Sara Somers, Author of “Saving Sara: A Memoir of Food Addiction”

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:09] Welcome to The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I am Dr. Mark Leeds and I will be your host. Join me in exploring the world of addiction treatment. How can we improve the ways that we help individuals to overcome addiction? The goal of treatment is to save lives and help people to get back on track to a path towards success and happiness in life. The following is an interview with Sara Somers, author of Saving Sara, a memoir of food addiction, available now on Amazon.com. Welcome to the Rehab Podcast.

Sara Somers [00:48] Thank you. Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:50] I was just reading your blog before we came on. Is sarasomers.com out my window?

Sara Somers [00:55] Yes, that was the one I first started and I’m doing it to try and keep a record of what’s the pandemic here. And then I have a separate one that’s just about food addiction. That one is saving-sarah.org.

Dr. Mark Leeds [01:10] So that one’s directly related to the book. And the book I was looking at on Amazon, it comes out next month, May 16th. May 12th, two weeks from today. Oh, wow. Congratulations. That’s great.

Sara Somers [01:27] Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s been up on Amazon since August. It’s like, okay, already. Can we get here? They put it up a long time in advance. Not my book. All books, I think.

Dr. Mark Leeds [01:40] Yeah. And it’s a good book. I had the opportunity to read it already. And I love the book. And I wanted to ask you the difference between Overeaters Anonymous and Greysheeters Anonymous.

Sara Somers [01:52] First of all, I owe a debt to Overeaters Anonymous because that was the first program I heard about and went to. And at the time that I went in, they were transitioning from this one food plan, which was printed on a gray sheet, to what they call the dignity of choice. And they had three different food plans and said, pick the one that we think would work for you. It wasn’t until much later that I kind of shook my head and thought, you know, if I could pick something that would work for me and be trusted to pick something that would actually really work, I wouldn’t need to be here. And so I bounced around in those rooms because they kept letting go of structure instead of tightening it up. And for people like me who’ve read the book, I think of myself as a pretty low bottom binge eater. The reason Greysheeters Anonymous works for me is their structure. It’s very like AA. It’s a no matter what program. You do it this way, no matter what. You don’t get on the slippery slope. You’re not partially pregnant. You’re not partially drunk. And so it’s really appealing to me because it’s so much like AA. And turns out I thrive with structure. If I have walls to bounce up against, so to speak, I feel a lot of freedom. But if I am just told, well, just do what you want, it paralyzes me and then I get scared and then I go eat. But I say I’m addicted to sugar and grains and hard form and liquor form, that my body’s like a distillery. You put that stuff in, it turns to alcohol and I’m off and running. Once I realized that, once I realized that I actually had an allergy. Then I realized those kind of things weren’t going to work for me, but that didn’t make them bad. OA and Greysheeters Anonymous, AA, they’re all free, you know, and sometimes I think people are a little scared of if it’s free, it can’t be very good. But I mean, nothing’s free. We’ve paid, I feel like I’ve paid my dues and you’ve read the book. I think I’ve paid my dues and I’ve earned my seat in this program and in AA. I just pray that people find what works for them. But I came into these 12-step rooms with a diet mentality. It turned out the only thing wrong with me was that I had this severe allergy to sugar and grains. I can’t put it in my body. If I don’t put it on my body, I don’t obsess about food. I don’t crave food. I do my no matter what. I just have specific amounts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’ve got a whole lot of freedom between my ears now because I’m not worrying about food and what I look like and what I’m going to eat or what I’m not going to eat. I got to move to Paris. I mean, I would never have been able to do that. So I’ve got a lot of freedom in a program that has a lot of structure.

Dr. Mark Leeds [04:59] How do the 12 steps apply to a program about food and managing eating?

