Michael is the consummate entrepreneur. While advertising agencies are part of his portfolio, advertising isn’t the only industry in which he’s created success. Automotive dealer software, online sales training, and online education are just a few. He understands as well as anyone that advertising is only as good as it works.

Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

The Behavioral Corner 
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner. You're invited to hang with us as we discuss how we live today, the choices we make, what we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around for a while.

Steve Martorano 
Hi, everybody, welcome again to the Behavioral Corner. It's me, Steve Martorano host and guide. This is the podcast, about everything. It's a podcast about everything because everything is what affects our behavioral health. And a reminder that the whole thing is made possible by our underwriting partners Retreat Behavioral Health, you'll hear more about them. Down the road. We've done just a multitude of shows about substance abuse, and now broaden it to include mental health issues as well. But substance abuse is kind of a meat and potatoes topic here on the Behavioral Corner. It's an enormous problem. It doesn't show any signs of going away, in terms of people having difficulty with substances of all sorts. And so we returned to the topic very, very often. Today we're going to focus on the two R's what I'm calling recovery and relapse. And for those of you who know anything at all about this whole process, relapse is the boogeyman. It's the 600-pound elephant in the room that that people are ultimately terrified about, we're using it as an excuse for not even trying now everybody relapses. Well, not everybody relapses, but many do something, it's almost, you know, it may be a process -- a learning process. And if someone once told me, It's not how many times a person relapses, it's how many times they're able to get back up and get back in the game, and figure it all out. That's certainly the case with our guest today. Mike Villa joins us. He is a native Floridian I understand and he has a story that is right on topic for us today. Mike is now 17 years sober. But the story is a little more complicated about that because he knows a little bit about relapse. Mike, thanks for joining us on the Corner.

Mike Villa 
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Steve Martorano 
You know, you're no newbie about sobriety. 17 years, it's quite an achievement. Congratulations. Let's begin at the beginning. And you can take us up to that relapse you had several years ago. When did you first start drinking? When was your first drink?

Mike Villa 
You know, I started to drink in my late 20s. I was really a late bloomer. And it was, interestingly enough, it was when the disco era was kicking off.

Steve Martorano 
Disco drove a lot of people to drink. There's no doubt.

Mike Villa 
It was my very first trip...that I'd been married and I was divorced. On my first trip to a disco, I walked in and I was absolutely overwhelmed and mesmerized. And being in the bars you drink. And so that's what I did. And then we rolled into the 80s when everybody was drinking and had a vile of coke in their pocket, and it kind of went through the 80s. And I always just thought I was a partier. You know, I thought I was a I liked bars I used to nightclubs every night. I just felt like that was that was you know, and drinking was just a byproduct. I used to have a joke that, you know if I loved hanging out in restaurants that were 500 pounds. The reason I drink is because I go to these bars. And then in the early 90s, a gal that I had been dating and I broke up and by that time I was I was drinking a lot. Quite a lot. And when she and I split up, I thought to myself, Well you got better be careful because now I don't have a warden. I don't have somebody that I gotta be careful and not overdo it with it. And that's what happened. I started drinking quite a bit then. And so I had an episode that happened one night, that really the next day, I was like, Oh my God, you know, I gotta get some help for a friend of mine. asked him if he take me to a treatment center here in Tampa. And he did. And they let me in. And I remember them telling me what's a 28-day program that we're gonna get you better in 20 days. Right around the first five days, they found out my insurance didn't cover it. And they said, you know we're gonna get you better in five days, and which is kind of a joke, but they told me Get the $1,000 a day you want to pay upfront, I didn't have that money. So I remember sitting down with a psychiatrist discharging me, you know, become pretty fast friends. And I asked him, I said, you know, do you think I'm an alcoholic? And he said, Well, I don't know, he said, I think you might be in the gray area. But if you keep drinking, the way you drink, you're going to probably become an alcoholic, because my recommendation to you is to go to AA and he recommended a particular meeting took place at 5:45 in the afternoon, which was about the time I'd head for happy hour, instead of kind of break that routine. So I did and went to, but a club called YNA, which means You're Not Alone. I gotta tell you, within a very short, two or three-day period was going every day. I felt like I belonged, I really felt like I belonged, I'd always felt like, my whole life, I was on the outside of the tent looking at, I just never felt like people liked me the way I like to be liked. All of a sudden, I'm in there with these guys. And you know, the lawyer over here, the house painter over here to the homeless guy over here. And I wound up getting sober with people that I never would have drank with and that worked really well in meetings every single day. However, I got approached by someone early on, who wanted to sponsor me. I didn't want to make the commitment to be sponsored, I didn't want to meet with somebody on a routine basis. So I declined.

