Cultural Amnesia: Understanding the 60s, 70s, and 80s Impact on Modern Society

Have you ever wondered how the cultural chaos of the 60s and 70s molded the society we live in today? Join me and my enigmatic guest, Elaine Donly, as we journey through her personal history and explore the deep-seated impact of a time when political assassinations were frequent, and violence was a part of everyday life. Elaine's gripping narrative of surrendering to Alcoholics Anonymous at age 32, after years of battling addiction, serves as the linchpin of our discussion.

In our earnest conversation, we draw parallels between the Vietnam War era and the modern world, emphasizing the importance of youth activism. Elaine reflects on the profound influence of the Vietnam War on her life and outlook. We also journey back to her memories of growing up in Newburgh and attending the legendary Woodstock festival - a cultural climax of the 60s and 70s. My friend Leo Vernetti's experience of getting stuck on a mound during Woodstock serves as a comedic relief in an otherwise serious discourse.

No stone is left unturned as we tackle American history, hope, and poignant reflections on recovery. Elaine shares her personal experience of working with the treatment court and drug court - a journey marked by revelations both simple and profound. We wrap up our conversation with insights on dealing with life's challenges, the need for self-compassion, and the role of gratitude in breaking the cycle of addiction. This episode is a powerful testament to personal transformation and the enduring influence of historical events on our lives. So, buckle up and join us on this enlightening journey of recovery, gratitude, addiction, and inner exploration.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:55

Hello and thanks again for listening to another episode of All Better. I'm your host, joe Van Wee. Today's guest is my friend, elaine Donnelly. Elaine and I discuss today her entry into recovery in 1987, the end of an addiction that began in the 60s and 70s. We also discuss that period of history distinctly under a term called cultural amnesia. We're about two decades seeing political civil rights leaders assassinated at a frequency of every three to four years, some of these televised, captured by a form of media, what that does to a person's security and how we forget what violence looks like Monthly or daily, or the words of violence being used in a political context. We talk about many other things. I'm very excited for you to meet Elaine here with Elaine Donnelly, and she's already lying. She's lying about breakfast. She asked her what she ate for breakfast for a sound check, and she said a Nutri-Crain bar.

Speaker 2: 2:19

That was a lie.

Speaker 1: 2:20

I love liars. Elaine, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2: 2:25

Joe, thanks for having me. I really, really am honored.

Speaker 1: 2:29

Yeah, not yet. I'm just doing a weird podcast. Who knows what we're going to say. That's it. It could ruin the rest of your life.

Speaker 2: 2:37

I don't think you're that powerful.

Speaker 1: 2:39

No, I don't think so. My dog thought I was pretty slick, but that was it.

Speaker 2: 2:45

That's why we love dogs.

Speaker 1: 2:46

I haven't seen you in a while and we're trying to figure it out. When you arrived, I remember I used to see you every day downtown and we get to catch up. We have a history of doing a couple projects together with arts and arts alive.

Speaker 2: 3:06

And children Joe.

Speaker 1: 3:07

And children, yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:09

And you were in school South Indian media and you were wonderful with them.

Speaker 1: 3:12

It was fun.

Speaker 2: 3:14

And your staff.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:16

Tim Calvin being one of them.

Speaker 1: 3:18

It was Tim Calvin Lindsey Barris and Dave Grigliano who I missed dearly. They live in Asheville.

Speaker 2: 3:26

Oh okay.

Speaker 1: 3:30

Well, I guess I would have to go back my first memory of meeting you. I was probably a teenager and I was dropped off to alcohol and A&A and around the recovery community of that time and I think that was kind of my first run-ins with you. But I thought maybe we can talk about you today. A little background and the time you spent in your career, what do you think?

Speaker 2: 3:58

Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's all an open book, joe. Yeah, it really is. What year did you get dropped off? 1994., so yeah, I had been there for a while. I got sober in January of 86. Wow yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:17

Were you part of the Marworth crew? The people that went through Marworth.

Speaker 2: 4:20

No, as my first sponsor used to say, kiss my ring. I never went to a rehab. Kiss my ring, kiss my ring, yeah no, I was like the primordial slime that came right underneath the door. I was. I had given up on life. I didn't want to be alive. I had no place else to go. The only reason I went to AA was everybody else was going. That was because I was only with people that were very, very ill, and it turns out I was probably as ill or more ill than any of them and it took me longer to get there because of it.

Speaker 2: 5:02

In 86, I was so alone and you know, a little information goes a long way. So I knew that suicide, you know, when someone in a family dies by suicide it kind of becomes a part of the dropdown menu of options for, you know, resolutions and with problems. There wasn't any reason at all that I could ever think of from my two children to die by suicide, but so I couldn't, for their sake, my last decent act as a mother, I think that was what that was. So I used to lay in bed and pray to a God that I hated. I loathed for putting me in this position, which is ridiculous. But you know that's where I was at that time, and begging him to let me die. You know, if you're going to make me suffer this way, at least let me stop suffering at one point or another. And of course, he didn't take my option for that either, and so I was dropped off at AA.

Speaker 1: 6:14

Yeah, how old would you say you were? I was 32. Don't want to live your mother addictions. It's not even a refuge. I would assume, any more of the way you're speaking, that whatever you're using wasn't even causing any temporary relief.

Speaker 2: 6:31

No, I wasn't getting any relief at all and, yeah, I had stopped getting any kind of you know high from anything, from any substance and, um, you know, I was just my emotions were all over the place. My behavior was driving those emotions. My behavior was an abomination to everybody around me. You know, people were people that cared about me, were confronting me. I mean, I had people you know were very, very blunt and very honest and well, this is really painful to talk about.

Speaker 2: 7:07

No, you know, it doesn't matter how long you're sober or how many times you've talked about it when you reflect on how much pain you put into the world. I don't know that you could ever put enough love into the world to compensate for that, you know. But that's the solution, isn't it? So I, yeah, I was so forlorn, I was so, I felt so forsaken. I did not see the, the comments and confrontations and consequences of that. People were um, metting out to me to be commensurate with what I was doing. I could be. I couldn't see it all. The only thing I could do was be mad at them and hate them and hate God, and I hated everything.

