Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hey you. Yeah, you, if you or someone you know, is struggling with anything mentioned on today's program, please, please, please, please, please. Please email
[email protected]. That's a U T H E N I C K. The
[email protected]. I am available 24 seven three 65 to help in any way that I can. I have resources. I have open ears and open heart and tons of hope. I've been freely given all these things and would love to give them to you. Be good to yourselves and each other. Follow me on Twitter, using the handle at authen, Nick and my dog, Marla on Instagram at DJ Marla dot Jean. During today's program, you will hear a mentioned multiple times, the individual expressing their thoughts and opinions. Do not reflect AA as a whole. Please enjoy.
Speaker 1 00:01:02 No, no, my mama, my mama mad, mad, mad. I can't get these men. <inaudible> you
Speaker 0 00:02:04 Are listening to <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:02:13 Here on authentic, where we get authentic. We talk about all things recovery. Well, what do I mean by that? All things recovery. Well, what I mean by that is if you are still living and breathing on this earth, you, yes, you are in recovery from something. As for myself, I am in recovery from alcoholism. I am an alcoholic. I'm also a drug addict. I'm a compulsive gambler. I have an eating disorder. I bipolar disorder. Really the list could go on and on and on. Luckily for you, today's show is not about me. It is however about two people. First is my guest. Jim. Second is the one person whose life is going to most, certainly be saved today by hearing Jim's testimony. Because if we help one person today, then we've done our job. That's really what this whole thing. This whole podcast is all about. And by the grace of my higher power, I have been blessed with people to come into the studio, get vulnerable, break stigma, and share their experience, strength and hope before I introduced Jim, you know who I need to introduce, right?
Speaker 1 00:03:23 My dog, Marla. <inaudible> go, go. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do go pack go. Because when you said <inaudible>, you've said it all, Jim,
Speaker 0 00:03:48 Your turn, welcome to the show. Please introduce yourself in any way you see fit.
Speaker 2 00:03:54 I am GMR and I am an alcoholic. Welcome, Jim. And I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 0 00:03:59 I'm happy that you're happy to be here. Jim, why are you here specifically? Uh,
Speaker 2 00:04:05 Uh, the program, the program, the program says that we need to connect with people. What program, the AA program, the program to recover from alcoholism to work on a day by day. This is a great opportunity to connect with some folks like yourself. We've already won. We've met each other for the first time face to face. You put it well. Yeah. If we can give somebody some message somewhere, that'll help them in some way, shape or form. That's why I'm sitting here and selfishly, I'm helping my own program by sitting here. Cause I'm thinking about my disease and I'm working on it today.
Speaker 0 00:04:44 And that's the great thing about what we in the AA program called 12 step work. And that's called being of service. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all of our affairs service service is what gives me purpose service to others is what comes around, taps me on the shoulder and says, Hey, remember that problem you had earlier that you couldn't fucking figure out here's the answer because you got outside of yourself, you got out of your own way and you got your answer. Jim let's get right into the nitty gritty showering. Let's talk about your childhood. What was your childhood like growing up?
Speaker 2 00:05:30 So I was born in, uh, lacrosse, uh, Wisconsin to say that drinking was part of the culture would be a gross understatement. I had a great childhood things were by all appearances, pretty normal, you know, grew up, uh, in a home with two parents that were together. I didn't know until later that things were a little shaky cause my dad was a drinker and alcoholic brothers and sisters, you know, but I played ball, went to school, decent, high achiever, et cetera, et cetera. But all around me for sure was drinking. Drinking was just part of what we are and what we were. And I'm an Irish boy too. So that was always part of the stick, right? Hey, Oh, hire a shear drinker. Yeah, he just like a dad, just like all the other Irish people in town of course had includes all the other cultures as well. And I would say that it was always a, maybe better, best way to put it. It was always sort of a, a, a destination that when you reached a certain age, you're going to start sneaking drinks one way, shape or form. That was just seemed to be what we did at least our group. Anyway, that started at 11 or 12 for me taking, taken some of my dad's bears saying some of the, some of the liquor.
Speaker 3 00:06:48 Do you remember what your very first drink was?
