Why I Got Sober (for entrepreneurs)

alright today is a special episode so this is going to be a video on youtube but also on the podcast so if you're listening to this you're probably on my youtube or you are on the my first million podcast if you're on my youtube then you probably don't know me but basically my name sam par i'm most popular because i started this company called the hustle and i recently just sold it to hubspot it was a really big deal for me and my family and it was a a pretty good exit it was a popular media company that i sold so millions of people read us each day know who where we are and i guess you can kinda say i'm a successful entrepreneur entrepreneurial i mean a lot of people would say that there's people that are way more successful obviously but that's what i'm known for but i'm also the host of a podcast that my company owned and it's one of the top ten business podcasts and we talk about cool ideas and we're we brainstorm different ideas and we have a lot of famous guests on and it's really cool podcast it's called my first million we just just brainstorm i mean it's to simplify it but today i'm talking about something kind of strange something kind of different so i've been sober for about seven or eight i think seven years this july and i stopped drinking when i was twenty three or twenty four i'm about thirty now thirty now thirty one and it's kinda weird to talk about this on a business podcast or in a business channel but a lot of people who are focused on business or who are focused on high achieve or achieving they have a lot of the same things that i have which is i love to go all in on stuff i get obsessed about things i can get addicted to things very easily and those attributes are also what can be part of being an alcoholic and having substance addictions and i had that and i overcame it and i wanted to talk about that and interestingly what made me addicted to alcohol is actually what has made me a pretty successful entrepreneur and fairly successful a lot of different things i do in life so i've got some notes here so you might see me look at once a while but i've got a large twitter following and i tweeted out to them that i was going to do this and i got hundreds of messages so with people asking questions so i'm gonna try and go through all of the questions that people answered but i wanna do today is i want to explain to you how i got addicted and what that was like but then also how i fixed it and then six or seven things that i learned and how my life changed and what i noticed about being sober after having an alcohol problem so let's just start and get into it but before i do i do wanna say none of this is advice so maybe i'll i'll i'll say things in a in a sort of way where it sounds like i'm giving advice but it's really just maybe my phrasing but i do wanna say right now i'm not giving advice also i've studied this a little bit from a science perspective but not nearly enough that i should be considered an authority figure on on on anything related to addiction on chemical and imbalance on depression on anxiety trauma i'm not an expert again i might phrase some things like saying like well i felt this way because of x y and z this is really all my opinion that's it so i also don't think that you should give up drinking necessarily i don't know who you are i think for a lot of people drinking can be great it can make your life better actually but for people like me it made it horrible and my life is way better now and if you're struggling with that then this video will help you but again i'm not judging you i'm not telling you i think you should do this and and don't even think that what i'm saying is our facts other than it's how i live my life so i just wanted to say that because it's important that you don't put too much emphasis on this because i you see this guy on youtube but you hear me in your ear earphones and for some reason you think that i have authority on this i don't so i started drinking when i was about sixteen i i grew up in missouri and i think it's part of like midwestern america i would say it's part of a lot of america but particularly in midwest america there's not too much to do and you go to parties when you're high highest when you start drinking but i grew up in like a kind of a working class normal family middle class family and drinking part of the culture you know you're you go to the bars on the weekends like with your family and it's you go to soccer games and sports games and there's alcohol and as i grew up you go to parties when you're sixteen seventeen eighteen and you drink and it's just very normal you know like when we were younger like fitness really wasn't a thing eating healthy wasn't really anything so you just drink a lot and that was just kinda normal and i didn't really think anything of it but as a young kid very early on i realized that i love to go all in on stuff so like if i could get my hand on a pack of cookies i would eat the whole thing even if it made me sick if i got into running which i did i would run constantly so i eventually went to i got a scholarship a a track and field scholarship d one because i loved to run i love to work out i love to eat i would never leave my plate with food on it i just love doing everything to the extreme if i was going to well you get the idea i just like doing everything to the extreme and i think i drank a bit in high school because i was really uncomfortable with myself i think a lot of people are in high school you're uncomfortable with yourself and i kinda became a little bit of a bully i would bully people around a little bit but i never really fit in and i was awkward and i would drink to fit in and then i would also drink because