Can You Design the Alcohol-Free Life You Want? Martha's Journey to Sobriety

With her PhD and a heart full of experience, Martha Burich opens up about her courageous fight against alcoholism and her transformative journey to sobriety. 

Martha isn't just surviving; she's thriving by leading AA and NA groups in jails, championing the power of community in recovery, and serving as a beacon of hope as a mindset coach.

Discover how Martha reshaped her life through daily exercise and a steadfast dedication to living in the moment.  She also tackles the myths surrounding wellness, advocating for a personalized approach to health and happiness. 

Plus, don't miss the profound wisdom Martha shares about the impact of listening to others' stories in AA meetings—it's a testament to the strength found in shared experiences. 

🎧 Ready to be moved and motivated? Tune in to the full episode of Flat-Pack Sober for an unforgettable journey with Martha. 

Your path to understanding and personal growth is just a play button away! 

Connect with Martha on the following platforms:

• Facebook
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• Website

Transcript

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:00:00) - Hey there, sober warriors! Welcome to Flat-Pack Sober. Your catalog of tips, tricks and tactics to help you design the alcohol free life that you want. Now I am joined by a very interesting guest today. As you probably noticed, quite a lot of the people that come on this show have given up drinking, but my next guest has gone one step further. She has not owned a TV since 2007, so that's properly giving stuff up, isn't it? But one of the things she definitely doesn't give up is she goes to the gym every day. I think her current record is 120 days straight, and she even walks backwards on the treadmill. I'm desperate to know what the benefits of doing that is, so we'll probably get into that. But she's got a lot of qualifications to PhD, and she runs AA and NA groups in jails, so I have no doubt she has a huge amount to offer to this podcast. And she's also got a couple of books coming out this year. So I don't know how we are going to squeeze all of this into sort of 45 minutes, but we'll give it a go, won't we, Mark?

Martha Burich (00:01:05) - Certainly.

Martha Burich (00:01:06) - Hey, really nice to be here, Duncan. Thank you so much. What a great intro. All right, so you read what I sent you. I'm in shock.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:01:15) - Well, I love it because, like some people, they send me a bio. But you sent me 20 fat. I was like, wow.

Martha Burich (00:01:21) - I was reading more. I was like, hey, this gal is cool. She does a lot of stuff.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:01:28) - It's like they say, if you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. So if you probably actually live in your bio, there's something wrong with you. But anyway, let's ask you the first question. Are you familiar with Ikea? They have Ikea where you live. Yeah. Yes, yes. Okay, so you get the idea about Flatpack furniture. If I was going to give you some flatpack furniture, I don't know, a Billy bookcase. How would you go about assembling it? What would your strategy for, uh, putting together some flatpack furniture be? Read the.

Martha Burich (00:01:57) - Instructions. You want to hear a story about reading the instructions? Go on. Well, I know my brother made an entire business out of reading the instructions when I was younger. I was the last of three children, and my brother's seven years older than me and all my life. Oh, your brother's a genius. Your brother's so smart, you know what am I, chopped liver, you know. But anyway, so all my life. Oh, your brother's so smart, you know, ten years old. He built his own television. I mean, really, it's honest. It really is. At 16, he took a car apart, put it back together. These legitimately. He's a very, very intelligent man, okay? And he was a very intelligent kid. Well, anyway, where am I going with this? Oh, yeah. Read the instructions. My brother, he starts a business. Um, as he got older, he became a mechanical engineer. And he had his own business.

Martha Burich (00:02:41) - Now, in his job, what would happen is, well, he would go in and save these businesses, you know, in the machinery going fatal air fuel. Al would come in and save the day. So I said, al, you know, you did really good at your business because he was telling me how how did you do so. Well, it's your business. How could you possibly work on all these machines? And they said, you won't believe it. Martha, I read the instructions.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:03:03) - I think there's probably quite a valuable lesson in life there. You know, you want to stay sober. What? You do read the instructions anyways. So is it fair to say you open the box, you take out the instructions, you sit down, you read them cover to cover. You kind of understand them. That's your methodology. And is that sort of a little bit the way you approach life? I mean, do you like to to learn things, read the books, listen to the podcasts, get the information before you tackle any problems.

