and let's just put 'em all on there and then let's do what we can now and we'll just keep the list open forever. And she said, my experience is that as time goes by and your recovery deepens, you might see some people drift from the maybe list to the, okay, I'm ready to do this list. And you might see people drift from the never list to the maybe list. And when I made that list, there were some names on that never column that I was like, never, never.
And three, four years after beginning that process, in the last six months, there've been a couple where I woke up one morning and I was like, oh, today. And all of a sudden this thing that just felt like impossible was not only possible, but very straightforward. Oh yeah, you're just going to write a letter and this is what it's going to say and you're going to send it to them. And then there's this weird, I've experienced with that, this weird release where I truly understand what people mean when they say it doesn't really matter how somebody responds to it. A true amends is not about asking for forgiveness, it's about taking the opportunity to own what you did and just naming what you did and saying, I did this thing and it was wrong. The thing that I did was wrong, and thank you for the opportunity to let me say that. And that's all it is. And people are allowed to respond however they want. And I've gotten a lot more courageous about facing that and allowing people to respond however they want to and knowing they have the right to. So it's weird. It's excruciating right up until the moment you do it and then it isn't
ELISE:
Right. No, I would imagine it would feel amazing.
LIZ:
That seems like a spiritual miracle. Like, wait, why was this so hard last week and suddenly this week, it is no longer hard. I do not know.
ELISE:
It feels like a practice that would be healing for all of us all the time. In the same way that everyone's write gratitude letters, own your stuff, even if it's 10 years
LIZ:
Later, or in my case, one of them 35 years later.
ELISE:
Wow. Yeah,
No, what's interesting too about the book is that singular as your experience is, and I've been an Al-Anon, I've never been in the program, but so much of it is everyone tells their stories. And in listening to other people's stories, it is I'm sort of right sized in my own life. And then also you're like, oh, we're all having the same story. So I'm sure as this book comes out, even though it feels so highly specific, it's not right. I'm sure you're going to just hear from an endless number of people who are like, this could have been my story.
LIZ:
I think so. And I think on multiple sides of the story, I don't think I know anybody whose life has not been impacted by addiction of some sort, whether it's their own or the addiction of another. I don't know. I can't think of anyone. I'm running through ahead of everybody I know and I can join
ELISE:
The, I feel like it's statistically impossible at this point.
LIZ:
And so that's all of us. I think a good definition for me of an addict is just all of us, but a little more, it's like what we're like, but more an extreme version of what we're like. And it's all about the degree of intensity of how much we are trying to escape, but it's very difficult. Who was it who said mankind cannot handle much reality? I think it was TS Elliot who said, it's very hard to be in this world unaltered and to be in your own life and your own challenges, unaltered. It's a tough curriculum, earth school. And the other thing that I really wanted to do in the book, and I think I kept coming back to it intentionally as a touchstone, was this concept of innocence. That there's a tremendous and heartbreaking innocence to all of this misbehavior and all of this acting out and all of this codependency where it's like quite simply the only thing anybody is trying to do is survive the day and try to learn how to be happy and try to get their needs met. And when we're not, well, that can make us into maniacs.
ELISE:
Yeah, you have a line essentially like we're all innocent or none of us are innocent. And I think anyone who is in recovery or is in an active addiction or loves someone who recognizes even as hurtful as that behavior can be, that was an amazing moment where you recount where Rhea meets a girl, where essentially she talks about the girl's brothers a vampire. Can you tell that story because I thought it was, do you remember what I'm talking about?
LIZ:
I do. So Rayya was varying degrees of sober, but I will say hard drug free for 18 years before the
ELISE:
I love the Agoustina Bitters.
LIZ:
Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. She had some pretty loosey goosey ideas of what sobriety meant for a while there, but she stayed away from the stuff that was truly killing her because she had been a heroin addict and a cocaine addict, a speedball junkie with tremendous consequences. I mean, she was a massive out of control drug addict for 12 years of her early life, including multiple stints in jails and prisons, multiple stints of living in park benches and bus stations and huge consequences. And then did finally surrender to enough of an extent that she was able to put it down for 18 years, and then she picked it back up again at the very end of her life for a lot of reasons, many of which I may never know. But the story that I think you're referencing is that many times over the years, because Rayya had been my best friend and we spent so much time together, I watched as people came to her asking for guidance when they were in situations with a loved one who is an addict, especially with loved, loved ones who were ruining their lives and the lives of their family members and friends.
