Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Pain Created Purpose: David's Sober Story

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

In this compelling episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast, David shares his intense journey from his upbringing in Ocean City, NJ, to struggling with addiction during high school, and eventually finding himself in psych wards and homeless. Highlighting the power of the right support system and the incredible transformations in his life, David discusses the pain and growth experienced in recovery, now thriving as a medical student with aspirations of becoming a neurosurgeon. Tune in to hear how he turned his life around, harnessed his addiction for good, and discovered the true power of sobriety. --------- New Podcast - Sober Motivation: Just Between Us: Subscribe Here Sober Motivation Community (1 Month Free): https://sobermotivation.mn.co 1:1 Mentorship Information: https://sobermotivation.com David's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david.millar.mindset/

Welcome back to season four of the Sobermotivation 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, David shares his intense journey from his upbringing in Ocean City, New Jersey to struggling with addiction during high school and eventually finding himself in psych wards, rehabs, and homeless, highlighting the power of the right support system and the incredible transformations in his life,

David discusses the pain and the growth experienced in recovery, now thriving as a medical student with aspirations of becoming a neurosurgeon, tune in to hear how he turned his life around, harness his addiction for good, and discover the true power of sobriety. And this is David's story on a sober motivation podcast. How's it going, everyone, Brad here? Welcome back to another episode.

Before we jump into David's story, I just want to let you know about something that I really really, I really am excited to get going on and has already kind of started. It's a new podcast, subscription-only podcast called Sober Motivation Just Between Us. Here we're going to slow down and talk about the things that matter beneath the surface, our struggles, our breakthroughs, our fears, and the moments that change us. In each episode is going to bring personal reflections, some guest conversations, mindset shifts, and practical tools to support you on your alcohol-free journey.

I would love to invite all of you to check it out. I'll drop the link down on the show notes below on how you can join this podcast and listen in. It's going to be a lot deeper parts of my story and different thoughts on different topics in sobriety. The whole roadmap is not figured out. It's going to be an as we go kind of thing. But there's going to be a ton of value there about sobriety. And it's not going to be about the stories. It's going to be more of my personal insights connecting with guests on specific topics

and what's really helping them and some tools that they can give to us to help us get to the next level. So I would love to have you also heading into the holidays that's extremely busy. Sobriety can become very difficult during this time with the days off and hanging out with family and everything else that goes into it. So I just want to mention that I have a few spots open for my one-on-one mentorship. This isn't about me telling you what to do, but it's really about me walking with you to help you out, check for blind spots and support you, hold you accountable to your goals, whatever that may be. And lastly, another incredible thing is the suburb motivation community. We have over 10, 12 meetings every single week and awesome community of people that are willing

to meet you exactly where you're at because we've all been there at one point or another. I'll drop all those links down on the show notes below. I would love to connect with you. Now let's get to this episode. Welcome back to another episode of the sober motivation podcast. today we've got David with us David how are you really good happy to be here yeah man glad that jason connected to two of us for you to jump on here and share your story shout out jason yeah he's the man yeah so what was it like for you growing up um it was it was pretty pretty normal man i talk about

this a lot i didn't have anything crazy you know my parents got divorced when i was a little bit on the younger side uh but i don't really remember it affecting me too much there were some instances of specific family members struggling with things like alcohol and drugs and addiction and previous family members that I'd never really met that I'd passed away due to it. So I'd always like known about like the harm that could potentially come from drinking, using drugs. And I think that that kind of pushed me away from taking my first drink earlier than I would have took it because I kind of knew I'd seen what it was doing to people in my life.

And again, like it wasn't like anything. crazy, but I saw like these common patterns with people that were drinking every day and I saw how it was affecting their life, their relationship, their appearance, their habits and stuff like that. So it kind of pushed me away from taking that first drink. But eventually I did when I was in high school and just had a crazy white light experience right off the rip and kind of knew that that was going to be my deal for a little bit. But yeah, in terms of like growing up, it was you know nothing nothing like abnormal really i mean not from a super wealthy family also not like poor but kind of right in the middle we struggled financially a little bit um but had everything

i needed yeah where did you grow up i grew up in ocean city new jersey we're kind of on the beach yeah okay yeah interesting you share that too with your parents um divorce there is a lot of shows kind of in the catalog there where people share a, you know, similar experience too. And, you know, maybe it impacted them. You know, maybe it didn't. Do you have siblings? Yeah, yeah, I do. I have a younger brother, younger sister. What was school like for you? It was, it was good. I mean, I was, I feel like I was like a mediocre student. When I started using, I was no longer a good, good student or even an average student um but it was it was good for me for the most part but once like right when i found alcohol right when i found drugs it was kind of that was the main focus

and everything else was no longer really a priority for me so it started to go downhill yeah okay so it's an interesting story right and not necessarily one new to the podcast but it does interest me how you know leading up to kind of that first point when you started drinking right i saw on your instagram there at age 16 everything is going pretty well like overall it sounds like and then you have the first drink and kind of worlds collide how do you look at that now like what maybe caused it it's a good question so i think that like i didn't really understand exactly what was what i was struggling with and i didn't really understand what it felt like to be have some of the weight lifted off me a little bit because the weight was

just always on me like I didn't realize I didn't even know what it felt like to be have some of that removed and right when I took that drink that weight was removed off me so for the first time in my life I felt like lighter and at ease more at ease than I had ever been so you know I I think that I attribute it a lot to that I mean right like I didn't even realize I was really struggling with a lot of stuff leading up to that drink. Like, I was just, I just thought this is what it is, you know. And then I took that drink and I experienced the ease and the comfort and the contentness and the, you know, the liquid courage and the ability to socialize how I wanted to

and not think, not overthink everything. Right when I experienced that, I got, I got accustomed to feeling at ease like that. And I wanted to feel at ease again and again and again and again. And every time I went back to feeling that way. and then I woke up the next morning, sober back to reality, the weight kept feeling heavier and heavier and heavier. So, you know, I think it was, I think it was a lot of that. Yeah.

