Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Dustin struggled with alcohol and felt he was living two lives until he found sobriety.

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

In this episode we have Dustin.  Dustin shared his experience growing up in a Christ-centered home, where he was shielded from alcohol. Although he was a talented athlete in high school and college, he found himself joining the drinking culture due to the social pressures that influenced his early adventures into alcohol consumption. Despite getting three DUIs over 11 years and the drastic consequences, including jail time and a strained relationship with his parents and future wife, Dustin continued to struggle with alcohol addiction. However, after his stint in rehab, a turning point in his life, Dustin became sober and started dedicating his time to writing, running, and therapy. Today, Dustin shares his story publicly and wrote a book titled 'Looks Like We're Running: An Amateur's Companion to Becoming a Marathoner that combines stories of running and his sober journey. This is Dustin's story on the sober motivation podcast. -------------- Follow Dustin on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/dustinriedesel/ Download The SoberBuddy App here: https://soberbuddy.app.link/motivation More information on SoberLink: https://soberlink.com/recover Follow SoberMotivation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sobermotivation/  

Welcome back to Season 3 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 is possible, one story at a time. Let's go. In this episode, we have Dustin. Dustin shared his experience growing up in a Christ-centered home where he was shielded from alcohol. Although he was a talented athlete in high school and college, he found himself joining the

drinking culture due to the social pressures that influences early adventures and alcohol consumption, despite getting three DUIs over a period of 11 years, and the consequences, including jail time and a strained relationship with his parents and future wife. Dustin continued to struggle with alcohol addiction. However, after his stint in rehab, a turning point in his life, Dustin became sober and started dedicating his time into writing, running, and therapy. Today, Dustin shares his story publicly and wrote a book titled, Looks Like We're Running, an amateur's companion to becoming a marathoner that combines stories of running and his sober journey.

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Let's get to know each other and see if we can help each other on the journey. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Dustin with us. Dustin, how are you? I'm doing great, Brad. Appreciate you having me on. Yeah, of course. Thank you for connecting and been willing to share your story on the show. Oh, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. I was telling you briefly, but for anybody listening,

I only got into a comfortable place of sharing openly my story within the last year. And as much as I hope it helps others, I find it immensely helpful for me to just share of myself and find that in every time I do, I become more grounded in who I actually am versus. is the facade I was trying to put up prior. That's a very powerful realization in a sense, right? Why don't you take us back a little bit and share with us what it was like for you growing up? Yeah. I'd love to.

Starting at the beginning. I grew up in an extremely, I even feel bad calling it a Christian home because I feel like that puts these stereotypes on it. It was a Christ-centered home, and there were a set of values that came with that. But my parents, I never saw either of them take a sip of alcohol until, gosh, I must have been 26, and it was a toast at my older brother's wedding. And my dad took one sip of wine to make everybody else feel comfortable with the venue. And that is it. So I grew up in a non-drinking household.

And childhood was great. homeschooled up until about eighth grade. That came with a lot of intellectual benefits in an education, but it also came with a lot of emotional insecurities about fitting in and feeling like I was part of a group. And so once I got into school, I think sports saved me from a social aspect. I was a very good basketball player, played through college, and played football. We won a state championship my senior year, started on that team. And so that plugged me in to people and gave me a group to be a part of. But my very first drink came because of that same social group, which is pretty common.

You do what the people around you do. The first drink I ever took was after we won the state championship football. game in high school. And it was both an amazing and an awful first drink, as probably a lot of first drinks are. But there was a particular beer that our sophomore year of high school, one of our buddies, older brothers had a party with his college friends, and somehow they had drank every beer in the fridge except this one they left behind, and we found it the next day. And we're making jokes about like, how do you just leave ones? This is like the last slice of pizza? What's going on here? And my friend's mom comes home and she sees it and she's,

guys, you don't even be eyeing that yet. And she wrote on it, do not open until state championship 2003. And she knows we all play football together. She's leaning in. And that was how it was in in Kansas. And so fast forward to a couple years, our senior year, we win it. We have been looking at that beer with that little post-it note on it. that fridge, and I had told the guys like, hey, if we would, like, I'm taking a sip of that. And it was a natural light. It was old as could be. And it was the first sip of alcohol I ever took. And so it was bathed in the glory of the moment and was the beginning of what would become a slippery slope. And naturally, given my upbringing and my parents, and it also created a severe division

between what I was presenting to the world and what I was doing with other groups or on my own time. So, yeah, that was childhood. I then went off to a Christian college that didn't allow for any drinking at all. You sign a pledge prior to starting with the school and completely dry campus, completely dry county. And so that only deepened the dissonance between, what I was doing secretly and who I was to the outside world. And I think my problems with feeling like a whole individual and having control of myself was the fact that I categorized

my sense of self according to my surroundings. And so I don't blame those atmospheres, but they certainly nudged me in a direction. Interesting there. I'm wondering too with that, because your experience growing up, too, it's not around. And then you go to the school and it's not around. Do you ever think throughout this entire process, what is it about alcohol that we're trying to be, or I'm trying to be protected in a sense from, to where it's not allowed?

