by Kris Oyen | Nov 17, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Kevin. He is 48 years old and lives in Napa Valley, CA. He took his last drink on September 22nd, 2025.
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71% of Europeans are drinking less alcohol and the future generations are opting out in general, according to a new report for Circana.
[02:59] Thoughts from Paul:
On the last Sober Travel Trip to Peru this past October, Paul was reminded of one of life’s greatest teachings: it’s the journey that matters, and not the destination.
He tells us about how he and 16 other fellow travelers hiked the Inca Trail to go to Machu Picchu. After over 20 grueling miles, they found out at the gates that their tickets to explore this natural wonder weren’t valid for that day.
Everyone was understandably disappointed. Since everyone on the trip is in recovery, they already have been working on concepts such as surrender, embrace life on life’s terms and of course, to place more mental energy on the journey than the destination.
Paul says he will never forget how the group responded to receiving the bad news and it was one of the greatest gifts he has received while doing sober travel.
[08:34] Paul introduces Kevin:
Kevin lives in northern Napa Valley, CA but grew up in the Midwest. He and his wife have been together for over 30 years, and they have two teenage children, one dog and two cats. Kevin says he is between careers right now, but previously he worked in wine sales and in the tech industry. For fun, he enjoys playing music and is big into fitness.
Kevin grew up the youngest of three boys in a great community. Alcohol was always present, but he doesn’t recall any immediate family having issues with it. His first drinking experience was when he was in seventh grade when he and some friends raided his parents’ liquor cabinet. His brother confronted him about the drinking and warned him he shouldn’t be doing it.
Throughout high school, Kevin was so involved in sports and academics that he didn’t drink more than two times that he can recall. Kevin went to a small college where he met his wife and while he loved it there, he had to change schools for budget reasons. It was at the bigger school where his drinking took off, Kevin says.
Kevin’s parents moved to California and soon after Kevin also moved there. He says his drinking wasn’t a major issue through this time period until his dad passed away suddenly while in town for a visit. This was a turning point for not only Kevin’s drinking, but his brothers’ as well (who are now also in recovery).
Kevin was working for a tech company but was interested in getting into the wine industry after his wife started working in Napa Valley. This is where the conflict began for Kevin. He was drinking frequently after work and was around alcohol all the time. After leaving work he would practice with his band which would involve more drinking. He knew deep down that the way he was living wasn’t right.
Kevin began to see a therapist and started doing more research about drinking. He discovered Recovery 2.0 and a podcast episode he listened to was saying exactly what Kevin needed to hear, he says.
Kevin feels he had a spiritual awakening and couldn’t work in the wine industry anymore. He wants to dig into things that he is passionate about now – health and wellness, psychotherapies, and yoga teaching.
The last 30 days has Kevin feeling great. He is part of the Café RE community, and he says both the community and the podcast have been a great help to his success so far. He says he is working with a sponsor in AA, living sober out loud and says that his spirituality was the missing link in his life. He is passionate about it.
Kevin’s parting piece of guidance: if you are struggling, just keep digging inward.
Recovery Elevator
It’s all about the journey and not so much the destination.
I love you guys,
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by Kris Oyen | Oct 13, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Sue. She is 54 years old from Stewartville, MN and she took her last drink of alcohol on May 9th, 2023.
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[02:36] Thoughts from Paul:
Paul shares that while visiting his parents in Colorado, he lost his wallet at a park. Thankfully, a high school friend’s mom ended up being the one that found it. When he picked it up from her, she told him that her son is recently sober and gave Paul his phone number to reconnect.
Paul had recently tried to rejoin the fantasy football league he had previously been a part of and was denied re-entry. This brought up huge feelings of rejection reminiscent of his childhood. While on a retreat with his sober friend in Mexico, Paul found himself dwelling on the negative emotions when he caught himself looking at a beer a fellow diner was having. The thought that “one or two beers would make you feel better” came over him, but then he looked at his newly sober friend and reflected on the great talks of sobriety that they had shared, and the thoughts went away.
