Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Alcohol Addiction Cost Him Everything. Why Couldn’t He Stay Sober?

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Feel like you’ll never get sober? Maybe you’ve tried again and again, but nothing seems to stick. Mike knows that feeling well.Mike’s alcohol addiction eventually cost him his marriage, his business, his relationship with his kids, and nearly everything he had. He went through treatment multiple times, tried AA, and even put together years of sobriety, only to find himself drinking again.Mike knew a lot about recovery. The problem wasn’t knowing what to do. It was putting what he knew into action.In this episode, Mike shares what finally changed, why community became such an important part of his recovery, and how he rebuilt his life after years of alcohol addiction and relapse.Learn more about Mike: https://www.michael-lassman.com/Download the Sober Motivation app. See ya on the inside. Sober Motivation Mobile App: https://apps.apple.com/app/sober-motivation-app/id6759266291Sober Motivation Website: https://www.sobermotivation.comSupport the Podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivationContact me anytime: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I couldn't take the darkness anymore. Everything was just so dark and my life was so bad that I had no options left. In 2011, my wife had kicked me out of the house six months prior to that. I was drinking every day. I wasn't making it to work at all. I was in an apartment drinking the minute I got up until I passed out and then doing it all over again. I ended up losing the business. My wife filed for divorce.

My kids wouldn't speak to me. I was bankrupt and I had zero money. And it was just like, okay, look, you can stay here and die drinking. Mike spent years trying to get sober, treatment centers, AA, months sober, even years sober. But he kept going back. Eventually, he lost his business, his marriage, his relationship with his kids and was drinking from the moment he woke up until he passed out. What finally changed wasn't learning more about recovery. It was something much simpler that he had been unwilling to do all along.

And this is Mike's story on the Subur Motivation podcast. Great to have you back for another episode or if this is your first time listening to the show or watching along. Thank you. Before we get into it, if you're working on your sobriety journey and looking for some extra support, check out the Subur Motivation app. We've built a really great community with live meetings, daily tools, and people who get it. Search Subur Motivation in the app store or click the link below in the show notes. Now let's get to Mike's story.

Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Mike with us. Mike, how are you? I'm doing great today. How are you, Brad? Yeah, I'm good, man. Glad we could connect, excited to work through your story and share it with everybody here on the podcast. Absolutely.

Yeah, I love your show. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So what was it like for you growing up? Oh, wow. I've been growing up. I mean, I feel like I had a very fortunate childhood. I mean, my parents are married.

They're still married today, you know, almost. 90 now. I had three siblings. We grew up sort of middle, upper middle class. Really, really had a great family life. So can't point to that and say, this is why I became an alcoholic because my background, my childhood was actually really good. Yeah. Interesting. I feel like, I mean, this is where the episode started is with this question. So it's right when we get into. But I mean, it's maybe a 50-50 split about people growing up and some people working through a lot of challenges. Other people, you know, I mean, there's challenges of life and growing up. I think there too, but maybe nothing that stands out. Any early memories from growing up?

I think so. And I'm, you know, as I look back, I have a feeling that this is sort of, you know, where I developed this need for alcohol. As a, you know, as a four or five, six year old kid, you know, I had really big ears. And the kids used to call me Dumbo on the playground. They would just chant Dumbo, Dumbo, Dumbo. And so at a very early age, I got very self-conscious about my appearance. And it made me afraid of other people. And so early on, I just developed a lot of insecurity, a lot of fear of others. You know, as I got a little bit older, you know, some of the bullies would come up and say things like,

hey, do you think you can beat up Troy Pipkin? And then, of course, I would be like, yeah, I can. And then they would arrange a fight after school. And, of course, he would beat me up. And I would run home crying, which, again, reinforced my fear of others. And, you know, that happened a couple of times. And I just learned at a really early age that people are scary. I'm afraid of people.

People will hurt me. People will embarrass me. People will humiliate me. And I was just very uncomfortable in social situations around other people until I found alcohol. Yeah. And that seemed to make it a lot easier. That became a real solution for me. Yeah.

And I mean, this is, I'm taking it here anyway. this is that kind of hindsight, or are you picking up and putting the pieces of this together sort of as you're going through it? Yeah, I mean, I think I've definitely put that together over time. And to a certain extent, I still feel the same way. I still am afraid of people generally. I'm afraid they're going to, again, humiliate me, embarrass me, hurt me. And so I have, you know, I call myself an introvert, but I don't really think that I am. I think it's just more a function of, I'm just not comfortable in social settings. And I really believe that's why I started drinking.

And I started drinking at a very early age, too. Yeah. Did you see a lot of drinking growing up? I did. I mean, I grew up in a small town in southeast Kansas, you know, sort of a, you know, no rules kind of place. Kids were allowed to just roam free and get into all kinds of trouble. And, yeah, I mean, we were, you know, at 13, I had my first couple of beers, you know,

at 14, I was. drunk for the first time. And, you know, we drank frequently through high school and then nonstop through college. So it was definitely an environment where, you know, there was a lot of alcohol, a lot of people drank. It seemed to be the norm. It seemed to be accepted. You didn't get into too much trouble, you know, for doing it. It just became a part of life, you know, even as a, you know, a young teenager. Yeah. Walk us through your first drink. So my first drink was with my dad and I used to go canoeing over in Arkansas, Missouri sometimes with one of his law partners who had played football for the Green Bay Packers, you know, back in the 60s. And he had a son that was

four years older than I was. And he was like a superstar, you know, all, all big eight, three years in a row linebacker for the Kansas Jayhawks. And so I always love going on these, you know, canoe trips because he was the coolest thing that I'd ever seen, the coolest guy I'd ever met. And I really wanted to be like him. And I remember I had never had a drink and there used to be this shuttle process where we, you know, we'd finish our float trip and then the dads would get in the car, drive back down to, you know, to get the other car and then drive it back. And my, my buddy, Chris, you know, Tiberin and I, we would just sit and wait, play games. And, you know, he, at the time, I think he was, I was 13, he was 17 and he would pop open the cooler and have, you know,

a beer and he offered me one. And I'd never had a beer before, but I wanted to be cool. And I really, you know, idolized him. So I took my first drink and I was like, wow, you know, it really changed the way I felt. You know, he ended up giving me a second and a third one. And, you know, I thought that was the best thing ever. It just gave me this confidence. It gave me this courage. It made me feel like I belonged. And then I used it as my solution, you know, in every social situation going forward. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that too. Everybody who, kind of joins the podcast. I feel like there's a lot of different stories, right? That first drink for some people is like a home run or, you know, they say the coming home in a sense or really

checking the box and other people, maybe it takes some time. But for you, it, how does it go from there? I mean, at 13, like, I mean, you can't walk into a store and get it all, but it sounds like it's, it's around. I mean, are you drinking a lot then or no? Yeah, not a lot. I mean, it's very active in sports and school. And so, you know, all the extracurricular activities sort of kept me from getting into more trouble than I could have gotten into. But really from, you know, 14, 15, 16 on, you know, we were pretty much drinking every weekend, you know, in high school. And again, growing up in, you know, Pittsburgh, Kansas, there weren't a lot of rules. There wasn't a lot of enforcement. There was a university there called Pittsburgh State. And I remember I had a Pittsburgh State

jacket and at 17 years old, I could walk into any liquor store with that jacket on and buy whatever I wanted. So, you know, that was kind of the routine of, you know, go to school all week, you know, play your sports, have your games on Friday night and then go get drunk Friday night and Saturday and then be good until the next Friday night. Yeah, be ready for the next party. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, sharing about it now, like I'm sure that the, you know, the young people out there. They're probably, you know, doing some weekend stuff, experimenting. And there were probably other people around you, too, that were, you know, hanging out, party and drinking on the weekend. I always wonder when I look back at my story, because I hung out with a lot of people, same stuff.

