Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
Dennis Kriba, welcome to the Midlife Fulfill podcast, a vulnerable conversations episode.
Dennis Kriba [00:00:07]:
Thanks for having me, Bernie.
Bernie Borges [00:00:09]:
Well, thank you for, being willing to join me for this vulnerable conversation. You and I met, a little while ago, a few weeks ago, at, at an event, at a conference. And I learned a little bit about your story, and, thought it would be great for you to come on and share your story. It is a very personal story. If I was to characterize it as a midlife crisis, it would be an understatement. I think it’s much more than that. And so why don’t we begin, Dennis? Just tell us a little bit about you, your background, and then we’ll we’ll get into your story.
Dennis Kriba [00:00:47]:
Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Bernie. I, I mean, by day, I’m, I work for a health company, and, I’m a project manager in IT. So I’m on the computer all day in meetings, planning, delegating, you know, finishing up documents and, etcetera. And, COVID hit, as we all know, in 2020. My company was very proactive with that and sent us home in March of 2020 right away. And, actually, I’ve been working from home since then.
Dennis Kriba [00:01:21]:
So, you know, that’s over 4 years of working from home. And that’s an important part of my story because it changed my patterns and my habits and not in a good way. So instead of commuting to work 45 minutes in the morning and 45 minutes in in the evening, an hour and a half, you know, suddenly I had an hour and a half free every day. And that really changed up how my evenings after work operated. Previously, I’d be home 5 o’clock, 5:30, 6 o’clock, make supper, have a couple of drinks, relax, enjoy the evening. Now, I was off at 4 o’clock and I really started hitting the bottle right after work. I started drinking alcohol right after work. It wasn’t something I planned for, it just kind of happened.
Dennis Kriba [00:02:10]:
And, I started to use that as a coping mechanism for myself during COVID. I was at home, I’d finish work. Instead of commuting, I’d grab a beer, sit down on my personal computer, play some video games, and quickly grab another drink, play more video games, and and that would go on. And before I knew it, I was consuming a lot of alcohol, 6 to 8 drinks, a night, and yet I still think or still thought I had control of the problem because, I wasn’t really allowing myself to realize that I had a problem. And I think that’s a very popular thing that happens with people that are drinking. They they think they’re in control. They don’t realize they have a problem. They won’t admit that they have a problem.
Dennis Kriba [00:03:01]:
And, I was really good at hiding that I had a problem. And, actually, I feel like COVID helped with that. For instance Sure.
Bernie Borges [00:03:09]:
Sure. Can can I let me just jump in with a with a quick question because I I can no. I can see that you are are very intentional about sharing your story because you wanna help others. I know that about you. Even though I haven’t known you that long, I know you wanna help others. Tell us a little bit about how was it impacting your life? Was it impacting your work? Was it impacting your relationships? Your health? How was it impacting you?
Dennis Kriba [00:03:36]:
Yeah. Thanks for that, Bernie. I actually wrote, a very large, chapter in my book about the effects of drinking on my life. And, you know, in hindsight, when I look at that chapter and I read through those words, I I just can’t believe I continued to drink. I mean, first and foremost were the hangovers and, you know, what I call fuzzy brain in the morning. I’m not sure what the scientific term for that is, but, you know, you’re very slow in the mornings. I had problems multitasking, keeping up with complex tasks. You know, it took me a couple hours maybe to warm up in the morning, and, you know, I grabbed a coffee and sat in front of my computer trying to, you know, shake the cobwebs off of my brain.
Dennis Kriba [00:04:21]:
I had, pretty intense headaches and some not so pleasant physical symptoms like acid reflux, upset stomach, my bowel movements weren’t healthy. There’s a lot that comes with drinking that much alcohol that’s not favorable for you. And it wasn’t pleasant at all. I was tired at the end of the day. I was drunk at the end of the night to have any viable conversations with my wife. And, again, I don’t wanna say it was lucky, but with the COVID framework, I mean, the only times we kinda met was to eat food or after our our nightly activities that that we kind of did solo. So I would eat and then come back up here, play on my computer, drink some more, and then we would watch some TV. That became a typical schedule.
Dennis Kriba [00:05:17]:
I had nothing else to do. It was either watch TV or play around on my computer. And so it was it was quite easy for me to hide it and to get drunk and not be aware most of
Bernie Borges [00:05:30]:
the day. And and so this started 2020 during COVID. What was your age at the time? It was only 4 or 5 years ago.
Dennis Kriba [00:05:37]:
Yeah. 2020, I was 48.
Bernie Borges [00:05:40]:
Okay. Alright. So you’re right smack in that midlife season. When, Dennis, did you acknowledge that you had a problem?
