Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Chris had his first drink at 13 and it marked his first experience with drinking, getting drunk, and blacking out.

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

This week's podcast guest is Chris, who received a constant message while growing up as a kid: 'We don't talk about our problems.' Facing struggles at home, Chris embarked on a search for a sense of belonging. Initially, he found it within the punk music scene and took his first drink at the age of 13. That moment marked his first experience with drinking, getting drunk, and blacking out. From that point on, he never learned to drink any differently throughout his entire life. This is Chris's story, shared on the Sober Motivation Podcast." --------------- Check out Chris on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_chris_howe_/ Follow Sober Motivation on IG: https://www.instagram.com/sobermotivation/ Download the SoberBuddy App: https://soberbuddy.app.link/motivation More info on Soberlink: www.soberlink.com/recover

Welcome to Season 3 of the Subur Motivation Podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible, inspiring, and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety as possible one story at a time. Let's go. On this episode, we have Chris, who received a constant message while growing up as a kid. We don't talk about our problems. Facing struggles at home, Chris embarked on a search for a sense of belonging.

Initially, he found it within the punk music scene and took a child. took his first drink at age 13. That moment marked his first experience with drinking, getting drunk, and blacking out. From that point on, he never learned to drink any differently throughout his entire life. This is Chris's story on the Sober Motivation podcast. Getting sober is a lifestyle change, and sometimes a little technology can help. Imagine a breathalyzer that works like a habit tracker for sobriety. Soberlink helps you replace bad habits with healthy ones.

Weighing less than a pound than as compact as a sunglass case. Soberlink devices have built-in facial recognition, tamper detection, and advanced reporting, which is just another way of saying it'll keep you honest. On top of all that, results are sent instantly to love ones to help you stay accountable. Go after your goals. Visit soberlink.com slash recover to sign up and receive $50 off your device today. Community and connection is key when it comes to living a life in sobriety. Getting connected with other like-minded people that are on the journey that understand

what it's like on both sides. so important. That's why I love the sober buddy app. I really enjoy hosting groups, getting to know all the new members, getting to know some of the community members that have been around from eight, nine months coming to the meetings weekly with over 40 support groups hosted per month, plus community-led member hangouts. The sober buddy app is an incredible resource to help you get or stay connected with other people on the sober journey. Check it out today. Yoursoberbuddy.com. Download the app, check out the seven-day free trial, join some groups, come and hang out with me three days a week.

We'd love to see you there. How's it going, everyone? I hope you're doing well when you're checking out this episode. I just want to give you a heads up before we get into it that we do talk about sexual abuse in this episode as well as suicide attempts. So I want you to know that before we get into it. Now let's get to the show. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast.

Today we've got Chris with us. Chris, how are you? I'm great, Brad. Thanks for having me. Of course, man. How we start every show is with the same question. What was it like for you growing up? Yeah, for me, I'd love to just preface it by saying that my story is not unique.

I'm not special. My story is the same story that every alcoholic and every addict has. The details may differ, but the emotions that we all go through as people in active addiction and who have come out the other side are all the same. By no means is my story a unique one, and I'm sure you'll hear a lot of things that you've heard from many other guests, but I always like to just make that clear. But because that's what really bonds us all and brings us all together is that emotionally we've all been through the same bottoms, that same hell that each of us have gone through. But for my childhood, so I was born in 1978. I grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario, which is just down the road from you.

I lived in this little area that was, it's called Port Deluzi. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it used to be a ton of just bars. There's bars everywhere. and people drinking, like using. It was a shit show. I always like to describe my family as a don't ask, don't tell type of family. They were very much about how we appear on the outside. Anything that happened behind closed doors was always left behind closed doors.

In the household, I can say I always felt like I was walking on eggshells. I had one parent who suffered from mental health afflictions of a few different kinds. And also there was a lot of substance abuse. Substance use. I don't want to say abuse. I don't know that's for them to say. But my household was a cold place. It was sometimes a violent place.

It was a place where I didn't know which version of my parent I was going to encounter at any given moment. So I was a very anxious child. I was embarrassed to have people over at my house. I would go over to friends' houses and I would see these cohesive family units and I would feel a warmth in their house. that was so unlike what it was like for me at home. And I never wanted to leave those houses because I hadn't, for me, I didn't know that was possible. And I thought they were maybe faking it because I was told to fake it.

And you don't talk about what goes on. You don't talk about our problems. You don't talk about our personal stuff. Make it look good for everybody on the outside. And so that theme was really drilled into me at a young age. And of course, my parents were young. And they didn't know what they didn't know. It was the 80s that they were young parents just.

in their 20s trying to get by and they had their issues. And I think it's back then it was different, right? Parents weren't educating themselves the way we are today. And unfortunately, a lot of us felt the wrath of that uneducated young parents struggling with their own things and not really having an outlet and maybe becoming that outlet for the parents to act out upon. I didn't know that I was any different, but I for sure felt constantly on edge. I was very depressed. I was very depressed. I spent a lot of time living in my own head. So I oftentimes loved to imagine myself. I'd imagine myself in a different life as a different person with different circumstances. And I loved that. I was a fantasy kid. Like I lived in my own fantasies of what could be or what I wished

I could be. Yeah, a lot of stuff there. If you don't mind for a second. Of course. I like how you started things off there too about we all have these different stories, different events that happened, but the set of emotions that we go through as humans are the same in a sense, right? Different events, I think, of course, are going to bring upon how we feel and in what shapes us growing up, but those emotions are going to be consistent with just being a human. So I think that's incredible. And another thing, too, I'm just thinking through here, when you share that about you have to put on that front and in that thing that everything is okay behind closed doors. As a young person, that's got to be exhausting.

