Latino Alcoholic Jaime Talks Recovery, Being a Man, Culture and Being Present

Ever been told to “just have one” or “pray more” when you’re fighting for your sobriety? We dig into the real-world tension between recovery and culture, especially in Latino families where machismo, jokes, and tradition can make saying no feel like a rebellion. Jaime joins us fresh off a big Texans win to share a much bigger victory: how men’s groups, clear boundaries, and a grounded faith transformed his life from hourly cravings to steady presence.

We get practical fast. You’ll hear how to build natural dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, and oxytocin into your day with movement, sunlight, dance, fellowship, and service—and why tracking these habits helps your brain relearn joy. We walk through scripts for family gatherings, the value of an exit plan, and the power of a phone list when pressure spikes. Jaime’s story of finding a daily outdoor meeting during COVID shows how vulnerability and accountability—done with warmth, not shame—can rebuild trust, confidence, and connection at speed.

This conversation is for anyone who’s felt misunderstood by family, mocked by old friends, or stuck between love for culture and love for life. We talk about shifting from entitlement to alignment, from “I earned this” to “I choose this,” and from surviving the day to inhabiting it. Faith becomes a compass, not a performance; presence becomes the metric, not perfection. You’ll leave with tools you can use tonight and a vision of sobriety that makes room for joy, music, and genuine belonging.

If this helped, follow the show, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a quick review to help others find their footing. Your story might be the bridge someone else needs.

Chapters

• 0:01 Welcome And Mission Of Recovery
• 0:30 Natural Rewards And Self-Tracking
• 1:02 Guest Intro And Joy Of Dancing
• 2:18 Culture Clash Around Recovery
• 4:20 Handling Machismo And Boundaries
• 7:14 Finding Men’s Groups During COVID
• 9:55 Accountability, Vulnerability, And Growth
• 10:59 Life Before And After Sobriety
• 12:40 Faith, Presence, And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Yes, today is another special day. We are going to be talking Latino, English, Spanish. Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in recovery podcast, where we encourage you to laugh every day. Work hard, work hard in recovery, work hard in your relationships, work hard in your job, business, school. Just work. And the love unconditionally, just put much more love out there and watch much more love return. Now, we encourage people to go to the website lifeiswonderful. It's a way to start your recovery on your own where you introduce natural dopamine, endorphin, serotonin, oxytocin. You keep score, you start healing, and you start watching your recovery skyrocket. Again, it's in the show notes. Life is wonderful. Now, let's jump into this week's episode, and we have a special guest. How are you feeling, Jaime? Man, I'm feeling great.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11

Just got uh done with uh leaving the Texans game and we had a end of the season big win, so it was awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17

That was exciting, and now on to the playoffs. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Tell the audience one thing you love.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24

Uh man, I love uh, you know what? I guess I love enjoying life and having fun, but uh just finding little moments and things that are at the present moment, like last night. Um I love dancing, right? So uh it was a good friend of ours, uh 55th year uh birthday, and she threw a big 80s theme party and uh had a live band. It was blast. I dressed up as Jaime Johnson instead of Don Johnson. I'm kidding. Uh, but uh I was out there on the dance floor just you know getting down and having a favorite band from the 80s, do you remember? Uh uh Log of Seagulls is pretty pretty good when it comes to mind. Just a wild, crazy one, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 2:08

That was more like Depeche mode, jazz, yeah. Yeah, those are all it. That's all great. Absolutely. All right, let's just jump in to all the questions. You're Latino as well as myself, and you you know as well as I that recovery, just even the thought of recovery, can hit different cultures differently. Being a Latino, now my family did not accept, did not understand recovery therapy. Tell the audience how recovery was accepted by your family and how important is their help with or without as you venture on into recovery.

SPEAKER_01: 2:54

I think I was very lucky and blessed, uh, you know, and fortunate just to have a full support of my family completely behind me, I think. You know, seeing where I was, uh, you know, it at the at the down part of my life and in the deeps of my disease. Uh I think they were just hoping for any change that was that would be, you know, for the better.

SPEAKER_00: 3:19

So mine did too, but but my mother would just say, Tienes que rezar mas you know, just pray more. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 3:27

Well, no, yeah, I think I think they were just very cooperative, really. I mean, because yeah, my my parents well and my mother is now gone, but uh at the time, you know, they were just happy to hear, I think that, you know, that I was getting some professional help and and just willing to to support me behind all that. I think uh that they didn't really question it or like try to say you can do it another way, or um, you know, just they were they were behind me 100%, including my my my brother. Um so yeah, it was a good experience.

SPEAKER_00: 4:02

Uh it's it's uh there was uh well well also well help also the people like myself within the culture, because this can be whether we're talking about black culture, Asian culture, Jewish culture, every culture will look at recovery, the whole idea of addiction differently. Yes. Do you have any words for the Latinos with a family that doesn't understand recovery? What would you tell them to do?

SPEAKER_01: 4:31

Yeah, so now definitely my immediate family was the way I told you. But my extended family, my cousins, uncles, those guys, they're like, what do you mean you can't have a you know, a beer? What do you mean you can't have a shot?

SPEAKER_00: 4:47

Did they ever tell you Maricon? Because I'm telling you, I got all kinds of abuse from my family than I did from my own addiction sometimes.

SPEAKER_01: 4:57

Oh yeah. So yeah, we have uh an uncle that's uh lives in the border uh towns of Laredo, Texas, right? So there's a huge machismo, you know, culture there. And he definitely from him, he's like, oh, so what are you making uh knitting dresses now or what? You know, so yeah, you definitely get that. Uh they do it in a joking manner, but still, you know, it does have some sort of it has an impact for sure. You know, it's like, oh man, dude, don't you think I'd, you know, if if if it was if I was a normal person as far as you know uh alcoholism, being an alcoholic, you know, I'd I'd be more than glad to enjoy a a drink with you like I did in the past when we did have fun or whenever I I had fun with you at the time. But for me, it's no longer an option. Uh it's it just it's not gonna be fun. I know what's gonna happen, and it's not gonna end up being fun.