Speaker 2 00:06:51 I think it was an old, um, I say old, the old brand of red, white and blue beer. I think that my dad got it was cheap gut rod beer that he had. Yeah, it wasn't a, but he also had a whiskey hanging around too that didn't get into that for a little bit until I realized the beer wasn't cutting it. And then we started to get our, some stew, you know, take some booze and things like that. But for some reason I was tabbed as a guy that could get the fake ID. I must've looked older. I dunno what the deal was. So at 13 or 14, I had an ID, which said I was 18 years old, which as I look back, I can not believe that the store owners or the off-sale liquor store owners, where they were just looking the other way.
Speaker 2 00:07:30 I mean, I would go sit with my dad and bars is like all the other kids on the bar stools. That's what we did. Nothing didn't think anything of that at all, that wasn't a big deal. So that was the start of a, what I like to say, hall of fame career and drinking, you know, 45 years of, of drinking. And that just was who I was, who we were. That was my childhood. And I got through school. Fine. You know, I was on the debate team. I was on sports teams, decent enough. Grades got into decent college all the time. What was a constant thread was drinking the whole, you know, whenever I, I could, I mean, it wasn't always falling down drunk. It was, but it was certainly looking for looking forward to it every, every weekend. And what's a weekend, starts on Thursday and ends on Sunday night, maybe Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe not in college.
Speaker 2 00:08:20 It drifted into Mondays and Tuesdays. And that's when the grades started suffer a little bit, but I recovered, I got enough good grades and enough of a good test score. I may at the law school and I became a lawyer. Oh geez, lawyers don't drink. Do they? That was another part of my evolution. And there again, straightened up a little bit to get through law school, but not that much, but was able to function. I mean, it's a CA it's, I'm always, I always laugh when I hear about people say you're a functioning alcoholic. What the heck does that mean a functioning alcoholic? That means that you're still living in breathing. Oh geez. It is just, uh, it's crazy. But you can do a lot of stuff hung over and you think you're doing it a hundred percent. He looked back and go, you, you weren't, Hey, did I go to court drunk now that I represent people with while I was drinking? No, I certainly partied. And then once we had kids there again, Hey, okay. That part of my life's got to dial back a little bit. I can control it now. And let's cut back a little bit, got the young kids, right? That didn't last long. At that point, I did not know I had the disease and uh,
Speaker 0 00:09:26 You call it a disease. Do you believe it to be that there is this argument back and forth that goes on, you know, generally speaking, there are some folks that actually identify it, call it a disease. And there are some people that call it. You just have a fucking problem. Why do you say disease?
Speaker 2 00:09:47 First of all, disease and problem are the same thing in my mind would be the first observation. But I think it's a disease in the sense that it just, it w both a physical and a mental obsession with alcohol as part of your life. And, you know, I remember going in, when I ended up going to treatment, this is a few decades later and we'll get to that part of the story. I said, I just want to know what my triggers are. He goes well, since he started drinking that many years ago, did you drink when you were happy to make yourself feel better? The answer's yes. Did you drink when you were anxious and frustrated and worried about life? Yes. And did you drink because there was nothing else to do and you're isolated and bored. Yes. Okay. There's your triggers. Let's stop talking about the F and triggers right now.
Speaker 2 00:10:36 Let's get to it. Let's get to the bottom of how you can get on top of this thing. That to me is the disease. That's why I call it a disease because it's just like, it's just so ingrained in your mind. And some folks, they can turn it off. They can have that self willpower, some camp I've accepted the fact that I had it for all these years. And I just never knew that I did. I just figured it was part of me who was just part of, it was just part of my skin, part of my personal ethos. If you will, to be a drinker. I was the party guy, first guy at the, at the party, last guy to leave. So what I did, I was funnier when I, when I drank, I was more bombastic. The stories people would tell the next day at the hangover bloody Mary's, you know, all of that was just part of the culture. And it was as eating away at my soul and my body. It was as we were going along. So
Speaker 0 00:11:26 Do you think you didn't recognize it as a problem in the moment because there weren't any consequences. What, what was going on there that you don't? Was it denied?
