Tommy Vext of Bad Wolves recently celebrated 11 years of sobriety.
“I didn’t get sober to have a mediocre life,” “Everything in my life, I want it to be extraordinary: my relationships, my jobs, the way I interact with people. Otherwise, what’s the point? I’ve got to have that, but I also have to work for it. They say (in the rooms of the 12 Step meetings) that more will be revealed, but the reality is, more will be required.”
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“I was the youngest guy on a tour with dudes who were 10 or 15 years older than me, and we were drawing straws to see who would wake the others up in their bunks on the tour bus, because we didn’t know if they were dead from partying the night before,”
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“My introduction to 12 Step programs through Sonny was purely by example,” he says. “Sonny lived in a house with a wife and a car and a couple of dogs. He had peace, and I saw what he had, and I wanted it. I didn’t want to die anymore. I had tried, and it didn’t work out so well.”
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In those early days of recovery, however, Vext discovered what all recovering addicts and alcoholics come to understand: the substances are just a symptom of the problem. Vext was essentially a broken man: Despite the success of the Snot tour, he was homeless; the relationship he had just ended was mutually destructive, and the girl with whom he drank and used had lost a baby. Relationships, he adds, have been one of the toughest things to navigate, even in recovery.
