Joanie and Steve Sigal are committed to helping people into and with recovery. They produce The Addiction Podcast Point of No Return has been broadcasting for five years with over 345 episodes and 807,000 downloads. It was a privilege to be featured on their podcast. Janis and I had a wide ranging conversation covering these topics:
- How David experienced the progressive nature of alcoholism
- Joining a young software startup as the first employee at age 22
- The point in time where I pinpoint I was definitely an alcoholic
- Sailing for two years in the Mediterranean while home schooling our three children
- How complete unfulfilled I was in my career after returning from the Med
- My belief that the universe put an amazing coach in my path so I could get sober
- Admitting I had a drinking problem and going to my first 12-step meeting
- My decision to become an entrepreneurial coach
- And then to specialize in helping entrepreneurs struggling with alcoholism or addiction
- My birth reunification journey and being present at my birth mother’s death
My Addition Podcast interview with Joanie is available on all major podcast platforms. You can listen directly below to the YouTube version. Many thanks to Joanie and Steve for having me.
Transcript
Joanie Sigal (00:06):
We appreciate you listening to the Addiction Podcast point of no return. We don’t do this podcast because we are former addicts. We don’t do this podcast because we have loved ones who have suffered from addiction. We do this podcast because we feel that addiction is one of the biggest problems facing the world today, and that no matter who you are, no matter your religion, no matter your income status, no matter your race, no matter anything about you, addiction affects you. This podcast is a free resource for anybody looking for help with addiction. If you would like to help us in our fight against addiction, go to www.patreon.com/the addiction podcast. That’s www.patreon.com/the addiction podcast and make a donation of whatever amount you would like. Thank you for supporting us.
(01:12):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Addiction Podcast point of no return. My name is Joni Siegel. I’m the host for the podcast and my husband, Steve Siegel, is the producer of the podcast. We are co-founders of the podcast. We are closing in on the end of our seventh year of weekly podcasts, and we sincerely hope that we have offered you some kind of hope if you are suffering from addiction or if someone you love is suffering from addiction or even if you’re just in recovery and like to hear success stories. Our purpose is to give hope and to let people know that help is available. To that end, if you would like to become a supporter of our podcast, we have a Patreon page, and you can check it out at patreon.com/the addiction podcast 2 7 3.
(02:07):
This is a passion project for us, and we just thought we would ask our community if they’d like to support us with a small dollar amount monthly. So check it out. If you want to also please subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and give us a five star rating because that way when people Google podcasts or help for addiction, then our podcast shows up and that’s the whole purpose. Also, if you would subscribe to our YouTube channel and give us a thumbs up on our videos, same thing. That way when people go to YouTube, if they look for videos with hints or helpful tips about addiction and how to handle it, then our podcast will come up and that’s what we hope for. Today’s episode is episode number 301, and today we have an interviewed with a gentleman named David Greer, and I’ll tell you a little bit about him before we talk to him.
(03:07):
He’s an entrepreneurial coach, author, and facilitator. He lives in Canada with his wife, Karalee and their three children. He helps people fully realize their dreams through his coaching, writing, and speaking engagements. David has been sober for 15 years after struggling with alcoholism earlier in life. He leverages his journey to sobriety and personal growth to help other entrepreneurs challenged with addiction issues, even while living on a sailboat and homeschooling his children. For two years, David drank daily to cope with his inner turmoil. Though David appeared successful externally during his drinking years internally, he struggled greatly before committing to sobriety. Without further ado, let’s talk to David Greer. David Greer, thank you so much for being on the podcast today and sharing your story.
David Greer (03:58):
Thank you so much for having me. I’m really looking forward to this conversation.
Joanie Sigal (04:02):
Oh, you don’t know how mean I can get just kidding. I do not ask those questions. When did you stop beating your wife? That’s for the mass media and we won’t talk about that. I have definite opinions about that. But David, take us back. We know you’re doing fabulous things today, but just give us a little background. Where did you grow up? I believe that you had an issue with alcohol, and you can take us into that, but tell us about you when you were little and what your life was like. Sure.
David Greer (04:34):
I was actually conceived in Calgary, Alberta, Canada as a result of a teenage pregnancy where my mom was sent to Edmonton, Alberta to a home for unwed moms, and I was born in Edmonton and immediately relinquished for adoption. In fact, I doubt my birth mother ever held me, and I was adopted into a wonderful upper middle class Edmonton family as the first born, the first child, and three years later my parents adopted my sister, and three years after that, my mother got pregnant and had a good job. Wow. You hear
Joanie Sigal (05:12):
That happening all the time where couples can’t conceive, can’t conceive. They adopt, they adopt, and then they have a baby.
David Greer (05:18):
And I think they’ve probably been trying for 15 years by that point. And my father took over the business that my grandfather started in 1923. I come from an entrepreneurial family.
