The Sober New Yorker - Melissa McGovern

I loved recording this episode with Melissa McGovern, the Sober New Yorker. Melissa just hit one year sober this August, and we met on the Sobah Sistahs retreat this past April in Bali. In this emotional and inspiring episode Melissa shares about her journey towards sobriety and the people that inspired her along the way.

Transcript

Alex

Okay, so let's bring ourselves into a comfortable shape just for a moment. And you could close the eyes or soften the gaze and just take a few deep breaths in and out. And as you connect to the breath and your body in the moment, just notice Maybe there's some sounds in the space that you couldn't hear before that you hear now. Maybe there's some sensations in the body that you couldn't feel before, but you feel them now. Maybe there's some energy in the room you weren't feeling before and maybe you can feel it now. Just taking everything in about this moment for a couple more breaths. Then gently allow the eyes to start to flicker open and bring yourself back into the space. Beautiful. Hey, welcome everyone to this episode of Sober Yoga Girl podcast. I am so excited to be sitting with Melissa McGovern today. Melissa and I met in April when she came to Bali on the Soba Sister's Retreat. I was just so impressed with We connected on Instagram and seeing Melissa's fitness journey and her story and everything she was sharing with the world. I just knew I wanted to have you join and speak for our community and share the story with the podcast as well.

Alex

Welcome Melissa. I know you're close to a year sober, right? When's your sober date?

Melissa 

Hi, Alex. Thanks so much for having me. It's really great to see you again. My sober date is in 10 days, August 14th.

Alex

Oh, my God. That's how you knew when my book was coming out.

Melissa 

That's how you knew.

Alex

You said Melissa said, Your book's coming out in 10 days. I was like, Wow, she really.

Melissa 

It's a great day to have big things happen. August 14th. Yeah.

Alex

Congrats.

Melissa 

Thank you.

Alex

I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what led up to that sober date. What was your journey beforehand?

Melissa 

My journey beforehand was sober curious for for probably the past five or six years. Actually, we never had this conversation, but when I was in Bali and you spoke about one year, no beer, I had a membership with them. Oh, wow. Yeah. And not a lot of people know about that because it's an English group. I mean, that definitely have spread around the world in the years since they started. But I think it was in 2018 or 2019 that I heard Andy Ramage on the Rich Roll podcast. And five, six years ago, podcasts were not like they are now. They weren't as popular. I don't know how I even found that podcast, but he is such a dynamic speaker, as you know. He had a book out, 28 Days, alcohol-free, just like a reset. I thought it just intrigued me so much. I picked up that book. I think this was in 2019, like the spring of 2019. A couple of years previous to that, I would have doctor's appointments, and my liver enzymes would be slightly elevated, not out of control. My doctor would say, Take a break, don't drink for three weeks, come back, and we'll retest.

Melissa 

That happened a couple of times leading up to 2019. I got this book and I started reading. I would get six days into it and then go out and drink. It was a lot of stopping and starting. In 2019, I went to my niece's wedding in September in Colorado. God, I got so hammered the night before the rehearsal dinner, and we were in the mountains. So it really affects you. Ten drinks can feel like 30. And I was wrecked the next day. It started occurring to me that I could not do this. It was really like, What am I doing? So in November of 2019, after another night like that, The next day, I woke up and I was like, I'm going to commit to the 90-day program that they had. And that's a program where you get emails and you get videos and you have a Facebook group and You stay somewhat connected. You stay as connected as you want to. You can engage in the online group as much as you want to. And I started to feel really good. I started to feel great. I was cruising along and losing weight and getting healthier and getting my...

Melissa 

I went to the doctor during that time and I said, I'm done. I can't do it anymore. I think that was December of 2019. I had a whole six weeks or something alcohol-free in me, and I felt wonderful. I kept going through the holidays. Then March 12th, 2020, in New York, was D-day for COVID-19. My daughter had a big track meet that got canceled. You guys all know how crazy that time was. In New York, especially, as it went on, it was just surreal. I said to my husband that day, it was exactly four months, four months I had under my belt, and I said, I think I'm going to have a beer with dinner. We We're going out to dinner. He said, Have a beer. He said, Do you think you can have just one? I was like, Yeah, sure I can. Because the mental gymnastics game starts playing in your head. Bier wasn't my drink, so I knew I could have one beer, and I did have one beer. I can't remember exactly when I started going to the wine store because the liquor stores were open. That was an essential business. And the food you ordered to get delivered would deliver wine as well.

