Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Ricky started drinking alcohol early on in life and joined the Marines after high school. Ricky never talked to anyone about his internal struggles and used alcohol to numb the pain.

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Ricky started drinking early on in life and it just became the norm. Everyone around Ricky was always drinking and for years it never seemed like a problem. Ricky joined the Marines after high school and would experience several traumatic events and decided to quit drinking for a year but slowly got back into drinking. Ricky never asked for help and struggled in silence for many many years. One day Ricky describes it has something clicked in his head and he knew things had to change. Ricky was still drunk and logged on the Instagram in search of help. This is Ricky's story on the sober motivation podcast. -------------- Follow Ricky on Instagram Follow Sober Motivation on Instagram Check out SoberBuddy App Check out Soberlink  Donate to support the show here

Welcome back to season two of the Subur Motivation Podcast. Join me, Brad, each week is my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety as possible, one story at a time. Let's go. Ricky started drinking early on in life, and it just became the norm. Everyone around Ricky was always drinking, and for years, it never seemed like a problem. Ricky joined the Marines after high school and would experience several traumatic events and decided to quit drinking for a year, but slowly got back into drinking.

Ricky never asked for help and struggled in silence for many, many years. One day, Ricky said something clicked in his head, and he knew things had to change. Ricky was still drunk and logged on to Instagram in search of some help. This is Ricky's story on the Sober Motivation podcast, the Sober Buddy app. This community is one of the most supportive I've ever seen, starting with the meeting hosts who lead with support, kindness, and understanding when someone follows the community rallies to help support and encourage. People from all different countries who show up as strangers leave as friends.

It is a true example of community and connection. What makes somebody special is everyone is working on the same mission, to get another day sober, so we can live our best lives and to provide a safe place so no one feels they have to do it alone. Come and check us out on the Sober Buddy app, your Soberbuddy.com or your favorite app store, and join me for one or all three of my support groups I host per week inside of the app. Hope to see you there soon.

It's hard to find the motivation to get sober when you're in the trenches of addiction. It's easy to say I'll stop tomorrow or I'll cut back tonight. What's harder is putting action behind those words. That's why I've teamed up with Soberlink. Soberlink's remote alcohol monitoring system was specifically designed to help you in your recovery, not just some breathalerizer you buy at the store. Small enough to fit in your pocket and discreet enough to use in public. Soberlink devices combine facial recognition, tamper detection, and real-time results,

so friends and family know instantly that you're sober and working towards your recovery goals. Visit soberlink.com slash recover to sign up and receive $50 off of your device. How's it going, everybody? Happy Thursday when this episode drops. I just want to give a fair warning here to everybody that in this episode, Ricky does talk about suicide and losing some people very close to him. So I want to throw that out there. If that's a sensitive topic for you, you may want to skip this one. Now let's get to the show.

Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. We've got my friend Ricky with us today. Ricky, how are you? I'm good, man. How are you doing, Brad? I am well. I'm happy that we do. jumped on here to do this. Why don't you start us off with what was it like for you growing up?

Growing up, it was, I don't know, it was kind of a normal life. I mean, back then, didn't really have a lot. My dad owned a landscape company, so it was kind of week by week. But we had a lot of friends, you know, played sports. Everything was kind of normal. Just loved baseball and football and hockey. And then we moved out to the country. I got two older brothers. We lived in town, so my parents had to get us out of there, just kind of terrorizing the neighborhood, you know. know, then we moved out to the country. And that's where I like to say it all began, you know. Yeah.

Usually it's the other way around, though, Ricky. Usually in the city we get in trouble. Well, you found some stuff in the country. Oh, yeah. So like I said, my dad owned a landscaping company and we had a big barn out there. And I always had friends over constantly. They all just wanted to come out to our house because it was the freedom. It was nothing about property.

We had a thousand acres next to us. We had five acres. And it was just all over the place. And we could hunt. fish and do whatever we wanted. And then, you know, we'd set up tents out back and that's where everybody would sleep, especially where it was nice outside because we had the pond and bonfire pit and everything. So basically a pretty normal, I don't know, I thought it was a happy child life, you know. Yeah. No, it sounds like it. I mean, fishing, hunting, pond, bonfires. We play a lot of

hockey on the pond. Do a lot of fishing and stuff. But then, you know, you get a little bit older and you start getting a little more gutsy. So on the barn, there was a piece of wood that I could fit under because I was the youngest out of all of us. And they'd say, hey, go in there and grab us a couple of waters. And I'd go to the fridge and, you know, you're just a naive kid, 11, 12, 13 years old. No, not even 13, 11, 12. And you just grab what you see, you know, and there was no waters. And there was all beers because my dad's guys would come in. They'd have beers and work on the equipment and stuff. So I'd grab us all a beer and water. And, you know, that's just started turning into, you know, get them from my brothers. And,

Then the bonfires started and buddies were like, man, I wish we had some beers. And I was like, I'll be right back. So that's where the snowball effects started, you know. I would like to say kind of young, you know, 11, 11, 12 years old. That's young, you know. Yeah, for sure. It is fairly young. What was it doing for you at 11, 12 to kind of, you know, keep it up?

