Jessica Stipanovic [00:00:00]:
Until about 19. It was light and bright. Everything's possible. And then, eventually, the lights just shut off because I didn't understand that what I was dealing with was alcoholism. I thought at the time that every drink I was putting into my body was helping me. I've experienced a lot of loss in these 18 years. I've seen it. I've seen a lot of people not make it.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:00:24]:
And if if one thing that I say can perhaps help somebody, then great.

Christiane [00:00:32]:
Welcome back to the Happy Healthy Hustle podcast, where we're here today with a very special guest. We have Jessica Stipanovic, and I'm really excited because she's going to share how she came out overcome alcoholism. Jessica, why don't you introduce yourself?

Jessica Stipanovic [00:00:50]:
Hi. My name is Jessica Stipanovic. Christiana, thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I am the writer of an upcoming addiction memoir. I'm also the podcast host for the sober living stories podcast, which shares how people have overcome alcoholism and all forms of addiction and then now living their best lives sober.

Christiane [00:01:13]:
Amazing. And this all comes from a place of personal experience.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:01:18]:
Yes.

Christiane [00:01:18]:
So, Jessica, how would you describe your own superpower?

Jessica Stipanovic [00:01:22]:
I would say if my superpower is it's dreaming big. From a very early age, I knew what I was gonna do when I grew up. And it was I had 2 life goals. 1 was to become a New York Times best selling author, and the other was to travel to Africa. I didn't have any other goals. Those were just my 2. And I didn't think about getting married or having children. It just was those 2.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:01:50]:
I had a wonderful upbringing. My parents raised me to believe in myself that I could do and become anything, And it was seamless up until I was about 19 or 20. And then the dynamics of my family shifted. I remember coming back from college that year, and I was we had met at a bar. All my friends were there. It was a holiday season. As you often do, you get together. And I remember that was the first time that I sat there, and I thought about writing this book.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:02:25]:
I knew I wanted to do it. Everybody else was talking about just the evening, the present day, and I just could never get away from the future and what I wanted to do and how I was gonna get there, how I was gonna achieve that big goal. And I almost wish I didn't have it, but it was so placed on my heart to do that that I couldn't do anything else. So when I heard people talking that evening, that particular evening, I could still remember it as clear as day. I thought I don't fit in here. I don't I don't fit in. I'm not thinking about tonight. I'm not thinking about what I'm gonna do next week.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:03:02]:
I'm thinking about what I'm gonna do over there and how I'm gonna get there. But at that time, I did not have the life experience to fill the pages of that book, and that would come in the next 10 years as I shifted away from a normal college life and began to live a life of alcoholism in my early adulthood and what that looked like and not knowing what it was, but knowing something was very wrong and that I needed to fix it. I would say up until about 19, it was light and bright. Everything's possible. And then, eventually, the lights just shut off. And I spent the next near decade trying to figure out how to turn them back on, how to not only turn them back on, but to find myself where I went. I was just searching for her. I I left the country a number of times to reset, to go get well in Indonesia or Singapore and just start a wellness journey there and then come back and restart.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:04:07]:
But it never worked because I didn't understand that what I was dealing with was alcoholism. I thought at the time that every drink I was putting into my body was helping me. I'll stop when I feel better. I'll stop when I when I, you know so I would take another drink not knowing that I had already crossed that line, and every drink I was putting in my body was hurting me. So I didn't know until I knew, until I got around people who were versed in the disease of alcoholism, and I started to understand what was going on, and I began to get well. And that happened 18 years ago, and I have not had a drink since.

Christiane [00:04:46]:
So it sounds to me like your sense of time when you were with your college friends, your, let's say, vision was a little bit different. And I know, of course, because I'm a college professor myself, that it always seems 10 years are, like, a lifetime away. But it nearly seems like you were at a very mature mindset to where you were actually thinking about 10 years in the future or thinking about things you would do in the future and not necessarily tomorrow. Does that sound right?

