Hi, my name is steve pomeroy And I am a recovering alcoholic. I'm recording this podcast on the evening of July 9, 2019. 5 days removed from our independence day, july 4th. The reason that date is of significance to me is that July 4, 2007 was a turning point in my life. The purpose of this podcast is to share with those out there that are struggling with their addiction and their alcoholism, and for the families that are watching them struggle. I'm gonna share with you from my perspective, three main reasons Why I was afraid and it took me a long time to get sober with. That. Said going back in time on July 4, 2007 I was delivered by Messenger. A notice of my termination of employment from a company that I had worked for full time since 1991. It was a company that I dearly loved. That was a significant part of my life, my self esteem, my self worth and value. It gave me a lot my career did to me did for me. I was fired for cause on that day and I received that termination letter, I opened it and I took a look at it. My recollection is, it was about a page long citing different reasons for my termination for cause and I was offered far less than what I was entitled to for my contract. It was approximately 11 days of severance. I'm looking at that termination letter. I had it in front of me. I probably had a glass of wine or some other drink of an alcoholic type. You know, an alcoholic beverage in front of me? Most likely I'm looking through that notice and I really didn't see anything that jumped out at me. But as I sit here now recording this podcast, I realized looking back that really what I was most interested in and was looking for in that letter was whether or not one of the grounds for termination had anything to do with my drinking. I didn't find anything. At first I had a sense of relief. I wasn't concerned that they weren't going to honor my contract. That wasn't at the forefront of my mind and my thinking What I was thinking about was whether or not the people in that company, the powers that be or anybody for that matter, thought I had a drinking problem already. I had known and thought in the back of my mind that I had a problem. So I wasn't fired from my drinking per se. But I I tell you this today that if I would have stayed around longer, it was most likely would have become an issue 16 months earlier. My divorce From which is now my ex wife was completed in March of 2006. It was an ugly divorce. I lived back in the Greater Cincinnati northern Kentucky area and given the size of the market and the company I was running that divorce became public. I was accused of some things that would upset a lot of people. I wasn't concerned about much of that because I felt I knew the truth. So why worry about it? What I was concerned with about the most was that my wife at the time we were still married but separated accused me through her attorney of being an alcoholic interestingly enough, that was the one thing that played out for a number of years for me was I became an alcoholic. I carried at that moment and it had been building a lot of fear and shame, which was the number one reason why it took me so long and a number of tries to get sober, stay sober and live a life worth living. A purpose driven life which I believe I have today shame for me means a number of things that the 1st, 1st on the list is I'm a mistake. I was a bad friend. I was a bad husband. I was a bad ceo I was a bad son, a bad brother, a bad leader, business leader in the community that I was flawed and I had done something terribly wrong. And the dream didn't play out the way I had hoped it would. It was my dream job. That's what I wanted since I was in college. So that was at the top of the list. I believe this disease that I have is a shaming disease and that's difficult because for me I believe that we live in part in a shaming society. Now. If you've listened to some of my previous podcast, I've talked about relapse and what causes relapse. So some of this is gonna tie into that. I've talked about not being able to set and maintain healthy boundaries hell into the last few years. I didn't even know what a boundary was beyond a physical boundary or a geographical boundary. I really didn't know what it meant. So how could I set one and maintain it for me? That caused a lot of emotional dis regulation. I didn't know what to do my solution more and more became alcohol that added to my shame. It started to pile up. So between the divorce and being terminated for cause from my dream job for me, that was the ultimate in failure. And I carried myself that way in that community for a number of years. Not that people viewed me that way. I viewed it that way. That's how I carried myself and I continued to seek relief in the form of alcohol. So questions started to come up. What do I do? Can I stop? I kept convincing myself. Oh yeah, I could stop. I've done it before. I'll do it tomorrow or next week. There was always an excuse, but do I really want to stop. I mean, this has served me so well in the past for years, this is my go to coping. This is my new norm. I've got to try and figure a way out to keep this coping mechanism that I thought worked for me for so long and of course I thought, what will people think? The fear, the shame, I'll be blamed for everything people will say, I told you so. I knew you had a problem all along. This is why this was messed up. This is why your marriage failed. This is why we're not friends anymore. Steve. This is why you weren't a good ceo steve. This is why you're not a good son steve, you're a bad brother. Steve those with the voices inside my head, not to mention the fact all the stigma and the stereotypes of alcoholics and addicts that I had heard for years. Their bums, they're drunkards, they sleep in the gutter, they have no willpower, they're weak, you're not man enough, you're not tough enough. So I'm carrying that with me. While all these questions are going through my mind on a regular basis. The second thing for me that I've already touched on was I carried so much fear. There's two definitions of fear that applied to me back then frustration, ego, anxiety and resentment. The second one, forget everything and run, That's that's how I carried myself, that's how I lived day in and