Martha Burich (00:03:31) - So usually you'd like to know what's going on. But you know, I like to live too. So sometimes one of my challenges is I jump in with both feet and don't pay enough attention, you know? So yeah, I want to do that and I just go ahead and do it. But you know what? Whatever. Whatever. I'd rather live. I'd rather, you know, I'm going to live till I die. And I'm 69 years old. Every day is the best day of my life. Every day, you know? And here's something. But maybe I'm. Maybe I'm jumping ahead here, Duncan. But here's what I notice about people that can't seem to stay sober. They're stuck in yesterday. Whenever I hear somebody talking about constantly, you know, glory days and blah, blah, blah, and this happened to me. Whether it's glory days or the bad things that happened to me, then I always think to myself, they need to get out of that. They gotta come to today.

Martha Burich (00:04:17) - Today.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:04:18) - Yeah, I think we're going to get into that in a little bit more detail coming up. But I just the reason why I like to talk to people at the start about Flatpack furniture is I think it gives the listeners a bit of an idea about where you're coming from and how you approach things, and I'm sure you've noticed there is there is a little bit of information on the internet and what I like people to kind of understand how they can interpret this information. You know, some of the people that come on this show, you know, they're going to say some stuff and it's not going to resonate with other people. And I don't want people to feel bad about it and say, well, I can't be successfully sober because I can't do everything Martha does. You know, maybe they just. They approach life in a different way to you. And I think that's that's really important. That's why we we always start with that. So tell me a little bit about your history around alcohol and getting sober and that kind of thing.

Martha Burich (00:05:14) - Let's go way back. We'll go way back. My dad was a prisoner of the Germans in World War two for two years now. Of course, when he came back. Now, this is way before I was born, before my brother was born. But when he came back, he was a different man. And I think that the drinking really escalated from my father then when he came back from the war. And you know what? You can't blame him. You know what I mean? Okay. Well, I knew I knew from the time I was small. Even though I didn't start drinking until drinking age, I knew that I, I was an alcoholic. I knew for my first drink I was an alcoholic, and I was probably going to be one because of my dad, so I but most of my drinking was usually when I became an adult, even though I knew I was an alcoholic, I would binge on the weekends. I was one of those functional alcoholics, you know, because I, I had self control.

Martha Burich (00:06:08) - I knew better than to, you know, I knew I was an obnoxious, ignorant drunk. So I usually drank alone, you know, once I once I got past like 25 and people told me how aggravating and annoying I was, I just started drinking alone, but I would only do it on the weekends. So even though I got kicked out of two colleges and that's another story, I got kicked out of two colleges for drinking. Guess what? I still went back, got the degree and became a psychology professor. So you know what? It doesn't matter how many times you fail, a quote unquote fail doesn't matter. Just get back up. In fact, my mother was crying and my mother, oh, I got a 1.0 GPA. That's a D. Oh, they'll never know. Oh my God, what am I going to do with my life? You know, I was like 25 or something crying my eyes. She goes, you go right back to that college right now and you ask them to let you back in.

Martha Burich (00:06:56) - So I did. I marched right back there, you know, knock, knock, knock. Will you let me back in, please? So I got a lecture and they said, okay, we'll let you in, but you better be good. You get six months probation and nothing less than a C. So, you know, I grew up.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:07:11) - Was that the end of the drinking then?

Martha Burich (00:07:12) - Oh, yeah. So I continued to drink throughout my life. Yes. But basically, you know, I was able to keep jobs and because I liked my jobs and I knew better and I also knew I was an obnoxious drunk. So I never let people at work see me drink. I never drank at work functions just because, you know, I didn't want any gossip about me. I was smart, I was smart that way. But I still drank on the weekends, and I couldn't raise home fast enough on Friday night to get drunk. You know, I was a typical alcoholic. All I could think about was was the bottle.

Martha Burich (00:07:40) - So here's what happened is I retired, and then I had no reason to not drink during Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you know? And then the next thing you know, I'm hitting the bottle every day and I'm telling myself, okay, I get up at eight, I'm like, no, don't drink. I'm not drinking. I'm not drinking any. I'd be drunk by noon. So one day Dunkin and I'm listening to it. It's about 7:00 at night. I'm listening to a podcast and the speaker was Carolyn Mays. I don't know if you know her, but she comes out of her house, so she goes, I. And here I am with my bourbon and Diet Coke in hand, drinking away. And she goes, I dare you. I dare you to ask God to make you quit. And I.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:08:21) - Was like.

Martha Burich (00:08:22) - Whoa, no, no, no, that's how you wind up in jail. In the hospital, when you ask God to make you do something.

