Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Journey to Healing: Mason's Transformative Battle from addiction to sobriety.

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

In this episode, we have Mason who shares his profound journey from childhood growing up in a family where alcohol was part of the norm, Mason recounts his experiences with his parents' substance use issues, navigating school life, and coming to terms with his own struggles. He dives into his periods of heavy drinking, the challenges of accepting his sexuality in the ’80s, and the spiral following his HIV diagnosis. Despite multiple setbacks and deep lows, Mason finds the strength to seek sobriety in his mid-40s, eventually leading to a fulfilling career helping others. His story is a testament to resilience and the possibility of change at any stage of life. ----------- Join the Sober Motivation Community: https://sobermotivation.mn.co Sign up for SoberLink: https://soberlink.com/recover Donate to Support the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivation     00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome 00:24 Early Life and Family Background 04:04 High School Years and Early Drinking 09:15 Post-High School Life and Marriage 12:55 Struggles with Substance Abuse 18:56 Facing Consequences and Isolation 21:13 Moments of Realization and Regret 24:28 Gaming and Personal Struggles 25:23 Facing the Truth 26:40 Sobriety and Self-Realization 28:21 The Turning Point 30:10 Early Days of Sobriety 32:19 Therapy and Self-Acceptance 36:49 Life Changes and Achievements 40:49 Continuous Self-Improvement 49:09 Final Thoughts and Advice  

Welcome back to season three of the Suburmotivation podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety is possible, one story at a time. Let's go. In this episode, we have Mason, who shares his profound journey from childhood growing up in a family where alcohol was part of the norm. Mason recounts his experiences with his parents' substance use issues, navigating school life, and coming to terms with his own struggles. He dives into his periods of heavy drinking and the challenges of accepting his sexuality in the 80s

and the spiral following his HIV diagnosis. Despite multiple setbacks and deep lows, Mason finds the strength to seek sobriety in his mid-40s, eventually leading to a fulfilling career helping others. His story is a testament to resilience and the possibility of change at any stage of life. And this is Mason's story on the Suburmotivation podcast. I've taken the device everywhere with me. It's gone on camping trips, holiday vacations, even Iceland. It was really useful for when I wanted to travel.

I wanted to be able to visit friends and really be able to live my life. These quotes are from Soberlink users who have found peace of mind while enjoying vacations, even in early alcohol recovery, when traveling can feel scary. Maybe you're nervous about being away from your support system or your loved ones are concerned about a possible relapse. That's where Soberlink comes in. Here's how Soberlink helps keep you accountable. You'll test at a scheduled time each day, two to three times a day.

Facial recognition confirms your identity. Tamper sensors detect any attempts to cheat the system. And easy-to-read results are sent directly to your loved ones, giving them peace of mind while you're enjoying your time away. Soberlink isn't just about proving you're sober. It's about building confidence in your recovery, even when you're miles away. Soberlink, proof of sobriety at your fingertips, wherever life takes you. Visit soberlink.com slash recover to sign up and receive $50.

off your device. How's it going, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Brad here. Here we are, October 1st. Some people in the sobriety world may refer to it as sober October. A lot of people get started on their sober journey. A lot of people feel like that's an easy way to explain to other people. Well, I'm doing sober October.

We had a gentleman join many moons ago, one year ago, join one of the free public zooms that we put on when we were with sober buddy and he's celebrating a year he shared in that first meeting it was the very end of the meeting i'll never forget it i put it out there is there anybody else who wants to share he came forward he shared definitely nervous most people are when they join a community and first share it's not easy to do and if you're doing it and if you've done it great job i just want to open things up too if you're doing a sober october and you want to be part of an incredible magical community of people that will support you no matter where you're at, help you get back up if you slip, help you stay on track. And a place

in the sober motivation community where you can also reach back into the fire in a sense and help those that need support as well, starting out on this journey or maybe just struggling anywhere within it. We've been doing this stuff for a while. We have people from their first day. We've got people all the way up to multiple years. And we got people where, with many, many years, more years than I got. And it is truly a magical thing where we work together, support each other where we're at, and just really give people a place to share what's going on with their life. And you'll hear often in the squares, as some people call it, on Zoom,

that they share more deeply and more vulnerable with people in the community than they do with people in their own life. And I think a big part of that is that we get it. We understand what it's like. So this is an encouraging message to you that if you're struggling and you need some support, jump into the community. Magic is truly happening there. I'll see you on the inside. I'm hosting three groups each week.

Sometimes I do four. And we have other hosts as well. We have a ton of options for meetings to attend and just to share what's going on with you. Work through this thing. Get sober. Stay sober. And have some fun doing it. So I'll see you on the inside.

I'll drop the link for the sober motivation community with a two-week free trial down in the show notes below. Let's go. Welcome back to another episode of the sober motivation podcast. Today we've got Mason with us. How are you? I'm doing good. How are you? I'm well.