Speaker 2 00:11:36 Well, I, I say that I got a DWI at 47 and that was the first time I ever drank over the limit. That's a joke, Nick, that's a joke, a thousands and thousands of times. So, no, I never got it until 47 and at 47. Wow. All the appearances are now gone. Everyone knows I got a DWI. His drinking has come to a head. This should snap him back into reality. Right. And it did for a little while, six, eight, 10 months, liquor left. The house could have beer, could have liquor, Wuhan went out out, but not at home. So you
Speaker 0 00:12:11 Had specific rules, there was rules
Speaker 2 00:12:13 Put in place. Yes. So my wife and I decided we had rules in place and that, you know, modified it a bit. It didn't take long for it to come back more than ever. And at that point, the kids are now getting older on their own head and out job was in a decent spot. It had a successful legal career in the business career. And the business career was kind of, I won't say on costs, but certainly, you know, I'd reached a certain level. I probably wasn't going to go too much further. And it was going well, a lot of business travel that I could direct. And there was plenty of drinking and entertaining on that deal. And I just sunk right back into it. So from 50 to age, 50 to 55, it was just, it just got worse and worse and worse. We're now, now it's like those triggers.
Speaker 2 00:13:02 I talked about most days of the week. If I had any of those triggers, I just went right to the bottle. That was no problem at all to do that. So I spent many weeks, most days having alcohol, I finally got another DWI, 57. So obviously whatever happened at 47 didn't snap me into reality all that much. That's when I started peeling off the layers and I said, Hmm, somebody said, you gotta go to treatments. You gotta do something here. And I said, okay, all right. Yeah, maybe there's something here, but it was half-assed. And the disease had already, the obsession had gotten to a point where it was like, you know, I'm not really sure I want to stop. I've had a lot of fun doing this over the years. I thought in my mind, I tried it failed. I tried some other things failed and eventually decided I was going to leave work.
Speaker 2 00:13:57 Maybe that was going to help maybe with a little nudge. I left work and started looking for something that was a little less strenuous, a little less, a little more relaxed heading into the retirement years. And it just continued to get worse and worse until finally it was to a point where I couldn't, you know, every day I woke up, that's what I was thinking once the first opportunity to get some alcohol. So you talk about your hall of fame career. That's a lot of years, right. And I've thought to myself, what if I had not made that decision to finally reached the bottom and go to inpatient treatment at, at Hazeldon? Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:14:36 Finally reached the bottom. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 00:14:38 Breached the bod drank. I just drank it so much every day. I mean, I remember just, I mean, there, there wasn't even now my wife had kind of given up, she's tried everything to try to tell you to stop drinking, you know, you're killing your yourself with your liver, you know, literally
Speaker 0 00:14:57 How long would you say your wife had been addressing your drinking?
Speaker 2 00:15:02 Oh, a lot of years. A lot.
Speaker 0 00:15:04 Meaning how long decades?
Speaker 2 00:15:07 Yeah. Yeah. She was concerned for decades. In what ways could she, you know what she just say, you got to, why are you getting so drunk and why are you having so much and your answer? Well, some, a lot, a lot. I'm sorry. I'll do better next time. And as time went on, it was kind of like, Hey, this is who I am. This is kinda what I'm all about. So yeah. I'll try to curtail it as best I can, but this is I I'm gonna drink. This is what I do. So, you know, and then I'd always kind of try to find some other examples around to say, Hey, look at all these other guys, they do the same stuff too. So I'm not any different than them.
Speaker 0 00:15:45 Well, I suppose it's easy to make that identification as this is who I am. I am a drinker because you started drinking at the age 11, 12, and you didn't quit until you were 57.
Speaker 2 00:15:59 Yeah. 58 or nine. I get 50, 58, I guess. So that's over, over 40 years.
Speaker 0 00:16:07 That's almost 50 years of drinking. No wonder you thought that who you were,
Speaker 2 00:16:12 It was totally ingrained. Totally ingrained. In my, in every part of my body, every celebration we did, every event, always a couple beforehand drinking at it, what to drink, how much to drink, but we put on parties because then I could be in charge of going to get the beer or the wine, or, you know, if it was alcohol tried in the later years, not to drink alcohol with that when I went back to that as well. Cause that was the easiest way to get drunk.
