gAy A: The Queer Sober Hero Show
gAy A delivers inspiring stories about queer people in sobriety who are achieving amazing feats in their recovery, proving that we are all LGBTQIA+ sober heroes.
If you are looking for a safe space where all queer people, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, age, length of sober time, or method of recovery are valid, this is the sober show for you. If you are sober, you are a hero!
This show is not affiliated with any program or institution, so you will hear stories from alcoholics and addicts where people mention getting sober using recovery methods such as rehabilitation, both inpatient and outpatient rehabs, sober living, hospitals, and some of us who got sober at home on our own. Guests may mention twelve step programs like AA, CMA, SMART Recovery, or other methods, while accepting that no one answer is perfect for everyone.
This podcast will provide valuable insights for any interested in learning more about queer recovery, from those of us with years or even decades of recovery under their belt, to people just beginning their sobriety journey, to even the sober curious or friends and family of alcoholics and addicts.
Each week, host Sober Steve the Podcast Guy tries to answer the following questions in various formats and with different perspectives:
· How do I get and stay sober in the queer community?
· Can you have fun while being sober and gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer?
· What does a sober life as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community look like?
· Where do sober gay and queer people hang out?
· How can I have good sex sober?
· What are tips and tricks for early sobriety?
· How can I get unstuck or out of this rut in my recovery?
· How will my life change if I get sober?
· Can you be queer and sober and happy?
· How can I untangle sex and alcohol and drugs?
gAy A: The Queer Sober Hero Show
Sobervation: Sober Motivation featuring Eric (#191)
**Episode Highlights Include**
- **The Role of Fitness in Recovery:** Eric shares on how his weight loss journey and sobriety journey have continued since his last episode two years ago. 💪
- **Building a Business:** Eric shares how Sobervation was created, as well as how it’s helped his sobriety. 👕👚
- **Humor in Recovery** How humor has helped us both stay sober, and how not to take yourself seriously.
- **And Much More! **
**Where to Find Us:**
- Sobervation Store 🏣
- Eric’s IG 🟢
- Sobervation’s IG 🟢
- gAy A on IG 🟢
- gAy A everywhere else 🖇️
Tell a friend to listen today!! Until next time, stay sober!
When I was five, six years old, I would play with Gem and the Holograms dolls. I would love. When that show came on I'd have all the words to all the songs memorized Before life had turned me into a jaded drunk, I guess, and now that I'm sober it's just like I'm going right back to the person I was before that. It's a whole like like full circle moment for me.
Speaker 2:Hey there, super sober heroes, it's your host, sober Steve, the podcast guy, here with 1067 Days of Sobriety. And today I am grateful for my dog, remy, and his new haircut, because he looks so cute right after a haircut, just like many of us do, and I am very excited to share with you my interview with Eric from Sobervation today. But first I also wanted to take a moment to reflect on something more recently that I've been reading through and by reading I am listening to an audio book of Polysecure, and the beginning part of the book that really had me interested in talking about a little further with you all today and processing things was the different attachment styles and how mine have changed and grown in recovery. It was fun to think and reflect back on that as I was relearning what the attachment styles were. I was a psychology major in college that's what my degree is in and so I am familiar with the attachment styles of secure attachment, anxious, avoidant and disorganized, and for those who are not, that is a-okay. Polysecure is a lovely book, but it is very dense and very collegiate and makes me feel very smart listening to it.
Speaker 2:But in terms of attachment styles for dummies, you have the four different attachment styles. The primary. You have the four different attachment styles. The primary one that we generally aim to strive for is the secure attachment style, where it's warm and caring, trusting and forgiving. You have good boundaries, you manage your emotions well, you're responsive and you're honest and open All very good things to have. And then they have the other three attachment styles that kind of go into what happens when you don't receive what you need as a child and how it affects you in terms of not being able to securely attach as adults and things that you'll see. So again, trying to oversimplify it from a very smart book, polysecure, which I'll link over to in the show notes If you have Spotify you can listen included in their premium.
