Achieving A Purposeful Life Of Sobriety

 

In this episode of I Love Being Sober, Tim Westbrook sits down with Estil Wallace, founder of Cornerstone Healing Center, for an honest, live conversation about recovery, mental health, and what it really takes to build a life in sobriety. Estil shares his personal journey through addiction, the role the 12 Steps have played in his recovery, and how lived experience – not theory – shapes the way he shows up today. Together, they talk about experience, strength, and hope, navigating early recovery, staying grounded as life gets bigger, and why recovery is about much more than just not using. This episode is for anyone who’s struggling, early in the process, or looking for proof that meaningful change is possible one day at a time.

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Achieving A Purposeful Life Of Sobriety

We’re really fortunate to have a guest who understands addiction and mental health from the inside out. Estil Wallace is the founder and owner of Cornerstone Healing Center here in Arizona. Before he was leading a treatment center, Estil was someone who struggled deeply with addiction and the instability that often comes with it. Through recovery and the 12 steps, Estil was able to change the trajectory of his life.

Estil’s Life Before Recovery And Sobriety

Sobriety didn’t just help him stop using, it helped him learn how to live, how to take responsibility, how to repair relationships, and how to show up differently day after day. Estil’s been sober for many years and is deeply rooted in 12-step recovery. What makes his perspective powerful is that he hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be in early recovery or to struggle with mental health while trying to stay sober. This conversation isn’t about being perfect or having it all figured out. It’s about experience, strength, and hope and what recovery can actually look like in real life. Please help me welcome Estil Wallace. For anyone here who doesn’t know your story, who was Estil before recovery?

Adopted. I went through foster care and then adoption at a very young age. Never really grafted successfully with my adopted parents. They’re real decent people, but there was never a strong connection to family growing up for me. I had an aunt and uncle, probably the closest in terms of a real emotional, spiritual, familial closeness and I just didn’t see them enough.

Great people, still very close with my aunt and her kids, my cousins. Saying that out loud, that set of cousins are the only people in my family that I really stay synced up with. I have a long family history of alcoholism, drug addiction on both sides of the house. A lot of my aunts and uncles aged all the way through foster care. If you’re looking at it through a clinical lens, there’s just trauma for generations and a lot of bad choices. I’m almost completely English, so you can draw my roots all the way back to England. It’s just a lot of drinking and debauchery and in America, a lot of drugs and gambling.

Now, just to clarify, was this addiction and alcoholism in your adopted family or in your biological family?

I’m adopted by my grandparents on my dad’s side. I was still in the same gene pool. Yes, on both sides of the family all the way back, many generations.

What did addiction look like for you at its worst?

At its worst, very familiar with this area, this part of town. By seventeen, I was a daily meth user. I smoked crack regularly right down the street from here on Roosevelt in the Garfield neighborhood. I left home that year, never to really return. I lived homeless in and out of cars, sleeping on rooftops. It was the ‘90s, so I smoked a lot of crack. Nobody really smokes crack anymore, but it was New Jack City back in them days. There was a lot of crack, a lot of meth. Fentanyl wasn’t a thing yet. We did heroin, but it was black tar heroin.

I’m obviously active in the 12-step world and I sponsor guys that come in after burning down a business or a marriage all those things. That’s not my story. I was drinking as a kiddo and got into hard drugs by the time I was a teenager and I wasted the first half of my life. I got sober at 26 and my teens and early twenties were not awesome. Being homeless in Phoenix sucks. I’m sure it sucks everywhere. The heat, though, is particularly tenacious.

I can tell you, if I was going to be homeless, I wouldn’t want to be homeless here.

San Diego’s a better fit.

San Diego, Hawaii.

Not that it wouldn’t still suck, but it’s better weather, it’s more temperate. Not the extreme.

The Turning Point Of Estil’s Story

What happened? You obviously had this rough childhood drinking, drug addiction, smoking crack, heroin, black tar. It seems like you were pretty deep. When did you come to the realization that you needed to change your life, that you wanted to turn around? What happened?

I’ve got several a-ha moments, come to the Jesus moments, moments of clarity, whatever you want to call them. I’ll just recount one of them for you. This is the same year I got sober, which is 2004. This is like March of 2004. I’d stolen a bicycle, like a downhill mountain bike and rode it out into West Phoenix to a place I know a dude that’ll trade trinkets for dope. I’ve got like a quarter ounce of meth in my pocket. I’m drunk. He’s got booze and stuff so I’ve been pounding shots of gin, smoking meth off the bubbler, and now I’m walking the 15-20 miles back down the canal was like the drug addict highway and it was my I lived off on and off the canal for a long time.

I’m walking back the canal and I’m about as drunk as I can be and I’ve had as much meth in my system as I can have and I’ve got enough for the next day in my pocket. Normally I drink and I use so I don’t have to feel the shame and discomfort and self-hatred that I walk around with. When I get drunk, I just go to blackout and it’s like time travel, whatever. When I get all geeked out on meth, you get so wrapped up in these weird tinkering projects, it’s the same effect just the opposite direction. It may take me a couple days before I snap out of it at all. I don’t want to snap out of it.

Everybody here I’m sure struggles with addiction of some sort or even mental health to a degree where I don’t want to experience my natural state. Deep down, I know I’ve never expressed it to anyone, but I fucking hate myself. That’s why I continued to drink and use so self-destructively. I was a cutter, never actually attempted suicide. Thought about it a lot for the last few years before I wanted into recovery. This afternoon that I’m describing, I’m walking down the canal as loaded as I can be and still be standing. Walking down the canal and I can still feel everything.

I don’t know if you’ve heard that. I’m sure you’ve heard that term in recovery where they say the booze didn’t work anymore or the drugs didn’t work anymore. That was one of those moments for me where I couldn’t get anymore intoxicated and I could still feel how much I hated people and how much I hated myself and how much this was all a waste. That was one of my first moments where I thought I should I think I need help. It’s either kill myself or ask somebody how to get out of this because I don’t know how to get out of this. You know that lonely feeling where you’re not sure a way out exists. Other than suicide.

