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.
One promise, many freedoms. The 12 promises. Recovery programs have different ideas of what else is offered beyond freedom from active addiction, or using. But what are those freedoms? Are we really free when we live a life of recovery? What does freedom even mean? We explore what freedom is and if we are truly free in our life of recovery. 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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8/23/20 One promise, many freedoms. The 12 promises. Recovery programs have different ideas of what else is offered beyond freedom from active addiction, or using. But what are those freedoms? Are we really free when we live a life of recovery? What does freedom even mean? We explore what freedom is and if we are truly free in our life of recovery.
Transcript:
all right so we’re testing on the new the new computer i don’t even know if it like stops after a certain amount of time i don’t know if it’s got a limit on a recording i have no [ __ ] clue we’ll find out we will we’ll find out we’ll be right in the middle of talking and look over and be like how the [ __ ] long ago did that stop you son of a gun so what are we going to talk about freedom yeah and i don’t know why i thought about that while we were sitting there today and uh i can’t i can’t remember exactly what i was thinking but it was along the lines of like i have the freedom today to decide like you know do i want to stay at my job or not if i want to leave i can leave you know i’ve done that i know that that’s a thing that i can do now and i think that’s a that came from recovery like that came from learning like i can just make decisions in my life i’m not like i don’t have to do what everybody thinks i’m supposed to do or i don’t have to follow what everybody else thinks i can be my own person make my own decisions
hmm
freedom of decisions i feel like i had freedom of decisions when i was using but they just were all shitty ones like i left jobs that everybody thought i should stay at it’s just broken money i don’t know it’s funny i was looking at so there’s the fancy video editor and then i just ended up not even [ __ ] with that i was trying to learn some but then i just trimmed down our video to put a little blurb on instagram and i was like oh i’ll find an interesting blurb you know somewhere in here something a little comical something or other finding a minute that didn’t have the word [ __ ] it was kind of tough i was like oh oh man we really yeah we overused that maybe all right maybe i’ll have to calm that down maybe not i don’t know i was just like god all our funniest [ __ ] has the airport can’t put this on instagram
you know i always hear that one promise many freedoms but i’m like i feel like a lot of the freedoms are the same thing freedom of choice are they all freedom of choice
hmm
i mean isn’t that just a longer way of saying freedom freedom of choice isn’t that almost what freedom means
but yeah and that’s then i thought about one promise many freedoms like i’ve heard that like queer so what is that right so you start with the the drugs you free from them that’s the promise and then the many freedoms is what like the the promises in a is it that is it uh whatever they promised financial stability and i don’t know where do they promise all that stuff yeah man i don’t i love that promises actually yeah i don’t know that i’m familiar with them a a promises
here we go if we are painst oh jesus christ just [ __ ] open it singapore singapore a a why is that the top [ __ ] thing you know that drunks over there
how tiny is this gonna be if we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through we are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it we will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace no matter how far down the scale we have gone we will see how our experience can benefit others that feeling of usefulness and self-pity will disappear useless himself but he’s not usefulness i hope that doesn’t matter we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows self-seeking will slip away our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us we will suddenly realize that god is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves are these extravagant promises we think not
with a lot of [ __ ] but that’s not are they all freedoms comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace
freedom
there’s that part in the 11th step god’s will for us is our own true will for ourselves or something
maybe we did have freedom when we were using power or right to act speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint
i would say the argument to that would be that even though i could do all those things i was controlled by the drugs right well and that’s the very next thing is absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government
the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved
hmm i wonder if one promise many freedoms comes up with anything what’s it just for today
if you just work the steps and don’t use drugs you’ll get married live in the suburbs have 2.6 children and start wearing polyester ooh this doesn’t say this says these however are truly gifts they are not promised to us just because we could become any members all we are promised is freedom from act of addiction our only promise is freedom from active addiction so we don’t have all the same promises as a a no
but you may be able to have more freedoms i guess freedom
trying to remember their pamphlet that talks about i think it’s another look where it talks about freedom from and freedom too that’s in the another little pamphlet
another look
that’s the one i’m thinking of
addiction is not freedom addiction is not personal growth addiction is not good well addiction is not a way of life
then you got the higher the broader the base the higher the point of freedom is that more freedoms or just a higher point of freedom from active addiction
that must not be the one i’m thinking of
it’s probably somewhere and more will be revealed yeah sounds like some [ __ ] that would be in
there
here we go this is what a guy that i know believes is the equivalent of aa’s promises in our fellowship it says we see that regardless of the presence or absence of material success in our lives we can be content we can be happy and fulfilled with or without money with or without a partner with or without the approval of others we’ve begun to see that god’s will for us is the ability to live with dignity to love ourselves and others to laugh and to find great joy and beauty in our surroundings our most heartfelt longings and dreams for our lives are coming true these priceless gifts are no longer beyond our reach they are in fact the very essence of god’s will for us he says that’s what he thinks we kind of rendered it to be basically just the idea that we don’t need these other things to be happy just the program and working it and being fulfilled in our lives will do it for us similar i guess yeah well it’s like almost like in the buddhist thing like once you find inner contentment you’re outside you know [ __ ] doesn’t matter so much yeah you know if you’re happy and at peace with the buddha and you’re out stuck in a rainstorm it’s a beautiful thing you know like some people feel the rain some people just get wet yeah something like that
i don’t know where you want to go with it
because there ain’t much last week stuff to delve into just no nobody had anything mostly just you know condolences really
hmm found a newer personality to join us for our conversation about how to avoid sketchy situations yeah a newer personality yeah well she’s she’s uh kind of loud and and has a large personality which i figure that’ll be hopefully useful um
she’s she’ll have a year in september she was at bob and trisha’s house for a while and then she’s now down in parkville somewhere so i figured that’d be interesting it’ll be our our fresh voice for somebody to talk about how to avoid sticky situations
so we can do that whenever next sunday or something yeah that’s your work do you have any luck getting in touch with that one lady she’s out of town so i know um and i should get her jen might have her number i should just try to call her um she does a lot of traveling for work
so i have to try to [ __ ] coordinate sometime when she’s gonna be around yeah that or we can do the virtual thing like that’s what we’re gonna have to do with the the girl in parkville oh yeah i think she said she was up here on tuesday nights but i’m like yeah we’re pretty strict about sunday mornings yeah sunday mornings are pretty good that usually works pretty good too that’s even like tonight i’m like oh man i [ __ ] hate going out that’s right
i know we got home from we went tubing down in moncton or whatever which is like a lazy river it’s not any thorough thing we just chilled there and then by the time we got home and ate and did the you know cake and presents for my son it was kind of like all right time for you to run yeah see y’all later know jen started that [ __ ] too well i get home and you’re like i’m hungry and i’m tired and i eat and i lay down for a couple minutes and you know then i get up to leave she’s like you always want to be affectionate when you’re leaving okay i won’t be affectionate at all bye and i left it like [ __ ] you know they’re not the answer all right where’s that [ __ ] [ __ ] fear and uncertainty attitude unity compassion
vigilance change anonymity growing understanding and effectiveness maybe that’s a thing is recovery really freedom
are we really free i mean we seem to have some
boundaries guidelines you know rules or whatever does that make us not free
a lot of people say we’re brainwashed yeah do we do the old redneck freedom isn’t free saying freedom ain’t free [ __ ] it let’s start we’ll just get into this yeah babble that’s what we do
so
what mood is
welcome back it’s recovery sort of i’m jason i’m a guy in long term recovery and i’m billy i’m also a person in long term recovery and uh not a whole lot of wrap up with with last week uh people sent their condolences to my daughters and i and i i greatly appreciate that you know we we had a little service thursday um we didn’t put it on it was put on by a family member and a close individual and and honestly it just kind of reinforced the whole addiction is a sloppy messy [ __ ] cringy area to me you know i mean we we talk about and we talked about last week how it just delves through families and and you know generations and all that and it’s like you know her sisters are already gone and now she’s passed and then you got some guy who was basically the the the sugar daddy or the john or the date for the month of august up there talking about how he hoped he could you know this is the guy who who i guess thinks he’s in love with her and you know talks about i’d had no shot with her if she was really clean and all that like just and you’re like uh and then he’s like describing how he’s picking her up and dropping her off and she’s living in tent city meaning she’s down there homeless somewhere my daughters like don’t know all the ins and outs of this right and then he’s like oh yeah we spent you know half the month of august together i’d pick her up we’d go out to eat she had tacos and all this [ __ ] and i’m like we’ve been trying to get a hold of her to go see her right right how like i don’t i don’t know i just felt bad for them i hope they got some kind of peace out of it i guess but the whole thing to me was just like cringe after [ __ ] cringe and and you know every uh deacon says that every person that died is going to heaven and that’s just kind of sits wrong with me too so i was like over the whole [ __ ] thing before i got there i was glad it was only 26 minutes long and i could get the [ __ ] out of there and and and go back to doing something better that i can try to do for them i guess um but it’s just sad man it just makes me sad you know that that’s where we put ourselves in addiction you know we put ourselves in those situations that that’s what we get at the end right that’s uh one of the the saddest parts i guess was in the little god [ __ ] pamphlet menu what what do you call the thing the schedule of it they give you or whatever oh yeah when you go to a play i know what you’re talking about yeah the agenda for the the situation it had a excerpt i hate that word excerpt from a text she had sent apparently to somebody um and in the text she was just like man i just want to get back to living again and get back to having a job and and you know experience in life and that hurt me a little bit just remembering like that was every [ __ ] day when i was getting high it was always ah man i just want to get back to being [ __ ] normal right i just want to get back to being able to appreciate a birthday party for my parents or something or just the normal [ __ ] like going out to eat or and i just couldn’t ever get there and so that kind of hurt knowing that she really like i guess i had this idea in my head that when she died it was like oh she was probably just [ __ ] done with