Total Abstinence and the 90-Day Sprint to a Spiritual Awakening — Quentin S.

Welcome back, my friends, to AA Recovery Interviews.
I'm your host, Howard L., and I'm an alcoholic.
Sober since January 1st, 1988, one day at a time.
I'm grateful you've joined us.
AA Recovery Interviews is the podcast where Alcoholics Anonymous members from around the world
share their extraordinary stories of experience, strength, and hope.
My guest on today's show, Quentin S., started drinking in his mid-adolescence amidst a chaotic home life.
Alcoholism was not prevalent in his immediate family, but the vestiges from earlier generations were there nonetheless.
Quentin's alcohol use escalated quickly during his late teens, along with regular use of marijuana.
In high school and later college, his use quickly turned into serious abuse of both substances,
and though he stopped smoking weed to abide by the rules in his living room,
his drinking picked up to take its place.
Finding himself a daily drinker, Quentin hid his growing functional alcoholism by drinking in isolation.
By his early 20s, he had become a full-fledged blackout alcoholic,
with mounting consequences spilling over into his work life.
Quentin had attended a single AA meeting a few years before his sobriety date,
but refused a desired chip because he frankly wasn't done drinking.
So things got worse until a week before his 25th birthday,
when Quentin was diagnosed with alcoholism.
Quentin dragged himself back into AA while still detoxing from his final spree.
This time, he took the desired chip and has now been sober nearly three years.
That desire to stay sober has been fulfilled as Quentin got to work in the program.
Along the way, he has fulfilled service and sponsorship commitments
and has remained close to his sober fellowship.
If you're early in AA recovery, I believe you'll find Quentin's story to be quite encouraging.
That he escaped the throes of the disease in his late 20s,
is strong evidence that sobriety is possible by following AA's simple suggestions.
For listeners with longer-term sobriety,
Quentin's description of his program of action
is a fine reminder of the persistence necessary to stay on top of the disease.
No matter where you are on the journey of recovery,
please enjoy the next hour of AA recovery interviews with my friend and AA brother, Quentin S.
My name's Quentin and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi, Quentin. I'm so glad that you could do this interview.
Thanks for having me, Howard.
So we're doing it after a meeting that we both attended today,
and I always like doing interviews with people within a few hours or a few days.
Sure.
And you didn't get a chance to share in today's meeting,
so I didn't get a chance to kind of tune in on where you're at, which is good.
That way I can do this and not have to think about what was it you said earlier.
The topic today was on humility,
and I'm curious, as you were thinking about what you might say if you got called on,
what would you have said?
What would you have said about the topic of humility?
It's interesting you ask that.
I think early on I would always say, okay, if I get called on, what am I going to say, you know?
And the longer period of sobriety you have and the more meetings you attend,
I think you kind of think of that less.
You have an idea as to what you're going to say,
but it's a lot less, I guess, rehearsed in your mind because it's intimidating, right?
You come into a room filled with people with what you think is years
and centuries of sobriety when you have 30, 60, 90 days.
You don't want to sound bad.
So if they were to call me today,
I was going to talk about how I had to get honest in the beginning, right?
I felt like I had, especially towards the end of my drinking career,
a lot of secrets, you know, hiding, hiding the alcohol consumption,
hiding what I thought was, you know, I was trying to put on a good face for everybody.
But on the inside, I was miserable and trying to hide how much I was consuming
and how miserable I was.
And I think humility, when you come in, it's important.
Now, you get humbled in the fourth and fifth step.
You have to tell it all.
And if you don't, you're in trouble.
Yeah, I think the minute you walk through the threshold of the meeting,
there's something that's very implicit about humility, just walking into a room of AA.
It's interesting that people don't go to AA
until everything else hasn't worked, oftentimes.
And usually it's at a point of defeat or surrender.
And there's nothing that says humility more than being beaten or surrendering,
which is where the idea of humiliation comes from.
But I think we go after being humble as opposed to being humiliated,
which is very, very important.
And it can be nerve-racking for a lot of people.
You know, do you remember a couple of Mondays ago,
I was actually leading that meeting that you attended,
and it was somebody's first meeting.
Oh, yeah.
And he said, I was so nervous.
I was nervous all day to go to this meeting tonight.
Yeah, I saw him sitting outside, and I was wondering what...
Because there was a guy at this meeting today, last week,
who was sitting outside, who was brand new,
and he shared about being really nervous, too.
So isn't that interesting?
It's common.
I was pretty nervous for my first meeting.
I don't know if it's because I was admitting to myself that I had a problem.
I don't know what I thought.
If I was going to have to stop drinking,
if the secret...
It would be out if I showed up to an AA meeting,
and everyone would know who I was.
I mean, I just didn't know.
So it can be nerve-racking.
The secret is out.
Yeah, to us.
To us.
But that's why we have the anonymous program to protect that.
So how long have you been sober now?
I've been sober since June 23rd, 2021.
Okay, so you're coming up on...
Three years.
And it was seven days before my 25th birthday.
So I get to kind of celebrate both.
So what was going on on June 20th?
Well, June 20th was probably the third or fourth day
of a pretty in-and-out blackout bender.
Towards the end of my drinking career,
I had become a sunup-to-sundown drinker.
My boss at the time had gone on vacation,
and I was in sales.
And I thought of it as my vacation.
Right.
So from sunup to sundown,
it was drinking, man,
in and out of coming to and blacking out.
And so by the third or fourth day,
I found myself calling somebody who I used to work for
that was in the program.
And I called him,
which I don't think was the first time I had called him drunk,
but I think it was the first time I called him and said,
I need help.
Will you come pick me up?
And he did.
So you already knew about AA.
Did you know about it specifically from him
or through shows and movies and that sort of thing?
What was your concept and your understanding of what AA was
before you actually encountered it for yourself?
I think I knew what it was.
I was kind of raised by my sister,
and she is like a mental health professional.
She's an LCSW.
So I knew that she worked with people who were in recovery.
So I kind of knew what it was.
But coming into the program,
I had gone to one meeting before.
It was a Friday night meeting in the Heights,
men's meeting that we're familiar with.
And I went there probably two years before getting sober.
Why did you even show up?
And then what was your impression once you were there?
So I used to work with John Gee.