Recovery begins when the booze or drugs do not work anymore. Share on X

Yeah, it doesn’t it just doesn’t seem like there’s a way. What happened? How did you end up getting into recovery or treatment or whatever?

I checked into the Salvation Army ARC down on Pima and just off Central and Pima in South Phoenix where downtown becomes South Phoenix. It’s like right in that little nook.

I know exactly where it’s at.

I checked in there. I stayed sober 3 days to get in there and I stayed another 6 days, so I was 9 days sober, the longest stretch in memory of sobriety and I left. I left after nine days. I’d been exposed to AA, CA, that kind of stuff. I just wasn’t ready. As with so many people I think that are in their first exposure to recovery, the math didn’t math. I wasn’t looking at sponsor, home group, service commitment, prayer to a god. I don’t believe in equaling, “This nightmare is over, Estil. Wipe away the tears, put the fucking weapon down, you can go and live a normal life if that’s what you want to do.” That wasn’t the equation I saw.

I saw this is like a tree branch not even slowing my steady descent and further into hell. I see that in the eyes of people too when they come into treatment when they come into meetings, I can see how lost they are and it’s like they’re not like, “This is the way out of this.” I didn’t see that. I got loaded for like another 7 or 8 days living outside and I got arrested on ASU campus at 1:00 AM, May 8th, 2004.

I had multiple warrants. I started going to meetings in jail. When I got out of jail, I moved to the Solution Halfway House which was right down the street from here, 4210 North Longview. If my pants weren’t so tight, I would show you I’ve got it tattooed 4210 North Longview on the side of my leg. They asked for 90-day commitment and I lived there for eight months.

When did the 12 steps enter your life?

I heard that message in a CA meeting in Durango Jail and it didn’t fully gel, but the person who delivered the message, I heard him share that the way he felt was the way I had felt. He spoke the language of pain that I had been living in and had found a way out and that now I’m really not computing like, “This dude is healthy, clean, he smells nice. He drove here in a car. He’s taking time out of his life to talk to these inmates about recovery. I’ve got to know what this is about.”

That’s what nudged me in. It was this was this fascination that somebody who could speak the same language of pain that I knew that I never talked about also could speak the language of recovery, post-traumatic growth, if you will. He had come out of the nightmare and had gone on to live a thriving life. Beyond curiosity, I was like, “How is this done?” I lived at the Solution, got a sponsor, went to meetings and it was during that time that I got all the way through the 12 steps. Sponsoring people is really what really pushed me over the edge to where the obsession left.

What was the hardest thing for you to let go of in early sobriety?

Picking cigarette butts out of ashtrays? That was a tough one. To be trivial. The hardest thing to let go of? My unmet expectations of other people. You look at my first inventory and a lot of men that I’ve sponsored over the years, their inventory as well, it’s real common, is most of my resentments are born out of this seeming inability for me to accept that the world doesn’t need my fucking permission to just be what it is. That’s hard. It was hard for me. I have I have a much easier time of it now I’ve been sober. A little stretch and done a lot of work, not just in the 12 steps but in clinical environment and I’m in a much healthier place now.

Yeah, letting go of the way things ought to be. The way things should have gone down. What she should have done. What they should have said. The way I was mishandled. When you start talking about childhood trauma, and I don’t want to compare traumas, but when you have something that’s genuinely and authentically egregious in your past, that’s one of the most dangerous ones to hang on to because you’re right. What happened to you is fucked. Shouldn’t have happened. On behalf of the human race, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you got dealt a shitty hand if that’s what happened to you.

 

That’s what happened to me. At some point, that story doesn’t serve me. Victimhood has a real definite benefit. The benefit is it’s not my fault. I didn’t do this. I didn’t ask for this. What’s the negative? What’s the downside? What is the squeeze for that bitter juice I get of me being right that this wasn’t my fault? The squeeze is I’m stuck. I can’t change this.

You’re not responsible. You’re a victim.

That’s right. If I want to be free, if I want to find the way out and thank God for people in recovery that’ll grab a flashlight and take you by the hand and lead you out, you have to be willing to let go of that and say, “It doesn’t matter that I’m right. I’m done being fucking angry and rageful about it. The past is the past.” It might not be right and what things that happened to any of you may not be right. You going to let it kill you now? It hasn’t killed you yet. We spend our adult lives reliving these phantoms of the past over and over again. Whether it was abuse, whether it was sexual, whether it was familial. Things that we did to ourselves as teenagers in our twenties. Shit.

People that are new maybe things you were doing a month ago. We can stay prey to those things if we allow ourselves. It’s easy to do when you’re justified, when it feels justified. Letting go of that, letting go of those unmet expectations of other people and the way things ought to be, that was probably the toughest. The cigarette thing’s just a joke, although I did pick cigarette butts with full packs of cigarettes in my pocket for like a year.

I’m thinking a couple things as you’re talking. Expectations are resentments waiting to happen and then the second thing I was thinking was powerlessness. Step one, when we first get into recovery, I’m powerless over alcohol my life has become unmanageable and then it’s I’m powerless over people, places, and things. One of the one of the four agreements, not taking things personally. It’s like living those things and just realizing that what other people say or do, it might not be what I want, but who cares?

That’s a hard pill to swallow because most people, it’s like the actor scenario in the big book. They’re very few instances where I’m going to be pleased with the outcome of other people’s behavior. That’s across the board from the government to my family to my children to the people who raised me to the people I work with to the people I meet in the street. You could look through that lens at anything and it’s just overwhelmed frustration. In the 12, they talk about living in a world of unmet demands. It’s a rough place to live.

