LAF Life (Living Alcohol Free)

Matt Gardiner, Season 2 Guest Ep.2

October 03, 2022 Matt Gardiner Season 2 Episode 2
LAF Life (Living Alcohol Free)
Matt Gardiner, Season 2 Guest Ep.2
Show Notes Transcript

We welcome our 1st Guest of Season 2, Matt Gardiner! What an amazing exchange of energy with this fellow Canadian Podcaster and Recovery Coach. Listen to Matt's struggle  through his first attempt at living alcohol-free and what he did differently the 2nd time around to be successful in his "AF" journey. We loved hearing about Matt's dedication to helping others overcome their trauma and how he's sharing his Hero's Journey.

Find Matt on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/recoveryroadmap.me/
or check out his website at http://www.recoveryroadmap.me

Be a guest on our show https://forms.gle/GE9YJdq4J5Zb6NVC6

Music provided by Premium Beats: https://www.premiumbeat.com
Song: Rise and Thrive
Artist: Young Presidents

Honorable Mentions:
Finding Joe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8nFACrLxr0
Hamilton Pharmacopeia
https://www.hulu.com/series/hamiltons-pharmacopeia-ba51f4e6-df48-4278-b75f-38f0d6ae6734
How to Change your Mindhttps://www.netflix.com/ca/title/80229847

**Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this episode are not professional or medical opinions. If you are struggling with an addiction please contact a medical professional for help.

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Website: https://www.laflifepodcast.com/
Be a guest on our show: https://forms.gle/GE9YJdq4J5Zb6NVC6
Email us: laflifepodcast@gmail.com

Connect with your podcasters. We'd love to hear from you!
Tracey:
https://www.instagram.com/tnd1274/
Kelly:
https://www.instagram.com/pamperedkel/
Lindsey:
https://www.instagram.com/hariklindsey/

**Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this episode are not professional or medical opinions. If you are struggling with an addiction please contact a medical professional for help.

Music provided by Premium Beats:
https://www.premiumbeat.com
Song: Rise and Thrive
Artist: Young Presidents

Resources:
Wellness Togethe...

Matt Gardiner, Season 2 Guest Ep.2

Intro

[00:00:00] 

Kelly: welcome to the laugh life podcast, a lifestyle podcast based on living alcohol free and a booze-soaked world. My name is Kelly Evans and together with my friends, Tracey, Djordjevic, Mike Sutton and Lindsay Harik. We share uncensored. Unscripted real conversations about what our lives have been like since we ditched alcohol and how we got here by sharing our individual stories.

We'll show you that there isn't just one way to do this, no matter where you are on your journey from sober, curious to years in recovery and everyone in between, you are welcome here, no judgment and a ton of support.

Tracey: Hello everyone and welcome to season two of the LAF Life podcast. Tonight, is episode two, and we have a special guest with us Matt Gardner. Matt is a fellow Canadian podcaster, and he is also a recovery coach, and he is joining us to tell us [00:01:00] about how he started his previous drinking career, as we like to call it.

So Matt, maybe if you wanna start out with telling us how long you have been sober, and maybe then tell us a little bit about your background, how you came to this time in your life where you're now recovered and helping the recovery. C. 

Matt: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. Great to be sitting with some fellow Canadians as well. So super excited to be on your guys show. So, thank you very much and for the opportunity to talk of my drinking career, as you mentioned. So, my sober date is April 8th, 2019, so about three and a half years in now. I did have a fairly lengthy alcohol-free stint earlier in my life it was a little over three years, 2012 to 2015. We'll get to that as part of my drinking career. You'll, find out what happened there, but just a little teaser. Okay, So I'm gonna go back to my earliest memory is. Fun to share, but also kind of a little bit dark as most shares are in this, in this kind, this genre of, of conversation.

So, my uncle Paul, who I told you guys [00:02:00] about in the preamble that we sort of had there, Uncle Paul on my mom's side was a big drinker and he ended up in white horses we were mentioning. And when he gets together with my dad, so my dad was the other big drinker, and I just remember like five-year-old Matt would hear them in the other room.

And it would be like, you know, everything's, as is for, and then about half hour in everything was so much louder. The music's turned up, they're like yelling at each other, but they're not angry, but they're just like really loud. I'm like, what is going on in there? So, I'd go in and they go, Hey Matt, come on over.

Come over. We got something for you to try. Right? And it wasn't like I got a full beer or anything, but I'd have that first sip of coconut and then they'd do the bitter beer face, and they would laugh and, oh yeah, you're gonna learn to like that one day and that kind of thing. Right. So that was my earliest memory.

I was just remember being like super curious about it. I thought, okay, there's something to that. I liked having fun. I was like a fun-loving kid. I didn't like the taste, but yeah, it stuck, it stuck with me for sure. My parents got divorced right as I was going into grade eight.

 I am from Prince [00:03:00] George, British Columbia, a little bit of a smaller center. 70,000 people. So, the high school was grade eight to 12. I didn't hit any kind of a growth spur until I was about halfway through grade nine. So, I was really small at the time, like 5, 3 80 pounds or something like this.

Right. And just completely stunned cuz my whole family dynamic that I had lived, it was a very sheltered upbringing. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and all of a sudden, this divorce and, in 94 divorces weren't nearly as common as they are today. It really shattered my world. I, and just everything that I thought our family was and, it was very challenging.

So, my home that used to be, my safe abode to come back after school from was not exactly that anymore. It was just everything was so different. And uh, yeah, I was definitely getting bullied in high school, as you can imagine, showing up. It's like the land of giants, these guys are like six feet, and they got mustaches already. And then here I am this little kid that's this little guy that's not really speaking. I was very shy, especially around girls, painfully shy. So yeah, I had a [00:04:00] rough time in grade eight and nine. And what happened is by about grade nine, I started experimenting with marijuana and with drinking.

So, and then I got into music. So, by the time I was 14 I got my first guitar, and for me that was a great way for me to, to sort. I get this, like these feelings that I didn't really know how to articulate out in a more abstract way, like through music. So, and along with music though, as you can imagine started idolizing and reading all these like rock bios and like Lead Zeppelin and.

Being a child of the nineties big into like Pearl Jam and Nirvana all these bands that are just doing like hard drugs and so much drinking and hotel destruction and destroying their instruments on stage. And that was cool to like a teenager that was, I was angry as it was. Right. So that was kind of what was modeling my behavior as well. I thought it was really cool to get hammered and play loud music. That was a big turning point for me, is my personality started to change and I believed that drinking was bringing out this identity, right? I think it's such a common story. It definitely is. My story was that [00:05:00] I was finding my voice; the alcohol was allowing me too really be myself. Like this, I the shy kid, I'm not shy anymore. I can go talk to those girls now and I can go to house parties and talk to everybody. Right? That was my impression, my first impression of it. I thought, man, alcohol is like my ticket.

This is, this is me. Right? So, and then it was just wrapped in, in this identity of, of a musician as well. So, like as I mentioned before, I got outta Prince George as soon as I could, as soon as I turned 18 because as soon as you go over into Alberta, I'm in Edmonton now. The legal drinking age is 18, so that factored heavily into it. I'm like, wicked. I can go to bars, I'm gonna start a band. We're gonna be playing all around the town. And obviously Edmonton's considerably bigger than Prince George. So that's what I did. And by the. I was, I'd say like early to mid twenties. I was a daily drinker by that point, and that was this gradual, it was like a gradual thing, right?

