In this episode:
In this episode, I sit down with Brian, a school administrator with a remarkable journey to share. Brian opens up about his past as one of the few Black male elementary school teachers he knew. On top of that, he shares how he battled alcohol addiction and navigated the challenging road to sobriety. Listen to learn about educators’ struggles as they balance teaching responsibilities with personal demons and what tools you can take for your journey.
Resources:
Follow Brian: @teacherhootnhowl on TikTok, Threads, B-R-I-A-N Linktree
Explore Brian’s Support Groups: Sober Together Facebook Group and Sober Together Marco Polo
Bottomless to Sober – Workshops, Writing Classes, and Coaching
Transcript:
Jessica Dueñas
Hey everyone. Welcome on today’s episode. I’ve got Brian, who is a fellow educator who I’ve connected with here in the beautiful world of the internet. And really, I just wanted to invite him on the show today because I think it’s really important with back to school season being right around the corner for folks to hear about the perspective of an educator with regards to his story in recovery, and hopefully you are able to walk away with some tangible strategies to either help you or the educator in your life in terms of.
making some strides in your own journey. So with no further ado, Brian, tell us about you.
Brian
Well, I’m Brian and yes, I am an educator. I have been an educator for, I don’t know the years now, 24, I think. And part of the education journey that I’ve had has been partly, mostly as an alcoholic that I could honestly say.
I’m originally from Michigan. That’s where I spent the first 30 years of my life, growing up in a very Southern Baptist Christian home where alcohol was…
just no, a big no-no. Alcohol was bad. And I’m 46, I grew up through the 80s and 90s. So a lot of the advertising and things like that were out there for us and what we were learning in school had to do with not doing drugs. That was a big deal. But alcohol really never seemed to be
deal they didn’t Nancy Reagan the former first lady didn’t really talk a lot about don’t drink don’t drink or anything like that so it was such an acceptable thing in society but I really got through middle school through high school without ever doing anything I believe it was because I
was raised that way and that wasn’t something that I was gonna do but by the end of my senior year of high school in 1995 I was just turned 18 and in February of that year and it was the end of the year it was a memorial day weekend and I went quote-unquote camping with my friends.
And because that’s what you do. It was senior skip weekend. So we skipped school, went camping at the rifle river. I have no idea where that is. I just know I was in the car. Drinking beer and enjoying it. And I was like, oh, this is cool. This is what this is what camping is. So I think that first night. Because my bloody recollection is not all that good, but.
I’m pretty sure I went through a case of beer, smoked weed, did everything that 18 year olds did or teenagers did at the time. I did it all in one night and I was like, yeah, popped up the next morning and did it again. And that started a life of drinking. So I was a commuter in college, so I still lived at home and lived…
the college life even as a commuter. So I would still go out and party. I would still start my weekends on Wednesday and go to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then start over calmly on Monday with a new week and focus on my school and all that kind of stuff. It wasn’t…
crazy alcoholic drinking and when I looked back on it, it was, you know, what a lot of people were doing at the time. It was just partying as a college kid. Then around 22, I ended up abruptly ending all that party stuff and got married and was a father immediately. So
I had to make some different choices about how I dealt with alcohol because that was still there. And honestly, I don’t think I’d be sitting here talking to you if I hadn’t gotten married and become a dad. When I did party, it was blackout drink party.
piss yourself at some point, puke wildly. I had fun, but there were a lot of times that I’m pretty sure I was not the life of any party because I was always focused on the drink. Always focused on the drink instead of focused on the fun. So I took that into marriage, and I think I was more of a…
heavy drinker, but I tried to restrain myself to weekends because I had little kids. I have three daughters and I needed to be present as dad and as husband for my wife to be able to do that and be an elementary school teacher. So in my town of about 35,000, I think everybody knew who I was. I was a kid.
black kid who grew up in a white town where I ended up teaching in the district and town that I grew up in. So people knew who I was and if I did stupid stuff with alcohol, people knew that. My wife, when we got together as just dating and stuff like that, she was not a drinker. And I…
Introduced that to her at some point. I guess in order to date me you were gonna have to drink With me or you didn’t have to but that was that’s part of the decision that she had made so It became a thing for us, but I can remember many times As a young dad and young teacher and young husband still doing stupid drunk stuff
not all the time, but enough as to where I should have known that there were some issues there. But I was able to survive and be successful. And as a teacher, my kids were in the 90% reading, and they were very high in math, and they were good kids. Nobody messed with Mr. Johnson’s class. I guess I can say my name. I don’t care.
