Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Todd struggled with the confusing place of grey area drinking for years.

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

On this episode of the podcast, we have Todd.  Growing up in  Omaha, Nebraska, Todd started drinking alcohol in high school and his consumption escalated throughout college and law school as he used alcohol to cope with stress. Todd would go on the graduate law school and become an attorney and from the outside, it appeared that Todd had cracked the code of life. Todd was a busy father, husband and attorney but his drinking habits from college never left.  For years Todd would go back and forth with attempted moderation and was able to take several 90-day breaks from alcohol and this confirmed what he thought at the time if I can go 90 days without alcohol could I have a problem? After the back and forth Todd was in his car one day and was honest with himself the only option left was the quit. 4+ years into the journey Todd shares that every area of his life has improved. This is Todd’s story on the Sober Motivation Podcast. ------------------ 👉 Follow Todd here on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tkinney111/ 👉 Check out Todd's Book: https://a.co/d/2XFnVUa 👉 More information on SoberLink: www.soberlink.com/recover 👉 Donate to support the show here: buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivation 👉 Follow Sober Motivation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sobermotivation/

Welcome to Season 3 of the Subur Motivation Podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible, inspiring, and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety as possible one story at a time. Let's go. On this episode of the podcast, we have Todd. Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, Todd started drinking alcohol in high school, and his consumption escalated throughout college and law school,

as he used alcohol to cope with stress. Todd would go on to graduate law school and become an attorney, and from the outside, it appeared that Todd had cracked the coat of life. Todd was a busy father, husband, and attorney, but his drinking habits from college never left. For years, Todd would go back and forth with attempting moderation and was able to take several 90-day breaks from alcohol, and this confirmed what he thought at the time.

If I can go 90 days without alcohol, could I have a problem? After the back-and-forth, Todd was in his car one day and was honest with himself, and the only option left was to quit. Four plus years into the journey, Todd shares that every area of his life has improved, and this is Todd's story on the Sober Motivation podcast. Hey, everyone, how's it going? Thank you again for checking out another episode of the podcast.

Before we jump into it, I want to ask. If you can drop some reviews, if you're enjoying the podcast on Apple or Spotify, it would really mean the world. I also want to give a big shout out to Sober Buddy. A ton of people, fans of the show, have downloaded the Sober Buddy app and attend our groups that we hold every single week, our support groups.

And it's being really helpful for people to get connected with other people that are on the journey, share about what's going on and also joining on some of the topics that we talk about. If you could use a little bit of support on your journey, this holiday season, which I think is so important, be sure to download the Sober Buddy app, come and check out our virtual support groups,

Meet the community. You're going to love them. Hope to see you there soon. I host three groups there per week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Come and say hi. Get some support. And I'll see you guys in there soon. Getting sober is a lifestyle change.

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Visit soberlink.com slash recover to sign up and receive $50 off your device today. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Todd with us, Todd. How are you? I'm good, Brad. How are you? I'm well, man. Thanks for joining the podcast and sharing your story.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. What was it like for you growing up? So I had a pretty typical middle class, upper middle class upbringing. Good family. Two parents who I had a really good relationship with still do have a very good relationship with. Three siblings. My dad was a lawyer. My mom was a teacher and then stopped teaching for a while to raise us kids and then went back to work. Very blessed childhood. I didn't want for much. I thought I did. did, but we had everything we could ask for. It was a very loving household, very typical Midwest upbringing with no real traumatic incidents that I had to run from or cope with or figure out how to deal with. And so nothing really, nothing to complain of there. I've got great relationships with my siblings and great relationships with my parents. I've been, I was very fortunate growing up. Yeah, that's incredible. Where did you grow up? So I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, where I live now, actually in Bellevue, which is just south of Omaha. But lived here my whole life except for four years of college at the University of Iowa

and live out in Omaha today with my family and four kids. Yeah, wow, that's incredible. So you're Huskies fan, is that, the college football team Huskies? It's the Huskers here. And I'm one of the few here who is not a Huskers fan. I'm an Iowa Hawkeye fan. So I'm in the minority here in the middle of Huskers country. And I have been since I've been like seven years old.

So my dad's a huge Iowa fan. And it got in me early. Cool. I love that. So how do you do in schools? How did all that play out? School was, I did well in school. It was never easy for me.

I felt like I had to work a little harder than some of my friends. Not all of them, but I was never a person. I've never been a person where it's come easy for me. So I had to work hard. I was not a great standardized test. So I did well in school, but it wasn't, like I said, it didn't come easy for me. I did okay in college. Same deal. I had to study a lot. I felt like to get decent grades. I was always jealous of people who could get really good grades and it seemed like they put no time into it because I seemed to have to put a lot of time into it to get maybe as good of grades as they were. And I never understood how people do that. But I was always a little jealous of that. It was good. My school didn't come easy, but I did okay. I got in. to law school out of college. And I did okay and law school was tough.

But again, I felt like, you know, my wife went to law school also. She's naturally much smarter than I am. I feel like it took her like a semester to figure out the law school game. It took me like two and a half years. So we both figured it out. She just did it much faster than I did. Yeah, I've always enjoyed school. I remember college was so exciting for me because you were meeting.

people from different parts of the country. You get out of your bubble for the first time, or at least I did, and you're meeting people from different parts of the country. You're being exposed to new things. It's learning and the opportunity to learn new things has always been exciting for me. College was the first blow open the doors on that for me. So I enjoyed college immensely. Law school was not quite as much fun as college, but I still enjoyed the learning learning part of all of that. Yeah, beautiful. When does drinking enter the picture?

