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EP.16 - Kari Nautique: Sobriety, Service, and Swimming with Sharks

EP.16 - Kari Nautique: Sobriety, Service, and Swimming with Sharks

Reframeable Podcast

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EP.16 - Kari Nautique: Sobriety, Service, and Swimming with Sharks
June 20, 2025
1 hr 28 min
Season 3

EP.16 - Kari Nautique: Sobriety, Service, and Swimming with Sharks

In this conversation, hosts Kevin Bellack and Emma Simmons dive deep with Kari Nautique as she shares her transformative journey from alcohol to empowerment, highlighting the importance of community support, purpose, and service in recovery. She discusses the impact of alcohol on her life and relationships, her experiences swimming with sharks as a metaphor for facing fears, and the lessons learned in sobriety. The discussion is filled with personal anecdotes, insights on navigating social situations, and the importance of prioritizing one's health and sobriety.

Kari Nautique is a sober supermodel, producer, and the founder of My Best Friend’s Place, a sober living home for women in Jacksonville, Florida. She began her recovery journey in 2019, and since then, it’s become her mission to create safe, empowering spaces for women to rebuild their lives with dignity and purpose.

IG: @kari.nautique

Website: My Best Friend's Place

The Reframeable podcast is brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the #1 app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, and share with those that you feel may benefit from it. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover on the podcast, send an email to podcast@reframeapp.com or, if you're on the Reframe app, give it a shake and let us know what you want to hear.

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https://www.buzzsprout.com/2133197/episodes/17367202-kari-nautique-sobriety-service-and-swimming-with-sharks
Kevin Bellack

Kevin Bellack is a Certified Professional Recovery Coach and Head of Coaching at the Reframe app. Alcohol-free husband, father, certified professional recovery coach, former tax accountant, current coffee lover, and tattoo enthusiast. Kevin started this new life on January 22, 2019 and his last drink was on April 28, 2019.​

When he went alcohol free in 2019, therapy played a large role. It helped him open up and find new ways to cope with the stressors in his life in a constructive manner. That inspired Kevin to work to become a coach to helps others in a similar way.​

Kevin used to spend his days stressed and waiting for a drink to take that away only to repeat that vicious cycle the next day. Now, he’s trying to help people address alcohol's role in their life and cut back or quit it altogether.

In this conversation, hosts Kevin Bellack and Emma Simmons dive deep with Kari Nautique as she shares her transformative journey from alcohol to empowerment, highlighting the importance of community support, purpose, and service in recovery. She discusses the impact of alcohol on her life and relationships, her experiences swimming with sharks as a metaphor for facing fears, and the lessons learned in sobriety. The discussion is filled with personal anecdotes, insights on navigating social situations, and the importance of prioritizing one's health and sobriety.

Kari Nautique is a sober supermodel, producer, and the founder of My Best Friend’s Place, a sober living home for women in Jacksonville, Florida. She began her recovery journey in 2019, and since then, it’s become her mission to create safe, empowering spaces for women to rebuild their lives with dignity and purpose.

IG: @kari.nautique

Website: My Best Friend's Place

The Reframeable podcast is brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the #1 app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, and share with those that you feel may benefit from it. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover on the podcast, send an email to podcast@reframeapp.com or, if you're on the Reframe app, give it a shake and let us know what you want to hear.

Kari Nautique: Sobriety, Service, and Swimming with Sharks

​[00:00:00]

Kevin: Welcome everyone to another episode of the Reframeable podcast, the podcast that brings you people's stories and ideas about how we can work to reframe our relationship, not just with alcohol, but with stress, anxiety, relationships, enjoyment, and so much more. Because changing our relationship with alcohol is about so much more than changing the contents of our glass.

This podcast is brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS and Android app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you. My name is Kevin Bellack. I'm a certified professional recovery coach and the head of coaching at the Reframe app.

Emma: And I'm Emma Simmons. I'm a Reframer, a certified life coach and Thrive coach with Reframe. And today we're excited to be joined by Kari Nautique. She's the founder of my best friend's place, a sober living home for women in Jacksonville, Florida. She began her recovery journey in 2019, and since then, it's become her [00:01:00] mission to create safe, empowering spaces for women to rebuild their lives with dignity and purpose.

Welcome, Kari. We're so good to have, so good to have you here. It's so good to have you here. We're glad to have you here.

Kari: Thank you, Emma. Thank you, Kevin. I'm really happy to be here.

Emma: Classic game is starting us on a good

Kevin: foot. Just gonna say, as always, it's early in, it's early in New Zealand. We'll give you a break.

Emma: I'm on my third, coffee and it's not helps.

Kevin: Okay. Okay. No more breaks. No more excuses then once the third, I should be on fire. Yeah. But yeah, welcome. Thank you for joining us again and I think we, let's just dive right in and yeah, let's go for it. If you'd like to share, tell us a little bit about your story as much as you'd like, and we'll go from there.

Okay.

Kari: There's there's a lot of facets to my story. So I'll try to keep it like, in a nutshell and keep it simple. But I started drinking when I was a teenager. I grew [00:02:00] up in Jacksonville, Florida and I had a addict, alcoholic for a mom. And she was. Not entirely present. Had an amazing dad and my dad had an amazing mom.

My nana, so she raised me, but she was also an alcoholic. She was just a very nice alcoholic. So I just grew up around people drinking all the time and it was something that I thought that the cool kids did. And so I being very awkward as a teenager, like I wanted to be the cool kid.

My uncle passed away when I was a teenager, and that was like my first blackout night, when I was like 16, 15, 16 years old. Just like my first blackout night was losing him. And and then, just like fast forward into like my early twenties and everything was partying and, my goal when I was younger was to become a model, like a bikini model, like a Victoria's Secret fashion model, like a Playboy bunny.

Like I idolized those women. I thought they had it all together. And I used to take pictures of bikini models and [00:03:00] take them to my bedroom door and like when I was like 11 and 12 years old, I wanted to beat them. So I jumped into that industry really early and that industry came with lots of alcohol and lots of parties and lots of nightclubs, and we're talking early two thousands where it was like every single song on the radio was about, bottles in the club and how the models had the bottles.

And if you had the bottles, you got the models. It was like everything was about drinking and models, right? So I fell into this like nightlife lifestyle and myself and all of my friends and everyone around me, we were. What I see now, like absolutely raging alcoholics. Like at the time it didn't look like that because everybody did it.

Oh, you're hungover, just drink some more. And then I can I can't believe the unhealthy things I put my body through back then because it was like after the drinking it was, oh my God, we need to eat a bunch of greasy food to soak this all up. And after eating all the greasy food, it was like, oh my God, you could [00:04:00] never get to sleep.

And unless you were blacked out, and even now we know scientifically that you're losing rem sleep regardless. So like you're not actually getting rest and then waking up tired. And then if I had a photo shoot that was a really big deal. I wouldn't eat for 72 hours before the shoot and all I would live off of was like black coffee and liquor so it was my early twenties were really, unhealthy, I guess you could say. So I stumbled my way through that. Over the course of that like decade I met my ex-husband, I became a mom. My life completely changed and my drinking didn't, like I loved my son more than anything and also still tried to fit all of my drinking into my parenting, and I fell into mommy wine culture after that, which was like, baby in one hand, glass of wine in the other.

And then I felt like a sophisticated drinker. 'cause I was married and I had a kid and it's now I'm not drinking at the club. I'm drinking at home, but I'm still going through bottles and [00:05:00] bottles, just my relationship with alcohol never changed. No matter what happened in my life.

No matter how drastic it got, I always tried to fit drinking into my life. And, that means that all of the hobbies I had, like I loved working out and I loved diving and I loved going outside. And like all of a sudden those hobbies just fell to the wayside because all of a sudden everything that I did had to involve drinking.

Even just going to brunch like with the other moms, or if I was going to the playground or with my kid, it was like I have to bring like a Yeti with a bunch, with a margarita in it. And everything had to revolve around drinking. So around the time of my, I left my son's dad. After that divorce, it got worse.

It was the worst that my drinking ever got. The days that my son was at his dad's house, I was so emotionally. Lost that. Like not having my child with me. Yeah. And not having responsibility. There are slow seasons in my career, right? So there would be weeks at a time where I might [00:06:00] not have a job and trying to support myself.

I picked up bartending and that turned into drinking on the job. And then the days I didn't have my son, I was just watching the clock trying to get to, an acceptable time of day to drink. And then I realized that I was just like consistently drinking, like all the time. So right before COVID hit back in 2019 my biological mother came back into my life.

She was sober and she was starting to make amends. She was very just god awful at it. But she told me about aa and she inspired me. That was the first time in my entire life I considered that I had a drinking problem. And I knew that desperately I didn't wanna be like her. And I got the opportunity to tell her that I would never let my son view me the way that I view her.

And that, I would do whatever it took to, to quit drinking and to just be the opposite that she was. So her and I still don't have a relationship. But that's what started me [00:07:00] on my journey in 2019. And so I discovered that I couldn't stop drinking. That was when I first tried. And I would have a week at a time and then go back trying to go into the rooms of aa, and then it was two weeks and then I'd drink, and then three weeks, and then I'd drink, and then I'd make it a month, and then I'd drink.

And I remember seeing like the little six month chip at the meetings, which was like a lifetime to me. I was like, I could not imagine getting six months without alcohol. I just couldn't imagine it. But when COVID hit everything shut down and. Without a bar to go to or friends to invite me out.

I really just started okay, if I don't buy alcohol and I don't bring it home I got a therapist. I started working out and COVID was actually my first like nine months without alcohol. But I wasn't working a program or doing anything recovery related. I would just, there was nowhere to go and I was like determined to not drink at home.

So I really white knuckled it through that. And then holidays came back around. My best friend came back into town and [00:08:00] we went out drinking again. So next year I made it six months without doing any, without doing any drinking. And when the holidays rolled back around, I went back out. And then the following year I made it four months.

And then I started to realize every time I go back out, it's harder and harder for me to stop. Like I would say, okay, January 1st, I'm not gonna drink. And it would take me till February or March. To be able to actually put it down. And this is waking up saying, I'm not gonna drink today. I'm not gonna drink today.

I'm not gonna drink today. And by four o'clock picking up, so it was it really became a battle. Like I started to realize it was a battle. So February 2nd, 2024 I was sitting in a pub. I had, I was hungover. I had my last, actually February 1st, I had my last half of a beer and I ate a cheeseburger and I was just like, I'm really not doing this again.

Then I'm just, I'm [00:09:00] done. And I remember telling my friends who were my drinking buddies that I was gonna have. I was like, I'll probably start drinking in October again. I also did real estate investing. At the time. I was like dabbling with my first real estate investments and I. The opportunity to open a sober home came about when I was about six, four or five months sober.

And so I had a what I feel like was my higher power, like a nudge from him to be like, look like you wanna do this, let's go all in. And I trusted it. Like I trusted that gut instinct. And the house that I never expected to fall in my lap fell in my lap. And it was a foreclosure that I was able to I was able to take over.

And the layout was so incredibly weird that it was like, this can't be a rental for anyone. I can't make it a co-living. I can't make it an Airbnb. But the way that the rooms were laid out, I was like, this is where the beds are. Like this is my sober living. And I took it with this flimsy [00:10:00] willingness and relationship I had with my God at the time.

I, I said, okay. Like, all right buddy, I'm all in. Let's do this. And that house was opened up as a sober living several months later. But during the months that I was renovating it and staying sober it was right in the middle of where I grew up. Where everything bad that's ever happened to me in my entire life has happened to me within a five mile radius at that house including a suicide attempt that I had when I was a teenager, and so I had to battle all my demons in the middle of building this home. And it was really just like a God shot, so that house, through opening that house through marketing that house, I was like. Okay, I'll try AA again. But I'm gonna go to women's meetings only, and then through the women I met in the area I found my sponsor and, through her I found my house manager and through my house manager, it's it was this snowball, it just literally rolled downhill and got bigger and bigger.

[00:11:00] And I would've never in a million years did it ever would've imagined that this is what that house would've turned into. But it's the, I'm hoping the first of many, and there's a whole other plan to go with with treatment centers and iops and stuff that I wanna open.

But right now it's it's definitely a God thing. Like my, I would've never, ever been able to open it if I wouldn't have just been like a hopeless drunk, you.

Kevin: So in February of 24 is when you were like, okay, this is it. Yeah. When did that come, when did the house come up?

Like how long, how far after that was it?

Kari: I purchased it in June actually. I am we're 10 days away from officially a year of me purchasing that house. And and when I first decided to quit drinking, or, that time around, this time around when I decided to quit drinking, I didn't even trust myself.

I said like, when October rolls around, I'll probably drink by Halloween. And by Halloween I had a sponsor and was [00:12:00] fully working a recovery program. And that was not my intention. My intention was like, let me just white knuckle this as much as I can. And through the process of opening the sober home, I found purpose and through service and purpose, I.

Like my anchor into this, like this lifestyle, and so before I didn't have that. It was really empty. It was, there was nothing that could keep me from going back to drinking, not even my kid. And I would say I'll quit drinking for my son and then I would end up picking up a drink again. And so I would have this horrible guilt and shame because I'm like, man, I don't even love my kid enough to stop drinking.

And that's not what was happening. I love my child more than anything. I just couldn't stop drinking because I have this mental obsession, like one drop of alcohol and I'm off to the races, and so there is no such thing [00:13:00] as controlling drinking for me. And what people, what I didn't understand then that has been communicated to me that I understand now is normal people don't try to control their drinking.

If they don't have people who don't have a problem with alcohol, don't try to control their consumption of alcohol, they could just take it or leave it. They don't think about it. And like in the modeling world, because I've been a model for two decades almost. I can look at a meal and pretty much tell you the macros that are in that meal and how much I'm gonna have to work out to balance eating that meal.

And I have to budget this during runway season. I have to budget my meals. And in off season I find myself budgeting my meals where am I allowed to eat this? Much of this normal People don't think about food like that. They just eat food. So the obsession of the mind for me it goes into many other different compartments.

But that was what connected it for me when I was like, oh, you mean normal people don't think [00:14:00] about alcohol? That's weird. But when my mentor, she was like, I don't think about food the way you think about food. I was like. You don't think about food. You don't count how many calories are in a donut before you eat it.

She's no, I just eat donuts. I was like, wow. So normal people just drink drinks and they just leave it or take it. They don't obsess over, oh, I won't drink tomorrow if I drink today. And that really opened my eyes to like, oh, damn. I must have a problem because I'm obsessing over.

If I drink tomorrow, I won't drink today. Or can I make it till four o'clock or can I make it? I was bargaining and negotiating and budgeting for drinks. When people who don't have the type of obsession I have with alcohol, they don't do that. That was an eyeopener for me, for sure.

Emma: And I think that whole I get that obsession and that constant thinking about alcohol or, planning activities around when am I gonna be able to drink?

Or like where's the alcohol gonna, do I need to bring my own? Is there gonna be alcohol there? Is it supply every [00:15:00] event? That was the big question on my mind, no matter what the event was. So it's, and now you, we get to go to events alcohol free, and the point of being there isn't to drink or, the obsession of the, or the thought process behind the event isn't, where's the alcohol?

What am I gonna drink? It's right. I wonder who's gonna be there? Or what are we celebrating? Or, it's a baby shower. Let's what thoughtful things mimosa gonna do for the parents to be Yeah, let's not

Kevin: worry about the mimosas. Let's, yeah, exactly.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. It's a completely different way of showing up in the world.

Kari: With family barbecues and stuff that happen like over summer. It's used to, I would say, okay, I'll bring just a six pack of beer, but let me see which one has the highest A BV. Because if I'm only drinking six, it better be like 10% A BV. Okay. And then I would look at wine bottles and I would look at what percentage, how drunk is this wine bottle gonna get?

And if I was going somewhere that may or may not have alcohol, I was [00:16:00] overly friendly. I was like, let me provide the alcohol for you guys. I can bring it, who needs it, who drinks what? And I would go spend hundreds of dollars to bring alcohol to an event. And then I would notice that like almost no one drank it.

And so I would usually end up bringing it home with me because. I didn't wanna leave alcohol behind with people that weren't gonna drink it. 'cause that's alcohol abuse, right?

Kevin: Yeah.

Kari: And so I would end up saying, let me bring you all the alcohol. And then at the end of the night or end of the event, I would say, oh man, you guys didn't even drink it.

I'll take it off your hands. I'll take it home with me. And that was my way of making sure I always had a supply no matter where I was going. And that got really bad because there were times I'd go to the movies and I would just throw mini bottles of like little individual wine bottles, little minis in my purse.

And I made the excuse that like, oh, I have to have my glass of wine with a movie. Girl. No that's a problem.

Kevin: Yeah. Now, my wife and I just went to the [00:17:00] movies this weekend and we stopped somewhere in advance and I'm like, you know what? We're gonna buy this extra big bag of sour Patch watermelons. And that's what we threw in our purse. So it's changed a little bit from those days. Now what you're sneaking into the movies is no longer Yeah.

What I'm sneaking into the movies. Yeah.

Kari: Skittles cost,

Kevin: yeah,

Kari: $20 at the movies and it costs like $5 at CVS. My kid's I want Skittles. I'm like, okay, if you're getting Skittles, we'll bring us Skittles in my purse.

Kevin: Okay. Yeah. Can we fit bottles of water in there too? No.

Kari: Yes. Skittle smugglers.

Kevin: Yeah. I remember I was probably coming up on two years alcohol free, and I think, I feel like it was like, it was February, so it was like Valentine's Day weekend and yeah, my wife and daughter and I went to get sushi and for lunch and we, I got an NA beer while I was there and drinking it.

It was fine, whatever. And we got up to leave and I walked five steps away and I stopped and I just like, I'm like, what am I missing? And I looked back and I had half of the beer that was left and I [00:18:00] stopped because I'm like. I felt the need to go. I realized I felt the need to go back and finish it.

Wow. Yeah. And I was like, now, you know what? I'm good. And I, as I was walking away, I'm like, oh, that's what I always wanted. I wanted that, take it or leave it attitude, but it didn't work with alcohol. It's a drug, it's affecting my brain. The na beer that I had wasn't spiking my dopamine and making me want to get more.

And, so that was one of a little bit of an aha moment. A little bit farther along. But yeah, it's just different. That was totally the same way. Like I, I looked at the percent I, I like craft beer, whiskey, all that. And I went to percentage first. And then what do I want?

Always

Kari: tastes terrible. The highest percentage ones always tasted terrible. And I would just like, ugh. I'm like, ugh. And that's when I started going to shots and I said, okay. Listen, I'm just gonna pound shots of tequila before I go because nothing taste like shits better

Kevin: than that.

Kari: And [00:19:00] before my in-laws would come over, it was like, I remember my best friend and I standing in my kitchen and I would keep a bottle of tequila in the freezer.

