by Kris Oyen | Mar 24, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Niko. He is 43 years old from San Juan, Puerto Rico and took his last drink on September 2nd, 2024.
Sponsors for this episode include:
Better Help – 10% off of your first month
Café RE
Next week registration opens for our flagship retreat in Bozeman which is always a lot of fun. In addition to our lake hangout, breathwork and recovery workshops, we’re also playing laser tag. We also have a few spots left for our alcohol-free trip this October to Peru which includes travel to Cusco, the Sacred Valley and of course, Machu Picchu.
If you have quit drinking and are looking for new alcohol-free friends, Café RE is the social app for sober people. With 24/7 access to a like-minded community committed to living alcohol-free, you’ll never feel alone on this journey.
[03:25] Thoughts from Paul:
Jackass alumni Stevo-O once said he didn’t experience alcoholism until he quit drinking. In 1958 alcoholism was first classified as a disease. How does one experience this disease after they stop drinking?
Paul shares his thinking that “if you want to find out why you drink, quit drinking and you’ll find out pretty quickly”. And another thought “it’s not an alcohol problem; it’s a sobriety problem”. When you are addicted to alcohol, withdrawals are a huge problem. But another issues presents itself when we are sober and no longer using alcohol to cope or cheat code for dopamine. Our eyes are wide open to the movie of our lives and there is no way to shut it off.
This is why people in recovery attend social circles where people can talk about the baseline state of the human mind, which is restless, irritable and discontent. When we come together, we have a better chance to heal.
[07:25] Paul introduces Niko:
Niko lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico and is the youngest of three siblings. He enjoys beach tennis, swimming and volleyball, which was something he played a lot in school.
Niko first tried alcohol when he was around 12. By age 14, he had his first blackout. For years Niko never questioned his drinking because he figured if he could tolerate it and wasn’t doing stupid or embarrassing things, he was fine.
Niko was recruited to play volleyball in a college in Pennsylvania. His drinking interfered with his grades, but he never questioned his drinking until recently. Drinking is very embedded in his culture and says it isn’t abnormal for teenagers to be drinking at the table with adults.
In his 30s, Niko says he added cocaine to his drinking, and this continued until last year. Niko knew he had an issue with it, but it wasn’t until his girlfriend presented an ultimatum that it was the drugs or her. He was able to quit cocaine and started therapy where he proclaimed he still had to be able to drink. After a few weeks, he talked with a friend that had recently quit drinking who encouraged him to give it a try.
The first week without alcohol was pretty tough for Niko but he says things turned around in the second week as he entered the pink cloud and started thinking he should keep going.
Niko has dabbled in AA and SMART Recovery. He sees his therapist once a week and also attends group therapy with up to 8 other people. Without alcohol Niko is getting to know himself again and his therapist helps a lot with that. She introduced him to the RE podcast which he says he has listened to a lot while going to the gym and walking the dog. He has lost 45 pounds since quitting drinking and is starting to do more of the sports he loved when he was younger. Since he has been getting to know himself, he is finding the ability to be more present for others as well.
Niko’s parting piece of guidance: if you think you have a problem or maybe you don’t think you have a problem, just give yourself a try. You won’t regret it.
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You took the elevator down, but you gotta take the stairs back up.
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by Kris Oyen | Mar 17, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Alyssa. She is 30 years old from Vancouver, WA and took her last drink on September 5th, 2024.
Sponsors for this episode include:
Better Help – 10% off of your first month
Sober Link –
Next Monday, our five-week course called Ditching the Booze. This is our alcohol-free 101 crash course and is included with Café RE membership. All sessions are live and you’re tuning in with others who are in the same spot as you. The sessions are also recorded in case you can’t attend.
On Tuesday, April 1st, registration opens for our flagship retreat in Bozeman which is always a lot of fun. In addition to our lake hangout, breathwork and recovery workshops, we’re also playing laser tag.
[03:20] Thoughts from Paul:
Today Paul talks about why alcohol can be so hard to quit, why the process of quitting can take years and can contain many stops and starts.
Addiction guru Gabor Mate says, “addictions are always a human response to pain, suffering and trauma”. We are constantly in search of homeostasis. When we find something effective at helping us find this relief, it becomes our first technique to use when we are in pain. After drinking long enough, you’ll get to the point where you only feel good, or dopamine will only be created when we are drinking.
It takes time after quitting drinking for our body to naturally create dopamine on its own. You will need to learn new routines, create new habits and figure out a way to fill the time that used to be spent drinking. Paul shares with us several other reasons quitting drinking is hard.
Why do you think quitting drinking is so hard?
