Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Quitting Drinking Saved My Life | Stephanie’s Sobriety Story

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Stephanie never thought she had a serious drinking problem. She was successful, working in healthcare, maintaining relationships, and doing everything she could to keep life together on the outside. But behind closed doors, alcohol slowly became the way she coped with anxiety, depression, grief, loneliness, and major life changes.What started as gray area drinking eventually turned into hiding alcohol, drinking alone in parking lots, blackouts, hospital visits, rehab, and feeling completely trapped inside her own mind.In this episode, Stephanie shares her powerful sobriety story, including growing up around alcohol, trying to moderate her drinking, relapsing after rehab, and the heartbreaking moment her father stayed beside her through withdrawal without judgment. She also opens up about how sober community and connection finally helped her stop fighting alone.This conversation is for anyone questioning their relationship with alcohol, struggling to quit drinking, battling anxiety tied to alcohol use, or wondering if life without drinking can actually get better.In this episode:Gray area drinkingAlcohol addiction and recoveryAnxiety, depression, and alcoholRehab and relapseLearning how to cope without alcoholThe progression of drinking over timeSober community and connectionRebuilding life through sobrietyIf you’re trying to quit drinking or stay sober, this episode will remind you that recovery is possible — even when things feel hopeless.Stephanie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steph_kan_do_this/Sober Motivation Community: https://sobermotivation.mn.co/Sober Motivation Website: https://www.sobermotivation.comSupport the Podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivationContact me anytime: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey everyone, Brad here, and I need your help. The platforms have let me know that over 60% of you that listen to the show regularly do not follow the podcast wherever you listen, Apple, Spotify, and so on. I put countless hours into this podcast over the last three years. Interviewing people, setting it up, doing the editing. In a vast majority of it, I covered the bill with no sponsorships. This is something you can do for free that can help these sorts of, stories reach more people, and it would mean the world to me. Wherever you listen, be sure to follow

the show. Thank you so much, and now let's get into it. My dad got me in his house, and he basically locked me in a bedroom, and he just laid with me. He just held my hand and made sure I didn't go anywhere without him for like three days, and didn't ask questions. He didn't shame me. He just was there. He's been my hero my whole life, my dad. But that really was like, probably, so heartbreaking for him, but like he didn't know that he was doing the best thing for me by just like being that person that I needed to like just let me go through coming off of all this alcohol in some way sweating and crying and begging him to let me have a beer. She thought alcohol was helping her cope with divorce, depression, anxiety and starting over.

But eventually it became the thing that destroyed her from the inside out. After years of gray area drinking that slowly, turned darker. Stephanie found herself drinking alone in parking lots, hiding alcohol, ending up in the hospital, and wondering if she even wanted to keep going. In this episode, she shares the truth about how alcohol impacted her life and what changed on the way down. And this is Stephanie's story on the Supermotivation podcast. Thank you guys for listening. If you're able to connect with anything from this episode, don't forget to drop it down in the comments below. And be sure to subscribe to the channel wherever you enjoy the podcast. Now let's get

to Stephanie's story. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Stephanie with us. Stephanie. How are you? I'm great. How are you, Brad? Yeah, I'm good. Happy to be here. Happy to connect with you and share your story. So what was it like for you growing up? I grew up in Upper Michigan, which is the top part of the state of Michigan connected by the McAnough Bridge with the lower part that everyone else recognizes as Michigan. And it's very beautiful, but very secluded. I was born in 1985, and my parents divorced when I was two. And I mainly grew up with my dad.

My dad was single for most of my childhood up until I was 17. He remarried then. My mom remarried when I was five, and I had split custody with my parents, but I mainly grew up with my dad. So my sister and I would go between my, mom and dad when she had her days off. I have one real sister. I say real sister, but one real sister and a whole bunch of step-siblings. My dad was remarried once and my mom was remarried once, but they all had kids from their previous marriages, so a very large, like, split family, basically. My dad didn't, he didn't drink in our house. He drank, unlike Friday nights after a long week of work,

He never had alcohol in our house, and he never really, like, came home and expressed, like, actions that he had been drinking. At my mom's house was different. They liked to drink beer. The bottom half of our fridge was always full of either stroze or bushlight. But there was no room for, like, kid drinks, like soda. So I grew up drinking warm, so it was always on the floor next to the fridge because there wasn't any room in there for... And her, my mom's family, she has five brothers and sisters. So aunts and uncles, they all live in close proximity to my family and my grandparents.

