1,000 days sober – a milestone that's more than just a number; it's an accomplishment that takes resilience, community, and the power of embracing my authenticity! Join me on this episode as I dive deep into the highs and lows of my journey from addiction to recovery, shedding light on the peaks and valleys along the way, the lessons I've learned, and my hopes for what is to come.
🌈 Reflecting on a Queer Childhood:
Join the conversation by emailing steve@sobersteve.com and become part of our community by becoming a guest, submitting clips, or sharing any of your gifts with the listeners.
1,000 days sober – a milestone that's more than just a number; it's an accomplishment that takes resilience, community, and the power of embracing my authenticity! Join me on this episode as I dive deep into the highs and lows of my journey from addiction to recovery, shedding light on the peaks and valleys along the way, the lessons I've learned, and my hopes for what is to come.
🌈 Reflecting on a Queer Childhood:
Join the conversation by emailing steve@sobersteve.com and become part of our community by becoming a guest, submitting clips, or sharing any of your gifts with the listeners.
Hey, super Sober Heroes, it's your host, sober Steve, the podcast guy, here with 999 days of sobriety and I am grateful for each and every single one of them. And today I am happy to announce we are kicking off phase two of the GPU or, as I'm calling it, the gay podcast universe, which I just thought was very clever when I made that up. Also, if you're watching live, you'll see that I have a face tattoo because we my husband and I did the no hate campaign photo shoot yesterday up in St Pete's. So if you're catching me with the no hate tattoo on my face live, that is the story behind that. But yeah, I had a great, amazing week, so I'll get into that before we get into the topic of this week's episode, which is my origin story, as I reflect back on what will be tomorrow when this goes on all the podcasting platforms a thousand days of sobriety, which is very exciting, and I am grateful for each and every single one of these days that I've woken up Sober. I couldn't even imagine when I first started this journey and first started this podcast you know, 90 days seemed like it was impossible, a hundred days, and now that I'm at a thousand, it just the amount that's changed between now and then back then, and what can change going forward with another thousand. I'm very excited for it, taking it one day at a time, of course, but this past week I also have been again continuing to live this great new perspective of an outlook on life. That's been really rewarding for me.
Speaker 1:I have ventured outside of just my sober communities that I've been hiding in for the past couple years and I'm getting out into the real world in Sarasota and it's been very lovely getting to know more people through. I joined a kickball league which, again six months ago, even being sober, I had all these rules around what my life could or should be like involving me not being athletic or sporty or a group activity person or a gay social club person or all these different rules but decided to try it and I haven't played kickball yet. So far it's just been the social parts. Our first pickup game where we learn the rules and everything is on Friday, but I'm pretty sure I know which way to run around the basis, so we'll be okay on that and then also spending a lot of time with church between doing drag race on Fridays and you know that I'm in the right church, when that's how we spend our Friday nights is watching drag race with our pastor and his wife and a whole bunch of queer people watching it on the big screen, as well as Saturday. This past Saturday we had game night and then Sunday we had service, and it's just wild that I spent three days in a row in church, like having fun and enjoying it again when I normally wouldn't have so as great and as warm and safe as the sober spaces that I've found over the past 1000 days have been. It's been really exciting for the past 90 to 120 days, so exploring and realizing that there are some pretty cool, amazing people out there that aren't sober and in recovery that are also worth getting to know. So that's been fun, and I've also been out there rebranding out in the public and online as a sober Steve, the podcast guy, since all the different business names I was trying on never really fit right and everyone either knows me as sober Steve or they know me as the podcast guy or a mix of boats. So it's been really helpful just with getting my name out there with people, especially locally in Sarasota, where I have been hiding a little bit more of the past few years, knowing that I can help if you're sober but stuck or if you need or want to make a podcast. So with that, it helps me focus on the podcast stuff here.
