Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 2 (It’s Okay to not Be Perfect)
Welcome to the second episode. In this episode, we talk about the increase of alcoholic deaths due to the pandemic and come to terms with how to overcome such hardship by using the loving-kindness meditation.
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Welcome to the let go and be free podcast, A podcast for those who grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family. I'm your host Ron Vitale, author of The let go and be free 100 daily reflections for adult children of alcoholics series. On this podcast, we'll talk about everything from dealing with ruminating thoughts to stopping dysfunctional behaviors that you learned as a child in an alcoholic home. Together will shine a light to dispel the shame you might have been secretly living with about your upbringing, and then talk about practical tips that will help you center yourself and live a healthier life. Please note, I am not a therapist or a doctor. If you need professional help, please reach out to a medical expert. If you'd like to learn more, feel free to visit my website at let go and be free.com.
And with that, let's get on with the show. So welcome.
This is episode two, I wanted to do something a little bit different for this episode. I am recording this at the tail end of March 2022. Most of us in the world have gone through some pretty difficult times due to the Coronavirus pandemic that basically up ended so many people's lives back in, I guess I was like late February 2020. Again, for my history, I had started writing the let go and be free series. And I think it was like the end of November 2019. So the majority of the books that I wrote those four volumes, basically were written over the course of the pandemic, you know, during the lockdown and various variants, the whole thing.
One of the things that I came across over the last week that kind of got me thinking of, you know, kind of where we are. And where we've come in where we got to go is I did see an article and they're with me here, I'm trying to pull this up on my computer and computers acting funny. The Here we go. There, I came across an article that essentially talked about the various deaths due to alcohol over the course of the pandemic. And I was kind of shocked to see the you know, the numbers, and I kind of wanted to talk, you know, through this with you, just so that we can kind of go together about this, because again, it is something that I just was shocked about. It is it is just something that, you know, I couldn't believe the numbers of how much things had gone to such a bad way, you know, over time.
So what I have here is I came across an article in the Washington Post, and I will put all this information in the show notes. It was a study that was published in essentially March 2022, in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And it found that more than 99,000 people died in 2020 of alcohol related causes, ranging from alcohol associated liver diseases, to mental and behavioral disorders, to drug overdoses involving alcohol. The tail end of the article, I'm going to just read another quote from it. Public health experts have seen increases in anxiety, depression, and social isolation during the pandemic.
Quoted by this one of the lead authors of the paper, Aaron white, and the interesting thing is that, you know, when you take a look at the numbers 99,000 more people, you know, essentially died in 2020. There was a graph in the article, and you can see, you know, the tremendous loss of life over the course of time due to alcoholism or alcohol related diseases over the course of time over the years. When you get to 20. There's this massive spike. You know, I can speak to my own personal experience in that in the, at the beginning of the lockdowns, I remember in my state, the state essentially has a state controlled Liquor Board. And that means that hard alcohol, whiskey and vodka and the like, are sold from as we call them, state controlled stores, state stores.
And at the beginning of the pandemic, during the lockdown the various state stores in our area that sold you know, wine and hard liquor, they were boarded up. The fear was that people were basically going to, you know, break in, you know, essentially try to get, you know, alcohol and I remember that there were lots of discussions of it. You know, go, you know, stock up, because none of us knew what was going to happen, you know, how long we were going to be locked down how safe it was to go out, you know, businesses were closing, I mean, at those early days of the pandemic, it was just, just wild. I mean, again, I pray and hope that no one will have to go through such a difficult time, of uncertainty and fear and anxiety due to, you know, a virus, it was it, you know, to me, I kept saying, I feel like I'm living, you know, one of my books I've written, you know, I, it's just was just wild, wild time.
So, you know, when I look back at that time, I had made a decision, both my wife and I, I think it was like, for her, maybe two or three years prior to the beginning of the pandemic, she had decided to stop drinking alcohol. And then, several months after that I had done the same I decided, you know, it wasn't gonna, you know, drink alcohol was a personal choice that I just said, you know, what, I'm going to give this a try, see how my body feels. You know, and I remember talking to a former coworker, he's a runner, like, I'm a runner, and he had said, you know, I had done this 30 day, dry January. And when I stopped drinking alcohol, I realized that my muscles, I have a lot less inflammation, after I had my long runs.
