Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Daniel Patterson kicked the booze on January1, 2015 and has never looked back 💪

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Daniel Patterson's sobriety journey began on January 1st, 2015, although it wasn't initially part of his plan. As the date approached, Daniel recognized that alcohol was not benefiting his life and he had already embarked on what he referred to as a "pre-quit" phase. The previous night which was New Year's Eve, like many others, was filled with alcohol, and it was during breakfast the following day that Daniel experienced a pivotal moment that set him on a path of honesty and the decision to embrace sobriety. This is the inspiring story of Daniel Patterson, shared on the Sober Motivation Podcast. ----------- Follow Daniel on Instagram Follow Sober Motivation on Instagram Download The Sober Buddy App Check out SoberLink Click here to get more information about Palm Beach Recovery Center's    

Welcome back to season two of the Subur Motivation Podcast. Join me, Brad, each week is 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. Daniel Patterson's sobriety journey began on January 1st, 2015. Although it wasn't intentionally part of his plan. As the date approached, Daniel recognized that alcohol was not benefiting his life. and he had already embarked on what he referred to as a pre-quit phase.

The previous night, which was New Year's Eve, like many others, was filled with alcohol. And it was during breakfast the following morning that Daniel experienced a pivotal moment that set him on a path of honesty and the decision to embrace sobriety. This is the inspiring story of Daniel Patterson, shared on the Sober Motivation podcast. Sober Buddy is not just an act. It's a community of support that will uplift and inspire you on your journey to recovery. With Sober Buddy, you can complete daily challenges, track your progress, and connect with a network of like-minded individuals who understand what you're going through. You can also plug into the live support groups.

I host three groups myself each week inside the app. Download the Sober Buddy app today and take control of your sobriety journey. As we say it's sober buddy, we came as strangers and left as friends. Remember, with sober buddy, you're never alone. It's hard to find the motivation to get sober when you're in the trenches of addiction. It's easy to say I'll stop tomorrow or I'll cut back tonight. What's harder is putting action behind those words. That's why I've teamed up with Soberlink.

Soberlink's remote alcohol monitoring system was specifically designed to help in your recovery, not just some breathalyzer you buy at the store. Small enough to fit in your pocket and discreet enough to use in public. Soberlink devices combine facial recognition, tamper detection, and real-time results so friends and family know instantly that you're sober and working towards your recovery goals. Visit Soberlink.com slash recover to sign up and receive $50 off your device. Are you a loved one struggling with alcoholism or substance use disorder? Palm Beach Recovery Centers can help.

Their inpatient medical detox and residential facility provides personalized treatment to help you get back on track. Their experienced staff is here to support you every step of the way. For more information, visit their website, Palm Beach Recovery Centers.com. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Daniel with us. How are you, buddy? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

I'm excited to be here. Good, man. so happy to have you, so happy we could connect on this. How we start every show is the same question. What was it like for you growing up? What was it like for me growing up? I would say that that is in two different seasons. I think early childhood through like fifth grade,

10 years old was great. It was very classic, grew up out in the middle of nowhere in the country, older brother, younger brother, real fun, real fun, and real typical. And then around 11, I started having battles with anxiety and depression and just peer relationships. We got really hard for me. And so from middle school through high school was pretty challenging, although I was a high performer, did well. A student, student council, varsity sports, all of the things, but wasn't very happy.

and started experimenting with drugs and alcohol around, I don't know, 16 probably. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I can relate with you. I want to say high school might have been the hardest four years of my life. Oh, yeah. Felt completely out of place.

I mean, I had the anxiety and the depression. I never at the time when it was going on, I was never able to put words to what was going on or reach out. Yeah. I relate to that so much. because I didn't know what to call it, right? I didn't, especially when I was younger, feeling super anxious or just having mental health issues, never knowing what to call it, didn't call by it same

because I had never seen a clinician. I had never gone to a therapist. I had no idea. I just felt like I felt different. Yeah, no, I'm with you. For me, it was like always that fight or flight. Like I was in fighter flight, 80% of my life, especially in like grade six, seven, eight.

And then through high school. And it was just exhausting. And I had no idea. I just tried to fit in and just be part of the crew. Right. People, you know, and I always felt like I was on the outside looking in with everything. And it was tough. Yeah, I relate to that.

Yeah. So where did you grow up? I know you're in California now. Was it in California? Yeah, I grew up in northern California about an hour north of the city, San Francisco, way out on PC. in the middle of nowhere. PCH is a road that goes all the way up the California coast. And yeah, it was about 40, 45 minutes to the first stoplight, that kind of country.

No TV, no internet, nothing. So no cell phone service, just real old school. Old school. But fun. My parents still live there. So it's nice now to go back and get off the grid. Yeah, slow things down a bit. That's correct, especially these days.