And they were all social, pretty heavy drinkers. Like every holiday, Christmas, barbecue, graduation, celebration, funeral. It was always pretty heavy with the, the presence of alcohol. So I grew up kind of thinking that was normal. I remember the first drink I ever made my grandpa. He liked to drink high balls. That was always his nightly thing. And I would watch him mix his whiskey. And I was really little. And I remember being like, Grandpa, I want to make you a drink. And so he let me go do that. And I screwed it up big time. I think I mixed it all whiskey and like a little splash of soda. And that was the big joke when

I was little because he still drank it. But it was really bad. But I was so proud of myself that I could be like the little bartender or like run for everyone's beer. And looking back, I think, like, you know, you think about all those little planted seeds in your life and how they affect you later. And that was definitely just being around it all the time and having it normalized. I think planted a lot of seeds in me. So growing up into an adult, I was just thought that was normal, you know, always having it around. not having alcohol in the presence of all life's things was not normal to me. My first hangover, I remember, was at my stepsister's wedding in 2000.

It was this fancy wedding near Chicago, and they gave away all these little tiny bottles of wine. I think it was like Sutterholm or something. But there were red ones and there were white ones, and they were on all the tables. And it's like, it seemed like people weren't really drinking them or didn't want them, but I, as a 15-year-old, just started running around, like, collecting ones that people weren't drinking. And I remember bringing them back to the hotel room with my stepbrother and waking up the next morning with, like, the worst headache. And, like, oh, my God, that was, but also remembering it was, like, something sneaky and something I wasn't supposed to do and, like, something fun. But that was the first hangover I remember having when I was 15.

Yeah. And in high school, I didn't drink, and I don't remember drinking being like something that my class did. Marijuana was kind of a big substance when I was in high school, but I didn't really partake in that either. I was born with a heart defect. So I did spend a lot of time in the hospital from when I was first born to up until about 12. I had a lot of different procedures done to help correct that. So growing up, I didn't play sports. And I was, I just remembered being, you know, really wary of drugs.

Drugs were like, I have this heart condition so I can't, you know, I would never think of doing anything, any kind of substances. But alcohol wasn't considered a substance in my head. Like that was, that was separate from all of the other drugs that were possible for me to take. So in my head, I always thought like, I will always stay. away from illegal drugs because, you know, I don't know what could happen to me in my condition. But alcohol was on a different level. So it never, that never, you know, that won't affect me. But all these other drugs will. So I was a good student in high school and I got a good GPA. My dad rewarded that kind of behavior. So I always tried to do my best to like get good grades.

and I liked science and medicine. When I graduated high school, I went to a community college for three years, not really knowing what I wanted to do. And the community college was close. And you went to college when you graduated high school. I didn't have any other aspirations. I just knew I had to keep going to school. First person to go to college in my family. So my parents didn't have a good grasp on how to, like, navigate that with me.

They were just kind of like, Godspeed, Brave Soldier, have fun. You know, like, now I see parents who take their kids and go to all the tours of college and help them fill out applications. And that's really cool that, like, that just wasn't a reality for me because my parents didn't really know how to do that. And that's fine. I mean, I made it through. Eventually, I moved to a town north of where I grew up, Marquette, Michigan, which has the

University, Northern Michigan University is the college there. And I studied surgical technology, which is like kind of a degree of nursing, except that my job is just to assist in different surgical procedures. And I moved there with my college boyfriend, who I eventually ended up marrying. It took a long time. I really wanted to like right out of the gate, get married. And I don't know why being married was like an accomplishment. That was a something I needed to do. I had to have the big wedding and the big party and turns out they're really expensive. So it took a long time to get to that point. But that being said, there was a lot of parties that we went to. There was, every weekend was, you know, party, party, party. And you worked

out when you weren't in school and any extra money we had left was always going to like food and do we have enough money for beer? Do we have enough money for the parties? Do we have enough money to go out? That was always a priority. And all of our friends drank, all of our social circles, everybody,

it was just a constant in our life. Any extracurricular activity was revolved around alcohol and drinking. I hear hindsight's 2020 a lot on these episodes I listen to or different podcasts I listen to and

it's when you're in that situation, you never think like, maybe I should change this up or maybe I should do something a little different, find different hobbies or find different activities because in the moment you're having fun and that's what everyone else is doing. And, you know, if it's not a problem, if it's not causing any issues, why would you change your lifestyle? So for a long, long time, I was, I think now I can say I consider myself like a gray area. a drinker. I wasn't someone who would just take it or leave it. I always took it. But I never let it get out of hand. For a long time, I never let it get out of hand. It wasn't like affecting

anything. Just wondering, too, yeah, you've listened to a lot of the stories here on the podcast. I mean, that is a common trend through kind of high school, college. There's no like big, massive red flags. Things are going okay. I mean, I think that's another part of the human condition, too, is we can convince ourselves that things are going. good. Imagine if we, you know, everything that potentially could go wrong was at the front of our mind all the time, right? Of like a line coming right on the corner. So we do a good job to protect ourselves that things aren't, you know, terribly bad. But growing up around a lot of drinking, too, like you shared, is kind of planted this seed or many seeds of, you know, drinking is just

really, really a normal thing. Yeah, it was normal. And, you know, I didn't, know anybody who couldn't control it. I didn't know anybody who had massive effects, like negative effects on their life from it. So if you don't see it, it doesn't exist, right? I know that when I met my ex-husband's family, he has a very large family. And they're all, I mean, I decided a long time ago I could not keep up with them. Anytime we went up, went to some sort of gathering or some sort of camping trip or something, family reunion. Like, it took me a couple tries, but I decided I can't keep up with these people drinking. They are professionals.

