How I Recovered From An Eating Disorder & Alcohol Addiction | Episode 170

How I Recovered From An Eating Disorder & Alcohol Addiction | Episode 170

SUPPORT THE VOICES FOR VOICES® TV SHOW AND PODCAST
https://www.voicesforvoices.org/shop/p/supporter

Chapter Markers
0:00 Recovery From Eating Disorder and Medication
22:06 Making Tough Choices for Recovery
27:47 Building Voices for Voices®

Struggling with an eating disorder and alcohol addiction can feel like navigating a storm without a compass, leaving you drained and searching for a way out. Join me as I recount my journey from a restrictive diet of carrot sticks and plain hummus to discovering the essence of balanced nutrition and the courage it takes to embrace recovery. Through the eyes of my 2017 hospitalization, I'll share the pivotal moments when structured meal plans and compassionate care helped rebuild my physical and mental health. Alongside this, I faced the daunting challenge of trusting medication over the false security of vitamins, a crucial step toward reclaiming a healthy relationship with food.

The battle didn’t stop there; overcoming alcohol addiction required confronting tough choices and embracing self-advocacy. Reflecting on the comfort of weekend drinking routines and the fears surrounding hospitalization, I share how these moments led to the founding of Voices for Voices®, an organization dedicated to mental and relational advocacy. Through personal stories and the growth of our mission, discover how Voices for Voices® empowers individuals and communities to thrive. Listen to the transformative power of therapy, medical guidance, and the unwavering commitment to supporting others on their recovery journeys.

This episode explores my journey of redefining my relationship with food amid mental health struggles and medication management. It offers insight into the challenges and successes faced while advocating for oneself and emphasizes the importance of nutrition and self-advocacy for overall well-being.

• Looking back on restrictive eating habits
• The role of nutrition in the hospital experience
• Challenges of adjusting to medication and cravings
• Importance of deciphering hunger signals
• Reflecting on past behaviors with food and alcohol
• The transformative power of self-advocacy
• Encouragement for listeners to understand their own relationship with food
• Commitment to supporting others through shared experiences

Voices for Voices® is the #1 ranked podcast where people turn to for expert mental health, recovery and career advancement intelligence.

Our Voices for Voices® podcast is all about teaching you insanely actionable techniques to help you prosper, grow yourself worth and personal brand.

As you can see, the Voices for Voices® podcast publishes episodes that focus on case studies, real life examples, actionable tips and "in the trenches" reports and interviews from subscribers like you.

If that sounds like something that could help you grow personally or professionally, then make sure to join me by subscribing!
—
Thanks for listening!

Support Voices for Voices®: https://venmo.com/u/voicesforvoices
Learn more about Voices for Voices®: linktr.ee/Voicesforvoices

#eatingDisorderRecovery #alcoholAddiction #mentalHealth #recovery #wellness #therapy #journey #selflove #mentalillness #addiction #mentalwellness #healthylifestyle #hope #resilience #inspiration
#Newepisode #newpodcastalert #podcastseries #podcastcommunity #voicesforvoicespodcast #mentalhealth #newpodcast #MentalHealthMatters #donatetoday #501c3 #charityorganization #podcast

Chapters

• 0:00 Recovery From Eating Disorder and Medication
• 22:06 Making Tough Choices for Recovery
• 27:47 Building Voices for Voices

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. Thank you for joining us. I want to thank you for all the love and support you've given us. We can't thank you enough. Check out all the past episodes, follow us, like us, share. We enjoy what we do and hope that it resonates with you. We have a lot of episodes we're well into if not by the time this one airs into the 170s for total episodes, which is just incredible, and 70s for, you know, total episodes, which is just incredible.

Speaker 1: 1:11

As we, you know, got started a couple years back, we didn't really have any expectations. We didn't know how many of these episodes we were gonna do. We didn't. We just didn't know. We just started. And here we are, so thank you for being with us.