Drinking entered the picture for me in high school. I didn't drink a lot in high school. And I felt like I came to the game a little bit later than some of my friends. I think I was a sophomore when I drank for the first time, which also was the first time I got really drunk. And looking back now, the issues I ended up with. with alcohol, we're pretty much there from the first time I took a drink of alcohol. But I wasn't one of those persons. I've heard people say that the first sip of alcohol I had just transported me to this new world that I couldn't, I fell in love with, I couldn't leave. It wasn't really like that

for me. I think I was a fairly typical high school drinker. I didn't do it a ton, but I did do it. And I liked it. I don't remember loving it. Like, I don't remember waking up and thinking, oh, my God, We got to get drunk again this weekend. But I did it enough that by the time I graduated high school, I was familiar with it. And I liked it, but I wouldn't say I was obsessed with it. Now, college was when the drinking foundation that really stayed with me was delayed. That was when I drank a lot more often. It was much easier to do.

It was all around you 24-7. It is a whole new world in terms of drinking, partying, access to it. And again, I didn't think much at the time of my drinking because, one, I was going to class. I was getting decent grades. And I was working hard. And I thought, I'm just drinking like a normal college student. And in college, at least where I went to college, everywhere you look, there's people drinking excessively. We all have those people we look to and say, at least I'm not as bad as so-and-so.

And in college, those people are all around you. There's no shortage of those people if you want to look to someone, make yourself feel better about your own drinking. They're everywhere in college. The issues started to creep in on a real low level at college, but I didn't spend any time with them. I didn't give much thought to them because, again, you're in college. That's what you do. And I don't want to give much time or thought to it. I think subconsciously I probably knew there was more there than I was willing to admit, and I just didn't want to go there.

But what started to emerge in college was I didn't have an off switch. Too often, I didn't have an off switch. Not all the time, but I was always in a rush to get that buzz and then to get drunk. And then after that, all bets were off. But I was always in a hurry to get there. And it was like, every time we drank, I approached it as if whatever was in front of us was like the last bit of alcohol available on the planet. And you better drink it. or you don't know what's going to happen.

I was just always in a rush to keep it going, to get to that buzz state and then to keep it going. I don't think a lot of people approach drinking that way. When I'd be halfway through my first drink, I'd be thinking about where I was going to get my second. And when I was halfway through my second, I was thinking about what's the third one going to look like? And if there was a potential break in the drinking

or there was going to be a problem with getting that third drink or fourth drink or fifth drink, That made me anxious. I got anxious about that. And too often I was the drunkest one in the room. People would have four drinks. I would have seven. People would stop drinking at 11 o'clock at night or midnight,

and I would want to keep going until one or two. So all those things started to appear in college. And those things, in some way, shape, or form stayed with me, with my drinking after college, but I just, I didn't examine it much at that time in my life. I knew I didn't like how those nights made me feel. I didn't like how I woke up feeling the next day and trying to piece together the night before, trying to figure out if my girlfriend was mad at me or if I had something I needed to make up for.

I didn't not remembering things. I hated that. But again, I didn't dive into any of that. I just brushed it aside and went on with my life. Yeah. Yeah, that's something we hear a lot from the culture of college, especially going away, right? You don't have the guidance necessarily from your folks. You don't have the oversight.

You're just with a bunch of other college students. You have that freedom. And the word that comes up quite often is binge drinking. Is it really builds in that cycle of binge drinking, right? Because a lot of people, you're doing your studies. You're staying plugged in. You're doing fairly well. but it might be on the weekends right out worked hard all week it's like that earning that thing

and then like you mentioned too it stuck with you and i think some people they'll some people i knew in college after college there was those people who stayed in the college town if they kept the party going and then there were also those people too who moved on from it to where i would shake my head and wonder Todd how did they get this figured out we used to do this stuff all the time regularly and then they've just turned to this switch off and I was just like that to me is extremely foreign and for me I'm with you in a sense on that those sort of behaviors that cycle could carry on I hope it's changing I don't on the college campuses these days but you're right that's exactly what it was and it's been a couple years since I was in college but it's that's

exactly what it was you I wasn't drinking every night but it was very much of I'm going to work my tail off Monday through Thursday or Monday through Wednesday. And then I'm going to cut loose Friday Saturday or Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Because I deserve it. And I've worked hard. And I had a long week. And binge drinking was very much the norm in college. And I've said before, when you talk about people moving on from that stage and flipping

a switch with their drinking, my drinking never really changed. That's not to say I partied when I was 28, 29, started having kids. at the same level I was doing in college. But for the most part, my drinking habits and how I drank stayed the same. And what changed was my circumstances in life. You go from college student to law student to young professional to getting married to having kids. Those are big life changes. And for a lot of people, what accompanies those changes is you don't drink as much as you did before or you do it differently.

And I may not have drank as much, but I wasn't doing it any differently. And that's what started to cause issues later on for me was drinking like I was when I was 22 looks different and has different consequences when you're 32 and when you're 42. And so a lot of that stuff was changing in my life, but the way I drank was not. And that can cause problems. And it was causing problems for me. Yeah. To back up there a second, too, because after college, then you went to law school.

And I've heard a few stories about people going to graduate school, right? You're actually of age to drink then. It seems like the pressure. I've never experienced it, but from the stories, it seems like the pressure and everything really can have an impact. What was it like for you then when you made that transition? So it's funny because I thought going to law school, I thought there'd be less drinking and I thought it'd be more serious.

