Dora Gosselin interviews me on her Soberoso Podcast. We discussed how I recognized my problem with alcohol and the deep denial I experienced. I credit my coach, Kevin Lawrence, for helping me admit his drinking problem and guiding me towards 12-step recovery. We both emphasize the importance of personal growth and the ongoing work required to stay sober, especially doing the work of the 12 steps. I also talk about the challenges of being a perfectionist and the need to find balance in life. If you are stuck on an issue, in business, life, or addiction, remember that I offer a free coaching session to anyone in need, whether it’s related to business, life, or addiction. Many thanks to Dora for having me on her podcast and all she does to help people in recovery.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2Hj8al4D8LSBMEw01ZMsuz?si=5933b7cefb624d38
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iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-soberoso-sharing-our-passi-81419440/
Transcript
Dora (00:00):
Hi, David.
David (00:02):
Hello, Dora.
Dora (00:03):
How are you?
David (00:05):
I’m good. I’m happier now that I’m on my sailboat.
Dora (00:09):
I was just going to say, are you coming at me on a boat?
David (00:13):
I am. I noticed a couple of your Instagram posts had what looked like boats in them.
Dora (00:20):
Yes. I was recently in Puerto Vallarta and yeah, that was probably some posts from out boating there, getting some vitamin C. Before we get into the show, I just want to say congratulations on your anniversary.
David (00:38):
Oh, thank you.
Dora (00:39):
You said it was 42 years, right? Yeah. That’s a long time.
David (00:47):
It is, and I just, on my way to my home group meeting last night, I realized that I’ve just done 15 anniversaries in a row, sober.
Dora (00:55):
Oh, lovely. Well, congratulations.
David (00:59):
Thank you.
Dora (01:00):
You’re welcome.
David (01:02):
And I love Puerto Vallarta too. I was at the sobriety end of the Sun conference in January, and I spent five weeks in PV in January and February.
Dora (01:12):
Perfect. We would’ve been there exactly at the same time. Have you been before to the conference?
David (01:17):
I have. That was the first time.
Dora (01:19):
Awesome. That’s where I got sober was Puerto Vallarta. Oh, wow. I just moved back to Canada. Yeah.
David (01:24):
Yeah. It’s good sobriety.
Dora (01:27):
Yeah, it is good sobriety. That’s where my journey began.
David (01:38):
You are listening to Soberoso, sharing our passion for recovery.
Dora (01:45):
That’s right, folks. And thanks for being here again on the Soberoso Podcast with us. My name’s Dora, and I am your grateful host of this show. Today we are joined by my guest, David Greer. Welcome to the show, David.
David (02:01):
Thanks, Dora. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Dora (02:04):
It’s an honor to have you and David, it’s not too often that I’m actually recording with somebody in the same country, so we’re not too far away. You’re in Vancouver? I’m currently in Abbotsford, so yeah, pretty close.
David (02:21):
Pretty close.
Dora (02:24):
As you know, if you’ve been listening before, I am going to get right into all those beautiful questions that you want to ask, and I get to do the asking for you. So David, let’s get right into it. Why don’t you tell us at what age or how did you recognize that you had a problem with alcohol?
David (02:47):
My story is one of the progressive nature of alcoholism. I think in my twenties I probably wasn’t an alcoholic. Since I’ve got sober and I’ve had time to look back and reflect, I can say that when my wife got pregnant with our first child, I committed, she committed to not drinking during her pregnancy, and I committed to her to support her by not drinking. And that lasted 24 hours. And I still to this day, don’t know how I squared it with my wife. Now, did I know that I had a drinking problem in that behavior? No. My story is also one of deep, deep, deep denial, and I’m someone who can drink a fair amount and still be an uber high performing individual, which is way more people than I think people realize.
Dora (03:52):
And functioning. Alcoholic,
David (03:54):
Very, very high functioning. I still think I was missing out on 10 or 20% of life or more depending, because I got drunk every day. And from the time that Karalee got pregnant with Jocelyn to when I got sober was like 20 years. I have 20 years of daily drinking.
Dora (04:19):
Wow.
David (04:21):
I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was very young, joined a young software startup when I was in university. Stayed 20 years built into global powerhouse. After that, my wife and I had something completely different. We took our three kids and homeschooled them for two years while sailing 5,000 miles, 10,000 kilometers, in the Mediterranean.
