Today is 4/20, a day that is glamorized as marijuana day in the culture of substance abuse and addiction — as a day to get high. We want to remind all of you that THC really stands for The Higher Calling and that’s why we asked Josh Bone to join me on Flip Your Lid today. He represents what it looks like to move from addict to catalyst and live out a Higher calling. Check it out!
ABOUT JOSH
Josh Bone was born and raised in Dallas, NC. He attended college at UNC-Chapel Hill where he began to struggle with alcoholism. After years of active addiction, he will be celebrating four years of sobriety this month.
Josh works as a therapist with Carolina Center for Recovery located in the Charlotte area. In 2019, he created Anchor of Hope Sober Living through a GoFundMe account The non-profit, Anchor of Hope Sober Living now consists of seven sober living homes across the Charlotte and Matthews area serving over 45 residents.
Josh currently resides in Charlotte with his wife, Jennifer, and two children. He and his family are a part of the Pritchard at South End church community as he and his wife serve on a weekly basis. Sharing God’s amazing grace and helping others has become a passion in his life illustrated by his willingness to walk by faith.
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WHAT FLIPPED JOSH’S LID?
Though he was already a daily drinker, Josh’s mother passed seven years ago giving him an excuse to drink even more. This led to a series of events that landed him in some legal trouble. As a result, he had his first experience with sober living and received pivotal education about addiction. Before he allowed God into his life, he would experience short-term sobriety, but would eventually relapse.
When he woke up in a jail cell on suicide watch and no recollection of what brought him there, life had reached a whole new low. After 70 days in jail, he still wasn’t willing to give his life over to God. Eventually, he realized he was at that the “rock bottom” he’d always heard about. Josh describes the bottom as the place where you stop digging.
The moment Josh became willing to step into a new life, he was willing to open himself up to God and at that time, God began to reveal Himself to Josh in new ways. He trusted God to use all of the choices, troubles, pain, resentment, and shame for His purposes.
Kim shared the troubling paradox of self-destruction— when we’re self-destructing there is no sense of self, so there has to be a miraculous glimpse of self that comes when a person decides to stop self-destructing.
One question Josh asks his patients is,
Would you treat anyone in your life the way you are treating yourself?
He admits that when he was in active addiction, he hated himself and punished himself through his actions over and over again and he would have never treated anyone else that way.
Kim points out that PTSD is the only anxiety disorder directly correlated to addiction. A simple definition of trauma is disconnection. Addiction is also disconnection.
WHAT EVENT SEPARATED YOU FROM YOUR SENSE OF SELF?
Josh was raised by his grandparents from the time he was 4 months old. His parents were very young when he was born and were not ready to be parents. He was taught that alcohol was bad you just don’t drink, but he didn’t receive any education so he felt he needed to find out the why behind the traditional ideology.
Since he was raised differently and felt he was different, he had to stand out. As a high achiever and perfectionist, he reached college and alcohol took the place of the high he experienced through his accomplishments. The disconnection from his home community when he arrived in a new place with a lot of new people led Josh to find that drinking allowed him to fit in and be more comfortable socially. Josh realizes now that he was very good at painting a picture of a healthy productive life while caught up in the cycle of addiction for those who were distant from him. Those who were close to him were keenly aware of his alcoholism and the progression of it.
WHAT WERE THE FIST SIGNS OF ADDICTION?
For Josh, he noticed that he scheduled his life around drinking. He only went to bars that served his favorite beer. He was always drinking before the party. He was usually the last one up. He didn’t have to have a reason, but if there was an occasion that gave him an excuse to drink more. He began hiding his drinking— the amount he drank, etc. Physical dependence leads to drinking first thing in the morning and keeping alcohol accessible 24/7. When Josh started drinking when he first woke up, he knew his drinking was a problem.
After college, Josh could no longer drink enough to achieve the level of satisfaction he desired, he began to no longer be able to function in life like he once did. He began to lose jobs, became sick, and started to face major repercussions for his drinking. The fun was over and a lonely slide to the bottom began. No matter what he achieved or accomplished, he could no longer fill the void he felt in his soul. His emptiness came from trying to fulfill himself with self. It came from a lack of reliance on God and His grace and mercy and his inability to see God working in and through him.
HOW DID YOU MOVE FROM ADDICT TO CATALYST?
When Josh was released from jail, he wasn’t able to stop drinking immediately, so he sought help from a friend who got him admitted to the hospital for medical detox, and then he entered a 12-step program that gave him the tools to heal.
He lacked self-esteem, so in order to change that, he began doing esteemable things like practicing kindness. As he worked the program, he realized that simply stopping drinking wasn’t going to make his life better. He had to have a substitute. He had to have God working in and through his life and in order to establish that relationship, he had to do some work.
When the pain of a life of addiction became greater than the discomfort of doing the work, he became willing to take action. He noticed that the service of others had brought about his opportunity to find sobriety and felt he wanted to give back.
His friends were opening Carolina Center for Recovery and Josh asked if he could volunteer and then never left. A few years later, he felt the desire to give back on an even greater level. He had experienced the power of sober living during his recovery journey and in April of 2019 began building his non-profit, Anchor of Hope Sober Living.
Kim pointed out that recovery started when he asked for help and the next level of sobriety began when he asked if there was a need.
Anchor of Hope Sober Living now consists of SEVEN sober living homes across the Charlotte area where people in recovery can find connection and a safe place to work through the process of sober living. He has found great support from the recovery and faith communities and Josh continues to simply walk through the doors God opens for his organization.
Hear the rest of Josh’s story and learn more about his work by listening to or watching the full interview!
While you’re here, why not check out Kim’s book?
But Your Mother Loves You is the witty and candid tale of how a renowned psychotherapist moved from “not good enough” to “the right person” despite childhood neglect and a toxic relationship with her mother.
Everyone knows at least one person who demonstrates toxic love, someone who consistently jabs a straw in others and sucks the life right out of them. Without an in-depth understanding of how to navigate these relationships, most people continue to emotionally regress and remain paralyzed in familiar, pain-soaked patterns. But Your Mother Loves You helps readers overcome this cycle of toxicity.
Kim Honeycutt shares the real-life experience of how a shame-based, self-destructive little girl grew up to be a recovered alcoholic, entered the world of psychology as a professional, and created her own strategies to address and conquer toxicity.
This story, both witty and practical, is told through the lens of personal life experience and expert psychological strategies combined with Godly intervention. Readers learn how to either walk away from or walk with a toxic loved one without losing themselves. Covered in both vulnerability and clinical information, But Your Mother Loves You provides a step-by-step approach on how to stop toxic love and the subsequent self-abuse.