RE 583: Anonymous?

by Kris Oyen | Apr 20, 2026 | Podcast

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Today we have Aimee. She is 51 years old, from Minneapolis, MN and took her last drink on March 20^th, 2022.

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[02:39] Thoughts from Paul:

AA has been the most popular and widely recognized program to treat alcohol addiction for more than 50 years. And that has pleased Big Alcohol because it has the word “anonymous” in it. Big Alcohol knows they are selling an addictive drug, and it is a gift to them that when people figure out that alcohol lies to them about their product, calming them down or enhancing their lives, they won’t say anything.

Paul isn’t dogging AA but recognizes that the anonymous part had kept the stigma of addiction going. Paul shares and excerpt from As Bill Sees It from Bill W., the founder of AA.

The way he reads it, he doesn’t think that Bill W. ever intended the anonymity component to be a curtain of shame. It is just in reference to what is said in the meetings, stays in the meetings.

Gone are the days of keeping it a secret. In the last four years Big Alcohol has lost $830 billion in revenue. We have to keep talking about this. As Bill W. says, it’s a tragedy that drinking has been marketed as good for us, but we’re starting to get it right.

[08:16] Paul introduces Aimee:

Aimee lives in Minneapolis, MN, works for a large medical device company, is married and has two adult children. For fun Aimee enjoys traveling now that she is in recovery and has been dabbling with art.

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Aimee’s father was in recovery from alcohol around the time that she was 12 and she remembers the impact seeing him there had on her. Her parents were divorced and she and her mom had a strained relationship. Aimee ended up moving to Minneapolis from Texas to live with her dad and had struggles with bullying in school. Drinking became a way to feel like she belonged in a group.

When Aimee was in her early 20s, her father lost his mother and was very depressed. Aimee feels like she was parenting her dad at that time while she was also getting married and having her own kids. Their children were very active with sports and weekends while the kids were playing, the parents were partying.

Aimee thinks her drinking became a problem around 2018. In 2019, her father passed away. Shortly after he passed, she thought she would quit drinking for a year in remembrance of him. Aimee wasn’t sure she could do it, but if she could do it, it would prove to herself that she didn’t have a problem.

Without community or AA, Aimee stayed sober for about 15 months. She wasn’t interested in AA and didn’t have any other resources. Aimee started drinking again and would have multiple stops and starts until 2022 when her husband was about to have open heart surgery.

Knowing the level of care she needed to provide after the surgery, Aimee began seeking other resources to assist with recovery. She hadn’t told anyone about her quitting, not even her husband. But she found community and listening to others share helped her feel less alone. There were a lot of things happening within her family that could have made her want to throw in the towel, but being part of the Café RE community helped her.

Aimee says the first year in recovery had her feeling the pink cloud a bit, but years two and three were a little more challenging. However, she is now going back to school since her kids are now adults, and planning travel. Two things she knows she wouldn’t be able to do if she was still drinking.

Aimee’s parting piece of guidance: just don’t quit quitting. You don’t have to hold onto shame.

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You got to take the stairs back up

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RE 558: Nothing Gets Worse

by Kris Oyen | Oct 27, 2025 | Podcast

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Today we have Josh. He is 48 years old, from Sarasota, FL and took his last drink of alcohol on September 23^rd, 2023.

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[02:28] Thoughts from Paul:

Paul was having a talk with his good friend Dusty the other day and he mentioned that when he quit drinking, nothing got worse. Which leads us to the conclusion that everything got better?

This whole thing is complicated but also it isn’t. We are sold a bundle of lies from big alcohol. It just takes time to get the message to all parts of us that when you quit drinking nothing will get worse. When you quit drinking, everything will get better. Finances improve, and we start to feel better about ourselves, just to name a few things.

The word alcohol in Arabic and other languages references alcohol as a spirit or living entity. Several languages in the East, alcohol is literally translated into “mind and body eating spirit”. Nothing will get worse when you quit drinking, and to flip it, everything will get better when you’re not consuming a body and mind eating spirit.

