Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Chris was sober for 8.5 years before having "Just a few drinks" - 17 years sober - Chris shares the story.

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

In this episode we have Chris, who shares his compelling story of growing up in East Texas, his battles with alcoholism and drug abuse, and his journey to sobriety. Born in 1972 in Tyler, Texas, Chris grew up witnessing heavy drinking in his community  Despite a supportive extended family, Chris struggled with feeling uncomfortable in his own skin.  After several interventions in which he spent 12 months in a strict rehab center, Chris initially found sobriety at 22. However, after having another drink after 8.5 years of sobriety, he experienced a dark period of relapse. Chris openly narrates the challenging, yet ultimately successful, battle to regain his sobriety, his personal growth, and his current role as a father. He emphasizes the importance of persistence, the need for a strong support system, and how his views have changed over the years. This is Chris’s story on the sober motivation podcast. ----------- Free SoberBuddy Meetings Sign up Link:  https://yoursoberbuddy.com/free-zoom-meetings/ Follow Chris on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrismcox72/ Follow Sober Motivation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sobermotivation/ 00:00 Welcome to the Sober Motivation Podcast with Chris 00:16 Chris's Childhood in East Texas: Family, Culture, and Early Challenges 02:26 Feeling Different and Out of Place: Chris's Early Struggles 05:34 Turning Points: From Trouble to Treatment 08:56 A Journey Through Rehabilitation and Recovery 16:41 The Road to Sobriety: Challenges and Triumphs 18:56 Embracing Fatherhood and Finding Purpose in Sobriety 20:27 Finding Joy in Sobriety and Community 21:26 The Slippery Slope: From Sobriety to Relapse 22:44 The Harsh Reality of Addiction and Its Consequences 25:18 Struggling to Regain Sobriety: A Personal Journey 27:39 The Turning Point: From Despair to Hope 33:22 Building a New Life: Sobriety, Family, and Career 37:22 Embracing Change and Helping Others 41:08 The Power of Community and Virtual Support

Welcome back to season three of the Suburmotivation podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety as possible, one story at a time. Let's go. In this episode, we have Chris, who shares his compelling story of growing up in East Texas, his battles with alcoholism and drug abuse, and his journey to sobriety. Born in 1972 in Tyler, Chris grew up witnessing heavy drinking in his community, despite a supportive extended family, Chris struggled with feeling uncomfortable in his own skin.

After several interventions in which he spent 12 months in a strict rehab center, Chris initially found sobriety at 22. However, after having another drink, after eight and a half years of sobriety, he experienced a dark period of relapse. Chris openly narrates the challenging yet ultimately successful battle to regain his sobriety, his personal growth, and his current roles a father. He emphasizes the importance of persistence, the need for a strong support system, and how his views have changed over the years. And this is Chris's story on the Sober Motivation podcast. How's it going out there, everyone? Brad here. Welcome back to another incredible episode. Thank you for all the notes and messages to on that solo episode. It's a little bit out of my

wheelhouse, to be honest, but I'm glad I put it together. And hopefully in the near future here, I'll put some more of that stuff together and hopes to help people just kind of work through this whole thing. On another note, too, I've been getting a lot of messages, a lot of emails about people that are struggling with stringing some days together. They feel like they're failing because they're falling off. They're slipping. They're relapsing after 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, whatever it is. Everybody has their own journey. But I just want to remind everybody, this only doesn't work out if you quit, if you quit trying. So no matter your situation is you've got to dust yourself off, get back up and get back at it.

Because you'll hear in these stories. I've done over 142 of them here on the podcast, but also just in real life. And before I even started doing this podcast, it's very, very, very rare that you hear a story of the first time everything worked out according to the plan. It's very rare. So if things are a little bit rocky for you,

that's okay. You have to keep going, stay plugged in. and join a community. Find a community of people that have been through this that can help support you. We're hosting free meetings inside of the sober buddy community. Every single week, I'm doing one coming up next week on Wednesday. We've got one tonight, Tuesday, April 2nd. I'm going to try to make that too.

So if you want to check that out, check that out. I'll drop the link for that in the show notes below. It might be helpful for you. The people who attend on a regular basis are finding. are finding it extremely helpful for them to stay on track. All right, let's get to Chris's story. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Chris with us.

Chris, how are you? Doing great. Thanks, Brad. How are you? I'm well, man. I'm glad that we could connect and share your story here on the show. Good. Thanks for having me on.

Excited. Perfect. Well, what was it like for you growing up? Growing up. Okay. So I was born in East Texas. They call it the Pine Curtain because it's the Piney Woods, East Texas, real close to Louisiana. I was born in Tyler, Texas, and I grew up in a really small town and like 2,500 people.

We had a red light, a dairy queen, a Sonic, and it was the 70s. So I was born in 72. Very interesting time. Looking back, I didn't know politically or culturally what was going on, but East Texas was one of the last places to desegregate their schools. And that happened the year I was born. And so what's interesting, like, looking back on it, is I grew up in a time of a lot of tension in our school. We didn't know what was going on.

