January 13, 2026 • 42 mins
At UC Santa Cruz, Brooke Knisley fell more than twenty feet from a redwood while drinking and spent ten days in a coma. What followed was the long, messy work of living with a traumatic brain injury: double vision, memory gaps, relearning daily life, and building white-board systems to keep moving forward. With sharp humor and hard-won clarity, Brooke traces the shift from bar fights and self-numbing to therapy, sobriety, and a steadier kindness toward herself and others—learning to “play the tape through,” when making decisions, and to find joy in the small moments.
Brooke is a talented freelance writer specializing in humor, personal essays, and reporting on disability, mental health, and culture. To read more of Brooks insightful and engaging work, visit her website: https://www.brookeknisley.com/
Contains traumatic brain injury/coma, alcohol misuse, and a reference to sexual assault. Listener discretion advised.
Story Producer: Nicholas Tecosky
If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story! Please email us at aliveagainproject@gmail.com We’d love to hear your story!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
My name is Brooke Nisley. I fell over twenty feet
out of a redwood tree while I'm bibing. I was
in attendae coma, and I didn't die.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(00:47):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
For the few months preceding my accident, when I fell
twenty feet over twenty feet out of a tree in
Santa Cruz, I was attending U SEE Santa Cruz as
an undergraduate. I had transferred through the community college. I
(01:29):
get the transfer program, and I, to put it lightly,
wasn't doing great.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I was.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
A pretty bad alcoholic. I was drinking daily. I was
told by a professor's aide when I turned in an
essay extremely late. They said to me, Wow, imagine if
you did this work all of the time, it turned
it in. This is brilliant, But you just don't. And
(02:05):
that translated was you're a dirty alcoholic and you're drunk
all the time. It's a hit or miss if you
show up in class, so to put it lightly, not
in an ideal situation. So the night that I fell
(02:26):
out of the dream, it would be more accurate to
describe the time leading up to that, as in, at
the time says I can't do you see Santa Cruz
because I climb trees all the time. That that was
a favorite activity of me and the elder transfer students.
(02:46):
We would get drunk, well, I should say, we would
have a few beers and climb trees. We were climbing redwoods.
We were never really two sheets the wind. We always
try to keep it eve, it kind of contained. And
I always considered myself a very good climber. I never
had any scarcer accidents. I can't describe to you the
(03:15):
night of my accident from my own memory because I
have no memory of it. But I was told by
the friend I was with when it happened that we
had had a couple of beers, and then we climbed
the tree, and when we're about eighty feet or so up,
I turned and looked at her and was like, I
gotta get down right now. She said, I just booked it.
(03:40):
I was climbing down as fast as I could, and
then all she heard were two smacks and then a thud,
which I assume was me hitting branches, and then they
ground the forest floor. Luckily, my head broke my fall,
(04:01):
so I didn't break anything except for my brain. And
then she got down and then they actually carried me.
So this is something you should not do. You should
not move someone who may or may not have a
like neck or spinal cord injury. They carried me back
to there's actually a trailer park on the UC Santa
(04:24):
Cruz's campus, and she lived in the trailer park, so
they carried me back to one of the trailers in
the trailer park. And finally someone was like, we should
call nine poet one, so then they called an ambulance.
But but yeah, but folk, you know, leading up to that,
(04:44):
we would just get drunk and be like rap scalion
and my friend, yeah, she said that. I tried to
talk her into sneaking me out. I was like, you
could just take me away, you could just help me
get out. And then they kept asking. So they ask
people who have traumatic green injuries, which is what I
(05:05):
had a series of questions to orient them. And they
kept asking me where I went to high school, and
I kept saying San Dimas over and over again, and
I've never been to San Dimas scenario in La. And
it was only after a while my mom called my
dad and said she keeps saying San Dimas. He's like,
(05:25):
that's a high school from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
And so I was just defaulting to just like pulling
from information wherever I could find it. I guess wear
in the recesses of my brain. During this time too,
(05:46):
a guy that I had been sleeping with but not
together with, came into the hospital told everyone he was
my boyfriend and so and then my best friend at
the time pulled my mom aside. It was like, this
is not her boyfriend. But my mom didn't really she
was I'll give it to her. She was under a
lot of stress, so she didn't have the bandwidth to
(06:08):
argue with this guy, so she just let him be around.
So at one point, my friend told me that they'd
walk into the room and I'd see him and I'd go, well,
I have a boyfriend now, I yes, So when my
memory first started, it started coming back to me. At
(06:30):
one point, he walked in and introduced himself to me
and said, do you remember me? And I said yes,
I think I do. And he was like, I've been
telling people that I'm your boyfriend. Is that okay? And
I said, well, I guess. So. He very much inserted
himself into my recovery after that. So, while I was
(06:51):
doing outpatient therapy, I went back to San Diego, where
my parents are located, to stay with them while I
was doing that, and he came back to San Diego
he's not from Santana Diego, and found a place to
rent and was just showing up at my house all
the time. And I was in contact with a friend
that I had been with falling out of the tree.
But every time I messaged her, she would say to
(07:17):
be like, oh, do you remember everything? And I'd be like,
I don't remember anything about that night and whatever I
repeated our conversations to him, he would freak out. He
would freak out and be like why would you say
that to her? And then she kept saying things to
me like maybe there's something he doesn't want you to remember.
And then after a while of this kind of back
and forth him freaking out, I started diggy. I was
(07:41):
still I have to pay the same for you, because
I was still I had double vision, I had diplobeia,
I couldn't walk within an arm crutch. I I didn't
take a solid boop for a long time after my
accident because I got seated from the hospital and destroyed
my got back to your ID. Lost a lot of
(08:01):
weight also, because being in a coma you lose a
percentage of body mass every day. It was just ridiculous.
And then on top of that, my brain was just
not I could remember, I could understand what people were
saying to me, but I couldn't always remember it, so
sometimes I would forget. So my my ur retention was bad,
(08:22):
but my comprehension was good, which is just like I
don't know if you've ever heard something immediately forgot it.
That was basically my whole existence at that plenty of time.
So it was just looking back at it that it
(08:45):
was very funny just thinking of me sitting there with
like one eye closed, like a pirate reading over old messages,
whereas I and also I was a I don't know
if I can guys. I was about to say I
was a househole, but so I was kind of an asshole,
like I was so good at emotional things, my emotional
(09:07):
intelligence was quite low. So I was reading back through
these messages, and that's why I discovered that the guy
who was pretending my be my boyfriend had sexually assaulted
the friend I was in the tree with, and then
I had been like mediating their conversations. But I didn't
(09:29):
have a memory of this, but as it was such
a weird sensation because reading the messages, and then I
did start to remember it. I was like, I remember this.
And then I sent her this big along paragraph talking
about like psycho analytic theory and then at the end
being like, yeah, I think he might be a narcissist,
and just like, I'm like, what a crazy person that
(09:50):
I set her all of this psycho analytic tests to
explain that I think that he might be a narcissist.
