In this second episode with Dayna and Mazz, we hear the brutally honest story of the scary depths Mazz’s disease took him in denying his alcoholism. Mazz shares how close he came to death. Dayna candidly shares the reality of facing her spouse’s disease and recovery and how daunting this can be as a partner.
You can learn more about Mazz & Dayna, a couple who beat many odds, through the links below.
FB: https://www.facebook.com/DailyDoseDrMarryDD
IG: https://www.instagram.com/daily_dose_of_dr_marry_and_dd/
YT: https://www.youtube.com/@dailydosedrmarrydd
Website: https://www.daynadelval.com/category/dr-marry-and-me/
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See full transcript below.
You’re listening to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast, a place for real conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host, Margaret Swift Thompson.
Intro: Welcome back! During the last episode we left off with Mazz being in hospital after having to be placed in a coma due to severe alcohol withdrawal. Today Dayna and Mazz share the brutal honesty of the scary depths of Mazz’s disease took him, while Dayna speaks of her determination to fight for herself and them, even when it felt daunting. Let’s get back to this couple, Dayna and Mazz.
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret
You also, I hope can give yourself credit for doing something that many of us don’t do. And if we do, it’s often kicking and screaming, we’re not really Whoa, let’s go do this work because of the person that I love, is an addict? Right? It’s usually focused on them still, especially in crisis point of his medical situation, though, you had this unlimited time where he was cared for potentially protected to the best of his ability?
Dayna: Yeah.
Margaret: And I cannot imagine how terrifying that five and a half day period must have been. I’m sure it was hard before that, even but that level of unknowing of how Mazz would survive and come out of it.
Dayna
Yeah, I do think it’s also important to point out I had so much in my favor. So, I didn’t have my own addictions to deal with, right. We were already empty nesters by this point. So, I wasn’t managing toddlers, preschoolers, school schedules, those kinds of things. I have an extremely flexible job. So, I literally I went back to my team when Mazz went into the hospital. And I said, I guess I’m married to an alcoholic. And I will be in the hospital. So, you know, text me, I’ll be working. But I don’t know what this is going to look like. Everybody just hang with me. And so, I had so many resources and so much freedom, that so many people do not have, that I could selfishly go all the way inside. Because I could. And that is a gift that many, many people do not have. If our son had been home and 10 or 11 years old, it would have been a very different thing, because I would have had to put on some kind of face.
Margaret: Yes,
Dayna: For him. In this case, I did not care what the hospital staff thought of me. I declined physically, I declined Emotionally, it didn’t matter to me. I thought this bill is going to be $12 million. I don’t care what you think of me right now. I got to do this work.
Margaret
Right. Again, you give a lot of credit. That’s not the right word. But like you still did it, Dayna?
Dayna
Yes, I did. I did.
Margaret
So, take that and feel like wow, because that is a wow, that you did that soul searching work? Because, you know, I like to think of myself as being very willing to do work, been in recovery, done some tough stuff. When I was with my partner who was, he identified as compulsive rather than addicted. When I was with him, even when he dumped me. I’m still fixated on him so that I didn’t have to do my work. Right. So, you get to own that even though Mazz is laying there, and the circumstances are dire. You are able to somehow take the gift of that time, put a boundary up with work and do some self-reflection that is a characteristic of you that is impressive that I hope you can take for yourself.
Dayna
All right, I will take it, thank you. And I will say if you were to read that journal, you would go oh, she’s mostly mad at him. Oh, let’s be clear. It wasn’t like I here’s another area I could get better at. I had a lot of anger to work through before I sort of reached this new, you know, sort of zen place and to say that I was then then or now is a gross overstatement of the word.
Margaret
But I also think that speaks to the truth of the work and Mazz we’re coming to you because I do want to get some input from you on this, that we have to do almost a clearing house, over the wreckage to get to where we are. And you weren’t focused on him. It was an ideal time to just, I called it vomit, vomit on the paper, all the ugliest of stuff wouldn’t hurt him wasn’t hurting you.
Dayna: Yes.
Margaret: And gave you some space from that intensity to be there from as in a different way when he woke up?