Speaker 2:But the first one is the anxious style, where you have relationship insecurities, fear of abandonment, lack of boundaries, mood fluctuations, highly sensitive and overly accommodating. I know for many of us, whether it be in the before, the during or the after, we might be able to relate to a lot of that Avoidant. Some of us might also have experience with a fear of closeness, distant and withdrawn, avoiding conflict, extremely independent, emotionally distant, unresponsive to their partner and very logical. And then you have the disorganized, where you're unable to self-regulate, you find intimacy and trust difficult, tendency to dissociateate, lack of empathy and wants closeness, but fearful of others. And I am sure a lot of people, if you have rough shit happen to you when you're younger, as a lot of us have will find themselves oftentimes with the disorganized.
Speaker 2:Because I grew up in a very emotionally chaotic atmosphere and it's been interesting, though and I, but the one thing I think people oftentimes, when I hear people oversimplify attachment styles that I don't want to do here is that they think that, like, the one way that you attach is the way that you attach, but I have different attachment styles for different relationships that I have in my life, as most of us do. So I might have a secure relationship with many people in my life, but there are individuals that I might have an anxious or an avoided or a disorganized attachment style with. That doesn't mean that that's the absolute attachment style that I always have. So don't identify with your attachment style as a reason for going unhealthily through your relationships is, I think, good advice that most people would agree with.
Speaker 2:But in general, through my addiction, I can look at the different relationships that I've had with different people, and most of them were disorganized or they like, because disorganized oftentimes is also seen as like a little bit of anxious and a little bit of avoidant when you're very high in both.
Speaker 2:So actually not a little bit, it's when you're a lot of both you can get that disorganized style.
Speaker 2:And so I would very much have that anxious moments and I have my avoidant moments and it was that very push and pull that I feel like a lot of addicts might also get to relate to with our relationships, with our addictions. And so as I went through with the attachment styles and learning about the different ones and kind of getting a refresher on what it looks like today, it was interesting to see and look at the relationships that I have and how many of them have shifted towards a more secure attachment style, especially and most notably my husband, my spouse Stephen, who, yes, he also has my name, but with us I was so disorganized in my attachment style with him he never knew what to expect from me rightfully so, because there were days where I would come home and be like the loving, wonderful, awesome, amazing husband that I can be, and there were days that he'd come home and I was like a blacked out fucking mess and it was gross and rough and difficult for both of us.
Speaker 2:I was very disorganized with the way that I showed up to my relationship with my husband as well as a lot of the other people in my life, and it was in my early recovery where I was feeling the emotional psychic shifts and changes that happen within us when we work our program, whatever that program looks like for us For me, it was 12 steps, but for other people, however, you get sober, you do things that get you sober, and when you get sober, things change, you grow, you evolve. Things around your life just seem to magically level up when you start being present in everything and not actively disassociating or causing harm to yourself or the people around you in your act of addiction. Like life gets better when you are sober. I'm pretty sure that everyone listening can agree. I've never heard anyone say that they regret being sober, that it was a mistake or that they were miserable over it. People love sobriety. It makes our lives better and I had that feeling right away of that, like I'm feeling better about relationships now.
Speaker 2:But it took a while for these relationships that I had that I spent years traumatizing through my disorganized attachment style and my irregular and erratic behavior that it took them seeing me grow in my sobriety over the last three years almost to be able to realize that I have changed, I have grown, that this is me and we've been able to develop this secure attachment style with each other, as well as other relationships that I've had that are geared more towards secure than they have in the past. And sure, not every relationship is always going to be perfect. My parents call me and you're going to get either. Well, mostly, most of the time, I'm avoidant when it comes to them, but if I'm not avoiding them actively I'm anxious. So that's very disorganized. So there's still relationships and things where it's always going to be a work in progress. But I was really enjoying learning about the different attachment styles with the new scope and mindset of a sober person who's able to be present in the relationships and really get to connect with people on a deeper, more meaningful level when I'm able to show up as my authentic, sober, awesome self.
Speaker 2:So I would love to hear if anyone else is a little psychology geek like me or was able to kind of follow my probably not very great explanation of the different attachment styles. You know that you don't come to this podcast for fancy science stuff. If you did, you'd be listening to Sober Powered, because that's where all the fancy sober science is at. I am not the science guy, but hopefully I made sense with the attachment styles, I would love to hear what your experiences were and how they might have shifted in sobriety, if you were able to identify what it's been like over the years of staying and being sober and showing up to these relationships, watching them shift from an attachment style that might not have been as healthy in the past and seeing them shift back or shift into secure, possibly for the first time. So my socials are always open for that at GA podcast.