Speaker 1: 7:56

Wow, that's a lot of pain.

Speaker 2: 7:57

Yes, it was a lot of pain.

Speaker 1: 8:00

Joe, it's. There's something that shines out to me. I was raised Catholic and I were you. Did you rate? Were you raised Catholic?

Speaker 2: 8:08

or Christian, it's, patrick, it's. Oh yeah, my dad went to mass every day.

Speaker 1: 8:14

Well, there's two paradoxes, I think, that is common to people with not only addiction but a Catholic background or any kind of Christian, messianic background. At no point did it seem to stop believing in God and what you said. But you also think he's the cause of. There is no way to reconcile this. He either created everything or somehow he is like just you know. You can't blame him for anything.

Speaker 1: 8:43

I don't know where that this makes sense. And to still have that that there's a boss of the universe. And here you are as a conscious person and your entire life has been just now whittled down to the existence of pain and you can't escape it. And instead of knowing there's a way out, you've already reconciled there's no way out at 32. I'm stuck in pain. Please really leave me of consciousness. Yeah, that's that's intense.

Speaker 1: 9:16

And then the other paradox that kind of jumped out at me that we could talk about is like all right, I've caused pain and I have to that you. There's no way to put back the love that into the world to kind of compensate for this or that it could. There's, there's, there's a weird absurdity, philosophically at this rate, that what is love if there is no pain? I don't think the human mind could, you can't make a plane of understanding in your mind to understand, unless there are opposites.

Speaker 2: 9:51

Oh, we're definitely a world of dualities black and white, in and out, up and down, tall and short, et cetera, a male and female, and it's, yeah, it's so, that's our understanding. That's the only understanding that I had. Well, now am I, you know, 30,? How many years? Is it 37 years? I don't even know.

Speaker 1: 10:12

I have a calculator.

Speaker 2: 10:13

Yeah, 86 to somebody out there. Do the math. That's listening. You know, in that number of years I have questioned a lot of that and thought about that and you know um debated that, and so I have more answers that I'm comfortable with now than I did then. But no, I don't, you know I. So my, my dad was my hero. Um, like I said, he he was. He really was one of the people, along with my grandparents, who, uh, really saved me, and when I what? What I mean by that is he was the one who used to say you're a good girl, I know that you'll do the right thing, and he was, would always built.

Speaker 1: 11:03

Did he say that to you as an adult? A good girl.

Speaker 2: 11:07

Um, it was mostly in my teen years when the going got rough, and then I, with my mom. My mom was very strong woman. She really wasn't. She was very fearful, but she came on, her demeanor was very powerful, she was like a dragon. And so, uh, we, we, and she was an alcoholic. So, um, you know, she didn't have very many coping skills.

Speaker 2: 11:33

My mother loved me and she was loyal to me and, you know, blah, blah, blah, on and on, um, you know, I, I, I love her and I miss her every single day. But we went after each other like two Tyrannosaurus rexism. And there was my dad in the middle, and so he was blamed by my mother for siding with me, and then he would get me in the car. I was crying and he was dropping me off at a friend's house. You know the typical scenario. And I'm telling me that I was a good girl. You know your mother don't listen to her.

Speaker 2: 12:05

So, and my grandparents were, were very supportive. Um, I lost one, one grandmother, when I was, uh, just 12, I had just turned 12. And I was very close to her, but I had two that were left, and both of them, my father's mother and my mother's father both told me that the reason my mother treated me the way she did was because she drank too much, and I didn't believe them. I thought, oh, they just love me, you know, I don't think she drank too much.

Speaker 2: 12:36

Well, she had our disease. I mean there was, you know. You know, I mean I have my theory about some of the pain that my mother endured and the lack of experience she had and the lack of help. And you know, one thing led to another. But you know, as the case may be, she drank and she drank, and she drank and she drank, and and we were very different people to begin with and I, you know, she perceived that as letting her down and I did the same thing. I mean it was, you know, it was a bad scene, but you know, in the end see, that's the point that I was making is, after all of these years, I can say this is my mother, this is who my mother was.

Speaker 2: 13:23

I mean, I have friends from my childhood. We still laugh about Julie. You know what I mean. We have Julie's stories. Remember when Julie this, remember when Julie that, but I loved her. I mean she. You know I stir my pots of soup with her wooden spoon and you know and I know who she was, and I also know right now how afraid she was and how she had no solutions.

Speaker 1: 13:49

And when was the first time you considered that what she had was fear? That was that, was that. Were you able to articulate that in your twenties, like in the seventies, like no? Did it come after your own?

Speaker 2: 14:02

After I was sober after I was sober and I understood what fear was. You know, after I sifted through uh, what's the difference between anger and? And where does that come from? Oh, it's fear. Uh, you know all of the insecure. To me, everything boils down to fear, and you can put it into different um cubicles, but it's fear.

Speaker 1: 14:26

I wish you would have told me that, elaine, when I was 16. You would have saved me.

Speaker 2: 14:29

I'm sorry, joe, I would have done that if I had only known it's 36 years 36.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Okay, here's the math. I did 20, 23 minus 1,900.

Speaker 2: 14:44

I knew at the day, I celebrated it, just I lose track of it 36 years yeah. Wow yeah, so I've been sober longer than I was alive when I got sober Interesting.

Speaker 1: 14:56

It is, and I wanted to talk, maybe after what I heard you say, because I could relate to this, and I still do, now that I have two kids. I feel like I'm understanding my dad more and more now that he's dead.

Speaker 2: 15:12

Yes.

Speaker 1: 15:13

And the more and more I get older, and this, this couldn't have been any way accessible to me without time or just the luck of staying alive longer.

Speaker 2: 15:23

Now, that's the paradox of the ages. I'm watching it with my children and my grandchildren. Um, you know, there's still 10 and seven, but I, um, I know that they won't know what I know until they're my age and you know you're not going to know anything more than you know. It's I, I and I try, you know, I try to use words to, like you know, introduce concepts and ideas, but we have to have experience wed with that.

Speaker 1: 15:57

Yeah, it's weird. We're a gen, we're a generational species. Um, and I, you don't think of that way all day, you don't think of yourself that way. Um, and just out of the the average understanding that most people don't know their great great grandfather's name.