I was talking to my little sister about my mom. My mom’s a little goofy and my sister gets mad because she’s always late, she doesn’t show up to her kids’ games, etc. It’s like why would you expect anything different? You look at her past behavior and again, it’s not taking things personally and realizing we’re all just here living life. I’m going to do what I do and you’re going to do what you do and what I do, I’m not trying to offend you, you’re not trying to offend me. We’re not trying to make each other mad. It’s just like I’m just doing what I do and you’re doing what you do.

That’s a very mature approach because that’s a harder pill to swallow. It sounds great from 30,000 feet. When you’re down on street level and it’s not working out, that’s what road rage is. That’s what most violence is. It’s born out of that that contention of like, “No.”

Disagreements are like pimples. You can pop it if you want, but it will lead to scars long after the pimple is gone. Share on X

I think 90% of transformation is awareness, so the first step is the awareness. The awareness that I might not know everything. I might be wrong, which is a hard pill to swallow because I think I’m always right.

That doorway opens up to so much possibility.

There was a guy named Jefferson Fisher that I saw speak and he said, “What if you take the approach of even if you know you’re right, what if instead of digging your heels in you say, ‘You might be right,’ even if it’s only like 5% or 2%, even if I’m 100%, is there a tiny percent that they might be right?’” they can let go and not then it just levels everything else out.

What is more valuable in the grand scheme of life? The knowledge that you were right in a contentious argument or to continue to build human relationships which make up the very fabric of human existence? Which is more valuable? I like to take that dynamic and put it in a marriage. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. Why? That’s what you just described. You can either concede not necessarily that you’re wrong and they’re right.

You can concede that I care about you and this relationship so much more than I do about this one topic. Disagreements are like pimples. You can fuck with it if you want to. I don’t think you should. At some point, it leads to scars long after the pimple is gone. You can ruin a lot of stuff with the with resentments. Look at half of marriages.

Breaking Down Estil’s Experience With The 12-Step Program

Which step was the most uncomfortable for you?

They’re all pretty uncomfy. Five. I lied on my first one by omission. I left some things out. Nine would give me physical shaking on a couple of them. Twelve equally was very nerve-wracking at first. I really enjoy it. I enjoy sponsoring men now and helping other men find recovery and God and new ways to live. However, in the beginning, that was a scary thing, thinking I have nothing to offer. I don’t even know how to live my life and here I am trying to guide you on how to live yours.

Let’s talk about this sponsor-sponsee relationship. How important do you think that is in your life and in your program?

It’s 11 out of 10.

Why?

It’s accountability. Not to wrong or right either/or but accountability in the sense of we’re walking this trail together and maybe you see things I don’t. A buddy of mine took a took a cake and he said, “My sponsor can see my blind spots and I can see his.” We can’t see our own blind spots. Having a sponsor, having 10-step partners, having friends that have walked this journey with you, it’s critical. It’s arguably the most important component of recovery.

If you figure the recovery path that we call the 12 steps existed before the 12 steps. They came up with this thing and they were getting sober and finding purpose-driven lives as a result of this thing they were doing and eventually, when they wrote the book years later, they came up with 6 steps. They’re like, “We should map this out.” That’s the way science works. It’s not empiricism top down. It’s practice, tinkering, you figured out something and then you try to map it. You walk a terrain and you go, “As best as I can remember, I want to map this so it can be replicated or at least duplicated.”

When I remember how simple that framework is, when you look backwards through your own history and then through all the literature back to the early days of Bill Bob, Bill Dotson, the first very first people, Henrietta Seiberling, all the people that made it happen, community was at the core of it. Doing this together was at the core of it. It’s an old 12-step adage. The first word in the first step is we. That’s an old adage. That’s a thing because it’s true. Community’s at the backbone of it. It’s one of the reasons 12-step programs have such high success rates, which is underreported. I can rant on that for an hour if you like.

As they say, addiction is the opposite of connection. Many people feel that way.

I saw the TED talk on that subject. It’s great. It really is. When you’re walking a monster around the block, you want to do it in private. The bigger that monster grows, the longer the walks are and you start to not be able to tell it when it’s time to come home. All of a sudden, you’re defending your own abuser to a degree. You’ve got this monster that you have to walk daily and it’s too big to conceal. We’re trying, we’re lying, “No, I’m fine.”

What do you say to people who resist the spiritual aspect of the program?

Hope you don’t die drinking and using. Hope you don’t kill yourself. I hope that the darkness you’re living in doesn’t take your life and offers you enough mercy and enough pain simultaneously that you will come back and give it a shot. There’s not another way. I can speak to this from some bottom-up empirical data-driven evidence. There is nothing on the planet.

I work in the psychology space at scale. There is not another data-driven data-supported mode for long-term recovery that works as well, not even close, as 12-step recovery. Success rates are over 76%, if you didn’t know that. When I got sober, they told us it was 6% and I was like, “I’m not good at stuff. I’m probably not going to be in the 6 out of 100.” It’s not true. Seven and a half out of ten is the answer.

Just to clarify, that’s people that actually follow the program.

It’s the only way. Here’s this is a great topic. You can’t compare 12-step recovery to methadone. You can’t compare 12-step recovery to antibiotics. You can compare 12-step recovery to a gym membership. You’re changing the way you live. If you don’t take the fucking prescription that would be like I get a prescription for methadone and then I don’t take the methadone. I just keep shooting heroin and I’m like, “This methadone don’t work for shit.”

 

Obviously, if you don’t take the prescription, it doesn’t work because it doesn’t work if you don’t take it. I had to drink alcohol to get the effect produced by alcohol. If I wanted to stay alcoholic and numb and blind to my misery, I had to actually get fucked up every day. There’s not a way around that. That’s why alcoholics and drug addicts can grasp onto that tenacity and we only start to repel it and get resistant when we come into recovery where it’s like, “Why I got to do all this stuff?”