Well, thank you for sharing that too, because, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, when we're younger, you could be struggling, but maybe not even be able to, I know I sure is heck, I struggled with really articulating or sharing what was going on. I just, I kind of noticed, I think, from an early age that I was operating a lot differently than a lot of my peers. I mean, can you put a finger on it now going back into those years what it was that you were struggling with? Yeah, I think it was, you know, I like to chalk a lot of this up to alcoholism. I think it's, you know, in my opinion, a lot of this is a spiritual malady. I think there is some component of mental and physical stuff too. I'm in medical

school right now. So I'm actually very interested in all of this. And this is like my main focus of study. So I do think that there are other, you know, pillars to this disease. But I think a lot of it can be chalked up to, at least from my experience, as some sort of like spiritual malady and misalignment with, you know, who I was like deep down and also, you know, connection to some sort of higher power. And, you know, having my not having like my site set on. you know, actually doing what I was put here to do and not having that underlying faith is big for me. So. Yeah. Did you grow up going to church or anything? A little bit. We went occasionally on holidays. I never really took it too seriously. It was just more of like we had to go.

Yeah. Check it out. Yeah. I remember my grandmother, my grandma and grandpa saying, yeah, we got to go for service. And I was like, oh, my goodness, okay, you know, I'll do my best here. That's really interesting, you know, sort of the thoughts you shared there. I think about some people when I first started drinking, the first time I drank, I shared the same experience or similar to what you had, right? It was everything just kind of slid away, man, all the insecurities, the low self-esteem and not fitting in. The ADHD that I was struggling with and had been made.

dedicated for for a long time and it was just like, man, all of that stuff was gone and people wanted to hang out with me and it was funny. I think they were laughing at me, but I still, you know, I found my place, right? I felt like I had found community and all this stuff I had been aimlessly searching for throughout high school in my earlier, you know, sort of years, right? And it all kind of slid away. And it was like, you know, this kind of makes sense. But then I go back to thinking about a lot of other people who I would hang out with that drank as well. And man, they didn't, I don't know. They sure as heck didn't seem like they enjoyed it as much as I did.

Like a lot of people would maybe save it for the weekends or maybe once a month. And I kind of wrestled with that, to be honest with you, for some time, like what up into that point in my life made that first experience so much different for me than it did for everybody else? Yeah, I agree with that. I also have the experience of always wanting to take it to the next level and continue to do more and more and more when other people around me didn't share that exact mindset. And it would always kind of freak me out a little bit in the back of my mind. I'd be like, why do I experience like this need to continue doing this substance

or to continue drinking or to want to drink on Monday night or to want to get another bag of drugs, get another bag of whatever? and some of the buddies around me are just like, no, like I'm actually good on that. I never understood that. Like, I never understood people like, yeah, I'm actually, I'm good. Like, I'm just good with this. I was never good with anything. I could have had like an eight ball and a 12 pack and a bottle of vodka and I still wasn't good, right? Like, part of my high came from the thought that, oh, the dealers on the way to the house. Like, I got high off that thought. Do you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't even necessarily me getting high. It was me getting high on the idea that I can get more. Like it was like it was almost like a

weird like control thing in a way. I don't I don't know if you relate to that. Yeah. I mean, I think to prep some people share about the preparation. I think it's like when you know after a while you you know, I remember driving to the the store to get alcohol right. My mouth would start to water like the anticipation of it all right. Like yeah, you know, because the relief was around the corner. My brain was reacting to that about what was to show up. So you kind of get into it here at 16. I mean, even leading up to this, did you have any sort of behavioral stuff going on or anything else kind of leading up to that in high school that you would have kind of known? The only reason I asked that is I, I mean, I had things going on my life ever since I could remember. I was

seeing doctors, psychiatrists, therapists, counselors, learning centers, everything. And when I look back at it now, I was destined to find some relief that I could control. You brought up the control aspect previously, right? And I think, you know, I'm just throwing it out there. I don't know everybody's journey and everybody's story. But alcohol, drugs, they allow us to be in control of how we feel, how much we have. And in my world, it felt so out of control like I wasn't the one making decisions and everything else for so long. And now I say this, now, you know, looking back. At the time, I had no idea. Like, I, I just liked a party. That's what I told everybody. But was there anything sort of on the radar for you prior to this,

to your first drink? No, not, not really. Like, I definitely had certain things. I mean, if you, like, put me in front of, like, a psychiatrist or something, I'm sure they probably would have found something wrong. But, yeah, no, never really had anything, like, blatantly obvious. But I did develop a lot of things as I began using. And then as I would try to get sober and come off of drugs and stuff like that, you know, I'd be diagnosed with like generalized anxiety disorder, depression, bipolar. They diagnosed me with like everything, which is another reason I wanted to come to med school because I think a lot of that process isn't necessarily handled correctly. I don't know if you've ever gone into detox or rehabs to try to get clean. But my experience,

with doing that at multiple different facilities is you go there and immediately they're trying to put you on pharmaceuticals. And I was on enough medication at one point in my recovery for paranoid schizophrenic. So I was taking like handfuls of pills every morning. And I was symptomatically. I was like a paranoid schizophrenic. But, you know, I was detoxing off of like a five day bender of using crack cocaine and not sleeping. So like obviously, you know, I'm going to be symptomat. I'm going to look symptomatically identical to somebody who has like, schizophrenia i don't think that but but that doesn't warrant me taking on this this medication and falling asleep at noon so if you go through my medical records like you will see like like me being diagnosed