life right she was probably happy to go and not really right not really she she probably wanted to get back and and be in some kind of recovery and and have some kind of freedom which segues nicely into what we’re talking about tonight freedom right um the the n.a saying that i’ve always heard is one promise many freedoms right and the promise being the promise of freedom from active addiction we can get clean basically we can stop using but then these many freedoms are kind of alluded to but never really described i know the aaa version has the 12 promises which you know seem to promise a whole lot of different uh ideals and and i thoroughly like them i’m not trying to discredit them whatsoever right i love the idea of the promises i think they’re beautifully written and and i love at the end when they say are these extravagant promises and everybody’s like we think not right that’s great um but we’re gonna explore the idea of freedom today and and you know maybe even define what some of these more freedoms are or question if we are even [ __ ] free i don’t know so what do you what are you thinking about with freedom billy this was your topic um yeah so for me i know since i’ve been clean i’ve had a lot of opportunities which i’ll call freedoms that you know i can remember using and and having all these you know plans and dreams and things i wanted to do in one days you know i’m gonna do this and one day i’m gonna do that and that [ __ ] one day just never seemed to happen and uh you know not to go back to your daughter’s mother to go back that way but you know i remember you know using and saying those same things well you know a week from now or tomorrow or just you know i’m gonna just you know party one more time or just you know pretty soon i’m gonna be done with this and i’m gonna get my life back together and uh for me it just worked out i was lucky that i didn’t overdose or die or whatever before you know i had made that decision to get clean um but yeah one of the most recent things like we’re getting ready to take a vacation and um we’re going down to the beach and we have a camper that we’ve purchased you know a while back um and to tell a little bit of my history story whatever you want to call it a few years back you know my wife and i had made a decision she had been after me for years to try to just quit my job and go travel around the country and do what they call work camping where you go work at campgrounds and you know you work somewhere for a season or you know whatever and then when you’re done with that season you move on you move somewhere else and you know you live in a camper and uh it seemed kind of crazy for the first you know 15 years of my recovery um i was like no way you know all i’ve ever wanted was to like have a steady job and to buy a house and to settle down and have the two cars and the two kids or whatever you know and and i wanted all that stability and you know so i worked really hard in recovery and i got clean and got a job and focused on a career and did all those things and you know probably roughly 15 years in was like okay well this is this really what i want to do with the next 30 years of my life you know is this is this it like is it i i don’t feel complete i don’t feel like i’ve arrived yet you know and uh so we you know i i finally joined her in this decision to sell our house and get a camper and travel around the country and we’ve had campers we love camping we’ve you know wanted to do that forever um but that really felt like like i had that freedom to do that you know for one i had some financial stability in my life that i could take that risk without a fear of starving or not being able to feed my children even if it all went bad you know i still felt like no matter what happens one i have the ability to work you know i have the ability to get a job and i’ll do almost anything if it comes to feeding my kids number two at that point i had some credit credit cards whatever you know i could go into debt if i needed to and uh three i had like the love and support of my family back behind me my parents my brother and sister to where if i was really in trouble they would help me out you know if i really needed it um and it was a tremendous freedom to be able to up uproot my whole life to change everything and go try something else with no uh i don’t know what you want to call it security and how it was going to go or how it was going to work out or what i was going to be doing the next year or the next year would that be like no illusion of security because we don’t really have security even when we’re in a [ __ ] house oh yeah i think we figured that out with the pandemic that we really only have an illusion of security so uh yeah but that that just that experience you know really made me appreciate like just being clean and the freedom of choice that i have in my life today the opportunities that are available to me now that i’m clean um you know we hear people say sometimes you know i could be anything that i want and there’s a few limitations on that you know i’m [ __ ] probably never going to be the president um there’s certain things that i’m not going to be able to do but there’s an awful lot of things that i can do and i’m not limited um you know i i have a lot of opportunities thanks to this uh thing called recovery do you think a lot of freedoms are opportune so one of the things i’m like really i know you looked up the definition a few minutes ago like what are the freedoms right because i’m questioning i was just thinking oh we had the freedom to go on vacation you’re going this next week i went a couple weeks ago but is that a freedom or an opportunity like i’m not really sure which one that is i guess it’s the freedom to choose to do that with the money i have but but and then they that you know brings up the question uh does can you gain freedoms from having more money like the amount of money you have does that increase your level of freedom because that’s not my understanding of what we’re really going for around here that’s not the freedom we’re looking for is more money even though we can get that we’re looking for like the freedom from being attached to money really i think oh yeah well that’s a tricky one because i will argue with my wife about that sometimes but we haven’t argued in a while i realized we need to disagree all right so there is a part of me that that there is money equals freedom i i tend to think that um well let’s go back so you have a definition so yeah so we looked up freedom so uh a noun that says the power or right to act speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint um so it was one definition and then it had two other you know similar definitions uh which this one or actually the next one maybe i thought felt more recovery related uh absence of subjugation to foreign domination or despotic government which i mean that’s making a stretch there but it’s like i’m not i’m not enslaved to that thing that addiction um and then the third one was the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved so i think those second to maybe even the third one relates more to my understanding of addiction like or the way that i felt in addiction i felt trapped you know i felt enslaved to drugs they made the ultimate decision i always just think of that creed song that my own prison i’m like i [ __ ] created my own prison like i couldn’t do anything i couldn’t go on vacation when i was getting and that was going to be what i was going to ask you so when you were using you know yeah you have money now and and you know you have the freedom to go on vacation and it’s a freedom because i know for me when i was using i wouldn’t have made that choice you know what i mean i would have wanted to go somewhere but then when it came that well do i have you know 800 to a thousand dollars to spend to go on some trip somewhere or do i just want to get high with that money i remember still being young enough to like mutual and parents vacations and going down like ocean city on monday and then by wednesday [ __ ] doing 105 on the way home because i was out [ __ ] and i’m like oh my god i gotta get home like i can’t be down here on vacation [ __ ] around i’m gonna get ill right that’s not gonna work right so so yeah okay i have the freedom to choose to go on vacation because the drugs aren’t imprisoning me but for people who don’t make it out of uh you know the lower socioeconomic status life maybe they don’t still have that freedom so maybe it’s not just i have what the drugs dictate and then i get clean and then i have what money dictates or the system or poverty and yeah there’s ways to work you know through that for some i i don’t know that everybody has that same opportunity to ever actually get out of that or to be able to afford a house like the the you know i don’t want to get into too much economic disparity or the the difference between the haves and the have-nots but we do know that there’s something to that that some people really just struggle to break out of any kind of middle class life i definitely grew up with friends who never even got into drugs but still never really had the financial means to go on vacation they went years and years and years and they just never went on vacation and like i’ve been blessed that i that’s not my experience we’ve you know been able to take one pretty much every year but i i mean i worked with guys in the union when i was in the union they’re making 36 dollars an hour doing pipe fitting and they never got to go on vacation because their wife didn’t work and they were raising their three kids with their wife and paying the mortgage and couldn’t afford it like well some of that so you can take vacations that don’t cost a lot of money i mean you can go to a campground for like 30 bucks a night and you know what i mean you can you can take some pretty inexpensive trips which is nice if you have a camper and not as nice if you have a tent i will say i’m not a tent camper for sure well when i was younger i didn’t mind camping with a tent we had done that you know you can get blow up mattress for pretty cheap but it’s still rough yeah still right yeah um and i’m just you know that’s just one right version i’m sure there’s other inexpensive vacations you can take um well and he had he had freedom of choice you know he he also bought guns and his wife liked to buy things and so there was reasons they didn’t go on vacation it wasn’t all just oh hey we pay our bills and we’re you know right do nothing else and we can’t afford vacation they had other choices but i guess can you gain freedom with amounts of money is that a thing like are people able to gain more freedom because they’ve got more money um i mean jeff bezos is is more free than you i ha that’s interesting yeah i would say yes i would say yes um and this is like say this is an argument that my wife and i get into all the time i think there’s a balancing act of like we all have this you know i think they call it a hierarchy of needs or whatever like i need to have i don’t need but if i don’t have you know food clothing shelter and those basic things um i will start to resort to like some pretty animalistic type behaviors to get what i need right so that’s for for me personally like that’s one of the reasons i think poverty is such a terrible thing in our country because if you can’t you know eat then you are going to go out and probably rob some from someone who has so that you can eat it’s kind of explanatory of some of the uglier aspects of protesting right now like if you don’t feel safe and protected by your local police agency like you’re going to act in animalistic behaviors right um so i think there’s a base level of money that we need or or you just become dependent on the government which to me isn’t really freedom because then you’re dependent on a system that is out of your control right um so you’re not really free being on the government take being on the government’s dime you know you’re just enslaved to that system versus you know drugs or some other system um now how much i want to work or how hard i want to work once my basic level of needs is met i guess depends on my motivations and how much uh i don’t know freedom i want right you know how expensive are my freedom choices so yeah i mean well you know we talk about yeah elon musk jeff jeff bezos uh bill gates whoever i would say in general i guess they have to be a little more free because they are free to make some decisions i can’t right i can’t choose to buy a yacht i can’t choose to go out on that yacht for a three-month vacation like those aren’t options in my life and i guess do options create freedom is that is that what we’re saying do we believe that the more options you have the more free you are