i love going all in on stuff so if i tasted it i wanted to go all in and i wanna go beat extreme and i want to be a tough guy so i could drink a lot and still drive and or still keep going and have one more kinda became a competition and whatever you know it was a relatively normal high school but then i went to college and when i went to college i got into a serious relationship and after about two years it went south and i quit my sport so i was a very competitive athlete i was in wonderful shape but i quit my sport and i was depressed i basically kinda like ptsd and i kinda went through trauma and i think i have some stuff from my my childhood that i still couldn't figure out why i was angry about which let could talk about another time but i used alcohol as a drug and so you know at first in college it was pretty normal i would go out thursday or maybe i went out at first like friday and then saturday and you're like hungover saturday morning and you're hungover sunday and on friday and saturday you stay night partying and you eat in at three am and just do all the normal college stuff but then i would party on a thursday and then maybe on tuesday and then i broke up with that girl and i got basically traumatized and i started to drink to cover up the pain that i felt and it was a combination of i felt pain from some stuff as a kid i felt pain because i was uncomfortable with myself because i wasn't very confident because i was over compensating but then also i'd experienced trauma i was trying to cover that and numb that pain and i didn't wanna face it i didn't know how to face it i didn't even have the vocabulary you know growing up in the midwest like you don't you don't really talk about your feelings that much and i i didn't have the the tools to handle that and i went to drinking it made me numb and i loved it to be honest it felt like i was a rockstar star i could party all night and i woke up all h feeling horrible but for some reason i loved it and i eventually quit my sport i didn't drop out of school but i didn't go i left all my friends i moved to an apartment by myself where i didn't know anyone in this little house in a bad neighborhood and i would drink with my neighbors and so my junior and senior year i was basically intoxicated twenty four hours a day practically for like three years maybe and every day i would get up have a hangover from the night before and i don't know if it's because my body which is bad at meta the sugar but i hangover overs like i would get really really bad and so i would roll out a bed and i would always go to sleep with like three miller lights next to my bed and i would roll out a bed and i would drink a a couple about two or three right before i even put my foot on the floor and then i would get up take a shower well while i'm in the shower have on and it just throughout the day i would basically have like a case like a like a twenty four or thirty rack and it wasn't good i did that for two or three years and that was basically drunk during school and i was pretty smart but i'd gotten straight a's up until that point so i could get bad grades and still do okay and my school wasn't that hard but i got by but basically i don't remember a lot of the second half of college i it was not good and i would go to the bars by myself i didn't have friends i completely alienate myself i i would see my friends sometimes but i would go to the bars by myself i would meet people i would it was crazy i i would get in fights i love to fight and i would sleep outside a lot you you know many times i woke up at the cracker and the song was coming up and i was like oh my god i'm sitting on a park bench where am i mean i was crazy i was out of it i was mentally ill and i was a complete addict and it sucked but i loved it it felt like an adventure i felt like a rock star i previously was like pretty shredded when i was an athlete now i had like a beer belly and my body hurt me i always had scrape on my knees and on my elbows from falling at that point i i actually have a fake tooth i had already had a fake tooth when i was a kid but at one point like my fake tooth fell out and i looked i just looked like a bum i mean it was it was not good i would i got arrested a couple times i spent collectively maybe a week in jail i got arrested three different times i went to court a few times and one and a couple times didn't win and i got dui and even after my dui i would still drink and drive and i basically plan my whole life around drinking i couldn't plan anything saturday morning because i knew i was gonna be screwed up friday i eventually started a hotdog dog stand a lot of people who follow my entrepreneurial career the joke is is that i started a hotdog dogs stand that made a lot of money the reason i started a hotdog dog stand was because i could get there at like noon so i could wake up at eleven roll out of bed go outside and i could have a red solo cup in my hand and it wouldn't be considered that weird to be drinking on the job while making money then i would go like pass out a little bit after like the noon to like three o'clock crowd and then i would go out to the bars and put my car outside the bars and i could still drink then and i could be around drunk people and i went have to go home till three am and that's how i made a living i had started hotdog dog stand while i was in school and i basically did it because i didn't have a lot of money and i wanted to start a business where i could drink it was not good but again i kinda loved it the things i hated was i hated waking up and knowing i did something bad the night before based off of how hard my knees were like if my knees hurt me then i know oh i fell all over the place and if i was falling