We were just kids. But my childhood was very happy. A lot of my extended family, like my grandparents, my great aunts, my great uncles, I was really close with those. My immediate household was, dad was an alcoholic. And my mom was, like, the typical person that's married to an alcoholic. And being an alcoholic in East Texas was like, or at least being a heavy drinker was very common back then. There's a lot of dualities where I'm from. It's drink cuss and smoke, money through Saturday, go to church and act good on Sunday.

And that kind of thing. Our county, because it was in the Bible Belt, I don't know if you've ever heard like the Bible Belt, but there's church on every corner. Our county was a dry county, which means they didn't sell alcohol. But what that meant for most of my friends and myself is our parents just on Saturday would drive to the liquor store and we were always fully stocked with alcohol in our house. Looking back and after doing a lot of work, that whole like Texas mentality of being a man and what is a man and the kind of stuff that I was programmed with very young was kind of that like John Wayne kind of attitude, like walks off carry a big stick. There's a lot of fist fights growing up. There was a lot of tough guy.

Don't show your feelings. Don't show your emotions. Tough it out. So it wasn't raised like learning how to handle emotions. And so I think because of that and maybe being predisposed to it, I always felt different and out of place. And I don't know if that's a common theme that you hear on your podcast, but it's definitely a common theme I hear from people that struggle with substance abuse issues or alcoholism. So, yeah, growing up was different. But then I also remember a lot of love from my extended family.

Like, I was really close with my grandmother. I was really close with her sisters and her brothers. I learned a lot of cool stuff about nature growing up and being a country kid. And growing up fishing and hunting and just being outside. I learned how to respect nature and that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's a thing that comes up, man, in probably every episode. I think that there's that thing to where we feel that. there's something different, we feel out of place. I always look at it like I was looking at life

out of a snow globe. Like I was in the snow globe in my own little world and then everybody else was just operating outside of that. And it's so interesting. When you mention that, is there a specific time when you were able to pick up on that to where you realize I feel different with things? Yeah, that's a good question. And I mean, there probably was. I mean, I could think of several times. And I think I always had like that feeling I had to prove myself. So I would never like back down in any situation. I remember being in like fourth or fifth grade and this freshman from down the street was picking on me and I just picked a stick up and whacked him.

And I didn't do that because I was tough or angry. I did it because I was scared. And not scared of him, but just scared of not like being a man and scared of not doing what I was supposedly programmed to do. And I was always extreme. But I do remember that. And yeah, so, I mean, I think there were several incidences, but I think I was always aware of it. Yeah.

And, I mean, you kind of grow up. You do a lot of work on yourself and you learn that do most people do this. I think whether they're have substance abuse or not is they compare their insides to everybody else's outsides. Because everybody to some extent puts up a front, especially now with like social media. And we're just showing people like what we want them to see, not really what's in here. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I can relate to you too. There was a bunch of different situations. I noticed, too, when I started to do it early on, because once I felt less than or the insecurity started to overwhelm me or the anxiety and trying to fit in, that's when I started wearing all these different masks in life. That's when I just started to be this person in this social group. I was this person at home. I was this person in this class. I was that. And for a while, it worked. But it was really a hard thing to keep together. I was just exhausted. And I mean, this. This is all looking back. At the time, I didn't necessarily pick up on this.

I wasn't intuitive in that sense to know that this is what I was doing. But I was doing what everybody else, what I thought everybody else wanted me to be or I was being what I thought everybody else wanted me to be. And then I just got so farther away from who I actually was. And then I lost myself for a bit, like probably in high school. Yeah. Yeah. Who I was.

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, and you're just talking. I just remembered like there was one time where it got really. extreme and that was right before my 16th birthday and that was after the drinking and using some drugs and smoking pot daily started kicking in but I remember just feeling just so uncomfortable to my own skin and my parents put me actually in my 16th birthday they put me in this place in Shreveport Louisiana it was a residential I don't know if it was a treatment center or what it was but I remember

seeing a counselor I remember them like really were working with us on getting our grades and learning how to be responsible because at that time, my grades were failing. I'd always keep my grades together during football season so I could play. And then when football season was over, I'd just kind of go hang out with the kids that weren't doing anything again. And so I remember how it like you said, like I was a chameleon, like you would act one way over here. But, you know, then when it was time to, you know, hang out with my people, those were the guys. We had a tree. We hung out before school and after school. I would go hang out with those dudes.

That's where I felt the most comfortable. Yeah. What was that? What was the place? So did you go and live there, this place your parents? Yeah, it was like in the hospital kind of setting, I remember. Yeah. So it was like a 45-day deal.