Thank you so much for being willing to share your story here on the podcast with all of us. Awesome. Thank you for having me here. I ran across your podcast. I like to do things to reaffirm my dedication to my own journey. And when I saw that, it was pretty cool. Yeah, awesome. Thank you for checking it out. So what was it like for you growing up? I think like most, most of us who have this problem with alcohol and substances, and by the way, I don't really differentiate between alcohol and other substances. It's things we use to kind of not be where we are with ourselves.

Both my parents had substance use issues. My father was in the Air Force. My mom, Satan, the old mom, the culture in the 1940s and 50s, drinking. On the U.S. youngest of eight kids. So I'm sure that was an excuse for her to drink. Five boys, three girls, ran a ragged. And I was used to the culture of drinking. And actually, it was normative in my household. Yeah. Wow. Seven siblings and then you being the youngest. Wow. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland on the East Coast. My father, after he left the military, was a furniture salesman. And like I said, my mom, she was a homemaker. She stayed there and made That counts. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's, I've got three kids. I got eight kids, my goodness. Yeah, I'd be bankrupt. I'd be bankrupt for one. You couldn't do it nowadays.

So as you grow up in your younger years, do you have any memories of what was going on and what things felt like for you? That is a question that to this day I ponder. I'm very dissociative from my childhood. I have. glimpses of what I believe I remember, then I have the stories that are like family histories that I've been told happen. But my childhood, up until I would say late junior high to high school is a blank. Yeah. I see pictures, and I see pictures of when I was a child. And even though we weren't a rich family by any means, I had Christmas tree with all the present. and big Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas candy and things like that, I remember, and going on trips. But any day-to-day, it was almost as if I was waiting for the next thing to happen.

Because with my mother, probably after my father passed, my mother wasn't a huge drinker at that point. But she was almost a dry drunk. She was doing all the things that drunk would be without the alcohol. It might have calmed her down a little bit, but she was raising a household herself with 10 children. So she was very much an authoritarian. So we knew to tow the line. And that anger was always there that knowing that we had to perform was there. And I think that anxiety and that fear plus some other situational things.

I just waited till the next thing to happen. Unless it was like I said a holiday where we all felt good, which of course drinking was a part of. We wake up and when I was old enough, or maybe even a little bit before, we'd have an Irish coffee on Christmas. And then we'd have the Jack Daniels later in the day and some more Jack Daniels later in the day. And it became just something we did. Yeah. So always waiting for the next shoe to drop in a sense, right? Maybe keeping you on your toes a little bit because you bring up that anxiety thing too and things being unpredictable, I think is a fairly common story that we hear on this journey, especially when family members are struggling with their own substance use in one way or another, too.

So it starts to come into picture for you around junior high. I mean, what did things look like for you there? When did you start drinking? Junior high, I grew up. So we moved down to Rone Up Virginia. And that was when I remember my life. I remember being accepted. I started into athletics. I was back in the days, you can tell where I come from. We had the jocks, the nerds, and the brains.

And I was a little bit of both. I was taking all honors classes for college. I was on the varsity wrestling team, and I played Dungeons and Dragons. So I transverse between the freaks, the nerds, the brains. within all of those communities, there was drinking. And we would get together and we'd have our little dungeon laid out. And it was just something we did in high school. And it was just something, I don't remember it being a huge issue in high school.

I remember going to parties. It was more situational in high school. Going to parties, having fun. I actually jumped off a roof of a house once. Thank goodness I was drunk. I bounced. You know, and that was normative. That's what I taught on average high school experience was.

Yeah. It's always interesting too, right? Because we look back on those high school experiences. For some, it's college. For me, it was more college. I wasn't really well connected. And I say well connected as a fancy word for maybe not cool, not the coolest kid in high school. So I didn't get invited to all the parties and all that stuff.

But more in college for me. And at the time, I thought it was very normal for everybody. to be drinking. And now when I look back, like a lot clearer, it was a couple different camps people were hanging out in. And when I looked back, I was like, well, it's fairly normal for people to drink maybe Friday or Saturday night. That was probably a thing. But for me, it crept into every other day, right? Now you're looking for a deal at which place is going to have this special or that one or which one can we get into, drink a little bit underage and all that type stuff. And I'm like, that consumed a lot of my life. And I don't know that it really consumed

a lot of the life of people around me. So I think it's always interesting, too. I think a big thing is I was surrounding myself with other people that were living like this. So to me, that's what I saw, right? I didn't really hang out with the people that were hitting the books hard and wanted to do well. I was hanging out with the people who hit the books maybe once or twice a week and then wanted to let off steam every other day. So moving forward with things, and you mentioned that too, for you when you first started, it wasn't this overly pre-exam. problematic thing, right? It was just maybe kids being kids in a sense. Looking back from a healthier perspective, very few of my friends, even the ones that were close to me,

