Grief Counselor, Alcoholic, Recovery, Ivy League Talk with Joseph O in Philadelphia

Grief drives many toward substances that temporarily numb overwhelming emotions, creating cycles difficult to break without proper support. In this revealing conversation with Joseph, a grief counselor with 14+ years of sobriety, we explore the profound connection between loss and addiction that shapes many recovery journeys.

Joseph shares his personal story of losing his brother to cancer and father to suicide, explaining how these traumatic childhood losses created emotional patterns that later fueled his alcohol addiction. When he first discovered drinking at 16, it seemed like the only remedy for anxiety, depression, and social discomfort stemming from unprocessed grief. Yet as with many who use substances to cope with loss, the relief proved temporary while the underlying pain intensified.

We challenge the common misconception that intelligence can overcome addiction. Despite Joseph's impressive academic background—from elite boarding school through Ivy League graduate studies—he discovered that "you cannot outthink an emotional issue." True recovery requires emotional intelligence, vulnerability, and community support rather than intellectual analysis. This revelation transformed his approach to relationships, parenting his 16-month-old son, and marriage.

Throughout our discussion, we emphasize that grief itself isn't something to fear but a universal human experience requiring validation and support. The path forward involves progress rather than perfection, accountability rather than isolation, and recognizing that multiple emotions—even joy and sadness—can coexist during healing. Whether you're personally struggling with grief, supporting someone who is, or working on recovery, this conversation offers compassionate insights for navigating these profoundly human experiences.

Have you found yourself using substances or behaviors to numb emotional pain? Join our Facebook community, Recovery Freedom Circle, where we create space for authentic healing conversations.

Chapters

• 0:02 Introduction to grief and recovery
• 4:35 Personal experiences with loss
• 9:42 Numbing grief through addiction
• 13:32 Education vs emotional intelligence
• 19:49 Family, accountability and moving forward
• 23:36 Final thoughts on grief and recovery

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome again, here we are. We're going to be talking about grief, addiction, recovery three wonderful topics. Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in Recovery podcast, where we encourage you to laugh every day and work hard. Work hard in recovery, work hard in relationships, work hard in your job, your business, school, just work. And also to love unconditionally. Just put much more love out there and watch more love return. We always say recovery is beautiful, your EQ is your IQ. Recovery is beautiful, your EQ is your IQ and you cannot outthink an emotional issue. And what we encourage people to do is join the Facebook group Recovery Freedom Circle. What it is, it's just a community where we talk about the steps, recovery, healing whether it's something you want to share about, it also dreams and goals you have or something you may be struggling with, and you want the community to chime in and to add some value. The link is in the show notes, but now we are going to connect Houston to Philadelphia. Welcome, joseph, how are you feeling this evening?

Speaker 2: 1:25

I'm feeling great, hugo, and thanks a lot for inviting me to join you. All right, so let's just quickly jump in, just tell the audience one thing you love. So one thing that I love, which I've loved for pretty much all of my life, is the color orange. I try to find little accessories and also the color of my car is orange.

Speaker 1: 1:52

It just brings me joy and I find is kind of an instant dose of positivity. Actually, part of my logo the sun that I have with Life is Wonderful is orange, so I utilize aqua, orange and yellow as the primary color, and I went to the University of Texas, so burnt orange is part of my history, and I do have a few orange items, more like t-shirts. I do not own an orange suit, do you?

Speaker 2: 2:21

I don't. Orange is actually a tough color to wear for shirts or sweaters, but I have kind of a burnt orange sweater that I enjoy wearing around the fall.

Speaker 1: 2:31

All right, how about any?

Speaker 2: 2:32

orange sneakers. I also have kind of a burnt orange sneaker. Burnt orange is a little bit more wearable than neon orange, but I have some neon orange running and athletic wear as well. I agree, like running and athletic wear as well.

Speaker 1: 2:45

I got you. So let's just so people have a little bit of background as Joseph and I are talking. Joseph had his own addictions, with mainly alcohol, some weed. So he has now over 14 years Congratulations. It's always good to have that more than double digits especially. And also I had something buddy. Someone told me that your first 12 years it's like each year is like you were doing a step. So you're like your first year recovery, you're like step one is more important. You know you get this year 12, step 12 becomes more important. But now, once you pass those first 12 years, you know you kind of like redo things. It just shows that you've obviously been on this journey and this quest. So congratulations.