this and that um but yeah that didn't necessarily come until after um i'd been using for a while yeah yeah interesting there too take us back to like how things pick up i mean from 16 still in high school you kind of get into drinking how do things pick up speed for you and too i'm wondering as well like does anybody around you notice too because for you your story looking at is a lot there's similarities to mine as some people have sort of uh maybe what some could call a slow burn you know might be over decades or or or even more um before things get problematic it sounds like for you and definitely my story i mean i was getting in trouble fairly quickly so did anybody pick up on and what did the progression look like yeah i'll start by saying like i'm very grateful that

my progression of this whole thing was like very very intense and i feel like that kind of like goes to my personality a little bit like i'm an obsessive person even before i picked up a drink i'm very if i like something i do it uh all the way and uh that's still my personality today too by the way um just not not directed toward drinking i'm a big proponent of using that addictive personality to go out and do what you want to do. But I'm very grateful because I see a lot of people, especially online, that, like, it didn't, like, totally consume them to the point where, like, they were getting DUIs, they were going into detox, they were going into psych wards, their wife was kicking them out,

their family was kicking them out. Like, they could manage it. But for me, like, I had a little bit of that, like, in the very beginning when I was first introduced, and I did a good job. I did a good job of hiding it. But eventually, like, I wanted to get high. the way I wanted to get high. That's what I wanted. I remember I would go to rehabs and stuff and I would see people that were like older than me. They were like 30 or 40 and I was, I got sober

at 20. I was going into rehabs at like 18, 19 years old. So I was pretty young. I was still kind of dependent on mom and dad a little bit. But I would see these people coming into rehab getting high how they wanted to get high. Like they had their own place. They had an income source. They didn't have anybody bothering them at night. They could sit in their room and just get high. I got jealous of that. Like I wanted to get high the way I wanted to. to get high and you know i i like did it all the way up until how i wanted to do it and it spiraled out of control very quickly i started drinking like middle high school went to college had like a promising like career path in front of me but i didn't really even know what i wanted to do like i

just wanted to get high so you stick me up at college i'm going to find ways to party and do drugs because that's what i want to do and eventually would take take a leave from school like a medical leave and yeah just at the time like a lot of it was me blaming it on like how I felt at baseline and you know at this point though I'm like putting substances in my body like three four times a week staying up like not taking care of myself and just kind of like being a victim a little bit and playing it on like oh I feel anxious and I feel depressed and because of that this is why this is happening I need to fix that but you know eventually I became educated with the idea of like spiritual malady. And I think that a lot of like the anxiety and the depression that I was

dealing with and the bipolar, like whatever you want to diagnose it as, I think it was all just like ugly manifestations of the root problem, which was alcohol, you know? So yeah, just spun out of control very quickly for me, which I'm grateful for because I see a lot of people that just had this little like thing on their back that hasn't been like too in their face to the point where like they're going to go do something about it. But like has just been con like, consistently and slowly kind of like sticking the knife in between their ribs and really like fucking up their life. And for me, it was all in right away. And I wrote it till the wheels fell off. And because of that, like I was just, I was a psycho. Like, I was straight up a psycho,

like really quickly because I was just doing blow and drinking and I was a garbage bag. I was doing whatever I could get my hands on. I just didn't really care. I made a decision. When I took that leave from college, that was a lot for me because then I was like, I don't know. Like I guess I identified then as like a college dropout. And I didn't really want to sit with that reality. And I made a decision to myself and I was like, I'm just going to get high the way I want to get high. You know, that's where I'm going to put all my eggs is in that basket because that's the only thing that kind of makes me feel good. And when you make a decision like that, it's just like you're obviously, it's not going to be good. You know, family. Burnt Bridges with family. Ended up in psych wards, detoxes, rehabs, homeless. Yeah. So it is pretty bad. yeah well thanks for sharing all of that what were your experiences with rehab like where did you go yeah so i went to uh they i would get down to florida a lot a lot of my like rehabs were unfortunately they were like psych wards um because i would just be crazy like i was i was all about stimulants um if somebody like had a xanax or like a percocet i wouldn't turn it down but like

it wouldn't get me like super excited like i would still take it but really i liked doing the stuff that made me energized, made me feel like I was, like, ecstatic. And because of that, I would be up for, like, five days straight and just totally out of my mind and just saying, like, the most insane stuff. And then I would end up in these psych wards, like, committed, like, involuntarily in these psych wards because I was just saying crazy things. And, you know, I wasn't allowed to leave until they cleared me, like, psychiatrically. So it was a lot of that.

and it was just like a lot of detoxes and rehabs around my hometown in New Jersey. I was probably in every single rehab and detox within like a 25 mile radius from my house. And it was it was like multiple, this took me multiple times. Like as I tell people a lot too, like on my platform, it's like you only need to be successful once. I was in and out like people look at me now like the ultramarathon running, the medical student stuff. But here I sit in medical school training to be a neurosurgeon. and you know people see that and they like automatically make these assumptions but i was in the trenches for two years trying to get clean like and failing and picking up a white chip and and laying

in bed with myself at night thinking like this shit is not going to work for me like i'd go to meetings and i'd see the guys with 15 years and i'd be like bro that's not me like i don't know if i have that in me do you know what i mean and i and it would really like bum me out but but the thing about this this process is you only have to be successful once. That's the biggest thing. Like, this only needs to work once. You only need the right people around you once. You only need to have that good conversation with that good dude once. And then your life is going to change. And it changes so fast, bro. It changes so fast and it's so inspiring. Like, there's a quote that says, your life actually changes overnight. It just takes 10 years to get to that night. That's sobriety for me, dude. I woke up

one day and I was in med school and it it's real like people talk about don't leave before the miracle happens like dude this shit is a miracle I should not be here I feel like I am living a life that I am not qualified for I was never smart I was never smart I was homeless I addiction runs in my family my dad struggling with it right now you know but but I'm here be only because of the sober community, the people that told me the truth about what I was struggling with, that educated me, that showed me in their own actions what I had to do. So beautiful, man, well said, well said. What I'm curious, a lot of stuff there, but curious about that too, what helped you stick around when nothing was working? Because I think it's really easy. Now, this is what I see