Martha Burich (00:08:29) - I know in my little drunken mind, you know, I know. I'll ask him. I'll ask God to help me quit, which I think was brilliant, drunk or sober. I think that's a brilliant strategy. So I said, God help me. And the next thing you know, he goes, okay, AA so I look up AA online, there's a meeting ten minutes from my house. The next morning, 10:00 in the morning. It was still early. I was able to get a good night's rest and not be too hung over the next day. So I go to AA meeting. So I'm at the meeting and these lovely women sit next to me and talk to me and made me feel very welcome. Well, it just so happened that one of the women sitting next to me, it was her one year anniversary, and they had a cake and a token for her. And you know, when I walked in that room, Duncan, I was like, Martha, who? Who are you kidding? You can't stop drinking it.

Martha Burich (00:09:15) - It's over for you. And you know what? You're old and fat, too. So why don't you just give it all up? And so I'm sitting there, and then it's her one year anniversary. She stands up and the look of pride on her face. And I looked at her and I thought, wow, she did it. Maybe I can. Maybe I can stay sober and boom. You know, more than five and a half years later, here I sit still sober nights and weekends, too.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:09:47) - Oh, no. That's brilliant, that's brilliant. And I think, you know, that resonates a lot for me about the kind of hiding it from people. There are still, to this day, people who don't really believe that I had a problem with drinking because whenever they saw me, you know, I always very controlled and never drank too much, you know, would be out an event or something like that. And I drink one glass and they think I was a normal regular drinker.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:10:13) - Of course, I go home and drink a couple of bottles afterwards. But, you know, so I think that that will resonate with a few people. So you used AA as the method to stop drinking. What do you think the best thing is about AA? Certainly in terms of keeping you sober, what's the main thing? It's got to help you stay sober.

Martha Burich (00:10:32) - It was one day at a time, one day at a time. Did it for me. I used to call myself the Scarlett O'Hara of AA because Scarlett O'Hara's main saying was, I won't think about that today. I'll think about that tomorrow. So I would get something that would get me all bent out of shape and I would say, you know what? I won't think about that today. I'll think about it tomorrow. And then tomorrow would come. And half the time, Duncan, I couldn't remember what I was so bent out of shape about.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:10:59) - But for you, that kind of for one day at a time thing ties into the fact that you believed you couldn't ever get sober.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:11:07) - So it was much easier to just do one day rather than the whole thing seemed unmanageable.

Martha Burich (00:11:12) - Right. And, you know, I sometimes I'll hear people say, I'll never drink again. I can't say never to anything. How can you say that? I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I don't know what's going to happen five minutes from now. You know, all I know is today I've made a commitment to myself and to God and to the universe. Today, I'm not drinking. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but today, that's not my plan, and I'm going to stick with it. And also, you know, I do go to the ladies at the jail every Monday. I have an AA and a meeting in the jail. And I told the ladies at the jail, I said, you know what I want on my tombstone. She was a good example. And whenever it comes across my crazy mind, because sometimes it does, I don't know why. And people 20, 30 years sober, they'll say, I'll be sitting around thinking, man, I'd sure like a beer right now.

Martha Burich (00:11:54) - It just comes in your mind for some crazy reason. I don't know, because we're human. Anyway. Whenever those crazy thoughts come to me, I always take it all the way. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. You know, I never had a DWI before, but maybe it's time to get one. Yeah, I never had to have a lawyer before, but. Yeah, let me go get one now, and I'll let me have to spend all my money on a lawyer and then talking to the judge and feeling really low and you know. Yeah, yeah. Let's do that. So I always, you know, think about it all the way out. But anyway, so I tell the ladies and I say, you know what? One of the reasons why I don't drink is because whenever it comes across my mind, I think of you. And I think, who's gonna who's going to be here for you? I made my commitment to you. What are you going to think if I have to come in here one day and go, oh my God, I relapsed.

Martha Burich (00:12:33) - What? How can I benefit you? That's of no use to you. You need someone who's a good example. My intention is to be that good example.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:12:41) - I think you're doing pretty well. But, I mean, I love that idea of doing it in the service of other people and having to be there for them, and that, you know, that that must give you an enormous amount of purpose and meaning to, to what you're doing.

Martha Burich (00:12:57) - Would you like to hear my jail story?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:12:59) - Oh, go on, here's.

Martha Burich (00:13:00) - How I got to the jail. Here's my jail story. I'm sitting around in a meeting one day, I don't know about a year and a half ago, and I'm like, I'm bored. So I said it, you know, because my turn to talk, I'm like, man, I don't know. I'm getting bored at these meetings. And the guy across the table, he goes, yeah, well, I'm on the corrections committee. Here's the application. So.