that’s tricky yeah that is tricky i don’t know i don’t know either i think the aaa version of the promises mentions uh fear of not having to have a fear of economic insecurity and uh i guess that’s a thing i don’t i love the aaa promises i’m not sure how they can promise all those things i’m really not because i i you know my always i go to this like worst case argument of well what if you’re in an accident and you can’t work anymore and you’re you know forced to live on a minimal uh whatever they’re willing to give you for you know disability and then like i don’t know like i i would still fear economic insecurity or you needed certain medicines to treat you or like i don’t know are you really is that a freedom can you really promise that like i don’t know i don’t yeah and we make some i i would say we in n a make some i don’t know if they’re similar types of promises but we definitely make some pretty uh what i would call inflammatory statements and some of the things that in our literature that it says um you had read that saying i think it was in the 11th step a little earlier and i think in an ideal world like we can get those things if if you’re the idea ideal aaa person and you work all these steps and and internalize them in your life and get in touch with a higher power and you know become really spiritual like you probably can get all those things but how likely is that for most members well and when we were reading them i i you know i of course look for loopholes i’m like how can i prove this [ __ ] wrong i don’t know why i want everything to be wrong um but maybe they don’t have to do with anything external at all and so let’s go through the the promises for those who aren’t familiar with what they are uh if we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through so initially the promise is we’re going to be amazed right i guess before we’re even halfway through how do you know when you’re halfway through i have no idea but you’re going to be amazed by that so i guess that’s how you know when you’re amazed you’re not you’re not quite halfway through yet um number two we’re going to know a new freedom and a new happiness
i guess if you’re working the steps i could buy into that like if just getting sober or clean i don’t think you’re going to be happy instantly but you do you will know a new freedom like you won’t be tied to that alcohol or drug um here’s we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it is that a freedom or it’s just a promise yeah these are promises not necessarily freedoms hmm we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door i agree with that but i think that’s kind of the place we have to come to personally we will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace no matter how far down the scale we have gone we will see how our experience can benefit others i don’t understand that one because i think that’s the same thing as we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it i think that’s like an extension for me yeah i would agree that feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear man i need to get an a yes i still feel some self-pity from time to time maybe my program doesn’t promise that and i need to maybe i need to read now shout be clean or something we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows at times self seeking will slip away has self seeking slipped away for you billy do you self seek yeah like i self see i still seek a lot uh our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change i’ll agree with that it’s kind of [ __ ] hard not to honestly yeah fear of people and end of economic insecurity will leave us ah is this like fear of certain people like when you’re scared of bullies or is this just fear of people in general like introverts or maybe yeah people
uh i don’t know yeah i don’t know why and why they put that in with insecure economic and security people and economic insecurity they go hand in hand we will we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us i love this one i just don’t know i guess maybe certain situations because i still come to situations where i’m like yeah i’m still baffled by things all the time i know stupid baffling we will suddenly realize that god is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves there’s where you disagree yeah i mean whatever and just uh okay so that’s the aaa promises which aren’t exactly all freedoms but i would imagine that i almost feel like everything we gain is some kind of freedom from something it’s kind of hard not to be like when you when you when you lose the fear of economic insecurity you gain the freedom of peace of mind i i mean it just seems like any time you’re promised something you almost if you gain you get a freedom from it yeah and i think there’s a general uh the idea for me anyway the general idea is the the more uh
the more spiritual work that i do and the more spiritually centered and in tune with myself that i become the freer i am because i’m not like enslaved to trying to be what you think i should be or what someone else should think i should be or i’m not subjecting myself to other people’s judgments and criticisms um i’m just able to like be myself and be happy and okay with that without like the fears of judgment failure whatever and there’s a freedom that comes with that you know that that just allows me to be comfortable in my own skin and to pursue my own interests desires needs i feel like i have that a lot of the time not all the time by far i still have my moments of doubting myself and comparing to what others might think about what i how i handle a situation or not uh probably because i still judge people and how they handle their situation so i’m like oh they must all be judging me about how i handle mine but i’m still waiting for the freedom of not being tied to what i think i’m supposed to be at times like that ego that story i tell myself about this is who you are and who you have to be and blah blah blah blah like sometimes i’m still married to that and have trouble finding freedom from that like why can’t i just do something [ __ ] different if i want to why do i got to be this thing that i think i’m supposed to be and not always in a terrible way sometimes like maybe i don’t want to do what the [ __ ] i’m supposed to do on a monday sometimes that’s okay right like not if i do it every monday that’s a [ __ ] problem if it’s every other monday that’s a problem but if it’s one monday a year there’s nothing wrong with that to take a day to myself but i’m still married to this but i’m the guy who shows up and blah blah blah like well maybe one time i’m not gonna be right maybe one time i’m gonna be the guy that doesn’t and i don’t have to be i guess that’s a freedom i’m still i still find a struggle with like that whole ego concept of the story who i say i am and then trying to live up to it yeah well and that’s a big problem i have too like i want to be you know the person that has all the answers and fixes things all the time you know whether it’s for my kids or at my job or whatever and uh i have a hard time admitting like oh i can’t do this i don’t know how to get this accomplished you know i need help like those things that’s like ugh that’s so hard to say those things you know i can’t even figure out what the [ __ ] i want half the time i get this new computer and i’m like oh cool i can finally like do some video editing not that i’m going to do a lot but i’m going to do this video editing and i’m going to put little pieces of this on instagram for to play for a minute at a time for a little advertising for the podcast and then i i get the computer and i download this video software that people said i should get and i look at it for like 10 minutes and and i’m just like i’m not ever gonna [ __ ] learn this this is way too complicated for anything i ever need like [ __ ] this [ __ ] right and then 10 minutes later i’m like watching a youtube video trying to learn it again and i’m like why can’t i decide what the [ __ ] i’m gonna do right i’m either gonna do it or i’m not i don’t know um well let’s let’s go ahead and take our break we’re close enough and then we’ll come back and read the uh the other statement you were talking about so we’ll be right back here’s voices don’t forget to get your [ __ ] rubber ducky uh because that’s gonna is that september okay yeah early september yeah um so you’re running out of time get your five dollar rubber ducky and watch the race and something bit me while i was down here
like my arm is itching like a [ __ ] i got a big bug bite right there i think i got one on my leg or something but i can’t ever tell some stupid mosquito i get [ __ ] i get bug bites no matter where i go
trying to be more at peace with it that hypnotism lady that thing she recorded for me says that any sensation i feel and any sound i hear can be used to relax more and i’m like really so i’m trying to like i’m like well how the [ __ ] does that when i’m listening to this and i’m trying to like kind of meditate on it i’m like so what happens when my face itches that’s supposed to relax me and i’m like it kind of has because i’m like oh if i just go deeper inside myself if i use the itch to remember that i’m feeling external [ __ ] and i go back further into the awareness or the mind or whatever i guess maybe i don’t know weird [ __ ] i think people are all crazy and i’m just buying into it yeah right you’re just making [ __ ] up i’m gonna relax more because my phone rang all right
i know i’m getting so [ __ ] resentful and angry at work i’m like i don’t even want anybody to talk to me really yeah what are you gonna do about that well i mean my boss my boss is on vacation when he gets back we’re gonna i’ll sit down tell him we’ll get somebody else in there to do part of what i’m doing i mean we’ve already had that conversation too he’s already you know told me like oh you don’t have to keep you know this job i’m doing since we fired that one person it’s not a job i want to keep doing that’s what that’s and i almost want to get into that and then it’s like a little weird because he listens to the podcast i’m like careful about what i say so yeah comment on instagram he listens the [ __ ] one as soon as it comes out he always listens him and the other dude always comment josh back and forth they were like i’m calling the dentist oh my god
um so
i’m just and that’s where my struggle comes in it’s like no i want to be the [ __ ] guy who saves the day and does everything because nobody can come in and do it the way that i do it now that’s right and it’s you know good and everybody’s happy and things are moving along great but i don’t want to do it i hate it i [ __ ] hate it which is part of my attitude that i will admit i have some attitude problem at home it’s like i [ __ ] hate my job every day i come home and i [ __ ] then she starts asking for [ __ ] like i have no more [ __ ] to give i’m giving all my [ __ ] today giving all your [ __ ] at work yeah unlocked at home don’t ask me for anything else people have asked me for [ __ ] all day i don’t have anything else we’ll figure out how to deal with that because i gotta feel that one’s coming down the line for me when i’m doing therapy full time i got a feeling that i’m going to be like struggling to have empathy and compassion at home because i give it to everybody all day and i want the [ __ ] solution for that well i don’t have the solution my solution is to stop doing this job you know we’ll get someone else to do and it’s just i don’t know we’ll see it because i want to talk myself into i can do this i can do this and the truth is i don’t want to do it and i don’t have i [ __ ] why should i force myself to do something i don’t want to do right that’s not a freedom you know just because i think i can do it better than anybody else like okay well that’s fine so what are you gonna do do every job in the world yeah right so we’ll just let someone else do this part i will be like i can help them i can support them because there’s certain things that i’ll be able to do well that will help whoever comes in but then someone else can sit at that desk and deal with the customers and deal with the monotony of [ __ ] just i think i can’t sit at a desk anymore all day i gotta do stuff after working at campground like i like doing stuff i don’t care what it is i’ll [ __ ] rake leaves i’ll paint fences i don’t give a [ __ ] just sitting at a desk is not it it’s just not it that’s funny yeah you think meditation would actually like make that easier i thought i was going to struggle with the same thing being a therapist but i found i love sitting at a [ __ ] chair talking to people i guess i probably yeah i wouldn’t probably mind talking to people it’s just and i think i can do it and i can do it well i just don’t like it you know it’s like doing something that i don’t like you know the best part about being a therapist everybody wants to hear what you have to say like oh my god they’re coming to me for my suggestions that’s really really good
it’s not like talking to my kids they don’t want to hear [ __ ] i started looking for a therapist i guess everybody’s still doing and i don’t know how the [ __ ] do you pick one how are you doing yeah i don’t know if they take insurance on my insurance what is your injury aetna probably i would imagine so i know they take it now is it like delaware or maryland i guess it’s delaware probably they’ll take it i mean i don’t know how much it’ll come here they got there anybody decent you i’ll come to you