I start getting all sensitive about, “I have church hurt. I don’t want to talk about God. I don’t believe in God. I think God hates me,” whatever. I grew up Catholic or I grew up Muslim or whatever your grievances are. If you can put all of that aside for just a moment and just look at the overarching picture of humanity, something like 70% of the world’s human population believes in God very specifically. The rest of us that are atheists and agnostics think we’re in a fucking simulation. If you’re doing the math on that, we are living in a creation. Even if it’s a simulation, we’re living in a creation with a creator. If you can just get past the gag reflex of that, the whole world opens up.

There’s somebody else in control and it’s not me. There’s somebody else that created the world and it’s not me. Call it the universe, call it God, call it your higher power, call it whatever you want to call it. There’s somebody else out there, there’s something else out there that’s in control of this world that we live in.

I was paranoid for a long time. I stay up few nights and start to think the invisible bureau of investigation’s after you. Anybody share those experiences with me? All right, good. I’m not totally alone. That feeling of paranoia, I came to really start to pin down my first real concept of God. I associated it with that. It was like why do I feel like somebody’s watching me? Well, because there is dummy. There is. I am being observed by the center of the universe. It speaks to me directly through my conscience.

That’s the native GPS system that’s in me. It’s my soul. I know the difference between right and wrong. Everyone does. We’re all born with it. It’s not something you learn. It’s not a skill. We’re born with it. Even when I have spent decades trying to muffle the sound of that voice, trying to distort it, I can still hear it. It’s usually the last thing that pulls us into places like this. It’s usually the last thing that draws us into rooms of recovery. We stay based on life because the difference between the truth and the lie is really simplicity versus complexity.

Truth is simple. You can hear it. You can tell when a liar’s saying it. The lie’s got spin, it’s a sales pitch, it’s got narrative. Give you an example. “I don’t feel comfortable sober. Let’s get high. I don’t want to get high I ruin everything.” I’m talking to myself now. “No, I don’t want to do drugs again I’m going to go to prison. My wife’s going to leave me. I wasn’t saying we could do hard drugs. Let’s just smoke some weed. Weed’s legal. It’s just recreational, you never stole anything for weed, Estil.”

You know it’s true. I never stole anything for weed. Next thing I know, I am now caught in a transaction where I am the seller and the buyer of bullshit. Who’s going to win? The lie’s going to win because how many variations of, “Let’s get out of this discomfort of sobriety.” Have I tried on myself? How many variations of this needs to end are there? It’s just one.

When you use that lens, am I justifying? Do you want to find a reason to go smoke pot and say fuck you to recovery? You’ll find 1,000. I could help you. I hope you don’t take any of them. I hope that you’ll take the one simple hard direction. Seemingly hard direction. God, it’s so hard psychologically. It’s not hard physically. Once you’re past detox, you go to some meetings, pray to a God you don’t believe in, please.

Staying loaded on the streets of Phoenix is like a 85-hour week job. It never ends. It’s overtime constantly. There’s never enough. That’s a hard life. Going to some meetings, sponsoring a few guys, praying to a God that I don’t believe in.

Doing the next right thing because I want to feel good?

Yeah. It’s not it’s not hard at all. Psychologically it’s hard because it’s new terrain. To come back to the question about people struggling with the spirituality, I get it. If you’re right and none of it’s real, then what does it matter? Try it on. Drink the Kool-Aid. What’s the what’s the harm in it? 12-step programs aren’t going to spit you out in worse condition. Do it for a year. The statistics are based around a year. If you can do 27 weeks’ worth of 12-step programming inside of a 52-week period, your chances of never drinking again or at least for 16 years are over 76%.

Nobody in AA or 12-step is going to ask you to do anything illegal. Nobody here’s going to tell you to do anything unethical or immoral. If they do, switch it up, get a different sponsor. That’s pretty rare. I’ve heard a couple of horror stories but only a couple out of twenty-plus years of recovery. It’s pretty rare that anybody would ask you to do anything that’s unethical at all.

Mostly, people in the 12-step world are going to try to help you get in alignment with your conscience so that you feel good about what you did today, so that you feel good about what you did yesterday. You perform enough estimable acts in enough days in a row, all of a sudden, self-esteem grows. That was my experience. All of a sudden, after 6 or 7 months, I didn’t feel like a piece of shit anymore.

I’ll say this, here’s a little pontification. One of my gripes about 12-step culture. We have this thing that we say in 12-step culture somebody asks you how you’re doing they say better than I deserve. I hear you. If you’re under a year sober, that very well may be true. I have been sober 21 years. I am a chosen child of the living God. I am not doing better than I deserve I’m right where God wants me.

I know I don’t live up to all the things that he wants for me. I pray for his strength, guidance, and direction constantly. It’s not like I’m perfect or something. I’m not a piece of shit either. I may have been, but I’m not anymore. I was and here’s an example. I was sitting in my home group this is about ten years ago. I’m sitting in my home group and I’ve got a brand new guy with me.

He’s got like three days sober. This dude with ten-plus years of sobriety gets on the post and he starts talking about some crazy road rage story about where he’s the center character and he behaved very poorly. He’s like, “That’s just what we do,” and everybody laughs and claps and I bump my sponsee I’m like, “We don’t all do that. No. That’s actually super unhealthy behavior. I don’t fucking act like that. That’s crazy.”

It gets this thought going of we can come in with such a self-degrading view of our existence that we just beat ourselves up unnecessarily. The difference between accountability with yourself, discipline, holding yourself to higher standards, there’s a line between that and beating up on yourself. That’s not that fuzzy of a line. It’s pretty clear, honestly. If you give yourself the benefit of the doubt, and I don’t mean a break on lack of discipline.

