You Are Not Alone ft. Dale W

Host Sober Steve celebrates 1,172 days of sobriety and introduces Dale W., who is 205 days back in sobriety, sharing his powerful journey in this first part of a two-part episode.

Dale opens up about his struggles with meth addiction, the isolation he faced, and the joy he found in building connections within the queer community. The conversation delves into overcoming emotional hurdles, finding acceptance, and the critical role of honesty in sobriety. Together, Steve and Dale explore the importance of authentic connections and offer a glimpse into their shared experiences within sober kink communities, which they’ll discuss more in the next episode.

- Dale's Journey: From meth addiction and isolation to finding community and recovery.
- Overcoming Emotional Hurdles: The challenges Dale faced and how he overcame them.
- Building Authentic Connections: The importance of honesty and community in sobriety.
- Sneak Peek: A preview of their upcoming discussion on sober kink communities.

**Where to Find Us:**
- Dale on Instagram 🟢
- gAy A on IG 🟢
- gAy A everywhere else 🖇️

Transcript

Steve: 0:00

Hey, there is super sober heroes. It's your host sober Steve, the podcast guy here today with 1,172 days sober. And I am so grateful for all of my friendships in recovery that I'm continuing to not only make, but also have grow as we get to know each other better, including this week's guest Dale, who I have so much to share with all of you that we couldn't fit into. Just the one episode. This is going to be a part, one of a two-part episode, featuring my friend Dale. I look forward for this episode for you to get the chance to know him better. And then in the next episode, We're going to talk about. What we have in common and where we met, which was leather and kink 12 step meetings. And that will open up a whole new level of conversation as well as a whole new level of myself to all of you next week. So get to know him first and make sure you're following so you can get the part two next week. Enjoy. Hey there, Super Sober Heroes. It's Steve here with Dale.

Dale: 1:00

Hey Steve, good to see you.

Steve: 1:03

It's great seeing you and I am so glad that I got to meet you through my recovery meetings, but for those not lucky enough to know you already, introduce yourself.

Dale: 1:14

Hi, my name is Dale W. I currently have 205 days back. I started my recovery journey around six years ago and after several relapses. I am primarily a meth addict, but this time I realized that my story started with alcohol. Like heavy use of alcohol and luckily I have a sponsor now that was able to really bring that to my attention so that's me and I am also a sober kinky leather man So yeah

Steve: 1:50

Yes, that is how we met as you were getting your day counting. I was getting into checking out and exploring sober leather recovery, which is like a space that exists and is awesome. So we will get into that in part two. I wanted to make sure as I've gotten to know what a beautiful amazing human you are That my audience got to know you personally as well So why don't you share with us what your favorite part of being a sober? Kinky leatherman today and just being sober in general is

Dale: 2:22

I was also always a self isolator This time I'm realizing that I need other people. It is a we program. It's not a me program and Surprisingly when you talk to other people They may actually like you and you might actually like them and you can actually have fun. So I'm really Embracing that now last night. I actually one of my local gay friends AA meetings did a Rocky Horror Picture Show movie showing at one of the girls houses and it was a blast. I would have never done anything like that before, and it was just I had one of the best times I think I've ever had.

Steve: 3:09

That's awesome. I love that all these things in my addiction, I would say Oh, I'll never do that, or I'll never be that type of person. And I am that type of person now, and I love it so oftentimes. And why don't you share a little bit about what your favorite part of being a member of the queer community is today?