 It was pretty apparent when I started getting on top of me. In the meantime, though, like I'm getting promoted at work. My band's doing very well. I'm living the life or so I think, right? But there's this darkness that's starting to come [00:06:00] into my drinking and uh, I'm just silencing it.

I'm like, I'm aware of it. I'm starting to feel that and there are some voices in my head starting to go. You might want to back off from this a little bit. The first real time that I pumped the breaks, I was 27 and I actually gave myself acute pancreatitis from drinking too much.

It was a really rough binge drinking weekend. So, I tried to get myself through like a 40 or 60 awry or whatever it was, as quickly as I could. And being a daily drinker into that weekend. And then, yeah, I ended up just hospitalizing myself. Very painful experience three days in the hospital and I was that guy, just doing okay if I just let me get outta here and I'll never touch another drop.

I've learned my lesson, doing this whole thing I'd love to say that was like my rock bottom and I cleaned up my act after that. I didn't so coming outta the hospital and this is the power of the addict brain. This is the devil on my shoulder, right? The drinker Matt he starts going, as soon as I leave the hospital, I'm walking home and there's like a couple beer stores on the way home, and you, the guys like the devil.

My shoulder's like, [00:07:00] Well, that was Ry that did that to you. You can, you, your beer, beer would never do that to you. You can be a beer drinker guy Now. I'm like, Hmm. Seems logical. That seems, yeah, that seems pretty reasonable. Maybe I can beer. Nobody ever has problems drinking beer. Yeah, I think I'm a beer guy. So, on the way home from the hospital, I grabbed a six pack of beer and within like 24 hours of being out of there, I'm having a beer, right? Nonsense. But at the time it made, it did make sense, right? So, I was able to navigate that, I guess it would be the late twenties in my early thirties of being the beer, beer drinker guy.

And I was, I was able to kind of like feel when my body was getting to that stage where I'd had too much and then I, I would always just back it off. But there's a few scary moments where I thought, Man, I thought I could feel that flaring up again. And luckily, I would just go to bed and just pray.

Literally pray please don't have this happen again. Cuz, I got pretty lucky the first time, and then honestly, I hit my rock, my actual legit rock bottom I would say right around my 30th birthday. So, my current fiancé, who was my [00:08:00] girlfriend for the four years leading up to this we had some issues, so we ended up having some time apart it was pretty hurtful on both sides, so I had a hard time with that. And you know what, by this time my drinking had just really gotten a hold of me. And strangely enough, the universe was presenting me. It was such gifts. I was getting a grant to record a professional album with my band.

 I kept getting promoted at work somehow, and everything else was going great, but I just couldn't get my crap together otherwise. And I just felt hopeless, you know, the whole thing after, Darcy and I split for the couple of years on the back of us actually deciding, Okay, this is over, this is not gonna work. I just finally, I put up my hand and just said, I can't do this anymore. And honestly, and this is worth mentioning cuz I'm sure there is somebody out there that is either in the stage of thinking they want to ask for help or will be able to relate to this part of the story. I honestly thought I was gonna get fired. I went to my boss and he's like, this alpha male, he loves MMA and hunting and everything. I'm like, this guy's gonna think I'm just like this weak loser when I tell him this. And I was just like, dreading telling him. And [00:09:00] he was totally cool about it. He was the exact opposite. He was like, Yeah, whatever you need. How much time off do you need? Totally get it. Yeah. 

Kelly: Sorry, Matt, you told him, what did you tell him? 

Matt: So, I, I told him everything. I said, I'm drinking every day. I'm having a hard time here and I need some time off. And he was like, what do you need?

So, you know, if at that conversation hadn't gone like that, I wouldn't be talking to you guys tonight. So that was huge. Just to fast forward, in case I don't mention it when I quit this job, it was, this is a job I've had since I was 16 and I just quit this in January. So, 23 years at this company. 

Tracey: Wow. 

Matt: And so, he was a big part of, my mentoring and as I got promoted, he kept getting promoted. So, he ended up being my regional manager when I was assistant store manager. And I reached out to him after I'd quit and I said, you know what? Just thank you for everything that you did for me, because that was such a huge turning point moment.

And if that conversation didn't have gone even a little bit differently, my life would've been completely different. Yeah, that was one of the toughest things. I think that was the toughest thing I'd done in my life up to that point in a lot of ways, because I [00:10:00] thought I was hiding it.

Obviously not hiding it as much as I thought. That's usually. As soon as the veil of booze I guess removed, you're kinda like, Oh man. Okay. No, no, I was, people knew. I'm not to the extent, like the full extent, but they knew more than I thought they did. Is the point right. Yeah, so I took the five weeks off. The first two weeks I went on a huge binge and was just giving her, and then finally I was just like, Okay, I gotta go one way or the other here. So, I'm either gonna be like Uncle Paul, I'm just gonna go on a massive binge, quit my job, I have some money saved, go down to Vancouver, do whatever, and just have this big party.

Or I can at least attempt to clean up my life. So, I chose to at least attempt, right? I had my friend Brent, who we'd had a falling out over substances, big surprise and hadn't talked to him in about a year, but he'd cleaned up and he'd gone to NA and AA and I just called him up outta the blue for, and said, Hey, can you take me to one of these things?

Cuz like, I'm at the end of my rope. I basically will try anything at this point. And he's like, Yeah, of course. And so that was kind of us, like mending fences in a really cool way. [00:11:00] And he took me there to a meeting and we were in the parking lot. And I just remember the feeling of being in the parking lot was enough. Or so I thought where I was just like, Okay, you know what? I don't need to go in there. I'm cured. I'm good. I was afraid. It was what was what it was. And again, one of these moments, if this hadn't happened, we wouldn't be talking is Brent turned, around. We were sitting in his truck, and he put his hand on my, on my shoulder and yeah. And he's just like, you know what? You're in the right spot. This'll be good. And he smiled and I'm like, Oh, okay. All right let's do it. So, we went in together and he's like a frigging celebrity in there and everybody's like, hey, Brent, and high fives all around and hugging him.

I'm like, Okay, this is not what I was expecting. And I was expecting all these like old washed up, the characters that I have in my head of these angry drunks, right? It's nothing like that. Or my experience wasn't, Anyways, and so that literally changed the course of my life because I sat down, they started the opening reads that they do. And I don't even remember what was said. It was just the energy. I had a profound, like spiritual 180 [00:12:00] happened. I literally felt like, what would've been like if I had like a friend doing like the chicken fight thing on my shoulders and just like this massive physical weight leave me mm-hmm.

And I started tearing up and I was like, Oh, okay. And I get it. yeah, it was definitely like, I was touched by something, something outside of myself and I was like, Okay, I understand this now. So, on the back of that meeting, I was able to stay alcohol free for three years. Three months.

And don't get me wrong, like I was still going to meetings, and I had to change a lot about myself, but I found this inner piece that I had never had before, and I felt completely different, and I still can't really explain it. I've never had anything like that. Happened since. And that saved my life cuz if that didn't work, I literally would've just gone to Vancouver and just, kept going.

So that was massive. So, I wanted one more stint as a, with my drinking career apparently the comeback to her, if you will. So, I, after the three years, three months, I got into Wayne Dyer and the spiritual side and self [00:13:00] development and this kind of stuff.

