AllBetter

Finding Strength in Fellowship House

• Joe Van Wie • Season 4 • Episode 84

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What if unresolved childhood trauma could be the root cause of your addictions? In today's powerful episode, we sit down with Mike G as he opens up about his first year of recovery at Fellowship House. Mike takes us back to his roots in Dunmore, a small football town, where the impact of his parents' divorce and his father's alcoholism left lasting scars. Listen as he shares how these early experiences shaped his feelings of inadequacy and responsibility, and how completing step four of his recovery journey helped him tackle these deep-seated fears head-on.

From experimenting with marijuana during a middle school basketball game to balancing sports and social life, Mike recounts his early substance use and its intersection with his athletic ambitions. Despite participating in programs like DARE, he found himself frequently blacking out and attending therapy sessions in high school. The narrative takes you through his college years, where opportunities in sports led him to new paths and challenges, including a stint playing football in Berlin. Mike's candid storytelling brings you into the highs of MDMA use and the harsh lows of addiction, culminating in a cubicle job that only deepened his despair.

Join us as Mike describes his transformative experience at Fellowship House, where supportive counselors and a conducive environment played crucial roles in his recovery. Discov

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Speaker 1:

Hello and thanks again for listening to another episode of All Better. I'm your host, Joe Van Wee. Today's guest is Mike G. Mike is a person that just entered his first year of recovery and is Fellowship House alumni. Mike wants to be open about his recovery and decided to tell his story here what the first eight months of early recovery looked like for him and what it was like growing up in a small town and having a passion for football, and it still wasn't enough to protect him from an addiction that spiraled out of control. Mike has become a good friend over the last year and I'm excited for you to meet him. Let's meet Mike G. Mike G on the mic. We're here with Mike G. Mike is alumni from Fellowship House. He actually graduates this evening. He will be accepting a ceremony that we call a coin out. Mike, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2:

Hey, thanks, joe, my pleasure, do anything for you, like a brother to me. Man, you nervous, I don't know what's going on. This is your first podcast, my first podcast. I'm just going with it. You know, you just asked me as soon as I walked in the door, so I was like let's do it.

Speaker 1:

Well, yeah, and it's a chance to tell your story and help others, and you know you're willing to come on and talk about your recovery openly, and you have been for months now. I think a good place to start is to describe. There's a little town next to scranton that's called dunmore. How do you like your dear me, dunmore? So give me a summary of what it was like growing up there.

Speaker 2:

I would say, growing up, my, you know it's a small town, football town, everybody knows your name. You know looking forward to play for Coach Jack Hensis when I was younger. But going back to that, you know, with my recovery, doing the work and seeing where maybe the trauma has, you know, filtered and started growing as a young ages. When my parents divorced I was about six or seven years old and the feeling that I had for that I thought it was my fault. So I lived with that. I thought I was the problem, lived with that. I thought I was the problem. It's such a young age and I held on to that for so many years.

Speaker 2:

But growing up I was always outside, going, going back. I was outside because I didn't want to come home, because at the time, you know, my, my dad had an alcohol problem. It was an alcoholic. My mom was busy doing that. Single mother, single father. They had me at a young age. So, just growing up, I had a great childhood. I was always with my baba. She watched me. But I grew up on Delaware Street in Dunmore playing cops and robbers, backyard football some mischief stuff too, you know, ringing the doorbell and running. They have a name for that, but it's an appropriate name. But you know, I can't say I had a bad childhood, I just held on to those bad thoughts and feelings growing up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, growing up, yeah, I the word trauma, that kind of serious physical damage, an event and I just want to put some context to it because of the way we teach trauma here, we first treat it in this objective, non-personalized kind of view and it's the way it was described to you when you arrived here. Let's talk about trauma in this really narrow lane and lens that a memory function. So if the brain's recording events and times and you have this continuity of you being yourself, what is trauma if you don't lose an arm? So the way we're using that word and the way you just used it, the context is this If there's an event in your life that begins to use your fight or flight, that's registered as fear and a bunch of these mini events. It's registered as fear and a bunch of these mini events say divorce, a move, change of school, things that other people are like, that wasn't traumatizing to me. Well, I try to put it right in this lane. So if we're talking about memory, this is an event, especially for a child, that won't go into long-term memory right away, you know, a couple days, weeks, months. It stays as an open event in this working memory, what you'd call your short-term memory. So if the event is creating displeasure, fear, anxiety, discomfort, the fight-or-flight response, into your amygdala, this older part of your brain that's really useful to measure threats. Now, when they've been vanquished or they've left you, you could go back to a normal, balanced state. Trauma are these events that don't turn that off, or at least in a quick, balanced way.

Speaker 1:

So you experienced a divorce and some people will be like why is he describing that as trauma? Well, here, that's how we discussed it and when we taught that. What did that do to change the perspective of not only okay, you're saying an early divorce fed to your identity, that since you're that age, you're the subject of the divorce. It's not your parents getting divorced. Since you're that age, you're the subject of the divorce. It's not your parents getting divorced. Mike is the subject and cause. That's a child's kind of position. Where did you take that new definition? You learned here, and apply it through the rest of your life, that these are events that never cease to end and you're bringing them into new relationships, new events, this unresolved, what we're calling trauma.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely from doing step four. I know I'm fast forwarding a little bit, but step four, my defects were fear of being alone, fear of not being good enough Like the main ones, the rotation. I feel like the fear of not being good enough is that's where that trauma started. Like the fear of not being good enough is that's where that trauma started. My whole entire life, having that just on my shoulders at the all my life, and I feel like sports was a huge mask that I've wore for so long, was it a good one.

