Stephan Neff is committed to “Making this world a better place. One Impact at a time!” He is a speaker, author, anesthetist, and show host. On his Steps to Sobriety podcast, we discussed these topics:
- Many businesses thrive on an alcoholic culture
- You can lead a high-growth and thriving business without using alcohol or drugs to cope with the challenges and stress
- You can have all that you want in business and in life
Learn more in our podcast interview:
Are you feeling stuck in your business? Are you an entrepreneur who deals with alcohol or drug issues? I specialize in helping entrepreneurs with business and/or addiction issues. My own experience is that I had to realize that I couldn’t do it any more on my own. If that’s you, please Contact Me or call me at +1 (604) 721-5732. I’ve been there and no what it’s like to run a business fueled by substances and how to run a business in recovery. Call today.
Transcript
Stephan Neff:
Welcome back to My Steps To Sobriety, my show in and YouTube and there’s a podcast with me your host, Stephan Neff. Today is another fantastic day for an interview because my guest today, David Greer is a man who has truly, truly loved his drink. He’s like me. We both got a lot out of it, typically a fuel or typically, “Yes, come on, give me the power.” You guys think, “What the hell is he talking about?” Well, we going to explore that today why so many entrepreneurs and so many people who go out there to make this world a better place and make them leave a legacy, why we fall foul to alcohol. So David, welcome to my show.
David Greer:
Thank you so much. It’s thrilling to be here. I’m really happy to be here today.
Stephan Neff:
When did your love affair start? When was the first time that you had a drink?
David Greer:
The first drink was when my father gave me a little bit of champagne in a glass and I had a sip and it was so awful I spit it right back in the glass, and my dad had to waste the whole glass. I was not popular.
Stephan Neff:
Oh, please. Unless you vomited into it, a good alcoholic father would’ve taken that, “Ah, that’s all right. Down it goes.” So yeah, your dad-
David Greer:
So for me, it’s … I was adopted at birth, and I don’t believe that my adoptive parents, who they’re mom and dad, were or are alcoholics. They did like to have … Dad was an entrepreneur. He took over the business his dad, my grandfather, started, and he came home from work and had a scotch and mom had a gin and tonic. I had saw a pattern of daily drinking, but they’d have one, maybe two, right? Then yeah, sometimes my aunts and uncles come from out of town and there’d be a big booze up, and booze was always around. I really modeled the acceptance of all of that.
Now, four years ago, I decided to go look into my birth families, and I found both my birth mother and my birth father.
Stephan Neff:
Wow.
David Greer:
My birth mother has definitely been an alcoholic pretty well her whole life. My maternal brother, Gary, died in 2015 before I had a chance to meet him of his alcoholism, and my birth father is not an alcoholic, but his sister is, and he wonders about his dad because he moved out when he was 18. So he didn’t see his dad. His dad, by the way, was an anesthetist. Coincidence.
Stephan Neff:
Well, we can talk about that. We are probably, what, ground to coincidence.
David Greer:
I just remember wanting to be part of the crowd in the summer of grade nine or so and offering someone to buy a beer for a dollar. This is back in 1972 where a dollar was worth a lot of money, and I probably had my first beers around then. Then in grade 10, where I grew up high school, was 10, 11 and 12, and I really became involved in sports and starting with football in the fall and went to my first keg party and really had some binge drinking experiences and was definitely part of the crowd.
My story of my relationship to alcohol is the progressive nature of the disease. Yeah, I went to those parties and drank a lot, but I didn’t drink during the week and I didn’t even necessarily drink every weekend until probably grade 12, right? Again, it wasn’t the end where I was isolating and drinking alone. It was more always with other people after a Friday night basketball game.
Then I moved out of the home when I was 18, moved from the prairies to the West Coast here, Vancouver, BC, Canada, which is where I’ve lived for the last 40 plus years, and eventually went back to university, was part of the rugby team. So lots of drinking, but again, I don’t know the exact spot where I turned into a pickle, as we might say. What I know is that when my wife got pregnant with her first child, I committed to her to stop drinking, and that lasted for maybe 24 hours. I know then I was the pickle. I was definitely, totally pickled.
Stephan Neff:
What did the alcohol give you? What was it doing at that time? Were you already an entrepreneur yourself at that time?
David Greer:
Yes, yeah. I mean, at 22, I joined the young software startup as the first employee after the founders, and I was still at university. I think there’s a number of things. I think part of it was just coping with the stress. Some of it was my whole media’s depiction. My personal belief is you drink a lot of alcohol when you’re successful.
Stephan Neff:
Who were your heroes at that time?
David Greer:
Yeah. My former partner and I were in the market that we were in. In the computer market we were in, we were known on our first name basis.
