From pain to podcast: How one woman turned sobriety into her superpower

An estimated 18.5 million adults have an alcohol use disorder — and that’s almost certainly an undercount. Most people know at least one person in their lives who abuses alcohol. A new study from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that alcohol-related deaths in 2020 were so high that, for 16- to 64-year-olds, they exceeded the number of deaths from COVID-19 in that age group.

One now-sober Massachusetts woman did something extremely difficult: take control of her addiction. Gill Tietz turned her pain into a podcast called "Sober Powered," all while working as a biochemist. Her podcast shot up in the charts, and now runs a podcast network and heads a virtual community called "Living a Sober Powered Life" to support others in their journey to quit

drinking. Tietz sat down with GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share how she views sobriety as a strength. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Arun Rath: The first thing I want to ask you about is how many people don't realize they have an alcohol addiction. I think we're coming out of a time when people have maybe done the [Dry January challenge] and may have a moment of realization around now. Tell us about when you went through this, when you realized that alcohol was a problem.

Gill Tietz: It's a long journey from when you start to question it. Maybe you're Googling, "How do I know if I'm an alcoholic?" Then, years will usually go by before you start dabbling with sobriety, and then even more time before you quit. But I started questioning my drinking almost right away, less than two years in, back in 2014. I had a late start to drinking, and I didn't quit until 2019. So I worried about it for a long time and tried to figure out how to control it, but I think deep down I knew the whole time I just was scared of what it meant.

Courtesy of Gill Tietz

Rath: What was your internal monologue while this was going on? Was there a dialogue? Were you talking to people about it?

Tietz: I was horrible to myself. The shame that you experience when you observe everyone, or almost everyone, around you be able to control their drinking and you can't. The stigma tells us that it's a choice. It's a lack of self-control. People who can't stop are weak-willed. I just bought into all of that, and I called myself a loser basically every single day.

I would threaten myself with sobriety. I used to say, "If you can't figure out how to moderate and control this, you're going to have to be sober forever, and everybody's going to call you an alcoholic." That was supposed to motivate me, I don't know, to stop? It was awful.

Towards the end, I would start my days looking in the mirror, repeating, "I hate you" over and over and over, making myself cry because I couldn't control myself the night before.

Rath: How did you get to a point from that much self-loathing to being able to turn yourself around the way you have?

Tietz: The self-loathing is hard, and it can get really scary. I was very suicidal at the end because of it, and that was why I ended up stopping because I realized [I] could do something about this some day. Even with how much I hated myself and how worthless I thought I was, I knew I didn't actually want something bad to happen to me.

And I quit. I said, "OK, I'll do 90 days. "It's a bad habit." "My tolerance is really high." Whatever. Then I returned to drinking after the 90 days, and I observed all of my problems return.

That's when I finally was able to accept: "This will never change. This is how you drink. It's not a habit. It's not a high tolerance. It's just how you drink. If you don't want this life, you can't drink."

Then I accepted that I have to stop forever. That was a little bit over three years ago.

Rath: We talked about your professional background. Did biochemistry help you understand this at all? Obviously, chemistry is a part of it.

Tietz: I became a biochemist six years ago, and I loved it. I thought it was really fun to work in the lab and contribute to very important projects.

And once I decided to stop [drinking], I wanted to understand, "Why did this happen to me? Was it my fault? Am I a weak-willed loser? Is it a disease? Is something wrong with my brain? Did I choose this?" So I used my background to start researching it because I knew how to find information, I knew how to digest it and understand it. I just started learning about the brain and why this happens to some people and not others, why we can't stop drinking once we start and why sobriety has to be the answer for some people.

Rath: We live in a pretty pro-alcohol society, especially just going off of the media. What are some of the ways that you deal with that? It's kind of reinforcing all those other negative tropes that you talked about regarding addiction. How do you navigate that?

Tietz: It's funny — anyone I talk to, regardless of where they live or what they do for work, they say that they work in an industry that [has] a big drinking culture or the area that they live has a big drinking culture. And I'm like, "No, it's not really unique. It's kind of everywhere."

But I think what helped me — in the beginning, I would go to happy hours for work, and I would cry afterward because of the stress, and the discomfort, and drink pushers, and people trying to ask why I'm not drinking anymore.

But once I did it a few times, I realized [that] this is a superpower. I don't have to overshare anymore. I don't have to get sloppy or be weird. I realized that I can be that cool person in the room now — I have it together, and I can be responsible for myself, and talk to people and comfort them when they're in a bad place. I don't have to worry about getting too drunk or having googly eyes from all the alcohol. I just show up the way that I want people to see me. It's very empowering to trust yourself again.

Rath: There are thousands of people listening to this broadcast, so we can say with certainty that someone listening to this is struggling with alcohol. Anything you want to say to someone who wants to change?

Tietz: It's really scary because you cannot even imagine what life would look like without alcohol in it. I think I would just challenge you to just be open to it. I was a daily drinker, and a couple of people had asked me to do Dry January in the past, and I couldn't even fathom 30 days. So if you can't take a break, it's fine, but just be open to getting some more information.

I think once people start showing up in the sober community, either on social media, private groups, going to meetings — whether that's Alcoholics Anonymous, SMART Recovery or something online — or listening to podcasts, you see that you're not the only one.

We always think, "I'm the only one who's ever suffered in this way. No one will ever understand my experience." But even down to the tiniest details of my drinking, someone has done the exact same thing. It's really nice to see that I'm not alone. I just see a person who is in pain, and then it helps me not beat myself up — because if they're not a loser, why do I have to be a loser?

I think just being open and lurking is a good first step. And when you're ready for a break, that's awesome. But if you're not ready, just show up and start there.

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or use the Crisis Text Line by texting “Home” to 741741. More resources are available at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.