Speaker 2: 3:34

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Okay, let's jump into question number one, grief. You're a grief counselor. You've dealt with a lot of grief. A lot of people, unfortunately, whether they've lost, especially a spouse, a lover, a child, even a parent or a sibling, they reach for alcohol, they reach for drugs or even gambling. They need to escape because they don't know how to deal with all these overwhelming feelings because, like they say, grief and I just lost my mother here back in February and my dear aunt who was 98. Her funeral was last week. So I've been dealing with grief here this year, but I've been dealing with it differently and grief can can come in a lot of different ways. But can you share with the audience either tips on how to deal with grief, either from your own experience as well as a counselor? Just help people deal with grief, maybe in a different way.

Speaker 2: 4:39

Sure, yeah, and I think this is a great question, and it's one when I think about it is like intricately interwoven with my addiction and recovery story as well. I will. We live in a culture in society broadly, that is just not really comfortable talking about loss. Society broadly, that is just not really comfortable talking about loss. Losses that we are more comfortable talking about, I think, would be losing relatives to older age or losing a loved one to cancer is kind of like celebrated as that person really fought heroically, and I think that those are still important losses to tune into. I mean, different people can respond to the same death or other traumatic event in their life differently, so I definitely don't want to minimize any death or loss that people experience in their lives.

Speaker 2: 5:47

But as far as grief going unaddressed is concerned, though, in my life I pretty much had this sense of not really fitting in or belonging or being like other people as a result of the traumatic loss that I was experiencing in my life. So when I was five years old I lost my three-year-old younger brother, patrick, to neuroblastoma, which is a rare form of pediatric cancer. My mom was in medical school at the time and was able, in time, to complete her training and everything. But I can't even fathom training to become a doctor and then having your seemingly healthy second child succumb to this awful illness.

Speaker 2: 6:47

That loss put a major strain on my parents', marriage and relationship, as is very common for families that lose a child or experience other major loss. That ended up being a downward spiral, particularly for my dad. Mentally he identified as being an alcoholic and not being able to safely drink, but he did not have a community or program of support like AA or a therapist, anybody else in his life that he could really open up to and feel supported about challenges that he was experiencing in life the loss of a son, emotional unmanageability, professional challenges. So when I like a lot of isolation, not having any support, having access to firearms, like kind of a perfect storm of events, and that was a bit kind of more extended than I originally intended. But those were just two of my major losses. It was my brother to cancer and my dad to suicide and they kind of compounded.

Speaker 1: 8:11

So that's but there's also the grief of divorce.

Speaker 2: 8:17

Absolutely, because the family structure then gets separated.

Speaker 1: 8:22

That has to be grieved. I mean, you know my brother went through divorce. I've had a cousin go through divorce. You know my mother was a big advocate. You know she, you know the proponent, like you know me and your father never got divorced. They were married for 53 years but there was still a lot of enabling, there was still a lot of addictive behaviors. That still happened. But what you're saying to me is, and to me later on, there's also the grief of addiction. Because I know so many people will say I love gambling or I know so many drug addicts, I love drinking or drugs, and I said you got to just grieve that, you got to let that. That's kind of goes and those are different types of griefs. But I don't know if you want to touch a little bit on other things.

Speaker 2: 9:06

Yeah, I will and I'll share that with. I didn't start drinking until I was 16 years old, which was three years after my dad died. But when I did, it felt like, wow, this is one of the only things that makes me feel like emotionally okay. I felt a little bit more talkative, social, around other people, I could actually kind of like take a breath of relief, whereas before I just felt so tense, anxious, depressed, out of place. And it wasn't until I realized none of the underlying feelings were going away, really of missing my dad, of missing Patrick, of feeling out of place, of feeling like I couldn't open up to people or have genuine friends. It was just like I was dousing all of those feelings with alcohol and they would go away temporarily, or I would literally drink to the point of blackout and they would be erased from my mind at an immediate conscious level, but then they would just come back, you know, amplified later on and it got to the point where I basically all of the grief work that I've done in my life has happened after getting sober at 20 years old in 2011. And even then, you know, it took a while for me to realize that.

