Nobody suspects the guy who always shows up.

The kid from Riva, Maryland

David was adopted from Brazil at two years old and raised outside Annapolis by Stan and Carolyn Chaney, two parents who never let a day pass without telling him he was loved. He grew up crabbing, dirt biking, and chasing music with the obsession of a kid who felt he had something to prove.

And it worked. A scholarship to Berklee. The X Factor. A Coca-Cola deal and the official anthem for the World Cup. By his late twenties, David Chaney was living the exact life he’d written down as a teenager.

Then his mom called him home.

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Two phone calls

The first call was his dad: stage IV cancer. David sat in his car in the driveway and finished a bottle before he even heard the news. He calls that moment the real birth of it.

His mom retired and died a month and a half later. He was in London when his father, a 230-pound army vet he’d never heard cry, told him she had two weeks to live. Her response when David called her, falling apart:

“You are doing everything you ever said you wanted to do. I could not be more proud of you, my son. I need you to keep going.”

He flew 17 hours home without telling anyone, drinking the whole way. She held on long enough to see him walk through the door. Two nights later she was gone.

Two years after that, his dad died on Christmas Eve. Twenty-seven years old, no siblings, both parents gone, and a career still climbing.

“I just became friends with the thing that tried to kill me.”

Mr. Show Up

Here’s the part that will feel familiar to more people than want to admit it. David never missed. He memorized everything so he could perform half asleep. The people around him had a nickname for it: “There he is, Mr. Show Up.” He sang the national anthem at Sunday Night Football in front of 80,000 people, months into a sobriety attempt, after slipping away for shots nobody saw. He killed it. That performance triggered his darkest relapse.

That’s what high-functioning looks like. The show gets better while the person disappears. Handles of Tito’s a day. Sunglasses in every photo. A wife quietly putting a tracker on his car because she was scared of what she’d find otherwise.

One night, at his lowest, he drove to his parents’ grave site intending to say goodbye. The first person he ever met in America, his best friend since childhood, was somehow standing in that cemetery when he pulled in. They cried for a long time. It was the first time David said out loud that he needed help.

(If any part of that lands close to home for you, in the US you can call or text 988 any time.)

It still took eight years and a string of rehabs from there. Cuffs, jail, a DUI, the edge of divorce.

“I had to crash out to cash in. It’s that simple.”

What a year and a half sober looks like

David is 40 now, married, living in North Carolina. He adopted his wife’s son, the 11-year-old who saw the worst of it and calls him a fighter anyway. His 20-month-old will never meet the old version of his dad. He released his first sober single, “Fake News,” and found out he could make music without a cup waiting between takes, which he’d genuinely believed was impossible.

His measure of success changed sizes. It’s his wife leaving for ten hours and saying “you’ve got the kids, right?” without a flicker of doubt.

“Alcohol is a slow death, point-blank, period. It will take the soul, it will take the man, it will take the family. It will drain you to nothing.”

If your drinking has a schedule

If you’re reading this and your drinking has a system, a timing, a set of rules that keep it invisible, David’s story is going to feel less like a podcast episode and more like surveillance. The performing. The “I can put it down tomorrow.” The people who’d be shocked. He did all of it, for years, while the whole world watched him win.

The full conversation goes places this post can’t. The story of his mom’s last 48 hours. What an ibogaine retreat in Costa Rica did and didn’t fix. The moment in Atlanta where he fell to his knees and never looked back.

Prefer video? Watch the full conversation on YouTube

Also on Apple Podcasts · Acast

David’s story has the part most people skip past. The relapse, the coming back, the day after the day after. The Sober Motivation app is not a place that grades you on streaks. It’s a place to start over without explaining yourself. As many times as it takes. Sixty support calls a month and a community that knows what starting over feels like.

Start again with the Sober Motivation app →

Pulling for you. — Brad

Watch this episode:

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If you’ve ever wondered whether your drinking is becoming a problem—or you’ve called yourself a “functional alcoholic”—this conversation may hit closer to home than you expect.