Joanie Sigal (05:33):
What was the business, David? Just curious.
David Greer (05:36):
The business was wholesale sanitary supply, so things to supply commercial janitorial services and is now run by my brother. Last year was the hundredth anniversary of the company,
(05:50):
And yeah, less than 1% of businesses make it to the third generation of the family. It was quite a milestone, but I’ll get to that. But I always wanted to take computer. I knew in grade eight that I wanted to take computers in business and put them together, and I wasn’t going to be able to do that running the family business. And despite a lot of pressure from my dad to take it over, I did other things. But I just want to preface one other little bit. My parents, I don’t actually believe were alcoholic, but they were daily drinkers. So dad comes home from work, pours a scotch and soda for him and a gin and tonic for mom, and that’s probably all they have, or maybe wine sometimes. I mean, they were really good partiers and binge drinkers, I saw that too.
(06:43):
My story, eventually I became a heavy daily drinker, and I think part of that is it was modeled in my family of origin that was normal. But to this day, I don’t really think that my family of origin parents, my mom and dad are alcoholics and my dad passed away a few years ago, but my mom is 96 and still lives independently. I try and get up and see her every six months and talk to her every couple of weeks. So yeah, it’s very special to be in my sixties and still be able to talk to my mom on a regular basis.
Joanie Sigal (07:18):
Absolutely.
David Greer (07:21):
I was an academic jock geek in high school, so did lots of going to keg parties with football teams, what she had to do to be part of the tribe and drinking after basketball games, but there was no drinking in between. There was no drinking during the week. It was just part of what she did. And then when I was 18, I did one term of university at the University of Alberta, but I were really ready to leave home and my high school girlfriend had moved to Vancouver, I left home at 18 and moved to Vancouver. Of course, she broke up with me nine months later, which was my first true heartbreak. But eventually I went back to university, and I asked my now wife out after a chemistry lab in November of 1976. No, 1977. We’ve [been] married 41 years university. I played rugby at university. Another great place to drink, drank on weekends was part of the science fiction club, drank with them, but again, it’s like pretty heavy binge drinking, kind of early twenties kind of drinking, but
Joanie Sigal (08:47):
At that time just more partying rather than drinking every day. Yes, exactly. Understood.
David Greer (08:53):
My story is very much the progressive nature of the disease very, very much. It just keeps coming on, keeps coming on. When I was in fourth year, I joined a young software startup as the first employee. After the two founders, I had to apply to the 1980 International HP Users Group conference for a paper which was accepted, and I took a week off of university to fly to San Jose, and I remember standing on the side of the stage about to be introduced and shaking like a leaf, but I didn’t need to drink over that. But during that conference, I remember one night there was a dinner and there was a fellow from Hungary there and kind of challenged me to drinking wine. And man, I was pissed and ended up walking home in San Jose to my hotel and these car with two girls pulls up and wave to me and I go over to talk to them and there are a couple escorts who I’m not interested in, but they pick back at me.
Joanie Sigal (10:00):
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David Greer (11:48):
Oh boy. Right. So there I am. 22 is one of my early experiences of both booze and not looking out for myself. And I’d tell the police I had to call American Express Travelers checks what we had back then to get the money back. And I had to tell my boss and his wife, because that was the two founders there was named for Robert and Annabelle. It was called Robelle was the name of the company. I started with that company helped build it progressively, my drinking increased, but my story is one of very much a high performing alcoholic. I mean sometimes functional, very, very high functioning, having a six pack of beer. And I’m still working on super, super complicated computer code that many, many moving parts. Now there’s a point where if I drank too much, then I’d spend the whole next day on doing the mess that I created.
(12:58):
And then 10 years in, Annabelle decided to retire. I was offered to buy her shares and it took everything that I’d saved for the previous 10 years as a down payment. And then I borrowed the rest from her, had to make payments over three years and if I missed the payment, she could claim all the shares back, which is a fairly standard business deal. But I’m 32, I got a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. I left an accountant’s meeting about that deal, one of the biggest accountants in Vancouver. And tears were coming down my eyes outside the elevator and I’m sure I went home and drank.