these days, younger people, right? I mean, I was fairly young when I got sober too. rehab for a year and psych war is like so relatable man jail whatever you know all that stuff right it's so relatable um to so many things but i see a lot of young people specifically and i had a conversation with somebody over the weekend man and um things are not going well for him but they seem to be under the impression that they've got time you know what i mean it's like i've got time to to figure it out, whether it's just drinking and it's not causing a ton of consequences right now. And for a lot of people when you're younger, you kind of have a little bit of a backstop, right? It's like, you know, you have a goalie with parents potentially. But once that's gone,

man, and people kind of get fed up and that's kind of gone, it's like, okay, this thing can speed up really quick. But what was it that kept you coming back to, you know, the meetings or or whatever it was, even though maybe you weren't essentially achieving the goal you wanted because I think that that's such a relatable story for so many. I mean, I could only, and I've been working with people and talking to people about this for 15 years, there's maybe two people out of the thousands that had worked the first time they tried. The rest had to keep going, keep showing up and keep trying, but that can also become extremely overwhelming because we sit back and think, well, you know, Tom's figured it out,

John's figured it out, so-and-so's figured it out, when's it's, when's it going to be my turn, it can be a little bit defeating. But what kept you coming back to stuff? Yeah, so I think that's a good question. So I think that a lot of it was the other people around me, you know, as much as it can seem discouraging when you see the guy in the back of the room with 15 years and you're like, oh, that just seems like such a long. long way to go. I found a lot of hope in those guys, you know, because I saw it in their eyes. Like, it wasn't even just like them saying they had 15 years. It was the way that they were acting. And it was the way that their facial expression looked on not only on Monday, but on Monday,

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Like, they were always excited. Like, if you're going to like the right, you know, we'll say 12 step. I mean, there's a lot of ways to get sober. I went to 12 step, dude. And if you're going to the right 12 step meetings, there's going to be. guys there that are just, they're just happy to be here. They're excited. You can see it in their eyes. It radiates off of their skin. You don't even need to talk to them. You know, you don't even need to sit next to them. You can see it. And by the grace of God, I was surrounded by people like that. And, you know, as discouraging as it sometimes is, when you're the guy with 30 days or can't even get 30 days and keep slipping up. But like, these guys, like, they weren't arrogant

about it. Like, they weren't like, they didn't hold it over my head. They didn't like, they didn't tell me to like shut up you know they were like open about it they wanted to share their experience with me they wanted to instill the hope in me they understood that i was going to be the next generation doing the same thing for the kid like me coming in in like 20 years you know when they were gone so i think a lot of it was that you know there was also the component of i was in a long-term structured living when i got sober so it was all around me bro like i was just i was enveloped in this um going to a ton of meetings i lived with people lived with people that were sober. The house I was at was intense. We were holding each other accountable.

We were always talking about recovery. We were always like trying to really like get this thing down. And you know, it's interesting too. The thing that you say about time, that like piques my interest, especially because my big thing online is like I really want to reach out to the younger generation. I think it's, it's very hard to get sober when you're young. I got sober when I was 20 and I see a lot of people struggling with that and the thing about having time like true i would i would tell that person i'd be like true you do have time but like that's like a scary thought because the longer you wait like the less and less opportunities you have if you're somebody that is lucky enough lucky enough like grateful i feel so grateful i was exposed to this kind of thing when i was 18 years old

because it put the idea in my mind of what my life could look like if I stayed sober at 18 when I still have all I'm not even like I'm not even a fifth into my life I have all this time to just let sobriety iterate that's the thing about sobriety it iterates there's no like finish line to this it just like it keeps growing its roots out and out and out and out the more that the more time you just let it sit with you. It just grows. That's why a lot of people talk about like one day at a time. Like sure, like one day at a time,

it's important to kind of like compartmentalize a little bit. But not a lot of people talk about like the long game of this. This is all delayed gratification at the end of the day. That's all this is. The rest of the world is participating in the instantly gratifying culture. But sobriety is all about the delayed gratification. Sobriety is not going to accumulate until like two, three, four, five years from that day you pick up the white.

but that's how it's supposed to be because that's that's the high that's the high that you want you want the high that's delayed because the high that is delayed is the high that's not going to go away a lot of people are stuck on the instantly gratifying high but the problem with that high is that it goes away when you wake up the next morning where it goes away when when life's difficulties hit you but sobriety iterates so sobriety just like totally can expand if you give it enough time to do that and that person that's 18 years old has the opportunity of the lifetime right right in front of them you know but I sit here six and a half years later and somebody who's like in med school like doing all this stuff and like I'm just I'm saying this because

this is my experience and I'm really just trying to put it out there for for the person like me who's 20 who's coming across this it's just you have no like you have no idea like what you're passing up if you're not going to try to like go go after this yeah I mean I I think that the biggest challenge I would guess at with, you know, people that are younger, too. And maybe something you went through. I know something I went through is that I always thought it would just kind of be a little bit of a phase. I mean, of course, I believe that I would wake up one day and everything would, you know, would change. And I mean, I see it for what it is now.

Like the reality is, I think for anybody getting into this, you can want to get and stay sober all you want. like you can want that more than anything else but without the proper tools structure routines i mean it's going to be really really tough in the support without the proper support you shared that that was huge for you right to yeah have other people who you know i think met you where you were at met you with where you were at and supported you with uh you know your journey and in everything you were going through when did i mean you mentioned in there too like before like when did the cocaine and stuff start for you like that was a big thing i mean did they kind of go together cocaine and drinking yeah they they went together i started drinking first and i started smoking weed and um i was introduced to cocaine

maybe like a couple months after i had started drinking and i decided to do it and immediately like that was my thing it did something for me that nothing i thought drinking was like doing a lot for me but when i did cocaine for the first time that was really doing a lot for me and that was my thing and You know, I would drink with it. It would kind of like evened you out, which was fun. Man, you put, man, I had a time too, but I don't know that I put that much thought into it. I had a streak to of doing cocaine. When I look back on that, that might have been like some of the, I don't know, man, the darkest times.