Dayna
Yes, absolutely. I could not have set my anger aside long enough to have the really, really dear and precious memory to me of when he finally did come back to the present. And I said to him, do you know who I am? Because he hadn’t known the day before? And he said, yes. And I said, who am I? And he said, We’re Dana del Val. And I said, who am I to you? And he said, you’re my wife. And I just, you know, I couldn’t have appreciated the beauty of that if I had only been consumed with fury.
Margaret
Yes.
Dayna: So as a present
Margaret: It was, it was a real gift to both of you.
So Mazz, you’re the gentleman on the bed. Right? You’re the one whose disease took you to a depth where you were physically compromised significantly, you nearly died. Dumb question. Ever, in your script of your life, when you were taking the one drink? Did you ever think that you would get to the point that it will take you to that place?
Mazz :
Absolutely not. I’d never thought about it. Even when I knew there was something wrong with me, and I was ignoring it. Another part of me was thinking why it’s not too bad. You’re not doing anything wrong, because you know, everything’s working. Not everything. Nothing was working. But I thought everything was working, right.
Margaret
So that denial kept it from ever being as bad as it really was. Was the consequence for you or the bottom for you? A physical one. That’s what had to get your attention, or that’s what it took at this point to get your attention in the illness.
Mazz
It wasn’t just a physical one. I think I was lucky; I was sober two weeks before went to rehab. Usually your 28 days and rehab, they split it into time sections, the first third of it is getting you sober. The second third of it is alright, you’re sober, how are you thinking. And the last third of it is, this is what you need to do if you want to stay sober. So, I had two weeks before, I went into hospital. And I started doing a lot of reflections and things in my recent past that I was piecing together these things. And I thought well, so here I am, two days before the week that I can’t remember when I was in a coma. They kept asking me how much I drank. And I kept saying I have a drink or maybe two a day. So, they said, Well, judging by your blood work, you’re either an alcoholic, or you’ve got leukemia, so we’ll have to do a bone biopsy, I said, well, we better do a bone biopsy because I don’t drink that much. So, I let them drill a hole in me. Because I wouldn’t admit I was an alcoholic.
Margaret
Time out for the audience out there who love people with this illness that is so important to hear. That the disease is so manipulative, even for the person that has it to go along with that type of invasive procedure. Rather than have you admit that there’s a problem or that you drink more than you’re telling them.
Mazz
They had me lined up for a liver biopsy and a kidney biopsy and I thought yeah, bring it there’s nothing wrong with me. And they weren’t going to do that. But I I’d actually lapsed into or was put into a coma by them because I don’t remember any of this. But Dayna went off and said, I’ll see you in a bit. And that’s the last thing I remember. I kind of must have had some kind of psychotic break. In the meantime, and the next thing and I was trying to work out where I was and you know, didn’t realize it’d been gone a week.
Dayna: Yeah
Margaret
DT’s, yeah. Withdrawal, psychosis,
Dayna
Enormous psychosis. Incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it. So yep.
Margaret
And then seizures when the alcohol is coming out.
Dayna: Yep.
Margaret: Okay, so we’re talking chronic late stage. Alcoholism? Yes. So, you come to having no memory, whereas Dayna is witnessed at all. And the medical staff and they don’t have to do these other biopsies because it’s evident they figured it out.
Mazz: Yeah.
Margaret: When you come to what do you feel? What do you experience? What happens to Mazz? I heard what happened with Dayna, what happened with you?
Mazz
First, I felt completely numb. And then I was just grateful that Dayna was still here. And then I remember I had a roommate who looked like he was pushing 70. I could listen to him through the curtain because he got brought in, I think he rolled his pickup truck. I don’t know all the details. So, jump in, if I’m getting any of this wrong. So, for the first couple of days, every morning, they come in and ask me, you know, can you tell me your name? Can you tell me your date of birth? before they do anything like they were putting blood in me because I didn’t really have any blood cells they’d put blood in. And then every couple of hours, I’d take it out again to test make sure everything. But every time they did that, they asked me my name, and what my date of birth was, and I knew what it was. This guy took them about four days before we remembered what year he was born. Then it took me another day or so remember what he’s actually birthday was. He couldn’t tell them what day of the week it was. When I left, I went to shake his hand. And I said good luck to him. And he said, I’m beyond lock. There’s no lock left for me too late. That has had a profound effect on me.
Dayna
Because he was younger than I was
Mazz: younger than Dayna.