Jessica Stipanovic [00:05:21]:
Correct. I just knew that I was going to write a book, and that's what I was to do. But I had no idea how to write a book or what to put in the pages of the book, but I knew that it was going to be something that had to be done. And, you know, I had a a long about a 10 year after a at the tail end of my drinking when I became sober, I began to work as a journalist. I began to work as a freelance writer for about 10 years. It was more of a a talent that I just had that I didn't know that I had, and then it came out. I never went to school for it. I have a bachelor's degree in psychology.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:05:58]:
The ironic part about it is those 10 years that I bounced around in different countries, drunk in some countries, sober in other countries, swearing it off for a year, putting it down for 3 months, picking it back up. There was there was some very difficult moments there. I mean, alcoholism is a progressive illness that eventually wants you either dead or institutionalize, and it takes a lot of turns. When I finally put it down and I began to surround myself with people who knew about it, And I learned about it because I I was smart. I always did well in school. I just didn't know what I was dealing with. And it wasn't until the end of my active alcoholism and the beginning of my sobriety that I began to really see my talent come out of writing. Because I had written all those years in active alcoholism, Whether I was away, I I was interviewing the veterinarians that were traveling through.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:07:02]:
I I said, hey. That could be a good piece. But what ended up happening was none of them got published. None of them were paid for. It's like the old example of sitting at a barstool just telling this person, hey. I'm gonna do this one day. But it never comes to fruition. It never happens.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:07:19]:
It's just all these fruitless efforts pouring forth your, and it just never amounts to anything. And that's what that looked like, an act of alcoholism. But when I put it down, within a year and a half, I had over 150 articles published and paid for through my through staff writing at a newspaper, through, magazine articles here and there. And I'm not saying that because that's an achievement. I'm saying that because it speaks to that barstool mentality of, like, when you're doing something and you're in that addiction and you're in that alcoholism, things don't happen. They just are about the alcoholism. It's never about anything else. It's not about your family, your friends, your education, your dreams.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:08:08]:
You think it is, but it just doesn't have the components that can amount to anything. Because with alcoholism, it's always about that. So once you get rid of that and you have, you know, solutions, you can begin to really start your life.

Christiane [00:08:25]:
What would you say was your biggest Challenge in your life, and how did you overcome it?

Jessica Stipanovic [00:08:31]:
Well, hands down, the biggest challenge in my life was overcoming alcoholism. Because the active part, of course, was difficult. There was a lot of unanswered questions. My health wasn't good. But when I overcame it in the beginning stages, that was difficult as well. It was the hardest thing I did, but it was the best thing I ever did. And I had a lot of help. I had a people who surrounded me and just stood next to me and beside me, and they listened to me, and they told me the truth always.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:09:13]:
And the difference is I yielded and listened to them. If they told me to do something, I trusted that they had an answer that I did not have. And I took it, and I went forward. So, you know, traveling around the world by yourself, living up and until this this point, being very self sufficient that was very difficult for me to do. But I knew that my life depended on it. I was willing to put down what I knew to say that I don't know anything about getting better here and to listening to people who had more time than me. And that's when my life started again.

Christiane [00:09:54]:
I love that. And you actually say your life started again. That's brilliant. So what or who do you think was the biggest influence that helped you overcome the challenge?