It was called Charter Hospital. I remember that. It was in Treesport, Louisiana. I went ahead and went. I didn't, like, I didn't fight it. And then there's like a story a little later. So I kind of got through that. And then they had me go to this ranch kind of place for six months in Arkansas.

saw and then I came back. And then that's when things got really kind of heavy for me as a teenager when I came back and that was like the late 80s. And Ecstasy started becoming a thing, MDMA and it was like started really in Dallas, Texas. And Dallas was about two hours from where I was from. And then I started like buying and selling that stuff. My dad had like bought me a truck. I just took that truck one day and I took it to a car dealership.

And I sold it and I started buying it like ecstasy and selling it. And I got in pretty bad shape. And this is when I was 17. And I wasn't living with my parents had moved out. And I was living in Tyler, which was the city kind of by the little small town. I grew up in had a 150,000 people in it. It was like almost like a trap house. We were like selling drugs out of there doing our thing.

And I was a minor, but it was the 80s. So things were kind of different back then. But your parents still had control. over you. It was a mess. I'm 6'1 and I'd gotten out to 140 pounds and historically been a pretty athletic kid and bags under my eyes and I was in bad shape. My dad calls me and goes, you want some help and me help you kind of get on your feet? I'm like, yeah. And I think at that point I'd probably lost all my money and just things weren't going well. I go, yeah. And he goes, well, I better help you get an apartment. That sounds great. I'll pick you up Monday morning.

And so he picks me up and we're driving around and he pulls in this parking. And he goes, I got to get something from this guy. He's going to meet me here. He's going to give me a list of places for us to go look at. And he pulls up next to this like van and it was just a van with no windows. And big ass dude that he had hired jumps out of the van handcuffs me and throws me in the van. And it takes me to a place in Dallas. And that place was called Straight.

And it was kind of like that they called it spit that her piece. They'd get in your face and yell at you. They'd beat you up pretty good if you got out of line. It was a locked out facility that your parents could have you committed to. It was kind of a cross between juvenile hall and some like just weird thing. Like the 80s, you know what I mean? And I was locked in that thing for a little over a year. He was able to get me committed there for a little over a year.

Yeah, that was a pretty gnarly experience. Didn't use drugs in there, though, didn't smoke cigarettes. It was so structured. and you were kind of locked in a room at night. Yeah, it was wild. It's kind of hard to explain. A couple years after I got out of there, the state of Texas shut the place down to being abusive.

But yeah. Yeah, no, that's wild, man, because I can relate to you on that. I went to a place just like it. I went to, I was. Did you really? Yeah, man. I was 17. I was 17 and everything was unmanageable in my life.

I'd already been arrested and got kicked out of school and was on probation. And things were just out of control. and I actually ended up in a psychiatric hospital for these suicidal thoughts. My parents hired to, what do you call it, a transporting company. Two people came. They picked me up in North Carolina, and they were bringing me to this place called Peninsula Village in Knoxville, Tennessee. And I had no idea that parents could get you sent to these places or that they existed. My life was just completely unraveling.

And it ended up being there for a year, and it was a lockdown unit. They did restraints. It was structured. I mean, you had three minutes to go to the bathroom, seven minutes. to shower. You sat there. You did a couple of group therapies. Yes. I'm with you on that. It is a wild experience. Something I went through. And I was there for 13 and a lot and this place was wild, man. You had to sit at attention for hours. And that meant you sit in a chair and your back couldn't touch the chair. You had to be up straight. Man, I had great posture

when I got out of there, man. And if you didn't do that, they'd have one of the guards come by and put his knuckles in your back and pull your upper body back and make sure you're sitting up straight. They made sure you felt it. Yeah. So looking back on this, because this is interesting, the place I went to, it got shut down two years after because they used to have physical consequences. So if you swore or if you did anything out of line, there was rules for everything. You'd have to do pushups and pull ups and sit ups and different consequences, right? They were deemed overly punitive. Like, looking back on it, I mean, what's your take on things? This was a good intervention for you at the time.

it saved my life as far as just getting me off the streets. But mentally, it wasn't a good thing. So, I mean, there's two sides to that story. Like, I probably needed to get off the street and probably would have been a little bit better to put me somewhere that was actually doing some good. And it's weird because that was my senior year high school. And the end of my junior year, all my senior year. So a lot of those guys and girls that I was in there with, those were like my high school friends. Like, we got close and it really messed a lot of people up long term.

I have a guy I grew up with and I've known him since third grade and actually we just kind of had it. We have a little reunion every three or four years. He was like, man, that place broke me. And I, like, I was like, got out of there and I told myself I was never going to let anybody break me again. And he turned into just a gnarly dude. We're in our 50s now.

I think he's probably spent like, you know, half of. his adult life and in and out of prison. He's out now. But, you know, it really had a real adverse effect on some people, you know. But me, it was like going to crime school because I learned some hustles in there from some other people that eventually led me to coming out to California and, you know, working out now. So, yeah. So where'd you go after that?

