Taught Friday Hot Yoga After Six Morning Beers and a Corrective Line of Coke 🫠 – Jeff S.

About This Speaker Tape

Jeff tells his story with 2.5 years of sobriety (date February 1, 2016) at the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting. Born in Boston, raised in Miami in what looked like an ideal childhood — loving parents, Pop Warner football, Saturday sailing races in the bay — Jeff felt like the odd man out from kindergarten on. He bounced between five schools, could never name a best friend, and spent nights in his room trying to theorize his way to being a normal person. His first drunk at 13 on Sanibel Island ended in a warm Old Milwaukee heist, a tiki-torch beach fire, and his first arrest. By high school he was a long-haired drummer in an older guys' band, sliding Long Island Iced Teas across the Outback Steakhouse table, missing 60 days his senior year, and still somehow coasting into Georgia Tech.

College became a fake ID, a keg bought from Max Liquor with cops standing three feet away, a warehouse stage on Lucky Street, and runs back to Miami to load up on rave-scene substances. He failed out, got a programming job, clawed his way back through school, and met his future ex-wife — a normal drinker who watched the worst decade of his drinking up close. He switched from vodka to gin to beer to wine trying to manage it. He had two kids. He did the blood-oath thing. Nothing stopped him. He drove home two hours in a blackout from his own birthday in Blue Ridge. His liver enzymes were off the chart. He became a vegan yoga teacher and opened his own studio — and taught Friday night hot classes after six morning beers and a corrective line of cocaine.

August 3, 2014: his ex got him into Ridgeview, where he palmed a leftover Molly pill from his backpack during intake and spent his first day in treatment rolling. California rehab followed — 28 days of reading page 84 every morning until he noticed they were reading the same page, of a Richard Ellis share that played like a 45-minute stand-up set, of the First Step quietly landing in his body for the first time. He came back and was Mr. AA for a year — three meetings a day, share in every one — caught a resentment at his one-year chip, decided he'd graduated, and disappeared. Eighteen months in, a friend offered him a line in a New York bathroom. A month later, wife out of town, he called a guy, did nothing but powder for three days, flushed what was left, drank a tumbler of whiskey in front of her, and puked his guts out.

New sponsor, new sober date, and a much more humble deal. Jeff has worked the Fourth and Fifth twice now; his defect, he found, is needing to be relevant — never the third wheel. He sold the studio, went back to software, got divorced, met an alcoholic girlfriend in yoga. He prays by polishing the lens — remove self-pity, self-doubt, self-hatred, self in all forms — because the interface he can actually clean is right here, not somewhere far away.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Eric opens the Monday night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NAVA Club; Kelly reads from page 29 and introduces Jeff
• 2:30 Jeff opens — sobriety date February 1, 2016, two and a half years, first time telling his story
• 4:30 A new friend dies suddenly on a mountain bike trail the morning after dinner — 'if not now, then when?'
• 8:00 Miami childhood, five schools, theorizing how to be a normal friend — feeling like the odd man out everywhere
• 12:30 Age 13, Sanibel Island — prying open the beachside bar, warm Old Milwaukee, tiki torches, flashlights from three directions
• 16:00 Drummer in the older guys' band — Long Island Iced Teas slid across the Outback Steakhouse table
• 20:00 Missed 60 days senior year — parents beg the school to let him sit finals; rubber-stamped into Georgia Tech
• 23:30 Fake Massachusetts ID buys a keg at Max Liquor with cops standing in the store
• 30:00 Marriage, two kids, switching drinks to manage the problem — 'there's a caged me in there'
• 34:00 Yoga studio phase — six beers before noon, a corrective line, then teaching class
• 40:00 Ridgeview August 3, 2014 — pockets a leftover Molly from his backpack and pops it at the nurse's desk
• 44:00 California rehab — page 84 every morning, Richard Ellis share, First Step lands in his body
• 50:00 One-year chip, caught a resentment, 'thought I graduated' — then the bathroom line in New York
• 53:00 Three-day solo binge, flush in front of his wife, tumbler of whiskey, puking — calls his sponsor the next day
• 56:00 New life — new sponsor, Fourth and Fifth twice, sold the studio, back to software, an alcoholic girlfriend from yoga