Dry County, too, that's interesting as well. Yeah, well, it's in Kentucky, heart of the Bible Belt, and I think you just had a bunch of people from a time who consider alcohol a sin. and I do think that the sense of protection, like the you can't have this, the forbidden knowledge, some of the outbreak coming here, the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, it's right here. And that never jived with my personality. I'm extremely curious. I love learning. I have trouble taking people's word for it. I got to know myself. And I do think there was an allure attached to that that,

that I don't know if it would have been there or not. I'm not one to get very rigorous about the genetic aspect of this versus the learned aspect. You make your choices. It hits you how you hit you. And you do your best to adapt. And so I did enjoy getting into that because it felt like it fleshed out an aspect of my personality, the drinking did, that I didn't get to pursue otherwise. So there was a lure of discovery that I think that atmosphere nurtured.

And I didn't have that many people in my life. Shoot, maybe the number is zero. I didn't have anybody that I felt like I really admired who had been into the depths of drinking, seeing what it had to offer them beneficially and could speak honestly to that. and also the destructive aspect it brought into life. And I don't know if that would have curbed it, but I think about that all the time. I have children four and two about,

well, now that I'm not drinking, am I going to recreate the wheel here? Like, how do I educate them on what this thing is and that it is, in my opinion, unique to every person who crosses it so that they don't get this imbalanced relationship that I endured for a while? Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's an interesting perspective, too. How do you approach it? Whether it's differently, whether it's the same. It's a very interesting sort of thing, right? Because I've got the kids as well, a six-year-old, three-year-old and the two-year-old. Yeah, you got any tips? I haven't gotten there yet with them, with them yet, but I'm sure that we'll cross that bridge one day. And I'm sure it's probably going to pose challenges. That's what I'm thinking, right? Because when I was a teenager, if there were anything like me, even close, I had it all figured out. And I knew what was best around every turn. And I really struggled with taking direction from more senior people in a sense than me. So I'm not projecting that to be their entire issue. But all teenagers are going to have some sort of curiosity, right?

And I don't know if it's something we entirely want to take away. I think that's sort of about life is figuring it out. But that's an entirely different thing, Dustin, for us for sure, right? We'll get there when we get there. right? We don't want to rush that. I'm just thinking too from your story there, so you go away to this college where it's dry and the county's dry. Is there anybody in these situations that are bending the rules a little bit? Or is everybody just followed that to a tea? No, it's interesting too. It's one of the things that I think appeals when you start the drinking is like any community, you start to find

your people. And it happens interestingly. Like maybe you run into a guy at the the first chance liquor store outside of the county line. It's, oh, you too. And now you have this shared awareness. Or we'd go downtown, we're outside of Lexington, Kentucky, would go downtown on a night and you feel pretty safe going out drinking, even though, like, you would be in trouble. It's like a mutually assured destruction if somebody else from your school is also out there. And you would meet all these people that it's not just that they shared in the drinking and all the implications that were provided around that, which for us meant you're going to have a more sexually active lifestyle.

You were a little bit freer with your language or smoking, all these things that were taboo on the campus. It was also that you would see each other around campus and you had a shared hippoccurial. It actually didn't feel like hypocrisy at the time. It felt like all the people who were following the rules. Like they were a little square. Like they had protected themselves from the fullness of life and that maybe they didn't get it. And now that I'm older, maybe they did get it. Maybe they didn't. Like it's a thin line right between being sheltered and being wise. Like the what is preventing you from spreading those wings might just be the fact that flying and falling aren't that different. So it wasn't like anything official, right? You're not like finding the secret rooms

and fight club. It just, once you knew people, you might shoot a text out like, hey, are you going out this weekend? And it was weird too because you would find yourself being friends with these people that you could go out with on the weekend. But when you were both on campus, no, we're not really part of the same group. Right. And so there wasn't this, this uniformity of life, even with the people who were living a similar life to you. Wow, that's deep. That's deep and interesting. So you did get started then in college. You would go out in Lexington and stuff then? Yeah, after that first drink at the towards the middle of my senior year in high school, I was pretty much all in. I got a fake ID through a friend pretty quickly that was at the time a Kansas ID was a pretty easy fake and they knew somebody and it looked identical. And so I then had access. I was taller because of lifting weights and I'm six four like I was more physically developed. I never had any trouble. getting alcohol at any point. And there was always, I think part of this goes with sports too.