When I could have just said like, yeah, no, this
is bad. But finally, when I you know, I got
through all of that. I was like, oh, my goodness,
but I didn't know what to do because at the
(10:11):
time I was staying with my parents and not to
throw them under the bus, but they weren't. They were
also having issues with my brother at the time. He
has he had his own health than going on, and
so they had a house full of just everyone was
just brain addled at that time. I didn't at my
own bedroom. I was actually sleeping in my mom's bed
(10:32):
with her. My brother had a room in the back
that my dad just like slept on the couch. So
we were just a collection of people. And I just
felt very lost then because I couldn't think. I couldn't
think longer than a few seconds at the time. I
couldn't remember what I was thinking before that. This guy
(10:52):
would keep showing up and side out. He would do
like crazy things to me, like he he would say
so fucked up things to me. He would He took
me to Palmar Mountain in the east of North County
one time, and my doctor had said that I shouldn't
do extreme, you know, extraneous exercises because my body was
having issues regular temperature. To things like that, he was like, no,
(11:15):
the only way you'll get better is if you like
jog up this mountain. So I did, and I threw
up all over the side of the mountain and he
just like sat down next to me. He sat down
next to me, and he goes, he just like sell
it for a second. He's like, my dad was always
very hard to hug me.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
And I just thought, I just like, looking back at it,
it was just so funny because it's just like it's
like that was his way of just like explaining why
he's being such a.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
My one's not handling any of that well. In my defense,
I was very, very damaged. But so when that revelation came,
when I finally like pieced together what had happened before,
I brought it up to him because I have no chill,
and I said like, hey, I feel like the only
reason you're here is because you want her to think
that you're taking care of me. Boy, you're not. And
(12:11):
I was like, oh, that's not true. You know, a
defensive backped line, that's not true. So that went back
and forth for a little bit, and then he left.
Right after I got an eye surgery that fixed my
double vision. When I started getting better, the guy, this
guy actually he said to me the balls. He said
(12:32):
to me, he was like, wow, I feel like now
that you're getting better and I don't have your injury
to think about as much. Side note, I still couldn't
walk by myself entirely, and she's like there was still
a lot wrong with me. And he was like, now
that you're getting better, which now he was like, now
I'm more worried about the situation with that girl, because
(12:56):
you're right, this thing did happen, but I don't think
it was as bad as she said. And then he
was like defending himself and I was like, so you
admit it. You admit it that the only reason why
you're here is because you were distracted. You were trying
to create some sordin narrative in your head. And he
was like, no, that's not true at all. I'm just
saying that I have to worry every day about potentially
(13:22):
having charges brought against me for something that I feel
like I didn't even do. And I told him, I
was like, do you know how to insane? This sounds?
Right now? I feel like the only victim in this
situation between the two of us is me that you
are here doing this and that set him off, and
he anyway, long story short, he finally left. He was like,
(13:44):
I have to leave. I have to leave. So he left.
We stopped being in contact act. I started pulling my
brain together as best I could. I actually I hadn't
(14:05):
finished my degree, so finally I transferred down to UC
San Diego. Finished my last remaining credits at you see
San Diego. So anyway, so I finished those units up.
And then after I finished those units up, it was
right after I had turned twenty six so twenty sixteen,
and so I was no longer in my parents' health insurance,
(14:27):
and I was getting health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
But it like cover California, but it was not enough.
Even my doctor's always seeing through that insurance kept telling me,
they're like, you're seeing you went through an injury like
that and you're seeing me. No, you need better insurance.
So I had uh. I had scored a job at
(14:48):
an academic publishing company as a production assistant. So I
was taking the train by myself. I was a little
like hit when we called them my feeler arm, because
my balance was so bad, and so just like naturally,
to balance myself out, I would always like pull my
left arm up, so I looked like half a praying mantis,
and I'd just be like whenever I felt unstable, and
(15:10):
so I can only imagine I'm taking the train down
by myself going into this publishing company, and then during
work at the computer with my feeler arm up, and
everyone was just like, oh, Brick does good work. We
just don't talk to her. But so, but while I
was there, one of the other production assistants got accepted
to a grad program in Boston at Emerson College. And
(15:34):
she had been talking about that and I was like,
that sounds good. I want that, I think. And then
I was finishing up my last class I you see
San Diego before I got my bachelor's, was a feature
writing course, and I talked to the professor in that
course and I just told him the truth. I was like,
I fell out of the true. I'm severely brain damaged.
(15:55):
I think I want to go to grad school. I
think I want to do this, and I think that
it's going to help me get health insurance. And I
think I could do the program and then i'd excel
in it. And he was like, Okay, I just think
you're way too practical for an MFA, you should apply
for just the masters. And I was like, perfect, So
I did, and I got into the program and I
(16:17):
got health insurance, and then I moved to Boston and
did grad school there, and everyone the whole way through
just kept telling me how amazing it was I was
doing grad school because they were like, people who have
a brain injury as bad as yours end up very stupid.
And I was like, you don't know what's behind here.
There's nothing, there's like a monkey playing symbols. I'm just
(16:38):
I'm just good at faking it. While I was in
grad school, I got an email from the guy and
he so it was probably two years later, and he
hit me up and was just he was like, I
(17:00):
don't know if I'm safe yet, and just like basically
talking about how he was living every day of fear
that suddenly you would get charges brought against him, uh
for the and I just kind of I lost my shit,
to put it lightly, because first I reached out to
my friend, my best friend at the time, and said there.
I was like, look, he's hitting me up, he seeing
(17:20):
all this stuff. I don't know what to do. Should
I just block him? And she said, well, because she
she was a she was trained, she was a social worker,
so she was trained in recognizing suicidal ideation, that kind
of stuff. She said, she's displaying factors that make me concerned.
(17:42):
If I were you ilread to reach out to his mom.
So I did so I messaged his mom on Facebook,
and then that motherfucker emailed me back and said, I
saw you reached out to my mom on Facebook. She
was having issues getting here d her account, so I
checked it for which I don't know if that's true
or if he just like tecks people's facebook's all willing ally,
(18:06):
I don't know, but he was like, that meant so
much to me that you're worried about me, And I
was like, well, I did that at all. So I
told told my friend and she was like, wow, that's
like the worst thing that could have happened in that situation.
I was like, you know what, don'm taking your advice.
I'm gonna take my own advice, which is I'm gonna
say very mean thanks him, and I did. I said
a lot of very mean thanks to him. That was
(18:27):
finally the end. And then after I said all of
that mean stuff, then he never contacted me. Again, so
that was good. I would say the hardest part about
living with the disability, living in a traumatic brain injury
is actually I have a lot of strategies. I have
whiteboards everywhere. I would say that the hardest part is
other people not giving me grace so or like meeting
(18:51):
me where I am or understanding because for example, very
soon after my accident, my mom took me on a
boat and she thought that was a good idea. I
have vestibular issues and balance issues. I obviously yashed the
whole time and she was like, wait, you don't look
in jured. I was like, you saw me in a comat,
like I'm two months ago. I have two yeah whiteboard
(19:15):
calendars over here. I have one that I list like
all my daily stuff that I have to do for
the month so I can get a snapshot of that.
And then I have another one that lists like when
the trash comes and just like recurring stuff that I
need to know so that I can always reference it
and like crossjacket with all the stuff that I have
to do. And then I have another white board. So
(19:38):
those are my two big calendar whiteboards. I have a
smaller whiteboard that is more for daily tasks. So if
I know that I have a couple of meetings today,
then I'll put it on that one. And then if
I have or like to do items that are not
for my jobs, that are specific like life to do,
like oh I need to mail this thing, it goes
(19:59):
on that whiteboard. Job stuff goes on the first calendar whiteboard.
I have another whiteboard over there that's a big it's
a big white board and it is my when I'm so,
I read a lot of essays about horror movies and
(20:20):
just things in general, and I'll pitch stories and I'll
write comedy pieces and that that's what that big white
word is for. It's so if I'm watching a movie
and I have an idea, I can just go scrawl
it on there as messy as I need to, because
my handwriting is terrible unless I'm like really focusing on it.
That way, I can just like scrawl on there big
enough print that I can like look over and I
(20:40):
know what I'm saying. And then also I'm a pacer,
so I I normally you can see I'm like crawling
out of my chair right now as I'm talking through this,
and I'm all animated. So when I'm thinking through things.