Speaker 0 00:16:39 You explained to some people what it's like to be an alcoholic in Wisconsin, or just to witness the drinking culture because it is unlike anywhere else. At least in the United States that I've seen, I've been told of. They're like, Holy shit, you guys fucking party. Like I've seen some drinking, but this is on a whole nother level. How would you describe the drinking culture in Wisconsin?
Speaker 2 00:17:07 Well, I, I agree with that. It, it was almost Nick. It was almost like a badge of, I mean, you kinda got your, you got your caring card, right? You're a, you're a Wisconsin and you're a guy you drink your priority. I'd say it happens in Minnesota too. I mean, you know, I've been to plenty of hockey tournaments with my son. The dads would drink the whole weekend, drink into the middle of the night, get up, go to a hockey game, hung over, watch your kid play. And then, you know, have them go off and do something with the rest of the team and you'd go find a bar and shoot pool. And then of course there was some party at night with all the families together. And the Wisconsin thing is it is true. I mean, it is sorta just, I was thinking about when I was, you know, cause this is a little more of a conversation than the, uh, than the classic experience, strengthened and hope store and not the classic, but I mean, sort of the typical deal.
Speaker 2 00:17:58 And I was thinking it was just, it was just me. It was just us. It was what we did. It was sort of the, it was just expected, you know, packer games. Uh, do you want me, my second DWI was a result of watching a packer game and starting at nine o'clock or 10 o'clock in the morning, drinking all the way through it and then leaving to go to the hardware store and getting hit by another car. And then, you know, getting picked up or getting cited for a DWI. I didn't think anything out that and drinking and driving no problems whatsoever. That was sorta like in Wisconsin. That's like, you know, there's lots of stories of those two or the cops will say, well, we'll get you home. We'll figure out a way to get you home type thing. You know? So it was, there was an acceptance to by authorities, if you will, while the kids in the bars at young ages, I think that'll be, I don't know if it's still legal. There used to be legal. You could have your kid in a bar. Your kid could drink with you in a bar under 18, as long as you're there, as long as you're there. And so there was lots of kids, 16, 17, they go with their dads and they would be drinking too playing pool and having beer. So you think about that, that's a pretty screwed up, pretty screwed up dynamic
Speaker 0 00:19:03 Going through your drinking career. What was your opinion of people that didn't drink? What did you think of people that didn't drink
Speaker 2 00:19:10 As I sit here today, neck? I'm not sure. I knew that many people who didn't drink. So what do I think of people that didn't drink? I just said, well, whatever. I can't even think of settings where we didn't hang around with people that didn't drink as they sit here today. That's crazy to think about like that. I didn't even, that's a great, great question. I'm like, no. Who would, who would those people be? I have no idea.
Speaker 0 00:19:39 What are, those must be aliens. They're invading from Mars.
Speaker 2 00:19:43 They must be from Utah or something. It must be, they must be the Mormons. I have no idea. No great people jam. I'm just kidding. I have to reflect on that.
Speaker 0 00:19:53 They are weird because they don't drink though. It's like, I don't know
Speaker 2 00:19:57 To reflect. Yeah, no, I can't. I can't think of any church groups. Ah, yeah. I mean, you know, confirmations Friday night fundraising smelled fries. Oh yeah.
Speaker 0 00:20:07 It was every where, what would you say to me? Let's do a little exercise. Let's say we're at a ball game. You and I, you order a beer from the guy, a beer here. Yeah. Grab a beer and you look over to me and you're like, what do you have? And I say nothing. I'm not drinking. What would you say back to me while you were in the thick of your alcoholism?
Speaker 2 00:20:29 Well, as long as I was getting my beer and getting drunk, it didn't really matter. That's what I'd say. You'd be like, Oh fuck you. Okay. Whatever. Well, when they say I fuck you, I just say, great. Let's keep talking about sports because I'm really getting loquacious. I'm I'm unbelievable. I can talk about it. I'm going to be the great fan here and everything you're doing what you're doing by the way. You're going to get yourself a coconut hot dog. Would you mind getting me a couple more beers and here's some money for and tell you what? I'll buy your Coke and your hot dog for you too. So, no, I didn't. That didn't bother me.
