Recovery (Sort Of) – The Podcast

Mental Health conversation centered around 12 step recovery and related topics. We talk about spiritual living, living with addiction and growing in the 12 steps. Find us on our home at https://recoverysortof.com/. If you want to join the conversation, email us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecoverySortOf, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_sort_of/, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Recovery-Sort-Of-112376247161866/?view_public_for=112376247161866.

43: Honesty, Is It Really The Best Policy (Sort Of)

byBilly and Jason

We talk about honesty and how we may not be applying it in ALL of our lives.  Maybe we are willing to lie to institutions.  Maybe we are willing to tell small lies.  Maybe we will lie when it doesn’t harm anyone else.  Maybe we will lie to save others from harm.  Maybe we are dishonest by omission.  Is it possible to be honest without there being harm done?  Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com,  or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

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Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/recoverysortof/message

Show Podcast Information

8/9/20 We talk about honesty and how we may not be applying it in ALL of our lives. Maybe we are willing to lie to institutions. Maybe we are willing to tell small lies. Maybe we will lie when it doesn’t harm anyone else. Maybe we will lie to save others from harm. Maybe we are dishonest by omission. Is it possible to be honest without there being harm done?

Transcript:

big old chin dig with you know 50 people or like it when you know jen talked about doing a thing for her anniversary at the house we kind of decided against it because we’re like man it’ll probably just be more people than we would really want and it would be hard to limit it without hurting some people’s feeling you know especially with her because she knows so many people and it’s connected with so many people you know so we just opted against it but

it’s tricky though man it is and i oh and then we sent billy to a camp this week did you yeah they had a camp it was through cecil parks and rex oh i think i heard something about it what was it for though i can’t remember just an activities camp for kids ages up to age 12. um i forget what they called it camp extreme or whatever you know one day got messed up because of the [ _ ] hurricane oh my basement flooded and [ _ ] dude oh yeah we had terrible that sucks dude look i had like two feet of water in the basement which really ended up we didn’t really lose anything oh jen that’s what it was jen posted about some memorabilia or something she did yeah she was going through all her stuff boxes and stuff

she remember being at my house and the backyard and stuff

find it here

so this is my backyard holy [ _ ] and watch when you see the picnic table it’s up to the benches on the picnic table wow so it’s however deep that is [ _ ] yeah i mean you’d never think my back there’s no creek or no stream or nothing around there how does that even happen it just the [ _ ] town sewers couldn’t hold it the water was so much everywhere and it was quick right i thought people were saying it was minutes i don’t i mean i guess i don’t know it was it just it rained hard for a long time you know but that’s [ _ ] nuts in it to see that much water it is and you see like the the grated fence and you’re just like well how is it not leaving yeah it goes somewhere i don’t know where but somewhere oh here well i’ll show you the other side the front yard this is what it looked like out on the street

this is when i come pulling up sesame tells me there’s water coming in the basement windows and i’m like in the basement windows what do you mean wow

you could ride a boat yeah it’s [ __ ] nuts

just so much [ _ ] water and here that’s what i was worried was going to happen to us down there like strange oh yeah that’s so good how high up it is on the [ _ ] ass right before we left it looked like the hurricane was going to hit us like the day after we got there and i’m like all right great you know we’re going to be stranded on an island sitting on our roof waiting for somebody to come rescue us or something and it basically all but missed us we got like a little tiny storm out of it and then it crushed here and it was like damn yeah that changed

i don’t even think i posted

our podcast from last week like i usually post online comments yeah i [ _ ] forgot so i and just whatever i have officially not deleted but i haven’t been on facebook in like probably at least a week um i am trying to i don’t know if boycott’s the right word i just want to stay off of it i feel like it doesn’t do me any good so i’ve been [ _ ] with instagram now yeah and i’m just doing instagram so i see the memes and you know when they pop up and i and i laughed because i’ve been joking with people and saying you know in the beginning of like facebook and [ _ ] i’m like i don’t give a [ _ ] about [ _ ] people picture of their food and their [ _ ] pictures of their vacation like that’s so stupid now that’s like that’s all i want to say is pictures of your [ _ ] food and where you went for vacation like i don’t wanted all that other [ _ ] that comes along with facebook and sharing [ _ ] news articles from fictitious or totally ridiculous websites and you know whose opinions what about trump and about covet and about [ _ ] schools and it just makes me angry like it really just you know like my brother post [ _ ] about kids should just go back to school it doesn’t matter kids are fine you know i’m like dude there’s so much wrong with that and i start you know [ _ ] wanting to respond and then i’m like count to ten delete this shut this the [ __ ] off and i don’t even want to deal with it and i’m like i don’t know something that makes me hate my brother is really good

and that’s where and i’m not saying you’re wrong i would yeah that is kind of strange uh i’m not saying you’re wrong at all that might be the absolute best way to go but the other side of that question is if this is who my brother really is don’t i want to know like do i want to have my opinion of him based on who i think he is without knowing him and i yes the difference i think is i would have that conversation with him face to face and i think it would go very differently than if we start [ _ ] text beefing back and forth at each other on you know because anytime at least with him specifically and i’ve known him my whole life anytime we start with that it’s it’s too hard you know what i mean it’s like i say something and then he responds in some weird ass indirect way and if it was a conversation it just wouldn’t be the same or like he might have posted that whatever a day or two ago and now i chime in like a day later and then he might not get back to me till later and then it brings me right back in you know here i’m out of it after that 15 minutes that i’m mad and i get out of it and then the next day i read it again and i’m half annoyed all over again and it’s just it’s a weird way to you know communicate and that’s somebody that i know that’s my brother right i think people communicate better in person too you just you can pick up on what the other person’s vibe is you care more about that they’re a human they’re not just somebody on the other side of a you know internet it’s a lot different for sure yeah so anyway so now i’m just doing instagram and trying to figure that thing out uh instagram which i messed with it once before but i’m like i don’t know i’m becoming more the i don’t feel like being on any of them right now and i’m probably not bad i’m like our social media guy and i’m like uh i just want to isolate and introvert myself i don’t want to be on here but that doesn’t get people to listen take a break you know people that are listening will keep listening how does do you feel like that picks up a bunch of new listeners i don’t know i think it can’t hurt to interact with people for sure and then they say oh that was a nice interaction maybe i’ll listen maybe one out of every 20 of them actually continues to listen but facebook has been the main since that’s the newer one that’s been like the main focus lately yeah trying to put memes on there and then invite people to like the page because they like the meme somewhere along the way and that’s tricky [ _ ] disaster i mean it’s kind of working if i don’t post if i don’t post the podcast on there it really doesn’t matter yeah i was gonna say it’s one thing if you enjoy it or it’s something to do it’s another thing if it’s if you’re [ _ ] getting sick of it i feel like the goddamn vacation just [ _ ] me all up like you know you don’t want to get back into the routine i don’t i really don’t like i don’t want to do anything now i just want to [ __ ] do nothing for a week i didn’t have much service down there which was kind of beautiful in a way but i think it just gave me nothing to do and so i was like doing them in my head all the time

you’ve been meditating much no of course [ _ ] not meditation has been such a good i know i i need to surrender to life and just [ _ ] meditate and i have yet to be able to force myself

yeah we had three crazy things happen this week well of course the flooding then i get a call from my real estate not even my real estate guy a real estate agent that sold the house to us the other day says yeah so we got this tax notice went to the previous owners for that parcel of property that’s next you know we own our house and then the lot next to it the whole one right and uh apparently when they did the title work at settlement they didn’t transfer over that deed for that other piece of property so the taxes and all that are still in their name so one the taxes haven’t been paid on that piece of property this year and you got to get them paid right away because you know if not they can auction the property off and then two you got to figure out what you got to do to get this all [ _ ] fixed and i was just like i wanted to freak out and be like well who the [ _ ] is response you know why are you telling me this i paid all you [ _ ] people and sat in a room for all you guys to figure all this out right and now it’s [ _ ] up and who screwed me up you know well there’s no more commission to get so now it’s your problem all right and i mean it turns out it’s probably not that big a deal of course i didn’t know this in the beginning but the taxes because it’s just considered a vacant lot there’s no house on it or nothing or it’s only 139 which i can just go pay that and then the previous owners actually had already reached out to the county because it came in their name and they said hey we don’t know this we’ve moved or we sold it and uh they said i guess the deed is right you know what i mean which is what i guess really matters like the the record shows that we you know we own that property and that it’s in our name but there was basically some paperwork that should have got filled out probably by our title person is who should have done that and didn’t file just basically file papers to change the name on that parcel with the county so legally we own it so which i guess is the most important thing you know legally we own it and we bought it so that’s all good and now we just have to pay the taxes you know and then then i’ll have to try to talk to our bank and try to get them to square it up where they just pay it out of our escrow account which is how they pay our other taxes right i don’t know how easy that’s going to be it’s not i don’t care if it’s 140 i don’t care i’ll pay that every year if i have to i mean if they start making it too much of a headache i’ll just be like look [ _ ] you just let them send me the tax bill and i’ll pay it right not doing 17 000 things of paperwork for some dumb [ _ ]

and then sophie said she doesn’t think she wants to go back to college really i think she’s just a 15 year old kid and it’s a lot of work she’s like man i want to be a 15 year old kid you know which is kind of tough because i’m trying to not let her quit

