Be True to Yourself ft. Chad R

Host Steve celebrates 1,195 days of sobriety and welcomes Chad to share his powerful journey. Together, we explore the importance of self-discovery, overcoming toxic relationships, and building a life rooted in recovery and community.

• Celebrating Sobriety: Steve marks 1,195 days sober and introduces Chad to the show.
• Starting Early: Chad’s journey to sobriety and the struggles he faced along the way.
• Overcoming Challenges: From toxic relationships to personal growth, Chad opens up about the hardships he conquered in early recovery.
• Community & Transformation: Chad’s experiences in sober community activities and how they’ve shaped his recovery.
• Advice for Newcomers: Chad offers valuable insights and advice for those in early recovery or facing challenges.
• Looking Ahead: A teaser for a follow-up discussion on competing in fun events in sobriety.

Tune in next episode for part two, where we discuss participating in competitions sober.

- Chad on Instagram 🟢
- gAy A on IG 🟢
- gAy A everywhere else 🖇️

Transcript

Steve: 0:00

Hey, super sober heroes. It's your host. So receive the podcast guy here with 1,195 day sober. And I am so grateful for the amazing experience I had this weekend out of fiber, as well as the wonderful life that I got to come home to from it. And I will be getting more into my out Viber experience in next week's episode, as I'll be talking about a little bit more with Chad, a sober buddy, I got to know over the weekend. And so we are starting off this week's episode with you getting to know him a little bit better. So let me send you over to my interview with Chad for part one of a great two part episode. Super Sober Heroes. It's your host Steve here with Chad. Welcome to the show.

Chad: 0:46

Thanks, Steve. Excited to be here.

Steve: 0:48

Yeah, I am excited as well, because you've been in my queer sober orbit for quite some time now, but this will be my real first chance to get to hear your story and how you got here.

Chad: 0:59

Yes, yeah, I was thinking about that earlier. I'm like, I don't know how much she knows of my story, or if you even knew how long I've even been sober. So I'm like, I don't know. Maybe I'll surprise him and be like, Oh yeah, I've been sober 90 days. So

Steve: 1:10

I've known you longer than that. So I was confident that that wasn't going to happen, but yes. Well, let's jump into it. What is your favorite part of being sober today?

Chad: 1:20

I think my favorite part of being sober today as I don't know if it's lame or not is being able to just experience anything. I went so long just so it was like, wait, drink, sleep. Work, drink, sleep. And it was like nothing. And I mean, life's been insane and painful and great. and painful and crazy. But being able to actually just experience life for the first time sober, no matter what's going on has been pretty amazing.

Steve: 1:53

Yeah, I can certainly relate. I definitely drank to numb basically the entire human experience. So being able to experience things present has been hard at times, like you said, there's pain involved, but it's also a lot of amazing, great things that you get to feel more authentically sober too. So with that, what's your favorite part of being a member of the queer community?

Chad: 2:13

Oh my God. I mean the obvious this sex is fantastic in the gay community. I think honestly, it's a community that is for the most part, most of the time, so loving and supporting of each other and able to be expressive and actually truly authentic in ways that it's not always present in the heteronormative community. And I know we don't always support each other as well as we can, but I think overall, like we do more than most communities and just to see the variations of it is whether it's creativity and art you know what I mean? It's a community that allows you to just truly express yourself, whether it's hair color or painting your nails or what you do for work I don't know, it's pretty amazing and lucky.

Steve: 2:56

Yeah, it definitely is. Especially having recently experienced this whole queer weekend and then having to come back to the reality in one of my first marketing meetings today was. hateful ignorance and, I was like, I just want to be around queer people all the time. And not have to worry about if I'm being too gay, or if I say this or that.

Chad: 3:14

Absolutely. I am lucky. I'm at a pretty supportive company with supportive teams. So like. Drag race regularly comes up on my team meetings and who's winning and everything else. So it is nice to be in a supportive environment, but that's not always been the case. So it's pretty amazing.

