Remember Your Why

Annamarie has been sober since 2009. 

She started drinking in her early 30's. Up until that point, she was using food as her addiction. Following a surgery, she started out doing great and felt good about herself until the day she didn't and that void was then filled with alcohol. Things progressed quickly with her addictive personality. 

She began to drink to the point of oblivion and while she knew she needed help, she wasn't ready. We need to be ready, we need to want to change and be willing to change as addicts and alcoholics. 

Hear how Annamarie finally decided that she'd had enough and got the help she needed. Listen to her story here. 

I met Jorge back when I was in rehab down in Florida and he was a mentor. He helped me a lot along the way and it was special having him on my podcast. 

He has over 28.5 years of sobriety. He works in residential treatment, where they handle substance abuse and mental health amongst other things, and has been in the treatment field for 10 years. 

When he was a child, he experienced trauma that would affect him for the rest of his life. By  8 years old, he was drinking Budweiser. 

Hear his story here of the progression of addiction, as well as the gifts of recovery. 

Don is sober 20 years. 

Had his first drink at 12 and got wrecked. He went fishing with a buddy, went home and slept it off and woke up feeling horrible. But he couldn't wait to do it again. That launched him into his journey of drinking. For a long time he was just a weekend warrior before, at some point, it crossed the line. 

It was a moment looking at himself in the mirror, not too long after his 40th birthday, that changed everything for him. It occurred to him that maybe his life doesn't have to be screwed up the way he's been living it. He believes he was 'struck' sober. 

Listen to his recovery journey here!! 

Jill has seven years of sobriety and cannot even imagine where she'd be if she hadn't made the decision to get sober and live a life of recovery. It saved her life and she'd love to help the struggling addict, and pay it forward. 

She started drinking at 12 years old, and she felt as though she found this thing to help her get out of herself and feel comfortable in her own skin. Jill believes alcoholism is a disease we are born with and alcohol is just a symptom of the disease. 

The people she started drinking with did not abuse alcohol or need to "run" away from anything so she stuck out like a sore thumb... but it was the people she was introduced to that became the problem. She stumbled onto cocaine which then became a drug of choice especially because a lot of her friends became drug dealers and that lifestyle just felt normal. That was the scary part. 

Hear more on the progression of Jill's addiction and how she overcame it... 

Nigel started experimenting in high school... weed and drinking. Wanting to fit in and get invited to parties. Once he went to college, everything took a back burner to his drinking and partying. He continued to spiral out from there. Drunk driving, harder drugs like LSD and ecstasy, no accountability and denial... just a few parts of how Nigel's addiction progressed. 


Hear Nigel's story here... 

Terry is a peer counselor at an outpatient clinic in New York but his main job, like he says, is being a sober man. 

He was in 7th grade when he first tasted alcohol, and though it didn't get out of hand at that time, a pattern was formed.  Anytime he picked up alcohol he went "go hard or go home." He hated the taste but loved the feeling. 

Things did not get awful until later on for Terry.  When things were going well with coaching varsity sports, he met someone who had a very tumultuous life that introduced him to heroin. And that was the drug that brought him to his knees. 

Listen to the full episode of Terry's story and how he found recovery... 

Sarah's last drink was in July 2009. She picked up her first drink around age 13. It just happened one day- started going to parties and then it was off to the races, like everybody else around her at the time. Moderation was not a thing and she couldn't understand anyone who could have a beer and just go home. That wasn't in the cards for her; it wasn't how her brain worked. 

Her mental health journey started around the same time as her drinking and when drugs came into play.  She suffered from depression and anxiety. She was reckless and suicidal. She just felt stuck. Life was extremely difficult and there didn't seem like a light was at the end of the tunnel. Until she decided to get sober...

Now, married with kids, and about to celebrate 14 years of sobriety, Sarah is a testament that recovery works. Listen to her story of sobriety here! 

Carl is in recovery and has been sober and clean for 24 years. He is a yoga teacher and meditation teacher and carries the message of recovery in his classes, as well as in a podcast he has called 'Close to the Bone,' which is on Apple and Spotify. 

As far as he can remember he was a bit lost and uncomfortable being social and he came across fellow musicians and through them he started his journey of exploring alcohol and substances. He enjoyed the feeling and it made him feel as though he fit in. His disease progressed over time and went through different phases- he explored his drug use with marijuana, cocaine, heroin and more. He was just looking for numbness and oblivion. It was just something he did. 

For Carl, it was more about his mental health. He suffered from chronic depression and anxiety disorder, as well as obsessive compulsive disorder. This got worse with all of the drinking and drugging, though at the time, he didn't think there was any correlation between the two. 

Hear all of Carl's story and what he learned about himself and his behaviors through recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous & therapy. 

Mark is a 60 year old alcoholic who found that out about himself later in life. 

He walked into the rooms of AA 8.5 years ago and was sure of two things: that he wasn't an alcoholic and was also positive he was not going to stay in the program. For decades he had drank from the moment he woke up to the moment he went to sleep and no one had ever said tp him that he was an alcoholic. Not his wife, not his kids, not his friends. The first time someone mentioned something to him was a psychiatrist that the couples therapist he and his wife were seeing referred him to. It was 10 in the morning and the first thing out of the doctors mouth was 'you smell like a brewery.'  You have two options- you can go to an AA meeting or you can go into a rehab. 

He started drinking at age 16, after having grown up in a very religious household where no one drank. Once his sister passed, he began using alcohol every single night to get to sleep and by the time his kids were born, he was waking up and drinking. 

6 months into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, Mark experienced the most crippling headache to the point where he was laying on the floor wanting to die, because his marriage wasn't working, he couldn't drink, so what was the point. At a meeting later that day, someone mentioned that what he felt was an aneurysm, and as it turns out, they were right. That saved his life and he considers it a spiritual experience. Hear more of Mark's story on the podcast! 

Michael grew up in Yonkers, NY and came from an Irish Catholic family with eight brothers and sisters. He is currently married with two kids and 33 years ago he chose to get sober and it saved his life. 

Mike liked alcohol and drugs and he felt they found him. He truly never thought he would stop drinking and using drugs because those were the things that kept him together. It allowed him to be a part of. When you are in the mix, everything seemed so normal. Alcohol filled the hole that he felt and he never realized it was his medicine. It was just what he did. =

Things got progressively worse, as they often do when it comes to addiction, and he ended up homeless. He slept in a van and wouldn't go home. He had no friends and was left with just himself.  Alcohol was always there to tell him everything was ok... until the day he wanted to put a rifle in his mouth...