I just remember going to bars. I remember just always being and the memories are not like as clear as maybe they could be, but just sneaking off to the bathroom. I mean, I lost a few jobs. I mean, I had a few jobs working shift and have to. To go and do that. But yeah, that was a dark time, man, for me. Obviously, the money spent staying up all night, seeing the sunrise. Here in the bird, that was like the most depressing thing. Here in the birds start chirping in. I was like, oh, you know, and I would reflect in those moments, right? I would say, oh, man, I, you know, I promised myself, right? Tonight, I promised myself tonight that wasn't going to be the case. You know, but the whole thing, man, when I was going through this, I would ask myself this question sometimes. to like how did I get here man I grew up my my folks were good man um you know it wasn't a perfect childhood you know there were some some speed bumps um but overall I would say you know I had a pretty

good uh pretty good shot at doing well family loved me and and I was plugged into sports I was never really good at school I had a lot of stuff going on but I still very privileged in the opportunities that I had and I couldn't help myself but reflect back at some of those darkest moments like how did I um how in the heck did I end up here did you ever have those thoughts or no like how did I end up here in terms of getting yeah like substance use or just like how my life had kind of you know how I was living life yeah um you know a little bit I think that yeah I think I was kind of astounded by like the craziness of it all but you know I just I didn't care.

Like, I didn't care at the time. I just, I knew that that was what I wanted to do and I was just ready to, I was ready to literally take it to the end. Like, that was, that was my thing. Like, it had just, it had been such a profound experience for me from the first time I picked up to the point where I just wasn't even thinking about it, you know? And I think I'd more so have those thoughts sometimes when I would like, wake up in the psych ward, you know, waking up in the psych board the day after you've been on a five-day

bender and just being like, oh. Like, I can't believe I'm back in here. Like, I hated, I hated going to psych wards. That was, like, my demise. And I'd always promise myself, like, I'm not coming back here. Like, I'm not coming back here. Like, anybody who's ever been in one of those, they know, like, the paper scrubs you had on, like, none of the doors of locks on them. Everything's, like, fucking screwed to the ground so you can't, like, freak out and throw it at one of the staff members.

Yeah, yeah. And I hated it. And I always would be, like, I'd never come back to this place. Like, I promised myself. and I'd end up back in the place and how did that like how did you end up there was it the police that intervened was it was it was it was it was it parents was it a friend was it you yeah I was it was it was uh you know people calling the police on me um and then me you know being like just suicidal and just saying crazy stuff and some of it too was like detox is not

having beds and then you go to a you know you go to a psych ward to kind of keep you there until you go to rehab and um yeah Yeah. It all happened pretty quick for you too, man, which you shared earlier too, which I wanted to highlight too. I don't know if it was grateful that it all kind of picked up speed the way it did or something like that, but that you could get to that point to maybe provide you some clarity to where this was all headed or kind of force you or push you in the direction of seeing what recovery or what sobriety was all about. And like you mentioned there, the flip side of the coin, which, you know, we see a lot too is it not going all the way there, right? You kind of use that quote unquote functional word, right? Where things like the wheels are not falling off for a time. And I think the reality is for some people, too, the wheels might never fall off.

I mean, that can kind of be a thing to where at the end of, you know, somebody's life or whatever there, it could have been maybe looking back at sort of. of this, you know, maybe a 50% of, you know, what they could have really put out there, too, which is like, man, that that's kind of scary. But the fact that it all happens kind of quick for you, when you reflect back on this sort of, this chapter in your life, you know, I always think about for me, I never really liked who I was. You know, that was one thing.

I never liked what I saw in the mirror, you know, when I was using, drinking, whatever, and even before. and then I feel like once I got started it just became normal I normalized I surrounded myself with people who accepted it nobody really said any different if they did I would just kind of move on um what was it like for you I mean what was it when you sobered up what was what came to your mind that was like okay I've got to you know kind of get out of this place yeah it was tough man like my first year almost two years of actually being sober was arguably even harder than my years of active addiction um and i think you know i i don't know like what it is really

but i because i i meet people that like they they get sober like they stop drinking and then they they like they start getting better like i used to have those roommates in a rehab like my roommate in rehab one time like he'd be like seven days 14 days 30 days removed from the drink and he'd start like coming back together i'd be like damn like i must be really fucked up because i'm coming apart Like, I'm still coming apart. I'm 30 days out from the drink, but I'm still coming apart. Like, I'm not feeling like me. Like, you talk about, like, not like in who you were.

I woke up every day I hated myself for probably a year and a half of that first, you know, I'm six and a half years now. So, you know, good chunk of my sobriety was a lot of pain. And that's just the unfortunate circumstance of how this is for me. I don't know if it's like that for everybody. But, you know, if you scroll through my page and you look at a lot of my quotes, a lot of my quotes are dark. but a lot of people relate to that you know because i i think that there's this thing out there

right now online that like this is just soft and easy and teddy bears rainbows and it's not like for me it's not and for a lot of people that follow my page it's not like this is war this is struggling this is pain this is in my opinion it's god kind of using using your his you know this pain to mold you into who you're meant to become so a lot of that first year of recovery for me was really, really tough because the other thing about it, too, was like, I didn't have the experience with pain yet to know that I'm going through this for a reason. I was just in the victim mindset. I woke up every day as a victim back then because I couldn't see the bigger picture. I didn't have the faith yet. I couldn't see that in six years I would be putting on a

white coat going into med school. I couldn't see in six years that I'd be crossing the finish line after running a 100-mile race. Like, I couldn't see that. But now, now I can look back and understand what was happening there. I was being forged into the person that I am today. You talked about not liking who you were. The biggest thing that sobriety has allowed me to do is to be myself unapologetically. I am who I am 100%.

