Parker Gates was around 13 when he got properly drunk for the first time, in a field in Waco, Texas, with his two best friends. He remembers lying in bed that night with one clear thought: this is how I want to feel for the rest of my life. He was in his first rehab at 15. He stayed dry for six and a half years, bought his first legal six-pack at 21, and picked up as if he had never stopped. A seven-year run of getting darker followed.
He got sober at 27, after several DUIs cost him his driver’s license and his corporate job, and he spent the first year and a half of sobriety working at Starbucks. Next week he hits 25 years. Along the way he ran a company with his business partner for a decade, coached CEOs and senior leaders, and spent about 15 years at Stanford’s d.school, where he now teaches. The kid who barely snuck out of high school teaches at Stanford.
In this conversation, Parker talks about the secrets he held back the first time around and what that cost him, how the steps and traditions became his first leadership framework, why he believes personal development is professional development, and how meditation and time in the woods keep him steady. He also tells the Nick Cave story he asked Josh not to let him forget, and explains why he believes everyone is radically creative.
Show Notes
[02:49] - Skateboards, Punk Rock, and the First Drunk
Parker’s parents divorced when he was very young, and a couple of stepdads came through in the early years. It didn’t feel broken to him.
He fell into skateboarding around 12, and punk rock came with it. He stayed up late in Mobile, Alabama, recording college radio onto a jam box to catch bands like Agent Orange, the Dead Kennedys, and the Violent Femmes.
In that world, he says, you went one of two ways: get really good at skateboarding, or party and get into mischief. He took the second route, and it grew from breaking windows to skipping school to small-time theft.
Around 12 or 13, he became fascinated by drinking and drugs. His first real drunk came at about 13, in a field with his two best friends, and he remembers coming home and thinking he wanted to feel that way for the rest of his life.
Key Insights
“This is how I want to feel for the rest of my life.” - Parker Gates
[06:49] - First Rehab at 15 and Six Dry Years
Parker went to his first rehab at 15, in 1989, a co-ed unit run by a hospital company. He believes his parents sent him because they had no idea what to do with him.
The unit mixed kids with eating disorders, drug addictions, and other struggles. He got through 90 days, smoked a joint the day he got out, and was scared enough by that to stay away from alcohol for the next six and a half years.
He prefers the words “abstinent” or “dry” for those years. All the old behavior was still there, and he says not drinking probably saved his life.
He moved to Colorado to become a professional rock climber, then to Nashville at 21.
Key Insights
“All the cruddy behavior was still there, but I just didn’t drink, which probably saved my life to be real frank.” - Parker Gates
[08:48] - The Relapse and What We Hold Back
At 21 in Nashville, Parker drove up to a meeting, saw people who looked boring and square, and left. A few days later he bought his first legal six-pack. After two or three beers he felt like he was back in that field with his best friends, and a seven-year run followed that went darker than anything before it. Within two weeks he was doing blow in a bathroom with people he had never met. He says it reminds him he can’t go back out and give it a shot.
As a kid in Texas he went to meetings and picked a young, cool guy as his sponsor, but he held things back when it came time to share his inventory. He thinks that had a lot to do with his relapse, because he never learned how to get really open with another person.
After sponsoring men for about 25 years, he sees the same pattern. There is almost always one thing a person is embarrassed about and wants to hold back. For Parker, those things had nothing to do with drinking. They were about his body and whether people liked him.
He is grateful the men he sponsors trusted him enough to say hard things out loud. Josh adds that you can’t score pain, and Parker says the brain registers emotional pain much like physical pain.
Key Insights
“Very isolating and lonely when we keep those things to ourselves.” - Parker Gates
[16:06] - Starbucks, Consulting, and Borrowing From the Steps
Parker had a corporate job right before he got sober and lost it after several DUIs cost him his driver’s license for a couple of years. He worked at Starbucks for the first year and a half of sobriety.
He has always been entrepreneurial and doesn’t love working for other people, so he started consulting early and ended up working with CEOs and leadership teams. In his early 30s he took a corporate job, joined the leadership team, and wore khakis and a button-down every day.
He was excited to be sober and to have leadership jobs, but he had no idea how to lead people. So he borrowed the only framework he had, the steps and the traditions, which he says have held 12-step programs together for almost a hundred years.
Years of sharing his own story made big, open conversations feel natural. He would ask team members what was really going on with them, even when they hesitated.
Key Insights
“I have no idea how to lead people.” - Parker Gates
[20:24] - Personal Development Is Professional Development
Parker ran a company called Stoked with his business partner for a decade, tried some unusual experiments with their leadership teams, then moved into coaching. Today he is embedded with senior leadership teams, CEOs, and executive directors, and he calls the last 15 years one huge learning experience.
With 25 years in recovery and more than a decade of meditation retreats, he calls himself an old-timer. Those inputs shaped his book idea: personal development is professional development.
He says people get hung up on skills like reading spreadsheets and leading meetings. The leaders people love to work for are kind, compassionate, collaborative, and generous. They have strong role clarity and trust their people to do their jobs. It has little to do with executive presence.
When a recovery line like “this too shall pass” comes up in a business meeting, people’s minds are blown and ask where he heard it. Josh adds that addiction can fuel a passion for bigger things, and recovery lets you put that fire into something else.