And then my dad actually had, did have a condo or an apartment that he owned in Dallas. I got to live there. Experimented with going to college, bounced around, finished my high school at one of those continuation schools in Dallas, living on my own and then kind of got into some, but it's kind of hard to explain, but I got into some ways of making money that didn't involve dealing drugs that weren't so legitimate,

stuff that I shouldn't have been doing, but I did. And it all revolved around like call centers and boiler rooms. And there was just some stuff going on that we were making money And we started making me and another guy, we started making contacts kind of all over the country doing this kind of stuff. And so at that point, everybody thinks I'm doing great because I'm not getting too out of hand where I'm losing a bunch of weight and I'm paying my bills and I'm making money.

And I ended up getting a really nice place, buy myself a car and kind of had a front to this stuff. Oh, yeah, we're in the leads business. That was her kind of thing, as we'd say. And so I ended up talking to my friend one day and he goes, let's go meet all these people. We've been doing business with over the phone and talking to you and doing FedEx stuff. And so we went and spent some time in Denver, Colorado, I spent a winter in Aspen. And then he says, let's go to California.

Yeah, let's go to California. You think about like Hollywood and palm trees and all this. And so we got in the car and where should we go? And we stayed a couple nights in this like CD Hotel just trying to figure it out. I was a CD Hotel and we drove to Venice one day. He goes, I went to high school, this girl lives in Venice. Let's go to Venice Beach and went to Venice Beach and my first day in Venice Beach. Been there like a couple hours and we're down on the boardwalk and Rodney Dangerfield,

the comedian comes walking by. I'm like, oh, there's a movie star and then there's another famous dude down in Venice Beach, plays a guitar, skates around on rollerblades. So we got a picture of me and my buddy and those in Rodney Dangerfield and this guy, my first two hours in Venice, we rented an apartment there. And we're just having fun, man. Like I'm not really having any like consequences from what I'm doing at that point. We're making money.

Life is good. I mean, yeah, we're doing stuff we're not supposed to be doing. But my family thought I was doing good and stay there about a year. And I always really miss Texas. I was always like, I want to move back to Texas. And we lived in Venice for a year. I probably spent half the time in Venice. And then I'd fly home to Texas and hang out in Dallas with my friends.

Just kind of back and forth. And about a year into it, I was like, adamant. I'm like, I'm moving back to Dallas and my friends. Hey, let's go check out Orange County. I found a house on the water down in Newport Beach that we can rent. And it was this really cool house. And I go down and look at it and I go, yeah, I'll do this for you for six months. And so ended up moving to Orange County.

It was on this little island called Lido Island. And right across the bridge is the peninsula. And on the peninsula, there's the Newport Beach Alano Club, which for people that don't know, that's in a club where they hold AA meetings. and sober people hang out, that kind of stuff. And so we moved there and I'm like 22 at the time and I'm like walking by. I'm like, oh, there's a sober club there. I'd remember all to back up.

My dad ended up getting sober when I was 14. So I knew about recovery and 12 steps and all that kind of stuff through my dad. And so I was walking by that club and there's all these like people having fun out there one day. They're all kind of my age. They're on their 20s and there's good looking girls. And I'd like, I'd walk by there like for a couple weeks, just kind of checking things out about 5 o'clock. And what I didn't know is there was a meeting going on at 5.30. It was a young people's meeting.

It was upstairs. One day I just wandered in there, man, and went to a meeting. And I didn't get sober right away. But at the end of, end of 1994, I was 22, I ended up deciding that I got soap. And I'm like, let me try this stuff. And so that was the beginning of my sobriety journey. Yeah. So I knew I needed to be.

I wasn't in a spot like it was when I was 17. But talking about that feeling of like uncomfortable, restless, irritable, discontent, not happy. I had stuff, but, you know, I hadn't run things into the ground. But I just knew I needed to be sober. Something that said and me told me, hey, man, you need to. quit doing everything you were doing because I was a daily drinker. I was doing, doing blow at the time, doing all those outside issues, man, that we do.

And I think I felt that like the wheels were going to fall off. I think I always felt that at some point we were going to get trouble for what we were doing. And we were getting a lot closer to getting in trouble. This was before the internet, before a lot of security cameras are around. And so, yeah. So when I walked in there and I got sober and I met a bunch of like, young guys that were on fire for sobriety, happy, having fun, and got a sponsor and the sponsors.

People that don't know is like somebody you get when you walk into the rooms of a 12-step program that helps you understand what it's about and takes you through the 12 steps. And I got on a sober softball team. I was playing basketball. I was kind of getting back into my athletic kind of roots and just had a lot of fun, man, like from 20 to probably 20 something, I quit that business. My friend was working at a surf company called Billabon, and his boss was Bob Hurley, who ended up starting Hurley,

and he told my friend, like, hey, if you buy some of this equipment, I'll give you work. And so he asked me if I wanted to do it with him, and we bought manufacturing equipment. And this was for everything that had gone to China, and apparel was still manufactured, and a lot of it in Southern California, especially in the surfing skate industry.

and started a company doing that, started having success, and had a lot of fun. And I was always still, like, in the back of my mind, really kind of wanting to move back to Texas. And at 24 years old, this girl I was, like, hanging out with ended up telling me she was pregnant. And I'm like, whoa, thought it was like the worst thing in the world, man, that happened to me. I'm really confused on what to do. Should I marry her? Should I not marry her? I got all different kinds of advice from all different kinds of people.

