Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Josh's Escape from Alcohol and Brink of Death to Sobriety.

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

In this episode, Josh shares his heart-wrenching journey from a childhood impacted by abuse and perfectionism to the depths that alcohol took him. Throughout the years of struggling, Josh had a DWI, rehab stays, but he never wanted to make changes for himself.  He recounts hitting rock bottom with a near-death experience in Italy, which became the catalyst for his transformation. Through resilience, therapy, and unconditional love from his family, Josh finds his way back to himself, embracing sobriety and self-love. Josh’s powerful story is an example that life can turn around, and although sobriety is not easy, it’s worth it. ---------- Join the Sober Motivation Community:  Join HERE Listen to the Just Between Us Podcast: Click HERE Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jgmaurice/

Welcome back to Season 4 of the Sober Motivation Podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. We're here to show sobriety as possible, one story at a time. Let's go. In this episode, Josh shares his heart-wrenching journey from a childhood impacted by abuse and perfectionism to the depths that alcohol took him. Throughout the years of struggling, Josh had a DUI rehab stays, but never wanted to make the changes for himself. He recounts hitting rock bottom with a near-death experience in Italy, which became the

catalyst for his transformation. Through resilience, therapy, and unconditional love from his family, Josh finds his way back to himself, embracing sobriety and self-love. Josh's powerful story is an example that life can turn around, and although sobriety is not easy, it is worth it. And this is Josh's story on a sober motivation podcast. Welcome back. Good to have you for another episode. The Spotify wrapped just came out, which shows sort of a broad picture of how people are listening to the podcast. One thing that stood out to me was listening time, 5.7 million minutes of listening in the last year, which is crazy.

So thank you everybody who listens to the podcast on Spotify. I want to mention, too, with the holidays coming up, whether we stay sober or not through the holidays, I think has a big thing to do with how we get prepared for them and how much support we have and where we're at in our journey. So as always, I'm mentioning the suburb motivation community, the 30-day free trial if you join today that would carry you through free. You can cancel any time. We have over 15 meetings a week. We have a men's meeting, a women's meeting, and we have probably now 10 hosts that host meetings. I host three in the app myself, and it's an extremely supportive community. And there's a variety of people, some people on their first day,

some people are trying to gain some traction and some people have multiple years of sobriety that have been part of this community since their day one. So this is your invite to come and check out the suburb motivation community, jump in on some meetings, connect with some people, meet some people. You really never know where all of this can go.

A little while back, we had the big meetup for the community in Toronto. And it was just a full circle moment, just how incredible it is to know these people for a couple of years virtually in the squares on Zoom and then connect in real life and it feels like we've known each other forever the first time we meet everybody was just so incredible so it's a beautiful community and it could be something there for you to help support you it's not judgmental it's not about you getting everything right

or people telling you what to do or anything like that i promise you there's somebody in there who shares the same story as you even if maybe you feel yours is extremely unique like there's going to be things that cross over and people to talk to and strategies to pick up. It's getting out of the willpowering way of doing sobriety. Like, it's getting out of that. It's learning the tools. It's connecting with others. It's building our skills. And ultimately, that is the most beautiful way to do all of this. I think so anyway. And that's what the experience of a lot of the members are. So I also want to mention, too, if you do listen on Spotify, be sure. sure to give a five-star rating. And I just want to say thank you for everybody tuning it to the show

and supporting it over this year, sharing it with your friends and people you might go to groups with or whoever it is. And to all the guests that have really put it all out there for the world to hear your stories and hopes to inspire the next person to either get started or keep going. It's so cool. It is so cool to have everything. everybody that's willing to do that. It's a beautiful, another full circle moment, too, as we head toward the end of this year. I also want to mention, too, there's three episodes up on the Just Between Us podcast. I mentioned it before. It's more of an intimate experience, more of my story, and sharing how I got to where I am today. The next episode I'm really excited about, I'm

going to share a little bit about my rehab experience. I went to rehab the first time when I was 17 and I went for 12 months. I had no idea of rehabs even existed. I had no idea that I needed a rehab and it's a wild story, but my parents hired private security company to bring me. I was in the hospital of Syc Ward, UNC Chapel Hill, and they hired this private security company to transport me to this rehab just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. And I had no idea anything like this existed.