In this episode:

• Why “functional alcoholic” can be a dangerous label
  

• Hiding alcohol addiction while appearing successful
  

• Drinking whiskey in coffee to get through the day
  

• The progression from controlled drinking to dependence
  

• The moment everything changed
  

• Finding lasting recovery and a new way to live
  

If Jason’s story resonates with you, please like this video, subscribe, and share it with someone who needs to hear that recovery is possible.

The girl everyone said was too young to be an alcoholic

Mailinn grew up in the countryside an hour outside Bergen, Norway. Two brothers, two parents, a normal childhood by her own account. She had her first drink at 12, homemade vodka, and by her late teens the weekends were the only thing she could think about.

By 18 she was already writing in her diary that she should take a sober weekend. By 21 she was drinking every day. But every time the worry crept in, she had an answer ready.

She believed what a lot of people believe. That an alcoholic was a 50-year-old man, not a young woman in her twenties. So she kept going. The warning signs were loud. She just turned the volume down.

The years she drank to feel nothing

This is the part people on the outside can’t understand. How a person lets it get this far. For Mailinn, the answer was simple, and it’s one a lot of people will recognize.

It was numbing for me. I had a lot of thoughts, anxiety, things from my childhood, a lot of stress about the future, and I didn’t feel good enough. I just used it as medication to numb every feeling. I didn’t want to feel anything.

By the last four years, it was no longer about getting drunk. It was about staying functional. She drank around the clock, slept very little, and threw up every single day. In the final year, what came up was only blood, because her esophagus had given out.

When I woke up, I had to drink at least 12 big beers to get the shaking to stop and to get my head working normally.

She was consuming roughly 7,000 calories a day in alcohol. She reached 165 kilos. She started writing letters for her family to find after she died, sorting out who her belongings should go to. By early 2020 her legs were collapsing underneath her. A doctor finally told her she could drink as much as she wanted in the hospital, but if she left, she would die. She stayed. They put her in a coma that morning.

She spent two months under, four and a half months in the hospital, and woke into a world that had a pandemic named, in her hallucinating brain, after a beer. Nobody expected her to survive. She did.

What she has now that she didn’t have then

Mailinn had to learn to walk again. She had to lose around 100 kilos. She had to figure out what to do with a life she was certain she’d never get to live, because she’d been sure she would die before 30.

What she talks about now is not willpower. It’s gratitude, the kind that shows up in the smallest moments.

My gratitude is my reward for the hell I’ve been through.

Six years later, she can stand up off the toilet by herself, without firemen, without a wheelchair, and burst into a smile because her legs just work. She can walk into a restaurant and order a soda. She spends her days sharing her story in the media so that the next person who drinks like she did knows they are not the only one.

If the voice in your head says it’s impossible

If you have ever stood in front of a mirror and not recognized your own eyes, Mailinn knows that exact feeling. If part of you is worried and the rest of you keeps finding reasons it isn’t that bad yet, she knows that too. She lived in that gap for years.

Here is the one thing she wishes someone had told her while she was still drinking:

Don’t listen to the voice in your head telling you it’s impossible to live without alcohol. The voice is lying. There is a very good life waiting for you.

Her full conversation with Brad is below. The transcript can’t carry what her voice does when she describes the eyes that came back. It’s worth your next 45 minutes.

Prefer video?

What Mailinn describes, the part where you start to believe you’re the only person who has ever felt this, is the reason the Sober Motivation app exists. The thing about hiding your drinking is that the secret convinces you nobody else could possibly understand. The app is where you find out that isn’t true. Same stories, different kitchens, people one day ahead of you who already know what it feels like.

Join the Sober Motivation app → https://www.sobermotivation.com/

— Brad

Sober Motivation is a podcast and a community for people getting honest about alcohol. If this one hit, the best thing you can do is forward it to one person who needs it.

He woke up on a Saturday afternoon in a hostel he didn’t recognize. No money. No phone battery. When he stood up and started walking toward the center of Granada, his flip-flop snapped.

He made it to the most central point of the city and stopped.

He stood there for two and a half hours.