Melissa 

So things started ramping up again for me, and I couldn't have just one. I could never have just one. I was an all or nothing drinker since the beginning of time. In the pandemic, that really sped up for me. I I actually had some success as far as business-wise in the pandemic. I started my own cloth mask-making company, and I was like a one-woman, I joke, I was a one-woman sweatshop because I was at my sewing machine cranking out masks all day. I was wholesaling them. We have a place in upstate New York. I had some businesses up there that were buying them and selling them. It kept me really It also kept me thinking that I deserved that wine at five o'clock after sitting in front of my sewing machine for seven, eight hours a day. It was ramping up, and it was somewhat in control until it wasn't. Because like we all know, alcohol is a highly addictive substance, and the more you drink, the more your body wants it. In 2021, we had a big loss in our family. My husband's mother got cancer, and within 10 days, she was gone. It was very fast and very aggressive.

Melissa 

It was wrapped around her spine. We all booked tickets to go to see her, what we thought would have been our last time to see her and say goodbye, and it ended up being her memorial. That was a really big loss for our family and us as a couple. It was about the same time that my very best friend, T. Scott, who I moved to New York with in 1995, and he was the best man in my... I'm sorry, man of honor in my wedding, saw both my kids grow up in the world. He had a huge drinking problem, and he hid it for years and years. Right when my mother-in-law passed, was when he had told me that he had liver disease. His outlook was not good. He was 53 years old. When you hear that, and my naiveté around the matter, because he was always a beer drinker, I said, You're just drinking beer. How can that be? How can that be? Well, he was drinking more than beer. It was really hard. It's probably a bigger podcast, but it was really hard to see someone who was so charismatic and full of life and just walked into a room and owned it, shrink into someone that was controlled by alcohol.

Melissa 

He was also HIV positive, so his body did not have a chance. In the spring of 2022, he went into the hospital to have a routine procedure that you need to have done when you are suffering from this horrible disease. He needed to have his body drained. That's a regular thing that needs to be done. He had sepsis and pneumonia, and he never left the hospital. He passed away in the hospital six days later at age 54. It gutded me. It He flattered me in many ways because I thought I lost my best friend, and the way I lost him was something that I'm dealing with, that I'm struggling with. How is this happening? In my head, I thought, Is this the thing that is going to really impact you enough to make some decisions about your life? Is this going to be it? This has to be it. I even thought about going to see him in the hospital to get that vision blared, stamped into my brain about how awful someone looks when they They have this disease and they are losing their life. I didn't do that because I knew in my heart of hearts, he would never, ever have wanted that.

Melissa 

I hadn't seen him in years because of the pandemic, and he lived in Ohio. I wanted to remember him the last time I saw him. I had spoken to him regularly on the phone. We were in touch. I knew he wasn't going to have a long life, but you're just never ready for something like that. Me dealing with that, the way I chose to deal with that was not to get sober right away. It was to push the fuck it button and drink as much as I want, eat as much as I want. It was still somewhat pandemic-y, and we ordered food to be delivered all the time. I just ate my way and drank my way through my grief for about 15, 16 months. I had to go see my doctor. I had a prescription that I needed refilled, and she wouldn't do a virtual visit for that. I had been prediabetic for about nine or 10 years. I needed that medication refilled. I I made an appointment for August 15th of 2023, and thinking in my head, I've got a couple months to get... I know I can stop drinking before that appointment, so I can go in, and it won't be as bad as I think it's going to be.

Melissa 

Well, I didn't stop drinking until August 14th, the day before that appointment. I went into that appointment, I confided in her. She had remembered that I had did that one year no beer. I changed that number on the form. How much do you drink? Five to seven drinks, right? How much do we all lie about that? I put 20 to 25, which was probably still under what I was drinking. I told I knew that I thought I was drinking too much. And she didn't judge me. She didn't scold me. She didn't put me down. She listened to me, and she brought up naltrexone. I didn't even know what naltrexone was. She talked about AA. I told her I didn't think that was my jam. She just heard me, and she told me also that I was not the only one going through this, that she had lots of other patients that come in here and confide in her, lots of women my age. So we did the bloodwork, and in the middle... The bloodwork comes back very fast. In the middle of the night, I got those results. When I woke up the next morning, there was a notification in my chart.