SPEAKER_00: 5:48

Yeah, and I also try to encourage people, if that happens, have some phone numbers so you can call someone so you don't feel so isolated. Uh do you feel the same?

SPEAKER_01: 6:00

Absolutely, absolutely. Just uh making sure um that uh there's an out, right? And especially in the beginning uh for me. Because we're all defensive. Absolutely. I mean, it and and it's sensitive. And and my experience with that uncle was mainly during Thanksgiving. We'd always make the trip down to Laredo, Texas, go out hunting in his ranch, and you know, start drinking from the get-go, right? So it was always that whole uh part of you know the the interaction with with everybody, you know, having a drink and continuing on and waking up with drinks and wondering oh, when uh is what they would say, you know, let's go drink, and it's just you know, it was just something else. But yeah, having an out for me in the beginning was definitely um I'd I'll I'll be honest with you in the first year going around those guys was was not an option for me. I'd try to stay away as much as possible.

SPEAKER_00: 6:57

So I agree. That first for me it was really 18 months that I was really insecure about alcohol or talking about it, especially in different environments. Some some areas better than others. But let's jump into question two. Now, you, when you got into kind of recovery, you seemed to kind of like dived headfirst into getting help from a lot of men, whether we're talking in 12-step rooms, whether going to all men's meetings, whether going into the Catholic Church, getting into men's groups with the Catholic Church. How important, and it seems to be you, you were also you were trying, besides to understand alcoholism and addiction, you were also trying to understand how to be a better man, a better husband, a better father, a better friend. Tell us how important being around healthier males was in your recovery.

SPEAKER_01: 7:58

It was it was critical. I mean, it was key, right? For me, uh, my experience was that I went into rehab uh in January of uh 2020. And when I got out of rehab, um, you know, I started going to meetings and trying to, you know, follow how many days were you in rehab? For I was there for 30 days. Um, and you know, when I got out, it's it's just like started going to meetings and got a sponsor uh while I was in rehab and then started working the steps with them out, you know, once I was out. But then as everybody knows, uh COVID happened. So they started shutting down the meetings, and everybody thought it would be for a month, this, that, or the other. And by the grace of God, I ended up finding out about these group of men that were meeting together um outdoors near uh Memorial Park here in Houston, and they would meet every day at noon, and I started going to this meeting on a daily basis. And uh, you know, for me that was really uh, you know, like I said, it was by the grace of God that I found these guys because it was this group of men that taught me uh that it was okay to be vulnerable, and it was okay to share how you felt and the things that were going on inside that were really having an impact uh in my life and the way I felt and and the things that I thought and the way I saw things, and I found that these men had the same things that I saw, they were they were in common, and and they their vulnerability allowed me to be able to open up and and I felt closer to these men in six months than I felt with some of my friends that I had for 30 years, and it was just an amazing thing that these guys held me accountable, uh they were there for me, loving me, you know, opening up their arms, and and they were there for me. So it's critical for me, it was critical.

SPEAKER_00: 9:54

Excellent. Glad you were able to find it because and each state was different. You know, being in Texas, we tended to try to open up faster than others, which I think was so critical for mental health to start being able to go to the gym or being able to at least congregate in smaller groups uh than some other states that really felt isolated and unfortunately suffered. But let's jump into question three. You kind of alluded to it there in the beginning about talking about love. What would you consider the best part of recovery? Or how do you feel now that in recovery, now you're more than five years since that drink, you know, almost compared to like, ooh, uh you know, so it feels different 2026 compared to 2016.

SPEAKER_01: 10:47

Oh yeah, yeah, 2020, right? Um it was just um what it's the way that I live today, it's night and day, really honestly, because I was just living life in a way, and and you know, my my life, I still had a job, I still had a family. Um well I said I had a job. It was at the end I was pretty much cut off from a job, but l luckily uh uh my boss and and uh uh friend was still willing to help me out and and uh to help help me go through rehab and all. But um, but yeah, it's just but my my life was was still there, but I I was just a lost soul, to be honest with you. Um I was going around, you know, having this entitlement about don't you see what I bring to the table? Don't you see who I am and what I can do and what I you know I bring you know the the bacon home, I guess, if you will. Don't you I get to I can get to drink whenever I want and wherever I want, right? But you know, at the end of the day, that's not the way I see things. It's just that's not what life is about for me anymore. About it's all it was all about me, right? It was me, me, me, and what can I, you know, get for me. And that's that was not the way to live. You know, it was just I I was just in in my in my doldrums, really, and I was just uh man, I was lost. So now today I get to be able to really experience life, you know, in the present moment and being present instead of maybe being there sometimes and not really fully being present in my mind somewhere else, thinking about myself and where I'm gonna get whatever else I wanted to get next. Um, so that's not the way I live today. And I get to have a true that the most beautiful thing that this has given to me is the real relationship that I have with God, and that is what keeps me grounded to strive to be the man, the brother, the husband, the father that I believe God intended me to be, and I can strive to do that, whereas before I was just going along, man, just whatever, you know, to to find a way to please my desires, whatever it may have been. Survive the day, yeah. And it was just, you know, chasing that drink, you know, almost on an hourly basis at the end, you know, it's just not a way to live.

SPEAKER_00: 13:23

Oh my god. Well, I appreciate your input here on the 1% in recovery podcast. And with that, we are gonna end this episode.