(13:39):
But where’s the point where I became a pickle? I don’t know exactly What I can tell you is that when my wife got pregnant with our first child, Jocelyn, I agreed with her. My wife committed to not drink. Well, she’s pregnant. How great is that? And I committed to not drink with her. That lasted 24 hours. And I actually to this day do not know how I squared that with Carol Lee. I did somehow, and I’m pretty certain I was close to or at daily drinking by then. I can definitely tell you that Jocelyn was born in July of 89, so fall of 88 I was a pickle, but I’m a super high performing pickle. I don’t have consequences. We go forward and our second is born and it just all continues. And then after 20 years, the other founder, Bob Green, and I had a major disagreement about the future of the company and we settled it by him buying me out. I
Joanie Sigal (14:52):
You are listening to the Addiction Podcast point of no return. For more information on the podcast or to reach out, if you have a story you would like to share with us, go to our Facebook page by the same name or you can email us at the addictionpodcast@yahoo.com or go to our website, the addictionpodcast.com. And please remember to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and give us a five star review. We appreciate you listening to the Addiction Podcast point of no return. We don’t do this podcast because we are former addicts. We don’t do this podcast because we have loved ones who have suffered from addiction. We do this podcast because we feel that addiction is one of the biggest problems facing the world today. And that no matter who you are, no matter your religion, no matter your income status, no matter your race, no matter anything about you, addiction affects you. This podcast is a free resource for anybody looking for help with addiction. If you would like to help us in our fight against addiction, go to www.patreon.com/theaddictionpodcast. That’s www.patreon.com/theaddictionpodcastand make a donation of whatever amount you would like. Thank you for supporting us.
David Greer (16:25):
And there, I’m in early 2001, I’m not noticing, there’s this thing called the dotcom meltdown. It’s like a terrible time to be going chasing technical deals, but I’m networking like crazy and trying to figure out what the next thing is for me. And someone’s smarter than me sat me down and said, look, your kids will never be 11 nine and five again. And she said, when I had a career break like yours, I flew to Australia and bought a VW van and went, turned around for a year. And I literally had, there was literally the cartoon light bulb went off over my head, aha. And my wife and I hatched this plan to commission a sailboat in the south of France and take our three kids and homeschool them for two years while sailing more than 5,000 miles in the Mediterranean.
(17:17):
And so we decided that in February, end of February of 2001, we left June 26th. I was putting in 50, 60 hour weeks and powering up with alcohol to get everything done. And if you want to be an alcoholic, being an alcoholic on a sailboat in the Mediterranean is a fantastic place to be. Wine costs about a third of what it costs in Vancouver, which is very heavily taxed. Beer is about half. Any place you pull in anywhere in the Mediterranean is a restaurant sitting there. I’m happy to serve you a beer. And I kind of drank my way around the Mediterranean with a couple exceptions.
A couple of things happened on that trip that I’ve come to appreciate once I got sober. One is we did a lot of overnight passages and one of the miracles I didn’t realize, and some of those were remote like two day or three days nonstop, like three days, days and nights nonstop. And every one of those passages I never drank and I never wanted to drink because the stake lives of my family were literally at stake. And that was enough. I didn’t really appreciate it at the time. I did kind of notice it. I think I might’ve even journaled about it. But I really then of course, as soon as we arrived, wherever we arrived, almost any time of day or night a beer would get cracked to celebrate the arrival, of course.
(18:56):
But I think that was the universe giving me a little tiny glimpse of a possibility. The other was we were in a second overnight passage in the Western Mediterranean Sea, and we were motoring because there’s a high pressure system, which also meant the skies were completely clear. And my 10-year-old son, Kevin, was on the port side, the left side of the boat, and I was on the right side. And as far as we could see over top of us was the Milky Way. And it was so bright that the stars on the horizon we would mistake for other boats. And I think it was really, I think it’s another time when the universe was trying to tell me there’s something bigger, something special.
(19:42):
And again, I don’t think I recognized, I mean, I did recognize it for it. Remember, I actually hadn’t been drinking. I was actually sober in the middle of the night I could truly appreciate this and take it in. And again, I think it was just trying to be touched by that. And we spent our second winter in Tunisia, and it’s a Muslim country, so they have Ramadan the month of fasting. And I decided the month that they were fasting, I wouldn’t drink and I wasn’t successful, but I maybe was only three or four drinks a day instead of eight or 10 or 12 plus. And some days I actually didn’t drink, but I white knuckled it, no program, just brute force. And Ramadan ended and I just resumed exactly where I left off. And again, no consequences. I still running this complicated trip about homeschooling kids and away we go. And my wife doesn’t see anything wrong with me or my drinking, like her vision of an alcoholic as a truck driver or a logger being in a bar and getting in fights.
Joanie Sigal (20:57):
Well, and it also sounds like you weren’t a mean drunk. You weren’t beating her up or the kids up or anything.
David Greer (21:02):
No, totally, totally the opposite. So not that experience at all. So came back from the trip in the med and then I did a bunch of angel investing where you invest your own money in startups. And I’m working, I’m on board of directors and I’m working for options. And after about three years, I don’t really realize just how frustrated and unfulfilled I am until I take one of my young CEOs to a training session with a guy by the name of Vern Harnish who’s produced a couple books and he has a framework for how you plan your strategy and execution for a business, which is the scaling up one page plan. And his belief is you got to be able to get it all on one admittedly big page, which is the framework. I actually specialized in my professional work, and Vern was really interesting and I learned a lot from him. But what was more interesting is there was two coaches in the back of the room, talked to both of them, one of them coach Kevin Lawrence. After about five minutes conversation, he made me be more uncomfortable than I had been in years. I had tears in the corner of my eyes, and I think all he said was, there’s a hundred people in this room and almost all of them need your help. And I had not been able to find anyone who wanted my help.