Steve Martorano 
Wow, just I'm curious as to why you would get so much benefit out of the group setting, but resist sponsorship.

Mike Villa 
Because I didn't really want to do any one-on-one work with somebody I felt like, you know, it's kind of private, that felt like, you know, what, you know, I've heard what takes place, particularly step four, or five, and I thought, You know what, only part of that I'm not gonna I'm not going to bare my soul to a total stranger. Because I know now just an excuse, really, to boil it all down, I was just lazy, I didn't want to commit to it. And so Therefore, without having a sponsor, I never worked the steps, I just went to meetings every day. Well, fast forward a little bit, I got married in 1994, and our first child was born in 1996. And my business just skyrocketed after I stopped drinking because I happened to be there for a change. And so as my life began to unfold, things began to happen business wife, kid. I started peeling back on the meetings, you know, I can't make that 5:45 today, I gotta, I gotta I got a project I'm working on I gotta get finished. Well, my son's got a little league game, and something was going on, that I began to make what I thought were legitimate excuses for not going to meetings. And once that happened, or began, then I just began to scale back more and more and more. And instead of meeting every day, I'm doing a couple of meetings a week, and it's a couple of meetings a month. And there are no meetings at all. And that happened about three years before my relapse. And during that three-year period, I noticed in hindsight, that I kept getting irritated very easily. And, you know, I was argumentative with anybody who disagreed with me. Wasn't very spiritually fit for sure. And there's a term and a that they use. It's called your restless, irritable, and discontent. That's exactly in hindsight, what was going on. And when my wife married me, I was sober. So about...I've been sober for nine years. And I went through one night, did you know, I said, I am wondering if I should, maybe, I mean, we go out to dinner with friends we have, you know, a good party. I don't ever drink everybody else does is going to be having a good time. And I can't have a good time to do his job to kind of resent that. What do you think about me, maybe, you know, drinking once in a while?

Steve Martorano 
Does she know about your past difficulty with alcohol?

Mike Villa 
No, not really. I mean, I told her some of the early on in AA. But you know, she'd never experienced that. So I said, What do you think? And she goes, Well, you know, once you get to your need, do something good, because you're no fun to be around. And so I thought while that's all I needed. And she regretted those words for the next five years. We were going on a cruise shortly after that. And I remember I was scared to drink. I thought kind of doing the right thing. And I'm sitting with my father-in-law in a bar on a cruise ship. I ordered a snifter Louie the 13 Cognac, which was my drink of choice...after dinner, drink of choice. It's not cheap. It was $175 an ounce or something like that, and I'm swishing it around, and I'm looking at it. And I'm doing well, I don't know if I should do this. And so finally drink it. And drink two or three or four sips of it. And I thought, you know, I'm not gonna do this, I don't want to do this. And I gave it to my father in la. We're going back to the cabin, our cabin, you know, I'd heard in my early AA meetings, that alcoholism is a progressive disease, you'll pick up where you left off. If you relapse, and I ran into the cabinet woke her up, and I said, Hey, I told you, I wasn't an alcoholic. I just gave a $175 drink to your father and didn't finish it. So I didn't pick up where I left off. Well, that was then for the next, you know, a few months, two or three months, I would drink I would people be happy to bar, you know, to party and restaurant. And the server would say, just having a drink. I'm good. I don't want another one. Well, I did want another one. But I was trying to control myself. And eventually, my father passed away about six months into my relapse. And we had a big celebration of life party at my house, after the funeral. And that was the first time I got drunk. Since 1992. This was this was 2000, mid-2001. So I hadn't been drunk in a long time.