So there once a year there's like this food and wine festival that happens down in Miami. And I would work the festival or like my partner would work the festival and we would get, they would gift us at the end of the festival cases. I remember one time we had 55 bottles and it was like just cases and cases.

And so I'd run through them pretty quick and I would keep tequila in the freezer and I would just start taking shots. And I remember they were coming over and I was so nervous. 'cause I'm not really good in social situations. I'm very nervous around. Even people that are family I'm hyper anxious when they come over how do I entertain them? What do I do? And so I remember pounding seven shots back to back before they walked in the door and just being like, my best friend was standing with me and she's I feel you. Can I have some? And I'm like, yeah, let's go. And why? This is family there? Like literally family is [00:20:00] coming over.

There's only gonna be five people at the house. And my body went into fight or flight mode and I said, no, I have to be drunk. And that's part of the disease. It's it's creating these instances where it's like on my shoulder you need to drink because of this. And I actually made myself more anxious and more fearful.

And then I would start. Like anticipating those moments, oh, we're gonna have a barbecue. I've gotta get hammered. And so when I would take it away from my body, I'd get even more anxious because I wasn't giving myself what I wanted. I wasn't giving my disease what I wanted, or my obsession, what it wanted.

I was withholding. So I was extra anxious, I was extra fearful. And what does that translate to? Snappy, angry, short, with people like just not pleasant to be around. Because in the back of my mind, I'm fighting this thing. Nobody else around me knows what's going on. They're like, damn, Carey, why are you being so mean today?

Just get away from me. I don't know. And it's because my anxiety is [00:21:00] heightened 'cause I'm not feeding this obsession, and there's this lie in my brain that was like, if you take that sip, you'll have comfort. But I promise you, the comfort I feel now is. What I was looking for in the bottom of that bottle.

And I find it in sobriety. It took longer to find it, but it stays longer because that quick little bit of comfort from that one shot is immediately gonna turn into anxiety within 20, 30 minutes and especially the next day with your cortisol levels raised and just your whole body being in disarray because it's trying to bleed out toxins, so like I kept looking for this calm, composed, relaxing substance and I was making myself worse every time, not even realizing it.

Emma: Yeah, I think that's a really good point of the yes in the moment it feels like [00:22:00] alcohol or having a shot or having a drink is helping with your anxiety or gonna help you feel better.

But when we give up alcohol long term, we do get like a baseline of comfort. Like we, we are. Not always, but our every day is more comfortable, less anxious. And yes, we might get little spikes, but we can navigate those so much easier. Whereas when we're drinking, it's just an absolute yo-yo of I feel like shit, I'll have a drink that'll make me feel better.

And then I'm down. And then, oh shit, I feel like shit again. I'll have a drink. And so then I'm okay. But it's only okay. Or maybe just a little bit better than Okay. It's never I feel great it's never gonna feel the

Kari: same way the first one did.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. You're always chasing

Kari: that.

You're always gonna chase that first feeling and it's gonna get less and less and less each time. And the feeling that I get now for accomplishing things without alcohol, that's that feeling I was looking for with alcohol. So if I make it through a barbecue and I do it [00:23:00] sober, I actually feel proud of myself.

I don't feel proud of myself when I drink. I if I'm leaving and I picked up a drink or multiple drinks, 'cause there was never picking up one drink for me. And whenever I did leave, it was like, ugh, did I say the wrong thing? Was I embarrassing? Did I do, it was more anxiety. And then now when I do things sober, when I do hard things sober, I leave and I'm proud of myself.

Or I go to bed at night and I'm proud of myself. And that's what I was looking for. That's that feeling of like self-esteem and dignity and, integrity that I was looking for. And I never found that in alcohol, ever.

Kevin: Yeah. How, and that's the billion dollar question I feel is, but how did you do it?

Like what did you, what are the, what did you do that. Helped you get to that point. And I know it's probably a million little things, million different things, but is there anything in particular that you would say helped, besides just, sometimes [00:24:00] it's just you guys just gotta do it and get through it and show yourself.

But that's hard.

Kari: So the thing about discipline is that there's no, yeah. If you don't wanna snooze in the morning, you don't snooze when your alarm goes off, you just put your feet on the fricking ground. There is no hack to discipline. If you don't wanna do something, you just have to do the thing.

So without the alcohol in my system if I don't want. I have to just not drink. Now for someone like me who had this obsession and what I believe is like alcohol use disorder like they call it now or like alcoholism. And that runs in my family. I couldn't just discipline my way out of it.

And that's what was really screwing with my head was that I can do hard things and I'm proud of myself for doing hard things and I'm able to withhold like a more discipline than a regular human being. I'm not military level, but listen, I can do hard crap. Okay. [00:25:00] And I couldn't stop drinking. So the couple of years that I was trying and that nothing stuck, that final like beginning that I had where I was doing it on my own, it took me realizing that like I couldn't do it on my own and reaching out for help.

For me, that help came in the form of Alcoholics Anonymous for me that came in the. The support groups of AA rooms, which is not where I imagine spending all of my time now. I love it. It's my, it's like free therapy, I chair meetings, I host zooms. I, like I help other women and this is, this has become part of the service that I do.

So when I started focusing on helping others quit drinking, it took me outta my own problem. And having a support group of other people that were just like me helped me call people instead of picking up a drink. It helped me have a toolkit of other [00:26:00] people that had the same problem I had that were able to say listen, before, like as soon as you romanticize that glass of wine, just shut the thought down, pick up the phone and call somebody.

And so help helped me and service, like helping others helped me because all the time I was doing it on my own. I couldn't. And then through those support groups I found my way back to believing in God. And I can't believe I'm sitting here even saying that because for the longest time in my adult life I was like, that's a cult.

Nope, absolutely not. Joining that, not doing that again. But I learned through this through what I've been through in the past year and a half, I've learned that, religion is just for people that fear hell, but spirituality is for people who have been through it and I went through enough hell.

So I have the spirituality to believe that there's something out there that's greater than me and stronger than me that I can lean on. So I have my support groups of AA and I have my [00:27:00] higher power. That's literally my, I live and breathe that like it's part of my daily, like the things in the background right here behind me.

That's the third step prayer, the seventh step prayer and the 11th step prayer framed on my wall. Because I say that when I wake up in the morning, I say when I go to bed at night, like teaching my child that we can choose to be kind to people because everybody is going through something hard.

Everybody needs someone to lean on that. Even the villains out there have an origin story of when they were treated badly, right? Learning to love other people and to offer help to other people, helps me not pick up a drink. It sounds like this vast, crazy universe, but it's really not. It's keep my own house in order, right?

Believe in God, help others. That's it, and I just don't pick up a drink one day at a time.

Kevin: Yeah, that's funny. Sorry, that was a lot you said about the No, it's, thank you for sharing that. That was, I love that you pointed the things on your wall and told [00:28:00] us what it was. 'cause I was actually going to reference this on my wall because you were talking about service and that, let me refresh my memory exactly what this says.

Yeah, it's a fortune cookie that if a true sense of value is to be yours, it must come through service. And I. Got that when I was deciding like, okay, I was alcohol free, but I was like deciding whether to change careers or whether to, and it was, the timing of it was, I was like, all right.

I don't believe in this whole thing, but I believe more in coincidence, but I'm like, all right, I see you. I got it. It was just one of those things that just hit me, which is why I have a fortune cookie framed on my wall because, love it. That was a huge point that kind of pushed me that, no, this is what's, it, this is what's meaningful to you.

This is what helps you, and this is what helps you help other people is Yeah, just doing that thing, putting yourself out there. I realized I

Kari: was picking up drinks because I was hurting inside. I realized I was picking up drinks because I was in pain [00:29:00] and helping other people through their pain takes me away from my pain.

I was so self-centered and selfish, like Kari's pain matters in everyone else's pain. 'cause what Kari's going through is bigger than everyone else's. So screw you guys, I'm just gonna drink myself into oblivion about it because poor me. Pour me a drink, right? As soon as I took myself out of that mindset and started listening to other people dump their problems on me please tell me about what's bothering you today.

Please tell me the burdens that you're carrying today because you sharing that burden is gonna help you by just getting it outta your system and it's gonna help me. 'cause I'm gonna realize real quick that I'll take my problems. Thank you very much. Mine are good. I'm gonna keep mine and you can have yours.

And I'm here to listen, and so taking myself out of myself, really taking myself out of that self-centered mind frame, like the urge to drink isn't there when I'm in the middle of like, how can I help this person today? Or man, I'm really going through a lot right now. Let me pick up the phone and call somebody and ask them how their day is.[00:30:00]

Super, super simple thing to do. It's, but like people joke about it being like a thousand pound phone, right? 'Cause it's a simple thing to do, but you really it's that discipline of I have to do this because my problems are never gonna solve themselves, but maybe I can help somebody feel better.

And then I'm not focused on picking up a drink. I'm not focused on my cravings anymore. I'm not focused on whatever's going on in Kari's world anymore. I'm focused on, Hey buddy, how can I help you today? Tell me about your problems. Tell me about what's bothering you. Like man, that really sucks.

Let's talk about it and then an hour goes by, right? Or however long that phone call is, and all of a sudden I'm like, damn, I feel like I helped and did service for someone else. They feel better 'cause they got it off their chest and I don't feel like drinking anymore. It's. Simple

Kevin: and Yeah. And that's, it's 'cause it sound, it can sound like maybe you're just avoiding what you know [00:31:00] your problems by helping somebody else.

But I know, I'm not saying that's true, but it is that maybe my problem just needs a little bit of time to, maybe it's just, or perspective, maybe intense or perspective. Yeah. To, and give my, give myself time to get that perspective. Or just to, I don't know, maybe in that time I also eat something or did, did something for myself and was able to do that and make myself feel better

Kari: yeah, maybe you need to eat something. Maybe you're tired, maybe you need a nap, maybe you're lonely. Maybe you need to pick up the phone and call somebody. Maybe you're angry. Maybe you need to. Point, what maybe you need to name your anger, which is something I'm teaching my 11-year-old to do, where it's anger's name is never anger.

Yeah, your anger's name is something else. And if you sit with it long enough, it'll tell you your anger's name is fear. Your anger's name is grief. Your anger's name is exhaustion. Your anger's name is anxiety. Like your, name your anger, so it's, [00:32:00] you're either hungry or you're angry, or you're lonely or you're tired.

And sometimes, yeah, eat something, take a nap, but picking up a drink always made those things worse. Never better. So no matter what I was feeling, no matter what pain or loneliness or sadness or depression or anxiety or fear or what, no matter what I was feeling, picking up a drink made it worse.

It poured gasoline on the fire every single time. And I would wake up the next day and be like, damnit. And I did the thing again that I didn't wanna do. And then there's guilt and there's shame, and there's regret, and there's, and it's just so much worse. It's just so much worse. I'll take picking up the phone and calling somebody, instead of picking up the bottle and drinking.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. That's something I like to ask people who are contemplating having a drink. I say, how will a drink make this better? And they have to really stop and think, because ultimately it won't make it better. But you can, you often list [00:33:00] off the ways that it'll make it worse or it.

Or it certainly doesn't help, like you were saying, you're maybe you're exhausted and you've had a big day and you're like, oh, I'll have a, I'll have a drink to wind down, but then tomorrow you're gonna wake up more exhausted because for people like you and I, it's not one drink, it's several, many drinks.

And it's, so you wake up feeling dusty, you haven't slept well. You've got that anxiety comes in. So you've just made, what was it? I'm tired and I need to have a shower and go to bed early into, like you've compounded that exhaustion and you're just piling shit on top of your exhaustion.

Kari: Yeah. And I find that if I really do need to put myself to bed, there's melatonin, there's magnesium, there's go to the gym. Like the days I'm stressed out and I'm a little bit, I'm on like a kind of like psychotic level of working out. But I work out for two hours a day, right? Try to not sleep after just killing yourself in the gym for two hours.

Throw on a weighted vest, get on the stair [00:34:00] stepper, set your timer for an hour, and then tell me that you can't sleep. There are ways to do it naturally where you don't need the drink. And then when you do. Actually fall asleep. Your body goes into REM sleep. REM sleep is where your body repairs itself and you're able to actually function the next day and feel like, oh, all those problems I had yesterday are not as big as they were yesterday, or they are just as big, but I can tackle them now because I sleep.

Like I'm not saying pick up the phone and call somebody and don't pay your bills, right? Trust God or let go and let God, right? That doesn't mean let go of your efforts, right? That means let go of your expectations. So people who are like, I'm just gonna let go and let God and then all of their life bulbs apart, no, you still have to work.

You still have to pay the bills. You still have to clean your house. You still have to feed your kids. You still have to like, you can't just let go and let God like Jesus take the wheel goodbye. The car's gonna crash. You have to let go of your expectations, but you still have to do the work to get the results.

So i'm not [00:35:00] letting go and letting God, and then just leaving all of my problems behind, but giving myself a night of rest or giving myself a night to sleep on it, or giving myself a natural way to fall asleep through drinking a magnesium drink before I go to bed, or working out extra hard that day.

'cause I know I'm going through a lot of stress, like things that I go to now and gravitate to now. I feel so good about when I go to bed and there are days where I don't wanna wake up. There are days where I, my alarm goes off and I'm like, Ugh, I don't wanna do this today. I never regret it though.

Like I wake up and I'm like, you know what? I'm tired, but I'm not hung over. I'm tired, but I'm not sick. I'm tired, but I don't have shame and I don't have guilt, and I get to live my life. Like I get to sleep at night knowing that I did the best thing I. I'm not hurting other people. I'm not manipulating other people.

I'm not doing, like shitty, like sneaky things. Like when I was drinking it was always like me out [00:36:00] for me. And I'm not like that anymore because when I feel like drinking, I try putting other people first. So I go to bed at night, I, man, I sleep great. I'm like, sleep queen over here. And it's all because I don't drink before I go to bed.

I don't drink my problems away anymore.

Kevin: What time do you get up? Go to bed.

Kari: Oh my God, my phone goes into do not disturb at eight o'clock.

Kevin: Okay.

Kari: The only numbers that can get through are like my dad, my kid, and my house manager.

Kevin: Okay.

Kari: For emergencies like but I was gonna turn my phone off at night, but with running the sober house, it's like highly irresponsible for me to, and my dad co-owns the sober house with me. Okay. So my dad lives I live in Miami. My dad lives really close to the sober house, so if there's ever an emergency he can be right there, and he was really on board with getting into when I opened up the house, my dad was really on board with it 'cause he [00:37:00] saw my biological mom, like struggle with drugs and alcohol.

Mostly alcohol, like I say, drugs and alcohol. But, I think she only ever did drugs because she was drinking a lot. But the stories I have from when she was little, when I was little, of just the, she was a teenager. She just didn't have a chance to really Yeah. Grow up. And as a parent now, and as someone in recovery now, I feel I feel really sorry for the relationship that we have because I, I know that like now as a mom, I know that hurting my child would hurt me so much.

So I look at maybe recovery will bring our relationship back together.

Maybe it won't, but I look at that like my kid gets the opportunity to be, to have a sober mom. And then because of my dad witnessing what happened. Throughout my childhood, my dad is always there to fix things. We had a sewage line burst. My dad is like 66 years [00:38:00] old, and he's out there digging up a 20 foot trench in my yard, repairing the sewage line, like with my brother and they're just out and he's sending me pictures.

He's this is a shitty job. And it's like a sewage line that's busted open. Thanks for the dad joke. Literally a shitty joke. Yeah. Literally some money has to do it. Yeah. And doing it with doing it with love because seeing the opportunity that we have to help other women, and especially in my hometown, it's, it means so much to him, as much as it means to me.

So it's really cool.

Kevin: That's awesome.

Emma: So one thing I can think of that I would very much like to be well arrested for would be swimming with sharks. Not something I've ever done or I think I would ever have the balls or the courage to do.

How on earth did you get into swimming with sharks? Like how does that happen?

Kari: Okay, so Nautique is my real name. That was a boat that my dad had when I was born. So we, I grew up on the water. Like I was my [00:39:00] dad's first child and only child for 15 years. And when I was born he was like, name her after the boat.

That's it. Like the boat was our life. So we spent every single summer in the Florida Keys, lobstering, and spearfishing since before I was born. It was like a family tradition. So when I couldn't even walk, they had me in a life vest with a mask and a snorkel, and they'd chuck me in the water.

And when the boat was anchored, and they would let me just hold onto the anchor and watch through my mask and watch them catching lobsters and spearing fish, sharks were never a problem for me. And I know there's, everybody knows about the TV series Shark Week, right? Shark Week was always on the same week that lobster season started.

So all day, sunrise to sunset, we were in the ocean. And then all night we were watching Shark Week. And then we would just wake up and go back out in the water. So there was never a fear really with it. When I got sober again, I started getting back into the [00:40:00] ocean. I spent so much time away from the ocean that like between being a mom and getting married and getting divorced and prioritizing clubs and parties and modeling and alcohol, like I didn't have room for the ocean.

And I started out just mask and snorkel and fins and just going out from shore and living in south Florida, we have a beautiful reef system that's just right off shore. You can just swim to it. And that developed into, oh my God, this is where I feel at home. And I remember like surfing with my dad when I was a teenager and we'd paddle out and dawn patrol, which was always the sunrise surf.

And I would just watch, I would stare at that line where the sea and the sky meet and I would just. Lose my breath, just in awe of it. And I remember telling my dad like, I'm never gonna love anything in the world the way that I love the ocean. And there's one, one caveat to that, and that's my son. [00:41:00] The only thing I love as much as I love the ocean is my kids.

And I started diving more frequently. I met up with a group of friends in South Florida, sort of meeting more people that shore dive. I got more professional equipment. And then I got invited by one of these this diving page, this shark diving page to come out on their boat one day, like over a year ago.

And they were like, yeah, come, just swim with sharks. We'll give you photo video content. I was like, oh wow. I haven't directly just swam with sharks. Like I've seen sharks in the ocean, but I've never been like, let me throw dead fish in the water and get sharks to come up to me.

Yeah. It is the most. Life-changing experience. It's because you think that sharks are these apex, like they are apex predators. You think that they're out there to like just eat everything that moves and that's not the case at all. It was really hard to get them to come near us, to get them to trust us.

They only came near [00:42:00] us because we have chum, and then when the snacks are gone, the sharks are gone. So they view, as long as you're making eye contact and you're staying calm, they view you as one of them. And the sharks have this natural predatory instinct where if I'm gonna swim away from them, their instinct kicks in.

They're like, that's prey. I might be able to eat that. But if I stand and I, or not stand, but if I turn and I make eye contact with them and I hold my ground and I maintain like this calm demeanor, they're like, oh, you're just here for the fish too, right? You're just here for the chump. Don't eat my chum.