Stephan Neff:
Oh, wonderful. No, with that I mean heroes. What kind of films did you watch? Who-
David Greer:
Oh, I was at that time a big science fiction fan, lined up for the first Star Wars movies.
Stephan Neff:
Good. Okay. Yeah, That-
David Greer:
So yeah, James, loved James Bond.
Stephan Neff:
Okay. Well, yeah. Okay, there you go.
David Greer:
I got taken to Thunderball when I was in grade four or five, even though I shouldn’t have been because it was a PG movie.
Stephan Neff:
Of course, of course.
David Greer:
I love that whole secret agent. I mean, in grade seven I was with friends doing invisible ink and going to the library and getting books on how to do secret stuff. That whole hero genre, invincible, the James Bond, and James Bond drank the martini.
Stephan Neff:
Absolutely.
David Greer:
All of that stuff is definitely manifested in my belief systems, right?
Stephan Neff:
Absolutely.
David Greer:
Then also, my partner and I were stars in our market. We were the big shots and deservedly so. We earned that reputation, but it’s easy to build on that and think you deserve all the alcohol that you’re having.
Stephan Neff:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What was your favorite tipple? What did you drink?
David Greer:
Beer, beer and wine. When I first got sober, the notion I could almost think about not having beer, almost, but the idea that I’d be having meals without wine, that was inconceivable when I first got into sobriety.
Stephan Neff:
Including breakfast?
David Greer:
Nope. No, no. I pretty much had very strong rules, but the traditional progressive alcoholic, I’ve heard the story many times, progressive nature disease. It’s like I have all these lines I wouldn’t cross. I never drink in the car. Then towards the last seven or eight years, somewhere I crossed that line. Then I’ll never drink in the car while it’s moving.
Stephan Neff:
Exactly.
David Greer:
Then I’ll never have one. Fortunately, I never did it with anyone else in the car ever. I never crossed that line. It was like you don’t drink before 5:00, and then it was 4:00, and then by the end it was 3:00, which I think was part of where I knew the jig was up. I’m the kind of alcoholic, I still had a house and I still had some career and I had my wife and three kids and two cars in the driveway kind of thing, but I’d lost everything in here. I had lost all the self-respect, right? I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Stephan Neff:
True. True.
David Greer:
That and an extraordinary person who … Can I continue into how I got sober? I know you asked … I’m still trying to answer the question when I have my first drink.
Stephan Neff:
It’s beautiful. It’s beautifully flowing. Oh, no, no, brother. I mean, that is so beautiful the way you describe your journey because you were a high functioning alcoholic, but very early on, you threw a mixture of genes and our environment. You were very much, and not just environment, with environment, I should say, the marketing that already was out there and the general acceptance within the population. We were bound, we were set up to fail.
David Greer:
Yes, completely.
Stephan Neff:
Exactly. This was a time when man like you and me, we were going out there and we were leaving a stamp on the world wanting to spread our wings, being successful, working, working, working. That defined us. Work, work, work, work, work. Then after a while, after 16 hours, guess what? Your body is saying, “Oh, fuck off. I don’t want any more.” Then for me, alcohol, you called it first, rocket fuel. Hell, that was exactly what it was. Give me two glasses of wine. The first glass of wine goes, “Oh.” Literally, that’s sound effect came with the first glass. The second glass of wine was, “Bing! Okay. Let’s keep working. Let’s do things.”
David Greer:
Yeah. I had that period, but towards the end, it was more like the six pack to … The first one is like, “Okay. We just …”
Stephan Neff:
Okay, okay, okay. Maybe my words should be taking a little bit more of artistic license. Maybe the first bottle of wine and then the second bottle.
David Greer:
Oh, right.
Stephan Neff:
Now we’re talking.
David Greer:
Now I can go over that.
Stephan Neff:
Yeah, exactly. Okay. I shouldn’t have kid around. That was me at the end too. What was your limit? I mean, when did you pass out? Which amounts did it take?
David Greer:
So my modus operandi would be to start at that 4:00 or 5:00 and then go until it was time to go to bed. It’s get to a certain level of inebriation, and then again, there’s this self, like as a high performing individual, it’s being out of control or slurring my words or falling down and stumbling. That’s too drunk. I mean, I would sometimes go over and get there, but it was about just controlling, getting to a certain level of inebriation and then maintaining that till I passed out. That was kind of the way that I operate. That wasn’t kind of, that was the way that I mostly operated.
Stephan Neff:
Interesting. I was harder going because certainly at many times in my life, I drank to escape my reality and I drank to escape my pain. I drank to escape the monsters under my bed and inside my head, and for that, I needed more. I was slurring my words. Yes, please. You probably would have not understand a word, and that is what I needed. So what happened when there were hard times in your life? You were pointing towards the anxiety and the being early on thrown into the limelight. Not everything would’ve been smooth out there. There would’ve been lots of not so nice times.