drank the way that I did. The ability, the copious amounts, and again, I'll write a passage. Can you drink a whole bottle of the jackdails? I sure can. Watch me. And I did, and I did it several times. And looking back now, though, my friends did not do that. My friends would just And of course, memory is such a fickle thing. It's not accurate. But I seem to remember a little like cringy looks. Oh, should he be doing that? Of course, everybody knew not to try to get me to stop

because that would be the best way to get me to speed up. Looking back from this space, yeah, it was sporadic. That particular wave of drinking was more sporadic, the more weekend warrior hit it hard, then the week would come, and then I would have to do homework, and then I would have to wrestle practice. And then it was, again, all my actions

were meant to keep me away from my own loathing of my own self. I had no time to think about who I, I mean, what 17-year-old kid does that? They're not going to sit down and be introspective. But I also, from the background, it was like the perfect storm. From a very tumultuous home life to a very active social life to a very active drinking life. I had no time to put anything into perspective.

Yeah. It's interesting, too, the point you make there about how things were different. Looking back from a healthier place now, how you were drinking different than your peers. And I hear that a lot on the podcast about people identifying with that. you're having no idea at the time, right? Like you just mentioned there, we're not looking within this stage in our life, but when we reflect back, even from the beginning, we can identify those patterns that were different than our peers, because I was always confused. I was always confused that after college, all my buddies moved on, and I was still in the same spot. But I had the

thought that this was just a phase in my life that I'd be able to just walk away from, no problem. It was fun. We had a good time, but I wasn't able to do that right away. So moving through your high school life, what did things look like for you afterwards? It was a little so interwoven with who I knew I was, who I wanted to be, and who I eventually was going to be. I am gay. However, in high school, that was, and this was in the early 1980s, and I was, and I was, wasn't going to come out. I wasn't going to tell people I dated around right after high school pretty soon. I was married by, I was married by 21 and I had my daughter by 23.

Fortunately, I went so fortunate that I only stayed married three years. I knew that something bad was going to happen if I stayed. I didn't want to hurt my ex-wife. She's a great woman. She loved me and I truly believed I loved her but not she didn't know me to love me she couldn't because I was hiding and so I was only married for three years and she moved to the west coast and that really threw me into a spiral then I had no guardrails I had no daughter to take care of my my career at the restaurant that I was working at was it was on the skids they had me take a lie to test because they thought I was dealing amphetamine, crystal. We called it crystal back then, back in the day.

And actually, I wasn't dealing it. I was giving it away. So that, but I passed the lie detector test by taking another illegal drug. Don't try this at home, kids. This is not a good thing. I think the owner of the place that I was working at was very clear about what I was doing and gave me the choice of either resigning or firing me. And then that just, by that point, I was in full, out of control, whatever I could give my hands on, my drinking.

It started with smoking pot and drinking. Then it really went into drinking and then any other, anything else I could get my hands on. Yeah. So this all kind of, this storm is coming through it. You said at 23, right? Yes. Yeah. That's interesting, though, for your job, they had a, they made you take.

a lie detector test about what things were going on. They knew somebody had routed me out, and as well they should. And at the same time, this person, I think there was talk in the restaurant about things going on. And this person outed me and said, I gave this to them. And so he gave me the lie detector test. Yeah. And what was that process like for you coming out and all that stuff? during that time. I went from having a straight life, the wife and a daughter, to trying to figure out

what not being straight was. And of course, again, you're looking at the mid-80s to late 80s in the gay community, lots of drug use, which is also interesting that later on that was also some of the source of my greatest shame as somehow I brought other events into my life because of what I was experiencing and I thought I was only trying to have fun. Yeah. So where do you go from there after you get through this phase? And I mean, you mentioned there too, right? Like things ramped up, the guardrails come off of things here for you. And what does it look like for you moving forward? So in 1995, to kind of circle back from where I was and coming out, I was diagnosed HIV positive. And that was another little, like, turbo boost.

This was 1995. There was no one pill a day at the height of when I was first diagnosed. I was taking 52 pills a day. I had three pill boxes. I had to take some with food, some without food. And I thought to myself, full, screw it. I'm going to die. I'm going to die with my best friend, Jet, and I'm going to hit it. And that just went. At that point, I was probably had a $500 a week Coke habit. I was drinking probably a half gallon of jack every two to three days. There was one weekend. I had doctor shopped for some perks and took 90 in a weekend, and I don't know how they like in out of that one. that was poof so yeah it was just that was probably my i i can't say it was a point like a low point

it was like a low period a low decade where you just you don't see the way out you don't and quite frankly i don't think i really wanted to be out at that point out of my own misery out of use out of drug use yeah so what else is going on in your life during this time like you're working and all that type stuff as well? Yeah, I was working. So at this point, I had no college. I had a career in restaurant work. Right around this time, I was waiting tables.