And one of those instances was they were talking about one of the aunts and uncles that I hadn't met. And I was like, oh, you know, where are they? And they said, well, they don't come because they're alcoholics. And I was like, well, why wouldn't they come? Well, because they just can't be in this environment. And that was it. No one said anything else. No one said, you know, but I was just like, I've never met anybody who, you know, what, what is that like where you just have to not show up to these really fun things?

Because you can't control yourself. Like, I wonder what that's like. I just thought that was, I remember thinking that was really interesting, like, will I ever meet these people? Because they just won't come around. And everyone had great things to say about them. There was no animosity. So I just felt bad for them. I felt bad that they just couldn't control themselves enough to come to like this family event.

And now I think like, oh, I totally get it. I totally get it. Like at the time, I couldn't understand it. But now it's like, oh, yeah, I get it. Ex-father-in-law as well, he is a recovering alcoholic. And that was something he said to me too once he said, you know, you're never recovered. you're always recovering. And that was something I didn't understand either.

I'm like, well, you haven't had a drink since 1988. How can you not be cured? You know, he's like, you're never cured. And he didn't really talk to me a lot about it. And he was around us a lot when we were drinking. And he would always pick us up, you know, if we needed a ride. He was always there. But he never, ever succumbed to the pressure that was around him constantly.

You know what I just thought. I always remember being like, wow, that's, you must have had it bad. You must have really hit a rock bottom to be able to dig yourself out and not touch it anymore. You know, you would touch the fence enough times where you learned your lesson. And again, that's something I see now that it just takes so much work. And I hear the word willpower thrown around a lot. But it's like, I think, at different level than that even when you're recovering for the rest of your life with this disease that you make a lot of life changes and a lot of different. choices for yourself to get to the point where, you know, you could have been in his shoes

where at the time, I just don't understand, you know, how you could have gotten so bad that you had to change what you're doing now. And that didn't float around in my brain for a lot either. I was just like, well, that's them and that's not me. So that's okay. When I was 25, so 2010, I had to have another heart procedure done. And this was a turning point in my drinking because my doctor said, like, you have two options, and one option means you're good to go. You have the surgery, and it's fixed, and we don't have to worry about you anymore, but you have to be on this crazy blood thinner.

Or option two is you basically just you're fixing the problem for a little bit, but later on down the road, you'll have to fix it again. And nobody wants to keep having these surgeries. Nobody wants to keep doing this. So I had a choice to make you either be on these blood thinners forever and we'll never see again or see again in 15 years. And part of being on the blood thinner part was you can't drink alcohol anymore. You can't have babies and drink alcohol. So at 25 I was like kind of seated with this decision I had to make a very quick decision.

It was like a three day. In three days you're going to have to figure this out. And the baby part wasn't the big, you know, kicker for me. My partner at the time, my boyfriend who became my husband, wasn't interested in kids. I haven't really been a huge person in favor of having kids myself. It never really, like, was something I was passionate about. But the alcohol was like, that was the kicker. That was when I was like, oh, my God, I can't have champagne in my wedding.

I can't have, you know, drinks while I'm camping. I can't celebrate Christmas or weddings or graduations. I can't do anything. What am I going to do with myself if I can't drink? Yeah, I mean, it's embarrassing now to admit that that went through my head, and that was a big decision maker for me. But that's the course I went, and I had the surgery. And having that surgery allowed me to become really active.

I started running. I started going to the gym because, I kind of had this new healthier version of myself that was able to do these things that I couldn't do before. That was a positive part of that. I became very active. I ran a lot of half marathons. Never ran a full marathon. I couldn't get myself to do that.