yeah that is tough i wouldn’t have wanted to do college at 15. no i don’t want to do college now but it’s like she’s doing all good and she made the [ _ ] president’s list you know last year doing all great and she’s just she’s like it’s a lot i don’t think i want to do it [ _ ] stick with it well it’s you know i she says of course what she’s like look with the regular school stuff that i do there and this that’s all my time like it’s a lot right and i just i don’t want to do it i didn’t want it you know so i’m trying to get her to say like look you know going to college is not going to be easier later like it’s not like when you get 18 or 19 or 20 and you have a job and you’re doing all that stuff that’s going to be easier to go back to school then i feel like in her case it would probably be easier to try to get some supports with a couple of the things she’s doing at school for a semester or two and you know that shit’s not going anywhere it’s not like because like she takes care of all the animals and she does all the hospitality stuff and you know she does a lot of stuff around the school and i’m like well let someone else do that [ __ ] but the truth is she likes doing that stuff that’s why you know someone will just do it some and let them do it other i don’t miss this opportunity my daughters when we were just applying for the high school last year before all coveted hit last fall and they were supposed to start this year they have programs where you can do like you can finish high school supposedly with your aaa degree or close to it or something that’s what sophie’s in yeah and so part of me wanted them to like part of the problem was they don’t have it at northeast you have to go to one of the other two schools yeah which is a pain

but the other part of it is like i get nervous about that i’m like i don’t really want to expose my kids to older people before they’re ready for that like that freaks me out a little bit especially with my daughter at least my one daughter who’s like very

how to say that caught up in the attention of older guys to some extent and right now it’s only a year or two older but what would it take for it to be four years older and that’s just they’re doing stuff that’s out of your league like right so i don’t know i mean i think that’s like everything else there’s some positives and negatives to all of it yeah we were probably put i was leaning on her a little bit upset her she started crying i said we’re not going to make you do anything i said i’m just i’m i don’t like i and i tell genesis all the time like i feel like my parents just let me kind of do whatever which was terrible they should have [ _ ] talked me into staying in college i gotta quit college and i gotta go get a job and blah blah blah blah and you know i don’t know that was not a good decision i don’t know about that though yeah like i hear what you’re saying and there’s places in my life where i look and i say my parents would have been better handling it like this but with all the reading i’ve done about parenting and even my own experience i see that like that way doesn’t really work either yeah and let me rephrase that by saying i don’t know that they could have convinced me one way or the other once because i didn’t listen to my [ _ ] parents from the time i was like 15 i didn’t listen to him i did what i wanted but i regret not staying in college and finishing college and i feel like if i had some encouragement in that area i might have made different choices you know and i i don’t blame like say it’s not i don’t blame my parents i don’t feel like it’s their fault it’s my fault i’m the one that dropped out i’m the one that you know quit twice you know went and then i was like i don’t want to do this work i’d much rather but it was the same kind of thing it’s like well i got other stuff i’d rather do i’d rather go work and i’d rather all this other stuff and again not that i feel like i want to force sophie to do it but i also wanted to understand like this is pretty important you know and it’s probably like now is an easier time in your life to get this done if it’s something that you want to do you know and i said even you know you’re you’re in school your boyfriend’s far away we can support you you have tons of support around you right now you have me your mom you know abby to drive you around where you need to go you got support at your other school because they’ll help her with her it’s not even like like you guys would be in a different spot because you don’t have the support at high school like they would still have to go and do all their high school work she kind of doesn’t you know what i mean because they have such an open curriculum she can mostly spend her time at school doing her college work so she’s not even saddled down with a regular curriculum of school work to do so so i’m like now is the time when you have all these supports and the lady you know melanie and some of the people at her school will support her with her college work and getting that stuff done but you know again i know i can’t make her do anything

but i want to yeah like i want to pull it all right well you’re getting ready to be 16 if you want a car you’re going to stay

that’s a good one i think that’s incentive isn’t it is that is that blackmail um well so and the only reason i would feel bad about that we didn’t make abby do anything to get her car we just got her a car and mostly because it made our lives [ _ ] way easier when we had a kid with a car that could drive them around and [ _ ] take them to school and do all that other stuff but we didn’t make her do anything to get a car and we pay for her car and her insurance and she doesn’t she does whatever she wants and so it would feel bad to do that i’d say do whatever she wants she helps us out a lot she took billy to camp all week and you know when she was living at home she took them back and forth to school and did all their stuff they needed to do so she does stuff for us but you know i’m not buying none of my kids a car should be interesting yeah damn hmm i don’t know what are we talking about today i don’t know so you said something about i and i had something in my notes but like yeah yeah no no i mean there’s like 300 topics in here no i’m not that great what does it mean to be a newcomer um cliches or acronyms

meta medically assisted treatment as recovery

what is being clean or what is being in recovery

the truth defining the truth which i thought was kind of interesting moving or changing areas in recovery

any experience we’ve had with any in-person meetings so what were you thinking with families of origin stuff like your upbringing or yeah just genetic how that family of origin childhood home has such a huge impact on the course of our life and the ways we act within our life with other people and how little we talk about it even though it’s such a huge deal and what came up for me in vacation was seeing my mother and her boyfriend have some disagreements and just that vibe took me right back to being a kid of my mother and father having those exact kind of things where it’s like they try to pretend it’s okay in front of everybody else not so much they try to pretend it’s okay like it’s obvious they’ve disagreed and they’re not happy with each other but it’s still like they try to be civil in front of everyone even though the vibe underlying the entire thing is not [ _ ] civil at all it’s like the cold shoulder or i’m not talking to you or i’m just going to leave the house and go do what i want for a couple hours and not even tell anybody i’m leaving like that’s going on and so i’m just watching it and i’m like no wonder i’m all [ _ ] up if this is what i was a kid like this is [ _ ] me up now right and so just seeing that and then i i was like in my head the conversation was going further like this isn’t new wisdom like we know you say you know you marry your mother or you marry your father or whatever but what is that really what that really means is you form these different weird you know attachment issues around people and you marry somebody that fills the void that you know you don’t have from your parents it’s either and it’s so many different pieces it’s you watch your parents relationship and so that’s what you’re trying to you know fulfill in your life but then also your relationships with your mother for a guy i guess would be like you kind of get a wife and then all of a sudden like i don’t for me at least i i noticed i’m like oh my god you’re doing that [ _ ] my mother used to do my father i hated that [ __ ] and i can just see the similarities

i just think the attachment side of that affects so many aspects of how we deal with people i take everything [ _ ] personally the smallest things i texted my mother today and it was like a little paragraph a little heartfelt thank you for going on vacation and making it so special for us and she sent back you’re welcome and i was like [ _ ] you too i take that personal like i just put my heart into this and you’re gonna throw me a [ _ ] you’re welcome i don’t know i think that’s all [ _ ] from my kid my childhood but i don’t know that’s that’s the only thing that came up for me this week and people in georgia not giving a [ _ ] about masks that’s it that’s all i had all i noticed yeah yeah like say uh we had all kinds of stuff going on but i’ve been so everything’s just chill i don’t know i attribute it to medicaid meditation medication medications i mean that would probably work too yeah but then the other thing is i’ve been getting up at five i finally made a doctor’s appointment i think something’s [ _ ] wrong with me because i’m so tired i mean i get up at five and i go exercise so one of my motivations to start exercising was i was getting [ _ ] tired like late in the day like by like three four o’clock i’m like [ _ ] man i need to sleep like and that’s never been me really i’ve always been pretty active and so in my own head i either have sleep apnea that’s what i tell myself i have sleep apnea so i’m going to go order a cpap machine and [ _ ] get one sent to the house and [ _ ] jen’s like you’re not ordering a [ _ ] cpap machine like wow i know i got to have sleep apnea like i looked at the symptoms i wake up with headaches i’m always tired you know but it’s been that for several months that was one of the reasons i really motivated myself to start exercising and eating a little better i’m like my energy level sucks well now i’ve been doing that for months and nothing’s changed now i just get up at five and still [ _ ] by 3 30 4 o’clock i’m [ _ ] tired i don’t have any energy coming from work it’s like i got to sit down or i just act like a complete [ _ ] because i’m so tired and exhausted i don’t want to do anything but i gotta make dinner and we gotta have something to eat and all that so then i just do it but act like a dick so that leads to that i’m laughing because i relate so i’m like oh i have sleep apnea i’m gonna [ _ ] get a cpap machine and fix myself and she’s like you can’t you gotta get diagnosed by a doctor and all this right so like [ _ ] fine so i made a doctor’s appointment cool that’s not till september that’s the first appointment they got september 1st well they had one a week before but we’ll be on vacation so we’ll be on vacation that week so where are you going uh we’re going to ocean city maryland