Reeling from this, Paul went outside, shook his head a few times and then was filled with a warm embrace by the universe knowing that his lost wallet put him in Mexico with his sober friend and everything ended up alright.
[07:36] Paul introduces Sue:
Sue is 54 years old and has two adult children and one granddaughter. She works as a housekeeper for a hospital at the Mayo Clinic and for fun she loves nature, animals, hikes, jet skiing, kayaking and birdwatching.
Sue’s parents were both daily drinkers. Sue would sip her dads beer because she thought it was cool, but her first real drinking experience was when she stole some sloe gin from her parent’s pantry at age 13 or 14.
In her teenage years she began to party a lot on the weekends. Sue was a shy girl, and drinking helped her open up and gave her the attention she craved. Her grades in school began to suffer because she was skipping a lot and Sue ended up unable to graduate.
Sue never thought her drinking was a problem even after getting in trouble for underage drinking. Her boyfriend was abusive, but due to her craving for love and attention, Sue kept going back to him. After a long breakup, he returned wanting to reunite, claiming he had changed. Soon Sue became pregnant, got married, quit drinking and focused on having a family.
Sue enjoyed being a mother. Her husband worked a lot, so she did a lot of the parenting on her own while working a full-time job. As the kids got older and were home less, Sue began to drink more. She tried to hide her drinking, but her kids began to notice. Sue and her husband were fighting a lot and eventually had a messy divorce in which her husband got custody, which was very hard on Sue.
Sue got remarried in 2015 and while she cut back a little, her husband started calling her out on how often she was drinking. This led to her hiding her drinking again and several hospitalizations over the next few years.
In 2017, after a hospitalization, Sue was able to get sober with the help of AA. She says complacency led to relapses. Her children had cut her off and there were multiple inpatient and outpatient attempts but nothing stuck until May 9th, 2023.
Sue says the difference this time is that she fully surrendered and is doing this for herself and not others. She checked herself Hazelden and dug into the work of loving herself again. She still stays active with that community and her AA group. Sue says her
spirituality comes from nature and her belief in prayer and hope. She has been able to reconnect with her children over the past year and has plans to become a peer recovery specialist.
Recovery Elevator
Go big, because eventually we all go home.
I love you guys.
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by Kris Oyen | Sep 22, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Emily. She is 28 years old from Denver, CO and she took her last drink on April 25th, 2025.
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Starting Wednesday, October 1st, if you sign up for Café RE you get a free month! Café RE is our alcohol-free community who recently got non-profit status and we’re all about having fun and kicking ass without alcohol.
[03:45] Thoughts from Paul:
Paul has said many times that quitting drinking was the hardest thing he has ever done, but that’s not true. Today he shares with us 20 things that are harder than quitting drinking.
This is the short list of what is harder than quitting drinking and Paul feels that it can all be summarized with this:
Continuing to poison yourself with alcohol is harder than quitting drinking and that’s exactly how we have to frame it. Regularly ingesting poison takes a bigger toll on your overall health than quitting drinking.
[10:14] Paul introduces Emily:
Emily is originally from Delaware but currently lives in Colorado with her boyfriend, two dogs and two cats. She works in tech sales and for fun she enjoys all things outdoors including skiing, backpacking, camping and has recently gotten some paddleboards and golf clubs.
Emily was against alcohol while growing up, began to experiment when she was 16 or 17. She thought it was a great way to escape the regimented lifestyle she was living.
In college, it was normal to drink from Thursday to Saturday. Emily didn’t see it as a problem because everyone around her was drinking the same way. She was able to maintain good grades and work multiple jobs while in college.
Emily was working in the bar and restaurant scene and decided to continue doing that after graduating. At age 23 Emily applied to work for a liquor supplier and got a job in Connecticut. When all of her bar tabs and Uber rides were being paid for and the way that alcohol is glamorized in the industry, Emily was never forced to see the negative impact her drinking was having on her life.
