I love the title of Michael Alisasis podcast: “Life Sober and Shit.” It captures what it’s like to be in recovery.
In our interview, I share my journey to sobriety, which began with the help of a coach who encouraged me to attend 12-step recovery meetings. I describe my first meeting and the challenges I faced in the early days of sobriety. I emphasize the importance of personal growth and ongoing work in recovery. I also discusses the connection between sobriety and success, highlighting the need for internal change and self-discovery. The conversation concludes with me offering advice for those seeking sobriety and the importance of finding a supportive community.
The Inner Alchemy Harnessing Your Attention to Unravel Life’s Mysteries
Transcript
Michael (00:00):
To another episode of Life Sober and Shit. Today I have a very special guest, entrepreneur, life coach, 15 years sober, you guys. Okay, David Greer. Hi David. Welcome and thank you so much for taking the time of your day to speak with me today.
David (00:22):
Thanks so much. I’m really excited to be here and to share with you and your audience.
Michael (00:28):
Yeah, thank you. I know that recently you just celebrated your 15 years time sober. So can you tell me a little bit about that and what it was like for you or how it’s been for you?
David (00:45):
Well, it’s been an amazing journey 15 years ago, I’m like, I never went to treatment. I had a very significant person come into my life, an unbelievable entrepreneurial coach, Kevin Lawrence, and I worked with him for 18 months before I admitted my big secret, which was that I had a drinking problem and Kevin coached me to go to 12 step recovery and that was Tuesday, January 27th, 2009. I committed to Kevin in that meeting that I would go to a meeting by that Friday. Now being the overachieving entrepreneur that I am, I went online and looked and I was going to a technology event in downtown Vancouver presentation, a networking event, which I knew finished by eight and I looked online and lo and behold, there was a meeting at 8:30 and it would be one quarter of a block off the road I was going to be driving down to go home.
(01:56):
I think it was meant to be. I went to the event, I had finished a little early, I got to the meeting a little bit early. That meeting took place in all Legion, which for your listeners maybe outside of Canada or don’t know legions or social places normally for veterans. And I walked through the two doors and downstairs is a bar and the doors to the bar were open and there were three tables that had beers on them. And I’m not even 24 hours sober. I had my last beer at 10 o’clock the night before and I stop and I’m like a deer in the headlights. And someone going to the meeting passed me by and they had that sixth sense that I was confused. So they said, oh, are you looking for the meeting? Go down the hall and up the steps. And I turned right and I went down the hall and I went up the steps, which I later learned there coincidentally are 12 steps in that legion.
(03:00):
I attended my first 12 step meeting and about three quarters of the way through the meeting the chairperson asked, “is there anyone new to the program?” And thankfully the chairperson was very patient and waited and I swear it was like two minutes, but it was probably like 15, 20 seconds that I just sat on my hands. And then I stood up and I said, “I’m David, I’m an alcoholic.” And I think that was, well, admitting to coach Kevin was the first step. Admitting in the meeting publicly I think was the second step on that journey of recovery. And Right.
Michael (03:43):
Go ahead. I was actually just curious. What was the reason for you to decide what had happened to you to decide, I have a problem, I need to change this. What moment was that for you and where that all started?
David (04:04):
I dunno exactly when it started. I mean, I think I’d known for a while that my drinking was likely a problem, although most alcoholics, I was deeply in denial about it.
Michael (04:16):
Yeah, 100%.
David (04:18):
Yeah, I’d go to buy booze. So Mondays I go to my local liquor store that was close to the house. Wednesdays I go to one that was farther away Fridays, one that was in a different neighborhood, I might see the same person selling me booze each time. And they might think,
Michael (04:36):
Oh. Wow,
David (04:37):
What might they think of me?
Michael (04:39):
You were ashamed. You were ashamed of the problem.
David (04:43):
But I wasn’t ashamed. It’s like this complicated, it’s just an alcoholic mind where it’s just because I don’t want to deal with it. I have these kind of behaviors, like normal people don’t do this. Normal people don’t go to liquor store three times a week. And the other, I mean ultimately what got me into the rooms of 12 step recovery is I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Michael (05:15):
Okay. Yes.