Speaker 1: 1:32

We are a 501 nonprofit. We run on sponsorships, donations. If you're able to support the show, we greatly appreciate that. If you're able to, you can head on over to voices for that's for voices dot o-r-g. And at the top of the screen you'll see a spot there says support the show. Click on that and that'll take you right where where you need to be and again, thank you for allowing us to do this. We, we enjoy this, we enjoy sharing, we enjoy helping others. We know not every topic is going to resonate with you just like when I listen to shows on podcast, not every episode resonates with me but we are an organization that we pride ourselves on. We're talking about real issues and bringing those right right to you and to our subscribers, our followers and we're on every audio platform gnome, the man, as well as on youtube and Rumble on the video side of things. So if you stream on it, if you Instagram on it, you can find Voices for Voices on it. So this episode is going to be an extension of two prior episodes. We're going to close this episode out and really the third episode, right, about talking about my relationship. And so what relationship? So you can have relationships with people, with things, and so it's about my relationship with food.

Speaker 1: 4:00

Prior to heading into the hospital in 2017, I wasn't eating very much. It was down to eating carrot sticks and plain hummus. No energy, little sleep, burnout 24-7, turning away projects, projects, turning away teaching assignments. So when I did enter the hospital and to the psych, or, besides the therapy medication, there was the nutrition side of things Met with a nutritionist and then had three meals a day. So I was in hospitals. Very little different on the nutrition side of things. And what do I mean by that? I mean that somebody from nutrition would come by and you would fill out or I'm not talking about you, talking about me I would fill out what I wanted to eat for the next day. So I ended up spending I think five, five and a half days. I ended up spending I think five, five and a half days in hospital.

Speaker 1: 5:25

So after, actually during my first day because I was say, I was added as an inpatient around like 3 am, so it was sometime that first full day that I, or the rest of that, that first day that I was there, that we all the, the people that were admitted they were asked to fill out for tomorrow. So what are we going for breakfast? We're going for lunch, going for dinner when we went for a snack and knowing now with, uh, just having a lot of experience in the hospital with family, uh, seeing how those processes are very, very much similar but a lot of times there's restrictions. So it could be restricted on the amount of calories, could be restricted on the amount of salt, sugar for me, because I wasn't eating. I was feeling in my mind like I was allergic to everything except carrots and plain hummus. So one of the goals of the staff the nurses, the psych staff, the therapist they were looking to increase my calorie intake so I didn't have any restrictions. It was like a full menu. So anything I wanted to order I could, and the first first couple days it was.

Speaker 1: 7:18

It was hard, even though I knew I was in a safe place, that if something were to happen I was in a hospital so I could be taken care of. If I really was allergic to something or a medication was having an adverse reaction, so I was able to order anything I wanted off the menu. Medication was having an adverse reaction, so I was able to order anything I wanted off the menu. So that was the first thing. The second was the medication, and so I never really took medication.

Speaker 1: 8:01

I was taking a lot of different vitamins because I was Googlingling how can I lower my stress? Oh, let me, uh, magnesium, let me go get some magnesium when I was driving. And so I was supplementing well, what I should have been supplementing the vitamins, while those should have been supplementing real food. I was using vitamins that were probably 70-80% of what I was eating and the other 20% what was I eating? I was eating carrot sticks and plain hummus Not the best.

Speaker 1: 8:44

So when I was put on different medication I was one of the ones I was put on I felt like, oh, I'm trying to think felt like my potassium. I felt like one of my levels was really high or really low and I was so concerned I was like in my mind thinking the staff doesn't understand. You know, they're giving me this medication and again, so my mind is going down these rabbit holes, holes, and there were all kind of times where I was getting extra blood drawn and extra tests just to double-check to make sure what I thought was happening, my mind wasn't actually happening and that what the staff, the outcomes that they were looking to get, that those were starting to happen. And that really led into when I did get released.

Speaker 1: 10:00

One of the medications was a blood pressure medication. It wasn't that I really had high blood pressure. One of the things I do have is generalized anxiety disorder, and so the thought around taking a small amount of blood pressure medication was that it would tamp down some of that time when I was feeling extra, extra, extra stress, elevated heart rate, and so in my mind I'm like, oh my gosh, my heart rate's too low, it's going to be so low, it's going to stop. That was my thought, that's what I, that was my thought, that's what I, that was my thought, that's what I thought was gonna happen. And it was happening. So I remember showing up to therapy and almost every day I'd have to go. I didn't have to, I did, I would. I'd be the first one knocking on the nurse's door like I think my blood pressure is too low. They'd hook me up right, no, you're fine, you're right where you need to be. And so that was again.