Speaker 1:I'm very excited for what's to come in phase two. I have been experimenting the past couple episodes, as you've seen, having more guests on per episode so it's not just a one-on-one interview for the full episode. I'm trying to get multiple perspectives so that it is more of a community shown, a community effort. I have this amazing group of people that I've met through podcasting, as well as more than I'm sure I will continue to meet through this beautiful sober journey that I'm on, and so anyone who finds me along the way is more than welcome to come on and contribute their thoughts and their feelings and their voice to the different messages that we'll be talking about each week about living life queer and sober and what that means for us sober heroes. So I'll get more into that later and how you can get involved, but I'm just very excited for things to come and, as we are looking ahead, why not take a thousand days sober as a chance for me to also reflect back?
Speaker 1:I know that one of this podcast first came out on my 90 days sober, I did like my first ever qualification or share on here, and then I've done some check-in episodes along the way, along various milestones of recapping or sharing my experience. But between now and being on video for the first time ever, as well as me being a little bit more unfiltered in the way that I'm delivering the message, I thought that it might be fun for me to take this opportunity to introduce myself to anyone who's newer or hasn't heard my story recently or has heard it before a million times and is ready to hear it from a new lens. So my childhood I always say that I was an alcoholic long before I had my first drink and I've been looking more into what that means and like where it might have come from, because I was just like well, that's how it happens and that's great. But I've really been looking at recently just the fact that I grew up not only feeling like different from being like a young queer kid, with just feeling innately weird and like often being told you know certain mannerisms that I had, I had to like tone it down or not to talk that way, or that I can't play with this toy or that toy because of gender rules and things like that that I know many of us have gone through.
Speaker 1:But one thing that I also went through with my parents is I grew up, you know, with the idea that anything that we have could be taken away from us at any moment. My parents, I would say, in like an average week, five of those nights, involved like all out knockdown, screaming matches about finances, about not having enough finances, about where the next meal might come from, about how much money my mom spent of my dad's money that he was working hard to make, and about how much of a drain having my brother and I were on their finances and how things would have been just so much better if they only had one of us, or even better if they had neither of us. And it was constantly this like scarcity mindset of you know, if you like something you better hold onto it because it might be taken away from you at any moment. It was very wild to learn in high school when my friends like started pointing out to me that I was upper middle class, that my parents actually like never were gonna run out of money, that they never were not gonna put food on the table for my brother and I. It really was just their mindset about money, that like, even though they always had a comfortable amount, even though there was always green in the account, like it was about that they just always wanted more and never had enough.
Speaker 1:And I guess that's the behavior that was modeled for me, because anything that I found that I enjoyed, like I always wanted more of it because I was afraid that it might go away. You know, it was always with books. I had to like read as many books as I could so that I can like get more from the bookstore, because what if I can never go to the bookstore again? Like if it was candy I wanted to get like the biggest bag of candy, because what if we can't get more candy again? Something that I was taught to me subconsciously. I know that they didn't purposefully and like intentionally try and be like this is the message we're gonna send to our children. But I definitely grew up like worry that if I liked something or wanted something like, I had to have it right now because it might be taken away from me tomorrow. And it is just funny finding out that like there so many people out there who had so many more like actual, real financial struggles where they were like living on ramen or like parents were really struggling, that it is really like I've had to, you know, let go of some resentments, or I'm actively working a lot of times on letting go of some of the resentments towards the environment in which I grew up and in the people in it, just because I knew that that wasn't their intention. But it is wild that like people lived much happier, fuller lives, like without that scarcity mindset, who are much more hard off. It's just the way that they, you know, were raised and have chosen to continue to live their lives.
Speaker 1:And then you add in the fact that, as I've mentioned in the past in some of my solo episodes, sexual trauma is also a huge part of my history and my childhood. I was from an older cousin at family gatherings, so for the longest time I thought that it was actually part of the punishment. So I grew up feeling like not only like might I be get molested if I misbehave at a family gathering, but that like it also led to later on, the whole sex is bad thing, which I know a lot of us were already struggling with, with the way that we were dealing with our sexuality. So, with all of that, like I always wanted to escape. I didn't want to be here. It wasn't very it didn't always feel like the best place in the world right now, like when I was younger, it was very scary.