Gary grew up just south of Manchester, in what he describes as leafy suburbia. Loving parents. Only child. All-boys private school. Popular. Good at sport. “The perfect childhood on paper,” he says, and he means it without irony.

By his early 30s, he was teaching at a university in Seville, Spain, where the bars open at 7 AM and there are more of them per square kilometer than any other city in Europe. He was in them every morning.

The gap between those two points is what Gary came on the Sober Motivation Podcast to talk about. And the way he talks about it, plainly and without self-pity, is worth your time.

The part that doesn’t make sense until it does

Gary knew something was off by 17. He told a mate directly: “I think I’ve got a problem with this. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Nobody did anything about it. Including Gary.

He spent eight years in London in a cycle he now describes without softening as “drunken, underachieving debauchery that just made me miserable.” Drinking on the train home. The pub until 10. Payday loans. Bailiff letters. His best mate from school being interviewed on the BBC on a Tuesday morning while Gary watched with a can of Stella.

“The torture was knowing I had loads of potential and doing fuck all with it. That was one of the turmoils that I got stuck in, which led me to drink more. Because I just couldn’t handle my head space.”

He moved to Spain at 31, convinced it would be a fresh start. “Obviously when I look back it’s ridiculous,” he says. “But I took my alcohol dependency to Spain with me.”

The relationship he’d moved there for ended because of his drinking. He moved to Seville alone. Seville, with its 7 AM bars in the old town. You already know how that part went.

Granada

The weekend in Granada started with a lot of MDMA on the Friday. Gary woke up Saturday afternoon in a hostel he hadn’t checked into. No money, no phone battery, flip-flop snapped, making his way through what he describes as “horrible terrain.”

He got to the center of the city. Waited.

“I was stood there for about two and a half hours on my own just, like, questioning my life.”

His flatmate eventually walked past. Gave him the equivalent of 50 dollars, told him nicely to sort himself out. Gary bought two cans for the train home to Seville. Drank one and a half of them.

He walked into his apartment. Looked at the last half can.

“I poured the last half of the second can down the drain. I’ve not had a drink since.”

That was it.

What the AA meeting felt like

Gary rang AA from a cafe the next morning. He went to a meeting that Saturday. It was English-speaking, half the room was Scottish, and Gary had been born in Scotland.

He shared. Then he walked outside and sat on the steps.

“I cried uncontrollably for about three or four minutes. For the first time in my life I felt like... it wasn’t catharsis, it was like a cold glass of water in my face. Like, right, this is it. There is one option here, and that is to go all in and make getting sober your life’s priority.”

He went home. He meditated every morning, wrote gratitude, walked before work, said no to every single social engagement for two years. He lost 30 pounds. Got promoted. Started sleeping. Started liking himself.

He found out in his 40s that he’d had undiagnosed ADHD the entire time. The obsessive craving loop that started at 13. The inability to switch it off. The self-medication that was never going to stop working until he stopped it.

“It wasn’t just a character flaw. I wasn’t a weak piece of shit that couldn’t get a grip on his life. There was something going on.”

He now coaches people in recovery. About 60 to 70 percent of them have ADHD.

If you’re reading this in a version of Gary’s 20s, the part where the outside is still holding together but the inside has been running in that pit-of-the-stomach dread for a while, Gary’s full conversation with Brad is below.

The part where he talks about what finally shifted for him is worth your next hour.

Listen on Spotify

Prefer video? Watch the full conversation on YouTube

Also on Apple Podcasts

What Gary is describing, the loneliness of carrying it alone for years because he was too proud to tell anyone, is the reason the Sober Motivation app exists. The thing about hiding is that you start to believe nobody else has ever felt this. The app is where you find out that’s not true. Same stories, different kitchens.

Join the Sober Motivation app

— Brad

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that motivation isn’t the problem.

People who want to get sober aren’t struggling because they lack willpower or because they haven’t heard the right quote. They’re struggling because they’re doing it alone.