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[09:02] Paul introduces Alyssa:
Alyssa lives in Vancouver, WA with her fiancé and two Rotskis. She currently works as a server and in her free time she enjoys reading and traveling with her fiancé. They are currently trying to determine where they are going to move to be closer to family.
Alyssa says she had an early introduction to alcohol but never really considered it an issue until she met her fiancé who doesn’t drink. For years, everyone around her drank so she didn’t notice her own drinking.
Alyssa’s drinking increased slowly but became daily during the pandemic. In 2021 she read Easy Way to Quit Drinking by Allen Carr and was able to stop for a few months.
For Alyssa, her drinking began to create an inner turmoil, and it started to erode her confidence because she was making promises to herself and then breaking them by drinking instead of accomplishing her goals. After quitting for a period of time, Alyssa thought that she would be able to moderate. In time, she says, she was right back where she was.
After moving in with her father while they save up to find their own place, Alyssa says the lack of goals and uncertainty of the future found her drinking more to cope. She was no longer active and was losing self-esteem while anxiety and depression took hold. At the bottom of her heart, Alyssa knew that eliminating alcohol would help fix the way she was feeling.
Alyssa chose a quit date and started seeking sober podcasts and books to prepare, including This Naked Mind. It was after a night out with friends that Alyssa told her fiancé that she didn’t want to drink anymore. He was very supportive of her decision and offered to help however he could.
Alyssa continued to read This Naked Mind and participated in a 30-day sober challenge. This paired with the liberation she felt from her decision led to a pink cloud experience for Alyssa. Anxiety and depression started to lift quickly. Going forward, she is trying to figure out what she wants to do in the future, and she believes in sobriety the options are endless.
Alyssa’s parting piece of guidance: Just listen to that little voice. Give sobriety as many chances as you gave alcohol.
Recovery Elevator
Rule 22: lighten up – let’s do our best not to take ourselves too seriously.
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by Kris Oyen | Mar 10, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Lisa. She is from Brisbane, Australia and took her last drink on February 24th, 2022.
Sponsors for this episode include:
Better Help – 10% off of your first month
If you have quit drinking and are looking for new alcohol-free friends, Café RE is the social app for sober people. With 24/7 access to a like-minded community committed to living alcohol-free, you’ll never feel alone on this journey.
[02:35] Thoughts from Paul:
Healing from alcohol addiction is more about restoring the original circuitry we arrived on the planet with, opposed to learning anything new. You already have everything you need to quit drinking. There is nothing wrong with you, we simply need to remove the layers of muck, grime, false stories and incorrect paradigms that we have accumulated over the years of living in a toxic culture.
As you clean up your inner mess, you’re also laying the foundation for others to begin their healing process. When you heal, others around you heal.
[07:27] Paul introduces Lisa:
Lisa is 45 years old and lives in Brisbane, Australia. She runs a residential rehab for women. For fun, Lisa enjoys CrossFit and the community that comes with it. She has a 21-year-old son.
Lisa first tried alcohol when she was 17. It was an issue from the first time she picked it up. Once she got the feeling in her system, she just kept going. This continued until she was pregnant with her son who was born when she was 24 years old.
When her son was 13 months old, Lisa became a single mom and wanted to find herself again as he started to get older. With her mom helping her with her son, she was able to start going out to meet people and says the only way she knew how to do that was with alcohol involved. Lisa says she thought to be sociable, you had to drink.
There were times when Lisa was able to abstain for extended periods while focusing on her son and fitness, but she always went back to it. She found herself using drinks as a reward to get through the weekdays and then would binge drink on the weekends. This cost her multiple jobs in the fitness and nutrition world. Lisa found herself blaming everything but herself or her drinking.
Lisa had been working on getting sober for quite a while but had always been trying to do it for other people or jobs. A few years before her sobriety date, she had a revelation that she had to quit drinking for herself. She was able to go 500 days from that point and says she wasn’t doing the work suggested to her and ended up drinking again.
At this point she was adding other substances to her drinking. A weekend camping trip in November 2021 ended badly for Lisa and after her partner picked her up, she shared that she didn’t want to live anymore. The fact that she felt that way scared her.
When her son questioned her about going to rehab, Lisa told her she couldn’t because she had so many other obligations. The drinking continued and she would start going to lengths to try and conceal it. After a weekend away with her son, she found herself on a balcony consumed with suicidal thoughts. It was then that she called a rehab to try and get help. Within a few days, she travelled 8 hours south to start rehab.
Lisa says her connection to herself is now authentic. She no longer looks to others or external things to make her happy. Lisa feels free and can now be grateful for her addiction because of where it has led her. She knows she has to put herself and her recovery first which was hard in the beginning. And now after three years, she still makes sure to attend meetings and do what needs to be done to stay sober every day.