i was just curious i i so i have a den i have to make a dentist appointment and i’m uh i’m struggling with being a guy that i want to be a good dude and right now i don’t want to do the things it takes to be a good dude i’m supposed to quarantine for two weeks and get tested before i go out i don’t wanna i don’t wanna get tested i think it sounds [ _ ] terrible i wanna get tested just to do it i don’t like that at this point i’m curious i’m like all right i think i just want to do it i had some throat issues like 10 years ago almost and he had to stick a camera up that channel and look at it and if i [ _ ] hate that feeling dude it really disturbs me and so i don’t want to go get tested and i’m like because of a disturbing feeling i’m going to put other people at risk and i’m going to make this dentist appointment and if they can make it this week i’m going to and i’m going to go [ _ ] tell them i haven’t been out of state like that’s kind of shitty of me and that’s not who i think i am and yet here i am i’m about to live it are you having a toothache or anything yeah i had an abscess like two weeks ago and they gave me the medicine for it and they got to like do a re-treatment for a root canal but the abscess is starting to come back i can feel it so it’s like the sooner the better for me but all right i’m like [ _ ] am i going to lie to him and tell him i haven’t been out of state i think i am and that’s kind of shitty yeah but that’s where i’m at i’m like what’s the alternative go get tested oh we’re we were well i don’t know we haven’t decided we’re supposed to go to massachusetts in september and we’re like [ _ ] now they got the thing where if you come in from out of state you’re supposed to quarantine for 14 days or or you can get a test 72 hours before so which seriously right it’s all arbitrary [ _ ] but so i’m like all right so what i would think i want to do is try to get a test now to see kind of roughly how long it takes to get the results back and how that all works and then basically if we decide we’re going to go we’ll all have to go get tested you know us and all the [ _ ] kids and jan and i and get our results back so that we can go into massachusetts with our [ _ ] permission slip wow say that we’re negative or you’re supposed to quarantine for two weeks when you go there and of course we’d have out of state tags and i don’t know how [ _ ] nazi-ish they’re being with all this [ _ ] you know are they pulling people over are they really expected yeah that’s what i mean i don’t know they might or if we gotta drive through these other states like i don’t know what all the other states are doing and what if we need to [ _ ] stop at a rest area you know so i just thought [ _ ] it you know if we have the negative test results at least we can say look we have our [ _ ] permission slip you know [ _ ] green card whatever you want to call it you know that’s funny the further south you go the less they give a [ _ ] yeah it was like dead on spot we georgia didn’t care south carolina didn’t really give a [ _ ] either north carolina started to see some concern we stopped to eat in georgia on the way home mostly mass in georgia i mean in virginia and i’m like it’s weird it’s like you’re stepping up the levels of who cares maryland i’m i really i should stop bitching about people who don’t cover their nose like jesus after this trip [ _ ] at least you’re doing something i know but i mentioned the kids for that the kids in general do that [ _ ] going to still put their [ _ ] mouth like this yeah like you know your mask is useless when you put it like that it gets really nice i’m a full coverage mask i mean if you’re gonna [ _ ] wear it you might as well wear it you know what’s stupid it’s weird to wear it in a state where you feel like you’re the oddball yeah but we did i’m like [ _ ] that we’re we’re mad squares give a [ _ ] what anybody down here does we’re math squares so i i mean i don’t want to i’ll put myself out there and talk about not wanting to you know get a test or quarantine for two weeks and how that isn’t that’s dishonest to lie to my dentist and we could talk about the truth if you want and how the truth works or yeah it’s fine i don’t know we got some of that same [ _ ] so same like say we sent billy to [ _ ] camp for all week you know it’s like now i’m gonna go and go around him and then go back into work and am i putting him at risk and you know do i need to tell all the people at work and [ __ ] it’s weird man it is weird there’s a bird on there uh let me pull up these two there was a couple of messages

that we can mention

um jenny had something to say about step eight somewhere okay and then there was an instagram message that said something

that’s right there

okay

i guess i’m ready when you are

okay the truth this should be interesting

is it the truth or honesty

i feel like the truth was what i was originally thinking but that’s a little different

that’s all based on perception honesty’s a little maybe honesty oh that’s what it was with us and i don’t i haven’t done it yet but i’m thinking the same thing of lying for billy’s age because he wants to go to the gym but he can’t go to plan a fitness unless you’re 13. i’m like he’s big enough i’ll just go [ __ ] lie about his age and then he can go that’s it all right

welcome back it’s recovery sort of i’m jason i’m a guy in recovery i think until after this conversation i’m billy i’m a person in long-term recovery and uh sorry for being late this week we’ve already had at least one person message us and say where the hell is the podcast at you guys are slacking uh yeah well i was on vacation and and then came back very very late last night and so uh i would not have made it this morning even if billy wasn’t out on a boat so i won’t blame him whatsoever um but we did man vacation [ _ ] me all up we didn’t even post the the podcast last week to like any social media spot so probably nobody heard it but if you did it was about step eight um and you know we got a little bit of feedback about that jenny was talking to us about it and i don’t know if you got a chance to hear it so we got cut off at the end and i had posed a question to you okay so after i posed the question to you it’s just this segway music and then it’s like hey billy didn’t get to answer that so now there’s a cliffhanger and uh we gotta remember what the [ _ ] the question was so you can answer it on step nine because i think it was about that oh it’s about sponsorship yeah trying to remember how much input you had on whether people made amends or how they made amends or who they talked to like how you felt about that and so it was open for interpretation for others to answer do you remember i vaguely remember the question and now out of that conversation it seems kind of like oh i don’t know i got to think about it all over again well we’ll definitely figure you have a whole month almost um and so jenny listened to that and she loved the ending and she said that uh oh here’s my my fact check she did think that what i described about buddhism was pretty right on that i can’t change other people i can only change me but that doesn’t give me an excuse not to say sorry but apologizing seems to come naturally when i change myself and so i think what her version of that was saying that like uh it’s not necessarily that we work ourselves up for the apology we work ourselves up for the internal change kind of like we were talking about how step eight seeing the evidence and effects of our actions on others helps us to go back and and have more humility and surrender for the character defects to change right and so she’s saying that through that process we’re just become genuinely sorry and want to apologize it’s not really something we have to work towards and so i thought that was kind of cool uh and then stephanie had mentioned to us that she felt like making the list help to see that her behaviors and actions toward others had real effects or even consequences even though she might not feel like she was bothering anyone rarely is that the case of what’s really going on there’s usually somebody being affected by what’s happening and it teaches her accountability it’s not so much that she has to be a people pleaser and you know make others happy all the time but she does have to be mindful that when she’s making decisions they’re going to have a ripple effect in the ocean right they’re going to affect other people whether you mean them to or not and sometimes and i guess you know this is just maybe reading into what she said a little bit sometimes the decisions i make even if they are the best decision for me and my family or whatever that is going to have a negative impact on other people and that doesn’t mean it’s wrong it doesn’t mean i can’t do it it just means that that’s what i got to take into consideration while i’m thinking about making that decision like hey this is also going to affect these people not so well is it worth whatever i’m gaining out of it to do that yeah and i think a big part of that uh step eight for me too was was just that it’s like

really looking at um the the change i needed to care about how my actions affected other people i don’t know i’m not saying that well but when i was using i always thought i’m not hurting anybody but myself and if what i do if like my family for example if my mom says my feelings are hurt by you know what you’re doing i’m like well that’s your fault that’s your feelings i’m not responsible for your feelings and i didn’t make that connection until i got into like step work and realize that like yes my actions do have an impact on other people around me and uh when i got into recovery was the first time i really started taking responsibility for the way my actions affected other people and that’s such a fine line to walk because uh you know there’s a very thin you know canyon in between those two mountains of like what i do affects people and yet at the same time your feelings are yours to deal with and some things i do are going to hurt your feelings even when they’re the right thing for me to do and you know you need to deal with that and so it’s very it’s it’s hard to walk that yeah the balancing act but i think like the the process of you know the awakening of the spirit that we get through recovery you know these spiritual awakenings if you want to use you know recover more recovery-centered language like that’s what spiritual awakenings to me or is this awareness like hey i need to kind of balance out like my actions affect other people but my you know beliefs and values have meaning too and how do i weigh those two things out to make the the best decision for myself while causing the least amount of harm to others or you know like like trying to balance through that stuff and and having awareness on how we affect the world around us yeah it’s super tricky i wish the bugs i’m sitting here if you’re watching on youtube i keep itching my goddamn legs i wish the bugs had more awareness of me and how they affect me because they [ __ ] me up down in georgia um

