Alcoholism Documentary (Nate's Journey From Despair To Hope)

Okay. I know I titled this video alcoholism documentary, but in hindsight, I really wish I would have called it recovery documentary, because on this channel, we are really focused on bringing you the solutions to addiction and alcoholism. There are plenty of other people and organizations out there talking about the problem, and they're doing a great job of advocacy and reducing the stigma around addiction. But it's our goal to give you the tools, supports, and resources that you need to beat addiction and alcoholism, whether that's for yourself or for someone that you care about. And we bring you those solutions through a combination of science and story. And today, you're going to hear a remarkable story from Nate. He's going to talk to you about his journey of recovery out of alcoholism and stimulant abuse. Now, as you listen to Nate tell his story, I want you to pay particular attention to three facts, factors that were really important for Nate's solution. So listen out for the factors that led Nate to become willing to accept help and then pay attention to the timing and the way that that help was offered to him. And lastly, pay particular attention to Nate's process from treatment into the recovery community. And one last thing. Before we get to Nate's video, I'd like to invite you to subscribe to this channel, because every single week, we're going to bring you even more solutions to the problem of addiction and alcoholism. And as an extra special bon, for anyone that watches Nate's video and subscribes to this channel, we're gonna donate a dollar to the recovery organization of Nate's choice. All you need to do is subscribe and go into the comments below and just write these words. Write, Donate my subscription. Okay. I know you came here to hear from Nate, so here he is.

I would drink beer from the time I got up in the morning and gradually throughout the day until I would kind of pass out and go to sleep. And that was became more and more like a completely daily routine. So there's nothing really glorious about my kind of demise of my sleep, substance use life. It was. It was running out, you know.

Would you say at the time, like.

Between 25 and 27, would you have called yourself a functional alcoholic? I know that's not like a clinical term, but no. Were you functioning?

Thank goodness I wouldn't, because I know there are a lot of folks who can do quite well, like, operating in the world and have disruptive relationships with substances like alcohol and other things, and that can be confusing. It would have been for me. So, for example, if I had been able to Keep a job for a long period of time, like pay my own bills, take care of myself, not have, like, family or other relationship challenges. Just keep reoccurring and popping up and kind of devastating my sort of status quo. Then I might have had a harder time maybe relinquishing that relationship, not with substances, but I wasn't.

You had a fair amount of unmanageability.

Yeah. Yeah. So as I was watching the world kind of move and my fellows, like my peers, kind of gradually move into an adulthood, I was very stuck. And really, for me, that was not. That was an existential dilemma. And I've talked to many folks in recovery who can definitely relate to this. It wasn't about taking my life. That wasn't really ever anything I would have like, taken that much action to do something about. But almost even worse, there was a lack of a desire to be like, to be alive, you know, and it's hopelessness. And I can identify that version of me and characterize that person with those thoughts, that despair, hopelessness, and really no sort of daily way to fix that.

You know, what would the people around you. Like, I know people that know you now. And if I had to say, like, if I had to say, what would people tell me about me? They would say, oh, he's all out there, you know, like, he's in the middle of everything. He's personable and talkative and he, like, you know. Yeah, I give a lot of energy, I guess, is what I would say.

Yeah, that person had succumbed, you know, and that was one of the problems. Probably 22, 23, I. I can look back now and say I was definitely in my addiction. Like, it had a hold of my life, but I was still like, able to act that. That part, like, that part of me that I call it kind of the light. That light was still in there and still shining. But those years in between, you know, 24, 25, 26, the light began to dim. And so although some people might. I wasn't available to people. Right. I wasn't. I didn't have friends that I was gregarious around. I. My. I was like, removed. I was. I was dimming. I was going out, which is kind.

Of interesting because what I know about you, you're sort of an all in kind of guy.

Yeah.

And I could imagine in your 20s.

Yeah.

You must have been that way prior to it.

Definitely didn't feel right. Okay. You know, and that was one of the reasons why I think it was a perfect time. How I started out, that describing that it was the perfect time for me to be introduced to some alternatives, to be given some hopefulness to replace the hopelessness. I was very ready for that. A little different than like a bottom like we talk about. But I think for me, that existential tension, I've been able to see that in others. And that's a way of understanding it that's a little bit. Maybe safer in some ways than like, than like a material bottle. Right.