David Greer:
There’s bumps in the road, but I really have been very blessed not having really huge bumps in the road. My family of origin, my father only passed away a couple years ago at 93. My mom this past week celebrated her 95th birthday, and I try to make sure to see her a couple times a year and talk to her every 10 days or two weeks.
Yes, I definitely drink to overcome some of those things that I didn’t like in the business, but I think a lot of it was just to keep going. Then my principle three fears after having done a lot of personal growth work, having got sober is I’m not good enough and is an entrepreneur and running a business like that, That one is very present. It’s my fault. That other fear is like someone’s going to say, “It’s your fault.” I’m a hugely over responsible person, take too much responsibility.
So when you’re over responsible, you don’t want to get too drunk because then you can’t be responsible. It’s got this tug of war going on. Then the third one is, “Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are to deserve a great life? Who do you think you are to …” The first holiday, I did some therapy work and I came to realize, “Well, I’m principally an extrovert. I really need some …” and I isolated as drinking. I have to be careful about isolating, but truthfully, I need some time just by myself to recuperate, build my resiliency.
The first time I went up to Whistler, a local ski resort in summertime and did six days by myself and basically insisted with my wife that I was going to go by myself, that was a big step to move out of codependency. That whole who do you think you are, who do you think you are to have six days totally by yourself without your spouse, without your children, without anyone else, that one still works sometimes.
Stephan Neff:
Oh, that too, who do you think you are, one is the aim to order, to focus on being selfish. The other one is, “Who do you think you are to do that?” In my case, the imposter syndrome, “Who am I to actually sit here, have a show and talk to people? You bloody little,” and this one is going 10,000 miles an hour, and you just fake it, and it’s weird. It’s still so much working in the underground and it’s trying to sabotage me. From now on then, I really have to stop. I have to look on my shoulder and say, “Hey, look. Okay. Look, this is my 325th show now. I think I’ve established myself.”
David Greer:
Yeah, “What do you think? Do you think you’re maybe doing okay?”
Stephan Neff:
Yeah, exactly. It’s, “Come on.”
David Greer:
There’s a little voice going, “No, no, no, no, no, that’s not enough.”
Stephan Neff:
Exactly. Oh, I know that voice so well.
David Greer:
Not that I’ve ever heard that voice in my head.
Stephan Neff:
No, no, no, no, no. Never. Yeah, right. Yeah, right, but that is what we need to accept because most people are not even aware that these voices are there. They’re slaves to these core beliefs that are often so warped and so out of this world. Your failure, absolutely. My God. I accumulated little letters behind my name, title after title after freaking title. I made a point of doing a publication every six months in my field and it was just, oh, it was never enough.
David Greer:
Yeah. I was just going to say, and that’s not enough.
Stephan Neff:
I was considering myself a failure. I think that is my worst core belief. It’s still there today. It’s still my go-to. I’m now about 56 for crying out loud. I’ve got another 50 years to go. I’m working on this core belief.
David Greer:
You’re still working on that, yeah.
Stephan Neff:
Yeah, exactly. I don’t know who I want to be when I grow up, but I’m working.
David Greer:
I’d say on the professional side, I didn’t have a lot of trouble with imposter syndrome and I didn’t have a lot of feeling like a failure.
Stephan Neff:
Good.
David Greer:
It was more in the deserving side.
Stephan Neff:
Interesting.
David Greer:
Then again, in sobriety and personal growth work, one of the things that it’s really taken a lot of work is people would tell me they loved our products and that we were a great company, but to really accept it and let it into my heart, to let compliments land and come in, I’m way, way better at that, but again, I think that’s mostly the I’m not good enough fear. It’s like if I really take that in, then, well, maybe I am good enough, and what now?
Stephan Neff:
Okay, okay. I like that, that take on things because it’s the feeling of inadequacy that makes us strive, that makes us move forward. So absolutely, absolutely. I often take anger or failure as an, sorry, I often take anger that comes from my failures rightly or wrongly so, however I perceive the situation, let’s say, yeah. However I perceive it if it was a failure or not, I probably think it was, but that anger that comes from there, that frustration I take as a power to move forward, to refocus.
To a certain degree nowadays, I love to make mistakes because I learn so much from them. So whilst I love to win, I also nowadays appreciate the lessons I learn when I don’t win. I actually loved them a lot, but emotionally, of course, they still confirm, “See, you’re a failure. You can’t even get that right.”
David Greer:
Yeah. My former coach, Kevin Lawrence, did a lot of coaching with me. Everything in life’s an experiment. Failure, that’s just a perspective.
Stephan Neff:
I like that. I like that a lot.
