Latest / Breaking Down Addiction / #15: Mathew Dwyer — Service Industry Drinking, Spiritual Surrender & Finding Recovery

Transcript

#15: Mathew Dwyer — Service Industry Drinking, Spiritual Surrender & Finding Recovery · Breaking Down Addiction

0:00
SPEAKER_00: I have access to fifty thousand dollars worth of booze 24-7-365.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: We never close 100%.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: Hey, welcome to a new episode of Breaking Down Addiction, a podcast by National Addiction Specialists.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: And I'm your host, Johnny Phillip.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: And I'm joined with my really good friend, special guest, Matthew Dwyer.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: Hello.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for joining us.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: You're uh pinch hitting in a way.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: And so thank you for the last minute uh decision to come on.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: You were doing service work last night.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: So you're coming in warm.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: I am.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Right.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Love it.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh we've known each other for the better part of almost three decades.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: We've lived in Wisconsin together.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: But I want to get right into this.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: So if you were sitting across from yourself in active addiction, what would you say?
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Probably what the interior monologue of my brain always says.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: So what the hell is wrong with you?
1:07
SPEAKER_00: That was one of the most um the most infuriating things about my active addiction is that I knew better and I did it anyway.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: And one thing you learn, particularly in early recovery, is you can't think your way out of this problem.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't care who you are, how smart you are, what kind of degrees you've got, what kind of circles you run in, doesn't matter.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Cultural background.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: It does not matter.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: It does not matter.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: Sure, Wisconsin is a notoriously uh a notoriously booze-drenched state.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: But um that doesn't mean everybody in the state is an alcoholic, you know, not like me.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, so I that that's a wonderful elaboration on that.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: Wisconsin, for all of you listeners out there, um, there's maybe eight bars to every corner.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: Miller owns maybe 60% of the city.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: You're born with a Miller High Life in your hand.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: So, yes, I mean, there is an element of that being from Wisconsin.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you and I culturally just come from a drinking town.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: It's um when I when I explain it to people, particularly in the buckle of the Bible belt where we are now.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Um I always think it's cute that Nashville fancies itself a drinking town because the most insane New Year's Eve party you've been to in Nashville is just your average Tuesday night in Madison or Milwaukee.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: It's it's another dimension as far as uh as far as the drinking culture.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: It's Wisconsin's like Nashville, hold my beer.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: Or my old fashioned.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: My Wisconsin old fashioned.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: Yes, there is, yeah.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: Um so you've been in the service industry for almost three decades for however long that we've known each other.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: Um sidebar, side note is that you were my boss once at a bar restaurant.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: So we'll we'll get into that later.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: But it seems like the service industry as a whole, it can protect your drinking.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: And how did that happen for you and how did that unfold?
3:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've I've definitely considered this question quite a bit just because, you know, as as you move through the rooms, I'm I'm an AA guy, and as you move through the rooms, you always hear people talk about how, particularly in their industry, you get a lot of drinkers.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: So I'm a lawyer, nobody drinks like lawyers.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm a nurse, nobody drinks like nurses, I'm a teacher, nobody drinks like teachers.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: The one thing that separates the service industry from any other industry is access.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: I have access to$50,000 worth of booze, 24-7, 365.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: We never close 100%.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: And um it is by definition a very transient industry.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: If you think about the people that come in, work for two weeks and dip, get fired, uh, move on, go on to a real job or what have you.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it does, it really shields people with drinking problems because you enter that drinking culture and the alcoholic mind necessarily compares me to other people, you know, and that that is uh part of what getting over the hump for me in sobriety was was you know, yes, I drink a lot, but at least I don't blank, at least I don't live under a bridge and drink it out of a paper bag, you know.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: And maybe at least you can still keep your job.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: Right, a hundred percent.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a hundred percent.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: Because the the the drinking that I did was way out of my budget.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't drink the wine that I fancied or the scotch that I loved, or the I couldn't afford that stuff.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but in the restaurant I can afford anything because it's free.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I remember starting off shifts with a shift beer to where we're all trying a very fancy strong beer.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: And then I remember there would be a contest on selling a beer in particular while we're working.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: Whoever sold the most of it, of that focused beer, then you get uh like a mini bar tab.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: So it does protect it.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: And why as servers, as somebody in the the in the service industry, why is drinking so prominent?
5:06
SPEAKER_00: I think that there is a built-in because of the nature of the business, I feel like that there is a um there's a built-in sort of desperation or an immediacy.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: Um everybody, well, I shouldn't say everybody, everybody I ever worked with is living paycheck to paycheck.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: So you're in a you're in a naturally precarious position.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: And if you throw this disease on top of it, it can it can get pretty gnarly pretty quick.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: And um I think that's probably why it attracts us.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a that's a great answer because I remember I was a musician and toured for almost 16 years working at a restaurant.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: I can always come back to my shifts, but I remember loving working in the service industry because alcohol was everywhere.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: But I wasn't playing music hardly anymore.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: So I was almost numbing myself out because it's I mean, maybe there's a certain point of directionlessness there.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: What do you what do you say to that?
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Or am I?
6:11
SPEAKER_00: I I I agree.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: I think um if I could describe myself an act of addiction, it would definitely be rudderless and directionless and without identity.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: And I I think that the nature of the industry is to be all things to all people.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, if a if a cranky person walks in, you you get them on the level.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: If a happy person walks in, you feed that happiness.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, you get to be the chameleon that you are on the inside, you get to put into a professional capacity and and and really do it on the outside.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: No, thanks for elaborating on that.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you were a functional drinker for a long time.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: What was the what do you say the biggest lie that you told yourself to protect that narrative?
6:57
SPEAKER_00: I think the biggest lie that I told myself um was that everybody else was overreacting to my drinking.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: I think that um I I say that my drinking career in earnest went for about 17 years.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: Burning through friends, burning through relationships, burning through jobs, burning through cars, burning through all of that.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: If if anyone were to look at what I was doing objectively, they would say this this person's off the deep end.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: It's you're tripping.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And again, that goes back to my early, earlier point of um I'm smarter than this.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: If I was an alcoholic, I would know it and I would stop, which is just nonsense.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: To say it outside out loud is I was a crazy person.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: I was I was an absolutely insane.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: You're living with insanity.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: Yes, like a hundred percent.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think so I think that the biggest lie that I told myself, other than the comparisons, was um that I was managing it.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: There was no measure by which I was managing anything.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: It was uh it was a disaster from start to finish.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: Your life was unmanageable, completely and totally unmanageable, as the program says.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: Um a lot of programs speak early on here.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh correct me if I'm wrong, but I think with you and maybe a few other guys, you guys helped start the log cabin group here.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: I was uh I was an early attendee of the log cabin.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: I I'm reticent to say that I was uh a founder because I it was it really started while I was in treatment.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Um and this was at the backdrop of of COVID.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Um my sobriety date is April 20th of 2020.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: That's four and a half weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: When I say I left for treatment when we were in the wiping down your groceries portion of the pandemic, that's not an exaggeration.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of people did not respond to Zoom during the during the pandemic.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: And so, how do we get a live group of guys or gals or co-ed together?
