Self Reflection ft. Joe

And so I started young As it as crazy as it sounds that we left Colorado and, or Las Vegas when I was 11, we moved to Colorado, but I never really draped from junior high till my first year of college at all. Never. And then I get into college and once I got into college, that's when it went downhill. After attempting college for about two years here in Colorado, I got into a bunch of financial difficulty and it was doing the dating thing and partying thing.

And I decided to move back to Las Vegas and I moved back to Las Vegas for about two years. To try to get a debt, which I did well at, but then I was back in Las Vegas and I was 21 and I was in the party scene. And so needless to say, I think that was a good running start with in my lifetime. And I was living with my family and Out of my family and I have two sisters and one brother. I'm the only one, including my parents that have like kitten the bottom in terms of alcoholism.

I do believe my father is an alcoholic. He drinks and he has drank his entire life. He's 76 and he functions very well, but he's just never, I guess, crossed over the line. He's the only one that I feel that might have a problem in my family. So I'm the first one that I guess bloom, I guess, is what I like to call it. But after two and a half years in Vegas in the early nineties, I finally moved back to Colorado and I discovered my sexuality and that was in the early nineties. And it, yeah.

I think it did kind of push me into the drinking scene. I also got into the club scene and the drug scene by the end of the nineties. I remember going to a club called the paradise garage, which it was a dance club. It's the old tracks club here in Denver, Colorado. And I sat in the truck with my ex-boyfriend back in. This is in 92. And I remember we were scared to death to go into club. Cause we both were coming out at the same time. We knew nothing about sleeping with guys.

And I choked a pint of Jack Daniels that night before going into that club. And I will never forget it because I was just shaking profusely. And once I got in, I was fine. In fact, I started drinking even more. I remember. Going to the clubs back in the nineties. And it was that's all you did was go and you socialize and you drank and you, and you hung out with your friends. And we all were in the same boat.

We had something in common and we were day, but the alcohol, I think helped us relax and become, you know, we were okay with who we were, who we were at that time. But, I feel like the gay scene probably. Pushed me a little bit faster into my alcoholism, maybe. But it, I was with my ex boyfriend until the late 1990s. And we lived, we moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, which is a ski town in the, in the late 1990s.

And it was a party scene, the mountains, you know, there's drugs and alcohol everyday. And after eight years I decided it was time to go my own way and do my own thing. And so in 1999, I left an eight year relationship and I, I found myself drinking a lot then. And I remember saying to myself, I'm going down a dark path. And so in 1999, I moved back from the mountains. I moved to Denver, Colorado, and I moved back to the city. And I was able to establish myself with a little bit of cash.

And I bought a place here in downtown Denver in 1999. And it was in 1999 that I met my current husband of 22 and a half years at an after hours club here in Denver, a very popular after hours club. And I also had gotten into. The drug scene and into the drug ecstasy in 1999. And that became a huge factor in my life. Because now I, wasn't only drinking all the time.

I was doing ecstasy all the time and I pulled by my, my boyfriend at the time, my husband now into the scene and you know, Every weekend we were out during the week we were out, we were drinking with our friends. We were partying with our friends, doing the ecstasy. I, we never really, I never really took any other drug except for really ecstasy. I never got into crystal meth or any of those types of drugs.

I never got into cocaine in the mountains, which is, which is kind of surprising because that's a big scene up there as well. But ecstasy was, was the big drug and, and with ecstasy came a lot of side effects and those side effects, we came to the terrible Tuesdays, which made me drink more because alcohol was my escape. It made me feel better. Everything better. Back then it seemed and you know, so the happy hours after work or, or the rough days or whatever, it just was.

I found myself sitting at, at, at the bars more than I was sitting at home doing the things I really wanted to do. Other, I was really into the health scene, you know With the ecstasy, because that, it kind of pushed me into one, the image situation when I was in the club scene. And and I was at the gym a lot, but of course the happy hours in the boost scene seemed to take priority.

And, and it, and it, I always like to set joke a joke because it seemed like there was a. Special DJ spinning or a birthday or an anniversary, or it was just because we wanted to, we were always out at the bars drinking and having a good time, even if it was a school night and somehow I still managed to go to work and and do my job and get a paycheck, which was great.

But me and my husband stayed together and we actually got married in 2001 and we did a a ceremony up in Breckenridge with A lot of our friends, there was like 250 people. And at about 2007, I received a job offer in Breckenridge working for the state of Colorado, working for a judge was kind of a dream job. And we were, you know, as much as we were drinking here, We didn't think we had a problem. I didn't think I had a problem and I wanted to escape the drug in the club scene.

