Portage Park man's tattoo honors four years of sobriety

Chicago Sun-Times — May 29, 16:00 PM

Steven Bruehl looks at the tattoo he got to commemorate his sobriety from alcohol. https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/3149a36/2147483647/strip/true/crop/8192x5464+0+0/resize/840x560!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F24%2F0e%2F86bf7cf942028481f2f907d96968%2Fsobrietytattoo-2604120422.jpg" />

For Steven Bruehl, quitting drinking felt like getting glasses for the first time: Life became sharper.

He found himself noticing small things, like the leaves on the trees.

He can’t imagine going back to how things were before.

“I saw joy in everyday things,” he said. “I had never experienced that joy.”

Bruehl, 54, was in active addiction for around seven years before he took his last drink and checked himself in for intensive outpatient treatment in April 2022.

Four years later, he looks at a new tattoo on his forearm and sees a reminder of his recovery.

The tattoo is a heart shape filled with flowers, mushrooms and skulls that symbolize different parts of his life and his experience of recovery.

The tattoo is a celebration of his sobriety, but he doesn’t shy away from the dark moments that preceded his revamped life.

Sitting in tattoo artist Orlando Camacho’s chair, tattoo needle buzzing and permanently inscribing his skin the day after his four-year anniversary of being sober in April, Bruehl reflected on the reality of his day-to-day life during active addiction.

“It's not the actual being drunk or passing out or getting to a point where you can't talk or whatever,” he said. “That's part of it.

But the amount of time you think about, ‘When am I gonna go get it?

How am I gonna get it?

Where am I gonna hide it?

Am I gonna hide it?’ It is all consuming.”

For years before he admitted he needed help, Bruehl says he was in denial.

He thought of his stable career, his master’s degrees, his generally successful life, and convinced himself he didn’t have a problem.

But before he knew it, he was drinking every day.

Steven Bruehl's tattoo is a heart shape filled with flowers, mushrooms and skulls that symbolize different parts of his life and his experience of recovery. — Steven Bruehl’s tattoo is a heart shape filled with flowers, mushrooms and skulls that symbolize different parts of his life and his experience of recovery.

Bruehl’s husband, Cesar Barradas, knew Bruehl needed to quit drinking long before he did.

Desperate for a change, Barradas collected empty liquor bottles and left notes on half-drank ones begging Bruehl to stop, to choose their relationship, to get help.

In 2022, Bruehl’s drinking reached a new level.

It was affecting his whole life.

Bruehl was passed out at home one day when he finally said the words out loud.

“I was calling his therapist and going, ‘We need to do something,’” Barradas said.

Bruehl reflects on that moment as near rock-bottom.

“I got off the elevator in the basement, but not maybe quite all the way down,” he said.

Days later, Bruehl went downtown to the Positive Sobriety Institute and enrolled in its intensive outpatient treatment program.

He recalls listening to different people tell their stories of addiction, and he related to many of them, even the scary ones.

There were times he should have been hospitalized, he said.

He took a leave of absence from his work as a middle school Chicago Public Schools teacher and attended eight hours of therapy every day for six weeks.

There, he found a community of supporters, inspirations and peers to commiserate with, share advice and lean on through his sobriety.

“You think you've told your partner everything in life and your family, and you think you told your friends everything,” Bruehl said. “No, these people, five or six people in this small group I was with for about six weeks, know absolutely every horrible thing.”

It’s hard for Bruehl to put a finger on exactly what made him addicted to alcohol.

There’s certainly the genetic component, and he also suspects part of him was trying to push his problems and emotions aside in pursuit of helping others.

He always wanted to appear OK, and disregarding his emotions led to him using alcohol as a comfort, he said.

Barradas had watched Bruehl slip into addiction and begged him to get help, but looking back, he now knows it always had to come from him; no one else could make him stop drinking.

Getting to treatment was a huge step, but it was just the first step, Barradas said.

Steven Bruehl gets a tattoo at the Tattoo Art Collective from artist Orlando Camacho.

“It's relief, but it's also uncertainty,” Barradas said. “It's just starting.

It's day one.

Is there gonna be a day 10?”

Four years after Bruehl’s last drink, life looks a lot different.

He enjoys vacations in a way he never did before.

His memories of beautiful places are sharp and clear instead of fogged by alcohol, overshadowed by the constant pursuit of his next drink or completely gone.

“We spent 10 grand to go to Barcelona,” he said. “And I don't remember what I saw.

I mean, what a waste of an opportunity to see some stuff.”

And, for the first time since before he slipped into addiction, he finds himself bored, asking himself: “What do I do with all this time?” He was used to his time and mental space being taken up by drinking.

But it was in that boredom that he found a new mindset, a new way to approach life that he had never tapped into before.

“It's really hard to put into words, like there's this freedom, this joy, this love of life that I really didn't have,” he said.

He wanted something permanent to commemorate his sobriety and recognize how far he'd come.

Once he decided on a tattoo, he knew Camacho was the right artist for the job.

Camacho is Barradas’ cousin and had gotten to know Bruehl over the years.

He had done some other tattoos for Bruehl, including a bright red cardinal and an outline of the state of Minnesota with trees and a loon drawn inside.

Tattoo artist Orlando Camacho is a cousin of Steven Bruehl's partner, Cesar Barradas. — Tattoo artist Orlando Camacho is a cousin of Steven Bruehl’s partner, Cesar Barradas.
Camacho applied Bruehl’s tattoo in a four-hour session.

The two worked together on the design.

Camacho, who owns the Tattoo Art Collective in Highwood, considered what he knew about Bruehl when putting the tattoo design together.

The final design included Camacho’s signature skulls and mushrooms because they “grow out of the muck,” symbolizing Bruehl finding sobriety.

Camacho also added Barradas’ birth flower.

“Even though I did horrible things, I don't have to claim those things for the rest of my life,” Bruehl said.

For Camacho, doing tattoos for family and friends is an honor, but it comes with a level of pressure that tattooing strangers doesn’t.

“I'll probably see them at a family function, or I'll see them at a barbecue,” Camacho said. “And people that I know very dearly will see that tattoo.

And so you want to do even better.”

Watching Camacho work diligently on the tattoo, Barradas thought about how far he and Bruehl had come.

“He's always been so caring, he's been the guru of his family, always bringing people together,” Barradas said. “It was there before, during the toughest years of him drinking, it was still there, but now it's just freer.”

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