Speaker 1:There were lots of times growing up where I realized, like in the lens of 20, in the 2020s, when, like, mental health is more of a thing. I remember when I transitioned from third to fourth grade, my parents moved me from public school to Catholic school for like various reasons that they thought were for the best. But, like as a fourth grader, like I was so severely depressed that I was like having meltdowns every single morning and like being in the nurses office all day and like crying all afternoon for like months on end and no one was like, hey, this child might have depression, which is interesting, but I just like I didn't handle life and I didn't handle change. Well, I always wanted to just run away and escape, because the world always felt scary around me, and the first time that I had alcohol as a kid, it was at a family gathering where I was handed a beer and I was like, oh, that's disgusting. But again, like, right before I handed it back to my uncle, I still took another gulp, which, like most things, I mean, if it was broccoli and you handed me a broccoli and I took a bite of it and I was like, oh, I would hand it back to you, no problem.
Speaker 1:But something about alcohol like with a beer, even knowing that it tasted disgusting there was a part of me that was like but you should have some more before you pass it back, and I always thought that it was because I was too young at the time. So every year, like around or on my birthday, I would break into my grandmother's liquor cabinet and try the old gin in her cabinet that was as old as I was, to see if it all of a sudden magically tasted good. Spoiler alert never tasted good, but that's also because it was straight gin and I was not seasoned or prepared for that or expecting that. So I didn't really like drink through high school until I got to my prom and I've shared before how great of a social experience that was after having been bullied and tormented and made, felt like othered and teased, and like even the beginning of my senior year, like when I had been outed and attempted suicide and everything like it wasn't a great environment at school. And all of a sudden my after prom, everyone's laughing and cheering about how fun Steve is because Steve can drink so much and Steve is so funny. And look at Steve's smoke pot and like, look at all the stuff that Steve's doing. We didn't know Steve could party like that.
Speaker 1:And all of a sudden like I felt like I had arrived with these people and felt part of a community in a way that I never had before, like in high school or in elementary or junior high school that I could remember I was always very isolated between the geographic location of having like everyone from my high school being from all over Long Island and being 20, 30 minutes away with parents who had never drive 20 minutes to drop me off at a friend's house because that was too far for them and they were too busy for that. So I didn't really have a lot of connections and being able to have those I always like kind of painted that as like my aha, like this is the great moment that I was chasing, but only recently in my for my leather and kink meeting that I've been frequently lately, when I examined it through the lens of like sex that I also realized. Like after that night like ended where everyone was like in love with you know, steve, the drinking smoking pot, fun, awesome guy. Like I went back with my prom date at the time, ricky and I was horrible to him in the bedroom, like it was the first point we had gotten to a certain point in our relationship romantically and he didn't live up to my expectations and I let him know about that and a very rude way and it was very not cute. And it just goes to show that like right from that first drunk, like I could either look at that first half of the night where I was having the time of my life, but like, if I actually look at the full picture, it almost always ended with some sort of heartbreak or trauma generally that I was inflicting upon someone else. Rarely, you know, occasionally it happened to me as well, which was always awful, but more often than not I was the one causing the trauma in my wake right from the beginning, which was interesting to be able to realize and reflect on. I know that that certainly set up a pattern of behaviors that came from that into college.
Speaker 1:My first goal right away was finding a guy who was old enough to buy me alcohol, no matter how great or not great he was towards me or for me and so we were in a tumultuous relationship that eventually got me thrown out of school or not thrown out. I was like discharged a little bit early and was able to finish my finals from home before doing that from home was a thing and went to semester in person while like locally on Long Island, while I was living with my grandmother, before venturing back up to SUNY Albany where I ended up graduating with my psych degree. But throughout that college experience it was a lot of either me being in relationships with guys who would supply or provide my drinking habits or, if I was single, a lot of promiscuity and floating from one like nowadays they would call it situation ship to another where I might be with someone for three weeks or five weeks or six weeks, but like never too close. It was always like right away. If I remember correctly, we were like always like saying I love you within, like the first or second week, which was wild now because, like I know that that's not how love works Like for me with those situations it was just I love the way that they made me feel and I was an addict and so I wanted as much of them as I could until things got difficult or weird and then I was done with them and it was on to the next one, which also isn't very cute.