So it's a long story, but check out the just between us, sober motivation. podcast. I'll drop the link below. You can't find this. It's not searchable on podcasting apps. It's a private podcast. I'll drop the link below that has all the information for it. And yeah, I would love for you guys to check it out. Now, let's get to this episode with Josh. This was incredible to connect with Josh, how far he's come and his journey and healing and sobriety. It was just beautiful. And I didn't know really anything about Josh's story before we jumped on this podcast. Let's get right to it. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Josh with us. Josh, how are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, so glad we were able to connect and you'd be interested in sharing your story here on the podcast. Yeah, it's a great platform. And part of my journey is just talking more about it. And hopefully it impacts some people and, you know, maybe changes some courses. Yeah, 100%. So what was it like for you growing up? Yeah, so I had, you know, the nuclear family, you know, sibling pets. My parents are still married. They were, they did the best they could with what they had, to be honest with you. You know, it was a pretty rough upbringing. I was molested when I was young, three through about eight or nine. So I was dealing with that. But trying to share that guilt and that fear and that victimization with my parents in my early teens was hard. And that, um, that. sat with me for a long time really i honestly thought i had dealt with it thought i'd addressed it but it wasn't until you know this this part of the journey they're kind of tied my sober process and getting to that point of sobriety is connected with dealing with that childhood drama among other

things but the childhood you know in looking back in it um if you were to remove that relatively good childhood you know um i try not to complain about it i love my parents to death yeah and getting to that place too of it maybe it was always that way for you maybe not only guessing here on my end of they did the best they could with what they knew you know i think that that really shows i think for myself a a big deal of growth in the healing process of you know all of that right like i mean i'm a parent now and yeah it's tough you know right i'm a parent with three kids and uh 2018 and 11 so spreading them out changes your perspective and I want to have a great relationship and I do have a great relationship

with my parents but I did want my internal process of dealing with my own trauma and my own journey to sour my relationship with them as they got older and I got older and my children grew up with them so it was really important for me to deal with it to provide you know that grace and forgiveness so that we still have a positive relationship yeah beautiful well thank you for sharing all of that as the early childhood days. Where did you grow up? Grew up in Atlanta for the most part, you know, a little bit in upstate New York, but my childhood was primarily in Atlanta. And great, I loved it, went to college in Vermont, lived in New York City for a while, so kind of been all over. Now I'm in Florida. But, you know, during those

journeys, you know, just to tie it into sobriety, you know, I got to college and I didn't drink my freshman year. You know, I wasn't raised in old. My grandfather was an alcoholic, so my dad's reaction was to swing the pendulum to the other side and grew up, you know, in a very controlling kind of perfectionist-driven environment. So when I got to college, I really wanted to have that control. And over time, I started drinking more and more and then it escalated. Yeah. So when you grew up, there wasn't like much drinking around or wasn't like problematic in a sense.

No, interesting. No. Neither my mom or dad drank. And, you know, my relationship with my grandfather was really removed. He was in Vermont. I was in Atlanta. So wasn't around it. So my interpretation of what alcohol and a relationship with it looked like was through

my father and my mom. Yeah. So that's kind of what was passed down to you and those initial years up until anyway, college there. How did high school go for you? I mean, you mentioned kind of the perfectionism too. A lot of people a lot. This comes up a lot on the podcast. It's sort of idea of getting everything.

Right, which feels like a lot of pressure. I mean, did that impact you? You did well in school then? I did really, really well in school. But in this journey, you know, I've been diagnosed with ADHD, some OCD in there, depression, all clinically diagnosed. And a lot of what happened to be in my childhood, even through my teen years, was a compounding effect of not only my own biology, but, you know, my mom particularly was very much a perfectionist.

and my dad had very high standards, and those two things combined with kind of my own chemical makeup led to a ton of pressure, pressure that I still deal with today. I still go to therapy. I still talk about these things to create better coping mechanisms than a lot of the things that I had built to protect myself over the years. And alcohol became a rucks for that over time was a way of turning my brain off, shutting down the OCD, escaping the ADHD, avoiding that perfectionist voice in my head kind of thing. Yeah. Did the ADHD stuff come up like in high school for you?

Or you mentioned too, is that like now, that kind of part of your life today? Yeah. Yeah, much later in life. There wasn't a lot of that kind of care around me growing up. You know, it was you just, this is who you are. You do the best you can. And usually that's not good enough. So you've got to try harder.

And that's kind of the mention that I was raised with, that it was just, you know, you never good enough. Yeah, which I mean, I think our parents, you know, would like to guess, you know, that they want what's best for us, right? And kind of what's best is like, do well in school and get a good education and then, you know, dreams will come true. But it's maybe in that entire process, too, that we pick up. I really connected with what you said, sort of the armor we put on or what we do to survive and how we survive. And then I notice people as they kind of go through life and go through this journey is the big part in sobriety. I mean, skipping way ahead here, and I'm sure we'll get to it, but a big part of the sobriety is really identifying what are the things that helped us survive that are no longer serving us anymore and might be keeping us stuck, you know, like lack of vulnerability or trusting others or the grace. that you've mentioned too. So that's interesting.