Speaker 1: 16:15

Like like it's not top of mind, even if you did know or may know Um, so that he wasn't even remembered and he's what produced me. Yes, and it takes this long to know someone. Now that we could live this long to 80. Um, it's just strange that it just doesn't seem, uh, it seems new to the newest part of the brain. It takes this long to know a person. That that complexity, that I'm still getting to know someone. They're dead and they're living in my head. Yeah, um, that's why I need recovery for that. I have such a dynamic thing going down in my head. I know you do. Oh, yeah, I have another life in there. That's just like inaccessible. Um, were you a hippie in the seventies? Were you attracted to the movement?

Speaker 2: 17:02

It's been, it's been rumored, yeah, yeah, yes, I mean black armed bands, army jackets. I mean my, you know my, my mother's became my mother, um, lost her brother, uh, parachuting into Normandy on D day. He was with the 82nd airborne and I had no appreciation. There it is, there's the age thing. I had no appreciation for that at all. I knew the Vietnam war was wrong and I was pursuing that idea and I was arrogant as hell about it. Um, and my father was, everybody was a veteran.

Speaker 2: 17:37

But you know, for baby boomers, Every that whole generation above us, there wasn't a. You know, my mother used to say to me well, you're, you know your father, uh, he was really older than the draft but he joined because someone in the family had to represent us. And you know, your uncle couldn't go because he was married and he only had one eye, um, and so that was kind of whispered like. We won't speak of that. But I want you to know what the story is. Uncle Jack didn't go, it's not because of shame, it was because of, but, um, I had no appreciation of that. So I flaunted my, you know, um, you know, anti war, anti government. You know, I had no appreciation, appreciation of of LBJ and all of the things that he did do for this country in terms of, like, civil rights, and you know all. All I could, all I knew, was that the war escalated. Um, I had no understanding about what Nixon had done in regard to the war and how he you know.

Speaker 1: 18:42

Paul's in that. Yeah, it's still good to be that active, even ignorant, I guess, because there's a voice being and and change comes this way. Change, if I could look back in hindsight of what I read about the sixties in comparison to how I grew up and what you're saying, this disconnection of ideas, what the stakes were, um, how visible corruption was, and and this unjust war of Vietnam versus this noble experience of having to fight in Europe at the stake of the entire planet.

Speaker 1: 19:17

It's succumbing to fascist ideas. Um, it's still. There's still something to be said about P 18 to 24. 25 year olds, still voicing something that still changes, something that even the world war two or the boomers just took for granted, a structure that was like you can't change that part of it, and it takes this blind air against. Sometimes maybe there is a benefit to to that kind of bravado.

Speaker 2: 19:46

Well, of course there is I think it's the yin and the yang of every generation right To push back against what is and that changes, you know. Look at what we're going through right now.

Speaker 1: 19:59

That's a mirror.

Speaker 2: 20:01

And I think the hope that I have one of the hopes that I have is that um, people, young people, um, are going to rise up and they are strong in number and if they educate themselves and are aware of what's happening in the world, they will come forward with their thoughts and their ideas, even when they're in conflict with each other, with each other, um, they can come to some kind of resolve about what our core values are. And so that brings me back to so Elaine Donnelly and you know 1986 decides to get sober. And the question is what came first, the chicken or the egg? So if I wasn't that person that was so adamant about life and living it to its fullest and having it the right way and being a part of that, um, you know how did that affect my decision to get sober? What did I ultimately decide? I'm not giving up on life because that's not who I am.

Speaker 2: 23:00

I mean not that I verbalize that to myself, but, um, you do, when you talk to people, you can kind of find out what's yeah, I just I didn't stop breathing, I didn't, you know I, I could have driven off the road by, but you know I, I think every generation has the possibility to um rejuvenate our planet.

Speaker 1: 23:25

When you said that, I remember hearing stories that what came to mind first and foremost was the visuals of Vietnam and what they could have looked like for Scranton, and I've seen pictures, uh, from the, the paper, the times, and then talking to friends that are older, that, if I'm not mistaken, hundreds of coffins within that period, uh, hundreds of funerals of young guys from Scranton. Well, and I don't. Well, here's the thing.

Speaker 2: 23:54

I'm not, no, because I'm not from Scranton. Oh no, no, I was. I was born in the Bronx, so I'm Yankees fan.

Speaker 1: 24:01

That's right.

Speaker 2: 24:03

And last year I had, you know Well, the Bronx. You were in the Bronx. I know, and then I.

Speaker 2: 24:09

so my story is that I was then at the at at at 13 months old, I was here in there, and I literally mean I was here in there for the first 13 months of my life and then, because I was given up for adoption on day one. So, foster homes, another home, I don't know, I don't know, it's all closed in. Anyway, I ended up in Newburgh, new York, which is right on 84. Yeah, that's beautiful, oh, it's there's. You know, a part of my heart will always be in the Hudson Valley.

Speaker 2: 24:42

Yeah, it's, it's, it's. You know, there's so many things I could tell you to go visit.

Speaker 1: 24:46

It's magical.

Speaker 2: 24:47

Yeah, we'll talk later. I'll tell, I'll give you a whole playlist of your places to go, but anyway, you know. So that helped mold me on. 60 miles outside of New York. I'm getting New York city news but we there wasn't any local news, so we had a larger world vision, I think.

Speaker 1: 25:06

Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2: 25:06

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:07

It's an artist town too. I mean, there's.

Speaker 2: 25:09

Yes.

Speaker 1: 25:10

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:11

And we and racial issues. We were part of the Great Migration and you know a very strong John Birch society which was very conservative. So there were riots in my high school. Wow and the oh. The first one was my junior year at about, but I this is civil during civil rights.

