145 Reinventing Yourself with Alex Bales145 Reinventing Yourself with Alex Bales
You're Sober! Now What?
Alex Bales shares how addiction, illness and toxic relationships led to a spiritual turning point and a commitment to self love and change. The conversation covers his relapses, his five tenants of health, and his focus on helping people in early recovery reinvent themselves.
38:08•25 Oct 2021
Turning Darkness into Your Greatest Asset with Alex Bales
Episode Overview
- Recognising addiction and making a firm commitment to never give up on oneself can be a turning point in recovery.
- Early recovery support, including meetings and structured steps, may offer a clear plan and spiritual foundation.
- Making amends can relieve guilt, repair relationships and remove a heavy emotional burden.
- Building long-term sobriety can involve balancing exercise, sleep, nutrition, spiritual practice and healthy relationships.
- Using painful past experiences as learning opportunities may help create a purposeful life and support others in recovery.
“"If you don't have self love, like there's really no point to life."”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? This conversation with 26-year-old Alex Bales gives a raw look at how messy that turning point can be, and what happens when someone decides to rebuild from scratch. Alex talks about growing up as a shy, sensitive kid who excelled in sport, only to be crushed by a verbally and emotionally abusive coach.
That pressure, plus PTSD-like symptoms and plummeting grades, fed straight into his first drink at a friend’s house — two swigs of vodka that quickly turned into blackouts and a scar across his head.
As he puts it, drinking became the only time he felt like he could "connect to who I really was." From there, things escalated: Epstein–Barr virus, chronic fatigue, years of steroid use, a toxic relationship, and a cycle of wine, NyQuil, coke and amphetamines just to get through the day.
He describes suicidal thoughts and a quiet spiritual surrender where he realised, "I don't want to live this way anymore," and interpreted that as a call to let his old self "die" so something new could emerge. Host Tamar Medford chats with Alex about early recovery, his experiences in 12-step meetings, and how making amends became a crucial relief from guilt and shame.
He relapsed twice, both at around eight months, which inspired his focus on people 90+ days sober who are stuck in that "what now" phase. Alex breaks down his "five tenants of health": exercise and energy, rest and sleep, nutrition, spiritual practice, and relationships. He’s clear that recovery for him is "rooted in self love and self care" and that toxic relationships and overtraining can be as harmful as alcohol.
If you’re wondering how to turn your past chaos into "your greatest asset" or reinvent yourself after those first sober months, this episode offers a candid look at what that process can actually look like — could his five-part approach be the structure you’ve been searching for?
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