Addiction & Recovery Conversations with Brett Lovins
The kind of conversations I would have wanted to hear when I was finding my way to sobriety. Conversations that can help remove shame and stigma and move people toward finding help. Substance Use Disorder (addiction) is treatable.
Addiction & Recovery Conversations with Brett Lovins
Invitation to Dry January 2025 with Nell Hurley & Brett Lovins
Can curiosity transform your relationship with alcohol? Join us as we explore this question with Nell Hurley, a notable figure in the addiction recovery space with over 26 years of sobriety. Together, we navigate the evolving landscape of sobriety and the "sober curious" movement, delving into the intriguing concept of "gray area drinking." Nell shares her wealth of experience in guiding individuals through recovery journeys that venture outside traditional treatment settings, emphasizing the importance of curiosity in fostering self-reflection and challenging societal norms around alcohol.
Our conversation dives into the heart of societal pressures to drink and the gradual cultural shift towards more mindful consumption in places like the UK and the US. We recount how our paths crossed at a wellness summit and how this serendipitous meeting led to the birth of our new venture, Sober Curious Consulting. Both of us remain committed to creating recovery-friendly environments and encouraging a non-judgmental exploration of personal lifestyles. Through personal stories and reflections, we highlight the empowering potential of re-evaluating one's drinking habits, whether through a movement like Dry January or through everyday choices.
As we launch our Dry January 2025 Program, we invite you to join a supportive, stigma-free community that makes the journey of abstaining from alcohol for a month, both enriching and enjoyable. Our program offers a space to connect through webinars, weekly gatherings, and an online community. Nell and I share our excitement about offering early bird discounts for those eager to embark on this transformative month of curiosity and self-discovery. Whether you're sober curious or simply looking to reassess your relationship with alcohol, this episode offers insights and support to guide you on your journey.
- Sober Curious Consulting - Brett and Nell's Recovery Friendly Workplace consulting business.
- Washington Recovery Alliance - building the capacity of the recovery community to advance substance use recovery and mental health wellness by catalyzing public understanding and shaping public policy in Washington State.
- Recovery-Ready Workplace Toolkit - providing information, tools, and resources to help employers from all sectors—government, for-profit, non-profit, and not-for-profit—effectively prevent and respond to substance misuse in the workforce from the Department of Labor.
- Data on SUD in the US (2022) - from SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration). Link to my favorite PDF for statistics.
- Addiction 101 - it’s not a moral failing—it’s a treatable illness. Get the facts about this misunderstood medical condition from my friends at Shatterproof.
Welcome to Recovery Conversations. I'm your host, brett Lovins. If you're new to my podcast, you know I've spent the last couple of years exploring a wide range of topics, everything from personal recovery stories and the impact of substance use disorder to the Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative, which is near and dear to my heart, and so much more. My guests have included musicians, doctors, childhood friends, family members and even my wonderful wife, molly, has joined the conversation In today's episode. I'm thrilled to introduce you to my new business partner, nell Hurley. We're going to be talking about our new Dry January program, which is officially launching, and we're now accepting signups. Let's get the conversation going All right. Here we are, nell Hurley.
Speaker 2:We're doing this.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being on here. We've gotten to know each other quite well over the last little while, but the people that listen to my podcast do not know who you are probably, so I would love to give you the opportunity to just kind of introduce yourself a little bit.
Speaker 2:Sure, so my name is Nell Hurley. I live in St Paul, minnesota. I've been sober for a long time. I've been sober since December 27th of 1997. So it's 26 years. It'll be 27 years next month. I got sober when I was 27. I'll let you do the math.
Speaker 2:I love my sober life, wouldn't trade it for anything. I've worked in the addiction recovery field for about 15 years. Never as a clinician, I'm not a counselor, but I've worked in recovery advocacy space and the peer support space and really my passion is around, well, helping people kind of get rooted in recovery after treatment or in lieu of treatment, because really most people who get into recovery don't go to treatment. It's a very I think it's 9% or 11% of people who are clinically appropriate for medical intervention like treatment actually ever make it to treatment. So helping people kind of navigate their sober lifestyle or their recovery life, whatever that means to them in the real world. So that's what I love to do. I love to build recovery communities.
Speaker 2:I'm really interested in the sober, curious movement and this. You know what I call gray area drinking. I mean that's not actually not my term, I've stolen that term. The concept of gray area drinking is that you know there's. There are a lot of people who lie somewhere on the spectrum between completely fine or non-drinker, teetotaler, normie, whatever you want to call it at one extreme and full-blown, rock-bottom alcoholic at the other extreme. There's a lot of people who fall somewhere in the middle. They're maybe not clinically appropriate for treatment, but they're not fine either. So I love helping people explore that and I hope that we'll be able to talk about the sober, curious movement in this conversation.