Dennis Kriba [00:05:52]:
Yeah. Thanks, Bernie. I call it the incident, and I’m sure a lot of people have, the incident in their lives where you reach a moment in time where you make that decision to go forward or to change. Unfortunately, I, I was gaming 1 night online with friends. That’s, that’s something we did when we were stuck at home. We met up for games, much like you and I talking. And, we were playing something very complex and, it was a Friday night. So, you know, certainly I’d started the night off drinking quite heavily and wasn’t all there when we we started this gaming session.
Dennis Kriba [00:06:33]:
I got frustrated with some friends. I was trying to get some help. I didn’t feel like they were helping me, and I kind of just exploded. I saw red and that happened quite a bit while I was drinking that I couldn’t stop myself from losing my calm. I got in range. The PG version of this is I told my friends where to go, and I disconnected from the call immediately and pretty much fumed the rest of the night that, they refused to help me. And, the next morning, I expected a phone call from my friend saying, hey. No problem.
Dennis Kriba [00:07:08]:
Like, I don’t know what happened last night, and that never came. As the day got a little bit older and as I got towards the time got towards noon, I I started getting this pit in my stomach saying, you know, maybe this time is different. I I don’t know if we’re okay. So I called him, Ernie, and he told me it’s not okay, that we were not okay. And he basically broke up with me over the phone. You know, we talked about, you know, I just listened. He told me I was hard to be around. I was very negative.
Dennis Kriba [00:07:42]:
I wasn’t a healthy person to be around, and he needed a break from me. And I got off of that call really upset. I just fell down on the floor crying, and I just kept telling myself like, what did I what did I do? What happened? Like, man, I like, I screwed up. I don’t I don’t know how this happened. Like, how did I get here? And I was that close to losing my best friend or had lost my best friend at that point in my opinion. And, I kind of my life changed after that. I decided that I was not going to live like this anymore and that I would you know, take a break from drinking. So that morning, right after that
Bernie Borges [00:08:23]:
call suggest that? Did he suggest that you do that?
Dennis Kriba [00:08:27]:
He didn’t. We never really talked about drinking again. Like, I mean, I hit it well and, you know, everyone paused to go get a drink. And so Okay. You know, it was, we were a very social group, very you know, drinking was was part of us. And, you know, as you drink more, you can handle more. So it it it wasn’t that big of a deal to have 4 to 6 drinks and still be okay on a Friday night. But the signs pointed to the fact that the alcohol was impacting me and I knew it.
Dennis Kriba [00:08:58]:
And I needed that push. For some reason, I wouldn’t allow myself to admit I had a drinking problem even though I knew I had a drinking problem until that moment in time. And I’m okay saying it out loud. Like, I’m an alcoholic. I like to drink more than 4 drinks in a session, and and I I cannot live like that. I need I need to live sober.
Bernie Borges [00:09:26]:
Sure. Sure. So what about, you know, if you don’t mind my asking in this vulnerable conversation, what about, your wife? I mean, did you and she discuss it? You know, what what was going on in that relationship?
Dennis Kriba [00:09:40]:
Yeah. I I mean, our relationship has always been strong, but, obviously, it was impacted by my drinking. And it it just we didn’t really know why. We we wouldn’t attune it to that. Like I said, I I hid my drinking fairly well.
Bernie Borges [00:09:54]:
Okay.
Dennis Kriba [00:09:54]:
And, you know, between the 2 of us, if we were watching TV, you’re you’re fairly silent. You know, so we didn’t have all of these conversations even though we’re living in the same house together. You know, she was downstairs. I was upstairs a lot of the time. And, you know, most of our interactions were over food when when I was more sober than not or at the end of the night when we’re ramping down and we were silent. I also hid my drinking by hiding empty bottles, going on massive liquor store runs where I I would load up at a time and hide extra bottles. And so I started hiding the problem not only from Herb, but from myself so so that the I really couldn’t count the amount of liquor or the amount of mix I was using, the amount of of Coca Cola or, you know, whatever it would be, how many beers I had that evening.
Bernie Borges [00:10:47]:
Well, Dennis, I know that, you’ve got a a new book out called Dennis on the Run, a men’s survival guide to lasting change.
Dennis Kriba [00:10:55]:
Yeah.
Bernie Borges [00:10:55]:
And, you tell your story there. Why don’t you share a little bit of what’s in the book? And, of course, at the end, we’ll ask you to tell us where people can get it. But where are you now? How did you come to a point in, you know, this very, big challenge that you faced at this point in your life? How did you overcome it?