Yeah, for sure. It was very exhausting. There was always stories. The police were always at my house. There was stories and I would have to start lying about it to my friends because I had to cover it up. It put me in a very, I guess it was a really early form of people pleasing, right? Like I had to make up a story for every time my mom would act out and a reason why that didn't happen or the information that they were given. because it was a tight, small, tight-knit community that I lived in.

So I went to school. My friends knew about what happened in my household before I even knew. And so I was lying at a young age. And I was told that was what I was supposed to be doing because we couldn't have everybody knowing the truth. And so, yeah, and I'd get caught up in my own lies. And this is a theme that was through my entire life, lying about things, manipulating stories to suit my needs and then getting caught and then feeling,

okay, now I got to pedal, back pedal, and I could never get ahead of it. Just an awful place to live and an anxious place to live. Anxiety for sure, that was my main emotion as a child. I was never safe. I was always on edge. I was always on guard. I was always waiting for something to pop off. And when I was seven years old, I was sexually abused by a female caregiver of mine.

And that to me, at seven years old, I had no idea what exactly had happened. I didn't understand what had happened, but I was again told by this female caregiver, this is between us. This is our little secret. Nobody can know about this. So again, that theme of keep this secret, don't talk about it. Don't, this is for us only. And I always say for me, that was the day that my childhood ended. I think that was when I was catapult into an adult set of emotions and into circumstances that, as I said, I didn't quite yet understand, but I knew something was wrong. I knew something was a secret for a reason. And I knew I couldn't talk about it. So I had this festering feeling of I had done something so wrong and so

dirty. And at the time, I didn't feel that I had a choice in the matter. And I want to make this clear. I don't like victimhood. And I, and things in my adult life, I take full responsibility for. But things that happened to children, children don't have a choice. And one event had a real lasting impact on my on my life from that point moving forward yeah yeah that's heavy man i really appreciate you sharing that i can't imagine that's easy and i just see you here and in seeing what you've been working on for a time that you've done a lot of work in this area to be able to share about that and bring that out yeah and that's when it comes to addiction that's a story and an experience that a lot of people go through yeah and i think how you're

mentioning it there, you're processing too when you're seven years old reflecting back onto the seven-year-old Chris, right? You don't have any direction or nowhere to go with a thing like this, right? Yeah. And I'm guessing here, getting a little bit forward, that probably shapes the next however many years of your life on how you're reacting to the world and things around you. I think that's incredibly brave, though, that you share that. So thank you for that. Yeah, thank you, Brad. I appreciate that. And I really think that this is a story that happens, and that I've heard a lot from men in recovery as well. And I think that's really important that this happens not only to females.

This does happen to a lot of males. And I was raised in the 80s. There was no way I was going to be talking about this stuff to another man or to anybody for fear of rejection or fear of I would be cast aside as somebody that was weak or was whatever. There's a million different names that people would call it, right? But yeah, so as I said, I kept quiet about it. And what I found is from that point on, I was constantly seeking an escape. And I'd mention I'd fantasize about things oftentimes.

I'd live in my own head. And then I found punk rock and hardcore. And for me, that was the thing. That was the really, that was my first escape in my first almost little addiction. I found that in punk rock and hardcore, I could hear all my emotions. I could hear all my feelings from different bands that were singing what I thought was my anthem at the time. And I really loved it. And I dove deep into it.

And that's where for a long time, you wouldn't see me without a set of headphones on in elementary school up through middle school and that sort of thing. And that was my first escape. And I fell into different groups. I was like hanging around with skinheads, punks, hardcore kids. It was there was some violence. There was some edginess. There was a lot of substance abuse in that world. And for me, I took my first drink at 13 years old, or my first drink became my first drunk, which also was my first blackout.

And I've never known how to drink any differently than that in my entire life. But with that first drink came a sense of relief like I had never felt before. It was warm, it was inviting, it was like I could finally drop my shoulders and breathe. I could exhale. And I didn't have to worry about what people were saying, what people were thinking. I felt part of something. And as I said, that first night, I blacked out and I woke up the next day, not having a clue where I was, who the people around me were.

I felt a kinship with them. Everyone was laughing, joking, telling me that I was great. Come to the next party. Come to this place. Come to that place. I found my little niche within my peers. And so from that point on, I became, I'd made it my goal. I said, this school isn't a thing that's working for me.

But this partying thing, this is where I feel at home. and I just made it my identity. Anything that people would put in front of me, I would take drugs, alcohol, whatever it was that could alter my state of consciousness, I was all in. And I would do enough of it that I would physically be moving. My body would be here,

but mentally I was checked out. And that's what I was chasing. I can relate to that too, man, 110% is that first time. It was that thing of that community, that connection. that willingness to be a part of something that I had been trying to maybe navigate throughout my life too. Can I fit in somewhere?