Like they, they don't wanna come near you. They don't wanna fight. They don't wanna engage in anything that's gonna make them burn out all of their energy reserves. They don't wanna potentially injure themselves. They're just there to eat. And I'm not on the menu. So the shark bites that you do hear about in the news are either people that were wrong place, wrong time, and the shark was just like, that might be food.

And then the shark bit it and was like, Ew, [00:43:00] gross. That's not food. Or they're in a situation where they see the shark and they're swimming rapidly away. And when we want the sharks to come to the surface, the first thing we do is splash. Trying to get their attention and make them think that we're, or that we pre, the more that I'm out there with them, the more that I'm like, man, I know humans that I don't trust. And like I'll be with sharks all day. I will swim with sharks before I go swim with like strangers or hang out with strangers that I don't know. Yeah, because it's that whole like bear in the woods a theory like, would you rather be alone with a stranger in the woods or a bear in the woods?

I'll take the bear. And in this instance it's I'll take the shark 'cause I know what the shark wants. I trust its motives. And like most human beings, I don't know what they want. I don't trust their motives. So I now find that those are my moments Where I'm most at peace is when I'm in the ocean and I get to swim with sharks.[00:44:00]

Emma: So these are like big chompy sharks. Like these sharks could take a bite at you. Chompy C Chompy. Like we're not baby shark, we're talking Mama shark, daddy shark.

Kevin: Yeah. So these sharks are, are about, what kind of sharks are they? It's an actual dam versus your baby sharks. Chunky chunkies. Yeah.

Kari: Okay.

So there are bull sharks are my favorites to swim with because they, while they're bigger and they're more barrel bodied, they're chunkier sharks they're more chill, they're more of a calm demeanor. There are lemon sharks, which are my sassy sharks. Those are the ones I wanna be extra careful with in the water.

'cause the lemon sharks are very quick moving, very curious, come in really fast. The lemon sharks are, I feel it the more likely to just like, nibble at you to see if you taste good. Oh. So I'm not like, so with lemon sharks I'm a little more aware. There's silky and sandbar sharks right now are in migrating season in south Florida.

So those sharks are, they're a little bit smaller in [00:45:00] nature, so they're probably like six feet, seven. Faster, but they're typically more docile. They're more those are sharks that like, they really don't want anything to do with you. But they do come in fast for the kill. Like not kill, but come in fast for the bait.

Whereas bull sharks will come up slow and methodically and you can kinda toss them. I'm not allowed to toss them the fish or the chump because it's, I'm not a professional shark diver. I just dive with professional shark divers and it's my friend's company and it would be really detrimental if I got bit, it would hurt their business.

So I'm not allowed to feed the sharks. I ask, I always ask that I'm not allowed to feed the sharks until I'm a professional. And I'm not a professional yet. It's just a pastime.

Kevin: You working on it.

Kari: I would love to work on it like being in the water with. It's the most incredible thing being in the ocean.

It really is. And because I have free dive, I'm scuba certified, but I don't use tanks. I just hold my breath and I can't do that when I'm [00:46:00] drinking. I can't do that hungover, my lung capacity. I can hold my breath and swim down 40 feet and hang out with sharks and just sit there and it's, I'm really bad at meditating, but those are my moments.

Like those are my god moments. Everything slows down. I'm literally holding my breath and everything around me relies on my full attention. I can't be in my head, I can't be thinking about anything else except for making eye contact with the sharks that are swimming by so that they know I'm a predator too.

And oh.

Locking eyes with another with an apex predator. It's just it's a gift. Like it's so in incre, like these are the things that I would've never, ever made the time for if I wouldn't have stopped drinking. And it cost just as much as a bar tab. I'm sorry. Go. You mean that I could pay for strangers bar tabs at happy hour, or I could pay for the fees to go dive on [00:47:00] like a charter that's the same price.

Okay, I'm gonna take the ocean and the experience and the magic that I get there versus the hangover every single time now. Like it's mind blowing.

Emma: Yeah. I love it when you put it like that. Like how much were you spending on? Because if you think of things like, oh a dive charter. Oh no, that's too expensive.

Oh no, I couldn't do that. But when you're like, yeah, but you did just spend how many hundred on a bar tab, like how what satisfaction, what life satisfaction are you getting out of both of those experiences? What do you want more of? What's,

Kari: I had a moment where I was like, in order to keep me from drinking so much, I'm only gonna drink a hundred dollars bottles of wine.

How'd that go? Oh, I went broke real quick. Yeah. I was like, I tried. That was easy. A thousand in two days. Yeah. I was like, oh, I'm going through four bottles of wine a day and let me just see if I can, so what happened was I would drink the hundred dollars [00:48:00] bottle and take a picture of it posted on Instagram, like I was some big shot who could afford a hundred dollars bottles of wine, and then I would drink the cheap bottles after that.

It's so that I yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. The box. And can I kill it? You just

Kari: get outta the box. Take the picture of it. Now when I see that kind of behavior like I have sisters that are teenagers, and so now when I see that kind of behavior, I'm like. I don't mean to say this and be crude or crass or whatever.

That's poor people shit. I'm sorry. You need to brag about how much money you spent on a bottle of tequila. There is no health in that. There is no wealth in that. There is no like physica, like you're not physically, mentally, or financially healthy in any aspect. By taking a picture of a hundred dollars bottle of tequila and posting it on social media, you're flexing while you poison yourself.

That's just my sisters are in that teenage age, so I'm just like, poor people. Shit was the line that got through to their heads.

Emma: Yeah, like how does this serve you? How does this benefit you? How does this make you a better person? It's like you said, it's not [00:49:00] helping you physically, mentally, it's not benefiting your health.

Kevin: Yeah. And you mentioned too, when you were younger, I believe, like looking at. Models or people on the, on social media and being like, they have it all together, I wanna be that. I wanna do that. And then you realize like nobody has it all together. In fact, those, some people are, who look like they have it together, have it the least amount together.

Yeah.

Kari: I just got the opportunity every year in Miami and it's the International Swimwear Fashion Week. Every year it's called Miami Swim Week. And this year, every year I say, I'm not gonna do it again. And then I get offered really cool runways to walk, so I'm like, okay, I'll do it. One of the largest brands I've ever walked for picked me up this year and

I was I'm still just in awe that I got do it. And there was a woman that was also booked for it. And in the, in the [00:50:00] recovery programs, we have this phrase called, but for the grace of God, there go, I, and what it means is I'm one drink away from being that person again. And this woman was so drunk that she got asked to she was in her suit ready to go and couldn't get up off the floor.

Wow. And they could, the company couldn't let her walk. And I was like, I was helping get security over. And I was like, Hey guys, like discreetly as possible. Be gentle because I'm, in my mind, I'm thinking of the women in my recovery house. I'm thinking of how I would react if that was me and how offended.

And when you put somebody in a corner and they're embarrassed, they'll die on that hill. I'm not drunk. I'm not drunk. And and it, yeah, I just as gentle as possible. Guys, she can't walk this runway, she can't lift. And it's half a football field runway with hundreds and hundreds of lights and photographers, and it's a fully sold out event.

And it's it's a huge stage and it's televised. And I'm like, for [00:51:00] so many reasons, please don't let this girl go out there. And I immediately text my sponsor and I'm like, this is happening. And I'm grateful. I'm just grateful. And she goes, but for the grace of God, there goes Kari.

I'm like, yeah, that would've been me a million times. That would've been me. I would've screwed up everything because I had to have a drink to unwind because I was so freaking nervous that I couldn't have done it. And then by the time it would've been able for me to get on stage, I would've been falling all over myself and

man, like the opportunities I've, the opportunities I get now in sobriety I get to say yes to. And they're scary, right? That's a scary job. Going to a backyard barbecue with family members. I don't know about y'all, but that's scary for me. Like people, I have the people please throw me in the wa throw me in the water with the sharks, please.

I'll be much better off. But it's those opportunities I get to do and I get to do these things that normally I would've drank over or drank before and then been guilty or been shameful or been regretful. I get [00:52:00] to do those things sober now and then after they're done. Ugh.

Yeah, I went on a tangent there for a minute.

Emma: That's okay. I have a question for Kevin. Would you rather go swimming with sharks or walk in a speedo in front of hundreds or thousands of people on a runway?

Kevin: Okay that's not a, actually a good question now because I would totally take the sharks because I know a little bit more now that.

I'm not food. As long as I don't swim away fast, which that's not gonna happen anyway. So once

Kari: you take the sharks, you'll go back to the sharks every time. Yeah. I promise you. Everyone I have brought to this my friend's shark company in Jupiter, Florida. It's called Tanner Underwater. It's all one word.

Everybody I've brought to Tanner, like they always come back. Yeah, they're always like, that was so much cooler than I thought it would be. I wasn't even afraid. And then they always come back. So if you pick sharks you picked right? Because Yeah. Then you'll get addicted to sharks. Yeah.

Kevin: I picked sharks and then gimme a year for the [00:53:00] Speedo.

I need to work on it a little bit on your bikini body. Working on it. Yeah, working on it. So how, speaking of tangents how so how do you do that now? I'm curious. Like the, you talk about. Redefining yourself being fearless. Being able to, have that gratitude that you were able to be there and do that that show.

But how did you do that show? How did how do you now get yourself ready to go to the backyard barbecue or a pool or a club, or a outing with other people, not sharks?

Kari: I love sharks.

Kevin: Never for sharks. Yeah.

Kari: You wanna know the really cheesy answer?

Kevin: I, cheesy or the better.

Kari: Okay. I take myself completely out of myself and I ask my God to remove my fears.

I literally just ask him to take them away. [00:54:00] And at first I didn't believe in anything out there in the universe. And then as I was just willing to ask, like, all right, God, I don't know if you're real or not, but can you please make me feel a little bit better about this backyard barbecue? That'd be great.

Thank you. I'm super nervous. As soon as I just was willing to ask for help from a higher power, the feelings went away. And then it was, all right, dude, you did it last time. So can you can you help the sister out? I'm gonna, I got this other thing I gotta do. And so literally before I walked that runway it wasn't the, it wasn't the only one I did this year.

There was one, I did a couple, like a week or two prior to that where the girl in front of me, I happened to know from modeling, and I know she's religious, so I like tapped her on the shoulder and I was like, can you hold my hands and pray? And so like right before we walked that runway together, I was just like, okay, can we bow our [00:55:00] heads?

And we said a two second prayer. And we went out there. And the big runway, I didn't have, I didn't have I didn't know any. I was like, okay, I'm all right. And I just folded my hands and I bowed my head and I was just like, I will be done. Keep me safe. Take these feelings. Amen. And that's it.

Kevin: And

Kari: I swear I like, did not even remember my walk. Like I got back off stage and I was like, did I smile? Did I not smile? And it was being live streamed, so I was able to like scrub back through the live stream and I was like, oh, I did my job. I did great. Excellent. But just sometimes I get so wrapped up in my fear that I forget that I can just ask for help.

So when I do feel those feelings, I ask for them to go away or I name them. What really is the scariest thing that could happen? I trip and fall. Then I go viral, so that's actually not a bad thing. So it's what's the [00:56:00] worst imaginable thing that could happen out there? My life is fine.

Like I'm safe, and I'm protected by my higher power. So it sounds cheesy, but I literally just, I know I've got a long way to go. I know I'm not like a shining example of a church goer because I'm human and I live a very human life. But I know that like, when I need help, all I have to do is ask for it.

Even if it's just, please help me not pick up a drink. Please help me get rid of these feelings of fear without picking up a drink. And it works every time. Yeah.

Emma: It's so present and loud and clear that community is really important to you and reaching out to people. And it sounds like you've, realized throughout this journey with alcohol, your journey with alcohol, that in all aspects of your life, people are, yes, it's scary.

But, we need it, we do need community. We can't do this by [00:57:00] ourselves. And we do need, even if it's a, a quick text message to a friend or a sponsor of this is what I'm going through, or just, releasing this thought to you or tapping a friend on a shoulder and asking for a moment of prayer.

Or not even a friend, just someone that you happen to know might be open to this. Yeah. Yeah. But that's all part of building community, and it's so important that we don't live on this isolated island. There are people out there that want to help. Yeah. Yeah.

Kari: It's just making the effort, just be willing to ask for help because my best ideas landed me hungover every time.

My best ideas put me in the worst situations. There wasn't ever a time where I thought this is gonna end me up in jail or missing my front tooth, or with a totaled car, like I'm gonna do it, right? Like, all of those moments that have happened in my life, like I, I had a blackout night where I woke up and was missing a front tooth.

One of these is fake, okay? And as a [00:58:00] model, I'm like, this is the worst thing that could ever happen. Oh my God, this is my faith. And every time I put my best foot forward, my best thinking always landed me in the worst situations. If I take myself outta the equation and I'm like, what's up, God, what you got for me today?

I. Cool, let's do that. I will be done, not mine. 'cause my will has put me in a lot of shitty situations and I find that the more willing I am to ask for help, if it's not a higher power, it's a phone call, it's a text message, it's community. Because there's always somebody out there that you can bounce those shitty ideas off of that's gonna tell you immediately I dunno, you might end up in jail for that one.

Or maybe you shouldn't. There's always gonna be somebody that's a voice of reason. And if that isn't a higher power for you, then it's find that person who you trust. Because for the longest time the people that were closest to me were the worst advisors. And I wanted them there because I liked my bad ideas.

And then [00:59:00] I had to realize that like the five people closest to me, I would not pay to advise me on my life. I had to change my circle. I had to fire those people and I'm still friends with them. I love them from a distance. And it took me a year to build this tribe and this community of women I trust who have faith in God, who don't drink, who are really supportive, beautiful souls.

And it took me a long time to find that there was a lot of loneliness and like I don't have any friends. And the friends I have, I don't like and I don't trust, or their ideas are really shitty, like mine used to be. It's like being able to fire those few people that I was using as trusted advisors and having people I can actually call and trust with advice is huge.

That community aspect of people that are living a life you want to live, that's huge. Like the people around me now are living in a way that I admire and value and respect, and how do [01:00:00] I get to be more like you? Let me call you when I have an idea. Oh, that's a bad idea. Heard. Okay. I won't do that. So the community is important, but it's the quality of the community that's around you too.

That's really important.

Emma: Yeah. I think one of the cool things about, particularly online communities as well is that you get a perspective from all different walks of life from all over the world and you'll share in a meeting and there will be potentially hundreds of people who will pipe up or, say something in the chat of oh I tried this, or have you considered that?

And you are like, I had no idea that existed, or I had no idea that was an option or that was possible. And so you're just opening yourself up to so many more possibilities in life and you're not just stuck in that same group of five people that have potentially been giving you really bad advice for the past.

Kari: Yeah.

Emma: I dunno. 15, 20 years. And I've heard

Kari: them. I heard a woman say recently in a meeting and [01:01:00] she had 37 years of sobriety and she said back in the day, they didn't call it relapses. When you picked up a drink again, they called it a slip. And slip stood for sobriety, lost its priority

Kevin: and you can

Kari: reprioritize it at any time.

If you pick up a drink and you hate yourself for it, you can literally just put it back down again. You can reprioritize an alcohol-free life at any point in time, but having a community of people that you can talk to and reach out to who also have alcohol free lives is a big part of being able to live that life and having those tools like, oh, I'm gonna go to a barbecue today and crap, I really don't wanna go.

'cause everybody there is gonna be drinking. Take your own car, show up and make an appearance. Turn around and leave if it, if you can't take your own car and leave whenever you want, you don't need to go to that thing. I have a, I have no FOMO for that. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna run a hot bath and throw some, like soaking salts in it, and I'm gonna put like a hair mask in my [01:02:00] hair and I'm gonna have a lovely calm evening and drink some nighttime tea and read a book and go to bed.

I'm not missing out on anything if I don't show up at your event. Yeah. But having that ability to say no, having a community of people that can give you tools and give you advice that you, that's good advice. That people that you respect who are living an alcohol free life that's priceless.

Kevin: Yeah. We have the same wind down routine too.

Emma: A hair mask and a face mask. Yeah. What were you gonna say, Emma? Oh, I was just, what was the slip stands for? Sobriety lost its purpose. I love that. And there's

Kevin: priority, no reason.

Emma: Priority. Yeah. Sorry, not purpose. Priority. Yeah. There's no reason you can't Yeah. Make it rearrange your priorities. We talk about that so often. Like sometimes your priority needs to be your career. Sometimes your priority needs to be your kids. Yeah. There's no reason you can't.

Kevin: And that's like when I started too. My, [01:03:00] I would always do it that, oh I'm gonna stop drinking at least for a little bit.

All right let's start this new workout program. Let's start eating. 100% clean. Let's start doing all the things. And then once one thing fell, then the next thing and the next thing, the dominoes fell. And so when I truly, when I in, in truly started. I said, okay, I can do those other things, but I don't have to do those other things.

I'm only focused on this right now. Whatever this is I still need to figure it out, but this is what I'm focused on. And I actually gave myself time. And you know what? If you give yourself time to prioritize yourself and do that, you can make progress it's not gonna be perfect.

Never was, never is. But yeah, when you try, when we try and I feel like, yeah, just we do too much. Like it's always about what's the next thing? Am I [01:04:00] doing enough? It's all that pressure. Again, it goes back to, keeping up with everybody and doing those types of things. When realize, we have to realize that no, we get to make our own decisions on what that priority is or what that group of things that is important to us is.

Kari: And perfection is never the goal. 'cause you'll never reach it.

Kevin: No.

Kari: Progress is the goal. Even slow progress is still progress, so if sobriety lost its priority, prioritize it again. You've got, you can start over at any moment in any day. You don't have to wait till tomorrow. You can start over right now, yeah. You'll have to wait till one day. The one thing I can, yeah. And the one thing I continue to hear is that the people that, that, that went back out, they, they lost that community connection. They stopped going to meetings, they stopped doing service, they stopped helping other people. Like they stopped picking up the phone.

And I don't know about you guys, but like alcohol wants to isolate me [01:05:00] because that's when I turn to it is when I'm isolated and I have to be self-aware, am I isolating myself and I'm in a really vulnerable state in my life right now where I'm going through a huge shift. I'm going through a really big breakup.

I, I have three businesses that I run. I have my own if I don't make sobriety my priority right now, I will lose everything. And like I have to put okay, in order to maintain peace in my life, I have to turn to my community for tools I have to trust in and believe in my higher power, that there's a bigger plan out there than the one that's unfolding right now.

And that this is just a test and I have to stay sober. I can't pick up a drink because all it's gonna do is pour gasoline in my dumpster fire of life. It's literally just gonna burn my entire life down. If I pick up a drink right now, I'll lose everything. So the only way for me to stay focused is to keep SI sobriety [01:06:00] in priority, that's it. Yeah. Yeah.

