You Won't Always Feel Like This ft. Roger

Steve welcomes Roger to share his experience, strength, and hope while they discuss living sober in the queer community.

Thank you for listening. Please join our Patreon family for the post-show, along with more exclusive content at www.Patreon.com/gAyApodcast

Find Roger on Facebook at Roger Harrison and follow us on Facebook and Instagram while you are at it  @gAyApodcast.

You can also check out his website, https://waystosobriety.com/

If you are interested in sharing your story, getting involved with the show, or just saying hi, please e-mail me at gayapodcast@gmail.com 

Transcript

Steve: 0:03

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Gay A, a podcast about sobriety for the LGBT plus community and our allies. I'm your host, Steve Bennet- Martin. I am an alcoholic and addict, and I am grateful for all the exciting opportunities for growth I'm finding on Udemy. As of this recording, I am 848 days sober. And today we are welcoming a guest to share their experience, wisdom, and hope with you. This recovery coach and counselor is joining us from across the pond, and I can't wait to get to know them better. Welcome,

Roger: 0:30

Roger. Hi, hi, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be part of this. Yes,

Steve: 0:37

well, thank you for reaching out. Why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners since this is your first appearance here?

Roger: 0:43

So, my name's Roger and I'm an alcoholic. I've been in recovery for 27 years and I've been sober for 24 years. And I live in Manchester in the north of England where our weather is quite a lot more damp and gloomy than some of the weather you're certainly having in Florida where this has been hosted from. I am 55. I'm in a civil partnership. I've been married for seven years. And I've got sort of two, two jobs, really. One is I'm a senior lecturer in public health at a university, and I do that part time. And that allows me to spend the rest of my time as a counselor, but increasingly, I'm getting more involved as a recovery coach, and in the wider recovery movement beyond AA.

Steve: 1:36

That's excellent. And what would you say is your favorite part of being in recovery today?

Roger: 1:41

Well, I think being in recovery today, the favorite... And Pardis, what you and the people listening can't see is, even though behind me, it looks as if there's a nice piece of wallpaper. I'm literally sat in my kitchen, in the middle of decorating the house. So that is the only piece of wallpaper that's on the wall. There is a pasting table, there are toolboxes. All around, we've got a window that's part boarded up, that's why it's a bit dark, and I'm completely okay with that. Excellent. And what would you For me, that

Steve: 2:16

is recovery. That is recovery, yes. And what would you say is your favorite part of being gay or part of the queer community

Roger: 2:22

today? over the years I've seen a lot change, and of course there's a hell of a lot more that needs to change, but I think what I like being part of is, certainly the people that I'm able to mix with is the idea of different ages coming together. And as an older gay man I don't choose to go drinking and things like that, but there's a whole host of sober social opportunities I can take part in, where there'll be younger people, middle aged people, my age people, older people than me people. And I think we've got a real zest for, being more inclusive, but also having more variety and wanting to mix with. with different individuals and pushing some of the boundaries of society as well. Because I think, we've got that great opportunity to do that. Yeah, we

Steve: 3:13

certainly do. I know that between being queer and sober, those are like my two favorite things. And they used to be like the two biggest things I struggle with. So it's like kind of leaning into that. Well, why don't we jump into sharing a little bit about what your journey with alcohol and addiction was like?