Like, because it wasn't one certain thing. It was just sort of an exhaustion, hopelessness I'm tired of.

Yeah. And then the solution for that, I was, I was open to it because so much of that light had been dimmed. I was, you know, I was, I was ready for some change. I'm not a person who wants to be in despair. You know, I'm not inherently hopeless. Exactly. And that's something that I think substances can, are so tricky. You know, some of the recovery communities use some terminology and you know, that cunning, baffling, powerful piece like relationships with substances and behaviors that can become so dysfunctional in our lives are baffling to us. You know, they really take us away from the versions of ourselves that we might aspire to be. And so that I can put it in those eloquent terms now, but then it was just. You could see it, right. You come into my room and you'd be like, despair, hopelessness, alcoholism. No, you know, my family. And this is one of the real powerful things about these types of illnesses. And I really believe that they, they transcend an individual. Like heard it said, you know, alcoholism or addiction, these type of mental illnesses. These illnesses are so powerful that they affect and sometimes even kill people that don't even have them. Family members intergenerational. So that was, that was something my parents experienced. My dad is a minister and a family therapist. And yet he was perfectly incapable of being able to sort of see right in front of him the kind of demise of this, this person. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

I have a video one day about what that's like growing up.

Yeah, there's some interesting. But like any parent who feels sideswiped by a relationship to some, but to a child or that feels maybe that they should have known or that they were equipped to know what the evidence suggests otherwise it very much affected my parents ability to contemplate it. So in cognitive behavioral therapy, we think about cognitive distortions. I mean, my family was having delusions around what my state of health was.

What actually got you into treatment was it, did your family confront you? Did you just Take yourself. What happened?

Well, just like we were just discussing, I think my family finally, in a very pragmatic way, stopped pretending that they were equipped to deal with this situation. 27 year old, oldest son living at home after being away, you know, for years, kind of returning after one failure after another. And obviously having this relationship with substances. It wasn't even hidden, really. And just that willingness, that initial willingness to be humble, trying to do something that they weren't equipped to do, they were too close to the illness such that it affected them like I was describing. So in that they're giving up on something they couldn't have done anyway, allowed for me to also kind of do the same. And so with the help of a therapist who was very patient in waiting for me to come around to saying, you know, I get drunk before I come see you out in the parking lot. Every time I drink three or four cans of Milwaukee's Best, you know, I keep a cooler in my backseat and it's filled with, not ice, but cans of warm, cheap, you know, be here and I drink before I come see you. And, you know, in a nutshell, I'm tired of that. And I don't know what to do. And she had never pushed me or said, I smell alcohol in your breath or you have an alcohol. Like, I was there seeing her for probably about 18 months because I had this, this like kind of a failure to grow up. There's like a term like, like, I couldn't like adapt to peanut grow. Yeah, I mean, right. But with alcohol, I mean, goodness, there's a pretty good reason, right? There are a number of reasons, but the, the substance use, the relationship with substances was definitely an impediment to me bridging that. So she was willing to make some recommendations.

In your mind, were you seeing that therapist for? Depression, anxiety? Were you seeing that therapist for.

Yeah.

What did you think?

That's a really good question. I had always had experiences, seen therapists, I think, because my dad was one.

Okay.

I've had a challenge being comfortable in my own skin my whole life. So you'll hear that a lot from folks kind of entering in recovery when, you know, they tell their stories, they talk about when they had their first drink or had an experience with a substance that was very effective at alleviating some of that. Yeah, that sense of just okayness, sort of, for me, alcohol was real good at providing that. But the point that I didn't have it kind of naturally since I was a young child, like my first memories is helpful for me. Now to kind of understand why I might have developed that dysfunctional relationship with substance, why that would have been such an easy thing for me to slip into. But I did have access to help, and so the idea of getting it was provided opportunity. However, I also was a PK and therapist kid, so, like, I thought I could outsmart and probably did outsmart a few of the people that I went to see, you know, but this, this one, this woman was fantastic because she just waited a long time for me to kind of get to that point. And then when I did finally give up, essentially stop fighting, stop coming. In a way, I mean, it wasn't that graceful. She was like, well, here are some. Here are some options of some ideas you could think about. Right? And I think about it now and I look back and I. It was like in one session, it was probably more like two or three, but in one session, I noticed that the books on her shelf had to do with addiction. Okay, so it's like everyone but me knew I was going to see a counselor about my alcohol.