Steve Martorano 
It was like a five-year period when you when you weren't drinking?

Mike Villa 
I didn't drink for nine years

Steve Martorano  
Nine years?!?

Mike Villa 
From 1992 I relapsed in 2001. And then the first six months of that relapse, I was pretty much any under control that I binge drank one night got drunk. And that was kind of it. Now is where the pick-off-where-you-left-off metaphor comes in. Here's what the psychiatrist is saying, I don't know if you are or not, you might be in the gray area. But if you keep drinking, you will become an alcoholic drinker. That's all starting to happen. I started drinking more often. I was a happy hour guy. So I started going to happy hours once or twice a week and got home at seven or eight. My wife would What are you doing? How come your home so late? And well, you know, I ran into some friends just fast-forward to the time. You know, about a year before my recovery. In my second recovery, I was going to happy hour, every day. I get there at 4:30 with the intention of having two or three drinks at home by 6:30 or 7:00. I get home at one o'clock in the morning.

Steve Martorano  
What kind of a -- forgive the term -- what kind of a drunk were you when you got home after...?

Mike Villa 
Happy. Yeah, outgoing.

Steve Martorano 
Easy guy to be around.

Mike Villa 
I always felt like I didn't fit in. When I drank I fit it. You know? I got cute and thought I could sing. All kinds of things happen. But I wasn't I wasn't a violent drunk or anything like that.

Steve Martorano 
Right. You're also high-functioning. I mean, you didn't lose jobs. And you were going to work, right?

Mike Villa 
Yeah, I'm an entrepreneur. But I did suffer. Because, you know, I wasn't, I wouldn't get in first thing in the morning because I'm hungover. So I wouldn't show up to work till about 11 o'clock. And, you know, I started losing the respect of the people that work for me, not because of my alcohol and because of my lack of focus on what we did for a living, and I jeopardized my leadership role, you know, and now getting home at wee hours of the morning cocaine in this picture about them. And so I would absolutely not even the least bit interested at all in doing coke. Until all of a sudden my third drink, I'm banging the phone away trying to get my drug guy to bring me stuff. That would always happen after about the second or third drink. So now I'm in my early 50s And I'm drinking every day, probably a dozen drinks that happy hour. I'm snorting up much coke and then so I didn't look like I have done a bunch of coke. I was eating Ataman to bring myself kind of down a little bit but I mean at that age I'm ripe for disaster by the grace of God it didn't happen you know, I explained it away to my wife and I would argue about it. And you know...

Steve Martorano 
Let me stop you for a second so she doesn't drink with you. It wasn't a situation....

Mike Villa 
She drank...

Steve Martorano 
She didn't drink the way you drank. What was the argument about? If you were great to be around...

Mike Villa 
You know we waited for dinner for you. I want to tell you a couple of quick little things that happened right before I hit my bottom again. One was when was at the bar I don't know what time it was probably 7:30 or 8 o'clock at night, and I got a phone call that said home on my caller ID. So I sent it to voicemail. Got another call about 20 minutes later, home, I didn't want to get into an argument I'd like to explain what I was doing. So I sent the voicemail and I got a third one. I sent it to voicemail, I came home, you know, crashed I never went to sleep. I passed out. The next morning, I'm listening to my voicemails. And my son who at the time was about seven or eight years old. And the first voicemail is Hey, Dad, and get ready to go to bed soon. Hurry home. Second one. Say, Dad, I'm going to bed now we come home. And the third one was never mind that I'm in bed. And that really hit me hard. Shortly after that, you know, I'm gonna do the whole exercise, showmanship, corn all the liquor the house out and all that in a coma therapist that I poured it all out. I don't drink at home, and he said, hell, you're never home. So why would you keep it there? Well, that's a good point. Shortly after that, I can promise that we're going to do it before the alcohol is out, and I won't do this anymore. And it kind of sort of meant it. But you have to for five or six days there I am on barstool again. Got one or two o'clock in the morning. My wife was downstairs and I came down get take my son to school and this is what she would normally chastise me pretty good about last night not coming home. She didn't say anything to me. She shook her head down. I said, come on. I know you're upset. You know, I want her to engage with me. If she wouldn't, she just said no, I'm not upset. She said I'm just I'm not going to worry about this anymore. She goes, You've crushed my spirit. I don't want anybody to fight this. And I took my son to school. And I thought to myself, oh my God that crushed someone's spirit. What kind of piece of crap am I?