Speaker 2:But until we get into that, let me shift on over to this week's interview.
Speaker 2:Like I said, eric is a returning guest and a friend of the podcast, so if you are a completionist or want to already get to know more of how he got to his sobriety and a little bit more about his weight loss journey, you could check out his earlier episode, which I'll link over to in the show notes. But if you are already ready to go and see what it's like and hearing his strength and hope in regards to what's been new in his sobriety as well as his new online and with that I will shift gears and send you on over to my interview with Eric it was great catching up with him, so I hope you enjoy. Hello super sober heroes, it's your host, steve, here with Eric. Hey Eric, welcome back to the show. Hey Steve, and especially now that we are in video, not only are people going to be listening to you for possibly the first time in a couple of years, but they're also seeing you for the first time, so why don't you introduce yourself to people?
Speaker 1:Hi, my name is Eric and I first had a podcast episode with Steve a couple months after I'd stopped drinking, back in 2021. We both had Instagrams. He was promoting his podcast and I was just promoting myself. I guess I don't know what I was doing at that time. I just my Instagram was kind of like a daily journal of of it played off of my website anyways, and we touched base with each other and we did an episode then and that's been like what? Like two and a half years almost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a while Cause I remember when I first like found you online, not only were you recovering out loud about your like addiction and your sobriety, but also your weight loss journey, and that was really inspiring how you were allowed about both of those. How has that continued over the past two and a half years?
Speaker 1:I still see you post in progress pics and all that, oh my goodness, I'm probably in the best shape I've ever been in my entire life and it's just as I started making fitness part of like my me time every day. It's like something that I do for myself. You might not see results that day, but it's something that's going to pay off in the future and, you know, one day I'm going to be 60 years old and I'll be very grateful that I did keep at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Excellent. I mean we keep at the fitness as well as we keep at our sobriety. What has changed in your life over the past two and a half years?
Speaker 1:is a monster of its own and I have my own issues with that. But I stay at it every day. But my fitness is my me time.
Speaker 2:And that's part of what keeps me sober. Yeah, I know that it took me a couple months to realize that I was following you on two different places. Do you want to share, kind of a way that you're doing service for the sober community?
Speaker 1:So I started making some designs. I wanted a hat for myself. That was just basically said that I was sober, and it was okay to ask me that I was sober, because I had run into people that wanted to ask how things were going, how why I did this, why how things have gone, and they were just afraid to ask me because they were afraid to trigger me. So I was looking for like a hat or something that I could wear that would let people know that I'm not just sober, but I'm okay talking about it. And so this was the hat. It's the I'm sober because embroidered hat. I ordered it and I was like, okay, well, that's actually really cute, maybe other people would order something like that. So I started slowly putting things into a store. We call it Sobervation. It's been going since September of last year and we sell apparel that's geared to help people recover out loud.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's excellent.
Speaker 1:I see some behind me.
Speaker 2:I see some behind you as well as on you, and people who are listening will be sure to be able to click over to the website from the show notes so they can see the store.
Speaker 2:But I do love the stuff that you create, stuff that I would actually wear. So I really enjoy just that. Because I was even talking with a fellow last night who I met in the past month or two. We met in the past month or two. We met in person and when I was talking about what gym I went to, they were like, oh wait, I recognize you from six months back because you were wearing a sober shirt and it wasn't one of your shirts, but it was another sober shirt. When you go out in public, I wear it because it's one of the shirts in my drawer that I'll just wear out because it's cute. But the fact that, like by part of that wearing it out and about as people recognize me as someone who is sober or someone that they could talk to about their sobriety, and it is really cool being able to display something again because I mean oftentimes we hid this when we were interacting, absolutely To recover out loud.
Speaker 1:You know what it kind of reminds me about, because I'm an old school gay man, I'm in my 40s and I grew up in a small town. It kind of reminds me of like in my 40s and I grew up in a small town. It kind of reminds me of like when I came out of the closet and how I had to find ways to identify other gay people so that I could survive. Basically, and it's the same feeling to me I wear a sober hat and I starts a conversation with somebody just like you, like you said. So I love hearing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, and what would be you say is one of the biggest surprises or lessons that you've learned about yourself and your sobriety and doing sobervation.