9:03
SPEAKER_00: And the best way to do it is outdoors.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: So this uh small group of fellas uh put together a group and and booked some space at the Buchanan Log House down on uh Elmhill Pike, and it literally started with like four or five guys standing around a fire outside of that um outside of that log cabin.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: And I probably came in in like their third or fourth meeting that they had ever had, and it really resonated with me, probably because I was coming out of treatment and everything was very new to me and very exciting.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: And um I still go to that meeting.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: I still do.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: I was just there, you know, two nights ago.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Incredible.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: No, it's awesome, and it grew into something to where I remember I went once, there was maybe 90 men there.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: Yep, and it's a men's stag group.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: It is a men's stag, and uh it's a it's a speaker meeting of sorts, and uh we actually did outgrow the original facility.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: So the Buchanan Log House on Elmhill Pike, we could not cram, you know, with all the all the Crisco in the world, we couldn't grease everybody up and cram them in.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: So we moved over to the annex of Donaldson First Church, and it we've seen nothing but growth.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: So we went again from four or five guys standing around a fire to between 80 and 120 people a week.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: We get everything.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: We get drugie buggies come and drop off their folks from the halfway houses and stuff.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we get newcomers, and and that's what that meeting really is focused on is the newcomers.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: We want them to come in and feel that energy.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: It's it's incredible.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, thank you for bringing me into that meeting.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: I was you brought me in as a speaker, so told miniaturized version of my story and brought topic.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, going to that meeting, I never found something that really felt like a home group here.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, I I went to maybe five, six different meetings before that.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: Never really found my footing and my my group.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: Not that you need to, right, but I remember going to the log cabin group and there's this undeniable love.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: Like if you walk into that meeting and you don't know anyone, somebody will come and shake your hand.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: So if there's anybody listening to this episode in the Nashville area, you should definitely check out the log cabin group.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: Tuesdays, 7 30.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Tuesdays at 7 30.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: We do a meeting before the meeting.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: We meet at uh Panera Bread on Royal Parkway.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: Um longer fat bites.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: No, we started with Panera and then we started doing some other restaurants in the area, but there's um there's a cost consideration for newcomers, and we don't want cost to be a barrier to getting in that fellowship.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: So we'll meet, we usually meet about an hour and a half before the meeting.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Um and uh, you know, get get the new guys plugged in.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: And then we also do things outside of those two things.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: So, for example, tonight, the log cabin men's group is going to a movie out at the Thoroughbred in Franklin.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: We do that once a month.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, we also do incredible amounts of service.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Like I had said before we started today.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: I was at a detox house over on Haywood Lane last night.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we do outreach to um uh uh the um the DUI school.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh we do uh at Williamson County, yeah.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: I will uh no, I think it's Davidson.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: I've not been, but um yeah, that's something that we also do as far as service and outreach, and then um again detox centers and uh and halfway houses and stuff like that.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: So you know, service being an important kind of cornerstone of my recovery, I'm all about it.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: I just love doing it.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: I love I love helping the newcomer because they helped me.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's it's funny because uh leading up to this episode, we were talking about how you're our first guest that doesn't work in treatment, but technically you do with all the service.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: I volunteer in treatment.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: You volunteer in treatment.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's way better put.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: Um I do want to start getting into some consequences, not to shift gears, but um so you had blackouts, job losses, pancreatitis, yes, um, which I heard is awfully painful, and also lead from drinking.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: So what you know, what took you so long for this to stick and even after the hospitalization?
13:13
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's um it's the damnedest thing.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it is um despite all of those consequences, missed opportunities, lost opportunities piling up, I soldiered on.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes I wish that I had the type of dedication that I had to drinking and could apply that to things that are actually productive.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: But unfortunately, that was not in the cards for me.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: Um what did it take?
13:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh the first the first time that I really made an earnest attempt to get sober was in the summer of 2018.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: And the consequence was my wife caught me drunk at 10 o'clock in the morning and said, Uh-oh.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: That's it, man.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: We gotta do something.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: And um I got sober at that point for the wrong reason.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: I got I got sober to save my marriage.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: And um that lasted uh 14 months.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: So I white knuckled it and did all of the bare minimum, everything to make it look like I was doing everything I needed to do.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: I was checking the boxes, I was getting an A plus in recovery.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: But there was no service, there was no outside anything.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: I was going to a meeting, you know, probably five days a week.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: I was going to the East Side Sunlighters at 7:30 in the morning and uh getting to know those folks a little bit.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: But uh that only lasted about a year.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: And then so I stopped going to meetings in June of 2018, uh uh 2019, and uh I relapsed in August of 2019.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: Did you have a sponsor at this time?
14:43
SPEAKER_00: I did, my same sponsor that I have now.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh Chris F has been my sponsor since the summer of 2018.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: He shepherded me through that relapse and uh got me got me to treatment when I needed it the most.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: We'll we'll definitely get more into that.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: But the pancreatitis that you had, was that in 2018?
15:00
SPEAKER_00: That was in 2011.
15:01
unknown: Okay.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: So we moved to today is my 15th anniversary moving to the city of Nashville from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's good.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: And uh I in we moved here in February of 2011.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, I took me with me.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: So I was even though I pulled the geographic, I didn't I didn't get away from anything.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: So by I think that was June of 2011, I was in the hospital with pancreatitis.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: And uh I was in the hospital for about a week and um was released from the hospital, and I think I didn't drink for about 10 days after that.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: It scared you for 10 days, it scared me for 10 days, and that's exactly what it was.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, oh, you know, this is a real consequence, and I'll never drink again for a while.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: So um unfortunately that made my drinking career a little bit more dangerous because it had become clear that I could no longer function in public while under the influence, but all I wanted to do was be under the influence.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: So I stopped going to bars and restaurants for my drinks, and I started going to liquor stores and bodegas for my drinks.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: And uh it became much more dangerous at that point because I was literally hiding it from everybody.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: I was hiding it from my wife, I was hiding it from my friends, I was hiding it from my from my bosses, I was hiding it from everybody.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: And um the way that I drank was very, very dangerous.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Um binge?