Martha Burich (00:13:18) - All right, well, okay, put your money where your mouth is. Martha. I do all the all the machinations you got to do to be at the jail, to do a meeting in the jail while I go to the jail. My first meeting, there's a woman there who I had met at AA a year before. She had gotten in trouble, but not enough trouble. Well, this time she had really gotten in trouble, and she looked at me. Okay, so then she's at these meetings for about the next two months, and then she got released. But she came every day and she was a changed woman. She really this time she knew that she had to change. She had to stop drinking if she wanted her life to be good. Well, anyway, she gets out and I don't see her anymore because we live in different areas of town. But she becomes really important in AA, doing a lot of stuff. You know, we have a place called the Dry Dock that a lot of addicts and people go to, and she became like on their board.

Martha Burich (00:14:10) - And I mean really, really doing important work, service work. Well, I go to the Christmas party and she's there and she said, you know, I never told you this. People who don't know on the star cry, people who don't know you know your name because I talk about you and how you saved my life. Listen to this. I said what you know. And of course I didn't. I didn't do anything but be there. You know, she did everything. She said. When I went to jail, I wanted to contact you so bad. I knew if I could contact you because you're stable and dependable and that if I could contact you, I could get some help. And she goes, and then you come and I pray she goes. I prayed and prayed that I could contact you. And she goes, and then you come walking into the jail to lead the AA meeting. Whoa. And what's the point of that? The point of that is prayer works when you're serious.

Martha Burich (00:15:02) - God in the universe gets behind you and says, okay, I'm going to help you, but you got to be committed and you got to make a decision.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:15:08) - You know, we may we may have a different interpretation of how the events align. You know, people do have different worldviews, but who cares if events align? And I think if you don't do anything, you know, the events can't align, can they? Unless you are actually taking some steps forward. You can't. Those coincidences will never happen, right?

Martha Burich (00:15:30) - Yes, definitely.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:15:31) - It's part of a Gary Player quote, isn't it? You know, the the more I practice the luckier I get.

Martha Burich (00:15:37) - Oh there you go. Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:15:38) - So look, I have a feeling that there's going to be a rather resounding yes to this question and maybe a few, few detailed bits, but since you've got sober, have you made any big changes in your life?

Martha Burich (00:15:52) - Oh my goodness. Oh duh duh. Well, you know, I was all right.

Martha Burich (00:15:59) - I'm 69, so I sobered up at 63, 64. And you know, and I was starting to think, oh, you're old. Oh who cares? Get fat. What does it matter? I still had some goals and things, but I was like, ah, you're old. Why? Where do you bother? What do you bother? And then one day I thought, you know what? That's unacceptable. You're going to live till you die. Do you really want to live every day in regret? Do you want to have days where you're thinking to yourself, I'm not living up to my potential, you know? I mean, I taught high school science and math for years. I've got a lot of knowledge, and I taught child psychology and psychology for years at the college level. It wasn't suddenly I turned 65 or something, and I don't know anything anymore. Those are silly thoughts. Silly thoughts. So I decided, you know what? I'm changing my ways. I went to the gym.

Martha Burich (00:16:47) - I got a trainer, personal trainer. I've lost weight, £52 so far. I've still got about 20. But I made a commitment. Just. Just like with the alcohol. Just today, I just tell myself, you know what? Just today, today. And I would jump out of bed, put on my shoes, my gym clothes and my shoes and go because I knew I had to make it a habit immediately. And I have a new trainer now, my old trainer left. So we get a new trainer and this guy's been in the business like 30 years. He's so phenomenal. And our first training session, he goes, you're an athlete. I said, what you know, and then and then I'm thinking back to myself, Duncan. When I was 18, I did a bicycle ride 88 miles. It was all hills. All hills. I was the only female and I did not walk up any hill, even though I came in two hours behind the males. I finished, I finished, and you know, and that's my thing.

Martha Burich (00:17:35) - Just just finish. So finish today. All you got to do is finish today sober. That's all. That's all you got to do.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:17:41) - So that's kind of like, all you're really asking of yourself is to exercise today. Don't just worry about what happened yesterday or tomorrow. Just do it today. Tomorrow.

Martha Burich (00:17:51) - Right? Right. And I can make I can make plans for tomorrow. I want to go here. I want to go there, but I don't invest myself in tomorrow. I do everything I can today to make my life fabulous. That means I talked to who I think I need to talk to. I do what I think I need to do or what to do because, you know, every day is so fabulous as long as you remind yourself, you know what? I am just so lucky to be where I am and to have people that I love, that love me. And and then, you know, every time you go to an AA meeting, it's a gigantic group therapy.

Martha Burich (00:18:24) - I get to learn from all these people, from all walks of life. What a blessing.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:18:31) - Yeah. And I just want to pick up on that kind of like, do what you've got to do and do it today. What are we waiting for?