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, it's easy to have a perverse sense to live with your wife's disapproval or anger. When she says I give up. You've taken the life out of me. That's a tough one.

Mike Villa 
Yeah. So I made a decision right then and there. You know what? I've been hearing from people now for years, that I drink too much. I need to stop drinking. By God, I'm gonna stop I am done. It was the first time I ever said it to myself. And I'd go for a few days. I remember driving and I changed my route to work coming home from work. So I wouldn't drive past this watering hole. Well, sure enough, the new way that I went to this popular shopping center. And it had a bar in it. And I remember, but three or four days, not drinking and I'm driving through and I look just glance over and I it's all glass. I see somebody sitting at the bar drinking a martini. And I drove past the place at about a block down the street, made. I made a U-turn, came back parked my car. A quick Martini. That looks good. One o'clock in the morning. And that scared me for sure. Her spirit was crushed. She was done arguing with me. But I'm like, Oh my God, how did this happen?

Steve Martorano 
I have no control...

Mike Villa 
I realized...it was the first time I realized I had no control over alcohol.

Steve Martorano 
I gotta set that scene again. You're driving past...it's not like you're at a party and people are sloshing around...You saw a guy with a martini and went bang, I have to have one.

Mike Villa 
Well, Bill Wilson in The Big Book talks about when he was in an early recovery going to a hotel. And he walked by the bar and he heard the ice.

Steve Martorano 
Ice. Yep.

Mike Villa 
You know, and it lured him. Well, that's what happened when I saw the Martini. And I thought, again, still lying to myself. I can do this. I can control this. And I didn't. That kind of thing happened about three or four or five times during a one-month period. I swear it off to myself. And then I would go back in and I wasn't in AA, so it wasn't relapsing. I was just falling off the wagon. And...

Steve Martorano 
Why is that not relapsing? You were drunk?

Mike Villa 
Because I've been drinking for five years. You can't relapse when you're drinking.

Steve Martorano 
You know you had been sober...you had been sober at one point.

Mike Villa 
I was in a relapse. But when I was promising myself I wouldn't drink and then going out you know four or five...

Steve Martorano 
Oh yeah, I understand. Yeah.

Mike Villa 
I wasn't relapsing I was just playing the process. So finally, it just floored me and I actually went out one night, with some friends, we were shooting some pool and having a good time. And I don't remember anything after that. Nine o'clock the next morning, there was a cop poking me in the ribs with a billy club. The good news is that knew him. So he took me home. But I passed out under a tree, about six, somebody's front yard about six, six blocks from my house. I have no idea how I got there. But then I said, Okay, I'm back at it... And four or five days later, I'm back at it again. So finally, one morning, I walked out to my garage, and I had an old 63 Corvette, I like classic cars. And I thought, You know what, I can't, I can't do this, I can't live like this. I'm gonna start this thing up with the garage door closed. And I'm going to end it. And I thought about it, I thought, Well, gosh, I don't want my kids to come in here and find me, you know, having committed suicide. So I figured out a way to stage the scene where it wouldn't look like it would look like an accident. And when I figured out that, and it would have worked, as far as they're concerned, I thought it scared the hell out of me. I thought, Oh, my God, and I don't want to do this. And I have a call for a moment of clarity. I said, You know want to live, I don't want to die. And that morning, I left the garage, got my car, and went to the office. And that morning of going to a city council meeting. We're fighting a developer in my neighborhood. And there was a gal there, the lawyer and I remember her from the old days and AA. And I used to see her sitting outside Starbucks with a bunch of other AAs, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee when I would walk over to my watering hole next door. So she came over and I must have looked pretty, pretty good dejected and he said How are you doing? I didn't know her name. And I said, Yeah, I've been better. She said, What do you get plans for lunch? And I said no. I said, Okay, let's go. I can use the company. And we went in, there was a little restaurant, people went to, and next door to the church and everybody parked in the church parking lot, and walked over the restaurant. So she pulled into the church parking lot, and I was behind her car, and I was heading to the restaurant like, Where you going, We're going to eat, right? Come with me. So she took me into the church to a noon meeting. And I picked up a white chip, on December 7, 2006. And I was overwhelmed. I never felt that much relief in my life.