Roger: 3:29

Well, it's always important, isn't it, to reflect on, where, where I've come from, and even though it's been a good few years since I last had alcohol, and hopefully, you know, it'll be another good few years before I never touch it I grew up in a very loving family, a very supportive family, and we didn't particularly have much money. But both my parents worked very hard. I had a sister a few years older than me. We lived in a little village on the other side of England in Leeds, which is about a hundred miles from Manchester, where I am now. And my mum and dad sort of liked to party, but certainly never was and has never been any over use of alcohol. They were never into drugs and there were no other sort of problems associated with addictive substances or uses. So, I'm a bit of an outlier in our family in terms of that. Not only the only gay person in our family that we know of, but I'm also sort of like an outlier. I'm the only addict, really. I'm the only one who's had considerable mental health problems over the years. I suppose I'm saying that because... I know some people, come from families where their upbringing has been, they've been surrounded by drugs and alcohol. For me, it wasn't like that at all. And in fact, that was a bit of a late starter in one sense. I didn't really start Drinking more than the odd sip of, of wine or beer or lager, it, it wasn't really until I hit sort of 16, 17, 18, when I started using alcohol. And before that, I used the self harm. That was... one of the ways in which I dealt with some of my emotional world. But then I discovered alcohol and as I got a little bit older, my parents encouraged me to go out. I was incredibly shy. I didn't really have any friends. I didn't speak to people. And they kept on encouraging me to go to the pub. So for an alcoholic, in the making. Some people might think, wow, your parents were encouraging you to drink, but at that point they're trying to get me to go and socialize and, and just be a bit more around how other people my own age were in the village. And when I say village, I have to use that term carefully, I guess, because we have the gay village, but this was like a town village, a geography village. And I still remember that when, whenever I used to go out, That, I always came home very drunk, and even though some of my other friends were doing that, I was the one who would be falling in the ditch, or getting home. And I remember once, was one Christmas Eve, And the next day, somebody came round to the house, and he'd picked up my clothing that I'd been dropping as I'd been finding my way home from the pub, back to where we lived. Probably, I don't know, a sober walk of ten minutes, but I'm sure I took quite a different route. And I don't know how he knew it was my clothing, but there was just bits of clutter that I'd sort of dropped along the way. And, I suppose at the time it was sort of quite funny and, you know, oh, you had a good time last night and up to antics and things like that. But what happened for me, and I suppose it does for all addicts really, was that those behaviors. were increasing, whereas the friends around me, those behaviors started to reduce, so they were, starting to develop other interests and relationships and things like that. Whereas for me, if I went out, there was only one reason I went out and I went out to get pissed. I didn't understand really the sense of going out and having a few drinks. and having fun. To me, well, no, if I'm going out, I'm just going to go out to get absolutely wasted. A Northern term for, for blackout, I guess, when you're wasted, you're in a blackout. So to start with, I didn't particularly get in much trouble. In a sense of, I wasn't in trouble with the police when I was 18 or anything like that. I bummed around and mucked up a couple of careers. I left school early, and eventually I had a stern talking to from my mum, in particular, that I should think about going to university. And university just really scared me because it meant being around groups of people. And my sister had been to university and she was very clever and I didn't think that I had, you know, anything about me. But anyway, I went. And in the halls of residence, I think there was 14 of us on the floor, 14 guys. I was older, a few years older than the others, and they were still at that stage of going out, getting drunk. And for them, it sort of lasted a few weeks until their money ran out. Whereas for me, it carried on to the point of I found it was just easier to have a bottle of vodka while I was in my dormitory room. On my own because it was easier. So it was just all is very much around wanting the effect of alcohol rather than this whole idea of it being part of having a social evening. When I left university, I went to London and I sort of, I started to come out, you know, to tell a few people I was gay when I was in my last year at university, but a lot of my drinking was very much associated with. Fear of my sexuality and self hatred internalized homophobia, which was so internalized It took me a long time to actually realize that I even had it But I knew I just hated, I hated gay people But I knew I was gay and I hated me for being gay and I hated other gay people because they reminded me of being gay So it was all that sort of, you know, mixed up, pretty textbook sort of scenario really, I guess And then I moved from London up to Manchester, I'd met a guy and we were in a relationship. And I wouldn't say it was fuelled by alcohol, but the way I dealt with things in the relationship was by using alcohol. So if there were uncomfortable feelings or... If there were things that needed to be said instead of discussing things, I would just find a reason to go and get drunk. And I spent a lot of money taking him away on holiday, because going away on holiday justifies getting drunk. Because what else do you do at the airport when you get pissed, don't you, at 9 o'clock in the morning while you're waiting to check in? So we had a lot of weekends away. I came to realise it was just another way of justifying my drinking. When I was 27, I think I was 27, around that time I had a housemate. And he was training to be a counsellor, and he was the first person ever to question my drinking. And he said I just drank so fast when we went out, and that I wasn't pleasurable to be around. He actually told me that I wasn't a nice person to be around when I was drinking. So I kicked him out. That's how I dealt with that, you know. I didn't want to hear what he was saying. Carried on and then I thought well actually things are getting a bit bad and I was getting to that stage where The the alcohol wasn't doing what it used to do. It wasn't making me feel numb anymore It wasn't making me Get away from what was going on inside my head anymore It was just causing so much or leading me to so much more misery So I went to an AA AA meetings. I don't know why I knew about AA, nobody had ever told me about AA, and the only thing I can think of is Cagney and Lacey, and the fact that it appears in the telephone directory. Now you and a lot of other people won't know what a telephone directory is, but we used to have a, a huge book. Everybody had one in their home delivered to them that had all the telephone numbers of the county that they lived in. And the first number listed in that is Alcoholics Anonymous. So as a kid, I just think I must have read that at some point and internalized it. And I went to a few