That’s the thing nobody talks about enough. Sobriety is hard not because you have to stop drinking, but because drinking was woven into everything. Your nights. Your friendships. Your way of unwinding. When you remove it, you’re not just removing a drink. You’re removing a whole world. And unless something replaces it, that void will pull you back in.

That’s why I built the Sober Motivation app.

It Started With a Simple Question

When people started reaching out after finding the podcast, they were asking some version of the same question: “Okay, I’m in. I want to do this. But what now?”

They had the inspiration. What they needed was infrastructure.

A place to track their days. Not just as a number, but as a reminder of what they’d built. A place to connect with other people who actually get it, not friends who keep saying “just have one” or family who don’t understand why it’s such a big deal. A place to go when it’s 11pm and the urge hits and calling someone feels like too much.

That’s what the app is.

What’s Inside

Day tracking. Your streak matters. Not because sobriety is a competition, but because seeing 47 days, 112 days, 200 days staring back at you on a bad night is often enough to get through it. The app tracks every day and reminds you how far you’ve come.

A real community. Not a comment section. Not anonymous strangers. A community of people on the same path, people you can actually talk to, check in with, and lean on. Some of the friendships formed inside this app are the most genuine ones our members have. Because when you strip away the alcohol, what’s left is honesty. And honesty builds real connection.

The podcast, all in one place. Every episode of Sober Motivation lives inside the app. When you need to hear someone else’s story, someone who’s been where you are and made it through, it’s right there. No searching, no shuffling between apps.

Meetings. We’ve built in access to daily meetings because community matters that much.

Journaling w/ prompts: Because sometimes we need a place to organize our thoughts and a nudge to get started.

Much more to come as well, we are just getting started.

The Thing I Keep Coming Back To

The most common message I get from app members isn’t “I’m doing great.” It’s “I finally don’t feel alone in this.”

That’s the whole thing. That’s why this exists.

You can listen to the podcast, read the books, watch the videos, and all of that helps. But at the end of the day, sobriety is lived in real time, one day at a time, often in the in-between moments when no one’s watching. The app is built for those moments.

Join Us

If you’re anywhere on this journey, day one, day one thousand, or just starting to wonder if your drinking has become something more, the app is for you.

It’s free to download and there’s a community of people on the other side ready to welcome you.

👉 www.sobermotivation.com

You don’t have to do this alone. That’s the whole point.

Brad

He had been drinking every day for years. He had not, until that moment, decided to stop.

JB is 35. He has a wife, two small kids, and a life in the Atlanta suburbs that looks, from the outside, like it’s working.

He started drinking at eleven. Filled water bottles from his parents’ liquor cabinet at twelve. Smoked cigarettes at nine. By the time he could understand what alcohol actually was, he had already built a life around it.

He had never met a sober version of himself.

The night the management stopped working

For years, JB didn’t think he had a problem. He had a system.

Drink runs on the way home. Two beers in the truck so they’d be gone before he walked in. A recycling can he filled in careful stages so the neighbors wouldn’t hear.

He called it management. He never called it moderation. Moderation implied moderation was possible.

“It wasn’t about moderation. It was about management. And that’s exhausting.”

The first big crack came at a gas station. JB had been drinking for days. He sat there, drunk, with a firearm in his hand. He called his brother. His brother stayed on the phone with him all night.

JB kept drinking for another year and a half.

That year and a half is the part most people don’t tell. It’s the gap between knowing and acting. JB filled it with hundreds of day ones. Most of them didn’t last past lunch.

What finally moved him wasn’t the gas station. It was a tattoo.

He’d planned the piece for years. He went in still half drunk and stayed in the chair for five and a half hours. When he stood up and saw it, he panicked.

“They looked like my four-year-old drew them. I knew I had to quit drinking.”

He got two days, drank again. Three days, drank again. Then October 7th. He has not had a drink since.

What 227 days looks like

What changed wasn’t a system. JB had systems. What changed was that he stopped trying to do it alone.

The morning after his last drink, he logged into a Sober Motivation virtual meeting. Day one, he was so hungover he can’t remember if he turned on his camera. Day two, he turned it on.