Speaker 2: 25:32

Yes, we had civil rights, women's rights, gay rights. You know, I had friends that were gay, that were in the club and then, and then I got to watch them suffer with HIV and die, you know. So the baby boomers went through, you know, just a wave, you know, like in, you know it was more like a the sea during a storm. One wave after another, after another, yeah, but, but being enmeshed in caring about the world and caring about those issues, it was the groundwork to everything else. So I, I cared just as much about being a mother, yeah, and I cared just as much about becoming sober, which I think ultimately helped me. You know, I chose my path, but, yeah, it was an interesting time to grow up. And so one little funny story was did I go to Woodstock? No, but everybody, well, yes and no, everybody that was going to Woodstock, right, had to come. If they were coming from the South, or they were coming from the West, or they were coming, they, everybody had to converge in Newberg, and so there were half a million, well, except from the North, when, if they were coming down from the North. So, yeah, a half a million kids of the throughway was, which you know was runs right through Newberg.

Speaker 2: 26:55

Yeah, that was shut and so we were taking back roads, we being my girlfriend and I and her family. She had her family. I was blessed enough to spend so much time with their family and that was another saving grace. Yeah, the universe put a lot of people in my life, but anyway, we were on our way to the Catskills where they had some land and a cabin and, you know, no running water and no, it was it was. We called it camp. So we were on our way to camp and we're thinking ourselves what are all these people along the side of the road? We were at Yarsgarh's farm, the. The farm had been closed off, so everybody was parked along the street. So there we were and my friend Barbara and I were like we should be, we should get out of the car.

Speaker 1: 27:45

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:45

We were just shy, a year or two, of being recalcitrant enough to go on our own and let the chips fall. Well, she was. She was a better person than me. She wouldn't have gone into fighters but I would have been up there. But yeah, I was at Yarsgarh's farm during Woodstock and but never, you know, really went in.

Speaker 1: 28:08

That's phenomenal. I just heard a story. It went up in the stock. You wouldn't believe it. Leo Vernetti I've known him my whole life.

Speaker 2: 28:16

Remember we were, we were there, we were told me was at Woodstock.

Speaker 1: 28:19

I said how did I miss this? He said he got stuck on a mound. He's wearing a jacket plaid jacket slacks. He showed up as a square, took 20 minutes to get off a mountain which he goes back 40 years later. It was a mound. I said someone gave him mescaline and it took him 30 minutes to walk off this mound. He was screaming for help.

Speaker 2: 28:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:43

So this is my favorite period of American history because so much is packed in of where we're at now and that's both sides of our political spectrum. How it was formed from just what you were describing LBJ sacrificing pretty much the Democratic Party in the South permanently for the next 40 years and it became Republican because of civil rights, and he knew this. It wasn't like an unintended consequence.

Speaker 2: 29:18

And a president from the South.

Speaker 1: 29:20

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:21

You know, he was a Texan and he knew what was coming.

Speaker 1: 29:25

And you know as many things as you could point to him and say they're very ugly. He was a master politician and it might have took that guy's personality to finish the civil rights moment.

Speaker 2: 29:40

Well, and I you know it's funny, who's to know? Because John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy as his attorney general, really laid the groundwork, I mean, they built the framework.

Speaker 1: 29:53

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:54

And then LBJ put the sides up on it. But you know my generation also got to see. You know John murdered and Robert murdered and Martin.

Speaker 1: 30:07

Luther King murdered. Malcolm X murdered.

Speaker 2: 30:09

Malcolm X.

Speaker 1: 30:10

John Lennon.

Speaker 2: 30:13

John Lennon was 1980, but it was, they were, and it was a cumulative effect. Because I remember getting up in the morning. Well, I mean, I remember everything about JFK, like everybody does. You know. I remember the intersection I was at with my mother and grandmother who was sick at the time and hearing that JFK had passed, and you know so I remember all that. But by the time and then Martin, and then by the time Robert Kennedy was assassinated, I got up in the morning and my mother said to me I just heard on the radio that Robert Kennedy was murdered. And I looked at her and I turned. I remember doing this, I couldn't verbalize anything. I looked at her and then I turned around, I went in brings tears now and I just sobbed how many heroes could we have possibly lost? You know, like the whole world was coming down. And yet it wasn't. Because here we are, here we are.

Speaker 1: 31:29

We landed on this topic and I was. I'm watching yesterday. You know political rhetoric getting violent and here you are. You've lived through a generation. Every three, four years, key leaders of many movements were assassinated and these are recorded visually. How do you convey to someone that's in their 40s and below like this language could kill? And we're not even seeing that. We're seeing just weird pockets of violent explosions in schools and so but to see a leader assassinated on television you live through that. What does your sense of stability and hope feel like by the time you reach 1980, with that culture being what you're walking out of Like? What does that fucking feel like?

Speaker 2: 32:23

Well, you know, I. So there's enough baby boomers still left that we keep telling the tale. And I think repeating what we personally experienced is cannot fall in deaf ears in terms of, you know, hate cannot outweigh love. You know, I mean, it's so simple, right, so silly. Actually, you know the Beatles, all you need is love. And well, that's not all you need, but it's certainly a good start, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 32:55

I take a health plan with that.

Speaker 2: 32:58

Seriously, yeah, but I think it goes back to what I said before, which is allowing young people to see the history, the, as you said before, the linear history of you know the generations, and then, looking at their own generation, those two young men in Tennessee that were kicked out of the you know legislature, and then one is in and one is out. This is three weeks ago.

Speaker 1: 33:33

Oh well, this was you know it started.

Speaker 2: 33:36

It started months ago and then they were taken back in, reappointed and then the other one was just kicked back out and there was a woman that was also. But my point is, when I listen to those young men talk, it makes me feel like we are going to be okay, even if you don't agree with them. That's great. They are not talking about being angry. They're not talking about revenge. They're not talking about you know what they are. Let me talk about what they are talking about. What they are talking about is doing the right thing, providing for everybody, raising people up, listening to their ideas. You don't have to agree with them, but you have to engage, and you know I mean. There's nothing better than a good debate.

Speaker 1: 34:32

No, and the best argument can always win yes, truth, truth. Truth always has a better chance, higher probabilities of winning in an argument, a nonviolent inner. I always see history myself and I have to see it this way because I'm sitting slanting towards less than I am Less violence, more isolated violence, and that's just a trend, that and I see more liberties, I see more autonomy, just if you just took a metric, in the last 400 years, like 500 years ago, both of our families were under the rule of whatever noble was in charge of the property.