I always prided myself on not drinking during work or not doing drugs often, often would be a more realistic statement. Because I could always saw myself that wonderful comparing out that we love to do. I'm not as bad as they are. They drink in the morning. I don't drink before 5 p.m. At 5 p.m. I'm halfway down a fifth. It's a gram a cook.

Whether you do it all the day or after 5 to 10 o'clock. So I was working and I also started at that point. I became an apprentice to do hair. Okay, yeah. No, it's interesting you bring that up because that can keep us in that. We hear it all the time, right, that spot about, I don't do this or I don't check those boxes. So there's nothing to see here.

There's no problem here. I'm doing what I need to do. You hear it a lot of the time. I go to work, right? I think it's a good excuse in a sense to keep the train going. And you kind of experienced that too. Throughout this period, though, I mean, you mentioned too. You probably weren't ready, right?

You weren't necessarily ready to get sober. But did you have any thoughts about where? I wonder where this is all kind of heading. I knew that I had a problem. I knew. and I was actually embracing it. It wasn't as if I thought, it was a strange dichotomy.

On one side, my brain was like, you're not an alcoholic, you're not, you're not one of them. But the other side was like, yeah, you are. You're drinking about a fifth a day. And normal, people don't drink that much. Some people will drink,

a half a glass and put it down and never go back to it, which, by the way, I think is awful. But that's what I would think. Oh, my God, they're leaving alcohol? What are you doing? And so did I know? I think the honest answer would be yes and no. I think I knew, but had no desire whatsoever to stop. I had no desire to be with who I thought I was, which was an awful individual who was HIV positive, who deserved what they got, and I was going to hurry up the process. Wow. It's a tough spot to be. Yeah. I would say that my daughter was the one thing. We were not in communication for all of this time. We were apart for 21 years. Wow. At first, it was me trying to get my ex-wife to agree to say another word.

She had every right to move away from me. She had every right to be around her family and move our daughter to a place where I hold no animosity towards her whatsoever. At the same time, again, looking back, there were different decisions that could have been made, but they weren't. And you can't go back and rewrite that. I think my daughter was the one thing that kept like I wanted the thought of being, with her again someday was where it kept me going. And that I, and it was also, it was that underlying current.

It wasn't the thing that got me sober, but it was the one thing that always enabled me to consider being sober. Yeah, so it kept you in the game for maybe a little bit of the possibility of, not half percent. Yeah. I was almost all in.

But not quite. Yeah, not quite. Did you have anybody around you that was sober? I mean, what was it like for you? Did you hang out with other people throughout this stuff? Or was it just an isolation thing? Or like, how did that look? In the very beginning of my prodigious journey, it was, I only surrounded myself with people who drank, including my twin brother.

He, awesome man, would stay around family and they all drank. And then my friends, when I came out, my family, we separated for a few years. And then it was just people that I hung out with were drinkers, bar people. That kind of ended when I got my one and only DUI. I am nothing if not a good student. And I learned that I did not want to do that again. And it was much more efficient and cost effective to get drunk at home.

So then it became more of an isolation situation. Yeah. You hear that sort of trend too. Not always the DUI part, but you do hear that trend. Yeah, for me, it started out the same kind of idea, social. But then what I figured out, the further along I got, these people I was hanging out with weren't drinking the way I was. They were going far too slow. They just weren't going at it the way. And I didn't pick up on it at the time. I had no idea. But then what I did is I just went on the isolation track because I didn't want people watching it. I already felt bad enough about it. I didn't want anybody else's opinions. And then I found that if I did hang out with people, the next day they're telling me,

hey, you took it too far, it's too much. It's this. I cut a lot of that stuff out and would definitely surround myself with people that had the same intention I did. And we didn't know what we didn't know at the time that what we were doing? Why were we doing all of it? You know what I mean? Why were we doing it? What was different or maybe not even difference is the right word, but what was going on the inside that I had to drink that way. And some of my peers that I hung out with wanted to do that as well. When did you get the DUI? What year was that? How old were you? It was on St. Patty's Day of all the rookie moves you can do to get a DUI on St. Patty's Day. What the I would say probably 20 years ago.

So whatever 20 years ago, 2004, maybe? Yeah, yeah. He took me to the police station and said, sir, you blew a 0.248. And I said, I know, and you're ruining my buzz. He said, you're going to have to sit here a while. Then I called an X of mine, and we had taken a break, which ironically, we got back together after he came, picked me up. God bless him.

I didn't see that one coming. Okay, we can hang out. I think the one thing, when I started to get a clue as to when I actually felt like I had a problem, where I could actually consider, I play, I'm a big nerd, I play World of Warcraft, I'm big gamer. I've been playing it still vanilla. I have 20 level 70s.