Steve: 3:30

Excellent. And let's jump right into it and tell us a little bit about what your battle with alcohol and addiction was like.

Chad: 3:38

I always say that I started drinking later compared to most people, but I got sober around a lot of younger people that were getting sober. I didn't start drinking until, like, 19. Probably, right when I went to college, I was the nerdy rule following band nerd that, like, didn't even get invited to band parties. I always joke around, like, I didn't know that band kids drank. Apparently I was, that not cool that the band kids didn't invite me to their parties. I didn't start drinking until after high school for my senior trip, when we went to Cancun and it was legal there. That was why I was like, Oh, well, I can drink there because. 18 is legal. Then I came back from that and had a normal, experience, blackout, puke, drink, puke, drink in Cancun went to college and I don't know, it was one of those things, like really quickly, I joined a fraternity because I was shy and secure kid and alcohol really quickly, made it okay. Like I wasn't out yet. It wasn't, quite as accepting as it is now where kids are coming out in high school and middle school. I wasn't fully out yet and yeah, alcohol just became like the most important thing. And I pretty much drank through my college years drank through my loans as a nice bar tab. Eventually failed out I went to the University of Florida for five years, probably, I think it was about three classes away from finishing my degree and was drunk, suicidal, tried to kill myself, and they sent me home to kind of get help with that, and unfortunately went home to my dad who didn't understand the gay thing at the time. That came out later, thankfully. But he's a normal drinker. He has a six pack of Corona that sits in the fridge all year. And he'll drink one on his birthday. And so, he was like, Oh, you know, it's because you were in college. The fraternity was all those things that's why you drank. And I was like, yeah, totally. And so I moved in. I was like, yeah, I don't need to go to treatment. I don't need to do anything. We couldn't afford it anyway. I didn't have insurance and they couldn't afford to send me anywhere. So I was like, yeah, you're right. It'll be fine. And so I kind of white knuckled it at home, got a job serving and that lasted. Six months maybe and then you know, working in restaurants, everybody drinks and parties and does drugs I'm in a small little redneck town and there's not a lot to do. So we would drive over to Orlando, the big city to go out and yeah, I would be the DD for the first couple of weeks because everybody wants to DD. But then. Started drinking again real quick and picked it up for another four or five years and never looked back. And in the end, I was mostly a daily drinker. Pretty much always blacked out drugs popped in and out, but nothing heavy. Mostly it was fine. Honestly, a few times I tried drugs, they were too, too great. And I'm like, oh shit, I better not fucking do this again. Cause this will be regular. So smoked a lot of pot, but. Mostly just alcohol and got fired from a lot of jobs, quit a lot of jobs long enough to get another really great job and then. mess that up and leave and get pissed off.

Steve: 6:32

Yeah. I mean, I can certainly relate. My first experience drinking was after prom, but the college happened and off to the races as well for sure. But with that cycle that you were going through, what changed that started this journey now?

Chad: 6:48

So ironically I was working in a bar. And this guy would come into the bar pretty regularly. His name, Timmy, which I'll never forget because we used to have to make Timmy juice for Timmy because Timmy didn't drink. And it was like this horrible concoction of like Red Bull and all the bar juices, all mixed, all the mixtures basically mixed together with no alcohol. And that was Timmy juice. He would come into this bar every day, this shitty little gay bar. He was sober. And I couldn't fathom not drinking at that point. So I thought, wow, this guy must have like cancer or he's dying or something, he can't drink. And slowly he comes in and he's like, he just got sober. And he was going to recovery meetings and like, tell me all these things about that. And he had, I think at the time he had like maybe 90 days. I remember over the course when he came in, he would just tell me all this stuff and he would ask me questions about like my drinking while I'm drinking behind the bar, serving him juice the questions that, you know, Sober people know that I ask, like, well, have you tried to stop? And I'm like, no, why would I, as I'm drinking at work? but it put that seeds in my head, right? The little like, Oh, maybe I do have a problem. But when it got bad enough I was having a really bad night, I was in a really not great relationship with a guy and my last night of drinking was one of those, just like a normal Friday, I peed the bed, I broke a lamp and I tried to cheat on the guy that I was with and I woke up and I'm like, you know what, maybe. What Timmy talked about like maybe I do need to look at this and look at getting into recovery