Speaker 2: 10:30

Yes, I think I mean I come from a long line of alcoholics in my family. Like that I probably have just inherited the genetic trait. But I've also like that predisposition was was like chomping at the bit, like ready to go with all of this other fodder from the losses, and I think that's kind of how there are people without a predisposition to alcohol who, like alcohol and drugs and gambling and other forms of self-medication, can feel like the only outlet that takes away some of the pain and awful feelings of losing a parent or losing a sibling, losing a child, and I you know it's like maybe the pathway to treatment will look different for different people. But a primary question that we ask in like grief counseling intakes, is are you using any substances you know? Or, like you know, how is your alcohol drinking? Has anything changed since the loss? Because we're not trying to pathologize anything, whether somebody who has previously had alcohol drinking under control it now seems like Right you in your intake?

Speaker 1: 11:53

do you ask a question in terms of does this grief feel more overwhelming, where you need to numb out? Because that's what? Because I mean from our experience I've the people who've accelerated their addiction through some major grief, like you said, you identified the alcohol allowed your body to numb out so then you could deal, you could be more and more talkative. And I'm curious to see is the numbing out almost necessary in some people because the grief is so overwhelming that they can't emotionally process it?

Speaker 2: 12:37

I think it may be. That's a good insight. We ask it a bit differently. We try to kind of focus on what are the self-care or coping skills that you have. But a lot of times people will volunteer. You know that I'm drinking more than I than I used to or I've I've picked up. You know smoking cigarettes again and you know we, as gently as possible, we try to explore with them. You know, like, without adding on any more shame than they're already experiencing, what are the feelings behind that, what are the triggers? Also, what are some supports or things that you've done well in the past that have worked well in that area?

Speaker 1: 13:24

All right, sounds good. Let's just jump into question two Now. You, like me, have a very extensive, decorated educational resume. Went to boarding school St Paul's in New Hampshire, undergrad Wesleyan in Connecticut. Went down to Wake Forest, then also did Ivy League school at the University of Pennsylvania. Like you heard me say in the beginning, you cannot outthink an emotional issue. But you know whether it's all the different high, what's considered high academic institutions from high school, undergrad, graduate school. So many people that we know try to think their way through addiction. Tell us how that is such misguided. And what can you tell people that have considerably higher IQ that you can't outthink this? You can't outthink addiction.

Speaker 2: 14:37

Yeah, I mean. First of all, I completely agree with you and what you've said resonated a lot with my experience, because I've tried to outthink addiction as many possible ways and times throughout my recovery as I could.

Speaker 1: 14:54

And you tell yourself I'm smarter than this.

Speaker 2: 14:57

Right, right, and I think a lot of the answer for me has lied in keeping an open enough mind as I was attending hundreds, maybe thousands of AA meetings, you know over the years. You know, am I focusing on? On what I can relate to. You know and and and how. You know, if you're sharing how Hugo's experience, even if different than mine, or even if he hasn't attended you know well, you, you happen to have attended all of the top institutions in Texas, but it's like, if I'm, how can I break free from like only being able to relate to Hugo because of the academic pedigree than the person who has had stretches of homelessness or didn't finish high school and outwardly seems to have a very different educational background than me?

Speaker 2: 16:03

I mean, I've learned so many powerful tools in recovery from people who are from those from from from very different backgrounds than me, and the only way that I was able to access that wasn't through, like me doing, you know, a line by line study of the big book, you know, alone at my house, but by, by getting out of the house and going to meetings, um and uh, and also for extended periods, trying to listen more and share less, not like in a take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth way.

Speaker 2: 16:45

But just like I noticed that I had this tendency to think about what I wanted to share at meetings as the meeting was going on, it was going to be some I was going to maybe quote from the big book or sound really knowledgeable on a particular step. I'm like that's not what it's about. I was missing a lot of gems of rich recovery experience that were being shared because I thought that I needed to be like some poster child for recovery. And then, as far as the, I say that not to put education down If people like education and pursuing graduate degrees, I've met many PhDs, mds, jds in recovery and then I hear from them whether they already had the degree when they entered recovery or were in the process of going back to school or being in school and they say, yeah, I mean it doesn't matter that I'm an emergency medicine physician or a CEO or a therapist.

Speaker 1: 18:04

I'm not my own therapist, I need to have a program of recovery. So, you know, I hope that that kind of speaks to it. Yeah, I think what it means is to me is I challenge anybody especially that considers that, you know, kind of debating is when we talk about open-mindedness. There's so many different layers and levels to open-mindedness that we think we're open-minded in the beginning when we start our recovery journey, and it takes almost several years and, you know, almost like stubbing our toe to realize. Yeah, you know, when I was a little more closed-minded, you know we all want to believe that we're, you know, generous, kind, open-minded, honest and in a lot of ways, you know, we truly are able to look at all those. You know we're able to rate them. You know we have to truly look at how. What is open-mindedness? And I think it takes a while for us to truly get there and I think that's some of what you've seen.

