From Big Spender To Clear-Headed Traveler: Choosing Sobriety Over Chaos

Ever tip like Santa, wake up like Scrooge, and wonder where the night—and your rent—went? I’ve been that guy, tossing hundreds across the bar, buying temporary friendships, and calling it “fun.” This time, we pull the curtain back on cravings, the real cost of drinking, and how to keep the laughter and connection while dropping the chaos.

We start with the hard part: admitting that the first instinct after a rough day is still “I need a drink.” I talk through the triggers that used to send me spiraling, the way alcohol torched my financial guardrails, and why being generous turned into being reckless. Then we draw a clear map out: how I rebuilt travel without booze, from packing non-alcoholic rum and cola to structuring resort days around the ocean, movement, and actual rest. The twist that surprised me most? Staff and old party friends quietly shared their own sober streaks. When the performance ended, the support showed up.

From a $15,000 Christmas blowout in Mexico to a sober return trip where I came home with money and memories, the contrast is stark. I share the moments that hurt—watching “friends” disappear when the free drinks stopped—and the ones that healed, like celebrating a 50th birthday and a one‑year sober milestone with my wife and real friends who wanted me present, not plastered. You’ll hear practical tools for handling cravings, saving serious cash, and still being the loud, funny, center‑of‑the‑room version of yourself without waking up to damage control.

If you’ve ever wondered whether the party can be better when you remember it, this is your sign. Hit follow on Spotify and YouTube (Pure Chaos, spelled K‑A‑O‑S), share this with someone who needs a nudge, and drop a comment with your best sober travel tip or the milestone you’re aiming for. Your story might be the one that keeps someone else on track.

We can choose to give in to the KAOS, or we can forge a new path forward!

Transcript

Finding A Voice And Format

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to yet another Pure Chaos podcast. This is season one, episode three. If you've listened to my last two episodes, thank you very much for uh tuning in. Um I am trying to find kind of, I guess, my groove, uh, my rhythm for this and how I kind of want to do these. Now, I know for some of the apps for some reason that I'm using uh for editing and posting podcasts, some of them only allow 20 minutes. So the good thing about these podcasts is you're only gonna have to listen to my voice for like 20 minutes.

Honest Look At Cravings

SPEAKER_00 0:35

So uh today's podcast will be brought to you by Sunbrew, 0% Corona, and the letter B for boy, I miss drinking some days. I really do. I think anyone that says, you know, that that's in recovery and hasn't drank and says, oh, I never miss it, they're they're probably lying to their self for whatever reason because I know for myself there is so many days that I just I really um yeah, I just uh maybe it's like a you know a certain event, life event, work event, a trigger. And my first instinct is fuck, I need a drink, right? I just want to get shit faced and forget about fucking everything. And then, you know, a little piece of me remembers all the bullshit that comes with that, right? With all the stuff. Now, what I'm gonna start doing is, you know, if getting into different stories from within my life of my drinking, and just I'm having a hard time too. Sorry, um, I'm also a little OCD and I'm ADD, so I'm all over the place. Goldfish. Um, but yeah, I'm just having a hard time wondering where I should be looking, so I don't know. But um all the shit that I've done and that drinking has caused me is fucking phenomenal. In a bad way.

Money Lost To Drinking

SPEAKER_00 2:04

I have spent thousands, tens of thousands, fuck, over the last 20 years, probably hundreds of thousands, on drinking, but then all the other stuff that goes with drinking, you know, especially if I'm let's say, you know, on vacation in Mexico at a resort, right? Because then I'm it's weird how you know you just once you have a few drinks in you, you feel like invincible, like nothing can fuck up your vibe, nothing can fuck up your stride. You know what I mean? Like you could literally have, for instance, $1,500 in your bank account, mortgage, rent, whatever you want to call it. And you know, if I touch the $1,500, I'm not paying rent. I'm gonna be fucking in some deep shit. You know, or if you have a mortgage or whatever the case may be, but you have some drinks, and that all goes out the fucking window, right? Next thing you know, you know, you're tipping fucking bartenders, you know, hundreds of dollars and fucking throwing money to people like it, you know, just it's not good. And then all of a sudden, that when you're sober knowing I'm not gonna touch this money, it's for rent, goes out the window and you spend it all, right? And then you're left wondering, how the fuck do I come up with money for rent now or mortgage or you know, whatever the case may be. And that was something with me is that when I drank, I didn't give a fuck about responsibilities, about money. I just I spent money like I was a fucking millionaire, which I am not, but I spent it like I was. And one thing is that, you know, you'll when you're drinking and you're in that head space and you're in that world, you surround yourself with other people who kind of have the same issues, the same drinking problems. So you're not drinking alone, you're drinking with other people who, for one, would never judge you, two, just want to have a good fucking time and keep the party rolling. And three, I don't know if there is a three, but uh one thing you'll find is you will always find people who are more than happy to you know latch on to you and you know enjoy the free drinks, enjoy the fucking