And I remember watching her counsel a woman who had come to her in distress because her younger brother was a heroin addict, and this woman kept trying to save her brother doing all the things that those of us who are like blackout codependents do,
Who were I can fix, manage, and control this completely unfixable, unmanageable and uncontrollable situation if I just try harder, love harder, give more. So this woman had been just pouring her life into the life of her brother who just kept bottoming out and taking her down farther and farther with him. And Rayya was counseling this woman and saying, and explaining to her from the perspective of somebody who had been the brother whose family had corrupted Rayya's family went through hell when Rayya was heroin addict trying to get her well, and she was stealing her grandmother's jewelry and stole her dad's car and sold it for crack while he was in the hospital. I mean all kinds of stuff. So she knew what it was like. She knows what a true low bottom addict is. She was that. And the woman was saying, how can I help my brother?
And Rayya said, what you need to understand is that you don't have a brother anymore. What you have is a vampire. And it's very confusing because your vampire looks like your brother and his voice sounds like your brother, and he still has enough of your kind of brother's original DNA that he confront, that he's your brother, but your brother does not exist anymore. And what you have is a vampire. And that vampire is going to take absolutely everything that you have until there's nothing left to take. And one of these days you're going to wake up and everything that you have is gone, including him, including the vampire. Once you've got nothing, once you've been completely sucked dry by this person, they will leave because there's nothing left for them to take from you, and they're not going to leave until there's nothing left to take from you. And she said to the woman, you better start giving a shit about you because I can guarantee you that that vampire does not give a shit about you no matter what it is that he's saying, because I've said all those things too. And she said, but what if he dies? And this was the bluntness and the directness of truth telling that I always marveled at it Raya, she looked at this person and said, your brother's already dead.
If he is a low bottom heroin addict, he's already dead. And you may need to grieve that, but you need to start taking care of your own life or else you're going to end up with absolutely nothing at all, including a brother. And she said to the woman, the question now that's on the table is whether or not your brother decides to come back to life, but you can't do that. There's nothing you can make to make that happen. And actually, I remember asking Ray one time, was there anything that anybody could have said or done back in the day that would've made you get off heroin sooner and cocaine? And she said, the only thing that would've helped me back then is if everybody had abandoned me sooner, because as long as there was even one person left in the world who would pick up the phone when I called and feel sorry for me, I had no reason to quit as long as there was one person who would take me in and let me sleep on their couch or lend me money or listened to my sob story, there was no reason.
And she said it wasn't until there was not a single person left in the entire world that she could hustle, that she was completely alone with herself. And then she had to say to herself, do you want to live or die? And she said, maybe if everybody had cut me off a lot sooner, that moment would've come sooner. So ironically, she was training me. I watched her in so many of those conversations that when she became that vampire again, it was as if she had taught me over the years what I was going to have to do and I had to cut myself off from it.
ELISE:
I believe this is Earth school. And you write about it beautifully. And you think about, as you were describing earlier, sort of Francis Weller calls them these rough initiations and that you can sort of maybe save off if you're lucky for a bit, but they come for all of us and that it's how you grow, right? Or it's part of life. There is no life absent that. When you think about this particular course curriculum of your Earth school, do you think that Rhea needed to vampire you in order to actually bring you to your knees? Is that the moment for you? Is that your sort of rock bottom equivalent?
LIZ:
One of 'em, she also taught me this. She also used to say every rock bottom's got a trap door with a lower level under it. Just when you think you're at rock bottom, there's the trap door under it with quicksand under it, with another trap door under it, with another bottom under it. And so it was on my down to rock bottom. But in our relationship, that was our rock bottom. And I would have to say, I mean, I love something that Byron Katie says, her definition of God is reality. And because it's inarguable reality that cannot be changed is kind of the definition of omnipotent. It's like the thing that you cannot, apparently that was God because that's what happened, and there's no way to go back and change that. Byron Katie also says, I never have to wonder what God's will is. It's whatever is happening.
And so that was happening. And in the end, I don't know that I understand what the workings of the universe are, but I find that when I use the model of Earth School and apply it to myself, it actually empowers me and it takes me out of a sense of victimization where instead of being like, why is this happening to me, it transforms it to why is this happening to me or why is this happening for me? Or what is the thing that I cannot learn any other way that had to be learned by this? What was the contract that these two souls created? Because we certainly thought we were about to enter into a very different kind of story after, what was it, 13, 14 years of being beloved friends and then finally coming together as romantic partners and having only six months, we thought we were embarking like the most romantic story the world had ever known.