Sara Somers [05:04] Well, we use the same 12 steps as Alcoholics Anonymous. I believe that I’m powerless over food, meaning the foods that have those sugar and grains in them, and that my life was unmanageable. And it was. If I wrote a timeline of my progressive eating when I was a child or a teenager and the ways that I couldn’t manage my life, you can see they were related. They got worse. The story of finding the quarter on the ice. And then I turned into stealing my mother’s, having my mother’s wallet and lying and cheating. And I couldn’t manage my life living like that because I was always on the run or looking over my shoulder, wondering who was going to catch me. People like me, it’s one thing to stop eating. Then it’s a whole nother thing to say, if you’re going to stay stopped, Sara, you’re going to have to change your behaviors 180 degrees. And that’s what the 12 steps do. Whether you’re a drug addict, whether you’re an alcoholic, doesn’t matter. They promise. If you don’t find a way to change your behavior from going that way to going that way, you will go back to your addiction. We each go through the 12 steps, sometimes more than once. I absolutely believe that was true for me. I had been in therapy. I was a therapist. I think that I can kindly say the combination really is wonderful. I had some big problems. So having the combination of therapy plus this remarkable spiritual program that even with my very cerebral mind, I still think it’s full of miracles. And I don’t ask questions anymore. They just seem to keep coming and my life keeps getting better. It’s been so long and yet I can remember as if it was yesterday, crying and begging God because I could not stop eating. That was a miracle to me. What I get from going to 12-step meetings is to be reminded, to be grateful about that. It’s a gift. If I could have done it, I would have done it. So obviously I couldn’t. And to pass it on to another person. And that’s why I wrote the book. I want to pass on that there is hope, there’s a solution. I think there are a lot of people, I heard Nicholas Kristof talking to Bill Maher in February saying that obesity is one of the worst problems next to loneliness in the world now, that they expect by 2030 that 50% of Americans are going to be obese, not overweight, obese. It’s a real problem and so I wanted to write the book to pass it on there’s hope that if you identify with my book you there’s a good chance you’re like me and if you go try these programs these base eaters anonymous programs there’s likely you’ll get help and they’re not easy it’s like learning a new language you know being told you’re gonna have to learn Chinese

Dr. Mark Leeds [08:19] I’m curious as far as because I work in the field of medication assisted treatment for drug addiction and a lot of people are against that even though it’s proven to be beneficial and especially with the 12-step fellowships pretty much all of them have no issue with medication treatment for addiction it’s an outside issue it’s between a person and their sponsor maybe but Narcotics Anonymous stands out as if they have an official position against medication used for addiction treatment. Does Greysheeters Anonymous have any position on that if people take medication for weight loss or for appetite control?

Sara Somers [08:58] We don’t have anything written down. And as you said, everything is between a sponsor and a sponsee. If somebody asked me about taking medication specifically for appetite suppressant, I would suggest they didn’t because eventually they’d have to get off of it and go through the same thing. So why put it off? You know, is it vanity? You just want to get thin faster. I mean, and the other one that comes up is around sleep because a lot of people, when they first get abstinent, get sober, have terrible sleeping problems, you know, racing in their minds. And again, you know, we say, unless you really have severe insomnia and go to a doctor and work it out with your doctor, we caution not to do it just to do it, just to get more sleep, because it’s better to try and get through these difficult things. The thing that the drug addict, the alcoholic, the food addict that we all have in common is we don’t like being uncomfortable and to the point where we use something. And learning to live with discomfort and finding out you’re not going to die, nothing’s going to happen, you’re just uncomfortable, just like a lot of people in the world, it’s a huge lesson. And putting it off is all that’s doing. It’s putting it off. And people often come in if they’re excited. You know, I have a friend who says they’re at the corner of hope and desperation. And, you know, they come in desperate, it and they hope they’re going to turn the corner and go to hope. So letting go of things right at that moment with hope, it’s a lot easier often. And waiting, I think it can get harder. So that’s my personal opinion. Greysheeters Anonymous doesn’t have any kind of written opinion. And I would never, if I met somebody, I would never think that I know them well enough that I could diagnose them and say you should or you shouldn’t, I’d say, what does your doctor say?

Dr. Mark Leeds [11:11] Yeah, and that’s a good way to see it is that it’s between a patient and doctor and, you know, a person and their sponsor when they have that kind of relationship. Is that something that when a person goes to Greysheeters Anonymous, I mean, these days they are going in a Zoom meeting, can a person find a sponsor fairly easily and get to work on the steps?