Speaker 2: 35:11

That is, that's right.

Speaker 1: 35:12

What the fuck Right? Who's in charge of like? Listen my great.

Speaker 2: 35:16

well, okay, so now that I've said I was adopted, I can talk about my two families. Right, I talked about the one that raised me, the one that I lived in their culture and they supported me, and what. But my? You know my DNA, you know I stand on the shoulders of those people too, and you know so. My grandmother, mary McCabe, came here in 1916 and alone and poor, and it did not end well for her. But the point that I'm making is you know they had struggles too, and you know they were taking Hard, hard struggles, hard struggles.

Speaker 1: 35:57

And a lower lifespan. Yes, they didn't get the 20 extra years we have to get at something done. No, I don't think. I don't think it's easily accessible to your brain when you're considering periods of history. You're talking about half the lifespan we have now. Oh yeah, Pre 1900, half the lifespan.

Speaker 2: 36:18

Was the average lifespan.

Speaker 1: 36:19

Yeah, I want to. Let's wrap up how you, your recovery. You know, came to birth and I think you painted a great picture of culture. You can't separate yourself from culture. You're in it, Right. It's the software you download to your head. It becomes part of your behavior.

Speaker 1: 36:40

And the culture you got to experience in the first 30 years of your life was unstable. Even though it's in the United States, the sense of security seemed to always be jeopardized in the last three years, every three years, with either an assassination, a war, a political upset, a changing of the guard, women's rights going up, they come down. That brings you to 1986. And here's a person that had hope 10 years earlier, was part of something that was real, a thing that would change, change the structure of how people view power. That seems to be gone right From. How did your addiction end and when did you start to have hope?

Speaker 2: 37:31

So you know, there is, I think, a mental health component to addiction which is, you know, at the bedrock of who we are selfish and self-centered, so-.

Speaker 1: 37:49

Makes for a good economy.

Speaker 2: 37:53

It does. Yeah, we are very good consumers of a lot of things, but you know. So here's what I have to say about it. I thought I was just a part of a social order that was going to change the world, the whole thing that I was missing, that I found in recovery, and I don't think I was going to move forward without the help of a number of people, you know, having my back and pushing me forward the recovering community.

Speaker 2: 38:27

Is that the biggest journey, right, the biggest responsibility, the only way that we're all going to keep moving forward, is for us to look inward, and I hadn't done that. I was just a part of a surge, you know, I was just a part of, like, I was a boomer, I was, you know, we were, you know sex, drugs and rock and roll. And this is, I think you know, goes back to the age thing where I, you know, I got to the age where I thought to myself I've looked all around me and nothing's going on here. This is getting worse, never have an eye looked for an answer, and in the rooms where people with the same problems sit, somebody suggested that I look inward. Just take account for what you have done and how that looks, and then the whole puzzle piece came together.

Speaker 1: 39:38

Isn't that that's a hard venture. I just want to put it under my microscope to your demographic Spending 10 years saying this is the problem, this is the violence that preceded us, this system, a patriarch system. And now you're here. You are at the end of an addiction and someone's saying, no, look in, is it? Is that difficult when you're coming? Did you meet other hippies or people that were a part of that 10 years? It's hard to say, okay, where's your blame? Where do you go in and get empowered by looking at?

Speaker 2: 40:16

Well, and I don't know whether I don't think this is just my generation, because research will show you that most people begin to resolve their issues in the thirties. You have that makes you know, that's just right. That's just the research. You know we spend the teenage years being, you know, kind of amoebas we're. You know, in our twenties we're all over the place. That you know.

Speaker 1: 40:40

My 10th class reunion was just you know In a medical book, you could be treated by a pediatrician until you're 26.

Speaker 2: 40:47

There you go. I know, and some of the brain research is showing, you know you're not. Your brain isn't done maturing until you're 30. So it all makes sense right. So now we're into our thirties, we've made enough mistakes that we, you know we can look around. You know, if you're totally successful, you get to sort out what was your success and what did your family hand you, and that in and of itself can be shocking. You know, oh, yeah, okay, so I don't have this car because I earned it.

Speaker 1: 41:18

You know my dad, you know you didn't build it either, exactly.

Speaker 2: 41:22

So you know I, we, we, we begin to reconcile all of that. But you know, I, I think there were, of course, a number of of people my age that were getting sober at the same time, and we and so I remember Joe the thought about well, these are the people that I like hanging around with anyway.

Speaker 1: 41:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:42

And so that helped. I mean, that was, you know. There were the serious soul searching, you know kind of unquenchable thirst for deep, deep questions that I was. And then there was the frivolous thought about like these, these silly people are the ones that I always gravitated to, and so they're what. There they were, the seekers. Yeah, Well, the seekers, but you know the people that couldn't climb down off the molehill because, they thought it was a mountain.

Speaker 2: 42:15

You know, I mean all those people here they are, they were still trying to climb down off the molehill, thinking it's a mountain, and we got to do it together.

Speaker 1: 42:25

So, and I don't think that's different than any other generation of people coming, you know, and so you remind me of an old cliche I liked in early A when I first came around from that molehill was hey kid, don't pole vault over rabbit shit.

Speaker 2: 42:42

I never heard that, but I like it.

Speaker 1: 42:47

So sobriety is produced in this mixture of you know, friendly faces, people you could connect with, some step work and just engaging the community in the 80s, when did things form a career or what you wanted to do to find meaning and work? How did that evolve?

Speaker 2: 43:12

So my career was dedicated to children. That's how it began. I always had the feeling that if children were nurtured and loved and respected, they would be okay. And so that's how I started with after school programs and just loving these kids and getting them what they needed to the best of my ability. And I worked for uh, at the time it was EOTC, now it's outreach and it is a loving kind.

Speaker 1: 43:53

You know, wonderful you know, you know I'm on the board. Oh, you're on the board. Well, first board member, they got a board. Welcome aboard.

Speaker 2: 44:03

I forgot to tell you. Well, and last night was their mighty oak dinner. And one of the children from my earliest days with them, uh, who is now except? Has accepted a position as an anchor woman? Um, yeah, I know, uh, not locally. She's going to be out in the Western like state college and beyond. But you know, went through prep, went through college, got a master's degree, like has a, lived here, did this and she's beautiful and fabulous and smart and uh, what does that feel like when?

