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AllBetter
Discussions on addiction and recovery. We interview clinicians/researchers, legislators, and individuals that include a variety of means to recovery. Joe Van Wie is a father, husband, filmmaker, and reformed media consultant in recovery.
AllBetter
"Finding the Tools that Work" with Evan Glass
Imagine uprooting your life, battling with the demons of addiction, and then going on to build a thriving business. This is exactly what my friend Evan Glass did, and he shares his inspiring journey with us. Evan candidly recounts his youth in Pleasantville, NY, his struggles with substance abuse, and his ultimate commitment to sobriety that led him to Northeastern Pennsylvania. His story is a stark reminder that addiction doesn't discriminate, but the power to overcome is within us all.
Substance abuse doesn't just impact your health; it redefines your identity and personal relationships. Evan opens up about his experiences with marijuana and alcohol, the culture surrounding these substances, and the paranoia that can come with their use. He also shares his dark moments, like his solo detox in a New Mexico hotel room. Yet, it's not all gloomy. Evan's story is also one of resilience, as he discusses how he managed to rebuild his life and business in a new environment, thanks to his determination and courage.
But Evan's recovery journey didn't end with sobriety. He found solace and perspective in a hobby - fishing. He shares how reconnecting with nature and prioritizing self-care became instrumental in his recovery. Additionally, he emphasizes the importance of community in recovery. His extended 12-step family and the local fishing club provided unwavering support, demonstrating the transformative power o
📢 **Announcement!** 📢. We want to introduce our new 24-hour, 7-days-a-week hotline for crisis or substance use treatment. Whether you are seeking help for the first time or are an alum in need of immediate assistance, our team is here for you around the clock. 📞 **Call 1-800-HELP-120 anytime, day or night.** #ScrantonRecovery #ScrantonRecovery #ScrantonRecovery Fellowship House
As a treatment center, Fellowship House offers both residential and outpatient treatment services to
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Hello and thanks again for listening to another episode of All Better. I'm your host, joe Van Lee. Today's guest is my friend, evan Glass. Evan is the owner and operator of Mac Tools in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Evan moved here in 2001 to get sober and he's lived here ever since. Today we get to talk about the last 20 years of what sobriety looked like for him, what a relapse looked like after long-term sobriety, some of the problems that rise up for an individual in long-term sobriety especially someone who is a caretaker of many and when crisis rises in your life, who do you approach to speak openly and candidly about the help you may need? We talk about that in great detail and we also talk about the many dozens of people that we know that have been here for the last 20 years and moved here from somewhere else to escape addiction and find recovery, and what they added to our community here and it's great let's meet Evan Glass.
Speaker 2:Racism doesn't exist.
Speaker 1:Well, we were just finishing up a conversation. We got a hot mic now, oh great. So again I want to thank Evan. Evan and I have been friends. I would say she's got to be 20, 25 years since 97.
Speaker 2:I moved here in 2000.
Speaker 1:Okay, 2000. Oh, wow, okay, now I remember. Yeah, so we've been friends since 2000. Yeah, it's 23 years and Evan stopped by today. Because Evan, I'm going to let him tell his story. He's one of these interesting stories that he moves here and immerses himself in a recovery community and he's now a Scrantonian with a flourishing business. And this story's common and it's not as linear as you know most people would like to be when it concerns recovery and building a business. But Evan is a very interesting story and a friend and I thought we could just shoot the breeze today. I was going to start with this Evan.
Speaker 2:Hold on. That's amazing. I have that picture All right?
Speaker 1:Well, it just always ends up on my desk. This is a picture of my brother, evan, and myself almost looking like the Beastie Boys. This was Evan New Year's Eve dance. I would say that was 2010.
Speaker 2:The red fat laces and the Adidas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that was a great picture. So, evan, where are you from originally? Where were you born?
Speaker 2:I grew up in Pleasantville, new York. Pleasantville, new York, just north of the suburbs of New York City.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how would you describe Pleasantville for someone who wasn't familiar with it?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's beautiful there. It's great.
Speaker 1:Remember that movie Pleasantville.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everybody's in black and white, yeah.
Speaker 1:I forgot about that movie. That was the late 90s flick, so just summarize what was it like growing up there. How long did you was your entire childhood in Pleasantville, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I grew up in like a Frank Lloyd Wright community, so lots of yuppies, and my mother was very liberal and I was on my bike every day and did what I wanted I didn't have. That was the days of no helmets.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You went outside and played in the creek all day.
Speaker 1:And did you have any friends Like as you started to reach adolescence, maybe from the boroughs?
Speaker 2:Oh, of course. And the kids from the other sides of the tracks yeah, I fit in with them better.
Speaker 1:And so when did you realize you fit in with kids, that maybe it didn't have the same advantages of what might have been in your proximity, your eye line? How'd you connect with those?
Speaker 2:kids. Well, I'm a product of a single mother, so I instantly related with other kids that had the same behavioral issues that I had. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And this is pre-alcohol, pre-cigarettes like something? Yeah, absolutely. And so what would you describe it as? Like what was happening?
Speaker 2:I was also shunned too, by the parents, the kids, their parents. You know the good, you know dynamic households, you know the parents that don't be friends with Evan.
Speaker 1:And how old are you? When this is like, because that sucks, man, that is just so. Boxing the box is a kid, even eight years old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, evan, he's a bad boy. Yeah, right from the gate.
Speaker 1:So did you feel an angst and maybe how would you describe the way you felt before you ever got drunk or maybe experienced your first joint? What was a feeling that was always there, that maybe wasn't as noticeable until you were relieved of it?
Speaker 2:Well, of course, the way I communicated with myself learning disabilities, attention disorders, so I was always had, you know, and then I was a daydreamer, Like so I didn't pay attention because I was, you know, getting kicked in the face with the soccer ball, because I was picking dandelions out of the soccer field, you know. So you know right away, you know my voice to myself was you're no good, yeah, you know, and there's just lots of insecurities as a child.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's freakish. You end up, you know somewhere, when you're an adult, you're in a room. There's 50 people here that would just describe the same exact childhood and you're like what the fuck? Yeah, I thought I was suffering from this quietly. I didn't know. Other people thought this way.
