Overcoming suicidal thoughts and addiction is a long road. Therapist Zach shares the raw truth about rebuilding his life after hitting bottom.

After reaching a breaking point, Zach sought help and stopped drinking. While getting sober was a major step, he discovered that the real work began afterward. This video covers the challenging, honest reality of what happens when you commit to personal recovery beyond the initial crisis.

If you are navigating your own path toward sobriety or mental health recovery, this story offers a realistic look at the process. We explore how to manage expectations during the rebuilding phase and why the hardest work often starts six weeks into sobriety. This narrative is for anyone seeking perspective on the long-term struggle of getting better after a period of crisis.

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Couples therapist Zach Brittle opens up about quitting alcohol, confronting the anger he calls his real drug of choice, and rebuilding trust with his wife and two daughters after years of hiding behind a calm exterior. This is a conversation about sobriety, anger, and the patient, unglamorous work of becoming a person again.

Zach spent years as the therapist other people came to when their lives fell apart. But by the summer of 2020 his own life was the one falling apart. He was drinking during client sessions, thinking about ending his life, and running out of time. On November 13, 2020, he poured out his last drink. He thought that would be the hard part. It wasn't.

In this episode, Zach talks about:

- Why his fear of alcohol started in childhood, long before he ever drank
- The deal his father made him as a teenager, and why he refused it for years
- The night his daughter confronted him, and the courage that took
- Why quitting drinking exposed anger as his real addiction
- The near relapse that happened after he received his five-year sobriety chip
- How his family's chaos shifted onto someone else once he got sober
- His theory, used with couples every day, about everyone's hidden drug of choice

Zach is a couples therapist in private practice, host of the podcast Marriage Therapy Radio, and writes at Stuff I Write on Substack.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Cold open

01:32 Welcome and introduction

05:21 Who Zach is today

07:45 The before version of Zach

12:15 The poem and movie that shaped his fear of alcohol

15:00 The deal his father made him

25:19 The summer everything came to a head

28:47 Why quitting drinking was the easy part

36:54 How the family system shifted after he got sober

39:46 The theory of relational recovery

47:53 A letter to his younger self

51:02 Where to find Zach

sobriety, recovery, anger, couples therapy, addiction, how to quit drinking, recovering from alcohol addiction, anger as addiction, life after sobriety, couples therapist sobriety story