Yeah, even more so. these days. So you mentioned there at 16, you started to experiment with drugs and alcohol. What did that look like for you? How did that all come about? I mean, again, I grew up in such a weird place where I had friends, parents who were like growing weed in their backyard, right? It was a very, very typical experience. So marijuana was like the first drug of choice and then alcohol and mushrooms, psychedelics, things like that. But it wasn't a daily thing. and it wasn't a, I don't know, it was more for fun, right? It was more recreational at that point.

I didn't start really relying on alcohol, which is definitely my drug of choice until I went to college because I had no idea how to compensate from having, like, no friends and no social standing and no sense of agency to a brand new life filled with friends, filled with opportunity. I was overwhelmed. I was socially anxious and I just used alcohol at every turn to cope, basically. Yeah. Yeah, in college, yeah, it's the way a lot of us find our way, right, to fit in and be part of it. And I had this weird emotional fatigue because 11 to 17 or 18 was so exhausting and it was fight or flight and mostly just a constant state of survival that when I got to college, I had this huge emotional letdown, even academic letdown.

I went from getting straight A's to almost getting kicked out of school because I was failing. I wouldn't go to class. I was just drinking. I was like, I've tried to be this other kid that was perfect and that didn't work. So now I'm going to go to the other. I overcorrected. Now I'm going to be the guy that has puka shells and fucking drinks natty light and doesn't go to class and smoke cigarette outside of fraternity.

Like I went completely the wrong direction and 120% in the wrong direction. Yeah, extreme flip there. Yeah, it was not a good look. It's interesting you say, though, because when you're younger, right, like it, for most of us, I can relate to that too. It didn't start out as a disaster. Again, for me, with the drinking and with other drug use, there was a purpose for all of it. Like, it did a lot of, I hate to say it, but it did a lot of good for me.

in the beginning. I was able to fit in. I was able to quiet the voices. I was able to make friends and meet people and do all these things and get invited to parties. And like it was good until it took over, right? I think it's progressive. And I think that's easy to forget once you're just swallowed by it eventually. But, you know, it's one bite at a time that alcohol takes you or drugs take you.

So I feel like it doesn't, I didn't wake up one day being like, do you know what? I'm going to be an alcoholic. I think that sounds like I just, it was nobody told me about the long-term effects or, and even when I started having that internal dialogue

with myself early in my 20s. Okay, I think this is not, I can't keep up at this pace. I think I'm drinking more than everyone else. I think I'm drinking more often than everyone else. I would always look for somebody that was worse than me to like use as a permission. slip to keep drinking or to keep coping the way that I was coping. And that was easy to do,

unfortunately, right? In a college setting, you can quite typically find somebody who's not going to any class and I was still going to some or who's drinking every night and I was taking like one off, right? So that comparison game is really hard. Yeah, no, that's so true. You always try to find, yeah, if I don't fit this exact mold, then there's not a problem. Yeah, not a problem. I'm not going to accept the label because it doesn't look like X, Y, and Z. Yeah. Yeah. And how long did that keep you stuck for?

Oh, man. The college drinking, I left college, but college drinking didn't leave me. I tried to calm it down toward the end of college, and I did get more emotionally regulated. I started taking medicine and going to therapy a little bit, although the medicine didn't really work because I was still drinking on it. But I was at least aware that there was an issue. However, I didn't really care. And I had no intentions of stopping. After college, we moved to Las Vegas and lived there for a few years and then moved

eventually to Southern California where we've lived for the last 20 years. But I remember thinking, like, I don't care. Like, I have this problem. It's all I love. It's what I love the most. And I deserve to drink because I've had this shitty life, which isn't true. There's a lot of good qualities in my life, but I would just like gravitate toward or I have a good job. I'm college educated.

I pay my bills. I'm happily married. All of these things. So it doesn't matter that I have this problem because I have a resume and I'm good on paper, basically. Yeah. You were already married in college? No, no. I mean, I got married at 25, but my wife and I were dating in college, yeah.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're getting all of those signals that all of this stuff is together. Right. And a lot of people, too, I hear this story. And I don't know if this relate to you. But a lot of people do their best. They're finding that for a while, they can really perform their best with it as part of their life.

Yeah, you use it as an energizer. And when I got into teaching, I taught for 10 years. And then I was a high school principal. I was excelling at my job. I was winning awards and teacher of the year and administrator of the year and the PTA awards, all kinds of things, excelling, excelling, but it was definitely like living two lives because then I would come home and all I wanted to do was drink, to not think about anything, to not be stressed, although ultimately that just made me more stressed and more depressed.