Speaker 2:

It was a great one, yeah, but that was also an ego, because the ego and how I perceive things now is like okay, they had me at a young age. Okay, this is me ruminating, making all this up in my head. This is insanity and, looking back on the last 15 years, I lived in chaos.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And making up everything, everything, and oh, this person looks at me wrong, oh, they don't like me or something. It just it's. It's a huge insanity and chaos. It's. I'm just very grateful for this program, the fellowship, and I guess what I'm trying to say is to make to make somewhat sense is that, you know, I really had to change everything and surrender Like I had to change everything and surrender, like I had changed my number who I hang out with. There's people in my life now that I would never think I would be friends with, but they're awesome people and these were all decisions you made by yourself.

Speaker 1:

Somewhat, I listened. You felt empowered to do it yourself.

Speaker 2:

I like I like, at brookdale, my counselor um said, danielle was like you're gonna die, and something kind of struck struck me there. I was like, yeah, you know, I am kind of out of control. You know, 7 000 rpm guy, I want more, more, more and just I was just hiding from reality for so long.

Speaker 1:

I dig the way we're talking about this more. It's more like a Tarantino movie. We could start in Dunmore, pop back to Brookdale, back to Fort. So let's keep this volley going. This will make it interesting. Let's go back to Dunmore High School.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And you were a great athlete and you just described sports as a place to connect. But sports also build around an ego and this could be healthy, yes, but you've had you've described this kind of not so much alienation, this separateness because of, early on, a split of your primary caregivers. When did you realize alcohol, marijuana, when did they get introduced and when did you feel that they were, there was a good match there? What they, what were they doing for you? How old were you?

Speaker 2:

I believe I was in eighth grade. When I seventh or eighth grade I was at halftime of a basketball game and a few people were smoking a J at tennis courts at Dunmore High School. I was like, oh sure, I'll try it, like that's. That was like kind of my personality, whatever. Like let's just, let's do it. You know, kind of like, oh hey, joe, this sounds like a horrible idea. Like who's driving?

Speaker 1:

You weren't scared at all. Was there any forces prior to that telling you you know sports drugs? Was marijuana viewed as a drug to you then, or was there a softer image of it?

Speaker 2:

I mean we had the DARE program, but that was. I didn't really take that seriously. It's hard to take it seriously.

Speaker 1:

Did you get the briefcase when they started it? When I was like late eighties, they'd open a briefcase and it'd have like examples this is an upper downer.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think we watched a video or something and it was just like I was not interested. It kind of wanted me to try them, you know. But but yeah, man, I just that was my first uh. But yeah man, that was my first J, I think seventh, eighth grade I used to steal like for Dunmore Oilers Me and my buddy, you know my mom had stuff in the refrigerator Like we didn't have a bottle opener. I didn't know my, you know, get two bottle caps and open it and I didn't have that in my resume yet.

Speaker 1:

Back to the tennis court. Did you get high that day?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I got high, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1:

So do you remember that, like what was not for some people to feel, a different state of being conscious? You get stoned. You take a couple hits. Was there anything to compare to in the first 12 years of your life, the way you were feeling then? Was there anything to associate it to? Or was it scary, or did you immediately feel relief? How would you describe it?

Speaker 2:

there was some sort of relief. I was laughing a lot. I think the second time was a little bit more intense, with the, with the getting high the first time. I guess going back I was like it was. My body was just like adjusting to this because the first time putting this into my, you know my system, Did you feel still a deep sense of self?

Speaker 1:

Did you feel like yourself?

Speaker 2:

In a way. In a way but I definitely know, going looking back, it was an altered personality and that was the werewolf yeah, the werewolf.

Speaker 1:

Awaken and alcohol culturally and around sports. This area it's not too taboo. It's like this hidden you know, acceptability, that weekends were you going to kink parties. What was happening in your generation of weekends for football?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, bonfires go up Music Lakes to my buddy's place I don't want to drop any names, but yeah, doing that every weekend, drinking and driving, which was looking back on it. I'm very thankful no one got hurt. I ruined a Cadillac my dad, my grandfather's Cadillac DeVille 97 green. That's unacceptable. White leather interior off a jump.

Speaker 1:

Did it have the lighters and the leashes to hold in the background in the back seat and light your cigarette? Yeah, I had a Caddy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but yeah, that was over like a basketball game. I lost, like I said, feeling the bad energy, the bad wolf.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, I would say, drinking and driving was acceptable. Back then, did you look at it as something that was an issue that you could describe as alcoholism, substance use disorder? These couldn't have been concepts in your head, did?

Speaker 2:

you feel different than anyone you were using, differently than anyone else, say by senior year. Yeah, it was a little out of control in my early age. Senior year, Winding back to freshman year, that's when I kind of started drinking. My mom made me go to a therapist and I was considered an alcoholic, so that kind of started drinking. My mom made me go to a therapist and I was considered an alcoholic, so that kind of scared me at first. Yeah, yeah, I had a bunch of blackouts when I was at a young age so I stopped for a little while and then I was still hanging out with that same crowd, same people. That's still like I kind of wanted that.

Speaker 1:

And how about plans for football or school continuing school. Where were you at senior year with that?