Can I be a part of something? Will people accept me? And I had the same experience, man. The first time I got into it, I got the feedback out of the year, crazy, man. That was hilarious. Like, it was great. And then I just felt, it was, and I knew I had this, like, underlying thoughts of, this might not be the greatest direction for me to head,

but I was so desperate to find up somewhere to belong that it didn't match. The downside didn't matter. As long as I had that people were actually interested in me and wanted to be a part of my life, whether it was built on sand, which it was looking back, but it was incredible. I was like, wow, I'm with you on that. I was like, wow, this is, this is the best thing ever. Girls are interested in other people are interested. I was like, wow, man, I found my home sweet home. And I can relate to that with you 110% and you run with it. Yeah, it's, I think it's, again, I want to say, I believe that's all of our story. That's when we first felt our first taste of inebriation. It was the escape that we had been searching for up until that moment. And then we just, as we hear in the rooms, right, like we feel like we've arrived. We've found our place in society or in our peer group or whatever it may be. Yeah, for me, the drug use and alcohol consumption escalated really quickly.

When I was in my late teens, I had already become an IV user. All the things that drugs and alcohol brought me at the beginning were starting to go away. So the popularity, the friendships, the girls that might be interested, the parties that I was being invited to, the social status that I thought I had at one point was going away. I noticed that I wasn't being invited to parties. When I did show up, people were like, it wasn't like, yeah, he's here. It was like, oh, fuck, he's here. And the consequences were getting a lot worse for me. And when I was 17 years old, I quit high school.

I moved. I had an opportunity to move out to New Zealand for a little while. I went out there thinking, and we hear about this a lot, right? Like this geographical cure, I thought, here's my opportunity to reinvent myself and become just Chris. I don't have to be Chris, the alcoholic, the problem drink or the addict, the pain in the ass. I can just be Chris. And I can be whoever I want Chris to be. And as the saying goes, I went to the other side of the earth, but I brought myself with me.

So I found all the people that were just the same as me, got into things that were just the same as I was getting into at home and worse. My trip out there didn't last as long as I had expected and I had to come back home with my tail between my legs, defeated. This opportunity I thought I had to reinvent myself and it backfired because I didn't work on myself. I didn't change myself. I just thought, let me take myself out of the environment.

of course, it's everybody else's fault. It's where I grew up. It's my friends. It's the places, the people, the things that I'm surrounded with. And we all know this. We never look at ourselves until we get into recovery. And hopefully then we have the humility to look at ourselves. But in active addiction, it's always somebody else's fault.

It's always we're never to blame, right? Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I love that part there you mentioned too, because I went to rehab when I was 17. I went for a year. And every week we used to get these. We used to get these. They called it a focus where they give you this one liner.

And that would be what you would share in the groups and everything all week. I was there for, I don't know, maybe five months at this point. And I felt like I was making progress. This is the one-year program. I'm like, I'm in a good spot. Yeah, everybody's buying into me doing better and making these changes. And I get this focus. And it says, wherever you go, there you are.

And I was expecting something to be like, hey man, great job. Keep up the good work out here. And then they hit me with this. And so I had this entire week to reflect on this. At first, I'm pissed off. I'm like, nobody, I may as well just throw in the towel because nobody's realizing my progress. And it hit me, man. And after that, I had this better understanding of the whole concept of exactly what you had just mentioned that wherever we go, there we are. You can move across the world. But yeah, if you're going with that move as well, then that stuff is just going to creep back in, right? It might take a week, two weeks, a month or three months,

but it'll be there without the work that has to be done. So where do you go from here? So you're coming back from New Zealand. Things didn't pan out. Yeah, because of the shame and the guilt and everything, of course, I dove deeper into substance abuse and ended up going back. I went back to school. I did graduate.

After I graduated, I had another opportunity to go. away. This is a common theme with me. I was always running to different cities, different countries, different continents. So I moved down to the Caribbean with this great idea to again, reinvent myself. And I thought I would, it was a perfect scenario for me. I'll work on the beach at a bar with a ton of alcohol and all the locals around me that know how to get whatever I want and a cash register full of cash, but I'm going to reinvent myself. I'm going to change. And of course, So you know how that goes. This story would happen over and over again.

For me, I bounced from city to city, from again, country to country. Wherever I went, I was causing a wake of chaos. I always had to, I always felt like I was just this nomad. I always had to carry on to the next place where I could outrun that shit that I had caused. And I ended up back home in St. Catharines. I was working in a factory and I worked steady nights. So that was perfect for an addict. I could go and set up my machine and party in the parking lot.

And then on day shift, this one man, a big burly biker dude covered in tattoos, would always stand at the end of this corridor and just stare at me. And I thought to myself, oh, my God, I must have pissed this guy off sometimes. So at some point in a blackout, this guy wants to kick my ass for sure. And it was months and he would just stare at me. And he was like inquisitive, but he would give me this disapproving look, like something like a father. would give a child when he had disapproved of something he had done or something he was doing. And one day he came up to me and he said, kid, if you ever get sick and tired of being sick

and tired, give me a call and he handed me a piece of paper with his name and his number. I had no idea what that meant. I was 22 years old at that time. I had been put through the ringer. I was getting, I was an IV user. I was a complete wreck emotionally. I was getting beat up. I was getting like,

I had dealers that weren't answering my phone calls because I owed so much money. I wasn't allowed in certain places. My name was just, it was awful. And for some reason, I kept that piece of paper. And a couple months later, I found myself in a bar

and I was ordering drinks and trying to call dealers again. Like, I was into it for too much money to too many people. Nobody was answering their phone calls or my phone calls. And I was searching in my wallet, because I was drinking a pretty big bar tab at this bar and I couldn't pay for it. I had no money. I was broke. I was at the time, I didn't even have electricity on at my house.