Yeah, I mean, as I evolved, I just became more and more empty because nothing was good enough. Nothing satiated me, right? I was always hungry for more. So I was constantly chasing. And as, you know, you mature and you evolve, your wants and needs change, it became career, it became money, it became things. And as I acquired all of this, none of it really satisfied me. And drinking was there as kind of my only companion. and that I could find solace and it never you know those two things didn't mix well to be honest with you yeah of of not feeling worthy enough or never feeling like you you got there and then drinking comes in i mean how does that kind of start too right because you have all this history

you shared with us right in the family and then your experience growing up and then not drinking your freshman year how does alcohol come into your life and you kind of switch on sort of how you maybe felt or viewed things yeah it was a slippery slope you know it started as one or two and then over time even without acknowledging it to myself only in hindsight can i recognize this i was self-diagnosing and i was drinking to to kind of you know quell the demons and escape and it just became more and more and everything became escalated so the more i chased and the less things were rewarding me and giving me those dopamine hits, the more I drank. And that led me on a path up until about two years ago where the three or four years prior to that, my life was really falling apart. I was having

drink to be functional. So I was waking up in the morning, drinking. I'd wake up in the middle of the night. If I had a headache at 2, 3 a.m. in the morning waking up, I'd sneak out of the bedroom and I'd drink and got to a point where I was hiding it from my family completely. And if you want me to talk about that now I can yeah I mean I would be interested too sort of in the the kind of story to how you ended up there because I think a lot of people you know there's a lot of people it's so interesting right a lot of people in these are kind of how the stories go in a sense right there's always kind of that maybe that quote unquote sweet spot to where it's not overly problematic you don't have a vision or don't think it ever could get anywhere and then there's a lot of people who

I find kind of live in that maybe gray area of things aren't that bad. So maybe I won't do anything about it now. But it's also interesting because it's like, well, if you're already headed that way, how many other areas in life do we wait until things get really that bad? Like if we have a flat tire, we don't drive on it for the next three years thinking, I'll just look after it another day. So I am really curious on how things kind of ramp up. And maybe it's justification, maybe it's denial, maybe it's just this is what's working for you, like really interested in sort of that story. Because if anybody's kind of in that spot of like on the fence of like, hey, maybe I'm headed

this way, maybe I'm not. Like, what was your experience kind of in that middle ground? Yeah, I would say I think I avoided that self-reflection. I would have the typical, oh, I should stop conversations. And I did through throughout my journey, you know, I've been to rehab three times. The first time was like a virtual rehab, didn't make any sense, didn't last long. And then, but had that conversation, I got to stop. I, you know, was engaging for a period of time, two, three months.

I was sober. And then I wasn't ready. I hadn't surrendered myself to stopping. I was still resisting. I was still thinking I could manage it, that I was in control, that I had power. Eventually did inpatient for four days. was supposed to be 10, but 95% of that population at that rehab facility were going to jail, essentially, after they had passed through. I didn't really connect with them. They were all

narcotic users, and the community there was not healthy. So I went to the doctor and conned my way, essentially, out of rehab, and was able to stay sober for a period of time. And none of these things woke me up. None of these moments. And then it continued to escalate where I stopped. There was a point in time when the rehabs kicked in where I wasn't drinking around anyone. It became hidden. It became secret. It blew up my marriage, my relationships with my kids. It became something that I had to do every day to physically feel better. And it reached a point where I was picking my daughter up from a camp. and got in a car accident.

I had been drinking. It was a DUI. I flipped my vehicle with her of the passenger seat. And we walked away without a scratch and was sober for three months, four months after that. And that still was not enough to wake me up. And to your point, though, to the question, how to get there, it got there because I let it. And in a way, it was a weakness in me. I kind of had given up, to be honest with you.

I couldn't love myself. I was never good enough for myself. I never felt satisfied with myself. And the alcohol turned all of those thoughts off for me. And it became a yin and a yang. The thing that was killing me was the thing that I needed, but I didn't want it. And that toxic relationship just continued to spiral me down and down. And I didn't have the resources. I didn't have the desire to be frank with you

to change any of that at that moment. There was the logical side of me that was saying, oh, you should stop. But my body and my emotions and my spiritual place in that moment of time didn't bring me to a to a point where I could admit I had a serious enough problem that I had to go to impatient again that I needed to officially stop for the rest of my life and looking back on it I don't know what more what more could have happened to me up to that point to wake me up and then more stuff did but looking back on it

I continue to wonder like how did the DUI of all things with my daughter in the car not create self-reflection. And the forgiveness had to give myself first. I had to forgive myself. I had to deal with my past, my childhood. I had to, you know, I went to, you know, I've been to psychiatrists. I've been to therapists. I've had to approach it really holistically to get to where I'm at and be sober for the last two years, to be honest. Yeah. Well, thanks. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I think it really paints that picture and kind of leaves us with that question of what it's going to be for each individual to make the change, right? For some people, it's a quiet conversation on a Sunday morning that enough is enough.