That's just crazy. And to the people who can do it, you're awesome. But I tried, I tried. But one thing that always ended my races, almost every one of them was like, at the end of the race. race, you get a beer. You know, you stop at a brewery. It was always like a reward. And so that was like even incorporating alcohol into parts of my life that really don't have any business involving alcohol. I somehow always got it in there. And so, yeah, I was a gray area drinker, I think, for a very good portion of my life, probably from the time I could start drinking to about,

I would say like 35 years old. I got when I was 27 so two years after my surgery I got married and then it just was live in life. I had a house with my husband. I had a good job at the hospital near our house. We didn't have kids. I've had dogs my whole adult life. I'm a big dog person. For a long time I felt just kind of like riding the wave, you know, just not I didn't have a lot of ambitious dreams. I didn't have a lot of goals, but I just lived and drank and worked. And that was kind of it. And at a certain point, it started to wear on me. Like, I really felt, you know, they say you have like a midlife crisis sometimes, like, around your 30s and 40s. Um, yeah. And I know I remember thinking, like, I had a lot of people pass away in my life in that, like, a 10 year span from like

27 to 37, it's like every single year I was going to a funeral for someone that was close to me, if not once but twice a year. My stepdad passed away when I was 27, and he influenced me in ways that I can't even explain. He was such a huge part in my life, and it was really sad when he passed, and we all drank. We all drank when he passed. And every time someone passed away, the only way to cope with it was to be at their funeral and cheersing them in some way with a beverage. And seeing, you know, looking back now, I realized, like, I didn't have any coping mechanisms that I knew of other than alcohol. And that

really caught up with me. You know, so nothing spectacular happened in the gray area drinking of my life. I never got a DUI. I never got hurt or hurt anybody else. I never lost my job. I never called in sick because of drinking. Did I go hung over all the time? A lot of times, yes. do you do stupid stuff? You know, when I, the, the drinking progressively got like a little heavier, a little longer stretches of it. It's just this graph that just goes like this to me in my head. Like, it starts out and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, you know, taller and then eventually it falls off the cliff. And I would say, you know, everyone says COVID is a big turning point for them. But I don't remember COVID creating a,

an issue with my drinking being any worse than it was before COVID started. It didn't affect my job as much as affected others. I still had to work as an essential person. Things that my place of employment did start to change after COVID, which kind of spun me into like, maybe I should try something different. Maybe I should have a different profession. So I did end up changing jobs. It was kind of like a parallel move from being a surgical tech to this. other job, I still worked in the operating room, but I worked for a company that did tissue procurement, which is when you, on your driver's license, you can sign up to be like an organ donor. And when you do that, you're on a list. So like, if you pass away, you become on, you're on

this list for organs and tissue. And my department was tissue. And it's a, it's a graphic job. You know, you are handling deceased people and you're taking. all of their essential tissues and then putting it back together. They sold the job as like, it paid really well. It gave you really good benefits. It had really good health insurance. And it kind of gave you this freedom. We were a little ambiguous to like our lifestyle. We didn't have a routine. We didn't have a nine to five. It was sometimes we worked and sometimes we didn't, but we got paid salary to do it. And there were months where we didn't do anything. But then there were months where we were so busy we didn't know what to do with ourselves. And I lost my sense

of routine after I got that job in 2021. I didn't have the consistency of hours at a place of employment. I kind of lost what do I do with my hands? What do I do with myself? How do I spend my free time? Do I have free time? Do I, you know, and then when I'm doing the work, it's a very kind of sad, like you're diving into people's medical charts and how they died and, like, working with their families and their mourning. And it was just very, in hindsight, very depressing. And I depressed. And the only thing I knew to help numb that feeling was to drink more. So I think in 2021 is when my drinking became the end of the rope for me. It got, you know, my mental health was struggling.

I was drinking more. My marriage was struggling. And eventually my marriage started to end. And in 2022 is when I filed for divorce. And, you know, we didn't have enough money to get lawyers and we didn't have kids. So we didn't really need that part of it. We just kind of navigated the separation together but separate. and I lived in our shared house for almost 10 months during that process.

So we have a tiny house we're trying to live separately and pretend like, you know, we're strangers in this tiny little area and I'm still working with this tissue company. And I think I was blackout drunk eight out of those 10 months. I mean, I did so many things that I don't remember because I would just start drinking on days, even when I was working on call, just hoping that I wouldn't get called in. And at some point, I didn't care. I just didn't care if I got called in. I missed some days of work. I called in sick. So yeah, that was a pretty dark time. And in that time, I also met someone else who is now my husband. So I got remand. And after my, I mean, in the month of April where my divorce was finalized in

23, I moved, got a new job, and left everybody and got a divorce. Like, the month of April was a huge pivot of change for me. And the whole time I was thinking, like, I can do this. I can do this. People do this all the time. People get divorced all the time. People move all the time. Like, I'm no different. Like, I'm not going to sit here and feel sorry for myself. But the only thing I knew how to take care of the feelings that I was having was to drink. And He knew me as some, he had met me drinking. He had met me at my worst and still liked me. So I thought that's really big of him.