all over the place i probably got a fight like was my jaw or like are my fist like it was it was crazy i'm i'm a nice guy now but back then i wasn't i just had demons and i was drinking to cover up the pain that i felt some this stuff that happened when i was younger and that breakup up and it wasn't good and my senior year i was twenty one i think some of these years might be a little funky but i was sitting just piss drunk i was wasted and i saw this video fix my mic i saw this video on youtube it was i think noel gallagher the lead singer of a oasis and he was singing like don't look back in anger and this sounds so cheesy but he was playing this song and it was just him playing on the guitar and there was something like three hundred thousand people in the crowd and i i got emotional i started crying because this guy was playing this guitar there i don't think there was any other instruments just him and he was barely str his guitar and he was barely singing into the mic and three hundred thousand people were screaming back at and the lights were bla and the base sounded amazing once the drums eventually came in and i thought holy shit this is one human being who is exerting a very small amount of energy but because he is leveraging his energy effectively it is creating the you know the input is a little bit of energy the output is this huge world changing energy you know if he just impacted these three hundred thousand people in the crowd think of all the other people that who love his music and it and a makes them feel good about themselves and i thought that's amazing i love how he's able to do that i can do that too i am talented enough to do that i know i can do that i have the it factor i can pull that off but i can't do it when i'm a fucking pissed drunk bum that's what i was at the time i was a bum i was basically it felt like i was homeless practically i had a home but like i was a der i mean i was i was i was like the zombies you see on the street that's kinda how i felt you know i would steal from the grocery store sometimes because i didn't have enough money all the time my parents by the way they would have supported me but i they didn't know what i was going through and never in a million years would've have told them but i was a der and i thought if this guy can do this i can do this i have to get my shit together and so i try to get help i went to my university and i said i'm having massive problems i feel horrible i feel sick i'm black out i'm passing out and even when i wasn't drinking if i woke up i would like fall over my hands were shaken all the time my blood pressure so they tested my i go guys i'm an alcoholic like i'm i've been drunk for like two years now i need help and so what they did was they tested my blood pressure and they're like you need to go the hospital right now forget what what what what it was maybe like a one eighty or one ninety over like one ten which is like it's bad and i went to the hospital and they're like yeah you gotta quit you're gonna die they looked at what what do you when you drink is it your liver or your kidneys that has spots on it and they looked at it and they're like they're like it's manageable now if you quit you'll be fine but like we're seeing a clear pattern here that if you live this lifestyle for long like it's it's not gonna go well it's when i quit and i did that for a few months but it felt horrible i felt so sick and so i dropped out of school and i moved to san francisco and i did that because when i wasn't drinking i cold emailed these guys called air bed and breakfast and i said i love your company and this was in two thousand and twelve i think i love your company i think you can improve by doing next y z can i please work for you i called email the founder that company now is called airbnb by the way and he forwarded me to someone else or i forget how it worked out but i emailed the founder and nate they go hey just come to the office on monday you live in san francisco right now i yeah i live i live there and he goes alright great see you monday so i flew out there got the interview talk to them got the job like pretty quick right away went back home finally told them still college but like i'm done so i dropped out mood moved all my stuff and then basically seoul i didn't have anything and went out of san francisco and i arrived on san francisco this all happened a matter for three weeks and prior to starting like literally on monday i was supposed to start on like a saturday or sunday they said we're taken back your offer you lied to us you said you didn't have a mis or any criminal record and new do you got dui you got fighting on your record you got all types of stuff and at the time i was actually on trial for one of my cases and so i thought i wasn't lying and i lied i guess they thought it was lying i thought like maybe it's not considered lying regardless i was in the wrong and they took back my offer so here i am out in san francisco completely screwed and i met a guy and i ended up partnering with him and starting a business but while i'm doing this i'm like fuck it i'm too depressed i'm i'm drinking again so i relapse i was only sober at that point for two or three months and in san francisco it was awesome because i was on my own i didn't have a lot of money but i could go to the we had i don't think we had whole foods where i lived in nashville this was back in college but in san francisco i had a whole foods by my house and i had you don't have to drive so i remember i was so screwed up that i was like well if i get a bike then i could bike to the bars and not drive anymore so i won't get dui eyes it i won't get arrested but maybe i'll get a bike with an engine in it so i want the