And I loved it, and it was great, and things were going well. There was still a part of me though, I was like being protective over who I told. And in hindsight, looking back on it, I believe that I was hiding it a little bit so I could just leave the door open just that little bit so I could kind of, you know, go back to it one day.

I know that now because that's what I did. So, Yeah, initially I thought I was using the excuse to myself that it's nobody's business. I don't want this getting out there. I'm still, feeling a little bit shameful about it. But in reality, I think there was part of me that was like, okay, when the day is you can go back and do that cuz you've learned your lesson.

 And that's, so that's what happened. So, I went to my drummer's wedding. I was at groomsman at, and this would've been June 2015. So, three years, three months, alcohol free. Life has really turned around for me. You get to the wedding and it's one of these weddings is wonderful wedding, 200 people there, drinks being thrown my way left, right, and center again because I did not protect my sobriety.

I wasn't telling everybody I wasn't drinking. They kept coming up to me. And instead of just saying no, I was [00:14:00] doing the nonsense. I'd take a shot and water the plant behind me, and pretend I have a beer. instead of just straight up having a healthy boundary of, no, I'm not drinking, I did all this other nonsense.

So, by at the end of the night, I finally took a shot of tequila because I was like, I'm like, ah, whatever. May as I may as well just have one. What's, what's the difference? Or I think I said something like, I got this, It's fine. And then did it. And this is like ego gets involved saying that I got this thinking that I'm gonna be the one person that's had this problem drinking his entire life since he was like 16.

And you know, I got it now. It's all good. I'm, I'm cured. And I tell you, as soon as I had that shot, it was like 15 seconds of whatever brain chemistry happens. And it was like the old Matt was back and I was just like, floored. I'm like, how does this happen so quickly? It was three years I put into this, and strangely enough I was okay with it because there was that small part of me that was like, you know what?

Initially I said, I, I remember even thinking the thoughts, your sobriety is done, your sobriety streak is [00:15:00] over. And I was like, I'm okay with that. And I went and grabbed a beer and then driving home from the wedding, I remember it was totally like old Matt. It was like 2:00 AM I'm driving around looking for that liquor store that's still open.

Anybody that's on the road is a cab or a cop, and they're just saying, I'm just like, oh man, I kind of miss this. This kind of reckless, doing what you're not supposed to be doing. I missed the exclamation point that I was putting on life through the recklessness that I was getting through drinking.

I didn't find a way to satiate that. So, there was always this energy that was still inside of me that wasn't, I hadn't figured out a way to get to it. So, I tried the next three years. Three years plus of every moderation technique or, parameter or condition, 

so, I would do, okay, well I was drinking cheap beer before, so I'm gonna have expensive beer and in fact I'm going to support a local brewery. I'm gonna get local, I feel good about myself. All again. And so, it's just nonsense to look back on it. But I tried 'em all like, okay, so I'm only gonna drink on weekends then all of a sudden [00:16:00] every weekend is a four-day weekend. Okay, well that doesn't work. Okay, well I'm only going to drink after six. And then before you know it, I'm drinking on the way home, while I'm driving. Right. Okay. That didn't work. Well, no alcohol at home. That's fine. I'll. Do it when I go out and it's expensive when you go out.

So, I certainly won't have more than one or two beers. And then I'm going out five nights a week and I'm drinking four or five in my, the beer bill is going through the roof. So, I, oh man. I tried and tried and tried and just 0% success rate and it was arguably worse. I found it much more challenging to white knuckle through three or four days and, and then have the idea on Thursday I can start drinking again.

What a terrible way to live. And it was just like, I liken it to if anybody's doing a really restrictive diet, but they have that one cheat day and I imagine the whole week they're just thinking about the cheat dam. Oh man, I can't wait to have some cake and donuts. It's like that, it's just to me that was, it was no way to live.

And it was so discouraging cuz again, everything else in my life was leveling [00:17:00] up and everything else was good and I just could not reconcile this whole thing and Okay. This is the days leading up to my current alcohol-free stint. So, my dad passed away at age 66, a few days before Christmas, 2018, and he had been a heavy drinker's entire life as well, and he had retired.

He'd been retired about a year. And he took up smoking cigarettes again for some reason. And so just living an unhealthy lifestyle finally caught up to him and he died just sort of outta the blue yeah, on a few he days before Christmas. And I knew, I'm like, I'm on this path. Also, Uncle Paul, the gentleman I was telling you about earlier had passed away, I wanna say a year or two before, no, maybe even three or four. Anyways, somewhere in there he passed away from complications from drinking as well at like 57, so I'm like, I know I'm on the same path as my uncle Paul and my dad here. And there were still a couple months. There was a delayed reaction, as there often is, but it was, it really affected me. And I'm heading to my dad's celebration of life it's April 8th, hence the sobriety date of and I was coming out of this [00:18:00] really rough party weekend.

These friends that I know when I get together it's gonna be like everything cocaine, marijuana, lots of beer, just everything, right? And we're up till 4:00 AM or something like that. And I have to leave the next morning to drive eight hours from Edmonton to Prince George to go honor my dad.

And I remember I woke up fairly early to drive out there, and I always have like the hair of the dog, right? And just to try and recalibrate in the morning. And I got about halfway through this beer before I hopped in my vehicle at 8:00 AM to drive for eight hours. And I'm like, what am I doing?

This is not, ah, this, is so out of alignment with who I want to be and who I think I am at my core. So, I just dumped it out. I threw it out way and disgusted and headed out on the road, and I got to Jasper. So, Jasper's a beautiful, you know, Rocky Mountain, quaint little rocky mountain town, literally almost to the kilometer, to the minute, right in between Prince George and Edmonton.

And it's one of my favorite places. My dad and I had some great memories there it's just, it's such a beautiful spot. And it was a bright, blue, sunny day [00:19:00] and I was just driving through there, and I noticed, I felt nothing like void, black, helpless ashamed. Even a lower than shame.

 There was like less active than that. I just felt so empty. So, I grabbed my cell phone. I remember doing this and, and just, I needed to try and articulate this. I wasn't gonna phone anybody. I don't think there's service in the area I was driving through anyways. And I was just talking to myself and recording it.

And it got really dark and there was some suicidal ideation, which is really not like me at all. But I was just like, I'm at the end of my rope here. What am I, I'm so helpless, I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. And it wasn't quite to the effective, like that one meeting that I talked about.

But there was definitely something that happened to me in there spiritually where I had this like shift and I realized that, having this feeling of really dark and disturbed and admitting that out loud and feeling it and get that energy moving and then realizing that I can take that energy and use this as like a sort of an ancestral healing kind of thing too.

Right. Cuz my [00:20:00] dad, my grandpa, my great grandpa, that whole lineage on my dad's side were all heavy-duty drinkers. So, I'm like, you know what? I can stop with me. I can do. This for my dad and for my family, and it can stop with me. So, like combining that, I'm like, Okay, nice. I got some momentum going now.

I'm focusing on a solution now. So that was, that was basically it. That was enough for like the context. It was everything. The environment was everything, right? If I had stayed at home and I didn't have my dad's celebration of life again, I don't know if we'd be talking right now.