Speaker 0 00:20:57 That's interesting because I know at least for me, I engaged in this all the time. And I think a lot of it has to do with what I did for work, working in the bar scene, managing bars and things of that nature. It was always, no, I'm not drinking. I'm not drinking tonight. Come on. You can have one, you can have one, come on, just do a shot and then you'll be fine. Like no big deal. And I never ever thought that maybe at one point I was doing that to a person that was an alcoholic in recovery and what that was doing to them internally because they could see it. Someone that's in recovery can see the alcoholism in another alcoholic. It's real easy to spot them. But if you try and tell an active drinker that he's an alcoholic, it doesn't go so well all the time. It rarely goes well, unless somebody hit their bottom. Like you talked about, I remember pushing, drinking on people. Like it was meeting debrief. It's like, you need this alcohol, like, come on, come on, come on. It was incessant. Yeah. It was incessant. I want to know if your kids ever said anything about your drinking while they were still in the house. Was there ever a time when any of your kids say, dad? I think you've had enough for dead. Are you okay? Anything like that?
Speaker 2 00:22:18 Not the first question. The second one probably is. Are you okay? Yeah. I think, and your response. Fine, fine. Tired. Make up an excuse. Whatever the case may be. I'm okay. And what did you feel on the inside at the time as an alcoholic? Hey, I'm providing for you. I'm there? I'm coaching went to practices, coaching after having a few on the way home from, you know, for happy hour before we got to coaching, by the way. So was I, there, there is a funny term. Cause it's really not the case. I wasn't always there on paper. You're showing up. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Speaker 0 00:22:54 The surface. If you dig in a few pages deep. Oh no. There's something going on there there's there are so many people that talk about some sort of underlying thing that they have as to why they started drinking. Not just because for me growing up in Wisconsin. Yes. I drank because that's what we did. Like that was the thing every fucking weekend, all through high school, even in middle school, it was like, that is what we do. Although I did notice certain things dissipated when I drank, especially when I had that first sip, I could finally relax. I had all these internal things going on. I hated myself. I really didn't like myself. I thought I was fat. I thought I was stupid. I didn't think anybody liked me. Was there anything like that going on for you?
Speaker 2 00:23:47 I would say that an intense desire to have people like me and consider me to be this bigger than life person. Why do you think that is? And I thought alcohol helped me do that.
Speaker 0 00:23:58 Why did you have that intense desire to have people like you Jim? Because you're a pretty likable guy. I don't know.
Speaker 2 00:24:04 I wish I could get inside my crazy brain to figure that one out. I don't know. The Eagle run a muck Eagle around a muck, I think is just like get the next job. And I think back to my work career, yeah, I worked hard. I did a good job where there's some folks that I kicked off the mountain on the way up the mountain. Probably. Yes. Not probably yes. Maybe not directly, not a shot in the bag. Didn't lie about them, but made sure I've positioned myself in a way to do that. And that's ego and self-centeredness which now I see, you know, when I got going in treatment, what does AA mean again? I have this vague sort of that people go to these meetings and know anything about it. I didn't do it at 47 with the first year. That's for sure.
Speaker 2 00:24:45 No, that was, I just, that was the bright light that stopped everything. Okay. We're done with that. That's all. We're that chapter's over. Well, that was silly. But then when I started getting in and out of the 57, 58, and then small patient, which stuck a little bit, but not enough. And I realized there's some defects going on here. There's some different things going on in my head that is causing me to do this right. And to, to work on this is critical to the program, but it just didn't sink in and get it until I started going. Wow. I wrote down on a note here when we were talking, it's never too late. I thought in my early fifties it was too late. I did. I thought it was, I thought I was too late. This is who I am. I'm a drinker. I won't dry drink and drive anymore because that gets me into trouble.