Dora (04:42):
What an experience. And good wine.
David (04:45):
And good wine and cheap beer and every place you pulled up to at a restaurant and booze and
Dora (04:51):
Happy hour,
David (04:52):
It’s a great place to be an alcoholic. Right. But I came back and when I tried to reestablish my career, I did a bunch of things and I hadn’t realized how unfulfilled I was until I met. I went to a training event and I met a coach. His name was Kevin Lawrence, coach Kevin. And Kevin made me more uncomfortable than I had been in a number of years. In fact, I had tears in the corner of my eyes just from a few questions and observations that he had, and I ended up hiring him. And my belief is the universe put Kevin in my path to get sober. And we worked together for, well, we worked together for nine years in total, and then he stopped doing one-on-one coaching, and I moved to his coach who I just had a call with a couple hours ago. And anyways, we worked together for 18 months and we cleared off all the kind of wreckage and all the clutter on the table till there was only one thing left, which was my drinking on January 26th, 2009. I had my last beer about 10 o’clock at night. And the way I worked with Kevin was I would always send a summary of things going well, and then the topic for our coaching call the next day, the day before. And we had a coaching call the next day, and the topic I put down was my drinking.
Dora (06:16):
And next, sorry, I got to back you up here one minute. Just to clarify. This coaching call prior to that was to do with business, not to do with drinking. So it was all about business except for, and life and cleaning up financial stuff.
David:
As coaches, even business coaches, we start usually with a person’s business and career and finances, but we’re coaches. You can’t separate the human from the rest of their life. So everything ends up coming into it. We’d cleared off all the other things that weren’t working in my life, and Kevin knew nothing about this. He had absolutely no idea, no reason why he would. Right. But I reached a point where I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. And the start times kept, it was five o’clock and then f:30 and 4:00 o’clock, by the time I admitted it to Kevin, it was probably 3:00. I’m picking up the first beer and the next day, on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009, we had a coaching call and I told Kevin I had a drinking problem.
Dora (07:29):
That takes a lot of courage to admit that.
Narrator (07:32):
Please hit that subscribe button wherever you’re listening to the Soberoso podcast and help us normalize conversations around alcoholism and addiction recovery. You can join us on Instagram and Facebook at Soberoso. You are not alone. And we do recover.
David (07:51):
It’s even deeper than that because I had now built such a strong relationship with Kevin that I knew once I admitted to him, once the genie was out of the bottle, it was never going to, so to speak, it was never going to go back in. Kevin was never going to let me off the hook. I knew that I knew when I sent the email, he was never ever going to let me off the hook. He’d keep bringing, even if I didn’t do something about it right away, I knew he’d keep bringing me back to it.
Dora (08:22):
Yeah. Did your wife know that you had the problem? No. Or was that a secret from, okay, so Kevin, your coach was the first person you’re actually confessing to that you have a drinking problem. Correct. Wow.
David (08:36):
Right. Total denial. Everyone in our social circle was completely and family circle. Completely shocked. Wow. Again, I’m a super high performing. I don’t slur. I don’t trip and stumble. And in fact, I would see that as a failure, a perfectionist. So it’s like I got to be a perfect drinker to a certain level of inebriation, and then I maintain it right at that spot. And if I go too far, then it’s like, oh, I’m failure. Now everyone might think I’m a drunk,
Dora (09:07):
Right? God forbid.
David (09:10):
God, yeah. The denial was so deep, so entrenched. And Kevin coached me to go to a 12 step recovery program, and I had a lot of aversion to it, and I have no idea to this day what the aversion was. And I don’t know where I learned about it, but I did. It might just be the stigma of being an alcoholic, just that simple. And it was a Tuesday. He made me commit to going to a meeting by that Friday and then being the good overachiever that I am, I had a networking event downtown in Vancouver that night that I knew ended about eight, and I went online and I looked and lo and behold, that 8:30, there was going to be a meeting, a quarter of a block off the main road I was going to be driving home on. I went to that meeting and about two weeks later, I made it my home group. And I was there last night. More than 15 years later, it’s still my home group.
Dora (10:12):
Beautiful.
David (10:13):
And there were at least three people there last night who were there in the night that I came in. They have been witness to my entire recovery.
Dora (10:24):
Beautiful.
