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.
Addiction is full of pain for everyone. The suffering is great, and doesn’t end when someone transitions. The pain carries on to the next generation in a cycle. Our systems are currently not equipped to deal with this problem. What do you do when the loss hits close to someone you care about? How do you help them? How do you console them? How do you try to break the cycle of addiction? Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
Voices of Hope Rubber Ducky Race
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/recoverysortof/message
8/16/20 Addiction is full of pain for everyone. The suffering is great, and doesn’t end when someone transitions. The pain carries on to the next generation in a cycle. Our systems are currently not equipped to deal with this problem. What do you do when the loss hits close to someone you care about? How do you help them? How do you console them? How do you try to break the cycle of addiction?
Transcript:
i’ll just hit record on that so yeah just so you know uh
it’s been a week
we go on vacation of which we’ll have to figure out what we want to do for next week so we’re leaving saturday to go on vacation down ocean city saturday what time i don’t know okay i have to find out for sure i mean we’ll stay early and then we’ll never leave early we will never leave that early so we could i mean i damn i actually was going to tell you i had a meeting next saturday and sunday to go to
um but i guess you won’t be going to them you’ll be in ocean city unless you want to drive up from ocean city to go to a meeting in baltimore right after you drive down i mean we could i can do i’m pretty available i could probably do friday night or whatever if that leaves your saturday open to leave whenever you guys are ready and get things together because that’s always i know when we’re leaving for vacation that that morning or whatever is like oh [ __ ] we forgot the penalties to get this together i’ll have to be loading up the camper too which is going to be fun fun
see she told me the 23rd she better be
right
yeah we went over last night and started like cleaning out the camera because we haven’t been in the camper in a year you know we lived in it for so long i think once we all got out we’re like [ __ ] that place i mean it was all cleared out but we had to get in there and like clean clean it like get the
cobwebs and wipe everything down real good because of course when we finally moved into the house it was like just pack everything up get everything out get everything into the new place right but now it actually is like damn this is a nice camper it’ll be fun to actually camping not necessarily living
you wanna meditate yeah all right so we’re gonna meditate so if you don’t do that or have time for that has anybody made any comments about that at all oh no i guess the only people that would see it are the youtube ones yeah there’s not many people that watch on youtube it’s just uh i don’t wanna say it for the hell of a thing but
i don’t know maybe if i edit it down they would but anyway we’re gonna meditate 10 minutes feel free to skip ahead call for work i’m turning that [ __ ] off
so
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good
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hmm
there’s like some underlying spooky sounds in there or something like what is that that’s what i thought too like what is that i mean it’ll be birds i will say i enjoyed the forest sound for the most part but i kept here i was like what is that like a ghost in the farm what the [ _ ] is going on i heard it too i thought the same thing i’m like does that sound like a bird coffee time get a coffee which you probably already have so just fast forward fast forward [ _ ] vhs talk yeah
it was like
and i couldn’t read the whole thing because if i opened it i would have forgot to respond to it so i just looked at that and it kind of brightened my day yeah and then i look at it the next day and it goes further and it’s like i’m a blogger if you ever want me on your show it’s like oh man i’m glad i didn’t read that part yesterday
how’s that
i gotta say that’s one of the toughest things that i went through when i left it was like being used to having everybody there every morning when i woke up
is
um
i was like
oh
yeah i guess in-person meetings everybody’s used to them by now we had three people show up
but there was an anniversary over in harford county that was a guy that went through the dexter house so much of those guys
the other three guys that are in the home group all went on vacation together on a trip out west so uh uh he celebrates this weekend
i will be the week after that but i won’t be on the 20 whatever that would be is
not this thursday but the following well i’ll be celebrating
[ __ ] down right across the street
last night
yeah my sponsor yeah my network absolutely
meetings
of course
around here and nobody knows who the [ __ ] anybody
yeah yeah i go to like the saturday meeting when we went there like i know like four people in here at like 30. i mean
thursday nights at seven i’ve been going virtually
respect
i’ll say this bro i’ve been going there since i stopped going to my home group it’s been like three months damn near every week i’ve missed two now one for vacation and one for area i have
that what it’s called or whatever
nothing wasn’t the right thing
that’s when all the problems i know right here
i don’t have words
so uh you know with christina offering to be on our show which uh i don’t know who’s christine the lady that emailed us oh the blogger yeah and i you know not that i’m that’s the second person that’s talked about being on and i’m not against it i just uh it’s not really what we do just yet but somebody did give the mention of like having more
having guests on not so much to share their story because i know we’re not about that right but having people on just to have some slightly different demographics and while i look i think we’re both in a good place to try to be open to looking at things from different angles i don’t think it could hurt either at times i like that idea now i started trying to think like well who right it’s almost like so they mentioned that you know we did the the the dating sort of episode and it’s like we’re both 40 year old white married men with kids and it’s like yeah we probably and and i we thought that at the time we just couldn’t find the right person but we did want someone to come on and i was thinking that that topic you liked about avoiding situations that might lead to using or whatever i’m like we need somebody with like nine months to 18 months on for that because that’s the demographic that just went through avoiding [ _ ] now we’re still going through it like i don’t have i don’t have much experience with that at this point like i just don’t [ _ ] use i don’t avoid situations or or i’ve established that i avoid certain things right you haven’t established like a whatever you want to call it plan or practice right people in that early time are like oh my god it’s my first christmas how the [ _ ] do i avoid this weird family gathering where they all drink or you know all my buddies are going to a bachelor party at a bar or whatever like they’re more in tune with that so maybe we could just try to i guess we’d have to do better planning our topics and then figuring out what kind of person would fit that topic better yeah well that’s the thing i was trying to think of who would be fun interesting people to talk to that would kind of add yeah yeah you know that’s been my focus too like who’s fun who’s interesting maybe we just try some [ _ ] people out see what happens if they’re dry and boring then we’ll pick up the slack i don’t know yeah i really don’t know i figured we can figure it out um as for today we got some people did have stuff to say about honesty and so i got a few things to talk about with that to recap um i don’t know if you wanted to delve into any of those topics i had sent you but the other side of that is um so last night after the meeting we found out that my girl my daughter’s mother died and so i don’t know if that fits into one of those topics i was trying to like like compassion maybe i don’t know tried to look back through the list and see if it made sense to fit into any of them and how to
fear and i mean using related i don’t really know probably i mean if not directly some kind of indirectly i mean what i told my daughters was like we don’t know what happened but we probably know exactly what happened really like uh
i mean it kind of fits into fear and uncertainty i’m not about unity compassion compassion not about unity though
vigilance yeah that sucks man i’m sorry for them i know as
big of a piece of [ _ ] as my jen’s ex-husband was leaving his dad was for her he’s a [ _ ] hero or whatever and it’s you know right it sucks when he goes downhill or starts getting all [ _ ] up again because it affects her in a negative way and it’s [ _ ] weird yes i’m in a weird place with it all really so it’s almost like sorry i’m trying to find these messages so i haven’t pulled up
i can’t find the [ __ ] message i’m looking for
um so for you was she somebody you had like a relationship with or was it kind of a long one yeah um
but it was definitely and that’s where i’m at where it’s so weird for me it’s like i’m really not feeling a whole lot about it and that was my thinking was how did it affect you at all or you know for somebody there was a slight thought of being angry that she left me to deal with all this but i’m really not angry it’s a thought it’s not a feeling it’s like i should be angry at her
well and that’s kind of so i figured we would go through this and i i would tell the not as short as it needs to be story of how i found this out last night like the process of getting to it and then we would just [ _ ] go from there well if that works for you i figured that’s a topic story yeah and i mean i have a little bit of i don’t know like say dealing with leona’s dad and watching him use and say same thing seeing well with him it was weird because we’d see the good side where he had i think five years or so where he was [ _ ] clean and doing great and we shared christmas together like all of us with leona and all our kids and family we got video of us all [ _ ] playing that pie face game and you know it was like [ _ ] like that to back to [ _ ] using who knows where he’s at he hasn’t been to see her in two years i just [ _ ] up
i thought
all right so i guess that’s just what i’m going with what buddha said because i don’t remember what else she said about this i can’t find it oh it’s before the 11th that’s why but yeah there’s a lot of [ _ ] in there empathy compassion you know and a sort of more somber tone gratitude you know i was like [ _ ] that’s what’s waiting for me out there you know die and leave my [ __ ] kids
or even if i don’t die still [ __ ] forfeit in that relationship
right right and that’s i mean that’s where i feel like we’ve been for so long like she hasn’t been involved in their life forever so god i should have this [ _ ] ready hey people will message me something about the podcast and i respond to it and then it turns into a discussion so it’s like going back to find what they actually said about the podcast because they said something useful and i’m like [ _ ] what did they say i’m still not getting on facebook and i’m not gonna lie i’m it’s been a little bit of a difficult transition but i haven’t been on like what two weeks three weeks i was talking to uh mike last night and i don’t want to say his last name but at the saturday night meeting mike and jamie oh yeah yeah so and he was saying jamie cut facebook off because it was getting like toxic for her and he’s struggling with it and yeah i mean it’s just the whole thing is just like man it’s just not worth and i don’t feel like i’m really missing anything i really don’t there’s a and that’s i’ve jumped on once or twice because you do find out like you kind of have to get on for like if you’re trying to find information about a place and they only have a facebook page or whatever like i guess i’ll go to their facebook page and then it opens up and now i see i have a hundred and some notifications because i haven’t paid attention to them in days and you know new friend requests and all that but i’m just like nope i can just navigate around this and i haven’t been on there oh and i did get on because there they do have a bunch of pictures on there of stuff over the years that i’ve done or seen or whatever that are on my facebook that i want to download and get back what you can do are you thinking about actually deleting the whole thing i mean at the moment i don’t really have a reason to delete it necessarily although i would probably like to download all those pictures and [ _ ] just in case you decide to yeah yeah they do have a thing i think now where it’s really easy you just click like one button and it gets everything and i’m not like i’m not overly a facebook i mean i’ve been slowly weaning off of it for a while so i’m not like such a facebook addict where like oh my god if it’s if i see it i’m going to be [ _ ] looped back in it’s like no i just and of course similar to what happened the last couple of times it’s like i do get on there for something else you know for something and i started looking for half a minute and within less than five minutes i see one of those articles or some shared off some fake site news [ _ ] somewhere and it was like yup this is like that’s some rebel flag up there you know i think the last thing was like my brother commenting on how everybody just needs to send their kids back to school and quit bitching because kids don’t spread covet i’m just like oh my god i can’t even like one you have you know you’re lucky you completed high school and two you have no medical training to know even what you’re saying is remotely true and the cause of that is death yeah like it’s not like you know it’s death to people so anyway i’m just like nope i’m out i just i don’t even i don’t even need to know his opinion on that because i don’t want to right i saw one yesterday because i i don’t scroll it much i get on there i do what we do for the podcast and i share memes and interact with people who do that and invite people to like the page but i did scroll a couple days ago i