EP 76: From Addicted to Attorney: My Journey to Sobriety

Disclaimer. At two addicts in the moron, we discuss personal stories of addiction with the intention of being educational, relatable, and inspirational. The views and experiences shared are those of individuals involved are not meant to glorify or condone any illegal or harmful behavior. This content is for educational purposes only and is not intended as professional advice. If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, we strongly encourage you seek help from a qualified professional or support service. But I'm gonna fix your name because it dripped before we leave. Don't don't down down. We'll fix it. We'll fix it. That was a drippy marker. It's all right. Sometimes they get wet. It's all right. That that will be a you know, you can leave it like that. It'll be what it is. There you go. I love it. Drippy. I think it's the same. Well, we're back to another episode of two addicts and a mother fucking moron. I'm the mother fucking moron. I'm definitely admit that recovered. But I had to explain this to our guest who we met out in the in the driveway here. But he knew all about it. And I was really excited. We had a nice little chat out there. But that he's in gentlemen. Lance Travis. Thanks. I don't know why I said larynx. That's all right. Fucked it up. Lance. You want to do the drippy of it? Yeah. Well, thank you for coming, man. Thank y'all for having me. No. And you reached out to us, right? Yeah. Come on. And I love when that happens. I love when people who watch us reach out and because we'll reach back and we love a we love a good story. And my brother, you have a good one. Maybe. Oh, yeah. It's mine. We'll see if we'll see if anybody likes it or you'll like it. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about what your DOC was. Alcohol straight up booze straight up booze. This might be the only one straight up booze. Has there ever been a just straight up booze? Yes. Oh, yes. But we have had a couple. One or two. Yeah. Yeah, we have. Yeah. For sure. He wrote a book. I mean, I'll say I wouldn't above drugs. Yeah. I mean, if you would give them to me, I'd try it. Yeah. Yeah. And I did try everyone that everyone gave to me. They didn't do it for me. Yeah. I don't know what I don't want to tell you. I feel pretty fortunate about that now because if any of those things had taken off the way that the alcohol took off for me, I really can't imagine where it would have ended. It really feels like it would have ended in prison or death because the alcohol you can get away with for a little bit longer because it's a little bit more legal. Well, this is interesting to me. So you've tried drugs. Do you think that it was the stigma around alcohol that kept you going to the alcohol and maybe the stigma of drugs pulling you away from them? Nope. It was the effect. Okay. Yeah. I was. I've always run fast. I just try to present calm, but inside, I'm always going fast. And so the stimulants did not agree with me. Yeah. Yeah. The stimulants did not give me the effect I was looking for because I was always looking to slow my wheels down. There you go. And the I stumbled upon alcohol. I did not come from a family that that drank when I was 14 and ran into alcohol. I was two days away from my 15th birthday. So I was close to 15 at Labor Day weekend before my freshman year of high school. Okay. And saw literally saw alcohol for the first time. Whoa. There was no alcohol in my house. I never seen anyone drink before. Didn't know anything about it. When my buddy showed me that bottle of vodka, I didn't even know what it was. I mean, that's how naive and sheltered I was. Whoa. But he said we'll pour a couple of screwdrivers, a bit of vodka, orange juice, and we'll have one and then we'll replace it with water. And my mom will never know. So he had one. He poured me one. He went to bed. I stayed up and finished the bottle. Yeah. Filled it up with water. Filled it up with water. I never got invited back to that house. I'm imagining my buddy. I could give him a shout out. We're still somewhat friends. I could imagine my buddy got in quite a bit of trouble over that. But immediately, like from that first time, I was off to the races when it came to the effect that that substance produced in me. Yeah. And it, I mean, and there went the next 37 years. I mean, it was harder for me to get access to for those teenage years. But I did it. And that was another deal too is, you know, I had to lie cheat and steal to get it when it was 15, 16, 17. Yeah. Because you couldn't just, well, now, I mean, I had a fake ID at 17 back then. The Texas IDs were a little bit easier to, yeah, to just change the number on where I'm 55 years old. So we're talking back to the early 80s, early to mid 80s. I remember sitting outside gas stations with like 20. Absolutely. And asking somebody, hey, will you get me a case and we'll buy you a case too? Right. And that was like when I was 14, 15. But yeah, alcohol always amazes me when when when people come on that are just alcoholics. I know you said that drugs were something that you didn't, you didn't, it wouldn't probably say no to them, but alcohol is what to do for me. Because we've had a Ryan boy, yeah, sober water. He's had, he's came on and then Josh Dean remember last call. Yeah. Yeah. And and Emily Bond too. Yeah. Yeah. We've had a few and it always blows my mind because the stigma behind being a drug addict is so much like if I was just an alcoholic, yeah, I could have, if if if if people looked at meth, the way that they look at alcohol, I may have never stopped. I know. You know, and it's that that also means it's so much harder for someone like you. I used to always look at I'm judgmental. I used to look at alcoholics and be like, well, you can't handle your whiskey pussy. But then I started thinking whenever we started doing this and we started talking and I started thinking, holy shit, like it's going to be so much harder. Like I don't have to walk in a store and walk past meth. Yeah. I don't have to go to my buddies football game and see that they're smoking meth, but they, but they are drinking alcohol. The barrier to entry is so much. I don't want to say it's harder, but there's a lot more effort required for drugs. Yes. There's effort required and there's virtually zero effort for alcohol. Yeah. If I pop out of meth, pipe and start smoking in a family reunion, people are going to be like, what the fuck? Yeah. But if you pop out of beer, no big deal. And in most places, until the very end, I mean, and the very end for me lasted like 10 to 15 years. But until the end of the run, in most places, nobody's given me trouble over my problem. Yeah. I mean, there were some people that knew in my 20s and 30s that this was a problem. But nobody really, there wasn't as much discussion of alcohol as alcoholism and addiction in general in the 90s and early 2000s. Oh, yeah. What maybe crack? Maybe that, but nobody really talked about alcohol as a fatal progressive disease in open public like they do now. Well, they're probably one of the biggest sponsors of any sports out there. Everything. They're still to this day, like literally to this day. I'm a right responsibly. Yeah. I'm a runner. They sponsor every marathon. Yeah. I'll run the Dallas marathon in a couple in about a month. Yeah. And the number one sponsor is a Troy Eggman's beer company. Yeah. I mean, right? It's athletes sponsoring beer and tequila and whatever. So yeah, it's a painting painter. Connor McGrater's whiskey. Yeah. Well, he sold it. Well, still it's still fucking. He still drinks it a lot. That's new to his out of his fucking mind. By the way, which is fine. I mean, which is fine. The statistics show that maybe 80 to 90% of people that drink alcohol are not going to drink it alcoholically and have the issues that I have. Yeah. That's why it's available on every street corner. For the people that it's working for, it's working. Yeah. Yeah. It is a poison. It is a toxin. You're poisoning yourself. That's what gives you the buzz. It's changing your brain chemistry. And in excess for somebody like me, it is absolutely deadly. And it's only a matter of time. And I just am a little bit more stubborn and a little bit stronger stock. Yeah. than some others. And so that run for me was three decades plus. Yeah. Okay. So three decades plus in the fight. Yep. When did you recognize? Well, first of all, I didn't ask you this. How long have you been sober, man? 2222 is my sobriety day. And a couple of months will have four years. Oh, yeah. Let's go. We got to give you a round of applause for that. I don't know that that means anything. You still go pick up chips. Oh, absolutely. They fuck you. We need to come. We need to come see you pick up your chip. We absolutely. I pick up at the Magdalene House birthday night that we have. Even though I didn't get sober there, I volunteer there. Yeah. A bunch every week. And so I pick up my annual chips with the guys that are that I'm helping sponsor that are picking up their 30 day chips and their 60 day chips and stuff. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. And the little inspiration and hope of what several years might look like. Yeah. So back to the question before that was. When did you recognize that you had a problem? Like I know you you're admitting that it was 14 when you kind of got off to the races. Yeah. When did you kind of recognize? Early 20s. Okay. 2324. When you were going through college. College and grad school. Yeah. In between probably between senior year of college and first year of grad school. I'd always been a straight A student. I mean, my my school came easy to me. Yeah. When I was in in school in the 70s and 80s, there were three kinds of people in school. Jocks, nerds and stoners. Yeah. And and I was unequivocally a nerd. No, yeah. Never plates or parents are professional musicians. That's what I was supposed to be. Classical musicians. Yeah. Not on tour with the grateful dad. Yeah. They had advanced degrees. You know, we ran in kind of that world. And I did very well in school. But then in the last of my college and first of grad school, I started to struggle in school as a direct result of my alcoholism. I would think because you're going to law school. Correct. Yeah. I mean, it's not like you're going for underwater basket weaving. No, no, if we and I don't know what you'll take when you'll go for that. But law school's got to be a little bit. It was demanding. Yeah. Alcohol use was high. Uh-huh. People alcohol use was high as a stress reliever. Yeah. Um, I could see that it was accepted Baylor Baylor undergrad and Baylor law. So spent seven years in Baylor Baylor. And Waco. And we worked on that they're known for. Sure. There's law school. Yeah. We worked hard. And then a lot of people played hard. I played harder. Yeah. And I couldn't stop. Yeah. And it started getting in the way of school. And I started trying to quit. And I started this spreadsheet routine where I would try to limit the number of drinks. Like really counting the drinks daily or weekly. Yeah. To make sure that I was staying within the lines. And I could never keep the count. Yeah. I couldn't we call it call in your number. I could never