The difference between accountability and discipline is how you hold yourself to higher standards. Share on X

If you need more discipline in your life, you need to get up earlier you want to exercise harder you want to put yourself out there as a sponsor more, by all means, do that and get some accountability to do it. For fuck’s sake, quit telling yourself you’re a loser. Stop calling yourself a piece of shit, stop calling yourself stupid and I don’t mean out loud. I mean silently. Stop saying that stuff to yourself. It’s not true. You’re probably doing something hard for the first time it’s difficult. Things in life that are worth doing are hard. That’s why they’re worth doing. They’re desirable because they’re difficult.

I’m thinking about limiting beliefs it’s like I’m not worthy. It’s like yes you are worthy. Suit up, show up, do the next right thing. You are worthy. You got to start believing that you’re worthy. If you start believing you’re worthy, then your life can start to change.

You can start it with the action. The beauty of the 12-step programming is that you don’t have to believe anymore. You just need to have enough belief to take the action and then with a little bit of action, you’ll start to see it. People will see it before you do. “You look good. I haven’t seen you in six months. What’s going on? Are you doing something different?” “I quit drinking and I did this rehab thing.” They’re like, “Holy crap.”

“I started taking suggestions.”

They’re like, “Keep doing it. You seem great. That’s not on accident and eventually, we can start to metabolize that ourselves and go, “I am doing okay and I do feel comfortable just being me.” I can’t speak to the egomaniac that comes in and is like, ‘I’m this and needs to be right sized,” but I got to tell you, I work in the space and I’m very active in the 12-step world. I almost never meet those people. I meet people that come in who secretly underneath any talk. They don’t think they’re enough. It’s like more than 90% of the men that I talk to, I have intimate conversations with they don’t think they’re enough. I didn’t think I was enough.

Building A Life In Sobriety

At what point did you realize that sobriety wasn’t just about being sober?

Around the time I was sponsoring people. In the 6-to-8-month range, I started realizing that this actually works, that I could feel okay being me because it’s not just about the obsession. I would say the obsession and my self-hatred, my hatred for the human race all vanished at the same time. I haven’t returned. It’s been 21 years. That was a revelation and honestly, the revelation didn’t feel like a lottery win. It is. Looking backward I see it, I know that it’s a winning lottery ticket but I didn’t see it as a winning lottery ticket. It felt like somebody had thrown me a life preserver and I was actually on shore, so I feel like I’m panting coughing up salt water on the beach like I might actually survive this. That’s what it felt like.

When did it switch to, “I’m actually building a life?”

I struggled as much or maybe a little more than many with Imposter Syndrome probably the first 8 or 10 years. It took me a while. This pontificating I’m saying about you being enough and you being a child of God and you deserving a good life, that took me a decade in recovery to really feel that. I got stay at 5, 6 years making 6 figures, owning my own business, driving foreign cars, traveling the world, I was still terrified that somebody was going to kick me out.

I thought somebody was going to pull my number and be like, “No. We’ve been watching you, Estil. We have a big case built on you. This is for good people. You’re a piece of shit person you belong back here.” Yeah, around ten or so, I really allowed myself to feel the anointing and the presence of God in my life and that’s a lie, that I have a purpose here. I’m here to help other men find recovery, find God, to be a good husband, to be a present and engaged father. To leave the world maybe a just a smidge better than I found it. I have a purpose here. It took a while. Those old lies are like a smelly old shoe. They fit perfect.

I remember when I celebrated five years, people said, “Congratulations, you’re no longer a newcomer.” I was like, “What? Screw you, dude. I’ve been here for five years. I’m an old-timer.” That’s what we think. How quickly did ten years go by?

Looking backwards, it went fast. It seems like an impossibility. When I was newly sober, when somebody had ten years-plus at a birthday, I thought they’re lying. Literally, my knee-jerk reaction is they’re full of shit. Either they’re lying about the date or they didn’t use the way I did. Plain and simple. When I was 60 days sober, I wouldn’t have believed. What got me over the edge was going to meetings with people for like six months.

Six months when I was new, having conversations with them hanging out with them and then watching them get a year. I was like, “That dude has a year,” and I believe it because I saw it happen. I was around for some of that evolution. I watched it happen. You hit a year and you’re like, “Holy crap, is this real?” You see your buddy that got a year before, now he’s got two and you’re like, “All right, this is a real thing. This is a thing that people do.”

I see people who I swear they just relapsed and they just celebrated ten years. It’s like, “What? You’re ten years. You just relapsed like a couple of weeks ago.”

We’re just aging at this point because that enough time goes by and that’s how it starts to feel. I have people that I feel like same exact thing. I feel like just relapsed 3 weeks ago and they’ve got 5 years, 7 years, 10 years. It’s wild.

It happens. How do you stay spiritually and emotionally grounded with the turbulence of life, leading a treatment center, having a family, having kids?

I’d say starting the day with prayer. Meditation is a big part of it. Prayer throughout the day. I’ve got a notion. I would I’d like to challenge anybody that hears this with. If you’re struggling with prayer, I would recommend try this concept. Imagine that every single thought is a prayer. There’s no escaping prayer and that you’re praying all the time. It turns your attention to what am I praying for?

Are you praying for, she’s hot, what’s for lunch? I deserve more. Can it be more intentional than that? Give me the strength to do this hard challenge in front of me. Give me the coolness and calmness and presence of mind to not lose my shit as I walk into this trying situation that I’m about to go address. All of a sudden, your thought life gets cleaned up pretty quickly. I would challenge all of you. Try this on like a t-shirt. All thought is prayer. God hears every single thought. The next question is what am I praying for all day.

How do you protect your recovery when stress, money, responsibility and pressure pile up?

You know the old adage about roots and wings, you got to stay rooted because we can scaffold all kinds of interesting, ambitious things towards the sky whether it’s relationships, whether it’s career and finances, whether it’s fitness goals. I know that you’re into you’re into cycling and you’ve done like Ironmans and all that stuff. All those things, first of all, they’re big, they’re important, they’re hard. They’re worthwhile endeavors. At the end of the day, my human existence in recovery is a safe and secure sandbox for me to play with these ideas and to be ambitious and to try as hard as I can to be the best I can at whatever that thing is, whatever dimension of life we’re talking about.