David (10:25):
Yes. What a gift. So again, that admittance and I do things like on Monday I go to this liquor store that’s close to the house, and on Wednesday I go to one that’s a little farther away, and on Friday I go to a different one because they might think that I’m like a drinker or have a problem. This is the craziness of being an alcoholic is that you’re doing these behaviors and you’re even having this conversation kind of having this conversation in your head, but at no point are you willing to admit that might be like a problem.
Dora (11:03):
Yeah, I get it a hundred percent. I get it.
David (11:08):
We are crazy because we have a mental health disease, alcohol use disorder, and it causes us to do really strange behaviors to people who don’t have alcohol use disorder. It doesn’t make any sense, but to you and me
Dora (11:26):
Makes perfect sense.
(11:28):
Yeah. I get you. Towards my later years in drinking, I was going out several times a week and I was blacking out for years. And I got to the point where if I blacked out and I couldn’t remember the next day, I would not go to that particular bar for a week because in my crazy thinking, I thought after a week there would be some other incidents in the bar for them to remember besides me. So you would shock in different places for booze, so they wouldn’t recognize that you were drinking a lot. And I wouldn’t know what I did in a blackout and if I caused a scene or not. I would just avoid that bar for a week so they’d have somebody else to talk about.
David (12:10):
There you go. Makes perfect sense. Perfect
Dora (12:12):
Sense. Worked for a while.
David (12:18):
And to our listeners, if you’re uncertain your relationship with alcohol, those of us who have recovered, we laugh because we either have to laugh or cry. And so we for the most part laugh because we found recovery and we found how to live a life that’s sober. And the thing that I remind people of in my recovery program is that it’s not putting the cork in the bottle that is somewhat, I’m not saying it’s easy, but compared to other things, it’s easy. But I have to now live my life without my number one solution, which is alcohol. How I coped with it, that’s how I coped with not feeling or doing feelings that were uncomfortable or I drank to power up to do more, or I drank because I was sad and didn’t want to be as sad. And now you take all that alcohol away, it’s like those feelings don’t go away. If anything, you feel them a lot more because you don’t have any alcohol in your system. So how do you live your life and all of those feelings and all of the things that go on without my drug of choice, my solution. And that’s the gift to me of recovery, especially for me, is being 12 step. And that has given me tools to let me live my life fully without ever having to go back and pick up a drink.
Dora (13:55):
Beautiful. Now, after Kevin, your coach knew about this, how did your wife or you had kids at that point? Were they …
David (14:11):
Oh Yeah. My story, if you saw when I came in, so I was in my early fifties, three kids, one, I guess our oldest was just about, or in university and the other were mid late teens, two cars in the driveway, own a house, nice part of town. And 15 years of sobriety. Later, I’ve got three kids who are still in my life and two grandkids, and well, actually, we’ve been really busy with them this week and two cars. I live in a different house, but still in a nice part of town. It’s still a pretty nice house. If you looked at me from the outside, you’d say, David, nothing’s really changed. And from the outside you’d be correct. But I can tell you that on the inside this David today, who you’re listening to is a really just completely different David than the one that walked into that first meeting on January 27th, 2009. Yeah. I’m sorry you asked if I had kids, but that was what came up for me.
Dora (15:20):
That’s, I was just wondering that when you confessed to this coach and eventually, I mean quite soon, I’m sure your wife and your kids found out, how did they handle it? Were they in utter shock? What do you mean? You’re an alcoholic dad, you don’t even drink.
David (15:37):
No, I think my daughter turned out, she’d been sneaking some of my beers. They were stored downstairs where her bedroom was. I don’t know if she knew I was an alcoholic. I drank a lot. She was in the cupboard where the empties and the full ones were. My wife was in complete denial and has caused a lot of caused rift for a long time in our relationship because she has certain stereotypes about what a drinker, she comes from the country. She comes from a place called Cranbrook in the interior of our province, British Columbia. And I’m not a truck driver and I’m not a logger, and I don’t go to the bar and I don’t get in fights when I drink. If I’m none of those, then I can’t be an alcoholic. There’s that piece. And then when she was a young girl, she promised herself she would never, ever, ever marry an alcoholic. So now she’s in a deep kind of quandary because if she admits I’m an alcoholic, then she has to admit to her little girl self that she broke her promise right now. Again, she didn’t know. She couldn’t know.