Dayna: He looked ancient. And he was I think 42 or 43 at the time.
Margaret
So, the impact was there by the grace of a higher power go I.
Mazz
Something like that. And I still didn’t know, at the time, I thought, Alright, I guess I’m an alcoholic. And I thought, well, I’m kind of enjoying being sober. And at the time, I still thought I could go off and fix this. So, I was talking to a social worker, I think she was.
Dayna: She was.
Mazz: She allowed me to convince myself that if I went to night treatment, like I thought I could just roll back into work and in the evenings, I can go to an AA meeting. And everything would be rosy and fine.
Margaret: Right.
Mazz: Dayna pointed out to this lass that this was not the case. And then gave me an ultimatum she was I’ve been here with you every day, I need you to go into treatment. And I mean, go into treatment. And I said, I don’t need that. And Dayna said, well think about it. Because if you don’t, then I won’t come see you. And I thought about it that night. And then I thought, yeah, maybe Dayna’s got a point.
Margaret
How hard was it to draw that line? That boundary?
Dayna
For me? Not hard at all.
Margaret
Then you would have followed through?
Dayna: Yeah, I think I would have.
Mazz
I think she would have, that why I changed my mind.
Dayna
Yeah. I mean, I certainly had years of empty threat making behind me. But one of the remarkable things about that journal journey that I took, was that you can’t get that real about yourself, and then decide you’re going to put up with garbage from anybody else.
So, I gave him a couple of days, to you know, get the drugs out of his system and to come back and really be as clear headed as I thought he could be. Before I said to him, so now what are we talking about here? And he wasn’t glib. He wasn’t boastful, but he certainly had zero interest in patient rehab. And I will tell you that I didn’t know anything beyond inpatient rehab. And again, I knew it from Hollywood. But I just felt like, look, I just basically peeled all the skin off my body, looked at myself and put it back on, you’re going to do something that hard and all I could think of was inpatient rehab.
So, this social worker sat down with Mazz, they had this conversation she called me in and she said, he’s going to go to night treatment. And I said, No, he’s not. And she said, well, unless he agrees to check himself in, there’s nothing you can do, because you don’t have a history of physical violence as police records. So, you can’t go to the Secretary of State or whoever it is, and appeal for them to mandate him to rehab. So, I said to her, can you give me 10 minutes? And she said, yeah. And I walked back into his room. And I like to use this phrase, I basically ripped my face off and revealed to him who I really am and said to him, you have one option here. You go to rehab, or you won’t see me again, you can come home, but I won’t be there.
And in that moment, I had no doubt that if he had said no, I would have driven home, packed up my things taken our dog. And I don’t know where we would have gone. But we would have gone somewhere. I was never ever, ever going to have lived through what I had just lived through, and let him come back in as if nothing had happened.
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Margaret
So even though one could hear that and think, well that was an ultimatum, it absolutely was not because you were bound and determined to follow through.
Dayna: Yeah,
Margaret: You had decided that you needed more? Yes, you wanted him to go take his skin off and deal with the truth. Sounds like you needed some time. For you.
Dayna
Yeah, I couldn’t imagine how was I going to, like manage this man at home? When I wasn’t smart enough to recognize he’d been an alcoholic two and a half weeks early?
Mazz
I hadn’t actually really?
Dayna
That felt like someone saying, here’s 47 children, just take care of them. I mean, I just, it was so daunting to think about the reality of them checking him out to me. And me now being in charge, that if someone had said, do you think he should go to Wuhan, China? I would have said yes. Yes. Send him to China. I needed him to go somewhere. So that I had more time to get my bearings. And because I didn’t believe that if he came home, he wouldn’t start drinking. I had no reason to believe that that wouldn’t happen.
Mazz
Yeah, I didn’t know that either. So
Margaret
So, you went to treatment?
Mazz
Yeah, Dayna made me see sense.
Dayna
I gifted him with the opportunity of the decision.
Mazz
Changing my mind. Coming up with hang on second thought. That was obviously the best decision. It was scary. And it ended up being my 47th birthday, that I went to Praire St. John. And this woman said, What’s your date of birth? And I said, oh, you know, today 1970. And I said to her, well, great way to be 47. And she looked at me and said, just think well 48 is gonna bring and I thought yeah.