Speaker 2:It's like but then it makes like a savant situation where my other abilities were brighter. Yeah, you know, you know.
Speaker 1:So I developed skills that other kids didn't have and what would be some of them, because I know what they are. What would you describe them?
Speaker 2:I was just motivated to earn, yeah, you know, and because there was, I was the man of the house, like I felt like I even had to provide, and you know.
Speaker 1:I don't know this. Did you have any siblings? None, so it's you and your mom and my mom's an only child, and is she working full time or you just started? When she's an artist, she's an artist.
Speaker 2:You know. So you know she was a stay at home mom. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the hustle just woke up in you early, right away. You've always been an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:I've never seen my mother would take me shopping at the like the second hand store, yeah. So the toys I got were used older toys, lincoln logs, erector sets I loved erector sets, old trains, you know. You know American pickers, man, you know like. So I had to make my own entertainment while their kids were given something that functioned.
Speaker 1:And did you know you could profit from something that was something else? Somebody didn't want this.
Speaker 2:I always tell this story Boys Life magazine. Did you ever have see that? I remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like as a punchline. I remember Ranger Rick with Boys Life. I know what it is.
Speaker 2:So it was a boy, it was a magazine for the purpose of Boy Scouts, okay, and on the back of it was the American sales club, and so you would sell stationary door to door and you would earn a toy. They didn't give the kids cash, wow. So I would go like I signed up for this thing and I would knock on doors with, like, their portfolio. It was almost like what was that Years ago.
Speaker 1:There was another like thing, there was always candy magazine drives.
Speaker 2:I remember those service and book drives and you had the catalogs, you could sell things like so door to door and I was charming and cute so people were like all right, I'll give you $15 for some stationary, like people use the mail system. Back then, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm a product of the 70s, so I wanted a telescope man, you know. So I earned two of them, and then the pallet arrived in the driveway and this is like where alcoholism and my behavior reared its head is. I've got the toy, I did the job, the pallet arrives with all my customer stationary, and now my mother has to put it in her Chevy citation and deliver it for me, because I was already gratified. How old are you, god? I must have been 10 or 11 or Well, this kind of entrepreneurial.
Speaker 1:You've already commandeered your mother as an extension of your corporation. She will do that. Your sales oh my God, you had them Amazon. Yeah, that is Amazon, and that stayed with you that never really left Never.
Speaker 1:Never yeah, I've always was inspired and I've learned a lot from you. When we first met I couldn't believe you know, you just entered recovering. You're already establishing yourself pretty quickly and scranting through property, business, drive skills, and I was just. It was inspiring to a lot of people because we were similar in age and you paved a way for a lot of people in their 20s this is 20 years ago to think they could own a home and scranting that are in recovery. That's a powerful thing to see in a recovery community, especially in people in their 20s I think I was 30 when I bought my house 30?.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm already off by a couple of years, but I think you get what I'm laying down.
Speaker 2:That was real, but like I fixed my credit, yeah, and I went into work every day.
Speaker 1:Well, before we get there. I want to talk about that because that's a hard thing. You don't always have someone to navigate you through that and a lot of people need that kind of help. Coaching, maybe we could talk about that, but what was it about? What was the first time you got hired drunk? What were you doing?
Speaker 2:Um, I was at a family meal and, uh, I had a stepfather at the time and he thought it would be humorous. But I mean before I got drunk with alcohol. I mean there was other. You know, I would go to the big, into the garage when I was little and take the cap off the lawn mower oh, take it.
Speaker 1:I like the way it smelled, but it's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know that smell. Yeah, you know, I mean there was that. But the first alcohol that touched these lips was at a family meal, yeah, yeah. And then I was cracking jokes and I'm like, wow, everybody likes me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow. So it immediately had a profound effect on you, the way you felt about yourself and how you interact with people, and that you've never experienced that kind of fluid social movement, even in your own home.
Speaker 2:Right and then later on. Then it happened again in like middle school where, uh, I must have been 12 or 13 where we stole a bottle of vodka from somebody's parents and we got drunk and then sick. Yeah, but it was. You know, the story on Monday back at school attracted people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was like oh, this is my identity, a boy's life.
Speaker 2:You know, I've arrived.
Speaker 1:And this progressed pretty quickly. For a young guy, how would you, how would you describe that? How did it? How did it turn dark so quickly? It didn't. I don't know if it was quick. Well, you were in your twenties. That's pretty quick for most people. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well I, I'm a high school dropout, okay, so I was some mechanic and, uh, alcohol didn't sit right with me. I was 90 pounds. Like I was a lightweight, like I was the kid that you know I'd go to the party, drink three beers, pass out on your couch and then urinate on it Like I couldn't hold the liquor. But marijuana I, you know I loved it you know that was my title in life and, of course you know, 1994, cypress Hill, the Wu Tang Clan. Like those were my mentors.
Speaker 1:I wanted to be it's a culture and it was, uh, there's a unifying poetry to all of it, absolutely, and there's activism to it too. I mean, that was I saw Cypress Hill 1992 at Lollapalooza too, and how could you not like Cypress Hill? I mean.
Speaker 2:I'm not a big West coast fan, but if I were to choose, that would be my favorite.
Speaker 1:They had an edge of silliness, like, like, exactly, yeah, they just openly talked about smoking marijuana as a I don't know a mindset, like it was driving their art form. And marijuana isn't, as you know, abrasive as drinking, especially underage Drinking, is an investment of time. It's hard to hide, it doesn't go away quickly. You could ease into being stoned. You can manage it throughout a day. You could smoke all day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you smoke all day pretty quickly? Oh yeah, and a friend with weed was a friend indeed, you know. So I, if I had weed, I had friends.
