Drunk-ish - A Sobriety Podcast · Stefanie Wilder-Taylor

The Margarita That Started My Relapse with Colleen Saldana

·44 min·3 clips

Colleen says she was “planning my relapse” two days before the first margarita.

1. Drunkish frames Colleen Saldana’s story around sobriety, relapse, and recovery after a first drink that restarted heavy drinking. 2. Stephanie Wilder-Taylor hosts Colleen Saldana, who works as a marriage and family therapist at Friendly Recovery Center and speaks as a sober person with a relapse history. 3. The episode asks what happens when someone gets sober young, stays physically sober for years, and then relapses at 38. 4. Colleen describes a childhood shaped by camping trips to the river, Death Valley, and a home where her mother drank from box wine and passed out on the couch. 5. She says her father struggled with depression and often had a beer in his hand while she and her brother tried to manage the chaos at home. 6. Colleen says she was bullied at school, overweight as a kid, and often felt like a latchkey child with no clear adult protection. 7. She explains that she started drinking around 14, smoked weed heavily, and had parties with alcohol in junior high while her parents were away camping. 8. Colleen says high school felt bad, her grades were poor, and she barely graduated before a camping trip where her mother broke her leg after falling drunk down trailer stairs. 9. She says that period led to her mother losing weight, becoming health-focused, and encouraging Colleen to run and change her eating, which she says worsened her eating disorder. 10. Colleen says she first got sober at 21 after becoming sick in Rosarito, then being diagnosed with tuberculosis and cirrhosis of the liver. 11. She remembers a Native American woman in the doctor’s office telling her, “you’re yellow and you’re 21 years old and you’re gonna die.” 12. She says her father took her car keys, cigarettes, and weed, and stayed home for two months because no rehab or eating-disorder program would take her. 13. Colleen says that same period pushed her toward therapy and eventually toward a career change from graphic design to becoming a therapist. 14. She says she finished a bachelor’s degree and graduate degree at Cal State Fullerton in 2015 while relying on financial aid, scholarships, and a small loan. 15. Colleen says she worked at Kaiser, then private practice, and still had an active eating disorder and severe anxiety during those years. 16. She explains that her relapse started after a tense office situation with another therapist, where she felt she could not meet that person without drinking. 17. Colleen says she took the first margarita, bought a bottle of wine later that night, then moved to nightly wine, Bacardi, and kratom use while working therapy sessions from home. 18. She says the last stretch included morning kratom to manage hangovers, Uber rides to work, a failed rehab attempt, and an intervention that led to detox and sober living in Fullerton. 19. The conversation is direct, confessional, and practical, with Stephanie asking precise follow-up questions and Colleen answering with specific dates, places, and drinking patterns. 20. Listeners who want a relapse-and-recovery story with family details and addiction specificity will get the most from this episode, while people wanting a light recovery chat may skip it.

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