There's like a machoness around it all, right? As silly as I know it is now, it seemed like the realest thing in the world to be somebody who could drink hard, chase girls, still show up and play great in the games, and to just be able to handle everything and not let anything be, like, well, nothing is scary to me. Nothing seems risky. And so I think that playing sports in college, maybe it doesn't make a difference. Maybe it does. But again, I found myself with a group of people who had a similar bent to the activities. And I wasn't going to be a person who skipped out on the party or the social hang up because I wasn't going to engage. And it's almost just a stroke of luck for me that it was only alcohol, that like being in that portion with those guys, like, that's all

that we were doing. Because I'm 100% certain. If one of my friends had come along and they were offering like harder stuff, I wouldn't have flinched. It's not like I wanted to run towards those like harder drugs or different drugs. I, that's side pet peeve. Like, alcohol is an extremely hard drug. It's just thought of differently. But I'm sure I would have thrown more stuff into the mix had any of those people who were close to me like been about it. Because that was as much of the draw as anything is I wasn't going to say no to the experience. And then as far as like, when was I addicted and when did it have its hooks in me, maybe from the very beginning, but I don't know.

That maybe once like I saw the consequences, I picked up my first DUI in college. So, but the very least, I had real material consequences coming quickly. And yet those didn't turn me away either. It turned into like lifestyle management. So yeah, it's, that's when it, that's when it began. And similarly to the, I don't really. need to splice whether it's like a disease and it's a genetic thing. Like to me, all that is unhelpful. It started happening then. I know how I responded to it. And whatever,

maybe this helps some people who are battling with how to categorize this thing in their own mind. But independent of what research says about how we should categorize alcoholism, I have all the evidence I need in just my personal experience, because for me, it's this way 100% of the time, is that I let it go too far, and I lose control, and I make decisions that make me ashamed of myself, that then I have to reverse engineer into guilt, into something I can work on, into a better version of myself. and that is a massive amount of internal and external work that I would rather just avoid, if at all possible. Yeah.

No, I like the way you put that. Yeah, it's how it ultimately is how it's affecting us, right? How is it affecting our life? And is it preventing us? Because I've had a lot of people on the show and you've listened and some people are going to identify with being an alcoholic and they embrace that term. And it helps them, a lot of people share that it helps them stay connected to how it was and how it could be again.

And then other people, they'll share terms of sober or share terms of alcohol-free or share different terms and connected in different ways and conversations they're having with people. But it's so important that it ultimately comes back to that. Like, the way you explained it was just incredible there. Things get out of hand. And then you end up in a spot where we commit to ourselves. I'm going to cut back.

I'm going to take tomorrow off. I'm going to quit. I'm going to do this. And then we often find ourselves in a spot where we can't do that. We find it very difficult, if not impossible, to just throttle back. And I'm envisioning somebody without this struggle, which is for me, it's really hard to wrap my head around it. But without it, if they go out and they have one bad night and things go sideways or not according to planned, I envision them being able to say without any sort of massive struggle that maybe I'm going to take some time off or maybe I'm going to do things different.

and it doesn't become that cycle because you mentioned it there too as we feel bad about ourselves that shame kicks in and then now we're trying to adjust other things constantly to minimize the consequences or change this or do that and that cycle just goes around and around so how do things look like for you after college it's interesting too you threw that in there dustin about your first DUI as well in college what is that experience like because you're Maybe relatively early on in your journey here. Is that a wake-up call-it-all-all-for-you temporarily, or how do you respond to that? Not really.

I went through a couple weeks of, well, beer only. Somebody else should drive. But part of the problem of living a bifurcated life is that if I think, if I found myself in a position where I wanted to drink, but also I need to go back to the other life where people can't know that I don't drink. I can't create a bunch of erratic behavior. Where's your car? Why'd you leave it there? Sometimes it was a girlfriend, sometimes it was a family member. So because I couldn't even own the fact that, yes, I am someone who drinks, and I kept putting myself in worse and worse situations. So it was a wake-up call in as much as it put my parents

onto the issue because I needed their assistance financially to manage the fees and what was I going to do with the car, et cetera. So it got them involved and that changed some of the nature of what I was doing. I think it also was the primary thing. So when I graduate from college, I go back home to Kansas City. I'm working there for a couple years. My parents are aware of my issues drinking. They're trying to help me. Like my mom even put me on to a therapist who was coming at it from a very like theological perspective. She would find AA meetings and be like, hey, you should go to this. But she's also trying not to, she wants it to be my choice is the thing. And I wasn't going to make that choice. So that tension did spur me to taking a job in North Carolina and moving away, which, though it didn't pay immediate results, ended up being long-term what my life needed.

So I moved to Carolina. Things go well here. I'm working, like the jobs are going pretty well. I'm starting to develop a good friend base. We're still going out and drinking, but Now at least everybody understands who I am. There's no hiding myself anymore. And so that helps remove some of the bad behavior. Like, I'm now taking taxis, like to a from downtown and splitting them with friends. And so I'm minimizing damage. But of course, I fly back to Kansas City. I tell my parents I'm coming in a day later than I am so I can go out that night with friends.