Speaker 1:You had a connection. Yeah yeah, this is the 90s. Yeah yeah, that is an icebreaker and I think that's a powerful thing you know you can really zero in on if you walk in a room, especially with weed. You can even do this with cocaine, but the you know weed is different. There's a connection that is unsaid. If you share a joint with someone and someone's smoking pot, there's a lot of assumptions quickly being made and the social ice is broken. There's no angst. You could. You could let your hair down and meet someone quickly.
Speaker 2:I think my mother even, you know, wasn't as strict with me because she knew it was less dangerous than alcohol.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and this is pre like if anyone was young, this is pre cards dispensary. Yeah, it's a lot of seeds, there's a lot of branches being picked out of backs. Was there ever a time in that time where weed is? You know this part of your life, you're using it daily that you experienced a bad high? Not like a bad trip, but like a little paranoia.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's Mars.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and how would that subside back then Like was there an amount you thought you had to take to avoid paranoia? I'm always curious about this because I've been talking about it a lot. There's they're finally able to research cognitively, like what's happening. Why do certain people experience relaxation with certain strands versus maybe a paranoia height state that you're taking in too much information socially about cues from eyes, people's movement. It just makes a self-centered paranoia just rise up.
Speaker 2:I'm not even a fan of weed. Yeah, honestly, like, looking back on it, I'm like I even I smoked pot one time in the course of the past 23 years and I'm sober eight years. I think it's awful. Yeah, I've never felt really relaxing. No, I've always like been looking out the windows, thinking the cops are coming to get me questioning. It even brings up some emotional stuff for me. It's like you know, after being sober and smoking, that one time I was saying why am I doing this to everyone? Like I was like man, really feeling bad, like just washed with guilt.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, pot's really strong and you know I had an awful relapse. Both of us related and connect on this. After being sober for years and you've experienced this I smoked. I initially felt relaxed, but it wasn't long after that. It was creating tremendous anxiety. But I didn't stop smoking it. I wasn't drinking yet. All I was smoking was weed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I was so desperate to change my consciousness, I was willing to induce anxiety because I could just say it was from weed, it wasn't from my thoughts or life Weeds cause. It was awful Absolutely and it always felt there were so so much.
Speaker 2:The heart palp populations I get from weed is worse than cocaine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, I experienced that and so I really didn't like it by the time I drank, and once I drank and used cocaine. I don't smoke weed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I won't like, I don't even want to even the room.
Speaker 2:It's immature.
Speaker 1:But I was reading there's a great not reading listening to a podcast that's Huberman Labs and this guy's a Stanford neurologist and a lot of his podcasts are like 40 minutes. They're like straight lectures. I learned more about weed last year and 40 minutes than I ever knew in my entire life and I smoked a lot of weed. Would you learn what the paranoia will not leave? If you're, you have the psychology that it just increases and it gets worse. And now weed at this dosage that you know. You see these. This is crazy. It causes psychosis and I'm not. I'm not witch hunting weed. I don't care what people like. There's another side of me.
Speaker 2:People are going to listen to our podcast and hate us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not labeling weed as devil's lettuce or anything.
Speaker 2:I'm saying if you're going to smoke weed, I'd rather you do that than heroin or fentanyl or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's. I've seen people do that as harm reduction, so it's, there's a lot of dimensions to this. But just talking specifically, you and I having the same experience, now that you're saying that we're guys who can't experience again a nice way to smoke weed yeah, and this was a fact and he lays it out and I probably won't do it as elegantly as he does, but he explains it in great detail and it's been studied in depth now for seven years, because it's legal in some states that these exact ideas of what emotions are coming out and and a high, what would cause paranoia, what's the psychological state of someone, especially if they had addiction and I was sold on it. After that I knew exactly what was happening to me and it wasn't the weed. The weed was accentuating Anxiety already had.
Speaker 2:I feel like I outgrew it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, A lot of people. Well, what was your drug that really grabbed you after? You know, most kids have that. In the nineties, guys like us had this exploratory weed thing. But was there something else afterwards that really Well, in in with the weed.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know, in the early nineties I mean, there was LSD mushrooms. I didn't like either of those very much, but mescaline, I ate a lot of those because it had speed in it. Well, I never did. And then you know cocaine and other narcotics, yes.
Speaker 1:How about cocaine? You mentioned earlier. You had attention deficit disorder and attention problems. The cocaine give you any sense of order, absolutely In your head.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I'm a groove performance guy. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like, and I won't go so far and opiates do the same thing for me, like give me that energy. Yeah, you know, I'm not one of those people that nods out Like I'm, I'm productive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's a common effect.
Speaker 2:And also I'm a great communicator.
Speaker 2:Like I can sell stuff to people Like I'll convince you. And then, of course, while I'm under the influence now, I'm scared of how people pay. Like so, when somebody's car was broken, I had a comfort zone that I would meet. Like so, after like a thousand dollars of repair, I would be uncomfortable calling them and be like your car is really messed up and needs a thousand dollars, but under the influence of opiates three thousand bucks, bro, I'll get it done you know like I could just and it was a legitimate three thousand dollars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so that's so funny. That is just. Do you think that's because of? Did you have friends when you were I'm just, I don't want to pry that were didn't have even less privileges than you? Yes, right, that you felt bad ever having more than them. Yeah, isn't that a weird?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel that way now. People ask me to borrow money sometimes and I'm like I don't even have it, I just give it away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a generosity is a problem for me. I don't know you. You walk a path that your intuition, I'll tell you, I don't think there's. You can only judge that man. I've seen you help and make a real impact on people's lives that stayed sober even while we both went back out. You've changed.
Speaker 2:You can actually. There's guys out there that I got not like to take this credit. Yeah, they were 20 years sober.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah. You sponsored dozens of people in early 2000s.
Speaker 2:Leo's kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you took to the program. So well, let's, let's back up and like Well, punishment. Let's make an entry into a let's get to 2000. Just so I can have this linear narrative of people meeting you and how you arrived in Scranton, like how would you start to build up the arrival here, how did that happen and how old were you?