Speaker 1: 44:35

you see that.

Speaker 2: 44:36

Well, I, I mean, I loved her then and, um, you know, I and I love, and I love her. Now. This is, this is the you know the the first day I met, um, this young woman Chantel is her name, chantel Calhoun I, I, I. She deserves to have her name out there, cause she's a star and there's many stars, um, and that's the point, right? So, uh, the first day I met her she's you know she said I have to do a book report. Well, um, what's the book report on Rosa Parks? I said, okay, well, tell me what the book said. Well, I didn't read the book. I said, well, okay, you didn't read the book, so you have to read the book. We can't write the report without. I'll help you write the report. You have to read the book. When? When is the report to? Tomorrow? So that was the first day I met her. And um, she has just flown over the clouds ever since. You know, once, once she got started, she just never stopped. I mean, she's had adversity in her life, well, like we all have, and um has risen above at all. So, anyway, that was my beginning.

Speaker 2: 45:46

Now I'm going to get to the root of your question, which is um, you know. So tell me about your recovery and, um, and the work that you did. So you know, the grants ran out and they my job was changing, and they called me into the office and said what do you think about doing some work with the treatment court, with the drug court, it was called at the time. Um, I said well, and I knew what that meant we don't have any money to pay you unless you do this. So we're giving you the courtesy of asking, but it really doesn't matter what you. So I said, well, I don't want to do that.

Speaker 2: 46:25

And now you have to hear this joke because you're going to love this part of my story. I already do. Um, I. I said I don't want to do it. I said, well, can can we ask you why? And I said I don't like those women. Those women hurt their children. I love their children. Who they are hurting? I have no interest in reaching my hand out to them. I don't like them and I don't wanna spend time with them, and you know my work well enough to know that, if not you, I was this.

Speaker 2: 47:02

This is directed to my supervisor. You know my work well enough to know that if I have to do this work and I believe I will then I will do the best that I can for those women, but I don't wanna do it. Well, go ahead and think about it, elaine, and we'll talk about it. So you know, joe. You know the next thing? I know I'm sitting in the treatment court and two weeks later I'm sitting in my office listening to some woman tell me probably some egregious thing that happened to her, some profound experience that she had in her life. And I looked at her and I thought and I can't give you the background of this, I can only tell you what was happening there was a woman talking to me and I'm looking at her and my thought was this you're one of the kids. Where did I think the children were going to go? Where did I think they were going? Here's where they're going to my office. I've just jumped the line a little bit and I'm catching them, you know, and hugging them as adults.

Speaker 1: 48:19

Once they weren't defended.

Speaker 2: 48:22

That was it, and I thought this is where I was supposed to be. All of that was practice.

Speaker 1: 48:28

It's full circle to how you came to understand your mom, your grandmother, these women You're so easily and desperately wanna judge and know you're different and you can't. I'm not saying, but you look at it. What causes that kind of person to harm what would seem innocent as a person? That?

Speaker 2: 48:52

their childhood was stolen. They're sick themselves. It's a you know that whole multi-generational thing, but it's true. But let me say this too who was it that the universe was looking out for in that situation? The woman who stood in the office and said I don't like them, those women, blah, blah, blah. They did this. You know, I'm one of them. I had completely separated myself from the herd. I had forgotten who I was. I had forgotten somebody picked me up.

Speaker 1: 49:26

How long were you sober when that moment of your life, of realization happened?

Speaker 2: 49:32

So I probably have been with the well, I think the judge and I decided I'd been doing working with the court for about 20 years. So 20 years, yeah, so it was probably more than that now, but what?

Speaker 1: 49:47

you're saying to me is exciting, because life could get cynical again, even in sobriety. You don't have to relapse If we have little revelations that are that simple. That I am you.

Speaker 2: 49:59

Yes, I am you Well here's the thing we say all these little quippy things about. You know, oh, we don't have to have a drink to have a relapse, we don't have to have a drug to have a relapse, and yet we miss in each other all the time the things that are really happening. I didn't know, I did not use again, I never had a drink or a drug, I never, you know. But here's the thing, Joe, I was lost, I was lost and I was getting more lost.

Speaker 1: 50:29

I never knew.

Speaker 2: 50:30

Well, I didn't either. Which is more for no, you didn't know that I was a relapsing. No, that much.

Speaker 1: 50:36

I think, well, I can't. You were a little goofy.

Speaker 2: 50:39

You know, I mean it's a technical term, but I think you get the gist of it.

Speaker 1: 50:43

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 50:44

There's Joe. He's goofy. I did a lot of praying for you, Joe. Thank you, I did Thank you.

Speaker 1: 50:50

I needed it. I felt really alone and it was a lot of it could be looked back to as manufactured. But right before things started to get really just dark in my head, it was right after I spent time with you. Not that you're the cause of it.

Speaker 1: 51:08

I have broad shoulders though, but I think all the people interesting, kind, loving people that have the insight that you do, that I was able to be around in my teenage years. I don't think I would have the resiliency even when things got dark again, sober or drunk, like I can't fall into a total pit, because you guys live in my head as characters. You evolve, people stay with you. You're one of those people that I know is out there fighting a noble fight, cares about morals, cares about who you are, and even when we get lost, you could wake back up.

Speaker 2: 51:50

Well, and you know, we think we know what's going on in the world, but you don't have any idea how many times on a Saturday night somebody would say hey, has anybody seen Jovan we recently? How's he doing? Does anybody know how he's doing? Oh well, he this, that the other thing. So along the time that I haven't seen you, I've heard all about you. Like, what I'm saying to you is you are thrown into a pool of people who, as loose as it may be, at the fringe right of your life, are still people who are holding that, that together and yeah, and have your back, are there. You know, people are. We cheer each other on and it's not always face to face, Jo, but it is constant and never ending. When you hear about somebody that's floundering or faltering or has fallen to any extent, the only response anybody I've ever heard I mean I'm there was probably a few people that you know that's not true but overwhelmingly the response is love.