And then I don't have to explain anything. I get busted for another DUI that night because of like a time compression within three years of the college one. I end up doing nine days in jail. And they worked with me on like jail time and house arrest and like when I could do it, which was look, in my opinion, pretty kind of the courts. So that I could schedule that around a vacation, quote unquote. And it was in jail that I think I probably saw the bottom.

It takes me a while yet before I'll completely wake up. But it was there that I saw the bottom. I'm on a bus that is shipping us from prison to the courthouse where we'll get our final sentencing. And they have us segmented. So they throw all of us like misdemeanor are in the front part of the bus. And then there's a cage. And in the back are like the violent criminals. And so we go, I walk up to the courthouse from the basement.

A bailiff walks me into the room. And it's just me sitting where a jury box would be, like on a classical TV courtroom. And the judge sentences me. And I'm wearing like the classic black and white stripes. I'm cuffed up. And the only people in the room are my mom and dad sitting in the back row. and for me, now that I'm a dad and I understand, golly, how painful would it be to be in that back row and seeing my children, I am extremely thankful for having at least someone who believed in me no matter what.

I think there's an incredible place for unconditional love, and that is a really hard thing. I don't think my marriage is unconditional love. I think that's a partnership. It's built on terms and agreements. And maybe nobody but my parents were capable of being in an unconditional position that day. And they were. And I'm leaving. I'm feeling just the worst I've ever felt. And the bailiff, once we're in the hallway, he says, just stop here. And he goes and he gets my mom and my dad. And my mom comes running out and gives me a hug. and it's only a few seconds. But as I'm going back down towards the cell with the bailiff, he goes, most people's parents don't show up. You should be grateful for that. And it started to,

I think that was the seed of starting to realize the pain I was inflicting upon others when it was just my own problem. No, whatever. Whatever. But the moment I started feeling it hurting other people, that's when it got bad. And so when I'm in Carolina and I'm living how I'm living, I'm trying to manage it better. I'm trying to have rules and I'm getting along.

But it wasn't really until I met my now wife that it was like, okay, I'm strapped to somebody else who this affects. And then there were events in my life that rolled out that made me decide to take it seriously. but I would say that was, oh, I'll tell you what was the bottom that I missed. After this bailiff says this, and I'm in the bus on the way back to prison, a fight breaks out behind us, and they don't stop the bus, they don't do anything. The rule is just get back to the prison, and they'll handle it there once we're stopped, and they can get more people out of the bus, so it doesn't turn into anarchy. So the big black guy had the upper hand, but then I saw the other guy.

He's like a rabid animal trying to pull at these cuffs. And I happen to be on the back row. And I'm not allowed to move from my seat. Anybody who gets out of their seat gets charged. So I see him pull his hand out from his cuff and I see it take off skin. I can see like the blood coming with him. But he gets his hand out of the cuff. And then with a free hand, it turns the whole fight on its head.

And he beat the other guy, now that his hand was free, he beat him mercilessly. And it was the most brutal physical violence I have ever seen personally in my life. And we get there, they rush all of us in the front half of the bus off. They throw tear gas into the bus. And then they send some guys in, like, body armor and, haul everyone out. And the guy who was getting beat, I'd never see anything like it. His eye was just a gelatinous mess hanging down on his cheek that was like turned green. And I'm sure he's never seeing out of that eye again. And so I felt simultaneously two sides of the stakes in that what I consider

the nadir of my life drinking, which was the impact it had on those who, loved me most and the potential danger I was putting myself in. So I met my wife maybe a year after that. And we got engaged. We had several breakups and fights because both of us were drinking, but we sensed something in each other. And then six days before we get married, I get diagnosed with cancer. I go through 33 days in a hospital before I taste fresh air again, 10 more months of chemo after that. I get this post-cancer zest for life. I'm going to do it all. And it returned a little bit of real positive energy. I got back into that athlete's mindset. I started running, which I always thought was awful, but now I was just going to lose weight. I was going to get in shape. And so I started running

aggressively, but I hadn't dropped the drinking. I thought of that as part of, well, yeah, I'll travel more. Like, I'll have fun, but I'll also be really effective in my life too. And so now I'm burning the candles of both ends. And there's only about six months of that. My wife and I got married by this time when I get another DUI. And at that point, because I now have my wife, somebody who was signed up with me, She drew a hard line. It was like, I don't care if it's expensive. I think you need to do this. And I agreed because I didn't have any other answers.