(22:30):
And I realized that that moment how completely unfulfilling the work was that I was doing. And remember by 24, 25 years old, I’m 10 rungs up the entrepreneurial ladder and I’m now working with young CEOs and it takes me a year to get ’em up one rung. I’m just not working with people at my level. So anyways, I took Coach Kevin’s card and I had it next to me in my home office right next to the phone. And I looked at it and I’m sure half a dozen times I thought of picking up the phone and calling him. And every time the phone weighed at least 10,000 pounds. And that was way too scary thought. Thankfully Kevin called me and he said, Hey, David. He said, it’s coach Kevin. He said, do you remember me from the Verne Harnish event? To which I said, yes. Skipping the part about, it’s about all I’ve thought about for the last three weeks. And we started working together on my 50th birthday, August 9th, 1957 or 2007. I was born in 1957 with Coach Kevin, coach Kevin’s the kind of guys like me. It’s all in or all out. There’s no halfway. And so when you hired him one-on-one as a coach at that time, your first coaching session was two eight hour days.
Joanie Sigal (24:01):
Wow.
David Greer (24:02):
Back to back. So pretty intense period. And we started working together and we worked together for nine years in total until Kevin stopped doing individual coaching. He wanted to focus on his strategic planning practice when then switched to his coach, nano O’Connor, who’s still my coach today. But anyways, after 18 months, we had basically cleared all of the messes off the table and pretty much tidied everything up until there was one thing left. And on June or January 26th, 2009, I had my last beer about 10 30 at night, and I made sure that I had no more beer in the house. And then I sent an email to Kevin saying the topic for our coaching call tomorrow is my drinking.
Joanie Sigal (25:02):
Did he know you were a drinker?
David Greer (25:04):
No idea whatsoever.
Joanie Sigal (25:06):
Ah, interesting. None, you hit it pretty well.
David Greer (25:09):
I was a master manipulator, hide, isolationist drinker. Yep. I was very good, very good at everything I put my mind to in my life that I really, really worked at. And drinking was something I really, really worked at.
Joanie Sigal (25:27):
Okay,
David Greer (25:29):
The next morning was Tuesday, January 27th, 2009, and he coached me to go to 12 step recovery, and I had such aversion, and to this day, I dunno where it’s from, I don’t know whether it’s the stigma associated with alcoholism. I knew nothing about aa, but there it was. He coached me past the aversion, being the expert coach that he is, and he got me to commit to go to a meeting by that Friday. So being the overachiever that I am that afternoon, I looked online, I knew I was going to a networking event, technology event and networking event downtown that ended at eight. I looked online and lo and behold, at eight 30 there was going to be a meeting that was going to be a quarter of a block off of the main road I would be driving down on the way home again, the universe just worked doing its stuff.
Joanie Sigal (26:27):
That meeting right in your path.
David Greer (26:30):
Actually my event finished a little early. I probably got to the meeting about eight, and I walked in, it’s in a legion, which has a bar on the first floor. I walk in and the doors open and there’s three tables with beers on them, and I just literally deer in the head stopped and I’m frozen there, and a couple of people go into the meeting, they’ve got that nice sixth sense, and they just looked at me and they said, Hey, if you’re looking for a meeting, go down the hall and up the steps. And I went down the hall and up the steps, which I later learned there was actually 12. That’s funny. Coincidentally, I know. It’s really funny, and it’s probably years it took me to admit how scared I was. I mean, I’m an outgoing, gregarious person for the most part. I think being with a lot of other people wasn’t scary. I think it was the fear of the unknown. And I was listening to your recent podcast with Marcy Hopkins, and she talked about the fear of never, the fear of never drinking again.
Joanie Sigal (27:39):
How am I going to cope?
David Greer (27:41):
How can I have dinner without wine? Yeah. How am I going to cope? This was just an impossible thought and all the fear associated with that. But I got welcome, two young women. There was a back room, and then the main room where the meeting was, and I’m kind of hiding out there, and two young women came out and just really welcomed me and they were just really friendly. And I went into the meeting and it was a big meeting. It was probably 50 people, maybe 60 people, and two like an aisle up the middle and chairs in rows on each side. I did go kind of halfway up, but sat right on the edge. I wasn’t getting really getaway, but I didn’t do the back row. Most people do. Okay. And at that time, at that meeting, the meeting goes three quarters of the way through and then they asked you, is there anyone new to the program? The chairperson that day paused probably 20, 30 seconds, and I sat on my hands and I sat on my hands. Then finally at the last second, I stood up and said, I’m David. I’m an alcoholic. And that was the first admission. I think that was the, well, first of all, I was sending the email because I’d worked with Kevin enough that I knew Kevin would never ever let me off the hook.