yeah so to this week we’re going to talk about honesty which i think it sounds like a incredibly boring [ _ ] topic um until you get to some of the parts we just talked about right before we started recording and then it becomes an incredibly interesting topic i think or at least debate um i don’t know that there’s any right answers or that will come to any right answers but there’s definitely some interesting points and so i think maybe i’ll start with uh i have often thought you know obviously we get more honest as we get here i believe that you know we we come around i probably got pretty honest and then i got super honest which was not beneficial because i hurt people’s feelings and with my honesty right because the whole honesty without compassion is abuse saying and then i probably tempered it back down and so you know there’s i can be honest in what i’m doing uh then there’s the level of honesty that i either don’t have the capability of having yet that self-honesty like that part of me that i’m just not able to see yet everybody else might know it’s true and i might say it’s not and that doesn’t mean i’m being dishonest that just means i’m not capable of seeing that that self-centered part of me yet or whatever it is um and so is it is honesty a no matter what principle like i think that’s kind of my ultimate question and i don’t i don’t know that there’s an answer to that but i think that’s where i’m going with this podcast maybe is honesty a no matter what principle do you have to be honest no matter what is that always the right thing to do and i know somebody right now is thinking well what if a killer puts a gun to your kid’s head and says yeah obviously in those situations we might need to lie for something but is there any other reason you ever need to lie in your life what’s your immediate answer to that so and for the non-religious guy i’m going to go to a bible verse for this here we go the good story so one of and i actually had a minister at a church explained this to me in this way and i’ve always loved it and i i use it um in my life now for a lot of application of spiritual principles and so um in the bible there’s a verse like the wages of sin are death and you know we sort of always hear that in some sort of literal way or or the way the bible’s applied a lot of times it’s meant to be this literal kind of thing like oh if you sin you’re gonna die or whatever and uh the way that he described it to us it’s like when when i commit a sin there’s like there’s a cost to that and not it might not be like a literal death but you know for example if you and i are a friendship and we’re in a relationship you know as friends and then i lie i am i am damaged i’m causing harm to that relationship like a death yeah if you tell me you can’t hit my anniversary and then i see pictures on facebook that you’re at a party or something right i’m gonna be hurt right so you know that application of like the wages of sin or or death is like you know there’s there’s negative consequences that come along anytime i quote unquote sin and so i’ve applied that in my life to be how i look at most of these spiritual principles um there may be times that i don’t apply them or i make a different decision than probably what is technically the most spiritual um but again back to like awareness like trying to be aware like hey there’s a cost that comes with this there is a price that comes with this and then it’s up to me to weather you know try to weigh out whether that price is worth it or not so for me personally i would say nothing is a no matter what principle you know there’s there’s always some gray there’s wiggle room yeah and everything if you’re willing to pay the price they say i’m never going to use no matter what well i had surgery a couple times and got pain medication from a doctor i took it right you know i drink coffee i drink you know i’ve ingested a lot of caffeine very rapidly to try to not to get high but just to alter my state you know it’s like i don’t i don’t put myself in these no matter what i gotta you know categories i got it so i you when you describe that i kind of remind me of um a little picture i always had in my head that we use these spiritual principles through the process of the steps or if you’re not working recovery through the steps through whatever recovery process you get you get more in touch with yourself right we figure out who we are and do it on purpose you know we’ve mentioned that before and so in doing that and figuring out who we are and living these spiritual principles i i look at it as like i have i’m just standing like in an open field for some reason i don’t know why i’m standing in an open field but that’s where i am and i have bricks and mortar right and i have a hammer and every time i don’t act on a spiritual principle if i decide to lie to someone if i decide to uh not be open-minded like every time i don’t live in a principle i’m kind of like laying another brick right and i’m building this like four walls around me and the longer i do that the more i separate myself from the world and what i think of it as my connection you can call it god but my connection to the universe right my spirit is filled up through this universal energy and i slowly brick by brick block it the [ _ ] out so that i can’t communicate with it anymore and when i do that i feel shitty right and it’s living in these spiritual principles that i believe in that i start knocking the bricks down with the hammer and the more i knock them down the better i feel because i’m more connected to the universe and so kind of to me goes right along with what you were saying like the price might not even be hurting somebody else even though somebody seems to always be hurt by everything i do but the price is just that i don’t feel as [ _ ] good about myself when i don’t act on my spiritual principles i believe in right now going through this situation that i just brought up to you that we’re about to talk about here like i’m already [ _ ] questioning my behaviors like i know it’s not right and so what do i think i’m just gonna do it and feel okay with it am i gonna like wipe the sweat off my brow like got away with that one no i i know i did it it doesn’t matter if anybody ever finds out or any damage is already done i’m ready to compromise my principle of honesty this week and and i’ll give you this is just a silly one and it’s funny you say that like you know this this [ _ ] sticks with you no matter what so and i run into this almost every year when i do our taxes so we make donations to charities at different times for different things god my wife’s donates so much money to voices every time with somebody’s birthday fundraiser or whatever but we make some other donations we donate different stuff different places it’s never tremendous amount of money we’re not overly wealthy but it’s probably a few hundred dollars you know here and there over the year and every year that i do my taxes i’m like goddammit we got to get receipts for this stuff you know because you can right claim it and then i don’t and then it gets to the end of the year and i just pick a number that i think is fair and write that on there and just send it in and like well that’s like it’s being dishonest i don’t i don’t know i could be off one way or another i like to justify it by just saying well i’m sure we donated more you know like i’m sure it was more than that so i’ll just use you know 400 or 500 whatever i think is is a good number you know but it’s like that’s a dishonesty and every year when it comes up i’m like am i gonna do that this year you know it’s like i feel that little bit of guilt that’s like this is i know it’s not the right thing to do so i don’t even try to guess how much we did i just look at the max amount that the irs doesn’t question and put that here like i’m sure we’ve given at least that i don’t know that though i’m right with you there and it’s funny you said you know justify and i was thinking justification and rationalization because that is already what has come up when i’m trying to talk myself into behaving like i’m about to behave this week it’s already like i’m like wow i was safe while i was down there right so just so we’re not baffling anybody my family and i went to georgia this week which is you know one of the top five states of coronavirus uh and after being there no [ _ ] wonder why right nobody gives a [ _ ] about the mask rule whatsoever um but we went to a little tiny place on the coast it’s called jekyll island it’s seven miles long three miles wide uh you gotta pay seven dollars to get on it for the day or whatever so it’s a little island i wear a mask my family wears a mask we wore masks anytime we went in a goddamn store never fails like we’re committed to that i you know hopefully it works i don’t still you know i’m not a scientist i didn’t do the the test but i’m assuming it’s doing something and so we wore mass we did the safe things to do spent most of our time on the beach did a little bit of fishing the beach is exactly what i was looking for in a beach which is basically [ _ ] empty completely empty there was like a mile stretch of beach where right by the house we were at might have been 20 people on it at the most crowded time and so it was very easy to socially distance while you were out there we were 30 feet from the closest people at all times that’s not the concern the concern is like the few times we had to run into the little market or or the highs or whatever it was god i just gave highs a promotion whatever the [ _ ] gas station was and uh that was not that didn’t feel good to me we were safe but everybody else who was ignoring the rules on the door of wearing masks did not make me feel safe and apparently no businesses are actually enforcing it down there um and so in maryland when you go to georgia right now they say when you come back you need to quarantine and get tested i don’t want to get tested right i’ve had a procedure done where they had to stick a camera down through my nose cavity or whatever the [ _ ] and that feeling really really disturbs me and so i don’t want them to put a [ _ ] q-tip up there i’m against it i’m against it for me i’m against it for my five kids one of which is a you know one-year-old like i’m just not for us doing this i think it sounds shitty but beyond that you got my buddy jack who’s throwing the conspiracy theory in my ear that they’re giving covet to people when they test them and [ _ ] and i’m all [ _ ] up about it right so i don’t wanna i don’t wanna do that i don’t wanna follow the rules i don’t wanna quarantine for two weeks and or till my test results come back i’ve already been to a store and you know i didn’t warn them when i walked in the store i wore my mask but i didn’t warn them and say hey i’ve been to georgia for two weeks i want you to know to keep back like i did tell billy before i came here that i was willing to go remote if that wasn’t feeling safe for him i plan on going to the grocery store this week and not getting tested i have a dental procedure that needs to be taken care of sooner rather than later and i need to call them tomorrow and make the appointment and i’m hoping it’s this week and my intention when they ask me have you been out of state is to say no because i don’t want to have to get tested or put off getting the procedure done like i’ve already had an abscess i got the medicine for it abscess is starting to come back i need the procedure done i don’t want to do a whole more antibiotics and all that so i’m getting ready to lie to people about this and i’m already not following the safety guidelines that you know probably two months ago it would have been like oh that’s [ _ ] up somebody’s not following the safety guidelines here i am now i say oh well i did everything safe down there so this is like a little white lie you know the way we explain it away i did all the right stuff but i’m not doing the right stuff now i’m not following the rules now whether i follow the rules there or not i’m not following the rules of get tested and so like the repercussions of this could be major will i ever know that probably not but could i give it to the dentist who takes it home and one of his parents dies from it this [ _ ] is real right like i i guess i’m not thinking about that a whole lot but so the point being i already feel shitty about the fact that i need this dental work done and i’m not going to get tested and i’m going to tell them i haven’t been out of state and i’m basically putting people at risk and that’s kind of shitty yeah and and those are the choices where we have to weigh out like you know what do we what do you think the effects on yourself would be what do you think the effects would be if you found out you had it and got someone sick or got whatever would you be okay with that like would you be okay with making the same decision with the worst possible outcome um so knowing somebody dies probably not yeah well i mean maybe not even know when they die just knowing someone gets sick or whatever and i’m sitting here thinking in my head i’m just like i would probably rather put off the procedure for a week and just say at least i’ll feel better now and i haven’t shown any symptoms for a week of being home then i i’d rather do that than go get tested right like and and there’s a weird so i’ve had this discussion with some people at work about you know following some of these rules and doing some of this stuff and and what’s hard for most of us is that we all have a different level and and this will tie back into the honesty and what we’re okay with we all have a different level of what we think is safe and what we think is okay and then what we think is a little more risky and like i use the example i said like for us um i am fine going out to restaurants doesn’t bother me you know what i mean done that a few times they’ve all been you know the restaurants themselves are practicing the social distancing i haven’t been in anywhere that’s like overly crowded or where people aren’t you know wearing mat well i guess you don’t wear masks at your table but you know but i’ve been to restaurants a couple different ones i’m fine with that um i’ve been out and about in public i’ve been to gatherings at people’s houses probably less than i’d say less than 20 people um i don’t think i’ve been anywhere more than 20 people we decided not to have something at our house because we were worried there’d be more people than we’re comfortable um and i pretty much go out i go to the gym you know so i’m not overly paranoid but i probably wouldn’t go to a crowded movie theater you know what i mean if there was a brand new movie opening and they weren’t like blocking off seats or blocking off rows and i knew there might be [ _ ] 200 people in there i’m not going you know i probably wouldn’t go i definitely wouldn’t go to like a baseball game or something where there was 40 000 people you know they’re like [ _ ] that i’m out you know i’m not doing that i wouldn’t go to a carnival or you know the fair if they had to fare um but each of us has our own what we’re okay with in that scenario you know there are some people that be like yeah [ _ ] it i mean you saw the people went to the trump rally with thousands of people there and there are people that go to these you know concerts and [ _ ] with thousands of people and they’re completely okay with that they just had the bike rally thing didn’t they was that south dakota sturgis or something oh did they have it i didn’t care about that one that was this weekend um but where this goes back to with the spiritual principles is the same thing like each of us has our own uh level of what we’re comfortable with you know and and what we’re okay with um in in trying to live by these principles you know when i was using i didn’t care i didn’t really have any principles as i got into recovery i slowly began to practice some on a very uh surfacy basis most in the beginning and now they’ve gained a much deeper meaning and a much deeper uh impact on my life so i try to really apply them in all my affairs um would i be okay with you know in your situation you know doing that and then going home and laying down at night and being okay with with that person um again i think it would be important for me to say well if i really think of what’s the worst thing that could happen and then play it out as that am i okay with that you know that would be something i would try to measure that against are you if i were you yeah no i would i mean i don’t want to make the decision for you and i won’t judge you either way but i wouldn’t do that so i would either get a test or wait two weeks and then in the case of just having been through a really bad abscess tooth like a year ago [ _ ] that i’ll get them to stick the thing up my nose but i haven’t had that like i don’t have the hang up with it that you have so it’s easy for me to say that it’s incredibly interesting too because you’re talking about comfort levels of of people going out and and how they feel i will not eat in a restaurant right you said that and i’m like shuddering over here i’m like nope taking all my [ _ ] food home like i ain’t eating near people at all especially not indoors outdoors yeah maybe if i’m far enough away but indoors not a [ _ ] chance right you went to a gathering of like you said less than 20 people i have not been near anyone except family members and i will not i’m just not there i’m not going to any gatherings but i guess with a mask and distanced maybe i’d stand this far away from you and talk with a mask on at a backyard picnic but that would just be kind of [ _ ] weird i don’t know so i’m like god i feel like your behaviors are more i don’t say more risky but you are more comfortable your comfort level with that is higher right i would think those behaviors and this is where the whole and here i am justifying rationalizing right i’m like oh somebody that’s doing that needs to get tested before they go to the dentist not somebody who went out of state and did it safely like i’m probably safer in georgia than he was here and i’m just like is that true i don’t [ _ ] know i know i should preface this my wife would tell you that i should preface most of this by saying i am a complete [ _ ] rule follower most everything she gets mad because she’s the type of person that will ignore rules that she thinks are stupid she’ll say well that’s a dumb rule and she’ll just do what she wants anyway you know let’s say like you’re in a hotel and they say you gotta wear [ _ ] shoes through the hotel or whatever she goes well that’s stupid and she’ll just do whatever she wants i’m just going to the pool it doesn’t matter right whereas i’m like nope that’s the rule that’s what we got to do it doesn’t matter if we like it or not that’s what we do so what’s different here i’m a rule follower i think i’m following the rules i mean i like say as far as i understand them maybe yeah i mean the gathering we were at at the friend’s house was definitely less than 20 people is that the new rule 20 i don’t know it keeps changing yeah so i’m not sure but like i wear a mask anytime i go out when we do go to restaurants like we wear our mask in the restaurant we go i take them off and we sit our table there’s been a couple of times actually that i start to feel weird and i’ll kind of put it back on when the waitress comes over because i feel like that’s respectful to that person you know um not every time but i have done that a couple times just like well you know they got to work in this [ _ ] around all these [ _ ] like me that are at a restaurant so you know um but yeah like i’m okay with that you know feeling like i’m following the rules but and again where we differ is my situation is different like i don’t feel like there’s anyone in my home that i am putting at any kind of risk you know i’m not around any older people i don’t have a young infant i have you know two kids that live at home that are pretty healthy and my wife is pretty healthy and none of us smoke and you know i always have this fear even when everybody is healthy just these weird random offshoot cases of people who are healthy and young and still pass and i’m like man i just terrified of that well that’s so in my mind how i’ve become okay with that like yes that can happen but that’s like saying when i drive out of here and get my car to go back home i can get in a car accident and the odds are low right you know that even if i get covid that i’m going to get sick and get seriously ill or die it can happen it’s definitely a possibility i don’t want to get it i’m not out [ _ ] licking covet lollipops or anything you know i want to stay away from it so that’s why i wear a mask and i do try to do the social distancing and stuff i i go out to meetings and i try not to really hug people and i try to keep my distance when i’m at those things or around people i don’t really know especially right um but there’s a a risk to life in general you know whereas i have i mean i’m always willing to take some kind of risk yeah yeah and i think you make a good point there that there is like a you know we can take precautions for things but in the end like there are some things that are never you can’t be totally safe anywhere ever right it’s just not a thing unless you live in a bubble and even then a bubble could run out of oxygen or something right uh so let’s take our break here and and we’ll do the voices that i know you had mentioned another situation upcoming where you were thinking about possibly some uh some some dishonesty um and while right before i mentioned voices that their rubber ducky races coming up so if you want to grab a rubber ducky it’s five dollars it’s going to be online and we can watch it and hopefully it’s not a two-hour rubber ducky race they don’t get stuck um but feel free to go on facebook and and find voices of hope or or right on the internet voices of hope i don’t know cecil county i think is the voice of the hope cecil md there you go i i always google search [ _ ] and i’m like boys i hope cecil county and it comes up uh so go ahead and get your rubber duckies for five dollars and and we’ll all be watching that craziness when it happens and then we’ll be right back uh