It took me to a really, really dark place. Yeah. So you were a principal. How did you? Yes. How was that being a teacher? What grades were you teaching and all that stuff? I mean, I've taught grade six through 12 in my career,

but I was working as a English teacher, mostly seventh grade and tenth grade, because it was a seven through 12, like a middle school and a high school that were attached. And I loved it. I loved it. And then I became a varsity tennis coach, a student council director,

and then the high school assistant principal. but I got sober earlier in my, in my, I guess halfway through being an administrator. So I had two years while I was drinking while being a principal and two years while I was sober. So when did you get sober? New Year's Day, 2015. So my last drink was, so I'm eight and a half years. So my last drink was on New Year's Eve of 2014. Wow.

Yeah. And I didn't have a plan. I had not planned to stop drinking on New Year's Day. I had been trying to what I call land the plane for several years. I wanted to stop at this point. Or I knew, I don't know if I wanted to stop, but I knew I needed to stop. I was finally accepting that that was my responsibility. I could see the writing on the wall.

And so I was like, if I don't stop, I think I could play the tape out and see what was going to happen. And so it had been in the realm of possibility, although it felt impossible. But I woke up on New Year's day and I went out to breakfast with my wife and my daughter, who was three, and another couple. And we were in a diner, and I was having auditory hallucinations. So that broke me. That was the beginning. That was the beginning of the end. and I have not had a drink since then.

Had you experienced that before? That was the first time. That was the first time, yeah. I was in the restaurant, and it just felt like so loud and so steamy and hot and eggy and like clinky and just, I felt like I was huge and everyone else was tiny. So actually went out to my car.

I had to leave breakfast, go out to my car, turn on the air conditioning. And then that is when I was having the hallucination. in the car. When I was by myself, I was hearing voice. I'd never happened before and it has not happened since, but it happened and it was what I needed to scare me enough to then go to the doctor. I went to urgent care because it was a holiday so that my regular doctor wasn't open. And then I went to see my regular doctor right after that as soon as I could and got on some medicine and came up with a plan to like, that was the first time I had squared up. I had to square

up. I had to square up with my doctor because I was hearing things and I was horrified. So I couldn't just be like, I'm just here for checkup, which is what I would always normally do. This time I went in strictly for I'm quitting drinking and this is what happened and I need help. But even then I didn't really want to. I was like, I'll just take a month off. But here we are. Yeah, here we are eight and a half years later. That's incredible. I want to just back up for a little bit. You had mentioned too about you were thinking about quitting and the writing was on the wall. What got you to that place to where you were able to break through the barrier of denial, I guess, of hey, what might have to look at? Like, what kind of got you there?

Did somebody say anything, too? I'm wondering that. Well, I mean, my wife obviously was, or not obviously, but my wife was all over me. She could see what an unhealthy relationship I had. In a lot of work and reflection, both pre-quitting, like I went to my therapist, Jessica. I call it to pre-quit. I started talking with her about my problems with alcohol, and she really wanted me to go back and kind of work through the trauma in chronological order

from to present date. That way we did all the dishes and put them away, and it was eliminating a lot of the excuses to drink, right? Because I'm acknowledging these things. I'm facing these thoughts that I was trying to drink away. So then with that process, it made it easier to take five days off. six days off, seven days off, right? And then inevitably I would go on a bender and then get just like super drunk for several

days or be really good. I was good about not drinking at work. I didn't drink at work because I was so horrified of being an educator and drinking on the job. I just did not want to be arrested. So I like had the fear because I had seen as a principal I had to confront teachers who were drunk on the job. Like I knew what would happen.

So I was coloring inside the lines there, but the toll that it was taking on my mental health, every time I would take a break and then I would drink, it was like taking the hangover was worse. The mental depression was worse. The anxiety was worse. It was just getting the toll it was taking was no longer worth it to me. Yeah, no, I hear you on that. I think it's a good point to kind of hit home, too, is the effect on the mental health. part of things, right? Because we often hear, we often hear about these external consequences that

happen, right? Impaired driving or going to jail or lost relationships. And I feel like sometimes maybe we missed a boat on the internal, I call like an internal rock bottom. Correct. Stuff that's going on inside of us that's just destroying us and it's all fueled. But most of it's fueled by drinking. Like I still have anxiety, but I have a lot less anxiety. not drinking. Well, yeah, it's so much easier to manage. And I didn't have your, I mean, I did hallucinate, right? So I guess that can be sort of a rock bottom.