think it might have even been last night and i saw like one percent of people die from this and so we need to you know the economic and all these other tolls it’s taken ain’t worth it i’m sorry if it’s you know cruel or whatever or not i don’t know i just think we take whatever why are we so built on a world that we need to question whether to do one or the other why don’t we should be built on like a way that everybody’s already taken care of if we need to right and we can save as many lives as possible like why do we need to we’ve built our world to be this way yeah we don’t have to right we can rebuild it differently right that’s not the answer the answer is [ _ ] it we’ll have some extra people die yeah and it’s like this i i’ve run into the same thing with the politics people are like you got to pick this side or that side i’m like no you don’t right they both suck they’re both full of [ _ ] none of them are based on what i think we’re supposed to be doing even with the [ _ ] whatever you call it blueprint we already have we’ve done [ _ ] that all up like right whatever you know so don’t tell me i gotta pick one side or the other i gotta agree with this or that like that’s all [ _ ] we don’t have to do any of that right i don’t know for whatever reason i’ve been able to be detached from it mostly like when i see a post that annoys me it’s not that it doesn’t annoy me at all it’s just like yeah and that’s the extent of it like i don’t it hasn’t had me caught up like it has it before but right now it’s not so i’m like all right [ _ ] it yeah and it it gets me caught up you know it just it gets in my head it’s like a bug that gets in my head and then it’s there you know creeping around like the next two or three days and i’m just like [ _ ] i took like the top five or ten people that were on my list that have some really strong beliefs and and words to say all the time i just don’t see their [ _ ] anymore that’s like yeah i did that to a bunch of people to your brother yeah i do i snooze them for 30 days or whatever dude permanent [ _ ] them like i can always go back and change it if i want yeah and uh yeah well that’s what i realized is i there’s really not that much on there that i want to see and but for me it was actually so i would scroll a lot because that’s it would be like a time killer like i’m sitting here with nothing to do [ _ ] watching tv i’ll scroll through facebook see what’s almost like a news feed or whatever like i’m trying to just catch up on what’s going on with people or whatever and then like say now it just seems like it’s not what i want i rarely ever post on there yeah i don’t post at all anymore i posted some [ _ ] about the podcast that was it and then like i don’t want to post nothing anymore i don’t know [ _ ] facebook yeah so now i just instagram i’m waiting to mess around with that a little bit more that’s facebook’s company yeah but it’s definitely i for whatever reason i don’t get all that i don’t get any political [ _ ] in mine right now i don’t know if it’s coming but it’s not well i think you know one of the things that is more picture based and you don’t really even have to read the captions if you don’t want to really do every once in a while i’ll read some of them but
i don’t facebook is so tricky to get rid of now and and it’s not and it is at the same time like could i live without it yeah i could but like you said i find information on there people like our area that you know when they need information that’s the only way they have to get a [ _ ] poll or an idea of what the area thinks is facebook groups like that’s it that’s all we got my words with friends games are tied into that like is that a big deal no i could [ _ ] lose it i don’t care candy crush whatever but it’s easier and more convenient that i have it available to link it like yeah and that’s that’s what i thought was mine too i’m like i can keep it i’m not like say it’s not like if i know i have it i’m going to be jonesing to get on there i just keep it and if i need to go do something i do it and actually the few times i have jumped on have just been a reminder of why i’m not [ _ ] scrolling it every day have you ever encountered the time when you go to look up something and like you said they have a facebook page that’s their main website and it makes you sign in in order to see it like it won’t let you view it if you’re not signed in i’m like are you [ _ ] kidding me you need to create a facebook account to look at this company’s website like i i guess i think i know what you’re talking about i don’t know if i’ve run across that there might be ways probably on my phone and work i’ve done it so i’m already logged in anyway i got you there’s probably ways around it where you can still view it but it’s like what the [ _ ] man it’s just so much easier just to have one yeah right yeah yeah you can always be the cool kid like no i don’t have a facebook but i’ll say like my kids don’t they don’t mess with none of that [ _ ] i didn’t think my older ones did but i think they do and they just don’t post anything and they like lurk on there too it’s weird and then like the weird thing with that generation since they do the whole disappearing snapchat and all that [ _ ] like my daughters have instagram but after they post [ _ ] and get whatever they archive it so you can’t see it anymore like you sneaky little getting around the system here
yeah i did find out my daughter has an instagram i don’t know if she’d post anything on it because of course it was private too i just said here i’ll follow you that my older one it’s interesting their generation is almost like like we saw facebook in myspace and we’re like oh my god we can document our whole lives and they’re like let’s not document anything yeah well i guess what we saw is you get documented for [ _ ] people get in trouble for [ _ ] they did years ago yeah you know five years ago you said a racist comment as a joke on twitter fired bro you know
yeah that’s tricky i mean in one sense you want to be accountable for the things you’ve said in the other sense like do we have the ability to change and grow and can we respect that that people change and grow well i think so i don’t think you ought to be able to fire people over [ _ ] they said years ago or back log i mean it’s one thing if there’s a pattern of behavior but yeah or if they did it since they got hired right and and what do they say about it now you know if they say yeah i was 20 something years old and stupid and i made some mistakes and you know i don’t believe these things anymore i don’t think that way anymore right it’s another thing when they try to defend it you know and who thinks to go back and delete that [ _ ] because that’s like impossible scrolling for hours like 10 years ago oh let me delete that comment that looks a little weird in 2020 or to go back and look at something that you said you know five or ten years ago that now would be offensive that wasn’t quite so offensive then you know watching joke or you know saying [ _ ] or you know any of those things like that [ _ ] wasn’t really nobody cared right now it matters and you got to be careful if you want to tell how bad something’s aged watch something from your childhood now watch the 80s movie and just be like oh my god that would never fly today even even like joke movies like revenge of the nerds or something it’s like what no you can’t do that all right full of stereotypes yeah sexualizing women completely like what the [ _ ] it’s incredible yeah it’s weird [ _ ] man every time i try to show my kids the 80s movie it’s always like rated pg and then it’s like full of foul language like is this before the ratings what the [ __ ] were they doing jesus christ half naked people everywhere like how’s this pg it was all sexualized that’s crazy
my neighbors pissed me off [ _ ] complainers i lived next to like [ _ ] neighbors they [ _ ] about everything i was burning some [ _ ] in the yard yesterday cause we had a big tree branch come down so i was cutting it off and burning some stuff up out back i missed a pretty good size fire i’m not gonna lie but you know it was outside of my little fire containment ring thing but i knew it was gonna be i was like [ _ ] it i’m just burning all this stuff everything’s wet so it’s not like anything’s gonna catch on fire right and some ashes went over on their porch like oh you’re getting ashes on our porch okay kind of hoping your house burns down yeah all right i don’t want you to go away we had a tree fall in our backyard i gotta i haven’t got too good i gotta chainsaw it up or something never even use a chainsaw yeah that’ll be interesting all right i pulled mine out and it’s broke because it was underwater so i gotta get a new bar for it like that it’s a 16 inch bar it’s all jammed up on the end it’s got a spindle thing on the end that spins and it’s all [ _ ] up that’s we had one or my in-laws had one and it was it just wouldn’t start so when the tree fell they went out and bought a new one i haven’t taken it out and played with it yet but ought to be interesting seeing where the chainsaw it’s funny the situations i get in now living out here that like i just think of my city upbringing and i’m like never play with a chainsaw it’s so [ _ ] weird no i love that [ _ ] what’s fishing cause i was the same way i was raised in the city and we moved out there when i was like 13 and so much [ _ ] was like whoa like what is this you could just drive lawnmowers and tractors right yeah not all these friends they’re like my age they’re like 10 11 you know they’re [ _ ] driving four-wheelers and motorcycles and [ _ ] to ride their bike wherever they wanted you know [ _ ] riding our bikes you know 10 miles to whole other towns and [ _ ] like i could do this right please do that it’s definitely crazy we went fishing yesterday have you had to catch a fish yeah i just go out i [ _ ] i feel bad it’s not like i’d be fine just sitting there fishing but i constantly like lose the bait like the fish just steadily eat the bait off the hook because i apparently i don’t know what the [ _ ] i’m doing so i’m constantly like wasting bait and then i lost two hooks i’m like what the [ _ ] i just give up i’ll just sit here about y’all where were you fishing uh her father has some friend um it’s down there past the town of northeast going down towards the park down there but you make a left somewhere and they have like their own little private pond that they stocked with fish my daughter called three but she was the only one who caught anything yeah do you know what kind of fish they wear uh i believe they said two of them are largemouth bass oh nice and i don’t know if the other one was a bluegill or a sunny i’m not sure but yeah she caught three of them just playing around but nobody else caught anything we just kind of sat there the little the little one drove me crazy the whole time can we leave yet oh my god you’re not coming next time i i enjoy the process i wish i was a little yeah there’s like tactics yeah thing and you know if you’re trying to catch those little [ _ ] sunnies and bluegills you need like little tiny hooks but if you have little tiny hooks and the bass get it they’ll just spit those little tiny hooks right out well and i don’t know if my hook was too big her father mentioned that because he knows what he’s doing so he was there helping us and we had bobbers and [ _ ] and i don’t know if that was the problem they were eating because the hook was too big or i don’t know what the [ _ ] was going on honestly it was interesting though but i do enjoy i i tell you one thing i can’t stand and and you know maybe i’m prissy or whatever you would like to label me as i don’t like the bait at all i want fake bait yeah you can use lures yeah we had blood worms and i’m like i don’t want to [ _ ] with these yeah picking them out of the dirt and [ _ ] with all that well these were like the ones that bite you and they had the little legs on the side yeah i’m like i’m holding them in the plastic bag trying to you know bait them with a pair of pliers or something like i don’t want to touch this bloody gooey [ _ ] this is gross especially with largemouth bass you can get away with all kinds of bait with them they like spinners and [ _ ] yeah yeah that’s what happened yeah [ _ ] real bait that’s gross yeah and like a lot of things there’s little tricks you know and i’d learn all this from my dad you can put like a what they call a leader on the end so when you want to change out you don’t have to [ _ ] restring and re-tie just you put everything’s on like these leaders and then you just unclip one thing take it off clip the other thing on you know new hook with a different size so you can [ _ ] around with different stuff because that’s definitely i just want something i just cast it out and reel it in case i could do that for a while oh yeah it’s my kind of [ __ ]
all right are we ready yep i don’t know if i am but we’ll try since we’re already been here almost an hour
that’s funny i said to jenna this morning i was like i feel like doing i just want to go back to bed and lay in bed all day you can just not do it for one day like i’m not doing it today i look forward to it