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Binge binge a hundred percent and binge seven nights a week.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, and what what did that look like?
16:29
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes in the morning, always in the morning, never in the morning.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: So, again, as alcoholics and addicts, we make rules for ourselves.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: And I had been uh fired from, you know, by the time I left Milwaukee, I was essentially unemployable.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: I had burned through all the goodwill, all the good friends, all the everything.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: I had just set the world on fire in Milwaukee.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: I could not be trusted, I could not be lived with, I couldn't do anything.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: And I moved here and it was still that same, like, you know.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And uh so my landlord got me a job at a restaurant in East Nashville, and you'll never guess what happened.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: I got fired for being drunk on the job.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: No, and so that was the rule that I set for myself is that I would never jeopardize a job again because of my drinking.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Now it it would never occur to the mind of an after of an active alcoholic that that might be the problem.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: Forget it.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: So here this was my ritual.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: I would get off of work usually between 10 and 10:30 at night.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: Liquor stores in Tennessee close at 11.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: So buzz on over to the liquor store.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Pardon me, and uh buy enough to get me through that night.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: Because I can't have like a handle of whiskey just sitting at the house.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: I don't drink anymore, right?
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: And so I would buy usually a pint of vodka, and then I would buy two big pistons of some kind of a beer.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: So Pabst, uh, you know, my hometown favorite, it's my culture.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: And um so what I would do is I would drink the two beers on the way home.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: To warm you up, like a let's get let's get primed.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: You're not too buzzed to dry.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: And you can chug them down in the car, be good to go.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, stop at the gas station, toss them in the trash, and then get home, crack into that pint.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: And w when I say that I would drink half that pint all in one swallow, I'm not kidding.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: So I would have, you know, some kind of a soda or lemonade or something like that, pour half of that pint into the cup, fill it up this much, put this much liquid on top of it.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: And I can I can still consume liquid like that.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: I could take this and just go, and that's exactly what I would do.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: So you're talking, I think that a pint is like 10 measured drinks.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: And then in addition to that, I had the two tall boys on the way home.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: So I'm consuming 15 drinks within about 90 minutes.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: That's a steep.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: That's a steep.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And I did that for seven, eight years.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: And um, I was just discussing this at the and and everything that would come along with that.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: So of course you're gonna pass out.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Of course you're gonna piss yourself.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: Of course you're going to black out and say and do things that you don't mean.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're drinking an insane amount of alcohol all at once.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: And and more than, you know, obviously I'm chasing oblivion at this point, but it's more I don't want to get caught.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: Full stop.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Um and the the hangovers that would be accompanying that the next morning were just devastation.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: How did you get through the hangovers and still make work?
19:50
SPEAKER_00: The well, the good news is that I would never have to be at work until three in the afternoon.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: And so I would wake up probably 8 30, 9 o'clock in the morning, certain that I was gonna die, and uh just spend that uh spend that three, four hours just recovering, just recovering uh liquids, foods, you know, cold showers, you know, whatever.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: But you know, a lot of times what I would do is I would wake up at 8 30, eat something, drink something, non-alcoholic, and then just go back to bed.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, especially when my wife had a day job, you know, she would leave for work 9 30, 10 o'clock in the morning.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: I was right back to bed.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Wake back up at 2 o'clock, get in the shower, try and wash as much of the vodka off of me as possible, and then stagger into work.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: Um we all I remember making um I I don't know how to phrase this, but I remember kind of like bending my life to be hung over or maybe continue drinking at work, to where my friend Dave, that used to be a server way back in the day, he told me that when he was a server and hung over, um, normally he would have his tray in his left hand.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: When he was shaky, he would put it in his right hand.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, that's how I got through.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: Where it's so it's like we do these things to allow us to repeat these bad behaviors and like ruining our life.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: The the pancreatitis, does did it ever happen again?
21:17
SPEAKER_01: No.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: Luckily, which is bizarre.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I heard that it it once it happens, it can reoccur.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: It can become chronic.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: And uh the fact that that never happened is is a miracle.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: But I was suffering medically from my alcohol intake.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: And don't forget, I'm lying to everybody.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm lying to everybody, my wife, my family, my coworkers, and my doctor.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: So I would go to the doctor, you know, once a year or once every six months, and they would do a blood draw, and they'd be like, dude, your LDL is off the charts.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: Your triglycerides are off the charts.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: You're pre diabetic, you know, what are you doing?
21:55
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh cheeseburgers are good.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And um I was on, I had high blood pressure, so I was on high blood pressure meds and this and that and the other thing.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: And it turns out you take the alcohol out of the equation and everything else, everything just goes back to normal.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: So I am no longer on blood pressure meds.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm no longer, well, I do take a uh statin for cholesterol, but that's more of a function of my age.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: Same disease.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: So um, but I did have to have that day of reckoning with my doctor too.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, I've been pulling your leg for almost 10 years, and uh here we are.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: You've made some even healthier choices getting sober because I know that you've done Pilates for a really long time, and I think you were doing it like almost daily.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: I was doing Pilates six days a week up until December.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: I had surgery on my foot uh in December, and I'm just about out of the woods as far as getting cleared to go back.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm expecting to return, make a triumphant return to Pilates in the next couple weeks.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: Good, good for you.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm thankful that the pancreatitis never came back.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I dodged a lot of bullets, and and I can't emphasize that enough, especially when you spend time in the rooms with people who and you know, we try to avoid war stories because everybody's got them, but invariably it it comes up the consequences that other people faced.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: And I think I think about how many times I snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: I am a rabbit's foot when it comes to consequences.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, I did I did manage two DUIs, um, but other than that, I mean, not a whole lot.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: Not a whole lot.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: I do remember a story when you were drinking heavily, and this is a kind of a figment of my imagination almost.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: This is maybe 2017, 2018, something like that, where you drank way too much and the next morning, or maybe that night, they uh you went to the hospital or something and they had to give you a banana bag, what do you called it?