Brian
Nobody messed with my class. They were well behaved. They were good kids. They knew what the expectations were and what they were supposed to do. And I think at that time back in the early 2000s I didn’t spend a lot of time drinking during the week where I would show up to work hungover and smelling like alcohol or anything like that.
I was good about that. I was always really good about separating work and alcohol. Even though sometimes I do remember I occasionally, you know that wake up time when you’re like, oh shit, I’m still a little fucking drunk. Can I cuss on here? I just did. Oh, sorry.
Jessica Dueñas
No, you’re fine. Totally fine.
Brian
Yeah, but I would wake up a little drunk or hungover or whatever you want to call it. And I’d still be able to go to work because it was a small town. So I could just hop in the car, drive a half mile to work and push through the day. And when you get good at teaching, you can figure out those days that you don’t really want to do anything.
And I’m not promoting this at all, but we figure it out. If it’s a day that as a teacher, I just need to be alone, even though I’ve got between 20 and 36, 38 kids, whatever you, it’s all changed over the time. But I was very good at not being drunk at work and never would have thought to drink at work.
or drink before work or you know head right to the liquor store after work that was not part of anything. I would have laughed if anyone had asked me that what my routine was. My routine was to get up really early, do lesson planning, do grade grading papers and
be the first one out the door because I wanted to be there with my kids and my wife. My kids didn’t even know I was a teacher. They never saw me grade papers, they never saw me lesson planning, and they were little, but they really had no idea. Not until they got older. Around the…
sixth year, fifth or sixth year of my career was when the economy started to really be messy and that was the first experience that I had with being laid off and not knowing what I was going to be able to do, not knowing what the future was.
with my job even though eventually I would always get my job back but sometimes it was less like last second I remember they were like hey you’re gonna be teaching this kindergarten in the morning and eighth grade math in the afternoon and I’m like okay at different schools yes yeah I can do that of course
Jessica Dueñas
That’s insane.
Brian
super teacher, I guess, but I was gonna do anything for my family. But the cycle started of not knowing where I was going to be. And I think the last year that I was there, I ended up at a different school and it felt like a… I don’t want to say an imposter, but if you know schools, schools really… I think if you have a good school culture, you can…
sometimes become very family-ish and sometimes that can turn a little clickish. So I would show up and felt like an outsider. And through all that, I think my wife and I had decided that we were going to leave and my wife and I ended up deciding that we were gonna go to somewhere. We didn’t know where and we landed on Arizona. She had lived in Phoenix in 99 and said it was beautiful. So we ended up.
coming here, I’d say probably about 15 years ago around today. I got a call to be a Dean of Students. And I think by that time we were, I know I was drinking more. We had sold our house and were living in her parents basement until I.
was able to get a job in Arizona and then we finally did move, but I know I was drinking more then. I don’t know if it was because of the stress. I don’t know if it was because of the progression of the disease. It’s a lot that I look back on and wonder, you know, where the red flags were, should have been. Can’t go back and change time.
So I know that alcohol was way more of an issue. And I’m telling this story from what I recall and how I’m recalling it. I could be way off base. My wife could have another version of this and I’m sure she does, which there’s nothing wrong with that. She was there for that and any kind of trauma that I caused. And…
Brian
as I tell this and try to go back so many years, it is an interesting trip because I see things from my perspective. Having little kids, I don’t really think about, having little kids then, I didn’t really think about, you know, what any of this was doing for them, to them, or how it was affecting them. I should have thought of that stuff because I was an educator and…
I knew the effects of substance abuse and trauma and all that stuff from being a teacher. And I did not apply it at my own home. And that was a fail. That was a fail on my part that if I could go back and change time, I wish I could. But like I said, I can’t. But I get to do that now. So…
Coming to Arizona with no money and nothing. I had a job and I was excited, but we had really pushed all the cards on the table to be able to sell the house and move and do all of that successfully, which we did. But there was a lot more drinking in my house, probably on my part.