Dale: 3:28

For me I always hid that I was gay, I grew up in the pretty much the 80s It wasn't so accepting, especially in the South. I'm from Birmingham, Alabama, and I live in Memphis, Tennessee now. And being gay just was not what guys did, I lied about it all through high school, at all my jobs. It wasn't until six years ago when I started this journey that I finally told an employer that I was gay and otherwise it was a lot of just hiding who I really am. This time, I am being who I am and this time for the first You know i've lived here in memphis for basically around off and on for 30 years and since my first coming out part 25 years of it was involved in relationships where the first one didn't want me to go out And then the last one I was a caretaker With him of his elderly parents and it really didn't allow for us to go out and i'm meeting people now that are like, oh, did you just move to memphis? It's No, i've lived here for a long time Oh And then there's the whole having to explain, why they don't know who the hell I am. So yeah, this year I got involved with our local leather bar and helped them blow up over 10 000 balloons for gay pride and marched in the gay pride parade with them and I had a Fucking blast on that. That was pretty damn amazing. So

Steve: 5:18

Yes, the pictures you sent me of the number of balloons you blew up were very impressive, and I definitely can relate to what you said because I was a very isolated drinker as well, so between my drinking and then COVID and then even in recovery isolating more just in terms of, Spending more time on zoom than in person. I'm going out now and meeting these people that are staples of my local community that know everyone that I know, but I'm like, nice to meet you. They're like, Oh, did you just move to town? And I'm like, no, I've been here for 13 years, but I'm only now going out and doing things where I'm meeting more people.

Dale: 5:52

Yeah, exactly. It even says my sponsor pointed out to me, there is, a page in the big book where it talks about, When you get sober if you are in the right spiritual condition and you have a reason There's no reason for you to not go out to bars or go to places that have served alcohol Or you know go over to friends houses that drink Or even go to a good old fashioned whoopee party I believe it's how Bill, my first

Steve: 6:25

No, what was it? It was in living sober. I think I read the whooping party and I took pictures. I said, where's the whooping party? Let's get going to that.

Dale: 6:35

That's good. Yeah. I like bringing that up.

Steve: 6:37

Yeah. And with all of that, you mentioned on a little bit that, through your adult life and into your adult life that you were hiding a lot of who you were and that was what your kind of sobriety theme was been about so far with your journey. But why don't we rewind back a little bit and tell me what that journey was like that led you to trying sobriety the first time around six years ago?