I don't know. I think it was making us more like adventurous. I guess you want to say we would sneak out and do a lot more. I mean, there wasn't really anything we could hurt besides getting lost or. stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, not really doing anything to hurt anybody else, I should say. You know, this is being my buddy. We have a couple beers and go for a walk. And then it just turned in to be something normal. We just did it. Hey, let's grab a beer. You know, you're 13 years old and you got buddies coming over from football practice or whatever. And they'd spend the

weekends out there. Then we moved up into high school and playing football. I was assistant captain in hockey. I was the quarterback in football. So I had tons of friends. We actually had a state trooper that would go up and down the street. We lived out on dirt road. He'd come up and down the dirt road and he'd pull him back. And he would sit everybody down when we were having a party. You're like, listen, I know you guys are drinking. If I see a car

leave here tonight, I'm pulling you over. And everybody respected that. Nobody drove. Nobody did anything until the morning. You know, and then we'd wake up and everybody would skedaddle. You know, it looked like a big campground back there. So you were plugged in. You had a big crew of friends and everything. Did the alcohol serve any purpose?

for you as like fitting in, is connecting with other people? I don't know. I think when you're that age, it just seemed normal. I don't think it really seemed like a fitting in thing because I had a ton of friends, you know, but I guess I don't really know because it was always there. If we couldn't get into the barn, then somebody would bring it, you know? So I think we had the place. That's all it was.

You couldn't do that in the city, you know, because somebody's parents were always home. You always had neighbors watch. I mean, we didn't have any neighbors. There was nobody around. It was just free range. And as long as we got the chores done, you know, because we had a big garden. We had a lot of chores. We had to cut the grass.

We had to maintain the house and pick the garden for market and stuff. And as long as everything was done, there was no questions. You know, there was never a question to ask. So, I mean, at the time, it just seemed normal, I guess. Yeah. And how did things progress from there? So you go through high school, everything there was pretty good. Well, we drink a lot in high school, a lot more than normal people.

And we partied a lot. Even during school nights, we had people to be spending the night. Bonfires and fights, a ton of fights out there. So yeah, during high school, it was nothing. High school was a big party. It was a big blur. You think about it now. And as good as I was in football and hockey, what it would have been like without the alcohol, you know, so what it could have should have, but you still think about it, you know?

Yeah, for sure. Did you ever think during your high school days of, hey, this might be a problem or this might be getting in the way of doing other things? No, I never did. I never did. I think it was just because it was normalized. It was just so normal. Everywhere you looked, everywhere you went, you know, and my dad had a beer, my brothers had a beer, or my mom didn't drink.

She wasn't a bit drinker at all. I would come home from work or whatever. I would actually have buddies at the house and they would just be sitting in the bar and having beers with my dad, you know? It was just kind of normal, you know? I wouldn't even have to be there. I didn't really think about it like at that time, you know? Yeah, for sure.

And then what happens after high school? Where do you go after that? Well, during high school, I had one of my best friends. He wanted to go in the Army. And he was like, I don't know about the Army. But he's like, well, what about the Marines? And honestly, I never even knew what the Marines did. He's like, they're the toughest this and that.

I was like, all sounds good to me. So there was a group of us. We all signed up for the Marine Corps. And we took the ASFAB and everything. And then when you go, so you got to go to a MEP station. It's like a separation station where they keep you overnight before you go to boot camp. out of the four of us, I was the only one that didn't do any drugs because drugs were bad, you know, your harped on how bad drugs are. They couldn't pass the drug test. So that right there

was kind of a switch for me. I was like, you know what, I'm out of here. You know, if you guys can't be at least that dependable to make this kind of a decision, then it's time to go. So I left for the Marine Corps and went to boot camp. You know, you get to boot camp and there's no drinking, there's no smoking. I was 227 pounds. I was snowballing into a Pile of shit is what I was. That was one main reason why I went in and just left those guys. So boot camp was three months. We got done with that and we went to SOI and that was another three months.

So I got down to like 157 pounds just in six months. The healthiest, the most fit, the best I've ever felt in my life, you know. Then I get stuck into the fleet. I get to my unit. When you get to the unit, it's like college. You know, you get these dorm rooms. You got two roommates, but it's party. When you're not in the field, it is nothing but party.