And for other people, it can be intervention after intervention, event after event to that, get to that S word that you mentioned of surrendering that this is always going to end up me in the same or worse situation. well exactly after the after the DUI as I mentioned I remained sober for a few months started drinking again my wife went out of town and was watching my daughter and we were married we are we're still married it all ends happily I hope to say long road but we were fighting she left there with my daughter she saw me drinking when my wife came back I was supposed to leave for Italy. And it all blew up. My daughter shared with my wife that she had seen me drink. My wife confronted me again. I left my wedding band on the butcher's block, packed my bags, hopped on an airplane to Italy for business, and thought that was it. No more marriage.

I'm going to lose the kids. There's no way I can keep them with my track record. And got to, It just started, this is how bad I was. During that process of slaving my wedding band down and packing my bag, I actually went to the convenience store, drank in the parking lot of the gas station, drove back, wrapped up, took an Uber to the airport, kept drinking, landed in Italy, walked to a market, bought whiskey, got back to my hotel room, kept drinking, went to a team dinner that night, hammered, fell asleep at the table, Went back to the hotel room.

Woke up the next day for our big business meeting with the owners of the company. And I was hung over. I was sick as a dog and played it off as COVID. They sent me back to the hotel, went through the COVID test, kept drinking. It got to the point where one of my employees saw my behavior in the hotel and thought I needed an intervention there. And called 911 or the equivalent of. I went to the hospital. And spent the night there, fluids, the whole thing.

My employers picked me up the next day, and I got a letter shortly thereafter terminating me. So here I am in Italy by myself in a hotel room, hungover, fired, thinking I'm divorced. And my first thought, my only thought is, where's my next drink? And it dawned on me that I brought over two bottles of whiskey with me as gifts. and I'd completely forgotten about them in my luggage because I was drunk when I packed it. And I found those, drank one and a half, broke the second bottle after popping eight or ten trazodone, and thought I'd be done. And that was it. And all while this was happening, my employee called my wife.

and this is overlapping timeline called my wife she got on an airplane flew to Italy didn't tell me no one told me I was too drunk no one was engaging with me

I was hidden in my hotel room and she walked through the door with my employee who happened to be a nurse and found me dead on the floor of the bathroom naked blood I'd cut myself piss crap myself

no pulse and they brought me back and that was the 22nd of September the 23rd is my birthday and that was the first day I had spent sober

in a long time long long time and it clicked I gave up, and I surrendered. I surrendered to my wife. I surrendered to the process. I surrendered to whatever life had planned for me.

Because up to that point, I had tried to white-knuckle everything and plan everything and execute everything. And none of it was good enough. And it led me to that, you know, cold bathroom floor in Italy. And I just remember going for a walk with me. my wife on my birthday in Italy. We were going to fly out the next day, the 24th, and we walked that night. We spent three, four hours just walking. These, they were just rural streets of Italy and Pisa.

And I just remember that walk was transformative for me. We didn't talk about anything important. We just spent time together, and we spent it together with me being sober. And that was the moment that I told myself that if I surrender to the process, I'd be okay. That if I just stopped trying to control everything and let things enter my life as they do and just roll with the punches that I was going to be okay. and I came back, spent 30 days in an inpatient program. It's the longest I'd spent and met a group of guys, seven of us, and we still stay in touch. That was two years ago.

I formed a group. We talked every Sunday for about a year. All parts of the world were from. And that was part of the journey, too, that community, that brother, that brotherhood. But it was it was just putting everything down and level setting and starting from scratch, to be honest with you, without expectations. So much of my life had expectations applied to it. Everything in my life had an expectation, how I was raised, how I performed, everything was immeasurable. And I stopped measuring.

and it gave me the space and the freedom to be able to start dealing with all of these things in a more mature fashion. Wow, Josh. Thanks for sharing that, man. How do you feel right now sharing that of how things were and what you've been through, like right now? That's a great question. Really good question.

I feel very high. happy. I feel very happy that to be direct, that I just am on your show to be able to talk about it. I try to talk to people about it and sometimes those conversations are great and sometimes they're not because they touch too close to what that person's going through and maybe they're not ready to receive it. But I find part of my process is being able to talk about it. So this is therapeutic in a way. But it also makes me happy because as bad and as negative as all of what I shared sounds, it's really my wife's love, my love, my kids love, my parents love that it's love that has really dug me out of this. And so when I share the story, I feel that. I feel that love

that got me here. I feel that that support and that warmth that is is given me the opportunity to be here right now. Wow, that's beautiful, man. Love. Interesting in that in your story there, too. I mean, a lot of things to unpack there. But one thing I picked up on is you sharing that moment, that walk with your wife about it wasn't necessarily any groundbreaking conversation that you had, but it was the, you know, maybe the time together. And you share in that moment, not exactly in your words, but things kind of made sense. Like the stars kind of aligned maybe in that moment. What is your thought on?