I'm at peak authenticity. I've never been this authentic before in my life. And it's such a good feeling. It is such a good feeling. But I only got there by suffering for that first year and just having to figure it out. Also having the right people around me, though. Also having the people that were comforting me while I was going through that and instilling the hope in me like, dude, this is part of the process.

Like I needed the people saying to me that if you take the suffering out of recovery, you take the recovery out of recovery. That's been my experience. I needed to feel the pain a little bit. I needed to really be molded. There's some emotions that are so rare that they can only be felt through that pain. They can only be felt through that difficulty. And what that does, though, for the addict and the alcoholic that eventually gets this thing,

is it makes everything else lighter. So what do I mean by that? I've ran 24 hours straight, 109 miles. And I can sit here and tell you every day out of the week, recovery is harder than doing that 100% of the time there has been there nothing in my life right i've had people die like i've had all this shit right and and i'm not even like you know i understand i'm like still in my 20s you know i still got a lot of difficulties going to come at me but i can sit here and confidently tell you that i i would bet money that my recut that would be the hardest thing

that i ever had to do in my whole entire life that's the level of difficult that it was at and as a result of that that's actually a superpower because now it's just everything else is lighter. When I took the risk to go into med school and people were telling me how hard it was, I was like, the hard part's over. You know what I mean? The hard part is over. This is easy. This is light work, bro. Like, I've already walked through it. I've already, like, I've identified who I am. And as a result, like, that's all you need. You just need that. And then the rest of it is just, it's light. And it's really, really cool when you get to that level. And I think that a lot people like at least the people that are in my DMs they relate to that message like they're like

dude i've tried to get it's just too tough bro it's just too tough and i see people that that do it and it's just like it's they can just do it easily and i'm like dude the amount like the amount of difficulty that it that it will take you to get sober is directly proportional to the amount of joy and purpose and fulfillment that you will experience when you walk through that door and actually do it Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that, man. Yeah, I mean, it is tough. And I've seen, you know, all different ways, right, for people or, you know, the, where on the spectrum, I guess they fall with everything too. And in how sort of digging out looks like and how digging out feels for everybody. But you having that opportunity to plug into that sober living for a year and get connected with other people and stay accountable in that sense. Like you said earlier, right, just well connected in the whole. sobriety thing i think i saw something on your instagram too man which i'm you know like a a big advocate in a sense for um you know the drinking wasn't exactly what was going on you know i think that's like you know i mean drinking is sort of you know for me anyway it was like my

portal um to another world but when i peeled back the layers you know rehab after rehab and session after session i started to realize that you know, the drinking and drug use and all that sort of stuff was, was not really at the root, but it sure as heck looks like it is because that's, when we're in it, it's like, that's causing all the problems, you know? And nothing was worse for me when I sobered up for a couple days here or there. It was terrifying. It was terrible.

I didn't know how to go in life. I mean, I wasn't used to that, how to work through emotions. My nervous system didn't have the capacity to really deal with a whole heck of life. a lot. I would get triggered to fight or flight. And I was so used to just pulling the eject button, you know, using or drinking or numbing or whatever. What was helpful for you after, you know, you leave the sober living and stuff to really make this thing keep going, right? Because, I mean, a lot of people, too, they share. They went to, you know, you go to rehab. You kind of do this. You do that. And all of those things, any intervention in a sense like that is really great.

But how do we continue it sort of in, you know, back to our daily life, right? It seems like a lot of people get hung up in that transition, right? Yeah, I mean, people message me all the time. Dirty day rehab. Yeah, you know, things are great. I rocked it. I, you know, did everything. And maybe three, four days later, man, could be back to how things were.

What was helpful for you during these transitions? Yeah, that's a good question. I was out west. That's where my long-term treatment was. and then I actually wanted to go back to college. So at the time, I had just stayed in this intensive, long-term, sober living, and I want to go back to the East Coast because I'm on the West Coast. I want to go back to the East Coast where my college is,

and I don't know anybody sober at this point, and I'm going back to a college university campus, right? So, you know, kind of a bad look. But, you know, one thing that I was taught very early on is to make sure I keep my sobriety number one under any in all circumstances. I was taught that if I don't have sobriety, then I don't have anything else. So therefore, despite what might be in front of me, I need to keep sobriety number one. And I kind of held on to that mindset, like, real tight, real tight.

Because once I got a year, like, I didn't want to lose it, you know. I didn't necessarily want to be sober when I was coming in. But once I got that year and I started walking through that pain and I started feeling the payoff, I was like, I don't want to lose like this work I put in. So I actually ended up checking myself into another sober living. I didn't want to do that. But I had people around me that were going to hold me accountable if I didn't. They were going to call, they were going to be like, bro, you shouldn't be doing that.

You shouldn't be going back to a college campus where you don't know a single person sober and expect that you're just going to stay sober. That doesn't sound like you're prioritizing your sobriety to me. So I checked myself into another sober living And it was an intense fucking sober living And it sucked bro Let me tell you what Because I'm like a year and some change sober

And I'm walking into this intense This new intense sober living After graduating a long term sober living I'm walking into a new one And they're taking my phone And treating me like I just got taken out of detox I'm like guys I'm like a year in some change sober They're like doesn't matter

Every client that comes in gets treated this way You're on blackout for 30 days you can't leave the house without a person that's like without an elder member in the house with you. I'm going to college classes. They took my cell phone. I don't have, I don't even have a cell phone. I'm a college student in a nursing program. I'm writing down my roommates or my classmates' phone numbers so that if I have questions on the homework, I can go to the house phone later that night and call them from like a house telephone and be like, hey, it's David. I need help with this. And like that might sound crazy to some people, but like that's the mindset.