And I partied a lot in high school, drank a lot in high school. But this was a whole other level. You know, it's like, okay, so now, especially if you're not drinking for six months, you're like, holy shit. I had one guy, I'm not going to say his name. He went into his room. There was a guy doing a line of Coke. And then the other guy was drinking. And so, I mean, there was everything was in there.

And it was just another, I'm trying to think of the word, like Habitat for Destruction. Was that something you were expecting at all? Or did you think it was going to carry on like the previous six months? Yeah, I thought it was going to keep carrying on, not to the extreme that it was for the six months, but I thought it would still have a lot of the similarities, you know? And I was like, this is what I like, you know? So when we went to the field, we'd go to the field for a week or two at a time. And there's no drink in or anything out there, obviously.

So we get back from the field, they call it Liberty. They'd set us on Libo. We'd have three, four days off sometimes, and it was nothing but party. It's all it was. It was just a huge party. And there was times where we had a PX on base where we could buy alcohol, but all the Marines that were on base that didn't go out in the field like we did, they would already have it all.

So we'd have to go off base. And there was times we'd have to drive a half hour away just to get anything decent, you know. During the weekends, it ramped up heavy. And there was a lot of people getting in trouble. There was a lot of DUIs. A lot of people never even. and came back, you know. Just when you think you're doing the right move by getting away from home, you're

entered into a whole different world, you know? Yeah, for sure. They got that old saying, wherever you go, there you are. You know, you don't change the internal things, the external environment. You'll still be there, right? What was fueling all this? Because, I mean, I don't know. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Ricky, because I've never been in this situation.

But is there anybody a part of this that isn't going to the extremes, like other people that are just like maybe normally drinking, quote unquote, or casually drinking? And then there's like the partiers. Is there different crews here? Yeah, there was definitely different groups. Definitely. You had the drinkers, the heavy, heavy drinkers. I didn't really see any moderate drinkers.

But then you had the drinkers and the drug users. So, I mean, yeah, you had your different clicks. And then you had the married guys. There was married guys that lived off base. Then you just go to their house, you know, so you wouldn't get in trouble on base. You could just party at their place. But I mean, would it have been a possibility to be a part of this? and not be heavy, heavy into it.

You know what I mean? Like to have a few buddies that weren't leading that all the time? I know. If you could find them. I mean, if there was any, you know what I mean? You're 17, 18, 19 years old. You definitely got people telling you what to do. But I mean, we got sergeants and staff sergeants.

They're only 22, 23 years old. They're in charge of, you know, two, 300 people. So they want to unload two. I don't know. I guess they just wanted a party also. So on the weekends, that's all we did. And then how did this all play out? How long were you in the Marines for?

So I was in four years, but there was a time in there when Shick had really bad. So we did a lot of live fire range, a lot of live fire shooting. What a man is everybody would run these fire ranges, but people would go down range and you would have other Marines setting a field of fire for you during one of these ranges, and we did it on a Monday. We never quite understood why we did live fires on Mondays because, I mean, even Sundays, we were always drinking, you know. So this is where it got a little hairy for me.

We're doing these live fire ranges and everything's good. You know, we're all laughing, having a good time. And a group takes off. And sometimes people, they would freeze on the ground. And they would get like, we called it shell shock, where they would hear the guns around them and they would literally just freeze. Well, there was a time when we were doing these and we had a group take off. And we partied with these groups.

There was another group setting down. fire down range and we saw a guy knock it up so we were kind of harass him at first you know then they called cease fire cease fire and what happened was so he got shot in the heel of his foot and when our rounds hit these rounds that hit you they don't just go straight through you they tumble so they tumble inside of you and it went through the heel of his foot through his boot up his leg and it came out his chest so he died right there so they shut the range down I mean these was of our friends, you know. So we go back to the barracks and we hear nothing. We don't hear anything about it. We had a funeral, the funeral forum and everything. But I mean, we partied. I mean, we were

still drinking, you know, nobody checked on us. Nobody checked to see if anybody was okay, you know, like trauma or anything. No, there was none of that. There was nothing. Nobody ever did anything. So we got stuck on air alert. What air alert is, you're confined to base. You can't leave base. and even the married Marines, they have to stay on base because what it is when we get to deploy, you got a half hour to an hour and you're gone. I mean, you've got to pack everything. We've already had everything staged and packed, but we have to be on the planes or on the boats and gone.