Emma: I love that. And sometimes, like you said with your, your core group of friends sometimes and you mentioned earlier as well, that going out you realized you just can't do it. And sometimes it's that you need to make so priority your number one priority and absolutely protect it with everything that you've got.

So that means maybe not going out and not hanging out with those friends, but it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be forever. You can still go out with those friends, just maybe not right at the beginning when you're, when you've got that baby sobriety to protect. And you might go out with those friends, but on your terms or with your boundaries.

So it might be that you go out for a day at the beach or you go out on a boat or you go out for a hike or whatever. But it's not going out to a bar, not going out to that environment. You called sobriety

Kari: a baby. Yeah. Like I love that you called sobriety a baby. It's 'cause that's in the beginning I can easily say like my friends that I could be honest with about it.

My sobriety is a baby and I have no [01:07:00] babysitter for it, so I'm gonna stay home with this baby. And I would say that like my sobriety is only three months old or four months old and I can't leave it home. I can't leave it. I have to stay home with it. And my friends that I could be really more like blunt with when they would invite me to things that involved drinking, I would flat out be like, you can invite me to Sunrise cardio to on the beach, to the gym.

You can invite me on a hike. You can invite me on a dive, you can invite me to tea. At two in the afternoon at a building that doesn't serve alcohol. You can invite me to the library. You can invite me to anywhere that doesn't serve alcohol. And I'm happy to spend time with you. You could just call me and we could catch up on the phone.

Don't drunk dial me. Don't call me with your problems past eight o'clock at night because I'm probably gonna have my phone off and be in bed. And so don't drunk dial me and don't invite me places where they're serving alcohol. And whenever those situations have come up in the past and I do ask my higher power, I don't wanna say no, it's her [01:08:00] birthday. I love her, but man, I'm so nervous about this event. It's, I either call my sponsor or I call somebody and say, what would you do? Or I pray about it. And the times that I prayed about it, it's absolutely been removed. Something else came up that was way more important, that gave me an out.

Or if it was a situation where I was like, listen, we have to take separate cars or we could ride together, but we're only going for an hour. Or, I'm not going tell your friends and family that I'm working and I'm super busy and I love them and I'm apologetic that I can't make it. And if that caused friction, that was okay because to.

It's easier, but other people that have been in your life for a long time where they're like no. Wait a minute. You used to come and hang out for 12 hours. I'm like yeah. I used to go drink for 12 hours. I don't wanna go hang out for 12 hours. I don't wanna actually sit in somebody's backyard for 12 hours.

I'm gonna go to this barbecue and I'm gonna have a salad and like [01:09:00] a chicken wing and like a conversation and I'm gonna be outta there by an hour and a half later. I'm gonna take pictures with everybody and make an appearance and head out. And that was always just to protect my sobriety.

But one thing you can say to those people as well, especially family, is look, this won't be like this for, yeah, this is my new norm and right now I have to prioritize my health. I have to. So I can come for an hour and then leave, or I can just miss it and see you guys next time. And like it won't be this way forever, but just for right now, this is what I have to prioritize.

And if anybody sticks their nose about it that's not your friend. That's not somebody that you need in that inner circle anyways,

Emma: Yeah. That's not someone that actually genuinely cares about your wellbeing and your best interests.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: Exactly.

Kevin: And I would say too give people a chance, because I think sometimes we think oh, they're not gonna, they're gonna judge me.

They're gonna be doing this and we tell them and they're, oh my God, that's I was, I, [01:10:00] whether they are thinking about it themselves or they are just so supportive of you because they care about you. Yeah. Give people a chance to surprise you in a good way. Yeah. Because I think we always think, again, worst case scenario and that actually that can happen.

The coolest

Kari: thing happened my, my son's father and I, because I'm sober now and because I've made amends and we have an incredible relationship now where we respect each other, which is really cool. And his wife and him had a baby recently and they invited me to their baby's one year birthday party.

And and I was like, that would've never happened without sobriety, first and foremost, because they would've been worried that I would've been drunk, Carey, and I showed up and I guess her brother, I overheard him saying like, why is there no beer in the cooler? And it rung with me.

It was like, oh my God. They literally are throwing this like they respect me and my sobriety, my ex-husband respects my [01:11:00] sobriety enough to not beer in the cooler at this birthday party. Just because they invited me that, so it's, it'll surprise you, like you're right. Let people surprise you.

Because for me, I've always been vocal about this is what I'm doing. I'm not drinking. Because if I'm telling on myself and I'm vocal about it, people aren't gonna offer it to me, but that was a surprising thing where I was like, wow, that is so cool. The people that I didn't expect to respect it, respected it, yeah. Let people surprise you, or bring your own little like thing of lacrosse or whatever, bring some sparkling waters. Bring your own BYO sparkling water.

Kevin: My B-Y-O-C-I usually walk in with a coffee.

Emma: Yeah. How am I gonna get through this event with caffeine?

Kevin: Yeah. When you were talking about that early on here about the needing that additional one. I'm like, yeah, that's coffee for me now. I have to go. If I go places on a we just went on a cruise, it's okay, I have the coffee package. Good. Where can I get [01:12:00] coffee?

How often can I get coffee? I need access to it. 'cause

Kari: mine is cake. Mine is not coffee, but mine, there's a really good bakery by my house and oh my God. It's that is my Achilles heel is okay, I cannot go to this bakery. My kid doesn't even eat sweets.

He's he could take it or leave it. He is I don't know, mom, you go. He said the other day, I was like, do you wanna bake sugar cookies? And he looked at me and he goes, you do you mom? And I was like,

I was like, you don't want sugar cookies? He's no, mom, you want sugar cookies?

Kevin: Come on. What good are you? If you can't just agree with me just so I can make them and say, oh, I made them for everybody.

Kari: Can you just say these? But that was what I did with alcohol, where I would bring a bunch of alcohol hoping that I didn't look like the weirdo that wanted to drink all the alcohol.

And I'd end up being the one that ate all that, drank all the alcohol. Now when I bring sweets, it's the same old obsession. That obsession of my mind has not gone away. It's just been repurposed. And it can be repurposed for healthier [01:13:00] things. Like shark diving or the gym or,

Kevin: yeah.

Kari: Bakery goods, yeah.

Kevin: I mentioned the Sour Patch kids in my wife's purse at the movie theater. Yeah. I'm not saying my only obsession's coffee. So

Kari: yeah, I would look weird coming into the movie theater with the whole buttercream cake. Should do just

Kevin: some Tupperware or something. Yeah.

Kari: So listen, you don't sell this here.

Okay. I'm gonna eat this whole thing.

Emma: I would buy a purpose-built handbag to fix the cake in there. Yeah. This cake is a fashion statement. Yeah. Is it cake? Is it a handbag? Ooh. Ooh.

Kari: That's a good one.

Emma: Is those my kids watch what my kids watch those shows on Netflix as well. Is it cake or is it, I can't remember what it's called.

You guys know what I mean though? Is it had a cake?

Kari: Is

Kevin: it really cake? Whatever. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kari: I had a birthday cake one year that was made after this one of my favorite purses and my best friends all [01:14:00] took my purse to the cake shop and had the cake shop make a custom cake that looked identical to my purse.

It was the cutest thing. That's so cool. It was so good. It was so tasty.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. It's one thing, every cake looks good, but it's gotta taste good as well. Yeah, that good.

Kari: Doesn't. You got it. It's. Supermarket bakeries. Like here in Florida, we have Publix. I know Walmart has really good cakes.

There's bakeries or don't sleep on that. Okay. 'cause they're actually really good and really inexpensive.

Emma: Follow us. One more Great life advice. Yes. Listen, it's not alcohol. Okay.

Yeah. We got you Gotta enjoy life

Kevin: grocery store and get a cookie cake for that. Used to be my birthday and sober bursary thing was a big old cookie cake.

The more I see the better, but it's changed to a specific cupcake here. It's a cookie cake. It's just a big cookie's,

Emma: like a giant cookie. [01:15:00] And then they put oh, a cookie the size of a cake. A cake with icing on top.

Kevin: Yeah. Whoa. And you just, you cut it like a pizza and you eat it like a triangle Pizza slice and, yeah.

Kari: One of the local bakeries here in South Florida, Publix used to make, 'cause we get hit with hurricanes for hurricane season. And so when hurricanes were gonna hit, they started making hurricane cookie cakes that were like the eye of the hurricane, like the icing looked like the hurricane. And they would write the name of the hurricane on it and they'd sell it.

And then people got offended by the hurricane cakes because hurricanes actually do a lot of damage and sometimes kill people. So the bakery stopped making hurricane cakes, but it was a brief moment in time where everybody was celebrating hurricanes because the cakes were so tasty that

Kevin: Yeah. I just picture the amount of icing that might be with just a little eye in the middle.

Oof.

Emma: Yeah. Okay.

Kevin: Lemme go see what sweets we have downstairs after this.

Emma: Yeah. And now I'm hungry.

Kevin: Yeah. Should we [01:16:00] move on to the next nugget of

Emma: the

Kevin: finish up with the nuggets?

Emma: I have a nugget. I see nugget. I thought of one. So my nugget or I was this week, days old. I learned this week.

Kevin: You say that wrong.

Every time. Every time. This could be completely off topic. What do we learn this week? This could be completely off topic, not sobriety related. A little nugget.

Emma: So Emma was today years old when, or this, I learned this week that I can't read three meaty books at once. Surprisingly. So I love reading, love a good novel.

And I've just rediscovered our local library. Like I know it's been, I just, it's one of those things you forget about, but we've got an app so you can like, scroll through books and I don't have to walk around the library and get completely overwhelmed and flustered. I. Can scroll through the app and put books on hold and then it notifies me when they're in the library and I [01:17:00] can go and pick it up.

'cause they'll get it in from different libraries around the city. So cool. If Emma puts three books on hold, three books will become available at once, which means I've got three, maybe four weeks to try and read these three meaty novels that I really wanna read. And I don't wanna relinquish my hold of them 'cause then I might have to wait too long to get it back.

So I don't know what the solution is, but I've got three big books to try and read very quickly.

Kevin: What do you, and I'm, I have the, this doc up here where you wrote that on and just now and I'm, I got distracted by the what's constitutes a meaty novel?

Emma: Yeah. What is a media like? It's a thick, yeah, it's a big

Kevin: thick book.

But what's with, gimme a page count.

Emma: I dunno. It, I dunno. Are you reading Stephen

Kevin: King or are reading

Emma: maybe even, do you want me to go get the books book right over

Kari: there?

Emma: Yeah. Hold on. I a Stephen

Kari: King book right over there. I love reading Stephen King and they're like my [01:18:00] favorite meaty books to read.

Kevin: Yeah, that's, I started going through and reading his from start to finish and I made it, all his books. I don't know, 75, 80, 90 books. I think I got through three. I did it get through three and they were good. But the Dark

Kari: Tower series is my favorite. I listened to that. Yeah,

Kevin: that was like 150 hours I think of Audible that I listened to.

And I still, I have to go back and pick up the new ones it came out with since I've done it. What do you got there?

Kari: I'm reading Xmen

Emma: Carnival by Catherine Chidi, I dunno how to say his surname. It's a New Zealand author. So we got

Kevin: three 50

Emma: pages.

Kevin: All so you got a 350 pager you got,

Emma: and then this one that I am yet to start.

Kevin: Ooh. I have too. Demon Copperhead here by

Emma: Barbara King sva. I've heard this could destroy me. Whoa. In a, that's

Kevin: related to by way Addiction. Sobriety. It's a novel, right?

About that.

Emma: It's [01:19:00] a novel. I have no idea. 548 pages. But these ones are big pa like this is a heavy book. I don't wanna pack this in my carry on. I don't actually know what it's about, but my my friends said it was a good one. So I don't know how I'm gonna get through these books, but this one's on my nightstand right now.

Yeah.

Kevin: Ooh,

Emma: meaty

Kevin: Are you just reading through the Dark Tower series now? I'm

Kari: rereading it, read, rereading it. I read the first time when I was in high school and rereading it like 18 years later is so much more. Makes sense. Yeah. And it's way weirder to read as an adult

Kevin: because you're pretty far then.

'cause that's what book. Oh yeah,

Kari: this is, what is VII? Is that seven?

Kevin: VII, yeah.

Emma: Seven. Yeah. Damn. Yeah. But then

Kari: I know that my favorite character is about to die, and I was like, if I don't read it, it won't happen. Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. That's funny. That's actually I think in year two, year one, year two I think I got so burnt [01:20:00] out listening on my commute to work quit lit that I'm like, I can't listen to another one of these books.

And that's what I switched over to was The Dark Tower. I think it was the stand first and then I listened to

Kari: all the Dark Tower.

Kevin: But yeah, that's good stuff. Now I did think about that the other day. Now you have me thinking I might go back and actually read it, not listen to it.

Kari: What is your nugget?

Kevin: My nugget is, does everybody give

Kari: a nugget? Yeah,

Emma: everyone gives a nugget if you can. If mine's not really bad.

Kevin: Yeah. Mine has nothing to do with meaty novels. That's gonna be in my head now. I, I am today years old that I actually, I. Would consider maybe possibly being in the water when and going like swimming with sharks, intentionally seeking out shark, intentionally seeking out sharks.

Yeah.

Kari: Nope. Don't a professional though.

Kevin: Yes, because when we started this in my head the whole [01:21:00] time was like, this sounds like a drunk idea. This sounds like a drunk idea. Hey, let's go swim with sharks and if you ever

Kari: wanna do it, I've got the right company to hook you up with down here.

Cool. Lemme know.

Kevin: But yeah, that's, I didn't have really a nugget coming into this. I figured I'd think about I, I'd figure it out, but as you were talking about it, I was, because I was always like, Nope, that's not gonna happen. Because I've, I just assumed once the chum was done, then I became the chum.

Kari: No, it's I don't know if you have cats and dogs, or have been around cats and or dogs swimming with sharks is like playing with cats. They don't care about you. They don't want you, if you have treats still come around, might still bite, chew, like they're not interested. And once the treats are gone, the cats are gone.

Swimming with dolphins is like playing with dogs. They wanna be around you all the time. They think you're really cool. They'll bring you toys, like they'll bring you seaweed or they'll play with your stuff or they'll mess with you. So that was the differentiation for me is I have cats and dogs.

I have two cats and I have three dogs. So I love [01:22:00] both. And so I love my sharks, but they very much are like cat behavior, and then the dogs are interesting. The dolphins that I've ung with are very like dog behavior. Yeah. But they're both lovable. Except dolphins have a lot of empathetic qualities.

Like the dolphins are more like, you can humanize them and like communicate with your eyes with if sharks are just sharks

Kevin: Yeah.

Kari: Sharks don't, you're never gonna have an emotional connection with a shark. It's not gonna happen. Shark

Kevin: with the cat. Yeah, same

Kari: thing with a cat. The cat like the cat, you're never gonna have an emotional connection with a shark in the water.

Whereas with a dolphin, it's there's a woman that I am friends with who goes out to The Bahamas every year since 2018 and she meets up with the same wild pod of dolphins and they remember her, and they'll bring her, their babies and they'll swim with her and play with her. And like sharks aren't like that.

Sharks don't give a.

Kevin: I have an Needy 5 pound dolphin downstairs, so I don't have, we have dogs. So

Kari: I have a nugget that I had to expand on because [01:23:00] I was today years old when I realized it, but today I was today years old when I realized brown eggs and white eggs are the same. It's just a chicken feather color thing. Huh? Okay.

White feathered chickens with white ear lobes will lay white eggs and red or brown feathered chickens with red ear lobes will lay brown eggs.

Emma: I feel like I didn't know that chickens had ear lobes either.

Kevin: Yeah, I was, it was, I was, I got stuck on that too. I was like, ear lobes, uhhuh.

Kari: Yeah. I grew up and when I grew up in Jacksonville, we always got eggs from our own chickens.

And so sometimes the eggs were white. Sometimes the eggs were brown. And it was, you could tell which chicken it came from because of the

Kevin: feather. Wow. Huh?

Kari: Yeah. And they don't have ear lobes. They got like holes. Okay. Yeah.

Kevin: I'd like to change my answer.

Emma: I always say iselle when I learn that chickens have ear [01:24:00] lobes.

Kevin: Because, in my head, and is this right or wrong? I feel like all the eggs that are portrayed as healthier options in the stores are brown and all of the one, and not all of 'em, I'm not saying, but I'm thinking of like the packaging here and things like that. And I feel like in my head I just equated like it's healthier.

But why? And I never thought about it.

Kari: Brown hens tend to lay bigger eggs because.

Kevin: On today's episode of annual

Kari: on today's episode of, I used to Wear, I told you I have so many random nuggets of information, but I I grew up like fishing and spear dive or spear fishing and diving and I, we always grew our own vegetables. I can rota till a garden. I can get eggs from our own chickens.

We never had cattle or horses because we weren't rich people. We were like the poor people that lived off the land, not the rich people that had horses that lived off the land. And then between just growing up, picking our own [01:25:00] blueberries and vegetables and, corn and. My nana, who was an alcoholic, I had mentioned that she was the nice alcoholic, right?

But she always had either a black coffee or a or a straight whiskey in her hand and she would take the double barrelled shotgun behind the front door. And she, 'cause it was loaded and kept behind the front door, and she would try to shoot the squirrels that were getting into our corn and she'd miss and she'd take out the corn stalks because after a couple of whiskeys, your aim was off.

So you know that my papa would get mad that the corn was getting obliterated and like it was a whole thing. Random chicken facts,

Kevin: as long as she wasn't taking wild place. I

Kari: was just, I was thinking about that too. No. The chickens were valuable.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah.

Kari: Random Florida things.

Kevin: I was like you said Jacksonville, right?

This is not what, this is not the picture I had of that area. Or Florida? No. Jackson was

Kari: split up. There's like Jacks Beach, there's like downtown Jacksonville. Yeah. And then there's like out in the sticks, Jacksonville. And then where my Nana and Papa's Lake house was actually in the middle of the Ocala [01:26:00] National Forest.

And so we, there was never any like cell phone signal out there. Like I'm pretty sure they still have dial up, like they live in this like really remote area. And that was my weekends and my summers was spent there, so it was Florida's all mil, a million different things. I'm in Miami now and it's the majority of it is like Latin, Hispanic, and you go a couple hours north and it's farmland and it's, it's wild.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah.

Kari: So yeah, that's where the chicken knowledge comes from. I love it.

Emma: Chicken Knowledge,

Kevin: meaty novels and Chicken Knowledge. On this episode of the re Frameable podcast just leave it at

Emma: that tagline.

Yeah. The name of this episode, Chicken Nuggets and Meaty novels.

Kevin: Meaty novels and Chicken knowledge. Chicken nuggets.

Kari: You could have a lot of fun sober [01:27:00] guys. You don't need alcohol.

Emma: Yeah, exactly. We don't, yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Alright. Kari, thanks so much for chatting with us today.