Dora (16:58):
I think it’s a common misconception. I mean, I myself thought that way. I grew up in northern BC and my immediate family was not alcoholic, so I didn’t have a firsthand vision of it or experience with it. So for myself, for most of my life, I thought if you were an alcoholic, it was because you drank out of a brown paper bag under a bridge and you were homeless. There’s no way I could be an alcoholic if I held a job down and paid my bills on time. And my mentality was work hard, party hard. It was like almost this reward system too. I got through Monday to Friday and now I’m dealing with these adult problems, and now I get to check out with some drugs and alcohol on a mini vacation in my head for the weekend and then go back to the grind of dragging my feet through life. But I was paying my bills. I paid my rent on time. I agree with your wife. It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around back then.
David (18:01):
Anyways, the truth is, I’ve done a lot of research in the last few years as I mean helping more people and especially entrepreneurs and business people who might be alcoholics, that trench coat brown paper bag, that’s maybe one or 2% of alcoholics, the vast majority look like you and me. That’s the thing I think people need to remember and understand that most are relatively high performing, most are managing to pay their bills and on the outside kind of look like they have it together. And the rule, the research says about one in 10 people are alcoholics. If you know 10 people, there’s a decent chance one of ’em is an alcoholic and you just look around your circle and they could be rich, they can be poor, they can be anything in between. They can live anywhere. No has nothing to do. But whether none of those things have anything to do, whether you’re an alcoholic or not,
Dora (19:12):
You’re absolutely right. I just think when I came in, I too was in this denial. How could I be when I had all these things going for me on the surface? I think today I’ve got five years clean and sober, which is still just a short chunk of time, but you’ve got 15 years, and I think today we’re talking about this kind of thing more openly. And that’s definitely what I want to do with this podcast is I’m sure 15 years ago when you got sober, David, it was a little bit of a different time. It might’ve been even more hush hush or a bit of an embarrassment or what do you mean? My husband’s not an alcoholic, he’s a doctor of words or whatever.
David (19:59):
I think the stigma of alcoholism is almost as great as when I first came in. And part of why I do podcasts like this is to try and help reduce the stigmatism of alcoholism. The one thing I do think has changed is the popularity of non-alcoholic drinks and kind of this movement to people to say it’s okay not to drink. Yes, agree. And for people who don’t have any issue or troubling relationship with alcohol, people who are making conscious choice about their health and how they want to live, I think those are really, really positive things. And I do think that that has really changed in my time in recovery. And I’m hopeful that even more of that is going to happen. We deal with the most powerful drug on the planet, which is completely socially accepted today. If someone in the United States went to get approval for alcohol as a drug with the Federal Drug Administration, they’d be denied. It wouldn’t pass the first hurdles. And I think people forget that it literally is the most powerful drug on the planet. And when we ingest alcohol, it affects our whole brain. Most of the drugs just go for a little tiny piece of our brain, but we’re actually pickling our entire brain when we ingest alcohol. That’s how alcohol works. The words that I’ve heard said are cunning, baffling powerful. And that’s been my experience. Alcohol is just infinitely powerful.
Dora (21:50):
Yeah, it sure is. Well, David, I just want to ask you, so when you went to this first meeting that your friend got you into, you said you never picked up a drink after that, right?
David (22:03):
I have not so far.
Dora (22:05):
That’s incredible. I mean, there is a lot of people out there that relapse time and time again, and I commend them for continuing to keep trying, but I really think that it’s a lot harder to come back than it is to just stay.
David (22:24):
So obviously I can’t speak to that. I have heard that from a lot of people. But here’s one way that I look at it is I know I have another relapse in me for sure.
(22:39):
I do not know if I have another recovery, and I do not want to take that risk. The other thing for me is getting sober is the single biggest achievement in my life. And every morning when I get up and I sit down on my cushion and I open my journal, I try and remember that I have to achieve that again today. I don’t really get, it’s easier today than it was 15 years ago. Let me be clear, but I have to not lose sight of the Number One thing for me every day is to stay sober. I coach really high powered entrepreneurs and one of their biggest struggles is they don’t stay focused on the number one thing. And I don’t have that problem because every day I make sure the number one thing is to stay sober today. Everything else has to be second to that. And I think that’s one of the things that has let me stay sober and to get much better connected to the universe and to some universal force, something that believes in me and has my best interests at heart. Part of why I’m on my sailboat is that that lets me be much more in touch with that experience, that force, that whatever we want to call it, my best. And that’s who keeps me sober.