i think this will be all right [ _ ] it’s gonna make me do some other [ _ ] i’m gonna schedule this two weeks out that’s all right i’m getting ready to tell you i’m going to justify my lie so there you go maybe that’ll change your mind

so all the equipment is going to get shipped back i’m just going to [ _ ] tape up the box tomorrow take it to ups and they’re taking all of it back and then i’ll reorder all the [ _ ] from some other website which it’s on back order so i’m still gonna be [ _ ] waiting for it forever but i gotta wait till they credit my account before i go ordering again all that [ _ ] like a month and a half computer i bought supposed to get shipped tomorrow not that that’s very helpful without yeah so i mean what do they just finally said they turned out they were going to offer me 25 and then when i did the math they were already over charging 16 for the bundler charger more for the one yeah i’m like you [ __ ] pieces of so yeah anyone do not know so i’m like i just want to be done with this i’d rather give somebody else my money at this point yeah right yeah that’s terrible customer service i agree i agree

so there’s that i don’t know i’m like by the time i get all this equipment straightened out we’ll be done podcasting i have all this podcast equipment nothing to do with it i’m out of the habit i haven’t recorded any for that other podcast i do i don’t know a week and a half now i think i did one right before i left for vacation but the whole time i was going i was like i’ll do something down here no not a [ __ ] chance i didn’t do nothing the time off yeah i did nothing

are you ready yep and you’re gonna talk about the gym thing yeah all right

here we are we’re back and now i’m gonna let billy tell his version of his uh most recent struggle with honesty yeah so uh as most of us have seen with covid like my son is he’s 11 he’ll be 12 in september he’s been pretty much home playing video games for the last since march so it’s at five months of you know very limited activity um we had this big you know like most people in the beginning like oh we’re gonna go out every weekend and consent on a few items to continue