Because I often think about my story of like, I think we all have that moment to where we make this shift, right? We see clearly, whether it's a spiritual experience or whatever it is. It's like, okay, I see this for what it is in this moment now. And then maybe on this side of the journey, we're like, how didn't I see it before? You know, how could I not have said it or been so blind to maybe where, I was headed, and that's interesting. Do you think there's any relevance to every intervention, the time you went to the outpatient, the time you stuck around for three days? Do you feel like those were sort of building blocks to maybe prepare you not for, you know, you didn't know what

was coming, was coming, but maybe everything played a little role even at the time it didn't feel like it did, or do you feel like it was just really heavy at the end there? I think there is an accumulative effect, but I was in such a bad way that I would never accept internally. I would never accept that these could benefit me. I was doing, I was going to impatient and outpatient for other people. I wasn't going for myself. I was going to check a box. So I always felt like that it was a game to be played, not necessarily something.

to take seriously and really grow from yeah and i think that's a relatable story for so many people as you know the earlier interventions of maybe it's to keep the marriage together or the kids or keep a job or all of that type of stuff right i think that like most people i think start there because people around us recognize it before we do right yeah absolutely yeah they're seeing it all happened in real time and the pain that it causes because it's not their control and their I don't care who they are, is to try and help and try and provide some organization to it. And they, you can't. It's got to be a personal decision. And it was that last 30 days that I did for myself. And I, but I had nothing at that point. I didn't have a job. I didn't, I thought I was

still going to get a divorce. Didn't think I was going to see my kids. There was nobody there for me outside of myself and so I had to do it for me and and so in a way it was very freeing to be at that place because again it gave me the room to to do what I needed to do to heal myself yeah yeah what when you like after your wife came too I mean that's such a I mean that is such a a story right to where how things had ended and then you go to Italy and then the employee makes the contact and they show up. I mean, the timing had it been right. Yeah, I mean, had it been minutes later, we wouldn't be on the podcast together. There's something very serendipitous about it. You know, I've had people ask me,

you know, did I see anything or did I have a, you know, an experience or whatnot? I didn't. I wish I did in a way maybe it makes the story more relatable or more believable if I had seen something or had this kind of journey but i did i just came to and i saw my wife and that that's the angel yeah yeah and then you kind of make this commitment too to go to this program for 30 days and have a different maybe mindset or you know belief in yourself to do something you know at this point you have to do something different and it's so interesting too about kind of even circling way back of the armor that we carry and the things that help us survive and the things that help us keep going and at this point when you enter this treatment program now my guess is is that

now you have to be vulnerable and you have to share what's really going on you have to let other people in and all of that stuff is kind of maybe things that you haven't really plugged into right about it sort of admitting right I can't do this on my own I need support I need help and this is all of the stuff I've been just stuffing down for all of these years yeah no that's you you hit the nail on the head and it there was a part of fake it till you make it the beginning too i took the amount of love that my wife has for me and in that moment hopping on the airplane scared to death seeing me pale cold on a bathroom floor and still in being there to save me if she can love me that much then i have to be able to love myself

I didn't believe that, but I kept telling myself that. And I had to just fake it until I made it. I had to keep telling myself that, that I'm worthy of love, that I'm a good person, that I am enough, and that if she believed all those things about me, even when I didn't, that there was hope, that there was something in there that I could find for myself and I was able to. Yeah, beautiful. I love that fake it till you make it. It's interesting because some people have a different perspective, but I always say you'll only understand it when you're in a situation where you have to fake it until you make it,

where you have to convince yourself to stick around long enough for sort of the magic or for something else to click. Yeah, I think you have to do the hard work. That's the big part of it for me, is that I was avoiding doing the hard work for a long, long time. and it's been the last two years that I've just committed myself to doing the hard work and it's not easy it's just not but it's worth it the rewards that I've I've received from my own personal validation from my own personal relationships and you'll love for those around me have rewarded me in such

a way where no matter how hard it is it's worth it and And that's what I've seen and I saw while I was on this journey was the reluctance to surrender yourself to do the hard work. You got to just, you got to suck it up and just commit yourself to, to, you kind of put it, just stick with it long enough because it will break in your direction. It just, you have to be willing to put in the work to get there. Yeah. And that's a, you know, big part people talk.