Dennis Kriba [00:11:19]:
Yeah. I, I did write a book. I’m I’m very excited about it and, really in 2022 that my journey started, I started blogging and, writing about, my health and wellness and sharing things in my life. And, a call out from a local publisher went out, and I got, a chapter into a running book about how running saved my life through my sobriety. So, really, I credit the changes in habits that I had to do with my sobriety and my change in perspective on life. So, rather than waking up in the morning all fuzzy brained, I woke up with a ton of energy and all of a sudden I had 90 minutes extra a day to do something with and I decided to get fit. So, every morning I actually changed up my routine, made a coffee in my basement. I have a little bit of a fitness studio and I jumped on the treadmill.
Dennis Kriba [00:12:17]:
And every morning since for almost 4 years, I jump on that treadmill, I run, or walk 4 to 5 kilometers over, let’s just say 40, 45 minutes. And that’s how I start off my morning. So, I really decided to start getting more fit, more active, get my butt out of the out of the chair, out of the computer, and, that flowed into eating healthier, being more intentional about eating with my wife, doing some meal planning. So it started with some physical changes, and and then I needed to deal with some mental changes. One of the problems that I had when I stopped drinking was dealing with the quiet time, dealing with my brain and the thoughts in there, and they kept going to that moment. They kept going back to, you know, how how could you let yourself get there? How could you drink so much and not realize what you’re doing? And so I started, investigating meditation and mindfulness. I started spending hours by myself, and, that really allowed me to start start tuning my brain into understanding where I was and start accepting, those feelings and what happened to me without judgment. And, I worked with a psychologist as well, and we worked through a lot of those mental challenges that come with such a trauma of getting to that rock bottom and then trying to pick myself off the floor literally, and recovering there.
Dennis Kriba [00:13:47]:
And I talk about this in my book, my journey of physical transformation and a lot of mental transformation, which is harder to talk about because you can’t really see it.
Bernie Borges [00:13:59]:
Right. Right.
Dennis Kriba [00:14:00]:
But, I spend a lot of time in meditation and mindfulness just trying to be in the moment, such that, one of my new models in life, became a next shot. So, Bernie, I don’t know if you’re a golfer or not, but, I take a lot
Bernie Borges [00:14:16]:
of No. The the few times I play, I always say that I’ll never play again. And that’s an easy promise that I can keep to myself because it’s so hard to hit that little white ball into the hole that it frustrates me. So I don’t I don’t play except on a very rare occasion. But go ahead. At least share your story.
Dennis Kriba [00:14:35]:
It it’s a tough sport for sure. And I’ve actually done a lot of sports psychology and read a lot of, golf books, which, you know, become pretty relevant in life because, you know, in in golf, you can hit a perfect shot, and it it bounces off a sprinkler and goes out of bounds. Just like in life, you can be the best person and then life throws you a curveball or what I like to say, windy days. There’s lots of windy days for me to deal with and you have to face that adversity with lots of resiliency. So, in golf, there’s a term, that I learned called next shot. And what it means is you all you can do is deal in the present moment. It doesn’t matter what happened on your last shot or the last hole, and you can’t think 2 holes ahead. All you can do is look at that ball and say, where do I want you to go next? So, next shot really became a life model for me, meaning be present, be mindful, be in this moment, and worry about what’s happening today.
Dennis Kriba [00:15:32]:
Worry about this interview and discussion with Bernie, and don’t let your mind focus on whatever else is happening next. So next shot became one of my life mottos. And I talk about positive sayings in my book quite a bit because I I believe reframing your thoughts and thinking about positive things and being able to just trick your brain into thinking a different way is really important. And one of the ways that you can do that is with, you know, recalling positive sayings or mantras or mottos or whatever you wanna call it. So, next shot, you can remember that.
Bernie Borges [00:16:08]:
I like that. I like that. That that makes a lot of sense. Just really focus on the here and now. Like you say, be present. Dennis, is is community, a factor? Is there a role the community plays? I I you know, the people that I have met and I’ve not I’ve not met a lot, but those that I have met that are alcoholic but sober rely on community as as a big support mechanism in their life. Is that true for you?
Dennis Kriba [00:16:36]:
Yeah. That’s a good question, Bernie. And I think I’ve actually launched an online community myself to support men that want to change and transform their lives because I feel like I didn’t have that when I went through my problems. I didn’t have a tight men’s community where we had vulnerable discussions and honest discussions about our health and mental health. And I didn’t talk about my problem and I didn’t talk about my recovery, my sobriety. I did it a lot solo. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have help. I had a great support network.