didn’t come to me uh my take on everybody there is pretty good i mean i i wouldn’t go in with any recommendation really they the lady who owns the place kind of filters through what you say your problems are and puts you with somebody that she thinks is the right fit for you but yeah i i would say i was impressed that’s a good group of people there i think my biggest problem my wife tells me i’m broken i’m not even sure what that means but find out there yeah they can tell me i can see if she’s right or i’m right somebody needs to be right in this argument well here’s the problem i run into is that i plan on working there one day and i can’t go there yeah and i’ve looked like extensively in this area and there ain’t much else offered honestly yeah nothing else is very impressive i’m like oh this is like the only place in town that’s worth going to
but yeah that’d be my recommendation i would say go there if you’re thinking about it why not are they doing in person or everything right it’s really not though i thought it was going to be super strange too and i love it it’s so [ __ ] convenient oh my god you don’t have to drive there you don’t have to do none of that you just don’t have any privacy places in my life you sit out in my car in the driveway with my [ __ ] phone i would recommend the computer just like for the zoom meetings computer’s way better i don’t know i wouldn’t want to do it in my house with my wife and kids around is there an office at your job i mean i don’t have like a private office [ __ ] do it here i mean i if i really wanted to i could find a place i mean okay i’ll [ __ ] sit in my car i’ll just take the computer out into my car i just tell everybody to stay the [ __ ] out of my room i’m like i’ll lock the goddamn door if i have to my kids walk in though
all right you ready yep
okay back into it talking about freedom uh so let me read this thing this is in uh n a literature it’s a book called it works hound y which is an odd title for a book and everybody calls it a different thing how am i how it works and why why it works and how i’ve heard all kinds of [ __ ] over the years but it works how am i uh and so this is a guy in my life said he thought this was kind of our version of the promises since we didn’t adopt those um and i don’t know if it’s that or not but it’s it’s kind of pretty uh and you wanted to pick it apart so i’m down with that it says uh we see that regardless of the presence or absence of material success in our lives we can be content we can be happy and fulfilled with or without money with or without a partner with or without the approval of others we’ve begun to see that god’s will for us is the ability to live with dignity to love ourselves and others to laugh and to find great joy and beauty in our surroundings our most heartfelt longings and dreams for our lives are coming true these priceless gifts are no longer beyond our reach they are in fact the very essence of god’s will for us and so what what part of that were you thinking was a little too much for us to say is possible i don’t think that i mean it i i would say that similar about the aaa promises neither of those you know two things is impossible it’s just what’s the likelihood that most average aa or n a people are going to have that type of experience i feel like irons is more realistic honestly yeah like there’s promises like specific things this is kind of like a broader like hey you don’t need to have money or a girlfriend or boyfriend or an approval of others you can be happy right like you can find some joy in life and the world around you you can walk out back and see a squirrel running or a bird chirping and those things can be pleasant like i i hear i’ve heard a billion times in somebody’s share you know the birds used to [ __ ] piss me off in the morning because it meant that i had been up all night and you know doing all the wrong things and and never even bothered to sleep and you know trying to pick [ __ ] pieces of crack off the carpet and [ __ ] like the birds were just a signal of unhappiness and then once they got clean they started hearing them in the morning and they were kind of pretty and beautiful and yeah i know it sounds a little [ __ ] stupid sometimes but whatever like i feel like that sounds realistic like the fact that we don’t need certain things to find happiness we can just like joy is an inside job and we can get that whether we have these things we thought we needed at one point or not like i always thought i needed money and a hot girlfriend and all these things to be happy and i’ve found happiness without some of those at different times yeah and so and that’s kind of what i was thinking when you were reading that and like say it and and i guess i could see applying this to some of the promises as well the aaa promises it’s like that is the ideal state you know what i mean like if everything’s going really well and i’ve you know my life’s gone well and i’m recovering up and i’m hitting meetings and doing all that good stuff then yes all that stuff sounds completely plausible um but we don’t at least my experience is no one stays in that ideal state forever like and i tend to think that i tend to think oh you say these promises or you read that and that’s just the way that i’m supposed to walk around all the time 24 hours a day seven days a week like that’s immediately what the way i want to interpret that and i’m like well wait a minute i know that that’s not realistic i can say that i have definitely had those times those moments in my life where all that stuff was true um i could probably say i’ve had times in my life where i would say all those a promises were true in my life and that you know i’ve experienced all of those things doesn’t mean that’s how i walk around all day every day you know right that there are still times where i slip back whether it’s just a simple not enough sleep or you know a bad day or someone hurt my feelings or whatever um or just feeling a little insecure at times no i would say you’re right i i do tend to you know and people tend to say this is an added quality i don’t [ __ ] know i’m an extremist right like am i living this 365 days a year because if not then i ain’t really [ __ ] i can’t really say i’m doing it right you know i i talked to a friend of mine and i’m like man when we get this professional microphones that i’m going to eventually order and they’re going to not be back ordered and come through then we’ll have a real podcast so like you already have a real [ __ ] podcast dude you’re out there you’re you know you record you do it and i’m like ah but we were not real right like i always had this concept of it’s got to be this some thing to be real or something and so yeah i read that and i’m like yeah just like you i’ve had those experiences i had one tonight it was beautiful i was sitting there my my son turned six today and we went and we water tube today and that was you know the older kids jumping off their tubes and getting on our [ __ ] nerves whatever but then we were having you know we had a little cake that he wanted he wanted a cake shaped like a six that was cake on top and brownie on the bottom and and you know icing and chocolate icing and sprinkles and that’s what the [ __ ] we made for him right like grandma helped and we got it all together and and then we gave him our little gifts which wasn’t nothing fancy like his main gift didn’t even come it’s not even there we didn’t even mention to him that hey it’s on the way it’ll just be a shock when it comes in the mail right but he got these little like i don’t want to call him dinky gifts but he just got smaller gifts and didn’t even think nothing of it and he’s just he’s such i don’t know what the [ __ ] happened to him right i don’t know if somebody else like stole him and raised him for six years he’s a sweetheart he really is he’s a beautiful little soul and he’s like thankful and happy and smiley and giggly and bounces around and he’s just such a bundle of joy honestly he really is and and i was just sitting there and i was like tearing up just [ __ ] happy to be sitting there with my family celebrating his birthday with him all happy right and everybody was pretty happy and we’re just shooting these little slingshot chickens at each other and it’s like i didn’t we didn’t need anything in that moment right and so i do have those moments but am i there 365 [ __ ] no [ __ ] no right i i’m i’m imprisoned by myself most of the time but i think that’s that’s a freedom i want to one day offer myself the freedom to be [ __ ] human no matter how spiritual i get no matter how close to this ideal self the spiritual place that i want to be that i get i’m always going to be human and still struggling with this human condition where i have an ego where i have once where i have greed where i have you know i get bitter about the [ __ ] congress not passing some kind of new stimulus check force i don’t need that i really don’t like it’d be nice but i don’t need it but i’m greedy all right right i’m lusty i’m these things that are just human traits and i can’t i’m jealous i’m i mean i can’t hold myself to this perfect standard and be happy though and and when do i allow myself to have the freedom to be human yeah and i think through like consistent practice of principles consistent practice of humility um i am i would say more forgiving of myself when i slip into those bad spots and i’m quicker to recognize them when i get there you know like i start to recognize like oh i’m in a pretty negative space like hopefully if i’m you know in a consistently taking care of my spiritual condition i recognize a little quicker that i’m going down that negative path because if not i’ll spend two or three days or a week you know being angry about what i don’t have or angry about what i didn’t get or angry about who owes me what you know right whereas you know usually if i’m in a good spot i can catch that a little a little faster you know maybe in the first day or you know sometimes even in the first hour and be like wait a minute you know what i mean that’s not that’s not really the person that you want to be you know what i mean let’s let’s look honestly at your like in my situation like say with the stimulus thing i get the same way i watch the news and i get mad like why aren’t they passing like i would like another 1200 or whatever it is and the truth is i have not missed a day of work to do any you know for covid i’ve consistently worked right there but i wanted to free 1200 because they’re giving out 1200 so i want it you know and then i’ll get annoyed but then i can sort of hopefully step back and recognize like that’s just you know that’s just money like that doesn’t really matter it’s not a thing that i need to you know i don’t need that to make me happy so going back to elon and jeff and you know tim and bill and all these rich folks are they freer than us or are they more trapped because they’ve decided the route that they want to go and they’re stuck there like they’ve decided money is their answer maybe not i don’t know i’m just guessing that right but maybe they’ve locked themselves into this is all about who has the most money and how much i can get and how many things i can do with it and for all i know like jeff never has a day off because he’s always worried about making the next dollar i don’t he might be more miserable than me right he might have more complications more headaches government oversight whatever the [ __ ] he’s got to do i don’t have to deal with none of that [ __ ] right i got to deal with like wife oversight that’s about it i don’t have no government checking in on me to see if i did my job right or if i’m screwing people or so i i mean are they actually more free because they have more options like yeah he can go on a three-month vacation if he really wants to but can he he’s got a [ __ ] job to run