Martha Burich (00:18:37) - What are you waiting for? Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Because otherwise, when you're going to do it. I mean.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:18:42) - Was drinking for you kind of like a way of putting stuff off, of saying like, I'll do it later. Procrastinating and not really making the most of your life. Yeah. Drinking was.

Martha Burich (00:18:52) - I thought, my way to deal with life. You know, I thought it was helping me handle things. In actuality, it was making things worse. I remember sitting with my glass, you know, I can see still got my glass in my hand, you know, sitting with that glass. And one time I kissed my glass of booze and I said, I love you because I did, I loved it, I loved it more than my mother, more than my husband, more than my son.

Martha Burich (00:19:23) - I loved that bottle.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:19:25) - Now I feel bad that I've forgotten who wrote it. But there is a great, uh, book called Alcohol Loves Stories. And. Because I thought, oh man.

Martha Burich (00:19:35) - Things for me. But in actuality it wasn't. It was making everything worse. Of course, you've heard this story a thousand times. Everybody says the same thing. You don't realize until you let it go. Like, wait a minute. That was actually ruining my life.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:19:47) - I spoke to somebody earlier about that. It's like, well, it helps me deal with stress. And then we spent ten minutes talking about all of the things that actually the massive amount of stress it causes in your life. So how exactly does that work? But yeah.

Martha Burich (00:20:03) - Yeah. Love the stress of a blow and go machine, right? I never had to have one of those luckily. But yeah, everybody that tells me about them. Yeah. All right. Alcohol really making your life better.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:20:14) - Yeah. So go on tell us then.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:20:15) - Tell us the story about regret.

Martha Burich (00:20:17) - Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So I'm at I'm like two months sober, 2 or 3 months sober, and and I just had this sin. I had to get out. I had to get this terrible thing I had done out in my head to confess it. So I go to this meeting and it was in a different part of town. I didn't know any of these people is a total different part of town. And they were all I know. They seem like young, maybe 30 ish, 40 ish. And so I'm in the media. I'm just crying my eyes out, Duncan crying my eyes out. I just have to confess. I have to confess. And and I go. When my son was three months old, I went back to drinking and drugs. So I had to stop breastfeeding him and just cry my eyes out, right? That was my. That was my big sin. After the meeting, this young guy comes up to me and he goes, oh, don't worry about it, honey.

Martha Burich (00:21:04) - I used to shoot up with my baby in the back seat, and I looked at him and I said, you win. And then I realized all this since I was nothing but a pissant. Excuse me? And I actually had a woman at the jail one time say to me, why would God forgive me if he wouldn't forgive the devil? Immediately? I thought, okay, we got an ego problem here. We got an ego problem.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:21:28) - Yeah. Wow. No, I mean, that's that's one of those things I meet people and they do. They're like, well, I, I'm totally different. I think they call it terminal uniqueness in AA. Ah yeah. Yeah. And you meet people like that and it's like just it's that moment when they realize that actually, no, you just like we've all been there, we've all done that. We've done stupid stuff that we're not proud of and it's not a competition. And then just that kind of like relief that they're among friends, that I think that's so powerful, that non-judgmental.

Martha Burich (00:22:03) - And, you know, if you've been around AA long enough, you'll have met homeless people, people that lived in dumpsters, people who've murdered people, you know, I mean, you by a drunk driver who I knew from meetings. And it's so sad. He was a young kid. He was a great kid. Smart, had a great life. But he got drunk. And then he was sober enough to realize what had happened in the accident. And he saw who he hurt because they weren't dead then. And he looked in that car and he knew both of them from meetings. I mean, just to have that. Yeah. That feeling just it's, uh. Yeah. And he's in jail. He's in jail now. He killed a husband and wife. People who are who had been in the program 30 something years were absolutely loved by everybody.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:22:48) - Yeah. I don't like alcohol very much. I don't know whether it might come across at some point. But on a slightly more positive note, I suppose you talked about, like making changes in your life and you mentioned that you've had all this experience, you know, the psychology and the teaching and all of that.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:23:05) - And you kind of I love that idea that, like, you stop working and all of a sudden you forget everything. There's nothing of any use in your mind anymore. Oh, that's complete rubbish. So how have you been putting that to, to use. How have you been kind of like sharing that information.