call my number. I could never go to a bar even with the intention of having three double bourbons. Yeah. Which is that's a lot of good. That's getting your party on. Yeah. I couldn't call I wasn't trying to call my number at one shot. I was trying to call my number at enough to get you jacked up. Yeah. And I couldn't stop. Then. And that's looking back in hindsight. I didn't see any of this at the time. Sure. It's too drunk. Yeah. But looking back in hindsight. That's where I see that I lost what we call the power of choice. Yeah. So there's two problems that I have. One is the power of control. Right. Which is when I start drinking. Can I call my number? Right. The other is the power of choice. When I want to put it down. When it is causing havoc in my life. And I say, this is directly related to that liquid. Yeah. Why don't I put that liquid over here? I can't do it. Yeah. And when our program teaches me that once you've lost the power of control and the power of choice, you're not going to get it back. You need a program of sobriety from then. Yeah. Or it is going to progress. Yeah. And we'll see what happens. And I didn't know anything about the program of sobriety. So for the next 30 years, I just went through the progression. Yeah. You just kind of white knuckled it. We were. Yeah. I thought I thought a lot. I went through a series daily, weekly, monthly of fight really hard, give up, fight really hard, give up for the we can get to this part. But for the last 15 years in secret and in isolation as much as possible. Because about 15 years before I got sober, I got busted by my wife. I mean, she knew what was going on. But it got to the point of and tolerable for her. Our kids were little toddlers. And she was a stay-at-home mom. And I was a workaholic. Working 12 hours a day to try to grow my business. And the demands of all that stuff. And then I would just come home at night and disappear by myself. And drink myself into a stupor every night. And so a little while into that, I don't remember exactly. But weeks or months, not not years, she let it go for a little while. Yeah. And then came to me and said, this is, this is not going to work for me and the kids. This doesn't work. You have got to do something about this. And it was kind of cool because she caught me in a place where I wanted to do something about it. That's important. I was miserable. Yes. So I went to a doctor who said, you're a high functioning alcoholic. Yeah. No shit. And I was like, that's a badge of honor. That's what I wore. I said, what does that mean? And she said, your life is amazing, but you drink too much. And so here's what we're going to do. We're going to put you on some medication to control your cravings. And we're going to teach you how to moderate. So you can keep your life together. And I said, what about quitting? Like what about abstinence? She said, we don't need to talk about that yet because you're not having consequences. Oh no. You're still married. You're running a very successful business. You got dozens of employees. People look up to you. You got it going on, man. You just drink too much. So let's, the first step is you're having problems controlling your cravings. When you start drinking, you can't stop. She basically told you you didn't have a problem. Yeah. Not one that she couldn't solve that medical science couldn't solve. And what she described to me is what's known in the medical literature is alcohol use disorder, okay? Which is drinking too much plus consequences. That's how a lot of medical doctors define this. I didn't learn for 15 years what alcoholism was. Yeah. And that's a different deal, which has nothing to do with consequences. It only has to do with those two things I mentioned earlier, which is control and choice. Because of what she said, I decided, by the way, I went on her program for a little while and it didn't work. Yeah. I was going to say like if someone told me that, I'd be like, I don't have that way of a problem then. Yeah. Well, just she made me, she sounded to me like it was solvable. Yeah. Like she had seen this before. And you know what? Most of the people that walk into her office are probably just hard drinkers. Yeah. Statistically, probably most of them are not in stage alcoholics. I did tell her the truth. I didn't hide it from her. And I think she gave me the first line of defense that might actually work for most people. But it didn't work for me. Right. And the weird thing was my response to that, which was not, let me go find a different kind of help. Second opinion. Right. Maybe check out a support recovery group or whatever. No, my response was, oh my God, this is horrible. Nobody can ever know ever again. Yeah. I'm going secret, deep undercover. And so from that day forward, I really created a double life with hiding the boost. That's what I was about to ask. Did you tell me you hit them in the fucking water bottle? Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere that my wife, who was the only one who really knew how bad it was. Yeah. I thought she can't see that I have fallen back off the rails to the point where she told me to go get help. Right. Right. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to get my daily dose of medicine, not around her. Right. Which meant creating this secret double life, where you know, I had to find other places to drink. I had to find places to hide the booze. I had to find ways to buy the booze that didn't show up on the joint bank accounts so that she would see the money I was spending. And brother, let me tell you, deception, daily deception from your loved ones is a bad plan. Yeah. It didn't lead any further than the alcohol. I mean, it didn't lead into affairs and other crazy stuff, but it's demoralizing, and tiring to have your entire life be that lie. And then the biggest lie I told her every day and to anyone else that met me was the simple answer to the question, how are you doing? Oh, man. And my answer was, I'm kicking ass and taking names. Have you not seen? Yeah. As I would say to the kids, look around. Yeah. Daddy did all this. Yeah. How could I be sick if all of this came, all this stuff came from me. People are jealous of this family son. Yeah. You know, why? Because daddy works as tail off for you guys. A drunk couldn't do that. Right? And as soon as you tell that lie to other people 20 or 30 times, man, you can start telling it to yourself. Yeah. Believe in that. And then you're dead. Then you're dead. It's just a matter of time. So how much do you think you were drinking per day at your peak? Well, in the end, when it started to get really bad and I was keeping up with the spreadsheet, I had a week that I legitimately counted. I was trying to keep it to 10 or 12 a day. 10 or 12 drinks. Yeah. That was my goal. Double. Yeah. Whatever. Okay. Just whatever. Just say a crown and coat. 10, 10 12. Sure. Let's just keep it to two or three for breakfast, two or three for lunch, two or three in the afternoon and two or three to go to sleep. That's like just maintenance dose. Right? Yeah. But one week I counted, I counted like 127 drinks for the week. Because I couldn't keep up with the daily total. I kept going over on 10 a day. Yeah. So I went, all right, screw this. Let's go with week. So I counted that week and it was like 120 something drinks, which is close to 20 a day, 18 a day. And so I said, well, that's bad. By the way, I'm not terrible. That's just bad. I felt really bad. I'm bad, dude. Yeah. And I'm working 14 hours a day in the midst of all this is why I mean, you're dealing with clients and shit. Absolutely. And are you showing up to court? Never. Oh, isn't that weird? Isn't that crazy? I never, ever. Now, did I ever show up to court hungover? I'm sure. Yeah. But never, ever under the influence. I got you. Never to what we call a deposition, which is in a room like this, but we're taking a sworn statement of people, never showed up to a deposition drunk or even buzzed. I took my job really seriously. So you planned around that. I did. Right. Double life. I got a fucking be there at five. I can probably drink at seven in the morning. Maybe at 12, but I got to cut that. I can't drink. And once I get to five, I'm good. Correct. Whatever. Yeah, I managed it. I managed it around the job because the job was my identity. And the job was my trump card that I could play with my family as to why everything was okay. How stressful was that? Like looking back, probably sanity in the moment. Like I was thinking about that. I was talking to somebody about this today. In the moment, things just make sense. Right. We justify it like alcoholic life becomes the only normal one. This is just normal. Right. This is what everybody's doing. Yeah. But now looking back now, I was I was telling my buddy. I was like, I'm so glad I don't fucking live that way anymore. Yeah. It was just it had to been every day was hectic, stressful, hectic running, running, running, trying to figure out how am I going to hide this or how am I going to hide this or looking over my shoulder or this and that. Well, I was crazy. And and in the end alone. And when I say the end, I'm talking five to seven years. She never left. But she did quit trying to change me. She didn't give up on me. But she somehow realized that that beating me up with carrots and sticks weren't going to work. Yeah. Like it just wasn't changing me. And so she basically started taking care of herself. Which I bless her for. I mean, that's probably why we're together today. As she was able to kind of take herself out of the last few years of my chaos and make sure that she and the kids were protected. While I just spiraled off by myself. So I mean, what what it led to was such insanity that I could not maintain even the most basic relationship. Yeah. No friends. I mean, I have a different phone now, but I wish I could go back and look at my phone and confirm this. I promise you, I did not get a text or an email from a friend for years. Not one. Wow. I was alone. I had run everybody off. Because the maintenance of that double life requires you to be such a fake, arrogant jerk. To keep up the illusion to everybody else that you're okay. You have to overcompensate. And it's gross. Right. Nobody wants to be around it. And by the last five years, seven years, whatever it was, nobody was around it. Right. They just went, dude, have fun. Business partners basically said, have fun. My family basically said, I don't know what to do with you. And that didn't make it better. The isolation and the loneliness. If we want to go back to my teenage years, that's what I started using the alcohol to solve was the loneliness that I felt as a high school nerd. Making straight A's in high school wasn't cool. Yeah, that's not cool. It did not get me the hottest girl at all. Yeah. It got me some nice girls that I had no idea how to relate to and ran off. Right. Right. But that was the uncomfortability that started inside me way back when from just, I'm different. I'm not accepted. I need relationship, but I don't know how to be in them. And so I guess I'll just go to the corner of my garage and drink alone. I mean, I don't have another solution to the BS that's going on inside my gut. This is wild. Yeah. So I