Dora (24:05):
Yeah, beautiful. I sure wasn’t able to keep myself sober.
Narrator (24:11):
You are listening to Soberoso, a show dedicated to alcoholics, addicts, survivors of abuse, overcomers of great tragedies, and those of us with mental health issues too. Each week we invite guests and listeners from around the world to listen in as we have casual conversations with regular people like you and me who’ve against all odds turn their lives around. If you’re a family member of someone suffering from alcoholism or addiction, a newcomer or old timer or sober curious, this show is for you. Join us now on the Soberoso Podcast with your host Dora Gosselin in sharing our passion for recovery.
Dora (25:03):
Talking about that, you said that when you told this Kevin, that you had a problem with alcohol. You hadn’t voiced that before. So had you tried to quit on your own before voicing this to Kevin?
David (25:17):
So about three years previously, I’d slowly been coming to the realization that I had a problem and I quit for about six weeks and just white knuckled it. And it was brutal. And when I told my wife that I thought I had to quit and she didn’t really believe me, and then I picked up again, and the first day was only six drinks and the second day was 13 drinks, and I was back at it and my wife and no one around me all perfectly fine. No problem here. It took me three more years until I finally got to that point where I just literally just couldn’t take myself anymore. I just couldn’t take that behavior anymore.
Dora (26:09):
Sick and tired again. Sick and tired.
David (26:12):
And again, I really believe the universe put Kevin, he put this person who had so much to give and who I ended up building such a strong trust relationship with. It was someone I could trust my secret to. And not only could I trust it, but whatever he was going to ask me to do, I could trust that too.
Dora (26:42):
Wow. Yeah. That’s huge.
David (26:45):
And it’s, so a little side story to this whole thing that I didn’t learn about until only three or four years ago actually is coach Kevin for a long time has had a summer place in Washington state just to the south of where we are here in British Columbia, and I forgot whether it’s like cabins or trailer park. He went there with his kids for weekends and significant time every summer, and there’d be communal fires and people would gather around. And Kevin is a very gregarious guy, and he loves to learn. It’s what part of what makes him such a great coach. And it turned out one of the people that he hung around the fire with had 25 years in a 12 step program of recovery.
Dora (27:33):
Love it.
David (27:33):
He would ask questions, he didn’t have a problem, but he’s a curious guy and he coaches a lot of people. When I admitted to him, he knew what the solution was because he spent a lot of time talking to someone who had found a solution
Dora (27:49):
Talking to an alcoholic,
David (27:50):
Right, who’s an alcoholic. That’s awesome. And I didn’t know that Kevin shared just didn’t never came up in conversation probably for the first 10 years. And then Kevin and I were talking about something, or he came to one of my celebrations and one of my anniversaries, and he said, oh, yeah. And I said, well, how did you know? And he said, oh, well, let me tell you. And then he told me that story.
Dora (28:12):
So
David (28:13):
Again, it’s like it was all really meant to be, I think, right? Yeah,
Dora (28:19):
Definitely. But you get clean and sober and you haven’t had a drink since. And since you already confessed to us that you’re a perfectionist, you are probably going to be doing sobriety perfectly. Whatever they tell me I’m doing it, whatever they say, I’m doing it because I’m going to do sober. Perfect.
David (28:38):
Yeah. It’s maybe one of the rare cases where my perfectionism didn’t completely dominate.
(28:46):
In a 12 step program of recovery, you’re supposed to do these things called the 12 Steps. And it probably was about 18 months until I did it for the first time. I did do a whole bunch of suggestions. I found someone that I really trusted who I could rely on and ask them if they would help coach me, be with me in my journey of recovery, which we call a sponsor. And for me, what I found, and this is true probably outside of recovery, I learn and do best when I do it with a small group of people rather than alone. I have done the 12 steps of my recovery half a dozen, eight times, and I’ve always done it with a small group of men and a facilitator, and we do a 16 week program where we meet every week and we assign ourselves, we get to assign homework, we follow a kind of book or suggestion, and that works really well for me to have that accountability and to show up every week and to have the work done. That’s where my perfectionist and I have another thing called the taskmaster spirit,
Dora (30:04):
Which
David (30:05):
Can really,
Dora (30:06):
You want to get the check boxes done, check,
David (30:09):
Right? Yeah. Check, check,
Dora (30:11):
Check. Actually, that’s kind of how I looked at the 12 steps when I got in there was like, okay, so if I just check all those boxes, I’m going to be cured and I could drink again, not the case.