There was a guy there. He was married, lived out of town. So in order for the married Marines to leave, they would have to fill out a chit. And they could only be gone for like a half hour at a time because they'd have to come back, report in. So you could only go so far away because you'd have to go so far away because you'd have to fill out of chit. had to be back in order to get ready in time. So anyways, there was one Marine and we noticed to kind of weigh heavy on him and didn't really know if it was family life at home because he

was married and he had two kids, two young kids, or something else because we all knew that he was the one that fired the round down range and you could see a difference in him. But you know, you're 18, 19 years old. It didn't really register it, you know, it just kind of thought that, okay, he'll shake this off and whatever. So we get off air. alert. We get ready to go upon our time, you know. And we go by the duty shack and what the guard says, he Staltz and the other guys that were with me is like, hey, Rodriguez isn't doing too good right now. You guys might want to stick around just in case something happens. We stuck around because he was our buddy. Duty came up to the room and he's like Stultz come down to the guard

shack. We got to talk. He told me what happened to Rodriguez. What happened was he shot himself in his bathroom in his house with his kids. And his wife were, So they went over. We went over there. There was three of us that went. They took care of him. They took care of the body and everything. But staff sergeant opened up the bathroom door, why we had to do this or why we got picked to clean the bathroom where he did it. When he opened that door, it was almost like a horror film, just seeing what happened in there. You know, when you're 19 years old, seeing somebody get shot is a different mindset. But cleaning up, what we had to clean up is. is a totally different mindset. You don't expect that, you know. So we're cleaning in the sup. There was nobody said the word. It was absolute silence.

We got done and we get back in my car and we're heading back to the barracks. One of the Marines in the back seat, he said, you know, we're never going to see Rodriguez again. It hit real hard, you know, it hits that spot. We were like, yeah, you know what? We're never going to see him again. And that was kind of like our going away doing the bullshit that we had to do. It was hard. It was hard to deal with, man.

It really was. Not something you would have expected for sure. No, it's not. It's not. And it's one of those I was talking to my therapist about it. It was one of the most disgusting things I've ever had to do in my life. And I've done some pretty disgusting things. But this was horrified.

It was absolutely horrified. I mean, it's fucked me up sleep wise. My anxieties through the roof was through the roof, everything. That was a tough time. It really was. It was a tough time. It actually, one of the good things that came out of it was I quit drinking in the Marine Corps for a year.

I quit drinking. I quit smoking. I quit dipping. So that's how come back to those clicks. I started that guy. I was that guy. There was very few guys that actually respected that, you know? Everybody else was like, oh, you know, Staltz is being a puss.

You know, he's doing this for his girlfriend, you know. Everything was about something else. It could never be just for yourself. And then we got deployed, we went overseas. I started dipping on ship again just because your anxiety's ramped up. You don't know if you're going to battle. You don't know what's going to happen. You're literally set in lingo, you know.

We used to chew Copenhagen. It was kind of a dip that you put in your lip. They wouldn't sell it on ship, but the officers could get it through the mail and the enlisted guys could get it through the mail. But officers got their stuff a lot quicker. I didn't know that they were doing because it would dry out, that they would open it up and they would pour whiskey inside of it. just to keep it moist.

So you get this and it's a different type of buzz, you know. Now knowing what I know about alcohol, that was my triggering factor right there to start drinking again. And that's where another downhill battle went, you know? When you were sober for a little bit there, like, were you missing the drinking or were you like good with being sober? How did that look for you? Oh, I loved it, Brad.

I did. I absolutely loved it. The funny thing is we didn't have any of this. We didn't have Zoom calls. we didn't have cell phone, we didn't have nothing. I actually had to work. I had to get out the phone book and look up AA meetings. There was nothing even in my chain of command that could help me look for these meetings.

You know, the chaplain didn't know anything about it. So, I mean, I actually had to drive to meetings because that's all we had. And I'm 19, man. So I was proud of myself. It was awesome. My mom was proud of me. I'd come home because we had to come home before we got deployed. And my buddies were like, I can't believe you're done drinking.

I say like, do you think it's going to be forever? This kind of sucks. But not telling them what I had to do, I think it would have been different. You know, you don't know how to tell people that. You don't know how to talk about it. I think if I knew how to tell them what I had to go through, they would understand it, that it wasn't just for a girl. Everybody thought it was for a girl.

But I didn't have a girlfriend. That's what's funny thing. I didn't even have a girlfriend. Once you guys find out who this girl is, let me know, you know. Yeah. How do things play out? you get this dip with the whiskey and then that kind of gets the wheels turning again for you to start drinking again. Oh yeah. Yeah. It almost seemed like I picked up right where I left off,

you know. It wasn't slow. That's for sure. We'd pull up to a port or we'd pull up somewhere and we did a lot of training with the Spanish Marines, Spanish Army. There was a time when we switched over and they got on our ship and we went on their ship for a couple of nights and with their meals, you can get a beer or wine on their ship, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I mean, every, meal, you got a beer or wine. And when you went out to the field, there was a cantina because we had to do the field ops with all of them also. And during the field ops, we were going to do joint ventures where we would also train with them. They would train with us. They would be at the canina all night. We were not allowed to go to the canina. The U.S. Marines were not allowed to.

