Staying Connect ft. Mark

Steve welcomes Mark to share their experience, strength, and hope with you, along with advice on getting and staying sober.

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Transcript

Steve: 0:55

Hi everyone. And welcome to gAy A, a podcast about sobriety for the GT plus community and our allies. I'm your host, Steve Bennet-Martin. I am an alcoholic and I'm grateful for my younger brother, Mickey. As of this recording, I am 452 days sober and say, we're welcoming a guest to share their experience, wisdom and hope with you. Welcome mark. Thank

Mark: 1:16

you. Thank you. It's great to be here.

Steve: 1:18

It's great having you. Why don't you start off by introducing yourself to the listeners?

Mark: 1:23

Sure. My name is mark. I am an addict and alcoholic and I have about 16 and a half years. My sobriety date is November 21st, 2005. I live in Jersey city, New Jersey. And my home fellowship is CMA in New York city.

Steve: 1:40

Oh, excellent. And what are some of your favorite hobbies that you found in sobriety?

Mark: 1:45

I would say in sobriety, I definitely learned to love Broadway, so I love going into the city and going to see Broadway shows cooking. So I often tell the story that I got sober with ina Garton and Giada Dientes because every day when I would come home from all of my outpatient programs, I would sit on the couch and watch those cooking shows on food network and it sort of reinspired reinvigorated the hobby of cooking. So it's a huge stress relief for me.

Steve: 2:20

That's awesome. And why don't we get right into it, then tell us a little bit about what it was like with your journey with alcohol and addiction. Sure.

Mark: 2:28

You know, I grew up at third generation alcoholic, right? My grandfather and a lot of his brothers were functioning alcoholics. My father and both of his brothers were functioning a. Both of my brothers and I, and my younger cousin have all entered the rooms of sobriety. The first thing I was ever addicted to was probably pretend mm-hmm you know, I was always looking for some sort of an escape you know, and the first piece of shame I ever felt was before I went to school. I was shamed out of like, you know, trying my mom's clothes on or walking around in my sister's shoes or grabbing a pair of dangly earrings that I wanted to wear, you know, clip-ons and that was the first time I really remember somebody saying you can't do that. It's not normal. You know, and. Life life went on. Right. And as a young gay kid who didn't quite understand what that even really was or what to do with it, but I knew it wasn't okay. You know, based on what other people were saying that it, that really led to a lot of the icks and isms kind of cropping. in how I acted and reacted to things. I'm also like five foot three on a good day. So that was the next thing that people made me feel badly about was. You know, my height and weirdly enough, that one projects all the way into adult gay hood where, like that became a trigger for me where like, people would be like, oh, well, he's cute, but he's too short, you know? So I didn't really drink in high school or any of the, like, I really was a late bloomer when it came to my actual addiction taking off When I went to college, I didn't have a thing. You know, there were jocks, there were brainy acts. So my thing was I'm shorter than all of you people, but I can drink everybody under the table. Mm-hmm and I was a throw up, piss your pants, blackout, pass out, kind of drunk. and it was sloppy because I could never predict what order those things were gonna happen in. So some nights were more embarrassing than others You know, and I just went all in, you know, like I drank as much as I could. And. I also was Bingy right. So I would like drink and get really messy for a while and then kind of pull my shit together and then drink and get messy for a while and pull my shit together. And then like somewhere in the middle of sophomore year, I realized if I continue like this, I'm not getting out of here. So I better like. Pull this together. My parents had gone bankrupt, so I kind of had to manage myself better and work and get a job and, and all sorts of stuff. So I was able to kind of pull together Was also where sort of my coming out sort of starts happening as I'm returning from college and working in Manhattan and, you know, answering the back of the village voice ads. And if you're not from this area that was like the 900 numbers or the 9 76 numbers and beginning to explore like this secret world of like hooking up with people randomly. Right. Because I grew up in the seventies, eighties and. As a 52 year old male, you know it wasn't okay to come out, right. At least not in my family. I didn't think it was gonna be. So all of my gay experiences were very sort of Cy and sort of backdoor and behind the scenes kind of experiences. Which was a really good parlay into the world of drugs and alcohol, right? Like that was CD and, and, and mysterious. But like, I was a terrible drinker because I mean, I was really good at it, but I was terrible at handling what happened when I was drunk. Right. So two DWIs, both of which I was driving 45 minutes in the opposite direction of where I was. it's a miracle. I didn't kill myself or somebody else. And that's those moments where I have to go back in my story and go, that was a power greater than myself keeping me alive. Mm-hmm and you know, like I go to dollar drink night when they had those such things, right. And spend like$40. That's not a good sign. I'm sure. Some of it was tips. Yeah. But probably not a whole lot. And then, you know, moving into, going out in the city I was introduced to the world of club drugs. Yeah, which were great, cuz they like the after effects weren't as bad. It felt so much better, but I'm an addict. So I would take it from like, you know, one ecstasy and a little bit of K and going to one place. and being home at a semi reasonable time in the morning to I needed an extra pill and more this, because I had to go to another club, you know, and to the point where I was like, hallucinating that everybody in the club knew a choreographed routine. Mm-hmm and I was the only one that didn't know