Speaker 2:I was 24 when I went to the Karen Foundation, yeah, and then the Karen Foundation to Serenity Lodge and then from Serenity Lodge to one of the sober house in downtown Scranton and that's when Frank owns Serenity Lodge yeah, yeah, I'm frankly. Two garbage bags full of clothes, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you never heard it. Did you ever hear of Scranton prior to that?
Speaker 2:Never, never. And like when I was at the Karen Foundation, the people were like you're going to Serenity Lodge and I was like, yeah, they're. Like. I heard you have to plow the fields up there and pick corn and I'm like, if that's what you want me to do, you know I was beaten, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know what got you beaten that night for that you could feel and accept that you want to recover.
Speaker 2:I didn't do opiates until I was 19. Okay and uh, but I was hooked right away. So by 20 in the course of five years four years I was on the methadone program. I was an IV cocaine user. Like it was unbelievable. Like people looked at me and like really were like this kid is in bad shape and I'd been in five treatment centers, eight hospitalized detoxes.
Speaker 1:And are you homeless? Experiencing this around people you don't pleasant feel? Yeah.
Speaker 2:And my mother like locked me out of the house, you know, wore her purse around her neck when I was around, like I was just a monster.
Speaker 1:When would you be able to peek and see yourself that what was happening to you? Did you feel like a stranger in your own life, like was there versions of you? I don't know if you've ever experienced this and well, this was darkness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've experienced this darkness again. There's two. I have two recovery stories. And that darkness was just trying to attempt to sleep 24 hours a day, yeah, and I just wanted to be comatose. You know the next darkness I guess we'll get to that that one became more violent, more suicidal yeah, I was scared because I was sober at the time.
Speaker 1:we were struggling and then, after you came back, I was blessed my mind.
Speaker 2:And then the attempts to get sober. That time were we have to get to that because I was just out of my mind and now I had money? Yeah, yeah, you know. So, getting sober when you're 24 and you have nothing like you can't, you know, $8 an hour, I think I was making here. Like there wasn't, yeah, there was no options to go use drugs.
Speaker 1:No, and there's a rush to get away from really awful consequences. You were in a lot of pain. Yeah, I also had legal problems at 24.
Speaker 2:In New York, yes, and I think I was like the last person to have my parole transferred from New York to Pennsylvania. Like and this was before treatment courts, you know, and a lot of that stuff. So yeah yeah, that wasn't.
Speaker 1:That wasn't an easy transition back then. Yeah, what, what would? What was recovery for you after Serenity Lodge? How did this? How did you just get accepted here I would describe that and why did you stay here?
Speaker 2:Joe Gilcrest Wow, Really, that's right, it's Joe, yeah, joe Gilcrest. So I went to Serenity Lodge and Joe Gilcrest worked there God bless his soul and but I had already had the at the Karen Foundation. Something happened. I can't tell you what it is. There's like they call it the turning point. There's like no moment of time when I can tell you that I surrendered. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was because of the withdrawal that I went through, or whatever. Something happened down there where I was like, just tell me what to do, I can't do this anymore. And I was just physically beaten up to the point. You know, I had a mitral valve prolapse condition, Like my heart was in pain 24 years old and I'm on beta blockers, you know because of just being a knot, not being able to sleep. And then, of course, the treatment centers jacked me on psych meds. So I was overweight, like I went from, you know, 90 pounds to 180 pounds really fast. It was just a mess.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, joe Gilcrest, you put a yeah.
Speaker 2:So the man. I walked into Serenity Lodge and this detestable human being was there and he gave me a big book. I have it. It says his name is written on the. It says Joe G. And he gave me, as he said, if you want to live, read this book. And it was like okay, and the man took me through the big book of alcohol.
Speaker 1:I went through the big book with Joe Bruce. Bruce was always my sponsor, but when I came back 2001,. That's how we met. Right after now I could clearly remember Joe Gilcrest was taking a meeting every day. He called me every morning. He was relentless, he was tough.
Speaker 2:The man. I love him, Loved him and I had other mentors like this is just going to come up because you know Donnie Callio, scotty, joe Gilcrest, Gene Walsh like great flow. Yeah, yeah, you know, and you know great flow like gave me an impression he was so immersed in alcoholics anonymous, god bless his soul that man could never drink because of how he went to like five meetings a day yeah. I was like this guy.
Speaker 1:I looked back at Al now and I love Al Just how much trauma I couldn't understand from the context or the lens of my age in my 20s that I thought when I found out how horrifying his experience of Vietnam was. I could never put that in context because, you know, al was a character. Everyone was sweet to him. He was young guys, you know we always get along with them. But to think the horrors that man lived through and how kind and he was such a gentle man?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was. And then to think, like I had this conversation, he's like they. You know, they gave me an M16. Yeah, like he's a kid, he's a chock, like a gentle human being. And then they gave him a weapon to go destroy people with, like you imagine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he wasn't on a base, I mean, he was in horror. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To think that's the same human being that I would see would dance at the drap of the hat and sing. He was just the first meeting I went to at Marworth.
Speaker 2:When I came to Scran he was chairing, yeah, and then that was like on a Saturday night. And then on Monday night I went to Covenant to the meeting there and I opened up the 12 and 12 there and it said grateful, al. And his phone number was inside the book. I said I'm going to ask this guy to be my sponsor. Yeah, this is the champion of here.
Speaker 1:I mean, I learned later on yeah sure, we, we you know, we all have a has its own skeletons. We got to protect our own. So there was a really vibrant community and people that really cared about each other and there was no real recovery.
Speaker 2:Well, I watched men who had their lives together. It was almost like they were levitating dude. Yeah, yeah, you know. Like I watched people come into the room who had a wife and a job and kids and they would say things to me like I can't, tomorrow I have to go take my son to Boy Scouts. Like God, like that's the life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is it feeling yeah?
Speaker 2:And then I had other people that just encouraged me to be better. And then I wanted a social life. I wanted to have friends, I wanted to have community. I didn't have you know, I was isolated. And then the people that I was hanging around with were like yo, you got to do this stuff or you're not going to be our friend.
Speaker 1:I'm like shit.