well my argument would be the difference is if he decided tomorrow like i don’t give a [ __ ] anymore about the company i don’t care about whatever and just decided i’m changing my name to you know george yeah right and i’m gonna go live in you know miami he could do that and never have to work like he’s got enough at this point to never have to work another day in his life the the option to work for him as a choice you know not a requirement for me i could quit my job and not work huh maybe a year you know like i mean probably not even but you know because i have a mortgage and all that i mean i could sell my house and you know sort of get rid of a bunch of stuff that i have to try to you know last a little longer but at some point i don’t have enough stockpile to never have to work again i mean that’s the only place i would make that argument is you know you could do the same thing it’s just that your condo would be under the bridge yeah not in a miami you know top shelf environment well i would have to whether it was going out and begging or trying to get on some government assistance i would have to be indebted to someone to try to get money in some way right whereas he’s got a whole boatload of it stocked away in his you know scrooge mcduck vault that he can go swimming if he wants to scrooge mcduck i miss duct so um you know that that i would say there is a freedom in that um but like say i don’t i don’t know his mental state i don’t know his mentality um but what i did think about with freedom so i don’t know that anyone is 100 free uh when we make choices in life there’s you know and we joked about it before this and now i’m gonna say it but it’s like the old redneck you know freedom ain’t free kind of thing it’s like i have decided i want to be married to my wife well there i have to make some sacrifices in order to make that work i mean if i want it to be you know what i think a marriage is supposed to be right um i have children i like to be involved in their lives i want to be a dad that means i have to give up some things that i might want to do i’ve missed opportunities or trips or things that i wanted to go do with friends you know because it’s like i make the choice that well you know i don’t really give a [ __ ] about my kids softball game but that’s the person that i want to be so i’m going to go do that because that’s more important than me going out and and playing a game so um i don’t know is you know is that a freedom like am i free in that situation because i’m maybe giving up what i want to do and doing what i think i should do i’m still hung up on on ducktales honestly it just occurred to me that scrooge mcduck was like the original mr krabs from spongebob and i didn’t realize that they’re like the same guy with a different voice sorry uh i know it’s way off topic i don’t know is the freedom ain’t free a redneck thing because i’ve heard that a lot around the city too that’s a statement around the city freedom ain’t free and they talk about that in in our program right like the freedom that our program offers limits us in some ways and so i guess that raises the question does any one particular freedom we choose imprison us in some other way is that just fact is there any way to choose a freedom that does not ultimately limit our freedom somewhere else if i choose to go on vacation if we called the ability to go on vacation of freedom if i choose to do that i limit my financial stability or ability to do other things with my money i can’t go buy a new car if i just went on a 8 000 vacation right if i choose that i’m going to be free from active addiction i can’t go have a beer for me at least i guess some people think you know that they can and might be able to but for me if i choose the life of n a i can’t go have a beer with crabs not that i ever did but i hear that being a complaint from people well i mean i think the freedom is in the choices that we make not necessarily in the specific choice itself like it’s like the the freedom isn’t like vacation isn’t the freedom i have the choice to go on vacation that’s the freedom you know and i have the the freedom to decide you know yes i want the new car and so i’m going to give up the vacation or vice versa whereas when i was using it didn’t matter what i wanted to do right i was getting high you know like i was using you know i’m gonna put 25 cents in my gas tank right and then the rest of this money is all high money so i i guess from what you’re saying there the only way to be free is not get married not have kids not take vacations it’s to live in the ability to do things but not actually do any of them well and that’s i was just and i think i answered my own question there by talking through that a little bit it’s like the freedom is in my choices you know what i mean like today i have the freedom to choose you know the person i want to be is the good husband is the good father so i can choose to do those things i’m not you know a slave to my self desires i’m not a slave to my gluttony of i just do what i want to do [ __ ] everybody else you know i can say oh make it sound so bad yeah i can i can choose to be like hey maybe i want to do this but it’s not the right thing to do so i’m going to choose this other path you know but i feel like okay so we have these freedoms to choose different things but every choice we make then limits that freedom every choice i make it’s going to limit my ability to have freedom in some area or another if i choose to get married because i love my wife and i and i want to start a family and that’s the way i want to go or not start a family whatever i want but yeah but that’s the cost of that freedom like say it’s not free so every freedom is not free so every freedom we have is really limiting every choice i make in freedom because i have the freedom to decide ends up limiting me somewhere else that’s weird maybe freedom’s an illusion freedom is an illusion i mean so unless you’re the guy that goes out into the middle of the woods and builds a house out of sticks and it’s off the land and you know i i honestly think that from what we’ve just said the only way to be free is to never [ __ ] do anything right like if i never make any decisions i am ultimately free i have ultimate freedom because i have all the decisions at my disposal i just don’t make any of them great now i have all the freedom that’s dumb though wants that so i mean there’s a you know the cost of freedom uh people say we’re brainwashed when we come to n a and and some people who maybe just miss the fact that we used to hang out with them and can’t or don’t anymore and i’ve had people that have wanted every good intention for me in my life and loved and cared about me dearly say the same thing you’re like oh you’re brainwashed down there all right what are they doing to you and i’m like that’s weird right am i am i really free if i’m being brainwashed if i’m being fed information that i ultimately believe in i guess at some point but do i it’s it’s almost like a [ __ ] we talked about this the cult thing like are we a cult do i just believe in it because somebody said it enough times did i hear it shared enough meetings that i now say it myself or um maybe i’m brainwashed i don’t think cult because i have been away long enough like when we traveled on the road i had periods of time where i didn’t hit meetings for weeks or months at a time i don’t recommend that it wasn’t good for my mental health right you know but it helped me to realize like one this is beneficial for me so that’s why i don’t necessarily think it’s a cult um i was away from it and nobody came and like tracked me down and dragged me back or made me you know sacrifice a kid to get away or you know none of that well they should i know but you were in the wrong home group i’d be even more free than if i had one more freedom yeah more freedom with less kids um and like say what i realized again what i give up for the benefits of recovery are worth it you know what i the cost of that freedom from active addiction and the struggle that’s in my head is worth it high cost of low living right and then a good old cliche oh yeah oh man you got to be up to date i’m going to take it out of the city more billy uh so is freedom just choice is that all freedom is it’s just choice i have freedom because i can choose things are there other freedoms besides choice
am i like is that all i don’t know i’m really kind of baffled by that yeah um i mean immediately i want to say yes i think that’s that’s all we get is the freedom to make choices
wow that sounds weak we should have a better promise than that yeah so what freedom from active addiction is what the freedom to make more choices you have more options on your plate i guess you don’t have well now using is a choice you know for me and every time i get ten dollars it’s not i don’t know exactly where it’s going i have options i can go play pool i can go see a movie i can you know which there was a lot of times before where i really felt like i wanted to not get high or i felt like i wanted to stop and i did it anyway and i couldn’t always figure out why you know so when people would ask me why they’d say well why don’t you stop like i don’t know you know i want to right i just can’t is recovery freedom and so i know we kind of look at recovery frequently from the 12-step perspective specifically from the n a perspective it’s kind of hard not to just because that’s generally what my life is based around loosely uh but i guess there’s other people in recovery who do it a little differently maybe some still drink and are in recovery maybe some smoke you know medicinal marijuana or recreational marijuana and are still in recovery i i don’t know how that works i don’t envision it working well for me even though i try to sell myself all right every once in a while um but is recovery freedom or is recovery it’s not a different vice but is it a different form of not freedom i hate i don’t want to call it slavery like but is it a different prison i mean at least my perspective and i think each individual is different on this but my perspective is for me it’s freedom because i don’t nobody makes me do it you know what i mean like nobody nobody’s forcing me at this point in my life to go to meetings or get a sponsor or do any of the things that you know recovery’s not use right i mean i guess my wife would be a little upset if i you i mean there’s some people that would be upset if i used or it might freak some people out but i could do it tomorrow you know if i wanted tonight i could leave here and go to a bar and get drunk and you know that would be you know my choice no you can’t do that yeah nobody’s stopping me um i wish somebody would [ __ ] force me to work this six step instead of saying honestly i don’t like the freedom yeah i’m not doing well with it i don’t know though yeah i guess it’s freedom because you don’t really have to once we get the freedom from the drug use from the active addiction part of it right uh and i i know people who argue the act of addiction because they say that’s not just using drugs it’s you know my disease can be active in all kinds of other ways even while i’m not using drugs it can still be active it’s just not you know drug use but i know that’s what we’re talking about when we say active addiction generally we’re talking about using drugs right so yeah i get the freedom from that but i’ve been around quite a few people in recovery that have whatever amounts of time and don’t seem like they changed a whole lot besides that like they’re not like oh i’m locked into this spiritual program i can’t act that way they’re like nah i’m going to be a big piece of [ __ ] today and whatever like you can deal with it so i guess you’re still free to do whatever you want if you want to but each one of those decisions then limits you every time you make a decision you actually limit your freedom i’m not making any [ __ ] decisions anymore that’s all it is to it i want to be free i want freedom all right well that’s living by default i guess or just i gotta run this past our buddhist friend jenny i want to see are you not free because you make decisions like i’m [ __ ] baffled by this now absolutely and this is gonna be a totally bastardized uh my take on like what i read about the buddha okay and stuff but my takeaway from a bunch of stuff that i read about like i think it’s the darth however you say his name before he was the buddha right like he basically ran around and disconnected from people and things and the world and that’s where his freedom came from like it’s like yeah you got freedom but you also have no connections to everything around you like i don’t it was it seemed almost like what you’re saying like he gave up everything to have this freedom but to me it felt like that wasn’t where i wanted to be like no i like a connection to people yeah so that brings up uh you know something somebody said to me this week which was the oh god you’re gonna have to help me i’m gonna butcher the [ __ ] out of this bible quote but basically what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul like that that whole concept and so that kind of reminds me of the opposite like the guy who doesn’t he just chases all these material things but then loses you know the freedom of his soul or whatever so maybe the answer is we do need to say [ __ ] off to everybody and move in the woods and build our twig house and maybe that is freedom maybe we’re not supposed to i don’t that’s hard to believe though man i feel like we’re supposed to be connected so i felt like for the buddha that was like there was a peace there and there was a connection because like he he served others but there really wasn’t like what i would consider an emotional connection i don’t know and and i probably miss i mean i like to think that i misunderstood something somewhere but that was just in my reading a couple of books and listening to some you know different lectures on different types of buddhism and the origin of the buddha and stuff like that is it really freeing to have a strong relationship with any one person because i feel like you’re like almost locked into uh any other conversation you have with other people then does not measure up to the conversations you have with this one connected person you have right i feel like then at one point when one of y’all dies it’s very