So there's a humility in that of, oh, I thought I was getting A, but it turns out I'm getting B. I thought we were getting this beautiful story, but we're getting this horrific story. But maybe the beauty of it was the thing that needed to be taught. And Ray used to say her greatest wish for me always, because I used her to shore myself up. I used her as a bodyguard. I used her as my higher power. I used her for years long before we were together as a romantic couple. It was like, you are my savior. You're the one who is so strong and so tough, and who's going to defend me and tell me what to do and love me even if I don't know how to do it? I borrowed so much strength from her, but she used to say, I will not rest until I see you standing on your own two feet in every single situation of your life. And what better way for her to offer me the gift of learning how to do that than to remove herself from the position of being my higher power and actually become somebody really dangerous to me who I had to figure out how to defend myself against.
ELISE:
When did you have this? I'm sure you were conscious of the fact that something was happening in you along with that interest of controlling people through money, right? Through benevolence and generosity.
LIZ:
Put that in air quotes, put that benevolence in air quotes, it's suspect. Suspect, how benevolent that was. But I'm essentially, I think my true nature is benevolence, but my traumatized not so pure. Nature has definitely a motive.
ELISE:
And did Rayya ever, I learned to process addiction from you? Thank you. I didn't know that it actually had a name, but did she ever like you're a love and sex addict, or was she unaware of it too?
LIZ:
No. And in fact, she had a great, this makes so much sense as a really good user, an addict, she had a great distrust and hatred for Al-Anon and Coda as programs as well. She should have, because that's where people go to learn how to get their power back from people who are using them. I remember she was always so contemptuous of Al-Anon and she was always a bunch of fucking victims, bunch of whiners blaming everybody for their lives. And it's like, well, victims of whom, you know what I mean? There's a reason that's always the big joke in 12 step recovery is you go to an AA meeting and I do go to open a meetings and I love them. There's so much laughter. The addicts are so much more fun than the codependents. They're the wild ones and the uncontrollable ones who have the really great stories and they're in their cracking up and the Al-Anon people, Al-Anon, for those of you who don't know, it's a program for people who are in relationship with people who have addiction issues.
And they're down at the other end of the community center having their meeting, and they're all sobbing. They're sobbing because their lives have been totally destroyed by the addicts down the hall who are laughing. And it's like, well, why can't we laugh? How come the codependents are always the one left weeping while the addicts are like, what a great story. That was the time I almost drove your car over a cliff, like whatever. So no, she wasn't a fan of the, I don't think she would've directed me in that way. No, she just wanted me to stop when she was sober and when we were deeply aligned and connected, she just wanted me to stop giving my power to people. But when she was using,
ELISE:
Then she was happy to take it.
LIZ:
She no longer, she was perfectly happy to take all my stuff. So I mean, I'm laughing about it now because it's too beautiful and on the nose to not be funny. In a way, my experience is when you land on truth, you either start laughing or you start crying or you start crying and laughing at the sink. That's how it's always been for me in life. When I see the truth, it's like, oh my God, that's hilarious. Or I'm crying and just like, how did I not see this perfect thing?
ELISE:
No. And to that point about Al-Anon, it's just really unfun medicine. I mean, I wouldn't want to be an addict. I'm relieved. I don't have that patterning or that tendency, or I don't have addiction, I guess is the proper way to say it, or I have virtuous addictions to things like work. But with Al-Anon, the entire point is keep your eyes on your own knitting. You can't solve this problem for someone else. You can't lead them to like a horse. And that sucks.
LIZ:
Super sucks. And also, there's something I heard somebody say in an Al Andon meeting once that I was like, there it is. And there's this adage that we've heard so many times that it's a cliche, which is live and let live, right? And that's one of the slogans of Al-Anon. And somebody was breaking it down and saying, okay, here's the thing about that slogan. We've heard it so many times, we've become immune to it. Well, we don't study it. There was simple words live and let live. But this guy pointed out, when we focus on the adage live and let live, we're focused on the second part of it, which is let them live. Try to learn how to take your paws off other people's lives. Stop trying to fix, manage, and control them, accept and tolerate people the way they are. But he's like the most important word in that adage is the first one live.