I don’t know if it was because the job was more stressful. It just always felt like we were behind on a lot of different things financially. And moving to Arizona with three kids is hard. And then the thing that we tried to avoid in Michigan started happening in Arizona.
where the economy was, it’s like Arizona always has to be able to catch up from the bottom. So two years into working here, they’d already cut my job in half and I was basically instructional coaching and Dean of Students at the same time. And then by the third year, the my position was gone. They had eliminated that. So I was in
What I really didn’t know was this long series of not knowing what the hell I was doing in education. I didn’t know what the next job was. I didn’t know what the next school was. And as a teacher or as an administrator, that’s not a good feeling to have. And within that, I used alcohol as just a way to basically shut down.
I think I was still successful during that time doing what I needed to do, but that was what I used to just basically say, fuck it. I’m doing what I can. I’m doing the best that I can. And it doesn’t seem like enough. And I was, my gosh, after I was a dean of students, I was a…
specials teacher where kids came to me and I Just basically did what I did him from my office in the classroom talked about so what we would call social emotional learning now I was a social emotional learning teacher before that even Was a thing and I got to do that kindergarten through eighth grade, which was a nice No, it wasn’t a nice experience. I’m looking at it now. Like I’m glad I did that
But I was at one school for two weeks, and then I would go to another school for two weeks, then I’d go back to that school for two weeks, and I didn’t have any kind of home again. I was just that dude that taught that specials class, and I knew that that’s what I was, because they had called it like a gap position. We just need a special, we need a body, we need somebody who can do this, and I was like, yeah, I’ll do it, just to, you know, I didn’t know any better.
but it didn’t help me out in dealing with alcohol. It really allowed that to increase. Yeah.
Jessica Dueñas
Right. So when did you like, when was like that turning point for you where you had to stop drinking? Like, what was it that brought you to that turning point? You know, for some people, they use the term bottom, other people don’t resonate with that term. But I’m hearing like your career was getting increasingly, increasingly more stressful. The budget was affecting your role.
Brian
Yep.
Jessica Dueñas
also kind of like not really being honored and respected as a professional, which happens to so many teachers. And so yeah, I’m curious, like, where was it that you started to realize that the alcohol had to go?
Brian
Um, well, after all a few years in flux, I ended up getting an assistant principal job in a different school district, which was great. That was 2012. And I was in that school district for seven years where I was an assistant principal and I was a principal. Uh, I was drinking during that time. I, my principal would tell me that sometimes when I was an AP.
And I think I knew I had a problem. I was still drinking when I was a principal. And then we had the change in leadership. So as an educator, you know this, you get a new superintendent that comes in, new superintendent, cleaned house, of all the administrators put her people in. And I was one of the people that,
Brian
was part of that deal. And I had to go back to the classroom. And that was really not the rock bottom, but it was bottom enough as to where I should have known, yo, you got to stop. During that time, I had my first seizure in 2019. I didn’t know why I didn’t and I ended up in the hospital for a few days. And
Jessica Dueñas
Wow.
Brian
I didn’t, it was not attributed to alcohol. So I was just like, all right, let’s just keep going. So I continued on with life, but then the pandemic hit and I was teaching at home, like many teachers across the country, across the world. And my alcohol definitely very much,
exponentially increased as to where I would be on a Zoom and I would have bottles next to me and be able to put kids in breakout rooms and then be able to break out my own bun and there was there was no supervision there was no administrators coming to the classroom or anything like that so I became a drinker at work at home.