He hasn’t missed many since.

The part he keeps coming back to is that sobriety didn’t fix everything the day he put the drink down. It just gave him enough time to see what was actually there. Underneath the daily drinking was a man who had never lived without something in his bloodstream. At 35, he was meeting himself for the first time.

“I’m learning how to be a real boy. I’m learning how to live.”

He gets to sit with his kids now. When his son is upset, JB tells him: you can sit with it. Let’s do that together. What his son doesn’t know is that JB is doing it for the first time too.

He calls what he’s going through sacred.

If you’re still in the management

If you’re reading this with a drink at your elbow, or a plan to start one in an hour, you are not the first.

You are also not as alone as the math in your head is telling you. JB had hundreds of day ones. Every one of them was him still believing he could manage it. He couldn’t. Most of us can’t.

There is a version of your life on the other side of this that you can’t see from here. That’s the hardest part. Not the stopping. The stepping through.

JB’s full conversation is below. The tattoo. His kids. The long quiet pause before he says it out loud: I got beat.

Listen on Spotify:

Prefer video?

Also on Apple Podcasts:

Where JB started

JB’s first 227 days started in a 9 a.m. virtual meeting. If that sounds like the rail you’ve been missing, the Sober Motivation app is where to find it. Daily check-ins, real stories from people one day ahead of you, and a community that knows what 2 a.m. feels like.

You don’t have to do this alone. JB didn’t. That’s what made the difference.

Download the Sober Motivation app →

— Brad

Then he would drive home, open two bottles of wine, and drink until he passed out.

Every single night.

Dr. Crowe is a board-certified emergency physician who spent over 40 years practicing medicine. He was a university faculty member at the University of Florida, a former tennis pro, and by every external measure, a success. He was also struggling with alcohol for decades, and he knew it. He just couldn’t stop.

I sat down with him on the Sober Motivation Podcast, and this conversation hit different. His medical perspective on why some people can’t control their drinking is one of the clearest explanations I’ve ever heard.

Then he would drive home, open two bottles of wine, and drink until he passed out.

Every single night.

Subscribe now

Dr. Crowe is a board-certified emergency physician who spent over 40 years practicing medicine. He was a university faculty member at the University of Florida, a former tennis pro, and by every external measure, a success. He was also a high functioning alcoholic for decades, and he knew it. He just couldn’t stop.

I sat down with him on the Sober Motivation Podcast, and this conversation hit different. His medical perspective on why some people can’t control their drinking is one of the clearest explanations I’ve ever heard.

Watch the full episode here: [YouTube link]

Here’s what stood out to me.

He Didn’t Start Drinking Until College

Dr. Crowe grew up in Indianapolis with no exposure to heavy drinking. His dad had the occasional martini after work but never got visibly intoxicated. Donald actually remembered feeling disdain for alcohol growing up. It just seemed pointless to him.

That changed at Purdue. His first experiment with alcohol was peak scientist: he sat alone with a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, measured out precise amounts, drank them at intervals, and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. He concluded alcohol had no effect on him.

A few months later, a fraternity brother told him he was “just not doing it right” and taught him to chug beer during spring break. He woke up the next morning with hazy memories and one clear feeling: whatever had happened, he liked it.

“I kind of woke up the next day and kind of wondered a little bit about what had happened the night before, but I knew that whatever it was, I liked it.”

That was 1973. He wouldn’t get sober until 1998.

A Friend Told Him He Was Alcoholic. He Ignored It for 20 Years.

During medical school, a classmate he respected pulled him aside and told him that the way he drank looked alcoholic. Dr. Crowe thought it was ridiculous. He was performing well. He was going to graduate. Nothing was falling apart.

“No one had ever actually said that to me before, and I thought it was ridiculous. My initial thing was to defend my drinking.”

Instead of slowing down, he doubled down. He drank harder to prove he could succeed and drink at the same time. That bargain carried him through two more decades.

If you’ve ever told yourself that your drinking can’t be that bad because your career is still intact, this part of the conversation is worth hearing.