That's your command. And that's why it's so hard for those of us who have gutted self-esteem or grew up super focused on other people as a way of feeling safe. I'm going to completely focus all my attention on others because I actually don't know how to live right? So if you say to me, live and let live what you're telling me, girl, go live your own life. And I'm like, I don't know how. I only know how to focus on your life. I only know how to tell you what's better for you. I only know how to command and control and obsess over your problems as though if I can somehow fix your problems, then mine will someday be solved. And that's the difficult medicine. The difficult medicine is now you have to figure out how to live your own life. And some of us, that's really hard.
ELISE:
It's brutal. It's way more fun to do it on behalf of other people. One thing I was grateful for, and I feel like this is in my own resistance to Al-Anon or the vernacular of recovery, and this probably is a shining light being like, this is you. I could not finish Melody Beatty's book. I know it's a classic, but I was like, no, I don't like this. And I don't not finish books either, but that's one of four books that I didn't finish. I'd hate the suggestion that if you are involved in an addict in any way, whether it's a parent or a partner or a child, that you are then by definition, codependent. So do you think that that's true? But I also feel like you have a really embodied definition of codependency, and I don't know, is that distinct from your own sex and love addiction? Or is that part of it?
LIZ:
Well, I'm in all the relationship programs in 12 Step. So because I have a problem, am obsessed with people, I'm obsessed with relationships, I get lost in relationships. A friend of mine years ago said to me, your friendships are more intense than most people's marriages. I have a deep intensity around human relationships, so I need all kinds of recovery at all levels of relationship. So I identify as a sex and love addict, and I go to rooms for that. I identify as an onic, which is I want to control and manage other people's more. And I'm deeply attracted to people who are out of control. There's also something very exciting to me about somebody who's imagine what it would be like to be that out of control. For somebody who's got such a tight clamping grip on life, what would it be like to be that wild and adult children of alcoholic and dysfunctional families?
That's another one of the relationship programs. Coda Codependency is another one of the relationship programs. I think that for me, I very happily and Contently will say that I belong in every single one of those rooms. I get high on people. That's my thing. And it's taken me years to even understand what a boundary is. I've never known how to say no. I'm a world-class people pleaser. I'm terrified of losing approval. I'm terrified of losing love. I'll bend myself and contort myself into all sorts of shapes to try to keep love approval, validation and acceptance coming from the outside in. So yeah, I think for me, and again, this is just my own experience. I'm all of that. I qualify for every single one of those realms. So for me, the thing is, why do I keep magnetizing to me, people who need me to fix, manage and control them, whether it is because of their depression, their anxiety, their lostness, and I think I can direct them to a place where they can find salvation through my direction, their addiction, whatever their needs are.
It's like I'm addicted to people who seem out of control so that I can then take the reins of their lives. So I don't know whether it means that anybody who's in any kind of relationship with any addict as a codependent, I just need to keep the focus on how many times in my life I have pulled that sort of a personality type toward me with the diluted concept that I can somehow make them. Okay. There's a bunch of definitions of codependency that I've heard over the years that I threw in the book. Most of 'em are really funny, but one of them is the motto of the codependent is, you break it, we fix it. It's so good, right? It's so terrible having the mirror held up. It's like, how do you know this about me? How do you know this about me so much that you made a slogan about it?
And another one is, the joke is, how do you kill a codependent? You lock them in a empty circular room with no windows and no furniture, and you tell them that there's somebody in the corner suffering who needs their help. And then you watch them run themselves to death looking for the person who they're supposed to be saving. And what it is, apparently, from what I've been told, it's a massive avoidance. It's a great way to distract yourself and avoid your own pain is by completely fixating on somebody who you want to manage. And that's kind of bred into me. So I just have to be really heads up about that. And a victory for me is when I avoid the kind of people who I used to run toward. I heard someone one time say, when I see red flags, I think it's a parade in my honor. And I run right toward it. I run right. Oh my God, there's a parade. Look at all those red flags.
ELISE:
Did you read The Dry Season by Melissa Febos?
LIZ:
Yes, I have.
ELISE:
Yes.
LIZ:
Great. I love her.
ELISE:
I love her too. She's such an amazing writer. There was a funny blink, blink where she writes about her ability to turn on her charisma. I feel like I encounter people like that, and I'm like, oh, they have a magical vagina. I know the term is not vagina, but she just talks about her ability to turn that on and send it out like a beacon. And then at one point you're writing about in the early days of your recovery and how you can feel your power magnetism when you're speaking, what does that for you? I felt like you guys both described the same phenomenon in slightly different ways, but is that just intoxicating to be able to do that?