It's been a really good time. Chicken nuggets and all. Where can people find you or contact you? How's the best place to track you down?

Kari: So my Sober living has a website called Best Friends place.com. And then my Instagram is Kari dot Nautique, that's K-A-R-I-N-A-U-T-I, que. And then that's the main place where you can reach me.

Emma: Awesome. Thanks. We'll pop that in the show notes or whatever, right?

Kevin: Yeah. Perfect. Yeah,

Emma: absolutely. Like Kevin. Just that I don't know. I'm like, we'll do it and, but Kevin has to do it. Yeah,

Kevin: I will do it. And I just realized that Yeah, you switched it to, from chicken knowledge to chicken nuggets which I thought was like, I love

Emma: that

Kevin: thought.

You were talking about eating them.

Emma: Eating chicken nuggets. The nuggets are

Kari: chicken knowledge. It's that's cool. That works.

Kevin: And now I want cake. Chicken nuggets. Chicken nuggets. Yep.

Kari: [01:28:00] Chicken nuggets. That's a good, that's a good Wednesday evening or free, is it Thursday morning, Emma?

Emma: Yeah.

Kari: Yeah.

Emma: Breakfast.

Kari: Breakfast.

Kevin: Awesome. Thank you. Thank so much for joining us this

Kari: conversation.

Kevin: Yeah, appreciate you joining us today. Thank you all for listening to another episode of the re frameable podcast, brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS and Android app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe and share with those that you feel may benefit from it. And I want to thank you again for listening and be sure to come back for another episode. Have a great day.

Kari: Bye friends. Bye. Thank you guys. I appreciate this and I love what you.

Kari Nautique: Sobriety, Service, and Swimming with Sharks

​[00:00:00]

Kevin: Welcome everyone to another episode of the Reframeable podcast, the podcast that brings you people's stories and ideas about how we can work to reframe our relationship, not just with alcohol, but with stress, anxiety, relationships, enjoyment, and so much more. Because changing our relationship with alcohol is about so much more than changing the contents of our glass.

This podcast is brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS and Android app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you. My name is Kevin Bellack. I'm a certified professional recovery coach and the head of coaching at the Reframe app.

Emma: And I'm Emma Simmons. I'm a Reframer, a certified life coach and Thrive coach with Reframe. And today we're excited to be joined by Kari Nautique. She's the founder of my best friend's place, a sober living home for women in Jacksonville, Florida. She began her recovery journey in 2019, and since then, it's become her [00:01:00] mission to create safe, empowering spaces for women to rebuild their lives with dignity and purpose.

Welcome, Kari. We're so good to have, so good to have you here. It's so good to have you here. We're glad to have you here.

Kari: Thank you, Emma. Thank you, Kevin. I'm really happy to be here.

Emma: Classic game is starting us on a good

Kevin: foot. Just gonna say, as always, it's early in, it's early in New Zealand. We'll give you a break.

Emma: I'm on my third, coffee and it's not helps.

Kevin: Okay. Okay. No more breaks. No more excuses then once the third, I should be on fire. Yeah. But yeah, welcome. Thank you for joining us again and I think we, let's just dive right in and yeah, let's go for it. If you'd like to share, tell us a little bit about your story as much as you'd like, and we'll go from there.

Okay.

Kari: There's there's a lot of facets to my story. So I'll try to keep it like, in a nutshell and keep it simple. But I started drinking when I was a teenager. I grew [00:02:00] up in Jacksonville, Florida and I had a addict, alcoholic for a mom. And she was. Not entirely present. Had an amazing dad and my dad had an amazing mom.

My nana, so she raised me, but she was also an alcoholic. She was just a very nice alcoholic. So I just grew up around people drinking all the time and it was something that I thought that the cool kids did. And so I being very awkward as a teenager, like I wanted to be the cool kid.

My uncle passed away when I was a teenager, and that was like my first blackout night, when I was like 16, 15, 16 years old. Just like my first blackout night was losing him. And and then, just like fast forward into like my early twenties and everything was partying and, my goal when I was younger was to become a model, like a bikini model, like a Victoria's Secret fashion model, like a Playboy bunny.

Like I idolized those women. I thought they had it all together. And I used to take pictures of bikini models and [00:03:00] take them to my bedroom door and like when I was like 11 and 12 years old, I wanted to beat them. So I jumped into that industry really early and that industry came with lots of alcohol and lots of parties and lots of nightclubs, and we're talking early two thousands where it was like every single song on the radio was about, bottles in the club and how the models had the bottles.

And if you had the bottles, you got the models. It was like everything was about drinking and models, right? So I fell into this like nightlife lifestyle and myself and all of my friends and everyone around me, we were. What I see now, like absolutely raging alcoholics. Like at the time it didn't look like that because everybody did it.

Oh, you're hungover, just drink some more. And then I can I can't believe the unhealthy things I put my body through back then because it was like after the drinking it was, oh my God, we need to eat a bunch of greasy food to soak this all up. And after eating all the greasy food, it was like, oh my God, you could [00:04:00] never get to sleep.

And unless you were blacked out, and even now we know scientifically that you're losing rem sleep regardless. So like you're not actually getting rest and then waking up tired. And then if I had a photo shoot that was a really big deal. I wouldn't eat for 72 hours before the shoot and all I would live off of was like black coffee and liquor so it was my early twenties were really, unhealthy, I guess you could say. So I stumbled my way through that. Over the course of that like decade I met my ex-husband, I became a mom. My life completely changed and my drinking didn't, like I loved my son more than anything and also still tried to fit all of my drinking into my parenting, and I fell into mommy wine culture after that, which was like, baby in one hand, glass of wine in the other.

And then I felt like a sophisticated drinker. 'cause I was married and I had a kid and it's now I'm not drinking at the club. I'm drinking at home, but I'm still going through bottles and [00:05:00] bottles, just my relationship with alcohol never changed. No matter what happened in my life.

No matter how drastic it got, I always tried to fit drinking into my life. And, that means that all of the hobbies I had, like I loved working out and I loved diving and I loved going outside. And like all of a sudden those hobbies just fell to the wayside because all of a sudden everything that I did had to involve drinking.

Even just going to brunch like with the other moms, or if I was going to the playground or with my kid, it was like I have to bring like a Yeti with a bunch, with a margarita in it. And everything had to revolve around drinking. So around the time of my, I left my son's dad. After that divorce, it got worse.

It was the worst that my drinking ever got. The days that my son was at his dad's house, I was so emotionally. Lost that. Like not having my child with me. Yeah. And not having responsibility. There are slow seasons in my career, right? So there would be weeks at a time where I might [00:06:00] not have a job and trying to support myself.

I picked up bartending and that turned into drinking on the job. And then the days I didn't have my son, I was just watching the clock trying to get to, an acceptable time of day to drink. And then I realized that I was just like consistently drinking, like all the time. So right before COVID hit back in 2019 my biological mother came back into my life.

She was sober and she was starting to make amends. She was very just god awful at it. But she told me about aa and she inspired me. That was the first time in my entire life I considered that I had a drinking problem. And I knew that desperately I didn't wanna be like her. And I got the opportunity to tell her that I would never let my son view me the way that I view her.

And that, I would do whatever it took to, to quit drinking and to just be the opposite that she was. So her and I still don't have a relationship. But that's what started me [00:07:00] on my journey in 2019. And so I discovered that I couldn't stop drinking. That was when I first tried. And I would have a week at a time and then go back trying to go into the rooms of aa, and then it was two weeks and then I'd drink, and then three weeks, and then I'd drink, and then I'd make it a month, and then I'd drink.

And I remember seeing like the little six month chip at the meetings, which was like a lifetime to me. I was like, I could not imagine getting six months without alcohol. I just couldn't imagine it. But when COVID hit everything shut down and. Without a bar to go to or friends to invite me out.

I really just started okay, if I don't buy alcohol and I don't bring it home I got a therapist. I started working out and COVID was actually my first like nine months without alcohol. But I wasn't working a program or doing anything recovery related. I would just, there was nowhere to go and I was like determined to not drink at home.

So I really white knuckled it through that. And then holidays came back around. My best friend came back into town and [00:08:00] we went out drinking again. So next year I made it six months without doing any, without doing any drinking. And when the holidays rolled back around, I went back out. And then the following year I made it four months.

And then I started to realize every time I go back out, it's harder and harder for me to stop. Like I would say, okay, January 1st, I'm not gonna drink. And it would take me till February or March. To be able to actually put it down. And this is waking up saying, I'm not gonna drink today. I'm not gonna drink today.

I'm not gonna drink today. And by four o'clock picking up, so it was it really became a battle. Like I started to realize it was a battle. So February 2nd, 2024 I was sitting in a pub. I had, I was hungover. I had my last, actually February 1st, I had my last half of a beer and I ate a cheeseburger and I was just like, I'm really not doing this again.

Then I'm just, I'm [00:09:00] done. And I remember telling my friends who were my drinking buddies that I was gonna have. I was like, I'll probably start drinking in October again. I also did real estate investing. At the time. I was like dabbling with my first real estate investments and I. The opportunity to open a sober home came about when I was about six, four or five months sober.

And so I had a what I feel like was my higher power, like a nudge from him to be like, look like you wanna do this, let's go all in. And I trusted it. Like I trusted that gut instinct. And the house that I never expected to fall in my lap fell in my lap. And it was a foreclosure that I was able to I was able to take over.

And the layout was so incredibly weird that it was like, this can't be a rental for anyone. I can't make it a co-living. I can't make it an Airbnb. But the way that the rooms were laid out, I was like, this is where the beds are. Like this is my sober living. And I took it with this flimsy [00:10:00] willingness and relationship I had with my God at the time.

I, I said, okay. Like, all right buddy, I'm all in. Let's do this. And that house was opened up as a sober living several months later. But during the months that I was renovating it and staying sober it was right in the middle of where I grew up. Where everything bad that's ever happened to me in my entire life has happened to me within a five mile radius at that house including a suicide attempt that I had when I was a teenager, and so I had to battle all my demons in the middle of building this home. And it was really just like a God shot, so that house, through opening that house through marketing that house, I was like. Okay, I'll try AA again. But I'm gonna go to women's meetings only, and then through the women I met in the area I found my sponsor and, through her I found my house manager and through my house manager, it's it was this snowball, it just literally rolled downhill and got bigger and bigger.

[00:11:00] And I would've never in a million years did it ever would've imagined that this is what that house would've turned into. But it's the, I'm hoping the first of many, and there's a whole other plan to go with with treatment centers and iops and stuff that I wanna open.

But right now it's it's definitely a God thing. Like my, I would've never, ever been able to open it if I wouldn't have just been like a hopeless drunk, you.

Kevin: So in February of 24 is when you were like, okay, this is it. Yeah. When did that come, when did the house come up?

Like how long, how far after that was it?

Kari: I purchased it in June actually. I am we're 10 days away from officially a year of me purchasing that house. And and when I first decided to quit drinking, or, that time around, this time around when I decided to quit drinking, I didn't even trust myself.

I said like, when October rolls around, I'll probably drink by Halloween. And by Halloween I had a sponsor and was [00:12:00] fully working a recovery program. And that was not my intention. My intention was like, let me just white knuckle this as much as I can. And through the process of opening the sober home, I found purpose and through service and purpose, I.

Like my anchor into this, like this lifestyle, and so before I didn't have that. It was really empty. It was, there was nothing that could keep me from going back to drinking, not even my kid. And I would say I'll quit drinking for my son and then I would end up picking up a drink again. And so I would have this horrible guilt and shame because I'm like, man, I don't even love my kid enough to stop drinking.

And that's not what was happening. I love my child more than anything. I just couldn't stop drinking because I have this mental obsession, like one drop of alcohol and I'm off to the races, and so there is no such thing [00:13:00] as controlling drinking for me. And what people, what I didn't understand then that has been communicated to me that I understand now is normal people don't try to control their drinking.

If they don't have people who don't have a problem with alcohol, don't try to control their consumption of alcohol, they could just take it or leave it. They don't think about it. And like in the modeling world, because I've been a model for two decades almost. I can look at a meal and pretty much tell you the macros that are in that meal and how much I'm gonna have to work out to balance eating that meal.

And I have to budget this during runway season. I have to budget my meals. And in off season I find myself budgeting my meals where am I allowed to eat this? Much of this normal People don't think about food like that. They just eat food. So the obsession of the mind for me it goes into many other different compartments.

But that was what connected it for me when I was like, oh, you mean normal people don't think [00:14:00] about alcohol? That's weird. But when my mentor, she was like, I don't think about food the way you think about food. I was like. You don't think about food. You don't count how many calories are in a donut before you eat it.

She's no, I just eat donuts. I was like, wow. So normal people just drink drinks and they just leave it or take it. They don't obsess over, oh, I won't drink tomorrow if I drink today. And that really opened my eyes to like, oh, damn. I must have a problem because I'm obsessing over.

If I drink tomorrow, I won't drink today. Or can I make it till four o'clock or can I make it? I was bargaining and negotiating and budgeting for drinks. When people who don't have the type of obsession I have with alcohol, they don't do that. That was an eyeopener for me, for sure.

Emma: And I think that whole I get that obsession and that constant thinking about alcohol or, planning activities around when am I gonna be able to drink?

Or like where's the alcohol gonna, do I need to bring my own? Is there gonna be alcohol there? Is it supply every [00:15:00] event? That was the big question on my mind, no matter what the event was. So it's, and now you, we get to go to events alcohol free, and the point of being there isn't to drink or, the obsession of the, or the thought process behind the event isn't, where's the alcohol?

What am I gonna drink? It's right. I wonder who's gonna be there? Or what are we celebrating? Or, it's a baby shower. Let's what thoughtful things mimosa gonna do for the parents to be Yeah, let's not

Kevin: worry about the mimosas. Let's, yeah, exactly.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. It's a completely different way of showing up in the world.

Kari: With family barbecues and stuff that happen like over summer. It's used to, I would say, okay, I'll bring just a six pack of beer, but let me see which one has the highest A BV. Because if I'm only drinking six, it better be like 10% A BV. Okay. And then I would look at wine bottles and I would look at what percentage, how drunk is this wine bottle gonna get?

And if I was going somewhere that may or may not have alcohol, I was [00:16:00] overly friendly. I was like, let me provide the alcohol for you guys. I can bring it, who needs it, who drinks what? And I would go spend hundreds of dollars to bring alcohol to an event. And then I would notice that like almost no one drank it.

And so I would usually end up bringing it home with me because. I didn't wanna leave alcohol behind with people that weren't gonna drink it. 'cause that's alcohol abuse, right?

Kevin: Yeah.

Kari: And so I would end up saying, let me bring you all the alcohol. And then at the end of the night or end of the event, I would say, oh man, you guys didn't even drink it.

I'll take it off your hands. I'll take it home with me. And that was my way of making sure I always had a supply no matter where I was going. And that got really bad because there were times I'd go to the movies and I would just throw mini bottles of like little individual wine bottles, little minis in my purse.

And I made the excuse that like, oh, I have to have my glass of wine with a movie. Girl. No that's a problem.

Kevin: Yeah. Now, my wife and I just went to the [00:17:00] movies this weekend and we stopped somewhere in advance and I'm like, you know what? We're gonna buy this extra big bag of sour Patch watermelons. And that's what we threw in our purse. So it's changed a little bit from those days. Now what you're sneaking into the movies is no longer Yeah.

What I'm sneaking into the movies. Yeah.

Kari: Skittles cost,

Kevin: yeah,

Kari: $20 at the movies and it costs like $5 at CVS. My kid's I want Skittles. I'm like, okay, if you're getting Skittles, we'll bring us Skittles in my purse.

Kevin: Okay. Yeah. Can we fit bottles of water in there too? No.

Kari: Yes. Skittle smugglers.

Kevin: Yeah. I remember I was probably coming up on two years alcohol free, and I think, I feel like it was like, it was February, so it was like Valentine's Day weekend and yeah, my wife and daughter and I went to get sushi and for lunch and we, I got an NA beer while I was there and drinking it.

It was fine, whatever. And we got up to leave and I walked five steps away and I stopped and I just like, I'm like, what am I missing? And I looked back and I had half of the beer that was left and I [00:18:00] stopped because I'm like. I felt the need to go. I realized I felt the need to go back and finish it.

Wow. Yeah. And I was like, now, you know what? I'm good. And I, as I was walking away, I'm like, oh, that's what I always wanted. I wanted that, take it or leave it attitude, but it didn't work with alcohol. It's a drug, it's affecting my brain. The na beer that I had wasn't spiking my dopamine and making me want to get more.

And, so that was one of a little bit of an aha moment. A little bit farther along. But yeah, it's just different. That was totally the same way. Like I, I looked at the percent I, I like craft beer, whiskey, all that. And I went to percentage first. And then what do I want?

Always

Kari: tastes terrible. The highest percentage ones always tasted terrible. And I would just like, ugh. I'm like, ugh. And that's when I started going to shots and I said, okay. Listen, I'm just gonna pound shots of tequila before I go because nothing taste like shits better

Kevin: than that.

Kari: And [00:19:00] before my in-laws would come over, it was like, I remember my best friend and I standing in my kitchen and I would keep a bottle of tequila in the freezer.

So there once a year there's like this food and wine festival that happens down in Miami. And I would work the festival or like my partner would work the festival and we would get, they would gift us at the end of the festival cases. I remember one time we had 55 bottles and it was like just cases and cases.

And so I'd run through them pretty quick and I would keep tequila in the freezer and I would just start taking shots. And I remember they were coming over and I was so nervous. 'cause I'm not really good in social situations. I'm very nervous around. Even people that are family I'm hyper anxious when they come over how do I entertain them? What do I do? And so I remember pounding seven shots back to back before they walked in the door and just being like, my best friend was standing with me and she's I feel you. Can I have some? And I'm like, yeah, let's go. And why? This is family there? Like literally family is [00:20:00] coming over.

There's only gonna be five people at the house. And my body went into fight or flight mode and I said, no, I have to be drunk. And that's part of the disease. It's it's creating these instances where it's like on my shoulder you need to drink because of this. And I actually made myself more anxious and more fearful.

And then I would start. Like anticipating those moments, oh, we're gonna have a barbecue. I've gotta get hammered. And so when I would take it away from my body, I'd get even more anxious because I wasn't giving myself what I wanted. I wasn't giving my disease what I wanted, or my obsession, what it wanted.

I was withholding. So I was extra anxious, I was extra fearful. And what does that translate to? Snappy, angry, short, with people like just not pleasant to be around. Because in the back of my mind, I'm fighting this thing. Nobody else around me knows what's going on. They're like, damn, Carey, why are you being so mean today?

Just get away from me. I don't know. And it's because my anxiety is [00:21:00] heightened 'cause I'm not feeding this obsession, and there's this lie in my brain that was like, if you take that sip, you'll have comfort. But I promise you, the comfort I feel now is. What I was looking for in the bottom of that bottle.