Melissa 

It was just awful. It was really, really bad. My cholesterol was high. My A1c, my glucose, I was very close to being diabetic. My liver enzymes were through the roof. This is a number that's... There are two numbers, AST and ALT. They're run between 5 and 40, 5 and 35. I had one that was one 90, and the other one was 322. These were like off the chart numbers. I have since done research. If your liver enzymes are two and a half times what the normal range is, you are on the road to liver disease, period. My friend T. Scott didn't drink for the year before he died. The damage was already done. Once you cross over that threshold, there is nothing you can do to reverse it except a transplant, really, honestly. What else? My blood pressure, my weight, I was the heaviest I've ever been. The summer before I went into the doctor, I was feeling so depleted. I would look in the mirror and hold my belly and just shake it and feel like shit. And I didn't like looking at myself in pictures. I started feeling in the morning, what if I just stayed in bed all day?

Melissa 

I had these awful mental health things going on, and I knew exactly why. I knew it was because I was drinking too much. So when I got the physical results, the two were perfectly aligned, mental and physical, because of one incredibly toxic substance. So she told me in an email, If you don't make drastic behavioral changes, I'm going to put you on medication. I'm going to put you on a statin. I was probably going to head towards the diabetes, blood pressure, all of it. I was 51 years old. I was not that old, and I had to make a decision. In my head, I thought, Is this the path I want to take with my life? Just to keep drinking? Or do I really want to make some changes? She said, I want to see you in no less than three months. For three months, I could have done all the right things. And gone back and said, I'm really good. My numbers are great. And then try to pick up and moderate again. I could have done that. I've done that before with her. In my head, I was like, This is it. This is it.

Melissa 

This has got to be it. I have an opportunity to live a longer life than my friend T. Scott did. And I decided to take it. I decided to take that opportunity. I went all in, which I know is not the usual MO for a lot of people when they start to get sober. But to me, it's what worked. She said in that email, Try to stop drinking. Make drastic behavioral changes. Try to stop drinking. So I didn't drink. I laced up my shoes, and I listened to podcasts, and I listened to Quitlet, and I read Quitlet, and I went to the gym, and I walked, walked, walked, walked, walked. I started noticing changes immediately. Within the first three weeks, I probably lost eight pounds in three weeks. And after 10 days of withdrawal, which was basically just a dull headache and not sleeping well, I was starting to sleep better. I was feeling better. I was getting It happened quickly, and I didn't want it to stop. So I kept going. I kept going, kept going, kept going. I got through my birthday without drinking. I got through In three months, you can experience a lot of life and some hurdles.

Melissa 

I moved my daughter back into college and had some... Things go wrong with that. And it was like, But I'm not drinking. I went back to see this doctor, 11 weeks to the day. And my blood test, everything had completely reversed. I lost 50 points off of my cholesterol. My blood pressure was back to normal. My liver enzymes dropped to that 5 to 40 range. My A1c, my glucose, which was almost diabetic, was no longer prediabetic. It had dropped 1.1. I lost 27 pounds in 11 weeks. I It felt like a new woman, and she could see it, and she was so excited. She didn't hug me. I would have hugged her if she would have let me, but there was that doctor patient. And in my head, there was no part of me that said, Okay, I'm picking up some rosé to celebrate these results. I had to get a wrap around my head that I am not a moderate drinker. I never have been. I never will be. I'm going to accept that, and I'm going to get through it, and I'm going to move through it, and I'm going to figure this out.

Melissa 

And it was about that time when I started getting emails from Megan at Soba Sisters, and she had a retreat in Vermont. I saw the Vermont retreat, and I thought, I can do that. I can drive. It was in June. Here it was early November, and I thought, If I can find something to hold on to and keep me accountable till June, in my head, I was like, Oh, my God. Can you imagine me not drinking alcohol until June? I signed up. I signed up. I gave her my deposit. I had absolutely no idea that it came with a community of women and weekly bi-weekly meetings and a slack or an app and all that. That was like the cherry on top. I got involved in that community, and that led me to a different community. All of a sudden, I'm showing up on Zoom meetings and sharing my story and relating with everyone that I see, everyone I'm looking at in these squares right now. It's like we all look the same. We We all experience the same shit as women, and the choices we make really do matter. I can't believe I'm sitting here 10 days away from my ear.

Melissa 

That was a lot.

Alex

I have tears in my eyes now. Melissa, I It just... That was incredible to hear your story. And when you shared about where you were, because when I met you in Bali, you're just a completely different person than who you describe. And for me to sit here and be like, wow, you came from that and who you are today. The person I met in Bali, you're so positive, so uplifting, so encouraging. And it's just incredible to think of this transformation you went through. It's incredible.