Dale: 6:58

So basically, I did not think I was an alcohol. I started drinking late. I moved to Memphis for grad school And when I moved away from home, it was like, oh nobody will see me if I go to a gay bar So I go to a gay bar and I hadn't I'd had beer before but I didn't really think about it I didn't like it that much. But I started drinking it and I realized it made it a lot easier to talk to people And soon I was going out like every friday saturday and sunday night and then that became You know me becoming an extremely sexually generous individual in my 20s And I also ended up You With HIV at that time, but you drank enough, you just didn't remember that you had that and I had my fair share with run ins with the law at times. I Did over three thousand dollars worth of credit card debt when I was a manager at Dillard's and I ended up having to spend some time in jail and Go to court. Luckily. I got a judicial diversion. I completed my probation and all that was good, but that you would think that would have stopped me from drinking, but no I was Doing refunds on to my own credit card so that I could have more money to go out and travel and drink and have a good time and support the lifestyle that I thought I deserved I just kept drinking and I just drank very heavily to the point that I was drinking every day buying the cheapest beer I could you know, if I was not working, you know a good 18 pack of I think it was ice house at the time. I'd drink that before the afternoon was over and I was good, but a changing point for me was I decided that it was time to have a relationship I had not really had one So what do I do? I go out and it's a beer bust and I meet a guy and Six months later. He's moving to chicago with me and this individual also introduced me to the joys of drugs first it was ecstasy then we graduated to coke and you know crack and meth and I ended up, Marrying this individual thinking that would fix things but I was with him for 18 years He was verbally and physically abusive since I had no concept of what a real relationship was supposed to be I thought I had to make this one work And I now realize I was extremely codependent And thought I could fix him and it became very clear quickly that it was his way or no way and I kept thinking I could fix it until around 2018 I lost my job we started doing pretty much every day I started doing Uber and Lyft and I was the most talkative and the best Uber driver you've ever had because I was doing it high and it's a miracle I didn't kill myself or anybody else, but it got to the point where I wanted to kill myself. It was so bad. he would tell me I was worthless, you know a piece of shit I might as well not think about leaving because nobody's going to have me and it was bad it was real bad. And I remember the night before I left, he had started hiding my wallet and hiding the keys to the car from me so that I couldn't leave unless he gave them to me and we had two dogs at the time and I was looking up how much of like my psych meds that I had to take to do an overdose. And he gave me a black eye and beat me up pretty badly when I said no to that it's like we needed some food or something that yeah, he was not happy about that And I was sleeping on the couch. You wouldn't let me sleep in the bed and I was thinking about I wanted to kill myself and then the dogs came and just sat in front of me And stared at me You know and I couldn't I was even if they hadn't been there. I don't think I could have done it but the next morning I got up and found my wallet and found the keys and We had one vehicle and I took it and he was asleep and I left and I didn't have a phone. He had broken my phone. I had a tablet I went to mcdonald's and sat in their parking lot and used their wi fi and got on facebook And the only person that I had ever known that had gotten sober was a guy that we used to Do drugs with all the time and I knew he had gotten arrested and gone through a drug court system here and graduated it So I reached out to him on Facebook and luckily Justin responded and he was at work, but he told me to wait till he got off and I met him that day and that was on a Friday August 18th and between him and people, they Found me places to stay until I went to the Salvation Army on Monday morning and committed to do their six month in house rehab program which you know for a gay man going to the Salvation Army It was I was terrified of that I didn't really Tell them per se but when I told them, I was hiv positive the Intake coordinator figured it out. But yeah, so she told me I didn't have to tell anybody anything so I did not and all I had with me was the Clothes on my back. I had called another friend that I used to work with that I was surprised he would talk to me because my ex had told me that nobody wanted to talk to me, and I believed him. And we called the police, and I wanted to go back and get some of my stuff, and the police gave me 10 whole minutes to go in. I used to be I still am, but I was a huge comic book collector. I had around 20, 000. And I had all these statues and action figures and plus all my clothes and all my family stuff and I just had to leave all that and I never got that back and when I You know those first couple of months at the salvation army all I could think about was what I lost but it was worth the price of getting away from him And even then I was still balking at the idea that I had a problem. I called my drug Dealer the day I went in and told him i'd be in touch with him six months later, but I did pay attention to it And by the end of the six months I admitted that I had a problem. And I was working a program.

Steve: 14:49

Yeah, and you say what the next six years were like, or five and a half years or so, and then, how's it been different this go around?

Dale: 14:57

After leaving Salvation Army, I did graduate, and I actually worked for them for a short period of time in one of their donation centers, I met a couple of people through my sponsor, who was, my first sponsor was the guy that I called that day. He introduced me to fly fishing, and I started meeting these guys and going on these sober fly fishing trips, I suck at fly fishing, but it was fun to go camping. I had a great time, and I ended up meeting the guy I ended up working for the last five years. I started going to AA meetings. At Salvation Army, they really push something called Celebrate Recovery, which is a 12 step recovery program, but Jesus Christ has to be your higher power. It's, there are no other options. it has to be Him. And Like most gay people from the South, had a bit of a problem with church and religion. So I had a little bit of a problem with that. And I guess from the North and

Steve: 16:00

from the West and from the East as well, girl, that's just a religious trauma on all of us. I haven't been like, I'm struggling with steps two and three. I'm like, really? You're the first queer person who's probably ever dealt with that relationship with God and issues from your past.