Dennis Kriba [00:17:10]:
My wife and I are very close. I’ve got some friends, but a lot of my friends were based on in my social network and and they were drinkers. And I was no longer a drinker when I decided to be sober. And not only that, I got into this fitness regime. So all of a sudden, the social network that I had didn’t really exist or didn’t exist for the new dentist and what I wanted to do with my life and self improve and and get into health and wellness. So, I found it a very difficult time for me to find communities. And and so now I’m trying to create this community of my own to support men that are ready to change and they’re looking for help. They’re tired of status quo or what you would call, you know, your midlife crisis, and they don’t know what to do.
Dennis Kriba [00:17:56]:
They’re scared to change. They’re scared of what change means. They’re the breadwinner. They’re they’ve got mortgages to pay. They’ve got a job. They’re scared to change jobs. They’re scared to rock the boat. And mostly, they want to talk to other people that have done this and know that it’s okay.
Dennis Kriba [00:18:13]:
And I believe men want to be vulnerable. We’re just scared and don’t necessarily have communities to do that. And so I think community is super important, and I did it mostly alone. I wish I had had a very strong community, and, I’m trying to build that for myself and other men moving forward. It’s called the Beyond Survival Initiative.
Bernie Borges [00:18:37]:
Okay. Thank you for sharing that. So, you know, Dennis, this vulnerable conversation can be a a two way conversation. So I’m gonna share something very personal with you and the listener. And that is that I have a small community of 4 guys, me and 3 other men, in the same age range. We’re all just a few years apart. We’re all in our sixties. And we get together every once in a while.
Bernie Borges [00:19:04]:
We got together in person for a long weekend in South Carolina back in, I think it was, September. And, we planned this month in advance, and we opened up. We’ve shared things with each other that we have not shared with anyone and any other person on the planet, including our spouses. And that little community, it’s not a big community, it’s a very small community, is extremely meaningful to me. And I would encourage you to, you know, think about doing something like that with just a very small, tight knit community of people. I think in your case, as is the case with me, other men, I think there’s a lot of value just like women get together. My wife has the same thing. She’s got a small circle of women friends that she gets together with that I’m sure that she discusses things with them that she doesn’t discuss with me.
Bernie Borges [00:19:55]:
And I think that’s very healthy, and I think we we all need it. And it’s a huge, blessing in my life, and again, I would encourage you to do that. I think it’s amazing, Dennis, that you have accomplished what you’ve accomplished, and I’m so proud of you and so happy for you and your wife. I’m sure it’s good for your marriage as well. But the fact that you’ve accomplished it without the benefit of community, boy, that’s to me, that’s just like you you buck the odds. Like, you did this the hard way in some respects, you know? Have you thought about that?
Dennis Kriba [00:20:30]:
Yeah. I mean, I I’ve been thinking about that a lot, especially, I know one of your pillars is relationships and, you know, I pay attention to it a lot as well. And while I’ve been building this community, it it comes up in my brain a lot. And I talk about my support network in my book and primarily I’ve leaned on professionals. So, I’ve done a lot of work with psychologists and therapists and everybody I work with becomes a half therapist for me. So, my physiotherapist, you know, we talk about, we talk about life. And when I go for a massage, you know, face down on a table for for 30, 45 minutes, we talk about life. And so, you know, I got this support network.
Dennis Kriba [00:21:13]:
And and you know what? I do I do have a set of friends and and, you know, we hang out and we we do stuff, but I don’t feel like I had that close vulnerable, close knit community that you’re talking about. I’m so happy that you have it because I think it’s rare. I think it’s rare for guys to have that and
Bernie Borges [00:21:31]:
It is rare.
Dennis Kriba [00:21:32]:
It is. You know? I have that group. We we we play board games or we go on a golf trip. But sitting around in a circle and having a discussion, an honest discussion about your mental health, perhaps, that’s a deeper community that I think every guy needs. And, I think you’re right. I need it. I’ve been searching for it, and maybe I I haven’t been able to find it. So I’ve decided to create my own.
Dennis Kriba [00:21:57]:
I’ve also, through this opportunity and through some, media presence, been in touch with a couple of groups. And as a matter of fact, Bernie, on, next Tuesday is my first meeting with a in person men’s group that I joined and have been accepted into. And, they’re the long shipment of Edmonton. And, they’re that tight knit small group that I’ve been looking for, I hope. And, I’m really looking forward to meeting some new people and being in the presence of a community that’s interested in having those vulnerable discussions, going deep with a process and a plan and leadership that’s ready to support men. And, I, you know, I’m super excited about that.