But I also say often on TikTok and people don't like it always, but that rock bottom is a myth. Because you, rock bottom is what we've been spoon fed by big alcohol and by society in general to keep drinking when you make bad choices, to keep drinking when you don't feel well because you have not been arrested. You have not, you know, got pulled over for drunk driving. You haven't gotten to a huge fight or something at a bar. They want these big ticket items. And if you haven't done those big ticket items, you're good. But I hadn't done any of those big ticket items. And I was not good. I was feeling suicidal and so depressed. And because I was literally poisoning my body and my brain every single day or 15 to 17 years, I guess.

guess almost 20 years yeah yeah no i love the way you put that yeah if you don't check these boxes then you're good you're good if nothing's major yeah you just look forward go back yeah and even now it's weirder when people don't drink than if they do drink right which is backwards and i remember thinking people that didn't drink just looking at them and being like what a loser what a boring person you are. You've just settled for this half life. Just, I don't know. And now I'm so content with that life. I'm so content with that freedom and quote unquote boredom, which I call peace. Like I welcome the peace. You might call it boredom. I call it peace. And I'm so happy and grateful to be on this side of the mountain, right, and have been able to maintain this far, this amount of time. Yeah. And I'm,

I know that's beautiful. I'm wondering, too, while my dog is barking in the background, this must be a delivery driver here upstairs. But I'm wondering, too, how were you able to get over that? But your perception of people who didn't drink, right? Because a lot of people are right there, right? Like, you know, you talk to a lot of people. I talk to a lot of people. They're right there.

The fun is out the window once I commit or decide not to drink. How were you to move past that? Well, you have time. There's no workaround, and that's the brutal. And that's why before I'm on the run that I'm on now, the longest I ever went was about two weeks without drinking for that reason. Because I always felt like it's my birthday or it's the Fourth of July or it's the holidays or it's this or it's that.

Right. And in order to have fun at this concert or sporting event or whatever, I have to drink. So the alcohol was like Velcroed to fun, the concept of fun. So I call it finding your resting sober face like you'd take it. takes time to figure out who you are to learn to be yourself as yourself without alcohol. And basically you prune all the shit that you thought was fun and see what grows back. And sometimes, like for me, I was really afraid I could never go to a concert again. That would not be fun.

Those are fun. I love them. I go all the time. But there's other things that I used to do that I don't do that aren't fun anymore. So fun just changes. For me, fun is opportunity. Fun is feeling rested. Fun is meeting new people, having deeper relationships with less people, rather than superficial

relationships with more people. So fun is just different for me now. Yeah, no, I love that. All of that, too, yeah, the less people. I heard this thing a while back that four quarters is better than 100 pennies. And it's so true. And in recovery for me anyway, is just. finding that you don't, I don't have to be everybody's buddy, buddy.

And it's so incredible, you know. Yeah, that's a brilliant, that is a brilliant saying, by the way, four quarters is better than 100 pennies. It's so true. And the alcohol made me mistake busy for successful, basically, in a lot of different ways, in a career perspective, certainly, but also socially and emotionally, thinking, again, just I'm getting invited places, I'm going out, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, like that happiness through osmosis or happiness through attaching myself to to these actions

rather than the actual feeling of being happy while being still, which is very different. And takes a lot of work and it's not perfect. I'm not saying, I'm just so happy all the time now. Like I still have, I still struggle with my mental health, but I, I've cleared a lot of the self-sabotage and roadblocks and needless drama and all those things to focus and keep the main thing, the main thing, which is like, if I have an actual disagreement or an actual sadness or an actual feeling, I can identify what its root is without getting it confused with alcohol and all of the baggage that alcohol brings with it. Yeah, and I like how you mentioned

too throughout this about a lot of this work takes time, right? I think that we're so used to the instant gratification, right, when we're drinking, because you have a drink and a couple minutes later, 10, 15 minutes later, you're feeling different and you're on your way to achieving your goal. And then in recovery, it takes time. And we do 15 years, 10 years of this addiction, we're wrapped up in it. And then we put this unrealistic expectation sometimes that things are going to just be miraculously better in 30 days. Yeah. And I don't think it's sometimes, I think it's most times people have an unrealistic expectation of how hard it is and how patient you have to be and how much your life is going to change. And at first, it's going to take all of the wind out

of your sails and it can be very isolating and feel very lonely and scary and just quiet, like creepy, quiet. But you have to go through that to rebuild. And there's the pink cloud that people refer to. Some people, it seems easy to them at first, but I really believe in my journey with sobriety, it's, I think of it more like a tide. Like sometimes the tide comes in and sometimes the tide goes out. Like sometimes it feels really manageable and sometimes it feels harder than normal. And it just ebbs and flows and it's a process. It's not a destination. Something I will always be doing is recovering and everyone listening to this is recovering from something. Yeah, I like that. The tide goes in, it goes out. Do you still think about drinking or

or we need like the tide goes out and comes back in. Is that more of like mental health stuff? That's more mental health. And alcohol was my primary coping skill, my primary medicine, even though it was a horrible prescription. I'm not a doctor, turns out. I don't think about drinking. I don't actively find myself saying, oh, I love a drink right now.