Sara Somers [11:33] In AA, yes. They will get a sponsor, probably start on the steps right away. In Gray Sheet, we suggest you wait 90 days and get abstinent so that you’re building a pattern. You’re making it intuitive. You practice practice, just like we practice meditation. You practice doing weighing and measuring your food until it becomes much more intuitive. Because, as I said, we don’t like to be uncomfortable. And there’s a chance we’re going to get uncomfortable when we start digging deeper. And I have a friend who says, if you want to know why you ate, get abstinent. And it is so true because the stuff, I mean, you’re a doctor. The stuff just comes out of you. And some people just get so frightened. Other people get anxious. A lot of people just get enraged at everything, at every little creak. It’s amazing. So you don’t want to encourage someone to do something where they might have to go back because who knows if they’d come back. These are such hard programs. So I tell my sponsors, let’s wait 90 days. It takes about 21 days for detoxing. Who knows how long it takes for an emotional withdrawal. That’s very personal but after three months I think that people can start getting on the bandwagon and doing some steps at least on a lighter level you don’t have to go deep you can wait but definitely do them

Dr. Mark Leeds [13:13] And was it also recommended to start out by going to 90 meetings in 90 days to go to a meeting every single day

Sara Somers [13:19] Certainly in aa that’s become it was never written in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was never written down anywhere. It’s one of those, you know, folklore things that’s come down through the ages and it’s been picked up by many of the 12-step programs. If I have a brand new person and she’s having a hard time getting abstinent, I will say, well, why don’t you go to a meeting a day? And right now in the pandemic, it’s very easy to do it. If you’re actually having to walk there or drive there, it’s harder. But I think it’s good for another reason, not just because we have brains that need to be washed, if you will. You know, my brain thought so poorly of me. My brain was so accustomed to thinking a certain way about the world and a certain way about my family. And I really needed it to be washed. And so the more I heard other people talking about what they were getting, one, they talked about where they came from. So they were reminding me what it was like to binge, but didn’t want to go back there. And then they were telling me what their lives were like. And they’re pretty wonderful. So then I wanted to come back. Now, in the beginning, my memory was 30 seconds, 60 seconds, you know, depended whether I’ve always kept a journal. So I would write things down and read it, but my memory wasn’t great then. So I would, and so I would pick up the phone and call people. We suggest that too, for food addicts, that they pick up the phone and talk to people and ask them, what was the hardest, what was the hardest moment you had? You know, what was the greatest moment you had? Just find out, get your brain washed.

Dr. Mark Leeds [15:10] And that’s another thing I was going to ask you about as far as are you able to, by going to meetings and getting involved, to build a support network of people that you can become friends with or talk to on a regular basis and call or have meetings with?

Sara Somers [15:25] Absolutely. I like to say, you know, that we’re zebras and we’ve been running around with the lions out in the world and we didn’t see the other zebras. But now all the zebras have gotten together and they’ve run in a herd. And so we protect each other. We don’t want someone running out and maybe getting caught by a lion. So we’re very protective of each other. That doesn’t mean that we all like each other. I have this sense, I’ve always had this sense that we’re in a lifeboat together, you know, and who wants to be the one to rock the boat? It’s something that works. We want to help each other. If I met you out on the street, would I like you? I don’t know. I, you know, I like a lot of these people. And over time, if you talk to someone enough, you kind of get your really good friends. They’re on the same level. They have the same politics, can’t bring politics into meetings. And so you know and so I have like a probably about 10 12 women that I’m that I feel very close to and that I know would answer the phone any time of day if I called and want me to succeed and I want them to succeed and then I have a whole bunch of younger women here in Europe you know that I kind of I’m a mother hen to you know and they call me I wouldn’t hang out with them, I don’t think, but I care about them as if they were my family. I really feel like we go to the brink of death. It’s true. People understand that drugs and alcohol will kill you. And I believe that food will kill you also. It isn’t just the eating of food. It’s the terrible old fogginess you go into when you’re on a run and things you do, things you say. And my worst fear is that I actually wouldn’t physically die, that I would just be like a walking skeleton. I wouldn’t have anything to give to the world. I wouldn’t, nobody would really care about me and my heart would keep beating. I mean, I just can’t imagine any worse health. So, yeah, I am very protective of my girls over here. And I’m very grateful for my friends that care about me. And I have a lot of people that I know from just my life that care. They saw me as a person that was not particularly pleasant. And they’ve seen that I’ve become somebody different. And they’re all proud of me. And I’m going to try, I’m going to have a book launch Zoom party. And every single one of those people is coming. They’re just so happy for me. It just, you know, I could just tell you, I could tell you a hundred things that are so wonderful.

Dr. Mark Leeds [18:25] Oh yeah. Do they have in Greysheeters Anonymous, do you have any kind of a key tag or a chip that you give out for milestones?