Martha Burich (00:23:22) - Well now I'm with, I guess what you call it mindset coach. So now I help other people. You know, there's so much social anxiety out there, especially for women over 60 men over 60 social anxiety. And you know, I really believe it's never too late to become what you might have been, what you what you wanted to be. It doesn't matter your age. You know, they're. Colonel Sanders was 65 when he looked at his Social Security check and thought, what? I can't live on that. So he didn't even sell his chicken until he was older than 65. There are people now, you know, there, uh, there's a woman gymnast. A woman gymnast at 95.

Martha Burich (00:23:57) - She was a gymnast when she was younger. It doesn't matter your age. There are there are men in South America who are shimmying up coconut trees at age 88, getting the coconuts. And they aren't they aren't going up like this either. They're shimmying up like they're 22. And you know, you know, it doesn't matter your age, as long as you're alive, you have life to live and you have people who need you. And let's say you don't like people. There are animals who need you. You know, I have two dogs, two rescues. They they need me. They love us. They need us.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:24:29) - So have you found the idea of the, you know, the dogs and caring for animals? Has that been. An important part of your recovery is that provided you with some important kind of capital. Yes.

Martha Burich (00:24:39) - You know the one dog. Okay, we have two dogs. One's crazy. And and anytime he sees a car or anything moving, he goes like nuts because he's an Australian cattle dog and he needs a job and we don't have any cattle for him to rustle up.

Martha Burich (00:24:52) - But anyway, so I can't walk him because he's crazy. But I'll take the lab and the labs like 30, £40. And so during Covid, I just took that dog a walking and he kept me. He kept me going during Covid and oh, you want to hear some Covid stories? Okay. Meetings during Covid, my brother and I would go to meetings and I would be like, oh my God, can we hide the truck? It was so stressful going to meetings. One guy got a circus tent and put it in his backyard. We used to go to meetings in his backyard, in his circus tent, and every Saturday night we'd have an ice cream social. Oh, it's so much fun. But it was still scary. Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:25:31) - So were you allowed to continue doing in-person meetings during Covid?

Martha Burich (00:25:36) - Up to ten. You could have ten people in the room at a time. And then one time, okay, we used to have meetings at the Masonic Center. And so we continued.

Martha Burich (00:25:45) - The Masons were gracious enough to let us continue to have the meetings during Covid. And one day, the guy that hosted the meetings, he always had $1,000 on him in case we got arrested. He got arrested so we would have ten of us. So there were 12 of us in the room. He'd say, now look, if the cops come, two of you go to the bathroom. So we're legal.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:26:09) - Yeah, I love that. It's like now. Now our main crime is having too many people in the meeting. You should have met us before we got sober, Mr. officer. We were terrible.

Martha Burich (00:26:19) - Oh, yeah. Exactly, exactly.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:26:22) - That's beautiful.

Martha Burich (00:26:22) - We were so grateful to.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:26:24) - I'm going to take a wild guess that you think community is really important to sobriety. You got any stories about that or any thoughts on the subject?

Martha Burich (00:26:33) - Yes, yes. You know, it's really fun. Okay. I love AA picnics. Oh, Christmas. All right. Well, I first we've been with my brother about five and a half.

Martha Burich (00:26:43) - I was like two months sober. I live with my brother in the night before Thanksgiving. Well, Thanksgiving morning he says, okay, we're going. We're going to a Thanksgiving meeting, get in the truck. And then later on that day, I think there was a Thanksgiving night time meeting. Then comes Christmas. He goes, okay, look, we go all day. So here's the thing about community. One day I had to miss a Sunday night meeting. Now we would have these meetings, the men's table and a women's table. Now, that's not how AA is all the time, but sometimes that's what we do. Men's table. Women's table. So we had a women's table and there were these two sisters okay. So one Sunday I couldn't make it. And my brother comes home and he says, Lyle and Nancy want to know where you were. They missed you. And I'm like, whoa, somebody missed me. Little old me. Somebody actually thought about me. I was hooked.

Martha Burich (00:27:34) - That's it. Okay. You know, I'm going to be at that meeting every Sunday night. That's my home group. Uh, because I finally I belong to somewhere. You know, I felt even though I'd had this wonderful life and I never felt like I belong, but they're in AA just because somebody said, Where's Martha? We miss her. Oh, my God. And you know what? And I do that all the time. Whenever I see a newcomer come here, you sit by me, you know, because I remember how alone I felt at my first meeting. And those two ladies were so wonderful to me. I still love them to this day. And that feeling of because we feel so beat down, so bad about ourselves. And you know, when somebody says, oh honey, it's all going to be okay, don't worry. You know, that's like, oh my God, it's like you're a little kid, you know, oh, it's going to be okay. Yeah.