But I do find myself saying, I would like to escape this feeling. I would like to escape this situation. I would like to escape this response. and quiet my brain, which is where I have to employ other strategies and also learn that I am not every thought that I have. Yeah, I can relate to you on that. It's not, it's not about the, because a lot of people ask that too, right? Do you think about this stuff forever and you're craving alcohol and stuff? It's probably about me, about six months into it. That was out the window. I was just feeling a lot better about myself and life just became so. much more manageable, but I'm with you too. Like, of course, I would love to avoid the hard stuff. Life is still lifey. The human's human. The triggers trigger. The world doesn't stop moving just because you get sober. You have to learn to adapt and manage your feelings and manage expectations.

But yeah, so when people ask me like, oh, do you want to drink? Or I'm, or I post about it a lot or all the time and they're like, why are you still posting about it if if you're sober, doesn't that make you want to drink? And no, I think it's cathartic. I think it's fun to tell stories and to connect with people who are exploring sobriety or new to sobriety or have more time than me even. I think social media is a great way to get out there and spread the message, but it doesn't make me want to drink because I'm posting about it.

If anything, it holds me accountable because I've made it at my platform. so I'm less likely to do it, I think, versus if no one knew I was sober, who's going to hold me accountable? That's another good segue to this thought I've been having recently, right? Because a lot of people, a lot of people get sober and they want to keep it secretive. So they'll say, well, I don't want to tell so-and-so.

I don't want to tell these people that I've given up drinking, right? Right. And I think that, I mean, I get it. Everybody's situation different. And it's everything, everybody looks a little bit different. but I honestly think the faster you can get to owning your truth, the better off you're going to be as uncomfortable as that's going to be and people are going to think what they're going to think.

Right. I think it's, you know, I think what you mentioned, where you're sharing it, and it adds that accountability. It does, yeah. I didn't share anything with anyone for like six months. And one, I was afraid I was going to fail. Two, I was afraid I was going to be held accountable because I hadn't put a ring on it.

I wasn't sure, right? I was still in the fact-finding. And I think that's where people get really obsessed with and stopped by or tangled up in the label. Like, what do I call this? Or what do I call myself? Or what do I call this time of my life? Am I not drinking right now, tonight, forever?

Am I an alcoholic? Am I alcohol-free? There's so many different ways to patch it together that at least I found I had paralysis by analysis. where I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything at all. Versus now I encouraged, like you just said, I encourage people to find community, to find their voice, to tell someone. And people's reaction is none of your business and it will be what it will be.

I think it's a little bit different if you've been on and off, on and off, on and off. I understand when people keep it quiet when they've tried and failed publicly, like 12 times and everyone around them is tired of hearing about it and tired of being let down. But I think that's a different caveat than just your typical person who's trying to stop or who has stopped. Yeah, no, so true. Yeah, I can wear people down, right? People around you.

But I mean, getting back at it is always probably going to be the best thing, right, for most. Getting back. 100%. Yeah. I just know that when some people feel reticent to tell those in their life and I ask them why, They're like, well, it's because, you know, I've said this to my friends 10 times and then they try to get me not to drink and then I drink and then we have a big blow up and then again, accountability. So I do agree with you though. I think finding your voice and also understanding that you're allowed to change, your recovery is allowed to change, the way that you do it is allowed to change.

And the world that we experience is always in motion. It's always growing and shifting. And so too can your recovery plan, whatever it looks like to you, in my opinion. Yeah, no, of course. Yeah, I mean, everything's fluid, right? You mentioned two before, what you do different things now for enjoyment, for fun. What are some of those things, hobbies that you've picked up or that you plug into? That's a funny question because I would always pretend I had hobbies.

When I was drinking, people would ask me, like, what do you like to do? and I would rattle off a bunch of stuff, right? But those either things I didn't do or I only did when I was drunk. But I really do enjoy playing tennis. I enjoy, I'm very into Wimhoff, like breathwork and ice baths. I love social media and posting and creating content. So I do that as a hobby. I have three kids and I'm married, so I don't have that much time for hobby hobbies.

I would love to have more. but really just my presence is just like the clarity is is the blessing and what I love the most and being able to hop on here and work on my company and just do whatever wherever it takes me today is what I love to do because I worked for in 14 years in a very traditional work setting and after I got sober I quit my job and started a company and I've started two companies and I've lived the life of an entrepreneur since 2016. So that's also been a huge hobby, his creativity. Yeah.