LIZ:
Yeah, but it's also, I'll give you a different story that I didn't put in the book that I think can describe, it feels like power, but it's bullshit and it's an intoxicating power, but it's bullshit based on this deep fundamental lie. And it's also the opposite of power. It's actually tremendous dependency. I'm turning on this charisma. I'm turning on whatever powers of attraction I think I have because I need your attention. And if I don't get it, I'm not going to be okay. So how can you possibly call that power? It's an appearance of power, but it's disguising a vacancy and a desperation, and I'm not going to be all right unless I pour this energy out and you respond to it in the way that I need you to give me the thing that I cannot generate in myself, which is my own esteem.
So it's quite the opposite of power, but that's not easily explained to a young person who's flirting with their power for the first time where it's like, oh my God, I can draw someone toward me. I'm a magician, can make someone want me? I'm a magician. You know what I mean? And it's like, no, I'm not a magician. I'm a very lost child who's just using some sort of superficial glittering spell. But the story that I was going to tell you about was also very early on in recovery, I had a professional encounter with somebody. And what I recognize now too, of what I used to call love at first sight and what I used to seek that incredibly electric magnetic two people meet and instantly they're like this huge spark. I now know that that is something that is a warning to me that I need to get away from it.
Because if I'm having that intense a reaction to somebody, what it can only mean, and again, this is my life. What it can only mean in my case is that we have the same disease. We have the same disease, and we have the same damage, and now our diseases want to come out and play, and it's going to be amazing for a little while, and then it's going to be catastrophic. I'd had this encounter with this person, and there it was, all that electricity was in the air, and I was getting high off that electricity. And I remember I couldn't sleep that night after I met them and butterflies in the stomach. And it's interesting because all of these things that we associate with romance and a beautiful love story, butterflies in the stomach, my knees are weak. I can't focus. I'm obsessed. That also sounds like sickness, nausea, weakness, losing power and obsession and distraction.
And I remember waking up in the morning and I thought, they're going to contact me today. And this is somebody who is 100% married, 100% married with a family. And I thought, I'm going to get a message from this person today based on this encounter that we had last night. And I woke up that morning and there it was, and it's like, let the games begin. They were taking my temperature to see. It was a very provocative and flirty message that they left. And boy, there's a part of me that wanted to run right into that. And without the recovery that I have would've told a story about how destined we were to be together because of those feelings. And I sat in meditation for about two hours that morning, and I just watched, I disciplined myself to just sit there and watch what was happening somatically and internally with me.
And what I was watching was I felt like I'd never been able to sort of dissect it and feel it so clearly before there was a part of me that was trying to run away from me and toward this person. And it felt like physically a splitting was happening. And I'd felt that many times in my life and tried to control it. But instead of trying to control it, I just watched it and it's like this pull, this energetic pull that felt like it was beyond my control. And I watched the desperation of that part of me that was pulling toward that person, and I just kept saying to her, I just kept talking to her in a really gentle voice internally and saying, sweetheart, I know why you want that, and I know what you think you're going to get out of that. And I'm going to ask you if you would trust me to stay with me because I promise you, I can take better care of you than that married man with three children can I know you don't believe me. I haven't necessarily always done a good job taking care of you, but I'm speaking to you as a sober person that I have more to offer you than he does.
And I'm not as exciting as that. But run the tape all the way through about what happens when we engage in this kind of thing and where we always end up alone, even more alone than ever, even more disgraced and degraded than ever totally abandoned in a pool of snot face down on the bathroom floor. Guarantee you that's how this story ends. And I could feel her torn between the things she always does, and this person saying, I've got you and I want to take care of you, and I cherish you, and I invite you to give me a chance. At that point, I think I was only a year in my recovery programs, and I said to her, to that part of me, I don't always know how to take care of you, but I really care about learning and that's my goal now. And just give me a chance. Let me show you how I can love you before you go do that.
And she very reluctantly came. I felt her reenter my consciousness. It was like integrity was restored. This part that was trying to run away came back, and then I just cried. She cried, but I want that excitement and I want that romance, and I want that flirtation. And I was like, I know, baby. We've wanted our whole lives, but we're doing something else now. We're doing this now. It's something I hear, I heard God say to me a lot in early recovery was, we're doing this now. We're doing something different now. We're not following every single impulse to its final bloody destination.