We're talking about like drinking being the symptom, right? Drinking not really being the root cause. If that resonates with you, like I hate to be the one to break this to you, but like you got to start implementing those kinds of mindsets into your daily life if you want to achieve long term sobriety because it is not just going to happen. It is not just going to happen for you. At the time, I was very upset about this. I'm talking about this now. Like I was okay with it, trust me when I tell you, I was upset. I was paying tuition to go to school. My GPA was on the line. I was trying to be a nursing student. I'm already on bad terms in terms of being a college dropout. I was not like okay with this happening to me at the time. But as I look back, I'm like

that was necessary because it taught me a valuable lesson, valuable lesson, that sobriety was more important than my academic performance at school at that time. Sobriety was more important than me looking like an idiot because I didn't have a cell phone and having to ask people for their cell phone numbers and write them down on a notepad so I could go use the house phone from 1920 to give them a call later that day. That's the kind of mindset because it's not just going to work itself out, right? So I had that mindset. And there were other things too that I was taught at this long-term recovery house I was at like journaling and this is a huge thing like if I have a medical school test and I don't study for my test I am not going to pass no way I need to spend a decent

chunk of hours preparing for my test so I can pass right so here's the thing like about like the world right now like people study for a lot of things right like people study for school people study for business, people study how to grow a social media account, they're on YouTube trying to figure it out. But nobody really studies themselves, right? So this is where the journal comes into play. Like journaling is huge for me, man. You need to study yourself. You need to study your problems. You need to study how you feel. You need to study your emotions. You need to write this stuff down. This stuff is allowing you to study what you're really dealing with here. And as a result, you know, I've been doing that for like six years. And as a result, I have a pretty

good idea of exactly like what I want to do in my life like who I am I talk about like this peak authenticity a lot of that was built off of journaling every single day taking everything I was struggling with and bringing it to the journal because when you write it down you hear it back in a second language you're studying you're studying so this isn't just alcohol isn't our problem like we're talking about alcohol and drugs aren't our problem it's deeper than that so you know it takes a specific and I could talk all day I'm going to stop there but there's a lot of these tools that I use every single day that I've been using for years. Yeah.

Well, yeah, it's about being intentional. It's about being intentional and putting forth the effort, too, to make this a sustainable thing, right, for sobriety. Getting sober was never really my big obstacle, staying sober was. I could get sober, right? When the bank account dried up, when I was in jail, when I was in the hospital, when I was here. But staying sober was the big time obstacle, very relatable to.

When I first sobered up, I had no interest in getting sober. I wanted the problems and consequences to stop. Shortly thereafter, I realized, hey, let me connect the dots here. My substance use is causing, is part of the problems. It's all intertwined. So if I wanted to stop the problems, then the substance use would have to go. But I sure bit a lot of the same experience you had, man. It was really difficult because I didn't know who I was.

So I had like this identity crisis. Plus, I dug myself an extremely deep hole. My grandmother's 80th birthday party. We just celebrated it yesterday, and I shared it in the sober motivation community. My grandparents saved my ass at the end of things. I called them out of the blue, and I said I need help. And she was 65 at the time. My grandfather was even older, and they lived in Canada.

I lived in North Carolina. They drove down the next day. They picked me up in Carolina and brought me to, my last detox in Florida and um for a long time i felt guilty about that because they swiped three credit cards to the max um i didn't have any health insurance like i did i was sleeping on my brother's floor and to that point in time right yeah yeah i had to do whatever i took and you know it was so interesting man you talked about sort of the pain i remember they kind of presented me with two options i was really heavy into opiates heroin at the time

Xanax drinking everything and methadone whatever i could get out of my reality with and um they had two options man they had like sort of this medical thing where he'd go into a hospital he'd pay like 30 grand and they would like put you to sleep and rapidly detox you but it was like painless and whatever and or they had you know the traditional detox with medical support and suboxone whatever and i was like i want to do the other one because i want to remember it in some weird way. You know, I don't want an easy way out of this. But I think in life, we look for the easier, softer way naturally. A brain is designed to protect us. We enter a room. First thing we find are the exit signs, right? If shit hits the fan, I know where to go without even really realizing

it. But kind of putting ourselves in that uncomfortable spot provides a massive opportunity to grow, massive opportunity to grow when there's kind of no way out. You know, the wiggle room is is slim you know there's always a way out there's always a choice um you could leave you could just call it quits on stuff but i found putting myself in those positions to where it was going to hurt a little bit it was really going to hurt um is something that helped me build a solid foundation to where you know implementing those other um you know a lot of the other stuff you talked about too about um you know how is this whole thing going to work and what am i going to do differently realizing too that my life wasn't going to change with a snap of fingers. I had been

through so many interventions in like a five, six year, seven year, eight year span that I think I finally had the clarity that, dude, this was going to be hard work. And it was a lot of it was going to suck. You know, my bank count wasn't negative and I had no direction or no idea of where I was going. And it was all rough. But I just knew one thing, man. I had this early mentor I talk about sometimes on the podcast, his buddy Andy of mine. And I always knew it would get better, man. I didn't believe it all the time, but I always knew if I just put one foot in front of the other, it looked really bad at times.

I had absolutely no idea where I was headed, but I just knew that if I put one foot in front of the other, like I would get somewhere other than where I was and anything was better than where I was, you know, that hopeless state of mind, man. you just feel like what's the point kind of going anymore? I had those thoughts a lot. What was the point of even carrying on with where I was at? Yeah, yeah. I relate to everything that you said.