And I find it in sobriety. It took longer to find it, but it stays longer because that quick little bit of comfort from that one shot is immediately gonna turn into anxiety within 20, 30 minutes and especially the next day with your cortisol levels raised and just your whole body being in disarray because it's trying to bleed out toxins, so like I kept looking for this calm, composed, relaxing substance and I was making myself worse every time, not even realizing it.

Emma: Yeah, I think that's a really good point of the yes in the moment it feels like [00:22:00] alcohol or having a shot or having a drink is helping with your anxiety or gonna help you feel better.

But when we give up alcohol long term, we do get like a baseline of comfort. Like we, we are. Not always, but our every day is more comfortable, less anxious. And yes, we might get little spikes, but we can navigate those so much easier. Whereas when we're drinking, it's just an absolute yo-yo of I feel like shit, I'll have a drink that'll make me feel better.

And then I'm down. And then, oh shit, I feel like shit again. I'll have a drink. And so then I'm okay. But it's only okay. Or maybe just a little bit better than Okay. It's never I feel great it's never gonna feel the

Kari: same way the first one did.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. You're always chasing

Kari: that.

You're always gonna chase that first feeling and it's gonna get less and less and less each time. And the feeling that I get now for accomplishing things without alcohol, that's that feeling I was looking for with alcohol. So if I make it through a barbecue and I do it [00:23:00] sober, I actually feel proud of myself.

I don't feel proud of myself when I drink. I if I'm leaving and I picked up a drink or multiple drinks, 'cause there was never picking up one drink for me. And whenever I did leave, it was like, ugh, did I say the wrong thing? Was I embarrassing? Did I do, it was more anxiety. And then now when I do things sober, when I do hard things sober, I leave and I'm proud of myself.

Or I go to bed at night and I'm proud of myself. And that's what I was looking for. That's that feeling of like self-esteem and dignity and, integrity that I was looking for. And I never found that in alcohol, ever.

Kevin: Yeah. How, and that's the billion dollar question I feel is, but how did you do it?

Like what did you, what are the, what did you do that. Helped you get to that point. And I know it's probably a million little things, million different things, but is there anything in particular that you would say helped, besides just, sometimes [00:24:00] it's just you guys just gotta do it and get through it and show yourself.

But that's hard.

Kari: So the thing about discipline is that there's no, yeah. If you don't wanna snooze in the morning, you don't snooze when your alarm goes off, you just put your feet on the fricking ground. There is no hack to discipline. If you don't wanna do something, you just have to do the thing.

So without the alcohol in my system if I don't want. I have to just not drink. Now for someone like me who had this obsession and what I believe is like alcohol use disorder like they call it now or like alcoholism. And that runs in my family. I couldn't just discipline my way out of it.

And that's what was really screwing with my head was that I can do hard things and I'm proud of myself for doing hard things and I'm able to withhold like a more discipline than a regular human being. I'm not military level, but listen, I can do hard crap. Okay. [00:25:00] And I couldn't stop drinking. So the couple of years that I was trying and that nothing stuck, that final like beginning that I had where I was doing it on my own, it took me realizing that like I couldn't do it on my own and reaching out for help.

For me, that help came in the form of Alcoholics Anonymous for me that came in the. The support groups of AA rooms, which is not where I imagine spending all of my time now. I love it. It's my, it's like free therapy, I chair meetings, I host zooms. I, like I help other women and this is, this has become part of the service that I do.

So when I started focusing on helping others quit drinking, it took me outta my own problem. And having a support group of other people that were just like me helped me call people instead of picking up a drink. It helped me have a toolkit of other [00:26:00] people that had the same problem I had that were able to say listen, before, like as soon as you romanticize that glass of wine, just shut the thought down, pick up the phone and call somebody.

And so help helped me and service, like helping others helped me because all the time I was doing it on my own. I couldn't. And then through those support groups I found my way back to believing in God. And I can't believe I'm sitting here even saying that because for the longest time in my adult life I was like, that's a cult.

Nope, absolutely not. Joining that, not doing that again. But I learned through this through what I've been through in the past year and a half, I've learned that, religion is just for people that fear hell, but spirituality is for people who have been through it and I went through enough hell.

So I have the spirituality to believe that there's something out there that's greater than me and stronger than me that I can lean on. So I have my support groups of AA and I have my [00:27:00] higher power. That's literally my, I live and breathe that like it's part of my daily, like the things in the background right here behind me.

That's the third step prayer, the seventh step prayer and the 11th step prayer framed on my wall. Because I say that when I wake up in the morning, I say when I go to bed at night, like teaching my child that we can choose to be kind to people because everybody is going through something hard.

Everybody needs someone to lean on that. Even the villains out there have an origin story of when they were treated badly, right? Learning to love other people and to offer help to other people, helps me not pick up a drink. It sounds like this vast, crazy universe, but it's really not. It's keep my own house in order, right?

Believe in God, help others. That's it, and I just don't pick up a drink one day at a time.

Kevin: Yeah, that's funny. Sorry, that was a lot you said about the No, it's, thank you for sharing that. That was, I love that you pointed the things on your wall and told [00:28:00] us what it was. 'cause I was actually going to reference this on my wall because you were talking about service and that, let me refresh my memory exactly what this says.

Yeah, it's a fortune cookie that if a true sense of value is to be yours, it must come through service. And I. Got that when I was deciding like, okay, I was alcohol free, but I was like deciding whether to change careers or whether to, and it was, the timing of it was, I was like, all right.

I don't believe in this whole thing, but I believe more in coincidence, but I'm like, all right, I see you. I got it. It was just one of those things that just hit me, which is why I have a fortune cookie framed on my wall because, love it. That was a huge point that kind of pushed me that, no, this is what's, it, this is what's meaningful to you.

This is what helps you, and this is what helps you help other people is Yeah, just doing that thing, putting yourself out there. I realized I

Kari: was picking up drinks because I was hurting inside. I realized I was picking up drinks because I was in pain [00:29:00] and helping other people through their pain takes me away from my pain.

I was so self-centered and selfish, like Kari's pain matters in everyone else's pain. 'cause what Kari's going through is bigger than everyone else's. So screw you guys, I'm just gonna drink myself into oblivion about it because poor me. Pour me a drink, right? As soon as I took myself out of that mindset and started listening to other people dump their problems on me please tell me about what's bothering you today.

Please tell me the burdens that you're carrying today because you sharing that burden is gonna help you by just getting it outta your system and it's gonna help me. 'cause I'm gonna realize real quick that I'll take my problems. Thank you very much. Mine are good. I'm gonna keep mine and you can have yours.

And I'm here to listen, and so taking myself out of myself, really taking myself out of that self-centered mind frame, like the urge to drink isn't there when I'm in the middle of like, how can I help this person today? Or man, I'm really going through a lot right now. Let me pick up the phone and call somebody and ask them how their day is.[00:30:00]

Super, super simple thing to do. It's, but like people joke about it being like a thousand pound phone, right? 'Cause it's a simple thing to do, but you really it's that discipline of I have to do this because my problems are never gonna solve themselves, but maybe I can help somebody feel better.

And then I'm not focused on picking up a drink. I'm not focused on my cravings anymore. I'm not focused on whatever's going on in Kari's world anymore. I'm focused on, Hey buddy, how can I help you today? Tell me about your problems. Tell me about what's bothering you. Like man, that really sucks.

Let's talk about it and then an hour goes by, right? Or however long that phone call is, and all of a sudden I'm like, damn, I feel like I helped and did service for someone else. They feel better 'cause they got it off their chest and I don't feel like drinking anymore. It's. Simple

Kevin: and Yeah. And that's, it's 'cause it sound, it can sound like maybe you're just avoiding what you know [00:31:00] your problems by helping somebody else.

But I know, I'm not saying that's true, but it is that maybe my problem just needs a little bit of time to, maybe it's just, or perspective, maybe intense or perspective. Yeah. To, and give my, give myself time to get that perspective. Or just to, I don't know, maybe in that time I also eat something or did, did something for myself and was able to do that and make myself feel better

Kari: yeah, maybe you need to eat something. Maybe you're tired, maybe you need a nap, maybe you're lonely. Maybe you need to pick up the phone and call somebody. Maybe you're angry. Maybe you need to. Point, what maybe you need to name your anger, which is something I'm teaching my 11-year-old to do, where it's anger's name is never anger.

Yeah, your anger's name is something else. And if you sit with it long enough, it'll tell you your anger's name is fear. Your anger's name is grief. Your anger's name is exhaustion. Your anger's name is anxiety. Like your, name your anger, so it's, [00:32:00] you're either hungry or you're angry, or you're lonely or you're tired.

And sometimes, yeah, eat something, take a nap, but picking up a drink always made those things worse. Never better. So no matter what I was feeling, no matter what pain or loneliness or sadness or depression or anxiety or fear or what, no matter what I was feeling, picking up a drink made it worse.

It poured gasoline on the fire every single time. And I would wake up the next day and be like, damnit. And I did the thing again that I didn't wanna do. And then there's guilt and there's shame, and there's regret, and there's, and it's just so much worse. It's just so much worse. I'll take picking up the phone and calling somebody, instead of picking up the bottle and drinking.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. That's something I like to ask people who are contemplating having a drink. I say, how will a drink make this better? And they have to really stop and think, because ultimately it won't make it better. But you can, you often list [00:33:00] off the ways that it'll make it worse or it.

Or it certainly doesn't help, like you were saying, you're maybe you're exhausted and you've had a big day and you're like, oh, I'll have a, I'll have a drink to wind down, but then tomorrow you're gonna wake up more exhausted because for people like you and I, it's not one drink, it's several, many drinks.

And it's, so you wake up feeling dusty, you haven't slept well. You've got that anxiety comes in. So you've just made, what was it? I'm tired and I need to have a shower and go to bed early into, like you've compounded that exhaustion and you're just piling shit on top of your exhaustion.

Kari: Yeah. And I find that if I really do need to put myself to bed, there's melatonin, there's magnesium, there's go to the gym. Like the days I'm stressed out and I'm a little bit, I'm on like a kind of like psychotic level of working out. But I work out for two hours a day, right? Try to not sleep after just killing yourself in the gym for two hours.

Throw on a weighted vest, get on the stair [00:34:00] stepper, set your timer for an hour, and then tell me that you can't sleep. There are ways to do it naturally where you don't need the drink. And then when you do. Actually fall asleep. Your body goes into REM sleep. REM sleep is where your body repairs itself and you're able to actually function the next day and feel like, oh, all those problems I had yesterday are not as big as they were yesterday, or they are just as big, but I can tackle them now because I sleep.

Like I'm not saying pick up the phone and call somebody and don't pay your bills, right? Trust God or let go and let God, right? That doesn't mean let go of your efforts, right? That means let go of your expectations. So people who are like, I'm just gonna let go and let God and then all of their life bulbs apart, no, you still have to work.

You still have to pay the bills. You still have to clean your house. You still have to feed your kids. You still have to like, you can't just let go and let God like Jesus take the wheel goodbye. The car's gonna crash. You have to let go of your expectations, but you still have to do the work to get the results.

So i'm not [00:35:00] letting go and letting God, and then just leaving all of my problems behind, but giving myself a night of rest or giving myself a night to sleep on it, or giving myself a natural way to fall asleep through drinking a magnesium drink before I go to bed, or working out extra hard that day.

'cause I know I'm going through a lot of stress, like things that I go to now and gravitate to now. I feel so good about when I go to bed and there are days where I don't wanna wake up. There are days where I, my alarm goes off and I'm like, Ugh, I don't wanna do this today. I never regret it though.

Like I wake up and I'm like, you know what? I'm tired, but I'm not hung over. I'm tired, but I'm not sick. I'm tired, but I don't have shame and I don't have guilt, and I get to live my life. Like I get to sleep at night knowing that I did the best thing I. I'm not hurting other people. I'm not manipulating other people.

I'm not doing, like shitty, like sneaky things. Like when I was drinking it was always like me out [00:36:00] for me. And I'm not like that anymore because when I feel like drinking, I try putting other people first. So I go to bed at night, I, man, I sleep great. I'm like, sleep queen over here. And it's all because I don't drink before I go to bed.

I don't drink my problems away anymore.

Kevin: What time do you get up? Go to bed.

Kari: Oh my God, my phone goes into do not disturb at eight o'clock.

Kevin: Okay.

Kari: The only numbers that can get through are like my dad, my kid, and my house manager.

Kevin: Okay.

Kari: For emergencies like but I was gonna turn my phone off at night, but with running the sober house, it's like highly irresponsible for me to, and my dad co-owns the sober house with me. Okay. So my dad lives I live in Miami. My dad lives really close to the sober house, so if there's ever an emergency he can be right there, and he was really on board with getting into when I opened up the house, my dad was really on board with it 'cause he [00:37:00] saw my biological mom, like struggle with drugs and alcohol.

Mostly alcohol, like I say, drugs and alcohol. But, I think she only ever did drugs because she was drinking a lot. But the stories I have from when she was little, when I was little, of just the, she was a teenager. She just didn't have a chance to really Yeah. Grow up. And as a parent now, and as someone in recovery now, I feel I feel really sorry for the relationship that we have because I, I know that like now as a mom, I know that hurting my child would hurt me so much.

So I look at maybe recovery will bring our relationship back together.

Maybe it won't, but I look at that like my kid gets the opportunity to be, to have a sober mom. And then because of my dad witnessing what happened. Throughout my childhood, my dad is always there to fix things. We had a sewage line burst. My dad is like 66 years [00:38:00] old, and he's out there digging up a 20 foot trench in my yard, repairing the sewage line, like with my brother and they're just out and he's sending me pictures.

He's this is a shitty job. And it's like a sewage line that's busted open. Thanks for the dad joke. Literally a shitty joke. Yeah. Literally some money has to do it. Yeah. And doing it with doing it with love because seeing the opportunity that we have to help other women, and especially in my hometown, it's, it means so much to him, as much as it means to me.

So it's really cool.

Kevin: That's awesome.

Emma: So one thing I can think of that I would very much like to be well arrested for would be swimming with sharks. Not something I've ever done or I think I would ever have the balls or the courage to do.

How on earth did you get into swimming with sharks? Like how does that happen?

Kari: Okay, so Nautique is my real name. That was a boat that my dad had when I was born. So we, I grew up on the water. Like I was my [00:39:00] dad's first child and only child for 15 years. And when I was born he was like, name her after the boat.

That's it. Like the boat was our life. So we spent every single summer in the Florida Keys, lobstering, and spearfishing since before I was born. It was like a family tradition. So when I couldn't even walk, they had me in a life vest with a mask and a snorkel, and they'd chuck me in the water.

And when the boat was anchored, and they would let me just hold onto the anchor and watch through my mask and watch them catching lobsters and spearing fish, sharks were never a problem for me. And I know there's, everybody knows about the TV series Shark Week, right? Shark Week was always on the same week that lobster season started.

So all day, sunrise to sunset, we were in the ocean. And then all night we were watching Shark Week. And then we would just wake up and go back out in the water. So there was never a fear really with it. When I got sober again, I started getting back into the [00:40:00] ocean. I spent so much time away from the ocean that like between being a mom and getting married and getting divorced and prioritizing clubs and parties and modeling and alcohol, like I didn't have room for the ocean.

And I started out just mask and snorkel and fins and just going out from shore and living in south Florida, we have a beautiful reef system that's just right off shore. You can just swim to it. And that developed into, oh my God, this is where I feel at home. And I remember like surfing with my dad when I was a teenager and we'd paddle out and dawn patrol, which was always the sunrise surf.

And I would just watch, I would stare at that line where the sea and the sky meet and I would just. Lose my breath, just in awe of it. And I remember telling my dad like, I'm never gonna love anything in the world the way that I love the ocean. And there's one, one caveat to that, and that's my son. [00:41:00] The only thing I love as much as I love the ocean is my kids.

And I started diving more frequently. I met up with a group of friends in South Florida, sort of meeting more people that shore dive. I got more professional equipment. And then I got invited by one of these this diving page, this shark diving page to come out on their boat one day, like over a year ago.

And they were like, yeah, come, just swim with sharks. We'll give you photo video content. I was like, oh wow. I haven't directly just swam with sharks. Like I've seen sharks in the ocean, but I've never been like, let me throw dead fish in the water and get sharks to come up to me.

Yeah. It is the most. Life-changing experience. It's because you think that sharks are these apex, like they are apex predators. You think that they're out there to like just eat everything that moves and that's not the case at all. It was really hard to get them to come near us, to get them to trust us.

They only came near [00:42:00] us because we have chum, and then when the snacks are gone, the sharks are gone. So they view, as long as you're making eye contact and you're staying calm, they view you as one of them. And the sharks have this natural predatory instinct where if I'm gonna swim away from them, their instinct kicks in.

They're like, that's prey. I might be able to eat that. But if I stand and I, or not stand, but if I turn and I make eye contact with them and I hold my ground and I maintain like this calm demeanor, they're like, oh, you're just here for the fish too, right? You're just here for the chump. Don't eat my chum.

Like they, they don't wanna come near you. They don't wanna fight. They don't wanna engage in anything that's gonna make them burn out all of their energy reserves. They don't wanna potentially injure themselves. They're just there to eat. And I'm not on the menu. So the shark bites that you do hear about in the news are either people that were wrong place, wrong time, and the shark was just like, that might be food.

And then the shark bit it and was like, Ew, [00:43:00] gross. That's not food. Or they're in a situation where they see the shark and they're swimming rapidly away. And when we want the sharks to come to the surface, the first thing we do is splash. Trying to get their attention and make them think that we're, or that we pre, the more that I'm out there with them, the more that I'm like, man, I know humans that I don't trust. And like I'll be with sharks all day. I will swim with sharks before I go swim with like strangers or hang out with strangers that I don't know. Yeah, because it's that whole like bear in the woods a theory like, would you rather be alone with a stranger in the woods or a bear in the woods?

I'll take the bear. And in this instance it's I'll take the shark 'cause I know what the shark wants. I trust its motives. And like most human beings, I don't know what they want. I don't trust their motives. So I now find that those are my moments Where I'm most at peace is when I'm in the ocean and I get to swim with sharks.[00:44:00]

Emma: So these are like big chompy sharks. Like these sharks could take a bite at you. Chompy C Chompy. Like we're not baby shark, we're talking Mama shark, daddy shark.

Kevin: Yeah. So these sharks are, are about, what kind of sharks are they? It's an actual dam versus your baby sharks. Chunky chunkies. Yeah.

Kari: Okay.

So there are bull sharks are my favorites to swim with because they, while they're bigger and they're more barrel bodied, they're chunkier sharks they're more chill, they're more of a calm demeanor. There are lemon sharks, which are my sassy sharks. Those are the ones I wanna be extra careful with in the water.