I walk in a circle, big circle, and I go
over to the big whiteboard and right there, right on
(21:03):
there my ideas. And then I have another whiteboard on
my fridge that's by my front door, and it's one
of those like magnetized peely off whiteboard things, and I
put on their pretty much the same reminders that I
have on the smaller whiteboard that I use over here
for like daily tasks to do, just to remind me.
(21:25):
That way, when I leave the house, it's like, are
you grabbing the mail or are you grabbing that thing
that you have to drop off at the ups store?
Or don't forget to pick up your pills from the pharmacy,
although I have to admit recently I've just been telling
the pharmacy to mail it. I'm like, I can't do
this anymore, Please just mail the pills. So how my
(21:55):
accident changed my relationship to my drinking? Oh boy, I'm
usloaded because acutely right away, of course I couldn't drink.
So people ask me all the time if I went
through withdrawals. I'm like, well, if I did, I don't know.
I was in a coma. I didn't I don't remember
having cravings or anything like that while I was in
(22:16):
the hospital. But also, I feel like when you're hurt
that bad, it's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You can't
have a certain craving when you're you're just down here.
Here's what you're just making sure that your body is
regulating temperture correctly. That being said a medical social worker.
(22:38):
My mother staged an intervention for me while I was
still I couldn't get out of bed. It was I'm
still very fresh. It was when my memory first started sticking.
The medical social worker began with a you do a
She and my mom came in my in the room
and she said, hey, Brooke, we wanted to tell you,
(23:00):
like impress upon you how you're drinking contributed to your situation.
Of course, I started laughing because of that period of time,
I was just hanging out of the hospital. Everyone was
being very nice to me. I was having a great time.
You know, I wasn't fully fully there, so I just
started laughing. I was like, this is great. I don't okay,
it's drinking got me here all right. And my mom was,
(23:23):
you know, she started crying. She was feeling pretty bad
about that reaction, and so the medical social workers said
to her, show her show broke a picture of her
that you took of her in the koma. That way
she'll understand. Well, that was a mistake because I had
that giant blood dread. So when they showed him with
(23:43):
the picture, I started cracking up because I was like,
because it's like, oh, the somber scene like young woman
in coma, and then it's just like it's almost like
the camera's panning up and then it gets to the
face and then there's just like a giant blood dread
sticking out the out of the bag. So I just
started cracking up, and the medical social worker was like,
this is her injury. There's frontal log damage. You know,
(24:07):
she'll she'll even out, she won't be like this. My
mom was like, this is just how Brooke is. That
intervention obviously didn't go well, and I was released from
the hospital two weeks later went back down to San Diego.
I was pretty good about not doing anything bad until
(24:33):
until it started coming back to me about the whole
about everything. And then I because again low emotional intelligence.
I'm not good at communicating my feelings well as you say,
I am now I've gotten a lot better. But at
that time, I was like, oh, overwhelmed, don't know how
(24:53):
to deal going to bar? What bar? Will They never
find me at strip club? So I would go to
the only strip club in North County, San Diego, and
I would hide out and get lap dances and just
drink a bunch of beer, and then eventually someone would
find me or like track me down. For about a
(25:19):
month there, I was sneaking and going to drink getting caught.
Everyone was angry at me, you know, understandably. So I
just I really missed it, and I really missed how
easy it was before. When I was having big feelings.
As we say about my dog when he throws his elephant,
(25:41):
but I didn't have an elephant to throw anymore. I
couldn't drink beer like I used to. So I was
having all these big feelings and I couldn't. I don't
know how to work through them, So I'm just hobbling
to the strip club. I'm like, So I was put
on an anti depressant. Little did they know. I had
been on anti depressants before and I did need them.
(26:02):
So I just stayed on them. And so when I
went to Boston. I needed a psychiatrist there to fill them.
And during the intake with this psychiatrist, she asked for
my history and a little context of what and essentially
(26:23):
I told her everything. I just told you, Hey, you
all right now? And she said, wow, that's a lot.
I have a few more follow up questions. Can you
come back here at the same time next week? I
said sure, So I came back in the same time
next week, and I gave her more context, and then
(26:43):
she asked more about my family, and I talked through
the problems with my family that I was having and
different relationships and things like that. She was like, oh, okay,
I need a little more context. Can you come back
next week's same time. I was like, yeah, sure, So
I came back next week at the same time and
I was talking were more with her, and then by
the end of it, she said, do you mind coming
(27:06):
back at the same time next week because I want
to hear more about these these days. She like read
a couple of things after Liz, and then I'm a
little slow. I was like, are we just doing therapy?
Are you tricking me into coming back? And she's like
She's like yes, And I was like okay, and I
continue to see her for like two years in person,
(27:27):
and then when the pandemic started, I saw her remotely.
I actually kept seeing her until so I saw her
for about four or five years, and that's the only
reason I got sober. Doctor Asma Rashid. Yeah, she was amazing.
She was just like matter of fact. You'd listen to
what I'd say and then she would just say matter
of factly back to me. She'd be like, okay, but
(27:47):
you do realize that you started from this premise that's
inherently flawed. And I'd be like, damn it, Doctor Rashid
got me again. But it was great. It was just great.
(28:09):
So she helped me, like logically work through why I
was drinking and why I felt the need to fall
back into drinking instead of handling things. She's like, how
I used to always say to arrors, like my professional
life is great, I'm on point, I do all these
things great, and my personal life is falling apart. I
don't know to handle it. She's like, why don't you
(28:30):
just treat your personal life like your professional life. Just
be matter of fact with everyone like you are with
your colleagues and workers. And I was like damn it,
doctor Rusheid, Why didn't I think of that? And she
was like, but yeah, so that's kind of how my
true directory with alcohol has gone. Since then, it'll be
ten years this July. I would say since my actions
(28:59):
my accident, my personality hasn't changed much. It has taught
me to be gentler with other people. I've always been
kind of an irrational fellow and my friends how they
would describe me as a little cantankerous direct which I
(29:22):
don't think that's gone away. But I'm more conscientious of
how I say things and how I present thanks to people,
which is a little ironic considering most people will most
medical professionals will tell you the opposite happens with someone
has a traumatic grain injury, that their filter becomes a
little less. But if anything, it's taught me to pause.
(29:47):
I've learned to let things go too. That was one
thing I had to learn quickly is that when I'm
chasing after the words when I can't remember them, which
is a phasia. Yeah, ives, I got that's a little
on that of those, right, I forget the word for aphasia,
But yeah, so aphasia makes it where I'll forget a
(30:10):
word and then when I try to like chase after
it metaphorically speaking, it just almost seems to get farther
and farther away. So I learned fairly quickly that it
made more sense to just find another word, to just
let it go. So I've become very gifted in the
art of letting go. If I can't remember something, I
(30:31):
just let it go. On the whole, I would say
I've become less impulsive. Mindfulness is a buzzword, but I
(30:54):
believe that I've become more mindful in the sense that
I think about things more before I do them. Before
or I would always be like, yeah, that makes sense,
and then I would go do it, but I wouldn't
really think of the full repercussions. I know. That's the
thing they always say to alcoholics too, like play the
tape through, play the tape through. What app is after
you do this thing. I don't regret falling out of
(31:18):
the tree, and I don't regret the brain damage or
anything like that. I wouldn't have got sober otherwise, if
I'm being honest. All of my friend's parents, including my
and my mom, all said to me that they didn't
think i'd live until age thirty. So when the accident happened,
they all were just like, wait, this is not a
(31:38):
surprise to us. We saw this coming, or we're just
surprised that you survived. And I was like, well, you know,
I'm happy, and now, well, I guess I should say
I get happy now because what I've realized before, and
what I realized about myself before, especially when I was
deep in my alcoholism and depression and all of that,
(32:00):
is that I never really had those high highs, which
is why I drank a lot of why did the
extreme things I did, which is why I climbed trees.