David (05:17):
Really it’s an internal thing. It was like I kept crossing red lines. We all do. I’ll never drink in the car and I’ll never drink in the car when it’s moving, but I’ll never have more than one drink in the car. And I eventually crossed all those lines towards the end. I’ll never drink before 4:00, I’ll never drink before 3:00. And I noticed that that was my pattern was normally I’d start around four or five and have a six pack to get going. And I noticed that time was drawing back. But when I came into recovery, I had a house on the west side of Vancouver, which is kind of the nice set of town. And I had two cars and I had a wife and I had three kids and 15 years on, I got a house on the nice side of town. We got two cars. I’ve still got the same spouse. I’ve got three kids. I have some daughters-in-Law and Sons-in-law that I have two grandchildren. On the outside you might say what changed on the outside? Not much changed, but on the inside I’m a completely different human being, like the human being that came into the program years ago.
Michael (06:37):
Yeah, I love that you get onto the
David (06:39):
Yeah. And the person I’m today is very different.
Michael (06:45):
I love how there wasn’t really a time or reason or a time for you to change or have this outlook for me from my personal experience. It was, again, like you said, it’s really the work from within. And It’s the work that people really can’t see. And for me, it wasn’t really what happened. There was a moment in time, it was over the years I knew the alcohol and the relationship I had with alcohol was not healthy. It was really a self-realization for me. I mean, there was times where I would leave the stove open or on and sleep while there’s food on the stove. I’ve done things like that. And you really not only endanger myself, but I could endanger my neighbors. And so there were moments like that of course, but it really started and came from within. And I love that you can relate that to the alcoholism and your relationship with alcohol.
David (07:47):
My belief is we can’t do this alone. Now, in my case, I got so dissatisfied and so unfulfilled in my career that I hired this brilliant business coach. But as we cleaned everything up, both in my life and in business, we cleaned everything off the table until the only thing left was the big elephant in the room, which was my drinking. And I trusted Kevin, I got to a point of trust. I sent him an email the night before saying the topic for our coaching call today. That was our pattern The day before I would send him an email with the topic for our coaching call and I said, it’s the topic of our coaching call is my drinking. And when I pressed send on that email message, I knew the jig was up because I knew Kevin would never let me off the hook once I admitted it to him. I had such a deep trust relationship with him and I know how deeply he cared for me that he was never going to let me off the hook. So that was, I think the sending the email was really in some ways the moment of surrender,
Michael (08:58):
Reaching out, reaching out.
David (08:59):
I knew that nothing would be the same. And I finally stopped trying to do it alone. I actually got help.
Michael (09:07):
Yeah. So that’s a really weird correlation with me and my personal experience. I didn’t quite really find my people. I’ve been to meetings and I’ve tried the meetings and after talking to you a little bit, it’s made me kind of open up a little bit of finding support and reaching out for the supports I do. And you’re right about not doing it alone because it is not easy to do it alone. But during those times of reflection, you really figure out who the people that you love and that support you, genuinely support you either what your life is going through, those people you start to reach out to and you really start to find your support. But it’s not the same. I don’t find that it’s the same, or actually I can’t really make a relation because I haven’t really met anybody sober, kind of fighting the same things I am. But I’m also just kind of searching everything within myself. But you inspire me about the 12 step program. I’m really looking into that and what it can serve me to highlight things that I didn’t realize or see or that still need to be worked on. And so that kind of gives me to my next question. Do you think that the work is ongoing or do you think that there’ll be things that new things come up and in the future that you still need to work on? Is it like an ongoing work is the question?
David (10:37):
I can only speak for myself, right. I made a decision when I went into recovery that I was going to commit to my personal growth. I don’t know if I did it right away, but at some point early on in recovery, I committed to never, ever stopping my personal growth.
Michael (10:59):
I love that
David (11:00):
Every year I try and find something that stretches me and I, I’m experimenting with different things. Like the last couple of years I’ve done a lot of things around just coloring.
Michael:
I love that.
David:
And non-dominant hand coloring and drawing. And I figured that the last time I must’ve stopped drawing when I was about grade one or grade two because that’s about the level that I started drawing at. It’s really hard not to self judge or compare my sketching and drawings to other people’s. But that’s part of the personal growth
(11:35):
That I’ve started to learn is part of the personal growth. I’m also a member of Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families [ACoA], and last year I finished going through their Loving Parent Guidebook, which I highly recommend even if you’re not part of that program, if you want some really serious personal growth and looking at your inner child, that is an amazing workbook. But when I committed to doing that workbook, I committed to myself that every time I would start a new chapter, I would non-dominant [colour]. Like each chapter has a bunch of little sketches, parents, children, all sorts of different things and flowers and little decorations on the pages. And I committed that when I started a new chapter, I would always take my coloring pencils out and color all the sketches before I did any of the work.
Michael (12:27):
Oh, interesting.