Lisa’s parting piece of guidance: just put it down one day at a time. And if it takes one minute at a time, one hour at a time, whatever it is that you need to do to get off the booze, there is a better life out there for you.
Recovery Elevator
Go big because eventually we’ll all go home.
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by Kris Oyen | Mar 3, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Charlie. She is 32 years old from London, UK. She took her last drink on December 28th, 2024.
Sponsors for this episode include:
Better Help – 10% off of your first month
In October of this year, we are going to Peru! There are still spots available for this 11-day 12-night journey throughout Cusco, Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley. Registration closes June 2nd which is the deadline for Inca trail tickets.
[02:50] Thoughts from Paul:
According to NCS solutions, who poll people about their drinking, the number of people who want to cut back on their drinking increases every year.
In 2025, 36% more people participated in Dry January than in 2024. A good reason why the numbers are increasing is reflected in a poem Paul shares called Memories of Alcohol by an unknown author.
So much of the work we do is reframing how we view alcohol. Subconsciously it is still deeply ingrained in our culture that drinking enhances our lives, but we have all learned that it doesn’t. Once the voice in our head starts telling us that a drink would be nice or we deserve a drink we can start giving it some tough love and tell it that no, a drink would not be nice and please give me some better ideas.
[05:09] Paul introduces Charlie:
Charlie is a software engineer from London and will be getting married in April. For fun, Charlie has rediscovered that she enjoys skiing, running and swimming.
Growing up, Charlie witnessed both parents struggle with divorce and use of alcohol and medications. She started drinking when she was around 14. Charlie says everyone around her drank and seemed to be having a good time, so she joined in without thinking twice.
Around her mid-twenties, Charlie started to have a subtle undercurrent of doubt in her mind and a quiet voice suggesting that maybe she wasn’t the best version of herself anymore. Since she never had what others would consider a problem, she didn’t think her drinking was an issue.
Charlie began to find things weren’t going wrong for her, but they weren’t necessarily going right either. She felt stagnated. In an effort to try and make changes to this she removed alcohol from time to time and began to connect the dots between her stagnation and the alcohol use.
Charlies says she tried moderation, but it was exhausting. Her all-or-nothing mentality made it difficult. She also shares that she has had multiple stints of around 100 days without alcohol because she learned that was a good amount of time to feel many of the positive effects of quitting.
This time feels different for Charlie because she has leaned into the sobriety community a bit more. She has been listening to podcasts and reading books and learned that the key to maintaining sobriety is to find community. Since there are more people around her encouraging her and sharing insights, Charlie feels this time is indefinite as opposed to the other times when she had a finish line of sorts.
Charlies says since quitting drinking her positivity has returned and she is feeling like the younger version of herself now. She shares that it’s amazing how much you can fit into a day when half of it isn’t taken up by drinking or recovering from it.
Charlie’s parting piece of guidance: if you’ve never quit drinking before, what’s that worst that can happen?
Recovery Elevator
It all starts from the inside out.
I love you guys.
We can do this.
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by Kris Oyen | Feb 24, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Robbie. He is 43 and lives in Moses Lake, WA. He took his last drink on August 15th, 2024
Sponsors for this episode include:
Better Help – 10% off of your first month
3,649 days ago, or 1 day shy of ten years, the first episode of the Recovery Elevator podcast dropped. Paul remembers the date well because for three months after the first episode released, he kept thinking “oh my God, what have I done?”. Burning the ships in podcast format gave Paul a lot of anxiety, but here we are, 523 weeks later and thank you listeners, for keeping the show alive.
30 Best Sobriety Podcasts
[04:13] Thoughts from Paul:
Paul shares the definition and his thoughts around the term gray area drinking. The definition states that it is the space between end-stage drinking and every now and again drinking. Gray area drinking could also be classified as someone who can stop drinking without medical detox or can stop on their own before someone stages an intervention.
Paul believes it’s all gray area drinking. Be it one beer a month or 10 beers a night. One common thread he hears on this podcast is “and then xyz happened”. It’s these major life events that can ramp up the drinking and everyone has life happen to them.
[07:10] Paul introduces Robbie:
Robbie is 43 years old and lives in Moses Lake, WA. He currently works at a chemical plant in the semiconductor industry. He has five children in the age range of eight months to 14. They enjoy spending time outdoors and at the lake near their home. Robbie is a big sports fan and played sports often while growing up.
Robbie took his first drink when he was in college in his 20s. He didn’t drink much until he lost his dad in 2013. Without knowing how to process his grief and having young children, Robbie learned that drinking helped him be numb and he started drinking four or five days a week. At the time, Robbie was working as a corrections officer, which was a very stressful job that contributed to his drinking as well.