Okay, this is serious. Like, college was fun, but this is grad school. It's a little more serious. And I remember literally like the first night I got there, it was before classes started, there was a party put on by the Student Bar Association at a bar in town. And it was an open bar. And there was a couple professors there. And everybody was drinking. And I thought, oh my God, this is like college part two. And it's not any less drinking. It might be more. And so the drinking in large part in long. school was fairly similar to college. We may not have done it quite as much. We may not have gone out as many nights as you do in college. But man, the binge drinking and the, and was pretty much the same as it was in college. And what I noticed in law school, again, looking back, I didn't notice any of this in real time, but looking back, that law school kind of marked for me the beginning of using alcohol

to cope and using alcohol to deal with stress. Because law school was a, can be a very stressful thing. And at that time, I wasn't working out very much. So I wasn't using exercise as an outlet for stress, but I was using alcohol for an outlet for that stress. And that's obviously a much less healthy option than exercising. But that was my main coping tool in law school was drinking. And that kind of marked the first time, or that I think the beginning of using alcohol as a tool to cope with life's stresses. And again, I thought that was okay. I thought it was fine to do that

because everywhere you look, other people are doing it too. And that's just what we did. And so you don't know any better really to question it, and it seems normal. And I had no concept whatsoever for a long time after that

that using alcohol to cope just makes things worse, not better. I was oblivious, totally oblivious to that. But that was, law school marked that moment where I started to use it as a coping tool. Yeah, it's interesting too, that shift that takes place, right, to where it was this thing to fit in, belong, party, let off a little bit of steam. And then now it takes that switch, that upgrade in a sense to where now it's helping you with the stress.

And to an extent, when I look at my story, like it did for a bit until it didn't. And that was like the big, that was like where the carpet was pulled from under me is where it worked. And then it works so good. I was like, this is the greatest thing ever. And then like you said, after a while, it starts to not work anymore. And for a lot of people that share, that's a very scary transition because we've relied on something to help us out, get through life. And then it's, oh, now that doesn't work anymore.

I'm wondering, too, though, Todd, when did you decide to be a lawyer? Was this the decision you made in college or this was something that you had, or to go to law school you had in mind way before? No, I had wanted to go to law school for a long time ever since I could remember. in third grade is like the earliest time I remember like saying I'm going to be a lawyer and I never really it's funny I never really seriously considered doing anything else it was something I just wanted to do since I had been a little kid and so that was always a goal of mine and never really wavered on that too much yeah is that the influence of your father because that was what he was doing I'm sure that was a big part of it I looked at I looked at that and thought I want to do that now he he never pushed me in that direction. If anything, he wanted to make sure I backed up, looked at the big picture. And I think he wanted to make sure I wanted to do it for myself and my own reasons. But he never pushed me in that

direction, never told me he wanted me to do that. And like I said, if anything, I think he wanted to make sure I was certain of that decision. Yeah. He knew maybe the tough road ahead, right? Yeah. It's easy, right? So you want to be, you want to make sure that's what you want to do. So you have like, grad school experience there. This is when things kind of transition in a bit. And all this is hindsight at the time, right? Are you connecting any of the dots here? Not really. No, not really. Law school, in terms of my examination of things, law school was fairly similar to college. I knew I drank too much of times. I knew I had trouble with an off switch. I knew that I'd have these feelings of shame and regret and embarrassment the next day that I hated. I knew I hated them. But again, I didn't

really dive into any of those. So I was not connecting any dots at that time other than on some level knowing that they were there, but not really wanting or thinking about doing anything about it. Now, I will say when I was like 25, I think, my dad gave up drinking. And my dad and I are very similar creatures, very similar personalities. And he was a similar drinker as I was. He drank every night and he was very successful. He kept his stuff together. Everything was fine on the outside.

Not someone you'd look at and think, oh man, alcohol is really holding them back. But when I was about 25, he quit and I had a very small voice in my head at that time that said, oh shit, you're going to have to get up drinking at some point. knowing how similar I am to my dad. I had a very small voice in my head, a very quiet voice that I heard when I found out he quit drinking. But I put that away for a long time because I did not want to go there. Because like you said, it was about the scariest thing you could have asked me to do at that point. If you would have said, what do you think about giving out of alcohol?

I would have said, are you crazy? Do you want me to die? No way. Yeah. I think that we all go through that thing and then we go through that stage. Yeah, but it sounds like maybe the seed was planted at that point in time, right? I mean, a seed of plant. Oh, for sure.

Of the fear of, oh, but there was also the seed planted of, that kind of looks a little bit like the way I operate. And I might have to make that decision someday. But let's put that on the back burner for now, which all of us do, I think. I don't think any of us have that first initial thought of, I got to quit and then we do. There's some people, but I think that I really think that a lot of us think about it for years, some 10, 20, or a couple years, you know, everybody's stories can be different. Absolutely. I think that we've thought about it and we've had that subconscious, those thoughts or something

about, hey, someday, I knew I did, like way before I quit. I knew, hey, this, I'm going to have to give up someday. I just knew it because the writing was on the wall. I was never the full-blown alcoholic that you might see in the Hollywood movies where they've lost everything. But I knew that, like, it was a slippery slope because I could not get enough in my peers. They could get enough. They were satisfied, like you mentioned. 10, 11 o'clock, they were looking for a cab home.

And I was looking for a cab to the next place. Yeah. I wasn't ready to stop. So it took me from the time I admitted that I was evaluating my relationship with alcohol until the time I decided to give it up was six years. So you're exactly right. It takes people a long time. And at the beginning of that, I wasn't in a place where I said, I'm going to work on giving

this up. At the beginning, I was at a place where I was like, I got to figure this out so I don't have to give it up. I need to figure this out. I need to figure out how to drink like a normal. person and that's largely what those six years were spent doing and surprise there was no figuring it out but yeah it was a six year it was a six year period for me yeah and it's that i i have this just call it research right we have to do the research yeah and we've got to slowly take

things off the table of what we tried and then really get to that point of being honest with ourselves about well i tried x y and z i tried you hear all the stories right the but budgets, the switching the drinks, switching the times, eating before, eating after, going to bed at a certain time. You hear the madness that we've all tried in a sense. So where do you go after that, though? 25 years old, around 25 and your dad is giving things up. What does your life look like at 25?