David (12:30):
I didn’t do it for the, there’s 22 chapters. I didn’t do it for the first one, but I did it for the subsequent 21. Every single time, every time I started a new chapter, and I got my pencils out, there was this loud critical voice telling me, what are you doing? You should be reading, you should be answering the questions, you should be getting the work done. And that was part, I mean this whole dialogue that happens in us.
Michael (12:56):
From the dialogue,
David (12:57):
Our critical parents, our critical caregivers, teachers, wherever it comes, I don’t even know where some of ’em come from. I don’t need to know. But it was interesting how deeply embedded in me was this notion that just coloring is bad or wrong because it’s or not effective.
Michael (13:18):
Do nothing.
David (13:20):
Exactly. Yeah. It’s this internal story that I actually have to be doing something productive now it turns out to be productive in my personal growth, fighting this voice and forcing myself to do the coloring was actually the most productive thing I could have done for my personal growth and recovery. So anyways, and it’s slowly has not completely deadened, but it has quieted that voice. So, oh
Michael (13:50):
My God, David, I feel like you’re like, oh my God, I love this because that’s literally where I am. And I think that yes, we are so conditioned a certain way growing up that we forget that we can actually keep learning and discover more things of us, not even just in childhood, but in adulthood. There’s so many things, but I feel like we’re so conditioned and we only just focus on that one thing. But again, you are practicing and exercising your mind and that’s what I’m doing right now. And like you said, it does quiet down a little bit the more you practice. And again, it’s that inner dialogue with ourselves and most people aren’t really aware. And I love that it’s the inner dialogue that really matters. It is the work, again, the work is from inside
David (14:44):
Another personal growth area, which has been years working on, in fact, when I first took my coach training, it was pointed out to me, which was like nine or 10 years ago, which is I’m a firstborn, a bunch of reasons, but I’m highly responsible, generally can be quite serious,
(15:10):
But I still know how to have fun. Some of the personal growth is just going back to being a little kid who just goes and rolls on the grass and just let’s go. And again, my default behaviors tend to rush back in. And the overly responsible and easy and serious. So the thing about being sober and the things about 12 step recovery is that 12 step recovery to me is not about putting a cork in the bottle. That’s actually relatively simple. I’m not saying it’s really easy, but compared to, because what’s really hard is actually living life on life’s terms without going back to our number one solution, which is alcohol or drugs,
(15:57):
How we coped. And that’s how we coped with having feelings that we didn’t like. It’s how we made the lows not so low. I made the highs higher. And the thing that I found for me is 12 step recovery has given me a set of tools in order to deal with life. When life throws me curve balls, I have a playbook to go back to. And I got a sponsor to talk to and I continued with Coach Kevin for nine years. And then the last seven years I switched to his coach, coach Nan O’Connor in Atlanta. And in fact, I have a coaching call tomorrow. I’ve kept these other people in my life, I’m not trying to do it all alone. And if you’re very resistant to some aspects of 12 step recovery, I mean there’s online communities, there’s recovery coaches, there are a lot of options out there if you go looking for them. And I can just tell you what worked really well for me and that’s my experience. And what I hope is if you are a listener and you’re suffering with alcohol and or drugs, I just want you to know there’s hope. If I am a daily drinker for 20 years can recover, then I believe you can too.
Michael (17:24):
Yeah, 100%. There’s hope out there. You just have to want it. It’s not going to happen to you. You have to search for it. Like you said, if you want the help, if you want to change and you feel like there’s something that’s holding you back, look for those resources, look for the help, look for the people and the community. And you’ve really opened me up to that. Honestly, David, I have been looking into more about the meetings and stuff and just being more open and experimenting to see if I can connect in a different way because I have been doing it on my own. But yeah, you kind of shed a little bit of light onto that. So yeah, with 15 years sober, okay, I am just curious. So you’re very successful undeniably. So the success, did your success come before, after your sobriety or did it just enhance your ability to create your business to become successful, not only inside, but also from the outside like we were talking about earlier. Was the sobriety, did it change your life? And of course it changes your life, but your success, your success.
David (18:44):
I’m going to be a bit pedantic, but again, I think we get lost in this idea of success because what is success? I consider this overcoming this negative reaction to coloring a massive success. Now it’s not something right for material things. Yes, I’ve been a very successful entrepreneur and have done very well financially, have been able to do extraordinary things in my life. A lot of those things were all done drinking. It’s not like I, and some of that fueled my success. Going to trade shows and be able to hold your liquor is generally a positive thing. And when I sold out of my first business after building it for 20 years, my wife and I did something completely different. We commissioned a sailboat in the south of France and we took our three children and we homeschooled them for two years while sailing 10,000 kilometers, 5,000 miles in the Mediterranean. And I drank my way all the way around the Met.
