Sobriety began on September 11, 2021. It was a Saturday. The morning started around 4 am with me staring at the ceiling of the Neurobehavioral Inpatient as a suicide risk. They also needed to detox me down from a .406 BAC for a few days. One of those nights, the haggled few of us with the TV remote were able to sneak a watch of South Park. It was the episode where Towelie had a drug intervention and then was sent off to rehab. I remember watching the intervention scene and feeling it was too close to one I had in the basement offices of our church plant.
It’s been a little while since then. The me now has a hard time listing everything going on that was broken with me then. It’s also difficult to recount the path my life has been through since. Both from my past doings and continued assurances that I got this, I didn’t have a lot of people to lean on from the life I had pre-sobriety.
By no means was I alone and didn’t have options: just that it was lonely and dark at times. Truthfully, I had to spiral to run out of me. Like the Prodigal Son coming to the end of himself among pigs, my sobriety didn’t come until I terrifying had to decide if I wanted to drink or live – there was no middle choice anymore. I was tired of what I had become. When I was staring at the cold ceiling or sitting in on mandatory group therapy sessions, waiting to face a judge again, and then going straight to rehab #2, there was nothing left to hold on to the pathetic ego that was Paule before September 11, 2021.
On the ride up to my second inpatient rehabilitation, a man who worked at my first rehab asked me on the phone if I was ready-ready this time. In mental health and recovery, clinicians often are looking for that fire of change within, the kind of fire where you are willing to actually try something different because they are done with who they are. Ron, my friend from rehab #1, was asking me about that. I remember trying to lean into it as hard as I could while in Columbia Falls. I “graduated” (such a weird term for it) halfway through because I no longer met the requirements for inpatient treatment.
That same thing, me running out of myself, kept going. I’ve learned to see how much further my ego and psyche go. The fuzzy and shrinking boundaries of my PTSD are becoming rather focused now. I’ve had to learn how to do sobriety first with someone, then without. I’ve had to learn relationships as if for the first time while trying to unwind and understand myself in the process. Every spoken word feels like it has to be reevaluated to its core root from within me. I’ve had to learn how to run my own home, from laundry to bills to cooking.
The number of rabbit holes I’ve spun into searching for understanding and something to give me better reigns on myself was dizzying. I’ve sifted through countless rules and spheres of human existence and relations because I had to figure it out. I’ve had to learn how to lead and manage people in an environment not exactly the logical conclusion of my professional career (GM of Arby’s). I’ve had to learn a lot about how this Paule could survive in this world. Learning just how to say “no” or “this far and no farther” proved to be an existential gauntlet. The items listed above are a relatively “safe” list, one I could throw out. The nuance and interplay of everything one must unlearn, learn again, and learn anew is rather breathtaking if we were to lean into ourselves.
I became the GM of Arby’s during the summer. I started in April as an Assistant. The job was meant to be a steady income while helping take care of some of the headaches of my legal and financial wreckage. It did that. It was an excellent opportunity for me to take everything I knew and shove it into an organizational system I wasn’t familiar with (I’ve never worked in fast food).
After I took over, we changed things. The store improved and it was fun…enlightening. Things started to change around October into the holidays. I was growing more frustrated with the management above me, I still wasn’t able to make enough after everything had been taken out to have more than $500 after rent unless I did other work – so things I needed get to weren’t. The time demand was also more than I thought – I wasn’t able to get time off because of our management shortage to be able to see my kids.
Not that I could because my car laid unrepaired for over a year. It was things like that that made another holiday season without my kids, stuck in the just aftermath of my idiocy and insecurities, that made me snap. I came in shortly after the New Year work to just open the store until my manager got there. While I was there in the first hour, that manager and another called out, meaning I was going to have to work 3 open to close shifts in a row. I had already been thinking about it and there were a couple of opportunities on the table.
I was done. I was done not making enough, not doing the things I could do, not doing the things I love, and not being able to get past those things that felt they were holding me back from being in the world I both needed and wanted to be in. I was done with what people thought. I was done with the circumstances I lived in and through not improving. I was done not being the man I needed to be for my kids. And I was fucking done with not having the relationships and connections with my children I want. I was ready to burn the world down. I was done…with me…again.
My most-played song on Spotify in 2023 was The Kid I Used To Know by Arrested Youth, and then closely behind was Hope by NF. I had them on repeat and still caught myself giving myself to them. Both artists focus on our past selves that keep us from the life we want to be living. For Arrested Youth, it’s that past kid trapped within. In NF’s song, Hope, he has this line:
“Thirty years you been draggin’ your feet
dasd
Tellin’ me I’m the reason we’re stagnant
Thirty years you’ve been claiming you’re honest
And promising progress, well, where’s it at?”
In rehab #2, One of the last things I had to do was write a letter to myself. I wrote it to my roughly 12-year-old self. It’s something I will always have and will continue to share with people. For me, sobriety was one aspect of life and only one problem that had to be fixed. Luckily, sobriety stuck quick and I can count the alcohol cravings I’ve had on one hand in the last couple of years with another two fingers left. Rather, it has almost been a constant journey of going head-to-head with myself, that kid I used to know and his 30 years of excuses, figuring out what has to die, and be reborn into something new.
After a “conversation” to get more help into my store before I up and quit, I turned in an official 4-week notice. The plan for what was supposed to happen afterward didn’t. There was a bit of juggling and some “wtf am I doing” moments. Initially, Drunk Pastor was going to house everything I was doing under one name but then some website work I’m doing in Trinidad required that Drunk Pastor not be the name.
So, while Drunk Pastor was born over 5 years ago, Stigma has been around about as long as my now teenage child. I needed branding quickly and Stigma was ready. It had the logo and the name and color but still had more work to do because of it. That took time to get set up, hence the delay on this post, which was meant to be kind of a “Hey world….I’m back, and here’s what’s been up” post.
So the two things I’m doing right now, are Drunk Pastor and Stigma Marketing. Drunk Pastor is an outlet for my writing: sharing my ideas and engaging the world. I also need/want to work through some things “out loud”. There is a lot I want to do with it, including a podcast and a YouTube channel. There’s also this Samaritan Woman book I’ve been sitting on since before I moved my family to Missoula to start a church, which I haven’t stopped studying since and have something like 30,000 words on. Plenty of good ideas have been had since. There’s just too many ideas now. So far, I believe aside from Avoidance, Resistance, and Change, I’ve reposted some old content. There are a couple of final drafts and more in the chamber. I’m itching.
Stigma Marketing is my business for graphic design, web design, and marketing. It’s also just getting off the ground. I have a couple of clients and leads. I’m having fun sometimes with it. Stigma Marketing has been around for a while. I did it for over a year early on in my sobriety. However, Stigma then turned into more project management, development, and client representation….and a bunch of suicide prevention work. I didn’t have to market myself and when I did, I decided to go for Arby’s instead.
Life feels different. It feels like practice, leaning into the things I know and know well, feeling comfortable doing the things I can do for others but now as myself alone. Things I couldn’t before I can. It sometimes scares me. I’d rather not spend the time trying to convey everywhere I see it but it’s everywhere…kind of like hair. I was waiting for a new chapter to begin, the one after sobriety finally happens and sticks. This feels like the beginning of that chapter: a wrathful unacceptance of my bullshit and the latched-on resolve to do life differently…again. Because, well, I’m done with that pathetic child I used to know but am not any longer.
Two and a half years of sobriety just passed. I’m curious what the next two and a half hold.