Speaker 2:

I honestly had no direction. I just remember Chris Ferris calling me and saying hey, go up to Mansfield, you could play there. He's just graduating. So the head coach called me and I got an opportunity to play there. I had no, it was like college.

Speaker 2:

I didn't know what this is whatever, I just go up there to play football Went to Mansfield after my senior year of high school and I did pretty well there. I got redshirted so I kind of went all over. My girlfriend at the time lived in Philly. We went to Philly a bunch of weekends, all over, like Bloomsburg, all the state schools. Yeah, I was partying a lot my freshman year but I do remember it was kind of like a growing up stage to being on my own. I remember calling when I first got there for doubles because everyone, like the football players we go before school starts and all my friends are still in the summer, have a few weeks left before they go to college. I remember calling my mom. My mom's been a huge backbone. She's been through me for all this. She's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I remember calling her and be like, hey, I don't, I don't think I could do this. I'm in Mansfield, pa, right now, route six man, I'm in the boonies and she goes, start walking. I go, and she hung up the phone. I was just like oh. I was just like oh, but like I needed that. I was like get your shit together, mike, you know. Then I was like you know my purpose. I was there to play football. I wasn't there for an education, which I'd never. I'm just being honest.

Speaker 1:

I love sports, yeah from that point yeah, it's. These are consequences of not feeling like. You know you had a solidified plan. You know you're great at football. Everybody knew that and and now it's being almost, it's becoming almost impossible to stay at Mansfield. And where? Where is your drinking and drug use at this point? Is it, is it helping you at least manage the stress of this, this experience at school crumbling, or is or is it not helping at all?

Speaker 2:

I'm still smoking weed and drinking on the weekend, sometimes during the week. There's one thing, though when I played sports I was pretty disciplined, so I knew my redshirt. Freshman year I'm like, okay, I can deal with this. Played one year at Mansfield, did pretty well, and then they dropped the football program. And then that's when I went to my new spot, kutztown University, and that's where I met a friend of mine, joel. He was me and him partied the last 15 years together. We were, you know, you call it raves, shows, you name it, but Kutztown was a fun little city and that's where I took another four years to graduate.

Speaker 2:

I was like on the fifth year plan, maybe five and a half year plan, but I got in trouble there a bunch of times for fighting out of control. You know, even though I'm trying to justify it, you know they're taunting us and all that stuff throwing snowballs at us. It's still wrong. Looking back on it. I just had to go on probation. Then I missed my junior year. I missed the first two games at Kutztown. I missed the first two games there that season. Senior year got hurt, missed a handful of games, ended the season pretty strong, ended up graduating that summer finally, but then I got an opportunity.

Speaker 2:

You know, and I'm reading this book called Playing for Pizza. What's it called? It's called Playing for Pizza by Paul Rishon. I don't know the name right now. What was the book about?

Speaker 2:

The book was about an NFL quarterback who played for the Cleveland Browns and he was like a backup. Backup. He got sent in and the Browns have this large three to four touchdown lead. He comes in, blows, it gets injured, he's in the hospital. His agent's like no one wants you. He just pulled the biggest lead in the AFC championship history. It was fictional, but anyways. His agent's like hey, you could play in Italy. This team in Italy wants to, wants you. So that's where I got, you know, the seed to go play overseas.

Speaker 2:

Uh, I talked to my mom's boyfriend at the time go on europlayerscom, set up a profile, put your highlights in there. And I got a message, probably in a week, by my old coach from Mansfield, dave Likens, who I used to play there and he was at Berlin, germany, at the time, and I was like oh, he's like. Asked me like can you still play? I'm like there's a. Asked me like can you still play? I'm like there's a bear shit in the woods. Yeah, you know so I got an opportunity after that, so I didn't have to go get the job yet. You know so I went to Berlin for a year, uh, and played football over there. They only allowed two Americans on the field at the time. Um, I had a coach too. Nobody really understood me.

Speaker 1:

Was it awesome? What were your experiences Did?

Speaker 2:

you make any relationships with anyone who wasn't an English speaker, or friends? Yeah, Facebook, I kept in touch with a lot of the guys, but then, like I said, going back listening to other people. What I need to change is, you know, I don't have Facebook anymore. I don't have any social media. I'm a ghost, which I like, but yeah, I mean. Berlin introduced me to the nightlife MDMA you know the XC, all that stuff.

Speaker 1:

Mdma, you know the xc, all that stuff. Just to make a clear line, drinking marijuana, uh, at kutztown, was there any psychedelic use? Then I used cocaine once and passed out, yeah, and but it was like, yeah, some people don't jive with it. Um, so now you're in berlin and you're playing for a year, uh, in the European League. Berlin is notorious. It is the mecca of all nightclubs, raves, you know all of that. That whole scene Did you just connect immediately with the seat?

Speaker 2:

I just immediately it was like, wow, oh, I have to go to practice the next day too. There's a bunch of times I just walked to practice right afterwards, got on the train, let's go. I was like I could do this I'm built for this Like crazy and still perform at a decent you know. I mean it wasn't like NFL, but it was like college level. Yeah, that's exciting. Tony, tony hunt played there.