So it was fairly typical. Again, I was a young associate in a law firm. I was pretty focused on my job. I got engaged and married in late. 20s, I think it was 27, 28. Everything's going according to plan. And my drinking was, I wasn't drinking every night. Again, it was mostly weekend drinking. So it was social and weekend drinking, I would call it. But again, looking back, it was a similar thought process to college. Man, I've worked hard this week. We're going to this party tonight. Let's have a good time.

And then I'd cut loose and I would wake up and think, why are you doing this again? How did this, how did you let this happen again? And I got into this dance with my wife, this kind of day after dance of having to figure out, is she mad at me? How mad is she? Did we come home early because I got too drunk? All this stuff.

And that morning after routine is so, oh, God, it still makes me cringe. And it's been years, but it's still, it's just awful. I just, I hated it with all my heart. But I kept doing it over and over again. And finally in 2013, so we had been married for 11 years by this point. But in 2013, I was noticing it was feeling like we were, we had all of our kids at that point. So we had four kids at that point.

Our youngest had been born the year before. And it was feeling like we were having the same fight over and over again. And it was usually about my drinking. And it wasn't so much like my wife never said to me, you need to stop drinking or I want you to stop drinking. She would always say, why can't you drink like a normal person? And I would always say, I don't know. I really wish I could.

I would love to be able to do that. If there was a pill I could take to do it, I would do it right now. But it was starting to affect our marriage to the point where I was, I just felt, okay, you can't have the same fight over and over again in a marriage without doing something about it or that's going to lead to trouble. And so that's when I started. a therapist was in 2013. And it's funny because the first time I went to see her,

it was under the guise of, my wife and I are arguing a lot. We're fighting a lot. We're not getting along very well. I'm getting really angry, really fast. I'm going from zero to 60. I've got a short fuse, and that's not usually like me.

I usually like to talk things out, and I'm not doing very much of that. But at that time, I even had trouble admitting to this therapist that alcohol was at the root of this. Now, it took her about five minutes to figure that out. But our first visit, my official reason for coming was, I'm not getting along with my wife very well. And then lo and behold, we ended up talking a lot about alcohol.

And so she suggested at that time that I'd take a 90-day break from alcohol. And at that time, I 100% felt like she was asking me to walk into a burn. building. I was like 90 days. Are you kidding me? I was like, that's three months. And this was in like the fall, late fall of the year. So I'm going through, oh my God, it's football season, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's. We got travel coming out. How do you do these things without alcohol? It's scared me to death. But I was also at a point where I was ready to do something to try to change things. So I was like, okay, it's three months. It's not forever. Just set a goal for yourself, do it for three months, see what happens. So I did. And it wasn't bad. It was, but again, at the time,

I was like, I had my eye on that three-month date on the calendar for when I was going to be able to drink again. So quitting was nowhere on the radar screen at that point. I thought, I'll just do this three months. Because people who have a problem with alcohol, they don't quit drinking for three months. So if I can go three months without alcohol, I'm in great shape. Like, I don't need to quit because people who need to quit can't go three months without alcohol. So I did the three months. I learned a lot.

I discovered some things about my drinking for the first time that I had never discovered before. I discovered that I physically drank faster than most people, which is crazy to me that I'd never figured that out or never really noticed it. But I hadn't. I realized that some people go out to dinner and have two drinks and then go home. And that's it for the night. And that floored me. That was something I had never really.

I'm like, why would you do that? But I realized that people actually did it. And I realized I loved waking up in the morning on the weekends during this three months. I love the mornings. They were, oh my gosh, to wake up without the usual, oh, my God, what happened last night? What did I say? What did I do? Check my phone.

Doing the dance with my wife to figure out. removing all of that for three months was fantastic. And so I got a glimpse of during that three months. I got a glimpse of kind of what was there. But again, my mindset was never, and maybe this is something I should think about giving up. It was just let's get to that three months. And then I'll be a changed drinker.

I mean, my New Year's resolution that year, I remember, was to change the way I drank. And I did for a while. For a while after that three months, things were good. and I was drinking differently. And I'm like, you know, I was patting myself on the back. And I'm like, this is great.

Look at what you did. And then those things don't last forever. And eventually the old habits came back and crept in. And you might go six months without a bad drinking night. And then you have one. Then you might go another month. But then you have another one. And then you might have another one a week after that.

And all of a sudden you're back. You're back in that same. shame spiral that you hated from before, except this time, now that you've taken the, now that I had taken the break, I'm much more aware of these things. And I'm aware that it doesn't necessarily have to be this way. And I'm aware of what it feels like when it's not this way. And so that that made it worse, that made it that much worse when it was happening. And so about three years later after this first three-month break, or maybe two years later, I took another one, another three-month break. This was self-imposed because I could feel myself getting a little loose

again. And I felt like everything I had learned that first time was fading. And so I was like, okay, you need to slap yourself back into where you were before. So do another three months. And again, I was like, this is great. I'm doing this on my own. No one's even making me do this. I don't have a problem Because people with a problem Don't voluntarily just give up alcohol for 90 days So I did it again I did another 90 day break

And again it was fine I didn't have a lot of physical cravings Where I was white knuckling I didn't have nights where I was like Standing at the fridge Thinking oh my God I need the beer in there It was difficult psychologically it was difficult socially

It was difficult It was very awkward Going to go into a social event Not drinking That was incredibly awkward and shines a spotlight on you and you don't know what to say to people. You don't know how to act. All that was incredibly awkward. But I wasn't physically craving alcohol as much as I thought I would.