Like, I couldn't pay for that. And I was looking for a credit card or something that I had maybe stolen that I could try to use as collateral or try to pay with. And this guy's numbers like just popped out of my wallet. And I'm like, fuck, this, I have no idea what this means. But again, I went to the pay phone at that time because we didn't have cell phones. And I think I stole a quarter off. the bartender's tip char to make the phone call.

And I called this guy and I said, hey, you said, you could help me if I'm sick and tired or being sick and tired. And I think I'm there. And he said, where are you? And I told him. And he said, don't move. I'll be there in five minutes. He came down to the bar and truly, and I'd say this jokingly, but all I at the time wanted

was for somebody to pay my bar tab. And he did that. But he did it. Conditionally, he said, I'll pay your bar tab, but you have to make a deal with me. come across to the Tim Hortons across the street, have a coffee and a sandwich, let me buy that for you, and you got to listen to me,

tell you my story. And I was like, perfect. All I heard was pay my bar tab. I'm in. And so he told me his story and he was 20 years sober at the time. And he talked about going to the rooms of AA and how it had changed his life. And at the end of it,

he said, you know, does that sound like something that you want? So that was, he was doing his 12 step work for me. And I said, yeah, I don't think it's possible.

for me, but I'm willing to give it a chance. And at that time, I truly didn't feel that I had, that I was done, but I knew I needed help. I could definitely concede to the fact that I was an alcoholic and a drug addict. I was told that every day by people that I would come across. And I truly knew that I was a good person doing terrible things. And so he brought me to a meeting the next day. And what I found in that meeting was very much like what I mentioned at my friend's houses as a child. I felt a warmth in the room. I felt love. I felt compassion.

I felt a cohesiveness among the people that were in those rooms. And everybody wanted to shake my hand. They wanted to know my name. And I was very standoffish because at that time, I was by far the youngest person in the room. I probably had more tattoos than anybody in that room. So I felt like I looked a lot different than anybody. and I, as much as I liked the feeling of being in that room, I did nothing but compare myself to them. I didn't give them a chance.

I didn't try to relate to their stories. So I listened to them and I heard their stories. And after every time somebody would say something, in my mind, I said, that hasn't happened to me. That's not me. At the time, oh, you haven't gone to jail. You still have a car. You still have a job. You still have this.

And I would tell this guy, Terry was his name. the guy that brought me to the meeting. And he said, okay, every time you say that hasn't happened to me, just add the word yet to that because that stuff, I promise you, if you keep going the way you're going, all that stuff will happen to you. But you don't have to go that path. You don't have to, you don't have to test my theory. I'm telling you it's right. So stay here and that stuff won't happen to you. It's good to say that hasn't happened to you. You're fortunate. And of course, me being a young, stubborn kid, I went for three, four weeks and I thought, okay, I've graduated AA.

This is, I've got everything that this program has to offer. I didn't share once. I took up a seat. I didn't get a sponsor. I didn't join a home group. I didn't get active. I didn't do service work. I was taking up space in that room.

That's all. And somebody said to me when in one of those meetings, they said, once you've come to the rooms of recovery, whichever fellowship that may be, It's going to ruin drinking and using for the rest of your life. You'll never enjoy it the way you used to enjoy it. And at that time, I thought, I'm not to the point where I'm past the point of enjoying it. It's just something, it's a need for me. It's not an enjoyable thing.

But it certainly changed every time I picked up and used because I remembered, hey, I went to those meetings for a few weeks. I saw those people. Recovery is possible because at that time, I didn't believe that it was possible. I ended up, and I would relapsed. I would say from age 22 to 32, I probably collected 50 to 60 desire chips, a 24-hour chip. I relapsed so many times within that span. And I always went to those rooms.

I went to those rooms because then I would start getting arrested. I would start ending up in jail. I would start getting things repoed. I would start getting whatever the, I don't like to go too much into the mess of things. but to me, I used those rooms to take the heat off of me or to prove to a partner or somebody that, hey, look, I know I messed up, but look, I'm taking steps to do better. What I wasn't really in it for, I wasn't in it because I wanted to change. I was doing it to appease other people.

In that time, I had gone to school to be a paramedic. I realized that I would be a terrible paramedic. I cheated my way through school. And when I started to work, I realized, wow, this is people's lives. I have literally in my hands and I don't know what I'm doing. So I needed to change directions and somebody said, you could either try to be a cop or a firefighter. And I was like, you want me to be a cop. I'm not going to spend all my days like busting my friends.

I'm too busy doing like criminal shit to be a cop right now. And so I said, Firefighter doesn't sound bad. Like that's people respect that. I thought people, it was right after 9-11 and all that stuff. And I thought people really, I hear a lot about this. It's hero thing. And maybe the hero, if I had, and I'm doing this air quote thing because I was never that, but maybe that hero card, if I can get that hero card, it will balance out my addict card.

I can get some respect from people and never thinking I want to give up the drugs and alcohol and maybe they'll get respect then. It was like, maybe I could go into this line of work. So I went, I moved down to Texas. I went to school there. I sobered up long enough to get a job after I finished school. And I got hired. And one of the first things that a senior firefighter said to us as a group, there was nine of us that got hired.