welcome back it’s recovery sort of i mean jason i’m a guy in long-term recovery and i almost [ _ ] that all up it’s okay i’m billy i’m a person in long-term recovery and we’re here today to talk about something or other who the hell knows one of the things we wanted to get to before we waste any time because i get sidetracked easily we got a lot of feedback about our honesty episode last week and people had a lot to weigh in on some of the the stuff that was said uh jenny reached out to us and told us that buddha said that a person who is capable of dishonesty is capable of any egregious act lying is the worst one of the five precepts in buddhism is refrain from lying buddhism is about facing the truth truth about life truth of ourselves and it’s an impossible task if we can’t be honest and so i thought that was kind of interesting i actually tried to look into uh the ten commandments because you know a lot of times i tend to think that buddhism and christianity are pretty well related i i is it do you know the ten commandments that well like i don’t think lying is one of those it says do not bear false witness but to me that sounds like a particular kind of lying but maybe that’s just from the era they were speaking yeah i don’t think lying is actually in there i’m trying to think back through them real quick but yeah i don’t think there’s specifically one about lying yeah so i i looked into them i had googled them and the closest thing i found was do not bear false witness which i guess like in you know the speak of two thousand three thousand years ago maybe that’s exactly what they meant maybe they were just saying don’t lie um but to me when i read it you know in in 2020 i was like oh that means don’t you know say somebody did something that they didn’t or didn’t do something that they did specifically um but it probably wasn’t that specific i i just found it interesting that it wasn’t on there like you know honesty seems to be a pretty important facet yeah i’m looking through i don’t see it you know i have to believe that that false witness thing is lying i i have to believe we just don’t understand the translation anymore yeah it kind of got a bad translation yeah google translate [ _ ] that one up and um but yeah so i i mean you know according to to that idea of buddha that you have to it’s almost like you have to be honest first like nothing else comes until you’re honest and so i would say that makes it a pretty huge priority whether we want to lie or not and that kind of brings me to a comment that selena made on our post she said i thought honesty was a spiritual principle that i had in the bag until i was going over step four round two and my sponsor pointed out a situation where i was being dishonest then i listened to the podcast i always sneak candy into the movie theater my son told a theater employee that our pockets were full of candy once i was mortified and then had to have the conversation about lying generally i practice honesty and consider it a pillar in my recovery and so i thought that was really really interesting because we got into a discussion and i was like okay so if you sneak candy into a theater that’s lying but you know i i think we sneak candy into theaters because we feel like theaters are gouging the price of candy right and look i i don’t know the theater’s budget maybe that’s the only way they stay afloat and provide entertainment is by overcharging for candy prices i really don’t know but i think i try to get over on them before they get over on me is the thing but really like and so i say well where’s the honesty is it looking out for my family is that the the better way to be honest is it you know respecting that they charge four times as much for candy like i guess the thing is if that’s what they charge i just need to pay it it doesn’t really matter what the [ _ ] i believe in beyond that like the truth is they say don’t bring candy in and i should just follow it regardless yeah and that’s you know what i teach my kids about you know laws and rules and stuff all the time is you know it doesn’t if a place is up front with you it tells you what the expectations and what the rules are i mean you should follow it if you don’t like it then don’t support that place but yeah it’s not necessarily fair to ignore the rule and justify uh being dishonest i will say that i i think that the climate of movie theaters and all that has changed uh you know even in in-person entertainment at sporting events with these giant comfortable tvs we have in our houses and high definition video like i i kind of prefer to watch most movies at my house my only beef is that i gotta wait extra three months till they come out on video but yeah beyond that like i don’t need to sneak candy and i don’t even want to go to the theater it’s like a hundred dollars to take all my goddamn kids to the movies yeah it’s quite expensive and uh like say it’s it’s almost i get the same way with sporting events like i almost enjoy watching it better at home there’s certain things that the experience is great at the theater or at the event but you can do that like once or twice a year and then the other you know rest of it just do at home yeah i’m definitely down with that uh stephanie mentioned the part we talked about sort of at the end we had talked about some stuff about uh your kids and my kids and conversations about weight and uh she mentioned that her 12 year old was pretty sedentary and she was just really super honest she personally has a small frame but her her kid takes after her father more and she approached it from a health aspect and said if you want to live a longer life and have more energy you can’t keep doing what you’re doing with the way you’re eating and then you know so now apparently the the younger kid works out three to four times a week in whatever way they do and she encourages the healthy part not the thin part because you know thin is not always necessarily healthy and i know that to be true from from taking a course in the biology of obesity and it’s not really the thin people that are the healthiest it’s it’s people who are healthy who are the healthiest right and that’s with my son that’s definitely the case like he’s always been husky he’s always been kind of a bigger kid and i’ve never cared about that so much you know because he stayed active we played sports we did stuff pretty regularly you know ride bikes go outside play with friends run around at school whatever um but i think it just it’s worried me lately with the covet stuff the amount of sedentary um like say not even necessarily by his choice it’s like by circumstance and uh you know he’s put on extra weight but we kind of went i i talked to my wife and we decided well no we’re not gonna ignore the rules and do that so we made a decision about that that we just i personally took it on to try to do some more active things with them so we went out a couple days this week we just went out and walked the dogs for like a mile and a half you know just to get them outside and doing stuff and outside with the dogs i figured we’ll start there we’ll just start making that like an everyday thing that we do um and then just again circumstance wise uh there’s he went to a friend’s house or his cousin’s house actually the other day and then he went and met up with another friend and you know so he’s starting to get out i think things are starting to open up and you know so hopefully the world will get back to somewhat normal that’s interesting and then i don’t have to lie right you chose to to be honest with the age and i chose to put my dentist off for two weeks my appointment is two weeks and two days out from when i got home and so i meant to tell you this and this isn’t an advertisement for anything well i guess maybe it is i found this a friend of mine told me about you can order a covid test if you have insurance it covers it right it’s through labquest i’ll get you the name of it they’ll send it to your house it’s not the deep nose swab it’s just a nose swab you do it yourself you put it back in the thing and send it to them they get you your results within 72 hours so the whole process is only supposed to take three to four days um from the time you order until you get it you know if you swab get it right back in the mail they’re supposed to get it back to you within a day or two that’s pretty awesome i heard they’re they’re now doing like a mouse swab test and you know with varying accuracy as as any of these tests have and so i was like man i’m you know wasn’t out on this my mother got her test done and she was negative and i’m like geez here i am like worried about it but my dentist appointment is two weeks out i don’t have to lie to anybody so that’s that’s good news i’m glad we all decided to be honest in that situation was that by choice or just by situation uh so i i put off calling them for like four days last week and then by the time i got around to calling they offered me like the 25th uh and i was like yep perfect it worked out just the way it was supposed to um i don’t know if putting it all helped anywhere we did get another comment kind of in line with stephanie’s about the kids and body image and weight and i appreciated it our friend julie messaged us and mentioned that it was hard for her to listen to that because she grew up with a lot of body image issues coming from her parents and so you know it really made me step back for a second like i i talk about and i talked about last week how you know my family sort of has some inside jokes with their one daughter because she sat on a chair she happens to be the heaviest kid only by like eight pounds from her twin sister right it’s not like she’s overweight at all in the least um but she happens to be the heaviest kid and so my son ribs her a lot for that and she sat on a chair out back and broke it and so like that’s the joke now you know whenever you sit on something it’s gonna break blah blah and i i play into it a little and i think i shared that last week a little bit that we we play in with some family type jokes but julie was pointing out that like it was really hard for her to listen to that because of what she’s dealt with for her entire life since childhood because of that and so it really i just i i don’t know that i’ve come to any firm decisions on it but it definitely made me step back and say hmm maybe maybe joking isn’t the way to go about this or maybe i at least need to take a a more third person look at how this could possibly affect the way she feels about herself and her eating for the rest of her life like i i shouldn’t take it so lightly or just say oh it’s a family joke it must be good because it’s inclusive yeah and so after the podcast i went home i don’t know if it was that day or the next day and started looking into like is it healthy for you know maybe they’re because i think you had brought up like maybe there’s a reason kids that you know at 11 12 years old shouldn’t be exercising so i thought i don’t really know if that’s true so let me look into that and see and so i started you know doing some reading and doing and no one had a definitive answer on what age kids are supposed to start exercising or not but one of the big things that i read multiple times was exactly that about you know stressing more the health versus the body image stuff um and i think i’ve done that already like i’ve i’ve never tried to tell my son like oh you’re fat you know what i mean it’s not really that it’s it’s more for me i’ve approached it from the you know the lack of activity like they know me i’m very active i do stuff all the time i’m not a sit around couch potato kind of person um i like to do outdoor activities yard work whatever i just like to stay active um and so i try to push that more so than the body but it really made me aware like i gotta i need to be ultra uh aware of my language when i’m talking to him and and really try to be conscious of what i say because i’m a person who weight has never been an issue you know just never has been if anything it was the other way like i was always super skinny and felt like i was you know too skinny you know get the nickname you know string bean and stuff like that so skinny bones yeah so i’ve never had to deal with being overweight and you know so i can tend to be less sensitive just because i don’t have that experience so i try to be really aware of that um and then i know with our kids they’ve been different at different ages like you know my middle daughter was i don’t know i’m gonna say heavy but she was heavier when she was young now she’s hit puberty and she’s matured out and she’s good healthy weight very active you know what i mean right i wouldn’t call her my oldest daughter is very skinny you know and i think that’s just her frame and her build and my middle daughter’s different i know my son’s going to be different and i’m okay with that um i’m not i i think it is important though at some point weight does affect health you know what i mean it’s one thing to be whatever let’s say 5 10 15 pounds overweight and it’s another thing to be obese where you can cause yourself respiratory and heart issues no absolutely absolutely and that’s kind of what we learned in the biology of obesity class was that like the recommended weight is actually not the healthiest weight for people it’s actually the one above that is what they’re finding people live longer at that step just above that that like semi-obese or whatever it’s called i don’t remember at this point but then as you go up levels from there to to obesity and and like you know real struggles with obesity that’s the highest level that i’m obviously not describing well because words are not with me this morning but those do really come with a lot of complications for hearts for breathing for all kind of internal organ problems and diseases and so it’s just an interesting thing man it’s something we got to be real careful of the messages we send and and i know society sends those messages plenty right they’re going to get them a lot and and some of that gets even mirrored from me without me even you know that whole idea of when i’m being an unconscious person i’m just giving them exactly what i got right the same messages i got from society it’s interesting you also mentioned there that like you’ve always been skinny and so it’s easy to take it for granted and i just always takes me back when people say something like that to i constantly when i just do something well out of my nature for whatever [ _ ] reason i’m blessed to do this one thing well i just question why the [ _ ] everyone else came right okay i got my struggles they’re just not there right and so why can’t i just be more understanding that everybody has that struggle area um when it’s funny and just not to harp on that’s too long but for me it’s the healthy eating thing eating healthy is so [ _ ] hard because i don’t put on weight i can eat cheeseburgers and fast food and cheesesteaks and french fries and i don’t put on weight and people be like oh that’s wonderful well no it’s not [ _ ] wonderful because i still have you know i can still get you know cholesterol and diabetes and all these other heart ailments you know those things don’t just kill overweight people they kill you know skinny people too that’s like going to the bar and having a drink and nothing happens it’s almost the worst thing that can happen because it’s that false sense of security that ah this is fine there’s no external difference i must be healthy internally too and it’s and i kept hearing my