So I did that second 90 day break and then I went and again quitting was nowhere near on the radar screen at that time. And again, it was the same thing. It worked for a while and then things started to get loose again. And then after you, after I had done that twice and things started to be. loose again, I'm like, what is your deal? Why can't you, what is your problem? Like, you can figure stuff out as a dad. You can figure stuff out as a lawyer. You can figure stuff out as a spouse. Why can't you figure this out when I beat myself up and I feel like a failure and the shame comes back and it's just, it's brutal. And I didn't realize how bad it was, how much it was

affecting me until I quit and got some space there. Because I, at the time I thought it was just something that bothered me on a Saturday morning for an hour or two. And then I let it go and I focused on. I started thinking about the next time I was going to drink. But really, it's so much more than that. It stays with you. It's inside you. And even though you may not feel it coming to the surface, it's there. And it's not good. It's not good to have that shame and regret and that negative stuff living inside of you. It's just not healthy. And it's, I didn't realize what a effect that was having on me at the time.

Yeah. So much to unpack there. Because it's a very confusing spot that you can end up in. Because think of this, this back and forth, right? So you're able to quit for this 90 days, the way that we might perceive somebody who has a problem with alcohol or an alcoholic or however we want to drum it up. You're right. It's they can't take a break for 90 days. So if I'm able to do that, I'm off the hook.

I'm out of here. There's nothing to see here. I'm good to go. I did the 90 days. And then probably on that 91st day. I don't know. I could be wrong. But you're right back into it.

Most people share that. Now, first day, that's a celebration, right? To get back at it. But it's, yeah, it's interesting. And then that's why I think it's so important to pay attention to the spectrum. And this is sort of newer language. Like when I first started out exploring all this stuff, there was, I never heard anybody say it. Maybe they were out there saying it, but I didn't hear anybody.

And then there's this gray area. drink and there's kind of people that are maybe falling somewhere on this spectrum and what I think is so important to realize about this spectrum is that I think anyway that this train only goes one way I don't know if we're saying that hey this is what I'm seeing right my relationships are affected this how I'm feeling the shame spiral all this stuff is going on I don't know if we're going to bring that train back to like maybe how it was it's saying high school for you where it's it or leave it. If we get into it, we get into it, cool. If we don't, we don't. Cool. Like, I'm good either way. And that's what in the gray area drinking is something too. And I think that's

where, you know, you're mentioning, you know, what you're describing too. It sounds a lot like, right? Yeah. And I had never, I quit for a little over four years ago. And until I quit, I had never heard that term. And the first time I heard it, I was like, oh my God. That, yeah, that's, yes, That's me. And one thing that really held me back was I don't want, I, from seriously considering quitting, I was the thought of, I don't want people, as soon as I tell people I quit, they're going to think, oh my God, what happened? Or, wow, you must have had a, you must have had a big problem.

And I was tell people like, yeah, I didn't have a capital P problem with alcohol. I had a small P problem with alcohol. But that doesn't mean that the problem or problems that alcohol brought into my life were not big enough that I didn't need to do something about it. I think we all spend a lot of time evaluating our own drinking and thinking, am I a quote unquote alcoholic? Am I better than so-and-so? My neighbor over here. Am I better than so? My neighbor to the left.

I did that. And for years, I was like, I don't, I'm not an alcoholic. I don't lose my job. I don't crash my car in a ditch. I don't get arrested. I show up to my kids' sporting events. I think I'm a decent dad. That's not what an alcoholic was in my book.

I'm not waking up and leaning over and getting a fifth of vodka from my bedside table. And I thought everyone was going to think all those things about me if I quit drinking. And that kept me stuck for a long time because nobody wants to think about people thinking those things about them. And I finally got to a point where I was like, it doesn't, none of that matters. None. The labels don't matter. It doesn't matter if you have three drinks a week or 30 drinks a week or somewhere in between. The only thing that matters is if alcohol is causing you issues in your life to the point where you want to make a change, then you need to make a change.

You need to figure out what that change needs to look like. That's all that matters. But you're right. I hope the discussion is changing because it needs to and it needs to just because that makes it easier for people to make changes, but also because it reflects reality. We don't have drinkers over here and drinkers over here. 95% of people in this world are somewhere in between those extremes. And just because you could be right here or right here, and both of those people could

equally need to make changes just as badly. but it's going to look different for everyone. That's so true. It's going to look different. But the thing with alcohol is the makeup and the build, I think over time, is that we build up the tolerance. That's why some of these consequences over time get bigger and batterers because we have more tolerance.

So what two pints of beer used to do, now it takes six just to get started. And then obviously, if you have eight or ten or twelve, I don't know what good's going to come with it. So that's the longer we stick around, then the more tolerance. and then it probably is going to maybe move us down the spectrum a little bit to the other side. But that's so good.

That's the thing is you can get off the train at any time. And you should. And if you're listening to this show, and I mean, we are changing the conversation. We're having a conversation right here about it, Todd. We're changing it. But if you want to get off of the train that's headed the other way, like you can do that at any time. And that's what I think is so incredible about your story is you didn't necessarily burn everything down and then decide to. And a lot of people I've talked to over the years, they agree.

Like, none of us can predict the future, but they agree. If I were to stick around, I would be getting closer and closer to more things becoming unmanageable as I went along. And for you to be able to like turn the ship around and give up the drinking is incredible. So when was that? Walk us through a little bit around like the time frame of when you decided that and what did that look like for you? Yeah. So my second 90 day break, I believe, was in 2016.