ELISE:
Yeah, I mean, what a process and life is relationships mostly. I mean relationship with yourself, being primary, but what a tough curriculum from Earth School to have to figure out what that actually looks like if it doesn't feel like everything that you've trained yourself to want. What is boring? I mean, what is mundane and balanced and maybe not so exciting. It doesn't sound that fun, but
LIZ:
Yeah. And withdrawal. I mean, I learned a lot from Rayya telling me about her various withdrawals all the time. She quit heroin and cocaine. And I always tell this to my sponsees, to newcomers, withdrawal from anything, one of the primary discomforts of it, withdrawal is always a time of tremendous discomfort because you have to sit with what you're feeling without reaching for the thing that will make it go away. It's boring. It's part of the irritation of withdrawal is that you're bored. I had guidance from my sponsor about doing what I was taught were called top line behaviors, which she had me make a list of my bottom line behaviors. These are the things that destroy your life. And then she had me make a list of top line behaviors. These are the things that enrich and nourish your life and make your life bloom and blossom. And trying to replace those bottom line behaviors with top line behaviors was really irritating.
I was like, yeah, the bottom line behaviors are really fucking exciting, and they make me metaphorically high until the crash. And I think what I've learned now where I'm at right now is I don't know if I can survive the come down anymore from the high. And that's why I don't do anything that's intoxicating anymore. The comedown is just, it's so brutal. I don't know if I can physically, emotionally, or spiritually do it again. I hope I never have to do it again. So you're telling me to replace the thing that gets me high with eating a salad as a top line behavior or going for a walk or calling a friend who's emotionally healthy and stable and spending an afternoon with them and going out to lunch? You kidding me? It's like, are you serious? This is my remedy going thrifting with my nice friend instead of getting high, crazy.
But what happens is that the more I was doing the top lines, the more stabilized my nervous system was becoming. And then there's this, oh, suddenly I don't need anti-anxiety medication anymore, and suddenly I don't need sleeping pills anymore. And suddenly I don't need hormone replacement therapy anymore because I'm actually humming at this nice steady hum. And all of a sudden my creativity is blooming and I've got all these ideas for books I want to write, and my friendships are healthier. So, but it's very difficult to sell at first to an addict in recovery. But there's a beautiful line that I was told, which is that withdrawal is a sacred process because it's where you meet yourself in the process of withdrawal from whatever the thing is that you're escaping into. You're going to meet yourself in that space of boredom similar to how you meet yourself in meditation.
ELISE:
Yeah, no, and you have that. I think it might be an AA line, but addiction is when you give up everything for one thing, recovery is when you give up one thing for everything, which makes it sound awfully easy, right? Oh God, it's so simple. Just
LIZ:
Do that. Just give up that one thing. Yeah, no problem. You know that thing. You know that thing. Just give that thing up. No big deal. Oh my God. God, nothing to it. Well, that's why you need a community. That's why for me, it's too hard to do alone.
ELISE:
Oh, I don't think we're supposed to do any of this alone. No, I don't think so. None of it. Well, thank you for joining me. Thank you for this beautiful book. I can't wait to see it Land in the World. I'm sure every publishing journey is exciting. Is it exciting, though, in the way that you want,
LIZ:
I'm trying to figure out if I'm excited. I think I'm pleased. I feel really pleased to be able to offer this book. And I feel really pleased with the story that I've told. It's as honest as I have been able to be. And it had everybody who's in the book who was in Ray's life and her family members, direct family members, and the friends of hers who are mentioned in the book, I gave the book to all of them to read in manuscript over a year ago. And the question that I asked for everybody was, do you see anything in here that isn't true? And do you see anything in here that you don't think is fair? And because I want to make sure that this is true and fair. And so with their help, there were some things that I changed and some things that I took out if there was a dispute about is that what happened?
If there was any dispute whatsoever, I took it out. Like I said, we may have experienced things differently and come to different conclusions, but I want to make sure that the essential facts of the story, that I didn't get any of this wrong. And so I'm really pleased that I feel very comfortable putting this into the world and saying to the highest degree that it is possible for me to have done so. This is an honest recount of something that happened that was really difficult, but that led to a tremendous awakening. And when I first came into recovery, I'll end with this. I was on the phone with a fellow and I remember getting really angry going back to the discomfort of withdrawal. And I was saying that what I really want to do is I want to take handfuls of MDMA and mushrooms and go into a darkened room with somebody who I'm obsessed with, close the shades and shut the world out and disappear into that person and into the universe for days on end without leaving the bed.