Like, I'd failed repeatedly. I'd caught a glimpse of how bad it could get. And I didn't want this person to think of me as a failure. So I went out to rehab and I don't think rehab is necessary to begin the recovery process. But all I can say is this. say this to anybody, no matter what the problem is, it doesn't have to be drinking. If you have one problem in your life that is very clearly your biggest problem, like this is what puts you in the hole most times, if you can just take 30 days and focus on nothing but that problem,

get resourced with coaches, people who have the experience, you get educated even while you're unraveling what your connection is to this issue, it is. It is, the greatest gift you can give yourself. I really think that a lot of being a really effective person, like the best version of yourself, is as much about removing obstacles as it is about achieving successes. And so when you remove like this massive obstacle, I don't think it's any coincidence. Like after that, all the good things in my life came. I got promoted into leadership at work. I've published a couple books. I have a family. I'm in the best shape. I've ever been in. I started running marathons. My friendships feel solid. Like they're real. They're

based on something. And so it's not coincidental to me at all. It's that I remove this one giant barrier between me and the person I was trying to become. And I wouldn't say I'm there yet, but it's, it all seems achievable now in a way that seemed overwhelming before. Yeah, wow. Powerful. Thank you for sharing all of that. It was the third. Third DUI you got, was that in Raleigh? Or were you back in Kansas City for that one? Third DUI happened in Raleigh. So I got tagged everywhere I've ever lived. It's so interesting, too, the way that if we go back in your story a bit, to the way you grew up into what you were looking up to your parents, it was never around. And I think a lot of people have this conception, this idea that if somebody struggles with alcohol, then it comes back to the family and it was part of it.

doing this podcast and hearing over 120-something stories, I would say it's 60-40. Some people's folks do struggle with alcohol. And even in my story, my folks did drink. I never saw them drink. I never saw them drunk. I never even picked up on it at all in my life, ever. So it's such a, it's just an interesting component that it can go both ways.

and we can still struggle with this down the road. So that third one, you had your wife that drew the line in the sand, which was incredible and hard to do, I think, for somebody. But I also loved your story about the courtroom, too, because I've got a little similar story after I did nine months in jail, actually right there in Raleigh. I was in jail for nine months. And I had this court date after nine months.

Dude, nine months is no joke. That is a long time. Yeah, it was a lot downtown. Well, it wasn't all downtown. It was some of it was downtown and some of it was they have other satellite jails. I couldn't even remember where the other one was. But yeah, it was a lot. But at the end of it there, when I finally went to court, it's interesting how we think,

and this might not be your story at all with it. But it's interesting how we think we've got these relationships that are solid in our life and people that are going to support us no matter what and people that are going to show up for us no matter what. But what I figured out when the rubber hit the road, like you, you mentioned there, my folks were the only people left. When I went into that courtroom after nine months of being in jail, and everybody was so excited for this to be a resolution and to reconnect, they reunite through letters and video calls and whatever,

I walk into that courtroom and it's my mom and it's my brother. And it just really, at that point in time, it just really hit me to a lot of what you said, but also to the fact of none of those relationships that I had, Not that they didn't matter, but it was just built on sand. And I expected and thought people would show up. And people probably thought and expected me to show up. And I wasn't capable of doing that in my life.

And I thought I was. And what I realized looking back is that what we had in common was just this desire to escape reality. And that's really all we had. We wouldn't be able to share a coffee together. It would be the most awkward, uncomfortable thing in the entire world. We wouldn't have been able to get to a place like that. that. And I think just looking back and now I'm just really grateful to realize that. And it's not to say any relationships that I was in, that they were bad people or I was a bad person. It's that

we just got sucked into this easy way to build relationships. And then you hear a lot of people when they get sober. It's, I'm really struggling to meet people, to find people. And I'm like, hey, people, this is how it's supposed to be because this is real, like meeting new people and doing all that stuff is uncomfortable and can be in building genuine connection. So that really just made me think about that whole thing. How old were you like just a little bit of a timeline, a general timeline of when that third one came along and when you decide to make this leap of faith in a sense to go to rehab? Yeah. First D.U.I happened when I was 21 and then the third one, I guess I would have been 32. So, yeah, I tell people like my 20s are just squandered. I don't know if you've heard this

quote, but every man has two lives and the second one starts when he realizes he has only one. And for me, it's 32 is, that's what I realized it. And that's way too late to realize you only have one life. Like, if you can figure it up faster, do that. But I wanted to talk about something you mentioned because this is one of the reasons I love what you do here. is that it's community focus, that even if a lot of it happens digitally, you realize that there is a utility to friendship and relationship. And knowing that people are attached to the same mission that you are is really helpful in making that relationship worthwhile. Like I find even with, even just, I'm 38 now, even pushing into middle.

middle age is your responsibilities and the things that you do mount and become a more significant part of your life, it feels like I have to make special time for friendship, right? Like I've got to make time to go get a coffee. And what I've found is the relationships that have the most impact are ones that are integrated into things I already care about. I have a friend, I've known him since college. He's one of the reasons I'm out here. And for a while, me not drinking put our lives at odds. And we just spent less time around each other. We didn't have some of the things to rally around. And it's been over the last year where he's been doing less of that in his life. And we find ourselves like, now we're working out together. We're leading a men's group

together. And it's like we can spend all this time together now because our lives are aligned by the utility, like where we're trying to go, what we're trying to build. And so I think a lot of those things that we felt were great relationships that we were building while we were drinking. We're actually just excuses to keep drinking. And the great relationships happen once you are fully yourself and chasing things that matter to you rather than avoiding your confrontation with the world. And part of the reason I am now proactive about finding ways to talk about my story and share my story. Yeah, sure, there's a little bit of book promotion, right? I'm trying to get that word out there in the world.