Speaker 2: 52:58

Yeah, and that brings us back to full circle.

Speaker 1: 53:03

Makes one feel silly sometimes when I my mind is straight and I thought this source of gratitude. The last two years I've heard stories of really high acuity, of serious trauma, people who did not even have the circumstance even what my problems are yours. I've heard people that didn't even have the probability of a chance or the people of support they could find just in their community, and to me it's not like shame on me forever, it's more of holy God. Let this always be a source of gratitude. Some people don't even are 12 step communities beyond probabilities or good results because of the people that are in our community here. That's not everywhere.

Speaker 2: 53:49

This grant's not everywhere. You know, I just listened, speaking of podcasts, to a podcast with Norman Lear and who is 93 years old or was at the time, I think it's a recent podcast. Anyway, there's many things I could say about that podcast in Norman Lear, but what I will say is it was over Winfrey, that was the interviewer, and she said to him you know he had established I'm a Jew but I've never been religious. You know, we've never had an organized thing. So she said to him how would you define a spiritual experience with God? And he said one word gratitude. Yeah, it's almost like my husband, you know, with his one word saying connectedness. You know, I don't know that you can have gratitude for life and for people and for who you are and what you have and the solutions that are available that you don't see yet, and not connect with the higher power, even if it's all of the people that are contributing to your life.

Speaker 1: 55:09

No, no, it's. That's the gift that lingers from desperation. Is that it's my source of gratitude? I was just telling one of the guys here you know. You said having struggled with a job and just only three months ago he didn't have a job and wasn't going to get hired by anyone because of his background. I said dig deep, don't let go of that day. Like I go to a hospital bed all the time, like when some trivial thing is about to ruin my day. I'm telling myself a story of why things are going on and why things are going to be awful all day. I go back to thinking man, I wanted to just die outside. If I was going to die, can I just die on the sidewalk? I want to breathe air. That's an endless source of gratitude because that time has passed the pain of its past, but I could visualize it in such detail that the gratitude that comes from that is real and it's always accessible. Any multitude of symptoms.

Speaker 2: 56:13

The only reason it's not accessible is because we won't let it come through.

Speaker 1: 56:18

Yeah, no, and you have to manufacture your problems then. So the problem happened where your perceived one will happen. You have to keep telling yourself how that problem is going to happen. That's not a rubber band or a muscle reflex. That's you hypnotizing yourself. That's me hypnotizing. My practice is step 11, let's me kind of break that. It's a practice every morning. I'm not going to a waterfall, my meditations or anything like that. I don't relate to those meditations, I'm just watching. Holy shit, why am I thinking about this? There I go planning again. Now I'm telling a story. I haven't seen this person in 10 years. I'm finishing a conversation with them while I'm getting in my car to go to work. This is fucking psychosis. Yeah, yeah, this is that's where I think addiction can really go rampant on someone If you don't see. That's where it is, that's where it lives. It's this, it's this dialogue I have.

Speaker 2: 57:16

It's internal. Yeah that's the thing, right, that we were talking about before, which is the you know the final frontier. To go back to Star Wars, you know not Star Wars, star Trek, I'll talk Star Wars, yeah, yeah, well, I love Star Wars, but anyway, you know, the final frontier is is just that it's going, it's going inward.

Speaker 1: 57:39

Yeah, the cosmos is in there. Yeah, al Watzo, he said that he goes. You got a magnificent telescope. You see another galaxy, a drama. He goes. Oh, you're seeing what's in your head. You can go anywhere, man, the cosmos is in there, that's right, yeah, yeah, I think a lot of interesting things at science right now are thinking there's a more complex relationship between a conscious mind, a human brain, like in my brain, and my relationship to the world.

Speaker 1: 58:12

And there's something that's just not sensible about it that you're rendering parts of reality Like like the fact that you just don't see your nose all day, like this is a revision of reality, like so you're, you're editing, I caught. You're not taking in raw, objective truth ever. So how do we even access what's true or in reality? I always relate that to addiction. I know the, the addicts I and alcoholics I relate to know a fraud's being committed and in the fraud, in the sense that you described, god is somehow this paradox. I need his help, but he's hurting me. There's something not clear, but I can understand things without articulating them when I've let what you said connectivity happen. I can't always describe why I'm changing or why my beliefs are changing, but I know something's changed to me, right Like I'm open to stuff.

Speaker 2: 59:13

Well, and you know, one of the questions that that I've had to grapple with is why do I value my brain more than my heart? Why do I feel like I have to understand this and explain this in words, when this may be far more complicated than anything my brain can produce? So I need to sometimes fall back on something that I can't use words to explain.

Speaker 1: 59:42

Yeah, yeah. The instance that it seems where the stakes are so high for me and what you just explained, is when I would have a head full of acid and I would get this panic that someone's going to stop at the house. Oh my God, I would just realize I started tripping on a Tuesday morning and I didn't go to work seeing if this would wake me up. And I'm like, what if someone rings the bell? I'm so tripped out. I know I'm not crazy, I know I'm tripping, but if I talk to someone they might call Look to have some psychiatric intervention on me. How am I going to defend myself? Because I don't think at this point I could prove that I'm not crazy, even though internally I knew I wasn't. I knew I wasn't. That's when I could feel it. It's like this really emotional roller coaster that communication is so subtle for, for sanity and norms and to share a sense of community. I think that's the warmest part of a. I found my freaks. I joined the circus that I knew I belonged to.

Speaker 2: 1:00:43

Yeah, yeah, and I mean and I think you know you were talking about your two children, and so when you sit down and talk to them, the how profound a child is is also beyond words. You know, what is it about? A baby or a toddler or, you know, a preschooler or you know? Or my 10-year-old granddaughter? What is it about children that makes them so magnetic, that makes them so above and beyond everybody else? They will grab the attention of a crowd and this has nothing to do with their philosophy or the truth of the universe. It has everything to do with. We have beauty in this place and it's right before our eyes and we don't need to explain it.

Speaker 1: 1:01:49

And I think that's- and I'm looking at my phone. No, you're right. I mean, I get that.

Speaker 2: 1:01:56

That's it. I watch it all the time. People going down the street on their phone and they have the most gorgeous human being walking next to them that thinks like your dog did, that thinks everything of them.