Dayna
That was the first moment of hope I had in the entire thing. She because she said it as if it was just a done deal. But what an amazing way to start your 48th year. Think what next year’s birthday will be like, and I thought, oh my gosh, maybe there is an end in sight. It was the first glimmer of hope that I had.
Margaret
So you go to rehab, you commit to the time, you went in two weeks sober, which you see as a gift because you were able to dive into the meat of a recovery.
Mazz
Well, I thought I did. I was still convinced I could still fix myself. I was getting a bit depressed. Because all I want to do was go home. So, I got given this assignment and I did what I yell at my students for doing, I just thought I’m not doing it.
So, my counselor Joanne bless her, screamed at me and she had a hidden surprise for me because I’ve been there, what a week, maybe
Dayna: 10 days probably.
Mazz: So, my little surprise was Dayna was the first of the invited guests because everyone in the group had a significant other come in and Dayna met everyone. And I always got in trouble with Joanne, so Joanne had a word with Dayna and I about what I hadn’t done because I was being a spoiled brat. So, Dayna and I had this very long conversation in her car in the parking lot, and I came in after getting offered my biscuits on a plate. Joanne, ripped me a new one, I went back to my room that night and did my assignment. And that was my turning point. It took me even that long to realize there is actually something wrong with me. And I really need to start listening.
Margaret
How about I need to accept help.
Mazz
And that.
Margaret
So, what I hear is your self-will, maybe your Irish stalk makes you a stubborn, so and so.
Mazz: Thank you. That’s a good way of putting it.
Margaret: Yeah. And your disease doesn’t mind adding to that character flaw. You know, I look at my years working with clients in treatment, you would have been one of my favorites, because the reality is the person in there we know is not the presentation of this person behaving badly. It’s the disease manifesting in a man who’s incredibly raw and uncomfortable, who’s missing his partner and his environment he drank in, doesn’t know what the future holds, doesn’t know how to do life sober, and oh, crap. No, not sure I’m signing up for this. You needed another reality check of the alternative.
Mazz
And I got it. And even Joanne says to me, you know that when I was leaving, she said, I want to talk about my favorite day with you. And I said, oh, you mean the one where I got double tagged? It worked? Yes, it did. And thank you very much. She even said, I could tell the next day, yeah, there was something different about you.
Margaret
I’ll always say the disease is the most formidable opponent I’ve ever gone up against. And if I see it that way, then by God, I have to be willing to get in the ring too. And I’m not getting in the ring to beat you as a human up. But I will tackle the disease if I have to. And not everybody has that approach or style. But that is what I believe those two did to you that day, they stood up to your disease. They called it out on itself. And yes, it’s in you. And yes, it’s hard. And you could have easily been like, no, I’m not going there. But there was something that it hooked in you that you that wanted to be well, that gave you permission to keep going.
Dayna
Yeah, that sums it up really beautifully. And I think that was my angry at him that day. So, I’m in this woman Joanne’s office and he gets called in, he doesn’t know I’m there. It’s obviously a hard surprise. I don’t really know what I’m walking into. She says to him, where’s your assignment? He says, well, I couldn’t do what I had to mop last night. And she says, no, you had time. And he’s got all these excuses. And it’s so hard to sit there and watch my 47-year-old husband be treated like a really naughty nine-year-old. And he’s making all these dumb excuses. And it’s embarrassing, and I’m just getting more and more angry. And she finally says to him, you’re a liar. You’re excused. And he said, what? And she said, you’re excused. And he got up and walked out. And I watched him walk out. And I looked back at her. And she said some things to me, and you know, whatever. And then I was walking back to my car. And this is when we had this big conversation in my car where I again, ripped my face off. And what was so infuriating to me was I felt like I was fighting. I was throwing every punch I had ever thought about throwing at this thing. And he was too cool for school, like what the hell. Get it together, fight the fight, or get out of my way. Because now, I’m geared up. I’m not backing down now. And I would never say I’m the reason that Mazz turned a corner. But I do believe that he saw in me for the first time ever, a conviction of I will not go back and either scared him into getting around that corner or it made him believe that he could go around the corner. Because I’ll just say it, you better believe you want me in your corner if you’ve got to fight because I’ll throw the first punch every single time. I don’t care who it’s going to land on. I think that empowered him to decide he could fight to.