Melissa 

It's so inspiring. Thank you. The thing that was really scary for me last summer is that these thoughts that I was having in my head about not wanting to get out of bed and waking up thinking, Well, I'm here again on this planet for some reason. I'd never had those thoughts before because I was never that woman. I was always a confident woman. I always had my head I was highly functional. When those thoughts started creeping in, they really were scary. I had seen family and friends deal with depression and anxiety and all that. I felt like I dodged a bullet somehow by not having those feelings. And then here they were knocking on my door, and I knew exactly why they were there. Exactly. When I had the blood work, it was all black and white. When I think about... I'm on vacation right now. I'm at the beach. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. We have the sun out. You see people drinking. The thought of sitting on the porch, looking at the ocean with a glass of wine is still very sexy and very appealing. I know it will never be one glass of wine.

Melissa 

The way that I will feel in the morning in such a beautiful place will just be completely wasted because I can't just have one glass of wine. I just can't. I know this now, and I've just thrown myself all in. I mean, if you would have told me I would be having a successful sober Instagram, like what? Or that I would Start a podcast or be on podcasts or openly shout it from the rooftops, what is going on in my life and be so proud and confident about it. I mean, it's really crazy and hard to wrap my head around it. And it just is what's going on. And it's just very exciting. I've carved out a life that I feel like I always knew I could I love. It's amazing.

Alex

So inspiring. So tell me about the Instagram and the podcast and everything. First of all, were you publicly talking about your sobriety right away? Or when did that shift come in and what inspired that?

Melissa 

I think that I was inspired by that. Actually, along with Megan, I was a part of another group where we were sober women, figuring out what the next steps in our life would be as far as starting a business or changing jobs or this and that. There was a woman on there, Monica Hardy, and she was about eight months sober at the time, and I was only three months sober. We had a whole conversation about what it would be like coming out on social media. And she did it. She used Canva to make a nice cute little post. That's the first time I heard of Canva. I saw this and I was really like, Wow, I wonder if I will ever get there. It was about five months. It was January of this year. I was just looking at Instagram, like what names. I was making a mental list, an actual list, actually, of what names could I use this. A lot of names are already taken. The sober Instagram world is huge. The sober New Yorker, however, was wide open. I thought, Really? And honestly, the word sober and alcohol-free, you go back and forth with that.

Melissa 

Sober can sound a certain way, whereas alcohol-free is a bit more benign. But the Sober New Yorker was open, and it was an early morning in January, and I took it and I started. I think I put a picture, and I didn't even really have a bio or a post. I barely started it, and I put it aside, and I was like, Okay, let me just think about this. I got going with my day. Because I'm probably 52 years old, I don't realize that You can't start something like that and put it on a shelf where no one else will see it. You start it, and then your friends that you're already... My personal account, all of a sudden it pops up on their page. I had a friend text me and she said, Is this you? I said, Oh, my God. I said, Yes, it is. Actually, this was a friend from the first time, that first time where I had four months. She knew I was doing that, and she was a big supporter. And she said, Well, I know you've tried this before. Because I said to her, Yeah, I've been for about five months.

Melissa 

And she said, That's amazing. And I said, Do you want to be my first follower? And she was. So it was out. The cat was out of the bag. I was like, Okay, right? And then I went back and I started a bio, and I I put it out there. And then I did it on Facebook because there's some older people that don't always do Instagram. My parents had known, my family had known, and they were very supportive. But the world at large and other fringe friends and things. Yeah, it helps keep me accountable. It really does. It's the thing But it also makes me... I'm a super creative person. I was a stage actress at one point, and I love to sing and dance and all that stuff. I get inspired by the creativity around it. It turned into something really fun for me. It is a really inspiring place to meet other people. From that, I thought Everyone's doing a podcast. Why couldn't I do a podcast? I took a four-week mentorship program with Brad McLeod, Sober Motivation, the goat of Sober Podcast, basically. Goat is greatest of all time for those who don't know that acronym.

Melissa 

No, a lot of people don't. And they're like, Why is she calling him a GOAT? Yeah. Greatest of All Time. He led us through the steps. I was like, It's not as hard as you think it is. And his motto is, Better done than perfect. I love that. I love that for a lot of things moving forward with my life. And so now it's something that is really fun, and I can do it on my own time, and I can figure it out as I go. And it's been fun. So.

Alex

And have you released any episodes yet, or is it upcoming? Have you started?