Speaker 1:

There's a bunch of big names that played in this league, like I was playing against them and at this point there's no backup plan for a career or professional life, like you're just in the moment of living in europe and playing in the moment. And then comes MDMA. Yeah, so why do you think you connected with that drug? And, to be specific, I mean this is a drug that for the last four decades has been lobbied and voiced for treating trauma or a sense of disconnection with self. Or if you have this lack of bonding or you have such a pronounced ego that's really there to do a specific job protect you not only socially but from the hard realities, is that you might not be who you are, who you're saying. This self-talk and voice that might not be there to point to it could be something completely manufactured in an individual. You take this drug. Describe to me what that drug felt like the first time you could remember the exact feelings that were being produced by it.

Speaker 2:

Felt free.

Speaker 1:

Free.

Speaker 2:

Before, like alive. I felt the music in my soul. Yeah, you know, I just felt like the connection, the people I in my my soul. Yeah, you know, I just felt like the connection, the people I was with. It's just like, wow, I don't want to move.

Speaker 1:

Did this lead to chronic use or was it uh?

Speaker 2:

I feel, yeah, I was chasing it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was chasing the dragon, okay, yeah definitely, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely Absolutely. And going back with that book that I was reading I'm sorry this just came to me Everything I was reading was coming to life. I read the Pat Conroy Lords of Discipline, which is based on South Carolina, the Citadel School, and I was reading that and I finished it and my coach, dave Likens, in Berlin he was in Berlin at the time I'm still in D block, no more and he's like, hey, do you check with the? The running back is is from, he was from the Citadel. It was so cool. It was just cool. I was like reading and everything was coming to life. I don't know if that's ever happened to you, but that it's pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

The synchronicity, that's what Jung calls it. No-transcript, you're just talking about it. Yesterday you have a run-in of someone you dreamt about and all these things add an event, and what an individual will want to do after that is produce meaning to it. This is your world, this is the limited stimuli we all get. Of course we're going to try to make sense of it all becoming one full story and for some people this, could you know, it's really profound. It'll change the direction of their lives and how they relate to the world. So there's a whole kind of little mini philosophy on synchronicity. But I think addicts in early recovery, late recovery, or start making connections very loosely to things, and then I think a mistake, especially in early recovery, could be that it's a prompt for a behavior or a consideration of an action that you're not going to tell someone else. Okay, that's when you get wild. Oh, this means I should buy this purse for my entire paycheck.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Don't you see all the connections?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So how does Berlin end?

Speaker 2:

We lose the last game in the German football league playoffs and then I go home early. I was ready to go. I think I was like, okay, I need to get out of here, I need to go back home. And there's some reason. I just felt that way Because I did a lot. I was like worn out. I was worn out man. So I go back home, you know, I see my family. I'm like, oh shit, this is real life. Now, you know, I'm trying to get back to no celebration of the european league.

Speaker 1:

In the d block there's celebration.

Speaker 2:

There's a. There's celebration, they're welcoming me back, but, you know, like a little party, save the family, um, but my mom's like you gotta get a job. You know what I mean. Yeah, here comes the hammer, um, but she's right. Um, I tried to get to play over in italy, sweden at the time, but that wasn't working, so I closed, I closed that, that door, that path. I tried to coach over there didn't work out. But uh, and then I got a job at ups in the industrial park in a cubicle. Uh, accounts receivable. I was miserable, I was, I, I do the uh. The analogy of the mr incredible when you know his career is over with the superheroes and he's in the cubicle and the guy comes in and just keeps on asking questions.

Speaker 1:

I was literally, I felt, I could feel that To go from European League Berlin MDMA club scenes, feeling a really uncommon path to a lifestyle of being able to use sports into adulthood. That's a, you know, semi-professional career to go there to tailor or dumb, I mean, that's that's. It's a hard reality that maybe you can't wake up to. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It was very yeah, and then a cubicle too. It was like it was. It was very, very difficult. I was there for about four or five years?

Speaker 1:

That's pretty long for you to grind that out. What does addiction do and where is it at then to soothe this place in life that you don't want to be?

Speaker 2:

Well, I'll tell you what I did during this period. I was in a pretty long relationship. I thought I was going to actually marry this woman. Things didn't work out. I started drinking heavily drugs and, to be honest with you, it starts to crack.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, which is how did that happen? Because that's a big leap, especially your background and the culture you come from. How do you get comfortable smoking crack, and with two? Because it's not historically a social drug, but you have to be introduced to it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I was doing after relationship that kind of hurt. So you know, what do we do as addicts, alcoholics, you know, let's drink and do drugs. That'll make me feel so much better. I was at a friend's house it was probably a trap house. I felt comfortable there, you know but he was, he was like hiding, he kept on going, like no, he wasn't doing bumps, he was smoking out of something and I go what are?

Speaker 1:

you doing.

Speaker 2:

He's like don't worry about it. He did this to me numerous times because he knew my personality and finally he just gave in because I think, like a couple months later he broke up with his girlfriend and I tried it and for a good, I would say, two years. I was chasing that, that feeling it was, it is. It is insane. I don't wish that on any of my.

Speaker 1:

it is, it's scary, it's a miserable drug, especially you having the experience of the social aspect that addicts can find in, not only clubs, concerts, even in fandom fish, the grateful dead. There's this more social, romantic, undefined culture that you think you're connected to. To go from there to crack crack is insidious, um, and it's so non-social it really wakes up your bare primal at least this, these instincts.

Speaker 1:

I don't even want to call them primates, because primates don't act this way. This obsessive, but what it does? It increases your reaction almost to just primal needs not being met. You can't speak. You could only desire.