Speaker 1:Occasionally they would stick around and those would be the relationships of people that I would spend more time causing trouble for or tormenting with my selfishness and my drinking, and it kind of went through that over and over again, like through New York into my early twenties. I know that as I became of age and able to buy my own alcohol, it became easier for me to drink. So I started dating guys younger that thought how much I drank was cool rather than alarming, like the older guys that I generally was attracted to like started pointing out that I didn't drink so great. So I needed to find younger guys who didn't know better. And they kept on going until the point that I was, you know, 25 and miserable and I did my first geographic down to Florida because I was in a situation where I was having lots of promiscuous sex.
Speaker 1:I was drinking to the point of blacking out almost every single night and I knew that my grandmother was very sick and was on hospice and it wouldn't be too long for this world, and so I thought that I would run away from it all to Florida, and it just shows that I learned real quickly that you can't really run away from your problems. I mean, within a month or two of my moving down here, not only did she pass, which we all expected at that point, but I also had my HIV diagnosis and I also had my first DUI and so, like those three things happened within a month of each other and within two months of me moving down here, which was quite a lot. But I did adjust. You know, I did start getting medical help right away, so I've been undetectable now for over 12 years and I did all the DUI stuff which scared me enough into. I mean, when they sent me to meetings I was like this is horrible, because they didn't teach me how to get away with it next time. So I didn't really listen to the message, but it did scare me enough where my drinking was under a little bit more control, using that loosely like for a little while, but not really great, like it.
Speaker 1:Just, rather than being an everyday occurrence, it went from just whenever it did happen. It was. It was not great. I never knew when to stop, there was never just one. It was happening less frequently after the DUI, which gave me a chance to like work on my health and get myself settled down here in a more meaningful way.
Speaker 1:I mean, there were still some relationships along the way that that weren't the best for me, but eventually I realized that and I ended up spending some time, some months, living with my parents, not really drinking at all, getting into physical shape, taking care of myself, and I was like in a really good place where I wasn't looking for the next hire, the next stronger, the next relationship. And that's, of course, when I met my now husband, steven. You know, meeting, thinking that you know, maybe it'll start as a friendship, and it turned into much more, much quicker. But it happened in a way where it was the first time where it was because I was choosing to be with him rather than like I felt like I needed to be with someone, whoever it was. So that was cool. But of course, as we go out and we start doing things around places with alcohol, I start drinking and we realize that it's not exactly like improved over my past few, few months, or you know, of working on myself while living with my parents that when I do drink still, even after a six month hiatus, it's still pretty bad and we continue to try and manage it and you can't manage the unmanageable.
Speaker 1:It progressed as the years went on and I had always tried to say that I will moderate, like in time, because at one point our plan was to, you know, get married, then get the house, then have a kid and then, you know, have our family. That way, and as we were going through a pending adoption, that ended up being too much for us as well as the world shutting down with COVID. It all was just a time when, when all of that ended and we had to say no more, that everything I felt like I was aiming for or looking for, trying to take to get out of my life, kind of came tumbling down, and that's when I really like gave up, of like trying to control it, of trying to be like well, maybe this time I won't drink as much, or maybe this you know, I can't drink this often because of this reason or that reason I just said like fuck it, like fuck the rulebook that I made in my head about when and when I can't drink or how much I can't drink, and just became like all about me getting my next drink. At the time I was also smoking pot constantly as well, so it was like one or the other. Thanks. It felt pretty bad pretty quickly because it ends up.
Speaker 1:Those two things are both depressants, which you couldn't have told me in my addiction. I was convinced that both of them were the solution that would make all of my problems go away. The problem wasn't that. It was what happened to me when I was younger, what happened to me with the adoption, what happened to us with the marriage and the COVID, and like everything was about me, me, me and how it. But it wasn't about the alcohol.