A Potential ALS Diagnosis Gave Him Permission to Drink Without Limits

Toward the end of his time at the University of Florida, Dr. Crowe lost muscle strength in his right arm. A neurologist raised the possibility of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. At the time, that was essentially a five-year death sentence.

He walked out of that appointment married, with his first daughter on the way, and convinced he was going to die. For a lot of people, that kind of news would be a wake-up call. For Dr. Crowe, it was permission to get loaded and stay loaded for the next several years.

His drinking escalated. He added other substances. His first marriage ended because he chose alcohol over his wife. The whole thing unraveled.

“I Wasn’t Drinking to Feel Better. I Was Drinking to Feel Less Bad.”

When legal consequences finally forced him into treatment, he spent three months sober for the first time in years. That window of clarity revealed something he never could have seen while drinking.

“It wasn’t until I’d been sober for several months that I realized the truth. And the truth was I wasn’t drinking to feel better. I was drinking to feel less bad, and that was an important distinction.”

This is the line that stuck with me most from our conversation. There’s a massive difference between those two things, and most people who are stuck in the cycle can’t see which one they’re actually doing.

His Medical Framework for Why Some People Can’t Stop

Dr. Crowe has spent 40 years studying this from both a medical and personal perspective. His framework is simple and, I think, really helpful.

He believes certain people’s brains are hardwired so that the inhibitory system, the part that tells you “that’s enough,” does not function properly once alcohol is introduced. He calls it chemically mediated disinhibition syndrome, and he thinks that term is far more accurate than “alcoholic.”

His wife can leave half a margarita on the table. He cannot have one sip without the escalation beginning. It’s not willpower. It’s not discipline. It’s neurological.

He tested this after treatment by putting tiny amounts of bitters in club soda, a subtherapeutic dose that never made him feel drunk. Two drops became four. Four became ten. He watched the escalation happen in real time and realized his brain was already malfunctioning, even at doses that had zero intoxicating effect.

That was the moment he accepted alcohol had to be completely off the table.

Why He Thinks We Define Alcoholism All Wrong

This is one of the most important points from the episode. The traditional definition of alcoholism is tied to external consequences: DUIs, job loss, divorce, financial problems. No visible consequences? Then it must not be a problem.

Dr. Crowe calls that fundamentally flawed.

“I think the primary symptom of this disease has nothing to do with external consequences. I think it has to do with internal struggle.”

He points to Michael Jackson: someone at the absolute peak of fame, fortune, and talent, yet paying someone to administer a drug whose only purpose was to blot out consciousness. The external markers of success were all there. The internal misery was bottomless.

If you’ve ever found yourself wandering around your house looking for something to drink, knowing you shouldn’t but feeling like you need it, that internal war is the real symptom. You don’t need a rock bottom that destroys your life to have a serious problem.

Sobriety Is the Starting Line, Not the Finish Line

After treatment, Dr. Crowe got his job back, repaired his relationships, and thought the hard part was over. Then he went to a 4th of July party three months sober and wanted to drink more badly than he ever had in his life.

“The people that are supporting me the most are the people I’m most afraid of. I was terrified to be around these people without being loaded.”

That moment cracked open the real work of recovery. The anxiety, boredom, loneliness, and sense of insignificance that drove his drinking were all still there. Removing alcohol didn’t fix any of that. It just exposed it.

“Sobriety is not the finish line. It is the starting blocks.”

28 years later, Dr. Crowe says his life is infinitely better. Not because he’s resisting the urge to drink every day, but because he built a life where drinking doesn’t make sense anymore. That identity shift, from someone who wishes they could drink to someone for whom alcohol is simply irrelevant, is the whole point.

“If my life wasn’t infinitely better now, not drinking, I’d go back to drinking. But it is. It’s simply a better way to live.”

This is one of those episodes I’d recommend sending to someone who needs to hear it from a doctor’s perspective. Dr. Crowe’s YouTube channel, Second Act Recovery, is also worth checking out if this resonated with you.

Watch the full episode here: Watch the episode.

If this post was helpful, share it with someone who might need it today.