When I can remember that I’m in the sandbox that God created for me, it’s like, “I need to talk to my sponsees, I need to make sure I’m praying, I need to make sure that I’m putting myself out there to be of service, that I’m leaving the world a better place today than I found it this morning.” This is funny. I came home after a pretty stressful day. My housekeeper goes, “Are you okay?”

I go, “It’s been stressful day, it was tough.” She’s like, “I’m sorry to hear that.” I almost immediately was like, “It doesn’t feel any more stressful or less stressful than when I was broke living in a halfway house on two terms of felony probation, so all in all, I’m good. I’m great. This is fine,” as I’m explaining this to my housekeeper. We’re good. Keep in your feet on the ground. It’s great to be ambitious and I’m a very ambitious go-getter.

I’m a very type A person. I’m all in support of going after your dreams, I’m a big believer in that. To answer the question, to equally stay rooted. I’m just a weird mammal wearing sneakers, trying to do God’s will. When I’m that simple, life is easier. It’s easier to stomach the losses and it’s easier or simpler to shoulder the wins. That’s equally important. So many of us, when we come into recovery, we’re so used to disaster. We’re so used to things falling apart. We don’t prepare well for success. We don’t prepare for success in relationships.

I see people say sabotage their own marriages. They sabotage relationships with their children, they sabotage friendships, they sabotage their career. You stay sober, you grow into recovery, you get beyond your crippling depression, you’re going to win at life. That’s what the earth is designed for, I think. It’s a creation and you’re part of the creation. You’re going to win. When you’re not punching yourself in the face all day, when you’re not walking around with the loaded horse power-driven weapon of life and not shooting yourself in the foot with it all day, you’re going to win. No matter how small, no matter how big, you’re going to win.

The question is can you handle that? Am I ready to rely on God again when things get good? That’s a thing a lot of us don’t plan for. “I hope this works.” What happens if it does? What are you going to do when the dog catches the fire truck? What will you do then? “I don’t know.” Give it some thought. Give it some thought because things might actually work out.

I think at that point, you have to be prepared to believe that I am worthy because that’s the thing that sabotages a lot of people, just the thought that I’m not worthy, I don’t deserve this. Better than I deserve. That’s a horrible thing to say. I’ve heard people say it too.

If you really mean that genuinely because you’re behaving like a heathen behind closed doors and when you’re not speaking so profoundly at an AA meeting, well then by all means, do you. My suggestion to people that are new, don’t live like a piece of shit and then don’t repeat that you are. Do estimable acts, grow self-esteem and own that. Own the new identity that you’re a decent person.

Perspectives On Relapse, Reality, And Compassion

I think I want to open it up to questions. I want to hand it over to you guys. You guys got any questions anything you want to ask Estil? Anything in this conversation that’s resonated with you?

I’m an open book. Nothing’s off limits.

What’s your perspective on relapse, both personally and professionally?

We can go a lot of different directions with this. Relapse is common. Not necessary but common. It’s another reason to pull out the stick and beat myself. I would strongly urge anybody who has come in and out of recovery to not do that. It’s not a weapon to be used against yourself. I would recommend conversely that it be used as fuel for the fire. Use it to fuel your ambition to have a better life and to lead a better life. It hurts my heart when people relapse and then our fellowship rejects them.

 

That hurts my heart a lot. I have stayed friends with many people that I’ve known over the years that did not stay sober. Some of them are not sober now. Some of them are in prison now. They’re still my friends. I don’t know why they wouldn’t be. There can be this weird thing and it’s not everybody. We even say in certain meetings like we don’t shoot our wounded. Some of us do. I don’t want to be the person that does that.

There’s a nuance between what I do to keep boundaries for myself and what becomes exclusionary or like pretentious in recovery. I like hanging out with my friends that have 10 and 20 years that are dads and that are running their businesses. I also like spending time with newcomers. Just because a somebody had 6 months and then went on a sick run for 6 months and they’re back, it’s not a flu. I’m not going to catch it by sitting next to you in the meeting.

I’m not going to catch it if we have an in-depth discussion over cheeseburgers or tacos. I’d rather have a conversation with that person, again within safe healthy boundaries. I may not invite somebody who just got out of prison or who is coming off of a sick one over to my house where my children live. Dit doesn’t mean I’m too good to sit on the curb, have a cigar, eat a taco, talk about life. Go explore together recovery. Those are two different things. I think that’s probably where some of that comes from. They start to think like, “I don’t want to be around that person. They’re not healthy.” I hear you but they’re back. That means they probably want to be healthy. I’m with that energy.

I think about I am the average of the five people that I spend the most time with. As they say, stick with the winners. It’s also important to spend time with people that are that are new or people that stumbled.

It helps with the roots part of that equation. It keeps my feet on the ground. Helps me remember where I come from.

It’s always that could be me, that used to be me or I’m glad that’s not me.

What an honor and privilege on a cosmic level to be the one entrusted to help that person grow past that into this wide-open green field where I get to play every day.

The next thing you know, they have ten years. It’s the best.

What an honor and privilege. When this is all over, if we have the opportunity to look back over our life spans, I don’t want to look at it with too much regret. There’ll be some. I work every day to make sure that I look at each decision, each conversation, each relationship as if this is part of the great experiment, the great human existence creation thing. The thing that all spiritual books are designed around. The thing that the thing that is talked about in the Bible, the thing that is talked about in music and art and culture from all around the globe for all millennia. It’s The Truman Show in real life.

It’s really happening right now. When I can remember that, when I have the presence of mind to think, “This is a simulation of sorts. How am I behaving?” If the stakes aren’t really as high as I think they are, the stakes are really do you choose good or evil? All of a sudden, I can slow down. It’s not that big of a deal. I can be present for other people. I can say yes and I can say no with confidence when it’s something unhealthy that violates me and my family’s boundaries.