We are partying, we were drinking. Not all of them had a substance use disorder or developed a substance use disorder. I wonder kind of connecting back to your story about what box is drinking checked for you, if that, you know, I think, too. I mean, been doing this for a while. that that, you know, relates to, you know, how much we, you know, how much it affects us and all that. Like, did you have other people, too, like, that just kind of drank and then they moved on or? We, yeah, absolutely. I'm most of them, you know, but I did notice really early on, Brad, of, you know, probably

at 14. I remember a time where eight, seven buddies, so eight of us, you know, we'd gotten a case of beer, we decided to go out to this piece of property that my father owned and we were going and, you know, drink this case of beer. Eight guys, 24 beers, it's, you know, three beers apiece. And I vividly remember, you know, sitting around this fire with these beers. And I quickly knocked out the first one, knocked out the second one. And as I looked around, you know, these guys were kind of like, oh, this is terrible.

Or I'd catch some of them pouring some of theirs out. And right then I knew that I drank differently than everyone else. I not only had my three, but I had two or three more from people who didn't want to finish theirs. And, you know, at the time, it seemed like I was kind of one of the few that drank like I did at that age. And most of my friends, you know, didn't end up having a problem. Yeah. Would your parents say anything or it's? No, they never did.

You know, I mean, it was, and I guess in hindsight, I wish they would have. You know, I mean, I came home drunk a lot, you know, would throw up sometimes. And rather than getting in trouble, you know, my mom would just clean it up and nobody would say anything about it. So we kind of had a family where, you know, there wasn't a lot of confrontation, you know, there wasn't a lot of, you know, punishment. There wasn't a lot of reprimanding. There weren't a lot of lectures. And so it was just kind of like boys will be boys.

Yeah. What about your siblings? Are they going through stuff too or is it you're doing all to drink? Yeah. None of my siblings had a drinking problem. So, you know, they didn't drink much at all at younger ages. They did not, you know, didn't really follow them into a drink. adulthood either. So I was the single one in the family, the black sheep, right? Yeah, I'm with you on that.

How does college look for you? I mean, you're still doing well. It sounds like for the most part, anyway, like you're doing well. You're doing what you need to do in school and sports and all of that stuff. So it's not like things are derailing at this point for you, right? No, absolutely not. Yeah, everything was great. So, I mean, I was, you know, I was an A, B student, very active, played basketball, played football, played golf, you know, had a good social life, good family life. It really wasn't impacting me, you know, much in high school. You know, as we went on to college, kind of the same thing, you know, I wanted, my dad made it very clear, you know, that I'm going to pay for your college, but the only place you can go is Kansas State, and I'm only paying for four years. So it became

clear to me that I needed to graduate in four years or pick up the tab beyond. And so, you know, I focused on making sure I graduated. I was super active in the fraternity. super active in intramural sports. And so we were always playing something, which again, kept me out of a lot of trouble. But the drinking was probably more frequent. You know, we would drink during the week, you know, we would get really drunk, you know, on Friday, Saturday nights, you know, sometimes in the afternoon. I think that's when I had my first morning drink. You know, we would have these mimosa breakfasts with another sorority. And, you know, that was. You know, That was one thing that I had learned was I'd never had a drink in the morning, but we'd gone out the night before, gotten really drunk, and I had this terrible hangover.

And we had this mimosa party the next morning. And they started making, you know, champagne and orange juice drinks. And I had a couple of them and I felt immediately better. And I'm like, wow, this is a really, this is a cool trick. This is a nice hack for feeling better the next morning. And, you know, and then every time I had a massive hangover, I always had a couple drinks in the morning. And that lasted for a long time. In college or?

I mean, I did a fair amount in college, but really more probably as I got into my, oh, gosh, like late 20s, you know, early 30s, you know, having gone out the night before and woken up with a terrible hangover, I realized a few shots of vodka in the morning would set me straight. Yeah. Is that what you were drinking too in college was vodka? No, you know, that was the, we mostly drank beer. in college. And, you know, back in the, you know, the 80s in Kansas, the drinking age was 18. So, you know, you could go pretty much into any bar. You could buy beer at any convenience store. You had to be 21 to drink hardlaker. So we pretty much stuck to beer. And, you know, as an introvert or someone who was socially awkward, I was not comfortable going out to the bar scene. I did not

like hanging out in the crowd. Again, you know, insecurity, you know, fear of other people. And so I thought a great idea would be to get a job at a bar. So I ended up getting a bartender job at one of the, you know, most popular bars in Manhattan, Kansas, and standing behind the bar made me feel a lot more comfortable with other people. And the guys that owned a bar, they were real proponents of absolutely drink on the job. You know, we want you to have fun. We want you to, you know, push drinks, We want you to be a part of the party. And we did. And I remember this story.

And sometimes I say this is where I cross the line. You know, they talk about, you know, you're a cucumber and you turn into a pickle and you can't turn back into a cucumber again. But I recall, it was actually my first night, bartending at this bar. And the owner comes up to me 10 minutes in and says, come on, you're going with me. And I'm like, where are we going? And he took me to this, you know, club, which was just a block away. We went down to the basement where the bar was, and he buys a whole bottle of pinch scotch. And he says, as your initiation, we're going to drink this whole bottle right here before we go back.

And I was like, wow, because I never really had, you know, liquor before until then. And we finished the bottle. I was extremely drunk, extremely drunk. He drugged me back to the bar. and these guys were also drug users, so primarily cocaine. He drags me down to the basement and he lays out a couple of lines of cocaine. And we do those and then pop, I was up immediately and like ready to go again, ready to drink again. And I really feel like that was a major turning point of, you know, where you can get to a point where you drink too much or you feel so terrible, you just want to stop.

But the cocaine sort of just revived me and just allowed me to. just to keep drinking and keep drinking. Just to keep the party going, yeah. Yeah, keep the party going. And that was kind of the beginning of when things started getting kind of bad. And is this still in college or no? This is still in college, yeah. This would be my junior year in college.

Yeah, yeah, wow. What are your thoughts like a couple days later? I mean, was that on your bingo card to be drinking a bottle of scotch and doing cocaine? Or was that not there? No, that wasn't really on my B. And I didn't do that a ton after that. I didn't drink a lot of hard liquor after that moment. But for a while, we experimented with cocaine. And it certainly, you know, got me to a place where if I drank too much, a little cocaine would help me, you know, continue on. Yeah. So where do you go kind of moving forward from that? I mean, does it, is it feeling good for you at this point? I mean, because if you're struggling with connecting with people and going out and the insecurities like drinking can round those edges quite a bit. bit to maybe make it less scary. Yeah, very much so.

I mean, I felt like I had to have it. You know, I just was not comfortable going to any, you know, fraternity or sorority party, to any bar, to any event, unless I had alcohol in my system. And so, yeah, it became my solution, you know, for managing my insecurity, my fear of others. It was a great fix. Yeah. So where do you go to you?

you finished college then? I mean, you got four years. We finished college and then I end up getting a job at Coke Industries, which is not the soda company. It's the oil company. You know, they, I was in Wichita, Kansas for a year and a half. They sent me up to Minneapolis and gave a budding alcoholic the dream job, which was, I remember going to Minneapolis, went to the office and I said, okay, what's, you know, where's the, where's the file cabinet? Where's the computer? What do you need me to do? And they're like, well, you don't need a file cabinet. You don't need a computer. Here's a credit card with an open expense account. Here's a company car. Here's a warehouse full of trinkets to give away. And your job is to drive around the state of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

And by every propane dealer you see a chicken fried steak and get them drunk. So I spent, you know, a year and a half pretty much every other day on the road driving around just getting people drunk, drinking myself, eating chicken fried steaks, and just spreading goodwill for the company. And some problems started to happen. I mean, I wrecked the company car. You know, I had some days where, you know, I couldn't get up and out of the hotel and onto the next meeting because I was in such bad shape. And, you know, the consequences started to begin at that point. And then I guess- company? Like, what was the company's reaction to that? You know, again, it was kind of, you know,

they thought it was funny. You know, they thought, oh, this is hilarious. You know, here's this guy. He's out having a great time. People love him. You know, this is what we hired him to do is just to go, you know, spread goodwill and, and keep these guys buying propane from the company. And so, you know, there was zero consequences, which is really kind of the story of my life of, you know, even from 13 all the way through the point we've talked about, there just were never any consequences for me. And, you know, it continued. They eventually transferred me to Houston where I spent, oh gosh, probably three years, you know, selling, trading natural gas for them, drank a lot, drank almost every day down there.