Martha Burich (00:28:24) - Community is so important in AA to me. Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:28:27) - We kind of all are little kids. Don't you know we're not that different once we've grown up. And we do. We want somebody to value us and to see us and to reassure us that we belong. I mean, I think that that's massive. That's a that's a beautiful story.

Martha Burich (00:28:44) - If you go to meetings and you think that people don't treat you right like, oh, you know, nobody likes me and blah, blah, blah, well, you make yourself the designated greeter. You sit there and you look out for new people. You sit there and you look out for anybody who's sitting by themselves, and you go plot your butt right next to them. You be the person who looks out for others, you know, because sometimes we're so self-centered. And isn't that the definition of an alcoholic? Self-centered. So you know what? If you think people aren't loving you enough at AA meetings, you be the lover. You be the person people go to for attention and for somebody to talk to.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:29:20) - Yeah. And I think, you know, there is an enormous advantage in in helping other people and, and sharing, you know, your knowledge and your wisdom. And that's something that comes across. And I don't think it matters what how you got sober. I did like genuinely, I've never met somebody who stopped drinking, who doesn't want to share it because he's just so much better than the alternative. Of course we want to. Of course we want to help other people. But, you know, I think there's there's something kind of almost not selfish as such, but there's something that really that really helps you about, you know, explaining how things work, even if you're just explaining where the coffee is, you know, it's it's massive. And I was I used to work in a bar and I don't honestly condone working in bars anymore, but I used to have a job in a bar, and I started at 2:00 in the afternoon. And this, this other girl started at 6:00. So I had worked there for four hours, and I'd worked out where the pumps that the beer was and where the money was, and that was about all that I knew.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:30:26) - But because she was new, she didn't know anything. She thought I'd work there for ages. She thought I was a genius based based on four hours experience. And I think that's kind of like you meet a lot of people and they'll say, oh, what can I say? I've only done 30 days, I've only done a couple of months. And it's like, do you know how much more you know than somebody who hasn't done any day, you know, hey, the.

Martha Burich (00:30:51) - Person who's been sober a day is a guide to me who just got here. You know what I mean? Oh, my God, you made it for a day. How'd you do it a week? Oh my goodness.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:31:02) - Yeah. Fantastic. So tell me. About. You've written a couple of books.

Martha Burich (00:31:07) - Oh, yeah?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:31:07) - Well, one of those about. I'm interested. Yes.

Martha Burich (00:31:11) - You can raise happy, responsible children. That book is finished. And yes, you can teach them all, because I did.

Martha Burich (00:31:22) - I was a high school teacher in a very, very rough area, and, um. Yep. And, uh, I taught them all. I taught them all. That was another very interesting experience. You know what? You know, the secret is.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:31:36) - The.

Martha Burich (00:31:36) - Secret. Yeah. Here's the secret to getting along with people. And this is. Oh, there's two secrets. One, shut up for your mouth. As my grandmother used to say. Shut up by your mouth. Just because you think it doesn't mean you need to say it. Because we're all wanting to improve everybody and help them. No, no no, no. If it isn't kind, if it isn't absolutely necessary, if it won't help them feel better about themselves and if it won't improve your relationship. Shut up. Just shut up. Excuse my language. Excuse me. Or be quiet. Just be quiet because we all think, you know we want to help people. Oh, let me tell you. You want another story? I'll give you another story.

Martha Burich (00:32:16) - All right, so I'm at a meeting. There's this young guy, and he's using the F-word. Every other word. Oh, my God, my sensibilities. Duncan. That's terrible. Oh, how uncouth, how terrible. So I'm talking to this old timer after I meet him. Oh, my goodness, can you believe how that young man talks just like an old teacher? One way he goes. What do you care? Does he apply for a job at your work? And I'm like, no. And he goes, and it's none of your business, is it? Well, no, I guess it really isn't, is it? And I really got me thinking. It is none of my business. And I'm not his mother and I'm not giving him a job. So why don't I just let him be who he is and say what he wants to say? If he wanted my advice or opinion, he'd ask for it. So until that day comes, shut up by your mouth.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:33:09) - Oh, that's so good.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:33:10) - But I just to return to that idea that you can you can teach them all. I mean, is that about kind of valuing something that's inside all of the kids and not writing any more?