During the COVID pandemic, Emily was supplied with a lot of alcohol and the only thing she needed to do was make cocktail videos since everything was shut down. Her apartment complex became party central.
Soon after everything began opening back up, Emily was laid off by the company she worked for. She and her fiancé moved to Colorado where she got another job working in the wine and liquor industry. This company did not foot the bill for her drinking like the last one. Emily says she and her partner both drank heavily, and it was a toxic relationship. Once she ended that she decided that she was going to become a better version of herself but didn’t change any of her habits.
Emily met her current partner around age 26. She began to notice her drinking habits more around him because he does not drink much. Emily began trying to moderate during the week and then drinking like she wanted to on the weekends when she would blackout and suffer from hangovers.
Before going to her cousin’s wedding in April, Emily told herself she wasn’t going to get drunk. She ended up drinking more than she planned, and it was a disaster. The next morning when she woke up, she decided she needed to quit and immediately began burnings the ships with everyone she knew.
Emily threw herself into recovery by attending her first AA meeting, listening to podcasts, reading books and joining Café RE. Emily says that by quitting drinking she did lose a portion of herself, but it was a portion that she wasn’t happy with. Since quitting Emily says her sleep has improved, the mental clarity she has gained has been amazing and she is now able to trust herself.
Emily’s parting piece of guidance: tell people you love and trust. Lean on people, community is everything.
Recovery Elevator
You took the elevator down, you gotta take the stairs back up.
We can do this
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by Kris Oyen | Sep 15, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Ty. She is 76 years old, lives in Bozeman, MT and she took her last drink on March 8th, 2008.
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[04:21] Thoughts from Paul:
Paul tells us that every time he goes into a retreat or event with RE, he asks the universe to send us a (safe) wildlife encounter. This past retreat in Bozeman was no different. This time, it showed up in the form of a bald eagle while we were spending time at the lake pavilion. After it flew in, it perched on a lone pine tree branch about 50 yards away from us where we admired it’s beauty and Ty, an avid birder, shared some facts about the bald eagle with the group.
Paul shared that while editing the interview he did with Ty, he noticed some background noise. Normally, he does his best to avoid this, but this time he welcomed it. You will hear in the background the sound of birds. He says it was if the universe sent the birds to support Ty.
[08:45] Paul introduces Ty:
Ty lives in Bozeman, MT with her husband Dan. She likes to hike (gently), watch birds and enjoys reading. She is technically retired but has been editing the RE podcast since episode 25.
Ty grew up with an alcoholic father in Fort Worth, TX. Her mother did not allow alcohol in the house, so her father was gone a lot. Ty didn’t drink much during high school due to the fear of her mother detecting it on her.
After she graduated, Ty got married to her boyfriend. That marriage didn’t last long because her husband was an alcoholic and became abusive. They divorced when she was 21. During that time Ty would go out with friends she worked with where they would drink together. She says her rebellion against her father came out in that time – it was the early 70’s filled with drugs and rock and roll.
Ty said she spiraled shortly after her dad died and went through a dark time. She sought help from the county health board and after they placed her on mood stabilizers, she started drinking less.
At age 26, Ty went to university where she chose doing well in school over drinking and partying. A month after graduating college, Ty had a baby. Her daughter had a lot of health and developmental issues, so she became a full-time caregiver for her throughout her 30s.
In her 40s, Ty met her current husband Dan, who does not drink. They moved to Bar Harbor, where Ty worked in the restaurant industry. This exposed her to fine wine, which she would enjoy at home after work, while her husband was sleeping. Ty says red flags began to show when she switched to vodka because it has less calories. She began to hide her bottles and drink in secret.