whole life oh when you get older when you get older when i’m [ _ ] 45 years old i can still eat like [ _ ] every day and i don’t i’m still super thin you heard it here first so but but i mean what i mean is i know the importance of eating well and it’s such a struggle to try to do it you know it’s it’s hard i find it hard to eat well one when i’m less active i’m like when i’m active and i’m trying to do some kind of healthy routine of activity i find that it’s easier for me to eat in line with that because i’m like oh yeah i gotta eat to fuel this this certain thing i did uh and when i don’t it’s like i might as well just eat what the [ _ ] ever but then if i have whatever it’s hard for me to want to go back to the healthy thing because the billion dollars they’ve spent you know creating this flavor is [ _ ] incredible oh yeah it’s really good sugar ah sugar and fat together it’s so good um we i got an email moving on a little bit we got an email from christina and she wanted to reach out and just tell us that she had found us on instagram and started listening and she really really loved the the podcast that resonated with her she binged a few episodes and she step 8 was the one she listened to last and she talked about making the list she was said she was only on step four but it really helped her to hear about the steps she feels like she’s coming right up on it um and she liked the episode about spiritual not religious too she’s got about six months sober congratulations christina i really appreciate the email hopefully she reaches back out to us we reached out to her to get some more information but it’s always nice to hear that i was actually having a bad day when that email came through and i i didn’t get to read it right that second but i read like the the highlights you see in your notifications you know the first little paragraph from it and it it brightened my day a little it was like man okay because sometimes i get like why are we still doing this we should [ _ ] this podcast right now like that’s why we do it we do it because you know it helps us and and hopefully some other people get helped well and to be honest you know i think we just talked about this this morning like for me a lot of this is i just like getting together with you and talking about recovery [ _ ] and it helps me it’s a part of my process you know my commitment to my recovery but also my growth and development you know as a person in recovery like we talk about some deep [ _ ] and then you know like the honesty thing then we go home and it helps me reflect of like hey do i wanna you know am i okay with this little bit of dishonesty in my life because that’s what the [ _ ] it is right and if i don’t come say it to you i’ll justify that [ _ ] in my head and then we’ll be off at the [ _ ] planet fitness lying on application right everybody it’s okay right those are not things that i want to do so i hope that it gets popular and people get something out of it but i just enjoy getting together and talking about recovery [ _ ] i know and if you don’t think we like talking uh youtube now i mean the episodes are extended already like way too far we’re always like oh yeah let’s cap it between an hour and hour and fifteen and like an hour and forty and then if you go on youtube and watch it we don’t even edit the video so you’ll see that we talked for at least an hour before this and that whole time we’re like man we should really start to [ _ ] podcast um so anyway that’s a little bit of wrap up from last week if you didn’t listen to honesty go listen to it of course you know join our conversations and have your input that’s facebook instagram twitter wherever you’re at on social media we’re there too [ _ ] reddit whatever we’ll find you you’ll find us um and and you know have a say in this we love to hear from people we like other opinions it gives us more to reflect on and think about uh so now getting more to the topic of today which we don’t actually have a topic topic but uh i’m going to start with a story and so if you don’t want to hear me deviate from the story 46 times go ahead and skip forward so you can hear billy again last night i had to go share a meeting i went i shared it went pretty well uh the last guy that shared from the floor was talking about a situation where the night previously he had played with his grandkids all day uh his daughter’s children and then he returned them at like seven o’clock so he could hit a meeting and he returned him to the father and you know the father had relapsed recently but he seemed to be in all right shape like he’s still taking care of the kids and so he returned him to the father they had a little conversation the father said he was just drinking and that was at seven o’clock and he went off to the meeting his daughter got off work at 11 she came home and he had overdosed and he and he has passed and he was just sharing like some ideas about the pain that’s left behind like yeah his pain is gone now but it’s all the pain left behind for the grandkids and for his daughter and just how [ _ ] abruptly this changes lives right and it was sad to hear um but i i’m leaving the meeting right after he shares that and i have a text and it’s it’s my wife and she’s like oh my god we got to talk when you get home um when are you getting home you know that kind of thing and so i texted her i’m like is everybody okay and she you know she’s like yeah the kids are fine me and my parents and your mom and my grandmother we’re all right like just when are you getting home we need to talk and listen i’m not trying to pickle my wife but she’s done this before about you know wanting to change the [ _ ] color of the bathroom so i i tried not to stress too much about it it was like a 20-minute drive home and what i thought about during that drive home was i’m about to find out information that might change my life right and i don’t know how big or small that may be maybe you know they took the bank took money from us or maybe somebody gave us some money i don’t know um but what is it like to be me right now before this life-changing news comes and i don’t know it just seemed like an interesting thing to ponder since i didn’t know what the [ _ ] i was coming home to and uh and i get home and we walk out back and uh my my oldest daughters my twins have a different mother um and she’s been caught up in using for as long as i can remember right she she had the girls early on and then it became obvious that she was using and so i just took them and didn’t give them back and you know they’ve seen her sometimes since then in the years since on and off when she’s doing better i guess um haven’t really seen her much for quite a long time i think the last time we saw her was right around last christmas we went down to you know see my mom who still lives in the same neighborhood that i grew up in and we watched the christmas parade and she came and you know hung out with us during that um but apparently uh and and we don’t know why even though we probably know why but she’s she’s transitioned she’s deceased she’s no longer with us and like in that moment of that information it’s like how the [ _ ] am i gonna tell my daughters that their mother’s dead right and i don’t know and at the same time i’m like well i don’t want to sit here until i [ __ ] figure it out like they need to know now not later like they deserve to know and so it’s just a matter of calling them outside and and and telling them and uh
what a hard thing to do yeah you know i i didn’t have to go through that like my parents gave me enough trauma in my childhood but they were alive and uh how do you tell your kid that their parents not here anymore and uh i don’t know like i it didn’t really hit me then in the moment i was actually like beating myself up for not feeling more about it uh and apparently i’m feeling a little bit now but i don’t know man where the [ _ ] do you go from there like i and my mother’s like you know we kind of knew this was going to happen yeah maybe but i kind of i always hoped for the [ _ ] redemption story that i got blessed with right i always hoped that she would just pull out of it and make my life a pain in the ass for making me have to drive down there to see her and drop the kids off and she would do better and they’d be she’d be able to apologize to him for missing so much of their life and that shit’s not going to happen now i i don’t know uh i’ll let you talk for a minute yeah so you know addiction is [ __ ] taking a lot of people i mean again i don’t know if that’s exactly what did it but you know it whether it takes people you know literally through death or it just uh negates their ability to have relationships either way i don’t know i guess when people are still alive there’s always a hope that things are going to get better and there’s a hope that you know it’s it’s going to change whereas once you know they’re actually dead that doesn’t happen anymore um but we’ve seen over the years and dealing with you know my stepdaughter she’s
her father is in and out of addiction and in and out of her life over the years i mean i’ve been in this girl’s life for 20 years now and there’s been times where her dad has done really well and he’s been actively involved and really engaged with her and then times where he’s [ _ ] not around and nobody’s even talked to him for years and it’s devastating to her when he’s not around and as much as i can think whatever i want about the guy whether i think he’s a piece of [ _ ] or whether i think he’s okay or or whatever um to to her you know he’s always a [ _ ] hero you know i’m still just the stepdad and that’s fine i don’t i used to be resentful about that i’m not anymore and i realized like with parents like i don’t know i’ve just always believed no one can take the place of your parents people can try and they can still love you and they can take care of you and you can have step parents that are amazing um but there’s something there with that relationship you know with an actual biological parent you know that’s that means something to people uh and i don’t get it i don’t know the science behind it if there is even anybody but there’s a relationship there that that matters in some way um and you know that this this guy always held a special place in her heart and when he’s doing well and things are good we’ve spent christmases together and we’ve done things together and then there’ll be times where she gets super upset you know where’s my dad what’s he doing i haven’t talked to him in two years you know we don’t [ _ ] know um and that’s got to be really really difficult for your daughters now you know to to lose someone who again i don’t quite understand why whether she has been there or not to them that’s a meaningful relationship you know it carries some weight yeah yeah it does i mean uh you know we’ve known for the past few months and and the hardest i guess one of the hard parts for me not the hardest but one of the hard parts for me is like she reached out a few months ago and said oh my god i haven’t been in touch with you all because i was in the hospital going through this thing i had a stroke whatever and for me knowing my addict tendencies and the general tendencies of other people in active addiction that may or may not be true right like maybe i was just too busy using to text you and now i need a good excuse so i was in the hospital and but i i i tried to take it seriously to the best of my ability and i’m like all right well let’s find out if we can go see her and at some point she ended up in a like a nursing home type environment and we were getting ready to go see her and it was all planned out and we actually left the house and started driving down 95 and she hadn’t texted him back and then before we even hit the first exit like she texted him it was like oh i can’t have visitors and so we had to turn around and that was like really disappointing for him um and then since then i’ve tried to make the effort to ask regularly like is she in a hospital right now is she somewhere we can go see her like i want and i feel like they wanted that too and it just never they never got that visit and it’s like do you regret that the rest of you like i don’t know man there’s just so much to this [ _ ] but it all comes back to [ _ ] drugs or killing people yeah like this is a serious problem and and we can say how we feel about medically assisted treatments or you know this that or the other but even with that like she was on methadone at one point in time according to her again i i only know so much uh that what i get through you know conversations and and what is true and not but she was on that and it still wasn’t the answer really so it’s like it comes down to well what the [ __ ] do we do like how do we help how do we have i mean i’ve dated women over the years who i know died at like 30 or younger from complications or from the disease and and there’s millions of these people who leave behind kids that are going to be raised by not their biological parents and it’s like what what do we do for these people like how do we help with this kind of grief and this kind of tragedy oh well that’s difficult you know i think yeah loaded question yeah that’s that’s tough there’s
