gAy A: The Queer Sober Hero Show

Coming Out the Other Side with Phil B – Career, Recovery & Here Queer Sober

• Steve Bennet-Martin • Season 2 • Episode 48

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Super Sober Heroes, welcome back! Today, I’m joined once again by my dear friend and co-founder of Here Queer Sober, Phil B! With 7 years, 9 months, and 24 days sober, Phil shares about his whirlwind year—completing his master’s degree in counseling, navigating job offers, moving into his own apartment, and embracing the next chapter of his recovery and career.

We also dive into:
✨ The big life transitions that tested his recovery—and how he stayed grounded
✨ Balancing sobriety & career in addiction counseling
✨ Finding the right meeting routine after so much change
✨ The first-ever Here Queer Sober Conference (coming September 27-29, 2024) and how you can get involved!

Phil reminds us that sobriety isn’t about avoiding life—it’s about showing up fully, embracing change, and creating something meaningful. 🌈💪

Resources & Links:

📍 Register for the Here Queer Sober Conference:
➡️ Find the link pinned in the Here Queer Sober Facebook Group
📧 Email Phil at philip@herequeersober.org

📢 Want to lead a workshop or panel?
🎤 DM me on Instagram @gAyApodcast

📍 Follow Phil & Here Queer Sober:
📲 Instagram: @herequeersober

🎧 Listen now & get ready for part two with Phil coming soon! And as always—stay sober, friends. 💖✨

Support the show

Steve (2):

Hey there, Super Sober Heroes. It's your host, Sober Steve, the podcast guy, here with another episode of Gay A, the Queer Sober Hero Show. I am here with a friend and family of the pod, Phil, and I'm grateful to have 1, 346 days sober. Welcome back, Phil. Hey, Steve. Thanks for having me back. Yeah. Why don't you share where you're at with your recovery?

Phil:

Yeah so as of today, it's 2856 days, which is like seven years, nine months and 24 days.

Steve (2):

time.

Phil:

Yeah, it's been a little over a year since I was last on the pod. been listening faithfully week in, week out hi everybody.

Steve (2):

It is great to have you back. And we have so much to catch up on because of what has been new in your life the past year.

Phil:

All of 2024, I was finishing up my graduate degree. Getting my license alcohol drug counselor in the state of Minnesota writing and defending basically the equivalent of a master's level thesis. And then, so that's basically all of 2024 in a nutshell. School finished December 14th. December 15th, I moved into my own apartment, which you can see, and then was here in Minnesota for Christmas because there was just too many moving parts to try to head back east and see my family. January 19th, I turned 42, which hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is the meaning of life. So between moving and turning 42 and graduating and starting a job, a whole bunch of people in my life were like. Hey, you should have a birthday housewarming party. So that happened two weeks ago and I think I'm still recovering from it because I'm 42, not 22. But when you and I were kicking around ideas on the topic and everything of this episode, it's about coming out the other side and the roughly the last ballpark six months of 2024, I was trying to do everything right. I was trying to at my internships, be, like, the first person to volunteer to do things because they're going to love me even more, and they're going to offer me a job, and it's going to be exactly what I want, and life is going to be great and dandy, and all the things didn't exactly happen. As somebody that I look up to in the room says, Oh, gee, Phil got served some humble pie from the universe.

Steve:

And

Phil:

you know what I did and that's okay. That's okay. but I landed on my feet. I would have loved to have gone back to the East coast for Christmas, but the week before Christmas and right up until Christmas. I was doing job interviews, I sent my resume out to 10 different agencies. Seven of them contacted me for interviews. five of them went through multiple rounds of interviews, and then three of them offered me jobs. And all of a sudden, I'm literally sitting on the floor of my brand new apartment because I have minimal furniture. With all my notes spread out going, okay, this is what this company is offering. This is what this one's offering. I just applied the principles of 12 step recovery, which has gotten me to seven years, nine months, and 24 days. I talked about it with people, weighed the pros and cons, and I even pulled up maps on my Macbook what would the commute be like from my new apartment to job my master's program was a two year program, and it was very haphazard and very quick that all of a sudden I was a graduate student, While you're in it, you're like, yeah, I'm in school. Like life, it is what it is. And then all of a sudden it's ending. And it's Oh, I got to figure out employment. I got to figure out how to do all the adult things. And it was overwhelming at times, and I'm very grateful to my network and to my sponsor and to my therapist and to my priest and to everybody that kind of let me use them as sounding boards to be like, hey, what do I do or not even what do I do, but let me just bounce the ideas off of you because that's how I process a lot of things is engaging in conversation. And I do it with multiple people from different walks of life. So that I get as full a picture as possible so that I can make the best decision for me for now and for right now, I've just done three weeks of work and I love my job, I can see this working for a while. I can see this pushing me to keep moving in the right direction.