That's crazy that he met like the absolute worst version of me and still wanted to hang out with me. So I moved to Wisconsin in 2023 and that was about five hours from where I used to live. And I was 38 years old. And I had never lived that far away ever. Like I'd always lived within 45 minutes and my whole family. and now I'm just like gone and I don't know anybody I don't I'm getting a brand new job

I don't know this town I don't know this area it was like so much to take in and of course we all know Wisconsin is like the state that drinks the most so that's definitely not going to help if I thought I had a drinking problem

I definitely didn't help myself by moving to the place where that's promoted so I did pretty good the first couple months I was here. I, you know, I was on orientation for my new job. I showed up to work. I was still, you know, drinking heavily. My partner at the time, he made, did the best he could to make me comfortable, to make sure I had everything I needed to like, you know, it was a lifestyle change for him and a huge one for me. And he, he really felt like he

needed to like make me as comfortable as possible, which I like to the state totally appreciate. But I inside, you know, I wanted to show him like how appreciative I was and how happy I was. But inside I was like so sad. I had left everything I had known. I'd left my state. I'd left my home. I'd left my family. And I just didn't know what to do with that. And so I was drinking way more than he probably ever realized. I would leave my job at three and I would go to the store and get these little boxes of wine they sell in the gas station of the stores. They say they have like three and a half glasses in them and I would drink the whole thing before I got to my house, which is about 17 miles away.

And I couldn't wait every single day until I could get to the store. And I would drink at home too. So like that was just my starter. At the end of, you know, I would get home and I would already be three and a half glasses of wine in before I'd say hi to them after a long day of work. and every day thinking like when I'd wake up with a hangover or have this crippling anxiety that I'd say like this is it this has got to be it you got to get a handle on this and um I remember you know eventually it just led into more drinking and as soon as I was off orientation three months after I started I could call in sick then so there were days I would call in sick and but I couldn't go to my home because you know, if I went home, like, they would know that there, or were you sick? But I wasn't really sick. I just didn't want to be at work and I didn't want to be at home. I just wanted to be by myself

in a car in the parking garage of work. And I would go, sometimes I'd go to the gas station that was near my job and just get whatever it was they had there to drink. And I didn't have a plan. I didn't have, I would just sit there and drink alone in my car on the days that I called and sick. And I was so sad and didn't know what to do with myself. And I mean, that's, happened every day. It didn't happen often, but it happened enough where, you know, my, my boss was like, hey, I've called in sick a couple times since you were off orientation. That's, you know, we have a policy. And I was like, yes, I know, I'm sorry. I'm just like, trying to navigate, you know, like new life and stuff. And sometimes things get hard.

She's like, I understand, you know. And that fall in 2023, I went to a Packer game with some friends and I had gotten really drunk and fell and hit my face. And I got brought to the hospital. I don't remember anything. I almost lost my front teeth. I had a concussion. I had this face that looked for weeks. It looked like I got beat up.

And I remember that being like the deciding factor in my drinking. It was like, this is out of control. But I was so sad and so depressed at that point. But anytime I felt anything, I was just like, I got, I got to have a drink. I got to have a drink. I can't deal with any of these feelings. Like, and there was, I just didn't see a way out of it. And my, um, partner started to notice like, boy, this is, there's something wrong here.

And, um, we got engaged that December. Um, and, you know, shortly after getting engaged, but you should be really happy and it should really, it should fulfill you and you should be celebrating. I was still drinking all the time and hiding it and lying about it and it was just getting worse and worse and worse. And finally it was like probably three weeks after we got engaged. I came home from work and I said, I don't want to be here anymore. And it was wild to me that I thought I don't want to be here anymore because I have this new beautiful life with this beautiful person. and he wants to marry me and I don't want to exist.

And that's when I went to the hospital for the first time because of, you know, suicidal intentions and drinking issues. They got me a therapist. They got me an antidepressant. They didn't really say a lot about being on an antidepressant and drinking. And, you know, I was still not at a place where I decided, like, I have to stop this drinking. I didn't have any tools to teach me how to cope with things that didn't involve alcohol. So, you know, there were periods of time where I wasn't drinking, but I was still really sad. And so I'd start drinking again.

And this went on for a couple more months. And it was May of 2024, where it finally came to a head again. And my fiancé was like, I can't do this anymore. Like, he took all the alcohol out of our house. He has a pretty big collection of bourbon in our basement. He put a camera in the basement because he knew I was going down there and sneaking things. Like, I was never a person that liked mixed drinks or, you know, I was a craft beer for a person for a long time. But like wine was my, usually my drink of choice for a long time.

But at the end of my drinking, it was anything I could get my hands on. Like, I would pull shots out of bottles of vodka, bourbon, anything that was open, anything that was open, anything that, that, was in my reach. Like, and it was just awful and I just can't like even think about being that person again is like it kind of makes me sick to my stomach. But I needed it. I needed it. It wasn't, and I don't think it was a physical addiction. I think it was a mental, like chemical mental addiction that I had to it. My blood work was fine. Like I had gone to the doctor and they didn't have any big red flags for me. And any time I had tried to come down off alcohol, the crippling anxiety that I would feel

was just, it was I just couldn't bear it. And the only thing I knew to get rid of it was to take another drink. And I would take one drink and I think that was fine. Like I can, you know, get through my day. But it would, it would wear off. It would wear off. And I would like, oh my God, I need some more. I need some more.