Speaker 2:

It's a real nightmare. Oh, it's a huge nightmare. How I describe it is you know. Oh, it's a huge nightmare, it's a. Well, how I describe it is, you know, I'm trying to go to work. I'm not at UPS at the time, I was at Dempsey's for a hot minute but then I'm in the sales and I'm looking out the window and, like you've seen the movie ghost, I'm assuming the black creatures that come out at night.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, the shadow people. The shadow people come out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, shadow people. I mean, that was a nightmare for me, man, it really was. And at this time I'm comparing myself how come I don't have this? Going back to my recovery now, looking back on it, I'm still comparing. How come I don't have a girl? How come I don't have a nice car?

Speaker 1:

Why do I only have shadow people? I only have my shadow people, so people are my shadow people. Anyone who hasn't smoked, crack or done cocaine at a psychotic three-day level. Shadow people are a common occurrence of what would be cocaine psychosis and it starts to take. It begins in the peripheral vision, where you'll see things moving, and then they can manifest into more elaborate hallucinations where there's shadow people, whisperings of voices, sounds behind walls. It's really all the symptoms of psychosis, but there's a distinct flavor to it with cocaine because it's driven by paranoia and an unseen kind of sinister group or single person after you, and that's shadow people. Yum.

Speaker 2:

I'm telling you it's insane and looking back on it I'm like, oh, I'm trying to like do better in my life.

Speaker 1:

This is not the thing. The description you said, looking out the window and seeing the show, you know what's so tormentive about cocaine, uh, and specifically say crack, uh, having a relationship with crack is that free will or any of your broad or limited or unexamined definitions of free will, is non-existent, and what I mean by that is really specific. To just keep this conversation on free will lasered in, you have an eighth of a second to respond to say an obsession for cocaine. And what does that mean? You have an obsession. It's either cognition or something in your environment, the room. A word brings us the stimulation to need or want to use the drug when you're not using it. And that's not thought, that's not precognition, that's not a choice. That's where addiction really becomes powerful and you have an eighth of a second to respond to that stimulus. That's an obsession.

Speaker 1:

To say I want a different plan, that's not any reasonable amount of time to make a decision before you're making a plan and behaviors are being driven by this emotion, almost a fear and excitement to get the drug Coupled with that, like you don't have space to think. What happens is the receptors that are waiting. The reward dopamine reward system that wants this drug are being primed as if it's coming, and high the high from cocaine already feels like it's being, and a high the high from cocaine's already feel it feels like it's being experienced without the drug. Tell me where free will is in that and you're fucking nuts. To look at anyone who's addicted to cocaine and not wonder why, why are they doing this? You don't understand why they're doing this is beyond. This is like trying to control your heartbeat or your hair growing. At this point for that individual it's impossible, yeah impossible.

Speaker 1:

Um, what a shitty, shitty drug oh, it's, I was.

Speaker 2:

Uh, yeah, I was. I should have been in a straight jacket yeah, easily yeah, it's uh.

Speaker 2:

But you know what though? Um, okay, like I said, looking back, um to like to continue that story in the beginning, though I'm gonna go back, so just keep me there. Like I I did it. I just popped up to me like I had a suicide letter. My mom found like I was, like I was hurt from that divorce. But you know, coming back and looking what I've been through, I don't think I would be the person I am today without going all through that. So obviously nobody wants to go and see shadow people all day, you know, you know. But that's something I had to go through. But that's life, man, I chose that. I was lost, I was, I didn't, I didn't feel like I belonged.

Speaker 1:

Did you choose it or did you kind of just fall into it, like it's hard to separate the idea. How about I needed it? Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, let's bounce. When's the first time there's an intervention on this kind of, I think, a very standard model of the last generation that goes from alcohol pot grows into narcotics, maybe some psychedelic use? When is there an intervention that this is Mike's problem? It's not that he doesn't want to get a job, he doesn't know where to play football. The problem now is addiction. When did you get squarely confronted with that the first time and by whom?

Speaker 2:

I was on that road for a little while. I tried to go into the rooms of AA and my mom was really rooms, um of AA and my mom was, uh, really, really wanted me to get some help. Um, and I was in a batch. Obviously, you know doing cocaine and that road and you know smoking it. Um, I went on a really really dark path hanging out with people that I shouldn't be hanging out with and I just wanted to have enough. So I the biggest, I guess, my first go around I went to Marworth because I went to my mom's safe and I stole $20,000 from her safe and then I think I was telling him I went to my buddy's house and told him I won all this money on a slot machine and he was like there's no way he's trying to get me to go to the Philippines, my buddy that I've been partying with for the last 15 years.

Speaker 2:

I'm like, thinking back now, if I went to the Philippines, I wouldn't be here. That money would have been blown in. Thinking back now, if I went to the Philippines, I wouldn't be here. Oh, you're headed for a pike. Yeah, that money would have been blown in like a day.

Speaker 1:

And I think it's over half of the population is Islamic. Now You're going to be running around smoking crack.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I can't imagine Underneath like a I don't know a tree. But yeah, then I was like, okay, obviously I can't go to the Philippines, let me party for a little bit. I had to Florida. I was like all these ideas, but then, like I would lose my job, my brother called me. I remember my brother calling me on my way when I was going to Florida and he's like what you know, what are you doing? I was like to Florida and he's like what are you doing? I was like to be honest with you.