(29:08):
I had that trust relationship with him. When I press send, I knew the jig was up. Kevin would just, he’d be like a dog with a bone. He wouldn’t have let it go.
Joanie Sigal (29:22):
Now you’ve come clean and now he’s going to all do accountable,
David Greer (29:27):
And I trust Kevin to do what’s best for me. We’ve done enough work together. And I went back to that meeting a couple times and then I made it my home group and it’s still my home group today.
Joanie Sigal (29:39):
Wow, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Did you, I’m sorry. I was just going to say, how did you then turn your sobriety and your story into the coaching that you do? How does that figure in when you’re coaching?
David Greer (29:56):
So let me just advance the story just a little bit more.
Joanie Sigal (30:00):
Okay. Sorry, I’m rushing you along. I didn’t mean to, but yeah,
David Greer (30:03):
No worries. I want to make this work for you and try and keep it to a reasonable timeframe. But I do a couple of really important things. I found that home group two or three weeks in, I found a private men step group meets every Monday at six o’clock, and I’ve been going to that group for 15 years. In fact, I joined it by Zoom from Mexico last night. We generally meet in person at one person’s house, but we zoom in for people like me. One person couldn’t make it due to weather, and I’m in Mexico, so a couple of us joined in Zoom and the rest were in person. And that’s being instrumental because we read from 12 steps and 12 traditions, and I got to hear so many things. I got to hear men share about their conception of a power greater themselves. I got to see men cry and I got to see the other men not do anything about it.
Joanie Sigal (30:59):
Interesting.
David Greer (31:01):
I remember the first time in that group, someone cried and it was all I could do to not jump up and go over and pat them on the back and say, it’s okay. And I eventually have realized that that was all just about my discomfort with those emotions. David,
Joanie Sigal (31:18):
How it, sorry to interrupt you, but how is it private people? Obviously
David Greer (31:23):
It’s not listed in a directory. You hear about it, see,
Joanie Sigal (31:26):
How did you hear about it?
David Greer (31:28):
I was at a breakfast meeting and I talked to one of the attendees and he said, oh, I go to this men’s meeting, why don’t you come? And here’s its location.
Joanie Sigal (31:37):
I
David Greer (31:37):
Got it. It turns that he was supposed to call the facilitator and kind of get me cleared first, but he didn’t. I just showed up. And you’re also supposed to take it. If you do suggest someone, you’re supposed to go with him.
Joanie Sigal (31:49):
I got it.
David Greer (31:50):
Which he didn’t do. It’s okay. It worked out.
Joanie Sigal (31:53):
Yep. Yep. All right. I’m sorry, I interrupted you. You were talking about watching someone cry and you realized it was your discomfort, not theirs.
David Greer (32:01):
Yeah, my discomfort, and that’s still an area that I’m still working on, being comfortable with negative emotions. I’ve come to realize my biggest fear is I’m weak.
(32:13):
And crying is like a sign of weakness. It doesn’t have to be, but that’s the story that happens for me. So just to fast forward it, I keep working with Coach Kevin. We find some new entrepreneurial gigs. I’m basically helping other entrepreneur friends of mine, usually in a sales and marketing role, and now I’m sober. A couple years into that, I worked for a friend of mine who is a company in Ottawa in the Ottawa Valley, and I was probably two, three years sober, and I had known each other for 30 years. So when he was suggested hiring me, I told him that I was an alcoholic in a recovery. And I spent three weeks working in Vancouver and one week working at the office, actually staying in Birket’s apartment above the office. And I went to rural meetings in Ottawa, which was a very interesting experience, a little different. Every AA meeting is the same and every AA meeting is different.
(33:18):
And then I’ve been warning Birket that he didn’t have enough customers and he had some challenges in his business, and he eventually really listened and figured that out. Then he had to let me go. I was costing too much. And then another friend of mine, I ended up becoming a VP of marketing of this telematics company, publicly traded 35 million a year. It’s the biggest kind of company I’ve worked for. And I was there for three years. And I came out of that gig and I realized I do not, a couple of things. One is I do not want to prove to anyone that I can work hard. I have done this over and over and over. I’ve come to learn it so baked deep into me, it’s deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. My taskmaster spirit is fantastic. It lets me get so much done, but it doesn’t always serve me. My goal is to work less hard, which I’m getting better at slowly. And then I wanted to give to other entrepreneurs the gifts that Kevin had given to me. I made the decision to become a business coach like Kevin.