Moderation for Ty was when she would quit drinking for Lent. One year she found that she wasn’t able to which got her thinking more about her drinking. She was attending Al-Anon meetings but was interested in the literature for AA. After taking some quizzes to determine if she was an alcoholic, she started to believe she might be.
The next morning while in church, Ty says she prayed: “I can’t do this will you help me”. That evening she went to her first AA meeting where she introduced herself as an alcoholic. It was the first time she had said it to herself or anyone else.
Ty says she burned the ships early on. Honesty and openness became very important to her. She knew she had to do the work and became comfortable asking her husband for support in various ways. AA has been a big part of Ty’s recovery story since the beginning. She has witnessed a lot of growth and change in the recovery world since quitting. Joining RE opened up so much for her and she says her toolbox expanded in terms of resources and learning different things.
Ty’s parting piece of guidance: it’s harder to get sober than it is to stay sober.
Recovery Elevator
You took the elevator down, you gotta take the stairs back up.
We can do this.
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by Kris Oyen | Sep 8, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have David. He is 51 years old, lives in Pinson, TN and took his last drink of alcohol on December 23rd, 2024.
This episode brought to you by:
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We have a great lineup of events and courses coming to Recovery Elevator. A mindfulness course is coming up in October, then Dry January as well as a beginner ukelele course are happening in January. In February we have our first AF Songwriting course and later in the month our weeklong sober travel trip to Costa Rica.
[03:11] Thoughts from Paul:
In today’s intro Paul shares with us some statements he heard from Steven Glover (aka Steve-O from Jackass) who celebrates 17 years in recovery this year. Steve-O said that alcoholics are in a sense lucky because unlike other diseases where the best one can hope for is to return to a pre-illness state, when addicts and alcoholics treat their disease, they have the potential to become better versions of themselves.
In Paul’s upcoming book Dolce Vita, he makes the point that addiction is almost a biological mechanism to help wake us up as humans. On the other side of the addiction, if we are to heal, then we have to build a life that is more oriented towards helping others, where we are to be more authentic and where we are to admit when we are wrong in life.
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they quit drinking is they just quit drinking. Although this is a huge step in the right direction, if this is all you do it leads to the concept of being a dry drunk. You need to address the reasons you drank to excess in the first place.
By listening to a sobriety podcast, you are doing the work. You’re investing in your recovery, and you are not a dry drunk. Your potential of becoming better than before is becoming a reality. And what wonderful timing you have as the world needs your honesty, your authenticity, your smile and your service more than ever.
[08:16] Paul introduces David:
David is 51 years old and was born and raised in West Tennessee. He has three adult children with his wife of 31 years. For work, he manages a manufacturing facility and for fun he is a lifelong musician and also enjoys genealogy and cemetery preservation.
David is the youngest of four children. He says his mother was a teetotaler and his father had a drinking problem, but it had tapered down a lot by the time David came along. David says he was raised in the country and had a small group of friends that his mother would say weren’t the best influences, and David was more of a follower than a leader and he and his friends would experiment with alcohol when he was younger.
When David was 18, he met his wife. They got married in David’s early twenties and began having kids. At this point, David didn’t drink often, and his wife didn’t drink at all. It wasn’t until their thirties that they would start having the occasional bottle of wine in the house.
In his late thirties, the drinking began ramping up. David began to have a regular music gig that was 45 minutes from home. He began going to have dinner and beers before the gig and over time started going out again after the gigs as well. He began drinking more on the weekends and that eventually crept into every day while isolating.
After some negative health reports in 2019, David began to try and address his drinking and says it was like a hamster wheel. By 2021, he knew he wanted to pursue an alcohol-free life and shared this with his wife, who has been very supportive of him.
Since his last drink in 2024, David says all of his relationships have improved, his bass playing has improved, and he started college last year and will be graduating soon. David is looking forward to continuing his personal growth, learning to meditate and travel.
Recovery Elevator
You took the elevator down, you gotta take the stairs back up.
We can do this.
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