[08:45] Paul introduces Josh:

Josh is 48 and lives in Sarasota, FL. He is married with three children, he works in sales and marketing for a wellness company which he enjoys and for fun he enjoys cooking and spending time with his family.

Josh never had any alcohol until he was 20 years old. It wasn’t an issue for him for a very long time until it began creeping up on him shortly before COVID. Josh says it was around this time that he was having issues with his job and found himself drinking around the clock in order to cope with it.

During COVID it only got worse. Josh says there was a lot of internal conflict around his drinking, and he says he was drinking more than he was sober and the alcohol was always corrupting him. It was hard for him to stop on his own as he had become physically dependent on it.

Josh’s wife gave him an ultimatum after his first attempt at sobriety didn’t work and told him to go to inpatient treatment or they were done. Josh went, didn’t take it seriously and only stayed four of the ten days because he was able to convince a doctor to let him leave early. Everything in Josh’s life was hanging by a thread when he left for a work trip in Italy that ended up being his rock bottom moment.

Josh drank on the flight over and did not stop after he arrived. He missed the work event and was admitted to the hospital that evening. When he awoke, he had lost his job and proceeded to drown his sorrows with whiskey and trazodone. Josh’s wife had found out about him going to the hospital and came to Italy without Josh knowing. She and their friend (who was a nurse) found Josh on the floor of his hotel room without a pulse and saved his life. Josh feels that was divine intervention.

Upon returning home, Josh attended a 30-day inpatient treatment where his life changed. He met other men that were going through treatment at the same time that helped him learn new skills that would help shape his life going forward. Josh always had a hard time asking for help so learning to surrender in all ways has been important to his healing.

Josh began to learn what a gift being present can be after spending so much of his life running from things. Josh is actively working on healing his relationship with his family and friends and is also beginning to explore his spiritual side.

Josh’s parting piece of guidance: surrender and you have to be willing to do the hard work.

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RE 487: How Would You Walk?

by Kris Oyen | Jun 17, 2024 | Podcast

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Episode 487 – How Would You Walk?

Today we have Sarah. She is 45 and lives in Indiana. She took her last drink on December 31^st, 2022.

Let’s talk AF International travel with Recovery Elevator. We’ve got some incredible trips in the works. We’re going to Vietnam for 12 days in January 2025. Then Back to Costa Rica for our 4th trip to the Blue Zone in April 2025, and then, we’re going back to Peru in October 2025 where we’re going to the Inca Trail and work with Non-profit Peruvian Hearts again.

Athletic Greens

[02:42] Thoughts from Paul:

The World Heart Federation published a policy brief in 2022 staying there is “no level of alcohol consumption that is safe for health.” There was and still is a collective belief that alcohol is good for you. This is especially prominent in the wine culture.

The paradigm is slowly cracking which is a huge step in the right direction. When Paul started Recovery Elevator in 2015, you couldn’t find that line anywhere. It was almost customary to see a line that says something like “studies show moderate alcohol consumption can improve heart health and longevity”.  Today the tides are turning and a narrative that alcohol can wreck your world (aka, the truth) is emerging. People are waking up to the lies that Big Alcohol has sold us.

Check out this recent article about a new phenomenon called BORGS explains what these are and then follows it up with the snippet about alcohol being shit.

[09:18] Paul introduces Sarah:

Sarah is 45 and lives in Indiana. She is married with two kids and works in marketing. When she isn’t running the kids to their practices and games, she enjoys exercising, reading and backpacking.

Sarah parents divorced when she was 11 and she grew up with her mother who she was very close with. She doesn’t recall alcohol being very present in their lives. Sarah didn’t drink much in high school but in college and into her 20s, everything she and her friends did involved alcohol. She always knew her drinking looked a little different than everyone else’s, but didn’t identify it as a problem.

When Sarah was 35, her mother was diagnosed with brain cancer. Sarah quit working so that she could care for her mother through the diagnosis. Her drinking increased as she dealt with being a caretaker, having a family in addition to not working.

After her mother died four years later, Sarah says she did not know how to deal with life. She would drink into a blackout almost daily and was stuck in the cycle of wanting to quit but not being able to. Sarah began to worry that it might not be possible for her and worried that she would disappoint her mother if she wasn’t able to quit.