Brad

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People who looked like they had it all together on the outside… but were quietly struggling behind the scenes. Stories about hiding drinking, chasing moderation, hitting breaking points, and what it actually takes to change.

What stands out every time is this. No matter how different the stories are, the feeling is the same. That moment where you realize something has to give.

And more importantly… what happens after that.

I am now putting full episodes up on YouTube, and there’s something powerful about being able to see these conversations, not just hear them.

If you’ve ever wondered:

How do people actually quit?

What does it really look like?

Or could my life be different too?

I think you’ll find something in these.

👉 You can check out the latest episodes here:

https://www.youtube.com/@sobermotivationpodcast

Grateful for your support,

Brad

Jersey Mike rode the alcohol train all the way to the last stop — liver failure, a coma, and a body that had finally had enough. He was found on the floor by his own son. He begged doctors not to send him home. And somehow, he made it back.

In this episode, Mike opens up about the earliest warning signs he ignored for years, the morning he looked in the mirror and knew he was dying, and the shame that almost stopped him from ever getting help. This is one of the most powerful conversations we’ve ever had on the Sober Motivation Podcast.

If you’ve ever quietly wondered whether you’re drinking too much — this one’s for you.

In this episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast, I sit down with Philip Barb — a television producer with 18 years of sobriety — to talk about pressure, performance, grief, and what alcohol was really doing beneath the surface.

Philip didn’t grow up in chaos. He grew up in a loving home. His dad was a police officer. His mom was active in the school board. He was the overachiever. The captain. The guy who had it together.

But underneath that image was anxiety. A voice that wouldn’t shut off. A deep fear of not being enough.

Alcohol silenced that voice.

And for a while, it worked.

After losing his mother as a teenager, the drinking escalated — arrests, a DUI, fights, close calls. Eventually he was faced with a choice: keep performing, or finally get honest.

What makes this conversation powerful isn’t just the story of getting sober at 22. It’s what happened after.

Philip talks openly about ego in recovery. About staying sober but not fully doing the work. About being called out by a stranger in a meeting. About the moments where vulnerability cracked something open and changed him.

We also talk about long-term sobriety — the kind that forces you to keep growing. The kind where the world still pulls at you with status, money, achievement, and comparison… but community is what actually fills your heart.

This episode is about:

• Using alcohol to silence anxiety

• Grief and emotional avoidance

• Performative vulnerability

• Ego and entitlement in early recovery

• The power of strangers showing up

• Why connection changes everything

If you’ve ever felt like you had to wear a mask to survive… this conversation will resonate.

Sobriety isn’t just about removing alcohol.

It’s about becoming someone honest enough to live without it.

In this episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast, Jacob shares his powerful journey from a normal upbringing and moderate drinking to developing alcoholic liver cirrhosis after a slow, 10-year descent into alcohol dependency.

Growing up in Wisconsin with a loving family, sports, and strong values, Jacob never saw alcohol as dangerous. Drinking started socially and casually — a beer here, wine at dinner, fun with friends. But as stress increased through marriage, business responsibilities, and parenting, alcohol quietly shifted from celebration to coping.

In 2023, Jacob was hospitalized with severe abdominal swelling (ascites), jaundice, and ultimately diagnosed with alcoholic liver cirrhosis. Doctors gave him a grim prognosis and discussed palliative care.

But this is not a tragedy story. It’s about what Jacob is doing with his second chance.

Eventually, alcohol dependence escalated to 25–30 beers per day, severe withdrawal, grand mal seizures, and DTs, leading to hospitalization and a medically critical turning point. Learn how he turns it all around.