Jessica Dueñas
Hehehe
Brian
And during that time I had COVID, I lost my taste and smell, but with that I also ended up in the hospital. I had a car accident where I believe I had a seizure. My blood pressure was really low. My, and then by the time that they had done all the scans and checks, they’re like, dude.
your kidneys aren’t functioning, your liver’s fucked up. You got a lot of stuff going on. I burned my esophagus because I couldn’t taste and smell. I was drinking 100 proof, you know, the 99 brand. I was drinking 99 bananas, like it was water and I was chasing it with water. Like either my chaser, I wasn’t mixing drinks anymore. I was just like.
Jessica Dueñas
Oh god.
Brian
I’m gonna get fucked up and still do whatever this is. And during that pandemic time, I was hospitalized a few times. I would pass out in parks. I would go, quote unquote, walking. And when I went walking, there’s lakes here where we can walk. I would hit the Safeway first and get some little of the airplane bottle type.
drinks, put them in my pocket, walk around my three miles and be halfway through that little pack knowing that I had stuff at home. I started driving out in the desert just because there was that was the only way out of your house because it was mask up or don’t go anywhere, you know. So I would drive out, I would drink, throw bottles out the window.
there were never any cops around, so I wasn’t really worried about it. And throughout all this time, doctors would be like, dude, your liver enzymes are bad, your, these numbers are bad. Every time I would have to go to the doctor, it was like, I knew something negative was gonna be there and it was about alcohol. I stretched through that and I was like, I’m gonna be a principal again.
I’m going to do this again and I got that last year. And. At Labor Day of 2022.
Brian
I was told in the morning, this is the best, I was working at a target school, the guy that ran it said, this is the best start we’ve had in our 10 year history. Thank you. And that afternoon, I was given a letter of termination because they said they didn’t have enough students. They had cut my Dean of Students position the week before. And I was like, yeah, I can manage this on my own, which I could. And then I lost that job and that was pretty much.
the way and I just didn’t care anymore. I felt like a failure for the third or fourth time in my career. Everything was defined by my education career, by being whatever that position, whatever that title was. That was an important thing growing up, was going to college and becoming that thing and being that thing for the rest of your life.
And I clearly wasn’t doing that from what the world was telling me. And I just started drinking all the time at that point last year. Uh, crisis team had come in. I’d been to the hospital several times. I really wasn’t doing anything good as a dad or husband. I was terrible to my wife. I was really angry with her.
and displayed that regularly. I didn’t care about education anymore, which, you know, that was my heart. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.
Brian
Eventually through a series of events, I ended up checking myself in to a behavioral hospital and or psych hospital, whatever you call it. And
That was October of last year. So almost 10 months ago, just over nine months ago now, I finally had said, you know what? This isn’t gonna work anymore. This marriage isn’t gonna work. Being dad isn’t going to work. Being teacher guy or educator or whoever the, whoever I thought I was supposed to be, none of that was going to work if I was going to…
keep drinking alcohol. And on top of that, physically, medically, I had a seizure in January of 2022 in my glass with my students. And thankfully I had a, my teacher’s assistant was a paramedic and my wife worked there too. So she was around the corner.
but I was able to not help. But again, that should have been a red flag of stop, stop. And I had tried to stop during that year in 2022 because I knew going into that next job, having alcohol be a part of it was not going to help me be successful as the principal that I wanted to be. And when I lost it, I lost pretty much hope. But then…
something clicked that said, hey man, the next seizure you have, it could be your heart. It could be, you know, I didn’t know. And I made a point of saying I’m not going to be the guy that dies with a bottle next to me or in my classroom because I was drunk. And I was in the psych hospital for a week. And really…
I think through the use of medication and therapy and, uh, seeing other people in similar circumstances and meeting people who I still talk to today and we still have connection, uh, that ended up being really important. And I was listening to your podcast today.
and one of the ones that you did before about you know being in a hospital and it was the best thing I could have done and I honestly don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner except for when I think back and I can think currently is the stigma that goes around with being an alcoholic that exists here in this country
and probably around the world. I haven’t been around the world, but I know it does because I have friends that I talk to around the world now and they said the same thing, but I finally succumbed to that. And since October 15th of 2022, I have not picked up again and I have not had any cravings. I have not thought about it. And every time I think or see alcohol, I…
do a little dance in my head or sometimes physically and say, fuck you, I win. And that’s how I am here today. As a nine month sober person, my life has entirely changed and I’m a better everything for it. And I wish I’d done it much sooner.