And it went on like that for, like I said, from 20. probably end of 2020 to fall of 24. So two straight years is when I was really like dependent mentally on alcohol. Like my anxiety and depression couldn't go without it. And I tried to stay sober for a couple months in the summer of 2024 after he had taken all the alcohol out of the house. And he bought a breathalyzer and he put a camera in the basement. And these were all things I agreed to as well. because I thought I need something to help me stop doing this.

It lasted about three months, and I went back to drinking one day, and again, we came to a head, and he was like, I can't do this anymore. Like, we got to fix this. And I said, I will moderate this. Like, I'm not going to be told as an adult that I can't drink anymore. This is ridiculous. So he just begrudgingly said, you know, do what you want to do, I guess. And so I, after like about three months,

of sobriety, I went back to drinking and in about three weeks it took me to get right back to where I ended it. And it was worse. It was worse than it was. My depression and anxiety was worse. And finally, the fall of 2024, I hit a rock bottom. I went home back to Michigan for a trip that I wanted to take camping with friends and something. just snapped in me and the only thing I did that whole time was drink and drink and drink and drink. And I hid in my friend's basements and I would go to their house and I would just lock myself in whatever bedroom that was available. And everybody up there from where I used to live was like, what is going on? Like they didn't know that I was struggling with this. The only person that really

knew that I was struggling this hard was my fiance. Like, and it's not that I hit it well. It's just that, you know, if you're out of sight, you're out of mind sort of thing. And I was way out of sight. And when I was with my friends and drinking like that, you know, they finally picked me up and helped me, brought me to my family, my dad. And my dad was like, what is going on? Like, what is happening? And I was just so out of it. For five days, I drank anything I could get my hands on. And there was no part of me that was like trying to end my life, but there was no part of that was thinking I'll ever get out of it. I'll never. I have to keep drinking.

I have to keep this alcohol on board. And I'll figure it out. Someday I will figure this out, but for right now, that's all I'm going to do. And he would just sit there with me. And it was like horrible that I put him through that, but it was just amazing that he sat. He did go through that with me because, like, I don't know as a parent that has to be awful to watch your kid,

you know, go through something you don't even realize it's happening to them. So we got me back to Wisconsin. I went back to work that Monday. I told my boss immediately that I have to have time off. I am an alcoholic and I need to go to rehab. And she was like, okay, here's the papers. We'll sign you off.

We'll get your FMLA. We'll, you know, she was so helpful. That day I sat in the cafeteria and I called all the numbers I was supposed to call. all. I talked to all the people I was supposed to talk to. I actually talked to my financial advisor who took care of all like the retirement of places that I had worked at previous. And I said, I need $30,000 for rehab. And he was like, okay, here it is. Like, didn't ask questions. He just like, you know, he'd always help me like, that's not a good trade or maybe we should do this or you got to keep, don't touch this, don't do this. And he didn't. And he told me after that.

He's like, I used to be a psychologist before I decided to be a financial advisor. And he goes, I knew that there was something wrong with you and I knew I had to help you. And, you know, financial, you know, advice, bad. Don't take money out of your retirement to do this. But your mental health and your well-being good. So I will give you all the money you need out of your account to help you through this. And I just thought, like, he was, again, somebody that I was like, oh, my God, this man's amazing. I'm so happy and lucky to have him in my corner right now.

So yeah, I went to a place called Rogers Behavioral Health for five weeks. I was only supposed to go for four, but I asked to stay for another week because I was just so scared to go back into the real world. And this was October of 2024. And when I got there, the therapist was like, you have zero coping skills. And I was like, okay, I don't know what that means. And he goes, you don't know how to cope with anything. and the only thing you know how to do is drink. And I was like, well, I am good at that, I will say.

But he was behind. He helped me, you know, they teach you all of the things that being an addict involves, you know. And a lot of it you feel is very obvious and some of it is not so obvious. But it was a very good program. I was very scared to go because I just pictured like a dark basement with folding chairs and depressing people sitting in a circle and talking about, you know, stuff I didn't want to talk about, but it wasn't like that at all. It was a very well put together organization. And, you know, I'm very thankful that I was able to get into that program because I had another option

to go to Florida to a rehab center, which ended up being like basically a huge scam. And I'm so thankful I did not go there. I know that there's lots of rehabilitation centers. There's like the one I almost went to that are very helpful and good for people, but the one that I almost got scammed into going to is a program just basically to get money out of people. I don't think they really care if you get help or survive your time there. They just want your money. So I'm very happy I didn't go in that direction. I was able to stay in my house. I was able to come home every day.