The new expansion just came out. I was a guild leader. We were raiding. The other officers of my guild took me into a private Discord channel and told me their concerns. They said, Mason, you fell asleep in the middle of our raid. And I always play a healer, oddly enough. I was like, they said, we. took the time to get 10 people together,

and he disappointed all of us. And it is something that has stuck with me throughout the years that I couldn't hear my really good friends, and these are some of my in real life friends, some of my online friends, telling me that they were concerned, and I just couldn't hear it. It was like, that's your problem.

So they kicked me out of my own guilt. Damn. Oh, right, I'll find a new one. But many years later, I look at that as, I don't live in regrets. I don't live in regrets, one. The things that I did, I survived, and they either came out the way I expected or I learned a whole lot from them. But I do get sad about that young man who was so hurt that he worried his friends.

And those are the things that really, that the most poignant memories that I have of those times, or the times when I'd really disappointed people around me. And after I got sober, there was one friend. And I thought he and I would date. We never did. We hung out a couple times. And I finally got up the nerve and I called him. And I said, hey, would you meet me?

He said, yeah. And so we were talking. I said, can I ask you why we never hung out more? And it looked at me, he got this really sad. Look, he said, you were a drunk. because I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings. And I was like, it doesn't really hurt my feelings,

but it just makes me sad. And I appreciate the honesty. Then we still talk now. But it was those things like that that just makes me sad. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm that kind of stacks too, I think. And my own story, it was, you know, at first it really stung and then it always did, but it was so frequent.

Like, I was. constantly letting people down and maybe left them with that point of disappointment. I don't know that many people mentioned it to me because I always had this tendency if there was too much conflict or too much. People got on my case too much. I would just distance myself from them. So I think it was like a fine balance between people who cared and loved me about towing that line because I was very selfish. I was just worried about what I wanted to get out of things. And I wanted the least amount of friction between A and B. And I didn't want a bunch of people in the way telling me what to do or how to do or everything like that.

But yeah, it's those times. But when you look back at that, though, that situation where you have these people that are playing with you on World of Warcraft, which I never got into. I used to be a gamer. Counterstrike was my thing. A runescape.

I know when I bring this up, people are like, that's ridiculous. But you're an FPS or I'm an MMO or come on. Yeah, I don't even know what that means is over my head. But when you look back at that time, though, You're in this spot too. I'm just picturing it here. You're in this spot where you have an idea, right, of this is a problem for me, but not really at the spot to really make a move on it necessarily. But you have these situations to where other people in one way or another are being let down or left disappointed by your choices and decisions. And I think it's a really interesting thing that we go to. My point here wrapping it up is, and I don't know if you can relate to this, but I didn't care about myself enough to make the change. or to improve my life. But when it came to other people, I had a younger brother too growing up. I have a twin brother and I have a younger brother. And just to think about like one day he's going to figure it out. It was going to figure me out that you're his world when they're younger and

they're growing up. You're the best thing in the entire world. You're the coolest, right? Big brother. And I love that. But I, towards the end of drinking in drugs and everything else for me, I always had this subconscious thought in a sense about what if he really knew the truth? What if they really knew the truth? And the truth wasn't on the surface that I was struggling with substance use. The truth was that I was in so much pain that this is the only way I saw a way out. And I was just, for some reason, I was just envisioning what if he ever struggled with that? Or what if they ever struggled with that?

They were in that much pain and discomfort that they were in that much pain and discomfort, that they thought this was the only solution. And I'm just curious in a sense, like, why that got through and maybe the own thoughts you had, didn't, if that's relatable. I think for me personally, I think everybody knew the truth.

Yeah, as stealthily as I thought I could drink, and I've had people tell me, my own brother lived with me for a year, and he said, I never saw you drunk. And I said, I was always drunk. but I think they may not have known the length of where I was at or how desperate I was. I was the only one deluded. Who is the one who was moving forward?

I think people, they either had a feeling or they actually knew or I, and that's what sobriety does. It wakes you up. I was an expert at fooling myself. And I think that's the thing that makes sobriety so interesting is to stand honestly to where I am versus where I was. And that is such a different person. The person I am now would never want to be that person again. I would be that person again to be where I'm at now,

but I can't. I can't relate to that person anymore like that. Yeah, how things change, how things change for you. Another thing there too, though, is about what we go through, right? What motivates us to change? And are we coming up close to when you got sober? Yeah, it's a pretty, it fits that pretty unflattering story. the person who I was with him for six, seven years, and I honestly, coming from a poorer household,

coming from a more deprived background, finances were always my focus. And not that I necessarily dated for that, I actually had a tendency to date people that I had to take care of because that gave me a reason to, that gave me a, that was a good mark on my side of the ledger. but this person actually had a great job with the government and when he told me that he wanted to leave, he wanted to break up, that was the moment. My retirement was walking out the door.

How was they going to live? How was they going to drink? When my world got so, I have a firm belief that everybody on this planet at some point or another experiences what I call the quarter turn. It feels like the earth under your feet turns like 25 degrees quickly and without notice, and that's when your head just starts like trying to put everything in order.