when people die and and this is for i guess i’m gonna say this part would probably be more for the non-attic audience or whatever but when people die whether they’re addicts or not like that death it still hurts a lot of people you know they still have people that love them whether they deserve to be loved or not doesn’t matter you know people still love them they’re still someone’s kid they’re still someone’s parent they’re still someone’s brother sister and you know when those people die it usually hurts or leaves a loss in someone’s life and any efforts that we can do to love and support people that are using to get into treatment you know are are worth it that’s my pitch there um i don’t necessarily there’s there’s lines you got to draw for enabling and stuff like that but as far as trying to get people into any kind of treatment or any kind of recovery or any kind of push towards you know the right path whether it be you know medicated assisted treatment or counseling or you know whatever inpatient or outpatient even if they’ve been before like just don’t give up keep encouraging them hey you’ve been to [ _ ] rehab seven times maybe an eighth time maybe eight’s the trick you know who knows because there are people out there that have that story that i’ve been to treatment i don’t know how many times i’ve been in and out of counseling i’ve been to methadone five times and then that one time they get it um but again not to beat it you know dead horse but we know that shaming people and guilting them and trying to you know look what you’re doing to your family look what you’re doing to your children look at you know shaming and guilting and beating them up over their using doesn’t work um but as far as the the loss i think it’s important that as a recovery community we try to set up uh i don’t know what you want to call it like groups or supports to be like uh empathetic to be uh loving and caring towards these people even though they might have overdosed and died that that we still try to do our part um i know with my daughter stepfather and it sounds like with your uh daughter’s mother that you try to encourage and keep pushing that relationship um i’ll be honest in the beginning i didn’t i i was like [ _ ] that guy he doesn’t deserve to be around he’s not paying any child support he’s not doing anything i’m paying for this kid you know what i mean [ _ ] him um and that’s how i felt you know because i was raising this kid and i didn’t feel like that was my responsibility and feel like that was fair you know here i am getting my [ _ ] together i mean i was still early in recovery you know i’m still getting my life together and i got to work and pay for my kids and i’m paying for his kid and he’s out [ _ ] getting high you know i was angry um and it was my wife that got me to understand like no matter what she never wanted to be an impediment to the relationship between his her daughter and the child you know what i mean like the daughter and her ex-husband and that that needed to that relationship needed its own uh space beyond you know my ego and her ego and whatever we felt like we [ _ ] were entitled to or deserved that for her daughter’s sake that we needed to do whatever we could to encourage and and build that relationship and we did you know when we did and if it sounds like from what you’re saying is you know at least within the last couple months or i don’t know historically but if you were doing that for your daughters like that’s the best thing you can do for them uh we don’t get to control the outcomes of how that goes you know it still may never be not you know still may never happen the way that our kids hope they would um but you know i think our part at least mine as a step parent or yours as a parent is is not to be an impediment to those relationships right uh let’s uh paul is here for our break obviously i know complete change of tone there’s a rubber ducky race which doesn’t sound we’re a little somber for a [ _ ] rubber ducky race but um we’re never too somber for a rubber ducky race that’s coming up i think what i’ll do because i’ve made it impossibly hard to describe the google search is just i’ll put the link to the page where you [ _ ] buy a rubber ducky on our show notes and then you can just look under the podcast and click the link and it’ll be easier to find so hopefully i’ll remember to do that but uh that’s coming up so get your your five dollar duck i believe it is i i will say right now if i win just inspired by this moment i’m gonna give that money to some recovery resource or people that are trying to help probably voices of hope because we love them um because it just seems really important right this moment so we’ll take a break and we’ll be right back
yeah gosh then you pull and see the 50-something crosses out i’m about to bring that up too
when is that at the end of the month they’re gonna stand on the corner or something the signs i think oh i’m not sure i think i read that they’re going to have those out there for a month and then at the end of the month they’re going to like hold signs up and stand outside i meant to email and ask how old you had to be for that i’m always trying to figure out because a lot of things you got to be 18 for him yeah get old
i mean what the [ __ ] maybe that gives them some kind of purpose i don’t know i feel like it’s useful
heavy topic it’s not fun i don’t want to be serious i’m going to be [ __ ] goofy
yeah [ __ ] death sucks
but even when you expect it you don’t expect that you know and of course i want to say and i know someone’s going to say it like that something dies so that others may live oh that [ _ ] like can i just want to get like well shove that up your ass because we’ll go die though [ _ ]
uh so i don’t know where to take this i got a couple things that you had said that stuck out to me that i wanted to bring up and i mean do we take it in the direction of like i want to say i would like to i mean there are things that help unfortunately and they’re not the [ _ ] easy things that’s the hard thing and i learned this from my sister it’s like what helps is [ _ ] talking about the dead people with the people that were affected by the death and it seems like it doesn’t because it seems like it makes them sad and it seems like it brings them down but like for my sister with my nephew like just talking about him knowing that like he was a person that meant something to people and that his life [ _ ] mattered and that he was you know that he existed you know because the easier thing to do is just not even to bring it up to not to talk about it to act like they’re just not here anymore and that’s that um that’s easy the people that don’t love those people you know what i mean and like my sister will say like yes not always easy to talk about him but she never regrets it you know it’s never like oh don’t talk about them like no [ _ ] now like
that sucks i feel like that’s hard i mean and and not just well i’ll save that for when we get in yeah that’s what i mean it’s not the easy but it’s the [ __ ] hardest thing to do it’s the hardest part you know
all right ready
okay back and talking about unfortunately sadder or darker topics than we usually like to we like to keep it light and and you know i will continue to try to uh in spite of so you had mentioned you know the talk about uh not really wanting you know your daughter your stepdaughter’s father to be in her life or the entitlement or all that and i look i’ve definitely i can relate i’ve had that i’ve had the selfish thought because you know i didn’t want to deal with any kind of court or custody battles before like man and this was i don’t know ten seven some kind of years ago but the definitely the selfish thought of god if she wasn’t here it would be so much easier wouldn’t have to worry about any of that wouldn’t have to drive them over the you know rainbow to [ _ ] see her from time to time when she pops up and decides to rearrange my life because now i got to take them to see her because of course she doesn’t have a car she’s just getting clean or not clean even at times um oh god we got to go do this we got to go do that man my life would be easier if she wasn’t here i’ve had that [ _ ] thought right but thank god to a program that’s allowed me to know that that’s a really selfish thought when i think it and not follow through with it right i i have been bitter at times about her lack of involvement god i remember when i first got my daughters she was claiming them on some kind of pennsylvania you know assistance that she was getting a check for so here she is getting a check and in it probably on drugs and here i am with my daughters and i apply for like maryland assistance and they won’t give it to me because i can’t prove that she doesn’t have them even though they’re with me all the time and it’s like yeah there’s some bitterness in there at times right but i i have done my best i made it a personal point because i’ve seen other people operate in this way that i was not going to ever let that come into my conversations with them right that was going to be something that i could be bitter about somewhere else and i could talk about with my sponsor or my wife or whoever but when i talked to them i was never going to paint her in a bad light for the struggle she had and and thank [ _ ] god right those are the kind of things like you said that bring me a little bit of relief now like i’ve i did my best to try to facilitate some kind of relationship between them and i never made her out to be any kind of bad guy it was just somebody who’s struggling and hopefully she can get it together um part of the the problem with that like the the hope right and like you mentioned we if they’re still alive we can live with this this hope that one day they get it one day they wake up whatever it is that that happened for us right that i kind of almost have the the survivor’s guilt of like well why the [ _ ] did i get it and she couldn’t like i don’t know right i didn’t do anything different than her i don’t know why this clicked for me and and it didn’t for her but
should we even like the hope is almost harder right like we live with this hope and maybe it’s because we’re hoping for a particular outcome maybe the hope just needs to be more garden variety like generalized hope that i’ll get through life or that i’ll be able to be happy in spite of these tough times that i go through or so maybe you need to watch more star wars because they’ll give you a good idea hope always comes at the end of struggles you got to go through the major struggle before you can get you know before you really experience hope know it’s like um no but that was a bad joke but you know
first thing you know with a lot of these relationships when we try to maintain them with people that are maybe actively using because we have to or whatever well we don’t have to we choose to um for in our case what i didn’t get in the beginning and you had touched on it there with the selfish part is that it’s not really about me and what i want it’s about you know the the kid and what they want you know and for your kids you know what you did what was best for them not necessarily for you know their mother i mean you’re not doing it for her right she’s indirect she gets indirect benefit from you loving your kids and trying to you know do those things for them um one small disclaimer i would say though is there are some parents out there that are maybe dangerous or put their kids at risk or do some things that that aren’t healthy um and i think those are boundaries that individuals need to make when i say you should do whatever you can to maintain these relationships i think it should be when they are you know safe and and you’re not putting your kids in some sort of harm’s way you know what i mean you don’t want to ignore obvious warning signs i can’t tell you how many nights i prayed before i took him to see her that like is this the right [ _ ] thing to do because i don’t know her level of wherever she’s at and i don’t know how safe they are at times and i’m really trusting that she’s at least in a place where they’ll be able to come back alive right and that requires discernment and and knowing you know there’s there’s other options too of saying hey maybe we can all go somewhere together for a couple of hours we can go to a park we can go to whatever we can go do something outside somewhere where you can hang out with them and be together with them you know those are things that i think we need to be aware of with using people because not everybody using is safe and and some of these people even again i know me with the best intentions you know probably still when i was using would put my kids in the car with me drunk you know and think that i was fine and think that it was fine for them um but you know again we gotta try to think of the kids seem to be for me one of the most innocent victims in most of this addiction story that we hear so often and and when i see families you know and they have kids young kids you know especially once it’s like when they’re so young they might get through it okay then they get to that middle age between like five to like 15 which seems to be probably the most critical age of you know they really are aware of what’s going on with their parents i mean they’re not aware enough to know how to get the needs met but they’re aware enough to know that they’re not getting what the [ _ ] they need out of life and uh you know you see kids really harmed by addiction in that time frame um and it sucks you know it it sucks it’s like what do we do for kids that families are using what do we do for kids that parents overdose and die to to get them into loving environments um what seems to happen now is it ends up you know these people use and they die and then that burden falls on either the other parent that’s remaining or grandparents or the social services system um and that you know it was one of the things that inspired me we didn’t follow through on it we may at some point but like my wife and i thought about getting into foster parenting um to become foster parents and at the foster parent meeting they actually said yeah with the rate of addiction and overdose right now we are overwhelmed like in cecil county the foster care system is overwhelmed with kids direct result of addiction and using and it’s [ _ ] sad you know it’s really sad that these kids are these innocent victims in all of this one of the uh incredible things that actually is going on right now with cecil county is they have a what’s called the trauma grant for short and basically any child that’s affected by substance use in any way shape or form is provided the county the grant pays for therapy for them through a local clinic that we have they’re allowed to go see a therapist and it covers that and as long as a kid is being seen anybody in that immediate family can be seen and i say immediate i mean grandparents whoever it is that’s helping with the kid like as long as the kid is being taken care of first because that’s what the grant is most about it extends to all kinds of people in that family and so a much needed service right something that a lot of these people probably wouldn’t be able to get you’ve got retired grandparents trying to care for their grandkids and might not have the medical coverage or whatever it is that they would need or the money to get them into therapy and now they’re getting you know first-class therapy treatment which is great and yet in