We worked together and we used to play golf together.
And he and I were sharing a golf cart.
And I think I was drinking.
In fact, I know I was drinking.
I knew that he was sober,
and for whatever reason I told him
that I used to have a problem with cocaine,
but I no longer did.
And he said, really?
Well, how often would you do it?
And I told him, you know, the amount.
And I think I was honest.
For the first time in a long time,
I was honest about my use with that substance.
And I had told him, you know,
I hadn't done it in a few years,
but I just drank.
And as I know now, being in the program,
that's kind of a red flag
for somebody that needs to be in recovery.
But in my mind, not knowing or not being sober,
I just kind of told him that I did cocaine,
and now I don't do cocaine, but I just drink.
And he said, you know, you should go with me
to a meeting on a Friday night,
the one that I mentioned.
And for whatever reason, I said, okay, I'll try it.
I wasn't ready to get sober then.
I was just curious as to what AA looked like
or what a meeting looked like.
Did you identify, when they said anybody,
a newcomer, anybody from the first meeting?
Yes.
So the people in the room knew it was your first meeting.
They did.
And usually what happens in the first,
when there's a newcomer to the meeting,
a brand-new guy, is the meeting kind of turns and shifts
and then focuses on the individual who's new.
Was that your experience with that?
That was my experience.
But he told me, he kind of said, you know,
you don't have to raise your hand
and say it's your first meeting.
He didn't tell me what would happen if I did.
But he told me I didn't have to if I wasn't comfortable.
But I did.
And everything that was said was relatable, you know,
especially being in a men's meeting.
Yeah, because most people,
they don't just go to an AA meeting
because they're curious.
But this is happening two years
before you actually came into the program.
You went to the one meeting.
There must have been something about what was going on
for you at that time that made you agree
to show up at that meeting.
Yes, I had had some struggles with obviously cocaine,
but mostly alcohol for quite a few years prior to that.
And there was a time in college
where I couldn't stop drinking daily in college.
In fact, it prohibited me from going to class
a lot of the times,
which is why I didn't finish at that time.
Right.
One day, for whatever reason,
I Googled AA meetings in Waco.
I tried calling my best friend's girlfriend
who was at that school to see if she would take me.
And she didn't answer the phone.
She was probably in class, right?
But she didn't answer,
and that was the end of that thought for years.
Yeah, until that meeting.
Until the meeting on that Friday night.
Yeah.
So here you are sitting in the meeting.
You're a brand new guy.
Were you the only newcomer that night?
I was.
And this was pre-COVID.
Pre-COVID.
So the meeting turns its focus on to you as the new guy.
What did you hear that night?
And what didn't you hear,
now that you know what you should have heard,
what didn't you hear that made an impact on you,
good and bad?
You know, it's hard to say.
I don't remember specifics.
I just remember relating to a lot of the shares.
And I remember a few specific people
who are still in that meeting to this day.
But I remember leaving that meeting and thinking,
I think I might be an alcoholic.
And I was dating someone at the time.
And I called her after the meeting and I said,
you know, I think I might be an alcoholic.
And she said, well, you do have a problem.
You do like to drink a lot, is what she said.
But she also said, I think you might just be young
and in a party phase.
Boy, she let you off the hook.
Yeah.
And I took that and ran with it.
I said, you know what, you're right.
But it wasn't her.
I wasn't ready.
So she gave you permission at that time to continue on.
She kind of gave me the insight of, yeah, I am young.
You know, I was probably 22 or 23 at the time.
And that's a tough age, you know, especially if you're not ready.
So that particular meeting, when they said keep coming back,
did you get the sense that you would not be back?
Or what was your feeling after that?
No, I didn't know what to think.
But I remember I did not pick up the desire chip.
Nobody nudged you and said get up and get it?
Yeah, they did.
But I didn't want to disrespect anybody in there or the program as itself
because I knew I wasn't.
And I think part of me thinks if I pick up a desire chip,
you'll have to stay sober.
I'm committed.
Well, that's kind of what the desire chip is all about, isn't it?
It is.
Yeah, it is.
It's a token of our desire more than anything else.
But if you have a sense like you're not going to get sober
and you don't want to be sober and you don't want to go to AA,
it'd be easy enough to pass on getting that chip.
And like I said, I was more curious as to what recovery looked like
and what meetings were about.
And it wasn't, especially that meeting,
it wasn't a bunch of old guys sitting around drinking coffee
talking about how much their life sucks because they can't drink anymore.
Well, that's a young guy's meeting, too.
And it has been for a long time.
Did you identify with anything that was said there?
I don't remember.
But they did call on me.
They did?
They did.
And I remember saying I like to party.
It's gotten a little out of hand.
But I don't know if I have a problem with alcohol,
but I do have a problem with trying to be the life of the party
or something like that.
I had so many more drinking years after that.
So that happened two years before your sobriety date.
So it's about five years ago now that all that went on.
Yeah.
And the two years, especially with COVID, was a pretty big blur.
Did you think about getting sober during COVID at all?
No.
The reason I ask that was because Zoom made it real easy for people
to dip their toe in the waters of AA.
And I've known more than a few people who got and stayed
and they're still sober through Zoom.
And Zoom was, in my estimation, never meant to be a replacement
for live AA meetings.
But I'm also very grateful that it was available to me
and people who needed it during COVID.
Yeah.
Yeah, great tool.
I do remember coming in this go around June 21st,
and the rooms had been open for a couple of weeks.
Yeah.
Back open.
Yeah, things were kind of dicey at that time.
Right.
So let's rewind a little bit.
What was your family of origin like growing up?
That's a long story.
So I was born in Topeka, Kansas.
Actually, I was a product of an affair.
I'm the youngest of five on my mom's side.
Which is why I'm named Quentin.
Quin meaning five.
So I'm the fifth child from my mom.
Yeah.
So the two oldest are from one dad.
The third is from another dad.
The fourth is from another dad.
And the fifth is from another dad.
My mom got married at 16 to my oldest sister
and my oldest brother, their dad.
And there's a 22-year gap between the oldest and myself.
Yeah, the sister that I was mentioning earlier,
she's the oldest.
There's 22 years difference.
Did you know her at all growing up?
My sister?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So she was old enough to be your mother.