In 2018 Robbie’s marriage ended. This was the first time he had been away from his children. He moved two hours away from them to stay at his mom’s house. After his second DUI in two weeks, the judge imposed alcohol monitoring for Robbie. This helped him stay sober for a year but only because he had to be.
Thinking he could now moderate, Robbie started drinking soon after no longer having the monitoring device. He says he wasn’t having a good time, and he was just using it to numb out from multiple traumas.
In February 2024 Robbie reached a breaking point and reach out to his brother-in-law who helped him find a treatment center in Utah. Robbie was there for 35 days and felt like he had made a lot of progress. He learned a lot about himself and started doing counseling. Robbie finally got some help dealing with some big traumas throughout his life. He says he feels like he used alcohol to punish himself thinking he deserved to be miserable.
After a brief relapse, Robbie says he woke up on August 15th and just knew it was over, and he had to stop drinking for good. He decided to try naltrexone which he first learned about in rehab. He took it for the first month and says he still has no desire to drink. Robbie goes to AA meetings, listens to podcasts and audiobooks, and is a member of Café RE. Robbie stays accountable with his family and friends at work. People have noticed a positive change in him.
In the past Robbie quit drinking because he was forced to, or for other people. He said on August 15th; he was doing it for himself. He says sobriety is the greatest gift to himself and his kids.
Robbie’s parting piece of guidance: If you’re asking yourself if you drink too much or if it’s becoming a problem, it already is. Listen to your gut. Believe in yourself that you can quit.
Recovery Elevator
You took the elevator down; you got to take the stairs back up.
We can do this.
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by Kris Oyen | Feb 17, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Jeremy. He is 43 years old and lives in Portland, Maine. He took his last drink on January 23rd, 2019.
Sponsors for this episode include:
Better Help – 10% off of your first month
Recovery Elevator is going back to Peru in October 2025. On this 10-night, 11-day trip of a lifetime, we will be hiking the Inca Trail and participating in two service projects. Registration has been open for two weeks and we have about five or six spots left.
[01:40] Thoughts from Paul:
About three weeks ago, we had a gentleman named Nate share his story for one of our dry January sessions. He mentioned that just before he quit drinking, his spouse poured out a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey onto their lawn. The whiskey killed a circular patch of grass, making it an area where conditions were no longer suitable for growth, and Nate eventually had to replace the entire section of grass.
Today’s episode is titled “Would a Drink Help?”. This phrase is often depicted in movies, TV, and other media after a long day or stressful event. For those of us who find it difficult to have just one, a drink will never help. It’s not the fifth or the 10th drink that gets you into trouble, it’s always the first. Because it leads you to have the fifth or 10th drink which will leave a dead ring of grass inside us.
Unlike grass, our brains and bodies can heal from the poison. So, in answer to the question of “would a drink help?” the answer is always no, and it will always leave you in a worse position. We wouldn’t ask this question about any other substance either.
It takes time before the neurons in the brain that a drink can help stop firing together so go easy on yourself.
[07:11] Paul introduces Jeremy:
Jeremy is 43, married with no kids and works in tech consulting. They have an English bulldog and for fun, Jeremy enjoys snowboarding, hiking, and music. He is also a house music DJ and plays multiple instruments.
Jeremy first began to recognize that his drinking was an issue for him in his twenties. He began drinking in his teens and used alcohol to help him escape feelings around an assault that happened when he was 15. Since Jeremy didn’t participate in team sports in school, he spent time with people that did other things like drink and do drugs.
After taking a six-month break from drinking when he was 22, Jeremy thought he was fine since he was able to quit for a period of time. He moved to Boston, made some friends there and began grad school. He shares that his drinking didn’t look out of control but as he approached his 30s, he realized that his friends were starting to slow down, have families and he was still wanting to spend time in bars. Over time his drinking was creating issues with his wife, and he was starting to feel unhappy both when he was drinking and when he was not. Things looked ok on the outside, but inside they were breaking down. The blackouts were becoming a major issue for him, and he couldn’t see a way out.
In 2018, Jeremy and his wife had a fight and that’s when he broke down and told her he was struggling. He started reading books about quitting but was still struggling after a few weeks. A note from his wife was a catalyst to seek help from therapy and he discovered SMART Recovery. He kept going back and made connections with others in the meetings.
Jeremy shares how there are so many ways to get sober now and that you don’t have to hit rock bottom to quit drinking. He says you have to get over the fear and just focus on the day in front of you. Since quitting drinking Jeremy says he has learned that he doesn’t need alcohol to feel comfortable anymore. He is comfortable with who he is now and with therapy has helped learn to love himself and forgive himself for the past.
Recovery Elevator
You took the elevator down; you got to take the stairs back up.
We can do this.
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