So, the fact that I was outta my environment, it was changed environment and there was just such a powerful confluence of events and me feeling that way, you know what I mean? I think it was just lined up perfectly, as strange as that sounds to, for me to make that change. So, I remember picking my brother up from the, and my brother and I hadn't been back home.

We, he left at the same time I did. He was 20 and I was 18 and we got outta Prince George, so we hadn't been back home together in like 20 years. So, it was this real like healing trip for us. And we [00:21:00] went back to our old neighborhood and walked around there and man, it was like a completely different person.

And yeah, I had no cravings, I had no desire to go back to drinking. It was like this blackness had just been removed from my, my energy, if you will. Yeah, man, which was it. And we paid respects to dad and did some healing that way. I just haven't really looked back since then.

I was out in Prince George for probably five days and then came back and, strangely enough I didn't get back into meetings or anything like that. But I definitely got a lot more focused on some of my routines and just staying healthy and, yeah, so, I'm three years in, well, three and a half.

 Like through the pandemic and all that, I realized after working at this job for so long and coming home and just having this cycle of going to work, coming home and drinking, I really started listening to my intuition about, is this something I really want to do for the rest of my life?

And I remember just thinking to myself, I was like, Man, all I have to do this for another 15 years. And then as soon as I'd say that I would just have this like constricting [00:22:00] energy, I'm like, Hmm, interesting. Cuz I never would've noticed that before cuz I would've just been drinking it away, right?

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Matt: I'm like, Hmm, that's very curious. What does this mean? So, I ended up taking six months off last year, and I just sabbatical right? And unpaid. So, I made to, to save some money just so, so I could get through it pretty much instantaneously. I remember morning one of the sabbaticals, I had this like, distinct voice in my head that wasn't.

Self talk, like it wasn't inner dialogue it was a voice. And I think it was my grandpa's, my grandpa on my mom's side, I always liken it to, to him as a guide. And it was just that like, you're not going back. I'm like, Interesting. Okay. What does, dunno what that means yet, but I, I'll pursue this further.

And so, you know what I, I basically, I, I did a lot of soul searching and I got, just a lot of just things I always wanted to do that I was always putting away, when I get to here, then I can enjoy this. I was always doing this like stacking of achievements and then when I get this much money, then I can relax doing that whole thing that, a lot of people are kind of caught up [00:23:00] in and it just was not satisfying whatsoever.

So, it got out. Have it as best I could, or at least got on the other side of it for a while, and then realized I did like certain aspects of the job. 23 years at the job, the last 12 years I'd been in upper management. So, by that time it was just with my level of experience and the position I've been in, I've been the coaching and mentoring part was huge and I very much enjoyed that.

And sharing, my experience where somebody doesn't have the experience and then kind of bridging the gap and, and bringing them up, so I loved that part of it. There was just a lot of the other noise that I didn't care for. Working in retail, especially during the pandemic was incredibly challenging.

So that was it. I started getting some coaching certifications and, they're just Like broad, you can basically take these coaching certifications and go to whatever genre you want to go with. And of course, initially I was like, wow, I wanna help everybody, and be like a life coach, right?

But I'm like, well, okay. So, it's like Tony Robbins is a life coach too. There are all these other famous life coaches. I did a business mentoring programmer. They're like, you want to niche into something that you have life [00:24:00] experience. Because nobody necessarily knows you right away, 

so, if you can get down to as specific as you can with something that you have life experience and you're passionate about, that would be a good starting point and then you can kind of broaden up from there. So, I said, well, I have a lot of experience in drinking, and I definitely have a lot of experience in getting myself out of drinking.

And I feel very comfortable and confident with these last three and a half years. So, I'm at a stage where I'm comfortable, not too comfortable, like I got last time. I'm comfortable though, with the, my life now and how I've been able to, transition into a very healthy, balanced life without the need for alcohol.

So, I dunno if you guys are big into like the hero's journey, that whole thing where it's phase three of the Hero's journey is like, phase one is it's in so many movies, The Matrix, Harry Potter, all these other movies. Anyways, so it's like there's the calling where it's just that's phase one where you know something isn't right and you don't quite know how to put your finger on it, but there's something, you realize there's another way to do things.

And then [00:25:00] phase two is the dark night of the soul, basically, where you, okay, you've, there's no going back at this point. And that would be like kinda like my initial recovery where I really had to get into why I had an addiction or addictive behavior in the first place. So, I did a lot of deep work on that.

And then phase three is when you. Confident, comfortable enough with what you've learned, and now you're gonna go back and help people go through their own hero's journey. So that's how I've set myself up for as far as helping other folks in recovery, early sobriety even. I've had people that have gone through my program that are like, well into sobriety, but they just like to have that you know, kickstart or, or a little bit of a rocket fuel thrown on there and have some fun in community and such.

That is the highlights and lowlights of my drinking career transitioning into what I'm doing. 

Tracey: I like that Hero's journey, is that what you called it? 

Matt: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. 

Tracey: I've never heard that expression actually. Or those steps, so, 

Matt: Okay, cool. Okay. I would say I didn't wanna take for granted if you knew what it is. There's a, a wonderful documentary that [00:26:00] you can watch on YouTube for free. It's called Finding Joe, and it's all about the hero's journey and how it shows up in like, popular culture in movies, books, and even in our own lives. And it's, it's incredible. I highly 

Tracey: Oh, that's awesome. 

Matt: To you and your listeners. It's so good.

Tracey: Yeah, That's great. Thank you for that. 

Matt: Yeah. Thank you 

Mike: Matt. I'll preface in, say I read your, your online your book, your eBook. Yeah. 

Matt: Oh, thanks man. Yeah, 

Mike: I read the bulk of it, right, cuz I was reading it on my computer and getting through you went from your previous to your current life, then you went back and forth. So, it was kind of this guy is really giving his whole story in how it's coming out. I found it like you were just kind of regurgitating it, if that's the right way of saying it. And 

Matt: yeah, definitely. 

Mike: There was a lot of detail for sure. And I gotta say, I'm sorry to hear about your friend passing. I could tell by the way that you were writing that it was the guy meant a lot to you and you did have, you said you had a little bit of a falling out, but you, you [00:27:00] reconnected when he helped you. Getting into meetings and whatnot. So, my condolences to you there. Yeah. It sounds like he was a big, a big influence on you. I'm not gonna speak for everybody, but it sounds like the big root thing for a lot of people, why they drink and trying to figure out why they're going through these motions and trying to quit is unresolved trauma. And I think in reading what you wrote, and I never put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you had a lot of unresolved traumata with maybe your parents' divorce and maybe some things that were happening to you as a young guy. obviously, I think you agree with that, but do you have anything you can comment on, in regard to that and how you figured that out the second time around because 

Matt: Yeah. 

Mike: Do you think that was connected to why your kind of not fell off the wagon, but had that moment of I'm going back to an old Matt.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. No, for sure. Mike, thanks for reading the book and yeah, absolutely. It was a regurgitation. I kind of intentionally just made it as like a Quentin Tarantino. It wasn't necessarily linear. It kind of jumped around a little bit and yeah, Brent, [00:28:00] yeah, Brent, the guy that that took me to that meeting, he passed away and it had nothing to do with substances other than, I mean, he was a diabetic, he passed away at 33. It's a very special story and a huge part of my story that Brent, took me to that first a meeting. So, thanks for bringing that up and shouted out Brent. Yeah, absolutely, dude. And somebody asked me this once, he's like, Well, what's the big difference between your first sobriety stint and this last one?