Speaker 1:Until I finally got to the point where I was forced to like, look at it. Or Steven was at the point where he was ready to have me pack my bags and move out and I had to admit for the first time, like out loud, that I had a problem. Because as much as I knew for months leading up to that that I had a problem, I was like waking up in the middle and I crying that like I didn't have an aneurysm in my sleep and just passed away because, while I wasn't suicidal, I definitely wanted to turn off the button of being alive. I wouldn't like take the actions to do the thing, but I certainly didn't want to be here anymore and I was very upset every morning when I was. And then I had to go through this whole cycle of what did I do, who did I text, what did I say? Never doing this again and then doing it again before the morning's over, and that cycle was just very difficult. And so having to admit out loud that I needed help and that I couldn't control it was very scary.
Speaker 1:But as soon as it came out of my mouth it also felt so much lighter, like, and I felt nice getting it out and being able to say it to him. And what was wild was that when I actually started communicating with him about how I felt about the alcohol and how much I had been drinking and how I'd been feeling about it and everything like that like, rather than trying to hide it or minimize it or downplay it, he was able to really hear how bad it was. Like you know, and I'm sure as most people who have loved alcoholics in one way, shape or form of known. Like there are signs that you know and you might find the empty bottles you know hidden away places. But like I don't think he truly knew how spiritual like I was feeling bad, like he knew that there was a lot of alcohol going on around in the house but didn't know what was going on here as much. And when I shared it I wasn't kicked out, but I was strongly encouraged to do something about it, or I would be.
Speaker 1:So I did start going to try meetings and it took me a while before I found the right one. And I found the right one by accident because we had this talk like within like a week before me going up to New York for a friend's wedding, which I don't recommend doing when you're less than a week sober. But I go up to this wedding less than a week sober with my husband, convinced that like I'm going to relapse up there and then I'll come home and then I'll start for real, like that. The first week was just like the practice and through a series of fortunate events, I guess now I would call them higher power moments, not only the night before them meeting when are the night before the wedding, when everyone started getting out of hand with their alcohol consumption Did I go up to my room and find what later became my home group of my 12 step program. But also, the following morning, on the way to the wedding, I met my friend's uncle her uncle Bill, which is a funny name for people in the program who ended up like saying that they were in the program and helping my sober buddy through the wedding as well.
Speaker 1:So once I was able to get through that experience of flying up to New York, going through a wedding and flying back and staying sober, I came back and Vince that you know this was going to work. Of course it took me longer for the people around me to realize it, because I had had periods of a week or two sober before, with, or you know, saying that I was sober, even if I was sneaking drinks before, where people weren't sure, like when the other shoe would fall. But I felt it, I would say, like right away, like after that first week of getting through that I really felt like, as long as I kept following the signs that were being laid out for me and doing the work that the people who have more time told me to do that I would be okay and I really believe that. So it was really cool as I continued to start my sobriety journey really quick. I had already had a podcast with my husband about movies and TV shows that we liked, so it was very natural for me to take all these skills, after not finding enough queer sober podcasts out there, to make one more, and I'm glad that, since I've made this one, that there are plenty more from there. It's an ad extreme having all of these queer sober sobriety podcasts where you can check out different perspectives and viewpoints, because I've learned that it is about getting the message wherever you can, however you can, because it's going to be different for everyone.
Speaker 1:That first year was all about like listening to people for the first time ever. I always thought that I knew better than everyone else, and so I was like, well, I'm just going to try these things that I've never tried before, like prayer or meditation or calling people you know, not texting people, but calling people, doing gratitude lists, like all these things that I always thought were like silly or hokey I was doing, and not only was I doing them, but they were feeling good. Some of them I would try, and I was like, you know, maybe that's not for me right now and I would put it on a shelf, knowing I can go back to it later. But that first year was really great and in hindsight I would say the only thing that I wish I did differently was like taking my time as I went through things like steps and work, because I always like to get things through like quicker. I always wanted to like reach the finish line and it's hard to wrap my mind around that, like the variety as well, as this life is not about reaching the finish line, because at this point, like the finish line is dying. We don't want that. You want to just continue on this race as long as possible. So it's just more of a matter of I'm excited now that I'm going through the steps and everything again with a new sponsor, to be able to go a little bit deeper. But I know that you know, during that first year it was really just listening to the advice.