Steve Martorano 
Just from that walk into the church and...

Mike Villa 
When I picked up that white chip. I finally knew I was doing something about this. Within less than two weeks I had a sponsor. I work the steps. I had a spiritual awakening, which I talked about in the book. I really had a spiritual awakening. And I now sponsor other people. I do everything that I'm told to do. Yeah, get a sponsor, work the steps, get a home group, sponsor other people to take the message. That's what we're supposed to do.

Steve Martorano 
And you do that because you're not compelled to do it. But when you weren't doing that stuff, doing what you wanted to do your life was a mess.

Mike Villa 
Well, yeah, and what is happening is I never had any peace. The first nine years. I've never felt any peace at all. Now because of what I'm doing. I'm feeling a sense of peace and to this day, feel a sense of peace that I have never felt in my life. I lived in fear my whole life. I used to sweat in the shower, worried about the future I worried about what was going to happen. And that what if and what if way before I went into treatment, that's just the way I used to think I got my dad because he was a worrier. In hindsight, he was an alcoholic and he was living in fear.

Steve Martorano 
Mike, can I take you through just a couple of things? I mean I've read a lot about relapse now and you know that you can go online and see 10 things to avoid this and they're all, you know, we get a lot out of them but it really kind of breaks it down to one simple thing and I think you'll agree with this: People who relapse just aren't working their program, whatever their program is, is that the way you see it?

Mike Villa 
100% and I go to meetings all week long. I see a lot of people that relapse. I see people who relapse on multiple occasions. And it's apparent that They're not following the program. They either don't have a sponsor, but they haven't worked the steps. And most importantly, that spiritually fit. Because this is a God program, there's no doubt about it. It's not a religious program,

Steve Martorano 
You mean AA?

Mike Villa 
We're allowed to pick a God about our understanding. But yeah, I see the same methods, you know, I go to meetings a lot, because there are no pictures in the big book. By going to meetings, I get to see what happens to people who don't go to meetings.

Steve Martorano 
You know, they also some of the things I've read, talk about the stages of relapse. And sometimes I think this is overthinking something. But anyway, you didn't touch upon them in your description of what your experience was, like, you talked about the emotional impact. You talked about your mental state of mind. And you touched upon the physical nature of it when we were drinking it made you I guess, psychologically feel better, but you really were a wreck. Right?

Mike Villa 
Okay. Yeah, absolutely. It was, it was an emotional relief. It wasn't a physical relief.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah. So I mean, that is pretty much the stages, one will go through, I mean, maybe not in that order, but certainly, your emotions, your mental frame of mind. And physically, you're going to pay a price for this stuff is there and I hear you about Look, here's how you stop abusing substances. You stop abusing substances, you find a program and your case, it was AA and you do it. So pretty simple. But what about those people who go, Yeah, well, you know, people I know people are going to meetings for 15 years, and they relapse. And are there any...could you offer anybody like red flags, warning signs? What should you be on the lookout for? If you are sober? But you know, worried? What do you do about it?