Speaker 1:Just that I still have a lot to learn. Every single day I have a lot to learn. You get. I guess the biggest thing I learned I am seeing reinforced in life is that you get what you put into it. So I've never had an online store, e-commerce store, anything like that.
Speaker 1:I've always worked for someone and I was just in a real bad place with my job back in September of last year and one of my bosses was going through a relapse and it was just a terrible situation for everyone involved and it was affecting my sobriety. I was getting back to old habits and stuff and, yeah, I put two and two together with the hat and the. Everything. It was like I do still have my day job. The the owner that relapsed has been bought out by rick, who is my sober hero, and I I love him to death.
Speaker 1:So I'm still at that job and subervation is something that I do all the time. I come home from work, I work out for an hour, I eat dinner and I work on subervation until maybe like 1030 at night and then I try to unwind with Rich and I watch a show or something, and you know I do it all over the next day, and now it's like I just had someone. I just got a notification a couple minutes ago, right before we started, that someone on Instagram posted a picture of them in their shirt today, and seeing stuff like that it warms my heart and that's what keeps my sobriety going right now.
Speaker 2:That's excellent. Yeah, we definitely do the thing to be able to see how it affects and changes people. I can see, like you, having someone's share or post a picture of them wearing your clothes. The same way, like when I get like a listener on Thursday, like reaching out and being like I love the episode, or like love this guest or this thing Absolutely. What would you say is one of your products? Or like, what slogan on your products is one of your favorites?
Speaker 1:What slogan so I'm really proud of, like the Sober Queen and the Sober King, because I started using the line. I started using the line rule your realm and like it's a whole, nother take on heavy is the crown and you're in control of your life. And it seemed to resonate really well with people. People love the Sober Queen and Sober King designs and I just I love it.
Speaker 2:That's one of my favorites During you sharing about how now the person you're working with you called your sober hero, which, of course, my ears were like ding, ding, ding. That's the angle I'm working this season, so tell me a little bit about what a sober hero means to you.
Speaker 1:Well, on our last episode I told you about a dude named Rick who would and that's who I'm talking about Same guy, so I still work at the same place. I just a sober hero to me is someone who's mastered the program but they're working, not not specifically AA or or NA or whatever they're working, but the program that they are working specifically. That's. A sober hero is someone that's mastered that and is so confident in it that they can share their knowledge with other people and help other people take control of their lives back and not even realize that they're doing it Like that's. That's my idea of a sober hero.
Speaker 2:Excellent, and how would you consider yourself a sober hero in your everyday life?
Speaker 1:In my everyday life. I mean, I keep myself sober. I know that I've inspired quite a few of my friends to at least reevaluate their relationship with alcohol. I don't know, I'm just. I'm just doing me, I am just learning who I am without the alcohol, and it's something that I'm still continuing every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so you work out and you're sober, anything else?
Speaker 1:Well, I do sobervation. That takes up most of my time. It's something I've never thought I would be doing, but I guess if you would ask a six-year-old me who was rocking out to Jem and the Holograms, then they would have had a different story. They would have totally predicted this.
Speaker 2:Oh, really, tell me more about that.
Speaker 1:I mean, that was something like when I was five, six years old I would play with Jem and the Holograms dolls. I would love, when that show came on I'd have all the words to all the songs memorized before life had turned me into a jaded drunk, I guess, and now that I'm sober it's just like I'm going right back to the person I was before that. It's a whole full circle moment for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, when you were younger, did you like to design or create or draw?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I always loved to draw and I was always dressing my dolls in all kinds of outfits. You wouldn't imagine Rio, who is Jem's Ken, would always try to wear Barbies, not Barbie, oh shit, jem's shoes, but they didn't fit him.
Speaker 2:They didn't fit him as people too big, the bigger sizes now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they hung out with He-Man and Masters of the Universe too, so I'm not going to take too much stock into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely can relate to that, though, in sobriety, oftentimes the things that you were drawn to when you were younger, kind of reconnecting with them. And now, looking ahead with Sobervation, what would you say is going to be your next big milestone or your big win for Sobervation?