So the Spanish Marines would stay up. Everything overseas was live fire. So they were doing demonstrations. And we were professionals. Yeah, we were drunks. But, When we were doing our drills, everything was professional. It looked good. These guys were the sloppiest. It was so sloppy. And then during these live fire ranges, there was two of their guys got shot by their own guys. They didn't even shut the range down.

They shut nothing down. And they still wanted to do the joint venture with us during this live fire. And our kernel was like, no way, this isn't happening. You talk about being like anxiety ridden. You're like, no, you know, we don't want to do this. So, you know, you're stressed out. Your stress level is so hard to explain. It just overrides everything.

And you just think a drink will calm everything down, you know. So we get back from overseas and I'm still drinking. And I went home and I got my car and my mom saw me drinking. You could just see the disappointment in her eyes, you know. She was so proud of me, sure, not drinking. And still to this day, she's got my chips from my AA meetings. It makes me so proud right now just because I knew. She knew that there was always.

somebody better. But do you think your mom noticed that this was maybe a problem? I say that kind of in air quotes too, because I don't know if that's the exact word for it, but did she have some concern for you with drinking early on? Because I love my mom. I don't want to make it sound bad. I don't want to say she wanted me to find out for myself, I guess, kind of thing. But I think she just wanted me to find out for myself because my dad was an alcoholic. So I think it was just kind of nature to her, if that makes sense. Yeah, for sure. Sure. I think we never necessarily want other people to figure it out, but I think for as humans to change, kind of have to come to that conclusion ourselves. You know what I mean? Like it's not like we want somebody to burn everything down, but it's like sometimes as hard as it is to stand by and watch. Sometimes it's required for change, right? It does. So we would come home and I'd always have buddies with me from the service and it was game on. It was party until we'd go back to base.

Long story short, I got a DUI in the Rain Corps. I blew a 0.08, and that was the legal limit. That was the limit that you could blow before you get busted. The judge found me guilty. So it was like 400 bucks I had to pay. No community service, no nothing. I didn't lose rank and service pay nothing. So it was kind of like a slap on a wrist back then.

I get out of the Marine Corps and go back to Michigan. I got another DUI with my buddy, Kendall Marcy. That one was a little heavier. I want to say it was $800 and I had to do 40 hours community service. We painted fire hydrants around the city. The guy that was driving the truck, his name was Jerry. And we were called Jerry's kids on his bus. He was like, you know whose kids you are?

You're Jerry's kids. And we're like, all right, Jerry, we get the joke. But he was in the Navy. He was an older guy. He was in the Navy. So he took it easy on me. It's always been taking easy on me when you get in trouble. Why is it that took it easy on you?

Any idea? No. I don't. Yeah, I think it was the Marine Corps because the first one I was in, B, the second one, it was because Jerry was in the Navy and we always talked military. I honestly don't know. Have they painted over the fire hydrants that you painted yet or the original paint job you did on them? No, they painted over by now. That was a long time.

Where are you living this whole time? This is all in Michigan. You've been in Michigan for basically any time you're not deployed. You've been there? No, I was in North Carolina. Yeah, I was on Camp Lejeune. Yeah. But when you come, when you say you came home, that's all Michigan and you grew up.

Yes. Michigan, right? Okay. All Michigan. Yeah, all Michigan. So the buddy I was with, Kevin, he was a heavy drinker. All my friends were heavy drinkers. Everybody in my whole entire life that I've ever known has been a heavy drinker.

He got a DUI. And I've known a kid since third grade. So I would drive him around. Everybody helped everybody out until he got his third DUI. And I'm talking within a year or two, he got three. We were packing up for ice fishing trip. to go to Wisconsin. And my wife called me and she says,

I think Kevin might have shot himself. I looked over from my brothers and they could tell something was up. I said, well, what do you mean you think? We're getting ready to go on this ice fishing trip and we're drinking, packing trailers and stuff because we're leaving in the morning. And she goes, one of the neighbors called, the neighbor girl was a friend with my wife.

She was, yeah, she heard a gunshot at Kevin's. So I get my truck. I go to Kevin's house. I know where the key is. He had a spare key. had. When I opened up the garage door, I went through the house, and there was nothing in the house, opened up the garage door, and it was just like opening up the bathroom door on Camp Lejeune. I couldn't believe that he did that. It made me so angry. I was so mad. He left a lot of people

with unanswered questions, you know. He was like a brother. He was like my family's best friend. I mean, my dad even cried, and I didn't see my dad cry much. My dad cried like a baby. saying how his heart was broken. I just wish he would have said something. Because you never see this. You never see it. I say it time and time again, depression is the silent killer. You just got to ask for help, man.