What do you wish families better understood about addiction, mental health, and recovery?

Primarily how prevalent and common and effective recovery is. How many people recover. People recover permanently or at least in the long-term fashion at such an amazing percentage, it’s mind-blowing. When I tell people that recovery rates, I do CIT crisis intervention training with firefighters and police officers, they’re mystified when I tell them recovery rates are over 70%. They trip out they’re like, “Where are you getting that?” I’m like, “The CDC. No big deal.”

There’s a study done by the Administration of Veterans Affairs. Do you know when it was published? It was published in January of 2020. Maybe have been overshadowed by some other news that we got that year. It’s not sexy. Unfortunately, we live in a bloodlust entertainment culture. Look at the news. Do they report good stuff? No. Just the blood and guts. They don’t report the good stuff that’s happening. The same thing goes with peer-reviewed papers. Nobody wants to talk about how good things are going. I can tell you how many people die from drugs and alcohol in the United States every day. It’s 724 a day. Think about that for just a moment.

Imagine, 724 corpses in one place and they’re not and these aren’t people in their 80s. This is people 20 to 50 years old mostly. The lion’s share is between alcohol mostly. Alcohol’s the number one and then fentanyl. That’s sexy. People want to talk about that they want to talk about cartels, they want to talk about embargoes and trade tariffs and the war on drugs and dealers and how much dope have you seen. It’s a Vice news piece. The person sharing the sensitive information has to like change their voice and wear a mask.

I think it’s much more interesting to find out how many people found God today? How many people were reunited with their children for the first time in years today? How many people made their last financial amends today? How many people’s credit score went for and I mean people that were like us, struggling with keeping their heads above water in day-to-day life, how many of them hit 720 for the first time ever today? How many 25-year-olds got a driver’s license today? Hard to find those numbers. They’re everywhere.

I think I’ve heard that there’s three things that people want to hear more about. Conflict, comedy, and drama. When you’re talking about those things, it’s not really what people want to hear.

It’s not news noteworthy.

It is. People don’t want to watch that.

“Most people that work at 12-step programs stay sober the rest of their lives.” Next. What else have you got?

Allowing Yourself To Build A Community

We don’t see that. What would you tell somebody who’s early on in sobriety or recovery from mental health? What suggestion would you give them?

Allow yourself to build a community. Get with the people that are around you that are gravitating towards the light, towards the goodness. You want to look for reasons to be apart from to be isolated to say this is bullshit, that’s easy. It’s super easy. It’s like reading books by academics that naysay capitalism or American culture or Western European culture. If you want to find evidence that people hate that? It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere. You want to find evidence of people that that suck at life, that lose? Listen to popular music.

You guys ever heard of Clever? I like him so much. He’s rising. Post Malone produces him. I can only listen to 2 or 3 songs because it’s all about losing at life and I get it. People gravitate to that. They can identify with it. Post Malone’s music, The Weeknd’s music. Just go through popular music, what are they talking about? They’re talking about debauchery and losing at life. That’s why I like the bravado of hip-hop. I’m a ‘90s kid. It occurred to me yesterday that ‘90s hip-hop is the classic rock of today. People in their 40s and 50s listen to Wu-Tang Clan. We just do.

That’s what that was what was popular music in the 1990s and there’s so much bravado in hip-hop. I’m not talking about the I want to go kill people gangster rap necessarily but so much of hip-hop is first of all, it’s dad jokes that rhyme. It’s peppered with all of these connections to our culture to American culture. Most of it is very positive. Most of it is trying to build a career, trying to get the girl, trying to try to build, trying to grow. I love that. I love that energy.

You think about what you’re telling your subconscious mind because we have 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts every day and 90% of the thoughts I have today are the same thoughts I had yesterday. Those are the things that are feeding my subconscious mind. It’s what I’m praying about, it’s what I’m thinking about, it’s what I’m dreaming about and that’s what becomes reality.

I think about what am I what am I listening to? My music has changed over the years. Still love hip-hop but I listen to Connor Price and I listen to Big Sean and I listen to people that are super positive. Even like the Drakes and Jack Harlows, I listen to less of it because it’s there’s so much womanizing in it and that’s just not part of my life. There’s still this strong element of like building, growing, having a growth mindset, getting up and over challenges and I love that part of it.

I am not completely devoid of that type of music but it is something that I take into consideration. I take into consideration podcasts I listen to, books I read, like financial books are a great example. People make book recommendations all the time and I’ll quickly investigate the author. Who is the author? Have they done the thing they’re writing about? Are they a practitioner an academic?

I don’t trust academics. I trust practitioners. If you have taken the time to do something impossibly hard and have now taken the time in your successful leisure to record that, I’m in. I want to hear it. I want to know what it is. If you have spent your life studying the success of others and are ready to give me the map that you’re giving me second-hand, I’m not interested. I could be wrong in certain edge cases but by and large that’s my skeptical outlook.

Living on the streets, living homeless, I’m skeptical. I’m genuinely skeptical and at the same time, I’m optimistic. I believe there is good in people. I believe that a lot can be done a lot can be built. There’s so much growth. Being willing to admit and knowing that I’m probably wrong about whatever this thing is heh gives me the open doorway to learn. I learn amazing things happen. Procrastination is the is the death of opportunity.

Procrastination is the death of opportunity. Share on X

At first, it can be like, “That’s not for me I’m not good enough. I don’t belong in that world.” If I can start to get past that obstacle, the next thing is well that’s impossible. “It’s too hard.” “Is it really?” Outside of some very broad and roomy parameters, there are some guardrails. I’m 5’10”, 40-year-old White dude. I’m never going to be in the NBA. That’s pretty certain. It doesn’t matter how much I play, doesn’t matter how good I get in my local league, it’s over. If there ever was an opportunity, it’s long gone.