Michael:
Wow.
(20:01):
With one exception. So this was part of my journey I think to getting eventually sober was in the two years that we were living on our sailboat, the Med is a lot bigger place than it looks like because sailboats go very slow. So anywhere takes a lot of time. We did over 20 overnight passages where you’re sailing for 24 or 36 or 72 hours nonstop day and night. And the one thing that happened that I did notice and journaled about was that I never picked up a drink or even had a desire to pick up a drink when we were on passage, when we were in these long passages. If we did a day passage, yeah, I’d have a beer in the afternoon. But these overnight passages have a lot of additional risk associated with them. And I had the most important people in my life, my family with me.
(20:58):
And I never picked up a drink during those passages. I also had an extraordinary experience. The second overnight passage we did, which I did appreciate at the time, but I’ve come to appreciate much more in sobriety as a connection to a power greater than myself was. My son and I did watches together. He was 10 at the time. And we came on watch at two in the morning when we were in the Western Mediterranean Sea between the Balearic Islands and Corsica. And we were probably a couple hundred miles from land, so there was no light spill. And that night, the Milky Way, just stars, literally totally above us, right down to the horizon. In fact, my son and I kept mistaking stars for the lights of boats.
Michael (21:48):
Oh wow.
David (21:51):
It lasted for an hour or two hours and just was magical. I think that was the universe really trying to touch my heart. It didn’t get me sober right away, but it is an evening and event that I really go back to. And anytime I’m like step two came to believe in a power greater than myself. I go back to that night with Kevin on watch. It was just
Michael (22:19):
One Mediterranean
David (22:21):
Seed.
Michael (22:21):
Yeah. That one moment of I think gratitude and realization. And it’s crazy when you kind of sit there and you just be in tuned and be present in the moment and how grateful you could actually be.
David (22:37):
And I was sober, remember I was on passage I didn’t pick up the drink.
Michael (22:41):
Yeah, that’s when you were sober.
David (22:43):
Yeah, I was sober. It was only actually recently that I finally connected that. Did I have that experience? And was I connected to something really so much bigger than me and phenomenal and not, and I was sober, not very much. And I still was sober
Michael (23:02):
And you were really able to take everything I was you were really able to take in this moment. This moment has just one moment with your son. It’s crazy. It’s so surreal. It sounds surreal in that moment when you’re telling me the story.
David (23:23):
It was very magical.
Michael (23:27):
I love that. So the question really was for me, I’m curious because I feel like when I got sober it goes to the same as appreciating and the gratitude of the moment I’m able to make decisions. My mind is so much more clear just going back to the success. And again, I actually had this conversation with a friend and what the measure success is from the inside out. I’m constantly working from the inside and I feel like that is the hardest and the best project that I’ll ever worked on. But ever since I got sober, I feel that I’m not only clear, but there’s something that I’m much more aware and I am very much more and I can be very present. And I’ve never felt this connection with, not just with myself, but just my surrounding and the universe being sober. And it’s like this, I don’t know, it’s like I can’t explain the feeling, but it’s a really great feeling just to be clear and clear minded and to be successful. I think just making the right decisions for yourself and myself and I’m able to navigate and move forward more clearly without the alcohol.
David (24:51):
I’m so happy that you are getting that clarity. Thank you. And I’ll share a little secret with you. That’s from recovery. It’s from coaching, and here’s the secret, it’s all an inside job.
Michael (25:05):
I love that. I love that so much. I love it.
David (25:08):
And it takes some of us. I was in my fifties before I finally figured that out and stopped looking to those external, do I have the big house? Do I live the right way and have lots of money That’s not, again, I had all those things and I was a hollow [shell] human being on the inside.
Michael (25:30):
I love that so much. It just puts a perspective that I’m getting emotional because like you said, you had this realization in your fifties. And It really brings me back like there’s really not a time for you to see yourself or be yourself. There isn’t really a timeframe. And again, it really just depends on when you want it or when you’re looking for it or if you want to look for it, if you want to find that self. And so there’s no better time than now, really. Right. If you want it is the thing.
David (26:10):
I completely agree. And the truth was until January 27th, 2009, I wasn’t ready. And I really try not to have judgment about myself and about what if I got sober 10 years earlier? Well, the universe meant for me to get sober the day that I got sober.