Speaker 2: 19:03

Yeah, I think that that's really well said. It reminds me of a quote that I heard somebody with a lot of time and who I always appreciated hearing at meetings in North Carolina say. He said I don't care how somebody sounds between the serenity prayer and the Lord's prayer. So that's to say at the one hour of the meeting I care how somebody sounds and acts from the Lord's prayer to the serenity prayer the other 23 hours of the day, and I think that is slightly different than an education thing, but it's a living our values and actually practicing these principles in all our affairs.

Speaker 1: 19:43

Correct. All right, let's jump into question three. Recovery has changed your life. You are married, you have a wife, you have kids kids. Tell us how, now, you look at I mean how family, how you almost like view family, how you view being a husband, what it means to be. You know the husband that you believe that you should be, as well as the father that you should be, and talk to us how recovery, spirituality, has played into that.

Speaker 2: 20:17

It's a great question and it's one I think a lot about on a daily basis as I try to be the most present and loving husband and father of a 16-month-old son that I can be, and I think that my response kind of centers on this sort of the recovery concept of progress rather than perfection. Or we claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. That's one of my favorite lines in recovery literature Because, for whatever reason I think a lot of us this may be the case I can be particularly hard on myself and think I'm doing well and maybe I'm even in that 1% as a nod to our podcast title but it's like there's no such thing as full perfection all the time, and so I try to think without recovery I wouldn't have any of this. So recovery remains the foundation, but if I also try to celebrate making it to two or three meetings a week now, then a meeting a day, which I was doing for the first couple of years in my recovery Like things are things, things change.

Speaker 2: 21:44

I I still try to be available, um, to people in my network, but it's I mean, life is constantly changing and evolving, you know, and and uh, in many good ways. You know life is wonderful, but there can also be many stressors and unexpected challenges. Try to stay connected to daily and that, even if I feel like I'm I I am a bit more, uh, distant or or or not as connected as I'd like to be, that, like my support network includes my wife, like where she can kind of, you know, encourage me and say, like you know, hey, maybe you should call your sponsor or maybe maybe you should catch a meeting, um, you know and uh, so I, like I appreciate being accountable to others today. That's something that I couldn't fathom saying 14 years ago. I wanted only to be doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, with no accountability or responsibility to others, and I'm grateful that that's changed today.

Speaker 1: 22:57

Yeah, excellent Accountability, maturity, you know these are actually valuable traits or attributes to have Because in the end, they will give us a lot more peace, they will give us that serenity that we seek. So, with that, any last words, if there's any one last thing you want to share, just about recovery, or just the journey, or how to relax, how to start, you know I love the recovery refrain.

Speaker 2: 23:36

like you know, keep coming back and if you haven't, if you're, if you're not already in, like, give it a try.

Speaker 2: 23:46

And I'll also say you know that, like grief is not, grief is a universal human experience. It's not something to be feared or you know, uh, like it's natural to feel sad when we lose people that we love. Um or and or or go through, you know, a loss of a job that we've had for a long time or other many other forms um of experiences and um, that like recovery, even if, even if substances aren't directly connected to your grief, that they all they often are. You know that's something to be aware of and you know, cautious about that you can still that you're not alone. You know in going through that, and you know I always found that comforting to hear an AA early on, and then I think it equally applies to grief. So that doesn't mean you need to open up to everybody about things that are challenging in your life or people or experiences that have led to loss, but if you can find just one other person or a support group or family members who may be understanding and supportive, that can make a big difference.

Speaker 1: 25:06

Yes, and the one thing I did learn in therapy is that you can have multiple emotions as an adult every day. Even throughout an hour, an hour or so, even if you're feeling grief, even if you're feeling the shock and denying it, or the depression or the anger, you can also smile. There's going to be moments of your day that you're going to be happy, joyful, excited. You can experience all of it and I think that I think, as we're going, whatever grief event we're going through, just be in touch with all your feelings and just let you know. Just that way, I think you know and validate. Number one first, validate to yourself this is what I'm feeling and then, hopefully, we each have a network of other people to validate or be able to talk to, other people to validate or be able to talk to. All right, with that we are going to end this episode of the 1% in recovery podcast.