And so of course the mountain scene was going to be the escape. You know, we could get back up in the mountains, we could do the active things. We can do our, I can do our snowshoeing. I snowboarded for 18 years. You know, I was active though. I would always say in looking back, I, I always thought I had it. I wasn't, I never thought I was an alcoholic because I did all those things. I did. The physical things, the snowboarding, the gym, hiking, the snowshoes, those kinds of things.

But jet, I didn't take, I didn't take it seriously of how much I was drinking or doing the drugs. So I moved to Breckenridge in oh seven and I took on this awesome job. My husband worked from Breckenridge, remotely. He owned, he started to buy into a business. There are down here in Denver, but he would work from up there. And, you know, we thought life was going to be different, but I'm living in the mountains. Everybody was on vacation and you wanted to be on vacation to goddammit.

And so, you know, we would get done with our, our our jobs and we would go to happy hour with, with all the other mountain people who were working in the service industry. And, and then it became lunches, working lunches. And, you know, we were, we were drinking all the time and, and I couldn't keep. My body was going through withdraws out. It seemed like more and more and more. And I was shaking and I was starting to lose sleep. And, but I was always going to my job. I never missed work.

I never called in sick, but it just seemed like the drinking just really, really got at a hand up in the mountains a lot. And then it became, we were drinking it. And I would, I would say go, I'll have two drinks and I won't drink after that. And I'll just go to bed. Well, that didn't happen. That, that got thrown out the window really fast. And instead of going, we thought, instead of going to happy hour, we'll just go straight home and we can have a couple of drinks.

There were a couple of drinks, turned into a double bottles and that just escalated from there. And so I, like I said, I never really. Drink on the job, but I did drink at lunch a lot towards the last year of my employment. I finally quit the state in 2016 because we thought maybe it would be good if I could work for my husband. And maybe I could, you know, maybe calm down things that we could be together a little bit more and watch each other.

And, and maybe he could help me with my drink constituent. And that turned out to be not such a good idea because I wasn't going to work. And I was like, you know, I don't feel good. You know, oh, I drank too much last night and we both were partaking into, into the drinking at home more. And so that was my excuse to not work for him. And So then I was going out to lunches with my friends. Then those lunches turned into drinking all afternoon while, while my husband worked.

And and then that turned it into happy hours and more happy hours. So like I said, in 2016, I quit my job. I went to work for him. It was getting so bad during, from 2016 to 2017. I finally got help with it February of 2017. But it was getting so bad to where I couldn't even get out of bed without drinking pretty much a battle time tobacco, if not more, just to get my legs out of the bed so I could stand up. I could not stay and to urinate in the bathroom. It was, it was horrible.

I couldn't brush my teeth. I, I was not eating at all. I couldn't even hold water down. And my husband was going downhill as well. And we both got sobriety together at the same time, but that's a whole other story. Ironically at the end of February of 2017, I was going to visit my family and it was my sister's birthday and I was going to Vegas to visit my family. And before I left my husband and I were pretty much, I thought it was going to be over because he was going in a bad spiral.

And so it was. And he decided to go to treatment and as I ordered the the mountain shuttle to get, to get to DIA, so I can catch a flight to go home to Las Vegas, to visit my sister for her birthday. I said, goodbye, not knowing what I was going to come back to. And I was hoping deep in my heart. And in my mind that maybe I might get the help that I wanted, because there were so many days and nights that.

I cried or I really thought about suicide, but I never had the strength or the guts to do it. I just, I was more caught up in the moment of, I just wanted to feel better. I was so ill and, and, and I guess that paint kind of over it, it overtook the situation of, oh, should I kill myself? Should I, you know, what should I do? I just want this life to end it because I truly hated my.

And you know, when you, when you're going in front of, when you're working for a judge and you're going in front of people who have committed crimes, or they got a DUI or they're in drug court we started a drug court program up there in, in, in, in Breckenridge. And when you're going to work every day and you're looking at these people and you're wishing that man, You could be them.

Cause you know, deep down, get another, they're going to sit in a jail cell or they're going to go through a treatment program. They're getting the help that they need. Why can't you? And that just, I faced that so many days in so many, so many nights, you know, those thoughts just, just overcame me. But when I, when I went to Vegas for my sister's birthday, I just was hoping that something was gonna happen.

And by the grace of God, who did my sister Had we had, my father was about people was involved in the little family intervention and they basically said you need to get help. If you want to save your marriage and your life, they, they commented on how bad I shook and how I, I was pretty much unfunctioning. And so I was very lucky enough to have them pull me by the hand yet willing we go Steve to this program.

And, and I know that there's a lot of people who don't have the opportunity and, and I felt extremely fortunate that I was given that opportunity and that, that second chance how in the hell in my lifetime, I never got a DUI that I killed someone. Did I hurt someone physically except for myself. And I have a whole list of injuries that can go on, including breaking my wrist, my, my ankle breaking my ribs.