Speaker 2:That's something that really lights me up. So I don't know, that's me. I'm a runner. I've run a bunch of marathons. I'm super into fitness. That's something that's really helped me in my. That's like one of my main recovery pathways movement and fitness, running, all that stuff, yoga. I live with my husband. What else do you want to know? I'm a knitter. Anyone here is interested in that. I like knitting. It's cool.
Speaker 1:Great start. The word curious has come up in Nell's opening here. Those of you that don't know, nell and I have started to work together and when we decided, with the name of the little consulting group that we are, we landed on Sober Curious Consulting. I'd love to just kind of drill in a little bit on this word curious, because I have some opinions about this, nell, that I'd like to share, and it'll lead us towards the dry January stuff a bit.
Speaker 1:I think I have this theory that the number one thing that people can do, you just you just drew a pretty good picture of what I think most people think they are. Chances are, if somebody's listening to this, they feel like, well, yeah, I'm on the spectrum because there's, there's only two ends and there's something in the middle, right so, and they may have thought, well, where where do I land? And you know, right so, and they may have thought, well, where where do I land? And you know, in my case I thought I was okay, like my, my assessment of where I was on the spectrum was flawed, but but here's the thing is is that I had no, I had no outlets for curiosity.
Speaker 1:I resisted anybody who came into earshot of me that wanted to challenge my drug and alcohol use in any way, shape or form, and I'm a believer that I think the work that well I won't speak for you the work that I'm trying to do as a part of the work together that we're doing is to allow people to get curious for themselves, quietly or out loud, whatever they need to do, and when they get curious, there's stuff around them to help them understand either their predicament or their safety or whatever else, or maybe the family members around them. I really believe that curiosity is really the number one thing, that anybody who's in this spectrum which we all are is key, and the problem is shame and stigma don't allow it in for the most part. So I'd love for you to tee off on that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it applies to anything, right? I mean, curiosity is such a powerful thing that can open your mind to new perspectives, and I do think that there are a lot of people out there who default to drinking because it's seemingly normal, it's very socially acceptable, it's? You know, we live in a drinking culture. Think about, you know, all the Bud Light commercials during NFL football games, or just you know, st Patrick's Day parades, new Year's Eve parades, new Year's Eve work, happy hours. I mean, we are a society that is just awash in alcohol, although that's changing a little bit. I've read some research and seen some data on the numbers around alcohol consumption both in the UK and in the US, and it is declining a little bit for the first time in many, many decades.
Speaker 2:The thing that I love about the sober curious movement, or about curiosity in general, is that it creates an opening for another way, and I think that we need to be careful about the way that we default to societal norms that are not good for us, are not good for our families, aren't good for our communities, aren't good for our planet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that curiosity is a really, really powerful tool that's available to anyone, given. You know, sometimes we need help kind of getting there, and I think that these conversations are really important, like any opportunity a person has to look at, look at their own life, look at their inner life, their outer life and their inner life and what you know, what do I want for my life? So I'm I'm really interested in the big powerful questions Like what do I really want in life? In the big powerful questions like what do I really want in life, what do I really want for myself when it comes to drinking or any kind of substance use? You have to ask that question and there's no right or wrong answer. It's very personal, but the curiosity is key.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the other thing too. Anybody that is listening to this that just got their backup, because I would have. Who are you to tell me? I didn't want anybody to tell me anything. I didn't want anybody to tell me nothing, but the truth is, is that, quietly, a little part of my brain knew things weren't going sideways, and I'm just saying this out loud for anybody that's listening that you know, as we get closer to talking to about dry January, this is between you and you. Nobody has to. If you go and look at an article that we provide or you decide to learn a little bit more, that's between you and you, and it's safe to do that on, quietly, on your own, and that's and I wish that I could have gotten curious sooner. And those of you that don't have any problems, you know awesome.
Speaker 2:You'll, you'll, you'll discover. Hey, you know I can, you know, potentially keep alcohol in my life in a safe way, and that's awesome too. So there's, I don't think there's no judgment and you just said there's no right way, like because I? The truth is I love drugs and alcohol to my freaking core. Me too, my core yes.