pedal because it's really hard to pedal when you're drunk like this is like i plan my whole life around alcohol and i would go to the whole foods and i would eat a slice of pizza while shopping around and i would just leave the carton and bounce and that was like how i would feed myself or i would like steal not steel but like again in the bus without paying and i would play these games at bars that would like trick girls and to buy me a drink i'd be like hey i bet you i can make you answer yes to any question i asked you and i would like have this little trick it was messed up and i was again horrible i was drunk again i was drunk all the time and eventually i just i i had enough i was like i'm gonna die this is horrible i feel horrible i met this guy named joe garvey i haven't talked to joe ga in a few years hopefully he sees this but he was like tall and good looking and i was just pissed drunk and he let me do some part part time work for him running these like scavenger hunts for like corporate companies was just fucking horrible because like i was when i say scavenger it's like off it was like corporate training and like you basically or not corporate training but like team building events so like some company like salesforce or something will send like fifty people and we have do the scavenger hunt throughout the city and it ends at a bar and i would just get wasted with them and so again this is like a hotdog dog business i can be drunk while doing it and still functioning but i met joe and i was like joe here have a drink catch like three months he goes i don't drink and i was like because yeah i i i gave it up i had a problem i went i go to aa and i gave it up and that was the first time in my life that i'd met someone who was like good luck and cool and who i had admired and was hit and would still go out to bars and he didn't drink and i thought that's amazing you and and also you just admitted to me that you go to aa how bold of you you know like you have a problem i thought only like aa and alcoholic like people who talk about that that was on movies that was like you know for like you know rock stars who like getting car crashes or who o d you know like amy wine house that's what rehab for aa for like not guys like you and me i mean of course that's exactly what it's for but he was cool he was the life of the party girls liked him he was sober and he inspired me so much and so one day i ago go fuck i gotta get my shit together so i and it was hard because like i was fat but i was making a little bit of money because i was just talented at that but like my body hurt me all the time i was bloated but i got girls like girls like me i mean lane girls but like you know a girl who would be around a stupid basically fat bro type of dude but i felt like a rock start but i woke up every morning and i regretted what i did the night before and i was ashamed of myself and i felt like i'm gonna die soon and i'm gonna die for nothing i'm basically when you walk through home san francisco and you see these guys on the street i was like i'm closer to them than i am so for those who are listening i'm pointing the my wall of inspiration i've got these like really interest interesting inspiring people in my wall i felt closer to a homeless guy on the street than i did one of these guys on my inspiration wall and so eventually i didn't have any much money and so i googled like san francisco mental health clinic or something and i went in off the street i i got an appointment and and like i was doing well enough that i had an iphone and i had like airpods or not airpods but like iphone headphones and i walked into this place and i was fucked up when i walked in and these peep i was the youngest one there probably i mean look at me if you look at me i look like a kind of a well white dude with like a white teeth and like comb hair i stuck out like a a sore thumb but i was the same as these people we were both we were all zombies but i had like air or iphone headphones in and i was like i am so out of place like this is wild that like i look at i i look how i look but i'm like with these like crazy people and they serve quarter coffee for a a a quarter and like they're talking to themselves and i'm like i'm in the same categories as i've fucked up that's why i can't believe i let this happen and so i meet this woman named jocelyn doctor cortez so i still go to to this day and i said i'm a drunk i need to get sober so she gave me some anti antidepressants and she helped me we off and i i didn't we off i basically locked myself in a room and she kinda i would just let her know what was going on and it worked it works really well for some reason i don't know why this particular time it pull i pulled it off and i just it was basically i was like if i do this i survive if i don't do this i'm i may not die today but i might as well be dead i'm just a zombie who can't function and it worked i went so basically i just went to a mental health clinic on harrison in third in san francisco and jocelyn who i you know i said i still see it it worked out well and now there's like eight years later so like it it's like a lot of people listening are like oh man i i was a drunk for twenty years so like and i got sober so i look i wasn't i guess it doesn't matter like we're not like said it doesn't need to be a pissing contest but like yeah i was basically fucked up for three years pretty bad and i got out so it's like no big deal right three years i was able to get by but you know there's a period of time that alcohol controlled my life it it apps i did everything was revolving around it and i got sober and like the first two weeks was so hard i just had to lock myself the room and i don't i i think there's