For sure, I did all this, I replaced the drinking habit. This is the first time, the 20 12 1. I replaced the drinking habit with going to the gym. So, what I feel I did is I did a lot more, I just replaced like an action with another action, which is great. But it's not necessarily sustainable because I didn't go into the trauma as you mentioned.

Right. I think it's called addiction shifting or habit shifting or something. I know I didn't have the skillset at the. To figure out what the trauma was. I was going to counseling. I think for me, I thought there was just gonna be more of the doer, the fixer, the achiever energy, and just doing more of that was going to get me to the stage where I was just gonna be satisfied [00:29:00] and being able to move on.

So, to answer the question, the second time through this, this current alcohol-free St I'm on, I've gotten way more into the yin stuff. So, if it was a yang of the achiever, the doer, the fixer, I have finally, gotten some balance in my life as far as bringing yin yoga, meditation some breathwork, some really intense breathwork like the DMT and the whim ho breathwork.

I did the actual coaching, the coaching that. I do with my clients. I went through the program, obviously. And that's, it was a huge amount of, it's called story work therapy, or Story work coaching. And it's basically bringing all of these traumas, as you mentioned, to the, forefront and actually addressing them, I thought and I had, I journaled about them a little bit, but not to this extent, where you're putting them up on the computer, in a paragraph form, essentially like you're writing a part of a book, reading it out loud. To somebody else, to the other coach. And then reading it out loud, in slow motion. So, the emotion has [00:30:00] time to kind of come up and, and well up and then reading each sentence with a big breath in between. And then it's incredible what it does to the story, and it gives you this like objectivity that, that it gave me an objectivity I had never had with a lot of these stories. And to be honest, now I'm just older, right? That burning desire to do something reckless and stupid

it's finally left me with older age. So, it's just a combination of all that, getting in more in touch with realizing not everything has to be a grind. If I find myself, that was the thing it's worth mentioning, the main habit that I used to continue to numb my feelings was like distractions.

So, if I started feeling a bit lonely or if I started feeling a bit like. generalized sad. And I did, I, instead of getting curious about why I felt like that, I was just, oh, pick up my phone. No, who, who texted me? Getting into technology and then it would just or put the, the emotions back down.

So just in the last 18 months or so, I've been getting a lot more unconditional with myself. Okay, so my [00:31:00] parents were both especially my dad was, was very conditional. He did the best he could. I really don't want to come across like slagging him, but it was always if you get this done or if you're this, I always felt like I had to do something in order to be loved.

And I took. Into my adulthood. I did that with myself. And this is literally something that I have a coach. I have a couple coaches that I use that I got pointed out to me this the past January. So, this is like brand new for me to realize my patterns. Cuz patterns are so subconscious in the background.

They're blind spots, they're, it's shadow work for a reason, right? It's like I can't see this until somebody reflects it back to me. Like I said, I've been counseling and such, but it's the coaching that has really brought that out. And as soon as I heard that, I had an emotional and energetic response, so I knew that there was something there.

It wasn't just words. There was something there. I guess a long way to answer your question, but that was the big thing is just getting to the point where I'm allowing these feelings to come up and in an unconditional [00:32:00] way. I'm not being conditioned with myself anymore. I'm showing myself unconditional love. I'm practicing it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not perfect. Yeah. And then that's where the trauma comes up and that's where I can then dissolve it, resolve it, release it. And dude, that's like pretty new for me. I'm gonna be honest with you. 

Mike: Yeah. Do you think that, or have you come to any realization or thought that in relation to your dad, he had unresolved trauma even up to the day that he passed that it's not something that I think is passed down and, and I can speak to my own experience with my own dad, and it's very similar to yours, is that. when you sit there in reflection and think back, they just didn't have the skillset to, to deal with these things. 

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: Here we are, at an age. And I think we're all very similar in age, we have the ability now to do something and, look at the things that we're doing, what we do with our podcasts and what you do with yours, and try to share the message that, you can fix this, you can get better. And there's a community out there that you guys were talking about on Instagram, and I'm not an Instagrammer, you had said it's a big sobriety [00:33:00] community out there. I think it's great, do you think I'm on the right path by saying that? 

Matt: Oh yeah, yeah, a hundred percent, man. I actually ended up doing a two-month course on just ancestral healing. And what it ended up coming out of it was I was in Interviewing, my mom about my mom's side and she knows everything. She's one of these like wizards of family history. She's got like 7,000 photo albums and she can tell you exact dates of people when they moved places.

I'm like, Oh, nice. I'll talk to mom for a few hours. Here we go. And she knows obviously everything about her side and quite a bit about my dad's side. And one thing that she brought up that I, found fascinated and I didn't, maybe it heard but I didn't really clue in, and then she kinda like spelt it out for me or hinted at it. So, my dad was brought up in a very strict Catholic upbringing. So, he went to a Catholic elementary school. And he says he doesn't remember anything about his childhood. And so, I was like, I'd heard that before. I'm like, Well, that's kind of weird. Maybe some people don't remember being a toddler or whatever. She's like, No. Like he doesn't remember up until about like 13 years old. And I've talked to [00:34:00] his mom, or like my grandma, and she's like, oh no, he had liked a regular childhood. He, I don't know why he doesn't remember it, blah, blah, blah. And like, and then my mom's like, well, remember what kind of school he went to?

You know, what kind of stuff happens or has been revealed to be happening right at those types of schools? I was like, Ooh, man, I never thought of that. Yeah. And it was like, she kind of had to like, no, like, think about it a little bit harder. And I was like, Whoa. Interesting. So not sure, right. But there's definitely something there potentially.

And yeah, dude, like he was, a troubled, troubled person. When he was drinking, he would be, Happy go lucky till a certain threshold and then he would get pretty rude and, and angry. Yeah. Right. And then he would very much, because of his Catholic upbringing as such, he kept that to a degree, into his adulthood.

So, he had a lot of guilt around his lifestyle choice, to be that big of a drinker and everything. Yeah, he had some demons for sure. I saw it when I was, we were kind of at odds. I always looked up to him, in teenage years, and by the time I got to twenties, we were starting to butt heads quite a bit. [00:35:00] 

And I definitely saw that, and I was just like, Man, how, it was like this respect thing, right? He'd come over to my house, I bought a house, and he's coming over and just kind of acting up and telling me how to live my life. And it just had this like, dynamic shift and yeah, you could definitely tell he had some. Big time, some unresolved traumas and, it's interesting. I don't wanna say funny is not the right word. It's interesting. There's a book that I read a while back then where the chapters are live as if your dad is dead. There's something as blunt as that, live as if your dad is dead. And I'll tell you, I don't know if I'd be doing this the same thing, or it would've been a lot pretty challenging for me to tell him that I walked away from a job.

I was almost making six figures at 40. To start my own business, he would've been like, What the hell are you doing? Right? 

Kelly: Mm-hmm. 

Mike: Yeah, 

Matt: because honestly, I'd have my conversation, this gets back to that conditional thing. I'd have my conversation with them, and it would be like a checklist. He's like, Okay, how's work going? Okay, you're still making good money. How's the house? What's the mortgage down to you? It's like this, like itinerary. I'm like, Yep, Dad, things are good. Yeah. Oh yeah. I might get promoted to get, and it's, that's where I got this, like, okay, [00:36:00] I have to check these boxes in order to get my dad's approval.