Key Insights
“In a church basement when I was struggling not to drink pure grain alcohol. That’s where I heard it.” - Parker Gates
[24:37] - Meditation, the 11th Step, and Getting Into the Woods
Parker came to meditation through the 11th step, a suggestion in the 12-step program. He struggled at first and pictured saffron robes, incense, and tatami mats. A meditation hall in Nashville changed that, and his Dharma teacher, Dave, is also sober with more than 20 years.
He started with an insight practice, watching his breath for a handful of years, then moved toward open awareness. The big shift was seeing that he is not his mind or his thoughts, so he could watch them without blame or shame.
He sits daily, and he says he feels better physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually when he sits regularly, goes on retreat, and gets out into the woods. At 52, he finds quiet hard to come by with screens, traffic, and leaf blowers around.
Josh says sitting feels uncomfortable when his body wants his phone. Parker says the biggest benefit of a silent retreat may be leaving the phone in the glove box of the rental car and walking into the mountains.
Key Insights
“I am not my mind, I am not my thoughts, and to be able to watch thoughts, to become a watcher.” - Parker Gates
[31:23] - Bass Lines, Horror Movies, and the d.school
Parker started playing bass at 14 or 15. His stepdad, a phenomenal bass player, taught him a few things, and he kept recording at home and collecting records. He wouldn’t have called himself creative then. He just liked music.
He first saw himself as a creative person at an executive education program at Stanford’s d.school, where he now teaches. Looking back, he saw the drawing, the horror movies he made with friends as kids, and the bands.
About six years ago he wrote a novel. It started when his uncle gave him Joe by Larry Brown, and he thought, I want to write like that. He also names Cormac McCarthy among the writers he loves.
He recalls a study where kindergartners all raised their hands when asked who felt creative, and fewer hands went up in each later grade. He thinks adults use language that tells kids to put the glitter down and get serious.
Key Insights
“I think inadvertently or unconsciously, we beat creativity out of kids.” - Parker Gates
[38:55] - Fear, Comedy, and the Nick Cave Story
Parker says a fear-versus-creativity match is going on in everyone at any given moment. Comics get on stage scared and do it anyway. He is comfortable speaking to large audiences, but a bit at an open mic sounds more terrifying.
Josh describes being in the zone the day before while demonstrating macro lens photography, and they agree that practice makes a flow state second nature.
Before COVID, Parker saw Nick Cave on a solo tour, with a piano and audience questions, at TPAC in Nashville. Someone 30 or 60 days sober said they were afraid they would stop making good music.
Parker recalls Cave answering that his work had never been better, and that he had become much more special since giving up alcohol. Josh adds that it keeps getting better because you are tapping into your real self.
Key Insights
“We’re scared what other people are going to think. We’re scared it’s not going to be as good as we wanted it to be.” - Parker Gates
Key Quotes
“I’m excited to be sober and not dead.” - Parker Gates
“Personal development is professional development.” - Parker Gates
“I got so used to talking about my stuff that it was weird for other people not to talk about their stuff.” - Parker Gates
“I would argue that everybody is radically creative.” - Parker Gates
“I feel way better when I sit on a regular basis, when I sit a retreat, and then when I’m just out in the woods.” - Parker Gates
Resources Mentioned
The steps and the traditions: the framework from 12-step recovery that Parker borrowed to learn how to lead
The 11th step and meditation: insight (mindfulness) practice, open awareness, and silent retreats
Joe by Larry Brown: the novel Parker’s uncle gave him, which inspired his own fiction writing
Nick Cave: the musician whose solo tour with a piano and audience questions Parker saw at TPAC in Nashville
Stanford d.school: the design school where Parker took an executive education program and now teaches
Personal Development as Professional Development: Parker’s forthcoming book, which he hopes to publish in spring 2027
Where to Find Parker
Website: parkergates.com
Newsletter: The Practice, at parkergates.com/newsletter
Instagram: @parkers_day_off
Retreat: a small two-day retreat about an hour outside Nashville at Evins Mill, January 7 to 9. Half the time looks back at the past year, and half sets intentions for the year ahead. [Register Here]
Book: Personal Development as Professional Development, hoped for spring 2027
When You’re Ready to Lead Your Own Life
Parker keeps returning to honesty. What he held back the first time around had a lot to do with his relapse, and the openness he learned in the rooms became how he leads teams today.
Leading anyone starts with being honest with yourself. Parker says the leaders people want to follow are kind, generous, and clear about what they are there to do, and he learned the first two in a church basement.
That is the work inside The Sober Creative Reset, a guided 30-day alcohol-free reset with one-on-one coaching from the first session. You get four 60-minute sessions, daily support and check-ins, a short morning email with a reflection prompt, trigger and pattern mapping, strategies for social and work situations, and help recalibrating after a setback. If your work gets done but feels harder than it should, this is a place to start looking at why. It is coaching built on having lived through this. You don’t need to identify as anything to be here.
Thank You
A heartfelt thank you to Maura, Natalie Lago, Aaron Marshall, and everyone who joined us live for this conversation, and to Parker Gates for his extraordinary compassion and wisdom. Your presence and engagement make these conversations possible.
P.S. Missed an earlier conversation or newsletter? The full archive lives at thesobercreative.substack.com/archive. If this one landed for you, forward it to someone who might need it.
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