Speaker 2 00:25:28 When I can find lots of other ways to do it, get cabs, get a taxi to the airport. So that way I can drink, you know, on the plane on the way back home and then, and get the tech, you know, whatever. Even cross my mind a few times when I would get really drunk. Yeah. My wife's telling me my house going to pot. If I go early, I've had a good run. I've raised, the kids have made decent money. We got a nice house. Everything's good. I mean, that's, that's screwed up thinking really? No, I realized that's screwed up thing because it's never too late. If I break my life up into thirds, sort of that 10 through 30 and then the 30 through 55 60 just ballparking it. I'm in this next third of my life. The last third of my life, I have a Renaissance. I have a Renaissance of spirit and I want to the program, I ought to the steps. They ought to the connectivity. I mean, once I started digging in and saying, wow, this can happen to me. This works and I'm embracing it. Why am I sitting here today? I enjoy people in recovery. I enjoy giving and I enjoy receiving from recovery. I have a Renaissance of spirit. I was only using 50 or 60% of gym. Most of the time. That was pretty good to the outside world. They're like, he's stand-up citizens,
Speaker 0 00:26:36 Good guy, volunteers on the church board. He said, rotary, he's doing all this kind of shit, but inside you couldn't stop drinking. And all I couldn't stop.
Speaker 2 00:26:45 I put up enough stuff. It's almost like I did all that stuff too. It was almost like a justification. Like as long as I do all these things,
Speaker 0 00:26:51 Then I can drink how and however long as I want
Speaker 2 00:26:55 Exactly eggs. That's exactly right.
Speaker 0 00:26:59 Earned it, Jim. Yep. You can get smashed tonight because you've shown up for your kid's hockey tournament. You've taken your kids there. You've taken your wife there. You still have a job. You provide
Speaker 2 00:27:10 Gone to Europe, we've done this. We've done that. Uh, whatever. We're good.
Speaker 0 00:27:14 Good. Totally. Jim. We're good. Totally. Again. It's those things on paper. It's not real. No, it's not. It's not real. And it never is. It's this outside looking in. That's what a lot of alcoholics want to put out there. Everything is fine. This excessive need to show everyone that it's fine because if they knew what was going on underneath, if they knew what I was doing every night, if they knew what I was doing every morning, then they would think completely different of me. They would look down.
Speaker 2 00:27:49 Oh, absolutely. Well. And sharing in my early recovery was a challenge for that regard, the counselors and fellow, uh, it folks would say, you share one of your comfortable sharing. And I took that to heart. I've got to measure this out. That's gone now that has gone. I mean, it's, I view sharing as an opportunity to make myself vulnerable and open myself up to someone who's got a problem. Might not even be an alcohol problem. See, I did it. It's never too late. It's never too late to change a lot of people at my age. I hang out with people 55, 60, 65, a lot. That's a lot of my friends. Right. I hang out with younger people too. I'm hanging out with you today, Jim. I'm 74 years old. It's amazing how the recovery is really. It's
Speaker 0 00:28:32 No, I'm like Benjamin button. I get like five years younger every year.
Speaker 2 00:28:39 Marla doesn't know that she's in the reverse aging season, but it's never too late. People say, well, this is the way we always did it. Why would you please tell me why you can change? Change?
Speaker 0 00:28:52 You got to the it's never too late mentality. What did the last year of your drinking career look like? How often were you drinking? What were your relationships like? What did that last year look like for you?
Speaker 2 00:29:08 Pretty much every day,
Speaker 0 00:29:10 Drinking to get drunk every day.
Speaker 2 00:29:12 Well, some days I try to measure it a little bit. Other days just couldn't, you know, I'd find myself not remembering that I had X amount and when X plus whatever. So pretty much every day with the job thing sort of on the wane, it was kind of like, well, I don't know what I'm going to do here with this next stage. And it was my work stage and stuff like that. So it was kind of like, well, what the hell I might as well, just, I can look for a job drinking. That's not a reason
Speaker 0 00:29:38 You might as well just lean into this lifestyle that you've always wanted to completely immerse.