Speaker 1:So Love too. So okay, so we, we should probably just real quick tell people how we met. I think that that's is that interesting, that's kind of interesting isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think we initially met on LinkedIn. Somehow we got connected and I was doing some work in the recovery friendly workplace space and you were too. I'm sure most of your listeners know about the work that you did at Cisco. We were both invited to participate in a wellness in the workplace summit. It was a two day meeting at SAMHSA headquarters in Rockville, maryland. For those of you who don't know, samhsa stands for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. It's the arm of the federal government that funds and supports mental health and substance use disorders. So we met in person. After connecting on LinkedIn, we met in person at this meeting and we just connected. We just really hit it off. We both went to Western Washington University, which for people who live in Washington that's probably not a unique thing, but I don't think there's very many people from Minnesota who go to school at Western.
Speaker 1:But I did.
Speaker 2:I was there in the early 90s, at the same time that Brett was there. I don't think that our paths ever crossed there. Maybe they did. When I finished taking all the classes that I could take at Minneapolis Community College, I wanted to transfer to a four-year school. I wanted to be in the Pacific Northwest, and so I transferred to Western Washington University, which I had never I mean, I had never heard of it, I'd never heard of Bellingham, but and I I drove out there sight unseen and to go to school there. And when I got there I decided I'm going to start over, I'm going to, I'm going to. I don't want to tell anybody that I'm like sober. You know that I've been through treatment and I did drink again, but it was very controlled. Did drink again, but it was very controlled. I did have this kind of a two-year period of it wasn't totally controlled, to be completely honest, but I wasn't full on, like you know, drinking every night and spending tons of time in bars.
Speaker 2:I was mostly doing school so maybe that's why our paths didn't cross.
Speaker 1:So then we met at the SAMHSA event. You touched on that. So, just from my perspective, I flew into this event. You know that Peter Gamon I don't know exactly who paved the way for me. I think it was my friend, alexa who put in a call and basically there was about 100 people there, maybe 125. It was really cool because it sort of validated all that work I'd done at Cisco was, you know, being seen somehow right being. It was just. It was really cool for me.
Speaker 1:But I didn't know a single person in that room, maybe one or two, because I spent my time, you know, outside of the recovery network per se, my LinkedIn, my LinkedIn connections there's. They're growing as far as the recovery space goes, but I was all by myself, right. So to see somebody like you that I connect with a little bit on LinkedIn was, was cool. We ended up having lunch one day and and you were one of the facilitators, so you were up at the mic, so you're, you're, you're, you're fancy, you're fancy up there See the way I look at it. And yeah, it was cool, like I mean, it was cool to to, to meet you, to see you on stage, to hear you facilitate the meetings as they went along, and then you know, have lunch and you know, we just bullshitted. It was cool, that's. That's the way I remember that part.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was great it was. That was definitely a highlight was of that. That two day meeting was connecting with you. The meeting was about. The meeting convened people across the country who are doing work in the recovery friendly workplace space, so the recovery friendly workplace initiative.
Speaker 1:All right. So let's move to this offering Dry January. So the title of this podcast will be something along the lines of Dry January, with Noah Hurley and Silver Curious and blah, blah, blah. So you know, you've made it this far into the podcast and we're going to talk about Dry January for a second.
Speaker 1:So I already alluded to my lack of curiosity for my particular predicament. I wanted to drink everything in the place and then some more, and always. But you know, probably when I was about 25 or 26, there was a musician in Bellingham that I really admired and you know open mic. I sit down next to him and he tells me and I noticed he's not drinking, which was like what. And I asked him why, why aren't you drinking? And he said well, I take one month off every year and I choose february because we were in february, because it's the shortest month of the year. That made a huge impact on me and I and I and I started to try to do that and, and we don't have to go long on that, but just suffice to say I didn't know anything about this concept of dry January or any of that. But even as a young guy, I was attempting to try to figure out some kind of way to I don't know rein it in a bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm trying to remember when I first heard about dry January and I can't exactly recall. I think it just sort of started to show up in the media. It's become. It's a thing that was started in the UK in 2013. It was started by an organization called Alcohol Change UK. They started this Dry January Challenge in 2013. And it gained in popularity over there over the next few years and then it jumped to the US and it has just gotten bigger and bigger every year.
Speaker 2:And again, I just I love the concept of curiosity around alcohol or substances and I also really reject the idea that you are either alcoholic or you're fine. And when I quit drinking in 1997, those, those were sort of my options. There was no other way If you were having problems with alcohol. Well, at least this was my perspective. I don't always trust my you know this was my 19-year-old perspective, so who knows? But the way I interpreted my experience was that, because I was having problems, I was a full-blown alcoholic and AA was the only place for me to go. I went to treatment and then I went to AA and it helped me a lot. I stayed sober in AA for many years. I still go to AA, some not like I used to.