super painful for the other that’s left behind so like maybe what buddha was doing was instead of having this grand connection to one individual he just projected that connection facelessly onto everyone and serve them and that was his connection to everyone’s spirit it just wasn’t with any particular people it was with any spirit yeah but i guess that’s that was i would say yeah that sounds fairly accurate but to me that’s what like i like the interaction with the individual like i can’t look at like oh you are jason you’re just faceless man you know what i mean like you’re just faceless male figure you know that like just the same as everybody like no you’re you you have characteristics and traits and things about your personality and i as a individual like i like that stuff i like knowing about people and what makes people different and what people think and how they think and you know like i’m fascinated by you know jen laughs at me because we’ll be sitting in restaurants and i’m like listening to conversations of people like two tables over to like because it’ll be interesting or weird and you know like that’s so strange like how fascinated by the uniqueness of people i would like to be more fascinated and less judgmental it’s usually judgmental of people but now i get it and i like that too because i you know you ever told a joke to the wrong person and you’re like oh my god my buddy would have [ __ ] loved that joke right and that person didn’t even laugh or get it and it’s uh i get that too but i feel like that almost maybe that does i feel like this episode has really [ __ ] my whole world up honestly i feel like now i just believe freedom is not what i have exactly i think freedom is this other thing that i don’t want to sacrifice what i have to get i almost feel like freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose uh is that what we’re talking about here like when you don’t have [ __ ] anything that’s freedom or maybe when you don’t care if you lose [ __ ] that’s freedom i struggle uh kids weird [ __ ] mental images of horrible things that can go wrong when we’re doing anything at times it’s not all the time i’m not doing this all day every day but every once in a while i’m like oh my god this could go horribly wrong and something and brutal brutal to think about right that’s not [ __ ] freedom right if i wasn’t connected to any of them it would be i wouldn’t have to worry about it so damn freedom sounds [ __ ] lonely right i guess i don’t think it’s not such a great thing maybe it’s not maybe we really don’t want freedom maybe the nazis had it right they just take everyone’s freedom
wow that’s awful but no but i don’t honestly from this conversation i don’t know that this freedom is something i want to aspire to because it sounds like i need to give up all the things that i love to have it and that’s awful well that’s maybe don’t wear i would say that would be absolute freedom like maybe absolute freedom isn’t the goal you know maybe we only need one maybe we’re back to square one with you know we only need one freedom and that’s the freedom from active addiction and you don’t need all these other freedoms all these other freedoms are just extra so one of the and and because we’ve gotten good lord yeah i don’t even know where we’ve gotten with this but one of the things i thought about when you mentioned freedom earlier was i have the freedom to to view life how i want right and we’ve explored this concept before so i don’t want to i don’t want to say it again the same way but the whole idea you talk about the person it’s an old saying at this point people probably don’t know what [ __ ] i’m talking about but somebody who sees the world through rose-colored glasses right they have the freedom and i do too if i really want to uh i can see what i want in anything right we we talk about like these facts and these truth as if they’re like hard cold concepts that aren’t changeable but they are um and just going through that i was reminded of that in some conversations this weekend and talking with people that like and i think this was maybe britney i was talking to on twitter but i you know okay my daughter’s mother died and at face value that’s awful right i had this hope that one day she would you know get the blessing that i did and gain the freedom and there would be honestly i kind of just envisioned she would be a pain in my ass like be you know manipulate me to try to like bring him to her because she wouldn’t have a car in early recovery and she’d think she was owed all this extra time to make up for like i had visions of how it was gonna suck for me honestly um and so when that didn’t happen it was like oh my god it kind of like just crushed that hope into nothing or extinguish that hope out of nowhere and that was my view for a day or two was just like oh like this is pretty awful but i was reminded and i think i believe like i said from brittany that i can view this how i want like i don’t know what this protected me from right and i know this can be far-fetched and and we kind of are on some different sides of the god’s will or the universal law of how things go and all that but the old concept of if i get a flat tire on the way to work i can [ __ ] about why this happened to me or i can say who the [ __ ] knows if i would have been in an accident five minutes from now and this saved me from it right i really don’t know those kind of things i don’t know what kind of protection this gave i remember at one point in my life and this is only one [ __ ] little theory like there’s eight billion outcomes that could have came if she just stayed alive but i remember thinking at one point they might grow up she might still be out there using they might miss and desire a relationship with her and ultimately end up having a relationship with her the only way she could relate to anyone which is using with her how [ __ ] awful would that have been right maybe this is that protection that saved any of that from ever coming about before they got their licenses and could drive down to seer by themselves and all that kind of stuff and and who knows what other kind of awful or positive outcomes could have came from it but for some reason this happened and if i believe in this concept of like things work out the way they’re supposed to for reasons then i might not always see it like i look at i have this thousand piece puzzle at home that we got while we were down in georgia it’s [ __ ] seashells dude don’t ever buy a [ __ ] seashell puzzle all the shells look alike they’re only like three colors and i’m like jesus christ there’s a thousand pieces they’re tiny but if i look at one piece of that i have no clue what i’m looking at if if i’m lucky it’s got possibly more than one color on it and maybe like a slight design but when i get the whole puzzle together it’s a clear picture right and so i don’t ever think i’m gonna get the whole puzzle of life put together i’m never going to see all the different ways and means that things work out but i’m only looking at this one little piece and i’m deciding whether it’s good or bad i’m deciding what it means for me and what i have today is the freedom to change my mind about that and say you know what this might be a positive somehow or another that i don’t even see right this little piece of this puzzle might actually be a picture that saves me from something down the road that i wasn’t even aware could happen i don’t need to call it something terrible i can just call it what it is and i can be free to see it that way yeah well and i just thought weirdly and i don’t know if this is good or bad but is did you gain freedom in your life from her death like now you don’t have that peace to deal with anymore yeah i i mean i don’t know and then again is that worth it is that freedom worth the cost right you know right i don’t know i mean there’s another thing it was presented to me that they might be entitled to some kind of social security death benefits because they’re under 18 right and it’s something i gotta explore i don’t know that she ever worked long enough to put money into it for it to matter but i can explore it and and like as shitty as this thought is here’s the reality if they get social security benefits from her it’s more than the [ __ ] she gave many other time right they’re getting more from her than she than she was given while she was here and so as sad as it is like maybe this does work out to their benefit somehow maybe they can save some of that money uh and go to college and they can use some on whatever like and i don’t know they probably like i said they probably won’t get anything but it’s just one of those things like i have the choice to see anything how i want to see it and i think that’s one of the biggest freedoms i have today i even when i get caught up and look at things in some shitty self-centered ways i have the opportunity if i want to try to explore some other ways to look at it and i think you kind of talked about that earlier just having the option to see things how you want yeah we’ve gained tools on what you know our perspective should be or how to keep life in the right perspective right so i don’t know i’m like i’m less clear about freedom than i ever was i thought i was really free when i came here and i’m gonna leave here like uh they might as well be transporting me to my like shackled and [ __ ] going home to my house tonight like [ __ ] i’m in prison i mean being grateful you’re not free right maybe maybe i’m grateful i’m not free probably gonna [ __ ] run away from my wife next month i’m not afraid i feel trapped right and playing rage against the machine i’m out of here i don’t know uh i don’t know you got any final thoughts about freedom no i did definitely this went a way different way than i thought it would in the beginning i know i’m like we’re going to explain freedom for the people supposed to be all positive and great now like gosh i don’t even know if i want to be free like i don’t know if that’s a good goal right is freedom really something to aspire to right i think freedom from active addiction is a huge positive in my life yeah so i would suggest that for anyone and start there and freedom to not be stuck in patterns right that’s a huge one i think that we can get through our steps and or some people get through therapy we get caught up in these this unconscious living where we just react maybe we have the same relationship over and over again with different people and like we can find freedom from those kind of things i guess for me when i’m looking for freedom i’m looking to be able to call the shots in my life that’s what i’m really looking for i want to be able to make the decisions instead of having these you know childhood traumas or drugs or something else make those decisions for me so that’s the freedoms i want uh beyond that i don’t know how much freedom i really need well i don’t want the courts or the judges or the cops making decisions for me anymore either that’s for me i’m sure no you got a point so i like that freedom too i guess that’s like maybe the republican stance they want freedom from government i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know so uh find some freedom right or or not we obviously don’t know as much about freedom as we thought we did for sure uh but i i god i hope everybody has comments about this someone explained freedom right somebody explained i needed help god damn i thought we had it all figured out billy there we go um but yeah so that’s what we got for this week uh please feel free send your comments i i can’t wait to debate i’m sure we’ll have some follow-up to debate next week about freedom uh oh [ __ ] you celebrate your anniversary is sunday this is so you’re not gonna listen to this till sunday even though we’re recording friday night billy is 20 years clean yeah sunday big [ __ ] deal um and and so i you know i thought we were going to be here for that but we’re not he’s going to be on ocean city enjoying his life god damn it um being free down there uh but yeah 20 years a big deal man congratulations it’s amazing thank you it’s [ __ ] incredible um and so with that enjoy your life this week figure out what the [ __ ] freedom is and let us know so that we can have a good idea what we’re doing in life and we’ll see you next week oh wow what the [ __ ] is freedom yeah that’s pretty crazy that is crazy i thought i had a handle on that i started thinking and then i was like huh i i should have looked into that a little more like that because i didn’t even think about it going in like that weird direction but i think that’s almost where like the communism and like the antifa people come from it’s like no you can’t just let people be free and do all this stuff like you gotta you gotta almost control everything like i think people are happy or not free yeah there’s a comfort and security and dude can you imagine just being free just being one of them guys that sits in the [ __ ] woods and has no wi-fi and no connection to earth like that doesn’t sound [ __ ] good sounds terrible for me yeah well that’s what i mean like in in communism like the government just tells you oh you’re going to do this now this is your job you just go do that and then you go home and here’s where you’re going to live like this is just what you do and you don’t [ __ ] get choices you just do this it’s funny that people outside of those countries hate that and yet i’m not saying everybody of course there’s always going to be people to have problems with everything but generally people in the countries you don’t hear them bitching about it too much maybe they control the media and you just don’t hear it but so what a lot of at least the ones in this side of the globe will tell you is that if you look at most communities not necessarily socialism this is more specifically communism but the reason you don’t hear a lot of bitching is because communism has been responsible for matt like wiping out massive amounts of people because any resistance typically the government shuts that [ __ ] right down you know you had the chinese who you know they’re [ __ ] notorious for just oh you want to [ __ ] about the government fine we’ll just cut your [ __ ] head off and that’s that you know they just they were just executing kids yeah of like the muslim community in china yeah crazy and then the russians were the same way it was like there’s just oh you can’t speak out like you don’t get to speak out against what we’re doing so you know do you think people are happier though