That's what I want to do. That's my dream. Let's just do this and have there not be a world at there, and the only world is each other and the only world is this psychedelic experience of God and each other. That's it. That's all I want to do. And I don't want to come back downstairs and see that there's a bill from at and t or that I have this difficulty in my family that I've got to deal with or that I'm aging or that who the President is. I don't want to deal. I just want to do that. And this person said to me, and I was so enraged, she was like, Liz, the world actually needs you in it. It doesn't need you locked behind a door with the shades down, doing drugs and disappearing into somebody's eyes. And I was like, fuck you.
And I literally said like, fuck you. And also, fuck the world. Let the world take care of itself. Because I've been carrying so much responsibility my entire life, responsibility that never should have been mine for so many people, places, and things that I've been trying to manage and control, that I am exhausted and depleted and I have no interest in what the world needs. I just know what I need and what I want. And I was like, look, I'm going to put it down because I know that it ends up harming me, but I'm always going to want it. I'm always going to want that scenario that I just described. And that was when she said to me, the day will come when you will not even want what you used to desire with all your heart. And I was like, also, fuck you again on that because you must be smoking roofing tar. If you think I'll ever not want to do that, I will always want to do that. And that day has come lease where,
ELISE:
Wow, I was going to ask
LIZ:
You want to do that. I actually think that underneath all of my trauma and drama, when I could kind of clear it out and turn it over and get it away and clean up the wreckage of the past and change all of these behaviors, what's under all of that is a soul that came here to earth because it dearly longs to be of service and dearly long to be helpful and kind and loving to people. And in order to do that must be in the world. Yes. So it's not that I'm excited about the book, it's that I'm pleased because I believe that the book will be of service to people. And I actually don't say fuck the world anymore. I like being a citizen of the world and I want to be in it, and I want to be engaged with it, and I want to be helpful if I can be in a non codependent way. So that's an extremely long answer to your question of how do
ELISE:
I feel? No, but it's beautiful. I mean, I am with you and I feel we all signed up for this too. And so yes, escaping feels like a fun idea, but the reality is we are all supposed to be here right now doing whatever it is that we're supposed to do. So time to just do it right
LIZ:
And deep, deep, deep down inside, if I'm well, it's what I actually want to do
Because it brings a level of connectedness and joy and divinity and satisfaction that is sustainable. The problem with the taking the handful of MDMA and mushrooms and going into the room with somebody for a week and shutting the door is that I have to eventually, someone needs to eat a sandwich. You know what I mean? It has to. And when it ends, I'm brokenhearted that it's ended. But this level of this kind of loving is something that if I pace my energies, I can do in a really beautiful and satisfying way for the rest of my life, God willing. So that's where we're at.
ELISE:
This is a moment from near the end of the book when Liz finally submits to the program and she writes, and “despite my blinding deafening rage, the voices of the people in the rooms were starting to infiltrate my consciousness, telling me that I could not control or cure anyone but myself and to keep the focus on healing my own wounds, suggesting that perhaps I might consider giving the world back to God and stop trying to manage it all. Teaching me that, pouring myself into someone is not necessarily romantic and just might be toxic for all parties concerned, assuring me that I was not the highest power in the universe and asking me to stop forcing my will upon others. Inviting me to pray for guidance, daring me to surrender, reminding me of the word humility, inviting me to look at my own role in the unmanageability of my own life. Advising that I learn how to take care of myself rather than obsessing over others, rescuing them, or blaming anyone else for my own disordered internal state. Asking me, are you still waiting for someone else to change so you can be okay? Telling me to allow people the dignity of living out their lives on their own terms, even if their personal choices led to their pain or early death. Introducing the phrase, keep your eyes on your own work as a gentle way of saying mind your own damn business.”
Alright, friends all the way to the River by Liz Gilbert. It's a beautiful book and it's heavy, but it's also light and funny and just so incredibly readable because Liz Gilbert really knows how to write. If you got something out of today's episode, I would so appreciate your help spreading the word. Please rate and review the episode, follow pulling the thread on your preferred podcast platform, and share this episode with a friend who would also enjoy it. That's how we grow this thing. It's so helpful. Thank you.