There were times where, you know, we would go out for lunch with customers and with coworkers, and we would drink so much that I would come back and pass out in my office. And again, you know, no consequences. It was just kind of what was going on at that time in the energy industry. And again, no consequences. And then I remember one day I was carpooling in from Kingwood to downtown Houston, which was about an hour commute. And I was carpooling with a coworker of mine.

And one day he calls and says, hey, some guy in my neighborhood, You know, his car's in the shop. You mind if he carpools with us. So, sure, we let him ride along. He says, what's your name? I said, Mike, he said, what do you do? I said, I, you know, market and trade natural gas for Coke industries. And he says, cool, let's get some donuts.

And I never saw the guy again. And then six months later, I get a phone call from Goldman Sachs in New York City saying we want to talk to you about, you know, start, you know, working for the company up in New York. And I'm like, I don't want to be a stockbroker. I'm not interested in that at all. And they said, that's not what it is. It's something completely different. The natural gas futures contract was set to open in April of 1990, and they wanted to put together a proprietary trading desk on Wall Street.

And so they said, well, let us come down and talk to you. So they flew down. I talked to him. I still wasn't sold. They called back and said, okay, look, we, and this guy had gone to work there, and he And they said, hey, we want to start a natural gas group. Does anyone know anyone that knows anything about natural gas? And this guy says, hey, I carpool with some dude that said he marketed and traded gas for Coke.

And I think they were just trying to use me as sort of a springboard to meet other people in the gas business. But for some reason, they ended up liking me. They flew my wife, my ex-wife now at the time to New York City, put us up in the Brits Carlton, took us out, whined and dined us, showed us the, you know, the trade floor. And I started to, I was becoming sold. You know, if this is not, I'm not a stockbroker. I'm not out trying to hustle business. They're actually going to give me a lot of money to just speculate on the price of natural gas and all kinds of various derivatives. And I remember after the third interview, Brad, the partner, you know, called me into his office. I remember he laid down on his couch, he had his shoes off. And he's like, Michael, we like you. And,

And for reference, at the time, I was making $28,000 a year working for Coke Industries, you know, down at Houston. So he says, Michael, we really like you. And he said, we are prepared to offer you a salary of $120,000 a year. And I was like, whoa. And he's like, no, make it $150. I was like, whoa. And then he was like, you know what? And we'll guarantee you $150,000 bonus for the first three years.

So I'm going from 28,000 a year to guaranteed 300 grand a year for the first three years. And I'm, you know, in my late 20s. So we went to New York. And it was kind of the same thing. I mean, we were, you know, grinding it out, very high pressure environment, very dog-eat-dog kind of world. It was intense. It was rough. It was fun.

And there was a lot of drinking going on. I mean, we were every night after work, you know, we'd go someplace and have a couple of martinis. Then I'd get on the train. There was always outside of the train going out to Fairfield County, Connecticut, there was always like a bar and you could get yourself a drink and then get on the train. But every train also had a bar car. And so you could just, you know, if you wanted another drink, you'd just walk to the bar car and drink on your way home. And that became just a daily thing. then I'd get home and have, you know, a few glasses of wine with my wife, wake up, feeling

terrible, take a little shot and go back and do it all over again. Yeah. Wow, that's quite a ride. A lot of things changed. A lot of things changed in there for you. It was a ride. And I wrote about this in the book, is it, you know, I was, I mean, I didn't know anything about commodities.

I didn't know anything about trading. I didn't know anything about Wall Street. And they stuck me in this position of, you know, here's an unlimited amount of money to invest and speculate with. And I ended up building an enormous book. And coincidentally, there was a location in Canada called the Empress and I also called Aco. And it was a basis differential.

So it traded at a differential to the New York Dymax, which is in Henry Hub, Louisiana. And I had built this massive position in Canada. I'd gone long, you know, basically Canadian gas. and the market just turned on a dime, and I lost like almost $40 million in two weeks. Of the company's money? Of the company's money. Of the company's money. And it was brutal.

It was brutal. So, you know, that was, that was it. I mean, I'm no experience in a position I shouldn't have been in drinking every day, you know, making stupid decisions. You know, and at the time, we didn't have risk management. There wasn't a lot of oversight. Nobody really knew, you know, what kind of risk was on the books. And it just blew up. Yeah.

And this is, so you're drinking every day too. I mean, every day. Every day. Maybe not in excess every day, but drinking, it's consistently part of your life and you're waking up. No thoughts, though, at this time in your life, your early, was this early mid-20s of this. This would be late 20s.

Yeah. Yeah, this was late 20s. No. I mean, I felt like, okay, this is just how the world works. Everybody parties, everybody drinks. You know, the rule at Goldman Sachs was, I don't care how junk you get the night before, you just answer the bell in the morning. And, you know, oftentimes I'd look around the trade floor and guys would be throwing up in trash cans. And everybody thought that was funny.

It was just accepted and kind of cool, actually, back then. Yeah. So to me, it was like, okay, this is what Wall Street's like. This is what life is like in New York City. And, you know, it works for me. And were you married at this time? I was married, yeah, yeah. And so we had our first child when I was up in New York. And, you know, after the blow up, you know, it was kind of like, okay, I'd been there for almost five years. I said, you know, I'm so burnt out. You know, I'm getting up at five in the morning, you know, to get to the office by eight. I'm not getting home until eight at night. I'm never seeing my, you know, my new son. I'm drinking. I'm in big trouble, you know, for losing this much money on this position. And it's surprising. Surprisingly, they didn't fire me. They said you were going to work here until you work that off.

And, you know, after probably four or five months, you know, after that happened, I said, I just can't do this anymore. I got to go. And where do you go after that? So from there, I left and ended up saying, I'm, you know, my name is ruined in this industry. You know, people know, you know, that I've lost this money, that I've essentially blown up. And I thought for sure no one's going to offer me a job, but just the opposite happened. It's like because of the experience on Wall Street, because it was a new market, because, you know, we were doing a lot of innovative things with financial derivatives. I was getting calls from all over the place.

You know, can you come work for us? You know, we're going to pay you this. We want you to do that. I had three or four really good job offers. And so I ended up taking one in Omaha that turned out to be a disaster. They actually did fire me after about 10 months because my bad New York City attitude didn't fit well with the Midwesterners from Omaha. And at that point, I was like, okay, now I am done. And I decided to go and do something totally new.

So I started a gourmet coffee franchise. Oh, really? Wow. Gourmet coffee franchise, wow. Yeah. Yeah. So it was fun. I built three stores.

And it was a really, really fun business. But again, the drinking was, you know, I was drinking a lot. I was taking, we had a store room and I was hiding bottles, you know, of whiskey in the store room. And I'd be going back there every half hour, every 45 minutes and taking a couple of shots. And it seemed like that started to become a daily thing. Anybody mention anything to you about the drinking? Yeah.