something like maybe there's some reason why like certain races or ethnicities struggle with alcohol but i think there's something in there that like there's definitely like there's two parts of this so there's like the the trauma that you're depressed and your you saw something crazy when you're were younger something that like makes you wanna like abuse substances but then on the other side at least with alcohol i always felt like there was like a thing where like my body didn't metabolize it in a wonderful way so i was addicted very easily and it would make me sick it would make me really sick and if i didn't continue drinking i i i would i would felt horrible and i felt like that for weeks and eventually i got addicted to like sugar and carbs like the right when i got off i would just eat horribly and i told my doctor and she goes you know what just just do it man like if it makes you feel better who cares if you're if you're eat sugar and we'll handle that later you know just use this as a coping mechanism so did so i got a little chu i got even chu and i would eat cakes and m and m's and that's all i would eat is just like m and m's i remember peanut m and m's like all day every day it's all i would eat pizza and i think that like because when i quit alcohol i was craving the the sugar you know when you drink alcohol you're consuming a lot of sugar and i was craving that like crazy but i did it and so now i definitely am still addicted to that i am able to kinda stay away and i drink a lot of stuff like this this is called a x it's like a calorie free whole foods soda i drink a ton of carbonated beverages though i drink tons of carbonated water tons of diet coke i don't do diet coke anymore i'm trying to do like x or top chico or but i love like usually the way that habits work typically is you don't really get rid of a habit without and replacing it with another habit and that's what i did i replaced it with candy and now i'm replacing the candy with top chico with i'd drink a ton of non alcoholic beer lots of it but so that's where i am now and so what i've learned it's a bunch of stuff so if you're struggling i'm gonna talk to you like about what i learned and maybe this will make your life a little bit easier but so like when i got off booze like it took like six weeks maybe longer three months but i put it's like i it's like i had bad eyesight for a long time and i finally put glasses on because when i was on alcohol like imagine telling a deaf person what what like a certain sound signs like or a blind person what like a mountain looks like in the beauty of seeing a mountain it's really hard and when i was on alcohol when people were like just don't do it just go to this party and don't drink and i'm like i don't that doesn't even i can't even fathom that thought and what so like the the game the inner game that i have now and how i feel now i couldn't even imagine it wasn't even my okay vocabulary i even know it was possible before i got sober but so here's a few things that i learned the first is that getting sober again this is all about me don't criticize me in the comments about well it's not actually true i don't care that's your experience i'm a talk about my experience so the first thing is it's this was a choice that i made and it is all about inner game and i quit drinking in my early twenties when i was single i'm very very very happily married right now which was talking about in a little bit but what just like anyone who's in their twenties male or female probably what do you care about most hook up i cared about meet people going on dates that was my thing and the idea of like meeting a girl sober like what not a chance what do you create that doesn't that's not how it works you gotta get loaded and then go to your thing and well so like my life was around girls and what i realized though the first big thing is giving alcohol it was all about changing my inner game and what's cool particularly for men i can't speak for womb but for for men the more that men work on themselves and make themselves better the more interesting they become to other people and the more other people like them or i attracted to them and so it was great i'm like wow i can be incredibly selfish about myself meaning i can work on myself and that will actually if i work on myself and focus on me and quit booze and get fit and find interesting hobbies that attracts more people to me both men and women and friends and and girls and that inner game basically matt i'm not gonna i'm gonna care less about other people's opinion and yet it made people like me more so i do it i did it all from me and in return it kinda actually helped all my external wants the second thing is that it was actually really important to me to talk about it incredibly openly so i would say i'm a little nervous doing this because i'm talking to like you know we have like hundreds and thousands of and sometimes millions of people listening to our podcast so i'm kinda telling the story about being a fool and i'm probably gonna post kinda shirtless picks of myself looking like an idiot my family's gonna hear so like i'm a little embarrassed about that but on a one on one conversation i'm not ashamed of this at all i'm upset that i behaved how i used to behave and when i meet people from my past life i'm like i apologize i'd be hey i was a wreck then i just wanted to say i'm sorry but i'm not embarrassed to discuss this not even a little bit and the reason why is i used to think that well if i tell people this they're gonna think i'm a freak then i was like yeah maybe they will think them a freak but you know what freaks are kinda cool and also when i tell people i don't drink i used to make one of the thing we