Sara Somers [18:34] We do milestones, 30 days, 60 days. Is we really try to keep away from the weight as the reason we’re there. You know, that we’re there for our sanity. I mean, we have a saying that we came for the vanity and stayed for the sanity. You know, that people have different bodies. If you just eat properly, you’re going to stop at a certain place. And it depends whether you take up exercise. But there’s no have tos except for what you put on the scale and in your body. But really, we try to put the focus on living a better life and trying to take it off the food, take it off the weight. Because for me, just speaking personally, that’s all I did 24 hours a day was think about my weight, how ugly I was, how I couldn’t walk by a window, you know, a glass window without looking and wondering who that woman was. And it was a 24 seven job. And I’m so grateful. It’s, it was hard to do. And I still find myself slipping back. I mean, but I know that it will only make me unhappy. So we have chips for putting the days together, just like you would have a hallelujah if you started learning Chinese and actually had a conversation, you know, that you’ve done something hard. This is great. You’ve gotten this far. And then I think people tend not to get too into it after one year, The first year, if you make it through the first year, it’s just wonderful.

Dr. Mark Leeds [20:23] Now, as far as friends and family, there’s a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bodybuilding encyclopedia, which has always stuck with me. He says, if a friend gives you a piece of pizza, that’s not a true friend. Now, that’s true of friends and family. You know, the people insist that you should be able to eat like them or you go out to a restaurant with your family and you want to eat the way that you know you should eat. You’re trying to stick to a program and they’re like, well, come on, you can have a little bit. This one meal isn’t going to kill you or this isn’t going to make you gain weight or whatever. I mean, how do you how do you deal with friends and family? You know, once you’re in the program and trying to explain it to them or to deal with because eating is a social thing that we have to deal with all the time.

Sara Somers [21:11] Well, there’s different aspects of it. There’s families where if you don’t eat mom’s food, she thinks you don’t love her. I mean, it’s just practically killing her. So that’s one thing. We lovingly say that Greysheeters Anonymous is like taking assertiveness training 101. You’re not going to lie down and be a doormat for anybody anymore just to make other people happy. They will begin to believe you when they see what happens but I what I used to do if when I went out to dinner people I didn’t know is I would just say look I’m because I bring out my scale at a I couldn’t tell you what four ounces was if you paid me a million dollars so I say I don’t eat certain foods. I weigh everything. Anybody wants to ask me a question, you have one minute, then no questions because I want to enjoy my dinner. And people laugh and no questions. Nobody says a thing because I said it first. Usually if people push it, push me, they have a weight problem and they’re trying to kind of come in the back door to find out if they can find out something for me without actually having to do what I do. So it’s a difficult one, but it is, it is the biggest problem women have in this program is asserting them, asserting themselves and saying, no, this is what I have to do. And if you don’t like it, go cook your own food. I’m not going to stop you, just don’t stop me.

Dr. Mark Leeds [22:51] That’s a huge issue. I think with all addictions is that, you know, a person gets involved with something that’s working for them. And then, down the road, you know, people come down on them and everyone has an opinion and everyone knows what’s best for you and says, well, you’ve been doing that long enough. Let me tell you what to do now. Or, you know, I think you’re done with that now. You know, you’ve been clean long enough or you’ve lost enough weight. You know, I mean, even with addiction treatment for opioids, people quickly forget about how, you know, where a person came from. You know, they went from being completely hopeless to now functioning normally in society. And even three months down the road, the family is like, well, I think you’re done with that treatment. I think you’re fine now. You know, so yeah, I mean, it’s hard to deal with friends and family and co-workers and, you know, everybody has an opinion and a plan. But I think that’s great advice, you know, or not just advice, but I guess learning how to not be everybody’s doormat and let people walk all over you.