Speaker 2:

I'm just fucking lost man, I'm lost, I'm hurt, I'm fucking sick of it. I didn't want to live again. I had that feeling again. I considered myself a fuck-up at the time. But then I stopped in Atlanta part party that weekend came home and then I went to Marworth and uh I was like, okay, let me get some help. And then I was like, okay, maybe I won't do cocaine anymore, let's get back to the race. And that's what I did. To have everyone shut up. I was good for a little while and uh didn't start going back to some shows Brooklyn Mirage, florida, okeechobee there's like 88,000 people.

Speaker 1:

What does that do for you to be in a show like that? Feel connected with what? What pain of your life would disappear in those moments?

Speaker 2:

to be connected into the show there's the sense of belonging, I think, and like not feeling judged. Yeah, I guess, even though I'm making these up in my head, being judged, does that make sense. Yeah, I'm being like the rumination, like I, just I'm not and the connection.

Speaker 1:

Connection's powerful. I've gone to plenty of shows in Brooklyn, or even just say the experience of going to Camp Bisco.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

I don't have any of the Disco Biscuits music, nor would I even listen to it in my car, but this feeling that I'm on the mountain with 15,000 people and we know why we're there, you know we're the fringe, yeah, thanks. That's a powerful feeling to be around that many people. So these moments when you're not experiencing that, you're also experiencing deep despair. Where you said lost Living seems exhausting. Is this intensified when you're sober, like your sober mind? You said lost living seems exhausting. Is this intensified when you're sober, like your?

Speaker 2:

sober mind. Oh yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to see, I don't want to see anybody. That whole I'm isolated, I'm not, I'm not leaving my place. Let me. I don't care if I had to get a pizza. That's $54.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Just not to leave the house. I just want to leave the house. The terror of seeing someone what if they ask? You how you're doing? What are you up to? What's your problem? I was going to smoke crack in the Philippines last month, but that plan fell through.

Speaker 2:

With the rehab I started going to the shows again.

Speaker 1:

No, I I it's uh, it's so.

Speaker 2:

And the biggest thing, sergeant, the biggest thing for me is that during this time, I'm like, well, I have to stop this, though. This is not reality, though, and back of my mind, going through the end of my run, this recent run, and knowing that I'm being, my soul is being sucked out from making these other people happy that I'm there. I'm not going to lie, I was for the most part. I was a pretty good party guy, I guess, to be around it's pretty funny, I would say. My eyes maybe not in others, but I just knew that, like at the end of this run, I was just like I'm exhausted. I really don't want to do this anymore. I'm, you know my family's not in the picture. Uh, my brother's starting not to really talk to me. He's putting up with me. He knows something's wrong. Uh, you know my dad's in the room, my dad's in the rooms now, at this time. How about the?

Speaker 1:

and the theft of the money. Is this still? It's just an open sore that keeps you away from your family.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, not going to like family events, like birthdays and stuff. It's just like I'm such. I'm like disgusted with myself at the same time, but still trying to live this life. Yeah, and I just know that I'm killing my family and that I'm killing my family and I'm killing myself.

Speaker 1:

When do you take the risk to fully commit all in this last time that you entered Brookdale? Which when was that?

Speaker 2:

That was November 15th is my sobriety date. Wow that flew by. Yeah, eight months with you guys, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Eight months. It's going to be forever. November I know my mom called you. I know I spoke with you briefly before I was down in Stroudsburg. November, right before my brother's birthday and Thanksgiving. So I had a sixth seventh whatever. Right before my brother's birthday and Thanksgiving. So I had a sixth seventh whatever. But I was down in Stroudsburg. I was talking to a girl. She was coming back. Now we've been hanging out for over a couple months now. We just saw Stevie Nicks the weekend before. She was in Miami flying in. I was going to meet her. I stopped. I got the times mixed up, right. I just told her that she's right and it was my fault, even though I have the text. But anyways, defeats the purpose. I stop and get a, a drink. I'm doing MMA, I'm doing cocaine at the time at this bar right by her place. She gets back. I go and meet her and she she locks herself in her in her apartment, which she did that about a handful of times since I met her, which is crazy. It's crazy, but it happens.

Speaker 2:

So we go down to the a handful of times since I met her, which it's great, it's crazy, Um, but it happens, it happens. But uh, so we go down to the hospital she was a nurse. We go down the hospital, get a spare key and they don't have it. So this whole time I didn't know that the next call, this person had a spare key and it was a cop. Okay, I don't know what the hell happened to me, but I was like you, a cop has a key to your apartment. I mean, you know, I have some stuff on me Like I could get in trouble. All this stuff. It was like Whoa huge red flag.

Speaker 2:

So we waited across the street, not the bar where I had dinner that night, but we were partying and stuff, Live band playing. The band was really good, even though I can't remember the music. I guess I was dancing. But I go to the bathroom and then when I'm coming out she's gone and I don't know. I guess she's over at her apartment. I go back over there. I think I got kicked out of the bar, Actually, because I was dancing too aggressively. I would say Aggressive dancing. Aggressive dancing, Just jumping up and around and I don't know my body weight at the time.

Speaker 1:

And it's Paul Simons on the jukebox and you're jumping up and down, yeah.

Speaker 2:

There's another tone going through my brain, another DJ. So I cross the street, go upstairs the door's open, cracked open. Going up the steps I turn in, I walk into the apartment and the cop's there. I totally go in psychosis for probably 10 minutes. I wake up going downstairs. I'm like where am I leaving? She's like, yeah, I'm not handcuffed at the time and I go downstairs and no one was hurt. But apparently it was like throwing TVs and shit. He says I saw this cop man.