give a hobby like oh i just i gotta work out tomorrow or i have a early morning then and no i actually say oh no i don't i don't drink and something and then if they say why not i'll say oh i'm an alcoholic and it does two things one it's they they won't pressure me ever again they're not gonna pressure me at all and if they do fuck them i don't those guys are dead to me they're out of my life i don't it's like a good it's like a good way to get losers out of your life but two it shows them i'm really comfortable about discussing this and one of the big fears of giving up drinking is you don't want the people around you to be uncomfortable which i'm gonna talk about in a minute about how i drink not a alcoholic beer or i'll drink a sprite with a lime edible a bar to make people feel i want people around me to feel comfortable people i care about i don't want them to think that they can't drink around me or that they they'll feel uncomfortable and so i love openly discussing this if they ask me because it makes them feel oh i'm really this is like a thing we can discuss this is just a fact like this is a part of me just like i like to exercise i work in business i have a podcast i don't drink like it's just a fact and i can bring that up third booze makes your body fucked up it is crazy i mean you know what's kinda of funny is like we accept in this order in society alcohol cigarettes weed in reality that should be swapped i think we should accept the weed first then cigarettes or nicotine and then alcohol alcohol man that thing that messes with my body it i felt horribly bloated my joint i was only twenty three i felt like i was forty you know i would make that noise when i sat down or like when you're trying to stand up i felt horrible i was so bloated if you look at all pictures of me which we're gonna show up on this video i looked like if you pop me with a needle i would explode it was just horrible it made my it gives you brain fog you can't feel stuff like certain emotions it just was horrible on my body it turns i was a talking monkey you know it's just gross and and i actually don't think all vice are bad you know i think that humans were built to want escape once from while like smoking weed i i which i don't i don't do any drugs i don't do anything but like i wish i did but like i think smoking weed is probably good for you sometimes i think drinking for a lot of people can actually be great for them it could bring them with the friends and and it's good to escape sometimes but drinking too much alcohol it's just the worst and you get used to it when you do it a lot so like you get used to it not and that it feels better but you wake up in the morning and well this is just how i feel and i feel that way like if i drink a ton of now i'll alcoholic it beer if i drink or i eat a ton of cake or a ton of pizza and i wake up the next morning i have like a sugar hangover i'm like dude it i can't believe i i feel like that every day for years it's crazy so it's bad for your body another thing is that like i said when i did this as a younger guy i was single and the number one care thing i cared about was girls and my biggest fear was that people i wouldn't be able to get girls like they would think i'm weird it's a crutch that allows me to be confident to talking to women and i and up and until getting sober i don't think i'd ever like gone on a date with a girl sober or like had a first kiss sober i i don't think i've ever done any of that but the first time i did it basically i got sober i don't remember this exact timeline but around like week four five or six i was like i wanna go meet someone because it was like again like i put glasses on and i was feeling reality and i was like this is so weird what it feels like and i was like i wonder what it feels like to like have a first date let's try it and i did and then i like kiss this girl i don't remember as the first day or second can get whatever and i was like oh my god i'm on top of the world i overcame this i completely did it and that felt amazing and also when i admitted that i was sober and because i had a problem not only did people not like the i think some people did push me away but didn't know it because i didn't wanna be around me because i sober and they liked to party but the people who i went out with like some guy friends who i went went out with and on dating when i told them my issues they were attracted to me way more i don't like i'm not here to talk about if it's some like oh like girls like guys who are like broken and they wanna fix them like you know there's that joke i don't know what the truth is but i know that when i confidently said i don't drink because i have issues but you're welcome to drink and and i'm still gonna have a ton of fun and i women love that i think it was a confidence thing i don't know what it was but people even strangers were drawn to me be way more another thing was that having like i've said all the positive stuff but i will say having fun when sober i think can be a lot harder so like the nighttime fun that a lot of you guys have i don't really have that and it's yeah it's more boring i i think it's more boring but i'm happier because of it and sober life maybe is less fun than drunk life probably like i wish my wife i've never drank with her because i met her one year after i got sober it would be fun to go out and just get sloppy drunk and do silly stuff and then come home i mean that'd be awesome like it would bring us together the best part is though i don't fight imagine having like fist fight but also like with your spouse or with your girlfriend or your friends like where you say something stupid i don't i mean i still say a lot of stuff stupid but it don't come from