At the time, you know, I think, you know, my wife was concerned. And I remember, I think I'm not. must have been like 32. And I remember we were sitting out on the back patio drinking wine in front of the fire. And I said, you know what? I think I might have a problem with alcohol. And she said, you know, I think you might too. I'm like, well, what do you think we should do about it?

And she's like, well, maybe you should just slow down a little bit. And so we popped open a second bottle of wine and said, that's a great idea. You know, I'll start to slow down a little bit. That lasted for probably. probably three days, you know, and then I was just back at it. And at that time, it was, I was drinking in the mornings, you know, all the signs of, you know, hiding bottles under my bed. I had bottles hidden in the garage. I was filling water bottles up with, with vodka, you know, so I could take them anywhere, you know, I was taking a bottle of schnops to, you know, to work.

You know, that was back of the day when we carried the briefcase and I just take a bottle of stops in there. And during the day, I'd take a few shots. And it just, it really started to get out of control then. And that's, that's when I finally went to my first treatment center, one of many. Yeah. This is in your early 30s, too. What were, what came to mind when you were like cutting back or or quitting was there? Like, what was the thought process there of like, oh, I, you know, I can't do that or I don't want to do that. Yeah, I, I didn't want to for sure. I think I thought to myself, well, maybe there's some way to control this. You know, maybe I've just, you know, gotten out of hand. Maybe things have just gone too far. Maybe I can figure out how to control it, you know, just maybe like,

just like the book says, I switched to beer instead of liquor and I'm not going to drink during the week and I'm, you know, not going to drink in the morning and tried to control it that way. But it was just, it was addicted. So I just, I couldn't do it. Yeah. Did you have, before all of this sort of became part of your life. Did you have any, like, education around, like, alcohol? Is it like other people in the family of like, hey, they got sober? They struggled or any sort of information of like, hey, this is what can happen, you know, the addiction element? Zero. Zero. I mean, again, I mean, we're back in the, you know, what is this? We're back in the 90s, you know? And I mean, I didn't even know anything about AA at all. I didn't know that there was a program.

I did not understand addiction at all. I didn't know. I didn't know. know any other alcoholics. You know, I take that back. Actually, I was when I was, after I'd sold the coffee franchise, I went to work for another oil and gas company in Tulsa. And I remember being on, and again, we were out entertaining, traveling all the time, playing a lot of golf. It was just, it was the same job I had in Wisconsin, just a little more classy of the company had private planes. And so we'd get on a plane to go see customers and the drinks are free, which is great. And I remember being on a flight with this older guy, you know, and I'm just knocking him back right and left. And he's drinking a Diet Coke.

And I'm like, dude, you know, get a, get a beer. Let me get you a drink. Have a drink. And he's like, no, I don't want one. I don't want one. And I just kept pounding and pounding and pounding this guy, you know, to have a drink. The whole flight there finally says, look, I'm an alcoholic. I can't drink.

And I was like, well, you can have just one, right? and that's how little I understood about it. And he's like, no, I couldn't. And sort of, you know, ironically, you know, when I'd hit one of the first bottoms, you know, Williams, when Enron went down in a ball of flames, the company I was working for, Williams also went down and they gave me two options. They said, you can take a demotion or we'll give you two years pay and you can leave. And I said, give me the money.

At the time, I was, you know, I was just drunk every single day and realized I got a problem and he's the he's the guy I called and I thought for sure he'd say you know screw you know you were such an ass to me you know on that plane you know you berated me for not drinking but he said come to my house he gave me a big book you know he said this is this is what you have to do go to this meeting you know my son's going to take you and that kind of started the first journey for the first recovery journey of many and it was and you mentioned or treatment or rehab was in the mix there too? Yes.

Yeah. I went to like a couple of AA meetings, you know, with him and with his son, but I just kept drinking and I think I was at the point where, you know, my wife said, look, you got to do something about this. And so I went to a 30-day treatment center, you know, nearby, spent 30 days in there, came out, felt great and ended up staying sober for a year. But I didn't, but I didn't, you know, I didn't stay in the. program, you know, I went to a few meetings. I went to a lot of meetings at first, and then it

started falling off a little by little. I didn't have community. I wasn't really working the steps. You know, the first relapse happened shortly after a year of sobriety. Yeah. Indeed, so the treatment experience was, you know, good for you then. Yeah, it was good. I mean, I, I think I have this, this, there's no statistic to it, but I feel like the first time to treatment is your best chance. Because if you've been there a few times before, you know the drill, they kind of, you know, they run you in, they run you out. Maybe they work you through the first three steps.

30 days is hardly enough time, you know, to do anything other than detox, you know, let alone figure out, you know, what's going on inside you and how are you going to fix, you know, what's broken. Yeah. You know, from there, I mean, a year later, I'd gone to the same treatment center again. And six months after that, back to a different one. I started trying everything, Brad. I went to celebrate recovery.

I went to Narcanon, which is a Scientology-based recovery center. That was weird. You know, I tried everything. And I just continued to relapse and relapse and relapse. Yeah, Narcanon. I almost ended up in one of those places now that I think about it. I went to a detox in South Florida, and then they were. They were like, yeah, you got to get into this program.

And it was one of those programs. I didn't know much about it. But yeah, it was one of those programs. But I didn't have two dimes to rub together. So I was like, this is a great plan, guys. But I don't know how I'm going to pay for this program. Interesting. That's expensive.

Yeah, it was a very peculiar program. I mean, it was essentially it was a, they would put you in the dry sauna for eight weeks. So you go every day. You'd spend eight weeks in the dry sauna. They'd give you niacin. You'd get in the dry sauna. You'd spend eight hours, you know, you're in, you're out. And then what would happen is with the niacin, your skin would get all red and blotchy.

And when it finally stopped doing that, all of the alcohol and drug metabolites have left your body. And then you were done with that part of the program, which I thought was super interesting. And physically, I felt really well. You know, you get to spend eight weeks in the sauna, just cleaning out a system that's pretty messed up. I felt pretty good. Yeah. Well, what's niacin? What's niacin?

It's just a vitamin B. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's just a vitamin B. So you would do that. So, okay. What's happening? Like, walk me through, like, these relapses. I mean, is there, I mean, you leave the program and they're committed to, like, I'm not drinking again.

and then something changes along the way? Or how does that look? Yeah, I think a lot of it was, I mean, there were times where I drank the day I left, you know, the treatment center. It's just, I just wasn't ready. You know, I wasn't, I wasn't willing to admit that I had a problem. I didn't want to be, you know, the alcoholic. I didn't want that title.

I wasn't one of those people. And so, you know, I fought it really, hard. And it just, it just, it just never got better. I mean, I would go a month, six months a year, sometimes, you know, one time I went as long as three years, but there's always something that kept driving me back to it. And then they, and it's because alcohol was my solution. I mean, it's how I handled, you know, all of this emotional unrest that was inside of me, the fear, the self-consciousness, the, you know, the anger, the stress, the, the, You know, I just, I didn't think there was another way to live without alcohol.

I couldn't imagine, you know, functioning, you know, in this world without it. Yeah. And so it became, you know, quitting alcohol was just the beginning. You know, I needed to figure out what's going on inside here and how to solve some of those problems. So I'm not using alcohol to fix it. Yeah. It sounds like, too, I hear a lot of people share about this, too, like other things in life, seem to be going decently well. I mean, you're getting all these job opportunities. I mean,

you have to coffee franchise. So it's not like you're just, you know, hanging out in bed all day, just reaching over to drink from the bottle, right? So I wonder too, like if that has an effect on things too, right, about like, hey, everything is, yeah, things aren't great, but everything is not completely pulling apart externally, right? Where some people, if it was, maybe there would be more pressure or it would be a quote unquote more obvious. But for you, it seems like as far as that goes, things were all right or do. Yeah, I think so. And, you know, maybe that's part of the reason why it took me so long because things were going well. You know, I had good jobs. I had some money. I had a good family. I had lots of friends. I wasn't really in a lot of trouble.