And I had this old guy, like, that I really respected that had 30 years sober, just put his arm around me. And he goes, you just got to show him and be a dad and be a service. All that other stuff you can figure out as you go. And so that's what I did, man. I ended up having a kid at 25. He's 27 now. I'm so proud of the kid. I'll tell you more about him later, but he's doing great.

And he's doing really good being sober, man. Yeah. So. Yeah, that's exciting. That's exciting, too, getting in on the ground level of those incredible companies moving forward doing the manufacturing, moving your operations to those legitimate operations as well and the sobriety you walk in, you check it out. Did you face any challenges at 22 when you walk in there? What's some stuff that comes up at 22 with getting sober? It's funny. Now that I

have like kids that have gone my kid, my son's got through his 20s and it's, I think about now, he's about the same age I was when he was like two years old and like, I look at him and I'm like, I was that young, like his mind. I think my challenges at that time was like definitely had a lot of energy to get up and grind and work. So that was fun. That feeling of not fitting in really was it went away when I quit drinking and I got around a bunch of other people that had kind of been through what I'd been through. At least I could relate to the way they felt and were doing positive things. And so that was like, I guess one of the challenges that got solved like really quickly just by getting around those people.

And we just had so much fun back then. I mean, we'd going trips, would go to softball tournaments, we'd play basketball tournaments. There was these two coffee shops around here that were open until three or four in the morning. It was all sober young people hanging out in. There were sober parties, sober dances back then. I mean, there was such a movement of young people in the 90s. getting sober around here. And there still is movement of young people getting sober.

I'm just old now, so I don't know where they. But I mean, we had so much fun. So, and then here's what happened, right? And then here's the downfall of it is about 28, 29. It started getting life started getting like materialistically really good. Buying properties. I kind of started like getting away from these guys over here that were sober. and kind of move into people that I worked with that weren't sober,

but on the outside had it together, and a lot of them did have it together. And so the thought in my mind started coming up, well, maybe that was just a phase. Maybe that was just because of your upbringing, because I did a lot of work on my upbringing when I got sober, and who am I really? And what is the definition of somebody that's a man? And so I started questioning whether or not I was a true addict or alcoholic. Like, could I control drinking? And so at 30, at eight and a half year sober, and I'm out on a date with a girl that was like a second or third day with a girl that I barely knew. And just kind of getting the know, a nice girl.

And we were at the improv at a comedy show and they had a two drink minimum. And historically, when I'd be at one of those things, okay, two Cokes, well, I order two beers without even kind of thinking about it. And I drank those two beers. And I think what happened when I started moving away from those sober group of people and everybody, I started feeling that sense of uncomfortability again without identifying it, knowing it. And so I drank those two beers or two more. And I remember about halfway through the fourth beer feeling that warm buzz come over me that I hadn't felt in eight and a half years. And I remember my mind going, man, this is great.

Why did I ever quit doing this? and then okay I'm making deals with myself I'm not going to do drugs so I made that deal with myself I'm just going to drink and maybe tried to just do it on the weekends and so we went back to her house and she had some pot and I'm like well pot's out of drugs so I smoked some weed with her and then four days later I'm in Vegas and that that was like our annual big convention for the apparel industry and there's some guys doing blow and Did some blow four days after I made that deal with myself. And I mean, I was off and running for four years and they got pretty ugly.

Yeah. It happened so fast. It happened so fast again, right? We bargain, make those deals with ourselves, right? Everything, right? There's so many people you hear at all the different strategies that we tried, right? Whether it's the weekends or whether it's after five or it's this budget or it's that. But when we open the floodgates there, it just comes in, right?

We're just saying yes to all the, everything now, right? Yeah, we start saying yes, and then all those yet start happening. I'm not going to drink with my son in the house. Then I'm drinking when my son's house. Okay, I'll drink, but I'm just not going to do drugs with my son when I have him.

And I'm doing drugs in the house with him. I'm not going to drive, drop. I'm driving drunk. It's like, they just cross line after line. And it's for me, and this is not true for everyone, but for me,

it's not like we talk about getting hit by the tree. train, it's not the caboose that kills you, it's always the engine. For me, it's the first one, right? And I've proven to myself, and I can kind of get a little more into that in a minute over and over and over and over again that I can't just have one. And I'm a pretty self-disciplined willpower guy in every aspect of my life. If I tell myself, I'm going to work out every day, I work out every day. If I tell myself, I'm going to not eat sugar for a month. I don't have a problem putting things down, except for drugs and alcohol. So I have a lot of willpower, just not in that area. So, yeah. Yeah. You said you're going to explain that a little bit more too, because I'm interested

to see what you put together there for about what happens when you do, like when you did have that one, I mean, the chain reaction of events. Yeah, the chain reaction of events and about two years into it. I crossed all these lines, my self-esteem and just how I'd, like, viewed myself. It had just kind of gone out the window. And I started getting people, like, trying to have talks with me. My family tried to have an intervention on me. And I got up and I walked out. I went to going to and listen to him. My son's mom was like, and she's long-term sober. I met her in the program when I was in my 20s. And she was just, you know, she was so like, Alan, like, this is, We talked about this before.