Speaker 1: 11:17

Those were things I was just working through as a person, as a patient, with medication and then again with the eating and getting the nutrition was getting calories in my body. I was, I believe I was down 40 pounds or so from where I was at and it were. And it wasn't that I was trying to lose the weight, it was. The weight was just decreasing because I wasn't eating. I was taking a bunch of different vitamins. That's not food. And so that was where I was at, and that's the part that was one of the parts that was hard of kind of getting back into being a human being eating. Well, at that point it was eating one meal a day because I wasn't really eating close to a full meal of anything, it was just the carrots and the hummus, so that it took a lot of time for that to. It took weeks, months for that to really take a hold.

Speaker 1: 12:42

I've, I was part of the the regiment I was on when I was in the hospital. On top of the food, I was being ordered insurers, which are basically just like protein drinks. So whereas years before, when I was working out and drinking a muscle milk protein shake after to grow my muscle there, I was a few years later drinking a protein shake just to make sure that I was getting my base nutrition. So that was, that's what was happening at that point. So now, as I sit here 2025, and looking back on 2024, and these fluctuations with my weight, with working out, with food, with gaining weight and muscle, and then not working out, and getting to the point of being admitted into the hospital, being admitted into the hospital and wanting to get my calories up, to get my weight back up to where we thought it should be, in that range, one of the medications that I'm taking now.

Speaker 1: 14:22

One of the potential side effects is it can raise your cholesterol or it can add to cravings, or what I learned in therapy, the term I guess the term is the urge, the urge to eat, the urge to drink. So I don't, I don't have the urge to drink alcohol on that side of things. But where my urges food-wise come in are with, say, like sugary foods, so desserts. Say like sugary foods, so desserts, sugary cereal. You know that my daughter eats and uh, people younger than me at 43, uh, would, would eat and then not, so that's kind of the sugars out of things. But then also, on the salt side of things of you know, late night eating chips and other snacks and now, uh, drinking like a little bit of pop, whereas I was just strictly drinking drinking water, not drinking a ton of pop like one a day for the last little bit of time, for the last little bit of time.

Speaker 1: 16:13

So these are urges that I wasn't having, well, when I was in the hospital, because I wasn't at a point, you know that this began stages where I was eating in general. So they probably would have served me pop or soda if I had, if I had requested it. And so those are things as I sit here today, 2025, these urges, these cravings that I have to work through Of making sure that, as much as possible, that they're as close to healthy as can be. And that's really the big part with my team, staff-wise, is just to make sure that when I am consuming a pop a day, whether that's every day, whether that's every other day, whether that's once a week, and snacks, and you know these cravings or these urges, when they, when they come into play, that they're not negatively impacting me, meaning that some other protective measures would have to be taken, whether that's changing a medication, whether that's lowering a medication, whether that's adding a different medication, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 18:24

But these last, you know these three episodes that we've kind of kind of done here, you know, talking about the supplements and the vitamins and the flaxseed and and the sea salt and the alcohol, and those urges and the impact on sleep, yeah, and then where I'm at now, it's really this kind of yo-yo or up and down roller coaster, and so the common thread across these three episodes are my uh, you know, at the kind of macro level. The big level is looking at things as they relate to what I'm consuming on a daily basis food wise, drink wise, no alcohol, no illicit drugs. Prescription medications I'm taking, but I did want to also touch on this for individuals who who their urges may include overindulging of alcohol or other substances, whatever that may be, whether it's fentanyl, if you know it's fentanyl, or if you don't know it's fentanyl, it's cocaine, heroin. Uh, you know we don't need to go down the the, you know the the list, but those are urges that should also be kind of looked at and just make sure that we're all being as safe as possible. Nothing's 100%, we know that, but the goal is to be as safe as we can. So earlier in my life you know my late teens, 20s earlier in my life, you know my late teens, 20s my urges were going, clubbing, lifting weights, frosted tip hair, alcohol consumption. And if I was invited to some party, some get-together, if there was an out-call there, I would either bring my own or I wouldn't go, because I'd be looking at the situation and say, well, this is a Friday night or this is a Saturday night. I'm not gonna go here and spend this amount of time when I can, I can be pre-gaming, or I can be getting something to eat and then pre-gaming or whatever. The myriad of excuses that I was giving giving that they did not and still don't hold water. So we want to, we want to also think about that on the urge side, or the addiction side of certain things that, uh, we could again the urges addiction.