David (30:26):
I never really wanted to drink again. So early on in my sobriety, somehow I committed to myself that I want to commit to personal growth and I want to commit that for the rest of my life.
Dora (30:41):
Beautiful.
David (30:42):
I try and do something every year, even if it’s really small, but some proactive thing that I do to move my personal growth forward.
Dora (30:56):
I love it.
David (30:57):
I’ve done the work in the granddaddy of 12 step recovery programs. Five years ago I discovered another program for adult children.
Dora (31:08):
Oh, wonderful.
David (31:09):
And I’ve done three workbooks in that program. The last one called The Loving Parent Guidebook has just been phenomenal personal growth and awareness. My coach Nan O’Connor actually did for herself, even though she’s not in the program like that book, she found it incredibly useful.
Narrator (31:30):
If you have a wonderful product or service that could benefit our listeners, this ad space right here could be yours. If your business aligns with healthy choices or bettering oneself, you might be a perfect fit as a single or multiple episode sponsor. Contact us today by sending an email to info@soberoso.com
Dora (31:50):
Doing the 12 steps. I just think they should be taking it into high schools because when you think of it, for me, the 12 steps basically gives you a design for living a map how to live. And prior to me getting clean and sober, I had no fricking clue what I was doing or I was just running from chaos to chaos. But these steps give me a little routine and stability and a design for living. I believe they should be taught in high schools to people that don’t have problems.
David (32:24):
Yeah, I stay curious about that. There’s a couple of the steps that require very deep introspection like examination, and I wonder if people who haven’t gone through what we’ve gone through and kind of the fires of hell, whether they’re ready to really do that.
Dora (32:47):
Yeah, I hear you
David (32:50):
When you’re desperate, and I sure as hell was desperate to stay sober when I came into my program, I was ready to do those things.
Dora (33:01):
I know about that gift of desperation, the
David (33:04):
Gift of desperation, and I agree with you. I think a lot of people could really benefit from it. I question whether people have the kind of motivation, whether they’ve got to that level of desperation where they’re really willing to do it. As I’ve heard said, the steps are easy. It’s the work that’s hard. You can read, they’re understandable, right?
Dora (33:33):
Not that’s called walls complicated. You’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Done.
David (33:41):
And that’s really all of my personal growth has come from rolling up my sleeves and doing hard work, not by reading books, but if I’m going to read a book, then I got to do the exercises in the book, or I’ve done five years of personal therapy work and I do the homework that the therapist asks me.
Dora (34:01):
And when we’re in, yes, putting it into practice,
David (34:03):
Bring it into, and it’s actually in the process of doing that, I’ve been able to heal. I can’t think my way into healing. I have to work my way or take actions, concrete, observable actions to move me into healing. At least again, that’s my experience. Other things, my work for other people, but I’m just telling you what works for me.
Dora (34:35):
That’s fantastic. That’s why you’re here. We’re here for you, David, and the listeners are there.
David (34:41):
And I was going to say, and hopefully the listeners are getting something from this too. Yeah.
Dora (34:46):
If you guys can relate to this, what this conversation, again, we’re just sitting here having a chat together because we are on the other side of addiction and of alcoholism. And as David pointed out a little bit earlier on, we can laugh about it because we’ve got some distance between us in that last drink. And when I first started this journey and I went into a 12 step program, I heard people laughing in that room and I was so broken and so shattered. I was like, what the hell are these guys even laughing at? Yet? They were talking about stories in their own drinking days that I related to, but they were laughing. And for me in early recovery, I was completely broken and hopeless. I was like, what can they possibly be laughing at? I’m on the verge of death here, but today I’m not there and David isn’t there. And that’s why we can look back at some of these things and as you said, we can laugh about them or we can cry about them. And I love that you said that
David (35:57):
And we’re alive. I remember that too. There’s a lot of people who don’t make it and by don’t make it, they suffer an early death. It took nine years of sobriety and 60 years of life. I was adopted at birth and I took getting over codependency with my mother who I still am very close to and love, and what her opinion would be if I found my birth mother and kind of turning 60 and a lot of recovery. I went looking for my birth family, and it turns out my birth mother is an alcoholic and she had three children from a different father than my father. And the middle one, Gary, he died in 2015 as of liver disease, as the direct result of alcoholism. And he never, and a year later, his wife died of cancer most likely as a result of her alcoholism. And why do I get it? And he didn’t. I don’t know. I don’t have an answer to that question, but it does remind me this is a really, really serious disease and it really does have serious consequences, and they take a long time to develop. And when you’re in it, it’s very hard to admit that or know it, but it is the truth.