My next question was, do you think she didn't realize it until that moment you said it, or do you think she was just waiting for you?

But she was very good at waiting.

That terrible thing that happened that you then got forced into.

Yeah, the coercion was more organic, like, but the environment pushes, I believe our environments push us towards health, if we're listening, and wellness. But so there is this sort of. It's not a bad coercion. It's sort of this, like, wellness, like my life, my light was pushing me towards healing, you know, but, yeah, there were events, though. There were plenty of them. But I think one of the things that I, you know, in some ways this is an advantage. In some ways, this might have kept me from earlier realization, but, you know, being, you know, a middle class, you know, white male with a dad who's a minister and counselor and kind of played that role in the communities we came up in. I mean, I. I couldn't get in trouble if I tried, you know, Like, I. There were times I had been pulled over for drinking, running red lights and police officer a couple times would let me go, you know, And I know I've heard others share that story, but that. That's. There were some things that probably wouldn't have happened like that for some other folks, you know, come that way. It really came through this. Through this fairly quick decline in my motivation to, like, be alive. And then the help was there. Right. So my therapist did put it in A certain way. That was kind of cool. She gave me three choices. One was you could go up to Pennsylvania and stay in an inpatient treatment center for, like, six months. And she sort of let me think about that for a minute. Then she's like, or you could, like, come to some groups that I offer some outpatient stuff and maybe do that two or three times a week. And I thought about that, but I had already been kind of doing that. So the way that I was approaching this help, my response to that was, well, I'll just tell everyone what they want to hear and keep drinking in the parking lot. For me, at that time, that's that I needed it. I needed something more.

You had enough insight in there that.

You needed to have.

I did. But when she's like, pennsylvania, six. No, no, no, no, no. That. That seems kind of extreme. Six, you know, so she. But she knew me, right? And then she's like, or there's a treatment center right here, you know, not too far from here. And it's, you know, 28 days, sometimes six weeks, depending on your needs. And you could, you know, go in and take a look at some of this stuff. So I was like, yeah, I'll go with the middle option, you know.

Yeah, that's what I say.

Start high.

Yeah.

Because then whatever you say next sounds, like, really good.

And immediately I was relieved, you know, to kind of have, you know, just something different, you know? But from that point, she, in the group of my network of help, you know, that was around me, went into action, you know, that. That illness, that misunderstanding of what was going on because of this space for healing to come in and the help of a professional and others, what we would call today a recovery coach. But it was a client of hers who had gone through a process, and he was a member of a recovery community there and immediately knew that she could. Or she had spoken to him and said, well, here's this guy's number. In the meantime, while we're working on trying to get you in, maybe you could hang out with him.

Did you call him?

I did.

Wow.

I did, yeah. I mean, like, again, like, all I had. I had made every mistake. Like, so it's not like this awesome thing that I am 27, and I go in and, like, I get a chip, and it's the same way chip I have now. Yeah. But I waited until I was 27. Like, there are a lot of opportunities to access a change in my life before that. The only reason I have one chip is because I'm stubborn. You know, and I waited. And then. I'm stubborn. Once I got into recovery, you know, for better or worse, you know, I wasn't gonna give up.

So it took you a long time to come to it. But when you came to it, you sort of. You came to it.

I was, yeah, I was finished. Like, I was very finished. Like I tapped it out. There was no more.