about too is like the work and you know everything you have to do i'm really curious to how you begin to after you you know make this choice to decision to get sober which is an incredible one but ultimately the first step to everything else that kind of comes next how do you begin to repair these relationships i mean with your wife and in kids and you know yourself too yeah yeah i think it's i had to come from a position of uh humbleness to be on honest, I had to just, I had to show them that I could live around them before they let me back in. And over time, I was able to show that I, that I was on the right track, that I could live around them, that I could start rebuilding some security in that relationship. But ultimately,

they had to reach a point where they could forgive me. And that was their journey. And that's not something that I could push on, I could ask for. They had to come to terms with it on their own. So it relates back to the hard work. People think hard work is going to a party and being around alcohol and not drinking or having a craving. For me, the hard work are the relationships. And getting back to a position of safety and security with those that I love. and the hard work is recognizing that you can't control that.

The hard work is sitting back and taking a passive role in these other journeys that you are, you're dangling on the outcome. You want to be let back in. You want the forgiveness and love. But you can't force that. They have to come to terms with it. So for me, patience and being humble and being humble and being. present and showing through action that I was still in there, that the dad they knew, the

husband that they married, the son that they had was still in there. And if given enough time and space, can find himself again. Yeah. That is it. I mean, that kind of leans into, you know, ultimately what can we control in life? You know, like, but I think with the drinking cycle is that can be an element of us trying to control how we feel and so many different areas of life that is completely exhausting. Going back a little bit, because I kind of skipped over this, and I'm just hearing kind of where you're at now, where was like the turning point you would say? I mean, when you first started drinking, did you identify problematic right away? or when was like the turning point that sort of maybe set you on this?

Or was it just ultimately a slow burn? I think it was a slow burn until COVID. And we had moved from Atlanta to Florida about 10 years ago. Florida is a very different lifestyle than Atlanta. Much more permissive. Alcohol is everywhere. And, you know, I thought it was everywhere in Atlanta, but not like in Florida.

And combined with my environment, my lifestyle, and then you have COVID where there was a ton of day drinking for me. And then once I started day drinking, then it became earlier and earlier, later and later, all day. And it became something I had to have to function. And so it wasn't like a big moment, but I would say that COVID absolutely accelerated things. yeah yeah thanks for sharing that too that is a that is a common thing for COVID a lot of people share on the podcast too right I mean the lack of supervision you have to go into work nobody's smelling it a lot more free time less community less connection and some people I think I don't know I think it could go kind of two ways of people are like hey it sped things up

and I kind of got to sobriety maybe sooner that I would have or it sped things up and it was quite disastrous and it was difficult you had shared another thing too I picked up on earlier with reaching that level of acceptance right of like this is my life and i've just kind of come to that acceptance of that this is how it is right and i pick up on that from a lot of people who struggle of like there's kind of three stages right where you you pick up on you have a problem and then you kind of slide into maybe that you know this is how it is this how it's always going to be and now i just have to do my best sort of in this space which i think is you know very tough spot to be in and as you go and that's why i mentioned to a lot of people too if you know maybe

they're earlier in their story right and they're drinking and it's a little bit problematic and they have some things that are not that are happening that are not good some consequences i think the longer we keep drinking around and it's not going to be the case for everybody but we open ourselves up to one thing happening right for you it was covid for a lot of people was covid i don't know what the future is going to hold for for you for me for for anybody. I don't have a crystal ball. But I think the longer we keep drinking around and it's sort of checking this box for us of escape from life, all it really takes is one event that's traumatic or one event that we're not prepared for. And things can just change like the snap of

fingers, right? We lean in more. We lean in more because that's what's working for us. That's always mentioned to people like no matter where you're out on the spectrum, it could change on a dime. Nobody wakes up one day that I know of and says, okay, you know, I really want to be dependent on alcohol and really want to go through withdraws if I don't have it. I've never heard anybody share that before. Right. No. No. And I think you're spot on that it's a fine line, in my opinion, between social drinking and like I watch my wife still drinks and she's fine. turns it on and off has a day goes days doesn't matter i think for those that find it to be a pattern and you're starting every day or every other day and it becomes an escalation i i agree with you i think

it opens a door and it's not that you might walk through that door it's that something else that's going to walk through the other side of the door and that's the unpredictability of alcohol is that you don't know and uh to your point you know you know i've said this about alcohol that I feel lucky to a degree that it was alcohol because there's a lot of off-ramps with drinking. Most go, I think, unheated, but there's a lot of off-ramps in hindsight, other addictions and going 100 miles per hour against a brick wall. And you don't have those chances to step off. So if I were talking to somebody that's early in the process or may have some warning signs, I think it's important to recognize that early because it's by the nature