Speaker 2:And what was the stuff like? The work, that's you know the four step and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:And seven days a week. Every day did you talk to someone in recovery? Were you going to? Yeah, that's what. That's what your recovery experience was. You were going to meetings, meeting people. Now would you call multiple people a day.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I, right from the gate. I started working and I bought my first car in recovery. Yeah, $750, chevy Cavalier, you were in it. I gave you rides in my car, that's what it was Like. I put recovery miles on that automobile, like it was like every night, like you want me to pick you up.
Speaker 1:You know that was when did you feel at home here and you felt safe, that you felt like you were protected from addiction?
Speaker 2:It was pretty quick actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it was fast.
Speaker 2:It was, it's not. I don't sense that in the AA here nowadays, Like COVID hurts some stuff.
Speaker 1:It changed, it changes, it'll change back. It'll not back. It could change into something changes every 10 years, with or without COVID. Covid made specific changes. I see it coming back now. Recovery bank helps a lot of that. I think they're so active. There's daily meetings that are becoming more vibrant, numbers are growing up, but that was damaging and a lot of people died.
Speaker 2:There wasn't even a lot of young people when we first came around here.
Speaker 1:We were the young people. Yeah, before you, when I came in 1994 at 16, the next closest guy to my age at that time before Tom Mike, anybody, timmy was a guy named Dave. Dave was from New York and transplant here. He was 32. And he had like an Air Force fighter pilot jacket, combat boots, like really grunge but like this wasn't grunge, it was almost like borderline neo-nazi shit. And Dave was the closest to my age. I saw him at a picnic or something like this dude's off man. I was 16 and I knew it. The next week he stabbed a guy with his own glasses like almost like a godfather scene where he broke the guy. The guy wouldn't give him his glasses, he was in a psychotic breaks parod, schizoaffective and stabbed the guy with his glasses and ended up in a psych unit like a state hospital after that. But that was my first experience. This is here's the young people thing. Dave, it was Dave. I felt bad. We had some great characters back in the day.
Speaker 2:The cafe Del Sol remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:There was a cafe just dedicated in Scranton that entire period of time to people in recovery at Mulberry Street. That was banging. So you're sober for a couple of years after this point, after 2000. When did things start to change, like for the? It becomes stale, or maybe you felt restless. What happened, what was led up to the relapse? Yeah, it's your sober while 11 years 11 years, yeah.
Speaker 2:And a lot of things were taking place in my life. I'd always been so motivated to figure out, like, what's my, my talent, to like put everything together into one thing, to figure out what it was that I was going to be my career. I'm a talented mechanic, yes, yeah, and, but I'd always wanted to like I hated it that they made $98 an hour and gave me 13. Yeah, you know what I mean, and I'm like these are even my customers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were all your customers. I went there all the time. My brother, my whole family went there, yeah.
Speaker 2:Everybody, everybody, everybody. I practiced these principles and all my repairs I said like I just took care of people and in that case I always had work. But I wasn't getting a fair break there, you know, and I don't think even if I went to another garage or started my own, it would have just been too. It's not a good field. Yeah, you know, even though I'm still in it, mechanics don't get paid enough and they're not appreciated sometimes.
Speaker 2:So I bought a house. I ended up with a sober house, like next thing, you know, I had guys living with me and then I had another sober house. It was very organic, like how my life progressed. And then the guy I was buying tools from, I sold him a roof, like I was working for a guy on part time as a roofer Wow. And then I sold my Mac tools guy a roof and he's like, how did you do? And then it was not just a roof, it turned into a roof, siding and decks, so it was like $26,000 like I walked out of you know, and he's like how did you do that?
Speaker 2:Like why aren't you selling tools? And he's like come for a ride with me for a day and just totally recruited me. You know, like what do they call it? Head hunted me and was like this kid is too good for this corporation. You know they lost them. Yeah, no shit. And then. But then I started worshiping false gods. This is where it leads up is in the false gods.
Speaker 1:Were Benjamin Franklin and Grant, I just always saw your money conscious. I didn't see that begin to happen, because I'd come up your house for a picnic. I'm going to barbecue. I just saw flourishing with. You were taking care of a lot of people in the sense of a sponsorship. You're providing a roof for them. You have a nice property. You have large piece of land. Well, I thought it's always filled with a people.
Speaker 2:It's great that you talked about the parties I had at my house and how I was inclusive and always had lots of people, because that story then turns into, you know, the line of cars outside of my house for the party, and then, after I relapsed, the line of cars got smaller and smaller.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how about that?
Speaker 2:I know that and that spirals into something. But I think I was trying to provide for this girl, yeah, that I was married to, and I felt like I had to be. I don't know, maybe it's because I didn't have a dad. Like it brings up some stuff, like I just had a champion, this, you know. So maybe she was a little stuck up, you know, and I couldn't get satisfied her. So I don't know, I remodeled the kitchen, you know, I made all this stuff and and then the marriage went bad and it slammed me man, yeah, slammed me.
Speaker 1:Now were you around, people that can understand your pain. Did you feel disconnected from them at this time, or were you afraid to ask for help? How did that?
Speaker 2:Well, I was such a helper. Yeah, you were.
Speaker 1:I had such a hard time reaching out for help, and who would you reach out to Exactly At that period? You're 11 years sober.
Speaker 2:Some people in AA lost credibility because I got to know even people with time. I was like I can't even talk to this guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, both ends of that. I couldn't talk to anyone and I was losing credibility. I'm sober at the meetings but I'm a real jerk and I don't even know it. Yeah, that happens. People don't talk about the.
Speaker 2:Also there was. Also she was in AA, that's right. And so when she started drinking before I did like this is what caused. The problem is like she started drinking and wanted to go hang out with people who weren't in AA. Now and I'm like, why aren't my AA friends, who were girls that are friends with her, like jumping on her? Right now? It's like it's almost cultish it. Yeah yeah, I'm like why, where are you ladies Like, why aren't you saving my? And now I'm going to meetings and I'm saying to myself I'm different. You know, I'm not like these people. Or I'm also saying to myself these days, let me down. Oh yeah, that's now. You know. I was starting to blame. It's almost like my first treatment center, like I walked in. This is punishment. These people aren't like me, they don't have my problems.