Margaret
Mazz you’d agree?
Mazz
You know, and from that day onwards, being in an AA is very sad. It’s stressful. It’s lonely. It’s an assault on your senses. Because you know, I wasn’t the youngest person in there and I wasn’t the oldest person and the more AA groups I went to the more we talk to different people when you hear this story, I felt a bit more of a shame because I just listened to some of these people. I think Jesus your life is a frickin mess. And then I felt bad. What kind of idiot am I, or how weak are mine, I’m in the same state as you. And my life is like a frickin Harlequin romance compared to what’s been going on with you.
Margaret
You know what, I wonder? This is the problem with doing these conversations, because I have so many thoughts running at me, and its which one to follow. But I’m going to follow this one. I wonder if in that car, with your beautiful, committed, fiery wife, saying difficult things, not easy to hear, showed you someone loved you more than you loved yourself and was willing to fight for you. So, by God, it’s my turn.
Mazz
I think so. Because I still didn’t get that. I think until that point, I decided that it was still why are these very nice people wasting their time and an idiot like me, right?
Margaret
Right. What a great story for the disease to keep you stuck.
Mazz
That was the moment I thought you know what it is, you know, get busy living, or get busy dying? That’s when it finally made sense.
Margaret
And she was willing to get busy living next to you.
Mazz
Then everything changed after that, in fact, a couple of weeks later, when Joanne called me into the office and I thought, no, what have I done? I’ve been trying to do it. She said, so how would you like to go home tonight, and come back during the day? And then be free to go home at 3:30? And I immediately said yes. And I thought oh, let’s check with Dayna. So, she looked at me. I still think that was my final test. Because she looked at me and nodded knowingly going, yes, let’s check with Dayna. So, I was actually quite worried. But when I heard Dayna on the other side of the phone going, oh, absolutely. I can be there to pick them up. That was a shed a tear moment there. I’ve done something right. Dayna’s gonna let me come home.
Margaret
At the end of all of this. You never did anything wrong. You had an illness that created ugly, damaging character changes that hurt you and the people that loved you.
Mazz: Yeah.
Margaret: Still, I think to get our head around when we’re living in it.
Mazz
I think this is the best version of me. And I think the version Dayna originally met.
Dayna
By far the best version by far.
Margaret
Well, you’ve said the same about yourself.
Dayna: Yeah, absolutely.
Mazz
You know, AA is different for everyone. It’s tragedy for me, I mean there is tragedy in AA. And rehab is. Some of the people I was in the group with aren’t with us anymore.
Margaret: Right?
Mazz: were younger, way older, couldn’t pull it together. There was a woman there. Who knew what to say? Everything. She was given me advice, and I actually took some of her advice. So, the two days before I graduated, she got kicked out. Somehow, she managed to get hold of some drink and then someone saw panhandling by the YMCA.
Dayna: Yeah.
Mazz: You know, the guy that was Quinn’s age telling me everything, he actually said to me, you finally got it. I actually now believe what you’re saying. The day before we were both supposed to leave, he got caught with drugs, sad it is a grip that gets you.
Margaret: It is
Mazz: Even in rehab. If you’re willing, you can find someone to get your something in there you can get it.
Margaret
Which is why rehab in my opinion works when people are given the dignity to make the decision because we can’t lock them away from from life. Everything Right?
Dayna: Right.
Margaret: If someone’s disease is going to take them out the door it’s going to take them out the door we can definitely intervene when we do we can offer peer intervention staff intervention family intervention all of it but if the person’s disease has them we go to Al Anon to cope with the reality of this disease killing far too many people. And why do some make it in some don’t and if I get stuck in that I’m in trouble.
Mazz
You know, I understood the monthly coins we got, Queen maybe a display case for mine, so I had to rejigger when I got my five year coin. But you know, the stories you hear that you get your one-year coin and then you hear the stories of how many people got their one year chip and then went out to celebrate again, surely, I can have a drink now because I’ve been sober a year. And you know, 98% of them end up in a in a psychiatric unit or dead.
Dayna: or jail.
Mazz: Yeah. And then they say the worst year is between one and two. And then that’s why someone said to me, you know, why would that’s where we have 18-month coins, because that’s the most dangerous year.