Dora (37:30):
Yeah, kind baffling. Powerful. Well, David, I’d just like to touch down a little bit on your 15 years after getting clean and sober, what does life look like as an entrepreneurial businessman while you’re in addiction? Are you performing at the same level you are in sobriety or what’s the difference that you’ve recognized?
David (37:59):
Boy, there’s lots of things I could unpack there. I’m only pausing. I could go in 10 directions at once. I’m trying to pick one. So one is I came out of my last executive gig 10 years ago in my mid fifties as a VP of marketing for a $35 million a year publicly traded company. And I realized in the previous three years I’d worked harder than I worked in my whole career. And I finally came to the realization I do not need to prove to anyone I can work hard. I am going to get past that. Turns out it’s a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be to get past that. I’m very hardwired to work hard, and that’s part of why I decided to become a professional coach. And partly I wanted to give back to other entrepreneurs the gifts that coach Kevin had given to me. But I also wanted to work less hard. And so now my goal is to work no more than 20 hours a week in the weeks that I work
Dora (39:01):
Lovely.
David (39:01):
And to take 12 weeks off a year.
Dora (39:04):
Oh, living the dream.
David (39:06):
So is that for my sobriety hardly, because I don’t think I could have done that. I couldn’t have come to the realization of the work hard piece and I would’ve still been trying to chase some
Dora (39:21):
Validation.
David (39:22):
Validation. Some other people think I’m okay if I hadn’t done the personal growth work in my program of recovery, I don’t think I could have come to all of those realizations. They’re intermixed and along with some good coaching too that I’ve had. So you can’t tease apart a single piece of these because they all work together. And a lot of my personal growth is things like this taskmaster spirit of mine, which is just constantly on me to get more done still even today. And I had a coaching call at 10:45 this morning and I got a little bit behind and I’m like, I’ve got to get to the boat and I’ve got to be on the boat to take that call. And finally it was getting to be about 10 30, maybe a little past that. And there’s a beautiful park next to our yacht club and there are lots of parking spots in front. And I just pulled the car in and stopped the car and then got out my client’s file and read through my notes and was at peace. But the internal story was still get on the boat. You promised that you were going to have this call on the boat again. I just wanted to be on the boat. It’s a safe, happy place for me, but if I make myself anxious in order to get there,
Dora (40:48):
Yeah, that’s defeat the purpose.
David (40:51):
And the growth is I caught it in time and I did something about it and I slowed myself down and I just paused. And it seemed like from my client’s point of view, we had a pretty good coaching call, which makes sense to me because I calmed myself down,
Dora (41:14):
But you didn’t get to see the boat.
David (41:17):
And afterwards, afterwards I walked down to the boat and I’d already made my lunch and had it with me and I had a nice peaceful lunch and I’d been tired. My body’s just really been tired today. And I went to spin class at 7:15 and the whole spin class, I’m like, why am I tired? And I finally, you don’t need to know why you’re tired. Your body tells you it’s tired. Just could you respect that
Dora (41:44):
You’re tired. Oh, I love it. It sounds like your brain and my brain have a lot in common.
David (41:49):
So after my lunch, I lay down on my little settee and I had a half hour nap before my next call. And this is all strange behaviors. This is not how the alcoholic David would behave. And again, this is a number of years of working towards this. I didn’t get to any of these things like in a single gulp or a single step, and they all are intermingled. You get to different pieces of them at different paces and over different time. And I still regress and have my task manager dispute and try and do two, twice as many things in a day as a human should ever try and do. Sometimes I actually make a conscious decision to do that. This is all going on in our life. It would be really helpful if I got all these things done today. So let’s torque up with my task master spirit and let’s go for it. But the difference is I would’ve been doing it by default before and I never would’ve thought of. The other thing I try and do now is between tasks, I try and take 30 seconds and pause.