think it's really important to say you are like, we don't have to talk about it, but I think you think it's very important that people know how big of a success you are. You are a lawyer. Right. And on my own farm, I think I think a decently respected lawyer, I've been doing it 30 years. I've been doing the same thing. You know, I work for big, highly respected clients on big cases. I've always been good at my job. I know that sounds weird to say, even at the height of my addiction, I cared a lot about my job and doing a good job and the public perception of me. I'm a perfectionist. I'm a type A. I'm a spreadsheet guy. I've got some brain cells to rub together. So I could manage to compartmentalize those things. But the shame of not wanting people to know that someone that looked like they had it together was so broken and so out of answers, I couldn't come clean with anybody because I was supposed to be the man. And that's what I always wanted to be. Like I started chasing that from when I was 10 years old. I wanted respect. That's the term I would have told you that I wanted. I determined that respect came from power and money. At some point I quit chasing respect and I started chasing power and money thinking if I get enough power and money, I'll get the respect. Guess what? It didn't work out that way. There's no amount of power and money that you can amass that will get you the respect that your soul desires. It is only today that I now actually feel respected by my peers in recovery. And not because I finally came clean because I can finally sit here and say to how many thousands of people are going to watch this. I screwed the whole thing up. So nobody did it to me, but me. My parents didn't show me that example. I didn't have some kind of wild childhood trauma that I was trying to mask. I just picked up a drink and never stopped. I'm just rolled. So I think it's real important. And thank you for sharing what you do for a living. But I always say I don't think there's a whole lot of difference between the guy under the bridge and the guy in that white picket house. I think that you go through my disease. You going through what you were going through and him going through what he's going through. You guys have a shitload in common and you can probably find a lot of common ground with the disease with that part of it. When we break it down to control and choice, when you take consequences out of the equation, it becomes real simple. And we all have a common problem. And that is we are looking for a solution to our internal brokenness. In this substance, it doesn't matter if it's meth or coke or alcohol or food addiction, anything. Right or sex or gambling or it all. Yes, it all falls into the same category, which is as long as it's an occasional thing, it can be a release. There are such a thing as casual drug users that are not ruining the world. Right. Probably not the majority. Right. But it happens. What we have in common is I can't call my number and I can't put it down. And the bomb under the bridge, when I sit across the table from him and talk about our experience has the exact same. Now if we start comparing felonies, yeah. And defining our problem by felonies, we're in trouble. Right. Because it'll never stop. Right. Oh, I had three. Well, I had seven. Well, this one was more serious. Well, I had this to the worst. And I had that. That's what I was waiting for. I was waiting for that stuff. I said, if I get an alcohol related felony, my license is in jeopardy. And if my professional license is in jeopardy, the whole house of cards falls down. Yes. She'll probably leave. I'll be disgraced. I might go to jail and then I'll quit. Yeah. I said this out loud. I think that's a lie. I don't think it would have ever stopped me. Because I don't think the consequences had anything to do with my addiction. It's we like to overlay that and society likes to overlay that on the addict. Because it's really easy pickings to say, oh, you haven't hit rock bottom. Your consequences haven't been low enough yet. Man, if you're a slave to a substance, you don't have to go to jail. You're living in hell. I don't care what substance it is. No, well said. If you're every thought is about getting a hold of that substance. And then for most of us hiding it from others, which is most of the energy is spent hiding it and then the shame of it. I mean, man, how can you look really? How can you have a healthy relationship? Yeah. I don't know. I tried. Yeah. And I thought until the end that I could whoop it. When I finally heard several other people and I got very fortunate that my sponsor is a very successful professional man who like me looked well from the outside, but was in the same crap inside. He was the second story I heard. The second ever alcoholic I heard tell their story was the guy that became my sponsor. And I just heard him and me. And he said, it's not about my consequences. This is an internal disease. This is a disease of my soul. Now it started with my mind and my body. Yeah. But it crept into my soul. It took over your soul. And man, when I heard that, I thought I can get behind this. Like, I finally don't have to listen to somebody telling jail stories that I don't have. And using that as a justification to say, have you seen my 401k? There ain't no in-stage drunk that has a 401k that looks like mine. In fact, there are. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not spoken of. Yeah. And look, I can help and have helped the homeless guy under the bridge. Yeah. But I will say if I have a little niche in the recovery space, it's been my ability to relate to those other professional guys that find themselves in the same place that I've been that go, Oh, brother. Well, I know exactly what you're talking about when it comes to the shame and the stigma and the double life. Yeah. Well, the guy under the bridge is wearing it on his outside. Right. Right. You guys aren't. That's what I mean is you guys hiding it. That's what I'm saying. It's like because of that, I would almost say that there's you are known of what you were. Absolutely. But they're definitely there. I see them. I can pick them out. You can see them now being sober, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's not the smell of the bourbon. No, no, no, that's what I mean. Shot eyes. It's the loneliness and the pain. Yeah. I know this sounds hokey and weird, but I can see in their soul because I see myself in them. And I see the facade. I see the imposter syndrome. Yeah. Yeah. I see the links that they're going to to cover up because I invented that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I also say I learned from some mentors that were also playing the cover up game. Sure. By the way, they're dead. Yeah. They died in their 50s and 60s when I was in my 30s, they pickled themselves. They were the leaders of the community. They were badasses. They are who I lived up looked up to. But yet, as I approached the age at which they died, it never occurred to me that I was on the same path. Yeah. I was still saying, yeah, that happened to them, but it won't happen to me. What happened to me? Huge out of control, ego, which is also a hallmark of this disease is the horribly inflated version of self. That's delusional. Yeah. It has nothing to do with reality. If you asked anybody around us, they would tell you where peace is a crap. But that's not what we're showing the world. Yeah. And we really don't want to believe it within ourselves. Right. I mean, I called myself a piece of crap. I looked in the mirror and cried and yelled and right. I mean, I wasn't proud of who I had become. But on the balance, I could stack enough stuff up on the positive side that I felt it always outweighed all that other stuff of the success. Yeah. And the perception of what was going to happen to me when I came clean, that everyone would desert me, that everyone would make fun of me, that everyone would question whether or not I ever was any good, that that's when the empire would come crashing down is when this became public knowledge. And my sponsor said, buddy, your business is going to triple. Yeah. He said that like week one. And I said, Oh, you're insane. Like, thank you for propping me up, trying to convince me to take this sobriety into week two. Yeah. I appreciate you not telling right. But I didn't believe it. Of course. And a year later, it's doubled. And two years later, it's tripled. And I don't know, the sky's the limit. It's like not only has it not harmed me. The fact that I've released the shame that I've just said, you can't shame me. Yeah. To the extent it's doable, I'm going to shame myself. Like you're not going to need to talk behind my back. I'm going to tell anybody that's willing to listen. Yeah. Here's what I did. Here's my story. Yeah. And the response has been amazing. Of course. Yeah. Nothing but love. From my current business partners who you can imagine might not see this as a badge of success to their business. Right. It's like, you want to be partners with that dude. Yeah. And their answer is yes. Fuck yeah. They love that dude. Because he's real. Yeah. And he lived to tell the story. And he honestly wants to help others who might be struggling with the same thing. Yeah. And that's actually attractive to people. And I didn't know it would be. Yeah. I think that when you see somebody go through what you went through, right. And you come to the other side of it. Yes. That's somebody that I want in my corner with me. Like if we're going to go in a foxhole, I want this motherfucker right here. I don't want someone that just took the perfect left turn and they didn't ever have to go through adversity or this or that. And they just made it because I want the motherfucker that went through everything. That's who I want in my foxhole. Yeah. If we're in a war. So yes, you're somebody that I would absolutely want on my side. You know, the I don't do you remember I remember the first meeting I ever went to when they were talking about these promises. Yes, sir. Right. And I was so hopeless sitting in there that when they were talking about how your life is about to change like your business is going to triple right. When they were telling me that my life was about to get so much better, I was thinking you mother fuck y'all are on y'all are still doing drugs right now. Right. Because there's no way that I'm going to go from using every single day and coping with what I'm feeling inside. To now I can't use that to deal with my feelings. Now I have to be a regular person. It's going to be even more miserable than what it was whenever I was using. And it's it's always amazes me of how much wrong that was. Right. Because as I started getting 30 days, 60 days and 90 days and I started getting things back and getting people's love back and trust back and friendships back and family back. I was like holy shit like all those people in the beginning that I thought were full of shit that were lying. They weren't lying. They actually this program actually does work. I did not believe the promises. I did not believe the program was going to work for me. When my sponsor and I sat down and discussed step two, he said he gave me the standard line, which I'm sure you've heard. Do you believe what worked for me can work for you? And I told him the truth. No, not even a little bit. I do not. I was raised in the church every time the doors were open, we were there front row. I have no problem with the concept of God. Never did. But I don't think you heard me tell you the way I drink. And by the way, God hates drinkers. That's what I heard growing up. Yeah. And so no, I don't believe this can work. But I love. I just love this moment. He said, do you hope it can? And I said, well, yeah, I hope it can. Because I don't have anything else. I've tried everything else, every human being, every plan that this brain can come up with. By the way, not for a week or two, for the last 20 to 30 years, I've been trying these things. And they're failing. And he said, all right, good, we're done moving on to step three. And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Because that's all we need. Brother is a little bit of hope. Hope is equivalent to a willingness to believe. Because what you just told me is that you're willing to believe this might work. Because you hope it can. Yes. And look, the power for me from the beginning and today was that decades long step one experience. I was very fortunate in hindsight to I think have stared into the abyss of death. Right. Not the good life left a long time ago. I got to the point of looking at the breathing life. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Life life. Yeah. Right. And I didn't care in that first month or two or six if those promises were true. I legitimately just wanted a breathing life. I wanted my marriage to stay together. Right. But I was unsure if it would. Right. I wanted my business to grow. But I was unsure if it would. All those things really fell by the wayside. Yeah. I was 1000% focused on the breathing life. I just want to live. And these people told me we can do that. Now they said we can do even more. And I kind of went bullshit. Right. But I stuck around because there were people there, some like me, like me in terms of background and education, some not at all. Yeah. Some that dropped out of eighth grade that I learned more from in those first six months than I had ever learned from any graduate professor I ever had. And that crazy. And I just said, wow, that lady's got 20 years with that to work with. Yeah. I'm staying close to her. She's breathing. Right. And by the way, she's happy and she's not faking it. Yeah. Like I don't know about when and if all these promises are going to come true for me. Yeah. Um, that was the other thing. But I would have another choice. I don't have another choice. I was just so happy to have been out of options. Yeah. My sponsor sets me up all the time with new guys and says, it's a trick question. It says, tell this guy why you think this worked for you. And my bottom line answer is because I didn't have anything else. Right. So I don't know. I don't preach the 12 steps work for everybody. I don't really even know why they work for me. I do know factually that I was out of options. Yeah. And that's when I was presented with it. And that's what I did. And now my life is full of options. So I don't that's the only math that I can do. The rest of it. The rest of it, I don't know. So I want we talked about this over our gourmet meal that we had in there. Thank you guys for the pizza. I didn't know. I didn't know that was a tree. I was bringing it all away from the top. Yeah. So we were talking a little bit about how you got sober and how you absolutely widened. I did. Your sobriety. You didn't go to rehab. No. Should have. But didn't go to detox. Didn't should have anybody out there. I recommend please get medical help because that that shit will kill you. That's what the doctor told me when I finally saw her. So I had been my wife and I had been going to a marriage class at the church. I had been showing up to that class drunk. But I really liked the therapist. I did. She was really smart. And look, I know you would understand this as the addict. This double life. I was trying to do two things at once. Absolutely. I absolutely wanted to be a better person. I wanted to get closer to my wife. I wanted to improve my marriage. I wanted to stop drinking. I just didn't know how. So I was having to do both these things at the same time. But I met this therapist there while I was still drinking. And immediately after that is when I had this epiphany experience that God said to me one more in your dead. And I believed he was correct. Yeah. And ran into my wife and said, I can't drink anymore. And I thought I should go see that therapist. She seemed to be smart. So I got in to see her like a week into that white knuckling experience. And she was mortified. She was like, Oh my God, what are you doing? Like you have to get medical help. And she said, I'm not going to see you anymore until you go get checked out by these 10 medical specialists. Yeah. Because if you're telling me the truth about the way you've been drinking for 30 plus years, every vital organ in your body is currently shutting down. And you're in trouble. Yeah. And she said, she said, literally, I'm not going to book another appointment with you until you show me that you've gotten all these medical tests. She said, we can't work on your mind until we've gotten your body healthy. No shit. What a good person. So I ran to the medical doctors. Yeah. By that point, apparently I had already gone through the worst of the detox. And they were like, your kidneys and liver are jacked up. Your blood pressure is like stroke level. Right. I mean, we've got problems. But we can start to treat these and six months later, nine months later, baseline normal as if I'd never drank. Nice. That's awesome. So it is medically, for me at least, it was medically reversible. I know people get to the point that it's not because I work with some of those dudes. But it's never too late. It's never too late to get off the liquid and see if the body will repair itself. But yeah, she was, she was scared. I did get to a doctor. I just didn't get to a doctor as soon as I should have. And what was that like? That week of white knuckling in the bed. Yeah. Before you got to that point where you went to the doctor. You wasn't able to go to work and shit like that. Terrifying for an hour. Yeah. I'd make an appearance to make to try to keep up the illusion for all my employees that I was still running to business and wasn't dead. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I was the boss. And I already had this mentality of I'll be there when I want. And I was doing that around my drinking. Right? But I just buzzed in and buzzed out. Yeah. You know, but it was hard, you know, to tell you the truth, um, I walked a lot. I couldn't sit still. I was itching out of my skin. I couldn't sleep. I would just lay awake at night. Did you have night? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Shakes, sweats, shakes, all of it. All of it. Yeah. Heart palpitations. And did you know it was going on when that happened? Or were you not really? Because like, I was telling you. I never picked up the phone and Googled right? I was telling you when I was eating like when I went to rehab, I didn't know I detox for 13 days on my own. And I didn't know that they had detox. I didn't know there was a such thing as a detox. Never heard of it. I didn't know there was anything called sober living. I rarely like rehabs. I didn't know that there was hundreds of them around us. Yeah. I didn't know any of that. And I just knew that if I sat in the house and didn't go anywhere, then I might be able to stay sober. Right. And that's kind of what I did. My wife baby sat me. And I also had a little bit of hope. Just a little bit because that morning after the end, so to speak, when I thought I heard the voice of God say one more in your dead. And it was clear to me. Again, people hear this and they're like, hmm, were you just having visions and maybe, maybe, but it was clear to me. I believe in that stuff. Yeah. I know what I heard. Yeah. Like, it's my story and I get, I get my story. Yeah. That's a cool thing about my experience. You can't argue with it. It's fine. But that morning, I laid in the bed with my wife beside me. And she was stroking my head like a little baby telling me everything was going to be okay. And I was just sobbing. And I just kept repeating over and over again. I can't and I won't. She was like, what? And I was like, she was like, why are you so sad? And I said, because God told me, I have to quit. But here's the shitter. I can't quit. And I won't quit. I mean, this much we know from my experience. Yeah. But she left me for a minute to go get one of the kids ready for school or whatever. And when she left, I heard God laugh. His laughing is butt off at me. Just like Santa Claus. And I was like, what is so funny? And he was like, you finally got it, dude. You can't and you won't. Okay, that doesn't sound like good news. Yeah. He goes, well, the good news is I can and I will. I was like, well, interested to see how that's going to work, right? Still really skeptical. And the next day I woke up and there was an email in my inbox from my church. Never seen anything like it before. And it said, are you interested in a conversation about recovery? Wow. Whoa. And I went, uh, what's going on here? And I was like, yeah, I start having another conversation with God. And it's like, yes, of course I am. I'm interested in that discussion. But not at my church. I'm a leader in that church. I'm a, I was a sunny school teacher. I was the president of the adult choir. Like I was, I was trying to be the man. Yeah. Like I like I was trying to be the man everywhere I went, right? Keeping up appearances. And I was like, I can't go to a discussion on alcoholism at my church. The cat, you know, everybody's going to know cats out of the bed. Yeah. And he's like, go. Like, what else, what other sign do I have to send you? Like go. We argued and argued and argued. And I went. And that was like at the end of that week. So I was looking forward to that all week. I had some lurking notion that there might be something there. And that's when I walked into that meeting and saw that woman on stage telling her story. And I'd never heard another alcoholic tell their story. Certainly never heard it from the stage of a church. Right. And she was being super vulnerable. Mm-hmm. About the horrible stuff that she had done to herself and her family. And I knew this woman a little bit. I knew that she was a highly successful person in our community. Like I knew of her. Yeah. And I thought, oh my God, how can she be saying this stuff in public? Right? But it was like a tractor. I'm take, take you back to Star Wars to my little kid days. It was like a tractor beam. Oh, yeah. I was just drawn to her. Yeah. So I basically tackled her after that meeting. Yeah. It's like help me help me help me. Yeah. And she was like, man, it doesn't work that way. She was, she was nice, but not what I expected. Mm-hmm. I expected like my grandmother to wrap me up in a blanket and take me home with her and give me some chicken soup and love on me. And she was just kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, buddy. You