you know working with that counseling center knowing like a lot of the people that come in um and not to speak about any in specific but just the fact that in general that population man needs so much help like there’s so much devastation from the loss of parents and then you got the grandparent who doesn’t have the means to raise kids whether it be their age they’re just too old to deal with like that’s a big generation gap right uh whether it be the financial aspects of it whether it be their lifestyle maybe they’re still trying to work but now they got to take care of a kid and get them to school at the same time the anger they’re dealing with about losing their kid to the disease of addiction whether that be physically through through a death or like you said just the fact that they’re not around so they might as well be you know let’s say might as well be dead but they for all intents and purposes they have no contact so that’s not any use to you and so you’ve got the grandparent dealing with that anger and yet still trying to raise a kid and i don’t know it’s hard for me to relate to my kids right much less another generation removed where they’re coming from a completely different place and so just the the conflict in these families and also you know the unspoken thing and i’m not trying to bash any grandparent that’s trying to raise a kid right now that that they have to add a necessity but chances are and this might sound awful chances are the parent that was using it had something to do with the trauma that came from their childhood home which was where the grandparent was and now we’re throwing the kid right into that [ _ ] same lions den and it’s like it’s a brutal situation man it’s tragic yeah i i don’t have the answers for that i just i mean at least the grant’s there and they get to see therapy yeah well i mean i think they’re one of the answers is you know recovery whatever we can do to get people in recovery i mean hopefully with this situation like you’re in recovery now you’re stable now in your life you can provide this love and support you and your wife and you know can help to raise your girls in a healthy environment you know hope it’s healthy i don’t know i mean talk like it’s healthy i’ll pretend it is um you know that you can provide that stability in that so that even if they didn’t get it from their mother they at least get some semblance of normalcy in a stable household and and all that um just like you said i think breaking these chains of
cycles of use and addiction and you know abuse like trying to break that cycle is critical you know it’s critical whether that comes from you know a parent getting in recovery or grandparents or family members you know getting those kids out of that environment you know i don’t know that’s what’s really hard i i look at i think one of the hardest parts for me is like what to do now right um i you know i’ve dealt with [ _ ] scrapes and bruises and you know you give your kid a hug and put a bandaid on and and they feel better later or or some minor you know emotional hurts probably more what i’ve dealt with is having to apologize for damaging emotionally my kids right when i’m a jerk for a few minutes and i lose troll control of myself but like how do you [ _ ] console somebody that’s lost a parent and i i guess that’s exacerbated for me from losing my father at 26 and how devastating it was for me and knowing that nothing anybody said [ _ ] helped at all like i really just wanted to tell people to shut the [ _ ] up no matter what they said oh i’m sorry oh i went through it too oh and i’m like shut the [ _ ] up i hate everybody right now like i just don’t i’m so angry at the world for robbing me of my father in the relationship i had with him and like so what the [ _ ] do you do for somebody when you know nothing works right and you mentioned something uh in the break yeah so in talking with my sister uh my sister my nephew was actually killed by and well i’m gonna call him an addict i don’t know if he was an addict it was a guy who was using all you know strung out on pain meds and alcohol and he actually had his license revoked because he was on his fifth or sixth dui and you know was anyway he ran a red light and killed her son at 17 and uh she now actually runs a support group for families of overdose people so even though her son was killed by an addict you know or someone that was using you know she’s found a way to take that pain and and try to help other people um but in talking with her over the years like one of the things that she’s talked about is you know it’s it’s good to talk about those people you know even though it sometimes can be hard and difficult and painful like she doesn’t mind if i call up and say hey i was thinking about you know christopher today or i know today it was his birthday so i call her on his birthday um around the holidays to like bring him up to mention his name things like that like that is for a like emotionally uh challenged person like myself like that’s the hardest [ _ ] thing in the world like i want nothing more than to avoid any sort of deep emotional conversation most of the time um but those things are meaningful you know to the people that lost someone uh for your daughters it may just be you know maybe now or soon saying hey look you know i know this is hard for you guys if you ever have any questions about your mom or things you want to know or or things you know that i can help you with you know that that line of communication should always be open feel like you can talk to me about it i’ll tell you what i know i’ll share with you what i can right and so and that’s where i was alluding to this gets trickier for me and and even more difficult than it already is just to have these awkward conversations i you know when we first told him my wife and i basically each just grabbed one and hugged them and and and held them um because what the [ _ ] else do you do right and they kind of gathered themselves a little bit after some time and went inside and just you know chilled in their room which isn’t anything out of the ordinary they’re teenagers they spend most of their time in their room um and when we were putting my sons to bed we i went in and just sat with them for a few minutes and basically just let them know exactly that look i’m across the [ _ ] hall like i i don’t care if you want to talk at me i don’t care if you want me to just [ _ ] babble for a while i don’t care if you want to sit in the same room and look at our phones together so you’re not alone like i’m right across the [ _ ] hall it doesn’t matter when come knock on the door and and we can do whatever right but the tricky and difficult part for me when you talk about talking somebody is that uh due to my acting out in you know different forms of of addiction uh i i don’t know their mother that well to be completely frank right um she was from my neighborhood like we had kind of had some interactions while we were using just here and there running crossing paths um at one point she was trying n a for a while and and i ended up relapsing or i was just coming back from i don’t even remember the whole exact story but like i ended up in prison and she ended up in a detox and we were like pen pals for a little while and then i wasn’t even out of prison yet i was actually in like a halfway house but still locked up and i got a pass to leave and i went and visited her in a detox and we had sex on a [ _ ] tree stump on a walk like we we did not have the relationship where i can have like three years of knowledge to draw and to say oh your mother did this and she liked this and i don’t know much about her right this was a uh an unfortunate circumstance where where i don’t have the answers that they seek for a lot of it right like i never even their mother was very unclear about how old she was like we were debating what year she was born at one point like she wasn’t even sure and so they’re going to have this list of questions that i wish i could provide more information about and honestly the tragedy of addiction right there’s nobody [ _ ] left that knows uh their mother was one of four sisters um one who has a uh you know lives with a mental situation who’s still never evolved and grew up basically still very young-minded even in an adult body the other two sisters besides their mother have already died from this disease of addiction the the mother of them the grandmother is already passed on like there’s nobody [ _ ] left to even neighbor like is there going to be a funeral or a viewing i’m like probably not like who the [ _ ] would put it on right who would do this kind of thing my wife’s like well maybe we should uh claim that i’m like how can we can we clean the ashes i don’t [ _ ] know like i don’t have any ties to this lady per se like my daughters might maybe she’s got an older son somewhere that nobody ever talked like it’s just so [ _ ] dysfunctional the whole disease has been like through the whole family like wildfire and what’s left is this tragic end of them not feeling any ability to find out more information or know any more about her and so that’s where like i’m willing to walk through the difficult conversation but i just feel like i i’m useless and don’t have the information yeah so and this is hard for i think you and me because we’re analytical people but having the answers isn’t always the point of the conversation you know i mean it’s that listening and caring and you know sometimes saying i don’t know like that’s that’s an okay answer it’s not for [ _ ] me ever then you know i don’t know it’s never good enough but apparently for emotional people that is okay
because what they really want is just to know that you care that you’re listening that what they think or feel matters you know and and you know some of those tough conversations you know might be like hey i don’t do you guys have an interest in getting your ashes would you like to try to do something maybe they would maybe they wouldn’t um and then if they say yes then say well i you know i don’t know how this is gonna go i’ve never done this before you better start doing your chores but you know what i mean like and just being honest and and at some point i probably probably say not right now but at some point in the future like that conversation about how addiction you know ravages families is probably a conversation worth having you know just to see like look this is when we start using and heading down this path like this is the result you know i don’t know about you but i had this glorious uh i don’t know what you want to call it like hollywood uh you know grunge music version of using that you know we were all gonna get high and be somber and you know [ _ ] was gonna be fun right you know and and the reality was never laid out to me in a way that might have been helpful and i don’t know if i was ready to hear it at 15 16 17 years old um but because no one ever wanted to have those conversations because it was easier to avoid you know and just to tell me well you’re not supposed to do that if you do that you’re gonna go to jail and you know those kind of things you know my parents never had an honest my mom was raised in a household with a guy who was an alcoholic that was abusive and violent and died of violent death and she would never have an honest conversation about what that was like her upbringing any of that stuff i don’t know if it would have influenced me at all but i it could have happened you know what i mean like and we don’t know what helps people find recovery we don’t know what helps people stay you know like hey maybe that’s not such a great idea um what i do think and time back into our question of last week is like uh dishonesty or painting some rose-colored picture you know and ignoring the reality and ignoring the the honest results of addiction don’t [ _ ] help yeah i so i don’t know my experience was and i don’t know that anybody told me i don’t know that anybody in my household was specific enough to know you know i don’t know if they were informed to say oh well this is the kind of path addiction takes and this is where it leaves families and blah blah but i know the old timers when i was like a rookie at using in my neighborhood and running the streets the old-timers in the neighborhood informed me you don’t want to do this son that’s a [ _ ] terrible idea you’re going to end up here or here or here where everybody that uses ends up and i was like ah that ain’t going to happen to me that’s what you [ _ ] idiots did right like i’m too smart or good or young or not caught up for that like i had every reason why it wouldn’t be me um and not that i won’t take the time to you know try to get as detailed and and explain as much as possible with them i just don’t know i don’t know what kind of track record that has for helping people who know it all maybe that’s the difference of what people find recovery and what people don’t because so many people are introduced to recovery and not everybody gets it and we don’t know what things lead to you know why some people get it and some don’t like you said we don’t know why it sticks to some and not to others but maybe some of those stories of you know this is what really happens this is the outcomes of living this way you know and you know who knows that could be it planting a seed right there’s a seed planted there you mentioned the i don’t know i’ve actually uh i’ve found that to be a cheat code in my life lately for real uh yeah i don’t like not knowing but i found with most of my kids questions about anything throughout a day if i just say i don’t know i don’t have to [ __ ] think about it or answer it i’m like man this is great can i get on the xbox i don’t know can i eat i i don’t know you should probably ask your mother i’m kind of being a shitty person with it honestly pushing it all on my wife oh there’s a follow-up to that is then you gotta teach them how to learn or how to know no i’m just going with i don’t know the cheat code to parenting i don’t know um you mentioned your your sister you know finding purpose and i feel like if i can give my kids anything through this what i really want to give them is
