Sober sinceOctober 23, 2021

I got sober on October 23, 2021, dry heaving over my kitchen sink at 6am, shaking too bad to hold a glass of water. That was the moment I finally believed I was worth more than the life I was living. But that morning didn't come out of nowhere. It came after almost twenty years of drinking and using to survive being alive.

Where It Started

I grew up in a family with alcoholism running through it on both sides. On the surface, my upbringing looked fine. Underneath it, my parents were toxic in ways I didn't have language for as a kid, and my father was absent when I needed him most. I learned early that love came with conditions and that feelings were something you kept to yourself or drowned.

By middle school I was already drinking and using drugs. Not experimenting on weekends. Using as a way to feel normal in a house that didn't feel safe. By high school I was selling drugs, which felt like power to a kid who didn't have any at home.

The Years It Got Worse

College gave me a socially acceptable excuse to go further. Cocaine and binge drinking became my baseline, not my exception. I carried that into my twenties and into the workforce, drinking at work, telling myself everyone did this, that I just handled my liquor better than most.

I didn't. The wreckage kept piling up. I got evicted. I drove drunk more times than I can count and eventually got a DUI. I lost jobs because I couldn't show up sober or couldn't show up at all. My cars got repossessed. I took out loans I had no plan to pay back and overdrew my bank accounts trying to keep the lights on and the bar tab running.

The lowest point, legally, was stealing from my best friend's bar. I got charged with four felonies. Years later those charges were dismissed and expunged, but the fact that I did that to someone who trusted me still sits with me. It's part of the story because it's true, and because it shows how far addiction will take you from who you actually are.

I alienated almost everyone who loved me. I was angry all the time, the kind of angry that comes out sideways, and I'd flip out on people who didn't deserve it. I got into fights. I went to rehab more than once and left more than once, not ready, not willing, still convinced I could out-manage this on my own.

The Bottom

Eventually my body started failing before my mind caught up. I got sick in ways that scared me. I couldn't go more than a couple of hours without a drink without my body starting to shake and revolt. That's not a party anymore. That's a hostage situation, and I was both the hostage and the captor.

Desperation has a specific feeling. It's not dramatic. It's quiet and exhausting and it wears you down until one morning you're standing over a sink, sick, shaking, and something in you finally says enough.

Where I Am Now

That morning in October 2021 wasn't a movie moment. It was just the first honest thing I'd done in years: admitting I was worth more than the life I'd built. Everything since then has been about proving that to myself one day at a time.

I'm not sharing this because it's comfortable. I'm sharing it because I know what it's like to believe you're too far gone, too broken, too much of a screwup to come back from it. I didn't come back by being special. I came back by getting honest, doing the work, and refusing to quit on myself even when I'd quit on everyone else.

This is why Sober Evan exists. Not to pretend recovery is clean or linear, but to show what's actually possible on the other side of it, physically, professionally, and personally. If you're in it right now, wherever "it" is for you, I want you to know it's not over. It wasn't over for me either.