day out for years with fear. Those kind of thoughts and feelings were driving me crazy. I didn't think I could make it through a day without getting some relief. I needed relief. So it was like, okay, I'll go ahead and drink today and I'll figure it out tomorrow. I gotta have some relief from this. It was eating me up. So that shame, fear based behavior and thinking and inability to regulate all the emotions, all the stuff, the crap that was coming up for me. So that turns into shame and guilt based self loathing for me. I started to dislike myself. I didn't know it at the time. But now looking back, I realized that that was coming into play into play and therefore I started having resentments towards others. My ex wife, friends, former friends, family, board of directors, former employees. I became very hyper vigilant, constantly wondering if somebody in my life was a threat to me, a threat to my livelihood, a threat to, to my self worth, my self esteem, my manhood. So I became very self absorbed. I couldn't I didn't have time to think about other people. I didn't have anything to offer to other people. I wanted to I didn't have access to it anymore. That just lead, lead to more shame for me. And now I'm at a point where I don't know how to stop. I'm realizing this things probably got me here I am. And at the time I wasn't sure how I got there. I can I had an idea, but when you're when I was totally out of whack and out of sorts all the time, and then had to self medicate. How can you regulate? How can you come from a place of logic? When everything is shame and guilt and fear based? I don't know how to stop and I'm really fearful and ashamed of what people are gonna think of me if I decide to get help. So now I've got all this shame. The anxiety is just consuming me from the time I get up until I can try to numb all that away so I can go to sleep and get some relief. Somehow, hoping and desperation that tomorrow is gonna be different. I've got this fear of being judged, A fear of being disappointed by others. So I isolated, I didn't want anybody in my mind to disappoint me, I was already disappointing myself. So, I felt very unsafe around others and I withdrew more and more into isolation, carrying all of this guilt shame, fear with me that leads me to number three disappointment, I just touched on this. So now I'm I'm afraid to get help, I'm gonna be this big disappointment in everybody's eyes because I didn't want anybody to know. So I hid I'm hiding out and when I relapsed leading up to this stint of sobriety, which needs to stick for me because I was gonna die. So, in the past, when I relapsed and went back out, I hit I might show up for a week or two, and then I'm back home with the alcohol shame is back, loneliness. Fear the guilt. It all comes back right away. Any work I had done in treatment, going to support group meetings, boom out the door, it's right there waiting for me after the first drink. And I remind myself of that I choose to do that every single day to neutralize all those past thoughts and memories of alcohol and how it was a solution at one time. So now we're talking about disappointment and myself. Fear of being disappointed by others, now enters in self pity and playing the victim for me, all this wrongdoing that I felt was cast upon me, the company, the board of directors, uh family, friends, uh past relationships, why did this happen to me? I'm a decent guy. I never meant to hurt anybody that self pity and playing the victim lead me and kept me in the abyss of addiction and alcoholism and addiction and alcoholism to me are the same thing because my drug of choice was alcohol. I became addicted and formed a chemical dependency on alcohol. That was my drug of choice. So that mode of self pity and playing the victim felt useful. It felt justifiable. It became a justifiable, reasonable state of mind for me. I would rather just hide out in my misery in in my alcoholism, replaying the same scenarios over and over again and that suffering became the norm. A new norm that was so much better than oh man, I mean, I don't want to go back out there and engage in life, I'll be disappointed again. This stuff hurts as I'm talking to myself to my higher power, which I choose to call God and I'm carrying all this anger and resentment and that's when the real self loathing came into play for me. I hated myself for feeling that way about others. I didn't want to hate people, I didn't want to disappoint them, but I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to do it. So I stayed with it. It became the new norm and the result for me was more shame, self loathing, anger and resentment. It just kept piling up very, very difficult time for me and the times that I have relapsed in the past which were multiple and I've been to multiple rehabs for help. But I had just enough courage to say yes to life than to say no to life because deep down deep down, I didn't want to die, I didn't want to go out that way and I know those of you who are listening and have a loved one or those of you that are there where I was at. I feel for you. There's another way to just say yes to have just enough honesty to say, you know what you can even say? I think I've got a problem. I think I need help. That's a great start. Okay. I'll try something else and just a willingness to say yes to life just for today. So I'm very emotional about this. I know that this disease that was killing me. I was a week or two from bleeding internally hemorrhaging to death and who knows what the would have came out of it. What would have been reported? Could have been his heart stopped heart failure and that's it. I have an opportunity to share this with you. I know it kills, I've seen it, do it to friends and I know your family's care and I know you care if you're listening, it just takes one. Yes. Today I was fortunate to be able to say yes more than once and I came in broken down. Dear death. Feel free. I'm here for you. You can reach out to me. You are enough. Damn it. And you do matter. I matter. You matter if I can do this and it is hard man. It is hard, but it's doable. I'm doing it and millions are doing it. You are enough. You can do this. You are loved. I love you and I'm praying for you. God bless you. Hang in there