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00:00 Welcome to Season Three: Unveiling Sobriety Stories

00:14 Jenna's Journey: From Childhood to Sobriety

04:19 The Turning Point: High School and the Spiral of Addiction

10:03 A New Chapter: Motherhood, Moving, and the Struggle with Alcohol

11:16 The Bartending Years: Navigating Work, Motherhood, and Alcohol

18:07 Seeking Change: The Move and the Battle with Alcoholism

20:17 The Harsh Reality of Alcohol: Mental Health and Seeking Help

21:48 The Struggle with Isolation and Alcohol

23:28 Finding a New Path: Entrepreneurship and Fitness

24:28 A Wake-Up Call: Family Health Crisis

25:59 The Journey to Sobriety: Therapy and Support

29:04 The Power of Sharing and Connecting

40:29 Reflections on Sobriety and Personal Growth

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00:00 Welcome to Season Three: Unveiling Sobriety Stories

00:24 John's Journey: From Childhood to Sobriety

00:38 The Early Signs: Growing Up with Addiction

02:37 High School Struggles: Acne, Fitting In, and Early Drinking

04:21 College Days: The Start of a Deeper Relationship with Alcohol

13:42 Post-College Life: Realizations and Responsibilities

19:34 Marriage, Parenthood, and the Turning Point

21:48 The Journey to Sobriety Begins

22:28 The Realization and Struggle with Sobriety

24:28 A Second Chance at Sobriety

27:42 The Impact of Family and Age on Recovery

28:49 Embracing Recovery and the Path Forward

35:18 The Power of Community in Sobriety

40:05 Final Reflections and Encouragement

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00:00 Welcome to the Sober Motivation Podcast with Chris

00:16 Chris's Childhood in East Texas: Family, Culture, and Early Challenges

02:26 Feeling Different and Out of Place: Chris's Early Struggles

05:34 Turning Points: From Trouble to Treatment

08:56 A Journey Through Rehabilitation and Recovery

16:41 The Road to Sobriety: Challenges and Triumphs

18:56 Embracing Fatherhood and Finding Purpose in Sobriety

20:27 Finding Joy in Sobriety and Community

21:26 The Slippery Slope: From Sobriety to Relapse

22:44 The Harsh Reality of Addiction and Its Consequences

25:18 Struggling to Regain Sobriety: A Personal Journey

27:39 The Turning Point: From Despair to Hope

33:22 Building a New Life: Sobriety, Family, and Career

37:22 Embracing Change and Helping Others

41:08 The Power of Community and Virtual Support

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00:00 Welcome to the Sober Motivation Podcast with Sue

00:15 Sue's Childhood and Early Experiences

01:49 The Start of Sue's Drinking Habits

03:07 Traumatic Events and Their Impact on Sue

07:50 Boarding School Memories and Its Influence

10:17 Navigating Early Adulthood and Challenges

12:21 The Tsunami Experience and Its Aftermath

18:55 The Journey of Motherhood and Its Struggles

22:36 Finding a New Beginning and Facing Challenges

25:53 Reflections on Drinking and Its Role in Coping

26:59 The Vicious Cycle of Alcohol Addiction

27:36 The Turning Point: Seeking Help and Finding AA

32:04 The Journey to Sobriety: From Desperation to Hope

34:44 Embracing a New Life: Growth and Healing in Sobriety

39:23 The Power of Community and Self-Reflection

48:36 Advice for Those Struggling with Sobriety

50:28 Conclusion: The Continuous Journey of Recovery

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👉 Links 👇

Jordan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/like_the.river/

More information on Sober Link: www.soberlink.com/recover

Follow me(Sobermotivation): https://www.instagram.com/sobermotivation/

00:00 Welcome to Season Three: Unveiling Sobriety Stories

00:38 Jordan's Journey: From Awkward Childhood to Substance Use

01:38 High School to College: Finding Identity in Substances

02:53 The Spiral Continues: College, Marriage, and the Service Industry

14:23 A Glimpse of Reality: Facing Anxiety and Substance Abuse

20:36 The Phoenix Phase: A New City, Same Patterns

23:14 Reflections on Mental Health and Self-Medication

24:18 The Turning Point: Deciding to Leave the Drinking Lifestyle

26:42 The Struggle with Sobriety and Moving Back Home

30:05 A New Beginning: The Journey Towards Sobriety

39:31 Finding Purpose and Helping Others in Recovery

46:16 Reflections and Advice for Those Struggling with Addiction