Anyways, we all have those injuries from drinking from those drinking days, but how in the hell? I never killed someone. I don't know. But getting that opportunity to go to the treatment was definitely a, a life change for me. It was it was. It was the angel I needed to, and I am so extremely grateful for that. And so that is kind of my story in a

Alcohol is the one common denominator that we seem to find in society, within our friends and our family that draws us together. And if we all have something in common, that's where we feel that we have that bond. And so let's do a shot together and let's have another cocktail together. And so I've developed so many new friends but I'm thankful for the old friends that I still have because you know, you truly do find out who your friends are. I have my husband back. I have my marriage back.

We have a fantastic relationship and in every way, My health that's that's fricking start there. I, you know, I'm 53, I think I've been drinking probably 45 years out of those 53 years. You're not going to become healthy in five years. You're not going to be gone 10 years. Every day is a challenge. Every week is a challenge. It's unbelievable, but you know, being healthy is, is a big thing. It's funny, you know, I mentioned how I used to work out all the time.

You know, the things we used to do to look pretty at the club. But now I, I struggled to go to the gym because I'm, I'm too busy having my dessert that I never ate before, because I can appreciate that stupid dessert and that in that meal, because I never ate at all. But it is funny, you know, like things like that We're very fortunate that we, we have always worked hard.

I've never been fired from a job, and I'm grateful for that during my alcoholism and, and I've worked very hard and I, I currently work for my husband successfully and I currently own my own travel agent business as well. And I also am still working for, I got signed on for the state and the last year, and I am a contract Baylor for the state of Colorado when there's jury trials, I go and I babysit the jurors.

So I'm fortunate to have the employment opportunity opportunities, but more importantly, the educational opportunities to take those tools, as well as the tools I've learned in AA. The 12 steps and be successful. So for all of that, those are the positive changes in my life. And I'm so very, I'm so, very grateful for that, Steve. That's awesome.

So like for him, it was very easy to like, not have alcohol in the house or like, but like at the same time he wasn't going through what I was going through either. So what was your experience like?

That's another story, but it was, you know, it was interesting because we both triggered each other. We both fed on each other. We both supported each other with the drinking situation. Now the roles are reversed and we're very fortunate because we have each other to get through sobriety. And when, when he went off to treatment here in Colorado and I went and did my treatment in Las Vegas with my family, cause they were close there for. We didn't talk to each other for 90 days.

And then, and then the thought of what's going to happen when we get out. And I will tell you when we first met up for the first time, it was like, we were, it was like a first date. It was, I was, I was shot at, I was shy to get on drugs. That's how odd it felt, but, but we are, you know, where we used to enable each other. Now we, you know, we support each other and, and if one of us feels, it's a bad idea, we just say, you know what, not a good idea. And this, we have the support.

And I think it's really important that you have the support of each other in a relationship or with your friends or with your family, whoever that may be. But you've got to have that stuff.

And it was, it was, it was so much fun. But we knew nobody of course, because we're way older, but you know, our friends. You went somebody to lose some. That's how I look at it as going through the, when I was coming out, you know, the peer pressure was there. I think society has changed so much. I feel like the support there's so much support in the community in general. I don't, I, I definitely feel that I could walk into one of those establishment if I know who they are.

And they know that I'm I'm sober. I would feel comfortable that they would keep me sober. But again, it comes down to. People places and things carefully. Yeah. So I would probably not put myself in that position for my own safety, but I think the community is very supportive. Our, our friends are definitely supportive. I mean, we, I don't, I don't know of anybody that has been not supportive of say that.

I think everyone should have a sponsor or try to really, really, really hard someone that you can talk to on a regular basis, whether it is your sponsor or just someone that is in the same position as you may be trying to get sober or is sober. And I think just creating that social network or that safety network for that, you can. Lean on, I think is really, really important.

But I try to, I try to be active with, with people around me so that I, you know, I, instead of going to drag queen bingo, I try to do things you know, dinners, you know, things like that. But I pray every day I talked to my higher power every day. And just self-reflection, that's the biggest. Is it's just self-reflection. I took a trip once to, to the Caribbean and I sat under a tree and it was probably let's see what was my third year and sobriety.

And I, and I had that moment that we all kind of like look for when we're first trying to get sober. And I sat under that tree and, and, and I'll never forget that moment because it was the most self-reflection I'd ever done in my entire life. And when I walked away from sitting underneath that, that tree next to a church under the bed on a bench, I never had the same thought process again, about a, and, and it, it works, it flipping works and I can't say enough about.

So you get new episodes when they come out every Monday and Thursday, and until next time stay sober friends.