Jessica Stipanovic [00:10:04]:
It wasn't just 1. Mhmm. I have some I have some key people that I love dearly and that are still in my life that, of course, stayed right next to me and were closest and would not let me fall either way. It would go. Like, I was a difficult person. I was hurting, and I wanted to be better. And I had lost time, and there's some desperation there. And and I was angry, and I was sad.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:10:28]:
They didn't absorb that. They accepted it. They told me I have just a couple moments to sit in that, and we need to move on. And so I listened to them, and my life started to move forward. You know, in my 3rd year of sobriety, I began a book, the book. I began the book, and I took a year off, and all I did was write. I wrote in the bank. I wrote at the food store.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:10:51]:
I wrote anywhere that I was. That was my sole focus because I knew that was what I was supposed to do finally. But what ended up happening was after I wrote that draft, I put it away, and I didn't touch it again for about 15 years. That brings you know? I don't know. Writers do that. They just say, I can't. I'm not gonna do it, or they think it's not good enough or whatever the the narrative you tell yourself is. I put it away.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:11:20]:
I put it on a shelf. And this past year, I had the good fortune to be placed in front of people that helped me take that off the shelf and begin again to complete the dream. And so that's where I've been living in the last year and a half. It looks very different. I was single then. I lived in a home by myself. I could do what I wanted right when I wanted that year that I put that together. So this time, I have a home.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:11:56]:
I have a husband. I have 3 children. We run a business. I'm launching a podcast. I've so it's busy. When I had the opportunity to take it off the shelf, I knew that it was the premier opportunity because of the people that were being placed. And I said, I have to take this. I have to grab this.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:12:16]:
And it took a lot of time away from my family this past year. And in you know, my first shoe, I was handmade, homemade, everything. And my youngest, I was doing this. So I had to instead of beating myself up and saying, I didn't get to volunteer at the school this last year as much as I did before, I had to reframe it and say, well, hey. Maybe she needs a mom. Maybe she needs the example that, hey. My mom has a dream. She's going to go after it until she accomplishes it.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:12:55]:
And that's what she gets to look at. So I had to reframe it from beating myself up for not being there at every single moment as I was laying the foundation of this this past year to honoring it and finding seeking balance so that I could accomplish it, but not at the expense of others, namely my family. I think this year, I laid the foundation, and I'm thinking that 24 is gonna be implementing what I have already laid, which is gonna make for more time and for me to just move forward. And they've been so gracious. My husband's been so supportive. How many people can overcome 10 years in, like, the darkness of their life, right, and come out? And I made a choice this summer. I celebrated 18 years of sobriety, and I had never spoke about that out loud. I always kept it private.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:13:51]:
It was easy to write it down in a book because I didn't have to present myself as someone who had alcoholism and then didn't. I wasn't speaking to anyone. I was writing it on the the pages of a book. It was still very private in a sense. But I made a decision this summer to begin to speak out loud about it, mostly because I had to stop being afraid of what people were gonna think about me, and instead, honor that perhaps my message could help somebody else. And to make that the premier focus instead of what anyone else who presently knew me thought about me. You know? And it it was just a choice that I thought, if I was grace of living in recovery, who am I to keep that to myself? To maintain, you know, to maintain who I was as a person in the community or whatever it was. I proudly gave that up, and I began to speak out loud.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:14:54]:
And it was a process. It was difficult. It was kind of caught right here. It was so hard to say, and it was hard the 1st time, hard the 2nd time, hard the 3rd time. But now it's not so hard. You know? And it's really okay. I I reached 2 other milestones this year. I celebrated 10 years of marriage.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:15:18]:
That is a milestone, I believe, and I turned 50. And when I turned 50, I was so happy to have my 50th birthday. I was just, like, late. I was like, wow. I am 50 years old. You know? And that has to account for something. So I thought, yes. This year will be different.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:15:37]:
This year, I will live my life out loud so that perhaps somebody could catch a message that could help them start their process and overcome this as well. I've experienced a lot of loss in these 18 years. I've seen it. I've seen a lot of people not make it. And if if one thing that I say can perhaps help somebody, then great. I'm not afraid anymore of keeping that quiet. It doesn't mean anything to me to do that anymore.

Christiane [00:16:12]:
I love that perspective that you have now. I sometimes say, we all have something important to share. And if we don't share it, we're actually stealing from others because we are keeping our story behind and private, more worried about what they will think of us than actually us thinking of how we can help them. And that's why I love in my podcast when people share their superpower because frequently afterwards, the audience tunes in and they say, oh my gosh. I totally connected with that superpower, and I'm feeling that's something I could tap into as well. So go you for sharing it. I really applaud you, Jessica. Thank you.

Christiane [00:16:55]:
Well, where can we find out more about you and get in touch with you? What's your preferred social media or your website?

Jessica Stipanovic [00:17:03]:
You can find me at www.jessicastipanovic.com. So that's s t I p a n o v I c. And the easiest way to get updates about my upcoming memoir or any freebies that I have or any sharing of anything I've learned up and until this point, I try to make it available through a newsletter called the 321 on a personal note. And that just you simply sign up on the website by dropping in your email, and that comes out every Sunday. And the preferred social media is my Instagram, which is at Jessica Stipanovic.

Christiane [00:17:40]:
Thanks for being part of the Happy Healthy Hustle, and we look forward to seeing and hearing you next time. Thank you.

Jessica Stipanovic [00:17:47]:
Thank you,