Speaker 1:That's a bad story to tell yourself you get sick, you get real sick. Yeah, I know that story.
Speaker 2:It was almost like I was living in a world that was color before, like I was going on vacations, like New Year's dances, like I was a spectacle, my life was amazing and then, all of a sudden, black and white. You know, sitting on my steps at two o'clock in the morning in the home I purchased for my wife alone. You know, I think we even had a conversation, me and you. We did.
Speaker 1:And when you said that, I remember it because we were taught it was late at night and I would stay up late. I think I lived downtown then and we were talking for a couple of weeks and I was a vault because I wasn't like as active in your circle, but we were friends, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I remember what you said to me. Actually I said you said to me Evan, you're going to be OK, you're charming. That's what you said to me. I swear to God, and I didn't believe it, or I did believe it, but I was like still then, why me? Yeah, it's a lot of pain, man. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I was devastated, you were heartbroken. Yeah, and I've been heartbroken and it's, it could be overwhelming. It's hard to talk about, too, when you're an adult man, because you're like everyone's could experience. If you don't talk about it, it could, it could really you my ex was also from Scranton.
Speaker 2:They, her and her family, adopted me yeah, also, so I was abandoned there too. Yeah, it's painful.
Speaker 1:Does this pain it? Just you didn't find a way to deal with it before. How did? I don't remember, I don't know the details. What, what was it that brought you right to that, the moment that you were willing to see if you could drink, or?
Speaker 2:Well, I had to go get a new wife, yeah, so I went and, you know, found a girl and she wanted to get high. And then it was like, if you can't beat them, join them. You know, I didn't want.
Speaker 1:I was in love.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to lose her, you know, and then of course it was sneaky. Yeah you know because.
Speaker 1:I didn't this from people too, yeah, it wasn't an open.
Speaker 2:Oh, I had commitments, man. I had sponsors. Oh, that sucks. So I was like you know, can I get away with this? Is anyone going to find out? You know, can I keep this a secret? I was asked to speak at the women's meeting at the celebration.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about that because there's a sense of you, like I remember being resenting that I was hiding drinking from certain people and certain people I didn't have to. They were my friends. Other people I was afraid in my good, in my recklessly destroying my reputation. They don't understand, like I don't want it to be black and white, he's just an animal now that he drinks, was there a sense of you that thought you could still hold on to yourself in the relapse? You just can't let other people find out or they're going to make it worse.
Speaker 1:Isn't that like?
Speaker 2:that story shows I would get text messages from guys that I helped get sober. You're letting me down.
Speaker 1:Oh man, that's crushing.
Speaker 2:Dude. And then people who resented me in AA. I got prank phone calls. That's where to God. That's gross. It was disgusting Like I even went and fought somebody.
Speaker 1:I don't remember Like I think it was out of touch. We were out of touch in that period.
Speaker 2:That's gross. Somebody who heard me speak at a meeting that just I rubbed them the wrong way and I do it Like. I mean I have a big, huge ego and condescending, you're from. Pleasantville. Man, you're from Pleasantville, I also. My shoulders are puffed out, like you know how do you get back from here?
Speaker 1:Did you think you were going to make it back? Because we ran into each other. How did you get through that?
Speaker 2:Well, I went to war Like there was five years of me. Five years, yeah, five years, yeah, trying to, you know, have the best of both worlds, trying to stay sober and or trying to live the a principled life, and then being a double agent. It was. It was working three jobs. It rips your brain apart. Oh my God, it's absolutely horrible. I even and like this is important, like I want it like I went and did one of those detoxes where they put you under anesthesia. What is that? I don't know, I'm not familiar with it, so I was. You know, they detox you from opiates while you're under anesthesia.
Speaker 1:Wow, so there's no experience of conscious experience?
Speaker 2:It's not legal in every state.
Speaker 1:Like so.
Speaker 2:I went to Detroit and the anesthesiologist gave me anesthesia and then hit me with Narcon, yeah, and then they slowly bring you out of the anesthesia and you wake up with, you know, out of the withdrawal, but trust me, you're still within withdrawal. Oh man, you know, like so like I tried to like just disappear for a week and get sober. Yeah, I've tried that, and you know it's by way of $12,000 detox in Detroit, michigan, oh God. And it was like, oh, that is so painful, don't ever do that Now you.
Speaker 1:you have cash flow, you have business. You have a flourishing business. You're your own boss. You have property. How did you? How?
Speaker 2:do you keep this stuff going? Well, I was not keeping it like things were bad. Yeah, so, I'd never. I always paid my mortgage, but I def. I had a home equity line of credit that I started to default on yeah, which was ugly. Not to mention the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue. I'm still paying that one. Yeah so, but Mac tools was coming to scrape the decals off my truck. You know like it was, but luckily, you know I what happened. How did I do it?
Speaker 1:How did you come?
Speaker 2:up like yeah, what's the?
Speaker 1:feeling you ready yeah.
Speaker 2:Man. So that line of cars that was outside for my parties, yeah, that got smaller and smaller and smaller. Where people had given up on me, a gentleman by the name of Jeremy Williams. Do you remember, jeremy?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember Jeremy he used to play cards.
Speaker 2:He used to call him the Rev. Yeah, he always had Reverend Jeremy. He talked about Jesus a lot in meetings.
Speaker 1:I like Jeremy he was he was he was a real dude.
Speaker 2:He was a hard dude and we used together. Yeah, jeremy walked in my house and threw my shit away, man, and it was like my last hope. And then I came. I came back. This wasn't instantly Sure. I came back. I got another girlfriend. I wasn't focused. I knew how to steal money from my business, you know, and I'll profit equal revenue equals profit.