[ __ ] we’ll go back like half a sentence i’ll just go back to the beginning okay

so like most people at the beginning of covid you know my son uh has been home playing video games since march um we had big plans to start doing all these physical activities on the weekends or or going out you know hiking and biking and all this great stuff we were going to do to keep everyone active um that lasted a few weeks and then you know my work routine never stopped so i stayed in the same work routine as i always was and uh we got involved in some home projects and long story short we really weren’t doing a lot of physical activity with the kids and he’s 11 so staying home playing video games is [ _ ] great for him he’s couldn’t be happier um now fast forward you know five months later and that’s really all like he has no motivation to do much of anything he’s got his friends online that he chats with and he couldn’t be happier of just playing video games watching youtube and netflix and stuff all day and just being a vegetable you know at home all day so uh he did express some interest in wanting to go to the gym i get up and go to the gym every morning at like five o’clock um he had expressed some interest in wanting to go but you have to be i think it’s 13 to get we go to planet fitness not to give a plug to them but that’s just where i go and uh you have to be 13. so he’s a big kid for his age you know they would never know by looking at him so i’m like [ _ ] it i’m just gonna lie i’m just gonna go in there tell him he’s 13 are they going to ask for a birth certificate probably not i could probably just sign him up go in it’ll be fine i’ll get him a card nobody will ever know and uh you know then we would start going i would have to change my schedule go in the evenings or whatever but we could make it work and that would be beneficial for him um because he would be getting out and exercising doing the things you know that he wants to do for himself and and i think it would be good for him as well um so yeah my

goal i guess i think justifies the lie so why do you think they have the rule of 13

oh it’s probably like most of this what age needs to wear a mask and all this other [ _ ] it’s just some arbitrary they have to pick a number somewhere so they just pick one they probably pick you know what is the average age that most kids hit puberty where they can do muscle development and it won’t impact their growth you know i mean i’m sure i can’t say i’m sure that’s my uneducated guess i didn’t know if it was more for liability or more for any actual you know scientific studies that show that they it won’t hurt you from this age on or maybe just studies of like who can follow rules and pay attention yeah i’m not sure i think the y uh again not a plug for the y but that was where we were at before all this stuff and theirs is 14. and so my story is that last year before my daughters turned 14 we were members at the y and they wanted they showed interest in wanting to come in the gym and i was like [ _ ] it you’re 14. like i don’t have any qualms about that at all uh and it’s interesting kind of you know i was thinking about this for the the dentist piece too like i don’t want to lie directly to a human about something i feel like affects a human right but this is where that age step could come into play because generally i look at these institutions as not affecting humans and that’s not the case i’m like oh it’s the [ _ ] dentist well the dentist is a person who’s trying to reasonably stay safe by you know screening people for covet the why like that there are humans that work there that could be affected by that well why you know they could get fired for letting 13 year olds in their gym i guess i don’t know i don’t know how that works but i i look at it as it’s a place and so i don’t look at the humans who could be affected by it and so i didn’t give a [ _ ] i took him in and worked out now it was very short-lived and now it doesn’t matter anymore but yeah i i guess i would justify and say i didn’t lie because nobody asked yeah and probably my biggest hang up i mean there’s a little bit in me that’s like all right you know i don’t want to lie i have two bigger hang-ups one is what am i teaching my kid about these rules and stuff because he’s obviously going to know and it’s going to put him in a weird spot you know of now he is like lying by default you know because he’s he’s now participating

and that was thrown right in my face last summer we were at one of the go-kart tracks down in ocean city we were in ocean city maryland they had the go-kart tracks you had to be 12 or 13 whatever age you had to be to ride certain go-karts and i said oh we’ll just tell them you’re old enough if they asked your age you know just tell them you’re 13 or i said oh he’s 13 and the guy says well what’s your birthday well he says his birthday what it really is because he’s not you know in his mind it’s it’s too much for an eleven-year-old to try to start doing math and know he needs to take a year off and you know all that stuff so he said his birthday and the guy’s like yeah you’re not old enough and then i felt bad because i put him in that spot and he now you know was was caught in the middle of disappointing me like because we had a conversation about this afterwards and he felt like he was disappointing me because he wasn’t able to participate in the lie you know it was just a weird situation of like wow that was [ _ ] up and i can’t believe that i put my kid in that awkward of a situation you know because i didn’t care yeah i’m and and this is one of those things that you know while my daughters they’re twins by the way for anybody who wonders why i keep saying plural my daughters um while they might never actually say this out loud because they know i probably wouldn’t appreciate it too much it very much becomes well i was willing to you know lie stretch the truth whatever when it was convenient for me because i wanted them to work out with me but you know when they if they wanted to get a tattoo at 17 or you know some other thing at an earlier age like i would totally not be okay with that and so i could understand their complaints about that like how come we can do it when it’s good for you but not when it’s good for us like we want to cut corners when it’s good for us too we want to not be patient and wait for that and that’s what you know you bring up uh showing kids dishonesty right like i don’t feel like i’m struggling with that with the dentist piece because they won’t have to see it but yeah how often do i show my kids that you can break the rules when it’s convenient for your life when i judge it’s not going to have enough of an effect on anybody for it to matter right how come i get to choose that and they don’t and what am i showing them in that choice yeah well and i think and i hope it’s okay to bring this up but i think you brought that up with like when we were getting together and you weren’t letting them go to their friends but then you were coming to meeting up with me and they had brought that up to you like how come it’s okay for you to do it but not for us right you know and and they don’t understand the point that i would say behind that which is that i trust myself to follow the rules basically like we stay pretty far apart we don’t hug or anything like i don’t know what they’re gonna do with their friends i don’t they’re gonna do whatever the [ _ ] their friends do they don’t understand the nuance of my justifications yes exactly they don’t get how well i can do this right and so i just i think these are interesting questions do you know what you’re going to do are you going to take them to the gym so i haven’t yet um just and i didn’t really think of this before until just now i was like well maybe i should go and talk to him about it and say hey do you really want to go to the gym i’m willing to go in and tell them that you’re 13 if you’re okay with that you know but i don’t want to put you in a weird spot i don’t want you to you know so maybe i’ll do that talk to him about it see if he’s really interested and the truth is and and this is part of my justification for doing it too is i feel like the same thing i feel like it’s going to be really short-lived he’s going to want to go you know two weeks if that and it’s like the first time that it cuts into his really good [ _ ] video game session with his friends online because i’m regimented and it’s like no we go at six you know that’s we’re going at six right the first time it starts cutting into that [ _ ] he’s gonna give up on it um that’s me you know playing it out the way i think it’ll play out who knows i could be completely wrong it’s so interesting that we do that because like the reality for me that i’m looking at and you talking about this i could have just as easily taken my daughters in our backyard and done workouts until they were 14 like i didn’t it didn’t have to be gym workouts i am more motivated by gym equipment for some reason just seems easier maybe i don’t know maybe i’m lazy um they were more motivated by the fact i guess either that it was the gym and they never could before or whatever it was that got him in there for a few times but i could have just done it the right way and it wouldn’t have really like for the for the ultimate goal the ultimate goal of like us all being more fit we could have done in the backyard and not broken any rules but that wasn’t even a consideration at the time right i guess that doesn’t necessarily apply to the dentist thing unless i just wait two weeks or whatever it is that that pleases everyone i think then i can tell the truth hey yeah i’ve been in state for two weeks and i still don’t get tested i can’t get a backyard dentist like that’s not a thing yeah and one of my previous sponsors pointed out to me before like we as addicts we seem to live in this world of like it’s it’s all or nothing it’s like any time a scenario comes up we give ourselves like one of two extremes as options it’s like you know he can’t go to the gym at all or do any kind of workouts or we have to [ _ ] lie to planet fitness and commit some kind of fraud to get in there and go and the truth is there’s probably some other options if i like did a little bit of research weighed them out looked at what the possibilities are right you know maybe there’s a different gym we could go to maybe there’s a different you know scenario maybe we buy a weight bench you know who knows there’s there’s all kinds of scenarios but in my head it’s like we do nothing at all or we lie to planet fitness and that’s the two [ _ ] scenarios i don’t know if that’s addicts i feel like that’s where the us is right now there’s just two scenarios just pick one and that’s the truth right pick a side that’s it and so what uh you know the other part of honesty at least another place that i would take it after we talk about you know what kind of message we’re showing our kids with showing them dishonesty is what about honesty with kids right and and i get that there’s plenty of proponents of be as honest as possible whatever that means but like where is that line where do you not tell kids about adult matters or you know fudge around the honesty of an adult matter because a kid’s in your mind not ready to hear it or not ready to hear it a certain way and where that came up for me in this last week’s vacation my mother and her boyfriend were there and that was kind of like part of the point of our vacation was to get to know him better we don’t know quite as well as you know other family members he’s newer he’s been around for a couple years he’s not like brand new but he’s newer to our family and during the vacation there were some times of like i don’t know just for me it was very much reminiscent of my childhood my mother and father would you know get in their arguments and you’d see part of the argument in front of you and then the rest of it might be behind closed doors where who knows what kind of nasty stuff was said or whatever and then there’s just a vibe afterwards there’s this mood that like sits over top the entire vacation where you feel like you can only do stuff with one parent or the other because they’re not talking to each other or whatever and it brought it all back for me to watch her and her boyfriend have an instance or two like that and it wasn’t anything major but it was just one of those like i brought it up and pointed it out to my kids i’m like hey do y’all feel any kind of weird vibe going on or whatever hey i didn’t want it to be something that wasn’t talked about but b i also kind of wanted to show them my history and say hey we’ve probably had vacations like this 10 years ago where i was this person doing this with your mother right and i’m trying to like grow and through that not that i can’t be that guy today i’m trying to be different but this is where i come from and this is what i learned and i want you to see you know why this was my experience and so maybe the 14s were probably fine with that understanding right but maybe i was too honest with my 11 year old and my five-year-old like maybe maybe they don’t need to have that pointed out to them i i don’t know like is there a thing with being honest there’s definitely some situations i know you’re ready to talk i’m sorry uh like i’m not gonna talk about sex per se around the five and the 11 year old not any explicit stories or anything so there’s definitely a line of where my honesty will stop right yeah me and mommy were wrestling under the covers not right right but but where is that and so we have always tried to be pretty honest with our kids i need your consent on a few items i don’t know why my phone keeps doing this it needs your consent on a few items to continue giggles trying to steal my life i don’t [ _ ] understand what’s going on um start with so we’ve tried it so me and my wife have always tried to be pretty honest with our kids about life situations as they come up right um and like just like a situation like this like things come up so i was raised probably similar like i was raised in a household where you never talked about like the elephant in the corner you know what i mean you just ignored the obvious we just acted like everything was fine even though [ _ ] wasn’t fine right and so that’s still my tendency now whereas my wife’s the complete opposite you know in a good way she’s more the well something’s not right let’s talk all about it you know let’s get it all out there and throw it all you know throw it all out and whatever we’re feeling and all that and uh that’s been very awkward but it’s been amazing with our kids because the idea now that they’re older is that we do want them to be able to come to us and talk to us about things and tell us when things are difficult i mean um we were talking before here my 14 year old she should be 15. she doesn’t want to do college anymore she’s in a program where she goes to high school half day college half a day and she doesn’t want to do it and rather than just you know sort of quasi doing it and and not doing well or or lying and saying you know whatever she brings it up to us and says i don’t want to do this anymore and that’s a difficult thing for her we tell when we were talking to her about it there was a lot of a lot of uh i don’t know uh worry about disappointing especially me and uh she had some apprehension about wanting to talk like i could tell when we were talking about it that she really you know she didn’t want to feel like she was letting me down but at the same time she wants to be a 15 year old kid she doesn’t want all this pressure of all this college work and so you know hopefully i at least i hope that our experience with talking about these things and being honest about how we’re feeling and being open with our feelings uh created an environment where she could talk about that or she could bring it up with us so she’s not forced to do things she doesn’t want to do or be overly pressured to be someone she’s not and that’s i i think that’s my goal as a parent too is to be more in that place where my kids feel like they can talk to me about things i i don’t think i did that well when my older ones were younger right it was like a concept i didn’t really catch on to until maybe midway through their life and so while i’m trying to adjust what they do or or get from me uh they’re you know they got that programming from early on of something different