Speaker 1:And the second year is when I began struggling because I thought that I had it all figured out. After a year sober and after having gotten through the steps and after being able to make some pretty cool changes in my life. I was like, okay, this is the formula, like I do this every single night, I do this every single day, I do this once a week, I do that once a month. And I like almost took what my first year of sobriety was and turned it into a playbook of what the rest of my entire and it was. It was cool for a while because that was what was working for me.
Speaker 1:But what I realized is like, as I was getting later into that second year and starting my past year that I've been in, I was starting to feel suffocated by these rules that I had set. I didn't realize that, you know, all of these things that I had set up were almost rules, like I had when I was drinking again, about what my life was like, how it had to be, how it should be, how other people even should live their lives. At some point I was getting judgmental again and that's never good for anyone in sobriety when you start to think that you have the answers, more so than one other person, without being able to fully understand their experiences. So I was starting to backslide, like mentally I was, you know, look great on paper. It was very much like my childhood were like you know, or even my active addiction, where, you know, I was hurting on the inside and I wasn't talking to people about it and I was telling everyone that everything was fine, while on the inside that I was miserable. And occasionally, like one person might get like a little like vent of, like whoosh, this is miserable, but like other than that one person getting that one clue, that one time and I would like make sure I wouldn't tell more than one person too often, because they want people to think I, like I was very much trying to wear that mask of like a perfectionist, like everything's fine, everything's cool here. I'm just here to help you all stay sober. I'm here to do this podcast. I'm here to do, you know, chair this meeting. I'm here to be this program chair.
Speaker 1:Like I was doing all of these things for all these other people, while also trying to follow my rules about what my life should look like, even as I was looking to grow and evolve in ways that I didn't really understand or couldn't put into words or feelings yet. And so it got to the point where I was having these amazing opportunities like interviewing Mark Jacobs on stage in front of 500 gay and sober men and talking to him in the hotel room beforehand for like half an hour and texting him afterwards thank yous and never thinking of taking that chance to like invite him on this podcast, because I was full set on like the rules about like my life and what I could and couldn't accomplish and what could and couldn't happen and who might or might not say yes, and rather than risking asking the question, knowing that he probably would have said yes, because he said yes to like everything as the time, you know, as we were going through and planning this event. He's very cool guy. Like I just was convinced, or I told myself that like he would say no, so I didn't ask for fear of rejection and I'm sorry for all of you because of that, but who's to say that he won't be on again one day in the future? That would be awesome, as I am now just like realizing that it is a matter of just putting yourself out there and asking. But I didn't know that at the time because I was trying to live small and I was absolutely miserable inside as I was trying to fit into like what other people wanted from me rather than living my own life. I was in a job that was making me miserable.
Speaker 1:When I returned home from that trip, I was like, why am I doing this? This is horrible, and it was because, like for the first year to a sobriety, I needed a simple life. I needed to keep it simple and stick to the basics and get my foundation set up and make sure that my foundation was very large and wide. Like that I had multiple different places that I can get my recovery, and I'm very grateful that that is what I did during my first couple years. You know, not only do I have my meetings, but I also have this podcast and I have this community that I've made and met people through this podcast. And now I'm making other social connections in town as well as in different sober programs and sober service opportunities and sober roundups, and there's this huge sober world out there as well as this non sober world. That's also pretty cool, but it's just a matter of putting yourself out there and getting what you want from all of the places, and that's what I did.