Speaker 2:

I don't know I have a problem with authority. But then I walked down the steps. He's like yeah, we're just going to go home. As soon as I get out the door I'm getting handcuffed and I'm flipping out all the time and I get all these charges of felony assault. You know, if I hit a cop they would know. This guy was 6'4". He said I elbowed him in the face, you know. But anyways, but they were taunting me this whole time I'm in this holding cell. I just remember how angry I was. I was so angry they were taunting me. I remember telling them I was like why don't you guys come in here, keep my handcuffs on and all three of you come in here? I was just ready. I was. I was at that point I don't know if I should say this on here, but I was ready to kill them. That's how angry I was. I had to stay in Monroe County that weekend. Being in there was an eye-opening experience for me, being there the whole weekend.

Speaker 1:

Are those cops on your men's list whole weekend?

Speaker 2:

Are those cops on your men's list? You know what my sponsor made me take two dozen donuts at the Burrow of Dunmore? Yeah, because he knows. That's great, he's kind of the same way too. That's a humiliating experience, but man, I guess that's a good point. I totally try to block that whole incident out of my life. It's a tough job, yeah.

Speaker 1:

But you know, you went to Brookdale then.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, then I went to Brookdale and I was still angry a little bit. I went there sober, but I was still like angry. And then Larry drove you, right, no, larry drove me home. Drove you home, so my uncle, my uncle, uh, and dropped me off, uh, so I got to talk to you over the phone, yeah, before I went to court.

Speaker 1:

Yes, just you know. This episode is kind of just talking about the whole experience from coming here and graduating. Yeah, and we had. I didn't have a direct relationship with you but I knew you were family. I remember screening and distinctly telling you here isn't about compliance, it's about transformation, Like you could be complying here and not doing well and you've got to see a bunch of people not only get better here, some other people, they'd probably be comfortable at another place and we helped do that. You came here, you were ready, but you seemed confused about a lot of ideas of what the problem was like any of us initially.

Speaker 1:

but how would you say? We at least provided the space, because the transformation that happened to you, um, happened from you becoming empowered. It wasn't, it wasn't us. We're just putting a set together for people. Yeah, you had a real transformation here. Why do you think that happened? How?

Speaker 2:

did that start? That sounds cliche, but man, I literally from going from Brookdale and the transition to like you're doing aftercare. I'm like whatever you want me to do, because you know what, I have the fellowship house lined up. I still have some legal problems, but I surrender. Tell me what I need to do because my way is not helping. But as soon as I got to the fellowship house I was like oh, they got meditation.

Speaker 2:

Let's, let's, let's go on this path, because during my whole addiction, I'm like I was, I felt like I was on a spiritual journey, but I would block it out and then do good things, but just doing the uncomfortable work and going to work, coming to IOP, going to group, going to meetings, doing the 90-90. I don't know, I just changed my whole. I didn't know. I just I just changed my whole. I didn't change everything. You know, joe, I had to change my friends. I had changed, you know, like I said, I don't have social media. I had changed the people who I'm hanging out with, because obviously it's, it's not working. And now I hang out with people that are, you know, plugged in this program. I try to talk to somebody every day, listening. I remember one of my favorite I had a really hard time when people talk is, you know, one of the best lessons I had, uh, here was call, call somebody and just ask them a bunch of questions, and I did that.

Speaker 1:

It was your homework one week, wasn't it? It was the homework, it was the homework.

Speaker 2:

I was like oh, this should be easy. It wasn't fucking easy.

Speaker 1:

No, you can't say anything but questions. I remember that homework. You have to call someone and only ask them questions.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, about their life. Yeah, I'm like, oh, but now I'm like sitting pausing, being able to react, not just really digest it. I'm like, oh, my thought, I don't have to hold on to this, it's just a thought and just let it, let it pass by. I'm not going to hold on to this, uh, but I've been through a lot. You know, work is a huge emotion roller coaster that's eased out. But, um, yeah, I'm very thankful for larry, though he gave me right. Let me just say larry gave me a, uh, a ride home. I had a sponsor that first day, tony m, so tony ends up great so let's talk about that.

Speaker 1:

The guys that do well. Here there's, there's common um, universal themes and things being accomplished. They come to group Not that that it's an option, we'll weed that out. The first two weeks, the lectures they're connecting, if not with one or all, they're finding a counselor that they're connecting with On their own time. If you can't find a sponsor, we put them together. If 12 steps is the path and it is for the majority of people in our house, they're working the steps and they're beginning right away. You got to experience that here.

Speaker 1:

You took what we call fourth step, evaluating an inventory not only of all your relationships, all the people you may have harmed, all of your fears. You get to confront these. You do it with another person and then approach a meditation of what can this mean? How can I look at the truth of my story objectively and think, okay, there doesn't have to be shame involved, I can move forward by making amends. You started some serious amends here. What did that process? I know how liberating the fifth step was for you. How's the ongoing process of the ninth step? Because you graduate here tonight and you've started a lot of your amends and you've committed to service already. You are our house captain the last two months, which requires you to keep order in the house. You set the standard of what a room looks like, how to take care of the new guy. What was so transformative about making amends?

Speaker 2:

What was so transformative about making amends Just by a lot of like, my amends with, like, my parents, my family, was, you know, action. You know, because I've said this, when we do the 11th step, or the 10th to 11th step for the people that you know if there's an argument. There's 10 and 11 in there, Page 86.