I used to get on of fights too. I used
to be a regular punk, a regular run of the
mill punk. But but that's why I did all of that,
because I never had those highs. So since my accident
(32:26):
and since I've gone to therapy and I've retrained myself
to be a human being, I realize now I'm not
happy all the time, but you're not supposed to be
happy all of the time. But I do get happy.
And I for example, when I was I just got
back from seeing with a friend in San Francisco, and
(32:46):
when I come to the bed at night, I was
like Okay, I have to do my stories before I
go to sleep, and she's like, your stories, what's your stories?
I was like, I watched the cute animal videos and
I do that. That's what I do before I go
to bed. As I get girl and I swipe through
the little like there was a story of like a
little rodent trying to like grasp nuts from a guy
(33:09):
who's juggling, and I just like laughed and I laughed
and I was so happy. So I'm able to take
pleasure in like the smaller moments, which goes back to
what I was saying before about that that mindfulness aspect
that I'm I can slow down and I can be like,
I'm here right now and this is good. I'm no,
(33:31):
I'm me because my little dog knows me, and that's
enough for me.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Welcome back. This is a live again joining me in
the studio to talk about today's story. I have two
of our story producers, Nicholas Dakowski and Lauren Vogelam, and
I'm your host Dan Bush. I thought the most wonderful
thing to me that struck me about the story was
she went from bar fights to watching animal videos. Oh yeah, yeah,
(34:25):
I just love that it's like, Okay.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
I'm not getting you know, I'm not getting the high highs,
and so I've become so the alcoholism is born out
of wanting to get these high highs.
Speaker 6 (34:37):
And now she's but you can just take a tiny
little drop of serotonin and do you can get that
from a duck video?
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Ducks are so.
Speaker 7 (34:44):
Cute on video as somebody who is also sort of
I mean, I've stopped drinking. I don't drink anymore. I
definitely recognize what the moment was that made me realize
I had to quit. And it was a lot more
subtle than falling and like getting a brain injury, but
(35:11):
it was, you know, and I'm not going to go
into it. It's weird and personal, but like that moment
of clarity that this terrifying thing has actually saved my life.
It's messes with your brain. I mean messes with your
head a lot, you know, thinking about this, and in
recovery from injury as well as recovery from alcoholism or
(35:34):
or addiction, it's a it's a it's a matter of
putting systems in place to keep yourself accountable, to keep
track of where you are too, to be able to
kind of move forward every day. And I really you know,
Brooke talked a lot about her systems, the systems she
creates place. Yeah, her whiteboards. She has invented a structure
(35:59):
for her life out of whole cloth that wasn't there
before the injury. This injury caused her to create systems
in her life which are life sustaining. The fact that
she was able to put systems in place, build systems
that you never had before, and that this injury made
it absolutely necessary.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
Also, the idea of play the tape through, Oh, play
that was fat like a still battle with this. Sometimes
it's gotten much like I will nine times out of
ten instead of choosing the fuck it right, why not?
Fuck yeah, I'll go Well, I want tomorrow morning to
be pretty awesome. I want some dopamine in the morning.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:41):
Oh, I want some sun I want some sunshine. I
don't want to pull down the curtain. So like that
decision of going play the tape through was really a
cool way to put that.
Speaker 7 (36:50):
And yeah, and that's like that's big in recovery. That's
that's big with addicts. It's like, think about how you're
going to feel later, think about how what affects this
will have in your like large effects as will have
in your life. And I will admit that, like especially
really recently, Like I thought after a few years that
(37:11):
like the itch would like go away, and it largely had.
But I've definitely found myself more in recent days because
of just the stress of the world, because of what's happening,
really struggling more against it and having to rely on
playing the tape forward to not drink.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
It is a really effective too. I didn't know that
was doing it, but I've been Yeah.
Speaker 7 (37:34):
It's thinking about the consequences of your actions.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
Yeah, and like I can pay for it later, I
can pay for it now, you know, and I can
make you gotta make a sacrifice on either side of
that gambit absolutely well.
Speaker 7 (37:46):
And on top of that too, doing that helps you
build more self awareness too, I think because you are
like having to think through what your actions will do
and what your actions the fact it has not just
on yourself but on the world. Me not drinking means
that I'm more present for my daughter. That means that
(38:07):
my daughter is going to be It's going to feel
more loved, it's going to feel more secure in our connection.
So I don't drink.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
It's also I will say it's with the drinking in particular,
but it is a slippery slope. Like you know, when
I was it took me the first couple of years
of having the kids around of like, oh, it's you know,
it's been a hard day. I've been I've been working
all day, busting my ass. I've also been raising these kids.
You know, I'm dealing with all of their stuff, and
(38:36):
you know, you're worn out, and so you're like, oh,
let me make a drink, and you know, you get
to wear two of those, three of those at night,
and eventually I'm not wanting to read to the kids anymore.
I don't have any energy. And my dovna meine just
got blasted from the first drink, and I'm trying to
get back with the others and it's not working and
it's going downhill, and I just to catch yourself and go.
I want to read. I want to have the drive
(38:57):
and the energy and the focus to read a bedtime
story to my kids. And the only thing that's keeping
me from doing that it's not because I'm exhausted. It's
because I'm drinking.
Speaker 7 (39:07):
Brooke is fucking fantastic, She's incredibly funny about all of
this stuff, and yeah, you can. I definitely felt a
kinship with Brooke.
Speaker 6 (39:18):
Yeah, and I guess kind of along those lines, and
also still talking about alcohol misuser or whatever kind of
drug misuse anyone might be going through. One thing that
struck me about the way that she talked about her
former self was that And maybe maybe I'm projecting or something,
but like she sounded angry at her former self. She
(39:40):
sounded dismissive, and she's allowed.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
To feel that.
Speaker 6 (39:43):
You know, you're allowed to feel however you feel about
how you were and your mistakes and how you've moved on.
But you always hope with any kind of recovery that
the part of the process is going to be opening
yourself up to grace and learning how to forgive yourself
and be you know, just okay with it. Be like, yeah,
that idiot was fine, but yeah it's all right, this idiot.
Speaker 5 (40:04):
Is way better. It's like the one of the biggest
ingredients that's lacking in the normal day to day these days,
people are lacking grace for themselves but also just for
one another. Yeah, they don't. I don't know.
Speaker 6 (40:16):
And Brooke was talking about that, right, talking about how
it's an invisible injury. Yeah, and how you don't always
you know, you just right, you don't know what someone
is going through.
Speaker 5 (40:28):
And I had a friend that used to say, everybody
knows something about something you don't know nothing about. Everybody
knows something about something that you don't know nothing about.
Speaker 6 (40:36):
True, that's accurate, that is scientifically proven, And.
Speaker 5 (40:40):
It's so easy to just reduce everyone to go dumbass
or whatever. And it's like, yeah, that guy's probably dealt
with something that you've never dealt with. Next week, the
story of Drew Cyber. A fall in the middle of
the night broke his neck and should have killed him.
Rushed to the hospital, he was told he would never
walk again, but he surpassed his doctors expectations and completely
(41:01):
transformed his life.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
I was working fifty hours a week or more. I
was starting to get high blood pressure and maybe I
was on my way to a heart attack or a stroke.
Perhaps the spinal cord injury maybe has saved my life.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent die
Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbaan. Music by Ben Lovett additional
music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
production support. Our studio engineers are Rima Elkli and Nomes Griffin.
(41:41):
Today's episode was edited by Mike w Anderson, mixing by
Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host Dan Bush.