i don’t think so i mean at least what i know because so this and this gets a little bit back to the freedom and i don’t want to go down this [ __ ] rabbit hole but that’s where i think where we’re messed up with the people that are on all these social programs like i’m not a you know right winger where i think we should take all the money away from people that need money and i think poverty is a freaking tragedy in this country and that we shouldn’t have kids that should be starving and we shouldn’t have people that shouldn’t have a place to live like i think all that stuff is terrible but i don’t think the answer is what i’ll call enslaving them to government social programs like i think there’s got to be a better solution to having people still in some way like work or pursue you know things or interests or whatever to to provide for themselves in some way like and i don’t know what that would look like but i’m just saying like to just say well here you just don’t do nothing you have to you know stay home and take this money and they keep them trapped because like we’ve talked to some people i don’t know if you’ve known some people like this but we’ve known quite a few that they come into recovery they’re on some sort of disability mental illness social security or whatever they get clean they start to get their lives in order they want to go out and like get a job and have more but then if you make so much money they take you off of those programs all of a sudden you lose your section 8 housing you lose your and they’re still in that catch period of like well i don’t know i’m still not even sure i can do a full-time job and maintain and pay bills and then if i do it’s actually it’s going to be harder for me to go out and work a full-time job and pay my rent and pay for my food and all this stuff once i get off these social programs so they almost keep people trapped you know you know and then they’re not free right you brought up one of the things and i didn’t uh i meant to say something about and i forgot but you were talking about you know jeff could go live in florida or miami and retire and not do anything and i was thinking i’m always more miserable when i don’t have an agenda to do like i would probably be miserable in retirement like i do much better when i have a routine and something i have to do and i struggle to come up with my own menu of what i have to do and so it’s like i i don’t i guess that kind of fits into that a little bit like i need to have things that i have to do for some reason i just i’d live better i’m happier that way i i don’t know for me the answer is everybody gets a base [ __ ] wage you can live on you just get paid government just gives you the money yeah that was andrew yang’s yeah you know or a living wage and what’s funny i never knew because universal basic income that’s what’s called i never knew this until fairly recently but that’s actually been a concept that’s been around for a long [ __ ] time that’s not a new thing they were talking about this you know a few decades back you know you just you know the country makes enough money just everybody gets a base income and then and then from there if you want more you work and i don’t i can’t fathom the drawback of that i really can’t do more people stay home okay all right what’s the problem yeah you’re still gonna like you don’t that doesn’t hinder anybody else’s freedom that doesn’t hinder the guy who wants to go out and work 80 hours a week they stay home okay cool go work 80 hours a week you can pick up their job they’re staying home like i just i i don’t know i guess there’s drawbacks to it but i can’t for the life of me figure out what the [ __ ] they are like why not then everyone the republicans would tell you it’s because you’re taken from the haves and given to the have-nots that’s the point right but i mean that’s the difference and i i am on your side of that argument but the the argument is you know i shouldn’t have to give to you if you don’t want to get up and go to work that’s not fair to me that’s the argument now i think well you’re going to have a certain percentage of people that don’t want to work and if you don’t provide something to them they’re going to make society worse like overall society is going to go down yes but they don’t see it that way they don’t we’re as strong as our weakest link we’re like a [ __ ] team but we don’t act like it i don’t know i just feel like with all the hatred in in the us i i’m not saying they would be happier in communism but at least they don’t have to think about it they don’t even they don’t have to wake up and think am i going to post and argue some political [ __ ] online today nope you sure as [ __ ] not if you want to be alive tonight right like they got a lot of [ __ ] mapped out for them that they don’t have to debate and argue i’m not saying that’s happiness or freedom but as much misery as i see people creating on facebook right there’s got to be some freedom to that oh our system is [ __ ] we’re we’re in a weird place and it’s weird people don’t think about this but it’s like forms of government get overthrown all the time i mean we’ve been seeing it all through the middle east and you know all that you know arab spring or arab summer whatever the hell they called it when they were just overthrowing all the governments over there like and we sort of almost look at it like here like well that can never happen well you know why that cannot ever happen because we have a tyrannical government that doesn’t listen to its people that’s why that wouldn’t happen you know that’s why that can’t like that’s a little scary to think about yeah i can’t imagine any of the world superpowers getting overthrown like can you imagine like somebody trampling england’s government and restarting from scratch that just doesn’t seem feasible china well china not because they just they just kill you with their military right i feel like that’s what we would do that is what we would do yeah and that’s what’s scary we would but we would say we’re different we would different that’s the hypocrisy of it i can’t imagine it i do think we need i look i got i shouldn’t say this out loud my fbi agents right your camera is going to start blinking out i got a uh keep notes on like how the [ __ ] do we do the government just if we were starting from scratch what could we do different that would actually work just ideas well what’s weird is like most people at least it feels like if you have conversations about it most people recognize what the ills of the government are if you if you don’t talk about democrat republican and you can stay away from the key buzzwords and you just talk about like if i pretend i’m a republican but then i start talking to people about yeah you know do you feel like your congressman represent you do you feel like these people that are in office you know they’re bought out by big business and the pharmaceutical companies and the oil companies they all agree with all that [ __ ] they know that we have a health care system that doesn’t serve the people very well they know that the whole game is rigged and you can have that if you can pretend to be on their side and have that conversation you can almost hit those same key points with anybody that’s a republican or a democrat it’s just the the the one side wants to typically blame the other side oh it’s because of the goddamn democrats put us here with all their [ __ ] you know and it’s like and the solutions are less democrats like that’s not the solution you know like why not a congress that doesn’t get paid like they do a congress that makes teacher wages right and they don’t actually vote things into law everybody gets an app on their phone [ __ ] direct democracy right yeah or we have obamacare guess what you get obamacare that’s what you get as a [ __ ] government person that’s what you get what everyone else gets you don’t get special [ __ ] lifetime right health benefits that are [ __ ] some gold standard of [ __ ] and then hand me a pile of [ __ ] yeah they don’t need to be superstars that’s what i’m saying they should just draft up really simple to understand laws and then they go out to the app and everybody [ __ ] gets a week to vote and we all vote right done you’re not special anymore in congress you’re just typing a [ __ ] thing into a app and then we [ __ ] it direct democracy we’ll probably run ourselves into the ground but whatever like yeah let’s try it vote what the people [ __ ] want why do we even need representatives that’s what i don’t at this point in life we don’t need that i get you know in the 1700s you had to have that like you couldn’t take a poll of everyone in the u.s now you can we have the technology so let’s use it i know you you disagree because fundamentally like the idea of representatives is people that are supposed to understand concepts that we don’t put yeah and there’s a you have the like would you do it like i get the point of having representatives to represent an area because like for example when you talk about like the state thing like we talked about before like all of new york city could outvote four other states you know what i mean could out vote you know [ __ ] whatever rhode island and right and then rhode island doesn’t matter what they ever wanted or needed they’d never get anything because the rest of the country didn’t see it as important to [ __ ] rhode island well i almost think that’s a fundamental decision we just need to decide is it that the [ __ ] states matter individually just because they’ve been created as a state or because they have such a smaller population do they not matter as much rhode island to me doesn’t matter as much there’s way less [ __ ] people there they don’t get an equal vote just because they happen to be a small state like [ __ ] them we’re voting on the majority that’s democracy majority rules that is democracy it’s not oh you have state borders that we decided on so you get a [ __ ] equal share of the vote no i don’t i don’t know do you disagree with that or sort of and i’ll have to think through it a little more but the fundamental idea at least i thought of the united states was the states were their own individual thing and that the state’s rights were supposed to be what mattered the most but then the federal government was just supposed to help sort of keep all the states sort of to together like from getting too far out of whack like you don’t need to necessarily print your own money we can have money that you know we can have roads so that everybody can get to all the states so that we interact together that way and then we can have a centralized you know military that protects all of our little individual states um but the states were representative of the people that lived in those states because your state you know might be a farming state or it might be a you know industrial state or you know your people might live in [ __ ] cold weather where certain things matter when it’s you know you’re in a beach weather like you know you would have the individual needs and that state could more address the specific needs of its population and the federal government would just oversee the big picture see and i’m a i’m a smaller federal government person like i think that our federal government has gotten way the [ __ ] out of hand like we’re just it’s so far into [ __ ] left field on what i think the original idea of it was so abraham lincoln was actually a dick he should have let him succeed he should have let him secede and states rights should have been more important than the federal government um so the only reason i would disagree there mostly on the fact of slay like i don’t know how you [ __ ] ever think slavery is a good idea or made that