No, that's incredible, right? To fill the soul, man, with all the different stuff. And what you do, too, is incredible, the videos and everything you do is, it really seems to move people. I mean, you're extremely vulnerable with a lot of the stuff you do. Yeah, it can be different. You know, not everyone, not everyone is gracious. but for me, it comes with the territory, although I do block and bless a lot because I'm not on there

for the drama. I'm not on there to convince Roger from wherever that he doesn't or does have a drinking problem. I just share my experience and what has worked for me and tell stories. And if people, if it resonates, it resonates, if it doesn't, okay. That's why the internet has literally millions of people on it. You find someone else. Yeah, you're going to find people who don't, or just there to stir the pot type stuff all the time. Oh, yeah, but you don't have to attend. I mean, I think one of the lessons I've learned in sobriety is you don't have to attend every argument you're invited to. And I really do value my peace and peace of mind.

And I don't let that many people in to my space, even, which is counterintuitive because I'm posting constantly and sharing all about myself. but like going into the comments and replying or DMs or things like that, I'm pretty protective about my mental health and how much of that I actually read and absorb because it's just not good for me to be in a constant state of feeling like I'm defending, defending or deflecting. I don't like it. Yeah, no, for sure. I'm with you on that 110%. If somebody was listening to the show here and they were struggling to get her stay sober, What would you say to them, like from your own experience?

I think that sober curiosity is only real when you take enough time to live life without alcohol than understand the difference. I would do my sober recon when I was drunk. So I would be thinking about quitting and looking on the internet and go to therapy, but still drinking, not at therapy, but you get the point. And doing all of these things and tricking myself into thinking that was taking. action and it wasn't taking action. I think what I did initially was what worked for me was not committing fully, which is counterintuitive to what you might hear. The first six

months I was very much in, okay, I'm just going to take this one day at a time. I'm not going to drink today. I'm going to see how I feel. I'm going to see how my medicine works. I'm going to see what this life. I had never been an adult without drinking. What is this shit like without drinking. So I think instead of thinking, I call it, you get a case of that forever's, you start to think about forever and forever and forever and you future trip and then you freak out and you drink again. So just set a goal of a few days and see what it's like. Honestly, don't make any big statements. You don't have to put a post on Instagram. You could just try it out and don't do it alone. Community is really important, whatever that looks like to you, either virtually in-person,

free, paid, traditional, not traditional, who cares, some sort of community of people to support you and to be there with you. Because you, at least I felt like, there are no sober people. And then I got sober and I'm like, they're everywhere. They're literally everywhere. I just couldn't see them because I was hammered. Yeah. Why? You, you, you mentioned community. I'm a huge fan of community too is being extremely helpful. Why community though? What makes it so helpful? Because alcohol preys on isolation. I think it preys on isolation. And when, at least when I got sober and when a lot of people stop drinking, they overcorrect and they get really inward and

they stay home and they isolate. They cut everyone out and they cut everyone off because that's a safer choice in that moment than going out, right? Because they're like, at least if I stay home, I won't drink. But it can be really lonely. And it's while it's fine to talk and it's effective to an extent to share with people who have a healthy or normal relationship with alcohol, nothing hits like talking about it with somebody else who has also gone through it or who is in it.

Somebody who can understand that taking just one day off is a really big deal. Whereas I tell that to my wife and she'd be like, I haven't had a drink in six weeks. I'm like six weeks like, you psychopath. That's crazy to me. So I think community is just validation and also learning that you're not in it alone. Yeah, no, I love that. That's exactly what I was thinking too for it is that you're able to connect with other people

and the people understand, right? You can just listen. Most of the time, it's nice to just have people to listen. I feel like when I taught with people outside of the recovery, or the sobriety space. It's always, I'm getting fed solutions. Yeah, they want to fix it. Yeah, and I'm just like, I appreciate it.

But I'm just not looking for solutions. I'm literally just looking to say, I'm having a hard day, and you just to nod your head and be like, yeah, I have hard days too. And that's all I need. I don't need to, I don't need to up my therapy. I don't need to do all this stuff.

I don't need to go for a run right now. I just need someone to be like, yeah, you know what, I have hard days too. Correct. You just want to feel seen. heard. Understood. Yeah, I agree. And that's not to say that people have ill intentions. It's just when you don't know and you can't relate to something on a personal level, you just try to offer solutions to try to, oh, I should try to help or try to fix it. And sometimes you can't fix it.

You just have to sit in the soup and just let the feelings be and let them pass. Yeah. That's another thing. You didn't one thing, another, what I've been thinking about recently is that different feelings, right? Just in sobriety is just experiencing them as opposed to like what I used to do is like, oh, I'm feeling this. So I got to start, you know, I got to get out of it really quick. Right. Accepting things as they come and they come.

Nothing lasts forever in my experience anyway. Right. And it flows through and it goes. And that's kind of like the piece. You spoke a lot about that. But that's like kind of what I, what I experienced like as the peaceful thing is like, I just don't have to just jump. and get flustered with everything I'm feeling that feels uncomfortable.