That put me at a bad spot. I mean, a real bad spot for a long time. It still weighs heavy on me. I think about the kid constantly. I couldn't sleep. I was sleeping probably a few hours a night at the most. The only way I coped with any of this was drinking. Me and my buddies, he was friends with all of us.

And all we did, we'd sit out and drink and talk about Kevin, you know, Rudy Hillbillies play songs, you know, and just, yeah, if Kevin was here and this, it was a constant goodbye, you know, it was like for a long time. So that was tough, man. That was tough. And like you mentioned there, too, you probably relived the previous incident, right? Brought up a loss. Yeah, no, Brad, it was bad.

It was the same thing. With Rodriguez, these nightmares I would have, he was in them. And it was like a reoccurring nightmare. But it was him after he already did what he did. So that was like the trauma. That was the hardest part to sleep with. I was seeing him like that, you know, I couldn't sleep. And then Kevin doing his, it was like they were buddies in my dreams, you know.

They were friends in my dreams. And it was a dream I don't want anybody to ever have because it sucks. It sent me to the Veterans Hospital here. I needed help, man. I needed help bad. I was going down a bad road. They helped me with it a lot, and they still today. I mean, this is going on years, and I still talk to them constantly.

They put me through a six-month sleep trauma, which, oh, my God, it helped immensely. I mean, huge. It helped me so much that I finally got some sleep, you know. I finally learned how to deal with the after effects because you wake up and you're sweating, you're shaking. Now I relate a lot of it to the alcohol because I would literally drink to black out, so I didn't at least sleep through these nightmares, you know, because it seemed to me there was no other way,

there was no other way to get through a night of sleeping unless you could black out. So that was part of waking up sweating and shaking. Little did I know all the alcohol was doing was intensifying the dreams and making them even worse. The withdrawal effect was the shaking and the sweating. All this time you're thinking it's the dreams, you know? How many years did that cycle go on for?

Oh, I lived like that for, I would say, since 99, 2000. Well, up until 2018, 2019, it just seemed normal, you know, it just, there was never any questions. Nobody ever questioned, nothing, you know. Did you ever talk with anybody close to you about his experiences or how you were feeling or anything? I had one of my buddies that I was in the rink or he's my best friend until this day. He actually moved to Michigan with me when we got out, his wife and kids live here now. we went on a hunting trip and he noticed something on me and he was like man you were trimming in your sleep last night and the heat went out the heat went out in the camper man

I was still just sweat was just dripping off me he was like dude it was so cold in here and you were sweating shaking he was like we couldn't wake you up when he said that it was kind of like why couldn't you wake me up was I in that big of sleep or what and I think it was just because I was blacked out you know where did the story go from here so I call the VA and the VA sets me up with all this in the trauma classes. I didn't start the 12s, or the six months trauma classes until after you go through an evaluation because they want to text your mental stability and everything. I was good with everything. I was fine with everything. The only thing I wasn't good with was telling what was on my mind. And now that I know,

it was because I never really hit anybody that I could depend on. I never really was brought up depending on somebody to talk to. And if somebody would have talked to us about what happened, about what we had to do, about what we had to go through, I think a lot of things would be different today. I really do. I think a lot of things would be different in my life. So I go through the mental part with the hospital and everything, and that's when they set me up with the sleep classes. During the sleep classes, the trauma classes, my dad comes down with a stroke.

So this is 2020, 2019. My dad has a stroke. My brothers and I were taking time off work to take care of them. My mom couldn't do it all. His legs weren't working really well. We had to change his sheets. We had to change his bed. We had to do everything for him.

We did everything for my mom because, you know, she's trying to work. She's trying to keep her steady head, you know. My mom's like the rock of the family. And finally, we couldn't do it. My mom couldn't do it. So we called the ambulance. And this is during COVID and everything. So it's impossible to get anything done.

The ambulance came to pick my dad up in. Then they made us come pick him up from the hospital, trying to say that he wasn't bad enough to stay in the hospital. So we're trying to plead our case, but obviously nobody can go in the hospital. So it's all over the phone. We're like, listen, he can't go to the bathroom. He can't walk. He can barely talk. It was absolutely miserable.

Meanwhile, we're all still drinking. Even when I'm going through these sleep classes, I was still drinking. Finally, they accept him into the hospital. This is going on time after time. And he gets into a senior center where we can see him through the window and everything. I mean, my brother and I, we'd see him every day. But when you're watching your dad, he was just whittled a little way, just dying in there. There's a bar right across the street, you know.

So we get done seeing dad, crying, go have a beer. That's what we did. We threw our hands up in the air. It was just, I gave in again, you know. So it just seemed like one bunk in the road after another, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah, for sure. When do you think was the first time you were like, this drinking stuff is out of hand or it's a big problem for me. Like, did you ever have that thought before you ended up quitting again or no?