And, you know, we had a discussion about it, and I was like, oh, okay, as I'm getting older, you know, and I'm trying to keep my body in shape from, you know, run three times a week, and all my long runs, you know, depending on what I'm training for, you know, I've gone for runs have done two marathons in my life, you know, at least half dozen half marathons, but typically, on a, on a weekend run anywhere from six to 10 miles, depending on what I'm training for, you know, when the next day, just, you know, your legs, muscles being sore, it hurts, it's not, it's not a fun experience. So I bought at, you know, at that time, again, this was pre-pandemic, let me try just cutting out alcohol, I have never been a big drinker. You know, due to my upbringing, and, you know, what I experienced, you know, as a kid within my, you know, family upbringing, I really shied away from alcohol, I never got into the binge drinking in college or anything like that.
So I just said, I'm going to just cut alcohol, you know, out entirely. And, you know, basically, outside of Maybe one, maybe two beers in the course of the last three years. Stuck, pretty true to that. So when the beginning of the the lockdown happened due to the pandemic, you know, both my wife and I had said, Well, we're, you know, we're fine, we don't have to rush out and get any alcohol, because we knew a lot of people were trying to stock up, we were just like, Oh, we're, we're just going to go as is and, you know, stock up on normal things that we might need for food and such. But we, we didn't, you know, start drinking alcohol. But, you know, knowing and seeing what other people were doing, we did here and see that, you know, others that we knew, were starting to consume, you know, more alcohol due to stress, anxiety, uncertainty.
And seeing this article, you know, that was basically, you know, came out of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, you know, it's kind of disturbing and frightening to see that number of 99,000 people, you know, just in 2020, essentially died of alcohol related, you know, causes. And that got me thinking that, you know, no matter if you personally struggle, or someone in your family struggles, you know, with alcoholism, there's also a lot of dysfunctional behaviors over eating, you know, all kinds of stress related coping mechanisms that came out of, you know, the, the time that we went through during lockdown and the, hopefully knock on wood, the worst parts of the pandemic.
Now, when I look at that, and I start thinking about where we are now, you know, in my current time, and our I don't know what the future is gonna bring, but thankfully, virus cases are on the decrease, you know, in the United States, things are looking better. You know, we're hoping that it's going to stay that way. But due to various sub variants of omicron, things might go up in the next couple of weeks. We just don't know. Again, lots of uncertainty. But what I am thinking about is, the families that are struggling through the course of job loss and the pandemic and you know, everything that came out of that, specifically things like job losses and divorces and just great upheaval over the last You know, two plus years, that all of us have been doing our best living through the pandemic.
And, you know, now we're, quote unquote, on the other side, and things are looking great. I kind of like to point a finger and maybe pointed fingers to negative a phrase to use, but I like to just simply say, it is not as though magically, everything has gone and everybody's problems are solved. You know, just because the worst of the pandemic again, hopefully, you know, is over. That doesn't mean that the lingering after effects that people are still struggling with, you know, anxiety, social disorders, alcoholism, you know, overeating, like tons of different things people have been struggling with, you know, and talking with other families, not to get into personal stories of other families. But I know that there have been struggles in just trying to get, you know, scheduled for counselor or therapy session, because so many therapists are just overbooked, due to the struggles that various people are going through.
So when I, when I saw this article, that got me thinking that that's only a slice of one type of issue, you know, alcoholism, there's obviously been an epidemic of opioids, you know, in the United States, and people struggling with those, you know, that type of addiction, there's just lots of difficult problems, psychological issues that people been dealing with since the beginning of the pandemic? And, you know, from my perspective, the answer is, what are we going to do about that? What if we, ourselves are struggling with, you know, social anxiety or alcoholism and a whole range of various issues? Obviously, you know, my first line of defense would be, you know, trying to get help from therapist, you know, go to somewhere like, alcohol, anonymous, go to adult children have alcohol meetings and such, like, there's there are various mechanisms to be able to help. But, you know, I also wanted to focus on, there are other tips that I wanted to share related to how to help yourself, if you are doing those things, but you need something else to kind of help you get through in the sense of dealing with in the moment, stressors and challenges that, you know, yes, it's great to go to a therapist, I'm not saying that that's, you know, a bad thing at all. No, it's wonderful to do that, if you're struggling with issues called therapist, but it might be hard to get in to see one. And then if you do see a therapist, it might be once a week, 15 minutes, what are you going to do for the rest of your time, what other, you know, ways you're going to deal with, with your struggles. And that got me, you know, again, thinking of the larger impact that the pandemic will have on families throughout the course of time over the next, I would expect several years to decade, that rippling effect, you know, children that are growing up now, I know that are trying to, you know, overcome what's happening within their own families.