And then by 2019, again, things were getting loose again. And I felt like for me, my drinking was always accompanied with so much effort. There was always so much thought and effort into keeping things under control. I was constantly thinking about drinking, recovering from drinking, thinking about when my next drinking experience was going to be. and then thinking about how I was going to keep it under control and make it a good drinking night instead of a bad one. It was always on my mind. And by 2019, I was getting tired of all that work. And I was doing it less.

My drinking was getting loose. And I wasn't putting in the work to keep it under control because I was exhausted by it. And we all have those moments where you're, fuck it. I'm done. I'm not doing the work tonight. I'm just going to go out and have a good time because that's more fun in the moment. It's not more fun the next day, but it's more fun for two hours the night before. It's easier and it's better and it's less work.

So that's what I'm doing. And I was, so by 2019, I was doing that more often than I had been. And I could feel it and I knew it. But again, I was just like, no. I'm not examining it. I'm not doing the work. So a couple of things happened that year that I call nudges getting me to the point where I decided to give it up. One was that summer I was at a college world series baseball game. Omaha has the college world series every year and it's a big deal in our town.

And we usually go and I usually go with my kids and their friends go and all this stuff. And so it's a fun thing every summer. And I went with a couple of our kids, a couple of their friends and one other guy. I think we took like five or six kids with us. And we go down to the game and we all had tickets in different places in the stadium. Me and the guy, me and my friend, go sit in one place. The friends disperse or our kids and their friends dispersed to sit in other places. And I was driving.

So I had not had a lot to drink. And my son had not seen me have a lot to drink. But when we all convened in the concourse at the stadium to meet up to drive home, my oldest who was 15 at the time says to this. me, Dad, do we need to take an Uber home? And I said, no, why do you ask? And he said, sometimes when you and Mr. Peterson get together, who I was with, things can get rowdy. And I was like, no, buddy, it's, I, it's fine. I'm fine to drive us home. And I was fine that day. But that comment stuck with me for the rest of the day. And it was the first thing I thought of the next morning. I could not get it

out of my head. And we had, um, there were about two or three weeks before that, there had been a horrific tragedy in a town right next to ours where five girls who had just graduated high school got in a car accident where alcohol was involved and had four of them died. And it was horrific. And that was on my mind because my oldest was getting ready to start driving. So that was on my mind. And then he makes this comment at this college world series game. And all I kept thinking was my son who I'm supposed to keep safe I'm supposed to protect it if nothing else's parents were supposed to help our kids feel safe and my son is asking me whether or not we need to take an Uber because he's seen me drink too much other times with this person and by myself

and with other people and that stopped me in my tracks and I was like this can't be the I can do as a dad. Like, I've got to do better than this. I don't want this to be the best I could do as a dad, where my son is wondering if he has a safe ride home from a baseball game. That made me feel awful. And I couldn't get that out of my head. That was one thing that just slapped me in the face that I couldn't run from. I couldn't bullshit my way out of. I mean, you know how many excuses we tell ourselves and how we rationalize drinking. to the, we can use anything to rationalize our drinking. And I did a lot of that. But I couldn't rationalize this. I couldn't run from this. This was something that slapped me right in the face and

really made me sit up and think, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing as a dad? And don't you want to do better than this? And so that was in roughly June of that year. About a month or two later, I was in Orlando, Florida for a mediation and happened to be in the room with opposing counsel for a while, just making small talk. And we're just telling some stories talking about our kids. And this guy was about my age. He worked at a firm, very similar to the firm I worked at. We practiced in the same area. We have very similar careers and family life. And we're at similar stations in life. And he just casually mentioned, yeah, when my oldest turned out, I quit drinking.

I was worried about the example I was setting. And I just sat there and I didn't say anything other than, oh, wow, good for you. But I thought about that for a while after that mediation. And it was almost like he gave me permission to start thinking about that myself. It was like, here's the guy who's just like me. And he gave up drinking. And I was like, huh, huh, like maybe it's possible for someone like me to entertain the idea of doing something like that. And then about two months after that, we went to Arizona for a good friend's 40th birthday party.

And it was an adult only, no kids. And it was just a weekend at a nice resort with family friends we've known forever and some other people. really fun group. We go on vacation with these people all the time. We know it's a really fun group. My parents were there. And the first day at the resort is one of those days where we're out at the pool. It's great weather.

Everybody's drinking. Everybody's having a good time. I'm drinking more than everybody else. And so it comes time to go back to the rooms, shower up, get ready for dinner. And my wife is trying to get me to stay in the room for the night. because she thinks I've had too much to drink and I just need to sleep it off till the next morning. And I, of course, think she's being ridiculous and doesn't know what she's talking about. And I'm like, I just need to eat, relax, it'll be fine.

So I get ready. I go down to the private room. We have a private room reserved for our group for dinner. And we're sitting at a table and my parents are across the table from us. And she leans over and whispers. spers into my ear, she says, your parents are staring at you. And I was like, what are you talking about? And she said, your parents are staring at you. And I just dismissed it at the time. I'm like, oh, stop. Get off my back. It's fine. Just leave me alone. But again, that was another comment where

I could not shake it. And the first thing I thought of when I woke up the next morning was her telling me that. And it bothered me in a way that my drinking had never bothered me before. I'd been through the shame cycle hundreds of times before this. But this was something, this was different. This was worse. It hit me in a place that just wrecked me. And it was because I wasn't thinking my parents are the most compassionate people in the world and the most non-judgmental, loving, caring people in the world.

So I wasn't thinking about them looking at me thinking like, oh, my God, our son, is an embarrassment. It wasn't that. What I was thinking was my parents were probably looking at me in that state, and they were probably sad about what they saw. And they were probably sad for my wife. They were probably sad for me. And I just couldn't shake the thought of making them sad.