It was basically like going to class, five days a week, six hours a day. They were almost going to admit me to the hospital, but I convinced them I didn't need that. So I did the program and they let me out at the end of October. It was like beginning of November of 2024 and I stayed sober for almost a year. And I relapsed. And I think mainly because I was white knuckling most of my time after leaving Rogers. I didn't have a plan. I didn't go to AA, and I figured out AA was not for me. I really kept myself occupied with things, but I was like sitting on my hands for almost a year, like,

struggling to understand who I was going to be without drinking. And after my relapse, and it was, it was one day of just really drowning my sorrows and ended up back in the hospital and saw my therapist the day after and joined the sober motivation group the day after that. And that was the first time I ever went on a Zoom meeting with this group. That was... And I have been 100% sober since September 27th of 2025. And that was my first day on the sober motivation app. So I went through a lot of hills and valleys to get to this point, but my peak was joining this community.

And I have, I have this community to thank for being here today and talking about it. So in a nutshell, that is my story. Well, thank you so much. So proud of you. Hopefully you already know that by now. It's so interesting because you touched on so many things that, I think, topics that, you know, come up for the podcast of, you know, gray area drinking. Am I bad enough?

Like, do I need to change? Can be really confusing in that space, right? I don't look like the guy in the movies or I'm not, you know, walking around with a paper bag, you know. There's not much truth to that, but I think that that's what we kind of believe that those people need help. I mean, I'm not that. And then things start to get worse for you, you know? I think that's a lot of people's story too.

When I first started navigating life sober, I was listening to a lot of the episodes on your podcast. But now being in 100% sobriety is like, I want to hear those. Like, I didn't ruin my life or have a rock bottom moment. I just realized that alcohol is poison. And my potential for living the best life I can live can be met if I just don't drink anymore. Like it doesn't have to be this horrible, awful story. It can be the realization. that life is just better without it. So in the beginning, I didn't appreciate the stories like that, but now I just like I seek those ones out because it's like, I just feel so proud of people who didn't have to get to such a dark, terrible place like I did. And they got out of, you know, they were in gray area drinking and they decided this isn't for me anymore because in my head,

you always had to get to liver failure or something terrible and tragic had to happen. That doesn't have to be your story. That, you know. Yeah. Oh, it definitely doesn't. How have things changed in your life? I mean, you talk a lot about, you know, the hospital visits, right? Not wanting to necessarily continue on with life anymore.

I mean, those are some of your low moments, depression, crippling, anxiety. I know once we quit drinking, life isn't perfect. Like everything doesn't just, okay, now the puzzle is magically together. There's still ups and downs. But overall, what would you, like, share about how your life has been since, you know, starting this? You know, for a long time, I thought if one more person says day at a time, I'm going to slap them. But it really is like I feel like I don't have enough hours in the day to truly appreciate how

beautiful life is. Like the budding trees outside, a nice summer day, a nice spring day, a fun winter day. like all of these things are just so like you you just feel it more than anything else because everything was so numb before and I just felt like I needed these huge pieces of chaos and everything had to be amazing or it was trash there was nothing in the in the and now it's just like I appreciate my coffee in the morning just quiet time to myself I'm building a garden I go to Brewer's baseball games, and I know everything that happened in every inning. I remember wonderful, you know, if I go to a concert, I remember every single song of every set.

I went to Banff Canada for our honeymoon, and it was mind-blowingly beautiful, and I was sober for it. And I don't think I could have appreciated that sort of amazing experience under the influence of alcohol. know, so many times I would look forward to how drunk I was going to get on some vacation, only to realize what I remember most from it was my hangovers and how terrible I felt. I didn't remember all of the good things that happened. So life is just, you know, my relationships with people, I have less relationships because a lot of people in my life are still heavy drinkers, but the relationships I do have are meaningful and deeper, and I have.

more patience with people. I have way less anxiety. I won't say it's gone, but I don't wake up at clock in the morning anymore wondering, you know, is the world crashing on top of me? Because it's not. You know, everything that comes to my plate I can deal with and I can navigate through it. You know, and it's not as hard as alcohol made it. Made it so much harder. And my empathy for people in recovery and people going through tough times. And I just have so much empathy now for those people. Where before, in the medical field especially, it's like, oh, my God, like, get your shit together. Like, pull yourself out of it.

It's not that hard. And now I know it is probably one of the hardest things people can do. And I just appreciate anybody who has gotten through it. And on the other side, I just think we're amazing humans. You know, we're the luckiest people to be talking about this. navigating this life sober. Yeah. I'm with you on that 100%.

