Odette, took her last drink on December 17, 2018.  This is her story. On today’s episode Paul talks about control and how it relates to the level of an addiction.  The more our drinking gets out of control the more we try and control our external environments.  This is the main driver why control is such an important concept to deepen with so we can become aware of the level of control we placing on the external environment.  We are left with 2 choices.  Option 1 is to do nothing, and that is not what this podcast is about.  That leaves us with option 2.  Get ready to saddle up.  Once an addiction is been acknowledged it can no longer be ignored, and it cannot be addressed without making major life changes.  Changes like a new self-image, your perception, a new consciousness, your ideas and beliefs, your entire life’s foundations.  That’s a lot of change, and as humans we resist change.  SHOW NOTES [8:10] Paul introduces Odette.  Paul first chatted with Odette on episode 128, which came out on July 31st 2017, when she had 1 week of sobriety, he encourages you to go back and listen to that episode.  Today, Odette hit a big milestone…she has 6 months of sobriety.  Odette is originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, but has been living in San Diego for almost 10 years.  She is married and a mom to 2 toddlers, Max and Sienna.  She works fulltime at WeWork.  Odette loves bowling for fun, says it's probably her favorite thing, and she will fight anyone who says that it's not a sport.  She also loves to try new teas and lately you will find her doing puzzles.  [11:50] Give us a background on your drinking. Odette says she’s been in the recovery world for a decade.  Her dad is a recovering alcoholic and he's about to hit his 10 year, so she was first exposed to recovery through him.  She likes to say that his addiction has become the biggest gift, not just to herself, but to her entire family. Odette also developed an eating disorder, which she says is her first addiction, if it has to be labeled.  Odette says that although she’s been in the recovery world for a while, in terms of drinking, she thinks she falls into the ‘gray area drinker’ category.  She doesn’t have a catastrophic story to tell in terms of her relationship with alcohol. Because of this it’s been a real journey for Odette to figure out if she really belonged here or if she didn’t belong here, if she really had a problem with drinking.  What really changed things for Odette was something that she keeps telling people.  You don't have to have a serious drinking problem to have a problem with drinking, and she definitely knew that she had a problem with drinking. [16:05] In regards to alcohol and your eating disorder, what is your thoughts on addiction whack-a-mole? Odette thinks addiction whack-a-mole is a thing and that it is really important that we become ambassadors of being graceful to ourselves.   The addictions become more manageable now, not because it's easier, but because there's this sense of awareness.  Odette says she still sometimes eats when she’s not hungry, and that things that are part of her eating disorder chapter still come up, but she is aware of it now.  She realizes that she just didn’t want to feel the feelings, so she ate.   [21:43] Talk to us about the time between when you were first on the podcast until now? Odette struggled a lot, because, she says she is a binary person, and is like a lot of others in recovery who are in that gray area.  And not just with drinking but the gray area of life.   She loves fitting in boxes and labeling herself, and that is something that she really been trying to detach from these last 6 months.  She stopped questioning where she belonged and if she belonged and started asking herself different questions, like how she was feeling when she drank or if she was trying to cope with something.  She had to get a little creative with her questions because she was getting the same results when asking the same old questions