my not my understanding of a higher power but the idea that it’s useful to have some understanding of something and i know from your standpoint that’s not particularly a god but just a belief in something right something that gives our life meaning and purpose and uh i’d love to give them a way to turn this pain into a purpose right i feel like the people who most excel at life after tragedy are the ones who find a way to use that tragedy to fuel purpose in their life and so i i don’t know how exactly to do that um you know we mentioned we we pull into the place where we record this morning and i guess it’s overdose awareness month which i should probably know this kind of [ _ ] being a podcaster of recovery topics but they’ve got you know 50 crosses out on their front lawn to represent the people who’ve overdosed in the last year in in our small county alone and uh you know i think they’re going to hold signs up on the last day of the month as cars drive by to try to raise awareness uh and like could they do something like that would they find any purpose in that or would they find purpose in helping people who struggle or i i don’t know right my the general purpose i find in everything for my life is somehow through the whatever tragic feeling or whatever that’s going on when i get to the other side i’m able to share with somebody who’s going through it after me um and so maybe that’s what their purpose could be right helping the people that that lose people after them once they’ve gotten to a better place i i don’t know how to give that but i just find that that’s so crucial to have meaning yeah and i don’t know i and i should know this but i don’t know if there is either around here or around uh regionally if there are support groups for children of addicts who have overdosed you know i know there’s for there’s uh why is the names escaping me the group that my sister runs it’s typically the parents of um people that have overdosed but i think that’s parents and family members but i don’t know if they have a lot of young people participate in those meetings as well but you figure teens or or kids would have a different perspective you know yeah different kind of support that’s interesting there is a uh a grief group at the counseling center that i’m familiar with but i don’t know if they take any kids into theirs either i just don’t know and that’s like you said uh there’s some relief in that right i’m not [ _ ] supposed to know like nobody gave me the manual to study in a college class like oh hey when your kid’s uh other parent overdoses and dies this is what the [ _ ] you do and how you handle it like i never got that like nobody told me that [ _ ] i i have no clue and that’s it’s okay to have no clue um i will say the blessings of recovery i’m here today right i i am the stable parent they’re not with a grandparent it wasn’t both of us out there using it wasn’t both of us that have passed on um but what that requires is vigilance right because i ain’t immune i could use
this is more purpose for me honestly like this this reignites the fire of bro you need to stay the [ _ ] on top of what you’re doing because you were what they got left and you’re important and it’s it’s always been funny to me because as much of a [ _ ] egomaniac as i tend to be i have seen you know friends or people that i know or people in recovery overdose and use and i’ve seen them overdose and and not use and overdose and wreck their lives and [ _ ] and i have never felt above that you know what i mean like i know the way that i use and the the way that what happens to me once i start down that road is i am not above you know any of the terrible parenting decisions parent you know terrible life decisions that i see people make when they’re using like i will do all of those things and i am grateful that i’m not in denial about that um and you know i we talked about i said i don’t know how you describe it maybe somber gratitude but like when i see people overdose and see other people suffer i just think [ _ ] thank god you know that i found this thing called recovery like thank god i’m clean today because that could easily be me and you know whatever is going on in my relationship with my kids and my wife and all that could be 10 times worse if i was using you know or non-existent right right yeah one of the things i’ve always gotten and found to be the most powerful so my kids uh all came after my my recovery started um you know they still got some really shitty parts of me early on for sure but like hopefully i continue to grow and change that and give them better parts of me that are coming out but when people share in a meeting about the ways they interacted with their kids during active addiction or drug use whatever you’d like to call it i’ve always found that to be some of the most powerful things for me and messages that really hit like deep in my soul because i’m like it’s never been what a piece of [ _ ] you are for sharing that or doing that it’s always been [ _ ] that’s the guy i would be that’s exactly who i would be and one in particular always stands out my friend bobby she shares about how she left one day she left like a seven-year-old in charge of a two-year-old and she left to get what she needed to do that day to get well and when she got home the first thing she saw was uh it was one of those stand-up plastic you know seats that you feed babies in jesus christ a high chair whatever and it was [ _ ] burned up and her heart dropped right and and thankfully her kids were upstairs but she’s like in that moment i didn’t know what the [ _ ] i did i left a seven-year-old in charge of making food for a two-year-old and she’s like i i thought i had like i thought and it always just hurts me inside to think about it and thank god that’s not what happened but it’s like that’s the kind of [ _ ] that keeps me clean man it’s not about just me today right and i’d have never saw that without the program because it was always only about me right that’s all anything was about and and like you said like that’s the blessing of of being able to all this time know their relationship with their mother had nothing to do with me right it was always about like what’s best for them yeah i was silently in my bedroom bitter that their mother didn’t have to do any work and i had to like always transport him and all that [ _ ] and drive four hours to [ _ ] wherever she decided to move this month and but it was never outwardly about me and and thank god dude because that’s not the guy i am right and i don’t know there’s debate about you know who you really are whatever like when i got here that’s not the [ _ ] guy i was i was a selfish self-serving dick and and there’s moments in my life when i’m still that guy there’s a lot of moments in my life that i can just step back and be like who the [ _ ] just said those kind words out of my mouth because i love that person and that’s who i really want to be and i think there’s you know some opportunity with your kids to be like i don’t know what the [ _ ] we’re doing here like this is a new thing for me too and i you know maybe we just walk through this together and we figure it out as we go as a [ _ ] family you know you have two different you know two two daughters or twins they’re probably going to react to it different you know as you’ve said their relationship with their mother was different you know so it’s probably going to affect each of them in a different way um and those are things that there aren’t easy answers to you know there aren’t there are there isn’t like a magic hey we just do this and that takes care of it and we’re good it’s so crazy to learn from from a learning and understanding therapy standpoint to know that they’re going through the exact same emotion and having such different reactions to it and different processes it’s [ _ ] weird and so like i’ve learned about me like my and i know we talk about the stages of grief and how they’re a thing i don’t know i process them i tend to process grief differently so for me usually like whenever a grief thing happens my first go-to is shut off all emotion and what needs to be done now i’m the logistics person in the moment you know what i mean do we need to make [ _ ] arrangements how do we need to get from here to there who needs to do what how do we get this done what do you need and i go into that mode and i get real high functioning for a little bit of time you know however until stuff is done and then once the stuff is all done and things sort of slow down and life starts to get back to normal then like the grief will hit me you know after my mom it was obviously the funeral was tough and that stuff was kind of tough but it really didn’t hit me until you know like a week or so later and once all that stuff was done and life gets back to normal and then you’re like wow this [ _ ] person is gone like they won’t be here anymore right you know and and then i start to process the grief after that um other people it [ _ ] hits them right away and they become you know whatever useless for days you know they just can’t function they can’t even [ _ ] eat they can’t take care of themselves um so even though they have these stages of grief we all go through that [ _ ] different that first version sounds so much like me avoiding a school paper i’m like oh my god i’ll [ _ ] paint the house i’ll chop the tree up out back [ _ ] that paper right i’ll deal with the hard [ _ ] later and that’s kind of exactly what you know some of us choose to do we’ll deal with the harder aspects of it later yeah i don’t have answers um thank god for being in a place where i don’t feel like i have to at all i just i do wish i had like some way forward that i understood and to an extent i do right i had the understanding is to just show up and and be present and check in on them frequently and let them know i’m available and you know if they want to sit in silence i can sit in silence with them i don’t have to feel the need to talk and if they want to talk i can definitely babble away because obviously we we show that i’m good at that um but i still there’s always that search for like ah but there’s got to be a right thing right there’s got to be a right thing to say there’s got to be a next right action and i just don’t think there is in tough situations man it’s like a you know just kind of feel your way through it try to be present with whatever’s going on with whoever needs you and and go from there yeah it’s [ _ ] scary though and that’s the other thing like i know for me i want to always give advice and sometimes giving advice is the worst [ _ ] thing to do sometimes it’s you know the best thing you can do for someone suffering is just to say wow i’m really sorry that sounds like it sucks yeah you know and if either if you need anything if there’s anything i can do for you just let me know but you know that really sucks and and that’s kind of where i’m at right and so we have an 11 year old and a five-year-old and a one-year-old the one-year-old obviously is just gonna be you know toddling around like a baby like she does the five-year-old we’re trying to discuss this with him and explain what they’re going through and how it might be really tough to lose your mommy and all this kind of stuff and and you know he’s like he’s already told my daughter to suck it up and and he said he’s got miracle hugs and if they just hug him for 21 minutes they’ll be fine and i’m like what the [ _ ] do you even do with this guy like i don’t even know i’m like dude the best thing you could do honestly is just shut the [ _ ] up right and he sucks at shutting up he does not stop talking i’m like oh my god this is going to be a tragedy at some point um i don’t know do you have anything else about grief or or death or tragedy or how to [ _ ] help people who we don’t want to lose i don’t know that there’s an answer yet maybe and i think that’s the thing everyone goes through it everyone death is part of life and we all lose people and we all go through it and there’s you know especially for addicts there’s this thing where we just think we’re supposed to [ _ ] avoid it like the plague you know what i mean like like i just want it to go away i just want it to stop and uh you know one of those things is i’ve gotten older in recovery and into meditation it’s like no it’s okay to sit with your feelings and it’s okay to be sad and it’s okay to be in a stage of grief and to [ _ ] miss people you know what i mean like times it hits me i mean i miss my nephew you know we shared a birthday we grew up kind of together my sister had him real young so she lived at home with my parents and me and my brother because she’s older than me um so we he lived with us his first bunch of years of life so i saw him as a baby and watched him grow up and like say we always seem to have a good real i miss him sometimes you know and there are days i give myself the freedom just to miss him whereas in the past i’d be like shut that [ _ ] down i’m at work i’ll [ _ ] i don’t have no time for this same with my mom you know i’ll miss my mom sometimes i’ll just i’ll get sad and i’ll miss her and learning that like it’s okay that’s that’s okay like it’s okay for me to feel that way it’s okay for other people because i used to hate that [ _ ] people put like their facebook post oh i missed my mom today if you lost your mom you can really you know like [ _ ] you you know so dumb you know same suck it up [ _ ] life goes on i think i i’ve probably been just as annoyed by that kind of stuff mine is just for me i think it’s more of a personal thing and so i don’t want to broadcast it i guess maybe that helps some people to broadcast it right i i too i miss my father right it’s been 14 years at this point and it hasn’t really changed the fact that i miss him and i wish i could talk to him um i just i wish there was some maybe is n a not working like we we get that it works for some and not for others we’ve always kind of had that understanding but we’ve never really known why or i don’t think that anything else we’ve come up with yet any of these other recovery modalities that we explore like they all are neat and work for a certain type of person maybe or certain people find them and they work but is there still something left untouched is there still some way that we could truly reach everyone that we’re just missing because these measures work for some um there are i think there are ways we can reach more people i don’t know that it has anything specifically to do with n a n a is its thing and it has a purpose and a structure and a