of what the addiction is, you have the grace of getting off that track sooner than something far more dangerous and deadlier, more immediate, I should say. Yeah, yeah, the way you just framed that up about the door, that was incredible. Yeah, about something else, you know, just life happening right because weird stuff and it happens all the time every day in people's lives right and i think that i think every time we reach for a drink if we're in that that place and in even with your wife there too like that is a reality for people i mean we can't sit here and say that everybody who who's drinking you know would should quit drinking type deal but right i think the more that you see those warning signs and kind of those red flags and the more the way i look at it too is

in my life anyway, the way it picked up speed is the more things came into my life, the more I leaned into drinking, the less I leaned into things that were healthier, right? So we're celebrating wins at the job. We're connecting with other people. It was down days or tough days or boring days. And then I didn't push myself to do other things that could have been more, you know, productive that could have helped me out with my confidence and self-esteem and sense of belonging and all of the insecurities that, you know, I had growing up. And then it was just

like alcohol. And then, and then most people's story, a lot of people's story ends up sort of in the isolation phase, right? You end up isolating. And then family members or somebody is mentioning, hey, this is a problem. Then it's, then things can really go downhill because then it's the hiding phase. And then I think they get the shame piles on. And it's, it's really fascinating, kind of how it plays out as opposed to when we start there's no idea of how this is going to yeah i think it's insidious right it starts socially and then body finds that it's medication it's not healthy medication but it's but it does its job until it doesn't and i think a lot of people at least i identify with your journey that the you know brief moment you shared

here that you really are you always have that choice And I was in the same boat. You know, I've worked from remotely for a long time pre-COVID. And my drinking got progressively worse, but it would oscillate in that journey. And it always peaked when I was bored. And I look back on that and I say, why wasn't I more productive? Why wasn't I making healthier choices? You know, I could have been doing anything else, but sitting there, isolated, drinking, feeling ashamed of myself.

that's where the forgiveness comes in, right? You have to forgive that, that person because you're not that person anymore. And you can't hold on to that. Yeah. Let's move into that a little bit here, too, kind of back to to present day or in the last two years. How did you work on that? Because that seems to be a big theme to your story and something that you've really focused on. Yeah, a combination of things. I found the right therapist. I think it's not good. enough to say you go to therapy. You've got to find the right person. And I have been very, very lucky, but also I did a lot of vetting. I found the right person. And that has helped a lot. Went to see a psychiatrist, got on meds for a while to give myself runway. I have to be able to

calm my brain down to be able to work on these things. And I have done just a lot of just fundamental things, changed my diet, exercise. But to be. the work that I've done in therapy is the most important work. But I also, it's funny because I'm in the medical world, been in around Big Pharma for a long time. I have strong opinions about it. But that being said, I needed the medication to give myself that space to work in therapy. And I'm now off meds and feel amazing. But I always encourage people to explore that as an option as something that is not a permanent solution, but something that can maybe help in a short term, whether that's a year or two years or five years, whatever that short term

looks like for you, to slow things down, to take the pressure off, to balance your body, because you know, if you've been drinking for as long as at least I have, it changes your entire brain, rewrites neurological pathways, your neuroplasticity changes. I mean, all of these things are affected. And you have to give yourself space and time. for all that to recover. Yeah. It did learning all of that help you as well? Because I find a lot of people now today things are more like out there, right, of sort of the effects. And things seem to be kept oddly quiet for a long time, you know, of the impact of alcohol. And then I feel like people are really feeling empowered by understanding too about how things changed and why things

are happening in that it is going to take time to heal up. I mean, six months, a year, like might just be the beginning. I mean, there's different things that suggest different, and it's going to depend on each person. But did you find knowing sort of that information helpful? Yeah, I think the more I explored the biological effects of alcohol and the aftermath, the more aware I became of my own impulses and decisions and choices. If you know that you want something, you can expect the dopamine hit. And when you, you know, you know, you can expect the dopamine hit. you feel good, if you know the chemistry that goes into that, it makes it easier to have, I think, that meta-conversation, that metacognition of yourself in the moment to say,

look, I'm here right now, I'm being tempted, I know what my body's doing, and I have a choice. Do I indulge that dopamine hit and make a really bad decision? or do I recognize what my body's doing and have a conversation with myself and make a healthier choice? And so for me, particularly, that logical approach of understanding my body's mechanics and its physical interaction with alcohol allowed me to understand why I was doing some of the things I was doing. Yeah, beautiful.