What inspired you to jump on the podcast here and share your story? I've known you for a bit, and I wouldn't say that, you know, this is something you do every day. I go to the gym regularly, and I have talked about how I'm sober. We have these focus meetings once a month, and they are still asking me, like, can you do this little like one minute voiceover and share your story of sobriety and it scared me at first. I was like, well, I don't know. But they said, we have people who are struggling here and we don't know how to help them.

And I think if they can just hear that somebody else was struggling or struggles daily or but still has done the work to get through and is navigating, you know, every day sober, it's helpful for other people. and I was like, I would have never thought anyone in my gym that I go to regularly is struggling with alcohol because we hide it. You know, we're really good at hiding from everyday people that were in this loop of addiction. And I thought, I wish I would have had someone a long time ago tell me, I see what road you're going down and it's not going to turn out well. I wish I would have had all the sober influences I have on Instagram now or that maybe I would have stumbled on your podcast sooner or joined the sober motivation app way sooner than I did. But you know, you can't dwell on the past. So all I can do now is hope that maybe if I tell my story, somebody out there who is looking to change their way of thinking about navigating life without alcohol can do that because they hurt. someone's story that was able to

pick themselves up and do the work and know that it's so worth it. Oh my God, is it worth it? And you're going to hear it over and over. It's worth it. It gets better one day at a time and you're going to want to flap all those people. But if you can just get past that feeling, I promise you

they're not wrong. They are not wrong. And it's just... Early on, you're thinking, yeah, like, it can't. We get to this point in life where we just believe that a life without alcohol is meaningless or what am I going to do? I mean, you list it off a few things there. How is this going to look? How is that going to look? And I think the question that if somebody's in that spot, the question they asked themselves is, when did this take a turn? We weren't like, I wasn't born anyway. I can't speak for everybody. But at five years old, 10 years old, I wasn't thinking, oh my gosh, if I don't have alcohol anymore, I'm doomed.

When did that change happen for us to where this became a thing that a life without it was just belt so scary or so small, the reality is it's, it's not true at all. It's so far from the truth. I mean, continuing to drink is limiting our potential, whether, wherever we live on the spectrum, it's limiting our potential. I mean, it's progressive. It doesn't hold in one area for a long time. You know, it progressively just gets worse. Whether it takes you your whole life or whether it to a couple months or a couple years. It will only get harder to navigate with alcohol if you let it. If you let it keep controlling you, it will eventually control everything.

So if you can't, if you can stop it from getting to that point, you're better off to to keep it from growing. Yeah. So true. Well, thank you, Stephanie so much for jumping on here. I mean, doing an incredible job with, you know, sharing your. story with all of us. What would you say to anybody if they're out there and they're considering, you know, giving this a go? Again, you can't do it by yourself. I tried. Even after getting

help, I tried avoiding AA. I tried just, you know, I'll listen to podcasts and I'll do my thing and I'll be alone in my feelings. I'll see a therapist, I guess. But truly, community is what helps you. And the only other thing I know how to do is get on these Zoom meetings every day. And I love it. It's not a chore to me. It's something I want to do. I want to jump on at least one meeting a day. Like, we're not just talking about how miserable it is to be sober.

We're talking about how amazing life is that we're all together in this and the things that we've, you know, accomplished in our sobriety and our struggles too. You know, people talk about their struggles. But knowing that there's people there that can help you and understand you is huge. because if you're doing it by yourself, that means you're not around people who know what it feels like to be there. So just don't do it by yourself. If you're struggling, find something, find a group.

Yeah, beautiful message. Well, thanks again, and I'm sure I'll see you soon. Okay, thanks, Brad. Well, there it is, another incredible story here on the podcast. You know, over the months and years of recording episodes, 273-ish episodes now, I've been privileged to meet some incredible people with some incredible stories. And it's been really cool to get to know Stephanie being part of our community with sober motivation.

And just to see that she was willing to jump on here and share her story. Before we got here, I'm a big story guy. So I got to share a little bit of the story with you. We have tried to record an episode. I want to say three or four times. I know three for sure, but maybe four. And for whatever reason, tech problems. and maybe Stephanie not being 110% ready, if that's fair to say.

Here we are. And what an incredible job she did. I was blown away. I pretty much sat back on this one. I feel like all of our practice leading up to this had Stephanie more prepared than ever to share her story. The points that she thought all of you would connect most with. So if you did connect with any part of Stephanie's story,

Be sure to send her over a message on Instagram. I'll drop that below this episode and the show notes or the description. As always, thank you for listening and I'll see you on the next one. Thank you again, as always, for listening to the show. Don't forget to leave your thoughts down in the comments below if you're listening on Spotify. And please, follow the show. It helps out so much. Let the platforms know that this is an incredible show.

And more people should know. that it exists. See you on the next one.