Party Friends Vs Real Friends

SPEAKER_00 4:16

whatever it is you're doing, right? They and when you're drinking, you don't care. You may know in the back of your mind, like, you know what, these people are probably just using me. Um, but at the same time, you don't fucking care because you have people to party with, you have people to hang with. And the biggest thing is that you're not getting judged for for your choices, for your drinking. A lot of that for me, you know, came. I learned a lot of that later. And, you know, I've throughout the years and decades of my drinking, I've you know, had made friends, lost friends, really seen true color of people. Um, one day, maybe I'll get into uh one of the most fucking shittiest experiences I ever had with a uh popular TikTok creator. We won't say any names, but uh yeah, we'll get into that maybe one day. But there are people that will happily, happily latch on and you know take your money and you know pretend to be your friend and pretend to, you know, understand and there's no problem. But the second you get sober, or the second that you stop, you know, giving them money, let's just call it buying a friendship, they're gone. They cut you out. And it it hurts because you realize holy fuck, this person was never my friend. And it's not just you know popular creators, um, well, one in particular, but it's it's just people in general. Now, I do have some friends from my life um that I still have today being sober, and they support me, they support my sobriety. And then I've had people who, as soon as I got sober, you know, either I decide, you know what, I don't want to be in that world, I don't want to be in that environment anymore. Um, and you kind of just take a step back and you know take a different path. Um, or they just realize, hey, you know what, you're not drinking, you know, I can't afford to drink the way I want if you're not paying. So they they leave, which is for the best.

The $15,000 Christmas Trip

SPEAKER_00 6:20

So I've had uh I've had some vacations in Mexico where I was the fucking life of the party, I was the fucking king of the fucking resort. But, you know, coming back and when you're you when you come back home and you're trying to, you know, wean off the booze and you're going through the shakes and the sweats and detoxing, and you know, once your head's a little more clear and you can actually think, you know, you look at your your accounts and you see, you know, how many times you pulled out money from the ATM in the lobby and you add up how much you spent in a seven-day period. It is fucking insane. Um, I think one of my one of my uh most expensive vacations was uh in Mexico, and I dropped in a seven-day period over Christmas, I dropped fifteen thousand dollars US uh just you know, handing out hundred dollar US bills for tips. And you know, at one point they were calling me Santa Claus, and I loved it. Don't get me wrong, I fucking loved the attention, but I went back to that resort when I had uh not, you know, spent that much money, and it's definitely different. I mean, everybody in Mexico is so amazing, they're so fucking nice, and I have a lot of people I consider family and you know, hermanas and hermanos and you know, brothers, sisters, and I still have a lot of these friends to this day. But unfortunately, there were a few that I had to just be like, yeah, sorry, man, you know, I can't afford to fucking give you know hundred dollar bills anymore. Um, but all in all, I've I've I've had nothing but good experiences with Mexico. And the fact that I spent money like a fucking idiot, that was that was me. That was my problem. That was not something that someone said, give me money. I was happily, you know, dishing it out, literally making it rain. And uh I guess for me, I like that, right? I like being the center of attention, I like being the most important fucking person in a room, you know, where you can walk behind a bar and start pouring drinks for people and you know, fucking if somebody else tries to go behind a bar and get the fuck out. So I do like that to this day. I still love