Margaret
I think that as we said a formidable opponent, but in that same vein of the front window versus the rear view, we’ve got to have balance. If we’re willing to go to the lengths we did to use to stay sober, we can do this. It’s a hard switch to flip. But it’s doable. If we have accountability, and if we have resources, and we have the tools of recovery, we can stay out of the ditch. We have to use them; we have to consistently work at using them. And we have to stay out of the self-pity. That rear in your head of why me? Why can’t I? Why am I the one who made it, survivor’s guilt when some of the others do go. And it’s a hard one to get our head around. But one of the things that I would try to work with clients who were struggling in early recovery, and they lost someone who’d went out and relapsed and passed. What would they want you to do? Would, they want your story to be different. Are you willing to work your program like your life depends on it, because they can’t anymore? Which feels selfish and horrible, but we’ve got to find a way despite that, to be well, because we deserve it, just like they deserved it. But for whatever reason, they didn’t get to have it.
Mazz
No. I mean, there’s loads of facets to this, when we were doing Daily Dose, we talked to one of our state senators who’s in North Dakota, we’re trying to revamp the state hospital,
Dayna: mental hospital
Mazz: Mental Hospital, they want to have a central area in the state of North Dakota for mental patients, and try and centralize it and chemical addiction centers, were going to be in the center of the state so everyone can get to them. And he brought up this story about the difference between having it in a localized area and having it central what the pros and cons were. Because I went to Prairie St. John, which is in a town that we live in. And there was these kids here who were three hours from home. And old people that were three or four hours from home. And it felt nicer to meet you to actually be I could walk home if I wanted. You know, when I went to, we went to different AA meetings the whole time I was there. So, you get an idea of how many different ones that were if whatever you do, which were personal to you. But I always knew where I was also astonished. So that was this, you know, there was an extra dimension to Fargo Moorhead, there were meetings because they were everywhere. How did I not know this? I’ve lived here since 2001.
Margaret
But you knew where every bar was? Yeah. It’s the focus right? When we’re in it. It’s the focus when we’re in recovery, and we embrace recovery. Wow, who knew “friends of Bill W” meant people in recovery and at an airport, you can have six people at your side in 10 seconds if you announced over the intercom system.
Dayna: Yeah,
Margaret: Who knew? I didn’t know that until I was in recovery. And I think that’s the thing is, it’s even the story of your counterparts and treatment who found alcohol or drugs. It’s there that’s why bubble wrap doesn’t work. We can’t make someone safe from this disease by wrapping them in cotton balls and bubble wrap because somehow the disease will manifest away in that person to get what they need to survive, because that’s what they believe they need.
Dayna: Yeah.
Margaret: So the alternative is how do I deign to take care of myself as a family member and step out of the way of letting Mazz do what he has to do? Even though I’m scared to death, he won’t do it. And I don’t want that outcome to be the story we live with.
Dayna: Mm hmm.
Margaret: How’d you do it? Dayna, how did you end up going through that intensity? Doing your own work seeing him and rehab being a part of that, but continuing to focus on you and let him have his journey?
Dayna
Well, that’s a great question. I don’t really know, do you have a thought on that. I guess I’ll answer.
Mazz
You can have your thought, l but I’ve got one. So, I’m going to speak again.
Dayna
No, I am a acutely independent person. And, and even though we are married, I certainly do not view that as an abdication of myself. So, I wanted him to do the work for him and for us, but my sense of self was not going to go down with that ship.
So, I tried to present to him how far I would go as an ‘us’ and make it very clear that of the two of us. I would be okay without him. I did not believe he would necessarily be okay without me, which is not actually true, but it’s what I believed at the time, and so I simply gave him some options. And they were manipulated to some extent, but they were the options. And, you know, if he had opted to come home because he decided that two weeks of being in the hospital half of that time, he was unconscious, he had decided that was enough, then that would have made a decision for me, which would have triggered a series of actions. And he would be dead today. I know he would.
So, I think it was just a case of like, when I was a young single woman faced with an unexpected pregnancy, like you just have some options, you weigh your options, you say no to some, you keep other options open, eventually, something happens, a baby is handed to you. And you have to make a decision. Okay, this was another one of those moments. I do not fold, in times of stress and pressure I rise. And I gave him the opportunity to rise for himself, believing that that would allow us to rise as well. And thankfully, he had enough belief in himself or in me for him that he said yes, in the moment. And then he figured it out for himself. And he really did, figure it out for himself.