know, maybe you're an alcoholic, maybe you're not. Um, can you stay sober for a couple of days? I was like, yeah, my wife is babysitting me. Yeah. She's going to make sure I don't drink and die. And she's like, come back in a couple of days. There's another meeting and there's a guy that I want to introduce you to. And that was the guy that ended up becoming my sponsor. And so really early on in that, what in the world am I going to do? I got hit in the face with the most recovered people that I have met to date. Yeah. Like, by the way, they were both down the street from me for 30 years. Yeah. I didn't know them. I didn't know them. And all of a sudden, literally in the moment that I needed them most, they were right in front of my face. Yeah. And I mean, I just have no other explanation. God, than a miracle. I have no other explanation. And again, people are even your body healing that itself and you not having a repercussion like a serious, serious repercussion from you going through the detox because nobody believed it. Like, the doctors didn't believe it. I had to learn this through, again, more on, right? Like, yeah, I don't learn through this, that barbituates and alcohol are the tools that will kill you if you don't lean yourself off of them. And now it's serious. That is. I don't know that my doctor that that won the main doctor and my therapist. I don't know if they believed, really believed the way that I drank for a while. It took me seeing them multiple times for a while for them to go, I don't think you're bullshit. Like, I don't know how you're okay. But we thought when you walked in the door, maybe this was exaggeration, Bill, like you're attention seeking, you're telling everybody that it was that many drinks a day in hopes that you'll people will throw a pity party for you or something. It took, probably people to do that probably. Yeah. No judging, no, if that's what gets them help, I've do it. I got several things I need to work on still. And one of them is judgment. I came in really judgy of others, not so much of myself. But I'm getting over that because I've just seen how wrong that is and how I don't really know what the plans are. And going back to my sponsor and our first step work, when we started talking about step three, he said, if your life has been a ship, who has been the captain of your ship for the last 51 years? Yeah. He said, who's had hold of that wheel? I said, me, not only have I had a hold of it, like you can't get near it. That's my wheel. And he said, good. Here's the concept of step three. Yeah, let's go. Hands off the wheel. And I said, the smart ass that I am, well, if I'm not holding the wheel, who is? And he said, we don't know. But anybody's better than you. Yeah. That's true. And that simplistic truth, right? I couldn't argue with that. He's like, what happens when you have the wheel? How's that going? Yeah. He's like, you're literally sitting in front of me shaking, crying, stuff coming out of both ends. Right? It's like, you're not in good shape, brother. Yeah. How's that been going? It's like, it's bad. Yeah. So I've tried to remember since then that concept of, it's not my wheel. Yeah. I don't know where this thing's steering. It's not your boat. That car steered me from Dallas to Austin tonight to talk to you guys. And I don't really know why. I don't know how I found y'all, where I found y'all. Why I thought this would be a good idea. Why y'all thought it would be a good idea? Dude. But this is just the way I live my life now. Best when I'm at my best. When I'm at my worst, I grab that wheel back. And it's not long before I'm in pain again. Yeah. And the cool thing about being substance free is it doesn't take long for that pain to get my attention. Yeah. I don't have any other medicine for the pain anymore. Oh, treat. Right? I think you do. It just now it's yeah, it's not a liquid and a substance. It's not a liquid and that. Right. The medicine now is when I get to that pain is to go the reason you're in it is probably because you're white knuckle in that wheel again. Remember what you did before to get out of the pain? I'll let it go. Talk to somebody. Yeah. Talk to somebody. And then take your hands off the wheel and see what happens. I'm glad you mentioned the thing about judgmental. Yeah. We all are. We all yeah, we all are just you get away with it. You get away with it in the sense that you don't have to turn to a liquid or substance to numb yourself from the pain of it. I do sometimes. I do. I'm not but it's temporary. Yes. It is. But doesn't go into that every time that I'm going to a drink. It's because I'm happy. And this is how it's about to say that I would be a liar. But it works for that. If you can use alcohol for that. Yeah. Rock on, man. We always tell everybody you have to find it. Anti alcohol. Yeah. I'm just anti alcohol for me. Yeah. I know what it does to me. Right. If it's working for you, I'm never going to tell you to stop. Yeah. We talked about that in the kitchen. How some people want to tell you, you got to do it this way or do this way. I always say you have to find your own sober. And whatever your sober, if that means that you can drink here and there, but there's people out there that can smoke weed and not ruin their life. Smoke away. If that makes you feel better, I know that I can't touch meth because my life will go to shit very quickly. I heard you all answer in the question about cratum. Can you use cratum and be sober? Yeah. I personally can't. I can't. And I personally, in fact, I have turned down sponsoring people that said they wanted to continue to smoke weed through not drinking. Yeah. I can find them a sponsor that does that. Yeah. Because I know people that are working that program who tell me that it's working for them. Yeah. And who am I to say that it's not? Right. 100%. I don't think that program will work for me. I tell the guys this all the time, did I really have my last bender? I don't know. I don't know. Do I have another run in me? If you all got a beer in that fridge, could I have one and be okay? I really don't know. Yeah. But I don't think so. Yeah. And that's right. I just don't want to run the risk of finding out. But this idea that I'm certain that I know this and I know that and I know that people that are using weed as part of their sobriety are wrong. I don't know squat. Yeah. My program tells me I know very little. I know very little. I know very little. Yeah. That's a phrase that my wife started going to Alonon a year in to my sobriety. I wondered her to go sooner because I got so on fire with this 12 step program that I thought it could make a difference in her life. She needs to do it too. Yeah. Not for purely selfish reasons. I actually just thought she could find some freedom in it. We say that all the time we think that everybody, even if you're not an... Everybody can go through this. This has its benefits for all. Yes. Everybody can go through the 12 steps and uncover some things that will make you a better person. I definitely believe that. But she found Alonon a year in. And so she knows all the lines from the book that I know. Yeah. And so it's a it's a famous line in our house now when things start to get a little bit too certain to just say we know very little. Yeah. She just says remember remember we know very little. God will constantly disclose more to us if we stay close to him. Yeah. And the other cool thing with her going through this, which is why I really recommend that loved ones and friends of addicts who are in a 12 step program consider learning something about it themselves because she got back from the night where her group was studying the mental obsession. The choice park that we were talking about earlier. Yeah. That my brain won't let me quit. Yeah. They had studied that section of the book that night in her group and she got back to the house ghost white. Mm-hmm. She was oh my god. She said that's what you've been living with. Yeah. I had no idea. Mm-hmm. I'm so sorry. Right. Like she didn't judge herself for how she had tried to help me in the past. She was just two and the best she could. Yeah. What was what she heard? What did she do in the past? No, no. What I'm saying is she knew she did the best. Yeah. She could with what she knew. Yes. To do. Which is all anybody new. Yeah. Which was to basically try to shake you and wake you up. Mm-hmm. To just say, honey. Yeah. This isn't you. Mm-hmm. And my response to that at the time was so gross and so sick. By the way, well thought out, scripted, oh yeah. Planned. I had a three point plan that I've trotted out all the time. You can only imagine where it started. Check the bank account. Oh yeah. I think it's full. Mm-hmm. You know who did that? Yeah. Daddy. And then my second two. I mean, I really, I can't believe now that I said this. I said, I don't beat you in the kids. That's gross, dude. I didn't. I never did. Never raised a hand to grow in the kids. Right? Because that's a bare minimum like for like, if that's what we're stacking up again. I trotted that out. It's my reason I didn't need to quit. And I said, and I don't cheat on you. Yeah. Yeah. Those are all just bare minimum. And the reasons that I trotted that out is a good percentage of the marriages on our block were breaking up. Yeah. As our kids were in elementary school and middle school, these college sweethearts that had met and had kids together. All of our friends were starting to get divorced. And at a common root of a lot of those was abuse and infidelity and financial insecurity. Yeah. The dude would lose his job. He would start beaten on his wife. And then he start cheating with the secretary. Right. And we knew those stories from our friend group. Yeah. And so I could find this plan. Yeah. Right? And I go, you know why I'm not like those dudes. You know why I'm well? Because I earn, I don't touch you in a harmful way. And I don't cheat on you. And I literally said to her, as long as I'm following those three rules, leave me alone. Yeah. That was my armor defense mechanism to go on with my drinking. However, I wanted to go on. And you know, after a while, she did leave me alone. Yeah. And guess what? Didn't want to. I wasn't any better. Yeah. No. That didn't, that didn't actually solve my problem. Yeah. So this is a real, you know, it's a real sickness. It's a real disease. It's not a behavioral disorder, which I thought it was that that's the first thing that woman said from the stage that night is, you're not bad. You're sick. Now, I don't know that I believe that right then. But it made you feel a little better. It was a seed that was planted. Yeah. That I just thought, oh, well, if I'm sick, maybe there's a cure. There's a chance. Yeah. There's a chance. But I, you know, I really think it's important for loved ones to get educated on this. Not enough of them do. Because in my, I'm so thankful that my wife did and that my sons have, my youngest son came with me to meetings for a while to learn about what was going on with his dad. That's awesome. My sons are happy now that their dad has these tools. Yeah. They are 20 and 23. Okay. So out there making one of them's a junior in college and the other one is working and in school and making a go of their