She was.
In a lot of ways.
In a lot of ways she kind of was.
Yeah, later in life.
And this was before I was born, obviously.
But that marriage ended in a divorce
and then my mom remarried another gentleman.
And they had my brother and my sister,
or so the dad thought.
But she was also a product of an affair.
But she didn't learn that her dad wasn't her dad
until she was 12, which is when I was born.
Let's just say when my mom got pregnant with me,
there was no possible way that I was his as well.
So is there 12 years between you
and your next oldest sibling?
Yeah.
So by the time I was born, you know,
the secrets of affairs kind of blew up
and everybody knew about it.
And they divorced, obviously.
But my mom remarried who I call my father
when I was probably nine months old
and was adopted by him.
So by the time I was four,
all my siblings were grown and out of the house.
It was my mom and who I called my dad.
Who is my dad?
He just, you know, he raised me.
But it was just us, us three.
And I was very lucky to have my dad in my life
because he was a good man.
He raised me just like his own.
He adopted me legally and treated me
as if I was his own blood.
And so there was no void of a father in my household,
you know, a father figure to look up to.
Well, what a chaotic environment
over the period of, what, 22 years, like you said,
until you were born.
And your oldest is 22 years older than you.
Yeah.
Yeah, their upbringing was a lot different than mine.
Was it?
Well, it was, yeah.
Because by the time I, you know,
could kind of have memories,
they were all out of the house
and their childhoods were over and done with.
And the one I had was not the one that they knew.
You know, theirs was kind of filled with secrets
and, you know, mom slipping away, having affairs.
And I heard those stories,
but that wasn't the case for my upbringing,
if that makes sense.
Yeah, it does.
And my siblings were,
they're all spread out across the United States.
So it was more like having aunt and uncles
than siblings.
And how about alcohol and drugs within the family,
within the family tree or extended
when we're talking about grandparents
or aunts and uncles?
What was the prevalence of alcohol and or drugs?
There was no alcohol in my family, immediate family.
I never saw my mom drink,
but maybe one glass of wine growing up.
My dad, devout Christian, never drank.
Grandparents never drank.
Mom's side of the family does have a lot of other isms.
You know, there's gambling going on
and there's affairs and probably some sex addiction,
but alcohol was not around.
Now, my biological father, who I haven't talked about yet,
I have four siblings on that side
who I didn't meet until I was 16.
There's alcoholism on that side.
And I didn't know that until I was older.
You said 16?
Yeah, about 16 when I met them.
Had you already been drinking by that point?
Yes.
What age did you start?
Drinking, I started probably about 15 or 16.
Yeah, that's about right.
Most people start between 14, 15, something like that.
Now, I did smoke weed before I drank.
I was a freshman in high school
and smoked weed with some friends.
Though weed is not really my story, alcohol is,
but it did start with that.
It's enough to take the inhibition down to drinking.
Yeah.
And then if you decide you don't like the weed,
you've still got the booze.
I think I was so confused with my family of origin
and my mom having mental health issues growing up
that a lot of the feelings of negativity for myself
kind of got passed down to me.
It was around in the house, right?
So the first time I ever smoked weed,
it was like that all went away.
And I was able to just relax.
You must have loved it.
I did, but I got caught probably my third or fourth time
with my parents, so that was short-lived.
Isn't that something?
So freshman year comes to an end of high school.
I'm living in Kansas,
and I got the opportunity to move to Houston
and move out of the house,
to move in with my oldest sibling, my sister.
So she had been living here nine years
by the time I moved down here.
But so freshman year comes to an end,
and I was smoking weed and not doing well in school
and just kind of going down a bad path, right?
And my sister recognized that, and she said,
why don't you come down to Houston and live with me
and go to a college preparatory high school?
She had some, she has in-laws who were offering
to pay for my schooling down here.
Wow, that's great.
Yeah.
My sister and her husband got married when I was seven,
so his parents were kind of like my adopted grandparents.
So I begged my parents, you know,
will you please let me move to Houston?
And they're like, no, you're 14 years old.
You're our child.
Like, you're not moving to Houston.
And it took a couple of months of convincing them,
like, I won't do drugs down there.
I'm going down a bad path up here.
Can I please just go down there to Houston?
Because I had visited down here every summer
for four or five years, and I loved it.
I was out of Kansas, the country where there's
not a whole lot going on.
Houston was a bustling city,
and there were so many more opportunities down here.
And one day I'm sitting in my room,
you know, probably playing Xbox or something
like most 14-year-olds do, and my mom says,
okay, you can go.
And I'm like, go where?
She says, you can move to Houston.
And this is like July, you know,
school starts next month.
And I was like, really?
And all my friends and everything I ever knew
was in Kansas.
And now that I have the green light,
I'm like double thinking it.
Like, is this what I want to do?
And so I called my sister and she said,
okay, but there's one condition.
No drugs, you can't smoke weed,
and you're going to take school very serious.
And I said, okay.
So for me, it was kind of like going to college early.
You know, I would go back for spring break
and Christmas break and all those breaks
back to Kansas and be with my parents.
And then when I got here in Houston,
it was school time.
Almost like being in a boarding school.
Kind of.
Yeah.
Don't tell that to my sister.
Well, when you first told your folks,
when you first told your mother that you wanted
to come down here and you wanted to get away
from the weed and the drinking and everything else,
was that a story you were making up
or were you actually that involved
that you acknowledged the fact that you had a problem?
I think 99% of me was being genuine.
Huh.
I want to get away.
I want to start.
Because I had seen what drugs had done to my brother.
I told you there was no alcohol in the family.
I have one brother who is definitely one of us.
And I kind of saw what not getting out of Topeka
would do for me.
It's kind of like you're stuck working retail
or maybe you go to school and, you know,
it's just there's not a lot of opportunities.
So I took the opportunity and moved down here
in July of 2011.
Went to a very nice college preparatory high school
that I had no business just being able to get in and go.
But I had an opportunity of a lifetime and I took it, you know.
Where I was before probably had 400 students in my grade
and where I moved to there were 79 kids.
So everybody knew everybody.
Everybody knew each other's families
and you knew who was at school because of what car
was in the parking lot.
It was true camaraderie, right?
Yeah.
So how were you accepted when you moved down here?