a a drunk place that's awesome but having fun is harder it it it is awesome when you can figure it out and i i can go out and have fun and be sober and remember it at all but it's definitely harder what i typically do when i go out to bars is or if i go out to somewhere that involves drinking and i wanna make my friends feel comfortable or even if i just wanna have fun i'll if you go to the bar this is for anyone we'll we can talk about those because a lot of people don't realize this if you go to the bar and you say you wanna let's say you're with friends hey johnny you nab beer that means non alcoholic and all bartender tenders a lot of bartender will know that you're trying to low key not drink and you say give me an na y and that means non alcoholic usually every bar has at least one style and you can't say like i want this brand or that brand because they usually only have one you just give me an na and i always make them bring them to me in a bottle i wanna see them open it and then i'll i'll let them pour in a glass and that way i'll have a what looks like a beer so my friends can feel comfortable or if they don't have an na i'll do a sprite with a lime and when i'm in a bar or bar setting and i smell the beer and my friends are getting drunk and i'm drinking non alcohol beer honestly it kinda feels like i'm a little buzzed so i can have a similar amount of fun but it's definitely not the same so i don't wanna like you know sugar that i will say that intense realism is something that i described being sober so like you've got this cloud when you're drinking and i can and and you drink to i remember i a friend die and i and i would drink at the funeral so i didn't really feel that sadness that i was supposed to feel at weddings i don't feel like the happiness or you know the whatever you feel at weddings or meaning someone that you wanted to go out and date with and you had a crush like are you really just drunk and horny or you actually like them breaking up with someone and feeling like that pain i broke up with a lot of people drunk and i don't know yeah i mean it was it was i was kind of a pussy to be honest i would do these challenging things drunk and i wasn't facing it like a man and i just didn't get to experience that so basically like i didn't develop a lot of skills that i think a grown man needs to have and i had to develop those a little bit later in life basically like from age like i consider my age of like twenty to twenty four like they just didn't exist and even though i'm like thirty one now i'm actually like a you know twenty seven year old or something but i didn't experience those things and once i got sober and i got confident in my decision to be sober i actually sought out those challenging conversations and it made me feel alive it made me feel like this is what i've been missing this is awesome and i felt like it was also a game i'm like oh normally i'd be afraid to do this now gonna do it right away i'm gonna do it i'm i'm gonna approach it straight on and i'm gonna do it just a prove that i can i wanna feel alive and it feels like a a big rush to me now when i do some of these things and i like it in a weird way the last couple things is i control my emotions far better than before try people do dumb stuff you get fights that you don't really wanna be getting in you say shit you don't mean i still act impulsive sometimes and i still say a lot of i don't really mean but it's way less and last i save so much money it's crazy and i spend a lot of it now probably on on food and experiences but like think about this like in a big city you'll spend four hundred bucks in a weekend you know hundred dollars friday saturday sunday i mean that's maybe like fifty bucks at a bar sixty bucks at a bar thirty dollars eating food afterwards like you spend a lot of money and then like me if you're were crazy you're drinking thirty dollars a day anyway that's something like twenty six thousand dollars a year over seven years i think it's been seven or eight for me but that's like two two hundred thousand dollars i mean that's a lot of money so that's my story with alcohol i wanna answer a couple of questions because people are asking me some questions and if you go to the youtube page just google sam par alcohol you'll see this page if you're listening on on the podcast and i'll answer some questions i tweeted out that i was gonna do this my handles the sam par so i'll read out some of the things that people ask the first is how do you handle social gatherings when everyone's shrinking what benefits have you seen outside of the health outside so when i go to bar i for an na that means non off alcoholic beer and bartender typically know that means that you're sober or i'll do a sprite line so with health i'm weight less bloated my joints don't hurt now i don't drink i also take testosterone placement there video which is a whole another podcast in video which i like but i feel like a professional athlete i don't really get tired right now i feel great i i sleep good i sleep eight hours a night i don't really i i feel awesome i mean i i just i feel alive i feel like a pro athlete how can you be supportive of folks who know you're trying to stop especially wait how to how to be supportive of folks who you know okay got it so if you know someone who's trying to stop how to be supportive well my perspective is efforts i didn't really want people to bring it up too much now i'm okay if people tease me and that kind of normalize it so i like the eating teased a little bit but i also like when people confront me head on and act normal so like for example hey we're gonna go get beers if that's if you're comfortable with that come on if you're not why don't we catch up with