meetings and I sat there. It was, I went to an LGBT meeting. Manchester is fantastic. It was one of the first outside London to have an LGBT meeting. And now we've got five, four or five LGBT meetings every week in Manchester. So I went to the first few meetings and I heard people say so many lies. They were telling, they were saying that their life was good. And I just thought, how can your life be good? We were in a, it was a Friday night in Manchester, about a quarter of an hour's walk from the gay village in Manchester, which even though I hated the place. It was like my go to, it was like my Mecca. I thought that that's where life was at, even though it wasn't. And these people were saying that their life was brilliant, and it was beyond their wildest dreams, and they've got so many friends, and their phone was always ringing, their social life was amazing. And I just thought, you sad fuckers. Here you are, pretending that your life is great, on a Friday night in what was a pretty rubbish building at the time. And my ego was just so big. I went out after about three weeks and I thought, I can stop drinking on my own, I don't have a problem. So I stopped for about two years, two and a half years. But nothing else changed. I was still hanging around with the same people, going to the same places, still with the same attitudes and expectations. I was, I was quite open with the guys, you know, as often, you know, to me a night out meant getting drunk and ended up in a stranger's bed and not knowing what their name was. It was very much, you know, that type of lifestyle, but I just did it without alcohol. And I got in a relationship and we went on holiday. And the guy drank, but not massively really, I don't suppose, but we went on holiday, and I'd been sober, it was probably about two years, and I used the term sober loosely, I just hadn't drunk alcohol. So we went on holiday, and I call it my Shirley Valentine moment, we were sat on a beach in Sitges, in Spain, near Barcelona, and The waiter came and the next minute there was a glass of sangria in my hand. I don't know how it got there. I don't know where the voice came from to tell that person to bring me a glass of alcohol. Yet I will not forget the look of fear on my boyfriend's face. face at the time when he saw me with a glass of alcohol because he had seen me drunk. So then when he saw me with alcohol and within those two weeks, within two weeks of that, that's that first drink after two years of not drinking, all the, all the things that I'd heard people saying those first few AA meetings started to happen to me because I'd never Lost a job because of drinking, but suddenly my job started to become called into question. I'd never been into trouble, in trouble before because of drinking, while suddenly there were police appearing at my house on an evening and I had no idea why they were there. I nearly lost a hell of a lot of money due to a missale of the house that I had. There was, I, I came down, came home one day and the windows in my house had all been smashed. No idea to this day how that had happened, who had did it, what was behind it. So all those yets that I'd heard people talk about at those AA meetings when I thought everybody was lying and that they were sad losers started to happen. And I came to a realization that that they were actually the people who were living the life that I wanted. And I went back to the same AA meeting, and for the first time I actually spoke to somebody. It was the person in the chair. He's still a friend of mine, still now. I went up to him at the end and I, I sort of still didn't know what AA was. I thought their psychiatrist would come in through the fire door. I thought they hid them and then at the end of the meeting, they would bring the psychiatrist in and he got taken away. I thought that's what would happen, you know. I was so messed up, so full of paranoia. And anyway, he just looked at me with the most angelic eyes. And he just, he took my hand and he just went, Roger, he said, all you need to do is come back next Friday. It was the most simple advice. It was said to me with so much love and care and compassion, and that's what I did. I went back the next Friday, and then I went back the next Friday, and bit by bit I started to talk to other people, and I was given the dishcloth, I was given service, you know, washing pots got me to talk to people because I didn't know how to mix with other people. Eventually I got a sponsor, and when I say eventually, it was about a couple of years before, before I got a sponsor and worked the steps. But I didn't drink from that first proper time when I went. You know, I was, I was lucky in the fact that I never drank since that date. And really, you know, my journey has just gone on from there. I mean, recovery is not a walk in the park, is it? I think, particularly when you come across a newcomer now and they think that, you know, oh, our life is perfect and everything, they don't see how many days or weeks or months, you know, over the time. Just because they've been, you know. Sober for 24, 25 years doesn't mean that life's not incredibly tough at times. And of course it is, you know, I had an attempt on my life 10 years into recovery. And, you know, I get quite bad periods of depression. I'd stopped going to AA and I was going to drink. And I knew that if I drank, I would die. So I was going to kill myself to save me the pain of dying by alcohol. But fortunately. An intervention took place and obviously I didn't, but my recovery journey now is very much, I do more around recovery now than I have ever done. because I want to keep more of what I've got. Yeah. And I always remember some of the people who've been around longer from me, one guy, he's always says to me, he said, you always have to be doing more. Yeah. You always have to be adding more to your recovery. And I really. That, you know, that message is, has been so important for me. So hence now, you know, I've been training to become a recovery coach, training with an organization in America, actually CCAR, and so I've been doing their recovery coach academy training and setting up, you know, as an independent practitioner. I trained to be a counselor a few years ago, so I do counseling, but you know, a lot of my passion is, is, It's just meeting people in recovery and helping them. And because by doing that, I actually get so much back as well, but I need that constant daily reminder and other people, you know, coming to me for help and things remind me that actually, yeah, Roger, you're still, you've still got that same way of thinking. You know, my wires, I, I don't think my, some people say you get rewired. I haven't been rewired, but I've just grown some bypass wires. But if I don't listen to those bypass wires, you know, some of those core, core neurological pathways are still there if I want to listen to them or not. Plus, you know, last week I was taking part in a film about recovery. This week I'm talking to you guys. So when people say, are you, do you not have a boring life? Well, being in a pub every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, night, all day, Sunday, that was boring. You know, doing things like this, this then just becomes interesting and exciting, doesn't it? So, I can talk a lot. Once I found my voice, it took a long time to find it, but once I found it, I certainly did, but hopefully that gives you and your viewers a bit of insight to where I've come from. Yeah,