And of course, I looked different. Back then, it was 2003 that I got hired. And people now people are going in with full sleeves of tattoos and neck tattoos and they're getting hired. But that wasn't happening back then. I went to my interview with a shirt and tie and I didn't have anything on my hands or neck. And I was very like proper. And then when I went the first day, everyone was what the, who's this guy? I was told I was disgraced to the uniform.

I was like, it was bad. But one thing that one of the senior firefighters said to me was, if there's one piece of advice, I'll give you as a group to carry through your career, is to never show your weakness around here because we pray on our week. You're paid well to see the things that you're going to see. And you suck it up, you walk it off and you like, quote unquote, be a man.

And we don't talk about that stuff. We'll joke about it. And it was this, again, this thing of, and I say this because it's a recurring theme in my life of having to hold things in and not share my emotions. So I'll fast forward through this part, but the first eight years of my career, I was an absolute animal. I was disrespectful. I was taking advantage of the job that I had, the coworkers that I had, the public that I was there to serve. I was living two completely different lives. When I put my uniform on, I tried to be this upstanding citizen and then when I was on my days off, I was out there in the dope houses with criminals doing criminal shit, oftentimes being caught and being let off because of my career, because these cops

were trying to show professional courtesy, which looking back, I'm so fortunate to have had that, to have been given those breaks long enough for me to get sober, but I shouldn't have a job today based on the things that I was doing back then. I hated myself so much in those dark days. The last three years of my drinking and using, I tried to commit suicide three times. I was like throwing myself in front of cars. I couldn't stand the sight of myself. I had taken every mirror down in my house because, or anything that had a reflection because I hated the sight of myself. I was sickly. I was disgusted in who I had become. I was taking advantage of every person that crossed my path. I couldn't stop drinking. I couldn't stop using. I couldn't stop

abusing anybody that would come in my vicinity. And I don't mean physically. I just mean like in whichever way I could get what I needed from a person. It was, it's a terrible way to live. But I loathed myself because of it. And I mentioned I tried to commit suicide three times. And and I had, I had, okay, 2000, it was January 2nd, 2011. I woke up and I thought, I can't live this way any longer. I had been using and drinking for, I shouldn't say I woke up because I didn't go to sleep. I was up.

But I had been using and drinking for three days and nothing was working. I couldn't, I wasn't, I was, I felt like I was stone sober for three days. And I couldn't, there was, I had taken enough. drugs and alcohol to kill a horse. And I felt stone sober and I thought, oh my God, my medicine is not working for me now. And it scared the shit out of me. And so my intention that day on January 2nd, 2011 was to erase myself from the earth. And I thought, listen, I've tried this three times. I felt like a failure. I'm going to do this right this time. And I sat in my garage and I wrote down all these possible ways to, you know, commit suicide.

And it was a dark, it was an awful time. And I share this often. People talk about a spiritual experience. And I think of this as like a wave of emotions that hit me. But as I was writing this list, I just, something said drop the pen. And all those times that I had run into the rooms of recovery to appease other people or to outrun or to take the heat off of me for my job, my girl, my, the cops, whatever it was, I remembered all the little things in those rooms. I remember the smiling faces. I remembered

the slogans on the wall that I used to say, oh, slogan. What's it? That's not going to work for me. That's poison. That's garbage. It's, you know, and I'd laugh at it. And then these people put so much stock into it. And I remembered the stories and all the people that I said, I'm not like this person because I've got this or I'm like this or I'm not this. All the comparison that I've made. And I just realized all in one like wave of emotions that I'm exactly like everybody in those rooms and I've been trying to deny it for 10 years now and just getting worse and worse.

And everybody says, and this is true, every rock bottom has a trap door. We can go lower. And I dropped the pen. I crumpled that piece of paper up. and I threw it away and I found the first meeting that I could. And I walked into the meeting and this is something that I think is really remarkable. I walked into the same room that I had been going into for years and it just felt different. I went in with a new set of eyes, a new set of ears, an open heart, a mouth that was shut for once.

And truly just like I had a, I felt part of. And it was again, it was like that first time that I had blacked out and felt like part of a part of something with drugs and alcohol, I finally felt part of something that was positive in recovery. And that first meeting, the first person that shook my hand, I'm not afraid to say this, I didn't let go of his hand and I bawled my eyes out in front of him and everybody gathered around me. And I joke about this sometimes now because it was a discussion meeting. and I just started talking and I started telling them what I've been through and what I had been holding in for my entire life. And I turned that discussion meeting into the Chris Howe speaker meeting and all the addicts around me and alcoholics around me were kind enough to notice that I needed that outlet. I needed that to pour out everything that I had been harboring for so many

years and they let me just talk and I never felt relief like that in my life. And from that moment on, I knew. I asked that guy that I shook his hand, I said, I need you to show me how to live because the way I live on my terms just doesn't work. I'm going to die. And he said, yeah, we can help you with that. And so from that moment on, I spent every waking moment, either in the gym with my sponsor in a meeting or doing step work or going to a retreat or a court date that I still had to show up to or something like that at the time. But anything that I was doing was like positive and trying to inch that 1% better every day. And he brought me through the steps very rapidly. I started working with others reluctantly at first. But I realized that after I started making amends

with people, I realized that, wow, there is so much freedom. There's so much freedom in this way of living that I had no idea about. And I mentioned this. Up until that point, I thought anybody who was sober was boring, was maybe lying about it. I didn't think it was possible for people to live in recovery and live a productive, meaningful, exciting life. And one of the things for me, I did. So I boxed a little bit as a kid and I started to box again and then I got into Muay Thai. and so physical fitness became like a real pillar in my recovery. I used combat sports as the substitute for the excitement that drugs and alcohol gave me. And it was a positive outlet where I was meeting healthy people that I could learn and grow with that were outside of the rooms of recovery. And I thought that was really important because I think too many of us live in the rooms of recovery. And then when we realize the outside world doesn't really operate that way. And we lose that ability to have a conversation with the quote unquote, like normies or normal people out there that don't live in the rooms of recovery. And that was checking that box for me.