Sara Somers [23:51] It’s interesting the way you’re saying it’s a way of thinking that you start somewhere and you get to a goal and then you’re fixed. I think that’s a way of thinking, certainly that Americans have. And so it’s not really the fault of people who think that. And in a way, I have to take responsibility for my recovery and explain to people it doesn’t work like that. You know I have something that I’m never going to get cured of I’m going to arrest it and it is arrested and I plan to keep it that way but I’m not cured I am this way I am hardwired to self abuse by eating food and one day at a time I don’t do it so I’ve really and we really I think people in the program I’m sure you’ve talked to a lot of them, but I think people in the program do not think I get to, I get somewhere and then I’m fixed, which is what Weight Watchers tells you know, because I did Weight Watchers many times. You get somewhere and then you get all those foods back that caused me to gain all the weight back. But I think it’s a way of thinking, you know, that, you know, we say it to each other all the time. It doesn’t matter where you’re going. It’s the journey that counts smell the roses well we’re actually saying something very profound that we’re not really paying attention to ourselves because this for me this is just a journey it continues to be a journey of self-discovery and by the price I pay is putting so eating a certain amount of food, putting on a scale, my abundance of food. I mean, living in Paris is a dream for somebody like me because I walk, I fill out my little passport, they make me fill it out. What time did you go out? I have to carry it in my hand, walk down, and there’s three vegetable markets with nothing but vegetables and fruit there. And I’m in heaven. I can eat everything. And next to it is a patisserie and my father used to say about this fancy accessory store in San Francisco called Gumps and he would say you have to treat Gumps like it’s a museum you go in and you appreciate everything but you can’t walk out with anything so I do that around patisseries and I because they’re beautiful here I mean it’s not like the United States they’re gorgeous. And I appreciate it. And I don’t walk out with anything. But those vegetable markets where you can see all the colors, all the fruit, and I can have everything. It’s a dream living here.

Dr. Mark Leeds [26:49] You had mentioned your sponsees and women in the program. Now, women in addiction recovery can sometimes have a lot of difficulty, especially when they go to meetings. And NA meetings are mostly men. I know a lot of AA meetings are also more men than women. And they always say men stick with the men, women stick with the women. And there aren’t always a lot of women to stick with. And you have to kind of look out for who you talk to. Is it different in Greysheeters Anonymous as far as the…

Sara Somers [27:18] Well, in Greysheeters Anonymous, the women outnumber the men a lot. But yes, the general rule of thumb is a woman should sponsor a woman, a man should sponsor a man. If you can’t get that, get a gay person from the other sex. You know, the whole point is to not let something else get in the way of what you can get from a sponsor-sponsor relationship. And so the general advice is a protection. So I know that here in Greysheeters Anonymous, some men have sponsored women and some women have sponsored men. I’ve never heard of a problem. I mean, we do watch out for each other. I’m much older. I’m going to be looking out for, I have some, there’s some young women in their 20s and 30s and all they want to do is get married, you know, they forget what’s important. And so I, you know, get on the phone, try and say, no, wait, wait, you know, like attracts like, do you want to attract someone like you are right now? Or do you want to get to be a really good person and then attract someone? And that usually pulls them away from hanging out with people. What I get from being in these programs is I get family. I get a deep, deep spiritual connection with people. I’ve learned how to meditate. I’ve learned how to connect with a higher power that I’ve really come to learn how to trust. I know it sounds weird, but I really do. I trust sometimes more than people. I have I feel like I can navigate the waters of life because I was so deficient of all all of that I didn’t I isolated I didn’t I was ashamed I didn’t want people to know how abusive I was to myself I didn’t think I was a good friend people who loved me you know I thought of myself as like a porcupine I had so much to learn. This is the richest experience I’ve ever had. And all I had to do was be a compulsive eater.

Dr. Mark Leeds [29:42] Now, what do you think of therapy? You know, would you recommend for people that are in Greysheeters Anonymous that therapy is still also important to get to the root of childhood?

Sara Somers [29:53] I do. I was a therapist for 34 years and I think they’re just, we don’t pretend to be somebody that can fix issues and people come in with some, some really difficult issues. And if their sponsor is smart, you won’t, we’ll send them and say, I can’t help you with that. But I think if you go to therapy, I’ll hold your hand and be with you while you’re going through it. So yeah. I think the combination of therapy and the spiritual workout we get, it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful.

Dr. Mark Leeds [30:33] Yeah. And as far as meditation, do you practice any particular kind of meditation?