But a lot of it is I feel so much more grounded in where I'm going and what I'm building when I can tell people the honest truth of who I am. And I find that the relationships that I attract become ones that are like-minded. Like when you share who you really are with people, the people who want to be part of that person will respond to that story. And they'll find you, and you can react in turn.

And I was not doing that from 21 to 32. I consider it one of the greatest strokes of luck in my life that my wife ended up being the person she is because we both found each other in like a schism of our real selves and we've mutually grown back. And I think it's amazing that whatever we were going through at that time, that we were able to see the real person inside of there. And now things are amazing.

I mentioned we were fighting a lot and we had breakups. Man, I've got the most peaceful relationship on earth. The chemistry is outstanding, and we never fight. Like, we'll have disagreements, but we have skills. We talk through it. And it's crazy to think about the knock-down dragouts that used to happen. It seems like completely different people. So I just say all that to hopefully encourage anybody who's in the nexus point about the social cost of leaving drinking.

Like anything, I had a basketball coach who was trying to fix our jump shot. He said, it's going to get worse before it gets better, but then it gets a lot better. And, man, it's as true with your social circle as it is with trying to increase your three-point percentage. It gets worse, but then it gets a whole lot better. Yeah, that's so true. Yeah, 110%. It gets better with time and you just have to learn a new way of doing things. And then when you hit that stride, it makes a lot of sense. And like you mentioned there too, you start to attract people that are on the same mission or headed in the same direction and bring those people into your life and that's really just going to improve things

all around. So after this rehab, where do you go from there? So the crazy thing about rehab, me and my wife have been trying to have children. The day she picks me up from rehab, I had thought she had miscarried. She had called me like five days before getting me to tell me she had miscarried because she thought she had. And the day she picks me up, I get in the car and she shows me the sonogram strip, and it's the very first time I've ever seen my son. And if you can't take that as a sign about, it is time to be a man. Like, this is it. This is the moment. Like, you're going to respond to this. You've just walked out of rehab. And can you hold it together or not? And within two weeks of that time, I signed up for the Chicago Marathon. Look, I had six months of running under my

belt at that time. But in rehab, I'd been, after the first week, they let me get up and run on the beach. And so I've been running every morning to have a personal time and something beyond just the work. And so I'd come to this idea that it would fill this anxiety void. Like, it gave me something to drive towards. And because of sports, I always believe that, like, the body is a really excellent educator on the rest of your needs. I think people forget that your mind is part of the body, not the other way around. And the research inside of rehab that covered some of this, I knew that if I got a better handle on my fitness, it would help my anxiety levels. And so I was like, this is all good. This is all good. I'll run a marathon. I didn't have much more of logic behind it.

And to me, it seemed impossible. The idea of running 26.2 miles seemed unachievable. based upon my experience of running. But I just started running a little bit further every day. I had no plan. I had no education. And so my wife is getting more and more pregnant. I'm building and running. I have put the marathon further out.

So she actually has our son. It's a couple months later. And I finished a Chicago marathon much slower than the goal I had charted. But I knew as soon as I finished that, and I'd set my goals like 100 hours of group therapy or AA for that year. And I was going three times a week. I tried to focus on just three things, like writing, running, and therapy. And in between, I'll do work and hang out with my wife.

And so I hit those goals. And the moment I crossed that finish line at Chicago Marathon, before they even got the metal around my neck, I'm texting my wife totally. worth it. Because I could feel it. Like, the fact that I had done something super difficult that seemed impossible while maintaining my routines for sobriety, it felt like in that moment that I understand it now. If I can just be consistent, like, all the saying, like, one day at a time, that's all it is. It's one run at a time. It's sober for today. And over time, it's stacked. up that you have this mountain of evidence that I don't know that it's that useful to anybody,

but it means everything to me that I can look at that evidence and say, I have what it takes to be the captain of my own ship. I'm the one in control here. And once I had that, like, there have been slip ups, but I would say on average it's like once a year up until these last couple years. And you might have two nights in a month and then not drink for 18 months, right? But like on average, it would just, it would catch. And now it's like a really strong thing. Once I built up enough evidence, I realized what it did for me was it created self-esteem because I knew that I would do what I said I would do. That hypocrisy that I built when I was being one person over here and the person who drank over here, I had enough time eroding that

so that I was the same person all the time. And once I felt that, that's when I got really comfortable sharing with anybody at work, anybody I meet that, yeah, these things happened to me. I got these DUIs. I had this addiction. Probably still have it, if we're being honest. But it allowed me to make myself the main person who would be disappointed if I let me down instead of, and I needed some other people and the pain inflicted upon them to help me get there. But once I was the person who cared the most about my sobriety, it got a lot easier. No, I love that too. And a lot of people, too, will share that they got started because of other people in a sense. And then there's some people that are like, oh, you can't do that. I think it's a great way to start.