Steve: 8:13

Yeah I know that for me similar my entry into recovery was having to face Consequences regarding my relationship and those consequences didn't look fun for me at the time So I definitely gave it a try for me and, it's worked for me as well since then But what was those early days like day counting? What did you do to get through that?

Chad: 8:33

I worked a lot, thank God, because it was a really bad relationship and he wasn't working. So I was working trying to work two jobs to support him. Although apparently he was Prostituting on the side. So he probably had money. I just didn't know about it, but you know, hindsight. But it was a lot of honestly, white, white knuckling it. I went to a lot of recovery meetings, trying to distract myself and work a lot. I remember cause I was still bartending and serving at the time in fact, my boss, when he found out I stopped drinking, put me behind the bar more, I think, cause he assumed I wasn't going to steal the alcohol then since I couldn't drink it, but I'm like, That's like having the pedophile lead the Boy Scout troop. So I worked the bar a lot and it was a lot of just like white knuckling and going to the bathroom and doing serenity prayer. Like I got this, I can hang in it but I also started distracting myself with for the first time, actually trying to get more healthy as well. I started Taking care of myself and food prepping. I quit smoking decided I wanted to run. I had a guy that would be my sponsor shortly after that, he was doing marathons and I'm like, I'm going to run a marathon. So having never done a 5k or anything else, I signed up for my first marathon. And so that kind of kept me busy for almost my first year of recovery. It was just training for a marathon.

Steve: 9:46

Yeah, it definitely is helpful to have something like that to look forward to, and I always like to, especially as people are listening, like, when they're early in their recovery, so oftentimes it's being like, everything's great now that I'm sober, but we also still go through some really fucked up shit. What would you say was the hardest part of, like, your life being sober so far? How'd you get past it?

Chad: 10:07

Oh, wow. So many answers to this. How much time do we have? I mean, I'm coming up on, on 17 years. So I would say in that time, I've had a lot of life. In my first year, I think the hardest thing that I went through besides just not drinking was. When I found out that the shitty relationship that I was in, that I was working two jobs to try and save, he was actually cheating and prostituting and having to just end that for the first time that was challenging. But it was one of those amazing moments where the stories I hear in recovery about the grace of, just showing up and taking care of you in the moment. I remember when I confronted him, I wasn't even angry. I just had this moment of forgiveness where I'm like, you know, what he must be going through to be doing this and blah, blah, blah. And really just had this peace in him. you know what, I'm going to go about my life and it'll be fine. And I moved back into my parents and he went about with his life and it was fine. But Man, I wish that serenity and grace of that moment last longer. That probably saved his life from me being super angry. I think one of my favorite sayings I heard early in recovery was, what do you have when you sober up a drunken horse thief, you get a sober horse thief. Right. And so leaning through my own fuck ups. I mean, I still stole money in sobriety. I still didn't pay my taxes for seven years. Probably one of the hardest things. When did that happen? Maybe let's call it year 12 or 13. My relationship with my husband was Rough. We were having communication problems and everything else. Rather than going back into therapy and couples therapy at the time, I ended up cheating on him. Which was tough, but the harder part was being confronted. He's also sober. And we were going into couples therapy where he was about to find out and I was like, all right, I'll resolve this there. And he found it up stuff on my phone. And like that was one of those moments That was one of the hardest. periods of my life probably for like six months where he was just dealing with his constant. And rightful hurt, rage and everything else, you know? And just not knowing if I was gonna get through it, like, you know, just trying to stay sober and like all my sober friends just surrounded me and took care of me. But like, it was heartbreaking every day to see, to see that.