And then at work, I was able to, I was able to rebuild. And I took this, I took, I used the steps in every facet of my life. And I realized that, yeah, I had eight years, eight years at the time, seniority at the fire department. But I hadn't learned a thing in those eight years. So I had to go back to square one. And I was asking the probationary firefighters, hey, can you teach me how to catch a hydrant? Can you teach me how to do this? Can you teach me how to do that?

Because I took advantage of this career and I'm trying to make up for it now. And I made amends with people at work. I started giving back. I started telling my story to people at work. And I was doing public speaking and I was working for a company out of Toronto that was sending me everywhere, like all over the place to emergency service departments across Canada, telling my story and just more to do with how addiction pertains to emergency responders. And yeah, from that point on, and I was traveling a whole bunch.

I ended up, I was spending two months every winter in Thailand, training and fighting there, like learning from pros how to fight Muay Thai and just I fell in love with life again. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, that, dude, that's incredible. Thank you for sharing all that too and just your experience there. That meeting that you went to that day, was that one of the first times or maybe the first time where you really opened up and you were just like put the armor and the shields down?

Yes. That was without a doubt the first time that I had opened up about anything in my life. And that was like opening the floodgates. Do you know what I mean? I'm just thinking too because your story, right? There's those that reoccurring theme of just hold it all in. And I think there's a lot of us as men probably more so with you growing up than maybe I did. And I think we're in a better place now.

We've got a lot of room to grow, but about that we need to talk about our emotions and what we've been through and our experiences. And it's not a sign of weakness. But for you being able to do that, it's incredible that you're able to find a safe place. Because I feel like that's a big major component with all of this, too, if we're going to get to a spot where we're just going to pour it all out there and experience that freedom is finding a safe place where probably people are going to relate. And that's a big thing, why I'm a huge advocate for community and support, whether people do a fellowship or whether people check out alternative different things that they align with, but some type of community

of people who understand the journey, the emotions and the experience of struggling with addiction because then we can feel, I think, more comfortable in expressing ourselves and really sharing what it matters. I remember seeing a lot of therapists and stuff growing up and I could never open up to these people. For one, I didn't really want to get in trouble. And for two, I didn't really know how to. I wasn't able to connect the dots when I was a teenager. But for three, I just didn't feel like they would have any understanding of what I was going through when it would be pushed, pushed to the side. Yeah, I understand that's going on. But it always seemed to come back to why don't you behave or why can't you do well in school and all these things that there was so

many underlying things I would try to bring up and it was just let's talk about something else that matters that's the thing I heard and those things doing well in school I could have cared less I couldn't I wasn't worried about that I never was interested but that's incredible and I love how you bring up the fact too about you're doing the boxing and you're doing these other things and that's checking a box for you outside of all of your eggs in one basket type of thing. I really think that's incredible too. Yeah, I think it's really important. And to your point, yeah, one addict talking to another, we speak the same language and we don't have to go into details because we've, again, this thing that I mentioned at the beginning, we've experienced

the same things. The details are different. And finding that safe place, whether, and I think that's for anything in life. For me, in fighting, I had to find safe people that I could confide in when I was losing all the time. And when I felt like I was a failure, so I had to find that safe community within the combat sports world. I had to find that community within my workplace, which was very difficult because I work in this typically male dominated tough guy type of, I call it a caveman world in the fire department because we're so behind the times. And that's something that I will mention as well. For me, as I was moving through my recovery and finding safe spaces and people and really rediscovering who I am and what really invigorated me in life. I was 10 years sober at the time

and I was starting to have panic attacks and I was starting to get very oddly aggressive for no reason at the not when I was at boxing. Like at the wrong times I had met my now wife and my stepson, her son was in my life and I started to, I was just acting different and she was calling me out on it. My wife's also, I think she's coming up on 12 years. sober as well. So we both, it's, we are able to call each other out on our stuff. So she had mentioned it to me. And then I had an instance at work where I had a panic attack in a basement fire. And I couldn't ignore that. It was a very dangerous thing to have happened. I put a lot of people's lives in danger as well as my own because I couldn't do my job the way I was supposed to. I had,

and at that time, like I had progressed to a rank of captain. So I had people that I was responsible for. And this is a big part of my story as well. So 10 years into recovery thinking, oh, I've worked the steps a whole bunch. I had started to do like a Buddhist recovery group as well called refuge recovery. And that's up the place that I really found my home. Like I do still go to 12-step meetings and 12-step saved my life. But I make my home refuge recovery. But I thought I had been doing my inventories.

I'd making my amends. I'd cleared all, I cleared my side of the street. I've been doing all these wonderful things for other people around me. and for myself and for my new family and all this stuff. And I thought there is no way I could have any mental health issue. I'm 10 years clean. I'm 10 years sober. And I got lazy.