Speaker 2 00:29:46 Oh, that's a good way to put it. I hadn't thought about it that way. That's yeah. Just kind of like, well, the obligations are starting to come down as well, right? Because financially we're doing okay. Kids are out of the house. I mean, leaving my work was, uh, it was a decision I made because I was getting sick and tired of working the big full-time 60 hour high pressure job. So that was an easy one because the guy was really, you're fine. You know, if he would help for you to have a part, you know, some other gig, but you can take your time looking for that. Yeah. So that was lean in time. It was also, as I've learned about the, the, the disease, it was also the progression of it, which I now I fully understand having gone through the treatment and learning about it, that just got worse and worse and worse because that's what the disease does. It gets worse and worse and worse.
Speaker 0 00:30:34 Then what did, what did your last drunk look like? Was it this big blowout? I'm going to go to treatment tomorrow. I'm going to get as drunk as humanly possible
Speaker 2 00:30:45 Day. I had spent the morning, middle of the day, middle of the week in may, uh, putting in some applications, looking for some jobs, kind of thinking about the work thing, made a couple phone calls with some friends. I wasn't seeing friends as much either in that last year. I think now I see that there were some people distancing themselves from me a bit as well, not overtly. I mean, people still, we still hung out with people and stuff, but there was a little, you know, there was an acknowledgement there. I think one of those days is kind of like mid to late morning and then had said, well, don't have much going on the rest of the day. I've kind of done whatever I can do job wise. So I'll just have some drinks and I couldn't control it that day. And I kind of slipped and fell in the kitchen and I couldn't get back up without kinda stumbling back over into the living room. And I remember just looking up at the ceiling and, uh,
Speaker 0 00:31:35 You wishing you had a life alert. No,
Speaker 2 00:31:37 I'm looking at that recess light. And every time I see a recess light, it takes me back to them. I want one, I'm looking at their recess, like on, you know, I don't think I could really get up at this point. So I'm just going to kind of sleep here. Fall asleep. Laurie comes back at three. Things are going to, you know, hopefully I can kind of fake lie and fake and do something about it. And she just walked in and sat down and kept her coat on her purse and looked at me and I said, I need relief. I said, I need relief. It just snapped. It just snapped right at that moment. Two days later, I was in Hazelton. I haven't drunk since
Speaker 0 00:32:12 What did your wife say to you?
Speaker 2 00:32:15 You got to call Hazeldon, I'm going to call your sponsor right now. Remember now I've been half ass in the program. I already had a sponsor. I gone to Alec patient. I was going to meetings. You can't see it on the podcast, but I'm using air quotes. I was physically going. Sometimes I wouldn't go. Or sometimes I'd even go if it was at seven, o'clock
Speaker 0 00:32:35 That resistance to diving all the way. Your program of alcoholics anonymous, working the 12 steps going back and forth, dipping your toes in that lasted for what? A decade?
Speaker 2 00:32:48 No, no, that was about a year and a half
Speaker 0 00:32:51 A year and a half. Funny enough. That's how long you've been sober. Is that correct? That's right. And a lot of people in the program talk about their sobriety date the day after they had their last drink. That is their first day of sobriety. What is your sobriety date? Do you remember?
Speaker 2 00:33:07 May 29th, May 29th. I think that's right. May 29th, 20, 19. Yeah. 18 months as of yesterday. Congratulations.
Speaker 0 00:33:18 Congratulations.
Speaker 2 00:33:19 I got to tell you, it seems even longer than that. The quality of my recovery has been. I can only thank God for it really. I can only thank some other higher power because I did everything they said right. To start off with. And now I still do everything that they say, and I have a rigorous program in that regard. So
Speaker 0 00:33:37 I'm gonna pause you right there because we are working into the strength portion of the program. We are going to take a little natural break there. Thank you so much for the segue. We will be right back after Jim's first musical pick time to talk about. So Jim smash. Wow. That's it for part one of Jim R stay tuned next week for part two, when Jim will share his stroke and his up as it pertains to his recovery from a life long battle with alcoholism, he run authentic and keeping authentic. We have to pay credit where credit is due, the musical stylings you ed on today's program to lead us off. You always hear my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my mad madness by muse. And to take us off in to the nights days like this by van Morrison, remember be good to yourselves and each other.
Speaker 1 00:35:05 Well, it's not all <inaudible>, there'll be days like this. When everything falls into place that go flick of a switch. All my mama told me <inaudible>.