First Sober Resort Strategy

SPEAKER_00 8:35

that. Um, but uh my first sober trip to Mexico was over Halloween that just passed. So Halloween October 2025, Halloween. Um, I went to Mexico and it was my first time being sober. At this point, I was about eight months sober, and I was I was scared. I was scared as hell because for one, I was like, what the fuck do I do with myself if I'm not sitting there drinking from sunup till sundown? And also, I went back to the one resort that was my party resort where I fucking got lit. And I went back there and I went with my wife, and I was very scared on how I would be able to cope. Um, and you know, I did a lot of research to see if they have any non-alcohol drinks and didn't really find much, which for the resorts. Come on, guys, a lot of people don't drink. Let's get some more non-alcohol stuff out there. But what I did is I brought uh like six bottles of uh my favorite non-alcohol rum by a company called uh Undone. I think it's undone. One sec here. I've got some ready for my next trip to Mexico, but uh uh undone, yeah. So this stuff here, let's see if you can see that. It's uh a non-alcohol Jamaican dark cane rum. Rum and coke are my go-to, they are my favorite. I love me a Cuba Libre. And so I brought six bottles with me, and thank fucking Christ I did, because at the resort, unfortunately, I couldn't find any non-alcohol options. And I mean, I don't want to just drink sugary fucking virgin daiquiries and pina coladas all day. And I mean, pop, you know, you drink too much pop, you get a fucking headache. So, and who the hell wants to go to Mexico and drink water? Um, so I brought six bottles, and honestly, it was my fucking saving grace.

Supportive Staff And Old Nicknames

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Now, I'm not gonna lie, I did uh, you know, smoke some reefer while I was there. So I figured, you know what, if I had to choose between getting high on some weed or drinking, I'm gonna choose weed each time. And that for me worked. It it was it was awesome. I had a great time. A lot of the people that I knew from back in my you know party days, everyone called me blue because I had like this electric blue hair. And uh, it was great. Everyone was happy to see me. Everybody was very supportive of my not drinking, and there was a lot of the bartenders too that I didn't realize, you know, because when you're drunk, you don't you don't take a lot in, you don't notice little things. And you know, so of course, bartenders, you know, you don't realize that they could be suffering some of the same addictions you are with alcohol and stuff. So found out afterwards a lot of the bartenders were also sober and hadn't drank in you know three months, nine months. So that to me was like, wow, you know what? It's it's it's something that they understand, and everybody there was so happy for me and supportive. Supportive. I've got this uh my brother from another mother down there, Martin. Martin, if you're watching this, love you, bro. Um, but yeah, so he's a captain down there on a catamaran uh boat, and yeah, he's probably been one of my biggest kind of supporters and my biggest um friends, you know. And when I went down there, he actually took time and came to the resort to hang with me, you know, and we had some non-drinks and you know, went in the ocean, went in a pool. It was just an amazing day. So the fact that, you know, now I know I can survive not drinking in Mexico. Um, I'm going again uh this next month, actually in February. It's gonna be my 50th birthday as well.

Milestones: 50th Birthday And One Year Sober

SPEAKER_00 12:10

While I'm there, uh March 2nd is my uh one year not drinking, 12 months sober. So I'm gonna be there to celebrate my 50th, which is fucking insane to think about. But also I'm gonna be celebrating one year being sober in Mexico, right? I love Mexico, I love the people, I love everything about Mexico. Um, and then, you know, we have some other friends. Um, I met this one couple down there that was from England, jolly old England. Um, and I met them at one of my favorite resorts, uh, which is Gran Bahia Principe in the Riviera Maya, uh staying at a resort called Tulume. I've been there handful, like dozens of times. Um, but we met this couple, um, these two ladies who were there under honeymoon, they just got married. And of course, you know, I'm at this time, I'm fucking drinking, I'm partying. Uh, and we just kind of connected. Me and my wife just really connected and hit it off with them. And, you know, of course, you meet a lot of people when you're drunk, you're like, yeah, we'll stay in touch, you know, and then you never do. Um, but with these two, uh, you know, they were just different. And I ended up, me and my wife kept in contact with them,

Real Friendships Beyond The Bar

SPEAKER_00 13:20

and we became very close friends. Uh the one, the one, um, the one lady is a detective in Jolly Old England, and her wife is a social worker. Uh, we're not going to use names or anything, but uh they we stayed in contact and then they were they've always wanted to come to Canada and see it. So we're like, you know what? Come down this summer, which would have been this past August 2025. And they came down from England and they stayed with us, and it was the most amazing experience and trip um I've ever had, like hosting people sober. I was again worried, you know, what are we gonna do? But we just kept so busy and did so much crazy wicked stuff, you know, like BAMF and all that other good stuff, that the days just passed, they just flew by. And next thing you know, you know, seven, eight, ten days goes by. I'm sober still, they're supportive, they're so happy about it. And so, you know, eventually me and my wife are gonna go visit them in England, probably following summer. But, you know, if you are like me and you spent years and decades drinking, where everything you did, everywhere you went, drinking was a big part of that. Just know that there is hope that you can still do shit and be happy and have fun. And what I learned is that I'm just as fucking crazy sober as I was when I was drinking. It's just now I remember everything. Now, you know, I come home with you know money left, right? Because I like said that one trip was like 15,000 US I spent. And I usually bring at least 2,000, you know, US just for tipping and stuff. And I've never came home with money, ever. And I've been to Mexico, like I said, so many times. And this last trip, last uh October 2025, um, I actually came home with just because I wanted to save it, I came home with like a hundred dollars. And I'm like, holy fuck. First time ever that that's happened.