Melissa 

Oh, no. I think I've released six episodes. It's The Sober New Yorker is the name of the podcast. Actually, do you remember Simone from Bali? Yes. I love it. Yeah. Quiet little Simone. She just had her year two days ago, and I thought, there's no way she's going to do my podcast. She's like a little mouse. But one on one, she can really talk. And she said, Yeah, I think it's time that I start telling my story. And I thought, Oh, I love that. I love that. So anyway, it's just been a fun creative outlet for me. That also helps me stay on my own path and my journey. And I think it's all about that.

Alex

Amazing. Wow. I cannot believe the sober New Yorker was not taken. That is the best. That's such a good Instagram handle.

Melissa 

I know. I've heard that say to me 20 times. Everyone says that. I don't know. Maybe it was just meant to be. Me? Me? Me? Me?

Alex

All right. Well, we just have a couple minutes left here. So I have one more question for you, but I do wish that we had more time. I'm tempted to bring you back on the show because I just feel like we've scratched the surface into such amazing... I think you have so much wisdom to share. So one more question, which is, if you had any wisdom to yourself before you started this journey or any advice you wanted to share, what would that be?

Melissa 

I think it would be, don't think so much about what you are losing Think about what you are gaining. It's so cheesy because we hear that all the time, right? It's like we take... What is the phrase? We get rid of Everything for one thing. And then when we get sober, we get rid of one thing for everything. It's so true. I thought, How am I going to get through certain events? Or even just coming home at the end of the day and open up my wine and sitting down my couch. That was a ritual for me. It was involved in so much of what I did. It was really daunting to think, How am I going to live without it? And one day at a time, one event at a time, your body, you get so used to. For me, I have gotten so used to feeling good, and I don't think there's any better feeling in the world than feeling good, sleeping well, waking up, the same woman you went to bed as the night before, is no better feeling than that. So change that mindset. Think about all you'll be gaining and not what you'll be losing.

Melissa 

Love that.

Alex

Thank you so much, Melissa. This was an amazing, amazing, amazing episode. You're an inspiring person, and I think if this is what you accomplished in one year of sobriety, I just can't wait to keep following and see what's next.

Melissa 

There's a question.

Alex

Oh, we got a question. Let's see. Someone put a question in the chat?

Melissa 

No, she's raising her hand. Robin.

Alex

Oh, go ahead. Yes. Let me unmute you, Robin.

Melissa 

We're starting your podcast cast starting to work on it. Did you have fear? Yeah, of course. There's always fear. There's always doubt. I think I've gotten the point where that fear and doubt, what's the worst that could happen? If two people listen to it, so what? It's two people. I have found that doing things that scare me make me grow. I mean, they make all of us grow. If something scares me, like someone, Megan. I've hosted a couple of for Megan. She's been absent or whatever. The first time she asked me, I said, That really scares me a little bit, which is why I should do it. When you lean in and you do it and you realize it's not that big of a deal and that tragedy did not happen, you grow. And that's how I... Have you gotten any hate comments? Oh, yeah, definitely. What What do you do about that? I block and delete. Yeah. Trolls. There's going to be trolls out there that comment on things. I block and delete. I have a video that went somewhat viral, like 300,000 views. It's all of the empty strollers outside of the sidewalk, and it says, Is this your why?

Melissa 

It's very short, and it was very impactful. Impactful because our whys are often our children. I don't push a stroller anymore. But anyway, the video I recorded it is outside the JCC, the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. Someone did reach out to me, a Jewish person, and did not want the name of the institution in the comments. And I sat with it. It's a public sidewalk, so there's no legal... But I also didn't want him to give me... I also saw his point of view. So I deleted the comments that referred to where it was exactly, and I let him know. And he was very appreciative. I know that Jews are in a very sensitive spot right now. So little things like that. Yeah. But if there are haters, I just block and delete. My whole thing is, if you've got haters, that's a sign you're doing something right. People are going to come for you when you're doing something right. They're jealous and they see what you're doing and they don't like it, and they want to do it, even on Instagram. Alex can relate, I'm sure. Love that.

Alex

Yeah. For a while, I have to say I like when I get hate comments because it boosts the algorithm. There's four interaction happening on my posts, and often people will start arguing and defending me. I used to take it personally, and now I'm like, Oh, this is good. Any comment is better than no comment.

Melissa 

For anyone that's here that is following me, please send me a message so I know who you are and I can follow you back because a lot of accounts are private, and if they follow me, and I don't follow them back, usually, if I can't see who they are as a person. So please send me a DM, and I'd love to get to know you all on an Instagram level. Maybe you'll be on my podcast someday.