Steve: 12:12

Yeah, I can certainly imagine I've been the wronged and the wrong doer before. And I've always like, it's almost like when you know you fuck up, it's almost like harder'cause we're our own worst critics in the end with everything almost in life like the way we can treat ourselves is harder than anyone else So it does have some pretty great moments though. What would you say is some of your highlights of these past 17 years of sobriety?

Chad: 12:34

Oh my so many. I mean the silly cliche things of like finding myself like just Really embracing who I was. Like I am, as the guy, you know, today, that's just really, really nerdy superhero, dorky guy. Like I had put him aside for so many years, because people made fun of me. And I'm like, I want him to be liked. And probably my second year, just fully embracing it. I'm like, I'm a fucking nerd. And I love Dungeons and Dragons. I love board games. I love comic books. And just getting more involved with that and with sober people also sex and sobriety has been life changing for me. And I think kind of the groups I hung around with an early sobriety, even in the gay community, surprisingly, we're very, Conservative, unfortunately, I would always get that whole like, oh, you know, you shouldn't go out to bars and should go to clubs and all these people that would do that. But then they go out of town and they do that stuff, but they don't do it around here locally. Right? almost like they were keeping secrets and sobriety. so finding that group of people that's Allowed me to still embrace the gay culture in a sober way has been great, like going to Folsom with a group of sober people and running around in a jock strap and a harness all weekend, it just was amazing. And You know, I've been on my second Atlantis cruise and the Mediterranean and just fully being able to be there and be in recovery because there'll be like 50 people in a recovery meeting there, hanging around at a party and still dancing and having fun, but being able to do it sober and like appreciate it and enjoy it and wake up and not. Wonder what I did tonight before.

Steve: 13:57

Yeah, I definitely have had more fun out in sobriety than I did out ever before because I was always a hot mess before because I was an alcoholic around alcohol and people and I needed all the alcohol no matter what the people around me said. So yeah, I can definitely relate to that. But now being able to go out, it was a while, cause I started as well in beginners meetings and especially beginners meetings, they're very cautious about putting yourself in risky situations, understandably so. But I over analyzed it or like, I took it to heart too much isolated for my first two years of sobriety and didn't really people in person. So now being able to go out, I've learned that there's sober subsects of every part of our community, the leather community, like we have, sober people everywhere you go, whether it's a whole group or even one or two. As long as I'm recovering out loud, eventually I'm gonna run into someone else who's like me too. So it's been really cool to see that and experience that. My life wasn't over when I got sober, like I was afraid it would be.

Chad: 14:49

That's awesome.

Steve: 14:51

With this journey to sobriety, as someone who might be new or struggling in their recovery is listening to this, what piece of advice would you have to them as something that you keep coming back to?

Chad: 15:00

I think that the most important thing is to just learn to be true to yourself, right. And figure out who you are, but always just be true to yourself you know, life is tough to be sober through. There's a lot of stuff that comes at you. And I think trying to fit into other people's molds on top of that is challenging even in sobriety, right? Like I can feel like I need to be this perfect model, sober person by what other people look like and just learning to just figure out who I am and stay true to that helps me stay sober. Because when I'm not doing that is usually when I want to drink, when I'm trying to be something I'm not. So that would be my advice.

Steve: 15:35

Yes, well, you are truly magnetic, so being yourself is working fabulously for you, from my perspective. Whee! Awesome. All right. Well, excellent. Well, thank you so much, Chad. Stick around because listeners, Chad is also going to be back for the next episode where we're going to talk more about competing because not only did we compete together in a fun competition this weekend, but this guy is a competitor, so it'll be interesting and a great conversation. So make sure you're following us wherever you're listening and we'll see you next week. Awesome.

Chad: 16:06

Can't wait.