Steve: 7:46

it oh, no, that sounds like a nightmare. I thought it was hysterical.

Mark: 7:51

Mm-hmm you know, and Right, because that's what I do. I take it too far and, and, you know and somebody at that time, when I was living in Manhattan, introduced me to crystal meth and I said, yes. And you know, that was a big part of that was a trap door. It was a secret passage way to the conservatory that I was not expecting. It was a moment where I. Oh my God, because it silenced all the crazy better than anything I had ever put in my body before that I never felt that good. I never felt so sexy. Right? Like I had all this, you know, internal shitty feeling about myself. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't hot enough. I wasn't this enough, but like, if we were all on an even playing field in high, like I walked into that room, like I was like king Dick, and I was gonna be in charge of everything. And you're gonna put this CD on and change that porn to this. And that lube is crap. Let's go. We're gonna fix this right now. I was like the Martha Stewart of like, you know sexual encounters on crystal meth. You know, and when I li I lived in San Francisco for a little bit after, you know, I started and I started out really sort of nonchalant quietly, little bit here, a little bit there, and soon enough it was pushing into the week I lost a job and I showed up at the like, Vest meeting high as a fucking kite. And they were like, are you doing drugs? Cuz we'll get you help. And I was like, how dare you? you know, fast forward I came home. I tried to do it again. I stayed clean for a year, but the minute somebody asked me and I think the dangerous thing about this was I began to draw these boxes and put these parameters around my use. That would keep me. Safe and allow me to use without going overboard. And I have to say surprisingly enough for a large part of that time, I actually stayed within those boxes. And at this point I was binging for like six months on six months off, six months on six months off. And the third winter that I went to do this, it just got really fucking sloppy. The wheels came off the. And I just got caught, you know, and luckily my family decided that they were no longer gonna cosign my bullshit. And my brother who was luckily 10 years sober at the time, showed up and was like, I'm here to tell you, you gotta leave the house because mom and dad don't want you here anymore. Now we can fix this. If you'll do what I tell you to do, you know, and. I'm I'm grateful that I just kind of sat down and said, okay, you know, and I had had physical bottoms, you know, coming home from San Francisco, weighing like 85 pounds being green. I'd had financial bottoms in running out of money and tapping everybody. I knew. You know, I've had, I had emotional bottoms where I was like, I'm so tired of this, but it wasn't until that morning after running, like I knew the jig was up that weekend, cuz family members had kind of tried to contact me. So I decided I was gonna shut off the phone and go until I ran out of gas, drugs, and money. Luckily, I ran out of them in the opposite border so I ran out of gas last. I managed to get home first, you know, and I listened to a voicemail after I turned on the phone and it was my mom. You know, the one person who my entire life had always loved me unconditionally, no matter what. And the message said, you fucking, you dirty motherfucker. That's what she called me. You dirty motherfucker. Get out of my house. I'm done. And that was the moment where I realized I had become something I could no longer tolerate. It was a spiritual bottom. Right, right. You know, and I have to have that in order to really do step one and realize that I have to surrender. So that was the end.

Steve: 12:47

Yeah. And in some ways it's kind of the beginning. I mean, what was it like getting sober from there and staying sober so long. Right.