I was 44 years old at the time. I had four kids of my own. And it transported me back to being like a little kid. When you disappoint your parents, it hit me like a ton of bricks. And it just gutted me that I, the idea that I did something as a 44 year old adult to make my parents feel that way. And again, that was another moment where I was like, what am I doing? Can I do better than this? I feel like I can do better than this.

So that night in Arizona was the last time I had a drink. And I woke up the next day and I thought, this isn't working. This isn't working. I've had enough. I was not ready to say that day I'm quitting for good, but I was so disgusted with myself and I was so pissed at myself and I was so angry that I hadn't figured this out. I was just like, enough. Something's got to change. And so I immediately committed to another three month break. And then during that three month break, my therapist said, why don't you make it six months this time? Because you've done three months before. And that hasn't worked like you wanted it to, try something different.

And I thought, okay, I'll do that. I was fine with that because I was still in the motive. I need to punish myself. I need to do something different to produce a different result because what I had been doing was not working. And so I committed to another six months. And then somewhere between that three month and six month mark, I had that moment where I was finally honest with myself.

And to your point about turning the train around, I had this. I still remember where I was driving in the car. and I just finally admitted to myself, you're not going to fix this. This is not a fixable problem for you. Or at least it's not fixable by changing the way you drink or doing any of the 45 moderation hacks you've employed over the years. I just had this moment where I said to myself, you are not going to control, you are never going to control your drinking to the extent you want to.

It's not possible. whatever the reasons don't matter maybe it's something me maybe it's something with me maybe it's something with the way my brain works maybe it's something i was born with maybe it's something i developed at some point in life none it doesn't matter what matters is i finally accepted it's not going to happen i'm not going to do it it's it's impossible for me to do and after i accepted that then the next step was i mean it wasn't an easy step but the what the next step needed to be was easy because there's only one thing left to do if i wanted to truly make it a change and I'd gotten to the point where I finally admitted to myself, you're not going to

moderate this thing to death. The only thing left to do was to give it up. That was the only, that was the only thing left on the table. And that's when I decided, it still took me another week to say it out loud to my wife to actually walk in the room and say, I'm going to give up alcohol because I knew once I said those words to her, I'm like, it's, there's no going back. Because then I'm a huge asshole. If I say those words to her and then I start drinking again, then I'm just, I can't do that. I finally set the words out loud and the rest is history. Wow.

Thank you for sharing that. It seems like in those stories, there were seeds planted along the way. Yes. There were some thoughts that you couldn't shake and it really started to drum up, maybe the alternative option. Because I think we're in this spot too for a while, Todd. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you can't.

but we envision our consumption is only impacting us. It's like, oh, well, this is just what I'm doing. This is my choice. I have to wake up every morning and feel like crap. But that's all me. It's all on me. And I can handle that. But then maybe towards the end or as things continue,

maybe it starts to come out that like this has a really big impact on everybody around us. And it sounds like some of those stories. It was like, hey, now it's, yeah, it's not just about Todd. And it's interesting too in your story there because I think a lot of us go through this too is to where we have that shift of I can moderate it, I can control this, I can figure it out. And then we shift over into this. I just accept that this is the way my life is going to be forever. And then we jump into that sort of, I'm done fighting it.

I've just accepted it. It sucks. I'm going to make the best of it and everybody around me. This is the way it's going to be. We don't maybe tell them all that, but that's the way we act. And then we shift into this other enlightening. part of things where it's like we hit that other moment of clarity you mentioned between three and six months to where now you have this vision of the only way out of this to stop this cycle is

just to not drink and then what's changed with your life since those decisions since that decision that you made oh man this is one of my favorite things to talk about in in the whole world because there's there's not a facet of my life that has not improved by my decision to quit drinking. Family life, personal life, married life, it's all significantly better since I quit. And the reason I love talking about this so much is because, one, if you would have told me the day I quit drinking, if you would have told me that I was going to love a life without alcohol, much, much more than I did my drinking life. I would have bet you a million dollars that wasn't going to be the case, I was 100% convinced. I would have told you there's, there is no way that's going to be

true. It seemed impossible to me. And I'm here to tell you, it's, everything is better. That's not to say it was easy. And that's not to say you don't go through some stuff where you're like, man, this is, you don't have days where you think giving up alcohol sucks. This is I can't believe I did this. I hate it. Yes, you have those moments. You have those days. But as you, the further away you those moments and those days get fewer and farther between. And it's, I have been blown away by how much I enjoy a life without alcohol. And the inner peace and the calm that I have now, I didn't know existed. This living without alcohol is an entire way of life, an entire new way of living that I didn't

know existed when I was drinking. I didn't know the weight of that shame and the, uh, disappointment and the embarrassment that I felt after drinking all those mornings, I didn't know the weight that was occupying inside of me. That's gone. And to shed that felt better than I ever knew it would feel because I didn't know I was carrying all that weight. My relationship with my kids is better. I don't do a lot of looking backwards and thinking about, why didn't I do this sooner. But man, my kid, I wish, I'd love to go through the toddler phase of parenting again as a non-drinker because I know I'd be better at it. I know it would be easier. And I tell people

all the time, I bought into this lie. We all buy into this lie, or a lot of us do, that alcohol makes parenting easier and makes your job easier. It makes your life easier. And I can tell you, from my experience, I've done all, I've done all this stuff as a drinker. And now I've done it as a non-drinker. And it's not even close. What's better and what's easier is doing everything as a non-drinker. It's, it's, it's, I've been blown away. I've been blown away by it. And I tell people, I say the decision to quit drinking was at the time, maybe the hardest decision I've ever made in my life. And if I had known what was awaiting me, it would have been the easiest decision I've ever made. Wow, that's powerful. That is so powerful. Yeah, every area of your life has changed. It's changed so

that you wanted to write about it. Tell us about this process. Yes, yes, I wrote a book. It's called I Didn't Believe It Either. One dad's discovery that everything is better without alcohol. And the reason I wrote this is about a year after I quit drinking. I was a big milestone for me. And I felt like I'd gotten to the other side. And I was just doing a lot of reflecting on how grateful I was that I had decided to give up alcohol, how grateful I was that I discovered this whole other way of living. And so I wanted to tell people about that, who were interested. I don't like to, I don't want to be that guy who walks into a room full of drinkers and says, hey, have you guys ever thought about quitting drinking? Nobody wants to be that guy.