23:55
SPEAKER_00: That was in 2015.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't remember the circumstances leading up to well, I mean It's probably one of our lunches you told me about that.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I drank uh until I had completely lost consciousness and I was, you know, passed out on the living room floor, and my wife um was basically trying to get me to wake up and and saying, Hey, if you don't wake up, man, I'm I'm gonna have to call an ambulance.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to call an ambulance.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And so she did.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, I got picked up and taken to Skyline Medical Center, put on a banana bag and uh and brought back to life in a way, I guess.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm guessing it's a banana bag because it's yellow.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, it's bright, bright yellow.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: And uh, I I don't know is it potassium or something that they put in it, but they they they colloquially refer to it as a banana bag, and it's just all of the things that you need to live.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, and that was we were supposed to, I think that was in March of 2015, and we were supposed to, I think the following Monday, we were supposed to leave for New Orleans and we were gonna go get married, and that all got put on hold.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: We still made the trip to New Orleans, but we did not get married.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Um we didn't get married until two years later.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: Tumultuous times, it seems like autumn really chaos you guys have made a way of working things out and improving your lives together.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh and it and it did nearly cost me the relationship several times.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: Several times and um lie through my teeth, you know, um because I was really good at hiding it.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, show me, show me the empty bottles, show me the this, show me the that, you know, and and she could never so she couldn't she couldn't pin me down and say crafty dude like like pen and teller level of magician uh work.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: Wow, you know, sneak out, grab a bottle, hide a bottle here, hide a bottle there.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, and part of part of why I drank so quickly was because I needed to get the evidence out of the house.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right, right, yeah.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: Um you had a system down.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was it was an airtight system, airtight.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh amongst all this, and I don't know when, but cocaine entered the picture.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: How did that change the way you drank and also your denial at that point?
26:22
SPEAKER_00: I was very fortunate to uh have been able to just put cocaine down.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh there was about a three-year period when I was doing cocaine almost every day, when I was the general manager of a restaurant in Milwaukee, and um the place was just a cocaine paradise.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: It was just everywhere.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: So that's how it got introduced.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't I don't I don't I can't think of a single other person on earth who tries cocaine for the first time at age 30, but that was me.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I had never touched it, never been around it, never this, never that.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: And with work folk?
26:52
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: So it started with there was a guy who would eventually become my Coke dealer, um, and I noticed he was just hanging out between the bathrooms.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: We were one of the first uh bars in the city to do a service industry night.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: And so we would just be overrun with maniacs every Sunday night.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: And there's this one guy just hanging out between the bathrooms, and everybody seems to know him, right?
27:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I walk up to him like, I'm the general manager here.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: Do you think I don't know what you're doing?
27:19
SPEAKER_00: And he literally asks me how much he's got to kick to me in order to keep doing what he's doing.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know anything about coke, so I'm like, Yeah, give me a quarter.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: So every Sunday I'm getting a free quarter ounce of cocaine, like two eight balls basically.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: And I became a damn popular guy after that.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: And I'm still married to my first wife at that time.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm I'm blowing everything up at home, but I'm just like fancying myself a mini little scarface, you know, when I go to work.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: And um of course that job crashed and burned.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I got fired.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: And um did it allow you to drink more?
27:56
SPEAKER_01: Because I know that some people will introduce a drug like that and upper, so it allows them to drink more and longer.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: And and um I would it's hard to gauge at that point because you know that I'm we're talking 2004, 2005.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: So that's relatively early in when the switch happened.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, I used to just be a heavy drinker when the when the switch flipped to being an alcoholic when I was 27 or 28.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: So I was still only a couple years in.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, I I think I thought I could drink more and function better, but things got real wobbly on Coke.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: And uh again, I think I probably did Coke regularly for for about two and a half years or so.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget it.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: I just woke up one day and it was just like, I don't like these people, I don't like this scene, I don't like the come down, I don't like anything, I don't like how expensive it is.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: So I just walked away and didn't really do it again.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, however, interesting cocaine is in the story of my relapse in 2019.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's that's what kind of brought me back to the booze.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: We were in Mexico celebrating our wedding anniversary.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, this is terrible.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Celebrating our wedding anniversary.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: And uh we were in uh we were in Cabo and uh we're at a resort in Cabo, and I'm um it's like the morning, we're swimming.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: I get up, I walk, you can't really walk the beach that in that part of Cabo.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's all rocky and stuff, but uh, there's a bunch of people hanging out down there, and I'm just sitting on the seawall looking over the ocean, and all of a sudden, just some guy on the beach is like, hey amigo, hey amigo, you want?
29:39
SPEAKER_00: And he just shows me this baggie of white powder.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: So, what's the smart thing to do during the height of this opioid crisis, right?
29:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course you buy a bag of white powder from a stranger in a foreign country.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: What could possibly go wrong?
29:54
SPEAKER_00: So I'm ripping lines, and by the time the vacation is over, I've cracked into the mini bar and I'm in I'm in full relapse.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: So now I've returned to the United States with a little secret in my pocket.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: Just to prove that no matter what it is, if it's cocaine, weed, whatever your drug of choice is, if you dabble in something else, it will bridge you to because it's not your drug of choice.
30:19
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Because you're just gonna be tickling, you're just gonna be tickling that uh, you know, I I always forget how the science of it works, but like heroin pokes at this one, cocaine pokes at this one, meth pokes at this one, weed pokes at this one.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: Um alcohol fires all of them.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: So if you're tickling one of them, of course I want all of them to fire.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, because that's that's my DOC.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: That's that's that's my comfort zone, is in that oblivion.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: So to demonstrate the progressive nature of this illness, my story is uh it's a uh is a prime example of that because I relapsed in August of 2019 and I ended up in re in rehab in uh April of 2020.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: So that's eight months.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: It took me eight months to get back to where it had taken me 45 years to get to the first time, which is to me demonstrable proof that the next time is gonna be the last time.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: I won't survive if I go out again.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: Um your your first trip, 2018 to rehab was I've only been I've only been to to rehab one time.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: That was in 2020.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: The other time when when when Autumn came home and found me hammered at 10 o'clock in the morning, that was a okay, I'm gonna go to AA.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: Because all the half measures in the world, right?
31:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'll I'll I'll do anything to not lose this relationship.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, it was never boy, I sure need the separation.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: I need to be away from this and and release do some work.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: It's no, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to some meetings.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, let's let's talk about half measures here because you've been vocal about having um about doing not doing half measures in recovery in treatment.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: How did that show up for you in doing half measures that first time?
32:08
SPEAKER_01: What how you know what did that lead you to from doing half measures, uh probably treatment, but how did you figure out to not do half measures and do the full met the full scope of treatment?
