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Josh Spencer is a photographer and creative human. He also happens to be 11 years sober. In Part 1, hear about Josh’s journey with alcoholism. In Parts 2 and 3, we learn more about how people are coping with sobriety during quarantine when they can no longer go to AA meetings in person.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:04
– All right.
00:05
Hey, Soul Pancake, my name is Josh Spencer.
00:10
And, all right, stoke.
00:13
My name’s Josh Spencer.
00:17
Let’s try this again.
00:18
Warming it up, ya know?
00:20
Me and the dog.
00:24
Hey, Soul Pancake, name name’s Josh Spencer.
00:26
I spend most of my life behind the camera
00:28
so sitting in front of this has been super awkward.
00:31
I’m gonna make three videos for you guys
00:32
exploring sobriety in a time of COVID.
00:36
I’m gonna tell you my story, I have 11 years sober.
00:39
The main goal of this is that if there’s anyone at home
00:42
who’s suffering, hopefully you can hear something from me
00:46
or hear something from one of my friends,
00:49
or be able to be left with some resources
00:52
at the end of this.
00:53
Know you’re not alone in this crisis.
00:55
And I wanna be really clear, I am not a spokesperson
00:58
for Alcoholics Anonymous.
01:00
I’m not an expert on Alcoholics Anonymous,
01:02
I am just sharing my experience.
01:05
I grew up in a family where my mother drank herself to death
01:08
and my dad was sober my whole life.
01:10
I often think that if I wasn’t afflicted with the disease
01:13
of alcoholism, which I believe I am,
01:15
I would have seen what happened with my mother
01:17
and I would have not drank.
01:19
That didn’t happen, I had to have my own experience
01:21
with the disease of alcoholism.
01:23
I had to have my own experience with drinking.
01:24
The first time I really got drunk
01:26
was 12 years old and it all went bad.
01:28
I blacked out, I woke up covered in all the things
01:31
and I think that a person who wasn’t an alcoholic
01:35
would have looked at that situation
01:37
and said, “Okay, maybe that’s not for me.”
01:39
That never even crossed my mind.
01:40
What crossed my mind immediately was,
01:42
“Okay, maybe I just didn’t do it right.”
01:44
I didn’t put the right concoction together,
01:46
I didn’t have the right elements.
01:48
And I chased putting those right elements together
01:52
and trying to control my drinking
01:54
and other things for a lot of years.
01:58
I’m 42, I’m 11 years sober.
01:59
So my drinking wasn’t always bad, there was some fun times,
02:03
but when mine got bad it was noticeably worse
02:06
than most of my friends around me,
02:08
or most of the people around me.
02:09
There were so many times when people would ask me,
02:13
a boss, or a friend, or a girlfriend,
02:16
“Why can’t you just drink like a normal person?
02:18
“Why can’t you just have a couple beers and be mellow?
02:20
“Why can’t you just hang out?”
02:23
I always thought I was, that was the goal.
02:26
I was always trying to drink like a normal person.
02:30
And sometimes I would, sometimes I would think
02:31
I figure it out and then I couldn’t replicate it again.
02:34
I’d have one good night where nothing really bad happened
02:37
where I didn’t black out,
02:39
where I didn’t have a total catastrophe,
02:41
I didn’t have to wake up apologizing to everybody.
02:45
Or figuring out who to apologize to
02:47
and then going out and apologizing,
02:49
or just never talking to ’em again.
02:51
So I chased that for a really long time.
02:53
I would lose jobs, I would lose friends,
02:56
I would lose girlfriends, I got to the thing
02:58
where I would lose dreams.
03:00
I would get to a point where I was chasing something
03:03
for a long time and then I would get close to it
03:06
and then because of my drinking it would just fall apart.
03:08
And I’d have warnings and I just couldn’t do it.
03:10
I can’t tell you what exactly made me say,
03:14
“Enough was enough,” because there were a lot of things
03:17
that could have done that.
03:18
Or a lot of things that should
03:20
have led me to say, “Enough is enough.”
03:25
What ended up happening was I walked into a meeting
03:28
of Alcoholics Anonymous and I found someone
03:30
who was able to help me have a personal experience
03:36
with the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
03:39
‘Cause I grew up with a sober dad and a drinking mom,
03:43
so I knew the difference and knowledge of this program.
03:46
I had a knowledge of these things.
03:48
What I didn’t have was any experience.
03:50
So I had to go and have my own experience
03:51
with the drinking and I had to have
03:53
my own experience with the sobriety and with the program.
03:56
And what that looked like was meeting
03:58
and talking with another alcoholic,
04:00
having him share his experience with sobriety.
04:02
The one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic
04:04
is the foundation of all of this stuff.
04:06
It’s kind of where I find the most relief.
04:09
And again, I’m not an expert,
04:10
I’m not a spokesperson for this program.
04:12
I’m just sharing my experience in hopes
04:14
that someone out there will hear something
04:17
and it’ll help someone, hopefully.
04:22
Oh, I wanna talk about the anonymity,
04:25
it’s called Alcoholic Anonymous,
04:27
why am I telling you my name?
04:28
Why am I going on video?
04:31
Anonymity is a personal choice.
04:34
I’m choosing to not be anonymous in this.
04:38
And also, honestly, if you knew me before
04:41
I stopped drinking and you were to see me now,
04:44
you would immediately know that I’m sober.
04:47
There’s no question.
04:51
I’ve always viewed my anonymity
04:52
with a little bit of a grain of salt
04:54
because I’m not a spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous,
04:58
I’m not a spokesperson for anything.
04:59
I’m just telling you my story, thank you for joining me.
05:04
I hope that if you are out there and you’re hurting
05:07
or if you’re out there and you’re wondering
05:11
how you can reach out, I’m gonna provide
05:14
as much information as I can about that.
05:16
I hope this helps someone out there.
05:17
So, thank you.
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video