you afterwards like this like saying things like that i'm cool with i also don't like though if someone like doesn't like changes their behavior to accommodate me i i fucking hate that i can't stand that that makes me feel guilty so if someone says like oh we're not gonna drink because of you i'm like no get drunk in fact i even encourage my wife and friends to get drunk sometimes because i'm like you guys go wild let's have fun like because i wanna live through them a little bit so if my opinion is be normal and confront everything normally and just you can acknowledge things when my friends like ever wanna do drugs if they're like at a party and they wanna do drugs i leave and they say hey we're gonna get wild just so you know and they know i'm gonna go home i don't like being around that but i don't i'm cool if they like to do it are there occasions where you miss it someone asked one hundred percent yep i'm miss responding with my coworkers with some friends definitely miss it i don't miss it enough to do it and don't miss it enough that regret it but i miss it getting in trouble a little bit i miss feeling like a rock star is kinda of fun to like go party and be crazy at a bar and have people over and have a fun ranger and wake up and not know what happens i mean i found that to be adventurous and exciting and fun i don't miss it enough that i wanna do it but i do miss it on occasion what all what coping mechanisms for certain stress you do you use food so when have a bad day i i i allow myself to pick out and eat a whole pizza some will say don't do that you're getting bad habits i don't care i overcame one bad habit that was life or death i exercise now got pack i'm gonna pick out sometimes when i feel horrible because i can go and run or lift weights or row or something to burn those calories and i'd rather be fat and alive and dead and you know you get the idea so i i do a lot of food for coping mechanism instead of getting mad though i typically like to look at as a game like what's a desired outcome that i want from this conversation because a lot of my like stress comes from like other people what can i try to like gain the system to get what i want know how can i what emotions is this person trying to tell me what are their needs how can i meet their needs i can eventually get what i want i look at like a game and it it can be kind of fun for me how can we overcome oh someone asked basically like i wanna look cool and i'm afraid if i don't drink i won't look cool i answered that before you know what's cool is like confidence confidence is cool men and women like confident men and it's also if you really wanna milk this which i think you should if it makes you feel better tell people you're you're messed up and you have substance abuse problems brag about the stories not brag but tell the war stories tell the demons that you've overcame cap them get their attention use it to your vantage i don't see why not how do you switch off unwind can it be boring yep definitely can be boring instead i love to like get huge muscles and then i love to do like cutting i'm like a cutting phase now but then i so i love exercising so i like challenges so i do like an iron man and i will be my challenge i'll do like a bulk phase i'll try to get really muscular at least for me and then i'll cut it and i think that's of cool so that's that's like what i do so i'm not bored and i work a lot and i also have fun my friends i encourage them to drink sometimes but i really i don't go to bars i i pretty much don't ever go out at night except for like movies and out to eat would you recommend someone going cold turkey if they drink in moderation yeah i guess that's that's an impossible questions for me to answer though last couple questions how do you frame it for folks who ask why you don't drink and how do you frame it yourself so when people ask me why i don't drink my answer is just done mix well with me if they ask again i say well i'm an alcoholic and i smile so they know that like it's true but they if they wanna keep talking about it i will and we can be comfortable about it and sometimes they'll say oh i'm sorry i'm like no you didn't do anything wrong at school you wanna talk about i just i have issues so i just choose not to do it and that blunt i think makes everyone comfortable to be honest someone wanna asked if i have felt like getting drunk in recent years no like weird to happen you know like when you eat too much food like eat too much cauliflower as a kid and like you wanna p if you smell that and you just like can't stand cauliflower that's kinda how it feel i'll alcohol i i don't crave it but if i but i do crave the sugars and i eat tons of cake and tons of candy what if what advice would you give to your younger self to overcome the drinking girls will take you're cooler because you're sober and you'll be bolder not weaker if you're sober and last questions where are the benefits of not drinking over have an occasional drink or two i don't have self control one or two is not an option that's either they're all or nothing so that's the episode thank you for following along you can subscribe to our podcast with my first million click that subscribe button maybe you'll see another we'll do another one like this if you want my twitter handles the sam par just comment like send me a tweet or something and ask me a question or if you wanna let me know if this episode was good or bad i don't care it as bad tell me but i appreciate you listening hopefully this helped in some capacity but if you're listening and you are struggling with us been there done that a lot peep a lot of people who've had a way worse may have definitely overcome it you absolutely can too good luck see you