Six years sober, and she still feels six years old.

TL;DR - Eltoniesha has been off meth for almost six years, and she says she feels about six years old. Sobriety stopped the using, but the growing up only started once she quit numbing out with everything else.

Hi everyone,

Eltoniesha will be six years sober from meth in November. During this conversation she summed up where that leaves her in one line: "I'm 6 years sober and I feel like I'm 6 years old." She calls this stage recovery after sobriety, and it's one of the most honest descriptions of long term recovery I've heard.

A sobriety date tells you how long it's been since the last use, and nothing about how much growing up happened in that time. Eltoniesha stopped using meth, but her body never stopped asking for relief, so it found other doors. Some days that door is sleep. Other days it's sinking into depression. She caught herself buying an energy drink she didn't need, because, in her words, "I just want to feel something." Then came an emotional relationship that gave her the same rush, and ending it felt harder than getting off meth. That's what pushed her toward the question she wants to write a whole book about: are you really sober?

What I see in my office, over and over, is that the part of us that needed comfort tends to stay the age it was when the numbing started. Eltoniesha can put an age on hers. The love she found in her church community, she said, was also reaching "that little 9-year-old girl who wanted the love." Now she's raising a son who is nine himself, and she jokes that the two of them are in the same boat.

That younger part also writes stories. One night at church, she told people she was leaving early to put her kids to bed. The real reason was avoiding someone she was sure was judging her, and the kids didn't go to bed early anyway. "I see the plot," she said, and then admitted there was no plot. She had written the whole scene and rehearsed her defense in it. The conflict she walked away with only existed in her head.

Midway through our conversation, the belief underneath the plot surfaced right there on the mic. She felt rejected, and under the rejection sat a core belief she hadn't known she carried: I'm not lovable. A core belief is a conclusion we drew about ourselves early, usually from how we were treated, and it runs quietly in the background, deciding how we read everything that happens to us. Hers had been steering her reactions for a very long time.

So now she's growing up on purpose. She started EMDR and is doing two sessions a week, and she's practicing the part nobody applauds, which is sitting with discomfort instead of reaching for relief. One movie night with her kids, she made it to about twenty minutes before the end before picking up her phone. At six years sober, that counts as a milestone. She's also learning to decide where she's going before deciding who comes with her, which gives that younger part of her a direction to grow toward.

How old is the part of you that still reaches for relief, and what would it take to let it grow up?

Eltoniesha and Rachel get into why faith and mental health belong together, and why love has to come before correction, in the full conversation with Eltoniesha. New episodes drop every week.

My Reads of the Week

When the drug goes, the need for comfort finds another outlet

Researchers at UTHealth Houston held a group discussion with 38 people in substance use recovery and found that participants described emotional eating and addiction transfer, with substances and food both used to cope with a loss of control and with relationship challenges. Nine in ten said they needed help forming clear boundaries with family and friends. Published in Acta Psychologica in 2025, it reads like a map of Eltoniesha's story, from the sugar she says she needs to detox from to the emotional relationship that felt harder to end than meth.

The fear of being left is what turns love into a dependency

A University of Deusto study in Adicciones, published in 2025, looked at 108 adults in outpatient treatment for gambling disorder and found that traumatic life events were tied to both early maladaptive schemas, the researchers' term for core beliefs, and emotional dependence on a partner. In women, abandonment and enmeshment schemas helped explain how past trauma became separation anxiety in relationships, and the authors say addressing those patterns is crucial. Eltoniesha named abandonment and rejection as her core wounds, and she described the urge to manipulate her way into someone's heart just so they wouldn't leave.

EMDR may quiet craving along with the pain underneath it

A meta-analysis from the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry in September 2025, pooled 14 studies of EMDR for substance use disorders and found moderate or larger effects on craving and on emotional symptoms like depression and anxiety. It did not significantly change overall addiction severity, and the authors call for longer, more rigorous studies. That fits what Eltoniesha is after in her two sessions a week, relief from the old wounds that keep sending her body looking for something to feel.

Wisdom Nugget

Swapping a substance for nonstop stimulation still counts as avoiding the discomfort, it's just the version nobody frowns at. Constant scrolling can keep your nervous system from ever learning that quiet is survivable. The Awkward Recovery team calls stillness strength training for the nervous system, the base that distress tolerance skills need before they can work. It starts small, like a walk without headphones or coffee without your phone, and it's supposed to feel uncomfortable at first. Read more

Hot Takes

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Thanks for reading,

Rachel

p.s. If this is our first introduction, hi, I’m Rachel, founder and CEO of Atomic Souls Counseling. I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor (LPC-S) and a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC). After years in the trenches as a clinician, I discovered that my real passion isn’t just helping clients heal; it’s helping therapists thrive.

I’ve built Atomic Souls into more than a counseling practice; it’s a place where healing and business intelligence meet. I work with therapists, counselors, and practice owners to help them build sustainable, ethical, and profitable practices. Together, we focus on strategy, systems, and the economics of growth the behind-the-scenes work that allows you to keep showing up fully for your clients without burning out.

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I write about the business of healing: strategy, systems, and soul for therapists who want to build thriving, values-driven practices on my blog.

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