And there weren't, again, a lot of consequences, you know, to my drinking. And so, it just hadn't gotten bad enough for me yet. And it didn't until 2011. 2011. It is interesting too because there'll be people who listen to this episode too. And maybe they're kind of in here where you're at right now. I went to treatment. I tried all these things.

Nothing's worked. I wasn't ready. Maybe I'm still not ready. But I think we know, right? Like logically, it's like, okay, if I quit drinking my life, it could get better. or should get better, will get better, but they're not ready. Like, what do you say to somebody who's, like, kind of in there? Like, is it, is it that we need to wait around for things to get worse to say,

okay, let me try something different? Yeah, I mean, I hope not. I wish that wasn't the answer, but I think it is. The book talks a lot about, you know, how they try to raise the bottom, you know, for the, for the younger alcoholic. Because, you know, in the old days, the Bill Wilson, and days. I mean, these guys were the low-bottom drunks. But I just, I didn't, I didn't get better until I couldn't, I couldn't take the darkness anymore. You know, it wasn't that I saw a light of,

oh, here's, here's recovery, here's sobriety, here's a new way of living. Everything was just so dark and my life was so bad that I had no options left. I mean, in 2011, I was, I'd had another business. It was an outdoor overstock business that I'd had for seven or eight years. You know, my wife had kicked me out of the house, you know, six months prior to that. I was drinking every day. I wasn't making it to work at all. I was, you know, in an apartment, you know, drinking the minute I got up until I passed out and then doing it all over again.

I ended up losing the business. My wife filed for divorce. My kids wouldn't speak to me. I was bankrupt and, you know, I had zero money. So I had no options left. And it was just like, okay, look, you can, you can stay here and die drinking, you know, because they're eventually going to kick you out because you can't afford to pay for the apartment anymore. Or you can go get some help.

And that's in 2011 was really the rock bottom for me where I was fortunate enough that I went to a long-term treatment center called Burning Tree in east of Dallas. And the plan was, you know, it was a two-year program. You're supposed to spend one year inpatient, you know, living on a ranch. And then the second year, you were supposed to live with another resident, you know, get a job at Home Depot or something and go to outpatient for that year. And, I mean, just to tell you how tricky this disease is, is that I went to this program, excuse me. And I was in the program for six months. I felt amazing. I felt strong. I'd work through the steps. You know, I had this thing down and I'm like, okay, I can't stay here for another year and a half. I've got, you know, kids back in Oklahoma. I've got to begin to put my life back together again. So I'm leaving. And, you know, they didn't make it easy. You know, they were, you know, they had my family call. They all wrote me letters. They told me how stupid I was for leaving after six months. And, you know, I was determined. I was to that look, I've got this thing down.

I'm not going to drink again. It's all going to be good. And so they dropped me off at a gas station a couple of miles down the road, gave me 50 bucks. That's all I had to my name. And they're like, good luck to you. And, you know, I called my brother and said, hey, you know, I think I'm going to go out to, you know, Durango, Colorado,

spend a couple months with my parents just kind of unwind and figure out where to go from here. He wired me some money, and I got on a Greyhound bus from Kaufman to Dallas, which was sort of the hub. And while I was waiting to catch a bus to Albuquerque where my parents were going to come pick me up, it was a mess. I mean, I'd never ridden a Greyhound bus before. It was packed. Everything was late. It was chaos. And I remember standing in line for probably an hour, you know, just waiting for them to say, okay, your bus is here.

your bus is ready. I was just getting so frustrated and so angry. I look across the terminal and they've got a bar in the terminal. And I'm just like, I'm going to go have a drink. Six months, you know, I'd lost everything. I'd lost my family. I'd lost my money. I'd lost my job.

I'd lost my reputation. I'd been six months in treatment talking about how strong I was. And in one moment I was ready to throw it all away right there in the, right? They're in the bus depot. Yeah. But did you? Did you drink? I didn't. I didn't. I remember, I'd remembered something that I'd learned, which was there are three things that you should do if you feel that urge coming on. And one of them is to, you know, throw up a quick prayer to God or your higher power of, hey, you know, take away this frustration, take away this anger, take away this embarrassment for having to, you know, ride a greyhound bus when, you know, a few years earlier you're flying around on private. explains. And then the second thing is, you know, talk to someone. You know, in the program, it's talk to your sponsor or talk to, you know, a trusted friend or talk to a spiritual

leader, but just talk to someone and tell them how you're feeling. Well, in the bus terminal, I didn't have a sponsor. I didn't have any trusted friends, but I'd been chatting with this girl in line. And she was on her way back to Seattle. And I said, man, I'm so frustrated. I'm so angry. I just feel like I want to go over to that bar and just get drunk. And she's like, I know, me too. And she said, I'm trying to get back to Seattle to see my fiance before he gets deployed to Afghanistan. And now I'm not going to make it. And that kind of hit me between the eyes of like, oh, wow. You know, here I am, you know, being a baby about getting on a bus, but I'm going out to Colorado, beautiful Colorado to spend two months, you know, chilling out with my parents,

to have my mom make me breakfast, lunch, dinner, and enjoying life. And she's going to miss, you know, seeing her fiance who's going to risk his life for our country. And then I remember the third thing, which was, you know, it's, you know, throw up a prayer, take away whatever this spiritual malady or this emotional turmoil is. Two is to talk to someone. And three is, you know, turn your thoughts to someone you can help. And so I said, okay, two out of three, I'm not feeling quite as much like I want to go to this bar now. show me someone I can help. And at that very moment, I look across the tarmac.

I don't know. Is there a tarmac at a bus terminal? And I see this Hispanic woman, and she's got three kids with her, small kids. They're all crying. She's crying. She looks confused. She's got all this luggage. And so I decided, okay, I'm going to get out of the line.

I'm going to go help her. And so I went over, helped her figure out which bus she was supposed to be on, got her luggage and her kids on the bus. And then I went back and got in line again. And it all just went away just like that. And I did not go to the bar and have the drink. Yeah. Wow.

So you're going back to your parents, too, in Colorado. What are their thoughts? What are those conversations like? You know, I think they're scared. I mean, they've seen relapse after relapse. They've seen problem after problem. They don't understand the disease either. And I think they're just trying to be supportive.

but, you know, they're scared, you know, they're skeptical. They didn't really want to address it much. It was just like, you know, good for you for making it six months and this is great. And you're going to do it this time, which is something they told me, you know, a dozen times before. And it's hard. You know, and that was one thing that as an alcoholic I didn't really get early on is I told myself, I'm just hurting myself. you know, I'm hurting my body.

I'm hurting my reputation. I'm, you know, it's my money. It's that, that was my job. I'm not hurting anybody about myself. But the truth is I was hurting everybody badly. You know, my kids, you know, I lost a marriage over it. You know, my parents were, you know, had a lot of sleepless nights. You know, they would always tell me, you know, when the phone rang at night, they'd always think it was going to be the call saying I was dead.

Yeah. So we do a lot of damage and we don't think we do. Yeah, which is interesting. I think that, yeah, there's a lot of us that we start there of wondering why. Why is this bothering all of you when I'm the one drinking and it's my own life that's being impacted? But yeah, it does. It does affect everybody around us. Yep.

Yeah. So you mentioned to me, though, I mean, your last drink was in 2017. We're at 2011 after this program. of six months, it suggested to be two years. But how do things look moving forward? Yeah. So I stayed sober for a while. I think it was about three, a little over three years, you know, after I left the long-term treatment center. And then probably the similar story you hear from a lot of people is I stopped going to meetings. I stopped getting involved. I stopped, you know, being a part of the community. I started, you know, letting things, you know,

get to me, you know, had some relationship troubles, had some work troubles, and, you know, and the thought goes through your head of, you know, what's going to make me feel better? And the answer's a drink. And it works, right? It works, you know, for a few minutes. Like my old sponsor used to say, it's 15 minutes of euphoria and, you know, 15 days or longer of pain. And so I just had gotten to the point where, you know, I just wasn't taking care of myself, you know, psychologically or emotionally.