Fun Without Booze And Saving Money

SPEAKER_00 15:20

So if you're worried that, you know, if you stop drinking, life's gonna be dull and boring, it doesn't have to be. And that all depends on you, right? Do you want it to be happy or are you gonna just kind of glum about the fact that you can't drink and da-da-da. Now, that being said, I'm also very antisocial. Now, for me, I'm a salesman, so that is just crazy to think that I'm an antisocial person, generally don't like people, and you know, I I used drinking a lot to kind of mask that and to give me that kind of liquid courage and energy to do all that stuff. But then I realized once I got sober that I can still do all that and I can have even more fun. So yeah, if you're worried about, you know, if you stop drinking, you can do it. You can. Now, you know, I want to thank whoever's listening to this, you know, for listening to this. And if you're struggling with stuff, you know, you're not alone. You're not alone. Um, drinking even nowadays, especially with millennials, a lot of people don't drink anymore at all. They're really seeing the health, you know, not benefits, but the health implications of it, as well as just the money it costs, right? Like you go, let's say you go to a club or a lounge or whatever, right? You're talking what, eight dollar drinks? You have six, seven of those, that's pretty much a hundred bucks plus tip. So typically you go out, you're spending a couple hundred bucks. And if you're like me and you like to take care of your friends and pay, you know, that can easily turn into a $500, $1,000 night, right? And then if you know you start drinking, and the next thing you know, somebody offers, you know, pulls out a bag of drugs. When you're drinking, isn't everything a great fucking

Readiness, Health, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 17:00

idea? So it saves a lot of money, but may mostly it it just really saves your health. Um, so yeah, that's uh I don't even know where I was going with that, but I guess thank you for listening to me ramble. And if you guys are enjoying this podcast, feel free to comment, give it a like, make sure you follow. I think my main platforms are gonna be Spotify and my YouTube, which is obviously pure chaos. Chaos spelt K-A-O-S. If you're wondering why you're spelling it wrong, well, back in the day I was a DJ and my DJ name was DJ Chaos, K-A-O-S, and then I dropped the DJ part and just went by Chris Chaos, which was you know K-R-I-S, K-A-O-S. Um, so I just really like that because when you drink, just that whole life, it's it's literally pure chaos, and it just doesn't seem to stop. Um, so yeah, so if you're struggling with addiction, alcohol, drugs, whatever the case may be, you're not alone. You know, right? Maybe you're not ready to give it up. That's totally fine, right? Because I had so many people try to get me to stop over the years. My family, my mom, my dad. I just wasn't ready. And no matter what anybody would say to me, it wasn't gonna make a lick of difference because in my mind, I wasn't ready. I finally got to a place, and we'll get into this on another podcast of some things that happened that really made me. I don't want to call it rock bottom. I've had a couple rock bottom moments throughout my life. Again, we'll get into that on other podcasts. But uh it I finally took a good hard look and thought, what the fuck am I doing? And also getting up there in age, right? Like I'm pushing 50 now. My liver isn't gonna be as forgiving. Um, my family doctor was amazed at my liver. We did all these tests after I stopped drinking like three months later. All my tests were amazing. Um, and I figured take that as a blessing and don't squander that away. Don't squander health because you can't get that back once your health is gone. You know, I've seen it with my dad, where you know, unfortunately he's no longer with us, but he didn't even drink and his health deteriorated so quickly. And I really don't want to see that happen, and you know, so anyways, thank you guys for you know tuning into this podcast,

Closing Thanks And Invitations

SPEAKER_00 19:20

um, pure chaos, right? And of course, there'll always be chaos in the world, but we can always choose a different path, right? Because chaos is gonna always be there. But uh, what we can do is just try to try not to befriend it and take it on the arm and walk, you know, down the fucking road, bottle in hand, singing jolly are we? But uh thank you everyone. I really appreciate it. These will get better with time. Uh, if you have any suggestions for you know ideas, hey, I'm all ears. All right. Thanks, guys. Uh, thank you for tuning into Pure Chaos. Like and subscribe, and uh thanks again, guys. Appreciate you being here.