Not everybody understands this, but there's a certain way to approach an alcoholic if you're a family member. And there's a program called Al-Anon. People just have family members and they want to know how to deal with their alcoholic. It's a beautiful program. She would approach me out of love, but also truth. And she did a good job of that. And I knew everybody knew what was going on. And I thought I was keeping it together.

But, you know, the bank account was twiddling. I lost a bunch of money. and one thing after another was happening. And I'd met a girl when I was drinking. She was a really nice girl. And I'd known her for about a year and a half. And I asked her to marry me. And I got engaged.

We've been engaged about a month. And this was right before Christmas. And I was supposed to spend Christmas Eve with her family. And the night before, I kind of stayed up all night doing blow. And I'm like really a mess. Man, that I'm going to try to pull it off and go see your family. It's the afternoon or Christmas Eve and I, I told her I'd be over there in about an hour and I stopped by my drug dealer's house and they're smoking crack out of a Coke can and I'm like, man,

I've never smoked crack out of a Coke can. Let me try that. I'd smoke crack out of a crack pipe book can and for some reason to admire heads. You're like, oh, that's something different. I got to try that. Anyway, four days later, I didn't show up to Christmas and I'm back at my house. I'm with somebody else that I met on this run and I'm just a mess and I remember sitting in the shower and it's we call it a moment of clarity sometimes and I'm sure you've had that like where it's just I got to get it together okay it's time to admit defeat and I'm sitting in the shower get out I called my A sponsor who's like I've had the same guy since I was 22 he's still my sponsor so he's 30 years my sponsor but I called him and I'm like I need to get

sober again and he sent one of my he's my best friend but he's also we have the same sponsor and so he sent him to come pick me up and uh he took me to another friend's house and you know i'm all just wired and i walk over the liquor store and i get a bottle of crown royal i drink that they take me to an a-a-a meeting i hung out at another one of my friend's house for about four days planning on getting sober again. And that was the start of a two-year journey of trying to get sober and not being able to get sober. And I'd get three days and I'd go out. I'd get a week. I'd go out. I think a couple times in there I had 30 days. I'd go out. And I really, Brad, I really wanted to be sober. Like, I really did. And I just couldn't make a day stick because I'd get moving. I'd do everything I was told

to do. I'd go to recovery meetings. I'd go to recovery meetings. I'd call my guys, I'd work steps, I'd do everything. I'd be in a place and I'd be on the wrong frame of mind or just something would happen that would set me off. And without thinking, I mean, I knew what I was doing. Like, it wasn't unconscious, but it's just I had no mental defense against what they say is the first drain. And that's kind of a term. I said in recovery a lot of times, when I was talking about that willpower, like I could do a lot of things with willpower, but I just didn't have the willpower to quit. And that was a two-year just death march.

So, yeah. Was that how things would usually start back up for you with drinking and then you might get into the other. Everything always started with alcohol and ended with alcohol. And I really like cocaine. But when I really analyze it and do some self-reflection, the reason I like cocaine so much is because I could drink longer. I mean, one did never go by itself, if that makes sense. Yeah. No, for sure, 100%.

So it's a different sort of spot maybe you find yourself in as opposed to when you were 22 and you went to that first young persons where just hearing, just as I was chatting before. What I kind of took away from it is, well, maybe not. It was a lot easier, but it was a different process for you to quit that first time. You were interested in you got involved in things made sense. And then at this time, you're further along, right? in this journey of addiction. And now you're really facing what I think a lot of us go through is that point in time

where we have that moment of clarity. And then it's I want to quit. But how do I do this, right? What am I going to do? And then we try and we fall down, scrape our knees and then kind of get back up. And you go through that two years. I can relate with the 100% because I was like that. I did the drinking was always consistent for me.

I did the methadone program. I did the Suboxone program. I would be back on the medication. I'd be back drinking. The drinking would get messed up with the methadone program. Then the Xanax, you don't know what I mean? The cocaine and the drug test. It's just a world win, right?

And then people look at you. I had the counselors and they would just look at me like, what's going on here? And honestly, now I know. But at the time, I would just shake my head and kind of just be full of shame. I'm just kind of embarrassed. I just did not know what was wrong with me when all these other people were figuring it out. was like, man, I don't know. I'm stuck here.

So where do you go from that? I mean, how do you get yourself out of here, Chris? Well, I mean, I just want to kind of comment on what you said before I answer that question is so true. And it's like I had built such a sober community in my 20s. And now I'm like in my mid 30s when I'm coming back. And I had close people that really cared about me. And, you know, there's all these other people that I know too that are sober.

