Hot Charlie’s founder Charlie Backer has launched his own podcast to explore his journey toward sobriety—and speak to others struggling with alcohol and mental health issues.
In The Sober Charlie Podcast, Backer talks frankly about sobriety and mental health, drawing in large part from personal experience. Backer himself has remained sober since giving up alcohol in March 2017, which dovetailed almost perfectly with the launch of Hot Charlie’s.
Backer had been making hot sauce for years, and friends had encouraged him to start selling his product. He was starting to take the idea seriously, but he says sobriety unlocked the door to his life as an entrepreneur. “Sobriety was the greatest gift that I never wanted,” Backer says. “But if I hadn’t become sober, I know that Hot Charlie’s would have never done anything. I was able to take that newly acquired energy I had, and as opposed to putting it toward drinking and numbing things, I put it toward the hot sauce. That was where my focus went. I gave up the sauce to make the sauce, I guess.”
With The Sober Charlie Podcast (new episodes will be released every Monday on Apple Podcasts and Google Play Music) Backer’s aim is to be relatable and authentic: to encourage listeners who are hurting to start conversations, and to remind people that “it’s OK to not be OK.” If he sounds like somebody who is comfortable discussing these issues, Backer’s the first to admit it wasn’t always this way.
As somebody who describes himself as instinctively “very private,” Backer knows how difficult the first steps to sobriety can be. He talks about the shields people often put up defensively, and repeatedly advocates embracing vulnerability. In episode two, Backer talks about a painful wake-up call that proved to be pivotal—a story he says he has never told before. He speaks about these difficult subjects candidly, and with optimism.
He says he wasn’t the kind of person who woke up craving alcohol, but his wife, Kelly, helped him see that his relationship with alcohol was unhealthy. “I would get off work at 7 o’ clock at night, and I’d be like, ‘OK, I’m going to drink some vodka, or have some wine,’” Backer says. “And it became that pattern. I was drinking in excess, and I was functioning. But you would wake up those mornings like, ‘What did I do? Do I regret something?’ I just got tired of that feeling.”
Therapy sessions before and after going sober helped Backer recover. “As I started talking, I realized that it's like they say in Shrek—just like onions, we have layers,” he says. “As my therapist started peeling back these layers, I realized that I was using alcohol to sort of numb myself. I was self-medicating. As I stopped drinking, I realized that I had struggled with social anxiety or some mild depression before when I was drinking.”
For the first year of his sobriety, he avoided talking about it on public forums. “I wouldn't even put it on Facebook. It was humiliating to me, and I was ashamed,” Backer says. He only decided to begin speaking out about his experiences when he marked one year sober in March. Since then, he has been posting updates to his Sober Charlie accounts on Instagram and YouTube—and he says the immediate response took him by surprise.
“People started reaching out to me,” Backer says. “Whether they be friends that I've known for 20 years or strangers, they’ll watch my videos and say, ‘Hey, thank you so much’ or text me late at night. These people I would never think of are reaching out to me, just saying that they're hurting.”
Backer is comfortable offering advice where he feels he can do so appropriately. For example, he intends to cover subjects like navigating the first 30 days of sobriety. However, he is adamant that every journey to sobriety is unique, and there are no catchall solutions. Crucially, Backer reminds listeners that a podcast is no substitute for the help a professional can provide. Episode one begins with a disclaimer, with Backer saying: “I am not a doctor. This podcast—in quotation marks—is for entertainment purposes only.”
If you or a loved one is facing a mental and/or substance use disorder, there's free and confidential help available through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Call 1-800-662-4357.