And when he told me that, I immediately said, I'll stop drinking. I don't even think he knew it that. He never said it was because of my drinking because, remember, he was the one that got back together with me from picking me up from my DUI. And then all of a sudden you're going to tell me it's because I said, I'll stop drinking. He said, I don't know that's going to help. In other words, I don't believe you.

Are they enough? I never took another drink. We were never meant to be together, by the way. And thank God I love him to death, but yeah, we weren't supposed to. The first two weeks of being sober, the one thing, I wasn't afraid of being sober. I was afraid of all the damn time I had all my hands with me. I think with me. Like, I started the white knuckle in.

I just can. I just can. I have another day. I have another day. And I attended a few AA meetings. A.A. is a great organization, by the way. I did the majority of my sobriety with personal therapy. And that was after quite a bit after that initial white knuckling, dry drunk stage I went through.

Went through some. I wasn't ready. Even at that point. Even at the major relationship of my life. life told me to go take a height. There was still that voice in my mind when I would try to call myself an alcoholic. They would go, no, you're not. I would say it took me about six years to really look at myself and go, yeah, you're an

alcohol. No shame, you are. Just wake up on it. Give yourself a hug. But that was the weirdest feeling to have every piece of evidence in front of me that told me that my life was in the shitter. my things aren't going good, and to still be able to have that little piece of my mind go, they're not.

It's just, that's the most amazing thing I taste. Yeah, so when was it? August 22nd, 15, 2009. Wow, great job. Thank you. So backing up a second, though, to that day, right? Because it's interesting. Some people, they share a different, a story maybe a little bit different, right?

they planned it out. Okay, when I'm turning dirty, that's it, party's over. And then you have maybe some of these other events, right? And for me, it's like that too. I didn't plan my last drink. I just woke up one day, gave it another shot. Going back in your story, though, at any point in time, had you tried to get sober? Or was this, like, kind of the first time? If you asked me in the period in which I stopped drinking for, I think maybe I only had two days, it was. It was, wasn't trying to stop drinking. It was trying to cut down. I'm drinking a little too much. I need to cut down on. Okay. Cutting down from two-fifths to one-fifth. Yeah, man. I don't want to do it. No, it ain't going to do it. So, on all honestly, from who I am now,

I never wanted to quit drinking. And on that day, it was like the fear was so great. You know, I use camera as a defense mechanism a lot. And to give myself credit, I truly loved that man. I truly loved and it did hurt me. However, I'm not going to deny that a lot of what happened was him removing the financial stability, which was part of my trauma, which caused me to probably investigate alcohol in the first place. Yeah.

And so for those first a couple weeks and stuff, we even mentioned there two, six years to kind of really get to that spot to say, yeah, this is the truth of the whole thing. And you plug into some therapy and stuff. But what's it like for you? What are you thinking those first couple

days drinking that much? You must have went through some physical stuff as well. Yeah, I shook a whole lot. I had a lot of brain fog. By that point, Jack and I had been through a lot of fights. Mr. Daniels would push me down the stairs. I'd always forgive them the next morning,

but by that point, I thought vodka would be a better choice because I didn't like it as much. And so I was drinking just as much of something I didn't like. The first two weeks, physical ramifications, I lost a lot of weight,

which I thought was good. But the one thing that I just kept thinking was, this is forever. I'm going to have to do this forever. What is forever? And I was just stubborn. enough. I don't know what kept me sober in those first two weeks other than I was going to prove the person I was with wrong, but I could actually do it. And I think it was probably at the end of

the second week where I got enough clarity. And I started to sleep a little bit more regular and I started to feel a little bit more regular where I could actually say, yeah, this is desirable. I like this feeling. I'm not waking out, wondering what I said on my World of Warcraft game to someone that I don't remember, or I'm remembering my life now. And it took me a long time to really to admit the enormity, the whole pathology of what had happened and to a name alcoholic to it without feeling shameful, and I'm not ashamed.

I have a disease and it's something that I have to watch. I have a couple of them. And it's the same that it takes watching. You have to watch it and you have to honor it and honor the process. And I am humble. I know at any point just recently, two years ago, my husband,

we've been married eight years, he had a stroke on an airplane with coming back from San Francisco. I basically watch him code on an airplane. 20,000 feet above the ground. And if I'm not drinking now, maybe I can take a little bit of a deeper breath every day, but I'm still going to do my thing where I know who's keen myself from drinking.

And that felt good too. And there have been those little incidences since I quit. I was prescribed pain medication for a torn rotator cuff because I used to train CrossFit. And the doctor gave me like a 30-day supply of tramadol. and I literally broke out in a sweat. But you know what?

I flushed it. And that was another thing like, oh my God, there goes all those good drugs. And I was like, yeah, drugs you don't need. You're not in that much pain. You can take care of it with an aspirin.