And you go down to these meetings and these old guys would be like, hey, what are you going to do different this time? And I'd be like, I don't know. I'm doing everything I can. What do you mean? And so I'll tell you the story about my last drink. And it'll kind of lead into me answering your question is I'm down there one night. And this one like old dude goes, what are you going to do different?

I'm like, I have no idea. And then this other old dude that I really respected speaks up. He goes, Chris, the truth is just because you want to get sober doesn't mean you get to get sober. And I'm like, what does that mean? And I just shook my head and I walked out and I'm pissed off and I go home. My neighbors are drinking. I have a six pack of beer. I smoked a joint.

And I go to bed and I'm just laying there and that guy's voices like in my head just because I want to get sober doesn't mean I get to get sober. And I'm like, man, maybe I'm just going to be one of those guys that just can't get it. Because I knew guys like that from being around sober people a lot of times. And I would always like look at them when I was sober before like, why can't they just do it? And then I'd become that guy that couldn't do it. That was my last dream. And for some reason, I got up and I just tried again. And I just dusted myself off and I tried again.

And I spoke at a meeting on Sunday night. And that's kind of my message to new people is just keep trying. I mean, like you were talking, Bradice, like you were trying and trying. And people are going to look at you, especially people that haven't lived the life and been in the shoes that we've been in. They're not going to understand. And that's okay. But there's guys like me and you that get it.

Find those guys and seek them out. Because I just tried again. And that's what was not different. That's what I continued doing. And that was June 4th, 2006. And that was my sobriety pay. And man, I got up. I went back to another recovery meeting.

I kept calling that sponsor. And I just didn't drink. The big thing for me that I think I really dove into, and I dove into it and still drank before, but I just kept diving into it was like, I didn't trust myself. The beautiful thing now, Like in the current day of what's going on, is there's so many opportunities to get that first 30 days in a residential treatment center, which is a safe space.

Because I had to kind of create that for myself and ask people to hang out with me when I didn't feel safe or go sleep on somebody's couch that was sober, even though I had a place to go. That's the beautiful thing about what's going on today. Yeah. So true. Yeah. So where do you go from here? I mean, 17 years, right? You said.

I mean, that's incredible. Well done, man. Yeah, so life's been great. I continued in that apparel business. Son really, I was telling you about athletics, man. My oldest son started wanting to play football. So I started back into my true love, which was football and coaching football in the afternoons.

And at about a year sober, I met my current wife. She's in recovery as well. And we ended up getting married. I had a couple years, a little over 15 years. And we had a kid right away. So right after we got married, like, you know, she got pregnant with my 14-year-old Zach. And then it was kind of funny about my kids. I joke.

I've had a kid every decade since 97. So, like, we held off. She wanted to have it that everyone. And I'm like, ah, and finally, like, we decided to after about 10 years after a previous one was born, so I have a four-year-old daughter. So I've got a 27-year-old that was born in 97, a 14-year-old that was born in 09, and a four-year-old that was born in 19. So yeah, I've been a parent of young kids since my 20s, man.

So, I mean, it's just been a beautiful journey. And I've learned so much about what I don't know, instead of learning more information, if that makes sense, right? Yeah, yeah. I've learned that my opinions will change. I have a strong enough opinion. It's kind of funny that. And life was good, man.

It got sober, kept my career going, was doing really well with that. I started coaching football with my younger kid, then ended up becoming a high school head football coach down here in California. And got into coaching some junior college and then coached freshman ball while my son went to college. And my 14-year-old's never seen me drink. My four-year-olds never seen me drink. And that older kid, man, I'm so proud of him, man. He's just been a good kid. I got to be his varsity high school head coach at the high school he went to.

He ended up getting a scholarship to go play football out in Pennsylvania, I played there for four years. Went to Germany and played pro a couple years with his college quarterback after he got done and got to travel around to see Europe and then came back. And now he's a firefighter in Malibu killing it. And my 14-year-old is doing grades in eighth grade. He's going in high school next year. I ended up kind of reeling it back and coaching his Pop Warner team last year.

And then my four-year-old, I thought I was going to have a daughter and it was going to be cuddles on the couch and Barbie dolls and she's a tucker kid. I mean, my boys, man, she's wild, just full of life and energy and got to reel her in a lot. But yeah, I mean, a lot of joy in marriage, but it's also a lot of work. My wife and I both work really hard on her marriage. It's how to subs and downs say the most important thing besides my sobriety in my life. And the reason I say besides my sobriety, because if I don't have my sobriety,

I don't have my marriage. I'm not a father or anything like that. But I have a wonderful marriage with a smart, successful, driven wife who has her own career and our own things going on. And then it's interesting, unless you want to stop and ask me anything right now. I kind of want to talk about that comment that I made about having opinions. Because the guys that, like, I learned sobriety from a real old school 12-step guys. And when I started getting sober in the 90s, There was like maybe two treatment centers that I knew of. And they were like for the rich people to go to because they're back down insurance didn't pay for treatment. And I always kind of had this attitude towards treatment.