Dale: 16:16

I'd only been told I was an abomination and going to hell, so many times, it's not like that affects you and the way you think and feel,

Steve: 16:24

Exactly,

Dale: 16:28

exactly. But I started going to AA but I was only going to one or two meetings a week. My first sponsor decided he wasn't good at sponsoring. So then I moved to his sponsor and He had a very laid back philosophy on things and if I called him that was okay if I didn't yeah, that was okay, too but I ended up meeting the guy that was my partner for the past almost five years You and I think 12 months sober, I moved in with him and his parents. And, to me, I wasn't around, my mother died in my active addiction and I didn't even go to her funeral. And to me, it was like instant family. I thought that was a good thing and they needed to be taken care of and he needed help and I thought that was a good thing You know, I got in my head, Oh, this is a perfect living amends today without talking to any sponsor or anybody with any kind of sobriety or Anything about whether it'd be a good thing to do or not And come to find out it's not really a good thing to do, especially when you're newly sober And the job that I took I was working like 55 to 60 hours a week managing a pool company and not another good thing to do when you're early in sobriety and you don't have a strong recovery program. Even if your boss is sober, in sobriety and all that it doesn't really balance out, I was not working any program whatsoever. Really I thought just because I wasn't using or drinking that, everything was good and I also realized that I was Emotionally a child I had no concept of how to really interact with people at all and my maturity level was low i'd always prided myself as being a mature person. I still am not a mature person at all. I started drinking when I was around 23 and most of my decision making skills were that kind of a 23 year old, and we all know how good those are they're just spectacular Yeah, that that was me moving in with my partner taking care of his parents, working all the time and then COVID And my partner's father died. His mother was basically a. What I would call a legalized drug addict because her doctors had put her on so many medications and granted she had a lot of health problems, She just took them and ran with them the way she wanted to

Steve: 19:21

yeah

Dale: 19:22

and come to find out my partner was toxically codependent upon his parents And he had this idea that he was going to save them and save me and I relapsed during the pandemic and I thought that was awful because, this time there were some consequences when I left my husband of 18 years, there were no consequences. Other than losing material things I was getting away from an abusive awful person This time there were people that cared about me that I had lied to and that really hurt So I thought wow, you know this time, i'm not never going to relapse again. Yeah, never say never and as they put it half measured a program this time I really half assed it. It was better than before, but when difficult things would arise, I didn't know how to handle them. And I was still self isolate. So something difficult did arise. His mother overdosed on her own meds was in kidney failure, it was awful. And He decided to quit his job and take care of her. So that left me being the only person working. And then my boss decided that, after 23 years, he was tired of running his own business and he was going to sell it to somebody that knew nothing about the pool business and also move, and I had been working in his house at his kitchen table for five years. There were all these awful things happening right then and there and that was also when I decided that I did not like my Long distance sponsor and I stopped talking to him. So that was in August of I would say 23

Steve: 21:23

yeah, what could go wrong with that?

Dale: 21:25

No And by November, I had decided to hook up with somebody and they had some drugs and I did it and it, I remember distinctly, I was smoking meth and I did it and my mind said, wow, I don't remember it being this great. I can handle this. I can do this. And three months later, I was in the hospital. I had tried to shoot up and missed and ended up with cellulitis in my arm. And it was swollen up to four times the normal size. And that same day the new owner of the pool company found out about it and asked me to resign. And my partner told me he was not letting me back in the house and that it was over. I didn't know what to do. I called one of my I consider him my kink sponsor. And I called him and I had enough money for a hotel. I went to got a hotel I was still sick. I hadn't even gotten the prescriptions for the cellulitis, you know Running like 104 fever and all that Oh, the first person I actually called was the guy i'd been getting drugs from and asked if I could come stay with him and his husband And ironically, he did not want me to hang around with him at this point I even told him, I can buy shit from you, that's not a problem But no, he didn't want me to come hang around with him. So at the encouragement of billy My king sponsor. He was like call people go to meetings. So Even with that fever and everything I got out and I went to four meetings That day reconnected told people what was going on, and over the next, I think eight days, various people from here locally and from my online meetings they paid for hotel rooms for me till I could get into a local, not-for-profit rehab. And that's what I did. And I continued to go to meetings every day. For the first three days I. Held on to my stash that I had for some reason, and I remember I went to a meeting and I called Billy and I said, I've got to tell you the truth. He goes, what? It's I've had meth this whole time. Since I called you and he goes, really? Have you used it? I said, no, I just flushed it down the toilet and he said Thank you for being honest with me. That's the first step for you Honesty has always been a problem with me, when you lie to your family about who you are And you lie to everyone else about who you are. It just becomes second nature to lie all the time And I would find myself lying for no stupid reason, have you taken the garbage out? Yes, and it's still sitting there over in the corner it's like why did that come out of my mouth? But for me, it was to please people, make them like me, make them think that I was a good person and I was not a good person. I have named my alcoholism and addiction dick because I, that's what I was. I was a Royal dick to everybody. When I was drunk or high, it didn't care what they were going through, what they wanted, what they needed. It was all about me and that carried over into my life. It was, everything was all about me.