But I’m glad I’m still here and get to be able to talk about it, share my story with other people. When I was a principal, education stories were huge to me. That would be part of every PD that we would have was education stories. And I would have teachers share their stories about how they got to where they are today.
Brian
I’ve been a speaker at a conference on stories and education. So coming up on you, you have a similar thought process when it comes to storytelling and storytelling and education with alcohol. That’s like sort of a cool bonus. I don’t know.
Jessica Dueñas
Right.
Brian
But it allows you to be able to use the things that you have used as an educator and be able to, honestly, I put them into place in my own life and they have been part of the toolbox. I was gonna talk about toolbox, but…
Jessica Dueñas
Go for it because I mean that, I mean, I was going to ask, well, now that you are so sober, now that you are sober, how are you staying sober as an educator? So yeah, like what does that toolbox look like for you? Schools right around the corner.
Brian
Yeah, so once I got out of the hospital last year, I started going to, I tried AA meetings, because it was a different world. I’d gone to AA once or twice, a few times before in town, and it was in person, and I live in a small community. So it wasn’t really anonymous. Everybody, you’d see people and you’re like, oh shit, I know who that person is. Oh shit, that lady teaches at my kid’s school. Oh shit, like, oh.
It didn’t feel good. It felt weird. It felt vulnerable and exposed and what’s the talk of the town going to be? This teacher guy is drunk and I didn’t like AA when I first went. And then I went zooming on AA and for a period of time that was very helpful for me to be able to hear.
other people’s struggles and stories within their addiction. And to know that I wasn’t the only one who was on the struggle bus when it came to this. I remember going in 1998, I was 21 years old, one of my buddies, he had to go to AA court mandated because he got a DUI. And I went to the meeting with him. I’m like, I don’t have anything else to do. I’m living at Michigan State for the summer, living my best life.
waking up drinking, going to bed drinking, eating Subway, like 21 year olds do. I went to this AA meeting in person, because that’s all there was then. And this, I just remember it vividly, this man talking about how he couldn’t function. He’s like, I had to wake up. And he said that he drank a case of beer a day. And I was like, you can’t drink a case of beer a day. What the fuck? These people are crazy. And…
He said I couldn’t I would wake up and I would drink and I would drink throughout the day and I would drink at night And I’m like God that’s an alcoholic. That is not me. I am NOT that person and Eventually that became me Spoiler alert! It happens! So I Listened to these people I had really determined that I was not going to be drinking anymore because I didn’t like I said I didn’t want to die
Jessica Dueñas
Right. Spoiler alert, it is possible to drink that in a day.
Brian
and I knew that I only had so many chances left. That’s really how I felt. I felt like if I was a cat, I was on life 12 and shouldn’t have been there. So, putting my toolbox together, when I got released from the hospital, I got set up with a therapist. I got set up with an intensive outpatient program, which was…
uh what I’ve really been doing during this time of uh I don’t want to say not working because I’ve worked off and on here and there but I had to and everybody doesn’t get to do this I had to call time out on my life in order to keep my life I could have kept grinding I there’s I could have after I lost my job in october or september of last year I could have
easily gotten another job because they need teachers and I’m a little unicorn-y in teaching because I’m a black male elementary educator and there aren’t a lot of us. There aren’t a lot of black educators but there aren’t a lot of black elementary male educators on top of that. So I could have jumped back into it but I had support from my family and I had support from my wife to do whatever I needed to do to…
help myself be better. And I did the intensive outpatient all online and that included physical therapy. My body was broken down from the seizures that I had had. So I couldn’t even lift my arms hardly. And my wife would make fun of me when I was trying to bag groceries because I couldn’t bag groceries.
I was so slow and I couldn’t put dishes away and all of this stuff and there was an app that had come out before I went to the hospital and it was called Sober Together and you basically had to there was a guy that moderated questions a question of the day and you got on video and answered the question of the day.