lives. But I think it's super important for all those people outside the addict to have access to that education. Because I swear, they've helped more people than I have. Yeah. I'm really happy. That's the best word I can come up with now. I'm really happy about the number of people that have come to me in the same hopeless moment that I came to those people with that are walking around today one, two, three years later with their lives restored and some hope. I didn't do anything, but I was just there in the moment to tell them my experience. That, that gives me a lot of joy. It pales in comparison to the joy that I get from the family members. That my family and the people in my orbit have been able to help. Yeah. Because I swear, those people are hurting in many, many cases worse than the addict themselves. They don't have the medicine. And they don't get to go unless they get involved in their own 12 step fellowship. They don't get to go to the support group where you feel all of this camaraderie and love. You want to talk about suffering and isolation and silence. Shout out to the family members, man. I mean, those are the ones that I sit in front of a dude who's two days sober and I have empathy for him and I have pain. I get the opportunity sometimes to a couple hours later be sitting in front of his mother because we have a family support program that the treatment center that I volunteer at also runs. And so sometimes the same day I meet the alcoholic. Yeah. I also get to meet their family. The empathy for their family is literally a hundred times greater because they are lost. Yeah. And so a lot of what I do in trying to carry this message out there is really as much for those folks as it is for the addict. Yeah. Because it's a family disease. That's a, it's a big deal too because you like the programs that they have out there for addicts. There's so many more than what they have for the family that's going through it. And for the family that's suffering from it. And maybe this is why you and us are connected maybe because of this is why we built that. You wanted to build this like guide not, you know, representing the families of, because this is my family and I watched them go through it. And I've since learned other like real blood family members have gone through it since putting this thing up. And that's the paradigm that we've tried to create is like there's two sides of the story. And it's the brother, the sister, the mom, the dad, the kid, spouse. Yeah. spouse that had to watch the title wave that the addict created. And that title wave doesn't go anywhere when that when the addict gets sober. There's still a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of pain and a lot of, yeah, about a sorrow that go. I got a program to work through my resentments. Yeah. Yeah. They might they might not. Yeah. Well, you got you mentioned hopelessness, right? Oh, that's the key, man. The hopelessness that we felt when we first tried this. Imagine the hopelessness that they went through trying to get us through it. You know, like yeah, you talk about throw your hands up. What the fuck do we do now? Correct. And to tell you the truth, I was really oblivious to that at the time that I was in my active addiction. It was only later when she said to me, can you even imagine what I thought every time you walked out that door, you might not come back. You might kill somebody today. They they I think there were dozens of times that we were a hair away from that. I mean, not we weren't way over here on the the white side of the black and white. We were straddling that gray line as close. Now in hindsight, that was the key. Yeah. I don't know if everybody's like this. I don't think they are because I think God made us all a little bit different. I had to see fully into the abyss. You could not tell me what was in the abyss and have me believe it. Right. I had to see it. You got to go there. I'm on that dude. Yeah. I'm a little less of that dude today. But if I have to admit, I'm still approve it to me. So I'm a skeptic. Yeah. It helps me a lot in my job. Yeah. I'm a devil's advocate. Yeah. First time right. I can play both sides of any coin. It's not great for the addict. That's what I was about to say. Like that's a. Prove it to me is a difficult one because you might prove it all the way to the point that we're not breathing anymore. Right. Or you've killed a family of four and you ain't coming back from that. Right. That's what I was going to ask you is like I went through my addiction for 10 years. Yeah. And I don't have a record and never been arrested and never. And I used to think I'm just really good at what I do. Like I'm really good. Like I've been pulled over. We were. I've been pulled over and they searched my car where I've hidden stuff in my butt. I've heard the stories. Wherever. Yes, sir. Didn't mind it. But and I would get out of that and be like, fucking they can't catch me. They're never going to. And then all the times where I would be dozing off while I'm driving and not hit the car in front of me or kill this family or that. I should be and I should be dead or in prison. Correct. And I used to think that that was all just luck and I knew what I was doing. But once I got in this program deep enough and once I realized that I always believed in God. But I didn't know that I thought God walked away from me a long time ago. And as I started realizing like all these things that I should have gotten caught with. But I didn't. That's the miracle. And in my story that I say that's where God never walked away. Like he was right there with me every single time. And that right. You live to tell the story. And there. Look, you got a guy sitting across from you that lived the exact same story. Who just thought I was the shit. I just will outsmart them all. Yeah. And I kept getting away with it. And every time I got away with it, I got more emboldened. Yeah, a little bit more ego. Yes. Yes. And so the fact that these two random strangers just met tonight with such an identical story. Imagine how many hundreds of thousands. I mean, we like to say in the Metroplex there's six or seven million people, 10% of them are alcoholics. That 600,000 alcoholics walking around in the DFW area right now. Yeah. Wow. Most of them not in treatment, not recovered, just struggling and suffering. There's a good percentage of that 600,000 that has the exact same story that you and I just told. And that's why that story becomes our greatest asset. I know that you're not telling me that to brag. No. And you know that I'm not telling you that. That I actually am so smart. I got away with it. I was not smart. And this idea that God saved me from all those things for this purpose. I think that's egotistical of me to say I don't like to pronounce that I know God's purpose. Right. I hear people say that and I understand them and I'm not judging anybody that feels that way. They could be right. For me to say that I feel like it's crossing a line into God territory. So I just like to say those are the facts. Yeah. I don't know what the causation of that is. I just can tell you that's what happened to me. I'm going to tell you the truth of what happened to me. And hope that someday I might run into somebody that that's exactly what happened to them and they go, dude, because you told me that I believe you because you were so open about what you said. I believe you. It's just what my sponsor said to me. After he told his story, he said, do you believe me when I told you the way I drank? I go, yeah. Like, who else would say that in public? Right. Right. And he goes, do you believe me when I told you I'm free? Free of that word. Free of the liquid. And I go, well, duh. Again, what's in it for you? To come down here for fun and tell me you're free when you're not. I mean, that would be a psychopath. That's just coming down to the treatment center to tell dudes he's free. What he's actually drinking in the car. I mean, that would be ridiculous. So it's like, yeah, the power of the program to me in the beginning was not God. Yeah. The power was another recovered man standing in front of me telling my story to me in a such an authentic way. I couldn't possibly argue with it. That's like he's telling your story. He's the pie pie. And from then on, he's the pieed piper. And that's helpful because he then says, I'll help you if you follow my instructions, which best of my knowledge and best of my ability are going to come from this book. It's not my instructions. I'm going to be a guide to you through this program that has worked for millions of other people and we'll see if it works for you. And so I'm going to need you to forget your ideas and start to listen to my ideas. Let go of that wheel a little bit. You're all the way. You've told me you believe me. You've told me you want what I have. You don't think you're going to get it the way that I got it, but you do want it. So from now on, when I suggest something to you, you should take that suggestion. It only takes two weeks for him to say, Sunday night, you're going to be down at the Salvation Army, helping dudes that just got out from under the bridge and for me to go, no, I don't think so. I mean, I just go, no. Right? I mean, we're three weeks into my recovery, starting to make amends, we're living in 10, 11 and 12. We're, you know, and he's like, he knows me. He knows my type. So he didn't let me read ahead. He didn't let me work ahead. He hid the end from me. I didn't know the end was helping others. Yeah. It's a baseball. I didn't know it. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't tell me that's where we were going. So we get to all the way to the end and I'm doing better. My life is start right. I'm feeling better. Life is starting to, I'm starting to actually see a little bit of life. Something on the end of the horizon and he goes, so here's what's next. You go down in the front lines on the front of the front lines. Not some name be pambi Malibu treatment center. Yeah. You're going down to the front of the front lines and you're going to start helping other drugs and I said, no. And he said, that's cool. Find a different sponsor. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Don't want to do that because I want to follow you. He's like, yeah, I thought that's what you said. So how about we'll see you at 7 o'clock at the Salvation Army? And sure enough, we did. Yeah. For the next year until we moved on to a different different treatment center. But that's the power of us having that story in common. Yes. Is that when I'm the new guy lost, that common story makes me want to follow you. Yes. And then when you tell me to do something uncomfortable, that I need to do for the good of my own recovery, I'm more likely to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm already bought in. I'm already bought into you. Yeah. Right. I tried for that year at the Salvation Army. It was mostly drug addicts. Uh-huh. Just be honest. The place I work now is people whose primary problem is alcoholism. Yeah. You can have some drugs. But part of the price of admission is your number one DOC needs to be alcohol. Because we understand that alcoholics working with other alcoholics is the synergy we need versus the I tried to sponsor like 20 drug addicts. Right. Guys, we're asking. I mean, I was down there to help them. I'm just working with what's in front of me. They asked me to help them. They're crack, math, heroin, combinations of all the above. And I'm willing. Yeah, man, let's start working the steps. It didn't go well. For them or me, it was a disservice to everybody. Yeah. Because we don't have enough in common. I don't know what it's like for the second guy I sponsored that's been incarcerated his entire adult life. Yeah. I say that all the time. You got to find somebody. Not my story. Yeah. I say that all the time. You got to find somebody that you see yourself in. Correct. Because I have no clue what it's like to be homeless. So if I'm sponsoring someone that's been homeless and you're telling me this, like I can't pretend like I know what you went through because I don't. Correct. Let my fucking my air condition shut off for a day and see how miserable I am. Right. I'm not sitting outside there. We went camping fucking last February or this February. And I took her for Valentine's Day, right? This me and my wife. Yeah. And I said, let's go camping tonight. She's like, okay, I didn't check the weather. Nothing. When we went, it was like 80 degrees. We didn't know that a cold front was coming in that night. And the camping spot that we was in had no trees around it. It was all right off the water. So at 12 o'clock, we went from our tent to the car where the heat was. We should fuck this little tent. Right. We just left the tent there. We went to our car to sleep. She was in the passenger seat. I was in the driver's seat. And at 5.30 in the morning, we got out of the car, packed up that tent, which we've never used since then, threw it in the trunk. And we just drove home and the whole way home, I was like, fuck, I don't know how homeless people do it. Right. And it gave me such a new respect for them. Right. Because I was in a tent with a blanket. And it was fucking miserable. And I was like, man, I just I'm so glad that I never got there. Because I wouldn't I'm not I'm not cut out for that. Right. I can and have been of some use to to people that have lived that story. I will say that the more commonality we have, the better it tends to work. Yeah. Of course. There's no it's not science. And look, I probably will not say yes to sponsor a straight up drug addict anymore. Because I've learned my lesson. And I now have enough of a network of straight up drug addicts. You can push them off that I get them to the right sponsor. Yeah. And those people refer straight up alcohol. Yeah. Right over to you. Some of the best sponsors. But other than that, I'm willing to help some of the best sponsors I've seen in rooms, sponsors, uh, women and guys are the ones that they'll listen to what you say. And they'll say, you know what, I don't know if I'm a fit for you, but correct. I've got a really good person for you. And they direct you in the right. And I think that is doing such a big service to that person rather than just accepting everybody. Yes, all sponsor. You all sponsor. Now, let me get you in front of somebody that I think would be such a better fit for you. I don't do daily check ins. I didn't do daily check. And look, the way I sponsor is the way I learned from my sponsor. Yeah. It's the way he learned from his sponsor. Everybody does a little bit different. Yeah. I know dudes that I respect the heck out of that do daily check ins with their sponsors. Yeah. I don't. Yeah. When I have a guy come to me and say, I'd be more comfortable with daily check ins. I got the right guy to get right. I don't need to tell him to mold himself to me. And I certainly don't have to mold myself to him. And as we were talking about earlier, I'm not going to tell him or anybody else that they're doing it wrong. Right. I'm so happy that nobody came to me in those early days and told me that I was doing it wrong. When I came to them and gave them hours long diet tribes about how I was figuring out the miracles and I intellectualized this whole thing. And I turned, they listened patiently. Yeah. And they moved on. Yeah. And when they did say something, they were like, that's an interesting exercise you're going through. Right. Instead of this pounding me over the head and going, dude, you're so full of it. Like, stop thinking about those things. You're thinking about this all wrong. They didn't. Yeah. They just let my little warped brain do what my little warp brain was going to do. And ultimately, it worked itself. Yeah. Let it work itself out. You're not going to tell you guys talk all the time about how resourceful alcoholics and addicts on 100% are book talks about that we are amazing people outside of the substance. Yes. The most amazing. The fact that we lived through that, right? We prove that it also proves we're generally not the kind of people that you're going to tell the answer to. Yeah. Yeah. Generally. If you can get us slightly pointed in the right direction, hopefully we'll run into that answer. That's what my sponsor basically tried to do with me. Is kind of like those wind up toys that had just run into the wall. And he would just turn me around and point me, not telling me where I was going to end up, how fast to go. What was what I was going to run over in the way? It's just like we're pointed towards the wall now. Let's point you back in the right direction and let you figure it out on your own. And that's the way I try to work with guys. I again, I don't know that I try not to have any right answers or wrong answers. I've learned from this last almost four years of experience that everybody's got a different journey. The end is the end. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I tell the guys every week, I don't want it to sound flippant. I don't want it to sound dismissive. But this is a free will program. I'm not ever going to keep you from drinking and using. The door is open. For the alcoholic, the door to the 7 11 is always open. So if you're looking to live in a bubble, yeah, or if you're looking for me to control your sobriety, we're already screwed. So this is an open program. And if you want to go out and try it again, free will, if you live through it, we'll be here. Yeah. Yeah. That's the key to me is I haven't tried it because I don't think I'll live through it. But I'm not going to try to convince you whether you will or you won't. Yeah. Only you know. I didn't know that's what this was all about. Right. I thought this was more of a school type program where the professor teaches the student and tells them the answer. That's what I thought before. And I found out it's just super open ended. Yeah. And open new interpretation. You get you are responsible for your own recovery. Yeah. And if you want to do it on your own, try it. It might work. If you find it doesn't work and you want to try something new, come back and we'll talk and we'll try something new. I mean, no pressure. Yeah. I didn't think it was going to be like that at all. I thought they were going to lock me in a closet and indoctrinate me into the cult. Yeah. That's not our brand of recovery. Yeah. And if that had been what I'd been presented with, I would have gone running. I don't think I'd be here because I was at the end. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming, dude. Thanks for having me. This was great. That was a fun conversation. Yeah. I'm really respect what you guys are doing. And keep it up. Appreciate it. Keep it up because this is a, it's super important to normalize this. Yes. And destigmatize this. And, you know, I think what you guys are trying to do is exactly what we should all be trying to do. And that's simply educate and inspire. Yeah. But if we don't have the basic education, we don't even know what our problem is. We're more than going to go from there than educate. I think, I think you're doing a lot of education. I think so too. But it's, we don't claim to be doctors. I think our, I think our stories, like your story, there's going to be somebody out there that is in a very professional life, more than one person that's covering it up. That's hiding it. Absolutely. And then they can see someone like you that was also ashamed to come out and say, fuck, I can't tell people in my alcohol. What do you all talk about? My whole business is going to collapse. They can see you in it and say, oh, shit. I might be safe. I might be able to do this. I mean, I see an example. I'm not making any promises about what's going to happen to anybody when they come out of the closet. But I see an example of a guy that did it. But you're a little hope too. Yeah. And I didn't do it because I'm cool. Yeah. I didn't do it because I'm smart. I did it because I didn't think I had another breath to breathe. Right. That's not simple, man. Like I mean, you had to give up. You had to, you had to take your hands off the wheel. So it's like until that moment hits wherever you're at, whether you're lawyer or whether you're under the bridge. Yep. Right. Until you're willing to let go. Yeah. Talk to somebody about it. Yeah. There's a, there's a lot of power. Haven't you seen? There's a lot of power and just the words coming out of your mouth. Yeah. It helps to get some feedback and write a four step and all that sort of stuff. But don't we get a lot of healing just from the expression of our brokenness. Yes. Just from saying out loud, I don't have this figured out. And there's something about the saying of that. You know, some starts the healing. Some of the biggest people in sobriety that I've seen 35, 45, 50 years. They owe a lot of times they lead with this. I'm 50 years sober and I still don't know anything today. Correct. I don't know. I still don't know what the fuck I'm doing today. Right. I just know that I'm going to stay sober today. Yep. And like that humility of saying like, I still don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I just know what work for me and it might work for you. That's all I know to do. And I hope that's helpful. Yeah. It was for me. I'm sure there's a lot of people who want more certainty than that. Sure. Sure. But I think that's empty. Because if I try to sell you that, I can't follow through. And then when I can't follow through, you're going to see me as a fraud. Right. And then the whole thing is screwed. So I've got to tell you the truth from the beginning. Also like it. I like your sponsor. Yeah. I like what your sponsor told you as far as like who was holding the wheel this whole time. Me. And how is your life right now? Fucking terrible. Well, how much you let someone else on. Yeah. Because the guy that used to do this with his J Klein. Yeah. He used to say he said that whenever he got sober this time, the guy told him, look, if you try my way for a year in your life is not 1000% better than go back to where you were. And he's like, man, he said that was so easy because I should I can always go back. Yeah. If it was so great, you can always go back. But then he said, once I started getting 30 days and 60 days and I started seeing these changes and these miracles, it's like, why the fuck would I want to go back there? Like that was the most miserable time I've ever. And