The special thanks to Brooke Nisley for sharing her compelling
story with us. Brook is a talented freelance writer specializing
in humor, personal essays, and reporting on disability, mental health,
and culture. To read more of Brooks insightful and engaging word,
(42:02):
visit our website at Brookneisley dot com. B r O
O k e k n I s l e y
dot com. Alive Again is a production of i RT
Radio and Psychopia Pictures. If you have a transformative near
death experience to share, we'd love to hear your story.
Please email us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com.
(42:23):
That's a l I v e A g A I
N P R O j e c t at gmail
dot com.
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
My name is Brooke Nisley. I fell over twenty feet
out of a redwood tree while I'm bibing. I was
in attendae coma, and I didn't die.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(00:47):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
For the few months preceding my accident, when I fell
twenty feet over twenty feet out of a tree in
Santa Cruz, I was attending U SEE Santa Cruz as
an undergraduate. I had transferred through the community college. I
(01:29):
get the transfer program, and I, to put it lightly,
wasn't doing great.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I was.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
A pretty bad alcoholic. I was drinking daily. I was
told by a professor's aide when I turned in an
essay extremely late. They said to me, Wow, imagine if
you did this work all of the time, it turned
it in. This is brilliant, But you just don't. And
(02:05):
that translated was you're a dirty alcoholic and you're drunk
all the time. It's a hit or miss if you
show up in class, so to put it lightly, not
in an ideal situation. So the night that I fell
(02:26):
out of the dream, it would be more accurate to
describe the time leading up to that, as in, at
the time says I can't do you see Santa Cruz
because I climb trees all the time. That that was
a favorite activity of me and the elder transfer students.
(02:46):
We would get drunk, well, I should say, we would
have a few beers and climb trees. We were climbing redwoods.
We were never really two sheets the wind. We always
try to keep it eve, it kind of contained. And
I always considered myself a very good climber. I never
had any scarcer accidents. I can't describe to you the
(03:15):
night of my accident from my own memory because I
have no memory of it. But I was told by
the friend I was with when it happened that we
had had a couple of beers, and then we climbed
the tree, and when we're about eighty feet or so up,
I turned and looked at her and was like, I
gotta get down right now. She said, I just booked it.
(03:40):
I was climbing down as fast as I could, and
then all she heard were two smacks and then a thud,
which I assume was me hitting branches, and then they
ground the forest floor. Luckily, my head broke my fall,
(04:01):
so I didn't break anything except for my brain. And
then she got down and then they actually carried me.
So this is something you should not do. You should
not move someone who may or may not have a
like neck or spinal cord injury. They carried me back
to there's actually a trailer park on the UC Santa
(04:24):
Cruz's campus, and she lived in the trailer park, so
they carried me back to one of the trailers in
the trailer park. And finally someone was like, we should
call nine poet one, so then they called an ambulance.
But but yeah, but folk, you know, leading up to that,
(04:44):
we would just get drunk and be like rap scalion
and my friend, yeah, she said that. I tried to
talk her into sneaking me out. I was like, you
could just take me away, you could just help me
get out. And then they kept asking. So they ask
people who have traumatic green injuries, which is what I
(05:05):
had a series of questions to orient them. And they
kept asking me where I went to high school, and
I kept saying San Dimas over and over again, and
I've never been to San Dimas scenario in La. And
it was only after a while my mom called my
dad and said she keeps saying San Dimas. He's like,
(05:25):
that's a high school from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
And so I was just defaulting to just like pulling
from information wherever I could find it. I guess wear
in the recesses of my brain. During this time too,
(05:46):
a guy that I had been sleeping with but not
together with, came into the hospital told everyone he was
my boyfriend and so and then my best friend at
the time pulled my mom aside. It was like, this
is not her boyfriend. But my mom didn't really she
was I'll give it to her. She was under a
lot of stress, so she didn't have the bandwidth to
(06:08):
argue with this guy, so she just let him be around.
So at one point, my friend told me that they'd
walk into the room and I'd see him and I'd go, well,
I have a boyfriend now, I yes, So when my
memory first started, it started coming back to me. At
(06:30):
one point, he walked in and introduced himself to me
and said, do you remember me? And I said yes,
I think I do. And he was like, I've been
telling people that I'm your boyfriend. Is that okay? And
I said, well, I guess. So. He very much inserted
himself into my recovery after that. So, while I was
(06:51):
doing outpatient therapy, I went back to San Diego, where
my parents are located, to stay with them while I
was doing that, and he came back to San Diego
he's not from Santana Diego, and found a place to
rent and was just showing up at my house all
the time. And I was in contact with a friend
that I had been with falling out of the tree.
But every time I messaged her, she would say to
(07:17):
be like, oh, do you remember everything? And I'd be like,
I don't remember anything about that night and whatever I
repeated our conversations to him, he would freak out. He
would freak out and be like why would you say
that to her? And then she kept saying things to
me like maybe there's something he doesn't want you to remember.
And then after a while of this kind of back
and forth him freaking out, I started diggy. I was
(07:41):
still I have to pay the same for you, because
I was still I had double vision, I had diplobeia,
I couldn't walk within an arm crutch. I I didn't
take a solid boop for a long time after my
accident because I got seated from the hospital and destroyed
my got back to your ID. Lost a lot of
(08:01):
weight also, because being in a coma you lose a
percentage of body mass every day. It was just ridiculous.
And then on top of that, my brain was just
not I could remember, I could understand what people were
saying to me, but I couldn't always remember it, so
sometimes I would forget. So my my ur retention was bad,
(08:22):
but my comprehension was good, which is just like I
don't know if you've ever heard something immediately forgot it.
That was basically my whole existence at that plenty of time.
So it was just looking back at it that it
(08:45):
was very funny just thinking of me sitting there with
like one eye closed, like a pirate reading over old messages,
whereas I and also I was a I don't know
if I can guys. I was about to say I
was a househole, but so I was kind of an asshole,
like I was so good at emotional things, my emotional
(09:07):
intelligence was quite low. So I was reading back through
these messages, and that's why I discovered that the guy
who was pretending my be my boyfriend had sexually assaulted
the friend I was in the tree with, and then
I had been like mediating their conversations. But I didn't
(09:29):
have a memory of this, but as it was such
a weird sensation because reading the messages, and then I
did start to remember it. I was like, I remember this.
And then I sent her this big along paragraph talking
about like psycho analytic theory and then at the end
being like, yeah, I think he might be a narcissist,
and just like, I'm like, what a crazy person that
(09:50):
I set her all of this psycho analytic tests to
explain that I think that he might be a narcissist.
When I could have just said like, yeah, no, this
is bad. But finally, when I you know, I got
through all of that. I was like, oh, my goodness,
but I didn't know what to do because at the
(10:11):
time I was staying with my parents and not to
throw them under the bus, but they weren't. They were
also having issues with my brother at the time. He
has he had his own health than going on, and
so they had a house full of just everyone was
just brain addled at that time. I didn't at my
own bedroom. I was actually sleeping in my mom's bed
(10:32):
with her. My brother had a room in the back
that my dad just like slept on the couch. So
we were just a collection of people. And I just
felt very lost then because I couldn't think. I couldn't
think longer than a few seconds at the time. I
couldn't remember what I was thinking before that. This guy
(10:52):
would keep showing up and side out. He would do
like crazy things to me, like he he would say
so fucked up things to me. He would He took
me to Palmar Mountain in the east of North County
one time, and my doctor had said that I shouldn't
do extreme, you know, extraneous exercises because my body was
having issues regular temperature. To things like that, he was like, no,
(11:15):
the only way you'll get better is if you like
jog up this mountain. So I did, and I threw
up all over the side of the mountain and he
just like sat down next to me. He sat down
next to me, and he goes, he just like sell
it for a second. He's like, my dad was always
very hard to hug me.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
And I just thought, I just like, looking back at it,
it was just so funny because it's just like it's
like that was his way of just like explaining why
he's being such a.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
My one's not handling any of that well. In my defense,
I was very, very damaged. But so when that revelation came,
when I finally like pieced together what had happened before,
I brought it up to him because I have no chill,
and I said like, hey, I feel like the only
reason you're here is because you want her to think
that you're taking care of me. Boy, you're not. And
(12:11):
I was like, oh, that's not true. You know, a
defensive backped line, that's not true. So that went back
and forth for a little bit, and then he left.