Sara Somers [30:39] I change around. I did Vipassana for many, many years, mindfulness. And I think now of mindfulness is larger than meditation. That I try to approach the world in a mindful way, which I find very difficult. But what I do every morning is I just sit quiet and I say a few program prayers. I repeat some of them in my own language so that I’m not just being rote. And I ask God to guide me, to help me be a better person, to if somebody needs that I reach out to people instead of thinking about myself all the time. And that I don’t need to be scared of life. But it works for me. I just use my own language. Most of the time, I get something that I asked for. It’s not always what I thought it would look like. But I get something. And my life just keeps getting better. This whole thing with the pandemic. It’s kind of blown me away. And I feel like the program has, a lot of people in the program feel this way, that we were so lost at sea, one being drunk, drinking, eating, binging. And then when all that was taken away from us, feeling totally lost and not knowing what was going to happen next. So it was very familiar, you know, sort of being said, go to your apartment. And nobody knew what was going to happen next, we’re all told in the program, plan ahead. So I went out weeks before the confinement and bought foods that I hoped would last me two months. I didn’t really think we’d be here two months, but here we are. I have not had a moment of anxiety. I don’t feel put upon. I feel safe. I feel like the French president really cares about the people that live in his country. I followed directions, which I never did before. And it’s just a different experience. And I’m learning some things I would have never learned before. I mean, Paris, if you go out and walk in Paris, it’s a Paris from the 1930s. You know, there’s no people out. I mean, it’s just remarkable. And there’s all these silver linings that are happening. I’ve connected with people I haven’t talked to since college. That’s what I mean when I say life keeps getting better. A day happens and somehow people, by getting on a meeting or by talking to someone, they help me sort of switch. We say an attitude adjustment, switch into something so we have an open mind and move forward. And that’s what I, my experience, and I wouldn’t have this experience if people before me hadn’t told me they had that experience because it was something I wanted. So I stuck with, I stuck with the hard times so that I could get what they had.

Dr. Mark Leeds [33:52] And you had mentioned stopping to smell the roses. Does that, I mean, do you feel that makes a big difference? Just maybe getting outside, breathing the fresh air, looking around, listening to the sounds around you. I mean, in a way, that’s kind of a form of meditation. Do you find that’s helpful to you?

Sara Somers [34:09] Yeah, I was lying in bed the other morning, and it’s been beautiful in Paris, very spring-like. And I have a sliding door in my bedroom, so it was wide open. And the birds were singing, and there was not another sound. No kids, no nothing. And I thought, this is just like if I was sleeping outside in my sleeping bag. And it was the most extraordinary experience. I thought if I just pretended I was outside on a trail somewhere, it’s… So for that moment, I stopped to smell the roses. I love listening to the birds here. And I have a little garden on my terrace, so I’m not completely flower-like. But we can go out for an hour. And we’re not supposed to go more than a kilometer. And I’m very lucky I have a park that is not closed. And I go up there almost every day. And for the first time, I think the first time ever, I’ve gone to the same place almost every day and seen the flowers go from buds to grow to big flowers. And now the tulips are dying. And so I’ve gone, seen them go through their cycles. And I don’t remember ever having watched that, at least in that part, because I’m too busy getting somewhere.

Dr. Mark Leeds [35:31] I was wondering about the book. Is this the first book that you’ve written?

Sara Somers [35:34] Oh, yes. And probably the last. They’re very hard to do. And this one was hard because I was really going back through some tough times and bringing back memories. And the teenage years were the hardest to write. But I’m glad I did it. I’m really glad I did it.

Dr. Mark Leeds [35:53] Oh, I loved it. I think, and I know people are going to love it. And I think it’s going to help people to make them aware of what’s out there for help. Cause I don’t think a lot of people realize that, you know, we run around in circles, spending money on different programs and trying different things and starving ourselves and, you know, and not really, and the 12 steps are something that’s out there that can, it’s not just

Sara Somers [36:14] A lot of people that get stopped by the God thing. You know, when AA was first started, it was fairly Christian. And it has gone quite a ways from there, but they still use the word God. And, but I think every denomination now comes to 12 step programs, but people will find reasons to not come into something like this and hearing the word God is usually the one I hear the most. And it’s too bad because it is a spiritual program, has nothing to do with religion. And we’ve got to find a name for whatever it is that has more power than me, and sort of, for me, it’s now become an umbrella word. I like the word higher power, but that is the thing that I think keeps people out.

Dr. Mark Leeds [37:10] Yeah, I would say to my patients, you know, the 12 steps are for some people. It’s not for everybody, but of all things, you know, things like God and prayer should not be the thing that stops you from going. Of all things. I mean, that’s something.

Sara Somers [37:24] They should try it before they condemn it. I mean, unless you try it, you don’t know it’s for you or not.

Dr. Mark Leeds [37:30] Sara Somers, thank you for joining me today.

Sara Somers [37:32] Thank you for having me. You’re great to talk to. If you have any more questions, I love to talk about this. I love to spread the word. So happy to come back.

Dr. Mark Leeds [37:43] Thank you for joining us today on The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I hope that you have found this show to be interesting and useful. If so, please subscribe to the Rehab Podcast and share on social media. I appreciate your taking the time to listen to the Rehab. Thank you.