you could probably agree with that. My guy said, give me a month. Yeah. Give me a month. If you don't like it, will completely refund your fucking nothing. You're nothing. Yeah. Nothing down payment. But he's like, we can get through these. He said, you it took you 37 years to get to this bottom. He said, we can have you with some measure of freedom in less than a month. I said, no way. Yeah. He said, well, I'll be here. I'll be here whenever you're willing to do the work. Like, here's the way we're going to do a fourth step. Call me when it's done. And I'll be here and we'll move on. Called him two hours later. I was done. Yeah. I was desperate. Right. And so he made sure that everything he told me was the truth in terms of I was not going to disprove. He wasn't going to oversell it and I wasn't going to disprove it. I'm going to be able to be able to. Yeah. I wouldn't be able to call him a fraud or a fake. Yeah. And man, it doesn't take very long to where for the, by the way, that's the first guy in my life in 37 years that hasn't been a fraud or a fake because all I attracted was frauds and fakes because that's what I was. Yeah. Right. We get we get what we are. Right. Right. And so I thought he was probably a fraud and fake. I'm skeptical. I'm trying to bust him. But I can't bust him. Yeah. Because everything he's saying is coming true. Yeah. It's a, it's an amazing miraculous deal. And you guys just keep fighting the good fight. You as well, brother. I will. I will do it. And look, you're welcome here anytime. Oh, well, thanks. I'd love to come back anytime. Anytime you all want to chat more. Maybe eight years, maybe maybe when we double this sobriety up when you're when y'all, uh, it'd probably be pretty cool to talk to you guys. That was, I was gonna say that. Well, maybe having both on it. Oh boy. Oh boy. Actually, you hear that. We got all of you. My phone's on here. I think she's, she is with a friend right now watching some of the clips of y'all's college shows. Yeah. So we might be in trouble. Yeah. And she's like, where are you going tonight? And I started to describe it. And she's like, it sounds cool. But what's the whole deal? And I'm like, well, you'll get to see soon enough. She, she, uh, puts up with me, um, going out to tell my story. And I don't tell her story from her side of it. I do tell my perspective of what I watched her go through. Right. Because I think that can be helpful to other family members. I try to be very careful. Yeah. Yeah. And not telling you guys what she thought or what she felt because I don't know. That's her story to tell. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's power and it is a powerful story. Um, so we'll see if we'll see if we can get her back in the hot seat next. You guys would love to talk to her. I'm saying this. That would be awesome. We, we actually, we haven't had someone come on to my knowledge. We haven't had a family member come on yet, even though we've wanted them to. That can actually say what their side of it is. Yeah. No, because I, we had the husband of young lady. Yeah. I thought you all had one. Maybe. Yeah. We did. We're right. I'll tell you a funny story real quick. We did. Me and my daughter were playing games in here last night. Yeah. And she was sitting there and I was sitting there. And I said, she pulled the mic. And I said, she's always wanted to come on here. She's just way too young. So and I asked you a couple of questions like, what was it like with your dad going through what he went through? And her answers were fucking incredible. Deep, deep like for a 10 year old deep. And I was after asking four questions as I, hey, all right, we're going to go ahead and play games now. We're getting away from where let me go ahead and pull the games out. We're going to play trouble instead of this. But when you get old enough, we'll bring up. But even a 10 year old, when she was six, some of the answers that she was saying was like, well, dad, you never really fed me. You always let me candy because you weren't good enough to even to even cook. Like, you wasn't in a place like, like those little things like, I don't even remember, right? Right. And then like, well, you was always in the bathroom because you were saying that you were taking poo poo. But now I know that you were in there doing drugs. And you was staying there for two and three hours, you know, it was insane. But her answers, I was like, all right, we got to cut this off right now. Yeah. Well, and you can, you could. I'm, I will bet you don't. Because the way I've listened to you, I think you work a strong program. I relate a lot to, to where I hear your program grounded. You have solid anchors in the ground, which I think keep you grounded. Yeah. From blowing in the wind of what I'm about to describe, which is those stories taking you back to such morbid reflection about how you harmed her that you almost want to use again. Yeah. Right. We're hopefully grounded enough that those stories are part of our recovery. Huge part. And I got a, I got a fear in that. I do. Because it reminds me of my step one experience. And the foundation of my recovery is that three hour poop. Yeah. Right. That's the foundation is never getting too far from that to go. This is about analogy. But I can smell, I can smell that. Yeah. Right. I know, I know what I was wearing. I know what I looked like. I can, like I can transport myself back to that moment and feel that pain. That's enough to stay on the other side. 100 days. That's why I like to go to the meetings. I like to go to our newcomer meetings. Absolutely. Because it's cool to hear someone that has 10 and 15 and 20 years. But the ones that I relate to the most are the ones just now coming in. Yeah. Because I want to remind, keep myself reminded. Correct. That that was me not long ago. And now I can talk to that person or share something with them that maybe would give them a little bit of hope that man, I heard your story and I was there four years ago. And do you know that she's not that sad about what she described to you last night? She's not that sad about that today because of who you are. What have to do? And that's what she told me. She said, I don't have to worry about that. No more there. I mean, we want to sit in it and think, oh my God, the harm that I've done. I mean, I felt the same way about my sons. Just it's hard. Yeah. But when he calls me and says, I trust you with the most important questions of my life because of who you are today, I realize we're not back to the harm that I was doing at that 10, 100. We've moved on from that. And that's the power of God as well. That's a miracle that I cannot work. But it has been worked because we get to see it right every day in our lives. And that's part of what we got to pass on to others as well. Yes. Is that this the miracles are going to affect so much more than us. I bet you don't even care if you get as much benefit out of it as the people around you. I'll take the hurt. If you can just God help the people around me. Yes. Now the beautiful thing is God doesn't seem to want to put me through that degree of hurt anymore. Right. The substance hurt. Right. Right. There's still stuff that we got to work through. But even though I'd be willing to take that pain for the benefit of my loved ones, I don't have to have to. Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Thank you guys. Well, no, thank you, man. Thank you. This was awesome. This was a really good episode, man. I can't wait for it to come out. I can't wait for your wife to watch all of our Dick and shit jokes all over the internet. No pressure. You might have to clean it up a little bit for her. She's not a she's not a prim and proper girl. But I don't I don't know that she would appreciate as much locker room humor. We definitely came taper it down for. We definitely. We've had a we've had a couple of beauty queens on here, like legit beauty. Oh yeah. I saw. Absolutely. Absolutely. That episode. Yeah. Me and my whole time were like, okay. Yeah. What's okay to say? I don't know. We were like, we were pretty good. We always kind of get into it in the beginning, like the first one or two minutes when it's a female on. Yeah. We'll kind of throw like, are we going to be able to give away with this? Yeah. Yeah. And then see what their reaction is. And then be like, all right, maybe we can't pull that one. Yeah. Well, this is by far the most unfiltered environment that I've been in. Yeah. I'll say that most of the other stuff I've done like this has not been in the not say for work. Yeah. Yeah. But I like real and unfiltered. I think that's what makes it work. I was telling somebody the other day who this person was doing some public speaking and there were some moments that were, you know, not perfect. I'll say. Yeah. And somebody came out to me afterwards and said, what'd you think about that? I said, I absolutely loved it because it was so real. Yeah. I don't like slick. Yeah. I like dead and all that. I like real. And I'll tell you one thing you guys got going for you. It's real. Well said, man. Thank you so much. Again, this was great. We're going to take some pictures. Great. And we'll let get it out. But hey, look how do people find you? Are you on like any of the other companies? Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm Lance Travis on Facebook. I don't hide from anybody. I'm Lance C Travis 2222 on Instagram. Okay. Let's go. And, you know, my cell phone's numbers out there for thousands of people already because I freely share it with everybody in the DFW recovery community that might ever need any resources. So I'm not hard to find. And I'm happy to talk to anybody that wants to talk about recovery. And if I can help you, I'll try. And if I know somebody else that might be a better fit for you, I'll get you referred to that person. Beautifully said. I don't. I know that I can't help everybody. I don't. I had a savior complex. I'm working on that. I was going to say I don't have it anymore. My therapist and my wife might disagree with you. But I do truly know that I can't help everybody. I don't have the time. I don't have the tools. But there were strangers there. Strangers there to help me. When I was dead. Yeah. And I'm going to live my life as that stranger to the next guy. Oh, yeah. And just see what happens. I may regret it at some point. Almost four years in. I hadn't regretted a moment of it. Not a moment. And it's been the biggest joys of my life. Is the guy that texted me yesterday from the Salvation Army and said, I just wanted to tell you, I got three years, brother. Nice. You know, it's like, I know a amount of drink had ever made you feel that good. I can't. And he didn't say you did this for me or he knows better. He knows I didn't do it for him. But he knows I want to share in his joy. Yes. Yes. And I did made my day. And the further we go, the more calls like that we get, right? Right. And the more calls you get from wives and husbands and family members who are at the end of their rope. And you give them a little bit of hope. Yes. And it just makes tomorrow better. 100%. Yep. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on, brother. Anytime. Do add to the moron. phase. We're out here.