Speaker 2:And so I went. What did I do? I think I got in a car and I rented a car from Enterprise and I bought my substance and I drove as far away that the substance would last me for and I ended up in New Mexico and I detoxed myself with nothing Like with a bad habit On a bed in a hotel room in New Mexico. I rocked back and forth on the bed so much that my ears were bleeding from the friction of the pillow on my ears.
Speaker 1:Was this almost a punishment rather than the except? What was the resistance to going to a medical detox?
Speaker 2:I don't, I'm been to those places. Man Toast yeah, I didn't want to go.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to be a burden and the extremity of extreme drive to New Mexico. Is there almost a self contempt in doing it?
Speaker 2:this way. I don't know Like I, just it was just you know what, While I was high, I was out driving and I'm like man, I just want to get away. This feels good.
Speaker 2:I was using just like the windows open, the warm summer air, and you just kept going and I'm like you know what? I'm going to rent a car and I filled the back seat with blankets and pillows and I just had no idea. I just drove. People were terrified, dude, and were you in contact with, like there was people like calling me, like where are you? What? Do you send me a picture of yourself? That's scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if I knew that, I'd be really scared for you. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was nuts. So then I came back from New Mexico and it took me a long. It was a long ride. It was a quick ride there. It took me like two days. The way back took me like like I would stop in a hotel for an hour. It's uphill, it's brutal ride. I got a flat tire in the rental car, it was just a mess. And then I came back here, I called my mom, I called a friend in AA, and people kind of surrounded me and then I knew I was in this was going to be a long, dangerous road and I gave somebody. I gave Sean Donahue. Yeah, I gave him the keys to my car, my quad. I gave him my money, I gave him my credit cards, my driver's license and I said don't let me have this Wow.
Speaker 2:And then one day and now I'd been this is really bad like because prior to this, like there was some suicides thinking, and then the gun I had guns and I'd put the gun in my mouth, you know like there was some. This is dark, dark. This is now next level, not 24 year old kid suicide, this is now I'm ready to like run my car in my garage with the hose type stuff. And one day I asked Sean to come bring me the keys to my car and just give me a couple of dollars. And I went to the old Forge meeting and I was like an hour early and I was real sick. I even crashed my car on the way of the meeting, like just bumped a semi on the way down to 81.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when I pulled up to the meeting, sean Bingham's there. Yeah, and we weren't like friends, like we actually hated each other, like we weren't okay, like we had drama back in the day. And I'm I see Sean across the park and I'm like, is that Sean standing out there? Like he looks so good? Yeah, and in the midst of those five years of me using, sean had five years sober and I walked up to him and I lifted up my shirt and I had my gun in my pants and I said, sean, I'm ready to kill myself, I need help. And Sean just grabbed me and like was like, I got you, I'll take care of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:I love Sean.
Speaker 2:And he took my gun. Yeah, good, that's pretty smart. And then I relapsed again. And then Sean got me. When then I went to treatment, sure, it was like I went to a real treatment center and I'm sitting there in the chair. You know, on a Sunday I got dropped off and Joe Cain walked up to me. He's like oh, you came to the Sunday meeting. Huh, I'm like no man and like so everybody in this treatment center that I'm at I helped get sober, bro, it's a weird place to be. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:How did you let go of that? How do you just wash and start new? How do you start over?
Speaker 2:I just wanted to stay in bed, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know how. I just, leo, helped me a lot with that Like with just the word new, like in the promises, like he's, like this isn't the recovery when you're 24. Yeah, this is a new beginning, a new life.
Speaker 1:You know and you knew you could. Did you feel a moment, you could start believing that things were?
Speaker 2:so messed up from well the house was in foreclosure. They're coming to scrape the decals my house had frozen Like the heat was off. Okay, so the pipes frozen my house Total disaster I came home to and it was February. Then to February I got sober February out of rehab to a frozen house.
Speaker 2:I got sober, february 9th 2015. So I, a month out, like I came out, like you could see my I could see my breath in my house. Like I opened up the oven and turned the oven on to heat the house. Sean picked me up from rehab.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know how many people that have had the experience of leaving a rehab. You want to go home and chill out. You don't want to turn on the TV.
Speaker 2:I couldn't even take a shower, oh God. Everything was broken and, like you know, I called my mom and my mom's an Al-Anon, like 30 years bro. I was in Cairan again, you know nine, 10 years ago and I called her and asked her for a carton of cigarettes and she said no, that would be enabling, and hung up on me. Click.
Speaker 2:I was like damn, like black belt, Al-Anon status. My mom, she will not do anything unless it's healthy for me. Yeah, wow. So like I'm not going to call my mom and be like you know. So you know, I sat on the hammock man, I let the business just chill. Oh, and Roy, I can't not have Roy go down in this conversation. Roy just opened up that treatment center. I was like one of his first patients. Yeah, he has a.
Speaker 1:I don't know Roy all too well but I know Sean and Ange and I love Sean. Bruce was font of Roy and that center is building looks remarkable. I mean just it looks exciting and he's got a great crew down there, Kyle and all those guys. Kyle helped me a lot when I came back. I didn't know him. He's a fresh face. I always enjoyed talking to him and he was in my home group it was just Roy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. When it opened, you know, I was just me and him. Sean made me do it, yeah, and then Roy took me fishing, you know, and was like what is with fishing? Oh, that's my new thing.
Speaker 1:That's just my was fishing found in this.
Speaker 2:No, I fished, since I was a kid.
Speaker 1:Okay, you know, it looks like there's a group. Of you have Roy.
Speaker 2:Sean fish is Frank Frank. Yeah, it's Dave Enslin. Dave Enslin's incredible fisherman.
Speaker 1:You guys have like a fishing club almost like this non-organized fishing club.
Speaker 2:It's a little competitive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, but it looks really chill. That's my church man, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's my church. That's nice. Now, do you keep the fish? Sometimes, I mean, I don't clean fish, but if I carry them out of the woods, frank will clean them. Okay, and Frank's an exceptional cook exceptional.
Speaker 1:He seems pretty detailed in everything. Frank's a really interesting guy and he's really bright, Really yeah he's a bright guy.