Right after I got an eye surgery that fixed my
double vision. When I started getting better, the guy, this
guy actually he said to me the balls. He said
(12:32):
to me, he was like, wow, I feel like now
that you're getting better and I don't have your injury
to think about as much. Side note, I still couldn't
walk by myself entirely, and she's like there was still
a lot wrong with me. And he was like, now
that you're getting better, which now he was like, now
I'm more worried about the situation with that girl, because
(12:56):
you're right, this thing did happen, but I don't think
it was as bad as she said. And then he
was like defending himself and I was like, so you
admit it. You admit it that the only reason why
you're here is because you were distracted. You were trying
to create some sordin narrative in your head. And he
was like, no, that's not true at all. I'm just
saying that I have to worry every day about potentially
(13:22):
having charges brought against me for something that I feel
like I didn't even do. And I told him, I
was like, do you know how to insane? This sounds?
Right now? I feel like the only victim in this
situation between the two of us is me that you
are here doing this and that set him off, and
he anyway, long story short, he finally left. He was like,
(13:44):
I have to leave. I have to leave. So he left.
We stopped being in contact act. I started pulling my
brain together as best I could. I actually I hadn't
(14:05):
finished my degree, so finally I transferred down to UC
San Diego. Finished my last remaining credits at you see
San Diego. So anyway, so I finished those units up.
And then after I finished those units up, it was
right after I had turned twenty six so twenty sixteen,
and so I was no longer in my parents' health insurance,
(14:27):
and I was getting health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
But it like cover California, but it was not enough.
Even my doctor's always seeing through that insurance kept telling me,
they're like, you're seeing you went through an injury like
that and you're seeing me. No, you need better insurance.
So I had uh. I had scored a job at
(14:48):
an academic publishing company as a production assistant. So I
was taking the train by myself. I was a little
like hit when we called them my feeler arm, because
my balance was so bad, and so just like naturally,
to balance myself out, I would always like pull my
left arm up, so I looked like half a praying mantis,
and I'd just be like whenever I felt unstable, and
(15:10):
so I can only imagine I'm taking the train down
by myself going into this publishing company, and then during
work at the computer with my feeler arm up, and
everyone was just like, oh, Brick does good work. We
just don't talk to her. But so, but while I
was there, one of the other production assistants got accepted
to a grad program in Boston at Emerson College. And
(15:34):
she had been talking about that and I was like,
that sounds good. I want that, I think. And then
I was finishing up my last class I you see
San Diego before I got my bachelor's, was a feature
writing course, and I talked to the professor in that
course and I just told him the truth. I was like,
I fell out of the true. I'm severely brain damaged.
(15:55):
I think I want to go to grad school. I
think I want to do this, and I think that
it's going to help me get health insurance. And I
think I could do the program and then i'd excel
in it. And he was like, Okay, I just think
you're way too practical for an MFA, you should apply
for just the masters. And I was like, perfect, So
I did, and I got into the program and I
(16:17):
got health insurance, and then I moved to Boston and
did grad school there, and everyone the whole way through
just kept telling me how amazing it was I was
doing grad school because they were like, people who have
a brain injury as bad as yours end up very stupid.
And I was like, you don't know what's behind here.
There's nothing, there's like a monkey playing symbols. I'm just
(16:38):
I'm just good at faking it. While I was in
grad school, I got an email from the guy and
he so it was probably two years later, and he
hit me up and was just he was like, I
(17:00):
don't know if I'm safe yet, and just like basically
talking about how he was living every day of fear
that suddenly you would get charges brought against him, uh
for the and I just kind of I lost my shit,
to put it lightly, because first I reached out to
my friend, my best friend at the time, and said there.
I was like, look, he's hitting me up, he seeing
(17:20):
all this stuff. I don't know what to do. Should
I just block him? And she said, well, because she
she was a she was trained, she was a social worker,
so she was trained in recognizing suicidal ideation, that kind
of stuff. She said, she's displaying factors that make me concerned.
(17:42):
If I were you ilread to reach out to his mom.
So I did so I messaged his mom on Facebook,
and then that motherfucker emailed me back and said, I
saw you reached out to my mom on Facebook. She
was having issues getting here d her account, so I
checked it for which I don't know if that's true
or if he just like tecks people's facebook's all willing ally,
(18:06):
I don't know, but he was like, that meant so
much to me that you're worried about me, And I
was like, well, I did that at all. So I
told told my friend and she was like, wow, that's
like the worst thing that could have happened in that situation.
I was like, you know what, don'm taking your advice.
I'm gonna take my own advice, which is I'm gonna
say very mean thanks him, and I did. I said
a lot of very mean thanks to him. That was
(18:27):
finally the end. And then after I said all of
that mean stuff, then he never contacted me. Again, so
that was good. I would say the hardest part about
living with the disability, living in a traumatic brain injury
is actually I have a lot of strategies. I have
whiteboards everywhere. I would say that the hardest part is
other people not giving me grace so or like meeting
(18:51):
me where I am or understanding because for example, very
soon after my accident, my mom took me on a
boat and she thought that was a good idea. I
have vestibular issues and balance issues. I obviously yashed the
whole time and she was like, wait, you don't look
in jured. I was like, you saw me in a comat,
like I'm two months ago. I have two yeah whiteboard
(19:15):
calendars over here. I have one that I list like
all my daily stuff that I have to do for
the month so I can get a snapshot of that.
And then I have another one that lists like when
the trash comes and just like recurring stuff that I
need to know so that I can always reference it
and like crossjacket with all the stuff that I have
to do. And then I have another white board. So
(19:38):
those are my two big calendar whiteboards. I have a
smaller whiteboard that is more for daily tasks. So if
I know that I have a couple of meetings today,
then I'll put it on that one. And then if
I have or like to do items that are not
for my jobs, that are specific like life to do,
like oh I need to mail this thing, it goes
(19:59):
on that whiteboard. Job stuff goes on the first calendar whiteboard.
I have another whiteboard over there that's a big it's
a big white board and it is my when I'm so,
I read a lot of essays about horror movies and
(20:20):
just things in general, and I'll pitch stories and I'll
write comedy pieces and that that's what that big white
word is for. It's so if I'm watching a movie
and I have an idea, I can just go scrawl
it on there as messy as I need to, because
my handwriting is terrible unless I'm like really focusing on it.
That way, I can just like scrawl on there big
enough print that I can like look over and I
(20:40):
know what I'm saying. And then also I'm a pacer,
so I I normally you can see I'm like crawling
out of my chair right now as I'm talking through this,
and I'm all animated. So when I'm thinking through things.
I walk in a circle, big circle, and I go
over to the big whiteboard and right there, right on
(21:03):
there my ideas. And then I have another whiteboard on
my fridge that's by my front door, and it's one
of those like magnetized peely off whiteboard things, and I
put on their pretty much the same reminders that I
have on the smaller whiteboard that I use over here
for like daily tasks to do, just to remind me.
(21:25):
That way, when I leave the house, it's like, are
you grabbing the mail or are you grabbing that thing
that you have to drop off at the ups store?