(34:25):
And I wasn’t at that time really thinking about the sobriety thing. I think it was in the back of my mind. I was more thinking of all of the business and entrepreneurial and things that I’d worked with Kevin on. And I took coach training, and I launched my practices one-on-one coaching, and then I do strategic facilitation for entrepreneurs and our senior leadership teams. Well then my current coach Nan O’Connor for a couple of years, every time I talk about my sobriety, she would just comment how the energy on the call was so pure and my knowledge was so deep and broad. There was no question she’d asked me that I didn’t have some suggestion about related to recovery and alcoholism and alcoholism in the workplace and how it shows up. And I guess three years, maybe four years ago, I made the decision to publicly come focus on this being a business coach, but one who focuses on entrepreneurs who are challenged with alcoholism and addiction.
Joanie Sigal (35:37):
Interesting.
David Greer (35:39):
And it turns out naturally, I’ve actually attracted some of those even before I went public on it. And then others through podcasts like this have come to me and said, Hey, I heard your story and I’m four years clean and sober and I run the business with my dad, but I really could use some help.
Joanie Sigal (35:55):
Interesting.
David Greer (36:00):
And just at its core level, someone who’s in 12 step recovery like me, when we’re on coaching calls, there’s just, I can reference a higher power and it makes sense to them,
Joanie Sigal (36:13):
Right?
David Greer (36:15):
Yep. When they’re having trouble letting go of an aspect of the business, I could say in recovery, what would you be doing about this challenge? And they’re like right away, why we turn it over. Okay.
Joanie Sigal (36:27):
It’s a point of reality. Yeah, that makes sense.
David Greer (36:30):
And the truth is, if we’re lucky, we control 1% of the things around us. If we’re lucky, even as business owners who really think we control things, but we don’t. And I believe actually the strongest leaders, the best entrepreneurs are the ones who set up the situation. All the people that work for them can succeed, which is clear goals, good coaching, being able to listen. Entrepreneurs are terrible at listening, and I was terrible until I got sober and really worked on it. I think if you’re really trying to listen to an employee and their challenges, you should be letting them talk 80% of the time, and you should be talking 20% of the time. And most entrepreneurs, it’s reversed. And then there’s just situations with, I have a number of clients who are in super high end sales, so multimillion dollar deals. So there’s an expectation. The CEO flies down and has dinner with the senior PPAs of the business. They’re selling to the chief financial officer, whoever, and they go out to dinner. And one of my clients a while ago who’s not an alcoholic, but he said to me, we went out to dinner and everybody had one two drinks before dinner, and then we drank a bottle of wine each. He said, is that normal? And I said, well, I said, I consider that alcoholic drinking. And yes, in that situation, it is normalized,
(38:04):
But see it for what it is.
(38:07):
Then I’ve helped. He’s wanted to just not have as much alcohol in his life. And I’ve helped coach, if you don’t have alcohol, what do you do in those situations, which is sometimes you come clean, sometimes you just say, for health reasons, I’ve decided not to drink. You always make sure you have a drink in your hand, even if it’s a glass of water. Same with networking events. Some of these things apply to all senior executives. They’re not necessarily just business owners, it’s just business owners tend to go to more charity events, more networking events, so they have to cope more often. And sometimes it’s just what’s the practical strategies around that?
Joanie Sigal (38:50):
That’s great. I mean, that’s a lot because I mean, I went to a ribbon cutting for actually a senior facility recently, and pretty much everybody I saw there was walking up to the bar to have a glass of wine. I spent most of my time there just drinking water. I don’t have a problem with alcohol, but it’s amazing how commonplace it is and how accepted it is. You were mentioning your parents were daily drinkers. Mine were until they hit somewhere in their eighties and they just decided that they didn’t want the extra calories, so they quit. But the whole time I was growing up, and I remember very clear from my adult life when I had my kids that it was two Manhattans rain or shine every day, and they had a motor home and they always had the bottle of bourbon, and they always had the driver mo, and that was just what they did. And it’s accepted. It’s considered accepted. David, if someone wanted to reach out to you and get coaching from you, I’m not sure I know what your website is. Do you have a website?
David Greer (40:05):
Yep. coachdjgreer.com. So that’s coach D as in David, J as in James greer.com, Google, David Greer, coach. I should come up pretty high as well. And the top of every page on my website is my phone number and my email address so’s the easiest way to get ahold of me.
Joanie Sigal (40:30):
And I like that. It’s not like you only deal with people who are in recovery, but I think sometimes for people who are in recovery, to have someone that’s helping them, who knows what it’s like, I think that’s huge. It’s like when you tell kids not to do drugs, and we have our friend Michael Deleon, and when Michael goes into the schools, he’s like, I was arrested twice. I was ready to spend the rest of my life in jail. So they know from where he comes. Do you know what I mean?