And I fell back on that, that I'm sober now. So everything must be perfect. And so I had this incident. And I was ignoring the signs and symptoms, even though I knew about it. And I was speaking to people about this on a regular basis. I wasn't taking my own advice. And I was lying to myself. And this event happened and I went the next day to a psychologist and I said, listen, this thing happened.

It scared the shit out of me. And I've never been able to not do my job in recovery. And now I feel like I can't do my job. What do I do? And they said, have you ever had any testing for PTSD? And I said, no, again, oh, no, I'm 10 years clean. There's no way I could have PTSD. And very naive.

And I did the test and I fell on the severe end of the scale for PTSD. And a lot of that has to do with things that I'd seen in my past, things in my childhood, things in my active addiction. But a big part of that is workplace trauma, the things that I go to on a regular basis and I see that I didn't deal with her. I didn't properly unpack. And in that environment, it's a tough place to unpack that stuff. We don't talk about our stuff. We don't connect emotionally. We go to the bar and we drink it away or we laugh and we joke about it and make fun of things about it.

And it's really just these band-aid solutions, but we're never actually dealing with what happened and the fact that we may not be okay with what we just experienced. And these little traumas, they really pile up quite quickly. And eventually, they just, you implode on yourself. And that's what happened to me. So 10 years into recovery, I end up getting taken off the road. And I attended a 14-week inpatient treatment center. and I was special, especially for first responders and military.

And I'm still, to this day, I'm still, I still am working on my past traumas. And what I really found, and the reason I mentioned this is because what I really enjoyed about that whole process and as arduous as it was, and I've been to several different treatment centers, it's never a good time. But what it really did for me, this time, was reinventing. I got invigorated my, lit the fire under me again for the passion I had for recovery at one point, because I admittedly had become complacent. And I realized that, okay, time in recovery doesn't really matter. It's about quality of life. It's about quality.

What are you doing today? What are you doing every day? How are you giving back? Are you being of service? Are you, are you? And I guess this for me as a, at that time, a new father, a stepchild in my life, are you being the example to your child that he deserves? And for a lot of us fathers out there, it's, we have to really look at ourselves there

because maybe we didn't have the right examples as children. So we don't want to repeat the past mistakes that we have been a part of. So again, it's bringing things back to basics and learning from the ground up again. And I really, going to treatment again at that point in my life was really quite humble. But it was the best thing that could have ever happened to me because I learned coping skills. I learned about I learned to dig a lot deeper than just the stepwork that I was doing. I learned to really get to the root of the traumas that I had experienced. I mentioned this earlier, to not play victim to anything, to take responsibility for everything in my life and learn from it and move forward in a positive direction.

and for me, most importantly, learn from it so I can hand that down to my stepson and so I can be the husband that my wife deserves and the father that my son deserves. Yeah, beautiful. I mean, yeah, that's incredible. It's good insight too, because we hear that story too a lot. Not necessarily exactly like that, but that we get complacent, right, with the journey. I'm definitely guilty of being there many times over the years about you get this idea that the growth is over and you want the growing pains to stop, right? Because constant growth,

it hurts sometimes, always trying to improve areas and the whole fatherhood thing too. I can't help but think every day. Am I doing this right? Yeah. Am I doing the three kids and six-year-old, three-year-old and almost a two-year-old, and I'm thinking at the end of the day, I get my own head. I tell my wife, I said, you guys don't have to do any thinking tomorrow because I stayed up way longer than I should have overthinking everything that could go wrong and I got it all figured out. That's what you were here. You get stuck sometimes and you want to do the best you can. And you hear this story too a lot of times.

We can become and some people do become what they don't want. And I was talking with this one guy and I never even looked at it from this point, but he became sort of his dad that he didn't want to because he knew it was an ideal, not what he wanted to be, but that's what he knew. I think it's so easily can be passed. through and you're just working on that trauma and stuff and that stuff is there's so many layers to it. I'm wondering, Chris, let's just say somebody was like, man, I only want to check out one minute of Chris's story. If they just checked out this next 60 seconds of the episode,

what message would you want to deliver to them? Sure. To me, I think the most important message is that recovery is possible, that no matter what somebody is going through, no matter how dark it may seem or how much you may have given up on yourself in the pursuit of a better life or recovery. If you're out there sick and suffering, just know that there are people that have felt just like you

that have been through just the exact same things as you that are here to help. They don't want anything from you but to see you do well and help another person. And if Brad can do it and if I can do it, then anybody can do it, right? We hear these stories every day of people who have lived our lives and hit the bottoms. And the bottoms, like I said, there's always a trapdoor.

There's always a lower bottom until you're under the ground. You don't have to go any lower than you are today. Seek out a meeting, seek out a safe place for you to share. And to know, I think for this message for sure is for the men out there. And for everybody really, but especially for the men. it's not a form of weakness to share your emotions. It's the biggest strength that you have. And the moment that you let that guard down and start to take the bricks out of the wall that we put up in front of ourselves,

we immediately start feeling freedom. And when we crash that wall down completely, we are the most free that any person can be. And there's just so much life to live. And you just do not have to live in active addiction any longer. I think that's the main message that I wish that I could have heard. And so today for me, I get to, I get to live an amazing life. I still work for the fire department. I own a tattoo shop with my wife.