Steve: 21:17

for sure. I can definitely relate to that kind of self isolation. When I was growing up, I was always happier alone than in a group setting. And then just, how rich our lives can be in recovery when like I thought that it was going to be so boring. What would you say of all the different words of advice that you've heard in the rooms or in recovery have been like one of your two of your favorite

Roger: 21:36

quotes? The one that, that still sticks with me, it was a doctor. My GP who said it to me when I was very depressed and she said you need to remember you won't always feel like this. You won't always feel like this. And that was so important to hold on to, to realize, because when you, when you're in the thick of it, you think that is it, don't you? You do not think that there's going to be any other way of feeling. And the other one is we are worth it. And that includes me. Yeah,

Steve: 22:12

it includes all of us. Yeah, I love both of those. Well, thank you so much. And Roger, if someone was interested in following your reaching out about your recovery coaching, how would they find

Roger: 22:22

you? Well, my website is waste ways to sobriety. com. And on there, I've got my profiles for my and socials and also for my recovery coaching and counseling service. And also I am on. I'm sort of a, still a bit in the dark with social media and things, and people laugh at me when I tell them that I only use Facebook, and apparently Facebook is like, like dinosaurs. So, I'm on Facebook as gosh, what's my social? Oh, I'll have to, I'll have to let you know what it is. I think it's roger underscore manc, M A N C.

Steve: 23:03

I'll double check and put it in the show notes so people can check the show notes for that information. Thank you, Roger. And make sure while you're following Roger, you're also following us while you're at it at Gay A Podcast. For more time with Roger and I, you can head on over to our Patreon page where we're gonna spin the post show topic wheel. Be sure to follow us wherever you're listening so you can get these new episodes every Thursday and tell a friend about us. Until next time, stay sober, friends.

Roger: 23:33

Bye!