Ricardo D. Age 38 Sober: 11/12/17Ricardo D. Age 38 Sober: 11/12/17
Keep Coming Back: Real Stories of Sobriety & Recovery
"I came to around 7am. No phone. No cash. My friends hadn't seen me for 12 hours. I was talking with my first sponsor at this point....he suggested I dive in head first into AA."
47:55•18 Aug 2020
From Blackouts to Serenity: Ricardo’s Journey Through AA, Codependency and Love Addiction
Episode Overview
- Weekend-only or “disciplined” drinking can still progress to blackouts, shame, and unmanageable anxiety.
- Doing 90 meetings in 90 days, plus daily meditation, can build structure, serenity, and connection in early recovery.
- Codependency and relationship obsession may sit underneath the drinking and often need their own focused recovery.
- Sharing in meetings and doing service (like setting up chairs or making coffee) helps people connect with you and strengthens sobriety.
- AA can act as a gateway to addressing deeper issues such as love addiction and family patterns, not just stopping alcohol.
“I googled ‘what do happy people do’ and one of the things was meditate. I was so miserable I was like, I’m going to do whatever people tell me.”
What makes a recovery story truly inspiring? For many, it's hearing someone like 38‑year‑old Ricardo D, sober since November 2017, talk honestly about blackout drinking, shame, and the surprising freedom he found in AA and beyond.
Host Mike S sits down with one of his closest friends, trading-floor colleague and former drinking buddy, for a conversation that goes way past “I stopped drinking and life got better.” Because Mike knows Ricardo so well, the chat digs into the stuff underneath alcoholism: codependency, obsession with relationships, anxiety, and the chase for validation through sex, status, and attention. Ricardo describes his "drinking bottom" in Puerto Rico: “I came to around 7am. No phone. No cash.
My friends hadn’t seen me for 12 hours. I have all this anxiety, this shamefulness. I don’t know what I did last night.” From Sunday xanax to numb his “Sunday scaries” to smashing his phone so he couldn’t drunk-text a woman, he paints a clear picture of how unmanageable things felt even when he only drank on weekends.
The episode also looks at emotional sobriety: doing a 90-in-90, adding 90 days of meditation, and realising he didn’t just want happiness, he wanted serenity.
Ricardo talks about codependency and love addiction, including the gut-punch moment a sponsor suggested he might be “love avoidant” because he kept choosing emotionally risky partners he had to “win over.” There’s plenty of practical recovery talk too: sharing at meetings so people actually know you, doing service, building fellowship in a new country, and using AA as a doorway into other 12-step fellowships.
A beautiful tree metaphor about being the “higher branch” helping others roots the whole episode in service. If you’ve ever thought, “I only drink on weekends, so I can’t be an alcoholic,” or wondered why relationships hurt so much in sobriety, you’ll probably feel very seen by this one.
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.