Speaker 2:When I first heard about Dry January, I just really liked the idea of being, you know, taking a month off of drinking and using that as an opportunity, not only to you know, kind of reset and use it as a health challenge and kind of almost like doing a little detox or a cleanse, not unlike, you know, cleanses that people do around food and around the first of the year, those things that have become really popular and really mainstream. I just thought it was brilliant to you know, let's do this around alcohol and give people the opportunity to you know, reset physically but also to examine you know, what's it like to go for a whole month without alcohol. Examine, you know what's it like to go for a whole month without alcohol. What's it like to go to a work happy hour without alcohol, or have a birthday or go to a wedding or watch a football game or, you know, do all of those things where there's always alcohol present, almost always, even baby showers. I've been to baby showers where there's like book club, there's like the wine is flowing. It's like the wine is flowing, it's like why is there alcohol? And the other thing. I don't know really exactly where this fits in.
Speaker 2:But I, because I have been sober for almost 27 years, I have had thousands of opportunities to turn down alcohol and I used to hate doing that. In the beginning I was really nervous that, you know, if I people are going to notice I'm not drinking or they're going to ask me why I'm not drinking and I'm going to, you know they're going to think I'm, you know there's something wrong with me. I was just, you know, I had all this anxiety around it and I would say no to it and people didn't really bat an eye too much. And now I love it. I love saying no to alcohol and at whatever event that I'm at, if when somebody asked me for a drink, I just own it and say no, thanks, I don't drink, and it's just, it feels very empowering to me and I do think that the world has, you know, there's been a shift, that it's okay to say that nowadays. Maybe it was okay in the past as well. I just, you know, didn't think it was, but I think it's become more acceptable to be a non-drinker in today's world. Let's see.
Speaker 2:What else can I say about dry January? So a few years ago, about four years ago now I started coaching business where I mentioned earlier that I'm a runner and fitness and yoga and running have been a big part of my wellness journey and my sober life and I started a small business called Hurley Health Coaching where I combined fitness with sort of life coaching and recovery coaching and I one of the things that was really important to me in this business was that I don't ever tell people that they should stop drinking and that you know people are, you know everyone is on their own journey. So I completely welcome people who just want to take a break from it or who want to cut down. Like I'm. I have stepped out of this black and white thinking around. You know you're either alcoholic or you're fine, because there's a whole world of gray out there and that's what Dry January, you know, gives. It gives people the opportunity to be in that gray area and explore a little bit.
Speaker 2:So I started facilitating dry January groups through my coaching business about four years ago. I was facilitating small groups of individuals and then last year I had which was really fun facilitating these small groups of individuals. Last year I facilitated a dry January challenge for Salesforce, which is a large enterprise company I think they have about 75,000 employees across the globe and they brought me in to facilitate the dry January and there were 406 people registered for that challenge and it was great. It's so much fun to do Dry January with other people. Doing it on your own, I think, can sometimes feel like sort of a drag or the person doing it might end up feeling sort of deprived of fun that alcohol can bring. But when you do it with community and with support, it's a blast.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So we've been setting this up for a little while now and if you're listening to this, it means that we're open for signups. So we've talked about the why, like you know, depending on who was listening, right?
Speaker 1:now maybe you want to take a break, you know, and maybe you want to do it quietly by yourself, but maybe you want to come join a group of people and share stories, share challenges, and we're setting that up. So both Nell and I will be there right and we're charging 99 bucks to join us for the month of January Webinar at the beginning to say let's do this thing, webinar at the end to say well done, and in the middle weekly get togethers webinars. And we have a community software called School SKOOL that we've set up shop. We're gonna join a community and it's not Facebook and we're gonna kind of insist on no shame and no politics and we're just gonna have some fun. And Nell's got a killer list of things she's going to put out there for you to look at and watch and read.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean again it's. You know I am a failure at New Year's resolutions. I mean, some of them I've been able to do, but you do. But I always try to do no sugar and about halfway through the month I just lose it. I lose my motivation, I lose sight of my commitment and I might have a little sugar and I just go back to it Like, oh my God, I can't do this, or feeling bored with it or whatever was there for me. So I think that the same applies to dry January.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this and you're thinking about it, maybe you've tried and, like Nell, just defined your New Year's resolution or your alcohol-free month went by the wayside somewhere along the line. That was my February. Over and over and over again. You know, it's okay, like there's going to be no judgment or we're going to, we're going to insist on that Right and now, and I will be facilitators in this. So so, somebody has a what would you call it, damp January. It's okay, right. The idea is we're leading, leading people towards some curiosity, and I'd love to tell a little story too, now.