And to be able to self-soothe like that was amazing. Yeah, wow, that is. Yeah. So you go through this. How has your life changed in another, let's start with that one, though. How has your life changed since, you made this decision and you've been working on yourself,

it sounds like a lot throughout the process. Yeah, I got my bachelor's degree when I was 50. I'm currently in my master's of social work, specializing in substance use disorder and trauma. I'm actually working at a community services board in Fairfax, Virginia. I'm one of the triage people who we see you first. We see you. My overall need is to give back.

to this community to give, to see, all we ever want to do in life is be seen. Just be seen. Not judged, not, but just see us for people, even in spite of ourselves. You know, you see what's on the outside. Most people would know that's not the culmination

or the entirety of who you are. I just want to people to be seen. I want to help those people. And that's what I'm doing. I just got my qualified mental health professional trainee license moving forward when I graduate with my LCSW. So I'm dedicating my life to those of us who either still have or have had a period in our lives where we just didn't see any hope.

And there's always hope. There's always hope. There's always a different decision to be made. if you can I don't know so who knows what it takes to see that but there's always that decision yeah it's so true and and I think sometimes you mentioned there a good point too about who knows what it takes to see and I think sometimes we think it has to be this it has to be something and I'm just hearing more and more of these stories to where it's piling up the evidence over the years to realize that we're already on a slippery slope or we're headed towards one

And once we get there, things take off fairly quick. And it's a turn, people throw around a lot in the community in different places, right? About rock bottom, I hit this rock bottom and stuff. And I'm just thinking, you know what? I had many of what people would consider rock bottoms. And I never got sober after one. I got sober after just fairly regular day. It wasn't anything overboard, wasn't anything too wild.

And things were able to turn around. Did you ever think this would be possible for your life? And I mean, even with you shared there, going back to school, getting a bad, is at 50 and now where you're headed with things. This seems like a complete turnaround from the way things were before. I was always a precocious job, and I made good grades. I was, like I said, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a doctor of some sort. I think when I was 12, I looked at the Duke University and wanted to be a

parapsychologist studying the occult. But I wanted the doctor. There's something about, so it's almost like a full circle thing. I think I used to see it and believed in myself. And then I didn't. And then I came back around to believing it. So yes, I thought it was possible, but I so lost track of it for so long, which was my journey.

I don't, like, I don't regret that. I don't agree. Anything that I did to make me, I'm a good person. And I can say that. I can look in a mirror and I can say that. I was a good person, even when I was drinking. I wasn't a mean person. I wasn't a selfish person. I didn't intentionally try to screw people over. But I couldn't have said it then because I just felt too ashamed of what I was doing. So I did think it was possible. I didn't. And then I made it possible. Yeah, I love that full circle. You shared a few times here. I've picked up on it about feeling ashamed or feeling ashamed of the way we're living. How have you been able to work through that to get to the comfortable space you are in today? Fake it till you make it? Like, I would look at myself and go, I, oddly, I just realized when you said piling up the evidence over years,

I would literally do an inventory of nice things that I did. And I am a caretaker. Dude, especially when I was drunk, give you the shirt, and I did give people the shirt off my back, just to prove that I would give you the shirt off my back. People always wanted to go drinking with me because you never had a barbell.

Yeah. Yeah, just put it over there. I would literally just do this inventory, like, dude, you care about people. You're empathetic. You know how they feel. You don't want them to hurt. You would go out of your way to...

One of my clients lived three hours away, and she told me that she was in pain, and I literally drove in one day three hours to give her a hug, just a hug, and then I drove home. I just, so it took, again, years of just saying that to myself, and finally it was like, I am a good person. And I think the other thing, as I get more into the therapeutic side of what I'm planning on going into,

there is that inner child. There is that small mason in me that is scared and frightened and doesn't know what all happened. But the difference now is, and it was what one of my therapists said one time because I'm about a shame to cry. I'll cry at the drop of that.

I'm an emotional dude. And I was in therapy and I was crying. Hey, look at me and he said, those aren't tears of a man. Because I'm a big man. I'm a big man. He goes, no. He said, that's not what you're talking about.

A man wouldn't cry over. A grown man wouldn't cry over it. And it took 10 years to, that was little me. Just crying over, feeling out of control and ineffectual. And I can actually tell myself now, the thing will be okay, and I can actually believe it. I don't have the specter. of yesterday that I don't remember over my head. I don't have the things piling up, the bills filing

up, the problems filing up, the stress piling up because I was just too busy running from who I was, then everything else got dragged into that tornado of everything. And when you can settle your life down and in those quiet places, I can live with who I am now. I'm not ashamed of anything. I've done. I hope I'll continue to move forward. And if something, something happens. I won't be ashamed of that. I'll learn from it and move forward from that. I love that too. And that's what it's about is you just continuously, you know, willing to work on ourselves to go to those places. I love in your story too because I think just human nature in a sense is especially those of us that struggle with substance. We like instant

gratification. And I'm really enjoying this part of your story where it's, you're learning stuff at different stages, right? Everything is not happening for you and you're getting all to the nitty grade of the bottom. All I figured it out within your first 30 days. And I think, too, a lot of people when they started out this journey won all the answers right away. Why this, why that, and everything. And I'm always mentioning people, be mindful about things aren't going to be all fixed up and patched up and you're on your way in a couple of days. And I'm loving that part of your story. My journey will never be over.

