156 Thrasherow did you become a user of
drugs and/or alcohol?
I started drinking when I was 17 or- I remember feeling like I was such a late
bloomer with that stuff. I started drinking
some beers in Europe on a skate trip. Real
mellow at first. But once I realized that
drinking seemed to alleviate the social anxiety
that I always had, I fucking floored it.
When did you realize you had a problem?
At a certain point I realized that I preferred
to be (at least a little bit) fucked up to do
anything. So I was kind of drinking all of
the time. That seemed like a red flag. But I
surrounded myself with people doing the
same stuff, so it was kind of sustainable. It
wasn’t until a few of my best friends sat me
down and expressed to me their genuine
concern about the direction my life was going
that I fully realized how bad it had become.
How bad did it get? What was the
breaking point that made you decide it
was time to stop/get help?
I was blacking out all the time. Months
would fly by in a haze. I got set on fire. My
skateboarding career was really fizzling out,
but I didn’t care to fight for it because I felt
like shit, physically. I couldn’t recover from
injuries. I thought I was having fun, but it was
pretty much the same day over and over. It’s
a difficult sentiment to convey, but basically I
felt like I had stopped progressing as a person.
That was probably the worst part. Wasting
time. After my friends sat me down for that
informal intervention I saw shit differently and
I knew deep down that the party was over.
How did you get sober?
I started by just trying to be clean for a little
bit. But quickly and luckily I felt like it was the
right thing for me. I connected with friends
who had been through the same thing. I
skated a lot. I got obsessed with feeling good
physically. I ended some toxic relationships.
I went to therapy to address some of the
shit I couldn’t figure out by myself. Most
importantly, I was just honest with myself.
What are the challenges of staying
sober?
In the beginning I felt emotionally raw. You
lose some of that artificial armor. You gotta
deal with everything life has to offer. Build real
armor. Also, I was very afraid of becoming
boring. But I guess becoming an old,
uninspired alcoholic is really boring.H
KEVIN “SPANKY” LONG
PHOTOS: ATIBA