And it just became really easy to take another drink. And then I'm off to the races again. Yeah. Off to the races. How hard is it for you going through this process, right? Six-month program, a bunch of treatment centers, realizing everything that you've lost. And then how do you make sense of it? Like, okay, now I'm doing what caused me to lose all of this stuff.

or do you go into it like, well, I'll do it differently this time. Or are you seeing through that lie too? Yeah. So, you know, the book talks about this cycle of addiction of, if it starts with this spiritual malady where, you know, we have this emotional discomfort, the anger, the frustration, the fear, the jealousy, the whatever it is. And, you know, our minds, you know, kick into what's going to make that go away, what's going to make me feel better. And the answer is always a drink, you know, and it does. It does make you feel bad. And there's a lot of people that, you know, can have a bad day and can be going through something rough and they can have a couple of drinks and they're going to be fine. But people like you and I, we've got, you know, different biochemistry that when we take that first drink, it sets off the phenomena of craving and we just can't stop.

And so, you know, I, we get to the point where we don't know the difference between the truths and the lies. I mean, we're, you know, the lies are like you just said, I'm just going to have one. have a couple or I can control it this time or, you know, things are going to be different or nobody's going to know or just screw it, you know. And then the truths are, you know, I lose my family. I lose my money. I get a DUI. I go to jail. I lose my job. And, you know, these things just make our psychological and emotional condition worse. And so we're feeling bad again. and we'd say, well, what's going to make me feel better? Another drink.

And, you know, off we go. And I think to answer your question, that was kind of where I was. I really felt like I was done. I'm like, and I'd said it a dozen times, like, I will never get better. This is how I'm going to die. I just, I will never be able to recover. It's just not possible for me. And I was ready to live with that, you know, even after having lost everything,

I just didn't think I could do it. Yeah, just couldn't. And I think that there's a lot of people. I noticed that sort of trend. I mean, when people first start drinking, it's like experimenting, whatever, it doesn't, you know, things don't fall apart right away. But then at the end, there becomes this level of acceptance. Like, this is my life.

This is the way I'm going to go out. So be it. Yeah. So the statistic is that 90% of alcoholics feel like their lives are meaningless. And those are alcoholics that are in active addiction and is almost 100% of drug addicts when polled feel like their life is completely meaningless. And that's how I felt of like this is just, you know, it's over for me. I can't get better. I won't get better.

It doesn't matter what I do. It doesn't matter what I try. Doesn't matter who's there to help me. I'm just going to continue to fail. And, you know, I had that attitude for a long time. Yeah. where do things turn around for you so i guess in 2017 you know i had gotten a DUI i'd lost a job my kids you know weren't speaking to me another relationship it ended and i was just like okay

i got to do something because i'm going to kill myself here and so i checked into another longer term treatment facility here in dallas ended up staying about three months and then decided, you know, it's time to get plugged into a program. You know, and one thing that, you know, the first sponsor that I had, Brad, you know, he was like, like, nobody knows the book better than you do. I mean, you've got like a Harvard education and recovery, and I probably spent more on treatment centers than, you know, somebody getting an MBA and a law degree from Harvard does.

He said, but what you're missing is community. He said, that's 100% the issue for you as community because I was, I didn't really like AA meetings. And I still struggle with them a little bit today of, I didn't want to go. You know, I didn't like going. I didn't always like the people. This was a pride thing. Like, I thought I'm different than these people. You know, I don't need this.

I'm better than them, you know, in some way. But the truth is, I'm just like them. And he said, Mike, that is your problem. You know, you, number one, you don't go to. meetings. Number two, when you do, you show up late and you leave early, you don't talk to anybody. So when you disappear, nobody even knows you're gone. And he said, I want you to start going, you know, to a meeting every day for a couple of months. And I want you to get there 10 minutes early. I want you to stay 10 minutes late. I want you to introduce yourself to people, you know,

and I want you to know everybody's name at that meeting. And I want them to know your name. And he was right. You know, once I, once I got that community, you know, which is something, you know, you guys do a great job of with sober motivation of building community, it kind of started to click. And then he said, okay, now let's work a little bit of service work in, which is really the same thing of when I gave you that formula of number three was show me someone I can help and I help the Hispanic woman load the bus. It's how can you help somebody else? Because what that does is it gets me out of myself. And when I'm in myself, I can go to a drink pretty quickly.

And so really just getting plugged into community, you know, being of service where I could and didn't have to be in and around AA. It could be, you know, I volunteer a lot at homeless shelters, at food pantries and things like that, doing things at church. It was just getting out of myself. And it finally just clicked of like, why was I doing that? Look how bad my life was. you know, look how many people I hurt.

Look how much stuff I destroyed. And it just, I don't know, it just clicked of, you don't need to do this anymore, you know. And then it became a function of how am I going to deal with that spiritual malady when it hits, you know, and how do I get over this self-consciousness? How do I get past this fear of others? You know, how do I manage my frustration or anger or jealousy, you know, when it pops up? And having community was a huge part of that. Yeah. And you feel like throughout the rest of it, you had kind of dipped your toe in it, but you

weren't maybe committed to the community or connecting with other people. Yeah, absolutely. I stayed on the fringes. You know, I had not committed. I had not surrendered, you know, to recovery, not surrendered to the program. I still had a lot of pride. I had a lot of ego. And, you know, it was what was holding me back.

And I couldn't figure it out because I'm like, man, I know this book inside now, and I know all the literature inside now, and I know the steps and how they work, and I've worked through them. And, you know, I'm an A student here in recovery, but I was acting like an F student. Well, with all the treatment experience and everything else, too. I mean, I kind of refer to that as like getting out of the bleachers and onto the field. Like, it's kind of like the education, the information, especially in today's world, like, I mean, you can, type into AI, whatever model you use. And they will spit out a pretty good plan for if you wanted to get sober that if you followed it, like I would feel confident to say like you would probably make progress.

But it's in those moments you talked about that I think are so important, the train station, these other moments in life to where the drinking makes sense. And then we just keep it to ourselves. We don't share it with anybody because maybe because I hear people a lot say, especially people that are sober, say they have a six months or a year, they maybe feel guilty in some way of, man, I should have this figured out. Like I shouldn't be reaching out to other people to say, hey, I'm sort of on the edge here. I don't, you know, I'm really struggling and they should kind of have figured out.

It's interesting, too, with sobriety, I find anyway, I always bring this up. But if you go to a gym and you're like, I want to get a six pack and you work out, you eat right, and you get a six pack. I think logically we all know if we start eating junk food again and we don't go to the gym, we lose the six-pack. But when it comes to sobriety, we convince ourselves that everything we've done to get us to a happy or content or a better place in life that we convince ourselves like, I can, you know, I can stop doing all of that.

Of course, it might change over time, but we can convince ourselves of like, I don't need to go to the meetings. I don't need to see my therapist. I don't need to, you know, call Brad twice a week and see how he's doing. doing, like, I'll be good with all of that. It seems to be a slippery slope for a lot of people. I agree. I think it's probably the slipperiest slope is that, you know, you know how it is.