That's having grown up in a dysfunctional family, alcoholic family myself, you know, it took me a long time to be able to get to the point where I am now. And I'm still, you know, working on myself still trying to move forward. So I just want to say there, you know, there is not a magic wand that you can just say, well, the virus is over, we can all go back to normal and everything's great. On the outside, yes, it might look like virus cases are down and you know, people going back to work and, you know, mass mean that it mandates being lifted, etc, etc. But the psychological aftershocks of what we all live through, I think it's important to openly discuss some of the challenges that we have all been going through, you know, and then work on finding ways that we can help ourselves again, professional, you know, help therapist, attending various, you know, meetings such as the ACA meetings or a meetings.
I fully am in support of such measures. For this podcast, I wanted to talk about another tip that I had come across something that I was at a meeting I was several years ago now and it was something that I didn't even think, you know, to I didn't even think I was going to be learning this, you know, at this particular session that I'd gone to, I'd gone to you know, it was a training session on basically how To continue to be an activist, you know, over time, you know, it's very important for me to be involved, very progressive, you know, values to be able to ensure that, you know, my children and my community, we are doing everything we can convince people to get elected, you know, in the sense that get people out to vote, get people to become more engaged in, you know, civic understanding of their community school board meetings, Commissioner meetings, you know, and the like, don't want to turn this into a political podcast, we might be on different political sides of the, you know, the spectrum doesn't matter for this conversation, what I wanted to share is I went to this meeting, you know, at the end of it, the trainer that was there, she taught us the loving kindness meditation. And again, I had never heard of this, you know, I have had various, you know, school sessions and dealing over years in college with various religions and such, I just never came across the loving kindness meditation before. And, you know, when I, when I found out about it, I was like, Oh, this actually sounds like something that could be really, really helpful. So she taught us the loving kindness meditation. And ever since then, I think at this point, it must be three or four years. Now, when I wake up in the morning, as I'm lying in bed, I essentially say this meditation to myself, you know, for several minutes. You know, there are three different levels to this. On today's podcast, I just want to focus on the simple beginning, you know, meditation of the most basic loving meditation, for loving kindness, meditation, and do a little research.
The loving kindness meditation, it's also known as metta in Pali, is derived from Buddhism, and refers to a mental state of unselfish and unconditional kindness to all beings. So that sounds really nice. It's like, okay, sounds great. And I did a little bit more digging, and I came across an article that appears on the National Library of Medicine website, it's a 2011 article that was originally published in the clinical psychology review. Dr. Stefan Hoffman, is the author. And in the abstract for this paper, they conclude the author's conclusions, Dr. Hoffman is the the first author on the paper, it is concluded that, when combined combined with empirically supported treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, loving kindness, meditation, and cognitive meditation, the loving kindness meditation may provide potentially useful for strategies that target a variety of different psychological problems that involve interpersonal processes such as social anxiety, marital conflict, anger, and coping with the strains of long term caregiving.
So I came across that article, and again, will be in the show notes, you can find out more there. And I wanted to point out that this is just not something that is woo woo, you know, as the common term is, these days, this is something that, again, I have found that when I work on training my brain to think a different way that I'm able to handle stress and anxiety that I couldn't from before. So I'm going to just quickly I'm going to talk about this, quote, unquote, level one of the loving kindness meditation. And I've seen multiple permutations. It's not necessarily the exact words that I'm about to read, I've seen it modified a little bit. But this is what you know, basically, what I came up with, and when I say came up with during the training, that's what was taught to us. And I, you know, took that, and this is the version that I use, you know, on this daily basis. And so here we go.
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be peaceful.
May I live my life with ease.
So again, I'll say it again.
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be peaceful.
May I live my life with ease.
So what I do anytime that I'm in a, you know, super stressful situation, and again, this is one of the first things I do in the morning when I wake up. When I'm laying in bed. I say the loving kindness meditation multiple times. Typically, I'd say at about maybe five times or so the trainer that was We were working with a couple years ago and said, usually want to say it for, you know, a couple minutes, you don't want to say too much, but just a couple minutes. So you could basically get in the mindset of these positive thoughts that you're focusing on. And she had said to me that there are, you know, these multiple layers to the loving kindness meditation. And she was very honest and said, for her, it took her I think she mentioned like two years of just sticking with his level one, before more consistently, she was able to, you know, go to level two. And so level two is essentially the same meditation. But instead of you focusing on yourself, you focus on another person, maybe, again, during the training that I went to someone that you feel neutral about, not that you hate, not that you love, someone that you know, but somebody that you feel neutral about. So you would say, you know, may they be happy? May they be healthy, may they be peaceful? May they live their life with ease. Again, I'll say that again, just to, you know, get it into your mind.