it’s just so tricky to know i guess one of the things that came up when you talked about the elephant in the corner and your family would ignore it right and i was picturing my my you know inner child or whatever went right back there and i’m like how [ _ ] wrong does it feel when the whole feeling of what we’re doing feels all [ _ ] up and you’re acting like everything’s normal they don’t go together right no wonder i’m [ _ ] up i can’t match up [ _ ] up feelings with with you know what’s going on in my brain because my brain says oh why everything’s normal well yeah but everything feels [ _ ] up and those two don’t even mash up like that’s such an uncomfortable place to be all right well and i just was thinking of this too i think there’s a difference now in in our kids generation than even in our time growing up as kids nowadays you know my son is is online video gaming and i am sure he hears language he hears subject material you know he hears you know conversations um he has you know i’d say unfettered access to the internet because he’s got his own laptop his xbox is online so he can go google or search up whatever he wants um so i don’t know that there is a too young for a lot of things these days i mean of course you want to tailor the conversations to you know again would your five-year-old understand like sex conversations probably not that’s probably not a time but by 10 you know that’s probably conversations unfortunately that you have to have where at least in our generation i think that could have waited a couple of years whereas now you know kids can really get tons of information um you know my buddy shared a funny story about you know one of his daughters was like eight and he caught her looking at some stuff online that was totally inappropriate for a kid and you know they were able to talk about it and now it’s kind of become the joke of their family like every now and again he throws you know a funny thing out why she’s on the internet well he’ll say you’re not over there looking at porn are you right like in it but it’s you know it’s them being able to have that open honest communication about it instead of the old you know you’re not old enough don’t do this turn that off if i catch you doing that again i’m going to take it away right that’s what i feel like we would have got i i yeah it came to light that my son my older son when he was six had searched up some kind of porn or something and and we had a conversation about it and that’s you know that was at the beginnings of me just trying to understand how to be a conscious parent you know somebody who’s awake and paying attention what do i teach him if i just snatch this from him and tell him he’s bad and you know run away and he can’t have a tablet anymore is that like right that’s shame that’s all i’m doing is teaching shame not you know the conversation we had and i don’t remember exactly what it was obviously at this point but it was very much like hey you know there’s nothing wrong with what you were looking up and once you get to a certain age that’ll be fine for you to look up just right now you’re a little young to be looking at that kind of imagery like it in itself is nothing wrong with right and probably to think about like for from his perspective that was probably another rule that you put on the six-year-old like and no looking at porn right right i never laid that out in my list of online safety and so i i don’t know you know what exactly else we can talk about with honesty you know we talk about the truth which is a whole different matter of you know perspective but i just i guess i feel like i i don’t know i i’d like before today before this this week’s vacation where i had to start considering that i’m not going to follow maryland’s rules i would have said yeah i’m pretty much honest all the [ _ ] time right like that’s what i do but i wasn’t considering my my tax my taxes when i did when i would say that right i’m thinking well yeah i’m honest with my wife even when i don’t want to be right even when i want to buy something and and tell her it was something else that i purchased like i still i’m honest about it even when my brain says don’t be i’m honest with my kids to the best of my ability even when i know i’m going to hear their [ _ ] about it later right so yeah i’m an honest guy and now i’m looking at it i’m like am i am i an honest guy i guess mostly but well and i think there’s there’s some you know humility that comes with doing like a tenth step on a daily basis where like i always did it from in narcotics anonymous they have that ip number 10 which is the daily inventory i think it’s number 10. um it’s the yellow one it’s a daily inventory that has all the questions in it and you know one of those some of those questions in there about you know what i did wrong today and it’s like if i ever get through days where i’m like oh i did nothing wrong today i was perfect today like then i’m not in a [ _ ] probably in the best of spaces you know because even though i aspire to live by all these spiritual principles in every situation in my life it’s not [ _ ] reality you know what i mean as much as i want to think that it is if it is if i really believe that then i am out of touch i’ve lost my self honesty my self criticism so can you think of any other examples where you have not been honest in any recent venture in your life i’m trying to i would have never thought of the gym without you bringing you know your current gym situation up but i was definitely not honest there um i mean i’m sure there’s more i can’t think about them i know like i’ve lied on applications for uh like little league you know with the volunteer applications when it comes to filling out criminal histories and stuff i’ve lied on that stuff um you know just out of probably embarrassment more than anything else it’s like i don’t know if i want people to know this about me or my history right um there’s been some of that on volunteer forms and applications is there a time where honesty isn’t useful i mean i okay let me rephrase that because there’s obviously a lot of times honesty’s not useful uh when you’re trying to do some certain things or get some certain outcomes right um where it’s not the best yeah is there a time when honesty is not maybe maybe not the right thing to do is that is such a thing without going to uh you know somebody abducts your kids with a gun to their head such a scenario so uh i mean uh and what i thought of i thought of this earlier and i wasn’t even sure i was gonna bring it up because i thought of it exactly on this scenario that you’re talking about so as my mom was getting towards the end of her life and she was dying which this was would have been september i think two years ago so she had a lot of anxiety over death over the fact that she was dying um she had copd it was a long drawn-out process of her dying and she would frequently like get depressed and be like i’m dying i’m dying and we would try to cheer back up and be like no mom you know we’ll get we’re going to talk to the doctors we’ll get your medicine right you know we’ll get this you’re going to get better we all knew that was a lie you know what i mean like it started getting to a point where it’s like okay this is really getting to you know when you when you watch someone deteriorate like that like you know the difference between like and the people from hospital like the doctors were saying like all right now it’s time to call hospice hospice needs to come in now it’s time let’s get her a medical bed and put that out in the living room you know and that kind of [ _ ] um because she didn’t want to go into a hospital she wanted to stay at home so we were able to keep her at home um but she had a lot of anxiety over that she was dying and we tried to just reassure her that it was she was going to be okay and that it was going to get better and it was more of that like the ignoring the elephant in the room but it still felt like the right thing to do you know and i don’t know if i would do that any differently really that’s super interesting to me i can’t imagine how that would feel i don’t know i just i feel just as discombobulated by that description as i do of the of the kid description with everything feeling [ _ ] up and everybody acting like it’s not i feel just as screwed up by that the i would say the difference was so like between the people that were really involved in her care which would have been my dad my sister and me like we weren’t ignoring things like we would go out back you know and sit on the porch and have a conversation about okay now’s the time because my dad couldn’t tell her that he was making her arrangements for her funeral you know like we didn’t it wasn’t like a thing where anyone would have been comfortable going in with her and saying hey what do you want at your funeral you know what i mean like she’d have [ _ ] lost it tacos yeah right like how do you you know whereas i like to think that’s how i would want to be like if i was dying i would hope my family would come in and say hey what kind of you know what would you like to do at your funeral what you know and i would hope that i would be comfortable enough with death that i would be able to talk about but my mom totally wasn’t right and it was totally like just the whole idea of death like she would start panic attacks and and it was bad she had a lot of anxiety over it so it just became a thing that we didn’t really talk about with her but like my sister and my dad and me we would talk about it we knew you know we would try to get ready and talk to our kids about it too like we would talk to our kids and they all knew when they were around her just to try to act kind of normal and upbeat and like things were okay and but it was [ _ ] weird it was definitely weird yeah it feels like it would be weird i don’t know though i i mean i have my opinions about it and then when you hit something so powerful is like asking somebody what they wanted their funeral i’m like ah maybe my opinion is [ _ ] stupid you know that’s a little tough that’s really really tough to ask somebody that i just i i’m not saying i’m going to be comfortable with death like i’m definitely not there today