With my peers?
Yeah.
You know, the first year was hard because those kids
had been going with going to school with each other
since preschool.
And you're the new kid.
And it took about a year for me to kind of get in,
which coincided coincidentally with the year
I started the use of alcohol, you know.
I started drinking junior year of high school
and I had friends from it, you know.
It's like what page 151 talks about.
It was true companionship.
It was camaraderie.
It was conviviality.
It was fun.
It was high school and I thought it made me funnier.
It made talking to girls easier.
It just did everything for me that I was looking for,
that I was scared of.
It took those fears away junior year of high school.
So to answer your question, it was hard the first year,
but slowly you kind of nudge in and then you're in
with the peers.
So you hung with the crowd.
Was it a particular subset of the limited number of students
that were drinking or was it bigger than that?
Yeah.
There were so few students that on the weekends,
that's just kind of what we did.
So everybody was doing it.
Yeah, for the most part.
I mean, there were a few students
that didn't, you know, took school a little more serious
or just rather didn't partake in alcohol.
But for the most part, it wasn't like there was a bad crowd
and a good crowd.
It was just kind of what we all did.
Alcohol and drugs were always, I think,
in my generation or generations since your generation,
they're always the ticket in to groups
that you would otherwise feel excluded from.
To be able to drink as much or drink more or be crazier
or that sort of thing.
Yeah, and I don't know if it was in my head
that I had to drink to fit in or if it just made it easier.
You know, I think it was probably a combination of both.
A combination of me leaving all I knew in Kansas
and going to a new city and you're uncomfortable, right?
It's something new and alcohol made it comfortable.
Given the fact that your folks were still up in Kansas
and you're down here, you had certain rules
of living with your sister and her husband.
You had to abide by their rules and everything else.
How closely did you keep to that?
Closely until halfway through junior year.
I got drunk at a party and inevitably smoked weed again.
And that led me to smoking on the weekends,
which led me to kind of smoking every other day during the week.
And I eventually got caught and it crushed her.
She was like, you know, this is the one thing we ask you not to do
and you're doing it after all we've done essentially.
And that hurt me, you know, knowing that I hurt her,
that hurt me on the inside.
Did you think you weren't going to have any consequences
if you got caught or was it that you were willing to take that chance?
I think I was willing to take the chance
and I did not think I would get caught.
I thought that I was a smart,
pretty slick user.
But what happened was my grades started to slip.
They're like, what's going on?
And of course, no, nothing.
I don't know.
Hard class.
And she's a professional, so she's seen it all.
Oh my gosh, yeah.
So what were the consequences of that for you?
I might have gotten my car taken away for a couple of weeks,
more curfews.
It was more of just the toll that it took on me emotionally,
because of how much I upset her in realizing this chance that I was blowing,
you know, and literally just burning away.
You know, when it's your sister,
it puts her in a tough situation to be the disciplinary, right?
Because that's not exactly her role.
But I kind of forced a situation to make it her role.
So she did the best that she could or what she thought she could.
So the drug test became more frequent, which helped, right?
Because senior year was great.
I finished my studies strong, and it was kind of a learning lesson.
So you're going to this university in Waco.
What was your experience once you went off to school?
I think for the first time in my life with no parental guidance
and no immediate consequences, right?
I could wake up hungover and no one would know.
My disease started to grow, and I was no longer a weekend drinker.
I was an everyday drinker alone in my dorm.
And that confused me.
You know, I'm finally at a place in my life where this is all I've wanted.
I've wanted to attend this university forever.
I'm here.
I want to get a degree from here.
And yet I can't seem by sophomore year to leave my college dorm
because of the alcohol.
I didn't know what was going on.
I didn't know who to ask for help or that I could even ask for help.
I was scared that if I asked for help,
you're coming home and that's it.
So you're facing it from both ends then.
Your sister's in-laws who are taking care of the costs
of putting you at that university,
that there could be consequences and repercussions from that.
And at the same time, you're noticing some problems within yourself.
Right.
And so it was kind of like I had to live this double life.
When I was in front of them and their peers and their socials,
you know, I had to put on this face of like,
I'm this good kid, you know, I don't drink, I don't party.
But when I'm with just my peers, I'm living the party life, right?
And so I think that really took a toll on me.
When did things flip from the former being the most important to the latter?
Somewhere between my first and second year of college.
In what ways did that occur?
I needed more alcohol consumption than ever.
I was no longer able to just drink on the weekends.
That had come and gone.
It's like we say, once you turn into a pickle, there's no returning to a cucumber.
Did you have friends, though, that were following that same trajectory with you?
Not at all.
In fact, my friends from high school, we all went to college together.
They were true good friends.
Like, they were worried about my behavior.
In fact, we had had multiple conversations about,
hey, you know, I think you need to cut back.
We lived on separate parts of the campus so I could hide it.
And my friends that I had on the other side of the campus
didn't interact with my friends from high school that we went to college with.
So, again, another double life.
So you could go out when you weren't around the friends that you went to high school with,
or anybody to whom the message of you leading that double life
could get back to the people who were funding your education.
Right.
You'd be hanging with the folks who were doing what you were doing.
Mm-hmm.
It's a really complicated situation to balance.
I didn't look at it like that at the time, but looking back now, in hindsight, yeah.
How did you do it?
Well, I didn't.
You didn't?
No, no.
Sophomore year came to a conclusion, and it had gotten to the point
where I didn't go to maybe ten classes all semester of the last semester.
You must have had a pretty low grade point average by then.
Yes, I did.
So what were you telling people was the reason for that?
Well, they didn't know yet.
They didn't know.
Yeah, they didn't know yet.
And I knew at that time when this semester comes to a conclusion, that's it.
I'm gone.
Did that bother you?
Did that thought bother you?
I think so.
I think that's why I drank so much at that time, you know, alone.
Isn't that ironic?
The thing that bothers you the most is the thing that you keep on doing
because you're bothered by it the most.
Right.
I didn't know another way out.
We'll be right back.
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And we're back.
So the friends of yours who noticed that you had a problem,
did you get it, did you hear it, did you acknowledge it,
or were you brushing it off?
I got it, I acknowledged it, but I couldn't stop.
You were very much in the throes of alcoholism.