Speaker 1: 1:02:09

No, I have to put safeguards because I'll miss the plot. Like the war for my attention or anyone's attention is the war now. Like that is the new oil attention, and I can miss the plot. Like the baby boomer dad who wanted to get ahead somewhere, stayed, burned the midnight oil to get the life for the kids. You miss the plot. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to With that kind of ideas in line, how would you summarize the most fulfilling parts of your career and ending a career?

Speaker 2: 1:02:53

I think the most rewarding, you said the most fulfilling.

Speaker 1: 1:02:59

You had Chantel. I guess that would be some of it, right, you know so it just happened last night, yes, and realizing that they're not two separate things.

Speaker 2: 1:03:14

People like to talk about their career and then their life, just like people like to talk about their career and their personal life and their family life. You can't separate these things, no they're just arbitrary.

Speaker 2: 1:03:30

And then they try to put friends over here and you know material things over here. Like we like to segment things. When you're making a cake, things are only segmented until they go into the bowl and then that's what makes it's the mixture of everything that makes the cake. So what I'm figuring out now at this age well, I guess building on what I already knew is a better way of saying it is that it's never been separated. It's always been a juggle about where does my attention belong right now, not where does my attention need to be, or doesn't what part don't shouldn't I be paying attention to? What's the professional separate? You know separation that I have to put here. What you know it's always been. How do I mix this all together to create a meaningful life that I'm proud of? Like what will my legacy be?

Speaker 1: 1:04:33

You said, it is always my goal and I always fall short of it. How do you an anxious guy, I get repetitive in my head for plans if I start to really overbook things and it starts to be really hard to be present, because now I want to solve the problem that I just walked away from. Now I have to go do something else being present. What are some tips and tricks that you use that just you walk into a room, whatever you came or left from, say the work to family, and it's lingering on you. How would you center yourself and say, no, I'm going to be in this room?

Speaker 2: 1:05:14

So, first of all, allow me to say that I don't do life perfectly, and so sometimes I drag that garbage right through the door with me, you know? So there's that and then that's-. So that's the beginning, right? That's the beginning of saying you know? Geez well, okay, I did that. I'm not here Like the acknowledgement of the situation.

Speaker 2: 1:05:39

the openness about- yeah, it's not like somebody's got the market on this. Somebody's going to write a book, and geez, I wish it was me. I wish I had put it to paper first, like there's always going to be a compilation of things that happen. And you said it before when you said I can't go to a waterfall. That doesn't work for me. All those images I have to be thinking about, oh gee, why am I thinking about that person and who is it? When yesterday happened, oh, so now I'm thinking about yesterday was and I believe that that's everybody's valid.

Speaker 2: 1:06:19

And to say that to yourself is to say you know, joe, you started off that question by saying you know I don't really ever achieve this or that's not the word you but you first you disqualified yourself from knowing that you are fully participatory, but not every second. So you say you go home to your wife and you know, and I know my husband, he tunes me out, I tune him out, and then I get mad at him, like I never do it. You know what I mean. Are you listening to me, jim? Do you hear what-. You know what I mean. Like I do the same thing. It's that compassion that we have to have for each other. It's the you know, it's forgiving yourself, it's just acknowledging. This is just a human thing we're doing here. Can we do the best we can?

Speaker 1: 1:07:16

And start over. And start- just keep starting over.

Speaker 2: 1:07:19

That's exactly what I was going to say next yes that's exactly what I was going to say.

Speaker 1: 1:07:23

Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of starting over. I want to be always non-resistant to starting over, because when I I want to keep finishing a story in my head, I get sick, I get sick. I'll finish in like an argument or a challenge for my wife going to work. Oh, why didn't I think it I'm like start over, just let go. Let go Listen and let go yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:07:47

Sometimes it's just a matter of going and I hate this, I hate this. It really is sometimes a matter of me going back and saying, you know what? I was just a real jerk. Yeah, I hate that. Yeah, me too. I don't do that part well in my life. I would much rather be giving advice.

Speaker 1: 1:08:03

I would much rather start over right at the moment to call my sponsor and tell him something, that there's a men's involved or. I don't like writing resentments, I will. I still like that practice. It makes sense to me. It commits me to another person that I'm not embarrassed of what like my life's, what exposed to what we're a community. I was like I want someone to know, I want to change something about myself, like a reflex I have. So is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't get to?

Speaker 2: 1:08:39

I don't think so. I think we can look at this as an ongoing conversation. So whether it's five years from now or-.

Speaker 1: 1:08:49

You're coming back. Yeah yeah, we talked about the sixties again.

Speaker 2: 1:08:53

You're real specific the sixties and the seventies yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:08:59

My favorite quote was remember Bruce, and I just saw him dumpster Bruce. I haven't seen him in a while. Flamin' hippie now he's kind of very conservative. But he said his favorite quote from the seventies why change dicks in the middle of a screw? Vote for Nixon in 72. There you have it. That's the first guy, matt and I. That's what he was telling me. He had all the hippie regalia.

Speaker 2: 1:09:24

And so I voted for McGovern. And what did he take one state.

Speaker 1: 1:09:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:09:29

Now, there you have it.

Speaker 1: 1:09:30

Yeah, well, till next time.

Speaker 2: 1:09:35

Thank you so much, joe. Thanks for coming. This has really really been fun it's fun right. So when I asked, when my granddaughter asked me again if you have had celebrities on, I'm going to say yes, yes, yes, as a matter of fact, a spectacular one Wonderful woman from Newark.

Speaker 1: 1:09:51

Wait and hear her story.

Speaker 2: 1:09:54

Thanks, joe.

Speaker 1: 1:09:59

I'd like to thank you for listening to another episode of All Better to find us on allbetterfm, or listen to us on Apple Podcasts, spotify, google Podcast Stitcher, iheartradio and Alexa. Well, thanks to our producer, john Edwards. An engineering company, 5.7.0 Drone. Please like or subscribe to us on YouTube, facebook, instagram or Twitter and, if you're not, on social media you're awesome. Looking forward to seeing you again. And remember, just because you're sober doesn't mean you're right.