Episode 16 - Keagan

This week on Sober Champs, Pete and co-host Aiden welcome Keagan, celebrating an impressive five years clean. Originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, Keagan shares how his family immigrated to the Seattle area when he was six, settling into a life that looked good from the outside but was filled with chaos behind closed doors.

Keagan opens up about his angry childhood years, getting kicked out of school for fighting, and how his dad's heavy drinking created a volatile home environment. The conversation gets real when he describes losing his best friend in a car accident at 17 – the moment he calls flipping his "alcoholic switch" that led him to reject any belief in a higher power.

The episode doesn't shy away from the progression of Keagan's addiction – from weed and alcohol to that first opiate high he chased for years, leading to heroin use and multiple arrests. With raw honesty, he walks us through his prison sentence in Arizona, where even behind bars he continued using until March 4, 2020, when everything changed through what he describes as a spiritual awakening.

Pete and Aiden create space for Keagan to share how rebuilding happened – the family who wouldn't bail him out but flew down to ensure his safe return home, finding sober housing through WELD, attending Zoom recovery meetings during the pandemic, and eventually becoming a house manager to help others.

There's something powerful about hearing these three men talk candidly about transformation – from prison cells to helping professionals, from broken family relationships to the joy of being a trusted uncle, from hopelessness to finding peace. This episode isn't about perfect recovery stories – it's about the real work of finding gratitude even in the darkest places and building a life worth staying sober for.