David Greer:
Right, and you try something. If you go in just treating it as an experiment, then whatever happens, you learn something.
Stephan Neff:
Touche.
David Greer:
Now, what we get attached to is that we run an experiment and then we get very attached to the outcome that we’re certain is going to happen, and that’s where we trip ourselves up really badly because we’re now not attached to the experiment, we’re attached to a future outcome we’re convinced is going to happen.
Stephan Neff:
Sure. Sure, sure, sure.
David Greer:
That’s really important distinction. I do a lot of coaching with entrepreneurs around trying to treat more of what they’re doing as an experiment like, “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Why don’t you go try it, but don’t be attached to what happens. Just go try it and then let the facts tell you what happened rather than you being emotionally attached to what you think the facts are going to be.”
Kevin, too, talks about facing the brutal facts, which is I think that if an entrepreneur faces the brutal facts, you can always find a way through them. The problem is when you’re not facing up to whatever the brutal fact is. I want to come back to Kevin because we did some of what led to my drinking. We’ve talked a little bit about some of the things I’ve learned in recovery and through personal growth work, but we need the in-between part, which is what it was like what happened and what it’s like now. I want to tell you a little bit about what happened.
In 2007, I was at a training event with the guy by name of Verne Harnish, who has a business framework that I think is one of the best in the world. Anyways, in the back of the room were a couple coaches. At that point I had, I’d gone off sailing for two years with our family. We lived on a sailboat in the Mediterranean for two years and homeschooled our three kids while sailing 5,000 miles, 10,000 kilometers in the Mediterranean. I came back. I’d been with the business there 20 years. I’d sold out. I wasn’t done for life. Now, I was ready to find some engaging things professionally and I wasn’t finding them.
I went to the backroom and talked to these coaches and one of them made me more uncomfortable than I had been in a number of years. In fact, I had tears in the corner of my eyes. All he did was he take his hand and he went around. There was probably a hundred entrepreneurs in the room and he said, “Well, I bet almost everyone in this room needs your help.”
I thought, “That’s probably true, but no one wants my help because I’d been trying for, at that point, three, four years to find entrepreneurs to help.” So anyways, he gave me his card and I stared at his card and the telephone was way, way, way too heavy to pick up, “Call Kevin,” but thankfully, he saw something that day and he called me a few weeks later and then he said, “Do you remember who I am?” and I said, “Oh, yeah. I remember who you are. Your card’s sitting right here.”
Stephan Neff:
Excellent.
David Greer:
The universe put Kevin in my path to get sober is what I believe. So on my 50th birthday, August 9th, 2007, we had our first coaching session together. When you go have Kevin as your coach, your first two coaching sessions are two eight-hour days in a row. You don’t go with Kevin unless you’re all in.
Stephan Neff:
Oh, wow. I like that.
David Greer:
Kevin and I started working together, and we worked together for 18 months until January 26th, 2009, about 10:30 at night. I had my last beer and I sent an email message to Kevin on the topic for our coaching session the next day. I said, “I want to talk to you about my drinking.”
The next day, we had a coaching call and no way was I willing to admit I was an alcoholic, but I wasn’t willing … He was the first person that I admitted I had a drinking problem to. I’d engendered enough trust with Kevin and we had the kind of relationship. I knew that once I admitted it to him that he was never going to ever let me off the hook. I knew deep down that Kevin was not going to let me off the hook.
Coincidentally, Kevin has a summer place in Washington State just south of where we live here in British Columbia, and it’s a communal thing and there’s common campfires and he’d sat around the campfire a lot of summer nights talking to someone that had decades of experience in AA. When I told Kevin I had a drinking problem, of which he had no idea because anytime I was in a call, it was not a time of day I drank and I’m a high performing alcoholic, so anything that Kevin got me to do, I did.
Anyways, he got me to commit to go to an AA meeting by the end of that week. That was a Tuesday. He got me to go. He got me to commit to go to an AA meeting before the end of the week. Then being the overachiever all in or all out guy that I am, I had an event downtown with the tech industry that ran till about 8:00. I went online that afternoon and I looked up AA meetings, and lo and behold, there was a meeting at 8:30 at a legion, which was literally less than a hundred meters off the road I was going to drive home on. I was going to practically drive by it.
I left even a little early from my event downtown and I probably showed up the meeting just a little bit after 8:00, and it’s in a legion. Legions were originally founded to serve people who served in the military. So for your listeners, they’re a bar. They’re a bar. I walked into this meeting and the doors were open and there was a whole set of tables and there were beers on a bunch of them.
I literally was a deer in the headlights. I’m like, “I’m not even 24 hours sober.” I’m standing there, and then three people went by and they were going to the meeting and they have that sixth sense that people in 12-step recovery have. They said, “Oh, if you want the meeting, go down the hall and up the stairs.”