'cause the lemon sharks are very quick moving, very curious, come in really fast. The lemon sharks are, I feel it the more likely to just like, nibble at you to see if you taste good. Oh. So I'm not like, so with lemon sharks I'm a little more aware. There's silky and sandbar sharks right now are in migrating season in south Florida.

So those sharks are, they're a little bit smaller in [00:45:00] nature, so they're probably like six feet, seven. Faster, but they're typically more docile. They're more those are sharks that like, they really don't want anything to do with you. But they do come in fast for the kill. Like not kill, but come in fast for the bait.

Whereas bull sharks will come up slow and methodically and you can kinda toss them. I'm not allowed to toss them the fish or the chump because it's, I'm not a professional shark diver. I just dive with professional shark divers and it's my friend's company and it would be really detrimental if I got bit, it would hurt their business.

So I'm not allowed to feed the sharks. I ask, I always ask that I'm not allowed to feed the sharks until I'm a professional. And I'm not a professional yet. It's just a pastime.

Kevin: You working on it.

Kari: I would love to work on it like being in the water with. It's the most incredible thing being in the ocean.

It really is. And because I have free dive, I'm scuba certified, but I don't use tanks. I just hold my breath and I can't do that when I'm [00:46:00] drinking. I can't do that hungover, my lung capacity. I can hold my breath and swim down 40 feet and hang out with sharks and just sit there and it's, I'm really bad at meditating, but those are my moments.

Like those are my god moments. Everything slows down. I'm literally holding my breath and everything around me relies on my full attention. I can't be in my head, I can't be thinking about anything else except for making eye contact with the sharks that are swimming by so that they know I'm a predator too.

And oh.

Locking eyes with another with an apex predator. It's just it's a gift. Like it's so in incre, like these are the things that I would've never, ever made the time for if I wouldn't have stopped drinking. And it cost just as much as a bar tab. I'm sorry. Go. You mean that I could pay for strangers bar tabs at happy hour, or I could pay for the fees to go dive on [00:47:00] like a charter that's the same price.

Okay, I'm gonna take the ocean and the experience and the magic that I get there versus the hangover every single time now. Like it's mind blowing.

Emma: Yeah. I love it when you put it like that. Like how much were you spending on? Because if you think of things like, oh a dive charter. Oh no, that's too expensive.

Oh no, I couldn't do that. But when you're like, yeah, but you did just spend how many hundred on a bar tab, like how what satisfaction, what life satisfaction are you getting out of both of those experiences? What do you want more of? What's,

Kari: I had a moment where I was like, in order to keep me from drinking so much, I'm only gonna drink a hundred dollars bottles of wine.

How'd that go? Oh, I went broke real quick. Yeah. I was like, I tried. That was easy. A thousand in two days. Yeah. I was like, oh, I'm going through four bottles of wine a day and let me just see if I can, so what happened was I would drink the hundred dollars [00:48:00] bottle and take a picture of it posted on Instagram, like I was some big shot who could afford a hundred dollars bottles of wine, and then I would drink the cheap bottles after that.

It's so that I yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. The box. And can I kill it? You just

Kari: get outta the box. Take the picture of it. Now when I see that kind of behavior like I have sisters that are teenagers, and so now when I see that kind of behavior, I'm like. I don't mean to say this and be crude or crass or whatever.

That's poor people shit. I'm sorry. You need to brag about how much money you spent on a bottle of tequila. There is no health in that. There is no wealth in that. There is no like physica, like you're not physically, mentally, or financially healthy in any aspect. By taking a picture of a hundred dollars bottle of tequila and posting it on social media, you're flexing while you poison yourself.

That's just my sisters are in that teenage age, so I'm just like, poor people. Shit was the line that got through to their heads.

Emma: Yeah, like how does this serve you? How does this benefit you? How does this make you a better person? It's like you said, it's not [00:49:00] helping you physically, mentally, it's not benefiting your health.

Kevin: Yeah. And you mentioned too, when you were younger, I believe, like looking at. Models or people on the, on social media and being like, they have it all together, I wanna be that. I wanna do that. And then you realize like nobody has it all together. In fact, those, some people are, who look like they have it together, have it the least amount together.

Yeah.

Kari: I just got the opportunity every year in Miami and it's the International Swimwear Fashion Week. Every year it's called Miami Swim Week. And this year, every year I say, I'm not gonna do it again. And then I get offered really cool runways to walk, so I'm like, okay, I'll do it. One of the largest brands I've ever walked for picked me up this year and

I was I'm still just in awe that I got do it. And there was a woman that was also booked for it. And in the, in the [00:50:00] recovery programs, we have this phrase called, but for the grace of God, there go, I, and what it means is I'm one drink away from being that person again. And this woman was so drunk that she got asked to she was in her suit ready to go and couldn't get up off the floor.

Wow. And they could, the company couldn't let her walk. And I was like, I was helping get security over. And I was like, Hey guys, like discreetly as possible. Be gentle because I'm, in my mind, I'm thinking of the women in my recovery house. I'm thinking of how I would react if that was me and how offended.

And when you put somebody in a corner and they're embarrassed, they'll die on that hill. I'm not drunk. I'm not drunk. And and it, yeah, I just as gentle as possible. Guys, she can't walk this runway, she can't lift. And it's half a football field runway with hundreds and hundreds of lights and photographers, and it's a fully sold out event.

And it's it's a huge stage and it's televised. And I'm like, for [00:51:00] so many reasons, please don't let this girl go out there. And I immediately text my sponsor and I'm like, this is happening. And I'm grateful. I'm just grateful. And she goes, but for the grace of God, there goes Kari.

I'm like, yeah, that would've been me a million times. That would've been me. I would've screwed up everything because I had to have a drink to unwind because I was so freaking nervous that I couldn't have done it. And then by the time it would've been able for me to get on stage, I would've been falling all over myself and

man, like the opportunities I've, the opportunities I get now in sobriety I get to say yes to. And they're scary, right? That's a scary job. Going to a backyard barbecue with family members. I don't know about y'all, but that's scary for me. Like people, I have the people please throw me in the wa throw me in the water with the sharks, please.

I'll be much better off. But it's those opportunities I get to do and I get to do these things that normally I would've drank over or drank before and then been guilty or been shameful or been regretful. I get [00:52:00] to do those things sober now and then after they're done. Ugh.

Yeah, I went on a tangent there for a minute.

Emma: That's okay. I have a question for Kevin. Would you rather go swimming with sharks or walk in a speedo in front of hundreds or thousands of people on a runway?

Kevin: Okay that's not a, actually a good question now because I would totally take the sharks because I know a little bit more now that.

I'm not food. As long as I don't swim away fast, which that's not gonna happen anyway. So once

Kari: you take the sharks, you'll go back to the sharks every time. Yeah. I promise you. Everyone I have brought to this my friend's shark company in Jupiter, Florida. It's called Tanner Underwater. It's all one word.

Everybody I've brought to Tanner, like they always come back. Yeah, they're always like, that was so much cooler than I thought it would be. I wasn't even afraid. And then they always come back. So if you pick sharks you picked right? Because Yeah. Then you'll get addicted to sharks. Yeah.

Kevin: I picked sharks and then gimme a year for the [00:53:00] Speedo.

I need to work on it a little bit on your bikini body. Working on it. Yeah, working on it. So how, speaking of tangents how so how do you do that now? I'm curious. Like the, you talk about. Redefining yourself being fearless. Being able to, have that gratitude that you were able to be there and do that that show.

But how did you do that show? How did how do you now get yourself ready to go to the backyard barbecue or a pool or a club, or a outing with other people, not sharks?

Kari: I love sharks.

Kevin: Never for sharks. Yeah.

Kari: You wanna know the really cheesy answer?

Kevin: I, cheesy or the better.

Kari: Okay. I take myself completely out of myself and I ask my God to remove my fears.

I literally just ask him to take them away. [00:54:00] And at first I didn't believe in anything out there in the universe. And then as I was just willing to ask, like, all right, God, I don't know if you're real or not, but can you please make me feel a little bit better about this backyard barbecue? That'd be great.

Thank you. I'm super nervous. As soon as I just was willing to ask for help from a higher power, the feelings went away. And then it was, all right, dude, you did it last time. So can you can you help the sister out? I'm gonna, I got this other thing I gotta do. And so literally before I walked that runway it wasn't the, it wasn't the only one I did this year.

There was one, I did a couple, like a week or two prior to that where the girl in front of me, I happened to know from modeling, and I know she's religious, so I like tapped her on the shoulder and I was like, can you hold my hands and pray? And so like right before we walked that runway together, I was just like, okay, can we bow our [00:55:00] heads?

And we said a two second prayer. And we went out there. And the big runway, I didn't have, I didn't have I didn't know any. I was like, okay, I'm all right. And I just folded my hands and I bowed my head and I was just like, I will be done. Keep me safe. Take these feelings. Amen. And that's it.

Kevin: And

Kari: I swear I like, did not even remember my walk. Like I got back off stage and I was like, did I smile? Did I not smile? And it was being live streamed, so I was able to like scrub back through the live stream and I was like, oh, I did my job. I did great. Excellent. But just sometimes I get so wrapped up in my fear that I forget that I can just ask for help.

So when I do feel those feelings, I ask for them to go away or I name them. What really is the scariest thing that could happen? I trip and fall. Then I go viral, so that's actually not a bad thing. So it's what's the [00:56:00] worst imaginable thing that could happen out there? My life is fine.

Like I'm safe, and I'm protected by my higher power. So it sounds cheesy, but I literally just, I know I've got a long way to go. I know I'm not like a shining example of a church goer because I'm human and I live a very human life. But I know that like, when I need help, all I have to do is ask for it.

Even if it's just, please help me not pick up a drink. Please help me get rid of these feelings of fear without picking up a drink. And it works every time. Yeah.

Emma: It's so present and loud and clear that community is really important to you and reaching out to people. And it sounds like you've, realized throughout this journey with alcohol, your journey with alcohol, that in all aspects of your life, people are, yes, it's scary.

But, we need it, we do need community. We can't do this by [00:57:00] ourselves. And we do need, even if it's a, a quick text message to a friend or a sponsor of this is what I'm going through, or just, releasing this thought to you or tapping a friend on a shoulder and asking for a moment of prayer.

Or not even a friend, just someone that you happen to know might be open to this. Yeah. Yeah. But that's all part of building community, and it's so important that we don't live on this isolated island. There are people out there that want to help. Yeah. Yeah.

Kari: It's just making the effort, just be willing to ask for help because my best ideas landed me hungover every time.

My best ideas put me in the worst situations. There wasn't ever a time where I thought this is gonna end me up in jail or missing my front tooth, or with a totaled car, like I'm gonna do it, right? Like, all of those moments that have happened in my life, like I, I had a blackout night where I woke up and was missing a front tooth.

One of these is fake, okay? And as a [00:58:00] model, I'm like, this is the worst thing that could ever happen. Oh my God, this is my faith. And every time I put my best foot forward, my best thinking always landed me in the worst situations. If I take myself outta the equation and I'm like, what's up, God, what you got for me today?

I. Cool, let's do that. I will be done, not mine. 'cause my will has put me in a lot of shitty situations and I find that the more willing I am to ask for help, if it's not a higher power, it's a phone call, it's a text message, it's community. Because there's always somebody out there that you can bounce those shitty ideas off of that's gonna tell you immediately I dunno, you might end up in jail for that one.

Or maybe you shouldn't. There's always gonna be somebody that's a voice of reason. And if that isn't a higher power for you, then it's find that person who you trust. Because for the longest time the people that were closest to me were the worst advisors. And I wanted them there because I liked my bad ideas.

And then [00:59:00] I had to realize that like the five people closest to me, I would not pay to advise me on my life. I had to change my circle. I had to fire those people and I'm still friends with them. I love them from a distance. And it took me a year to build this tribe and this community of women I trust who have faith in God, who don't drink, who are really supportive, beautiful souls.

And it took me a long time to find that there was a lot of loneliness and like I don't have any friends. And the friends I have, I don't like and I don't trust, or their ideas are really shitty, like mine used to be. It's like being able to fire those few people that I was using as trusted advisors and having people I can actually call and trust with advice is huge.

That community aspect of people that are living a life you want to live, that's huge. Like the people around me now are living in a way that I admire and value and respect, and how do [01:00:00] I get to be more like you? Let me call you when I have an idea. Oh, that's a bad idea. Heard. Okay. I won't do that. So the community is important, but it's the quality of the community that's around you too.

That's really important.

Emma: Yeah. I think one of the cool things about, particularly online communities as well is that you get a perspective from all different walks of life from all over the world and you'll share in a meeting and there will be potentially hundreds of people who will pipe up or, say something in the chat of oh I tried this, or have you considered that?

And you are like, I had no idea that existed, or I had no idea that was an option or that was possible. And so you're just opening yourself up to so many more possibilities in life and you're not just stuck in that same group of five people that have potentially been giving you really bad advice for the past.

Kari: Yeah.

Emma: I dunno. 15, 20 years. And I've heard

Kari: them. I heard a woman say recently in a meeting and [01:01:00] she had 37 years of sobriety and she said back in the day, they didn't call it relapses. When you picked up a drink again, they called it a slip. And slip stood for sobriety, lost its priority

Kevin: and you can

Kari: reprioritize it at any time.

If you pick up a drink and you hate yourself for it, you can literally just put it back down again. You can reprioritize an alcohol-free life at any point in time, but having a community of people that you can talk to and reach out to who also have alcohol free lives is a big part of being able to live that life and having those tools like, oh, I'm gonna go to a barbecue today and crap, I really don't wanna go.

'cause everybody there is gonna be drinking. Take your own car, show up and make an appearance. Turn around and leave if it, if you can't take your own car and leave whenever you want, you don't need to go to that thing. I have a, I have no FOMO for that. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna run a hot bath and throw some, like soaking salts in it, and I'm gonna put like a hair mask in my [01:02:00] hair and I'm gonna have a lovely calm evening and drink some nighttime tea and read a book and go to bed.

I'm not missing out on anything if I don't show up at your event. Yeah. But having that ability to say no, having a community of people that can give you tools and give you advice that you, that's good advice. That people that you respect who are living an alcohol free life that's priceless.

Kevin: Yeah. We have the same wind down routine too.

Emma: A hair mask and a face mask. Yeah. What were you gonna say, Emma? Oh, I was just, what was the slip stands for? Sobriety lost its purpose. I love that. And there's

Kevin: priority, no reason.

Emma: Priority. Yeah. Sorry, not purpose. Priority. Yeah. There's no reason you can't Yeah. Make it rearrange your priorities. We talk about that so often. Like sometimes your priority needs to be your career. Sometimes your priority needs to be your kids. Yeah. There's no reason you can't.

Kevin: And that's like when I started too. My, [01:03:00] I would always do it that, oh I'm gonna stop drinking at least for a little bit.

All right let's start this new workout program. Let's start eating. 100% clean. Let's start doing all the things. And then once one thing fell, then the next thing and the next thing, the dominoes fell. And so when I truly, when I in, in truly started. I said, okay, I can do those other things, but I don't have to do those other things.

I'm only focused on this right now. Whatever this is I still need to figure it out, but this is what I'm focused on. And I actually gave myself time. And you know what? If you give yourself time to prioritize yourself and do that, you can make progress it's not gonna be perfect.

Never was, never is. But yeah, when you try, when we try and I feel like, yeah, just we do too much. Like it's always about what's the next thing? Am I [01:04:00] doing enough? It's all that pressure. Again, it goes back to, keeping up with everybody and doing those types of things. When realize, we have to realize that no, we get to make our own decisions on what that priority is or what that group of things that is important to us is.

Kari: And perfection is never the goal. 'cause you'll never reach it.

Kevin: No.

Kari: Progress is the goal. Even slow progress is still progress, so if sobriety lost its priority, prioritize it again. You've got, you can start over at any moment in any day. You don't have to wait till tomorrow. You can start over right now, yeah. You'll have to wait till one day. The one thing I can, yeah. And the one thing I continue to hear is that the people that, that, that went back out, they, they lost that community connection. They stopped going to meetings, they stopped doing service, they stopped helping other people. Like they stopped picking up the phone.

And I don't know about you guys, but like alcohol wants to isolate me [01:05:00] because that's when I turn to it is when I'm isolated and I have to be self-aware, am I isolating myself and I'm in a really vulnerable state in my life right now where I'm going through a huge shift. I'm going through a really big breakup.

I, I have three businesses that I run. I have my own if I don't make sobriety my priority right now, I will lose everything. And like I have to put okay, in order to maintain peace in my life, I have to turn to my community for tools I have to trust in and believe in my higher power, that there's a bigger plan out there than the one that's unfolding right now.

And that this is just a test and I have to stay sober. I can't pick up a drink because all it's gonna do is pour gasoline in my dumpster fire of life. It's literally just gonna burn my entire life down. If I pick up a drink right now, I'll lose everything. So the only way for me to stay focused is to keep SI sobriety [01:06:00] in priority, that's it. Yeah. Yeah.

Emma: I love that. And sometimes, like you said with your, your core group of friends sometimes and you mentioned earlier as well, that going out you realized you just can't do it. And sometimes it's that you need to make so priority your number one priority and absolutely protect it with everything that you've got.

So that means maybe not going out and not hanging out with those friends, but it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be forever. You can still go out with those friends, just maybe not right at the beginning when you're, when you've got that baby sobriety to protect. And you might go out with those friends, but on your terms or with your boundaries.

So it might be that you go out for a day at the beach or you go out on a boat or you go out for a hike or whatever. But it's not going out to a bar, not going out to that environment. You called sobriety

Kari: a baby. Yeah. Like I love that you called sobriety a baby. It's 'cause that's in the beginning I can easily say like my friends that I could be honest with about it.

My sobriety is a baby and I have no [01:07:00] babysitter for it, so I'm gonna stay home with this baby. And I would say that like my sobriety is only three months old or four months old and I can't leave it home. I can't leave it. I have to stay home with it. And my friends that I could be really more like blunt with when they would invite me to things that involved drinking, I would flat out be like, you can invite me to Sunrise cardio to on the beach, to the gym.

You can invite me on a hike. You can invite me on a dive, you can invite me to tea. At two in the afternoon at a building that doesn't serve alcohol. You can invite me to the library. You can invite me to anywhere that doesn't serve alcohol. And I'm happy to spend time with you. You could just call me and we could catch up on the phone.

Don't drunk dial me. Don't call me with your problems past eight o'clock at night because I'm probably gonna have my phone off and be in bed. And so don't drunk dial me and don't invite me places where they're serving alcohol. And whenever those situations have come up in the past and I do ask my higher power, I don't wanna say no, it's her [01:08:00] birthday. I love her, but man, I'm so nervous about this event. It's, I either call my sponsor or I call somebody and say, what would you do? Or I pray about it. And the times that I prayed about it, it's absolutely been removed. Something else came up that was way more important, that gave me an out.