Yeah, I think a lot of people, you know, relate to that too about how things do change and how you just got to maybe, you know, slow down, ask some questions about things and realize that it's going to take some time, right? I mean, initially, I think initially a lot of people are like, drinking's my problem, right? Because it's causing all of these issues in my life. So it's like, if I quit drinking,

and then my last get, too, he hinted towards this, right? As long as I just quit drinking, everything is going to iron itself out. And I think what that really does is it brings a lot of things to the surface with time. of everything that we've kind of maybe been avoiding, you know, it could go all the way back to childhood

and for everybody that could be different. And a lot of these things come to the surface. So I love that you've really made the point there of getting the support you needed possibly some guidance as well in therapy and, you know, really leaning into that resource. And I think the journey starts when you stop. That things don't get easier.

For me, that hard work started when I stopped drinking. That's when I had to confront myself. That's when I had to confront. my past. I couldn't hide from it. I couldn't escape it anymore. So for me, the hard, the hard work is when you stop drinking. But it's also the most rewarding work. It's the stuff that feeds your soul that makes you look back on the last 10, 15, 20, whatever years of your life and say, how did I live without this feeling?

Gratitude play into it at all? Absolutely. I say my gratitude prayers every day. I am very grateful, very grateful. Because it took a lot of the universe, a lot of God, a lot of my friends and family, took a lot of things for me to be here. And I'm just very grateful of that. And there was a long, selfish period of my life where I didn't recognize how much people contributed to my happiness. Yeah, beautiful. Any big takeaways to share with the audience as we head towards wrapping up with these last. two years for you or for anybody who, you know, feels like they're stuck anywhere in their journey

or anybody who's on, on this journey. Yeah, I think to harp on it, you got to surrender. You just have to stop fighting yourself. If you're telling yourself it's a problem, give in to that, surrender yourself to that. And embrace what that means. What does that do to your journey? I think a lot of people are afraid to stop drinking. because they don't know what their life will look like when they stop

and they know what their life looks like right now and they're telling themselves it's tolerable I can live like this I can be here right now I hate it I hate myself but I can do it because I know it and the fear of the unknown holds I think a lot of people back who will I be who will I become who will I discover when I stop drinking and I'll just say that

that discovery, it is the most beautiful thing that I think we can experience when we truly understand ourselves. And I don't think you've come to a point of completion in that journey, but you definitely get to plateaus. And when you start reaching those plateaus, everything is just smells better, tastes better, more colorful. And that if there's hope in this story, it's that when you finally decide to surrender yourself, you're going to come out on the other side, I think, seeing life tremendously more vibrant. Yeah. And I think there's so much truth to that. Even if what we know is really destroying us, it's what we know, it's what we're, oddly enough, comfortable with maybe in a sense, as opposed to the unknown is extremely scary. And you

kind of listed off a few things there too of like maybe what we might be afraid of and something I hear a lot and I can relate to is what are others going to think too what are others going to think when I share with them if I do share with them that I had a problem with drinking I mean what picture are they going to paint in their head and how are they going to be but I think I think I feel decently comfortable saying that all of our biggest fears that we have never really come true. Yeah. No, none of the fears that I had amounted to anything in comparison to what I had been through. And so when you, you know, when you're climbing down in the mountain and you look back, it's only when you're looking back, do you realize, like, how far you scaled? And so to flip that,

I was in a valley, and I didn't realize how far in that valley I was until I climbed out and looked back down and you realize the hole that you were in. But you know, I want to say, and to hit it again, too, is love, you know, you got to love yourself. And, and when you learn to love yourself, you can love other people and you start making decisions that are of care for yourself. You stop drinking, start eating better, start exercising, sleeping. And you just do these fundamental things that show love for yourself. And they set you eye, I think, on the right path. Yeah. I think that's scary for a lot of us getting into this, you know, if I reflect back. But it is interesting, too, because you look at, I think if you asked a lot of people,

they might say, you know, they love themselves. But I think if you really dig deeper to it, I mean, can we, do we put a toxic substance in our body time and time again if we love ourselves? Like, I think that's a disconnect too. But loving ourself is definitely, you know, part of the journey we go on too about, you know, coming home to to who we are and reconnecting with ourselves. And yeah, such a powerful story, Josh. Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Absolutely. I really appreciate the time. And hopefully, you know, somebody heard it. Yeah. Yeah. Any last thoughts? No, I just want to thank you. You're really providing a platform for people. And I find you're doing

really great work just want to thank you yeah thank you so much josh you too well i appreciate it so great show well there it is another incredible episode here on the podcast huge shout out to josh i'll drop his contact information for instagram down to the show notes below send him over a thank you if there was anything that really helped you out any insights any perspectives or any part of a story you could relate to send it over and let them know the guests that come on the podcast always love to hear from you. They love when their story makes a difference or an impact or just resignates with another person. Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple and Spotify. It's the holiday season. Come on. Everybody go to Apple and Spotify, drop a five-star review. It helps

other people who are checking out all the podcast to maybe consider sober motivation. It would mean the world, and I'll see you on the next one.