Yes.
What was that like?
It was scary. It was confusing.
You know, you're 19 years old and you're drinking the way
that some people drink in their 40s or 50s after 30 years of drinking.
You know, here I was five years into my drinking career, not even,
and it truly got the best of me.
But my sister would always tell me when I was about 16, you know,
be careful with alcohol because you're playing with a loaded gun.
And what she meant by that was,
she knew my biological father's side of the family.
You know, she knew them.
She knew that it was prevalent in that side of my blood.
And I just didn't think it would happen to me.
Like most of us who have that in our family, we just think,
oh, well, that won't be me, that won't be my story.
And there was almost a desire to prove that story wrong.
Absolutely. Or just thinking it wasn't going to affect you.
Yeah, so school kind of comes to a close and I move back home
and my sister tells me, you know,
you can live with me and get a job and go to community college here,
but I want you to go to a therapist.
And I said, okay.
And I think looking back, she knew that if she told me that I had a problem,
I wasn't going to hear it.
But if I heard it from a professional, maybe I'd listen.
So I go to my first session with a therapist
and she asked the inevitable question, how much do you drink?
Oh, you know, two or three, maybe a day.
Which was not true.
You know, I was probably finishing half a bottle of vodka at that time.
And I think I went to two or three sessions of hers.
And I said, you know, I'm not really connecting with her.
I don't want to go anymore.
And so I didn't. I never went back.
So school comes to an end and, or I leave rather,
and I start working at a club, spa, hotel here in Houston as a pool boy.
So here I go from, you know, a kind of prestigious university
to serving drinks and food by the pool for a summer.
Talk about humbling.
Because a lot of the people who hung out at this establishment
I grew up with and went to school with.
And it's fine for a summer job.
But then that summer comes to an end
and I got a different position at the same company
going inside and being a server at the restaurant.
And over the span of four years,
I go from a pool boy to an inside server to a concierge
to selling pretty expensive members.
All while, after I get off work,
I go to my local watering hole and drink till 12 or 1 in the morning
because now I'm 21 and I can do that.
Did you do that by yourself or were you with friends?
No, I did it by myself.
The people that were there were the same ones that were there every day.
You know, they'd get off work and they'd come do the same thing
because, I mean, I was an alcoholic.
I didn't know that at the time.
But it was kind of like the camaraderie that I was talking about, right?
I mean, that we get from these meetings.
We get from AA meetings.
That's, I think, what I was searching for
by going to the same bar, the same establishment every night
and playing pool or playing cards or playing darts
and drinking like everybody else drank for the first time.
And they were 30, 40, 50 years older than me.
But I had to wear a suit to work.
So they got off, they thought I was a lawyer or something.
And they would ask me, are you a lawyer?
I said, no, I'm not.
And I told them where I worked.
And they understood.
And my friends were still in school, so they had no idea.
Yeah.
Except for my family who I lived with.
You know, I'd be coming home at 2 in the morning
and eventually they had enough of that, too.
So it was time to move out on my own.
And, of course, when you're hanging out at those establishments,
people start bringing in other substances.
And that's where I tried cocaine for the first time,
playing darts till 2 in the morning and doing cocaine.
What did you think when you did cocaine for the first time?
I thought it was awesome because I could drink more.
Yeah.
You know, you'd be so drunk and you'd do some cocaine
and then all of a sudden you could drink more and be coherent.
So, really, for me, I think it was just being able to drink more
was why I liked it.
But that was short-lived.
I think in a 2- or 3-month span of being a concierge
and being able to get it, having it accessible
and not having to pay for it, I lost quite a bit of weight.
And it became noticeable.
To where people are asking, what's going on?
In fact, it was my friends from college, once they graduated,
asked, what's going on?
And I told them.
I said, I've been doing some cocaine.
And they said, do you have any on you right now?
And I said, no, which I did.
That was a lie.
So I did the rest of what I had in my pocket that night
and didn't do it again, which I'm so thankful for
because I think that was the beginning of the fentanyl crisis.
I had never heard of anyone dying from cocaine
and fentanyl-laced cocaine until probably 6 months after I stopped.
Pretty expensive, is it?
Well, it was accessible for free for me.
I would recommend, you know, I would get people in at restaurants
or high-end restaurants around the city being a concierge.
So it was kind of their way of tipping you.
It was like a trade, yeah.
Here's a reservation.
Thank you so much for the cocaine.
Yeah, because sometimes the money gets in the way
of continuing that particular drug.
So you stopped cocaine flat.
Yes.
Did your drinking ramp up after that?
Of course.
It did, again.
Well, actually, I think it stayed the same.
I think just not having that substance to keep me on balance,
if you would say, it made the blackouts start to increase.
So you have a history of starting,
doing the weed and then stopping and then the booze picks up.
I guess so.
And then cocaine and then stopping and then that picks up.
Yeah, yeah, I guess so.
So if we take a look across the graph here,
were you higher on the graph in terms of your drinking?
That was always my number one substance, yeah.
It took away the edge.
It took away all the, which I think, you know,
probably stems from my childhood,
like not knowing.
Just being in a weird position,
like my dad is my dad, but he's not my dad.
There's so many secrets that are going around my family.
I was uncomfortable.
The only time I felt most comfortable or totally at ease
is when I was at a friend's parent's house
with a loving, you know, mother and father.
And not that mine weren't.
It was just a different dynamic.
Or if later in life when I was drinking
and able to take the edge off with some kind of substance.
Now, were your folks still back in Kansas?
Yes, they still are.
Okay, they're still there.
So here you are.
You got tossed out by your sister and her husband.
Yeah.
And did you just get your own place?
How did you?
Yeah, so my friends had graduated college
and they needed a place to stay.
So timing kind of worked out to where we rented a house together.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
Cool.
Yeah, over in the Heights area.
So you were able to do what you wanted at that point.
Correct.
No consequences.
No consequences.
With the exception of work,
I just had to show up at 9 a.m., right?
Didn't have to go to school anymore.
I didn't have to, you know, get certain grades.
I didn't have to do all these things
that were kind of part of 15 through age 19.
So how far were you away from you stopping drinking
and going to AA?
About three years, which was a fast three years.
2019, I'm still working at the same place.
Going to work, getting off work, going to the bar.