Or if it was a situation where I was like, listen, we have to take separate cars or we could ride together, but we're only going for an hour. Or, I'm not going tell your friends and family that I'm working and I'm super busy and I love them and I'm apologetic that I can't make it. And if that caused friction, that was okay because to.

It's easier, but other people that have been in your life for a long time where they're like no. Wait a minute. You used to come and hang out for 12 hours. I'm like yeah. I used to go drink for 12 hours. I don't wanna go hang out for 12 hours. I don't wanna actually sit in somebody's backyard for 12 hours.

I'm gonna go to this barbecue and I'm gonna have a salad and like [01:09:00] a chicken wing and like a conversation and I'm gonna be outta there by an hour and a half later. I'm gonna take pictures with everybody and make an appearance and head out. And that was always just to protect my sobriety.

But one thing you can say to those people as well, especially family, is look, this won't be like this for, yeah, this is my new norm and right now I have to prioritize my health. I have to. So I can come for an hour and then leave, or I can just miss it and see you guys next time. And like it won't be this way forever, but just for right now, this is what I have to prioritize.

And if anybody sticks their nose about it that's not your friend. That's not somebody that you need in that inner circle anyways,

Emma: Yeah. That's not someone that actually genuinely cares about your wellbeing and your best interests.

Kevin: Yeah.

Emma: Exactly.

Kevin: And I would say too give people a chance, because I think sometimes we think oh, they're not gonna, they're gonna judge me.

They're gonna be doing this and we tell them and they're, oh my God, that's I was, I, [01:10:00] whether they are thinking about it themselves or they are just so supportive of you because they care about you. Yeah. Give people a chance to surprise you in a good way. Yeah. Because I think we always think, again, worst case scenario and that actually that can happen.

The coolest

Kari: thing happened my, my son's father and I, because I'm sober now and because I've made amends and we have an incredible relationship now where we respect each other, which is really cool. And his wife and him had a baby recently and they invited me to their baby's one year birthday party.

And and I was like, that would've never happened without sobriety, first and foremost, because they would've been worried that I would've been drunk, Carey, and I showed up and I guess her brother, I overheard him saying like, why is there no beer in the cooler? And it rung with me.

It was like, oh my God. They literally are throwing this like they respect me and my sobriety, my ex-husband respects my [01:11:00] sobriety enough to not beer in the cooler at this birthday party. Just because they invited me that, so it's, it'll surprise you, like you're right. Let people surprise you.

Because for me, I've always been vocal about this is what I'm doing. I'm not drinking. Because if I'm telling on myself and I'm vocal about it, people aren't gonna offer it to me, but that was a surprising thing where I was like, wow, that is so cool. The people that I didn't expect to respect it, respected it, yeah. Let people surprise you, or bring your own little like thing of lacrosse or whatever, bring some sparkling waters. Bring your own BYO sparkling water.

Kevin: My B-Y-O-C-I usually walk in with a coffee.

Emma: Yeah. How am I gonna get through this event with caffeine?

Kevin: Yeah. When you were talking about that early on here about the needing that additional one. I'm like, yeah, that's coffee for me now. I have to go. If I go places on a we just went on a cruise, it's okay, I have the coffee package. Good. Where can I get [01:12:00] coffee?

How often can I get coffee? I need access to it. 'cause

Kari: mine is cake. Mine is not coffee, but mine, there's a really good bakery by my house and oh my God. It's that is my Achilles heel is okay, I cannot go to this bakery. My kid doesn't even eat sweets.

He's he could take it or leave it. He is I don't know, mom, you go. He said the other day, I was like, do you wanna bake sugar cookies? And he looked at me and he goes, you do you mom? And I was like,

I was like, you don't want sugar cookies? He's no, mom, you want sugar cookies?

Kevin: Come on. What good are you? If you can't just agree with me just so I can make them and say, oh, I made them for everybody.

Kari: Can you just say these? But that was what I did with alcohol, where I would bring a bunch of alcohol hoping that I didn't look like the weirdo that wanted to drink all the alcohol.

And I'd end up being the one that ate all that, drank all the alcohol. Now when I bring sweets, it's the same old obsession. That obsession of my mind has not gone away. It's just been repurposed. And it can be repurposed for healthier [01:13:00] things. Like shark diving or the gym or,

Kevin: yeah.

Kari: Bakery goods, yeah.

Kevin: I mentioned the Sour Patch kids in my wife's purse at the movie theater. Yeah. I'm not saying my only obsession's coffee. So

Kari: yeah, I would look weird coming into the movie theater with the whole buttercream cake. Should do just

Kevin: some Tupperware or something. Yeah.

Kari: So listen, you don't sell this here.

Okay. I'm gonna eat this whole thing.

Emma: I would buy a purpose-built handbag to fix the cake in there. Yeah. This cake is a fashion statement. Yeah. Is it cake? Is it a handbag? Ooh. Ooh.

Kari: That's a good one.

Emma: Is those my kids watch what my kids watch those shows on Netflix as well. Is it cake or is it, I can't remember what it's called.

You guys know what I mean though? Is it had a cake?

Kari: Is

Kevin: it really cake? Whatever. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kari: I had a birthday cake one year that was made after this one of my favorite purses and my best friends all [01:14:00] took my purse to the cake shop and had the cake shop make a custom cake that looked identical to my purse.

It was the cutest thing. That's so cool. It was so good. It was so tasty.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. It's one thing, every cake looks good, but it's gotta taste good as well. Yeah, that good.

Kari: Doesn't. You got it. It's. Supermarket bakeries. Like here in Florida, we have Publix. I know Walmart has really good cakes.

There's bakeries or don't sleep on that. Okay. 'cause they're actually really good and really inexpensive.

Emma: Follow us. One more Great life advice. Yes. Listen, it's not alcohol. Okay.

Yeah. We got you Gotta enjoy life

Kevin: grocery store and get a cookie cake for that. Used to be my birthday and sober bursary thing was a big old cookie cake.

The more I see the better, but it's changed to a specific cupcake here. It's a cookie cake. It's just a big cookie's,

Emma: like a giant cookie. [01:15:00] And then they put oh, a cookie the size of a cake. A cake with icing on top.

Kevin: Yeah. Whoa. And you just, you cut it like a pizza and you eat it like a triangle Pizza slice and, yeah.

Kari: One of the local bakeries here in South Florida, Publix used to make, 'cause we get hit with hurricanes for hurricane season. And so when hurricanes were gonna hit, they started making hurricane cookie cakes that were like the eye of the hurricane, like the icing looked like the hurricane. And they would write the name of the hurricane on it and they'd sell it.

And then people got offended by the hurricane cakes because hurricanes actually do a lot of damage and sometimes kill people. So the bakery stopped making hurricane cakes, but it was a brief moment in time where everybody was celebrating hurricanes because the cakes were so tasty that

Kevin: Yeah. I just picture the amount of icing that might be with just a little eye in the middle.

Oof.

Emma: Yeah. Okay.

Kevin: Lemme go see what sweets we have downstairs after this.

Emma: Yeah. And now I'm hungry.

Kevin: Yeah. Should we [01:16:00] move on to the next nugget of

Emma: the

Kevin: finish up with the nuggets?

Emma: I have a nugget. I see nugget. I thought of one. So my nugget or I was this week, days old. I learned this week.

Kevin: You say that wrong.

Every time. Every time. This could be completely off topic. What do we learn this week? This could be completely off topic, not sobriety related. A little nugget.

Emma: So Emma was today years old when, or this, I learned this week that I can't read three meaty books at once. Surprisingly. So I love reading, love a good novel.

And I've just rediscovered our local library. Like I know it's been, I just, it's one of those things you forget about, but we've got an app so you can like, scroll through books and I don't have to walk around the library and get completely overwhelmed and flustered. I. Can scroll through the app and put books on hold and then it notifies me when they're in the library and I [01:17:00] can go and pick it up.

'cause they'll get it in from different libraries around the city. So cool. If Emma puts three books on hold, three books will become available at once, which means I've got three, maybe four weeks to try and read these three meaty novels that I really wanna read. And I don't wanna relinquish my hold of them 'cause then I might have to wait too long to get it back.

So I don't know what the solution is, but I've got three big books to try and read very quickly.

Kevin: What do you, and I'm, I have the, this doc up here where you wrote that on and just now and I'm, I got distracted by the what's constitutes a meaty novel?

Emma: Yeah. What is a media like? It's a thick, yeah, it's a big

Kevin: thick book.

But what's with, gimme a page count.

Emma: I dunno. It, I dunno. Are you reading Stephen

Kevin: King or are reading

Emma: maybe even, do you want me to go get the books book right over

Kari: there?

Emma: Yeah. Hold on. I a Stephen

Kari: King book right over there. I love reading Stephen King and they're like my [01:18:00] favorite meaty books to read.

Kevin: Yeah, that's, I started going through and reading his from start to finish and I made it, all his books. I don't know, 75, 80, 90 books. I think I got through three. I did it get through three and they were good. But the Dark

Kari: Tower series is my favorite. I listened to that. Yeah,

Kevin: that was like 150 hours I think of Audible that I listened to.

And I still, I have to go back and pick up the new ones it came out with since I've done it. What do you got there?

Kari: I'm reading Xmen

Emma: Carnival by Catherine Chidi, I dunno how to say his surname. It's a New Zealand author. So we got

Kevin: three 50

Emma: pages.

Kevin: All so you got a 350 pager you got,

Emma: and then this one that I am yet to start.

Kevin: Ooh. I have too. Demon Copperhead here by

Emma: Barbara King sva. I've heard this could destroy me. Whoa. In a, that's

Kevin: related to by way Addiction. Sobriety. It's a novel, right?

About that.

Emma: It's [01:19:00] a novel. I have no idea. 548 pages. But these ones are big pa like this is a heavy book. I don't wanna pack this in my carry on. I don't actually know what it's about, but my my friends said it was a good one. So I don't know how I'm gonna get through these books, but this one's on my nightstand right now.

Yeah.

Kevin: Ooh,

Emma: meaty

Kevin: Are you just reading through the Dark Tower series now? I'm

Kari: rereading it, read, rereading it. I read the first time when I was in high school and rereading it like 18 years later is so much more. Makes sense. Yeah. And it's way weirder to read as an adult

Kevin: because you're pretty far then.

'cause that's what book. Oh yeah,

Kari: this is, what is VII? Is that seven?

Kevin: VII, yeah.

Emma: Seven. Yeah. Damn. Yeah. But then

Kari: I know that my favorite character is about to die, and I was like, if I don't read it, it won't happen. Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. That's funny. That's actually I think in year two, year one, year two I think I got so burnt [01:20:00] out listening on my commute to work quit lit that I'm like, I can't listen to another one of these books.

And that's what I switched over to was The Dark Tower. I think it was the stand first and then I listened to

Kari: all the Dark Tower.

Kevin: But yeah, that's good stuff. Now I did think about that the other day. Now you have me thinking I might go back and actually read it, not listen to it.

Kari: What is your nugget?

Kevin: My nugget is, does everybody give

Kari: a nugget? Yeah,

Emma: everyone gives a nugget if you can. If mine's not really bad.

Kevin: Yeah. Mine has nothing to do with meaty novels. That's gonna be in my head now. I, I am today years old that I actually, I. Would consider maybe possibly being in the water when and going like swimming with sharks, intentionally seeking out shark, intentionally seeking out sharks.

Yeah.

Kari: Nope. Don't a professional though.

Kevin: Yes, because when we started this in my head the whole [01:21:00] time was like, this sounds like a drunk idea. This sounds like a drunk idea. Hey, let's go swim with sharks and if you ever

Kari: wanna do it, I've got the right company to hook you up with down here.

Cool. Lemme know.

Kevin: But yeah, that's, I didn't have really a nugget coming into this. I figured I'd think about I, I'd figure it out, but as you were talking about it, I was, because I was always like, Nope, that's not gonna happen. Because I've, I just assumed once the chum was done, then I became the chum.

Kari: No, it's I don't know if you have cats and dogs, or have been around cats and or dogs swimming with sharks is like playing with cats. They don't care about you. They don't want you, if you have treats still come around, might still bite, chew, like they're not interested. And once the treats are gone, the cats are gone.

Swimming with dolphins is like playing with dogs. They wanna be around you all the time. They think you're really cool. They'll bring you toys, like they'll bring you seaweed or they'll play with your stuff or they'll mess with you. So that was the differentiation for me is I have cats and dogs.

I have two cats and I have three dogs. So I love [01:22:00] both. And so I love my sharks, but they very much are like cat behavior, and then the dogs are interesting. The dolphins that I've ung with are very like dog behavior. Yeah. But they're both lovable. Except dolphins have a lot of empathetic qualities.

Like the dolphins are more like, you can humanize them and like communicate with your eyes with if sharks are just sharks

Kevin: Yeah.

Kari: Sharks don't, you're never gonna have an emotional connection with a shark. It's not gonna happen. Shark

Kevin: with the cat. Yeah, same

Kari: thing with a cat. The cat like the cat, you're never gonna have an emotional connection with a shark in the water.

Whereas with a dolphin, it's there's a woman that I am friends with who goes out to The Bahamas every year since 2018 and she meets up with the same wild pod of dolphins and they remember her, and they'll bring her, their babies and they'll swim with her and play with her. And like sharks aren't like that.

Sharks don't give a.

Kevin: I have an Needy 5 pound dolphin downstairs, so I don't have, we have dogs. So

Kari: I have a nugget that I had to expand on because [01:23:00] I was today years old when I realized it, but today I was today years old when I realized brown eggs and white eggs are the same. It's just a chicken feather color thing. Huh? Okay.

White feathered chickens with white ear lobes will lay white eggs and red or brown feathered chickens with red ear lobes will lay brown eggs.

Emma: I feel like I didn't know that chickens had ear lobes either.

Kevin: Yeah, I was, it was, I was, I got stuck on that too. I was like, ear lobes, uhhuh.

Kari: Yeah. I grew up and when I grew up in Jacksonville, we always got eggs from our own chickens.

And so sometimes the eggs were white. Sometimes the eggs were brown. And it was, you could tell which chicken it came from because of the

Kevin: feather. Wow. Huh?

Kari: Yeah. And they don't have ear lobes. They got like holes. Okay. Yeah.

Kevin: I'd like to change my answer.

Emma: I always say iselle when I learn that chickens have ear [01:24:00] lobes.

Kevin: Because, in my head, and is this right or wrong? I feel like all the eggs that are portrayed as healthier options in the stores are brown and all of the one, and not all of 'em, I'm not saying, but I'm thinking of like the packaging here and things like that. And I feel like in my head I just equated like it's healthier.

But why? And I never thought about it.

Kari: Brown hens tend to lay bigger eggs because.

Kevin: On today's episode of annual

Kari: on today's episode of, I used to Wear, I told you I have so many random nuggets of information, but I I grew up like fishing and spear dive or spear fishing and diving and I, we always grew our own vegetables. I can rota till a garden. I can get eggs from our own chickens.

We never had cattle or horses because we weren't rich people. We were like the poor people that lived off the land, not the rich people that had horses that lived off the land. And then between just growing up, picking our own [01:25:00] blueberries and vegetables and, corn and. My nana, who was an alcoholic, I had mentioned that she was the nice alcoholic, right?

But she always had either a black coffee or a or a straight whiskey in her hand and she would take the double barrelled shotgun behind the front door. And she, 'cause it was loaded and kept behind the front door, and she would try to shoot the squirrels that were getting into our corn and she'd miss and she'd take out the corn stalks because after a couple of whiskeys, your aim was off.

So you know that my papa would get mad that the corn was getting obliterated and like it was a whole thing. Random chicken facts,

Kevin: as long as she wasn't taking wild place. I

Kari: was just, I was thinking about that too. No. The chickens were valuable.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah.

Kari: Random Florida things.

Kevin: I was like you said Jacksonville, right?

This is not what, this is not the picture I had of that area. Or Florida? No. Jackson was

Kari: split up. There's like Jacks Beach, there's like downtown Jacksonville. Yeah. And then there's like out in the sticks, Jacksonville. And then where my Nana and Papa's Lake house was actually in the middle of the Ocala [01:26:00] National Forest.

And so we, there was never any like cell phone signal out there. Like I'm pretty sure they still have dial up, like they live in this like really remote area. And that was my weekends and my summers was spent there, so it was Florida's all mil, a million different things. I'm in Miami now and it's the majority of it is like Latin, Hispanic, and you go a couple hours north and it's farmland and it's, it's wild.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah.

Kari: So yeah, that's where the chicken knowledge comes from. I love it.

Emma: Chicken Knowledge,

Kevin: meaty novels and Chicken Knowledge. On this episode of the re Frameable podcast just leave it at

Emma: that tagline.

Yeah. The name of this episode, Chicken Nuggets and Meaty novels.

Kevin: Meaty novels and Chicken knowledge. Chicken nuggets.

Kari: You could have a lot of fun sober [01:27:00] guys. You don't need alcohol.

Emma: Yeah, exactly. We don't, yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Alright. Kari, thanks so much for chatting with us today.

It's been a really good time. Chicken nuggets and all. Where can people find you or contact you? How's the best place to track you down?

Kari: So my Sober living has a website called Best Friends place.com. And then my Instagram is Kari dot Nautique, that's K-A-R-I-N-A-U-T-I, que. And then that's the main place where you can reach me.

Emma: Awesome. Thanks. We'll pop that in the show notes or whatever, right?

Kevin: Yeah. Perfect. Yeah,

Emma: absolutely. Like Kevin. Just that I don't know. I'm like, we'll do it and, but Kevin has to do it. Yeah,

Kevin: I will do it. And I just realized that Yeah, you switched it to, from chicken knowledge to chicken nuggets which I thought was like, I love

Emma: that

Kevin: thought.

You were talking about eating them.

Emma: Eating chicken nuggets. The nuggets are

Kari: chicken knowledge. It's that's cool. That works.

Kevin: And now I want cake. Chicken nuggets. Chicken nuggets. Yep.

Kari: [01:28:00] Chicken nuggets. That's a good, that's a good Wednesday evening or free, is it Thursday morning, Emma?

Emma: Yeah.

Kari: Yeah.

Emma: Breakfast.

Kari: Breakfast.

Kevin: Awesome. Thank you. Thank so much for joining us this

Kari: conversation.

Kevin: Yeah, appreciate you joining us today. Thank you all for listening to another episode of the re frameable podcast, brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS and Android app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe and share with those that you feel may benefit from it. And I want to thank you again for listening and be sure to come back for another episode. Have a great day.

Kari: Bye friends. Bye. Thank you guys. I appreciate this and I love what you.