Michael (26:29):
Yeah, that’s totally …
David (26:30):
And you commented earlier, and I think this is something that’s important for listeners to know, is I haven’t seen anyone successfully get sober to do it for someone else, to do it for their parents, to do it for their children. Even though these are highly motivating reasons. I don’t want to discredit them, but no one really gets and stays sober unless it’s something they deeply want themselves for yourself.
Michael (26:56):
For yourself. You have …
David (26:57):
To want it for yourself. And then I think all the doors are open to you when you really want it for yourself.
Michael (27:09):
I love that it has to come from within or else you’re just not going to find it.
David (27:14):
Yes. And the 12 steps when you read ’em, they’re not that complicated. No, it’s not a complicated program, but you got to do the work. And the work is hard because it’s this internal excavating about your belief systems and where you came from and shining lights in corners that you’ve never shone before. And sometimes there’s big piles of mud and you just got to go shovel it out and excavate it and then move on. And I’ve done the steps the traditional alcohol way, probably half a dozen or more times. And every time I learn something new about myself. In fact when I go to do a set of steps now, it is just an opportunity to learn something more about myself. The first couple times I remember being pretty nervous and I’m going to be an awful person when I do my step four. I think almost everyone goes through that experience and mostly you’re just a human being and there are some things that you might need to make up for and there’s lots of things you don’t. And that’s why we make a list. That’s why we share.
Michael:
No, I love that.
David:
And we share it with someone else in step five because we’re not in a very good position to judge that list impartially to see it in its whole context. But when we share it with another human being that can see a bigger picture, they can help put all of that into context.
Michael (28:54):
A different perspective almost. Well, that just kind of goes to show that we all have this ability or this power or this being within us. We are all the same, essentially. It doesn’t matter from what the outside looks like inside. We are all built the same. We all have the same thoughts, we all have not the same thoughts, but we can kind of connect in ways that you can’t really explain. But we all are talking about the same things or feeling the same things and we’re all connected in a way, but we just have to look for it and be connected and be in touch. But we are all the same. At the end of the day, we’re all the same.
David (29:38):
We are. And with that, we’re kind of at a half an hour, I wondered if you wanted to just any had a last question or thought that you wanted to round out our time together?
Michael (29:49):
Yeah, yeah. No, I don’t know if you have any other advice for people like me that doesn’t follow the 12 steps, I guess, do you think, actually let me have one more question. Okay, one more question David. I know you’re keen on the 12 steps and I’m very open to it as well because it’ll actually help me figure out ways and shine light to things that I haven’t seen or really worked on. But do you find that there’s a particular format or do you follow the 12 steps from one to 12? Or is there a free form way of doing it yourself? So for example, if you weren’t able to move forward from the second step, for example, you’re like, what is this? What’s going on? I don’t understand this. Can you move on to the third step and work your way? How does that work?
David (30:44):
My experience is that doesn’t work at all. And you need to try and figure out. Usually if you’re stuck [on] step two, then probably you haven’t fully admitted to step one. I find usually when you’re stuck on a step, if you go back one, that’s often really where you’re stuck typically. But the other thing is the steps are never meant to be done alone. They’re meant to be done with someone who’s done it themselves and has experience with it. In fact, my experience is that I have only been successful working the steps in either of my programs by doing it with a small group of other people.
Michael (31:24):
I love that.
David (31:25):
That meets once a week and just holds each other accountable. And we don’t share if we finish step four and then when we get together, we don’t share a step four with each other. We do that with whoever we’re going to do step five with. But we share in the process what was hard, what was easy, what did I learn about the process. And having that shared experience oftentimes really unblocked me when I found that. Or it just like, okay, other people are really struggling with this, I’m okay struggling too. Right. And the other thing is finding
Michael (32:03):
A community
David (32:04):
And finding a community. And again, I go back to if 12 Step is not your jam, I follow a lot of recovery people on Instagram and there is a lot of sober community on Instagram and many of those people are themselves like coaches or have their own communities that are typically online. I encourage you that if you’re struggling with one particular way, that you really try and explore some of these other ways.
Michael (32:41):
Perfect. Well thank you so much, David. Okay. You heard it here first. Okay. So finding your community, you guys, and you are not alone because we have David here to guide us. And yeah, thank you so much for listening. If you made it this far, please subscribe. Hit the like button, comment, show me some love. Okay, I will see you on the next one.
David (33:12):
Thanks everybody.
Michael (33:13):
Thank you David.