So, I can't even imagine having some of these conversations with him going like, Yeah, I quit. I quit my job. He'd be like, What? What are you doing? Interesting. Yeah, for sure. There's to answer your question, yeah. Good call. Good, good call on that one. 

Tracey: Well, I think Mike and I especially could probably relate to a lot of what you were saying about your upbringing and the history in your family. My dad died at a, what I consider a fairly young age too. He was sober when he died, but he was an alcoholic. And I think part of, why he died when he did was because he was very hard on his body, and he lived a very hard party. Leading up to, being sober. I think it had already kind of taken its toll on his body when he passed. And it was just catching up with him, unfortunately. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Tracey: So, I can really relate to that. I had the good fortune of being sober when my dad passed and being able to tell him that I wasn't drinking anymore. Which he was very happy and proud of because he was [00:37:00] always concerned about all of us, all of his kids drinking because of the past history for him.

But I can say too that I know my dad had a lot of traumata. He came from a European family I think his dad was abusive and there was a lot of, that kind of European standards in his family. And so, I can't imagine kind of the traumas that he was dealing with. But going back to, your two stints of being sober, I was saying on our last episode actually, that I think it's all about timing. Right? You have to be ready. Yeah. So, although something probably forced you into the first stint, you obviously weren't quite ready, and maybe that had to do with you not dealing with the trauma mm-hmm.

Or you just weren't done with it yet, because you said you had always in the back of your mind that nagging feeling of, I'm gonna drink again, or I can drink again. And the second time around, it was just your time, you were ready? Yeah. In a [00:38:00] different way. And I do definitely believe that we do have these signs from the universe pointing us in those directions. And definitely, giving us that guidance. 

Matt: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, good summarization. I always likened it too, I would always get the universe to gimme little taps on the shoulder, and then finally it would just be like, ah, a big smack on the back of the head. I'm like, Okay, yeah, yeah, I get it now. I was like this close to getting a duo. I'd been pulled over and, I had a six pack and I had been drinking and I had actually fallen down a set of stairs, so I'd had a concussion. So, I'd had one or two beer and I was just like, like a, you know, like a zombie.

And it was like a month or so after that. So, I was still like in a pretty bad. And this guy pulled me over and I was like, Oh man. I just remember, I'm like, I'm done. This is it. How am I gonna get to work? I'm going through the whole thing and I'm like, if I have to say even one full sentence, he's gonna be like, what is wrong with this guy?

And the guy was just like, I had to say one word to him, and he let me go. And I just remember, I was so close to my house [00:39:00] too. I also like 30 feet. I was going down the back alley and he followed me down the back alley and I was two houses away from my parking spot. 

Kelly: No. 

Matt: And I was just like, Oh fuck. Can you imagine? And then I just had, I said one word and then he was super nice, and he just got back his car. I didn't say a word. I was I stopped breathing. I'm just like, I'm getting side, get inside. And then, yeah. And then that should have been again, that was tap is kind of boom, somebody's kind of smacking me in the back of the head.

Yeah, and it didn't stop me. That was about two or three weeks before I had my like p my ultimate, rock bottom there. But yeah, I totally believe that timing, signs from the universe things coming together to conspire for you, for me. Right. So, yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with that. 

Kelly: Yeah. I could relate to your moderation rules, yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of listeners will be able to relate to that too. It's just, yeah. And how you said it, that was harder than just quitting and yeah, I never actually tried to quit until the day I quit. Which I know isn't the case for everybody, [00:40:00] but I definitely was stuck in that moderation, spiral of exhaustion and making all the rules and breaking them, and then hating myself even more.

Matt: Right. 

Kelly: Every time I broke one of those ridiculous rules, self-loathing just became more and more. Until the point of exhaustion for me. But yeah, I could definitely relate to all your rules,

Matt: right? You gotta try everything or so I thought anyways. Yeah. 

Kelly: Oh, for sure. You just, you try and justify whatever to try and keep it in your life, you know?

Matt: Yeah, it totally was. It was just a big pile of justifications. Yeah, absolutely. Just dressing them up and, with the, the wisdom that I had gained over those three years sober, they were just wiser, quote unquote, there was a different window dressing on them than there was before. But at the end of the day, there were still just, justifications. That's all it was. 

Kelly: Yeah. And I really see, people like your boss and your friend Brent. I see those people as angels in our life. But I also see the power in that was from [00:41:00] your vulnerability. Mm-hmm. your vulnerability to go to your boss and your vulnerability to get in the truck and go to that meeting. So good for you. Yeah. 

Matt: Thank you doing that. Mm-hmm., thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the further along we get here in, 2022, there's a lot of this stuff that is getting framed differently for different people. It is getting more normalized to be vulnerability is not a weakness.

We're hearing this a lot more often now, and it's getting championed as a wonderful character trait to be vulnerable is to be strong. There is in existence of like dualities or counterintuitive, one thing can actually mean another thing, right? And it doesn't have to be scoffed at or dismissed or shoved down.

So that's great. I'm just loving seeing that, you know, it's, it's been gradual. I'm sure you guys have noticed it too over mm-hmm. even the last 10 years and, like, when I first started going to yoga, I did a few back in 2012, I was like the only guy there, right. And now it's pretty normal for, for guys to go, you know?

And for sure. Yeah. It's little ahead of the curve, I guess., [00:42:00] 

Tracey: my partner still doesn't wanna go by himself. He'll only go if I'm with him. 

Kelly: I do by 

Tracey: myself. He's too, still too manly to do it by himself. Yeah, right. 

Kelly: My studio has more men than women often. 

Matt: Really? Oh, okay. There you go.

Mike: Now, now, 

Kelly: now. Yeah. Not when. Not when Matt started going. No. 

Matt: Right, right. Exactly. That's cool though. That's good. That's good. Yeah.

Tracey: Well, I was thinking the whole time you were talking, Matt, I had the thought in my head of the truth will set you free because I saw that pattern in your story, one, when you told your boss, but two, when you were saying how you hadn't told your truth to your friends, and that kind of made you fall back into the cycle of drinking and then again, when, Kelly said, you're vulnerable with your friend and you had that meeting experience. Yeah, that was just my thought process the whole time was thinking about how that expression, the truth will set you free and [00:43:00] how freeing it is once we let all that shame and guilt out and share that with other people and how freeing it is to release ourselves of the drinking. Because look at how much of a hold it has on us where it's literally controlling our lives and it's like it takes over control of us opposed to us being able to control ourselves. I can't remember the expression. Kelly, you might the one that Lindsay has said a couple times about your secrets, 

Kelly: mm. 

Tracey: Keeping you in the dark or something like that. Yeah. I wish she was here to say it because I was thinking about that. 

Kelly: Yeah. We're Lindsay today, 

Matt: Pop point in the last minute. Who knows? Yeah, I know which one you're saying like, that sounds a bit familiar. I'll have to look it up. But yeah, the truth will set you free is amazing. I'm throw out, there could be the, the show title of, of my episode, you know, 

Kelly: and, and not just the truth. 

Tracey: There you go. 