Speaker 2:

We do it every night at the house. You know, and sometimes I don't do it every night, but I remember the one night. Actions speak louder than words. You know for me I have to. You know if I'm putting it down, I got to take action. I got to show them. You know what I'm doing because if I don't stay connected into this and with the amends man, sometimes, no, I don't want to cut the grass, sometimes I don't want to, but that's me. Now I'm taking my will back.

Speaker 2:

Helping others is the key for me in my recovery and doing the next right thing is what I'm getting out of it. But the amends part I know my family knows I'm sorry and I've said this to them many times. I apologize for my actions. I'm sorry for hurting you or scaring you in any direction, but I was, I was lost. I was so lost and I wouldn't. With this program if anybody is listening the 12 steps I was so against it. I didn't believe in them, but I needed change. So I started doing them and I just know that my mind is still changing my thought process. But I know without them I wouldn't be alive today. I could have easily changed my attitude, changed my choices. But once I start thinking about me, I know that's when the other guy is starting to get awake. Werewolf, the werewolf of berlin. Hope that makes sense that makes sense determined werewolf I'm.

Speaker 1:

I'm an addict, so I could go from like left field to the outer space fast well, we have been very proud, uh, of you here and and I think one of the questions I may I want to ask you is you've we have an average of three to eight months stays here, um, where people don't become too dependent on fellowship house but get to empower their own life and where they want to go, and I hope we've been a help to you, because you've been a great help to many of the young guys and older guys here of a real community, and a lot of the lift is you guys get each other better when it's off hours clinical hours in the residence, on our trips, on our hikes, on our retreats. What would you like to see over the next year? Us improve here? Fellowship House that you think you know you'd like or maybe like to see more of that was transformative for you and the guys around you. That did just as well. What do you think is happening that I should improve?

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you because you guys have been great to me. Like I said, you're like a big brother. I never had man Tim's great, the counselor's great, the meditation. We got to get a spot for the meditation man. I don't know if it's out in the backyard here at the elephant or maybe over my new apartment right around the corner. Yeah, i'm't know if it's out in the backyard here at the elephant and maybe over my new apartment right around the corner.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm not moving too far. Yeah, we, we, we have a plan in place for the fall. We're going to switch. We're going to switch gears and locate new settings.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think the meditation is pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

And would you come back and lead some of them?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely I, some of them, absolutely I. You know I had to go in there a couple of times but, like you know, I was like whatever I surrender, I'm new, new experience. It's a that's getting out of my comfort zone, though. Yeah, you know saying yes.

Speaker 1:

And speaking to that, last eight months of your life, have you had? You've had anxiety, you've had depression, you had some disappointments and you know, um, you had some disappointments and you have other plans that are going to take a little time to create and then take some action on. I know we've talked about them, but how does it feel to know you can have anxiety, you can be depressed, you can have grief, you can have disappointment, and your initial reaction presently isn't to use drugs?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, to go run and cement them down to the basement, like, oh, this is normal, I know I deal with them by talking to others and talking, calling my sponsor, calling. I call my dad and that's a miracle and a half that we're both in the rooms. I mean he could tell his story, but we actually heard it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, his story at the fellowship at that meeting on Friday nights at 7 pm. You know that's a miracle in itself and you know that's all I wanted my whole life. But yeah, man, I'm just taking one day at a time. Nine months will be the 15th of this month, birthday is the 22nd. I'll be 38, man, but yeah, I kind of lost the question. What was the question?

Speaker 1:

It's like the I don't even remember.

Speaker 2:

I know.

Speaker 1:

This is what happens sometimes. But you guys are a fellowship house. It's one thing to have just an address, a property. Then you add a really good component good counselors, a good program, a really clean, distinct clinical phases of guys where you want to be. After month one or two it was picture perfect.

Speaker 1:

Not because of us, it was because your desire to get sober started. We gave you a place, I think, where that grew far larger and faster than your ability to quit and return to addiction. That's all I feel we're kind of doing. We're making the space your, your internal motivation took over and it was beautiful to see a reconnection to not only your family, your father, your mother, your brothers, your real friends, friends from childhood. The way you approached work, the way you approached things you did not want to do and I don't think perceivably you'll continue to have to do sometime in the future but the way you can endure stress now that all happened, just by the numbers it was, I couldn't believe that that was the space. It's just kind of a process that takes place if you have the right space.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely yeah, and and, like we just spoke about, to eight months. I, it seems like it was eight days or like eight weeks, not even eight months, though, man, it was like it was uh, it went by fast, but it's uh. You know, I'm always going to be involved, if you like. I said, if you ever need me for anything.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I got your back, no matter what. That's how I look at it. New guys will need you and I I count on you as a friend. Yeah and um, you're a friend in recovery now um and the you and the multiple graduates that have left this year I I look at as equals, as friends, because you're men, You're sane, you're sober and you're responsible and you got your guts back. You know where you belong.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I feel like I finally belong. That's a good word Free, you know.

Speaker 1:

I'm looking forward to tonight your coin out, I'm glad you popped on the podcast. Yeah, it was a pleasure to have you. Yeah, love you popped on the podcast. Yeah, it was a pleasure to have you. Yeah love you, man Appreciate you.

Speaker 2:

See you, man.

Speaker 1:

I'd like to thank you for listening to another episode of All Better. You can find us on allbetterfm or listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, 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.