Guys that's saying, meaning's what you're buying a $30,000 A book or you know what I mean, this, that or the other. So. But I always kind of like new treatment. For some people, I thought it was good. But it kind of wasn't my experience of what kind of got me sober. And I sold one company before COVID, a couple of. years before COVID and was just by myself and I was brokering deals that tied around a lot of events and just cruising along and life's good and I'm coaching high school football in the afternoon

so I'm working five or six hours a day and then going on and coach high school three or coach high school ball through four hours a day and um I'm flying to Pennsylvania for all my son's home games and having a blast and COVID hits man and I lost a lot of a lot of business in one week that was my income and my what I was going to be doing because I'd get orders four or five months out for the summer and uh sitting there and I'm watching TV and the NBA cancels and I had a panic attack and I never had a panic attack before but I could I literally couldn't breathe because I'm like what am I going to do I don't know what I'm going to do and I'm at my sister's house at the time I went outside and I just couldn't breathe and up the next day and I knew this guy that my sister

who you should have on one time, by the way, because her story is incredible. I brought her out her eight years ago, and she went to treatment and got sober. And she's doing wonderful now, but she was working at a treatment center. And I knew the guy that owned it. He was one of my friends from the sober community. And I said, hey, can have a job? And he's kind of laughed at me because I knew him pretty well. He's like, what are you going to do, man?

You have a career and all that. I go, man, I just have to go somewhere every day. And he goes, well, do you want to work in my detox? And I go, what does that mean? He goes, you're going to hang out with newcomers all day and talk to them and help them with different stuff. And you got to support them and the academy. I go, yeah, I can do that.

How much is it? And he goes, minimum wage. And I go, sign me up. And so I went and worked in his detox. And man, I just fell in love with it. And that's when like the fentanyl stuff, like I started seeing it. Oh, my God, this is different. This isn't what I was dealing with when I got soap.

The feelings those guys were going to do the same. But the consequences were way different. And about three months into it, their business development guy left, and I started doing that. Then I started learning the business, and I started learning all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I just kind of worked my way up.

I worked at a couple other places. And then I got heard on at South Coast counseling where I currently work as their executive director a couple years ago and having a blast. So my opinion of saying I'd never work in treatment, just completely changed. God had different ideas. And it's like the older I get, the more I am learning to live in like the gray or I don't know or that situation is different for everybody like we were talking before.

You have a lot of people listening to this podcast that might not be alcoholics like I am and they do have willpower. And they can like with some habit changes put it down. And then there's going to be guys like me that and you that, hey, one's too many. A thousand is not enough. So. Yes. Yes, exactly. No, I love that. And I mean, I think there's been a ton of progress in so many different areas when it comes to how people are getting treatment and how people are accessing treatment and what's helping. And it's always good to have options. I feel like the further that we get on this, at least there's more options for people to be able to access things virtually, which I think is incredible. I mean, we do with Sober Buddy, we do virtual peer support community. And we have people from all the world, Germany, Poland, Australia, US, Canada, UK.

We all come together and we don't have all the answers, but we learn from each other and we can understand what it's like and where people are from and just try to support people in that sense. But yeah, everybody's going to do stuff. And I think most people who do end up getting sober, like, they're probably going to have tried a handful of things before they kind of find the one thing that really hits home for them. Beautiful, Chris, thank you so much for sharing your story with all of us, man.

Is there anything else you want to mention that we haven't. yet. Yeah, I mean, there's, I mean, I could talk to you for hours, Brad. So no, I mean, maybe we do a follow-up Sunday. I mean, this was a lot of fun and it was awesome. And it's really cool what you do. And I've, you know, gotten to know you a little bit over social media. And you've been real gracious with everything that I've been doing and been supportive of that. And thank you for that. Thank you for having me on. So yeah, of course, man. But what about the show? What about your podcast? So my podcast is South Coast Chronicles. And you can follow me on. Instagram, Chris M. Cox 72. And South Coast Chronicles is just a variety of stories,

kind of like we just talked right now, but it's different people that have suffered from mental health or addiction and maybe currently are in it or have worked their way through it. So that's exciting. I release a new episode every week. And anybody that wants to check it out, we have it just as a resource for people to be able to go on and listen. And if anybody needs any help, they can reach out to me. Like you, man, we're just here to try to give people resources and if we can be their resource, we're their resource, and if, you know, we can help them find another resource that fits better for their situation or their location. We're here for people. Yeah, beautiful, man. Love it. Thank you so much again, Chris. Yeah, brother. Appreciate you.

Thank you. Well, there it is, everyone. Another incredible episode and story here on the podcast. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. I'll drop Chris's contact information to his Instagram down on the show notes below. Now let's go out there and get another day. And I'll see you on the next one.