legal and so a couple of things one the federal government helped to build up and support those states to become states and to get the power that they had in the first place it’s not like they were on their own standing individually especially all that southern territory i mean we were like you know the 13 original colonies were in the north they weren’t in the south and those areas were only established and built and set up the way they were because we had a central government that helped with that exploration and the building of those territories so they in essence owe something to the united states and then the only reason they wanted to secede is for slavery which was a [ __ ] horrible inhumane thing that you know needed to stop anyway so you know if every state had the government to do what was right locally okay so yeah slavery’s wrong but i bet there’d still be a couple of states that were hanging on to separate but equal i just listened to there’s uh a new po and i found it accidentally and i was intrigued and listened to the whole thing it’s called nice white parents and it’s about the [ __ ] school system in new york city it was the most it is still the most segregated school system in our country in our entire country and the reason why they kind of explain it a little bit in there and then they go into all kinds of reasons why and and how it ends up that way and how white [ __ ] families in new york still have all this power that all these minority schools and families don’t and the biggest reason was because they never had specific segregation laws in the north they never had to make laws to end segregation um just so they never did it’s just systemic yeah it’s just that’s the way it was and since they never had law specifically saying that’s what they did they didn’t have to specifically undo it so they just left it and it’s just been [ __ ] segregated so you have all these schools and all these poor neighborhoods that are run down and not supported and they get total lack of funding and total lack of support and then you have all certain schools where there’s white affluent people that they go out and fundraise and build up those schools and these are [ __ ] public schools so you can get completely you know almost polar opposite levels of education within the same public schools public schools i don’t even even talk about private schools these are public schools that you know are drastically funded differently in the same district like it’s [ __ ] bizarre no and and and that’s i think what happens when you don’t have a unified central government that is taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots right you have smaller government that yeah the state but then even you know you get down further from there and the community you’re in and that’s what happens the people in roland park in baltimore city have their roads fixed any [ __ ] time there’s a problem right two miles away in park heights they don’t ever get their road fixed no matter how many problems there are it’s the wealth right and but that’s the local government when you get smaller and smaller when you’re not taken from the people that have and spreading it everywhere that’s what the [ __ ] you end up with and i not that our centralized government has done anything to stop that either but i just feel like the smaller government you get then the money stays in the smaller areas too
well i think you’re more likely to change that at a local level than you are at a federal level you know what i mean like that problem you’re describing you know with the roads or whatever like that i think you have a better chance of fixing i’m not saying either it’s going to fix it exactly but there’s a better chance that your county or state government is going to fix that before the federal government is going to have the time and energy to come in and figure out a [ __ ] road disparity dispute between two counties and i get that and i’m not saying the federal government will stop that but i’m saying at each point in time when there’s a local government issue you have to go to the next highest right so for there you’re not even talking about the difference between the county or the city you’re just talking about the difference between districts in the city or even areas or neighborhoods right where the wealth gets is misplaced disproportionately and so how do you solve that those two communities aren’t going to resolve that like they like it the way the [ __ ] is on the hive side and the have-nots don’t but what are they going to do about it well then you have to go up to the next level of government okay and now the city government as a whole has to step in over the districts and then when you talk about disparity between the city and the county well now the [ __ ] state government’s got to step in to fix that so then at some point when you talk about disparity between this state and that state you’re always going to have to step up to that next bigger entity to solve the problem i feel like you’re not going to solve it well no what i hope is going to happen is that if i’m in the county that my roads aren’t being fixed that i have elected a delegate or a representative who’s going to represent me at the state level that’s going to get that done and if that person isn’t there doing their [ __ ] job and getting my problem fixed then they need to go and someone else needs to come in and fix that problem yeah but how do you out vote money
that’s where you know one vote for each county or whatever comes in it shouldn’t it shouldn’t matter how much money i have if if each county has one vote at the state level how much money you have doesn’t matter i mean unless there’s illegal [ __ ] going on and buying votes which we know happens and that’s where the problem comes in money becomes the problem we need to root out the money and the corruption but i guess the problem in the beginning is the minority though so the eight affluent districts don’t want to give to the [ __ ] poor district the one poor district gets [ __ ] because they’re the minority they can’t ever outvote the eight like that’s just and that’s the whole minority issue is that the minority but that’s where the representative the representative government comes in like that’s what the rep that’s exactly what a representative government is supposed to fix like a representative government is supposed to fix the majority outweighing the minority i mean that’s the idea anyway is that you know again we have whatever five districts and you know each of those districts no matter how much even if you know four of those districts is white and one of them’s predominantly black you still only get five votes it’s not all five districts total volume gets to outweigh the minority no but four votes is always going to output one no matter what if it’s not in their benefit true but if you have a good politician or a good delegate he’s going to get one or two other people to come on your side well and i guess but i guess i mean that’s his job you know what i mean his job is to solve that problem right that’s what makes a good political delegate that’s what makes a good representative someone who’s going to take your argument to the people and make it in a strong enough way that’s going to sway people to be like yeah that’s not right we need to make this right and okay i’ll buy that but to me it’s like okay so that’s my representative at the state level but then that’s for a district or a county dispute how do you justify okay we we shrink down the federal government right but then you have the same problem instead of between districts or counties you have the same problem between life is [ __ ] great and booming in maryland but in west virginia there’s no [ __ ] jobs and everybody’s broken poor we all live in the same country we should all be relatively even right so how do you end up fixing that disparity when there’s no government to do that that’s above the states like i i guess i just always still see the need to like we have to at some point go to that next level government to keep the country equal if not we’re all just different [ __ ] countries yeah well and that’s when i don’t i don’t know i mean we have it anyway even with a federal government that says you you’re the level of education that you’re going to get in i mean we got it within the state of maryland you go to one school district you get one [ __ ] level of education you go to another school district in the same [ __ ] county and you get a different level of education my wife teaches in baltimore city and drives an hour a day when we’re in school of course because it would be like half the money to work here right that’s crazy yeah we’re an hour away half the money right so but that and and so to me like that that’s the problem of the bureaucracy like we’ve created this bureaucracy that’s supposed to fix all these things they’re not [ __ ] fixed right they’re just as bad and just as broke as they ever were and to me it’s like all right well then let’s wipe out the democracy i mean not the democracy wipe out the bureaucracy and let’s like start back at the basics and try to see if we can fix it from there not no like what are we gonna do now start a new [ __ ] you know now we need a school oversight committee for the equality of teachers pay in the state of maryland and then that becomes its own big giant bureaucracy and they [ __ ] need a budget of 300 000 a year for eight people to sit on a board and come up with proposals and make recommendations that no one [ __ ] listens to and you know what i mean like that’s what ends up happening and it’s like these people this is again same thing that happens over at the [ __ ] health department it’s like oh we got a problem all right let’s create a new [ __ ] subcommittee that and then they’ve done spent three hundred thousand dollars and there’s no programming there’s no help that’s coming out to the people we’ve just analyzed the problem figured out what the causes are you know what i mean which you could have just went and asked the [ __ ] people over in hollingsworth matter what the [ __ ] of the problems were and eight of them you know they could have told you in you know eight days
i would agree with you all solutions that i have for government require basically wiping out what the [ __ ] we do there’s some really good pieces of it the checks and balances is great honestly we talk about was is it majority or is it you know just the fact that you’re a state congress has a a beautiful representation of that they’ve got both right right it’s kind of nice there’s some pieces that work beyond that that [ __ ] needs to be scrapped and started over it really does like you’re not i don’t see us fixing our path from here well and see that’s where i think again if you talk to most people at least most people in in what i would say our world i don’t i’m not sure some other people have other opinions but you know should our politicians be able to take all these [ __ ] payouts from these big corporations and [ __ ] like that [ __ ] should be totally illegal but everybody knows it happens yeah everybody knows it happens it’s like it’s almost a joke and that’s there was a thing i watched years back and i think it was called black money and it talked about how like we will typical american style make all these judgments on these other countries for like taking bribes and [ __ ] like that and they make the argument all the time like no we take bribes but everybody knows it like it’s all above board there’s no big secrets you know here they do it but it’s all under the table all hidden so then you’re never really sure who’s [ __ ] playing for what side it’s like politician everyone like oh no they [ __ ] pay me all this money so i’m doing what they want me to do and at least then you [ __ ] you know it might not be right but at least you know what’s going on it’s not a big lie you know here it’s a big [ __ ] lie and then we judge them and make them seem so terrible when it’s like it’s the hypocrisy of you know that’s how actually racism was described to me by by my spanish teacher and she said that racism exists every [ __ ] where you go but here we try to pretend it doesn’t exist and everywhere else it’s like it’s blatant and obvious and and there’s no confusion about it at least it’s like it just feels different it feels more human honestly right yeah it’s more it’s more honest and direct yeah and it’s like we go all the way back to that [ __ ] puritanistic thing of like you know nobody has sex until they’re married it’s like yes they do everybody’s having sick you guys are all cheating on each other you’re all sleeping around nobody’s you know you’re [ __ ] acting like you’re better than the same [ __ ] yeah that is weird but yeah it’s like our country’s pretty [ __ ] up most people don’t feel like our government’s working well for them but yet they still jump on the bandwagon of you know republican or democrats yeah well they sent me another stimulus check i don’t like them for another
2 responses to “45: The Many Freedoms We Are Not Promised (Sort Of)”
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