But for people who are interested, I love telling them about how wonderful I've found a life of not drinking to be. So I wanted to put that out into the world, and I read so many books in my early days of quitting, and I heard so many people's stories that helped me so much because at one point I was convinced I was the only person in the world.

So I wanted to tell people how much I enjoyed this way of living, not drinking, and how surprised I'd been by how much I enjoy it. And I also wanted to write something that would hopefully help people, who were either thinking about giving of alcohol or were early on and giving it up because I read so many books in my first few months and listened to so many stories that helped me so much. And I can't emphasize that enough. When you hear other people tell their stories and you read about their stories, you begin to feel like,

hey, I'm not the only person who's dealing with this stuff. And for a time, I thought I was. I felt like I was on an island. And you realize you're not on an island. And what I've discovered from quitting and telling my story is the number of people that reach out to me and that I've come in, I've connected with who want to talk about this stuff. There are so many people out there who want to talk about these things. We just don't talk about it a lot as a society. So I wanted to put something out there that hopefully will help someone in the same way that I was helped by people writing their stories and telling their stories.

So I wrote a book about it. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to share before we sign off? I'll just say the book is available on Amazon. It's called I Didn't Believe It Either. And if anyone ever wants to reach out and talk about any of this stuff, like I said, I love talking about this stuff. It's hard to get me to shut up once I keep going.

It's you probably just figured out, Brad. But I'm very passionate. It's been such a positive change in my life. I'm very passionate about trying to help other people. experience the same thing. Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, once you're, yeah, of course, it's only normal to want to give something a way that's so great to get away that insight, especially without you having it or seeing that that was at all possible because we can't be naive to think that we were the only people who thought that because I was the same. I was the same in a lot of aspects.

There's a lot of people out there who have no idea and this seems like such a far-fetched out in the wild universe with the star's idea that a life without alcohol can get better because, yeah, you set can be so much better because we've been sold a lot of dreams on this whole idea. There's so much more out there than just the cycle, right? The Groundhog Day. Yeah. But thank you, Todd. Thank you so much for jumping on here.

Thank you for sharing your story. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Brad. I appreciate it. Well, there it is another incredible episode. Thank you, Todd so much. Be sure, guys, I'll drop Todd's contact information for his Instagram, at least in the show notes below.

If you enjoyed this episode, if you can connect with any part. of his story or you just want to say thank you, which is extremely encouraged around here because it definitely takes some bravery to come on here and share your story with the world. Be sure to reach out to Todd. Let him know you appreciate him sharing his story. I love this conversation because I feel like it really paints a very real picture of what this is like, right? It does sometimes take time to come to that decision that our life would be better

without, without alcohol. And that's okay. It's obviously not ideal. We would like for the first thought we have is that, hey, this is not good for our life, and we just make the change right after that. But I don't personally know or even think that that's the majority of people's stories. Of course, there are people out there who would share that story. But I think for a lot of us, we go back and forth with this for years.

But with that being said, it was also interesting with the gray area drinking coming up again in another conversation. Because this whole thing, what I've learned over the years is it lives on a spectrum. So there's one part and then there's another part. And a lot of us, I think, fall in between there. Of course, there's going to be people that are all the way at one side and people that are just beginning out. But I think a lot of us are going to fall somewhere in the middle there. And it's really easy to convince ourselves that if we, We don't fit into this certain box that giving up alcohol is not going to improve our life.

But that's not true. Even a guy like Todd who, you know, you heard the story. It wasn't an everyday thing. It wasn't all out. It wasn't trouble every time. Most of the times, maybe it wasn't. But giving up alcohol was the best decision he did in every area of his life has improved. I mean, what else could you give up in your life that would improve every area of your life?

I can't think of anything off the top of my head right now but it's like that old saying you give up one thing for everything or you give up everything for one thing and I think that's what a lot of us do we give up everything just for that next one right so something to think about

look if you're struggling you got this you can get on track I had somebody reach out to me tonight actually right before I started to do the editing for this episode and they found the episode or what they mentioned was the podcast found them. I don't have all the details on that, but the podcast found them in their first day. And I'm sure there's a lot of you out there that are on your first day.

And I just want you to give yourself a pat on the back. Because even coming to this conclusion that you want to do something like giving up alcohol to improve your life in all areas is not easy. is very courageous. And a lot of people don't do it. So if you're one of the people that are doing it, you're going through this, be sure to get some support. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode,

and like I mentioned in a bunch of the episodes, join us on Sober Buddy and check it out. There's a free 30-day trial, 30 days, and even after that, it's $11.99 or $12.99 a month. $12.99. Most of you guys probably live, lose that in your washing machine each month. Try it out and see if connecting with other people on the journey would be helpful for you.

And if it's not, so be it. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with trying. But huge kudos to everybody who's sticking around and who just wants better for their life and for the life of the people around us because the addiction affects everybody, but so does the recovery. So does the sobriety. It will improve everybody's life around us.

So look, that's it for now. I'll see you on the next one.