David Greer (41:02):
Totally.
Joanie Sigal (41:02):
You’ve been there, you’ve experienced, you’ve done it, and you’ve come out the other side. And I think that that would resonate with people in recovery. I think that’s huge.
David Greer (41:13):
If we have a couple more minutes, there’s one other aspect I introduced in the very start of my life that I’d like to come back to,
Joanie Sigal (41:19):
Which is absolutely
David Greer (41:20):
Being adopted. So a lot of my personal growth has been around relationships. Like Karalee and I were very codependent, basically didn’t work that much on the marriage for 30 years. And in the last 10, I’ve done eight years of relationship counseling, and now I choose to stay in the marriage despite the challenges because that she’s the perfect person for me to have my next stage of personal growth. And through all of this, and that codependency was important to move beyond because I didn’t want to look for my birth parents for a long, long time because of fear of what my mother’s reaction would be or fear of hurting.
Joanie Sigal (42:03):
Her. Your adoptive
David Greer (42:04):
Mother? My Yes.
Joanie Sigal (42:06):
Mom. Mom got it. Yeah.
David Greer (42:07):
Mom. Mom. Yeah. And I had to come to a point where she’s an adult and she’s allowed her feelings, and I’m an adult and I need to do the things that are right for me. And her response is whatever her response is, it took a long time to get there. So nine years of sobriety, 60 years of living, also turning 60. And even if my parents were teenagers, what’s the chance they’re alive? You start running out of possibility. When I turned 60, I did apply for my adoption file, and I did find both my birth parents who went on and married other people, and the first person who I talked to was my birth mother, which was just over five years ago. And it was kind of classic alcoholic. I told her why I was calling. I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about. Then I explained that I got the adoption file and how I figured out she was my mom and those adoption people, they never should have shared that information. So blame about that thing that she just said she knew nothing about.
Joanie Sigal (43:24):
Right.
David Greer (43:25):
And then she said, I want nothing to do with you.
Joanie Sigal (43:30):
Okay.
David Greer (43:31):
And remember, this is the first person I’ve tried in all of the births, reunification, and yeah, I did take it personally at first.
Joanie Sigal (43:43):
Oh heck yeah,
David Greer (43:46):
I would’ve. But I went for a long walk and I called my coach and I called my sponsor, and I just stayed being in nature, and I just stayed in touch with the universe. And maybe not that day, but very soon when I was sharing that story, people said, your birth mother has no idea who you are, so she can’t reject you because she doesn’t know who you are. That’s right. She’s rejecting. She
Joanie Sigal (44:10):
Doesn’t know you.
David Greer (44:13):
And I had figured out on my maternal side who my siblings were, and I knew how to contact one of them. And I said, I’m going to reach out to other Ridley family members. Ridley is my maternal family name. She said, I don’t want you to do that. And I said, I can appreciate that. And I had coaching around this and what kind of approach to take. And I did reach out to my sister, and about 10 days later, my younger sister wrote me a beautiful letter welcoming me to the Ridley family.
Joanie Sigal (44:44):
Lovely.
David Greer (44:45):
It was actually an email, but it was, but
Joanie Sigal (44:47):
That’s lovely. Yeah,
David Greer (44:48):
Lovely. It was really beautiful. And I mean, my sister was just in Portugal and she’s in England right now. And the three of us and my wife have been WhatsApping back and forth every day.
Joanie Sigal (45:02):
Oh, nice.
David Greer (45:02):
And I got to meet both my aunt and uncle, and I’ve since met my birth father and my three brothers, all four of those guys are bigger than me.
Joanie Sigal (45:14):
Oh my goodness.
David Greer (45:17):
I am 6’ 2”, 240 [pounds], and I have 46 inch chest. I am big. It’s really weird to go with these other men that are
Joanie Sigal (45:29):
Bigger than
David Greer (45:29):
You are. They’re all bigger than me.
Joanie Sigal (45:32):
I think your dad was more welcoming than your mother.
David Greer (45:35):
He was intrigued.
Joanie Sigal (45:37):
Is
David Greer (45:37):
What he told me.
Joanie Sigal (45:39):
Did he not know about you? He knew, right?
David Greer (45:42):
He knew, but I don’t think he knew what sex I was once.
Joanie Sigal (45:46):
Oh, you just knew she was pregnant. Yeah.
David Greer (45:47):
Yes. The grandparents took over everything that happened after the discovery of the pregnancy.
Joanie Sigal (45:54):
I see.