Speaker 1: 22:06

For me, the alcohol was one of the big addictions. I didn't have that every single day, but when I had it, it was. It was on the weekends and the royal wasn't a thought, it was just. This is what I was doing. When it was monday I knew come friday there's gonna be alcohol involved. I was going to be going out, doing something, going to the club, going to the bar, going to a concert, and that's how things were.

Speaker 1: 22:39

So if I didn't get admitted to the hospital Because I had a choice I had a choice whether to admit myself or not I wasn't being pink slipped in, which means you're not really being asked to be admitted, you're being admitted. And so when I was, one of the big things I was thinking about was oh my gosh, I'm never, I'm not going to be able to drink alcohol when I'm in there. Well, I had no business drinking alcohol at that point anyways, because I wasn't eating anything to absorb the alcohol, to absorb the alcohol. And then the second part was I don't want to be taking medications the rest of my life. And that was that was my thought. One. And thirdly was I I hope it's not dangerous in here, hope I'm not gonna get in a fight or somebody gonna try to kill me, me or because that's just not me. So those things were floating around in my head and now, looking back, I'm very happy that I did do that.

Speaker 1: 24:03

And that was a difficult decision and really, at the end of the day, nobody can make that call except for you. People can give input, people can share their insights, but to do it right, you have to make the call for yourself, just as I made the call for myself. Call for yourself, just as I made the call for myself, if we're able to, if we're conscious and able to do that, because if I want no one in knowing, okay, justin, it's gotta change now or never. That was kind of the ultimate on us. I was like, if I leave the emergency room tonight, I don't know what's gonna happen to me. You know if I was continuing on to eat eventually, I don't know. Then parts of my body start to shut down and so I didn't know I had to make that decision and that's that's a big reason why I made the decision.

Speaker 1: 25:24

To admit myself and near the road wasn't gonna be easy and it and it hasn't been. Sorry, I got these allergies here, so I knew it wasn't gonna be easy and it's still not. Some days are better than others, but it's not easy. So you have to be your biggest advocate, whatever it is, even if it isn't something mental health wise, just anything. You have to be your biggest advocate because if you're not, and if I'm not, nobody else is gonna be.

Speaker 1: 26:23

And so that's why, with the decisions I made, to admit myself, then go through the therapy and still be in therapy and still listening to my doctor, and if I need to take medication, then that's just what I have to do and I'm fine without drinking alcohol. I'm able to be more clear-headed, have more energy. It doesn't mean I have a ton of energy, it just means I have more energy and less time of foggy thinking, of foggy thinking, still have foggy thinking, but nothing like when I was, you know, addicted and urges of alcohol and and all that. So it's really amazing how far the human body, how much the human body, can take, because I, I look back and I don't, I don't know how my body took what I was giving it or not giving it.

Speaker 1: 27:47

So, for whatever reason, it so, for whatever reason, I ended up admitting myself and deciding to start this organization, voices for Voices, the organizations, the people we've met, the people we've helped, the people we've helped through other organizations, and the people we've helped or the people that others have helped through us that we're all connected as human beings and for the time and for me making the decision for the time and for me making the decision and to advocate for myself in 2017 and just sticking with it, not knowing and still not knowing where all this is going to end up. That's why you see so much energy and vigor with me, with voices for voices. I believe in myself and what we're doing, and if other people are on the show, they believe as well. So I believe and I'm my biggest advocate, mentally, physically, relationally and with the organization. So that's why you see me just constantly out there, because Voices for Voices will be and is gonna be an organization that continues on long after I'm gone. So until next time, have a great day.