Mark: 12:53

So I went to rehab and I didn't know how it worked, so I just went there for the interview and they were like, there's a bed for you. And I was like, okay, we'll be back tomorrow. And she was like, no, sweetie, that's not other sparks. So I remember going out to the waiting room and saying to my brother, Dennis I think I need to stay here. And he was like, are you sure? He was like, yeah. As long as you could bring my stuff back. I think so then of course, I got like up to the hospital ward and like sat on the crinkly rubber mattress and was like, maybe I could just stay here for like three days and like, then go to the drew dealer's house and stay there. And that night they brought an AA meeting in and I swear the speaker was brought in just for me. I think that that was sort of the first place I decided to drop some of my will and listen, and try to make the best of it. Right. You know? And, and that's what it became. So I went from inpatient to outpatient. I got humble real quick because I had no place to live. and when my brother came, I was like, well, you own a building. You could let me have an apartment. Mm-hmm And he was like no, but my wife and I'll let you move in to our house, you know? And I was like, okay. And I'm grateful for that because it taught me how to be part of a family unit. Again, mm-hmm where I was having dinner with my brother and his wife and their kids. You know, I had. Been in retail for a really long time. And when I got out of rehab I had started prior to rehab, a teaching program for alternate route, which I had to abandon. I worked with my brother in real estate and I just kept saying like, I wanted to go back to that. So. You know, I got my first teaching job in sobriety. I got my, all my certifications in sobriety. I did my 90 and 90. I got a sponsor. I became active you know, in AA and CMA and you know, it was, it was good. It was great. Right. It was harder to go to gay meetings for me. The only way I knew how to relate to other gay men, particularly attractive gay men was like high with, you know, sort of all the barriers knocked down for me. Right. Like where I didn't have to think about what you were thinking about me. And that was a challenge for me. It was hard for me to connect with people in the rooms. beyond like my sponsor in a very small group of, of sober buddies. You know, and I got to my first year and kind of abandoned the rooms of CMA first because I was uncomfortable and stuck with AA for another like six months. And then I moved and, you know, became inconvenient to go to meetings. And by the grace of God stayed sober. Right. You know, because my thinking kicked in almost immediately, because being my own sponsor, bad idea, totally bad idea. And after my dad passed away which was amazing because we like had this amazing ability to rebuild this relationship to the point where you. When I was in San Francisco on nine 11 calling home to find out if everybody was okay, he was like screaming and yelling at me and telling me, you know, you're probably sitting your ass on everything you can. And to me, walking into the hospital and him grabbing my hand and saying, oh, I'm so glad it's you that's here today. You know, and I sat with him when he, when he died. You know, and that's a gift of sobriety for me. Right. You know? But I did go back to those rooms and I went back to CMA meetings and I was a different person and I was ready to connect and I was ready to throw myself into service. And I began doing service and sponsoring people, you know, and, you know, chairing meetings and sharing at meetings and just getting back in the middle of the boat, you know, and there's nothing. there's nothing better than talking to somebody who understands from the insider's point of view. You know, and, and that's been great, you know, and through my recovery and doing all the step work and helping other people, you know, I was at a, a conference where a friend was going to a. A workshop on trauma. And I was like, I'll come and support you. And all of a sudden this woman is talking and I'm like, oh, I have trauma. Right. And I don't, you know, I think sometimes we think of trauma as these like huge experiences, but like I was hearing this trauma of the way my dad would talk to us or the way my mom would keep secrets or. The way we were all kept in line. There are eight kids, you know, all the friends you'll ever need are around this table. You don't need anybody else, which I became interested to find out how did that stuff play out in my life? And is it holding me back somewhere? Right. And that stuff that didn't get covered in my step work. But therapy came into my life at 13 years sober and has been an amazing tool, you know? So I love that I get to remain teachable in this program, you know, and that at six, 15 years sober, I just, I, I got to put a name on certain feelings of anxiety and depression, you know, and looking at those and, you know, you know, that's a whole nother layer to the

Steve: 18:48

whole. Yeah. And with so many gifts of sobriety, what would you say your favorite part of being sober is

Mark: 18:56

that I am present for everything that happens in my life. Now that I am, I went from you are the youngest. You don't get a say to. Everybody wants me to fix all of their problems in my family. Mm-hmm you know And it's interesting because being the youngest and sober, I have such a different perspective looking up at the bunch I call them, cuz they're all sort of clustered together and I'm pretty far behind and knowing like what the program has done for me and my relationships and just wanting to be like, oh, you could use this. You really, you know, you could probably use.

Steve: 19:42

Yeah. And I know we, we, you spoke a little bit about how, when you were younger, some of like your first feelings of, you know, shame were regarding gender and sexuality. I mean, how did those feelings develop or you feel play a role in your addiction?

Mark: 19:56

I think that that whole idea of shame and hiding. And leading to acting out sexually in a very CD sort of way. Definitely made that transition into, you know, alcoholism, you know, took that away. Right. So when I started drinking, I didn't feel bad about feeling different. Mm-hmm you know I needed alcohol to go to my first gay bar. Mm-hmm cause that was the only thing that made me comfortable. Same with when I started using drugs, right. I couldn't go to the Roxy, you know, scrawny old me, you know, but boy did that ecstasy make me not give a shit about who was there and who was looking. And I would go into my own little world, you know, like I needed that substance just to be around other gay people. And I really do believe that it's from that like guilt and shame that I felt around it for so long.