I work through it. Yeah, you're not every thought. And one of the acronyms I love the most is Rain, R-A-I-N, which is when you recognize a feeling, and then you allow it in rather than trying to keep it out. And then you investigate, is this feeling true? Is there anything I can do about this feeling right now? Is this feeling worth getting flustered over?

Is this feeling worth compromising my journey, my healing, my sobriety and then nurture, finding a way to nurture yourself so that you don't drink. And so sometimes for me that is like, okay, I need to get out of the house and go take a walk. And sometimes it's, you know what, I'm just going to sit here and watch TV. And sometimes it's like somewhere, anywhere in between, right? Just the process of filtering feelings is something that's so much easier to do when you have a clear mind that's free from a hangover or shame or regret or guilt and all the shit that comes with drinking. Yeah, you named a few of the heavy ones, yeah, the shame and the guilt and everything.

How were you able to work through that? How were you able to work through if that was part of your story? Therapy, for sure. I'm a huge fan and active attendee, but also in the last two years, sharing my story has been really powerful. I spent six, almost six and a half years sober and I didn't really say anything to anyone about it unless they personally knew me. but even then I was real cagey. And then when I randomly started talking about it on TikTok, about two years ago,

that's when the first time I had talked about it out loud, really. And then started a podcast, and it's been, so naming it and even, oh, gosh, all the episodes that come out of my podcast, and I have a podcast with a co-host, but we'll talk about some really bad memories. and I'll just say it and I'm cringing the entire time and I'm just like, but then after I feel like, ah, it's free.

I'm free of it now because I've recorded it. I've put it on the internet and there's nothing I can do. So the memory is, I've set it free. So I've really been working on that. Yeah. Now that's awesome. Talking about the TikTok and where you decide to share your story, how do you, so you go through six years with sharing it with minimal people.

people and then you jump on TikTok. I mean, how does that happen? I don't, when I started TikTok also, I didn't start my TikTok channel with the intention of talking about sobriety. So I had always, on Instagram, always been in Facebook or whatever, social media, let's call it, had always focus on education.

Because as a professional, what I do is focus on adolescent mental health and substance use disorder. I help schools build programs. I help states build programs. I help private companies, build wellness programs to support youth, right, or young adults. So that's typically what I talk about. And I've kept saying that I need to go back and find what my first TikTok post was on

sobriety because I don't know what it was, but it was not for the first few months. And I don't know what inspired it. I think it might have been like a dry January New Year's Eve post. I took a dry January and this is what I did when I took a dry January. Something like that, that I just did something different. and it popped and people liked it and it responded. And I was like, oh, this is kind of fun. So I just talked about it more and a little bit more and a little bit more.

But early TikTok is mostly just me dancing, like really like dad moves. Now I do a lot of storytelling. So it's changed as I've changed. Yeah. And I saw your one video. I saw a while back, right? It was the video of that first day where you walk, I think you walked through. The thing I got from it was that it wasn't the plan, right?

Right. Yeah, it was my, yeah, that video popped off. I posted that this last year on New Year's Eve and saying, oh, eight years ago, when I went to sleep, I didn't have any intention of waking up and quitting and it can happen like that. Not that easily, but, you know, every time I planned to plan to quit date, I would find a way to self-sabotage. And then one day I woke up and it just arrived and I accepted it and I embraced it and I let it be my quit date. It's sort of inverting the thinking. Because when I scheduled my quit dates, I would always find a way for them to. not work out magically. Yeah, which I think is incredible. And it's becoming, I think, more and more common that that is a possibility and a possibility for a lot of people. Yeah. I think it's a possibility for anyone.

I think the magic, though, is taking it slow and not getting too ahead of yourself. Because when you've done something every single day for years and years and years and you think about not doing it anymore ever, ever, ever. On one hand, that's a good thought because it creates resolution. But on the other hand, it creates overwhelm, which could then trigger you if you were me to want to drink. So however it works for you, embrace that. But for me, like a gradual acceptance has been a little bit better than radical acceptance. Yeah. And now, where are you at with that? Do you say I'm never drinking again? Oh, yeah.

No. Yeah. People say, do you think you'll ever drink again? And I say, I have no plans to. I have no plans to and I'll do everything in my power to not. And that's where complacency can really ruin, can really rain on the parade when you're like, oh, I have this hacked. I have this figured out.

It's all solved because I've seen, I've had friends with 20 plus years, 30 plus years, go back out. when you stop working and stop paying attention to your recovery. Yeah. What helps you on a daily basis? Is there a routine or something that helps you, you stay on track and just keep on. I'd like to bookend my day with some small rituals or small formalities that help me,

you know, set my day with intentions and then sort of like bring my day to a close. But the life of an entrepreneur and what I do, my day-to-day schedule is very unpredictable. But weekly therapy, weekly ice bath, weekly breath work, working out pretty much every day. I run a small sober group. So focusing on that every day keeps me. And I travel and speak about it.