In time, Sarah found sober podcasts and tried medications to help. She says Antabuse worked, but she would stop taking it in order to drink. No one knew she was taking it to try and quit and Sarah feels that by not sharing, she always left the door open to drink again.

Sarah knew something had to change and decided to come clean with her husband. Being active in the Café RE community helped Sarah gain the courage to choose a quit date and write a letter to her husband letting him know what was going on. Sarah says she received a lot of support from him.

After the physical withdrawals, Sarah felt hopeful. As the months went on, she protected her sobriety by avoiding situations where there was drinking, and she began to gain more confidence. Sarah says that when she has thoughts of drinking, she does chooses to put her energy into her sober resources instead.

Sarah’s best sober moment: experiencing the Northern Lights with her son

Sarah’s parting piece of guidance: never quit quitting.

[41:14] Outro:

Paul invites listeners to answer some questions not with words in their minds, but in how they carry themselves.

How would you walk if…….?

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RE 483: NA Beers

by Kris Oyen | May 20, 2024 | Podcast

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Episode 483 – NA Beers

Today we have Tyler. He is 37 and lives in Phoenix, AZ. He took his last drink on November 28^th, 2023.

Recovery Elevator welcomes Danielle Marr to the team! She now writes the bi-monthly newsletter for RE which always has journalling prompts at the end. She taught our DTB writing course this last fall and does Instagram posts a couple days a week. She was also interviewed on episode 464.

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[03:35] Thoughts from Paul

Paul shares with us the history of NA beers and how they were created to pacify the Mothers Against Drunk Drivers campaign back in the 90’s. The companies had zero intention of scaling this segment of their business and it has been said that the purposefully made the beer tasteless and bland.

Those days are gone. Non-alcoholic beer sales have been growing every year by 30-40% since 2019. Many of the major beer brands are investing time and money into creating their own NA products and there are more breweries popping up that are 100% dedicated to making an AF craft beer.

There is no need to explore the NA beer world in the early days of your alcohol-free life because it can be triggering. There is trace amount of alcohol in many of the NA beers (usually less than 0.5%) and you would have to drink 25-30 of them to reach the legal BAC. Check out this Instagram post where someone drinks several NA beers and stills blows zeros into a breathalyzer.

What the AF beer world exploding shows is that people are waking up to the fact that alcohol is not good for you and big alcohol sales are reflecting that. The stigma around alcohol addiction is also crumbling. We as consumers decide every move a business makes – start asking for more AF options at restaurants and grocery stores. Start asking and you will receive.

Go Brewing. Use the code ELEVATOR for 15% off.

[09:58] Paul introduces Tyler:

Tyler is 37 years old and lives in Phoenix, AZ and has a six-month-old daughter. He does maintenance for a homeowners association. Tyler is also a musician and enjoys performing, writing, and recording music.

Tyler had his first drink when he was in high school as simply a fun thing to do with friends. A health scare which ended up with tumor removal drove Tyler to feel he needed to live life to the fullest. He says his drinking increased as it was associated with having fun, and he discovered his passion for being a musician. That found him romanticizing alcohol, drinking more after gigs, and acquiring DUIs. Since a lot of people he knew had DUIs, it was considered normal and wasn’t taking seriously.

When he lost a close family member to cancer, Tyler says his drinking evolved from good and bad to ugly. He and his girlfriend went out often, and his drinking became more frequent both while out and while at home. Tyler had a lot of anger that would come out while drinking. These issues eventually found Tyler and his girlfriend splitting up.

Tyler started going to therapy and discovered that the loss of his aunt affected him more than he realized. He was able to process some of his anger and cut back on his drinking. He and his girlfriend got back together and six months ago their daughter was born. Tyler began to realize that his drinking was interfering with this new life and told his girlfriend he was ready to quit. At this time, he also reached out to a supportive cousin that has over 20 years in recovery.

Tyler says AA didn’t resonate with him, but books, podcasts and other peoples’ stories have been very helpful. He believes in recovering out loud.

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Go big because eventually we’ll all go home.