32:21
SPEAKER_00: I think that really speaks to the true nature of surrender.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: I think that um the half measures that I embarked upon over the years, which is and it says it in the literature too.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm not gonna drink scotch anymore, I'm gonna switch to brandy.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm okay, brandy's not working, I'm only gonna drink beer, I'm only gonna drink on the weekends, I'm only gonna drink with friends, I'm only gonna drink without friends, I'm only gonna do this, I'm only gonna do that.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: Those are the half measures that sort of punctuated my drinking career.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: Um the nature of the real surrender when I staggered across the threshold at Discovery Place, and my sponsor had told me, like do everything they tell you to do.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: Don't do your own version of what they tell you to do.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Don't say I'm gonna do everything except that.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna do all of it.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: If they tell you to do 90, 90, do it.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: Yes, 100%.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: Get a sponsor, do it.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Right.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: Get it you go through the steps, do it.
33:13
SPEAKER_01: Right.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: Work with a sponsee, do it.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: I think that um being willing to be teachable, being willing to accept that running on my own willpower is a road to an early grave.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: Um it took just that little opening of willingness for me to be like, okay, the way I'm doing this is it's it's not working.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And so we're we're truly at a crossroads.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm either going to die or I'm going to live.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: That's those are my only two choices.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: And uh it became clear to me that with my track record and my history of these half measures, that the way I was doing it, it was gonna lead to death.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: And and um so I finally stopped listening with my mouth and started listening with my ears.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: And uh I met some really amazing people inside at Discovery Place, people that I'm still in contact with to this day, who were able to love me until I was able to just function and maybe love myself a little bit.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: Was part of this, and I know this is kind of my story, but was part of this was you didn't think you deserved a great life.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: And on top of that, you didn't think that you would live a long life as well.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes I think about that, and that's where I was mentally.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I've I definitely in in getting to know myself, and and a lot of this was through writing a fourth step and going through the fifth step and and making uh quite a few amends over the years, is um from a very young age, I always felt an emptiness on the inside.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: And that necessarily to me led to an identity crisis.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: I never knew who I was.
35:07
SPEAKER_01: Right.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: All I knew was that I had this insatiable, unquenchable need to change the way I felt.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: And it started young.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: And it started young.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: Um I would I I was a voracious reader as a young person.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: I read above my um above my grade level starting early, and I would stay up until two, three, four in the morning just reading fantasy novels, horror novels, um, think completely age inappropriate novels because I could immerse in that and I was gone and I was a different person and I was living in that world.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: Part of it is where I grew up, and I'm sure you can identify because you grew up in the suburbs too.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: I can there's a name for it.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: It's called ennui.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: It is just like a uh an aimlessness.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: I I didn't know that what I was feeling was a lack of culture until I moved into the city, you know.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: But but to me, like if white flight was a place, it's where I grew up, and it's where you grew up.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: And it's just this this beige conformist, like kind of goofiness, and everything just felt fake to me.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: Um I couldn't wait to get out.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh, dude, like there was a puff of smoke in in the shape of my body when I I turned 18 and I was like, bye.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: You're like, I gotta go.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know what I'm looking for, but this ain't it.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: You know.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then into adulthood, um in early adulthood, uh, I was more of a drugs guy than a booze guy early on.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh psychedelics, you know, stuff like that.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh, never anything hard.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, the hardest thing I had ever done up until the age of 30 was acid, you know.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it wasn't until I started bartending at age like 22 that I really started sort of developed my taste for alcohol.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: Um Do you think that that filled that hole in you better than everything else did?
37:00
SPEAKER_00: It did.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: It's like what Bill says when it when it says in Bill's story, I've arrived, right?
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've arrived.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm the bartender.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: And and the place that I worked, it was in Tosa.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: It's an old, old school Italian restaurant.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: And it was like at the time that the Sopranos was real big and all that stuff.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: So everybody's a tough guy, and everybody's real this and real that.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: And I work for these guys that look like they're from central casting, you know, and uh so I met the most bizarre people, but I really felt like I belonged because you felt like you found yourself.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm in a barroom that seats 200 people, and 75 of them know me by first name, and I've got what they want, right?
37:38
SPEAKER_00: So of course I'm the most popular guy in the room, you know, and there's you're all of a sudden the man.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: And you're popular.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: And and um my feeling of detachment that I would carry with me.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: You put a couple cocktails on top of that, and all of a sudden, that anxiety about just ex existing in the world that just sort of gets muted a little bit.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden I can talk to girls, and all of a sudden I can talk like a tough guy.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it it was it was an identity, but it wasn't my identity.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: It was just an identity that I was kind of putting on myself.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: Like we talked about in the program, you had a different mask on it.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: Yes, a hundred percent.
38:15
SPEAKER_01: And we have many different masks.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, when we're using and an active addiction.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: None of which are authentic.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: Which uh, you know, again, living a lie, you know.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, shifting gears here, I do want to talk about um you had a spiritual deficiency at what point?
38:36
SPEAKER_01: And when do you think you discovered that?
38:39
SPEAKER_01: And what did you do to not or or have a lack thereof of spirituality?
38:45
SPEAKER_00: I think that um I had conflated spirituality and religiosity, which are not the same thing.
38:51
SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh, me too.
38:53
SPEAKER_01: Can I can I give you a little timeout here?
38:55
SPEAKER_01: Because when I got a call, music here's helped get me sober.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: I went to Center City, um, Minnesota, the hazeled in there.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: And I was on the phone with admissions, and one of the questions was, Do you consider yourself spiritual?
39:07
SPEAKER_01: I thought she was asking if I'm religious.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, and I said, No.
39:14
SPEAKER_01: So I can level with that.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a hundred percent.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: I still consider myself to be uh what I refer to as uh as a militant agnostic.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: Like I just really don't buy into the structure of particularly American religion, which um yeah, I'm not here to bag on people who are religious because I know that I know a lot of people uh who live the faith.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: But when I was a kid, we went to church every Sunday and I went to Sunday school uh all the way up until I was confirmed.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: And then my parents were basically like, This is your choice.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: You're a confirmed member of this church, you can go or not go, which I'm really grateful to them for giving us that choice.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not like you're gonna do this and blah, blah, blah.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like that.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: But what I saw again feeding into that emptiness and lack of identity that I felt growing up, as I would, you know, the same people I went to church with are the same people that I went to school with, are the same people that I was existing in the society of that city with, and I would see people say and act a certain way on Sundays and then go out into the world and act the complete opposite.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: And to me, it was all just a big performative grift.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: And I still feel that way in a lot of respects, because I I think that in in the Christian tradition, I don't know what this is in the United States right now, but it ain't Christianity.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: It certainly is not Christ-like.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: Um but as an alcoholic, I dismissed that completely out of hand.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: You're weak-minded, you've got the problem, it's not me.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing, though, is that rejecting Christianity is not a rejection of spirituality.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: And the way that it was explained to me is particularly in early recovery at Discovery Place.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: I was talking to one of the one of the guides who works there.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: He says, How's your spiritual life?