I don't know. I think just being in it, I'm all the way in it right now in terms of professionally and personally. So that is a built-in mechanism to keep my eyes on it. Yeah, no, that's beautiful. Yeah, staying connected. It sounds like you're really connected, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I love that, man. This has been great. I appreciate you to share them with us. Your strategies, a lot of stuff. I mean, eight and a half years is incredible. Thank you. And especially all the stuff you're doing now. I know you've got your own show.

Tell us about your show that you have a co-host for. Yeah, so, yeah, I have a show called Sobriety Uncensored. And my co-host is a woman named Jenna. She's a nurse from Philadelphia. Jenna Bobena 9 on TikTok. She's not on Instagram. And we met because she was talking shit to me on a TikTok live when she was drunk. And now she's in her second year of sobriety.

And we have episode 32 just came out today. And so we're sponsored by SpinDrift. I don't know. We just have a weekly show. It's really off the cuff. The two of us just talk about whatever. It's pretty funny. and a lot of stories from our respective paths.

Yeah. Yeah, wow. Yeah, it sounds awesome. Yeah, it's funny because she's older and her kids are older and she started drinking later in life and then I'm younger. My kids are younger and I started drinking as like an infant essentially. So we just have different perspectives and we take turns asking each other questions and just like understanding the nuance across generationally, gender perspective,

of parenting all of it. So it's fun. I like it. Yeah, no, that's incredible. You enjoy podcasting, obviously. I do, yeah. Yeah. It's something that I look forward to. It's probably, it was one of the things that I was afraid to do, and I always wanted to do. And I don't know, one day we just decided, let's make a podcast. Let's just see. And we did 20 episodes, and that's when we got a sponsor and we're able to, like, continue doing it because it made sense. And so, yeah, we're, we're in it for a while because we signed like another six-month agreement with a spin drift. Wow. That's cool. Yeah, it's been fun. Look, wrapping things up here. Is there anything that you would like to say or leave everybody with?

Comparison is the Thief of Joy. So when you are looking at your own sober journey, while it's nice to have goalposts and ideas and, I don't know, a recipe to work off of, ultimately your journey is yours. So I would say get scrappy, get curious, check your ego, and try different modalities and different strategies until you figure out which way works. Because if you put all of your eggs in one basket and that basket, it isn't working, your likelihood of giving up and going back out increases tenfold. Yeah, I love that comparison. What would you say, just to wrap things up here, For real this time.

For real to wrap things up. For real. What would you say would be like the number one takeaway or number one strategy if somebody, like what would be the one actionable step if somebody is today is the day I'm going to start day one. I listened to the show and Daniel motivated me to make changes. What do I now? What do I do once the show's over?

Tell someone. Say it out loud to someone because then you will, that's called best day, worst day. The best day is when you finally tell someone and get it off. of your chest and it's also the worst day because you tell someone to get it off of your chest because then you're accountable so tell someone you don't have to make a post you don't have to go viral you don't have to go public but tell someone anyone could be the clerk at the grocery store i don't care who it is tell someone yeah no that that's incredible yeah i think and i think you mentioned in your store i forget the exact moment it was well you'd mentioned when you started to show your story on

TikTok. And you did it, you felt a certain way about it. Right. Yeah, there's power in it. There's power in it. If you don't control the narrative, it controls you. So if you want to make a decision, I say decision before provision, like you're not sure how it's going to work out, how it's going to end up, what it's going to be like, but you can at least express that desire to change or commitment to want to change to somebody else to help cement it into the universe and to get you energetically moving in the right direction, even if it doesn't resolve itself in that day, which probably won't. Yeah. Yeah.

How can someone find you if they're looking for you out there? You can follow me at Patterson Perspective on Instagram and on TikTok, and I have a website called Sobertunity.com. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yes. Well, everyone, another incredible episode.

So grateful for Daniel to come on here. He's pretty busy these days with everything he's got going on. I know that that story is going to hit home for a lot of people. I really do. There's a lot more stories I'm hearing about people just waking up one day. The night before wasn't even necessarily a bad night or a rock bottom night, and they're waking up one day. It's something's happening.

Something's happening. that's becoming their first day sober. And then they're doing it for a long time. I hope that's motivating in a sense to be that you don't have to be at a rock bottom. You don't have to lose a ton of stuff. You don't have to be in this really difficult spot to get out of. You can really shut this thing down at any time.

Look, everyone, be sure to reach out to Dan on Instagram and send them your love as all of you are so incredible at. And hope you're enjoying the show. And if you are, please, please, please. Please jump on there and leave a review. Let everybody know what you think of the show. And as always, I appreciate you.