Thankfully, I turned right and I went down the hall and I went up the stairs, and I went to my first meeting, and towards the end of the meeting the chairperson asked, “Is there anyone new who would like to stand up and introduce themselves?” Fortunately, the chairperson waited quite a while, probably 20 or 30 seconds. I’m sitting on my hands and then finally, I jumped up and said, “I’m David and I’m an alcoholic.”
I think that was probably a breakthrough moment because it was the first time I’d said that word and admitted it even to myself. I made that my home group. It’s still my home group 13 years, nine months and some odd days later. Although since COVID, we haven’t been able to meet in a legion, so we meet somewhere else now. Then I was there this week. In fact, I’m currently the secretary of that group.
Stephan Neff:
That’s beautiful.
David Greer:
So when I say, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, and then I think the universe put Kevin and his skills and his knowledge in my path That I had an opportunity to get sober. I won’t say it was easy, but fairly early on, I lost most of the craving and then did the things like make sure there was no beer in the house. My wife was still drinking wine, but early on I said to her that I was not going to open a bottle, I wasn’t going to touch a bottle, I wasn’t going to buy a bottle. I have not gone into a liquor store since the day I got sober, not once. It’s one of my boundaries. I do not go into a liquor store. I do not buy liquor.
Stephan Neff:
That all sounds like this beautiful transformation that every alcoholic secretly yearns for. However, the alcohol serves a need. For me, it was to dull the pain. For you, it was a whole range of things. How did you exchange those, the alcohol? What did you do to have your needs filled?
David Greer:
I think early on was lots of meetings, so lots of meetings. What was I doing in 2009? I was between gigs at that time I wasn’t working. I had time to do a little bit of reading in the big book and consider it. I got Kevin in the background helping me make sure that I’m doing the right things. I mean, I still exercise at 6:00 in the morning even when I was supremely hungover. I literally do not know how I did that. I do not know how I did that.
Stephan Neff:
Oh, boy.
David Greer:
There were also some financial messes that I’d basically been working with Kevin to clean up for 18 months. We continued in that path and it had quite a bit of emotional stuff with it, shall we say. We need to sell our big expensive house on a hill and downsize to a more modest, not a lot more modest, just a little bit more modest, but it radically changed our financial situation. I sold my boat. We sold our recreational property up in the mountains and we sold our house in a nine month period.
Stephan Neff:
Wow. Normally, talk about huge stressors in your life. The only thing that you didn’t do is change your relationship and immigrate to a new country. Otherwise, you did it all there.
David Greer:
That wouldn’t happened if we weren’t so codependent, I think, in some ways.
Stephan Neff:
We need to talk about that because it takes two to tango. So what was your wife’s relationship with alcohol?
David Greer:
Her relationship has always been like she likes her wine but not every day. She’s the kind of person who can go halfway through a second glass of wine and go, “Oh, I’m feeling tipsy,” and just leave the rest. Drives me crazy. Of course, when I was-
Stephan Neff:
Impossible for us, isn’t it?
David Greer:
Of course, when I was drinking it’s like, “Oh, good. More for me.”
Stephan Neff:
Yeah, exactly. There are recipes for leftover wine and they always confused me. I didn’t know what was leftover wine.
David Greer:
What was leftover wine?
Stephan Neff:
That’s right. That didn’t exist in my house.
David Greer:
Early in our relationship, we did a trip to France and we visited with a friend of ours in France who’s a professional friend, but we got to stay in their house. She was shocked when Pierre put the cork back in the bottle. She said, “You can do that?”
Stephan Neff:
So good. Exactly.
David Greer:
That was probably in my mid twenties. I’m already demonstrating pretty strong out. I don’t know if I’m a full blown alcoholic or not, but I’m certainly demonstrating alcoholic behaviors.
Stephan Neff:
Well, we can do a quick test now. Did you feel that you had to cut down at that time in your drinking?
David Greer:
No, I would say not.
Stephan Neff:
Were you angry when people were talking about your drinking, that you were drinking too much?
David Greer:
I’m so high performing that no one ever questioned my drinking, I didn’t-
Stephan Neff:
Did you feel guilty? Did you feel guilty about your drinking?
David Greer:
Probably not.
Stephan Neff:
Interesting. Did you need an eyeopener? Did you drink some alcohol in the morning?
David Greer:
No, I never really needed an eyeopener.
Stephan Neff:
See? Interesting. These are the typical screening questions.
David Greer:
Yes, agreed.
Stephan Neff:
That doctors would ask to gauge, “Is someone suffering from an alcohol use disorder? In other words, being an alcoholic. Interesting.