and i i i hope i am like you describe i hope i’m ready to have that kind of conversation but even further than that i hope that if i’m not i don’t want people to sit there and tell me i’m gonna get better if i’m not like that does i don’t i think i need to face it and i’m not saying that’s what your mother needed whatsoever but for me i need to face that [ _ ] because it’s coming right like not facing it ain’t helping me is what i’m getting at and i think for us that was like say that’s the weighing it out was is it really gonna do her any benefit to say look you’re [ _ ] dying you got maybe a month or two left and you’ll be lucky if you make it three like there just didn’t seem to be much benefit in that you know and i don’t know for her if it would have been or not but just in picturing myself in that scenario i think yes i think there would be benefit to telling me that yeah like that’s going to be i need to face this [ _ ] like that’s what i deal with in my life every day is i need to [ _ ] face this [ _ ] and uh and a lot of days i don’t choose to right but i i think i’m gonna need the help in facing that scary thing i think it will provide benefit to me because then i can do something else with it once i’m faced with that i gotta do something else i think right can i live in denial while people are telling me that i don’t know here’s the okay so when my father died uh up until you know the last two days the doctor and the oncologist kept saying oh yeah we’re you know we’re treating this cancer we’re gonna a new way we’re gonna try something else this this way didn’t have the result we wanted but we’re optimistic and they talked all that good [ _ ] and it just made it worse for me when the moment hit that it wasn’t true right i wanted to [ _ ] choke one of them in the hallway when it turns out that like you know i i remember crying and approaching him and saying what the [ _ ] is going on here like we were just talking about how great things were going yesterday and he’s like well i think we know what’s going on here and it’s like well why the [ _ ] didn’t you tell me that all along all right like that’s what i need i need that reality i guess yeah and see in in fairness to us like we had the doctors and hospice telling us this stuff but even the doctors they wouldn’t they didn’t want to really talk to my mom like you know the hospice people so weird it is weird death is weird we’re [ _ ] terrified of it me i’m i am i mean i’m not gonna say i’m not so harry and i won’t keep us too much longer but so here’s another situation let’s bring it up so one of the reasons i get motivated to kind of do something with my son is because he’s overweight like he’s put on a lot of weight in this last cove thing and my wife gets really upset when i talk about this but it’s to me it’s the [ _ ] truth like i’m a skin skinny fit person you know and i just lucky it’s just genetics it’s not any [ _ ] thing i do special i do exercise but i wasn’t overweight before i started so some of it’s genetics and he typically like we’d have been in baseball season we’d have been doing some other things this summer you know a lot more activities and we’re not and baseball season didn’t happen and so he’s been really inactive and not only that but he sits around and plays video games and eats [ _ ] snacks all day right so he’s put on a lot of weight um i don’t we’ve had talks with him about it because he’s somewhat aware and becomes very uh what’s the word like where he becomes insecure about it and so my wife gets pissed if i even say well yeah you put on some weight you’re a little overweight she doesn’t even want me to say that to him um and i don’t know you know i don’t know if it’s best to say that or if it’s best to just kind of encourage the activity so i mean it’s again another one of my motivators to lie to the gym is you know to help him with his weight because i know it affects him so is it best to go in and tell him like yeah dude you’re overweight but you need to do something about it it all makes bad life choices at 11. right you know in all fairness to your son i uh you know on vacation in my swimming trunks was reminded that i have been overeating slightly uh i’m not you know skinny or anything and i don’t think i’m obese or anything either but i definitely don’t look like i’m in my best shape of my life right this moment um few too many snacks at night maybe eating you know spoonfuls out of the tub icing i got a nice tan down there in georgia and and you know just looked at some of the pictures today when we got back and i was like ooh little middle section uh extra weight there and so i mean i’ve seen that in my son right my son has very much got the build of me when i was 11 which is a [ _ ] stick figure right skeletor uh and yet even with him looking like skeletor he’s got a little pudge belly because there’s no baseball there’s no soccer there’s no any of these sports going on and he’s playing video games all goddamn day long and eating snacks shocking right it happens to all of them even the skinniest ones um and we have pointed it out pointed it out to him as a family and comically done it i thought like a loving kind of teasing not like uh you know and that’s a tough line to call too right where’s the loving teasing and where’s the bullying right um but we we have done it lovingly i think um but yeah it’s a real thing so what it do you help by not being honest like if you see something like that so we talk about in our program and i don’t hear it much anymore i guess because people don’t want to hear anybody’s [ _ ] opinion but they used to say that we’re each other’s eyes and ears right and when we’re caught up in denial or just not seeing that because we’re wrapped up doing something else and distracted it’s the people close to us who can pull us up on that and say hey i know you’re not seeing this but this is what i’m seeing from my perspective maybe you might want to take a look at it and that creates awareness for us to see it right and so if we don’t point it out i mean how many how many people have you thought man they’re on the road to relapse and then they relapsed and you never bothered saying it to them i don’t know if it would have helped if you woulda but it definitely didn’t help when you didn’t right like i don’t know do we help people by telling them about themselves lovingly do we help people by being honest to the best understanding of honesty and well is it still is it are we practicing honesty by omission i guess is that a thing like right you know can am i really being honest if i omit to tell someone something either when they ask or when it comes up or when there’s an opportunity i mean i don’t think we just go out and start telling everybody about themselves all the time but they’ll be like with my son there’s been conversations or been opportunities you know where we’ve had those conversations so what is the the what do we come up with here you know i think we’re we’re phasing to the end of this conversation about honesty what what is like our golden rule of honesty right like what is the number one priority just do it when you can like is it do it or don’t do it but there’s consequences for not doing it or depending on your level of honesty will depend on your level of freedom like is that a we i don’t even think we addressed that a whole lot yeah well the older i get in life the more i realize that you know the only what is there and they’re saying about the only exception to the rule is the rule or something like that yeah there’s a there’s a saying about you know exceptions and rules anyway i can’t think of it at the moment but there isn’t ever going to be for me personally a hard set rule on honesty you know when it’s good and when it’s not i’m going to try to be the most honest person that i can in all areas of my life unless i think it’s going to be harmful to other people and then i have to look at the harm that i’m causing and weigh out whether you know what how does that balance out you know is it is the honesty worth the harm like sometimes it’s gonna be where that is gonna harm that needs to happen and then there’s gonna be times where i don’t think it is and i will err on the side of compassion see and i’m like even if i even if i went and got this covet test right even if i was choose to do that i would be doing the right thing for the dentist i’m still going to break the rule and go to the [ _ ] grocery store because i need groceries and i i’m not going to ask anybody to go to the grocery store for me i’m just not like so even if i do the pickup i guess i could but i’m still not quarantined technically i’m still true encountering somebody maybe less of it but it’s just like i i feel like no matter what i do i’m i’m going to be breaking this maryland guideline you i’m already knew i went to the gas station before i came here too i haven’t [ _ ] it all up well [ _ ] it i might as well just keep going right it’s a journey right i can just feel bad about the whole situation after yeah it’s all or nothing that’s it’s already broken it’s already broken there you go so [ _ ] the dentist i guess i don’t know i guess he’ll get covered if i got it i don’t know uh maybe the honesty is that i have to realize when i’m being dishonest just have to know yeah it’s hard it really is uh there’s so many situations in my life when i i even just to consider this kind of stuff and i’m like [ _ ] i’ve changed so much that now i’m the guy who has to consider if this is going too far like this thing that before i wouldn’t have gave up i wouldn’t even even realized i was doing it i was like no i ain’t been out of state [ __ ] that and now it’s like god i actually care and i wonder what kind of human i am and if this represents the person i believe i am yeah and and to consider like i used to uh measure myself by the quality of the lies that i could tell people to get money or to get out of a situation you know i used to think man i’m really good at this right i used to be such a good liar and i took i felt like that was some badge of honor

and nowadays i’m like [ __ ] i lied on my taxes i feel guilty

hopefully the irs is not listening to our podcast um so i guess that’s about all we have for honesty please feel free to reach out with uh your beliefs or interpretations of honesty or or any thoughts you have about honesty or to tell me i’m a [ __ ] jerk for not telling the dentist which i’m not sure what i’m gonna do right now uh and and we’ll see you next week and we’ll have another topic to talk about

then yeah my phone’s done that a couple of times recently and i’m like what the [ _ ] is on on my phone that it’s just listening to me all the time that really kind of creeps me out they just said there’s a government spyware in in a lot of phones i’m like what the [ _ ] no you can’t have my consent right what the [ _ ] [ _ ] out of here is that one of those like what do they call that when you check off your rights when you sign those uh user agreements like they just keep asking me help me one of these times i’ll say yes or hit yes or whatever so they could take my [ _ ] moving i’ll talk about next week it is next week what the [ _ ] today the 9th 16th

i want to do a uh another interview of a program yeah but what program we can find one you know any fancy aaa people around here that are fun to talk to i was thinking of that too i don’t know we could get them on google me if they’re interesting enough we get some british people

i don’t know how that would go british yeah it might be hard to understand what the [ __ ] did people say all right