Matt Childs took his first drink when he was barely a teenager, but things didn’t really get out of hand until later. When he opened up a restaurant with his wife, they got a license to sell beer, and thats when things really took a turn for the worse.
Imagine an undisciplined person with unlimited access to cheap booze and restaurant food. It’s a recipe for disaster. Matt can rattle off his list of times alcohol has nearly killed him, the only thing he’s missing is the partridge in a pear tree.
- 30 total arrests,
- 40 or more emergency room visits
- 20 detoxes
- 3 trips to rehab
- 2 visits to the ICU,
- and several trips to the psych ward.
That’s a laundry list of reasons to quit drinking, but it was a comment from someone at his anger management class that was the real catalyst for change. They hold him that they wouldn’t be surprised to see him on the front page of the newspaper for murder, and that’s when Matt was like “Damn…”
After his 20th detox, when Matt’s family was there to pick him up, he wanted to make sure it stuck this time. He started attending AA meetings. In 90 days, he went to over 200 meetings. He used to be the kind of guy who would make fun of those meetings and completely reject them, but once he had it in his head that he wanted to make it work – it worked. That’s a lot like the gym, too. If you have it in your head that you’re going to put in hard work at the gym, and you’re going to transform yourself – it’ll happen. There’s nothing to it but to do it, as the saying goes.
“I was put through all of that dumb, crazy shit for a reason. I feel like my reason is to get my story out and to show people that they can do anything if they want.” – Matt Childs
He says he created his own version of rehab, which consisted of going to work, eating good food, going to the gym, logging his workouts, then going to meetings. It’s a fairly normal day for most gym goers, but having this structure and discipline in his life, finally, saved him from himself. He’s lost 65 pounds and eight inches off his waist, going from 236 pounds to 181 pounds.
Now he walks around like he’s ready to hop on stage and compete, because the world is his stage and he’s competing with himself every single day to become better and better.