Steve: 25:36

Yeah. It's interesting. So many of the people that I meet when we're already in recovery and sober like you, and I see you and you're the most caring, loving, sweet person I know. But just like that's how people view myself when they meet me today. Sober this many years into a program, but I'm just like, you don't know, like what I'm truly capable of. If you were in the way of what I want and my desires, I'm not connected to a program. I will lie, cheat, steal. manipulate, like whatever it takes to get what I need. And I'm glad that I work things so that I don't act on that. But like part of, I think like my like step work, especially the second time around is like really accepting that's still there, no matter how much cleaning you do, it's still underneath the surface.

Dale: 26:20

Yeah, I actually last week I'm in the process of doing a men's and I met with the guy that bought the pool company that ended up, basically firing me. He knew I'd been dishonest with him and all that And he just he looked at me and i've known will for a long time because he's in recovery, too But he goes you are good He's like You have everything all your ducks in the row and you know what you've said to one person compared to another person and he's like you play people so good You should have been an actor. It's ah, yeah, I am i'm pretty damn good at it when i'm in the middle of You standing between me and getting my next high it's shocking the person that I've become. But I don't have to be that person anymore. Never again. It's my choice.

Steve: 27:14

Yeah. And if you had to give a piece of advice to someone who was new or considering sobriety, what would that be?

Dale: 27:22

I would say talk to people. Isolation is such a big part of so many of our stories and it's uncomfortable and it's difficult to talk to people, but. When you actually do you find out that you're not as Special or unique as you really think you are or alone. That was my thing I always thought that I was alone in all of this and i'm not you know You have been you know, I met you in this bout and You've been amazing. I am so grateful for our friendship.

Steve: 28:07

You've been amazing as well. And it is interesting because so much of, before I was like, I'm so unique, I'm so special. in some ways it was like building me up but in other ways, it was isolating me. I'm doing my Buffy rewatch that I do every year, but it's very much like the Buffy complex. you're so special that it's a good thing, but it's also a bad thing because then you can't relate to anyone around you if you think that you're this one of a kind only person. I'm not that special. I can just connect with other people now.

Dale: 28:34

And if you look at it the other way too. It's okay to be special But if you're that special you need to share it with other people, you know So that they can enjoy it as well

Steve: 28:47

Yeah I just have to trust that i'm special in some ways and other people are special in other ways

Dale: 28:52

Everybody's special in their own special way

Steve: 28:55

exactly and Thank you so much, Dale. We are going to continue this conversation in an episode of kink to get to know that side of you as well as share a little bit more about that side of me with listeners. But in the meantime, if they wanted to connect with you, what would be the best way to connect?

Dale: 29:13

It would be Instagram. I go by Bema Leather Dude, all one word together.

Steve: 29:20

Excellent. I'll add that in the show notes for people to click over as well. So thank you so much, Dale.

Dale: 29:25

Thank you, Steve. I really enjoyed this.

Steve: 29:28

Yeah, and listeners, make sure you follow us so you can hear the next episode, because you won't want to miss us get kinky with you all. And until that time, stay sober, friends.