I started dating this girl and we worked together as well.
And that's when I went to my first AA meeting,
right around that time.
Yeah.
Just the one meeting.
Just the one meeting.
One meeting.
That's right.
Then COVID happened.
Yeah.
2020.
And now I didn't have to go to work, right?
Yeah.
So now the drinking started when I would wake up at 11 or 12.
Every day.
Wow.
All day.
And Howard, for a couple of reasons, I'm thankful for COVID.
I think had it not been for COVID and no consequences,
I really do think my drinking career would have been extended
by maybe 10 years or five years.
COVID sped up the process of me getting sober
because now I was an everyday blackout drinker
with no consequences, nowhere to go.
Everybody's locked in your house.
And that's not sustainable.
No real accountability either, is there?
None.
Huh.
Yeah, none.
I just had to make sure my girlfriend was happy.
So I would hide the drinking from her.
Did she know about it and she just wasn't saying anything?
Or did you really succeed in hiding?
I don't think she knew the extent until we moved in together.
Mm-hmm.
Towards January of 21.
Hmm.
Did she try and get you to stop?
She would try to get me to cut back.
Cut back, okay.
Yeah, cut back.
Yeah.
So we come out of lockdown or, you know, COVID,
right around June or July, maybe, of 2020.
So July, we opened back up.
And so now I have to go back to work full time
when I'm used to drinking in the morning.
And so that was hard, but I adjusted to it.
Now what would happen is when I would get home,
from work at 5, it was a race to drink as much as I could
until I blacked out.
Hmm.
So you had a physical need to...
Now the physical need was there.
Wow.
Yeah.
You've said blackout a few times now.
Mm-hmm.
Were you an every time blackout drinker
or did you just drink to that extent every time?
I think I drank to that extent every time
and sometimes it would happen and sometimes it wouldn't.
So then I switched jobs.
I go to work for a real estate company
and same thing.
I had to be there at 9 and get off at 5.
But what was interesting about that is
I really do think God put this job in my life
because my boss was 12 years in the program.
Mm-hmm.
That's cool.
And he never, I guess, suggested I go to a meeting with him.
He just kind of lived by example
or showed me that there was a way to be clean and sober.
How early in that relationship did you know he was in the program?
He was pretty open about it.
It was a small company, maybe 10 people.
We knew, you know, he just didn't drink
and he was sober 12 years.
In AA?
Yes, he was in AA.
So you connected his sobriety with being in AA.
Correct.
And he's the person I called that night of June 20th.
So I worked there about nine months
and I had gotten an internship in radio
at a well-known sports radio station here in Houston.
And I was kind of pursuing that career
to hold a full-time job and full-time drinking career, right?
So COVID, I was supposed to start with that company
during the shutdown, but that got pushed back a year.
So in the meantime, I worked at this real estate company
where I was introduced to someone that was sober
and that I knew and I interacted with every day.
Mm-hmm.
And that was short-lived, like nine months.
I got out of that career because I got a job
from the radio company that I was mentioning.
And they were ready for me to come work for them
and they were ready to hire me.
As much as I was a mess outside of work,
I was very professional and moved up in work.
I was able to kind of keep those two things separate.
You would be what we would call a functional alcoholic.
At that point, I was, yes.
That whole industry that you're talking about
is one that is relatively permissive
of people drinking and certainly drugs.
I've heard all the stories of the 80s and 90s.
You know, radio in the 80s and 90s
and early 2000s was a wild place.
I mean, I've heard stories of people
going to the radio cane in studio and going on air, right?
Mm-hmm.
It's not the case now.
But that wasn't the culture of where I went to go work.
So I leave the real estate business.
I go work in radio.
I finally got my dream job of being in sports
and being in radio.
And for the first time in my working career,
I no longer had to sit at a desk
or be at a place from 9 to 5
because I was in sales, selling advertising for the radio.
So I would just leave, like at 11 or 12.
I'd go to lunch at a bar and drink
and maybe sometimes meet with clients,
maybe sometimes not.
I'd start drinking it.
It was like COVID happened all over again for me.
And I was treating it that way,
drinking in the morning, drinking in the afternoon.
That lasted about a month
until my boss went out of town,
which leads us back to the beginning of this interview.
So I'm living with this girl.
I'm trying to hide my drinking.
It's no longer working.
I'm blacking out every night.
I wake up in the morning.
I drink a bottle of wine in the shower,
a couple of beers on my way to work.
I go start drinking at lunch.
And then by 3, I kind of finish my day
and go to the bar and drink until 11 p.m.
I mean, it was absolutely miserable.
Sounds like it.
And in the moment, you don't realize it.
But towards the end, I was miserable.
Well, the days have a tendency
to just roll into each other,
and it becomes a blur after a while, doesn't it?
Yeah, it's an absolute blur.
So I was there about a month or two
before my boss went on vacation,
and I didn't go to work.
I went on a bender for three, four days.
At the end of the three or four days,
like you said, sun's coming up,
the sun's going down.
It all feels like one day to me, you know?
And I finally call that guy,
and I say, his name was Ryan.
I say, Ryan, I need help.
Like, I'm crying on the phone.
I need help.
Yeah.
Yeah, where you at?
I was at a bar.
He picks me up.
I kind of remember this, right?
He picks me up, takes me to his home,
and I am physically shaking,
like, from alcohol withdrawals
just for an hour or two.
And he actually gave me some whiskey,
and he said, here, drink this.
This is your last day.
Like, drink it, stop the shakes.
And he calls my sister.
He tells my sister,
we need to get him to rehab.
And she goes, well,
he doesn't have insurance.
Because remember, I'm two months on the job.
You usually don't get that until 90 days in.
At least.
Yeah.
She goes, he's not paying $20,000, $30,000.
He's going to regret that.
He does need help, but what we're going to do
is take him to Ben Taub.
That's where a lot of our stories begin
in A.A. in Houston.
At the Charity Hospital.
At the Charity Hospital,
the county hospital.
She takes me to Ben Taub,
and she says, he needs to get a medical detox,
because if he doesn't,
he can have a seizure and die.
And thank God for that.
So she takes me there,
and that's kind of where I come to.