Bernie Borges [00:22:49]:
That’s great. I’m very excited for you for that. I think that’s gonna be great. And, I hope you share down the road how that community is working for you, and it sounds like it’s got a lot of great potential for you. I wanna share something else, from my life that’s relevant to this conversation, and then I’m gonna tie it to your story. So many, many, many decades ago, I was a smoker, a cigarette smoker. I started when I was a child. I think I was maybe 12.
Bernie Borges [00:23:19]:
And so, by the time I was 20 or 21, I had already been smoking for, you know, call it 8 years. And, doctor appointment, he listened to my lungs, and he didn’t like what he what he heard and just warned me that I probably wouldn’t live very long. So I got motivated to quit smoking. But as you know, nicotine is there’s there’s an addiction to nicotine. It’s not easy to quit. So I went through a hypnosis program, and I’m not gonna give all the details on it because I don’t wanna take a lot of time. But the net of the program was that I wasn’t at the end of it, I wasn’t gonna be a stop smoker. I was gonna be a nonsmoker.
Bernie Borges [00:23:54]:
And it worked, Dennis, because to this day, from that time and by the way, it was a multi month program. It wasn’t a one time thing. It was it spanned probably 3 months. At the end of it, I was a nonsmoker. And and as a nonsmoker, I had 0. And to this day, I’ve never been tempted to smoke a cigarette. In fact, it it it repulses me. Like, I have 0.
Bernie Borges [00:24:14]:
So the idea of a nonsmoker and I kinda have the same impression of you, like, you are a non consumer of alcohol. Right? Am I right about that?
Dennis Kriba [00:24:24]:
Yeah. Absolutely. There’s there’s no more alcohol for me, and a part of that is, replacing a bad habit with a good habit. So I make sure that I’ve got tasty nonalcoholic drinks in the house ready to go. One of my favorites is an Arnold Palmer, which is half iced tea, half lemonade. I make the mix myself. And, really, what I did was every time that I go downstairs to grab a drink, I grab something instead. So it was a replacement therapy for me, and that’s one of the keys that I did to fix my habit.
Dennis Kriba [00:24:58]:
I replaced a bad habit, which was grabbing a beer or grabbing a drink with a good habit, which was grabbing an Arnold Palmer or a water or something healthier to drink. And, I just got in a new habit and started doing that. Same thing with my morning routine. I just jumped on that treadmill and replaced that old fuzzy brain habit of mine. And eventually, I just started having all of these healthy habits that built on top of each other. Some days it’s overwhelming. I mean, when you go for a walk in the morning and I walk at lunch as well, I’ve trained for marathons and run a marathon. So that’s, you know, you add another 8 to 10 hours worth of running.
Dennis Kriba [00:25:40]:
You add 10 minutes worth of meditation a day, and it starts to get pretty overwhelming to live a healthy life. But, you know, these habits are really good for me, and they keep me on the right track. And so so I keep them up, and, it’s one of the things I, again, I talk about in my book is is these replacement habits and making sure that, I’m sure everyone’s heard this before. Right? If you’re addicted to candy, just make sure you don’t have candy in the house and have something else that you’d, that you’d rather eat. And and so I did that with drinks.
Bernie Borges [00:26:10]:
Fantastic. Well, Dennis, yours is an inspiring story, and I’m just so grateful for you to come on the podcast and have this vulnerable conversation. Please share with my listener where they can connect with you, learn more about you, your story, and, of course, your book as well.
Dennis Kriba [00:26:30]:
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you so much. My book’s available on Amazon across the world. I think you can, you can just Google, Dennis Kriba or Dennis on the Run, and you’ll find my book on Amazon, and you’ll find my website. Officially my website’s denniskriba.com. And, that’s where I’ve got more information about my book, more information about my community. I also, I blog weekly about men’s health and wellness.
Dennis Kriba [00:26:57]:
So, you can catch, subscribe there and catch my, weekly blog every month or every week rather.
Bernie Borges [00:27:03]:
And, Dennis, I just wanna repeat something I said earlier in this conversation, and that is that, you know, we met only recently. And, I know from those conversations when we met that your passion is to share your story with other men and to help other men. You’re not out there to sell books. You wanna get your story in front of other men as an inspiration to help other men who might be struggling with whatever they might be struggling with. And so I commend you for that. That’s very, very honorable. And again, I thank you for joining me today on this vulnerable conversation episode.
Dennis Kriba [00:27:38]:
Yeah. Thanks a lot for having me, Bernie. And I always say if I can do it, you can do it. So, get my book. And, if you see yourself in there, you can do it too.
Bernie Borges [00:27:47]:
Fantastic. Thank you, Dennis.
Dennis Kriba [00:27:49]:
Thank you.
