Gabrielle “Gaby” Campagna joins us on The SHAIR Podcast. Gaby was an active alcoholic from age 15 to 36. In 2009, at age 36, her liver and kidneys shut down from drinking vodka heavily for over a year and she slipped into a coma. While Gaby was dying in the ICU from Non-viral hepatitis Alcoholic liver disease her my family was told she wasn't expected to make it. However her Higher Power had different plans for her and she survived, it took her over two years to recover her health back.
Unfortunately, she did not seek treatment or get any help. Gaby white knuckled it for over 3 years and smoked pot. When she turned 40 she relapsed for an entire year. On July 23, 2013, at age 41, Gaby entered an outpatient treatment program that is 12 Stepped based at Kaiser Chemical Dependency Recovery Program. She completed all phases of the program in 16 months. Gaby’s recovery story is full of amazing miracles and her life is beyond good. Life is great!
Clean Date: July 23, 2013
Omar: What is the best suggestion you have ever received?
Gaby: Oh, this one I love, and I got it at treatment, "Stop taking yourself so seriously. Nobody else does. You're ridiculous, and so is everybody else." I'm like, oh, my God, that’s so true. I learned basically how to observe myself objectively without judgment.
Omar: I love it.
Gaby: That’s what not taking yourself so seriously means. A good way someone described it to me was like, "If you had a friend complaining about the problems that you're currently having, how worried would you be for them? Would you really be that concerned for them, or would you think they're being ridiculous?"
I thought, "Oh, my God, that’s such a perfect way to look at things. When I'm worried about these problems that are just so not life-threatening problems, nobody's-going-to-die kind of problems, yeah, stop taking myself so seriously. Life is short. We are all going to die whether we like to believe that or not. I think human beings are in denial about that from day one, like there's something special and it's not going to happen to me. The truth is we all will die when it's our time, but before that happens, let's just kind of take it easy, stop taking everything so seriously, unless you're a brain surgeon maybe. There's no point of beating yourself up when things aren't going your way.
Omar: If you could give our listeners only one suggestion, what would it be?
Gaby: Oh, my gosh. Listeners who are already in recovery, keep going. It gets better and better and better. As we were discussing earlier, if you are a person who's still in active addiction, don’t give up on yourself. Give yourself a chance to at least explore the possibility of recovery. A lot of people die from this. If you're listening to this, you know you have a problem and you’ve broken through some denial, but you're still drinking, you can do this. This is definitely something that’s achievable.
I mentioned on another podcast I was interviewed on, everything I was trying to achieve with drinking I've actually achieved in sobriety, that feeling of happiness and joy and bliss and peace. If you're drinking, thinking it’s bringing you peace, you know it's not bringing you peace, but recovery and sobriety, it'll bring you all the peace that you need. It's so worth it. Life is very short. We should not be sitting around putting poison in our bodies and thinking that’s fun or the answer to solving our problems.