I'm at Ben Taub in the waiting room
with stabbed victims and homeless people
trying to check in for a bed,
and my family's there,
and my girlfriend at the time was there,
and we're crying, you know,
she's crying, we're all crying.
And that was like the point where I said,
I'm done.
That was the moment I realized,
the gig is up,
I can't keep juggling all this,
and that was the day it all started.
Was that a sudden realization,
or was that something that kind of gradually built
as that day unfolded for you?
Yeah, I think it was a gradual build
that I was only willing to admit when intoxicated.
I called, like I said,
I called Ryan,
and I was drunk enough to admit defeat,
which I wouldn't have done sober.
So here you are in the hospital,
you're detoxing,
getting to the point that you're finally,
where you can admit that you needed to stop.
Yeah, and by the way,
this is like 4 in the morning.
They take me at 11,
I think I get admitted at 4 in the morning.
They give me IVs,
and they say, you know,
this isn't a detox center,
this is a county hospital,
you need to get help,
you need to get treatment,
and they send me on my way.
And I sleep for half the day,
because I was exhausted,
a four day bender of just going in, going out.
You're still detoxing at this point, right?
Of course.
Yeah, of course.
So I went to a meeting that night
in the Heights,
a well-known blue building
in the Heights,
because I didn't know anything.
I just Google,
AA meeting near me,
I see the place where I live,
and I think, okay, that's it.
So I call Ryan, and I say,
will you go with me?
And he says, yeah, I'll go with you.
And it was a speaker meeting.
So I listen to this lady's story,
and I didn't realize this at the time,
but it is the most wild
drunk-a-log I have ever heard
in a meeting to this day.
And Ryan's sitting next to me,
and he's so scared
that I'm not going to relate to this meeting.
He just thinks it's a disaster.
But I'm sitting there,
because I'm so willing and so ready,
and I just think, you know,
if I keep drinking,
this is how my life is going to end up,
you know, with this drunk-a-log.
And there was probably four people
in the room total.
And I pick up a desire chip,
and that's...
And this little tiny meeting.
This little tiny meeting,
this speaker meeting,
I was so ready to just begin
this journey of recovery
and begin this journey
of honesty with everybody.
That same one I went to.
The first one.
The first one I ever went to
in that Friday night meeting
at the men's group.
So did you start going daily at that point?
Yes. I met with a gentleman
after that meeting.
He kind of pulled me aside.
He was around my age.
And he took me under his wing,
and he just said,
Hey, I know where you're at.
I'm going to show you a men's meeting
and I'm going to show you
where you're at.
And I was younger around.
What happened to him?
I don't know.
About six months into this sobriety,
I was six months sober,
he just disappeared.
Maybe he'll be back someday,
maybe not, but he took me around
to the men's circuit, right?
The whole circuit.
And that's still the circuit
I do to this day.
Interesting that you still
weren't detoxed when you got out.
The first three days were rough.
I woke up in night sweats,
shaking during the sleep,
kind of jolting,
when you start falling asleep
and you would jolt, like wake back up,
for about three days.
I was physically addicted.
So a lot of people think
when they go to AA,
the misconception is,
I'll go there, I'll get sober,
I'll learn how to drink,
I'll drink like a gentleman.
No, I knew because of that meeting
a few years back that this was
a pure abstinence program.
You know, I wasn't going to learn
how to drink like a gentleman.
I wasn't going to be able
to lie anymore.
This was kind of the start
of a new life, right?
And my sister was right.
I mean, did I need a rehab
at that time?
I think I was so ready
that whether I went to rehab
or did what I chose to do
and just do AA,
I think I was going to get sober
no matter what.
So you turned to AA.
I turned to AA.
You had this man, the one who went out,
he was your sponsor for a while?
No, no, he was not my sponsor.
Actually, my sponsor was
the gentleman who took me
to my first ever meeting.
So when I was ready to come into the program,
I called him and I said,
this is the guy that I golfed with
that kind of gave me
my first ever meeting.
It was my first meeting, right?
I got that first time meeting experience.
So he was my sponsor.
The guy who I was mentioning,
just, you know, for whatever reason,
felt like he wanted to help
and take me around
and show me the men's circuit.
And we talked every day.
I had two guys I talked to every day
for the first six months.
One was him,
came in like a week behind me.
And both of them
are not sober right now.
And that was tough, right?
Because six months in,
you know, you're doing AA,
you're going to a meeting every day,
you're working through the steps,
you start building your group within
the group of Alcoholics Anonymous
who you, you know, you reach out
and talk to on the phone every day.
And at six months, they were both gone.
Yeah, they veer off.
They veer off, which happens, right?
Yeah, that's a tough thing to experience
for the first time because
you realize just how close to the edge you are
when you're around them
and they seem to be okay and you're doing okay.
And then suddenly they're not there.
The first thought that comes to mind is
how far away from that edge am I?
Right.
So you got yourself a sponsor.
How long did it take you
to work through all 12 steps?
Exactly 90 days.
And on the 90th day,
I did the Holy Name Men's Retreat.
That changed my life.
So I had just finished my 12th step.
And on the sign-up sheet, it says,
you must have 90 days to attend this retreat.
That was my 90th day.
Oh, how cool.
The first day.
And so I emailed them and said,
is it okay?
Of course.
Yeah, of course it's okay.
And I had a spiritual awakening at that retreat.
Yeah, because I had just finished step number 12.
And on the 90th day, we had the retreat
and then you work all 12 steps again, right?
Yeah.
So that was a big turning point in my sobriety.
Was there a particular point within the retreat
that you had that sense of spiritual awakening
or was it just the weekend?
It was the weekend as a whole.
You know, it was meeting men
that shared the same experience
that I had with alcohol
and now they were sober,
some of them with 50 plus years.
Oh, yeah.
Some with a couple months like myself,
a couple few months like myself.
It was kind of like,
it's kind of like summer camp, right?
In a way, just for a weekend.
It was nothing that I can explain into words
but it was an incredible experience.
And if anybody has a chance to do
any kind of retreat
in their prospective towns they live in,
I would highly recommend it.
What I always say about retreats
is that they come very close to the fantasy
I've always had of being able to live within AA.
You know, that feeling you get sitting in a meeting
and you think, God, I wish I had this feeling
all day long.
100%, right.