That was great. We had a little community. Uh, you got to learn a little bit more about people. Um, it was a way to keep accountable by checking in every day. And through that learning along with my IOP, I had put together a lot of tools for the toolbox to be able to.
do something different than alcohol. To be able to color and draw and sing and find joy in doing laundry and the little things in life and still being able to go to some meetings and stuff like that. Well, early this year in 2023, the Sober Together app, they couldn’t maintain it.
and they shut it down. And that was a interesting time. But this group of alcoholics, we were very slick and we shifted our questions of the day over to Marco Polo. And we started assigning people weeks to have questions of the day. And with Marco Polo, there’s no time limit.
And that’s how I ended up where I am now with this group of people and being able to talk and getting on TikTok. TikTok, man, that’s been one of the best things I could have ever had. No lie.
I was a TikTok watcher like a lot of people are back in early TikTok. And then when I got out of the hospital, I’m like, I’m going to tell my story on TikTok. I’m going to go through recovery, check it in on TikTok every day. And I think my first one was maybe day 20 or I’m walking with my daughter. We’re on a walk. And
It got a lot of likes. A lot of people liked it. I was like, oh, okay, maybe people will. I was just a watcher and laughed at people dancing and I learned how to grill really good. And all the stuff that happened in the pandemic, I got really good at some things because I learned them on TikTok. And I thought, why couldn’t someone learn from me on this platform and see that you can be an almost dead.
puffy-faced, fat Elvis, alcoholic, at the bottom of whatever the bottom is, to be someone who today is 280 days sober and living the best life that I could possibly live as a school leader. With my family being happy and…
the changes that are actually occurring in my world because of the actions that I’ve taken. I would never have imagined that, but that’s where I am today and I’m damn proud of it. I work hard at it. For anybody who thinks they can just not work at it, they’re kidding themselves. It takes work, it takes determination, it takes plan, it takes support and I have…
all of those things at my fingertips right now. And I am so thankful to be here and get to share this story because there’s a second half to it. I look at it as the one of the questions recently was what would you call a chapter, this chapter of your life? And I went straight to Dr. Dre and I was like and Snoop and I was like this is going to be called the next
And that’s where it is. That’s where I am right now. I am living the next episode of Brian, and I’m no longer identifying myself as an educator. I’m just me. Everything about me as an educator defined who I was, what school district I was in, what position I was in, how many years I’d been somewhere. It was always important to be that guy.
Jessica Dueñas
I love that.
Brian
And now I could care less. I’m glad I have a school job and as a school leader, but I would be happy working at the safe way where I used to buy all my alcohol or working at the liquor store where I would pull up and the guy would be like, hot damn, hot damn, cause he knew my drink or the liquor store on the main street down the road where I can walk in, the guy sees me.
and pulls out my bottle of 99 bananas and I pull out my $9.67 and give it to him. I went in there and bought for my wife a few weeks ago, a few months ago, and he goes, the guy that owns the place, he’s like, damn, you look good. And I go, I’m not drinking anymore. And he literally walked back, put the little bottle down that he knew I would get. Then he goes,
Jessica Dueñas (49:15.051)
Thank you.
Brian (49:26.998)
what would you like? And I got whatever it was that my wife wanted. And I walked out of there just like I had won the lottery. Like I have done this and I’m going to keep doing this. And it took therapy, it took meds, I take naltrexone every day for cravings. I take gabapentin, which I think helps with that. I take
Zoloft, which helps me with my, which helps my brain. I’m taking things now that actually help me. And I listened to, you had mentioned on your podcast, your most recent one about if you break your arm, you put a cast on and you don’t have to wear the cast for the rest of your life and you don’t have a broken arm for the rest of your life. And
Brian (50:26.126)
And I looked at these things like, okay, I needed AA for a little bit. I don’t need that anymore. I don’t foresee always needing to be on medication for cravings or for anxiety or for any of that stuff forever. I don’t really see that. I see these things as temporary so that eventually I will be free of all of that. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.
Jessica Dueñas
Mm-hmm.