Yeah, I would say it at least once a week. Sometimes every other day. I'm not doing it again. I'm not going to bed like this again. You know how it is. We all do it. Everybody that's been in our situation, they say it all the time. No, I'm not doing that again tonight until noon hits and you get lunch in your stomach and you're like, you know what?

I could probably stop and have one. You know, I could have one with the boys. You know what, how that goes? One leads into two because you can't just have one. It's all in. And that's how I was. It was all in for me. And once it was all gone, we'd go to the store and just get more.

So what change? I got three daughters. And I don't want to say all throughout their life. But since they were born, my wife and I drink a lot, everybody around us drink, birthday parties, Christmas. When the babies were born, my buddies would come up to the hospital and we'd go out the parking lot. Ooh, drink.

Congratulations. Now they're older. You know, they're 20. 18 and 14, you can see, you know, they start to voice their opinions as they should. I came inside one day from the garage. My wife and I were out in the garage drinking and a bunch of people over and came inside. I was talking to the kids and, you know, broken promises. I don't know if everybody did it, but you forget that you made plans with your kids.

I don't know if I was planning something or I don't even remember what we were talking about. But I could just see the disappointment in their faces. It reminded me of the disappointment that I saw in my mom's face when I was drinking. And I don't know what the hell hit me, but right then and there, Brad, something right then and there just clicked in my head. And I was drunk and said, dude, you got to stop this shit. I went in my bedroom and I cried. I cried like a little baby.

I didn't know what to do. I was on Instagram. That made me go on Instagram. I didn't know if I could find help on Instagram or what, but I typed in sober. I don't even remember if it was sober sisters that popped up. But I hit message. I said, I can't do this anymore.

And I sent the message within minutes. I got a reply. And it was from Megan from Silver Sisters. She was like, you don't have to go through this by yourself. There's help out there. Gave me a book to read or asked me about a book to read and stuff like that. Told me about the sober buddy. So here I am from there, you know.

Yeah. No, I mean, that's incredible. There, you know, so many times I hear stories about these windows of opportunities open up, you know, and then we either just close the window or we go through the window and we take a little bit of action. It doesn't have to be anything massive, but we take a little bit in that direction. And now how many days ago was that? How many days are you sober for now, Ricky? So I let that sit in my memory bank for a few days before I actually followed through with anything. You know, I was nervous.

I was scared. Is this really what I want to do? So today, it's like 325, 325 days sober. And if it wasn't sure Megan responding to that message, I honest to God, I don't even know if I'd be here, man. I really don't. It was that bad. I was that bad just 300 and something days ago. I was back to 200.

I was 230 pounds. It was the most miserable I've ever been in my life. That's incredible, man. It's been nothing but a pleasure just to see your journey and your progress. And I mean, I didn't know everything you had been through, but to make a comeback from all of that and be willing to talk about this stuff, you know, I think that that's incredible, man,

because it's hard stuff, you know, hard stuff to talk about. The toughest part was asking for help, you know? Because we're men, we think that we don't need to ask for help. We should be able to do this by ourselves. I mean, if everything came easy, life would just be grand for everybody. You know what I mean? I hope to help people realize that,

There's no shame in asking for help because I'm proof that all you got to do is ask and people will help you, you know. I think Megan every day for answering that message. I don't know. Without you guys, I don't know what it would be like for me right now. That's powerful. You reached out to the VA hospital prior to that, right? But was that the first person you kind of reached out to about the drinking specifically? Or had you reached out to anybody in like 20 years?

No. No. Nobody. Not a single person ever. Did you know anybody that was sober, like in your life? No, no. I'm literally the only sober person that I know besides all of you guys. I've actually, there's two of my buddies that we used to be the garage drinkers in the neighborhood.

They have both also quit. I don't know how long they've quit, but I was walking a dog and I'll see Mike outside. And it'd be like, hey, you want to have a drink? Now I know that he was drinking the NAs. He's like, it's your flavor. It's cool. And I've got a lot of support for my friends. because I've opened up a little bit.

I got a lot of support for my friends. They'll keep the seltzer waters in the refrigerator for me or the NA beers. But the VA with my therapist, I did not open up to her. It was over a year. It was probably over two years before I could finally open up to her. She was so persistent. I mean, she was just so, she didn't give up on me. I think if she would have gave up, I would have just lost all hope, you know.

But once she was like, I can't believe it. I knew there was something in there. just dying to come out. And because when I let it out, it was the biggest way the world lifted off my shoulders, you know, it was the most freeing. It was so freeing. I related to texting or sending the message for getting sober. You never know that there's help out there unless you ask for help.