start because some people will share too is that they might not have had that love, care and concern for themselves to really do anything for themselves or to push. And if you have love or care about other people, the impact you're having on maybe your kids or your parents or whatever it is, if you can connect that to motivate you to start, my goodness, what an incredible way to start to do something. And then I think the transition takes place. It starts out for somebody else. I think eventually we've got to come home to ourselves. So eventually we have to find enough value and be able to start to love ourselves again to make it worth it. Because while I think the kids and the parents and the job might be incredible motivators, eventually I feel like that'll fade.

I don't know if we can carry that on for 10 years. I love that you're now sharing your story. What I'm taking away from this last part you shared. When you were drinking, you were living two lives. You were like the non-drinker in some circles, in other circles, you were the drinker. And then when you got into sobriety, you were like the sober person maybe in some circles at home. And then you were maybe just the regular dust in other circles and didn't really necessarily share the story. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I think that we'll get there if we want in time. But I do feel like there's a very freeing experience internally. by just sharing what's really up, what's really going on and who we really are, and not always worry about having two different identities in a sense. I think that's incredible. What's been the response? Hugely encouraging. I find it's usually one of two things.

The people who have acknowledged that they either have an issue, I guess there's three camps. There's people who have a problem and have acknowledged it. there's people who have a problem and haven't acknowledged it, and there's people who don't have a problem. The people who don't have a problem think it's awesome. They're just happy to see you get a handle on it. The people who have a problem and have acknowledged it, that's been the most inspirational connection for me, because now that I'm talking about, look, they can tell a difference. If you look at photos of me seven years ago, I got like this big old moon face. I was 60 pounds,

heavier. It is obvious that my life has improved dramatically. And so those people, they look at it and they hear me talking about it and they can recognize the sense of freedom. And usually they'll come and, hey, can I grab a coffee with you? I'd love to talk to you about this. It's something that's been on my mind. What did you do? And look, some of them are willing to take some steps in some But the people who, and this is honestly for me just as great, the people who have a problem and won't acknowledge it, I think those are the people you lose. It's not like a big show or anything. You just fade. You don't have the same goals anymore. And that can be a little bit painful, but similarly to how I'm dropping one version of myself, like I'm living two lives, I'm dropping one of

those lives. I don't know if you've ever heard this before, but like the word decide is from the like Greek roots about killing. You think like homicide, suicide, decide. And it just means to cut off. And so when you make a decision for something, you are cutting off the decision for everything else. And while that sounds painful in description, the sensation that you feel is, man, I am really light right now. I feel breezy. And I didn't expect it to feel that way, but every single time, most people who are drinking, they feel this sensation around a single event, which is you enter the event. Maybe, let's just pick a wedding to give it some substance. And other people who don't know you are drinking, and now they're offering you a drink. You're in the clear here. These people don't

know you. You could get involved. And you feel that old voice in your head start to scratch and it's noisy. Like now you're having this internal debate that you didn't plan on. And if you do nothing, that debate is just going to rage all night. You'll be fidgety in your seat. You'll be thinking about it. But if you just say to the person, no, thank you, I don't drink, that noise goes down almost immediately. Right. And similarly, if you say, sure, and you take that drink, the noise goes down immediately. So by making the decision, you free yourself of the burden.

But what I'll say is this. If you take the drink, that noise is going to come back louder the next time. If you deny it, it is slightly quieter the next time. And if you can build up the consistency, pretty soon that little noise in the back of your mind, it is so weak. You're like asking it to speak up. You're almost mocking it. You don't have the same struggle with it that you used to. And so once I understood that, I was like, oh, well, I get what this is. I'll get out in front of it. I'll just let people know. And then I don't have to deal with it anymore. And so I think it's really powerful to share that story, not just because you'll give

other people's strength, but because it'll give you a ton of strength. Yeah, that's so true. Sharing that story, just living in your truth. I think it's what we're all striving in a sense to do and overcoming those barriers and those obstacles of what if, what are people going to think and what's it going to look like and everything. Most of the stuff people figure out with time anyway. So that's one thing.

If you do this for a while, you look completely different. Hey, what's changed? We can go around and share these little white lies with everybody about how. how our life's improving and we're getting promotions at work and we're having all these opportunities and our relationships. We could go around and come up with stuff, but I really do think there's a massive relief and just being honest with people and sharing people your story because a lot of people don't understand it, right?