A second level was:
May they be happy.
May they be peaceful.
May they be healthy.
May they live their life with ease.
So over the course of time, the more that you do loving kindness, meditation, you start with focusing on yourself. And you make certain that from your perspective, you're taking care of yourself, setting your boundaries, getting your sleep, eating, well, everything that you need to do to be happy, healthy, peaceful, and living life with ease. What do you need to do those things, the meditation helps me focus on those things each day. The second level is essentially, you focus on someone else outside of yourself, you basically recreating that boundary of like, I am me, there them over there, but I'm going to send this positive energy, I'm going to focus my meditation on them. And it basically shifts your perception of your reality. So it's not just being only focused, you know, me, center Me, me, me, me, me, it allows you to then focus on someone else, someone outside of yourself, so that you can offer them, you know, wishing them goodness. And then finally, the third level, which she had said she had not gotten to yet hadn't raised that level, is looking at it from a global perspective, that it's not just one person outside of yourself, but it's the world. So you can say:
May the world be happy.
May the world be healthy.
May the world be peaceful.
May the world live life with ease.
So it's going from me? I want to focus on being happy, healthy, peaceful, and living with ease. What do I need to do each day? To live up to that commitment, that responsibility and that accountability? And then second level? How do I take that energy and that thought, and then think of someone outside of myself, again, being sure that understand the boundaries of, I still need to take care of me, I still need to find out what makes myself happy and healthy, peaceful and living with ease. But I'm going to take another part of my mind and focus on someone else. And then finally, a more global perspective, what can I do? That's going to help the entire world?
Again, focus on what about someone from another country? What about a different place I've never been, what about people that are suffering elsewhere? It's not that this meditation is going to fix, you know, it helps someone in the sense that, you know, a prayer from Heaven is going to like manna from heaven is going to come down and help them. It is allowing you to think, from your perspective of microcosm, all the way out to the macro. And then what thoughts could come out of that is, how might you help someone somewhere else? How might you be of service, again, with social anxiety and the stress and everything else that everybody's going through? You know, some of the things that I have learned over the years is that the best way to overcome one's own problems is one, acknowledge and build healthy, you know, behavioral skills to be able to help yourself get out of that problem that you're dealing with. But also to think once you have yourself centered, to also then volunteer your time to help someone else, you know, simple volunteerism of go to a homeless shelter or volunteer at your local library for an event or whatever.
It's just getting yourself out of the centeredness of I'm stuck, I'm lost. I can't Get out of this hole that I'm in, building over time through, again, professional help, if needed to get you to the point where you can get out of that struggle that you're dealing with building different mechanisms, these toolkit, you know, that I've mentioned in my previous podcast, what is in your toolkit, so that you can learn healthy behaviors to if you're dealing with stress, and, you know, anxiety through over indulging in alcohol or food or whatever, there's ways that, you know, obviously, you would need to learn how to deal with those issues and talk with a therapist to be able to get beyond that. The loving kindness meditation allows you to set you know, at a very local level, at the beginning level, what can you do for yourself, you're clearing that pathway, those negative thoughts, the negativity, of stress of, oh, I can't get out of this. There's the pandemic, there's a war there's this, there's that my job my, you're essentially saying, clearing each day, the deck in your brain. The Groove, as I talked about, in the last episode of that album, of the thoughts that are ruminating in your brain, keeps speaking that same language of doubt and fear concern over and over again, the loving kindness meditation clears that.
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be peaceful.
May I live my life with ease.
So again, I wanted to share that tip with you. Hopefully, it will be something that you could use again on a daily basis. Again, I will put in the show notes, the articles that I talked about in this episode. And I want to thank you for taking the time to download this podcast to listen to it no matter wherever you came across it no matter if it's way in the future. And this March 2022, you'll look back and say wow, so much has changed since then, let's keep our fingers crossed that things keep getting better with the pandemic. But I wanted to take the time to share this tip to help you. So again, thank you for listening. I sincerely appreciate it. And again, if you want to learn more, visit my website at let go and be free.com Thanks so much. And until next time, be well.