But it's one hour a day
and then you're going out to life.
My fantasy always was,
I'd like to be in AA 23 hours a day
and go out to life for an hour.
I'll be back in an hour, guys.
I'm going out to life.
And that's how it is.
Essentially, at the retreat from Friday evening
to a little afternoon on Sunday,
you're staying there.
Everybody has their own space
and their own room.
You're eating all your meals together.
You're taking the steps.
There's all that fellowship going on.
I always tell people when I'm out there
plugging in the retreats,
because it's so important,
I always say, it'll turbocharge your program.
And there are retreat centers all over the country.
The Passionists who run the one in Houston,
they can accommodate 80 men every time.
What you just said about going
and feeling that way
is the way I still feel.
So it's a beautiful thing.
It's a magical place.
And that's because
a lot of the individuals that join,
I had seen them around
in meetings here in Houston,
but I really got a chance to connect with them
on a deeper level.
You do. When you go into that many meetings
and you're spending time eating your meals together
and having snacks together
and just being in the same space,
I think it makes such a huge difference.
What I wanted to talk about was
what you've been doing
over the three and a half years.
What are some of the milestones
within that three and a half years
that you can look at?
You've already mentioned one of them being
that kind of spiritual awakening
you've had in your first 90 days.
What are some other experiences like that?
Some of the intangible ones
are just the relationships I've made in this program
with people and with a higher power
who I choose to call God.
The feeling that I have
and live with now today
is that feeling I think I was always searching for
in the bars
with the different accolades
I was trying to accomplish.
No matter what it was,
the feeling that I get living
the AA principles,
the day-to-day affair,
is unlike anything I've ever experienced.
Truly.
Some of the physical ones
I've exceeded in my career.
I've been up for an award
in Houston
for my position in radio.
That's great.
Obviously increased my income,
which will be a tool
that I can use hopefully
in the future for my family.
All the physical things
they say that you'll get in the ninth step,
they came true really quickly.
But the intangible ones
that I mentioned,
those are ones that stay forever
as long as you're working the program.
And I'll tell you this, Howard,
we haven't talked about this at all,
but your podcast
was extremely important for me.
My first year of sobriety.
And I know it just came from
a meeting of humility,
so I don't want to inflate your ego at all.
But honestly, it was.
Because every single night
that I fell asleep,
I would put on your podcast
and hear people talk about
how they got sober
and the way that their story
began with Alcoholics Anonymous.
And whether people had 40 years
or two or three years,
obviously the more recent
sobriety ones I could relate with more.
But that was so important to me
because I listened to it
every single night.
And it allowed me to find other podcasts.
Your podcast was an introduction
to be able to consume AA material
via listening.
And that was so important for me.
So thank you for everything
that you've done for this program.
Well, you're welcome.
And thank you for saying
such nice things about it.
Everything you said
is absolutely the reason
why I do it.
Are there parts of the program
that you look at
and you still struggle with?
You know,
I think in the first year of sobriety
it was so easy to have that conscious contact
with a higher power every day.
I did whatever you guys told me.
I was so desperate.
I read page 88
every morning, right?
For at least a few months in the first year.
I think the part that I struggle with today
is trying to maintain that relationship
with a higher power
or that conscious contact with a higher power
every single day.
It doesn't happen every single day.
It might happen three or four or five times
through the week.
And some weeks it might be two or three
or some weeks it might be seven.
But I think for myself,
three years in almost,
that's part of my program
that has gone through ups and downs
of sobriety.
But that first year, I was all in.
And it's not that I'm not all in today.
It's just that
my program's changed a little bit.
I don't go to a meeting every day.
I go to a meeting four times a week.
I don't know if I necessarily need one
every day now.
Or it just might not fit in my schedule
because I got my life back.
I've mended those relationships
with everybody in the story
that I've mentioned today.
My sister, my friends,
her, my sister's in-laws.
These are ninth step amends.
These are ninth step amends.
Those relationships have been made
either through living amends
or otherwise, I should say.
So how about the giving back part?
Sponsorship and or service work?
Yeah, sponsorship.
I've been able to take two guys
through the steps in three years.
Are they still sober?
Let me see.
One is still sober,
but he decided to not go to meetings anymore.
He might come back in.
He was finishing up law school
and doing his final exams,
so he was focusing on that.
And the other one moved to Pennsylvania
and I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
Did you suggest that he get
another sponsor up there?
Yeah, I did.
And before he moved,
he quit going to meetings as well.
So I've gotten everybody through step 12.
I'm two for two, I should say.
But I don't know where they are now
in aspects to where they are
in their AA program.
Because I reach out occasionally,
but I don't feel it's my duty
to stay on top of them.
I'm here if they need me.
So you're available
to be a sponsor right now.
Of course.
That's cool.
Well, it sounds like you've got a program today
that's working for you on a daily basis.
I see you participating in the program.
You're at meetings.
You're available to be a sponsor
and you've been a sponsor.
You take guys through the steps.
You've been taken through the steps.
Your sponsor has a sponsor.
And so all the ducks seem really nicely lined up for you.
Yeah.
How do you feel about that?
It feels great.
If you would have told me three years ago
that this is where my life would be,
I would only hope that half of it
would come true to seem happy,
and half today would have come true
three years ago,
I would have thought that I was king of the world.
And this program's given me so much.
I mean, my life was chaos.
And that's just not the case anymore.
People call me for advice.
You know?
They know that if anybody is struggling with alcohol
or whatever the case may be,
they know that they can reach out to me.
That you're available.
That I'm available.
And availability is nine-tenths of the game
in this business.
And that's an example for peers around me.
But you're in a good place today.
I can tell it.
I can see it in your face and in your eyes.
Well, I went to a meeting today.
Yeah, you went to a meeting and you're doing this.
And this is something that I think is so important.
And I'm looking forward to people around the planet
being able to hear a guy with your degree
of sincerity and interest
and desire
to not only stay sober yourself
but to pass it on.
And I honor you and acknowledge you for that.
I'll look forward to seeing you
in more meetings.
Love you, brother.
Take care.
Well, my friends, that's a wrap
for today's episode of A.A. Recovery Interviews.
I want to thank my guest, Quinton S.,
for sharing his story.
And thank you for tuning in.
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