And at the time, it's like I didn't realize why I needed to go through the pain. It bugged me a lot because I didn't get it. And I was in like that victim mindset a little bit with it. And now I look for situations where that kind of resurfaces. like the ultramarathons. The journey of completing an ultramarathon is so similar to the journey of getting sober. And that's a big reason why I do it

because I need to be reminded of the pain. You know, I need to put myself back in that to really, like, push myself and to feel things that I need to feel, you know? And it's just every time I run one of those and it gets tough, I think about recovery. And I think about that journey and what that's,

given to me and i really try not to forget like what what pain is done for me today um so but yeah man related to everything you said yeah that's kind of what gets things started man i mean that's i think that's where everybody's going to get eventually you know i mean is the pain going to sort tip the scales to sort of maybe the pleasure or the little bit of pleasure that's left at the end for drinking when i first started drinking it was great man it was getting a lot out of it where It brought a lot of weird value to my life. That was cool. I was connected.

But with time, that faded. And with time, it was no longer doing that. And things started to swing the other direction, where it was more problems than it was the escape. The tolerance builds, everything else. And it just became overall disastrous. I lost myself along the way. Heading towards wrapping up here, David, thank you so much for jumping on and sharing your story with this, man. What are your thoughts?

I mean, six and a half years. later since you got sober what are your thoughts man if you wrapped it up in a couple minutes i just think that not drinking has nothing to do with not drinking um i think that this is so much more than just staying sober till midnight this has given me a life that i am still six years later feel unqualified to live i get to walk into this big giant hospital every day and learn about the human body learn about addiction i get to connect with people like you and uh you know this isn't necessarily what I thought that I wanted or what I thought that I needed. But this has done so much more for me. We're talking about the pain and we're talking about the struggles of getting

to this point. And don't get me wrong, there's still things in my life that I'm still dealing with that still bring up pain in my life. But like the thing about like pain and the thing about sobriety is, is it it always does more for you than you do for it. It just takes a little bit of time to get there. So yeah, I am definitely like super grateful for this. I can talk about it forever. It's brought so much good into my life, not even just me, but my family is directly affected by this. And, you know, they see the change and they see what this has done for me and bringing God into my life and all that is a big part of my story as well. And I'm very grateful to be able to, you know, share this kind of message and to live a sober life.

Yeah, beautiful, man. One last thing for you. What's something you know now that you feel might have helped you out back then? that I was sitting on a gold mine of a brain. I just needed to figure out how to use it. The alcoholic brain, in my opinion, is one of the most powerful things that was ever created. You have the ability to obsess, to feel deeply, to sacrifice for what you truly feel needs to be done. If you can figure out how to wield your addictive personality in a way that doesn't serve you, and this is the key here, but serves the world you will live a life of purpose and fulfillment and joy and of

inner contentness there's a lot of negative things that get said to you when you're first coming into treatment first trying to get sober about you know your condition and your addictiveness and you're upset the word obsession was thrown on me a lot too like that even before I started drinking that was like I was always obsessed with stuff and that was always like had like this negative connotation to it yeah but uh nobody ever really like told me that uh this this was actually going to be such a great thing and this was going to turn into my greatest asset. Yeah. So switching things over to, you know, giving back and helping others, you know, using that locked in mode.

Yeah. To make it happen. Very relatable, man. I'm like that with everything, dude. Locked in, man. Just stay focused. But yeah, it's tough, man, because you get a lot of feedback. At least I did over the years, man.

I honestly couldn't even remember if I ever passed a test in my entire life. like that that's like the true i mean i remember i walked out of exams in high school to play basketball you know that was more important i mean impulsively that was more important to connect with my buddies to to play basketball than to finish an exam you know and pencil and all this stuff and um i mean that's just sort of a big part of you know why i ended up on the path i did i just felt like uh so much different than everybody else they seemed to value school i never read a book I never had any interest I had absolutely nothing I couldn't and it wasn't about you know and I'm learning more about ADHD with my daughter and stuff like that but it wasn't

about um not being motivated you know it was just a overall lack of interest but things I'm interested in I can lock in on no problem like I can do I can spend 10 hours straight where um it's something that that I have interest in too so yeah I love that perspective and in point on things well great stuff man thanks for jumping on any last thoughts adding to that last thought i think that sobriety kind of allowed me to see what actually caught my interest you know like i was i didn't know who i was when i was drinking and getting high i didn't know who i was in that first couple years of sobriety either and it was kind of like the trial-on-air process of just feeling all the things and walking through the pain and trudging and trudging and trying stuff out that didn't work and then eventually i landed on ideas that

were like truly and authentically me, the idea of training to run and the idea of going back to college. And I used to dream about like this weird dream I had that would keep, that would like give me so much peace when I was struggling trying to get to sleep at night. And those like first six months, I would just dream about being in a, uh, being in a college library and just studying for a couple hours with like a nice hot cup of coffee. It just bring me so much peace, bro. And, and, you know, here I am like, can't get away from library.

So, um, now you're living. in one that's what it is too man just the piece of sobriety dude i never had that it was it was constant turmoil chaos and everything you know internally and externally and that's like the beautiful thing one of the most beautiful things i enjoy about it is the the piece of um you know just going to bed after a long day or whatever it is just knowing that i'm not looking for anybody and nobody's looking for me man yeah things are pretty good and i wake up excited so much dude and like there were times where I was wishing I wasn't going to wake up and today I wake up like static like I love what I do like I love building the social platform I love going to school like you know but yeah it's

it's such a better way to live man yeah beautiful thanks again thank you yeah really grateful to hop on here and love what you're doing with your Instagram and stuff like that and great to finally connect well there it is another incredible episode here on the podcast huge shout out to David incredible work comes such a long way from how things used to be. I'll drop David's Instagram contact down to the show notes below. And if you haven't left a review on Apple or Spotify, I really have no idea what you're waiting for. Take a second out of your day.

Please drop a review. It lets people know when they're checking out all of the sorority shows, then maybe they should give ours a listen. Thank you as always, and I'll see you on the next one.