Kelly: Not just the truth that you're struggling with alcohol, but for me, I wasn't living my truth. I wasn't [00:44:00] me Yes. Anymore that the drinking was, I was shoving that. My truth down with my drinking. I knew I wasn't living my truth, but if I drank, I didn't have to think about it. 

Matt: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Ugh. You know, just thinking back. Yeah. 

Mike: Did you drink, did you drink to appease your buddies at all? I know for me; I had different groups of friends, and it was. My big thing was one night was with one group, the next night was a different group, et cetera, et cetera. Did you find that when you did stop drinking the first and second time, that you filtered some of those people outta your life because they didn't have their drinking buddies?

Matt: Yeah, so the first time, I kept all the same friends, and I would just drink a bunch of like, non-alcoholic beers. Cause like, being a, a musician, I was always just having musicians come over. And I think luckily over time as we grew up, some people just stopped the drinking and drugging, so that was part of it. And then the second time I definitely have, and me stepping away from my job of like 20 plus [00:45:00] years, I've been able to remove myself from what I felt was like obligation to kind of stay in certain groups. Cuz, I worked with them too. So, I'd be Yeah, you can't just.

Mike: Like a family, 

Yeah. I felt like super guilty about not going to things, so but now I've, I've definitely had the choice and honestly like as with drinking and myself, it was like these two separate worlds that I had that were always colliding as was my work, work mats and then artist Matt, we'll call, it was always so I've always felt like I've had like two different, a battle of two different people inside of me until I quit that job finally.

And then everything just sort of is in this one ball, you know what I mean. I'll going in the same direction instead of all these divergent things. And as a result, I, you know, as part of that, I have been able to step away and it's, it's from certain friends. Absolutely. And it's, a hundred percent there's no ill will.

I still love them, and they love me. It's just, I choose not to partake in hanging out with them. Cause I know what [00:46:00] it's. Going to be, mm-hmm. And if I do, there'll be the odd time. There are some of my, they were great friends and I still, really much carry about them, but I know when that threshold is.

I kind of got that. I think you, you guys all have it too, the spy sense where the party starts to kinda, it's getting sloppy. Okay. Bye. 

Kelly: Time to go. 

Matt: I'm out. Right. So, I knew when that Yeah. 

Kelly: Are you still in a band? 

Matt: I am. Yeah. Yeah. It's,

Kelly: How's that being alcohol free? 

Matt: It's actually amazing. I hadn't played a single note or sung a note of music sober until I was 30.

I always went out for a Dooby, or I had at least a couple beers in my system. Cause I truly believed that's where my inspiration came from, right? I had this collapsed distinction of, the whole tortured artist, right? I, my creativity, I is, tied up with my drugs and alcohol.

So, I was like, nah. I just didn't like when I heard musicians sobered up when I was in my twenties. I'd be like, He's lost his edge, he's so, so unfair and so not cool. I was an angry 25-year-old, what can he say? So, when Chris Cornell from Sound [00:47:00] Garden sobered up, I was like, His music sucks.

Now he's lost. You know? But now I'm No, it's so much, there's so much as with my relationships, there's so much more nuance and depth to my creativity. It took a while, don't get me wrong. I had to work my way through that story that it isn't, I'm creative without all that, that stuff.

Mike: You don't smoke weed anymore. 

Matt: So, a little bit like what I, yeah, and that's why I kind of try and choose. You probably noticed I was waffling between sobriety and then alcohol free. I to say alcohol free because that leaves a little bit of room for me to. To continue to partake with, well, we'll say plant medicines.

 I do a bit of psychedelics, still micro dosing. And I do very little marijuana nowadays. If I'm out camping, I might, are out in the mountains, have a little bit. Honestly, I found it to, I was starting to get very invasive thoughts from, from smoking weed. So, I, I've kind of fallen outta love with it.

Yeah. But I, I haven't said that. I have done a few, like plant medicine retreats as well, so like bufo, which is like the kind of one, the trendy ones. There's Iowa ska and bufo are the two. Yeah. Mm-hmm. [00:48:00] main ones. So, I did a Bufo three-day bufo ceremony in Vancouver this past April's you, 

Mike: what's it called? Bufo. 

Matt: Bufo. It's that the stuff the frog venom that gets dehydrated and you can vaporize it. Yeah. I guess Tyson Pharmacopoeia. What's that? Sorry? 

Mike: Have you seen that show? Hamilton's Pharmacopeia? 

Matt: No, I haven't actually. No. 

Mike: Oh. You might want to check that show out. It's on Vice Jet. It's on Vice, yeah. 

Matt: Okay. I'll check it out. 

Mike: Sorry to cut in there, but yeah. 

Matt: No, no, it's all good. 

Mike: Your experiences are very I'm not a musician first and foremost. I'll go by that, but yeah. Drugs and alcohol. I read your story, everything you've talked about. It's like I'm hearing me and you, nice, I saw the one thing you wrote about that massive bender with the eight ball and the hits of acid, and I was like, 

Matt: Yeah, dude.

Mike: Yeah. Well, that was, it's amazing how that life is so common all over the [00:49:00] country. All no joke and you know, right. All over it is, man, it is. Doesn't matter if you're Nova Scotia, Prince George, Toronto, that lifestyle is everywhere. Yeah, it is everywhere and it's, it's amazing the amount of people that are doing these things to themselves to push suppress trauma. That's, I think, what it comes down to,

Matt: Yeah, yeah. No, you're, you're a hundred percent right man. It's yeah. 

Tracey: One thing I didn't mention to Matt that I forgot. Sorry, that you do sound therapy as well. Going back to the music. Yeah. So, tell us a little bit about the things you're doing in the recovery community.

Kelly: Can I ask one more question? Before we move on, yeah. Trace, is that okay? 

Tracey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, 

Kelly: So, I just wanna get what no, you cannot. 

Mike: No, no questions. Not yet. 

Matt: No further questions. 

Kelly: Tracey's so good. And Tracey has, is always like, likes 

Matt: my, so she’s, my lawyer. 

Kelly: We started recording [00:50:00] 58 minutes ago. 

Tracey: So, we still got time? We're good. 

Kelly: I wanted to because I also I would rather say alcohol free. 

Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Kelly: I am not against plant medicine and some psychedelics for healing trauma and things like that. And there's amazing research around that if anybody wants to watch. How to Change Your Mind on Netflix. Yes. Have you watched that, Matt? 

Matt: It's so good. 

Kelly: And it's so good. It's incredible how in the eighties everything changed. Anyway, that would make our podcast really long if we started talking about that. But my question is, do you find that people criticize you for using the word sober, or do you just not use that word?

Matt: No, I do. It's, it's kinda like when in Rome, right? If I, if I go back to a meeting, I don't view myself, I don't prefer to u I say I'm an alcoholic. In fact, I avoid it. However, when I go to a meeting, I'm going to do it right. I'm gonna say it, it's, it's fine. It's all good. It's not my preference, but like, I understand that's part of being there. And that's, that's, that's fine. And the [00:51:00] sober is the big word that's being used in communities like Instagram and such. So again, it's just I view myself as alcohol free. I know it's like a, a distinction that I'm making. Has anybody said anything to me? No. I mean, not to my face.

But you know, I know the power of words and I know there is, I'm leaving myself open. The further along I get into this journey, I'm leaving myself open to criticism. Mm-hmm. Of people that are like, Well, technically you're not sober if you're blah, blah, blah. Right. I'm like, well, so 

Kelly: according, that's who though. 