David Greer (45:57):
But I wanted to circle back to my mother because in April of last year, My mother, I heard from my sisters, my mother was an alcoholic, and I have a brother, Gary, who I never met because in 2015 he died of cirrhosis of the liver through the rough result of his alcoholism. And in April, my sister called me and said, Terry’s gone into the hospital with a brain tumor and has a very short time to live. It was like Saturday morning, Sunday. I talked to them again Monday, I flew to Calgary Tuesday morning. The entire Ridley family, my aunt, my uncle, my sisters, they all invited me to the hospital room. And my birth mother was unconscious at that point. She couldn’t complain about my presence, but I was truly welcomed into the room.
Joanie Sigal (46:55):
That’s nice. That’s lovely.
David Greer (46:57):
And two hours later, she passed away and we all had a lot of tears. I don’t think I was crying for Terry. I was crying for everybody else and their loss. And 15 or 20 minutes later, my uncle Jim came to me and said, do you want a picture with Terry? And the internal dialogue was no effing way,
Joanie Sigal (47:22):
But the external
David Greer (47:24):
And the loving parent. I’ve now spent almost five years in a ACA. I’ve had a large tremendous amount of personal growth through that program. And the loving parents of me said, you will never have this opportunity. You’ll never have a picture of you and Terry if you don’t do it right now. I kneeled down on one knee next to Terry, and Jim took the picture, and then I stood up and I kissed her on the cheek and wished her well.
Joanie Sigal (47:48):
That’s lovely. That’s a great cap to your story. I appreciate that very much, David.
David Greer (47:55):
And the next day. So just to complete the alcoholism piece, the next day, my Uncle Jim, my two sisters that go to her, she’s in an assisted living place, but lives independently open bottle of Canadian rye whiskey in the kitchen cupboard, and a case of unopened 12 sitting in the closet.
Joanie Sigal (48:14):
There you go.
David Greer (48:15):
I was curious whether she was an alcoholic, practicing alcoholic right up to the very end. And I think as far as I’m concerned, the answer is
Joanie Sigal (48:23):
Yes. That would be Yes, absolutely.
David Greer (48:25):
Yep. And sad that she never had an opportunity for any healing and to carry that toxicity of having me for 65 years. What a burden to carry. What a horrible burden to have to carry.
Joanie Sigal (48:39):
Exactly.
David Greer (48:42):
And the other really, my uncle has said to me repeatedly, he says, “I keep telling Terry if you just get to know David, you’d really like him.” And that is just so heart touching. When Jim said that to me for the first time, here’s my uncle who didn’t know me until five years ago, and he’s being my advocate. Well,
Joanie Sigal (49:05):
They took the time to get to know you and,
David Greer (49:09):
And to be fair to myself, I have put a lot of time and effort into building these relationships and one group is in Calgary, the others in Toronto. I’ve done a lot of trips and put in time and effort to get to build one-on-one relationships with these people, which has been really rewarding. It’s been incredibly rewarding.
Joanie Sigal (49:33):
I think that’s beautiful, David, I think that’s beautiful, and thank you for sharing that with us. Any last words of wisdom? Wisdom you’d like to leave with our audience?
David Greer (49:47):
Yeah. I’m public about my alcoholism for two. I have two primary purposes for why I am one is I want to reduce the stigma of alcoholism and addiction. It’s a mental health disorder, that alcohol use disorder or substance use disorder. It’s a mental health disease, and that’s what it needs to be treated as. And no amount of pulling up by the bootstraps or thinking it’s a moral failing is ever going to get someone clean and sober. And I hope that by sharing my story and being public about it, I can somehow reduce that stigma associated with it. And then for anyone who suffers or for families, for people around those who are in addiction, there’s hope. And if an alcoholic like me can get sober, then no, honestly, then there really is hope. And I guess the third message I have is my belief is we can’t do it alone.
(50:48):
The mind that got me to be a drunk is not the mind that could get me sober. I had to have other people who could really show how my mind was tricking me, and I had to hear a lot of stories and slowly over time and doing the steps and the work, as we say in 12 Step Recovery, it’s not a program of thinking. It’s a program of work rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard personal work. And it is hard personal work. But as I’ve tried to share my story today, I can show up for other people as a coach. I can show up for my birth families as son, nephew, brother, and I still show up for my mom and for my sister Jane and my brother John and I do it sober today.
Joanie Sigal (51:37):
That’s awesome. David, thank you for talking to us today. Thank you for taking the time.
David Greer (51:42):
Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure to be with you today.
Joanie Sigal (51:45):
Thank you. Thank you for listening. Once again, David’s website is Coach C-O-A-C-H-D like David, J like Greer dot com. That’s coachdjgreer.com, and you can reach out to him if you are an entrepreneur and maybe you’re in recovery or even if you’re not in recovery and he can help you. We’ll be back again with another interview next week.
Announcer (52:22):
You have been listening to The Addiction Podcast point of no return. For more information, reach out to us on Facebook or go to www.theaddictionpodcast.com. Our email is the Addictionpodcast@yahoo.com.