You, 30 days, 60 days, you start feeling better physically, you know, go to a few meetings. You feel them pretty strong. And it's just so easy to say, you know what, I got this and I don't need that. And that, you know, that's happened to me dozens of times. And a relapse almost always follows. Yeah. What is it like in 2017 when you, like is there, was there an event that happened? Was it a conversation? Was it, what was it? It was it? You know, I think it was just that, you know, I'd been probably like on a two-week bender, you know, almost killed myself, you know, had again, it lost, you know, everything. And it was just a friend that said, you know, we got to do something. You know, we've got to get you someplace. And they found this place in Dallas. And, you know, I I was in a comatose state, so I went along and fortunately it worked. Yeah.

But it's not a one and done thing either. It's you got to keep at it. Yeah. And I think that's an important message for people, too, that might have a trend or, you know, go through this too is about not giving up, even though we might not achieve our goal the first time. I mean, I think it's kind of a unicorn out there. If there are people that do, they say, hey, I'm done. drinking and I'm getting sober and they never look back up until, you know, present day, right?

None of us know, I don't think anyway, what forever is. But it can be a challenge to, you know, stay in the game, I guess. Like, how do you keep showing up, right? Because I think the shame builds and sort of the guilt builds. And it's like where, you know, you're losing stuff, you're getting stuff. You're losing stuff. And it's like, man, the rebuild can wear you down too of like, okay, I got to start over again. Like is this, I wonder if we think sometimes, is it even worth it?

Yeah, I agree. I do. I think that, you know, it's so easy to get frustrated in this program. And honestly, I don't, I don't, I'm not sure I know anyone. You know, it's got to be less than 1% of people who decide, okay, I'm going to stop drinking and then they never have another drink again. And I hate to say it, but I think relapse is just part of the growing process. And, you know, I don't know what the statistics are, but they're not good. You know, I mean, we know people go to treatment and 80 or 90% of them relapse within the first, you know, six months or year.

You know, the odds get better as you're, you know, the lengths of sobriety that you have. But I remember someone had told me, you know, because I had gone, I had this history of relapsing, but having a lot of sobriety in between. So, I mean, I would go, let's just say a year, you know, without having a drink. And then I'd have like a three-day binge blowout. and I would just beat myself up of like, you know, you suck. You're never going to get this. You know, you're back at square one again. And just the daunting task of having to rebuild again,

what was just almost too much. And it made me want to give up. And I remember somebody said to me, you know, Mike, of the last, you know, 365 days, you were sober for 365 of those. You were drunk for three. that's like 0.0005% of the time you were drunk, 99.995, you were sober. That's positive. That's a good thing.

So, you know, I don't think as alcoholics and addicts we can really, you know, beat ourselves up that much when we fail. Because we do fail. And it's okay. I mean, you just have to look at the progress you've made, what you learned, what the relapse taught you. And just keep moving forward. it's not your end it doesn't have to be the end and sobriety is sobriety getting stopping drinking is just the beginning you know that that's what you have to do and then you got to figure out what's going on inside here and when you solve that you know then the equation becomes complete yeah i think yeah that that's

true i mean the doorway is not drinking because it's hard to figure out or maybe near impossible to figure out all the other stuff with the drinking in the mix I feel like that's so true though. It's like I failed and I'm a failure and it's never going to work out. I love the way that, you know, you had mentioned a friend of yours said there too. I mean, here's the numbers of drank for this amount of time out of the whole year. And I don't know if it's, I don't know where it came from. I really don't, Mike, but it's like when I first started kind of all this, you know,

probably 16, I don't know, I was probably first introduced to AA when I was 17, 20, 23 years ago. And I don't know if it was this way or this is just the way I saw it. But it seemed like the hierarchy or it was seemed like it was always like consecutive time was the gold standard. It was like anything but consecutive time. I'm still trying to figure it out. And I get that. Like if that's somebody's goal and that's cool, right?

Like that's important to me in my life today. But I feel like starting out that was kind of overwhelming. Like I think that credit is due for those who get to. who string together four days and have one off or string together 364 and drink for one. Like to me, that is still huge progress because the way I look at it too is you can't relapse or slip if you're not in the game. So like that in itself to me is like you're doing something about it because there's a lot of people wandering around the world who aren't there yet.

And so I'm like, that's already a huge win. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I, you know, the guy who has five days is just as important as the guy who has, you know, 35 years. And I, you know, I've never been a huge fan of counting days and of stating your sobriety date because I do think that that becomes daunting for the newcomer. You know, when you've got a week and some guys like, you know, I've got 27 years, you're like, there's no freaking way I'm ever going to make it there. And I don't, I don't, I think we should count the successful days we've had, you know, not when was our, when's our sobriety date? And so just like in my example, if you look, if you made it a year and then you had a slip

and you blew up for two or three days, okay, that's not good, but it's not the end of the world. And pat yourself on the back for making it a year without having a drink and just pick back up and let's go. Yeah. Progress is progress. heading into sort of the other side of things, you know, the sobriety. What do you feel were some of the hardest things for you to work through initially?

For me, it was getting comfortable in social situations. You know, it was, you know, I didn't want to go to any functions or any parties or any, you know, football games or anywhere where they were serving alcohol. You know, not because I was scared, I was going to take a drink, but because it would just make me, like, doubly uncomfortable. You know, because everybody, most people knew, okay, he's got a problem, you know, and I'm in there like, I'm awkward as it is, but now I can't have a drink to, you know, to fix that problem. And everybody's staring at me, you know, going, oh, gosh, you know, you got to keep your eye on him because, you know, he's a recovered alcoholic. And so it was, it was hard kind of try to figure out how to fit back in again because my whole life, that was my, that's where I lived. You know, I lived in the party. I lived in the bar.

I lived, you know, drinking was every single part of my life. And when you strip that away, it's like, who am I now? You know, what am I supposed to do with myself? How do I get comfortable in these situations? How do I manage, you know, what things should I go to, shouldn't I go to? I had a really hard time the first, you know, year or two figuring out how to have fun again, you know, without alcohol. Yeah. There's somebody who always leaves a comment to on YouTube about this one question.

What do you start doing in the evenings differently? Like how do you spend your time if you're, you know, before it's consumed? I mean, out drinking takes up so much time in our life. And then when we get sober and it's like, okay, you knew I, you know, rediscovery or rebuilding a new identity, kind of like you mentioned there. Who am I without all of this? What do I actually enjoy so many decisions that we made up into this point? we were either drinking or whatever.

That was in the mix. So what do you end up, what do you start doing? So to answer your question, my most recent book, Modern Man Search for Meaning is about finding your purpose in life. And I think as an alcoholic, you know, coming off this disease and asking yourself that question of, okay, who am I now? What am I supposed to do with all this free time I have? I think it's super important that each one of us figures out, you know, why are we here?

year, you know, what is our purpose in life? And, and, you know, we figure out what that is and we begin to pursue it. You know, and for me, you know, coming out of, in 2017, I was like, okay, I don't know what to do. I can't go to parties. I don't even want to hang out with my friends anymore, you know, because they're always drinking and I'm awkward and they're awkward around me. And I just felt really called to write my first book. So that became a purpose for me of, you know, this is a six or a 10-month project, you know, that I just put a lot of focus into. And it was cathartic to write it as well. But, you know, I think getting sober is great, but then you need to figure out what are you going to do with your life, you know?

And what is your unique purpose? Yeah, the purpose. What is our purpose? Yeah. I think that is so important, too. I mean, you've hit on that a couple times, right, of, you know, meaning in life, too, right? And I kind of see that as, you know, in line and in some ways, too. What's my meaning?

What's my purpose? What can inspire me to wake up every day? Be excited about things. Set goals. And yeah. So you found your purpose in sort of writing and sharing. You have, you know, and I think, you know, in particular book, you know, there's a formula. Finding purpose is really just the intersection of your values.