David Greer:
Yeah. I remember in the late ’90s going to my family doctor and there was a pamphlet by the receptionist desk with 20 questions around alcoholism, and I answered 17 yes out of 20 at that point. Then it said if you answered four or more, you should speak to your doctor, and I was like, “Oh, this fucking thing, they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Stephan Neff:
No, that’s-
David Greer:
Well, and also, among my social circle, and I’m a sailor, Talk about drinking among sailors, I probably could have identified 20 people could have answered 17 of those questions yes.
Stephan Neff:
This, of course-
David Greer:
So again, just totally normalized like, “Doesn’t everybody do this? Isn’t this how you live your life?”
Stephan Neff:
That’s how we are. We surround ourselves with like-minded people.
David Greer:
Of course.
Stephan Neff:
Therefore, you can put your hand on your heart saying, “Me? I’m an alcoholic? No. Joe over there, now he is an alcoholic. Look at him,” but you yourself, complete denial. That is 95% of alcoholics will tell you, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with me.” They will have this degree of denial there. That’s so hard. It takes time and it often takes the slippery slope and it takes maybe a DUI or maybe hitting your wife or whatever it is.
David Greer:
Whatever it is.
Stephan Neff:
Exactly, to finally for you to get the message.
David Greer:
If I can bring it around to entrepreneurs specifically and business owners, so a couple things is if you’re an alcoholic, there is a relatively strong probability you’re going to hire people who maybe aren’t full-blown alcoholic but definitely like to drink, and you’re the kind of CEO who has the Friday beer get together. That’s one aspect and it’s like if you do get sober, “What now?” because you’re not going to drink beer on Friday with everybody. So figuring that piece out is one issue.
I had a non-alcoholic CEO of mine a little while ago who’s in super high end. They have an industrial product, It requires you’re talking to very senior people, and you just have such … He said, “We went out to dinner with the sales prospect with our top salesperson and they needed me there as a CEO to create belief, and everybody had two drinks before dinner and we averaged one bottle of wine per person, and then a few people had drinks after dinner. Is this normal?”
I said, “Well, it’s really normal for alcoholics.” Unfortunately, there is a really, really strong alcoholic culture in this high-end sales, high-end performance. I have another former client of mine who works for one of the largest tech companies in Canada. Again, you go out to these dinners with 12, 14 people, and it’s a boss’ boss who’s sitting across from you and he says, “No, I don’t want any wine,” and then the person keeps filling his glass. It’s very difficult to say no to that person because it’s your boss’ boss.
What’s interesting is that he’s fairly new in sobriety, got a couple years. As he’s had some of his years and shared those in our coaching sessions and ways he can deal with it and ways he can get better, but it’s really interesting when he’s really stood up for himself, he’s had other people come to him afterwards and say, “Thank you for doing that because it let me feel okay not having drink and I did not want to want to drink.” That was the flip side.
Again, when you’re an entrepreneur and that is the culture of the business you’ve created and how you sell things or you go to trade shows and you go hang out with a bunch of people drinking, that’s the thing to do, I help them navigate that, and things that you can do and strategies that you can have That you can still be there but you can protect yourself.
Stephan Neff:
Exactly. That’s beautiful. You’re spelling it out. You need a coach in those things. It is the same thing as if you’re now in your mid 50s and you say, “Hey, you know what? I want to start a new sport. I have no clue how to do that sport.” So you wouldn’t just go out there, buy something and just start doing that sport and then injure yourself on your first training session. You would probably ask someone, “Hey, how do you do those moves in the gym more?” whatever it is. You would get a coach.
David Greer:
If you pick up skiing late in life, not as a teenager, which I know people who have, if you’re smart, you go take ski lessons.
Stephan Neff:
Absolutely.
David Greer:
You get over your ego saying, “Oh, no, no, you should know how to ski on the first time.”
Stephan Neff:
Yeah, that’s right. It’s like, “Bullshit.”
David Greer:
Even my children who started skiing when they were three, they didn’t know how to ski their first time, let me tell you.
Stephan Neff:
Exactly.
David Greer:
They fell over a hell of a lot more than they stood up on the skis.
Stephan Neff:
They’re a little bit lower to the ground They don’t care as much.
David Greer:
It hurts a lot less. It hurts a lot, lot less.
Stephan Neff:
My point. When you do that when you’re 55, “Oh, yeah.”
David Greer:
My kids are now 33, 31, and 26, and even they are starting to say when they have a wipe out that they’re starting to feel it.
Stephan Neff:
Touche.
David Greer:
Early 20s, no way. They’re just like-
Stephan Neff:
Touche, but I want come back to something that you’ve just said about that experience of one of your mentees who went out there to actually open up about his own journey with alcohol that others come to him and say, “Wow, I thank you.” This is so much more common what you are saying than others would believe because there’s always the shame and guilt, these evil twins that write you and, oh, my God, could I say that I’m an alcoholic? No. What will the other people think around me? Well, guess what? They know.