Mike Villa 
There are stories that I hear at AA and one comes to mind, this gal was sober, 22 years, and she relapsed. And then she would couldn't string more than a couple of years at a time, without relapsing again. And there's a lot of stories like that. It boils back down to working the program. But beyond that, I think that the most important thing that you can do, and people stopped doing this, that relapse is your sponsor, other people, you take this message to other alcoholics because that's how it all started. Bill Wilson, met with Bob Smith, Bob Smith said, You're not going to be able to get me sober. He said, I'm not trying to get you sober. I'm trying to stay sober. So when we help others, it helps us more than it doesn't.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, there is the surrender portion of the proceedings, where you as you did go, this isn't work and I can't get...

Mike Villa 
That's step one.

Steve Martorano 
And then there's a lot of steps in between. But as you just said, and it's another alliteration, there is this service thing. And people look at it. And I don't think they quite understand that what you just described is that you're doing this because it's good for you, too.

Mike Villa 
Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it. , I was at a meeting last night with one of my sponsees. And somebody that he had sponsored, who really, really struggled in the first few years kept going in and out, in and out, in and out. And now he's been sober for two or three years. And he shared that last night just meeting him. I told him, at my convenience, you're a different person, that's so gratifying to me. But at the end of the day, the 12 step is having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we carry this message to other alcoholics who practice these principles in all our affairs. So that's what we're supposed to do. After step 12, take this message to other alcoholics. So in a meeting, a lot of times a chairperson will ask, Is there anybody available to sponsor and always raise my hand.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, let me ask your question about it because I understand it's a step. And if you're going to do this, right, you've got to work the steps. But someone in your position and that woman who met you that day, you take a risk? Because I'm sure there are times when you reach out to someone to help them and sponsor them, if necessary, and they don't make it. How does that not trigger some doubt in someone's mind?

Mike Villa 
You know, that's got a lot to do with ego. You know, I'm not capable of keeping someone sober. If somebody relapses that I'm working with, and I take it personally, that means that I think I'm kind of, you know, why did they let me down? It's not about that. The girl that took me to that meeting, I started noticing, two or three years, four years later, I didn't see her in a whole lot of meetings. And then I didn't see her at all. And she has since relapsed. And she's the one who had my back and she was sober a long time. Is a way of life? That's all I can tell you. It's a way of life, you have to immerse yourself in this program. And you have to do everything that this 80-year program has taught us to do.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, yeah. So we're gonna wrap it up here now, just for those people who maybe have been living in a cave or something, and don't know about the steps or the big book or AA, I always say to people who doubt who have questions about AA, its efficacy and all that I say, look, it works for the people it works for. So you know, what other evidence do you need that this can help you get sober? How hard is it to find a meeting? Is somebody sitting out there going? I'm not going to a meeting. Besides, I don't know where they are, how hard is it to find in a meeting?

Mike Villa 
But it used to be you pick up these pamphlets in the rooms and have a meeting list. There's an app now called the Meeting Guide phone app, and you open it and it lists all the AA meetings closest to you. And closest to the time of day to open that app, there's really no excuse.

Steve Martorano  
And for someone who's going do I go with somebody? Or do I just walk with it, just get to a meeting, right?

Mike Villa 
Get to a meeting, you don't have to have somebody hold you. And if it makes you feel better bring whatever it takes to get to that first meeting. Because what's going to happen is you're going to realize that for the first time maybe in your life, that you're not alone, you're not different. There are people that are like you.

Steve Martorano 
And finally, Mike, somebody who may be hearing this has relapsed, and is now in active use again. What do you say to them?

Mike Villa 
I say do five things every day. And if you do these five things, you'll probably never relapse again. hit your knees in the morning and ask God to keep you sober. Read some sort of AA literature, whatever it may be. Talk to another alcoholic. Go to a meeting hit your knees that night and thank God for keeping you sober. If you do those five things, you I do them every day, you know hadn't been for 17 years. It works. They really do.

Steve Martorano 
17 years and counting many more, I'm sure in store for you appreciate your your insight into this. And I wish you the best of luck going forward. Thanks, Mike.

Mike Villa 
I appreciate. Thank you very much.

Steve Martorano  
And thank you all as well. Don't forget to like us, and follow us. Review us We love all that here on the Behavioral Corner and will catch you next time.

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