system that works for certain people um i think there are more things we can do in society as far as not you know criminalizing addiction realizing that yes this is a social [ _ ] disease like it’s it’s a sign that our society is sick and that people are [ _ ] hurting you know whether it’s from abuse neglect whatever trauma they suffered whether it’s physical pain emotional pain you know there’s to me these are like when you look at addiction and see like it’s trauma happening in your community and what do we do with that trauma i think where society falls down is you know are we doing enough as a society to reach out to these [ _ ] kids that have lost parents to addiction or do they just get shoved into the social services system and then sent on to you know a foster parent who’s probably trying let’s give them the benefit of that and say they’re even good people but are these people [ _ ] even remotely aware of how to deal with that kind of trauma whatever trauma they’ve come out of and then the trauma of losing a parent or a loved one you know and do we do enough to address those things do we do enough to address you know physical abuse sexual abuse neglect poverty in our communities like it’s such a big thing um and you bring up one of the things that we do know uh in general this isn’t obviously a hundred percent across the board but from like the social work field people get into social work to help others usually because they have a [ _ ] up life that needed help right and so all these people that even go into these court appointed advocates or foster parent roles like they’re usually coming from the best place but they’re also usually trying to fix something with themselves at the same time and so that best intentions doesn’t always play out to be the best position to help someone from and like we know that we know that’s true in a large percentage of people that try to help is they’ve come from a place where they needed help and not all of them have addressed that yet and so all the best intentions in the world they’re still putting somebody you know in the frying pan or in the fire possibly yeah and then you know unfortunately i mean even if you open up every door and every resource to some people they’re just not gonna be willing you know whether it’s they’re not willing to just face the pain and deal with their trauma or whether they’re not they don’t have the ability to [ _ ] be honest with themselves i mean i don’t know you know it’s just nothing’s ever gonna work for everybody so why am i always so [ _ ] surprised by life right like i know shit’s coming that’s how life works uh particularly with uh you know this situation knowing she’s a use an addict and this could very well happen on any given day and somewhat anticipating it even when you know shit’s coming it still feels like such a shock and it’s like how the [ _ ] why can’t i be more in tune with just understanding that the next shock’s on the way
um in fairness to you i think you are because you’ve reacted to all this in a pretty positive way you know we can’t go through life trying to prepare or or be ready to deal with every possible scenario at every moment i mean when i go out of here i’m going to drive my car on a highway probably 65 70 miles an hour and a big giant 7 000 pound steel [ _ ] missile the speed limit is like 55 out there really i don’t care the speed limit let’s 60 let’s say i’ll go 60 be generous but in any case you know and there’s going to be other cars going as fast or faster right next to me in four to seven thousand pound missiles playing on their [ _ ] cell phone or talking to their [ _ ] kid in the back seat or their dogs licking their face you know and like if i drove around on like such high alert of every possibility that was going on while i was driving down the road i would be paralyzed with fear and not be able to function you’d probably be a worse driver yeah but i mean if we go through life in that way like all right it’s today the day that my mom’s gonna die my dad’s gonna die my wife’s to die my kids could uh [ _ ] you know [ _ ] no i totally agree so hyper vigilance is probably not the answer right that’s that seems more of a hindrance than a solution but just in the sense of like every [ _ ] time that life does anything i feel like that meme with the surprise pikachu like and shock all over again like why am i so bad like yes maybe i didn’t know this specific situation was coming or the day but i kind of knew right like why is there oh i don’t know and i don’t think there’s an answer for it i just it badgers the hell out of me that i can’t be just more like okay so it’s like at the beach right i don’t generally turn to face the ocean uh while i’m in the water because then the [ _ ] waves splash me in the face in my eyeballs and [ _ ] so i generally turn with my back towards the waves i don’t see them coming i do know they’re coming right not exactly when but i’m kind of in this like this buoyant sort of i’m ready to go up when the wave comes and go down when it’s not and yeah a couple of them catch me off guard but for the most part like i get the general feeling of going with the ocean right i don’t need to know exactly when it’s coming to sort of be prepared for it and yet i don’t feel that comfortable in life like i feel like i’m just constantly blindsided by [ _ ] and i had no idea it was coming and i’m like why i should have some better idea that it’s going to be up and down well and i think that’s what our recovery practice teaches us is you know not necessarily teaches us how to deal with life it doesn’t necessarily give us the answers it puts us in a position to be able to manage it you know in in some way that hopefully is not harmful to ourselves or others you know like like that’s what i’m trying to do here life’s gonna show up shit’s gonna happen today tomorrow the next day and and how do i deal with it how i can choose to kind of go through it sort of gracefully and kind of with the flow and it doesn’t mean i won’t have ups or downs or get get sort of knocked around a little bit um or i can fight against it the whole time and you know get angry and get miserable and be whatever and and fight it um and recovery i think gives me the tools to just be in position to deal with it to face it and go along with the flow even though the flow isn’t always where i want it to go you know maybe it might be flowing somewhere i don’t want to flow right you know i have tools to deal with that too today so what’s the takeaway here i think for me um i think for me this was a reinforcement that i i’m i’m doing well just for today with this situation right i don’t need to have answers i don’t need to have any real good clear path forward just [ _ ] be available be present know it’s not about me for the most part and just try to reinforce that like i’m here and through this process one day not today obviously but one day we’ll find some meaning and purpose to add to our life from it yeah and knowing that you know loving people sometimes requires us to just be available to listen to be supportive and and not be the guy with all the answers to not be the fit i’m the fixer i’m the fixer and sometimes loving people is about not being the fixer yeah i i think that was one of the most clear things in my understanding last night when i was telling them was that i can’t fix this i’m just not that [ __ ] powerful man very humbling to know that i can’t fix this for my daughters i can just be there so uh with that’s being said i think we’re done here go out love people fix them don’t fix them whatever it is where you’re at just be available and let people know that they matter if you have any ability to to help to still suffer an addict you know do our best to do that and uh please feel free to reach out and and share any of your stories or experience with these types of situation and billy oh yeah i just remember the overdose grief support group uh through voice of hope is called healing hearts um they meet regularly i think it’s every other wednesday they have a schedule it’s on the voices of hope website so if you do have you know a friend or family member or you know loved one that you’ve lost to overdose and you’re looking for a support group there is one out there and if you’re not in our area or they don’t do it virtually i’m sure there’s a whole lot of stuff in other places if you just want to search that up if you weren’t sure it was a thing that existed so with that being said everybody i hope you have a good week and we’ll see you again next week
yeah oddly enough i’ve been like somber as [ _ ] the last couple days anyway yeah i told jen yesterday i was like i was outside working in a yard i was like i made this big fire was burning all this [ _ ] she’s like i said i’m good out here i’m just [ _ ] burning off some of this angst or whatever of course i’ve been watching all this weird [ _ ] i’ve i’ve gone on this you know facebook i mean on facebook netflix uh i don’t know what you want to call it rabbit hole of all like the criminal injustices of like false confessions and wrongly convicted people and [ _ ] overzealous prosecutions that try to get statistics up and all the terrible forensic science that isn’t really science at all it’s just some [ _ ] saying he knows something because he took a 40 hour certification class and now he can testify in court and say no [ _ ] yeah it’s [ _ ] bizarre and then you’re like is that really [ _ ] real and that’s like yup that’s really real damn and like and of course that all spirals down into the you know the [ _ ] the disparity of like black people in this country and the mass incarceration and the destruction of [ _ ] families of poverty and you know it’s just like ah so depressing like you say it’s this whole [ _ ] system of this criminal you know industrial complex and then the prosecutor and the court system that feeds right into it that you know and you just hear story after story of you know [ _ ] up [ _ ] you know i think all that and i’m like in this situation if she’d have been locked up she probably would have been clean yeah even though that’s not where i think people belong and i don’t think prison rehabs you in any way i’m sure we could do something different like maybe we could have a separate prison for drug users whether you’re [ _ ] therapy or something but which they do that some sort of thing in i think it was new jersey oh that guy it’s a guy bill that i used to sponsor that’s what they had you know in the prison they had a separate prison that was some kind of rehab type thing i mean i’m all for that but even if she’d just been locked up and in prison she’d be alive we talk about the whole idea of like tying somebody up and putting them in a basement they’d [ _ ] be here yeah oh i’ve always said i would do that with my kids i mean there i was like oh yeah i knew they were out using it on a [ _ ] street i’d [ _ ] bring in a room chain them up i don’t know if it helped but i would probably do it i mean you could pay some serious charges for [ _ ] kids yeah probably i’d probably charge somebody for kids well and these aren’t quite as as these are a little more black and white like they were telling one story was a [ _ ] lady single mother raising two kids she goes to court because she’s got past due traffic tickets i forget is like 1800 so she gets drug into court they say all right you know we’ve given you ample time you haven’t paid these you have to go to jail you have to stay every day is worth 50 dollars of your fine so they send this single mother raising two kids to [ _ ] jail to pay off traffic ticket fines and then it was the fines and the court costs and the interest of that all adds up so that she ends up in jail for 40 some days social services takes her [ _ ] kids she loses her apartment so she can’t get her kids back and it’s like is this really a [ _ ] system that we think is helping anyone you know like right yeah or then all the death row people that are you know that’s what that’s what started it was like the the false imprisonment false confession ones where they take people that are like mentally challenged or you know maybe even if they’re not mentally challenged they’re they’re slow you know what i mean you kind of know they’re not quite all together there and you know convince them the one guy they you know they talk to him about this murder and he tells me he’s nothing to do with it he doesn’t know anything about it so they bring him in two or three more times and then the third time or fourth time they bring them in they’re like so have you thought anything new about this he says well you know since i’ve been talking to you guys i had this dream about the murder and they’re like well tell us about the dream so he tells them all about the dream and they convince them that that’s actually a confession that he was actually there and that he actually did it and that’s his confession and it’s like he’s like okay yeah i guess so you know and so he’s [ _ ] does a confession that is this dream was true and he gives all these details of the murder that weren’t even [ _ ] true he said he stabbed the woman and him and two other guys raped her and all of a sudden the one guy who had a like rock solid alibi wasn’t even there and then and he described her outfit because he’s describing a dream so he describes her outfit and all his stuff and then the outfit wasn’t the same he said he stabbed her she was actually shot in the head all these things and then they still [ _ ] just went well we know he killed her that’s what the you know the prosecution’s like well we know he killed her he just got some of the other stuff wrong what the [ _ ] and then of course they get some public defender and some po dunk town that you know the prosecutors and the public defenders are [ _ ] all the same they don’t give a [ _ ] they mount no defense and then this guy’s on death row and it’s just like what the [ _ ] oh ridiculous yeah i don’t know if that’s any healthier for you than facebook though oh no it’s terrible well i thought of all the things jen describes to me a lot if i was going to get like actively involved in something i think that would probably be it i think that would motivate me to want to change something
so
you
that’s funny that would motivate you to change i’m just thinking uh that’s probably a lot harder to change than drug reform oh criminal justice system well