41:10
SPEAKER_00: I said, non-existent.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, you're drinking with a religious fervor, and that just stopped me dead in my tracks.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: What the hell are you talking about?
41:20
SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, if it's the first thing you think about when you wake up because you're so hungover you can barely function, and it's the last thing you think about when you either go to sleep or more accurately lose consciousness, then you're worshiping at the altar of something.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: If if if you're worshiping at the altar of oblivion, and we can just kind of shift you on over to something a little bit more spiritual, I think that we can we can get you on the right path.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: And so I've I've been a big believer, and I wish I could dig up the original quote.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: I actually heard it from the actor Rain Wilson.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't and he came from some bizarre religious background, but uh the the the saying or the idiom or the axiom is um uh uh religion or um religion or Christianity or whatever.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: It's the blanket that we throw over the great mysteries to see what shape they are.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: Now, if if I reject Christianity on its face, that doesn't mean that those great mysteries don't still exist.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: And I was really helped.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh we actually share a therapist, and before I left for treatment, he gave me a book to take with me to treatment.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: And uh it was bizarre because you were only allowed to bring conference-approved literature into Discovery Place, but for whatever reason they helped me to they they let me hold on to that book, and I read that book when I got really sick of reading the big book in the 12 and 12.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: I would crack open this book, and it was a book from the Buddhist tradition, and it talked about um how to meditate and the function of meditation, and I think that that is um that is what I've adopted as my spirituality is that um the sort of concept of karmic realignment that if you put you put out into the universe, generally speaking, you will receive the good back.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: And um that was what kind of crawled me out of that hole.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: Um that's wonderful.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm I and I also experienced a miracle, like the whole world shut down so I could go to treatment.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget, April 20th, 2020, all the restaurants were closed.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, I was on the phone with my boss telling her that I was leaving for treatment, and she was like, dude, there's no better time to do this.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: You're not missing any work.
43:41
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, I got paid$875 a week on enhanced unemployment when I went to treatment.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: Um so the closest thing that I come to say to saying like, thank God or thank Jesus or whatever, my my kind of catch all for that is no.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: Coincidences.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: Like if it wasn't a miracle, at least it needs to be acknowledged that this was no kind of coincidence.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: That this was just sort of the universe lining up so I could kind of like see the light.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: How has meditation helped you through this?
44:16
SPEAKER_00: So from that book that I had read, um here's the deal.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: And we had a shorthand for it inside of Discovery Place.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: We called it the Crazy Picture Show.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: The shorthand for it was this.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: Are you doing this right now?
44:30
SPEAKER_00: Are you doing this right now?
44:32
SPEAKER_00: Because inside my head is this constantly going just train of thought, and it is not rational.
44:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, it is it is anxiety-ridden, it is angry, it is judgmental, and it's not realistic.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: This is not the voice of reason that is running through my head.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: And in this book, they tell the story about in the Indian subcontinent, they, you know, India, Bhutan, Pakistan, all that stuff, they uh they don't treat dogs the same way that they do here.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: They don't necessarily keep them as pets, they just kind of run feral on the streets.
45:03
SPEAKER_00: So as you're walking through the cities in the Indian subcontinent, all you hear in the background is just dogs barking.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: Dogs barking, dogs barking, dogs barking.
45:11
SPEAKER_00: Several times throughout the day, for whatever reason, all the dogs stop barking at once.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: And then they start right back up.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: The purpose of meditation is not to become a great meditator.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: The purpose of meditation is to get those dogs to stop barking, if only for a couple of seconds.
45:30
SPEAKER_00: And that's where your clarity comes from.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: That's where your intention setting comes from, and that's where like the baseline comes from for you to be a functioning adult in the society.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: I wish I could say I was an amazing meditator or I did it with any sort of frequency or or or things like that, but it's it's uh it's a process and it's a journey, you know.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh thank you for sharing all that.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: I I mean it's so wonderful that you found that and that you had the book on Buddhism with you.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm so curious about many tip different types of religion.
46:03
SPEAKER_01: I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school until fourth grade and was forced into CCD in Sunday school until middle school.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: That's a whole nother conversation for a different time.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: But um I I struggled with getting sober and doing the 12-step program because of the G word.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: And I remember when I did the meeting at the log cabin group, that was my topic that I struggled with the G-word.
46:31
SPEAKER_01: And what what helped me, because this is so funny, there's so many strange parallels with brothers in recovery and or just recovery people in general.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: Um so when I went to Hazelden, there was this guy, Luke, in the room next to me, played sitar, musician, had a record label.
46:51
SPEAKER_01: He was a Buddhist.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: And I remember when I kept reading, kept reading the literature, and God kept being brought up.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: And I was I was said to the group, I'm like, hey, you guys, I don't believe in God.
47:06
SPEAKER_01: Am I gonna be okay?
47:09
SPEAKER_01: And they all gave me a hug and they're like, Yeah, of course, of course you're gonna be okay.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: And then Luke pulled me aside and said, Um, in the Buddhist literature, they don't read God as God, they read as good.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: So every time I read the literature from then on, I would read it as good.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:27
SPEAKER_01: And that kind of made me see past it and just take my blinders off.
47:32
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
47:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, so Buddhism in a way also helped me as well.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: And and and I I think that the way that the program, the way that the 12-step program is structured, leaves room for the non-Christian, which I think is a very important.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: But again, all of my half measures, and I I say this all the time when I'm talking about the actual moment when I made the decision to go to treatment, where I'm like, I wish I could see my Google history at that time because it was literally like how to get sober without AA, how to do everything but AA.
48:06
SPEAKER_00: Because I was perceiving it as this thinly veiled Christian organization.
48:11
SPEAKER_00: And let's not get it twisted.
48:12
SPEAKER_00: That's where AA started.
48:14
SPEAKER_00: AA is an offshoot of the Oxford group, which is an evangelical Christian organization.
48:19
SPEAKER_00: But they realized early on that they were necessarily cutting out a portion of the population that was suffering because of their non-Christianity or their reticence toward Christianity.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: We've already gone over how I felt about the Christians that I had grown up with, that they were hypocrites and and jerks and all this stuff.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, the when they say like God can be anything, it can be that doorknob over there.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
48:49
SPEAKER_01: I've heard that too.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: When we reach the part where I'm asking the doorknob to remove my character defects, then what do we do?
48:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, and my desire to drink.
48:58
SPEAKER_01: Right.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: And so God to me is the catch all for all of the things that are beyond my capacity to understand.
49:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's how I kind of carry forward with it.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: And I've been a magnet for sponsees who struggle religiously.
49:12
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, hey, you can achieve long-term sobriety without cracking a Bible one time, right?
49:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, um, which is great.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, I think that um keeping our our our tent big and our umbrella broad is is one of the most important things about keeping this uh keeping this organization moving.
49:34
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for mentioning all that.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: Because there are people out there that are still not getting sober because of the G word and the literature thinking it it's Catholic adjacent, you know.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: Um switching gears, you and your career have wildly changed.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: You've taken a 180, you're now a real litter.
49:55
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you're no longer in the service industry.
49:57
SPEAKER_01: That's correct.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: And you have you've teamed up with your wife.
50:00
SPEAKER_01: Like, tell me some moments lately that are so wildly different than when you used to work in the service industry.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: And also you guys working as a team, like how does this affect your marriage?
50:13
SPEAKER_01: Does it make it more stressful?
50:14
SPEAKER_01: Does it make it more harmonious?
50:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, do you guys show up differently for each other because you're also working together now?
50:21
SPEAKER_00: And I think that um getting out of the service industry was like the last little vestigial organ of my drinking career.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, part of my drinking career was getting home late at night and leaving for work in the afternoon.
50:40
SPEAKER_00: And my wife even said it a couple of weeks ago, where she was like, I feel like we're finally grown-ups.
50:48
SPEAKER_00: Um like you're adulting.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: Like we're we're adulting, finally.
50:51
SPEAKER_00: We've been adulting this whole time, but it's been like adulting with a little asterisk next to it because I'm still, you know, I'm I'm running with a crowd that's half my age.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's that that's what it is.
51:03
SPEAKER_00: Everybody I work with is, you know, 30 or younger, with very few exceptions.
51:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, most people find their way out of the industry, and I just stuck with it.
51:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, I worked with a lot of people that are now in their 60s that still work in the in the service industry.
51:16
SPEAKER_00: That's this is not a knock on that.
51:19
SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
51:20
SPEAKER_00: Not at all.
51:21
SPEAKER_00: But you know, my wife had reached a crossroads in her career where she needed to hire somebody on, and it was just, you know, I was frustrated enough with my position in the service industry to be like, maybe I should try something different.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: She's like, Well, why don't you get your license and we'll get you the hell out of there?
51:41
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we did.
51:42
SPEAKER_00: And it's been, you know, it's obviously been an adjustment.
51:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have two different working styles.
51:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, we have different styles for getting out and finding business.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, she's more the like pound the phone, scratching the dirt, and I'm more like, well, I've built relationships with people in all these different circles and all these different facets, and and I'm just gonna kind of I'm gonna bring it in that way.
52:04
SPEAKER_01: I think it's great that you guys are different thinkers.
52:06
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, 100%.
52:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, that's that's uh there's a lot of net positives there.
52:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, something that we talked about just the other day where um we had gone, uh we had done some kind of a presentation or something, and she was Monday morning quarterbacking that presentation, and I was like, here's here's how we compliment each other.
52:23
SPEAKER_00: I overthink beforehand and you overthink after the fact.
52:28
SPEAKER_00: So we really balance each other out because you're not gonna hear any of my bullshit overthinking it on the front end, and I'm not gonna hear any of your bullshit overthinking it on the back end.
52:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, so it is.
52:38
SPEAKER_00: We have really become more of that like one unit.
52:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, there have been there have been times where we've been able to accomplish things uh in in the in this world where we refer to it as Autumn with four arms.
52:55
SPEAKER_00: Like this is where we're just able to to to just accomplish a little bit more just because we've got an extra set of hands here to do it, you know, which is incredible.
53:03
SPEAKER_01: I know that she's an amazing salesperson.
53:06
SPEAKER_01: Uh her previous job, she was winning awards all over the place, and she was the number one salesman.
53:13
SPEAKER_01: And um, you guys won trips all over the place.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:19
SPEAKER_01: So I know that she's really good at what she does, and I've also worked with her a bit too.
53:24
SPEAKER_01: Um you guys have a couple different properties now, and and you have so many things in the works.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm just congratulations on making the change.
53:35
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, man.
53:36
SPEAKER_01: You did go back to school at one point, too.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: Would you have done that while you're still fucked up and drinking?
53:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh the entire time that I was in school, I was an active addiction.
53:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: So I went to how did that fare?
53:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh the results were were mixed.
53:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, I I didn't get my degree, and I I I still consider that to be a regret.
53:57
SPEAKER_00: But in, you know, I was going for a degree in public policy in political science, and like, you know, considering the current state of affairs, I don't know that that's an area that I would want to be working in actively at this time.
54:09
SPEAKER_01: It's nice to be informed, though, right.
54:11
SPEAKER_01: And have your own solid opinions.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:13
SPEAKER_01: And it Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine had that one quote, uh, kind of digging into somebody, uh, ripping on him for having so many political ideals and ideas.
54:24
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, You don't have to be in a rock band and have uh political science doctorate through Harvard.
54:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I do.
54:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:34
SPEAKER_01: Education's always power.
54:36
SPEAKER_01: A hundred percent.
54:37
SPEAKER_01: Um do you ever think that you'll go back and finish that?
54:41
SPEAKER_00: I've definitely thought about it because all that's left for me to do is basically an internship, um, which would be interesting throwing a 50-year-old in with a bunch of 22-year-olds doing their own.
54:53
SPEAKER_01: It's also not conducive to your lifestyle now and money.
54:56
SPEAKER_01: Right.
54:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I couldn't imagine doing an internship right now.
55:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it would be like a six-month internship.
55:01
SPEAKER_00: And and as a matter of fact, I was trying to put together an internship for the spring of 2020 to finish my degree, and then everything just kind of went to hell.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: The tornado happened, like all this stuff happened, COVID.
55:13
SPEAKER_00: I went to treatment, and uh, everything just has kind of backburnered.
55:16
SPEAKER_00: And once once I got out of treatment, it was like, you know what, that that's in the maybe pile down the road.
55:22
SPEAKER_00: And I may someday just finish up in order to, you know, just accomplish it and say that I did it, but I feel no urgency to get that done just because I don't think it's a field I would ever go into these days.
55:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
55:33
SPEAKER_00: You can't work in government in a state that hates government, right?
55:37
SPEAKER_01: It's just not.
55:38
SPEAKER_01: I was curious about that.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: So thank you for answering.
55:41
SPEAKER_01: And um, for for the addicts out there, this is one of my last questions, but for the for the addicts, alcoholics out there that haven't lost everything, what would you say to them that they're just continuing down this path, floating along, struggling, using, stealing, whatever they're doing, at whatever level, but they haven't lost everything.
56:02
SPEAKER_01: What would you say to them to help them or make them see the light?
56:07
SPEAKER_00: The bottom comes when you stop digging.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you think rock bottom is, it can get so much worse.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to have somebody die to stop it.
56:28
SPEAKER_00: We live, particularly us, we live in Nashville, Tennessee, which is one of the most vibrant recovery communities in the entire world.
56:37
SPEAKER_00: And the good news is that we take everybody.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: We take everybody.
56:42
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter, and it says it in the literature, it doesn't matter how far down the scale you've come or you've gone, we're always here.
56:50
SPEAKER_00: We'll always accept you.
56:51
SPEAKER_00: We will you can fall into our arms.
56:55
SPEAKER_00: All you gotta do is stop fighting, stop digging, whatever it is.
57:00
SPEAKER_01: Um that bottom, it's endless.
57:02
SPEAKER_01: It's it you can keep digging.
57:04
SPEAKER_00: Oh, a hundred percent.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: What if somebody's thinking about getting sober but they're continuing because they don't have a viber community and recovery?
57:16
SPEAKER_00: I think it's possible to choose not to have that network.
57:23
SPEAKER_00: We can build that network.
57:25
SPEAKER_00: We are everywhere, you know.
57:26
SPEAKER_00: Um this again is a disease that does not discriminate.
57:29
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor or of any sort of protected status, there is a recovery community for you.
57:37
SPEAKER_00: Um we're not here to judge you, we're here to help you.
57:41
SPEAKER_00: And the the I stand on the shoulder of giants.
57:44
SPEAKER_00: There are people whose names I don't know that have paved this road for me.
57:49
SPEAKER_00: Um and I continue to do that for others.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: Um it doesn't matter.
57:57
SPEAKER_00: What whatever your your deepest, darkest secret is.
58:00
SPEAKER_00: I uh part of what I do is I receive fifth steps several times per year.
58:04
SPEAKER_00: I've heard some dark shit.
58:06
SPEAKER_00: I've done some dark shit.
58:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
58:07
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, at the end of the day, all of these things that we're holding inside that we're medicating or numbing with our drugs of choice are going to kill us.
58:17
SPEAKER_00: Right through, you know, anxiety, depression, alcohol use disorder, fear, you you name it.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: It it this is how this is how we die with without a serious readjustment and realignment of how we continue forward.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: And my suggestion would also be you could start your own.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, look at you showing up with three or four guys around a campfire, and it turned into a meeting of 90 to 120 every Tuesday.
58:44
SPEAKER_01: Um and there are also meetings that people probably don't know about in their area.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a uh there's a uh clubhouse that's right by where I live now that holds a midnight meeting once a week, and it's four people in the service industry.
58:57
SPEAKER_01: So crazy.
58:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, crazy, right?
58:59
SPEAKER_00: And then um I go to another meeting on Thursday nights that's um it's a it's a much smaller group um that focuses entirely on emotional sobriety.
59:09
SPEAKER_00: Steps six, seven, ten, and eleven.
59:11
SPEAKER_00: That's all we focus on.
59:13
SPEAKER_00: And it is it it's you know, it's four people who maybe have a couple of years under their belts and maybe are struggling to find something fresh and new or whatever.
59:22
SPEAKER_00: And you know, maybe your self-will without the substances is still running riot.
59:26
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're obsessed with money, maybe you're obsessed with sex, maybe you're obsessed with gambling.
59:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
59:31
SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, so we focus strictly on six, seven, ten, and eleven that meets right around the corner here in Brentwood every Thursday night.
59:38
SPEAKER_00: So cool.
59:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
59:39
SPEAKER_01: And um I I just kind of thank you enough for doing this.
59:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
59:45
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought when we were staggering around together in Cafe Holland or 17 years ago?
59:49
SPEAKER_00: That we'd be doing up on a podcast in Nashville, Tennessee.
59:53
SPEAKER_01: I know.
59:54
SPEAKER_01: It it this my life constantly blows my mind.
59:58
SPEAKER_01: Like I don't know how I got here, but I do.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, I I know the steps that I took and I know the things that I changed aligned and um just getting honest and also making mistakes.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh, a hundred percent.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_01: I I think mistakes are the most beautiful thing because then you have something to correct.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_01: Uh but you have to get honest about your mistakes.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I want to thank you for a few different things here.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh, of course, for doing today.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh I want to thank you for adopting Baxter, my dog.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I forgot all about that.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_01: Um so my wife and I have a cat.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_01: It's her cat that I gained through marriage and relationship.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_01: And they don't get along.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_01: They would fight like cats and dogs.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_01: And so you took Baxter without question.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_01: And I can't thank you, Nottum, 100% more.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_01: And I remember the day that I moved here almost 11 years ago, you showed up in the morning to help me carry boxes.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_01: I've never forgotten that.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_01: And I mean you brought me into the log cabin group.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's just so many things.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_01: And you had a lot of suggestions for me to get involved in the recovery community when I first moved here, the Dharma group.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, I learned about 202 from you.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh there's so many things that I'm thankful for that you don't know that I'm thankful for, I'm sure.
1:01:18
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: You're welcome.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_01: I just love you so much, and everything you've shared is just rock solid.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_01: Um you could also get at Matt if you're looking to get into some property or sell your house.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_01: Uh, what's your at?
1:01:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh we are at uh season in stone real estate specialists.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh we are under the Berkshire Hathaway uh brokerage, and uh we spell we all over Middle Tennessee.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_00: Great.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely now get at get at Matthew Dwyer and he spells it weirdly with no double T.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_01: That's right, just one T.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_01: Suss him out.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh and then if you like this podcast, Breaking Down Addiction, and want to see more episodes, please like and subscribe and do all the things on socials.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: Leave us a five star review if you can.
1:02:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, everything helps.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_01: And look out for your brother and sister out there.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_01: And thank you so much for your friendship and everything, Matt.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_00: Love you.
1:02:13
SPEAKER_00: Love you too.