Steve: 21:02

Yeah. And how, how would you say that that's evolved or changed with the way you feel about our community and your place in it now that you're sober?

Mark: 21:08

I think that in that world, this, so like I've learned to have intimate relationships with gay men that have nothing to do with sex. It's not transactional. It has nothing to do with what I can offer you with my body. It has everything to do with what I can offer you with what my journey has been mm-hmm So it has definitely changed my perception of my place in the gay culture and gay society, you know, and I don't know, I've grown into my daddy phase, you know, I, I'm a man of a certain age you know and you know, I, I love that. I have people who look to me as sort of like a den mother mm-hmm so to speak. Whereas, you know, Before I got sober. I couldn't find my place here. Mm-hmm like, I just couldn't find my place here. And I think so the best thing about recovery, you know, there's is like letting go and. Letting things play out and find their way. Like I don't proverbially always have to be that kid in the corner, trying to shove the square peg in the round hole. Mm-hmm like, I find that like things fit naturally. When I just kind of take the next right actions and, and keep going. Right. Mm-hmm yeah. You know, I have to be a fucking knucklehead and try to make everything happen.

Steve: 22:52

yeah. And in terms of keeping yourself accountable, like, what are some practices you, you use in your daily life to keep you?

Mark: 23:00

So staying connected to my sponsor is important. You know, using my sober network. Is always really key. You know, I try to make sure that my sober network is also diverse and like, and I don't mean just like people with different lengths of time, people who come from different backgrounds, different colors, different ethnicities, races gender identities ages. Newly sober, sober long term, you know, like I need a variety of voices in my life to help me understand the world around us and the world as it is. Right. So keeping that sober tribe alive, active and vibrant is really important to me. Working with my Spees, you know, like right now, both of my Spees have time and I don't really interact with them as much as I would like to, but like, you know, that means like, okay, so am I ready to take on a newcomer again? You know, like, am I at that level? You know? And I also go to therapy and, you know, See mental health practitioners which has become a really good tool of sobriety, like finding someone who specializes in like gay recovery therapy has made a huge difference for me in, in long term sobriety, where I find, I want to try to dig a little bit deeper under the surface you know, beyond the step work.

Steve: 24:33

Yeah. And one question I always love hearing the answer from cuz we all have different favorite mantras or quotes. Do you have a favorite one that you live by in recovery?

Mark: 24:43

I think it's definitely, it sounds corny, but it's the let go. Let God mm-hmm like Jesus. Take the wheel. it is so much better when I'm not in the driver's seat. Mm-hmm it really, really is the best things that have come to me in my sobriety, whether it be, you know going back to school or getting a new job or becoming an elementary school principal or changing jobs, which I just did recently after, you know, eight years in the same position. I literally did my part kind of let go of it. And then all of a sudden, like it's like a roadmap that just starts sort of unfolding in front of you. And like, I know that when that feel like there's this feeling that comes with it, that it's like, okay, let me take these steps and see where this goes. you know, if I am like, again, that kid trying to shove the square peg in the round hole and be like, I want this job opportunity and it needs to work out or, you know, it's not gonna work. Mm-hmm you know? So for me that is, it's the saying that proves itself to be correct the

Steve: 26:00

most. Yeah. I, I agree. It's definitely a good one and a classic for a reason. Yeah. Oh, definitely. Thank you for sticking around. We can keep on talking all day and we actually will talk for a little bit longer. We're gonna head on over to our Patreon feed in a moment, but for now, why don't we let the listeners know where they can find you maybe on Instagram?

Mark: 26:22

Sure. On Instagram I am. Hey Marco eight. That's a G Y M a R K O. Number eight.

Steve: 26:30

Excellent. Sounds good. Well, thank you so much for being on market. It's a pleasure again, to know you.

Mark: 26:35

thank you so much. I'm really grateful to be here and I'm happy to be able to share my

Steve: 26:38

experience. Yes. And thank you listeners for tuning into another episode of gay. A you can make sure you follow us wherever you're listening so you can get new episodes when they come out every Thursday. And you can also head on over to our Patreon page for an exclusive after show. I'm about to record with mark as well as post shows every week. You can do that by going to www dot Patreon dot. Back slash GAA podcast. Thank you so much. And until next time, stay sober friends.