Mazz: Well, I did figure it out with a little help.
Dayna: It doesn’t matter. He did the work.
Margaret
What Dayna just brought up, set the boundary, set the bar, what she was willing to tolerate, and not tolerate. Do you think in retrospect, Mazz, you started out because you desperately wanted the marriage to work? You love your wife, and you wanted to have it happen, that it started that way? That was the impetus and then switched over to I want this now for me, or did you all at that point, when you made the decision to engage in recovery go hmm yeah, I want this for me, no matter what.
Mazz
I think it’s still, I wanted to stay married. And I definitely wanted to stay married to Dayna, obviously.
Dayna: As opposed to your other wife.
Margaret
Wow this gets more and more interesting. Yes. Is that the queen that you referenced earlier? Is that the same person?
Mazz
It actually went to well, if I want this, I have to fix myself.
Margaret
Yeah. So, it’s switched at some point?
Mazz: Yeah.
Dayna
It definitely switched. I watched it happen. And it happened almost instantaneously. He’s not wrong. When he says he got out of my car, he walked back into rehab, and he was a changed man. It doesn’t really matter what caused the change. What matters is that he accepted the change. And he, from that moment forward, it’s not that we’ve had no disagreements or that we haven’t had to work through things. But from that moment forward, he has been this version of himself. And it has been nothing short of extraordinary.
Mazz
There’s one moment I have; I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this. So we had to go and see a marriage counselor, and this guy was brilliant. He was weird as hell. But brilliant. So, in our last meeting, supposed to meet there at one o’clock. And Dayna was at work. Do you remember this day?
Dayna: I don’t know. Keep talking.
Mazz: So, the phone rang. I picked up the cell phone. And it’s like Dayna, I said, hey, what’s up? She goes, where are you? So, I’m just sitting around watching a film at home. She goes, yeah. Why aren’t you here? And I had no idea what she was talking about. And it’s oh, yeah. I was supposed to be over at Prairie St. John, with you with our last session with our counselor. I went yeah be there in a minute. And I drove there. And Dayna was kind of I wouldn’t say livid,
Dayna: I was irritated.
Mazz: She was irritated. And I looked at her and she said, what happened? And I said, you know what, I was just sitting at home to think, and I thought put a film on. I had no idea. And I just got here as soon as I could. I’m so sorry. But and I thought, well, you know, I’m actually happy this happened because I drove here and if I got pulled over by the police. The only trouble I’d be enforced for speeding because I’m completely sober. And I went on and Dayna looked to me and I think to this day, she looked at me went wow, it’s nice to have you just tell me the truth.
Margaret
Yeah. Yeah. It’s nice to know that you’re telling everyone the truth too. I mean, Mazz yes. Is it nice to have your partner go the truth that’s a refreshing, but it’s nice to know you’re not lying to everyone.
Dayna: Yes,
Mazz: I think that’s what I got out of the look on her face, my god you’re telling me the truth.
Margaret
How long did it take to look in the mirror like yourself again?
Mazz: About a year
Margaret: Do you think that took getting your integrity back like feeling like who you were with who you were, there was some solidity and your recovery and the characteristics that that brought about?
Mazz
I did. A guy called Chris, who himself is a recovering alcoholic. He said to me, when I first came back to work, he said, you’ve got to make a choice here because at the minute everyone hates you. You can either go somewhere else, or you can stick with it and just put your head down and work through it. And if they want to talk to you, they will and that’s exactly what I did.
Margaret
That’s not an easy one, either. No,
Mazz
No, I’ve even had people at AA meetings say how’s work? Are you looking for another job? No I’m gonna, I’m sticking with the one I got.
Margaret
That’s that Irish stubbornness again.
Mazz
They said ooo, I hope that works out for you.
Outro: Recovery journeys are filled with many ups and downs for each person in the family system. I so appreciate Mazz and Dayna’s willingness to share the added challenges when doing this in a partnership. Come back next episode where Dayna and Mazz will continue sharing about their story and their ongoing recovery journey which includes some interesting information about living and having fun in recovery.
I want to thank my guests for their courage and vulnerability in sharing parts of their story. Please find resources on my website
This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time please take care of you!