Or don't forget to pick up your pills from the pharmacy,
although I have to admit recently I've just been telling
the pharmacy to mail it. I'm like, I can't do
this anymore, Please just mail the pills. So how my
(21:55):
accident changed my relationship to my drinking? Oh boy, I'm
usloaded because acutely right away, of course I couldn't drink.
So people ask me all the time if I went
through withdrawals. I'm like, well, if I did, I don't know.
I was in a coma. I didn't I don't remember
having cravings or anything like that while I was in
(22:16):
the hospital. But also, I feel like when you're hurt
that bad, it's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You can't
have a certain craving when you're you're just down here.
Here's what you're just making sure that your body is
regulating temperture correctly. That being said a medical social worker.
(22:38):
My mother staged an intervention for me while I was
still I couldn't get out of bed. It was I'm
still very fresh. It was when my memory first started sticking.
The medical social worker began with a you do a
She and my mom came in my in the room
and she said, hey, Brooke, we wanted to tell you,
(23:00):
like impress upon you how you're drinking contributed to your situation.
Of course, I started laughing because of that period of time,
I was just hanging out of the hospital. Everyone was
being very nice to me. I was having a great time.
You know, I wasn't fully fully there, so I just
started laughing. I was like, this is great. I don't okay,
it's drinking got me here all right. And my mom was,
(23:23):
you know, she started crying. She was feeling pretty bad
about that reaction, and so the medical social workers said
to her, show her show broke a picture of her
that you took of her in the koma. That way
she'll understand. Well, that was a mistake because I had
that giant blood dread. So when they showed him with
(23:43):
the picture, I started cracking up because I was like,
because it's like, oh, the somber scene like young woman
in coma, and then it's just like it's almost like
the camera's panning up and then it gets to the
face and then there's just like a giant blood dread
sticking out the out of the bag. So I just
started cracking up, and the medical social worker was like,
this is her injury. There's frontal log damage. You know,
(24:07):
she'll she'll even out, she won't be like this. My
mom was like, this is just how Brooke is. That
intervention obviously didn't go well, and I was released from
the hospital two weeks later went back down to San Diego.
I was pretty good about not doing anything bad until
(24:33):
until it started coming back to me about the whole
about everything. And then I because again low emotional intelligence.
I'm not good at communicating my feelings well as you say,
I am now I've gotten a lot better. But at
that time, I was like, oh, overwhelmed, don't know how
(24:53):
to deal going to bar? What bar? Will They never
find me at strip club? So I would go to
the only strip club in North County, San Diego, and
I would hide out and get lap dances and just
drink a bunch of beer, and then eventually someone would
find me or like track me down. For about a
(25:19):
month there, I was sneaking and going to drink getting caught.
Everyone was angry at me, you know, understandably. So I
just I really missed it, and I really missed how
easy it was before. When I was having big feelings.
As we say about my dog when he throws his elephant,
(25:41):
but I didn't have an elephant to throw anymore. I
couldn't drink beer like I used to. So I was
having all these big feelings and I couldn't. I don't
know how to work through them, So I'm just hobbling
to the strip club. I'm like, So I was put
on an anti depressant. Little did they know. I had
been on anti depressants before and I did need them.
(26:02):
So I just stayed on them. And so when I
went to Boston. I needed a psychiatrist there to fill them.
And during the intake with this psychiatrist, she asked for
my history and a little context of what and essentially
(26:23):
I told her everything. I just told you, Hey, you
all right now? And she said, wow, that's a lot.
I have a few more follow up questions. Can you
come back here at the same time next week? I
said sure, So I came back in the same time
next week, and I gave her more context, and then
(26:43):
she asked more about my family, and I talked through
the problems with my family that I was having and
different relationships and things like that. She was like, oh, okay,
I need a little more context. Can you come back
next week's same time. I was like, yeah, sure, So
I came back next week at the same time and
I was talking were more with her, and then by
the end of it, she said, do you mind coming
(27:06):
back at the same time next week because I want
to hear more about these these days. She like read
a couple of things after Liz, and then I'm a
little slow. I was like, are we just doing therapy?
Are you tricking me into coming back? And she's like
She's like yes, And I was like okay, and I
continue to see her for like two years in person,
(27:27):
and then when the pandemic started, I saw her remotely.
I actually kept seeing her until so I saw her
for about four or five years, and that's the only
reason I got sober. Doctor Asma Rashid. Yeah, she was amazing.
She was just like matter of fact. You'd listen to
what I'd say and then she would just say matter
of factly back to me. She'd be like, okay, but
(27:47):
you do realize that you started from this premise that's
inherently flawed. And I'd be like, damn it, Doctor Rashid
got me again. But it was great. It was just great.
(28:09):
So she helped me, like logically work through why I
was drinking and why I felt the need to fall
back into drinking instead of handling things. She's like, how
I used to always say to arrors, like my professional
life is great, I'm on point, I do all these
things great, and my personal life is falling apart. I
don't know to handle it. She's like, why don't you
(28:30):
just treat your personal life like your professional life. Just
be matter of fact with everyone like you are with
your colleagues and workers. And I was like damn it,
doctor Rusheid, Why didn't I think of that? And she
was like, but yeah, so that's kind of how my
true directory with alcohol has gone. Since then, it'll be
ten years this July. I would say since my actions
(28:59):
my accident, my personality hasn't changed much. It has taught
me to be gentler with other people. I've always been
kind of an irrational fellow and my friends how they
would describe me as a little cantankerous direct which I
(29:22):
don't think that's gone away. But I'm more conscientious of
how I say things and how I present thanks to people,
which is a little ironic considering most people will most
medical professionals will tell you the opposite happens with someone
has a traumatic grain injury, that their filter becomes a
little less. But if anything, it's taught me to pause.
(29:47):
I've learned to let things go too. That was one
thing I had to learn quickly is that when I'm
chasing after the words when I can't remember them, which
is a phasia. Yeah, ives, I got that's a little
on that of those, right, I forget the word for aphasia,
But yeah, so aphasia makes it where I'll forget a
(30:10):
word and then when I try to like chase after
it metaphorically speaking, it just almost seems to get farther
and farther away. So I learned fairly quickly that it
made more sense to just find another word, to just
let it go. So I've become very gifted in the
art of letting go. If I can't remember something, I
(30:31):
just let it go. On the whole, I would say
I've become less impulsive. Mindfulness is a buzzword, but I
(30:54):
believe that I've become more mindful in the sense that
I think about things more before I do them. Before
or I would always be like, yeah, that makes sense,
and then I would go do it, but I wouldn't
really think of the full repercussions. I know. That's the
thing they always say to alcoholics too, like play the
tape through, play the tape through. What app is after
you do this thing. I don't regret falling out of
(31:18):
the tree, and I don't regret the brain damage or
anything like that. I wouldn't have got sober otherwise, if
I'm being honest. All of my friend's parents, including my
and my mom, all said to me that they didn't
think i'd live until age thirty. So when the accident happened,
they all were just like, wait, this is not a
(31:38):
surprise to us. We saw this coming, or we're just
surprised that you survived. And I was like, well, you know,
I'm happy, and now, well, I guess I should say
I get happy now because what I've realized before, and
what I realized about myself before, especially when I was
deep in my alcoholism and depression and all of that,
(32:00):
is that I never really had those high highs, which
is why I drank a lot of why did the
extreme things I did, which is why I climbed trees.
I used to get on of fights too. I used
to be a regular punk, a regular run of the
mill punk. But but that's why I did all of that,
because I never had those highs. So since my accident
(32:26):
and since I've gone to therapy and I've retrained myself
to be a human being, I realize now I'm not
happy all the time, but you're not supposed to be
happy all of the time. But I do get happy.