Steve (2):

yeah, I love how it seems like when the stars align, how everything all clicks into place at once because you had not just the one. life change or two. and of course, some are related to another. Like you graduate, it helps you get the job, but like the fact that your life looks 180 degrees different than possibly did it even just a month or two ago. What would you say has been the biggest adjustment in terms of how it's impacted or affected your sobriety on a day to day basis?

Phil:

So because my master's degree is in counseling or the concentration in addiction counseling, it's been a very fine balancing act of I'm there. I'm working with people that are in treatment, but I got to stop and take care of my own personal recovery too. For me at that time, it was School and eating right and paying my bills and all the other things. And if I had like extra energy, I'd pop into a meeting, one of the things that I've been trying to do since I'm like back now, fully on my own, because the two years of grad school, I had a roommate. And the three years immediately before that were the COVID years. I was living with a relative in New Jersey, so for the past five years, I've been, I've had some sort of cohabitation, whether it was a family member or roommate, and it's one of those things where I've caught myself doing the, I can kick back, I can relax, I can not go to a meeting, but I know that I should, and that's usually when I go. And fortunately, Minnesota is got a lot of recovery, so I'm still looking for like the group or which will become my home group, but I've got at least two meetings a day that I can hit, do I hit them weekly? No. Am I in daily communication with people in recovery? that support me and I support them. Absolutely. So yeah, that's how things have changed.

Steve (2):

Yeah. And I think it's about having that balance. And for me, What I love about my meeting schedule is I have the ones I go to weekly, but there's also my home group that I got sober and it is 9 p. m. every single night So I think sometimes just even knowing that you have that kind of solution or you have that backup plan helps you go through the day with a little bit more confidence.

Phil:

Absolutely. Actually Like I mentioned earlier, my birthday was the other day and for a couple of weeks ago at this point, Is somebody in my network here in Minnesota messaged me like a day or two after on Facebook. It was like, Hey, happy belated birthday. And I was like, Oh, yeah, thanks. Cool. And he's I miss you. I haven't seen you in a while. It was we got to get settled into the new routine and everything else. And his birthday was just like, 2 days ago, and he was having a party for his birthday and I was invited and it was a mixed party, and by mixed, gay and straight and people in recovery and people not recovery because they don't need to be in recovery. And, but it was interesting to watch the dynamics of the room because. The 12 steppers all like huddle together and we're like, yeah, don't be surprised if we see that one in a meeting, who knows but it was, and it turned into an impromptu meeting because

Steve:

of

Phil:

the fact that I hadn't seen a lot of those folks. In a while, and so it was like, Hey let's catch up. what do you got going on? And one of the guys, I actually met his partner and his partner is. in college right now doing the bachelor's level alcohol and drug counseling that I just finished my master's level of. And so it was like, it was a meeting, it was a little bit of networking, it was like the universe was just in total alignment, and the universe was in total alignment because I was 100% sober.

Steve (2):

Yeah, that's awesome. And with. All of these changes in your life, and you've reached a lot of goals that you were looking forward to for so long, obviously, though, it's not game over. So what's next? What are you working towards now in terms of goals?

Phil:

Going to back up to answer that question because my master's program actually was what they call a dual track. It's an alcohol drug track, but it was also a full mental health counseling track, which a lot of states separate out the two licenses. And right now, I'm a licensed alcohol drug counselor. I can work with anybody in the state of Minnesota that has an alcohol addiction or a substance use diagnosis. If they happen to have, another mental health diagnosis, I can still work with them. I can't touch them right now, and the reason why I'm explaining all that is while I was in my final semester of grad school, Phil got a little overzealous and a little bit of an overachiever, and I actually took the Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor exam now, aside from the education and the exam You then have to do 4, 000 hours of clinical work, which equivocates to about two and a half years of full time work. Obviously, I wouldn't get my license after taking the exam, but I wanted to get the exam out of the way while I was still in school mode, taking tests and everything else. I missed passing by seven points. Oh, no. And at the time, I was kicking and screaming and throwing a little bit of a diva temper tantrum. Now, I've got the time for it. I am waiting for the state to tell me when I can actually schedule the exam, because I like a little bit of a deadline pressure. If I know that I'm taking the exam on February 28th, I will back out how many hours per day I need to be studying so on and so forth. So that's the next thing I'm working towards is that, the licensed professional and clinical counselor part of, I like to have a couple of things going on at the same time and like I mentioned, I had three job offers. The offer that I wound up taking is with an employer that is more what they call co occurring mental health and substance use. And my, that other license that I was just talking about is actually going to be job requirement. So if I don't pass the exam, my job probably won't be on the line. I'll probably take it again. But again, I like that little bit of pressure, but part of the appeal for that employer was they just restructured everything. So I'm literally getting in at the ground floor of this new mental health addiction services line. With my employer, I'm building it up with them We're actually going to be bringing on patients. So I'm at the ground floor. I get to work with some fantastic people to put a better program in place. So I'm working towards that license. I am also working with a very near and dear non profit called Hear Queer Sober, which actually, that group's anniversary is coming up in just a couple of days.

Steve (2):

It'll be on Thursday the 6th

Phil:

Yeah, it's right around then. And the Hear Queer Sober group is putting together an amazing conference in New York City for September. So I'm working with all sorts of fun people, you included, on putting Together that conference,

Steve (2):

What are you most excited about for that conference that we've been planning? Because there's a lot that we are keeping under wraps. But what can you share that you're excited about?

Phil:

As a new yorker currently residing in Minnesota, I'm looking forward to going home. I am looking forward to Seeing folks that are part of my recovery network from literally around the globe coming to my home, New York City for this conference. I am looking forward to really breaking the ground, and building up something that is fully inclusive of the entire LGBTQIA community. And yes, it is open to every single member of the community. And in light of the more recent political realm, I will say this till the day I'm dead. I love you. I want to see you in New York, and I will do everything I can to make sure that you are safe, you are taken care of, you are respected.

Steve (2):

I'm very excited for what's to come. I love, being part of the Yeah. There's a lot because being that I've spoiled on the podcast before I'm working with the programming. So I get to be the one talking with the people who are our keynote speakers and like the workshops and it's just very exciting because just everyone is brimming with excitement. There's something about being part of the first that also everyone loves.

Phil:

You know what? I hate to say this, but because it's this podcast, I know I can say it, and we're in a scenario, don't edit this out. A lot of my college buddies are cisgender heterosexuals, and they love me no matter what. But they're always like, why are gay guys always hitting on me? I'm like, why do you hit on virgin women? Pop and Jerry's, just we get to do. Something amazing. Yeah, where it's no this is for everybody. This is not. And the other part about this is that it's not just for the entire community. It's for all of the different recovery communities within the rainbow family. So you don't have to be 12 step. If you're doing a recovery Dharma thing, rock on, bring it to us. If you're doing smart recovery, anything, if you're just sober

Steve:

and

Phil:

you want to connect with other sober people.

Steve (2):

Yeah, that's what I love about programming is that when Logan was like, yes, you can have one track of panels that are all 12 step based but then you have a step free where people, if they're not 12 step program affiliate, they can go in and know that they won't hear steps, traditions, capital G, God, and it'll be more about just living a sober. Life and what that looks like and getting people that have less traditional ones that can really share. So I'm very excited for that.

Phil:

yeah, it's a big lift such a fantastic team in place. I was actually really loving last week's episode Holland is a dear friend. He's also my barber and, I was listening to the podcast while I was making breakfast. You were just coming out my phone and It was almost like the two of you were sitting here at my kitchen counter this conversation. It was fantastic.

Steve (2):

I love bringing us all together and it's going to be an awesome conference. When is it?

Phil:

September 27th to the 29th.

Steve (2):

All right. I can say it's this year now.

Phil:

Yeah,

Steve (2):

exactly.

Phil:

It's just under nine months away.

Steve (2):

if you're interested in getting involved, how can you register?

Phil:

You could find the Here Queer Sober Facebook group. The registration link is pinned in the Facebook group. You can also send an email to philip at hearqueersober. org and I will be more than happy to send you a link to the registration website.

Steve (2):

I'll link over to all that in the show notes. And if you want to get involved in a workshop or a panel, hit me up at Gay A Podcast like you always can. And Phil, we have plenty more to talk about because we have AI made a list of questions for us. So listeners, make sure you check the show notes for all the Hear Queer Sober information and then check out the episode and we'll talk to you real soon. Thanks, Steve.

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