Dora (43:01):
That’s a quick break.
David (43:04):
I know it’s a quick break or a minute or two minutes, but the whole idea of pausing between tasks is still even 15 years sober, it’s still really weird. If I’m not careful, I will not do that. I’ll go the whole morning and it’s like, boom. The morning’s done. Where did you take a little pause? Where did you breathe? Where did you have five minutes where you just were still and calm? Nope, not this morning. So again, for your listeners, I just want you to know that we’re still human and we work towards these things and I have got better about being a perfectionist in that No, I’m not perfect about them and I never will be. And it’s about progress and staying on a trajectory that keeps improving. And my trajectory has just been unbelievable since I got sober.
Dora (44:02):
It sounds like just how you said about cutting your hours back, even though you have this task master, what was the word? Task
David (44:12):
Master. Task master spirit
Dora (44:14):
Task, master spirit. Well, I have some of that too. Even though this is that your default, you have, it sounds like since you’ve been sober that now your life is more balanced. You’ve cut back on your working hours and you’re looking more for balance and time and taking that time for recovery when your mental health and your emotional wellbeing and being present. And you’re right, that is not something we give ourselves as an active alcoholic because we’re constantly chasing the next drink. When am I going to get it? What time does the store close? Where can I hide it? How many can I have before? So-and-so gets here, it’s a never ending story of where, how fast. And so now you’ve got all that time on your hands that’s not spent drinking, that you can shift into these healthy behaviors and put into practice taking care of yourself.
(45:14):
And so I get it, your brain works a lot like mine. I’ve got that little, if I don’t do 20 of these things today, I’m failing. But I too am learning to take back, cut back from that kind of behavior. And also realize, as you also said, if I’m tired, I’m allowed to rest. My body is getting older, I’m allowed to have a break, I don’t need permission. I don’t have to ask somebody like I did 12 of the 15 things on my list. I’m having a fricking break. I just turned 50. I’m menopausal and I’m having a break. Do I need any more excuses? Yeah.
David (45:54):
For me it’s like stopping asking the question. Why? Because I was trained as a computer scientist. I have the super analytical brain. So it’s like why just be present? Just hello? Your body has just told you exactly what you need to know. Shut the brain down. Just be honoring what your body’s telling you. And that is a huge growth for me.
Narrator (46:22):
Are you curious about who it’s you’re listening to? If so, you can now find us on TikTok by searching for Soberoso Podcast.
David (46:31):
That is a lot of growth to just be more in my body and to just be accepting where it’s at and not trying to judge it or justify it or figure out why. Just because it is right now, that’s where I’m at. The being okay with it is still a challenge. I’m working on it.
Dora (46:53):
I can also relate to that is trying to figure out why. As a kid growing up, my dad taught us how to play chess at a very young age. When we had the bets on that, if we could beat my dad at a game of chess, we’d win a hundred bucks, which back then was huge right’s,
David (47:10):
A lot of dope.
Dora (47:11):
The drive to play chess and then the whole game of chess is, if I do this, then they’re going to do that, then they’re going to do that, then I’ll go here. It’s all this. I think that my mind works a lot like that too, and trying to understand if I do that, that’s going to happen. And sometimes now in my recovery, I got to tell myself like, you know what? Not everything makes sense. And it’s okay if I don’t have the answers and if I don’t understand why that person said that or acted that way, I’m going to drive myself fricking mental trying to understand. Just let it go, let it go. And that’s a part of the pause you brought up. Can’t control it. Can’t control it at all. Well David, it’s been fantastic having you on the show here today. And you are the first person joining me from a boat. I like that. That’s fantastic. And please say congratulations to your wife on your 42 years of marriage. And for anybody out there listening today, if you would like to reach out to Coach David, you can do so by sending him an email at david@coachdjgreer.com. I will put his link up in the podcast description and thanks. Great.
David (48:36):
And I am a professional coach and I do want listeners to know if they’re stuck on an issue, it can be a business issue or it can be a life issue or a drinking issue. I offer free one hour coaching to anyone that wants no obligation.
Dora (48:50):
I love it. I might take you up on that myself.
David (48:53):
Okay. Let me know.
Dora (48:55):
Okay. Alright, well thanks for being here today David. And for all you listeners out there, stay safe, stay sober, and to thy known self be true.