My journey, I hope that I always don't know something. Do I know a few things? I know what I know. I saw, I went to another therapy class, landmark education, which not a shoutout, but changed my life. The instructor draw,

do that pie circle on the white board and drew the thinest liver, and she said, that's what you know. That's two plus two. That's, you can speak English. If you do the little tiniest liver, she goes, that's what you don't know. I assume

you don't know how to speak Russian. I assume you don't know astrophysics. And she said the rest of that pie is what you don't know, you don't know. And it's the truth. Like you don't know. You don't even know five years from now if what you think, what looks fixed now, will seem fixed then. It's being able to have that confidence and that strength inside of you. And I don't mean some resolute stand against the storm.

It's that quiet, like, I got this. I'm going to, I'm going to run into shit that I, that's going to test me. But you know what? I'll take a deep breath. I'll see it for what it is. I'll gather my resources and I'll see what I can do about it.

And the thing that I would have anybody take away from my personal story is that I never saw the other side, but I knew there had to be one. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. It doesn't mean it can't happen. It just means you can't see it in the moment.

And that moment can be a day. It can be a week or it can be a decade. I got sober when I was 45 and I started drinking when I was 12th. It was always there. I just couldn't see it. And sometimes, again, you don't know what it takes for you to see it. But that's what I would say. So you'd take anything.

We all have our stories. But I think what binds us together is, the pain that we felt and then the desire to help others through it. And that's what's going to get, that's what's going to help at a long run, is be willing to open yourself up to let other people step in and carry you when you can't carry yourself. Let other people step in and believe in you when you can't believe in yourself. And I think that's one of the main.

major lessons, it was being more amenable to allowing other people's to care for me. Because I knew how to not care for me. I proved it. I did everything I could. But learning how to let other people care for me was one of the biggest gifts I gave myself. I'm not good at it. I'm not good at it. Yeah, it takes work, right?

It's trust me. It's trust maybe in a sense to trust other people and trust ourselves throughout the process. I think that's incredible too. I think us being vulnerable here might allow somebody on the other side to maybe not jump on a podcast, but maybe be vulnerable and be honest with somebody that's close to them about where they're at and what they're struggling with because trying to do it on our own and trying to figure it all out. It's just like I tried that so many times.

I wanted that to work the best because then I wouldn't have to deal with the feelings of shame or guilt or anything else. I could just do this quietly and move all of my life. but I just always found myself back in the same spot and off in a worse spot because I just couldn't do it. I could always talk myself into what I thought to be a good time and then what I realized never was. It's like opening up some space in your,

like even if you hear something on a podcast that opens up that little space in your head where you can consider it, that's a win. That's a win. And again, because of the pain and the shame that I think a lot of us go through, we project that other people must think that about us.

If we think that about us, positive, all my friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, people on the street, people that have never even met me with the exact same thing. And we create that reality. We create that for ourselves

so we can live in the misery we've become comforted with. And you need space in your head, so other things can get in so you can actually consider other things. Yeah, so true. Before we wrap up here, any closing thoughts that you have? Yeah, I hope somebody hears something, in my words, that actually triggers something for them to move forward with where they want to be in life.

And the other thing is to those people who may be, that may not be alcoholics or substance users themselves, but have them in your life, don't be afraid to mention it. Don't keep mentioning it. You don't ever know when it'll work. That person in your life who is suffering through their addiction may not be able, again, to see their way out.

And just to know, and I don't mean mention it, beat him over the head with it, Just keep mentioned, like, I know, is there anything I can do? I know you're going through a rough time. If you need a hug, if you need an ear to listen to you, I'm here, you're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. Because the one thing we like to be is alone because that's where the disease lives.

It lives in our fear and our shame. And when you can believe you're not alone, it can't live in that. Yeah. Incredible. I love that. Thank you so much for jumping on here and sharing your story. And yeah, keep things. It's my pleasure. My pleasure. I love your community. I love the podcast. You're what I listen to on my way into my therapy job. So I can get some pointers. Yeah. There you go. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, everyone for checking out another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Huge shout out to Mason. Thanks for jumping on here and sharing your story. Can't wait to see what's in store for you. next. I'll drop Mason's contact information down on the show notes below. And if you've yet to leave a review on Apple or Spotify, take a few seconds to do that. And if you want to donate to support the podcast, you can do that at buy me a coffee.com slash sober motivation. And I'll see you on the next one.