And I for example, when I was I just got
back from seeing with a friend in San Francisco, and
(32:46):
when I come to the bed at night, I was
like Okay, I have to do my stories before I
go to sleep, and she's like, your stories, what's your stories?
I was like, I watched the cute animal videos and
I do that. That's what I do before I go
to bed. As I get girl and I swipe through
the little like there was a story of like a
little rodent trying to like grasp nuts from a guy
(33:09):
who's juggling, and I just like laughed and I laughed
and I was so happy. So I'm able to take
pleasure in like the smaller moments, which goes back to
what I was saying before about that that mindfulness aspect
that I'm I can slow down and I can be like,
I'm here right now and this is good. I'm no,
(33:31):
I'm me because my little dog knows me, and that's
enough for me.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Welcome back. This is a live again joining me in
the studio to talk about today's story. I have two
of our story producers, Nicholas Dakowski and Lauren Vogelam, and
I'm your host Dan Bush. I thought the most wonderful
thing to me that struck me about the story was
she went from bar fights to watching animal videos. Oh yeah, yeah,
(34:25):
I just love that it's like, Okay.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
I'm not getting you know, I'm not getting the high highs,
and so I've become so the alcoholism is born out
of wanting to get these high highs.
Speaker 6 (34:37):
And now she's but you can just take a tiny
little drop of serotonin and do you can get that
from a duck video?
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Ducks are so.
Speaker 7 (34:44):
Cute on video as somebody who is also sort of
I mean, I've stopped drinking. I don't drink anymore. I
definitely recognize what the moment was that made me realize
I had to quit. And it was a lot more
subtle than falling and like getting a brain injury, but
(35:11):
it was, you know, and I'm not going to go
into it. It's weird and personal, but like that moment
of clarity that this terrifying thing has actually saved my life.
It's messes with your brain. I mean messes with your
head a lot, you know, thinking about this, and in
recovery from injury as well as recovery from alcoholism or
(35:34):
or addiction, it's a it's a it's a matter of
putting systems in place to keep yourself accountable, to keep
track of where you are too, to be able to
kind of move forward every day. And I really you know,
Brooke talked a lot about her systems, the systems she
creates place. Yeah, her whiteboards. She has invented a structure
(35:59):
for her life out of whole cloth that wasn't there
before the injury. This injury caused her to create systems
in her life which are life sustaining. The fact that
she was able to put systems in place, build systems
that you never had before, and that this injury made
it absolutely necessary.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
Also, the idea of play the tape through, Oh, play
that was fat like a still battle with this. Sometimes
it's gotten much like I will nine times out of
ten instead of choosing the fuck it right, why not?
Fuck yeah, I'll go Well, I want tomorrow morning to
be pretty awesome. I want some dopamine in the morning.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:41):
Oh, I want some sun I want some sunshine. I
don't want to pull down the curtain. So like that
decision of going play the tape through was really a
cool way to put that.
Speaker 7 (36:50):
And yeah, and that's like that's big in recovery. That's
that's big with addicts. It's like, think about how you're
going to feel later, think about how what affects this
will have in your like large effects as will have
in your life. And I will admit that, like especially
really recently, Like I thought after a few years that
(37:11):
like the itch would like go away, and it largely had.
But I've definitely found myself more in recent days because
of just the stress of the world, because of what's happening,
really struggling more against it and having to rely on
playing the tape forward to not drink.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
It is a really effective too. I didn't know that
was doing it, but I've been Yeah.
Speaker 7 (37:34):
It's thinking about the consequences of your actions.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
Yeah, and like I can pay for it later, I
can pay for it now, you know, and I can
make you gotta make a sacrifice on either side of
that gambit absolutely well.
Speaker 7 (37:46):
And on top of that too, doing that helps you
build more self awareness too, I think because you are
like having to think through what your actions will do
and what your actions the fact it has not just
on yourself but on the world. Me not drinking means
that I'm more present for my daughter. That means that
(38:07):
my daughter is going to be It's going to feel
more loved, it's going to feel more secure in our connection.
So I don't drink.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
It's also I will say it's with the drinking in particular,
but it is a slippery slope. Like you know, when
I was it took me the first couple of years
of having the kids around of like, oh, it's you know,
it's been a hard day. I've been I've been working
all day, busting my ass. I've also been raising these kids.
You know, I'm dealing with all of their stuff, and
(38:36):
you know, you're worn out, and so you're like, oh,
let me make a drink, and you know, you get
to wear two of those, three of those at night,
and eventually I'm not wanting to read to the kids anymore.
I don't have any energy. And my dovna meine just
got blasted from the first drink, and I'm trying to
get back with the others and it's not working and
it's going downhill, and I just to catch yourself and go.
I want to read. I want to have the drive
(38:57):
and the energy and the focus to read a bedtime
story to my kids. And the only thing that's keeping
me from doing that it's not because I'm exhausted. It's
because I'm drinking.
Speaker 7 (39:07):
Brooke is fucking fantastic, She's incredibly funny about all of
this stuff, and yeah, you can. I definitely felt a
kinship with Brooke.
Speaker 6 (39:18):
Yeah, and I guess kind of along those lines, and
also still talking about alcohol misuser or whatever kind of
drug misuse anyone might be going through. One thing that
struck me about the way that she talked about her
former self was that And maybe maybe I'm projecting or something,
but like she sounded angry at her former self. She
(39:40):
sounded dismissive, and she's allowed.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
To feel that.
Speaker 6 (39:43):
You know, you're allowed to feel however you feel about
how you were and your mistakes and how you've moved on.
But you always hope with any kind of recovery that
the part of the process is going to be opening
yourself up to grace and learning how to forgive yourself
and be you know, just okay with it. Be like, yeah,
that idiot was fine, but yeah it's all right, this idiot.
Speaker 5 (40:04):
Is way better. It's like the one of the biggest
ingredients that's lacking in the normal day to day these days,
people are lacking grace for themselves but also just for
one another. Yeah, they don't. I don't know.
Speaker 6 (40:16):
And Brooke was talking about that, right, talking about how
it's an invisible injury. Yeah, and how you don't always
you know, you just right, you don't know what someone
is going through.
Speaker 5 (40:28):
And I had a friend that used to say, everybody
knows something about something you don't know nothing about. Everybody
knows something about something that you don't know nothing about.
Speaker 6 (40:36):
True, that's accurate, that is scientifically proven, And.
Speaker 5 (40:40):
It's so easy to just reduce everyone to go dumbass
or whatever. And it's like, yeah, that guy's probably dealt
with something that you've never dealt with. Next week, the
story of Drew Cyber. A fall in the middle of
the night broke his neck and should have killed him.
Rushed to the hospital, he was told he would never
walk again, but he surpassed his doctors expectations and completely
(41:01):
transformed his life.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
I was working fifty hours a week or more. I
was starting to get high blood pressure and maybe I
was on my way to a heart attack or a stroke.
Perhaps the spinal cord injury maybe has saved my life.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent die
Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbaan. Music by Ben Lovett additional
music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
production support. Our studio engineers are Rima Elkli and Nomes Griffin.
(41:41):
Today's episode was edited by Mike w Anderson, mixing by
Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host Dan Bush.
The special thanks to Brooke Nisley for sharing her compelling
story with us. Brook is a talented freelance writer specializing
in humor, personal essays, and reporting on disability, mental health,
and culture. To read more of Brooks insightful and engaging word,
(42:02):
visit our website at Brookneisley dot com. B r O
O k e k n I s l e y
dot com. Alive Again is a production of i RT
Radio and Psychopia Pictures. If you have a transformative near
death experience to share, we'd love to hear your story.
Please email us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com.
(42:23):
That's a l I v e A g A I
N P R O j e c t at gmail
dot com.
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