Because they think, well, if you struggled with alcohol, then you fit into this specific box with things. You looked exactly like this of what we see in the Hollywood movies and this is it. And ultimately when we hear all these different stories, everybody's relationship with alcohol was a lot the same, but it was a lot different. And I think overcoming those obstacles and just being true to yourself because we spent a lot of time hiding. I did anyway, hiding what things were like. And then I just had this thing of it's exhausting. What did I tell that person?

What did they know? What are they going to find out? It's exhausting, balancing all of these different things. As we just wrap up here, Dustin, is there anything? I know you mentioned your book. Share that with us if you could where we could check that out. And then, yeah, just to wrap up with some final thoughts here. Yeah, so I'll share the book first.

And the book is called Looks Like We're Running, an amateur's companion to becoming a marathoner. And it covers a 20-week span of the second marathon I ever ran. It's my wife's first, and we run it together. And so the weeks break down, like stories from the weeks, but it flashes back to some of the moments we've talked about here and just like covers gear, training routine, things like that, and connects it to a story of a developing life, which is, for me, was massively instrumental in separating myself from an identity of somebody who was drinking, cared more about like social. life and what other people thought of me and was building step by step a relationship with the person I was trying to become. And so for me, I think that running is we can all do it mostly. It's affordable, it's simple. And because it is repetitive and it is long, it does an excellent job of connecting the dots from where I was and where I'm going. And not,

just because that's what you're physically doing, but because you can see yourself progress and you feel yourself becoming stronger and more consistent. And those are all the same tools that you need to progress in any area of life, certainly in sobriety. And so it's gotten an awesome response and I'm proud to have written it. And you can find it on Amazon or anywhere you listen. If you're a Spotify subscriber, you can stream it as part of your subscription. So I would love it If anybody check that out, it means the world to me when I hear positive feedback. And I'm still waiting for somebody to really just slam it. Come up at me hard to be like, man, this book sucks.

That's how I'll know I arrived is when even when I get a hater. But the best place to interact with me, if you're going through it, particularly if you're in the Raleigh area, I think it helps to be near people. One of the things I love, and I found this because I was looking for support when I was running, and I'm just looking for, okay, I need a podcast about drinking today. not about running. And you're right. Just listening to these stories makes people feel more committed because they realize there's people like them. But I am a believer in the 12th step. And if somebody reaches out to you and they're having an issue, like it is not just a duty, but an honor to try to

engage and share with that person what I know about how they can progress. So at Dustin Rodezal is my Instagram. That's usually the way I do anything on social media. And it's the best place to get me. And then the only other thing I have, Brad, is just a huge thank you for what you built here. I know personally, like, how difficult it can be to embrace our weaknesses as a central portion of the identity we present to people. And I think you've done an awesome job of that. I was just looking at some of the merch on the website. I love the just for today. try on the sweatshirt. I think I've got to pick one of those up.

But I think that you have tapped into a secret. And it shouldn't be a secret. It should be something people know. But a thing everyone discovers, which is we tend to be the product of the communities we immerse ourselves in. And the more time you can immerse yourself in a community of people who recognize not just the depth of this problem, the joys that can be had from getting a handle on it, the more you will feel like you have a

handle on yourself. And that's an immense gift that I hope anyone can give themselves. Yeah, beautiful. I love that so much. Yeah. Big question for you, though. I know you grew up, you were born in Kansas City, at least. Are you a caniac? Sadly, I could not claim it. Here's the biggest problem. If I had to pick a hockey team, it's my guy's the canes but i'm a basketball guy and those winter sports always at odds oh my goodness well you're in a good spot too for a lot of good basketball i could see that that that would be the only thing that i would let you off the hook a little bit for is because there is a lot of great basketball around there but i don't know i'm struggling with this one i'm struggling

with this one dust i'm sorry to end it on such a sour note i should have just lied despite all the things we said about truth and hypocrisy. Yeah, man, go Cades. It just went with it. Yeah. No, that's okay. I understand, man. It's all good. Thank you so much for coming on here, sharing your story and everything, man. It was incredible to be over here hearing it. And I know the listeners are going to really enjoy it. And I'm so glad that you started to share this with everyone. Oh, man. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. And like I said, I respect the heck out of what you're doing. Keep up. Keep up the good work. It's helping people. Thank you. Well, there it is, everyone. Another incredible episode on the podcast. If you could connect with any of Dustin's story,

be sure to reach out to him on Instagram. I'll drop the link to his channel in the show notes. Check out his book as well. Looks like we're running an amateur's companion to becoming a marathoner. What an incredible journey that he's been on. Thank you so much, Dustin, for sharing your story with all of us here on the Sober Motivation podcast. The New Year is upon us, everyone, so be sure to stay connected to your communities and to what's working for you. And I'll see you on the next one.