Speaker 1:Now, and I just you, you and I just spent some time together. You were out here in the pacific northwest and we we got a chance to hang out a little bit and I showed up to pick you up at 8 am the other morning and we were going to. We got some photos which will probably be on the, on the podcast, because we're working together. We got to do these things right and photos one of them. And you hopped in the car and I said something that I knew somebody like me would understand, and that is isn't it nice to be sober this morning? And I've been sober 11 years and it still blows my mind what it's like to feel that way in the morning, that crispness, that sharpness morning, that crispness, that sharpness.
Speaker 1:And of course you concurred with enthusiasm, and, and so maybe this dry January is just a month of that, right, and then you go back to whatever. But maybe this is the beginning of something else too. I don't know, that's up to you, but the point is is that we're bringing a group of people together. We have a point of sale up. We hope you'll click the button and go sign up, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I've gotten to know you well enough now that I think our vibe together is really good and different, right, and in a really positive way, and I look forward to watching you facilitate, listening to you, you know, lead some calls and then I'll just interject and say wacky things, cause that's kind of what.
Speaker 2:I do. We can count on you for that, brett. Bring your wackiness, bring your gifts. It'll. It'll be a blast. Let me just say a little bit more about what it's going to look like. You already gave an overview of this, but you mentioned that. Uh, so the cost of the program is $99. There is an early bird coupon for $20 off, I think, for the first little while here for early signups.
Speaker 2:But the way that it's going to work is that we're going to kick it off on January 1st with a webinar. It's going to be over Zoom and it'll be Brett and I. We're going to just talk a little bit more about Dry January, what it is, where to come from like, who's doing it. You know what's where did. Why is this thing so popular? Just kind of frame it up a little bit. And then we're also going to give you all a chance to have some discussion around. You know why you want to do dry January.
Speaker 2:There will likely be some of you joining who have done dry January in the past. You can talk about those experiences. There may be some of you who have, like, wanted to do dry January for several years but just haven't gotten around to it or, you know, for whatever reason, haven't done it. So it can be a really great experience to just have that discussion with other people around, like why, you know why, what, why are you doing this and what, what do you hope to get out of it. So, and also during that, brett and I will tell you more about what you can expect throughout the month.
Speaker 2:And what you can expect throughout the month is that we will then have those weekly, those discussions weekly over Zoom, and then we're going to also be pushing out inspirational content, so things like TED Talks videos, you know book recommendations, podcast recommendations, mocktail recipes you know different, different things like that that I have developed over the years. And then on January 31st, we're going to have a celebration, so no matter what it looked like for you, and you'll have the opportunity to talk about what your experience was like and what you got out of it. So I think it's going to be really fun. Again, I've done this before many times with other groups and people always say that their favorite part is being able to sort of connect with each other. And also I'll mention that if you don't want to talk about what's going on with you, if you want to keep your camera off and you don't want to share? You don't have to, you you know, you can just hang out and listen. So there's no pressure. There's no pressure whatsoever.
Speaker 1:So yeah, because I can do plenty of talking now. Just so we're clear, I can do some talking. Yeah, that's great, and for those of you that are in HR that are listening to this, we are still offering corporate dry January experiences for corporations, where you can bring your teams together as well, so we're still signing folks up for that as well, but this is for individuals. Nell, that was a great encapsulation and and I'm really stoked that I get to work with you and I'm, you know, recovery friendly workplaces is something that I care deeply about, as you know, and thanks for being willing to to have a conversation and I'm going to say it Put ourselves out there, right, that's what we're doing so yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say it Put ourselves out there, right, that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, we're doing it. Thanks, brett. Yeah, me too. Super grateful to be in this work with you.
Speaker 1:Awesome chat Nell. Thanks a ton. I'm stoked to be working with you for sure. So we invite listeners of today's podcast to take a look at our website. Drop us a message if you're so inclined, and if you happen to be a business owner or a decision maker, you can read about the services we offer as recovery-friendly workplace consultants. We can be found on the web at SoberCuriousConsultingcom. That's SoberCuriousConsultingcom. That's SoberCuriousConsultingcom. Hope you enjoyed the conversation. Maybe we'll see you in our dry January 2025 program. Take care, everyone is my son. Oh yeah, ha ha. Oh yeah.