My mentor, he was very big in finance and he was an entrepreneur extraordinaire, but he was a drinker to the extreme, but he had his contracts there. I am glad that the people that were in business with him couldn’t get out. Then when he got sober, people said, “Oh, God, I’m so glad because the only reason we are still with you is because we couldn’t get out of your contract. We knew you were an absolute bloody alcoholic,” and he thought, “No, no, I’ve hidden that well.” Yeah, no, you don’t hide it well. That is the reality.
David Greer:
Well, there’s exceptions to that.
Stephan Neff:
I would debate that because you and I can now smell a bullshitter a mile away.
David Greer:
Yeah, but among our social group and a lot of our friends, none of them suspected I was an alcoholic.
Stephan Neff:
Oh, really? You were such a chameleon.
David Greer:
Yeah, such a chameleon and so good at, again, that just get it to that certain level, and I was super expert at hiding, really.
Stephan Neff:
Oh, please, please get out.
David Greer:
I’m sure you’re the same, but to more to this point, I see myself at this current present moment is really two really big missions around alcoholism. One is I’ve broken my anonymity and come out because I want to reduce the stigma. I want to say it’s okay and I want to offer hope. There is always hope.
Stephan Neff:
Absolutely.
David Greer:
Those are really my two primary missions and why I come on shows like yours, I mean, to share the broader message, but if people leave and they only go away with two things, it’s admitting alcohol is absolutely prevalent in our society and it’s one of the most dangerous drugs in the entire world and we don’t treat it that way, and there is no shame in being an alcoholic. It is no moral failure to be an alcoholic. It is a mental health disease. It is formally diagnosed. Anyone, I believe, can get sober and stay, can get and stay sober. There is hope.
Stephan Neff:
100% agree. Wow. David, you are a force of nature there. I love it because you are so focused. You have taken on, for example, you have taken on the flow of this interview really beautifully and you’ve weaved a red thread through our discussion that was superb. I did not need to do very much here. Thank you. You did my work, but it shows how you think, it shows how you function. You find the core of the problem and you’re dealing with that. You’re doing the due diligence that you do as an entrepreneur, as an investor with a business. You’ve learned to do that with people. You’ve learned to see what actually makes them tick and why we escape into alcohol or why we use alcohol for the reasons that we do, and that is so powerful.
I could not agree more with you, the past does not equal the future. It is Important. Whatever has happened to you up until this moment, it doesn’t matter. Yes, there are many mental scars and maybe there might be quite some physical scars there as well, but that trauma does not define you. That trauma is the power that is pushing your bow back. You are now at a point. The sheer fact that you’re listening to this podcast, to this video-
David Greer:
Indeed.
Stephan Neff:
… you are here already. The tension in your body is already there. You are ready to release that power. Now, it’s just a question, where do you aim that bow? Where do you aim that arrow because you are ready. You’re ready to take action. That is the key thing in recovery. It’s not just sitting back, “Oh, maybe I should.” No. It is taking action. It is getting up in the morning, having a shower, brush your teeth. It is doing little bits, little steps, tiny, teensy baby steps, but they’re little baby steps in the right direction. That is how you get momentum in a new life.
It’s hard for you to see that. Too many of us are stuck in that hell of, “Oh, there is no hope. I’ve deserved that. Whoever would understand what I have done?” These are all lies that alcoholism tells you, that your depression tells you, PTSD tells you. That’s bullshit. Guys, you can, and I say guys, no, guys, girls, anything in between, I don’t care.
David Greer:
Yeah, again-
Stephan Neff:
Go out there.
David Greer:
Another thing that’s common knowledge is that not that many women are alcoholics. Well, the data is it’s about 60/40 men to women in the research that I’ve looked at, right? I know lots of recovering women alcoholics.
Back to coach Kevin, I don’t know what got me … Well, I think, again, I just got sick and tired of being sick and tired and I just didn’t want to do it anymore, but also just the fact that he engendered that trust That I could open up to him. It’s also why seven years ago I decided to stop being a senior executive and entrepreneur and move into coaching because I wanted to give to others what Kevin gave to me.
That gift of being able to listen, to be able to share, to take those scars and show you how you can build on those, to create an extraordinary life that you deserve, an extraordinary life and that you’re fully capable of it even if it’s really hard to see from where you are right in this moment.
Stephan Neff:
Absolutely. David, if people like the message that you are sharing here and like your attitude and aptitude, where can they find you?
