- All right.
Hey, Soul Pancake, my name is Josh Spencer.
And, all right, stoke.
My name's Josh Spencer.
Let's try this again.
Warming it up, ya know?
Me and the dog.
Hey, Soul Pancake, name name's Josh Spencer.
I spend most of my life behind the camera
so sitting in front of this has been super awkward.
I'm gonna make three videos for you guys
exploring sobriety in a time of COVID.
I'm gonna tell you my story, I have 11 years sober.
The main goal of this is that if there's anyone at home
who's suffering, hopefully you can hear something from me
or hear something from one of my friends,
or be able to be left with some resources
at the end of this.
Know you're not alone in this crisis.
And I wanna be really clear, I am not a spokesperson
for Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm not an expert on Alcoholics Anonymous,
I am just sharing my experience.
I grew up in a family where my mother drank herself to death
and my dad was sober my whole life.
I often think that if I wasn't afflicted with the disease
of alcoholism, which I believe I am,
I would have seen what happened with my mother
and I would have not drank.
That didn't happen, I had to have my own experience
with the disease of alcoholism.
I had to have my own experience with drinking.
The first time I really got drunk
was 12 years old and it all went bad.
I blacked out, I woke up covered in all the things
and I think that a person who wasn't an alcoholic
would have looked at that situation
and said, "Okay, maybe that's not for me."
That never even crossed my mind.
What crossed my mind immediately was,
"Okay, maybe I just didn't do it right."
I didn't put the right concoction together,
I didn't have the right elements.
And I chased putting those right elements together
and trying to control my drinking
and other things for a lot of years.
I'm 42, I'm 11 years sober.
So my drinking wasn't always bad, there was some fun times,
but when mine got bad it was noticeably worse
than most of my friends around me,
or most of the people around me.
There were so many times when people would ask me,
a boss, or a friend, or a girlfriend,
"Why can't you just drink like a normal person?
"Why can't you just have a couple beers and be mellow?
"Why can't you just hang out?"
I always thought I was, that was the goal.
I was always trying to drink like a normal person.
And sometimes I would, sometimes I would think
I figure it out and then I couldn't replicate it again.
I'd have one good night where nothing really bad happened
where I didn't black out,
where I didn't have a total catastrophe,
I didn't have to wake up apologizing to everybody.
Or figuring out who to apologize to
and then going out and apologizing,
or just never talking to 'em again.
So I chased that for a really long time.
I would lose jobs, I would lose friends,
I would lose girlfriends, I got to the thing
where I would lose dreams.
I would get to a point where I was chasing something
for a long time and then I would get close to it
and then because of my drinking it would just fall apart.
And I'd have warnings and I just couldn't do it.
I can't tell you what exactly made me say,
"Enough was enough," because there were a lot of things
that could have done that.
Or a lot of things that should
have led me to say, "Enough is enough."
What ended up happening was I walked into a meeting
of Alcoholics Anonymous and I found someone
who was able to help me have a personal experience
with the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
'Cause I grew up with a sober dad and a drinking mom,
so I knew the difference and knowledge of this program.
I had a knowledge of these things.
What I didn't have was any experience.
So I had to go and have my own experience
with the drinking and I had to have
my own experience with the sobriety and with the program.
And what that looked like was meeting
and talking with another alcoholic,
having him share his experience with sobriety.
The one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic
is the foundation of all of this stuff.
It's kind of where I find the most relief.
And again, I'm not an expert,
I'm not a spokesperson for this program.
I'm just sharing my experience in hopes
that someone out there will hear something
and it'll help someone, hopefully.
Oh, I wanna talk about the anonymity,
it's called Alcoholic Anonymous,
why am I telling you my name?
Why am I going on video?
Anonymity is a personal choice.
I'm choosing to not be anonymous in this.
And also, honestly, if you knew me before
I stopped drinking and you were to see me now,
you would immediately know that I'm sober.
There's no question.
I've always viewed my anonymity
with a little bit of a grain of salt
because I'm not a spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous,
I'm not a spokesperson for anything.
I'm just telling you my story, thank you for joining me.
I hope that if you are out there and you're hurting
or if you're out there and you're wondering
how you can reach out, I'm gonna provide
as much information as I can about that.
I hope this helps someone out there.
So, thank you.