Yeah, so true. Look, I think we already touched on it a little bit, but I want to ask two questions and then we'll wrap this thing up. I think we touched on this, but I want to ask it anyway. What's your message here you want to get across to people? that are hearing your story. I could wrap this all up. If I could just say one thing, it would be asking for help.

It's a tough thing to do, but it's the right thing to do. It doesn't make you any less of a man to ask for help. I'm here to support you. I mean, you can ask me for help. I don't care. I honestly think my whole entire your life would be different if I would have asked for help a long time ago, but that was a long time ago. Yeah, no, I love that.

Yeah, ask for help is so powerful. If somebody's listening to this show here, Ricky, and they're struggling to get or stay. sober. What would you say to them based off your own experience of the journey? I'm a true believer. I love the sober buddy. And you guys, everybody there, I want to say it's just been nothing but open arms. It was a debate for me at first, but it was the best thing I've ever did in my life. So I would recommend at least checking into the app and looking at the group meetings because I've seen from the group meetings people from day one, you see them light back up, you see them

come back to life. And they know that they're here for. something better. They're a whole better person than they were before and it's inspiring. It makes you want to stay. You look forward to the meetings. I literally look forward to them every day. I mean, we're missing one right now. So I would tell them not to be scared. There's no shame in asking anybody, anything about alcohol. I mean, there are so many answers out there in the sober community. I did not even realize how big it was and how supportive it is. It blows my mind how supportive it is. Yeah, so true. And it's nice to be able to connect with other people so we don't feel like we're alone on this journey. Like we're the only one struggling with this stuff because it can be

heavy at times to feel like, you know, I'm the only one going through it. And I mean, the truth is there's a lot of people that are and like a lot of good kind people from all of the world. We get to connect with people from England, from Australia, from US, from Canada, you know, everywhere, right? We get to talk about Tim Hortons. But yeah, I mean, it's to flip it around on. you, Ricky. I mean, you've been an incredible member, a contributing member of everything we're doing. We're truly grateful for. I definitely am, like, just showing that it works and that it can be helpful. You know, really plugging in, right? Because there's a couple different things that happen after somebody, I think, asked for help, right? Somebody asked for help and they'll get suggestions and they don't do

anything with it. And then I think there's other people who ask for help. They get suggestions and they take action on it. And I think that's what you did after a couple days. And I'm so proud of you. Well, thank you. So another message is you've got nothing to lose. There's nothing to lose. It's everything to gain. I took meditation classes. I never thought in my life, but I'm so happy I did, you know, and it just opens up a whole new world.

It's just a whole different, that person I was, I don't even relate to that person anymore. This is my road, you know, the road I'm on. And like you said, with the people that we get to connect with, it's like I tell you guys, you're probably sick of me messaging you, but I talk to. to you guys. I try to talk to everybody. You know, I want to know how they're doing and just just try staying on top of it because I know sometimes it might bother you guys, but it's just I don't know. It just helps me feel like I'm helping other people. Yeah. And I think too, I mean, I'm just like shooting here completely in the dark. But I think you know what it feels like

to be alone, to be afraid and to be on a journey yourself. And you don't want other people to ever have to experience that because you're available to help other people. 100% without you guys and without sober buddy, I mean, I would still be on this journey alone. Yeah, I got my friends here that I've opened up to and I've talked to, but I don't talk to them like I talk to you guys. You know, like I call it. My honest hour is when we have our meetings. So. Beautiful. Well, Ricky, we've covered a lot of ground, buddy and I appreciate it. Thank you so much for, I mean, really opening up the door for us here on the show with what you've been through. And incredible to see where you're at with all of that. Because what I hear is.

You could very well be in the same place. Very, very well you could be in the same place in a worse off place. And today you got 325 days sober. You're living your best life. You're helping others. You're getting help for yourself. You're making a difference. It just goes to show.

And one decision can change everything in our life. One decision. And I'm proud of you for it. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. Another powerful episode. So grateful for Ricky and so great for a,

for all the guests. So grateful for all of you, the listener, for giving this a chance, for sticking with us here. This is a powerful episode. You know what I mean? I think Ricky's story, Ricky's life could have went the other way very easily.

And I'm happy that he's on this side with us today and doing incredible things and living his best life and sobriety. If you're in a position to donate for the podcast to help out with the editing, be sure to check out buy me a coffee.com slash sober motivation. Thank you, everybody, for all the support. You can also leave a message there.

I love reading them. It's incredible. And, yeah, thank you for all the support. If you enjoyed Ricky's episode, be sure to reach out to him. His username is Sober Dog on Instagram. Let him know you appreciate him really opening up the door for us and pulling back to curtain and just sharing about his life and what's brought him to where he is today. and a lot more great episodes to come.

So thank you everybody for the support and I'll see you on the next one.