Brian
And that’s part of the story too is like you said, if you need something that’s going to help you just be your best self, what’s wrong with that?
Jessica Dueñas
Exactly.
Brian
I don’t think anything’s wrong with that. And that is what I’m telling people in my recovery is the point is not drinking. The point is being sober. And if I have my own way of doing that, then that’s totally 100%, not just fine, but awesome.
And I can share that with other people who get stuck in the AA trap or the big book trap or I don’t want to sponsor trap of what that is. And I love to read. I’ve read so much about the brain and the body and how alcohol really does mess that up. They would always show us that black lung back in the day when it was about smoking, but they never showed you.
the effects of the alcohol on your brain and your body. And I wish they would have, but now I get to be that person to be able to share those things with people like you who know that there are many paths to recovery, not just one. And that whatever your path is, if you’re successful at that, it’s…
it’s good. If it’s good for you, it’s good and it’s a path and a journey. And I was listening to somebody the other day talking about the journey. And if you’re driving from Michigan to Arizona and you get a flat tire, that’s just a little bump. That doesn’t mean you go back to Michigan and start the trip over. It means you fix your tire and you keep going to Arizona.
And if I were to relapse, which I don’t foresee, but I’m not, I always say confident, not cocky, Brian. If I were to relapse or for people that do relapse, you don’t have to go back to square one. You get back in your car after changing the tire and you keep moving forward. And that’s my mindset right now. And for anybody that talks to me, that’s where I’m at. And I’m…
best Brian I’ve ever been in my life. Well, maybe outside of that cute kid that I used to be, but that’s a different podcast.
Jessica Dueñas
Right. Well, Brian, I mean, just thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. Again, I mean, just for anyone who’s listening, I feel like a couple of the key takeaways here is, yeah, like exploring that toolbox. You know, again, nothing that was said here is medical advice. However, both Brian and I have benefited from collaborating with medical professionals, including…
going to treatment when you need to go to treatment, having a psychiatrist prescribe you medications that, you know, hey, you don’t have to take forever if you don’t need to, but really be open to whatever pathway is going to get you there. It doesn’t matter how you get there. The point is, and like Brian said, the point is getting to be a sober person, getting to be an alcohol-free person so that your life doesn’t have to revolve around this damn substance because…
we do already have enough to worry about, and we don’t need to have alcohol be that added thing that complicates things. So, I mean, Brian, again, thank you, thank you, thank you. And we are close on time. So I’m gonna go ahead and wrap us up. Did you want to say any last word? How can people find you if they want to find you? Or do you want to not be found?
Brian
I can be found on TikTok at teacher hootenhowl. It’s a weird name, but it’s a name that, this is gonna sound really silly. The hootenhowl was a bar that my buddy, teacher buddy and I would go to after, on Fridays, to finish our week, cause we hated our jobs and hated our lives. And we were just talking one day during the pandemic.
Brian
like we should come up with a podcast called Teacher Hoot and Howl. And I sat down and wrote out a whole little plan for it. We never did it, but I just took the name and, uh, have kept it. And it’s been really cool. I know one thing that you asked me to talk about was, um, still being sober when your partner is drinking.
And all I will say to that is if you stay focused on yourself and the things that you need to do for you, people can do whatever they want to do. It’s their choice. And my job is not to go in there and try to solve their problems. Even if it’s the problems of people that you care about and love. My problem is.
Brian
my alcohol problem and…
being preachy and all that shit is not going to help anybody stop. I know that for a fact. So I just try to like in teaching, be a model of what an alcohol free life can be. And currently on July 22nd, 2023, I think I’m doing a damn good job.
Jessica Dueñas
Yes, that’s awesome. And plug for my latest podcast episode, episode 10, I actually interviewed my sister on her experience as a loved one dealing with me and my addiction. So for anybody who is out there and is kind of listening to this and you’re like, Oh, I have a podcast. episode for that. Like go listen to it. It’s really helpful for folks who are dealing with a loved one struggling. Maybe you’re not, but someone you care about is. So I’d definitely recommend that. All right, Brian. Well, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
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