Speaker 1:So next big win for me is when Sobervation is making enough money that I can quit my other job and focus on Sobervation full time. I have so many ideas and things I want to do for it, but I am constrained by time and you know the need for the need for money because you know what you love doing doesn't pay the bills all the time.
Speaker 2:Now you mentioned how, in doing a lot of the designs, that you've had a couple that were your favorite, that you really enjoy, but some that weren't your favorite and sold extremely well. What would you say has been one of the ones that you expected to do? Well, that didn't, and what kind of what lesson did you learn from that?
Speaker 1:So I expected one to land like humorous, it was funny, and I just expected it. People don't just say, oh, that's funny, I would wear that. But I got a lot of people commenting back on it. It's still in the store Cause I people, people buy it. It's the if I'm drunk, call my. Or if I'm. The shirt says if I'm drunk, call my. Or if I'm, the shirt says if I'm drunk, call my sponsor. And it looks like beer font and has beer glasses and it's meant to be like a humorous graphic tee that someone who is sober could wear. And it's ironic that they wear it.
Speaker 1:A lot of people comment on it and tell me that's wrong. You shouldn't be making stuff like this and I apologize to those people, but people still buy it and they want to wear it. So if you see someone wearing it and you think they're drunk, maybe call their sponsor. But if not, laugh with them. Yes, if you know they're sober, just laugh with them. But I mean, that's something I don't take too much stock in. I try to put things on the store that are motivational and uplifting and different. I don't like to copy what's out there. So if anything's offensive I'm not going to put it on the store. But if you think it's offensive, I definitely would like to hear about it, because that's not my angle here. I'm not trying to piss anybody off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and with all of your designs, where do you see the brand going? In addition to because right now what I see is a lot of clothes, do you have plans to expand it beyond things you wear?
Speaker 1:So I really want to make more of the Soberversary cards because they are popular on the website, but it's a lot to make individual greeting cards and it's coming one day, but I have that. That would be where I would go.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I do remember seeing them and they were. They were real cute. I remember actually when I was reading I think it was an email blast that I got about marketing for Valentine's Day, but it was that like the first Valentine's Day cards back in the X hundreds or whatever, like they had to be handmade and how it's. Just making a card is so much work for what you can generally charge for a card. Do that unless you have a printing press.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm definitely not making much money, if any, on any of the greeting cards, so I'm sorry if they are expensive, but I never charge shipping on my store. That's something I want. I never. I ship worldwide and I never charge shipping, so there are no hidden fees there.
Speaker 2:Very cool and, knowing that we are the Sober Hero show here, I remember seeing you have a handful of superhero themed clothes and wear as well, correct?
Speaker 1:I do, I do. Let's see if I've got anything down here with me that I could show you. I don't think I have any designs down here, but I've got a lot of them in the store.
Speaker 2:We'll be putting them on the socials too. Okay, I'm excited for that excellent and knowing how much can change in even just a couple years for you. Where do you see your life and your sobriety and your story, like everything, heading in the next couple years?
Speaker 1:the sky's the limit. I honestly I never thought I'd be running a business out of my spare room in my basement in my house. So I mean, you know, maybe I'll be a millionaire.
Speaker 2:Put it out there, right.
Speaker 1:It can't happen if I don't put it out there.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Well, it is Sobervation. They can Google it, they can follow it on the socials, correct, any?
Speaker 1:other way to connect with you, Eric. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest. I have a Pinterest page. You can follow my personal page at Reinventing Eric if you want to, but just check it out All right, sounds good, excellent.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much, eric. It was great catching up with you.
Speaker 1:It was great catching up with you too, Steve. I can't wait to see this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and back to the show. Bye, bye. Thank you, paself, that was awesome. I am so glad that this episode is getting ready to air next week. So thank you very much, listeners, for tuning into another episode of Gay A Podcast, if you liked what you heard, into another episode of Gay A Podcast. If you liked what you heard, I'd love to hear about it. You can engage on all the socials at Gay A Podcast or send me an email at steve, at soberstevecom, if, wherever you're listening, you haven't already leave a five-star review, because that's how people in the apps and the algorithms and the AI and all the magic stuff behind the scenes knows that this podcast is helping people and that people like it and that it should show other people to listen to this podcast. So please take a few moments to leave a five-star rating if you haven't already. I always appreciate all of you, my listeners, and until next time, stay sober friends.