David Greer:
Easiest is my website, coachdjgreer.com. So my full name is David James Greer. It’s coach D as in David, J as in James Greer dot com. My phone number and my email address are right there on the homepage. So feel free to reach out. I’m also active on social media. You can reach out to me that way, but yeah.
Stephan Neff:
Guys, check out the description of the YouTube video and of the podcast because all his links are down there. Once you’re down there, press the like and subscribe button because David has certainly opened my eyes. Despite the fact that not just because we are both so long in recovery, sometimes to go back to the basics, go back to what really has happened to us, compare, reflect, you look at the same old story in a new light. Therefore, I will go away from this interview thinking, “Huh, okay,” and maybe some new revelation. Oh, well, there has already a few revelations during this interview here will be there.
I grow and I’m so grateful for having the opportunity, for creating the privilege to talk to people like David. I take active steps to change my future and in turn change the future of those around me like you guys out there listening to us. So why don’t you go out there and try to do the same? Tiny little steps. Take action. If you have never been to a meeting, throw the prejudices away and try to figure out. Is there a meeting somewhere physically close to you? If not, who cares? It’s the world of Zoom. You can find any-
David Greer:
Exactly. Go to an online one.
Stephan Neff:
Absolutely. There is no excuse. Take it as an experiment as well. Just one thing I would like to add. You had, obviously from the very first moment, you had a very positive experience in the AA. You jumped with your group. It’s interesting. There was not a single time that you mentioned the word God. Often, enough people are not very religious and somehow they believe that AA is a very church-driven kind of thing. The reality is that often, we meet in churches because that’s where you can get a cheap room to meet. That’s really the reason. Many groups are secular, and the word God, for many of us who do not believe, God can be a group of orderly drugs, a group of druggies, okay? So you don’t have to be a Christian to approach AA or a similar 12-step program. The 12-step program is a business model, really, how to help a failing business. I’ve written that here, My Step to Sobriety. Check it out there. I’ve described it exactly as that. Therefore-
David Greer:
I’ll share I was a little put off by that word. In AA, we read part of this book in a chapter called How It Works, and towards the end of that it says, “The chapter to the agnostic.” I eventually read that. Then also, there’s an appendix that talks about a spiritual awakening and how it happens gradually. Today, the letters G-O-D for me mean a power that something’s bigger than me, which I manifest or imagine is the universe or the life force of the universe. It’s bigger, and I don’t really understand it and I don’t have to. In fact, if I understand it, it’s probably not the right thing. My experience was very much that you talked about taking little steps and I just kept taking little steps, and then one day I realized that I was living a much more spiritual life.
Stephan Neff:
Beautiful. Beautiful.
David Greer:
Yeah, and that’s what I focus on today.
Stephan Neff:
Beautiful. So yeah, it does not matter in which deity you believe or if there’s no deity at all. It’s absolutely fine.
David Greer:
… or any, yes.
Stephan Neff:
Yeah, exactly. So don’t get spooked about it and just look at what is behind it. Between you and me and don’t tell anyone, but in reality, the founder of AA was actually not religious, but it was all done in the 1930s and he thought, “Well, really, how can we sell that?” At that time, God was selling, and that sounds like sacrilege to many people in the AA, but in reality, there are letters from his wife who actually confirmed that. There you go. So don’t get hung up on the Christian side.
David Greer:
In that chapter about to the agnostic, I think there’s 39 different ways that a power greater than yourself is referred to.
Stephan Neff:
Beautiful. I need to read that chapter again.
David Greer:
Because in one pass of doing the steps, the facilitator and I decided we’d count. We read that chapter.
Stephan Neff:
Oh, excellent.
David Greer:
We did.
Stephan Neff:
Excellent. Perfect. There you go, guys. No excuse. No excuse not to take the first step. Okay. If still AA or 12-step programs is not that, then there are other more scientifically based schemes out there, heaps and heaps and heaps. Guys, go back in my show I have had. I’ve had guests from virtually every nook and cranny of the recovery world there. Help is out there. It is not just possible, but likely, highly likely that you will change your life given the right direction and the right support. You can’t do it alone.
David Greer:
Yeah. I was just going to say, and what I know for me is there’s no way I could do it alone.
Stephan Neff:
Absolutely.
David Greer:
I’m not certain anyone can recover from alcoholism alone.
Stephan Neff:
Exactly.
David Greer:
It’s the nature of the disease.
Stephan Neff:
Exactly. David, what a fantastic interview. I truly, truly enjoyed that. You’re an amazing man.
David Greer:
Thank you so much.
Stephan Neff:
No, absolutely. So guys, if you haven’t gotten something out of this interview, then really, you need your head screwed off back rattled and screwed back on because this was gold. Okay, guys. So David, thank you very much. Look after yourself, and you guys out there, live with passion. Bye.