Was it that sort of like sick and tired of being sick and tired?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I was sick of light life. It wasn't me, you know, it wasn't me. So I was immediately pretty excited when I saw that there was some another choice and it was working, you know, so. But I did call them. But we were talking about those moments, those God shot type moments, the synchronicities, I call them. And it's like gonna be two weeks maybe before I can go into the treatment center place. And we arranged for him to come and take me to a meeting. His name was Mike, is Mike. But before that. So he's gonna come, we're gonna go the next day. This all probably happened over about a week period of time. And we're gonna go. So that I had shown some willingness to myself to the people who were invested in helping me. And I was like, that was really helpful just to set a course one little step at a time, you know, I, I still was drinking, you know, but. But I was, I was interested in something different. So I got to sort of partake of a different approach just gradually. But. But before I could go to a meeting with him, I got a call and a bed had opened up because that's kind of how things go. But it was like, but you gotta come like now, right? So I remember that being like, wait a minute, really? Not in two weeks am I really, really sure? Yeah. So that was good to kind of have that moment of am I going to do this? Like this is for real or am I not? Yeah. And so I did and my dad took me and, and it was, I was very fortunate, very fortunate because the way that that program worked was, you know, they, they made sure I was medically safe, even. Even drinking again. I didn't drink a lot of hard alcohol unless I could get my hands on it. But people wouldn't let me near it because it was bad. But I had been, I had alcohol in my system all the time. So I did need to have some withdrawal management. But like, as soon as you got a chance to really look at kind of what was going on in your life situation, taking a break from Yourself, really, and taking a break from your relationship with the substances and having all that happen in one place with others going through the same exact experience was like a perfect social model type experience for me to go through. And then part of that treatment process, as soon as we were medically stable, we would get to go to community recovery meetings, like, out in the community in vans.

Quickly.

They sort of integrated you into. I call it, like, real life recovery.

Yeah.

Like the real people out.

The culture of recovery. Yeah.

Instead of just the sort of in treatment.

Yeah.

Sort of really contained model of recovery.

Yeah. And for me, that was. That was perfect because I was so hungry for something different, but it had to be something substantial. You know, what do you remember thinking.

When you went to your first meeting? Like, what's the real behind the scenes?

What did you think?

Well, I mean, to be honest with you, there was enough social pieces. Like, I had a couple buddies that I'd made in rehab. We'll just use that language, because at that time, that's what it was, you know, to me. So I had a couple buddies who were, you know, like, we were both a couple days in. And so we're joking and messing around, and there were young people there and middle people, and, you know, it was dynamic enough that I could be social. Like, it was, like, normal, kind of. So what it gave me was. It gave me some attention, some approval, some ability to access a social environment. And I was very hungry for that because my drinking experience had really taken that away at first. My drinking was, you know, included that. Yeah, for sure. But I had been doing it long enough years that that had been really kind of. I'd stopped doing that. So, yeah. Environment of a recovery meeting or community is so, like, your autonomy is very respected. I mean, they may give you advice and have suggestions, but they say it, like, in their readings, like, it's suggestions, like, you will make the choice. Like, I had all my little critiques, all my little manipulations around, you know, pushing back against authority. That wouldn't work in there, because it's your choice to come if you want. If you want to go out and drink or whatever, that we're not gonna stop you. And then we wouldn't stop you from coming right back in here. We're in here for you guys, just like we were here for us.

You know, there's nothing to fight against.

Yeah.

Sort of thing.

I mean, you can always create something. But for me, that wasn't what I was gonna fight against. So I was. I was in, you know, and other Piece that was very critical was I was able to stay in a recovery residence that was associated with the treatment center for the amount of time it took me to go through the outpatient program, the post treatment. And so that was about a month and a half, maybe two months. And so we went to lots of meetings, I got back to work, I visited my family, got my car back gradually.

So you started to build a life at the same time you were building recovery.

Exactly.

So then the thing. The two things just more naturally work together because you built them that way.

Well, and I think that it worked that way for a lot of folks. But I think benefit we have today is we know the kind of evidence based process of that, and we can help establish that kind of scaffolding for folks intentionally. And I was very fortunate that the treatment center I went to kind of just had this already organically in the environment, and that can't always be the case.

You kind of came to this point.

Of sort of self confession. I'm really done with this. I'm tired. A willingness to say, okay, I'll do that. You sort of wasn't all perfect rainbow and sunshine, but for the most part, you sort of let go of the rope, I call it.

Yeah.

Went through this process. So do you.

What are your thoughts about.

People being like, forced into treatment and leveraged into treatment?

Yeah.

What are your thoughts around all that?

Well, I was, again, I'm very grateful for the fact that I didn't have any fight left in me, you know, and I didn't want to fight. Like, I saw that helping hand and I took it and all the different shapes and sizes that came in and the people who were offering those helping hands were very patient with the early recovery me.

Sam.