Barring things like that, almost anything is up for grabs. The things that matter, really, being the kind of dad I didn’t have, being the kind of sponsor that I was fortunate to have, being the friend and mentor that I’ve been fortunate to have in my years of recovery, being the husband to my wife that she deserves that I didn’t have modeled for me, all those things are possible. Financial security, living beyond survival mode, being able to invest, being able to invest for my kids’ future, all those things are totally possible. Things that I thought were impossible that don’t have anything to do with the NBA or being an astronaut or some crazy stuff.

At the end of the day, we want to feel good. We want to be happy. The reason we want to be in the NBA, the reason we want to be financially secure, the reason we want to travel, the reason we want a number 10 out of 10 relationship, the reason why we want a big house is at the end of the day, we just want to feel good.

I think for me and maybe for a lot of people, I want to feel like my utility is valuable. I want to feel like I can be a man. I can support my wife and my kids. I can provide them not only with the with what they need in terms of food, shelter, education but also with the love and belonging and the ear and the shoulder that they deserve to have. I want to be a good provider, I want to be a good dad, I want to be a good husband. I enjoy the fruits of that when I’m better at it.

What does a good day in 2026 look like for Estil Wallace?

It’s been pretty good so far. I slept in. I woke up about 7:00. That’s sleeping in for me. Woke up about 7:00 next to my son. He was still asleep. I got up and had some caffeine and caught up with my wife, talked about the rest of the week what it looks like what our schedules are today. I have a gym at my house. I went into the gym and I got into some prayer, meditation, talked to God a little bit then I put on some Christian rap super loud.

After, I did shoulders and it felt great. I took a hot shower, ate some breakfast, got dressed and I didn’t take the bus. I rode in a super bougie German vehicle down here through an old neighborhood that I used to do hard drugs in. Driving through the hood in my brand-new car. That’s always an interesting experience a juxtaposition. It feels like I’m on mushrooms most of the time. Honestly, I feel like I’m microdosing mushrooms. What am I doing after this? I’m meeting with a probably a guy you know after this over at our administrative offices for an hour or so.

It’s going to sound pretentious then I’m stopping by the tailor. I got a new suit I’m officiating a wedding in Thailand so I got a new suit needs to get tailored and then I’m going home to hang out with my wife and my kids figure out what we’re going to cook for dinner tonight. Wife and I have got some business stuff we want to talk about. I’ll probably in bed by 9:00. Probably smoke a cigar tonight by the fire.

Get In Touch With Estil

Tell me where can people connect with you and learn more about you? Tell me about you, tell me about Cornerstone. Tell me about anything you want to talk about.

Cornerstone, similar to Camelback Recovery, we’re a behavioral healthcare agency. We do a lot of stuff. We do substance use disorder treatment. We largely do mental health primary treatment. We have multiple facilities. We have hundreds of clients. We have hundreds of staff. We’re pretty good size. We’re not the biggest but we’re we’ve grown a lot over the years.

Beyond that, I think the best 12-step meeting in town is at our North Scottsdale facility on Tuesday nights at 7:00 PM. It’s a men’s meeting so any of you men, you’re cordially invited. It’s called the North Scottsdale Tuesday Night Men’s Stag Group. It is fantastic you can find it at Area03.com, which is the AA website for the Arizona area. You can find it’s a listed meeting. That meeting’s amazing. You can find me there most Tuesdays just hanging out.

If you’re into social media, I do have an Instagram page that I do have a manager manage. I check in on so I do check messages and stuff from time to time. Instagram, it’s my name @Estil_Wallace. It’s a weird name, easy to forget. That’s fine. Cornerstone also has an Instagram. I think mine is probably more interesting. We’ve done some podcasts and some content stuff. We actually did a whole series on the 12 steps which is pretty cool. Some men I know have that I don’t really know have come up to me at meetings and been like, “You do the 12-step thing?” I’m like, “Yeah.” They’re like, “I show that to my sponsees. I showed step 3 to my sponsees.” I’m like, “All right, cool. That’s dope.” Yeah, you can find me on YouTube or Instagram.

Is there anything that I missed, anything that I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you?

Not that I can think of. We could do this for six hours. We could have all kinds of topics. This has been a great conversation.

Estil, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you.

 

Important Links

• Cornerstone Healing Center
• Alcoholics Anonymous Arizona
• Estil Wallace on Instagram
• Cornerstone Healing Center on Instagram
• Estil Wallace on YouTube

 

About Estil Wallace

Estil Wallace — Founder & CEO, Cornerstone Healing Center

Estil Wallace is a recovery advocate, entrepreneur, and behavioral health leader best known as the Founder and CEO of Cornerstone Healing Center—one of Arizona’s fastest-growing treatment providers for addiction, mental health, and co-occurring disorders.

With more than 20 years of long-term sobriety, Estil combines lived experience with clinical insight to help individuals and families transform lives. His own journey from struggling with addiction and homelessness as a youth to building a mission-driven healing organization fuels his passion for recovery, resilience, and community support.

Estil has over a decade of experience in the recovery field and has worked directly with individuals inside correctional systems and nonprofit recovery programs. Under his leadership, Cornerstone has expanded from a small residential facility to a comprehensive behavioral health agency offering residential treatment, intensive outpatient programs (IOP), virtual care, and supportive services across multiple Arizona locations.

A respected voice in the recovery community, Estil is known for his authentic approach, practical wisdom, and commitment to evidence-based care. He has been featured in media outlets such as Vice News and Recovery Today Magazine, and hosts the Struggle & Strive Podcast, where he explores addiction recovery, personal growth, and purpose-driven living.

Estil’s work focuses on empowering people to heal deeply, build stability, and create lasting change, especially for those battling substance use disorders and mental health challenges. His leadership blends entrepreneurial insight with a compassionate recovery philosophy, making him a trusted mentor, clinician ally, and advocate for accessible, high-quality treatment.