Speaker 1:And so when I was ready to grow and learn more, it became kind of scary the idea that I didn't, but then I realized that that's a rule that I was making for myself, which is what led to a lot of the transformations that you might have seen in bits and pieces over the past, I would say four to six months. I know that when I, this past, fall, like after getting back from conference and digesting things, I did end up getting my life coaching certification and then getting involved in a program to help advance that even further and getting a lot of advice from my coach, which empowered me to make a lot of great changes, including quitting that job that was making me miserable, including getting back into shape and losing over 40 pounds, including expanding my social network beyond just zooms and Instagram Not like there's any issues with either of those places I still love all of my Instagram community, but branching out like. All these things have been changing because I realized, you know, after waking up one day and questioning, why am I sober, like? The answer is because the future is like, possibilities are limitless and that I'm just getting started and I need to take advantage of that and use that to my advantage. Like, and I can take it one day at a time and still have goals and dreams and hopes and aspirations. I can set intentions for the year, without trying to call the shots every single day and learning how to kind of work my program, as well as my coaching and my life like altogether in a way that feels right for me, has been beautiful. I know that all any of those things like done in a short period of time would be cool, but the fact that I've managed to do all of them at once feels a lot lighter and it's empowered me to be able to be a little bit louder and more vocal with my thoughts and feelings about certain things. It's given me the chance to communicate better with my husband and as much as everyone's always like joked about calling us like couple goals, I always cut was, you know, worried or like felt insecure about that, whether that's true, but like now that we're communicating on a daily basis about, like what we need and want and feel like I really do believe that because communication is so important in relationships. I'm learning that during my leather and kink meetings, but I feel like that's something that you can learn just in your day to day life and apply it to your normal friendships.
Speaker 1:The more that I reach out to my friends, you know, I have to realize that they might not always respond to my texts. But it's not about me, it's about them, you know. And that I just doesn't mean I shouldn't stop texting them, because then that ends up becoming about me. And it is about connecting to people because I care about them and want to send them love, not what they're going to do for me which has been huge and telling people that I love them when I love them and you know if I'm thinking of someone, not just thinking about them and keeping quiet about it, but shooting them a text the number of times that, like I'll be driving or in, working out or doing something and all of a sudden, like I feel this, like urge, or like a friend or a family or loved one like crosses my mind, like the number of times I'll just text them like hey, just thinking of you, like that I'll find out, or there will apply back later, like that came at the perfect time that they needed it. I normally would just hear those messages and just ignore them because I was doing my own thing, but it's been nice being able to share my love and my gratitude of where I am right now with my life, with the people that I love. I also love what it's done for this podcast.
Speaker 1:Over the past couple of weeks, you've seen a lot of changes as I prepared for phase two, launching today, and I'm very excited for what's to come. Not only are you, as you're seeing, possibly on YouTube, enjoying this show now on video, as well as in all your podcasting platforms, but over the coming months, I have more and more guests coming. I have easily, I think, six or eight interviews scheduled over the next couple of weeks, and more being scheduled every single day to make sure that, as I stitch together these topic episodes, that I'm able to insert multiple different voices, because the sober hero concept was born from a lot of the coaching work that I've been doing about the clients that I work with and how we identify, like everyone, as the hero of their own story. Cause you can't help someone as a victim, because coaching isn't about healing people from their past traumas and getting them to functioning. It's about taking people that are already functioning in their lives but might feel a bit stuck or lost or overwhelmed, and getting them to thriving. So you have to like for someone to be able to become thriving, you have to really believe they're a superhero or like a hero in their own right.
Speaker 1:And so, when it comes to sober people, I was like, well, that's obviously super easy, because every single person who's sober is a sober hero. Like everyone that I've ever talked to through this podcast, every single person I've ever met in a meeting, I can fully like look at them and be like you are doing awesome things, like because you're sober today and you chose not to pick up which is a radical act for an alcoholic and an addict who struggled with that before and the fact that you're like not only living your life but possibly doing amazing, wonderful things in your day to day life that are making differences, whether it be on a small scale, from treating someone else with kindness, who needs a ton of grand scale of doing these big acts of service or changing the world. Whatever you're doing today, if you're sober and you're doing your best and living your truth and being authentic with yourself, you are a sober hero. So I was like, check, I got this concept easy. And then, as we were talking about the different masks that we wear, I was like I wear tons of masks all the different times, like even though I shouldn't, because I'm always worried about what people will think of the true me If I show up authentically because I was always told to quiet down or always told to tone it down or said you can't talk about, you know, sex in public or they this joke or do this thing like, and it was always very much.