Speaker 1:I always liked Frank's company. That was the last time I really sat with Frank was with you. We were down at I had I was hatching some scheme for libertarians to do something online. Don't, don't, don't, evan? What do you call recovery today? Like what, what nourishes you? It's eight years now removed from that pretty dark relapse that in all probability I think probabilities against a person like you or I coming back, because it's so humiliating, the depression, so deep, the cynicism that this can work again. Just, it's just totally bottoms out. This isn't going to work again. I know I have friends in AA. Right, I don't think it's going to work for me. Like what, are they going to stay at my house until I get better? Well, there were some.
Speaker 2:I had to really study my previous recovery, yeah, To see how, what I left out on the fourth step to make this new recovery. So some of those things were self care, not being able to say no, I can't. I got to do what I got to do right now. Roy really helped me with meditation, like improving that consciousness, but it's just about really just being still and prioritizing peace, like going outside without the phone and anything and just listening, Like if I can hear the highway, you know through the forest, you know what sounds are available, You're experiencing real time.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:My breathing. You know what is going on.
Speaker 1:Why does that work?
Speaker 2:It's just it. How does it? Why does it work? I don't know. I think I have a clue, like, but how it works is it's just gets me grounded in a way. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It stops noise. Yeah, like we share a common word resentment to refill, similar to rumination. Most people have this problem. Their brain is lost in thought, but with alcoholism it's so severe and it's usually a story of just so unmeasured, of you being a victim. A plot has been hatched against you. Your life has been, there's a life you should have had and it's been taken from you, right, and everything else you have isn't enough.
Speaker 2:But hanging on to the resentment this is a story you've got to tell all the time. Hanging on to that is also my ego yeah, not letting that go. So I try to transcend that. Like the work day, I have a hectic work day, I have a hectic business. It's very stressful sometimes but it's. I can turn it into a vacation now. I couldn't do that before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you describe that? So you could turn it into a vacation. If I'm hearing you right, you can find peace within it, absolutely, that's, that's it.
Speaker 2:It's amazing.
Speaker 1:How do you so? That's the fishing self-care sane. No.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even being able to just go, wow, this is absolutely insane. What's going on right now in my life and in my head, and just going, wow, let's just get rid of that. This is actually. Let's just laugh that off and move away from that. Nothing is everything's solvable. Yeah, you know what I mean. And sometimes the things that are not solvable, don't touch it. Yeah, do nothing. Sometimes, the best thing to do is absolutely nothing. Yeah, it's okay. I used to tell myself like I'd wake up in the morning and I'd be like as soon as I open my eyes. I got to get this done, do this, this, this. How about? Don't? Don't go to work and don't feel bad about it. I would have guilt if I took the day off to go fishing before you know. Now I'm like I deserve it, I earned it. Stop being so hard on yourself.
Speaker 1:I don't know there's a spirituality to that. And your the perspective, your fishing trips, your finite so is work Like do you want to be in a deficit for fishing trips? Life's when life ends.
Speaker 2:I don't think so. Well, I have to make money to afford this fish.
Speaker 1:You do, but like there's a perspective that like, if you're caught in all those problems one morning, I got to get this done. I know that and I need that in my life. Some days need you to pause so you can really. You don't break a gasket Like what am I trying to achieve?
Speaker 2:I don't want to make fishing work too. No, you know what I mean. So that's the reward. It's just a flow, it is.
Speaker 1:So key facts did you save your business?
Speaker 2:You saved your house Big time. Oh, and then I've grown my business.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. A friend of mine now was laid off and one day he sits in my tool truck next to me and goes I'm coming to work with you, I'm collecting unemployment and he's getting sober too.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's awesome, you know. And I'm like all right, dude, sure. So I'm driving the truck and he's next to me, and then one day I'm like you drive, you know. So then he's sitting in the driver's seat and I'm in the passenger seat working deals, figuring stuff out, numbers and stuff Couple. Months later I'm like I'm going on vacation, I'm going to go to Florida for a week. He goes, I'll run your route while you're gone. I was paying him pennies, like just to hang out with me, and he was kind of my inspiration to go to work every day. So I go to Florida and I'm sitting on the beach.
Speaker 2:Oh, I wanted to sell my business at that time too, yeah, and I was looking at buying a one truck operation. I remember that you tell. I ran into you and he's like well, how long before I can have multi route? And I'm like you have to get approved. So I'm sitting at the beach and my phone is dinging on the beach and it's credit card transactions that Ricky's doing while I'm on vacation and I'm like is this happening? Right now he's making out, making me money. So I came back and I'm like hey, I said to the guy I'm like you want to buy my business. I'll multi route it, then you can buy it. And he goes oh cool, do that. I went and bought another truck, filled it with I had so much inventory. I filled the other truck with tools, sent Ricky on his way and then I came back to the guy and I said, well, now it's more money. And I scared him away yeah sure, sure, sure.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to anymore.
Speaker 2:Now here we are. Like you know, heaven glass, Mac tools, platinum distributor. Listen I go.
Speaker 1:I go over to my brother Patrick's house, said he's the garage that only exists to house your product, like he bought everything I think you've ever sold. But well, evan, I'm really glad you you said yes to this. I usually hit an hour and we're here. It's strange I sit here amongst people. I'll be at a meeting now. I'm 45. And like I described how long I knew you, and this is it. These are the people in my life, like there's nothing else happened, there's no other people coming. And you said something earlier, jayne, this just put me at pause that this is my life. This is what's happening. I wanna be a part of it. I wanna be present. I wanna be living the life that's happening in my head. This is killing me. You hit that home with the fishing and other things. You were describing these. This is it. You are the people in my life. We I have a very extended A or 12 step family. How do people make it without it? It's just phenomenal.
Speaker 2:I'm just. This is my community. I grew up here, you know, yeah, and because of that I'll take care of that Well.
Speaker 1:I wanna thank you again. I'm glad you came out.
Speaker 2:It was fun. All right, brother, talk to you soon yeah.
Speaker 1: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. Special thanks to our producer, john Edwards, and engineering company 570 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.