I'm partnered in a men's addiction treatment center here in St. Catherine's called Lakeside Recovery. And that's a program that we've tailored. I've taken all the things that I loved about treatment and my recovery. and kind of built it into a program. So in this program, it's a men's only facility, but we do combat sports. We focus on physical fitness.

We do a lot of nutrition. We have healthcare professionals. We have psychologists. We have yoga, meditation, mindfulness, everything. And you're exposed to every different facet of recovery. And so it's an exciting, we really tried to build an exciting place to recover. And because I think that's a really important thing to leave off with that. Life in recovery, we don't recover to be boring people.

We recover to live our lives to the fullest potential. And that is the most exciting thing that I've ever experienced. The things that I get to do today and the things that I get to be present and experience today are priceless. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. That's what it's all about is about getting out there and doing what we miss, things we enjoy, being engaged, being present in life. And not just watching it pass us by. I feel like that's what addiction was for me, is everybody else was moving on with their life and they were enjoying things.

And here I was from one year to the next and pretty much the exact same spot in the next year the same spot. If you would have met me, you would have met the same person for five years. And now, if I meet somebody maybe 30 or 60 days later, I hope that they're meeting a new person. And that's what I hope. I don't know. That's up to them to decide. But that's what I'm working on that progress, that compound. You mentioned it earlier, 1% better every day.

really adds up over time in making that progress. But I really love your message to people as well who might be out there. This thing only gets worse. And you brought it up earlier in your story about this stuff hasn't happened yet. And I see a lot of people and I'm very encouraged in this area. I see a lot of people getting off the elevator before all this madness happens. More today than I've ever seen before. And I think it's incredible.

Things are getting tough or getting harder for a lot of people as well. That's definitely an encouraging. message that, you know, what today, man. And that's what it is. I had a lot of people, they're waiting for this big bottom to fall out. And I didn't get sober necessarily after a bottom. And when I hear your story, too, you were into it. There was a lot of different things, but it wasn't like the night before you got thrown in the slammer or you wrecked a car or we lost this relationship, things that people associate. Like it's that internal warfare, that battle inside that can be a big motivating factor to just say, you know what, enough.

is enough. I have enough experience with where I go with this. Things don't get better on their own and I need to get some help. Walk yourself into a meeting called therapist, talk to a friend, a spouse, somebody get it off your chest, say, look, I got a problem and I need some help with it. And it can change everything. You hear in these stories. Everything changes in that moment. It's so powerful. It is. I really love that that you did mention that a bottom doesn't have to be some notable thing that happens to us. An emotional bottom is much worse than the things that might happen as a result of it. So if we feel ourselves in an emotional bottom, don't wait for the thing to have.

Don't wait for the event. When you feel yourself emotionally bankrupt, that's the time. As you said, find a meeting, find a therapist, connect with somebody. We live in a time. Now it's, to me, it's amazing to see all the people. on social media and podcasts like this, where we get to access pieces of other people's lives who are living, who are thriving in recovery. And we get to look at that stuff and connect with those people and find relatability there.

And so we're only, yes, sometimes we can't physically go to a meeting, but we can log into something online. We can do an online meeting. I can message you if I need to speak to somebody. I have a whole network of people that will always pick up the phone for me. And as dangerous as it is out there because the drugs have changed so much and it's ruthless and deadly out there right now, the opportunity for change is so much greater. And I don't want to say it's cool to be sober, but it's becoming to, you hear a lot more celebrities,

a lot more people that have personalities that outside of just recovery. You know, as I said, like, I didn't get sober. to, I didn't get sober to live in church basements and share my story every day with people and talk about how shitty my day was. I got sober to start living. And I get to see that whenever I open my phone or whenever I go connect with my friends, people have a really wonderful opportunity to take advantage of social media, especially as a tool. Yeah. No, so true. There's more out there now than they ever had. I mean, we'll just end on this too because I heard it a little bit in your story I can relate to it and a lot of other people can't is it's okay to start before you're ready

start listening to the podcast you guys wouldn't would never imagine how many people I get messages from about this podcast they say Brad I started listening to the podcast 60 days later I got 30 days I started listening to it and consuming the stuff because that thing you talk about is you're the using and drinking is going to be ruined but let's ruin it so consume some stuff about how people are living and how people are living their lives and you can connect with some of the stories start to believe it's possible for you. Take those first steps, but you can do because you went to all the meetings. And I did the same thing. I went for years with rehab, this, that, and I didn't get sober from then, but it was planting seeds. So let's get some seeds planted. Chris, thank you so much for jumping

on here, man. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Brad. I really appreciate. I just want to say, thank you so much. I'm forever grateful for people like you that give other addicts a platform to share their stories and to connect with others. I appreciate you and keep doing such great work. Thank you. Wow, another incredibly powerful episode. Extremely grateful for Chris to jump on here. Share his story so openly and honestly with all of us. Look, if you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, be sure to check the show notes to find Chris on Instagram, send him a message. Tell him, you know what? Chris, we appreciate you for being willing to share your story with all of us on the Suburmotivation podcast. Thank you,

everybody else for all the support. And if you made it to the end here and you haven't left a review yet, come on. Drop a review for the podcast. Let everybody know what you think. That way new listeners, if they're considering this or one of the other hundred sober podcasts out there, maybe they'll give us a shot. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll see you on the next one.