Speaker 1:You know that I was always a little different in whatever group that I was in, and so being able to really embrace that and know that the more that I'm uniquely me even if I'm the only me out there being as uniquely me as possible that more people will resonate with that and relate to that than they will if I am possibly like not saying something that I feel because I'm afraid it will upset some people. What if other people need to hear me say those things? So that was something big that I got out of my podcasting convention where hopefully you enjoy that as we go forward with these topic episodes, not only will I be sharing my guest views on the topics, but I will also be sharing my views as well, which will be fun to see how you all relate to that and see eventually, like I know that right now I can honestly say, after a thousand days sober and 179 episodes, that I haven't had a single negative comment and I'm being told that that means that I'm not trying too hard. So let's see if we can get some negative comments as I start ruffling some feathers with my thoughts and opinions, which is exciting, because how beautiful is it that, being sober today, that we all have these feelings that we can share with others in an open, authentic way, without it being bogged down or bogged down or trying to. I used to try and drink away, like a lot of the thoughts and feelings that I was having. It was to escape, not only like the bad stuff, but also the good stuff. So it's been fun being able to explore all of this in sobriety and through this podcast, and look forward to exploring it with all of you.
Speaker 1:It means a lot to me being able to take this concept of you know things like that we'll be talking about, about coaching concepts, but applying them to topics that relate to sober life for all of us, especially queer sober life. I know that I dropped queer from the title, but it still has gay, which is punny if you get it or you don't, which is okay too, but it is still going to be queer voices mostly that you hear, but I also can't promise that if, along the way that I meet someone who is a queer ally and very embedded in the queer community like we've had guests like that in the past Like I'm not going to not share their story if they are doing just as much service and work for us as some of us are. But what I can promise is that it will be mostly queer and most and 100% fabulous, no matter who my guests are. So I have some awesome guests coming up and I would love for you all to get involved as well. So the best way you can do that is by emailing me at Steve at soberstevecom. I still have the other email from earlier episodes, so if that's the one that you drive with, I'll answer there too.
Speaker 1:But going forward, I will be talking about going to my website, soberstevecom, for anything podcast related and how you can email me at Steve at soberstevecom. We have a lot of different topics coming up and we can record interviews on one, two or even three topics and spread it out so you might hear people over a couple of different weeks and little bits, which is exciting. I love being able to do that with Danielle and Mark recently and I look forward to doing it with smoother transitions for the future. People going forward and love to hear what you think about the sober hero concept and maybe even submit what your sober hero moments have been like and I'll share them on the podcast with everyone. I think that would be super duper cool. So make sure you are following us wherever you are listening right now so you can get these new episodes when they come out every single Wednesday on YouTube and on Instagram live and other lives, as well as Thursdays in all of your podcasting platforms.
Speaker 1:I am also on all of the social medias at gay a podcast, so make sure you follow me on all your favorite socials, because I am on all of them now, doing things most of the time regularly, at least weekly. So I'm very proud of that and how great it's been being able to connect with so many more of you where you are hanging out, rather than expecting you all to come over to Instagram to come hang out with me. So I've enjoyed chatting with people on Tik Tok and on Facebook and on other places that I wasn't as active previously. I can promise that you know, as big as this podcast might get in the future, that the one thing I always love is hearing from all of you. So I don't want to give up doing my own socials or hiring robots to do it for me. So if you comment on anything that I post, I can promise not only well that light up my day when I see that you've commented, but I will also be quick to reply, because it means a lot hearing from all of you.
Speaker 1:You know this podcast isn't just about my voice getting out there and sharing my experiences of how I've become a sober hero and I'm living my best life possible and doing my best to make a difference. But I also am here to showcase that there's lots of us out there. That was my issue when I was drinking is that I always thought that I was so alone and that I was the only one with these issues and struggles, and so I love in my sobriety I'm able to amplify the voices of queer, sober, sober heroes doing super awesome things out there each week. So this is just the beginning. Hang on tight. It's going to be an awesome face to as this show has evolved, and I'm sure we'll evolve again one day, because we are all growing and evolving in our sobriety and in our lives. And this is just the beginning for all of us, so thank you so much for tuning into another episode of gay a, the super sober hero show. I look forward to talking to you soon and until next time, stay sober friends.