Matt: That's the thing. 

Kelly: We've talked about this on the, mostly about the word alcoholic, but putting people in boxes and defining people by words and things like that. I think that keeps people stuck. 

Matt: A hundred percent. I agree with you. 

Kelly: May not want to go on the journey of being alcohol free or whatever they wanna call it, you know? So, yeah. No less judgment, more, 

Mike: Well, it ends up becoming a system of some kind that, which these goddamn systems have as has, that's what's ruined a lot of people is., You gotta follow this and do that. [00:52:00] Yeah. And be this way. And it's like, I can, 

Kelly: Lindsay's not here, so I'm gonna say bingo, 

Mike: Yeah, you can, It's bullshit. I'm sorry. It's bullshit. That systems like the school system, it screws up people and there's a whole other plethora system that when people can't follow what the system says, they get disgruntled and maybe they turn to alcohol. I think when we're not drinking, we're our best selves or at least we try to be our best selves and of our best thought patterns and best positive feelings about ourselves. That's the most important damn thing about this whole thing. Anyway, but I'm gonna keep talking and talking, 

Kelly: so, I'll up support alcohol free and you do it. That's the whole reason why we wanted to do this podcast is because, people do it on their own way and 

Mike: yeah, lots of studies to prove that alcohol is the biggest. Problem aside from anything else out there with regards to substance abuse, alcohol. 

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. 

Tracey: Mm-hmm. 

Mike: And it gets such a free pass with whoa. [00:53:00] Commercialization and, you know, x, y, z alcohol on TV shows and golf tournaments and baseball, like all that stuff. Like, it's a joke. It's a bloody 

Kelly: joke. 

Well, you watch that documentary, How to Change Your Mind, and you'll see why we've been conditioned to believe that the plant medicines are drugs and the war on drugs and all that shit.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm. It feels like, man, we're getting some great topics. I'm like, it's gonna be a part two coming up. 

Kelly: Yes. I was just gonna say that. 

Matt: I'm like, I don't wanna leave right now. This is getting really good. Yeah., 

Tracey: well, see, you can have Mike on your show and you guys can delve into this.

Matt: That's true actually. Yeah. There you go. 

Kelly: I would love to be on your show too. 

Matt: Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. Kelly, thanks for bringing up, there’s two important things, coming out of what we talked about and the, the distinctions or the judgements are the way that, people are, are framing it or, if they care to, is a very important topic. And you and the plant medicine thing too. And just the, the amount of, you say, there's science to back it [00:54:00] and, the, we're talking about progress with other things like the yoga and breath work and such as is with the micro dosing and psychedelics being accepted as they should have been a long time ago for the work that they do. And that's finally coming to light as well, which is amazing. 

Kelly: Great. 

Tracey: Now Matt, do you wanna tell us about some of the things you're doing in the recovery realm now that you're recovered? 

Matt: Yes. Yeah, I do actually. Yeah, so I'll preface it by saying it's a lot of the things that's worked for me, and again, that's kind of the whole.

You know, tie in of the hero's journey. It's these things that have worked for me that I'm just so enthusiastic and eager to share with other people. So that's where the, the sound therapy comes in I'm actually, I'm about to start it’s my second group that I facilitated. So, we did a dry July, and then my second group we're starting a couple days by the time this is out, already started sober October, of course.

So, and yeah, what we do is we do some group calls where it's. It has kind of a feel like what we're doing tonight, just sharing and sharing ideas and talking about these subjects. And I developed a, a 30-day course, so it's about five to seven minutes on different topics, whether it's reframing or [00:55:00] relapse, managing cravings getting into language, the way that you're talking to yourself and how that shapes your experience and your experience with other people.

Getting into like ego and expectations and things of this nature, getting into the why, like we were talking about before with traumas and why this stuff is coming up. So really doing some deep dives one on one coaching calls with myself. So, there's two of those that based on that story, coaching that I kind of briefly touched on.

Basically, getting your story up and reading it and breathing onto it. And then we have the Sunday events. So those are the yin activities I talked about. We do yin yoga some guided breath work. I do a sound journey, which is like a guided meditation with some like healing frequencies and musical composition over top of them.

And Tai Chi, we have an amazing Tai Chi instructor that comes in and helps us with that. So really getting into that, slowing things down and getting out of this like idea of like having to achieve and grind and fight for everything. It's like, no, like let's just get into our bodies and let's heal some of these traumas and get [00:56:00] into this energy that we're feeling instead of being up here all the time.

 And we can be up here and that's we're gonna be up here and when we get into the coaching, right? So, it's this, this full bodied, immersive, wonderful 31-day program. Honestly, the community's amazing. It's, we have a private Facebook group where everybody does your daily check-in.

You just like go, okay, this is how I'm feeling, these are my body sensations today. And just do a check-in. And then you go in and comment on each other's posts. And it's amazing cuz it's like six strangers. And then by the end of it, everybody truly feels like, like a family. And there's these friendships that are coming out of these things that it's ah man, I feel like a proud papa.

 I'm like, oh my goodness. It came from outta my imagination I was a little bit nervous and kind of had this like, your imposter syndrome going into, I'm like, isn't even anybody actually gonna do this? You know? And, and of course they do. And it's so it's been amazing, and you know, it's really helped me.

Be even more accountable with my own as, as my podcast, because now I'm out there as right, a recovery coach. So certainly, I can't have a drink now, right? Mm-hmm. So, it's, [00:57:00] it's really added to my self-accountability and just my identity as this new healthy person that doesn't drink. 

Kelly: That's amazing.

Tracey: That's awesome. 

Kelly: I love, 

Matt: Thank you. 

Tracey: So, tell us where you can be found. 

Matt: Yeah, for sure. So, the program's called Recovery Roadmap. So, the website is www.recoveryroadmap.me, and that's also my Instagram handle. So, recovery roadmap.me so easy to remember that I'm very active, more active than I probably should be on Instagram.

Very distracting. We talk about distraction, it's very distracting app. Mike. Good thing you're not on there. And I also have a YouTube channel, so I basically, I put like all my sound therapy stuff, and I have a couple different podcasts I do that end up there. So, it's Matt Gardner live on YouTube, and that's also my Facebook channel or.

Whatever profile. Yeah, there we go. Matt Gardner lives, so recovery roadmap.me and Matt Gardner live. Those are my two places to be found. 

Tracey: Okay, great. We'll put those in the show notes so people can find you. And it's been so great getting to know you and [00:58:00] hearing your story. You've been a great guest and I love seeing another fellow Canadian podcaster on this subject.

I'm sure there's lots out there, but it's great to actually connect with one. So, thank you for connecting with us and you can find us on social media at LAF Life Podcast on Instagram and go onto our Facebook community at LAF Life. Thanks again to Matt for joining us and 

Kelly: thank you Matt.

Matt: Thank you much.

Tracey: We'll give you all his contact info so you can reach out to him, check out his program, and until next time, keep laughing. 

Matt: Bye. Good night. Good night.

Closing

Kelly: Thank you for listening. Please give us a five-star rating like and subscribe, share on social media, and tell your friends. We love getting your feedback and ideas of what you'd like to hear on upcoming episodes of the laugh life podcast. If you yourself are living alcohol free and want to share your story here, [00:59:00] please reach out.