Martha Burich (00:33:20) - Yeah, you have to. You have to. I had some really, really rough kids and I had to really look at them because, you know what? Everybody has good points. I had one student, she hated my guts and she was a holy terror in my class. But I'm talking to another teacher and he's like, oh my God, she's an angel. I love her. I'm like, what the heck? Well, what could be the problem? Could it be me? No, no, a problem can't be me. It can't be me. But you know, that's what we learn in AA. Guess who's the problem? Look in the mirror. No, thanks. I don't want to. I don't want to.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:33:58) - Oh, no. No, I think there's a lot in that.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:34:00) - And I, you know, I genuinely believe that there's good in everybody. Everybody has their strengths. Sure. A lot of us have weaknesses and a lot of us have a lot of weaknesses. But, you know, given the right help and support and love community, all of the stuff we've talked about today, you can teach you all of them, can't you? You're absolutely innocent.

Martha Burich (00:34:19) - It up to me to decide what my weakness is. You know what I mean? It isn't for you to tell me. Well, you know, Martha, you're weak and this and this and this. You know, Jack Canfield, he wrote. He's the co-author of Chicken Soup for the soul. Jack told us what you want to do is build on your strengths. And if you want someone's opinion. In fact, if someone gives you their opinion, you didn't ask for it. All you do is smile and say thank you. I'll consider that. That's all you got to do. Thank you. I'll consider that.

Martha Burich (00:34:47) - Otherwise, let it go. Build on your strengths. You know, we're all like so much, oh, I do this wrong. I do that wrong. Okay. How does that help the world? Why don't you build on your strengths and then guess what? The things that you don't do as well will fade off into back. Or if it's that important to you, learn how to do them better.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:35:06) - I think you're absolutely right. And I think there's a lot of kind of this sort of misunderstanding that like if you're not doing yoga and journaling and drinking smoothies all the time, you know, you're in trouble. You're you're practically doing heroin. And it's it's that bad. But my journaling is amazing for some people. I know some people who absolutely love journaling. I can't get on with it myself. It's not it's not my bag. So you've got to, you know, you find things, try them. If they work, do them, embrace them. If they don't find something else, but do something.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:35:41) - You know, I.

Martha Burich (00:35:41) - Know I'm a big sinner. I know I'm a big sinner. I eat donuts sometimes. Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:35:47) - I won't tell your personal trainer. Don't worry.

Martha Burich (00:35:50) - Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:35:51) - I don't know how much you've been to Ikea. Have you ever had the Ikea meatballs? Yes, I love them. Oh, you love them? Okay. I kind of like torpedoes. My theory, because my theory is that nobody actually likes the meat. But when you go to Ikea, you have to eat the meatballs because you're at Ikea. But you know, anyway, you like. Okay, fine. It's just a way of kind of like wheedling in this question at the end, which is like, what's the what's the meatballs? What's the thing that nobody really likes? But they have to do, you know, what's the thing in sobriety that nobody wants to do, but everybody should do?

Martha Burich (00:36:30) - Here's what I learned in A.A.. Listen to everybody as if they know something I don't, because they all do.

Martha Burich (00:36:36) - I'm always shocked. You know, these old toothless farmers will be talking to me and telling me stuff, you know? And here I am, miss FD, you know, in and in, and I'm so smart. Smart. And then they'll be talking like, man, he's really smart. He really knows what he's. And they all I mean it's everybody hears it from everybody. People lived in dumpsters everything. I'm like whoa. And they all have helped me maintain my sobriety and stay sober because I listened to them, because they did it. Yes, they did it. Well, if they did it, I can.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:37:08) - I think that is you know, that's great advice for life. I think everybody needs to to listen a little bit more and realize what other people have got to offer because they're like, I think I know a fair amount, but I am awfully, awfully aware that what I know is just a tiny little speck of all of the things that you could know. And that's why I like I am really, really bad at bowling.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:37:33) - So I took my, um, my nephew's bowling at the weekend just to kind of like, just to to reinforce to me that there are things in the world that I'm just really not very good at. So, yeah, I'm totally on board with that. So how come people find out a little bit more about you? Where where do you hang out? I mean, other name. Well, you.

Martha Burich (00:37:53) - Can go to my Facebook page. I try to post every day about something. Go to my website Martha birch.com are t h a b u r I c h.com and you can get some more information about me. I'm on LinkedIn.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:38:09) - We will put all of those links in the show notes so you can find those at flat pack flat facts sober.com or on uh you know all your favorite channels. Um, so look, thank you so much for your time. It's been a really, really insightful and interesting episode I have. I've had a ball. So thank you so much for your time.

Martha Burich (00:38:30) - It's been great.

Martha Burich (00:38:31) - Thanks, Duncan. You good interviewer. Good job.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:38:35) - Thank you. You know what I did? I just shut up and listen. Oh, that's all right. Have a great day. Thank you.

Martha Burich (00:38:45) - Hey. You too. Thanks.