I mean, what are you passionate about? What, you know, what do you get upset about? What matters? to you in life. What makes you angry? And then your gifts, your spiritual gifts, your gifts, just your talents, you know, what are you good at? I mean, you're, you're good at podcasting. Maybe you're good at fixing HVAC. Maybe you're good with kids. Maybe you're good at writing or speaking or playing softball. Everybody's got talents. And then your life experiences and especially the painful ones, you know, and as alcoholics and addicts, we've all been through a lot of painful,

you know, life experiences. And when you, when you sort of take those three, where they intersect, gives you a really good idea of where your purpose is. You know, and I'm, I love to write. You know, I've had the experience of, you know, being an alcoholic, you know, being divorced, being, you know, bankrupt, being jobless, you know, having lost relationships with my kids. And so, you know, I can, I can write about those things. And, you know, some of my values are, as that, that I really value kindness. I value vulnerability. I value, you know, compassion and helping others and teaching.

And so when I kind of put all those things together, I'm like, okay, you know what? I can write, you know, and I can speak and I can post things on social media that help other people that have been through the same things that I've been through. And the things I've been through have not been fun, just like I'm sure a lot of things you went through weren't fun either. and a lot of people watching this program have probably got a list of undesirables of a half a mile long. Yeah. But I think that's kind of the key of, look, I stopped drinking.

Now, what am I supposed to do with my life? And when you figure that out and start to pursue it, not only does your life have meaning, but it helps you kind of get past that, you know, who am I and what am I going to do? Not that I'm not Mike the alcoholic anymore. Yeah. I feel like that's where, it may be too in your story in one way or another,

without figuring that out at some point, it's hard to really move forward and sort of get fired up. Because I think like the first year of sobriety for a lot of people's, all the effort and energy into not drinking. And it's like, it's kind of exhausting on the subconscious

or maybe even the conscious. It's like, okay, I'm not drinking and I've got this wedding and I've got this vacation. And my main mission, I think is great. It's just like I'm going to do all of these first things for an entire year without drinking. But then I feel like heading into year two or maybe year three or four or five, it's like, okay, what else is there? I'm not maybe as consumed with the idea of not drinking. I'm doing a lot better at that. It's taking up less space in my life. I feel more comfortable.

But what else is out there if the whole thing is just like I'm not drinking? I feel like the steam runs out of that boat after a while. Yeah, yeah, that's not a life goal. That's a good start. That's a beginning, you know, of creating a meaningful life. But you're right. I mean, the first year is the hardest. And you know, and you do have to be over focused on, you know, just not drinking, you know, and staying connected. But after, you know, like a year or two or however, at some point, you kind of got to figure out, where do I go from here? And I think without having that vision, without having that purpose, it becomes dangerous, you know, for people like us. 100%.

How do things look with your relationships now? You've mentioned your kids a couple times in the episode and stuff. Yes, things are good. So I have had a chance to, you know, make amends, you know, with my kids and with my ex, with my friends, with my parents, with my siblings. And life is good. So I remarried three years ago to a wonderful woman. She's got two kids and they're great as well.

And life has been good, you know, life has been good. Good, man. Just kind of heading towards wrapping up here, Mike, if somebody was out there sort of struggling, you know, they've made it this far in the episode today. And, you know, they were just trying to figure out what their next step was or how they can really, you know, make this part of their life. What would you mention to them? Yeah, don't give up, you know, don't get frustrated.

You know, it's not, it's progress, not perfection. And this doesn't have to be the end of your story. This can be the beginning of your story. It's never too late. It took me decades to figure this out, you know, failure after failure. And so it's just, it's don't give up and don't beat yourself up. Just get back on that horse and do it again. And eventually it happens.

It clicks for everybody at a different time and in a different way. And, you know, that would be my message is just keep at it yeah and it sounds find your people i love that it even sounds like too when it clicked for you it wasn't i don't know i feel like i got stuck for so long because i was looking for this secret sauce right like if i all eventually i go to enough meetings and i see enough therapist and i go to rehab enough times like obviously at some point somebody's going to just drop this secret on me and it's all going to make sense. That never happened.

But it sounds like with you too, it wasn't necessarily a new thing. It was just doing something you probably already knew about a little bit differently, being willing to connect with other people, be willing to show up a little bit differently. Like you had mentioned, you know, your sponsor or your whoever it was, said, you know, go to the meeting 10 minutes early and stay 10 minutes late, introduce you. Like there was five things, I think, that you live. that I'm like, well, any of us could do that. But I think sometimes, correct me if I'm wrong here, from your experience,

is that it feels so difficult because you've been to rehab and then the whole experience, right, we just heard it here on the show, that it's like, could it actually be something that maybe was fairly simple that could actually take me to where I want to be? Like, I don't know. I feel like I convinced myself that it had to be this sort of nearly impossible sort thing forward. Yeah, I mean, I love that you use the word secret sauce because I felt the same way. I felt like, okay, there must be something I'm missing here. You know, I'm not, you know, there's

this, there's this answer that's supposed to appear to me if I do all these things that they tell me I'm supposed to do and then I'm just going to get it. You know, in the book, you know, Bill Wilson talks about how he, you know, has the white light experience and he's standing on a mountain top and the wind of not air, but of spirit is blowing through him. And he realized that is I'm a free man. You know, I don't ever have to drink again. And, you know, that's a great story, but that doesn't happen to most people. I mean, you know, sobriety for probably 99% of people comes in the educational variety

of we just figure it out as we go. You know, we make progress. We take a step back. You know, we, you know, we trial and error, you know, different groups and different communities and different sponsors and different, you know. programs like sober motivation and, you know, it's just, it's a process and just keep at it. And it'll click. Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Mike, for hanging out today. Anything you want to mention before we close? No. I mean, I appreciate you having me. I love the show. I love what you're doing to help people. I love the community that you've built up.

You know, if anybody wants more information on, on me, the books, you can go to my, Michael dash lastman.com. I wrote my autobiography is called Killing Mr. Hyde. It's about my descent into alcoholism, the journey back out. And that was followed by Modern Man's Search for Meaning. And then the Seven Stones will be out after the first of the year, which is a book about sort of once you've found your purpose and your life has meaning, how do we begin to leave legacies?

So I really appreciate you having me on the show. It's been great meeting you, great talking to everybody. And, you know, let's go. Yeah, let's go. Man, you really are getting it to the writing. So you got a third book on the way too. And yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, third book on the way and starting to do some speaking stuff. And, you know, that's what I feel like my purpose is. So I'm just kind of going out at 100 miles an hour now, just trying to, you know, get these messages out of, which is, you know, recovery, which is addiction to recovery, which is finding purpose, which gives your life meaning, which is, you know, transfer. that need to happen before we can leave lasting legacies and just getting that message out to everybody and along the way just trying to help people stay sober. But I'm no better than anyone else.

I've got the same risk everyone does every day. And I've failed more times than I've succeeded. I promise you that. Yeah, beautiful, man. Thanks again. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. Have an awesome week and we will talk to you soon.

Well, there it is another incredible episode here on the podcast. My good friend Shannon said that I've got to do a little bit of an outro on the episodes like I used to do. And she just crossed over two years of sobriety. So here we are. I think one of the biggest things I took away from Mike's story is that you can know a lot about recovery, about sobriety and still struggle with staying sober. And for Mike, things started to change when he stopped trying to do everything on his own and really became part of a community. and that's what I get so excited about the Subur Motivation community because we're virtual, but we also hang out.

We try one time a year, but a lot of members get together throughout the year as well. So if you're struggling right now, don't give up. Maybe the answer isn't learning something new. Maybe it's doing something you already know you need to be doing. And it's so interesting because there is a word for this, the knowing, doing gap, at least from my research. It describes the space between knowing what you should do in actually. doing it. And I don't think for a lot of people, the lack of information is the problem. I think you have everything you need. I think all of you have everything you need. You know so much.

It's just crossing that bridge to implementing it into your life. Thanks for hanging out and I'll see you on the next one.